Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame; Warm Bodies; Byzantium; Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa; Dark Skies; Excision; Sabotage

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 Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

The charismatic Andy Lau starts as Detective Dee in this historical epic by celebrated Hong Kong director Tsui Hark.

A tale told on a grand scale, we find that Dee is an exiled investigator brought back to the capital on the behest of the imposing first Empress of China, to look into the seemingly supernatural sabotage taking place around the preparations to her crowning celebrations. An immense statue of the Buddha is being constructed at great expense, but after a couple of officials spontaneously combust the workers are spooked and building stops.

The action comes in short bursts, with more emphasis placed on the scale and grandeur of the part real and part CGI sets depicting the China of 689. The film as a whole is undeniably impressive, but the drive for the authentic formalities of the time makes the characters seem cold and hard to relate to. Still, Lau’s charm is undeniable and helps carry you through a film that could otherwise be a bit dry.

Warm Bodies

The undead are fairly ubiquitous in the 21^st century, whether it’s the continuing sequels to Romero’s Dead films, Hollywood muscling in with World War Z, or the TV adaptation of the Walking Dead comic book, but few have told their story from the zombie’s point of view.

In this case, Nicholas Hoult’s zombie falls in love with a survivor he encounters when the pack he’s part of stumbles on a raiding party. He saves her life, but takes her back to the airport where many of his kind serve out their undeath.

His thoughts and feelings are conveyed via monologue, seeing as talking is a struggle.

Coincidentally the girl of his dreams (Teresa Palmer as Julie) is the daughter of the leader of the survivors played by John Malkovich, who has a particularly violent view of zombies after the rest of his family was eaten by them.

As a zombie here is the good guy, and the central premise is about the undead regaining their humanity, there needs to be an antagonist that isn’t your normal zombie horde. So we discover that when the dead finally give up any shreds of their humanity they shed their skin and become relentless skeletal monsters. Cue a big old fight at the end where the dead transformed by the spreading power of love fight against these monsters gone too far, to save the humans.

With no jokes, this is the romzom to Shaun of the Dead’s zomromcom, and it suffers a little for it. The whole idea of the zombie ‘outsider’ trying to win over the object of his affection could be an allegory for the classic geek trying to win over high school sweetheart story, except here the male lead basically kidnaps the girl until she comes around, which is a little troubling unless you just see it as a straight up zombie movie, but then you’d have to take the ‘power of love’ element seriously.

Rob Corddry is good as Hoult’s zombie friend and Malkovich is as good as ever in his short snarling role as Julie’s dad.

Divertingly enjoyable, but no great shakes.

Byzantium 

Neil Jordan returns to vampires 8 years after directing the adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview With A Vampire, but Byzantium takes us on a different tack from the more traditional vampire stories.

Those cursed with vampirism have a lust for blood, but need to use a talon growing from their thumbnails to get at it. Daylight isn’t a problem (not an original weakness for vampires, rather it's been adopted since Nosferatu) and they can’t change into bats or mist or the likes.

Rather than being part of a global conspiracy or seeking to enlarge their ranks, the vampires seem to comprise of a few secretive men, jealous of their brotherhood which has been interrupted by Gemma Arterton. In the 1800s after various run-ins with arsehole officer Johnny Lee Miller she discovers the secret to vampirism – rowing to a secret island and going inside a stone hut while blood cascades down the mountain – a striking sequence whose fairytale quality is at odds with the squalid present-day setting of a run down seaside town.

The brotherhood is after Arterton for breaking the rules by making her daughter, Saoirse Ronan, a vampire too. On the run they shack up with Daniel Mays’ pathetic hotel owner, and Ronan meets an American boy, Caleb Landry Jones who has a serious illness and works as a waiter. There’s a big showdown and the occasional burst of violence, but it feels that there’s something missing that is needed to pull Byzantium together and avoid the viewer being unsatisfied.

Still, respect to Jordan for trying for a different take on the vampire myth in a time when many studios are content with remaking any old horror classic.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

Somehow Alpha Papa manages to overcome the barriers that often restrict successful sitcoms from being translated to the big screen.

When attempting to fill 90 minutes of screen time most shows tend to put the characters into an unrealistic situation that keeps the characters contained but give them a reason to be away from their usual setting – many opting for a holiday scenario (the Inbetweeners is a notably successful exception).

A siege scenario is both totally unlikely for North Norfolk Digital Radio and Alan, but the details of the story ring true, with corporate takeovers and layoffs, and the drama coming off on a distinctly small scale as Alan finds himself in the position of hostage negotiator and the opportunity of rekindling some of his lost fame.

Colm Meaney is great as Pat Farell, the sacked DJ who takes things for a violent turn, and Partridge regulars crop up including Lynn (Felicity Montagu), Michael (Simon Greenall) and Side Kick Simon (Tim Key).

If you like Coogan’s Partridge character at all you won’t be disappointed by Alpha Papa, continuing the mix of acutely observed character comedy (there’s a little of Patrick Bateman in Partridge’s obsession with detail) and sharp lines (‘honesty sporran’).

Dark Skies

Heavily influenced by the amateur camera/CCTV horror of the Paranormal Activity series, Dark Skies sees some weird things start to affect a young, suburban, middle class American family – something is getting in the house without tripping the alarm, rearranging the kitchen, causing their youngest son to sleep walk and then eventually influencing the rest of the family. The mother does some research and thinks she knows what’s going on – her husband is more cynical and finds a paranormal explanation hard to swallow, until presented with firsthand evidence. He sets up cameras around the house; they visit a world-weary expert.

This kind of thing has been done many times before, only it’s aliens rather than ghost or demons that are bothering this family. Retreading old ground is a common tactic in the horror genre, but unfortunately here the film fails to build up any decent tension, the family fail to stand up above their archetypal roles and the threat when it’s finally revealed looks and feels more like something out of a 1990s straight to video effort.

Dull.

Excision

Self consciously kooky without being twee, Excision focuses on the daydreams and delusions of high school student Pauline (AnnaLynne McCord) as she fantasises about performing various surgeries and having sex with corpses.

McCord is well used as her model proportions (very tall, skinny) help make for a gangly, ungainly teen with overwrought cheekbones and bad skin and hair. She is a typical geek, shunned at school but loved by her sister Grace (Ariel Winter) who is very much a girly girl, but suffers from cystic fibrosis.

Also, their mother Phyllis (Traci Lords) is overbearing and controlling, desperate for Pauline to just be a ‘normal’ teen.

Alongside a twisted version of the usual American high school tensions and stresses of an uptight family life, Excision is liberally sprinkled with evocative dream sequences where Pauline sees herself as a sexy, lithe version of herself, performing various bloodletting acts from surgery to abortion (on herself).

John Waters pops up in a cameo, and it’s his work that informs the tone here, one of a queasy, small-town Americana and the ugliness under the surface.

A neat little twist at the end breaks the day dream quality and lets the horror into the waking world.

Sabotage

Ridiculous OTT gung-ho action thriller with Arnie as the head of a misfit DEA unit. The unit robs some cash from a cartel, only the money goes missing and then the members of the unit keep turning up dead.

Stupidly macho in an un-ironic way that feels out of place decades after the 80s were over, Sabotage’s DEA crew are all grizzled dudebros with wild hair and tats, drinking gallons of whiskey and taking all the drugs.

Their tight knit ‘family’ swiftly unravels due to infighting over the missing money, and everything’s all a bit fishy.

Sam Worthington’s the only one of the cast who tries to do any acting besides grunts and hoo-rahs, but unfortunately doesn’t quite have the skills to pull it off, losing out to Arnie’s knuckleheaded charm.

Olivia Williams is one of the only good things in the film, as a cynical cop investigating the murders of these agents, but other than her character the film feels largely misogynistic with a miscast Mireille Enos (The Killing; World War Z) playing an addict and party girl who is singled out for vitriolic anger and bloody vengeance due to her betrayal of the group, despite Terrence Howard’s ‘Sugar’ also being involved.

The action is violent and gory but there is no one to root for here, the film’s tone is as beaten and cynical as the characters of Arnie’s John ‘Breacher’ Wharton and William’s Detective Caroline and the whole thing just leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Outlander; Hunger Games: Catching Fire; Brave; The Thin Blue Line; Cloud Atlas; Habit; Zero Dark Thirty; The Age of Stupid

Outlander

A little like the 13th Warrior, but instead of a Spanish Knight fighting alongside the Vikings, it’s a spaceman, fighting with them against an alien beastie.
As action B-pictures go it’s fairly entertaining stuff with enjoyably ropey CGI and a nice mix of action and suspense horror stuff with the hunty-stalky alien creature, but mainly it’s brainless fare with Ron Perlman being one of a few highlights.
Throwaway fluff.

Hunger Games: Catching Fire

The sequel to smash-hit adaptation of the Hunger Games, Catching Fire picks up where the first left off, with Katniss and Peeta now living in the victor’s village in District 12. Despite winning they soon find that the game never ends, and that they can look forward to a future of PR visits and events in the other districts for the benefit of the ruling capital.

In the course of these travels, Katniss comes to realise that there is trouble in the districts with many fostering opposition to the status quo, seeing her as a figurehead to a different way of life, but President Snow is keenly aware of this and quickly takes the opportunity to curb the chances of this proto-rebellion - the next Hunger Games will feature the current victors.

In the background Katniss is struggling between the affection she has for Gale, and something new that may be developing between her and Peeta, but the meat of the film focuses on the game itself and the strategies and alliances formed as a number of victors work to keep Katniss alive even as a group of the more bloodthirsty entrants work to end the lives of everyone else.

The game itself feels like a video game in many ways with elements revolving around timing and levels, but some of the personalities involved help to keep the drama from being alienating, with most of Katniss’ allies having some sort of personality despite the combat/survival setting.

Catching Fire suits the original well but ends on too much of a broken cliffhanger, rather than coming to a natural end which leaves you wanting more, it feels like a much longer film cut too early - in a book it would feel like a chapter ending a paragraph before the end.

Jennifer Lawrence is great again as Katniss, though rather than the character being a good example of a female lead being as capable as men, it seems like the roles of resourceful and determined Katniss have just been reversed with the relatively useless and helpless Peeta, who is hopelessly in love with Katniss while from her side relationships are more complicated. The only thing lacking in Peeta from the classic damsel in distress role is the screaming.

Brave

Brave tells the usual tale of a princess chafing against fate - she loves archery but is destined to be trussed up in a dress and married off for the good of the kingdom.
After accidentally cursing her mother and turning her into a bear, she has to set out and find the witch responsible before sunrise the next day, avoiding her father and facing a legendary bear in an ancient ruin.

Whilst the plot is slight with many elements borrowed from other Disney tales, and characters such as the larger than life Scottish king seemingly copied from How To Train Your Dragon’s Viking chief, the refreshing element here is that Brave’s journey is her own, there is no peripheral love interest or prince as a goal, neither does she reject arranged marriage because she wants to choose who to love, males simply don’t feature as what’s important to her beyond her father and brothers. It took a long time to get here from the swooning beauty of Snow White with seven half men protecting her and a prince to look forward to, but Brave feels like the first female animated film lead without a love story as the main or a sub-plot.
The animation is fine, there aren’t many jokes to speak of besides the attempt at hitting that Scrat/minion/Madagascar penguin sweet spot with Brave’s triplet brothers, transformed into bear cubs and forever in trouble, so the film isn’t going to be worrying the likes of Pixar’s first best work, but as family entertainment it is enjoyable.

The Thin Blue Line

Errol Morris’ 1988 documentary convincingly makes the case that Randall Adams was wrongly convicted of the murder of a police officer, due to the fact that prime suspect David Ray Harris was too young at the time of the killing to be given the death penalty.
Using a mixture of archival footage, reconstruction and interviews, the scene is set, certain elements are covered over and again from a number of perspectives and the picture is built of what most likely happened and why, and the detail presented is likely down to Morris’ past as a private detective.

Adams was freed in 1989 but due to the way in which the case was dismissed he received no money for 12 years of wrongful imprisonment, and passed away in 2010.
Harris was executed in 2004 for a separate murder.

Cloud Atlas

Said to be an unfilmable book, Cloud Atlas certainly makes for a slightly complicated blockbuster with its multiple plot strands set at various points in time, from 1850s Empire and slavery to a far-future of an Earth which has lost touch with off-world colonies after some catastrophe.
Many of the actors who crop up in each story arc appear again and again with the use of prosthetics, sometimes cleverly but often in a jarring manner, especially during the sequences set in a future Seoul where a number of Western actors have basically been given slanty eyes in a seemingly clumsy way, especially when they act alongside Korean actress Doona Bae who makes them look a bit like mutants.
Each strand feels complete in and of itself, though firmly set in the expected genre settings - the 1849 Pacific voyage is a slice of the likes of Master and Commander; the strand of Frobisher and Sixmith is awash with the repression and manners of pre-war homophobic Britain; the thriller in which Halle Berry’s journalist tries to expose a conspiracy behind a new nuclear power plant has the classic 70s grime of the conspiracy thrillers of that time; the dark, rainy, neon vision of Neo-Seoul in a time of clones and a high-tech police state takes the template of the post-Bladerunner dystopian sci-fi.
Despite the success in distinguishing between each of these disparate elements whilst simultaneously dropping clues as to how events and characters are connected through time, each part feels like just another entry into its own particular genre.
As the whole is no more than the sum of its parts, it’s hard to say whether Cloud Atlas is a failure, or a success simply for attempting and mainly succeeding in putting so many elements on screen at once, without really dropping the ball. Can you champion the okay?

In any case it’s too long and it would probably have been better served as a TV series.

Habit

This 1995 indie vampire feature gains much from the New York City setting - with just one year in office Mayor Guiliani hadn’t put in place the tactics to reduce crime and arguably sterilise much of the city. The settings of dingy streets of warehouses and apartments, basement nightclubs and abandoned boats helps give the film a neo-gothic air.
Pleasingly for a modern-day vampire flick, the main character Sam (played by writer/director Larry Fessenden) isn’t in thrall to vampirism and indeed the term isn’t voiced until later in the movie. As Sam negotiates a tendency toward alcoholism and the breakdown of a relationship, he gets involved with a mystery woman who has some odd appetites.
Not as philosophically ponderous as The Addiction, as self-consciously gory as Near Dark or as emptily stylish as The Hunger, Habit is a neat entry into modern day vampire films that keeps much of the supernatural aspects off-screen and unspoken.
It has the feel of a proper low-budget feature with snatched shoots on location and an unknown but talented cast, echoing the aimless 20s New York youth vibe that would strike such a chord in the likes of Lena Dunham’s Girls and Greta Gerwig’s Frances Ha two decades later.

Zero Dark Thirty

So, Zero Dark Thirty is a film in which you already know where it’s going and what happened at the end. This doesn’t mean that the film should be a pointless exercise, after all in recent years we have had the likes of United 93 and Argo, which either by using taut direction or artistic license have managed to make know outcomes fraught and exciting.
However, Zero Dark Thirty somehow misses this opportunity, working a bit more like a CIA based police-procedural as Jessica Chastain’s Agent Maya hunts down leads and roots out information over years in order to track down and kill Osama Bin Laden.
Cue lots of shouting as various agents argue about this or that theory or process, the odd bit of torture and then an extended special forces sequence as a bunch of ripped blokes get dropped onto Osama’s hiding place wearing ridiculous looking night vision goggles and then kill a bunch of people until they have their target.

You’ve seen the like before, though not usually based on real events. Sequences of intelligence agency people shouting at each other are no more engaging than similar parts of the Bourne films, and the climactic extra-judicial hunt and execution sequence offers little. No doubt it was meticulously researched but it feels a little redundant after the fact, it doesn’t have the entertainment factor of numerous special forces based action films and there are no unanswered questions to speculate on.

Competently put together, Zero Dark Thirty is certainly atmospheric and gives a feel for what it was like to be agents trying to find out information on possible attacks and prevent them, using whatever means they think they can get away with, but overall it just didn’t do it for me.

The Age of Stupid

Whilst the content of this withering accusative documentary sent from a likely future will be familiar to any who keep tabs on the state of the global environment, it’s still sobering to see such a collection of news footage weaved around six stories, hammering home the evidence for our effect on the environment and its possible outcome, with a marked increase in extreme weather occurring even before the film’s release in 2009.

The late Pete Postlethwaite adds a weathered authority to his tired damning of the past, reporting from a cultural arc in 2055 after the seas have risen and resource wars have lain waste to much of humanity.

Ultimately I found the story of the oilman the most affecting - a resident of New Orleans who was one of the many who helped rescue the stranded by boat, he says that given the chance again he would still choose to be an engineer prospecting for oil, a substance which he sees as a wonderful resource which enables us to do so much. Though his caution that we are using far too much of it far too quickly is the voice of reason too often drowned out by the shouting down of both sides.

It will be interesting to see how things develop globally, and how late governments will come round to the idea of sustainable resources - will it be from popular demand or economic necessity?
Meanwhile weather records continue to be broken on a regular basis and the global economic meltdown that began a year before the film’s release continues to ravage most nations, leading to ever more conservative governments in bed with the vested interests keen on pushing for oil.

Depressing.

Total Recall (2012); Killing Them Softly; 5 Broken Cameras; Silver Lining Playbook; The Monster Squad

Total Recall (2012)

In yet another case of the unnecessary remakes, Colin Farrell stars in the Arnie role of this reworking of the adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story.

The bare bones of the plot are the same, with factory worker Doug Quaid yearning for something missing, opting to visit the Rekall company who implant exciting false memories into you, and uncovering his status as an undercover agent.

However, rather than the previous set up of rebellion on the Mars colony, this time around Mars is a single reference, instead Earth has been devastated by chemical warfare leaving only the United Federation of Britain and the Colony (Australia) habitable, built up into 2000AD style Mega Cities. Connecting the two is the Fall, a drilled hole straight through the Earth’s core, with a transport that runs in between, altering its gravity half way through.

The set up is the familiar dystopia of the oppressed and oppressors, with the Colony here supplying hard labour to the UFB though the set design doesn’t distinguish a great deal between which is which. Blade Runner-esque is the order of the day with lots of rainy, neon-lit night and thousands of levels of buildings connected by hover car motorways.

This set confusion runs through most of the movie, as despite the mash up of languages and culture there are anomalies with accent where American seems universal and English rare, despite the UFB status as world leaders.

As well as this the whole idea of political upheaval doesn’t make sense. In the original there are defined differences between Mars and Earth, being different planets, but here the difference is ambiguous. Usually the richer part would live of the work or resources of the rest, but in this world of advanced technology encompassing a traversable bore hole through the Earth’s crust, a large automated robot police force/army and ubiquitous hover-cars, it’s hard to understand how resources are limited.

Still, Colin’s Quaid finds himself going through Arnie’s paces, fighting with what he thought was his wife (Kate Beckinsale in Sharon Stone’s role) and trying to reach the resistance to find out who he really is.

There’s lots of chase and fight related action, and neat little snippets of tech such as mobile phones implanted into the hand and bringing up a vid screen on any glass surface, but on the whole the film feels like empty flash, lacking the coherence of the original, let alone building on it.

Initially I thought Farrell would be okay compared to Arnie’s bug-eyed, gurning attempt at acting, but in retrospect Arnie’s cartoon character persona suits the ideas much better than Farrell’s anonymous, muted angst.

Beckinsale’s UFB agent and Jennifer Beale as Quade’s anchor to his old self do well in roles that require more fighting than looking pretty, but can’t elevate the film any more than Farrell, and Brian Cranston hasn’t chosen well for his post-Breaking Bad film debut as the evil leader of the UFB.

It will be interesting to see when Hollywood will decide to stop cannibalising itself, or are we stuck in this blockbuster & sequel cycle for another 30 years?

Killing Them Softly

Killing Them Softly yearns so hard to be a 70s film it hurts.

The wasteland sets of old crumbling buildings, sweaty card dens and battered cars along with the timeless wardrobe really give it a sense of place, with only the odd instance of a mobile phone or somesuch to pull you back to the future.

That and the constant glimpses of the Obama/McCain election campaign via TV and radio broadcasts and mentions of the ‘recession’ and ‘current economic climate’. Whilst many films attempt at a subtle introduction of subtext, KTS pretty much bludgeons the viewer with its references.

However, despite the bungled message, this is a beautifully shot film using lots of stylistic tricks to elevate the grubby setting of the story, concerning useless losers sticking up a card game and getting whacked - moments such as one of the junkies lost in a high, or a slow motion drive-by/car crash at night, seen from multiple angles.

Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn are brilliant as the losers, Ray Liotta is a slightly more vulnerable version of his usual roles, Gandolfini’s good as the repulsive hitman brought in by Brad Pitt’s fixer and Richard Jenkins is great casting as the administrative middle man for a corporate mob.

Pitt is as charismatic as ever but this isn’t his best performance, instead offering a nastier version of Ocean 11’s Rusty along with his usual schtick - the knowledgeable, worldly type. His own get-up hints at an even earlier time in cinema with his leather jacket and slicked back hair, a hangover of the 60s in a 70s film set in 2008.

Director Andrew Dominik’s previous feature was The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and it seems he’s learning with Killing Them Softly, keeping an element of the more ponderous, painterly moments of the former, but upping the pace and keeping to a genre running time.

Pitt’s last line is obviously meant to be the summary to the whole thing “America isn’t a country, it’s a business…” but the film yearns to be more important than it is - and yet, despite not being as good as it hopes to be, it’s still a decent film that doesn’t outstay its welcome and classier version than the usual mob/hitman flicks that are regularly turned out, with some great performances and lovely camerawork.

5 Broken Cameras

In 2005, Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat bought his first video camera to film his fourth son. He then ended up recording the conflict between his home, the West Bank village of Bil’In, and the encroaching Israeli settlements, taking over much of the village’s land and the villagers’ livelihood.

The 5 broken cameras of the title are the cameras broken during the course of recording the village’s protest at the settlements, cameras which record the beating, tear-gassing and shooting of peaceful protestors by Israeli forces, of olive trees burnt by settlers in the night and of raids on the village to arrest children.

Throughout the course of this documentary it’s clear that there will have been some editing decisions made to highlight certain events in a certain way, but increasingly as the film unfolds it’s hard to imagine any context that would allow the Israeli army’s actions to make sense, culminating in the death of one of the village’s key protestors and Emad’s friend, a man you come to know in a small way during the film and then who you watch shot dead.

It’s hard to watch the film without feeling outrage, and it’s hard to imagine being in the same position without retaliating with violence, so it’s a testament to the patience of the villagers and their supporters that they manage to keep it relatively peaceful.

Silver Lining Playbook

Both Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper are brilliant in bringing their characters to life, unpredictable and inappropriate, a strain on their families but ultimately trying to get better. Even with the trite plot tropes of the gambling all-or-nothing ultimatum and the challenge/competition finale, Silver Lining Playbook still manages to feel fresh.

Not only the leads but DeNiro as Cooper’s father turns in a brilliant role, the first for a long time that feels more about the performance than the pay, and Jacki Weaver, excellent in Animal Kingdom, matches him for the quality of performance. Even Chris Tucker manages to channel his usual screechy offering into a part that plays to all of his strengths, the fast talking energy and good-natured face that doesn’t seem capable of threat.

Excellent camerawork, jittery camera full of quick edits, but the framing gives you the feel of the shambolic inner world of the bipolar sufferer rather than the usual quick cutting of an action-packed blockbuster.

After the excellent The Fighter, it seems that director David O. Russell is excelling at coaxing spectacular performances from his cast.

The Monster Squad

Another of the video-shop tempters, I never got round to watching the Monster Squad in the 80s.

Perfectly aimed at it’s demographic, it focuses on a group of pre-teen outsiders who gang together as the Monster Squad, and hone their knowledge of the classic monsters - how to defeat werewolves and vampires for example.

It just so happens that after a failed attempt by Van Helsing to stop Dracula decades earlier, Drac gets himself and Frankenstein’s monster flown out in crates, only to be dropped over small town America after being discovered by the pilot.

In town a man turns into a werewolf, a swamp creature appears and a mummy escapes from the museum, leading to a perfect storm of 80s updated Universal classic monsters for the kids to face off against.

The squad consists of all the key skill sets - horror film geeks, a fat boy, a cool leather jacketed boy, a little girl - and the tone of the film is very light and fun-loving, a little at odds with the 15 rating earned by scenes like the werewolf being blown apart by a grenade, only to messily form together as it wasn’t a silver weapon. If the film were made today it would likely be a 12A, with its euphemisms such as ‘dork’ replacing any more grown up swearing.

Tom Noonan as Frankenstein's monster is the stand-out performance here, portraying the monster as a gentle giant in the vein of the James Whale adaptation, with less of the accidental killing.

Frances Ha; The Conjuring; The Hunger

 Frances Ha

After the mirth-free zones that are The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding and Greenberg, you could be forgiven for thinking that Noel Baumbach’s latest directorial credit would be another take on the middle class ennui of the privileged yet unhappy Americans that arthouse audiences seek out for a classier dose of Schadenfreude. And yet, Frances Ha is full of warmth and joy.

The ingredients are still there - starving artist struggling in the big city but with a relatively wealthy parental safety net, reaching that point of adulthood where a lack of direction moves from malaise to panic. But instead of the naked confusion and anger, there is joy at finding friends and celebrating what the city has to offer, up alongside the awkwardness of breaks in communication and the difficulty in balancing practical survival and fulfilment.

As the co-writer, star Greta Gerwig undoubtedly has a huge influence and tempers some of Baumbach’s more sombre excesses. Crucially Frances Ha presents a loose knit group of people who are all likeable, flaws and all, and the female lead doesn’t pin her existence around a male relationship.

The Black and White photography suits New York well, giving the film more of a timeless feel as it could comfortably slot in amongst other NYC cinema of the last 3 or 4 decades.

Having just watched 2 seasons of Lena Dunham’s Girls, the similarities are undeniable, but the underlying themes of female friendship and educated, directionless women in their 20's scratching a living in New York are larger than that series and this film. This is both a great little character study and a loving, honest look at a particular generation.

The Conjuring

Setting itself up as yet another classic ‘period’ horror, taking place in 1971 and trumpeting about the ‘true story’ origins, The Conjuring finds itself too sharp to convince when compared to originals such as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or recent homages like The House of the Devil. Its cinematography is more in keeping with the likes of director James Wan’s previous horror offering Insidious, though this isn’t such a bad thing, for instance when the digital clarity of the photography picks out the eerie skews of shade in the basement.

Speaking of the basement, The Conjuring is rammed with some of the most obvious of all horror clichés.

• family arrives at big old house in middle of nowhere
• house with ghoulish past
• bricked-up rooms
• youngest kid soon making imaginary friend/s
• bumps in the night
• doors opening/closing by themselves
• crew of exorcist/ghost investigator types
• an exorcism
• creepy doll
• apparitions glimpsed in mirrors/windows
• creepy music box
• reverse Hansel and Gretel - the apparition guides people to the optimum haunty bit of the house by making noises and moving things

But The Conjuring doesn’t just steal from the old classics, as a number of riffs from Paranormal Activity are adopted wholesale, mainly the grabbing of the sleeping leg variety.

The cast are superior, with Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga good as the open-minded ghost hunters, and Lili Taylor great as usual, here playing the mother of the family targeted by the other-wordly.

Still, however polished it is there is nothing original here, and again unlike House of the Devil it’s not enough of a loving retro-production to compensate for that same-old same-old feeling, nor is it good enough to compete with the likes of the Exorcist.

The Hunger

Tony Scott’s début feature set the tone for much of his future work - stylish and a little empty.

The Hunger isn't the first attempt to bring the vampire myth up to date and it won’t be the last, but it doesn't avoid the issue of cementing itself fully in its time. The film is so 80's it hurts, from the goth club opening to the endless smoking of the first half and maze of rooms full of billowing net curtains and doves in the second, the film was already a museum piece once released.

Early on the film feels a little like a music video aiming for French chic, as Catherine Deneuve and Bowie smoulder from behind sunglasses and plumes of smoke, the editing cutting quickly as various unnatural light filters wash everything in moody hues, but once Susan Sarandon pops up it feels that the lack of dialogue  in the earlier scenes is more to do with the acting chops on offer up to that point than a stylistic choice.

Sarandon sticks out as an intense focal point in the second half, both in her passion for her new romantic interest in Deneuve’s vampire, and in the addiction/withdrawal scenes as she battles with her change, her blood losing the fight with ‘inhuman’ blood. Also the idea of a room full of boxed-up former lovers, suffering through their immortality in dessicated bodies is a little bit more chilling than the average crappy fang-flick, but the lack of engagement with most of the characters blunts the true horror you should be feeling because of it.

Pre-echoes of Scott’s later 80's flicks Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop 2 are there to see, particularly BHC2 with the opportunity for showcasing Hollywood opulence and Brigitte Nielsen’s glacial vamp, cold stares from within her severe suit and shaded eyes, but like those films The Hunger is all surface.

Predators; Twilight: Eclipse

 
Predators

Right from the off Predators shows promise. Adrian Brody gains consciousness in freefall, his ‘chute automatically ejecting thanks to what looks like, at a glance, a predator tech altometer. Once on the ground in thick jungle, the familiar jungle-drum theme from the original plays softly as the camera pans across the tree canopy from below. For the rest of the film the score evokes orchestral pieces from 80s classics in a way that works, rather than simply a display of nostalgia for the sake of it. The full first half hour of the film doesn’t involve any action, instead concentrating on the disparate warriors, warily uniting and trying to fathom how they all came to be dropped from the sky into unending jungle.
The characters themselves are mainly thinly sketched stereotypes - Danny Trejo as a Mexican gang enforcer, a Chechnyan soldier, a quiet, enigmatic yakuza, a death-squad soldier from Sierra Leone, a mouthy death row con with a shiv, an Israeli Defence Force sniper, an incongruous doctor and indie darling Adrian Brody as the hero.
The premise is contained within the trailer, these people have been pulled together to be hunted and as the movie progresses they are picked off one by one; the group are all hunters of people back on Earth and so make for challenging prey.
A film about a group being hunted inevitably makes Predators a chase movie, but the situations that crop up as the predators wheel out a variety of traps and an encounter with another survivor (a scene stealing cameo by Laurence Fishburne) are more than enough to keep you hooked. Though the stereotypical characters are only one of a number of genre tropes to be found, Predators makes use of them in all the right ways. Any criticisms that can be made at the sophistication may be confusing the franchise with the ‘hard’ sci-fi horror of Alien - Predator, lest we forget, featured a cigar chomping wrestler alongside Arnie in one-man-army mode and use of the word “motherfucker” being a key recurring feature.
Though the characters are on the stock side the personality clashes, double-crosses and betrayals do enough to have you caring about at least some of them, and they are sometimes used well - when the yakuza finds a samurai sword, it’s enough to provoke a roll of the eyes, but a one-on-one blade fight with a predator ends in a scene almost poetic, its wind-blown grass echoing classics samurai movies.
It’s hardly going to win any awards and sci-fi action films have been done better, but Predators is not only a decent genre offering but a glimpse at the possibilities of relaunching fallen franchises, they don’t have to go the way of Aliens vs. Predator.

Twilight: Eclipse

I’m certainly not in the target market for the Twilight franchise; despite the promise of a vampire/werewolf tussle (the Underworld films already demonstrate how this isn’t an automatic winning formula) but it was the promise of this clash that almost had me looking forward to this third installment. The trailer mixed up the usual earnest smouldering between the three corners of the supernatural love triangle, Bella, Edward and Jacob with hints of a vampire army on the march to Alaska, facing the wibbly alliance of the Cullen vampire clan and Native American werewolves. What we actually get is mixed.
There’s plenty of rivalry between the boys as they begrudgingly work together to protect Bella, and while the end of New Moon seemed to see her choose Edward pretty resolutely as her love, here it’s as if Jake’s dogged insistence that she feels something for him actually conjures those feelings into existence. This time however the central plot has little to offer those who don’t totally believe in it. New Moon offered plenty of laughs, however unintentional, but Eclipse’s slightly moodier tone somehow dampens any hysterical aspects and deadens the impact of camp.
Unfortunately the sideshow of the big fight fails to deliver. We are told that newly created vampires, newborns, are stronger and faster than normal thanks to their sudden bloodlust, though they can be beaten with skill and strategy. Much was made in New Moon of the difficulty vampires have in dying; as the sun creates glitter rather than flames in its interpretation, it was only the Voltari, the ridiculously camp vampire aristocracy, could bring a vampire’s immortality to an abrupt end. However, it seems that vampires are actually made out of glass or crystals and can be smashed to bits fairly easily, perhaps because they’re ‘new’. Whatever the reason it seems to deflate a key plot point in New Moon. Another moment which hampers immersion is Bryce Dallas Howard in the role of Victoria. There’s nothing wrong with her aside from the fact that the character was previously played by Rachelle Lefevre - it’s not a big issue but still jars.
After being pleasantly surprised by the first installment and having enough to enjoy from the second from the overwrought depictions of Bella’s mopiness, Jake’s shirt-losing abilities and Michael Sheen’s daft costume, I found Eclipse to be a let down with the action too short and infrequent and the main struggle for Bella’s affections stretched a little thin after three movies of it.
Still much better than a tale of obsessed teen romance has any right to be, the third part is nevertheless somewhat of a dip. Hopefully the fourth in the series will see the story branch out somewhat.

Ponyo; Sherlock Holmes; Youth in Revolt; Baise Moi; Frostbite

Ponyo

Ponyo is the first Ghibli film directed by Hayao miyazaki since Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), with Tales from Earthsea (2006) being the last Ghibli release, controversially directed by Miyazaki’s son, Goro. Most of Hayao Miyazaki’s films involve some sort of wider story playing out around the main characters, but Ponyo is a return to the more simple storytelling of the Ghibli favourite, My Neighbour Totoro.

There is a bit more going on in the case of Ponyo than “girls meet and befriend forest creature; are upset that their mum’s in hospital; she gets better” - Ponyo is a fish, and the magical daughter of a wizard who has shunned the world of man and now works to keep the balance in the oceans; her mother is the Goddess of Mercy. One day Ponyo gets trapped in a glass bottle and is rescued by five year old Sosuke - they become fast friends, and although her father takes her back, she has fallen in love and wants to be human. This upsets the balance and the oceans rise, but if Sosuke truly loves Ponyo all will be well. He does, the end.

The visual setting of Ponyo is very ‘Ghibli’, that special mixture of standard anime style mixed with a rustic charm - Miyazaki favours a setting that throws in English Victorian village alongside modern day small town Japan and lots and lots of open space - the theme of ‘nature’ and man’s interaction with it stretches back to Nausicaa. Aside from the content, the actual style is very warm, everything having a hand-drawn feel that gives it a timeless quality - it could sit alongside the Ghibli movies of the early 80s as well as standing up today. Charming is the word.

The bounteous detail of the sea creatures filling the background of many scenes is a further indication of Miyazaki’s preoccupation with the natural world, but this does spill over into one awkward scene where Ponyo and Sousoke set forth on a magically enlarged toy boat and point out the extinct fish species that have returned to the recently flooded seaside town; it feels very much like thinly veiled educational programming at that point, but thankfully this is the harshest criticism that can be levelled against it. There are lots of lovely touches, such as Ponyo’s glee at the dinner table, her chicken-footed, frog-faced form between fish and human, particularly when using magic, the warm mutterings of the pensioners at the old folk’s home where Sousuke’s mother works next door to his school.

It’s not the kind of film that will gain many new converts to Ghibli studios, at least those over the age of ten, but for people who already have a special place in their hearts for the animation house’s output this is another in a long line of greats.

Sherlock Holmes

After the frenzy surrounding Guy Ritchie’s debut, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, I found myself distinctly underwhelmed by the film and disappointed in the attention given to the crap mockney gangster pic that spawned dozens of copycats. The resultant loathing for Ritchie and his output has blinded me to the fact that it was the only film I’d actually seen of his; despite the mixed or just plain awful receptions given to Snatched, Swept Away, Revolver and RocknRolla, I hadn’t bolstered my opinion of his work by actually watching any of them. Some would argue that this is perfectly acceptable - you wouldn’t need to have seen Uwe Boll’s work to hold a dismal opinion of them, after all, that’s what critics are for. No one has the time to watch everything, so you want to filter things and be left with the good stuff, or at least bad stuff that you enjoy.

I finally broke my no-Ritchie run with Sherlock Holmes. A new Holmes adaptation for 2010, with fighting and explosions, by Guy Ritchie? Surely not. The advantage here, though, is that Holmes is played by Robert Downy Jr., never less than watchable in anything he does and recently lifting the otherwise average Iron Man up to half decent blockbuster status.

Whilst this adaptation inevitably plays fast and loose with the source material, there is enough charm in Downey’s performance to keep you rooting for him throughout as he revels in the various aspects of his character - retreating into a messy funk due to the lack of challenge without a case to work on, his jealousy at Watson’s looming marriage plans and change of their cosy set-up, his flashes of deductive brilliance. There is a scene toward the end where various pieces of the overall puzzle are slotted together by Holmes all in one go, in what feels clumsy as part of what was up to that point a slick production, but other scenes use his unique skills remarkably well. Although Ritchie has a penchant for a bit of the old ultraviolence and has a particular audience to cater for, the combat scenes with Holmes (including one of bare-knuckle boxing, apparently one of Holmes’ methods of distraction from boredom) are peppered with wonderfully inventive slow-mo sequences where he analyses and plans the best course of action to fell his opponent, before we have a replay in more or less real-time; it’s a good way of getting meaty fight scenes in but incorporating them into the general atmosphere of the Holmes setting.

Speaking of atmosphere, the art direction is very impressive, getting the right mix of Victoriana and grime with belching chimneys and dirty brickwork, brass and clockwork devices and overall an impression that it feels films like From Hell came close to but here it succeeds; there’s something palpable about the paraphernalia and specimens in the lair of the ginger midget and the various items strewn about Holmes’ own room when Watson comes to relieve him from a funk as he attempts to invent a pistol silencer. It’s a world that is easy to get lost in and helps to ground the slightly hammier aspects of the performances.

Only the character of Rachel McAdams as the token yank sticks out, apparently an old flame of Holmes and one of the few criminals who he did not catch (there are references to her being something along the lines of a black widow or serial bigamist). She variously fills the role of no-nonsense dame and damsel in distress at numerous points, but is one of the few parts that starts to tug the curtain away from it all. Even Jude Law manages to put in one of his more charming performances as Watson, rather than one of his many slappable ones. The interplay between Downey and himself works well, and despite the allusions some have made to an undercurrent of homosexuality, their chemistry came across more as a version of Victorian repression of a close friendship, highlighted in one scene after Watson survives an explosion: Holmes stumbles out “I’m glad you’re…still with us” to which Watson replies by clearing his throat.

I never thought I’d say I’d enjoy a Guy Ritchie movie but there it is - certainly not the most faithful Holmes adaptation nor the best, but as a knockabout blockbuster which manages to reflect favourably on its source material it’s a lot of fun. Although I obviously went in with low expectations.

Youth in Revolt

Who would win in a fight between Michael Cera and Jessie Eisenberg? In an actual fist-fight terms, I’d go with Jesse, but with output too he seems to just about be in a different class. For two actors sewing up the awkward geek hero character roles, Jesse’s choices seem more measured/planned/calculated? Roger Dodger, the Squid and The Whale and the lands of Adventure and Zombies are his highlights, and whilst Cera has hit high with roles in Juno and Superbad, these were more ensemble or supporting gigs, with the more recent Year Zero pretty much a critical flop.

Still, it’s hard to dislike the guy so it was good to find that Youth in Revolt was a pretty decent stab at the “geek gets girl” movie.

Cera plays Nick Twisp who is your typical 16 year old American geek, although here he is burdened with his trailer trash mum whilst his unemployed dad is Steve Buscemi, who has shacked up with a hot 25 year old. As a typical teen boy he is obsessed with losing his virginity, and the unlikelihood that he will ever even meet a girl as they all go for jerks.

Anyway, his mum’s current loser squeeze (played by the Hangover’s Zach Galifianikis) sells a broken-down car to sailors, who upon discovering its condition threaten a beating, so the family all leave on an impromptu vacation to a shabby trailer in a holiday park. There, a cute, interesting teenage girl shows inexplicable interest in the poor boy and thus begins a mostly comic descent into mishap and adventure as he tries to be with the girl of his dreams. Chief to this is his invention of an alter-ego, the white-trousered, Gauloise-smoking bad boy Francois Dillinger, who sets him on the path of no good.

Buscemi and Galifianikis round out a decent supporting cast including Ray Liotta, Justin Long and Fred Willard, with Portia Doubleday as the object of Nick’s affections, Sheeni. She manages to play it so that it’s hard to tell if Sheeni is taking Nick for a ride and just using him for fun, or whether he actually means something more to her.

Youth in Revolt is certainly in no danger of winning prizes for innovation, but it all hangs together well and a teen romcom based around oddball humour is certainly preferable to the last run of gross-out comedies.

Baise Moi

Baise Moi rode the wave of arthouse films that were released after the change in BBFC guidelines in 1999. Alongside films like the Idiots, Romance and 9 Songs, Baise Moi was controversial for its inclusion of real sex scenes, but also married this up with violence.

Poorly shot on what I assume is digital video, it looks like out-takes from one of those stilted programmes used to teach French in schools. The performances are pretty poor and the score jars against the film, intrusive and spreading across scenes without helping connect them. The plot itself feels like nothing more than sensationalism, the idea that the women’s backgrounds in drugs, violence and prostitution drove them to their killing spree is hardly social commentary, rather an excuse for a bunch of low-budget gore and explicit sex. It’s just a bit empty when all’s said and done.

Frostbite

Swedish vampire movie set in the polar region where a night lasts a month. Yes you’ve heard the premise before in 30 Days of Night, but Frostbite was released in 2006, one year prior. It starts promisingly with a Scandanavian unit working with the German army gets stranded at an isolated cabin in the Ukraine in 1944. There are vampires in the cabin. But when we skip to the present day, and teen girl Saga is moving with her mother to a remote part of Sweden we drop into cliché – the vampires have monstro-vision meaning you see in first person and all monsters are mouth-breathers. These particular vampires see in wibbly red hues as they stalk lonely humans in the snowy dark.

Professor Beckert, a big name in Genetics, is the reason that Saga’s mother has dragged them to the far-flung town. But Beckert has secrets, including a comatose patient and dubious red pills, and before long people are turning up dead with holes in their necks.

Thankfully the wibbly effect isn’t overused, and the creature make-up is decent enough, nothing wildly inventive but better than the standard Buffy extra style do. The performances are strong throughout, though Beckert is perhaps a little overly sinister to not have attracted any attention so far. The conceit of the polar night isn’t really used, besides allowing for the story to play out over more than half a day without people having to hide indoors, making 30 Days of Night for once seem a far superior Hollywood offering, both in terms of the plot and the creature design.

Frostbite doesn’t rival its more recent cousin Let the Right One In either, not staying with any character long enough to give them a good chance to breathe, instead falling back on the set-pieces and effects work, and the few comedic moments aren’t quite enough (although good-hello talking dogs) to give it a point of difference.

Frostbite isn’t a bad horror movie and is well worth checking out as a B movie genre piece, but the stable of vampire movies is so swollen these days it isn’t hard to find something more satisfying. It is essentially director Anders Banke’s feature film debut, however, so it will be interesting to see if he gets the chance to build on this good start.

Daybreakers

Daybreakers

Slotting into the end-of-the-world zeitgeist that has built up with the renewed interest in the latest installments of two popular 70s genres, the disaster movie and zombie movie, Daybreakers performs the coup of covering both the tail end of the human race and the collapse of those responsible - in 2019 a vampire infection has spread so rapidly that they now comprise 95% of the population of Earth, with the last few humans hunted down in order to be farmed for blood.
Opening with a suicide scene where a young girl leaves a note and waits in the garden for sunrise, only to burst into flame, we than have sections of the note highlighted - frustrations at never growing up - then into the titles. This involves snippets of headlines and news broadcasts that fill in the back story. It seems a bat is responsible for kick-starting the infection in humans, and now vampires have become so numerous that blood supplies are running dangerously low and they are desperately trying to create a synthetic substitute.

The effort to create a new world adapted for vampires is admirable - subwalks, underground tunnels that connect buildings in cities, have been constructed so that vampires can move about during the day, and cars have modifications which block out the light and instead use cameras to feed video of the outside world in order to drive in sunlight. Smoking has enjoyed a rise in popularity, understandably as there is no health threat to the immortal undead and it provides a distraction from blood hunger as stocks dwindle, but well observed details like these also raise questions: in one scene the camera pans across a group of young vamps hanging out in what appears to be some sort of school uniform, and smoking with the studied insolence of the adolescent. But now that smoking is no longer taboo, why is the act an opportunity to display teen rebellion? And more importantly the majority of the teen vamps would be in their twenties by now seeing as the infection began a decade before - why carry on the teen act? Of course there is the possibility that vestigial social conventions still cling on, but it doesn't explain where the tobacco comes from - who grows it and how? If it's produced in indoor greenhouses how is photosynthesis achieved without killing the vampires?
Happily the film isn't chock full of such inconsistencies and within the horror genre Daybreakers does a pretty thorough job at creating a believable world, to the extent that you would pick up on niggles such as the cigarettes rather than just dismiss the whole thing as rubbish.

The themes underlying the film aren't exactly subtle; the baddies aren't just vampires, but represented by the corporation that farms blood and researches a substitute, and its CEO played by Sam Neill, whose fake fangs seem a little ill-fitting compared to the rest of the cast. Then you have the military industrial complex  in the form of the vampire army which hunts humans in daylight with tricked out humvees, full body anti-sunlight armour and automatic tranquiliser rifles. Further social commentary comes from the juxtaposition of the slick, suited vamps, living in fancy minimalist boxes in the city, whilst the human survivors clad in check shirts and blue jeans hole up in the countryside, setting out to rescue other survivors around the country in convoys of pickups and mobile homes.
Within vampire society itself the danger of blood famine isn't just starvation - it seems that if vampires go without human blood for too long they start to devolve into mindless, bestial creatures, taking on an appearance more bat than human and quite willing to attack other vampires in a lust for blood.

Amidst all of this is Ethan Hawke, head haematologist at Neill's company and in charge of blood substitute research, motivated not only to save vampirekind but out of regret that humans have become an endangered species. His chance encounter with a small band of survivors leads to him gaining their trust and being invited to their sanctuary in order to work on a cure that may have been discovered.
There's clearly a lot going on, but Daybreakers also manages to be particularly bloodthirsty, even for a vampire movie, with scenes of feeding, dismemberment and decapitation that wouldn't look out of place in a typical zombie flick, and even full-on gory bodily explosions. The cast do well, with Ethan Hawke in drippy mode as the vampire with a conscious, Sam Neill as the oily, reptilian arch capitalist who constantly pushes the bottom line (it seems that a decade of vampirism hasn't led to bloodlust overtaking consumer greed as the primary driving force) and Willem Dafoe, whose striking, sunken face perfectly fits someone supposed to be an ex-vampire, as well as the character who provides the main source of comic relief "Are we safe?" "As humans in a world of vampires we're about as safe as a five dollar whore".

After a resurgence in the vampire flick in 2009, thanks to the success of the Twilight films, it seems odd that Daybreakers has been released so far adrift, especially as at this time of year it is up against all of the last minute Oscar hopefuls. However, this distance surely works in its favour and helps it stand out, kick-starting 2010 and giving hope that this may be another good year for mainstream horror with the remakes of Romero's The Crazies and the Wolf Man both due shortly.

Not perfect, no, after all there must be a new slant to vampires in order to differentiate from the usual default of paler skin and shit contacts (look at Blade 2 for instance) that doesn't involve them having glittery fucking skin, but there are interesting ideas that are executed well enough that raise this above the average.