Trainwreck (15)
Directed by Judd Apatow
5/5

The melding of screenwriter-star Amy Schumer and director Judd Apatow is a movie marriage made in heaven.

Schumer is celebrated in the US for rude, raunchy and regrettably funny coarse television comedy while Apatow — for once not directing his own screenplay — made the classic bad-taste comedies Knocked Up and Bridesmaids.

One of the many pleasures here is leaving you wanting to hear and enjoy seeing cinema-virgin Schumer again, and as soon as possible too.

An added enjoyment, all-too-often-charmless Tilda Swinton (Dianna), unrecognisable in a blonde wig and makeup, proves an unexpected comic pleasure as magazine writer Schumer’s self-adoring editor.

Schumer is terrific as promiscuous, sex-driven Amy who, encouraged by her father, sleeps around without shame but with maximum enjoyment. Uncommitted sex is everything — until she is sent to interview sports surgeon Aaron (Bill Hader) and falls in love.

Yes, there’s a happy, romantic ending but getting there is unalloyed fun.

Review by Alan Frank

Mistress America (15)
Directed by Noah Baumbach
4/5

Hollywood history is littered with careers created by family — or other — favours.

Not here, happily.

Director Noah “The Squid and the Whale” Baumbach co-wrote this wise, witty, thoroughly enjoyable comedy with wife Greta Gerwig and also starred her as Brooke.

For my money (and I’d happily have paid to see Mistress America) husband-and-wife put very few frames wrong.

With her father about to marry again, lonely undergraduate and aspirant author Tracy (Lola Kirk) meets her soon-to-be-stepsister Brooke (Gerwig).

It’s the start of an initially unlikely, and as it progresses, major bonding between the undergraduate and her exuberant thirty-something new best friend.

Comedy, pathos and out-and-out outrageous situations are expertly blended into a must-see melange of relationships built, shattered and scattered.

Kirk and Gerwig are memorable. There are no weak performances and Baumbach uses his New York locations (notably the women’s first meeting in Times Square) to excellent effect.

Review by Alan Frank

Precinct Seven Five (15)
Directed by Tiller Russell
4/5

Crime is an inherent part of America’s psyche, in politics, big business and notably, on screen.

Outside of horror movies and westerns, crime movies are probably the longest-lasting genre. After all, notorious public enemy number one John Dillinger was gunned down after seeing a movie in a Chicago cinema.

This gripping story of a crooked cop in crime and violence-ridden Brooklyn in the 1980s and 1990s tends to make the works of Brian de Palma, Robert de Niro, Martin Scorsese and their ilk seem quite reserved in comparison.

Why? Because New York policeman Michael Dowd, the subject of this gripping documentary, is a real-life character and not some scenery-chomping actor.

Director Tiller Russell does a superb job of telling the story of Dowd’s decline and fall, from bribe taker to “business associate” of a Dominican drug lord.

Fascinating establishing footage is blended with Dowd’s 1993 hearing and, notably, Dowd (who was jailed) talking to camera.

Review by Alan Frank

Pixels (3D) (12A)
Directed by Chris Columbus
2/5

Adam Sandler is called upon to save the Earth from an alien invasion of Pac-Man in his most egocentric film to date.

When a time capsule containing video feeds of ’80s classic arcade games is misread as a declaration of war by extra-terrestrials the US president (Kevin James) enlists the help of his best friend Sam Brenner (Sandler), Ludlow Lamonsoff (Josh Gad) and Eddie “The Fire Blaster” Plant (Peter Dinklage) — all former teenage nerds, oops, games champions — to fight off the alien attack by a giant sized Pac-Man, Centipede and Donkey Kong.

Dinklage, no doubt on a break from Game of Thrones, was great fun to watch but it is of course Sandler’s character on cruise control again who saves the day in this terribly misogynistic sci-fi action adventure.

It was heartening to see Sandler being chased by a ginormous Pac-Man in the hope that he would be swallowed up once and for all in retribution for all the lazy, hideous comedies he keeps torturing us with.

The burning question is who is Pixels aimed at because kids won’t have heard of any of these video games and it’s too puerile for forty-somethings.

Review by Maria Duarte

Absolutely Anything (12A)
Directed by Terry Jones
1/5

Despite its pedigree — co-writer and director Terry Jones, fellow Pythons John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle and Jones — this fatuous Flying Circus farrago crashes before it can take off.

The well animated but otherwise irritating extraterrestrials are ready to exterminate mankind — unless their nominated Earthling Neil Clarke (Simon Pegg) can save the day using the wish-fulfilling powers the aliens grant him.

Clarke’s wishes include getting his dog to talk (voiced by the late Robin Williams) along with the kind of silly wishes that would blemish badly-written provincial pantos.

Also involved in the face-freezingly, utterly unfunny waste of film are Eddie Izzard (who, accepting he cannot act, doesn’t) as Headmaster, Joanna Lumley as Fenella, unfunny in a wig, tastelessly patronised Asian actors Sanjeev Bhaskar as Ray and Meera Syal as Fiona and heroine Kate Beckinsale as Catherine who deserves better.

Cinema-goers ditto.

Review by Alan Frank