'Norwegian Wood' review and excuses...

Hey all. I have been very busy off late and haven't been able to give my full attention to the (very important) pass time that is blogging. Here is my review of 'Norwegian Wood', which was released on Friday in the UK. I wrote that back in Venice last year. It was one of the first reviews I wrote at that festival and I wasn't as good on the Blackberry back then. Also, I think I'm a bit better at writing now than I was then. Anyway, enough excuses.

My girlfriend and I are on holiday for the next week and then I'm starting a journalisty internship at a video games website, which I hope might lead to something more. I've also got tons of review copies of Blu-rays on my desk which need to be reviewed between now and the end of the month, plus I have some outstanding articles to write for a book on American independant cinema. So expect this blog to be a little low on meaningful content over the next month. But check back anyway in case that proves inaccurate.

'Inside Job' review:

There has been a glut of movies about the financial crisis since 2008. Oliver Stone made his sequel to 'Wall Street', whilst Michael Moore took the opportunity to make a typically polemical documentary about the more general subject of American capitalism. Later this year another star-studded and glossy Hollywood movie about bankers and the collapse of the stock market will be released in the form of 'Margin Call'. But so far the only one of these resolutely topical movies to meet with widespread critical acclaim has been the earnest and indignant documentary 'Inside Job', a film directed by Charles Ferguson and narrated by Matt Damon and winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature last month.

A 'must-see' for graph fetishists, 'Inside Job' comes packed with facts and figures - each new revelation about greed and corruption designed to enrage its audience. Unlike the work of that great propagandist Michael Moore, Ferguson's film doesn't try especially hard to energise viewers into positive political action, rather it serves to confirm what 99% of its probable audience either knew or suspected going in: that the American government is controlled by Wall Street and that everyone from President Obama to the IMF to the board at AIG want to keep it that way. In other words it tells us that reform of the banking system is impossible as things stand - even when a reform candidate with a strong mandate takes office at a time when the system's failures are at their most apparent. It's a numbing feeling watching it for that very reason. Damon's sober narration leaves us with a half-hearted rallying cry just before the credits pop up, inciting us to fight for change, but you will in all likelihood have lost hope in civilisation long beforehand in the face of overwhelming evidence of deep-rooted systemic corruption.



Perhaps I'm missing the point, but I have a slight problem with documentaries like 'Inside Job' and it isn't a case of apathy or world-weary nihilism on my part at all. I have the same problem with (or indifference towards) the work of Richard Dawkins, in that I just can't see the point in preaching to the converted in this way. One thing the film makes abundantly clear is that the financial institutions involved in causing the crisis, and with it mass unemployment and bankruptcy around the world, have committed large-scale criminal acts - either consciously (which seems probable) or as a result of gross negligence. And yet we also see time and time again through all the interviews (with economists, academics, government officials etc) that the perpetrators are not only still running the world, with no realistic end to that situation in sight, but that they are also wholly unrepentant (presumably because many of the individuals involved became richer as a result of the crisis). Change can only be effected by those at the top and those at the top don't have it in their best interests to effect change.

This dispiriting truth, which I'm assuming a healthy percentage of the audience already knew before buying their ticket, makes it difficult to take anything away from 'Inside Job' other than rage or depression, either that or possibly a sense of overbearing smugness. You can criticise Michael Moore for being brash and manipulative, but at least he has something to say - his films are essays or editorial columns which have a political point to drive home. They want to inspire the audience into action, whether that involves forming some sort of worker's cooperative or voting a certain way in the next election. He also highlights things members of his audience might not know about, such as the history of American socialism. In short: whether you like them or not, Moore's films have a reason to exist. I can see the function they have and I can understand why they are interesting. 'Inside Job' is, by contrast, two hours of someone saying "the banking system corrupt and wreckless." Yes. I agree. What else have you got?



'Capitalism: A Love Story' also went an interesting route in talking about the financial crisis in that Moore used it as a way to discuss the fundamental problems with the ideology behind the system rather than simply providing an annotated guide to the crisis itself. To me that is where the interesting discussion is at and only when we question fundamental things about the way we organise out society/economy can we hope to break this cycle.

Though if a detailed account of the crisis with interviews and graphs is what you're after then there is no better film than 'Inside Job'. It is detailed and well researched, and the interviews are very well done, especially as Ferguson has no difficulty telling truth to power and does so confidently whilst always remaining polite. Unlike Moore you could accuse him of being hectoring of self-important. The best interviews see the likes of economist Glenn Hubbard squirm uncomfortably, struggling to answer questions so obviously aware of their guilt. These are the best scenes but also the saddest, as we see powerful, influential men - who are blatantly aware of their guilt - lying to us brazenly. The section that highlights the conflict of interests within the academic profession is especially good. It is certainly a smartly made movie and unquestionably on the side of right.

If there is such a thing as objectivity then I would have to say that 'Inside Job' is a very handsome film, clearly made by people passionately engaged with the subject at hand and backed up by lots of solid evidence. It must also be said that the pre-credits sequence about the impact of deregulation and privatisation in Iceland is fascinating. I'm not telling you to pass on watching it, not at all. I'm simply saying that you will likely leave the film with the same opinion of financial institutions as you had going in (whatever that may be) - and I personally don't see the point in that. Maybe people crave reassurance that they are right more than they want to be challenged or provoked? I couldn't say. I just know that Michael Moore can move me and inspire me whilst this left me feeling cold and unwilling to engage with an unfair world.

'Inside Job' is out on a limited release in the UK and is rated '12A' by the BBFC.

'True Grit' review:

The last few years, since the Oscar-winning 'No Country for Old Men', have seen the Coen brothers rebound spectacularly from the dispiriting mediocrity of 'Intolerable Cruelty' and 'The Ladykillers'. In fact, having come out from the other side of that period of creative stagnation, they are arguably now held in higher esteem than ever before, with the duo releasing films with unprecedented regularity and virtually guaranteed a Best Picture nomination every year. Their latest is no different with 'True Grit' - an adaptation of the Charles Portis novel famously made into a 1969 film starring John Wayne - nominated in ten categories at the recent Academy Awards. Although if failed to secure a single statuette on the night, 'True Grit' is an accomplished film and by far their biggest box office success, so far earning over $200 million worldwide.

In it Jeff Bridges renews his relationship with the Coens, for whom he famously played 'The Dude' in 'The Big Lebowski', starring as alcoholic, wayward US Marshal Rooster Cogburn - the role that earned Wayne his Oscar. He is ably supported by Matt Damon and Josh Brolin as well as the impressive (Oscar nominated) newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, who plays the film's narrator Mattie Ross. Ross is a shrewd, quick-witted and idealistic fourteen year old who reacts to the murder of her father - at the hands of an outlaw named Tom Chaney (Brolin) - by enlisting the help of Cogburn after hearing that he is a ruthless man of "grit". With him she fearlessly sets off into the wilderness where they are joined in their mission by a vain and self-satisfied Texas Ranger (Damon).



The language of Portis' novel is a perfect fit for the Coens, with their fondness for colloquialisms and absurdity. For instance, the fast-talking Miss. Ross would not be out of place in many of their previous movies, especially in a scene where her persistence and intellect see her out-haggle a perplexed stable owner. It reminded me of all the other great scenes of customer-salesperson confrontation in their work - in 'Fargo', 'Raising Arizona', 'O Brother Where Art Thou' and, of course, 'No Country' - with clever word play and small-town sensibilities as ever at the forefront. And as with every feature since they penned the screenplay for Sam Raimi's 1985 effort 'Crimewave', much of the dialogue is dryly, sometimes blackly, comic.

Another early scene sees a silver-tongued lawyer interrogating Cogburn in court, with a sly command of language similar to Tony Shaloub's Freddy Riedenschneider in 'The Man Who Wasn't There' or to Clooney's character in 'Intolerable Cruelty'. Again and again as with 'No Country' - even though we are watching a faithful adaptation of a novel - familiar Coen-esque character archetypes emerge unmistakably, discovered in the source material rather than invented. Though if these are perhaps merely superficial comparisons made by a lifelong fan, more vital continuity can be found in Roger Deakins' peerless work as the film's cinematographer and Carter Burwell's restrained and effective handling of the score. "Restrained" is really the key adjective when talking about 'True Grit', which is about as straightforward a story as the Coens have told. It is economical, seemingly effortless filmmaking that verges on the poetic.



Jeff Bridges offers a less sanitised version of Cogburn than the one made famous by Wayne: his alcoholism has clearly taken its toll on his health and his speech is slurred. Though he benefits from inheriting the role in a version of the novel which is willing to explore its darker elements. The Henry Hathaway directed adaptation of '69 (which I do enjoy) retains some of the dark edge - especially in Kim Darby's performance as Ross - but this feels more by accident than design, as key plot elements and dialogue lifted from the novel tease at a moral complexity at the story's heart. The Coen's version understands its source text better and goes to those ambiguous places, though this isn't 'Kill Bill Goes West' either. The Coens haven't made a cold-blooded revenge flick, but a story about the way revenge and blood-lust deform a person's soul.

By fulfilling her desire to see Chaney dead, Ross descends into the metaphorical hell represented by a snake pit and we find, from a bitter-sweet closing monologue, that her life afterwards has come to be defined by this chapter of her life. Like the one-eyed Cogburn, she is forever physically deformed, whilst she is also a spinster. The ultimate tragedy of 'True Grit' is that it's the story of a young, bright and precocious girl damaged more by the violence she has perpetrated and witnessed in her grief than by the catalytic sinful act: death of her father. It is this aspect of the tale that the Coens hone in on, albeit subtly, which makes 'True Grit' the opposite of a John Wayne film in many ways: at its core it is a humanist, wholly non-preachy anti-death penalty film.



I've oft heard it said that the Coens are heartless storytellers: that they don't like their characters and that they are cynical about people. I don't buy into that view at all and if I did I wouldn't be a fan. The Coen brothers, for me anyway, are defined by their willingness to look at all the cruelty of the human experience through the lens of absurdity and stupidity - a bit like the satire Chris Morris or Armando Iannucci. People aren't evil or good in Coen brothers movies, they usually just don't know any better. Bad things are done by people in a state of panic (most murders in Coen brothers movies occur this way) and pre-planned acts of inhumanity always find their way back to the often hapless perpetrator (think of Macy's Jerry Lundegaard in 'Fargo'). Even if, in this case, she is a little girl avenging her father's murder - a goal many filmmakers would find unproblematic.

The Coen brother's films are not only among the best made, most sharply written of the modern age, but they are actually also among the most moral, the most honest and least blithely pessimistic films about our species. 'True Grit' is just such a film and a damn fine one. A one-eyed drunk should be able to see that.

I saw 'True Grit' open the Berlin Film Festival back in February and it has been out in the UK for several weeks since then, having been rated a '15' by the BBFC. Here is something I wrote about the press conference from Berlin.

'Animal Kingdom' review:

If you think of all the great American crime films centred around a family - actual or metaphorical - you will almost certainly be thinking of films surrounding charismatic and honourable men. Violent men, sure. Frightening men, certainly. But the characters of 'The Godfather', or 'Goodfellas' or of 'Miller's Crossing', not to mention any Cagney film, are ultimately anti-heroes operating corruptly but within a corrupt world.

At their most heroic (or satirical) they come to embody the entrepreneurial spirit and even the American Dream as in 'Scarface'. And, as devoutly religious men, they always have some sort of arbitrary moral code - a line they will not cross. Either they won't sell drugs or they won't whack a guy in Church or whatever. American gangsters socialise themselves into a world of rules and meaning: one where their murderous, destructive actions are re-defined and sanitised.

As an audience we are always compelled to empathise with a film's protagonists, even if they take the form of an exhausted and delusional Adolf Hitler in 'Downfall' or the racist and paranoid fantasist Travis Bickle in 'Taxi Driver'. In this same way the bank-robbing Cody family of Oscar nominated Australian crime drama 'Animal Kingdom' are still relatable as human characters, yet writer and director David Michôd refuses to glamorise them and is cynical about trite ideas of 'family loyalty'.



Operating under the gaze of 'Smurf', a vaguely incestuous, ever-smiling matriarch played by Jacki Weaver (whose performance earned her an Academy Award nomination), the Cody clan - with the exception of the sheepish Darren (Luke Ford) and the conflicted young 'J' (James Frecheville) - are shown to be ruthless and we see that they would sooner turn on each other than go to prison. 'Smurf' doesn't even shed a tear when she learns that her estranged daughter, J's mother, has died from a drug overdose.

It is this death which sees J move in with his grandmother and uncles and become caught up in the world of crime his mother tried to keep him away from. Only he has been taken in by a criminal organisation well past its prime and soon realises he might have been safer staying his own, as an increasingly gung-ho police force closes in, threatening to wipe out the family. Pressure on the Cody family only increases when, in a revenge attack for the murder of a criminal associate, three of the brothers - lead by the dead-eyed and psychopathic 'Pope' (Ben Mendelsohn) - murder two young policemen in a cowardly, seedy act under cover of darkness and devoid of all honour or glamour.

Soon J, who was not directly involved in the attack, is targeted as a key witness to this double murder by the well-meaning Detective Leckie played by Guy Pearce. The central drama revolves around whether J will lie to protect his family or whether he will be persuaded by Leckie into testifying against them in court. It's all about where J fits into the food chain in a Darwinian world. As Leckie tells him "you may think you're one of the strong creatures. But you're not: you're one of the weak ones." Like Tahar Rahim's Malik in the similarly gritty and uncompromising 'A Prophet', J must adapt to his environment fast if he is to survive.

'Animal Kingdom' plays out as a battle between two charismatic competing opposite forces, who also happen to be embodied by the film's two most compelling actors: Guy Pearce and Jacki Weaver. Neither of whom dominate in terms of screen-time. Weaver has been earning the plaudits for a performance which manages to convey menace under the surface whilst her character is all smiles and sweetness. Weaver doesn't simply make 'Smurf' so nice that it becomes unsettling in itself, which wouldn't work as we have to believe 'J' really buys into her persona, but instead she seems sincerely nice, loving and sympathetic with the stage actress somehow conveying an inner complexity somewhere behind her eyes.

Guy Pearce is by now a Hollywood veteran of sorts and so he has understandably been overlooked in favour of Weaver, a relative unknown, in terms of critical acclaim. Yet he is equally if not more impressive as Leckie, another impactful supporting role in a career which has recently come to be defined by impactful supporting roles, following 'The Road', 'The Hurt Locker' and 'The King's Speech'. He is understated and commands your attention the way only a really gifted, natural-born screen actor can. In fact his presence raises the class of the whole film and makes his few scenes among the most memorable.

The whole thing has a moody and oppressive atmosphere which builds into something quite tense and 'Animal Kingdom' is a handsomely made film. Although one pivotal tragic scene involving J's girlfriend (Laura Wheelwright) is mishandled and far-fetched, meaning that it fails to have the desired impact. That scene also seems completely needless - in terms of the character's actions rather than the story - which could be intended to increase the tragedy, but just left me frustrated. However, the fact that the film so rarely strays into cliché is to be applauded, whilst the final shot is ingenious and immensely satisfying.

'Animal Kingdom' is rated '15' by the BBFC and is out in the UK now.

'The Mechanic' review:

Homo-erotic muscular toplessness? Manly scenes of unnecessary car maintenance? Evil South American drug lords? Homophobic, racist and sexist sub-text (and in many cases text)? A plot revolving around the theme of revenge? A lack of all humanity and compassion? A cruel sense of humour? Insanely violent and yet wonderfully creative martial artistry? It must be this month's Jason Statham actioner, this time 'Con Air' director Simon West's 'The Mechanic' - a remake of a 1972 Michael Winner movie starring Charles Bronson, which I have never heard of and will probably never see.

Like much of The Stath's output, 'The Mechanic' alternates between the intentionally and accidentally hilarious as its functionary plot serves to get its functionary leading man from set-piece to set-piece within a tidy 93 minute running time. The story is as follows: when the shady international assassination company he works for requires him to kill his friend and mentor (Donald Sutherland), "Mechanic" Arthur Bishop (Statham) attempts to soothe his crisis of conscience by adopting his mentor's bereaved son Steve (Ben Foster) and teaching him - in what seems like a couple of days - to become a world class contract killer. But will Steve find out who really killed his father? Will he be forced to kill his new found mentor and friend? Will the killing ever stop?!



Like everything from 'The Transporter' to 'Crank', 'The Mechanic' is at once brilliantly brainless and utterly repugnant. Our oddly charismatic meat-puppet of a hero gruffly whispers what lines he is given and uses his full acting range, going from quite pensive to extremely pensive - often within the same scene. There is one amazing bit of shared screen time for Statham and Sutherland in which the former looks thoroughly confused and slightly disorientated by what amounts to standard fatherly chatter. But it's hard, nay impossible, not to like Statham. To quote Randy Newman, "he may be a fool but he's our fool" after all and I really enjoy watching this slightly naff, extremely ordinary looking British guy in American movies. He's like the Beverly Hills version of a Mitchell Brother, with his designer sunglasses and leather jacket.

The world of 'The Mechanic' is the stuff of reactionary right-wing tabloid fantasy. At one point Steve decides he wants to kill a car-jacker (don't ask) so he parks his car in a poor neighborhood for a few hours and waits until a black guy duly turns up and puts a gun to his head. One target is a super-hard rival hitman, but he has one weakness: he is a total gay. This means that all Steve needs to do is sit near him in a cafe and wait to be hit on. That is seriously the plan... and, in this twisted, paranoid reality, it works. Then there is the film's opening murder (sorry, I mean "job") which takes place in "Colombia, South America", as with last summer's 'The Expendables' and 'The A-Team' South Americans mean bad news. The cavalcade of stereotypes and thinly veiled bigotries doesn't end there. Every woman seen in the film immediately propositions our heroes and beds them within about ten seconds, usually for pay. (Yes, it really is shocking that those Sky Sports presenters were so backwardly sexist in this day and age - because most of our mainstream entertainment is so enlightened and mature, no?)



Arthur is (of course) a cultured killer though. We know this because he listens to classical music and has a swanky modern house. He has his own code and method of doing things (like every other hitman in the last hundred years of cinema before him) that stops him from being just a nasty murderer. Only, doesn't such cold methodology make him a psychopath? Not if you get paid for it, apparently: then it's just business. Maybe that's intended as a satirical comment on the inherent madness of an economic system that forsakes the spiritual and metaphysical for cold market forces... though probably not. It's probably just rubbish, hackneyed nonsense. But it's got tits in it and guns and explosions and The Stath. Got to love The Stath.

'The Mechanic' proves how sodding hard it is to get an '18' certificate from the BBFC these days. Statham threatens to put a young girl's arm in a food processor whilst interrogating her father - in a scene that was genuinely pretty frightening - and the film generally shows you the moments of violent impact most movies forgo in the name of sanitised palatability. We see a man get his head smashed in by an oncoming car. We see a man hit the ground after a fall. We see loads of blood coming out of each gunshot wound. Only it's strangely not particularly visceral or gory because it's all so silly and so clearly CGI. Maybe that's why they get away with the '15'.



For all my flipplantness, 'The Mechanic' is as solidly made - from a production value and direction point of view - a Jason Statham vehicle as there has ever been this side of 'Snatch'. Ben Foster and Donald Sutherland are both good to watch, although the latter isn't in the film for more than five minutes, and (as I've already said) the fight choreography is often impressive, even thrilling. I laughed a lot as I watched it, even if often for the wrong reasons and I was never bored. If you don't care whether a film's heart is in the right place and if you don't mind if the lead actor can't act on even the most basic level, then you might just end up loving the sheer lunacy of this latest explosive, stunt-filled Statham-fest.

'The Mechanic' is rated '15' by the BBFC and is out in the UK now.

'The Fighter' review:

It is easy to dismiss David O. Russell's boxing biopic 'The Fighter' as riddled with sports movie clichés. It's the story of an ageing boxer working towards his last shot after years of wasting his potential. Sounds more than a little like 'Rocky'. In fact, based on the original trailer, it seemed that the film was more than a little similar to Darren Aronofsky's 2008 film 'The Wrestler' too, with a similar grainy, documentary aesthetic and with Amy Adams replacing Marisa Tomei as the sexy "white trash" confidant of the fighter pushing himself to the physical limit. Seeing Aronofsky's name attached to the film as an executive producer did little to allay this fear that 'The Fighter' would be nothing more than a derivative (and probably inferior) version of a story we've all seen a thousand times before.

Happily this prejudice, whilst not completely unfounded, only tells part of the story: 'The Fighter', it turns out, is a terrifically good film. It can't escape the trappings of the genre narratively or formally (as felt keenest in the obligatory training montage), but the acting is of such a high standard that you overlook its minor trespasses and enjoy what is an entirely entertaining yarn. The film follows the true story of welterweight boxer "Irish" Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and we witness the highs and lows of his relationship with his older half-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), a drug-addicted former pro and Micky's trainer. It is the web of relationships between Micky, his brother, his mother (Melissa Leo) and his girlfriend (Adams) that is the focus of this drama, which spends comparatively little time in the boxing ring.



This is probably a wise decision as it is outside of the ring that the interest lies as we see Ward pulled between the different forces in his life who all project their hopes and aspirations on the meek and sensitive brawler. Wahlberg is superb in the main role, playing a character so painfully reluctant to express himself or fight his own corner, but the more obvious show-stopper is Bale. Christian Bale not only took himself to the physical limit to embody the part, again losing a lot of weight as he had for roles in 'Rescue Dawn' and 'The Machinist', but he completely loses himself in the character. At times he could seem close to going too far, but he never does and the film's most tragic, poignant moments of emotional honesty fall to him - none more effecting than his realisation that he no longer his brother's idol.

Melissa Leo is also impressive as a terrifying matriarch who holds an uncomfortable sway over her nine adult children and who transparently favours her eldest son - the town hero due to his former glory. The film doesn't judge its characters, all of whom are varying degrees of messed up, but if anything it gives Leo's character an easy ride. She assaults her husband in an act of domestic abuse that is played as slightly comic - in a way that would be unthinkable were roles reversed - and there is more than a suggestion that she is willing to put Micky in harms way if she can make money from it (it appears that Micky's bouts pay for his mother's upkeep) though she is never held to account for that, or even shown to be especially apologetic. Yet Leo imbues the role with flashes of vulnerability - or at least self-delusion - to ensure that she is much more than just a monster.



Amy Adams, as Micky's girlfriend, is equally brilliant in the opposite regard. Her character Charlene is for most of the film a positive counterpoint to Micky's possessive family: she helps him to break away from them and act in his own interests. Yet there is more than a hint in Adams' performance - and in the film's screenplay - that she is potentially just as damaging and manipulative a force in his life. The relationship drama at the heart of this movie isn't about good and bad or right and wrong, but about reconciliation between both sides. Micky, in eventually asserting himself, tries to bring everybody together rather than abandon his family for Charlene or go it alone - a more emotionally mature and complex resolution than we are used to seeing, though it may spring more from the fact that the film is based on real life events than the ingenuity of the writers.

The writers do deserve a lot of credit though, as there are some smart and funny lines in the film. Such as when Eklund tries to con a family of Cambodians with a pyramid scheme and is defended against the charge of racism by a friend who says, assures them that "white people do over white people all the time". There is a really nice and subtle exchange between Micky and Charlene too after he picks up on her talking about a former roommate by saying "the army?" before she corrects him with "college" - the idea that someone from his poor neighborhood could go to college being so unexpected. It's a piece of social commentary in a film that makes a feature of America's oft-derided white poor whilst never becoming mawkish or condescending.



'The Fighter' warrants its Oscar nominations, though it justly only stands a chance at winning in the supporting actor categories, where Bale and Leo are surely favourites to win. It is a fairly generic film enlivened by its committed cast, but in some ways that is its principle joy: it is a straightforward, comforting underdog story during which you'll want to punch your fist into the air and cheer on the hero.

'The Fighter' is out now in the UK and has been certified '12A' by the BBFC.

'Rabbit Hole' review:

'Rabbit Hole', starring Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as a married couple going through the motions eight months after the tragic death of their four year old son, is a surprising and deeply effecting experience. Kidman has earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance - and deservedly so - but Eckhart should not be overlooked as he is equally superb in a rare relationship drama which mostly manages to avoid being cloying and calculated despite revolving around such an emotive event. The film pulls this off by virtue of the subtlety of the two lead performances, made all the more remarkable by the fact that the dialogue is often not of the same abundant class.

David Lindsay-Abaire's screenplay, adapted from his own award-winning 2006 stage play of the same name, is mostly decent but weighed down by some cliché lines, such as "what do you want from me?" and "I can't do this any more!" Yet Kidman and Eckhart invest each moment with such raw intensity and emotional honesty that the film is never less than captivating, never more so than when the two share screen time. Likewise John Cameron Mitchell's direction is unpretentious and respects the ability of the actors to hold our attention without distracting camera tricks and rapid cutting (take note Danny Boyle). The director and his stars are helped by the fact that 'Rabbit Hole' as a dramatic piece refuses to take the same well-beaten path of other relationship dramas. They are also beneficiaries of a writer who has crafted well-rounded characters, both of whom we are able to empathise with even though they try to overcome grief and maintain their marriage in completely different ways - something which reminded me of 'Blue Valentine' even though that film is about a very different and more commonplace emotional turmoil.



'Rabbit Hole' differs from 'Blue Valentine' however when it comes to the film's resolution, which is as melancholic as one would expect, but far less despairing. There is a light at the end of the tunnel in shared grief, but the suggestion is not that there is any quick fix to the emotional damage we have witnessed. The characters don't do anything silly either; they don't get involved in any irritating misunderstandings - any "baby, it's not what it looks like" moments. The film also differs from a lot of American tales about grief in that it doesn't bend over backwards to placate the religious in the audience. Kidman's character is critical of those in a child death support group who insist that the death of their child is "part of God's plan". She laughs at the suggestion openly and it turns her against taking part. When she has an argument with her mother (Dianne Wiest) about disliking the use of religion as a coping mechanism, her mother comes back with all the familiar platitudes yet she isn't forced to back down and change her mind as the film takes an intriguing turn.

The thing I liked best about 'Rabbit Hole' was the fact that Kidman's character doesn't have to go on a journey to "make peace with God" and find that "faith" is the answer to all life's trials and tribulations. The opposite is instead true: possibly for the first time in any film I've seen, science is mooted as a cause for optimism and as a means of comfort, specifically the quantum physics idea of parallel universes. You could argue that this is just another belief system and one requiring the same leap of faith as religious belief. Yet parallel universes are a widely accepted scientific possibility (based on measurable, testable data) and the fact is that this character pointedly finds hope in science rather than superstition. Eckhart's arc is similarly refreshing and pleasing if for entirely different, trend-bucking reasons. He is a rare mature, emotionally sensitive male character in American cinema who is not governed by his libido - even if his desire for sex is a contributing factor in the worsening of relations with his wife.



The film's one grating, uncomfortable moment falls to Dianne Wiest who has to deliver a monologue to her daughter about her own journey in dealing with the loss of a son. When asked if the hurt ever goes away, Wiest says that it becomes bearable but that it turns into something you "carry around like a brick in your pocket. And you... you even forget it, for a while. But then you reach in for whatever reason and - there it is." This moment is just a little florid and stagy when compared with the rest of the film and it doesn't strike me as being very true to the way people actually talk: does anyone really ever come up with overwrought, bafflingly counterintuitive metaphors like that in real life? Who puts a brick in their pocket anyway? Can you even fit a brick in a pocket? Why can't you just take the brick out of the pocket? It's just a rubbish way of explaining and simplifying grief.

But the script only finds itself lacking in a few isolated moments. Most of the film is solidly crafted and the performances are gripping. I shed more than one tear - and at little moments too, such as when Kidman throws her son's clothes in a charity bin, pausing for a moment afterwards as if to contemplate the fact that she can't get them back out again. The film is at it's most emotional when it isn't trying to hard. In the latter case it can feel manipulative. It is true that the supporting characters are thinly drawn props only there to provide added emotional complication to our leads, such as Kidman's irresponsible younger sister (Tammy Blanchard) who falls pregnant and the couples's best friends who have failed to keep in contact out of awkwardness, but these characters do the job and provide a necessary foil for our protagonists. It's all about Kidman and Eckhart and they elevate an interesting, diverting drama into an outside Oscar hopeful.

'Rabbit Hole' is rated '12A' by the BBFC and is out on Friday the 4th of February.

'Brighton Rock' review:

It can be a thankless task adapting a beloved novel to the screen. It is then a doubly thankless task when you choose to adapt a beloved novel which has already spawned an equally beloved film. Though first time director and several-time writer Rowan Joffe - whose previous screenwriting credits include '28 Weeks Later' and 'The American' - has undertaken this very task with his updated version of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock. 'Brighton Rock' is the story of a criminal named Pinkie who murders a rival gang member and is forced to cover his tracks in order to avoid a grim death by hanging. The only witness to his crime is a young innocent named Rose, who Pinkie decides to romance in order to ensure her silence.

When I say "updated" I simply mean that Joffe has moved the story from its 1930s setting to the mid-1960s and has set the action amongst the "mods and rockers riots" of the era, made famous on the silver screen by the 1979 film 'Quadrophenia' - a cinematic reference the film alludes to with its relocation of the climax from Peacehaven (or the Palace Pier in John Boulting's 1947 version) to Beachy Head. Sam Riley, best known for playing Ian Curtis in 'Control', stars as Pinkie, a role made famous by Richard Attenborough. Andrea Riseborough plays the naive waitress Rose, whilst the supporting cast is more impressive, boasting Helen Mirren, John Hurt and Andy Serkis as the debonair crime boss Mr. Colleoni. A thankless task re-makes may be, but there were signs that this stellar cast, coupled with the film's vibrant new context, could make this new adaptation something unique and edgy.



Sadly, Joffe's film suffers not only in comparison with the film of old, but also with just about any film currently in cinemas. It is poor. Very poor in fact. Bearing the brunt of this cinematic train wreck is Sam Riley, whose performance is embarrassingly one-note. His Pinkie seems to be in the mould of Phil Mitchell, as he speaks in a gravelly half-whisper for the entire film. The representation of his relationship with Rose is even worse. The history of cinema is littered with female characters who fall in love with gangsters and psychopaths; it is a well-worn idea and one that has been handled far better in a hundred different movies. Usually the guy is shown to have a lighter side, for example in the films of James Cagney: he is often smooth, funny and charismatic, only showing his darker side when pushed or challenged. Indeed Attenborough's Pinkie had an undercurrent of vulnerability to him and even sweetness if you knew where to look.

Riley's Pinkie, by contrast, has no light to complement the shade. He is unremittingly horrid from the first time he meets Rose until the last. As a result you care nothing for him, not even as a brooding anti-hero, and you wonder why Rose would ever be drawn to him in the first place. I saw an old interview with the great Peter Ustinov the other day in which he said that “it’s never worth playing a hero without a weakness or a villain without a heart, a character must have three dimensions and some sort of inner contradiction to make it interesting”. This is, in my opinion, true and it is the greatest failing of Joffe's 'Brighton Rock' that all of the characters are thinly drawn, though Mirren, Serkis and Hurt gamely try their best with the material (albeit with an air of deliberate camp). Riseborough succeeds at injecting her character with a warmth found nowhere else in the film, yet the script is so lacking in nuance and the central relationship so lacking in credibility that it is another thankless task.



'Brighton Rock' 2011 has few redeeming qualities other than the score by Martin Phipps and the fact that it gives people from Brighton and Eastbourne (where much of it was shot) the chance to see their town on a cinema screen. The film's clifftop climax is so badly done it's almost comical, whilst Joffe's direction verges on the amateurish and his evocation of overused mod imagery (such as Pinkie on a scooter) feels contrived and cynical. I'm not blithely dismissive of re-makes and adaptations by nature. They can be cracking fun and sometimes even brilliant cinema (all of Kubrick's films are literary adaptations, for instance). However, if you have nothing to add to the original besides a slight change of setting - and if you can't even adequately get across the core dynamic of that earlier work - then you have no business making that film.

'Brighton Rock' is out in the UK from Friday 4th February and can be seen at Brighton's Duke of York's Picturehouse. The film is rated '15' by the BBFC.

'Black Swan': My interviews with Aronofsky, Cassel and Kunis...

Hooray! The brilliant 'Black Swan' is out today in the UK. It was my favourite film of last year after I saw it at the Venice Film Festival and a few months later I was sent to a fancy London hotel for a press junket where I interviewed the director, Darren Aronofsky, as well as two of his stars: Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis. My review of this masterpiece is up on Obsessed with Film along with those three interviews. Here are the links below:

'Black Swan' review
Darren Aronofsky
Vincent Cassel
Mila Kunis

The film is destined to be nominated for a shed load of Oscars and I fancy Natalie Portman to win Best Actress - something I predicted as soon as I left the première screening on the Lido in September. I noted down all my Oscar predictions earlier in the week.

'Black Swan' is out now and playing at Brighton's Duke of York's Picturehouse. It has been rated '15' by the BBFC.

'Blue Valentine' review:

Stills and posters don't do 'Blue Valentine' justice. It looks too smug and indie, even a little high on itself with its brooding, handsome leads locked in a po-faced embrace. It seems self-consciously "cool" and "stylish", flaunting various garlands on the poster stating that it played in Cannes as well as the hippest international film festivals: Toronto and Sundance. It comes from the shamelessly Oscar-nomination-savvy Weinstein Company and the knowingly trendy soundtrack is composed by indie darlings Grizzly Bear. It was also subject of a high-profile age rating controversy in the US which was over almost as soon as it began, leading the more cynical to speculate that the whole thing might have been a publicity stunt to raise the film's profile (certainly nothing in the film warrants the original 'NC-17' rating from the MPAA). Worse still, I've heard people say things like "it's this year's '(500) Days of Summer'" - which is the worst thing anyone could ever tell me about a movie (except maybe "it's like a Michael Bay directed episode of '24'").

Forget all that though. 'Blue Valentine' is sensational and the performances of Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling searing. It is an emotionally raw, sexually frank and honest movie about relationships, with rounded, multifaceted adult characters and a nonjudgmental attitude. There is something in this movie for anyone who has ever been through romance. But it doesn't stop there. A lady sitting next to me wept during one scene in which Gosling's character, who works as a removal man, helps a lonely old person move into a nursing home by organising the frail gent's photos and war memorabilia around the small, impersonal room. In another scene Michelle Williams' character talks to her ailing grandmother about the decline of her parents' marriage. Another harrowing scene sees her confront the physical process of having an abortion. It's a film that will resonate strongly with people who've been through any of these experiences - not just a painful break-up.



It's not all doom and gloom however. The shade wouldn't have any impact if not for the bright light that shines on half the movie, which flicks back and forth between the happy beginning of the relationship and the fraught end of the couple's married life - prompting those unfair comparisons with the superficial, winking atrocity that is '(500) Days of Summer'. This narrative structure isn't employed for its kookiness however, as the film plays these moments against each other for contrast and often for a change of pace and emotional gear. The salad days of the relationship are probably harder for the film to get right than the sadder stuff. It's relatively easy to do bleak and receive acclaim, whilst genuine romantic warmth is hard to convey and all too often it can read as cheesy, grating and cloying. But when Gosling flirts with Williams, when he sings to her and plays the ukulele, it is properly lovely and wholly sincere.

Director and writer Derek Cianfrance strikes this balance so wonderfully that 'Blue Valentine' avoids becoming a blandly anti-romantic "isn't love bullshit" movie and is instead something much more complex and truthful. "Honest" is perhaps the best adjective to describe the film, in its depiction of sexuality and love. And as with the very best films, in 'Blue Valentine' it is always possible to take any character's point of view and empathise with it. There isn't really too much moral grandstanding here. Nobody is ever obviously in the wrong. Yet at the same time you can understand why they might appear to be in the wrong to the other party. I'd also wager that anyone who watches it will encounter a situation or even an entire conversation that has literally happened to them at some point - for me it was the argument during which Gosling attacks the notion of "potential" (as invariably measured by economic success).



If I had one mild criticism it would be that male sexual gratification is never shown positively and the only scene we see of intimacy between Williams and Gosling is one of cunnilingus. Male sexual pleasure is aggressive and potentially destructive - something to be either put up with or resisted by women. This is only a mild criticism though and I certainly wouldn't advocate an additional love-making scene specifically to tick some sort of affirmative box. What we do see is well handled: tastefully filmed and extremely intimate, and always in service of the characters and their emotional journey (what a turgid, overworn phrase, but I can't think of a better one). It would also be hypocritical of me (given my attack on the Apatow comedies) not to mention that Gosling's character is the typical modern movie male (an overgrown man-child) who just wants to drink and have fun, whereas Williams is the stern, career-minded one who lays down the law with their daughter. But here it is done so well that it rings true and doesn't feel like standard 21st century Hollywood sexism that it perhaps is.

'Blue Valentine' isn't that sad little emo poem of a movie you might think it is from the poster. It's a riveting film that says as much about love and romantic relationships as any other film I've seen as it bravely and skilfully jumps between emotional extremes with great economy and even subtlety. If it doesn't resonate with you on some level then I can only surmise that you haven't ever left the house. It's one of those movies that makes two hours feel like twenty minutes and leaves you feeling satisfied by the art form you love so much, despite the fact it so often breaks your fragile little heart.

'Blue Valentine' is rated '15' by the BBFC and is out now in the UK.

'The Green Hornet' review:

Masked-vigilante movie 'The Green Hornet' has taken a mighty walloping from film critics since its release on Friday. The action-comedy, which stars Seth Rogen and is directed by Michel Gondry, had a troubled production history which saw the original director and co-star Stephen Chow leave the project citing "creative differences". Added to that has been the lukewarm to negative reaction given to the choice of casting comedy actor Rogen in the lead role as Britt Reid (AKA The Green Hornet), as well as the generally unenthusiastic response to the first trailer released last summer. You could be forgiven for not having heard of it too, with minimal publicity being afforded the film (I haven't seen a single TV ad or billboard) by Columbia Pictures, who are seemingly keen to cut their losses and move on - a sign that nobody had much confidence in this movie to begin with. Slap on the much-maligned retrofitted 3D and this movie practically has "avoid" written in big letters all over it.

With crushingly low expectations I went to see it on the opening day last week, mainly because I've admired all of Michel Gondry's previous films. Aside from 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' none are perfect, but all of his films are rough gems, with lots of interesting in-camera trickery and generally fairly interesting themes. His first two films were written by Charlie Kaufman, but even his subsequent works ('The Science of Sleep' and 'Be Kind Rewind') had a Kaufman-esque high-concept and a lovable off-beat sensibility. This spirit and his directorial ingenuity even carried through into his recently released lo-fi and very personal documentary 'The Thorn in the Heart'. Even so, I expected an absolute train wreck of a film in 'The Green Hornet'. I certainly didn't expect to see something so utterly entertaining.



Any misgivings I had about 'The Green Hornet' disappeared during the opening scene, in which crime boss Benjamin Chudnofsky - played by Christoph Waltz who won an Oscar last year for his role in Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds' - confronts a flashy, young mobster played by the excellent James Franco (in an uncredited cameo) who has made the mistake of setting up on his turf. The dialogue in this opening exchange is hilarious and both actors are fantastic to watch. Franco is sleazy and cocky, whilst Waltz seems insecure and looks genuinely hurt by accusations that he doesn't know how to dress stylishly (a barb that will become a preoccupation for the remainder of the film). The German actor underplays his role and makes it funnier, but also adds some depth to his character. Chudnofsky isn't a typical mad villain who bumps off his own henchmen (although he is that too), he is also amidst a serious mid-life crisis and is quite pathetic, something Waltz does rather well.

Rogen plays an equally unconventional hero: a spoilt, selfish, arrogant son of a millionaire who does nothing but party. We've seen that before in Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark or even in Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne, but Rogen's hero isn't charming and erudite - he is an obnoxious oaf and by and large stays that way right the way through the film. Rogen's delivery - of dialogue he penned with writing partner Evan Goldberg - is superb too, in all its underplayed, mock-macho brainlessness. The relationship between Rogen and Jay Chou, who plays his sidekick Kato, is the centre of the movie and fun to watch. The film also boasts quite an impressive supporting cast. Aside from Franco's aforementioned cameo, there are also roles for Tom Wilkinson as Rogen's father, Edward Furlong as a guy who runs a meth lab and Edward James Olmos as a newspaper man, as well as Cameron Diaz as a brainy criminologist who (for some unexplained reason) takes a temp job as Reid's secretary.



Michel Gondry has done well to put his stamp on the troubled project too. The colourful and exaggerated world his characters inhabit could hover uneasily somewhere somewhere between 'Mystery Men' and 'The Fifth Element', yet it is tonally consistent and very broad without ever jumping the shark. The director's stylised approach as ever includes sequences of animation and eye-catching, innovative in-camera set pieces which show off his preference for practical visual effects. One single-take tracking shot uses several different actors as Kato in silhouette in order to imply his great speed and agility, whilst another shot slowly pans 360 degrees around a garage full of expensive cars as Rogen, in fastforward, enters each of them with a lady he has met at a party. Great time and care seems to have been taken over the films 3D conversion too, and the result is an effect which is far better than that seen in 'Alice in Wonderland' or 'Clash of the Titans'.

As funny and winsome as I found much of 'The Green Hornet', Rogen is clearly from the Apatow stable. This manifests itself not only in the type of comedy on offer (a lot of which wouldn't be out of place in a film like 'Pineapple Express'), but perhaps most tellingly in the treatment of Cameron Diaz's love interest character. Rogen and Goldberg just don't know what to do with her and she isn't in very much of the film. The sexism of Apatow films like 'Knocked Up' (itself a Rogen vehicle) is in some ways evident here, with men again cast as lovable man-children and women as joyless shrews, patronised as "mature" or "smart" in order to get away with it. Instead the emphasis is as always on "bromance", here between Rogen and Chou. Likewise, Reid's absent (apparently long-dead) mother casts no shadow over the film or her son's character, though the death of his father is a catalyst for the film's action and Reid's transformation into a superhero. That said, there is a reason for Rogen's continued errant man-child persona: it is funny.



For a film that is so resolutely playing the superhero movie for comedy, 'The Green Hornet' is surprisingly full of exciting action. Jay Chou's martial arts work - filmed by Gondry in an interesting video game style which recalls 'Oldboy' - is fantastic, but the really brilliant thing from an action perspective is the "Black Beauty", a modified car which serves as Britt Reid's equivalent of the Batmobile. It's got so many gadgets, missiles and guns on it that, basically, if you were ten years old again you'd want a toy of it for Christmas.

There is something to be said for entering a film with diminished expectations. Maybe I wouldn't have been so positive about 'The Green Hornet' had I seen it prior to all the negativity. But even then I can't imagine slating it. It was funny, with some interesting visuals and solidly entertaining action. It has Christoph Waltz in it. I didn't even mind the 3D. I can't see it being too many people's "film of the year", but all the same: if this ends up in a few "worst of 2011" lists we'll have had an ok year at the movies.

'The Green Hornet' is out now in the UK and is rated '12A' by the BBFC.

'The Thorn in the Heart' review:

If there is one word that sums up the feature film work of Michel Gondry it is probably nostalgia. His next film is 'The Green Hornet', a modern take on a character which made his debut on the radio in the 1930s and who was made most famous by his 1960s TV incarnation (which co-starred Bruce Lee). His last film 'Be Kind Rewind' was equally backward looking, taking its inspiration from VHS cassettes and cinema of the 1980s - with Gondry recreating lo-fi versions of such films as 'Ghostbusters' and 'Driving Miss Daisy'. The Frenchman also directed 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' which looked at the importance of memories and 'The Science of Sleep' which looked at the significance of dreams (through the eyes of a childish nostalgic played by Gael Garcia Bernal), whilst his first film 'Human Nature' was in some respects the ultimate look back as it followed Rhys Ifans as a primitive man raised by apes.

It is entirely fitting then that Gondry has chosen to shoot a documentary about his elderly aunt Suzette, a former school teacher. The film looks back at her life, and in the process that of Gondry's own parents and childhood, by way of a great deal of Super 8 film footage (the ultimate resource of the nostalgic?) as well as some very intimate interviews. The interviews are warm and Gondry comes across as thoughtful and kind-natured whilst managing to coax some quite poignant, heartfelt reminiscences - which mostly relate to the turbulent relationship between Suzette and her son Jean-Yves. It is from these interactions that the film's title is taken as Suzette describes her son as the thorn in her heart. Yet as you might expect from a Michel Gondry film, there is also a great deal of good humour and a sense of fun over a lot of the documentary.



In his typically inventive and inspired lo-fi style, Gondry uses animation to bring some of his aunt's recollections to life. In one playful scene, which had me in stitches, Gondry re-enacts a moment that his cameras have missed staging an incident in which Jean-Yves became "trapped" in a bathroom after a small clothes horse fell against the door. Opening the door ajar, Gondry has a member of his crew replicate how Jean-Yves poked his head through the gap and whined for his elderly mother to move the small laundry-drying apparatus blocking his path. In another innovative and charming sequence, Gondry makes a class of school children run around wearing green screen cloaks which he uses to make them appear invisible. As they charge around the playground with only their heads and feet visible, there is a great feeling of experimentation and spontaneity as the director looks to excite the children about the possibilities of his medium.

But the best "stunt" of his in this low-key film happens when Suzette takes him to the site of a demolished school where only an old projection box remains standing. Gondry and his crew decide to turn the space into a cinema once again and fashion a screen out of a timber frame and some bed sheets before taking an old projector into the old projection box and screening an old film for Suzette and some of her former students, now themselves middle-aged. It is a joyful and moving moment in a film full of such moments.



The film's crowning achievement is that whilst Gondry is always on friendly terms with his subjects (whom he clearly loves dearly) he does manage to get a lot of truth out of the exercise. His aunt is depicted with great admiration and respect, yet Gondry also manages to convey how she has perhaps neglected her son - possibly on account of his homosexuality - in favour of attending to the generations of school children who came through her classroom, all of whom seem to look on her more fondly than Jean-Yves. The relationship between Jean-Yves and his deceased father is similarly troubling. Yet this is counterbalanced by more jovial scenes, such as the opening in which Suzette tells stories about her husband over a big family dinner, during which she is incapacitated by laughter.

The family as depicted by Gondry is complex: equal parts beautiful and damaged. This balance is something which Gondry seems to portray so effortlessly without it ever feeling like he is manipulating his audience or his subjects. The film may even seem to suffer from the fact that it is so relaxed and slight - it could almost look like Gondry hasn't done anything at all. Though I think 'The Thorn in the Heart' is a really wonderful and personal piece of filmmaking from a director consistently so adept at looking backwards without compromising either his judgement or his artistry.

'The Thorn in the Heart' is rated 'PG' by the BBFC.

'127 Hours' review:

In theory Danny Boyle might just be the perfect choice of director to make a mainstream film about the graphic, but nevertheless quite boring, story of Aron Ralston - a climber who got trapped in a rocky crevice in an isolated part of Utah in 2003 and only escaped by severing his right arm below the elbow. I say boring because although Ralston had to hack through his own flesh and bone with a blunt knife before he was free, he spent five days prior to that sitting in the dark, talking to his video camera and drinking his own urine. However, in Boyle's hands you know that the story will be punctuated by his trademark blend of hyperactive editing and energetic music, with even the smallest moments - such as taking a sip of water - afforded flashy, hi-octane treatment with bravura use of camera.

This ceaseless, self-consciously hip treatment is exactly what the Academy Award winning director of 'Slumdog Millionaire' has brought to the table in his film '127 Hours', which stars James Franco as Ralston and is co-written with regular partner Simon Beaufoy. It begins with a fast-paced, split screen montage of archive footage showing people in big social groups (on the stock market floor; or at a sporting event) making elaborate use of their arms. Boyle, never one for subtlety, is ramming home the point that we use our arms a lot in communication with others. By going it alone and neglecting his friends and family (he doesn't return their calls or tell them where he is canyoneering) Ralston will loose one of these important social instruments, though ironically he will emerge a better, more socially minded individual as a result. Ralston might spend most of the film trapped in one tight space, but he does at least venture on an emotional journey. As every poster for the film tells us, this a "triumphant true story": something intended to be every bit as "feelgood" and "heartwarming" as 'Slumdog'. It's a motivational tale about survival and how we, like Ralston, can turn great adversity into a positive life-changing experience.



That is the theory anyway. Instead, for me at least, Boyle's heavy-handed and fidgety style of storytelling detracts from the humanity of the piece, as he shifts uneasily from crisp digital landscape photography, to grainy handheld shots, to cameras showing the POV of a hand or the inside of a drinking straw. Sometimes it's lo-fi and gritty and sometimes it feels like an expensive Michael Bay directed music video. It is the same restlessness and tacky excess that characterises the director's entire filmography, though with it's hallucinations and dream sequences, '127 Hours' also features the surreal touches and moments of genuine invention as seen in his best work: 'Shallow Grave' and 'Trainspotting' (and for me 'A Life Less Ordinary'). Yet these flourishes now feel overwrought and verge on self-parody. It also doesn't help that the self-indulgent form and fast-cutting of Boyle's film is consistently set to the most horrible of musical selections.

The cumulative effect of the distracting editing and the over-the-top soundtrack is that the film's most pivotal, climactic and talked about sequence - that of the amputation - is almost funny rather than horrific. I'm quite squeamish and I can't watch so-called "torture porn" films, so I was expecting to have to resist the urge to cover my eyes during the final moments only to be underwhelmed. It's no fault of the special effects and make-up department. The wound looks real (at least to someone like me lacking any frame of reference) but it is badly filmed. Perhaps the moment wasn't supported by the obvious and cheesy writing that preceded it, which had already dented my enthusiasm for the movie by that point. "You're going to be lonely" a former girlfriend flat-out tells the climber in a flashback (no need to think about what you're seeing for yourself). In another scene the same love interest lays a hand on Franco's chest and asks all-too earnestly "how do I get in here? What is the combination?" "If I told you I'd have to kill you" he replies predictably. Through those scenes I was left saying under my breath "go on: lop off the arm already and end this film."



'127 Hours' is at its most watchable and alive when Franco "does a Gollum" and videos himself playing both sides of a question and answer session. James Franco is a good choice to play this role and is rapidly establishing himself as one of the more courageous and interesting male leads around. He just about holds your attention during most of this one-man show with a performance that combines playful humour with despair and anguish. He is also a convincing physical performer as he scales the canyons before he is involuntarily indisposed. It is to the film's detriment that Boyle's busy audio-visual style prevents any moments of sincere and quiet introspection for Franco's character.

It is at least refreshing to see that Franco's Ralston doesn't start off the film with any sort of major personality defect - unless you take ignoring one answer phone message (left as he's preparing to leave the house) as shorthand that he's not nice enough to his dear old mum. He seems a likable if slightly cocky guy, described by two girls he meets before the accident as "fun". And he is fun: showing the lost pair which way to go and taking them to a a beautiful subterranean swimming pool where they all lark about for a bit. He is charismatic and he seems driven by a love of the outdoors rather than a selfish (and self-destructive) desire to be left alone. The character change he undergoes is more the organic and relatable response to a near death experience (to cherish your loved ones and take nothing for granted) than the contrivance of the needs of film structure as explained so well by Brian Cox in 'Adaptation'.



I will say that Ralston's real-life experience is genuinely incredible. No matter what was at stake, I'm not sure I could saw though my arm without anesthetic and with only a crummy little penknife and a makeshift tourniquet at my disposal. It is a testament to the guy that he managed to do that rather than passing out and dying of dehydration alone in that deserted rock face. It was never something I needed to see on film however and Boyle's loud, chaotic telling of it has failed to convince me otherwise. Maybe a smaller, more intimate and disciplined film would have worked better for me, though I can see that many will find Boyle's more excitable approach compliments its thrill-seeking central character.

One small caveat to end this review would be that in a fairly empty screening there were two or three people who applauded as the credits rolled. I also saw that many people were more effected by the amputation scene than I was, covering their eyes and so on. I haven't enjoyed any of Danny Boyle's films of the last ten years either. So if you found 'Slumdog Millionaire' to be as brilliant as many film critics (and indeed the Oscar voters) did, then maybe there is something for you in '127 Hours'. There just wasn't anything in it for me besides a winning central performance and a couple of breathtaking shots of the Utah landscape.

'127 Hours' is out now in the UK and is rated '15' by the BBFC.

Calling all martial arts film fans PLUS Jurassic Park!!!

Back in Venice I saw the exciting new Andrew Lau directed sequel to the 1972 Bruce Lee film 'Fist of Fury' (my favourite Lee feature) 'Legend of the Fist: the Return of Chen Zhen'. Brilliantly, Brighton's Duke of York's Picturehouse is playing the film as late night feature tomorrow (Friday 7th January) at 23.30.

In September my review said (with an uncharacteristic blood lust): "The first ten minutes equals anything in recent memory in terms of adrenaline pumping action. We begin in France during WW1, where a group of Chinese allied to the French are under fire from a German position. Few films tackle The Great War over it’s deadlier sequel and this is probably the most exciting take I’ve seen, as scores of biplanes bomb our heroes and Yen outruns machine guns and scales buildings, gleefully hacking away German soldiers."

Indeed the first 10-15 minutes are outstanding. I recommend Brighton based fans of Bruce Lee movies or martial arts stuff in general check this out tomorrow.



You can buy tickets for tomorrow's showing at Brighton's Duke of York's Picturehouse here.

Also, I have to mention that one of my most cherished films, 'Jurassic Park', is coming to the Duke's on Saturday 15th at 23.30. You can pre-book tickets for that here.



Mr. Toby King and myself have hassled the manager non-stop for a year to get this on the big screen, so please come and pay your respects to "the greatest film of all time".*

*my opinion aged 8.

'On Tour' review:

There are no less than two movies about burlesque entertainers doing the rounds in UK cinemas at the time of writing. The more heavily promoted and starrier of the two is 'Burlesque' which features Cher and Christina Aguilera in what looks like a brassy and tongue-in-cheek hybrid of Bob Fosse with 'Moulin Rouge' via 'Coyote Ugly'. The other is the self-consciously high-brow 'On Tour' (or 'Tournée') which snared its director and star Mathieu Amalric the best director prize at the most recent Cannes Film Festival. It is unquestionably the more authentic film, with its cast comprised of a real-life troupe of American burlesque performers who play themselves and perform to real audiences as they tour the coast of France with their fictional manager (a former French TV producer played by Amalric).

The scenes of performance are the film's strongest. There is an energy behind them and the women stage routines of real wit, the highlights being a routine which sees a dancer pantomime with a disembodied hand and another which sees a lady inflate and then climb inside a huge balloon. Whereas 'Burlesque' looks to define the form as "pop songs performed in lingerie" (up market stripping for the "Dirty" generation), the burlesque of 'On Tour' is every bit as knowingly parodic and grotesque as it ought to be. And whilst Aguilera and Cher are more traditional examples of female beauty (the latter arguably now defined by her eternal quest for physical perfection), the ladies of 'On Tour' are proper burlesque performers: brazen, unapologetic and unconventional as they confidently work against the idea of what the mainstream considers femininity.



The women tell a journalist that they are practitioners of the "New Burlesque" with the dances choreographed by the women themselves and not tailored specifically to titillate men. It is telling that Amalric has the most typically attractive woman picked out to do a television show despite the fact that she is regarded by the rest of the troupe as the least spectacular (or even competent) performer. The real burlesque, he is telling us, isn't shown in the mainstream media. It's curvier, racier and more vivacious than all that. The ladies are highly likable too. Especially Mimi Le Meaux (real name Miranda Colclasure) who seems vulnerable and a little sad beneath her vibrant and confident stage persona. When Amalric's producer has her remove her false eyelashes and make-up, all light and colour seems to leave her entirely.

Colclasure is the heart of the film and the most interesting character. It is a shame then that the film centres on Amalric's character and not the world of burlesque for most of its running time. Amalric is a really interesting actor and a charismatic presence, but the energy of the live performances, and the high spirited fun that characterises every scene involving the performers off-stage, gives way to a more introspective and melancholic atmosphere whenever we follow his character, as he attempts to reconcile with his two young sons. There is little to fault these scenes, which rival anything in 'The Father of My Children' in terms of pathos, other than the fact that you feel they are getting in the way of the fun and slightly tacky film you wanted to watch.



It is ultimately the tale of an isolated tour manager: a person who is surrounded by sex and drinking and laughter but is not involved in any of it. He constantly, somewhat desperately, insists that he is closest to these girls and that they are his real family, though this sentiment is not really convincingly reciprocated by the women themselves who seem to resent him entirely, bemoaning their poorly run tour which does not even include a gig in Paris.

Like 'Up in the Air', 'On Tour' is a film about a man on the road running away from making meaningful connections, and if approached on those terms it is successful and even insightful filmmaking. When the film ends, with a solitary Amalric miming an energetic howl to a soaring rock and roll number, there is no question that it is ironic. The problem with 'On Tour' is that Amalric intermittently opens a window onto something more fascinating and exciting than all that, yet never long enough for us to get a proper look, making it feel like a missed opportunity.

'On Tour' is rated '15' by the BBFC and is out now on a limited release.

'The Way Back' review:

'The Way Back', director Peter Weir's first feature since 2003's naval epic 'Master and Commander', is inspired by disputed memoir The Long Walk which recounts the dangerous journey of a Polish man who escaped from a Siberian gulag in 1940 and walked all the way to India, across the Gobi Desert and over the Himalayas. Weir dedicates the film to three unknown men who are supposed to have survived the ordeal, but says that his film - which he co-wrote - is fictionalised. In Weir's version Jim Sturgess stars as Janusz a young Polish inmate imprisoned by the Soviets after being labelled an anti-communist agent thanks to the testimony of his tortured wife. Once in the bleak and perilously cold surroundings of Northern Siberia he is pressed into harsh manual labour alongside undesirables from all over Eastern Europe as well as an enigmatic American known only as "Mr. Smith" (played by Ed Harris).

Realising that he and his fellow inmates won't survive long working in such conditions, Janusz decides to escape during a blizzard, taking with him a number of his friends along with Smith and one of the prison's most violent criminals Valka (Colin Farrell). Not long into the journey the men encounter Irena, a Polish orphan girl who is herself on the run and who is played by the rising star of 'Atonement' and 'The Lovely Bones' Saoirse Ronan. Amidst the walking we hear the sad tales of how each of these people came to end up in this situation. After the films pre-credits dedication to three survivors, you are immediately aware that many of the party will die in the course of the 4,000 mile walk, most likely as victims of the extremes of temperature and lack of provisions. The central question is "who will make it?"



Weir's ponderous, boring trudge of a film has the misfortune of coming out whilst two far superior works with similar subject matter linger in my recent memory. In Venice I saw Wang Bing's 'The Ditch' which depicted the bleak existence of ideological prisoners held in a work camp in Maoist China. Like much of 'The Way Back', 'The Ditch' is also set in the Gobi Desert but it feels far more real in its depiction of human beings rather than broad national caricatures (there is little to separate Farrell's Russian accent and broken English from that of a certain car insurance hawking meerkat) and with the reality of starvation and the desolation of the landscape much more visceral.

'The Way Back' is by contrast a sanitised account in which starving, thirsty people who have walked for several weeks in horrible cold and extreme heat show very little physical evidence of their ordeal beside chapped lips and dirty clothes. When people drop dead it is only foreshadowed by their character suddenly wearing a pained expression and talking in a softer voice. Furthermore, 'The Ditch' - though uneventful and slow moving - creates a much more coherent sense of the passing of time than Weir's film where we only learn how much time has passed from scene to scene when we are told ("it's been two weeks"). This has the effect of making what should be an epic journey feel at times like it has taken no time at all (paradoxically over an interminable two hour-plus running length).



The other film with which it compares unfavourably is Andrzej Wajda's 2007 film about the Katyn massacre, 'Katyn'. That harrowing Polish drama showed the brutal reality of what lay in store for young Polish servicemen captured by the Soviets during the Second World War. Again, it is a less clean, more emotional picture than anything painted in 'The Way Back'. French film critic Michel Ciment once asked Stanley Kubrick why he didn't consider 'Schindler's List' a great film about the Nazi holocaust, and the director is supposed to have replied that the holocaust was about ten million people being killed whilst Spielberg's film was about a small number of people being saved. That sums up 'The Way Back'.

It is the gulag/Soviet purges equivalent of 'Schindler's List' in that it is ultimately an uplifting human story of survival and not a questioning or difficult film about the complicated, sometimes frightening, reality of the human condition. Again here, the bad things we are all capable of are dismissed as the work of cruel, even evil, individuals - the human experience told with all the moral complexity of a Saturday morning cartoon. Of course, both 'Schindler's List' and 'The Way Back' are based on "true" events, but it is telling which true events filmmakers are drawn to tell stories about and how they choose to tell them.



'The Way Back' is blandly made and generic fare, with cliché-ridden dialogue and insincere performances worthy of an ITV melodrama. People say all the things you'd expect them to say in such a story and little else, spouting hackneyed phrases like "go on without me" and "what are you going to do when you're free?" There are slow-zooming shots on weeping actors as the film strains for poignancy amidst the hammy accents and romanticised vistas. Mark Strong turns up on Janusz's first day at the camp and gives him the obligatory guided tour. Peel back the pretense of real dialogue and what he tells Janusz boils down to him informing us: "don't trust Colin Farell" and "Ed Harris is a wilfully enigmatic American". The reality of life at the camp is peculiar too, as Janusz and Smith are assigned to work in "the mines" where they do very little but sit around chatting, without the guards seeming at all put out.

'The Way Back', with its simplistic grasp of history, politics and the human condition, is just another uplifting story about the overused buzzwords of "hope" and "freedom" that again fill in for anything genuinely profound or inspirational in the telling of the story or in the filmmaking itself.

'The Way Back' is out in cinemas across the UK now and is rated '12A' by the BBFC.