'I'm So Excited' and 'Star Trek Into Darkness': review round-up

'I'm So Excited' - Dir. Pedro Almodovar (15)

Pedro Almodovar returns to his early trashy sex comedy roots with this unabashedly frothy and disposable little number about an airline cabin crew attempting to calm passengers after it's revealed the plane they are on has a faulty landing gear. In the wake of this news the various colorful occupants of this otherwise routine flight from Madrid to Mexico find themselves diving headlong into hedonistic excess - taking drugs and openly copulating left and right, with three extremely camp air stewards (and their sexually conflicted pilots) leading this descent, both literally and metaphorically.

While it's the Spanish director's least overtly serious movie in some time, there is clearly something else going on here beneath the veil of froth. It's telling that only first class passengers are kept awake for the entire movie, with the rest of the plane put to sleep by the crew before we join the flight - either because the director finds the lives of the extreme personalities and colourful characters at the front of the plane more interesting than those he imagines at the back, or because he is saying something about social class. For the record, I have no idea which. It's possibly a bit of both, but maybe he's saying something about modern Spain and those leading the country to ruin in the wake of a financial crisis that hit his country worse than most.

A real-life scandal surrounding a disused La Mancha airport lingers in the background; a high-profile businessman on the flight is trying to escape fraud charges by heading to central America; one of the passengers is world famous dominatrix; another is a hitman; and all put unwavering, superstitious faith in the words of a spacey and naive clairvoyant. Between these broad, larger-than-life caricatures and the eccentric and debauched goings on of the crew - freely swigging alcohol and staging pre-planned dance routines to their customers bemusement (and anger) - the film paints a picture of a reckless and extremely tacky Spain. A place where nothing works and nobody can be trusted to look beyond immediate gratification (the mechanical fault itself is the result of a distracted and incompetent ground crew in Madrid, as played by Almodovar regulars Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz), but where (SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) everything somehow turns out OK in the end. It's an affable place, but not without frustration. Much like the film itself.

Beyond a gloriously camp set-piece which sees the stewards dancing to Pointer Sisters' number of the English language title, the whole thing feels strangely flat. It seems to want to be this dizzying, extravagant romp - full of naughtiness and cheeky laughs - but it never quite gets there. Some of that may be lost in translation, with Spanish-speaking friends telling me the English subtitles lose a lot of the humour, which comes from the use of language (comedy is a notoriously tough genre to effectively translate), but from my vantage point it just wasn't funny. And not just because I didn't laugh at the jokes, but because I could rarely see where the jokes were - unless, of course, I'm just supposed to laugh if someone talks about bi-sexuality and oral sex. Ultimately it wasn't nearly as entertaining as its premise or the record of its director would suggest, even if there's potentially some interesting social commentary lurking beneath its perhaps deceptively shallow surface.

'Star Trek Into Darkness' - Dir. J.J. Abrams (12A)

The "re-booted" 'Star Trek' - which "re-imagines" the crew of the original Starship Enterprise as super-slick trendies, each with one distinct personality trait and often also a funny voice - is back, along with the world's least inspiring filmmaker ('Lost' creator and Spielberg super-fan J.J. Abrams) and a script born from the minds that brought us the 'Transformers' trilogy (Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) and 'Prometheus' (Damon Lindelof). It's promising stuff on paper, especially as this sequel is going the fresh, rarely-trodden path of being "darker and edgier" than what's come before. (Because everything wants to be 'The Dark Knight' so, so badly now.) The director's surely by now self-parodic love of lens flare is back too, along with a lot of others things which return from previous movies and which it would be churlish of me to spoil here.

If I read as unduly cynical about this whole project then I apologise, but I can't take these new Trek films seriously. Or as light-hearted fun. Or as anything else in particular. It's a big bag of ready salted crisps - maybe even those weird old ones where you used to have to add your own salt. It's quite clear that even the makers don't really know who they are trying to please, with fan service and nods to the original series (or should I say "timeline"?) every other second even as they take the bold step of turning it into a straight-up action film - jettisoning all of franchise founder Gene Roddenberry's principles and core ideals into deep space along the way. It's an action flick in Star Trek uniforms and science fiction only because there are spaceships. New Trek (or Nu Trek as I'm now calling it) is superficial and vacuous in the extreme, wearing the clothes of a beloved pop culture icon in quasi-ironic fashion - in crass American high school terminology: it turns the beloved property of bullied nerds into something more suitable for their jock tormentors.

That's not to say there aren't people involved who genuinely love the "franchise", just that these people - like those who made/continue to make the 'Lord of the Rings' films - think faithful adaptation of clothing, character names, places and the so-forth represent what something is about, whilst not thinking any deeper about what's actually at that property's core. So here a series that's always been about an idealised and optimistic idea of an evolved human race, that ventures out into space to spread the love and for the sake of discovery, becomes about horrible humans destroying each other because they're a bunch of dicks. Star Trek is, traditionally, a pop cultural counter-point to knee-jerk revenge fantasies, irrational bouts of anger and massive bodycounts - it was humanist, even to the point where it was sometimes a bit preachy and smug. I don't particularly like Star Trek as a thing, but I like this far less. I might not personally like Star Trek, but I have more respect for what it is and what it means - beyond clothing and laser guns and badges - then these people seem to. If anything about these middling films - and both films are 100% OK - has the power to annoy me, then it's that.

Like I say, the film itself is exactly alright - too bland and inoffensive for me to review without ranting around the subject (see Philip French's barely two paragraph write-up in The Guardian) and, like all of Abrams' work, built around so many twists, surprises and mysteries that you can't really properly talk about what happens either without spoiling it. I'll just say there are moments when it's laughable and some where it's genuinely funny. There are bits where it's exciting and others where it's lame. The performances are pretty solid across the board (Zachary Quinto is an excellent Spock and Karl Urban steals every scene he's in as Bones, whilst Benedict Cumberbatch is predictably good to watch as the baddie), though that depends on your tolerance for dodgy accents in many cases. The action scenes are uninspired on the whole and Abrams has some annoying visual ticks (his constantly zooming camera is one such distraction), but the film is not un-enjoyable for much of its length. Just not particularly memorable either. And (potential SPOILER depending on how sensitive you are!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) it leans uncomfortably on another film's reputation.

'Iron Man 3', 'Oblivion', 'The Look of Love' and 'Mud': review round-up and 'Thor: The Dark World' trailer

Here's a trailer for this November's terribly exciting looking 'Thor: The Dark World', just because. Now on to the business of reviews:

'Iron Man 3' - Dir. Shane Black (12A)

As much as I love 'The Avengers' and am (as evidenced above) obsessed with the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, 'Iron Man 3' was not a film I rushed into with much expectation or the excitement I already feel for the upcoming Thor and Captain America sequels. Whilst Robert Downey Jnr's Tony Stark has been the most profitable one of the bunch so far for Marvel, with the patchy 'Iron Man 2' the most successful pre-Avengers "Phase One" movie, Iron Man has always left me cold. I've enjoyed the films enough, but I never loved them like I love the others. Perhaps because Iron Man seems to love himself enough for the both of us. That all changed, however, with Shane Black's new sequel to the series, which basically just turns the franchise into an awesome 90s buddy comedy, combining jaw-dropping action sequences - and some of the biggest and most imaginatively conceived superhero set-pieces yet seen - with dozens of genuinely funny and quotable lines. It's exciting, clever, superbly acted (Ben Kingsley's performance, in particular), and as close as you can come to a guaranteed good time at the pictures.

The script somehow blends all the best elements of a buddy cop movie (notably in Downey Jnr and Don Cheadle's team-up), a sort of Capra-esque Christmas movie (it'll sound shit on paper, but Iron Man's pairing with a smalltown kid is entirely winsome), an espionage thriller, a deft political satire (maybe overselling that a touch, but what the film does with Kingsley's villain is inspired) and a classic modern superhero movie. It's a 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' style deconstruction of action movie tropes and a faithful sequel to both 'Iron Man 2' and 'The Avengers' - which it references whilst also managing to be its own thing completely. It bravely takes Tony Stark out of the suit for most of the movie - putting him in more peril than ever before, and allowing him to be more genuinely heroic - whilst also still recognisably being a Marvel comics adaptation. It does a lot of things and it does most of them excellently. And it's probably the only superhero movie to have a satisfying "end boss" fight to boot.

I can't express enough how smart and purely fun Shane Black's movie is: unsentimental and yet full of unabashed heart, in a way that finally made me love this character. His screenplay - co-written with Drew Pearce - is fantastic, not only in its dialogue and character choices (Gwyneth Paltrow is refreshingly allowed to be much more than a damsel in distress), but in the way he contrives such wonderful and unexpected action sequences. Such as when Tony is forced to improvise new weapons after losing his suit and so nips into a hardware store, or when he successfully retrieves part of his suit and has to make do with what boils down to a glove and a boot. Here, for the first time in one of these movies, filmmakers have crafted antagonists who can actually pose a threat, allowing Tony to reasonably deploy his extensive arsenal in its entirety, hopping between suits in a sequence that's fast-paced and unlike anything else in the series to date. Don Cheadle gets more punch-the-air-awesome moments than I thought possible for an actor who was the British one in 'Ocean's Eleven' and Guy Pearce makes a sensational villain. It's just fantastic summer fun.

'Oblivion' - Dir. Joseph Kosinski (12A)

Say what you will about Hollywood "product" being derivative and low on original ideas, but surely nothing - no sequel or spin-off or re-make - is as cynical and brazenly plagaristic as the Tom Cruise sci-fi vehicle 'Oblivion', directed by Joseph Kosinski of 'Tron: Legacy' fame. You'd struggle to name a sci-fi movie or video game made in the last two decades that this one doesn't pillage for intellectual property, stealing wholesale plot elements, concepts and designs from the likes of the low budget cult hit 'Moon' all the way up to blockbusters like 'Independence Day'. There's weapon and costume designs lifted from the game series Mass Effect, whilst many will be quick to spot the embarrassingly blatant similarities between Melissa Leo's character - an untrustworthy, disembodied computer-treated voice - and the game Portal. And that's not even mentioning how much it rips off the filmography of its star, as we watch his continued slow fade from relevance.

It's a film that allows Tom Cruise - in the increasingly desperate "I'm not too old, honest, look what I can do!" phase of his career - to run really fast across sand, to ride motorcycles wearing sunglasses and to play an ace-pilot-and-ace-marksman-who-is-the-best-at-everything-he-does-and-a-scientist-and-the-saviour-of-mankind-who-is-irresistible-to-all-womenTM. Within the first twenty minutes he's taken two showers and gone for a dip in a swimming pool, and whilst the man is in unquestionably good condition for a fifty year old (much better shape than I've ever been in, for the record), his ab-flexing determination to prove how he still "has it" really isn't at all appealing.

The film itself is at its most tolerable when it epitomises the world of Tom Cruise cliche rather than when it's raiding every modern sci-fi classic for ideas - but mostly it's a bland, flavourless waste of two hours. Sometimes it's at least a slick and reasonably pretty diversion, with Kosinski's bright white Apple-influenced brand of future chic carrying over from the similarly attractive-yet-hollow world of his last film. Yet more often the whole thing is a display of baffling incompetence on nearly every level, with a central premise that doesn't stand up to any scrutiny, clunky exposition monologues repeated in their entirety more than once and twists you see coming a mile away (at least one of which is on the damn poster). The drone robots are fairly cool - with their use in war raising the film's only potentially interesting moral question - and the 'Top Gun' style flying sequences have their moments, but this is definitely one to avoid and, I would predict, one destined to be quickly forgotten.

'The Look of Love' - Dir. Michael Winterbottom (18)

The Steve Coogan/Michael Winterbottom partnership, which has served both so well over the years with the likes of 'A Cock and Bull Story' and '24 Hour Party People', continues with 'The Look of Love': an unfocused and shallow biopic about Paul Raymond - the infamous millionaire who was once Britain's wealthiest man. The film chronicles Raymond's career from - as the film would have it - a glorified circus ringmaster in the 1950s to an ageing property magnate and soft-core pornographer in the 90s, via his 60s/70s heyday as the proprietor of Soho's most sophisticated and talked about gentleman's clubs and publisher of a controversial, and widely read, men's magazine. The main problem with the film, aside from its strange refusal to engage with any social/political issues beyond glib one-liners, is that Coogan - a versatile performer - plays Raymond as indistinct from TV creation Alan Partridge.

Now, I bow to no man in my love of Alan Partridge as a comedy creation, but I'm guessing Paul Raymond was not so similar to Norwich's favourite son and Coogan's decision to play him this way is baffling. Every comic aside, awkward pause and geekish piece of trivia is pure Partridge, albeit a wealthy and successful one. It's a fact that cheapens the movie and renders its few attempts at real drama insincere. This is a pity as the film becomes more and more about the apparently complex relationship between Raymond and his daughter, as played by emerging star Imogen Poots - who steals the film out from underneath its star with a multi-faceted showing that ranges from vulnerable and troubled, to self-assured and downright cocky. The fact that the tragedy of Poots' character takes centre stage - being part of the film's framing device and used as a the catalyst for present-day introspection for Raymond - makes it even more of a pity that Coogan's central performance seems so disingenuous.

If the purpose of a biopic is to reveal something about its subject, to leave you feeling you know more about a person on the way out than you did on the way in, then 'The Look of Love' has well and truly failed. I leave the film none the wiser about what Paul Raymond was like as a man, with film engaging with this real historical figure the same way it engages with the "swinging sixties": presenting both with crude, cartoonish caricature and seemingly without affection. It certainly doesn't earn its mawkish and manipulative ending.

'Mud' - Dir. Jeff Nichols (12A)

In the very best of ways, 'Mud' - Jeff Nichols' follow-up to the impressive 'Take Shelter' - is a kids film. Not merely because its protagonist, Ellis (Tye Sheridan), is a 15 year-old boy, but because of the way the tale is framed: not simply as a coming of age story, but as a classic boys adventure in the mold of Mark Twain or vintage Spielberg of the 1980s. Or, better yet, 'Stand By Me'. The sort of film that looks children in the eye and treats a young audience with respect, refusing to sand away the rough edges yet not completely forsaking wonder. I have no idea whether Nichols ever envisaged the film as one for all ages - and it certainly isn't being sold that way and may not end up reaching that audience - but 'Mud' is a pretty perfect children's film, featuring a young hero in Ellis young boys can certainly empathise with. It certainly nails a certain time in a boy's life and this is easily as complete and challenging a role as a young actor is ever given, with Sheridan a real talent.

At its simplest, 'Mud' is the story about aimless, working class kids from broken (or breaking) homes who spend their days doing what boys do at that age: they go places they aren't supposed to, stay out later than they are meant to and make grand plans in secrecy. These boys, living on a river, take to playing around on a deserted and snake-infested island, climbing trees and playing with sticks, until one day they find an abandoned boat in a tree and decide to make it their own. The only trouble is a wanted man named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) has made the boat is home and makes them a deal: they can have the boat with his blessing, if they bring him some food and run some simple errands. Increasingly dangerous little adventures follow, which bring the kids deeper into Mud's difficulties than might be sensible, but - in the great kids film tradition - the kids go through hell to protect their new, social outcast friend from the threat posed by the local grown-ups: the police, the parents and the rest. In Mud McConaughey has a role every bit as memorable and intense as 'Killer Joe'.

'Mud' is a beautiful and moving piece of work. Sincere and populated by warm, genuinely loving characters right through the cast. It goes unexpected places and sidesteps every cliche you think you can see coming along the way. Overwhelmingly it's a film about love - in all its forms - in all its fragility and with all its pitfalls, but which ultimately manages to be warm and optimistic without compromising the gritty stuff. Love is hard and sometimes impermanent, it says. You might throw everything into it and get your heart ripped out, or even find yourself publicly humiliated as a result of unrequited affection. Yet it's worth it: it's the best thing we have and the only thing in this world worth having. That is basically the lesson learnt by the young hero through his trials and tribulations, but all without seeming twee or saccharine in the slightest. Quite an achievement - and a noble one at that.

'A Late Quartet' review:

The fact that I forgot I'd seen 'A Late Quartet' - and thus forgot to include it in my last round-up - actually speaks volumes for how I felt about it. There's really nothing bad about it. It's solid existential New Yorker angst stuff, with a great ensemble cast featuring the always brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener, and Yaron Zilberman's drama (co-written with Seth Grossman) is smart enough and rarely boring. Yet it's hard to get excited about, being a sort of middle-brow and evidently quite forgettable American version of this year's earlier 'Quartet' - and boasting the same "legendary musical troupe re-group for one final concert" plot-line. The main difference here is that more emphasis is placed on music, and playing instruments with a group, as a metaphor for life and relationships.

I don't really want to spend any more time on this, so here's a trailer for a film I'm really excited about. Noah Baumbach's 'Francis Ha', co-written with (and starring) Greta Gerwig. 'A Late Quartet' could have used some humour, not to mention a bit of Greta.

'In the House', 'The Place Beyond the Pines' and 'Finding Nemo 3D': review round-up and more Joe Blann quiz art

Finally getting around to some more reviews. My January resolution of 10 posts a month has failed spectacularly! Anyway, above is the latest Joe Blann picture round masterpiece from the Duke's at Komedia film quiz - Hold Onto Your Butts (first Thursday of every month). Below are some reviews.

'In the House' - Dir. Francois Ozon (15)

Prior to this one, my only exposure to the work of French filmmaker Francois Ozon was the kitsch and campy 'Potiche' - a multi-coloured 70s-set comedy about sexual politics that really grated on me in Venice, way back in 2010. It's possible that my intense dislike of that film has grown out of proportion since being bored by it at that festival, perhaps as much as a result of its bizarre appropriation by Odeon Orange Wednesday ads as by exaggerated memories of the film itself. In any case, my disdain for his last work almost prevented me from seeing Ozon's 'In the House' which, it turns out, would have been scandalous. It's one of the best films of the year: smart, funny, gripping, with a sly wit - excellently performed and with lots to say about storytelling, writing, voyeurism and more. It's truly excellent.

It stars the affable Fabrice Luchini, who seems to specialize in playing oblivious middle-class intellectuals, as a French literature teacher and failed author who is intrigued to find one piece of homework not written by a vacuous moron and becomes obsessed with the student responsible (Claude, Ernst Umhauer). Convinced that Claude has raw talent in need of guidance, Luchini takes him under his wing, giving him extra hours outside of school. However beneath this inspirational 'Dead Poets Society' style love of education and artistry there is also a slightly grubby aspect to proceedings: Claude's writings to Luchini take the form of an ongoing serial based on the student's real life obsession with and manipulation of the family of one of his classmates. So, in aiding Claude, Luchini is actively encouraging this increasingly destructive venture into another's family home and doing so partly to satisfy his own voyeuristic interest in the soap opera of their lives. A saga upon which he and his art gallery manager wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) are hopelessly hooked - filling the void left by their joyless, sexless marriage.

In telling this story Ozon's film is always fresh and imaginative. For instance, we occasionally witness the same events told by Claude in different ways, responding to the directions of his tutor. His style of storytelling and preoccupations also change in reaction to Luchini's advice. We see Luchini pop-up and offer critique to his student, even as events in the titular house unfold, in a device that feels like something out of the best Woody Allen comedy. There's obviously something about storytelling as voyeurism going on here throughout - and also the way the same events can be warped and manipulated when described to an audience, but what I found especially intriguing is the way Ozon's screenplay - based on a Spanish stageplay by Juan Mayorga - eventually finds a way to come full circle and investigate the homes of the protagonists: their growing obsession with this one, pretty ordinary family, ultimately saying more about their own unhappy lives. Literature as theraputic release or as harmful self-delusion? The ending left me uncertain.

'The Place Beyond the Pines' - Dir. Derek Cianfrance (15)

High expectations for Derek Cianfrance's epic follow-up to 'Blue Valentine' were undermined by my increasingly aggressive indifference to the growing hipster cult of Ryan Gosling. But, for reasons that become clear about a third of a way in, 'The Place Beyond the Pines' isn't really the spiritual successor to 'Drive' it's been marketed as in some places, on account of "the Gos" playing an ace motorcyclist-turned-criminal. It's much better than that: a cross-generational tale of fathers and sons - of consequences and regrets. Ambitious, sprawling and never less than compelling. It's the tale of one ostensibly bad man who will do anything for his son, even if it means breaking the law. And one clean-cut good-guy who will do his utmost to defend the law even if it means neglecting his son. There's more to it than that, especially in the third act, but it's an interesting central dichotomy.

Visually it's stunning, as shot by Steve McQueen's regular DP Sean Bobbitt, and somehow structurally tight in a way that belies its long running time. Factor in the fact that both Gosling and the recently Oscar-nominated Bradley Cooper are on top, career-defining form and it's potentially a modern American indie classic. It's not the crime thriller a lot of people will be expecting (it's really a fairly patient and introspective drama), yet 'Pines' isn't for want of horribly tense moments or spectacular sequences - notably a one-take car chase shot from the perspective of police cars in pursuit of Gosling's motorcycle. To say much more about it at this point would be to risk spoiling it, so I'll just leave it there for now.

'Finding Nemo (3D)' - Dir. Andrew Stanton (U)

It's not really a new release as far as I'm, concerned, so I'll keep it extremely brief. Andrew Stanton's classic - one of the vintage Pixar films - returns to cinemas, and I was delighted to find it was as funny and charming as the first time around. The gags come thick and fast, and range from the knock-about and silly, to the existential and witty, and more often than not they work. The animation and attention to detail - particularly the work the animators have done acting the various characters facially (no small ask considering all the characters are still recognisably fish) - is terrific and still holds up very well, even given Pixar's constant boundary pushing in the decade(!) since the film's original release. The 3D isn't really noticeable in all honesty so, given the damage the process seems to do to the vividness of the colours, I'd have rather seen it re-released in 2D. But don't let that put you off: like I say, It's barely noticeable - though that does call into question being asked to pay extra for the privilege...

Also, on a related note, the new 'Toy Story' short that precedes the film is really, really funny. Probably the best one yet - and a perfect antidote to 'Spring Breakers' (you'll know what I mean if you've seen it).

'Spring Breakers' and 'Trance': review round-up

Was in Moscow on holiday last week, hence the above shot of the "Mosfilm" studio logo - the only cinema-related part of that trip (though I did see some interesting cinemas around the city). Didn't go into the studio though, as I'm not organised enough to arrange a tour in advance, it turns out. Anyhow, below are reviews of the two films I've seen in the days since my return:

'Spring Breakers' - Dir. Harmony Korine (18)

Four vacuous college girls, three of whom are played, subversively, by former Disney/ABC tween idols, rob a fast-food shack in order to fund their dream spring break in Florida, with debauched and vaguely nightmarish results. This is the basic outline of the garish, pink-neon collision of Britney Spears and dubstep that has turned out to be indie filmmaker Harmony Korine's most mainstream and, simultaneously, most divisive film to-date. It subverts and critiques - sometimes perfectly - a certain shallow, money-obsessed sector of popular culture, whilst also, much of the time, seeming to revel in it - something it also does with the frequent slow-motion shots of topless college revelers and occasional gangland violence. Is it's heart, if it has one, always in the right place? Does the camera leer maybe a little too long at the titular girls, forever clad in bikinis, to undermine whatever satire is taking place? Possibly, but I don't think Korine really cares and it doesn't spoil his film.

This is a shamelessly trashy and exploitative movie that just works. It entertains, amuses and shocks in equal measure, and with regularity, throughout its tight running time, not least of all when James Franco is on screen as self-styled hustler and d-list rapper Alien - a role he completely vanishes into and for which he deserves award recognition. Some bits are really spot-on at pinpointing the seedy, mutually destructive nihilism and cultural bankruptcy of the American Dream - such as when Franco and the girls gather around the piano for an earnest performance of a Britney ballad that all present really do seem to believe represents a high cultural watermark. Another great scene consists solely of Alien showing off his increasingly pathetic "shit" in his mansion: an itinerary that includes different coloured shorts, several aftershaves and "Scarface on repeat". His extreme, gormless pride at this haul is the perfect rebuttal to MTV Cribs and everything it represents.

'Trance' - Dir. Danny Boyle (15)

James McAvoy's fine art auctioneer follows protocol and attempts to secure an artwork valued at £25 million during an armed robbery, lead by Vincent Cassel. During the chaos McAvoy hides the painting and is dealt a nasty blow to the head by Cassel - causing him memory loss, with predictably frustrating results for those looking to recover the valuable piece. Enter Rosario Dawson as a hypnotherapist who promises to be able to delve into McAvoy's subconscious and bring his memory back. She boasts that, with a susceptible subject like McAvoy, she can convince anybody to do just about anything. And so begins a tedious and predictable labyrinth of twists and turns, as the film asks us to ponder which one of these variously unsympathetic characters is really pulling the strings.

It's a Danny Boyle film, so it's all hyperactive camera movements and bizarre, possibly improvised, camera angles, none of which seem to mean anything or relate to what story is being told. There's a to-camera narration from McAvoy that feels like something out of a mid-90s British crime flick, but that comes and goes until it is completely forgotten. The musical choices are jarring and total rubbish. And it includes a nude scene that gives 'The Paperboy' a run for its money in the "Oh My God Did That Just Happen" category - a bizarre sequence I will never forget that sees McAvoy waiting (for ages) for Dawson to emerge from a bathroom, with the soundtrack a mix a of smooth, sexy-time music and the sound of a shaver. Don't worry if you haven't guessed what she's doing: Boyle will show you in close-up. The only thing funnier than this scene is the contrived justification that comes later.

'Oz: The Great and Powerful', 'Bullhead' and 'The Spirit of 45': review round-up

'Oz: The Great and Powerful' - Dir. Sam Raimi (PG)

Anything that's sold as being "from the people who brought you Alice in Wonderland" should be viewed with suspicion if not outright derision, and so it looked like Sam Raimi's prequel to 'The Wizard of Oz' - which sees James Franco as the egotistical, huckster wizard - would be one to avoid. And yet, all told, it's a pretty solid and likable little blockbuster, with enjoyable characters, some decent gags and an interesting cast of characters. Raimi's horror routes are plainly visible too, as he makes his villains - most notably the flying baboons - genuinely scary and manages to pack in a few jumpy moments, whilst his handling of the opening hot air balloon crash (which takes Oz from black and white Kansas to technicolor Oz via a tornado, in keeping with tradition) is like something straight out of 'The Evil Dead'. In fact his style is consistently visible from his fluid camera movements to distinctive use of montage.

In keeping with the 'Spider-Man' director's unabashed love of schlock (he was the producer of 'Xena: Warrior Princess' and creator of the 'Darkman' series, after all) the 3D here is gimmicky and in-your-face, but that's actually sort of fun and refreshing after the recent trend of emphasizing depth. It's tacky and, like  everything else in the film, doesn't take itself too seriously - even as it is rightly respectful of its heritage. The actors acquit themselves well across the board too, with Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams all relishing their roles as OTT witches and even the comedy sidekick characters, such as Zach Braff's motion-captured flying monkey Finley, coming over as charming when they could have been irritating.

Whilst a lot of the effects, notably the character of China Girl, are decent, some of the CGI backgrounds are a bit ropey, particularly as Franco first encounters the flora and fauna of Oz. It's also fair to say the film's message (if you can go as far as calling it that) is mildly troubling - suggesting that people at large are a dumb herd who need to be lied to by their leaders in order to be happy. Yet overall this is at its worst a bit bland and at its best an entertaining diversion. I wasn't bored - which itself is a rarity for a two-hour film of this kind - and it's certainly far better than Tim Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland', even if it's obvious both films have a production designer in common. So take that for what it's worth!

'Bullhead' - Dir. Michael R. Roskam (15)

Matthias Schoenaerts, of 'Rust and Bone' acclaim, stars in this troubling and deeply moving Belgian thriller about meat and hormones. Ostensibly the meat in question is beef and the hormones are the various illegal testosterone supplements used to bulk it up - a dodgy practice Schoenaerts' Jacky specialises in, working with dangerous criminal gangs. But it goes further with Jacky himself a testosterone-filled piece of meat, driven (by horrific childhood trauma) to take the same illegal substances, turning him into a sweaty, aggressive and sex-obsessed bull. Then it goes further still, with lingering shots of Jacky perusing a local red light district - starring coldly at women cavorting in garish window displays - suggesting another layer to the "people as meat" metaphor. There's a similar moment in a care home, as Jacky squares up to a mentally disturbed patient - one of many sequences dominated by Jacky's immense physique and a brooding sense of threat.

In this way 'Bullhead' really seems to be an examination of what makes us functioning human beings - as opposed to animalistic bags of hormones, rutting and smashing in each other's skulls. One nasty and violent change to Jacky's anatomy turns him from one into the other, questioning how much control we have over our bodies and our behaviour. At what point does chemistry and biology take over? Yet, on top of this, it functions equally well as an exciting and intense crime film, slickly put together and impressively acted. In a rare feat, it's as entertaining as it is challenging: psychologically interesting and quietly, unassumingly, philosophical. It's equal parts tense and tragic, with a brutal ending that came like a punch to the guts.

'The Spirit of 45' - Dir. Ken Loach (U)

It can be difficult reviewing politically-minded documentaries without falling into the trap of reviewing (or even merely describing) the subject rather than the filmmaking. Ken Loach's 'The Spirit of 45' is one where that difficulty comes to the fore because, as a film, it's all stock footage and talking heads: edited together very well in service of a point which it presents compellingly, but really its success or failure rests on how you feel about its subject. To my mind, it's a solid documentary that should be shown in schools, as much because of its power and poignancy as a social document, as because of its right-on political message (it rightly venerates and idealises the NHS, and acts as a rallying cry to save it from future privitisation).

Its grasp of history is, perhaps knowingly, simplistic: the so-called "Winter of Discontent" is brushed over and Loach paints the picture of a Utopian socialist republic, suddenly dismantled by Thatcher in the 80s. And whilst I have complete sympathy for, and a certain amount of agreement with, that view it isn't telling the entire story. Though that's not necessarily a bad thing and it doesn't really get in the way of Loach's point. This is a nakedly nostalgic piece about the hopes of a generation and the preservation of an ideal - not a rigorous investigation of British economical policy from 1945-present. And on those terms it is a triumph.

'The Paperboy', 'Side Effects' and 'Outrage Beyond': review round-up

'The Paperboy' - Dir. Lee Daniels (15)

Trashy, pulpy and a little kitsch, Lee Daniels' follow-up to 'Precious' would be much more fun if it weren't also a little po-faced. For a film that has clear arthouse pretensions, this is the movie in which Nicole Kidman's brash, convict-obsessed Charlotte wees on Zac Efron's besotted face. It's the movie which (in one of the most bizarre, awkward and misjudged scenes I've ever seen) sees Charlotte masturbating in front of the assembled cast during a visit to her incarcerated fiance, played by John Cusack - also feverishly masturbating, as hot-shot newspapermen Matthew McConaughey, David Oyelowo and their young driver (Efron) look on speechless: confused and a little aroused. It isn't like anything else you've seen and the there are some enjoyably extreme moments, like those highlighted, but this is funny-bad where the "bad" outweighs the "funny" by some margin.

It's replete with heavy-handed montage sequences and imagery that implies some sort of deep meaning but which under close analysis seems to yield very little. There's a Macy Grey narration that could be excised without harming the film in any way and which seems confused about who it's addressing. Why Grey's housemaid is even telling the story in the first place is never made clear by Pete Dexter's screenplay, based on his own novel. There's also the sort of over the top poverty porn that made parts of 'Precious' so baffling and slightly offensive, with every lower-class character a filthy degenerate with a funny accent. It's fun to see Cusack play against type, but it's an excessive performance - though Kidman is stand-out and the rest of the cast solid - but that's hardly enough to make up for the film's many shortcomings: an investigation storyline that goes nowhere; vague commentary on late-60s racial politics that goes nowhere; and a chase sequence in the third act that is quite possibly the least tense and exciting ever committed to film. It's a mess. Shambolic filmmaking.

'Side Effects' - Dir. Steven Soderbergh (15)

Not the film you expect it to be following a twist at the halfway point, 'Side Effects' - the supposed final film of director Steven Soderbergh - is a gripping thriller that takes many an unusual turn, stretching credibility all in the name of entertainment value. Partly a commentary on the power wielded by big US pharmaceutical companies over the medical profession - and on the power of doctors over patients - and the over-prescription of anti-depressants, the cold and methodical nature of the first half is reminiscent of the dry and earnest 'Contagion'. That section of the movie sees Jude Law's charismatic and plausible psychiatrist coming to the aid of a suicidal depressive played by Rooney Mara - a patient, seduced by advertising, into demanding a particular drug which also happens to be sponsoring several of her doctors.

The second half - which I can't really write about here - is tense, gripping and hugely entertaining, though it's undeniably quite contrived and a little silly. Never more so than whenever Catherine Zeta-Jones appears as a rival psychiatrist who looks more like someone's idea of a "sexy librarian" roleplay fantasy than a medical professional. There's something exploitative about some her scenes with Mara in particular, but it didn't hamper my enjoyment of Soderbergh's latest in a run of recent (and varied) successes - that include 'Magic Mike', 'Haywire', 'The Informant!' and the aforementioned 'Contagion'. Needless to say, I hope this isn't the final feature of a progressive 50 year-old director who appears to be going from strength to strength. Like most vintage Soderbergh, this isn't a film without flaws: but it's interesting, bold and dynamic cinema full of surprises.

'Outrage Beyond' - Dir. Takeshi Kitano (TBC)

Not his most cinematic, stylish or daring work to date - being a thoroughly enjoyable and polished, but otherwise fairly standard Yakuza gangster thriller - 'Outrage Beyond' (a sequel to his earlier 'Outrage') keeps Takeshi Kitano on solid and more commercially viable ground following a period of self-reflection and experimentation. In it he plays a former mob enforcer who just doesn't give a fuck - not about the police or his criminal overlords - making him the rogue element in a society built around deference and respect for authority. He's as enjoyable a screen presence as ever, though the film seems to lose momentum whenever he's not on-screen. Most interesting is the way the film portrays the complicity of the police in mob activity, through the schemes of Fumiyo Kohinata's cynical and manipulative Detective Kataoka - perhaps the real villain of the piece.

'Lore', 'Stoker', 'No' and 'Robot & Frank': review round-up, plus I'm back hosting Flick's Flicks

Time for another brief review round-up, but first I wanted to mention last night's Hold Onto Your Butts Film Quiz and Duke's at Komedia - the second so far. It went very well (from what I could tell) and I had a lot of fun hosting it. If you live in, or around, Brighton you might be interested to know it's taking place on the first Thursday of every month in the upstairs bar of the cinema at Komedia (Gardner Street, North Lain area). Though I really only bring it up here as an excuse to again publish Joe Blann's fantastic picture round (above).

Also, I'm again presenting Flick's Flicks to cover the regular writer-host's maternity leave, so here is the March edition of Picturehouse cinema's online film preview show:



On with the reviews!

'Lore' - Dir. Cate Shortland (15)

People I respect have raved about Australian director Cate Shortland's German-set 'Lore' - a coming of age story that follows the displaced children of high-ranking Nazis as they come to terms with defeat at the end of the Second World - though I found it to be a turgid bore. The premise is interesting enough, with the film taking the perspective of the eldest - the titular Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) - as she tries to shepherd her feckless siblings 900km across the country to their grandmother's house, following the arrest of their parents. However, it doesn't really seem to have anything to say about the situation the characters are in, beyond the obvious - that a generation of Germans grew up with guilt for crimes they didn't commit and that children born of Nazism stepped from the war into a world they didn't understand.

These points are hammered home with a few clunking metaphors, with a porcelain deer standing for innocence/the old ways and its climatic destruction a heavy-handed signifier that young Lore has left both behind. This is also a textbook example of "too-many-endings" syndrome, with yet another little scene every time you think the credits might finally be about to roll. Probably not an issue you'd have if, like many I've spoken to, you found the whole thing engaging and in some way illuminating about the human condition. But I didn't and so the whole thing was a tortuous drag - one of those Euro arthouse movies you see in the first week of a festival and forget by the start of the second.

'Stoker' - Dir. Park Chan-wook (18)

Strangely Park Chan-wook's uber-stylish English-language debut has a few things in common with 'Lore'. Firstly, it's a coming of age story about a young women moving into adulthood and losing their childlike innocence about the world. Secondly, and more specifically, both films feature a sequence in which the protagonist spies on her mother amid a sexual act and almost immediately sets out to replicate it with a relative stranger. But there the similarities end, because 'Stoker' is a stone-cold masterpiece in terms of direction, cinematography, editing and sound design. The plot itself is perhaps predictable and lacking in the sorts of twists and turns many have come to associate with the director of the Vengeance trilogy and 'Thirst', but the way the story is told is of the highest order. Some of the transitions between scenes are simply incredible, notably a shot that seamlessly goes from an actresses hair to a field of grass.

The plot basically amounts to: hyper-sensitive and isolated teen, India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska, who here looks something like 'Beetlejuice'-era Winona Ryder), is troubled after the death of her father and resents her cold, dissatisfied mother (Nicole Kidman). After the funeral her estranged uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) turns up and decides to stay in their house - only he has a secret and is more than willing to murder to protect it. But what it's really about - in keeping with the title's allusion to Bram Stoker of Dracula fame - is sex and death, both by way of touching lady-necks. Chan-wook is looking at the ability of blood, violence and mortal danger to both repulse and attract us - examining the erotic power of horror. In this context it's only natural that, after a spate of murdering, India comes to associate carnal desire with bone-snapping acts of violence, whilst seeming to fall for her mysterious and deadly new surrogate daddy. In other words, there's a lot going on here.

Double Academy Award nominee Jacki Weaver is also on hand to add to an Australian-rich cast, making her biggest impression since 'Animal Kingdom' in a brief but memorable role as India's aunt, in a film where every actor is perfectly cast. Matthew Goode in particular is a great physical presence, both charismatic and attractive whilst also always seeming like a genuine threat: he seems to loom several feet over the rest of the cast (pretty much all-female) and his hands - so often seen wrapped around the throats of victims - seem enormous. Wasikowska and Kidman are also excellent, particularly when playing off against each other.

'No' - Dir. Pablo Larrain (15)

Chilean writer-director Pablo Larrain's highest profile film in the UK to date, partly thanks to the casting of an internationally recognisable star in Gael Garcia Bernal, 'No' continues his run of films on the Pinochet era - following the disturbing and darkly funny 'Tony Manero' and 'Post Mortem'. This time his focus is on the end of that political epoch, as Bernal plays an advertising executive tasked with sexing up the "No" campaign during the 1988 plebiscite that would signal the end of the bloody dictatorship. Larrain's regular star Alfredo Castro also returns, here (naturally enough) as the suitably shady and morally ambiguous snake devising the pro-Pinochet camp's own adverts, though not even he can steal the show from the charismatic Bernal's withdrawn and equally ambiguous lead. Is he truly invested in the political campaign for which he is working? Or is he just out to win - furthering his fame within the advertising world?

In attempting to do the unthinkable and aid the "No" cause to victory - in an election assumed by most to be a formality, only staged to legitimise the regime's power - Bernal's Rene successfully uses the language of vapid, feel-good empty consumerism rather than engaging in traditional political discourse. This alienates a lot of campaigners on his side of the political fence, who feel he is ignoring the thousands of people "disappeared" by the regime, but Rene's lack of faith in the Chilean electorate is eventually rewarded. The film's final shots ingeniously play on our concerns about his victory, seemingly pondering whether a victory gained with empty, cynical consumerism can only lead to an empty, cynical and blandly consumerist society. It's a compelling point that renders the campaign's victory - almost a happy endpoint for the director's loose "Pinochet trilogy" - bittersweet.

The decision to shoot the film on 80s cameras is likewise ingenious, allowing the fictionalised drama to blend seamlessly with contemporary news footage and the original campaign clips themselves. In featuring the original adverts - with their crude comedy sketches, cheesy imagery and despicably catchy jingles - the film also becomes a historical document and a sort of documentary about that period in the nation's history, further enhancing how engrossing and fascinating the whole thing is. Along with the aforementioned 'Stoker', this is one of the best films I've seen so far this year. I can't wait to see what Larrain does next, especially now that he seems to have closed the book on that grim part of Chile's national history.

'Robot & Frank' - Dir. Jake Schreier (12A)

Without wishing to seem condescending or damning with faint praise, 'Robot & Frank' - a first feature for its writer Christopher D. Ford and director Jake Schreier - is a gentle and nice little movie. It's supremely pleasant but without being in the least twee, and it's wistful and nostalgic without being maudlin. Frank Langella, the Frank of the title, gives a subtle, un-showy central performance as a retired cat burglar and former jailbird suffering from dementia given a healthcare robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) by his concerned son (James Marsden). Both his hotshot lawyer son and flaky, bo-ho daughter (Liv Tyler) are mostly absent from his life and Frank slips in and out of remembering who they are during their brief visits and phone calls - but, despite early  reservations, Frank soon finds a renewed lease of life through his interactions with the robot. Especially after discovering his suitability for a life of crime.

It's wryly amusing and occasionally moving, especially in the closing stages of the arc involving Susan Sarandon, but beneath the deceptively light and easy feel there are actually a lot of interesting ideas and themes at play concerning our relationship with technology, the fragility of memory and how our society treats the elderly. It's actually a movie with quite a lot to say about these things, yet it never beats you over the head with any of them. It's certainly an easy recommendation and rounds out a really good week of cinema-going!

'Zero Dark Thirty', 'Lincoln', 'To The Wonder', 'Cloud Atlas': review round-up, plus Academy Award opinion

First up, before the reviews, a brief Academy Award summary just because it wouldn't be polite to completely ignore award season, as I have so far this year!

'Argo' winning doesn't offend me like it has some people. I know it's pretty lightweight, a sort of Sidney Lumet knock-off, but I really enjoyed it even if it's quite far from the best film of the past year (it made my 2012 top 30 though, coming in at 21). I think it found favour with the Academy because it's built to appease (or at least not offend) both right-wing hyper-patriots and liberals. It lays the blame for the situation in modern day Iran at the feet of the US - and UK - whilst also being a punch-the-air CIA success story, and in a part of the world where American successes are hard to come by. Plus, it's entertaining whilst still being kind of worthy, it pokes gentle fun of and celebrates Hollywood, and - though Ben Affleck was snubbed for a directorial nomination - the Academy traditionally loves actors behind the camera.

Ang Lee winning for the twee and shallow 'Life of Pi' (the night's big winner with 4 awards) is a joke, especially given that Paul Thomas Anderson ('The Master') and Terrence Malick ('To The Wonder') weren't even nominated. 'Life of Pi' was one of the worst films I saw last year. And how did it win a cinematography award? How much of it was actually filmed in-camera? It's a triumph of post-production work if anything at all - as a result (and perhaps justly) it won the visual effects award. I didn't rate 'Skyfall', but how is Roger Deakins still Oscar-less?

Can't argue with any of the acting wins, aside from the fact that Christoph Waltz ('Django Unchained') is clearly in the wrong category: he's a co-lead rather than a supporting player. Glad to see Jennifer Lawrence pick one up, though Bradley Cooper is the star performer in 'Silver Linings Playbook'. Would have taken any of Cooper, Jaoquin Phoenix ('The Master') or Daniel Day-Lewis for Best Actor, so I'm OK with the fact DDL won it - becoming the first triple Best Actor winner in the process. Pretty pleased for Anne Hathaway too: she's not in 'Les Miserables' for long, but she is the best bit. Besides she's due one for missing out back when she was up for 'Rachel Getting Married'. And, though I quite like Waltz and am glad he won another Oscar (just four years ago he was a 52 year-old unknown TV actor and now he has two Academy Awards!), there is no way his performance was on the same level as Philip Seymour Hoffman's career defining turn in 'The Master'. No way at all.

'Brave' shouldn't have beaten 'ParaNorman' in the animation category - or 'Wreck-It Ralph', for that matter. Confirmation that Pixar will win that award every year so long as the film in question isn't related to 'Cars'. I'd have preferred seeing 'A Royal Affair' win over 'Amour' in the foreign film category, but 'Amour' is still a terrific film. Shame Tarantino won a screenplay award for one of his baggiest movies: perpetuating the idea that the screenplay award is about dialogue, when movie writing is about much more than that. For instance, craft, structure and discipline. You shouldn't be able to throw every thought you've had onto a page and beat a pretty perfect film like 'Moonrise Kingdom' to that award. No arguments with 'Searching for Sugar Man' for best doc - loved it. Also, how was 'Cloud Atlas' (see opinion below) not even nominated for Best Make-Up? 'Hitchcock' was, and that's just Anthony Hopkins in a terrible fat-suit. 'Cloud Atlas' is a little more ambitious and interesting than that, even if it's not much else.

For more on the Academy Awards, they were the subject of my latest podcast with Toby King - which you can subscribe to on iTunes.

Anyway... reviews:

'Zero Dark Thirty' - Dir. Kathryn Bigelow (15)

Like 'The Hurt Locker' before it, Kathryn Bigelow's latest foray into post-9/11 US dealings in the Middle East is resolutely A-political. Whether that's in order to avoid splitting the audience (and Academy Award voters) or because she has no clear view on events I can't say, but 'Zero Dark Thirty' - despite strange allegations that it's pro-torture - is clinical, cold and matter of fact, sometimes to the point of being sterile. It's possibly the least testosterone-filled and adrenaline pumping movie of Bigelow's career as, aside from  a tense and deeply disturbing depiction of the Delta Force killing of Osama Bin Laden in the film's final third, it mainly follows the office-bound trials and tribulations of Jessica Chastain's maverick CIA operative. We witness her attempts - apparently based on fact - to persuade bosses to pro-actively pursue fresh intelligence on Bin Laden, then (supposedly) assumed by higher ups to be hiding in remote caves - a decade-long quest that ends in the al Qaeda leaders 2011 death.

The Delta Force sequence is breathtaking in its construction, and totally morally ambiguous - it's basically a group of well-armed men slaughtering the occupants of a family home as they sleep and plays as about as heroic as that sounds - but the rest is fairly forgettable, if reliably performed by the award-nominated lead. Chastain is a commanding presence, though most of her discussions with bosses are cliché dick-swinging contests won by the shoutiest person in the room, rather than Aaron Sorkin-style exhibitions of smartest-guy-in-the-room cleverness. It could have benefited from the latter given how talky it is, and how interesting much of supporting cast are: Mark Strong, Mark Duplass, Joel Edgerton, Chris Pratt, James Gandolfini, Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke and Frank Grillo are all decent in it but have very little to do.

In regards to the much-discussed scenes of torture, I don't think Bigelow, or writer Mark Boal, has an overtly pro or negative stance (though you could certainly make a compelling case for anything other than a negative stance being morally dubious) as far as we can glean from the movie. Torture is certainly depicted, but ultimately generates no intelligence that isn't ultimately already in the CIA's possession. Besides, whilst the military personnel involved, along with Chastain's character, don't seem to have any problem with the practice, the torture itself is suitably uncomfortable to watch - much like the Delta Force raid. Neither are presented as performed by uncomplicated good guys. In fact I'd be very surprised if anybody - even on the extreme "kill them all for what they done" far-right - found much cause to celebrate the military action as depicted here. The film's only real crimes are against reasonable running times, as it out-stays its welcome by a good 40 minutes. But that's a consistent problem with 95% of recent movies. For further reading, see 'Lincoln' and 'Cloud Atlas' below.

'Lincoln' - Dir. Steven Spielberg (12A)

This will be a very short review, as Spielberg's 'Lincoln' is an otherwise forgettable (if robustly constructed) film that will be remembered for an amazing central performance: Daniel Day-Lewis is fantastic, as is much of an impressive supporting cast. His Abraham Lincoln is believable and a character, not a caricature - something that can't be said for every Day-Lewis creation. We have no real way of knowing if this is what the most-celebrated US president sounded like or moved like, but this portrayal is entirely convincing and, perhaps more significantly, wonderful to watch. In fact it's the only thing that kept me gripped in what's really a dry courtroom drama about the horse-trading and back-room politics involved in passing a law. The Civil War setting is interesting and the law in question - the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed slavery in the United States - is obviously of great historical importance, but Spielberg's telling of these events suffers from an uncharacteristic lack of dynamism and narrative drive.

'To The Wonder' - Terrence Malick (12A)

Full disclosure: I'm not a great lover of Terrence Malick's ouvre, finding that I appreciate his work far more than I enjoy it or even like it. In that respect 'To The Wonder' is true to form: a plot-light, narration-heavy visual poem, replete with awe-inspiring visuals (including the classic: long grass in a suburban American backyard at magic hour) and deeply, earnestly contemplative about the meaning of existence, the director's relationship with God and our place in the universe. This one deals in typically big themes via Javier Bardem's conflicted priest and Olga Kurylenko's lovelorn immigrant - covering existential despair with over the top free-spirited joie de vivre. Yet it's more satisfying for me as a subject for post-film conversation than as a viewing experience itself.

To me its whispering narration, mostly in French and Spanish this time around, coupled with inspirational visuals of people frolicking in nature, give it the feeling of a particularly lavish perfume ad or an especially bombastic mobile phone commercial. Which isn't to say the film itself is at all superficial or pretentious: I think Malick is entirely sincere and honest in what feels like a very personal exploration of - among other things - marriage as an intrinsic part of faith and faith as an essential component of marriage. It's just that, as with the similar (if infinitely more grand and ambitious) 'Tree of Life', the themes that are closest to Malick's heart couldn't be further from my own. Spirituality and faith are often no more than buzzwords in American movies, and Malick is to be applauded for examining these concepts seriously and devoid of superficiality (I'm thinking of you 'Life of Pi'), but they don't particularly interest me as a militant atheist.

On a different tact, Ben Affleck is completely bland (or perhaps his character is just incredibly cold to the point that he isn't required to express any emotion) and his character poorly defined, whilst Rachel McAdams is in it for barely ten minutes - making it odd that in some cases the marketing has billed them as the stars, especially given that Kurylenko narrates the majority of the piece and features more prominently from start to finish. In many respects the film is about her character's journey from flighty and infatuated love-obsessive to wounded and disheartened romance cynic.

'Cloud Atlas' - Dir. Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski & Andy Wachowski (15)

Nothing says the Wachowskis like ambitious and expensive folly, and so in the spirit of the 'Matrix' sequels and the unfairly maligned 'Speed Racer' comes the cluttered and confused 'Cloud Atlas', made in collaboration with German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (of 'Run Lola Run' and 'The International' fame). There's so much to be curious about here: for instance, the principal stars all play a half-dozen different characters, often changing race and gender as the film cuts between time periods - from the 1800s to the far-flung, post-apocalyptic future. It's a sci-fi blockbuster, romantic tragedy, period drama, espionage thriller and a slapstick comedy about bungling pensioners - all in one movie. But this is both the appeal and, it turns out, the problem. Many (if not all) of these disparate elements are interesting, but combined they have the effect of drowning each other out, whilst the constant cutting leaves it feeling messy and unfocussed.

Basically it doesn't quite work as a whole, only really succeeding as a curiosity: but, for many, this curiosity won't extend for the film's near three-hour running time. Furthermore, the stories only really have one point: that we should set aside intolerance of difference and embrace the fact that we are all essentially one single race, united in our struggles. That's why it is actually anti-racist for (as an example) Jim Sturgess to get made up to look Korean, as opposed to deeply troubling: because the fact that we're all the same is the movie's entire point - which it attempts to amplify through the repeated use of the same actors in vastly different role across the span of human existence. But this presents two problems, as I see it.

The first is that this message, if - like most of the audience, I presume - you already believe it, doesn't require a three-hour, $100 million demonstration in which Tom Hanks incongruously plays an Irishman, a Scotsman and a futuristic caveman. The second difficulty is that, by venturing into the bigoted sci-fi future, and the bigoted ultra-distant future, the film suggests that this war against difference is intrinsic to the human experience and never destined to change. In other words: we'll always be racists. And that's a bit pessimistic for my taste.

'Wreck-It Ralph' review:

Jeez! This blog - and its humble author - just can't catch a break, gentle reader. Since making my hubristic turn-of-the-year pledge to update more regularly (10 times a month, said I!) I have been beset by horrid seasonal flu-like illness and (as of tomorrow) a major house move - complete with lack of internet for the immediate future. So I can't see my output improving any in the near future. So it goes. Anyway, this confluence of events also meant that I haven't yet seen award season hotties 'Zero Dark 30' and 'Lincoln'. Anyway, I did at least see Disney's latest home-grown animation, 'Wreck-It Ralph', whilst at a customarily dry 2013 slate presentation in London last month. So here's a review of that film, seeing as it's just now on general release on this side of the pond.

'Wreck-It Ralph' is to the video game arcade what 'Toy Story' was to a kid's bedroom, in that it takes place in the imagined downtime of the various game characters, after the patrons have left the arcade. Our hero is one game's villain, Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly)  - whose daily routine involves smashing up a brightly coloured apartment building so that Fix-It Felix ('30 Rock's loveable Jack McBrayer) can save the day: earning glory and the love of the game's citizens. But Ralph is frustrated by his lot. Why shouldn't he be the hero? Especially as, by some cruel quirk of sociology, his in-game villain status leaves a very real impression on his neighbours in the game. Understandably, Ralph doesn't want to be the bad guy any more. He wants adulation and sometimes a bit of birthday cake. And so he quits his game to see if he can make it as a hero somewhere else.



It's this quest that takes Ralph through various colourful and amusing game worlds, some based on actual games and others excellent facsimiles, with the most of the film taking place in one of the latter: Sugar Rush, an adorable candy-theme go-karting game featuring the genuinely cute Vanellope von Schweetz, as voiced by the great Sarah Silverman. It's after meeting Vanellope, a peppy little girl with a sad story and can-do attitude, that the up-to-now selfish Ralph starts to re-evaluate his priorities and discovers what actually being a hero means. It's a familiar arc, but it plays out here with real warmth and doesn't feel forced or hackneyed.

It's sweet and tells its story smartly, but where 'Wreck-It Ralph' really sings is with the sight gags, inspired puns and myriad of game references. It's an out-and-out comedy in an age where a lot of the classier animated movies - vintage Pixar, 'ParaNorman' - are increasingly dramas-with-jokes (not a criticism) and it converts an unreasonably high number of jokes to actual laughs. (More than most live-action comedies released in the past decade - though I realise that isn't necessarily too much of a yardstick.) It's a joy from start to finish. A little slice of happy, but without being overly saccharin... well, the least it can be considering it's a Disney movie set predominantly in a candy land featuring an adorable little girl teaching a surrogate father figure how to be a better man. But it pulls it off, without being too earnest and without smirking. It's a very genuine little movie made with obvious love of video games.

'Django Unchained' review:

Been a while, etc. Saw this a few weeks ago, when it was released in the UK, and even recorded a podcast about it - which subscribers to the old Splendor Cinema iTunes feed may well have already listened to - but a combination of work, holiday and illness kept me from posting a written appraisal. See below:

There is a good film buried somewhere within the three hours of Quentin Tarantino's typically self-satisfied western. Indeed, the first hour, which sees Jamie Foxx's slave Django pressed into the service of the ever-watchable Christoph Waltz's eccentric German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz, moves along at a good clip and is every bit as stylish, cine-literate and entertainingly violent as the filmmaker's acolytes would have you believe. The duo have a pleasing on-screen chemistry and their various (slightly wacky) escapades - though episodic and mostly inconsequential - are fun. So much so that I would quite happily trade the subsequent two hours of film for four half-hour TV episodes, in which these unlikely partners round up a new bunch of low-lifes each week against a Spaghetti Western backdrop. That would be better than 'Django Unchained' - the bloated and scattershot film from an ego-maniacal director, seemingly operating without checks on his power. Case in point: his truly risible cameo as an Australian people trafficker. Though the less said about that the better.

One of the appealing things about the first third of 'Django' is that, much like the enjoyably disposable 'Inglourious Basterds' before it, there is an overriding edge of sillyness and even moments of satire - both best exemplified by an amusing (if disposable) KKK skit - that help to undercut the unrelenting nastiness of Tarantino's characters and apparent world-view. In other words, it's easier to sit back and laugh at people's skulls being staved in when the overall piece is irreverent and daft, as opposed to when these actions are supposed to be cool. That last word, "cool", is key in terms of my relationship with Tarantino. The more desperately and self-consciously he seems to be trying to sell cool, to create cool characters and write cool dialogue, the more tragic and ultimately disturbing I find his films to be. The ever-present themes of Old Testament justice and revenge are difficult for me to stomach when taken seriously. Being asked to see them as cool is, to my mind, unpalatable.

And so we come to the latter stages of the film, in which Django fights violence and intolerance with the same and [SPOILER] wins. Leonardo DiCaprio's energetic and typically intense performance as the villain goes some way to offsetting the tedium of the second half but po-faced revenge fantasy blood-lust and a politically dubious finale - in which black collaboration with slavery essentially becomes the main villain of the piece, via Samuel L. Jackson's Stephen - leave a sour taste well before the credits roll and the horses dance. Throw in some baffling musical choices and the director's aforementioned cameo and 'Django' stops being irreverent fun and becomes, at best, sloppy and boring and, at worst, pretty hateful. It certainly wants a good edit.

'Silver Linings Playbook', 'Jack Reacher', 'Life of Pi' and 'Fear and Desire': review round-up

'Silver Linings Playbook' - Dir. David O. Russell (15)

Really strong lead performances from Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence combine with a smart script to make David O. Russell's relatively unsung follow-up to 'The Fighter' a real charmer. This story of friendship and, later, love between two mentally ill misfits is handled with sensitively without being patronising or sanitised, giving a non-judgemental glimpse at the personal lives of its troubled, bipolar disorder suffering protagonists. The duo's lack of social graces and peculiar home-lives gives rise to some amusing scenes, though overall the emphasis here is on drama - in a gritty, socially real style and following working class characters, making it feel similar to the director's previous in terms of tone.

Even the populist dance contest plotline that sees the two leads come together feels somehow grounded rather than whimsical, though the first half is definitely strongest - dealing more with mental health issues, whereas as it goes on it becomes more about the redemptive power of love and the peculiarities of fate. That's not a bad thing or a worthless theme, by any stretch of the imagination, but the film gets less compelling as it stops being an intense character study - as it is for the first (Cooper dominated) half-hour - and becomes more bogged down in its own plot. All the stuff involving Robert De Niro as a superstitious bookmaker feels particularly unnecessary, and the final scenes - hinging on an unlikely/nonsensical final wager - resort to contriving tension from an odd situation rather than the actions of characters.

'Jack Reacher' - Dir. Christopher McQuarrie (12A)

One of the most relentlessly right-wing action movies of 2012, 'Jack Reacher' stars Tom Cruise as the eponymous "hero" - an extra-judicial champion who deals with The Scumbags The Law Can't Put Away, dispensing justice at the barrel of a gun and at the heel of his boot. Here the enemy - as embodied by a brilliant but under-utilised Werner Herzog - invests in public works: making bridges and roads "that no one needs". Here politicians and policemen are corrupt and can't be trusted to get the job done, and in fact come between our hero and True Justice more than once. Here a defence attorney (Rosamund Pike) is made to speak with the families of her client's victims as a condition for getting Reacher's help. It's a film where American prisons are derided as holiday camps and where the rights of gun owners are frequently and fervently championed - with one of the good guys the owner of a gun store/practice range, as played by Robert Duvall. It's the only film I've seen where the hero can casually call a young woman a "slut" and still be considered the hero. I could go on but by now you either get the idea or you don't care.

Reacher is a typical Cruise character to a self-parodic and often hilarious degree: he's the best there is at everything, top of every class at military school, but he's also a bit of a maverick. During one particularly intense phone conversation with a wrong'un, he describes himself as "a drifter with nothing to lose". The ladies universally love him, turning to gawk at him in every crowd scene. He's good at running and driving fast cars, and you rarely see him fail or come off worse in any situation. But there's something different and, I think, quite sad about this particular Cruise role also - in that Jack Reacher is a bit nasty. In playing a character more ruthless and self-consciously "bad-ass" than his usual Cruise has never seemed older or less relevant, even as he struggles to stay hip.

'Life of Pi' - Dir. Ang Lee (PG)

The opening credits sequence to Ang Lee's 'Life of Pi' is the single tweest thing I have ever seen outside of a parody and, I suppose to its credit, the film starts as it means to go on: bombarding the audience with cuteness and whimsy and trite armchair theology from then until the sloppy ending moments. There's just enough bland and vague bollocks about faith and spirituality here to flatter the audience into thinking they're being given something that fits their intelligence, without actually challenging them and spoiling their evening out - but 'Life of Pi' is every bit as vapid as Vernon Kay or people who use the word "detox".

Based on a beloved novel, this is the story of a young man stranded at sea in a lifeboat with only an angry tiger for company. Whilst stranded at sea following a shipwreck - as his family attempted to move their zoo from French-India to French-Canada - Pi (Suraj Sharma) contends with the tiger Richard Parker - an impressive piece of CGI - whilst coming to terms with his own faith: a mix of Islam, Hinduism and Catholicism. The latter part, which could be interesting, is neglected largely in favour of adorable meerkats and flying fish that make nifty (and distracting, aspect ratio altering) use of the 3D.

Lee's film looks amazing - or at least, it looks different to anything else you've seen - but beyond that its empty calories and outstays its welcome well before it stumbles over the two-hour mark. Apparently the original book was once deemed "unfilmable" but on this evidence, to misquote 'Jurassic Park', Ang Lee was so preoccupied with whether or not he could that he didn't stop to think if he should.

'Fear and Desire' - Dir. Stanley Kubrick (12A)

Playing UK cinemas for the first time since 1953, Stanley Kubrick's rare and disowned debut feature can now be appreciated in all its flawed-but-sort-of-interesting glory. This is definitely one for die-hard fans of the director or those with a broader interest in film history rather than casual cinema-goers, a fact re-enforced by the decision to screen this short feature preceded by three short documentary films made by the young photographer as his motion picture career gathered pace. This means Kubrick aficionados can now also see 'Day of the Fight' and 'The Flying Padre' on the big screen, as well as a colour recruitment film made for the International Seafarers Union in 1953, the year after 'Fear and Desire'. The end result is a two-hour programme that's occasionally fascinating and sometimes a bit dull.

As far as existentialist war B-movie 'Fear and Desire' is concerned, it's understandable why Kubrick would block its distribution for so long during his lifetime. It's not a complete car crash, with some really nice photography (as you'd expect) and some eye-catching shots, but its overwritten and amateurish compared to his subsequent work, and pretty abysmally acted. Some recognisably Kubrickian themes can be found here, such as madness and the dehumanising horror of war, but its difficult to know how much of this could be down to the director given that this is the one film he took no part in writing - with Howard Sackler the sole credited author. Visually there are aspects of it that reminded me strongly of early Kurosawa - particularly 'Rashomon', which was such a big deal in the years directly preceding the making of 'Fear and Desire' - mainly in its use of the jungle setting and enigmatic female lead, Virginia Leith as "the girl".

There are some really appealing aspects to the story too, in that it focusses on four soldiers stranded behind enemy lines and their internal combustion under the pressure of what to do next. There is little conflict with the delightfully non-specific enemy - though the conflict we do see is powerfully and viscerally depicted - but instead we spend time with these increasingly mad men who, as far as we can tell, may as well be the villains of the piece.

'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey', 'Alps', 'The Hunt' and 'Seven Psychopaths': review round-up

'The Hobbit: An Expected Journey' - Dir. Peter Jackson (12A)

The first of three(!) instalments of Tolkien's short and sweet prelude to Lord of the Rings, as envisaged by the enemy of brevity Peter Jackson, is as punishingly long as you might expect. Factoring in twenty minutes or so of ads and trailers, this first hit represents over three hours at the movies. You would think that would give ample time to tell the entire story as written, but the money men and Jackson's own inflated ego - which has seemingly survived 'King Kong' and 'The Lovely Bones' unscathed - intervene to instead sell us what feels like a mix of DVD deleted scenes from his previous trilogy along with countless, interminable minutes of battles which feel like you're watching somebody else playing a video game. The various skirmishes that take place between the merry band of Dwarves and assorted ugly (and therefore expendable) sentient lifeforms - such as orcs and goblins - are bland and uninvolving, with no sense of jeopardy at all and even less sense of time and space. As ever it feels less like Tolkien and more like the imitators his imagination inspired, such as Warhammer or World of Warcraft.

Whilst Jackson and company had to condense the previous trilogy in order to turn it into films, here the decision to expand upon a much slimmer volume leads to a baggy narrative filled with incidental remembrances and incidents either wholly made up or pulled from obscure references in the appendices of LOTR. This accounts for why we spend fifteen minutes or so watching Sylvester McCoy, as Radagast the Brown, mug his way around a forest, on a rabbit-pulled sled, saving adorable CGI hedgehogs from god knows what. It's all entirely pointless. As is the scene in which Gandalf (Ian McKellen), Galadriel (Cate Blanchet), Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Saruman (Christopher Lee) meet up to have a conversation that isn't in the book at all - much like half those characters - just so they can hint at the grim future events previously seen in a separate set of films. It's fan service for a film made less than ten years ago and on a huge budget. In fact, it's basically the last ten minutes of 'Revenge of the Sith' all over again - and that's probably the best way to describe this entire film, as it attempts to play off nostalgia rather than doing anything new.

Jackson's 2nd unit again attempt to dazzle us with grand helicopter shots of Great Men walking across New Zealand's mightiest mountains, but it feels like a greatest hits re-run - ironically making it the exact opposite of inspirational. Even the riddle sequence with Gollum (Andy Serkis), which is closely lifted from the book and forms the film's highlight, is stretched out and provides too many opportunities for Serkis to riff and showboat, capitalising on his character's popularity, with straightforward storytelling never the film's primary motor.

The increased length of the piece also means that, this time around, we aren't spared adaptation of Tolkien's song/poems (the bits you traditionally skip over when reading the books). And so the Dwarves sing a jaunty washing up song like something out of a Disney parody and then they hum an ominous hymn with uncomfortable earnestness. Later the Elves gaily prance and play the pan pipes and serve vegetarian food and speak in breathy tones and dare you to smash them in the face with a rusty spade. It's all quite high on it's own imagined cultural significance and emotional power, yet that doesn't stop the filmmakers from filling the screenplay with awful jokes and slapstick comedy that would make 'Attack of the Clones' era C-3P0 die of shame. Literally the gags include: small man on a horse and fat man eating food (and later: fat man climbing tree).

I just posted this on Facebook, but I think it's a decent summation of this review and my feelings for the whole 'Lord of the Rings' movie oeuvre:

The wikipedia entry for The Hobbit (book) sums up the difference between Tolkien and Peter Jackson beautifully: "Beorn never actually shape-shifts between man and bear-form during the narrative of The Hobbit book: he is encountered in both forms, but his actual transformation appears "off-screen", away from the point of view of the main characters. Comments made by [special effects company] Weta Workshop indicate that in the adaptation, Beorn's transformation from man to bear will be a major special effects sequence." And probably one lasting twenty minutes accompanied by soft-focus and pan pipes and Enya set in the idyll of a cheese ad and filmed on top of a mountain, as captured by a 2nd unit helicopter crew.

On the positive front, Martin Freeman makes for an appealing Bilbo Baggins and does a very good (and subtle) impression of Ian Holm - who plays the elder version of the character, in the previous films and at the beginning here. Much like Ewen McGregor in 'The Phantom Menace'.

NOTE: I wasn't able to see the film in the higher frame-rate that's attracted so much negative criticism, so I couldn't possibly comment on that. However, I think the 3D is pretty good, for whatever that's worth. Clearly shot with stereoscopy in mind and never gimmicky.

'Alps' - Dir. Giorgos Lanthimos (15)
Speaking of directors coasting of memories of their previous films, Greek filmmaker Giorgos Lanthimos channels a lot of what made 'Dogtooth' so great into his follow-up, which follows a group of people who impersonate deceased loved ones in order to aid the grieving. The strange, stilted style of dialogue, phrasing and delivery continues here, as does his clinical, cold and detached aesthetic. Yet it doesn't work so well a second (or third, for those who saw the risible copycat that was 'Attenberg') time, perhaps chiefly because the sterility of 'Dogtooth' seemed entirely appropriate in the context of a story about adult-children who had never left the house and consequently had been unable to socialise in a normal way. Watching that film you could imagine that outside the gates of their sheltered family home you'd find a normal, recognisable world. Yet 'Alps' makes that stylistic choice feel like an affectation rather than commentary. So it's a follow-up that not only borrows heavily from a previous work but also diminishes it by association.

Whereas 'Dogtooth' seemed theme-rich and entirely clever, 'Alps' feels aimless and hollow: all style. There are moments where it really works - where the disconnected protagonists with their monotone voices say and do things which are really funny - but it's difficult to care overall. I'm at a loss for what it's about, to be completely frank. It might be saying something about acting as a profession: positing the trite idea that actors are all lost and shallow people without identities, who perform out of a desire to become somebody else and to please people. In this case becoming not only someone other than themselves, but doing it to please another and in doing so live vicariously off that affection.

Or perhaps, with its repeated a theme of dominant male characters (like 'Dogtooth', 'Alps' has a few violent patriarchs), it's saying something about the role of women in society? Pressured into conforming into various roles and so forth. A reading supported by the opening scenes which focus on female characters whilst disembodied male voices bark instruction. But in either case, it isn't effective or particularly thought-provoking, since it's hard to care at all when the characters themselves are so remote and unaffected.

'The Hunt' - Dir. Thomas Vinterberg (15)

Danish Dogme 95 pioneer Thomas Vinterberg directs the stellar talent that is Mads Mikkelsen in a taught and gripping drama about a primary school teacher in a small village who is (wrongly) accused of sexual assault by a child in his care. To make matters worse, the little girl in question is his best friend's daughter, very much leaving him without friends in town where his reputation goes from charming, eligible bachelor to paedo scumbag overnight. It's immensely frustrating to watch as a good man's reputation is disintegrated without reprieve or the hint of redemption, though that unhappy scenario does at least afford Mikkelsen the opportunity to give another stunning performance in a year in which he has also starred in the excellent 'A Royal Affair'.

A hard watch but a timely one, in an age where paedophile moral panic is at its greatest and media witch hunts routinely assassinate the character of public and private individuals. What makes the film so strong is that you believe that this one lie - spoken in anger by a troubled child - is all it would take to turn everyone you know against you and totally ruin your life as you know it. Perhaps the message of 'The Hunt' is that we shouldn't be so quick to pass judgement and join a hate mob based on hearsay and speculation - even if it seems to be coming from a source of authority: here in the guise of the well-meaning head mistress to whom the lie is first told. Though social media doesn't factor here, it is easy to relate this story to the world of Facebook and Twitter where such band-wagon jumping campaigns are able to gather steam like never before and with increasing frequency.

Perhaps this is why we, curiously enough, never see the trial or the justice system in action during 'The Hunt', with that taking place during a rare stretch of the film in which Mikkelsen is absent. This is a film about mob rule, in which guilt is assumed the moment the accusation is made and sustained even when all the facts go against it. In that way it would make a good companion piece to the similarly themed American film 'Doubt', though scenes of the character's day to day life in town following the trial reminded me most of Tilda Swinton's guilt-wracked mother in the aftermath of the events of 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' - incidentally, another film that deals with heinous culturally taboo crime perpetrated against children.

'Seven Psycopaths' - Dir. Martin McDonagh (15)

The most common complaint I've heard directed at 'Seven Psycopaths' is that it isn't as good as writer-director-playwright Martin McDonagh's earlier 'In Bruges' - and it isn't. But then what is? The main thing is that, whilst the film is certainly a little baggy and unfocused, it is still riotously funny. It stars Colin Farrell as probable author insert Martie - a screenwriter struggling to write a film out in LA, joined by Sam Rockwell as his actor best friend Billy and Christopher Walken as Hans, a quiet and philosophical religious man who makes a living from stealing and subsequently returning rich peoples' dogs. However the trio become enemies of a gangland psychopath played by Woody Harrelson when Billy steals his prized Shih Tzu and attempts to ransom the dog back. Things get messy, with tragic consequences as Hans and Martie are pulled into the conflict. All the while Martie is gathering material for his screenplay: 'Seven Psychopaths' - which becomes a sort of film within the film/self-fulfilling prophecy a la 'Adaptation'. And Tom Waits is in it too.

It's frequently hilariously funny, with Rockwell and Walken both particularly brilliant and Farrell clearly relishing working under McDonagh again, not least of all because this is a rare American film in which he is allowed to retain his Irish accent. A sequence in which Rockwell gives his account of how the shoot-out at the end of the film should play out is particularly inspired and brilliant and McDonagh's screenplay is every bit as uncompromisingly darkly funny as 'In Bruges', even if it misses the smaller scale two-men on the road setting. It's perhaps too big and there are too many characters, with the connections between some of them fairly tenuous, but you can't fault the writer for ambition. And if that sounds like a contradiction of my above review of 'The Hobbit', then chalk that up to 'Seven Psychopaths' being half as long and infinitely more fun to watch.