Top 20 Films of 2009

Been a bit absent on here last couple of weeks but have now returned with the run down of the top 20 films of 2009. The list of the top 10 will remain at the bottom of the blog but here is the full list (plus a few runners-up with reasoning).

It should be noted that this is as of today (Dec 29) and some of these have only been seen the once. It is naturally easy to favour those seen multiple times so perhaps the fight in my head over number 1 vs 2 and Coraline vs Ponyo might change in time. But for now this is the list. Only qualifying factor to get in the list is i had to see a finished version in the cinema for the first time in 2009. (Special mention: although i have seen a finished version of Shutter Island i have not included it here and am saving it for next year's list - competition permitting - as it doesn't officially screen until Berlin).

1. Up In The Air - I have gone back and forth on my number 1 (vs number 2) for a few days but Jason Reitman's bittersweet comedy just nabs it. Clooney has never never been better as an instantly relatable and appealing guy in a assholes' job. This film could have been mishandled in so many ways but Reitman nails the tone, Vera Farmiga is the sexiest love interest in film for years, Anna Kendrick manages to match George beat-for-beat (no mean feat for this sort of role) as a character you should loathe but can't help but love. It should leave you bummed out but instead fills you with a warm glow. Brilliantly done. The film of the year.

2. The conundrum over number 1 was caused by Kathryn Bigelow's superb Middle East-conflict bomb-disposal movie The Hurt Locker. You can't get much more different a movie from Up In The Air so comparison is hard and i'll admit Hurt Locker has the disadvantage of only having been seen the once and some months ago. Nonetheless the visceral impact of Bigelow's triumphant return (her best work hands down) remains with you long after seeing it. Jeremy Renner gives a superb performance as the cock-sure lead and gets sterling support from Anthony Mackie. The tension is palpable and it is an astonishing achievement, let alone for a film that cost just $11m to make. The best war film of the current/recent conflict without doubt and one of the best of the past 3 decades.

3. Avatar - It could all have gone hideously wrong, but then this is James Cameron, hasn't he earnt our trust after fantastic, imaginative spectacular after fantastic imaginative spectacular. And they don't come more imaginative and spectacular than Avatar. Certainly it has some cheesy dialogue, stock characters and blatant lifts from other films (the plot is essentially Dances With Blue Aliens! and a lot of moments makes you think of Cameron's own Aliens and The Abyss) but the majesty of the world he has created here is extraordinary. It's not just the visuals and the 3D (which are astonishing and totally immersive - i've seen it twice so far and was as wowed the second time) it the fully realised world. Cameron fills every frame with the most minute details and has thought through every detail of Pandora. I don't remember when a blockbuster's environment was so perfectly thought out. Of course this does highlight the issue that the plot could have been better thought out but it almost seems greedy to ask for more when Avatar offers so much. And the effects? Holy cow. Zoe Saldana's character in particular demonstrates just how impressive this is, every emotion, every thought behind the eyes registers. That achievement alone makes Avatar deserving of a good ranking in year best lists but it's also damn entertaining fun.

4. Coraline - it's been a hell of a year for animation. The very enjoyable Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Fantastic Mr Fox and Ice Age 3 all failed to make my top 20 and three did. Best of the bunch though was Coraline. Finally giving director Henry Selick the chance of truly shine, out from under the name of Tim Burton (who, due to marketing misrepresentation, most people still think directed The Nightmare Before Christmas) this was a wonderful dark treat not afraid to scare the bejesus out of kids (and more than a few adults). Genuinely creepy, always imaginative Coraline was the must-see animation of the year (and it wasn't even Pixar!)

5. Ponyo - close behind though was another stunning film from Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo. Close to rivalling My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away amongst Miyazaki's best films (who knows on repeated viewings perhaps it may even surpass). Miyazaki's ability to think in the scatterlogical way of a child, letting his imagination run away with him and the movie is what so delights in these movies and Ponyo does exactly that. You can't sit and analyse the story of a fish who becomes a girl (initially with chicken feet!) and befriends the young boy she was previous the pet of. Or why adults are happy to instantly accept the young girl was formerly the fish. In an American film there would have to be nay-saying adults not believing their "head in the clouds" children but this is Miyazaki's world and he understands not only is there nothing wrong with imagination it is actually a beautiful thing. And therefore so is this movie. A glorious escape into a world of imagination too rarely seen.

6. An Education - a good year for British films was headed by this wonderful little period piece from Danish director Lone Scherfig. You know you're in good movie hands when Nick Hornby's involved (heck, they managed to make good films starring both Hugh Grant and Colin Firth out of Hornby novels!) Here he adapts Lynn Barber's memoirs into a well judged screenplay of wit and pathos, innocence and intelligence. And he's matched moment-for-moment by a flawless cast. Carey Mulligan's takes her first lead with assurance making Jenny both wise and naive, self-assured and nervous, smart and short-sighted. She is expertly led astray by Peter Sarsgard who, with flawless English accent, treads the fine line between sleazy predator and charming rogue with aplomb (no doubt Hornby and Scherfig's hanlding of his character also was a major factor here). Then there's Alfred Molina's heartbreakingly old-fashioned and well-intentioned father. Plus a plethora of other fine support. A delight.

7. Crazy Heart - While this boasts probably the best performance of the year in Jeff Bridges' superbly realised, and completely believable washed-up Country & Western singer "Bad" Blake, it is also much more. It is a charming, funny and poignant drama. It sees a career-best performance from the always solid Maggie Gyllenhaal and strong support in small roles from Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell. It has just about the best soundtrack of a movie this decade. The cinematography is stunning. There is so much that's great about Crazy Heart but it all comes back to that first thing - Bridges. Bridges is an actor who is always great. Whether playing a corpse in Tideland, a president in The Contender, a machievelian villain in Iron Man or perfectly emboding cool and slovenliness as The Dude he is always a joy to watch, but he has truly never given a better performance than here. As far away from The Dude as he could be but every bit as convincing this should be the film to net him a long overdue Oscar. Here's hoping.

8. Let The Right One In (Lat Den Ratte Komma In) - In a time when vampire movies are everywhere (it isn't the only one in this list) this Swedish movie was more daring than any, more entertaining than any, more unnerving than any and more well thought through than any of modern times. Offering solutions for oft quoted and rarely explored vampire lores while creating a compelling narrative and an underlying potentially controversial edge this truly was filmmaking at its best. See it before the Americans ruin it with the unnecessary (and in production) remake.

9. Up - Who'd have thought a beautiful, hilarious, exciting new film from animation powerhouse Pixar, than had me crying first with sadness, then laughter than triumphant joy, would only rank at 9 on my top films of the year (and third in animation - which shows just how good a year it's been!). Despite this Pixar's latest was a perfect blend of everything they do best. The adventure story, particularly the all-action finale, was genuinely exciting. Dug the Dog was hilarious, with a brilliantly thought out way to justify the all-too-common-in-animation talked animal. The leads were perhaps Pixar's most overtly cartoony and yet believably human (except, ironically, WALL-E!). The the use of the depth of 3D to reflect the feelings of the characters and mood of the piece was ingenious. Another Pixar masterpiece.

10. A Prophet (Un Prophete) - A powerful prison drama, almost as compelling as The Hurt Locker in many ways, featuring an excellent lead performance. My review on the blog goes into all the whys and wherefores but Jacques Audiard's film should not be missed.

11. Mesrine: Killer Instinct - Another excellent French crime piece, but this is much more of a thriller. Vincent Cassel has never been better than here as the real-life criminal, while Gerard Depardieu reminds us just how good he can be with a memorable supporting role as a crime boss. Swift and exciting it was followed by the nearly as good, but slightly more langorous and dramatic Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1.

12. Moon - An incredible debut from Bowie Jr (Duncan Jones), made all the more remarkable for a $5m budget that bought faultless effects (albeit with an old-school feel) and a career-best performance from the always reliable Sam Rockwell. It also boasts one of the smartest scripts of the year. A genre piece Britain can be proud of for once. I can't wait to see what Jones does next.

13. Star Trek - speaking of genre JJ Abrams' fantastically fun and exciting reboot of the tired Star Trek franchise was the triumph of the summer blockbuster season. Instantly wiping away memories of its over-serious predecessors this delivered a hugely emjoyable piece of escapism. From Chris Pine's cock-sure Kirk, to Zachary Quinto's astute Spock, to Simon Pegg's hilariously Glaswegian Scotty, Zoe Saldana's smoking hot Uhura and Karl Urban's scarily exact recreation od DeForest Kelley's Bones, the cast took over the iconic roles with ease. And the pacing and action was masterful from JJ. A script overly reliant on coincidence and a weak villain let it down a little but this was a promise of great things to follow as much as a fun ride shot-in-the-arm to a seemingly lifeless franchise.

14. Looking For Eric - Ken Loach's best film. Surprisingly whimsical and fun for Loach, yet with the expected trials and tribulations of a put-upon everyman at its centre this was the film that kick started a banner year for British film.

15. A Single Man - yet another career best, this time from Colin Firth, in a lyrical, touching film from fashion-designer Tom Ford. A few moments feel too designed (like we're in a commercial) but the film gets better and better as it moves along and ultimately leaves you with a sense of true beauty. Julianne Moore is magnificent in support as the boozy has-been Charley and Nicholas Hoult marks himself out as a potentially major player on the UK circuit as a student who may be a siren or simply getting in over his head. A major achievement for a debut film.

16. (500) Days Of Summer - how you could go wrong with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel (two of the most talented, charmed and likeable young actors working today) is a question this wonderful anti-rom-com thankfully doesn't have to answer. A tight funny and completely truthful (if marginally exacted for fun) script is matched by both leads giving their best. JGL has never been as likeable and Deschanel triumphs as a cold-hearted character you should hate but can't help but love. A final, too-perfect zinger may through the tone slightly but you don't begrudge this comedy a gag after a breezy lesson in how to make a rom-com well.

17. District 9 - Neill Blomkamp's apartheid-allegory turned sci-fi actionner boasted fantastic effects (for $30m, although Blomkamp does have an effects background), a smart script and dynamic action sequences. Plus a lot of laughs. Yet another great genre pic for 2009.

18. Thirst - the other great vampire flick of 2009 Korea's Park Chan-wook. More a tale of addiction, moral dilemma, conflicts of faith, greed and jealousy this fable about a priest who volunteers to risk his life as a guinea-pig for curing an infectious disease only to become an unholy creature of the night who must feed on blood to keep the disease away it uses the parallel of vampirism and human sexuality in a new and clever way. Park's best since Oldboy.

19. Inglourious Basterds - Tarantino's best since Jackie Brown saw a creepy, unnerving, and at times hilarious performance from Christoph Waltz as the highlight of an incredibly entertaining film. I don't understand the Golden Globes placing of it in their Drama category as this was one of the funniest films of the year in my book. Brad Pitt and co's masquerading as Italian filmmakers complete with Southern American accents was the greatest single moment, but from Diane Kruger to Michael Fassbender to the stunning Melanie Laurent everyone was firing on all cylinders. Scenes like the opening farmhouse scene and the underground bar-room stand out as vintage QT but the whole film, while silly, was effortlessly entertaining. Welcome back QT, we've missed you.

20. Zombieland - And speaking of incredibly entertaining, i expected to hate this film - yet another zombie film, that was surely just going to be an American Shaun of the Dead. But this was a very funny romp along with four actors giving their all while boasting the best cameo (and cameo one-liner) in years. I don't remember the last time Woody Harrelson had top billing in a theatrically released film but he was so much fun to watch here i hope it (combined with what i understand is a brilliant performance in The Messanger - which i haven't seen yet) puts him back on top.

Runners-up - 7 films I can't believe didn't make the grade, but it's been a pretty good year:

State Of Play

Drag Me To Hell

Gran Torino

A Serious Man

Precious

Frozen River

Synecdoche, New York

Golden Globes nominations

This year’s Golden Globe Film Award nominations were announced today. Paramount's Up In The Air headed with 6 major nominations, followed by Nine's 5 and Inglourious Basterds' 4.

Up In The Air is excellent and deserves its nominations. Especially pleased to see both Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick make the 5 Best Supporting Actress nominations.

Also very pleased to see Jeff Bridges in for Best Actor, though i would have liked to see Crazy Heart pick up more nominations. Much love for The Hurt Locker but they missed out Jeremy Renner, which is a shame. Nice to see the ever great Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Best Actor Comedy for (500) Days Of Summer.

The Best Actress Comedy/Musical seems a bit rubbish though and what on Earth It's Complicated, with its cliched characters and unrealistic dialogue, is doing in best screenplay is beyond me. If that's one of the best 5 screenplays of the year then we're in trouble!

Full list (with my, no doubt completely wrong, predictions of the winners in BOLD) below:

Best Picture – Drama:
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
Up In The Air

Best Picture – Comedy/Musical:
(500) Days Of Summer
The Hangover
It’s Complicated
Julie & Julia
Nine

Best Director:
Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
James Cameron – Avatar
Clint Eastwood – Invictus
Jason Reitman – Up In The Air
Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds

Best Screenplay:
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
It’s Complicated
Up In The Air

Best Actor – Drama:
Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart
George Clooney – Up In The Air
Colin Firth – A Single Man
Morgan Freeman – Invictus
Tobey Maguire - Brothers

Best Actor – Comedy/Musical:
Matt Damon – The Informant!
Daniel Day Lewis – Nine
Robert Downey Jr – Sherlock Holmes
Joseph Gordon Levitt – (500) Days Of Summer
Michael Stuhlberg – A Serious Man

Best Actress – Drama:
Emily Blunt - The Young Victoria
Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side
Helen Mirren – The Last Station
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Gabourey Sidibe - Precious

Best Actress – Comedy/Musical:
Sandra Bullock – The Proposal
Marion Cotillard – Nine
Julia Roberts – Duplicity
Meryl Streep – It’s Complicated
Meryl Streep – Julia & Julia

Best Supporting Actor:
Matt Damon – Invictus
Woody Harrelson – The Messenger
Christopher Plummer – The Last Station
Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress:
Penelope Cruz – Nine
Vera Farmiga – Up In The Air
Anna Kendrick – Up In The Air
Mo’Nique – Precious
Julianne Moore – A Single Man

Best Animated Film:
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
Coraline
Fantastic Mr Fox
The Princess And The Frog
Up

Best Score:
Avatar
The Informant!
A Single Man
Up
Where The Wild Things Are

Best Song:
Avatar
Brothers
Crazy Heart
Everybody’s Fine
Nine

Best Foreign Language Film:
Baaria (Italy)
Broken Embraces (Spain)
The Maid (Chile)
A Prophet (France)
The White Ribbon (Germany)

(Previously Announced) Cecil B DeMille Award: Martin Scorsese

Latest screening: Crazy Heart

What a breath of fresh air this film is. Crazy Heart works on every level. It's not that it screams originality - hell this format has been used time and again whether in last year's The Wrestler or other country-singer themed films like Tender Mercies and Honkytonk Man - but everything is firing on all cylinders here.

The story of washed-up alcoholic country-and-western singer "Bad" Blake the film is a gentle and funny tale. It shows the state in which Blake has gotten himself but he's not a tragic figure in the same way as say Mickey Rourke's Randy "The Ram". He is a man enjoying his life as best he can. He's been dealt some bum hands but he's playing with what he's got and seems to be enjoying the game. Then he meets a young journalist who starts to make him see what's wrong with the way things are more clearly. Like i said, nothing mind-blowingly original, but handled in a confident and engaging way by the writer/director, and it sweeps you along with ease, never dragging, never outstaying it's welcome. In fact if there's a criticism i would make of the filmmaking itself it's that sometimes it feels to move too swiftly. The film addresses Blake's alcoholism and realisation that he wants to do something about too quickly and neatly. Perhaps the director didn't want to give the world yet another "the trials of rehab" scene or a "struggles of recovery" moment, and that's fine by to mop it up and sweep it under the carpet the way the film does, does seem to be short-changing the audience that are on this journey with the character just a bit. Still, small complaint.

Jeff Bridges is stunning here. Bridges is always reliable but he excels here and i would say this is his best role to date. He hasn't inhabited the body of a character this convincingly since The Dude in The Big Lebowski and his "Bad" Blake feels as real as characters come. Whether singing on stage, writing songs, getting drunk or getting in over his head he never hits a wrong note. I haven't seen Morgan Freeman in Invictus yet but for my money Bridges trumps all the other actors this year and I hope he finally gets his due for this. It is a towering performance, at once both in your face and yet subtle. A masterclass in acting.

Maggie Gyllenhaal more than holds her own and deserves a best supporting actress nod, though it's a tough field in that category this year and i suspect Bridges performance may eclipse much of the rest of the movie. This would be a shame though. Here she is likeably believable in an understated way and without her balance of the main character the film would struggle more.

Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall are both solid in smaller supporting roles but neither is really in it enough to get any awards attention.

The photography, like everything about this movie, is beautiful; while the soundtrack of new songs is simply stunning. Bridges has a great voice for them and personally i plan to buy the soundtrack album for this one. It'll have you top-tapping and thigh-slapping in the aisles!

One of my favourite films of the year. An awards movie that is also just plain entertaining - which is all too rare - with great songs and excellent performances, including a career-best from Bridges. A must see.

Latest screening: It's Complicated

These days you know something is bad when the best thing about your comedy is Steve Martin. Don't get me wrong, i am a big Martin fan but i can't avoid the fact that in the last 15+ years the only comedy he's made that was good was the self-penned Bowfinger. Mostly, sadly, he sucks now! Unless he takes an occasional serious role - like in David Mamet's excellent The Spanish Prisoner. And weirdly that is why he works here. Despite his second-billing on the poster the poster image (left) tells the truth for once. Martin is barely in this film. When he is he is mainly a subdued straight-man version of Martin, only getting to let out the better known Steve in one extended scene. So, for what little he's around, he comes out of this best.

And thank god for him and John Krasinski. Without the pair of them this film would be so tedious as to make you wonder by about half way through if suicide is a preferable option to sitting through another hour (plus) of this obvious, unfunny, cliched, dreck!

Nancy Meyers knows how to plum the depths of obvious, supposedly witty but really hackneyed comedy. Films like the fun What Women Want, the saved-by-the-leads Something's Gotta Give and the odious The Holiday have shown that she likes to write a so-called observational comedy, which couldn't bare less resemblance to real life if aliens invaded halfway through - and at least that might add some interest.

Here we have Meryl Streep as the long divorced wife of Alec Baldwin with three grown children. He is now married to a much younger woman and they are trying for a baby. Streep and Baldwin rekindle a flame and start an affair. Martin comes on the scene as a straight-laced divorcee suitor for Streep and... (see title)

The thing is none of it is even vaguely convincing. Streep and Baldwin have zero chemistry. Martin, again, fares better but has the thankless - only serves as a plot point - character that has no depths to explore. Streep and Baldwin are fine within their own characters but aren't convincing together.

In standard movie cliche way Streep's band of "outrageous" girl friends are always on hand for some sage advice and "outrageous" innuendo at a moments notice, but of course have no real characters beyond screeching here, going "Oh My GOD!!!" there and generally behaving "outrageously" in a way no actual human being does. They also, of course, disappear from the plot when no longer needed without another reference. Rita Wilson pops up here and does all the wrinkled brow, hand flapping, oohing and aahing that these characters tend to demonstrate, showing once again why she's never made it big as an actress in her own right.

These aren't the only cliches, the movie positively revels in them, and the whole doesn't have an honest moment in it - a problem, surely, for an "observational" comedy?

The Streep-Baldwin kids are also badly cast. Not only has the casting director managed to cast three young actors without the remotest resemblance to either Streep or Baldwin, but they've cast three without a passing resemblance to each other. Heights, shapes, facial features. Nothing links a single member of this family with another. That might not matter if it were because they'd gone for the best actors, but the son - geez, if they couldn't find a better actor than him than there ought to be an actor-shortage alert put out to get aid to Hollywood.

The saving grace is John Krasinski. Playing son-in-law to Streep and Baldwin he has the only genuinely funny moments after he inadvertently (and unwillingly) becomes the sole recipient of the knowledge of Streep and Baldwin's affair. He plays this beautifully, hitting every moment for maximum comic-effect. It wouldn't be hard to stand out in a film this lame and irritating, but he really is quite good.

Generally though what a waste of good talent. Streep should know better. This feels like her cashing in on her recent label of being "bankable" thanks to Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia! This has to be the worst role she's ever played and the laziest performance she's ever given. I'm sure the millions will keep her warm at night but she ought to be ashamed. Baldwin is trading off his 30 Rock success and has Kim Basinger to keep off his back and Martin couldn't spot a good script these days if he was mummified in it so i can forgive them, but Meryl, what were you thinking?

A hackneyed, cliched, tedious, obvious, trite mess. It's Complicated is not complicated, it's just rubbish.

Latest screening: Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

Fun! That really is the best word to describe Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.

This year has been a stunning year for animation. Coraline was dark, beautiful and exciting – showing the genius Henry Selick take stop-motion animation to a new level. Pixar’s Up was simply one of the best films of the year – hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measure. After a shaky second film Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs delivered a really entertaining, enjoyable romp for all the family. Hell, even Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol wasn’t bad. I’m seeing maestro Miyazaki’s latest, Ponyo, this weekend. It really has been a strong year. But something Sony Pictures Animation’s Meatballs (as I’m reducing its title to from hereon in) provides is an unashamedly fun-for-kids movie.

Don’t get me wrong, adults can enjoy it to, but this one feels made for kids first. Up, like all Pixar films, felt made primarily for discerning adults. Coraline was too disturbing for little kids but easy for adults to love and admire. Ice Age worked great for kids but had a lot of adult humour. Meatballs combines a daft story with bigger-than-life characters, simple design and bright, almost day-glo colours to please every child everywhere. Giant food falling from the sky. A comic-relief monkey. A colour palette that even puts Up to shame. This screams “kids will love this” to me.

I kind of feel like the adult appeal here comes from the voice cast. It is headed by the likeable, but unusual, pairing of Bill Hader and Anna Faris. These are hardly names that immediately make you think “kids movie”, yet there child-like glee and enthusiasm – actually often seen in their live action characters, especially Faris’ – fit perfectly. But the real manner-from-heaven is in the support cast. How often do you get a combo the likes of James Caan, Bruce Campbell, Neil Patrick Harris, Benjamin Bratt and Mr T (yes, MR T!!!) in an animated movie support cast? This is such a brilliant support cast it can deliver Harris as a talking monkey with only a few words of (oft repeated) dialogue. Caan is brilliant. This may bizarrely be the best use of Caan since 1990’s Misery! Mr T is so spot on you can’t believe no-one’s used him this way before.

It is not a great film. It’s not Up, it’s not Coraline, no it’s not even Ice Age 3 but it is very entertaining. That the film can raise sustained and deserved laughs from a reunion that uses only names (most notably from the monkey) is impressive. The film will have you laughing from the get-go – from design elements like Caan’s character, to situational comedy, to one-liners – and almost all of it will work for kids, not going over their heads.

The concept does lose momentum in the middle act and the villain of the piece is not nearly maniacal enough. Plus there is at least one too many false ending.

However despite these flaws it’s a very worthy watch. Sony animated films (Monster House, Surf’s Up) frequently turn out to be little treats hidden behind slightly unappealing marketing and consistently warrant watching. Meatballs adds to this reputation. This one may not trouble the awards lists (at least not when animation categories only have 3 entries, although the Oscars and Globes do have 5 this year) but it does provide a fun 90 minutes of daft amusement. Time well spent in the kids movie world.

Latest screening: Glorious 39

There are two things that have to be said up front about Glorious 39. Firstly it is best seen knowing nothing, and I mean nothing about the story. Don’t read reviews, don’t read synopses, nothing. Total blackout. Just go!

Secondly see it at a cinema if possible to make this more achievable but you must, MUST watch this film straight through in one sitting. No toilet breaks, no taking phone calls, no making a snack. Otherwise the impact will be lost. This is slow burn. At times early on you are not sure where it’s going or indeed if it is that interesting but you need this build to pay off later, and boy does it pay off.

This (while nothing like it in storyline terms and obviously not on the same level of utter genius) is like There Will Be Blood in its necessity to be experienced as a straight sitting film. Everyone I know who couldn’t see beyond the grandiose DDL performance in There Will Be Blood to the carefully constructed majesty of that film where people that saw it on DVD rather than in the cinema. In other words they saw in piece-meal and so the impact was dissipated. That was a film that should leave you reeling, leave you breathless, speechless, stunned. Glorious 39, while not at the heights of There Will Be Blood relies on the same one-sitting requirement in order to have the desired impact.

Don’t short-change it, see it this way (with no story knowledge – I literally knew nothing about it going in other than the cast, director and that it was set in 1939 England) and I am sure you’ll be blown away as I was.

Because of the above I obviously can’t talk about the plot and characters in this review so I will just leave it with my assurance that this turned out to be, after sticking with it, one of the most intriguing, exciting, and stunning films I’ve seen this year. It left me stunned. It is rare than cinema can surprise me in the way this did. It is sadly all to rare to find writing this brilliant any more.

Garai has never been better than she is here. She completely convinces as her character goes from wide-eyed enthusiasm, to paranoid conspiracy theorist, to numbed shock, to battling heroine. A superb performance that I believe can’t be denied regardless of your thoughts on the film. Garai has promised much since taking centre stage in I Capture The Castle some 7 years ago but never has her promise been better realized than here. For me she's a definite Best Actress contender for the BAFTAs.

The film is not without its problems. The slow pace and seeming lack of events in the first hour, while key to later story, may prove insurmountable for many – which is why I insist on the single sitting viewing. The film also takes a misstep in book-ending the film with present day scenes that provide the way into the story in a “tale told” approach that is wholly unnecessary and, in the case of the ending, irritating. The final couple of minutes serves no useful purpose and derails the impact of the film somewhat. A shame when excising these brief scenes would not only not have harmed the picture but would likely have benefitted it – not to mention dropped 5-10 minutes off the run time.

Even so I found this another fine addition to the exciting roster of British films this year. Usually I am a Brit film cynic, always ready (and expectant) to dislike them. But with Looking For Eric, An Education, Moon, Harry Brown, etc the British films actual seem to be the best this year. One of the few I’d rate as high that isn’t British is A Single Man and that boasts both multiple English actors and two British lead characters! A banner year indeed for our little Isle.

Hell, even The Men Who Stare At Goats had the omnipresent BBC Films behind it! They seem to be behind every other movie this year. Possible Brit-awards season contenders from them include also An Education, Bright Star, Fish Tank, The Damned United, Creation, Glorious 39, The Boys Are Back, In The Loop!

Latest screening: The Men Who Stare At Goats

After Up In The Air here we have that other George Clooney – the daft comedy George that can either hit (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, Intolerable Cruelty – yes, whatever the negatives of that less successful Coen film George wasn’t one of them) and miss (Leatherheads). It should perhaps be noted that daft George has always worked under the assured hands of the Coen Brothers. Oh for their touch here.

The Men Who Stare At Goats is no disaster. It’s probably in an Intolerable Cruelty ballpark in terms of quality, but it feels like it could have been so much better.

There’s fun to be had. There are some dynamite gags and great performances all round but too often it either goes to well too many times on a particular gag, running it into the ground, or just ambles aimlessly along with no purpose and drags.

After a fun start that introduces us to Ewan McGregor’s hapless, hopeless journalist, and the story of a psychic special forces group including Jeff Bridges, Clooney and Kevin Spacey (seen in flashbacks) expanded on during an Iraqi road-trip with Clooney and McGregor you soon realize that the flashbacks are all the meat this story has. The present day stuff is on a road-trip to nowhere.

Clooney is good as always and McGregor holds his own and is game for some very funny Star Wars references – though again these go too far. A couple of references to Jedi warriors raise smiles and McGregor’s quip about a farm boy is gold, but the script goers back to these referential gags time and again and they quickly become tired and irritating.

Oddly Bridges is less than great. He is entertaining enough doing a kind of ‘Dude joins the army’ thing but he isn’t pushed here at all. The Dude in The Big Lebowski was a fully formed character. Bill Django here never feels like he is. I don’t think this is Bridges’ fault. He has clearly been hired to be The Dude in a different setting and he brings it, and he does get laughs – but these are more out of a love of Bridges in general than really from anything he is given to do here. This is best seen in his delivery on a hackneyed joke so old and obvious that you feel like his heart just isn’t in it and it just kind of sits there (it’s in the courtroom scene).

Spacey on the other hand has virtually nothing to do but delivers on every front, mining his brief role for some of the best one-liners in the film. In contrast to Bridges he handles an equally old and obvious gag (in a wedding scene) with such expert timing that he drags freshness kicking and screaming into it. Essentially he is set up as the villain of the piece but he is never given a great villainous role to get his teeth into and this is a shame. A film that had the sense to make more of Spacey (and asked anything of Bridges) would have been 10 times better. Unfortunately the filmmakers seem happy to focus all their attention on Clooney and McGregor. While the two work well together and they give there all their story alone is simply not enough to sustain the picture.

So yet again we are left with a great idea in search of a much better script. The film sadly wastes the usually unfaultable genius of Jeff Bridges and underuses a dynamite form Kevin Spacey. Often fun but ultimately disappointing. I've read that Overture in the US were hoping for awards attention on this but i can't possibly fathom where, there is just nothing here on any level that deserves awards attention.

Latest screening: Precious

A very good film with a stunning central performance (and some excellent supporting ones too) Precious could well be the "little" movie that makes it big this awards season. It seems almost certain that newcomer Gabourey Sidibe will be nominated for Best Actress - the performance demands it - and also that Mo'Nique will pick up a Best Supporting Actress nod (she's currently considered the favourite, though i'm still giving it to Julianne Moore for A Single Man), but this could easily find itself seriously conpeting in Adapted Screenplay, Director and even Picture categories.

It's not an easy film but curiously it stands out this year in a lighter-weight line-up amongst the strongest contenders. Even those that are dramatic (like A Single Man) don't feel so gruelling, like last year's line-up where even the so called "feel good" film was the often tough going Slumdog Millionaire!

Precious tackles the abuse, both physical and mental, heaped upon an teenager who when given an opportunity in life will try her hardest to improve her situation but approaches most situations with a resigned gloom and a hard attitude because that is what she needs to survive. The film doesn't pull its punches either (well, my understanding of the what's in the book suggests it does a little but then it would likely be unwatchable). There are several brutal scenes that go beyond discomfort for the audience. So not a Sunday-afternoon crowd pleaser then, but a must-see none the less.

Gabourey Sidibe, in her first film, is simply tremendous as Precious. It could be tempting (since it is her first role and so viewers can't be sure) to think, oh well she knows it, she is it, it's not acting it's casting. Having been to a Q&A screening let me assure you it is acting of the best calibre. Sidibe in person is a sunny, smart girl with little seeming in common with the on-screen character. That she so inhabits the character with no training demonstrates how good a performance this is.

Much has been made of Mo'Nique's role as the abusive mother, and she is impressive. But i can't help feeling firstly that this is partly that people expected her casting is such a role and such a film to be stunt-casting (as with the cast's fellow players Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz) and were expecting her to be all wrong in the role. That she is so good (as is Carey for that matter, though Kravitz, while fine, has little to do) almost makes the performance seem even better. Secondly this is one of those gift roles. A superbly written monster. You feel the character created in the writing, the set-ups and shocking dialogue the script provides. I take little away from Mo'Nique, she does deliver the goods, but i feel this is one of those brilliantly written roles that a dozen actresses could have done just as well without missing a beat - much like Viola Davis' role in Doubt last year; a barn-storming scene-stealer that stays with you after the film, but really is it completely the performance or is it mostly the character?

Sidibe brings so much to her role she feels irreplacable. In comparison to Mo'Nique my vote for Supporting Actress this year (Julianne Moore in A Single Man) brings such a depth of character you can palpably feel beyond what's being presented you get a fully formed character that lives and breathes beyond her scenes and, indeed, beyond the story. Mo'Nique is giving her all to what is on the page, there's no doubt, but i get no sense of anything more. Of course the Oscars love a big shouty, unsubtle performance and favour them over delicacy and true character embodiment year after year so Moore will probably lose out (again!) but she shouldn't.

Paula Preston adds some much needed light to the film. She has little to really do beyond empathise and try to help Precious but once she is in the film it becomes more bearable. It doesn't hurt either that Preston much have a pretty good claim on "world's most beautiful woman", she simply is stunning.

Lee Daniels has delivered a thought-provoking and often harrowing film but it goes beyond strong performances and a tough story, Precious is a genuinely compelling film to watch. So often these kinds of films are lost behind a single strong performance (Monster) or get bogged down in their world (A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints) or feel like stunt-casting for a famous face known for alternate fare (Havoc), or are simply too full on to be really watchable (Johnny Mad Dog) - films are to some degree entertainment after all - but Precious, while often difficult to watch, is not a film you regret watching, or feel you wouldn't watch again, and what stays with you from it is so much more than the gruelling abuse episodes.

Precious is every bit as good as last year's Slumdog Millionaire (i would say easily better) and would deserve a Best Picture slot even if we were still done to 5 not 10. The test will be if Daniels can make the five directors. On the strength of what i've seen so far (most everything significant except Nine and Invictus) he deserves it.

Latest screening: 2012

The world is ending, which can only mean Roland Emmerich has once again been let out to play in his CG sand-box. But there's little to complain about here. This is Emmerich's third entry into a well-worn genre - the disaster movie - that had staples long before he started and few people that see this can have plausible deniability if they come out complaining it wasn't what they expected.

Arguably better - because frankly it's just more fun - than the solid The Day After Tomorrow but not as good as the ludicrous, but ludicrously entertaining Independence Day, 2012 does a Ron Seal. It does "exactly what it says on the tin".

In other words a menagerie of well-known faces (John Cusack, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Egiofor, Danny Glover, Amanda Peet, Tom McCarthy, Jimi Mistry, Woody Harrelson, etc) and many less well known who we can therefore consider cannon-fodder attempt to escape and survive the disaster movie to end all disaster movies. Yes, without help from outer-space - be it in the form of aliens of giant comets - the world is going to end. This is the day after The Day After Tomorrow!

Of course all the reliable cliches are in check. We have the self-absorbed dad (Cusack) who neglects his kids, one of whom hates him and prefers his mum's new boyfriend. Where could this storyline go? Hmmm, i wonder. We have the bratty rich kids of Russian billionaire and the trophy girlfriend - and, of course, her cure dog! We have the ridiculously honorable wise widower US President (Glover). We have the smart humanitarian scientist (Egiofor) who always knows what's best. We have the selfish, ass-hole political aide (presumably the White House chief-of-staff though if this is ever stated i missed it) (Platt). We have the conspiracist kook who, naturally, has been right all along (Harrelson, doing his best Randy Quaid).

On the plus side it does dispense with the usual disaster movie cliche of the scientist who knows what's going to happen but whom everyone dismisses until its (nearly) too late. For once the opening gambit of science-babble designed to make audiences think the writer may have done some research (ha!) and get all the necessary exposition out of the way in the first 5 minutes so that stuff can get on with blowing up, is actually listened to be political administrations. So that's something at least. And Emmerich also (perhaps unintentionally, but i'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt after destroying the world 3 times) plays some of the cliches so way over the top that it's all the more amusing. The expexted dog-in-peril moment isn't groan-worthy here because it's so audacious and comical that you have to tip your hate to a man that either really knows how to entertain or is genuinely the cornyist filmmaker ever to touch celluloid. Either way this sort of boldness should be cherished.

What we really come to see though is the world getting all kinds of crap kicked out of it and stuff blowing up. Aliens and Will Smith were all well and good but it was well marketed images of the White House and the Empire State Building being obliterated that drew huge crowds to Independence Day and Emmerich doesn't skimp on the spectacle in 2012. Super-volcanoes erupting, ash-clouds enveloping cities, massive rifts in the Earth's crust, supermarkets cleved in two, California falling into the sea, tidal-waves engulfing the Earth, an aircraft carrier flattening the White House - it's all here and it does look fantastic. I couldn't fault the effects (unlike Day After Tomorrow) it does all look great. The man knows he has to go all out here and boy does he.

Of course the characters are almost incidental but it helps to have an actor as damn likeable as the ever engaging Cusack to anchor the piece. Cusack can simply do no wrong, his laconic everyman is the more palatable version of a Will Smith. He can be heroic but you know its a begrudging heroism and that wonderfully relatable. You can put Cusack at the centre of the most preposterous story (Con Air anyone) and it becomes instantly more enjoyable.

Like The Day After Tomorrow is can tend to be a little serious and could use a bit more humour, but there are (unintentional - or not, eh, Roland) laughs to be had and while not cracking one-liners Cusack is such a laid-back kind of actor that you almost feel like he's being funny. Ironically the most sought after laughs - visual gags of California's governator at a press conference, The Queen getting to safety - are unnecessary and feel overplayed.

A slight negative is the film does seem to overdo the "plane in peril" shots, almost as if unable to do one in Day After Tomorrow and aware this may have to be his last disaster epic Emmerich decided to cram in as many as humanly possible.

Of course you could also argue a lack of characterisation beyond surfaces, the cliched roster of characters and the requisite cheese-ridden dialogue are negatives, but like i said at the outset, if you don't know what you're getting into when you buy the ticket then you probably only have yourself to blame.

This really is the disaster movie to end all disaster movies, though perhaps Emmerich has inadvertently ended his career in the process. Where does 'the disaster movie man' go from here? He'll have to destroy the solar system next.

Regardless 2012 is the kind of ridiculous entertainment that is a welcome diversion amongst the heavy roster of awards-baiting dramas currently battling for my attention and if you can't have daft fun spectaculars like this on the cinema screen then what's really the point?

Latest screening: Amelia

It's hard to see who, except possibly Hilary Swank's ego, this film was made for. A ponderous, unengaging traipse through the life of US aeronautical grand-dame Amelia Earhart.

As anyone who has seen Vanity Fair or The Namesake can attest director Mira Nair has a stunning ability to make a potentially interesting subject as boring as watching paint dry and here she wants to have her cake and eat it as the film tries both to tell us about Earhart whhile simultaneously assuming we already know her whole story. Though i'd be willing to bet that your average person - even Americans - know she was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic single-handed and the manor in which she died, and that's about it.

The film lacks any real sense of purpose. It seems to want us to see Amelia as a great pioneer, and that's fine i guess, but isn't she already kind of seen that way? That's Amelia the myth. If you're doing a biopic you look behind the myth, you show the woman at the heart of the story - the person noone knew. The problem here is either that Earhart just wasn't all that interesting beyond the legend or that Swank (who serving as a producer clearly we have to thank for what feels like a classic vanity project) and Nair were simply unwilling to tarnish their subject in even the most benign way. Probably a bit of both. Certainly the filmmakers must be to blame for only half-heartedly covering her affair and couching the heartlessness with with she treats Richard Gere's character. The affair feels thrown in out of a necessity not to be accused of avoiding any negative angles but is more implied than stated and then brushed over before it even seems to have started.

Swank shows none of the subtlety she excelled at in Boy's Don't Cry and Million Dollar Baby and instead brings the overplaying version of herself seen in films like The Black Dahlia. Could she be turning into Al Pacino? You do spend half of Amelia expecting her to cry "Hoo-haa!" and it wouldn't seem out of place.

Ewan McGregor is terribly miscast as Gene (?) Vidal (father of Gore - an overplayed aside) and Christopher Eccleston is wasted as Earhart's alcoholic navigator on her ill-fated round-the-world voyage.

Gere fares slightly better though. He is an actor people love to hate but i frequently find myself liking him and he is the best part of this, but not enough to make it a worthwhile watch.

Overall there is nothing here to engage an audience looking for anything other than hero worship and that it just a waste of everybody's time.

Latest screening: A Christmas Carol

Firstly kudos to the whomever designed this German poster (left) for the new Robert Zemeckis film, far better than the overly cartoonish ones we have in the UK.

Okay, first up i'm going to tackle the style before i tackle the film because the style is the film these days for Robert Zemeckis. I have never made any secret of the fact i hate Zemeckis' style of motion capture animation with its dead eyes and waxen skin. It's ugly, unrealistic and unpleasant to watch.

Now mo-cap can be used brilliantly, especially when placing a single mo-cap character into a more substantive world - Gollum in Lord Of The Rings or King Kong for example - but in each of Zemeckis' all mo-cap films (The Polar Express, Beowulf and now this) the style simply doesn't work. The characters have no weight for starters. A man walking, a dog running, a horse galloping - none look like they are subject to the laws of gravity in these films; like they are floating just above the surface.

On most characters, where Zemeckis has tried to achieve a "realistic" look (the kids in Polar Express, the humans in Beowulf, Fred (Colin Firth), Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman), Fezziwig (Bob Hoskins) etc in A Christmas Carol) the facial features are awkward and waxen with eyes that show no light, no soul. It is like the living dead. Perhaps Zemeckis should team with George Romero on the next Living Dead film, because he certainly has found the right technology for it!

Curiously though A Christmas Carol does feature the first instances of Zemeckis getting it right, achieving characters that work in the mo-cap and don't look like horror film rejects, and this is because in these two instances he hasn't gone for a "realistic" human look but played up the cartoonish quality of each character - namely Scrooge (Jim Carrey) and Marley (Gary Oldman). Even the eyes work for Scrooge, which is a marvel and makes you wonder why Zemeckis and his team can't spot the difference and didn't strive to achieve with the other characters (or least the other lead characters) what they did with Ebenezer. The eyes are still glazed on Marley but as a ghost it works for him. Both faces are very exaggerated and cartoony and somehow fit more naturally to the form than other attempts.

The film itself is patchy. Carrey as Scrooge (baring more than a passing resemblance to his character in Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events) is fantastic. He hams up the right amount to overplay the character in the manner Dickens wrote it and yet is believable both as the vicious, mean-spirited Scrooge we are introduced to and the frightened, humbled Scrooge we get along the way. Many film and theatre Scrooges (and i've seen many on film and in the theatre, as well as reading the book every year) fail to convince somewhere along the line - after all Scrooge does go through major character transformations through what is a short story set over a very short period of time. Carrey should be commended here and for once (for the first time) he isn't let down by the rendering into Zemeckis' animation.

The ghosts are sadly less successful. There is a nice, and slightly different from the common form, take on the Ghost of Christmas Future, but Carrey plays the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present with, respectively, a bizarre Irish lilt and a kind-of Liverpudlian tinge that makes the latter sound like the Ghost of Christmas Beatles!

Oldman is let down by the rendering of Bob Cratchit (and hiderous man-child Tiny Tim!) but does his best. He is great as Marley's Ghost though and again, for once, the style doesn't interfere.

Firth's Fred, Scrooge's nephew, is terrible on every level. He looks awful for a start. This may be the worst rendered character in one of these Zemeckis films - with the possible exception of Steven Tyler's elf in Polar Express! But Firth doesn't help matters. Tonally he is all off. His reading often comes off as angry or irritated when Fred, as Dickens wrote him, is unassailable in his joviality when dealing with Scrooge. He is the beacon of light. In this version you can frankly see why Scrooge wouldn't want to spend Christmas with him and that's just all wrong! In his jovial moments he also doesn't sound jolly so much as slightly tipsy speaking with a frantic squeak that sounds bizarre. A terrible piece of bad casting.

Hoskins is fine for Fezziwig but is again let down by the animation.

For the most part the story is fairly close to the book, excising a few moments but actually featuring elements that rarely make it into film adaptations - most notably the presence of the child-incarnations of want and ignorance that dwell beneath the cloak of the Ghost of Christmas Past. I'm not sure i can recall them ever making it off the page before.

Unfortunately there are a couple of poor choices. A completely unnecessary spectral-horse action sequence to add "a bit of excitement" for the ADD youth of today is a real shame and the changing of one of the books most famous lines is unforgivable (at least he didn't change the "God bless us, everyone").

Much of the film works and the shame, as always with this type of animation - and especially given that Carrey's look here is so similar to what has been achieved with make-up before - it that Zemeckis continues to insist to making his films with motion-capture technology rather than making a proper film. Zemeckis once made great films like Back To The Future, Romancing The Stone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and I believe that The Polar Express and his A Christmas Carol might have stood a chance to being up near those greats it he'd made them as real films. The mo-cap just isn't working Bob, give it up. Please.

Latest screening: Taking Woodstock

Some have argued that Taking Woodstock seems a strange film for Ang Lee to take on. I don't prescribe to this view. How a man that has made a period action epic like Crouching Toger Hidden Dragon, a politically-charged 70s-set family saga like The Ice Storm, a western like Ride With The Devil, a ground-breaking same sex love story in Brokeback Mountain and a comic-book superhero movie in Hulk can be said to have a "type" of film that he makes is beyond me. One thing you can't do is pigeon-hole Ang Lee.

That said, it doesn't mean that every film works and here he comes unstuck. Taking Woodstock is not a bad film, indeed, had it not been made by Lee reviews would no doubt be kinder, but it is very much a film of two halves.

The film starts well and the set up is well handled. Here we have a frustratingly quiet town for prpotagonist Elliot, who wants to be a good son to his domineering mother and put-upon father, but longs, silently, to escape. He sees a chance to help his parents get out from under financial problems and free himself in the process when an opportunity comes his way to use a license he has to host a musical festival (which traditionally consists of his playing records on his lawn) to attract an adrift massive music festival to his town.

So far so good and for about an hour things are ticking along nicely. Elliot and the other characters are well set up and believable, with the possible exception of Emile Hirsch who simply doesn't convince the viewer that he has seen real combat - a problem since his character is a disturbed soldier, recently returned from Vietnam.

The early scenes have a wealth of humour, from a town-council meeting that is gently mocking of small town bureaucrats; to the overwhelming cheapness of Elliot's mum (a brilliant Imelda Staunton); to the arrival of cross-dresser Liev Schreiber looking for a security job; and the general escalation of the festival.

Small turns from the likes of Eugene Levy and Jeffrey Dean Morgan provide real characters despite little screen time, but Lee establishes the world with his usual skill and eye for character and observational humour.

Unfortunately he then abandons it all as the film loses its way wallowing in the experiences common to a coming-of-age film and expected in a film set in this era - as Elliot discovers his sexuality, drugs and an independence he hadn't sought. The problem here is that's the end of the story. Threads about towns folk unhappy with millions of teenagers descending on the town, local muscle men looking for a slice of the pie, his mother's secret, selfish hoard, etc are all abandoned and character development goes out the window. Early established characters like Eugene Levy's farmer and Jeffrey Dean Morgan's straight-laced but concerned brother to Hirsch's Billy completely disappear.

If the film were truly giving a sense of his experiences perhaps this could be forgiven, but it doesn't. Lee is too shy - perhaps after the criticism he got in some circles for the graphic imagery of Lust, Caution - to show a lot of the inferred events unfold and others, such as his parents experiencing the effects a hash brownies, are played too briefly purely for the comic effect and to remind us (or maybe Lee) that there are actually others characters in this world.

And then it kind of peters out!

It leaves you wondering why the set-up if its all going to be abandoned down the road. Either you are making a film about Elliot's experiences or a larger canvas, but this appears to start as one and becomes another. And unfortunately the second part, the experiences, are neither terribly original, revelatory or interesting. Watching someone else get high on film is like watching someone play a computer game - if you're not doing it yourself it's lost in translation!

A disappointing film, but one that does offer some entertaining humour in the first hour and a dynamite supporting performance from Staunton that will no doubt be lost in the general inanity of the film. Shame.

Latest screening: Whatever Works

I so wanted to like Whatever Works, a comedy that combines the great Woody Allen with the ascerbic genius of Larry David. Throw in Evan Rachel Wood (so great in last year's The Wrestler) and the ever brilliant Patricia Clarkson and surely we have lightning in a bottle? No?! Ah, well, but then maybe expectations were part of the problem.

I didn't dislike Whatever Works. It was no disaster like Cassandra's Dream or even a generally bad but occasionally amusing one like Curse Of The Jade Scorpion or Hollywood Ending. But it also wasn't reeeeeaaaaalllyy funny.

After Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which had me laughing like a drain throughout, i had high hopes for a comedy combining Allen's humour with David's personality. But unfortunately Whatever Works runs along constantly raising a smile but rarely gaining a full-on laugh. It is amusing and likeable but that's all - playing a bit like Anything Else. Of Allen's comedy output over the past decade i would place it behind Melinda & Melinda on a rough par with Small Time Crooks, but maybe not quite as good even as that. Better than Scoop.

This is a shame because David does work as a Woody substitute. In fact, he may be the best Woody substitute in that David has such a distinctive creative voice of his own that he is the first to truly have no trace of Woody in his portrayal. An impressive feat in itself. That said, he isn't really an actor. While the role of Larry David he plays on Curb Your Enthusiasm is an exaggeration, a perfect version of what he wishes he could be and do it has set up an idea of what Larry David is. Here he is playing a different character but it is a slightly more pathetic and needy version of the same Larry we know, and therefore other characters referring to him as Boris just never sounds or seems right. He is not playing a character, he's being Larry David in a Woody Allen film. This might have worked in a brilliantly post-modern way if somehow Woody and Larry had collaborated to make the exact story of Whatever Works with just a few minor tweaks at the beginning into a Curb Movie spin-off.

Evan Rachel Wood is endearingly oddball but never has much to do given her screentime. Clarkson makes an impact as best she can and Ed Begley Jr is dynamite in a briefish role but this is Larry's show. It's more about a single central character than any film Allen has made that he didn't star in.

Perhaps when revisited without the expectations i'll enjoy it more but i was disappointed. Not a disaster by any means but sadly just not really that funny given the talent involved.

Behold The A-Team

And damn if Liam Neeson doesn't look damn spot on as Hannibal!

New trailer: Invictus

Mostly i don't mention new trailer's in the trailer bar (see right) at the moment because of all the screening posts but as this is Invictus - a film with the heady, awards baiting pedigree of director Clint Eastwood directing Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and throwing Matt Damon into the mix - this one has to be highlighted. It always sounded destined to be an awards season player and this trailer does nothing to contradict such assumptions.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/invictus/

Latest screening: A Serious Man

Ah, God bless the Coens. After No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading they continue their stunning role in such style it is easy to imagine that The Ladykillers was merely a bad dream!

A Serious Man is at once hilarious, touching, intriguing and confounding – everything the brothers do so well.

After a funny, Yiddish-language parable shot in a different aspect ratio which opens the movie like a Pixar short film – connective to the main film but not really directly related – we launch into the story of college professor Larry (the excellent Michael Stuhlbarg).

Larry is a vintage Coen character. Like a 1960s, lead character version of Steve Buscemi’s Donnie character in The Big Lebowski. He is a somewhat hapless, put-upon character. A character going through life minding his own business who would happily avoid conflict or difficulty at every turn, but whom, like a cat to the allergic, conflict and difficulty is inexorably drawn. Problems beyond his control arise in just about every possible aspect of his life and he greats each one as best he can, while displaying the accumulating weight of this world on his shoulders.

Stuhlbarg is fantastic. As the film heaps more and more bad luck and misfortune on him you can see the despair in his eyes, the weight on his soul. You feel that sense of how close he could teeter on the brink of a breakdown, just hanging on as best he can, struggling for meaning in world that offers none. He is fair-minded, just, honest, hard-working, caring, practical, yet nothing he seems to do helps. The sense of his being overwhelmed grows so naturally that it is hard to believe more is not being verbalized, so clear is Stuhlbarg’s internal feeling.

But this is not a depressing film and it is not one of the Coen’s straight, more serious films. Tonally it probably has most in common with Barton Fink, but it is much funnier. A series of meetings with various Rabbis are highlights, especially the second which contains the relating of a story so brilliantly Coen in both imagination and delivery of dialogue that you kind of know how the joke is going to work but you’re enjoying getting there and so happy when it does.

It is very much Stuhlbarg’s film. Beyond Larry the world is the character. It is the Coens world, but also cinematographer Roger Deakins’ world. After skipping out on Burn After Reading Deakins is back with the Coens where he belongs and the world of A Serious Man is typically beautiful. Deakins has done period, suburban beauty with the Coens before in The Man Who Wasn’t There, but here he can also add a colour palette and the result is stunning visual that belie the unflashy setting.

Carter Burwell’s score is also deceptively well judged, to the point you almost forget it’s there but it resonates beyond the film. It’s no Fargo score, which really plays well divorced from image on CD, but it is another crucial part that makes the Coen world seem whole.

The best decision here though was to abandon their regular stock company, not just the “star” names like George Clooney but also the regular character actors like Steve Buscemi, Jon Polito, Frances McDormand, John Turturro, John Goodman, Peter Stormare, Michael Badalucco, etc. About the most recognizable name in the movie is Richard Kind (at least recognizable to fans of the Michael J Fox sitcom Spin City) and Barton Fink’s Michael Lerner does turn up ever so briefly. But Lerner’s brief appearance almost feels like it serves to say, “no, this is not one for the regulars”!

Stuhlbarg is so convincing in the lead, and seems so suited to the Coens world (much like Billy Bob Thornton stepped so easily into the barbers shoes of Man Who Wasn’t There) that while this film doesn’t feature the Coen regulars it did leave me hoping Stuhlbarg becomes one of them.

Some will no doubt find the conclusion frustrating but it feels like the end the film deserves. The Coens have never strived to make a ‘Hollywood’ happy fit movie, they have consistently shown Hollywood what can be done.

A Coen film is also a must see but A Serious Man does not disappoint. It is certainly one of the highlights of the year so far and, given the Coens heightened awards profile post No Country, should at the very least garner strong awards attention for Stuhlbarg if not for the brothers and their behind camera colleagues.

Latest screening: Bright Star

I love the score to The Piano. I’m stating that upfront because it’s about the only positive thing I’ve ever been able to say about a Jane Campion movie. I haven’t seen An Angel At My Table but I hated The Piano, Holy Smoke, The Portrait Of A Lady and In The Cut so you’ll forgive me for not seeking it out.

It was therefore with trepidation that I went to see Campion’s latest Bright Star, but I have heard good things about the stars and familiarity with both Ben Whishaw (significantly Perfume) and Abbie Cornish’s (most notably the powerful Candy) previous work compelled me to give it a chance.

I can say it is Campion’s best work. I can say I liked it more than any of her previous films. I cannot day I liked it. I didn’t.

Bright Star is a typically overwrought, tedious, unconvincing, tiring Campion movie. That this is based on the real, tragic love story of one of the world’s most celebrated romantic poets makes Campion’s talent for wringing all the tedium she can from a subject (see Portrait Of A Lady) all the more impressive. The leads fail to engage on any level. Fanny Brawne (Cornish) is unlikeable, self-absorbed and arrogant. Whishaw’s Keats is irritatingly pathetic. Perhaps these are accurate portrayals but they feel more like a modern idea of what they might have been like and so, even if they are accurate, the film has failed to convey a realism to them.

Where recently lead performances in films like An Education, A Single Man, A Serious Man and Precious, and even bigger more action oriented films like The Hurt Locker and even District 9(!), have seemed entirely authentic those of Bright Star always feel Acted, and yes the capital A is intentional!

That is not to say Cornish and Whishaw don’t try their best, and Whishaw pretty much gets away with it, but they are poorly served by a director who couldn’t stage drama in the middle of the war zone! I just didn’t care about these characters. In fact I’ll further than that, as Fanny is the lead character here you should engage with her, care for her, want her to get what she wants, sympathize when things go awry. Her emotional arch should be yours. In Campion’s inept hands I found myself not only not caring what happened to her but actually happy that such a self-obsessed, silly childish girl saw her “love” end in tragedy.

Part of the problem is that there is zero chemistry between Whishaw and Cornish. In the depressing quagmire that is a Jane Campion movie perhaps chemistry cannot exist, surely any spark would quickly be dampened, but this is supposed to be the love that inspired Keats to some of the greatest romantic poems ever written. This is a real life tragic love story that should lend itself to the emotional rollercoaster that a movie can deliver. It should be heartbreaking, I just found myself happy when the tragic events came about as I knew it was finally nearly over!

I also don’t get all the praise for Cornish. She was fine, doing the best she could, but was all wrong for the part. There are some actors that can play in costume drama convincingly (I hesitate to praise Keira Knightley in any way but she does have a natural look for it) and those that work in any period, modern or old (Kate Winslet, Natalie Portman, Kelly Reilly, Romola Garai, Rosamund Pike). Then there are actresses that are simply too modern looking to convincingly fit in costume dramas, such as Angelina Jolie, Anne Hathaway or Scarlett Johansson. Cornish is sadly one of the latter group. From the first instant she seems like a 21st century girl playing dress up (not helped by the sometimes so “TV Costume Drama” costumes that even Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist looks convincing). Again Whishaw is aided by his look, he just fits in this world, but Cornish doesn’t.

Equally problematic is she has a distinctly antipodean look. Some people, many people, have an inescapable appearance that makes you know their nationality without them uttering a word. It’s a game you can play down the pub, and it’s all too easy sometimes. It’s no fault of their own and there’s nothing they can do about it. Michael Caine never works as American because (regardless of shakey accents – even his Oscar-winning one for Cider House Rules) he is inescapably British. Keira Knightley has the same problem. You couldn’t cast Thomas Haden Church as British, or Brendan Gleeson as French, or Penelope Cruz as Australian, or Sean Connery as Spanish (wait, hang on a minute – no, Highlander just proves my point!). Cornish looks Australian, it’s that simple. This is a big problem when she has to convince as a 19th century English woman! As a result she doesn’t.

A saving grace is the excellent Paul Schneider as Keats’ suspicious and cynical, but well-meaning friend Charles Brown. Schneider is utterly convincing and the scenes between he and Whishaw are highlight of the film. For me Schneider was the only performance I walked away knowing would remain with me come nomination selection time, but Whishaw may make it depending on competition. Cornish is a no go for me, as it the film as a whole, but no doubt given the British obsession with costume drama it will make a good showing at BAFTA regardless. It was at least nice to see the BIFAs not prostrate at Bright Star’s feet.

It Best Actress terms the beautifully played, naturalistic performances of both Gabourey Sidibe in Precious and Carey Mulligan in An Education run rings around Cornish and it would be a massive injustice if she beat either.

Campion is still zero for 5 in my book.

Latest screening: A Prophet (Un Prophete)

It seems to me that Jacques Audiard just gets better and better as a filmmaker and his latest film A Prophet (Un Prophete) is an assured, powerful work that resonates with you well after you finish watching it.

It the distributor gets their act together on screeners for this one A Prophet could be one of those films that breaks out of the limiting ‘Best Film Not in the English Language’ category at the BAFTA Film Awards and easily find itself with thoroughly deserved best actor and supporting actor nominations.

Tahar Rahim is superb as the lead, a character so real it’s like watching a nature documentary, you want to get in there and help him. Set in a prison this is no Shawshank Redemption although it is curiously uplifting in a strange way! Rahim takes his character from outcast, frightened newbie; to put upon weakling, subservient dogsbody; to crafty go-getter; to self-assured player – and all completely naturally. It is as impressive a performance as I’ve seen this year and deserves to stand along side the more typical English-language performances come awards time. At BAFTA at least he should have a shot.

Niels Arestrup, familiar to Audiard fans as the father in the BAFTA winning The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De Battre Mon Coeur S’est Arrete), is almost as impressive as the prison heavy, who rules by respect, control and fear, and when called for, violence. Arestrup is the Paul Sorvino Goodfellas character, the gang leader who seems in control and all powerful but deep down is as insecure as everyone else – well aware that not only is he a target for enemies but for ambitious underlings, and that his power is only as strong as his ties to those he controls. Arestrup says so much with just a look here.

A Prophet is Audiard’s best work to date and certainly among the best foreign language films this year, and arguably the best films full stop. The story may not be the most original, often going in directions you imagine it will, but it always feels right, organic, that it should. The prison setting is a familiar one for film goers but it is rarely handled in such a natural way, superbly balancing a sense of honesty, of how such a life would really be, with genuine, driving drama. True life prison story can often be honest but inert. Fiction can be dramatic, uplifting, moving but seldom feels realistic. A Prophet manages in large part to do both.

A truly impressive film.

Along with the Mesrine movies the French have set a high bar this year.

Latest screening: An Education

To those of us who have been steadily tracking Carey Mulligan’s career for several years from her small but key, eye-catching supporting role in the BBC’s Bleak House, to a star-making turn in a one-off episode of Doctor Who title Blink (the best Who episode of the modern series) to a blink-and-you’d miss her scene in And When Did You Last See Your Father? right up to a small role in this summer’s Public Enemies as John Dillinger’s wife it comes as no surprise that in her first lead film role she delivers a stunning, assured performance.

For all the good qualities of Lone Scherfig’s An Education, and there are many, it would be nothing without the luminous, brilliant Mulligan at its centre. If her revelatory guest role in Doctor Who was key in catching eyes in Britain then this is her calling card for Hollywood, and given her upcoming projects is surely already proving so. Mulligan is simply sensational here in the role of 16/17 year old Jenny, a high-flying school-girl and Oxford hopeful who gets swept up by the charm and high-living lifestyle of an older man, who her parents are equally taken with, in the early 1960s.

Her performance is so real that you don’t see a false edge. The character doesn’t feel acted but lived, she so embodies the role. You never doubt the character and that is impressive as this is a character that could so easily have come off false. Jenny is at once, incredibly intelligent, self-assured and seemingly wise, yet insecure and unknowingly naïve. She is too young to be an adult but too smart to be seen as a child. As a girl teetering on the brink of womanhood it is simply one of the best and most believable portrayals I’ve seen. She is assured of a BAFTA nomination for actress and should bag an Oscar one too unless there’s a fix going on.

She is ably supported by Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour as her parents. The three have such a genuine rapport together that they feel like a real family. Molina is excellent and deserves supporting attention come awards season. As a conflicted man living in a time on the verge of great change, but from a generation set to be slightly behind the times he is utterly convincing. Molina is a consummate actor but I’m not sure he has ever been as good as here.

Peter Sarsgaard has the tricky role of having to appear both slightly sinister and yet charming and likeable, and manages to pull it off. He can feel a little stilted at times, and I wondered if it he having to get to grips with the accent, but it could easily be read as part of the period setting. That said, it doesn’t play as well alongside the naturalism of Mulligan and Molina.

Cara Seymour compliments Mulligan and Molina as the third point in their failial triangle, and merely on a visual level is smart casting for Mulligan’s mother. Dominic Cooper seems a little unsure of his role in early stages but finds his footing, while the Oxford educated Rosamund Pike enjoys sending up Oxford students and playing an archetypal ditzy blonde – vacant looks abound to great comic effect.

Nick Hornby’s script is as funny, heartfelt and knowing as you would expect from the man responsible for books like High Fidelity, How To Be Good and About A Boy. Here he has found genuine voices for his characters and created a completely convincing world, whether at school, at home or out on the town. The film rushes a little at the end but on the whole the measure of how the script handles each incident and plot point is well paced and smartly thought out.

Scherfig of course deserves praise for realizing these elements on the big screen as well, though I suspect Mulligan and Hornby’s script will be the focus of awards season attention for this film, though a lot depends on the year’s other offerings.

An Education is superbly crafted on every level and as a complete film stands with A Single Man this year as leagues ahead of anything English-language that was on offer in the last awards season.

Smart, funny and genuine a movie as you’ll find this year replete with awards worthy performances, including a star-making turn from Carey Mulligan, you’d be a fool to pass up An Education.

Latest screening: Up In The Air

It’s starting to seem like every other George Clooney film brings with it a tag of George’s best performance yet. Intermixed with fun, goofy roles like in Burn After Reading and, from the looks of it, the upcoming Men Who Stare At Goats, we’ve had Syriana, Michael Clayton and now Up In The Air.

Up In The Air is not as serious as those other two but it is not goofy either. It is funny, very funny, but perhaps is Clooney’s most human performance.

Much of this can, no doubt, be credited to writer/director Jason Reitman. With Thank You For Smoking, Juno and now this he has shown a trend for mixing humour, both subtle and caustic, with heart and emotion without sentimentalising his character and descending into schmaltz. It is a fine line to tread and if anything Reitman is only getting better at it.

Up In The Air is a well judged look at the relationships in the life a guy who thinks he needs none. His relationship to his job, his “hobby”, his colleagues, his potential nemesis, his family, his lover, all come into the mix as we follow him as he flies around the US building up his air miles toward a dream goal and doing his day job – firing people for companies who don’t want to do their on dirty work.

This too is well handled. Reitman could have brought the more cynical and satirical edges he did particularly in Thank You For Smoking (and they do occasionally pop up, George one-liner following the revelation of how a boyfriend broke up with another character is the zinger of the year and evoked a massive audience reaction) but in a time when job loss and economic misery are effecting so many Reitman uses real people, mixed with an occasional actor (such as the ever reliable JK Simmons) to make you feel what they are going through. While doing this he also manages to make a likeable character out of the completely self-absorbed Ryan Bingham (Clooney) despite his job description. This alone would be an impressive feat.

This is almost a Frank Capra movie. Except this is a Frank Capra movie with edge. Ryan Bingham is no Mr Deeds or Mr Smith, an instantly sympathetic, loveable character. Bingham is kind of an ass but this is his story and you’ll be routing for him.

Clooney, as said, has rarely been better and Vera Farmiga gives sterling support as his literally fly-by-night lover. Danny McBride, Amy Morton and Melanie Lynskey are all solid in small roles, and Jason Bateman likewise has little to do. The real stand-out in support though is Anna Kendrick. It’s a tricky role that could easily come off whiny and irritating, or calculating and bitchy, etc but Kendrick takes an again not wholly likeable character and invests her with such vulnerability and well-meaning naivety that she wins you over. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a supporting actress nomination headed her way amongst several possible nods for this highly enjoyable and well judged film.

Latest screening: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr Fox may not quite be fantastic but I’d happily say terrific. A fun stop-motion animation the world works here. Some people may have issue in a CG animation world with the stop-motion, which especially due to the fur look compared with smooth plasticine takes a little more getting used to than say Corpse Bride or Coraline, but then you can judge that from the trailer.

The voice-cast is well chosen. George Clooney (especially busy at the moment) has the exact mix of charm, intelligence and brio for Mr Fox; Meryl Streep (is there anything this woman can’t do?) is perfect for the exasperated, but still in love, Mrs Fox; Jason Schwartzman is the best here as the unsure of himself and always taken for granted son of the Foxes; Eric Anderson (Wes’ brother) fits the bill for the perfect-at-everything cousin Kristofferson, that gets on Schwartzman’s nerves; Bill Murray is a nice fit for the sometimes over-eager Badger; and Wally Wolodarsky is superb as the well-meaning Kiley (sic) who just wants to do whatever he can to help.

The story moves along at a cracking swift pace, never letting up. It slows a little about half way through but is just gearing up for the dynamite finale. Crazy world interludes of the characters taking dance breaks in key locations after outfoxing their opponents add a nicely surreal touch.

Anderson very much creates a world here. How much you enjoy the film will basically depend on how much you buy into and enjoy the world. If you embrace it whole-heartedly it has much to offer. It is constantly funny, often exciting, occasionally bizarre and never less than entertaining.

The puppets look great, especially Badger and Mole to my eye and the film is full of small details that will no doubt multiply the more you watch the film. Inconsequential details are often some of the best touches. Badger’s son for instance is seen wearing a skeleton Halloween costume which, of course, blends in brilliantly with his natural colours, complete with mask over one ear. These little touches add so much to the world to really absorb you and take you on this adventure.

It’s over so fast (87 minutes) you’ll want to go again, like the best amusement park rides. A welcome all-round success after the so-so Darjeeling Limited. A great alternative for this year’s animation category, I hope it makes it. Although with film’s like Up and Coraline there’s stiff competition.