Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (15)
Directed by Glenn Ficarra,
John Requa
4 Stars

After Rock the Kasbah, another Hollywood Afghan war “comedy” was a depressing prospect.
I was wrong.

Armed with Robert Carlock’s smart screenplay (from Kim Barker’s book The Taliban Shuffle) directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s sarcastic riff on US military fighting in Afghanistan is a witty adult comedy cynically reminiscent of M*A*S*H.

Tina Fey is superbly funny and emotionally true as the cable TV producer who heads for Kabul in 2003 where her baptism of fire as a frontline TV reporter and subsequent battlefield adulthood is witty and serious with acid anti-combat stings in its tale.

Her segue from greenhorn to inevitably sceptical reporter begins billeted in the “Kabubble” — the raucous milieu of hardened hard-drinking, drug savouring journalists where, after telling her New York boyfriend by Skype “I don’t think I can do this,” she proves herself wrong.

And finds romance with Scottish photographer Martin “We’ll always have Kabul” Freeman (excellent) after “It’s a brothel and a Chinese restaurant” marks their first date.

Billy Bob Thornton’s General (“No sex with my mari-nes!”) is droll, bearded Brit Alfred Molina scores as a creepy bearded Afghan politician and there are no poor performances.

But it’s Fey, striking a perfect balance between truth and comedy, who rightly triumphs.

Alan Frank

Green Room (18)
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
3 stars

This week devout fans of gore, guts, slice and dice are served up a bloody, bloody good treat from writer-director Jeremy Saulnier, hailed for his previous shocker Blue Rain.

Down-on-their-luck punk rockers Callum Turner, Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat and Joe Cole are even less lucky after accepting a gig in a backwoods-Oregon roadhouse, antagonising the white supremacist audience, discovering a murder victim and being targeted for death themselves.

The unfortunate musicians are picked off one by one in cliched horror-flick slice and dice style, shot, become blood gushers while, to give Saulnier his due, considerable tension is created, notably in near-torture porn “highlights.”

For me, the most shocking aspect, however, was Patrick Stewart with an interesting — Oregon? — accent as the callous supremacist leader.  He’s genuinely scary — like the film.

Green Room opens with a shot of a field of corn. Could that be a summation of its level of real “invention”?

Alan Frank

Angry Birds (U)
Directed by Clay Kaytis,
Fergal Reilly
4 stars

Angry Birds flies off as it means to continue with a avian avalanche of knockabout comedy when we first meet initially improbable feathered hero Red whose attempts to deliver a large egg to a party triggers off enough animated pratfalls to satisfy even the most demanding young audience.

Red is sentenced to attend anger-management classes after literally shrinking an avian judge at his trial. And then when the remote island where the birds hang out is invaded by pigs — it’s up to Red to lead his bird pals against the porcine baddies.

Vocal casting is good, with Jason Sudeikis enjoying himself as Red and Sean Penn, among others, hiding behind smart animation.
The story is simply a delivery device for plenty of noisy comedy.

Narrative logic is not important, laughter is and fun seeking youngsters need not know about the video game from which the film was hatched to enjoy themselves.

Alan Frank

Cabin Fever (15)
Directed by Travis Zariwny
1 star

This remake of Eli Roth’s careerlaunching Cabin Fever has to be one of the most pointless ever made.

It is almost a scene by scene homage to the 2002 horror film, which brings nothing new to the table.

It centres around a group of five friends who go to stay in a cabin in the woods and slowly succumb to a vile mystery killer illness.

One of its problems is the zero chemistry between the cast members plus the fact than none of the characters are sympathetic or worthwhile. Then there are the cliched locals who are all portrayed as creepy and somewhat unhinged.

This is a horror by numbers and begs the question why Roth put his name to it as executive producer.

My advice is give it a miss and just watch the original.

Maria Duarte