Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Only two years ago, the first of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films came out, a cleverly reimagined portrayal of Holmes that was less aloof, detached, robot-like genius with an occasional opium habit and more drug-addled rock star of the detective world who stumbles from case to case causing problems for all around him and cursed with the ability to make stunning insights based on tiny observations. Rather than the unmemorable Blackwood of the first film, this one seems Holmes pitted against his nemesis Moriarty, as the original cliffhanger hinted it would. This of course made for a much more interesting cat-and-mouse game, but not only is there a worry now that this amusingly alternative version of Holmes will become the mainstream (making me long for the original version to make a return), but there was also the problem of giving Moriarty a motive that would seem intriguing and personal. Beyond a vendetta against Watson established purely because Holmes tried to avert it, there’s a supposed twist in that what Moriarty is really after is to start a large-scale war which will result in huge profits for him, because he has cornered the market in weaponry and other industries associated with warfare. It’s such an overused idea that it has its own TV Tropes page – ‘War for Fun and Profit’, and the idea was cliché in Star Trek, cliché in Gundam Wing, and it’s cliché here.

Still, there wherefores are peripheral, and it’s the stylistic delivery that works here. It’s by turns funny (that poor dog!), visually striking (the slow motion sequences) and clever (it’s not what the disguised ambassador does but what he does not do that gives him away). There’s a good mixture of action, comedy and pathos and the ending is satisfactory.

There’s also the appearance of Stephen Fry as Mycroft Holmes, an excellent foil to his brother and a bit of casting that I’m sure will evoke much commentary about the irony of Fry playing Mycroft to an American acting as the British Holmes while his long-time comedy partner who is British plays a famed American TV character based on Holmes, so I won’t need to add much to it here. It also reunites him with his Wilde co-star Law. On the other hand, having read about all his various body issues and extreme lack of confidence in The Fry Chronicles, I was mostly wondering about the psychological impact of the nude scene he had on the actor, rather than having the intended reaction of ‘Look, an inappropriately naked and unsightly man, how funny.’ But then, I’ve always had hang-ups about on-screen nudity, even wit nothing revealed.

And I also had problems with both the larger plot and the details. I could accept they would infiltrate Moriarty’s arms base when they don’t really need to in order to search for Rene, but after that there seems a great leap. They know Rene is working for Moriarty, but I cannot understand how Holmes deduced that the disguised ambassador had to be him. Why could it not have been one of numerous men working for Moriarty rather than Rene himself? It wasn’t made clear.

Plus lots of details were stretched, or relied on coincidence. Would Moriarty really leave the book that was his cipher in plain view when Holmes was visiting? Could he really rely on Holmes drawing the wrong conclusion when he went to the Opera for my (everyone’s?) favourite part of Don Giovanni? Did they really have to have their final confrontation over a game of chess, that most laboured of images?

Fun, but certainly not without its flaws.

Hugo

A lot of people still react with surprise when they hear Scorsese has made a children’s film. But it’s been a very long time since Goodfellas and Casino, and he’s amply proven his versatility since. And this ought to bring home to a wider audience that he can make interesting, stylistically superb films with great affection. I suspect this’ll be the best film this Xmas.

Based on what looks like an awesome mixed-media novel, Hugo is the story of a little boy who lives in a fanciful version of Gare Montparnasse, with a grandiose façade and a tower, winding the clocks and evading the station inspector, who will send him to the orphanage if he realises his drunken uncle is no longer there to do his job. His father, a watchmaker, left him just one thing – a large automaton – and though he gathers parts to try to get it working, it needs a special key. He gets in trouble trying to steal from a toymaker, who in turn takes from him his father’s notebook. But what is in the notebook makes the toymaker hesitate, and his pretty young daughter has a very distinctive key about her neck…

All I knew going into Hugo was that it was suitable for kids, that it looked quite steampunk-ish on the poster and that somewhere along the line the Lumière brothers and Georges Méliès were involved, names familiar from my master’s degree. And indeed, this film made me glad to have got that rather useless qualification, because there was a lot of familiar stuff here. The story revolves around a fanciful version of Méliès’ life (somewhat oddly pronounced with the ‘s’ voiced here), both triumphs and tragedies exaggerated to make for a good yarn, and this allows Scorsese to not only recreate the fun setpieces of Méliès’ best (and Le Voyage dans la lune remains my very favourite piece of pre-Expressionist film footage, with its tumblers and funny effects), but to put in references to other films and famous scenes, from melding that famous the Montparnasse disaster with echoes of both Jean Renoir and the Lumière train film (and of course I had to duck away when the actual film was played, just before the onscreen audience did, in accordance with the popular urban myth) to a scene that will definitely bring to mind The 39 Steps. He even inserted Helen McRory (one of several Harry Potter cast members in this film) into original Méliès footage! Part of the love for film here seems to be Scorsese’s own.

The cast is excellent. The children are the centre of it all, of course, and do superbly – the boy playing Hugo was adorable and will make an interesting Ender. The girl – who I only later realised was Hitgirl from Kickass – was both tomboyish and feminine and managed to pull off that tired character quirk of proudly using long words because she’s bookish. Kingsley is reliably superb and ought to do more roles like this. Sasha Baron Cohen will no doubt see his stature further rise from this – he popped up in Sweeney Todd but a lot of people still don’t think of him as an actor who will appear in other people’s films. Here, he manages loathsome, ridiculous and appealing, no mean feat. McRory, Jude Law and Christopher Lee are strong in their small roles, and though reports are conflicting, I’m convinced that was Johnny Depp putting in a cameo as the guitar player.

One slightly odd point was that when Hugo put his hair in a side-parting, he looked remarkably like a friend of ours. Which had us laughing at certain points! Overall, though, this was a superb little film and the first in many years that has actually made me interested in the video game tie-in.

Take Shelter

I knew almost nothing about Take Shelter before I saw it – I knew it was about a man building a storm shelter, and that it was quite intense. That was all. So I expected a film about surviving the worst nature can throw at you. What Take Shelter actually is, quite surprisingly, is a film about coping with the onset of paranoid schitzophrenia in the American Midwest when everything about your upbringing and community makes you want to cope with it yourself.

The technical aspects of Take Shelter are great – superb and believable performances, nice imagery (slightly better CG for its sparse use would have been an improvement), some excellent shot composition and a lovely contrast between the wide open landscape and skies and the tight, tight spaces, both of them in turns threatening and safe.

A man begins to have vivid dreams that affect him in his waking life. He dreams his dog bites him, and never trusts the poor thing again. He dreams there are people out to get him. And he dreams a great storm is coming. His actions lead to disaster for his family and his friendships – and eventually it all comes pouring out in a brief and stark psychotic episode.

Most of the film is build-up to the point where main character Curtis has his fears vindicated and eventually he has to face his problems. The trouble is that this puts too much weight on some rather hollow ideas for the ending of the film. There are three: first, Curtis has to confront the fact that the storm is inside his head. Perhaps it’s because I hear Mum and Dad talking about the paranoid schizophrenics they have to deal with, but part of me was really annoyed when the wife told Curtis he has to face up to his fears to bring about a change in himself. As if a paranoid schizophrenic will be cured by one revelation that a delusion was hallucinated. But it was something the character would believably do – I just would have rather it was made clearer her actions could have doomed her to a much worse result. Next, there was a scene where Curtis finally gets proper help and is told he will need institutionalising and a lot of treatment to be able to carry on, which was much more believable and logical after what had happened. And then finally, in what felt like a completely hollow insertion by a studio’s writer just to have what seems to be an ambiguous twist, we see a storm that may or may not be hallucinated.

It’s all just somewhat false. The film was very strong and while mental health issues are always a very easy way for an actor to be acclaimed, this one was performed superbly, with a character who could have been easy to dislike being very sympathetic. There just could have been a snappier pace and the ending could have said much more than it did.

My Week With Marilyn

We went to see the chilling true story Snowtown, but annoyingly it has ended its run yesterday and the cinema website obviously didn’t update to ‘today’ after midnight, but sometimes towards morning. As we’re seeing Take Shelter tomorrow, we opted for another (purportedly) true story – My Week With Marilyn. Which I was happy to see mostly for lovely Emma Watson, who had a minor role she was billed fairly highly for.

It’s pretty fanciful, and paints its characters in a very one-dimensional way, Marilyn aside. Telling the story of a young posh ex-Etonian who gets involved with showbiz through his family’s connections, manages to get on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, and through being generally sweet and harmless captures the attention of Monroe herself and begins an illicit affair.

The trouble is, nobody at all is likeable here. Colin, the protagonist, is awkward and dull – and though he’s a black sheep of sorts, nepotism is never going to endear a young man to an audience, and nor does it give him much depth. He shuts out the fact he’s just being used a little too much, and after all he cheats on his girlfriend (the gorgeous Emma Watson, who I certainly wouldn’t have left for Monroe – in fact, I think they ought to have cast someone plainer) with a woman he knows to be married already, which for all her iconic status is not a very romantic tale. Monroe herself is a whole spectrum of things – wide-eyed and winsome ingénue, clear-headed seductress, drug-frazzled trainwreck, spoilt idiotic brat and savvy businesswoman…but never does she seem all of them at once, a complete, complex human being. It’s not just the tension between Marilyn and Norma Jean, it’s fragmentation. It’s not the fault of Michelle Williams, who does an excellent and believable job in a challenging role, but it doesn’t hang together: Colin still sees her as a ‘Greek Goddess’ when she’s supposed to be humanised (to her dismay) and while Olivier gives his grudging respect for her lasting in Hollywood, it’s not clear why, or how this freewheeling spirit who never grew up and lives only by finding ephemeral comfort in the arms of a series of men also has that sort of savvy. The conclusion is thus strained and emotionally hollow.

A parade of stars make appearances, including Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi in roles that inspire affection. The up-and-comers I’ve been looking out for lately, Dominic Cooper and Toby Jones, were both in attendance, and of course Emma Watson sparkles. Of all of them, though, Brannagh seems to be having the most fun – but also seems to be sending himself up rather than trying to capture Olivier, who really is nowhere to be seen here and who is painted as a past-it stage actor left behind by the world and performing in a rather laughable way, which just isn’t true.

This isn’t a film for truth. Unfortunately, it rather needed to be, for without it, there’s almost nothing of interest left.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn pt 1

I feel totally robbed. And it’s Harry Potter’s fault. Well, really, it’s the fault of the annoying movie producers, who saw the last Harry Potter book split into two films, realised – quite rightly – that the Twilight fanbase would not only spend double the money to see the same amount of story, but be grateful for it, and did the same here. Just as Stephanie Meyer makes the mediocre and clumsy J.K. Rowling look like an expert in prose and character, this made those two dull and turgid films look like masterworks.

I feel robbed. I don’t expect much from Twilight, but I do expect expensive and impressive visuals, silly but fun fights between supernatural beings and lots of absolute absurdity that isn’t meant to be funny, but really, really is. It was particularly bad because though I had otherwise avoided spoilers, I knew that the last book was centred on totally ridiculous nonsense – a vampire gets a human girl pregnant, the baby more or less bursts out of her and kills her, she has to be converted to being a vampire (which frankly should have happened partway through book 1 and only vague handwaving at immortal souls – and in this film, the joy of sex – put it off) and then the werewolf boy actually falls in love with the baby. Surely that’s going to be hilarious, right?

Well, in a unified film of the entire book, most likely it would have been. But the fact was this had to be horribly, horribly drawn-out so that those events were the big climax and cliffhanger here. And almost nothing else happens.

I say that almost nothing else happens, but actually, the book was chock-a-block with hilariously stupid things that would have kept me entertained, as I discovered by reading my favourite blog about Twilight on Sparknotes, always my post-movie treat. I felt robbed anew – cut from the film are such hilarious things as Jacob’s wolf friend Quil going on an date to the beach with his three-year-old girlfriend, the brilliant tale of little vampire infants having to be destroyed by the Volturi and Edward not only randomly giving Bella a Mercedes but hinting he’ll get her another, better car once she’s a vampire. Gloriously stupid, absurd and mercenary. If the filmmakers were really mocking the source material, as Film 2011 suggested they were, this is the stuff that would have stayed in. Instead, they tried to make it as palateable as they could, and the only big laughs were the lovely romantic shots between one muscular wolf-boy and his baby consort and the desperate attempts to make ‘We took René and Esme and put them together to make the lovely baby name Renesmee’ sound reasonable. Though I must say, when the girls who I’ll euphemistically say were very into their ghetto culture in the seats in front of us in the packed cinema said ‘That’s pretty’ [‘Vass pri’ee’] I wasn’t sure how serious they were. ‘Renesmee’ would fit right into that joke video of ‘ghetto names’ like ‘La’Shonte’ or ‘Sha’Tanya’. If Meyer hopes for her own Wendy Darling, I’m fairly sure she’ll fail. And if the next generation has a lot of Renesmees, well, I’ll weep for mankind.

I’ve never been averse to Twilight films, despite all the hatred. I quite liked the first one – not a lot happened, it’s hard to see how anyone but gluttons for punishment like Edward and there were stupid sparkling vampires (which seems all but forgotten in this film, with tropical climates and outdoor weddings, and don’t give me cloudiness totally negating the effect), but it was nice to look at and the story was paced about right. The second film was decent for most of its length until it shot itself in the foot at the end, the third was really dumb but at least not boring, but this? So very, very little happened. It made me long for Potter and Pals sitting about in a tent griping about their situation.

In the amount of time it would take to get the whole film’s plot out of the way, Bella and Edward get married. They go to their private island in Rio, where the obvious thought to have is ‘why don’t the vampires just live there instead of, y’know, right next to werewolf territory?’ as well as ‘Geez, don’t you know you’re going to get covered in mosquito bites if you leave the door open like that in Brazil?’ They have sex, which makes Edward moan because he bruised her a bit. Bella gets pregnant, they’re too far from home and safety for Edward to get Carlisle to turn her into a vampire, and the baby grows ridiculously fast. They go home, the werewolves decide they want to kill everyone now a baby’s on the way, as after all they were just waiting for the right time to attack the vampires anyway (ie when Bella is either dead or a vampire), there’s a total lack of drama or action, and then the baby is born (seducing Jacob with her eyes) and Bella has to be turned. That’s it. Oh, and the incredibly difficult procedure of turning Bella involved giving her an injection and biting her legs a few times.

I’m happy for a Twilight film to be dumb. I don’t mind bad writing or bad acting (though the actors get a bad rap for a pretty decent job and would be praised for equal performances in better-loved properties). I don’t mind total stupidity. But I expected hilarity as vampire babies burst out of bellies and all-out war. The one thing I can’t stand in Twilight is dullness.

Contagion

Saw Contagion, and it is a mystery to me why reviews have been so positive. A dull scare-tactics film presenting what would happen if an extremely deadly virus spread from Hong Kong around the world, it paraded famous faces in front of the camera in a turgid miasma of unsatisfying stories. From Kate Winslet to Matt Damon, from Gwyneth Paltrow agreeing to be in about three scenes, including one where her head is opened to Jude Law doing an increasingly iffy Australian accent, from the girl who was Lizzie Bennett in the old Pride and Prejudice series now looking oddly like Sigourney Weaver at the right angles to the odd appearances of two famous sitcom dads in jarringly serious roles (Elliott Gould, the Gellers’ father in Friends and Bryan Cranston from Malcolm in the Middle), we get fed multiple stories with excellent research and science behind them, almost all ultimately undermined by mawkishness and sensationalism. It’s interesting to see a researcher taken captive in China to cover up the epidemic’s origins; it’s not interesting to see her with Stockholm Syndrome. It’s interesting to see the husband of the first US victim; it’s not interesting to see refugee camp situations coupled with a horrible climactic ‘prom’ scene. It’s interesting to see a researcher working on a vaccine; seeing her heroically become the first human test subject is incredibly cheesy. It’s interesting to see a blogger cause a stir by faking a recovery on a herb and causing riots; police sting operations and bail donated online is going too far. And none of it manages to hold the attention.

Immortals

It would have been so easy to make Immortals fun. It just needed to be brainless action strung on a shoestring plot with amazing visuals. The trailer led me to believe it would be just that, directly descended from 300. But a screenwriting committee-approved story killed this film. How could they make a brainless action flick so horribly, horribly boring?

All they needed to do was have this sort of plot: -

CONQUEROR ANTAGONIST [not Hyperion, cuz, y’know, he’s a Titan]: Hahaha, I am conquering! I kill your momma!
THESEUS: NOOO!
CONQUEROR: I also enslave you.
PROPHETESS: I help you escape! We go to a big city and rally an army!
CONQUEROR: Let battle commence. BTW I set free the Titans mwahahaa
ZEUS: Yeah well that means we can join the battle
[Rest of film is a huge epic fight full of eye candy and individually-characterised gods and titans!

Instead, we got long-winded quests after a McGuffin bow, different factions barely connected to one another, a hero who never seems like he genuinely ought to be a major character, a horribly shoehorned-in attempt to refer to the Theseus and the Minotaur story, lame titans and a very, very awkward love scene. And it all just went on and on and on. No strong characters, no moments of eye candy that actually raised a smile, and some extremely awkward extras placed right in the middle of the shot, once a guy failing to find someone to fight against and once someone really milking falling over after a gate exploded.

This should have been stripped down to the absolute basics and made silly, campy fun. Instead, the campy moments were way too camp and the rest was just dull, dull box-ticking which did not make anything remotely close to a good story. And whose idea was it to just abandon the battlefield to focus on two very small-scale fights was a master of building up expectations only to let an audience down. Nothing like it promised and nothing like what it could have been.

A note on Paranormal Activity 3

I guess I just find creepy ghost thriller films dull. Paranormal Activity's scares just didn't make sense to me. With most of them I didn't understand why people were caught by surprise because it all seemed too slow. And while the first film was good and creepy on its budget, this one felt very tired. Blair Witch Project did the same much better several years ago.

Holy Flying Circus

A TV film, but feature-length nonetheless, this dramatisation of the release of Monty Python’s Life of Brian was uneven and often didn’t pull off what it attempted, as well as being very heavy-handed at the end, but it was charming, entertaining and had some extraordinary performances that may well take some minor actors from comedy shows and make them big names on UK television.

Focusing on the two Pythons who appeared on the famous debate on Friday Night, Saturday Morning, John Cleese and Michael Palin, it follows their lives as they return to London after finishing the filming to a storm of controversy, finding that they will have difficulty getting distributed, that people are vilifying them as individuals, and that it is even affecting their families. This leads to their decision to go on the television show.

But two things make it something different from an average dramatisation – the first is the ‘Pythonesque’ (or ‘sub-Python self-referential bullshit’ as they put it) presentation, while the second is the way the characters were performed. The former largely worked well, with surreal moments and clever asides, but was also hit-and-miss and responsible for the overall uneven tone – for example, it was a stroke of genius to have the Terry Jones actor double as Michael Palin’s wife and Gilliam’s miniature animations were neatly done, but the exaggerated behind-the-scenes BBC meetings were strained and overlong and the way they shoehorned in humour based on speech impediments and male nudity just to mirror the similar (much better) moments in Life of Brian fell flat and really weren’t needed. I didn’t like the flash forwards or knowing references to present-day attitudes, either, and there were a few fart jokes too many – a certain French taunt amidst numerous nonsensical taunts aside, fart jokes weren’t really Python’s thing.

On the other hand, the decision to play the Pythons not as straight impersonations but exaggerated versions of their comic personas was brilliant. Thus it was not really a drama centred on Cleese and Palin so much as on Basil Fawlty and Nisus Wettus, which was excellent – and made me realise how absurdly good a sitcom based on exaggerated Pythons would be. That said, if less time had been given to unfunny Tourette’s character #248923 and irritating BBC ‘head of talk’ Alan Dick, the rest of the Pythons could have been more fleshed out – which would have been especially good as they were all acted so well. Sadly, we got an aloof Chapman going on about being gay every other line, a peripheral Gilliam largely escaping into fantasy, a Jones mostly defined by mispronouncing words and boring people with technical aspects of filmmaking and far worse than all besides, an Eric Idle so mercenary it really seemed like the writers had a vendetta against him, possibly just for putting together Spamalot.

The climax was very well-executed, if a little misleading. Friday Night, Saturday Morning was brilliantly recreated, with superbly nasty performances from the actors playing Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark. The show paints the encounter as a scathing, petty attack on the film from two uninformed bullies – Palin leaves furious, feeling defeated, only to go home and be told he has ‘won’, because the religious men were so contemptible the watchers would feel they were not worth listening to. Meanwhile, back in the studio an ‘everyman’ who has until then been opposed to the film confronts the bishop and the satirist and tells them he did not feel they represented him at all, and quite the issue is made of them not having watched the first fifteen minutes of the film, and therefore not understanding it (based on Palin’s account of meeting with one Raymond Johnston).

It would be nice if it had been so pat and simple, but the fact is that it was not. Thankfully, the BBC showed the full episode afterwards (and put it on iPlayer) so that 2011’s audience could judge for themselves. What’s true is that the level of debate was very poor – Muggeridge keeps calling the film ‘tenth rate’ and the Bishop compares it not only with undergraduate comedy but with what the mentally handicapped might produce, and then puts in his famous ‘thirty pieces of silver’ jibe. In fact, the full interview shows Cleese much more eloquent, especially about opposing closed-mindedness and (implicitly) the Church’s discouragement of free thought, and the Bishop much more friendly and personable than he is largely remembered, complimenting the acting and making affectionate jokes. What they Pythons ought to have done is to undercut the playground jibes, emphasise that the subjective opinions and value judgements are no more than that and moot in terms of debate, point out that these men are not critics and hardly likely to share their opinions of film and humour with large percentages of the audience – the young in particular – and so their barbs have no meaning, and raise what the debate should have been about – ie censorship, what exactly is objectionable to the church in the film and whether those who are criticised are the blind followers who do not think for themselves, and why that is.

The Pythons didn’t manage to steer the debate well. So while the film is right in pointing out that the mudslinging and taunting makes the Christians look bad, I don’t feel the central point this film makes about that debate rings true.

The Three Musketeers in 3D

This film was always only going to succeed if it was bad enough to be enjoyable. Luckily it was, though not bad enough to be a riot or something I’d ever watch again.

It was without doubt the worst adaptation of Dumas I’ve ever seen, or am ever likely to see again. All it had going for it were some lovely visual flights-of-fancy and decent, if largely unnecessary, 3D. What’s amazing about it is how it took well-loved characters known to generations and made them so incredibly unlikeable. In just a few opening scenes, they made Athos look like an easily-led, careless braggart, Porthos an abusive poseur and Aramis a stupid praying Batman parody. And this is before their fall from grace and disillusionment. All three of them let the hidden treasures and inventions of Da Vinci get completely destroyed without comment, and abuse their servant Planchet in a strained, cruel way. Planchet himself was played by James Corden in a horribly forced quasi-Ricky Gervais way, gets no laughs and generally shouldn’t be in the film.

As for D’Artagnan himself, played my unevenly pretty-faced Logan Lerman, who I can’t remember at all from Percy Jackson. He is so detestable that I hope I never have to see him in this sort of property again. His story retains the essence of the book’s story – on the way to become a musketeer, D’Artagnan gets into a scrap with Rochefort, and then in Paris ends up offending all the Three Musketeers in turn and has to duel them all, only to end up their companion when Richelieu’s men try to arrest them. But where it seems like charming impetuousness and bad luck in most adaptations, here D’Artagnan is just a horrible arrogant little twit who brings all the trouble upon himself. And a prick towards women.

The plot then pretty wildly veers from the source, albeit still revolving around retrieving a necklace from Buckingham (Orlando Bloom in Great Yarmouth pantomime mode) in London. Only here, not only is the Queen virtuous and innocent and the necklace stolen by Milady in an absurd razorwire/lasers scene, but the bulk of the plot tension comes from steampunk dirigible/warship hybrids flying about firing at one another’s decks (rather than, y’know, just shooting up at the airbags and putting a swift end to the battle).

There isn’t a single likeable character here, and you can barely say there’s a female character at all, so two-dimensional are they all, and it’s quite strange but true that the most sympathetic character in the piece is the useless comic relief King Louis XIII.

My Summer of Love

I’m just back from ‘My Summer of Love’, and despite all expectations, I really enjoyed it – in fact, it was one of the better films I’ve seen in months. At the beginning, I had my doubts about the pacing, I had my doubts about the casting, I had my doubts about how exaggerated the characters seemed, but by the end, they were all virtues, not flaws!

The film was a typical pairing, the earnest common one and the imperious, perhaps manipulative posh one, but the broad characterisations were so sweet, and portrayed with so much enthusiasm and belief that it was just wonderful. Predictable, maybe, but that only added to the charm: it was the joy of waiting to see the situations unfold rather than the surprise at new twists that was entertaining, and the characters were wonderfully realised.

I expected little, but was very happily surprised.

The Gold Rush

We just came back from The Gold Rush, which is most definitely a comic classic – and we had the Trinity organ scholar playing along, with some themes from Chaplin’s version and some well-known themes mixed in, which really added to the experience!

Brilliant, brilliant physical comedy from the master; I’m still laughing now about the tipping house and the bread roll dance routine, but what was really great about it was the way there was a story, and there were characters, and there were moments of great pathos, and tension, and the little tramp really is absolutely adorable. Georgia certainly didn’t deserve him!

Also fun to see that even if Christmas/New Year traditions have, comedy certainly hasn’t changed – but then, it’s not as though The Canterbury Tales, or even parts of The One Thousand And One Nights aren’t hilarious.

It’s easy to imagine people of the past as entirely different from us, more austere or simpler than we are – but people are just people, which is why great works from the past remain great, no matter when we turn to them.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

managed to get free tickets to a preview screening of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I wasn’t expecting it to be great, or even close to the book.

It was brilliant.

Absolutely fantastic, and far better than I was expecting. I had seen bits and pieces, and thought that the black Ford was a concession to tokenism, Zaphod’s hidden head was a cop-out, and there would never be the budget to do justice to Adams’ book. How wrong could I have been? The books have never been my very favourites, but they’re funny and witty and clever, and I enjoyed them when I read them, a while back – but if anything, I preferred the film. And it’s not often I say that. I really hope it’s a smash hit.

It deserves to be. I was wrong about Ford and Zaphod – they’re brilliantly cast, more interesting than they were in the books, and the two heads work very well. Alan Rickman’s a superb Marvin, Stephen Fry’s voice couldn’t be better suited to the guide itself’s surreal humour, and Bill Nighy’s Slartibartfast was somehow daft yet venerable at once. Best of all, though, were the cameos, the peripheral characters: how they got Helen Mirren to be Deep Thought I’ll never know. Bill Bailey’s whale was one of the film’s highlights (poor thing), and best of all (even better than the cameo from the original Marvin) were the League of Gentlemen’s Vogon extras. ‘He’s got a towel – run away!’ ‘He’s locked it from the other side – we’ll have to go around the other side’…brilliant.

Visually, the CG and puppetry were outstanding, really top-of-the-range stuff, which I didn’t expect. The music was great, too, especially the updated theme. All in all, it couldn’t have been much better.
Hope there’s another. They’ve ruined all the surprises, but I wanna see the restaurant!

Lost in Translation

because we kept mentioning going to Japan, someone lent us ‘Lost in Translation’.
To be honest, it wasn’t very impressive. It could have been set anywhere, and been just as bizarre. Plus all that ‘l’ and ‘r’ reversed stuff was painfully forced, when the Japanese version doesn’t sound that much like either. All that is just minor quibbling, though. Japan wasn’t made to look particularly good or particularly bad, which is how it should be. But the story was just so tired and unimaginative.

A bored middle-aged man and a bored young woman, both married, end up isolated together in a place where they don’t speak the language and don’t know the culture. They end up wrapped up in each other, ignoring everything around them and focussing on themselves. The Lonely Planet guide says that you won’t learn anything about Tokyo from it, and that’s about right.

That would be fine if the characters were likeable. But we have a weak, tiresome and uppity middle-aged man who can’t resist having sex with some random woman when he’s frustrated, and just puts his wife and children out of mind, and a girl who we’re supposed to think is justified in cheating on her husband because he’s got an airheaded friend. Well, rather her than the main girl, a stroppy, jealous, self-centred and arrogant cheater. If we were led to dislike this contemptible duo, fine. But trying to give us an uplifting ending by finally having them kiss left me feeling very self-righteous. Which is quite fun, admittedly, but the entertainment content of the film was…sorely lacking.

A Good Woman

went to see A Good Woman, a new film adaptation of Lady Windemere’s Fan, updating the story to the glamorous 30s, moving it to the Riviera and dolloping an extra portion of superb sleaze on the clever little story, it was a sparkling, elegant and beautiful reimagining of the classic. Tom Wilkinson and Helen Hunt put were excellent, Scarlet Johansen looked stunning and contributed an interesting, compelling and brave performance and the cinematography was utterly beautiful, all ocre and Mediterranean gentleness. What a shame it won’t reach the audience it deserves.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

It was good. Not as terrible as the bad reviews suggested, not as great as the rave reviews said. Just… pretty good. It started badly, with the rather comical ‘War!’ and probably the dullest and worst thought-out space fight in the series. Things pick up after that, get a little dull in the middle, but coast along nicely to the nicely climactic ending. I actually rather like Lucas’ pompous and overblown dialogue, in much the same way as I enjoy reading Lord of the Rings. Of course, a Han Solo’s cynicism is much missed, but the presentation of the film was not something I disliked: bombastic score, hammy acting and beautiful CG cohered well in the grand gesture of space opera. What was lacking was the story.

First, we are expected to swallow a huge jump in the plot and a new antagonist, the uninteresting coughing android General Grievous. To be honest, his whole plotline should have been cut – and the fact that he’s obviously a far better design than Darth Vader (whose big buttons and Frankenstein walk, along with some terrible lines asking about Padme then going ‘Nooo!’ really didn’t inspire much awe) makes you wonder why they didn’t use the technology to better effect – but then, the same can be asked of super-powered R2. Why, however, they didn’t use Dooku as the main antagonist rather than unceremoniously dispatching him at the beginning I don’t know. Then we get to the meat: why Anakin turns to the dark side. Well,the reason’s pretty half-arsed. He has some premonitions about Padme dying so embraces Palpatine’s teachings in order to save her, but of course becomes so twisted that he ends up being the cause of her death. Pretty flimsy, and the transition is hardly sensitively portrayed, tortured or even very interesting. Lucas even throws in some cute Jedi kiddies for him to butcher, just to show how BAD he is.

At the end of the film, the loose ends are supposed to be tied up. Luke and Leia are born and taken away when Padme dies (leaving the question, of course, of how Leia knows her ‘real mother’ in Return of the Jedi, but I suppose it’s the power of the Force or something). Obi Wan Kinobe goes to watch over Luke, changing his name to Ben Kinobe (’cos no-one would EVER guess!). Yoda fails to kill the Emperor, but for some reason, doesn’t show his Jedi spirit by going back and trying to kill the Sith lord again, but runs off to a swamp. Wimp! We also find out in a throwaway bit of dialogue that dead Qui-Gon found out a way to make Jedi into ghosts, which Kinobe and Yoda must learn in order for the original trilogy to make sense – and find the time to tell Vader, presumably. C3PO’s memory is wiped, for no reason, oh, and Chewbacca seems to be very important in the Wookie hierarchy, of course, because every random character in the original trilogy seems to somehow tie in with the story of the Empire’s ephemeral rise to power, which seems to have been taken up almost entirely by taking two decades to build a Death Star.

The biggest gripe I had was that at a time when Anakin needed to be shown the power of the dark side, Mace Windu overpowered Darth Sidious. Yes, he also needed to act vulnerable so that Anakin would be forced to make the choice to intervene, but frankly, if I was Anakin I’d’ve just thought that the Dark Side was clearly rather pathetic (not like Vader ever learns the lightning trick anyway). It would have worked if Windu and Sidious were well-matched, then Anakin comes in, distracting Sidious and allowing Windu to get the upper hand. As it was, it just seemed that the Dark Side is rather pathetic. And the worst thing is that I’m pretty sure it was only because Samuel L Jackson just wanted to look cool. Dramatically, it just didn’t work as it should have.

For all this, though, it’s a fun action movie and worth seeing for its fireworks and the satisfaction of seeing Yoda casually take out two guards with a sweep of the hand. But really, it is nothing, nothing to Episodes IV and V.

Catch That Kid

Watched the crappiest movie I’ve seen in ages, Catch That Kid, which as a consequence of its crappiness was utterly brilliant (and featured cute young Kristen Stewart, the girl from Panic Room). Seriously, there can’t be many other worse-edited, worse-directed, worse-thought-out movies. Though I’ve never seen Spy Kids!

(Written May 2005)

Sin City

Sin City was great fun. It divided opinions among the guys I went to the cinema with, but as long as you weren’t expecting it to be highbrow or intelligent, I think you’d probably enjoy it. It probably would have been better-presented as a high-budget TV series rather than a movie, since the almost totally separate stories told one after another made it seem overlong, but it was definitely pure entertainment.

An adaptation of a comic book, it had the aesthetic to match, with almost everything in greyscale, with one or two injections of primary colour. Visually, it was stunning – and the plot and dialogue matched the comic look brilliantly. It really was a cheesy crime comic brought to life, with three tough-as-nails men seeking vengeance or rescuing girls with no end to the bullets or bodycount. In effect, with the gore, the slickness, the excess, the ‘cool’ villains and the busty, mostly naked women who happen to be able to kick ass, it was the ultimate fulfilment of a 15-year-old boy’s fantasies.

If you accept and enjoy that, you’ll probably find a lot to make you grin in the movie. If you go in demanding an elegant plot, deep characters or subtlety, you’ll probably hate it. Luckily for me, I can enjoy trash just as easily as I could when I was a teenager – in fact, probably far more so.

Closer

Closer is a movie that is clearly adapted from a play, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It tells the story of various pretty people who can’t seem to stop falling on one another’s genitals. They go through painful break-ups and bristling challenges. They are all very strange people, but then, people ARE strange – and when neurotics surround themselves with other neurotics, the pseudo-intellectual discussions that take place in the film don’t seem all that unrealistic.

Indeed, the exchanges between people who are very familiar with one another ring true…even if strangers talking to one another like they do in Closer would mostly be met with funny looks and aversion. Essentially, the writer’s identity is too strong, and keeps coming through – the characters are just him with some superficial traits overlaid. And you can just imagine him by turns being horny and lonely and writing his fantasies, and remembering hard break-ups and transcribing them. Actually, Clive Owen’s break-up scene with Julia Roberts actually reminded me of how I broke up with Nikky, with added shouting and aggression – and how I’d never break up with someone again: in a barrage of questions designed to inspire guilty. We were self-destructive, too. At least we learned from it!

The truth is, it was all rather simple, which made it rather dull. People CAN be like these dreadful human beings, and communicate as they do. I have a feeling I was supposed to be shocked or intrigued by these exotic creatures. But in the end, I was mildly entertained by these flawed, very human characters, but also rather bored. It was all very predictable, really.

Stage Beauty

Stage Beauty was fun! Ham, sexual identity issues and the spontaneous invention of Stanislavskian acting in just one 17th-century rehearsal: what more could you ask for? I wonder why it disappeared at the box office – it was just as fun as Shakespeare in Love, though not nearly as conventional a love story. Not exactly subtle or as sophisticated as its period setting might have promised, it was nevertheless a sprightly and enjoyable movie, brimful of quotable lines.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind wasn't bad, but it didn’t half go on. Two quirky individuals meet and fall for one another, only to find out that they had already had a relationship, but all memories they shared have been erased. That’s the basic concept you have to accept, no matter how improbable it is that it would work (a note to all acquaintances asking for them never to mention the memory again isn’t really enough to make sure that the far-reaching connections made don’t cause endless complications), it’s not something you should dwell on if you’re going to enjoy the film, so it’s best to just accept.

The trouble is, once this idea is established, the film gets very drawn-out and tedious. While the characters are interesting (especially the peripheral ones) and the acting is excellent (Jim Carrey’s best performance that I’ve seen, and Elijah Wood really did well within the constraints of the part), Kaufman decides to focus the story on what Joel experiences as his memories are being erased. Charlie Kaufman is one of the more daring and inventive screenwriters around, and I enjoyed Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, but the flow of the story doesn’t work as well here. There’s just too much being bizarre for its own sake, too much hammering home the same points, and while the chemistry between Joel and temperamental, impulsive Clementine is interesting, it gets lost amidst repetitive symbolism hung on a flimsy plot. A fairly good film, but quite tiresome, and not one I would watch again.

Batman Begins

Batman Begins was great fun – everything it should have been! A cheesy plot, some cool oriental-style fighting, a criminal organisation who are evil because they want to do to Gotham what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah, and a frickin’ ace car chase sequence!

Batman was always the only DC character I liked. It wasn’t because he was about the only superhero who was essentially just an ordinary guy (his utility belt was basically a superpower), but mostly because he had such great bad guys (The Joker, The Penguin, Catwoman), a cool image, and an adorable sidekick.

But seeing this movie, it’s amazing how far Batman has come since the old TV series, early comics and even recent movies, all far too camp to be taken seriously. Where Batman Begins really succeeds, like Burton’s movie, is in taking itself seriously while acknowledging how ‘theatrical’ the idea of costumed superheroes is. While a new Superman film probably wouldn’t work, because you CAN have Batman seem feasible because of his technology and his believable reason for wearing his costume (both to blend into the dark and to be a symbol), the concept can work even in a context that regards superheroes as childish and camp.

Plus there was some great humour, mostly thanks to Michael Caine, who surprised me by making a great Albert the Butler, East London accent and all! Indeed, a great supporting cast were one of the movie’s biggest strengths: strong turns from such big names as Rutgar Hauer, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman – and how far Tom Wilkinson has come! Now he’s playing drug lords with Bronx accents in major movies. Well done to him.

In a nutshell, Bruce Wayne leaves Gotham, furious that the man who killed his parents (who CAN still be the Joker, surviving being shot; ‘he’s a double homicide’, said Oldman’s character at the end) has been released by corrupt officials. He finds a ninja academy on a mountain and trains to be a great martial artist, and returns to Gotham to become Batman (through spending and the right friends: nice to see hard work making a hero – and fancy gizmos). He busts the drug lord who protected his parents’ killer, but soon discovers that there is more to the criminal underworld than it seemed – and a (rather contrived) plot involving a machine that will destroy Gotham soon unfolds.

A tad overlong, and very predictable, it was nonetheless an extremely enjoyable movie, with lots of great setpieces, brilliant moments of humour, quickly-edited, snappy scenes and hilarious cheesy dialogue and plot. Perfect popcorn entertainment, even if it would make a RUBBISH book!

War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds as fairly good. Not brilliant, but quite entertaining, and worth seeing once. It was nothing near as good as the original, though – in setting, in ingenuity, in suspense, or even in pace. I can understand the relocation to the present-day US, which didn’t bother me, and it was very Spielberg to change the protagonist from a lone narrator who sees his family escape on a boat, but is essentially alone, to a father with a strained relationship with his children, forced to protect them, but the story became very limited as a result. There is no way such a movie can devote enough time to character development, and all Spielberg’s emphasis on family strife only made all three of the principle characters seem very irritating indeed. Cruise’s character may have been human, with all his flaws, but rather than making him endearing, there was just enough flaw to make him insufferable, even in his hardships. The son really should have died, and the daughter was very irritating, but Spielberg needs his happy ending, so I saw why they were included.

Sadly, it meant that the episodic nature of the book was sacrificed for action. Yes, there was an overlong episode in a basement which condensed the ideas explored with Nathaniel the preacher and the optimistic soldier, but without the frenzied madness and suspense of the former or the poignant optimism against all hope of the latter. But Spielberg’s worse mistakes are these: firstly, showing the Martians. They are so much more powerful as an unseen presence, flawless and machinelike in their great tripods, ideal in a strange and unpleasant way. Secondly, including an action sequence where Tom Cruise is harvested, only to place a grenade in the innards of a fighting machine and having it blow up. If it was that easy, surely they would have realised sooner and started letting crack squads of soldiers with grenades get harvested. The Martians no longer seem undefeatable after that, which is greatly to the detriment of the story.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

let’s have a bit of background. Roald Dahl is easily in my list of the five best children’s authors of all time. Even though I read the novel this movie is based on (and its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator) when I could still count my age on my fingers and have more than one thumb left over, I remember it with a vividness that some books I read even a year ago cannot boast. Dahl is a brilliantly funny writer, and had some absolutely incredible ideas, and the Charlie books were perhaps my favourites, with Matilda.

So even before I went in, I knew that Depp and Burton’s vision of Willy Wonka was very different from mine, which was derived from the book, and the illustrations that went with it. Wonka is an old man who looks rather like Uncle Sam, only with a grin rather than that accusing frown. I was fully prepared for something a bit different from the image I had in my head. My perfect Wonka was not Depp, was certainly not Gene Wilder – I would have chosen exactly who Dahl believed was the only man for the part. But Spike Milligan is dead, and a very un-Burton-like choice.

But before he appeared, we were introduced to Charlie. And Freddie Highmore is perfect: a normal British boy, instantly likeable, totally lacking obvious star quality. Like most of Dahl’s heroes, Charlie is a browbeaten but determined lad, an optimistic victim, someone who has little to celebrate but celebrates nonetheless. Dahl works with simplicity taken to extremes – and who better to deal with simplicity taken to extremes than Burton?

This makes the opening scenes excellent –the lead-up to Charlie getting his golden ticket is very close to the original book, sans only one superfluous bar of chocolate (though keeping one shiny coin seems much more acceptable thank keeping a ten-dollar bill – we must presume they’re dollars, because that’s what Charlie is then offered: we never quite know whether we’re in Britain, where Charlie seems to come from, or America, since they say ‘candy’, ‘vacation’ and ‘dollars’ – not that this matters). Charlie goes to the factory, meets the other children, a delightful group of typical Dahlian grotesques, and Wonka himself makes an appearance.

You can see why reviewers have compared Depp’s Wonka to Michael Jackson – an epicene, socially inept recluse with strange doll-like features and a fantasy land of his very own. But the pariah has long been Burton’s chief concern. A beautiful outcast, tortured by his past yet captivating and successful – all familiar territory. Gone is the Gandalf-like wise patriarch of Dahl’s original, who you trusted enough to know that he was fully in control at all times, and was teaching the wayward children a lesson. Instead there is a vulnerable, secluded, wild character who inspires sympathy rather than awe. It is a very different, very Burton-esque interpretation of the story, but not necessarily a bad one. It is simply a different story, with different sympathies. The child teaches, rather than being taught. It is a good companion to the book, but not a replacement and not a desecration.

And the oompa-loompa songs were damn funny!

The Island

Out of nowhere, this film has appeared, seeming to be aiming for the Top Summer Blockbuster spot, with big names like Ewan McGregor, Sean Bean (I wish his name rhymed…) and Scarlet Johansen. Djimon Honsou got high billing as well, despite appearing for all of two minutes, mostly screaming and bulldozing people out of the way. The story revolves around farmed humans, made for organs and to bear children, who are sentient despite what the company which makes them tells the public. When one clone discovers that the story they are being fed, of surviving a nuclear holocaust and one by one being shipped to ‘The Island’, the last remaining area of inhabitable land, is false, he must flee for his life with a secret that could ruin one of the most lucrative businesses in the world. It’s not a terribly original idea, but it provides a good platform for typical Michael Bay Hollywood pap.

The way the premise is presented doesn’t fare well under scrutiny, so it’s best to just switch off the brain, because after all, it’s all an excuse for car chases and big explosions. If you think too much, you’ll get stuck on the plot holes, convenient coincidences and reasons why the premise doesn’t really work – so the way you’ll have the best time is by accepting the clichés – the evil corporate bad guy, the heroes who cause the deaths of dozens of people (but it doesn’t matter because they’re not the heroes), the paid killer who turns good because he sees why these particular victims are worth turning against his employer for – and just putting them aside.

So in this spirit, the film wasn’t bad at all. The soundtrack was excellent – modern and energised – and the effects were of course spectacular. A screenplay Michael Bay shoots will probably never make you think very much, but he knows how to keep your attention with action sequence after action sequence, always thrilling, always inventive. Ewan McGregor was miscast, lacking the childish naivety that the clones are supposed to have, which the script makes clear includes his character, even if he does have a more developed brain than he should. In fact, about the only ones to pull this off were the guy who plays Neelix in Star Trek and Scarlet Johansen. I’ve never thought Johansen especially remarkable, other than looking stunning, but there was an innocence and purity about her that suited the part perfectly. McGregor is probably the more gifted performer, but in this instance, he was not at all suited to the role he was playing.

The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D

The most brilliantly, wonderfully terrible film I’ve seen in many a year, it was something special! Truly – in terms of cheesy, stupid, so-bad-they’re-good movies for lovers of irony, this should be the Holy Grail. It had no plot, terrible dialogue, some of the worst performances ever immortalised on film (especially from the girl from Sex and the City who I find rather attractive and David Arquette as the two parents), but that just added to its charm, and its charm was immense.

A young boy named Max escapes problems at home and bullying at school by going into the fantasy world of Shark Boy and Lava Girl, but of course, no-one believes his stories. When reality and fantasy begin to mix, and it seems that another force is changing the world Max has dreamed up, he must learn VERY IMPORTANT lessons about accepting the realities of life, standing up for yourself and, um…psychologically demolishing bullies. All with daft 3-D effects and some terrible CG!

Brimful of bad puns, the story reminded me more of The Phantom Tollbooth with fight scenes than a conventional action flick, and it was the whimsical high-camp that made it so entertaining. Yes, it’s stupid, but it believes in itself, and as such, is charming. This coheres with the performances of the three lead children: Rodriguez isn’t interested in getting good performances out of them, but they play their flimsy roles with such belief, such abandon, such conviction that even when they have to do a toe-curling scene of song and dance, it’s irresistibly cute. It helps that even though they’re all slightly funny-looking in real life, Rodriguez’ camera makes them all stunning beautiful. It was about the prettiest film I’ve seen since Peter Pan, and Taylor Lautner (Shark Boy) in particular was mesmerizing. A truly stunning martial artist so absorbed with the physicality of his role that he seemed to want to surf everywhere, I found his overacting perfect.

Unsurprisingly, given how seriously film critics take life, Shark Boy and Lava Girl is getting some shocking reviews. I’m surprised, though, that people will like Sin City (Rodriguez’s last offering) but dislike Shark Boy and Lava Girl. I loved them both, but in a very similar way: both weren’t actually any good, lacked any sort of character or story development, but were thoroughly enjoyable because of the coherence of the vision, the lowbrow fun of the ideas and the visual appeal. It seems strange that someone will think something childish and puerile is dreadful, but something adolescent and puerile is excellent – in fact, it seems likely that there wasn’t any irony in their praise of the schlock that was Sin City. Oh well!

Pride and Prejudice

All I’ll say is that if you wish to film a fairy story, and fill it with a cast whose faces belong in one, at least make the cinematography beautiful, and don’t fill your depiction of high society (albeit the lower end of it, in the Bennets’ case) with anachronisms, squalor and girls who behave like modern teens. If you’re going to make a period drama, at least have some idea of what we know of manners and deportment, and don’t try to squeeze humour out of awkwardness and male haplessness to appeal to a modern sensibility. If you want to make stiff characters more human, don’t direct the actors to perform as though they’re in panto.

And if you’re trying to make a movie at all, don’t insert shoddy extended shots that are supposed to showcase your camera-manipulation prowess, but ultimately look clunky, don’t slow the pace down so much your film becomes almost as dull as Austen’s prose style, and certainly don’t try to get symbolic by removing a room full of people for a single shot. A functional adaptation, but not as good as the seminal BBC version, which was nothing special in the first place.

At least it allowed me to recall my biggest problem with the story: because Darcy does Lizzie’s family some favours just so he can get her into (the marital) bed, we’re supposed to believe him reformed? He’s still a nasty piece of work. But then, I appreciate that I’m not the target audience. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why two X chromosomes will (if certain reports are to be believed) make you want nothing more than to never have to work or achieve anything but netting a rich man for yourself, whereupon you can live life in a prison. It’s beyond my powers of empathy…

The Brothers Grimm

I always await a new Gilliam film eagerly. There are a small group of directors who like their films quirky, visually stunning and unafraid of pushing boundaries, and along with Tim Burton and Jean-Paul Jeunet, Gilliam is my favourite of these. And like them both, he produces films that are decidedly hit-and-miss. Burton has From Hell and Sleepy Hollow, Jeunet has Alien Resurrection, Gilliam has Jabberwocky – and now this. Yes, while it had its charm, I’m afraid I’ll have to put The Brothers Grimm in the ‘miss’ pile.

The Grimm brothers are travelling tricksters who find villages rumoured to be haunted by ghosts and stage dramatic exorcisms for lucrative reward, until one day, they find themselves in the midst of events that genuinely cannot be explained in any rational way. The film’s highlights are aesthetic – spooky forests and squalid hamlets that look like they came right out of the pages of a story book. Some of the sequences that allude to the Grimms’ stories raise a smile, but others fall flat. Whoever decided The Gingerbread Man would be a great addition at the climax of the action should never be allowed near a pen or keyboard again.

The biggest problem with the film was that it was too uneven. I like variety in a film, very much so, but clumsy slapstick, silly accents and Heath Ledger playing against type as what seemed to be an homage to Michael Palin’s accountant characters in Monty Python just didn’t suit the tone of the film, and weren’t funny at all. Not just the humour – the pacing, the flow of the scenes, the music: they all jarred and jerked in a most irritating fashion. The characters were all very shallow and one-dimensional, and all sorts of magic gumbo was produced at just the right moment to provide an expedient escape route for the characters.

Indeed, the most entertaining part of the night was the row of young teenagers behind reacting to a misplaced trailer for an Ang Lee film about gay cowboys. Oh, how they had to push their disgust, lest any of their friends might think they could possibly enjoy the premise! Bless their insecure little hearts!

The Wall

So I watched the movie of The Wall last night. At least now that I know the music and the story well, it made a certain amount of sense. Last time, several years ago, it was just incoherent. Now, at least, I know why the war is at all relevant, the fact that this kid and this rock star really are the same person, and get the little in-jokes, like the mocked poem being the lyrics to ‘Money’. Despite how I love the album, though, the film is pretty dreadful. It’s so slow and self-indulgent, and doesn’t tell the story well at all. It’s an overlong music video that doesn’t include nearly enough of the music. Geldof actually does well with a limited part, and in fact looks very convincing both as jaded rock star and as unhinged neo-Nazi. The animations remain very impressive, clever and disturbing little bits of psychedelia, though the gratuitous gore comes across as rather juvenile instead of shocking.

And while I know it was Roger Waters’ baby, and he knows the story better than anyone else could, I question why he took ‘In the Flesh’, which lyrically is clearly about a rock star going to one of his concerts, mad and drugged up by doctors so that he can at least perform, and instead of giving them music, rants at them about being a surrogate band and then starts spouting a right-wing obloquy. That just works so much better than it actually being a neo-Nazi rally, where the audience are EXPECTING such a tirade. Oh well. In the end, despite the music, it was a chore to watch. I shaln’t bother again any time soon.

8 Mile

So I finally got around to watching Eminem’s moment of movie glory. And hey, it’s a damn good film. Simple, obvious, unimaginative? Hey, maybe, but it was done damn well. Many critics took objection to the fact that Rabbit’s story bears more than a passing resemblance to Eminem’s, and it’s no stretch to play yourself on film. But that’s crap. 90% of the performances you see onscreen are actors playing characters similar to themselves – that’s why they’re cast. And you still get a hell of a lot worse acting than Eminem’s, which was pretty damn good. He may never play another character, but he did a damn good job here, and not once in the movie did I think he was just a musician trying to act.

The story is your typical Rocky set, only Rabbit doesn’t have a montage where he improves miraculously in a ridiculously short time. In the beginning, he chokes (doesn’t say a work in the rap battle), and in the end, he doesn’t. It’s as simple as that. To be honest, it’s a whole lot more believable.

The rap battles themselves are definitely the highlight of the movie. I mean, yeah, the Dozens are a pretty terrifying prospect to the uninitiated: most of us middle-classed white folk don’t much like the sound of standing there being abused, and then trying your best to abuse back, but hey, it’s a game, and it’s not a hard one to understand. What’s impressive is the skill of rapping. A lot of musical snobs dismiss rap, and it IS a very simple art form (but so is most pop music), but improvisational rap is different. Sure, dozens of comedians improvise songs; I’ve done it, and it’s just a case of thinking up a good, simple rhyme, and using it while thinking of the next one. But the rhythms good rappers use, and the pressure of the situation are another thing altogether. While I don’t really think Rabbit should have won his first comeback round, his final rap was genius. What’s even better, though, is that we see the unglamorous side of the rap, the need to sit with a pencil and laboriously come up with rhymes, and build up an arsenal that you can use later. It takes hard work to be good at rap – and I’m very glad to see that represented.

But in all honesty, the movie isn’t really about rap. It gives it a hook, and a big finale, but ultimately, rap isn’t making superstars of white trash. Yeah, it happened to Eminem, but he’s one of millions. Dr Dre doesn’t appear to whisk Bunny Rabbit off to LA. What the movie is really about is life in the trailer parks, on the outskirts of predominantly black Detroit. About a mother who sticks with an abusive man just because he gives her hope of a future, and about cheating girlfriends, and about a tight group of friends. It’s nothing particularly new, but again, it’s done very well.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie a lot more than I had expected to. It won’t change my life, but it was an enjoyable ride.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I proclaim myself very impressed! The Harry Potter films have been a bit of a whimsical indulgence so far – cute adaptations almost purely for the fans, but paling in comparison to their literary counterparts. But Goblet of Fire was different. For the first time, I actually came out feeling that I’d just seen a good movie. In fact, I actually like it more than I liked the book. Things that seemed too obvious or even twee in the book were made real visual spectacles onscreen, and the pacing worked altogether better. I know that there’s a lot missing – Rita Skeeter, for example, seemed totally superfluous, and it was a shame to lose some of the scenes at the beginning of the film, before Harry goes to Hogwarts, but the meat and bones of the story were in place, and the real character development was all there. And that’s what made this film so appealing – the human element. Teenagers squabbling, having difficulty dating, and having dancing lessons for the ball. The bits that have nothing to do with magic or tournaments, but everything to do with charming, awkward humour and character. Ron falls out with Harry because he thinks he kept putting his name in the goblet a secret, they reconcile, but then Ron upsets Hermione by asking her to the ball only as a last resort, then ruins her night (as well as his own date’s) by being bitter when she turns up with Krum. That’s what Rowling does best – simple, charming scenes with her naturalistic teenagers.

And to make it even better, the three kids have improved their acting skills immeasurably! They may not be exactly the characters I read in the books, but they’re certainly their own, strong, individual onscreen characters now. Radcliffe was actually very good indeed as Harry. Very natural, very thoughtful, very real, and only very occasionally showing the flatness of the last films – but moving so far from it in the majority of scenes that I easily forgive him those instances. Watson’s Hermione is much more pushy and aggressive than the one in the book, but she inhabits that different character very well. And even Grint was actually funny in this film – genuinely, non-cringe-inducingly funny! All credit to Mike Newell for this, and to the young actors themselves.

Newell must be applauded, too, for the sheer visual spectacle of the film. The Durmstrang ship, the dragons, even simpler things like the faculty and the dramatic entrances of the visiting schools – they were so detailed, so exuberant, so much fun to watch. Rowling’s characters have never seemed so vivid – so COOL! Tiny Flitwick and enormous Hagrid, dark Snape and especially Gleeson’s magnificent Moody: all just fitted into the aesthetic so well, no matter how little they actively did. Like the best movie posters, their simple presence was enough to excite. I make special mention of Moody because despite him being far gruffer, far more genuinely threatening than he was in the novel, he was also far more human, and Gleeson performed the part with real bombast, and really stole the show. You really felt Harry trusted him at the end, when he takes him away to comfort him after all that has happened.

I don’t have a big problem with the glaring plothole after all, that being if all Crouch Jr wanted to do was get Harry to touch a portkey, he could have done it at any time without the risk of the tournament. Dumbledore might have been guarding against portkeys, and let that one slide because it was supposed to bring you back to the start of the maze, for example. Besides, the climax isn’t what really matters here. It’s done well, with Ralph Fiennes doing well with an almost pantomime part, making it genuinely rather creepy even through all the prosthetics, and Crouch Jr’s appearance is given the appearance of being a clever twist by our finally seeing who was stealing the Polyjuice ingredients when in truth it’s a real case of the expedience of magic, but the things that really matter in this film are action and character. Action is provided amply: a tournament is a convenient way for lots of great action scenes. The flight from the dragon is thrilling, the underwater adventure slightly too long but nonetheless suitably frightening (and I was very keen on it being Neville, not Dobby, who supplied the Gillyweed), and the maze just what it should have been. All three tasks must be very boring for the spectators, though. Still, there’s a nice theme of air, water and earth, e.g. flying carriages, the ship and the castle. The other three champions had about four lines between them, which was a shame, but nonetheless, they made quite an impact through the things we hear they’ve done. But I’ll say it again: the biggest strength of this film is character.

I cared that Harry and Ron were bickering. They were best friends, after all. I cared that Hermione was so upset. Her friend was being a bloody idiot. I was pleased when their conflicts were resolved. That’s what made the film special.

Battle Royale

I’d heard enough about it to know the general outline of the plot: the Japanese are sick of juvenile delinquency and the rebellious nature of the youths, so the government show the kids they mean business by abducting one class and sending them to an island, where they are forced to kill each other.

I think it was much to the surprise of us both that we really enjoyed the movie, because it was one of those movies that was just so bad it was great. The acting was horribly over-the-top. The script was ludicrous, with the kind of stupid flashbacks and blatant, rushed character development that tried to evoke sympathy for totally flat characters that would have given even the cheesiest anime pause, and I can’t believe that there was a novel before the movie, and they STILL thought it would be good. The direction was poor (I’m presuming the budget was tiny) and the faux-artistic shots of waves and sunsets were ridiculously obvious. Bee and I took to imitating the daft lines of dialogue, and all in all had a good giggle. Especially when the big betrayal happened – and made NO sense whatsoever. What use, exactly, were the betrayed to the betrayer? Why didn’t he just kill them??

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

I always knew that this movie would either be very, very good or utterly atrocious. The source material needed to be treated with great care to make a great film. Fortunately, Andrew Adamson (of Shrek fame) has succeeded with great aplomb, and made an outstanding movie, which was fun from start to finish.

First, let’s get the tiresome debate out of the way. Yes, there’s overt Christian imagery. It’s nothing besides, say, The Last Battle, but yes, the parallels between Aslan and Jesus are there for all to see. But it doesn’t bother me in the least. If a story is enjoyable, I couldn’t care less what the sources are. It’s not going to change my mind one bit on the subject of Christianity, and I would happily watch a fantasy full of the influence of any other religion.

Right, now that’s out of the way, a brief summary. The four Pevensie children are evacuated to Professor Kirke’s mansion during the war, and come across an old wardrobe that takes them to the kingdom of Narnia, where they discover their destiny in the battle between Jadis, the white witch who dominates the land, and Aslan, the saviour and rightful king, whose return coincides with the children’s arrival.

Lewis’ books have never been great favourites of mine, though I quite like them. The characters are flimsy and twee, the plot is slung together carelessly, the central McGuffin is a prophecy (the most hackneyed of plot pivots), and there are some really naff magical items thrown in purely so that a contrived circumstance can be brought about for their use. Plus it’s always been a bit of a Godzilla vs Bambi storyline: no-one ever stands a chance against Aslan. So Adamson does the very best thing he can do, which is to take everything way over the top, but do it with such conviction and sincerity that it wins you over. This isn’t to say that there’s no humour. The film is genuinely funny, with the humour based mostly around sibling squabbles and absurd surprises in the fantasy world, though Dawn French and Ray Winstone’s beavers were also surprisingly funny, with a genuine rustic warmth and familial affection to their performances.

But not only is it funny, but it’s actually very cool, the last thing I would expect from an adaptation of Narnia. The direct influence of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films is obvious, with stunning New Zealand scenery, impressive CG-based battle scenes (very sanitised, though you’ll barely notice), a swoopingly melodramatic score and lots of noble posing from the warriors about to do battle, and even some of those in its midst. The aesthetic isn’t perfect, with much of the CG and makeup looking a bit iffy, and sure to date fast, but for the most part, the film is gorgeous. An absolute feast for the eyes. From the breathtaking charge of the armies to the stillness of frozen Narnia, everything is beautiful.

The acting is top-notch, particularly with such young actors. I thought I was going to find the Pevensies very annoying, but actually they were perfect. Lucy was a sweet but normal sort of girl, instantly likeable. Edmund was portrayed much more sympathetically than usual, to the point that everything but his final, decisive visit to the Witch seems understandable or owing merely to ignorance, and he did well to convey a sense of lasting compunction even without much material to show for it. Susan was a bossy know-it-all who actually seemed like a bossy know-it-all, and Peter wasn’t quite as perfect as he is in the books, being subject to self-doubt, weakness, and actually being a bully who was perhaps more at fault than Edmund was. All the kids have more character than they do in the book. It’s very obviously done, with great ‘Character development’ signposts, such as in the opening scene in London (watching the film in Finchley Road, by the way, meant that mentions of Finchley prompted some cheering in the audience), but these moments made for better characters overall, and it was neatly and briskly done, which is to be commended.

Other great performances came from Tilda Swinton, whose Jadis was suitably regal and two-faced, and who really knows how to strike a great ‘I’m an evil queen’ pose, Rupert Everett, whose fox seemed to be a new addition but managed to be memorably sardonic yet heroic even with only a couple of scenes, and James McAvoy, who was perfectly cast as an amicable, rather vulnerable Mr Tumnus. Liam Neeson reprised his ‘guiding elder’ role yet again, but his voice suited Aslan nicely, and it’s a role he plays so often because, well, he’s good at it!

But the winner here wasn’t the acting, and certainly wasn’t the plot, which was pretty ropey and occasionally caused a cringe (I’m surprised Father Christmas wasn’t cut, and though they did well with his look, it was still rather dubious). It wasn’t even the characterisation, which impressed me with its slickness. No, the real reason this was so enjoyable was the setpieces. The eye-candy. The sheer exuberance of escapism fantasy allows. We’ve got giants and centaurs and minotaurs and gryphons. Why not chuck in some rhinos and boars and cheetahs and everything else? It was a feast for the eyes, and the plot essentially served as a vehicle to get us to the next exciting bit. Lewis through the Hollywood Blockbuster lens. And it looked very good from where I was sitting. Thumbs up.

King Kong

I have mixed feelings about King Kong – I didn’t hate it as much as some did, but it WAS quite a chore, especially since it clocks in at over three hours. I have to state that I’ve never seen the original. I’d like to, especially now, but like Casablanca and Citizen Kane, it’s one of those great films I just haven’t seen yet, but will, one day. I’ve heard that Jackson has been very loyal to the original, but I suspect that much of the reason the film doesn’t work is because too much has been added, embellished or stretched out.

Whatever you say about the Lord of the Rings films – I loved the first one and liked the others – you cannot deny that they were absolutely stunning visually. Beautiful cinematography, not just in terms of scenery but also in close-ups, in costuming, in the sheer campy beauty of what the characters had to say and do. And visually, King Kong certainly reaches the high bar set by those landmark films. When Naomi Watts’ character says ‘It’s beautiful’, it truly is. Other than some slightly plasticky CGI that will probably looks as dated in a few years as the original stop-motion segments in the 30s original do now and some silly quick-zoom shots of skulls in the scary bits, the film is a feast for the eyes. Beautiful scenery, wonderfully realised creatures and fight scenes, an exquisitely recreated 30s New York and some gloriously fantastical savages. Jackson is without doubt an excellent visionary director, and the scope of the film is extremely impressive.

But where the film fails is in the writing. It just tries to do too much at once. There are two films here, really – the film about the big monkey smashing things up, and the film about the group of interesting characters who sail to an island. The best action films provide very brief, economical sketches of their characters, just enough that we’re interested by them and care about what happens to them, and then plunge them into the action. But here, we have a little too much – several interesting plot strands begin, only to be abandoned totally for the sake of more action scenes. Jamie Bell appears as a young, vulnerable sailor with an iffy American accent, and just as you’re beginning to get interested in his development and his mentor-figure, the character fades into the background. Similarly, the main characters are set up to have interesting character arcs, but Jack Black only gets a cursory ‘I told you so’ moment, Adrian Brody seems to be playing two totally different people at different points in the film, and only Naomi Watts gets any depth, mostly in silent scenes where she’s a passive companion for Kong (who is superbly ‘acted’ by Andy Serkis).

It’s just too much to try and fit in, even in such a bloated film. I question those who said, ‘Well, we COULD have some more scenes with these characters, or we could have an overlong section about giant insects’. An enjoyable film, but not great.

The Producers

saw The Producers, the remake of the 1968 movie. I never saw the original, nor the stage revival, but I enjoyed it today with fresh eyes, and thought it was good fun. I’ve always had mixed feelings about Mel Brookes’ work, which tends to be a bit hit and miss (though I love 90% of Spaceballs, and have yet to see some of his most famous films), and The Producers was a little uneven, but had some classic moments. It started off a bit messily, badly in need of some anchoring realism or a straight man, but once we got to the process of staging Springtime for Hitler, the movie came into its own and provided plenty of big laughs.

In the car on the way home, I raised something that had occurred to me: I thought it was quite offensive to gay people. Not for the stereotyping, of course – the whole film was full of stereotypes, and I think a little bit of political incorrectness is healthy, and found most of the stereotypes very funny. But when the entire plot hinges on the appearance of the gay stereotype director as Hitler and suddenly everyone stops being offended and starts laughing because, well, of course these camp people cannot be taken seriously and MUST be a source of humour, I thought that was perhaps a bit too far.

Magical Mystery Tour

Just watched The Beatles’ movie for Magical Mystery Tour, which definitely ranked amongst the most bizarre things I’ve ever sat through. It starts off like a documentary about a British bus tour, but then gets bored of that, slings in some very bizarre or silly music videos for various tracks on the album (“Fool On the Hill” is three minutes of Paul standing on hills, or frolicking; “Blue Jay Way” is George sitting there, with occasional projections of cats jumping around; “I Am The Walrus” was bizarre enough without The Eggmen turning out to be a bunch of middle-aged men in a sheet), along with any random crap that occurred to the creative minds behind the project (fuelled by rather too many drugs, I fear), slings in the Bonzos singing ‘Death Cab for Cutie’ during a striptease, and then, as though that was the climax of the show, it just ENDS. One more musical number, and it’s finished. Utterly surreal.

In fact, I found it to be very much like a more likeable version of Un Chien Andalou.

Memoirs of a Geisha

I always knew it would be hard to make a good film. Sadly, Rob Marshall doesn’t quite pull it off.

I’m not gonna review this film properly. Pretty much everything I thought was already said by Roger Ebert, and I suspect his film criticism will long outlive mine! He even made the same comparison I made in my review of the book:

‘I felt some of the same feelings [of unease that Memoirs of a Geisha evoked] during "Pretty Baby," the 1978 film in which Brooke Shields, playing a girl of 12, has her virginity auctioned away in New Orleans. The difference is that "Pretty Baby" doesn't evoke nostalgia, or regret the passing of the world it depicts.’

Golden’s book survived on lavish prose and the very foreign subject matter, plus the sense of authority evoked in the detailed descriptions of 1940s Gion (and I now hear Golden’s getting sued by one of the women he interviewed because he stuck too closely to her life story, which I can easily believe). Underneath, once Sayuri had grown up, was a very cheesy love story that meandered about, relying heavily on heavy amounts of contrivance. All that Marshall had as a substitute for the prose was beautiful cinematography. And this was a stunning film. Really beautiful. But the cheesy melodrama ended up exposed for what it was. Even the power struggles between senior Geisha that seemed believable and tragic in the book suddenly seemed bloated and over-the-top.

This would have been fine, in small amounts. But the film just dragged on and on and on with nothing really driving the story, and barely a moment of tension to hold the interest of the viewer punctuated the drab underclothes hidden beneath all the beautiful kimono. I ended up being more entertained by the score than the story.

I had no problem with the lead actresses being Chinese. Perhaps they could have worked on their pronunciation a little more (you could tell who was Japanese and who wasn’t simply by how they said ‘Sayuri’), but it worked fine. The problem was the heavy accents used throughout. Yes, little Chiyo looked the part, but she, as well as pretty much every other major character, just delivered the lines so woodenly and so obviously, as though there was no need for good acting, since they were speaking with heavy accents. It put a big barrier between me and the characters. I think the only times it was ever surmounted were when there was nothing being said, and the acting was purely physical.

Not a good film, and certainly not one I’d sit through again, for all the visual spectacle. A shame, but not a surprise.

The Constant Gardener

This Le Carré story promised to be quite satisfying. The film’s pretty good. I like the direction, half slick Hollywood shots, half arty hand-held camera tracking, though always flowing smoothly. The acting was great – more natural than I’d expected, which was a treat. And the story was very good, and very believable: a man’s wife is killed in Africa, and in unravelling the reasons for it, he discovers a conspiracy involving pharmaceutical companies, greed and contempt for African life.

Somehow, though, it wasn’t as good as 20th Century Boys is. Not because the conspiracy is just commercial and the stakes are just the lives of the central characters (as opposed to global, with all sorts of apocalyptical possibilities floating around) – in fact, that’s where it improved on Urasawa’s rather cheesy work. It’s not because it pretends not to be cool. All the standard crime thriller scenes are in there, from men coming to beat up the central character as a warning to grisly death to men you think are out to kill the main character actually turning out to be trustworthy and helping them in a very earnest scene. It’s cheesy and predictable in its own way, and that’s not necessarily a failing. But the trouble is, there was nothing driving the plot. There’s a few vague clues, and no sense of anything about to happen, no real big revelations, no sense of unravelling. It was enjoyable, and a good story, but there was just not quite enough to it, with the result that it was a bit dull.

Date Movie

saw Date Movie, a throwaway spoof along the lines of Scary Movie. I don’t mind such films. I actually found Scary Movie quite amusing. But this was just dull. I got pretty much all of the references and cameos, despite not having seen most of the films they refer to, so it wasn’t that I didn’t GET it…it was just that it simply wasn’t funny. It has the worst rating on rottentomatoes.com (a collection of film reviews) I’ve ever seen. Their biggest complaint is also mine: there are numerous references to other films, but they’re not actually parodies, they’re just references. There isn’t any joke beyond ‘This bit looks a bit like that other film, huh?’ There are some strong performances – the two leads are obviously good actors, and the extreme stereotypes of the parent figures are well-done, but the problem is with the writing. The only funny subversion of a real rom-com is the reworking of the mother’s-remains scene from Meet the Parents, with a different SORT of remains, but otherwise the only laughs come from totally random interjections from Lord of the Rings characters or Michael Jackson. All three of these laughs came within five minutes of one another. The rest of the film was a wasteland of the banal, the obvious and the downright nonsensical.

V for Vendetta

Well, I’ll give them one thing – the ending of the movie is probably better than that of the comic book. I don’t think I’m spoiling much by saying that at the end, the Houses of Parliament get blown up – whereas that is the very first thing that happens in the graphic novel. It was a stronger opening than the film had, granted, but the comic’s ending was a disappointment. However, while that one element of the comic was a let-down, far more of the film was.

Essentially, apart from the stirring ending, all the best elements came right out of the comic. The scientist quietly accepting that V has already killed her, the story of the lesbian that gives Evey hope, the most striking twist (though they made it WAY too obvious with too many shots focusing on gloves), as well as the general aesthetic. I can understand wanting to change some more excessive or more convoluted parts, but nothing was changed for the better.

The biggest sin was humanising V. Where he was a remote, solipsistic, superior father-figure, he became a slightly bumbling love interest. Where he was an anarchist keen to point out the difference between anarchism and voluntary order, he became a liberal terrorist appealing to rather than provoking the people. Where he was playful with his references and tasteful with his excesses, he became pretentious and incapable of knowing when he’d gone too far.

The Wachowskis removed the post-nuclear war setting, instead making the fascist government complicit in a plot of releasing a virus, blaming it on terrorists and then coming forward with a vaccine that was lifted straight out of 20th Century Boys, although without a giant robot (I wonder if that WAS a direct influence – the film tells us nothing is coincidence!). This is fair enough, but in an effort to draw more parallels with the Bush regime, the Orwellian dictatorship is neutered and more emphasis is put on spin – but rather than make the setting more believable, you can’t believe the chirpy Brits who see straight through the lies on TV would actually follow John Hurt’s Hitler wannabe. For people living in constant fear, people certainly don’t seem too worried about the ‘fingermen’ – as evidenced by Evey’s blithe breaking of curfew laws in the opening scene (rather than being driven to illegal prostitution, as in the original), and Stephen Fry’s totally transformed Gordon character’s arrant stupidity.

Some beautiful direction was somewhat undermined by shlocky fight scenes, a clunky script (so why did V meet up with the detectives?), and Portman’s dodgy accent and over-acting, her talent visible in perhaps one or two scenes only.

An unfortunate mess made from source material that, while also somewhat messy, at least had impact and eloquence.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Not a great film.

Okay, it can’t be denied: Audrey Hepburn is incredibly beautiful. She is stunning. And I suspect that if she had been plain, if a huge proportion of the viewers didn’t either want to have sex with her or be her, this film wouldn’t have had a fraction of the success it enjoyed. Because it really isn’t very good.

A conventional romance about conventionally unconventional people, it tells the typical story of love showing two people the errors of their ways. The trouble is that while I’m all for flawed characters, even when they were acting in a way that was clearly supposed to endear them to us, they were both still utterly contemptible. Such self-centred, arrogant, weak people – especially Holly, who didn’t deserve her schmaltzy happy ending. I haven’t read the Capote novella, but if, in the name of biting social commentary, it contains the same sort of thin caricatures as the ones presented as peripheral characters in the movie, I’m going to steer well clear. Everyone in the film got on my nerves, with the single exception of the amicable fellow working at Tiffany’s. And he could hardly save the film with his one scene.

If I was supposed to forgive the main couple their flaws because they’re pretty, and because they might just change their ways in future, it clearly didn’t have the intended effect on me.

And the less said about Mickey Rooney’s sub-Python impression of a Japanese person the better.

Silent Hill

Admittedly, it being a computer game adaptation, I was expecting Silent Hill to be pretty dreadful. Possibly so bad it was great. Instead, I got a film that was almost an excellent horror film, but held back by some pretty major flaws. I think I would have preferred so-bad-it’s-great, but I enjoyed the film nonetheless, and would say it’s probably the best horror movie I’ve seen in a few years – although it admittedly doesn’t have that much competition.

The premise is great: an adopted child has vivid nightmares, somnambulating to the edge of a cliff and hysterically shrieking about ‘Silent Hill’ when rescued, so her mother resolves to take her there so that she might confront her fears and recover. Okay, so it’s a bit bizarre that these people’s garden backs onto a huge waterfall, but it’s an impressive setpiece! After a car accident on the outskirts of Silent Hill, mother and daughter are separated, and it soon becomes clear that something unnatural is happening in the town, and beneath the usual level of reality is something darker.

I never played the games, which is quite a shame, since they seem like they’d be quite good fun. However, the plot apparently doesn’t draw much beyond basic inspiration and one or two monsters from the originals, so there is no excuse for a bad story. Thing is, it starts well, but degenerates when the monsters come along, and by the long-winded final act, it’s all become rather incoherent and silly – but at least there’s a lot of gore to make up for it!

Aesthetically, the film is excellent. The cinematography is first-rate, from the claustrophobic, oppressive foggy streets and dark rooms to the huge, looming buildings. Everything creates a sense of stifling suspense, perfect for this kind of film. Unfortunately, what lets it down is the CG.

Now, I have a very good eye for CG, having watched its development in the cinema and in video games more or less from the beginning – at least, from when filmmakers began trying to pass of CG as real. Here, the lines were often rather blurred: there was a lot of CGI touch-up on filmed actors, and several sets were lit to look more like they were Computer Generated than they were, perhaps in homage to the games. The sets and inanimate objects created by computer were first-rate, though for such a special effects-laden film, there weren’t very many of them. The way the sets decayed and melted also looked fantastic. The problems came with the monsters.

The first monsters to appear were weird burning baby-things. Weird is good, and they probably looked great in the game, like something out of a Francis Bacon painting. But the CG just wasn’t good enough: they looked like they were made of plasticine. Later, they overlaid weird skin textures on actors so that they could stumble menacingly forward, which looked great – except that the way they moved made it look like they were about to burst into ‘Thriller’. Plus a big close-up of a bug with a screaming face was very ill-advised. They just looked silly.

On the other hand, monsters that were more or less human were far better. The guy whose feet were tied to the back of his head with barbed wire looked great slithering along the floor (even if his tongue thing was a bit silly), and the ‘Pyramid Head’ character from the game was a superb hulking menace, probably the most iconic character of the film.

But the idea of a fanatical religious cult who like to burn witches was very bad indeed – and if you MUST have such a cult in a movie, at least don’t put them in costumes that look like they’re straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail when they’re going ‘Burn her!’, because that’s all the audience will then be able to think of! I can’t deny that a demon from hell with awesome diabolical powers wreaking revenge is a great climax, though – even if things got ridiculously gruesome and violent.

The actors did well with an extremely clunky script, especially Rose (the mother) and Sean Bean, though his character and his entire plot should’ve been left out, as it served no purpose (according to my research, it was tacked on when the readers pointed out that there were no major male characters in the script), and the little girl trying to look evil just made it look like she wanted to be a teeny dominatrix, which I doubt was the desired effect. The butch policewoman managed to make a one-note character very likeable, though, which is to be commended.

The real problem was in the convoluted and overcomplicated explanation of what was basically occult gubbins, dragging out the last act and making the film overlong. But it was better than I had expected, and rather good fun.