Eggmag Movies

True Grit Review

2011-02-15T09:35:00.000-08:00

The Coen Brothers are on such a streak of form right now. True, Burn After Reading isn't brilliant but "not brilliant" from the Coens still tends to be better than many directors at their best. No Country For Old Men was a triumph, A Serious Man fantastic and now with True Grit they've delivered a superb western and a great film full stop.

The true grit of the title belongs to Mattie Ross (newcomer Hailee Steinfeld) a tough as nails and hugely intelligent young girl who hires drunk, disorderly but deadly US Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to avenge her Father's death by killing the man that did it (Josh Brolin). Joining the hunt is Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Matt Damon), something of a buffoon but who nevertheless displays courage and heart as the film progresses, causing Mattie to wonder if she didn't perhaps hire the wrong man in the first place.

The film is a coming of age story as much as it is a revenge story and it contains so much of what the Coens do best, pitch perfect tone (even as scenes go from dark to funny to tense and back to dark again) fantastic dialogue, economical story-telling and iconic performances. This film boasts what is absolutely a career best turn from Jeff Bridges. Yes everyone loves The Dude and yes he won his awards for the inferior Crazy Heart last year, but Bridges' Cogburn is simply phenomenol. We get the sense of him being a good man but the love of his life is whiskey and whiskey is everywhere to be found. He is at times hilariously uncoordinated, falling off his horse etc, and at times menacingly dark and is utterly compelling both ways. He is matched by Haliee Stenfeld who has an incredibly tricky job of convincing as plucky and tough without losing sight of her age or tipping into parody and at the same time revealing just enough vulnerability to let us see her change throughout the film. She is absolutely excellent and is certainly a talent to watch for the future. Matt Damon too is excellent. His character is that goofy type of character The Coens like to write but Damon always grounds him in something believable so he fits in completely with the rest of the film.

The other star of True Grit is Coens' regular cinematographer Roger Deakins, surely about to receive his long overdue Oscar next week. The film is beautifully shot, from the small scenes in cabins or by campfires to the stunning vistas one expects from a Western. True Grit is one of those films where you believe the characters have been around long before we meet them at the beginning of the part of their lives the movie depicts. With Cogburn in particular, and not just because he is the eldest, you absolutely get the sense of a man who has lived a life, not a character created for the purpose of telling a story. True Grit is elegant, tense, funny and truly a film you can just get lost inside of. In short, it's everything The Coens, at their best, have been delivering their whole career.

8.5/10

The Fighter Review

2011-02-15T08:56:00.000-08:00

The Fighter is one of the heavy hitters at this year's awards season, receiving a number of Oscar nominations including Best Film and Director for David O Russell. For my money it is by far the most generic of the nominated films I've seen so far. The King's Speech is pretty safe and unlikely to offend anyone but its story is unique and interesting. Black Swan is, depending on who you talk to, deranged genius or camp hysteria. Either way it certainly isn't formulaic. True Grit is an elegant masterpiece, Inception imaginative and filled with ideas. And in the middle of it all sits The Fighter. Washed up boxer seeking one last shot, family dragging him down but he needs them at the same time... all the cliches are present and accounted for. Yet there is no denying the film has class and is well acted and directed. I think my only issue is all the awards attention the film is receiving which, in an unusually strong year, makes its by the numbers story stand out all the more.

Mark Wahlberg plays Micky Ward, a welterweight who has never reached the boxing heights he dreamed of. Christian Bale is his brother Dicky, an ex-fighter himself who once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard but who is now addicted to crack. Dicky is Mickey's trainer, when he rememebrs to turn up, and his terrifying Mother (an excellent Melissa Leo) acts as his manager. They are, of course, completely mismanaging him, as evidenced early on when Mickey is coerced into a disasterous fight proper management would never have let him be a part of. Mickey's girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) urges him to ditch the family but, as the film progresses, it becomes possible that Mickey needs his family, in particular his wayward brother, more than anyone realises.

There really isn't a huge amount to say about The Fighter. It does what it does and does it very well. Christian Bale is pretty much guaranteed his Oscar this year and, in truth, there is little denying it to him. He completely sells his addiction in every scene, the way he clings to his one moment of glory is sad without ever becoming pathetic or cloying and what's great about the performance is the way Bale manages to present Dicky as basically a good guy without ever shying away from the fact that he is a total screw up. When we first meet him he has a film crew following him apparently to chart his return to boxing. The reveal of what the film is actually about, as well as the way it pays off, is genuinely affecting. Bale demands your attention whenever he is onscreen and, in truth, I wonder if most of the success of the film isn't due to his performance, the best he has been in a very long time. Wahlberg is Wahlberg and doesn't derail the film, finding a quiet centre in the maelstrom that surrounds him. I was concerned early on that Amy Adams, an actress I really like, was miscast. But after a slightly shaky start she settles into her role as the tough talking bar worker who has Mickey's best interests at heart. The scenes with the rest of the family, his ferocious Mother and gaggle of frightening sisters, were somewhat cartoonish for me. I felt them over the top and ultimately didn't really believe them. What I did like though was the way the family was the film's focus. There is actually very little boxing in The Fighter (but in a nice directorial touch what fights there are O Russell films as if they're TV broadcasts) and this is to its credit as it really did make me care about the relationship between the two brothers.

I'm actually warming to the film as I type this. I was never bored, there are many genuinely funny moments and Christian Bale is standout. It's just that I'd seen it all before so many times, I found it difficult to get really enthused about the film's strengths. In that respect, it reminded me of The Town, fantastically made but way too familiar. I should say though that The Fighter is considerably better. Ultimately there is much to enjoy in the film. Just don't expect any surprises.

6.5/10

Barney's Version Review

2011-01-30T08:18:00.000-08:00

I'll watch Paul Giamatti in pretty much anything. Well, I walked out of Shoot 'Em Up and I didn't see Fred Claus. But whatever, he's one of my favourite actors who absolutely sells me on whatever it is he's playing. That's just as true of his portrayal of Barney Panofsky in Barney's Version as it is of any of the other characters he has played and this is what creates the problem. The character is such an idiot, such a dick in a lot of ways, that I ended up rooting for anyone and everyone else in the film. When I could be bothered to concentrate. Barney's Version is long, tangental and unfocused with a number of plot strands that don't really go anywhere. If it wasn't for Paul Giamatti I'd have probably given up on it.

The film takes us through Barney's life as the producer of a dubious television soap opera (now in its 30th season we're told near the beginning) two disasterous marriages, a third marriage to the love of his life that he single handedly destroys, the fact that he may or may not have committed murder and his eventual mental decline. There are good bits, a few good scenes, some genuinely funny moments, most of which involve Dustin Hoffman who almost steals the show as Barney's lothario, straight talking Dad and, as I said, Paul Giamatti is always reliable and doesn't disappoint here. But I couldn't get over that central problem. I had zero sympathy for the guy. I've seen a number of reviews describe Barney as a "lovable rogue" or some variation on that theme but that, for me, is incredibly euphamistic to the point of it not being true. I didn't like him, I was asked to care about him and I simply couldn't. The film makes a few attempts to redeem him near the end but they are way too little too late and the film ends up being a waste of a great actor giving a great performance.

4/10

Black Swan Review

2011-01-19T01:59:00.000-08:00

Can it be that only 19 days into 2011, I've already seen the best film I'm going to see all year? Black Swan is an astonishing film, frightening, tense, unsettling and disturbing and it catapults itself into my top 5 cinema experiences of all time. It just means eleven and a half months of films that simply don't measure up...

Natalie Portman plays Nina, a ballerina desperate to ascend in the company she dances for. Aging Prima Ballerina Beth (Winona Ryder) is about to leave the company and company director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) seeks his new Swan Queen who, to perform Swan Lake, must be able to dance both sides of the role, the pure, innocent White Swan and the evil doppelganger, the Black Swan. Nina is all technique but is controlled and tightly wound. She excels at the White Swan but cannot tap into those darker aspects of herself in order to convince as the Black Swan. That is how the film starts and over the next couple of hours we experience Nina's psychological and physical breakdown and transformation into the eponymous Black Swan.

From minute one, Black Swan unsettles you and it retains a tone and atmosphere throughout its entire running time that pins you to your seat and simply won't let you move. What's absolutely fascinating about the film is that it's covering very similar territory to writer/director Darren Aronofsky's last film, The Wrestler. Both films examine a very specific, very niche world. Both films examine, sometimes in eye watering detail, exactly what the participants of that world suffer for their sport/art and we see how uncompromising both can be in the way the wrestlers/dancers end up destroyed by their respective vocations. Just as we watched Randy "The Ram" Robinson cut himself with a concealed razor blade to make the audience think he is genuinely hurt in the ring, so we watch Nina tape up her bleeding, battered feet and squeeze them into what on the outside are dainty ballet shoes, as well as watching her physio "pop" limbs back into place. Much of Black Swan occurs in grimy corridors, train carriages, tiny rooms, intimate in exactly the same way The Wrestler was. What's incredible though is that, rather than examining thse things in the form of a character drama, he now examines them in the form of a psychological horror film; a body horror in the tradition of early David Cronenberg and a descent into madness as compelling as The Innocents, Psycho or any of the greats of that subgenre of horror.

I really can't overstate how well this combination of genres works. The natural horror of what a ballet dancer puts herself through morphing into the body horror of her mental descent is utterly compelling. It walks that fine line of actually being comical but never loses its grip on what it's doing. So much of the film can be read in multiple ways and it's to the film's credit that you are as engrossed in Nina's situation as you are. 80% of the film is shot in either over the shoulder shots or big close ups, and the whole film feels like it's invading Nina's psychological as well as physical space as a result. The net effect is to completely unsettle, as well as leave us in no doubt that we are experiencing this film purely from her point of view. Regular Aronofsky collaborators Matthew Libatique and Clint Mansell contribute enormously, as they always do, their photography and music respectively adding massively to the overall tone and atmosphere of the piece.

In terms of performances, there really isn't a weak link. The film rests on Natalie Portman's delicate shoulders and her performance is utterly fearless. Her slow breakdown is completely believable and, as "big" as this film goes, her performance never felt overwrought or hysterical. The most interesting character after Nina for me was her Mother, played brilliantly by Barbara Hershey. This relationship throws back to Carrie as Piper Laurie's religious fanatic sought to closit and undermine her telekinetic daughter. But this character is way more interesting because of the way her motives are so ambiguous. She was a ballerina who, she tells us, gave it all up to raise her daughter. But we have no way of knowing how true that is. Maybe she's as over protective as she is because she knows the psychological toll the role of the Swan Queen takes. Maybe she suffered the same and its left her unhinged, crying to herself, painting those strange pictures in her room. Or maybe she's just a Mother and it's experiencing her through Nina's eyes that warps our view of her. Barbara Hershey plays it such that most interpretations of her are valid. Vincent Cassel is suitably sleazy as the company director, opening Nina up to her raw sexuality, possibly to get the best show he can, possibly for his own gratification, but, strangely, also finding moments of compassion in the small looks and glances he gives his "little princess." Mila Kunis also has a difficult job as Lily the company dancer and understudy to Nina who may be trying to steal the role away from Nina, or who may not even exist at all. As Nina seeks to find her black swan, it's possible that she externalises her own inner darkness into an imagined persona. Again, Kunis plays it such that a case can be made for either interpretation.

Black Swan is an incredible mix of horror film, art film and thriller. It is unlike anything I've seen in a very long time and, true I only saw it last night, but I can't stop thinking about it and I know it's going to stay with me for a very long time. It's a film that will mostly be overlooked by the awards season and that's absolutely to its credit. This is a dark, strange, compulsive and, let me say it again, unsettling film that demands to be seen in the cinema. Not for everyone perhaps but it was certainly for me.

19 days in and 2011 has peaked... It was good while it lasted.

9.5/10

127 Hours Review

2011-01-13T09:26:00.000-08:00

There was a part of me watching 127 Hours that struggled to sympathise with its protagonist Aron Ralston. "It'll take more than a 6 day desperate fight for survival with your arm trapped underneath a boulder culminating in you cutting that arm off, to impress me" I said to myself as I munched my popcorn and guzzled my coke zero. True, the most dangerous thing I'd done that week was to walk 50 yards down from the clearly marked zebra crossing only to then cross the road anyway, laughing in the face of danger and oncoming traffic as I thought to myself, Aron WHO? In all seriousness though, the problem is that, at the start of the film Aron is presented as, well, a bit of a dick. He doesn't tell anyone where he's going when he sets off into the Utah wilderness. Why not? Because he's Aron Ralston and he doesn't need to, that's why not. Pestering phonecalls from his family? No time for those! Clearly this is the deliberate set up for the "spiritual journey" our character will go on in the course of his crisis but it's a risky ploy as the danger is in alienating the audience. One assumes this is the way the real Ralston was in real life but since when have the movies let the truth get in the way of a good story? It's therefore credit to co-screenwriter and director Danny Boyle, as well as the charm and likability of James Franco, that the film is as engaging as it is.

Boyle the director, employs many of his now familiar techniques (odd camera angles, split-screen, thumping soundtrack) to infuse the film with energy and vibrancy. This works in the early scenes as we watch Ralston bask in the adventure of the outdoors as well as after he falls into the rock crevice and becomes trapped where these techniques distract us from the static, single location. Whilst immobile, Ralston uses every bit of his common sense and knowledge of the outdoors to extricate himself from what instantly appears to be a hopeless situation. The best thing about the film for me was the way, what are normally small things, take on massive, life or death consequences in the context of Aron's predicament. Frequently we enter our protagonist's head and watch him think back to regrets he has about his past as well as to consider a future he may never have. This kind of thing can often feel like filler but in this it genuinely works to up the emotional stakes of the film. By the time he makes the impossible decision to amputate the trapped arm and free himself, you absolutely feel not only his desperation, but also his sheer willpower, mental strength and desire to live. The amputation scene is predictably grim but not gratuitous. Danny Boyle has never been one to shy away from any violence in his stories and this could have been close to unwatchable. Instead convincing sound effects, tremendous acting from James Franco and a few choice shots, sell the horror of what he is forced to do.

I have an odd relationship with Danny Boyle's films. I tend to admire them more than I genuinely like them. 127 Hours continues this trend insofar as I can't imagine returning to it very often but I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would and it's definitely worth your time.

7/10

The King's Speech Review

2011-01-11T08:24:00.001-08:00

I'll admit I can sometimes have it in for a film before I see it. I like to think that, once in the cinema, I can have my mind changed if the film is genuinely good; Kick Ass is a good example of a film I fully expected to hate and that won me over. It's not that I expected to hate The King's Speech, it's just that it seemed like the kind of Oscar-bait movie the months of December and January tend to serve up, films professing their own worthiness whilst acutally not doing too much of anything. Imagine my surprise when The King's Speech turned out to be a highly engaging, witty, wonderfully written and acted movie.

It's 1925 and Albert, Duke of York (a career best Colin Firth) tries to deliver a speech to the Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium but is thwarted by his terrible stammer. His wife Elizabeth, the future Queen Mother (played with a fantastically light touch by Helena Bonham Carter) seeks help from Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) whose unorthodox methods of treatment have made his reputation preceed him. This relationship forms the cornerstone of the film as Lionel attempts to break down deep seated fears and insecurities within "Bertie" as Lionel insists on calling the future King, as well as treating the mechanics of the speech impediment. Their relationship develops alongside an incredibly tumultous period in royal history, and indeed British history generally, as King George V (Michael Gambon) dies and is succeeded by Albert's older brother David (a slightly over the top Guy Pearce) who is enamoured by American divorcee Wallis Simpson. When David abdicates to marry Mrs Simpson, Albert assumes the throne, putting enormous pressure on Logue's ability to cure the reluctant king of his affliction. This pressure climaxes when Britain declares war on Germany and Albert, now King George VI (but still Bertie to his family and Logue) must deliver the nation's first wartime address.

Imagine Rocky but instead of boxing it's speech therapy and instead of a nobody from Philly it's a reluctant King and you have The King's Speech. Actually that's incredibly unfair to David Seidler's intelligent screenplay (based upon his play) great acting from the leads and spot on direction from Tom Hooper. The film makes you genuinely care about the fate of the new King. You are absolutely rooting for him to knock the speech out of the park and, as he speaks into the microphone, Logue all but conducts him, utilising every trick and technique they have practiced to get him through this most important moment of his life so far. It's a truly fantastic sequence and provides a genuinely heartlifting finale without resorting to sentimentality. The history of the piece is fascinating and details such as the encroaching nature of the newly invented radio upon the Royals, adds life, texture and believability to the world of the film.

Geoffrey Rush has long been one of my favourite actors and this is one of his best performances. His desire to "better himself" is perfectly judged, his warmth and humanity genuine and never cloying. His strange treatment methods never lapse into the contrived (as can so often be the way with films like this when there's a "wacky doctor" "going against the establishment") and his amusingly bad attempts at performing Shakespeare never lapse into parody due to his obvious love for the Bard. The revelation though is Colin Firth. A dependable actor, he has never particularly stood out for me. He was good in last year's A Single Man but was let down by the film. Here, the writing and directing support him every step of the way, and he creates a character of humour, intelligence, pain and bravery. You feel everything he feels without him playing obvious "repression" or, at the other end of the spectrum, lapsing into hysterics. Like everything else in the film, it's perfectly judged and he has set himself up as the man to beat at this year's Oscars.

The film isn't breaking new ground and it definitely is the kind of "awards bait" movie I mentioned at the start of this review. But they are the worst things you can say about it. Subtle, warm, funny and heartwarming, The King's Speech is that rarest of things; a great story well told.

8/10

The End Of 2010 (But Not In A Roland Emmerich Way...)

2011-01-11T08:15:00.001-08:00

It's been a while hasn't it?

A lean couple of months kept me out of the cinema but here's a very quick catch up before we get to the new year.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

This is one of those films where there is loads of hype and I just don't get it. A great cast make it just about okay but when even someone as good as Julianne Moore can't make her character convincing, you know there was trouble on the page before anyone stood in front of or behind a camera. Unconvincing is in fact the best word I can think of to describe this film.

4/10

SKYLINE

Dear God...

1/10

TRON LEGACY

A friend of mine described it as "dramatically redundant" a phrase I quite like. A fancy light show with an admittedly great soundtrack. My advice? Buy the soundtrack.

And that literally was it! 2010 was not a great year at the movies. The highlights were there, Inception, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, but they were few and far between. So, 11 days in, what is 2011 serving up so far?

Unstoppable Review

2010-11-26T02:11:00.000-08:00

The case for and against Unstoppable. Let’s hear the prosecution make the case against.

Zero character/character development.

Direlogue.

The usual clichés (Everyman saves the day, the suits in charge care only about the money etc etc etc)

Zero story.

Logic be damned. (“Inspired by true events” apparently and I would imagine the key word there is “inspired.”)

And the defence.

A one million tonne runaway train. Let me repeat that. A one million tonne runaway train.

Large popcorn and coke. (I’d love to tell you I was hungry or I needed it, I’d even love to tell you it was comfort food. It was none of the above. This film required, nae DEMANDED a large popcorn and a large coke.)

Denzel Washington running across the top of the train manually slamming on the brakes carriage by carriage. Let me repeat that. Denzel Washington running across the top of the train manually slamming on the brakes carriage by carriage.

The “Stanton Curve.” (“It’s going too fast!!! It’s gonna fly off the tracks!!!”)

90 minute running time.

The defence rests.

And indeed, the defence wins. Every fibre in my being is screaming at me that this film is rubbish but damn it if I wasn’t on the edge of my seat falling for it hook, line and sinker. It’s 2012 all over again except that this one wraps itself up in 90 minutes. This is Tony Scott’s most fun film in years, which in reality isn’t saying much, but it’s loud, silly, exciting, doesn’t outstay its welcome and ends up being a lot of fun. One particular shot contains two trains, two helicopters, a fleet of cars and a guy hanging in mid air! It's vehicular porn of the most gratuitous kind and you'll never watch the film again but it really is a blast. What's also nice is that the train has weight and feels "real" with CGI apparently used sparingly and to enhance rather than create from scratch. Denzel and Chris Pine rise above their backstories and trite characters and the final moment of the film is brilliantly bad.

Maybe I was just in the mood or looking forward to the weekend… Or maybe sometimes all you need is a runaway train.

7/10

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1 Review

2010-11-25T06:19:00.000-08:00

Deathly dull.

It’s 2 ½ hours of exposition and wandering around forests. Voldemort as played by Ralph Feinnes continues to impress, the sets are amazing, the cast a who’s who of British talent but it’s scene after interminable scene of expository “And it was Clarence Wigglebump who gave the Menageriegoop to Felicity Witherbottom” type dialogue. In forests. For 2 ½ hours.

Breaking into the Ministry Of Magic and an animated story within the story near the end are probably the high points of the film, Harry’s dance with Hermione the low point. Clearly there is respect for the world and characters JK Rowling has created but this is in part the problem for me; slavishly adapting the books results in incredibly sluggish films, and, for all the talk of doom and gloom and sense of foreboding in the tone of the film, there is remarkably little urgency to the proceedings. I really didn’t feel any threat whatsoever and the sub-Lord Of The Rings style attempt to make the horcrux physically impact upon Harry, Hermione and Ron is very unconvincing and leads to a laughably bad moment where, for no reason I could discern other than it was a moment of contrived, cheap drama, Ron fights with Harry and disappears for a while. Only to re-appear a little while later and then just carry on.

I so wish I cared about Harry Potter. It’s clearly the most significant moment in pop culture in a very long time. If you think about it, it’s difficult to remember life without Hogwarts and Dumbledore and Voldemort and the other weird and wonderful creations in Rowling’s universe. But these films are 2 hours of nothing with a flurry of activity at the end and Deathly Hallows Part 1 is the most dull of all.

Still, the knitwear is good though.

3.5/10

Let Me In Review

2010-11-10T07:49:00.000-08:00

It’s such a strange thing. Let Me In arrives as the American remake of Let The Right One In, barely two years after the original film was released. Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) clearly has great respect for the original version but that respect results in him following the original almost to the letter and so his remake struggles to assert its own identity or justify its own existence in any meaningful way. So far so predictable. But Let Me In turns out to be a very good film, way better than expected, and what’s interesting is that, those moments where Reeves dares to be different, to add his own touches or moments, the film really flies. This makes you wonder what might the film have been if he had had the courage to go his own way even further.

If you’ve seen Let The Right One In then story wise you’re in for no surprises. Owen (The Road’s Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a lonely outsider, bullied at school, harbouring revenge fantasies against his bullies, and living with his recently separated (and, in this version, highly religious) Mother. Into his apartment block moves Abby (Hit Girl herself, Chloe Grace Moretz) and her apparent Father (the always excellent Richard Jenkins). Chloe is, of course, a vampire and Jenkins is her helper, going out at night to kill for blood to keep her alive. The story progresses, sometimes scene for scene, as the original film and we watch Owen experience his first love, the relationship between he and Abby being the focus of the film and that which drives it towards its fantastic last act.

One of the best things in the original film was the performances and Moretz and Smit-McPhee are both excellent in the remake. There is a palpable sadness in both children, both for very different reasons of course, and this lingers over the whole film. Reeves makes the choice to remove some elements and, for the most part, they are not missed. The now infamous “cat scene” is mercifully gone. What might just be the most famous shot from the first film is also missing. You’ll know it when you don’t see it. Owen’s Mother always appears out of focus or out of frame and it’s a visually interesting touch that underscores the nature of that relationship. The most successful changes are small moments that deserve to be seen without being spoiled beforehand, though I will say that a failed attempt by Richard Jenkins to capture a victim for Abby to feed on results in a sequence arguably more tense than anything in the original. Not all the changes work, CGI Abby being the worst offender, and its similarity to the original means the whole “what’s the point” question looms large over its entire running time. Most of the last act is completely intact, including the most famous scene, and the impact is diminished by virtue of it being so similar.

Ultimately Let Me In is a good film, atmospheric, deliberately paced, well acted and well written and directed and, as such, deserves to be seen. Would it have been like that without the first film? Even though both are based on a book, you still get the feeling that the original film was the bigger influence on Reeves’ remake and so therefore the answer is no. At the end of the day you should see Let The Right One In. But if you simply don’t do subtitles, then Let Me In is a more than adequate substitute.

7/10

Frightfest Halloween Special

2010-11-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I went to the Frightfest Halloween all night horror movie marathon at the Empire Leicester Square. It started at 6.00pm Saturday evening and the last film of the night was scheduled to start at 6.00am Sunday morning. We were in it for the long haul! As it happened technical difficulties prevented two of the films from being shown and they moved the last film of the night up to fifth place. Which was absolutely fine by my flatmate and I because by this time we were flagging and the last film, the Finnish film Rare Exports, was the main reason for wanting to go. In the end we skipped an earlier film to get some food so we ended up seeing four films, all of which are apparently going to be released in the New Year, so here’s a quick rundown of the night.

CONFESSIONS.

First up was a Japanese film called Confessions. A teacher, whose daughter died, comes into her class and announces that the verdict of accidental death was incorrect and that her daughter’s death was in fact murder. Not only that but the killers are two of her pupils. This was all I knew going in to the film and I thought that was a cracking premise. What ends up happening is that the film becomes a series of confessions, first the teacher, then one of the boys, then a friend etc etc. It’s a tough film to describe as it sounds like a variation of the Rashoman type, “multiple perspectives on the truth” type of film which isn’t really the case. Each of the person’s stories reveals a little more of the main plot and one or two concern themselves with subplots. In the end the film is less a horror film and more of a revenge thriller as the teacher exacts punishment on those responsible for her daughter’s death.

Confessions wasn’t terrible, it was very well made, stylishly shot and edited, but it didn’t really amount to very much for me. There are good moments, funny moments too, and, as with much of Japanese cinema, you never really trust the tone to remain consistent. The actual revenge as it plays out is quite convoluted and at well over two hours, my patience ended up being stretched. It was an okay start to the night as I was up for whatever was to come and it certainly got us in the mood for the remaining screenings As a film in itself it’s just about worth a look but I certainly won’t return to it.

ALTITUDE

Fucking hell…

The guys running the night introduced it by saying there would be a mixture of light and dark. Altitude was meant to represent the light and I assume its inclusion in the programme was tongue in cheek. The problem was that, while there were a few “so bad it’s genius” moments, they were too few to push the film as a whole into that territory. Also, dreadful acting aside, those moments mainly occurred in the last half hour making the first fifty minutes (the film was mercifully short) pretty much interminable.

A group of teeth-wrenchingly grating American kids (the jock, the sensitive one blah blah blah) charter a plane to fly to a rock concert. The pilot doesn’t look old enough to drive a car never mind fly a plane, but assuming she is of legal age to command a plane, I wouldn’t trust her to choose my McDonalds let alone fly me anywhere. Anyway our vacuous heroes take off and hit rough weather. Weather that is so rough in fact that, in one truly hilarious sequence, it necessitates one of the group being tied to a rope and hung outside the plane so as to manually fix the wing, or some shit. Seeing a young man hung from the back of a moving plane at 15,000 feet is pretty amazing. Anyway it’s during this sequence that they catch their first glimpse of the monster in the sky. That’s right folks, the monster in the sky. Shall I just tell you where this is all going? Yeah what the hell, skip if you’re afraid of spoilers. But really don’t be afraid of spoilers.

One of the group is a comic book nerd. He has a comic with him that is all about… are you ready… A MONSTER IN THE SKY!!!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!!! What is happening is that his fears manifest in the real world and he uses comics for inspiration as to what form they should take. It’s creature from the Id stuff but really terrible. He is in love with the pilot but she doesn’t love him and he’s afraid of… well, that I think. The climax comes when everyone else is dead and it’s just the two of them in the plane and they figure all this out. The clouds are jet black, they haven’t seen the ground in hours, there’s a MONSTER IN THE SKY!!! And then she leans over and kisses him! And the clouds vanish and the monster disappears because he’s not afraid anymore!!! Genius. But then, he realises that… SHE DIDN’T MEAN THE KISS!!!!! And the sky blackens and the clouds return and, oh my God, there’s the MONSTER IN THE SKY!!!! This time the monster reaches out one of its tentacles and pulls the pilot out of the plane!! But she manages to grab the window and hang on for dear life. Now, clinging to the front of a plane, with A 500 foot tentacle wrapped around her, she proceeds to deliver a speech about how he can’t be afraid anymore and how he must face his fears if he is to have a life!!! It’s absolutely inspired in all kinds of ways and almost, almost, makes the film worth watching. But not quite. There’s also some rubbish about a childhood incident that comes back on itself…YAAAAAWN.

Altitude is rubbish. Even with a MONSTER IN THE SKY!!!

THE SILENT HOUSE

This was one of the films I was really looking forward to seeing. It went down really well at Cannes, a fortune was spent on acquiring it and it’s set to receive a large distribution next year. It’s a haunted house movie from Uruguay but its main selling point is that it was shot in one continuous take on a digital camera. At 79 minutes long, this is an incredible feat and it adds massive amounts of tension as it becomes a real time film and you feel completely trapped with the protagonist in this creepy as hell abandoned house.

I SO want to give the film a glowing review. This is everything I love in horror films, things happening off camera, sounds from elsewhere in the house, psychological scares, little girl ghosts… it’s all there! When the film is good it’s absolutely brilliant, incredibly effective, tense, creepy and downright scary. But it frustratingly drops the ball in a way I won’t reveal so as not to influence expectations. It’s such a shame because this could have been one of the great horror films and at points it is. But as much if not more than the horror, I remember the disappointments. Interestingly, the crowd didn’t really seem into it. And I overheard many people walk out saying they had seen it all before and it was nothing new. With a film like this though, it’s less about originality necessarily and more about the execution and the one take approach, far from being a gimmick, adds a level of horror that is really palpable. From a technical perspective it is also incredibly impressive but that never overshadows the atmosphere and tone. Also, there are many genuinely creepy and unnerving moments outside of the one take approach hat linger in the memory. It’s a massive, massive shame that it just can’t sustain the level it often reaches for its whole running time.

RARE EXPORTS

What a weird little film! This was one that really could have gone either way judging from the trailer. But I’m really happy to report that it’s a lot of fun. An entrepreneur uses an excavation crew to blast a hole in a Finnish mountain in search of Santa Claus. Yep, Santa. But this isn’t our benevolent, Coca Cola Santa. This is weird, creepy Santa who kidnaps children and puts them in a giant sack for God knows what kinds of nefarious purposes.

I’m actually not going to say too much about Rare Exports because it really is well worth seeing as fresh as possible. The script takes the concept and pushes it to create many great little moments. The setting is fantastic, the acting excellent and perhaps most importantly, the tone of the film is absolutely spot on. It could have completely trivialised its concept but instead manages to be fun, funny, warm and take the idea seriously enough so that we laugh with it rather than at it and are genuinely affected by its unnerving, creepy moments. It’s never downright scary as such, creepy and unnerving are the best words to use. Though those moments of that old man glaring at our little protagonist really do unsettle. This is a genuine original and, like the other films screened, will apparently receive a general release so do go see it.

And that was Frightfest! A lot of fun and a couple of good films thrown in for good measure.

MONSTER IN THE SKY!!!!!!

Paranormal Activity 2 Review

2010-10-27T09:25:00.001-07:00

This is a strange one...

I sat in the cinema falling for it hook, line and sinker. I've read some reviews subsequent to seeing it that have decimated it and in the cold light of day I completely empathise. But I sat in the cinema tense and scared and unwilling to watch the screen.

The story and set up are basically the same as the first film. Weird things happening in a house, CCTV, locked off night shots, weird things caught on camera starting small and escalating to the finale. The events of this film are linked to those of the first in a way I have to say I quite liked. This time around the paranormal activity centres around a little toddler which is another idea I really liked. The baby is scared but doesn't know why. Or he isn't scared because he's too young to understand what is happening but we are scared for him. Pots fall, footsteps approach, walls are banged and the "dragging out of bed" scene from the first film is reprised but in a bigger way this time around as the sequel, whilst still being really small budget, nevertheless cost slightly more than the paltry $15,000 of the first. Make no mistake, this is the same film all over again and, loss of originality aside, if you enjoyed the first, I don't see why you wouldn't enjoy the second.

I re-read my review of the first film and I was full of praise for it, apart from the let-down ending, a problem that reoccurs in the sequel. What's interesting is that I haven't gone back to it as there simply isn't much story to tell. It's a one trick film that pulls off its trick very well. The sequel is exactly the same way and I can't imagine returning to it any time soon. I was scared in the cinema because ghost stories scare me and this is well done. Add to that a couple of good ideas and the film is definitely worth a look. Judging by the box office, I'm sure Paramount are already hard at work on Paranormal Activity 3. This could become their Saw franchise. Quite how far and for how long you can spin out films like this I don't know. But then this is Hollywood. And I'm sure there are plenty more characters who will place CCTV in their homes to capture their personal paranormal activity.

6/10

RED (Retired & Extremely Dangerous) Review

2010-10-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

Not the worst film ever but I started forgetting scenes almost as soon as they finished. The story isn't interesting and the action is fairly pedestrian. Sure it's nice to see older actors getting to kick ass but there is literally nothing else to the film.

Redundant & Extremely Derivative.

4/10

The Social Network Review

2010-10-22T02:26:00.000-07:00

Every time a film comes out that purports to be “based on a true story” (or more worryingly, “inspired by true events” by which you can interpret “bearing zero relation to anything that has ever happened. Anywhere. Ever”) out come the sayers of nae protesting as to the factual inaccuracy of the project. This didn’t happen this way, that didn’t happen that way blah blah blah. Unless the errors are particularly egregious (“Hey, have you seen that new movie about 9/11? It’s great, the planes miss the buildings.”) I usually have little time for these complaints. Timelines are ALWAYS truncated in films, characters merged for the sake of dramatic expedience and events changed for dramatic purposes. Nine times out of ten, the film makers know what they are doing and the changes made are necessary to tell the story for the cinema. David Fincher is a director renowned for meticulous attention to detail so the idea that he has got as much of the story of the founding of Facebook wrong as is being claimed is surprising to say the least. Yet it does seem to be the case. The thing is, The Social Network is a really good film, intelligent, gripping, funny, superbly written, directed and acted. So what impact do these alleged inaccuracies have on one’s enjoyment of it? For me, pretty much none. Colour me callous!

Jessie Eisenberg is Mark Zuckerberg, a computer genius studying at Harvard who finds himself ostracised from the University’s most prestigious private clubs, clubs that he thinks hold the key to his future. Zuckerberg, at least the Zuckerberg depicted here, is abrupt, difficult and in no way constrained by society’s norms and conventions. He is also conniving and manipulative. The fact that the real Mark Zuckerberg declined to be involved isn’t massively surprising… Anyway two twin brothers, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, come to Zuckerberg with an idea for a Harvard based social networking website. Zuckerberg sees something in their idea and, also taking the opportunity to stick it to the kinds of people who have excluded him up to now, strings them along while he takes the best of what their concept has to offer and creates what would eventually become Facebook. His only friend Eduardo (new Spider-Man Andrew Garfield) becomes the fledgling company’s business manager but as Zuckerberg is wowed by Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) Eduardo finds himself increasingly sidelined and, in the end, utterly shafted by his friend and he, along with everyone else, attempts to sue Zuckerberg for their piece of the pie.

The film depicts the depositions given by everyone involved in the two lawsuits and we flash back and forth between their testimony and the events being described in the past. This lends the film a great ambiguity as we only ever receive subjective accounts of events from the Winklevoss brothers, Eduardo or Zuckerberg himself and can believe or disbelieve things as we see fit. This is something of a get out of jail free card but the exact events are completely shrouded in mystery so it makes sense that writer Aaron Sorkin (working from the novel The Accidental Millionaires by Ben Mezrich) should structure the film this way. But Sorkin and Fincher have taken the subject of the founding of Facebook and used it as a springboard for the things that interest them, the nature of the creative process, the implications of sites like Facebook and their notion of who the film’s central character is. There is always that nagging feeling that much of how Zuckerberg is depicted isn’t true such as his ineptitude with women for example; he apparently had a girlfriend at the time. This is no small thing when the final moments of the film tie this character beat into the story to wrap everything up. Don’t misunderstand, it’s a great moment and a great ending, but some may struggle to find its dramatic satisfaction in the midst of factual inaccuracies. Sorkin’s trademark snappy dialogue is present and accounted for but, one or two clunky moments aside (Zuckerberg moves to L.A. and happily ends up on the same street as Justin Timberlake. Seriously? The same street? That’s like in Star Trek movies where the character beams down to a planet the size of Pluto but happen to land in the exact spot where another character lives) it’s a fantastic script. David Fincher remains one of the most interesting directors working in Hollywood and with this and Zodiac, the demonic Benjamin Button has now been completely exorcised. The cast is uniformly excellent with Jesse Eisenberg finding great humour and surprising moments of pathos in the inscrutable Zuckerberg.

The Social Network is a great film, a fascinating story very well told. The biggest problem with it being factually inaccurate is that the story is so recent, beginning as it did merely seven years ago. What isn't in doubt is that something unsavoury happened and Zuckerberg was slap bang in the middle of it. My suspicion is that, while the actual events depicted may be incorrect or even made up, the point they are making is pretty close to the truth, or at least, the truth the film makers believe to be the case. A subjective point of view is the best thing a writer or director can offer a film and this should be true of so called true stories as it is of works of fiction. And ultimately the truth is always subjective anyway. Two people can offer "the truth" of a situation and end up giving wildly differing accounts which is, in part, what The Social Network is about. At the end of the day intelligent, thoughtful, gripping films are very thin on the ground and, if it’s literal truth you want, the cinema never has been and never should be the place to seek it out. Cinema is about drama. And The Social Network has that in spades.

8/10.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps Review

2010-10-19T05:50:00.001-07:00

Money, apparently, never sleeps. So my suggestion is that it watches Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and that should send it off into a nice, restful slumber.

I remember when I first watched the trailers thinking, I have no idea what the story of this film is and my suspicion was that the film didn't either. That suspicion was confirmed upon watching it. The return of a much loved character (either hero or, in this case, villain) is not enough to hang an entire film on, as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull demonstrated in 2008. (There is no fourth film) Also, if you want to examine real world events in the light of the original film then great, but make the decision to do that. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps doesn't know if it's a character drama, examination of the financial crisis, corporate thriller or family drama. It mainly opts for the last one in scene after turgid scene of the most drama free drama I've seen in a long time.

I'm not a massive Oliver Stone fan, even his best films hit you with all the subtlety of a kick to the balls. But his earlier films contain passion, anger, outrage and conviction in abundance and there is simply no way around it, he has lost his bite. W, World Trade Centre (I'm not spelling it "er") the catastrophic Alexander and now Wall Street, these are films lacking any of the urgency of, say, Platoon, Born On The Fourth Of July, JFK or Nixon. Even if you think any or all of those films are misguided, at the very least they are about something; they have something to say. The best thing you can say about Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is that it's nice to see Michael Douglas onscreen again, even if his screen time is way too limited. In the end the film is just soul-crushingly, stupifyingly dull.

2/10

Buried Review

2010-10-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

Like Phone Booth and, to a lesser extent, Panic Room before it, Buried is a thriller that belongs in the somewhat gimmicky sub-category of thriller in a confined setting. Buried is surely the pinnacle of the genre as the whole film occurs in a coffin. 90 minutes in a coffin is a tough ask for a film and, to its credit, Buried pulls it off but to very little consequence.

Ryan Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, a truck driver working in Iraq whose convoy is ambushed and who wakes up, well, buried. He is six feet under in a wooden box with a mobile phone, lighter, fluorescent lights and his anti anxiety tablets. As he tries to desperately contact the outside world the “why” of his situation slowly comes together. Sand, snakes and assorted unhelpful people on the other end of the line work desperately to maintain the tension as his situation worsens and time begins to run out for Paul.

Director Rodrigo Cortes works his socks off trying to keep the film visually interesting. Setting a film entirely in a coffin is an interesting experiment but could have been a total chore to sit through and it’s to Cortes’ credit that it isn’t. But I couldn’t have cared less about the character and there really was no tension in the film at all, even as the script kept piling on the twists and turns and obstacles for Conroy to overcome. One can only imagine the panic one would experience in real life waking up in that situation, but as Paul uses his mobile phone to create a way out for himself, he ends up screaming at people in scenes that venture way too close to repetition for comfort. It’s not Reynolds’ fault as he really does sell the situation and its desperation in what one imagines must have been a bitch of a shoot. It’s the script that lets everyone down as it makes Conroy yell and shout and generally fail to convey the gravity of his situation. It’s not all bad, one or two moments work reasonably well, the idea that, even buried in a coffin, the biggest hurdle you face is being put on hold is well done and creates surprising levity. But it's not really enough and I never once experienced the kind of claustrophobia the film wanted me to.

Buried is worth watching, if only as a curiosity. But I was never tense and never really cared. The biggest thing I took from it was that it is actually possible to make a film set in a coffin visually interesting. Kudos for that I guess.

5.5/10

World's Greatest Dad Review

2010-10-07T05:45:00.000-07:00

This just in! Robin Williams is credible again!

World’s Greatest Dad is a pitch black comedy that barely puts a foot wrong. It boasts a great script by writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait (Zed from the Police Academy films, he of the “funny” voice), restrained direction and a great central performance from Williams. Seriously, Police Academy’s Zed directing Patch Adams in a good film?!? Has the world gone mad?!?

Williams plays teacher and failed writer Lance Clayton. Lance is also father to his sex obsessed, crude, misogynistic, life-hating and generally stupid son Kyle with whom he repeatedly and abortively tries to bond. When Kyle accidentally kills himself by auto-erotic asphyxiation, Lance alters the scene to make it look like suicide. He fakes a suicide note that ends up going around the school and profoundly affecting students and teachers alike and suddenly Lance’s writing has gained the audience he has always wanted… Things escalate from there as Lance descends deeper and deeper into his lie and Kyle ends up with a legacy that is hilariously flawed and unearned.

What’s great about World’s Greatest Dad is its willingness to follow through on where its concept can take it, the script absolutely unafraid to explore its central character’s manipulation and cashing in of his son’s death. The film takes its time getting to Kyle’s death and you watch Lance get trod on by his son, his son’s only friend, girlfriend, fellow teachers and principal of the school in which he teaches. He never complains, even as he knows people are taking the piss. This means that, as you watch him capitalise on the faked suicide, you’re still on his side. He has never complained, he’s basically a good guy, his son was a total nightmare, why shouldn’t he go out for himself? Williams is completely game, matching the script’s desire to push boundaries. People’s reactions to the death are dealt with mercilessly, from the students in search of meaning, to the principal conveniently forgetting he wanted to put Kyle in a special needs school, to the Oprah-like talk show host offering her viewers a heart rending story, everyone is a target of Goldthwaite’s razor sharp satire. Running jokes are pushed to the max but never stretched to breaking point, the Bruce Hornsby running joke in particular paying off in one of the film’s funniest moments.

World’s Greatest Dad is that rarest of film, one that has the courage of its convictions. It’s out on limited release but it really is worth catching, if only as a reminder that, with the right material, Robin Williams is a great comedy actor.

“Thank you Bruce Hornsby” might just be the best line of the year so far.

8/10

The Town Review

2010-09-30T04:32:00.000-07:00

I think we have a new movie cliché. Along with the “hit man called out for one last job” film or the “clean cut cop paired with a manic cop” film, or the “ugly duckling turns into beautiful swan” film (usually by letting her hair down and taking off her glasses) surely we must now add “crime thriller set in Boston” film? Why is every American crime thriller currently set in Boston? The ridiculous accents, Red Sox Hoodies, chats about “the neighbourhood” these are now clichés every bit as tiresome as any other. Welcome to The Town. What’s frustrating is that the film is very well made, very well directed by Ben Affleck and it’s to his credit that he is able to take material this familiar, this well worn, and elevate it into something watchable. With a good script I have no doubt Affleck will direct a really great film. But this isn’t it.

The Town isn’t bad per se, it’s just so painfully unoriginal. Doug MacRay (Affleck) heads a team of bank robbers in Charlestown (or “Chaaaaaaalsetaaaaaan” in Boston vernacular) who, on one particular job, kidnap bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) but let her go unharmed. Upon discovering that she actually lives right in their neighbourhood and they will probably see her every day, Affleck sets about ingratiating himself into her life to find out what she knows about the gang. Can you see where this is going? Of course you can. As they fall in love, FBI Agent John Hamm (still managing to be dapper in that effortless Don Draper way even with three day stubble and shoddy FBI clothes) is hot on their heels, knowing who the gang is and slowly gathering evidence to put them away for good. Present and accounted for are the best friend, the unhinged James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), the local crime lord (unlikely Pete Postlethwaite with an awesome Northern Irish accent) the Dad behind bars (Chris Cooper) and the drugged up skank causing problems for Affleck. (Blake Lively.) Is “drugged up skank” a politically correct term? Not sure. Anyway, boxes are ticked, scenes arrive with total predictability, the films goes exactly where you expect it to at every point and then it ends.

I’m coming down pretty hard on The Town and, in truth, because I like these kinds of films I was happy to watch it. The hook is that, an enormous percentage of all bank robberies committed in America occur in this small area of Charlestown. But while that's an interesting fact, it doesn't impact the story or the film in any meaningful way. Affleck wants out of the neighbourhood and his world of crime but so has every other protagonist in this kind of film before him. The "why" of it doesn't really matter. As I said above, the fact that it’s as well made as it is only serves to remind that we have been in this territory many, many times before. The various set pieces, opening bank robbery, a car chase through narrow streets and the climactic gun fight, are very well handled, Affleck and his always brilliant director of photograpy Robert Elswitt finding interesting angles to shoot the action from and allowing the audience the space to understand the geography of what’s happening within the frame. But I keep returning to the near total lack of originality. What is in this story that makes it worth telling? A bit of Heat, a bit of Copland, a bit of (God forbid) The Departed, stir well and then serve up The Town. I also found myself with little reason to care about the characters. Will Ben Affleck die? Go to jail? Live happily ever after? Get the girl, not get the girl? I don’t really care. And the script makes that lazy decision to have his best friend a borderline psycho who’s happy to kill. “See? Ben is not as bad as that guy. It’s okay to root for him.”

I have problems with Gone Baby Gone but it’s a much more interesting film. The Town feels like a way for Ben Affleck the director to hone his craft, challenge himself by directing action and plot and he has totally succeeded but, as a film, it’s treading water. It’s now time for him to get a really compelling piece of material and become the serious director he’s threatening to become.

Just please don’t set it in Boston.

6/10

Quickies

2010-09-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

I’m going to be offline for a few days so here are a couple of very quick reviews.

THE OTHER GUYS

I’ve come to the conclusion that I like Will Ferrell a lot more than I often like his films. Anchorman is without doubt his best, I have a soft spot for Blades Of Glory, but Talladega Nights, Semi Pro, Step Brothers… they all have funny stuff in them, usually Ferrell is the best thing in them, but the films as a whole are extremely scattershot, often too long and ultimately fall short to varying degrees. And to that list we can now add The Other Guys. What was surprising was how the film ended up being stolen from underneath Will Ferrell’s nose by Michael Keaton who is hilarious as the clichéd “Police Captain” who also happens to work at a bed and mattress superstore. Some very funny moments, definitely enough to make it worth a watch, but, again, scattershot, way too long and in the end probably insufficient.

5.5/10

DEVIL

When the concept is 6 people are trapped in a lift and one of them is the Devil, you really can’t complain about the resulting film. If, in a weird way, it had embraced its own inherent silliness a bit more it may have been quite good. But coming from the mind of M Night Shyamalan there is nothing throwaway or silly here. This is THE DEVIL people!!! And he’s in a lift!!! Thing is, it’s running time is 76 minutes and for that it’s definitely getting extra points. It’s also verging on the enjoyable in a bad way. It doesn’t quite get there, for the most part it’s just bad, and if anyone is fooled by the reveal of which of the elevator’s occupants the Devil ends up being, you should never be allowed inside another cinema ever again.

4.5/10

That’s it for now folks.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) Review

2010-09-03T05:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you watch a film and you think, what am I doing here? What am I supposed to be getting from this? In fairness, the story of The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is pretty infamous by now so one could argue that, you know what you’re getting yourself into. But while the shock value of the idea might get you to see the film in the first place, ultimately the film itself needs to deliver something and, for my money, it really doesn’t.

So the story is (and do finish eating before you go any further) that mad scientist Dr. Heiter, who has spent his life separating Siamese twins, has decided that it’s time to do the opposite, i.e. connect people together. Via the digestive system. Ass to mouth. Literally. The unwitting subjects are two young American girls who are travelling across Europe and a young Japanese guy. The Japanese guy forms the head of the “centipede” and the two girls the middle and end. His creation complete, the Doctor goes about trying to train his human centipede, but of course things go wrong.

So let me try and eek out the good here. Given its concept, the film is surprisingly free of gore and viscera. Writer/director Tim Six understands that the idea of this film is enough to give you shivers. He knows that all it takes is the Japanese guy to say “I need a shit” and you will spend the next 5 minutes squirming in the most convulsive, uncomfortable horror as all you’re actually watching is a close up of the poor girl’s eyes. This is the girl who is in the middle I should explain. In case that wasn’t clear. The most effective sequence is when Dr. Heiter has his three subjects tied to their beds in his makeshift surgery in the basement of his house and he explains the details of what he is about to do, severing kneecaps, removing teeth, and literally sewing the three people together. He does this with the kind of matter-of-fact precision that any surgeon would use to explain to their patient the details of their forthcoming procedure and it’s very effective indeed. The point here isn’t torture for torture sake, like, say, Hostel or Saw. This is an experiment, and the fact that the three subjects are anaesthetised as he performs the various surgeries and then wake up in the positions they end up in, adds to the sense of madness and hopelessness and makes it more terrifying as a result. This is a man who knows exactly what he wants to do and is going about it without fuss or hysteria, in the most methodical and efficient way he can. On this point, arguably the greatest horror on display is the horror of humiliation and degradation. Dr. Heiter proceeds to try and train his new creation as if it were a pet, the three people forced to crawl on their hands and knees, eat the food the Doctor throws at them and suffer the consequences when they disobey. Again, it’s interesting to note that this punishment occurs off screen. You hear what is happening and that is more than enough. This is not to say there is no onscreen violence; I defy anyone to watch the tooth extraction without wincing or screaming like a girl and covering their face with a cushion. Not that that’s what I did of course. I merely winced and moved on. But the point is that Six is trying to create horror through ideas and, in a really unique way, this is the problem.

I have no time for violence for violence sake in films, including horror films. The best horror for me is always psychological, always about ideas, and while The Human Centipede eschews gratuitous violence, it is equally possible to assault people with an idea so gratuitous that you have to wonder, in a similar way as you would with the films that place gratuitous violence front and centre, what is the point? What am I to get from all this? The film succeeded in making me squirm at points, making me uncomfortable at points, but to what end? And if there isn’t an end or point greater than the sum of the parts (which, for me, there isn’t) then isn’t that the very definition of gratuitousness? Dieter Laser plays the part very well and what is good is the way he is obviously, in-your-face insane. There is no pretence, no attempt at subversion, he is batshit raving mad from frame one. The downside from a plot perspective is that, from the second the two girls enter his house and are offered a drink of water, you are screaming at them to run. He is CLEARLY up to no good, get the hell out of the house!!! What is also good about his performance is the fact that, it’s not brimming with tics and hysteria. As I said above, cold, methodical and efficient are the best words to describe him and this makes him even more frightening. Cold, methodical and efficient are also good words to describe Tim Six’s directing style and I found myself completely distanced from the subjects’ plight at all times. The ending, in particular the final image, is supposed to resonate and haunt you but I really didn’t care at that point and so it had no effect on me at all.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) has and will gain notoriety. I like the fact that those seeking the very worst of what this film could have been will be disappointed by it not being as in-your-face as they will have presumably imagined. But in the end the only question I could ask is, what’s the point of it all? And, beyond to shock with a truly skin-crawling idea, I fear the answer is that there isn’t one.

4/10

Salt Review

2010-08-23T07:55:00.000-07:00

I can’t believe I enjoyed Salt! It’s 2012 AND The Expendables all over again where I know the film is bad but I’m enjoying it nonetheless.

In fairness, Salt (despite that ridiculous title) is slightly more credible than the other two films mentioned but it’s cut from similar cloth and essentially boils down to Hollywood nonsense that is more fun than it should be. Angelina Jolie plays CIA agent Evelyn Salt, who is forced to go on the run when a Russian defector literally walks in off the street to divulge information about sleeper Russian agents in place in the various American institutions who are about to initiate “Day X” a day when the agents become active and, through a series of devastating terrorist attacks, bring down the entire US. The defector identifies Salt as one such agent and announces, in CIA headquarters, that she is going to kill the Russian president later that day. Salt is forced to go on the run and ends up in a series of escalating action set pieces that require her to leap from roof tops, speeding lorries, infiltrate a massively guarded funeral service and, ultimately, break into The White House itself.

Angelina Jolie seems to be single-handedly making the case for the credibility of female action heroes and she does it exceptionally well. Much has been made of the fact she did most of her own stunts and Jolie is able to sell all the various high jumps and kicks, her patented leaping-against-a-wall-so-as-to-push-herself-off-it-into-a-bad-guy’s-face move being particularly awesome. Actually, I say “bad guys” but most of Salt’s victims are poor policemen or government agents of one kind or another who, one assumes, aren’t bad guys at all, merely getting in the way of what Salt has to do. On top of Jolie's physical prowess, seasoned thriller director Philip Noyce handles all the various set pieces with considerable flair and gives them a sense of reality that, for the most part, works quite well. Being about three steps ahead of any film is crippling, but in a thriller it’s disastrous, so extra kudos to Noyce and Jolie for making Kurt Wimmer’s pretty pedestrian screenplay (complete with ropey Hollywood dialogue, “We’re gonna crash this party”) come alive as well as they do. The film tries to keep Salt’s motivations for what she is doing vague, her guilt or innocence constantly a question. This all leads to a “surprise” ending that won’t be much of a surprise for anyone who has seen a single Hollywood thriller before. In fairness to the script, the Day X notion is a fun conspiracy, even if it is told in flashback. Oh and speaking of flashbacks, the moments where we get to see Jolie's relationship with husband August Diehl are a waste of time. And I wonder if his job as spider specialist is going to become important at any stage... One or two moments, (Jolie going undercover as a man being the worst offender) threaten to derail the film but there is always another fun chase or fight on the horizon to bring you back onside. British actor Chiwetol Ejiofor continues his run of big budget movies as Agent Peabody (Seriously, who the hell came up with these names?!?) the agent charged with bringing her in and Leiv Schrieber is wholly insufficient as her old friend and fellow agent Ted Winter (slightly better but somehow I would imagine someone called Ted Winter as a supply teacher rather than a crack CIA operative). But it’s Jolie’s show and she really delivers and props the film up when it’s losing steam.

I’ve had a run of dodgy action movies of late with Salt, The A Team, Expendables and Knight and Day, which I just realised I never reviewed; (it’s terrible 2.5/10. There you go!) It’s nice to see stand alone old fashioned action thrillers making a return (thank you Jason Bourne for that) and Salt was definitely my favourite. Of course, if it makes enough money we’ll be seeing more Evelyn Salt on our big screens which would be no bad thing in my view. Salt 2: Rock Salt, Salt 3-D: Sodium Free. The possibilities are endless.

7/10

The Expendables Review

2010-08-23T05:16:00.000-07:00

I can’t believe I enjoyed The Expendables! It’s 2012 all over again where I know the film is bad but I’m enjoying it nonetheless.

In fairness, I wasn’t going with it for the first 20/25 minutes. The opening action sequence, taking down a ship full of Somalian pirates, was somewhat underwhelming, the following scenes of “character development” interminable. But writer/director/actor Sly Stallone knows he can’t get such presumably giant egos together in one movie without giving everyone their moment to shine and the scene that turned things around for me comes when Jason Statham (playing Lee Christmas. Honestly…) confronts his ex girlfriend’s new guy on a basketball court after he discovers the new guy has been beating her. It’s meant to reveal character, but as written by Sly and delivered by the Stath, it’s unintentionally hilarious and the fight is quite cool. I was now onside with the film and remained so right up until the last half hour of brilliantly over the top carnage that takes the last 20 minutes of Rambo and makes it look tame by comparison.

The story, such as it is, sees a team of mercenaries, the eponymous Expendables, try and take down evil CIA agent turned drug baron Eric Roberts and his puppet General played by David Zayas, Dexter’s Detective Angel Bathista. And that’s pretty much it. In truth, the film has been hyped as the greatest collection of action stars ever assembled in the greatest action movie ever made and on that level it’s disappointing. Anyone who has read the press conference will have noticed Sly’s somewhat barbed remark that Segal and Van Damme turned him down because they saw their careers going in “a different direction.” But (and I REALLY never thought I’d ever type the following sentence…) in a film billed as the greatest cast of action stars ever, their presence is missed. And the much trumpeted coming together of Stallone, Bruce Willis and the Guvernator is a blink and you’ll miss it 1 minute scene of cameos that, in truth, is kind of laboured. I don’t follow American wrestling so, despite having heard of Randy Couture and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, really, their presence didn’t resonate with me particularly. Also, you know, they’re wrestlers. But what you DO get is a ludicrous, over-the-top, old fashioned, men-on-a-mission action movie. You never have any sense of danger for the team, despite their being called the Expendables, and even when 64 year old Sly is getting pummelled by a 30-something, brick shithouse professional wrestler, you still don’t feel any danger for him, even if the fight itself is a lot of fun. As I said, everyone is given their moment. Jet Li and Dolph Lungdren square off and, honestly, have you ever seen THAT before? Statham gets several moments of glory and, as he’s demonstrated before, is physically very adept. When Jason Statham is your most credible actor, that should send alarm bells ringing but somehow the whole debacle emerges unscathed from the onslaught of appalling dialogue, ropey acting and posturing by the leads. A fitting metaphor for the whole last half hour of the film in fact. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a good film in any traditional sense but as guilty pleasure movies go, it ends up being a lot of fun.

6.5/10

The Expendables Press Conference

2010-08-20T05:32:00.000-07:00

You know you’re out of place when the gentleman ushering you to the hotel conference room is wearing cufflinks that are more expensive than your entire ensemble. Did he really have to look me up and down with such disdain? Anyway thus began my first visit to The Dorchester Hotel to cover the press conference for The Expendables. The email from Lionsgate said to arrive at 11.15 for an 11.30 start. I got there at 11 and the place was already three quarters full. I ended up sitting near the back beside someone from Nuts magazine. I wanted to tell him that I’m much more of a Zoo Magazine kinda guy but I thought it best to keep that one to myself.

The panel consisted of Stallone, Dolph Lungdren and Jason Statham. The bulk of the questions were directed at Sly and this became a running gag throughout the whole event. Dolph Lungdren barely spoke but he smiled and laughed his way through the whole thing. Stallone was engaging and enthusiastic and had a great rapport with the assembled journalists and the atmosphere of the whole press conference was light and fun. The event was moderated by a woman from Lionsgate, the film’s distributor. We all waved our hands frantically to get her attention so as to ask our questions. Unfortunately, sitting near the back, Eggmag wasn’t able to get their question asked, despite much waving of hands, and, at one point, standing up and waving. So I’m afraid folks we’ll never know Sylvester Stallone’s take on internet hype and marketing of films in the face of a Q&A session he recently did with fans on Ain’t It Cool News. Which would have been a better question than some of the ones that were asked… I’m looking at you Miss How Does Your Faith Influence The Films You Make. I particularly liked Sly’s response to being asked if he feels the need to justify the violence in his films…

The moderator got the ball rolling with the first question. Enjoy…

MODERATOR. At the screening last week there was a massive round of applause before the film even started and as each star’s name appeared (in the credits) there were whoops of joy. To what extent does that level of excitement and expectation bring extra challenges or responsibilities to do something really special with the Expendables?

STALLONE. Well it’s like that around my house every morning, “Hey look it’s Dad, whoo!”

LAUGHTER

STALLONE. It’s A LOT of extra pressure. You know sometimes you have a major turkey and it’s not even Thanksgiving and you know it’s gonna be bad. But this time, this is the other end of the spectrum where there was a great expectancy and we thought, well gee, I wasn’t expecting this when we started making it so we better live up to this idea everyone has. It’s kind of complex, you know?

MODERATOR. And Dolph and Jason, how was it for you? Do you feel the expectation? Is there extra responsibility?

STATHAM. Well it’s all on Sly I’m afraid. So no.

LAUGHTER.

STALLONE. Oh just deflect it onto Sly.

STATHAM. Well that’s why you try to work with people who know what they‘re doing.

STALLONE. You better go work with Christopher Nolan pal. I’m guessing my way through this.

LAUGHTER.

At this point they opened it up to the floor.

QUESTION. Sly and Dolph, how would you compare your relationship now to the way it was 25 years ago when you did Rocky 4? Was it the same dynamic as before?

STALLONE. Well I never trained harder for a Rocky movie than I did for Rocky 4. And Dolph is brutal, he’s a world class athlete so we got to know each other pretty well. Then times change, we go through ups and downs, marriages, whatever, and meeting in this time it’s really great because, of all the actors I’ve worked with, Dolph has remained the most grounded, the most humble. Believe me actors can change a lot, it’s rough, it’s very competitive. But…yeah it has changed. I was dying to kick his brains in. He pounded me in that movie! (Rocky 4) I look at him now and I think, what was I thinking?! The guy is a monster! He put me in the hospital for days! So, you don’t think I had a grudge?! That’s why I shot you! (in The Expendables.)

LAUGHTER.

MODERATOR. And Dolph, would you like to comment any further?

LUNGDREN. No.

LAUGHTER.

QUESTION. Question for Sly…

STALLONE. Hey look, you gotta talk to these guys too!

QUESTION. What was it like managing all the testosterone on set? Did you have an all female crew to balance it out?

STALLONE. Female what?! No, well it got kinda aggressive. Let’s say Jason had an action beat. And he’s very physical, you’ll see in the documentaries, his hands were on ice, he was leaping onto baking hot ground over and over and he keeps wanting to do it and I had to say, “stop, stop.” So then the next fellow who has to do his stunt, he looks at Jason and says “Jason is really good, I’m going to kill this guy!” So it keeps building in competitiveness, men are just naturally competitive, they want to keep upping the ante. So, I don’t know if there were any women around. They were tough if there were, you had to be tough on this show.

QUESTION. And Jason and Dolph, was there anything you were scared of doing? Anything you won’t do?

STATHAM. I won’t wear a flowery shirt. I’m scared of that.

LAUGHTER.

STATHAM. No it’s all part of the job. The good thing about a film like this getting done and having Sly in control of it is that he shoots a lot of the stunts in the camera. A lot of the action directors of today tend to rely on the visual and it becomes boring because there’s a lot of CGI. When you do an action movie that requires real stunts, real action, it’s a great opportunity and that’s what we’re looking for, we can’t wait to get stuck in and do all that stuff.

QUESTION. Is there anyone you wanted to be involved that couldn’t do it or didn’t want to do it? And how did you get so many names in one film?

STALLONE. Well, at first it was just myself, Jason and Jet Li and it began to develop from that. And I was thinking of different things, you know originally I thought Ben Kingsley as the bad guy and Forest Whittaker, but then I thought that’s not gonna fly, let me just go really old school. So I called Dolph and he accepted immediately, he was very gracious. And then I thought, there aren’t a lot of young guys, bad asses out there today, guys who just want to get it on. Now, I believe the younger generation would like to show their metal, they want to prove themselves but there were just none around. So I went to the MMA and got a 5 time world champion who‘s at the top of his game, Steve Austin an incredibly powerful human being, you know, whatever you think about wrestling these are guys who are 250 pounds of solid muscle and it just kept building from there. I went to Van Damme and Steven Segal but they just had different ideas on their career, so…

LAUGHTER.

QUESTION. With a lot of high profile actors starring in flop movies, do you think star actors matter anymore?

STALLONE. Jason, do you want to answer that before you fall asleep?

LAUGHTER.

STALLONE. Stars don’t matter that much. Concept matters. The overall originality or reinterpretation of a really classic situation, like the way Star Wars went back to Joseph Campbell, all the variations on that, that’s what matters. Whereas when Dolph and I were starting out, this was a little before your time Jason. You were still… a thought. You were a concept.

LAUGHTER.

STALLONE. But with Dolph and I, they put you in a film and surround you with these guys, you were these unresolved characters but you can’t do that today. Rambo was a one man show but you can’t just do that now. But there is a lot more at stake today. Where you had maybe 400 films a year, now you have 250 so the stakes are very high and it’s almost a science now, what they make. So there’s no more “Oh I got a gut feeling. I’m gonna take a chance. I know everyone says no but I’m gonna try it anyway.” That’s gone. It’s all scientific. Every actor is weighed against what they can bring in from different territories. It’s like a math project.

QUESTION. Sly, how has your faith influenced the films you make? And do you feel the need to justify the violence in your films?

STALLONE. Well I’ve made a lot of career mistakes. Personal mistakes too actually. A lot. But I never started out to be an action actor, I was an ensemble actor. Rocky was ensemble, FIST was ensemble and Paradise Alley was ensemble. Then along came First Blood and there was the beginning of something unusual. Once all the dialogue was cut out, it was a very visual film. And I believe that the violence is very justifiable. One thing in my films, I only kill people that need to be killed. The ones that deserve it get it and the ones that go after women really get it. Really get it. If a man is really having his way with a woman, tearing her apart, wrecking her life, I’m not just going to shoot him with a bullet, that’s way too civilised. He’s gonna feel real pain and I think the audience wants that and feels it cathartically. Now, if you do that in every scene then it’s a horror film. But…yeah, I don’t feel guilty about it at all. I can feel guilty if you want me to?

LAUGHTER.

QUESTION. Jason, what was it like working with people you grew up watching?

STATHAM. It’s a situation where you get to know the real man behind the camera. It’s not the film maker anymore it’s just a regular guy. And to me that was the best part of working with Sly, getting to know him as a person. There’s no substitute for that.

QUESTION. Did you have to pinch yourself?

STATHAM. You can do that if you want, yeah.

LAUGHTER.

QUESTION. What was it like writing and directing and starring in the film? And Jason, what was it like acting with Sly as he’s directing you too?

STALLONE. My method is to learn everybody’s lines. Write the script, learn the entire script, that way I don’t have to think about it anymore, I can concentrate on the actors. Then, when we’re doing a scene, Jason will tell you, he’s always giving different lines on the spur of the moment.

STATHAM. Yeah, that’s the thing with having a guy who’s the writer and director because you have full liberty to change and improvise and you don’t normally get that, you get restrictions. Some guy wrote the script and he doesn’t want anyone to mess with that, the director isn’t allowed to mess with it, so it’s the best situation you can get.

STALLONE. For example, in the scene with the Somalian pirates, it builds up, “You want the money then come and get it.” Then, I go “BZZZ” everyone’s like, what’s that? “Say you’re getting a text.” And Jason is like, “What? I’m not gonna say that.” “Just say it!” “I’m not gonna say that!” And the camera is rolling the whole time. “So I’ll go BZZZ and then you say, I’m getting a text.” Camera is still rolling. So I go “BZZZ” and Jason goes, “I’m getting a text.” So now I look at Terry and I say, “Say it better not be from my wife.” And Terry is like, “What? I’m not saying that!” Oh just say it! So he says it. You have the formula, the blueprint, and once you have it then let’s just go and everyone ad libs. We had a nicely scripted piece but it didn’t have those eccentricities. Like when Dolph is hanging a pirate. It’s crazy but it’s memorable. Crazy is memorable.

MODERATOR. And Dolph, I think we wanted to hear from you on this?

LUNGDREN. Well they’re both right. I agree.

LAUGHTER.

QUESTION. Jason, this is your third film with Jet Li, how has working with him shaped your career?

STATHAM. Well none of the films I’ve done with Jet, apart from this one, have been any good.

LAUGHTER.

STATHAM. It’s difficult because my first movie with Jet wasn’t what it was supposed to be. But it gave me the opportunity to work with (fight choreographer) Corey Yuen which was instrumental in me playing in The Transporter films. But it’s coincidental that we’re doing another film together. It’s not that we beat Sly up and held him down, “We want to do a film together.”

STALLONE. But I think it’s a perfect example of how difficult it is to get an action film out there and have it performed and have the proper people involved. It’s great for Jason to see how it was done the old way.

STATHAM. And I’d like to add to that because the films I did with Jet were science fiction based and this harks back to the old school action movies, basically the ones that I am interested in doing.

QUESTION. There is a paternal theme in your films now, it’s the heart of Rocky Balboa and you have it with Julie Benz’s character in Rambo too. It seems that with The Expendables that you have a paternal relationship with Jason Statham’s character. How much of that is intentional?

STALLONE. It’s very intentional. You have to be age appropriate and he would be the protégé. He’s like the guy who will eventually take over but in the meantime I can tease him about his love life, not to take himself too seriously, stuff like that, like a father and son would do, but yeah it’s not by accident. You know, I always try to deal with redemption. I think everyone has regret that at one moment they made the wrong decision and sometimes you never get your life back on course. And that theme, from Rocky to Rambo to this, haunts me. Maybe I’m just mono-minded or limited but to me it’s inextinguishable. The thing with Mickey Rourke when he goes, “We used to be something and now we’re worth nothing because we gave up.” Okay so, redemption. How do I get it back? By doing something “charitable.” So that’s the theme, without overburdening the film and turning it into a talk fest. And you couldn’t understand what I’m saying anyway, so why bother doing that?

LAUGHTER.

QUESTION. With Rocky and Rambo there was a sense of closure, of you saying goodbye to your characters but I didn’t get that feeling with this. Are we going to see more action films from you or can we expect films with a bit more mind than muscle?

STALLONE. I don’t know, see, I’ve done my “mind movies” and I don’t think people are that interested in seeing me do that anymore. I’m past my prime in doing dramatic films. I think it becomes almost a pathetic cry out to be recognised as a serious dramaturge. I got my little moment, I’m very proud of the drama in Rocky Balboa, that’s about as deep as I can go, Copland too. I would much rather direct dramas. But The Expendables I would like to see go on. I’d like everyone to go on except him. (points at Dolph Lungdren.)

LUNGDREN. Because I talk too much.

QUESTION. Dolph, you’re in a similar position, you’ve directed five action films. Would you like to be completely behind the camera?

LUNGDREN. No, both are cool. One is easier than the other, behind the camera is more challenging. But I like to do both.

STALLONE. You know, contrary to how he looks, he’s really a very smart guy.

LAUGHTER.

STALLONE. Seriously! You know, here’s this beautiful guy, 6.5, Viking kinda guy, 29 inch waist, I’m going, he’s got to be a moron. But here he is, MIT graduate, Fulbright scholar, I’m going, him? Seriously? I mean, can you imagine him in a lab with test tubes going, “I will cure this rat of something.”

LAUGHTER.

STALLONE. He went from scientist to savage.

QUESTION. Why do you think audiences fell out of love with the action hero?

LUNGDREN. Well I don’t think people fell out of love, I think it just changed a little bit. And you know, it’ll change again.

STALLONE. That’s completly right. Every generation, including mine, has their own heroes. I mean I didn’t identify with John Wayne, I identified with James Dean. You have to find your own heroes and this generation has defined superheroes as their heroes. That’s why we (The Expendables) are kind of a novelty. That’s just the way it is. Look at music. It’s unrecognisable from what it was 20 years ago. That’s just the way it is. And then maybe it’ll go retro. Really, only Jason is current. Which is really lucky for us.

QUESTION. If you had made this film 20 years ago it would have cost you everything you ever owned…

STALLONE. (Laughing) Yeah!

QUESTION ….How did you get everyone now? Was it favours?

STALLONE. I could never have afforded Bruce and Arnold, that would have been the whole budget of the movie. Jason is a lot of money but he’s well worth it. £100 a week but worth every penny.

LAUGHTER.

STALLONE. But you’re right it would have been impossible if everyone had wanted their price. But things have changed, prices are dropping drastically. You’re lucky now just to get work. People that were getting 10 million are now down to 2 and they’re going thank you. But this was all favours. Some people worked for nothing. Mainly me.

And with that the Moderator called an end and the Expendables left the stage. On the way out, I hovered in the foyer, just in case. Jason Statham was ushered away and Dolph Lungdren wasted no time either. But Sly was having transport organised for him, he was heading off to another press engagement and so he hung around for a couple of minutes, signing autographs, answering questions, posing for photos. I managed to get his attention. “It’s a great film, well done.” And I offered my hand. “Oh that’s very nice, thank you.” And he shook my hand. And, despite being somewhat shocked that my 5 feet 8 inch frame was slightly taller than Sly’s, I nonetheless felt a transference of testosterone that made me want to get behind the biggest, jeep-mounted weapon I could find and turn faceless bad guys into red mist.

In the end though, I got on the tube and went home.

I'll get my review of The Expendables up as soon as I can. It opens today and it's ludicrous but good fun.

Jez Lewis Interview

2010-08-13T02:08:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I got to speak with Jez Lewis, director of the excellent documentary Shed Your Tears And Walk Away in which he returns to his hometown of Hebdon Bridge to try and root out the causes of the town’s crippling drugs, alcohol and suicide problems. Jez was screening the film and giving a Q&A and I spoke to him for about 40 minutes before he had to go into the screening room for the talk. Jez made for a great interview, passionate, intelligent and very honest.

Check out my review here first as it will help illuminate the people and scenes we end up talking about.

http://eggmagmovies.blogspot.com/2010/06/shed-your-tears-and-walk-away-review.html

This is a slightly longer version than the one on Eggmag's main website. Enjoy!

GARRETH. When you first left Hebdon Bridge when you were young, was there a problem then and were you aware of it?

JEZ. Yeah I’d say there was. Drugs were around, but because I was growing up there and nowhere else, I had a sense that it was unusual but I didn’t know – I couldn’t be sure. I had a year off before uni when I went travelling and got more of a sense that my experience in Hebdon was unusual. But also my next door neighbour had attempted suicide when I was about 16. Another friend committed suicide, I knew of another lad who committed suicide. But I actually became more aware when I got to university and experiences there showed me that actually most people didn’t take drugs – I didn’t take drugs.

GARRETH. That’s interesting because a lot of the time it’s the other way around. You go to university and this world opens up of alcohol and drugs…

JEZ. Well that’s what happened to some of my friends but I’d quit drinking by then, I quit drinking when I was 17.

GARRETH. How come? As a product of growing up in Hebdon?

JEZ. No, I was always terrified of drugs and addiction. I was also heavily involved in karate, I was quite sporty and I just made a twat of myself drinking one night and thought I’m not doing that anymore. A couple of friends had gone on a health kick and I joined in but took it a little further by quitting drinking.

Then, a friend came to me and said, “Can I ask you a personal question?” I said she could and with some trepidation she said, “A mutual friend told me you know someone who tried to commit suicide.” I just laughed and she looked incredibly shocked. I thought it was a wind up but it wasn’t. A friend of hers had attempted suicide and she wanted to talk to someone who had had that experience. So I said I didn’t mean to offend her, it’s just that I know a lot of people who have done that. And I started to get more of an awareness [of the problem] than I had when I was living at home.

GARRETH. You mean, being able to look back and say there is actually something seriously wrong?

JEZ. Yeah. Everyone at university was Southern, middle class and from private education. Whereas I was from a working class comprehensive school so there were differences and I didn’t know how much to attribute to the fact that we were from completely different backgrounds, or how much of it was specifically Hebdon. And then I made trips back to Hebdon and I saw my peers taking crack or whatever. It was gradual, but more people died or committed suicide, and really at the start of the film when Emma [School friend Of Jez] died I still hadn’t moved my perception to the fact that there is definitely something different there. So I did some research and it was then I decided I must make the film.

GARRETH. So then, when you started the film, did you have a particular agenda or did you find what you wanted as you were filming it?

JEZ. I went there to ask some questions in a journalistic way and I was only going to do a 15 or 20 minute film. I was going to say, here’s this beautiful place with a vibrant community but it also has this alternative community killing themselves one after another. I was going to ask questions of all people across the spectrum, but it changed quite quickly from that into what it is.

GARRETH. The main figures in the film; were they people you had been in touch with over the years, or people you got back in touch with specifically for filming?

JEZ. Cass I’d always been tentatively in touch with. The others mostly I hadn’t. I knew of them but they were not old friends.

GARRETH. This is one of things I’m interested in – watching the film you feel that there is probably an awful lot more footage – things you haven’t included, all kinds of people we don’t see…

JEZ. I had around 100 hours of footage!

GARRETH. Wow. So making Cass the focus, did that happen in the edit?

JEZ. No, I kind of knew. Cass was kind of a rock rebel when we were teenagers and I knew he had charisma. He also had looks, which were gone by the time I met him again. But those things were in my mind and I knew he knew everybody.

GARRETH. I must admit, that moment when you’re on the train back to Hebdon and Cass produces that can of special brew, it’s just heartbreaking.

JEZ. Oh yeah, yeah.

GARRETH. One of the things that interests me about documentary film makers is that question of wanting to make the film and watch this stuff happen but also the need possibly to intervene. Is that a difficult line to walk?

JEZ. I think if they hadn’t been my mates historically it might have been more difficult. I don’t know my audience when I’m filming, but my mates are there – they’re in front of me. I’ve done a lot of martial arts and I came across a samurai saying, I know this sounds quite juvenile to be quoting samurai, but the saying is: “You can hear of a danger and run away, but you can’t see it and run away.” I felt like that. When I wasn’t in Hebdon it wasn’t my responsibility but once I was there and filming, I felt almost ashamed to just point a camera at people who needed a hand. And I wouldn’t be able to live with being ashamed if I can do something about it.

GARRETH. Absolutely. One of the things that’s so interesting about the film is how much you feature in it, and, purely from the perspective of just watching the film, there’s a great moment later on when you say, “I have to just walk away. I’m trying to help you, I can’t do anymore.” But this is what you’re saying, you still can’t walk away really because you’re there, you’re watching it and there’s that sense of responsibility.

JEZ. Yeah, for me my responsibility is to the people there but I do have a responsibility to the film too so that’s part of the difficulty of those decisions and I’m more their friend than a film maker but I’m still a film maker. In that last scene when I’m saying I’m going to walk away, if I hadn’t had a camera [in that scene] I’d have walked away a long time before.

GARRETH. That’s very honest.

JEZ. In the end, after that scene, I put him [Cass] in a car and drove him to the house of a person he was with many years ago.

GARRETH. That has to be incredibly frustrating though too – you’re there and trying to help and, okay you’re making a film, but, you’re actually there and trying to help. Was there a part of you that experienced that frustration? Or was it just an overwhelming sense of sadness about the whole thing?

JEZ. It’s an overwhelming sense of urgency more than anything. I mean, I don’t know if you know but, since I stopped filming, five of the people I filmed have died.

GARRETH. I didn’t know that, no.

JEZ. Yeah, died of overdoses. I hate to say this but it’s not going to stay at five. But yeah – of course there’s frustration. To be honest with you, in that scene, it was my fucking chips and mushy peas he ate! You traipse around following people for 15 hours a day – it’s November and you’re cold, you’re hungry, you’re knackered, you have a 30 pound camera on your back, you can’t sit down - and then finally you go and get some chips. And it happened so many times, I’d go get some chips and there’d be somebody totally muntered! Staggering through the streets as if they’re about to die and I use that expression completely seriously, “as if they’re about to die.” And I’d go, “Have a chip. Oh fuck it, have ‘em all.” And it’s a joke in a sense but the frustration in that day was that. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I only went there to wish Di a Happy Birthday. I always have my camera with me but I had no idea Cass was there. And the truth is all that sadness and frustration and urgency was built up over that day and at that last minute, I was just so annoyed.

GARRETH. At that moment, when you found out Cass was there, what went through your mind?

(The day of the scene in question, Jez thought Cass was in London going through rehab, not back in Hebdon getting pissed.)

JEZ. I didn’t believe it. I genuinely didn’t believe it. That’s why [in the film] the guy who saw Cass tells me the make of his car, because he could see I didn’t believe him. I hoped Cass could come, like he did before, and not drink, but he didn’t. He came and he fucking hammered himself that weekend, you see it in the film…

GARRETH. I was going to say, he’s doing pretty badly at that point!

JEZ. Apparently the next day he got worse. His mate put him on a bus back to London and he got chucked out of his home which is the phone calls you hear in the end credits. He got fucking chucked out. Sorry about all the swearing!

GARRETH. Not at all. Do you know where he is now?

JEZ. Yeah, I speak to him every other week. He phoned me the other day and said, “Jez I think my head is swelling up.” I said to him, “Why Cass? Whats up?” And he said, “I was walking along and I heard someone shout “Cass!” and I turned around and there were two women sitting in a silver BMW. They got out and told me they had seen the film at the ICA and they thought I was right lovely and I’m starting to feel like a superstar!” He is drinking again, but that pattern is fairly normal. It’s quite normal, for people who succeed in getting off alcohol, to take four or five attempts. Just because he’s gone on and off it a few times doesn’t mean he won’t make it.

GARRETH. So when it comes down to it, do you have an explanation as to why this is concentrated in one small place?

JEZ. The people living that life think it’s normal. And I did. It took me until Emma’s death to convince myself that it’s not normal. Since finishing the film I’ve come across it people saying again and again, “I thought it was normal. Isn’t it the same everywhere?” And you have to say, “NO IT’S NOT!” My mate who was too shy to be in the film asked the same. My mate from uni stood up and said, “I don’t know anyone who has died from drugs or alcohol, I’m not sure I know anyone who has died under the age of 40.” My Hebdon mate was shocked because he knew about 30 people who had died. And a few months after that conversation, his own nephew hanged himself.

GARRETH. Oh God…

JEZ. Yeah. In the film when I say I’m afraid of the phone, it’s because [all this] was happening – getting texts or calls in the night. Imagine, you get a text to tell someone that their friend has just died – that’s how commonplace it was. And when it’s normal, it becomes an option, if you see what I mean.

GARRETH. That’s interesting. I mean, if I’m in the park drinking, or doing drugs or whatever – if that’s my lifestyle then I can kind of understand that becoming my normality. And people dying as a result of that, well it‘s sad but that’s what happens. It’s when so many people actively take their own lives… to my mind, I start to think that there’s a degree of awareness in that, that I have to get out and so I kill myself. It seems more active than just sitting in the park slowly drinking yourself to death…

JEZ. Cass says that, around here you either kill yourself or you die anyway. It is that thing, it’s ingrained in their unconscious, and it just seems like it’s par for the course. It’s simply how it is.

GARRETH. And there’s also a very strange disconnect between that life and the people watching it – two different worlds right beside each other. Because it’s very visible – it’s right there for everyone to see.

JEZ. Oh it is. Yards from each other.

GARRETH. And is there any sense then of what the rest of Hebdon feels about what’s going on across the street?

JEZ. They tolerate it. By the way, the film is a sugar coated version of what goes on there.

GARRETH. Really?!

JEZ. There are much worse things going on than you see in the film.

GARRETH. Can I ask…?

Long pause.

JEZ. No, I don’t think so.

GARRETH. Okay, fair enough.

JEZ. But there’s tolerance to a lot of things and they [the people watching] don’t mind if one or two of these people die. They think that we all make our choices and they are living out theirs. I’m not going to judge or criticise them for that. It’s not my way of doing things. It’s normal for these people, for everyone in the town. I have a mate who wouldn’t touch the drugs that the others use, he’s friends with them but he wouldn’t go near them and HE thinks it’s normal. And the suicides, as far as I can tell, aren’t really connected with the drugs. It’s like you said earlier, it’s an active exit strategy rather than a passive one.

Checks his watch…

Oops, I better go now…

GARRETH. Sure. Thanks so much for talking to me, it’s been really interesting.

JEZ. Not at all. Thanks.

A quick ending to a brilliant interview. Check out Shed Your Tears And Walk Away, it‘s a tough but excellent film.

A Quick Post On 3-D.

2010-08-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

I ended my Toy Story 3 review with a quick little sentence: "Oh, and the 3-D does absolutely nothing." A friend of mine posted a comment, leaving a link to Mark Kermode's blog in which he reads out a letter he received from the "3-D Guy" as Kermode calls him, who oversaw the 3-D conversion on Toy Story 3. The long and the short of it is that Kermode had said that he forgot he was watching a 3-D film while he watched Toy Story 3. He meant that he forgot it because he was so engrossed in the story and characters. The 3-D guy argues that, you don't notice the 3-D in the same way that you don't notice most of the music, the camera's focal length and the million other things that go into the making of a film, all of which operate on your subconscious to create a mood, evoke an emotion or help tell the story. Pixar's goal with 3-D is to have one or two "wow" moments but overall the 3-D should help create a mood, evoke an emotion or help tell the story. It's an interesting idea, particularly to a 3-D sceptic.

My feeling on 3-D is this. Watching a bad film, the 3-D helps because it's a distraction, it's something to take your mind off wretched characters, dreadful stories or whatever else is wrong with the film. Watching a good film in 3-D, the 3-D doesn't really add anything because the experience is satisfying as it is. This viewpoint clearly emphasises story above everything else and if the story is intact and the narrative working as it should, then 3-D is exposed as the sideshow it really is. But is it possible that 3-D can work as subtly as the other technical elements of the film? Several directors have pointed out that the very phrase "3-D" is something of a misnomer because every film you have ever watched has created depth of image in its many frames. Could Citizen Kane for example use depth to any greater degree? Taking this as truth, I don't think I really buy the idea that 3-D in its newest incarnation is another story-telling technique because depth of frame (or indeed lack thereof) has always been a story-telling technique. That Pixar emphasis story and characters is well documented and clearly evident in their films and I have no doubt that their brief with 3-D conversion is exactly as the chap who contacted Mark Kermode described it. I simply can't get over the fact that it is a gimick, a way of selling tickets at higher prices and a way for studios to think they're combating piracy.

I will get around to writing my Inception piece but one of the things that film demonstrates is that a film can enter the zeitgeist, create a conversation AND make a tonne of money without forcing people to put on the glasses and watch it in the third dimension. The fact that films have done that since their creation seems to have been forgotten. Give people a reason to go to the cinema and they will go. Give people a compelling story, a hook, a concept, interesting ideas, on top of a visual experience, and they will go. People want to be part of something and if that something is a sporting event, Live Aid, a demonstration at Trafalgar Square or that film that everyone is talking about, they will do what they have to to be part of it. Sure there will be those who think that downloading is enough, everyone hates the queues, the popcorn crunchers, the mobile phone talkers but films are shared experiences and, even though you don't have much control over who you're sharing it with, people still want that feeling of being in it together, of walking into the daylight chatting with whoever they're with about what they've just seen as everyone around them does likewise. I have no intention of ever sitting through a Twilight film but even these films attract their audiences because people want to see those characters.

This is what cinema at its best is. And it doesn't take the 3-D fad to accomplish it. So sorry Mr 3-D guy. I've nothing but admiration and respect for the work you do and it must be said that the 3-D on Toy Story 3 is very impressive; none of your hastily and shoddily done conversions to make a quick buck here. I think I can say with relative certainty that the reason I forgot about the 3-D was not because it blended in with the rest of the film making process, it's because the story and its characters were working so well. 3-D is here to stay. That much is certain. Equally certain for me is the fact that cinema, like literature, like theatre, like television comedy and drama, tells stories. And it's the stories that make me feel like what I'm watching is real, that what I'm watching matters , that the people I'm watching it happen to are real and that it all has consequences. It's the stories that achieve this. Not the artificiality of making me think the space it's happening in is all around me.

Thanks to Jon for leaving a comment and posting the link to Mr Kermode's blog.

The A Team Review

2010-08-04T05:27:00.000-07:00

I was about to launch into a full scale review but you know what? I can't be bothered. The film is terrible. I wasn't expecting a classic. For that matter, I wasn't even expecting a good film. I did think that maybe there might be some fun moments, some good action, it might be a laugh. It isn't. At all.

2/10

Friday sees the release of another throwback action movie that IS good fun. I was at a press screening last night but I'm embargoed from talking about it for a few days.

Let's just say that if you'd like to EXPEND some energy and you're ABLE to See a film at the cinema next weekend then you might want to check this film out...

It's like the enigma machine all over again.

Toy Story 3 Review

2010-07-29T06:40:00.000-07:00

I’m snatching a few minutes to write this review as it’s late. It’s about to be late AND hurried. I’m nothing if not professional folks.

Toy Story 3 comes eleven years after the second instalment in what is currently Pixar’s only franchise, although with Cars 2 and Monsters Inc 2, this is about to change. Toy Story 2 is one of the great sequels. It belongs to that rare group of sequels that surpass their originals. Yes Jessie is a bit annoying (culminating in her song that is rip-your-ears-off irritating) but Toy Story 2 does what all great sequels do. It furthers the story and the world, introduces new characters without sidelining the old ones and allows those old characters to grow in new ways, all the while remembering what made the original so successful in the first place that it demanded a sequel at all. Toy Story 3 is very, very good. If this were number two, there would be no need for any qualification. The problem for me is that it covers very similar ground to the second film and, as a result, struggles to justify its existence in a way that is pretty much unheard of for a Pixar film. That probably sounds like a very begrudging criticism, it certainly feels that way typing it. But I simply can’t get away from the nagging feeling that for the first time Pixar are chasing commercial success more than they are striving to make a great film. I will immediately qualify THAT (keep up here folks; this is the Inception of film reviews. And we’re only in level 2 yet.) They DO make a great film. Everything you love about Pixar, warmth, wit, character, story, are all present and accounted for. But Toy Story 3 is the first in a run of sequels and, though it might be very good, the fact that it’s not really covering new ground, or telling a story that is particularly different to the second, gives you a slightly nagging feeling.

The threat posed in Toy Story 2 that their owner Andy will one day grow up and outgrow his toys has come to fruition in number 3. We join the gang trying desperately to get the attention of a teenage Andy who has to start making choices about which of his toys he is going to put into the attic (from the toys’ perspective, the equivalent of a retirement home) which will go to the jumble sale and which will ended up in the dreaded trash bin. Through a series of plot machinations the toys end up at the Sunnyside Day Care facility which at first seems like a haven the toys never dreamed possible but quickly becomes a nightmare they fear they will never escape from. The toys hatch a plan to extricate themselves from their situation as well as create a place for themselves in the world once again.

The best thing about Toy Story 3 is the way it riffs on being a prison film, a kind of Cool Hand Luke meets The Great Escape but for toys. All prison movie clichés are here and are often hilariously adapted for the PG requirements of the genre and the execution of the toys' break out of Sunnyside is the highlight of the film and, for my money, one of the best set pieces in the Pixar canon. Pixar still has the monopoly on walking that fine line between keeping the kids entertained and having enough in there to make the adults laugh too and Toy Story 3 is very, very funny. Michael Keaton as the very metrosexual Ken is the comedy highlight of the film. The discovery of Buzz’s reset button, the omnipresent drumming monkey CCTV monitor and Mr Potato Head having to improvise a body for his eyes, ears and appendages are amongst the other many comedy highlights that had children and adults alike laughing in the screening I saw. Ned Beatty as Lotso, the bear in charge of Sunnyside, does great work and has an interesting back story of his own. The film is surprisingly dark and scary at times and Lotso's right hand man, a weird, creepy as hell baby doll, would not be out of place in a David Lynch dream sequence. Also, the ending of the film finds a nice way to resolve the central dilemma that is sentimental in the right way. Buzz and Woody end up somewhat sidelined and this, for me, is the most telling problem with the film. The characters have nowhere to go now. They simply have to be themselves in a new adventure and while it's very well done (once again the plotting of the film is superb. Seriously, anyone who wants to learn about screenwriting should watch Pixar films for the elegance of their plotting) it doesn't feel like it's enough.

I want to stress again that this is by no means a bad review and, by the way, I think the film is way better than, for example Ratatouille or the much loved Wall-E which is much more problematic story-wise. I think the problem though comes down to ambition and while Wall-E might not work for me, it really is trying to accomplish something interesting. Last year’s Up tried to accomplish something and succeeded, being as it is a nearly flawless film. Judged in those terms, Toy Story 3 is kind of treading water a bit, made worse by the fact that we’re now in a run of sequels. The simple fact is that Pixar films are judged by a higher standard, a standard they set for themselves. Toy Story 3 is smart, laugh out loud funny and a great time at the cinema. It just lacks the X-Factor we’ve come to expect (and probably demand) from the very best of Pixar’s output.

7/10

Oh, and the 3-D adds absolutely nothing!

Inception Review

2010-07-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

I really want to talk about Inception… But it’s important to know as little as possible going in. So here’s what I’m going to do. This review is going to be short and sweet. And then in a couple of weeks I’ll write a few thoughts about the film that will go into some spoilery detail about the story as there really is a lot to talk about.

The long and the short of it is that Inception really delivers. It’s an intelligent, exciting, thought provoking film, utterly unique amongst modern Blockbusters. Slightly overlong perhaps and I’m not sure it’s the instant miracle, modern classic, solution to life’s problems some have made out. Also much has been made of Nolan’s slightly cold, distant approach to his stories in the past and many of the reviews have pointed to the warmth and humanity in Dom Cobb’s (Leonardo DiCaprio's) journey in this film. This is actually the weakest stuff for me. Plot wise, story wise and ideas wise it’s absolutely great, but I never really felt anything for the characters and their story.

But Christopher Nolan has demonstrated once again that he is a great film maker with great ideas. His central concept here, entering people’s subconscious through their dreams is great but to put that in the milieu of industrial espionage is a stroke of genius and the film plays like a heist thriller with Cobb assembling his team so that, rather than stealing an idea, they can carry through inception, planting an idea in a person’s mind. We get an opening heist to bring us into the world, the assembling and training of the team, which does go on a little long. But the last hour or so is the heist itself and once this begins it really doesn’t let up. The dream world and its rules have been meticulously thought through and Nolan obeys his own internal logic at all times. The best part of this is how there are different levels of dreaming and what is happening in one level impacts upon the next. The high point of this is Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s zero gravity fight in a hotel corridor but that whole last hour, while maybe not being quite as tense as I’d hoped (or for that matter as James Newton Howard’s bombastic score wants you to think it is) is Hollywood at its best and Nolan utterly confident in what he is doing.

This is perhaps the most exciting thing about watching Inception. You get the sense that we are watching a film maker now at the peak of his powers. For all its faults I absolutely love The Dark Knight but much of what is wrong in that film is corrected here. I’ll return to The Dark Knight more often for the atmosphere and action and I’ll return to Inception more often for its ideas. How this film got made is a miracle because, while The Dark Knight is a Summer movie with a brain in its head and some good ideas, Inception is an ideas movie with some action in it released in the Summer.
Don’t misunderstand, there is plenty of action; that last hour is basically one, sustained action set piece. But it’s for its ideas that Inception should be credited. As with every good heist movie, once they start their plan it all goes wrong and watching the way the team improvises is incredibly impressive from a writing perspective. Nolan has set up the rules of the dream world and is now free to bend our expectations of them to provide the team ways out of their problems that are plausible, that never cheat and are utterly compelling.

This review was supposed to be short! Go into Inception prepared to do a little work, pay attention to it, and you’ll be utterly rewarded. And once you’ve seen it, let the debate begin about just what it all means. Inception is fantastic, deserves its hype and is a call to every other studio and film maker in Hollywood that this is what is possible with a large budget. And there is simply no excuse for bad storytelling in any films, including big budget ones. Roll on Batman 3!

8.5/10

Predators Review

2010-07-14T05:57:00.001-07:00

20th Century Fox really have the bargain basement blockbuster honed to a fine art. This Summer however they’re struggling to turn a decent profit with The A Team and in particularly Knight And Day underperforming at the US Box Office. With Predators, they have a July release with an apparent budget of $40 million. With the average cost of a Summer movie these days being $200 million (that’s just production costs, it doesn’t include marketing and distribution) $40 million is a bargain, right? I am no advocate of the idea that with large amounts of money automatically comes interesting results. Most of the mega-budget movies are pretty terrible these days if you ask me. But what’s happening currently at Fox seems to be a lack of ambition that is typified in the small scale nature of projects released in a large scale season. Enter Predators.

Predators is that kind of film where you walk out and say, “Well it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be” and this seems to be where Fox is happy to pitch their films. Predators isn’t as bad as you’d think it would be but that doesn’t mean it’s good. It doesn’t even make it okay. I sat there throughout its running time, not angry, not irritated but not excited or even interested either. Predators is basically a retread of the original except that instead of being on Earth, the jungle is on the Predator’s home planet, the group of walking corpses isn’t a coherent unit as it was in the first film but is instead a rag-tag group of the world’s best killers (or “predators” if you will) from a range of backgrounds and countries and… Nope, I think that’s it for differences. Oh, the CGI predator dogs… Which are excellent. Really, really excellent.

Boxes are ticked, enormous weapons fired and spines are torn from bodies. Adrien Brody lowers his voice and makes it husky to let us know he’s a credible action star and Laurence Fishburne turns up as a kind of Colonel Kurtz meets Ogilvy from War of the Worlds which is one of the more fun things in the film. Many of the effects are done practically which is admittedly refreshing, the Predators still feeling like guys in suits which is by no means a criticism. The film is presumably a low budget attempt to resuscitate a franchise that basically flatlined after the first film, a kind of Predators Begins. But what it lacks in budget it really needs to make up for in story, imagination and inventive action scenes. There is nothing remotely fresh, original or even interesting in most of Predators. It’s just…there. Inoffensively there.

Enough messing around 2010. It’s time for Inception. Don’t let me down!

5/10

Don't Walk Away From Shed Your Tears And Walk Away

2010-06-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

The last film I reviewed was the excellent documentary Shed Your Tears And Walk Away and in the review I said that the film is only showing at the ICA. The film's director Jez Lewis left a comment on the blog correcting that and left a link to the showings of the film. The link is included below so have a look and see if, in the midst of one of the worst Summers for films in recent memory, you can go out and support a genuinely good film.

Huge thanks to Jez Lewis for getting in touch. Best of luck with the film.

http://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/shedyourtears-playdates.htm

Shed Your Tears And Walk Away Review

2010-06-18T02:48:00.000-07:00

In Shed Your Tears And Walk, documentary film maker Jez Lewis returns to his hometown of Hebdon Bridge, Yorkshire, to try and discover why so many of the people he grew up with are dying of overdoses (drugs, alcohol or both) or else committing suicide. Lewis spends much of his time in the local parks where a significant portion of the town’s population, some still in their teens, many in their early twenties, go each day to get absolutely wasted on their poison of choice. He talks to a great number of people in his attempt to get to the bottom of why such a small town should have become so plagued by a very public waste of human life but the film centres on his friend Cass, seemingly off heroin but destroying himself with alcohol and never seen without a can of Special Brew. Lewis follows Cass being given just two years to live if he doesn’t change and his attempts to turn things around for himself, some abortive, some more successful, but always on that knife edge of reverting back to his old ways at any moment.

Shed Your Tears And Walk Away (the title coming from something Cass’ friend Silly says near the beginning of the film to describe his reaction to his own brother’s death) is an affecting, genuinely upsetting film. It is a stark look at alcoholism and drug addiction and it is made all the more frightening by the fact that Lewis is simply unable to come to a conclusion as to why it has come to this. There are potential explanations certainly, the absence of a Father or significant Father figure plays a reoccurring role in many of the people’s stories. Boredom is rife, opportunities limited, education or ambition nowhere to be found and a sense of alienation hangs permanently in the air. But even collectively, these answers seem insufficient. Several people die during the course of the documentary, including at least one that Lewis introduces us to. He has had five or six funerals in the last year and the parks and public spaces are filled with young men and women drinking and injecting themselves to death. This feels like a plague without a motive and the most frightening thing about that hypothesis is that it is also therefore a plague without an apparent cure.

What was staggering to me watching the film was the way honesty and denial could co-exist. Lewis’ interviewees talk of the epidemic of deaths in the town, talk of the “fucking idiots” who do whatever drugs they are doing as they themselves slur their way through the interviews with the ubiquitous Special Brew firmly in hand at all times. The same answers come up time and again as Lewis asks them why they’re doing what they’re doing. “It’s shit here isn’t? It’s shit. There’s nothing else to do.” Lewis suggests that they could leave the town but they all then respond that they don’t want to leave their mates and a couple of people are honest enough to admit that they are as frightened to leave as they are terrified to stay. This quickly brings you to the issue of people having to help themselves at the end of the day but the film gives the sense that none of these people see a way out. There is a resignation to this being their lot, awareness that it’s grim but the feeling that it can’t change. It’s very easy on the outside looking in to scream at them to just get on a train to anywhere and start again but the atmosphere is stifling and suffocating, their pain utterly palpable and you have a very strange sense that, even if they left the place now, the town would somehow always be with them. This becomes tragically and depressingly apparent when Cass, having left Hebdon Bridge for rehab in London and managed to stay off the drink for several months, produces a can of Special Brew on the train as he takes a dreadfully judged trip back home. His reasoning is that he wants to see the old place to renew his own sense of personal growth and change but you just know he does not have the strength or the will to maintain sobriety in the face of unremitting addiction. This gives weight to the argument that these people are simply addicts and there is nothing more mysterious about it than that. That each individual is an addict is all too apparent and undeniable. But quite why a significant portion of a small town ends up dead or dying from substance abuse is a much tougher and more disturbing question. The ending of the film felt abrupt as I watched it but, thinking about it afterwards (and you will definitely think about it afterwards) there was probably nothing else to show. We have seen these people at their worst, there are apparently no answers or solutions, what is left to say?

Lewis films the whole thing himself and is a presence throughout the entire film. You get a sense of his increasing panic as, more than once, he has to intervene in Cass’s situation to bail him out. He comes across as a man genuinely desperate to get to the bottom of a seemingly insurmountable problem and, even as he threatens to walk away, you just know he won’t be able to do it. I hate describing good films as “depressing” as that immediately puts people off going to see them but there is no way around it, Shed Your Tears And Walk Away is a depressing look at the dark side of a strangely picturesque little town. In a tiny release, the film is only playing at the ICA but, if you can manage it, it is well worth your time. Tragic, heartfelt, moving, it is a difficult watch but a film that will stay with you for a long time.

8/10

Dogtooth Review

2010-06-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

I actually saw Dogtooth last weekend but I’ve been holding off writing the review because I needed to give the film time to settle. I wouldn’t be much good as a professional reviewer would I? “Yes I know this film was released a fortnight ago but I’ve been letting it settle.” Actually, a quick look at Empire’s website reveals it was released April 16th… Whoops! Anyone reckon I’ll be three weeks late reviewing Tom Cruise in Knight And Day (“I’m the guy! I’m the guy!”) Liam Neeson in The A Team or Sly Stallone in The Expendables? Well who cares? The heart wants what it wants.

Anyhoo…

Watching Dogtooth, I REALLY wasn’t sure about it. It’s very, very slow, the single location stifling, its subject matter difficult and challenging. But Dogtooth has stayed with me, its many dark and disturbing moments nestling and taking permanent residence in my mind as I look back and think… who the fuck comes up with something like this?!?

A married couple (never given names) keep their three children permanently confined to the house and the garden, somewhere in the Greek countryside. The Father is the only one who leaves the house, driving to work each day. The children, two sisters and a brother, are in their late teens/early twenties but, despite being physically mature, are still basically infants in their minds, their notion of the “real world” where cats are dangerous predators and indeed the entire world beyond the walls of the house are filled with unrelenting dangers, completely manufactured and contrived by their parents. This is done seemingly to preserve the parents’ notion of their children’s innocence, although their exact motivations are never fully articulated and are open to interpretation. The son experiences the bizarre contradiction of emotional childlike innocence with the sexual appetites typical of a young man and to satisfy his desires, the Father brings home Christina, security guard at his place of work. Christina of course can’t help but bring some sense of the outside world with her and, as the children’s behaviour as a result of their upbringing intensifies and the parents’ controlling lies necessarily deepen to compensate for her influence, well, you just know that none of this is going to end well.

One of the things that strikes you watching the film is the matter-of-fact way it deals with its material. There are moments of dreadful violence, explicit nudity and sex (God bless the Europeans) and the piece as a whole is very, very dark. But there is never any hysteria, or for that matter, much in the way of the traditional cinematic build up that signals something bad is about to happen. These moments occur suddenly and spontaneously, much as most acts of sex or violence do in real life. Music is used incredibly sparsely and much of the film occurs in the beautifully sunny back garden, complete with fantastic looking swimming pool, the bright visuals serving to underscore the darkness of the story. The film definitely takes some getting into. Around fifteen minutes in I found myself becoming irritated and very much needing the film to “click” which it did do, but I wonder now if that had something to do with my reticence to jump on board for the rest of it at the time. Very little actually happens and the various things the family get up to, the sampling of anaesthesia to pass the time, play fights that would be harmless if they were children except that they’re very much not children and so real damage is done, and Christina’s visits, have an anecdotal, incidental feeling to them.

Interesting also is the sense of bone dry humour that permeates the film. Writer/director Giorgos Lanthimos finds the blackly comic in scenes that should be nothing but harrowing. Even as the world the parents have so carefully constructed begins to unravel around them, there are moments when you simply don’t know whether to be appalled or amused. It’s this sense of world that is the best thing about the film. 97% of Dogtooth occurs in one location but the characters and their situation are so believable (which is weird given how outrageous the story is) that you absolutely feel drawn into a bizarre, unsettling and completely new world. This is one of the best examples of a film that makes a distinction between its world and its setting, the world strange and uncomfortable, the setting seemingly mundane and familiar and it’s this disconnect between the two that contributes enormously to the tone and atmosphere of the piece. Whatever way you react to the film, what's for certain is the fact that you've never seen anything like it before.

Dogtooth is not a film for everyone. To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure it's a film for me. But it’s disturbing and odd in the best possible way, claustrophobic and unafraid to push buttons and provoke. It’s incredibly detailed (sometimes painfully so) completely thought through and executed with understated confidence in the most unflinching way imaginable. It’s also a film that gets under your skin, crawls into your brain, curls up into a ball and refuses to go away. The only solution? A bit of Tom Cruise grinning his way through a romping caper movie. Preferably as a super spy. Maybe riding a motorcycle while shooting at the bad guys. With a title that employs the worst pun in recent years.

Hey look, I’ve eaten my greens. Now I just want some dessert.

7/10

The Brothers Bloom… well it’s not really a review to be honest

2010-06-07T05:38:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to review a film you’ve missed a considerable amount of because you were asleep? Of course it’s not real sleep, the cinema is way too loud for a good, proper sleep. It’s like the kind of non-sleep you get on long haul flights where your eyes are closed and you’re semi-dreaming but with each little shudder the plane makes, you’re basically awake again. Even if it’s possible, I’m not sure it’s fair so I think the best thing to do with The Brothers Bloom is to say, I missed much of it and it has received lots of good reviews so take from that what you will. What I saw of it annoyed, irritated and bored me quite considerably. I’m not a fan of con movies generally and I hate quirky films (“Look at me! I’m so quirky! What will I do next?”). Brothers Bloom is meant to be “charming” but I found it very, very grating.

A late night the night before coupled with an early screening probably didn’t help but whatever. Not for me. However I probably haven’t given it a fair go so I won’t presume to score it.

On the plus side it’s better than Shrink.

No Ellie don’t do it…You can’t make me…Think of the children Ellie…Won’t SOMEONE think of the children!!!!

2010-06-03T05:38:00.000-07:00

The great thing about this blog is the autonomy I have to write the reviews the way I want to write them. Sometimes I forget there even is an editor-in-chief in charge of the whole affair. Until days like this. When she pounces. Like a cobra. A cobra issuing instructions to her film reviewer that go against every atom of his being.

Sigh…

Shrink is released this week.

I was hoping this cinematic abomination would just quietly yet shamefully die in a corner of the room. But I’ve been asked by SOMEONE to remind everyone that this utter waste of celluloid is getting its cinema release this week. I’m not going to repeat myself. Here’s my original review:

http://eggmagmovies.blogspot.com/2010/04/shrink-review.html

Ignore Empire’s 4 star review. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong. This weekend sees the release of The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson’s much delayed follow up to Brick) and Michael Winterbottom’s highly controversial The Killer Inside Me. If you’re escaping the sunshine for a movie this weekend try either of those. I’m hoping to have them both reviewed by next week but, even though I haven’t seen them, I’ll bet, no, I’ll GUARANTEE that they’re better than Shrink. Go see Prince Of Persia. Bollox to it, go all out and drag a razor across your eyeballs by seeing Sex and the Fucking City. Go to the beach, do a fun run, play Buckaroo, do anything, ANYTHING but go see Shrink.

I’ve done what I was asked to do! Damn you Ellie Good! Damn you straight to egg-hell!!!

Sex And The City 2 Review

2010-05-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

Fuck. That. Film.

No I haven't seen it but, whatever.

Fuck. That. Film.

Four Lions Review

2010-05-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

“Fuck mini baby bells” might just be my favourite line in a film so far this year. It comes from dim witted, would be terrorist Waj, in response to an anti-Western rant from his brother Omar justifying their particular Jihad. It’s one of many brilliant lines from writer/director Chris Morris in this somewhat scattershot but funny and, at times, moving tale of the eponymous four lions' attempt to martyr themselves by blowing up the London marathon.

That’s basically it for story. Omar and Waj travel to Pakistan for training. Meanwhile convert Barry recruits rapper Hassan to the cause and nervous Fessel worries over making the bombs and starring in the obligatory homemade video with a box over his head to preserve his identity. On the downside, Four Lions feels like it belongs more on TV than in a cinema. Scenes don’t feel like they build upon each other to form narrative as much as they come and go as funny, engaging, stand alone segments. In fact they feel less like scenes and more like individual sketches, a product perhaps of Morris’ background and that of his writing partners Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, most famous for writing Peep Show. At a certain point this started to get to me and I found my interest waning. This also means that the finale could come at any time because there isn’t much of a sense of narrative build. We could get our protagonists to London now, half an hour ago or not for another hour; let’s just see what happens. On top of that, the gags come thick and fast and I personally found that there were as many that missed the mark as hit. In particular, I simply didn’t believe the character of Waj. Moments like him mistaking chickens for rabbits and asking who was on the phone after Omar makes the telephone gesture with his hands and talks into it while making a speech are big, obvious gags, and indeed had many people in the audience I saw it with laughing hysterically. This is a character type that is very recognisable from television sitcoms. Going back to Malary in Family Ties all the way through to Joey in Friends via Dougal in Father Ted, many sitcoms use slow, stupid, dim-witted characters to provide much of the humour with their ineptitude. The problem for me is that this is a film, not a sitcom, and, on the big screen, I found the character unbelievable and the humour obviously scripted rather than coming naturally from the situations and characters. Because all of the humour that works does come from the characters and situations, it just makes this all the more apparent. Also, much of the mock arguing and pretend rambling suffered from this same problem; it felt staged and scripted and I didn’t quite believe it. I would have been interested to see what Morris as writer would have done with a more experienced film director guiding the material. Also, given Morris’ background, particularly thinking about Brass Eye, I was actually expecting the film to go closer to the bone. Having made the decision to tackle this material, the film ends up playing it surprisingly safe.

But this is to get the negatives out of the way so as to concentrate on the positives. Four Lions is generally well written and very well acted, particularly by its lead Riz Ahmed as the only marginally less hapless Omar leading the quartet towards their destiny. Omar is radicalised yet also Westernised, his slightly more free form Islam contrasting with the rigidity of that of his brother Ahmed who believes in Islam at its most Old Testament (to mix my religions) but is utterly opposed to the violence his brother espouses. This makes for a really interesting juxtaposition between a character steeped in his religion, with all the negatives (from our perspective) that goes along with this, particularly in the treatment of women, but who is ultimately peaceful and a character who has probably never read the Qur’an all the way through and is, on the surface, more “acceptable” (again, from a Western perspective) but has latched onto a popularised, corrupted misinterpretation of the faith and is capable of killing innocent people as a result. It’s also interesting how all the references of the would be Jihadists are Western, to the point where a character at the Pakistani training camp refers to Waj and Omar as being like Mr Bean, Rambo and James Bond. Hassan reveres Tupac but is later outed as a Maroon 5 fan. This goes alongside numerous anti western rants and tirades. It’s a subtle and very deliberate contradiction in the writing of the characters that reveals the absurdity of their ill informed opinions and actions. The film is laugh out loud funny and its humour ranges from the witty to the slapstick, the death of one character at the hands of the guys’ own bombs branded as martyrdom because he also happened to kill a sheep for example. The police and other security forces emerge as every bit as useless as the cell they are chasing and this results in one of the film’s funniest moments when two snipers, under orders to take out the terrorists dressed up as fun runners, can’t distinguish between a Wookie and the Honey Monster and engage in an extended argument about the differences between the two over their radios.

The film also has a couple of very striking and moving scenes, Omar saying goodbye to his wife before setting off to blow himself up, and explaining the notion of suicide bombing to his young son through use of The Lion King are the two standouts. The latter reminded me of that horrible yet brilliant and compelling scene in Happiness when paedophile Dylan Baker explains his proclivities to his son who is upset that his Dad doesn’t want him. Four Lions doesn’t quite push its scene that far but it’s cut from the same cloth and resonates amidst the mayhem of much of the rest of the film. That mayhem, one would hope, won’t distract audiences from the very serious nature of the material and the importance of discussing the topic. Four Lions is satirical, pointed, intelligent and funny. Everything you’d expect from the man who made Phil Collins talk about “nonce sense.”

And yes this review is weeks late, I know. What can I say? I've been busy enjoying the sunshine!

7/10

Heartless Review

2010-05-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I hate London. £12.95 to sit in what amounts to an oversized living room at 5.00pm on a Tuesday in Leicester Square to watch Heartless. I have a Cineworld Unlimited Pass but of course Cineworld weren’t showing it so I had to stump up the cash. Also, as much as I love Mark Kermode, I think I need to get savvier to the films he likes. Heartless was his film of the week last week. Admittedly it was a pretty shabby week for films but even still. He wasn’t alone though. There were a few middling to decent reviews for this British horror film from writer/director Philip Ridley, his first film in 13 years. The link to this blog on the spankingly, awesomely refurbished Eggmag website warns readers that “I’m a hard man to please.” But honestly, I don’t LIKE being negative, I don’t ENJOY coming down on films, particularly when I’ve PAID £12.95 to sit in an oversized living room to watch them.

Enough preamble. With emphasis on the amble.

Jim Sturgess plays Jamie Morgan, a young man with a heart-shaped birthmark across his face. Jim wears his hood up constantly to shield himself from the stares and taunts he regularly receives. Jamie lives in the East End where gangs of hoodies prowl the streets. Except that in this film, hoodies may not be the young kids we’ve all come to know, but actual demons lurking in the shadows. There is a lot of are they/aren’t they demons, a family tragedy, a pact with the Devil, lots of heart ripping, a truly hilarious use of cling film and a last act that, suggests it’s offering a few conclusions and is letting you make up your own mind but, for me, was emphasising one particular interpretation in the pursuit of a twist that amounts to nothing more than a pretty lame cliché.

Which is a shame because there are points of interest in Heartless. The idea of the hooded gangs as demons is a nice one. This works best when we catch glimpses of hoods disappearing behind walls or buildings but even when we first see an actual demon beneath the hood (not actually the spoiler it appears to be, don’t worry) it’s a surprisingly convincing effect. London’s East End is shot in a suitably grimy, graffiti covered way which makes for some atmospheric shots and moments and Jim Sturgess delivers a good performance, even if his character is hampered by being somewhat one note. Apart from Sturgess, the acting is very hit and miss however with Jamie’s wayward nephew in particular managing to ruin the scenes he is in. Also watch out for Noel Clarke making a great bid for the 2010 Most Pointless Character award.

There are a couple of insurmountable problems. The first is that what we basically have here is a new take on the old Faustian story which is fine. But it takes an absolute age for the Devil, or Papa B as he is known here (I wonder if I could get people to call me Papa G?) to turn up. Papa B’s entrance and the deal he strikes with Jamie is basically the crux of the film but we spend way too long watching and following the demons first which, though a nice idea as I say, in the end becomes somewhat redundant to the narrative. It’s no great spoiler to reveal that what Jamie wants is to lose his birthmark. The way this is dealt with though is very unconvincing and kind of over the top. The birthmark has left Jamie something of a recluse, single, living with his Mum etc etc etc. The birthmark is definitely evident and, I guess you could say disfiguring, and I’m certainly not naïve enough to think that people wouldn’t have some reaction, but people stare and recoil and react as if his head had been dipped in acid and was about to fall off completely. This happens repeatedly and to the point of being kind of laughable. It would have been much more interesting if, for example, people had not reacted at all and Jamie’s self consciousness and confidence issues had still been there. This would have made it much more of a character issue, an internal issue, and made his pact with the Devil more tragic as a result. As it was, I found it difficult to believe. The aftermath of the deal, in which things go briefly right for Jamie, is thoroughly unconvincing and by the time we get to the cling film (rocketing its way into the top 5 favourite scenes of the year list) the heart ripping and the cop out ending, the film and its near two hour running time have long outstayed their welcome.

As with Alice Creed, I’m trying to give British horror and thriller a go but it’s just not happening. At least it’s not for me. A couple of nice scenes, a few moody shots and one or two good ideas do not make a film. Heartless was in need of a restructure at the script stage to focus its story and intentions but never received it. An opportunity wasted.

4.5/10

Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans Review

2010-05-27T05:08:00.000-07:00

Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans, to give it its full title, arrives on a wave of glowing reviews and praise for Nicolas Cage’s “return to form” performance. In the end the film is one great big joke, which is fine because Cage and director Werner Herzog are clearly in on it. However I’m not sure it’s a return to form performance. Cage has been doing “weird” and “over the top” and “what-the-fuck crazy” for years. The only difference with Bad Lieutenant is that finally it’s a role that suits his weird, over the top and what-the-fuck crazy. Rather than shoehorning that into, say, The Wicker Man which (despite being a terrible film in many ways) badly suffers from a miscast Cage, even if one could argue that Cage’s tics and affectations provide most of the film’s highlights, with Bad Lieutenant, drug addled, boozed up, corrupt beyond belief cop Terrence McDonagh actually benefits from a dialled up to 11 Nicolas Cage.

Is there much point in discussing the story? I’m not really sure there is. McDonagh injures his back, gets addicted to painkillers, gets addicted to coke, gets addicted to heroin, gets a blowjob from the girlfriend of a guy whose drugs he took on the pretext of being a cop but actually, he just wanted the drugs, (naturally the young man is forced to watch said blowjob) and hallucinates seeing many, many iguanas and the break dancing sole of a dead drug dealer (no joke). Makes sense right?

In case it isn’t clear, this version of Bad Lieutenant bears precisely zero relation to Abel Ferrara’s original. Gone are the catholic guilt, Harvey Keitel's swinging willy and the always popular nun-rape. In its place are a series of increasingly over the top and bizarre scenes that don’t really form a narrative as much as they do a series of increasingly over the top and bizarre scenes. The last 20 minutes in particular is so ridiculous that I’m convinced the film has switched perspectives from objective narrator to untrustworthy protagonist. If the last 20 minutes of the film aren’t a drug induced hallucination then what you actually have is Herzog and Cage standing behind the camera laughing hysterically at the giant piss take they have unleashed. And maybe it is that simple. Maybe that’s all they’ve done. Which is fine I guess. It’s certainly not the first time a director has given the two fingers to a genre and the studio financing the film. “You kill bugs GOOD Johnny!” I’m just not sure that’s enough. And, in a weird way, I was actually expecting the film, its tone and central performance, to be bigger. Given how over the top Cage always is, I’m not sure exactly how much more so he is here. This is basically a “see it once and get everything from it” film. There are hilarious moments to be sure, Cage hiding behind a door, shaving with an electric razor, the aforementioned sexual indiscretion and a great scene where he tortures a pensioner by cutting off the air supply from her oxygen tank. Maybe I’m greedy, but I still wanted more.

This is such a weird film. I’m not sure what else there is to say about it really…

5/10

By the way, for anyone who hasn’t seen the highlights of Neil LaBute's Wicker Man remake…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6i2WRreARo

American: The Bill Hicks Story Review

2010-05-21T02:36:00.000-07:00

Since his untimely death at the age of 32, Bill Hicks has become something of the “comedian’s comedian”, an inspiration to anyone attempting that most difficult of art forms and a staple at college parties the world over. He regularly appears very near the top of those “Top 100” list programmes that have become so popular in recent years and is now legendary for his pro-smoking, anti-American ranting. With American: The Bill Hicks Story, British film makers Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas have attempted to get to the heart of what drove Hicks, his background, family life, everything that shaped the man and the comedian and for the most part they have succeeded.

There’s a wonderful moment near the end of the film, recalled by Hicks’ Mother, when Hicks was dying and they were spending a lot of time together. Hicks was telling her things he felt she should hear before he died and, responding with understanding and compassion, Hicks was prompted to tell her that “she is way more liberal than he realised she was.” Hicks, with his two siblings, was brought up a Southern Baptist and his early motivation for success was simply to get away. His best friend Dwight Slade recounts their early attempts at comedy. When Slade moved to Oregon, Hicks continued performing on his own and was a bona fide stand-up in his early teens. The film charts his move to L.A., his early television performances and documents his battle with alcoholism that would at first help create the Bill Hicks we all know today, but not before it almost destroyed him.

Some people are born to do what they do and there can be little doubt that Bill Hicks was born to perform comedy. Fiercely intelligent, his early comedy was filled with observations of his home and family life and while he learned his craft with this material and achieved a measure of success, he knew he was going to have to push things if he wanted the kind of success his comic inspirations like Richard Pryor had. Drugs and alcohol helped release his anger and played a large part in creating the enraged and hostile persona that became his trademark. Alcohol got the better of him however and he went through an extended period where his performances became little more than a drunk falling around on stage. Once he got sober, he was able to take what worked about that style and turn it into something hilariously didactic and vitriolic which is what made it even more cruel that just as he was peaking as a performer and gaining international recognition, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer from which he wouldn’t recover.

Directors Harlock and Thomas have an abundance of performance footage from which to choose the highlights but they make the smart choice not to overload the film with it, instead choosing snippets that express whatever particular point they are trying to make at any given time. Hicks emerged in the 80s as video was becoming popular and the directors have much grainy footage of his early shows. This gives a great sense of journey as we watch him learn his craft and develop into a consummate and confident comedian. Less abundant is footage to play over the talking heads interviews but Harlock and Thomas use animated photographs to tell the story and fill in the blanks. It’s a great device that works very well to keep the audience visually interested during the film’s slightly over long running time. They are also well served by Hicks’ friends, family and peers who provide great insight and first hand accounts of the man’s life. Conspicuous by their absence are any of Bill Hicks’ girlfriends or significant relationships but, on Simon Mayo last week, the directors explained how they were simply unable to find any of Hicks’ ex girlfriends willing to talk to them. It’s an omission that is noticeable but doesn’t destroy the film.

The latter part of the documentary is genuinely moving. His old friend Dwight makes the interesting point that a comedian’s voice should be an extension of their real selves rather than being totally fabricated. You get the sense that, for all his on stage blustering and, at times, outright abuse of his audience, this was a man who cared deeply about the things he was saying. It wasn’t front, it was genuinely felt and, most importantly, thought through and considered. The siege at Waco profoundly affected Hicks and there is amazing footage of a subsequent performance that, at least in the excerpt shown, contains little comedy. He was dying long before he told most of the people that knew him about his cancer and, indeed, continued performing until quite near his death. Hicks returned home to be with his family and you really feel the profound sense of loss his family experienced at his passing. Famously, his last ever television performance on the David Letterman show, was cut due to concern about the nature of the material. It’s in part this lack of mainstream acceptance and success that has helped ensure Hicks’ status as a “real” comedian amongst devotees. It’s interesting to speculate how the events of recent years might have raised his mainstream acceptance as Americans grew weary of George Bush and became less afraid to say so. Equally he would have been over a decade older and it’s possible the passing of time would have blunted the edge that made him the comedian he was. We’ll simply never know. In the end, like all artists who die young and at their peak, Bill Hicks is now immortalised as one of the greatest at what he did

With a subject this strong it’s difficult to go wrong but American: The Bill Hicks Story is imaginative, well crafted and predictably very funny. Avoid Prince Of Persia (which I won't be seeing or therefore reviewing by the way) and Robin Hood (which I'll get to at some point). Its release is limited but it’s well worth seeking out.

7.5/10

The Disappearance Of Alice Creed Review

2010-05-06T07:56:00.000-07:00

You really do want to give British films a chance. Especially when it’s a stripped down thriller like The Disappearance Of Alice Creed and particularly when it’s generating half decent reviews (Mark Kermode, Empire) but guess what? Is this the most singularly negative film review blog in the history of film review blogs? Do I like anything I see at the cinema? I don’t think I can actually face writing yet another protracted negative review so here’s the cut and thrust:

Vic (Eddie Marsan) and Danny (Martin Compston) kidnap Alice (Gemma Arterton) for a million quid. We watch them meticulously prepare the kidnapping and snatch Alice and keep her shackled to a bed. For the next ninety minutes the power shifts between the three as secrets are outed, relationships revealed, twists and turns occur with glee abandon and, in that long tradition of movie crime, nothing goes according to plan.

I went in to Alice Creed knowing next to nothing about it and, for anyone interested in seeing it, I would advise you to do the same. My problems are that I found the characters very difficult to like and sympathise with (even the eponymous kidnap victim) many of the twists I simply found unbelievable (one in particular: for anyone who has read this blog before, you’ll know it when you see it) and much of the film followed the same formula which is that character A leaves the flat leaving characters B and C to fight/argue/whatever but, uh oh, character A is coming back… I understand that this is a product of the set up and to a degree is unavoidable but that doesn’t stop the film feeling repetitive. Also my flatmate made the good point that much of the film inadvertently ends up being about characters asking each other for the keys to the handcuffs. Seriously, you could make a new drinking game out of the amount of times someone says “Give me the keys.”

It’s not terrible I guess but I was never on the edge of my seat, there were about three too many twists, it could easily be 15 minutes shorter and much of the writing and acting is less than convincing. Though kudos to Martin Compston for being quite good looking. It’s trying to do something interesting and character led (with only 3 characters onscreen) and deserves credit for that but in the end it wasn’t for me.

4.5/10

'Allo?

2010-05-06T07:20:00.000-07:00

This review is about 2 weeks too late… I simply didn’t get around to seeing The Ghost before this week. I won’t go into huge amounts of detail but I couldn’t let the film pass without congratulating that chameleon of accents Ewan McGregor on perfecting another dialect. Those of you who saw Ewan in Woddy Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream will have heard his cock-er-knee accent before. Add this to his “American” in The Men Who Stare At Goats and his Oirish in Angels And Demons and quite the CV is emerging. I still think Ewan McGregor is good with good material, Young Adam or Trainspotting for example. It’s just that his last few films have been pretty bad and he can never seem to rise above bad material. What’s interesting is that the choices he makes are usually understandable. Roman Polanski and Woody Allen are two directors every actor wants to work with and, I would imagine regardless of the script, chances are you’ll say yes to working with them. It’s just a pity these are two of the worst films of their careers. Same with Tim Burton. And who is going to turn down the chance of appearing in the Star Wars universe? Or to work for a presumably healthy payday alongside Tom Hanks for Ron Howard? It just seems to keep happening that the films end up being terrible and he’s bad in them. And it’s a shame because, as I say, he can be good and in person he comes off really well whenever I see him interviewed.

In fairness, in The Ghost he’s well matched by Pierce Brosnan and Kim Cattrell and even Olivia Williams, who comes out of the film better than anyone, kind of just has to hit one note for the entire film. The Ghost is plodding and dull. There is the germ of a good story in there and maybe the book is more interesting. But at two hours long with very little happening, Polanski’s film is a slog.

The best joke made about it was on Have I Got News For You when (I think it was Alexander Armstrong) quipped that The Ghost is a 15…but Polanski was sure it was an 18. The old ones are the best.

3/10

Iron Man 2 Review

2010-04-30T03:28:00.000-07:00

The Summer is here!!! Whoo!!! It’s blockbuster season and first out of the blocks is Iron Man 2. Tony Stark is BACK! Wealthy, adored, witty, pithy, charming, disarming and that’s before he suits up and kicks ass and…

Oh who am I kidding, I didn’t like it.

It’s six months since Tony Stark came out as Iron Man and, in his own words, he has “privatised world peace.” The element powering his heart and keeping him alive is also slowly poisoning him and he has been unable to find a replacement power source. The U.S. Senate is trying to get him to hand over the Iron Man weapon but he is successfully deflecting them, mainly, it would seem, on charm and sarcasm alone. Returning from the original are faithful secretary and love interest Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and his long suffering army buddy Rhodes (Don Cheadle replacing Terence Howard) . Newcomers are Ivan Vanko a.k.a. Whiplash (Mickey Rourke) who is hell bent on Stark’s/Iron Man’s demise due to a personal vendetta, Natalie Rushman a.k.a. Natasha Romanoff a.k.a. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) a SHIELD operative under cover as a Stark Industries employee and the thankfully singularly named Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) a rival arms dealer and wannabe Tony Stark who takes Whiplash under his wing to create an army of Iron Men to render the original obsolete and ruin Stark’s legacy.

As you can see there is a lot going on in Iron Man 2. Which makes it even more strange how, after about half an hour, the film keels over and dies. For the first 15 minutes or so it’s business as usual. Fast talking Stark talks fast, acts cool, flirts with Pepper Potts yada yada yada. At this point comes the film’s best sequence by a mile where Stark goes to the Monaco Grand Prix and ends up in the race. Here, Whiplash makes his entrance, his electric whips cutting through metal with ease, sending race cars flying and devastating Stark in front of the world. It’s a really fun sequence, it feels like something different, it’s well directed by returning director Jon Favreau and there are several cool little moments, my favourite being Mickey Rourke, his electric whips crackling, walking the wrong way up the middle of the track as race cars zoom past him. When Stark turns into Iron Man the expectation is an epic battle and here the sequence falls short; the build up is way better than the payoff but, that aside, the film felt for a moment that it might become a fun, Summer blockbuster. And then it flatlines. Completely. The problem is that Iron Man 2 is completely aimless, totally directionless. It has nothing driving it and nowhere to go. It basically spends the next hour waiting for the finale. Which, you know, isn’t brilliant really. This is best described by what happens to Rourke’s character. Having unleashed a fun villain and a credible threat to Iron Man, what happens? He spends the next hour in a warehouse building stuff; welding, typing on his computer, waiting to be released again for the finale. Imagine if, in The Dark Knight, when The Joker was caught and captured he hadn’t escaped and had sat in jail waiting to be let out for the finale. It’s the same thing. The film doesn’t know what to do with him because it doesn’t know what it’s doing or where it’s going.

The middle hour is completely flat. Characters yabber at each other about nothing and the whole film is resting on Robert Downey Junior’s charisma. There is actually very little Iron Man in the film and while one could argue that Tony Stark is more interesting than Bruce Wayne, Bruce Banner or Peter Parker, ultimately we are there to see their superhero alter egos, not their normal personas. One or two individual moments work reasonably well, Stark getting drunk at his birthday for example because he believes he won’t live to see another. But these moments are exactly that; moments. Individually they are insufficient and collectively they don’t add up to anything. The issue of Stark being slowly poisoned seems to be the driving force for the film but the way it resolves is massively anti-climactic, way too easy and totally lacking in drama. On top of that, it never really impacts on the story. Stark as Iron Man is always able to fight and fly and do whatever he has to so we never really feel the threat of the poison. Add to that the fact that the main villain spends his time building robots and the other villain is pretending not to be a villain and you have a film completely devoid of threat, tension and interest. There was talk of the script being rushed through because of the writer’s strike and the film basically being made up as they went along and that would go a long way to explaining the problems with Iron Man 2. By the time the finale comes it’s too little too late. There are a couple of nice action moments but it ultimately comes down to CGI metal men clanging each other across the head and, well, I guess that just doesn’t do it for me. There is a wonderful line in The Dark Knight when the Joker asks Batman (and this is paraphrasing) if he really thought he would let the battle for Gotham’s soul come down to a fist fight between them. It’s a terrific idea and it’s something these superhero films could try and incorporate into their stories. Your hero is made of metal so your villain also has to be made of metal, and be bigger presumably, but where can you really go with that? Have all the action and special effects you want but be clever and do something different with your story and its finale.

I’m not a comic book fan and I never read Iron Man so most of the references and in jokes will be lost on me. I’m sure the geeks will get off on things I didn’t spot, although I did get one. And I was very proud! Much of what’s in Iron Man 2 of course is also set up for Marvel’s Avengers movie coming in 2012. There are 2 scenes with Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury, both of which are redundant in this film, but which serve to remind us of the broader universe Iron Man is operating in. Also, Scarlett Johansson gets a fight scene of her own that’s quite good fun and, just for a moment, watching her in her figure hugging leather outfit, I could empathise with straight guys and lesbians; she really is hot. But none of this helps Iron Man 2 which, tries to be bigger and better than its predecessor and for a moment succeeds, but in the end settles for being at best more of the same and at worst not as good.

4.5/10

Shrink Review

2010-04-29T06:03:00.000-07:00

What is this Shrink I hear you cry? I see no such film in cinemas! Have you completely lost your reason Garreth?!? Well watching Shrink I almost did lose my reason (more on that to follow) but no, thanks to my editor-in-chief, I got to see a preview screening. Shrink is released on June 4th. Make sure you’re busy with something else that weekend.

Shrink tells the story of Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey) psychiatrist to the stars and, well, everyone else in Hollywood too. His wife has recently committed suicide (having seen the film presumably) and Henry is self medicating on dope, unable to sleep in the bed he shared with his wife and pretty much useless to any of his patients. His family try an intervention which he scoffs at, this is a man who is HURTING. Okay? He’s IN PAIN. Got it? Okay, good. So here we are in our single protagonist’s shoes for a character study. That is, until we meet Patrick (Dallas Roberts) a hotshot agent and OCD Hypochondriac and one of Henry’s patients of course. He has an assistant Daisy (Pell James) who is pregnant (surrogate for her sister), put down by her boss and has dreams of becoming a producer. She starts seeing a writer Jeremy (Mark Webber) who is sensitive and talented and basically a good guy but is ruthless because he is friends with Henry and steals the file of a young and troubled patient Jemma (Keke Palmer) whose Mother recently committed suicide and whose life Jeremy reckons would make a great movie. Best of all though is Shamus. Ah Shamus. Where have you been all my life? Shamus is an Irish (“Irish”) actor who is clearly, in no way, absolutely NOT meant to be Colin Farrell despite his drug problems and self proclaimed big cock. Shamus, by the way, is represented by the hotshot hypochondriac. So now we’re not in a single protagonist film, this is clearly a multi protagonist film a la 21 Gramms or Babel. Except that Spacey gets most of the screen time, but not so much that it feels naturally like it’s his story. So what’s going on? Everyone in the film is linked, everyone in the film is troubled and tormented and everyone in the cinema is fucking comatose.

There is a lot going on in Shrink (and I actually haven’t mentioned all the characters; just take my word for it, you have the picture) and, with all that happening, here is the one thought that occupied my mind for most of the film’s running time. The director’s name is Jonas Pate. Now, is “Pate” pronounced like “Tate” in Catherine Tate? Or is it pronounced like the delicious spread that goes so well on toast? Mushroom, goose liver and so many other varieties? I SO hope it’s the later. “Hi everyone, I’m Jonas Pate” Awesome.

This film is dreadful. It’s puddle deep, the characters skimming the surface of issues that could and should be interesting but which are dealt with in the most shallow and tepid way possible. What doesn’t help is the fact that many of these people are utterly vacuous, shallow and intensely dislikeable so why should I give a shit about any of them? Not only that but the film is horribly, persistently, offensively contrived. The only sympathetic character is the young girl Jemma who has tragically lost her Mother and who still has a passion for the movies that the people either working in Hollywood or trying to get into Hollywood have long forgotten. Jemma is not the typical patient for Dr Spacey so how does the story get her to him?

1. Spacey’s Dad (Robert Loggia) is also a shrink.

Okay that’s a tad convenient but I’ll go with you.

2. Spacey’s Dad is deeply worried about his son and organises the family together to have an intervention to try and get Spacey into rehab.

Right… I don’t see how this is connected but okay I’ll buy that.

3. When Spacey angrily refuses the idea of rehab, Spacey’s Dad gives Spacey Jemma’s file and tells him to treat her.

Right okay…wait, what?

A trained psychiatrist is giving a drug user the file of an emotionally damaged, bereaved and traumatised 14 YEAR OLD GIRL… because it might be good for him??? It might help him get over his own problems and sort out his drug habit??? What the fuck?!?! “Well it was worth a try. She’s such a troubled girl I was sure it would bring him out of his depression. But it didn’t work. Oh well.” “How is the girl doing?” “Who? How is who doing?” This is just WRONG! This is a freight train to the groin wrong, i.e. it shouldn't happen!!! This is the worst example. But characters spend the whole film bumping into each other, happening to know each other, dropping things on the ground just as the character who shouldn’t find it, does find it… Even if the characters were engaging or the stories interesting the plotting is so thunderously lazy that it would take you out of the film anyway. As it is it’s just another example of how bad the film as a whole is.

Spacey has made a career out of characters who are cynical, intelligent and witty and the idea of him playing a messed up shrink is great. But this is a film without intelligence, depth and, maybe this is just my cynicism, but it actually felt that Pate and writer Thomas Moffett were exploiting the kinds of themes and the kinds of issues and the kinds of films they’ve seen before to create something meaningful, rather than just trying to create something meaningful. Actually forget meaningful, how about something interesting?

Shrink is cinematic rohipnol. I was forced into unconsciousness and woke up at the end of it not knowing what had happened but knowing for certain it wasn’t good. June 4th folks. Remember the date. And for the love of God, avoid the cinema.

1/10

(I REALLY want to give it 0/10 but I feel I should save my first 0/10 review for something that’s actually offensive)

Centurion Review

2010-04-28T03:30:00.000-07:00

Some films take you by suprise, for good or bad. Kick Ass is a recent example of a film I expected to dislike and ended up quite enjoying. Other times you expect to enjoy something and end up disappointed (The Wrestler) or absolutely gutted (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. There IS no fourth film.) And then there are the films that do exactly, precisely, with zero deviation, what you think they are going to do. Welcome to the Centurion review.

The normally excellent Michael Fassbender plays Quintas Dias, the titular Centuron, whose battalion of Roman soldiers invading Britain is slaughtered by the native Picts early on in the film. Dias is captured but escapes and joins up with the Roman 9th Legion who are also wiped out save for Dias and four or five others. They are hunted by mute Pict tracker Olga Kurylenko and her crew and it is at this point that Centurion settles into being a chase movie. A very long chase movie.

To its credit, Centurion is a film that looks and feels bigger than it actually is. I would imagine the budget for the film was fairly low, very low by the standards of most movies of this genre, and for the most part the film succeeds in not being hampered by that issue. The film makes good use of its locations and the tough Scottish landscape with its cold, wet climate and much of the photography is stunning. But, in the end, who cares? Not me. Maybe had Centurion been a brisk, get-in-and-get-out, 85/90 minute job I could have gone with it. Though that said, a manageable running time didn't help my lack of enjoyment of Apocalypto, Centurion's spiritual cousin. As it is, the film takes what feels like an age to do very little. Michael Fassbender is one of my favourite young actors, not "British" actors as he is so often called by the way; he is Irish. I'm just saying. His work in Eden Lake, Fish Tank and in particular his stunning portrayal of Bobby Sands in Hunger have set him apart as an actor of considerable talent. Here though he is given very little to get his teeth into other than the film's many, many fight sequences. While he aquits himself well in these scenes, there is never any real sense of growth as he goes from centurion to General and, weirdly, I never really believed him as a leader of men. Fassbender is supported by The Wire's Dominic West who seems to have forgotten how to act, David Morrissey who I'm not sure has ever known how to act, Noel Clarke as a very East London sounding Roman andOlga Kurylenko as the silent but deadly Etain. When your most believeable and charismatic character hasn't got a single line to say you know you're in trouble.

You know exactly what you're going to get from Neil Marshall and I guess there is some comfort in familiarity. There's nothing inherently wrong with a meat and potatoes genre film, but what can I say? I like a spoon of gravy too.

4.5/10

Catch Up

2010-04-09T08:57:00.001-07:00

You wait months for a post and then they all come together.

I've just realised I've seen a few films that I never reviewed. Some have probably already left the cinema (making the review useful for the DVD release perhaps? No? Fuck yourself!) It's something of a cheat I know but here is a very brief roundup of the films of the last few weeks.

A PROPHET

Best film of the year so far, a gripping, tense thriller that demands your full attention for its considerable running time but rewards you with an adult story that respects your intelligence. Boasting a phenomenol central performance, you watch Malik enter prison a wet behind the ears petty crook and finish the film a criminal boss. Playing alongside this is the decline of the current boss who seems to be played by celebrity TV chef Anthony Wirral Thompson. Despite this minor distraction, A Prophet is a cracking film that's well worth watching... on DVD...

8.5/10

SHUTTER ISLAND

Oh I just don't know... I listened to Mark Kermode's review and he liked it and I understand why but I'm really not sure. It's okay but the ending is so visible, so transparent that I sat there for 2 hours waiting for it to come rather than be engaged by a good story. It's a great setting, a great time period, well acted and Scorsese is clearly having fun behind the camera. I have a problem with much of Denis Lehane's writing and Shutter Island is no exception. In a weird way, it almost isn't pulpy or shlocky enough. That's the territory it's in and seems to be going for but it also feels like it wants to be a legitimate thriller too. I'm just not sure.

5/10

I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS

Low expectations may have helped with this one but I really quite enjoyed I Love You Philip Morris. Jim Carrey is Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor doesn't completely destroy his scenes which, after a run of terrible performances, is a victory. I don't believe either of them are gay and I don't believe them as a couple which should be major stumbling blocks but weirdly I found I was able to go with the film. Also, the film features some pretty egregious gay stereotyping, the best example of which being when Jim Carrey first comes out and we see him dressed in a ludicrous outfit, mincing down the street, latino lover in tow, walking his Paris Hilton-esque dog. As a gay guy, watching scenes like this in films is usually pretty disheartening but I actually don't think the film is being malicious. The story is so ridiculous, so hard to believe (despite being true) that the film makers have gone incredibly broad in their tone so as to sell it to audiences and the the representations of the gay characters is just another example of this. This over the top tone is actually a good ploy and for the most part works. The only down side is a loss of depth of character, so we never really know what drives Carrey to do the outrageous things he does. But the film is very, very funny and has a few surprisingly touching moments.

6.5/10

GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

I'm sure you've all read the book and will be completely unphazed by what I'm about to say but I haven't read the book and so I was really taken aback by how harsh, dark and, well, lurid and mysoginistic the story is. Are we allowed to be mysoginistic again? When did that happen? Whenever you see everyone reading the same book on the tube it's always something very reader-friendly. But this pulls no punches. The story is reasonably engaging, although it goes on for a good 20 minutes after the story has reached its natural conclusion, you can't have better bad guys than the nazis and it confirms one of my longest held beliefs which is that lesbians are terrifying!!! Worth a look but I can't imagine ever going back to it.

5.5/10

A SINGLE MAN

Watching this I thought it's okay but, like a crap soufle, A Single Man disintegrated with one prod of examination. Hmmm.... maybe cooking metaphors aren't for me. Any film that takes gay characters and their relationships seriously is to be applauded but that doesn't necessarily make a good film and I really feel that A Single Man has nowhere near as much depth or significance as it thinks it does. It boasts great performances that lift the film but the fact that every scene is shot like a perfume ad serves to undercut the drama at every turn. Style over substance.

4.5/10

GREEN ZONE

Shit I've seen alot of films I haven't reviewed...

Green Zone was touted as Bourne In Iraq and it kind of is but is no worse off because of it. Paul Greengrass is famous for tearing up the script and with Green Zone he hasn't just torn up the script he has torn up the book the script was based on. Gone is the journalistic polemic of Imperial Life In The Emerald City and in its place is a fast paced thriller that boasts all of Greengrass' "shaky cam" work mixed with his political interests. It's a tough mix but he gets it right and, as the pace of the film never flags, neither do the political points of intrigue and interest. Damon is Damon and is absolutely fine. Brendan Gleeson is a welcome presence in any film, even though he REALLY can't do accents but the star here is Greengrass. Engaging, exciting, just a good, solid thriller.

7/10

And I think that's it. I'll never go so long without reviewing again!

Also, in box office news, I just read that Uma Thurman's new film Motherhood grossed a staggering £88 in England last weekend. Congratulations to all concerned.

Life's Just Too Short

2010-04-09T06:39:00.000-07:00

This weekend sees the release of Drew Barrymore's directorial debut.

Just take a second and consider that sentence.

Somebody somewhere in the world woke up one morning and thought to themselves, "I know what should happen. Drew Barrymore should direct a film." This person then gave Drew Barrymore the money to direct a film. This is the world we live in. A world where Avatar makes $2.7 billion ($2.7 BILLION) and Drew Barrymore is allowed to direct films. The film in question is called Whip It and stars Ellen Page of Juno fame (Breathe Garreth, just breathe. Just keep telling yourself, it's only a film. Juno is only a film) and seems to be a coming of age/finding yourself movie set in the world of Roller Derbys.

This does not sound like a good film.

Also out this week is Shelter which is some sort of horror film starring Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers who is as stunningly handsome as he is completely incapable of conveying even the simplest emotions. Which isn't great when your job is to convey a range of emotions, some simple, some complex, sometimes both at the same time. I like to think I'm pretty au fait with film releases and I have never in my life heard of this film.

That is not a good sign.

Also out this week is I Am Love which boasts the most insufferable trailer I've seen in about 5 years. I cannot think of another word I could use that would better describe my reaction upon seeing that trailer ahead of Kick Ass last week. Insufferable.

This is not a good word to use when describing a film trailer.

The point of all this is to say that I won't be going to the cinema this weekend because, as the title of this post makes clear...

Clash Of The Fucking Titans Review (expect swearing)

2010-04-08T09:07:00.000-07:00

What the fuck is up with Liam Neeson's armour in Clash Of The Titans?!?

It's glittery and shiny!! GLITTERY AND SHINY!!! He's fucking Zeus, the king of the fucking Gods, not the Tin Man's retarded cousin. He's wearing the campest, most ridiculous looking costume I've seen in a film since John Boorman had the bright idea to dress Sean Connery in a ponytail, thigh high boots and a red nappy in Zardoz.

http://waxturds.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/zardoz.jpg

I say it again.

What the fuck is up with Liam Neeson's armour?!

It's like the director and costume designer are taking the absolute piss out of him. "You won't believe what Neeson's wearing. Ssshhh here he comes!!" CLANK CLANK CLANK as Neeson lumbers onto set, "Ah, I don't mean to complain but am I seriously going to wear this?" The sheer stupidity of his look renders each moment where he's meant to be thundering away as Zeus unintentionally hilarious. He even has shiny metal gloves! I can't get over it.

I have no intention of wasting my time or yours talking about the film in any serious, meaningful way. It's thuddingly dull, cumbersome, crap, fucking annoying and Sam Worthington proves yet again that he is a blank void that no script or director has yet been able to fill with anything useful. Instead I want to talk about Liam Neeson's costume and Ralph Feinnes' hilariously distracting turn as Hades. Oh it's a VERY long time since Schindler's List, isn't it boys? Feinnes sounds like a cross between Lawrence Olivier and James Mason and, for such a good actor, turns in a performance so staggeringly bad it ends up being absolutely priceless. Is everyone on drugs? What the fuck is up with this film?

I'd love to tell you that the whole film is so bad it's good but without Neeson in the gay Mount Olympus scenes (that include respected actor Danny Huston turning up for 2 shots and one line of dialogue. Cutting room floor perhaps?) and Feinnes swooping around talking about "the kraaaaaken" it would be utterly unbearable. As it is it's crushingly, soul destroyingly dull and all the bits you remember being good from the original, Medusa, Pegasus, the Kraken, crossing the river Styx, are turned to stone thanks to a by-the-numbers script, dreadful acting and terrible directing. Much of the CGI is so bad as to appear unfinished with Medusa in particular looking like she was created by a 12 year old on his Amstrad.

But in the end I left the cinema saying only one thing. What the fuck was up with Neeson's costume?!?

1.5/10 raised to 3/10 thanks to the Neeson/Feinnes double whammy of misjudged lunacy.

Kick-Ass Review

2010-04-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

Long time no post! Watching lots of bad films ALL the time puts one off sitting down to review them. I'm not sure I could do this professionally. So it's with some pleasure that the first review in a long time is a good one.

Kick Ass really surprised me. I went in expecting to dislike it seeing as it's comprised of many elements I normally hate, glorified violence, "cool" "quotable" dialogue, comic book/graphic novel adaptation, the Matthew Vaughn element. Maybe low expectations helped but for whatever reason I thoroughly enjoyed Kick Ass.

The story concerns Dave Lizewski (Nowhere Boy's Aaron Johnson sporting a great American accent) a comic book loving loner whose only super power in his own words is his "invisibility to girls." Dave questions what it would be like to be a superhero for real and wonders why no one has done it before. He goes online, finds a bright green diving costume, and, armed with a pair of nunchucks, starts to fight crime. His first attempt is disastrous and he ends up beaten, stabbed and hit with a car. His injuries result in problems with his nerve endings which mean a higher threshold to pain. Which is just as well as he never really gets any better as a superhero throughout the whole film. The idea of the character of Kick Ass having his ass repeatedly kicked is one of many great running jokes in the film. On his second attempt he discovers that he isn't the only person with this idea. Damon Macready (a fantastic Nicolas Cage. Yes you read that right. A fantastic Nicolas Cage) an ex-cop with a personal vendetta against crime boss Frank D'Amico (current rent-a-villain Mark Strong) has turned himself into the Batman like Big Daddy and has trained his daughter Mindy to become Hit Girl. More on her later... Kick Ass, Big Daddy and Hit Girl join forces to fight crime in a whole manner of knife wielding, bone crunching, profanity laden sequences.

The thing you notice with Kick Ass is its pace. The story moves along, the action is varied and well spaced out, the humour is more or less consistent and coming in at under 2 hours (running time being my new most important criteria for how much I enjoy a film) the film (more or less) doesn't outstay its welcome. The writing (by director Vaughn and Jane Goldman) is smart and the performances are excellent. Johnson is terrific in the lead, unafraid to look the fool or take a beating and when he starts enjoying his youtube fame with his alter ego and lands the girl you feel genuinely happy for him. The film ends up being stolen by Cage who is fun and enjoyable for the first time in what feels like decades, his tics and mannerisms perfectly suited to the heightened world of the film. His vocal cadence as Big Daddy, trying to make himself sound more like a superhero (and clearly channeling Adam West in the process) is hilarious. The violence is very strong and will be viewed by many as reprehensible and immoral. I am no fan of violence for violence's sake but the film manages to be fun, entertaining and genuinely funny. I also think the film is cleverer than I thought it would be and is subversive in a way that really surprised me (and in a way that, for me, Watchmen, a film that covers similar ground, isn't) which is why I could stomach the violence.

Which brings us nicely onto Hit Girl... The first time we see twelve year old Mindy she is being shot at by her Dad who is teaching her what the impact of a bullet feels like and why it's nothing to be scared of. It's a brilliant scene, reminiscent of how a parent might teach their child that riding a bike is nothing to be scared of either. The first time we see her alter ego Hit Girl she skewers a villain with a blade that's about a foot longer than she is and says to the room full of henchmen the following line of dialogue.

"Okay you cunts. Let's see what you can do now"

Clearly you're on shaky ground here and I think many people's enjoyment of the film will depend on how they respond to that character. Personally, I think this comes back to the film's intentions and, while I'm not trying to pretend the film doesn't want you to laugh at this notion and also to find it very cool the way she dispatches bad guys in her many fights, shoots outs and other action scenes, I repeat my opinion that I think the film is cleverer than its surface might have you believe. You DO end up viewing her as an adult and this is brought to the surface in a great joke near the end when a teenager, watching Hit Girl's exploits on the internet comments on how hot she is and he friend replies, "Dude, she's like, 11." This idea of the near sexualisation of violence, the almost fetishisation (if that's a word...) of comic book characters and the violence they mete out is put into an interesting light by making the character a 12 year old girl. I think however that alot of people will be put off by the surface notion of what's happening which is fair enough too. I also think it's a question of tone and the fact that Hit Girl's first fight is put to the Banana Splits theme reveals the kind of world we're operating in.

On a more superficial note the action is superbly done. I can't imagine the film's budget was particularly high, certainly not by the standards of most comic book adaptations anyway, but it never feels cheap or skimped upon. Moreover, the action is varied so you're never bored and brilliantly choreographed and directed by Matthew Vaughn. I've said it before, but watch Transformers 2 for a film that has no clue how to depict its action scenes. Every fight and shoot out in Kick Ass is choreographed, shot and edited so I know exactly where I am at any given moment, making the action all the more thrilling and enjoyable for that.

Raging Bull it ain't then but for a fun, funny piece of entertainment you could do alot worse than see Kick Ass.

7.5/10

Crazy Heart Review

2010-02-22T05:25:00.000-08:00

Crazy Heart reminded me of The Wrestler, a film I really wanted to love, really wanted to be moved by. In the end I liked it, mainly due to a great central performance by Jeff Bridges, but I wasn't wowed by it in the way I wanted to be.

Bridges plays Bad Blake, a washed up country and western singer who knew the big time but who now drives his battered old pick-up truck from tiny gig to tiny gig, and spends much of his time being sick as he slowly drinks himself to death. In a small town playing such a gig he meets Jean, a reporter who wants to interview him for the local magazine. This sets Bad on a long and uneasy path to redemption as he strikes up a relationship with Jean, becomes a surrogate father to her son and rediscovers his love and passion, not only for music, but for life in general.

The main reason to see Crazy Heart is for the central performance by Bridges. This is a character who carries alot of sadness and regret and it's written all over Bridges' face, even as he uses his charm to win over those people he encounters, particularly Jean. You get a real sense that this is a guy who has lived, that this is not a character created for the 2 hour duration of the film, but a person who was around before the film started and will be when it ends. What's great about the film is the way it uses very small moments to convey its emotions. There is no great revelation, no hysterics (either in the script or in Bridges' performance) and most of what happens with and to Blake feels true and real. Blake was a mentor to country and western sensation Tommy Sweet (a strange cameo from Colin Farrell) but it's now Sweet who plays to sold out arenas while Blake plays to two dozen people in a bowling alley. Tommy is loyal to his old mentor and offers to have him open for him at his latest concert. There is a wonderful moment when, as Blake plays his signature song, Tommy comes out on stage to join in and the crowd goes wild. It should be a great moment of two excellent musicians together on stage but, even though Sweet never takes any pleasure from the situation or rubs Blake's face in it (and indeed publicly defers to Blake onstage), you can see that Blake knows that he is there only by Tommy's charity and those enormous cheers reverborating around the arena are not for him. It's one of many small moments that are wonderfully written and executed and, again, superbly played by Bridges.

So why do they not all add up to a truly great film? Part of the problem lies in a personal dislike for Maggie Gyllenhaal who plays Jean. She does what she does and is never bad per se but I never really believe her and, to be perfectly honest, she kind of annoys me. For this reason I couldn't really invest in the central relationship and, while I understand that she has had it hard and is desperate for love and he has had it hard and wants to connect and, as I said, certainly has much charm and charisma despite his problems, I'm always somewhat dubious of movie relationships like this where the (much) younger woman falls for the older man. They look wrong together somehow and, despite her single mum status, Gyllenhaal simply lacks the gravitas and sense of "worldliness" to make me believe that Blake would fall for her for reasons other than that she is a nice, pretty girl in a small town or, indeed, she for him. At a certain point in the film her character makes a decision that ends up being the crux for Blake wanting to change his ways. While the scene itself is well done and well played it was one moment that didn't ring true for me because, I simply didn't believe that she would do it and, if I went with it, I would lose all sympathy for the character.

Any film that eschews trite, contrived, "Hollywood" drama, particularly at this time of year when films like that are rife (I'm looking at you Clint Eastwood) and instead goes for something more real and necessarily low key is to be admired and director Scott Cooper certainly earns much benefit of the doubt on those grounds alone. But one must judge the film onscreen and, while it was good and enjoyable and generally well acted, ultimately I walked out of the cinema in no danger of needing to dry my eyes. Jeff Bridges is the favourite to pick up the Best Actor Oscar in a couple of weeks and I certainly wouldn't begrudge it to him, for this film as well as for the cumulative value of much of his work up to this point which, let's be honest, is how many an Oscar winner has won their award. Hoo-ha! There is much to enjoy in Crazy Heart but, at the end of the day it really is one of those films I wanted to like more than I really did .

6/10

Invictus Review

2010-02-10T07:29:00.000-08:00

Would you like cheese with your film? How about extra cheese? How about a giant dollop of cheese served with some thickly cut ham?

80 year old Clint Eastwood (Seriously Clint, you've nothing to prove, spend some time with the family) has turned the Oscar bait movie into an art form. Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby (I have to say I do really like that film), Flags of our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima, Changeling and Gran Torino were all made with that golden trophy in mind and released in the latter part of the year to keep the films fresh in the minds of the Academy members, most of whom are as old as the director who made them. With Invictus however, Eastwood has surely made his oscar bait masterpiece, a film dripping worthiness, oozing earnestnees from every pore.

Somewhat predictably we get Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela (personally I would have much rathered Chris Rock), released from prison and elected president of a country still torn apart by the evil that was apartheid. Their national rugby team The Springboks, led by captain Matt Damon, are supported predominantly by the whites and are losing badly. When South Africa is chosen to host the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Mandela sees an opportunity to heal the country and unite it through sport. So he meets Damon, impresses upon him the importance of victory, turns up at a meeting of the national rugby organisation who are voting to get rid of the name and colours of the Springboks to change their mind, learns the sport, learns the players' names and generally helps ensure the people get behind the team as, against all the odds, they make it to the final. (Spoiler: They win.)

Is it just me? Am I just too cynical of films now? I don't think I am. Here is a run down of just a few of the highlights of Invictus. The moment when Matt Damon visits Mandela's old cell and sees the ghost of Mandela superimposed into the shot. Didn't something similar happen in Rocky Balboa? The moment when what sounds like a boy band comes on the soundtrack and starts singing "I'm colourblind" in what must be the worst music cue I'm ever heard in a film. The moment when black hands and white hands together clasp the World Cup. The moment when the black housekeeper realises her white employers have got her a ticket for the world cup final and she turns to the camera giving a smile of such pride... This film is about as subtle as a kick to the nads and it's a shame because it's a real life "too good to be true" story that could have been genuinely inspirational. But Eastwood can't help but ladle more and more icky sentimentality into every last moment, rendering the whole affair naff and corny and oh God I'm picturing the housekeeper's smile again...

Freeman and Damon are fine in roles that, particularly in Damon's case, are really very passive but it all comes back to the cheese. Honking, stinking cheese clogging up the screen.

I've actually got nothing else to say about this film.

I'm colourbliiiiind...

3.5/10

Edge Of Darkness Review

2010-02-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

2/10

Book Of Eli Review

2010-01-21T06:29:00.000-08:00

I have now seen The Book Of Eli twice (don't ask) and, in terms of reviewing it, it's no bad thing. On my ten worst films of the year list is Orphan, a film that pulled a gloriously, hilariously, shamelessly stupid last minute twist out of absolutely nowhere. The Book Of Eli contains a reveal that, while not quite as moronic, is definitely in the same ballpark. If Orphan is actually on the playing field then The Book Of Eli is selling the hotdogs in the stand. What's funny is that, watching it for the second time, I could see all those moments where directors The Hughes Brothers tried to plant a clue, tried to play fair with the audience, and one or two I would concede are pretty decent. The problem is that to properly play fair you would have to be considerably cleverer film makers than the Hughes Brothers, but, really, what they're trying to do is so implausible that I genuinely struggle to imagine a way of pulling it off. I so want to talk about it but I couldn't spoil the surprise!

Denzel Washington is Eli, a lone samurai wandering the wilderness in the aftermath of nuclear holocaust. He is carrying a book and to talk properly about the film I need to say what the book is. It's fully revealed before the half way mark and the trailers have all but given it away anyway but stop reading now if you don't want to know... Okay?... Right...

Denzel is carrying the last remaining copy of the Bible. The war was started on religious grounds and the survivors made sure that every remaining copy was destroyed. This is quite a stretch, quite a big ask of the audience but, given what's to follow, it's one of the easier things to swallow in the film. Anyway Denzel is on a quest, heading east, taking the book to a safe place. Denzel has an old fashioned Ipod, running off what looks to be a car battery, and when he loses power he wanders into a town to recharge it and get supplies. The town is run by evil Carnegie (Gary Oldman in full on villain mode) who has teams of bandits roaming the land looking for... you guessed it, a copy of the bible. You see Carnegie knows how powerful the book is, knows how, if he has it, he will be able to control not just one small town, but the whole WORLD! Mwa ha ha ha! Carnegie and Eli face off, Eli escapes and Carnegie, who will risk and sacrifice anything and anyone to get the book, chases him with his army of disposable henchmen.

The Book Of Eli has two things going for it. Firstly, this core idea of the corrupting influence of religion, its ability to control the masses, and how a survivor of nuclear armageddon wants it for those purposes, is a strong one. In a film that didn't cost $80 million and without big name stars, this could have been a really compelling, character driven and subtle story. Instead, in one corner we have Saint Denzel and in the other we have Evil Oldman. Part of the problem is the casting. You don't have Gary Oldman as your villain and then tie him down. You want to let him loose, let him chew up the scenery, but in so doing you lose any of the potential grey the story might have had. Similarly Denzel does big, broad emotions and here he is playing GOOD! Ultimately what happens is that, the central notion isn't really explored with any great significance or depth and you end up wondering what might have been. The second thing the film has going for it are the fight sequences. I'm no great Denzel Washington fan but he is surprisingly adept at dispatching bad guys with a sword. The Hughes Brothers make the great decision not to cut those fights with lightening speed. Indeed, Eli's first encounter with hijackers on the road in which he takes on 6 or 7 men, one wielding a chainsaw, occurs in one sustained shot from quite a way back. The choreography is great, Denzel has clearly put the work in and is convincing, and the directors know that they just have to sit back and let it happen. In these times of action sequences being edited like the editor is taking Speed for his ADD, it's refreshing and feels strangely new.

But the film as a whole is really quite dull and the tone of the whole thing is so lugubrious, so humourless, each frame, everything from the music to the cinematography, demanding that you take it with utter seriousness and total sincerity as if it were the very book its titular character is carrying. If you're not really going with the film, as I wasn't, this makes the whole thing fall on the wrong side of laughable. Part of this problem lies with Denzel. It's not that he's bad, and as I said, in terms of the physical stuff he's excellent, but he's just so... earnest. "I walk the Earth. I carry my book. I pray every day. I'm Denzel, you will take me seriously" Any film asking me to take it this seriously needs to earn that and, in the end, The Book Of Eli doesn't. It's a half baked genre movie with some good ideas, a couple of great fights, long stretches of nothing, WAY too many slow motion "Denzel looking cool while walking" shots and a truly hilarious ending. It also contains one of the weirdest shots I've seen in a film in a long time and the strangest shot of Denzel Washington I think I've ever seen where, not only has he had his beard shaved, but his whole head has been shaved too and he is dressed in an ankle length, snow white robe... Unintentionally funny.

Every film I've reviewed this month has had the same line. "It's not terrible, it's just not that great." And guess what? I've seen worse, I've also seen considerably better. I feel that I am way overdue a genuinely great film. Come on 2010, surely you're better than last year?

5/10

The Road Review

2010-01-20T07:52:00.000-08:00

I find myself in an interesting, and lamentably rare, situation when it comes to The Road. I've actually read the book. I do read more than those first two sentences would suggest, honest! It's also one of my favourite books but I did try and approach the film as objectively and with as fresh a perspective as I could. The fact that it's directed by John Hillcoat, who directed The Proposition, gave hope. Cormac McCarthy's book drips with atmosphere and menace and The Proposition is one of the most atmospheric and tonally interesting films of the last few years. A good match then, perhaps. What struck me when watching The Road was that, a huge part of what made me love the book was not what it was about, but how it was written. Of course the film doesn't have the benefit of McCarthy's terse prose and so what you are left with is the narrative of the book which, to the best of my memory, is actually adhered to pretty faithfully by writer Joe Penhall, a narrative that is somewhat slight and episodic.

Viggo Mortensen plays the man, Kodi Smit-Mcphee plays the boy. Both are struggling to survive in the aftermath of an unamed apocalypse, travelling south along the eponymous road to the coast, avoiding those survivors who would use them for food and occasionally bumping into Robert Duvall or Guy Pearce who must surely be a shoe in for Best Supporting Fake Teeth at this year's awards season. And that's kind of all there is to it. As I said, that's all there is to the story of the book also, but the narrative deficiencies take centre stage in the film. Central to the story is this relationship between man and boy and both actors do well, Viggo in particular looking dirty, haggard and gaunt having presumably thrown himself method style into the role. The problems arise as the boy constantly pesters his Dad about who is good and who is bad. Rather than leading to an interesting grey area of survival in which no one is necessarily good or bad, we have the man and boy who are good because they don't eat people and the cannibals who are bad because they do. The boy questions his father's way of protecting them even as they are being attacked by those who would harm them and the theme loses any weight and believability as a result. Yes he's a child but all he has ever known is the apocalypse, all he has ever known is danger, dread, hunger and fear, so shouldn't he be savvy to his world by now? Shouldn't he understand the consequences if they don't defend themselves at all costs, violently if that's necessary? This adds a level of immaturity to either the character if it's deliberate or the script if it's not and either way I found it problematic.

What is most surprising however, is that I expected the film to assault me with its atmosphere and tone and it really didn't. Whereas The Proposition was relentless (to the point of being problematic to many critics but not to me) The Road actually becomes somewhat tiresome at times. Lots of washed out colours, plenty of grey, but nothing ever changes and at a certain point I found myself desensitised to the whole thing, apathetic when I should have been on the edge of my seat. There are some flashbacks to life before the apocalypse, with Charlise Theron playing Viggo's wife, "the woman" presumably, and these work to mixed effect. They provide a break from the unremitting grimness of the present but they don't inform the character of the man and storywise they could happily be excised and nothing would be lost.

I feel like I'm coming down pretty hard on The Road. I don't feel like this is a case of "I loved the book and you ruined it with the film", the problems are there on the screen. Like many of the films I've seen recently, The Road isn't terrible, it has much to commend and enjoy. I just found myself struggling to understand the point of it, what it was I was supposed to take from it. I've waited a few days to write this review as I haven't been sure what I thought about the film and I'm not sure I can articulate it even now. I guess my advice would be, read the book.

5-6/10

Up In the Air Review

2010-01-20T06:39:00.001-08:00

What am I missing? Why don't I like these films? Up In The Air arrives with glowing reviews, solid if unspectacular box office, Oscar buzz and the promise of Gorgeous George being, well, gorgeous presumably. At least on that level Up In The Air doesn't disappoint. It's the third film from Jason Reitman after Thank You For Smoking and Juno. I REALLY have to avoid turning this review into a Juno rant. If paragraphs stop suddenly, it'll only be me putting the brakes on yet another "why Juno is actually terrible" tirade.

I'm doing it already. Okay, back to Up In the Air.

Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man whose job it is to fly from city to city and inform unsuspecting employees that they have lost their jobs. Bingham is world class at his job. Soothing, calm, understanding. But he is empty inside. Becoming one of only a handful of people ever to clock up ten million air miles is his life's ambition. People and relationships weigh him down and the few days he spends at home are the unhappiest of the year, preferring to live his life in airports and hotels. When fresh faced company hotshot Anna Kendrick blusters in with a new scheme to do the firing remotely, eliminating the need for Clooney to travel the country, he is enormously threatened and is ordered by slimey company boss Jason Bateman to take her with him to show her how firing people is done and what it's all about.

There has been much talk in recent years about Hollywood studios bastardising "Indie" cinema, popularising it, packaging and marketing it and serving it out as an apparently high brow alternative to their mainstream fare. Up In the Air is the very epitome of this phenomenon, a film every bit as mainstream and, in all honestly, as hollow and empty as the Summer special effects movies. Getting Clooney to do the film is crucial for two reasons. Firstly, on this same point, it gives the film cache. "George Clooney is in it? It must be political and have something to say."Secondly, it means that a thoroughly unlikable character is now made more palatable to a broad audience and the awards voters. This notion is undeniable and transparent and is completely against the ethos of genuine independent cinema which as a result makes it the most compelling point in the argument that films like this do not represent genuine independent cinema and are merely low(er) budgeted Hollywood, mainstream films. Up In The Air isn't the worst film ever made. It just isn't particularly good and its pretensions make its ultimate emptiness all the more apparent.

The notion of a guy talking the talk in a job where empathy is crucial not actually having genuine emotional empathy towards others is an interesting one. I haven't read the book so I can't comment on how well it works on the page. The problem onscreen though is that, this idea slowly comes to represent the film as a whole. Up In The Air doesn't make a genuine connection, at least it doesn't with me, and I felt that I was being played the whole time. A few funny moments and Clooney's charisma and charm make you go with it while you watch it but, stepping out of the cinema to assess what I had watched, I found myself with little to say because there's very little substance. What makes it worse is that, director Reitman intercuts interviews with people who have actually lost their jobs in real life. This comes off as a very cynical way to give the film weight and make it seem as if it's offering a commentary of some kind on our current economic crisis, which it isn't. And of course there's the dreaded "alternative indie music" soundtrack. This has really come to represent a certain kind of film in my mind, a kind of film I just cannot abide. Jason Reitman is the new Cameron Crowe, just with less schmaltz and slightly more credibility, and the perfectly placed but sledgehammer obvious indie songs coming every 3 minutes with "wounded" singers asserting that karma won't let them down no matter what Annie said when she broke their heart, or whatever emotionally contrived crap happened to conveniently rhyme with the last line, only underscores this further. I don't believe the songs, I don't believe the film, there is actually nothing being said here but the packaging is top notch.

The film isn't terrible, it's just nowhere near as good as it wants you to think it is. Up In The Air is better than Thank You For Smoking and WAY better than Juno, although it is definitely cut from the same cloth and suffers from exactly the same problems. That is also faint praise given that immersing one's head in acid is better than watching Juno...

PARAGRAPH ABORTED - JUNO RANT DETECTED.

5/10

And The First Review Of 2010 Is...

2010-01-15T03:23:00.000-08:00

Daybreakers!

Where has this resurgence in vampires come from? Is it just Twilight? Daybreakers is as odd film because, while ultimately it didn't work for me, there is much to commend and admire in it and it attempts to bring something new to the vampire genre whilst simultaneously adhering to many of its conventions. It also attempts to remind us that vampires are meant to be scary and not, you know, mopey. Yeah all right I haven't seen Twilight so I shouldn't comment.

Daybreakers is set in 2019, ten years after the vampire plague has wiped out 95% of humanity. Of course this lack of humans means a lack of food for the vampires who, despite ruling the world, find themselves faced with their own extinction. In one of the nicest elements of the film, we discover that vampires who are deprived blood devolve into Subsiders, underground dwelling, bat-like monsters who, as the film opens, are growing in numbers and becoming more brazen about attacking the "civilised", suburban vampires in their own homes, so desperate are they for blood. The crisis has resulted in scientist Edward (Ethan Hawke) working to find a blood substitute for the company that seems to control the world's entire blood supply, run by creepy Sam Neill. One night Edward runs into a band of humans, one of the last, and discovers that they may have found a cure for vampirism. This sets him on a whole new path, working with the humans who are constantly on the run from the vampire military who hunt them down and farm them for their blood.

The best thing about Daybreakers is the world that the writer/director Spierig Brothers have created. There is a tremendous level of detail in the way that the vampires have organised their existence and the way they use technology to help themselves. Darkened windows with roof mounted cameras on the roofs of their cars to allow day time driving for example, mirror our own use of technology for our own ends in a nice way. The devil, as they say, is in the details and there are numerous small moments that work well to build a sense of reality to the world of the film, a spoonful of blood in the coffee for example, or an early shot where Ethan Hawke pulls up outside a building in his car and we see him reflected in the rear view mirror. It's the kind of shot we've seen in films a million times but, being a vampire, he has no reflection so all we see in the mirror is a suit with no head attached. This sense of the world feeds into what Daybreakers is ultimately about which is a commentary on and reflection of our own mismanagement of natural resources. For the most part this works quite well. The Subsiders in particular can be read in different ways and the way they gradually grow in numbers and encroach upon the suburbs (and the way they are ultimately dealt with) is an interesting notion of what people who are sufficiently desperate can become. Also noteworthy is the refreshing use of practical effects and sets with CGI used to enhance and augment rather than create from scratch. Even the monsterous subsiders appear to be guys in suits and, far from being a criticism, that works really well to give them presence and menace.

The problem however is that, having come up with this interesting parallel and use for the vampire legend, having thought through and then built this world, the Spierig Brothers don't really know what to do with it and the narrative ends up floundering. There are bits and pieces of different stories that don't really resonate or even go anywhere, Ethan Hawke's difficult relationship with his brother or in particular Sam Neill's estrangement with his still human daughter for example. The way Neill deals with her when they are reunited and what becomes of her should be one of the films key moments and emotional high points but, because she is introduced too late and because the way the two characters are reunited is massively coincidental, it fails to make an impact. Also, the various stories serve to jostle and fight for importance as well as for our attention rather than working together to serve the overall narrative and the effect of this is that they all end up failing.

Ethan Hawke is an actor I've never had great afinity for. Not terrible by any means, but just kind of missing... something, I don't know what. This actually works to his favour when he's a vampire but mid way through the second act he tries the new cure on himself and succeeds in making himself human again, though I was hard pressed to tell the difference. Way more problematic is the normally wonderful Willem Dafoe who hams it up as "Elvis", a crossbow wielding ex-vampire with an atrocious Southern accent who feels like he has wandered in from a different film. Indeed, there is a sense all the way through that the film isn't quite sure where to place itself. The success of its world building and its attempt to say something suggest a film of some intelligence. Willem Dafoe's performance and the clunky action scenes that pepper the film do not. By the time the predictably bloody finale arrives, you're way too bored to be bothered anymore.

In the end Daybreakers is a mixed bag. Part of me feels that a sequel could actually be a good thing because, having established such an immersive, convincing world, they could then use it to tell a really compelling story. As it is, characters of little interest wander through that world with very little to do.

5.5/10

The Awesome & The Awful of 2009

2009-12-30T04:23:00.000-08:00

2009. The year when Christian Bale lost the plot (as did Terminator: Salvation), Star Trek was re-born, Harry Potter continued to financially bulldoze every other film out of its way and the decades old question of whether or not the graphic novel Watchmen is actually unfilmable was finally put to rest (It is.) James Cameron returned to feature film-making with the over-hyped, underwhelming but undeniable box office champion Avatar and 3-D started to look like it's here to stay. Put simply, it’s been a rotten year for films. Many appeared to be so bad they simply had to be avoided so, for example, there’s no Dance Flick, Hotel For Dogs or Bride Wars on this list, although I have no doubt they would be here if I could summon the will to watch them. (I can’t.) Of course it wasn’t all bad, though I wonder how many of the ten best would have made the list in a stronger year. Regardless, here is my choice of the ten best and ten worst films I saw in 2009.

THE BEST.

1. DOUBT

One of the very few films of this year’s awards season deserving of its place, Doubt deftly examined notions of prejudice and the devastating consequences of gossip and assumption within a compelling story set in the Catholic Church of the 1960s. Superb performances by its three leads, Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams and a fantastic script by John Patrick Shanley based on his play, made Doubt escape its theatrical origins to become one of the first great films of the year.

2. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

I’ve become very sceptical of internet buzz over the years but for once all the talk was justified. Let The Right One In is a relationship film masquerading as a horror movie, but don’t be fooled; there are some brilliant and genuinely frightening moments of horror in the film. The two children are fantastic and this film and another further down the list are tied for my “favourite final scene of the year” award. Vampire movies are enjoying a new lease of life (See what I did there?) but this stood head and shoulders above the rest. Atmospheric, unconventional and absolutely brilliant.

3. ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL

It was a choice between this and The Cove for the documentary spot but, despite writing for an environmentally aware magazine, I had to go with Anvil for its warmth, charm and hysterical lack of self awareness on the part of the ageing rockers who had a fleeting taste of mega-stardom and then lost it again. It’s like Spinal Tap never happened but what’s great is that you are completely onside with the band, willing their dreams to come true along with them. Anvil was undoubtedly one of the funniest, most enjoyable films of the year.

4. MOON

There were several points in Moon where I expected it to go off the rails, to take the predictable route, to lose its way and it never, ever did. Ambiguous, sombre but never pretentious, Moon continued the current resurgence in intelligent science fiction and boasted a great central performance from Sam Rockwell. Hugely atmospheric, thanks in no small part to fantastic cinematography by Gary Shaw and an evocative score from Darren Aronofsky’s regular composer Clint Mansell, Duncan Jones’ debut film launched what, based on this evidence, should be a long career filled with great films.

5. DISTRICT 9

District 9 wore its genre influences on its sleeve and had a political agenda that was about as subtle as Katie Price. But it makes this list because it was smart, fun, funny and exciting, basically everything that the $200 million mega movies claim to be and rarely if ever are. Newcomer Sharlto Copley excelled as the blindly faithful company man whose journey (both emotional and physical) gives him greater insight into the “prawns” who have come to Earth. An alien invasion movie where the aliens aren’t actually invading and the humans are the bad guys, District 9 was probably the best genre movie of the year.

6. UP

I have to confess a certain prejudice towards animated films. No matter how much people try and convince me they can be enjoyable for adults, I find it difficult to escape the fact that I’m watching something that’s aimed at people 25 years my junior. However Up was a really fantastic piece of work. A wonderful story, funny, genuinely touching, brilliantly written and directed, Up was considerably better and more mature than most films this year that were supposedly aimed at people my age.

7. A SERIOUS MAN

The Coen Brothers’ ability to diversify is typified by their last three films, No Country For Old Men, Burn After Reading and now A Serious Man. Low key, intelligent, funny, enigmatic, the story of Larry Gopnik watching his life disintegrate around him as he wonders why, entertains and infuriates (in the best possible way) in equal measure. I liked the film from the start but in my review I wondered if it would grow on me even more and, even though I only reviewed it a few weeks ago, it already has. This is the second film tied for my favourite final scene of the year.

8. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

Paranormal Activity would have been a great film to "discover", to sit and watch with no pre-conceived ideas, as the film cannot quite bear the weight of all the hype. That said, it is easily the best pure horror film of the year and one of the best horror films in a long time, psychological in a way that stays with you and arguably becomes more frightening when you return to your own house. One of those "how has this not been done before" ideas, the film piles on the tension as ordinary couple Micah and Katie set up a camera to record the strange and terrifying goings on in their house. The finale is less than satisfying but the journey is well worth your time. Slow burning, tense and genuinely scary.

9. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

If someone had told me at the start of the year that a Spike Jonze film would be on my ten best list I would not have believed them, yet here it is. Emotional, imaginative and affecting, its lack of narrative is more than made up for by a surplus of character and emotion. The story of Max, a young boy clinging to childhood as he views both his impending adolescence and the changes within his family as sources of enormous fear, Max's adventure with the Wild Things, strange creatures who personify different elements of Max's personality and struggle, is refreshingly lacking in typical Hollywood "life lessons" and is instead honest, melancholy and very touching.

10. 2012

Every time I think of that limo outrunning California falling into the sea behind it, it makes me smile, possibly the only special effects film of the year to do so. The various stories are terrible, the dialogue is atrocious but a great cast powers through to make the moments in between the mayhem just about tolerable. Of course, it's the mayhem that got everyone to the cinema in the first place and on that front 2012 delivers in spades. Earthquakes, tsunamis, an aircraft carrier plunging into the White House, Hawaii buried under rivers of lava, a tiny plane dodging crumbling buildings... 2012 had it all! Undoubtedly one of the best films of the year.

HONOROUBLE MENTIONS

Milk, The Wrestler, Hunger, Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (More animation! What’s wrong with me?!) Angels And Demons (So bad it’s good), Drag Me To Hell.

AND THE WORST.

SIGH...

1. THE READER/REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

A Kate Winslet double bill of doom that represents everything that’s wrong with the awards season, these two films screamed “I’M IMPORTANT”!!! but neglected to tell us why. Revolutionary Road had precisely nothing new to say on its subject of American suburban decay in the 1960s and The Reader, despite having a couple of interesting ideas, seemed to be trying to set a record for the most boring film in history. If it didn’t quite make it, it came very close.

2. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

David Fincher and Brad Pitt were coming off two of the best films of their careers, Zodiac and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford respectively, but both were undeserved financial flops. So what better way to get back on speaking terms with the box office than with this queasy, namby-pamby, three hour snoozefest in which Brad Pitt ages backwards and the audience wishes it could. Another Oscar contender in one of the worst Oscar line-ups in recent years.

3. KNOWING

The advertising campaign for Knowing promised a twist that would blow your mind. SPOILER: It didn’t. ANOTHER SPOILER. It’s utter crap. Once upon a time Nicolas Cage was a credible actor, but that was a long, long time ago. Knowing actually starts reasonably okay in a campy, silly kind of way but it quickly derails and plummets down the ravine in a flaming mess of weird hair, strange teeth and a truly awful script.

4. X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

A bad Summer got off to a shocking start with this bargain basement blockbuster. The story of how Logan came to be Wolverine was covered reasonably thoroughly as I recall in X-Men 2 but apparently not thoroughly enough so off we went again with Colonel Striker, adamantium claws, blah blah blah, wake me up when the whole mess is over. Boasting computer effects apparently achieved with a Commodore 64, the only consolation was that there was simply no way the Summer could get any worse…

5. TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN

…Oh, right. A hideous, hideous, hideous cinematic experience, it’s really saying something when unremitting racism can emerge as the least of a film’s problems. The most blatantly cynical film I think I’ve ever seen, Transformers 2 elevated crass commercialism into an art form. Rather than cluttering up the multiplexes, this film needed to crawl under a rock and die.

6. INGLORIOUS BASTERDS

Quentin Tarantino is a film maker with nothing to say which is why every film he has ever made, including this one, is a “homage” (“rip-off”) to other films in which every character speaks in exactly the same way (i.e. like Quentin Tarantino) and spends hours talking about nothing. This is not a film about the joy of cinema as some have argued, it is two and a half hours of adolescent, inane, rambling nonsense. I don’t care how popular it was, I hated this film.

7. ORPHAN

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to include Orphan on this list. It contains a twist so staggeringly implausible that, not only does it have to be seen to be believed, really, it just has to be seen. The sheer guts it takes to come up with this ending, much less deliver it with a straight face in the manner in which it does is impressive. The previous 90 minutes is a complete waste of everyone’s time but that twist when it comes… Well let’s just say that, for all the wrong reasons, it should go down as one of the greatest endings in cinema history. Orphan is the one film on this list worth watching but only if you like to watch bad films in an ironic way and have the patience for a whole lot of nothing before reaching the punch line.

8. GAMER

Gamer pretends to make a serious point about the voyeuristic nature of modern society. Naturally, it does this in the most lurid way possible, stopping every now and then to tell us how culturally bankrupt we all are as it leers at yet another pair of breasts. Charisma bypass Gerard Butler runs around killing people in ludicrously violent ways and that’s about all there is to it. Tedious and deeply depressing.

9. LAW ABIDING CITIZEN

Hey look, it's Gerard Butler again! I thought about having a Butler double bill in the same way that I have a Winslet double bill but these films are so unforgivable, they deserve seperate places on the list. We have the success of 300 to thank for the fact that, not content to simply star in dreadful films, thespian Gerard Butler is now in a position to produce dreadful films for himself to star in. I went in hoping it would be so bad it's good and instead it's just baaaaaaaad. A crap premise, an appalling script and a twist to rival that of Orphan, Law Abiding Citizen bludgeons you across the head with stupidity and tedium. It's also further evidence that, Oscar or not, Jamie Foxx is actually not very good.

10. 2012

Exactly as above, except in the last sentence substitute"worst" for "best".

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Push, 12 Rounds, The Taking of Pelham 123, Jennifer’s Body, too many to mention

Avatar Review

2009-12-17T12:26:00.000-08:00

God I hate being right...

A friend of mine asked me a few weeks ago what I thought Avatar would be and I suggested that it would be two hours of nothing characters moping around a planet followed by forty minutes of a battle I didn't care about. And guess what?! Make yourselves comfortable folks, this one's gonna be a long one!

Before I continue, let me make a few things clear. Firstly, I have nothing against Avatar, no wish to see it fail, no wish to see James Cameron fail, I'm watching it as a film like any other. Secondly, I'm a big fan of much of James Cameron's work, though really his best work has come early in his career and a gradual though absolute decline is further evidenced by what I watched today. Thirdly, the story is the least of Cameron's concerns and so it's going to take up the least amount of space in this review. Quick synopsis: Jake Sully is a marine paralysed from the waist down, he goes to Pandora, becomes a Na'vi through the Avatar programme (tying his consciousness into a Na'vi avatar body and therefore free to roam the planet and become one of them) he falls in love with Na'vi girl Neytiri and abandons his human roots to "go native"and join the Na'vi in fighting back against the technologically superior human invaders. If that story sounds familiar, it's only because you've seen it a million times already. Before Avatar, Titanic was my least favourite James Cameron film by a very long way. Now, I'm not so sure.

Here's the problem. This is a film that has created and is in the process of perfecting new film making technology. It's a film that's meant to end the "3-D debate" and lest there be any confusion regarding the outcome of that debate, the verdict is "it rules!" This film is the herald of a new era in film making. It's a new dawn, a new age. Years from now, when mind bending 3-D spectaculars are par for the course, we'll all look back at Avatar and say, this is the film that started it all and I was there. Sure it's quaint now (Remember when you had to wear 3-D glasses?!) but without it we wouldn't be where we are today. This is what the film and its much talked about production process is screaming and you can be damned sure it's what Cameron is thinking. This is his legacy to film making. He's a pioneer, cutting his way through a new frontier, fitting given that Avatar is basically a frontier movie. Avatar's disclosed budget is around $270 million. Industry insiders have specualted that it's considerably north of $300 million and, if certain rumours are to believed, taking into account the many years of R&D, this film has cost close to $500 million. Has 20th Century Fox spent this much on the story? The characters? Absolutely not. Cameron's last film grossed $1.8 billion for the same studio so he is in a position to make some demands. I believe Cameron genuinely wants to further the technology of film making and so, having seen the more modest developments made by the more modest budgets of, for example, the Lord of the Rings trilogy (I mean that completely relatively; neither the final $200 million budget of Return of the King nor the technological advancements of the trilogy as a whole can be regarded as modest) he has secured a massive investment in new technology, to bring cinema to a place where it can weather the illegal downloading storm and provide photo-real CGI environments, characters and creatures in 3 dimensions. This is what he has promised Fox and this is what they have spent the money on. This is the film that started it all and now everyone else is only going to reap the benefits. I started this paragraph by saying here's the problem, and after a lot of set up, finally, here's the problem. Assuming for a moment I'm not interested in what it took to get it to the screen, in how much it cost, in what it's offering film makers for the future, what is Avatar, a stand alone film, offering me? What am I getting from it? The answer is very, very little.

Dances With Wolves, Dune, Last Of The Mohicans, The Mission, Ferngully, The Last Samurai... all of these films (and more) share two things in common with Avatar. 1 They're all considerably better. Yes, even The Last Samurai. 2. Those films were borrowing stories and story elements in their day. What does that say for an "original" story coming 20 years later? Avatar is cliched beyond belief, trite and incredibly sanctimonious. A technologically cutting edge $3/4/500 million film is telling me how nature will prevail in the face of technology. A tough lesson to swallow. The references to real world events are horrendously heavy handed, to the point where the final attack by evil military man Stephen Lang is described as a "shock and awe" campaign. Worst of all though is the Na'vi's connection with nature, their laughably mystic "oneness" with the flora and fauna exemplified in those moments when they all hold hands and sit chanting around the tree of life. Seriously, this happens. Twice. This is not "classic" story-telling as Cameron has argued, it's a juvenile appropriation of the native American culture with a view to generating cheap emotion.

Weirdly, the biggest plus point is the 3-D. I'm a complete sceptic when it comes to 3-D but there is no denying that Cameron uses it to tremendous effect in Avatar. Gone are the hokey "things poking you from the screen" days of 3-D. Cameron uses it to surround you in Pandora's lush vegetation and wildlife. You believe in the place, you believe this environment. In that respect the 3-D is as immersive and transportive as everyone is saying it is. But the film as a whole is not immersive, no film this dull can be. And when you take the 3-D out of the equation, so when I have the opportunity to watch it on DVD or Blu Ray for example, what is going to entice me back? The big screen, 3-D experience just about makes Avatar worth a watch once, but it is only story and characters that make a film worth repeat viewings and I can safely say I will never watch Avatar again. I think that the worse a film is, the more 3-D helps. So watching Up, I completely forgot about the 3-D. Watching Avatar, I was incredibly grateful for it. The motion capture technology is also very impressive, the movements of the Na'vi feel completely real and their faces are tremendously expressive. More generally, the CGI works to mixed effect. In terms of the environment, it is undeniably stunning. You really do forget that Pandora is almost entirely digital. Everything from the trees to the water is rendered on a computer and, in close up and in 3-D, it needs to be photo-real and for the most part it is. The various animals never look like anything other than digital creations and the Na'vi are never photo-real, despite Cameron's promises. Bright blue and feline, the design of them felt naff from the first time we saw them and watching the finished film, they still feel that way. You do accept them after a while, but in the way you accept an animated film for example. You don't believe it's "real", you accept it in context. Personally I never felt transported to another world in the way that, for example, the Lord of the Rings films made me feel. I believed the world certainly, but I was never particularly awed by it. Flying dragons, blue monkeys, variations on a rhinoceros or a wolf, there isn't anything particularly fresh or interesting in these ideas, most are variations on things we have on our own planet. Added to this the fact that the Na'vi are thinly veiled Native Americans and, for all its pretensions to "other-worldliness", the world of Pandora suddenly feels incredibly familiar.

By the time the big battle comes, it's too little too late. There are some spectacular shots to be sure, the frame is filled with marines and dragons and Na'vi and warships and, in 3-D, it looks amazing. But there is no resonance to any of it and, given how long we've spent wandering around that bloody planet, it feels very short by comparison. Not just that but I'm fairly sure I've seen another film, made over twenty years ago, that cut between different battles occuring simultaneously on a jungle planet... Oh right, it's called Return of the Jedi. Also, the way in which the battle resolves is the biggest cop out, "get out of jail free" piece of writing I've seen in a film in a very long time. It's all coming back to the writing. Cameron has never been a particularly strong writer but his best films have great set up to them in the script that his directorial abilities can then pay off in the finished film. Aliens is still the best example of this and remains his best film as far as I'm concerned. Terminator also does this very well, as does Terminator 2 to a slightly lesser extent. Those early films were not built on giant budgets and forced Cameron's creativity, which he has in undeniable abundance. He knows that a film with no characters or story is just a soulless enterprise, which is why he and the cast are constantly paying lip service to that as they promote Avatar, reassuring us that the James Cameron who made us care about Ripley's relationship with Newt in Aliens has made us care for Jake Sully's dilemma about whether to follow orders or join the Na'vi in Avatar. That is the James Cameron I'm interested in but it is not the James Cameron who showed up to make Avatar. Cameron keeps telling us how he has spent 10 years getting Avatar to the screen. Surely in those 10 years he could have found some time to work on the script? A week maybe? Even a weekend?

I feel like a broken record, but there is simply no substitute for a good story and good characters and there never will be. It's a lesson I feel the cinema will never learn. There are no technological advancements to be made with books. All they have ever had to sell them, and all they will ever have, is a story and it's on that story that they stand or fall. Theatre is (or at least can be) more technologically based, but theatre too ultimately comes down to its story. Why can it not be the same for cinema? Why, with all the possibilities now available to it, is a medium as potentially powerful as cinema squandered so repeatedly, used as nothing other than a fancy light show? That Avatar has been announced as a film that is changing the face of cinema just throws its many flaws into an even brighter light because if we have taken several steps forward technologically then we have taken an equal number backwards with regards to the stories we're telling. I really wanted to be wowed by Avatar, really wanted to be taken on a great adventure, but in the presence of unremitting cliche and trite storytelling, this is simply impossible. The visual effects and 3-D give it an extra couple of points but make no mistake, this is a bad film. See Avatar once for the 3-D and get everything there is to get from it because ultimately, a turd with diamonds on it is still just a turd.

5/10

Where The Wild Things Are Review

2009-12-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

I have to confess that for me, a little quirk goes a long way. In recent years Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry have emerged as the principal merchants of quirk, creating films that are much beloved as offbeat classics. Much of what they produce leaves me somewhat cold but Where The Wild Things Are had completely the opposite effect. It's definitely "arty" in the more populist sense of the term and possesses much of Jonze's dreaded quirk but it's a warm, heartfelt, melancholy reflection on that time when childhood is on the verge of disappearing as adolescence and adulthood loom large, as well as the fear and uncertainty that accompany that change.

Max Records plays Max, a young boy without a Father whose Mother (Catherine Keener) is seeing a new man (Mark Ruffalo in a strange, basically one-scene cameo) and whose sister has already moved beyond childhood into the next stage of her life, wanting to spend her time with her friends rather than with her brother. As the film starts, she and her friends have taken a snowball fight with Max too far, destroying his play fort and hurting him in the process. Later on, Max's fear of the change happening within his family manifests in a terrible argument with his Mother, culminating in him biting her on the shoulder. He runs off, comes across a boat, sets sail across the ocean and finds an island inhabited by enormous furry monsters, the eponymous wild things. Through his relationships with them, in particular with their leader Carol (voiced wonderfully by James Gandolfini) Max comes to understand some of what he's feeling but he never "learns life lessons" in that awful, mawkish Hollywood way. Indeed, Max never articulates what he goes through and it's we the audience who, as adults, can understand it on his behalf and articulate it for him. It's this relationship between audience and film that makes Where The Wild Things Are as moving and affecting as it is. We know what he's feeling because we've all been there and watching the creatures act out the various aspects of Max's life and personality, we and he come to greater understanding of the situation he is in and the way in which he copes with it.

The Wild Things themselves are a truly fantastic creation, all actors in suits with CG used sparingly to bring greater expression to their faces. The cast are uniformly excellent with the aforementioned Gandolfini, Catherine O Hara and Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose standouts. Max is a child who loves play fighting, running and jumping around, and he brings this physicality to his relationship with the creatures. They being considerably bigger than him, there is danger inherent in much of their interaction but the emotional danger of not fitting in here, in the same way that he doesn't fit in at home, is even greater again and so Max throws himself into each and every moment with relish. The pain of these encounters is never shied away from, much to Jonze's credit. Incidentally, Jonze began his career on the TV show Jackass, directing the various stunts and insane dares and much of the physical scenes in the film are weirdly reminiscent of those moments on Jackass when characters would dress up in bear suits and fight each other!

The pain on display is emotional as well as physical. Indeed, if there is an overall feeling to the film it's one of sadness. This is a truthful depiction of what it means to be a child clinging to childhood and every happy or funny moment the film has is completely earned as a result. What gives the film further honesty is how Max is just as capable of inflicting pain as he is of receiving it. I mentioned earlier how Max has his snow fort destroyed by those bigger than he. Later on, he is embroiled in a dirt-clod fight with the wild things and inflicts a similar pain on one of his new friends who is as undeserving of the indignity as he was. Also, Max discovers the bones of previous guests to the island, something that gives great ominosity to the rest of his stay with his new friends, especially in those moments when Carol lets his temper get the better of him, in exactly the same way that Max does.

There are many tiny moments in the film that reveal a great deal about character. When Max has his fort destroyed for example, he goes into his sister's room to exact retribution and discovers an old present he made for her, presumably some years ago, that she keeps in her room. As he is destroying it, we get a real sense of the relationship they once had that Max now misses, but also of the relationship that is still possible for them when Max catches up with her and enters adulthood himself. The film is barely 90 minutes long which is good as there is very little story here, something that usually bothers me. But this film is built less on narrative and more on character and relationships, in the way I've just described, as well as emotion and tone and in those ways it works tremendously. Sentimental but never schmaltzy, nostalgic but never contrived, Where The Wild Things Are is without doubt my favourite of Spike Jonze's films.

8/10

The Box Review

2009-12-06T10:21:00.000-08:00

Richard Kelly is a man with ambition. He's determined to pose questions and make you think. He has themes and ideas that fascinate him and is highly literate, cramming all his influences into his films with decreasing levels of subtlety. It's this talent and intelligence that make The Box as infuriating a cinema experience as it is. It should be provoking and intriguing but ends up being very unsatisfying. After the cult success of Donnie Darko and the abject failure of Southland Tales, Kelly has attempted something more mainstream. Or at least he's pretending he has.

James Marsden and Cameron Diaz play Arthur and Norma Lewis, an ordinary couple mired in financial difficulty. A disfigured and mysterious stranger, Arlington Steward (played with understated relish by Frank Langella), arrives and gives them a wooden box with a button on the top. If they push the button two things will happen. Someone they don't know will die and they will receive one million dollars. The moral dilemma is played out in the first twenty minutes or so, after all what kind of film would we have if they didn't push the button. The rest of the film deals with the consequences of that decision, offering an ever deepening conspiracy and increasingly bizarre happenings with the townsfolk turning into extras from Village Of The Damned with nosebleeds, the babysitter not being everything she seems and Arlington Steward being revealed as the victim of a lightening strike he may or may not have even survived. Amidst all of this, the couple try and understand exactly what it is they have gotten themselves into and how they can extricate themselves from it.

This is one of those films that suffers from unfortunate and misleading marketing. The trailers all played up the central notion of the mysterious box and suggested the film is a thriller. One suspects this is how Kelly originally pitched it and got the money to make it, as that core notion (coming from the short story by Richard Matheson) is a highly marketable one. But where the short story ends, Kelly is only getting started and he uses the premise basically as a springboard to launch into his own flights of fancy. Much of the first half lives up to the marketing and plays like a straight thriller. A really great score by members of Arcade Fire helps generate menace in otherwise mundane scenes and the cinematography and production design, while perfectly capturing the 1970s setting, work hard to create a sense of unease. The problem however is that there is very little actual unease present. Many of these early scenes clunk along due to pedestrian writing and unconvincing performances by Marsden and Diaz. More problematic still is the fact that many of the film's attempts to create mystery and intrigue fall on the wrong side of naff and laughable. There are a couple of terrific moments, a man standing just out of shot looking in the kitchen window, or particularly when Steward announces menacingly that another couple that the Lewis' don't know will soon be made the same offer as they, implying that they could become the victims of the next people's decision to push the button. But by the time you have the old Granny staring at Cameron Diaz at a wedding rehearsal dinner in a manner that's supposed to be creepy but is actually kind of hilarious, you're very far from unnerved. And that's long before you're completely sick of the nosebleeds.

The second half of the film veers into science fiction territory and the moral dilemma the box presents turns out to have much larger consequences. It's clear from the start that something is going on and those complaining that the second half comes out of left field have not been paying attention. Not that I can really blame them. There is only so long, only so many times, you can cut to a strange, seemingly random (except that it clearly means something and so isn't random and therefore, oooh what could it mean?) shot and expect the audience to say "Oooh what could it mean?" It comes down to the age old problem that I simply didn't care about the characters enough to care about their predicament, even as their predicament takes on ever larger significance. This problem renders the ending, which completely hinges on our attachment to the characters, pretty much impotent. Indeed by the time the ending arrives, you can't help but get the sense that what is happening matters way more to Kelly than it does to any of the characters. When so many films don't even bother trying, it's always good to see one attempt to inject meaning and multiple layers into its story. But it's that story that must come first; get the basics right before adding the complications and a lot of the time The Box fails on its most basic levels. Scenes merge into each other, particularly early on, and the editing is often disjointed with many scenes seeming truncated. This seems to result from the structure and story not being completely in place in the script. Yet running alongside this is the feeling that Kelly has made pretty much the film he wanted to make, particularly when it comes to the ideas of philosophy that permeate the film. It's a strange fracture that persists throughout the entire running time. Also, when you get into this kind of territory, there are ultimately only so many explanations for what is happening. And you can't help but feel that this ground has been well and truly covered before.

I'm starting to wonder if Donnie Darko was something of an anomoly, that Kelly may not even realise what made that film connect with people in the first place. The Box ultimately frustrates but, for me, there is never a sense that it could ever have been that much better. Perhaps working from someone else's scripts, Kelly may have greater success as he is forced to interpret a story that isn't his. As it stands, what we have is a film with good moments and points of interest buried in a lot of tedium, one that attempts to test our humanity and personal and collective morality but ends up merely testing our patience.

4.5/10

Paranormal Activity Review

2009-11-28T03:29:00.000-08:00

Paranormal Activity arrives with a massive weight of expectation, a weight that it cannot quite bear, especially in the final few moments where, not really knowing what to do, it drops the ball pretty badly. This wasn't the original ending, apparently various endings have been in flux for a while, but more on that later. For the most part Paranormal Activity is very effective, tense, sparse and very scary.

The story is well known by now. Micah and Katie are a normal couple living in a normal, suburban house. As the film starts, the pair have been experiencing strange disturbances in the house so Micah has bought a camera to document what's happening and that footage is what makes up the film. It's the "found footage" genre of horror film that goes all the way back to Cannibal Holocaust and, most famously, The Blair Witch Project. Paranormal Activity's trump card is that now-famous, locked off shot in the bedroom, wherein Micah and Katie have gone to bed for the night and the camera films them as they sleep. It plays on very base, primal fears to great effect as we watch increasingly creepy events occur around people at their most vulnerable. This is one of those "how has this not been done before" ideas and writer/director Oren Peli squeezes as much tension from it as he can.

What's great about the film is the way it uses what are ostensibly haunted house cliches, banging doors, televisions and lights coming on of their own accord, misplaced objects, and makes them work tremendously. Why they work comes down to two things. Firstly, it's not a haunted house movie. Without spoiling anything, the presence in the house is not a ghost and its objective is much more personal than simply haunting a building. As well as writing himself out of the "why don't they just leave the house" plot hole, this ups the threat and horror in even the most mundane of scares. Secondly, these things work because of that single, sustained shot. Its lighting and composition make you, the viewer, scrutinise every corner of the frame, every shadow and movement, and because of its stillness, any event that happens, no matter how small, has enormous impact. Peli knows that by having the central concept that he does and by putting time and effort into how that shot is composed, he has done 80% of the work and is now free to play with our fears and expectations. The other asset of good horror is the soundtrack and, as much as Paranormal Activity relies on simple visual scares, so bangs and bumps coming from somewhere within the house provide many of the jumps and help sustain the tension. Indeed, the footsteps of the unseen entity approaching the bedroom become increasingly ominous and frightening as we understand more of what it wants.

The two actors, using their own names in the film, are perfectly fine. Micah goes from scepticism to desperation as he tries to be the "man of the house", looking after his girlfriend and sorting out the problem. This notion of the masculine need to control and be in control is interesting and watching it play out adds some character depth to the film. This need manifests in him almost antagonising the entity at times which eventually grates on the nerves and, as he is doing it with the woman he supposedly loves pleading with him to stop, he actually becomes somewhat unsympathetic. The climax of this is when he uses a Ouija Board. Early on, Katie invites a psychic to the house to help them and Micah mentions a ouija board. "Do NOT use a ouija board" the psychic tells him in no uncertain terms. Of course at that moment, we absolutely know he will use one and guess what?! This works to mixed effect. Character wise, it works to turn you off Micah. There is then an overt scare with the ouija board which, for me, is the least effective in the film. However, when the entity communicates with Micah, it gives him a name and the pay-off when he discovers who the name belongs to and then further when we discover what the entity was telling him by giving him that name, is truly disturbing and one of the best moments of the film.

Which brings us to the ending. Had I not been so tense throughout, I would have had a bad feeling that the film might blow it right at the end. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens. Peli has apparently experimented with different endings at different screenings. Descriptions of those endings are freely available online and I'm sure they'll end up on the DVD. Pretty much any of them sound better than the one we're presented with. When Paramount bought the film, they made a few adjustments, most of which are okay, but this ending is also theirs and, by basically being nothing more than a cheap, unearned shock, it goes against the slow build and emphasis on atmosphere and sustained tension that the film has worked so hard to maintain up to that point. It doesn't ruin the film but it is a definite let down after everything that has come before.

All the trailers have shown members of the audience screaming in terror and the film arrives in the U.K. marketed as "one of the scariest films of all time." Is it THAT good? Probably not. But it's frightening, tension filled and without question the scariest film this year. If you're a fan of Saw (one through six) or the Hostel films, then maybe this is not for you. But if you like your horror psychological, subtle and insidious in a way that makes you question your assumption that those strange noises you've been hearing are just the pipes rattling, then Paranormal Activity is a must see.

7.5/10

The Twilight Saga: New Moon: Why I Won't Be Reviewing It: Colon:

2009-11-24T09:58:00.000-08:00

God, even that title is annoying.

Okay here's the deal. Yes I KNOW it's the biggest film of the moment. Yes I KNOW as a reviewer I'm supposed to watch everything, regardless of my own tastes and biases. Yes I KNOW they're all really buff and that's as good a reason as any to watch it.

Whoops! Eh, typo...

But I haven't seen the first in this "saga" and I can't bring myself to watch the second. I'm sorry, it looks insufferable. If you've seen it and you like it, send us an email and tell me why I'm wrong and why I should watch it. Otherwise you can listen to Mark Kermode give it a good review.

I hope my Editor-In-Chief doesn't fire me...

A Serious Man Review

2009-11-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

Those Coen Brothers are a slippery pair. I've deliberately held off writing this review to let their latest film, A Serious Man, sink in a bit. My favourite of their films is Miller's Crossing with Fargo, No Country For Old Men and Raising Arizona all tied for second. Most of their films are good, very good or at the very least have something of merit in them. Indeed The Coen Brothers are uniquely consistent film makers and have been across a prolonged career. There is a particular category of Coen Brothers film that is somewhat enigmatic, Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn't There and now A Serious Man. I liked the film considerably more than Barton Fink or Man Who Wasn't There but it definitely shares a kinship with those two films.

Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, a physics professor with a wife who wants to divorce him because she has got together with an amazingly pompous friend Sy Ableman, a son Danny who is less interested in school than he is in their television reception and getting stoned, a daughter Sarah who steals money from him to pay for a nose job, an unemployable brother Arthur (Spin City's Richard Kind) who has a cyst that needs to be regularly drained and who has taken up permanent residence on their couch and a student trying to bribe him for a better grade. As Larry's life slowly disintegrates around him, he asks the question, why. He doesn't get many answers. And neither do we.

And maybe that's the point. Bad things happen to good people and there is no order to it, there is no God who has it in for you, even if your Jewish heritage is telling you otherwise. Of course, if your Jewish heritage is correct and there is a God and you are a good person, why would He have it in for you? Larry goes to visit three rabbi for answers, each of whom is useless in their own particular way, and, with everything that's happening to test Larry, the film could be seen as a re-telling of the story of Job. Is the film actually about the so-called "Jewish curse"? The ending could certainly be read in that way. Or perhaps the point is simply to make people debate endlessly as to what exactly the point is. The Coens are pranksters and the fact that they generate this kind of conversation is as enjoyable to them as the story they are telling, which is not to ignore the fact that there is much in the film to debate. What further complicates A Serious Man is the fact that Larry spends its whole running time saying, "I haven't done anything" as if this were a defence against the bad things coming his way. He HASN'T done anything. Apart from consulting the rabbis, he continues to do nothing, even as God/fate/life/an ancient curse (seen in a wonderful prologue) throws more and more crap at him, and even when he does see the rabbis, he is completely unresponsive to their inability to provide the help he needs. The fact that he seeks help from others in the first place, rather than help himself, is telling and in the end one has to assume that his complacency is at least partially if not totally complicit in his downward spiral.

It's this angle that makes the character of Larry such an interesting one, and one of the Coen's best creations. What's great is that, even taking his lack of initiative as his biggest flaw, you don't lose sympathy with him. This is due in no small part to the fantastic performance of Michael Stuhlbarg who manages to retain dignity and humour in the character, even when you the audience (and apparently fate itself) are screaming at him to act, to do something, anything. This is true in a number of scenes, none moreso than the moment where Sy Ableman confronts Larry and tries to placate him with a bottle of wine. This is an incredibly tough line to walk and the Coens do it very, very well. Rarely does Larry succumb to the loss of control he's experiencing and, when he does, it's mainly in his dreams, a fantastic device that allows us into his psyche and to know he's suffering without having to endure the hand-wringing and histrionics of a lesser film. Despite the litany of disasters falling Larry's way, A Serious Man is also a very warm film, possibly their warmest to date. Many people have criticised the Coens for a somewhat misanthropic approach to making films, a criticism I totally disagree with. Amidst the horror of Fargo is the kind hearted cop Marge Gunderson, appalled by the senseless violence all around her. The beating heart of No Country For Old Men is not the opportunistic Llewelyn Moss or psycopathic Anton Chigurh but Tommy Lee Jones' Sherriff Ed Tom Bell. Miller's Crossing comes down to the loyalty Tom Regan (Gabriel Byrne) has for his mentor Leo and the chaos of Raising Arizona is perpetuated by Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter's simple and heartfelt yearning to have a family of their own. You can't have the good without the bad and just because you're not afraid to depict the bad and to make it very bad, doesn't mean you have it in for the possibility of good in people. With A Serious Man, they have taken their "good character" and put him centre stage. The question is why is he made to suffer and the answer is... well, that is entirely up to you.

This is their most low-key film since The Man Who Wasn't There, completely without fuss and refreshingly free of the glut of Hollywood a-listers they crammed into Burn After Reading. Those people troubled by the abrupt ending of No Country For Old Men are going to REALLY dislike this film. I found the ending touching, heartbreaking and, in a strange sort of way, it helped make sense of the story and bring everything together. This is not my favourite Coen Brothers film but I really enjoyed it and I have a sneaking suspicion it's going to grow on me even more. I'll be very interested to go back to it when it's on DVD and I wouldn't be surprised if I give it a higher score.

On that point, the fact that it's getting the same score as 2012 probably destroys any credibility I can ever have as a film critic. Let's just say that different films can be good in different ways. No? Hello? Anyone there? Come back! I haven't done anything!!

7/10

2012 Review

2009-11-16T05:51:00.000-08:00

Surely I can't give 2012 a good review. Can I? I mean it's terrible. TERRIBLE. The characters are non existant, all notions of story have packed up and gone home and so much of the film is filled with saggy, soggy, drippy melodrama. Also, it's two and a half hours long. But it's a piece of depraved genius. At one point California is being destroyed in an earthquake that looks like it measures about a 350 on the richter scale and John Cusack outruns it in a limo. A LIMO! I can't help but feel that the sheer brilliance of that might have won me over.

The story, such as it is, concerns solar flares that are causing the Earth's crust to heat up and melt. This is the "science." Ah, science. Is there nothing you can't explain? This in turn causes uber-earthquakes that drag whole cities into the sea, mega-tsunamis that swallow up the Himalayas and volcanoes that erupt in Hiroshima-dwarfing nuclear explosions. The advertising campaign was built around the idea that this was all predicted by the Mayans but the film realises this is a waste of time and quickly dispenses with it altogether. I could talk more about the story, failed writer John Cusack struggling to reunite his family or conscientious Government scientist ("scientist") Chiwetel Ejifor trying to maintain his humanity amidst the terrible decisions being made around him, but what's the point? It's turgid, dreadful and clearly not the reason why anyone is going to see 2012.

Mark Kermode, in his scathing review of the film, talked about how it's another example of cynical Hollywood bean counters coming up with a film, the bottom line of which is the bottom line. This is possibly true of the studio and the executives greenlighting the film but I don't think it's true of writer/director (auteur if you will) Roland Emmerich. This is not a cynical film in the way that, say, Transformers or in particular Transformers 2 is. Emmerich is clearly in love with disaster movies and this is his magnus opus. I believe he genuinely cares that you're having a good time and this is the main reason that you stay onside with the film. He is now the undisputed king of the "man running away from looming disaster" set piece. John Cusack spends much of the film running/driving/flying away from earthquakes/volcanoes/floods. At one point he and his family are in an airplane that's screaming down a runway as the runway falls away into the Earth behind them. There is no threat, tension, logic or reason in it but you can almost see the glee on Emmerich's face as he comes up with stuff that he knows is outrageous but which he can't resist and he suspects you won't be able to resist either. He has the big action, the big cast and the ubiquitous dog in peril. It's worth mentioning that, while these sequences themselves are insane, he directs them superbly and, while the complete abandonment of plausibility might baffle, you always know exactly where you are within a given moment. This might seem like faint praise but watch Transformers 2 for an action film that has no clue how to direct its action. Also, to his credit, Emmerich is smart enough to cast credible actors who help sell this stuff. Chiwetel Ejiofor is one of Britain's best actors and it's great to see him get to take centre stage in a major Hollywood movie. John Cusack is dependably good, as is Oliver Platt, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover and Tom McCarthy, director of the brilliant The Station Agent. (We'll ignore Thandie Newton) The film definately drags in the middle (our heroes have to get from California to China) but by the time you reach the last act with its arks and tsunamis, which could almost be a film in itself, you're right back with it.

Disaster movies have to be silly. We know this because they've always been silly. Check out the posturing of McQueen and Newman in The Towering Inferno or the frankly bizarre relationship between Ernest Borgnine and his ex-prostitute wife Stella Stevens (as well as Gene Hackman's seemingly knitted on hair) in The Poseidon Adventure if you don't believe me. In my mind, there is no difference between the 1970s disaster films and 2012. Would Irwin Allen have made a film like this had the technology been available to him? Of course he would. Modern special effects have freed up a personality that knows no restraint and the result is 2012. Simultaneously appalling and brilliant then, I have to say that the brilliance wins out. Just.

7/10

Harry Brown Review

2009-11-16T03:36:00.000-08:00

Why are British films always so bleak and dour? There is an extended scene in Harry Brown wherein Michael Caine (the eponymous Brown) visits two local gun and drug dealers on the pretext of buying a gun. This scene is grim to start with and gets progressivley more so, culminating in the video playing in the background of the two men having sex with the drugged out woman they keep on the couch. I have no reason to doubt that horror like this goes on in certain parts of the city but, just because you fill your film with the most awful things you can think of or have heard actually happened, doesn't mean you're necessarily saying anything interesting or important about them. And in the end, this is the problem that Harry Brown can't escape.

Michael Caine is Harry Brown, a retired ex-marine, recently widowed, living on an estate that is over run with crime and youth violence. When his chess partner and friend Len is viciously killed by a gang, Harry decides that enough is enough and goes about exacting some measure of justice. I mean revenge. Wait, which is it? Stories like these can be very problematic in this regard and this film, with its dubious politics and mixed messages, is no exception. Violence is awful. Except when it's justified. Stabbing a pensioner is horrific but wrapping barbed wire around a hoodie's neck is perfectly acceptable. Violence begets violence we're told but Harry Brown's murderous rampage has nothing but positive consequences. It's yet another film that demonizes every young person with his hood up and portrays the council estate as some kind of zoo for the depraved. Are some estates like this? Are there violent youths? Street violence? Of course the answer to these questions is yes but the simple fact is that we know this already. What else have you got to say? And the plain truth is that the film has nothing new to say. It's revenge fantasy with pretensions, nothing more.

There is something undeniably iconic about seeing Michael Caine in a buttoned up, black overcoat, staring into the camera. At 78, he seems to be still going strong and his place as one of the movie greats is assured. But, as much as I enjoy watching him, I never quite believe him in roles like this. I've always found him at his best in comedy, something he does much too little of. The film has been getting generally good reviews but I really believe this is because of the presence of Michael Caine. Harry Brown is the debut film of director Daniel Barber and there is undeniable confidence in much of how he directs the film. A big problem however is that scenes are pushed way past the point of interest, the scene I mentioned at the begining with Caine confronting the drug dealers for example, or a ludicrously extended section where every member of the gang is interviewed by the police. I suspect Barber thinks he is building tension in these scenes but they end up falling very flat. Supporting characters are very short-changed and any time Caine isn't on the screen, the film loses the only card it has to play.

Every year some new version of the "ordinary man takes the law into his own hands" film gets made. This year has seen no fewer than three with Clint's Gran Torino, Caine's Harry Brown and Gerard Butler in Law Abiding Citizen coming up in a couple of weeks. Harry Brown has been drawing comparisons with Gran Torino, comparisons I'm sure Daniel Barber is pleased with. I saw an interview with him in which he said that he would hate to think that his film would be compared to Death Wish, Michael Winner's 1970s exploitation thriller with Charles Bronson. If you ask me, Death Wish is the better film.

3/10

Jennifer's Body Review

2009-11-16T03:32:00.000-08:00

I hate Juno. Juno is the worst kind of film in that, everyone who has seen it will tell you how good it is, and it’s not good. Not at all. Writer Diablo Cody has a fantastic central idea, a teenager carrying a pregnancy through high school, an idea that could really resonate and go somewhere interesting, especially in these times of Creationism and abstinence. But she absolutely squanders it. The script is immature, there are no consequences to any of Juno’s actions and the whole thing becomes a highly irritating, flippant, kooky love story with a soundtrack of perfectly placed, just released eight minutes ago, indie songs to sledgehammer home every emotionally contrived moment. Cody clearly understands what it’s like to be an American teenager and is able to convincingly sell that world. So it’s no surprise that Jennifer’s Body, Cody’s next produced script, once again portrays the American teenage angst and its natural home, the high school, in a manner that is at once completely convincing and painfully familiar. Jennifer’s Body doesn’t have that great central idea which, in a way, actually works in its favour because there is little to spoil. What it has in abundance is all the irritating stuff. It isn’t even really a horror film, even though it has been marketed as such. It’s a high school film with a demon. And I really don’t like high school films. Can you see where this is going?

Megan Fox is Jennifer, the object of every teenage boy’s hormonally fuelled desire. Mama Mia’s Amanda Seyfried is Needy, her best friend. Out at a bar one night, Jennifer is taken by a struggling band who will do anything to get famous, including sacrificing a virgin to Satan. Except that Jennifer is no virgin and so she ends up inhabited by the demon, feasting on the young boys at the school to stay alive. She is literally a man-eater. Get it? Needy is the only one who knows the truth and it’s up to her to stop the killings that ensue. It’s a neat idea to take the high school archetypes and use them for horror purposes and Cody certainly has a nice way with finding small character moments that ring true. Director Karen Kusama does an okay job and the two girls are both convincing. But it’s not funny, it’s not frightening and once again I found much of Cody’s writing very grating. People have knocked her dialogue for being stylised which is a ridiculous criticism. Dialogue shouldn’t be conversational in my opinion, it should have structure and purpose, like the overall story, and many writers, including two of my favourites, the Coen Brothers and David Mamet, write highly stylised dialogue. The question is how one responds to that style. That response is of course always subjective but, for me, I find Cody’s characters very annoying. “You’re so jello. You’re lime green jello and you can’t admit it to yourself.” Lines like this come thick and fast and make me want to tear my hair out, I don’t care how authentic they are to American teen-speak. It’s the Quentin Tarantino school of writing, where every character talks in hip, “quotable” but ultimately inane sound bites. And just because the lead singer of the band remarks that the only way to get noticed is to appear on a “crap soundtrack”, referencing the problem I mentioned about Juno, doesn’t mean you’re negating that problem. Moreover, in jokes are cheap and unfunny and Cody is guilty of employing them.

I realise this review has become a bit of a tirade against Diablo Cody but she is one of the few writers who, so far at least, manages to be highly visible in the finished film. And good for her. Such a feat is rare for a Hollywood writer. I have nothing against her personally and she can clearly structure a script and tell a story. But it’s style over substance and if that comes from Diablo Cody or Michael Bay or anyone else, it’s problematic. There is a current backlash against Cody, part of the reason for the film’s poor show at the box office Stateside. Again, I want to be as fair as I can be, and this backlash is unjustified and unfair. The people tearing her down now are the same ones that lauded her when Juno first appeared and their objections are pretty much worthless as a result. At least I’m consistent. I hated Juno from the start and I hate Jennifer’s Body now too. I was bored, irritated and if I hadn’t been writing this review I’d have left half way through. Diablo Cody does her thing and I guess that’s great for her and for whoever is interested. It’s not for me.

2/10