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.

The Last Holiday

A big-hearted, big-boned black girl is told she only has three weeks to live, and decides that it’s finally time to live, and soon finds herself the centre of attention. Bizarrely, the screenplay was based on an earlier version by JB Priestley, and it’s a very cheesy story, if truth be told. Full of contrivance and coincidence and the goodness of the heart shining through and changing the world. Just the sort of thing I was directly opposing when I started to write a book with a similar premise myself. But so genuinely warm and likeable is Queen Latifah, so exuberant is her lust for life, and so entertaining is Gerard Depardeiu in one of those minor but powerful roles he does so well, that I enjoyed every moment. It wasn’t clever or original or different, but it wasn’t trying to be. It was telling a heart-warming story in a heart-warming way. And I appreciated that.

Rumour Has It

… with Jennifer Anniston. I wasn’t expecting much from a Jennifer Anniston film, but if Friends taught her anything, it was how to act in a very natural way that really does make her seem like a normal girl, and her performance was excellent for the part. A story with a delicious concept (the true story that inspired The Graduate comes out, profoundly affecting one girl’s life) develops in an interesting way, and the film was ambitious, sometimes a little far-fetched, but certainly enjoyable.

Nanny McPhee

I didn’t like it at first, because it was trying so desperately to be charming and classically British, with its Victoriana and very broad caricatures, and it seemed that the morality of the piece would be rather dubious. In the end, though, the adorable kids won me over, especially the boy who’s Hugh Grant’s cousin, who has an amazing ethereally childlike beauty for a boy who turns sixteen in a matter of days. All the performances were strong, given the pantomime dialogue, even from the peripheral characters, and obvious though it was, the payoff at the end was good fun to watch.

An Officer and a Gentleman

I always seem to expect Richard Gere films to be twee romantic melodramas, and I keep being made to rethink. This was a very good film, a convincing portrait of a hard lifestyle, with some truly memorable characters and a great soundtrack (for the time!). It was often hard-hitting, and often uplifting, and even if it sometimes strayed too far into cheesy territory, it was well-balanced with grit. Perhaps a little overlong, trying to incorporate storylines for the hero’s journey, romance AND friendship, but in general, it pulled them all off remarkably well.

The Matador

far better than it looked in the trailers. Pierce Brosnan’s first post-bond role as far as I know, and a well-chosen part in that context, with echoes but big contrasts. An assassin comes to realise just how lonely he really is as a nervous breakdown approaches, and reaches out to an ordinary man subtly played by Greg Kinnear. Could have been a cheap odd-couple comedy, but with gorgeous location shooting, a concise and pacey script and an intriguing concept, it worked much better than I thought it would.

The Da Vinci Code

You know how much they paid Dan Brown for the rights to this movie? Six million dollars. Six MILLION. Blimey. I hated the book, but I can’t deny it’s a true phenomenon. And now there’s a film, too.

And you know what? The critics have been a little too harsh on this film. The acting isn’t appalling. The plot isn’t THAT confused. And Tom Hanks’ hair definitely certainly wasn’t what you would call noteworthy.
In the end, the film was quite enjoyable. The novel begins in very conventional crime thriller fashion, which suits the movie well. The characters are cartoonish and their flashbacks feel incredibly tacked-on, but this is a story about ideas and the actors go through the motions (or ham it up to a hilarious extent, in Ian McKellen’s case) without being offensively dull. The music was a little uninspired, but the cinematography, especially the location photography, was beautiful. And best of all, since everything was kept brisk and exciting to fit the blockbuster mould, one of my biggest gripes about the book disappeared: stupid, simple puzzles got solved in moments, rather than being milked for pages and pages while you got increasingly frustrated at how stupid these leading cryptologists and so-called professors of symbology are. Thank goodness.

In fact, despite people calling this a slavish adaptation, there were a fair few changes, some good, some not so good. One cryptex got removed, which detracted nothing from the plot. The role of Opus Dei changed considerably: from people who want to seize the grail to control the Vatican to people who want to find the grail to destroy it. Jean Reno’s Javert-like policeman also became an Opus Dei member, the whole plotline getting resolved in such a perfunctory way that it seemed almost like a waste of time to begin with. The conclusion changed, too: no sign of Sophie’s brother, and the grail documents got discovered earlier than I remember them being found in the novel. At least Langdon became a sceptic here, though, rather than everyone being so self-congratulatory in their mutual appreciation of esoteric Grail lore and back-slapping.

The first half of the film was enjoyable enough, a rush from location to location finding clues and escaping the police. It soon began to get repetitive, though, and the ending felt half and hour too long. Still, there was entertainment enough in the improved dialogue, pretty scenery and the illustrations of the conspiracy theories around The Last Supper that it wasn’t tiresome to get through the film. And that’s something I can’t say for the book.

X-Men III – The Last Stand

Let it be known I am a complete X-men geek. But, manga addiction and recent interest in Alan Moore aside, not a comic book geek – I hated oh-so-perfect Superman, was bored by Spiderman and had a passing interest in Batman only because the bad guys were so awesome. But like millions of other young teenagers, I felt different, alienated, and wished it were more obvious that I wasn’t like everyone else, and thus, like millions of teenagers, X-men really resonated with me. So as with the previous movies, I came to this one saturated in canon lore, but also (like most fans, I would hope) ready to accept that the films will make big changes to the comics: after all, there have been so many alternate universes and reimaginings of the Marvel Universe that a slightly altered version shouldn’t shock anyone.

Being a fanboy, I got all the little in-jokes. I realised that man amazed by flying cars was Stan Lee. I understood why we saw the number 198 prominently. I smiled with glee at the fastball special against the sentinel. I even got the ‘I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!’ joke. But while I felt that the writers certainly knew what they were doing, and pandered to the fans somewhat, it seemed strange that the plot was so ropey when there was so much strong canon material to draw from. Not that it was a bad film – it was great fun! – but it had its flaws.

The change in director didn’t make much difference, except perhaps a slight shift away from the highlighting of the mutant-homosexual parallel, despite bizarrely unnecessary comments about hairstyles. The action was just as frenetic, the scale just as massive, the characters just as sleek and cool. And the plot wasn’t bad, either. Functional, at least.

As hinted at the end of X2, Phoenix has a significant role in the movie, one closer to the original story from the comics (which is a good thing – the interplanetary Dark Phoenix saga, with Phoenix being an independent entity, has always been one of my least favourite parts of the canon. So cheesy…). However, the main plot revolves around a government agency who, thanks to a drug whose crucial elements are extracted from power-sapping mutant Leech (a pretty bald boy in the film, rather than a hideous green creature), have developed a ‘cure’ for mutants, making them normal people again. While to some, this means a moral dilemma (as with Rogue, who cannot touch the ones she loves), to others (like Magneto) it is a threat to mutantkind, which must be eliminated.

These two major plot points don’t sit well together, meaning the scenes with Phoenix feel very much tacked-on and superfluous. The two plots, while concurrent and coming together in the climax, are pretty much mutually exclusive and could be disentangled with very little difficulty. So the problem is that the writers try to squeeze two films into one. This leaves some parts totally underdeveloped, such as Cyclops’ fate, the Rogue/Iceman/Shadowcat love triangle and Beast’s story. And unlike the other films, there just aren’t enough character moments for any of them to feel real, except for Wolverine and the two patriarchs. All the other good guys are pretty much ignored. Storm (at Halle Berry’s insistence) gets more screen time, but is totally pointless (her grand gesture in the final confrontation is to summon up some fog. Great.). But at least they aren’t just rubbish, like the new bad guys. The Marvel universe is full of great bad guys – why use the likes of Multiple Man and Arclight, especially when they do nothing but stand around looking useless? I suppose it’s to avoid what happened with Juggernaut: a legendary character, utterly shat upon.

Seriously, Juggernaut is an iconic character, a well-loved antihero. So where did it go wrong? Well, firstly with the casting. Vinnie Jones, for heaven’s sake? Why make him British, when you’re going to make no mention of his relation to Xavier? Even then, why cast someone who can’t act to save his life, and is totally wrong for this kind of film? And most of all, why put him in a costume of prosthetic muscle and tin that looks like his mum made it? Pants!

As they often do in melodramas, the British acting royalty steal the show. Patrick Stewart’s Xavier is the only one who gets any additional depth in this movie (being more morally dubious); just a shame I didn’t stay until after the credits, as apparently I should’ve. Ian McKellen’s Magneto is superbly merciless and yet sympathetic; I still think he’s miscast, but his version of the character is still excellent fun, and the scene with the Golden Gate Bridge is genius, in performance as well as in concept.

The SFX-laden fight scenes were undoubtedly impressive, but they weren’t quite as imaginative nor as focussed as I would have liked, and I found myself wishing repeatedly for just a little more story.

The Hidden Fortress

Great film! Despite how utterly repulsive the characters are, you really start to like them, especially Tahei and Masashichi (though I could hardly understand a WORD the latter said – at least I could mostly get the gist from the others). Except the princess – I was so glad when they made her pretend to be a mute. She was incredibly irritating. A simple story told in a clever way: it certainly felt ahead of its time. Good fun, though I have to say, despite antecedence and sophistication, it was no Star Wars.

The Godfather

Well, while the man was here working on the boiler (seemingly nothing to do with cooling after all, just a regulation from the boiler manufacturers that we’ve never had to pay any heed to before, but now have to pay £450 to adhere to), I decided to watch a movie. Suitable Independence Day viewing? Why, the film responsible for much of the adulation of the American criminal underworld, of course – The Godfather.

Great movie. Well-deserving of all the praise it receives. Not necessarily because of the story – it’s a bit obvious and predictable, slightly confusing in places (what exactly Barzini wanted and why he acted as he did seem questionable) and definitely too long, with whole chunks that could have been cut out (the whole Las Vegas episode really didn’t need to be that long, especially that late in the film). What makes this film classic is the atmosphere. The bleak lighting gives a veneer of gritty realism to the rather romanticised story, but what lifts it to such great heights is the performances. There isn’t a weak one there: every single actor on that screen is utterly believable delivering their dialogue, and Coppola expertly transitions between claustrophobic mafia discussions, family dramas and evocative location shooting in Sicily, a simple way of making the film more epic and ambitious. The music, the dialogue, the characters, the setpieces – all are superlative. I’ll never forget the horse-head scene, nor even characters like Luca Brasi, who make an impact despite scanty screen-time.

I’m not sure I’d ever watch it again, and unlike many, wouldn’t name it my favourite film of all time, but it’s truly great.

Fearless

brilliant fun. Just a pure, simple, obvious and spectacular kung-fu movie. Based on historical events (artistic licence wielded more like a morningstar than an artful three-part staff), Fearless tells the story of Huo Yuan Jia, a man instrumental in counteracting China’s image as ‘The Weak Man of the East’, representing his country in some crucial combat matches. Did my heritage colour my enjoyment? Nah – I was too busy being excited at recognising Mandarin words!

The writing style really felt like typical anime at times. After a string of fights, we have a lengthy flashback to Huo’s childhood, his downfall and rehabilitation (in a peaceful farming community, cared for by a blind girl – if it weren’t a true story, it would seem too cliché…) and then his rise to fame, before picking up again where we left off at the beginning. For the conclusion of the fights. People are always either speaking nobly of high philosophical concepts, or being sneaky swine who go around being duplicit. Characters are drawn big and simple, and emotional turmoil is milked for all it’s worth. Kids are brattily adorable or adorably adorable, friends come through for one another even when times have been difficult, and a man must suffer great guilt for his misdemeanours, or at least, suffer having a beard and looking mad for one scene before they can be rescued by some kind-hearted soul.

On this pleasingly simple and rather sweet framework, many many fights are hung. It’s quite strange, amidst detailed period costume and settings to have very obvious wirework, but the wushu here is of mythical status, and exaggerated as such. Huo doesn’t just beat his opponents, he totally dominates them, with the exception of fights with his childhood friend, the final climactic battle, and a scrap with Nathan Jones (it’s great just to know people that HUGE really exist!), although there the fight follows the very daft pattern of our hero getting dominated for the first half, then turning the tables and winning without taking another blow.

Much praise is lavished upon the famous fight director whose work here genuinely was very impressive, but the genre is so silly that I can’t take it seriously. It’s all so over-the-top that it’s a pure joy – but will always remain trivial, whether or not that is the intention of the director, in this case Ronny Yu, whose previous works involve such nonsense as Freddie Vs Jason, but who did a good job here, save perhaps some weird MTV quick-cuts in one of the fights, and some very wooden and cheesy performances, especially from the kids. That aside, the beautiful locations, sweeping cameras and sense of fun were all totally enjoyable.
Great fun, and had me giggling away at the sheer audacity of what we were supposed to swallow as a realistic plot, and getting very caught up in the sheer energy of the fights. I’m not sure it was for the right reasons, but I loved it!

Sid and Nancy

Great fun, providing you don’t take it as historical fact. Gary Oldman is astonishing, totally inhabiting the character of Sid Vicious, the girl playing Nancy Spungen is totally convincing and while it doesn’t take many of his interviews to realise that he’s not like that in real life at all, the guy playing Johnny Rotten does a very good job of making the character memorable in the little screentime he gets. Strange, though, remembering the film was made less than a decade after the events that inspired it. Playing around liberally with true events (putting Sid on The Today Show, for example) and making characters, events and settings much bigger and bolder and more easily digestible works well for telling a story, though, and the glamorous tragedy told here is a superb fairly story. Watching these total fuck-ups’ sordid existence is deeply compelling, and despite their being so utterly trapped and fettered, their impression of freedom, their total naivety and obliviousness is in many ways enviable. After all, a lot of people want to be Sid Vicious, and a lot of people want to tame someone just like him. Not me, but I can’t deny that a human wreck can look terribly, terrifyingly beautiful.

Pirates of the Caribbean II

Pirates of the Caribbean II was fun, if overlong. Lots of great CG, from Disney’s new logo animation, through the great-looking fish-human hybrid antagonists and to the climactic battle against the Kraken. Lots of pretty people, highly sexualised – indeed, about the second shot of the movie was Keira Knightley’s cleavage. Lots of funny slapstick, and a great swordfight sequence involving a huge mill wheel. Lots of joyously dark imagery – I thought a quick cut of a crow pecking out an eyeball at the beginning would leave parent wondering if the movie should really have had a higher rating (Like ‘Arrr!’?). Lots of broad stereotyping, as could be expected in a pirate film (though it seems the production company have got in trouble for portraying a real people as clichéd savage cannibals). Lots of fun, laughs and top-class Hollywood thrills.

But also lots of dubious moments (why does the Kraken faff about when it can pull ships under in a moment? If Elizabeth left Jack on the ship because the Kraken is following HIM, why didn’t it follow him when he was rowing off?), lots of disjointedness with the excessive aspects of the McGuffin-fuelled plot, lots of cheese from the main characters (even the gimmick of Jack is wearing a bit thin now) and really not a strong enough story to stretch into two movies. Nowhere near as satisfying as the first one, but fun nonetheless, and certainly worth seeing. And of course, the run-time was roughly the same amount of time as Will wagers on his bet…ie eternity.

And let’s face it, no-one, NO-ONE would ever have been convinced that Keira Knightley was a boy!

Stormbreaker

Oh dear me. The start of a new franchise this ain’t. Someone spent a lot of money on this film, and boy, was that ever a mistake. Big stars, big explosions, big names in fight choreography can’t save this turgid, bipolar rehash of tried-and-tested ideas from being a flop, which despite an epic marketing campaign it’s looking to be, playing to nearly empty auditoriums and all but disappearing from cinema listings in the country that should be its spiritual home before it even opens in the US.

The premise is simple: take all the James Bond clichés you can think of, from evil plots to unleash a virus across the world to the spy who is our main character escaping peril through the unlikely use of various gadgets. And then make the main character a child. No, it’s not an original idea (cf. Spy Kids, Agent Cody Banks et al) but then, not is Harry Potter, and that never did him any harm.

Like Harry Potter, this movie is adapted from a successful YA novel, but unfortunately, in adapting his own work, Anthony Horrowitz didn’t learn the valuable lessons taught by the Potter box office monsters. I may not have been a big fan of the first Potter film, but they got the tone right. Where the first Harry Potter and, I presume, Horrowitz’s book gleefully mixed daft British humour, straight action and some unoriginal but exciting action scenes, the first Harry Potter movie downplayed the silliness (gone were tube map-shaped scars, headless ghosts and pink umbrellas were peripheral and subdued etc) and upped the dark gothic romanticism, Stormbreaker just doesn’t know whether it’s trying to be a serious spy story or a tongue-in-cheek parody, so just mashes the two together and hopes for the best. Unfortunately, the effect is like mixing the wrong paints. The end result is a mess, neither of the colours you began with, but something else you don’t want. While you have the scenes of our hero, Alex Rider, done as straight as possible, you also have Bill Nighy and whoever played the female baddie hamming it up as though they were in a sketch comedy show. While you have gorgeous sets, intricately designed to the highest possible standard, you also have shots of fake seagulls about as realistic as the singing birds in The Producers and stray pistol shots making dead pigeons fall from the sky. Undoubtedly cool (if extremely unlikely) fight scenes with our hero using a rope in full martial arts stylee to knock out half a dozen hefty builders are contrasted with that bad-guy henchwoman and a babysitter having a totally unfunny slapstick fight.

The great cast is wasted. Fry appears for about ten seconds in a half-arsed performance as the Q equivalent, all of whose gadgets of course HAPPEN to be exactly what Alex needs at various points in the movie, and who was responsible for one of the most shameful instances of product placement I’ve ever seen. McGreggor is lucky, not even surviving the title sequence. Rourke just looks bored.

And then there’s Alex Pettyfer. Not as attractive as the posters made him look, and so wooden the term ‘chiselled looks’ sounds literal, I can’t see any way the boys of his age, the target audience here, would want to be like him. I’m almost entirely sure the vast majority of him would much rather punch the shit out of him. In fairness, it’s not really Pettryfer’s fault. The script requires him to never show a shred of emotion, act so cocky when undercover that it is immediately obvious he is a spy, get the girl in under three lines, possess superhuman abilities in combat and vehicular control and worst of all, wisecrack. Alex Rider never puts a foot wrong. As a result, I found myself really hoping he would die, as he blatantly would have done in the situation.

This could have been a parody along the lines of Johnny English. That would have excused the utter turd of a plot, which must have taken as much thought to conceive as does flatulence, if that. Utterly predictable, the only surprise in the whole film was that the expected ‘I AM your father’ twist never came, thank goodness – the film wouldn’t’ve been above it. To be done as seriously as it tried to take itself, as a heartfelt homage, it would have to have been much better written, and without the Beano characterisation. The only part that came close to that kind of standard was a side-story about Alex’s training in Wales, which ended in farce and was totally unnecessary to the story.

Definitely not a film worth seeing. When the highlight of a whole film is its brief shots of London (admittedly looking stunning), you know you are in trouble. Avoid like a bright green vial of virus juice.

Superman Returns

Okay, yes, the film really looks great. It really feels like a real sequel to the Superman films of my childhood, rather than the cheap imitation some franchise updates end up being. Shame the story was so very dull.

The cast all looked good and played the parts well. Kevin Spacey even made a few unusual acting decisions, as the trailer was keen to push, which made for an interesting watch. Routh’s transition between Clarke and Superman was note-perfect, and he really does remind one of Christopher Reeve. The look of the piece was nicely consistent with the originals. I thought perhaps they were going to make things more physically realistic, but no, anything and anyone Superman lifts still seems to get support braces shoved through their entire length and be able to resist gravity, which has its charm. Special effects were stunning to watch, especially on the iMax screen. The few 3-D scenes weren’t great – things too often looked like they were in a pop-up book, quick cuts ended up making everything blurry and (perhaps it’s my eyes) anything that came too close to the foreground ended up ghosting – but the sheer scale of the iMax screen really enhanced the experience. Technically, it was a great production.

The trouble was that the story was such guff. That’s why I never liked Superman. He’s so powerful that you can’t hurt him without kryptonite, so they have to focus on romance. So here, we have Lex Luthor hatching an extremely rubbish plot to use technology from Superman’s home planet in order to raise a new continent from the seabed, which will plunge most of North America under water. Why? Well, real estate is valuable, y’know. Coincidentally at exactly the same time, Superman returns from his journey to see whether his planet has REALLY been blown up, and discovers Lois Lane is now married and has a child. And is unusually cold to Clarke and brutal to Superman. But does Lois still love him? Will she betray her wife? Will Superman be caught as he flies around being a dodgy stalker, using his super-hearing and x-ray vision to spy on Lois? Who’s the father of that child REALLY?

Yeah. Uninspiring stuff. The most exciting action pieces are when a shockwave causes carnage in Metropolis, and when a boat is teetering on a newly-risen plinth of rock (also the best scene 3D-wise). But this was balanced by endless solemn scenes of superficial angst and a lot of dud scenes of Luthor’s Paris Hilton-inspired girlfriend having pangs of conscience when she finds out her boyfriend is going to kill millions. The ending is very disappointing, on a much smaller scale than expected, and when it started to drag on with a totally unnecessary ‘Is Superman Dead???’ plot and the small boy behind me loudly informed his father, ‘Daddy, I REALLY want to go home now’, I couldn’t help but sympathise.

And as for the romance…it got some warm chuckles from me, but in the end was formulaic and left me indifferent.

The Filth and the Fury

Julien Temple’s first documentary about The Sex Pistols, The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, often gets criticised for its bias towards Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren’s version of events and for the fact that it didn’t include John Lydon’s input at all. The Filth and the Fury was much better-received, giving all the band members as well as McLaren time to tell their own stories. If anything, it’s biased more towards Lydon’s point of view – or at least, he makes more convincing arguments in his inimical sneering style.

The film sets the scene of lower-class life in the UK in the 70s, showing a grim world of repression, boredom and grime, then charts The Sex Pistols’ rise to infamy, feuds and eventual break-up, interspersing interviews and live clips (though I’m thinking not live sound recordings, most of the time) with clips of Richard III (to whom Lydon compared himself) as played by Olivier, animation of the band, archive footage and various British comics playing the clown. It gives the film an interesting disjointed and unpredictable feel, and with the band members all interviewed in silhouette, there’s a sense of strangeness, of individuality, as though the Pistols were part of a world no-one else can ever really know, but they lived it utterly and completely. Which is very true.

I really admire Johnny Rotten. I find it hard to see why people would idolise Sid Vicious. Why girls want to have sex with him – that I can see, but to idolise him? Strange. But to see Rotten perform, even in old clips, is something special. The intensity he has, the way he can just freeze, staring with this look of accusation and dominance in his eyes. His sneering, powerful and instantly recognisable voice. His intelligence. The fact that he is a person like anyone else, with real emotions and real regrets. The way he knows that punk was about non-conformity and that the development of a look, a uniform, a pigeon-hole, ruined the whole thing. I don’t quite understand why he wanted to reform the band for a nice big commercial tour, but hey – he wanted to. And doing what you will, as for Crowley, as for the Romantics, as for the Epicureans, was part of the essence of punk. What more do you need?

I’m not saying I understand him. I’m not saying I understand punk, especially not the Pistols’ punk. But I enjoy it. And I do what I want, and if I don’t look like the rest of the punks, that’s fine by me. I’m happy being middle-classed, affluent, articulate, liberal in a mild, ineffective way and many other things that I’m sure are the antithesis of the punk movement. But until I start pretending to be something I’m not, I don’t think I’ll earn the scorn of Mr Lydon. And it’s not like that’s a guideline for life, anyway.

The film was compelling viewing and a must for any fan. Even non-fans would likely enjoy the classic rock and roll story told here, though probably less than the absorbing Sid and Nancy, simply because of the nature of the respective media.

I have to say, though, even though I like Roger Ebert’s film reviews very much, he wrote one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen by ANYONE for this film. He’s MET these people in person. He was going to write a film for them. And he thinks Sid Vicious was the frontman, gets song titles wrong, thinks a contemporary London councillor would use the word ‘guys’ and misunderstands entirely the relationship between this band and their fans? Tsk.

Children of Men

Children of Men walks a thin line, but it managed to be a very enjoyable film. The premise is that in 2027, infertility has suddenly swept the world and no babies have been born for 18 years. People see the end of all human life encroaching on them and the aging population gets increasingly hard to control, so anarchy ensues. England is one of the few remaining prosperous, stable nations because it is a dictatorship which imprisons, tortures and kills illegal immigrants. It’s far from an original basis for a sci-fi story, but it’s solid enough. The story revolves around a predictable McGuffin having to be taken by Clive James’ character to a safe haven, despite being coveted by many others who want the political leverage it will give them, leading to a lot of people shouting at others while holding them at gunpoint.

It’s not an original story – few such pieces are – and it was full of shades of 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale and even V for Vendetta. I believe that Brian Aldiss has written a story with a similar premise, though I’ve not actually read it. But Children of Men succeeds in how seriously it takes itself, how little like a sci-fi story it is and how much like a gritty action flick. Its weakest part is the exposition, which is a mess of disjointed scenes of protagonist Theo’s daily life that really don’t tell us much or have any relevance to the main story, but allow us to see what London has become on the sidelines – it could’ve been done much better. It’s only once Julianne Moore’s insipid, irrelevant character with an unconvincing history with Theo has departed that we get to the real meat of the story – a chase movie done very well.

Alfonso Cuarón is a gifted man, and I always admire a director who can spend a lot of money getting a film to look very real indeed. An ambush on a car is done with such brutal realism that I still remember how exciting it was, yet without any trace of the superficiality or glossiness of a Hollywood blockbuster – it was all shaky hand-held cameras, and that’s what made it so compelling and real. Performances are mostly top-notch, with some very natural, spontaneous-feeling dialogue – although occasionally things got clunky, especially with the freedom fighters. Pam Ferris’s wonderful middle-classed earth mother-type was superb; some will find her over-the-top but many will recognise her as spot-on for that type of person. Peter Mullan’s swaggering cop was also great. Michael Caine puts in a typical Michael Caine cameo with his usual brilliance, too. As for Clive Owen – he does the job, in his typical deadpan way. I didn’t especially like him but didn’t dislike his performance or anything. The girl who played Kee was noteworthy, too. But…was that McGuffin CG?

Brazil

Very much enjoyed Brazil. Okay, it was a total mess, but it was a satire; it was allowed to be. I loved the dream sequences, and the broad jokes of plastic surgery, bureaucracy and ineptitude. I loved the zany cameos from various Oscar winners. I loved the high-fantastical sets. The only things I would fault would be the stupid length of the film, the slapdash attitude to story and plausibility and the strange Michael Kamen score that keeps quoting well-known themes in a distracting way. But with the amount of fun everyone in the film was clearly having, all was forgiven. After the film, they showed Casquinha’s BBC ident for the last time!

The Departed

We went to the cinema and saw The Departed, Martin Scorsese’s remake of Internal Affairs. I’m surprised it’s gotten such rave reviews (albeit mostly from guys who think ‘Fucking cool’ is a level-headed assessment of a film); I didn’t think it was much good. It was nicely made, with great cinematography, music, casting and acting (even DiCaprio worked well, though Nicholson was annoyingly over-the-top at times), but there were such problems with story, dialogue, pacing and underwhelming action sequences that I was disappointed. A good simple premise is developed well at first, but then rapidly becomes banal. The two moles don’t hatch clever plans to out each other – they rely on coincidence and the kind of situations that would reveal their true identities over and over again in real life. Death Note did the cat-and-mouse game so much better (though that of course was fantasy and could make up its own rules, therefore could get away with much lazier writing). The real problem, however, was that the characters were all so unlikeable, the different parts (especially the far-fetched love triangle) so irrelevant to one another, and the cool factor of Goodfellas or Mean Streets so lacking. I was moderately impressed, but certainly didn’t think much of it.

The History Boys

to the cinema to see the film adaptation of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys. It concerns a group of boys in a Northern comprehensive who hope to go to Oxbridge, and the way their teachers guide them, particularly when the headmaster brings in a young tutor specifically to coach them in how to impress dons at the prestigious universities. While not as anachronistic, embarrassing and misleading regarding Oxford and Cambridge’s classism as the trailer made it seem, it was still a pretty awful film. I’ve never felt so much like a fifty-year-old as I was when I was expected to swallow this old fart’s view of what youth are like, how easily categorisable and understandable, even when they’re being sexually deviant or trying to outfox their elders. Never have I seen a more unlikely group of boys passed off as gritty and real. Never before have I seen three adult characters so totally defined by the values and interests they’ve had tacked on to them while all being of essentially the same flat character and verbosity, each defined far more by their actor than their written character. It was patronising, dull, contrived and contained about 30% of the good jokes it needed to sustain it. Oh, and teacher-pupil relationships really should’ve been explored in more depth than groping and sordid invitations from the boys. Yes, you can present it as a tragic yearning and a rather pathetic character flaw, but at least go into the issue of abuse of trust just a little bit, eh, Alan?

Borat

I confess being very surprised how successful Borat has been. When I first encountered the publicity for the film, I thought that it would have an impact comparable to Sasha Baron-Cohen’s other film, Ali G Indahouse, that it would play to a niche audience and then quietly disappear. But while apparently it’s not playing too well in American theatres (unsurprising given that the American mindset is the target of much of the satire), it’s received rave reviews (Rottentomatoes’ reviews are 96% positive) and it’s being lauded in more than one place as ‘The funniest film of all time’.

So I was a little disappointed to find the movie good, but not great. It’s funny, and I’m glad I saw it, but I wouldn’t want to see it again. It has some great laughs, but it’s not up there with the Monty Python films or that other great mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap.

The film opens in a village in Kazakhstan whose dilapidation is cartoonish, and its inhabitants more so. Borat, a television personality in his country (though who watches televisions when there’s still one telephone per village?), shows us around his hometown. Here is the village rapist, and here is Borat’s sister, who has won an award for being the country’s number four prostitute. If you’re going to get the joke, you will have got it by now. Anyone who still thinks Borat is a real Kazakh and finds their own prejudices confirmed by this movie is unlikely to ever understand satire – or reason. Interestingly, this segment also contains several direct references to Borat-like Internet celebrity Mahir (first meme I ever saw!), who I’ve always thought at least partially inspired the character, even though apparently Baron-Cohen has been developing him since long before Mahir’s page was hacked.

Borat goes to America in an attempt to edify his compatriots on what makes a country great, but when he sees Pamela Anderson on Baywatch, he decides he’s going to marry her and sets off to find the busty superstar. This is the totality of the plot, which is really a vehicle for getting the Borat character to meet various people, both formally and informally, and this is what Sasha Baron-Cohen does best. He’s not great at thinking up jokes (when Borat appeared on Letterman, every single funny line was taken directly from the film) but what he’s great at is interviewing people in character, be it as Ali G, Borat or Bruno, and letting the interviewee’s prejudices show themselves. I thought that the real disappointment of the film was that there wasn’t more of this. I loved watching people getting wound up in their own prejudice on The Eleven O’Clock Show, or Ali G’s own series, but here interviews I think are going to be great showcases of what Baron-Cohen can really do, such as the ones with a group of feminists or an eminent black politician are wasted on artificially linking to pre-filmed set-pieces; they could have been interviews with anyone. Even the horribly prejudiced rednecks and frat-boys whose opinions really make the liberally-minded viewer wince don’t really need Borat to lead them to say what they say. There’s nothing of the surprise of extracting something unexpected or of using the Borat character to show hidden prejudices that make Baron-Cohen’s TV work so special here: all the prejudice is either on the surface anyway or hidden too obviously to be satisfying when revealed, as in the posh Southern dinner party.

However, there are some riotous set-pieces, like the ones at the rodeo or in a hotel. Some of the parts that seem unstaged clearly are not, but you don’t realise until after the shock of what just happened has hit you.

The funniest film I’ve seen in a long time, certainly, but not the funniest film ever by a long, long way, and also, by a similar distance, far from the best work Sasha Baron-Cohen has ever done.

Casino Royale

I was a little confused when Casino Royale was announced, having in my childhood seen the spoof version with Peter Sellers and Orson Welles from which Pink Floyd apparently ripped off ‘The Trial’ (and I was so impressed at Roger’s eclecticism!), but in the storm of publicity surrounding the film’s release, I soon found out both films were different treatments of Fleming’s very serious first Bond novel. Appropriately, this new adaptation is a ‘reboot’, taking us back to the beginning of Bond’s Double-0 career and openly dispensing with continuity by making the setting explicitly modern-day and keeping Judi Dench as M. Pierce Brosnan was sacked, and with him the slick, pretty and overall safe Bond of recent films (which persisted in Die Another Day despite its opening), replaced with Daniel Craig, whose troll-like countenance suggests thuggishness, grit and danger, and it seems many women are vociferously approving of the sex appeal this gives him.

And yes, there is more of a realistic edge to this Bond, less of the cheesy gadgets and the quips, more of the brutal, flailing fistfights and questions of whether killing in cold blood really affects these agents. But from the heart-racing free running sequence that follows the great theme song by Chris Cornell (why isn’t it being promoted like Madonna’s piece of crap was?), it’s clear that this is the same Bond despite the crusty veneer and the nosebleeds, still fully equipped with a character shield, still able to react in a split second and pull off things trained professionals in specialised fields might manage one in ten times even when exhausted, still able to survive car crashes and shrug off bullets (or nails) to the shoulder. But apparently Daniel Craig is much closer to the Bond Fleming wrote (I wouldn’t know) than even Connery, and given that a certain torture scene apparently really was in the book (to my surprise), I take it they are indeed fairly dark. And I have to say, he had a vulnerability that other Bonds have lacked, which made him much more likeable – part of that was the writing and direction, but it was also the performance: it would have been easy for him joking while being tortured to be incredibly false and irritating, but Craig did well.

But once more we come to the plot. On paper, it’s perhaps my favourite Bond concept, of those I know of. A high-stakes card game forms the centrepiece of the movie, with the players attempting to psychoanalyse one another, as well as, in some cases, trying to kill them. It’s so human, so far from the usual nuclear-warheads-aimed-at-Fort-Knox nonsense that I was completely drawn in by the idea. It had the potential to be more Sherlock Holmes than Incredible Hulk, which really appealed. However, the horrible scene introducing Vesper Lynd, the prettiest Bond girl in recent memory, but also amongst the most unconvincing as a character (all sassy attitude, vanity and then easy vulnerability), in which she and Bond psychoanalyse one another in a most unlikely manner, should have forewarned me. The level of mind-games was about that of a Naruto fight. Bond’s supposed to be a superb poker player and he doesn’t see an obvious nervous twitch is a double bluff? Psssh.

In the end, I have to say that welcome though making Bond human, open to being hurt, being distressed and being betrayed was, and fine though the production of the film was, its episodic plot and the way that most interesting ideas were not given sufficient time to develop into full bloom meant that the highlights were not, as hoped, tense moments of soul-searching or the locking of wits, but were the great set-pieces: the aforementioned free running, the awesome sight of an ancient Venice building crumbling, the engines of a jet plane blowing away a police car, were the adrenaline-fuelled highlights. The film was a brave attempt to make Bond more than that, but it didn’t quite succeed. A shame, because there was a lot of potential there.

The writers have said that they will continue with the emotional threads the film left dangling in Bond 22, and it’s possible a character mentioned towards the end will be the next villain. This sounds promising – but the truth is that leaving the concept this undeveloped left a rather unsatisfying sheen on this otherwise enjoyable movie.

Worth seeing, beyond a doubt. But I can’t say that I think many people would want to see it again and again.

And the product placement, with even a too-obvious cameo by Richard Branson, was just gratuitous.