Greenberg

Greenberg


Those familiar with Noah Baumbach’s critically acclaimed The Squid and The Whale (and Margot at the Wedding) will recognise the template repeated here of unlikeable, self-centred East coast academic types, steam-rolling through life with the unwavering self-absorption of the ignorant (whatever their whining insecurities may suggest). The difference is that unlike in The Squid…, where engagement derived from discovering how each character, parents and children, dealt with the central catalyst of a relationship in collapse, here we only have the selfish Roger Greenberg behaving badly to some degree to all and sundry. The other characters in the film highlight this as they are more rounded with qualities to balance against their flaws or negative features.

The problem with an unsympathetic lead who isn’t an antihero figure is that it’s hard to invest in them. We’re told early on that Greenberg has recently emerged from hospital after a breakdown but as the film progresses you get the sense that he’s always been this way.

Rather than revealing some of the worst in human nature as in early LaBute, Baumbach seems content to bring us the merely annoying, like Seinfeld with no jokes, a feeling further cemented thanks to Ben Stiller in the lead. The cast, including Stiller, all play well, but it seems odd to typecast Stiller in the angry man role he often plays. Usually this is tempered in a comedy setting (even Royal Tenenbaums had an undercurrent of ridicule beneath the misery of the protagonists, in Stiller’s case his shared uniform with his sons and Dalmatian mice pricking the seriousness of his character), but when you just get the fury with no lightness to soften the edges it’s a hard watch, fine if that’s the point (Stiller played similarly straight and angry in LaBute’s Your Friends and Neighbours) but Greenberg wants to be taken as a quirky indie romcom, more like Juno than In the Company of Men or the Shape of Things.
In presenting a character you’d make an effort to avoid in real life it’s a wonder what kind of audience this is aimed at, let alone how we are supposed to believe in the central romance. Many films give away the best jokes in the trailer, but Greenberg may be unique in having those jokes become no longer funny when seen in context.
Like the character himself, Greenberg isn’t awful but you probably have better ways of spending your time than with it.

Alien vs. Predator 2: Requiem

Alien vs. Predator 2: Requiem


AvP2 is the film that the first instalment in the franchise mash should have been realistically, if not ideally - flawed and predictable and ignorant in the possibilities of theme and character development found in some of the comics, but trashy fun nonetheless. Essentially, Predators crash-land and die on present day Earth, Aliens escape into a small, isolated town in the USA, more Predators come to clean up the mess.
The first film, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Arctic pyramid-set travesty, felt similar to his previous Resident Evil adaptation . There’s a tangible quality absent, an unerring feel of inauthenticity or plasticity, as if the whole thing is held together with CGI effects too shiny and uniform to give the production any weight.
AVP2 at least feels more ‘real’ with its effects work and it features so many franchise and general horror film clichés that it feels familiar and so grounded. From the conventions of small-town America - the local sheriff, diner waitress and local badboy/rich family’s daughter tension - to a Predator’s ungainly fingers flitting over its wrist console and the distressed elephant squeal of a dying Alien, the film crams in as many reference points as possible to keep the fanboys on board.
We have facehuggers (though the gestation period seems to be much shorter in the present day centuries before the first films were set), Alien secondary-jaw head chomping, a Predator swanning about being a bad ass warrior until finally taking off its mask near the end for a good mandible-roar and bit of fisticuffs, the Predator console-bomb going off, a brief swimming Alien shot referencing Alien: Resurrection, a National Guard commander hearing his whole squad being swiftly taken out from his command centre, shots of Aliens slowly moving their faces up against the heads of very distressed people, ignoring the fact that the background to this shot ripped from Alien3 is that Ripley was impregnated with a queen and so spared the usual quick dispatch.
This last example sums up the general tone of the film, intent on recycling any “Woah, cool!” moments whilst seemingly oblivious to the qualities that made these franchises memorable besides the effects work.

New inventions include the Predator’s pleasantly luminous disintegration liquid - a small measure and any pesky bodies that would be evidence of the accidental introduction of Aliens to the planet are swiftly dissolved. One other invention is another example of the affectionate yet blinkered view of the creators. Alien3 put forward the idea that an Alien would incorporate some of the characteristics of the host species, meaning that whilst similar to the Aliens of human origin from previous films, the dog Alien from the third movie was inclined to move on all fours with a slightly elongated trunk. AVP2 has taken this idea and come up with the Predalien, a result of a Predator being the host species. Rather than a variation on the original Giger Alien design this one is not only significantly larger (despite little variation regardless of the age/gender/size of a human host) but sports the mandibles and rubbery dreadlocks of the Predator. Yes, dreadlocks.
The unknown cast help to create a level of tension as you are kept guessing about who’s next on the menu - if a baby ward at a hospital is at risk then everything’s up for grabs, but on the other hand the lack of any real character development makes it hard to care who’s next.

Whilst certainly better than the first film this is faint praise indeed, and it’s a shame that more hasn’t been made of it considering the wealth of ideas that have been generated around these two xenomorphs in the last two or three decades.

A very, very average action/horror B-pic, remarkable only due to its nasties.

The Departed

The Departed

My second viewing of The Departed, on terrestrial TV one night, one of those situations where you don’t intend to watch a film but get sucked in, allowed me to gain some perspective away from the intimidating comparisons with the Infernal Affairs or indeed any notion of what a Scorsese picture would ideally be. Able to appreciate the film anew I dimly remember dismissing many of the central performances the first time round, aside from what is arguably Mark Whalberg’s finest hour.
This time I was able to see past the grown-baby constipation face of Scorsese’s new millennium muse, DiCaprio, and witness a performance as a man utterly terrified of the violence surrounding him and his vulnerability to this atmosphere as the rat that Jack Nicholson’s Boston-Irish gang is trying to ferret out.
Leo as Billy Costigan never gets a break, constantly fearful and twisted inside at the effort of maintaining his cover. Matt Damon’s Colin Sullivan in contrast is having a ball, strutting and joking and thoroughly enjoying his privileged position as the double agent on the other side of the fence, yet he nevertheless manages convey the character as a clueless idiot, out of his depth despite his bravado and usually expelling inappropriate remarks, only dimly aware of the status of the relationships in which he finds himself.
Nicholson’s performance as mob boss Frank Costello also benefits from a new take. What initially seemed like Jack coasting through his role by simply taking the OTT elements he’s been famous for since Witches of Eastwick and cranking them up to 11, it now feels like a study of a man so out of touch with reality that he has gone off the deep end and can no longer see the surface. Rarely sober at any given moment and wolfishly enjoying his status as alpha male - later in the film he tellingly states that he hasn’t been motivated by cash since he stole his first lunch money in grade school - he is all about the mayhem.
Unsurprisingly for Scorsese the cast is rounded out with starry support. Besides Whalberg we have Adam Baldwin in fine form (both exhibiting a fine line in workplace ribbing that echoes Mamet), Martin Sheen as Billy’s undercover handler and father figure/mentor, Vera Farmiga as the counsellor and love interest to both undercover rats and Ray Winstone as Frank’s right hand Mr. French, his gruff menace outweighing the dodgy accent, Boston by way of Bow.
There are many recurring tics, flourishes and motifs to be found from the rest of Scorsese’s work, not least in the East coast gangland setting but with pop music montages and the intense paranoia, but this is lesser Scorsese, more akin to Bringing Out the Dead than Casino or Goodfellas. Like that film, however, there’s still much to enjoy here.

The Eye

The Eye

Danny and Oxide Pang were known for their frenetic take on East Asian cinema with the release of Bangkok Dangerous, their first feature as co-directors and one of the many success stories which went on to ‘enjoy’ a Hollywood remake (which they also helmed). The Eye, their second film together, came in on the height of the wave of Eastern horror in the wake of the Ring, before the market became saturated with gore-fodder and spooky girl movies.
Whilst there is some personality in the cinematography, the screen often washed with a sickly green reminiscent of some of Christopher Doyle or Jeanne Pierre Jeunet’s work, the story treads old ground with its premise. Our heroine Mun is the beneficiary of a cornea transplant and thus able to see for the first time after a successful operation, but after a time it’s clear that she sees more than most.
She sees dead people.
Admittedly previous entries in transplant horror tend to focus on the new body parts being evil or corrupting the host (see The Hand, Rabid, Idle Hands) rather than a gateway to the undead, but The Eye is unsuccessful as a horror film. Choosing not to go down the road of gore the film is surprisingly light on genuine scares with only a midway lift scene causing the skin to crawl, whilst the bombastic Mothman Prophecies-style ending seems to belong to another film entirely.
Beyond a few visual flourishes (Mun’s new sight allows the Pangs to play with focus) there is little to recommend The Eye above dozens of other Eastern horror entries released in the last decade and a half. Its popularity likely down to its appearance early on in the wave, for once there is the possibility that the Hollywood remake may fare better than the original (unlike the reportedly dire Nicolas Cage version of Bangkok Dangerous).

Jumper

Jumper

Jumper practically begs to be damned with faint praise, a textbook example of “not as bad as I thought it would be”. Essentially it is an X-Men movie, albeit one that instead of featuring a multitude of mutant talents instead focuses on one, and one that would normally be a peripheral feature exhibited by one of the kids n the background of a filler scene.
Props to the film makers that banked on Hayden Christiansen post Star Wars. Would the negative fallout from those prequels turn audiences off or would the massive exposure help attract fans to his new film? It’s a precarious balance but whatever the case Hayden is fine in what is an undemanding teen blockbuster, his petulant pretty boy image fitting the role of the selfish main character who embraces new found teleportation powers to leave his small town life behind to live as an international playboy.
After a few set-up scenes we rejoin Hayden’s David Rice just as he finds out that there is a secret order of religious zealots (led by Sam Jackson after another visit to the blind barber) who hunt and kill all the teleporters they can find. Their supposed millennia-long vendetta is apparently fuelled only by the belief that only god should be able to be in two places at the once, and it’s this simplicity that’s emblematic of the film’s core problems. After years of sampling the best of what the world has to offer David is apparently unable to find love anywhere, instead fixated on his first crush back home. Jamie Bell’s fellow teleporter Griffin is cartoonish, all leather-jacketed sneer as the experienced jumper who helps David learn about the secret war and also rescue his love interest after a kidnapping.
The film is also blatantly intended as a franchise; the story is left with a multitude of loose strings, the conflict unresolved as a battle won whilst the war still rages, Jackson’s Roland defeated but not stopped despite his unwavering desire to murder jumpers, and intrigue involving David’s mother revealed at the close of the movie but unexplored.
Ultimately Jumper can only leave you unsatisfied regardless of how low you’ve set your expectations.

The Deaths of Ian Stone

The Deaths of Ian Stone

Mainstream films often go for the lowest common denominator in order to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and not only recoup the investment but make a profit, or at least try and wrap up any difficult ideas in a safe bubble of celebrity. Whilst independent features often sidestep the need to please as many investors as budgets are much smaller, this reduction in expenditure can also make things a lot harder for the production as it takes a lot of skill to dress up nothing like a million dollars and for every low budget indie success story there are dozens of damp squibs going straight to video or failing to even secure release.
Unfortunately, in The Deaths of Ian Stone we have a case where the ambitions overreach the abilities of the production. The idea is interesting - a man finds himself dying and then returning. living a different life each time but with a few similarities, the same people returning with him but in different roles. He discovers the existence of inter-dimensional shadowy creatures, feeding on fear and resorting to murder to feed their addiction to the sweetest fear of all. The reason for his apparent reincarnation becomes clear as the film plays out, he used to be one of ‘them’ but rebelled for the love of a human.
The film plays out like a TV movie or an extended pilot for a show that never was. Despite the obviously British origin of the production and majority of the cast the photography has the hazy sheen of pre-digital American television whilst Ian Stone himself is played by Mike Vogel, an anonymous handsome jock type seemingly only in the film as a desperate attempt to extend the film’s appeal across the Atlantic. Whilst the effects are largely CGI they also seem to be bland, slightly ‘off the shelf’ creations rather than designs unique to the world of the film as the shadows share a glut of features from the ring wraiths of LOTR, giant insects of Mimic and arm/spear morphing from Terminator 2’s T-1000. Worse, when Ian discovers his true origins he becomes a half wraith/human hybrid, donning a generic Buffy-esque monster mask and Bon Jovi mullet in a spectacular example of design failure.
Aside from the lead the performances are okay and whilst the TV-feel doesn’t necessarily equate to bad quality, without a series run to flesh out characters or plot The Deaths of Ian Stone suffers from all the negatives of not being a show but doesn’t benefit from being a movie.

A Prophet; Precious; The Crazies; The Criminal

A Prophet

Anyone who has seen Jacques Audiard’s previous work, particularly The Beat That My Heart Skipped, will know that any new feature is a cause for excitement. French cinema is often typecast as largely bourgeois navel gazing and the attempts to focus on the grittier, urban side of France rarely result in Le Haine, but more likely end up with the cartoon of District 13 or the slickly produced but stereotypical Tell No One.

The prison drama has become a genre of its own, with a lot of time spent analysing the particular situation of men locked up together and a number of resultant tropes. A Prophet is very much of its stable – we have nasty violence between inmates; the poor (mostly) innocent forced to become a worse person in order to survive; the intricate schemes involving the smuggling of contraband; the kindly friend introducing a possibility for the future (in this case as in many, education); the boss man who lives in relative comfort and has a degree of control over how the prison runs; inmates divided over racial lines; and one familiar scenario not isolated to the prison genre and more often found in crime in general – the young man learning the ropes and rising through the ranks.

Although it does feature all of the usual prison drama trappings, there are moments of lyrical beauty and quiet, much like 2009’s sublime Hunger. Reyeb, Malik’s (our anti-hero) first kill, literally haunts him, appearing in his cell throughout the film and voicing his conscience or playing devil’s advocate. Along with these more visual flourishes, there is a certain attention to detail that many other straight prison flicks would habitually miss; one such scene sees Malik (played wonderfully by Tahal Rahim) on a limited release toward the end of his sentence, he is flying to the south coast as part of a meeting on behalf of the Corsicans and has never flown before. After passing through the metal detector the airport security briefly frisk him, and Malik automatically opens his mouth wide and sticks out his tongue, a routine ingrained as part of prison life.

The final scene where Malik walks away from prison a newly free man, with his friend’s wife and baby, is filed with tension and menace as they are followed by a convoy of Mercs and SUVs, indications of his new place in the underworld and that his past will haunt him, no matter what happens.

A Prophet is deserving of the praise heaped upon it and has already made a place for itself in the murky crime genre, it will no doubt be hailed as a classic in years to come.

Precious

You know those films where the actors are so convincing that you take it for granted and don’t really feel like anyone’s making an effort? Precious is one of those films. Every actor completely inhabits his or her character, even to the point where you start seriously thinking of Mariah Carey as an actress. Monique? Amazing. Transforms into a completely believable but repulsive monster. Lenny Kravitz. Really? I didn’t even realise until I saw the credits. Somehow they made Lenny Kravitz into an actor, not a cameo or an addition to a star-studded cast but a proper acting-in-character actor. That’s not to mention the numerous people who didn’t have a music career prior to the film, from Gabourey Sidibe in the title role to each of her ethnically diverse mix of classmates, each one of them living and breathing the role and elevating what on paper could be another TV-movie-of-the-week to a captivating and heartbreaking feature.

Precious is a harsh film, one of those that will have the majority of the audience in tears at some point. Dealing unflinchingly with domestic abuse, it must have been an uphill struggle to get it made, let alone garner the exposure and awards that are being bandied around. For once it’s good to see a film that focuses on the poor and downtrodden of urban America without getting caught up in the titillation of drug and gang culture – this story could be about a girl in any city anywhere in the world where poverty and overstretched government resources leave people falling through the cracks.

In many films the dream sequences where Precious imagines a life of fame and success would be corny, but here they help lighten the tone, bringing a brief respite from the problems that she faces.

It’s often hard to recommend films that mainly just make you feel miserable, as despite what some would say there is little joy here, no answers for the problems Precious faces and the people that help her through only highlight the plight of others like her that don’t get that support. However, the film is undeniably moving and if your viewing choices don’t have to all be about sweetness and light or explosions and empty grunting then you should check it out; sometimes a film gets hyped for a reason.

The Crazies

Hollywood’s recent fetish for remaking 70s horror continues with an update of Romero’s non-zombie zombie movie. Arguably less famous than the Dead films, it does make a nice change for them to choose something a little more obscure to dig up and re-heat, though it would be better if they started to go for films that weren’t quite classics. The original Crazies did a decent job in marrying the psychopathic contagion/community containment ideas that have variously cropped up in some form in everything from Outbreak to Rec. Whilst Romero did the live ‘infected’ decades before 28 Days Later, here the emphasis is just as much on the government’s response to the infection as it is with seeing what happens when lots of people go violently mental.

Happily we have some decent chops to get us through the exposition, with Timothy Ollyphant as the town sheriff and Rhada Mitchell as town doctor, a husband and wife team who find themselves part of the governments lockdown shortly after people start going nuts, and together they try and make it to the next town along with Ollyphant’s deputy, played by Joe Anderson.

Like many similar zombie/apocalypse movies, once the initial confusion over infection and government crackdown have happened, it’s mostly a chase movie as our group tries to get to the nearest city for help, stopping off at truck stop diners, supermarkets and abandoned houses along the way all ripe with the potential for hiding crazies and providing jump-out scares and action scenes.

All of the cast play well and there are a few tense scenes (the pitchfork/hospital ward stands out in the memory) sprinkled among those of straight up gory action, but there is little to raise this above a number of similar entries. The Crazies is solid and watchable but it never feels like it adds to the original in the way that Dawn of the Dead arguably did.

The Criminal

The debut feature of writer-director Julian Simpson, The Criminal was perhaps doomed in the way many British features have been for the past couple of decades. Unless it’s a period feature or a rom-com there are few chances of a success, with only a handful of films getting the exposure to break the mainstream, usually based around some sort of plucky underdog situation (the Full Monty, Billy Elliot, East is East).

As a conspiracy thriller about a normal bloke thrust into a seedy and murderous underworld, The Criminal put itself up against decades of stiff competition and with Eddie Izzard as one of the biggest names in the cast it was going to be a hard struggle for blockbuster levels of success.

Whilst the plot is not exactly grounded in reality (think the recent Clive Owen vehicle, The International for an equivalent level of silly/sensible) and ends up with things being tied up a little too quickly right in the last moments, the high quality of acting and the excellent ear for dialogue has you swept up in the story. Whilst there are inevitably a few less than natural clunkers when it comes to having to chuck in a bit of exposition, there is a healthy dose of banter that is hugely enjoyable. The relationship between Bernard Hill and Holly Aird in particular is excellent, as the detectives investigating the central murder, and their chief suspect J, played by Steven Mackintosh. The two genuinely feel like people that have worked together for years, that have come to know each other’s quirks and foibles, and can happily snipe away at each other only to immediate lapse into a shared joke. Hill in particular brings the strongest performance to the film, always lighting up a scene despite the fact that his swearing, slightly pig-headed character could easily be played as caricature.

Izzard is notable for giving one of his better performances here. Whilst there is an element of throwaway casualness that can seem at odds with the situation, for the most part he works well and doesn’t glare as he has done in some miscast roles.

Whilst he has worked steadily in films, appearing regularly since the late 90s, more recent performances tend to be that of supporting roles, those usually afforded to characters actors where his talents work best. Back in the period between 1999 and 2001 Izzard’s inclusion in a movie cast was trumpeted much more loudly than today, at least this side of the Atlantic presumably as a hope that it would add to the domestic box office. Whilst Izzard did work on occasion, in the Criminal and also in Shadow of the Vampire where a certain amount of hamminess was required in the role of a silent film star in what is a slightly camp black comedy, in others he didn’t fare so well – Mystery Men was a fairly decent stab at a super hero comedy based on third rate super heroes but Izzard’s part as one of the super villains stuck out a bit in a cast of zingy, SNL-style comedians. The post Lock, Stock gangster pic Circus was universally panned on release, and whilst it’s a little unfair to dump it all at Izzard’s door he certainly didn’t help.

The Criminal is a decent low budget London thriller, and aside from the strange inclusion of an unhinged yank squatter character (did they have to get an American accent in there by law?) it’s wonderfully written, brilliantly acted and whilst not the glossiest of features it doesn’t look bad for something scraped together in Bethnal Green. It’s a shame that Julian Simpson hasn’t had the chance to make a film again, even if only as a writer he has a definite talent for dialogue and character, but up to now he has been firmly placed in the world of TV with episodes of the likes of the well-respected Spooks, Hustle and New Tricks under his belt. Imdb has news of a new writer/director project One Way Split, so let’s hope this gets more of a chance to gain an audience.

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.

The Book of Eli; The Road

The Book of Eli

What can be said about Denzel Washington? If you want an actor to have an air of gravitas, a certain dignity and authority, yet still have a threatening presence, he’s your man. Liam Neeson is another actor with the bearing and worldly-wise sense of statesmanship to fit similar roles, but when called on to perform more violent scenes his sneer and snarl can possibly be read as that of the bad guy, whereas Denzel comes across a man who would kill with regret, attacking as a last resort.

And so to the Book of Eli. It’s hard to work out whether it’s a film about the redemptive power of Christian faith masquerading as a film about the post-apocalyptic American wasteland, or a kick-ass dystopian action movie masquerading as a film about faith?

The final twist - that Eli is blind - is a little hard to stomach. It’s not hard to recall scenes where other heightened senses don’t serve as sufficient explanation for his actions. Any amount of accurate violence can be attributed to finely trained senses of smell and hearing, but general orientation is a little harder to bear. In one scene there is a shoot out in the main street of a ramshackle town in the Western tradition. Eli takes out each henchman with a pistol, a mere one or two shots for each, but how does he navigate the street itself and know where to find cover?

For the majority of the film it doesn’t seem to be an issue - you’ll look back on scenes of feeling the sunlight on skin rather than needing to see it; knowing a woman’s hands were shaking not by sight, but because of the teacup and saucer she held.

For the most part the main impact comes from the blasted landscape of dust and saturated colour that Eli makes his way through, on an incongruously pristine highway headed west.

Such emphasis on the visual aspects come through in the first scene of the film, reminiscent of recent Wushu/Wuxia features, a twilight forest with ash lightly raining down. Panning across the body of a man, pistol dropped from his hand, we see a hairless cat approach the corpse, sniff and start to feed. Further off we see an imposing figure in the gloom and ash, hooded and gas-masked, his legs strain at a bow held level with the ground and aimed at the bait - his trap that the cat has sprung.

On the road we see Eli’s encounters with cannibal bandits, dispatching his enemies with lethal efficiency. The Wushu influences come forward again as Eli slices through his enemies with swift, fluid movements.

His journey takes him to a small town led by Gary Oldman in the style of another Western tradition - from the upstairs of a saloon bar. He sends teams of bandits into the wastes to search for books, after one in particular - the bible, a weapon to rule men’s hearts and minds.

The cause of the apocalypse is never spelled out but talk of a war, and of the sky ripped apart to see the sun fall to the earth and set it on fire accompany the blinding of most of the survivors of that time.

Few of the new Americans (all white, incidentally, and in the classic post-apocalypse ‘scrappy punk’ style) are able to read, but they serve as evidence that despite the harsh conditions people still went on having kids.

One such new citizen is Solara (Mila Kunis), the impossibly beautiful mini-clone of Angelina Jolie, all big eyes, full lips and dark, smouldering looks. How she has kept this alluring visage in the face of such devastation is a mystery; Gary Oldman’s Carnegie basically owns her and her blind mother, keeping both safe from harm (from others, at least), but there’s only so much soap, shampoo and moisturiser left in this ravaged world.

Still, she does a good job of standing in for innocent youth and the possibilities of the future.

Cannibals can apparently be detected as their hands get the shakes - presumably no-one suffers from any traumatic stress in this nightmare.

There is a slightly comedic moment when Eli & Solara come across the booby-trapped farmhouse of an old couple of cannibals, Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour as George and Martha, who swing from threat to allies when Oldman and goons arrive, somehow tracking them on a straight road even though we see Eli and Solara look down on the house from a cliff top.

In the West is Alcatraz, repurposed as the museum of culture, a sanctuary where none other than Malcolm MacDowell in mad professor guise compiles examples of art and literature and other pre-war cultural treasures. Most copies of the bible were burned shortly after the war as apparently it was seen as the cause, so Eli’s book is a very rare specimen. The end of the film sees him cleaned and shaved and dressed in a white robe, laid in repose and reciting the entirety of the bible before passing away, presumably not from the gutshot wound he sustained before starting to recite aloud the entire King James bible.

Apparently it is 31 years since he has been travelling. It’s never explicitly stated when in this time he had a voice tell him to take the bible and head West, but it’s safe to presume it doesn’t take that many years to walk across a mostly deserted United States. And how can he calculate that it has been 31 years since the war, but not remember his age?

The Book of Eli is very silly but Denzel’s very watchable and it’s always nice to see Gary Oldman getting his ham on.

*the Book of Eli gets two pictures due to the lovely artwork of Chris Weston: 

The Road

Literary adaptations are a hard one. Quite often what makes for a good book doesn’t necessarily translate to the screen, especially if it’s the quality of prose and character development that shines rather than the snappiness of the “Snakes. On a PLANE!” plot.

The Road is quite a faithful adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel, but even it falls foul of the traps that often plague such translations between media. No matter how talented the actor, there is only so much you can convey without words in the limited time available during a standard feature length, and The Road makes use of a voice over which slightly detracts from the story, giving you a third perspective of the father looking upon himself and his son, removing you a step from the business of their struggle for survival. Likewise, the flashback/dream sequences of Charlize Theron as the mother seem more numerous than in the source material, and again serve to pull you back a little from your identification with the pair.

Conversely, we are so used to representations of post-apocalyptic life involving extras from Duran Duran’s Wild Boys video (see everything from Mad Max and Escape from New York to Doomsday and Book of Eli) that the wandering survivors of the Road seems less threatening in comparison, more desperate tramps than fearsome cannibals, with the key confrontation having more of a Deliverance feel than anything.

Aside from this the film is wonderfully made, a cold and dirty wasteland of dead, creaking trees with a haggard looking Viggo Mortensen as the father, struggling along in rags in an attempt to get his son South. In a couple of scenes we see him strip and are witness to the Machinist-style methods to which Viggo went to in order to bring the character to life, starving himself down to ribs and knobbled spine, but these glimpses are only fleeting and I did wonder whether it was necessary to the film in order to convince us of his dedication. His starvation may indeed be a plot point, but you’d hardly expect the rest of the actors to follow suit; it’s something that can be alluded to rather than shown.

And this is the general feeling I get from the film - yes, it’s impressive and care and attention have been expended on the production, but at the end of the day what is the point - what has it added? As a straight adaptation of the book there does seem to be something lost in translation.

As an entry into the increasingly crowded dystopia genre, however, The Road fares well, leaning much more toward a realistic take as in Haneke’s Time of the Wolf, rather than the more fantastical readings of the aforementioned punk-haircut fests. Severed from the source material The Road stands a chance of competing well and will no doubt showered with award nominations, if not awards themselves, which isn’t bad for such a bleak view on the fall of man, where the thought of suicide is constantly on the mind as a viable option.

Not as good as the book, no, but a decent attempt at a realist survival tale.

Up in the Air

Up in the Air

The trailer for this one elicited mixed feelings when I first saw it. Yes, Clooney works well in those matinee idol roles, and a play on the be-suited, suave sophisticates he often inhabits by twisting him into a solitary corporate monster, flying the friendly skies and administering firings to all and sundry, seems like a neat-but-safe take on a Clooney vehicle. 

Indeed, a wry and witty glimpse of the life of a corporate hitman, all painfully neat luggage and executive lounges, could easily backfire by absorbing the subconscious banal hysteria of these places and situations, these people.

A fair way into the film it plays more or less as you would expect, some nice touches, Clooney as Ryan is as charming as ever, slick looks at the way he operates in his lone wolf world (the actions of packing and negotiating airport terminals a finely choreographed dance) and the nice little twist of Ryan being metaphorically on the receiving end of his hired-help firing when hot shot graduate Natalie (Anna Kendrick) waltzes into the business with plans of cutting all the expense of air miles with the great idea of sacking people via webcam.

Thus begins a voyage of discovery as Ryan takes Natalie across America, relieving people of their jobs and learning something about themselves along the way.

A short while into this air-based road trip come the features that help set Up in the Air aside. Ryan has periodic hook-ups with businesswoman Alex (Vera Farmiga) when their schedules happen to coincide; they snatch nights of passion in hotel rooms with expense accounts. As Ryan comes to learn the benefits of human relationships, both through Natalie and Alex, he finds himself inviting Alex along to his sister’s wedding. Not having had much contact in years, things are strained and awkward, but things pretty much stay that way. Aside from a scene where he talks round the groom-with-cold-feet, we’re not positive that he has learned much from the event. Once Ryan admits to himself that it can be better to share and lays himself open to Alex, the inevitable disappointment on discovery that she has a ‘real’ life back home whilst his is all of a piece is not that devastating and more of just a shock - “you don’t know what you want” being such a movie cliché but also totally relevant here, with Clooney’s features trouncing the salt and pepper hair with the look of a lost, hurt boy. By the end of the film Ryan is alone, back up in the air after finally achieving his goal of 10 million miles of air travel, now meaningless to him. The fact that the film does not attempt a happy ending, or even any hope, makes this one of the darker movies to come out of Hollywood recently without the slightest whiff of violence.

Right here I’ll just say I really like it, maybe my opinion will change over time, maybe it just speaks to me right now, but it definitely strikes a chord.

The use of what seem to be 'normal' Americans reacting to getting fired at a number of points, along with a short montage at the end of how family, friends and partners helped them through it, not only highlights the almost sidelined issues of recession and redundancy that take a back seat to Ryan trying to work out if he’s lonely, but also thrusts that hopelessness further in at the end – sure there’s hope for some people, but for Ryan there is nothing.

A number of comedy character actors are used to great effect in essentially straight roles, including Zach Galifianakis, Danny McBride, Jason Bateman and J.K. Simmons. In fact the nearest thing the film comes to comedy relief is having Ryan sit numb as air stewards celebrate his 10 million milestone, only the 7^th in American Airlines history, before bringing out a be-tached Sam Elliot as Super Pilot.

Essentially Up in the Air is about isolation and the virtually insurmountable task of making a meaningful connection with somebody. It’s the type of film that throws ”everyone dies alone” at you with no attempt to butter it up or make the character delivering it out to be wrong, or even lessen the blow by trying to come across as a film with ‘edgy’ ideas which are meant to provoke.

And Vera Farmiga is smoking hot in it.