Alice in Wonderland (futuremovies.co.uk)

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)

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)

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

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

Astro Boy (futuremovies.co.uk)

Loosely rooted in a classic Japanese comics series, Astro Boy is an animated tale set in that future that currently seems to be the only conceivable one for filmmakers, in which earth’s environment has been destroyed and humans have set up a new society; in this case a city that hovers miles above the abandoned surface. The film’s stylized opening lays out the rules of this robot-assisted world, but while it’s a cute little sequence you may find yourself zoning out before the story proper has even begun, as the set-up is so clearly a primary-coloured version of a scenario we’ve seen many times over the last decade in everything from I, Robot to WALL-E.

The boy of the title is a supercharged version of the service robots that populate this world, created by the government’s chief weapons and robots specialist, Dr Tenma (voiced by Nicolas Cage). Tenma builds Astro Boy (Freddie Highmore) as a robotic replacement for his son Toby, who is tragically killed after sneaking into one of Tenma’s weapons testing experiments. The inventor soon realises that the robot can’t replace his son though, and kicks Astro Boy out of his house. Meanwhile, war-crazy President Stone (Donald Sutherland) wants to get his hands on Astro Boy’s uniquely powered robot heart to bring a massive weapon called The Peace Keeper to life. Astro Boy finds his way down to earth’s surface and joins up with a band of resourceful orphans, hoping to find his place in the world and stay out of Stone’s clutches.

It’s ironic that Astro Boy’s story is rooted in the concept of uniqueness and invention, as director David Bowers (Flushed Away) has failed to come up with a single original idea in his telling of it. Instead, he steals visual and thematic concepts from wherever he chooses and piles them up with no foundation, leaving his film with zero integrity. The basic story is obviously reminiscent of Pinocchio and Speilberg’s A.I, but these two films come with serious philosophical baggage that Bowers simply attempts to ignore, unsuccessfully. You can’t introduce a robot character in the image of a dead human and just assume that the audience is immediately going to love and root for it. Pinocchio wanted to be a real live boy, so that’s an easy motivation to root for. But Astro Boy wants to be loved, and Bowers gives us no good reason to love him. He’s just a hunk of metal, and I’m still mourning the poor dead kid from the beginning! Maybe Bowers watched WALL-E and was fooled by how easily Andrew Stanton seemed to transfer human emotions and soul-searching to a robot character. If anything, Astro Boy proves that’s much harder than it looks.

The same is true in the action stakes; all the big action beats in Astro Boy are direct rip-offs of the huge fight sequences from Iron Man and the Transformers movies, and have none of the wit or visual invention of Monsters vs. Aliens, last year’s Dreamworks hit that perhaps represents the kind of tone Bowers was actually going for. What he ended up with was a hugely problematic mess.

The script, by Bowers and Timothy Harris (who in a previous life was a co-writer on 80s comedy classic Trading Places) is dire, peppered with weak political jokes that kids won’t get and adults will find patronising. The writers' only conclusion appears to be that violence solves everything, and arms that can turn into cannons are way cool!

To top it all off, the film contains the least convincing voice acting I have ever heard, with Cage in particular sounding like he’s been recorded at a script read-through, prior to being given any direction.

The swelling of the nominees list from three to five for this year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar confirms the level of quality that animated filmmaking has hit in the past year. Astro Boy has no place in a movie landscape that is producing genuine classics like Up and Coraline, as well as lower budgeted gems like The Secret of Kells. Its poor showing at the American box office last year shows that audiences know it too, and demand better.

2/10

Astro Boy is out in the UK on 5th February. This review is also on futuremovies.co.uk