True Story (2015)

Even a cursory knowledge of the true story of Christian Longo and his murdered wife and children is enough to know this bad taste exercise is the fruit of Truman Capote-wannabe Michael Finkel's wish to write his own In Cold Blood, but this nebulous "true crime" thriller about Finkel's friendship with Longo, adapted here for the screen with stretched-beyond-their-dramatic-acting-limits Jonah "punch a wall to show you are angry" Hill and James "just try to look enigmatic" Franco, ends at the conclusion of the opening scene depicting Longo's arrest in Mexico - the rest (shared handwriting, winks, feigned internal turmoil, double negatives and passionate jailhouse speeches) reeks of two self-interested men, both not very good at their jobs, trying to spin the four murders into positive personal outcomes.

★★☆☆☆

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

James Franco is a bit self-consciously James Franco in this 2011 first of the rebooted Planet of the Apes series of movies but his inwardness doesn't stop this being a terrifically entertaining blockbuster about Caesar, an intelligent ape, who ends up leading as rousing an uprising as any you've seen before in cinema, with the movie playing a little like what it would have been like if Alfred Hitchcock had included a first act explaining the terrible battery farm treatment that first made the birds mad.

★★★★☆

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The Disaster Artist (2017)

Just like the mirthful viewers who still years after its release fill theatres for midnight screenings of Tommy Wiseau's The Room, director, producer and lead actor James Franco and his co-stars (his brother Dave and an enormous number of celebrities appearing in cameo) gather in this adaptation of Greg Sestero's making-of account to rejoice in The Room's utter awfulness and to revel in Wiseau's ineptitude as a filmmaker and actor.

★★★☆☆

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The Interview (2014)

I had assumed the controversy surrounding its release - because it centres on a plot to assassinate a living leader - was a marketing ploy to overshadow the fact James Franco and Seth Rogen's comedy was a laughfree bomb, but in fact, despite myself, I enjoyed this audacious - and immature and unnecessarily violent - comedy greatly boosted by the genuinely touching relationship that develops between Randall Parks' Kim Jong-un and Franco's dopey celebrity shockjock, Dave Skylark, enlisted by the FBI to kill the leader during a staged, ratings-boosting interview.

★★★★☆

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The Iceman (2012)

This account of the career of real-life crime figure Richard Kuklinski, a hitman-for-hire active in the 70s, is more concerned with the gory techniques he used for his murder-for-profit than with his psychology, and so there's little of interest beyond that very briefly generated by David Schwimmer's turn as the Iceman's killer colleague.

★★☆☆☆

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The Letter (aka The Stare) (2012)

The director of a play seems to be losing her grip on reality in this movie of such utter awfulness it is almost worth sitting through its so-bad-it's-funny Z-grade Black Swan plot with its tedious voiceover narration and zombie-like performances, just to see.

☆☆☆☆☆ (no stars)

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Your Highness (2011)

Perhaps lured to work with the team behind the popular Pineapple Express, Natalie Portman deigns to appear in this only very occasionally amusing fantasy comedy adventure, but the biggest star by far is the penis, which features in every scene and is the punchline of every joke, either because it is flaccid, erect, severed, worn as jewellery, missing or, in some misguided scenes-played-for-laughs, used to sodomise, rape, and child abuse.

★☆☆☆☆

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Mademoiselle C (2013)

This is a magazine branding exercise more than it is a documentary about former Vogue Paris Editor-in-Chief Carine Roitfeld who in 2013 dares to launch a new NY fashion magazine: not even she can articulate what she actually does and after trying various words (stylist, storyteller, editor) the matter is dismissed for 90 minutes of beautiful people looking beautiful, meaning little is learned, sadly, about Roitfeld other than the fact she surrounds herself with fashion industry celebrities and 'treats service drivers as she would her own children.'

★★☆☆☆

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This Is The End (2013)

Some of Hollywood's most obnoxious personalities gather at James Franco's house for a party, and pretty soon the world decides to end rather than put up with another minute of their incessant shouting about drugs, semen, masturbation, and rape.

★★☆☆☆

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