New films reviewed for this year, in reverse order of being seen, are:- Vera Drake; The Incredibles; AVP: Alien Versus Predator; The Corporation; Old Boy; Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow; Dead Man's Shoes; The Chronicles of Riddick; Seom; Super Size Me; Hellboy; Ae Fond Kiss; The Village; King Arthur; The Stepford Wives; Gozu; Thunderbirds; Spiderman 2; Shrek 2; Fahrenheit 9/11; The Cat's Meow; Confidences trop Intimes; La Mala Educación; The Day After Tomorrow; Van Helsing; The Saddest Music in the World; Billy Bongo; The Dummy; Storage; Sredni Vashtar; That Old One!; Wise Guys; Shaun of the Dead; Dawn of the Dead; Monster; 21 Grams; Northfork; Big Fish; Dogville; Paycheck and Black and White.
Veteran film-maker Mike Leigh is famous for his interest in the private lives of ordinary people, the little people whom society so often ignores, whose daily concerns are invisible. With Vera Drake, he continues this practice, but simultaneously takes on something much bigger. It is to his great credit that this, his most ambitious film, never loses its vital personal quality. Despite the political challenges it presents, this is a humane and sensitive portrayal of a society at odds with itself.
It is 1950, in London. Vera Drake, played by redoubtable cinema, television and threatre actress Imelda Staunton (who won the Venice Film Festival's Best Actress award for this role), is the sort of woman on whom everybody depends. Working as a cleaner, with a part-time job in a factory, she devotes her spare time to community activity. She cares for the elderly, including her own bedridden mother; takes in and feeds people living on their own; and devotes herself to her husband and children. Although her life is undoubtedly a hard one, she remains stubbornly cheerful, raising the spirits of those around her. But there's something else that Vera does which is morally more dubious. Out of her desire to help anybody who might be in need, Vera has become a backstreet abortionist. Her own take on it is that she "helps young girls who're in trouble." The police's take is rather different.
In this skillfully crafted ensemble film, Leigh shows us a great deal of post-war London and the stresses it creates. Whilst young people flirt as always, and young men, including Vera's own son, casually persuade young women to sleep with them in exchange for silk stockings, the city is full of casualties. Women who have been raped, who have been abandoned by their men, or who already have more children than they can afford to feed are desperate for help. Legal abortions are available, but the cost makes them inaccessible to the poor. In this context, one can see why Vera's work might seem necessary; but then Leigh presents us with the consequences, the hideous and often fatal infections which can result from insufficient medical knowledge and poorly sterilised equipment. He also addresses the conflicts between men and women which these situations create; and the ancient conflict between a male-dominated medical establishment and the traditional practices of women practising within the community. All of this is elegantly done, without any direct proselytising, whilst the story continues to focus directly on its characters. It is also skillfully balanced.
In the central role, Imelda Staunton moves between cheerful confidence and emotional breakdown with considerable skill, creating a solid and believable character who might attract sympathy even from those strongly at odds with her moral position. Phil Davis is superb as her husband Stan, struggling to be loyal and supportive despite his personal beliefs. The rest of the cast are all solid, and what emerges is a moving portrait of a family holding itself together against tremendous pressures. The presence of poverty pervades the story; everyone is making little deals to get by. Enough cups of tea are consumed to make this the caffeine equivalent of Withnail and I. The period costuming, set dressing and dialogue are all spot on. This is a grim story, but full of human kindness, a brave attempt to bring human values back to the forefront of political debate. It is also a fine example of the film-maker's craft.
In a world where superheroism has been outlawed thanks to a series of lawsuits, Mr. Incredible struggles to get by in a depressing office job. His family have been moved several times as the authorities have tried to keep their abilities a secret. Mrs. Incredible, also known as Elastigirl, is worried about the disruption this causes to their school-aged children. But fighting crime is just too tempting for a man in the throes of a mid-life crisis, and you never know when another evil supervillain may try to take over the world.
With a lot more to say for itself than the average spoof, The Incredibles is a story in its own right, full of richly imagined characters many of whom we see only fleetingly. It acknowledges its debt to The Watchmen early on, in an effective newspaper montage, and goes on to take that premise somewhere different. Like Moore's work, however, what it's really interested in is the humanity of its celebrated characters. It's here that it really scores. Intelligently cast and well acted all round, it presents the viewer with a series of complicated domestic incidents each of which is at least as important in its characters' lives as anything to do with the central plot.
The other impressive thing about this film is (predictably from Pixar) the animation. Although the characters aren't designed to look realistic, the young Invisigirl has the most natural-looking hair yet achieved with computer technology, and textures such as those of fabrics and plants are similarly well designed.
I'd like to begin this review by saying that Alien Versus Predator is a film which has come in for an awful lot of harsh criticism which I don't think is really fair. The attion of its critics is roundly focused on the film it might have been, rather than on the film it is. Whilst I understand the frustration which comes from seeing a favourite story produced badly, knowing how much harder it will thereafter be to get it produced well, it would be difficult for any film to satisfy the leagues of fans who have been impatiently waiting for this particular conflict ever since an Alien skull was spotted in the Predator ship in Predator II. This movie has it where it counts. Making unusually proficient use of CGI technology, it gives us epic monster on monster action which is convincing, exciting, and even well acted. Of course, the human actors are universally shite (even poor old Lance Henriksen); but what do they matter? This isn't about humans.
That the film is aiming for a non-human audience is emphasised by the rather charming credits, all produced in Predator script and then translated. In parallel to this, a series of carefully latered visuals provide us with the Predator point of view. The humans are incidental, just bait in a trap. The design of this trap, and its dramatic history, represent overblown science fantasy worthy of David Twohy, with some of the silliest misinterpretations of Ancient Egyptian and Aztec archaeology to date. But this is all par for the course.
What's rather more problematic is the timescale. After a tedious first half hour spent almost exclusively watching the humans, we see the ancient mechanisms go to work with a speed which defies any sensible principles of chemistry and biology, terrestrial or otherwise, along with our established understanding of the pace of Alien reproduction. This is a shame, as there's plenty of potential in this part of the film, and it could have lasted longer without losing any of its edge. The scriptwriters seem over-hasty to dispose of surplus characters so that they can concentrate on building up the few who might survive, including a heroine who must be something alien herself, judging by her ability to survive Antarctic weather. At this point, the story takes a predictable direction, showcasing the Predator civilisation and values, losing something interesting in the process. The Alien queen, initially attracting some sympathy and showing some character, becomes just another flailing monster, not nearly as scary as she ought to be; and she'd have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for unexpected loopholes in the laws of physics. But one can't have it all.
This film isn't as good as it should have been, but it's still a lot of fun. If you can overlook the feeble dialogue and plentiful minor plot holes, it's lots of fun.
Billed as "Farenheit 9/11 for people who think", The Corporation is an ambitious bundle of left-wing rhetoric which simultaneously attacks capitalism and leaps aboard the gravy train created by Michael Moore's award-winning film. It has some honest reasons, of course. At two and a half hours long, it's clear the makers felt they had important things to say. Their dissatisfaction with the fast-cutting, humourous techniques which mark this year's successful political documentary films is clear. Their presentation is altogether more stark, often simply a series of talking heads interspersed with graphics which might have come from a government information leaflet. This isn't so much cinema for those who think as cinema for those who have convinced themselves that thinking can only be approached in one way - a dry, academic environment punctuated with clever references to familiar theorists, preaching to the converted, with very little in the way of new ideas.
The central theme of this film is an examination of what we understand by ,the corporation' - what such a thing is, how it came to be, and how it has influenced the world we live in. Interesting use is made of archive footage, but sadly this only serves to highlight the shortage of original material, and the early cutting is so crudely done that one soon tires of the images on display. There are occasional bursts of genuinely interesting material - especially those retrieved from foreign sources - but the whole is poorly structured and poorly paced. A succession of cards indicate the beginning of new chapters, but this only serves to make one more aware of the the rambling nature of the arguments unfolding. Intrusive music only exacerbates the situation.
To the casual viewer, it is possible that some of the arguments made in The Corporation may be new, and therefore of interest, at least for the first hour. Michael Moore himself is interviewed, showing a little more subtlety than usual, alongside stalwarts like Noam Chomsky and Milton Friedman. What's unfortunate is that each of these speakers seems to have been set at liberty to say whatever he wants, with no challenges presented. The first thing a strong argument requires is an examination of its own weaknesses. It's all too easy for a thinking person to spot the holes in some of this rhetoric, and, as the obvious problems are never raised, there is no way for them to be dealt with. This serves to undermine the case which the film is trying to make. For the most part, The Corporation approaches everything in dogmatic terms, with big business as the bad guy and the people as the heroes. Latter attempts to examine this more subtly acknowledge that business people can be nice people too, but let themselves down by pointing out that concentration camp guards might also have been nice people to their friends. The identification of corporations with psychopaths is similarly crude. In taking a stand against all business, the film loses track of what distinguishes the type of business which it initially identified as problematic, and loses its way.
Beginner students of political science and those who simply enjoy feeling reassured that there's a left-wing movement out there will probably find this film appealing. Others will find a few humourous moments, a few really smart moments, and some scattered but satisfying examples of the success of mass movements against corporate abuse. It's a real shame that this film wasn't edited down into something which showcased these points without turning off more viewers than it might hope to enlighten.
Winner of the 2004 Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, yet best known in the west for the controversy surrounding a scene in which a live squid is eaten (four were used during filming), Old Boy is an intense, complicated thriller showcasing some of the greatest talent in Korean cinema today. Faster paced than Mr. Park's previous work, it nevertheless needs two hours to tell its tangled tale. Along the way, we encounter all the stylised violence and passionate sex which would be expected in such a work, yet there's something much cleverer going on here, as these elements are woven into an unexpectedly potent, morally challenging whole.
Seeming several times as if it will turn into a different kind of film altogether, Old Boy opens with a wild-eyed man suspending another man against the edge of a roof by his tie. Is he there to kill him, or to save him? He hesitates in recalling his own name, Oh Dae-su, which means 'gets along well with others'. This name is of great importance to him, as it is one of the few things he has left, the only constant element of his identity. Travelling back in time, we see Dae-su drunk in a police station, annoying the staff, waiting for his best friend to come and take him home. As they make their way back, Dae-su goes missing, and his friend is frantic. We next see Dae-su in the room where he is being kept prisoner after having been mysteriously kidnapped. He has a televsion to tell him of external events. He is given food and medical treatment, and is looked after, but he cannot escape, and doesn't see another human being, for fifteen years. After this time, he is mysteriously released. Desperately trying to re-orientate himself, he is given money and a phone through which a stranger prompts him to seek revenge. He meets a young woman who seems eager to help, and he becomes determined to find out who imprisoned him and why, but he gradually comes to feel that he can trust no-one.
Old Boy's cleverly constructed story is complemented by a range of camera techniques which help us to get inside Dae-su's mind. During his schizophrenic episodes as a prisoner, the visuals become blurred, disorientating, and filled with edgy movement. When he is fighting, the camera moves between theatrical observation and nervous involvement. Though he remains at the centre of the action, we get similar insights into heroine Mi-do; bold, strongly coloured images of the independent woman she starts out as ("the best woman sushi chef in the country"), to more intrusive, shifting images as her experiences break her down into a little girl. Both these actors are perfectly suited to their roles, which becomes increasingly important, as the dramatic scenes toward the end could have been ruined by somebody less confident than Min-sik Choi. Meanwhile, Ji-tae Yu is less charismatic, but suitably convincing, as Dae-su's mysterious enemy.
This is a film about revenge and a film about puzzles. It is also a film about self-destruction, and the extent to which people might be willing to destroy themselves - or their relationships with the wider world - in order to protect the lives and honour of others. Yet, as revenge itself becomes part of the puzzle, it is unclear whether anybody is really saved. Dae-su spends his years in prison trying to understand his predicament by compiling lists of his sins; yet in the end, there is no simple answer, no sense of redemption, and it seems that the burden of sin can be relieved only by ignorance - that knowledge, and the passing-on of knowledge, is what causes harm. As we veer between scenes which some viewers may find too grotesque to watch and scenes of great beauty, we are forced to look at the potential monsters within ourselves and wonder at the price of innocence.
With a creation story as fascinating as the movie itself, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow represents a revolution in cinematic technology as important as the advent of the talkies, and heralds a new age of imaginative film-making. It was therefore desperately important that it be a good film, one capable of thrilling audiences as well as technicians, and in this capacity it really does deliver. Though imperfect, it tells its ripping yarn with confidence, carrying viewers along, and it's telling that a significant number of them never even notice what the rest of the fuss is about.
Set in an alternative mid 20th century New York which borrows heavily from the visions of Fritz Lang, this is the story of flying ace Joe (Jude Law) and intrepid reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), who are caught up in an attack by giant robots and set out to investigate its source. With room for both sleuthing and action adventure, it's a classic tale of heroism which will please adults and children alike. Twists are well concealed, partly because it's so easy to hide advance hints within the wealth of visual information presented to the viewer, yet the story is essentially naive, sticking closely to the trail-of-clues formula, which is sometimes a weakness. The script suffers further from the inexperience of its creator, Kerry Conran, who writes some excellent dynamic lines (Angelina Jolie might have waited her whole career to command "Prepare the aquatic division!"), yet who has no idea how to write filler dialogue, so that we hear some of the same conversations over and over again. Jude Law isn't always sure what to do with his starring role; at times he's appropriately brilliant and charismatic, but at others his performance is lifeless, his lines merely recited. Paltrow, however, is perfect as his spirited foil, understanding completely the nature of 1940s-style battle-of-the-sexes banter, and she's also terrific in the physical aspects of her performance. With only a blue screen and the other actors to work with, this demanded highly specialised and imaginative work from all involved; barring small props like guns and handbags, not a single object shown in the film was real. There's also a fascinating appearance from the several-years-dead Sir Laurence Olivier as the story's villain, another harbinger of things to come.
As one would expect with such a precocious project, Sky Captain isn't technically flawless; one notices the odd hiccup every now and again, as the stunning visuals slip out of sync; but these problems are no more prevalent than one would expect in any film using CGI. Overall, the degree of care taken, and its results, are amazing. Features like snow and rain don't always look photo-realistic, but they fit neatly into visuals which are also referncing '40s comic strips. Stunning use of light and astute blurring of edges complements this whilst working around many of the more awkward technical issues. As costume designer, Stella McCartney has finally done something useful, blending her vision flawlessly into Conran's. The overall design work is the most impressive feature of all. Several times, the mechanical contraptions on show directly elicited gasps from the audience. The art deco aesthetic seems the perfect choice for a project of this type, and contributes to the viewer's willingness to believe in enormous and fantastic things.
From this point forward, film-making will never be the same again. Don't miss out on the chance to see the movie that changed it all.
With a strong opening cutting between cine-film of children playing, and two men strolling through the beautiful but bleak landscape of rural Derbyshire, Dead Man's Shoes at once reveals that it has a character all its own. Whether or not one likes that character is beside the point. This is a gripping and surprisingly affecting story, a revenge thriller interested in more than macho posturing. Despite its amoral perspective, it has a deeply moral tone, and a complex one.
Telling the tale of one man's attempts to avenge his learning disabled brother's abuse at the hands of a gang of small-town pikeys, this film inevitably attracts comparisons with Get Carter, tough competition for any piece of work, yet its central concerns are elsewhere. Protagonist Richard (In America's Paddy Considine) is having more difficulty dealing with his own confused fraternal feelings as with anyone in the external world. The burden of guilt which he places on his own shoulders is, from the start, perhaps as great as anyone else's. There are periods during which this film ventures onto Death Wish territory, and there it is at its least interesting, but for the most part its approach is more sophisticated. It reaches beyond the usual limits of the genre by presenting all its characters as rounded human beings, even if they are crude, unpleasant ones. After building up sympathy with the avenger, it turns around to show us a group of petty criminals as scared and vulnerable as the formula group of teenagers stalked by a serial killer, forcing the audience to acknowledge the human suffering on both sides. This careful balancing act is sustained throughout the film, and is paralleled by Richard's awareness of his own gradual dehumanisation. With his brother unable to support him, his once-admired physical prowess is turned to destruction, and we begin to realise just how vital the handicapped youth's emotional input was.
Dead Man's Shoes is filmed in a raw, up-close naturalistic style reminiscent of early Ken Loach, but much more successful. Some viewers may find the thick Matlock accents difficult to decipher, and much of the dialogue takes the form of muttering or incoherent rambling (especially during scenes involving drug use), but all the essential information is clearly delivered, and the sometimes confused babble contributes to the mood. This helps to put across the fact that there are huge numbers of people who really do live and act this way, albeit generally with less extreme consequences. As a study of drug dealing and petty violence in isolated English towns, it is accurate and unfussy, illustrating the ridiculousness (five gangsters and a shotgun all crammed into a Citroen 2CV) of the situation as well as its ugliness (the suffering of the handicapped boy, the abuse of women). Its matter-of fact observation of events has the effect of making the viewer feel uncomfortably close to what's happening. As a result, it has a far greater emotional impact than most of its ilk.
Arnold Schwarzenegger should watch his step; there's a new Conan on the block, he's played by somebody else, and he's in space! He may be called Riddick and theoretically have a history of adventure all his own, but Vin Diesel's muscular hero makes all the familiar moves in a familiar story. Does this make it boring? Not at all. Stories of this sort are predicated on the audience having a fair idea of what will happen next. Why else would they bother with prophecies and notions of destiny? Nevertheless, The Chronicles of Riddick has a few more twists and turns than the average action movie. It's also refreshingly amoral, doing away with the unpleasant hypocrasy which haunts many movies about doing the right thing by beating up strangers.
Though all he really wants is a quiet life, Pitch Black anti-hero Riddick is continually pursued by bounty hunters. Realising who must be responsible, he travels to the new homeworld of the Islamic cleric he rescued before, only to find that he has been sought after because it is believed he is the only man who might save this world and others from destruction by the evil Necromongers, an army of repressed architects bent on making everyone wear grey. Riddick is a reluctant rescuer, not caught up in his own legend, aware of his poor chances against such an army; but he has concerns of his own, centered on a vague sense of responsibility for the kid he also saved, and naturally events conspire to dictate his dangerous course of action.
In the role of Riddick, Vin Diesel is comfortable and confident; the script was written by his role-playing buddy and it shows, as every line seems utterly natural for the character even if it would be completely unnatural in normal speech. All the film's dialogue is approached with the same brash good humour which enabled the original Star Wars films to get away with all their silliness. The Chronicles of Riddick has no time for conscious irony or self-conscious posturing, but simply forges ahead with its own story, so enthusiastic and energetic that it's very easy to like. Cliches abound. The bad guys probably bought their accessories in Forbidden Planet; the scheming wife of the lord marshall has starred in dozens of pulp fantasy novels; and the fights are largely formulaic, though well choreographed, with style points going to 'death by teacup'. Yet it's all so much fun that one really doesn't need to worry about it.
Unfortunately, in a film with a lead character as aggrandised as this, it's difficult for other characters to develop properly. The bad guys are adequate, yet never come across as quite dangerous enough as individuals. When we re-encounter the kid, it becomes plain that the writers didn't know what to do about her earlier transvestism, yet she is at least spared the indignity of turning into passive love interest; Thandie Newton does a good job of giving her a consistent identity whilst turning her into the sort of heroine whom Conan was always glad to have fighting at his side. This influence allows for the sort of grudging character development which again characterises heroic fantasy tales, and creates space for the plot to take a darker turn.
The Chronicles of Riddick is not great art, nor a polished blockbuster, yet, as a piece of entertainment, it is far ahead of its contemporaries, and it proves that both Diesel and director David Twohy are ones to watch.
Following the controversial Bad Guy, Ki-duk Kim's Seom ('The Isle') is a gentler take on the themes of isolation and obsessive love, though it contains some still more violent scenes. Set around a lake where fishermen inhabit floating shacks, it explores the relationship between suicidal newcomer Hyun-Shik and Hee-Jin, the woman who runs the lake's shop and, with her boat, controls access for everyone. Though we see her early on engaged in prostitution and being treated badly, it gradually emerges that Hee-Jin is the most powerful person in the vicinity, and, with the constant rowing she does, physically a match for anyone. This independence disturbs and intrigues Hyun-Shik in equal measures, and what develops is a violent sado-masochistic relationship in which both characters struggle frantically against losing their independence to love.
The urgency of this central relationship is underlined by the fact that Hyun-Shik has a past he doesn't want to talk about and Hee-Jin is apparently mute (though we see her talk on the telephone, suggesting that her lack of verbal communication in the lake environment is willful). Unable to discuss the world beyond the lake, or how they came to be there, these two characters live entirely in the present tense. Their communication is entirely physical. Through mutual self-destruction, they briefly create an island of love within a brutal world, though, ultimately, each is an island alone. The lake itself might be seen as an island, apparently cut off from reality, open to extremes. Threats from the outside are managed in a peremptory fashion, as if Hee-Jin is barely able to countenance their relevance to her world.
Despite the limited dialogue, Seom never drags; events occur with little heed to the passing of time, yet the underlying tension never slackens its grip. The whole thing is beautiful to look at, and the sound matches the quality of the images, evocative and involving. This artistic endeavour is, in turn, balanced by Mr. Kim's dry sense of humour. There's plenty to amuse, but the director's great achievement is to ensure that the audience are never sure whether to laugh or not, adding to the film's disturbing quality and to the intensity of its emotional impact.
Seom is not a film for the masses, and many may find it frustrating or just too unpleasant, but it is a masterpiece of its kind, and it has at its heart a beautiful love story. The ambiguous ending leaves it open to numerous different interpretations, most notably with its conflation of Hee-Jin with the boat-spirits of Korean legend, protectors of mariners. This is a bold, intriguing and complicated film which will linger in your imagination for a long time.
Inevitably, Morgan Spurlock's documentary examination of American popular culture has been compared with Michael Moore's much-hyped Fahrenheit 9/11, which is unfortunate for both of them, since they're very different films with different aims. Curiously, Super Size Me is by far the more effective propaganda piece. Whilst its central attack on the McDonalds food empire may have attracted some political controversy, its anti-obesity message is naturally easy to digest, and raises the notion that perhaps propaganda can sometimes be appropriate. Certainly, the teenagers in the audience with whom I saw this will think twice before ordering their next extra large happy meal. Super Size Me gave them a chance to express horror and disgust at the effects of overeating without needing to worry about being politically correct.
Super Size Me is a rare thing - a piece of deliberate art which communicates effectively to the masses, entertaining and provoking in equal measures. It follows the director's attempt to live on nothing but McDonalds' food (breakfast, lunch and dinner) for thirty days, against the advice of his increasingly anxious doctors. Spurlock is more personable than Moore to begin with, and his personal commitment to his cause (whatever the motivations behind it) easily attracts audience sympathy. Although the film is packed with information, it proceeds at an accessible pace and is full of easy humour. Besides its central story, it covers a range of issues surrounding the obesity epidemic in America, and is refreshingly positive in suggesting solutions, many of them already attempted on a small scale.
Super Size Me is not fashionably cynical (beyond a certain point), nor particularly incisive, but it isn't trying to be. What it does, it does very well. It is bold and to the point, and highly memorable.
Snatched out of Hell as a baby in a stunning opening sequence, Hellboy, raised by a doting professor under the auspices of a paranormal investigations squad, is a six foot five inch bright red demon with a stone hand, a regular government-dispatched vanquisher of evil who loves kittens, files down his horns in an attempt to fit in, and really just wants to be able to go outside and live like everybody else. Although this cinematic adaptation is weakly plotted, with flimsy villains and far too many action cliches, Hellboy holds his head high above the mass of superhero characters thanks to a terrific performance by Ron Perlman. Proving wrong those who claim that comic-inspired movies should be all about special effects, Perlman presents us with a complex individual who is bitter, frustrated, laconic and charming, experienced in certain aspects of the world yet still immature and vulnerable, most at ease in the company of a nine year old child. His hard-done-by avenger is ably supported by Selma Blair, wisely understated as depressed pyrokinetic Liz; her condition limits her onscreen charisma, but clever scripting and subtle acting effectively conveys the history between the two of them.
Unfortunately, the rest of the cast are unable to match these powerful central performances. John Hurt works fairly well as the professor, Doug Jones is passable (albeit often irritating) as aquatic mutant Abe Sapien, and Rupert Evans hasn't much choice but to play his naive secret agent blankly; but there is a lack of substance on the other side, where the story assumes it and depends on it. It's unfortunate to see a character like Grigori Rasputin, who has been played so brilliantly onscreen in the past (by Christopher Lee and Tom Baker in particular), played like wallpaper, pasted on the reputation of the real man. His surgically addicted zombie Nazi sidekick spends too much time tediously swishing blades around and not enough time being genuinely creepy. As for his (bottle) blonde Nazi occult-groupie, she's sufficiently personality-free that she might easily be replaced by Patsy Kensit for an all-singing all-dancing performance of (Stuart's suggestion) Blame it on the Hellboy. These characters are either boring or farcical, never horrific as they ought to be. Some of this rubs off onto their colleagues; we see too much of the same monsters, and some good fight choreography doesn't excuse the repetition. The really big scary monsters are beautifully rendered in accordance with the artwork of those in HP Lovecraft's circles, but they're nothing new.
That said, Hellboy is stunning to look at, its central characters perfect renditions of those in the comics. Some dodgy bits of CGI and wire-work can be more easily tolerated when one is able to delight in the detail of background patterns and images, all immaculately researched from occult traditions real and fictional. Although there are one or two awful bits of dialogue (presumably provided by another writer), the bulk of the script is very well crafted, so we don't get bogged down in exposition. This does a great deal to help the character actors do their thing.
Ultimately, Hellboy is not the great thing which many fans were hoping for, but it's a very promising film; with the right story, it could herald a much better sequel.
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever / Ae fareweel, alas, for ever, the opening lines of the famous poem by Robert Burns, set the tone for this story of a young Muslim man and a young Catholic woman attempting to forge and maintain a relationship in modern Glasgow. Essentially a slight story which we've all encountered before, its strength is in the way it deals not with prejudice but with expectation - the assumption that such a relationship can only survive for so long, and the pressures this puts on all involved. Unfortunately, though all the performances are strong, there's simply not enough chemistry between the leads to make their struggle believable. The script wisely eschews speech-making and direct declarations of love, but fails to provide enough other material to show us why these two people care about each other so much. Endless footage demonstrating their sexual connection doesn't quite cut it, and merely becomes irritating.
It's difficult to assess a new Ken Loach film without comparing it to Sweet Sixteen, and it really would be unfair to expect anyone to produce work of that caliber every time. Loach has insisted that this doesn't mark the final part of a Glasgow trilogy (also including My Name is Joe), noting that he sees them as very different, individual stories; yet he has clearly become steeped in Glaswegian culture, because it's the day to day scenes of shopkeepers, workmen and schoolchildren which give this film its solidity, its believability, and much-needed humour. As ever, the teenagers' performances and the director's awareness of how teenagers behave are spot on. Some of the family scenes in what was always intended as an ensemble piece are similarly affecting, but, in that regard, it's hard not to feel that East is East told the story better, with a more finely balanced approach to the concerns of pro-Western and traditionalist characters. Ahmad Riaz's performance here as the hero's father is comic enough to attract some audience sympathy and affection, yet lacks the strength to persuade us that this man's beliefs are powerful enough to present a real challenge to his willful son. It should not be necessary for us to be told about his tragic experiences during the Partition of India - this is background, yes, and the kind of detail Loach is good at, but it comes across as a substitute for showing us a rounded character. Without a strong enough sense of the concerns of the family, our sympathies remain firmly with the central couple, which restricts the potential of the story.
As the hero, Casim, newcomer Atta Yaqub is likeable and engaging, handling his character's weaknesses well. Eva Birthistle works hard as heroine Roisin; it's just unfortunate that they don't work together. Bizarrely, it's has-been television actor and pantomime star Gerard Kelly who delivers the most charismatic performance in his single scene as a priest, and one can't help but imagine what this film might have been like had it maintained that kind of energy. The dithering and awkwardness and uncertainty in its characters' lives is admirably realistic but does not represent a compelling narrative. Ae Fond Kiss has some excellent moments, but ultimately has nothing in particular to say.
M Night Shyamalan has been cursed by the success of his first two films; everyone now expects him to keep making the same sort of thing, and the critics are unforgiving of his experimental approach, when they don't outright ignore it. The Village is a film with a lot of flaws, but it is, in the end, a brave venture, a character study, not the failed horror story it has been presented as. There's real horror here, but not in the places you might expect; and the so-called 'twist', obvious from the start, was, I believe, never intended to be at the core of the film. The story doesn't rely on it; rather, the story centres on what happens above and beyond it. It is presented as a surprise to the heroine only because, more essentially, she is an innocent.
The notion of an isolated community whose residents keep an uneasy truce with something monstrous in the woods around its borders is not a new one, but it works on the level of a fairy tale, and, in this instance, functions as a metaphor for the monstrous things lurking in the human soul. Despite his interest in the supernatural, Shyamalan is astute enough to realise the greater horror inherent in the death of a seven year old boy from an untreated disease, and in a man watching his daughter go blind for want of medicines. The Village is a story about innocence, and about the evil which can occur because of it. Its only truly innocent character is Noah, a young man whose actions are shaped by his learning disabilities but who is, underneath it, more aware than any of the others. The horror of Noah's experiences lies at the emotional core of the film, despite its apparent focus on other characters and on more acceptable manifestations of love and courage.
Whilst Shyamalan is much vaunted as a creator of creepy films, his greater talent, his ability to direct actors, is generally overlooked. Here he extracts remarkable performances from every member of his cast, but he is most impressive in his direction of disabled characters. Bryce Dallas Howard is superb as the blind heroine Ivy; it's really refreshing to see a blind woman portrayed as competent without this being put at the centre of the story, as if it were an unnatural thing. Every tiny movement of Howard's, from her eyes to her toes, is perfectly judged, absolutely natural, but it is never allowed to dominate her character. As the learning disabled Noah, Adrien Brody deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Again, every little movement works, fitting perfectly with the nature of his disability and simultaneously conveying a lot of important story information without ever being obvious about it. This is a rich and complex character whose self-awareness and resentment of his condition are subtly evoked, and The Village would be well worth watching for this performance alone.
The greatest problem with this film is that it's too long. What would have been much more effective as a forty five minute story has been stretched into something long enough to please the distributors at considerable cost. There's too much padding, detracting from the tension, and certain events are overexplained. Besides this, some of the dialogue is badly put together. There are reasons for its clunkiness at the start, and this is quite cleverly handled, but not all the actors are up to it, with William Hurt, in particular, wooden and awkward. This is relieved somewhat by Shyamalan's handling of comedy moments, cruel yet sensitive, giving us the strong awareness of character priorities which we need to understand the emotional journeys taking place during the rest of the film.
From a technical point of view, this film is marvellous. Costume design and photography recalls the best of Roger Corman's work, but is never inappropriately crude. Vivid lighting techniques contribute a great deal to mood and to the story's examination of different kinds of madness.
If you're looking for a simple horror movie, The Village will probably disappoint. The focus here is on the psychological, and, despite a succession of scary moments, the real horror exists at a moral level. This is an intelligent, literary tale disguised as a popcorn movie, and one can only hope that Shymalan gets away with it, so that he might produce more work of this quality in future.
Purporting to be 'the true story behind the legend', King Arthur is clearly full of shit from the outset. We start by meeting Lancelot, the most obviously fictitious of all these legendary heroes, and by being told that his company are Saurmatian knights relocated by the Roman army, yet we're supposed to believe they're surprised to meet female warriors. Most of what follows involves characters wandering round covered in shit and mud as in the histories of Monty Python; but there's accuracy there in mood if not in narrative. Those looking for a fairy story, a Victorian-style romantic myth, will be disappointed. This is neither a biography nor a fantasy; it is a passable war movie. In that regard, it delivers as well as Gladiator or The Thirteenth Warrior, managing to illustrate strategy without losing touch with the visceral aspects of battle.
King Arthur's real strength is in its casting. Every screen Arthur has been bland, and Clive Owen is nothing amazing, but he's believable as a tired soldier and disillusioned politician, more rounded as a character than most tales leave him, not pushed to the sidelines to showcase Lancelot. As the best friend and sometime rival, Ioan Gruffudd turns in a workmanlike performance, thankfully shorn of excessive nobility and all that foolish swooning over Guinevere, more believable as a human being. Ray Winstone is perfect as Bors, father of a dozen bastard children, more sincerely torn between national loyalties than any of the others. And, surprisingly, Keira Knightley manages a passable Guinevere, though one does wonder where she gets her fancy dresses from in the middle of snow-covered fields.
It's refreshing, here, to see Ancient Britons portrayed realistically in a military context. Woad is used primarily in camouflage, not in the flippant new romantic style of Braveheart. Breasts are bound down, not stuffed into ridiculous corsets. Axes are properly swung. Stephen Dillane's barely present Merlin is properly charismatic and believable as a military strategist accustomed to being the power behind the throne. Throughout the film, Arthur is gently manipulated both by Merlin and by Guinevere, yet the film never directly addresses this; one comes, therefore, to doubt his intellect even whilst admiring his abilities as a leader, and one is left feeling that there's a much more intriguing story waiting to be told.
With both Britons and Romans intelligently presented, it would have been nice to see a deeper investigation of the tactics preferred by the Saxons, who act as this story's bad guys. Stellan Skarsgard is superb as always, and makes a believable Danish leader, a man who commands more through psychology and an astute understanding of tactics than through his skill with the sword; yet the writers seem to have understood the Saxon rank and file rather less well, and have them behaving in ways which seem out of keeping with their particular military tradition. Continually outmanouvered, the Saxons risk becoming comedy villains, which in turn undermines the confidence one is able to place in a man who should be an inspiring hero.
King Arthur is, overall, not nearly as bad as the critical reaction might suggest; but it doesn't live up to its own boasts, and it could try harder.
Opening with a perfectly judged title sequence showing 'fifties visions of happy housewives in futuristic homes, this updated version of the 1975 classic features some superb design work and glorious camp, but is ultimately too artificial for its own good. The usually reliable Nicole Kidman is woefully miscast as Joanna, Stepford's newest resident, who comes to suspect that the perfect bimbo homemakers who make up the rest of the female population are in fact robots. Whilst she's physically well suited to the part, able to look masculine, feminine or mechanical according to the demands of the plot, she's never warm and human enough to make us care, and the vital chemistry between her character and husband Walter (Matthew Broderick) is entirely absent. This inadvertently says more about modern sexual politics than the cheesily reconstructed story has a hope of doing.
In this twenty first century Stepford world, there are no natural housewives; we are invited to be horrified on behalf of the women there because they were all previously high-powered executives. This is offered as part-justification for their husbands' actions, undermining Ira Levin's original comments on human nature, and it seems to suggest that the naturally compliant are deserving of no pity at all. Just to make sure we know where we stand, the film opens with an awful prologue about Joanna's days as a network television executive, with digs at reality TV and cheap battle-of-the-sexes extertainment which are just too badly put together to provide satisfying parody. Opportunities for wit are squandered, signalling early on that this is all about camp and has nothing real to say. The original's careful balance between cheesiness and creepiness is lost. It is worth enduring these early scenes, however, because much of the later camp is very well handled, and there's quite a bit of unexpected humour.
The other big change to the main part of the story comes with the introduction of a gay couple, with Roger Bart conveniently filling the disposable best friend role. This enables the film to deal with gay politics and gender issues too, albeit only on the shallowest level. Once again, one has the feeling that something incisive could have been done with this, but the chance is wasted. Nevertheless, Bart brings a touch of much-needed warmth, and works well alongside Bette Midler as the unruly writer Bobbie.
The Stepford Wives is one of those rare films which uses cinematic and literary reference well, building in lots of little jokes which contribute to the atmosphere without interrupting the story. So much good work has been put into this that it seems an even greater shame - albeit a predictable one - that it hasn't had the guts to stay true to its own origins. The shot which ended the original retains its power, but a secondary ending, tacky, sentimental and disappointingly low on violence, has been added.
If there is one reason remaining to go and see this film,
it's Glenn Close. The finest pantomime villain working in Hollywood, she
gives a performance of such ferocious magnitude that it fairly blows her
co-stars - even Christopher Walken - offscreen. She is the only possible
justification for the final scenes; to see her crawling across the
floor like the Terminator in a big yellow dress makes it all worthwhile.
This is political science fiction reduced to trash, but if one is going to
do trash, one should at least do it well.
Gozu, crudely translated as 'cow-head', is ostensibly a film about one gangster searching for another (whom he may betray, or may be in love with) in the outskirts of Nagoya; it comes across like a Japanese version of Performance, with all that studied oddity, sexual mutability, and narrative uncertainty. Takashi Miike has made a name for himself as one of the most innovative directors in modern Japan, and here he sometimes takes on more than he can handle, letting ideas smother story and character, but it's an absorbing experiment. Opening with the line "Everything I am about to tell you is a joke," the film unfolds with the structural complexity Takashi explored in Audition, the audience never certain what is 'real' and what is hallucination. The borderland between these two states is itself important as the story connects with Japanese spiritualist traditions. We meet supposed mediums, women in fox-fur stoles, and a bizarre demi-god, yet the character of the film remains starkly modern. There is an intense emphasis on the sexual, especially on the interplay between imported Western taboos and the traditional (but now largely suppressed) explicit sexual celebrations of the spring fertility festivals. Boldly, Takashi has sidelined phallic imagery to concentrate on various aspects of feminine reproductive sexuality, especially lactation. From this he derives much of his trademark crude humour, but the female characters are never diminished by it. His unrelenting camera draws viewers in to the complex psychology of his virginal hero, at once attracted and repelled by the possibilities inherent in sexual contact, waiting for the remorseless supernatural to liberate him from his mundanely violent life.
In developing this story, Takashi draws on performances from a host of his regular actors, all of whom turn in solid performances and contribute to background humour; but it is only really Hideki Sone, as the younf hero Minami, who really succeeds in engaging the audience. A certain necessary coldness elsewhere means that the early stages of the film drag, and it's an hour or so before the story really begins to grip. This is unfortunate, especially considering the warm, appealing characterisation which contributed so much to the director's earlier work. It is compounded by the heavy use of cliched images, especially in the film's closing scenes, though, to be fair, some of these have been borrowed from the art world rather than film. There's a reason for all of them - this is a heavily referential film, but every reference is substantiated by a joke, often at the expense of other surrealist directors like David Lynch (watch out for the red beans) - however, audience members unable to access this erudite humour may reasonably become frustrated. Some will find the visceral intensity of the film simply too much - more than one person walked out of the showing I attended - though others will enjoy the gore for its own sake. Though many of the visuals are grotesque or simply drab, they are all exquisitely composed, with real attention to detail. Likewise, there is a lot of hidden detail in the script - Gozu demands a lot of attention throughout, which is unfortunate, because it's not always very good at holding it.
Gozu is by no means on a par with Takashi Miike's best work, yet it deserves some credit for demonstrating that this is a director determined to keep exploring new things rather than playing it safe. It is very far from being a safe film, and is a brave attempt to reconcile some of modern Japan's sexual neuroses, but those who go to see it will need to be brave too.
From the inspired animation of its opening sequence to the perfect colour-matching of its action scenes, Thunderbirds is a technically brilliant film, clearly a labour of love, and a great credit to director Jonathan Frakes. Though it has a simple story, somewhat blank acting and awkwardly choreographed fights, its every flaw corresponds perfectly with the make-up of the original series; it has dared to imitate faithfully rather than to modernise or to attempt improvement. As such, it is bound to appeal to fans of the show. What is impressive is that it also provides at least passable entertainment for casual cinema goers; and it is one of those rare films which features child stars and engages children in the audience without thoroughly irritating adults. The token geeky kid is annoying, sure, but he's easy enough to ignore as the story bounces along, and there's always plenty to see.
This big-screen adventure focuses on the experiences of the youngest Tracy brother, Alan, kept out of the team because he's still at school and because his father seems reluctant to let the last of his little boys grow up (slightly confusing behaviour, perhaps, from a man who encourages his older sons to risk their lives on a daily basis). Alan gets his chance to be a hero only when Tracy Island itself is threatened by the evil schemes of Ben Kingsley's mind-controlling madman The Hood. Appropriately, the height of this character's ambition is to rob banks. Equally appropriately, the female characters in the story get very little to do, though Sophia Myles still makes quite an impression as Lady Penelope, and we never really have to question why she's there. Bill Paxton is a suitably wooden Jeff Tracy, and the other Thunderbirds are all adequate. Where the movie comes into its own, of course, is in the action sequences, with scenes of the great machines emerging from Tracy Island perfectly judged to be both accurate and believable. Something approaching tension is achieved in the rescue sequences, and the atmosphere of the original is all there. Overall, this is an impressive effort; it seems unlikely to break any box-office records, but artistically it's done what it set out to do.
Spider-man, Spider-man, does whatever a spider can! Sits on his web all day and all night, just thinking about getting into a fight...
There is very little in this account of the return of the webbed wonder which is not well scripted, well acted and well directed, but it needs a good forty minutes of footage cut out of it to make it worth watching all the way through. In the absence of that, I suggest that you do what the opening titles hint at and take along a comic to read. It really is extraordinary how dull a film Raimi and his team have managed to create around a man with spider-powers fighting a man with giant mechanical octopus arms. When the fights happen, they really do deliver, but the angst in between will have you reaching for the bug spray.
Spider-man 2's problems are two-fold. Firstly, it is a transitional film, weighed down by excess plot as it sets things up for future installments in the series (with the Green Goblin junior and Venom); it's simply not strong enough as an individual story to stand up under this burden. Secondly, it is aiming to take us through some important changes in Peter Parker's life which simply aren't as engaging as those in the first movie. It was one thing to be along for the ride as our hero first learned to use his arachnid powers (and most viewers can sympathise with the agonies of adolescence); it's quite another to watch him try to come to terms with his moral burden through agonies of repetition and the recounting of events we're quite familiar with (and viwers are less keen to share the frustrations of erectile dysfunction). Poor Tobey MaGuire works really hard with the material he's been given, but there's just too much of it, and it's hard to keep caring. As a result, the characters who prove most engaging are those with the least screen time - Alfred Molina's superb Dr. Otto Octavius, and (surprisingly) James Franco's increasingly embittered Harry Osborn. There's also a delicious cameo from Willem Dafoe, reminding us of what this story has to live up to.
What everybody really wants to know about, of course, is the FX. These are much more impressive than in the first film, with only a few badly CGI'd swinging and throwing shots; the fights themselves are cleverly choreographed and Doc Ock's arms work surprisingly well. It's simple enough to overlook the impossibility of engineering them into the body that way when one considers the ludicrous physics one is obliged to overlook in order to accept the madman's plan to create a small fusion-sun in lower Manhattan. This is comic-book territory, after all. Many of the action sequences here are old classics - the bank robbery, the runaway train, the carrying-off of the damsel in distress - but they're enthusiastically rendered and we get more of a sense of Spiderman being in peril than we did the first time around. Although the finale is extremely silly and wastes some good opportunities, it's also a lot of fun. It's just unfortunate that's it's followed by so many unnecessarily-extended sentimental scenes telling us what we already knew.
This is a spider without much bite, but it seems to be an indicator of better things to come.
Fairy tale plots were invented before the money-making potential of sequels was well understood, and recounting the after part of happily ever after is no easy task. Shrek 2 actually does a fairly good job of it, with a well-constructed story which manages to provide romantic tension despite the fact the central characters have already fallen in love and married. The new characters are, for the most part, well-judged; Julie Andrews and John Cleese wisely tone down their familiar styles as Princess Fiona's parents; Rupert Everett is convincing as the somewhat wooden Prince Charming; and, though Jennifer Saunders' hamminess seems aimed strictly at US accent-groupies, her Fairy Godmother still has a certain charm, being one part Corleone. As the dashing assassin Puss in Boots, Antonio Banderas is perfectly cast, and there is not one moment of his performance which is not worth watching.
Despite all this, Shrek 2 is not remotely as satisfying as its predecessor. It's not that the original characters have lost their charm, but rather that the script relies too much on our eagerness to see them no matter how tediously they might be behaving. Scenes of family drama are well crafted and surprisingly engaging, even pleasing the younger members of the audience who probably miss much of their humour, but too much of the film divides itself into jokes for adults and jokes for kids, as if its makers have forgotten how to interest both at once. This is mirrored by the music. Nick Cave and Tom Waits work surprisingly well in the sleazy bar scenes, but much of the music seems aimed exclusively at nine year olds, and the final song is utterly out of place. There's also a lack of resolution with regard to the first film's secondary relationship. Although it's clear that the Dragon must have been involved in this story, we never see her; this is uncomfortably at odds with the fairytale structure yet seems to have no narrative purpose.
Many critics have enthused about the animation in this film, but one suspects they're simply saying what they think they should say. Though there are no noticeable glitches, and some of the work has improved since last time, this doesn't feel like cutting edge stuff the way the first film did. Parts of it have become gimmicky, like the film's use of reference, which is sometimes fun but is, in general, overblown; it's relying too heavily on borrowed jokes. It has become too self-conscious.
One of only three documentaries admitted at Cannes in fifty years, and winner of the Palm d'Or, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is one of the hottest films this year. So hot, in fact, that it nearly didn't come out at all, with Miramax owners Disney threatening to prevent its distribution, an action which Moore ascribed to political conspiracy and which others noted made a nice pile of money for the parent company when it finally sold its controversial property. Fahrenheit 9/11 is all about politics and money and never makes any scret of its left wing agenda. Many people will go to see it simply for this reason. It was always going to be a big statement. The curious thing is that it's also a good film in its own right.
The difference between this film and other documentaries on the War Against Terror is summed up by its coverage of the events of the 11th of September 2001 themselves. These are played out against a black screen; we've all already seen the pictures; all we have here is the soundtrack of screaming, frightened, confused people, which hits a lot harder as a result. Later footage concentrates on human reactions rather than on the event itself. As in Bowling for Columbine, Moore's focus is on the climate of fear experienced by Americans in the aftermath of violence, but this is a much more mature piece of film-making. Most of the snide remarks and ridiculing of public naivete are gone. Moore seems to have come to terms with the fact that people can disagree with him and still be worthy of sympathy, and this enables him to feature some much more powerful interviews, including that at the emotional heart of the film, with a woman whose lifelong commitment to her country right or wrong is shaken by her personal encounter with the ugliness of war.
As a persuasive argument, this film still leaves something to be desired. Moore retains his tendency to simply not mention factors which run against his argument (am I wrong in remembering the UK and Spain being part of the Coalition of the Willing?), making it easy for opponents to cut him down. Footage intended to highlight the ineffectiveness of countries like Iceland and Morocco may provide some light relief, but is still unpleasantly close to racism. For an international audience, the number of reaction shots and follow-up comments jars, though this is unlikely to be an issue for audiences used to the more personal style of the US media. International audiences will also be more familiar with much of the archive footage on display, some of which has been suppressed by the US media. Though there's still nothing here more horrific than the recent pictures of torture victims shown at primetime across the 'States, people may find that images of American corpses upset them in a different way, and likewise the images of Iraqi children injured in the conflict. Visuals like this, running alongside Moore's well-documented collection of links between US government officials, arms and oil companies, and the Saudi Arabian regime. may well win over some of those who previously disagreed with him. It's unfortunate that these are supported by clips of George W Bush behaving like an imbecile which, frankly, might be easy enough to compile about anyone on their off days, and which contribute little to the political debate.
The idea of going to see a political documentary will in itself be off-putting to many viewers; controversy aside, does it sound like a fun night out? In this regard, Fahrenheit 9/11 actually works very well. It balances intensive lists of facts and figures with largely visual sequences, carefully chosen music and some touching human moments. Despite the weight of its subject matter, the film has plenty of energy and retains a sense of humour. For once, Moore manages not to let his personal sense of outrage overshadow the varied opinions expressed by his interview subjects; the film is at its strongest when these interviews, and the archive footage, are telling their own story. Astute pacing means that the film grips most of the way through. Though in some ways it's frustrating to see closely related issues ignored, this was an awful lot to take on, and it's clearly had to be fiercely edited to get it down to a palatable size. This is an impressive example of how to make the documentary film work both as a political tool and as a piece of cinema. Make sure you see it while you can.
In 1924, somewhere in the region of twenty four guests set out along the California coast on a yacht owned and captained by the aging press tycoon William Randolph Hearst, the intention being to party in celebration of film producer Tom Ince's birthday. They included actors and writers, gossip columnists, directors and studio magnates. At some point during the voyage, a man was shot dead. Though the death was reported, the matter was never fully investigated, and no-one was ever arrested for his murder. This film takes what it can from the evidence and popular rumour, and tells a story about what might have befallen him. Along the way, it has just as much to say about celebrity, wealth, and California: "a land just off the coast of the planet Earth."
This is a film which centres on character, more than on mystery or even drama, though there's plenty of that. Joanna Lumley is a superb choice as the narrator, distant and cynical yet believably concerned about the fate of those around her as she recounts her experiences and theories about the voyage. Edward Herrman turns in a remarkably sympathetic portrayal of Hearst which the real man would undoubtedly have hated. Here he is as his empire begins to fade, a man increasingly aware of his vulnerabilities, and, despite all the glamour, a man who has come to value some things more than money. Kirsten Dunst demonstrates her versatility as the gorgeous, provocative, but very human Marion Davis, silent movie starlet and mistress of Hearst, a woman who loves him but can't seem to convince him of that. And Eddie Izzard is remarkably convincing as Charlie Chaplin, despite his physical dissimilarity; he does a fine job of capturing Chaplin's personality as described by many of his contemporaries. Taking little time to recover from the scandal surrounding the pregnancy of his sixteen year old leading lady, Chaplin has his heart set on seducing Marion. What begins as a rebellious gesture, justified by his struggle to escape from poverty in contrast to Hearst's riches, becomes an increasingly emotional obsession. But Marion is no flimsy, giddy Daisy Fae. The film's strength is that it portrays her throughout as a real, complicated person, a person who is determined that her fate will not be set out for her by the passions she arouses in others. This is an adult, sophisticated love story, examining her passions for two very capable and sometimes ruthless men.
The supporting cast, especially Claudia Harrison as Tom's mistress and Jennifer Tilly as the columnist Lolly Parsons (at last, a role well suited to her particular talents) are all excellent. As the troubled Tom, Cary Elwes finally gets a part he can really make something of. The script, also, is first class, full of dry wit yet never resorting to cynicism at the expense of emotional development. Beautifully paced and choreographed, the action is complemented by superb lighting work, making the most of the stunning sets and costumes. Throughout, this is a fascinating piece of work.
Anna, a woman looking for a psychiatrist, stumbles into the office of a tax lawyer by mistake and pours out her heart to him before he realises what's happening. After her second visit, she discovers the truth, but their meetings continue. This fascinating idea is still more interestingly played because the story skirts around the edges of familiar thriller territory and dares to concentrate on interpersonal drama instead. Unfortunately, there simply isn't enough story to support nearly two hours of film. What might have been an oil painting really suffers from being watered down; it's lumpy and uneven and faded.
Confidences trop Intimes is the sort of film which really depends on strong performances. It has a few here, most notably from Fabrice Luchini, whose superbly understated turn as the staid and vulnerable but far from stupid lawyer at times transcends the thin script. He is able supported by Hélène Surgère as his cynical secretary and Anne Brochet as his ex; and Michel Duchaussoy provides a finely judged comic performance as the real psychiatrist, to whom our hero turns for advice. However, this kind of film relies on having a remarkable heroine, and Sandrine Bonnaire simply isn't up to the job. Her flighty, tearful Anna is the same from start to finish - urgent emotions flit across her face, but there is no sign of any substantial change, no sign of character development. Most importantly, there is no sign of her having developed any significant interest in the hero, though the script implies this. She is a blank wall against which fellow cast members hurl their best work in vain. Being beautiful is not enough for a part like this, and director Patrice Leconte, who made such a powerful impression in the past with the likes of Ridicule and Monsieur Hire, really ought to know that by now. As it is, the whole story becomes skewed by this imbalance. It's easy to see why a quiet, lonely man might fall head over heels for a mysterious and emotional woman, but harder to believe that this is, on any level, a good idea, or that it could possibly lead to a lasting happy ending. The moral of the story seems to be that chance meetings can lead to conversations which lead people to change their familiar ways and pursue courses leading to true happiness - it's just hard to see how these particular people might expect to do that together.
This central story is vaguely paralleled by a subplot in which we see the lawyer's ex embark on a new relationship, a situation which seems potentially more interesting, but which is underexplored. We are also confronted by the strangely uncertain spectacle of Anna's disintegrating marriage, centered around sexual perversions which the scriptwriters seem neither to understand nor to know what to do with. Too much of the story seems like filler, calculated to produce particular audience reactions rather than flowing naturally from the greater narrative. There are some successful attempts at humour, and one or two moments which are genuinely alarming, but these don't seem to go anywhere. Overall, the impression is of a film which doesn't really know what it wants to be.
We first see him in his office, trying to concentrate on work, trying to interact politely with the former lover whose heart he's just broken. We first truly see her on a stage, dolled up in sequins, crooning love songs and throwing roses into the crowd. This is a story about blackmail and murder, about manipulation and broken lives. It's classic film noir; except that, being the work of Pedro Almodóvar, much of it is shot in lurid colour, not all the girls are really girls, and not all the boys are what they claim to be, either.
Following the mainstream success of Hable con Ella, Almodóvar received a great deal of critical praise, and it's curious to see how quickly most of those critics have forsaken him now that he's gone back to making the sort of film with which he made his name. La Mala Educación has been called crude and vulgar, garish and distasteful - yet these are all qualities which the director makes vital use of in order to tell his tale. Of course, at times, he is trying to shock - that's because there are stories here which should shock us, but which, in a more sedate film, we might find it easier to maintain emotional distance from. And yes, his story centres around transsexual prostitutes and hustlers, but these are people who exist in the real world, with real problems, and Almodovar has always been a champion in telling their tales. It would seem that this particular tale offends many people because, in recounting the effects of corruption, it presents characters who have been corrupted, who are not the perfect innocent victims whom we have come to idolise in modern western culture. Furthermore, the villains here are not wholly and simply villainous - though the heinousness of their crimes is not minimised, we see their perspectives, their self-justifications, and something of their motivations.
As with most film noir, this tale set against the background of a love story; in this case, a love which developed between two ten year old boys, the rebellious Enrique and the angelic choirboy Ignacio, during their school days; though they don't make contact again for nearly two decades, Ignacio never forgets his passion, and Enrique, though curiously passionless himself, remains vulnerable to it. The separation of the boys follows the intervention of a paedophile priest, Father Manolo, who believes himself to be in love with Ignacio and tricks the boy into the first of the series of acts of prostitution which will come to define and destroy his life. The adult Enrique's sympathy for acts of revenge against this priest permits him to be drawn into a scheme and a relationship which threaten to destroy him.
It's difficult to say much more about the plot of this film without giving away too many of its twists and turns. What's really interesting is the way that Almodóvar keeps his complex characters consistent across all this shifting ground; how long it takes for us to get to know them, and then to start wondering who they are. David Lynch broke the mold of modern film noir by casting Naomi Watts in the traditionally male role in Mulholland Drive, and Almodóvar has done something similar here with the creation of a male femme fatale as devious, alluring and dangerously charismatic as any to have graced the silver screen before. The education which he provides to Enrique is far more potent than any delivered at school, and one is given cause to wonder about the strange factors which shaped his own.
La Mala Educación is a bold, challenging piece of film-making with a great deal to say about identity, obsession, and the forces which shape our lives. Like its characters, it is much more sophisticated than it might seem on the surface, and is undoubtedly deserving of a wider audience than it's likely to get.
Over the course of eight days, the effects of global warming come together to create a storm which plunges the planet Earth into a new Ice Age. Its politics may be well-intentioned, its science is abominable, its grasp of political realities all the more so, but if it is accepted as a science fantasy adventure rather than a serious piece of speculative fiction, this film stands up surprisingly well. It is far more than the string of effects-heavy set pieces which anyone might have expected. It's well cast, well edited and intelligently storyboarded; it's not nearly as slow as the average disaster movie; and there's a vein of humour running throughout which makes it easier to forgive its various inconsistencies.
The film opens with the camera panning across an Antarctic landscape rendered in painfully bad CGI, set against a painted sky which recalls the end of The Terminator. We are introduced to three allegedly seasoned scientists who seem to have no idea how to make practical use of their equipment, let alone how to respond to dangerous situations; yet we know that at least one of them is going to make it, because he's played by Dennis Quaid. What the producers seem to have looked for in Quaid is a standard gruff masculine hero, forging bravely (and exploitatively) onward against all the odds, but what they've got is a little more complicated. Now that he's finally getting the chance to play men his own age, Quaid is proving to be a capable character actor, and, though the script permits him little room to manouver, he nevertheless manages to bring some depth to his role, especially in his scenes opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays his son, the film's secondary hero Sam. Unfortunately, the usually reliable Gyllenhaal fails to make a similar effort, and largely sleepwalks through the story, though he certainly handles it better than most US actors of his generation would have done. These two are supported by a solid, if unspectacular, supporting cast. It's interesting that, in a disaster movie which might more usually have focused on the physical, our teenaged heroes are a bunch of geeks for whom knowledge proves at least as important as muscular ability, even if the heroine still manages to do something really stupid apparently just as a plot device. One or two characters are developed and then dropped; similarly, an empty Russian ship drifts into flooded New York with no explanation provided as to what happened to its crew; and the impression is given that several further bits of story have been crudely excised; but by and large the film gets away with this. It is refreshing in that it does not linger overmuch on sentimental connections, nor on reminding us of what we already know.
Whilst some of the disaster scenes in this film are as poor as those opening credits, others work very well, and there are lots of them, well paced and all consistent with the film's internal logic. The tornadoes in Los Angeles are lots of fun, and aerial views enliven the tidal wave destruction of New York. Particularly entertaining are the snippets of Fox News broadcasts; clearly the channel got a good promotional deal with the filmmakers, yet they're not afraid to parody and ridicule its reporters with gleeful slapstick and black humour. This satisfying violence inclines the viewer to be more patient with periods of exposition, which are mercifully few, and which contain some similar jokes at the expense of US politicians, though here the subtler ones are the best.
One or two of the action sequences in The Day After Tomorrow are silly beyond the possibility of redemption. The scene with helicopters freezing over Scotland, made all the more ludicrous by its use of plummy fake English accents, breaks so many fundamental natural laws that it's hard for anyone to watch it without laughing. The later scene with the wolves is completely pointless, unless we accept it on a purely metaphorical level, with the canines symbolising the terrors of a past age and mankind's eternal struggle against the forces of nature, but this just makes it funnier, and it's hard to be the least bit scared. Such scenes rudely interrupt attempts at building tension and developing characters, reminding us not to take anything seriously. They play rather oddly against character deaths and meditations on the fate of the human race. This philosophising is itself awkward as no apparent thought is given to the long term consequences of large-scale migration and population pressure. The focus is on getting our heroes safely south, where, we are told, those angelic third world types have offered everyone support. Aye, for a few weeks maybe, until supplies run short and they realise these strangers might take their jobs. Then people will be wishing they'd held out in the north and lived an easy life with all that frozen food.
The Day After Tomorrow is by no means a great movie, but, as a representative of its genre, it's not at all bad, and it can provide a passable evening's entertainment.
Do you like action? Do you like explosions? Do you like battles between famous monsters? Do you like heroes with big weapons and heroines with improbable corsetry? If so, you'll probably still think that Van Helsing is a pile of shite, but you might enjoy it a great deal. Director Stephen Sommers herein lets rip with all the tricks he learned making The Mummy. The trouble is that he doesn't do much else.
As a rollercoaster ride through one action sequence after another, Van Helsing gets by fairly well. Most of the scenes are well choreographed, and the intercutting of events works well for the first two thirds of the film, only gradually unravelling as the strands of the plot themselves come apart. This plot is never terribly coherent, but, arguably, it doesn't need to be - this is an admittedly cheesy piece of Universal-style monster movie making. We know Van Helsing is the hero as much because of his name as anything else, though he bears little resemblance to any previous incarnation of the character; similarly, we know that Count Dracula is bad; and the rest of the story, incorporating Frankenstein and the Wolf Man, is fairly straightforward, sticking closely enough to accepted cliches to avoid any obligation toward realism. Where the film-makers have screwed up is in failing to understand that what applies to plot cannot also be applied to script. Careless dialogue is not the same as playfully bad dialogue. What results is incoherent and irritating, unnecessarily weak. It would be much easier to care about the characters if one could believe that those who created them did.
As the Indiana Jones style hero, bizarrely ignorant of Latin, Hugh Jackman forsakes all his acting credentials and turns in a performance which is almost entirely personality-free. There seems little reason for this man to exist other than to function as a cypher and to carry the heavy weapons. Amongst these are one or two innovative instruments, entertaining to watch, ostensibly designed by nervous friar Carl (David Wenham, who acquits himself surprisingly well, bringing a soul to his comedy sidekick). Kate Beckinsale is adequate as heroine Anna, though, like Jackman, she seems to have been cast principally because of the jokes which could then be made regarding her previous work. As a woman who has to face losing her brother and devoting her life to a family bloodfeud, she's remarkably shallow, but that's mostly the fault of the writers. Opportunities to explore the psychological effects of Van Helsing's amnesia and moral discomfort with his work are likewise squandered. As in so many stories, the humanity of this piece must be carried entirely by Frankenstein's monster, ably played by Shuler Hensley, who manages, through his layers of make-up and prosthetics, to put across more personality than anybody else. Dracula, meanwhile, is more palatable than many of his incarnations (mercifully, he doesn't try too hard to be scary or sexy), but his overplayed coldness robs us of the chance to get close to the moral ambiguities at the heart of the story.
It might seem unfair to approach a film like Van Helsing from a literary or moral perspective, but the fact is that this is a film steeped in literary references and it is a film which largely centres on religion, making some very bold (and blasphemous?) claims indeed prior to its ultra-tacky Return of the Jedi ending. Its opening vignette is promising, wisely presented in black and white, making its classic genre and Rocky Horror references without losing its integral pathos or its humour; unfortunately we then cut to scenes in Notre Dame which, whilst they provide an amusing commentary on the recent travesty that was LXG, are full of failings of their own. Finally we meet a Mr. Hyde as Scottish as Stephenson intended; but did he have to be a comedy Scot? He's cartoonish where he should be scary, and something is lost. We never get a real sense of the danger which our hero is in. This mistake is repeated throughout the film. What could have been grand and spectacular is all too self-consciously ironic. There are a number of good ideas just visible, but they seem to have been edited to death. Where the film needed vision, there is only polite compromise. It's a refreshing moment when Anna reproaches one of Dracula's brides for her giddy American villainess crowing with the remark "When you want to kill somebody, kill them;" a pity the same approach was not taken to the story at large.
Set during the Great Depression of 1933, this potent new offering from Guy Maddin (who famously directed Dracula as ballet) sees beer magnate Lady Port-Huntly summoning musicians from all over the world to Winnipeg to take part in a contest aimed at finding the saddest music in the world. Pairing a study of those who profited from the suffering of others with an examination of personal exploitation, suffering and despair, this is a film with lots of big things to say; yet despite its obsession with melancholy, it's surprisingly funny. It's filmed almost entirely in grainy 'black and white', sometimes blue tinted, sometimes sepia tinted, to give an impression of period and to suit the type of story it's trying to tell, yet there are bursts of colour from time to time when we come into closer contact with the real world, moving away from characters' fantasies about themselves and their actions. Several scenes are carefully staged to mimic classic work from early movies - the girl on the swing, the scientist smashing up his laboratory, the half-mad chellist sawing away at his instrument. There's a great sense of affection for early film traditions, and this contributes to the affection which we are able to feel for a bunch of complicated, not entirely likeable characters.
For years, Fyodor has been in love with Lady Port-Huntly, but he has unfortunately alienated her from him, since he drunkenly sawed off both her legs following a car accident. To complicate the situation further, she has long been in love with his son, failed Broadway impresario Chester, though she sensibly distrusts him. Chester, on whom the film centres, denies his capacity to feel any emotion for anybody. He is conducting an affair with the mysterious Serbian Narcissa, a self-proclaimed nymphomaniac, who is also an object of obsession for his brother, Roderick. The latter is continually in mourning for his dead son, whose heart he carries around in a jar, where it is allegedly preserved by his own tears. Despite their Canadian origins, these brothers identify, respectively, with America and with Serbia, which countries they represent in the contest. Chester's determination to buoy up sorrow with glamour and pizazz, and his tactic of absorbing anyone available into his melting-pot of creative talent, forms a strong contest to Roderick's sullen determination to go it alone, his music echoing guilt for nine million deaths during the Great War. At the very start, Chester is warned by a fortune teller that unless he acknowledges his own potential for sorrow his life will be a short one. Thereafter, the story unfolds like a fable, with everyone doomed to get exactly what sie deserves.
In undertaking a project like this, it is essential to have the very best technical people on board, and The Saddest Music in the World is a triumph in this regard. It features some of the finest orchestration to grace the cinema for years, courtesy of composer Christopher Dedrick and the Canadian Film Orchestra. The variety of music is considerable, as assorted teams of different nationalities are pitted against one another to great comic effect; it has simultaneously to underline the shifting moods within the narrative. Complementing this music perfectly are a range of beautifully realised costumes evoking both the period and the cultural variety of competition entrants. Luc Montpellier's ingenious photography, recreating Winnipeg as a magical land of dazzling dancehalls and ever-falling snow, makes the film a visual delight.
The Saddest Music in the World may not, with its adventurous design, be a movie with mainstream appeal, but many viewers may find it more entertaining than they expect. Based on an original screenplay by Booker Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, it is taut, witty, and energetic. Despite being old-fashioned, it's as gleefully vulgar as anyone who has much studied the Depression would expect, yet it is also elegant and ambitious. One rarely sees any film as competently made, so it's all the more impressive that this manages to present a satisfying story besides. Highly recommended.
The story of Billy Bongo, a young man who changes his name in the hope of becoming a magician but whose destiny is dominated by his outsize ears, makes for a remarkably clever short 'documentary' film from director Brian Kelly. When Billy announces his desire to compete in the World Ear-Pulling Championships in Alaska, his local community get behind him like never before, campaigning hard to raise funds, talking continually about what a joker the young man is. The many interview scenes are perfectly judged, revealing without ever being unrealistic, and it is remarkable how wide a range of anecdotes can be supplied without showing any real insight into Billy's character whatsoever. This - the years of frustration and rage which he must have endured, and the steely patience he has developed as a result - are only hinted at as the would-be magician prepares to pull off the biggest trick of his life.
Films of this sort can easily try the patience. The shallowness of most of the characters and the tweeness of their exciteable television appearances are difficult to present honestly without alienating or boring the viewer, but Kelly pulls it off to superb effect. This is essentially a one-joke film, but the joke isn't what it appears to be, and it's beautifully played all the way to the end.
The tightly-filmed tale of a man who creates a dummy version of himself "using the finest Japanese plastics" to take over his daily concerns, this is everything one would expect from a Susan Sontag adaptation: smart, smug, and almost insufferably twee. Director Heidi Bartlett has captured the tone of the original short story perfectly, and the short film format works very much to her advantage, so that nothing is drawn out more than necessary. Nevertheless, a tale like this, which relies on elements of predictability, can try the patience. It contains some superb physical acting from the unrelated performers playing the hero and his clones; much of this will appeal to fans of the Mr. Bean school of comedy, though the slapstick is less pronounced. Interestingly, this movie has been a big hit in Japan.
A bold and precocious little film which makes no use of dialogue whatsoever, Storage is Stephen Nex's attempt to explore the subject of repressed memories through the dreamlike metaphor of a woman walking through fields to break into an underground bunker and search its various rooms. The woman's clothing could be pyjamas or prison garb, and the sense that her search is a dangerous one is enhanced by the suggestion that someone is watching, perhaps through a car window or perhaps from behind the camera itself. These innovative touches work in combination with inventive camerawork, though the director doesn't always manage to pull it off. Whilst he is successful in demonstrating the character's sense of confusion, this comes dangerously close to seeming ridiculous in places where it ought to be gripping and disturbing.
Despite its boldness, this film is let down by heavy handed plotting. Nex could hardly have approached the subject from a more cliched perspective, and this limits the viewer's ability to relate to the heroine as an individual. The ending, where we take a longer look at a book merely glimpsed earlier on, is particularly crude, and seems to represent an unfortunate climbdown from the decision to avoid direct narrative. Nex has taken a brave step in allowing the story to end without every memory being confronted. The possibility that his protagonist may have to repeat her endeavours intensifies the emotional value of her moments spent experiencing a different aspect of the world. The devices which he uses to do this, however, are little short of tacky. Storage is a hit and miss endeavour; hopefully we'll see Nex create something better in the future.
Just ten minutes long, but packed with powerful imagery, Angela Murray's film adaptation of the Saki short story lingers in the imagination indefinitely. It tells the tale of Conradin, a young boy dying of a mysterious illness, who lives in the care of his aunt. Murray's version extends the original story to include the death of the boy's parents, living abroad, from the same illness, and there's an implication that she might be poisoning him, at least sufficient to suggest that he suspects it and to add to his motivation. "You are blessed by your illness because you can praise God with your gracious acceptance." the aunt advises the boy, but his own reaction to his situation is different, and he spurns her devout Anabaptism for a strange religion of his own creation centered on the creature he keeps in a locked hutch in the garden shed. "Sredni Vashtar went forth. His thoughts were red and his teeth were white. His enemies asked for peace but he brought them death. Sredni Vashtar the beautiful." Illustrated with Indian shadow puppetry, black against a crimson background in stark contrast to the bleak hues of the live action sequences, this mantra is repeated to chilling effect, and it's easy to see how powerful the god has become in the boy's imagination.
Despite its shortness, Sredni Vashtar offers insight into a number of issues, some of them rarely tackled in this medium. Most affecting is its illustration of the distance between the two central characters, centered on the failure of the aunt to comprehend the boy's emotional reaction to his situation. Although her life is focused on him, she is quite unaware of the ferocity of his will to live and of the changes which the proximity of death have worked upon his moral compass. Her fatal mistake is to dehumanise him, thereby losing sight of his human potential. This misunderstanding is naturally heightened by religious differences between the pair. Murray shows Conradin wrapping himself in an Indian shawl and implies that religious encounters on the subcontinent might have influenced what he has created for himself. He is at home in the squalid environment of the shed, where he shows a reverence for nature, perhaps enhanced by his awareness of his own mortality, which is completely absent from the orderly house his aunt keeps.
The power of this film rests on perfect performances by Fergus Nimmo as the boy and Sian Thomas as the aunt. No sentimentalism is allowed to enter into them, yet both demonstrate a complexity which goes far beyond what their few lines can express. The costumes and set dressing complement this beautifully, but most memorable of all is Balazs Bolygo's photography. The whole film looks faded and antique, a creature made manifest from the darkest corners of the imagination. Strong colours are used only to pick out items of great importance to Conradin: the green of the medicine bottle, the red of the offerings he makes. In this way, the viewer is made intimate with the boy's secret world, and, to a degree, complicit in his acts.
It should be noted that, unlike the earlier animated version of the story, this film is not aimed at children, though older ones may enjoy it. It belongs to the old fairy tale tradition in which nothing is held back to protect the sensitivities of the audience. Sredni Vashtar is haunting and beautiful, a rare treat.
Following a drunken night out with the lads, Tom (Kevin McKidd) wakes up beside a strange woman. Though he can only dimly recall the night before, one phrase lingers in his mind: "What are you going to tell your wife when you get home?" The film follows his flight from the unfamiliar house and his various imagined attempts at explaining himself. Naturally, this relies on a lot of repetitive vignettes, and it is to director James Henry's great credit that he manages to pull this off, with minimal irritation and a good deal of humour. He is helped by strong photography, a competent lead actor and a subtle, touching performance from Susan Vidler as the wife. This is as much an exploration of marital love as it is of infidelity. Henry has had the sense not to overreach himself, and tackles small scale issues in a confident manner, creating a surprisingly warm and sympathetic tale.
'Based on a true story', according to the opening credits, Wise Guys recollects the experiences of a group of Scottish schoolboys embarking on a paper round, and is heavily influenced by Goodfellas. Its young hero, obsessed by gangster films much to the perplexity of his peers, is determined to earn enough money to buy an expensive gift for the girl he has a crush on; he begins by undertaking legitimate work, but is soon looking for an easier life, and the scams in which he is involved gradually become more serious without ever losing their pointedly trivial character; their greatest significance is in their effect on the boy's imagination. Unfortunately, though the film has some good ideas and an occasionally witty script, the young actors aren't quite up to it, and carefully judged adult performances aren't enough to save the film. Whilst it works well enough in itself, and may particularly appeal to teenaged audiences, there's little here to keep one thinking about it after the closing credits have rolled.
A tale of terror set in leafy London suburbs, Shaun of the Dead is not only the funniest zombie movie for years but also, without a doubt, the best. This remarkable film debut from the team behind popular comedy series Spaced pulls no punches. It has all the violence and gore one could want, along with black humour worthy of Romero at his best, and, perhaps a first for the genre, characters one can really care about, though they're as hapless and flawed as any of the usual humans confronting undead. This is no one-joke spoof, but a fully rounded story packed with action and energy. Its mundane setting, naturalistic use of sound and lighting and habit of understatement restore the sense of outrage which the appearance of the walking dead ought to provoke.
Centering on the experiences of salesman Shaun, whose life revolves around trying to keep the peace between his flatmates, trying to appease frustrated girlfriend Liz and trying to come to terms with his mother's remarriage seventeen years ago, this is a story about ordinary people - 'losers', as they call one another - trying to deal with something extraordinary. So preoccupied is our hero with his domestic concerns that he spends the first forty minutes of the film quite oblivious to the developing horrors around him. This provides for some hilarious scenes, and an impressive list of cameo performances from minor British television celebrities underlies its tongue-in-cheek realism. Director Edgar Wright has great fun observing the narrow line between zombie behaviour and normal human behaviour, with early scenes of cashiers in supermarkets, people on the bus, and youths walking down the street which mimic the famous scenes of zombies trying to do ordinary things at the end of the original Dawn of the Dead. George Romero, incidentally, has stated that he loves this film. It's easy to see why. It's making the social statements which give good zombie movies their charm without ever belabouring them, and, in doing so, it never slackens its pace. Once he realises what's happening, Shaun's first priorities are, naturally enough, to rescue his girlfriend and his mum, though he has only the vaguest of ideas about how he might protect them. Thereafter, he knows that they'll need to find somewhere they can make a stand. This is the not the US, and the notion of going to the mall never occurs. With zombie-like predictability, Shaun heads for the place which has always brought him comfort and security, the Winchester Arms pub.
Of course, zombies, perhaps acting on the basis of some residual memories, want to go to the pub too...
It's really refreshing, in Shaun of the Dead, to see old-fashioned shambling zombies back again. Singly, these creatures are easy to evade, and, once our heroes have developed a basic idea of how to handle weapons, they're fairly easy to kill; but there will always be more of them, and their inexorable assault leads tension to mount throughout the film. There are some excellent sequences of zombie-bashing, with innovative use of Dire Straits records, tennis equipment and cocktails; the scenes of zombies eating humans are likewise gleefully gruesome. But it's the scenes between the survivors themselves, with the usual petty squabbles played out to hilarious effect yet much more convincingly than usual, which really raise this film above the norm. Even people who wouldn't usually consider watching horror films will find much to enjoy about it. Fans of Spaced will be entertained by references to the series, but there are also lots of film related jokes which will have international appeal, and it's not necessary to get any of this in order to enjoy it. The pacing is superb, the story never slackens its grip, the violence is genuinely ugly, and there is, overall, a tremendous sense of adventure. Audience reactions suggest that word of mouth is going to make this the year's surprise hit. Do not miss this film.
Let's get the big questions out of the way first. Is Zack Snyder's 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead a patch on George Romero's 1978 original? No. Is it still worth watching? Yes. Romero's work was visionary; the atmosphere and tension he created would be hard for anyone to replicate. Wisely, Snyder hasn't tried. He's simply taken the bones of the original story and fleshed them out into something of his own. The result is not amazing, but it is a lot of fun.
The story told here will be familiar to many who have never seen either film. After people start turning into zombies en masse, a confused group of survivors decide to take refuge in a shopping mall, only to discover that the zombies, perhaps acting on the basis of some residual memory, are drawn to the mall. Not having the sense to wait it out (how long can zombies last without food?) they proceed to get into all sorts of foolish scrapes. But if all films were about smart people, they'd be thoroughly unrealistic, right? This provides the opportunity for lots of violent action scenes, liberally sprinkled with gore.
The best part of Dawn of the Dead is the beginning. Beautifully paced, it introduces us to the mundane world of nurse Ana (ably played by Sarah Polley), at whose hospital a patient with a strange infection has just arrived, and for whom life is about to get very disturbing indeed. Once the action commences, it doesn't let go; our heroine is quick-witted and resourceful, but the circumstances she finds herself facing are almost overwhelming. As in all the best zombie movies, these scenes are rich in humour even when they are at their most horrific. They are also tightly directed and visually stunning. The whole film is enhanced by first class cinematography. It is through this that we are introduced to the full scale of the devastation which the zombie outbreak has caused.
Snyder's filling out of the original story with extra characters, creating a complex group dynamic in the mall, works well in places, and allows him more opportunities to show grisly deaths, but it's let down by some bad casting choices and the underdevelopment of certain characters. Cynical Steve and flirtatious Monica are throwaway stereotypes who diminish what could have been powerful moments. Inna Korobkina, playing pregnant Luda, walks around like a man with a cushion up his jumper and keeps inexplicably changing size. As for her offspring, there are two ways to handle these things, and going for the comedy puppet horror will always leave film-makers like this playing second fiddle to Peter Jackson. Otherwise, though, the cast work; Ving Rhames plays to type, lending a certain authority to proceedings, whilst Michael Kelly and Bruce Bohne bring real personality to difficult roles.
But what about the zombies? These, after all, are what most people go wanting to see. In this post-28 Days Later age, it's no surprise that Snyder has speeded his zombies up, but it is something of a disappointment. There's nothing of the shambling menace of the original, and one's sense of the scale of the onslaught is thereby diminished. Some of the action sequences are fast-paced and violent to the point of being hard to follow; others are simply over far too soon, before there's been time to build up tension. This said, the zombies look terrific. Their mutterings and murmurings are suitably ominous (though only once to we get to hear the word 'brainsss...') and their biting attacks are genuinely scary. A good bit of thought has been put into the fight scenes and the behaviour of the maimed. There's lots of gratuitous violence, all of it intelligently choreographed, and a few of the traditional methods of zombie killing are in there for fans of the genre to look forward to, along with one or two new ones. This is not a film for persons of a delicate disposition.
The soundtrack for Dawn of the Dead features some rather awkward, misplaced nu-metal, but makes excellent use of mall music, and gains kudos for its choice of Jim Carroll's People who Died to go out on. The music is complimented by its rich visuals and impressive use of light. Montages telling us what has happened in the rest of the world are particularly stunning. This superior technical work often carries the film, ensuring that it never drags; there's always more to hear and see and shudder at. One word of warning: as with so many films these days, you mustn't leave at the start of the closing credits, or you'll miss out on some of the most important moments of the story.
Out of a genre which usually breeds TV movies and second-rate thrillers has risen a film more powerful and more real than anyone had the right to hope for; a film at once monstrous and heart-rending; a film which utterly outclasses every other biopic for years. Of course, this is in part due to its dramatic source material, and it's sad to say that Hollywood still creates very few fictional female characters with this much depth; but Charlize Theron's towering performance as the serial killer Aileen Wuornos could have won her an Oscar in any year, against women and men. Ably supported by Christina Ricci as the enamoured and sympathetic yet naive and self-centered Selby, she careers along in a primal, almost animalistic way, responding instinctively to the disastrous events which happen around her. She is a creature outcast from civilisation, and as such it makes absolute sense that she fails to respond in a civilised manner, even whilst she struggles against it. Yet this is not a film which demands pity or charity. It is simply a brutal tale of a brutal world - our world - in which Wuornos' toughness has carried her a long way, but which, in the end, will destroy her, both mentally and physically.
There has been a lot of excitement about this film in certain feminist circles, where it is celebrated for showing a woman abused from the age of eight making a stand against the world and trying to exact revenge. There has also been criticism from those who point out that Wuornos was a vicious killer whose victims were by no means all rapists or paedophiles. Both of these approaches rather miss the point. Monster doesn't make Wuornos into a saint; it only shows her as a human being. The real horror of it comes from the extent to which it is possible to identify with her breakdown. By the time she is killing men at ranfom, she has clearly lost control of her behaviour, and, on some level, she knows it. The 'monster' of the title is ambiguous, as it also refers to a giant ferris wheel Wuornos remembers from her childhood, and the film is structured like this wheel, showing her rising up to a position where she sees herself as powerful, finally getting what she wants out of life, whilst it's clear to the viewer that she is doomed to fall downwards again into oblivion.
Knowing the story can often make viewers impatient with films of this sort; yet Monster somehow remains fresh and vibrant, always compelling, drawing one into an emotional drama which is something else altogether. Though Theron manages to create some physical resemblance to Wuornos, and is not conventionally attractive, her elemental vigour makes her surprisingly sexy in what is an intensely passionate film. It's refreshing to see a lesbian relationship portrayed as naturally as this, so that it seems unremarkable in itself, whilst the chemistry between the two actresses contributes to a fascinating love story. This is Wuornos' one encounter with real affection in a life where she has valued it above everything else. Her dedication to it is central to her downfall. Yet this part of the film is imbued with real warmth, and there's also a great deal of humour. Wuornos' crude approach to social interaction can be hilarious, and her innocence is charming. Her attempts to give up hooking and get a regular job are among the funniest, which, of course, only adds to their ugliness. Wuornos has coped with rejection all her life, but it is her brief encounter with a world which might offer her something better which proves too much for her to bear.
The other remarkable thing about Monster is its unsentimental, unglamourous portrayal of prostitution as a way of life. Very few films have ever tackled the subject as honestly. Monster shows us a variety of encounters without seeming to set up any particular social agenda. It enables us to see the variety of monstrous and merely human urges in Wuornos' clients as well as within her. In this way, it is able to say things about society at large, not just about one damaged woman, even whilst Theron's performance dominates the film.
If you think you've got the stomach for it, Monster is absolutely unmissable.
"Each of loses 21 grams when we die." runs the awful tagline at the end of the awful trailer for this heavily Oscar-nominated film. Aye, that we do, and any coroner can tell you what it smells like. This is the equivalent of titling a film Shit Sandwich; but, in its way, the title fits, as it's the story of a group of people who are, by and large, full of shit. However, this doesn't stop them being interesting. With the exception of Naomi Watts' Christine, they're well played, and Sean Penn probably deserved his Best Actor award. There are impressive naturalistic performances from the children in support.
There's been a lot of hype about the complexity of 21 Grams' plot, but this would seem to have arisen only because it's played out in non-chronological order, a trick which cinema goers really ought to be used to by now. The story is quite simple, a mixture of two popular Hollywood fables with a bit of religious angst thrown in for flavour. Penn is a man struggling with a serious heart condition, trying to come to terms with the fragility of his existence and its effect on those close to him. Watts is a widow blocking out the world as she grieves for her family. Benicio del Toro is a criminal reformed through devotion to Jesus whose life is torn apart again by a terrible accident. We encounter archetypes of self-centered masculinity and family-centered femininity as matters of life and death are weighed against one another; yet, for the most part, all these characters are believable. Watts' is the least developed - the director seems to have confused emotional distance with emotional absence, and catharsis with sudden bursts of atrocious overacting. Judging by her embarrassed reaction to clips screened at the Oscars, Watts, like the audience, knows she could have done better; but there's a lot of overstatement in this film as a whole. After an intriguing first forty minutes, the narrative slows down; it's easy enough to figure out what happens at the end, and much of the rest feels like unnecessary padding, giving the actors a chance to show off without contributing much to story or themes. Points are repeated again and again as if the audience is considered too stupid to have got them the first time. This is unfortunate, as it dilutes what ought to be an emotionally intense and suspenseful finale.
21 Grams is beautiful to look at. Whilst much of the interior photography is derivative to the point of being tacky, good set decoration and some stunning outdoor shots add character and passion. This is particularly important as a counterpoint to the religious passions described in several of del Toro's strongest scenes. If one is going to pitch melodrama on this level, it had better look the part. Through a combination of cleverness and prettiness, 21 Grams just about manages to conceal the fact that it doesn't have much to say, and it makes for a fairly satisfying evening's entertainment.
Set in the 1950s, in a Midwestern American valley which is about to be flooded to create a new reservoir, Northfork recounts the stories of the last few residents lingering in their doomed town. Amongst them is a boy too ill to be moved through whose delerious visions a strange redemption is achieved. Northfork takes a lingering look at America's religious past, at the blurring of assorted Christian teachings with native myths and human passions, and at the landscape within which these dreams came to shape reality. It's a hugely ambitious film which looks none the worse for being made on a shoestring budget, yet, whilst it has its moments of brilliance, it is never really compelling or consistent enough to carry the viewer along.
The biggest of Northfork's problems is its pacing. For the first half hour, the story meanders around without apparent aim, making occasional futile stabs at cleverness or sweeping emotion, resulting in a restless, faintly annoyed audience. Those who keep paying attention will do so principally because of the striking visual beauty of the scenes presented. The vastness of the Midwestern landscape is ably conveyed through bold, stark cinematography, with natural weather effects well utilised to show the rawness of the townsfolk's experience. Northfork seems not simply rural, but itself natural, as if its soon to be drowned buildings had grown that way; and in their shabby, half-dismantled shape, they look no less beloved. Nevertheless, beauty alone can't often save a film, and it takes patience to see this one through to the point where a coherent narrative begins to develop. This narrative makes overt use of surrealist devices, yet confident performances from the boy and from Gregory Peck as the old priest who tends to him provide a resilient emotional centre. Unfortunately, theirs is only one strand of the story. The parallel adventures of a group of government workers endeavouring to remove unwilling townsfolk from their homes were apparently intended to provide comic relief, but raised not so much as a smile, proving instead to be unrelentingly tedious.
The boy's story, which thankfully becomes central to the latter part of the film, is marred by an overly self-conscious approach to surrealist ideas. Androgyny, queer Englishmen, tea parties, oil paintings and frilly clothing have been thrown in haphazardly as if in some film-making-by-numbers attempt to create atmosphere. Again, these elements are visually sumptuous, but they fail to engage on any other level. There's an awful lot of peculiarity for its own sake, which contributes very little to the film and causes the story to drag even more. This is a particular shame as it reduces the impact of the film's few genuinely strange and brilliant ideas.
Northfork is one of those films which might best be summed up as difficult. If someone were to produce a re-edited version about twenty minutes long, it should earn awards by the plenty. As it is, most people are unlikely to consider it worth the effort.
A big step for Tim Burton, this, his first attempt at a piece of popular mainstream fiction (even if it is somewhat unusual) is a remarkable success. Though on the face of it it's a light, playful, feelgood film about the developing relationship between a dying father and his distant son, it takes a director of Burton's calibre to bring out the darker and more complex elements of the tale without ever detracting from that all-important sense of wonder.
The central theme of Big Fish is the interplay between reality, as experienced in the course of life, and fiction, the stories through which we create the versions of ourselves which others come to know and which they will remember after we're dead. The son in this story has always resented his father for telling stories, which, he feels, got in the way of his ability to get to know him as a person. The father, on the other hand, has developed his exaggerations and elaborations to a point where he almost believes them to be true, and where the audience can see that they have plenty to say about his nature as a person. His real problems stem from his tendency to fantasise about other people as well as himself. The pastel-painted suburbs in Burton's Edward Scissorhands represented the horror of unthinking sameness. Here they represent an ideal - but it is the father, Edward Bloom's, ideal, projected onto everybody else. Bloom abandons his family in order to work as a salesman, to raise money to buy them what he thinks they want, when all they want is his presence and his love; he does the same to the people of Spectre, the perfect town which he encounters on his travels; and though he might outwardly seem to devote himself to others, his self-centred, legendary nature cuts him off from the world to a point where he finds it increasingly difficult to care about what is and isn't real. This psychological journey, every bit as interesting as the picaresque biography through which it unfolds, is recounted in conversations between Bloom and his son as the old man approaches the point where he will lose his real presence and become only a story himself.
Throughout, Big Fish is packed with memorable situations and characters, and strong performances. There's something charming about Burton's casting of his fiancee Helena Bonham Carter as a haggard old witch, though her character unfolds as something more complex. The giant (who initially bears an uncanny resemblance to comics writer Alan Moore), the circus ringmaster with a dark secret, the Siamese twins eager to become American stars, the sometime poet who undertakes a dramatic change of career - all these people are fleshed out beautifully, with an affectionate quirkiness the actors seem to relish. In the lead, Ewan McGregor ably plays the earnest young adventurer, and though his accent wanders as much as he does it's easily enough overlooked when one is confronted by the myriad sights and sounds on show. Even cameo stars like the Daredevil Cat are not easily forgotten.
Big Fish represents a maturing of Burton's talent which presages still greater things.
Before entering the isolated Rocky Mountain town of Dogville, be warned: Lars von Trier's latest offering is not only an accomplished piece of storytelling, it is a film made as art, with things to say about the nature of the medium, and people unwilling to entertain such devices would be better to stay behind. A number of critics have already found themselves unable to get past the theatricality of the piece. Some would see its self-conscious presentation - filmed on a single sound stage, with chalk outlines replacing the walls of houses so that the audience can often see all the characters at once - as pretentious. Von Trier has commented that he was interested in exploring the potential of filmed theatre. His technique here contributes to the sense of intimacy within the Dogville community, and the pared down visuals encourage the viewer to concentrate on the characters. Most of the actors have done theatre work before, but there is no staginess about their behaviour; in fact, it's very easy to forget the strangeness of the setting and find oneself drawn in by their compelling story.
This story is essentially a morality tale, an exploration of moral duties to the self and others; it is also very much a film about the character of America, though this doesn't really hit home until the last few scenes. Set during the Depression, it explores the extremes to which people are forced and also the extremes which they choose. It's a film about power in which no-one entirely escapes corruption, but it starts off like a fairy tale, and the corruption develops so subtly that we never lose our awareness of the people of Dogville as human beings.
At the centre of the story is Tom (Paul Bettany), a young would-be writer living off his father's pension, who has made it his mission to understand human nature through the observation and interrogation of his neighbours. He wishes to illustrate the difficulty a closed community has with receiving, and is looking for an example when the beautiful fugitive Grace (Nicole Kidman) stumbles into town, apparently on the run from gangsters. Grace offers her services to the townspeople in exchange for sanctuary. At first, this involves simple manual labour; but when the police take an interest, her employers start to demand a higher price, and her goodwill places her in an increasingly vulnerable position. Kidman famously walked out of the premiere of this film because she couldn't face watching some of the later scenes over again. There is no blood and gore on show here, but real psychological ugliness, and it's clear from watching her performance that she became deeply involved with her character. Grace has a secret on which the detail of that remarkable performance hinges. In ceasing to think of her as a human being, the people of Dogville lose their awareness of her potential, a dangerous mistake.
There are a host of good performances on show here, from an accomplished cast. Each of the seventeen adult characters is fully realised through the combination of powerful acting and an incisive script. Dogville is one of those rare films which really does have something significant to say about human behaviour; a film which, if you let it, will make you think. Technically superb and unexpectedly involving, it is a first class piece of cinema, and I highly recommend it.
With its big budget attitude and famously wooden star, it's surprising to discover that Paycheck is actually one of the better Philip K Dick adaptations out there - not on a par with Blade Runner or Minority Report, but considerably better than the likes of Imposter. Much of this, of course, is down to John Woo. Though he has evidently made quite a few compromises in tailoring his style to suit the Hollywood machine, he seems to have a genuine interest in the material, an ability to bring a complicated plot to life and make it dynamic and entertaining. Some critics have called the story "too far-fetched" but, really, they're missing the point of Dick's work. This is science fiction