The Executioner's Gong

True Grit gets a trailer

2010-09-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

Ah, bless those Coens. Nothing gets me happy that awards season is approaching like the chance to see a new Coen Brothers film. And here we have reigning Best Actor Jeff Bridges in a role that nabbed John Wayne his only Oscar. Add in Matt Damon and Josh Brolin and a reputedly more faithful rendering of Charles Portis' novel and this all looks like true greatness yet again.

Apple.com has the exclusive trailer linked below and in the right-hand trailer bar.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount/truegrit/

Latest screening: Winter's Bone

2010-09-22T08:53:00.001-07:00

Winter’s Bone is bleak. There’s no denying that fact. It deals with a young woman in a tough situation in a brutal environment surrounded by unlikeable characters. It is therefore all the more impressive that this is such an engaging and stunning piece of cinema.

Eschewing the sorts of back-water clichés (both in character development, or lack thereof, and plot-points) any Hollywood film would embrace to throw against the heroine Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) Winter’s Bone manages to wring real, believable characters from even its most loathsome of antagonists. Every moment of the film from quiet trekking across a barren landscape to familial pleasures and concerns to moments of disturbing violence, threat and discovery is treated with a sense of absolute truth

Nothing feels false here and there isn’t a performance that lets it down, even the young kids that play Ree’s younger siblings can’t be faulted and Dale Dickey, probably best known as trailer-trash hooker Patty in sitcom My Name Is Earl, pulls off a brilliant job in probably the film’s hardest role – a loathsome bitch matriarchal character who could have, and would have, descended into caricature in most hands.

John Hawkes is equally brilliant as Ree’s uncle Teardrop. His frustrations and fury show in his eyes and despite his slight frame you sense exactly why people in this world might be afraid of and respectful toward him. He is a powder-keg but he has a heart. It is another fine balancing job that could have been overplayed. He could have been a monster yet despite his initially unsympathetic, and at moments appalling, treatment of his niece you understand him and you feel for him. A moment of tension with the local sheriff (Garret Dillahunt) is riveting.

But while surrounded by excellent performances from experienced character actors the film belongs to Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence was very good in the under-seen (but admittedly only so-so) The Burning Plain but is a revelation here. This is breakout stardom good. Lawrence is virtually never off screen and yet holds you enthralled in her quest and trials that you couldn’t tear your eyes away if you tried. I swear there could have been a seven hour cut of this film and no one would get up to even go to the toilet Lawrence’s performance is so compelling.

It will be interesting to see her as Mystique in the new X-Men movie, playing in a role that makes immersive belief much more difficult, because in Winter’s Bone you never doubt her for a second. If you were told this were a documentary you could believe it. In a just world Lawrence would easily walk away with a slew of Best Actress awards this year but small independent films with no star names have trouble getting attention and so I fear it is a very long shot to the gold. Still noms like that for Melissa Leo in Frozen River mean it’s possible. In fact that film and Wendy & Lucy are good examples of films that if you liked them you are sure to love this. Only, Winter’s Bone is far better a film than either.

Director Debra Granik has delivered on every level. This may well be the best film of the year. It certainly is so far.

***** (5 stars)

Recent screening: The Illusionist

2010-09-22T08:19:00.001-07:00

Enjoyment of Sylvain Chomet’s delightfully whimsical The Illusionist will likely depend a great deal on how well you know and appreciate the films of Jacques Tati.

As a big fan of Tati films such as M Hulot’s Holiday and especially Mon Oncle (which gets an in-joke poster gag in The Illusionist) I adored Chomet’s film which superbly captures the look, mannerisms and style of Tati.

This was all the more pleasing as going in I had no idea what the film was about. I had no idea of the connection to Tati or the fact it was adapted from one of Tati’s own un-realised screenplays. All I knew was it was the new film from the guy the made the wonderful Belleville Rendez-Vous. When the lead character appeared pre-credits sequence I thought “that looks just like Jacques Tati” but assumed it was a sort of animated cameo. Then once I saw the screenplay credit it became clear that I was about to essentially get to see a new Jacques Tati film in nearly 40 years.

And it didn’t disappoint. Starting out in a slightly similar manner to the Pixar short Presto! it then goes into a beautifully observed whimsical world of a magician struggling to find work as the variety circuit dies out in favour of rock ‘n’ roll groups, and his relationship to a young Scottish girl who in her naivety misunderstands an act of kindness for genuine magic and makes ever increasing demands on the poor man’s dwindling fortunes.

It is the kind of beautifully observed mix of humour and pathos that made Tati such a genius of universal appeal. Chomet’s palate and style perfectly compliment the tone of the story and it is impossible not to be swept up in it.

Any Tati fan will delight at this film. It is my feeling even those unfamiliar with Tati’s works (and if you are seek out the Hulot comedies now) will still love this film, but you never know.

**** (4 stars)

Trailers: Hereafter & The Fighter

2010-09-22T07:38:00.000-07:00

Two new trailers in the right-hand trailer bar (and linked below). Clint Eastwood is always a significant presence come awards season and Hereafter looks like it could follow his usual pattern. I hear great things about Cecile De France in this film, Damon is riding high on last year's Invictus (also for Eastwood) nomination and also appears in a supporting role in the Coens' True Grit this year - doubling his chances again as he did last year with a lead turn in The Informant! alongside Invictus' supporting role.

This looks to be an Eastwood film with a rare large scale and effects work. He has done large scale with effects before (most recently in the brilliant Letters From Iwo Jima and it's less successful companion picture Flags Of Our Fathers).

Unfortunately for all Eastwood's greatness as a director he has in the past shown a fatal flaw, the selection of unknown/child actors. Few people could dispute that the young actors in Gran Torino were terrible, especially the boy. Here even just a snippet of the boy in Hereafter gives the distinct impression of a terrible, wooden performance. Unfair to judge completely on a moment in a trailer but the kid could once again be the fly in the ointment here.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1274415385/

Then we have The Fighter. What to make of this? I am well on record as a supporter of the boxing film. I believe boxing is the most cinematic of sports subjects. Raging Bull may be my favourite film but there are numerous great films that revolve around boxers and boxing, such as: Rocky and its subsequent sequels, Cinderella Man (ignoring Zellweger), The Hurricane, Girlfight, Ali, Million Dollar Baby and Somebody Up There Likes Me.

The Fighter looks good. Generally i don't like Mark Wahlberg but he just got in my good books by being funnier than Will Ferrell in The Other Guys and this looks like one of those roles he can pull off. Add in the always good Amy Adams (although i admit to not having seen the apparently wretched Leap Year) and a typically immersive supporting turn from Christian Bale (is this finally the year he'll get a long overdue nomination?) and i'm there.

Of course it is David O Russell who made the irritatingly smug I Heart Huckabees and comes off as a total ass! But then he also did the great Three Kings, so i'll give him a pass.

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2330986777/

Honorary Oscars for Coppola, Godard, Wallach

2010-08-26T05:19:00.000-07:00

The Academy announced the recipients of this year's honorary Governor's Awards today and they include three legends.

Director Francis Ford Coppola, best known for his seminal Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now (i also always loved The Conversation) will be honoured.

The great Eli Wallach will be recognised. The actor is now in his 7th decade of making movies and had roles in both The Ghost Writer and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps this year. He is probably best remembered as the hapless Tuco in The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (left) and as the villainous bandit in The Magnificent Seven.

French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, director of such new wave classics as A Bout De Souffle and Masculin Feminin, will also receive the award.

Black Swan trailer

2010-08-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, so after 4 months of astonishing slackness i'm going to try and boot this thing up again (took me three goes to get my password correct!) since awards season is getting going with all the Venice, Toronto, London etc Film Festival line-up announcements coming thick and fast.

One of the most anticipated titles coming up (if you're me) is Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and the trailer (out today) makes it look as great as i'd have hoped. With a cast including the disturbingly beautiful Natalie Portman, the ridiculous cute Mila Kunis, 80s elfin crush Winona Ryder and some French bloke called Vincent Cassel (coming off the awesome Mesrine films) this looks to be a winner. And Barbara Hershey is in it. First Debra Winger in Rachel Getting Married 2 years ago and now Babs. All we need is Kelly McGillis and the where-are-they-now? of 80s leading ladies will be complete.

I've also updated the trailer bar on the right with the latest trailers for a few other upcoming films, including the brilliant looking (and well buzzed) Get Low, James L Brooks' latest How Do You Know, Paul Haggis' remake of Pour Elle titled The Next Three Days, and another buzz title Love And Other Drugs.

For Black Swan check this out:

http://uk.eonline.com/uberblog/b195828_natalie_portman_ballet_showgirls_black.html?utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=imdb_uk_topstories

Hilarious and sad and true! Brilliant breakdown of a Nicholas Sparks' movie

2010-04-07T09:41:00.000-07:00

Click on the above image to see it bigger (and more readable)!

This piece from Cracked.com is pure gold. Personally i actually kind of liked The Notebook but that's more to do with a love of Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling than anything else and was the first 'Sparks' movie i'd seen.

The centre piece image from the article (above) is spot on (especially the poster designer bit which cracked me up) but it's worth reading the whole piece as Sparks sounds like a colossal douche!

http://www.cracked.com/funny-4725-nicholas-sparks/

Contenders? A look ahead to the 2010 awards slate possibilities

2010-03-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

With the date for next year’s Oscars announced Friday as February 27th, 2011 (back in its standard time frame after this year’s push back to avoid Winter Olympics competition) and the BAFTAs now announced as February 13th, 2011 it clearly has to be time to look ahead to some of the potential contenders for the 2010 Awards.

Of course in a perfect world it would be a three horse race between The Expendables, Machete and Predators, but I can’t help thinking that even if the Academy extended the Best Picture nominees from 10 to 100 none of these would be likely to get a look in. Call me crazy!

So just a scant 11 months away from the big night what is currently on my horizon as seeming like potential Oscar bait?

True Grit – Any of the following would be enough to get this film consideration: The Coen Brothers writing and directing; Roger Deakins on as DP for a western; Oscar-winner Jeff Bridges taking on the role of Rooster Cogburn that won John Wayne his only acting Oscar; Josh Brolin and Matt Damon in the supporting cast. The combination of all these things surely makes this a sure fire front-line contender.

Hereafter – Okay so I say this about the new Clint Eastwood movie every year and some years it proves more true than others, but frankly Eastwood could send a CCTV tape into the Academy and drum up at least a couple of nominations so a reteam with Matt Damon (nominated this year in Eastwood’s Invictus) seems a good bet.

Get Low – The reputation preceding this film regarding veteran actor Robert Duvall’s performance alone puts this in the “pay attention” stakes. Add Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray and the Academy will be considering this.

The Fighter – (Pictured above). I’m not a fan of David O Russell but a true-story, boxing themed picture starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Melissa Leo screams Oscar potential. Three of those four actors have had Oscar nomintions in the past 3 years, and the insane thing is Bale is the one who hasn’t. On set pictures suggest he’s pulled a Machinist-style body transformation for this one. Could Bale finally be set for the Oscar recognition he deserves? I’m betting yes.

Love And Other Drugs – Another one with incredible early word. The IMDb tries to tell you this is a rom com, which doesn’t sound very Oscars, but this has Ed Zwick (Glory, Last Samurai) directing Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, with Hathaway already being lauded for her portrayal of a woman with early-onset Parkinsons disease. Hathaway seems much loved in Hollywood and after her stunning role in Rachel Getting Married at this early stage she seems a good bet for one of the 5 best actress nominees. And it had nudity which is one of those hallmarks of “serious actress” roles – see Hathaway’s own turn in Brokeback Mountain (with Gyllenhaal) or Halle Berry’s Oscar-winning turn in Monster’s Ball.

127 Hours – Danny Boyle directing the underrated James Franco (overdue some Oscar recognition – Milk anyone?) in the true story of a mountain climber trapped under a rock for 5 days who eventually cuts his own arm/leg (I forget which, I saw Danny Boyle talking about it at the end of last year) off in order to escape/survive. Harrowing, grueling, all about the acting. Hello Mr Oscar, sign me up!

The Greatest – There’s no shortage of opportunities for this year’s Best Actress nominee Carey Mulligan (who should have won) to get another nomination next year. One possibility is for supporting actress (always a sure fire-win for a young actress with a Best Actress loss under her belt) in The Greatest. This romantic drama weepy seems a bit like Moonlight Mile from about 8 years back based on the trailer below. Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon (also in Moonlight Mile) are parents whose son (Aaron Johnson) is kicked in a car accident and find themselves having to deal through their grief with the pregnant girlfriend of their son (who they don’t really know and Sarandon dislikes). That would be Mulligan sporting a flawless American accent. This is early in the year though in the US so may only have Bafta potential.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/videonews.php?id=64355

Never Let Me Go – The other (and stronger) Mulligan shot also would likely see her in a push for supporting actress (seriously, add Wall Street 2 into the mix – who knows how big her role as Gordon Gekko’s daughter is – and Mulligan could have supporting actress sown up one way or the other already). Never Let Me Go sees Mark Romanek finally back behind the camera for the first time since the brilliant (and vastly underrated) One Hour Photo in 2002. Based on the novel by Kasuo Ishiguro (Remains Of The Day) and starring Keira Knightley, Mulligan and the ever excellent Andrew Garfield this should get attention unless it proves to be a real clunker!

Blue Valentine – A relationship drama starring two of the best young actors around (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams – both past Oscar nominees) that was one of the hits of Sundance? Yup, Oscars beckon.

The Way Back – Peter Weir is a superb director and he’s making his way back here after 7 years away (since Master & Commander) with a 1940s-set true story about soldiers trying to escape from Siberia (I think). Colin Farrell and Ed Harris star.

The Descendants – Alexander Payne steps back behind the camera for the first time since 2004’s Sideways and has George Clooney in the lead as a widower searching, with his two daughters, for his late wife’s lover. This one should at least garner attention.

The American – Clooney again as Anton Corbijn follows up the excellent Control with the story of an assassin. So Clooney in lighter Payne-directed mode (Up In The Air Clooney) or in more serious mode (Michael Clayton Clooney)? Perhaps both! I bet he’s in the actor race somewhere though.

How Do You Know? – equally bound to get viewed at the very least is this rom com for the simple reason it’s the new James L Brooks. Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson star and rumour has it Brooks’ lucky charm Jack Nicholson is along for the ride.

Another Year – Lesley Manville stars in the new Mike Leigh, whose films are always cause for celebration and awards attention. Plus Imelda Staunton and Jim Broadbent feature. Typically though no clues as to the plot or even tone.

Betty Anne Waters – look out Oscar voters Hilary Swank is back with another true story portrayal. Oscar experts Fox Searchlight are distributing this story of a high-school drop-out single-mother (I may have just worn out my hyphen key!) who puts herself through law school to defend her brother, wrongfully accused of murder. Sam Rockwell (as the brother) may finally get the Oscar recognition he deserves (and deserved this past year for Moon).

The King’s Speech – wait a minute this year’s Oscar-loser Colin Firth following up his best ever performance (in A Single Man) by playing King George VI. Support from Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Michael Gambon and Sir Derek Jacobi. Hello consecutive nominations for Mr Firth!

Black Swan – okay so it has a supernatural bent but Darren Aronofsky knows how to deliver a damn fine film and he has a cast including Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Winona Ruder and Barbara Hershey to help him. No shoe in but can’t be ruled out either.

Inception – Chris Nolan steps away from the bat for a thriller that looks to be a mind-bender but that little is known about. Of course what is known is that Nolan has assembled a phenomenal cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy); and that the man has never made a bad film. Stepping away from Batman may make the academy take him a little more seriously for once (and they already took notice with nominations for both Bat-films, even if not the big ones).

The Rum Diary – No idea what to make of this long gestating film but you can never ignore Johnny Depp and the return of Withnail & I’s Bruce Robinson to the director’s chair after nearly 20 years makes it a must see at least.

The Social Network – David Fincher telling the story of Facebook’s creation? Could be brilliant, could me a major WTF? It seems an odd, and therefore intriguing, match of director and subject. I love (LOVE) Fincher’s Zodiac so hoping this true story proves as intriguing (because frankly the subject matter doesn’t do anything for me).

Tree Of Life – Terrence Malick directs Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. Unless it’s a train wreck (and yes, I did see The New World so I know how possible that is!) this is surely an Oscar voters must-see at least. Rumour has it it may first see the light of day in Cannes so that may tell us more if it happens (of course Malick will have to stop tinkering for that!).

There are of course numerous others. We could bring up Toy Story 3 which, as a Pixar film, has already locked a slot in the Best Animated Feature category.

Then there’s films from industry stalwarts Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island) and Ridley Scott (Robin Hood), but Shutter Island feels too early and not good enough. It’s a better film than The Departed but Scorsese has his Oscar now and Shutter isn’t good enough to stay in voters minds for 10 months IMHO. Robin Hood is another “we’ll see come Cannes” one but the uninspired trailering makes it look more Kingdom Of Heaven than Gladiator, and both the Ridley/Russell/period epic and Robin Hood story in general feel very “been there, seen that” so I don’t expect big things or awards attention for this unless if really surprises and knocks it out of the park. Time will tell.

Oh, my! Predators looking pretty cool!

2010-03-15T08:01:00.001-07:00

There are three big, stupid, old-school action movies this year and i'm excited for all three, but Predators didn't make my top 10 most anticipated films of the year, whereas Machete (co-directed by Predators' producer and co-writer Robert Rodriguez) and The Expendables did. Why? Casts, plain and simple.

The Expendables has the greatest action cast ever assembled full stop (Stallone, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Schwarzenegger, Mickey Rourke, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Terry Crews, etc) while Machete places kick-ass supporting actor Danny Trejo front and center and surrounds him with about the most eclectic cast of all time (Robert DeNiro, Steven Seagal, Jessica Alba and Lindsey Lohan all in one movie! That's just plain bizarre!)

But now Rodriguez has posted some behind-the-scenes footage from Predators on the official website (and a trailer is due later this week) which gives a better concept of what the intention is on this sequel/reboot of the franchise which saw one of the best action films of the 80s, followed by a pretty decent and underrated sequel before being butchered in the past 5 years by the AvP films.

Frankly if there a man for the job of overseeing a reboot of this material Rodriguez with this genre, action, kick-ass, entertainment approach (see From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty, Desperado, Planet Terror) is the perfect man.

This footage gives me hope and boosts Predators up my must-sees for 2010:

http://www.predators-movie.com/

Bullock: Oscars & Razzies - how make a speech

2010-03-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

I haven’t seen The Blind Side so I can’t comment on Sandra Bullock’s worthiness to win the Oscar Sunday night, but everything about her conduct over the awards weekend justifies it in my book.

Firstly there was the Oscar speech. Easily the best of the night and arguably the best Best Actress acceptance in modern history. It seemed genuine. It had emotion but neither the histrionics of a Halle Berry or a Gwyneth Paltrow nor the forced “look at me emote” of Nicole Kidman. It was funny, from the self deprecating opening of “did I really earn this, or did I just wear y’all down?” to the references. Even when the emotions took over with tributes to her mother she still threw in several funnies and ended on that note too. Often winners evoke the brilliance of their fellow nominees and it is always a hideous, false gush, but not from Bullock, again she seemed genuine and was funny (and thankfully unlike Kate Winslet from last year did remember all of them – she forget Angelina!)

I also like the idea of films like Speed and Demolition Man playing on TV with an “Academy Award winner Sandra Bullock” slogan!

The win also made it a good showing for stars of the 1993 remake of The Vanishing, with both Bullock and Jeff Bridges winning. I bet Kiefer Sutherland and Nancy Travis wish they’d done supporting performances this year.

But ultimately the main reason you have to love her and give her the award is her appearance at and acceptance speech for Worst Actress (for All About Steve) at the Razzie Awards Saturday night – complete with DVD copies of All About Steve for all the members of the audience. She was gracious and hilarious – funnier than she’s been on film in years – and frankly utterly loveable.

This simply demands to be watched:

http://www.darkhorizons.com/news/16553/golden-idol-spirit-awards-the-razzies

She’s never been in a position to win an Oscar prior to The Blind Side and she may never be again and so this seems fine. I would have liked Carey Mulligan to win, but I have no doubt given her extraordinary talent that she’ll have many, many more opportunities.

This was a Bullock version of Julia Roberts’ Erin Brockovich win.

Don’t know what the film is like but after her Razzies and Oscars performances I’m glad I’ll be able to revisit Speed 2: Cruise Control and Love Potion #9 with the knowledge I’m watching Oscar-quality acting (sort of!)

New Trailers: Two of the best for 2010?

2010-03-09T03:54:00.000-08:00

New trailers for Iron Man 2 and Tron Legacy here. Finally get to see a bit more about what the new Tron film is about, so next up from Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges is...

http://www.program-glitch-esc.net/

Meanwhile having not survived Iron Man Bridges won't feature in Iron Man 2 but this trailer suggests it'll do just fine without him:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount/ironman/

Now all we need is a True Grit trailer (which, as it has only just started shooting is likely to be a good 6 months plus away) to complete the Bridges related 2010 joy.

And if you haven't seen his Oscar-winning turn in Crazy Heart yet stop reading this now and go out and see it immediately.

The Dude Abides!

The BAFTAs: An assessment

2010-02-22T04:29:00.001-08:00

It proved a good night at the Baftas last night as pretty much all the right films and performances won. Even the annual jingoism award, which inevitably crops up in an acting category, seemed justified: Colin Firth’s superb, career-best performance in A Single Man (and I won £50 on that so it pleased me!). Plus Firth gave the best speech of the night in his fantastically laconic tone. Note here that Carey Mulligan’s win doesn’t count as jingoism since hers was far and away the best performance in the category.

Mulligan’s win was of course a highlight. Expected but thoroughly deserved and it feels like a justification to those of us who have been banging on about how good she is and how big she was destined to be for the past 3-4 years. She also wins best dressed. She looked fantastic.

Equally great was Moon’s win at the top of the night for Duncan Jones as best first-time director. Love the film and so glad it didn’t go to Sam Taylor Wood’s uninspired Nowhere Boy.

Of course The Hurt Locker’s 6 wins, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, was the triumph of the night. It was my vote for Best Film and I’m glad to see it beat out Avatar – though I think this was pretty expected at the Baftas despite what American publications like Variety say about “surprises”. I was particularly pleased here to see Mark Boal take screenplay over Quentin Tarantino (which also happened at the WGA Awards Saturday night). This is great because as good as QT’s dialogue is that script just lay there on the page. Tarantino made a hugely enjoyable, well crafted film but I had despised it in script form when I had read it a year earlier and it really showed me that Tarantino’s true talent lies in his direction, the way he brings together all the great elements behind and in front of the camera, not his writing. Sure he writes great dialogue but Hurt Locker deserved this win and I thought it was the one they might not get.

I was disappointed that Up’s fairly twee score got Best Music. Coraline’s (unnominated) score was far superior, and of the nominees Crazy Heart deserved the win. But then Crazy Heart, much as I loved it, never felt to me like a film that was going to gel with Bafta voters (hence, my placing the bet on Firth to beat bookie favourite Jeff Bridges).

I also would have liked to see Coraline win Best Animated Film. I don’t want to come off like an Up hater. I’m not, I loved it. But there was something so fresh and brilliant about Coraline that I would have liked to see it buck the Pixar-win-trend.

As disappointed as I was by the inevitable win of Kristen Stewart for the Orange Rising Star Award (or Jello BAFTA as I call that hideous statue) over Mulligan we all knew thanks to Twilight and it being the public-vote award that this would happen. What provided the silver lining though was that Stewart seemed genuinely embarrassed to have won, clearly knowing it was only due to the obsessive Twilight fans and not really because of how people felt about her work. And let’s be fair, Stewart really impressed in Sean Penn’s Into The Wild and was great in last year’s Adventureland; and she also seems to go out of her way to make a lot of small budget indies inbetween Twilight sequels like this week’s domestic opener The Yellow Handkerchief, Sundance films Welcome To The Rileys and The Runaways. In fact Stewart gave the distinct impression in her exception speech that she wasn’t terribly enamoured of Twilight fans – not that I’m sure they’d notice. Plus Mulligan was always going to win Best Actress so it all evened out.

The “lack of imagination” award (or Costume Design as it’s generally known) predictably went to uninspired costume drama The Young Victoria. Why imaginative works of genius like The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus consistently get overlooked here is beyond me but on the plus side it did lead to winner Sandy Powell dedicating here award to the woman who had cut her costumes for years and died after Young Victoria before accidently calling her “replaceable” – brilliant!

James Corden scored good laughs as a presenter (Nick Frost died on his arse with his attempts at humour) but one of the best laughs of the night was a cut to Avatar producer Jon Landau after he was named-checked in the acceptance speech for Production Design, where he was clearly about to doze off.

The reel of Vanessa Redgrave’s acting history reminded us how great an actress she is and how much she deserved the Fellowship; and then her off-the-wall rambling bonkers speech (who knew Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It said “Thank you Bafta”?!) reminded us how true her reputation for being bat-shit crazy is. She’s basically our Shirley Maclaine!

Amongst a generally good evening though my biggest disappointment was finding out that Lord Attenborough had chosen as his successor as president of the academy Prince William. Ugh! What a step backwards. I’ve rarely agreed with any Dickie sentiment and this seems typical Dickie but I think is a mistake. It should have been kept in industry. Perhaps Lord Puttnam for instance.

Picture of the year?! Genius on the Goya red carpet

2010-02-17T07:06:00.000-08:00

I for one was thrilled to see the brilliant prison riot drama Cell 211 (Celda 211) triumph at the Goya Awards at the weekend with 8 awards including Best Film.

However the highlight of the event has to be the above red carpet moment from presenters Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. This photo is surely a picture captioners dream. Everything works for comedy - Penelope's stance, her expression, her head tilt; Bardem's stance, his smile, the fact you can't see his hands; the publicists apparent attempt to not notice anything; the crowd's (especially the bald gent) clear focus on Penelope's posterior. It may be my favourite red carpet photo ever. I applaud the photographer that took it. You sir (or madam) deserve your own award!

Steven Soderbergh - how many films can this guy make in a year?

2010-02-09T04:42:00.000-08:00

News stories abound today of Steven Soderbergh’s new film casting up, with Matt Damon and Jude Law on board and Marion Cotillard and Kate Winslet in negotiations.

So they must be in Knockout, right? No, wait that’s already filming. Then Cleo that 3D musical with Catherine Zeta Jones must be back in the offing, no? No! Could they be joining Mr CZJ (Michael Douglas) is the much touted Liberace film? They’re not?

No this film, apparently set to shoot in the autumn after he’s finished up on Knockout, is called Contagion.

Is it me or is Soderbergh on a one-man mission to contradict all the directors who go on about how hard work making a film is and how it takes up “two-three years of your life”. You hear that time and again.

Soderbergh has made 14 films in the past decade. 14! Yes, okay, that includes Eros which was only a segment of a 3-part anthology film and both parts of Che but still…

He had 2 films out in 2000 (Erin Brockovich & Traffic), 2002 (Solaris & Full Frontal), 2008 (both Che films), 2009 (The Girlfriend Experience & The Informant!) and has hardly been slacking in the years between.

Also you look at some of the titles and wonder is he deliberately trying to tell other directors and the industry how easy it is. His constant “Traffic” of films is “Out Of Sight”. He’s upfront about how to get a film made fast and effectively, even acting as his own DP. You could say he makes his views “Full Frontal”. He is an “Informant!” for the red camera and making films quickly and cheaply, living in a “Bubble”.

He is constantly knocking another one out (see his latest film title) and they come thick and fast like a “Contagion”.

I think he is actively goading the film industry. With his titles he’s going “look at me and get your act together”. I greatly look forward to his future films “Better Than You” and his “Fast & Furious” remake!

Top 12 Oscar "what the...?!" moments of the last decade

2010-02-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

The Oscars come in for a lot of criticism. Rightly, in my opinion!

There are always the awards that make you go “what the f*#+?” – the ones that someone wins because they were owed from a recent losing year; or they just should have won by now; or they are the only American in the category; or they are an industry favourite; or the favourite was too “challenging” for many voters; etc.

But some of those that people mention a lot aren’t so bad are they? A lot of people think Star Wars should have won in 1977, but isn’t that like thinking Avatar ought to win this year? Years of nostalgic rose-tinted watching of Star Wars makes people wonder why a film with revolutionary special effects but a sub-par paint-by-numbers script and a lot of lousy acting (not everyone, but a lot of them) didn’t win over the smartly scripted, superbly acted, incredibly inventive Annie Hall. Fact is, Annie Hall deserved its win.

I have to accept this about wins I don’t like. I often disagree (in fact almost always) with the foreign language winner. To me Amelie was far better then No Man’s Land and Pan’s Labyrinth was one of the best film’s of its year, not just foreign language so its loss was astounding to me. But I accept that No Man’s Land is a very good film and The Live Of Others is excellent. They did deserve to win, I just wish they hadn’t come up against something else that deserved to as well.

The last couple of years have brought up prime examples of where I can’t really fault a win over my preference even though personally I disagree.

I love the Coen Brothers and I love No Country For Old Men but for me the raw power and majesty of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood was far superior. Had either film come out in either of the very bland year’s since they’d have walked it easily. Shame they had to go head to head. Last year I loved Mickey Rourke’s performance in The Wrestler and think he deserved to win the Best Actor Oscar that for a while he seemed on course for. Sean Penn won. But I can’t fault that. Penn was superb in Milk. The film was overrated but Penn was stunning. He did deserve to win. So did Rourke but only one man can so…

And then there are those I don’t think deserved to win (the third Lord Of The Rings, The Departed, Rocky, Russell Crowe in Gladiator over Tom Hanks in Cast Away – the man made 2 hours of talking to a volleyball compelling viewing, what more could we possibly ask him to do?!?!?!) but which I can see, and accept, why :– the first one should have won so Jackson was owed; Scorsese was so owed it was ridiculous; it was American feel good (and to be fair decent) movie in a year when the 3 (yes, 3!) far superior nominees had a very negative view of things in American society (Taxi Driver, All The President’s Men, Network); Crowe was owed from The Insider the previous year.

However there are some winners that just make me go “WHAT!!!!!” (like Ordinary People beating Raging Bull – which is just plain nuts!) and so below is my top 12 bad Oscar choices of the past decade (in no order other than chronogical) with my POV:

1. 2000 Best Actress – Julia Roberts beats Ellen Burstyn – Roberts was popular, sure, and she was never better than in Erin Brockovich. Okay. But it was hardly a testing role. Essentially a John Grisham character with a push-up bra Erin Brockovich is the kind of Hollywood version of an everyman character that Hollywood loves to slap itself on the back for but simply doesn’t exist.

Then we have Ellen Burstyn’s phenomenal, raw, disturbingly real portrayal of obsession and addiction in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem For A Dream. There simply is no way Burstyn shouldn’t have won for this and we all know that had she not previous won (in the 70s for Alice Doesn’t Love Here Anymore) she’d have walked this one. Burstyn was plain robbed here.

2. 2001 Best Picture/Director/Adapted Screenplay – A Beautiful Mind beats Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring – Many people viewed Ron Howard as owed, especially after the slight in 1995 when he wasn’t even nominated for the excellent Apollo 13 (which did get a Best Picture nom). And he pretty much carried the solid, but hardly astonishing A Beautiful Mind and its assorted departments to Oscar glory. There were certainly awards it deserved bit these three are definitely nos when you put it up against the first of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy – and let’s not ignore the fact that this gave the writer of Batman & Robin and Lost In Space an Academy Award!

Fellowship Of The Ring was an incredible achievement. Jackson and his cohorts had taken a very very dull book (I’m sorry but the first one really is, nothing happens) about walking and fashioned a compelling, exciting and yet bizarrely pretty faithful movie. A faultless cast (he even got a solid turn out of Orlando Bloom) FOTR had all the magic and whimsy, thrills and drama you could want. It was a true epic that instantly became as impressive a feat of filmmaking as anything released in the preceding decade or more. But it was fantasy – not a popular Oscar genre – so it got all the technicals the genre films are always fobbed off with while some said, well, let’s see the trilogy and see if they’re all this good. The second one was. It didn’t win either (see #5) but that didn’t matter because by now everyone knew it was all being saved up to give Jackson the keys to the kingdom with part 3. And the Oscars trapped themselves in a corner. When Jackson delivered part 3 and it turned out to be a bloated, seemingly never ending, ego-trip that offered nothing new to the trilogy and was the first to fail to match the book, offering zero tension or drama where its predecessors had excelled, the Oscars had no choice, they had to give it the win. People expected it, after all that was why they hadn’t given it to either of the first two.

Fellowship deserved it. It was the best film of the trilogy; the best film of 2001; and it would have saved them face in 2003. Whoops!

3. 2001 Best Supporting Actor – Jim Broadbent over Ben Kingsley – Okay so I love Jim Broadbent, he’s always good and he was typically solid in Iris. It was also the same year that saw him play a very different role in Moulin Rouge! (and close behind his excellent turn in Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy) and it really seems his win here was a combination win for both roles unofficially.

On the other hand we have Sir Ben Kingsley, who frankly is a pretentious ass! But that doesn’t remove the fact that his Don Logan in Sexy Beast was one of the most memorable and exhilarating characters to appear on the big screen in the entire decade. Kingsley was phenomenal in Sexy Beast. If I had to pick the 10 best performances of the 2000s he’d be in the top few and, I’m sorry, but Broadbent wouldn’t feature. This one should have gone to Sir Ben even if he is a prick!

4. 2001 Original Screenplay – Gosford Park – I love Altman and Gosford Park rode to a good haul of Oscar nominations off the back of how much Altman was owed an Oscar. Of course he didn’t win and Gosford Park consolation prize was a screenplay win. Everyone knew it would win this category and it did. But did it deserve to? Gosford Park was a solid script no doubt but this category featured Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach’s masterpiece The Royal Tenenbaums, the Nolan brothers twisty brilliance Memento and Guillaume Laurent and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s incredibly original whimsical fancy Amelie. Did Gosford Park deserve to beat any let alone all of these?

Some controversy that year regarding Memento being in the Original Screenplay category after the film credited it as being adapted from a short story written by Chris Nolan’s brother Jonathan is probably the reason Memento didn’t win. It should have been Memento’s to lose, but if it did Gosford Park was not the one that should have stepped in.

5. 2002 Beat Picture – Chicago beats The Pianist – Chicago is a fun musical with a sensational performance by Catherine Zeta Jones and great male leads in Richard Gere and an undervalued John C Reilly but a Best Picture winner? Essentially feeling like Rob Marshall took a camera into a theatre and just flatly and with little sense of dynamism filmed what was going on on stage (the DGA should be ashamed they gave him a Best Director award for this) is starred a weak-voiced and out-of-her-depth Renee Zellweger as the least sexy Roxie Hart in history. CZJ, Gere, Reilly and a dynamite Queen Latifah couldn’t make up for the director’s and Zellweger’s short-comings. And let’s not forget whatever won this year had to be enough to justify beating the second of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Chicago wasn’t even close.

But then there was The Pianist. It won Best Picture and Director at the Baftas causing a shock and a stir that many credit with its Best Actor and Director wins at the Oscars. It saw Polanski get a deserved (and controversy) Best Director Oscar but they just didn’t have the guts to give the film the win. Shame on them! The Pianist was grueling but stunning cinema. Not just a return to form for Polanski after years of so-so thrillers but a powerful, personal, devastating look at a period that created the artist looking back on it. All the pain in the movie could be palpably felt and every moment rang disturbingly true. The Pianist is Polanski’s masterpiece, more so even than Chinatown. Chicago is forgettable fluff. This win was a travesty.

6. 2002 Best Actress – Nicole Kidman and a plastic nose beat Julianne Moore – One of my deepest disappointments with this year’s Oscar nominations was that the brilliant, memorable supporting turn from the frequently overlooked Julianne Moore in A Single Man was ignored. But the fact remains Moore should have won years ago for her heartbreaking portrayal of the stoic housewife trying to keep everything in her outwardly-seeming-perfect life together as her world changes and collapses. Moore’s turn in Todd Haynes’ beautiful and tragic Far From Heaven is glorious.

What makes her loss worse was she lost to a plastic nose. Nicole Kidman’s bland delivery of Virginia Woolf in The Hours was not even the best female performance in The Hours. Both Meryl Streep and Moore herself were far more compelling and believable but Kidman had the showier role and the “transformative” plastic nose. If anyone was in doubt Kidman’s utterly false acceptance speech proved how overrated she is as an actress. I’ve despised Kidman ever since.

7. 2003 Best Actor – Sean Penn beats Bill Murray – Ah, the old “he’s owed and he’s overacting” thing the Oscars do so well. Like Al Pacino in Scent Of A Woman, Sean Penn’s hugely overacted shouty role in Mystic River was an attention grabber but hardly a great performance. Penn has given thoroughly deserving performances in his career (Dead Man Walking and Milk come most immediately to mind) just as Pacino (Godfather, Serpico) had prior to Scent Of A Woman, but Mystic River wasn’t one of them. The irony is in a typical compelling Clint Eastwood movie he was the weakest of the three leads. Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon’s more subtle, nuanced roles as the other two corners of the disparate friend triangle at the centre of the movie were utterly compelling and felt totally real. As did Laura Linney and Marsha Gay Harden’s supporting female leads. But then right in the middle of it was the over-the-top “look at me I’m ACTING!!!” of Penn. Why Oscar voters frequently seem to buy Acting (with the capital A) over a more subtle and realistic inhabiting of a character (like Bacon’s here) is beyond me. It’s like they’ve never seen films before. It’s like asking a punter down the multiplex who was the best actor – they’ll only remember the big shouty roles too. But as industry insiders – many of whom are actors! – shouldn’t they see the difference?

Well apparently they don’t and Penn’s win here over the desperately sad, painfully real, incredibly subdued, warmly funny and poignant Bill Murray in a career best (career redefining) Lost In Translation is appalling. Murray was never so good. Penn was rarely less deserving. This too is a criminal decision.

8. 2003 Best Supporting Actress – Renee Zellweger over Patricia Clarkson – Patricia Clarkson is like the female Stanley Tucci. She is always brilliant. She steals scenes and entire films over and over again. Yet she remains largely ignored by the academy – probably largely because she makes a lot of independent films which don’t have a studio behind them doing multi-million dollar Oscar campaigns.

In Piece Of April she gives a brutal, real portrayal of a woman fighting, and losing, a battle with cancer. She is mean, funny, irascible, frustrated and altogether human. It’s a slight film but there is nothing slight about Clarkson’s performance. Still (amazingly) her only nomination this should have been Clarkson’s to lose.

However she came up against the utterly miscast and totally ridiculous Renee Zellweger creation Ruby in Cold Mountain. Cold Mountain had Harvey Weinstein and the might of Miramax behind it. Plus Zellweger had lost Best Actress twice is the previous 2 years (for Bridget Jones’s Diary and Chicago). Cold Mountain has the smack of an “owed” Oscar all over it. But why was Zellweger owed? She didn’t deserve to win for Bridget Jones and she didn’t even deserve to be nominated for Chicago, she was the film’s weakest link (see #5 above). This could all be explained if she were extraordinary in Cold Mountain but she isn’t, she’s the most unconvincing farm-hand (or whatever she is, I forget exactly) in modern film.

Her win here is bizarre and inexplicable while Clarkson’s loss is equally so.

9. 2005 Best Picture – Crash wins – I don’t hate Crash but it is an incredibly obvious exercise in “worthy” filmmaking, drafting in an all-star ensemble to grab attention. There’s nothing subtle about Crash and for all it has “to say” on the surface when you look underneath that surface there’s really nothing all that deep to what is has to say. Nothing original. Nothing particularly interesting or surprising. It’s a solidly made, pretty entertaining film.

But then there’s Brokeback Mountain and Good Night, And Good Luck. Both films with incredible depth that didn’t try too hard to impress but simply did by their measured approaches. Films that equally had phenomenal ensemble casts but made up of performances that blended into the whole smoothly without drawing “ooh, look it’s…” comments. Both had deep routed and important messages, ones that are sadly seldom addressed, and certainly not so well. Both were everything Crash was not.

Most people think Brokeback Mountain should have won. Personally I think Good Night, And Good Luck is the best of the three (and indeed one of the best film’s of the decade). But either way Crash should not have won.

10. 2006 Original Screenplay – Little Miss Sunshine beats Pan’s Labyrinth – I enjoyed Little Miss Sunshine. It was fun, slight, but fun. It had a faultless ensemble cast, and no doubt they made the script seem better. The script however strung a few good and a few running gags together before petering out with a “that’s what they came up with” ending.

Pan’s Labyrinth had arguably the most original screenplay of the decade. Now I know “original” screenplay refers to not based on previous material as opposed to original in the ‘unlike anything you’ve read before’ sense but Pan’s Labyrinth thought out every strand, balanced the fantasy and real worlds on a knife-edge with expert skill. It was capable of bringing out emotions and opinions in one viewer that were entirely different from another while allowing both to be right. Some people find the ending heart-rending and tragic, others beautiful and heart-lifting. The skill of the screenplay of Pan’s Labyrinth is really something special. Perhaps rivaled only by the Coen Brothers and There Will Be Blood during the decade there is simply no way Pan’s Labyrinth should have lost out to the entertaining but hardly outstanding whimsy of Little Miss Sunshine.

Unfortunately Oscar has a habit of giving the “little US indie hit made good” the Original Screenplay award as a consolation prize. It’s a habit they need to break, never so clearly proven as here.

11. 2007 Best Visual Effects – The Golden Compass beats Transformers – say what you will about Michael Bay’s bombastic Transformers but ILM’s groundbreaking VFX were astounding. It all got a bit confused in the second film (not nominated this year) but the robot-human interaction in the first film was utterly seemless, the transformations believable. There hadn’t been as convincing an effects movie since LOTR and perhaps even since Jurassic Park, but rumours abound that general bad feeling towards ego-maniac Michael Bay kept Transformers from scoring any wins, even in these technical awards which would have given the hard work of behind the scenes maestros (not Bay) the little gold man.

And so instead they awarded The Golden Compass! Yes, the same Golden Compass with the cartoonish polar bears and Narnia-standard FX. It was one thing not to award a Bay film an Oscar but to give it to such a sub-standard effort as Golden Compass must have been a huge slap in the face. Perhaps that’s why. It probably is. But it’s childish and the fact remains that Transformers not winning this category is perverse.

12. 2008 Best Foreign Language – Departures beats Waltz With Bashir – As I said at the start the foreign language pick often galls me but never more so than last year. Since the Academy insist on foreign language films being seen on a big screen in order to vote in the early stages it tends to lead to older, retired voters who lean toward “Sunday afternoon TV movies your Mum would like” over edgier, darker, tougher fare, dominating this category and leads to the exclusion of films like City Of God and last year’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days from even the nominations. Very original foreign language films (such as Amelie and Pan’s Labyrinth) have a tendency to lose out to more straight-forward dramas that the older voters are more comfortable with.

Last year was such a case. Departures from Japan is a lovely film. There’s nothing very special about it but it does warm your heart and makes for a nice viewing experience for 2 hours. You can sit back and, apart from reading the subtitles, do no work – just letting it wash over you.

Waltz With Bashir is not that. It is an animated documentary-style account of brutal historic events told with a worrying impartiality (worrying to Hollywood and the US which tend to be anything but impartial), while dealing with post-traumatic stress induced hallucinations and nightmares. It is compelling filmmaking and quite simply not just the best foreign language film of 2008 but the best film (full stop) of 2008.

So that’s it. Sure there are other things I disagree with (Alan Arkin winning supporting actor instead of Jackie Earle Haley in 2006; The Fog Of War besting Capturing The Friedmans for Best Documentary Feature for 2003) but these are the 12 I really wish I could go back and correct.

Is this 10 Best Picture nominations such a good idea?

2010-02-03T07:47:00.000-08:00

These 10 Best Picture nominations are all well and good but don’t they kind of de-value getting one?

Look at this year’s 10. Can anyone honestly say half (arguably more) of these films will survive in people’s memories beyond this year? I really enjoyed An Education, but Best Picture? A Serious Man feels like it’s there because it’s the Coen brothers rather than really deserving the place. Blind Side, what’s that about?

The main reason I got thinking about this though is the presence of Up.

Pixar churns out a masterpiece so often we’re going to have to invent a new word for them because they are devaluing the concept of masterpieces. You want a masterpiece every so often across the industry not every damn year from the same studio! But many people I know, and I think I’d include myself in this, would argue Up isn’t the best animated film of 2009 – Coraline is.

Others may disagree with that assessment but even so, doesn’t having Up in the Best Picture category (as surely WALL-E would have been last year if there had been 10 and Pixar films going forward may become a regular fixture of) kind of make the Best Animated Feature category a foregone conclusion?

Many think this about the BAFTAs where they have both a Best Film and Best British Film category. Frequently one of the 5 nominations for Best Film is British but this same film fails to win Best British Film. For example the past three years has seen a British film, nominated for Best British Film, win the Best Film category: 2008 – Slumdog Millionaire, 2007 – Atonement, 2006 – The Queen. And yet despite winning Best Film not one of those three managed to win Best British Film! These instead went to: 2008 – Man On Wire, 2007 – This Is England, 2006 – The Last King Of Scotland. This leads to perfectly reasonable queries of “how the hell does that happen?”

But there is actually an explanation for this phenomenon. It’s not a great explanation, but it is at least, well, one. The whole Bafta membership votes to decide both the 5 nominees for Best Film and the eventual winner. However a select committee awards Best British Film so the general consensus of the membership need not be reflected. It may be a bit daft but it explains the disparity.

However, if such a disparity happens at the Oscars such an explanation will not stand. The Best Picture nominations and eventual winner, as I understand it, are the same – selected by the whole membership – so it stands to reason Up is considered the best animated film since it is the only animated film up for Best Picture. However the whole membership also votes for the winner of the Best Animated Feature nominees. Therefore is there anyway in which Up can lose, and if it does it has to leave everyone scratching their head and going “How?”

But the extension of the category to 10 and the inclusion of Up brings up a bigger issue of de-valuation of the category. It was inevitable that the very first report I read about the Oscar nominations after they were announced yesterday would state (and it did) that Up was “only the second animated feature ever to receive a best picture nomination”.

Doesn’t this de-value the nomination for 1991’s Beauty And The Beast. This is truly the only animated film ever to receive a best picture nomination.

Sure the odds were stacked against it happening again once the Best Animated Feature category was introduced. Too many voters would see that as award enough and not consider an animated feature for the big prize – although they have always been allowed to. The Golden Globes exclude animated features from being considered for Best Film, but then they segregate everything. Their Best Film is split into Drama and Musical/Comedy so it seems fair enough that Animation’s own category is essential just a third version of the big prize. But Oscar doesn’t do that and nor should it.

Yet animation has consistently been overlooked since the creation of its own category (well, and before, but still).

You can argue the same for Foreign Language. They have their own category after all and yet over the years they’ve been far more likely (Life Is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Il Postino, Letters From Iwo Jima) to get a Best Picture nomination, as well as consideration is other categories (City Of God and Talk To Her both received director noms although they missed out on Best Picture).

But this isn’t really the seen as being the same. The foreign language films category is only open to a single film from each country and that whatever the country submits. The rules of the category often exclude multi-country co-productions like Michael Haneke’s Hidden or Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries and a film like Letters From Iwo Jima could never be considered because despite being entirely filmed in Japanese it’s an American production. Politics play a big part. The Spanish industry, not wanting the world to think the Spanish film industry consists of nothing but the Oscar and Bafta friendly Pedro Almodovar rarely selects his films as the Spanish entry. Hence the year Talk To Her was nominated for the Best Director Oscar and won Best Original Screenplay it wasn’t eligible for Best Foreign Language Film. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement was funded by Warner Bros France and so the French refused to consider it French (a marked difference from the UK Film Council which considers pretty much any film that has even contemplated hiring a British gaffer as a British film!) and so no selection for Jeunet.

The other problem is to vote for the foreign language nominees an Oscar member has to have seen them all on a big screen so often this falls to older, retired members and harsher-themed movies lose out to windy-sentimentalism. City Of God was Brazil’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film in 2002. It should have won. Instead it failed even to garner a nomination, while the likes of Dutch rom com Zus & Zo did! This balance was redressed somewhat following its proper US release in 2003 which led to 4 Oscar nominations for Director, Screenplay, Cinematography and Editing (although it didn’t win any).

Therefore considering a foreign film for best picture may be seen as redressing an imbalance that can, and frequently does, exist it that category.

Animated Feature doesn’t have that luxury. The nominations and eventual winner process are as straight-forward as those for any of the other big categories. So logically there’s no imbalance to address and no need to give them a seat at the big table.

But now we have 10 nominees so why not throw them a bone? Why not include that animated film you enjoyed so much. Two simple reasons:

1 – it makes a mockery of the Best Animated Feature category. If only one of them makes the Best Picture nominees then the teams behind the other four might as well just turn up. And if they do miraculously win then it surely suggests there’s something wrong with the selection of the 10 Best Pictures!

2 – it de-values Beauty & The Beast’s nomination. In 10 tens when we have 10 more (probably all Pixar) animated Best Picture nominees Beauty & The Beast’s status will be diminished.

Okay, so Beauty & The Beast’s nomination for Best Picture (along with the special award for Toy Story in 1995) probably paved the way for the 2001 introduction of the Best Animated Feature category but more than any of the other 9 films in this year’s Best Picture nominees (well, okay maybe District 9 and The Blind Side) Up feels like it wouldn’t be there without the expanded category.

After all The Incredibles didn’t make the Best Picture 5 when that category agve slots to the likes of Finding Neverland and Ray; Spirited Away didn’t make the 5 for Best Picture in a year that gave noms to The Hours and Gangs of New York, and was won by Chicago!; last year WALL-E didn’t make the Best Picture cut in a year when the category was filled by the underwhelming likes of Frost/Nixon, The Reader, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.

The inclusion of an animated film in an expanded field of Best Picture nominees (much like a genre one for the likes of District 9) therefore feels like a consolation prize.

Until an animated film actually wins Best Picture or at least receives a Best Director nomination their inclusion seems both pointless and a de-valuation both of the category and that one film that made it to the heralded 5.

10 Best Pictures? Might boost the ratings but it seems a bad idea to me on reflection.

Oscar nominations... thoughts

2010-02-02T10:23:00.000-08:00

Okay so we have 10 best picture nominees and they couldn't have split that category more perfectly into the 'popularist' titles and the 'Oscar fodder' titles.

There can be only one logical reason to have 10 nominees - its a ratings getter. Sure it boosts flagging 'for your consideration' ad revenues with 10 films to vie for Best Picture. But ultimately Oscar show ratings have been flagging and since Lord Of The Rings win back in 2003 (a foregone conclusion after all that walking for three years) big name, big money making movies needed some attention at the Oscar table. Theory being... that'll get viewers. Well let's look at the 10 Best Picture nominees... yup, 5 of the ten are clear 'popularist' votes. Avatar - highest grossing film of all time, $2bn worldwide and counting. The Blind Side - over $200m domestic. Inglourious Basterds - QT's most successful film with over $300m worldwide. District 9 - a sci-fi break out that cost $30m to make and grossed over $200m worldwide. Up - the latest piece of genius from animation powerhouse Pixar which floated off with over $720m worldwide.

Then we have the more typical ‘Oscar fodder’ movies that do low to middling money and most audiences never get around to seeing that are terribly “worthy” but don’t pull in viewers: Up In The Air, Precious, An Education, A Serious Man and The Hurt Locker.

No I’m not saying they don’t all deserve their place at the table. District 9 is a stunning piece of work and a film like this, usually discriminated against because of its genre (see Dark Knight last year) is exactly the reason the type of movie this expanded category should exist to aid. Equally a couple of the “worthy” titles (An Education and A Serious Man” would almost certainly not have made the list had it been 5 as Tarantino and Cameron had those sown up.

So maybe it helps everyone. What’s interesting is how many nay-sayers thought we’d just see Avatar and 9 of the worthies. That a list of 10 would almost certainly allow for “good but not outstanding” films like Crazy Heart and Invictus (from Oscar favourite Clint Eastwood) in there. I don’t exclude myself from those assumptions. If anything I would say that while it didn’t deserve a place the lack of Invictus in the 10 – purely for being an Eastwood movie – is one of the bigger surprises amongst today’s nominations. That’s like Meryl Streep making a movie and not getting an actress nomination. It’s unthinkable! Perhaps the voters are getting more fair with the expanded category.

So who has it sown up? Is Up’s presence in Best Picture a certainty of Best Animated Film – you’d think, no? Can Mo’Nique or Christoph Waltz fall at the final hurdle? – surely not, but then it has happened before. Avatar is one big effect so it must have Visual Effects sorted right? Well presumably but then District 9 looked like a $200m movie with a total budget of $30m so…! Nick Park’s never lost (well once, for A Grand Day Out, but that was to himself with Creature Comforts so surely doesn’t count) so he’s got to win by default right?

Something funny is going to happen somewhere – it almost always does – but where?

And what were the surprises. There weren’t many but the inclusion of Maggie Gyllenhaal and exclusion of Julianne Moore in the Best Supporting Actress category has to be one of the bigger ones. Personally this makes be both very happy and desperately sad. I thought Moore was superb in A Single Man. It wasn’t a huge role but it was incredibly memorable for all that and she deserved her place on this list. That said I’ve been arguing (and voting) for Maggie Gyllenhaal in Crazy Heart from the off – worried (as most awards bodies have done) that she be overlooked as she was in a film with such a powerful central performance that is kind of eclipsed everything else. But I think the always good Gyllenhaal did some of her best work in Crazy Heart. Without her to ground Bridges performance the movie would have not been half what it was. Personally I think both performers deserve a spot in this category more than Penelope Cruz or either of the (still excellent) Up In The Air actresses. But then Cruz is there by default because she won last year. There’s nothing remarkable about her in the tedious musical Nine and had this film come the year before Vicky Cristina Barcelona I guarantee this nomination would not exist. As for the Up In The Air pair who wouldn’t you vote for? That is clearly why they are both there. They are both great in the movie. They are both completely different. They are both undeniably supporting. There’s no way to choose between them so I suspect most voters (as I and several people I know did) voted for both of them simply because that was easier. It’s also why neither of them has a hope in hell of winning.

The other big surprise for me was In The Loop’s nomination for Screenplay. I always assumed it would get a Bafta nomination, but an Oscar nomination?! I never saw that coming.

It’s an interesting mix. There’s a few things I simply don’t get. Things I didn’t vote for on the BAFTAs on principal. But I’m clearly wrong. I just wish someone could explain them to me.

First Avatar – Best Cinematography. It’s basically one big created effect so surely the beautiful vistas and lighting are created in the computer so shouldn’t that just all come under the VFX category? I’m obviously in a minority here but as beautiful as Avatar was to watch I just never saw that as cinematography.

Secondly Coco Before Chanel – Best Costume Design. So it’s a movie about a world renowned costume designer, so surely the costumes in the movie are just Coco Chanel designs, no? Were these created for the film? In which case presumably there’s no truth to the biopic at all.

Personally I’m hoping all the “obviousness” of Coco Before Chanel, The Young Victoria, Nine and Bright Star’s show-off period costuming will cancel each other out and Monique Prudhomme’s beautiful, exciting work on Gilliam’s The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus will win out. Not a ridiculous dream, surely?

I’m pleased to see the, expected, nominations for young actresses Carey Mulligan (woo hoo!) and Gabourey Sidibe as for me they gave the real stand-out performances of the year. It’s a shame the voters will most likely consider their nominations (each for their first lead roles) as good as a win and hand the award elsewhere.

It’s also nice to see the always superb Stanley Tucci finally get an Oscar nomination. Bad year for him to get it though as after years or delivering brilliant, scene-(often movie)stealing performances and never getting a nomination he’s come up against one hit wonder Christoph Waltz. I don’t mean to belittle Waltz, he is great in Basterds and I loved the film, but I give him 5 years max before he’s making Steven Seagal DTV movies. I hope Tucci gets another chance soon.

Beyond that all I have to say is “no Ponyo!!!!!!!” in animation. That’s appalling. They nominated Fantastic Mr Fox but not Ponyo? I can’t comment on Secret Of Kells as I haven’t seen it, and I’m glad that Princess And The Frog (a hugely enjoyable, old-school Disney movie) got in. And of course Up and Coraline had to be there (I’d have liked to see Coraline get a Best Picture nom too to be honest).

So come March 7 we’ll know the outcome. Will exs Cameron and Bigelow come to blows? Will there be an almost traditional acting upset? Will the film I want to win Best Foreign Film actually win for once (I’m not saying what, don’t want to jinx it!) Hmmm!

Oscar nominations... the list

2010-02-02T10:19:00.001-08:00

Best Picture
“Avatar” James Cameron and Jon Landau, Producers
“The Blind Side” Nominees to be determined
“District 9” Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham, Producers
“An Education” Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey, Producers
“The Hurt Locker” Nominees to be determined
“Inglourious Basterds” Lawrence Bender, Producer
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness, Producers
“A Serious Man” Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Producers
“Up” Jonas Rivera, Producer “Up in the Air” Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman, Producers

Directing
"Avatar” James Cameron
“The Hurt Locker” Kathryn Bigelow
“Inglourious Basterds” Quentin Tarantino
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Lee Daniels
“Up in the Air” Jason Reitman

Actor in a Leading Role
Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart”
George Clooney in “Up in the Air”
Colin Firth in “A Single Man”
Morgan Freeman in “Invictus”
Jeremy Renner in “The Hurt Locker”

Actor in a Supporting Role
Matt Damon in “Invictus”
Woody Harrelson in “The Messenger”
Christopher Plummer in “The Last Station”
Stanley Tucci in “The Lovely Bones”
Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds”

Actress in a Leading Role
Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side”
Helen Mirren in “The Last Station”
Carey Mulligan in “An Education”
Gabourey Sidibe in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia”

Actress in a Supporting Role
Penélope Cruz in “Nine”
Vera Farmiga in “Up in the Air”
Maggie Gyllenhaal in “Crazy Heart”
Anna Kendrick in “Up in the Air”
Mo’Nique in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”

Animated Feature Film
“Coraline” Henry Selick
“Fantastic Mr. Fox” Wes Anderson
“The Princess and the Frog” John Musker and Ron Clements
“The Secret of Kells” Tomm Moore
“Up” Pete Docter

Art Direction
“Avatar” Art Direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg; Set Decoration: Kim Sinclair
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” Art Direction: Dave Warren and Anastasia Masaro; Set Decoration: Caroline Smith
“Nine” Art Direction: John Myhre; Set Decoration: Gordon Sim
“Sherlock Holmes” Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood; Set Decoration: Katie Spencer
“The Young Victoria” Art Direction: Patrice Vermette; Set Decoration: Maggie Gray

Cinematography
“Avatar” Mauro Fiore
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” Bruno Delbonnel
“The Hurt Locker” Barry Ackroyd
“Inglourious Basterds” Robert Richardson
“The White Ribbon” Christian Berger

Costume Design
“Bright Star” Janet Patterson
“Coco before Chanel” Catherine Leterrier
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” Monique Prudhomme
“Nine” Colleen Atwood
“The Young Victoria” Sandy Powell

Documentary (Feature)
“Burma VJ” Anders Østergaard and Lise Lense-Møller
“The Cove” Nominees to be determined
“Food, Inc.” Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein
“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
“Which Way Home” Rebecca Cammisa

Documentary (Short Subject)
“China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province” Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill
“The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner” Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher
“The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant” Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
“Music by Prudence” Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett
“Rabbit à la Berlin” Bartek Konopka and Anna Wydra

Film Editing
“Avatar” Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron
“District 9” Julian Clarke
“The Hurt Locker” Bob Murawski and Chris Innis
“Inglourious Basterds” Sally Menke
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Joe Klotz

Foreign Language Film
“Ajami” Israel
“El Secreto de Sus Ojos” Argentina
“The Milk of Sorrow” Peru
“Un Prophète” France
“The White Ribbon” Germany

Makeup
“Il Divo” Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano
“Star Trek” Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow
“The Young Victoria” Jon Henry Gordon and Jenny Shircore

Music (Original Score)
“Avatar” James Horner
“Fantastic Mr. Fox” Alexandre Desplat
“The Hurt Locker” Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders
“Sherlock Holmes” Hans Zimmer
“Up” Michael Giacchino

Music (Original Song)
“Almost There” from “The Princess and the Frog” Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
“Down in New Orleans” from “The Princess and the Frog” Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
“Loin de Paname” from “Paris 36” Music by Reinhardt Wagner Lyric by Frank Thomas
“Take It All” from “Nine” Music and Lyric by Maury Yeston
“The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from “Crazy Heart” Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Short Film (Animated)
“French Roast” Fabrice O. Joubert
“Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty” Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell
“The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)” Javier Recio Gracia
“Logorama” Nicolas Schmerkin
“A Matter of Loaf and Death” Nick Park

Short Film (Live Action)
“The Door” Juanita Wilson and James Flynn
“Instead of Abracadabra” Patrik Eklund and Mathias Fjellström
“Kavi” Gregg Helvey
“Miracle Fish” Luke Doolan and Drew Bailey
“The New Tenants” Joachim Back and Tivi Magnusson

Sound Editing
“Avatar” Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
“The Hurt Locker” Paul N.J. Ottosson
“Inglourious Basterds” Wylie Stateman
“Star Trek” Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin
“Up” Michael Silvers and Tom Myers

Sound Mixing
“Avatar” Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson
“The Hurt Locker” Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett
“Inglourious Basterds” Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti and Mark Ulano
“Star Trek” Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson

Visual Effects
“Avatar” Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones
“District 9” Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken
“Star Trek” Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
“District 9” Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
“An Education” Screenplay by Nick Hornby
“In the Loop” Screenplay by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher
“Up in the Air” Screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner

Writing (Original Screenplay)
“The Hurt Locker” Written by Mark Boal
“Inglourious Basterds” Written by Quentin Tarantino
“The Messenger” Written by Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman
“A Serious Man” Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
“Up” Screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Story by Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy

BAFTA nominations

2010-01-21T06:35:00.000-08:00

And so the BAFTA noms…

Good to see District 9’s Neill Blomkamp make the Best Director list, though I don’t get all the Nowhere Boy love.

Below are the complete nominees with what I think will win (not necessarily what should) in bold:

BEST FILM
AVATAR - James Cameron, Jon Landau
AN EDUCATION - Amanda Posey, Finola Dwyer
THE HURT LOCKER - Nominees TBC
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE - Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness, Gary Magness
UP IN THE AIR - Ivan Reitman, Jason Reitman, Daniel Dubiecki

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM

AN EDUCATION - Amanda Posey, Finola Dwyer, Lone Scherfig, Nick Hornby
FISH TANK - Kees Kasander, Nick Laws, Andrea Arnold
IN THE LOOP - Kevin Loader, Adam Tandy, Armando Iannucci, Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Tony Roche
MOON - Stuart Fenegan, Trudie Styler, Duncan Jones, Nathan Parker
NOWHERE BOY - Kevin Loader, Douglas Rae, Robert Bernstein, Sam Taylor-Wood, Matt Greenhalgh

OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER
LUCY BAILEY, ANDREW THOMPSON, ELIZABETH MORGAN HEMLOCK, DAVID PEARSON - Directors, Producers – Mugabe and the White African

ERAN CREEVY - Writer/Director – Shifty
STUART HAZELDINE - Writer/Director – Exam
DUNCAN JONES - Director – Moon
SAM TAYLOR-WOOD - Director – Nowhere Boy

DIRECTOR
AVATAR - James Cameron
DISTRICT 9 - Neill Blomkamp
AN EDUCATION - Lone Scherfig
THE HURT LOCKER - Kathryn Bigelow
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - Quentin Tarantino

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
THE HANGOVER - Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
THE HURT LOCKER - Mark Boal
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - Quentin Tarantino
A SERIOUS MAN - Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
UP - Bob Peterson, Pete Docter

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
DISTRICT 9 - Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell
AN EDUCATION - Nick Hornby
IN THE LOOP - Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE - Geoffrey Fletcher
UP IN THE AIR - Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
BROKEN EMBRACES - Agustín Almodóvar, Pedro Almodóvar
COCO BEFORE CHANEL - Carole Scotta, Caroline Benjo, Philippe Carcassonne, Anne Fontaine
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN - Carl Molinder, John Nordling, Tomas Alfredson
A PROPHET - Pascale Caucheteux, Marco Chergui, Alix Raynaud, Jacques Audiard
THE WHITE RIBBON - Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka, Margaret Menegoz, Michael Haneke

ANIMATED FILM
CORALINE - Henry Selick
FANTASTIC MR FOX - Wes Anderson
UP - Pete Docter

LEADING ACTOR
JEFF BRIDGES - Crazy Heart
GEORGE CLOONEY - Up in the Air
COLIN FIRTH - A Single Man
JEREMY RENNER - The Hurt Locker
ANDY SERKIS - Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

LEADING ACTRESS
CAREY MULLIGAN - An Education
SAOIRSE RONAN - The Lovely Bones
GABOUREY SIDIBE - Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
MERYL STREEP - Julie & Julia
AUDREY TAUTOU - Coco Before Chanel

SUPPORTING ACTOR
ALEC BALDWIN - It’s Complicated
CHRISTIAN McKAY - Me and Orson Welles
ALFRED MOLINA - An Education
STANLEY TUCCI - The Lovely Bones
CHRISTOPH WALTZ - Inglourious Basterds

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
ANNE-MARIE DUFF - Nowhere Boy
VERA FARMIGA - Up in the Air
ANNA KENDRICK - Up in the Air
MO'NIQUE - Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS - Nowhere Boy

MUSIC
AVATAR - James Horner
CRAZY HEART - T-Bone Burnett, Stephen Bruton
FANTASTIC MR FOX - Alexandre Desplat
SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL - Chaz Jankel
UP - Michael Giacchino

CINEMATOGRAPHY
AVATAR - Mauro Fiore
DISTRICT 9 - Trent Opaloch
THE HURT LOCKER - Barry Ackroyd
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - Robert Richardson
THE ROAD - Javier Aguirresarobe

EDITING
AVATAR - Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron
DISTRICT 9 - Julian Clarke
THE HURT LOCKER - Bob Murawski, Chris Innis
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - Sally Menke
UP IN THE AIR - Dana E. Glauberman

PRODUCTION DESIGN
AVATAR - Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg, Kim Sinclair
DISTRICT 9 - Philip Ivey, Guy Poltgieter
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE - Stuart Craig, Stephenie McMillan
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS - Nominees TBC
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - David Wasco, Sandy Reynolds Wasco

COSTUME DESIGN
BRIGHT STAR - Janet Patterson
COCO BEFORE CHANEL - Catherine Leterrier
AN EDUCATION - Odile Dicks-Mireaux
A SINGLE MAN - Arianne Phillips
THE YOUNG VICTORIA - Sandy Powell

SOUND
AVATAR - Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson, Tony Johnson, Addison Teague
DISTRICT 9 - Nominees TBC
THE HURT LOCKER - Ray Beckett, Paul N. J. Ottosson, Craig Stauffer
STAR TREK - Peter J. Devlin, Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer, Mark Stoeckinger, Ben Burtt
UP - Tom Myers, Michael Silvers, Michael Semanick

SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
AVATAR - Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham, Andrew R. Jones
DISTRICT 9 - Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros, Matt Aitken
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE - John Richardson, Tim Burke, Tim Alexander, Nicolas Aithadi
THE HURT LOCKER - Richard Stutsman
STAR TREK - Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh, Burt Dalton

MAKE UP & HAIR
COCO BEFORE CHANEL - Thi Thanh Tu Nguyen, Jane Milon
AN EDUCATION - Lizzie Yianni Georgiou
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS - Sarah Monzani
NINE - Peter ‘Swords’ King
THE YOUNG VICTORIA - Jenny Shircore

SHORT ANIMATION
THE HAPPY DUCKLING - Gili Dolev
MOTHER OF MANY - Sally Arthur, Emma Lazenby
THE GRUFFALO - Michael Rose, Martin Pope, Jakob Schuh, Max Lang

SHORT FILM
14 - Asitha Ameresekere
I DO AIR - James Bolton, Martina Amati
JADE - Samm Haillay, Daniel Elliott
MIXTAPE - Luti Fagbenle, Luke Snellin
OFF SEASON - Jacob Jaffke, Jonathan van Tulleken

ORANGE RISING STAR AWARD
JESSE EISENBERG
NICHOLAS HOULT
CAREY MULLIGAN – text MULLIGAN to 82058 to combat the predicted Twilight whitewash!
TAHAR RAHIM
KRISTEN STEWART

The Baftas are awarded Feb 21.

The awards season just got interesting

2010-01-18T03:16:00.000-08:00

So the Globes went for James Cameron and Avatar for Best Director and Best Picture - Drama. Bet that pleased Kathryn Bigelow!

You can see why they did it though. Is Avatar the best film of the year? No, of course it isn't. But it is impressive. It has changed the way a film can be made. It is looking likely to become the highest grossing film of all-time (international is now a certainy, it just being a question of this week or next weekend now). It is in short the most memorable. When in 5 years, 10 years, 50 years people look back on 2009 the film it will be remembered for is Avatar. There may not be many people that would say it deserved to beat The Hurt Locker (it doesn't) but then that never stopped Titanic beating the far superior LA Confidential.

Then there's Sandra Bullock. The only woman ever to lead a film to a $200m gross in the US. Immediately following a massive result for The Proposal. Popular. Survived as a palpable, profitable lead well into her 40s (no mean feat in Hollywood). She produces worthy projects (like the Oscar-winning Crash). Now she's put herself into an awards-worthy role. And she's done it in a year when the most outstanding actresses are virtual unknowns in their first lead roles - Carey Mulligan in An Education and Gabourey Sidibe in Precious. Voters can happily slap themselves on the back and decide the nomination is the win for both these young actresses. The Bullock win is a game changer - expect this to translate to the Oscars. It just makes so much sense.

And then, praise be, Jeff Bridges. While it messes up my plan for betting on the Oscars (his odds will be rubbish now - i was relying on the HFPA to give it to Clooney so i could get good odds on Bridges for the Oscars). He is the actor that deserves the win this year. Plus he's beloved. Plus he's always excellent. Plus he's had multiple nominations over a period of 25 years and never won. Plus... he's the DUDE man!

At this point i suspect the Globes may have aced their four acting awards as far as predicting the Oscars goes. But the Oscars usually pull out a surprise somewhere. But where? Hmmmm!

Top 20 Most Anticipated Films of 2010

2010-01-04T05:12:00.000-08:00

As with the top films of last year my top 10 most anticipated titles for 2010 will remain at the bottom of the blog for reference but an extended list appears here.

Inevitably there will be omissions, both deliberate and accidental, that others think I should have included but these are the 20 titles I am currently most looking forward to seeing in 2010. Some because they look fun, others because I expect true greatest, and still others that are there purely on faith in a particular director, actor, etc. Sometimes maybe all three, but a line of reasoning accompanies each one on this broader list.

I will also note this is MY most anticipated so doesn’t include excellent 2010 films that I happen to have already seen, most notably Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass, which would otherwise have made the list.

On the bottom list of the top 10 they’ll be listed 1-10 but here I’m going to count them down in reverse order:

20. Stone – I basically know nothing about this film except that it’s a thriller. But the fact that it pairs Robert De Niro and Edward Norton (two of the best actors around) gets it a place in my most anticipated. Of course there last pairing, alongside Marlon Brando in The Score, was good but not great, but it that would have been higher on my anticipation list that year.

19. Love Ranch – Joe Pesci takes his first lead role in over a decade alongside fellow Oscar-winner Helen Mirren (what a pairing!) in a drama about the first legal brothel in Nevada and the violence that resulted when their relationship was tested by infidelity. Mirren’s husband Taylor Hackford (Ray) directs. Could be great year-end awards fodder but Pesci’s big-screen return alone (after a tantalising cameo in The Good Shepherd) gets this into the top 20.

18. Tron Legacy – If only for the 3D, the retro-cool of a 28-years-later sequel to Tron and the return of original star Jeff Bridges (the man seriously has to be the coolest actor working) this gets in there. Plus the teaser (seen not in 3D on my computer) looked freakin’ awesome.

17. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World – Michael Cera’s gotten awfully one note but if handled right (see Superbad, Paper Heart, Juno) can be immensely likeable. With Edgar Wright calling the shots on this comic-book adaptation about a boy who must battle the ex-boyfriends of the girl of his dreams in order to win her hand I’m expecting quality. The cast also includes Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Chris Evans, Jason Schwartman and Brandon Routh. It’s a little ironic though that the director who guided Cera’s best performance, Greg Mottola, is directing Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Paul (see below) while Wright handles this. Perhaps they got assignment envelopes mixed up!

16. How Do You Know? – It may not be called that by the time it releases but a new James L Brooks movie is always worth getting excited about. Okay so Spanglish wasn’t great but this stars Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd and reunites Brooks with the man he directed to two Oscars, the legendary Jack Nicholson. Jack alone would put this in my top 30 to see this year, a combo with Brooks and those leads means it’s only a lick from the top 15.

15. Alice In Wonderland – Tim Burton’s take on Lewis Carroll’s legendary fantasy sees Johnny Depp (who else) as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter (ditto) as the Queen of Hearts, plus Anne Hathaway, Matt Lucas, Crispin Glover (how have he and Burton not worked together before!) and newcomer (although she seems to be in a load of stuff coming up) Mia Wasikowska as the titular heroine. Burton can surely not go wrong, at least for fans like me, with this one.

14. Predators – okay, so this could be terrible, but I hear nothing but great things about director Nimrod Antal’s Kontroll and his horror Vacancy was efficiently made. Here he’s working from a script by producer Robert Rodriguez and a cast including Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, Rodriguez lucky charm Danny Trejo and, er, Topher Grace. Here’s hoping this puts the Predator name back in modern cinema-goers good books.

13. Never Let Me Go – Mark Romanek (the under-rated One Hour Photo) adapts Kazuo Ishiguro’s (The Remains Of The Day, When We Were Orphans) novel which stars 2009 break-out star Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley. This’ll be worth seeing just to see Mulligan act circles around Knightley (last seen on screen together as sisters in Pride & Prejudice) but the tantalising combo of Romanek and Mulligan is what attracts me.

12. You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger – okay so Woody Allen misses as often as he hits lately but he’s always a must see for devotees like me and this new romantic comedy sees him returning to the UK after a quick spin around Spain and his hometown of New York. The cast includes Anthony Hopkins in his first collaboration with Woody, which is reason enough to be excited for this one. Poor title though Woody.

11. Black Swan – Darren Aronofsky follows up the brilliant The Wrestler with a psychological thriller set in the world of ballet, that features 80s/90s uber-cute starlet Winona Ryder and stars her natural successor 90s/00s uber-cute starlet Natalie Portman. Vincent Cassel also stars following his superb turn this year in the French-language Mesrine thrillers.

10. Edge Of Darkness – Mel Gibson returns. This really dark-looking thriller looks to have elements of Ransom and Payback (the good Director’s Cut version) and is directed by Malcolm Campbell (Casino Royale) revisited the ‘80s TV drama he directed in the first place. The trailers look good to me and this is headed our way in February so one of the first of 2010 to look forward to.

9. Machete – Fun actionners are everywhere in 2010 and this spin-off of Robert Rodriguez’s spoof Mexican revenge thriller trailer in Grindhouse, co-directed by Rodriguez, nearly rivals The Expendables for a genius cast. It’s certainly the most insane cast I’ve seen put together for some time. Bad-ass Danny Trejo finally gets a lead role while his support comes from the beautiful Jessica Alba, the feisty Michelle Rodriguez, the “tabloids are now my career” Lindsay Lohan, the “haven’t been in a theatrically released movie for 8 years!” Steven Seagal and two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro. Yes, that’s Seagal and De Niro sharing the screen in a movie neither of them are even lead in. That alone makes this essential watching.

8. Hereafter – Clint Eastwood’s still going strong and next up is a supernatural thriller (his first in that genre) starring Matt Damon. With Clint who knows how “supernatural” this may be but you can rest assured it’ll be one of the best made films of the year.

7. Clash Of The Titans – I had no real anticipation for this until I saw the trailers, but damn it looks fun. Louis Letterier did the recent Incredible Hulk which was a blast that knew how to cut loose and have some fun within a fairly daft world. Here he’s got Greek mythology to run around in and it looks like he’s throwing everything (probably including the kitchen sink) into it. It could all be brilliantly cut trailers but they’ve done the job on me. I’m there.

6. Paul – If Edgar Wright were directing this it might make it a couple of steps higher but even so this third major teaming of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) is the comedy to see this year. Directed by Greg (Superbad, Adventureland, Daytrippers) Mottola this sees the boys tackle the sci-fi genre. Expect a very Close Encounters-y riff and great cameos from sci-fi greats like Sigourney Weaver. If it’s half as good as their horror and action movie com-ages it’ll be among the year’s best.

5. Inception – Don’t know a great deal about the plot for this one other than it’s a sci-fi thriller. But with Christopher “I haven’t made a bad film yet” Nolan directing from a script by his brother Jonathan (Memento, The Dark Knight) surely only brilliance can await. Even without the Batman films Nolan has delivered such greats as Memento and Insomnia. Then consider the cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine. The most intriguing film of the year.

4. The Expendables – This has as much chance of being a hideous mess as a great fun romp but Sylvester Stallone is assembling the greatest line-up of action heroes ever for a hopefully insane blast of a movie. Joining Sly to some degree or another (some are leads, many purely cameos) are Jet Li, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, Eric Roberts, the late Brittany Murphy, Dolph Lundgren and damn it all both Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger (in an extended cameo scene together with Sly)! It’s a shame Kurt Russell, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme all turned down the opportunity to appear but even without them this either adds up to the greatest action spectacular ever or the biggest missed opportunity of all time. Either way it’s unmissable.

3. Iron Man 2 – The live action highlight of the summer is the sequel to the hugely entertaining 2008 movie. The great Robert Downey Jr (he can even make a Guy Ritchie movie good – is there nothing he can’t do?) returns, as does Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L Jackson in a more substantial role as Nick Fury. Add the ever brilliant Sam Rockwell as business rival Justin Hammer, Don Cheadle in as Rhodey in full War Machine armour, the gorgeous Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow and come-back-kid Mickey Rourke as villain Whiplash and we are set for a superb sequel from returning director Jon Favreau. Can’t wait.

2. True Grit – The Coen Brothers making a new film is always a highlight of any year but this is a new, more faithful to the novel, adaptation of a great western. It reteams them their No Country For Old Men producer Scott Rudin and star Josh Brolin (this time taking villain duties) and sees their first time working with Matt Damon. But the biggest draw here is their working again with The Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, since 1998’s The Big Lebowski. His role here as US Marshal Rooster Cogburn couldn’t be more different but Bridges never disappoints and this will follow his recent career best (yes, even beating The Dude) in the brilliant Crazy Heart. Bridges + Coens + Western + Brolin + Damon + Rudin = unimaginable genius.

1. Toy Story 3 – It’s been over a decade since Toy Story 2 but the franchise remains the highlight in Pixar Studios almost faultless catalogue despite such masterpieces as Ratatouille, The Incredibles and WALL-E coming since. It has a lot to live up to but like last year’s #1 anticipated picture, Avatar, you have to reason “when does Pixar ever let us down?”. If you could see only one film this year this would have to be it.

Top 20 Films of 2009

2009-12-29T09:39:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-15T06:11:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-09T07:46:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-09T07:18:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-27T09:15:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-18T09:08:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-15T10:08:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-14T10:26:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-14T10:05:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-13T04:44:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-12T07:59:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-06T07:52:00.000-08:00

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

New trailer: Invictus

2009-10-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-10-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-23T16:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-21T10:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Latest screening: Away We Go

2009-10-20T04:30:00.000-07:00

Sam Mendes' latest is a change in size, scope and style for the filmmaker but not a wholly successful one. You can see his thinking here. After the detailed, complex characters, settings and worlds of Road To Perdition, Jarhead and Revolutionary Road he would get back to a smaller, easier world - a contemporary story of two thirtysomethings trying to find their place in the world. Smaller than any film Mendes has done, including American Beauty, it is his "indie" film after the large scale studio films he's been making in the past decade.

Unfortunately it feels as if his approach was "let's make an indie film". It is as if he watched a whole series of recent, successful and/or popular independent American movies (like Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, About Schmidt, Sideways, Me & You & Everyone We Know, etc) and made notes. He took from these films that he needed slightly offbeat central characters, lost in a giant world but making their way; he needed a supporting cast if infinitely quirkier characters to make our offbeat leads seem more normal and closer to ourselves, while providing outrageous comedy; preferably he needed a road trip! You get the sense a wrote a list if US indie film plot points (cliches?) and ticked them all off as he went along.

The film is not wholly unsuccessful. The central characters, played by Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski, and indeed charming and largely likeable. Any scene with the two of them alone together works, and this, naturally, helps a great deal. Many of the supporting actors are also good, whether their characters work or not. Jeff Daniels and Catherine O'Hara are great as Krasinski's self-absorbed parents; Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey are solid as the most normal and believable of the couple's old friends/acquaintances met along the way; Maggie Gyllenhaal truly inhabits her character, even if the character does the film a disservice.

The Gyllenhaal character, a new age mum who believes you shouldn't put a child in a stroller because of the negative energy given off by the act of pushing them away, and various such mildly humourous clap-trap, is a typical US indie film cliche of a character. She's never believeable as a character because you know she exists solely for the comedic possibility of mocking her extreme views. It does lead to the film's funniest scene, involving the stroller liberation of Gyllenhaal's boy, ut is it worth it. Not least because Krasinski's character may be appalled by her views but in taking the action he does he seeks not to protect himself and his family from these views and rebuff them he actively attempts to sabotage the relationship (however kooky it seems) between his supposed best friend and her child. It may be funny but it doesn't fit his character. It might have fit Rudolph's but as Gyllenhaal is Krasinski's friend the moment is given to him. Funny in the moment, but on reflection it hurts the film - and it all stems for the original decision to make Gyllanhaal's character to extreme and unbelievable.

And Gyllanhaal isn't the only one. Allison Janney is awfully contrived here. I love Janney. I loved her in The West Wing, but i already loved her in a plethora of pre-West Wing roles such as the English teacher in 10 Things I Hate About You. Her over-the-top character here is very very similar to that of 10 Things but whereas in 10 Things it fit in the Shakespearean world of extreme action it just doesn't feel organic here.

Away We Go is not without its laughs and certainly the central characters journey is enjoyable enough to follow them on, but you never become invested, you never really care!

Ultimately this is a xerox of so many other films that as with all copies the quality lessens. A solidly average, Sunday afternoon type of film but not one worth prioritising over so many other, more worthy films this awards season.

Latest screening: A Single Man

2009-10-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

Well, we have an early contender – certainly for Best Actor (Colin Firth) and Best Supporting Actress (Julianne Moore – who was robbed in the Best Actress category for Far From Heaven in 2002) – but arguably also for Film and Director.

A Single Man is one of the most assured debuts I can recall.

A beautiful film in every sense there are a few moments early on when the fact it is a film by fashion designer Tom Ford leave your mind getting in the way. One or two moments elicit an expectancy for a product logo to appear, but these are quickly thrown aside as you get drawn into the story.

The screenplay, co-written by Ford, is timed to perfection. The pace is quick yet allows for easy entry. Nothing about the world is covert and hidden yet neither is it in-your-face and confrontational. Each of the three leads, Firth, Moore and About A Boy’s Nicholas Hoult is given a fully rounded character regardless of screen time, because you can feel the unsaid underneath and each gets their own arc, without the story ever feeling like there is too much going on in its fairly short (99mins) running time.

The direction is highly stylised but it never gets in the way, always serving the story. It will be interesting to see if Ford can change the style down a gear when tackling other stories in future but here he has the balance right. It is easy to focus on the style in the early stages because of fore-knowledge but this is a film that just gets better as you watch.

It helps that is served by a faultless cast. It is interesting that Ford has chosen Brits Hoult, Matthew Goode and Lee Pace to play Americans and American Moore to play a Brit but it works and as most people won’t know (except for Moore) the nationalities of the cast the illusion will never be broken – you wouldn’t suspect.

Firth has simply never been so good. If every actor has one perfect, flawless role for them out there then Firth has found his here.

After a few years of noble efforts and oddities Moore reminds us that she really is one of the best American actresses working. This rivals Far From Heaven, while perhaps not quite matching it only because it is very much a supporting role. But if this isn’t the role that finally bags Moore a long overdue Oscar then there’s a phenomenal performance hiding out there somewhere because Moore ought to be a shoe-in.

There best summary is simply that A Single Man is a beautiful film – beautiful in tone; in intention; in acting; in realisation. If Ford can repeat the quality of this debut in future film projects people will be wishing he’d been doing this all along.

Latest screening: Up

2009-10-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

Some day Pixar will make a terrible, terrible film and it will signal Armageddon but with Up the most consistently excellent studio has turned out another masterpiece. And masterpiece is the only word. Pixar have their lesser films, most notably the resolutely 3-star or 7/10 ish Cars and A Bug’s Life, but most of the time they bat out of the park. And that’s what they’ve done here. A 10/10, 5-star movie Up continues another superb run from the studio which follows Ratatouille and WALL-E.

I have now seen Up 3 times (all, appropriately, in 3D) and it just gets better each time. At various moments hilarious, touching, delightful, heart-breaking and beautiful it is a triumph for director Pete Docter and his team.

The film opens with a beautifully realised prologue that charts the life of our grumpy old man lead character Carl. One film on from WALL-E Pixar again proves the power of a dialogue free story. This segment takes you through emotional, funny highs and sad lows in a way that in itself would have made an Oscar-winning short film with ease. Ten minutes in you are already drained but Up won’t let you wallow as it is then immediately into a great visual gag involving a stair-lift.

Then we get to the real story which sees our hero Carl determined to avoid a fate forced on him by an evil politically-correct world with no heart or understanding by following his life-long dream to travel to ‘Paradise Falls’, an idealic lost-world in South America. As you’d have to have your head in the sand not to know he decides to achieve this by flying his house with the help of thousands of helium-filled balloons, which he used to sell at an adventure park.

He’s joined on his journey by surprise unintentional stow-away Russell, an idealistic wilderness explorer; and later Kevin, a giant bird of paradise; and Dug a “talking dog!” as they all come up against and get on the bad side of Christopher Plummer’s stir crazy villain and his pack of highly-trained dogs.

The genius of Pixar is evident at every turn. As a comedy it is the studio’s funniest since Docter’s debut Monsters, Inc. It has the heart and emotional impact of WALL-E. It works completely as an adventure story like The Incredibles, with genuine excitement and edge-of-your-seat thrills, always perfectly punctured by a well judged gag, whether visual or verbal.

The introductions to all three supporting characters are organic and expertly handled, whether Russell’s nervous excitement; Kevin’s mystery; or Dug’s easy joke. All 4 leads get to share the laughs and emotion equally.

Dug’s talking is well conceived and the insight into the canine mind seems spot on. Russell manages never to be irritating and Carl is never too cantankerous. All feel like real characters, and that makes it all the more intriguing, and yet right, that they’ve opted for a very cartoonish look. Up goes for no realism in the look, especially for Carl. After WALL-E’s beautiful imagery that belied its animated creation, Up is overtly cartoonish. Carl is basically square. His head is huge, his body short. One scene which sees Russell climb up Carl highlights this – Carl’s nose is the same size as Russell’s foot. Yet this is absolutely the right approach for Up. It is a film about an old man flying a house with balloons in search of a mythical land, realism is not what it’s about.

The 3D is also used better than any film has ever used it. Docter plays with the depth of the 3D, deepening it in moments of glorious joy and high excitement to add to the adrenaline; and then flattening it to the point of being able to take the glasses off and watch normally in moments of sadness and intimacy.

As usual Pixar shows the rest of the field how it should be done and if they don’t add a third consecutive Best Animated Feature Oscar to their mantle then the Oscars should simply be closed down for either corruption or stupidity.

As a last quick side note, the accompanying short Partly Cloudy is one of the most complementary put out with a Pixar feature. Again mixing humour with emotion in what is again basically a silent film. Bravo all round. If only all film’s could be Pixar films! (speaking of which check out the trailer for next summer’s Toy Story 3 on the trailer bar on the right).

Latest screening: Zombieland

2009-10-14T08:44:00.000-07:00

Simply one of the most entertaining films I’ve seen this year Zombieland is a must-see. From the moment Woody Harrelson’s credit comes up (when was the last time Harrelson got above-the-title top-billing and the movie got a theatrical release?) to the end credits you’ll have a heap of fun.

The film is far better than it has any right to be, and is no doubt aided by a lack of expectations. I went in thinking it would be a US Shaun Of The Dead rip-off, likely missing the mark at least as often, if not more, than it hit.

But no this is a fast, funny, hugely entertaining romp.

Harrelson reminds you of the charisma and easy laid-back charm that made him a star in Cheers and early hit movies like White Men Can’t Jump. Since the mid-90s he has seemingly become a caricature of himself and rarely impressed. He’s tried to break his curse with different roles like in Paul Schrader’s under-seen but still ultimately unsatisfying The Walker and an occasionally genuinely good role – his brief turn in the Coens’ No Country For Old Men unfortunately lost amongst a glut of stunning lead performances. Here he shines, playing with the persona he’s now known. You simply can’t believe he’s not a bigger star.

Jesse Eisenberg delivers a likeable twitchy Michael Cera-type character but whereas Cera is always one-note and overly mannered Eisenberg strikes the right balance of geeky loser and struggling everyman, proving a great foil and companion for Harrelson’s testerone-fuelled meat-head with a heart.

Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin also make a great pair as sisters who come into contact with Harrelson and Eisenberg. The group has a fun dynamic, each bringing something very different to the table for an entertaining whole.

And the cameo in this is awesome, just freakin’ awesome. If you don’t know who it is I won’t give it away but every moment this person is on screen is gold. Hands down the best use of a cameo star in a movie in a decade, probably more. The star’s response to an “any regrets?” line is everything a fan could want. Kudos to the actor and the filmmakers for this one.

At 80 minutes the movie flies by and if you have a more consistently entertaining 80 minutes in the cinema this year then I suspect you’ll be ejected for lewd conduct!

Go see it!

Latest screening: The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus

2009-10-14T08:42:00.000-07:00

Like so many of Terry Gilliam’s films The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus is one that is going to need multiple viewings to truly form an opinion on. Like Brazil, Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, Fisher King, Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas and Tideland (even Time Bandits really) there is so much going on here that expectations or reputations get in the way and make it hard to digest and appreciate on a single viewing. No bad thing necessarily.

Of course Parnassus has the particularly insurmountable problem of being the late Heath Ledger’s final performance and following on from his superb, Oscar-winning turn in The Dark Knight. It is impossible to see the film through eyes that don’t see it as the film he died making. Some parts of the film may perhaps work even better than they may of done had he lived – some of the best films are triumphs over adversity and adverse conditions don’t come much greater than your star dying mid-shoot. But whatever works and doesn’t in the film it is hard – impossible on a first viewing – to divorce yourself from the knowledge you bring into the theatre.

On first feeling Parnassus seems patchy, and curiously it feels like a film that may not have worked as well as it does had nothing happened to Ledger. Don’t get me wrong I’d rather have a Gilliam failure and Ledger still alive to put it behind him and move on than a wonderful film that is largely the result of his tragic death. But we don’t have that so I’m just looking at what’s there.

The fact is the film is at it’s best when galloping around the fantastical worlds of the Imaginarium, with Ledger’s character Tony now played by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. Depp and Farrell are particularly good and imbue the film with an energy lacking in much of it.

The casting generally is good. Christopher Plummer is steadfast excellence as always. Lily Cole is a surprisingly strong choice. I’ve never understood the viewpoint of Cole as “sooooooo beautiful” that the gossip sheets and magazines espouse but she has a quirky intrigue that works wonders in a Gilliam world and proves herself as an actress amongst a proven group of impressive performers. Hers is probably the best debut performance I can recall of a model or singer turning to acting. She puts a lot of professional actresses (no Keiras named!) to shame.

Andrew Garfield is that intriguing mix of annoying and brilliant. Like DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? I started out thinking he was terrible and then grew to realise it was just that I hated him, his character. He annoyed the hell out of me. In another words he had inhabited the character so fully, so convincingly that my negative feelings toward him where directed at the fictional character. A superb performance.

Tom Waits steals moments constantly. Waits hasn’t been given such a juicy role that fit him better since Renfield in Coppola’s Dracula and he revels as Dr Nick (the devil) here.

Oddly the performance that, again I specify on first viewing, leaves you a bit underwhelmed is Ledgers. It is not a bad performance but the expectations as you go in, knowing it was his last performance, means you expect something special. Brokeback Mountain/Dark Knight special. But of course not every role is as powerful as his in Brokeback or as scene-stealing as the Joker. I mean he didn’t know it was his last performance for crying out loud. Therefore it cannot possibly live up to expectations and is destined to underwhelm until multiple viewings and some distance allow it to be judged fairly. That there was such a fully formed character there that three other actors could step in to play alternate universe versions of it entirely convincingly is arguably a testament to how strong a performance Ledger did give. It is not a likeable character or a flashy character (it doesn’t even really seem the main character until the alternate worlds with the alternate Tonys come in) and so Ledger’s understated subtleties are easy to miss.

When you watch Fisher King the first time you remember Robin Williams, not Jeff Bridges. In Twelve Monkeys it’s Brad Pitt that comes away with you not Bruce Willis. And yet on further viewings Bridges’ performance seems superb, Willis’ perhaps the best of his career. I suspect on repeated viewings I’m going to see the strength of Ledger’s performance better. I hope so.

And of course this is a problem much of the film has. Gilliam doesn’t make simple, overly explained films for the masses – thank Gilliam – you have to work with them. The problem here is that with your mind distracted with thoughts of Ledger and expectations built on that promise of Gilliam at his creative best, three step-in performances and Ledger’s final performance it’s hard to get your mind around the story and enjoy it as a piece of work.

Sometimes Gilliam films work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they get better and better on repeat viewings (Brazil); sometimes they work instantly (Twelve Monkeys); sometimes they seem to work but the more you see them or think about them they crumble and ultimately don’t (Brothers Grimm). Sometimes they just seem to be a mix of great ideas, wonderful performances and ingenius set pieces but hampered by an overabundance of theatricality and almost too much going on for its own good (Baron Munchausen). On a first viewing Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus feels like this latter. Bits work, bits don’t. It’s enjoyable in places but perplexing ultimately.

I will definitely revisit it though to see if changes on repeat viewings. I feel sure it will, but whether that’s a good or bad thing, well, I’ll have to wait and see. I do advise seeing it at least once on the big screen though because the visuals here are a treat.

Latest screening: Fame

2009-10-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

I have to bring down the axe on this one.

There was a great line in Edward Porter’s review of the new Fame in the Sunday Times that said something along the lines of “Remember their names? I can barely remember their faces!”

This essential sums up all that is wrong with the new Fame movie. There is nothing memorable about it.

You would think that when making a film about a group of dramatic arts and music students you would seek out the most talented unknowns out their. There must be dozens of them surely. Which makes you wonder how on Earth they finished up with this bunch of no-hopers! There is only one kid with any discernible talent, the pianist-turned-singer who has a teen Jennifer Hudson vibe, amongst the young cast. The rest is filled with lousy singers, uninspired dancers and wooden actors.

It does serve to make the underused teaching staff (Kelsey Grammer, Megan Mullahy, Bebe Neuwirth, Charles S Dutton) stand out more but I doubt that was an intention. In fact the script and direction goes out of its way to underserve these actors. Mullahy is given a terrible song to sing at a karaoke bar which does nothing to serve her natural singing talent, serving instead to make her sound shrill. It does perhaps show why her character did not make it as a successful singer and is just a teacher but that would be giving the director far too much credit I suspect and, besides, just not explain the awed gawping of the students. Grammer crops up in this scene out of nowhere making you think he was maybe just shoved in to give him more screen time. While Dutton has an hilarious storyline where one “troubled” student is telling a story and, in the timeline of the movie, it takes Dutton 2 years to ask the logical response question. What have these guys been doing for 2 years?!

And that brings me to the script which has two huge problems. The first is the timeline. The film follows the students over 3 years at the school, but does so so swiftly that it allows no time for growth. Most of the scenes follow in an ordered logic that would work just as well in a film that spanned a single week as 3 whole years. There is no growth. From one year to the next none of the characters appear to have developed, to have learnt a single thing. Those that are morose and troubled in year one are the same in year three. Naïve on day one? Yup, naïve on graduation. And this equally serves to kill any possible chance of rooting for a character to succeed. You don’t see characters getting better. Suddenly you are just jumped to another year and lo and behold someone quitting because they have an acting or dancing gig and you not only wonder “how did that happen?” but “who is that anyway?” The script does such a poor job of setting the characters up that often a characters “big moment” seems to be their only moment, leaving the audience shrugging and looking at their watches.

The other problem is the phenomenal lack of tension and drama. There seriously is none. It appears to be a phenomenon in Hollywood films I’m noticing more and more that they are so determined to hit all bases and offend absolutely no one that there is an almost comical lack of drama. The recent “thriller” Obsessed was this way. It had zero thrills. Fame is the same and hint as possible drama through unhappy parents or disappointments is so instantly resolved that no tension had built. A scene with one character possibly suicidal I was audibly rooting for the guy to kill himself just to give the film some sort of drama, an element of edge, a moment of guts, but no. Nothing. The closest thing you get to anticipation watching Fame (2009) is hoping it may at some point actually have something to anticipate!

This is probably partly the problem with hiring a choreographer to direct the movie. A good director (like the original film’s Alan Parker) can hire a good choreographer to help him but I guess a choreographer can’t exactly hire another director for advice. This films screams “I have no sense of story and drama” and while much of the blame can clearly be assigned to the script and the awful casting a good director would have seen those problems and, at least casting wise, probably helped avoid or overcome them. The director here is massively out of his depth.

Fame’s worst offence though is the truly unrealistic view of the world it portrays. The original went some way to at least suggest the work that such students have to put in, though perhaps in this age of reality TV where any moron can become an instant star this would be an unteachable, untenable lesson. Here any success any of the students have comes seemingly by luck and “right-place right-time” factors or from outside help. The school doesn’t seem to have helped them at all. And on top of that none of these students would make it because they are so phenomenally devoid of talent. A cast of talented unknowns with a choreographer director proved what can be done in Disney’s High School Musical. Given the potential for revisiting Fame in a modern day setting everyone involved should be ashamed of what they’ve turned out here.

Latest screening: Creation

2009-10-12T09:35:00.001-07:00

A noble, if largely cerebral and often unengaging drama Creation has the problem of wanting to be about a moment more than a man; not quite biopic and not quite epiphanic story. This follows Darwin in the year leading up to the creation of Origin Of Species and its publication but deals more in the mental state of Darwin - his anxiety over writing and publishing a potentially incendiary theory; the conflict between his growing atheism, his wife's faith and his own weakness for wanting to avoid confrontation; and his dealing with the premature death of his (clearly favourite) child.

Of course this condences time and uses flashbacks to suggest all this conflict existed within Darwin as he pondered whether to write and publish his theory, and indeed if he were capable. But then dramatic licence is allowable, i don't believe biopics and true stories need be 100% accurate. Buy a book for God's sake!

But the main problem here is it's just not all that interesting watching Darwin spend 2 hours going over and over the same anxieties and issues. The drama feels forced because really you get the sense that in reality there's not much drama there.

It also doesn't help that as good as the supporting cast is they are barely in it, even Jennifer Connelly has next to nothing to do. She has more than the paltry single scene afforded Toby Jones or the couple of snippets for Jeremy Northam, and she is good when called upon - in a thankless role. It is at least impressive on her part that for a role that could so easily have come off as a cold woman you sense the care and love under her frustration and opposition to Darwin's atheism and self-obsession. Connelly has fallen into the seeming cold trap before and i suspect the underlying feelings achieved here and thanks in great part to the actual relationship she has with husband Paul Bettany.

Almost all the film sees Bettany either alone or interacting with a ghost/hallucation(?) of his dead daughter - acting as his conscience, his sounding-board, his only friend, his outlet and, of course, the only dramatic device the film has to avoid 90+ minutes of Darwin talking to himself. She's essentially Wilson the ball from Cast Away!

Despite the film's flaws Paul Bettany impresses. Doing more than you would think possible to make the film work it skates by on his performance, being just short enough that you don't lose all patience. He is engaging while the film fails to be and it raises the overall impact. Generally though this is a film that lives and dies on Bettany's shoulders.

Darwin may be a name remembered for centuries to come but it's doubtful memories of this film will continue much past leaving the theatre.

Latest screening: Toy Story 3D re-release

2009-10-12T09:25:00.001-07:00

Is it possible for Toy Story (still Pixar's best film - and it has a heck of a competition - and one of the greatest animated films ever made) to be even better? Well, no - but it was fantastic to see it in 3D and back on the big screen.

Re-released in the UK for a one-week run a caught it twice. And it was glorious. I take nothing away from the 3D, it did look cool and on the first viewing it was almost impossible not to gaup for the first 5 minutes at the effect, but on reflection and the second viewing i realised it really only shows how brilliantly realised the Pixar worlds are already.

Many of the proponants of the new 3D talk about it being used to show depth and create a world instead of being a gimmick throwing things at you. The pluses and minuses of such an approach could not be more evident than here. This is film not made originally for 3D projection and therefore has none of the "gimmicks", so then the 3D is just adding the depth talked about. But then this is computer generated animation, it is and looks 3D regardless of the 3D projection. If the world has been thought out and created with care - and let's face it, it's Pixar so that's a given - then does the 3D projection add anything? I have to say no. If it had been re-released just as a standard re-release (like Disney always used to do with all their greats on a rota when i was a kid) i'd still have gone to see it twice.

But as said, it was still fun to see the effect applied even if it was largely unnecessary. For those who missed out look out for Toy Story 2 re-release coming to the UK on January 22. Let's hope now that these 3D prints have been paid for we'll see it cropping up back at cinemas a bit more often.

Latest screening: Me And Orson Welles

2009-10-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

Orson Welles is alive and well and residing in the body of British actor Christian McKay!

McKay is simply stunning here as Welles - the look, the eye-brow, the mannerisms, the bounce, the voice - never have i seen Welles, as a character, better done. Many have tried few have succeeded (although i have a soft spot for Vincent D'Onofrio's Welles-cameo in Ed Wood. If you are a BAFTA voter you have to see this just for McKay, he's that good!

The same can be said in general for Richard Linklater's film in terms of featuring Welles and using the whole "putting on a show" theatrical device. I didn't like Oliver Parker's Fade To Black with Danny Huston hamming Welles. RKO 281 was solid and Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock was a noble, if unsatisfyingly drear effort. Aided by McKay's towering achievement, a (mostly) superb supporting cast and a deft lightness Linklater has delivered his best film in years.

To my mind he can be hit (Dazed & Confused, Before Sunrise) and miss (A Scanner Darkly, Fast Food Nation), but this is firmly in the hit category.

Other non-Welles films, such as Kenneth Branagh's In The Bleak Mid-Winter, have failed in their attempts to have fun at "putting on a show" format because they are too in love with moments that haver that "you just had to be there" element. Christopher Guest made a go of it in Waiting For Guffman, but then he was mocking the pretentions so many others embrace as part of the scene. Somehow McKay's (as Welles) enormous personality and Linklater's breezy "makes it look so easy" style make you feel like you are there in Me & Orson Welles and it works to great effect - tantalising the viewer with moments and flashes of the play to come without giving it to you until the right time. The 'Me' of the title really becomes the viewer. You are sweft along me both filmmaker and Orson (and it really does feel like Orson. After a few moments i never doubted the Linklater had somehow resurrected Welles and saddled him with Zac Efron!)

And this brings me the film's one real problem (and surely a marketing nightmare for the distributors!) Now i'm no Efron hater, i haven't seen any of the HSM movies, but he was fine in both Hairspray and 17 Again but here he has to register in a fantastic ensemble of actors and he simply doesn't. Admittedly he is hamstrung a little by the role. Since the story and Linklater's direction make the viewer feel like 'Me' observing Welles as he creates his legendary production of Julius Caesar and the Mercury theatre company it is easy to kind of forget about Efron's Richard, or at least to dismiss him as Welles so often does. He just makes no impression at all. He's not bad he's just not really significant.

This leads to the inevitable problem that as we reach the films final act, once the play is done and Welles is off screen you feel like the movie is over. You've seen everything there is to see here, it is time to move along. But no, because Efron's story is unresolved so we get another 10 minutes of him and his ending. But you simply don't care. Once McKay/Welles had gone off with his supporting cast the movie was over, it just didn't know it!

Amongst the supporting cast Claire Danes continues in display as easy charm, effortlessly likeable and curiously beautiful in her quirky angular way. Zoe Kazan (last seen in Revolutionary Road) is a delight as the underused other woman in Efron's life (although if she'd been used more it would have meant more Efron, less Welles so maybe that's a blessing in disguise). James Tupper is excellent as Joseph Cotten, a great match for McKay's Welles. If they ever (God forbid) remake The Third Man they have the cast! Ben Chaplin is also marvellous as George Couloris. I'm constantly impressed by Chaplin and have no idea why he isn't a bigger name. Kelly Reilly doesn't have much to do but look gorgeous, which, naturally, she does with ease. Eddie Marsan seems miscast as John Houseman. I like Marsan but he didn't fit the bill for me here.

Ultimately this is McKay's show. He gives an electrifying performance at the center of a movie that while it is about Welles efforts to put on Julius Caesar is a charming, funny and swift-paced joy; but unfortunately it also has to make space for Zac Efron and his own storyline and there-in lie the flaws.

How you market this i don't know! I can't imagine Efron fans getting excited about a film set in the 1930s about the creation of an historic theatrical production staged by a man who's been dead for 25 years! And on the flipside i nearly didn't see it because i dismissed it, on first awareness, as a Zac Efron movie and so not for me. Only on a second invitation did i notice it was directed by Linklater (always interesting, if not always successful) which charged my want to see it.

Ultimately though if you want to see it because you're an Efron fan, well go see it because your guy's in it and because you'll get to see something a bit different from what you're used it. And maybe you'll like it. If you're not an Efron fan, never fear, you can all but forget he's there and just enjoy Linklater at his breezy best and the best performance of Welles on screen since the great man departed this earth (and took possession of McKay!)

Latest screening: The Invention Of Lying

2009-10-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

Oh dear! I had high hopes for this Ricky Gervais comedy. He's never proven himself on film, but here he was writing, directing, producing. He had come up with a great, funny concept. This was his chance to shine.

Unfortunately the light at the end of this tunnel is the train coming to run us down.

Like so many "high concept" comedies this is a concept in desperate, futile search of a plot... and some funnier lines.

It's no disaster. There are some funny bits. It starts well (or at least does after a hideously misguided voice-over explanation of the basic plot set-up) but the joke that everyone not only can't lie (lying doesn't exist you see, hence the title - obvious, right? So why the voice over explanation Ricky, why, oh, why!) but volunteers the truth, no matter how harsh, at every occasion quickly wears thin. He gets about 20 minutes out of it and some people handle it better than others. Curiously it is often the straight actors (like Jennifer Garner) that play it better and the comedians (like Tina Fey) who sound too much like they are delivering calculated lines to get a laugh - and therefore don't. I love Fey but every line of hers fell flat for me here while Garner sold the hell out of it. Perhaps it's the less comedic actors lose themselves more in the character and world and aren't trying for the gag, the laugh, just trusting in the script, etc. I don't know but it's noticeable time and again here.

A risky (for some American audiences) plot element involving his inadvertent creation of religion and the spiralling outcome of this is also amusing, but again it's funnier as an idea than in execution. Out-staying its welcome.

There are also some dynamite cameos, including two that had my laughing simply by their presence. A bar tender that joins Gervais and the excellent Louis C.K. in a scene is both funny by presence and in his dynamite delivery. I'm not going to say who plays it because if you're going to watch the film it was one of the highlights for me.

As was another cameo by a usually fairly serious actor (although he has shown a comedic side on occasion) as a traffic cop. Again just his presence is funny from the moment he walks on screen and the voice (cause you won't instantly recognise him) gives him away.

A scene with two Extras regulars is fun but feels out of place in the film, almost playing like an afterthought put in for faithful fans.

Amongst the other leads Garner triumphs and Louis C.K. is very funny, but Jonah Hill is underused and never hits the high notes he achieved in Funny People, while Tina Fey doesn't bring it (and i so wanted her to) and Rob Lowe really fails in an update of his Wayne's World character.

But ultimately this descends into sentiment and lacks resolve or real drama. It often feels like a string of stand-up one-liners extended into plot devices (as there is no lying movies are a guy -nice touch cameo from Christopher Guest as one such - reading a book on camera) that work once but then are repeated over and over, beating the gag into submission. Ideas like the use of lying to make people feel better are similarly used once to affecting and comedic effect but then overplayed.

And before you know it you're bogged down in a film about perception of others and looking beyond the surface that could have been reached by any number of devices, making the lying thing irrelevant!

Like Bruce Almighty the concept can only get the film so far before you notice you have almost no interest in the characters, there is no discernable plot and we're going to descend into sentimentality without passing through palpable drama or achieving any resolve.

Disappointing is the only appropriate word.

New Studio Ghibli!

2009-10-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

A new Studio Ghibli movie is always a reason to celebrate (even if we in the UK are left waiting 18 months + between the Japanese release and appearance on our shores!) and news came this week that the legendary animation house's next prject will see the return of director Isao Takahata (Graveyard Of The Fireflies, Only Yesterday) for the first time in a decade. Takahata co-founded Ghibli with the more famous (to Western audiences) face of the company Hayao Miyazaki and many consider Graveyard Of The Fireflies to be one the the greatest animated films of all-time.

The new film will be based on one of Japan's oldest folktales, which dates from the 10th century, The Tale Of The Bamboo Cutter.

Added to this the news the Ghibli blog reports Miyazaki-san is setting up two more features to do himself in the next 3 years. For a man who announced his retirement with Howl's Moving Castle, way before Ponyo was headed our way, this can only delight his fans.

2 New Trailers: Men Who... and Inception

2009-09-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

Men Who Stare At Goats - okay the combination of George Clooney and Jeff Bridges in a daft-as-brushes comedy is enough to get me into a theatre regardless but this does look damn funny, and Kevin Spacey gets the best trailer moment with the wedding scenes.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/themenwhostareatgoats/

Inception - only a teaser for Chris Nolan's new mind-bender but it looks intriguing and let's face it the man has never made a bad movie and he has a cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard and past Nolan collaborators Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine so surely this'll be a winner.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810099246/video/15201197

Updated: Avatar trailer! New faster link and now with The Wolfman too

2009-08-20T07:34:00.000-07:00

Need to watch this a few more times and am seeing the extended 15 minutes trailer on Friday (which i think is in 3D). I'm sure this could blow my mind in 3D but the blue dudes look slightly odd. Still psyched though.

http://www.apple.com/movies/fox/avatar/avatar2009aug0820a-tsr_720p.mov

This link takes an age to download and the apple.com links are currently not working but you can source the above link and others (which may be smaller and therefore faster) at comingsoon.net

The best link currently sems to be through Time Online and clicking on a picture caption. Posting the onward link on its own doesn't work (reverts back to Avatar website) but go through the below and you can get instant access:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6803770.ece

I have to say i've seen it 3 times now and the blue guys are growing on me.

Also out now we have The Wolfman trailer. Endless delays make me wary of this film but i still think it looks decent so who knows. It's a great story and this is a great cast so is it studios not knowing how to deal with a picture in the horror genre not aimed at teenagers or has it all gone awry somewhere along the line?

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/the-wolfman.html?showVideo=1

New trailers: 13 (including new Jonze, Wes Anderson, Gilliam & Coens)

2009-08-14T08:18:00.000-07:00

Where The Wild Things Are - DAMN! This looks so set to be my film of the year. It's been on my most anticipated all year and the more i see the more excited i get. Can't wait. Latest full trailer below and (as usual) on trailer bar, right:

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808412037/video/14932815

The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus - wow! This looks stunning, everything i wanted from the new Gilliam film. I just hope it can live up to the promise of this trailer and the fantastic cast.

http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/features/exclusive/

The Fantastic Mr Fox - The further you get in this trailer the better it looks. Took me 30 seconds to get past the look which threw me to start with but this does look very funny. An animated film from Wes Anderson with voice cast including Clooney, Streep and Bill Murray is too intriguing for words.

http://movies.yahoo.com/premieres/14824491/standardformat

It's Complicated - speaking of Streep! Okay, i'm sorry but i loved What Women Want and really enjoyed both The Holiday and Something's Gotta Give! I know, i know i have no excuses, i'm just a sucker for these films and this one looks like another winner to me. Streep is on a phenomenal run at the moment, Alec Baldwin, usually consistent, is peaking right now and Steve Martin seems to bringing that old comedic charm rarely seen since the early 90s. Sign me up.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/itscomplicated/

The Blind Side - okay, so i'm obviously just in a sappy mood today because i kinda want to see this too (though it's partly because i like Bullock). It looks classically run-of-the-mill but i know i'll give it a shot.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810088176/video/14881491

The Boys Are Back - ah-ha, the real me returns, 'cause this looks like a sap-fest that will iritate the hell out of me. Lousy all the way, not helped of course by the wooden presence of Clive Owen.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810062537/video/14931811

A Serious Man - woo-hoo! You got to love the Coens (in fact i'm seeing Big Lebowski again at the cinema tonight). This looks in the wacky fun side of the brothers school as per Raising Arizona - perhaps almost squarely landing between Barton Fink and Intolerable Cruelty!

http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/07/29/first-brilliant-trailer-for-the-coen-brothers-a-serious-man/

Dorian Gray - this trailer starts badly but gets better. I'm not sure. I don't like the style, and it is VERY stylised. But the presence of the wonderful Rebecca Hall will alone guarantee i watch it.

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=11198

Tron Legacy - ah, 80s reminiscers (it that a word?!) rejoice. Flynn is back, and in 3D no less!

http://www.flynnlives.com/media/video/0xendgame.aspx

Did You Hear About The Morgans - aarrgh! This looks horrible. As if a comedy with Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker wasn't enough reason not to watch a film this trailer would have to be the convincer!

http://movies.yahoo.com/premieres/15032495/standardformat/

Gentlemen Broncos - I've never heard of this but with Sam Rockwell, the usually reliable young actor Michael Angarano and from the director of Napoleon Dynamite i'm ashamed to say so. Especially as this looks hilarious. Enjoy.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/gentlemenbroncos/

New York, I Love You - after Paris, Je T'Aime comes another set of all-star vignettes, this times odes to the Big Apple. Looks good, but these vignette movies are always hit and miss. We'll have to see.

http://www.newyorkiloveyouthemovie.com/

Law Abiding Citizen - and what would a new set of trailers be without a cheesy thriller than looks hugely entertaining!

http://movies.apple.com/movies/independent/lawabidingcitizen/lawabidingcitizen_h.480.mov?width=480&height=204

The Remake Debate: A Consideration

2009-08-12T07:06:00.000-07:00

The last couple of weeks have brought news of upcoming remakes. Nothing new you may think, and that is true, every week we seem to get more news of upcoming remakes.

The two that are on my mind though are particularly disturbing to me, partly for the reason it’s hard to say why!

Blood Simple, the Coen brothers’ superb noir debut, is to be remade by Zhang Yimou. I love Blood Simple and the Coens and the idea of any film of theirs being remade would obviously bother me. But then I like Zhang. He made Raise The Red Lantern, Hero and House Of Flying Daggers. He has a style that would suggest bringing something very different to Blood Simple no doubt. So should I give it a chance? Probably. But I don’t want to.

Maybe it is because I have been impressed enough by Zhang to wonder why he need remake Blood Simple. Why not create a similar but new story, simply using Blood Simple’s basic premise as a jumping off point? But then perhaps that is exactly what he IS doing and it is reporting or press releasing that is at fault – going for the easy angle rather than telling the true story. So maybe I have to wait and see, gather more info.

The second is Harvey, to be remade by no less a film-maker than Steven Spielberg. I love the James Stewart original film and why anyone would want to remake such a perfect film is beyond me, especially Spielberg. Now Spielberg’s a great filmmaker (although he’s been running sub-par for a while now) but he’s hit the remake trail before recently with his poorly conceived War Of The Worlds, which pales next to the vastly superior story of the 50s original. Sure the effects now allow for a more real edge but the emotional core of the story and easy enjoyment of the characters were gone. And it is single-handedly to blame for the following glut of 50s sci-fi remakes such as the recent The Day The Earth Stood Still and the upcoming Fantastic Voyage, When Worlds Collide and Forbidden Planet.

I would argue for instance that Joe Dante had the right idea when he clearly took Fantastic Voyage (and his love of 50s sci-fi) as the jumping off point for InnerSpace. A brilliant film that in is in no way a remake but owes everything it is to Fantastic Voyage and the genre of that decade. The same could be argued for Tarantino’s about-to-be-released (and brilliant, review coming soon) Inglourious Basterds. He may have used the title and elements from Enzo Castellari’s 1978 film Inglorious Bastards (as well as a lot of structural and character archetypes from Leone) but it is not a remake. The geeks automatically give him the benefit of the doubt of course but should we do that for everyone?

So then all this probably once again raises the question of is a remake ever justified? And as a side question what constitutes a remake?

To tackle the second question first, this is a funny issue. For instance if a film is quite different from its original blue-print film is it a remake? The recent, and perfectly passable and entertaining in my opinion, Taking Of Pelham 123 is very different while contradictorily set-up quite similarly to the 70s original. They have the same title. The central characters serve the same purposes although both are significantly different to there 70s counterparts (the casting alone shows that) and others characters (the mayor most obviously) couldn’t possibly be more different. Yet it is dismissed as a remake. True it is not anywhere near as good a film as the original film, much like the remake of Assault On Precinct 13, but also like Precinct 13 it is different enough and entertaining enough to justify its existence in my opinion.

And what’s more the original Pelham was based on a book. New films of Alice In Wonderland, Clash Of The Titans, Robin Hood and Conan are in the works. Some call them remakes but are they. If you make a new Hamlet (and one is in the works from Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke) no one would dream of calling it a remake. Nor, I feel sure, would anyone call Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland a remake. And yet they did call Burton’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory a remake! Why? Both are based on beloved children’s books. Burton’s Factory bore little in common with the Gene Wilder film, and arguably far more in common with the book.

Myth and legend like Robin Hood and Clash Of The Titans clearly belong in the same category and yet while no one would throw the R word at Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe’s new telling of the legendary outlaw, the new Clash Of The Titans is always accompanied by the dreaded word.

Recently I read a talk back on Aint It Cool News when someone got bent out of shape with people calling the upcoming American version of Swedish vampire masterpiece Let The Right One In a remake. He argued that it wasn’t a remake because the original was based on a book. Would he, I wonder, have made that case for Taking Of Pelham? I argued on that occasion that it was a remake as director Matt Reeves had only ever referenced the Swedish film when talking about his new version, and never the book, making it clear he was not doing an American adaptation of the book, he was using the film as his jumping off point. So I guess with something like Clash Of The Titans the true question is has the intention of the filmmakers been to remake the film, bringing new effects to bare where Ray Harryhausen so perfectly delivered his stop-motion genius before, or are they going back to Greek mythology directly?

I haven’t seen anyone say the upcoming Marvel film of Captain America is a remake, but I distinctly remember an 80s version with Scott Paulin playing The Red Skull. And yet the new Karate Kid is considered a remake despite being called Kung Fu Kid, having different central characters of different ages and races, etc. So which is which? Or are both both?!

Okay, a tricky issue and perhaps impossible to resolve, so what of the idea of a remake in general? Is it ever justified? Can we say yes when so few remakes live up to the original? But can we say no when some (Cronenberg’s The Fly, Don Siegel’s The Killers, or Phillip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of Siegel’s own Invasion Of The Body Snatchers for instance) prove that a great remake can be made to stand in its own right.

The Siegel example is an interesting example. To take a modern director look at John Carpenter. His Assault On Precinct 13 was remade as a slick Hollywood thriller, but was perfectly entertaining in its own right. As good? No, but good? Yes. But then Carpenter’s Halloween and The Fog have seen hideous remakes and rumours persist of new versions of both They Live and Escape From New York on the books. Fans call for a moratorium on Carpenter remakes, but then didn’t Carpenter himself give us perhaps the greatest example of how good a remake can be with his 1982 version of The Thing – a remake of Howard Hawks’ 50s sci-fi The Thing From Another World? (Carpenter’s version is also now on the remake slates!)

Is there a cut off date? Is Harvey okay, or the 50s sci-fi based on the arguments of many people that “most modern audiences haven’t sent he original anyway”? But if we accept that then knowing that studios primarily drive films for the teen market can we complain that we 30-somethings complain about the preponderance of 80s remakes? Arguably, no! We want our cake even though we’ve eaten it.

Are foreign language remakes more acceptable? A lot of people seem to think so. The talk-backers on geek websites often seem to have no issue (or at least less issue) with remakes of films like Ringu (The Ring), Infernal Affairs (The Departed), Le Diner De Cons (Dinner For Schmucks), 13 Tzameti (13) etc than remakes of US films, despite the fact that the US films being remade are far older than the foreign ones (which are often very recent – which goes back to the Let The Right One In remake). Again the “bringing to a broader audience” argument is made. This is an appalling argument because a) it is the same yet is usual made by people who ignore the argument made for remakes of old US films above, and b) it basically a way of saying “we have to cater to the lowest common denominator or lazy and/or ignorant people”! Which is probably why studios make them, since they is generally the approach!

And in fact where would those that are anti a remake or Harvey but fine with a remake of Infernal Affairs stand on the proposed remake of Kurosawa’s Rashomon? It is a superb, classic film. But then both A Fistful Of Dollars (Yojimbo) and The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai) are US remakes of Kurosawa films that are great in there own right. Again, Precinct and Pelham, they are not as good as the originals (especially Magnificent Seven which isn’t close to Kurosawa’s masterpiece) but they stand on their own merits (and no I’m not saying Tony Scott’s Pelham is as good as Leone’s Dollars but there is a parallel here too many people seem happy to ignore).

And there in lies the rub. When this argument rages most participants pick and choose the parts that fit there case while conveniently ignoring those that don’t. Happy with foreign remakes but not US! Hamlet not a remake because based on a play originally but Pelham is a remake despite being based on a book originally (Hamlet vs Pelham my Uni film profs would be so proud!) Fine with old movies I haven’t seen but not ones from my lifetime that others younger than me may not have seen! Against all remakes but can’t admit there are some genuinely excellent films that are directly or technically remakes!

Even the argument for only remaking films that could be improved, not excellent films – which always rears its head in these debates – ignores the fact that many of the strongest remakes that make the case for the existence of their kind (Magnificent Seven, 3:10 To Yuma, The Thing, Insomnia) are all remakes of excellent films themselves (hell, Abel Ferrara’s 90s remake of Body Snatchers is pretty good too!)

You can’t rely on past history either. John McTiernan made the very entertaining and some (including myself) would argue better-than-the-original remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. He followed this up with the horrendous remake of Rollerball!

So this an argument that will rage for the ages, and no doubt in 20 years the current crop of teenagers lapping up all those 80s remakes we whine about will raise all the same issues again over remakes of 2012, GI Joe and Avatar (and probably their generations versions of Friday The 13th, My Bloody Valentine, etc), but I have to conclude if there are occasions when a remake can be justified (and there are many more good examples of why we can’t than I’ve thrown in here) then we can’t dismiss all remakes out of hand. Each has to be taken on its own merits, not least because when you get down to it it be hardly even be a remake!

Other remakes coming up include Fame, Red Dawn, Footloose, Hellraiser, A Nightmare On Elm Street, The Crazies, The Wolfman, Piranha, Straw Dogs, Arthur, Romancing The Stone, Highlander, Total Recall and Cliffhanger – where will these fall?

Catch-up mini review: The Taking Of Pelham 123

2009-08-12T03:34:00.000-07:00

Not to be confused with the far superior 70s film The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three this is a perfectly passable remake (reimagining/new version of book/pick your own, see above) that reminded me of the Assault on Precinct 13 remake. Was it necessary? No. Was it as good as the original? No. Was it terrible travesty of filmmaking judged on its own merit? No.

If fact here is a perfectly entertaining film with Denzel playing slightly different from his standard character; a solid script by the usually reliable Brian Helgeland that is actually (when you get beneath the concept and top layer) quite different in many ways from the 70s film; and James Gandolfini on dynamite form as a mayor who couldn't be a more different character than the mayor in the original.

In fact it is the differences in the characters that aids this version. The casting alone (Denzel in the Matthau role, Travolta in the Shaw) should have told us simply doing a like-for-like wouldn't work. This is in the The Thomas Crown Affair, Dawn Of The Dead, The Italian Job, Assault On Precinct 13 school of remakes - totally unnecessary but actually really quite fun and entertaining in their own right. They may not pass muster in direct comparison to the original (although i might give McTiernan an edge on Thomas Crown myself) but as a stand alone film for a bit of entertainment they are perfectly fine. I enjoyed Pelham much more than most of the "summer blockbusters" this year for a start.

So not a classic, and not a must see, but not a disaster and better than you might expect. The Denzel/Tony Scott pairing may never match their first collaboration - the excellent Crimson Tide - but i've yet to see one that didn't at least make me enjoy that couple of hours.

Catch-up mini review: Ice Age 3: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs

2009-08-12T03:17:00.000-07:00

This one was a surprise. I liked the first Ice Age, largely because it didn't try to overcomplicate its story, but mostly for the entertaining Scrat - bringing silent comedy gold to modern animation before WALL-E was even on the drawing board. I then found nothing to like beyond Scrat in the the forced and unfunny Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. It showed me what i had suspected in the first, the main characters just weren't that interesting or fun.

So i was shocked to find that rather than doing a DreamWorks and resting on the franchise laurels, working on the basis "if we make it, they will come" (i'm looking at you Shrek The Third) the team behind Ice Age 3 have crafted a hugely fun entertainment, and really looked back on the characters and brought them to life for the audience. For the first time i wasn't just waiting for Scrat to come back on, i was enjoying following the main story.

Furthermore this is by far the best use of 3D to heighten the entertainment experience that i've seen. Some use 3D for cheap effect and to try and generate more more for poor movies (Journey To The Center Of The Earth, Monsters Vs Aliens), some use it for a more immersive world (Coraline, Pixar) but Blue Sky use it here it in a dynamic way i've not yet seen. Chase scenes and action moments are more visceral, comedy moments (one involving Scrat, his female counterpart and the ever elusive acorn trapped in bubbles is gold) made even funnier. It is smart, smart use of the technology and should stand as an example of what can be achieved with 3D.

So the characters are more enjoyable, the story keeps you involved, the new character (voiced by Simon Pegg) is a vast improvement over those introduced in part 2, the comedy comes thick and fast and ellicits genuine laughs and the 3D is superbly used. No surprise to me it became the biggest animated film of all time at the international box office. One of the summer's best with ease.

Catch-up mini review: The Soloist

2009-07-31T07:22:00.000-07:00

You kind of know what you're going to get from this film going in and you're right. Here is one of those films that seems to have been put together in the sole design of getting its lead an Oscar nomination and as such, and as usual, it fails - falling flat on its face.

The Soloist is a story of so-so interest that we are told we should be interested in because this is a true story. Yes, but is it one that needed to be told? At least in cinemas? This story is cable movie-of-the-week standard in both writing and direction for the most part with a cynical, calculated performance from Jamie Foxx that seems like he signed up thinking "well better get my acceptance speech ready"! This is Sean Penn in I Am Sam, this is Halle Berry in Things We Lost In The Fire - an example of an actor believing there own press and thinking yeah, i'm good, show me the gold.

As so often (think Benicio Del Toro in Things We Lost) there is another actor genuinely acting his ass off - the ever reliable Robert Downey Jr - but it isn't enough because the director really is only interested in Foxx's central character - it is after all his story despite the fact it comes entirely from Downey's point-of-view - and also because the story just isn't that interesting.

Worthy and a perfectly reasonable time-passer but nothing special.

Catch-up mini review: Sunshine Cleaning

2009-07-31T07:09:00.000-07:00

A better concept than it is a movie Sunshine Cleaning is aided immensely by two wonderful, charming and likeable stars and strong supporting players.

Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are still in career ascent (especially Blunt) and so much of what is to like here is the chance to watch these two. A great fit together as chalk-and-cheese sisters Blunt (who has consistently impressed since the brilliant My Summer Of Love) and Adams (likewise since Junebug) dominate the film - rightly. But the concept could have been mined better. Here we have two loving but conbative sisters thrown together in work as clean-up crew at crime scenes. It is a high concept that could have been milked but we are too often stuck in the fairly hum-drum life of Adams (affairs with married men, a problem child, an obsession with how old friends might judge her). Elements of this are fine, and necessary. But it becomes the core of the film and wastes a lot of dramatic and comedic potential in the key set-up.

It also often sidelines Blunt as a result and the film would have benefitted greatly from putting the sisters relationship truly front and center instead of pretending too while really only being interested in Adams. Of course Blunt is as reliable as ever, as is Alan Arkin in his, type-cast, wacky, bad influence, ascerbic father role, but both are a little wasted. This is Adams show and she is also good as usual but the film needed to make the sisters equal not have one as just one part of the other's bigger story.

Clifton Collins Jr shines though in the best written supporting role in the film.

Catch-up mini review: Johnny Mad Dog

2009-07-29T04:40:00.001-07:00

Immediately after watching this film i couldn't have told you if i thought it was a good film. A month of so on that hasn't changed.

I do know i hated watching it. Johnny Mad Dog is one of those gruelling, deeply unpleasant viewing experiences that i wouldn't wish on anyone and have almost noone i can recommend it to. But does that make it a bad film - no not necessarily.

It is perhaps a brutally realistic look at guerilla warfare, the futility of both such situations but also of trying to stand in there way or talk round the participants. The film at times seems in love with its murderous, uncompassionate, angry, rapist youth characters, but at others casts an almost condemning eye. Played like a documentary with the kind of footage that would never actually be possible the film is undeniably visceral. The impact on your senses while watching and state of mind after is powerful.

Certainly there is a place for such film. It is no doubt important they are made and that people see them. If they affect one person the way the filmmakers intended then perhaps that's enough. It is horribly stark film to watch though. No character has any redeeming features nor any charisma. And so i won't say it is a bad film, that would be for better people than me to assess no doubt, but i will say i hated watching it (and i'm not one that has a problem with non-entertaining subject matter - Tony Kaye's Lake Of Fire, about abortion, is the best documentary i have ever seen and i would gladly rewatch it). This one is for limited viewing but will likely have its champions.

Latest screening: Moon

2009-07-24T10:04:00.000-07:00

Film of the year? Has to be a major contender.

Moon is a brilliant film, not just “considering the budget…” (it cost $5m), “for a British film” but for once I can be proud of a British film that isn’t a doom-and-gloomer (yes Red Road, London To Brighton, My Summer Of Love, a lot of Mike Leigh, all Ken Loach I’m looking at you – you’re great and I love ya but damn!). Moon it worthy of being talked about in the same breath as the films that inspired it, like Silent Running and Alien (ok more Silent Running than Alien, but nearly).

There are 3 main elements to its genius:

1 – Sam Rockwell. Always great, consistently undervalued Rockwell has been showing time and again since Lawn Dogs that he is one of the best actors around while seemingly only getting indie film-makers to notice! Here he arguably gives his best performance to date (although Lawn Dogs and Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind are tough calls) in multiple roles. The nuances he gives to each character, making them subtly different while essentially similar (which is key) is superb. A tour de force that given the size, nationality and genre of the movie will no doubt be entirely ignored by every awards body when the end of the year roles around – but is hard to imagine anyone matching this year. Impressive is not the word. This should be the movie to finally make people sit up and take proper notice of Rockwell but we been here several times before so it probably won’t be – particularly given the size of release it’s had.

2 – The consistently confounding storyline. No, don’t be scared off by that. It isn’t confusing, but it is stunningly brilliant. It leads you along, giving you just enough information to be ahead of the characters in the film and to make you think “ah ha! I know where this is going”… and then it doesn’t! Then you think you know what it’ll do now that things have changed, and again it goes somewhere else. And it’s never frustrating. It is smart but not smug. And it manages to avoid the trap so many sci-fi films fall into – having a great idea but not knowing how to end it satisfactorily – as this film has it’s cake and eats it and then goes back for seconds!

3 – The effects. Partly budgetary, partly homage to the films it aspires (and succeeds) to be the effects are mostly model miniatures and they are glorious. Touched with minimal well-used and never noticeable CG the movie’s effects are superb. There is an undeniably old school feel to them but they not only feel right for the movie they feel so much more believable than the shoddy CG you see in half the Hollywood movies out there. I love old school practical approaches to special effects (The Fountain effects for instance were inspired and cheap as chips). The effects here both look excellent and enhance the feel of the film.

Forget all the clap-trap blockbusters out there at the moment, if opportunity is there go see Moon. Superb.

New trailers: Book of Eli, Bright Star

2009-07-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

Why am i posting these two, they do nothing for me?! Well, this is intended to primarily be awards thinking and thus i can hardly ignore Jane Campion can I? Wish I could. As for Book Of Eli, well someone might be interested.

Book Of Eli (http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/thebookofeli/large.html)

To be honest this looks like it was intended to be a Wesley Snipes movie and they got Denzel instead! Yet another bleak post-apocalyptic movie and none can match the majesty of the literary world created in Cormac McCarthy's The Road (i doubt even the film version of it - which i'm refusing to watch - could) so i'm kinda done with these films. That said love Gary Oldman, especiallt in "show me the money" cheesy villain mode so maybe.

Bright Star (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810011941/video/14655888)

Jane Campion. What more needs to be said? I've found every film she ever made completely tedious. Some people love her. You know which side of the line you stand on likely this will fit whatever preconceptions you have. Looks like another pile of tedious dreck to me!

Latest screening: Inglourious Basterds

2009-07-23T09:10:00.001-07:00

It just goes to show how wrong you can be. I had not expected to like this film. I was disappointed by both the Kill Bill films (although i preferred the second) and Death Proof (although it was better in the shorter cut of the double-bill release). I love Reservoir Dogs, admire Pulp Fiction and think that Jackie Brown is Tarantino's most mature piece of filmmaking - technically his most superior - including the last great performance elicited from Robert De Niro. Since then it seems to me while his films have been okay (i haven't hated them) he has been treading water in referential, reverential, self-indulgent juvenilia.

Then i read the script last year for Inglourious Basterds - and i hated it! Sure it had some typical QT flouishes and the opening scene was undeniably powerful. There were a couple of great characters. But on page it was more juvenile rubbish, largely ruined by the largesse of the uninteresting Basterds of the title. It made me seriously contemplate not seeing the film. The trailers did nothing to convince me. I only changed by mind when i had the opportunity to see the film with a Tarantino Q&A following in London. I figured it would be worth enduring to hear him in Q&A as i know from interviews how entertaining he can be in person.

So little was i prepared for the sheer exuberant fun and brilliance of Inglourious Basterds.

Easily QT's best work since Jackie Brown it is a triumph.

Yes the references are there but they do not interfere with the story, they are not the driving force. Yes Eli Roth is stunt casting but he works fine, with little to do but look aggressive, and does nothing to hurt the film as i had feared. While i admired QT for using stuntwoman Zoe Bell as herself in Death Proof in order to amp-up the exhilaration of the major stunt scene her lack of any acting ability in a key role was a problem for the film. The same could be said of Tarantino's own appearances in several films, especially From Dusk Till Dawn.

What really makes this work is how BIG it is. The spaghetti western vibe to much of the style, dialogue and performances is wonderfully over the top without descending too far into the cartoon quality of Kill Bill. The violence is so big. The audacity so big. Brad Pitt is so big!

In the trailers the Hitler moment and Pitt's performance bothered me but in the context of the film they are hilarious. Pitt is actually brilliant here, exactly what he needs to be. He is Mifune's blustering samurai in Yojimbo, he is Robards Cheyenne from Once Upon a Time in the West, there is a very James Coburn vibe to him, and of course a suitably Lee Marvin edge.

Christoph Waltz (who i did not previously known) and Melanie Laurent (who i first noticed in a brilliant French-language British short film by Sean Ellis) are sensational and i expect to see both used a lot more in the future. Tarantino has clearly not lost his eye for casting, which seemed to desert him in Death Proof. Waltz is equally large in his performance. Chilling, yet theatrical. He is Fonda from OUATITW, Van Cleef from Good, The Bad & the Ugly. And Laurent is suitably Cardinale innocence but tough, a fighter. They both dazzle here.

That every member of the cast gets the fun to be had from what they are doing while not indulging themselves in just having fun nand trying to get laughs helps tremendously. The laughs - and there are loads - come organically. Only Mike Myers comes close to tipping the wink and pushing it too far but his scene is reigned in just enough - with the help of a fantastic Michael Fassbender who seems pulled directly from the mold of Attenborough's Great Escape leader.

All the actors shine and Tarantino throws in wonderful flourishes, but ones that work with the story. The introduction of Schweiger's Hugo Stiglitz is a riot. After a sensational slow-burn opening and a glorious intro to those inglourious Basterds the pace never lets up and over two and half hours flies by.

It also looks beautiful, marking this as a return to real filmmaking rather than just self-indulgent silliness. The musical choices, as always, are inspired from Morricone on.

The film is audacious and hilarious. After a summer when nearly every film has disappointed me it came as a huge surprise that the real fun and entertaining, but also involving and impressive film should be this one, when i would never have believed it from script form. Welcome back QT. 8/10

New trailer: Alice In Wonderland

2009-07-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

This is what it is. Personally i like the look of it, but simply put if you don't know what you're getting into with a Tim Burton take on Alice In Wonderland then you're madder than Depp's Hatter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09YdMstR1Kk

14, count 'em 14, new trailers!

2009-07-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, i'm back. It's been over a month and work insanity has been keeping me away but i am determined that this week and next will see a sudden explosion of new posts on here.

There will be a new side-bar dedicated to spoof trailers making its debut.

A whole host of films seen over the past 6-7 weeks will finally get reviewed (in mini form).

I will be pondering the whole 10-film best picture category at next year's Oscars and throwing out my thoughts on what the 10 might be.

But first: new trailers.

I won't post all the links here but you will find a brand new set of 14 trailers in the trailers to catch side-panel. All the old ones have been swept away so everything there today is new on here today. I also hope to add the new 2012 trailer later this week when i track down the link for it - saw it today but now can't find it!

Anyway to those featured today. We have a very mixed bunch; something for everyone. The three that are getting me most excited are Ponyo, (500) Days Of Summer and The Informant.

Ponyo, as the new American title has it (Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea for those of us that track the every move of Japanese animation god Hayao Miyazaki), is the trailer for the English-language version of the film featuring the voices of Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina Fey and others but most obviously Liam Neeson.

(500) Days Of Summer features one of my favourite young actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and one of my uber-crushes Zooey Deschanel in what looks to be a "delightful" romantic comedy type. Sign me up my friends, sign me up!

The Informant is Soderbergh and Matt Damon in wacky mode. Think the Coen Brothers version of The Insider and might be just about there. This won't appeal to all but damn this trailer makes me chuckle and the idea of Scott "Quantum Leap" Bakula in a significant role is worth the price of admission alone!

Also new today we have:

Amelia - Hilary Swank looks for Oscar #3 in a bio-pic of Amelia Earhart which, despite being directed by Mira Nair, actually looks quite reasonable.

The Box - can Richard Kelly redeem himself? This thriller certainly looks like it could deliver.

Brothers - how it has taken this long for someone to cast Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire as siblings is beyond me. This looks a tad melodramatic but i like Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman and Sheridan's In America is one of my favourite films of the 2000s so i know i'll be seeing this one.

Couples Retreat - looks like it could bring the funny

Daybreakers - someone gave the Spierig brothers a budget. Hoping they deliver.

District 9 - new full trailer for this intriguing looking sci-fi

Fame - want to hate it but damn i think this trailer is kinda fun!

Funny People - red band trailer for the Apatow channels Brooks film looks slightly less Brooksian

Invention Of Lying - perfect Ricky Gervais subject. Could be fun.

Jennifer's Body - red band trailer for the Diablo Cody written horror

Old Boys - i shouldn't admit this made my laugh but it did so there, judge me!

New trailer: Shutter Island

2009-06-11T05:57:00.000-07:00

Be warned: this is from the Robert Zemeckis school of "give as much away in the trailer as possible" so if you haven't read the book (which i have) that this seems to stick quite closely to, you may not want to watch this trailer before seeing the film.

That said it does look good and hopefully will be much better than Scorsese's overrated The Departed. Unfortunately it is yet another of the Scorsese/DiCaprio team ups (please make a new film with DeNiro Marty and forget pumpkin-headed Leo who's not fit to shine Bobby's shoes) but it has a hell of a cast: Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams, Max Von Sydow, Ted Levine, Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer, Elias Koteas, Jakie Earle Haley etc etc etc. Plus the trailer has clear stylistic vibes of Hitchcock and Kubrick which is interesting.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/shutterisland/

New trailers: Mr Nobody, The Answer Man, Shrink, The Final Destination

2009-06-05T06:58:00.000-07:00

All the links for these are in the trailer bar on the right as usual so i'm not reporting them, but new trailers put up today cover the gamut!

Mr Nobody - looks intriguing. Obviously very low-budget (perhaps too so for what looks like an ambitious project) this could be genius like a Vincenzo Natali picture or a Charlie Kaufman, or it could be frustrating like Science Of Sleep.

The Answer Man - looks light and not stunning but fun and Jeff Daniels is always easy to watch. Looks like his character from Squid & the Whale meets Jack from As Good As It Gets via standard Sundance sort of fare. Still, i'll watch this one.

Shrink - looks like a missed opportunity. This looks lazy and uninspired. I hope with Spacey in a lead role again and support from the likes of Robert Loggia i'm wrong but i have a feeling this ones not going to be worth it.

The Final Destination - ah, what would a week be without a stupid cheesy trailer. It would seem that not only have New Line now thrown out any hint of an okay actor or coherent plot line to go for cheap-as-you-can teen-fodder in a 3D sequel to Final Destination, but they've also been watching that box office on Fast & Furious and thought to themselves, "Hey, that title is like, retro cool, seems franchise and yet possibly original"! And so now instead of Final Destination 4 we have THE Final Destination! Add a The get a whole new audience! Although one can't help but think that technically it should be The Final Final Destination, but i guess that's being far too logical for a franchise about fate taking you out in various gruesome ways that will presumably in this film entirely involve methods of demise that require things to fly directly at the screen. So much for the "the new 3D is about depth and creating a world to better serve the story, rather than a gimmick to just have things flying out of the screen" argument! Horror films like It Came From Outer Space and Creature From The Black Lagoon made 3D popular in the 50s before people got bored, then horror resurrected it in the 80s with films like Jaws 3D, Amityville 3D, Friday the 13th, Part 3D(!) and beat it into the ground once again. I can't help thinking that films like My Bloody Valentine, The Final Destination, Piranha 3D etc may end up countering all the good done for the format by films like Up and Coraline this time around. Still, we'll see i guess. It is also interesting that the makers of the Final Destination franchise are obviously cowardly, having originally announced the third film as planned for 3D (that films rollercoaster set piece is a dead giveaway of being thought up with 3D in mind) but they bottled it (probably because there just weren't that many 3D screens back then). Now other films have forced cinemas into adding screens and proven the format tobe popular once more, look who's back on the bandwagon. This sequel looks about as cynical as they come!

Latest screening: Terminator Salvation

2009-06-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

Okay so it isn't T1 or T2 but Terminator Salvation (which wisely avoids the abbreviation that in the UK would forever make teenagers think it was the big-screen adaptation of a weekend morning kid-culture show) is a perfectly serviceable sequel.

I can see why fanboys got up in arms, it does have huge leaps in logic that kinda make no sense and it doesn't really live in a universe that could have followed on from the original 2 films. But like T3 (why send the Terminatrix back when she was clearly an inferior model to T2's T-1000?) any normal person won't really care. There's good and bad here but you mostly only notice the bad in the first half and get so caught up in the second half you'll forget all that and enjoy it.

The main negative is that, like its star, it could desperately use a sense of humour. This is played dead serious. Batman Begins serious, only that had Michael Caine's Alfred so more than that. Not that the Terminator's need humour. The classic '84 original had little humour and was awesome regardless. The third film over-played the humour and that was its biggest failing. But this all feels a little po-faced, especially in the 1st half when there's not a lot of action. I also found myself really missing Arnold during the first half. These characters just aren't as interesting as the Austrian oak was to watch.

Still it picks up. Once key plot elements come into play in the second half and the action steps up you get swept along with it. And the action and effects are excellent, really well staged. The film is genuinely exciting in these latter stages and the climax had me almost as on the edge of my seat as the climaxes of T1 and T2.

There are little issues. Bryce Dallas Howard and Michael Ironside are completely wasted. Sam Worthington's accent slips occasionally and while paying homage to the originals in nice touches and, oddly, The Great Escape it does blatantly rip things off from everything from Transformers to Cloverfield! It is nice to see that in a post-apocalyptic world dental hygiene is still LA excellent though!

Generally this surprised me. It may of helped i had verylow expectations but i enjoyed it and like Godfather Part 3 and the last two Alien films i feel as a stand alone movie it would seem much better than it may if simply compared to stunning originals. It may be an entirely unnecessary sequel but it is enjoyable entertainment and i'm fine with that.

This is brilliant!!! Pixar vs DreamWorks

2009-06-02T02:50:00.000-07:00

Click on the image to make full size and readable.

Genius!

Found this on http://www.culch.ie/2009/04/02/pixar-vs-dreamworks/?w9591

New trailer: Toy Story 3 teaser

2009-06-01T03:30:00.000-07:00

As if it isn't bad enough that US audiences are already enjoying the wonders of Pixar's Up, 5 months ahead of the UK opening (damn Disney!) and, of course, another genius Pixar short film in Partly Cloudy, but they also got the teaser trailer for next summer's Toy Story 3.

Thankfully while not on a glorious giant digital screen we can at least see the TS3 teaser online. As usual with Pixar it is very much a teaser with no relevance to what we are likely to see in the film, but it is nice to see these characters back after a decade away! The Ham line is the high-point for me.

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/259996/toy_story_3_see_the_teaser_trailer_here.html

With Up grossing an excellent $68m in the US at the weekend for Pixar's third best launch and another $4.2m in its international launch in Russia (yes, damn them too!) for the best Pixar launch yet, it looks like things continue on a winning run for Pixar. Can't wait for Up, can't wait for the 3D re-release double-bill of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, can't wait for Toy Story 3! Damn, i love these guys!

Oooh, cheesy thrillers! New trailer: Beyond A Reasonable Doubt

2009-05-26T06:06:00.000-07:00

Damn, I'm a sucker for cheesy thrillers, especially those, like this, that feel like they should have come out in the '80s. This is probably because i grew up entertained by the '80s batch themselves.

And among such wonders were The Star Chamber, Running Scared (which i think of as an comedy really but it was still great), Narrow Margin, The Presidio and of course "High Noon in space" Outland. I loved every one of these and they all had one thing in common, director Peter Hyams. Add to those the "Muscles from Brussels" most entertaining effort TimeCop and the criminally entertaining The Relic (plus classic Capricorn One) and i think we can agree (or agree to disagree) that Hyams knows how to make a damn fun piece of daft entertainment. Well, Hyams is behind the lens of this Beyond A Reasonable Doubt and frankly that would get me into the cinema.

Add to that that it also has Michael Douglas (reteaming with Hyams for the first time since 1983's Star Chamber) in one of his shady characters that are always his most watchable roles. Okay so it stars "rent a handsome face" Jesse Metcalfe who couldn't act his way out of a paper bag but then acting ability is hardly a pre-requisite for this time of movie.

It even has a gloriously '80s poster!

So chalk this one up to a must-see piece of hokum in my book.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/beyondareasonabledoubt/

It's official - I am NOT watching the movie of The Road

2009-05-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

That's it, the trailer is out (below and on side trailer bar) and i am NOT watching The Road.

I've been nervous about this one since it was announced, largely because what i loved about the book (one of 3 all-time favourites along with A Christmas Carol and 1984) was the knowledge it could never be made into a movie - it's too internal.

Then someone i know who had read the script but not the book gave me their impressions of the story and i started to get the idea the adaptation might be going places that would make me unhappy.

Last year i re-read the book only a year after i had read it for the first time because i wanted to make sure i read it again before my memories were sullied by the movie (if that occurred). Then it was delayed. Then it was delayed again. Now i plan to read the book again.

Now the trailer has hit and worst fears appear manifest. One of the greatest things about the book is the fact it takes place in a post-apocalyptic world but the events preceding the story in the book (solely about the emotional, spiritual and physical journey of a father and son survivors) are not gone into. We don't know what happened, why it happened and we don't need to. It is NOT IMPORTANT. The only things that are important are the father; the son; their survival - their story!

But this trailer suggests we are going to get the explanation, that the mother character (Charlize Theron here) has been significantly enlarged; that the brooding danger of the books rare close-shaves with cannibalistic survivors has become a much more in your face fight for survival from them.

I wish i could go back and stop myself watching this trailer as the images from it are already bothering me but at least i can still stop myself from watching the full film and ruining my experience of the book.

So that's it, i shall go on re-reading and loving the book but now i know for certain i shall not be watching this film.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810037227/video/13468775/

Stupid trailer of the week: Gamer

2009-05-22T07:05:00.000-07:00

Everything tells me i should keep as far away from this nonsense as possible but damn it i know i'll watch it. This comes off as Running Man meets Death Race meets Surviving The Game (Rutger Hauer/Ice T) with all the insanity that implies but hell Michael C Hall's in it!

Okay that's pretty much why i'll watch it. It could be fun, it could be awful and Butler isn't worth the bother but Michael C Hall in a villain lead role? I am so there. I'd watch any movie they put that guy in after Six Feet Under and Dexter, the guy's fantastic.

So count me in for this stupid looking movie, i just pray it's fun.

http://gamerthemovie.com/

Frustrating trailer of the week: Precious

2009-05-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

I really feel this is under-selling this movie. This trailer is clearly tailored specifically for the US African American audience, fronted by the Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry presents tag and then proceeds to look merely okay. In fact this is one of those trailers that if i didn't know what it was for i would say, "nah, won't bother with that".

But Precious is the renamed Push which met with huge acclaim at Sundance and sounds fantastic. I think this trailer has hints of that and i pray they recut to cater for international audiences because otherwise i'll never convince my mates to watch this, and this is one of my must-sees for this year. Anyway, in the meantime the fairly generic and undersold trailer:

http://www.oprah.com/media/20090506-tows-precious-trailer

Hang on... a damn minute (remake madness hits 90s)!

2009-05-14T07:21:00.000-07:00

Okay so now they are solidly in the 90s! Cliffhanger is being remade. That’s 1993 for crying out loud!

The bit I love is that it is being remade by Neal Moritz under his fantastically ironic production company Original Films (currently remaking Escape From New York and Total Recall and responsible for the remakes of Prom Night and I Am Legend, the TV-show based S.W.A.T. and endless Fast & Furious and I Know What You Did Last Summer sequels!) Who says Hollywood producers have no sense of humour?! – oh, but then, maybe he doesn’t get it’s funny.

This follows news that the latest horror to get the remake treatment will be Fright Night, but i've been expecting that for some time. What 80s horrors are there left to remake? Sleepaway Camp i suppose.

New trailer: Nine

2009-05-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

It is destined to be one of this year's awards front-runners but i have to say i find this trailer for Rob Marshall's Nine fairly uninspiring:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/nine/

Here you have a musical full of big names with more Oscars to there names than probably any other cast in history and yet you cut a trailer that features not a hint of any of the performances (except for a couple of lines by Judi Dench) and none of the songs! Does this scream lack of confidence to anyone else?

This trailer comes across more like an agent provocateur advert!

Still, Kate Hudson must be happy. I don't envy being her in this cast once the inevitable awards-season trailer hits with all it's "Academy Award winner..." proclamations. In a cast with DDL, Dench, Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard and Sophia Loren who are all Oscar-winners and many multiple nominees her "Academy Award nominee..." proclamation is going to read like "LOSER!!!"

Loving this Up poster

2009-05-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

So Up is greating a lot of coverage today from its Cannes premiere last night and the trade reviews in Variety and Screen International are glowing (naturally, it is Pixar after all!)

So i decided i'd add to the Up flow today and just say i love this character poster for the film. I really really want to make this my screen saver but for political reasons I won't go into that's not possible.

Still, go Pixar! (Can't believe we have to wait until October in the UK)

New trailers: Whatever Works, Princess And The Frog

2009-05-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

Okay so any new Woody Allen (with the possible exception of Cassandra's Dream) is cause for celebration with me, but the combinations of Larry David and Woody Allen is too good to be true. Add a cast that includes Patricia Clarkson, Ed Bedley Jr and Michael McKean and a great looking performance from the always excellent Evan Rachel Wood (amazing in last year's The Wrestler) and this is a must see - which is way it was in my 10 most wanted to see films of 2009 back at the beginning of the year (see bottom of blog main page).

Here is the trailer for Whatever Works, which my sources tell me is hilarious and lives up to how funny it looks:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/whateverworks/

And while we are talking about great looking trailers feast your eyes on the beautiful trailer for Disney's long-awaited return to feature hand-drawn animation, The Princess And The Frog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6DmEgtibOg

I don't know how good the story is going to be on this one, will it be fun but largely forgettable like The Emperor's New Groove and Lilo & Stitch, woeful like The Rescuers and Oliver & Co., or timelessly stunning like Dumbo, Beauty & the Beast, The Jungle Book, Snow White, Bambi, The Lion King, etc? One thing's for sure the animation itself looks awesome. I hope Disney knock this one out of the park.

New trailer: District 9

2009-05-01T06:15:00.000-07:00

Suitably intriguing trailer for apartheid allegory sci-fi film District 9:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/district9/hd/

essentially seems to be a feature exploration of the themes the director had in his 2005 short film Alive in Joburg:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNReejO7Zu8

Still, promising.

New trailer: Julie & Julia

2009-04-30T03:38:00.000-07:00

Already predicted by me and many as one to watch come awards time given the cast involved, this year's annual Meryl Streep bid for another nomination comes in the form of Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia. Reuniting her with Doubt co-star Amy Adams in an altogether more fun set-up and throwing in veteran scene-stealer Stanley Tucci the first trailer has just been released, and i see nothing here to suggest the Oscar nom won't be forthcoming unless it proves to be a phenomenally strong year for women's leads (ha!):

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/julie-and-julia/26129/main

New trailers

2009-04-24T06:03:00.000-07:00

I'm not bothering to post all the links in here because for now they are all on the trailer links panel on the right, but today i've put up 6 new trailers and wow are they a mixed set of movie types.

The only one i'm linking to is a documentary i'm now desperate to see, Facing Ali:

http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/04/17/must-watch-fantastic-documentary-trailer-for-facing-ali/

Boxing has always been a sport that makes a back-drop for great films, including my all-time favourite Raging Bull, and probably my favourite sports documentary is another Ali focussed one, Leon Gast's brilliant When We Were Kings. Facing Ali looks to be another fascinating doc and i pray it gets UK distribution or at least a slot at the London or Raindance Film Festivals.

Also new on the trailer board today:

Antichrist - Lars von Trier's Cannes competitor looks suitably intriguing, but like all Trier works could go either way. But i've liked the last few: Dogville, Manderlay, The Boss Of It All so here's hoping.

Armored - for anyone who unashamedly loves Judgement Night (starring Emilio Estevez, Stephen Dorff, Cuba Gooding Jr and Denis Leary) or Trespass (starring Bill Paxton, Ice Cube, Ice-T and William Sadler) comes this year's b-list ensemble fun, starring Columbus Short, Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, Skeet Ulrich etc. I'm sorry but this looks really entertaining! I hope it is.

The Girlfriend Experience - new Soderbergh on Bubble type mode. Looks interesting but like Antichrist could go either way.

Paper Heart - could be funny, could be sweet, could be irritating as all hell! A faux documentary starring Knocked Up's Charlyne Yi and the ubiquitous Michael Cera.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine - new trailer shows a lot more plot and is the most passable yet, but i'm still not sold.

Rest In Peace: Jack Cardiff

2009-04-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

The great Jack Cardiff, legendary cinematographer and perhaps overlooked director, passed away this week, aged 94. It was odd timing as a friend and I had been discussing him Tuesday afternoon in the pub and at a Q&A with actor George Kennedy that we went to Tuesday night (which given the Wednesday afternoon reports of Mr Cardiff's passing i assume was when he died) Mr Kennedy was discussing Death On The Nile, which Cardiff shot.

Cardiff always seemed to me one of those guys, like Ray Harryhausen, who were destined to live forever. I guess through his incredible, indelible images he will do.

The man photographed some amazing movies but none more beautifully in my opinion than his first project as sole director of photography, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's masterpiece A Matter Of Life And Death (right). The film, which i watched again last night in tribute to Mr Cardiff, is in my top 10 film's of all time and features a stunning mix of technicolor glory for the Earth-bound scenes and beautiful black-and-white for the heavenly scenes, including dissolves from one to the other - most notably that early one focussed on Marius Goring's lapel rose, which his character even comments upon. If you haven't seen A Matter Of Life And Death it's an absolute must and you will then feel ashamed for not having previously seen it.

Of course The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus followed in the collaboration between Cardiff and Powell and Pressburger, Cardiff winning the Oscar for the latter (right).

In fact, and slightly oddly, it was following a Q&A he took part in about working with Michael Powell that followed a screening of Powell's under-rated Peeping Tom (which Cardiff didn't shoot, making it a slightly odd selection) that i had the good fortune to meet Cardiff. It was April 1, 2001 and only a week after he had been awarded an honorary Oscar for his work on March 25 of that year. He was a true old-school gent and seemed genuinely pleased that so many people there were interested in him and his work. Perhaps because technical guys like cinematographers so rarely get the credit they deserve. It was a highlight for me amongst people in the industry i have either met or listened to speak in person at Q&As and such, and interestingly that was how he came up on Tuesday afternoon as my friend said he was the most interesting film personality she had ever heard speak, when he visited her university in the 90s.

Other non-Powell films he worked on as cinematographer included The Barefoot Contessa, The Prince And The Showgirl, War And Peace, The Vikings, Death On The Nile; the slightly surprising Conan The Destroyer and Rambo: First Blood, Part 2; and another of my favourites John Huston's The African Queen (right).

I am ashamed to say i am not very familiar with his work as a director, having only seen the enjoyable My Geisha, starring Shirley Maclaine, which i have on DVD. Amongst his other films was 1960's Sons And Lovers for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Director, while the film was also nominated for Best Picture. It also appropriately won Best Cinematography, for Freddie Francis. I intend to seek out Sons And Lovers as soon as possible. It lost out at the Oscars to another of my top 10 all-time films, Billy Wilder's The Apartment, but even to be considered in the same company makes it a must see.

I am glad to have had that opportunity to meet him just over 8 years ago and through his films, especially the Powell/Pressburger collaborations and The African Queen, i will always remember his huge contribution to cinema.

Farewell Jack. Rest in Peace. I hope heaven is all you made it look in A Matter Of Life And Death.

Cannes, Cannes - festival line-up full of usual suspects

2009-04-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

So, the Cannes line-up is out and it is the usual lack of imagination list of the same old Palme d'Or contenders. Lars von Trier, Ang Lee, Ken Loach, Pedro Almodovar, Johnnie To, Andrea Arnold, Michael Haneke, Jane Campion and Park Chan-wook are amongst those filmmakers who need only sneeze to get a automatic slot at Cannes.

And frankly the inclusion of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds should not only serve as a distinct sign of the corrupt publicity grab that Cannes is but also as a massive insult to other filmmakers. The film has never for a moment, from script through to trailers, looked to have even vague promise and after the embarrassment of including Death Proof in competition 2 years ago it is shocking that Cannes have once again bent over for the massively over-rated QT. But what really smarts about his inclusion is the arrogant way he announced off the back of a poor script last year, before he had even sold it, that any studio coming on board had to be behind it going to Cannes because he was planning to premiere it there. From that moment i hoped, prayed that Cannes would call him on this arrogant assumption of his greatness and not allow it in. That they not only took it but put it in competition is the biggest studio blow job the festival has done since putting Shrek 2 in the competition line-up.

And as if that's not bad enough, there are hardly any US films in the competition this year so QT could be taking a valuable slot away from a more deserved title.

Still, i'm sure the attention will be on the out of competition screening of Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus. A new Gilliam film is always a reason to be excited and no doubt French favourite Johnny Depp along with co-stars Colin Farrell and Jude Law will be in attendance to get the croisette in an uproar. But of course it will be the star that isn't there, Heath Ledger whose final role was here, that will generate most interest.

Personally were i going this year that would be my hot ticket and i'm sure it will be for many people. I'd also be interested in the midnight screening of Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell - a film that seems perfect for a slot that included George A Romero's Land Of The Dead and Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in year's i last attended. I would also be interested in Alejandro Amenabar's English-language historical drama Agora - although i was not a fan of his last English-language film The Others - which is his first film since 2004's The Sea Inside.

The line-up is:

In Competition:
· Pedro Almodovar - Broken Embraces
· Andrea Arnold - Fish Tank
· Jacques Audiard - Un Prophete
· Marco Bellocchio – Vicenre
· Jane Campion - Bright Star
· Xavier Giannoli – A L'Origine
· Isabel Coixet – Map of the Sounds of Tokyo
· Michael Haneke - The White Ribbon
· Ang Lee – Taking Woodstock
· Ken Loach – Looking for Eric
· Lou Ye - Spring Fever
· Brillante Mendoza – Kinatay
· Gaspar Noe – Enter The Void
· Park Chan-Wook – Thirst
· Alain Resnais – Les Herbes Folles
· Elia Suleiman – The Time That Remains
· Quentin Tarantino - Inglourious Basterds
· Johnnie To – Vengeance
· Tsai Ming-liang – Face
· Lars Von Trier – Antichrist

Un Certain Regard:
· Bong Joon Ho - Mother
· Alain Cavalier - Irene
· Lee Daniels - Precious
· Denis Dercourt- Demain Des L'Aube
· Heitor Dhalia - Adrift
· Bahman Ghobadi - Nobody Knows About The Persian Cats
· Ciro Guerra - The Wind Journeys
· Mia Hansen-Love - Le Pere De Mes Enfants
· Hanno Hofer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Propescu and Ioanna Uricaru - Tales From The Golden Age
· Nikolay Khomeriki - Tale In The Darkness
· Yorgos Lanthimos - Dogtooth
· Pavel Lounguine - Tzar
· Raya Martin - Independencia
· Corneliu Porumboiu - Police, Adjective
· Pen-Ek Ratanaruang - Nymph
· Joao Pedro Rodrigues - To Die Like A Man
· Haim Tabakman - Eyes Wide Open
· Warwick Thornton - Samson & Delilah
· Jean Van De Velde - The Silent Army
· Hirokazu Kore-Eda - Air Doll

Opening Film
· Pete Docter and Bob Petersen - Up

Closing Film:
· Jan Kounen – Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Out of Competition:
· Robert Guediguian - L'Armee Du Crime
· Alejandro Amenabar - Agora
· Terry Gilliam - The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus

Midnight Screenings:
· Stephane Aubier and Vincent Patar - A Town Called Panic
· Sam Raimi - Drag Me To Hell
· Marina De Van – Ne Te Retourne Pas

Special Screenings:
· Anne Aghion - My Neighbor, My Killer
· Adolfo Alix Jr and Raya Martin - Manila
· Souleymane Cisse - Min Ye
· Michel Gondry - L'Epine Dans Le Coeur
· Zhao Liang - Petition
· Keren Yedaya - Jaffa

Competition Jury:
· Isabelle Huppert, president (actress, France)
· Asia Argento (acress, director, screenwriter, Italy)
· Nuri Bilge Ceylan (director, screenwriter, actor,Turkey)
· Lee Chang-Dong (director, author, screenwriter, Korea)
· James Gray (director, screenwriter, US)
· Hanif Kureishi (author, screenwriter, UK)
· Shu Qi (actress, Taiwan)
· Robin Wright Penn (actress, US)

Latest screening: 17 Again

2009-04-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

I admit this is i bit off track from the films i usually post reviews of (and i've been meaning to do one of Wendy And Lucy all week which i'll try to get to next week, along with Anvil which i'm finally seeing tonight hopefully) but it was such a surprise that i feel i have to. I hadn't intended to even watch this and i've mercilessly mocked the trailer ("You look just like my husband!" "no, he f***ing doesn't") but see it i did and well, damn it i enjoyed the hell out of it.

Now let's not be too generous. There is nothing, and i mean nothing, original in this latest take on a plot device familiar to anyone that has seen 18 Again, Big, Vice Versa, Like Father Like Son, either version of Freaky Friday and no doubt many others i'm forgetting. It also has the requisite geeky best friend that is as much a mainstay of a male-lead movie like this as the gay best friend is to a female-lead one! And of course it seems impossible to ignore the fact that Zac Efron could only look less like Matthew Perry (the adult version of him) if he was blonde!

Yet this film is made with panache. The script is genuinely funny. The lead cast fire on all cylinders. Almost all of the jokes land. And damn it if Efron doesn't actually manage to convince as the young Perry after a while.

Perhaps because it is directed by Burr Steers (who made Igby Goes Down) this is surprisingly well done. It may not offer anything especially new, but let's face it the audience it is primarily aimed at probably hasn't seen any of those other movies mentioned above anyway (well, okay maybe the Freaky Friday remake, but that's probably it). However this doesn't matter for those who have seen them (and i've seen them all) because this is a damn fun ride.

It gets off to a rocky start with Efron having a couple of moments of shirtless hoop-shooting and cheerleader-accompanied dancing clearly designed to appeal to his High School Musical fans but serving to instantly put 30-somethings like me on the edge of my seat in anticipation of a walk out. But then we're quickly into Matthew Perry being Matthew Perry and all is comfortably Chandleresque. Then, with the help of Brian Doyle Murray's janitor, it all goes a bit It's A Wonderful Life for a minute and we're back with Efron. Now i'm only familiar with Efron from the musical version of Hairspray, in which he was fine but unremarkable, but damn the kid has charisma - you can definitely see how he's transcended the nonsense of the High School Musical franchise. But what was surprising for me about 17 Again was Efron actually does have talent. He evokes genuine sexual chemistry with Leslie Mann (playing his wife who doesn't know Perry's become Efron and doesn't get why her son's best friend looks like her husband did as a kid) delivering some of the edgy laughs that a film of this type desperately needs. He also plays the confused authoritarian, out of his depth in a younger hipper generation convincingly. What's more he's obviously studied Perry's intonations, mannerisms and expressions which he layers in at certain moments, often quite subtley, so that you gradually find yourself believing he is the young version of Perry (after all couldn't the character have had some plastic surgery between 17 and 37 to explain key facial differences that on the surface make the match-up ludicrous?).

Mann is also great, really throwing herself into the role and not afraid to go places many actors might steer clear of, while seeming believable. The best friend is also funny, although the film does have a tendency to overplay the geeky attributes of this character and the few times jokes fall flat are in the latter arc of this character. Michelle Tractenberg is wasted in a nothing role and none of the other characters make an impact. But this is Efron's movie and he knows it, and he really makes the most (after those odd opening moments) of his chance to prove there's more to him than a singing-dancing mannequin.

Is this the best movie of its type? No. Of course it pales in comparison to Big, but it is better than the rest of the 80s batch and on a similar plain of fun quality to the Freaky Friday remake, but more slickly done, so i would make a case that it is probably the most enjoyable of its type after Big. Regardless, if you accept it for what it is and don't expect an ounce of originality you will sit back and just enjoy the hell out of this entertaining movie. A director who knows what beats to hit with a star proving that he can hit every one. Colour me stunned!