Screen Fever

Sound It Out review (The List, Issue 690)

2011-11-12T14:52:00.000Z

The tagline for this affectionate record store documentary is ‘High Fidelity with a Northern accent’, and it is a rare case of the marketing being bang on the money. A labour of love for director Jeanie Finlay, who also produced the film and did most of the camerawork, Sound It Out is as low-budget as professional filmmaking gets, but Finlay’s passion for the subject is evident in every frame; the film resonates with the soul of a music lover.

The subject in question is Sound It Out Records, Teeside’s last surviving record shop, and something of a haven for Northern England’s record-lovers, music completists and social misfits. Through interviews with employees and customers, as well as plenty of in-store footage, Finlay builds up a picture of the community this store, and more specifically it’s devoted owner Tom, has cultivated and in many ways cared for for over 20 years in Stockton. It’s touching, at times very funny and also surprisingly moving. As well as crafting an insightful portrait of a specific place, Finlay effectively captures the moment of transition that record collectors worldwide are in, as the physical, tangible aspect of owning music gradually disappears. Highly recommended.

Showing at Glasgow Grosvenor on Weds 16th November, 6.30pm and Edinburgh Cameo on Thurs 17th November, 9pm, with a post-screening Q&A from director/producer Jeanie Finlay at both screenings. More info at www.sounditoutdoc.com. This review first published in The List.

David Mackenzie - Perfect Sense interview (audio)

2011-10-06T11:16:00.000+01:00

David Mackenzie on the set of Perfect Sense

Perfect Sense tells the story of a chef (Ewan McGregor) and a scientist (Eva Green) who begin to fall in love as the world begins to fall apart, when a series of inexplicable epidemics strike across the globe. Listen to my interview with the film's director David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Hallam Foe) from June this year at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It's a fairly in-depth discussion of some of the film's themes, so probably best listened to after you've seen the film.

David Mackenzie - Perfect Sense interview by paulcgallagher

As I wrote on The List blog during the Film Festival, Perfect Sense is a uniquely ambitious work in which Mackenzie picks up some fascinating ideas and uncompromisingly follows them through, with the help of a solid cast, and a great lead performance from McGregor. It's a demanding film, but also thought-provoking and quietly moving. As Mackenzie says in the interview, ‘what I saw in the script was a poetic attempt to tell the story of a possible end [of humanity], and that felt interesting to me. It felt like a subtle and rather magical way of looking at these things as opposed to a bombastic and genre-led thing.’

And if you want more Perfect Sense goodies, check out the exclusive content in the player below from Sigma films:

The film features a haunting score by Max Richter (Waltz with Bashir, Shutter Island), and you can hit the green button to watch a featurette with Mackenzie and Richter discussing their motivations with the score.

Perfect Sense is released on October 7th.

Red State review (The List, Issue 688)

2011-10-01T15:25:00.000+01:00

Outspoken filmmaker Kevin Smith hit a creative and commercial low with his last studio-backed production, the Bruce Willis-starring flop Cop Out, but before that film was even released Smith had shifted focus to this long-gestating personal project. Red State defies categorisation, but could, for some of its lean running time, be described as a political horror movie. Having independently raised funds, Smith shot the film entirely on digital cameras to allow for the quickest possible turnaround. The result is an uneven and often unpleasant film that leaves a bitter aftertaste, but despite its flaws suggests Smith has rediscovered his creative mojo, and is not beyond challenging himself yet.

The film begins with a class teacher in the unspecified titular state decrying the homophobic protests of a local fundamentalist Christian church. We soon see first-hand the horrific practices of this church, led by charismatic pastor Abin Cooper (Michael Parks, giving a creepily authentic performance), as three teenage boys get more than they bargained for after responding to an internet post seemingly offering no-strings attached sex. Smith refashions the traditional backwoods horror movie with Christian fundamentalists as the monsters, and while subtlety is clearly not on his agenda, this is an effective and scary first half hour, expertly put together and shorn of any of Smith’s usual wisecracking comedy. But the introduction of FBI agent Joe Keenan (John Goodman) signals a distinct change in tone, and Smith abandons horror in favour of an attempt at more nuanced political drama. While his ambition is admirable, Smith’s characters – with the notable exception of Keenan – are unsympathetic caricatures, and feel too much like convenient mouthpieces for the issues he wants to tackle. An inspired and bizarre final twist almost works, until Smith pulls the rug and backtracks for a West Wing-lite philosophising conclusion.

Red State was released on September 30th. This review originally published in The List magazine.

Pearl Jam Twenty – not so much a review as a fan’s take

2011-09-21T13:37:00.000+01:00

I’m a huge fan of Pearl Jam, and I’m a huge fan of Cameron Crowe (director of Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous amongst others), so there’s no point pretending I can offer an objective critical review of Pearl Jam Twenty, Crowe’s documentary of the band’s 20-year history so far. What I can tell you, having seen it at one of the worldwide one-day only screening’s last night, is that it is definitely one for the fans. Crowe's loosely chronological scrapbook-like approach offers up tidbits on the band's evolution over the years, inter-band relationships and songwriting processes; but ultimately this is a celebration, plain and simple, and taken on those terms it’s terrific.

Crowe has been a close friend of the band since before they were Pearl Jam, when they formed Mother Love Bone in the burgeoning early-90s Seattle grunge scene, and consequently he appears to have had access to every piece of film ever taken of the band. This means everything, from the band’s calamitous drunken performance at the wrap party for Crowe’s film Singles, to their tragic Roskilde festival slot in which 9 people were killed in a mosh-pit crush, is represented by on-the-spot video footage. There’s lots of good interview material with all the band members, as well as the scene’s other significant players, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell chief amongst them, but Crowe never dwells on a talking head for long when he has the pictures available to tell the story. His keen sense for comedy comes through too, with witty cutting between archive material and present-day reflections.

Predictably the first half of the film is more compelling than the second, as it contains so much fantastic footage from early performances and interviews, but even so, Crowe’s choice of live clips is never less than spot on, and he ends the film with a recent performance of Alive that is goosebump-inducing in its intensity. If you’re a fan of the band, you really owe it to yourself to see this movie as soon as possible.

www.pj20.com

Pearl Jam Twenty from Pearl Jam on Vimeo.

30 Minutes Or Less review (The List, Issue 687)

2011-09-18T21:04:00.000+01:00

Reuniting Ruben Fleischer and Jesse Eisenberg, director and star of the hit comedy Zombieland (2009), this funny and silly diversion just about matches the previous film in terms of laughs, although it lacks the mix of invention and unique characterisation that made Zombieland particularly special.

Here Eisenberg plays Nick, a pizza delivery driver – hence the title – whose life consists of watching 80s action movies and refusing to get a ‘proper job’ like his best friend, schoolteacher Chet (Aziz Ansari). In a needlessly convoluted set-up, a pair of wannabe criminals (Danny McBride and Nick Swardson) kidnap Nick, strap a homemade bomb to his chest and threaten to detonate it in 10 hours unless he steals one hundred thousand dollars from a local bank for them. The reason they want the money is so they can pay a hitman (Michael Peña) to off McBride’s millionaire father (Fred Ward), but really the motives are irrelevant; Michael Diliberti’s script values laughs over logic, and fortunately enough of the gags hit their targets to make it easy to forgive the story’s shortcomings.

Realising he has no option but to rob the bank, Nick convinces Chet to help him, and Fleischer correspondingly kicks the film into action as they plan the heist, carry it out and deal with the increasingly desperate consequences. There’s some well-staged manic car chase action, nicely connecting with Nick’s love of 80s movies, while the cast have fun with Diliberti’s witty (and frequently potty-mouthed) observational dialogue. Ansari, previously seen in bit-parts and TV shows, is the stand-out performer, and he steals all the biggest laughs from under Eisenberg’s nose as the disapproving and incredulous ‘grown up’ friend.

30 Minutes or Less is out now. This review also published at www.list.co.uk.

Troll Hunter review (The List, Issue 687)

2011-09-08T13:51:00.000+01:00

This monster movie was an unqualified box office hit in its native Norway, and has picked up dozens of rave reviews on the worldwide festival circuit, but aside from a couple of good jokes and a handful of impressive visual effects sequences, there’s nothing in André Ovredal’s film that hasn’t been done much better before.

It begins promisingly, with portentous opening text attesting to the veracity of this ‘found footage’, then a cut straight to handheld camera as three Norwegian media students document their pursuit of an illicit bear hunter. Their conversation is authentically mundane and the spectacular mountain scenery immediately atmospheric; it’s an aesthetic that’s been familiar since The Blair Witch Project so effectively rewrote the rulebook for modern horror. We seem to be on track for solid scares, but Ovredal abruptly gear-shifts to comedy once he reveals the trolls (fantastic CG creations that look like giant versions of Spike Jonze’s Wild Things). Not nearly scary enough to be a horror, but not consistently funny enough to be a comedy, Troll Hunter ends up somewhere in the middle.

Troll Hunter is on selected release from Fri 9 Sep. This review first published in The List magazine.

Weekender review (The List, Issue 687)

2011-09-01T13:05:00.000+01:00

The do-it-yourself rave explosion in ‘90s Manchester is a moment of recent history ripe with storytelling potential – Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People demonstrated that wonderfully – but Weekender, Karl Golden’s brazenly shallow ode to the scene, offers less insight than a homemade video of a great night out. It’s the story of best mates Dylan (Jack O’Connell) and Matt (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), who start putting on club nights and are drawn into a world of great success and, once big-city drug dealers get wind of them, great danger. It’s a solid set-up, but Golden and writer Chris Coghill toss aside the moral, political and social issues inherent in the subject matter in favour of taking an hour and a half to say ‘remember the 90s? They were brilliant!’

Pelican Blood director Golden’s attempts at style – essentially using Dutch angles in every other scene – fail to distract from the script’s complete lack of tension, with every potentially dramatic plot turn clearly signposted, and a concluding piece of illogical storytelling that even Guy Ritchie would have reservations about committing to film. Thank the party gods then for Henry Lloyd-Hughes, whose excellent lead performance saves Weekender from being completely unwatchable.

General release from Fri 2 Sep. This review first published in The List magazine.

Project Nim review (The List, Issue 686)

2011-08-14T12:39:00.001+01:00

It’s not surprising that director James Marsh has chosen to follow his Oscar-winning 2008 documentary Man On Wire by taking an approach often favoured by bands following up a hit album: don’t mess with the formula, just try and do the same thing again, but better. What is surprising, considering how good his previous film was, is how close Marsh comes to bettering it with Project Nim.

The titular project was an ill-conceived experiment in which Columbia University Behavioural Psychologist Herb Terrace took a baby chimp – Nim – and convinced Stephanie LaFarge, one of his ex-girlfriends, now married with children, to take the chimp into her home, and treat Nim as one of the family. ‘Only in the 70s,’ is how one interview subject aptly describes it. The theoretical aim was to teach Nim to communicate through sign language, but in practice the experiment was doomed from the start, and, of course, it was Nim who paid the highest cost.

Marsh’s film plays out through detailed interviews with everyone involved, alongside some amazing archive footage and dramatically charged reconstructions. It’s a very similar filmmaking approach to Man On Wire, but Marsh makes up for playing it safe stylistically by plumbing the subject’s thematic depths to pull out a deeply affecting story. Marsh’s storytelling instincts are good; he carefully withholds information to ensure viewers keep asking their own questions about the motivations of the projects’ architects. This is an animal story that’s populated by a fascinating cast of humans, and Marsh successfully draws out their considered and sometimes fundamentally contradictory opinions about what they did and were trying to achieve. What emerges is both a heartbreaking tale of the mistreatment of one ‘dumb animal’ and a complex meditation on the very best and worst aspects of human nature.

Project Nim is in cinemas on selected release now. This review originally published in The List magazine.
You can also listen to me reviewing Project Nim on BBC Movie Cafe here.

Chris Weitz Interview: A Better Life (The List, Issue 683)

2011-07-27T12:49:00.000+01:00

Chris Weitz began his career together with his brother Paul, first co-writing DreamWorks animation Antz (1998) then co-directing the hit teen comedy American Pie (1999). After another successful collaboration, the 2002 adaptation of Nick Hornby’s About A Boy, Weitz’s first solo attempt, The Golden Compass, was a disappointment, ending up as a heavily sanitized take on the challenging book by Philip Pullman. After a happier experience making New Moon, the second in the blockbusting Twilight series, Weitz has directed A Better Life, a much smaller story about a struggling Mexican immigrant and his son in contemporary LA. I sat down with Weitz to discuss the shift from blockbusters to smaller-scale filmmaking, as well as politics, producing and his thoughts on The Golden Compass debacle now.

You seem to have had a particular audience in mind with each of the films you’ve made so far. Was that also the case while you were making A Better Life?
No, I wasn’t thinking about a particular audience, as a matter of fact my sense of what the audience was going to be changed or developed as we made it. The aim was really to take this extraordinary script – which was extraordinarily written, the best I’d read in 20 years – and to do it justice. But that required a lot of research on my part; getting to know East Los Angeles, getting to know a bit about the gang life, the immigrant experience. And I started to realise that there were two audiences for the film, in America at least; one was the Anglo audience that profits from the work of illegal immigrants - in that the food they eat, the garbage that’s taken away from their homes, their cars being parked, their gardens being taken care of is really the result of very inexpensive labour. There’s been a story recently about how these fruits are rotting in Georgia because the price that the planters will pay to have them picked are so low that not even prisoners will pick them. So it’s that, and it’s also an Hispanic audience, that has never had a film that pays proper tribute to how hard the everyday working person works in order to make life better for his family. And now as I think about the international market, I suppose there’s the theme of love of family, but also the immigration question, which is actually global, between north and south, and wherever there’s a rich country and a poor country nearby, there’s going to be this problem. It’s not so much that the film takes a very liberal tack on it, as that the moment you turn a camera on somebody you humanise them, and you have to start talking about them as people instead of numbers.

So is there a particular sentiment that you’d like that first audience group, the employers of immigrant workers, to take from this film?
I think it would be interesting if they were able to understand the lives of their employees in a better way. And not just their employees, it’s really the human infrastructure of the lives they live; what makes it possible for us to lead these comfortable existences? Now, there are a lot of politicians in the United States who really think that if we could just stop the influx of any new ethnicity, everything would be hunky-dory, and there would be no white person out of work and we’d have a lovely country ‘the way that it used to be’. But there’ve always been immigrants in America from the get-go. Even the Mayflower families were a bunch of people who got told to bugger off because their religious views didn’t fit in with the prevailing ones.

The film is an interesting mix of quite indie-style cast and story, but very high production values in terms of music and cinematography – how did that come about?
I suppose that’s a bit perverse but what I wanted to do was make a film that wasn’t all about indie cred, you know? ‘Oh, we shot it in ten days with our camera phones and aren’t we great?’ I really wanted to be able to employ people like Javier Aguirressarobe (cinematographer) and Alexandre Desplat (composer) to give the story the proper amount of polish, and not to run on any received notions of how movies about poor people are supposed to be made. It’s a weird movie, but all of my movies are kind of weird in some ways! The people at Summit saw [the script] while I was making New Moon, which of course is an utterly different kind of film - so different that they almost belong in entirely different categories of medium - but they were willing to make this movie in spite of the fact that there was no quid pro quo of my making another vampire movie for them, or anything like that. And the budget they offered, which was perfectly sensible from what they knew and what their bean counters told them, wasn’t big enough for what I wanted. So we were able to get Lime Orchard, this new production company, to give us enough money so that we could shoot in 69 different locations without stressing the actors too much, and without rushing around so much that we could only have one take of every shot. The result is a weird hybrid between a film about poor people and their lives, and something with sort of a Hollywood gloss. I really wanted to make a film that people could appreciate for its aesthetics as well as for the story and the emotions within.

I hadn’t seen any of this cast before – how did you find them and decide on them as these characters?
We had two casting directors, Joseph Middleton, who my brother [Paul] and I had worked with many times before, and Carlo Hool, who’s a big Mexican casting agent who has come up to work in the States. She knew the vast reservoir of Mexican talent, and Demián Bichir is a big star in his own country – as is Delores Herdia, as is Joaquín Cosio – and the guys who played the people who came from Mexico, came from Mexico to perform in our movie. And so 35% of the movie is in Spanish with subtitles. Demián is an extraordinarily accomplished actor but he’s not known to American eyeballs, and really I suppose not known globally as much as he should be; I think it’s a role for which he deserves an Oscar nomination, and fingers crossed we’ll get one, because he has this tremendous bearing to him and delivers such a stoic and yet commanding performance. If it had been done by any of the more famous Hispanic actors who could deliver that kind of performance, like Javier Bardem or Benicio del Toro, I think there would have been a problem with audiences carrying baggage from their previous experiences of their other films, but with Demián I just had this double whammy of his appearing to be a newcomer and yet having these extraordinary talents.

It’s interesting that you’re very forward in mentioning an Oscar nomination – will you be campaigning for that?
Well he’s my guy! It’s forward, but inasmuch as it’s for my friend and for someone who carries the entire movie, I feel pretty good about that. Every year there is someone who is discovered in America – America suddenly realises that people in other countries make movies and that they’re actually good actors, and so the scenario opens up for them. I would like for this to be Demián’s year.

The film is, as you’ve mentioned, very different to your previous films – was there a personal connection to the material for you?
Yes. My grandmother is a Mexican immigrant; she came her when she was 17. She came under totally different circumstances; she was signed to a contract to be in silent films for Fox Studios. She still lives in America, and she’s now a hundred years old, but she’s still a Mexican national. She’s very proud; Mexicans are very nationalistic and proud. And my father was a refugee from Nazi Germany, so the immigrant connection is very close to me, closer than many people in America. So I felt some affinity for that, as well as for the fact that my wife is Hispanic, and most of my family speak Spanish except for me. So I thought this would be a good excuse to finally learn Spanish, which was in my list of New Year’s resolutions, as well as losing some weight. It was just a handy way to do some of my New Year’s resolutions really!

What was your experience of the immigrant community in LA before the film, and now?
There are so many immigrant communities in LA, and even when you’re talking about Hispanic LA, there’s Salvadoran LA, Honduran LA, Guatemalan LA, Mexican LA, and my experience is that there are these worlds within worlds, tiny bits of other people’s countries within our country. And they are fascinating and full of interest and life. I mean, there are restaurants in Los Angeles where you can get a cricket taco, if you want to! And even gang LA is surprising in its own way; these are not guys who live for violence and drug dealing; they’ve been pushed into these circumstances by a growing sense of nihilism and despair. But the moment you think you understand them, you realise that you don’t. I got into this state of mind where I was talking to all these guys in gangs and they were very friendly, and everything’s kind of cool, and then I was talking to my friend Hector who works in a gang intervention programme and is very much on the straight side of things. He started talking about what got him into jail, saying ‘one day, when I was firing my AK47 at somebody’, and I realised ‘wow, I’m dealing with people who’ve had quite different experiences from me! This is exceptional.’ But it’s all been to the betterment of my understanding of human nature, I think.

Something the film captures very well is the idea of learned behaviour among the gangs, with the younger boys awkwardly ‘trying on’ gang attitudes.
Yeah, I think that they’re not that way by nature; they’re on a sliding scale between the kid who is going to make it out of the neighbourhood and into college, and the gang members, and they are code-switching between these different systems of values and ethics. They know that to join a gang is a dead end in more ways than one, and yet they’re making a calculation in their minds about belonging, and there is a point at which they feel so down that that’s the way that they’re gonna go. And that’s actually contrary to gang life as it’s presented in gangster rap, where it’s something to aspire to and glamorous and all that kind of stuff. That’s not really the case.

A Better Life touches on many hot-button issues – gangs, immigration, education. Is it a political film?
I guess it is, despite the fact that I keep on trying to say that it’s not, because the moment that you a turn a camera on somebody a degree of sympathy is shown. The story that we’re telling is a bit of a thriller and an adventure in some ways, and the heroes are an illegal immigrant and his son, so in that way it’s political, inasmuch as people will hate it in some parts of America, because of that sympathetic eye on an illegal immigrant. But it’s not an overtly political movie in the way that, say, a Ken Loach film would be, or maybe the occasional Mike Leigh film, because there are no bad guys. Nobody’s wrong, not even the people who work at the immigration detention centres, they’re just doing their jobs. Everybody’s really just doing what they feel they have to do, and in that regard it’s apolitical. But it’s impossible, in America these days, to make a film which is sympathetic to an immigrant without it seeming to be making a political statement. Ironically, this was made with the aid of a Catholic priest, and some of the attitudes expressed towards immigration are shockingly un-Christian, and expressed by Christians.

You’ve experienced negative criticisms from Christians previously, with the issues around The Golden Compass, haven’t you?
Well The Golden Compass was fucked because of the Christian reaction in America. The studio had invested too much money to run afoul of the kind of Christian blacklisting that we suffered. Now I told them that it was going to happen no matter what, so we may as well have done an honest version of the film; I think the version of the film that came out was obviously not accurate to Philip Pullman’s vision, which is a particular pity. In Europe people didn’t care, because you guys have had your wars of religion, you’ve gotten over all that stuff, and people believe what they believe. But in America, we are still grappling with these issues; as recently as May this year, many people thought they were about to be raptured. It’s kind of mad!

So was the book’s original ending actually shot? And was there an intention to continue the series?
They had started [on the second one] in happier days, when we thought it was going to be a proper franchise, and we did film the ending of the book, all the way through Lyra’s friend [Roger] being killed and the bridge to the stars opening up. But eventually the top brass at New Line felt that it was too dark. They really had [wanted] Harry Potter or something, and it was devastating. As a director, to have gotten so close; to have filmed the scenes in which someone says “dust is sin”, and Mrs Coulter speaks about Adam and Eve, and then not to be able to deliver it to the public, and then to take it on the head for having done that, because the director is ultimately responsible for it: It’s the biggest failure of my career, and it haunted me for a long time.

Will that faithful version ever see a cinema screen?
It won’t. You can find a hatched-together version on the web, and I think they’ve done a really good job at it. But I did the research, because I really wanted to do a director’s cut, and I worked on my own, ripping dailies and DVDs and putting it together in Final Cut Pro, but it would have cost about $16million to do the visual effects which had been discontinued. And you can imagine the pain for a visual effects specialist who has developed these amazing algorithms for the cracking of ice and stuff like that, and to have that suddenly cancelled – tremendously painful. I’m sure winning the Oscar for visual effects softened the blow! But all the same, there was a lot of creative pain towards the end of that process.

It’s amazing that you came back from that and jumped into another big book adaptation, with New Moon.
Well yeah, but I new that with New Moon what they wanted was a faithful adaptation of the book. They wanted what the fans wanted, which was a movie experience of the book that they loved, and so I thought ‘okay, I’m gonna get back on the horse and prove that I can do this’. And that was the redemptive experience of doing New Moon, that’s why I did it. So that’s good; that made me feel better! And to go from a movie with over 2,000 effects to a movie with 800 was, like, easy-peasy pumpkin pie for me by then.

There’s a connection between these films and A Better Life, as they’ve all been scored by Alexandre Desplat. The music plays a key role in the storytelling of A Better Life; how closely do you work with Alexandre in your films?
Closer and closer. We’ve become really good friends and I have tremendous respect for him, and our families get along really well now, just from having traded visits. But in this case we had only a month between his having finished Harry Potter whatever-part-it-was and the next thing he was going to move onto; one month for him to write the music and record it. So my family and I moved to Paris for a month so that I could go and bother him in his studio, and it was really what you imagine the ideal scenario of a director working with a composer is. We sat around in his studio and had biscuits and espresso, and he had green tea, and he would play something and we’d talk about it for a bit, then he’d play it again; he handmade it while I was able to make my rather amateurish comments on it. But that’s one of the great creative experiences of my life.

And I assume you would hope to continue that relationship in your future films?
Absolutely. I would never want to work with anybody else in that capacity. Alexandre’s very in demand, however, and you’re often dealing with people’s availability when you’re getting a film together, so we shall see.

You have a lot of credits as a producer, by yourself and with your brother – how much of your working life is producing, and what do those credits mean?
Well, I’m not the guy who can tell you how much a crane costs per day, so I’m not a nuts and bolts producer, I’m kind of a creative producer. I can sometimes help people in the growing pains of making a movie, and because I’ve made money for studios, because they believe in my abilities, I can be a buffer between a filmmaker and the studio. I’m tremendously proud with what we’ve been able to do. For instance, to go from a movie like Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, which I really adored, to A Single Man, which is a completely a different sort of movie, and is really an art film – Tom [Ford] had final cut, even though it was his first movie – and to be of some help to him in the process, in these little moments where I can intervene, was tremendously useful. I mean, he’s an auteur, so my role is strictly limited, and should be, but I try and be the kind of producer that I would want, basically.

So do you have people looking for these kinds of films?
Yeah absolutely, we try to put together films as a boutique production house. We’re not like Imagine, where they’ve got x number of blockbusters and they’ve bought all these films and are adapting the most recent video game that just came out. We find scripts that we think are really good, and then we try to find the right directors for them and put them together as a package. They’re often very idiosyncratic, and so from movie to movie we don’t know whether we’ll be allowed to produce something, but we try our best.

You and Paul began directing together. Is that something you would ever do again?
I would love to do it again, it would take a lot of the load off my shoulders! It’s also good because there’s someone to talk to about what you’ve been through, at the end of the day. It’s really just that we got out of sync; I was too tired after About A Boy to work on the next movie, and neither of us wanted to prevent the other from doing what we wanted to do, if we were less interested in that particular subject or book. But we talk about it now, now that we’ve got some time.

What’s next for you?
That’s a good question because I don’t know. I feel like I’m going to have to spend the next few months of my life supporting this film through its run, because it really is a small movie that needs tender loving care. Also I’ve never had a bunch of projects waiting in the wings, I feel that’s like dating several girls at once and not telling them about each other. So I just wait until I find the next script that I feel I can risk my sanity over, and that can take years, so…

A Better Life is on limited release from Friday 29th July. This is an extended version of an interview from The List magazine.

Holy Rollers review (The List, Issue 682)

2011-07-07T10:16:00.000+01:00

Released over a year ago in the US, this true-life drama about naïve young Hasidic Jews unwittingly smuggling Ecstasy into Brooklyn in the late 90s would probably have skipped UK cinemas entirely if not for the presence of Jesse Eisenberg, whose star status has increased considerably following his acclaimed turn in The Social Network. Here he plays Sam, a devout 20-year-old Hasid, beginning to see the cracks in his family’s sheltered religion. When rebellious neighbour Yosef (excellently played by The Hangover’s Justin Bartha) offers him the opportunity to make money importing ‘medicines’, Sam’s eyes are opened to a very different side of the world.

As a drug-smuggling drama, Holy Rollers is conventional, predictable stuff, but Kevin Asche’s film is compelling in its focus on Sam’s relationship to his faith; this element layers some much-needed complexity into the film’s formulaic coming-of-age storyline. It is not a simple case of Sam rejecting his faith and embracing a life of crime; his Judaism continues to define him, and that internal tension of living with inescapable religious conviction while trying to in some way break free is subtly and effectively given flesh in Eisenberg’s understated performance.

Selected release from Friday 8 Jul. This review first published in The List magazine.

Edinburgh Film Festival 2011 Round-Up

2011-06-30T09:23:00.000+01:00

The Edinburgh International Film Festival ran from June 15-26 this year, and I was there watching films and doing interviews for The List's online coverage. Here's links to the various bits I wrote:

Perfect Sense (pictured) - review/interview feature

Project Nim - director James Marsh interview

Troll Hunter - writer/director André Øvredal interview

Weekender - stars Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Jack O'Connell interview

How Should EIFF Move Forward? - overview

The List's EIFF Awards

I was also part of a discussion about this year's Film Festival on last week's Radio Scotland Movie Cafe, and you can listen to it here until Sunday 3rd July.

Bridesmaids review (The List, Issue 681)

2011-06-20T21:59:00.000+01:00

Kristen Wiig (Adventureland, Whip It!) comes close to grasping the comedy crown from her Saturday Night Live colleague Tina Fey with this hilarious reinvigoration of the chick flick. As co-writer and star, Wiig disposes of traditional schmaltzy predictability, replacing it with the kind of frank raunchiness that’s led to success for blokey comedies like The Hangover and I Love You, Man. With the added oversight of gold-plated comedy producer Judd Apatow, Wiig clearly has her sights set on similar box office glory.

Wiig plays Annie, a 30-something singleton who has settled for less than her ideal, working as a shop assistant since her self-run cake shop went bankrupt, and occasionally falling into bed with commitment-phobic sleaze-bag Ted (Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, stealing every scene he’s in). When her newly-engaged best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) asks her to be chief bridesmaid Annie is delighted, until she meets Helen (Rose Byrne), Lillian’s new best friend; a beautiful, rich bitch who seems intent on driving a stake between Annie and Lillian.

Bridesmaids has all the hallmarks that the association with Apatow suggests: the main characters act in a refreshingly realistic and believable manner, the cast list overflows with comedy talent – Brit Chris O’Dowd is a stand-out – and the jokes are very funny, unapologetically resisting the boundaries of taste and decency (you won’t quickly forget the dress-fitting scene). The only flaw is that the film is let down by weak storytelling; the script fails to connect Annie’s personal journey with the overarching wedding story and, more problematically, director Paul Feig allows scenes that should be moving the story forward to outstay their welcome for the sake of dragging out a joke. Like a drunk wedding guest, Bridesmaids is very funny, but someone should really have kept it under control.

General release from Weds 22nd Jun. This review first published in The List magazine.

Life In A Day review (The List, Issue 681)

2011-06-09T09:40:00.000+01:00

This film is the result of a massive YouTube project, directed by Kevin Macdonald and produced by Ridley Scott, that asked people around the world to make a film of their life on a specific day, 24 July 2010. From the 80,000 videos submitted (a mind-numbing 4,500 hours of footage), Macdonald and his army of editors have meticulously crafted this unique and entertaining hour and a half glimpse at one day as lived around the world.

A lot of the material flashes by in quickly-cut montages, throwing up some powerful stand-alone images - a cow being slaughtered is particularly shocking, as is footage of people tragically crushed at Germany’s Love Parade. Macdonald’s over-reliance on music to create mood and connect clips together occasionally feels manipulative; much more effective are the moments that he allows one individual’s story to develop and speak for itself, from a Peruvian shoe-shine boy, to an American cancer-sufferer, to a charismatic round-the-world cyclist. Interestingly, the perspectives offered on humanity are overwhelmingly positive, indeed joyful; audiences will find themselves laughing often out of a sense of recognition and connection with these disparate lives.

Life In A Day is in selected cinemas from Fri 17 Jun. This review first published in The List magazine.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides & Win Win reviews (BBC Radio Scotland Movie Cafe)

2011-05-23T10:27:00.001+01:00

Click here to listen to the show on BBC iPlayer

Click the link above to hear me, along with Scotland on Sunday film critic Siobhan Synnot and the show's host Janice Forsyth, reviewing the new Pirates of the Caribbean film and the third film from The Station Agent director Tom McCarthy, Win Win. We also discussed the newly-announced Edinburgh International Film Festival programme and the reception in Cannes to Terrence Malick's Tree of Life (which went on to win the Palmes d'Or a few days later). Also on the show is an interview with Vidal Sassoon, the trend-setting hairdresser who is the subject of a new documentary. The programme is available to listen to until Sunday 29th May.

Both films are in UK cinemas now. Watch the trailers below.

Joe Cornish interview: Attack The Block (The List, Issue 680)

2011-05-14T20:13:00.000+01:00

Brit sci-fi film Attack The Block has done a good turn for the asbo generation, by making aliens seem much worse. First time director Joe ‘Adam and Joe’ Cornish (pictured above right, with Edgar Wright) talks to Paul Gallagher about turning the hoodie horror genre on its head

These are interesting times for British film comedy. Last year Chris Morris’ suicide bomber farce Four Lions presented an intelligent reflection on a thorny problem, while earlier this year Richard Ayoade’s Submarine proved that British comedy could tackle peculiar and poignant as well as the best American independents. Now Joe Cornish, half of cult TV and radio duo Adam and Joe, makes his writing and directing debut with Attack The Block, a joyously exciting action sci-fi that imagines the outcome when a bunch of vengeful extra-terrestrials face off against a gang of teenage hoodies in an inner-city London tower block.

There are laughs on hand, but Cornish also has a serious point to make about his protagonists’ exclusion from society, particularly in the character of Moses, the gang’s hotheaded leader, played by newcomer John Boyega. Moses is the kind of character that has become shorthand in recent British cinema for pure evil, thanks to a spate of ‘hoodie horrors’, including the Michael Caine revenge flick Harry Brown and Paul Andrew Williams’s Cherry Tree Lane. It’s a perspective that Cornish hopes to counter with Attack The Block.

‘This is certainly a reaction to [those] often brilliantly-made and well-crafted movies that I think take a slightly inhuman approach to an issue that, actually, involves very young kids. I think that’s the easy option, to take something in the world that already is demonised and frightens people, and just make it even more scary and horrible.’ Cornish favours a more compassionate view: ‘I don’t think it’s an incredibly radical premise to try and have sympathy for someone who has made a mistake. I think you’ll find it in the Bible quite a lot, and in various faiths; for me it’s quite a simple dramatic premise, and I’d be alarmed if contemporary society decided that it could only have absolutely clean-cut, morally pure characters in its narratives. If you went through the history of art and literature doing that, you’d lose most of it!’

Cornish’s upbeat and engaging manner – familiar from the weekly 6 Music radio show in which he and co-host Adam Buxton frequently collapse in fits of giggles – conveys his positivity about humanity, which is both infectious and very welcome in the often bleak world of UK film. It’s an outlook he shares with his filmmaker friend Edgar Wright, and it is what enabled him to see the potential for science fiction storytelling in these unlikely characters and settings, just as Wright did for zombies in Shaun of the Dead.

‘I totally looked at all these amazing tower blocks that have been around me all my life’ enthuses Cornish, ‘and I thought “wow, these are like huge clapped-out spaceships, or they’re like Nakatomi Plaza [from Die Hard], or the Nostromo [from Alien]!”’ He saw similar cinematic potential in the street slang regularly used by London gangs. ‘I was excited by the language, it was another place where this scenario that’s usually used for downbeat depressing social realism could be taken in another direction, towards all the kind of escapist, joyful, science-fictional things that I love, and I think probably the kids who live in those places love too.’

To achieve authenticity Cornish, who admits to being ‘a tiny bit less “street” than Prince Charles’ spent months visiting youth groups in south London, telling them the story of Attack The Block and recording everything they said, ‘as if it was a linguaphone course and I was learning Italian’. The result of that investment is obvious on screen, with the kids’ sometimes-impenetrable dialogue sounding as far from Cornish’s own precise enunciation as possible. Meeting with those groups had a secondary value too, as it cemented Cornish’s conviction that these ‘hoodies’ were worthy of better treatment on film: ‘We did find some who were quite similar to Moses, who’d been excluded from school or got involved with bad stuff. And they’re not monsters. They’re very empathic, and when you spend a bit of time with them they’re normal and sweet, enthusiastic and bright. But they’ve just been cornered a bit by life, and I think that often the way they’re portrayed doesn’t help with that. Culturally, it makes the problem worse, not better.’

Apart from the imminent release of his debut movie there is another not-insignificant string to Cornish’s filmmaking bow; he is co-writer of one of 2011’s most anticipated blockbusters, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s The Adventures of Tintin, shot in motion-captured 3D and due for release this October. Cornish plays down his involvement (‘really you’re talking to the lowest person on the food chain’) but it raises the question, how did that happen? It was, he says ‘purely about being friends with clever people and sticking with them. Peter Jackson had called Edgar [Wright], because they needed some work done on the Tintin script, and Edgar knew I was a Tintin fan, and before I knew it I was sitting round a table with Mr Spielberg and Mr Jackson.’ And what was it like being slotted in beside the biggest cogs in the Hollywood machine? For Cornish it basically meant ‘very hard work; those guys are very clever and bright, and they don’t beat around the bush in terms of telling you what they think. In a very nice polite way, of course.’

For Tintin fans the prospect of Spielberg’s long-gestating film has been exciting and nerve-wracking in equal measure, but Cornish and Wright’s involvement is a promising indicator that this won’t be a mangled studio version of the beloved books. ‘In terms of the [film’s] world,’ says Cornish, ‘it’s pretty true to the books. There are things you have to do to the narrative just because of the way those books were written; structurally they climax on every page, and the characters take a while to get introduced throughout the series. So there’s stuff one has to compress a bit, to make work over a feature-length running time, but I think [fans] will be happy with how faithful it is.’

As for directing again, Cornish has ‘lots of ideas’ and seems firmly bitten by the filmmaking bug: ‘I loved it. It’s all consuming, but it’s really enjoyable. The lack of sleep is tough, but I feel I’ve spent so much of my life being lazy that I can deal with a couple of years of sleepless nights.’

Attack The Block is in cinemas now. Read my review here. This interview first published in The List magazine.

Attack The Block review (The List, Issue 680)

2011-04-27T10:27:00.000+01:00

Coming from the same production team as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs the World, this confident debut from Joe Cornish (one half of duo Adam and Joe) is much less a comedy than might have been expected. Rather it’s a very accomplished sci-fi horror, and a properly exciting one at that, evidencing Cornish’s clear love of the genre classics from its atmospheric synth soundtrack to its flourishes of gory splatter.

Sitting between Aliens and Gremlins in terms of tone, the story straddles reality and fantasy as a gang of errant teenagers attempt to defend their inner-city tower block against an army of bloodthirsty alien monsters. Cornish’s breathlessly-paced script entwines thrilling action set-pieces with a gently provocative portrayal of urban youth, effectively challenging audience preconceptions while never letting up on the entertainment. It’s sporadically funny (most often when accurately skewering the attitudes of modern teenagers) but the science-fiction scenario is played straight rather than as parody, and as the body count rises Cornish generates palpable tension and scares. Despite shaky acting from some of the young cast, leads Jodie Whitaker and newcomer John Boyega are excellent, providing strong characters amidst the action.

General release from Weds 11th May. This review first published in The List magazine.

Your Highness review (The List, Issue 679)

2011-04-20T08:14:00.000+01:00

Before Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy heralded a resurgence of the ‘fantasy quest’ movie, this much-derided genre enjoyed a kind of golden age in the late 1980s, when Labyrinth, The Princess Bride and Willow captured the imaginations of thousands of young moviegoers. Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, respectively writer/star and director of Your Highness, were clearly front and centre in that bewitched audience, and in its best moments this film recaptures a hint of the magical, adventurous power that those films possessed. Unfortunately that is the only positive thing to be said about Your Highness, which is otherwise a vulgar, unoriginal, soulless, stupid folly, featuring a squandered cast of such quality that their involvement and co-operation must surely have been secured by means of dark magic.

McBride, recognisable from memorable bit-parts in Due Date, Up in the Air and Gordon Green’s previous film, stoner-comedy Pineapple Express, here steps up to leading-man duties as Prince Thadeous, the slovenly brother of the kingdom’s favourite warrior Prince Fabeous (James Franco, literally looking as if he could fall asleep any moment). When Fabeous’ bride-to-be Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel, vacant) is kidnapped by the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux, actually quite funny), the King (Charles Dance, bored) sends the brothers off to rescue Belladonna and rid the kingdom of Leezar forever. Along the way they are first saved then joined by a mysterious female warrior (Natalie Portman, rigid) whose quest becomes entwined with theirs.

If you think the plot sounds slapdash, just wait until you hear what passes for dialogue. There’s barely a line uttered in Your Highness that doesn’t contain either the word ‘fuck’, a mention of genitalia or some reference to sex. Vulgarity is substituted for wit, and it’s conclusively not funny. Evidently, McBride and Gordon Green have forgotten that a key element of those aforementioned films’ success was their innocence, an epithet that emphatically does not apply to Your Highness. For Gordon Green, who began his career with the excellent character studies George Washington and All The Real Girls, this is surely as low as he can go. His Lowness, you might say.

Your Highness is out now on general release. This review first published at list.co.uk.

Monsters DVD review (futuremovies.co.uk)

2011-04-04T22:16:00.000+01:00

Released into cinemas at the end of 2010 to glowing reviews and lots of ‘next big thing’ talk, British filmmaker Gareth Edwards’ impressive debut feature failed to prove as big a hit with audiences as with critics, comfortably recouping its small budget at the UK box office, but arguably falling short of the peaks of success that some critics (this one included) may have expected. So the release of Monsters on dvd brings a twofold opportunity; firstly for the film to find a new audience in a more significant way, and secondly for a reappraisal: to ask if the film really is as good as we all thought on first viewing, and whether it stands up to repeat plays.

Monsters takes place in an alternate version of our world where alien life has made its way to earth, and the resulting titular beasts – massive octopus-like creatures hundreds of feet tall - are contained in what used to be Mexico, now known as the ‘infected zone’. This sci-fi scenario is the backdrop to a very simple story - part mismatched romance, part road movie – in which photojournalist Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) is given the thankless task of escorting his boss’s stranded daughter Sam (Whitney Able) back home to America, preferably avoiding the infected zone en route. Of course, events conspire to force them through the zone, where they face attacks by the monsters, and ultimately discover a surprising truth about these alien creatures.

Writer/director Edwards’ real triumph with the film is his use of subtle visual effects in real-world locations, creating a wholly convincing alternate reality. Happily, this is just as effective on the small screen as it was in cinemas. ‘Subtle’ is the operative word when describing Monsters, as the creatures themselves play very much a supporting role in the film, always in the background apart from in one brilliantly realised attack sequence and at the film’s striking conclusion. Edwards is much more interested in what is happening with his human characters, and the film is possessed of a pensive, atmospheric mood, achieved in no small part thanks to the brooding score from Jon Hopkins, complementing Edwards’ dazzling photography very well.

On the downside, the flimsiness of the characters and story become much clearer on second viewing, and it is evident that the sci-fi scenario is actually much more interesting than the couple leading us through it. The performances are good - McNairy is really convincing - but Edwards doesn’t give them much of consequence to actually say to each other; the development of their relationship feels more like a conventional inevitability than a realistic occurrence.

This is not a major flaw though, especially in the context of what is an otherwise incredible achievement in budget filmmaking; Monsters looks and feels like a major studio film, and Edwards is clearly a talent to watch. The dvd/Blu-ray will also prove incredibly useful to anyone keen to follow in Edwards’ footsteps, as the exhaustive feature-length making-of - covering pre-production, shooting, editing and visual effects - shows in no uncertain terms how they pulled it off, as well as showing how important it is to get the right team in place. Editor Colin Goudie deserves particular praise, as it’s clear from the special features that without his tireless contribution, Edwards would have had a significantly harder time bringing his vision to the screen.

Monsters is released on DVD and Blu-ray on Monday 11th April. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk. Read my Monsters interview feature from December 2010 here.

Source Code and Sucker Punch reviews (BBC Radio Movie Cafe)

2011-03-31T16:33:00.000+01:00

Listen to my reviews on Radio Scotland's Movie Cafe (BBC iPlayer) here

Two very different new releases this week; one a highly recommended sci-fi action drama, the other an ill-conceived and entirely unnecessary peek into the juvenile mind of Zack Snyder, the man currently entrusted with reviving the Superman franchise (shudder). Listen to hear my verdicts, and I've also posted my notes on the films here if you'd prefer to read than listen!

Source Code

Army captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train.

Hitchcock influence

North by Northwest-inspired credits sequence – skyscrapers, train running through town, music is basically an update of Bernard Hermann’s score. The way scenario initially plays out – picking up details of characters, camera moving around everyone, sense of something not right – it all evokes Hitch in a very compelling way.

Storytelling
One of the film’s greatest strengths is how well Duncan Jones handles the unfolding of the story. He, and Ben Ripley, writer, keep the audience interested by gradually revealing more about the truth of Stevens’ predicament, while also ensuring that the repeating scenario develops every time you see it again – you’re not looking at your watch. The question of what is real/simulated/imagined is well-maintained, and ultimately answered.

Gyllenhaal has a lot of info to convey through dialogue, but makes it work. When the necessary ‘what is Source Code?’ moment comes it is well-handled.

Themes
Like the best sci-fi (including Jones' previous Moon) Source Code uses its far-fetched scenario to focus on very human themes; there is depth, and sadness, to Gyllenhaal’s performance, and by the film’s end some audience members will be reflecting on the value of life – it’s moving stuff, but at the same time, lots of fun.

Performances
Gyllenhaal is excellent, holds the film together perfectly and carries the emotional stuff particularly well. He’s funny and likeable, and very easy to care about. Michelle Monaghan does a great job in a very limited character range – she is basically replaying the same 8 minutes over and over, but still convinces us why Stevens would feel so strongly towards her. Vera Farmiga is the other great performance – unravelling of her professional exterior as she connects with Stevens – also adds to the heart of the film. Jeffrey Wright is the odd one out – weird accent and a bit pantomimey.

Comparison with Christopher Nolan
I can definitely see Jones stepping up to the level of Nolan. He has a similar ability to make big ideas really compelling, mixed with exciting storytelling, but he has more heart: this is big-hearted sci-fi, with big concepts, thoughtfully played out.

Not sure I needed very end – tries to tie things up too much and in so doing upsets the balance of ‘levels of reality’ that had been quite well held. Not a big issue though, the strength of emotion carries the story.

Sucker Punch
A young girl (Emily Browning) is institutionalized by her abusive stepfather. Retreating to an alternative reality as a coping strategy, she envisions a plan which will help her escape from the mental facility.

Zack Snyder’s previous live-action films Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen have all been good in part – visually amazing and well-directed action for sure, but lacking subtlety entirely, and based in a comic-book understanding of reality: everything grossly exaggerated and simplified. Sucker Punch basically sees him giving free reign to all his worst tendencies as a director. Whereas he has previously worked from someone else’s story, so in a way he’s been reigned in, this is his own story, and as such he’s let his mind go completely.

The result is like a parody of empty postmodern storytelling at its most ridiculously extreme. Like those Youtube mash-ups where someone cuts bits of Lord of the Rings into The Matrix for example, except feature length, and utterly meaningless. Incorporating LOTR, World War I movies, Chicago, I, Robot, Batman Begins, the list goes on. All populated by girls in sexy underwear, with big guns. And Nazi robots.

Female empowerment??
The depiction of the women is demeaning and close to pornographic in sensibility. Baby Doll is offered as this ‘ultimate male fantasy’ character, basically because she looks, and is dressed, much younger than her 20 years; and the other girls celebrate the fact that she can transfix men with her jaw-dropping erotic dancing. This is as far from empowering as is possible on film. These women are completely subjugated to a male gaze, and they act as if that is unavoidable.

Story/dialogue
Aside from the offensive sexism (and Snyder’s obvious self-loathing: every male character is a grotesque lech), the other main problem is the film makes no sense. It might have worked as a musical – it has the kind of illogical set-up with jumps in logic that works best as a musical. The ‘quest’ element is clunkily set up and feels like a computer game scenario. Dialogue is laughably awful – Showgirls-type scenes with girls trussed up in lingerie attempting to have serious conversations.

Music
After getting My Chemical Romance to desecrate Dylan’s Desolation Row for Watchmen, here everyone from The Beatles to Queen to The Pixies has their best songs destroyed in asinine soulless airbrushed covers on the ‘slabs-of-meathead-metal’ soundtrack.

Ending has the gall to suggest that this was a story of personal empowerment all along – what a load of rubbish. Avoid, and hope that Snyder has some kind of mental growth spurt before shooting his Superman remake.

Source Code and Sucker Punch are in cinemas from Friday 1st April.

Limitless review (futuremovies.co.uk)

2011-03-21T16:24:00.000Z

This slick thriller offers a diverting Friday night’s entertainment, but nothing more; that’s a shame given the potential of its concept. The one thing it does very well, though, is showcase the considerable screen talents of leading man Bradley Cooper. The Hangover star is the perfect choice to play Eddie Mora, a scruffy writer who transforms from an unmotivated layabout into a supremely sophisticated businessman with a razor-sharp mind after he takes a mysterious ‘clear pill’. It’s the kind of audience-winning performance that used to be Tom Cruise’s speciality; Cooper exudes effortless confidence in front of the camera, but also possesses a keenly intense dramatic ability that brings an audience immediately into his character’s moment.

But while Cooper shines, the story he’s in the middle of moves from promising beginnings to settle into generic chase thriller territory. The idea of a pill that can open up the untapped reserves of human brainpower is a fascinating one, and director Neil Burger initially seems interested in exploring it: the way the pill throws open Eddie’s mind recalls Tyler Durden’s system-subversion in Fight Club, and Burger’s Fincher-aping camera techniques encourage the comparison. But this central concept is not particularly explored by Leslie Dixon’s script, adapted from Alan Glynn’s 2001 novel The Dark Fields. Instead, once the film establishes how much power and status Eddie can acquire through the pill, it quickly shifts focus to the external threats to his situation – people who want to stop him, the problem of maintaining a supply, how to keep it a secret and so on – meaning that that the pill effectively becomes what Hitchcock called a MacGuffin; an object that the plot hinges on but is not important in itself. Once this happens, anything that was uniquely interesting or compelling about the story is superseded by simple ‘survive-at-all-costs’ thriller logic.

Burger peppers the film with a handful of impressive effects sequences that capture the effect on Eddie when he takes the pills. As he first experiences the drug, the visuals niftily explain what his brain is doing and where his new knowledge is coming from. Similarly, in a scene when Eddie fends off a huge group of attackers, Burger cuts between the sources of his newfound fighting ability – remembered moves from computer games and TV shows – and the practical application of it. It’s a brilliantly edited scene and works very well.

But the success of these sequences ultimately highlights the fact that there is nothing more to this film than flash and disposable thrills, a point further brought home by the negligible impact that Robert De Niro and Abbie Cornish make in their supporting roles. Once this script has laid its tracks for the plot to roll out on, it leaves no room for incidental details like characterisation or believable human interactions. Perhaps a better title would be Limited.

Limitless is released on 23rd March. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

Richard Ayoade profile interview (The List, Issue 678)

2011-03-21T16:13:00.000Z

Name
Richard Ayoade

Born
12 June 1977, Whipp’s Cross, London

Background
Best known for playing Moss in Graham Linehan’s hit TV comedy The IT Crowd, Ayoade first came to the notice of cult comedy fans as writer, director and co-star of spoof sci-fi series Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace in 2004. As well as featuring in The Mighty Boosh, he’s also directed music videos for Arctic Monkeys, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Vampire Weekend.

What’s he up to now?
Ayoade has written and directed his first film, Submarine, a darkly funny coming-of-age story adapted from Joe Dunthorne’s novel. It’s a work of sophisticated humour and depth, and a genuinely exciting British debut.

On turning the novel into a film
‘You can’t rely on literary fireworks, so it becomes more about behaviour; watching people and seeing how other people react. There’s no equivalent to a reaction shot in a book, there’s no way of instantaneously juxtaposing two views simultaneously. And films are good at that; they’re basically people just looking at one another! So you have to turn it into that – a series of looks.’

On casting the two young leads
‘Craig [Roberts] and Yasmin [Paige] were great and never felt like they were deliberately playing it like comedians. When you reach my age you just go: “I don’t want to do stuff with people I don’t like.” That’s the main thing: [finding] people you can talk to and enjoy two months of drizzle with. In Wales.’

On film as a key influence in lead character Oliver Tate’s life
‘Film seems to be the one area in the world where no one talks about films. Or, if they do it’s massively postmodern, like Tarantino, or Wes Craven’s Scream. To me it was always weird that film existed as a bizarre ghetto in which no one went to see films, or spoke about films, or behaved in a way that was influenced by films. Because people do, and this character particularly does.’

Interesting fact
Ayoade is developing a film based on Dostoevsky novella The Double.

Submarine, general release, Fri 18 Mar. This interview first published in The List magazine.

Submarine review (The List, Issue 678)

2011-03-16T23:04:00.000Z

Here is a rare thing: a British comedy debut that’s surprising, witty, hugely accomplished and fully capable of finding an audience worldwide. Richard Ayoade, previously best known for his TV roles in The IT Crowd and The Mighty Boosh, directs his own adaptation of Joe Dunthorne’s 2008 novel with confidence and style, suggesting a glowing film career lies ahead. It’s no incidental detail that Submarine is presented in association with Red Hour Films, Ben Stiller’s production company.

In a nameless Welsh village, at an unspecified moment of the late 20th century, we meet Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), a 15-year-old schoolboy with a briefcase and a tendency to be ridiculed by his peers. But in his mind – the perspective Ayoade most often presents to us – Oliver is a supremely intelligent outsider, the ultra-cool star in the film of his own life. Oliver has his sights set on two goals; to lose his virginity before he turns 16, hopefully with his gorgeously aloof classmate Jordana (Yasmin Paige), and to save his parents’ marriage after he sees his mum (Sally Hawkins) chatting up their neighbour, new-age motivational speaker Graham (Paddy Considine).

There’s a similarity to Wes Anderson’s Rushmore in the precisely crafted way that Ayoade shoots Oliver’s life, as well as his eye for comic details, but the film has a style of its own that keeps it from feeling like an imitation. Tonally, Ayoade treads a fine balance between poignant emotion and detached comedy, and his young leads serve him well in this regard. Paige is particularly good, equally convincing as the cool object of Oliver’s fantasy and the emotionally complicated, real girl he gets to know. The icing on the cake is the soundtrack, a surprisingly tender set of new songs by Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner.   

General release, Fri 18 Mar. This review first published in The List magazine.

Norwegian Wood review (The List, issue 678)

2011-03-06T12:07:00.000Z

Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has a unique voice in contemporary fiction, both hugely imaginative and intensely intimate. But with this adaptation of one of his most popular books, French-Vietnamese filmmaker Anh Hung Tran fails to find a way to successfully translate that voice into substantial and effective cinema. The story of directionless Japanese student Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama), and the relationships he pursues with Naoko (Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi) and Midori (Kiko Mizuhara) while at university in the late 60s is one of Murakami’s more straightforwardly accessible plots, but as retold by Tran it is ponderous, slight and, when stretched over two hours, painfully dull.

The director’s ability to create striking visuals is undeniable, and the film is graced with many beautiful, sensual moments, made all the more lovely by the fine soundtrack from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. But Tran’s willfully opaque screenplay means that enjoyment of the film remains at this surface level throughout. There are weighty themes to the story – death and love, the possibility of connection – but Tran’s determinedly contemplative approach, complete with sluggish pacing and intensely internalised performances, ironically only serves to keep the audience at arm’s length from the story’s emotional core.

Norwegian Wood is released on 11 March. This review first published in The List magazine.

Animal Kingdom review (The List, Issue 677)

2011-02-24T10:27:00.000Z

This dark Australian crime thriller has had critics lining up to heap praises upon it since its prize-winning debut at Sundance last January, and it arrives on these shores fresh from a deserved Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting Actress category for Jacki Weaver. These endorsements should hopefully provoke discerning cinemagoers to look past the film’s lack of big-name actors and its rather misleading title (it’s not a nature documentary) and give it a shot. Those who do are in for a treat – if a rather grim one – because the film is a riveting drama that announces the arrival of a distinct filmmaking talent in debut writer-director David Michôd.

In the film’s opening moments teenager J (James Frecheville) discovers his mother dead from a drug overdose, then gets in touch with his estranged grandmother (Weaver) who insists that J comes to live with her. Michôd’s brutally unsentimental presentation of these events sets the film’s tone very effectively; clearly indicating that the world we are entering is one where self-preservation is everything. J initially falls in with his three uncles, all of whom are involved to varying degrees in lives of violent crime, but a local police officer (Guy Pearce) becomes aware of J’s situation, and urges him to escape his family’s criminal ways.

Michôd takes his time setting up the story’s various characters, elaborately laying the foundations in the earlier stages for some powerfully effective pay-offs once the plot’s momentum kicks in. He refuses to handhold the audience at any point, building up characters then killing them off without warning, creating an ever-present sense of danger. His casting is also spot-on; as well as featuring two knock-out performances from Frecheville and Weaver – his subtly shifting, hers fearlessly cold – the cast is a virtual who’s who of Australian character actors (Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Dan Wyllie), all on top form. It adds up to a potent Shakespearean brew that dramatises humanity’s kill-or-be-killed instinct with chilling conviction.

Animal Kingdom is released on 25 February. This review first published in The List magazine.

West is West review (The List, Issue 677)

2011-02-24T10:14:00.000Z

East is East was one of the British box office successes of the late 90s, and found an even bigger audience on video and DVD, but it’s hard to believe that there is much, if any, anticipation for this belated sequel. That is probably for the best, as this plodding, bland drama has little in common with its predecessor, featuring none of the anarchically inventive comedy or keen social observation that caused that film to strike a chord with so many.

In 1976, five years after the events of the first film, Salford chip-shop owner George Khan (Om Puri) decides that he should take his unruly 15-year-old son Sajid on a character-building trip to Pakistan to discover their heritage. As played by newcomer Aqib Khan, Sajid is an irritating central character, charmless and constantly whining, and director Andy DeEmmony offers precious little else – save a blink and you’ll miss it Jimi Mistry cameo – to elicit audience sympathies.

Writer Ayub Khan-Din’s secondary focus is to have George face up to what has become of the family he left in Pakistan 30 years earlier. This theoretically fertile dramatic ground yields nothing fresh though, simply forcing the character to retread his emotional journey from the first film, as he once again confronts his shortcomings as a husband and his unreasonable attitude towards women. There are a few nice moments – a visually delightful wedding sequence stands out – but for the most part this is an uninspired and unrewarding sequel.

West is West is released on 25 February. This review first published in The List magazine.

Paul review (The List, Issue 676)

2011-02-18T22:13:00.000Z

The Shaun of the Dead boys have come a long way. Having followed up Shaun’s critical success with UK box office smash Hot Fuzz, stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and director/co-writer Edgar Wright were firmly established as major British talent. Last summer Wright took his first shot at a big American movie with comic-book adaptation Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, a disappointment at the box office but an impressive demonstration of his developing creative muscle. Now, after a few high-profile solo acting gigs (most notably Pegg’s turn as Scotty in 2009’s Star Trek), Pegg and Frost re-team as writers and co-stars in Paul, a tale of two English sci-fi nerds who encounter a real-life alien called Paul while on a road-trip through America’s UFO hotspots. But while the film certainly won’t disappoint fans of the duo’s brand of comedy, Pegg and Frost could have done with following Wright’s more adventurous lead; as it is they stick too closely to their comfort zones both as writers and actors, and despite its theme, the film is more run-of-the-mill than out of this world.

In fact, to begin with, Paul could almost be a Transatlantic episode of Spaced, with the geek-pal relationship between Pegg and Frost’s Graeme and Clive riffing on exactly the same notes that made Tim and Mike so endearing in that television show. It’s still a routine that works though, and there are plenty of laughs to be had in the script’s many recurring jokes – one involving characters reeling off the increasingly ridiculous titles of a cult sci-fi author’s books is particularly funny. Director Greg Superbad Mottola develops a suitably atmospheric tone, which entireley fits the script’s spirit of both revering and mocking sci-fi conventions (in both senses), while Jason Bateman provides strong support as a menacing FBI agent on the hunt for Paul.

And what of the title character? Happily, Paul is the film’s greatest asset. A fantastically realised CG creation who gets all the funniest lines and is brilliantly voiced by Seth Rogen, he’s the spark of originality that makes this film worthwhile.

Paul is out now on general release. This review first published in The List magazine.

Never Let Me Go review (The List, Issue 676)

2011-02-10T13:53:00.001Z

The students of Hailsham boarding school are special: set apart from normal society, they are being prepared for an unspecified purpose. No further details are apparent, to them or us, as this story begins, and to divulge more would take away the unique surprise of this ambitious and often beautiful film from Mark One Hour Photo Romanek. Never Let Me Go is an interesting collision of genres. Looking to all intents and purposes like a traditional period drama, it is actually closer to science fiction in its bleak tone and existential theme.

Divided into three sections, each marked by understated title cards displaying the years 1978, 1985 and 1994, the film follows the ill-fated love-triangle that develops between three Hailsham students, Kathy, Ruth and Tommy (Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield), from their uniquely sheltered childhood through to their integration into the world as young adults.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s oblique source novel was concerned more with examining his characters’ interior lives than explaining the alternate reality his story takes place in, and Romanek and his able team of collaborators wisely resist trying to fill in the blanks. Writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later…, Sunshine) does an excellent job of translating the limited perspective of Kathy’s narration in the novel into something that works on film; the three main characters, and their different ways of understanding the life carved out for them, are brought more sharply into focus with each jump forward in time, so that when the emotional punch finally comes, it hits hard.

Romanek’s film is draped in sadness, from the aching tones of Rachel Portman’s piano score to cinematographer Adam Kimmel’s muted visual palette. But it’s a sadness that will be familiar, and in some way edifying to an audience, due to the deeply felt performances of Mulligan and Garfield. These two young actors have deservedly risen to the top of the pile in the last 18 months, and as Kathy and Tommy, two doomed souls finding each other in the little time they have, they are inspiring; a call to catch love while you can.

Never Let Me Go is on general release from Fri 11 Feb. This review first published in The List magazine.

Tangled review (The List, Issue 675)

2011-01-28T13:45:00.000Z

Disney’s animation wing has undergone a rebirth since Pixar head John Lasseter took the reins, and this is the third film to benefit from his direct input, following Bolt and The Princess and the Frog. Like those two, Tangled is high-quality family entertainment, jaw-droppingly well animated and very funny, but it similarly lacks the easy charm and singular ingenuity that has guaranteed longevity for the studio’s best films.

Tangled is a retelling of the Brothers Grimm’s Rapunzel, and despite its funky title it is a relatively traditional Disney take on the story, right down to the inclusion of some show-stopping musical numbers. Rather than embellishing the narrative with self-referential commentary (a blessed relief in this post-Shrek era), directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard find new approaches to familiar characters. They introduce Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) in a brilliant song that explains how over the years, thanks to her tower imprisonment, she has become an expert in every imaginable artform, from watercolours to charting the stars. This Rapunzel is a winning mix of independence and hopeless naivety, so when bandit Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi) crashes through her window, it’s as much her gung-ho attitude as his self-seeking determinism that gets them on the road to adventure.

The directors lose points for their lack of originality, though: every big scene is directly pulled from Disney’s back catalogue. There’s a chase sequence from Aladdin, a romantic boat scene straight out of The Little Mermaid and a finale that’s pure Beauty and the Beast. Tangled is a crowd-pleaser for sure, but not one for posterity.

Tangled is in cinemas now. This review first published in The List magazine.

Barney's Version review (The List, Issue 675)

2011-01-28T13:27:00.000Z

Memory is a tricky thing, and that appears to be the main point of this rambling, unfocused but still enjoyable comedy-drama. Paul Giamatti plays Barney Panofsky, a slightly nastier version of the cynical schlub that’s become his stock-in-trade. He’s an ageing TV producer who is prompted to look back over his life, three failed marriages and all, when a book is published revisiting an unsolved 30-year old murder case involving Barney.

Adapted from Mordecai Richler’s novel and directed by Richard J Lewis, the film is essentially Barney’s case for the defence, with television director Lewis attempting to gradually shift the film’s tone from broad comedy to serious drama. Unfortunately, he lacks the grace to pull it off effectively. The film begins as a comic murder-mystery, but that aspect of the story fizzles as it shifts into Woody Allen-esque relationship drama. This central section is where Lewis is most successful, achieving an effective balance of observational character comedy and poignant drama, and getting brilliant performances from Giamatti and Rosamund Pike. But in its final third the director suddenly steers the film into tearjerker territory, undoing much of the actors’ good work by drawing more overtly heartstring-tugging performances from them.

The film is very well cast though, and Dustin Hoffman is particularly entertaining as Barney’s mischievous father, but the story’s central theme – memory and perspective – has been much more insightfully investigated by Charlie Kaufman in both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York.

Barney's Version is in cinemas now. This review first published in The List magazine.

Morning Glory review (The List, Issue 675)

2011-01-20T16:36:00.000Z

A few years ago it looked like Harrison Ford had resigned from movie stardom, but putting Indiana Jones’s fedora back on in 2008 seems to have refocused the old curmudgeon. This summer he’s headlining insane sci-fi western Cowboys and Aliens, but first we have Morning Glory, in which, as TV news reporter and reputed ‘third worst person in the world’ Mike Pomeroy, Ford has more fun onscreen than we’ve seen from him in decades.

Roger 'Notting Hill' Michell’s lightweight comedy centres on a determined young TV producer (Rachel McAdams) tasked with salvaging the ratings of moribund breakfast news programme Daybreak. She recruits investigative reporter Pomeroy, despite his disdain for the show, after discovering he is contractually bound to the station. Co-host Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton) is unimpressed, and it doesn’t take long for their mutual hatred to spill over onto live TV.

The script from The Devil Wears Prada screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna is as formulaic as they come, and a subplot featuring Patrick Wilson as McAdams’ love interest is completely dispensable, but Morning Glory is still fun. Ford and Keaton deliver their spiteful barbs with relish, but it’s the fiery chemistry between Ford and McAdams that is most effective, as these two talented comic performers get a rare opportunity to cut loose.

Morning Glory is on general release from Friday 21 Jan. This review first published in The List magazine.

127 Hours review (The List, Issue 674)

2011-01-08T12:36:00.001Z

Is there a more versatile or interesting British filmmaker than Danny Boyle working today? Few of his contemporaries have as varied a filmography, and there is no denying the consistency in quality of his cinematic narratives. Slumdog Millionaire earned him well-deserved Oscar recognition, but any fears that success would go to this most down-to-earth director’s head can be comfortably – or perhaps not so comfortably – put aside after watching 127 Hours. An intense hour and a half of exemplary filmmaking, it is a concise distillation of everything that is essential about Boyle’s cinema, and is arguably his most accomplished work to date.

A reconstruction of a real event, the film covers the five days that mountaineer Aron Ralston (James Franco) spent trapped in Blue John Canyon in the Utah desert, after a fall left him pinned at the right arm under an unmoveable boulder. With limited supplies, a portable video camera and, most significantly, a small travel knife, Ralston kept himself alive, and ultimately undertook an unthinkable act of self-amputation to escape this early grave.

Boyle has reunited his Slumdog dream team of cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, composer AR Rahman and writer Simon Beaufoy and he orchestrates their contributions with absolute confidence and control. The film’s opening 20 minutes are a joyful storm of visual activity before the enforced calm of Ralston’s ordeal, but it’s when the story reaches this underground standstill that Boyle’s invention really starts moving. His camera is alive to every visual possibility of the cramped location, even at one point switching to an inside-the-injured-arm perspective. However, this is no technical showcase; Boyle’s film is a question, a search to discover what drives a man to survive. Franco is completely convincing as he enacts a mental journey from self-sufficiency to realisation of his desperate need for human connection, to a moment of decisive action. The intense and graphic depiction of that moment may prove too much for some viewers (this writer came very close to fainting), but it’s completely justified. Boyle drags the audience into hell and out the other side, and everyone who makes it will feel Ralston’s triumph as their own.

127 Hours is on general release now. This review first published in The List magazine.

The Next Three Days review (The List, Issue 674)

2011-01-08T12:23:00.000Z

This unremarkable thriller represents a low for writer/director Paul Haggis, who not so long ago was being showered with Oscars for his work (Million Dollar Baby, Crash). It’s a remake of Fred Cavayé’s Anything For Her from 2008, and while it’s easy to understand Haggis’s desire to delve into the story’s moral grey areas for himself, he so completely smoothes over any rough edges in this retelling that he blunts every potentially interesting aspect of the film.

Russell Crowe gives a bland performance as John Brennan, an ordinary schoolteacher and family man who takes the law into his own hands when his wife Lara (Elizabeth Banks) is found guilty of murder and sentenced to long-term imprisonment. Convinced of Lara’s innocence, but lacking evidence, Brennan concocts an elaborate break-in scheme that leads him into increasingly desperate and potentially criminal actions of his own.

Despite working from his own script, Haggis seems unsure whether he’s directing a fun action romp or a serious moral drama; this ends up being neither. The highlight is an unintentionally hilarious cameo from Liam Neeson as a grizzled veteran prison-breaker.

The Next Three Days is on general release now. This review first published in The List magazine.

Gulliver's Travels review (The List, Issue 673)

2010-12-19T18:04:00.000Z

In the ten years since his breakout performance as John Cusack’s slacker workmate in High Fidelity, Jack Black has become a big name movie star, but his CV is surprisingly short of hits. Only Richard Linklater’s family comedy School of Rock has managed to showcase Black’s wisecracking, music-loving personality in a way that both audiences and critics have warmed to. Gulliver’s Travels is an attempt by Black, who co-produced the film, to create a similarly successful vehicle for his talents, but it is a weak, forgettable comedy, bearing little resemblance to Swift’s classic satire. Black seems uninspired by his own movie, going through the motions, and while the film scrapes by as undemanding family entertainment, there is not much to recommend about it.

Black plays Gulliver, a mail clerk at the Washington Post who accepts a travel writing assignment from the editor he has a crush on (Amanda Peet), and ends up shipwrecked in Lilliput, land of tiny people. After being captured by General Edward Edwardian (Chris O’Dowd) and the Lilliputian army, Gulliver earns the favour of the King and Queen (Billy Connolly and Catherine Tate) by saving Princess Mary (Emily Blunt) from a kidnap attempt. He becomes Lilliput’s official protector, but Edwardian sets out to discover the truth about Gulliver and bring him down.

The script’s endless pop culture references suggest that the film was conceived as a satire on celebrity, but the whole thing is played with such winking self-awareness by all involved that subtlety doesn’t get a look in. Only Jason Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) gives a straight performance as the humble everyman who loves the princess, and he seems to be the only comedian involved who really understood what this film needed to make it funny. Someone who clearly doesn’t understand comedy is the film’s director Rob Letterman, who brings no sense of comic unity to any part of the film: the overall impression is that Letterman left each actor to play their part however they felt best, while he paid more attention to the complex visual effects required to put it all together.

2/5

Gulliver's Travels is released on Boxing Day, Sunday 26th December. This review first published in The List magazine.

Tron: Legacy and Fred: The Movie reviews (Radio Scotland Movie Cafe)

2010-12-17T10:14:00.000Z

Listen to my reviews of new cinema releases Tron Legacy and Fred: The Movie

Tron: Legacy is basically the best music video you’ve ever seen. The visuals are stunning, and the revelation of the world is played out to Daft Punk’s atmospheric score. But despite its awesome looks and sounds, the game world and its occupants are not quite the never-before-seen spectacle that may have been hoped for, and the plot is a sub-Matrix rip-off that steals ideas and scenes from Star Wars, Blade Runner and even Lord of the Rings to name a few.

But Tron is infinitely better than Fred: The Movie, which wins my worst movie of 2010 award. Listen to the reviews to find out why!

Tron: Legacy and Fred: The Movie are in cinemas now.
Listen to the reviews here

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader review (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-12-09T13:02:00.000Z

C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books set a particular challenge to filmmakers and audiences who are accustomed to film series that tell a single continuous story (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Twilight etc.). The constant factor in Lewis’s seven books is not the story but the location, and each book tells a story that, as well as being a stand-alone adventure, increases the reader’s understanding of what kind of world Narnia is. Director Andrew Adamson did a pretty good job of transferring the basic stories of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) and Prince Caspian (2008) to the big screen, but both of his films failed to really explore or in any way explain Narnia, beyond the initial revelation of it being a wonderful, magical place.

For this third trip there’s a change of personnel behind the camera as veteran director Michael Apted takes over from Adamson (who now oversees in a producer capacity), but while Apted ensures that Dawn Treader features a lot more exploring of Narnia, there still isn’t much explaining; logical plot progression is decidedly not one of this story’s strengths. To be fair, the point of the magic of Narnia is that it is mysterious and inexplicable, but for much of the time in Dawn Treader there is not even a clear explanation as to why the Pevensie children have been summoned to Narnia once more.

The story begins with the two younger Pevensies, Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley), being transported to Narnia in spectacular fashion, through a magical picture frame, with their spoiled brat cousin Eustace (Son of Rambow’s Will Poulter) in tow. Once there they find themselves on board the Dawn Treader, the longboat captained by Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) with the able assistance of swashbuckling mouse Reepicheep (voiced by Simon Pegg, replacing Eddie Izzard) and his crew. Caspian is on a quest to find seven lords who were banished during the reign of tyrannical King Miraz, and invites the children to join him. From there the story unfolds as a series of smaller stories, each taking place on a different island in Narnia and involving one of the characters having to overcome a specific personal temptation in order to succeed.

There is fun to be had with this story, and Apted doesn’t try to disguise its freewheeling nature. In fact, the character of Eustace spends much of the first half of the film incredulous at the increasingly far-fetched turns of events, a function that Poulter carries off pretty well (until a particularly crazy twist literally transforms his performance). But more so than the previous two films, Dawn Treader is a film that is best-suited to younger audiences. With its simplistic moral boundaries, episodic story and broad characterisation, it’s not a film that has anything like the thematic weight of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but what it does offer is a fun and exciting (but not too scary) time at the movies for kids.

6/10

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is in UK cinemas now. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

Monsters interview feature (The List, Issue 683)

2010-12-01T09:27:00.000Z

Paul Gallagher talks to the director and stars of brilliant new sci-fi horror Monsters

‘Doing visual effects for a living is like being a gynaecologist’, says Gareth Edwards, ‘when you do it every day at work, it doesn’t turn you on any more.’ So he decided to stop staring at pixels and pick up a camera. The result is Monsters, one of the most unique and surprising films of the year, an ingenious mix of indie romance, sci-fi road movie and CG trickery that positions Edwards as his generation’s answer to James Cameron. All he wanted was to reclaim visual effects from the blockbusters: ‘I really hate watching Hollywood films where you can tell they’ve made lots of effects people break their backs to do these shots, but the final emotional impact is nothing. So it was really important for me to put the record straight: what I did with this film is not technically groundbreaking, but I hope the choices that were made were to be bold and throw away visual effects, not make a big deal of them.’ Monsters takes place in an alternate, alien-invaded earth, but Edwards’ focus remains on two human characters, travelling through the Mexican ‘infected zone’ throughout: ‘My favourite bits in the film are when you have these crazy visual spectacles, and as a cameraman I’m more interested in this couple. I hope that’s infectious for the audience.’

The couple are real-life husband and wife actors Scoot McNairy (In Search of a Midnight Kiss) and Whitney Able, who signed up for Edwards’ improvised Mexico shoot on the strength of one meeting and a 12-page plot treatment. ‘He’s a mad genius’, says McNairy, emphasising the mad: ‘We were down in Mexico City and Gareth needed people in gas masks, and this was just when swine flu came out. Gareth was like “this is amazing, everyone’s wearing masks, it’s perfect!” And Whitney and I were like, “well yes, but we don’t want to get swine flu and die”’. The seat-of-the-pants nature of the shoot was an ideal form of marriage preparation for the then-dating couple though: ‘I’m a huge outdoors guy’, says McNairy, ‘and I thought, if she can make it through this production – cos it’s going to be hell – I could definitely spend the rest of my life with her!’ For her part, Able relished the chance to do something that broke her out of the traditional confines of her stunning movie star looks: ‘Most [directors] want to put me in a box, being blonde and blue-eyed, so I was really excited to get a chance to show another side of myself.’ Edwards was clearly impressed: ‘It’s the Scoot and Whitney show, and I can’t imagine this film with anyone else.’

Monsters is on general release from Fri 3 Dec. This feature first published in The List magazine.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest review (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-11-18T17:09:00.002Z

When we last saw Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), aka The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, she was recovering in a beaten and bloodied pile, having barely survived being buried alive and shot in the head by her father and her nine-foot, man-machine half-brother who can feel no pain. Not exactly a typical family reunion, then, but as we know from Lisbeth’s backstory, which has gradually become the focus of the Millennium trilogy over the course of the first two films, such treatment is like a walk in the park compared to the various ways in which men have used and abused her over her relatively short life so far.

So ended The Girl Who Played with Fire, a second instalment that felt very much like a necessarily exposition-heavy middle segment that was paving the way for a killer third part that would tie together the various story strands in a thrilling finale. At least that was the hope. Unfortunately the reality is that returning director Daniel Alfredson’s closing chapter is easily the weakest and least satisfying of the three films, lacking significant thrills and criminally denying one of the best characters in recent cinema the final flourish she deserves.

Alfredson’s first mistake is to begin immediately where the last film left off, meaning Lisbeth spends the first hour of the story lying in a hospital bed while Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist, dour and stony-faced as ever), investigative journalist and Lisbeth’s one-time lover, tries to get to the bottom of the shady political goings-on that Lisbeth seems somehow wrapped up in. As with much of the film’s content, this may have made for riveting reading – certainly, the books’ colossal sales suggest the trilogy’s late author Stieg Larsson was doing something right – but onscreen it makes for lots of talk about… well, it’s quite hard to say what. This is the other major problem with Hornet’s Nest; rather than bringing the themes and plots of the first two films into a coherent and compelling conclusion, Alfredson delivers scene after scene of exposition-heavy conversations, and still he fails to make it clear just how Lisbeth’s life and general mistreatment by men connects to the wider political corruption story of the trilogy.

The film gains focus considerably when Lisbeth is brought to trial, in full gothed-up, Mohican-tastic glory, to answer the various charges against her. But even this section, which should be the high point of the series, lacks excitement, and depends on the replaying of the unforgettable sexual assault footage from the first film for its most powerful moment.

It is particularly disappointing that Alfredson drops the ball so significantly in this trilogy’s conclusion, as Larsson’s overt aims, to call out misogynistic men who presume they can control and subdue women, deserve a more defiant final shout. Similarly, the character of Lisbeth Salander is such a brilliant and compelling creation, and Rapace’s stunning performance so consistently perfect, that she deserves a more glorious cinematic final curtain than the few fleeting moments wielding a nail-gun that this film permits her.

5/10

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is released on 26th November. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

The American review (The List, Issue 671)

2010-11-18T09:42:00.000Z

Photographer-turned film director Anton Corbijn follows his haunting debut, the Ian Curtis biopic Control, with a film that moves him onto a bigger cinematic stage (thanks to its leading man George Clooney) while simultaneously allowing him to delve into more personal thematic territory. The American confirms Corbijn as a confident and uniquely gifted filmmaker, but be warned, it is an intentionally slow-moving film, featuring Clooney’s most defiantly subdued performance to date.

The story, adapted from Martin Booth’s novel A Very Private Gentleman, involves Jack (Clooney), an ageing gunsmith forced to go into hiding when an attempt is made on his life. He holes up in Castelvecchio, a beautiful historic Italian village, and there develops tentative connections with a priest (Paolo Bonacelli) and a prostitute (Violante Placido), both of whom provoke him to consider the value of his life up to this point. Meanwhile, Jack becomes increasingly aware that his pursuers are closing in and time is running out. 

The scenario will be familiar to anyone who’s ever watched a western, but the simplicity is intentional; Corbijn is interested in the ways in which simple surfaces, including the beautiful surfaces of this film, relate to deeper realities. He continually draws attention to Jack’s physical routines – from his constant gum-chewing to the literal routine of having sex – to question whether the routine is an end in itself, or if it must find meaning at a deeper level; a human connection that goes beyond physicality or a spiritual one that allows physical routines to come to rest.

The American is released on 26th November. This review first published in The List magazine.

Peeping Tom review (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-11-17T13:24:00.001Z

Universally reviled by critics on its release in 1960, the film that destroyed director Michael Powell’s career has experienced something of a reappraisal in the 50 years that have passed since then; so much so that it’s received the 50th anniversary digital restoration treatment and is getting a nationwide cinema release this week, followed by a debut appearance on blu-ray, featuring all the extras from the 2007 Special Edition dvd.

Watching Peeping Tom in 2010, it’s not difficult to understand why the film caused such uproar on its original release, but it is also clear that the voices of condemnation were wrong. The film is an incredibly perceptive work, exceptionally well-crafted, both technically and thematically, and still shocking and disturbing today. It’s not an easy film to watch, and perhaps not one that many people will want to add to their collection, but it is still essential viewing for anyone interested in the unique power of cinema.

In an opening scene that takes no prisoners and sets out Powell’s intentions very clearly, we see the main character Mark (Carl Boehm) picking up a prostitute in a shady London street, going home with her and then murdering her in cold blood. We know that this is a premeditated act, as Mark is filming the whole thing; we see it all unfold through the viewfinder of his handheld cine-camera. Powell gives us no choice but to identify with the killer, and in so doing forces us to acknowledge our compulsion to watch what we are presented with, even as it repulses us.

We soon learn that by day Mark is a quietly-spoken camera operator in a large film studio, and he makes extra money taking pornographic photos in the evenings, for a local newsagent to sell under the counter. He seems completely alone in the world, but we get an insight into his profoundly disturbed worldview through the attempts of his neighbour Helen (Anna Massey) to get to know him. Mark is taken with Helen, and allows her into his life, inviting her to see the cavernous studio where he spends hours developing and watching his films, but being careful not to give away the extremes of his murderous lifestyle.

Powell’s willingness to look so unflinchingly at the dark side of films and the act of filmmaking (for surely that’s what this is all about) is quite incredible. It is as if he was thinking about the joyous cinematic magic he had previously worked (in The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death, for example), and felt compelled to portray the uncomfortable flipside. Every element in Peeping Tom points to a damaging, dehumanising tendency at the heart of movies, from the foregrounding of pornography to Mark’s distressingly sensual relationship with his camera – the only physical contact he seems comfortable with – to the way in which the camera is involved in Mark’s murders.

The ironic thing about this films vilification in 1960 is that it happened at the same time that another very similarly-themed film – Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho – was playing to packed houses on a nightly basis. While Hitchcock’s masterpiece is unquestionably the more mainstream and formally groundbreaking of the two films, it’s arguable that Peeping Tom is the more thematically profound and insightful work. Just don’t expect to feel good after watching it.

9/10

Peeping Tom is released in selected cinemas from 19th Nov, and the blu-ray edition is out on 22nd November. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

Carlos review (Single-disc movie Blu-Ray edition)

2010-11-10T17:49:00.000Z

This 165-minute ‘movie’ version of Olivier Assayas’s 5-hour made-for-TV trilogy is impressive in many ways but, perhaps predictably, feels somewhat incomplete. In the interview that accompanies the film on this blu-ray, the director talks about his desire to reconstruct a full picture of the career of notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal, claiming that without the complete context his life doesn’t make sense. It seems strange then, in light of that comment, that this shorter version of the film not only exists but has been given a much higher profile UK release than the full trilogy (it’s the only version I was offered for review). So while Edgar Ramirez’s performance as Carlos is never less than completely convincing, the film doesn’t get under the skin of the character, and in the second half in particular it becomes a blur of locations and conversations that, ironically, suffer from a lack of clear context.

It’s very likely that the full-length version offers more substantial reflections on the questions about revolutionary behaviour that this film only glancingly touches on: what is revolution, and what is it worth? As it stands, the most valuable thing about this cut of Carlos is that it clearly demonstrates Assayas’s brilliant filmmaking ability. He is stylish, confident and hugely ambitious, and the sustained action centrepiece of the film – a hostage-taking raid at the 1975 OPEC conference – is thrillingly realised. But if you want some insight on what causes a man like Carlos to do the things he did, seek out the ‘trilogy’ cut.

Carlos is out on dvd and blu-ray now, in movie and trilogy editions.

Let Me In & Due Date reviews (Radio Scotland Movie Cafe)

2010-11-04T17:39:00.000Z

I reviewed two new releases on this week's Movie Cafe on Radio Scotland with host Janice Forsyth. First up was Let Me In, the US remake of 2008 Swedish cult hit Let The Right One In, and in my opinion it's much better than any of us had reason to hope for.

A little later in the show I gave my verdict on Due Date, the new road-movie comedy from The Hangover director Todd Philips, starring Robert Downey Jr and The Hangover's Zach Galifianakis (try saying that with a mouthful of Jelly Babies). Is it going to be as big a hit as the aforementioned blockbuster? Have a listen at the link below to hear my take:

Click here to listen to the show or download on BBC iPlayer

Due Date and Let Me In are both released in cinemas tomorrow

Burke and Hare review (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-10-29T17:41:00.000+01:00

There are a lot of things about this Edinburgh-set, comedy-horror period piece that don’t work. It isn’t at all scary, which puts paid to the ‘horror’ tag; it tends to favour humour of the man-falling-down-some-stairs variety as opposed to anything remotely sophisticated, and it contains at least one of the worst ‘Scottish’ accents ever delivered (congratulations to Isla Fisher on that achievement). But despite these and many other flaws, Burke and Hare is a film that’s hard not to like, imbued as it is by American director John Landis with a charm and naivety that belies its rather grotesque subject matter. I’m sure that it bears about as close a resemblance to factual history as Life of Brian, but in its best (admittedly few) scenes Landis captures a comedic tone that’s not a million miles from what the Pythons achieved in their heyday.

Landis was responsible for some of the most memorable American comedies of the 80s, including The Blues Brothers and Trading Places, both of which hinged on a central double-act (Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi and Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy respectively) for their success. In Burke and Hare Landis has Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis, both clearly enjoying themselves as the titular Irish entrepreneurs. The pair are penniless hucksters when we first meet them on the beautifully recreated streets of 19th Century Edinburgh, but they end up literally making a killing by stumbling upon a new line of business, providing fresh cadavers for the groundbreaking research of scientist Dr. Knox (Tom Wilkinson), whose previous source of fresh dead has been usurped by his powerful rival, Dr. Monroe (Tim Curry).

Pegg and Serkis easily hold the audience’s attention and sympathies – most impressive, considering the amount of cold-blooded murdering they do – but the film’s script doesn’t offer them much in the way of depth or decent gags to get their teeth into. In fact, most of the film’s weaknesses can be traced back to its script, the work of St. Trinian’s writers Nick Moorcroft and Piers Ashworth. The central romance, between Burke (Pegg) and Ginny (Fisher) is a case in point; the development of their relationship is non-existent, dramatically speaking, and as a character Ginny is largely unappealing and conceited. But Pegg and Fisher (awful accent notwithstanding) are both so charming and likeable that we believe in their romance, in spite of the lame dialogue.

The film is at its best when Landis makes his boldest tonal decisions, foregrounding the absurd comedy of a hanging scene, for example. But he is less confident when handling the script’s attempts at seriousness; an awkward subplot invites unfavourable comparisons to Shakespeare, and a number of scenes failingly attempt to ask questions about the morality of scientific study. There are some interesting ideas floated, but none are followed through with anything like the necessary conviction to make an impact. On the other hand, a scene featuring The Fast Show’s Paul Whitehouse falling down some stairs is hilarious, so I’m not going to complain too much.

6/10

Burke and Hare is out now. This review first published on FutureMovies.co.uk.

Festival Focus: Document 8 and Africa In Motion (The List, Issue 669)

2010-10-21T11:23:00.000+01:00

The term ‘Human Rights Cinema’, with its implication of heavy political issues and intense subjects, may sound too much like hard work for the average cinemagoer. But for the last seven years Document, the Glasgow-based International Human Rights Film Festival, has been demonstrating that films about human rights simply means films about people like you and me. Begun in 2003 with a focus on the lives of Glasgow asylum-seekers, Document’s reach and scope has widened with each successive year.

This year’s opening film is Aisheen: Still Alive in Gaza, a gently powerful portrait of contemporary life in post-invasion Gaza that offers a very effective introduction to the type of film’s Document showcases. The film focuses on one of the biggest political arguments in our world, but from the perspectives of ordinary people caught in the middle of it, showing how precarious life is amidst the devastation. But Aisheen is no angry polemic; Swiss filmmaker Nicolas Wadimoff observes, mainly through focusing on young people, how life continues in a community where basic human rights have been denied. The film is troubling and uplifting in equal measures: one boy says, “the conditions are not right for learning… we’ve given up dreams”, but just as affectingly, Wadimoff shows us the burgeoning rap group choosing words as their weapons, and attempting to bring some hope and inspiration to Gaza with their music.

Another key film in this year’s programme is Bloody Sunday: A Derry Diary (pictured), a remarkable first-hand account that follows the almost 40-year journey from the Derry massacre in 1972 to the long-delayed conclusion of the Bloody Sunday Enquiry earlier this year. Filmmaker Margo Harkin, who was an eyewitness to the devastating events and gave evidence in the tribunal, has assembled a film of incredible power that, through the measured accounts of each contributor, not only delivers a defiant shout in the face of injustice, but also offers a message of hope to anyone who fights for a human cause to be heard.

Other highlights amongst the festival’s 95 documentaries are The Fear Factory, a clear-eyed appraisal of the UK’s failing Youth Justice System, The Silver Fez, a hugely entertaining account of a penniless African musician aiming for glory and The Shutdown, Alan Bissett and Adam Stafford’s award-winning short about young life in the shadow of Grangemouth. Document 8 Programmer Neill Patton says, “we’re not here to tell people what to do, we just want to let people see what’s going on in the world.”

While Document is happening in Glasgow, the Africa in Motion Film Festival will be celebrating its fifth anniversary in Edinburgh, showing over 70 films drawn from 28 African countries. This year the theme of the festival is ‘celebrations’, and Festival Director Lizelle Bisschoff says “first and foremost it’s an arts festival, celebrating brilliant African films, and that’s more important to us than any issue-based or ‘worthy’ approaches to representing Africa.” That’s a statement that’s borne out in the programme, with highlights including the opening film, Sex, Okra and Salted Butter, from Cannes award-winner Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, a selection of music and dance-themed documentaries from across the continent and a special children’s workshop with Kenyan animator Alfred Muchilwa, lead animator on CBeebies’ Tinga Tinga Tales.

Document 8 Human Rights Film Festival, CCA, Glasgow Tue 26-Sun 31 Oct. Africa in Motion Film Festival, Filmhouse, Edinburgh Thurs 21 Oct-Fri 5 Nov.
A shorter version of this feature was first published in The List magazine.

Buried review (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-10-01T15:26:00.000+01:00

In which Ryan ‘The Proposal’ Reynolds wakes up to find himself buried alive in a coffin, and we the audience are in there with him. For each and every one of the film’s 94 minutes. After some great Saul Bass-inspired opening credits, debut director Rodrigo Cortés starts as he means to go on, with the screen remaining uncomfortably black for what feels like forever until the flicker of a zippo lighter introduces us to Paul Conroy (Reynolds), bound and gagged and, understandably, a little shaken up on finding himself buried in a box. Quickly discovering that his captors have left him an Arabic-language mobile phone, Conroy starts making some panicked calls to try and figure out who put him there, and how the hell he’s going to get out.

To call this film audacious would be putting it lightly. Cortés and writer Chris Sparling push the concept of one single claustrophobic location to its absolute limit, but this isn’t an attempt at documentary-style reality. Incredibly creative camerawork from cinematographer Eduard Grau (also responsible for photographing last year’s A Single Man) continually breaks the ‘real’ boundaries of the coffin, while intense editing and some huge dramatic music cues keep the tension building as we hang on to discover Conroy’s ultimate fate.

One of the film’s great strengths is that Sparling’s script doesn’t pull any punches with the scenario; there are no last-minute twists or reveals, Conroy really is buried in a box in the middle of the desert. And while Sparling has points to make about the loss of the value of the individual in our corporation/nation-prioritising world, director Cortés ensures that the message comes across in a way that’s hard-hitting but not heavy-handed; the themes are always subordinate to the telling of this specific story.

It all hinges on Reynolds, and the actor better known for his rom-com roles totally delivers what’s needed, his committed performance ensuring that the believability of his predicament remains constant. Buried represents a further sign that Reynolds is interested in more than just playing it safe with his choices – his turn in 2007’s The Nines was an equally interesting diversion from the mainstream. A few more like this and a few less He’s Just Not That Into You’s wouldn’t hurt his standing one bit. Maybe Tarantino could give him a call?

8/10

Buried is out now. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

Mother review

2010-09-23T15:33:00.000+01:00

New to dvd this week from Joon-ho Bong, director of The Host and Memories of Murder, Mother defies pigeonholing, beginning as a compelling murder mystery and transforming into a dark and twisting character study, tinged with surreal dream-logic. Hye-ja Kim gives an amazingly intense and unpredictable performance as the unnamed mother of the title, who sets out to see justice done when her son (Bin Won), who has an unspecified learning disability, is arrested for the bizarre murder of a local schoolgirl. What starts out as a simple tale of a loving mother seeking vindication for her wrongfully-accused son becomes something much more complicated, as Bong slowly gets under the surface of the mother-son relationship while gradually revealing the unsettling lengths the mother is willing to go to to defend her cause.

The title brings Hitchcock’s Psycho to mind, and that may be intentional; Bong’s masterful composition and editing creates suspense that Hitch would be proud of. One brilliant pivotal sequence uses a slowly tracking camera to reveal key information in a way that’s simultaneously chilling and delightful, as great suspense cinema should be. Equally effective is Bong’s use of different points of view as the mother pieces together the truth; the combined impact of his stylish storytelling and Kim’s sensational performance make Mother an unforgettable experience.

8/10

Mother is available on DVD now.

The Town review (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-09-23T11:18:00.000+01:00

Ben Affleck’s 2007 directorial debut Gone Baby Gone was both a brilliant thriller and an authentic representation of the Boston neighbourhood that Affleck knows; it was keenly-observed and morally complex - the polar opposite of many of his prior appearances in front of the camera (Surviving Christmas, anyone?) – but it was criminally underseen here in the UK. This was partly due to its delayed release (its ‘missing girl’ plot was similar to the Madeleine McCann case), and partly because its toplining star, Affleck’s little bro Casey, is not as big a box-office draw as his older brother, despite being arguably the better actor.

So Affleck has ensured his second offering will be harder for audiences to ignore, putting himself front and centre and enrolling one of the most recognisable men on TV, Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, as his opposite. It’s worked in the US, where The Town is currently top of the box office, and piling up the positive critical notices. And while this story of Boston bank robbers isn’t quite up to the standard of his debut, it’s still a great crime drama full of superbly-realised characters, and confirms that Ben Affleck, director, is here to stay.

As with Gone Baby Gone, The Town is based on a novel (Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan), and focuses on characters in a particular Boston district. As the film begins, title quotes inform us that Charlestown has produced more bank-robbers than any other city in the world, that robbing banks is a way of life in Charlestown, and that the man who tries to break the mould will have troubles indeed. The story that follows essentially dramatises and fleshes out those statements in the character of Doug MacRay (Affleck), a local who could have had a career as a professional ice hockey player but for a few bad choices, and so instead applies himself, very successfully, to bank robbery.

MacRay’s best friend and partner-in-crime Jim (The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner, on electrifying form) is the chaotic opposite to Doug’s carefully composed calm, and during the exceptionally well-crafted robbery that kicks off the movie Jim spontaneously takes a hostage; bank manager Claire (Rebecca Hall). They release her unharmed, but on discovering she lives in their neighbourhood sense the possibility of being caught. Meanwhile FBI agent Adam Frawley (Hamm) is putting the pieces together and closing in on MacRay’s gang. MacRay contrives to meet and befriend Claire, with a view to discovering the likelihood of her identifying them, but a connection immediately sparks between them, and he starts to imagine that she may represent a last chance for him to get out of Charlestown and start afresh.

One of the things that was so surprising and impressive about Gone Baby Gone was Affleck’s clearly-conveyed interest in ordinary people living their lives, and this again comes through in The Town. Affleck demonstrates his filmmaking muscle with an incredibly gripping action sequence in the middle of the film, but for the greater part of the running time he focuses on the subtler dramas, the choices his characters have to make and, as one character puts it, “the price we have to pay”. This is obviously central to the characterisation of MacRay - Affleck’s best performance in years, by the way – but it also underpins Hamm’s excellent portrayal of Frawley, who subtly develops from the straight-up ‘good guy’ agent into a more complicated character with agendas of his own.

The downside is that Affleck doesn’t keep a tight reign on bringing these dramas together in the film as a whole; the plot has a fair amount of ragged edges and unresolved aspects, suggesting that some hefty cutting may have gone on to keep the finished film around the 2-hour mark (Blake Lively’s character feels particularly underdeveloped). The story’s neat conclusion is also disappointing after such a satisfyingly complex character study, and makes one wonder where Affleck and his co-writers Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard might have taken things had they been free from studio restraints.

The cast can’t be faulted though, and judged on performances alone, The Town is one of the best studio films of the year. And just as in Gone Baby Gone, Affleck ices the cake with a pair of dramatic heavyweights in small but vital roles, and Chris Cooper and Pete Postlethwaite make the same kind of impact here that Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris did in his former film. Cooper in particular makes a powerful impression in his single-scene appearance, offering an image of a possible dark future for MacRay that doesn’t fade easily from memory.

7/10

The Town is released on 24th September. This review first published on FutureMovies.co.uk.

Breathless (À bout de soufflé)

2010-09-15T15:19:00.000+01:00

It’s re-released this week in a shiny new blu-ray edition as part of Optimum’s Studio Canal Collection (along with Mulholland Drive, The Third Man, Delicatessen, Le Cercle Rouge and more), so I took that as a good enough reason to finally check Jean Luc-Godard’s game-changing 1960 debut Breathless (À bout de soufflé) off of my ‘influential movies I must get round to watching’ list.

Breathless is all about style. In his plot-light pursuit of two free spirits in the hip streets of Paris, Godard pioneered the use of jump-cuts, not only from one scene to the next but throughout the entire film, in the middle of conversations, instantly creating a new approach to film editing. And the film is not just formally stylish; the two main characters, Michel and Patricia, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, became instant icons of cinematic cool, thanks to their chain-smoking, shades-wearing air of complete self-confidence.

Added to this, Michel is an entirely unsympathetic central character (his opening line is, “after all, I’m an arse-hole”, and he’s absolutely right), but somehow, I think mainly by showing us Patricia’s fondness for him, Godard makes us care about him by the time the film reaches its poignant conclusion. In so doing he creates that staple of contemporary cinema, the anti-hero.

All of this is already enough to make the film essential viewing for anyone interested in how movies became what they are today, but it should also be noted that Breathless is a lot of fun. There’s not a great deal going on under the surface, but there’s a vital energy and creativity to Godard’s filmmaking.

For me though, the thing that makes Breathless more than an important historical artefact is Jean Seberg, whose disarming performance provides the film with a necessary emotional centre. At times, Michel’s insensitive, sexist and self-centred comments are frankly repulsive, but the way in which Seberg plays Patricia’s responses – always seeing through the big talk to the man beneath – is natural and affecting, perfectly conveying the mysterious and often contradictory workings of human relationships. There is timeless truth to be found in those interactions, and that’s why Breathless will continue to endure.

Breathless is out on blu-ray and dvd now. More information at the Studio Canal Collection website.

Preview: The Social Network (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-09-15T08:53:00.002+01:00

It’s make or break time for David Fincher. That might seem like an odd thing to say about a director who has, to all intents and purposes, ‘made it’, but hear me out. In 2008, after 15 years of directing some of the most influential and grown-up films to come out of Hollywood, including Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac, Fincher took his first step into much more family-friendly territory with the lush drama The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. That film became his biggest box-office hit to date, but it also signalled, in my opinion, a distinct compromise of Fincher’s previously established flair, style and ability to fire on all creative cylinders. It looked beautiful, but it was too long, dull and emotionally inert; essentially, Fincher with all his rough edges smoothed off.

So the release of The Social Network (or “the facebook movie”) is a defining moment for Fincher, as it has the potential to be the film in which he successfully unites his proven ability to delve into the darker recesses of humanity with his obvious desire to make films for as wide an audience as possible. This film’s pedigree is impressive: it’s written by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, based on Ben Mezrich’s racy and, by all accounts, not-exactly factual book 'The Accidental Billionaires', and was first picked up for development by Kevin Spacey, who takes an executive producer credit on the finished film. It’s already being pushed for awards glory by über-producer Scott Rudin, but that’s not necessarily a bad omen; Rudin was the driving force behind some of the best Oscar contenders of recent years, including No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. He clearly knows how to enable, rather than dilute, a good filmmaker’s potential.

The film recreates the early days of Facebook by centring on the bitter feuds over who created it; feuds which came to public attention in 2006 through a series of deposition hearings between the site’s founder Mark Zuckerberg and various groups of his former friends and colleagues. Sorkin’s script, which is readily available online, zips back and forth between these hearings and the momentous events of three years previous, when what began as a site for rating the hotness of female Harvard students, set up by a spiteful Zuckerberg, mushroomed into the social networking phenomenon we know today. Several things quickly become clear when reading the script: one is that this is material that perfectly lends itself to Fincher’s detailed, procedural style, most effectively seen in his meticulously assembled 2007 film Zodiac, another is that Sorkin’s trademark quick-witted humour is definitely present, and the third is that this is not going to be a particularly flattering portrayal of Zuckerberg.

As written by Sorkin, Zuckerberg is a socially inept, self-seeking twentysomething with a mean-spirited wit and a massive IQ. It’s a gift of a role for Jesse Eisenberg, who has certainly proven his ability to play the awkward geek in a string of comedies (Adventureland, Zombieland). This is his chance to demonstrate a greater range, and I’m hopeful he’ll pull it off. The film’s huge cast also includes man-of-the-moment Andrew Garfield who, as well as being recently confirmed as the new Spider-Man, is also soon to be seen alongside Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan in Mark Romanek’s London Film Festival opener Never Let Me Go. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also the little matter of Rooney Mara, the unknown actress who David Fincher recently cast as Lisbeth Salander in his forthcoming remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Mara has a significant role in this film too, so it will hopefully be a chance for us to see just what it is about her that Fincher’s been so taken by.

So The Social Network offers a lot to get excited about. And if you’re still unconvinced, check out the most recent trailer, featured below. It’s a doozy.

The Social Network is released in the UK on 15th October. This preview first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

Mulholland Drive: Studio Canal Blu-Ray Edition (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-09-13T09:10:00.000+01:00

At the end of 2009, when it came time for the opinionaters of the world to offer their verdicts on the best movies of the previous 10 years, David Lynch’s 2001 offering Mulholland Drive was one of those titles that kept appearing at or very near the top of those lists. Watching it again for the first time since its cinema release, I didn’t find it hard to see why so many critics were keen to pull it back into the limelight. It’s a stunning film that succeeds on multiple levels, being simultaneously a darkly comic Hollywood satire, a deeply disturbing trip into a woman’s troubled mind and a hugely compelling riddle in film form. It’s ambitious, puzzling and deftly cinematic, and it allowed Lynch to showcase Naomi Watts, arguably one of the best actresses currently working, to amazing effect as Betty/Diane, the two sides of Mulholland Drive’s split personality.

As this lovingly presented blu-ray’s fascinating extras make clear, the fact that Mulholland Drive ended up as such an enduring work is really down to luck, both good and bad. Originally conceived in the early 90s by Lynch and his Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost, the bulk of Mulholland Drive was shot in 1999, without Frost’s involvement, as a US pilot for a doomed ABC TV series. It was never broadcast, but the project stayed alive in Lynch’s mind.

18 months later French producer Alain Sarde’s company made it possible for Lynch to get the cast back together and shoot an entirely new ‘third act’ for what would now be a stand-alone film. It could have been a recipe for disaster, but on one of this disc’s interviews Lynch admits that he now looks at the success of the finished film and wishes he could “trick himself” into such an unexpectedly productive creative process again.

The story of its creation goes a long way to explaining the film’s multiplicity of seemingly unrelated characters and its odd structure, which, on a first viewing, is thoroughly bamboozling. But it also gives one an even greater respect for Lynch’s brilliance: his particular achievement with Mulholland Drive is to gather these sprawling elements together into a thoroughly satisfying film experience, one that – ironically, given its TV roots – seems to capture the very essence of cinematic creativity.

Lynch’s refusal to pin his enigmatic characters to a conventional A to Z narrative leaves the film open to endless interpretation, but it also means that each scene has as much significance on its own as it does as part of the overall story. Lynch’s ability to craft brilliantly memorable scenes has never been more evident than it is here, and he masterfully dovetails every detail of the production, from each individual actor’s performance to Peter Deming’s precise camerawork to Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks-esque score, to give each scene a unique atmosphere of its own that still somehow makes sense in the wider context. It goes without saying that Mulholland Drive is a masterpiece.

As previously mentioned, this blu-ray edition, part of Optimum’s excellent series of reissues from French company Studio Canal, has a better set of extras than any previous edition of the film. The best all-new feature is 'In The Blue Box', in which a handful of French directors and film critics (plus Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly) get into the meat of Lynch’s craft in Mulholland Drive, discussing individual scenes and thematic elements. As one of them puts it, “[Lynch’s] films contribute to the fight against simplification, against a trend of unambiguous films which provide answers the way television news does”. In light of that statement, ‘Back to Mulholland Drive’, another new feature – unauthorized by the director - that seeks to explain what is actually happening from moment to moment in the film, seems to work against the essential mystery at the heart of all Lynch’s work, and is probably best avoided.

10/10

Mulholland Drive: Studio Canal Blu-Ray Edition is out now, more information at studiocanalcollection.com. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

Cyrus (The List, Issue 666)

2010-09-09T09:22:00.000+01:00

Sibling writer/directors Mark and Jay Duplass are figureheads of the Mumblecore movement – ultra-low budget, largely improvised films featuring non-professional actors – and after earning praise on the American indie circuit for their films The Puffy Chair and Baghead they’re bringing their sensibilities into the mainstream. Cyrus is the brothers’ first studio film and the first chance for UK cinema audiences to find out what the fuss is about and, on this evidence, the buzz is justified. Cyrus is (in this writer’s opinion) the best comedy of the year so far: unique, surprising and featuring a brilliant lead performance from eternal support player John C Reilly, it’s fresh and funny in ways that a traditionally-scripted comedy could never be.

The story centres on John (Reilly), an editor whose life has come to a standstill, a fact rubbed in by his ex-wife’s (Catherine Keener) announcement that she is remarrying. Hope arrives in the form of beautiful and inexplicably single Molly (Marisa Tomei), but then John meets Cyrus (Jonah Hill), Molly’s 21-year old son, and discovers a co-dependent mother-son relationship that the word ‘unhealthy’ doesn’t begin to describe.

In the hands of conventional filmmakers, this would be just another high-concept comedy bearing no resemblance to real life, but the Duplasses focus on drawing believable characterisation from their actors in even the broadest comic scenarios, resulting in supremely awkward but breathtakingly truthful comedy. Reilly shines, and Hill’s performance is also brilliant, unsettlingly poised between scheming and vulnerable, so that even the film’s apparently neat conclusion is undercut with ambiguity.

4/5

Cyrus is on general release from 10 September. This review first published in The List magazine.

SoulBoy (The List, Issue 666)

2010-09-08T09:43:00.000+01:00

Low budget Irish filmmaker Shimmy Marcus makes a bid for the mainstream with this formulaic but crowd-pleasing teen drama. It’s 1974, and bored teenager Joe’s (Martin Compston) life is transformed when he pursues unattainable ice-queen Jane (Nichola Burley) to a night at Wigan Casino and discovers the exploding Northern Soul dance scene. On the same night he bumps into Mandy (Felicity Jones), a childhood friend who still holds a torch for Joe. Throw in Alan (Craig Parkinson), Jane’s dance-floor king – and prize tool – boyfriend, and the stage is set for a comfortably predictable story of heartbreak and hip-swivelling.

The script by first-time writer Jeff Williams is workmanlike, but Compston, moving confidently away from his usual Glasgow hard-man persona into likeable leading-man territory, gives SoulBoy a warmth and energy that is irresistible. Jones plays the cute girl-next-door with the same charm and appeal she demonstrated in Cemetery Junction, and Burley, last seen strutting her stuff in Streetdance 3D, works wonders with a thankless, one-dimensional role. It all ends with a dance-off that’s as cheesy as it is uplifting, but SoulBoy’s heart is in the right place.

3/5

Soulboy is on selected release. Check soulboythefilm.com/cinema-listing for details. This review first published in The List magazine.

Cherry Tree Lane: Vintage Violence? (The List, Issue 665)

2010-08-31T17:34:00.000+01:00

When it comes to going to the cinema, how much screen violence is too much? Or is it more to do with the type of violence? Paul Gallagher ducks the punches

Paul Andrew Williams’s Cherry Tree Lane is a real-time enactment of the break-in and torture of a middle class suburban couple by vengeful teenagers. At a mere 77 minutes, it’s still a brutal, unpleasant endurance test, and much of its power comes from Williams’s stylistic choices. From the film’s opening – a portentous ultra-slow zoom onto a front door – he eschews the furious editing of modern American horror, as well as the more traditional camp vagaries of the genre, in favour of something less comfortable, more shocking, and closer to art house in form. Torture scenes unfold in beautifully composed long takes, and most of the gut-wrenching violence takes place just beyond the camera’s line of sight, with sound filling in the blanks in audience members’ pummelled imaginations. It’s an impressive display of technical expertise, but I struggled to understand why Williams would want to put anyone through such an experience. It’s not a question that he convincingly addresses at any point in the film.

I had a similar reaction recently watching another horror of sorts. Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me features two protracted scenes of brutal and humiliating violence against the film’s female characters; powerfully shocking scenes that have no justifiable place in what is an otherwise traditional, even unremarkable, noir.

These examples represent a growing number of British filmmakers employing the extreme tendencies of art house cinema in mainstream horror films, in a universally empty-headed manner. In the wake of what James Quandt referred to in 2004 as the ‘New Extremity’ – European filmmakers including Gaspar Noé, Catherine Breillat and Bruno Dumont who consciously provoked with painstakingly realised sex, violence and debasement – burgeoning British filmmakers have a new reference, more immediate and shocking than stylised Italian Giallo, but are doing nothing constructive or insightful with it. In fact, with their ‘realistic’ aesthetic, James Watkins’ Eden Lake (2008), Thomas Clay’s execrable The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael (2005) and Cherry Tree Lane serve only to reinforce the inaccurate stereotype that the only teenagers this country produces are fearsome amoral troublemakers.

The film that Cherry Tree Lane immediately brings to mind is Michael Haneke’s home-invasion grueller Funny Games, in which the divisive Austrian director dared audiences to withstand the extreme humiliation and pain he put his characters through. Haneke was making a point about screen violence though; you can disagree with him, but his motivation is clear.

Williams claims that his motivation was ‘to see if I could create what it would be like if this really happened’, while Winterbottom, reflecting on negative reactions to his film, simply said ‘I was surprised that people were so shocked by the violence’, suggesting a distinct lack of reasoning behind their provocative presentations of violence. Film is primarily a means of communication; on this evidence, extreme violence is the current easy option for directors with nothing to say.

Cherry Tree Lane, selected release, Fri 3 Sep. The Killer Inside Me is released on DVD and Blu-ray on Mon 27 Feb. This article first published in The List magazine.

National School's Film Week 2010

2010-08-30T21:56:00.000+01:00

I’m pleased to be taking part in National Schools Film Week again this year, which is happening in cinemas in Glasgow and Edinburgh from 28 October-5 November. The programme offers free cinema screenings for school classes, during school hours, featuring a huge range of films, from this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner The Hurt Locker to Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel, and everything you can imagine inbetween.

The idea of National Schools Film Week is to inspire pupils by opening them up to films they might not usually choose to watch, as well as equipping teachers by offering them new ways of approaching familiar subjects through film. They get industry professionals and film critics to come and talk before or after screenings; this year I’ll be introducing the Edinburgh screening of Pedro Almodovar’s most recent film, Broken Embraces (pictured).

This year Film Education will be supplementing its usual advice to schools with a special Not Just A Trip To The Movies guide at www.filmeducation.org packed with tips for teachers suggesting the broad range of ways in which they and their students might make the most of a NSFW (an unfortunate abbreviation, but it's the one they're sticking with) screening, before, during and afterwards.

Booking is open now for over 50 screenings in Glasgow and Edinburgh through the week, and you can find out more at www.nsfw.org.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

2010-08-29T20:50:00.000+01:00

In Edgar Wright’s new film, Scott Pilgrim, as played by Michael Cera, initially comes across like a Romeo for the Playstation generation, and not in a good way; he’s whiney, self-pitying, fickle in his shifting affections and overall a rather unsympathetic character. Added to this Hot Fuzz director Wright front-loads the film with visual gimmicks and whizz-bang effects that cleverly set up the video-game reality of Scott’s world but don’t hold much promise of depth. But stick with it, and slowly a human heart emerges from beneath both Scott’s detached exterior and the film’s flashy digital surfaces.

The plot is simple. Scott, bass player in struggling indie band Sex Bob-omb, meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead; cool as a whole crate of cucumbers) at a party, and is immediately consumed with desire for her. He soon learns that if he wants to date her he will have to defeat her seven evil exes in a series of duels. Fighting ensues.

As in Wright’s debut feature Shaun of the Dead, the central conceit of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – fights between humans presented in video game ‘vs.’ styles - is one that he previously used in one very funny scene of his brilliant TV show Spaced. Unlike Spaced though (or Shaun and Hot Fuzz), which was grounded in recognisably mundane - and very English - real-world contexts, it’s interesting that his first Hollywood feature is presented in a completely fantastical style throughout; perhaps a comment by Wright on the American film industry’s detachment from the real world?

His more probable motivation for the hyper-stylized setting (apart from Pilgrim’s graphic novel origins) is that here Wright is focusing on considerably younger characters than in his previous films; this is a generation that is increasingly distanced from reality, looking at the world through more and more filters. Scott’s world is a video game, and he is completely detached from real humanity – even “getting a life” isn’t as transformative as it sounds – and while Wright loves that world and plays with its aesthetics to tremendously entertaining effect, he ultimately recognises that it needs to be invaded by something real, otherwise it’s not worth living in.

So while the film is difficult to warm to in its earlier stages, it’s understandable why Wright chose to make it so. He should also be commended for taking a Hollywood budget and doing something that visually justifies it. Wright places the emphasis on images here - a bold move, considering his previous films’ strengths were arguably in performance and dialogue - but his visuals are inspired and unique (and often funny) enough to take the weight. Whether Scott Pilgrim will hold up to repeat viewings as well as Shaun and Hot Fuzz remains to be seen, but after one sitting it confirms Wright as a director continuing to challenge himself, and rewarding his audience in the process.

Avatar: Special Edition, The Illusionist and The Girl Who Played With Fire (Radio Scotland Movie Cafe)

2010-08-26T17:33:00.000+01:00

Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl Who Played With Fire

Click here to listen to the show

The Movie Cafe returned to Radio Scotland today after a break for the Edinburgh Fringe, and I was back on to discuss the cinema re-release of Avatar - what's so special about this 'Special Edition' and does anyone actually want to see it?

Myself, host Janice Forsyth and film critic Jon Melville also reviewed Sylvain Chomet's beautiful new animated film The Illusionist, the Edinburgh-set story of an aging magician and the young girl he takes under his wing. The film premiered earlier this year at Edinburgh International Film Festival, where Janice had also interviewed the director, also featured in this programme.

In the third segment of the show I stayed on to throw in my comments on the second part of the Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson's 'Millenium' trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire. We also got on to discussing David Fincher's American remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and the challenge that he will have, in particular to better these films' realisation of lead character Lisbeth Salander.

Listen to the show here

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2010 (The List)

2010-06-28T11:21:00.000+01:00

EIFF 2010 ran from 18-26 June this year, and I was there watching movies and interviewing actors and filmmakers for a blog on The List magazine's website.

Click here to read my EIFF 2010 blogs

The blogs cover a lot of the films that made big impressions at this years festival, including Skeletons, which won the Michael Powell Best British Film Award, Monsters, the sci-fi debut from Gareth Edwards, winner of the New Director award, and Get Low, the Robert Duvall-Bill Murray drama that picked up the Audience Award. Plus there's interviews with the men behind Toy Story 3, comedian Ben Miller and of course, much more.

Brooklyn's Finest (Radio Scotland Movie Cafe)

2010-06-11T09:22:00.000+01:00

This week I was on the Movie Cafe with Janice Forsyth, reviewing Antoine Fuqua's new intense cop drama Brooklyn's Finest starring Richard Gere, Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle and Wesley Snipes.

Listen to the show here (the review is first item on the show)

Although our discussion dwells on the films flaws (and there are many of them), and it's certainly not up to the standard of Fuqua's Training Day, I thought Brookyln's Finest was a pretty good, tense thriller, with particularly fine performances from Cheadle and Snipes.

Brooklyn's Finest is out now

4.3.2.1, Go! Noel Clarke Interview (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-06-04T11:41:00.000+01:00

Discussing the influences for his new film 4.3.2.1, writer, co-director and actor Noel Clarke offers some surprising reference points. “Sideways, Garden State, Happiness, Lost in Translation, Sidewalks of New York”, he muses, “films about characters.” If you’ve seen the furiously cut trailer for Clarke’s multi-stranded ‘four girls in action/adventure’ latest you might not immediately see the connection to those films. But Clarke says the heart of the film is who the girls are, not what they do: “Obviously the publicity people have to sell the film, so ‘it’s a diamond heist movie’. Yeah, there’s a little heist in it, but it’s really about the characters, it’s really about the girls’ individual journeys and their friendships. But you know (does ‘trailer’ voice) ‘Friendship!’ doesn’t quite work as a tag-line.”

While Clarke’s admiration for those character-based dramas is clearly genuine, with 4.3.2.1 he is painting with a rather broader brush, and consciously aiming to capture a wider audience. Like his previous film Adulthood, the story centres on young people in London, but here the four main characters are intentionally not a natural grouping. That was the whole point, says Clarke: “I definitely thought of girls that different girls could each relate to. I didn’t want them to be like Spice Girls, but I wanted them to be different enough that when you’re with each girl you’re on her journey and you follow that story. So whenever they’re together they wear clothes that identify them as friends, but as soon as they split up we put them in their character clothes, what each girl would relate to.”

Unlike the average writer/director, Clarke is very upfront about the fact that he shapes his films with a distinct audience in mind. It’s an issue that comes up again when I challenge him on whether 4.3.2.1 really needed the girl-on-girl sex scene that features in one storyline. “There’s a big core following that watch my films that are young male guys. This is a more female-centric film. The scene didn’t offend people enough in test screenings for them to not watch it because of it, but it gives guys who are, let’s say, of the more simpler-minded nature, something to enjoy.” Whether you agree with his perspective or not, it’s refreshing to hear such a plain statement of intent from a filmmaker. He goes on to add, “I also really thought that by having that scene in there we would show something that’s not shown. Whenever I’ve seen stuff on TV or film where it’s girls or guys of the same sex it’s always done in a gritty kind of way. Why can’t it be a bit more sensual? And yes, this is a bit titillating, but they’re in love, they’re not just like ‘let’s just have sex’.”

Clarke is no stranger to controversy - “People always said how Kidulthood ‘glamourised violence’, and my argument was that in real life if someone hits you with a bat you might die. That’s real life, that’s not glamourising” – but he is keen to point out that just because he puts something in a film doesn’t mean he thinks it is acceptable behaviour: “I don’t expect [my son] to behave the way the kids in the film behave. But it’s a piece of film that’s just put out there about the time that we lived in.” Similarly, he has no problems with people taking a different view to his own: “4.3.2.1 is just a piece of art, if you like, for people to talk about, and judge, and criticize or not, and it doesn’t affect me in any way. I’m not concerned by it. And that’s not an arrogant ‘I don’t care what you say’; it’s a drawing of a line. No matter what you do in life, your clothes, your jewellery, whatever, people are going to like it or not.”

But like him or not, Clarke is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Having won the BAFTA Rising Star award in 2009, he’s using the resulting clout to further not just his own career but those of other up-and-coming British filmmakers too, like Mark Davis, the technical whiz with a co-director credit on 4.3.2.1: “I’ve been mates with him for a long time, he’s got the directing skills of Spielberg and the VFX skills of Lucas in one guy. And in a few years time, people will know; there’s a sci-fi film that I’ve written that he’s going to direct.” He also has a comedy script finished, and even a prospective epic that may film in Scotland, an idea that stuck with Clarke after he acted in Neil Marshall’s Scottish-set Centurion (“the vistas where we shot – Lord of the Rings a hundred percent!”) Oh, and he’s a jobbing actor too, we’ll see him next in Ben Miller’s stand-up comedy buddy-movie Huge.

Uniquely among British filmmakers, Clarke is a genuine showman; a constant self-promoter who wants to give people a proper movie experience. “I just want to make films that entertain people”, he says. “You hit the cinema these days you’re looking to spend £70 – your travel, your ticket, you’re probably with someone, girlfriend or wife, you’re probably gonna have a meal after, you’re gonna buy a bunch of snacks in there. If I’m paying £70 for something I want to be entertained! You can buy a computer game for £40 that will last you months.” It’s a sensibility that is rooted in his love for American and international movies – as well as the aforementioned US indies, he cites Go, Pulp Fiction and Mexican cult hit Amores Perros as the chief influences on 4.3.2.1’s multi-stranded narrative – and it is why Clarke is good for the British film industry. His best work is still ahead of him – for all its style 4.3.2.1 is ultimately too confused and insubstantial to be great - but his ambitions are to be applauded, and will hopefully lead to much greater things. “I just want to do something different. I’m not saying that I am ‘the saviour‘, but I know that I can confidently sit here and say nobody makes films like I do right now.”

4.3.2.1 is on general release now. This interview first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

Read my review of 4.3.2.1

The Brothers Bloom (The List, Issue 657)

2010-06-03T21:26:00.001+01:00

In 2005, writer/director Rian Johnson transplanted ‘40s film noir to the modern high school and came up with Brick, an exhilarating debut that announced his arrival as a filmmaker of singular vision in no uncertain terms. For his follow-up Johnson had access to a bigger budget and some bigger names, but the convention-twisting spirit of his debut remains, and in The Brothers Bloom he offers a light-hearted spin on that favourite of cinematic sons, the con man. As in Brick, much of the film’s success comes from the well-chosen casting, with Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody balancing humour and heart as the titular tricksters, and Rachel Weisz staying just the right side of kooky as the eccentric millionairess they target for the time-honoured ‘last job’. Even a brief appearance from Robbie Coltrane as, of all things, a Belgian art dealer, hits the spot.

The emphasis is on comedy, and Johnson punctuates his shaggy dog of a story with clever visual gags and several laugh-out-loud moments that owe a debt to some (charmingly acknowledged) silent classics. While the near two-hour running time comes close to testing the patience, the story pays off with a final twist of melancholy that’s surprising and touching.

4/5

General release from Fri 4 Jun. This review first published in The List magazine.

Turning Tricks: Con men in the movies (The List, Issue 657)

2010-06-02T16:07:00.001+01:00

Con artists, sharks, flimflammers and hustlers have an honourable history on the silver screen. Paul Gallagher goes in search of the best

It was Herman Melville who first used the term ‘confidence man’ in the way we understand it today, in his 1857 novel of the same name. He identified America as the character’s natural home, and Lewis Hyde agrees, noting in his book Trickster Makes This World that ‘the confidence man embodies things that are actually true about America but cannot be openly declared’. Correspondingly, con artist characters can be found in cinema from the earliest of the silents onwards. But when early Hollywood gave a con artist centre stage, he or she was either reformed by love – like Barbara Stanwyck giving up conning for the love of Henry Fonda in Preston Sturges’ 1941 classic The Lady Eve – or secured the audience’s affections by ensuring that the only ones getting ripped off were those who deserved it – as with Jimmy Cagney gamely fleecing the fat-cats in Blonde Crazy (1931). This ‘good’ con man is the one who has had the highest profile throughout cinema’s lifetime, with George Clooney and his Ocean’s chums charming and cheating with impunity just as Robert Redford and Paul Newman did almost four decades ago in The Sting.

But Melville saw a darker kind of hero in the image of the smooth-talking stranger who promises much and takes everything, and this incarnation is the one that provides the greatest fascination for filmmakers and watchers alike. He is Gordon Gecko, the corrupt and heartless Wall Street inside dealer who became a beloved icon of cinema and earned Michael Douglas an Oscar; he is Keyser Soze, the master criminal who convinced the world of his non-existence in The Usual Suspects, and notched up another trickster’s Oscar, this time for Kevin Spacey. The simultaneous attraction and repulsion of the movie con man has never been more concisely investigated than in House Of Games, con-obsessed director David Mamet’s first and best film. Joe Mantegna’s Mike reveals the art of the con to Lindsay Crouse by saying ‘I give my confidence to you …’ and she can’t help but be drawn to the knowledge and power that he offers. But even as he is confiding in her he is still tricking her, just as Mamet is further tricking us. Yet we take delight in being tricked, because the thrill of being thoroughly fooled is actually what cinema is all about.

The Brothers Bloom (pictured), the new film from Brick writer/director Rian Johnson centres on two con men, played by Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody, who perfectly fit the charming cheaters description. But in the film, Ruffalo’s character Stephen claims that, ‘the best con is the one where everyone gets what they want’. This is the heart of the confidence trick; the trickster gets material gain by creating and sustaining an idealised fiction, telling the story so well that his audience happily suspends disbelief. Johnson’s script continually draws attention to the connections between conning and storytelling, signalling his own position as chief con artist in the greatest deception going; movies themselves. After all, what do we hope for from film but to be moved to feel something real by that which we know is not real? The greatest filmmakers are the greatest con men, because they fool us so effectively, and we love them for it.

The Brothers Bloom, general release from Fri 4 Jun. This article first published in The List magazine.

Profile interview: Tamsin Egerton (The List, Issue 657)

2010-06-01T15:42:00.001+01:00

Born
26 November 1988, Hampshire, England

Background
Having followed her older sister to a BBC audition at their local youth theatre as a child, Egerton started to get TV parts immediately, traveling the world for various productions before she had turned 15. She bagged her first movie role in 2005 in British comedy Keeping Mum, after which her head-turning looks kept the ‘stunning blonde’ roles coming, including teen sexpot Chelsea in the recent St Trinian’s remakes.

What’s she up to now?

Starring in Noel Clarke’s multi-stranded action caper 4.3.2.1 as Cassandra, the naïve rich-girl who travels to New York for a web-organised blind date that goes horrifically wrong. Egerton features in the film’s most bizarre scene, when cult American director Kevin Smith pops up as a fellow passenger on her flight.

On Cassandra
‘She’s not grown up on an estate and seen friends lose their virginity at 13; she’s naive and innocent. That’s what drew me to her, because I’m known for promiscuous Chelsea, whereas this character is not all about guys, she hasn’t lost it, she covets it and she falls in love.’

On doing nude scenes
‘I would never do an American Pie and “get my tits out” for no reason, because it’s grotesque, it’s unnecessary. But for my storyline you need the nudity, because you need to feel uncomfortable in the scene. It was very awkward, but that’s what it’s meant to be. I think, being a girl, it’s hard [to avoid]. Guys get to play with guns and we get to be in our lingerie.’

On acting with Kevin Smith
‘He was a bundle of energy, and very sweet, but he got really personal really quickly! He was asking about my sex life after five minutes of meeting, and I was like ‘erm, Kevin?’ while he’s saying ‘well me and my lady ...’ and I’m like ‘no, this is so weird!’’

Interesting fact
Egerton was in the final audition to play the 9-year old Joan of Arc in Luc Besson’s 1999 film The Messenger.

Read my review of 4.3.2.1

4.3.2.1 is general release from 2 June. This interview first published in The List magazine.

4.3.2.1 (The List, Issue 657)

2010-05-28T17:00:00.001+01:00

The shadow of Quentin Tarantino looms large over Noel ‘Adulthood’ Clarke’s ambitious second film, in which four girls (Emma Roberts, Tamsin Egerton, Ophelia Lovibond and Shanika Warren-Markland) have the weekend from hell. Clarke and his co-director Mark Davis aim admirably high, pushing against British drama traditions, telling interconnected stories with a cast of oddball characters spouting quirky dialogue via a narrative that playfully keeps reality at arms length. But while the resulting mash-up of conflicting tones and styles is entertaining and features moments of bizarre inspiration, 4.3.2.1 is ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

The set-up is promising – the girls’ parallel stories play out one after another, with the film rewinding to the same initial point after each one – but Clarke’s script is undisciplined, overflowing with ideas and not focused into a coherent and meaningful whole. A constant stream of attention-grabbing cameos adds to the patched-together feel, and the more dramatic story elements aren’t developed enough to hold much weight. The four actresses are great though, and their strong performances do a lot to carry the film through its weaker moments. Ophelia Lovibond (pictured) is particularly impressive.

3/5

4.3.2.1 is released on 2nd June. This review first published in The List magazine.

Profile: Matt Harlock & Paul Thomas (The List, Issue 656)

2010-05-16T17:45:00.000+01:00

Background  
Having individually produced various shorts and television features, Paul and Matt joined forces for their feature debut American: The Bill Hicks Story, an innovative documentary combining animated photos with interviews and stand-up clips to tell the story of the late great comedian.

On Bill Hicks’s comedy
Matt: ‘[He could] turn a subject on its head in a very short space of time, and distill something which you’d seen as a very big, complex issue so you take away this new understanding. He had really good dick jokes as well.’

On being the ones to tell Hicks’ story
Matt: ‘I had some contact with Bill’s family, because I’d been doing events in London, where we were showing his material, and there seemed to be a lot of footage that I just hadn’t seen. Paul and I started talking about whether we might be able to make it into a new telling of Bill’s story.’
Paul: ‘Hicks is getting pitched all the time, so we needed to come up with a different approach, and it was this device of animated photos – we knew that there was a huge photo archive, and that there was potential in that. So we did some tests and boom, channels jumped straight at it.’

On putting the film together
Matt: ‘The first time that we watched the assembly of Bill’s life, onstage, in chronological order, it was a really moving experience, watching him go from 16 to a very ill person at the age of 32. That powerful reaction was something that we felt was worth maintaining, and that’s where the chronological approach came from.’
Paul: ‘The first half really builds the idea of who this guy is [through] his friends and his family. Thirteen years had passed when we did the interviews, but the vividness and the clarity of the recollections were astonishing. Then [the stand-up clips] had to reveal Bill the person at the same time as the comedy. That’s where the second half really took on a power.’

On the role of the film
 Paul: ‘He should be somebody that everybody knows. He is a key cultural cornerstone.’

American: The Bill Hicks Story, selected release, Fri 14 May. This article first published in The List magazine.

Robin Hood (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-05-13T12:51:00.000+01:00

Ridley Scott’s timing couldn’t be better. In a week that’s seen a new Prime Minister assuming power thanks to a political system that has failed its people, it’s strangely appropriate to be reminded of England’s most famous outlaw. From the film’s opening scrawl citing a ‘time when kings were tyrants’ to the story’s central theme of individual liberty and the importance of rulers listening to their people, Scott’s take on the legendary figure offers plenty of moments to provoke chuckles of contemporary recognition, and perhaps even hopes that we had our own Robin Hood in action today.

But whether we would want this Robin Hood, or Robin Longstride, as he is renamed here, is debatable. The trailer promised a version of the story that we’d never been told before, and Scott and writer Brian Helgeland make good on that claim; this story ends where most previous tellings have begun, with Robin declared an outlaw and hiding out in Sherwood Forest. But Scott’s film also inadvertently makes plain why this part of Robin’s life is usually confined to backstory; it’s not that interesting, and Robin himself doesn’t actually do much in it. We’re used to seeing Robin Hood as a decisive leader of men and a dashing romantic hero, but here he is redrawn as a man carried along by the tides of circumstance, a small pawn in a much bigger political game.

This may well be a truer historical depiction of the real Robin Hood, if there ever was one, but it’s not the stuff of enduring cinema. For all his drawling Americanisms, Kevin Costner’s version of Robin, in 1991’s great fun Prince of Thieves, earned his place in movie history by firing that flaming arrow in slow-motion and making that heroic roof-top dive through a stained-glass window. The Robin that we meet here (Russell Crowe, excellent as always) has none of that heroism or heart. That’s intentional of course; Scott is trying to show us what made Robin change from a man living only for himself to a man willing to live and die for his woman and his people. The problem is that, in the larger historical context that Scott offers, Robin’s story just doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

Unsurprisingly, it’s in creating that larger context that Scott really succeeds, because he is a truly great film director, and given a big enough canvas he can bring a whole world to life. He has that canvas in 12th Century England, and he establishes the world with the same structure as he did in Gladiator; a huge, brilliantly depicted battle, followed by a mass of scenes that set up the fraught political situation in the country and skilfully introduce us to all the story’s main characters. There’s a lot of drama and intrigue to enjoy, and a host of great actors, including a fantastic Max von Sydow, playing it out.

Ultimately though, all this compelling background can’t make up for the gaping hole at the centre of the movie. Robin is a bystander in his own film: both Matthew Macfadyen’s Sheriff of Nottingham and Mark Strong’s villainous Godfrey are hardly aware of Robin’s existence, giving him no great enemy to conflict with, while his courtship with Marion (Cate Blanchett) is forced – literally – and fledgling, giving him no passionate romance to pursue. In their efforts to do something new and different with the Robin Hood character, Scott and his merry band of filmmakers have robbed him of everything that made him great.

6/10

Robin Hood is out now. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

Lebanon (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-05-08T14:46:00.000+01:00

After a few brief credits, Lebanon begins with a porthole opening and a soldier climbing into a tank. We’re watching from inside, along with the three other young and inexperienced men that make up the crew. Apart from one notable exterior shot, our perspective will be limited to what can be seen and heard from within this tank for the duration of the film. From this simple and restricted set-up, Samuel Maoz, who nearly 30 years ago was a gunner in an Israeli tank just like this one, builds a compelling, intense and surprisingly layered film experience.

If the prospect of being stuck for 90 minutes in a tank with four guys, none of them particularly conversational or charismatic, doesn’t have you beating a path to the nearest cinema you’re certainly not alone, but this is a film that is worth the effort; it rewards investment. Maoz doesn’t use this limited perspective as a gimmick or a merely interesting concept, but rather he uses it to build a very effective case against war as a reasonable human endeavour. From this perspective, it is difficult to see how any war can have any result other than disaster.

The film begins at nighttime, and text on the screen tells us it is 1982, the first day of the first Lebanon war. This is all the information we get, and it soon becomes shockingly clear that this is pretty much all the information that anyone on the front lines of this army has. A commanding officer comes into the tank with a seemingly clear set of orders, but as soon as an engagement begins, and we see glimpses of the chaotic conflict through the terrified gunner’s crosshairs, it is intensely apparent that there is no plan, just people being killed.

Maoz structures the film episodically, subtly shifting his focus around each of the four men to gradually add layers of development and place us firmly in each moment, provoking us to think and feel at all times. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the most powerful moment comes through the eyes of the gunner, as he watches a distraught Lebanese woman step out of a burning building that he has just reluctantly pulled the trigger to destroy. We are watching through the same crosshairs, strongly feeling the powerless rage of injustice on both sides of the gun.

The fact that Maoz gives virtually no context is both a strength and a weakness; it allows his film to be about war in general, and means that an audience with no prior knowledge of the Lebanon war can immediately grasp the issues being addressed. By the same token this approach leaves Maoz open to criticism, as his film doesn’t actually shed any light on the wider political reasons for this fight, arguments that remain unresolved today.

With its confined location and small cast the film feels at times like a play, and this feeling is borne out in Maoz’s dialogue; when characters speak there is meaningful weight to their words. Equally significant are the recurring extreme close-ups of the tank’s various dials and metal surfaces, which crumble along with the minds of the men the deeper they become entrenched in chaos. Maoz’s skill in marrying technical and compositional skill to thematic intentions belies his film’s micro-budget, and Lebanon is arguably as insightful a portrayal of men in war as the considerably more costly Oscar-winner The Hurt Locker. This film is a significant anti-war statement, and one that deserves your time and attention.

8/10

Lebanon is on limited release from 14th May. This review first published on FutureMovies.co.uk.

Sara Foster on Psych 9 (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-05-06T09:13:00.000+01:00

Sara Foster is most recognisable for playing überbitch Jen in the so-bad-its-hilarious guilty pleasure 90210, but the two films that she has coming out this year were in the can before her career took a step to the small-screen. You might have seen her in a few movies before she found that regular home on TV but, by her own admission, none of them would have been worth remembering. The first chance to see her in the cinema in 2010 is in director Andrew Shortell’s spooky - and at points just plain bonkers - chiller Psych 9, where she plays admirably against her TV image as Roslyn, a troubled young wife who takes up a night-job in an abandoned hospital, with predictably unsettling consequences. We spoke to her about the film and her career so far.

How would you describe Psych 9? 
I would say it’s a psychological thriller; you’re on a journey of her mind. You’re trying to figure out who the murderer is, but all the while watching this woman, my character, just be as damaged as you can imagine. This girl had a horrific childhood, she was abused mentally and physically, in any which way you can be abused, and she is trying to come to terms and solve the puzzle to her past in order to move on.

Roslyn’s backstory is certainly heavy stuff. How did you end up getting this part? 
It all happened so fast. It was one of those things where they had another actress and she fell out last minute. My agent suggested me, I came and auditioned, they saw my audition tape and I got the role. And then I stopped and said “you know what? No thank you”. The truth is, I wasn’t up to the challenge. I knew it was going to be hard, I knew it was going to be emotionally draining and taxing, and I didn’t know if I could pull it off. And everybody in my life said “you’re crazy. Because you’re so afraid of it, you’ve got to do it!” So I was talked into it, I talked myself into it, and I got on a plane three or four days later.

How did you approach playing the character? 
There’s a lot to a human being and you don’t get it all from the script, so I had to go and fill in the blanks. For me, I decided Roslyn had a sibling who died. So I tried to make her as whole a person as possible, and after that I completely isolated myself; I became Roslyn and I was her morning, noon and night. I didn’t talk on the phone, I didn’t surf the internet, I didn’t socialise. I went to work and I went home, and sort of stayed in that depressed state all the way through.

That’s intense. What do you think 90210 fans will make of it?
Well, the first time anybody saw me I was 19 and I was a host on MTV. And then my first big break was a movie called The Big Bounce, which I wasn’t that great in, and it wasn’t a great movie. And I think when you’re involved in such a big film and the film doesn’t work, you get pigeonholed as the girl that isn’t very good. And you don’t get the opportunities to show that, actually, you are! So I think people will be surprised, I don’t think anyone would think that I would have the chops to be able to jump in and do a film like this. Definitely, my Jen fans from 90210 will be surprised. I mean, forget the type of character I’m playing, just aesthetically I’m different, with the black hair and very white make-up. But that’s why we do this, we do it to have the opportunity to play very different people. So I feel grateful that they trusted me to do it.

So once you had jumped into it, what was the process of making the film like?
It was really hard. It was really taxing on my soul. Like I said, I was pretty depressed the whole way through, because I only knew how to work that way. I didn’t know how to go back and forth between Sara and Roslyn. I wanted to, but I tried and then the next day at work it was really hard for me to get back into the zone, so I just tried to stay with it the whole way through.

Your co-stars Cary Elwes and Michael Biehn play more conventional ‘horror movie’ characters, so were they somewhat more relaxed on set?
I think there was maybe less pressure on them. I mean, given that they’re both real pro’s, they’ve been doing it for a long time and they probably handle the pressure differently. I had to go to some real extreme places in this movie, but Cary did as well, he had some really emotional scenes as my therapist. But as much as we got on we kept to ourselves a lot, because the mood on set was reflective of what was happening in the scenes, there was just a very dark mood throughout.

What was the director Andrew Shortell like to work with?
He and I worked well together. I knew he expected a lot from me, I knew that he knew I could do it, but at the same time I think he was a little bit nervous that maybe I couldn’t. He was really hard on me, but hard on me just the right amount! So it was a really good balance. He knew what he wanted out of every scene but at the same time he’d let me do my thing, and give me the freedom to just go for it. And in a movie like this you have to feel free, or it’s not gonna work.

What was the toughest part of the shoot? 
Well (laughing), every day was pretty tough to be honest! We never had a short day, I never got released early, we worked six-day weeks and Sunday was our only day off. The therapy scenes were pretty tough, those were really draining.

At the end of a day like that would you consciously stay in that moment, or would you try and switch off in any way? 
No, I watched a lot of film. But I watched Stanley Kubrick, some Hitchcock, The Ring. I watched Sybil, with Sally Field, where she is like a total lunatic, just to kind of keep me in that place! And if I wasn’t working or sleeping I was listening to my iPod. There was really no winding down. I think I got one manicure the whole time I was there, one Sunday I treated myself!

What do you think is the appeal of movies that centre on a character we can’t fully trust? 
I love movies where I’m solving the puzzle as I go along, I don’t like movies that spell it out for you, that’s totally boring for me. I think these stories where you get lost in people’s minds are interesting.

Obviously this film is a piece of entertainment, but do you think in its own way it’s bringing mental health issues to the fore? 
Yeah, it’s that thing we don’t talk about. One of the tag-lines of this film is ‘the abused become abusers’ and that’s like, pretty much always true. Listen, I think anytime a film can send a message or get you thinking, in a positive way, I like that.

This film was shot a couple of years ago – how did you get from there to 90210? 
Well I finished this movie and then I went into a very hilarious comedy called Demoted, which is coming out this year. I’m really proud of it, it’s laugh-out-loud the whole way through. So that was nice – it was a fun set and we had a lot of laughs. And then I went from that straight into the show, and I’ve been on there for almost a year and a half now, which is crazy.

What’s the experience of shooting the show like, compared to making films? 
It’s a totally different rhythm, it’s definitely more by the book. In film you have a little more freedom to put your own stamp on it, and in television it runs with what’s on the page. So it’s a little more regimented, but I like the schedule, I like that it’s an ensemble and I like that I get a lot of days off! And I like that I get to be a nasty evil villain! Parts like that are not easy to come by, so I’m having a lot of fun. I’ve created this character from scratch, and people have really responded to her, which obviously makes it all the more worthwhile.

Are there particular actresses that you look at and think ‘that’s the kind of career I want to have’? 
The women that I think all of us girls [look up to] are all the same ones: Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet, even someone like Cameron Diaz, she’s had an amazing career. People think that the women who do comedy are kind of talented and women that do drama are geniuses, but it’s just not true. Comedy is freaking hard, and it takes a real pro to pull it off. And then you see her in films like Gangs Of New York and In Her Shoes with amazing directors and I guess that’s the ideal thing, to be able to kind of do it all.

So is it very competitive, being an actress at your level? 
Well I’m certainly not competing with those women, you know, Scarlett Johansson and I are not brawling over a script, that’s for sure! I’m probably number five thousand on the list after she’s passed. But wherever you are in your career it’s competitive, so there’s always someone glaring at you from behind you trying to take your spot. It’s cut-throat, but I don’t really engage in all that nonsense, I just try to work hard and do my thing, and that’s it. I’m a homebody and I just want to steadily work.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned in your acting career? 
I’ve learned that it’s pretty simple, you work hard and you’re gonna do well, and there are no shortcuts. Okay, there’s stories of someone who just gets really lucky and is catapulted into stardom and offer after offer, but that’s not the real world. If you want something you’ve got to really fight for it, because no-one is going to come after you. You have to have thick skin, because you’re gonna be rejected way more than not! Also, we’re not curing cancer here, so probably we should just not take ourselves so seriously. At the end of the day we are very blessed to be doing what we’re doing and getting paid for it.

Your dad is a very prolific composer. Do you have any musical side-projects up your sleeve?
I wish. I unfortunately don’t have a musical bone in my body, which is probably good, because that would be crazy nepotism, wouldn’t it, if I were to get a record deal? No, that’s not in my cards. Maybe in another life!

Psych 9 is on selected release in the UK from 7th May. This interview first published on FutureMovies.co.uk

Iron Man 2 (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-04-29T18:40:00.000+01:00

It seems unthinkable now, but back in 2008, Jon Favreau’s Iron Man was something of a gamble. It was a huge step up in scale for the filmmaker, and even more so for his star, the temperamental character actor Robert Downey Jr. They played to their strengths, and the result was something like movie magic: Downey’s excellent performance boosted him into the movie stratosphere, he followed it with a hilarious Oscar-nominated turn in Tropic Thunder and cemented his status as box office gold in the much-loved Sherlock Holmes. Favreau had succeeded in pleasing audiences and critics alike by putting some fun back into the superhero genre - a nice counterpoint to the sombre Dark Knight that same year - and he was quickly entrusted with the Iron Man sequel.

The question was, after the original’s unconventional ending in which the hero revealed his secret identity, where would Tony Stark’s story go next? The answer, as provided here by Favreau and writer Justin Theroux is “nowhere particularly interesting”. Despite - or perhaps because of - having an embarrassingly great cast in place, including all the original stars (except for Terrence Howard, cheekily replaced by Don Cheadle) and new and equally well-chosen additions Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson, Favreau has lost the emphasis on character that made the first film so compelling. Instead this film offers a series of carefully-planned, effects-heavy sequences strung together with slapdash storytelling, underdeveloped character ideas and the occasional funny line of dialogue.

It starts promisingly, noticeably darker than Iron Man left off, introducing Rourke’s embittered Russian scientist Ivan Venko, and presenting Stark as even more narcissistic than before. After some plodding courtroom banter over the legality of Stark holding onto “the Iron Man weapon”, Favreau zips location to the glitz of the Monaco grand prix and unleashes a killer set-piece. Cars fly across the screen and Rourke steps out from a huge explosion cloud like a laser-whip-wielding angel of death; it’s ridiculous, but enjoy it, because it’s as exciting as Iron Man 2 gets. After establishing Venko as a villain capable of doing some real damage, Favreau shifts the focus onto Stark’s business rival Justin Hammer (Rockwell), and Venko becomes a surprisingly controlled screen presence. The film never recovers from that shift, as Favreau fails to make it clear who the main bad guy is, what kind of threat they pose and to whom.

There is the suggestion in the film’s first half that the greatest threat to Tony Stark may be himself, both in terms of his super-powered technology and his self-destructive temperament. This is the direction that Favreau had hinted that he might take the Stark character, but it remains just a hint in this film, with Stark comfortably overcoming such pressures without much drama.

Curiously, Favreau sets all of the aerial action at night, meaning it’s often hard to make out what Iron Man is actually up to when he’s flying around. Much more satisfying is a late-in-the-game punch-up between Scarlett Johansson’s Natalie and a host of security guards, in which the slinky actress demonstrates a previously untapped skill for bone-breaking martial arts. The scene is tightly edited and has a neat and funny payoff. It’s a reminder of what Favreau can do, and the rest of the film would have benefited from a similarly disciplined approach.

5/10

Iron Man 2 is in cinemas now. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

How To Train Your Dragon

2010-04-21T18:33:00.000+01:00

While Dreamworks’ Shrek franchise continues to earn more money with each inferior addition to its series, the studio’s animation filmmakers are showing signs in other areas that they may yet be able to rival Pixar in the quality stakes. Last year their Monsters vs. Aliens was laugh-out-loud hilarious and made great use of imaginative characters, and How To Train Your Dragon is even better. It’s a really well told story full of heart, action and comedy and it’s refreshingly free of the pop-culture in-jokes that have so often been Dreamworks’ lazy standby.

Based on a novel by Cressida Cowell, the film centres on Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), a clumsy teenage Viking whose tribe lives a perilous existence in the village of Berk, perched on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the sea and continually under attack from vicious dragons. Hiccup excels at inventing but is useless with an axe, and his father Stoic (Gerard Butler), head of the tribe and also Berk’s premier dragon-slayer, is resigned to the fact that his son will never follow him into battle. When Hiccup amazingly succeeds in shooting down a dragon with one of his inventions he determines to secretly kill it and prove his worth as a warrior. But when he finds the trapped dragon he discovers not only that he can’t bring himself to kill it, but that the dragons may actually be much more friendly than the tribe believes.

The story follows the well-worn ‘young innocent secretly befriends the enemy’ formula with all the plot-turns you would expect, but filmmakers Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders tell it without irony, prioritising strong characterisation, and the film is genuinely engaging and moving as a result. Added to this they create some thrilling flying sequences and an intense action finale, representing arguably the best use of new-style 3D in animation yet.

The film also features great voice acting, with Gerard Butler in particular giving his most recognisably human performance in years as Stoic. He was clearly born to play warriors, and not much else!

How To Train Your Dragon is out now.

Centurion & Valhalla Rising (The Movie Cafe)

2010-04-18T16:58:00.000+01:00

Neil Marshall's Centurion (with Michael Fassbender, pictured) and Nicolas Winding Refn's Valhalla Rising were under discussion on this week's Movie Cafe on BBC Radio Scotland, with myself and Miles Fielder talking with host Pasquale Iannone about the appeal of shooting in Scotland, where both of these historical action movies were made, as well as giving our thoughts on the relative merits of each film.

The programme is available to listen to here until Thursday 22nd April, and the Centurion/Valhalla Rising discussion begins at about the 32 minute mark.

The show also features an interview with Martin Compston about his new movie The Disappearance of Alice Creed, plus an experienced ghost writer giving his perspective on Roman Polanski's The Ghost. All good stuff.

Centurion is released nationwide on 23rd April, Valhalla Rising has a limited release on 30th April, with a DVD release soon after.

Whip It (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-04-07T09:01:00.000+01:00

From infant star to wild-child persona to cutesy rom-com stalwart backed by a shrewd business sensibility, Drew Barrymore has continually found new ways to win audiences’ affections. And with her first film as director she maintains that track record, gathering a fantastic cast and making an unashamedly fun and feelgood movie, and putting something clearly close to her heart onscreen in the process. She places a niche women’s sport – Roller Derby - front and centre, but Whip It is no chick-flick on wheels; its mix of sporting action, silly humour and memorable characters will appeal to anyone who loves a good time at the cinema. The former Charlie’s Angel also scores a bullseye with the casting of leading lady Ellen Page, an actress who has such a likeable onscreen presence that no audience could help but cheer her on.

Page plays Bliss Cavendar, an average 17-year old from smalltown Texas who discovers the punk-infused appeal of Roller Derby and, despite the expectations of her beauty pageant-obsessed mother, secretly starts taking part. While the role isn’t as unique or challenging as those that she so brilliantly performed in Juno and Hard Candy, Page makes Bliss completely her own, and effortlessly draws the audience in, even in the context of this rather formulaic story. Her achievement is no small one considering that she’s surrounded by a wealth of endlessly watchable actresses, including Juliette Lewis, hugely entertaining as jokey nemesis Iron Maven, and ace comedienne Kristen Wiig, who gets a rare chance to play a slightly more serious role, and proves herself well able. Barrymore keeps the most broadly comic part for herself, and has a great time crashing into things and punching people as the short-fused, accident-prone, wonderfully-named Smashley Simpson.

Working from a script by Shauna Cross, who also wrote the source novel, Barrymore lets some of the domestic scenes hang around for too long, but directs with energy and confidence on the track. Getting her camera right in amongst the fishnets and mini-skirts, she gets a great balance of intensity and fun, and successfully builds to a final event that feels properly exciting. Jimmy Fallon, a former Barrymore co-star and a fine comedian, adds more laughs into the mix as trackside commentator Johnny Rocket, and aptly sums up the film’s easygoing approach to explaining Roller Derby’s rules: “we’ll keep track of the score, you keep track of the fishnets”.

While Whip It’s plot is aptly summed up in the title of Radiohead’s No Surprises - one of the many great choices on the film’s excellent soundtrack – it doesn’t really matter; the real enjoyment is in seeing this great cast on supremely entertaining form. With Page easily handling what little dramatic weight there is, the support players are free to focus on being funny, and they give it their all. Deserving particularly special mention is Andrew Wilson, who plays Razor, the girls’ coach. He very accurately sets the tone of the film in his performance, a deft balance of sincerity, hope and silliness. And that’s not a bad summary of what Drew Barrymore has served up with Whip It.

7/10

Whip It is out now. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

Whip It - Let the good times roll (The List)

2010-04-02T13:51:00.001+01:00

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It, is the high-octane story of indie-rock misfit Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) who escapes small town family life by joining the US roller derby circuit. But does the film get close to capturing the real excitement of the sport? In the spirit of our Glasgow vs Edinburgh issue we’ve asked old rivals (actually firm friends) the Glasgow Irn Bruisers and the Auld Reekie Roller Girls to pass comment. Interviews by Paul Gallagher and Paul Dale.

Irn Bruisers

What did you think of the film?

Lethal Loulou: I think it’s brilliant and I think everybody should go and see it! It’s really feel-good, and shows why roller derby is so awesome; how it lets you put such confidence in yourself. That’s what the whole film’s about, because everyone’s trying to force Bliss into being a beauty pageant queen, and she secretly goes off and plays roller derby and ‘finds herself’ and then has the guts to say ‘this is who I am’.

Coco Pox: If it was a film about a boys’ sport, we’ve all seen that kind of thing before, but this is a women’s sport, where a woman is the hero and the romance stuff takes a back seat. And she doesn’t go off into the sunset; she goes off to the derby!

Poison Delight: It is Hollywood-ised, definitely, but there are some elements that are quite true, like the reasons people get into roller derby, and that feeling you get when you’re with a bunch of girls that you have a lot in common with.

Sarah McMilan: It wasn’t as good as Juno, but it was a step above the generic sports film. I saw the trailer for it the other night and shivered again; every time I hear her say ‘I’m in love with this’ I get goosebumps.

Was it a fair representation of the roller derby scene?

Lethal Loulou: It was really good for showing what it’s like in America. It’s growing in popularity. Hundreds of people support teams and they have special warehouses where they can go and train and play games. We’re starting to get there and hopefully in a couple of years that might be us getting our own warehouse.

Sarah McMilan: The age range of the players in the film is great. You have people like Juliette Lewis and Drew Barrymore who are my age – mid 30s – and that’s very representative. Our team’s ages go up to 43, and that’s the wonderful thing about roller derby, it’s for all women of all shapes and sizes and ages.

Was there anything in particular that you wished it had included?

Sarah McMilan: I think some bits in it were unnecessary. But it’s a Hollywood film, so it’s a good idea to make it look glamorous and exciting and a bit offbeat. We don’t punch people though! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a full-contact sport, but you don’t punch anyone.

Coco Pox: [tongue-in-cheek] That’s for the after-party.

Do you think the actors could survive on a Glasgow track?

Lethal Loulou: Yeah I do. I think they could give us a good run for our money! A lot of the skaters in the film are actually real skaters, so it’s a real representation of the girls who play derby.

Coco Pox: I think that backs up the tag line, ‘Be your own hero.’ It’s not cartoon superheroes, it’s real people, and there they are on-screen. And you can tell the actresses from the real skaters from the thickness of their thighs!

Who would play you in a roller derby movie?

Coco Pox: Sarah would be played by that Gladiator, Jet!

Lethal Loulou: I think it would be hard to find an actress tall enough to play me.

Coco Pox: Maybe Lucy Lawless, from Xena: Warrior Princess?

Poison Delight: I would need to be someone short …

Sarah McMilan: Ellen Page, perhaps?

Poison Delight: Well she can skate already, so yeah!

Coco Pox: Meryl Streep for me, because I’ve got a weird accent and the same nose as her. And she’s about 60, proving you don’t have to be young to play roller derby!

Auld Reekie Roller Girls

What did you think of the film?

Bruise Leigh: To be honest I didn’t like the film. It was a kind of chick flick with roller derby in it, which isn’t really my thing. But apart from that I didn’t think it was very accurate. There was a lot of bitchiness and cattiness in Whip It which is the antithesis of what roller derby is about. This the most open and welcoming group of girls and we have a policy of no bitching, no back-stabbing and that’s totally the way it is.

On the plus side I suppose it didn’t make it glossy; all the outfits were still really shoddy and they got the DIY aspect of the sport right. And the line where one of the characters says ‘I’m in love with this’ rings true.

Was it a fair representation of the roller derby scene?

Candy Savage: If you see it for what it is – an American-made, Hollywood type film – it’s fine. It’s a sort of fun Sunday afternoon film. In the film they play more the derby that was played in the 1970s with a banked track. They could have portrayed it as it’s played now because it’s just as dramatic. I did, however, love Juliette Lewis in the film, she was awesome. The film’s pretty funny and has got some kick-ass girls.

Armalite Angie: I’m a bigger girl and roller derby is one of those sports where bigger girls can be included as long as you are physically able to take part and the film didn’t really reflect players like me. There’s also no upper age limit.

Roller derby is predominantly a female sport but we have committees set up and there is never any internal fighting and there is no discrimination. Girls don’t pick on girls or do any of that kind of stuff that happens in the film. What happens on the track stays on the track. The depiction of hedonism and extra curricular activities in the film is pretty accurate though. We have themed parties and really let our hair down after a tournament.

Was there anything in particular that you wished it had included?

Candy Savage: The real story should have been how we all find our inner roller derby girl. I’m Hannah in real life, but here I’m Candy Savage. I stand differently, sit differently … living out that persona is a big part of the sport. They could have just showed that story. They didn’t have to use the whole beauty pageant storyline. I’m surprised the film has got such a big release. It needed a bit more bite. Barrymore was playing it safe.

Do you think Whip It will raise the profile of the sport?

Armalite Angie: I’m hoping the film is going to make people more aware. I speak to people every day and they have no idea what we do. They think we line skate and play hockey basically. The sport is the same but they play on a banked track and you can go over the top but for us the only way is to go down.

Whip It is on general release from Fri 9 Apr. This article first published in The List magazine.

Kick-Ass (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-03-31T16:18:00.002+01:00

For once, the title is spot on. Matthew Vaughn’s comic-book adaptation really does kick the asses of all recent attempts to bring something fresh to this genre. With a similar premise to last year’s Watchmen – superheroes with no powers – but none of the self-importance and a whole heap more humour, this is a film that could easily still be bobbing around the public consciousness when the best of 2010 lists are compiled in December. It’s not for everyone, containing a dark streak a mile wide and enough child-related swearing and violence to keep it from troubling Iron Man 2’s box office, but for adults with sufficiently skewed sensibilities, it’s a must-see.

First and foremost, Kick-Ass is really, really funny, and for the best experience it should be enjoyed with as packed and up-for-it an audience as possible. To his great credit, Vaughn is never afraid to slip in a joke, even in the film’s most intensely action-packed moments, but never at the expense of good characterisation; the humour is always rooted in the characters. Aaron Johnson is one of the film’s biggest assets in this respect, his uninhibited performance as Dave Lizewski, the kid who decides to put on a wetsuit and fight crime, is perfectly balanced between naivety, stupidity and good ol’ fashioned movie heroism; crucially, he ensures we’re laughing with him or at him at all the right moments. He also handles the witty narration very well, and is blessed by Vaughn and his co-writer Jane Goldman with all the best lines, from a hilarious reference to Lost to a great aside about serial killers.

Vaughn and Goldman stick closely to the main premise of Mark Millar’s comic, going to great pains to explain that, unlike other superhero stories, Kick-Ass takes place in our reality. In the first conversation we hear between Dave and his two best friends, they list various superheroes then one-by-one dismiss their real-world credentials. This is a bold step from the writers, as it could easily have led them into credibility-holes of their own making, but it pays off, allowing the film to occasionally jolt the audience out of the comic-book comfort-zone, as when a key character is stabbed with gut-churning results. On the downside, a few moments of unnecessarily convenient plotting stick out somewhat, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s sidekick character Red Mist isn’t very convincingly developed; disappointing blips in an otherwise tightly written script.

But the film belongs to Nicolas Cage and Chloe Moretz, the deadly and very un-PC father/daughter crime-fighting team known as Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Cage’s performance - unhinged but somehow endearing - is not only the comedy highlight of the film, but also has an effective dark undercurrent; Big Daddy is a believable depiction of righteous anger taken to a psychotic extreme, and a kindred spirit to Watchmen’s Rorschach. Moretz is equally good, making Hit Girl both sweet and sadistic, and hinting at the messed-up girl behind the explosively profane dialogue. Her devotion to her dad is at once hilarious and deeply distressing, and Vaughn handles their relationship’s journey beautifully, paying it off with an unexpectedly moving moment amongst the flying bullets. The pair also provide most of Kick-Ass’s thrilling action sequences, in which Vaughn displays the same flair for visual invention that gave his debut Layer Cake such energy. One stand-out scene involves Big Daddy on a brutal rampage taking down one goon after another, and it’s masterfully done, precisely constructed and awesome in its intensity. Just one more reason, like you needed one, to get to the cinema and see Kick-Ass for yourself.

8/10

Kick-Ass is out now. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

Cracks - DVD review (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-03-25T09:07:00.008Z

A remote girls boarding school in 1930s Ireland (though you wouldn’t know it from the RP accents) is the idyllic setting for this lush adaptation of Sheila Kohler’s 2003 novel. Di Radfield (Juno Temple) is the leader of the school’s elite clique, who conduct themselves in near-worshipful admiration of Miss G (Eva Green), a sophisticated and beautiful teacher who seems oddly out-of-place among the aged staff. Di enjoys the enviable position and power of being Miss G’s favourite, until the arrival of Spanish student Fiamma (Maria Valverde) knocks this little commune out of balance. The exotic newcomer becomes the sole object of Miss G’s attention, but when she fails to behave with the same fawning admiration as the other girls, the teacher’s perfect appearance begins to crumble, revealing an obsessive nature underneath.

Miss G is a fascinating character, and it’s not hard to see why this story appealed to the cast and filmmakers; there’s plenty of room for dramatic investigation with this seemingly in-control and inspirational teacher who is slowly revealed to be even more needy and broken than her pubescent charges. But debuting director Jordan (daughter of Ridley) Scott fails to reach those interesting character depths, instead guiding the film from an evocative set-up into silly and overblown territory. She’s not helped by lead actress Eva Green, who chalks up another post-Casino Royale disappointment with her unconvincing central performance.

Casting an actress as striking as Green to play this character would seem to make sense, but she is too much a cinematic beauty and not enough a skilled actress to make this character’s unravelling believable. Her performance is too self-conscious, and while this serves the character in the earlier stages of the film - as Miss G is herself playing a role for the girls – it becomes a problem as her façade unravels. We are supposed to be seeing the real person, with all her insecurities and obsessions, coming to the fore, but as Green enacts the script’s increasingly ridiculous developments, there is no depth to her portrayal. Ultimately it’s just another ‘crazy’ movie performance that bears little resemblance to real life.

The writers’ development of Di is much more successful, and despite her perceived cruelty she gives the film its heart. At times she is nasty, but even in her manipulative moments there’s innocence to her, as she is living the only way she knows. Juno Temple makes a strong impression in the part, balancing a necessary streak of nastiness with a clear deep need for approval, and when the film ends it is Di’s story that lingers in the memory.

Juno Temple was previously in Atonement, which is a film that this film brings to mind, but Cracks is much slighter in comparison. The recreation of a secluded part of historic Britain is done with similar craft and precision, with excellent work from production designer Ben Scott, and beautiful cinematography from Scott senior’s regular collaborator John Mathieson. But unlike Atonement, in which Joe Wright used that traditional TV-drama context as a launch-pad to tell a unique and powerful story, Jordan Scott’s film doesn’t do anything particularly surprising with this scenario or the characters that inhabit it.

Extras: Three brief interviews with Jordan Scott, Eva Green and Temple & Valverde, plus the trailer. Not exactly inspiring stuff.

5/10

Released on DVD and Blu-Ray on 29th March. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

Trucker (The List, Issue 652)

2010-03-21T15:54:00.007Z

An interesting little drama that’s light on incident but big on character, Trucker is a welcome showcase for the acting talents of Michelle Monaghan. Having been a solid support player in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Gone Baby Gone, here Monaghan takes centre stage as Diane, the eponymous long distance big-rig driver who, much like Clooney’s Ryan Bingham in Up in the Air, is a professional loner, wanting nothing more than to live life her own way, doing whatever with whomever she chooses. Diane is considerably lower on the pay scale than Bingham though, and when the son that she openly walked out on 10 years earlier is forced back into her life, her independent existence is completely shaken.

Even given the unlikelihood of there ever being a real-life trucker anywhere near as gorgeous as her, Monaghan is utterly convincing in the part. First time filmmaker James Mottern also deserves praise for so successfully inverting Hollywood gender norms. While Diane is the film’s foul-mouthed, foul-tempered centre, it is the men in the story who bring the traditionally ‘feminine’ warmth and concern, with Serenity’s Nathan Fillion particularly good as the drinking buddy who longs to get closer.

3/5

Playing at GFT 21-24th March. This review first published in The List magazine.

The Bounty Hunter (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-03-17T22:38:00.004Z

Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler have an interesting track record between them. They’ve both excelled in their respective fields – she as a brilliant TV comedy actress, he as a powerfully manly leading man – and swiftly descended to churning out awful romantic comedies. Neither has been in a great movie for a good few years; is The Bounty Hunter the one to break that downward trend? You probably won’t be surprised to read that no, it most certainly is not.

The story begins with Jennifer Aniston’s ace reporter Nicole getting a whiff of a possible story from a reported suicide case. In her haste to follow up a lead she skips a bail hearing for a petty automobile incident and ends up, unbeknownst to her, on the wrong side of the law. As chance would have it, Nicole’s ex-husband Milo (Gerard Butler), drunken former cop and bounty hunter for hire, is assigned to apprehend her. Milo jumps at the chance to escape his substantial gambling debts and simultaneously get one up on Nicole, but his simple plan for an easy payday is scuppered as soon as he finds her.

Nicole has no intention of going to prison, and soon convinces Milo that they could make more money by going gambling together, but neither of them have yet realised the more pressing issue, that Nicole’s investigations have made her the target of several shady criminals. If this wasn’t bad enough, Milo’s creditors are equally intent on doing him some damage for non-payment. Is it possible that in the middle of all this craziness the bitterly feuding ex-couple could find themselves back in the arms of love once more? Well, you already know the answer to that one.

This is premium-grade convoluted Hollywood rubbish, but it had the potential, in the right hands - I’m thinking Soderbergh or Spielberg - to make for a great movie caper. Unfortunately the right hands weren’t available, and Hitch director Andy Tennant makes an absolute pig’s ear of the whole thing. This type of multi-stranded narrative requires deft pacing and editing to ensure it is balanced and running smoothly, but here every scene feels as if it’s been thrown on to the screen with no attempt at all to integrate it into a coherent story.

Aniston’s comic talents are thoroughly wasted in Nicole, a character without one notable feature and zero lines of memorable dialogue. The ‘jokes’ that centre on her character mostly focus on the fact that she has breasts (shocker!), and there is one stupidly misjudged moment when a rather average looking woman turns her nose up at the suggestion that Aniston’s character used to be a model. Butler fares marginally better, getting a few funny lines and releasing an endearingly gutteral growlish chuckle every now and then. They don’t fit together onscreen though, and never convince as a couple who have been married. When they finally kiss the moment has all the fizz of three-week old Coke.

The overwhelming impression is that this must be a severely compromised and recut version of writer Sarah Thorp’s original script (at least I hope so, for her sake). Support characters pop up and then disappear unannounced, plot threads are left hanging and the main characters behave schizophrenically, their motivations and affections shifting inexplicably from one scene to the next. The police corruption plot-strand is so badly chopped up that at the end we get a hilarious Scooby Doo-style exposition scene shoehorned in to tie things up. It’s as if Tennant was in the editing room and suddenly noticed that even attentive viewers would be a little puzzled as to how events were resolved.

If you want to see this kind of story done with all the tension, humour and sizzling-hot chemistry it deserves, watch Out of Sight featuring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez at their best. If you’re happy to settle for whatever half-hearted guff Hollywood decides to push your way, go and see The Bounty Hunter.

4/10

On general release now. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.

The Scouting Book For Boys (The List, Issue 652)

2010-03-17T08:52:00.004Z

One hazy summer in a sleepy Norfolk holiday park, David (This is England’s Thomas Turgoose) and Emily (Holliday Grainger), constant companions by default of being the only teenagers there, spend the days mucking about under the permissive gaze of site security guard Steve (Rafe Spall), who is Emily’s mum’s boyfriend and the only adult who pays them much attention. This relative idyll is punctured by the news that Emily must move away and live with her dad. Besotted, David goes along with Emily’s suggestion to hide her in one of the beach’s many caves, and plays innocent as the police get involved and her disappearance becomes a local media story. David believes he is Emily’s only friend and confidant, but soon learns that there is more than their friendship behind her plan.

British TV director Tom Harper (Misfits, Demons) makes a confident feature debut with this engaging story that slowly twists from a light-hearted evocation of teenage friendship into a dark tale of adolescent envy. Harper directs Jack Horne’s fine script with just the right amount of ambiguity, creating very believable characters in the process. David doesn’t sit easily in a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ category, and Turgoose makes the most of his sparse dialogue to construct a complex character through small but significant actions and reactions. It’s an excellent performance, and Grainger and Spall add strong support.

The film is not perfect; there are some jarring shifts in tone and the story’s ultimate destination stretches credibility, but as a dramatisation of the peril and confusion of adolescence it’s worth checking out.

3/5

On selected release from Fri 19 Mar, cert. 15. This review first published in The List magazine.

Alice in Wonderland (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-03-08T21:59:00.004Z

In the words of The Big Lebowski, “sometimes, there’s a man”. And if there was ever a director well-matched to a film project it’s Tim Burton with this new version of Alice in Wonderland. Sure enough, Burton’s trip down the rabbit-hole looks amazing, overflowing with inventive details in its characters and imagined locations, and pushing CGI possibilities to bring Lewis Carroll’s stories to the screen in a whole new way. Curiously though, this Wonderland lacks drama, and Burton’s seemingly inexhaustible visual imaginings can’t quite hide the film’s narrative shortcomings.

In this version of the story, written by Linda Woolverton, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is in her early 20s and has forgotten Wonderland; the only evidence of her visit there as a young girl is a dream that troubles her every night. After informing us through a little scene-setting preamble that Alice is about to be forced into marriage with an insufferable bore, Burton brings in the more familiar story elements; the white rabbit, Alice’s tumble down the hole, ‘drink me’, ‘eat me’ and then Wonderland itself. Or more accurately, Underland; “wonderland”, we learn, was a mis-hearing by the 8-year old Alice – this world is more clearly geographically defined, in relation to ours, than we had previously known.

It turns out that Alice’s return has been foretold, and there is hope amongst the citizens of Underland that she could be the one to slay the dreaded Jabberwock, and return the power of rule from the decapitation-obsessed Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) to her floaty, peace-loving sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). This being a Disney story, there’s never any doubt as to whether Alice will take up the sword and ultimately prevail, but would it have been too much for Burton to have added some suspense, some danger with a little edge? The climax, when it comes, is an epic battle that’s become a too familiar sight in many recent blockbusters, and it feels particularly out of place in this hitherto quirky world.

Thankfully though, drama, or lack of it, is not the make-or-break factor of Burton’s film. Burton’s visual creativity has always been most evident in macabre settings, and Carroll’s stories’ dark undertones - the awful reign of the Red Queen, the air of madness that pervades everything in Wonderland - prove fertile ground for his unique imagination. The look of the film is assuredly fantastical, with very effective CGI sets making Underland something halfway between photo-real and cartoon. This works well, and is particularly impressive in IMAX 3D, but it is the reinvention of the story’s familiar characters that is the most impressive of Burton’s achievements.

The Red Queen with her oversized head, played brilliantly by Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp’s sadly self-aware Mad Hatter and the creepily endearing Cheshire Cat - perfectly voiced by Stephen Fry - are all true to their literary roots, but given a fresh twist that means meeting them here again is hugely enjoyable. Through a combination of excellent casting and carefully highlighted details of behaviour, even characters making very brief appearances make a strong impression. If Burton had given that same attention to detail to the telling of the tale, this would have been a sure-fire classic. He treats the eyes and tickles the funny bone, no doubt, but the heart and mind are left wanting.

7/10

Alice in Wonderland is out now. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk

Green Zone (futuremovies.co.uk)

2010-03-08T12:28:00.003Z

Iraq, 2003: Chief Warrant Officer Miller (Matt Damon) is smelling something fishy about intelligence that is continually leading him and his team to WMD hotspots with a distinct lack of WMD in evidence. His concern that “something’s not right here” is firmly suppressed by superiors when he voices it, but a CIA agent on the ground named Brown (Brendan Gleeson), urges him to follow his nose. After discovering an American journalist (Amy Ryan) who seems a little too informed about US intelligence, Miller becomes aware of Pentagon chief Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), who is none too pleased about the direction of Miller’s enquiries. As Miller starts to see that there may be more than one side to the side he thought he was on, his pursuit of the truth becomes increasingly dangerous.

Directed by Paul Greengrass and starring his Bourne Ultimatum leading man, it’s not hard to see why Green Zone has been dubbed ‘Bourne in Iraq’ – a tag that the film company are notably milking for all its promotional worth – but such shorthand is misleading. There is only one proper action sequence in Green Zone – albeit a thrillingly intense one – and it comes late in the film; for the most part Greengrass is doing something closer in spirit to a 70s conspiracy thriller. It’s like All The President’s Men but with more tanks and shaky camerawork.

Correspondingly, Green Zone is a more complicated and ultimately less successful proposition than the Bourne movies; audiences will need to do some work to stay engaged. Greengrass and writer Brian Helgeland, adapting the script from Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book Imperial Life in The Emerald City, do a brilliant job of recreating the confused American presence in Iraq, with all its disconnected and conflicting levels of authority. They are less successful at bringing a story into focus though, and the first half of the film lacks a clear direction. It’s also dissatisfying that the conclusion of the plot hinges on a very predictable action by a character clearly slotted into the story to fulfil that particular purpose; all the more disappointing a cliché considering that Greengrass achieves such authenticity in the film’s setting.

But while his storytelling lets the film down, Greengrass constructs many individual scenes that have a powerful impact: in his first appearance, Jason Isaacs’ moustachioed general Briggs foregoes discussion and punches Miller square in the face, effectively summing up the impossibility of dialogue in this situation; Greengrass portrays the Green Zone itself as a virtual holiday resort, where Americans luxuriate by a pool mere miles from the ongoing conflict, again concisely presenting the problems at the heart of this occupation. To see such a pointed critique of recent history in mainstream cinema is a strong enough reason to recommend Green Zone, even if it isn’t the satisfying movie experience Greengrass has proven himself able to provide in the past.

7/10

Green Zone is released on 12 March. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk

Leap Year (The List, Issue 650)

2010-02-25T13:03:00.005Z

Imagine the classic 1934 Clark Gable/Claudette Colbert road movie romance It Happened One Night with all the wit, spontaneity and charm sucked out of it. That’s Leap Year. Director Anand Tucker (Red Riding: 1983, And When Did You Last See Your Father?) should be weeping into his Guinness over this joyless, laugh-free embarrassment of a movie.

Leap Year smacks of Hollywood desperation from the outset, hanging on the purportedly well-known Irish tradition that a woman is allowed to propose to her man on the 29th February. After Anna’s (Amy Adams) boyfriend misses a tailor-made opportunity to propose then heads off to the Emerald Isle on business, she decides to follow him there and do the deed herself. But bad weather foils Anna’s carefully-laid travel plans, leaving her stranded at the wrong end of the country with no choice but to accept a lift from a grumpy yet ruggedly handsome local (Matthew Goode).

There are comparably bad recent rom-coms – the execrable 27 Dresses springs to mind – but the thing that particularly grates about Leap Year (after Devon-born Goode’s horrific Irish accent) is the soulless, machine-like construction of it all.

1/5

General release from Fri 26 Feb. This review was first published in The List magazine.

Ponyo

2010-02-15T15:52:00.000Z

The new animated fairytale from Hayao Miyazaki is just as wonderful and imaginative as one would expect from the man behind Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, and yet somehow Ponyo scales greater heights of joyous fantasy than even Miyazaki’s previous films.

Taking Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid story and adding his own child’s-eye spin, Miyazaki introduces us to Sosuke, a 5-year old boy who finds and rescues what he thinks is a goldfish on the shore. He names it Ponyo, intending to keep her as a pet, but Ponyo turns out to be a magical sea creature of considerable power, who sets her heart on becoming human with Sosuke. But Ponyo’s undersea father Fujimoto isn’t happy, knowing that there are rules that divide the ocean and human worlds, and Ponyo’s magic begins to have drastic consequences for the whole planet.

Ponyo has a dramatic and fantastical storyline, but even its most intense moments are shot through with optimism. The characters who seem bad turn out to have good motives, and the main authority figure – Sosuke’s mother Lisa – doesn’t bat an eyelid even when the mighty sea itself appears to be bearing down on her. Miyazaki fills the whole film with a spirit of childlike hope, and it resonates in each aspect of the movie, from the gloriously alive hand-drawn animation to the vibrant colour palette.

The script is funny and light-hearted, and the American voice cast, including Tina Fey, Liam Neeson and Matt Damon, are great – even if Neeson has a lot of unnecessary exposition to speak aloud to no-one but the fishes. But the film's best moments are when no characters are speaking, and it is left to the images and the classical score to drive the story forward, as in the beautiful and otherworldly opening sequence in which Ponyo first ventures to the surface.

9/10