13 Minutes (15)
Directed by Oliver Herschbiegel
4/5

OLIVER HIRSCHBIEGEL’S 13 minutes tells the searing, true-life story of Georg Elsner who attempted to assassinate Hitler on November 8, 1939.

He made a bomb and hid it in the Munich hall where Hitler was due to speak but Elsner (Christian Fielder) failed — Hitler left the meeting 13 minutes early.

Despite the foreknowledge, Hirschbiegel racks up considerable suspense and creates a powerfully distressing portrait of the horrors of nazi Germany.

He is force-fed the truth drug Pervitin, an an early version of crystal meth given to Hitler’s troops to keep them wired and homicidal.

Interpolating scenes of Elsner’s appalling, torture-ridden interrogation by Hitler’s minions with flashbacks to the prisoner’s bucolic early life in the Swabian Alps before the nazis poisoned that life for ever, the director provides a valuable reminder of Germany’s all-too-easily airbrushed criminal past.

Fielder is excellent as a lecher, musician, handyman and unlikely hero, while an unfamiliar cast add chilling verisimilitude.
13 Minutes deserves the widest audience possible, especially in a week when Frau Merkel flexed her muscles to bring the bankrupt Greeks to heel.

Review by Alan Frank

Ant-Man (12A)
Directed by Peyton Reed
4/5

YOU might think that Hollywood is now scraping the bottom of Marvel’s proverbial barrel with a little-known superhero that can shrink to the size of an ant.

Just like Guardians of the Galaxy last year Ant-Man is a complete revelation with its delightful humour, action-packed heroics and unlikely but simpatico comic book heroes.

It is a 3D film which punches above its pint-size weight due in part to Paul Rudd’s easy charm and effortless wit as the convincing miniature hero — one of the original Avengers —who can also command ants.

He makes burglar Scott Lang a truly likeable character. Once he embraces his alter ego after stealing Dr Hank Pym’s (Michael Douglas) super suit, which shrinks him and makes him stronger, he embarks on defeating the former’s evil, crazy protegee Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) with the good doctor and his daughter’s (Evangeline Lilly) help.

With a superb cast, inspired visual gags and a straightforward plot this provides a refreshing respite to the uber-serious Avengers: Age of Ultron.

It sets Ant-Man firmly in the Marvel universe with a teaser to the next instalment at the very end of the credits for diehard fans.

Review by Maria Duarte

True Story (15)
Directed by Rupert Goode
2/5

THE title tells all.

Or does it?

All too often “based on a true story” simply means altering the facts for better box office.

You be the judge, should you see this.

Jonah Hill, playing a serious role — you know it’s serious, he wears spectacles — is Michael Finkel who, after faking an interview, is fired in disgrace from the New York Times.

He retires to Montana where he learns that accused killer Christian Longo (James Franco) has been using his name.

Believing there’s a story that might rehabilitate him, Hill meets the condemned man.

They bond, with Finkel seeking redemption and Longo out to milk the relationship — “I wanna help you, but I can’t unless you help me” — for his own ends.

British stage director Rupert Goode, making his feature film debut, does a workmanlike enough job, with Hill playing serious competently, Franco ditto.

In the final analysis, though, it resembles a well-cast but average TV film.

Review by Alan Frank

The Gallows (15)
Directed by Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff
1/5

THE Blair Witch Project has a lot to answer for in this travesty of a horror film which relies yet again on videoed film footage but which lacks the ground-breaking ingenuity of its precursor.

In it a high school theatre ghost has been waiting more than 20 years to wreak his revenge when the play he died in — The Gallows — is finally being staged once more.

A promising idea which is badly executed, with no surprises or scares as four students find themselves locked in the auditorium overnight.

Pursued by the ghost, one of them films everything although at times it is clear there is more than one camera.

Dull, derivative and wholly predictable, including the final twist — I wish we’d all been put out of our misery an hour sooner.

Review by Maria Duarte

Self/less
Directed by Rupert Goode
3/5

MULTIMILLIONAIRE businessman Damian (Ben Kingsley) has everything, including a regal apartment decorated in the worst possible taste overlooking New York’s Central Park.

Unfortunately, inoperable cancer is killing him.

Then he learns of a secret organisation that, for a fortune, will save him by “transferring” his consciousness into a new, younger body grown in their secret laboratory.

Kingsley agrees and undergoes the process, emerging as 30-something Ryan Reynolds.

He starts a self-indulgent new life in New Orleans until, despite taking daily pills, he starts having unnerving flashbacks to a previous existence.

The elderly John Randolph underwent a similar process in 1966’s Seconds, emerging as Rock Hudson.

So how does this riff on a similar storyline by screenwriters Alex and David Pastor and director Tarsem Singh work out?

If you relax and don’t try too hard to follow the plot, there’s enough action, gunplay and general mayhem on offer to provide easy to enjoy, easy to forget entertainment.

Review by Alan Frank