Movie reviews for greedy capitalist bastards

ANTICHRIST - emotional psychodrama

2009-07-17T07:38:00.004Z

ANTICHRIST is, to my mind, Danish auteur Lars von Trier's best film since DANCER IN THE DARK. Forget the hype - ignore talk of genital mutilation and talking foxes - at core this is a deeply felt, beautifully filmed story of grief and religious guilt.

The film opens with a prologue shot in black and white, in extreme slow motion, set to a haunting aria about escaping tragic fate. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play a married couple having passionate sex. Their is graphic nudity, but it's not sensational. The camera focuses on the wife's face as she climaxes. The footage is intercut with scenes showing the couple's toddler leaving his cot, climbing onto a table and falling out of their apartment window to his death. It is immediately apparent that Lars von Trier is going to be tackling issues of women's sexuality as conceived in religious propaganda: a woman can be a mother or a whore, and the price of climax is to lose the child.

We then cut to the first chapter in the story, "Grief", and the movie switches back to real-time, colour and naturalistic acting. The chapter sees the mother unable to move beyond grief, consumed with guilt at having left her son unattended. The father, a psychotherapist, wants to take her out of hospital and off meds. He thinks grief is natural and has to be confronted and worked through. She thinks he's arrogant, but submits to his plan. The acting in this chapter is superlative. I've never seen such an honest and touching evocation of guilt on screen. Charlotte Gainsbourg earns her Best Actress award at Cannes in spades. And when you consider that Lars von Trier is often seen as a technical master, but just a jokester, this is simply stunning work.

The second chapter, "Pain (Chaos Reigns") sees the couple journeying to their country cabin in the woods to confront the wife's fear of "nature red in tooth and clear". The husband tries to remain rational and evidently loves his wife dearly, but even he is saying unnatural, Shakespearian, portents - wild animals disfigured, damaged and dying. The wife can't shake off her fear: nature is dying and evil, "Satan's Church". She wakes up one morning, seemingly cured, but her husband distrusts the cure, as do we. Once again, the acting and emotional content in this chapter is searing, and the subtle build-up of dread masterly. I particularly liked the way in which DP Anthony Dod Mantle warps the image at the edges to give a feel of surreality. Sometimes the imagery is so beautiful it's as heart-breaking as the content. The only problem is the final image, where a fox intones "chaos reigns". We all laughed. Maybe that's what we needed? Maybe it's Lars von Trier showing us that even in the midst of the most serious material he can still be a prankster. Either way, I think the movie would've been better without it. But then, it wouldn't be a Lars von Trier film!

The third chapter, "Despair (Gynocide)" is where the stuff that you've read about starts to happen. The wife was writing a thesis on the medieval church's cruel treatment of women which centred heavily on sexually active, powerful women being burned as witches. While researching in the log cabin a year ago, she came to the conclusion that the women actually deserved that punishment. In other words she has become a self-hating woman - a female misogynist. What follows in this chapter and the next, "The Three Beggars", is that the wife descends into madness and takes out her anger on her husband and herself. It is savage - both graphic - and emotionally freakish. But that is all, I think, called for. I never felt that the material was sensationalist, and, once again, Charlotte Gainsbourg must be praised for making it seem credible. I love the ambiguity of whether her greatest fear was "Me" as in herself of "Me" as in her husband. I love the ambiguity of whether she really was complicit in her son's murder. And I love the physical ambiguity in the prologue.

I think the real problem with ANTICHRIST is the sensationalist title, the aforementioned Fox scene, and the fact that it is going to be the victim of its own hype. The movie actually struck me as a bit banal - I had thought it would be up their with SALO but it's nowhere near. But when you reflect on it calmly, and see it for what it is, it remains an impressive, provocative and actually very moving piece of work. And no, a movie about a woman turned misogynist is not, of itself, misogynist, any more than BORAT was racist.

ANTICHRIST played Cannes 2009, where Charlotte Gainsbourg won Best Actress. It opened earlier this year in Denmark, Italy, Finland, France, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Kazakhstan and Russia. It opens in the UK on July 24th, but is on preview at the Curzon Soho next week. It opens in Spain on August 21st; in Brazil on August 28th; in Germany on September 10th; in Belgium on September 15th; in Romania on October 16th; in the USA on October 23rd and in the Netherlands on October 29th.

HARRY POTTER & THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE - bland

2009-07-15T18:35:00.005Z

The sixth installment of the HARRY POTTER saga is a perfectly serviceable and enjoyable addition to the franchise. The movie wastes no time in establishing the characters and the story so far - so neither will I. After all, how can you spoil a movie when everyone's read the books? Technically, the film works fine. Steve Kloves has done a good job of condensing the material without being too slavish and Bruno Delbonnel has filmed it in the same warm, dark tones as A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT. The special effects and production design are top-notch. The performances are particularly strong - all the regulars do well, with Daniel Radcliffe given a chance to play some comedy, rather than just look put-upon. Among the new-comers, Jessie Cave plays comedy brilliantly as Ron Weasley's first girlfriend and Evanna Lynch steals every scene as Luna Lovegood.

For all that, I did have two problems with the film. Not big enough to kill my enjoyment, but flaws nonetheless. First, the movie lacks any real inventiveness or directorial stamp, in the manner of Alfonso Cuarón's AZKABAN. Second, the film is too biased in favour of the teen rom-com material in the novel at the expense of properly developing the serious material concerning Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, horcruxes, Snape and Malfoy. The films have been getting progressively darker and more emotionally satisfying. The last movie featured a genuinely scary scene with Ralph Fieenes. But this movie went for the easy laughs. And in doing so, the film-makers dropped the ball. Take, for example, the limited screen-time and development of Draco Malfoy. That's an emotional struggle to get your teeth into, but his final confrontation with Dumbledore is very brief. And what about the identity of the Half Blood Prince? That's revealed almost as an aside!

So, top marks for light laughs: but they dropped the ball on the darker content.

HARRY POTTER & THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE is on global release.

BRÜNO - Professor007 lays down the wisdom

2009-07-11T15:31:00.002Z

This review was written by our Austrian correspondent, Professor007

BRÜNO – In your face, but very funny

Arguably, what made Borat so good was not so much the slapstick-like scenes of him mincing around in mankinis or pooing on a sidewalk in Manhattan, but the way in which he managed to bring out the dark sides of otherwise normal-seeming people: the interviewee responding that he would have no problem with Borat shooting jews; the car salesman advising on the minimum speed to run over gypsies in a Hummer; or a crowd cheering when Borat proclaims that George Bush may drink the blood of every man, woman, and child in Iraq. Brϋno, a gay Austrian reporter for fashion show Funkyzeit, has made himself “Aus” of the Viennese fashion circles after causing havoc during a fashion show and leaves his country in order to seek fame in the United States, accompanied solely by his former assistant’s assistant, Lutz. He starts his quest in LA where he consecutively tries and fails to become a film star, a celebrity talk show host and a porn star, in-between hopping rather randomly from Kansas to Alabama with a short detour to the Middle East and Africa, in a rather haphazard storyline. In terms of wit and sarcasm, Brϋno doesn’t quite match his Kazakh predecessor. Granted, there is the scene where a human rights activist sits down on a Mexican worker doubling as a chair, explaining how much she loves to help suppressed people; and the Alabama priest trying to cure Brϋno from his homosexuality. However, most of the scenes live from their grotesqueness, constantly bordering on the ethically unacceptable and culminating in the homoerotic showdown between Lutz and Brϋno in a fighting cage. Which is not to say it’s any less enjoyable to see: if you enjoy (penis) in-your-face humour, you will, like me, walk out of the movie with your belly aching from laughter.

Finally, what does the Austrian in me have to say? Apart from me simply enjoying an occasional evening of crass humour, I certainly also went to be prepared for the inevitable ridicule I would have to suffer as an Austrian following Brϋno’s release. I’m not quite sure yet whether I should be relieved or disappointed, but there’s surprisingly little on the theme of my homeland, so I hope it will cause a little less upheaval in Austria than Borat did in the Kazakhstan.

BRUNO is on release in Australia, Belgium, Iceland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK and USA. It opens next weekend in France and Russia and on July 31st in Brazil. It opens on August 6th in the Czech Republic; on August 14th in Turkey; on August 20th in Singapore; on September 25th in Mexico; on October 15th in Argentina and on October 23rd in Italy.

FIRED UP - piss-poor teen "comedy"

2009-07-10T06:12:00.000Z

From the Director of the piss-poor DUMB AND DUMBERER and an untested writer comes a lame-ass teen comedy, whose limited ambitions can be summed up by the fact that the film-makers think the abbreviation of its title is funny. Nicholas d'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen (no you won't have heard of them) play two jocks who decide to become cheerleaders in order to get laid. Because evidently girls are attracted to guys who cheer rather than guys who play ball. But it's okay, because after an hour of weak gags about getting laid, what the chaps discover is that all they really want is to be part of a team.

The premise of the movie is paper-thin and implausible. Still, teen rom-coms - a highly stylised genre - have survived worse. What really does for this movie is the under-powered script (compare how the MILF storyline is handled here to AMERICAN PIE), not to mention the fact that the actors are at least ten years too old for the parts. What the director and screen-writer have forgotten is that the best lewd and crude teen comedies satisfy on two levels - they really go for the gross-out comedy but they also have an emotional pull. In AMERICAN PIE we laughed at the jokes but we also sympathised with the geeks. FIRED UP neither pushes the jokes far enough nor creates any emotional depth.

FIRED UP was released in the US, Australia and Kazakhstan earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK. It opens in South Africa on August 7th.

PUBLIC ENEMIES - is that it?

2009-07-07T19:13:00.007Z

Man, this movie was boring. I mean, eye-rollingly, "should I walk out?", "what should I make for dinner?" boring. And all this, despite the fact that I really like Johnny Depp and Christian Bale as actors, I really like gangster movies, and I respect Michael Mann as a director. Maybe it's the script? Maybe it's the cheap-looking, distractingly hand-held DV shooting-style? Maybe it's the fact that Michael Mann just isn't that interested in who John Dillinger really was? But this biopic of one of America's most notorious bank robbers lacks energy and drive. It just never got me by the proverbial balls and made me care.

What a shame. What better time to make a film about a folk hero who robbed the banks that were foreclosing on honest, hard-working folk at the height of the Great Depression? What better time to show the FBI abusing civil rights in its mad dash to imprison Public Enemy Number One? But Michael Mann isn't really interested in all that.

He's interested in telling the same old Michael Mann story - where real men are defined by their job and real movies are about real men who cannot, for some reason, continue in that job, and enter an existential crisis. So here's John Dillinger as the man who robs banks, never leaves a pal behind bars, and offers his coat to ladies. He isn't closed down by the Feds but, more fundamentally, by the crime syndicates who realise that bank robbery is bad for the real business of gaming rackets. Impeded from his typical modus operandi, Dillinger is forced to take work with the psychopath Babyface Nelson - a much higher stakes game.

Don't get me wrong - DV aside - this isn't a bad film. Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard all give decent performances. Stephen Graham as Babyface Nelson is actually superb. But the resulting film is, like bad schoolboy history, just one damn thing after another. I finished up not really knowing why Dillinger loved Billie or why he felt compelled to do what he did or what was going on in Melvin Purvis head. Despite a classic shoot-out sequence it lacks the momentum for an action movie. And despite the ponderous pace and period detail, it lacks the beauty and complexity of a film like THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD. Which makes the movie ultimately an exercise in clever but ultimately vacuous film-making.

PUBLIC ENEMIES is on release in the USA, Canada, the UK, Greece, Denmark, France, Indonesia, Morocco, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Israel, Slovakia, South Korea, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Turkey. It opens on July 23rd in Belgium, Hong Kong, Russia, Singapore, Ukraine, Brazil, Norway, Sweden, Egypt, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Iceland, Germany, Portugal, Finland, Romania, Spain and Italy.

RUDO Y CURSI - funny Mexican fable

2009-07-06T20:03:00.003Z

RUDO Y CURSI is a tongue in cheek Mexican fable about being careful what you wish for and love-hate sibling relationships. Rudo (Rough) and Cursi (both "smooth" and "camp") and two step-brothers living in poverty in rural Mexico. Both have ludicrous dreams of escape - Rudo has his gambling "system" and Cursi wants to go to America and become a pop star. When fortune favours them in the form of a travelling football scout, their key mistake is their refusal to forget their childhood dreams and just be thankful for what they have.

The resulting film is very funny - physical humour, obscene jokes, and a warm-hearted mockery of village life and the naivety of poor kids who see a jacuzzi for the first time. When Rudi becomes a big-time goal-keeper he gets a hair-quiff and ray-bans; Cursi gets vulgar blonde highlights and a gold-digging girlfriend. Both make themselves ridiculous. Writer-director Carlos Cuaron has a better sense of the absurd than his brother Alfonso and has made a more playful, if more disposable, movie. I love the way he uses colour and language and frames his shots. A particularly clever device is not to actually show any soccer footage early on in the film but to show reaction shots to Cursi scoring goals.

Put simply, I had a great time watching this flick and I can't wait to see what Carlos Cuaron does next.

RUDO Y CURSI was released in Mexico last year and in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Spain, Uruguay, Panama, the USA, Canada and Israel earlier this year. It is currently on release in Portugal and the UK. It opens in a fortnight in the Netherlands. It opens in Belgium on September 30th.

HANNAH MONTANTA - THE MOVIE: way better than it ought to be

2009-07-05T21:37:00.001Z

The shameful truth is that the HANNAH MONTANA movie is a perfectly watchable, highly enjoyable teen rom-com even for people like me who aren't in the target demographic. It's well made, well written, funny when it should be funny, sweet when it should be sweet, and even though it stays within the constraints of the genre, it's at the top of its league. Essentially the film is a classic double-identity comedy in the manner of SHE'S THE MAN or, for people who were the right demographic in the 80s, THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS. Indeed, it's the same emotional core that powers superhero flicks like SPIDERMAN and SUPERMAN. Miley Cyrus plays a character based on herself - a Tennessee teen who has found fame as a pop-star called Hannah Montana. Her father (real life dad Billy-Ray Cyrus) and her family are in on the secret but back home, everyone just knows her as Miley. Drunk on success and the Hollywood lifestyle, dad takes Miley/Hannah back to Tennessee where she falls for the local farmboy (PRINCESS BRIDE fans!) and dad falls for someone too. Problem is, both relationships are compromised by the lies and craziness around protecting Hannah Montana's real identity when she comes to town to play a concert that will save some local land for evil developers. I rather like the idea that a Disney movie can confront the Hannah fans with the inherent weirdness of teen stardom and the dual (if not triple) identity on which the successful franchise rests. No surprises that the resolution is no resolution at all: home-town values may be best; honesty may be best; but the fans still need a product, and Miley still needs to sing.

HANNAH MONTANA - THE MOVIE was released in April 2009. It is currently on release in Argentina, New Zealand, Romania, Belgium, Indonesia and the Philippines. It is released on July 30th in Portugal, on August 19th in the Netherlands and on August 28th in Venezuela.

MY SISTER'S KEEPER - slippery

2009-07-04T09:12:00.000Z

Not having read Jodi Picoult's book, and going purely by the trailers, I had thought that MY SISTER'S KEEPER would be a provocative courtroom drama examining the moral and legal issues around "savior siblings" - that is, children conceived in order to provide perfect match organs to their cancer-ridden siblings. But MY SISTER'S KEEPER isn't actually interested in the legal dilemma but the simpler story of a family under extraordinary emotional pressure. Yes, the other siblings may be taken for granted by their parents, but it isn't really the issue of organ-harvesting but a wider issue of just spending time with them. And the movie isn't so much about the ethics of taking organs from children who cannot consent, but about coming to terms with the fact that people die and not all battles can be won. In other words, this is a Weepie rather than an intellectual film.

To the extent that this movie wasn't a courtroom drama, I was disappointed. And I was rather annoyed at the slippery way in which this aspect of the movie was derailed. But then again, how credible was a courtroom drama really going to be given that Cameron Diaz is cast as the aggressively pro-organ donation lawyer-mother - a role beyond her ability - and Alec Baldwin (a prisoner of his 30 ROCK persona) was cast as opposing council. Only Joan Cusack, as a grieving mother and presiding Judge, adds any emotional weight and credibility to those scenes.

So how did the resulting emotional drama hold up? I didn't like a lot of the stylistic choices - particularly the voice-overs from the different characters explaining their points of view. (Although this is apparently a feature of the book). I especially didn't like the happy-family sunlit montages set to schmaltzy music. Jason Patric as the passive father looked mostly bored. Cameron Diaz as the aggressive mother looked mostly hysterical. Aunt Kelly looked entirely redundant. Ignored younger brother Jesse just looked mopey and is it me, or is Abigail Breslin just acting the same in all her films.? I feel she is over-exposed. The only thing that saved the story was the luminous lead performance from Sofia Vassilieva as the cancer-ridden teen, the touching evocation of her first and only romance with a fellow patient, and the realistic portrayal of her illness. This girl is definitely one to watch. I also applaud the writer-director for creating an ending that is, apparently, more realistic than that in the original novel.

MY SISTER'S KEEPER is on release in the UK, USA, Canada and Mexico. It opens next week in Iceland and Greece. It opens on July 30th in Australia and New Zealand; on August 6th in Slovakia; on August 13th in Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan; on August 21st in Romania, on August 27th in the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, and Bulgaria; on September 4th in Italy and Norway; on September August 9th in September; on September 17th in Portugal; on September 23rd in Belgium, Argentina, Brazil and Sweden; and on December 4th in Finland.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 (2009) - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

2009-07-03T20:44:00.001Z

For all its hi-fi sets, frenetic chase scenes, shouted ultimatums and heavyweight cast, THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 is a movie that fails to engage. It's like the TRANSFORMERS 2 of heist movies - so full of high-voltage action shots that plot, character and audience empathy are flushed down the toilet. Are we surprised? After all, the movie has been remade by the ultimate Lads Mag Director, Tony Scott, of TOP GUN fame and DOMINO and DEJA VU mediocrity. But maybe I am a bit surprised to find that this utterly predictable movie was written by the man who wrote LA CONFIDENTIAL. Essentially, the movie is about a psychopath (John Travolta chewing up the scenery) who boards a New York metro train, takes the passengers hostage and demands a bunch of money. He forms a weird relationship with a rail dispatcher with a shady past (Denzel Washington), and spurns the attentions of the cops (John Turturro) and the Mayor (James Gandolfini). The movie could've been so much better - a fracked up psychological cat-and-mouse game between hostage-taker and dispatcher - a discourse on the corruption of politicians and the police. On a technical level, it should've evoked the claustrophobia of the hijacked metro-cab and the wider menace of The City. In the end, it's all just a convenient hook to hang a chase scene on. Weak, weak, weak. Go watch INSIDE MAN instead.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 is on release in the USA, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Singapore, South Korea, UAE, Canada, the Philippines, Taiwan and Argentina. It opens in the final week of July in the UK, Greece, Malaysia, Austria, Spain, Belgium, France, Morocco, Switzerland, Israel, Kazakhstan, Finland and Lithuania. It opens on August 6th in Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Romania. It opens on August 13th in the Czech Republic. It opens on September 4th in Slovakia, Brazil, Japan and Mexico. It opens on September 11th in Bulgaria; on September 17th in Cyprus, Portugal and Italy.

Justifiably overlooked DVD of the month - THICK AS THIEVES aka THE CODE

2009-07-02T18:08:00.002Z

Predictable, derivative straight-to-DVD heist flick, directed by Mimi Leder (PAY IT FORWARD DEEP IMPACT) and starring a pay-check motivated Morgan Freeman and a mis-cast Antonio Banderas. Freeman plays an elderly thief "Ripley" (winks to Highsmith), who recruits the younger, inexperienced, Banderas (youth signalled by wearing a hoodie.) Meanwhile, Banderas' character is having an affair with a Russian chick (Radha Mitchell). No double-cross or double-identity is left unturned, and the ending is ludicrously schmaltzy. Ted Humphrey's script is poorly conceptualised and the dialogue is hammy. Bulgaria makes a poor stand-in for New York. Mimi Leder's shooting style is over-stylised. And the cast is uniformly too old and ill-motivated. Avoid.

THICK AS THIEVES went straight to DVD in the UK and the US earlier this year.

TRANSFORMERS - REVENGE OF THE FALLEN - Michael Bay on the illusory nature of plot

2009-07-01T06:57:00.003Z

Michael Bay should be hung from crimes against cinema, so I am not planning to watch the new TRANSFORMERS flick, much less review it. That is, you see, the advantage of being a blogger rather than a respectable paid-up critic. I can bow to sheer prejudice. Clearly, I could be wrong. TRANSFORMERS 2 could be genius. If so, dear readers, do let me know. Till then, the following satire is, I am convinced, far more entertaining than watching unrelenting CGI bangs and crashes.....

Critical consensus on Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is overwhelmingly negative. But the critics are wrong. Michael Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers' worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot......

(Thanks to Andreas von Ohlsdorf for the tip.)

SUNSHINE CLEANING - shameless cash-in

2009-06-30T18:44:00.000Z

SUNSHINE CLEANING is a worthless film. The script is derivative, the tone mis-judged and the execution poor.

Essentially, the film is a shameless attempt to cash-in on the sleeper-success of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE by recasting its characters in another setting. Once again we have a family beset by financial crisis and suburban failure. Admittedly, instead of a married couple we have two sisters – one, a high school sweetheart turned mistress and cleaner – the other a troubled college drop-out. But, in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE style, we have a central relationship between an eccentric grandfather and an eccentric grandchild. The plot, such as it is, consists of the two sisters setting a crime-scene clean-up business in order to finance the kid’s private education.

The tone of the film also attempts to ape the black comedy of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE but the script isn’t funny enough for that. Rather, we get a poor attempt to make a light-hearted film about painful subject matter – suicide, drug use and failure.

Finally, there are the difficulties with the execution. Amy Adams is cast as the older sister, but looks and plays younger than Emily Blunt. Emily Blunt’s accent is unsure. And casting Alan Arkin as the eccentric grandfather only confirms the movie’s attempt to capture the same tone as LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. Technically, the film suffers from a muddy colour palette and uninspired camera-work, relieved only by two exceedingly clumsy pastiche slow-mo shots of the two sisters at the start of the film, in the style of Wes Anderson.

SUNSHINE CLEANING played Sundance 2008 and was released last year in the US. It was released earlier this year in Canada, Sweden, Israel, Greece, the Netherlands and Germany. It is currently on release in Belgium, France, Australia, South Africa and the UK. It opens next week in Denmark, the following week in Singapore and Japan and on August 6th in New Zealand.

BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE - derivative, plotless nonsense

2009-06-29T07:37:00.004Z

BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE had potential, making the final product even more tragic. In post-WWII Japan, half demon / half human Saya (Gianna Jun) teams up with the mysterious "Council" - an ancient and semi-official organisation dedicated to fighting the forces of darkness - to avenge her human father's death at the hands of a particularly vicious vampire - Onigen. Sound a little like BLADE? That's because it is a little like BLADE, except with a female lead, low-tech weaponry, no boning, and massive plot holes.

In fact, the gaps in the plot were so gaping that the whole experience was rather surreal. Several times I thought I'd nodded off for 10 minutes and missed a bunch of stuff - but no, it was just repeatedly non-sequitor. Things just happen ex-nihilo - characters turn on other characters with no discernible motive or cause. There is no build up towards anything - no progression toward some form of resolution - no real character development.

A love story is thrown in there, and just as suddenly thrown out. Demons appear out of nowhere, without any warning or reason, triggering another poorly animated fight scene before the next aimless plot moment. Characters drive along cliff-top roads for no good reason, going nowhere that we know of, only to act as a prop for random high speed sword slashing.

At one point, a demon chases an airplane with the main character in pursuit. We don't know why. We don't know who or what is on the plane, why the demon is after it, or how the main character knew the demon would be there. What is more confusing is that the demon has wings, and thus has no need of aerial transportation. These weird "how did they know that?" and "why is this happening?" and "that doesn't make sense..." moments maintain a sense of almost complete disconnectedness in the audience throughout.

Thus the film "progresses", jumping from vampire to vampire, eventually reaching a climax that was so deus ex machina and anti-climactic that I walked out to go to the loo believing it to be a dream sequence midway through the film. I piss, come back, and to my utter confusion find the credits rolling. WTF? **THAT** was the end?? Ya woh? Nothing actually happened!

So, overall, this is one to miss. The only semi-entertaining moment was when I realised the Army General in the first third of the movie was actually Larry Lamb, Peggy's errant ex in Eastenders, explaining his piss poor American accent. But that, and an uneasy sense of confusion and disorientation, really wasn't worth the eight quid fifty I paid to get in. Two thumbs down.

SYLVIA - dirge

2009-06-28T18:54:00.001Z

The first film I ever watched at the London Film Fest started a trend of disappointing opening and closing night galas - the programming dictated by commercial interests rather than artistic merit. The movie was Christine Jeffs' dismal biopic of Sylvia Plath: acclaimed poet; wife of the adulterous Ted Hughes; mother to two small children; and suicide. And if you think I'm being reductive, then that is exactly what this movie does: it reduces Plath and Hughes' relationship to a daytime TV melodrama. Oh how pretty tony, young Sylvia (Gwyneth Paltrow) looks! See how her hair shines! See how that devilishly handsome Ted Hughes gets tired of her and betrays her! See how she is martyred in a dismal British flat in dismal post-war London! Oh, how Paltrow emotes inner pain! The whole thing was utterly dull and unconvincing. The fault, however, does not lie with the actors, nor with the score, cinematography or any other matter of execution. It lies in the movie's conception as a touching homage to Sylvia rather than a genuinely engaged, insightful analysis of what was, by all accounts, a passionate marriage and a painful suicide that cruelly left behind small children. The resulting film simultaneously caused offence to Plath's family for daring to be made at all - but causes offence to its viewers by refusing to actually delve into the emotional torment at its heart. It is the same emotional evation that frustrated me in Christine Jeffs' new film, SUNSHINE CLEANING - another film that deals with quite dark, depressing subject matter and yet handles it with all the willingness to truly engage of a rom-com (but without the benefit of actual laughs).

SYLVIA played London 2003 and opened in 2003 and 2004. It is available on DVD.

ELECTRIC DREAMS - doesn't hold up well

2009-06-27T19:42:00.001Z

According to IMDBPro, Virginia Madsen is trying to remake the 1984 rom-com classic, ELECTRIC DREAMS. It’s a film I remember fondly my childhood, if only for the sound-track featuring Boy George and Heaven 17, but so hazy was my memory that I hadn’t realised that it starred Virgina Madsen or, indeed, the chap who went on to play Harry Smith in TWIN PEAKS. Back in the early 80s computers were new and exciting and oh so slightly threatening. The idea that a computer could malfunction, grow sentient and attempt to sabotage it’s geeky owner’s relationship with his new musician girlfriend was an easy sell. Rewatching the film today, it looks and feels hopelessly dated. The synthesiser music and computer screen visuals are pre-historic. The romantic dialogue between Madsen and Lenny von Dohlen is hackneyed – and seems to come from a more innocent age before social networking and speed dating. And most damning, the movie is shot almost as a series of pop videos – unsurprising given that its director, Steve Barron, didn’t direct another movie until 1990’s TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, but segued into music videos, notably Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. I rather wish I hadn’t revisited the film but had left it as a fond memory of early 80s excitement of a high-tech future. Steve Barron didn't direct another movie till TMNT in 1990 but did film legendary music videos like Billie Jean.

ELECTRIC DREAMS was released in 1984 and is available on DVD.

Late review - HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU

2009-06-16T18:24:00.001Z

HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU is a deeply depressing film about contemporary thirty-somethings dating, divorcing, marrying and generally entering into sado-masochistic relationships. The basic premise of the movie seems to be that women, and occasionally men, read too much into situations and end up getting hurt when they should just stop being delusional and move on....except for when the studio needs a Hollywood-cute ending, and they shouldn't, in fact, move on, but hold out for the fairytale happy ending. I dislike this movie for being too gutless to pursue its world-view to its logical end. I discard the movie for being so poorly directed by Ken Kwapis, whose priors include the abysmal Robin Williams vehicle, LICENSE TO WED. And I despise it for basically crafting a product aimed at women that seeks to, essentially, mock them for their delusional fantasies while simultaneously pandering to them. All this is not to discount the nuanced performances from Jennifer Connelly and Jennifer Aniston, but to regret their choice of script.

HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU was released in Spring 2009 and is released on DVD next week.

UP - lost me in Peru

2009-06-15T20:04:00.001Z

Directed by the guys who wrote animated features that set the bar for animation - WALL-E, FINDING NEMO and RATATOUILLE - UP further burnishes the reputation of Pixar. The first thirty minutes are as brilliant as anything in WALL-E. The movie opens with a "meet-cute" - two little kids play together - she gives him courage and doesn't mind that he doesn't speak too much. In an elegant montage we see them marry, love each other, miscarry, grow old together, and grieve alone. It's wonderfully done, and I was crying almost throughout. The movie continues with our hero, now an old man, left alone, holding out against the surrounding redevelopment project and life in a nursing home. The old man has a plan: he's going to hitch his house to thousands of helium balloons, travel to Peru and find a long-missing explorer. Only glitch is, a pesky boy scout was clinging to his balcony as he flew away. As this familiar cine-odd-couple fly off to Peru, I enjoyed the shift from pathos to comedy. But as the movie became a jungle adventure, I struggled to maintain interest. The mad-explorer who has descended into Mistah-Kurtz madness, surrounded by dogs fitted with collars that enable them to speak - seemed to come from a different movie. And seriously, if you had invented a dog-collar that allowed dogs to speak, you wouldn't need to scurry off in disgrace. The movie only just regains it's bearings in a lovely scene where the old man realises that the boy-scout gets no real parental attention.

UP played Cannes 2009 and is currently on release in Russia, Canada, the US, Egypt, Kuwait, Mexico, Argentina, Panama, Romania and Venezuela. It is released next week in New Zealand and the Ukraine. It opens on July 29th in France, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and Spain. It opens in August in Portugal, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Iceland and Greece. It opens in September in Germany, Bulgaria and Norway. It opens in October in Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, the UK and Japan.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (2009) - slick, terrifying, remake

2009-06-13T21:08:00.001Z

Adapted by the writer of the genuinely suspenseful RED EYE and DISTURBIA, this remake of the notoriously vicious horror flick, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, is satisfyingly nasty and surprisingly well-made. If the first film served as a commentary on the relentlessly brutal violence of a society at war in Vietnam and engaged in the civil rights struggle, the re-make comments on a society where "torture porn" rakes in the proverbial box office phat cash.

The film sets the tone of anticipated menace from the opening shot, wandering through a dark forest, followed by an extremely violent prologue as Krug is busted out of a prison transfer by his gang. The movie then shifts to a lighter tone - all the more menacing because we know we can't trust it. A spoiled, rich, beautiful teen girl and her lower class friend follow a strange boy to his motel to smoke pot. His father, uncle and their female hanger-on turn up, regret that the girls have seen their faces, and proceed to commit brutal acts of sexual violence. By a series of events that seem almost plausible, the criminals end up seeking shelter in the house of the parents of one of the girls they have just attacked. At first, the liberal, kind parents offer assistance. But when they realise what has happened they take brutal revenge.

I applaud director Dennis Iliadis for having the courage to depict violence in an unflinching, un-exploitative manner. I applaud him more for showing, in an extended middle section, the results of violence. As the father, a medic, tends to the wounds of one of the girls, we are forced to experience, through his reactions, the sheer physical destruction she has endured. This is no post-modern, teen-kicks horror. My only disappointment was in the final scene: it was so ludicrous it entirely broke the horrific mood of all that preceded it. I also note the screen-writer's deliberate choice to avoid the redemptive finale of the Ingmar Bergman movie based on the same material. A truly nihilistic message.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT was released earlier this year in the US, Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Iceland, the Czech Republic, Russia, Estonia, Finland, Mexico, Taiwan, Greece and Kazakhstan. It is currently on release on the Netherlands and the UK. It opens next week in Hungary and Turkey. It opens in July in Portugal, Spain, Denmark and Romania. It opens in August in Italy and Singapore. It opens in Brazil on November 27th.

THE HANGOVER - dude, where's my groom?

2009-06-12T20:32:00.001Z

THE HANGOVER is basically a rip-off of the Ashton Kutcher vehicle, "Dude, Where's My Car?". Except this time, the drunken idiots are a thirty-something bachelor party in Vegas and they've misplaced the groom, stolen Mike Tyson's tiger, and gotten married to a hooker. The morning after they have to piece together the events of the night before, rescue the groom and get him to the church on time.

Problem is that THE HANGOVER is only sporadically funny in a "mild chuckle" manner. Sure, the fat, weird guy is funny to look at, but mostly because he reminded me of THE BIG LEBOWSKI. And dear god, do we really want to milk comedy out the drunken-hooker-marriage plot? A Mike Tyson cameo is utterly wasted and after a while, I really started to miss the superior comic stylings of Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn et al. Overall, while I didn't have a bad time watching the film, it's certainly nowhere near the level of raucous hilarity of ROLE MODELS. Neither does it have the genuinely affecting camaraderie of PINEAPPLE EXPRESS.

The best things I can say about THE HANGOVER, is that it is definitely funnier than Todd Philips' efforts like SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS. And second, that Ken Jeong is screamingly funny in his cameo.

THE HANGOVER is on release in the USA, Canada, Iceland, Australia, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Slovakia, the Ukraine and the UK. It opens next weekend in Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Estonia, Italy and Norway. It opens on June 24th in Finland, France and Sweden. It opens on July 10th in Denmark, Romania and Turkey. It opens on July 24th in Germany and Austria and on July 30th in the Czech Republic, Israel and Malaysia. It opens on August 7th in Bulgaria and South Africa. It opens on August 14th in Argentina and Spain and on August 28th in Brazil.

Overlooked movie of the month part two - TRANSSIBERIAN

2009-06-09T18:47:00.000Z

After the freakish psychological horror of THE MACHINIST, Brad Anderson, made a more quiet, more realistic but equally unnerving thriller called TRANSSIBERIAN. Set aboard the infamous Russian train, the movie sees an apparently squeaky clean couple returning from missionary work, caught up in an international drugs heist. The tension builds slowly in classic Hitchcock style - the "otherness" of foreigners who don't speak your language is used to great effect. Woody Harrelson is convincing as the warm-hearted, naive Yank, clutching his Baedeker, but it's Emily Mortimer who steals the film as the seemingly fragile wife who is transformed by her entanglement with a mysterious Spanish lotharia and a laconic Russian copper (Ben Kingsley). TRANSSIBERIAN is a rare film that has something to say about modern Russia and a thriller that is genuinely tense and unnerving. My only criticism is that, in contrast with THE MACHINIST, the ending is a little too neat and the shooting style a little too Hollywood-conventional.

TRANSSIBERIAN played Sundance and Berlin 2008 and was released in the USA, Spain, Belgium, Greece, Germany and Turkey in 2008. It opened in Hungary, the Netherlands and Israel earlier this year. It is now available on DVD.

Overlooked movie of the month - THE MACHINIST

2009-06-08T21:55:00.001Z

Before TRANSSIBERIAN, Brad Anderson made a freakishly weird film called THE MACHINIST, little seen, and remembered chiefly for Christian Bale's alarming weight loss to play insomniac lathe-worker Trevor Reznik. Barcelona is transformed into the nightmarish Los Angles of David Lynch, with walking ghost Reznik aware that he is losing his mind, despite the best attempts of sympathetic hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and waitress (Aitana Sanchez Gijon). This marginalised man becomes ever more isolated, professionally and emotionally, menaced by a disfigured co-worker and eery post-it notes playing hangman. THE MACHINIST works brilliantly as a brooding, austere, psychological thriller cum mood piece. It's masterful, freakish, cinema on the edge for all those who crave movies about characters on the margins of society and on the brink of madness.

THE MACHINIST played Berlin and Toronto 2004. It was released in 2004 and 2005 and is available on DVD.

LOOKING FOR ERIC - The crowd call your name: They love you all the same

2009-06-07T14:59:00.001Z

LOOKING FOR ERIC is one of the best films I have seen this year. It has everything - by turns laugh-out-loud funny and desperately sad - beautifully acted - utterly authentic - a middle-aged rom-com and a telling depiction of life in modern England - not to mention an insightful analysis of modern professional football. Oh yes, and it contains a touching set of cameos from legendary centre-forward, sometime actor and incomprehensible philosophe*, Eric "King" Cantona.

The core of the film is a brilliant performance by Steve Evets as Eric Bishop, a middle-aged post-man on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He abandoned his beloved first wife, Lily, thirty years ago and is still riddled by shame. His second wife has abandoned him, leaving him with two surly teenage stepsons, entangled in gun-crime. In desperation, his sub-conscious summons up Eric Cantona - an inspirational leader who will give him the courage to re-connect with Lily and save his sons, chiefly by holding onto his friends and "trusting his team-mates".

The resulting film is a marvel of tight and courageous scripting. Writer Paul Laverty doesn't shy away from grief, or from bawdy British working-class humour. Somehow, the sentimental scenes never seem schmaltzy, the dramatic scenes never seem unrealistic or forced and the political commentary is handled lightly. Most impressively, Ken Loach had so carefully entwined the peril and the fantasy elements that I utterly bought into the rather fantastic and cathartic denouement.

Overall, LOOKING FOR ERIC is a wonderful and memorable film. People who don't know about soccer, or about Cantona, need not shy away from it. It's a deeply human, warm, dark, film. If I see a better movie this year, I'll be very surprised.

LOOKING FOR ERIC played Cannes 2009 but was beaten by Haneke's THE WHITE RIBBON for the Palme D'Or. It is currently on release in France and opens in Belgium and the UK next week. It opens in the Netherlands on September 17th, in Norway on October 16th, in Brazil on December 11th and in Spain on January 8th 2010.

*"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea."

LAST CHANCE HARVEY - I have got nothing To offer you Just this heart deep and true, Which you say you don't need

2009-06-06T18:40:00.007Z

The trailer to LAST CHANCE HARVEY makes it look like a Richard Curtis rom-com for the middle-aged. The actual movie is far more down-beat and far less funny, but still set in the Magic Movie London where lovers meet-cute, and you can get from Heathrow to the South Bank in an hour.

The first forty-five minutes of the movie sees the heroes of the romance get beat up by life. Dustin Hoffman's Harvey Shine is professionally and emotionally obsolete - writing jingles that seem old-hat, and usurped by his daughter's step-father at her wedding. Emma Thompson's Kate Walker is marginalised on a blind date, and harassed by her mother (in a redundant and under-developed sb-plot involving smoked ham). The second half of the movie sees our heroes finally meet and fall in love over a series of long conversations along the Thames. He makes her laugh: she gives him the courage to go to his daughter's wedding reception and make the mandatory schmaltzy redemptive speech.

The fundamental problem with LAST CHANCE HARVEY is the fact that, as charming as Hoffman and Thompson are, I didn't buy into them falling in love. The reason I didn't buy into it was that I didn't hear enough of their conversations and I didn't feel enough chemistry. Joel Hopkins makes the wrong choice in showing them falling in love as a series of montages set to a mediocre bouncy score. BEFORE SUNRISE and BEFORE SUNSET work as romantic dramas because we hear the characters fall in love as they discuss matters profound and trivial in an artless manner. LAST CHANCE HARVEY, which is basically BEFORE SUNRISE for grown-ups, has none of that artlessness. As a result, I simply didn't care.

LAST CHANCE HARVEY opened in the USA, Portugal, Australia, Belgium, France, Singapore, the Netherlands, Iceland, Israel, Mexico, Finland, Taiwan, Germany, New Zealand, Spain and Bulgaria earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK, Argentina and Sweden and opens later this month in Brazil and Norway. It opens in Denmark on July 24th.

TERMINATOR SALVATION - a lovely little walking toaster of your very own

2009-06-05T22:10:00.002Z

TERMINATOR SALVATION is a technically well-made, visually interesting addition to the franchise. Problem is, the plot and character ideas are so ill-developed that the action sequences lose all meaning and dissolve into one long roar of sound and fury.

All if which is a great shame, because director McG (of CHARLIE'S ANGELS fame) clearly had aspirations for greatness, citing influences from THE GREAT ESCAPE to Cormac McCarthy's grim post-apocalyptic novel, THE ROAD. The colour and design of this film is sombre and the mood serious. We have shots of a concrete building collapsing on itself and white dust billowing over the wreckage - an image straight from 9-11. We have scenes of humanity turned savage, fighting over food and fuel. The only wink to the in-joke of the franchise comes late in.

The set-up of the film is promising but squandered. Christian Bale takes on the role of John Connor, prophesied leader of the Resistance against Skynet - the sentient defense machine that launched a pre-emptive strike against humanity on Judgment Day. Terminator robots were designed and sent back in time to kill Connor, his mother and his father with no success. Radical rethinking was required. Skynet creates a Cylon - half human, half android - a Terminator with a real heart. The stage is set for brilliant drama. How far can the Cylon have free will, and counter his programming to destroy the humans? In what sense can a woman really fall in love with a man who is half-robot? These are some of the questions that were explored with great insight and wit in the re-imagined BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

But TERMINATOR SALVATION is only interested in these questions insofar as they provide breathing room between the set-piece action sequences. Time and again, we have rushed, superficial scenes that hint at deeper questions but never give them room to develop. Thus, resistance fighter Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood, weak performance) falls for the Cylon who saved her life, and risks her own life to set him free. All this is essayed in five minutes and one scene of laughably Mills & Boon dialogue. Later in the film, the Cylon confronts his creators and asserts his humanity. Sam Worthington gives a good performance despite his inability to hold down an American accent, but we soon jump back to Christian Bale's attack on Skynet HQ.

And what about Christian Bale? His involvement with this film will no doubt be remembered for his ill-tempered attack on the Director of Photography, replayed to the masses on Youtube. This draws attention away from the fact that he has turned in a very mediocre performance in a thankless role. As in the THE DARK KNIGHT, he seems to think that adopting a growling deep voice conveys profundity and authority. And, as in THE DARK KNIGHT, he is upstaged by another actor, for this is really Sam Worthington's film. Maybe Bale just wasn't inspired by a character that is basically one-dimensional. There is an argument that if you were raised by your mother to be the saviour of humanity you WOULD be earnest, single-minded and dull. But, Connor should be charismatic - and when asking the Resistance to commit mutiny - he should sound more convincing, more inspiring than he does. Anton Yelchin, as Connor's teenage father-to-be, Kyle Reese, has more charisma, and indeed, more screen presence, than Bale.

All of this speaks to the weakness of the script overall - as evidenced by the numerous re-writes. Let's only hope they do a better job on the already announced, McG-helmed, TERMINATOR 5.

TERMINATOR SAVLATION is on release everywhere but Japan, where it opens next week, and Mexico, where it opens on July 31st.

ANYTHING FOR HER / POUR ELLE - Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together

2009-06-04T18:48:00.001Z

French writer-director Fred Cavaye's ANYTHING FOR HER has been much-praised for its original take on the prison-break-out movie. Cavaye doesn't bother teasing the audience with whether or not the young mother is really guilty of murdering her boss - her innocence is established up-front. Nor are there any typical suspicions of infidelity - she and her husband are clearly in love and they have a supportive family. Neither do we have a break-out masterminded by slick, omniscient gangsters. Rather, Cavaye's protagonist is a middle-aged, naive school-teacher, who accepts that his wife is innocent, doesn't think he can prove her innocent, and wants to break her out of prison and escape overseas. The viewer-interest should reside in seeing this ordinary man grapple with the complexity of planning a successful break-out - in other words, one that doesn't involve being caught the next day. Unfortunately, the concept of the movie collapses in on itself. Because, as a seasoned criminal explains to the protagonist early in the film, successful break-outs aren't for amateurs - they need careful planning, a lot of money, and a lot of luck. This leads Cavaye into a screen-writer's quandary. In order to be authentic to his concept, his protagonist but whimper and fail. But, in order to create an action-filled thriller, his protagonist must behave exactly like the trained criminal that he isn't. That Cavaye can't decide is summed up in a pivotal scene where the desperate man holds up a drug-dealer but then rescues the pusher. I felt it neatly summed up the muddled thinking at the centre of this otherwise technically well made, but literally incredible, film. It will be interesting to see what Paul Haggis makes of the paradox in his English-language remake.

POUR ELLE was released in France and Belgium last year. It is currently on release in Sweden, Turkey and the UK. It opens in Finland on July 3rd.