CatholicLefty

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince

2009-08-21T17:02:55Z

The sixth in the Potter series, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince was one of the better books and it is most pleasing to see that it has been translated to the screen in probably about the best way possible, resulting in the best of the films so far. This looks good, sounds good, is paced well, acted decently for the most part, and manages to convey most of the information required to setup the conclusion. There are a number of issues, which I'll get to in a minute, but the whole business of compacting the rather large and densely-detailed book into two-and-a-half hours was always going to be deeply problematic, and it is to the credit of those involved that they've done a rather good job.

Let's get the negatives out of the way first. By this point in the series, we're awash in characters, and any attempt to please everyone in sight by giving them all parts is always going to cause problems. As such, we get to see Neville a few times but he doesn't get to do anything at all - problematic given his big role to come. Luna Lovegood - pretty much the best thing about Order Of The Phoenix, if I'm remembering my opinion correctly, even if I didn't mention that in my review at the time - gets a couple of scenes but feels very underused. Hagrid doesn't feature strongly at all. Timothy Spall as Wormtail must have a good shot at having the shortest performance of a 'in-the-lead-credits' actor in a film ever - his screentime comes in at under 5 seconds. Lupin and Tonks don't fare much better, and nor do the peripheral members of the Weasley family. In a way, these all feel like extended cameos - and certainly there's too much going on elsewhere to devote too much time to most of these characters, so the decisions made are mostly good, though feel a bit perfunctory in many cases. If you're not familiar with the series you may well wonder who on earth all these people are and why they seem important - but if you jump into a series 5 films in, you've got to expect that kind of thing.

The changes to the story to accommodate the running time of a film mostly work well, and the balance between action, romance, and character moments is close to perfect. There are a number of issues introduced though - Dumbledore (somehow) appears to already know the contents of the memory he needs Harry to extract, so why go to all that trouble? The change of the attack at the end to be about Dumbledore rather than Hogwarts as a whole rather diminishes the impact of the scene - not least because it makes the vanishing cabinet stuff Malfoy has been doing all film pretty much pointless (Malfoy and Snape are already in Hogwarts - what does it really matter if the other Deatheaters are there or not?) I can see why Dumbledore's funeral is omitted, but I'd have had no objection whatever to sitting in the cinema for 5 more minutes to deal with this properly. And the whole half-blood prince thing is clearly only included because it is the title rather than because it imparts anything to the story - relegated to unimportant status, it makes Snape's 'revelation' at the end feel rather anti-climatic.

There are other issues that stem from the source material itself, which it is hard to blame the film for specifically. The 'luck' potion is a bit of a cheat on a par with the time machines in Prisoner Of Azkaban, even excluding the fact that the idea is lifted directly from Red Dwarf. The opening is very dramatic and shows the impact of the magic world spilling over into the muggle world - but then this idea goes nowhere and is forgotten about almost instantly. One place where the film improves over the book is in not delving too far into the tedious teenage temper tantrums all the lead characters indulge in - the level of complication and hormones on display in the film is much more bearable.

So, on that note, onto the good, which vastly outweighs the bad, even if I usually find it easier to complain than praise! The score is lovely, as you'd expect. The cinematography is actually rather nicely done, and bar a couple of small jumps, the editing is impressive. For a two-and-a-half hour film, you know it has been paced correctly when you don't get bored once and leave wanting it to have gone on for longer, and that is the experience I've had each of the three times I've watched this.

Most of the film rests on the acting and characterisation, and here there are mostly good things to report. Our leads have matured as actors immensely and have the potential of very good careers ahead of them. Somewhat oddly given he used to be the best of the leads, Rupert Grint is probably here the weakest of the three - he seems to have developed least. He's good, but is getting outshone by now. Daniel Radcliffe has come on in leaps and bounds since the early films, and delivers a competent and strong performance here. Emma Watson too has developed a great deal and gets the chance to successfully show this off here. Hermione and Harry's 'heart-broken' scene after the Quidditch match is one of the most memorable of the film, delightfully acted and strong enough that it seems to have set off another wave of 'oh, why didn't Harry and Hermione end up together?' fan-moans - though actually, the scene shows exactly why that isn't the important part. They are actually friends, and just friends, and all the better for it.

In the big adult actors category, Dumbledore actually has a good-sized role in this one, and Michael Gambon, unsurprisingly, delivers the goods. Alan Rickman doesn't have a lot more to do with Snape than he has already, but he's done a strong enough job to date that he has imprinted himself as Snape in our minds now, and it would be impossible to imagine someone else playing him. Jim Broadbent is probably a good choice as Slughorn - he fits the character described in the book pretty well. Robbie Coltrane doesn't have anything much to do with Hagrid this time around, but it is still welcome to see him, albeit briefly. Maggie Smith is rather understated here but delivers when necessary.

Tom Felton brings a surprising amount of depth to Malfoy that hasn't been readily apparent before. Ignoring the minor controversy over the part being recasted, Jessie Cave gets Lavender just right - borderline psychotic but fun! Evanna Lynch as Luna continues to steal every scene she's in. Rather a shame she's not in a lot more. My main reservation is with Bonnie Wright as Ginny - she's fine some of the time, but often her line delivery seemed off, and her chemistry with Harry was close to non-extant - though to be a little fair to her, the romance doesn't have any real development before it just sorta 'happens' (excluding the events of Chamber Of Secrets, of course), which is going to be hard to make work on screen. Hopefully it will work out better in the next couple of films now there is some degree of establishment.

Ending on one of the best and most poignant lines I've encountered at the cinema all year, in a beautifully-shot and touching setup for the conclusion yet to come, this film is quite the treat. Minor niggles aside, the tone is close to perfect, the characters well-balanced and the story (for the most part) an excellent representation of the book. Much better than I anticipated and probably about as good as a film based on the book could have been. 8 out of 10.

The Proposal

2009-08-20T16:48:31Z

The trailers made The Proposal look appalling, even more so given how many times the trailer was shown. Fortunately it doesn't turn out to be a bad film at all, and while it doesn't do a great deal for the rom-com genre and suffers from various problems, it remains watchable for most of its length and has a handful of pretty-good performances, including the leads. The mix of silly over-the-top action pieces and quiet contemplative moments is more or less correct, and while some bits fail - an extended tribal dance sequence is quite risible - quite a lot succeeds, particularly a scene with a dog, an eagle, and a mobile phone, which is surprisingly amusing. All the usual tedious lessons are learnt of course, family is good, love can blossom in unlikely places, oh we all know the drill. Here the only real complication is an immigration status problem that sets the ball in motion, and I find it rather hard to believe the immigration authorities in the US are quite this lenient on people who have wasted their time - but in the end, this isn't a forensic examination of immigration procedures but a quite formulaic rom-com, and suffices quite well at that. And it does set up a for once decently amusing set of scenes while the credits roll.

Sandra Bullock is infinitely more watchable than in the trailer. Apart from the opening ten minutes or so, where she's deeply irritating and the cause of an office setup which is in itself deeply unrealistic, she mellows quickly and nicely and shows off excellent comic skills while managing to bring some depth to her character. Surprisingly, given the bits shown in the trailer, it's quite a nice performance. Ryan Reynolds, who I'm continuing to warm to as an actor, is fine here too, and he and Bullock play off each other very well. I'm not at all convinced they have the chemistry to work as a couple, but they do the comedy well enough, and the couple bit is going to be after the cameras stop rolling, so they get away with it. Malin Akerman is ok in a very under-written part that continues to look like it is about to be fleshed out but never quite manages it. Oscar Nunez has an amusing, well-played role as someone who keeps cropping up in different guises. Mary Steenburgen must have the 'nice, caring mother' thing perfected by now, and she's fine here but nothing too exciting. Craig T. Nelson doesn't get a very well-written part as the cranky father, a side story which mainly distracts from the main plot but fortunately doesn't get a lot of screentime. Betty White is good fun as the grandmother.

It's not going to change the world, and it's a bit hit-and-miss, but it's a lot more enjoyable than you'd expect from the trailer, and I can't deny that I enjoyed the majority of it. So 6.5 out of 10.

Moon

2009-08-20T16:17:18Z

It is most welcome to see an original science fiction film, especially one that has clearly had a lot of thought put into it and has been produced with a lot of care and affection. It is also pleasing to see a film that slowly reveals a complex story without exposing gaping plot-holes - this film holds together very well indeed. In addition, it is also a pleasure to watch a showcase of acting in what is almost a one-hander film, with demonstrably different (and yet, in many ways, the same) characters played by the same actor. All of which are to be found in spades in Moon. There's a lot to like here and a lot to commend. While owing an acknowledged debt to movies such as 2001 : A Space Odyssey, this is highly original. Telegraphed twists turn out in the opposite direction - for example and almost uniquely, the clearly-partly--homage-to-HAL computer isn't evil and is actually helpful.

There are two minor drawbacks however. The first is that, while the story structure has no clear holes, it feels like a story that demands a final-act revelation, and that doesn't get delivered. All the twists have been revealed by the end of the second act, and it is a little disappointing that the film ends without any extra shocks. The second is that this is quite a cold, clinical film - we sympathise with the problems faced by the characters, and are intrigued by the story, but there is a sense of emotional detachment that doesn't involve the viewer half as much as I'd have liked. They are small but, in the end, quite significant problems.

Sam Rockwell is extremely good as our lead character(s) - which is fortunate, as he's the only person in sight for the vast majority of the film. He delineates his characters very well but in a way that makes sense when things get explained. When the script calls for him to physically deteriorate, unfortunately he's a little too good at that too, and perhaps the film becomes a little too graphic at this point for my sensibilities. I'm continually surprised whenever I pick up an old film and find Sam Rockwell has been in it and I haven't previously noticed (eg. Galaxy Quest, for goodness sakes!) so hopefully he'll start getting the attention he clearly deserves. The only character not played by Rockwell is the computer played (vocally) by Kevin Spacey, and he does a good job of ambiguity when required, and then friendliness and compassion later on. The 'gimmick' of the smiley faces representing his moods is good for a few chuckles and adds significantly to the ambiguity early on - the only criticism there is that the cute faces take away attention somewhat from the poignancy of when he explains the truth of what is going on.

I wish I'd been a little more emotionally grabbed by the film, because technically this is excellent - for one, there's a brilliant table-tennis scene that confounds your expectations completely on the use of split-screens, which deserves to increase my rating by a half-point in itself. Clever and filled with close attention to detail, this is a very well-done film and I'm quite unhappy I didn't engage with it and like it a lot more than I did. Even so, this is clearly deserving of a 7.5 out of 10.

Skin

2009-08-19T17:29:33Z

Skin tries to say something new about apartheid South Africa and pretty much succeeds, though it turns into a rambling and eventually rather unsatisfying film. Strongest when examining the stupidity of stupid laws - what exactly happens to someone who isn't clearly of either skin colour, when you're dividing the population into two based on that - the story eventually ends up as a rather pedestrian family melodrama with brief flashes of brilliance (the way the mother cuts down the father during his death-bed repentance is quite chilling). I suppose it is also to be commended for not showing anyone in a particularly good light - there are oppressed people here, but they're not entirely lovable underdogs and can be nasty too. Given the film is based on a true story, this is one occasion where this authenticity is valuable.

Sophie Okonedo plays our protagonist for most of the film (she's played by a younger girl for the stronger opening section) and her casting is, for me, the main problem with the film. There's something about her rather affected style of acting that really irritates me. In The Secret Life Of Bees (my review) that seemed to be because she had mental issues, but her character here - who doesn't have any mental issues - doesn't perform in a vastly different manner, and her jerky, nervy performance grates rapidly. Well, for me at least. Others seem to have thought it was a good piece of acting. Oh well. I guess I should see her in some other movies and see if I can prefer her elsewhere - but here she was plain annoying.

Sam Neill is reliable, as you'd expect. His character's ambiguity (is he a racist, or is he just trying to prosper in a stupid system?) is welcome at first, but also grates a little as the film progresses. Alice Krige does a decent but mostly unremarkable job, but she does deliver the best lines of the film (in the deathbed scene mentioned above) which elevates this performance considerably. Tony Kgoroge manages to craft a workable character who starts off loving and decent and ends up quite a bit darker.

It's nice that they tried something different for this film - despite the obvious Romeo and Juliet etc. etc. connotations, it doesn't feel hackneyed or excessively done before. Though it's less nice that they tried one of those tedious narrative devices of starting the film with a scene that should be chronologically about three-quarters of the way through, told the story up till then, and then carried on. As I've said before, you need a good reason to do this. There isn't one here. And finally, for me, the film suffers from Sophie Okonedo's performance, which I really tried to get into but just couldn't. 5.5 out of 10.

Bruno

2009-08-19T17:04:27Z

Probably my least favourite of the three major Sacha Baron Cohen characters, I did seriously wonder how you could construct a whole movie around Bruno. And the answer is that, well, you can't really, you just chain together a set of incidents with a very loose overall story. Which is fine, but does require the question of why this needs to be on the big screen, and I'm not sure any answer is all that convincing.

That said, there is much to enjoy here, with some of the silliest and most outrageous antics to grace the big screen in quite some time. The trademark deliberate misunderstandings result in some comedy gold, and some ultimately shocking ideas - I certainly didn't expect actual footage from the Middle East where he tries (and obviously fails miserably) to broker some peace deals. Certainly this isn't simply a case of picking the easiest targets to lampoon - perhaps in many ways some of the most ridiculous, but by no means easy. While much comes across as clearly cherry-picked in editing, and some seems a little mean-spirited (probably inevitable when sailing this close to the wind in so many places), there's certainly a lot to entertain and openly laugh at here. I'm deliberately skirting the issue of whether this is insulting to gay people, or exposing the hypocritical attitudes of people towards gay people, or both, or neither, because I'm not sure either that there is a coherent message or that one was fully intended.

I found Borat (CLoAfMBGNoK) surprisingly disappointing, though I had high hopes for it. I had much lower hopes for Bruno and ended up pleasantly surprised. C'est la vie, I suppose. Don't see Bruno if you're easily offended, but otherwise you'll have a lot of fun. Still, my opinion of this *as a movie* is significantly tempered by the fact that it isn't really much of a movie to start with, and also that it has close to zero repeat value (most summer blockbusters I'll try to see at least twice, unless they are truly unbearable or dull as ditchwater. But I had no desire to see Bruno a second time). Also it ought to have had a silly long name like Borat did, as that would have been more fun. 6 out of 10.

Rumba

2009-08-12T17:42:59Z

A mostly silent comedy, Rumba is full of bright gaudy colours and surprisingly edgey humour, and while some bits of the comedy fall rather flat and the final third is a bit lacking in a number of ways, this is unusual and innovative and not really the kind of film you'd expect to see.

Two teachers, who have rather unusual teaching styles, like nothing more than dancing, and then enter competitions and so forth. After an unfortunate accident involving a guy failing to commit suicide, one ends up with memory loss and the other loses a leg. Cue many scenes which flirt with being offensive but are instead just ridiculous - notably, a scene with literally minutes of throwing around crutches and paperwork in an attempt to balance with just one leg. Still, even while flirting with convention, this is a gentle, slow humour that nevertheless can be appreciated and enjoyed, though this does make the bits that don't work too well drag on a little too long. I suppose the closest thing in recent times would be Mr Bean, though Mr Bean tends to edge over the crass line rather more regularly (not to its benefit, in my book).

Both Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon are excellent at utilising this rather old and out-of-fashion style of physical comedy. Philippe Martz is excellent support too, as the continually unsuccessful suicidal guy.

There's quite a lot of fun to be had here, and it is pleasant to see a different style of film that points back to much earlier times, but retains a decent amount of contemporary edge nevertheless. The visual gags are very strong. A shame, given the short running time, that it starts to drag towards the end, because for the first 50 minutes or so this is quite a novel delight. 6.5 out of 10.

35 Shots Of Rum

2009-08-12T16:45:12Z

35 Shots Of Rum is a rather odd film to try to review, because of all the films I've reviewed over the past couple of years, this is probably the one I have the least idea what on earth it was about or what it was trying to say or even what was going on in the film itself. That's not necessarily a bad thing - I'm a big fan of David Lynch, for example - but this seems to present itself as a reasonable straightforward story about a family doing regular things and having some events happen to them. There's nothing outlandish in sight, but there's little explicable to the actions of these characters and few if any motivations are offered. There's lots of train-driving scenes, which is nice, and some good character moments, but my general bewilderment at the purpose of the film just leaves me incapable of judging much else.

I can't shake the feeling that there's something here that I've completely missed, and perhaps I ought to have watched it a second time to try to get some clarity. But on one viewing, this appears almost entirely incoherent, and just leaves me confused in a way no film has for a very long while. As such, I've no idea if this was a good film or not, and so I suppose I have to give it a very middling 5 out of 10, with the provisio that if I ever do see it again that could wildly change either upwards or downwards.

Ice Age : Dawn Of The Dinosaurs

2009-08-12T16:27:50Z

Ice Age : Dawn Of The Dinosaurs - or Ice Age 3 - has to have been the most-trailed movie I've encountered in a long time. There were teaser trailers for this around as long ago as March 2008, ie. 15 months worth of hype, which is frankly a ludicrous amount of time to trail a movie. Especially one as mediocre as this turns out to be - I was annoyed by the semi-infinite number of trailers before I saw the film, and as it wasn't anything special anyway... There isn't a great deal wrong with this movie but, other than a few visual jokes and a couple of decent one-liners, there's not a great deal to remain interested in either. By far the best parts of the film are the occasional interludes with Scrat and his new rival/girlfriend Scratte, which show a visual inventiveness and wit that brings to mind much older cartoons. A film with just these two may well have been too much of a good thing, rather like the penguins in Madagascar 2 (my review), but it would certainly have been better than the pedestrian main plot of the film (indeed, rather like Madagascar 2).

As it is though, we're lumbered with a clunking main plot that tries to explore family and how it impacts on friendships and similar tedious matters - not really the stuff of a children's film and not an enticing one to approach in a cartoon anyway. I'm not sure what audience the target really is here - just when you're sure it's unoriginal and uninspired enough to be a run-of-the-mill kids film, some adult concept comes along for a few seconds. Usually rather awkwardly.

Admittedly I haven't seen the two previous films, but I really didn't care less about the trials and tribulations of these stock characters at pretty much any point - and I can't imagine I would even if I had seen the predecessors, given the characterisation on show here. From an opening that heavily borrows from Bambi (hence evoking rather fonder memories of that film), this becomes a 'journey' film with a rather uninspiring journey. Not to mention it significantly outstays its welcome - after about an hour it begins to drag badly, and then when we get a resolution and an obvious end point (soaring, climactic music and all) it inexplicably struggles on for a further 15 or 20 dull minutes.

Still, it does look decent - not Pixar decent, but good enough - and the voicework is mostly good, though there are a couple of occasions where there are awkward pauses that just don't work. There's a few bits to make you giggle and the Scrat/Scratte stuff is inspired, but its not enough to save an uneven and rather dull main plot. Even setting aside the irritation caused by the excessive amount of trailing, this falls rather flat. 5 out of 10.

Rudo y Cursi

2009-08-11T17:19:08Z

Quite a charming and amusing little piece from Mexico, Rudo y Cursi is the story of two brothers who are gifted at football - one a striker, one a goalkeeper - and their attempts to make it in the big leagues. While it follows a rather well-trodden path - early glory, hubris, problems (one brother gets involved in gambling, one in expensive things and an expensive woman) and then a downfall - the film keeps light-hearted and entertaining enough to be enjoyable and enlivening. Even the ending - whereby a situation from earlier in the film is replayed, with much higher stakes - is, while highly predictable, also well-done enough to be easily forgiven for sticking rigidly to formula. Football is by no means my thing, but the actual football here is kept to manageably small bites, and the action is in the relationships and characters.

Diego Luna - who was the one disappointment in the otherwise excellent Milk (my review) - rather redeems himself here, with a fun and entertaining but not entirely superficial character. Gael Garcia Bernal is a good choice for the other brother too - he fits the image of a certain type of football star. The two work very well together. Guillermo Francella does an excellent job as the agent who first finds the brothers, and then operates on the margins of legality in order to progress his career (or, rather, his own interests). He also acts as a part-time narrator, talking about football and life and so forth, with often witty and hilarious asides. Jessica Mas plays the obvious 'TV star/footballers girlfriend' type, and isn't all that great, but doesn't have that major a part anyway.

I didn't expect much at all from this film, and so it was quite a nice surprise that it was actually rather a lot of fun. It's not going to change the world, but is a pleasant diversion. I'm on quite a good run still with Mexican films, it seems (La Zona (my review), Blue Eyelids (my review), now this...) A solid 7 out of 10.

The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee

2009-08-11T17:01:32Z

The writers (well, screenplay adapters) of The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee have gone to decent lengths to create realistic, rounded characters, and strong actors have been hired to fill these roles. In the end though, they seem to be strong characters in search of a strong story - and failing to find it. There's not a great deal of narrative anyway, and while the extended flashback structure is interesting - indeed, the young Pippa Lee is often a more interesting creature than the present-day one - it doesn't seem to fully cement the characters in the way you would expect such an extensive set of flashbacks to do. There's enough in the strong performances to keep the audience entertained, but there's much less substance here than it seems was intended. Of all the genres uneasily jostling together, probably the humour stands out as the most successful element - there are quite a number of rather enjoyably amusing moments, and it comes across rather better than the attempts at more serious melodrama.

Robin Wright Penn is a good piece of casting, as she gives a humanity and shine to a character who therefore holds our interest. Blake Lively plays the younger version with aplomb, given this is an awkward and difficult character she does an upstanding job of making the character feel multi-dimensional - to the stage that not only do you accept the intrusive flashbacks, but actually come to welcome them. Whether the two characters are convincingly the same person or not is rather more up for debate, I wasn't too sure this worked all that well, but the screenwriters could have provided slightly more explicit linkages and I think that would have helped. Still, it is a far better part in a less-embarassingly named film than that in The Sisterhood Of The Travelling Pants 2 (my review)! Alan Arkin is, unsurprisingly enough, excellent, though he could have done with being a stronger character in the present day rather than mostly just a foil. He's a delight to watch anyway, and fortunately he does get a fair chunk of screentime. Winona Ryder gets much of the best humour in the film, and makes the most of it. Maria Bello and Julianne Moore have small but quite well-formed parts. Keanu Reeves is rather wooden as ever, but it doesn't damage the part he needs to play all that much.

It's not really a good sign that only a few weeks after I saw the film, I can't really remember a great deal about it other than isolated images - Winona Ryder crying in a bathroom, Robin Wright Penn sleepwalking, Keanu Reeves with a very big tattoo, Blake Lively being spanked in a bizarre semi-porn photo shoot (not complaining in the slightest about that one, but certainly bizarre!). While I enjoyed the journey with these characters while I was watching the film, and enjoyed the performance of much of the strong cast, there doesn't seem to be a lot of substance to this film in the end - which is fine in itself, but it feels like there was an aim for substance that somehow hasn't been realised, and the final product feels remarkably aimless. 6 out of 10.

My Sister's Keeper

2009-08-07T17:06:00Z

Not exactly the film to choose for a fun night at the cinema, My Sister's Keeper takes an inherently depressing story - a teenager dying of cancer - and puts some other storylines on top of it, not entirely successfully. The film seems a bit aimless - starting with another sister, who had been bred specificially as a 'saviour sibling', standing up for herself and initiating a legal process to try to stop being forced into further medical procedures. After some of that, we get an extended elaboration on parts of the dying sister's past, with a boyfriend and so forth. Then we're back to conclude the legal proceedings, and move towards a reckoning of who lives and who dies and so forth. That does significantly understate the amount of time-faffing-about there is in this film though, indeed at some points I was struggling to get the chronology of certain scenes straight in my head. It would probably be easier on a second viewing, though this really isn't the sort of film you want to see twice (well, not if you're me, at least).

The true flaw at the center of the film though is that you feel the makers are trying to offer asignificant moral dilemma over the central courtcase, but rather like Gone Baby Gone (my review), there really isn't much of a moral dilemma at all, one side is clearly right and the other wrong. Or at least in my morality. (In case I need to spell it out, the child is right and the mother is wrong. The whole 'saviour sibling' thing is plainly abhorrent). The film then tries to get around this by having it all as a manufactured artifice for a different reason anyway - a twist that it is pretty easy to guess well before it comes, but avoiding the moral question entirely, which is somewhat of a cop-out. There would be nothing wrong with the motivation behind this being entirely genuine from start to finish, and would make for a sharper film. To some credit, the film does add a coda where the court case is won by the correct side, even though it is no longer relevant, so it isn't entirely troubling, but it has been sidelined from the main plot by this point.

The characters feel real enough in all their stubborn irritating ways, though there's a brother who is going off the rails who seems entirely incidental to the story, and ends up being an unfortunate distraction. He could have been chopped entirely with little effect. Still, the family interactions mostly feel authentic, with a few minor exceptions which seemed forced.

The film's main impact for me is in proving, again, that Abigail Breslin is an outstanding young actress. She's excellent here, never hitting a false note and dealing with a complex part in a competent and mature manner. The middle third of the film suffers at least in part because she's off the screen for most of it. She has a presence well beyond her years and is the heart of the film, whatever the screenplay implies. Sofia Vassilieva does a good job - I think - as the sister with cancer. I say I think because I'm not at all sure how hard it is to look miserable and dying for most of a film. She does it rather well though. Cameron Diaz plays against type as the hard-assed mother who cares about nothing but trying to make her daughter well. I felt no sympathy for her at all, but I think that's due to the screenplay than Diaz's performance. She deserved more opportunity for closure than the few seconds she gets right at the end - I'd have liked to see her deal with the collapse of her certainly a little earlier on. It's a competent performance but didn't stand out. Alec Baldwin, however, did stand out in his brief scenes, his compassion shone through very well and I wanted to see more of his righteous anger at the mother, though we had to make do with an electric couple of scenes.

In an attempt to be worthy, this too often strays into emotional manipulation, and the central story of the film suffers badly from not being the moral dilemma it is set up to be. Other than that, this is a story about death and illness, and as such isn't easy to sit through, but here it is handled reasonably well. Worth it for Abigail Breslin, if nothing else. 6 out of 10.

Frozen River

2009-08-06T17:39:42Z

Well, this didn't take long to arrive... Finally we get to see the final piece of last year's Oscars, with Frozen River and Melissa Leo's nominated acting performance. And... well, the film has some small value, but wasn't worth the wait, and Leo's performance is fine, but not exactly outstanding. Oh well.

A rather straightforward story about a woman trying to hold her family together with little money and a wandering husband, who gets involved with a Native American people-smuggling operation and the various adventures this results in, there's a lot of potential here for all manner of social and political commentary, but instead the film mostly operates on visuals of the frozen landscape and the mechanics of the operation rather than the underlying themes - and utilising but not entirely explaining the confusion as to how tribal lands operate, which often makes us rather confused too as to what the police of various jurisdictions are allowed to do and not do. As such, it feels somewhat of a missed opportunity and a rather contrived set of situations. One in particular, with a baby who may die, felt like blatant emotional propaganda poorly setup and irritatingly realised. And the ending, with another contrived situation resulting in a sacrifice, is no doubt supposed to be emotional but left me entirely cold.

Melissa Leo is good enough, but I wouldn't say this was close to an Oscar-nom-worthy performance. Her character is believable and hard and borderline unpleasant, and as such is fine, but nothing stood out strongly. Misty Upham plays her 'partner in crime' in a particularly annoying way that grated horribly. Charlie McDermott is an annoying teenager played in a stereotypical and unremarkable way. No-one else stands out.

I suppose the strength of Melissa Leo's performance is that she makes the film watchable at all, because without her this would be a tedious grind indeed. But it's not good enough to elevate this film above a run-of-the-mill and contrived 'movie of the week' which ducks a number of major issues in favour of some simple criminal tedium. Disappointing. 4.5 out of 10.

Public Enemies

2009-08-06T17:01:45Z

There's quite a lot to like about Public Enemies. The settings are atmospheric, the performances are top-notch, and the story is quite engaging. On the downside, it can be a bit hard to follow if you're unfamiliar with the real-life events it is based on, there are probably too many characters to casually keep track of, and the visual and audio quality is alarmingly variable. This was shot on digital cameras, which is often very obvious (it seems I'm a bit of a traditionalist for true film, and wisely so, if digital ends up looking as bad as this sometimes does). Worse than that, the volume is all over the place. I saw this in a very odd little community cinema in Scotland, and was quite willing to blame them at first, but when I saw it again at one of my more usual haunts it was clear that it was mainly the fault of the film.

Still, the story is involving and often a fun cat-and-mouse romp through various US states. The bank heists are fast-paced, though get a bit samey, and the quieter reflective moments are well-handled. The film would perhaps be stronger if we knew more about the background of these characters and where their motivations originated, as opposed to just being presented with the characters already setup for the film. To the credit of the leads, they mostly transcend this problem. However inevitable the ending may be, the journey here is enjoyable in the company of these fine actors. There are some suitable modern-day echoes with banks being the target of public ire, with the introduction of heavy-handed techniques on the supposedly 'good' side of the law, and so forth, though again without much background motivation there things are mainly 'just things that are happening' rather than placed fully in context.

Johnny Depp offers a layered and interesting lead character, even without the help of much backstory. He gives the role a combination of edge and sympathy to leave the viewer disoriented as to what they want to happen (should he keep getting away with it or face justice)? He's very good fun to watch when he's outwitting people in a light-hearted manner. If he'd only speak up a little bit I'd appreciate his performance all the more. Christian Bale is very good indeed, keeping his character very understated but with a clear determination and grit. Marion Cotillard doesn't have as much to do as one may hope, she's basically the love interest but doesn't get a great deal of setup. As a naive young thing who would fall for a bank robber, but also has a decent backbone when necessary, she's quite impressive. Billy Crudup makes for an impressive and quietly menacing Hoover. And there are lots of very small roles filled by quite big names, notably the delightful Carey Mulligan in a blink-and-you'll-miss it role near the start. Not to worry - we'll be hearing a *lot* more of her in the next six months or so. Then Leelee Sobieski turns up right near the end and surprises everyone in sight by being in a decent film for once.

There's potential for a great historical piece here that is close to being realised, but between the audio issues, the far-from-perfect use of digital cameras, the set-pieces going on for a little bit too long, and the lack of fleshing out of the characters, results in a film that boasts a lot of strong features but falls short of greatness. 7 out of 10.

The Informers

2009-08-05T17:48:08Z

They should probably have called The Informers 'the film where Amber Heard spends most of her screentime naked' - which would be true, much more relevant to the film than the actual title, and immediately draws attention to pretty much the only good thing about it. More people would have been likely to see it, at least.

Set in the early 80s in Los Angeles, a center of debauchery and useless, feckless people, with the looming shadow of AIDS beginning to take its toll, this film is one of those that follows various characters and in the end you find out that they are all linked somehow. Here, however, the linkages are very loose. almost to the stage of not needing to exist at all, and we're left with very small slices of life that usually don't really tell us anything. There's a set of scenes in Hawaii, for example, that are almost entirely divorced from the rest of the film. There's a side-plot about some child abductors which is very peripheral to the other stories. And some scenes don't seem to have any purpose at all (notably, the newsreader in the cafe laughed at, for no good reason, by a support band. What was that all about?) The few things that are vaguely interesting (the movie being made with an alien giant tomato, so silly it is actually enlivening) don't really finish up anywhere either.

Pretty much every character is so useless and so self-absorbed that we don't care less about them, and when they end up in a more miserable situation than they started with we don't really mind. Dreadful people have dreadful things happen to them, yeah, ok, whatever.

Amber Heard plays one of the vaguely tolerable characters in the film, though her character is using her beauty to coast by in life and isn't exactly achieving, so she's far from a moral paragon either. There is something quite poignant about her being the one to succumb first to AIDS though, given the far more dreadful people around her. Certainly she gives a better performance - clothed and not clothed - than most of the cast surrounding her.

Billy Bob Thornton is ok but doesn't exactly have a gripping storyline - all he has to do is try to navigate a tedious affair and his tedious children. Kim Basinger fares worse - all she has to do is look concerned or annoyed at various points. Winona Ryder also has little to do bar look mousey, and sit in a cafe in the pointless scene mentioned above. Special Agent Chester Desmond... err, ok, Chris Isaak is in the pointless Hawaii interlude - he's ok, but his mannerisms are the same as ever and it doesn't seem he's needing to do a lot of actual acting. Mickey Rourke is wasted as a loser child-abductor - he exudes menace, but little else. The late Brad Renfro is ok as a vaguely neurotic character who he manages to avoid being deeply irritating, which isn't a bad achievement. Then there are lots and lots of various interchangable young men, one of whom is ostensibly the lead, but none of them make much of an impression except in the regular outbursts of stilted or downright poor acting.

As a final note - this was based on a book, which apparently had vampires in it. Yes, vampires. If you're unfamiliar with the book, you can have a bit of fun watching this and trying to work out where you'd insert vampires, and what they'd do. Combine that with Amber's plentiful nudity, and you probably won't be too bored watching this film, though not for exactly the right reasons!

It has star power and a naked Amber Heard. It also has quite a lot of bad acting, an aimless and unstructured plot, and far too many characters you mostly don't give two hoots about. Sadly, the negatives rather outweigh the positives. 3.5 out of 10.

Kisses

2009-08-05T17:09:49Z

A small, odd, Irish film about two young runaways, Kisses doesn't seem entirely sure what it is trying to say or what it is trying to achieve, and instead ends up a slight if occasionally endearing mess. These two kids have far more adventures in one night than is remotely feasible - they encounter love, death, prostitutes, homeless people, people trying to help homeless people, a surprisingly helpful guy driving some sort of barge, a Bob Dylan impersonator (!) who gives them beer (!), and probably the most incompetent child abductors seen in film history (!). The idea seems to be that they see beyond their own miserable lives to see some other miserable lives, though I'm not sure that's such a good idea for a film, or that it is executed well. There's some verging-on-the-pretentious use of colour/black-and-white to compare the streets of Dublin with the colourless existence of their daily lives, which is an acceptable idea but seems too gimmicky here.

Kelly O'Neill makes the picture, more or less - she brings a decent amount of depth to a character who in other hands could have been a cookie-cutter character with little of consequence to do. She manages to combine a childish outlook with a world-weary defensiveness that works rather well. Shane Curry suffers in comparison, having a rather more cookie-cutter part and not really rising above it. But they do work ok together, which is fortunate as the film would be awful if they didn't.

It's ok, but nothing special. The title refers to a single rather out-of-place conversation that doesn't fit into the rest of the film, and the whole thing feels like it isn't entirely sure whether it wants to be a gritty slice-of-life or someone of a childhood fantasy - as such, it fails to quite manage either. Kelly O'Neill has a good screen presence though, and makes the film watchable even through the wildly uneven tone. 5 out of 10.

Cloud Nine

2009-08-05T16:57:15Z

Cloud Nine, or 'the movie with old people having sex', is unfortunately little other than 'the movie with old people having sex'. If it were about young people having sex, the movie would be pointless, mostly plotless, and be highly tedious. The people making this film seem to believe that old people having sex is novelty enough to not require a sensible plot to drive the story along. Well, they're wrong, and the film is slow and dull and fails entirely to grip, with a slight and unengaging plot and an ever-more-tedious set of scenes of old people putting their clothes on and taking them off. It's like The Reader (my review), though without the reasonable charms of Kate Winslet, and it annoyed me there too, but at least The Reader was trying to tell a story around the continual sex and nudity. And before I come in for criticism at calling this 'the old people having sex' movie, this has been explicitly marketed as such, and you can see why - there's little if anything to the film besides this. Ought this to be a novelty or should it have been an intrinsic part of some major storyline? Clearly, I think the latter would have been significantly preferable, but here we are.

The acting is variable, and while there are a few decent-looking scenes a lot of the film goes on in drab apartments, which isn't entirely enticing. There's some underlying theme to do with trains too, but it never gets properly developed.

A movie that seemingly goes out to say that sex isn't just for 20-somethings, this doesn't really work because there is nothing to the film other than the 'novelty' of seeing older people doing it on screen. As such, this quickly gets dull and repetitive and gets remembered for nothing but that novelty, which doesn't exactly seem the point that was intended. 4 out of 10.

Fired Up

2009-08-04T17:22:35Z

A teen/cheerleading movie that tries to be amusing and also - possibly, at least - have somewhat of a message, Fired Up neverthless isn't all that good at all, despite the implicit promise of large numbers of nubile young ladies. The humour is uncomfortably somewhere between raunch and family-safe, the situations silly, the characters boring cyphers, the story highly predictable, and there isn't even any decent cheerleading in it. In addition, this takes the general trope of 'high-schoolers' being played by people much older to an extreme - most of the people in this cast are of a comparable age to me, and I'm on the far side of 30 - and this is rather more noticeable than usual. A great deal of the humour falls flat, which is rather a shame as this scenario (boys at an almost-all-girl cheerleading camp) should be a decent opportunity for lots of fun scenarios, though it seems no-one managed to persuade the screenwriters of that.

Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen are almost interchangable, highly unlikeable and far too old for the parts they're playing. At the very least, you've got to like your leading characters in this sort of comedy, even if they are rogues. The timing isn't there and the amusement factor is kept to a minimum. Sarah Roemer is ok but doesn't get a chance to do much. Molly Sims isn't much older than the rest of the cast, however much she is supposed to be, but isn't much use anyway. David Walton plays a tedious character in a tedious way. Adhir Kalyan plays an annoying character in a deeply annoying way. Philip Baker Hall has a vaguely amusing role but quickly disappears from the film.

At one point the characters watch Bring It On - and while it is amusing watching characters in a movie wanting to be characters from another movie, it does bring to mind the MST3K advice I've quoted before - 'never show a good movie in the middle of your crappy movie!'. And this is, in the end, a rather crappy movie. Given it is a movie about a vast quantity of female cheerleaders, it doesn't even manage to be titillating - partly as it is inexplicably trying for a family-friendly rating. Sporadically amusing, but mostly very disappointing. 3.5 out of 10.

Everlasting Moments

2009-08-04T16:40:36Z

A Swedish film about a woman who wins a camera back in the days when such things were rare, Everlasting Moments has a great deal of technical proficiency on display but the underlying story failed to engage me. This is a slow and methodical film with a fair quantity of plot, but the mix of politics, extra-marital affairs, spousal abuse and photography just didn't gel together from where I was sitting. Sad to say, I found it remarkably dull, with little to commend it bar the technical. Acted competently and paced to avoid any dragging while getting things done in its own time, it is difficult to criticise anything specific about the film. Indeed, I'm not sure there is anything specifically wrong with it, and so I'm at a loss as to why I didn't find more things to like in it.

Nevertheless, while appreciating the craft of those making the film, the film itself did nothing at all for me, and indeed I can't think of much to say about it at all. Probably that's my fault, but I can't justify giving it more than 5 out of 10.

Sunshine Cleaning

2009-07-31T17:29:55Z

Sunshine Cleaning is an excellent example of strong performances attempting to break out from a story that isn't entirely well-formed, and having a decent amount of success. The idea of a pair of sisters struggling to get by, one a single parent in the middle of an affair with a married man which clearly isn't going anywhere, and one who hasn't entirely discovered responsibility yet, going into business as crime-scene cleaners, is perfectly acceptable, and allows setup of a decent amount of humour and emotion. In this respect, the script mostly works, and should be commended for balancing well between the rather gross concept, and the humour extracted from such, and yet not actually being excessively grotesque in indulgent examination of unpleasant detail. Equally, the character interaction works well, and we are presented with quite well-formed characters who develop over the course of the film. It's difficult to pull out any single scene, or set of scenes, and point to glaring problems. But in the end, the narrative doesn't quite fit together into a complete film. Most egregiously, the film spends a great deal of time setting up relationships for both sisters, which have no pay-off whatever (one is ended before it begins, the other looks promising but hasn't quite got anywhere by the end of the film). Almost as bad is the inevitable 'irresponsible sister gets to like doing things with some responsibility, but then screws up in a predictable way, and the usual consequences' story, which is rather by-the-numbers stuff. In the end, the film feels like a lot of setup that never quite closes in a satisfying way.

Comparisons to Little Miss Sunshine are inevitable and, one suspects, are welcomed by the makers, given both the title and the casting. But while the plot of LMS was ramshackle, there was an underlying direction and a clear conclusion. Sunshine Cleaning just moves along and then stops, which may be like a slice of real life but isn't a very satisfying film. It's all the more irritating because there is an awful lot to like about this film, but when the story is lacking a large amount of narrative drive it makes the whole film a lot more difficult to enjoy.

Onto the good bits - the performances. In news that should surprise no-one, Amy Adams is outstanding in a role that allows her to show off a full emotional range. There can't be many emotions that aren't covered by her character in the 90 minutes of this film, and Amy nails every one. Her character feels real, sympathetic, far from perfect, but doing her best. She interacts with all the other characters in a nuanced and accomplished way. It's really hard to pick any standout scenes because her performance is uniformly excellent - so I'll pick something quiet and simple : the scene where she's trying to explain to her son that his grandad is big on promises but doesn't always follow through. This is small, quiet, and really quite beautiful. Rather more conventionally, the scene where she's trying to explain to the ladies at the baby shower that she actually likes what she's doing, and she's more or less actually convincing herself, finally, at the same time, that this is actually true, is a minor masterpiece. The fact that Amy can act her socks off shouldn't surprise anyone at all now, but this is definite proof, if it were needed, that given a wide-ranging role she can deliver a wide-ranging performance (this adamantly isn't the various, albeit highly distinct, takes on naive we've seen in Junebug (my review), Enchanted (my review) and Doubt (my review)).

But the film isn't just the Amy Adams show, however enchanting (sorry!) that idea is. The other performances on display give Amy a run for her money. Emily Blunt is, also unsurprisingly, very good indeed, and the chemistry between her and Amy (and the other characters) really works. She gets less range to show off than Amy, but she still gets some memorably strong scenes (in the scene with the train, she compresses all that range into a few seconds, and pulls it off, no mean feat). Alan Arkin is also very strong, once again not entirely surprisingly. He manages to mix gruff, loving, vaguely naive, and strong independence into the same character simultaneously. Jason Spevack is mostly decent as the son, and mostly manages to avoid being an annoying child, though not entirely. He works well with Amy. Mary Lynn Rajskub is good, if ill-served by a storyline that sees her abruptly excised from the film. Until then we're wanting to see more of her, and the glimpses into her character are intriguing if under-developed. Clifton Collins Jr. has the same problem, without the abrupt exit. His character deserves to go further than it does. Steve Zahn has a more standard role than most here, and achieves it in an acceptable manner, but he's upstaged by much of the rest of the cast.

The first viewing of this left me rather unsatisfied. I enjoyed the performances, but found the story sadly lacking. Subsequent viewings have caused it to grow on me quite a bit. I still have issues with the story and wish it were a lot tighter in at least some areas - there's too much here crammed into an economical running time, and as such side-plots should either be excised or resolved rather than left irritatingly dangling. The 'fire' twist being utterly predictable is also quite disappointing in a film that otherwise isn't trying for a neat narrative. Conversely, there is a lot of the untidiness of the real world about this portrayal, and given the multi-dimensional lead characters and outstanding acting on display, these are lesser problems than they would be in most comparable films. I wanted to love this film, but I can't honestly say it gets near to those heights. However, there's an awful lot to like about it, and is still a rewarding experience, if not entirely satisfying. If nothing else entices you about the film, it may be worth mentioning that there's a surprising number of shots of Amy Adams in various underwear :-) - I'd find it rather hard to say anything too negative about a film that is gracious enough to do that :-) Seriously though, this ends up sadly not being more than the sum of its parts, though lots of the constituent parts are very good indeed. 7.5 out of 10.

Tenderness

2009-07-31T15:53:47Z

A rather odd story about a killer teenager released from prison, and a girl with problems who runs away from home to be with him (is she in danger from him? Does she care?), Tenderness has decent moments but for the most part it doesn't really hang together all that well. We're given a number of characters who evoke few opinions in us either way, and while there is a potentially interesting vibe of 'which of these damaged people are going to come out best?' about the endeavour, the whole thing feels rather unsatisfying by the time we get to the surprisingly flat ending. Some scenes suffer because they ought to be sinister or troubling but instead come across as silly or humourous (memorably, as the killer looks to be about to start killing again, he keeps on coming across implements that he tries to look in a sinister manner at. A hammer he randomly finds gets an unintentionally hilarious stare). Other things don't really pay off - the typically dogged semi-retired police officer with the wife in a coma doesn't really achieve a great deal, and his story doesn't satisfy.

Jon Foster has a potentially interesting part - is he a redeemed murderer, or waiting to strike again - but doesn't make much of it. Occasionally he does appear menacing or conflicted, but all too often this tips over into something closer to parody (eg. the hammer sceme mentioned above). Sophie Traub is also very uneven. In some scenes I was impressed - she seemed to do trepidation or uncertainly rather well - but at other times she was very unimpressive. There's promise, but it isn't realised here. Russell Crowe plays the semi-retired cop, a part already seen on screen a million times, and does so professionally but without adding anything memorable. Alexis Dziena shows up briefly but has nothing to do other than be an attempt at a honeytrap, and not a very convincing one at that. Laura Dern is close the dictionary definition of 'wasted' here, in a few small scenes with zero to do, which seems rather a shame.

Highly patchy, this does work in parts but falls down almost immediately again. Occasionally atmospheric, and again quite often not so at all, with a better script and more consistent performances this could have been quite a solid movie, but as it is it meanders between an 8 out of 10 and a 2 out of 10 wildly, often within the same scene, but is closer to being a 2 out of 10 for longer stretches. So to be fair I'll give it 4 out of 10.

Year One

2009-07-29T16:43:42Z

I seem to be trying to put all my 'what an appalling film' recent reviews into a row. Well, to continue the theme, here's the appalling Year One. This film is a woeful 'comedy' with useless characters, useless situations and fails to evoke a single smile. Well, apart from the one bit in the trailers where Jack Black pulls all his arrows out of his quiver at once - I quite liked that.

But this film has no idea what it wants to be, and manages to be not much at all. Mixing in prehistoric times and biblical times and mashing them altogether into a completely uninvolving plot, is not a sensible way to go when making a film - it helps if you know what you're trying to do, and why. Supposed 'gags' run on seemingly forever, and they were never funny to begin with - one scene involving oil and a hairy chest goes on for the whole of eternity, and is one of the more unpleasant things I've seen on screen all year. There isn't all that fine a line between amusing and plain uncomfortable, even though the two are somewhat related, but this manages to land firmly in the uncomfortable camp. There's the usual highly uninspired bodily function gags, and the attempts at social commentary fall flatter than a very flat thing. Even more egregiously, the film continually sets up situations that it then blatantly ignores in the following scene without any resolution at all. Oh they're in danger - oh no, actually they're fine, dunno how, oh well, let's get onto the next unfunny sequence.

Jack Black is, as ever, Jack Black, though you've got to wonder why he didn't think this was beneath even his usual low-brow comedy style. Michael Cera is still playing to type, though he's ok at that. Together they have a repartee that could actually work quite well if they had something approximating to a script to play with. Oliver Platt has a terrible character and gives a performance to match - like something borrowed from a Carry On film, without actually being funny. David Cross makes an entrance by clubbing his brother to death in a terribly slow and tedious 'amusing' scene, and his performance doesn't go anywhere better. The brother is played by Paul Rudd, easily the best thing in the film, and who has the good sense to get out quickly by being killed within a couple of minutes of showing up. Juno Temple is good to see, though she would be better served by a script which gave her something concrete to do. Olivia Wilde does have a bit to do, but doesn't do it very well. Christopher Mintz-Plasse isn't stretching at all here in a small role, and Vinnie Jones shows up just to try and give the worst performance of the lot - I'm not sure he succeeds, but he tries.

There are but two surprises here. One is how you can make a film that misses the mark pretty much every time, even with the comedy talents of Jack Black as your lead. And the other being the involvement of Judd Apatow as producer - his first extreme dud (as producer, at least), and what a dud at that! This is horribly unfunny, annoying and embarrassing for all involved. However, given there is something approximating to a plot, and a little bit of chemistry between some of the actors, and Juno Temple is alright to look at, I suppose this deserves 2 out of 10.

Telstar

2009-07-24T17:15:18Z

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. With Telstar we have a strong contender for worst film of the year, a crown that I thoroughly hope it takes, else I'll have to sit through a film even more irritating than this at some point in the next six months. This is no Transformers 2 (my review) - it doesn't openly have contempt for the medium of film - but nevertheless this film is completely without any of the features that constitute a watchable film, and instead is simultaneously tedious and toe-curlingly awful for the entire running time.

Set rather before my time, this is the story of music producer Joe Meek, a character portrayed here as so unlikeable and miserable and dismal that, well, if the real Joe Meek was like that, I'm glad he was before my time. If he wasn't, his family should sue for defamation. This guy is appalling, and atrocious to try to watch - he flies off the handle continually and for no good reason, throws things around, blames everyone but him for his problems, and evokes zero sympathy in the viewer. Indeed, for quite a while I was starting to predict when he would start throwing around some more things - you never have long to wait. The film revolves around music, but never has the grace to actually play us anything approximating to a full song. And apparently being a top music producer in those days involved vacantly twisting various mix-table knobs until things miraculously all come together - I suspect, actually, there was a bit more to it than this. There's some ham-fisted attempt to examine gay issues in the early 1960s, but like everything else in the film, it just comes off as irritating and highly unsympathetic. The only vague novelty is the setting on the Holloway Road in London, somewhere I've recently become somewhat familiar with - but the setting is claustrophobic and quickly becomes as irritating as everything else in the film. It's also a surprisingly foul-mouthed film - something I tend not to care about in general, but highly noticeable here.

Con O'Neill gives Joe Meek no soul, no character and no empathy. My suspicions for pointing the blame lie heavily with the script, but I'd expect something could have been salvaged with a different actor. As it is, he rapidly becomes painfully irritating to watch. He's certainly trying hard, but it fails miserably. Pam Ferris is more-or-less pointless, and her role goes nowhere. James Corden is, not entirely surprisingly, awful. Few others in the cast are better - this is a more stilted, awkward, unnatural set of performances as you're likely to encounter. Kevin Spacey turns up from time to time to remind us what proper acting looks like, but his role isn't exactly helpful to the plot either.

One thing I've found when reviewing films in the last 2 years or so is that the impression I get from the first 10 minutes or so almost invariably sticks with me to the end of the film. Not always, but usually. Here the first 10 minutes are chaotic, loud, foul-mouthed and deeply irritating. And the rest of the film is the same, except Joe Meek gets more and more unwatchable as time goes on. There's not an attractive woman in sight, the music is wasted, the plot is spoiled by a framing device that barges in every 15 minutes or so until we end up there at the end of the film, and there isn't a single redeeming feature in sight for the entire two hour running time. Awful, awful, awful. It didn't actively make me consider giving up watching films for life, so it isn't quite another Couscous (my review), but it's about as close as I've got to that nadir in the past year. 1 out of 10.

Katyn

2009-07-24T16:45:29Z

A World War 2 movie that unusually but pleasantly doesn't involve either fighting or exploring the (Jewish) Holocaust, Katyn has some quite interesting things to say about historical truth and the way such things are manipulated by governments to sway public opinion. Which is always a decent and important message to get across. Here, however, it is somewhat lost amid a confusing set of characters, and a narrative that is largely professional but largely fails to engage the viewer in a manner remotely commensurate with the subject matter. Even the ending, with a quite horrible slaughter, doesn't quite pack the emotional punch it deserves to.

That said, there are quite a few things to like about this film. It mainly looks good - if a little too claustrophobic on occasion - and is mostly (though by no means entirely) acted well, though overwhelmingly with a sense of clinical detachment that ought not to be present. The story is important - and controversial, even now - but the film meanders and takes in far too many other, distracting subplots (such as the fate of the university). A little more focus on the key event at the heart of the film would have been most helpful.

In the end, one suspects that this would have worked better as a documentary, and the film format has been chosen to make more people aware of it - a laudable aim, but seemingly not quite thought through enough to fully utilise the medium. The makers achieve their aim of educating people, but at the expense of a rather average film. 6 out of 10.

Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen

2009-07-23T17:51:55Z

My review of the first Transformers film back in 2007 was one of the first film reviews I ever wrote on this blog. I wasn't best pleased with it, to say the least. In the interim I can't exactly say I've warmed to the movie, but there's three things worth adding :

(a) the effects were really rather good,
(b) whatever my (acknowledged) hyperbole at the time about the destruction of one of my childhood icons, I've revisited a bit of Gen-1 Transformers in the meanwhile and, well, it's not really all that good either. Some bits work, but there's a load of problems with it. I do still rather like the (original, animated) Movie though,
(c) I feel I owe Michael Bay a (small) break, because in the interim I've learned that it seems one of the main reasons Enchanted (my review) wasn't made a few years earlier was because of the disaster of his Pearl Harbor, which would have robbed us of Amy Adams' iconic performance. Also he provided one of the best jokes in recent South Park : (to Bay) 'those aren't ideas, those are special effects' - (Bay) ' I don't understand the difference' :-)

So, I was willing to give Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen a fighting chance. Needless to say, it failed miserably nevertheless. On so many levels, this is an appalling film. It feels like they took all the bits of the first one that were deeply annoying and just made them louder, faster, longer, and even more annoying. It goes on for seemingly forever. And the one thing that set the first one apart - the effects - are no longer new or interesting, as we saw it all already.

How can you make a story that involves the death of Optimus Prime, the death of your lead character, the miraculous resurrection of, err, both of them, and the near-destruction of the entire planet, so completely emotionally uninvolving? After all, the death of the cartoon Optimus Prime in the animated movie traumatised an entire generation of children. The answer seems to be to give it to Michael Bay, who will remove all emotional impact in favour of a big explosion or twelve. Surely screenwriting 101 would say you don't kill off and resurrect *two* characters at different points in the movie? And if you're going to imperil the earth, surely you need to provide at least some decent characters so that we're not actively cheering on the destruction of all these abysmal people? Instead we get a near-endless number of 'comic relief' 'characters' who just make you despair for the future of the human race and hoping for their imminent destruction. Is it really necessary to have a comic-relief mother *and* a comic-relief roommate *and* a comic-relief John Turturro *and* a couple of comic-relief jive-talking robots, not one of whom are actually funny? Even avoiding the probable racial offensiveness of these two idiot robots, they serve no point other than to be annoying. But they are upstaged by the 'amusing' roommate, who makes a good claim to be the most irritating character in film in the past decade. Rarely am I actively hoping a character dies or mysteriously disappears from the script halfway through - but I certainly was here. And the keep on being thrown at us - the parents keep on appearing, for no good reason whatever other than to irritate the viewer to the extent that they'd rather throw themselves off a cliff than carry on watching this tripe.

The plot, such as it is, is convoluted, problematic, and eventually pointless. Basic geography is ignored. Human interaction is ignored if inconvenient (you can get on a plane with a box that is talking loud enough for everyone to hear, apparently. You can also get through a passport checkpoint in the Middle East (staffed by a midget for no reason other than to get a cheap midget joke) by claiming to be from New York without any documentation. Yeah, right). Objects have whatever powers are convenient for the story at the moment they're around, whether it actually makes sense or not. (oh, there was a cube fragment left in my clothes from the previous adventure. Yeah, whatever). There's some Transformers mythology added to the mix, that mostly changes characterisation we've known from the past (Megatron suddenly becomes deferential to this new leader called The Fallen? He hasn't got a deferential piece of metal in his body) - and the other characterisation is way off too, Optimus Prime is all over the place, one minute a ruthless Decepticon-killer, the next offering himself up as a noble sacrifice. And Soundwave's voice is utterly rubbish here, when it was one of the most memorable things from the cartoons.

Then there's the complete prostration of Michael Bay before the obviously wonderful and fantastic US military. If there is a way to make the US military look good and everyone else bad, Bay will find it. He even has a Whitehouse-appointed politician come in, ask some perfectly reasonable questions, and get thrown out of a plane by the military for his trouble. Yes, that's right - this movie actively forces down our throat that the military knows best, and elected politicians should butt out or they'll get trampled on by military might. Which, frankly, is astonishing. Sadly, Bay has felt the need to include some UK soldiers too, which I'd far rather he'd kept out of his macho military adoration. And there's much use of Diego Garcia, which is the scene of one of our darkest ongoing pieces of utterly disgraceful UK-US behaviour in the real world - in the way we forcibly displaced the native population in order to gift the island to the US for a military base. Yes, Bay, we get it - you like the military. Why don't you shove it right down our throats? Apparently they can blow up half of Shanghai and some of the greatest artifacts of the Middle East, and I'm sure everyone was very grateful in Bay's eyes, not least the Jordanian military, who are apparently completely useless in the Bay-verse.

There's also a brief incursion into some alternate universe which has these strange colleges that obviously conform to something in Michael Bay's mind but no-one else on the planet. Filled with hot girls and otherwise strange people, who have frat parties with elaborately-baked cakes (yes, really!), and astronomy lectures given by a professor who the girls all fancy (!) and fills his lectures with ridiculous sexual innuendo. Throw in some nonsense about Einstein and space-time, which has no relevance to anything at all, and you have an altogether eerie experience. And not good-eerie, either.

Even more oddly, briefly the film almost morphs into Night At The Museum 2 (my review) (!), when for some convoluted and basically dumb reason they break into the Smithsonian, activate one of the exhibits, and trash the place. Huh?

And after all that, the film doesn't even have the good grace to provide us with a vaguely acceptable ending. After an interminable 'finale' that drags on for about 40 minutes, all we get as a conclusion for the big battle that we've waited all film for, is something that is over in about 30 seconds, a quick monologue from Optimus Prime, and then it just ends, highly abruptly throwing us out of the story. Come on - I've endured 150 minutes of this tripe, you could at least give me something approximating to a conclusion.

And I still haven't managed to mention the appalling humping dogs, the 'hilarious' sequence where the mother takes cannabis and then has a reaction completely unlike anything you'd get from actually taking cannabis, the pointless shot of John Turturro in his underpants, the continually 'amusing' tasering sequences, the robot testicles (why???) and ohh, I just give up.

Shia LeBeouf gets nothing to do with his character and manages to achieve that, but little else. When you have no feelings whatever about your lead character - positive or negative - you have to wonder about the fabric of the film itself. Megan Fox fulfils the same role (if it is fair to call such a thing an actual 'role') as in the first, but as with all things in this film the bad parts are ramped up to the max and she looks more plasticky and unpleasant and not at all attractive. She clearly knows she isn't in this film to act and so doesn't even try for the most part - unless she is trying, which would be even more worrying. John Turturro is the least irritating of the endless collection of so-called comic relief, though that isn't hard. Some of his lines approximate to not-quite-wince-inducing, which is better than most, though he also gets some shameless plot regurgitation for those people too thick to follow the terribly linear plot. Ramon Rodriguez is downright appalling - he has an appalling character, and plays him in the most irritating way possible. Jar Jar Binks comes to mind, it is that bad. Josh Duhamel is oh-so-brave oh-so-wonderful military guy, who at least isn't saddled with the tedious 'getting home to see the new baby' subplot he suffered under in the first film, though without this seemingly-altogether-forgotten piece of his character he is just a random military guy. Tyrese Gibson suffers with the worst one-liners I've heard in years. He gets about 15 lines, and all but about 2 are the most banal gigglesome nonsense. Given that, he doesn't do all that bad, as no-one but no-one could have made his part sound convincing. Judy White plays the mother in a horribly over-the-top grating manner. Kevin Dunn is, fortunately, a bit better. And then there's Isabel Lucas, who I was rather keen to see after fancying her in Home and Away. Unfortunately she has been Bay-ified, and as such looks downright awful, badly lit and badly tanned. Her acting is pretty bad and her character just invokes another massive set of plot-holes in the fabric of the film.

The cinematography is mostly awful, the editing is hit-and-miss, the story a complete mess, the Transformers even further out of character from the first film, the characters are rubbish, the underlying social messages are simultaneously offensive and dismal, and it is far far far too long. Rather like this review, then - this must be the longest negative review I've written on this blog, and hopefully I've found it mildly cathartic.

Is there anything good to say? Well, I sorta liked the little robots coming to life in the house at the start, even if it is highly derivative of lots of other films. The ball-bearing robot was quite cool too. Err, well I saw it in a cinema that was a bit quieter than the first one, so I'm not still nursing a headache. That's about it though.

Terrible, shoddy, disastrous, and a downright disgrace to call this a film. It takes the summer blockbuster to a significant new low. I'm not bothered anymore that Michael Bay is raping a franchise that I liked as a child, but I'm very bothered indeed by what he's doing to the medium that I've grown very fond towards called the cinema - this is pretty much the platonic ideal of a film where the effects are all and everything else is entirely irrelevant, the curse of the modern blockbuster. There's no excuse for something this poor. Still, it wasn't actively painful for at least some of the time, some of the dialogue did give me a 'so bad it is good' giggle, and there were a couple of very brief bits I sorta liked, so it gets an extremely generous 1.5 out of 10.

Gigantic

2009-07-17T16:58:24Z

Odd, and ultimately far too kooky for its own good, Gigantic ends up offering little bar some nice character moments and an always-welcome opportunity to see Zooey Deschanel. There are far too many disparate things going on here that don't even begin to fit together - the lab rat experiments, the utterly random Chinese baby adoption scenes, the homeless assassin. What's real and what isn't? Well, sadly, you just don't care. I'm not sure you can readily combine a surreal plot with kooky characters, even though they may seem natural bedfellows - certainly this attempt isn't a success. And the title has nothing to do with anything, which is usually pretty irritating.

I've no idea if Paul Dano is a good casting choice for his character or not - the character is so random it is very difficult to tell. He's ok, but this isn't anywhere near his performance in There Will Be Blood (my review). Zooey Deschanel is probably the person you'd use to illustrate the dictionary definition of 'kooky', so her casting isn't exactly a surprise. She does well enough but is strongly playing to type (I like the type, so it's not really a complaint, but this doesn't seem to far a stretch for her). John Goodman has a role just as odd as everyone else in sight and is fine but his part doesn't go anywhere. Zach Galifianakis has the odd role of someone who quite possibly doesn't exist and doesn't get to do a great deal with it.

I found it impossible to warm to this film. I have no objection to kooky characters, surreal plots, or murky motivations, but I do like a film to be about something and to fit together in some remotely coherent way. This film fails at that and feels like a set of unconnected and mostly unsuccessfully experimental vignettes, combined together to make something even less satisfying. I've no idea what emotional response I'm supposed to have to the end scenes of family, and I'm by no means convinced the filmmakers know either. If this is what passes for a resolution, someone should tell the filmmakers that it really isn't anything of the sort. However nice it is to see Zooey playing a kooky part again, this is far from being a good film. Instead it feels odd for the sake of being odd, and rather tedious and pointless. 3.5 out of 10.