The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel review (The List, Issue 693)

(12A) 118min

Early in this by-the-numbers comedy drama, a young salesperson eagerly enthuses to retiring couple Douglas (Bill Nighy) and Jean (Penelope Wilton) that 'the grey pound is very strong at the moment'. We’re quite clearly supposed to see this whippersnapper as insensitive and opportunistic, but his position seems plainly analogous to that of the producers of this film, who have clearly decided there is an audience of a certain age ready and waiting for ‘Love Actually for the over-60s … but in India!’ They’re undoubtedly correct, and they don’t hurt their chances of satisfying that audience by casting an irresistible army of pension-age talent including Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Tom Wilkinson, all on excellent form. But the story, about a group of unconnected British retirees who come to the titular hotel in Jaipur and find resolution for their various issues and challenges, feels too calculated to offer anything more than disposable entertainment at best, and cheaply manipulative emotional kicks at worst. Actors this good can invest even this trite material with credibility, but they deserve better.

This review first published at The List's Film website.

Young Adult review (The List, Issue 693)

(15) 94min

This reteaming of Juno director (Jason Reitman) and writer (Diablo Cody) is a fiercely dark character comedy that once again demonstrates the pair’s refusal to be limited by genre conventions, no matter how sacred. The set-up is straightforward enough: recently divorced writer Mavis (Charlize Theron) decides on a whim to leave her bombsite Minneapolis apartment and drive back to her tiny hometown in order to win back Buddy (Patrick Wilson), her one-time college sweetheart. But Buddy is now a happily married new father, a fact that Mavis has convinced herself can only be superficially true; how, goes her reasoning, could anyone really be happy in a hick town where nothing of significance ever happens? Buddy obviously needs to be rescued.

It all sounds far-fetched enough to make for standard quirky rom-com material that will all rather improbably but reassuringly turn out nice in the end. But despite initial appearances, Young Adult is not that kind of film; somewhat daringly, Reitman and Cody are aiming for something much more truthful and ultimately more painful. Mavis is a conceited car-crash of a woman - the prom-queen who never grew up - and her solipsistic worldview and searing tactlessness are not character foibles that can be neatly ironed out by this story’s end. Theron’s performance was ignored by the Oscars in favour of more family-friendly fare, but in truth her portrayal of Mavis is perfectly judged, and delivered with an unflinching disregard for audience sympathy that few actresses of her standing would have the guts to go through with. The film also features a very strong supporting turn from Patton Oswalt, one of the great ‘where-do-I-know-him-from?’ character actors who, as Matt, the formerly ignored high-school nerd attempting to deal some truth back to Mavis, brings a touch of warmth and acts as a much-needed go-between for the audience.

As in his previous film Up in the Air, Reitman is interested here in offering a patient, perceptive and often very funny analysis of a problematic character. But where the former film was subtly subversive, particularly in its conclusion, here Reitman wears his rebellion on his sleeve. Young Adult’s consistently jarring tone, powered by Cody’s crackling self-aware dialogue, further confirms Reitman’s instinct for original approaches to storytelling. And as a bonus, the film will delight fans of peerless Scottish indie band Teenage Fanclub, whose song The Concept is the cornerstone of the film’s perfectly selected 90s rock soundtrack.

This review was originally published at The List's Film website.

The Town review (futuremovies.co.uk)

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.

Radio Scotland Movie Café: Avatar review

I had the pleasure of being asked back on to the Movie Cafe this week, to review arguably the biggest movie of 2009, James Cameron's Avatar. I was discussing the film with fellow film critic Nigel Floyd and the show's host Janice Forsyth. Click the link below to listen:

Paul Gallagher - Avatar (opens in a new window)


We all agreed that the $300 million plus epic was a must-see cinema experience, offering awesome visuals quite unlike anything previously seen on film, particularly in the amazingly believable CG imagery. I was a little more critical than Janice and Nigel on the films flaws, particularly the lack of drive to the story in the film's first half, and the uninteresting characters that Cameron had populated this eye-popping world with, but would still urge anyone with an interest in cinema to check out this significant movie event at the biggest screen possible.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (futuremovies.co.uk)

The prospect of watching a Terry Gilliam film is often more satisfying than actually sitting down to experience it. He has a singular imagination and is able to come up with breathtaking visual concepts, but his films often demonstrate his weakness when it comes to threading these ideas together to produce coherent and meaningful stories. This same weakness is evident in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus: Gilliam gleefully fills the screen with stunning and original images, but struggles to combine them in a way that makes sense.

While much of the attention around Imaginarium has focused on the fact of Heath Ledger’s untimely death halfway through production, the character he plays is not the central focus of the film. The story opens in contemporary London, where the titular Doctor (Christopher Plummer) is putting on a rather shambolic sideshow for the drunken post-clubbing crowd. Run by Parnassus and a handful of misfits, including his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) and young dreamer Anton (Andrew Garfield), the travelling show appears to be little more than an eccentric diversion. That is until an inebriated volunteer accidentally steps through the mirror at the back of the stage, and it becomes clear that Parnassus has more powers than appearances suggest. “Don’t worry if you don’t understand it all immediately”, says Parnassus to a policeman who stops to see what the commotion is about, and he could well be talking to the cinema audience too.

The film trundles along, a bit like Parnassus’s rickety Imaginarium, continuously in danger of falling apart and lacking a clear destination, but curiously fascinating to watch. We discover that Parnassus hides a secret; Valentina’s life is indebted to the shady Mr Nick (Tom Waits), due to a wager Dr. P struck with this devilish figure in the past. But the reappearance of Mr Nick, keen to collect his due, is paralleled by the arrival of another mysterious stranger, Tony (Ledger, whose entrance is goulishly macabre). Gilliam brings each of these characters into the frame before ultimately, through various twists of plot, returning to the world (or worlds) behind the mirror.

Gilliam has always been a visual artist first and a storyteller second, and he conjures up some thrilling treats for the eyes here, not just in the Imaginarium sequences but also in the thousand-year-old Parnassus’s various flashbacks. But visual creativity alone does not a movie make, and often these striking and painstakingly realised images are fleetingly glimpsed and lack a narrative context to make them resonate.

So what then, of Heath Ledger’s final appearance on film? In the best performances of his short career, Ledger displayed an ability to effectively make himself disappear, so all we saw was the character. In Imaginarium this isn’t the case: we are always aware of Ledger playing a role, and his portrayal of Tony seems more like a series of sketches, as if he was still at the stage of trying out different approaches for a character that he was gradually bringing into focus. It’s a performance that is slight in comparison to his screen-burning Joker or his heart-wrenching Ennis Del Mar, but in a sense it fits well in the context of Gilliam’s film. The shifting nature of the character and the film’s fantastical tone mean it feels quite appropriate for Tony to take the form of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell in the moments that he passes through the mirror. Those performances vary hugely in quality - Depp is great, Law is forgettable and Farrell disappears under the weight of the swiftly unravelling plot – but the mere fact of their presence in the film stands as a testament to Gilliam’s creative ingenuity in the face of a seemingly insurmountable setback.

It is the director’s ceaseless creativity that stands out in Imaginarium, and makes the film worth watching despite its narrative and logical flaws. The successful completion of this film may be just what Gilliam needed to spur himself on to better things; perhaps the Don Quixote film that has so long eluded him could yet become a reality.

6/10

This review originally appeared on futuremovies.co.uk.

Fish Tank (futuremovies.co.uk)

Mia is a 15-year old council estate-dwelling girl with a short temper, a fractured relationship with her mother and a cider-drinking younger sister who knows far too many swear-words for her own good. Her only escape from this thankless existence is to retreat to an abandoned flat whenever possible and lose herself in hip-hop dancing. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t naturally go out of my way to spend two hours with a girl like Mia, but thankfully, Andrea Arnold decided she wanted to. In doing so she’s made not only a brilliant and beautifully bruised character study, but also arguably one of the best films of the year.

The plot is a slight thing – it is more a film about being than doing – but the central event is the arrival of Connor (Michael Fassbender), the new man in Mia’s mother’s life, and the impact that he has on the impressionable and insecure Mia. From the moment that she encounters Connor half-naked in the kitchen, the film becomes electrified by an escalating sexual tension. Connor does nothing to defuse it, Mia doesn’t quite know what to do with it, and we know that it must lead somewhere, and it won’t be good.

Mia is played by newcomer Katie Jarvis in her first ever performance, and she demonstrates a natural ability in front of the camera. Her unselfconscious openness to Arnold’s camera draws us in to Mia’s confused life and worldview, so rather than watching from a distance and judging her, we live these moments alongside her. Fassbender, recently so brilliant in Inglourious Basterds, is also fantastic here in a totally different role. Initially he’s all effortless charm and knowing, but that is undercut by hints of insecurity that only become more pronounced as his character’s secrets are revealed.

Arnold excels at creating tension using little more than naturalistic performances and precise camera movements, and in Fish Tank, just as in her Oscar-winning short film Wasp, it is the sense that some terrible event is always just around the corner that most strongly pervades the atmosphere. The effect here is to believably convey the fragility of any peace that the characters may find, and it lends an almost tangible intensity to much of the film.

But while Fish Tank is certainly dark, it is not all-pervadingly so. Arnold is as interested in life’s beauty as its struggles, and captures some truly transcendent moments – an impromptu dance to James Brown on a sunny afternoon; the oddly beautiful sight of a horse in an abandoned wasteland - with the assistance of her cinematographer Robbie Ryan. In fact, the beauty of the film’s composition is almost overwhelming at points; unlike so many British directors, Arnold has a large cinematic vision that sets her apart as a real artist.

If the film has one flaw, it’s the occasional weak plotting, which is only noticeable because the characterisation is so strong. When your lead character is so brilliantly realised it’s harder to get away with lapses in story logic, and this becomes apparent in a certain course of action Mia takes towards the end of the film. This is no slight on Andrea Arnold’s excellent achievement here though, and emphasises how strongly Fish Tank succeeds on every other level.

9/10

Fish Tank is out now. This review originally appeared on Future Movies.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine - radio review

I was a guest on the BBC Radio Scotland Movie Cafe today, and reviewed the new Hugh Jackman movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine with the show's host, the lovely Janice Forsyth. It was a great experience and will hopefully lead to more. You can listen to the review here:

Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine by paulcgallagher

Sci-Fi Spotlight #3: The Man Who Fell To Earth

This was a strange one. I should have suspected that science fiction from Nic Roeg would not be anything I could anticipate, and sure enough I’m still struggling to decide what to make of The Man Who Fell To Earth. At the simplest level, it shows an odd-looking man named Newton (David Bowie) appearing in small town America - literally falling from the sky - and swiftly becoming one of the most powerful businessmen in the country. He is a cold, reclusive type, and we eventually discover that he is an alien, come to earth as his planet has run out of water. We see brief shots of his alien family dying back home, but Newton becomes distracted by the money and entertainment available to him on earth, and never returns home.

Roeg doesn’t so much tell this story as make you work to tell the story yourself. Large chunks of time are skipped over, and you have to fill in what happens inbetween with your imagination. So we see Newton arrive on earth with nothing, and in only a few moments of screen time we are several years down the line and he’s running World Enterprise, a massive company that is leading the field in American research and technology. This initially suggests that he has unearthly intelligence or resources, but if this is the case it is never made explicit, and doesn’t seem to feature as the story progresses and Newton is ultimately overcome by the world.

Bowie’s performance is excellent, impenetrable and otherworldly. His pale skin and dyed red hair, combined with his hollow stare, make him seem more like an alien in human shape than when his character sheds the human disguise and is revealed in his ‘real’, make-up heavy form. Throughout the film, apart from a couple of scenes, he remains without emotion, and his thoughts and desires are similarly obscured. If there is reason or purpose in his actions then Roeg is not interested in discovering it.

What, then, is Roeg interested in showing or discovering in The Man Who Fell To Earth? He creates a lot of fascinating visuals, but there isn’t a lot of sense behind them; while the film certainly seems to have artistic intentions, watching it is something of an empty experience. It also feels very dated, being full of gratuitous nudity and extended sex scenes that may have been provocative in the 70s but now beg the question ‘why?’ Similarly, Roeg plays with the timeline of the film as if to challenge conventional storytelling techniques, but to no discernible purpose.

So roll on Alphaville, I say. Perhaps I can make more sense of Jean-Luc Godard. Errr…

Sci-Fi Spotlight #2: THX 1138

Fresh from experiencing Tarkovsky for the first time, the second film in my Sci-Fi Spotlight is from a director that I need no introduction to, one George Lucas. The funny thing is, watching THX 1138 caused me to question if this was actually the same Lucas I knew from the Star Wars films, as the only link between his blockbusting series and this near-avant-garde film is the sense of technical innovation. THX 1138 is something of a revelation as far as my perspective on Lucas is concerned, and it seems a shame that he has never returned to making this kind of film.

The story is very simple. In an unspecified future society where everyone is sedated to the level of emotionless consumer-drones, THX (Robert Duvall) neglects to take his prescribed drugs and begins to see the reality of his predicament. His room-mate LUH (Maggie McComie) has already broken free from her sedation, in fact she intentionally caused THX to miss his required dose, and as the two awake to emotion they fall in love and have sex; illegal activites in this society. They plan to attempt an escape, but are already being pursued by the beaureacratic system of government and its police droids.

Lucas unfolds this story using a very pared-down style, not attempting to draw the viewer in by conventional storytelling methods. Working with the now-legendary editor/sound designer Walter Murch he cuts together images and voices, often unsynchronised, in a nonlinear style. Lucas uses very few establishing shots and mostly close-ups, so the individual performances and character actions become the audience’s main guide through the story’s landscape.

While there is a simple story thread running through the film, THX 1138 is most effective and memorable for individual moments, sounds and images. In a scene where police droids beat THX with electric prods, for example, they repeat the mantra “everything will be alright” even as he cries out in pain. It is a powerful image of brutal and unfeeling authority, both disturbing and absurdly funny, and Lucas injects the film with many of these moments.

On his DVD commentary Lucas insists that everything in the film is metaphorical and refers specifically to the political situation in the late 1960s. He makes a good argument for this being the case, but I don’t think it’s necessary to identify these correlations to take anything of value from this story. Many of the images and ideas in THX 1138 are arguably even more relevant today than on the film’s 1971 release, and it seems to me a great example of science fiction’s timeless potential.

Next up, The Man Who Fell To Earth. David Bowie is an alien - I knew it!

Burn After Reading

Screen Fever Score: 7/10

The Coen Brothers’ new movie is an almost perverse about-face in the wake of their Oscar-winning, weighty adaptation of No Country for Old Men, released just nine months ago in the UK. Where No Country was enigmatic and considered, foregrounding subtlety over show, Burn After Reading is broad and crude, placing its big-name cast front and centre. This is, I think, a good thing. While it is tempting to wish for more of the same after feasting on the greatness of No Country, it’s reassuring to know that the Coens are the same contrarians they’ve always been, and although Burn After Reading is unlikely to make anyone’s Top 5 Coens’ list, it is not without its pleasures.

The story is a lolloping thing, but chiefly centres around CIA agent Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), who as the film begins is receiving the unwelcome news of his effective sacking. To add to his woes, his wife is an ice queen (Tilda Swinton, naturally) who is planning to divorce him as soon as possible and is also carrying on an affair with George Clooney’s womanising Treasury agent Harry Pfarrer. Things will soon get worse for Cox, as Chad and Linda, two hapless employees of Hardbodies Gym (played by Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand) find a CD of his tell-all CIA memoirs, leading to possibly the worst blackmail attempt in the history of spy movies. Yes, this is the Coens’ take on cool espionage movies, except in this case everyone involved is at least two sandwiches short of the proverbial picnic.

There is a distinct sense in Burn After Reading that the Coens are wilfully pushing their own well-worn characteristics as near to breaking point as they can, particularly with their returning cast members. Clooney plays less a character and more a collection of tics and quirks, obsessing about food, floors and “getting a run in” after sex, while McDormand brings the bug-eyed naivety of Fargo’s Marge Gunderson, but the writing here has none of the human warmth that made that character so effective. The newcomers to the Coen family fare better: Malkovich is excellent in what seems like his first proper role in years, his outraged intensity perfectly fitting the bill. Pitt is also very good, revelling in Chad’s dumbness, but also more subtly pulling off the none-too-easy task of provoking us to warm to an essentially one-dimensional character.

As with all of the Coen Brothers’ films, there are suggestions of meaning beyond the film’s surface, particularly in the maudlin and pensive atmosphere created by Carter Burwell’s score. Unlike their best comedies though – I’m thinking of The Big Lebowski and O Brother Where Art Thou? – the disparate elements of Burn After Reading don’t add up to a hugely satisfying experience. That said, the film’s ending is perfect: as plot turns become progressively more ludicrous one begins to wonder if there is any point to the story, but a masterful final scene featuring a movie-stealing J.K. Simmons answers that question and ties things up beautifully.

Info:
Directors: Joel & Ethan Coen
UK release date: 17 October

You can also read this review on futuremovies.co.uk

Tropic Thunder

Screen Fever Score: 8/10

Ben Stiller gets back behind the camera with hilarious results, guiding himself, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr as three egocentric actors who stumble into a real-life conflict while filming Tropic Thunder, the 'greatest war film ever'. It's thrilling to see big budget production values on what is essentially a very silly film, and Stiller takes every opportunity going to poke fun at the movie industry, most effectively with Downey Jr's character, the jaw-droppingly self-involved Kirk Lazarus. It's not a perfect film, but it is a very funny one.

Read my full review on Future Movies

Info:
UK Release: 19 September
Cert: 15

Pineapple Express

Screen Fever Score: 6/10

Seth Rogen and James Franco star in this odd mix of stoner comedy and 80s action thriller from producer Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Superbad). While it's got some very funny moments and a great performance from Franco, it's all over the place in terms of tone and storytelling, so the end result is less than the sum of its parts.

Read my full review on Future Movies

Info:
UK Release: 12 September
Cert: 15

Baby Mama

My review of Baby Mama, starring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and the back-to-brilliant Steve Martin is featuring on futuremovies.co.uk. This'll give you an idea of what I thought:

"Fey and Poehler are very funny together, and the scenario gives them plenty of opportunities to show it...but it’s as much the supporting cast that make this such an enjoyable film; Sigourney Weaver has a handful of hilarious scenes as the ridiculously amoral head of Kate’s surrogacy agency, Chaffee Bicknell (note to comedy writers: a really silly name goes a long way), but it’s Steve Martin, back from the brink and funnier than ever as Kate’s New Age guru boss, who steals the show."

Read the full review here

UK release date: 25 July
Cert: 12A

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging

My review of Gurinder Chadha (Bend it Like Beckham)'s new teen comedy is featured in the current issue of The List. Here's a snippet:

"Chadha pitches the tone just right for a young female audience, addressing some of the hang-ups and dramas of early womanhood with a surreal and winningly silly tone, but scuppers a lot of this good work by opting for a conventional Hollywood-style story arc and a conclusion that’s positively dripping with cheese."

Read the full review here

UK release date: 25 July
Cert: 12A

Summer Hours, Transsiberian and Encounters at the End of the World

I have a few reviews from the Edinburgh Film Festival published this week on Edinburgh Festivals Magazine's website. Below is some more info and links to the full reviews.

Summer Hours (pictured above) - "Olivier Assayas’ new film could easily be dismissed as “too French” by UK audiences, considering its preoccupation with talking, drinking and generally not doing much. But Summer Hours is a film of considerable depth and maturity, and one that, if anything, actually demands repeat viewings in order to fully appreciate its quality."
Read the full review here
Summer Hours is on selected UK release from 18 July

Transsiberian - "Writer-director Brad Anderson’s last film was the tense and compelling The Machinist (2004), which starred an impossibly gaunt Christian Bale and worked as a nightmarish journey into one man’s troubled mind. For his follow-up he opts for a bigger cast and broader canvas, but the end product is not half as original or effective as could have been expected."
Read the full review here

Encounters at the End of the World - "There is a lot of fun to be had with this film before it reaches its more reflective conclusions, not least when Werner Herzog encounters a lone scientist who spends his life studying Antarctica’s penguin community, and asks him whether he has ever seen evidence of gay relationships amongst the birds. As Herzog is keen to point out, this ain’t March of the Penguins."
Read the full review here

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Top 5

It’s almost two weeks now since Edinburgh’s Film Festival wound up its first year as a June event. By all accounts it was a success, although I must admit that it didn’t feel quite as busy as the organisers are claiming it was, despite what I thought was a really good selection of movies. Yes, there were some disappointments – The Wackness, Stone of Destiny and much-hyped British debut Better Things were the biggest let-downs – but overall I got to see a lot of very good films; in fact, compiling a top 5 has been a little harder than I initially anticipated.

After much internal debate, here’s my pick of the five best films of the Festival, and more importantly, why they make the grade:

1. WALL-E – It may have been the most mainstream movie of the Festival but Pixar’s new film was also the best, representing another step forward for the already impossibly high-standard-setting animation studio. Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton takes the story of a cute little robot, left on earth for 700 years to clean up after humans have pretty much destroyed the planet and done a runner, and crafts a tale of loneliness, friendship and adventure that is both profoundly moving and bursting with stunning visual creativity. Added to this, WALL-E is a movie in love with the movies, packed with references to classics of the silver screen, with each homage incorporated as a relevant storytelling element, never feeling self-indulgent or unnecessary. It’s a true masterpiece, and my favourite film of the year so far.

2. The Visitor – Much smaller in scale than Pixar’s animation behemoth, this character-focused comedy-drama is equally accomplished in its writing, confirming Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent) as a writer-director of considerable human insight and compassion. Eternal support actor Richard Jenkins is perfect in the lead as Walter Vale, a bored Connecticut University academic whose life takes a turn for the interesting when he discovers a refugee couple living in his New York apartment. After initially throwing them out, Walter has a change of heart and begins an unexpected friendship with the djembe-playing Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira). Things are complicated when Tarek is arrested and threatened with deportation, but while the film does tackle political issues, it is primarily about people, and McCarthy handles the balance of personal and political masterfully. Also featuring a brilliant performance from Hiam Abbass as Tarek’s mother, The Visitor is a true gem, and I would highly recommend seeking it out, as it’s in UK cinemas right now!

3. Man On Wire – The best of an excellent selection of documentaries at the Festival, James Marsh’s film presents a man and a feat that both have to be seen to be believed. The man is Philipe Petit, a French tightrope-walker of singular vision and enthusiasm, and the feat is an almost unbelievable wire-walk that he accomplished in 1974 between the newly-constructed World Trade Center towers. The fact that Petit and a handful of friends managed to break into the towers and successfully set up and carry out the illegal act is jaw-dropping enough, but the way it is retold here clearly conveys the profound emotional impact it had on everyone involved, and the film itself becomes more than just a historical document; it’s a powerfully inspiring piece of cinema.

4. Let The Right One In – This is a low-key Swedish character drama with a difference; it’s also a vampire movie. Almost sluggishly paced in its first hour, director Tomas Alfredson takes his sweet time in building the atmosphere in this story of a bullied 12-year-old who befriends the slightly odd girl next-door, but patience pays off as he uses the very low budget to stunning effect. It’s a film of creeping unease rather than high pitch scares, and concludes with a final set-piece that made me want to stand up and applaud. Apparently that’s exactly what happened at the critics’ screening, which is an event largely unheard of at film festivals. The film doesn’t seem to have UK distribution at the moment, and appears to have already been snapped-up for an English-language remake, but hopefully this original version will find its way to cinemas soon, as it’s really quite special.

5. Summer – Robert Carlyle is an actor that I’ve always found likeable but never amazing, but in Summer he gives, for my money, the best performance of his career. He picked up the Festival’s Best Actor award for his heart-breaking portrayal of Shaun, a man who we meet in a beaten-down state, brought low by the hand life has dealt him. Kenny Glenaan’s film flits back and forward in time to build up a picture of Shaun’s life, and occasionally the story is almost too sad to bear, but Carlyle brings such a recognisable warmth and longing to the character that we can’t help but stay with him. A much-needed note of hope at the conclusion slightly softens the film’s emotional wallop, but overall this is a deeply moving tale of loss and frustration, and Carlyle deserves heaps of praise for his amazing work in it.

So that’s my verdict. Just missing out on inclusion were Shane Meadows’ new one Somers Town, the lovely Amy Adams comedy Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and an excellent British debut called Dummy, all of which are well worth investigation too. For now though, that’s my Festival experience wrapped up. Roll on London…

Info:
WALL-E (U) is released nationwide on 18 July.
The Visitor (15) is out now in selected cinemas.
Man On Wire (12A) is released nationwide on 1 August.
Let The Right One In and Summer have no scheduled UK release date.

Mongol: The Rise to Power of Genghis Khan

Screen Fever Score: 4/10

Verdict:
It tries to do for Genghis Khan what Braveheart did for William Wallace, but lacks the stunning action or heartfelt characterisation. This is a beautifully shot but uninspiring history lesson.

Full review:
Kazakhstan’s entry for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar shows that there’s more artistic ambition to the country than Borat suggested. But while Mongol has the scale of a Hollywood epic, it is a curiously hollow experience, leaving one unsatisfied and none the wiser about the driving motives of this fascinating historical figure.

Beginning with our main character Temudjin, who will become Genghis Khan, trapped in a dank cell, the story promptly zips back 20 years to properly introduce us, setting up an engaging first hour, with young Temudjin played by an excellent child actor called Odnyam Odsuren. As the film rolls into its second hour though, the cracks begin to show. Perhaps it’s a sign of Mongol being cut down from a much longer film, but whole chunks of time seem to be missing, making it impossible to determine from one scene to the next whether we have moved forward a day or a year. Writer/director Sergei Bodrov also has an infuriating tendency of cutting away from the action when Temudjin is in life-threatening situations, and then picking up the story later when he is safe, leaving us to assume that he somehow must have escaped! These bizarre time shifts and narrative jumps work against the story making any kind of overall sense, and compound its lack of emotional impact. There is supposed to be a passionate love story at the heart of Mongol, but it left me cold.

Bodrov’s aim must have been to create a Mongolian Braveheart, but where Mel Gibson’s epic gave us a strong central character and incredible, visceral action, Mongol has swathes of exposition with zero human insight and blink and you’ll miss ‘em battle scenes. In this era of action on a Lord of the Rings scale, Mongol’s three brief clashes are disappointing. The final battle in particular is a real let down, ending abruptly in order to bring some very predictable thematic repetition into the story.

Equally, those looking for some insight into the historical person of Genghis Khan will be left wanting; this film covers plenty of events but makes no attempt to get into the heart and mind of Genghis, so we get to the end of the film pretty clueless as to why he lived as he did.

Where Mongol succeeds is in its appearance, the beautiful cinematography creating a strong sense of something grand unfolding. The beginning of the film is particularly lovely to look at, and there is also one striking use of the reverse zoom effect that Hitchcock patented in Vertigo. If only there was something worth watching going on amongst the breathtaking views.

Info:
Director: Sergei Bodrov
Writers: Arif Aliyev, Sergei Bodrov
Cast: Tadanobu Asano, Khulan Chuluun, Honglei Sun, Odnyam Odsuren
Cert: 15
UK release: 6 June

Sex and the City

Screen Fever Score: 7/10

Verdict:
A refreshingly grown-up take on love and relationships which, while not quite at home on the cinema screen, is much better than most Hollywood rom-coms.

Full review:
Last week’s return of Indiana Jones was a momentous occasion for me, a movie event I’d been waiting many years to see realised, and one which when it finally came brought equal amounts of pleasure and disappointment. It didn’t escape my attention that the arrival of Carrie Bradshaw et al on the big screen was an equally anticipated event, albeit by a different, and perhaps even more demanding, audience.

But this time I was in a rather different position. Having never seen an episode of the smash hit TV series, I approached this movie as just another of 2008’s slate of summer blockbusters, while also wondering if my unfamiliarity with the show would make its near two and a half hours a pretty redundant experience. Happily, the film was most welcoming to a Sex and the City virgin; an opening montage featuring some thumbnail sketches of the characters and a quick blast through six series’ worth of feelings, frocks and that other f-word did a fine job of bringing me up to speed.

Initially the story centres on Carrie’s impending wedding to John James Preston - more commonly known as Mr Big – but as events unfold SATC’s focus expands. While this firstly feels like a mis-step, it ultimately makes for a better film. After a first hour that deftly balances character stuff, fashion stuff and fun stuff – including several trying-on-outfits scenes that show 27 Dresses how it should really be done - the film comes to something of a standstill as the girls hightail it to Mexico. While the change of situation allows for some fine comedy moments, the attempts at more serious reflection fall flat, and it’s a relief when they finally get back to New York and things get interesting again. It's here that the film settles into four distinct story strands, each eventually heading to satisfying and not-wholly-predictable conclusions.

Despite its title, the film isn’t really about sex. There’s still a fair amount of bedroom action in it, but each narrative strand is actually more focused on the pleasures, struggles and challenges of trying to make a long-term grown-up relationship work. Writer/director Michael Patrick King’s great achievement is to tackle this theme in a mature and complex way (particularly in the Carrie/Big and Miranda/Steve threads) without ever losing sight of the need to also be funny and entertaining. In this respect SATC sits head and shoulders above countless empty-headed romantic comedies, and it is a unique pleasure indeed to enjoy a summer event movie for the quality of its writing, complemented by a cast who really know their characters inside-out.

The flipside of this is that the material is not particularly cinematic, and King does nothing to pull the show out of its small-screen roots; only a handful of shots really benefit from big-screen projection, and for the most part this would work just as well as a one-off TV special. Also unsatisfying is an occasional reliance on unconvincing plot turns in order to get the characters into particular situations. Most frustratingly, the key moment of the story centres around a missed phone call, which feels too much like an easy get-out for the writer.

But these are not major complaints, and overall Sex and the City is an unexpected pleasure, offering warm humour, excellent performances and a little insight. Judged against any recent film of its type, it proves that the movies could really learn something about good writing and believable storytelling from the ‘lesser’ world of television.

Info:
Writer/director: Michael Patrick King
Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Catrall, Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Jennifer Hudson
Cert: 15
UK release: 28 May

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Screen Fever Score: 7/10

Verdict:
Harrison Ford returns to the role of his life with solid-gold movie star style, but Steven Spielberg can’t quite match him, making a film that’s too much whizz-bang visuals and not enough heart. It's fun, but not a patch on Raiders of the Lost Ark.


Full review:
I should really have learned by now, after a good few decades of movie watching, that the biggest of blockbusters will most likely fail to live up to expectations. Especially if it’s a long-time-coming sequel to a much-loved series. Still, I couldn’t help hoping that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull might just break the mould, and actually be the Best Movie Of All Time. It’s probably not surprising to you to hear that it isn’t. In fact, it’s not even the best film of this year so far, and by my current reckoning it will probably end up fighting Temple of Doom in the film annals for the dubious honour of “least-good Indiana Jones film ever made”.

So that’s the hard part out of the way, but thankfully, it’s not the end of the story; because even though Indy 4 isn’t a classic, it does offer a lot to enjoy in the way of old-fashioned action thrills – at least in the moments when Spielberg keeps away from his pesky box of digital effects trickery.

The story begins, after a scene-setting credits sequence, in the usual Indy style, at the tail-end of an adventure we never see the start of, with Indy, 20 years older than we remember, being dragged out of a car boot in the Nevada desert. Time has moved on since his wartime adventures, so now the baddies are Russian, and our grizzled but still instantly recognisable hero is their captive. By his side is a new colleague, Ray Winstone’s cowardly Mac, and in his face a new nemesis, Irana Spalko, a fantastic Cate Blanchett boasting a severe haircut and a ridiculous Ruski accent. The stage is set, and the action kicks off. The story that unfolds incorporates old and new characters; Shia LeBeouf cements his movie star status as young rebel Mutt, Karen Allen makes a welcome return as Raiders’ Marion Ravenwood and John Hurt and Jim Broadbent have small but significant roles as key characters (although ‘plot devices’ would be a better description of their impact in the film).

But even with its glowing cast list, Indy 4 is really a one-man show, and it primarily reminded me why Harrison Ford really is a world-class movie star. He is Indiana Jones, and even after 19 years away he is in complete command of the role. His performance in Crystal Skull offers up a plethora of iconic moments that confirm why we love these movies: a moment in his study with Mutt when Indy’s eyes light up at the prospect of a new adventure; a hilarious exchange with old flame Marion as they face certain (ahem) doom in a sinking bog; and of course, trading punches with a pesky Russian soldier who will just not give up. Ford convinces in every moment, getting to display a lightness and sense of humour that we haven’t seen from him since, well, the last Indy movie.

But if Ford slips back into character like he’s never been away, the same can’t be said of Spielberg. While there are some knock-out moments of big-screen magic (Indiana Jones encountering a nuclear mushroom cloud being the most jaw-dropping) Crystal Skull too often feels forced, like Spielberg is trying to recapture the spirit of the earlier films, but it’s not coming so naturally any more. Occasionally the tone is too silly, as when Mutt swings through the jungle with a tribe of monkeys in tow, and at other times action sequences seem to lack the intensity of Jones’s former escapades. The cliff-top jeep battle should be the most exciting, thrilling piece of action escapism that we see in 2008, but it comes off as flat. Even while watching it, it’s the idea of what’s happening that is more exciting than the actual execution of it on-screen. This isn’t helped by some very scrappy green-screen work, which pulls the audience out of the action all the more.

But a less than top-of-his-game Spielberg is still preferable to the majority of mainstream Hollywood directors working today, and Crystal Skull’s first half in particular contains some golden material, mainly resulting from the change of time period. It’s 1957, Elvis’s Hound Dog soundtracks the rip-roaring opening scene and Indy first encounters Mutt in a classic ‘50s diner (just think; set 2 years earlier we could have conceivably been seeing Indiana Jones come face to face with Marty McFly – now that’s a mash-up I’d pay good money to see!). Said diner is the starting point for one of the best set-pieces in the movie, as Indy and Mutt instigate a fight in order to elude some shady KGB men, consequently jumping on Mutt’s bike and starting a breakneck chase through Indy’s college campus grounds. The chase has a touch of the Bourne films about it in its audacious staging, but the sheer sense of fun is classic Spielberg. It ends with a pay-off line from Indy that is the icing on the cake of Crystal Skull’s most enjoyable sequence.

Sadly, as the film progresses Spielberg relies more heavily on CG effects to achieve his goals, resulting in a big finale that sees Indy sidelined in favour of a screen filled with digital effects that are all spark and no fizz. To Spielberg’s credit, the very end of the film is perfect, with a final exchange between Indy and Mutt that’s warm, funny and knowing in all the right ways. It’s that spark of humanity that makes the Indy movies so great, and it’s that which is crucially missing from Crystal Skull’s key grandstanding moments.

Info:
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writer: David Koepp
Cast: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LeBeouf, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent
Cert: 12A
UK release: 22 May

Smart People

Screen Fever Score: 6/10

Verdict:

Too many over-familiar indie movie trappings to be essential viewing, but worth checking out for its well-written characters and great performances.

Full review:
A little film with a big cast, Smart People could easily be dismissed as yet another self-involved indie flick in the style made popular by Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach et al. But under the familiar surface are some interesting and well-drawn characters, brought to life by strong performances from Dennis Quaid and Ellen Page in particular. The film, from debut directing/writing team Noam Murro and Mark Poirier, takes a gently humorous look at the lives of a family of intellectually ‘smart’ people who, it becomes painfully clear, have no idea how to engage with the real world.

Quaid plays Lawrence, a widowed university professor who lives a selfish existence ignoring the emotional needs of his two teenage children, and is none too pleased when his adopted slacker brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church) turns up in need of somewhere to live. Matters are complicated further when Lawrence ends up in the ER after some ill-advised trespassing, and there encounters Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker), an old student of his and now head of the ER. A romantic connection of sorts ensues, but only serves to highlight Lawrence’s complete inability to connect meaningfully with others.

Similarly stunted in her emotional growth is Vanessa (Page), Lawrence’s daughter, an uptight and old-before-her-time Young Republican whose sole focus is on getting a perfect score in her SATs. Vanessa’s quick wit and sharp tongue make her immediately reminiscent of Juno MacGuff, but in truth she is a much more complex character, in denial of her own neediness, leading to a fumbling attempt to get closer to the bemused Chuck. Page’s performance is marked by the same skill and subtlety that earned her an Oscar nomination for Juno, and is one of the film’s highlights.

Some over-familiar indie movie elements make Smart People difficult to warm to, particularly the seemingly obligatory intrusive acoustic soundtrack, and the initial feeling that we have seen these characters before. In the case of Chuck that’s not too far from the truth, as Church is basically doing the same slobby thing he did, to similarly entertaining effect, in Sideways. There’s also some fudging of issues in the latter third of the film, with things working out much too easily for all concerned; a little more reality wouldn’t have gone amiss. Nowhere near top of its class then, but Smart People has enough interesting elements to mark Murro and Poirier as a creative team to watch.

Info:
Director: Noam Murro
Writer: Mark Poirier
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church, Sarah Jessica Parker
Cert: 15
UK release: 16 May