'Captain America: The First Avenger' review:

My review of 'Captain America: The First Avenger' just went up on What Culture. So check that out.

Also, I have written a DVD review for The Daily Telegraph arts section tomorrow. I reviewed 'The Lincoln Lawyer' which is apparently DVD of the Week. I've got a few more gigs with them coming up too, which is certainly a pleasure.

'Cars 2' review:

Pixar is a studio known for taking risks and taking audiences to places they don't expect to go - making movies about rats cooking food, retired old men in flying houses and silent robots with a passion for 'Hello, Dolly!'. So whilst the studio's new found love of sequels may seem disappointingly in-step with the competition, you'd have to concede that the decision to make a sequel to 2006 film 'Cars' is consistent with the Pixar tradition. After all, who honestly expected a sequel for the studio's least celebrated film? Certainly there is a sizable population of young kids (boys in particular) who have helped to make 'Cars' the most lucrative source of merchandising revenue for the studio, but there is a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm surrounding the release 'Cars 2' when compared to 'Up', 'Wall-E' or last year's 'Toy Story 3'.

The original film saw brash race car Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) stranded in the backwater town of Radiator Springs where he befriended a rusty, well-meaning tow-truck, Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), and learned valuable lessons in humility, ultimately becoming a better racer and winning the coveted Piston Cup. It was a personal film for director John Lasseter, who was indulging his own sincere, lifelong love of motor racing as well as taking a good-natured and nostalgic look at a dying way of life out on Route 66. The sequel is, by contrast, a more sprawling, action-packed and seemingly less personal movie. A globe-trotting spy thriller in which Lightning McQueen is a supporting player. All of which sounds better in theory than it ends up being in practice.



'Cars 2' sees Mater accompany McQueen around the world (through Italy, France, Japan and England) whilst the flashy speedster participates in the "World Grand Prix". And it's the comedy best friend character who now takes centre stage after being mistaken for an undercover American spy by sleek British intelligence agents Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) and Holly Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer). Now equipped with gadgets and gizmos, he soon finds himself embroiled in a series of high-octane, life or death encounters, whilst his small town ignorance sees him clash with every culture he comes into contact with. What follows is a 60s spy film pastiche, full of races, chases and fish out of water comedy, set in a world solely comprised of cute motoring puns.

For a studio as famously disciplined in terms of storytelling as Pixar, the film feels quite loose and ramshackle - a series of hopefully exciting or funny moments rather than a compelling narrative. Some things work (John Turturro is fun as boastful Italian F1 car Francesco Bernoulli) but mostly it's the same earnest inter-car relationship drama as the first film (Mater and McQueen fall out, whilst it's the tow-truck's turn to find love) with a lot more broad, misfiring comedy - this time revolving around car-ified versions of national stereotypes. It's pretty tiresome (or should that be tyresome) stuff made depressing because of who is making it. 'Cars' was in fairness an OK film that suffered from the fact that it was below the exceptionally high standards set by Pixar. 'Cars 2' is genuinely just bad.



It begins promisingly enough, with some imaginative new character designs and innovative character animation (particularly of the boats and submarines). The new spy plot element creates an atmosphere of intrigue and excitement and the world of 'Cars' becomes fresh and more fun than it has previously been, especially as Finn McMissile fights off an army of villainous henchman during his escape from an exploding oil rig. Yet as soon as Mater becomes the focus of the story all the tension, excitement and humour evaporates. Finn McMissile is a funny character because he is played completely straight, whereas Mater is supposed to be funny but he's just obvious and annoying. The message of 'Cars 2' is that Mater should be allowed to "be himself", which I'm happy with so long as it does it somewhere else.

It struck me whilst watching 'Cars 2' that it's perhaps much more skewed towards young children than we're used to from the guys who broadened the appeal of the art form with 'Toy Story' all those years ago. This isn't a bad thing in of itself and it's possible that the spectacle of Mater wetting himself (leaking oil) might be as hilarious as intended if I was eight again. I'd most certainly have wanted to own every single toy, especially now that the cars have that other love of young boys - weapons. But as an adult it's got nothing to offer aside from the always-breathtaking animation of the artists at Pixar, who again do an amazing job: the film's reflections, lighting and character animation are impressive and the character designs are much more appealing than the actual characters.



It gives me no pleasure to write a review like this for a Pixar movie. It feels a lot like I'm punching a faithful friend in the face. A friend who, on every other occasion, has stood for not just the best of animated filmmaking but, in many ways, for the best of filmmaking period. Pixar puts in so much effort and invests so much loving care into every one of its creations, and the richly detailed, densely populated world of 'Cars 2' is far from being an exception. I saw a lot of amazing concept art for the film when visiting Pixar last month and it feels somehow churlish to run the movie down in the face of so much talent, especially as director John Lasseter has done more for animation than anyone else on the planet in the last twenty years (including spearheading excellent recent animated output at a resurgent Disney Animation Studios). But with all that said, 'Cars 2' is Pixar's first bad movie and I'd be lying to myself if I wrote otherwise.

'Cars 2' is released in the UK on Friday and has been rated 'U' by the BBFC.

'John Carter' trailer goes up!

Disney have now released a trailer for next year's sci-fi 'John Carter', directed by 'Wall-E' and 'Finding Nemo' helmer Andrew Stanton (in his first foray into feature-length live-action). This isn't quite as impactful as the much more enigmatic trailer I was shown in San Francisco last month - that one had much less dialogue and made more of a feature of the superb Peter Gabriel Arcade Fire cover - but it's still a good trailer that doesn't give too much away.

Personally, whilst I'm very excited at this point, I'm not yet sold on the two lead actors (Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins) though I remain open minded. But the sweep and imagination of the film is eye-catching indeed.

Check out my report on the production of the film when I had the good fortune of speaking to Andrew Stanton last month in his California studio.

'Tintin' gets an improved trailer...

Is it just me, or does anyone else automatically get the theme to the 90s French-Canadian animated 'The Adventures of Tintin' in their head when they think of the Belgian sleuth? Anyway, here is the second trailer for Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's upcoming animated adaptation of Herge's The Secret of the Unicorn.



Though many will still feel it's a little too close to the uncanny valley for comfort, my only criticism is that the voices don't look like they're coming from the characters. However, the lighting (particularly the mirrors and glass at the start) and animation in general look fantastic. I love the 50s Noire look a lot of it seems to have. It's also refreshing to see an investigative journalist with some integrity (to insert an already tired topical reference)!

Also, Jamie Bell's voice is a perfect fit for the central character, as he sounds youthful and optimistic without seeming twee - though I'm unsure about Andy Serkis as Haddock on this evidence.

'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two' review:

Having reviewed the overall excellent 'Deathly Hallows: Part One' last year, there isn't a lot I can write about this final part of the Harry Potter saga without repeating myself. Save for some take it or leave it 3D, it's just as good if not a bit better than that penultimate episode - certainly in terms of action and excitement, with most of the build-up now out of the way. The young actors remain vastly improved under David Yates' direction, as does the whole look and tone of the film which is dark and scary. Scenes of magic and fantasy are again made a thousand times more awe-inspiring by the fact that Yates keeps everything else so grounded - even mundane. Whilst the heroes are now free from the constraints and routines of Hogwarts school, and its campy thespian teachers, allowing them to become more active participants in the unfolding narrative as opposed to awestruck passengers.

In fact, everything seems to fit so well together now that I am even beginning to credit Warner Brothers with some sort of unlikely overall plan behind the series' game of directorial musical chairs. Unlike 'Star Wars' or 'Indiana Jones', the films have grown with their audience and, for those the same approximate age as the heroes, it seems entirely appropriate in retrospect that the brightly coloured, John Williams-scored whimsy of the opening Christopher Columbus episodes has developed into this more macabre and downbeat conclusion. As the stakes have been raised, and the supporting characters have started dying at an exponential rate, so the films have become more complex and interesting.



I don't want to oversell it: this is by no means a perfect movie and I'm still no convert to the "franchise" overall. Some plot developments still don't make a lot of sense and most of the side-quests are resolved in ways which are anti-climactic (notably when Potter's "suicide mission" return to Hogwarts turns out to be a cake walk). Yet it's become impossible to deny that these films have, if only in the final stretch, become way above average summer family movies, at least competent on every level and in some respects approaching exceptional. For instance, Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe is now an intelligent and immensely capable talent, with a deliciously offbeat, quirky sensibility that Hollywood will hopefully make room for (though I suspect otherwise).

Even the gurning Rupert Grint and the perennially huffy Emily Watson are now pretty decent co-stars and it is genuinely moving when their series-spanning romantic sub-plot finally reaches its resolution (with those around me moved to happy tears). The engaging Tom Felton is underused as minor series antagonist Draco Malfoy, but is as interesting and intense as ever when he is on screen, whilst Alan Rickman as Snape, for so long a scenery chewing caricature just "having fun with the role", is a real dramatic force in this installment, with a moving flashback sequence which serves as a rewarding payoff for those (like myself) who never bothered read the books. And speaking of Snape, this film picks up where the last film left off when it comes to potentially frightening young children.



The last installment began with a weeping schoolteacher being tortured and murdered in front of a watching audience of evil wizards - some of whom were members of the school community and parents of Harry's classmates. A few scenes later, Watson's Hermoine was erasing herself from her parents' memory so as to keep them out of trouble. Pretty heavy stuff, though in this respect 'Deathly Hallows: Part Two' arguably ups the ante. One scene in particular sees a wounded character slowly bitten to death by a huge snake, which has a surprisingly visceral impact as we watch the scene unfold from behind frosted glass. And this is what is so good about Yates' Harry Potter films: not that they are dark for darkness's own sake or that they have moved away from a kiddie demographic, but because he realises what most filmmakers don't.

Children are OK with being scared. In fact they seek it out - trying to watch what they aren't supposed to and frightening each other with increasingly depraved stories under the blankets. Children want to go to school the next day and talk about these darker, scarier moments with their friends. I'm not saying that the scare-factor of 'Deathly Hallows: Part Two' won't be too much for some children - and parents will have to be the judge of that, with it rightly given a '12A' certificate - but I'd suspect a lot of 7 or 8 year-olds would find this film thrilling because it doesn't talk down to them. Because it doesn't deny the existence of death and because it actually allows its villain, Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, to be as evil as everybody has spent the previous seven films saying he is.



That said, the film isn't without its quieter moments and even bits of comic relief, with the likes of Maggie Smith given some fairly chortlesome lines. It's genuinely heartening to witness the coming-of-age heroics of the until now faintly pathetic Neville Longbottom (a much improved Matthew Lewis), perhaps Hogwarts' most unlikely champion. Most of the movie is set during an epic battle which brings together great stone golems, haunting wraiths and armies of homicidal mercenaries as one huge set-piece follows another. But whereas these sorts of sections have been a source of great disinterest in earlier installments, Yates has done so well to engage our interest with the protagonists that we genuinely feel invested in what is taking place amid the explosions.

By now the battle lines have been clearly drawn between those of you that love Harry Potter and those of you that wouldn't turn your head to see this latest installment if Warner Brothers projected it onto your bedroom wall. However dismissing 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two' out of hand could mean you miss one of the year's most accomplished summer movies. This is the second part of what is easily the best live-action family film since the first 'Pirates of the Caribbean' almost a decade ago. Even the sentimental and completely superfluous last five minutes can be forgiven as people of the right age (which sadly doesn't include this ageing cynic) will be bidding a bond farewell to characters who've been with them for as long as they can remember. Even for the rest of us this marks the end of an ambitious decade-long cinematic experiment the likes of which we may never see again.

'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two' is rated '12A' by the BBFC and will be on general release from July 15th.

'Tree of Life' released today in the UK

Terrence Malick's long-awaited, Palm d'Or winning, probable Oscar contender 'Tree of Life' is released in the UK today. I reviewed it a few weeks back, so check that out here.

The film has been rated '12A' by the BBFC.

'The Iron Lady' trailer:

I recently pondered next year's Oscar race and completely forgot about 'The Iron Lady' - potentially next year's 'The King's Speech'. Another British historical drama with the backing of the Weinstein brothers, this time helmed by Phyllida Lloyd - the director responsible for the huge box office success that was 'Mamma Mia!'. This is probably enough on its own to suggest Oscar nods for the Margaret Thatcher biopic, but then you add the fact that the former Prime Minister is being played by none other than Meryl Streep and you've got to expect the Academy will love this.

I sincerely hope this isn't a celebratory film about "one woman's brave stand in a male dominated world" or some such. But with the great Jim Broadbent cast as husband Dennis, I can't see how life at home with the Thatchers is going to be anything other than sympathetic. I know it won't be critical or satirical of Thatcher (this is a British establishment movie if ever I've smelt one), but let's at least hope it isn't an insufferable whitewash. Chances are however that politics will be sidelined almost completely and it'll be a the story of a strong leader finding her voice in a time of great social upheaval (ring any bells?).

In any case, Streep's performance could be interesting regardless. There is a trailer out today, exclusively at The Guardian, so take a look.

'Norwegian Wood' Blu-ray review

Today the Japanese Murakami novel adaptation 'Norwegian Wood' was released in the UK on Blu-ray. It's a lovely release from Soda Pictures which I've reviewed over on the site formerly known as Obsessed with Film. You can read that review here.

I re-watched the film, having seen it last year in Venice, and liked it rather more this time around - so I contradicted my earlier festival review quite a lot. I also re-read that original review, written on a phone sometime late at night on the Lido by a tired and confused man, and found that it was barely coherent drivel. So hopefully I've done the film more justice this second time around!

Obsessed with Film is in the process of re-branding itself this month as What Culture.

'Larry Crowne' review:

Way back in 1996, Tom Hanks wrote and directed 'That Thing You Do!', a fun, colourful and breezy homage to the mid-60s rock and roll scene which charted the rise and fall of a fictional one-hit-wonder group. It wasn't a huge commercial success, with Hanks only taking a small part and casting a host of relatively unknown actors in the lead roles, but it was stylish and evoked the feeling of that era superbly - at least as it exists in our romanticised, collective imagination. Hanks also co-wrote some of the film's punchy musical numbers, with the project feeling like a genuine labour of love and the work of a film star taking time out to do something smaller and more personal. As if to confirm this suspicion, Hanks' production company, Playtone, is named after the fictional record label in that movie.

As should be obvious, 'That Thing You Do!' is a movie for which I maintain a deep affection fifteen years down the line. So much so that nothing could prepare me for the Academy Award winner's second feature as director: the goodwill-sappingly abysmal 'Larry Crowne'. Co-written with Nia 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' Vardalos, 'Larry Crowne' is a "feel-good" movie about well-meaning, middle aged Larry (Hanks) who - in a contrivance of the plot - loses his low-wage supermarket job when his employers discover his lack of a college education. Without a job, the goofy-yet-loveable Larry decides to enrol in college where he meets, and falls in love with, inspirational teacher Mercedes Tainot, played by Julia Roberts (alongside whom Hanks starred in 'Charlie Wilson's War').



I take no pleasure in criticising this already maligned film, both out of affection for its star and because it is so "nice": smiley, wide-eyed and unfailingly good-natured. Yet there is really no defence for 'Larry Crowne' that I can think of. At its core is a deeply patronising everyman story trying to imbue us with post-recession hope by showing a guileless hero's effortless 'Forrest Gump' style ascent from joblessness to gainful employment. Immediately after losing his income Larry starts attending his local college (how is pays for this is unaddressed). As soon as he realises his car is too expensive to run, he decides to buy a scooter and, as luck would have it, finds his next door neighbour (Cedric the Entertainer) has one knocking around. He then trades in his flat-screen television for it in a calculated move which echoes the 1980s advice of Norman Tebbit ("get off your sofa and find a job" is the clear message here). And, literally, as soon as he pulls up to college on said scooter, he attracts the attention of a wholesome gang of young, beautiful scooter friends who love him immediately and devote all their time to re-arranging his furniture, his wardrobe and his love-life.

The film trundles along in this fashion with Larry quickly becoming a star student, finding another part-time job (again, effortlessly) and having a whole bunch of fun times with his gang of super-awesome friends! Getting sacked was the best thing that ever happened to this guy. I can see the probable logic behind this depiction of being laid-off and it goes something like "people don't want to see something depressing about unemployment right now - the people need hope". But not only does this betray a condescending view of the public, the crisis and resolution depicted in Larry Crowne is too far removed from reality to function on this level. It offers nothing but a bland fantasy of inevitable success and faith in the American dream (crucially Larry is never shown to be given charity, though the source of this former "U-Mart" employee's relative affluence is never revealed).



The film's gags are pretty weak too, with the audience expected to chuckle as Hanks drives a scooter into a yard sale, knocking things over, or when he puts on a funny hat. It further suffers from the charmlessness of Hanks' co-star Julia Roberts who does her best to look unimpressed by Larry's antics, and her students' good humour, throughout the movie, echoing her frosty, lustless turn in 'Notting Hill'. Save the occasional flash of that trademark smile, Roberts comes across as a bit of a downer and the sub-plot involving the break-up of her marriage is heavy-handed and unsympathetic. Some of the oddball supporting characters are rather more winning, such as the scooter gang's leader played by Wilmer Valderrama and George Takei's economics professor, but they are the cinematic equivalent of the orchestra on the Titanic.

The most surprising thing about 'Larry Crowne' though, considering the pedigree of those involved, is that bits of it seem so amateurish. For example, one particularly frivolous shot had me baffled: during a conversation between Larry and a friend in a diner, Hanks cuts to a hitherto unseen third party who delivers one line before disappearing from view again for the remainder of the film. Who is this mysterious man and why is he introduced to us in full close-up, delivering a line that suggests he is a familiar character and a long-time friend of the protagonist? This is unlikely given the amount of preparation and thought that goes into making a film, but it feels as though this shot choice was arrived at randomly. On this showing, 'Larry Crowne' is not the work of a director with any particular vision.



As the film bumbles into its final twenty minutes it becomes a simple box-ticking exercise in which any and all loose ends are tied up whether the story needs it or not. The dumb oaf who fires Larry at the beginning is shown to have become a pizza delivery man, whilst Roberts' under-subscribed college class gains popularity for some reason seemingly unconnected to shown events and her porn-loving ex-husband must, of course, also get his comeuppance. Here Hanks acts like some sort of omnipotent moraliser punishing the wicked and rewarding the noble in a world without troublesome nuance. In 'Larry Crowne' a wholesome, good and friendly man is rewarded for being wholesome, good and friendly in a wholesome, good and friendly land. In the immortal words of Bill Hicks: "go back to bed America".

'Larry Crowne' is out now in the UK and has been rated a '12A' by the BBFC.

Better days:

'War Horse' and next year's awards season

The first trailer for Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's award winning novel 'War Horse' (also a hit West End play) made its debut last week. I obviously haven't seen it yet and, to be honest, it looks like sentimental mush (co-written by Richard Curtis), but I fancy it's the year's first serious Oscar contender. Consider the facts: it marks the return of a prestigious (perhaps the most renowned living) director; it looks glossy and replete with period detail; and it's a war film - and don't forget that both of Spielberg's Best Director wins have been for war films ('Schindler's List' and 'Saving Private Ryan').

This logic is certainly reductive and open to criticism. After all, 'Empire of the Sun' didn't even garner the director a nomination. Yet I'm confident, however it turns out, 'War Horse' will at least be nominated for the major prizes next February. Part of the reason is that there is almost nothing else.

Seeing as it's still the summer of 2011 it may seem a little premature to start going on about the Oscars of 2012. Yet it struck me the other day that we've had something of a lightweight year so far in terms of potential Academy Award winners. There have been plenty of good films, but then again something like Golden Bear winning Iranian drama 'A Separation' (released in the UK today) is not likely to contend for Best Picture, being foreign language and having limited commercial appeal.



You know an Oscar film when you see one and we've arguably not had many of them yet in 2011. This might not be a surprise, after all many of the big hitters won't be released until the winter. For instance, this time last year 'The King's Speech' had not yet even played Toronto and 'The Social Network' was still just that "film about Facebook" everyone dismissed out of hand.

Yet this time last year, of the ten Best Picture nominees, 'Winter's Bone' and 'Toy Story 3' had already been released, whilst 'Inception' and 'The Kid's Are All Right' would be out within weeks.

I talked this over with some journalists last week and a few people mentioned 'Source Code' as this year's smart blockbuster breakthrough in the mould of 'District 9' or 'Inception'. But whilst that film was well received and did decent business, it grossed half as much as the former and around an eighth of the latter. Oscar movies have to do outstanding business. In this respect the awards are as much about industry as they are art. What exactly is this summer's huge critically acclaimed blockbuster? There isn't one.

As for the animated vote, Pixar's 'Cars 2' is currently generating middling scores from critics and I can't see the likes of 'Rio', 'Rango' or 'Kung Fu Panda 2' making an impact with voters. Especially as a modified nomination process means that next year's field may be back down to five films, with any other films (up to ten) having to receive 5% of the total votes to be nominated.



So, aside from 'War Horse', what else could be generating awards buzz this winter? Well, Lynn Ramsey's 'We Need to Talk about Kevin' (above) was certainly the talk of Cannes Film Festival. It depends how widely it is distributed, but if the Academy gets wind of it that could garner a nomination at least. Woody Allen is no stranger to Oscar nominations and 'Midnight is Paris' is pretty good and has been one of his best received films of the last decade in the usually indifferent US. Meanwhile, Terrence Malick's Palm d'Or winning 'Tree of Life' is presumably a certainty for a few nominations if not a contender for the top prize. I'd bet against Lars Von Trier and 'Melancholia' being invited at this point.

Right now though, I'd hesitate to bet against Spielberg and his 'War Horse'.

'Bridesmaids' review:

"It's coming out like hot lava" screams a character in blockbuster comedy 'Bridesmaids' as they unleash a torrent of diarrhea into the sink of a plush public bathroom. It's a line, and indeed a scenario, that wouldn't be out of place in any other Judd Apatow produced comedy, where it might just as plausibly have been shouted by Seth Rogen. Here however, the difference - and the selling point - is that this line is shouted by a woman, Megan played by Melissa McCarthy.

Co-written by and starring Kristen Wiig, 'Bridesmaids' is about Annie, a woman in her thirties who is watching her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) get engaged and wondering how life has passed her by. Her car is rusty, her cake shop closed down in the recession and she lives with a couple of creepy room mates (one of whom is played by Matt Lucas). Worse still, the elegant, high-society Helen (Rose Byrne) seems set on supplanting her as Lillian's maid of honour.



'Bridesmaids' is a rare comedy that gives women permission to be funny, to pull ugly faces and to fart in public. Unlike the majority of comedies which relegate female characters to disapproving shrews and the perennial, sighing babysitters of giant man-children, this is a film in which the few male characters play it relatively straight whilst a female ensemble carries all the crass, sweary jokes. In this way it both subverts and conforms to the lucrative Apatow comedy model.

It's hard to recall another film comedy in which women take centre stage (perhaps the Tina Fey penned 'Mean Girls'?) and 'Bridesmaids' should definitively put to bed the myth that women aren't funny, with a first half hour as solidly amusing as that of any comedy made in the last decade. Yet sadly the rate of laughs is not sustained beyond the opening minutes and for most of the two hour running time 'Bridesmaids' seems to forget that it's a comedy, getting bogged down in Annie's inevitable fall-out with her friends and with her mild-mannered love interest (Chris O'Dowd).



It's also disappointing that some of the laughs are so uninspired, desperate and lazy, for instance when Wiig plays drunk and cringingly mimics Hitler, asking an air steward if he's German. Or when we are asked to laugh as an overweight person runs towards some food. The more manic and exaggerated the film gets in pursuit of easy laughs, the less funny it becomes. These moments are made more disheartening by the early promise offered by a laid-back and naturalistic lunch scene in which Wiig and the ever-excellent Rudolph effortlessly convince as best friends, showing that Wiig as a writer and a performer can offer so much more.

'Bridesmaids' is far better than its only real summer comedy competition, 'The Hangover: Part II', and must therefore be considered the year's best out-and-out comedy. At times it certainly lives up to that billing on merit, but mostly the fact this is what currently passes for above average just highlights the dearth of quality comedy films being made right now. But at least the long overdue emergence of this film, and its subsequent commercial and critical success, should ensure women are allowed to keep on being funny on film. David Brent once said "women are as filthy as men", but it's taken until now for Hollywood to make a feature of it.

'Bridesmaids' is out now in the UK and has been rated '15' by the BBFC.

'The Tree of Life' review:

With only his fifth feature film in just over thirty years as a director, elusive American auteur Terrence Malick continues his fixation with now familiar motifs: images of white picket fences, long grass and sunlight flickering through the trees accompanied by softly spoken classically American narrators pondering existential themes. Discussions of God, nature and morality rendered poetic and lyrical in movies which liberate this visual medium from dialogue and even go some way towards rejecting conventional narrative form.

'The Tree of Life' stars Brad Pitt as an authoritarian father - a middle American salesman in the 1950s - and the bulk of the film follows his interactions with wife Jessica Chastain and three sons, one of whom is played by a haggard-looking Sean Penn in infrequent glimpses into the future. It's a series of moments and a prevailing mood rather than a complex, three-act story: a father and son tale which sets its characters in the context of a vast universe, pre-historic life and the end of time itself. A slow and deliberately paced "nothing happens" movie in which literally everything happens. There are even dinosaurs.



Yet for all the breathtaking cinematography and fine performances (especially from Pitt), 'The Tree of Life' is undermined in its scope and grandeur by the existence of the less literal and more abstract '2001', and also by the Charlie Kaufman written 'Adaptation', in which a pretentious screenwriter seems to pre-empt the film (suggesting a movie which shows the creation of all life from small organisms to human beings for the purposes of parody). It's ripe with "meaning" and each whispered piece of narration is clearly supposed to be incredibly deep. Yet the philosophical aspect of 'The Tree of Life' is disappointingly simplistic.

As ever, Malick's depiction of female characters leaves a lot to be desired. In his films - with the possible exception of 'Badlands' - women are made of fine porcelain and (presumably because of the womb) are depicted as pure parts of nature to be negotiated and understood by male characters. I'm sure Malick means this as a positive - praising mothers upon a pedestal in the Catholic tradition - however it is deeply patronising and this inherent female closeness to nature and, by proximity, God prevents Chastain's character from being any more than a romantisied cipher. By contrast the father and his sons are allowed to show more emotional range and are given permission to change and grow over the course of the narrative.



'The Tree of Life' offers a simplistic and idealistic version of nature and of our place within it, where spirituality is unchallenged from its dominant Hollywood position where it stands for "depth" and "truth". In this way Malick has made a movie which supports the dominant ideology almost wholeheartedly, however ambitious it might be in scale. It's a seductive tapestry and, in a few instances, it is genuinely heartfelt, yet something is missing. The anti-war sentiment of 'The Thin Red Line' and its critique of capitalism ("the whole thing's about property") or the nihilistic, satirical edge of 'Badlands', seem like they come from a very distant place from 'The Tree of Life', which unambiguously advocates an intelligent design view of life on our planet. Religion has always formed a large part of the sub-text, and even the text, of Malick movies - but never to the same extent as this passionate hymn.

That is not to say that 'The Tree of Life' is not one of the best films of the year so far. The simple fact that it is in any way comparable to something as seminal as '2001', and that the director has constructed something so intimate yet epic, is enough to cement its place as one of the year's best films and a likely Oscar contender for next February. In terms of imagery and sound design it is almost peerless and the use of digital effects is wondrous and inspiring.

'The Tree of Life' is rated '12A' by the BBFC and released in the UK on July 8th.

Airline Food

I've not been able to update here for a little while, thanks to a recent trip to sunny San Francisco where I visited the offices of Pixar - as the Disney press machine prepares the world to receive 'Cars 2'. But before the fruits of that trip - including interviews with the likes of John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton - are be published over the coming weeks, I thought I'd unleash some mini-reviews of the rag-tag (and fairly recent) selection of movies to which I was treated whilst airborne.



'The Adjustment Bureau' is a Phillip K. Dick adaptation about a New York politician (Matt Damon) who falls desperately in love with a ballerina (Emily Blunt) following a chance encounter on a bus - changing both their pre-determined fates. It's then that the shady, besuited and seemingly omnipotent Adjustment Bureau pop in, with Terence Stamp and 'Mad Men' actor John Slattery among their ranks. They try to dissuade the loved-up couple from utilising this new found free will, but find Damon is not about to give up on love so easily.

It's undeniably slick and the leads are likeable, yet the film just never builds up any forward momentum until the final minutes. Instead we are taken slowly through a story which covers years of its character's lives, without much feeling of threat along the way. As a result it's hard to feel to involved in what's going on. Though there are some interesting ideas at play here, mostly concerning our desperate need to believe we have control over our lives even if we don't.



Probably the most entertaining film I saw on the flight, 'The Eagle' is the story of a Roman officer (Channing Tatum) and his Gaul slave (Jamie Bell) as they traverse the unclaimed lands north of Hadrian's Wall in search of a stolen standard - a golden Eagle lost by a massacred company of soldiers under the command of Tatum's father whose reputation has been shamed. What follows is a sort of occasionally violent road movie as two disparate individuals relate their different experiences of life, honour and war whilst fighting woad warriors and rolling around in mud.

Most intriguing is the film's casting of Americans as Roman soliders and British people as local Gauls - a fact flagged up as all the more deliberate when we hear the English Mark Strong also doing an American accent as a Roman. This not only sets up the Romans as invading foreigners and reverses the traditional movie role of the square-jawed American hero, but also opens the film up for potential reading as a critique of US foreign policy - a reading which holds up thanks to a degree of nuance and sophistication lacking in many more direct contemporary war films.



Director Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp extended their 'Pirates of the Caribbean' friendship into the animated realm with 'Rango', a Spaghetti Western about a domesticated, big-city chameleon (Depp) who convinces a hayseed town of assorted desert creatures that he is a notorious gun-slinger rather than an actor - soon becoming entrusted as the town's sheriff (a similar premise to that of 'A Bug's Life' or 'The Three Amigos').

Boasting a distinctive look, brilliant character designs and an edgy tone, 'Rango' takes a great many risks for a mainstream animated adventure film: the imagery is often a little dark (such as when Rango talks to a roadkill armadillo) and the dialogue isn't far off that of the genre's earnest live-action equivalents. Frequent references to Clint Eastwood or Western genre tropes (and even a nod to 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas') will pass over the heads of younger audience members, but it's still a blast for those in the know. Nicely animated too - 'Rango' is probably the most technically impressive computer animation yet seen outside of Disney/Pixar.



Before the popular emergence of Judd Apatow, the masters of all that is crass and disgusting were the Farrelly Brothers ('There's Something About Mary', 'Dumb and Dumber', 'Me, Myself & Irene'). But their latest tasteless gag-fest 'Hall Pass' fares much less well than either its predecessors or the current crop of American lad comedies. A likeable cast of Owen Wilson, Jenna Fischer, Jason Sudeikis and Stephen Merchant can not save what is an unfunny and desperate affair, which just tries far too hard to shock and ends up feeling tame as a result.



'Cedar Rapids' is very much an "offbeat, indie comedy" in the Fox Searchlight style, this time starring the third banana of the 'Hangover' films, Ed Helms. Directed by Miguel Arteta ('Chuck and Buck', 'The Good Girl', 'Youth in Revolt'), 'Cedar Rapids' wears its quirkiness on its sleeve, with overbearing, foul-mouthed characters straying into "wacky" territory at every turn. Its saving grace is that John C. Reilly is genuinely very funny whenever he's on-screen, though not enough to distract attention from the predictable and sanctimonious ending (you can smell a closing speech about "integrity" forming somewhere before the end of the first act). At the very best 'Cedar Rapids' should be considered an inoffensive and middling comedy from a director and cast who can do much better.



The less said about this one the better. 'Just Peck' is an "R-rated" teen comedy which looks and feels like a hideously misjudged Disney channel sitcom. There are moments when it becomes clear that the film is supposed to play as satire, such as when the "why are we here" duo of Adam Arkin and Marcia Cross threaten to sue the school principal if she disciplines their son for smoking drugs at school ("are you questioning our parenting?"), but generally it is hard to tell where the sappy, high school drama ends and the joke begins. It's like watching an episode of 'Hannah Montana' full of crude jokes about rape, incest and self-abuse (and often all of the above). It just doesn't make any sense. Who is this movie intended for?

'Kaboom' review:

There is something infectious and even alluring about 'Kaboom', the latest exercise in sardonic camp from veteran of the "New Queer Cinema" Gregg Araki, best known for his mid-90s "Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy". It's possibly the film's playful tone which knowingly assures the audience that nothing is to be taken all that seriously. There is a deceptive air of effortlessness to 'Kaboom', which could smack as the work of a director barely breaking into a sweat. Above all it's a shameless so-called "guilty pleasure" of a movie - a less kitsch version of the sort of thing you might expect from John Waters - a large portion of which consists of attractive young people having lots of sex, all of which feels somehow explicit, in spite of the fact that it really isn't.

'Kaboom' is one of those movies almost designed to frustrate the film reviewer, in that it isn't especially easy to define along the lines of any given genre. It isn't an all-out comedy, though many of the lines and characters are played for laughs, but it isn't anywhere near earnest enough to be considered so hallowed an animal as the word "drama" would suggest. It's certainly got a toe or two in horror movie genre at various points, though there are also elements of the thriller, the science fiction film and even the police procedural at work here. In fact it often feels like a complete mess. Yet it's fun to sit back and watch something that isn't asking you to congratulate the filmmaker for his vision, or yourself for your discerning high-taste.



Before the snowballing madness of the third act, which culminates in a final shot that more than echoes Takashi Miike's 'Dead or Alive', 'Kaboom' plays out like some sort of hitherto unseen pilot for a 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' style US TV series that never got the green light. It sees a cast of twenty-something actors (Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett and Juno Temple), playing teenage college kids and speaking in a sort of Joss Whedon-esque high school patois (albeit with a far greater level of sexual frankness and coarseness), as they embark on a serious of casual sexual encounters and discuss, for instance, the practical implications of autofellatio. It's like a bumper episode of a post-watershed 'Hollyoaks', only with a creepy murder mystery dimension and a touch of the supernatural (so in fact it's closer to Channel 4's 'Misfits').

The acting is fairly rotten, the dialogue forced and often clunky, and the lighting looks cheap for the most part. It's crass, exploitative and has all the nutrition of bubblegum, but it's hard not to smile through it nevertheless - probably because of these things rather than in spite of them. And not in some tiresome "it's so bad it's good" kind of a way, but because the filmmaker is so clearly not vying for your approval that it's sort of refreshing. Araki isn't asking to be taken seriously and isn't expecting you to love him. He isn't even chasing box office. Like his sexually liberated characters, he seems comfortable taking his passion where he finds it. I'm not sure it's a film I'll ever return to - and, in honesty, I'm not even sure it's any good - but it does posses a rare amorphous quality all of its own.

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

DVDs in Devon: 'Julie and Julia' + 'How to Train Your Dragon'

I've been visiting my grandmother in sunnyish Devon with my girlfriend this week, but I have managed to see a couple of films on DVD - giving me something to write about now as everyone takes a midday nap.

On Monday, at my nan's insistence, we all sat down to watch Nora Ephron's last film, the 2009 culinary double-biography 'Julie & Julia' starring the dependable Amy Adams and the legendary Meryl Streep. I was pleasantly surprised.



'Julie & Julia' acts as both the story of US TV cooking legend Julia Child, as she learns how to cook as the middle aged wife of a US diplomat in 1950s Paris, and of Julie Powell - a popular New York-based cookery blogger who became famous after tackling every recipe in Child's mighty Mastering the Art of French Cooking within one year.

An unashamed "feel-good movie", it feels like a bit of a whitewash, as it nakedly celebrates both women with little scrutiny of either character. It's also a little predictable and sloppy the way that Julie's moment of crisis comes courtesy of an unconvincing fall-out with her husband, rather than say, as a result of online criticism or the pressure of balancing her new celebrity with her mundane job in an insurance call centre. But this is my only serious gripe against what is overall a charming and polished film.

Both Adams and Streep make their characters fun and the film enjoyable. Especially the latter, as she impersonates the beloved cook, taking on her odd mannerisms and bizarre speech pattern perfectly. Stanley Tucci is also worth a mention as Child's loving husband.

As a point of curiosity, it was interesting to note how Ephron shot at many of the same Parisian locations as fellow New Yorker Woody Allen would later use for his 'Midnight in Paris'.

Tuesday night we watched the Dreamworks animation 'How to Train Your Dragon', which entertained me far less.



I confess, I'm not a fan of the Dreamworks house style anyway, but 'How to Train Your Dragon' did nothing for me. The story is exactly the same as that of so many other cartoons (notably the superior 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs') as a young schlemiel (always an inventor) struggles to fit in with a society that doesn't understand his individuality. In this case a whiny young Viking lad (Jay Baruchel) struggles to embrace the family business of killing dragons. Instead he befriends one of the creatures and alienates himself further from his horrifically unsympathetic father (Gerard Butler), before saving the day and changing the world.

The character designs and animation are far superior than any of the other Dreamworks movies, and it's also less of a crass, celebrity-filled gag-fest, but it still lacks the nuance and artfulness of a Pixar film. There is some pleasure to be had looking at the imaginative and varied dragon designs, but the movie is clumsily written and goes to all the obvious places in perfunctory fashion.

It also struggles under the weight of a third act that makes no sense, narratively or thematically, as the film has its cake and eats it too. The "love not war" morality of our dragon-training hero is here undermined by the film's generic need for a massive climactic dragon fight and a conventional villain, as a huge dragon-shaped deus ex machina emerges as the cause of all the Vikings' troubles and is destroyed without damage to anyone's conscience.

Tonight we're due to watch 1981 rom-com 'The Four Seasons', written and directed by its star Alan Alda, apparently one of my late granddad's favourite films.

'Senna' review:

It was a forgone conclusion that I would cry by the end of 'Senna', the biographical documentary about the Brazilian three-time Formula One world champion who died after crashing his car during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. I'm easily manipulated and knew that, by the time the film got to covering the event of his premature death, I would have been rendered helpless by endless earnest accounts of the subject's greatness aided by elegiac, probably string-driven music. I was expecting to feel moved, if for no other reason than it is sad to hear about the accidental death of a relatively young person. But 'Senna', directed by Asif Kapadia, rises above cloying sentiment to provide a portrait of the icon that is as tragic as expected, yet equal parts exciting, joyful and insightful.

Mostly avoiding the driver's personal life, beyond frequent references to his devout Catholicism, the documentary does well to maintain a solid focus on Senna's career - showing us his development as a go-kart racer in his youth and following his F1 years season-by-season right up to his death. The relationships that become a part of this narrative include Senna's notorious rivalry with McLaren teammate Alain Prost, his friendship with team boss Ron Dennis and his unhappy experiences dealing with the political side of the sport - as personified by FIA President Jean-Marie Balestre. This narrative, which plays out like the best dramatic sports movie, is allowed to play out using only stock footage and candid shots of life behind the scenes. The fact that those who have been interviewed especially for the film are heard but never seen keeps the focus on the amazing racing footage and ensures the film keeps its forward momentum.



A film about the triumph and tragedy of the attractive, charismatic Ayrton Senna is not a hard sell, even for myself - as someone with next to no interest in F1 racing. But what is surprising is that the racing itself is incredibly exciting to watch, especially those shots which are taken from the perspective of Senna as he whips around corners at immense speed. Through the cinema, even those allergic to sport are made to appreciate Senna's art and his daring desire to win at almost any cost. We witness high-speed overtaking and marvel at his aptitude for driving in the rain - a condition under which he seemed simply unbeatable. Watching him race, it isn't hard to understand why so many millions of Brazilians looked to him for inspiration during some of the country's poorest years.

Audiences have been reported as staying until the very end of the credits before leaving showings of 'Senna' - a practice usually reserved for those expecting a brief epilogue at the end of a superhero movie. They'll tell you they were enjoying the montage of still photographs, though I suspect this is a convenient smokescreen for those weepy souls battling to compose themselves before re-emerging into the outside world. Yet 'Senna' is not an on-screen funeral for those looking to re-acquaint themselves with grief almost two decades old: this is ultimately a celebration and an invitation for those of us who missed it all the first time around to see what made him so undeniably special.

'Senna' is on a wide release now in the UK and has been rated '12A' by the BBFC.

Trailers: Fincher's 'Dragon Tattoo' Looks Good, But 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' Less So

I really didn't at all like the Swedish adaptations of Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy": The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. Personally, I found them to be more than a little nasty and I felt they were blandly made, with a television aesthetic.

However, David Fincher - hot off the excellent 'The Social Network' - has been busy making his own adaptation, which looks markedly better. The trailer below is pretty electrifying, helped a lot of fantastic editing to the beat of a really energetic cover of Zed Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" by 'Social Network' composer Trent Reznor and Karen O - who provided songs for Spike Jonze's 'Where the Wild Things Are'.



I may still dislike the tone and attitude of the eventual movie, but this is a fantastic trailer regardless and I'm now excited to see the film.

Less exciting is the latest trailer for 'Planet of the Apes' prequel, 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' - which stars Academy Award host and nominee James Franco, alongside Brian Cox and 'Slumdog' actress Freida Pinto. The trailer makes it look really boring, with shots of men in lab coats talking about genetics, intercut with the faces of unconvincing computerised primates. I don't really know who this movie is for, unless the franchise is much more popular than I realise.

To me it seems like the wisdom of the age dictates that all "properties" have to be continually "developed", and therefore we were give Tim Burton's lacklustre take on the series and now this (with a view to several sequels, I'm sure).

I'm not completely writing it off as it could be really good, but the trailer leaves me unconvinced.

May I'm mostly put off by the core concept: that a bunch of laboratory apes could overwhelm a well-equipped human army. This seems to me to be completely stupid. Just because the apes become more intelligent, I don't see why that means they aren't still gunned down en masse as soon as the trouble starts. I guess I'll have to see the film if I want to find out how they overwhelm the world of man. We know who ultimately wins after all.

'X-Men: First Class' review:

It's barely been a year since the release of Matthew Vaughn's last film, the ultra-violent indie superhero movie 'Kick-Ass', yet his new movie - Marvel comic book prequel 'X-Men: First Class' - is already upon us. As that rapid production time might suggest, 'First Class' feels rushed: poorly scripted, with ropey back projection, lots of intangible CGI and a forgettable score. Problems which are only slightly alleviated by an interesting and talented cast, which includes James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Kevin Bacon, Nicholas Hoult and Oliver Platt.

As the name implies, 'First Class' is an origin story about the founding of superhero team The X-Men, which centres on the relationship between future enemies Professor X and Magneto - Charles Xavier (McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Fassbender). It starts by contrasting the lives of the two characters as children in 1944, showing how the metal manipulating Erik spent time in a Nazi concentration camp, where his parents were murdered and he was victim of experimentation, whilst the telepathic Xavier spent his formative years living in a mansion, dedicating himself to the pursuit of knowledge in order to better understand the mutant phenomenon.



The film then moves forward to 1962 where Xavier is graduating from Oxford as an expert on gene mutation, spending his free time downing yards of ale and charming sexy students with his well-rehearsed chat up lines. Meanwhile, Erik has become a Nazi hunter, scouring the globe in search of the man who shot his mother and experimented with his abilities, an energy adsorbing mutant named Sebastian Shaw (Bacon). With Cold War at its height, Shaw sets about provoking nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States in the hope of destroying non-mutant kind forever. It is he who is behind the Cuban Missile Crisis, playing both sides against each other. Xavier and Erik meet whilst in pursuit of Shaw (Xavier in the service of the CIA), leading the pair unite and set about recruiting other mutants in the name of preventing his evil plan.

This convoluted, time-traversing structure means that the first half of the film consists almost entirely of insubstantial moments, as Vaughn cross-cuts between exotic locations and introduces us to a multitude of obscure Marvel characters. It takes an age to get moving and in this time none of the perfunctory sub-plots are developed beyond the superficial minimum, with the movie feeling like a simple box-ticking exercise. Many of the mutants - including Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), Angel (Zoe Kravitz), Havoc (Lucas Till) and Darwin (Edi Gathegi) - are not fleshed out at all beyond the level of simple archetypes and are only really present to make up the numbers, in a film which might have done better to restrict the comic book heroes on screen in the name of greater depth. Certainly the best scenes are those which rest on McAvoy and Fassbender, who make for an appealing pair of opposites.



With four credited screenwriters, including Vaughn and Jane Goldman (with whom he scripted 'Kick-Ass'), it is perhaps no surprise that 'First Class' isn't the model of structural coherence or thematic restraint. The dialogue rarely rises above in-jokes about Xavier's future baldness or trite, over-explained literary references, to Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde, though a few of the actors are able to rise above the material with their credibility intact. The whole thing also reeks of compromise as the director sets up some quite sadistic and threatening scenes of violence before presumably remembering the film's prospective family audience. The brutal final kill shot is one such example, as Vaughn's camera maliciously, even pornographically, tracks the action. Only, without the blood and energy that would have underscored such a scene in 'Kick-Ass', this self-conscious moment feels muted and misplaced.

Worse still, Vaughn's treatment of female characters is the stuff of mild teenage fantasy. We are introduced to Rose Byrne's Moira MacTaggert as she strips into her lingerie to gain entry to a club filled with scantily-clad women. Similarly, minor antagonist Emma Frost (played by January Jones) is given little to do but look pretty, whilst Kravitz's Angel is first shown as a stripper, dancing for Charles and Erik as they sip champagne. She demonstrates her mutation - her insectoid wings - in a hopefully "sexy" way as they watch her from a red velvet bed. "How would you like a job where you get to keep your clothes on?" asks Charles on his recruitment drive, in the most chauvinist, patronising tone possible. Jennifer Lawrence too is subject to the film's leering male gaze, with her sub-plot being that her often-naked blue-skinned shape-shifter Mystique just wants to have body confidence. Like Byrne and Jones, Lawrence is all but written out of the film's biggest action sequence and instead is reduced to a kind of romantic hot potato, thrown between three of the male leads in the course of the film's two-hours.



For me though, the most troubling aspect of 'X-men: First Class' is that Vaughn's sympathies lie with the forces of revenge, intolerance and indiscriminate violence - and as such he is at fundamental odds with the source material. Fassbender's enigmatic future-Magneto is cast as an effortlessly cool anti-hero and it's with sickening relish that Vaughn stages the character's violent revenge killings near the start of the film. His emphasis on Erik's concentration camp struggles make it clear where our most reactionary sympathies are supposed to lie. As with 'Kick-Ass' before it, the film runs on thinly concealed right-wing politics: this time promoting the idea that "victim's justice" is a form of common sense.

By contrast, it's the sheltered and wishy-washy Xavier, the college kid, who wants to get along with the non-mutant humans and "fit in" (tellingly, he is even shown to be disparaging of Mystique's natural blue form and wants her to undergo treatment to become "normal"). He hasn't lived life and felt hatred like Erik has and, naturally, harbours none of the resentment. Here the "good" concepts, of self-confidence and rugged individualism, are wedded to Erik and a militant ideal. Certainly, the film wants us to love McAvoy too, but Vaughn's heart really isn't in it. Vaughn celebrates Xavier most as a loutish drinker and sleazy womaniser, rather than as the genius future leader of the X-Men, and by the final shots it is clear who we are really rooting for under the stewardship of this cynical budget-Tarantino.



'Kick-Ass' had an infectious energy, matched by a humorous style and editing so slick that I was forced to turn a blind eye to its dark-hearted contempt for human life. Sadly, 'X-Men: First Class' didn't provide me with that same excuse and, consequently, I was never given permission to shake off my sense of disbelief and partake in the unalloyed joys offered by the best superhero movies, let alone Vaughn's love of mindless, anti-social violence. By commercial necessity, it's a weak, flavourless blend of 'Kick-Ass' and Bryan Singer's earlier films, which doesn't tread anywhere with much freedom or confidence.

'X-Men: First Class' is mean-spirited, but isn't mean enough. It isn't allowed to get as bloody as it would like to. It isn't as stylish as it thinks it is. It isn't camp enough to be fun in spite of these failings and it isn't knowing enough to be considered ironic. Conscious of its brief to please a wide audience, the movie limply rests somewhere between those positions, unsure of what direction to take and which movie it wants to be - hoping you don't notice amidst all the explosions and the boobs.

'X-Men: First Class' has been rated '12A' by the BBFC and is on general release from today in the UK.

'The Great White Silence' review:

We British are very good at turning crushing defeat into heroic victory, whether it's at Dunkirk or the death of General Gordon in Khartoum. But no British colonial folly has ever been so celebrated as the 1910 journey of Captain Robert Falcon Scott - beaten to the South Pole by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, before freezing to death on the trip back - Scott is seen as the very model of an English gentleman and his fate is held up as a fine example of the British character. It is in this tradition that photographer Herbert Ponting's celebratory and romanticised account of the badly managed expedition, the recently BFI-restored 1924 documentary 'The Great White Silence', is best understood.

Ponting was part of Scott's expedition as far as Ross Island, charged with taking the photographs that would then form the basis of a lucrative lecture tour for the explorer upon his return home. He was expected to capture the Captain's heroic return as conqueror of the Antarctic, though the documentary as exists takes a different and more tragic direction. The final third of the film is restricted to Scott's journal entries, as well as an inspired mix of rudimentary stop motion animation, model work and staged pre-enactments of Scott's expedition trudging to the South Pole (filmed before the party made the actual trip). This is a film which, from the off, nakedly hopes to capitalise on Scott as myth - with a telling opening inter-title declaring that the following is a tale of courage which should inspire boys around the Empire. And doubtless it would have done upon its original release, with Ponting's miraculous images rendering our most romantic ideal of the "Age of Exploration" palpable.



Doubtless the original run would have been accompanied by triumphant, patriotic music, but this 2011 restoration benefits from an eerie and atmospheric new score by Simon Fisher Turner. Turner's restrained and haunting soundscape lends the whole enterprise a sort of otherworldly quality - as if we are watching strange men from another planet. It puts a surreal, almost Herzogian slant on things which gives the hundred year old footage renewed vigour. It's also often quite funny. Ponting's film is already rich with comic moments - with shots of sailor's dancing, a performing cat and stills of bewildered looking penguins - but Turner's score gives them all a new lease of life. Turner proves that a silent movie well scored can be every bit as effective now as it was then - in fact I'd wager the film is better now.

Yet even Turner's majestic accompaniment would struggle to lift the material were it not for the fact that Ponting's film feels so very modern to begin with. The best part of the film - in terms of running time and enjoyment - takes the form of a wildlife documentary, which sees us observe penguins, gulls, seals and orcas in their natural habitat. And this is takes the form of something instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with the work of David Attenborough. Ponting creates the same narrative as a modern wildlife documentary maker would, asking us to root for a hapless baby seal and its mother as a pod of killer whales closes in. He creates tension and prepares us for heartache as we see that infant struggle to come ashore as its mother frantically tries to push it up onto the ice.

The only anachronism that pulls us out of the moment, and reminds us we're watching antique footage, is the moment's resolution, as the crew of Scott's ship, the Terra Nova (a whaling vessel), harpoons one of the giant mammals and causes the attackers to break away. It's hard to imagine that happening in an episode of 'Planet Earth', but there are many details which flag up cultural changes (for instance, the ship's mascot, a black cat, is called "Nigger"). Also familiar to a modern audience will be Ponting's casting of the animals as little Christian families, with terms like "Mr & Mrs Penguin" or "the husband" used frequently, showing that there is nothing new about the anthropomorphism evident in films like 'March of the Penguins' (2005).



The most eye-catching, modern feature of the film however, is Ponting's frequent reference to the making of the film. He is sometimes seen on-camera himself, walking among the animals, and he often shows several takes of the same incident, allowing us to see how many times a particular set-up didn't go to plan. When watching a seal, he tells us how grateful he was that the "fellow" didn't keep him waiting long before performing the desired action. Better still, after inviting us to see a close-up of the bow of the ship breaking through the pack ice, he pulls back to show us how the shot was achieved - with the filmmaker perched atop a specially constructed wooden rig hanging precariously over the starboard side of the vessel. Ponting demonstrates himself to have been a very fine cameraman, with every frame of the film a beautiful photograph in its own right. His use of a handheld camera was pioneering and one panning shot, as the Terra Nova is buffeted by waves on the sea, sees him afford us an astounding view of the ocean filmed from somewhere up in the rigging.

The film ends with pages of Scott's immortal journal, telling us he and his comrades died like proper, stiff-upper lip Englishman and didn't grumble too much about their "unlucky" fate. Scott wrote that, whatever private misgivings they might have had, morale was always high among the men, who met their fate as esteemed examples of imperial valour. To my mind, these are the writings of a defeated man, once full of hubris, conscious of history and chiseling out his own legend. Even at the time of the film's release in 1924, the heroic ideal was being undermined by the senseless waste of life that was the 'Great War', and now those nineteenth century attitudes - which cast people as the expendable instruments of Empire - seem all the more alien to us. But set to a breathtaking new score and amongst Ponting's gloriously restored images, Scott's tale - and the dubious values of his age - are afforded a new lease of life.

'The Great White Silence' is rated 'U' by the BBFC and has been given a limited release in the UK.

'Silken Skin' and 'Day for Night': Two Truffaut Films Worth Watching

I've been doing a bit of reading around the Nouvelle Vague of late, with Emilie Bickerton's comprehensive chronological history of the Cahiers Du Cinema the book I'm currently reading. So it was a happy coincidence that the Duke of York's recently put on a Francois Truffaut double-bill featuring two films I'd never seen before: 1964 thriller 'Silken Skin' - also know as 'The Soft Skin' - and 'Day for Night', which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1973. Below are mini-reviews of both:

Silken Skin (La Peau Douce)


'Silken Skin' is about a French literary celebrity, Pierre Lachenay (Jean Desailly), who takes a business trip to Lisbon, where me meets a young air hostess (Françoise Dorléac) with whom he falls deeply in love. The majority of the film concerns Pierre sneaking away from his wife (Nelly Benedetti) to hook-up with his mistress, before he is eventually caught in a lie and has to make a decision.

It all seems simple, even banal, enough - a straightforward relationship drama. Yet Truffaut shoots the whole thing as if in homage to his idol Hitchcock and it plays like a thriller. The music is foreboding and the over-the-shoulder shots of people driving are reminiscent of 'Psycho', with the whole thing building to a powerful climax which is all the more striking due to the director's knowing refusal to forecast it during the preceding events (Truffaut was far too well schooled in Hitchcock for the abrupt ending to have been a result of structural deficiency).

It's seemingly a film about a cheating, nihilistic, self-satisfied husband - a man who tells his women what to wear - but 'Silken Skin' ultimately turns out to be about the women, as it cleverly subverts your expectations. It's also every bit as human as something like 'The 400 Blows', and though it's played straight for the most part, the film is not lacking in its directors subversive, darkly comic sensibility.

Day for Night (La nuit américaine)


When Jean-Luc Godard commented on the falseness of the motion picture industry in films like 'Tout Va Bien' (1972) (the credits of which feature a producer writing cheques to the cast and crew), it was tinged with bitterness and cynicism. On the other hand, Truffaut made 'Day for Night' just a year later - the quintessential movie about making movies - with a great sense of fun. Above all else, the film is entertaining. Visually it is a splendid, brightly coloured precursor to Wes Anderson, who most certainly paid homage to the film in his American Express advert - basically a riff on Truffaut's role as director within the movie, forever fielding questions from his crew and making decisions. (Though Anderson also borrows liberally from Godard and 'Tout Va Bien' in particular in his work.)

The film boasts some fantastic tracking shots too, but Truffaut never showboats without pulling back and making a joke at his own expense - and at the expense of the art form. It's always clear that he held cinema in the greatest reverence, but he was also able to channel that love into this high-spirited, good-natured look at the process and the industry.

The film is about the making of a movie, but the movie is beset by problems, feuds, death and even by a kitten who can't drink milk on cue (in a hilarious nod to an identical shot in 'Silken Skin'). Truffaut invites us into the kitchen and shows us how the sausage is made - and in a way which, for me at least, is far more fun than Fellini's '8 1/2'.

It also has a fantastic score, composed by Georges Delerue, which celebrates the wonders of the film making process as we watch sets being constructed or stunts being performed. It's clever without being smug and thoroughly enjoyable from the first minute to the last.

Both these films are deserving of far more attention than these short write-ups here, but I wanted to urge anyone who reads this to seek them out. Fantastic films both.