James Nunn & Ronnie Thompson | 90 mins | Blu-ray + download (HD)* | 2.35:1 | UK / English | 15
Residents of a condemned high-rise witness a gang-related murder, but don’t intervene and deny all to the police. Months later, a sniper begins to pick them off. Can they band together and survive?
Screenwriter James Moran (Severance, Torchwood, Doctor Who) seems to have hit a good idea for a single-location thriller, and there are neat sequences in the mix, but there’s not quite enough juice in the concept or characters to sustain a full 90 minutes.
By no means a bad effort, but a brisker pace — and, to be frank, more innovative reveal of the killer — could have paid dividends.
In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long. You’ve just read one.
* To be precise: I started on a rental BD, which went screwy just over halfway through, so I finished it off via a download. ^
Quirky director Jeunet uses quirky cinematography and quirky special effects to tell the quirky story of a quirky girl, who had a quirky upbringing by quirky parents, and now lives a quirky life with quirky friends. A quirky coincidence leads her into the quirky hobby of cheering up strangers in quirky ways, during which she meets more quirky people who do quirky things, and she quirkily falls for the quirkiest.
Nicolas Cage fulfils his long-held wish of playing a comic book hero in this peculiar effort from the writer-director of 
Adapted from a Marvel comic, though you can’t really call this a superhero movie: undercover cop Frank Castle’s family are murdered, so he goes after the crime organisation responsible. This is action-thriller territory, not guys in tights fighting.
Cinematographers discuss cinematography in this AFI-produced documentary. Initially a whistlestop history of film photography, it segues into analysis of movies the interviewed DPs had shot. Unfortunately, casual film fans may judge it monotopical, while hardened cineastes may find it a haphazard, Hollywood-centric overview.
The victor of Sight & Sound’s inaugural “greatest film” poll (though it’s slipped down the rankings ever since), this is the simple story of a man hunting for his stolen bicycle, which is vital for his job, hard-won in a time of unemployment and poverty.
The director of Disney’s woeful 
Aardman’s second CG feature attracts a starry cast (not just the leads — check out who’s credited as “Lead Elf”!) to the story of how Santa really delivers all those presents in one night: a giant spaceship-like craft and thousands of SAS-esque elves. But when one child is missed, Santa’s clumsy son Arthur resolves to fix it.
Sharknado is a defining film of 2013. The volume of conversation it generated, which achieved the near-impossibility of higher viewing figures for its repeats, is exceptional. So I was determined to give it its due in a full-length review. But I can’t be bothered — it doesn’t merit such attention.
After a decade locked away in motion-capture madness, Robert Zemeckis returned to the realms of the real with this Oscar-nominated drama. Its most high-profile nod was for Denzel Washington, starring as an airline pilot who miraculously crash lands his plane, but is revealed to have been high during the flight. Cue a film that attempts a grown-up account of addiction, but fumbles it, in the process missing the more interesting story of the crash investigation.
100Films.co.uk 