Competition time!

Just a quick entry here to say that the latest podcast is up on iTunes and should soon be available on the Picturehouse website and on this blog (literally within hours of this post). It's a really good episode as Jon and I discuss 'Kick-Ass', both the premiere and the movie itself. We also talk about Jon's time in Toulouse at the Latin American Film Festival.

Most exciting is the fact that we are offering our first giveaway! It's a copy of last year's disaster-porn-fest '2012' and it's on sparkling, HD Blu-Ray disc for your viewing pleasure. To "win" the film just e-mail me (r.beames@hotmail.co.uk), or Jon, and give us some feedback on the podcast. The best comment wins the Blu-Ray. Enjoy!

'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' review: On men who hate women...

The original Swedish title for this film (and for Stieg Larsson’s original novel) is perhaps more appropriate than that given to English language version. ‘Men Who Hate Women’ is almost an understatement here as we are shown scene after scene of violence (both sexual and non-sexual) towards women and perpetrated by a number of men (young and old).The films titular girl, Lisbeth (played by Noomi Rapace), has her own personal reasons to be hostile towards men, whilst the plot itself centres on the search for a man suspected of brutally murdering a number of young women. But apart from the frequent graphic scenes of rape, nudity and realistic violence the film bears a striking resemblance to a well-made TV detective serial rather than to a feature film. This isn’t because the film looks cheap, as it looks fairly expensive from a technical point of view, but it just feels as though it has a televisual style to it rather than a cinematic one, and so I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that the production team behind it (Yellow Bird) is behind TV’s ‘Wallander’: a detective show staring Kenneth Branagh.

The plot is contrived and conventional by TV whodunit standards: Mikael, disgraced investigative Journalist (played by the sincere and compelling Michael Nyqvist) teams up with Lisbeth (a “punk” computer hacker with a criminal past) to form a mismatched detective duo. They are called upon by an ailing old man to solve the disappearance and suspected murder of his great-Niece, which took place back in the 1960s. Along the way they encounter a number of suspicious, humourless relatives who gather around in plush drawing rooms and say things like “This is preposterous! You have no business being here!” and generally refuse to co-operate with the investigation. I don’t know if/how any of the story plugs into the next two films of the trilogy (which has already been shot and is awaiting release), but the film, as it stands, operates as if it were a standalone story in an episodic television series. Next week: an unrelated murder in another small parochial town of upper-class twits, and so on.



This isn’t to say that ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ is bad, however. In fact, it is quite good television. Danish TV director Niels Arden Oplev has done a decent job with the material, even if he is over-reliant on montage during the scenes where evidence is being examined. In fact, for a 2 ½ hour film it is fairly tightly put together and held my interest reasonably well. Refreshingly, the violence is not mined for slickness or cool and is always suitably jarring and grisly, whilst Noomi Rapace isn’t fetishised as the girl and the scenes of sexual violence are allowed to be truly awful. The film presents a seedy and disturbing picture of modern Sweden as a place full of corrupt officials (to put it lightly), little public order (Lisbeth is brutally attacked in a public subway by a gang of young males early on in the film) and of ageing Nazi sympathisers. It’s a far cry from the usual image of an efficient and well-run, if bland, modern Sweden and whilst I can’t vouch for its authenticity, it is interesting to see. Indeed, last year’s much-lauded ‘Let the Right One In’ gave a similarly bleak representation of Sweden as a place full of disconnected alcoholic people, nasty school children and equally appalling weather.

If you are in the mood for a solid crime thriller (and you don’t want something a bit mad like the superior ‘Shutter Island’) then I would recommend you go and see ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’. However, I’m not sure how this film will play to the ITV 3 crowd as it is less cosy than your average hour with Angela Lansbury or David Suchet and involves considerably more rape and a less clean picture of murder. However, women who hate men are in for a real treat!



'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' can still be seen in cinemas across the UK (and indeed the world) including the Duke of York's in Brighton where it continues its run until Thursday. It is rated '18' by the BBFC and a heavily censored version will be airing on ITV 3 next week (if there is any justice).

Some more trailers...

I don't have the time to properly update my blog today, so I'll do what I always do when that happens... post a couple of trailers!

Please Give
Jon of Splendor Cinema saw this back in Berlin and really liked it. Based on this trailer I am looking forward to it too:



Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
I know nothing of the comic book (yes, this is another comic book movie) but based on this trailer, 'Scott Pilgrim' looks like it could be really funny and rather unique:


Alamar
Again, Jon saw this Mexican film at a festival (Toulouse this time) and said it was an early contender for film of the year. If for no other reason, this makes me excited. Check out the beautiful trailer below:

'The Wraith': It's so bad... it's funny!

Everyone has seen a film that was absolutely terrible, but brilliantly so. They have to be really awful though: a slightly bad film is just boring, to be funny-bad a film has to be really, really terrible. I posted an article about Empire magazine doing a top 50 worst movies a little while back and some cult “funny bad” movies featured in that list (‘Showgirls’ and ‘The Room’ as examples), however my favourite bad film didn’t feature. ‘The Wraith’ stars Charlie Sheen and is written and directed by a chap named Mike Marvin who (thanks IMDB) also directed ‘Hamburger: The Motion Picture’ and produced ‘Hot Dog... the movie!’ (if anyone has seen either, please let me know!).

Basically, this film isn't listed in any version of the 'Variety' film guide, but it plays fairly regularly on TV (I've seen it twice within six months previously and a friend tells me it was on just the other week). The story is about... well I hate writing synopsis, so here is what a chap called 'KGF Vissers' wrote about it on the IMDB:
Packard Walsh and his motorized gang control and terrorize an Arizona desert town where they force drivers to drag-race so they can 'win' their vehicles. After Walsh beats the decent teenager Jamie Hankins to death after finding him with his girlfriend, a mysterious power creates Jake Kesey, an extremely cool motor-biker who has a car which is invincible. Jake befriends Jamie's girlfriend Keri Johnson, takes Jamie's sweet brother Bill under his wing and manages what Sheriff Loomis couldn't; eliminate Packard's criminal gang the hard way...

'The Wraith' is just hilarious in every way: bad acting (yes); bad visual effects (yes); cheesy 80's soundtrack (yes); fantastic plot holes that make no sense (yes). The editing, the shot choices and the lighting of the film all work together to add hilarity to every possible moment. In other words: it's a masterpiece in the funny-bad movie genre. I love that it isn't self-aware, though. It isn't one of those films that is taking the piss out of itself. 'The Wraith' doesn't know it's bad. In fact, it thinks it's awesome, which only hightens the sense of joy I feel when I see it. The tagline at the end of the trailer (posted above) says "If you've done nothing wrong... you have nothing to fear", well be afraid Mike Marvin. Trust me: watch it next time it's on. And it will be on, probably right now.

'Kick-Ass' review: Does exactly what it says on the poster

As I mentioned yesterday, I was lucky enough to attend the UK premiere of Matthew Vaughn’s ‘Kick-Ass’ on Monday night and I had a really great time. Some of this was down to the atmosphere of being part of a big and enthusiastic audience watching a yet-to-be-released film with its stars (and on a massive screen to boot), but most of it was down to the fact that ‘Kick-Ass’ is a brilliantly entertaining film. Probably the most entertaining film I have seen so far this year.

I have not read the Mark Millar comic book on which the film is based, so I couldn’t possibly comment on whether the film remains true to its source material, but I can say that this film is a damn sight better than the last film I saw based on one of his books. ‘Wanted’, which starred James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie as a couple of arsehole assassins, was a truly hateful movie and has some parallels with ‘Kick-Ass’ in that both are ultra-violent and depict a world in which violence is morally fine, so long as the people you are killing are deemed “bad”. Both also have a central character who is basically a weedy outsider (McAvoy in ‘Wanted’ and Aaron Johnson as the title character in ‘Kick-Ass’), but whereas ‘Wanted’ seems to preach that physical weakness is contemptible and has its hero using violence as a way to put himself above others in society (by the end of the film he is superior to his old workmates), ‘Kick-Ass’ is less troubling, as its central nerds are celebrated by the film. In fact in ‘Kick-Ass' the title character is more often the one whose ass is being kicked and, whereas ‘Wanted’ seems to have a nihilistic hatefulness about it, ‘Kick-Ass’ celebrates its naive heroes who are basically determined to protect people and right percieved social wrongs.



Now, even though I found it a lot less distasteful than 'Wanted', there are all sorts of problems with ‘Kick-Ass’ from a political point of view (none of which are too dissimilar from last year’s horrid ‘Harry Brown’ which Vaughn produced). The film has an uncomplicated view of crime (bad people commit it) and an equally uncomplicated view about how to deal with crime (the mass murder of criminals), not to mention that the film’s hoodlums are pretty much all played by ethnic minorities and are of low social class. British actor, Mark Strong, plays his villain as a prototypical Italian mob-type, whilst Nicolas Cage (an Italian-American actor) plays his hero as an ethnically “white” everyman figure. But everything in ‘Kick-Ass’ plays out like a Warner Brothers cartoon (with ‘Kill Bill’ levels of violence and swearing) and is injected with a lot of humour. Whereas ‘Wanted’ is self-consciously “cool” (in a way aimed at pubescent boys, with leather jackets, guns and sexy women belonging to socially retarded geeks) and promotes a violent attitude towards society (not necessarily physical), ‘Kick-Ass’, with its geek heroes, is always more self-effacing - with one of the vigilante’s portrayed by McLovin’ from ‘Superbad’ (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) - and somehow ultimately better natured.

Now I’ve catered for my conscience I can get to writing about the things I really enjoyed about the movie, which was one of very few recent films in which I didn’t check my watch (it packs a lot of great stuff into just under two hours), as it held my attention throughout. For starters, whilst Mark Strong, Aaron Johnson and Christopher Mintz-Plasse are pretty good in their respective roles, Nicholas Cage and the thirteen year-old Chloë Moretz give brilliantly funny performances as the films two stand-out characters: the father and daughter pairing of ‘Big Daddy’ and ‘Hit-Girl’. Nicolas Cage displays suburb comic skills (previously seen in ‘Raising Arizona’ back in 1987 and, more recently in 2002’s ‘Adaptation’) whenever he’s onscreen, with his character (a softly-spoken, gentle father who turns his daughter into a violent, gun-obsessed killer) switching to an Adam West impression when adopting his ‘Big Daddy’ persona. This is not only a playful nod towards Batman of the 1960s, but also possibly a humorous take on Christian Bale’s much-derided change of voice when he dons the armour of the Dark Knight in Christopher Nolan’s films (whatever it is in homage to... it is hilarious).

The action sequences also remind me of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. Of course, they are formally more similar (as is the film's visual style and design) to Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’, but they remind me of ‘The Dark Knight’ because that film represents the last time I really enjoyed action sequences in a cinema. The set-pieces are played out like the very best Warner Brothers cartoons in that they are imaginative and funny in the way they choose to deal pain to all involved (the dispatching of a key villain literally caused me to burst into spontaneous applause). I don’t want to spoil any of the set-pieces themselves here, but they are really impressive and varied (unlike ‘Wanted’ or ‘The Matrix’ in which all the sequences blur into one burst of slow-motion, bullet-time gunfire). The champion of these set pieces is, unquestionably, Moretz’s ‘Hit-Girl’ who really does kick ass whenever she is onscreen (in a manner recalling a miniature version of ‘Kill Bill’s ‘Gogo’).



The Daily Mail will no doubt continue to hate ‘Kick-Ass’ for it’s bad language (the ‘c-word’ coming from the mouth of a thirteen year-old girl will do that) and over the top violence, even though the film’s politics aren’t altogether incompatible with that paper’s own. But putting those issues behind me, I have to admit that ‘Kick-Ass’ was terrifically good fun and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to go to the movies, sit back and get entertained. It is equal parts funny and exciting and (if it performs at the box-office) may provoke a new wave of independent movie blockbusters.

'Kick-Ass' opens on Friday nationwide and will be played at the Duke of York's in Brighton (where I work). It is (somehow) rated '15' by the BBFC (even though a little girl says 'cunt' and kills almost everyone onscreen in a tidal wave of bloody violence). Jon and I will podcast on it soon, so stay tuned for that.

'Kick-Ass' premiere special: I done went to the fancy movie show

Thanks to my Splendor Cinema Podcast co-host (and boss at the Duke of York's cinema) Jon Barrenechea, I had tickets to last night's premiere of Matthew Vaughn's new comic book adaptation Kick-Ass (a movie which is both an independent and a blockbuster). Jon (who is currently in Toulouse for a film festival) couldn't make it, so he sent the lovely Felicity Beckett of Flick's Flicks (also a boss of mine at the Dukes!) and I in his stead and missed out on a wonderful night with (or at least near) the stars. I haven't been to a glitzy Leicester Square premiere before, so I was very excited by the whole thing, which took place at the Empire Theatre. It is a really lovely cinema inside and out, boasting a terrifically large screen (it looked to me to be the size of an IMAX!) and seating many hundreds of people. I was in awe of the surroundings the whole time from my seat in the third row.

On our way in we walked down the red carpet and between the fans on one side and members of the press on the other, who had come to see Brad Pitt (one of the film’s producers) as well as its stars Aaron Johnson (recently seen in ‘Nowhere Boy’ as a young John Lennon), Mark Strong (the film’s villain), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin’ from ‘Superbad’) and the young Chloë Moretz (who is slated to play the vampire girl in the remake of ‘Let the Right One In’ later this year). As well as these fine chaps I saw: ‘A Single Man’ star Nicholas Hoult standing by the popcorn kiosk; the reality TV pop star Lemar; 90’s comedian David Baddiel and Jaimie “school dinners” Oliver posing for photos with his adoring fans. My only brush with celebrity in any concrete sense came in the form of telling Sam Taylor-Wood (fiancée of Aaron Johnson and pictured above) that I liked her debut feature ‘Nowhere Boy’, to which she replied with a polite “thank you”.

My favourite moment of the night (other than the film itself, which I really enjoyed and will review later this week) came during Matthew Vaughn’s (extremely) brief introduction to the movie, during which I could see a nervous Chloë Moretz (only 13 years old) mouthing to her co-stars that there were lots of people in the cinema. It was really nice to see that she was impressed and excited by (what I assume) is her first big film premiere, not yet disinterested or jaded by what was going on.

Anyhow, thanks go to Jon and his contacts at Universal (who supplied the tickets) for allowing me to go and have a great night out at an exciting movie event! And, of course, to Flick for keeping me company. I really hope the chance to do this comes along again in the future. For a taster of the film, watch the (foul mouthed and ultra-violent) 'Hit-Girl' trailer below, although be warned that it does show some of the films very best moments:



'Kick-Ass' is on general release from Friday the 26th and can be seen at the Duke of York's where a superhero-themed fancy dress premiere is taking place on the evening of the release. My review will be up here before then, so please check back and read my thoughts here!

'Crazy Heart' review: Wrestler lite

In one of the very first shots of 'Crazy Heart' Jeff Bridges tells us that he hates bowling. As good as it is to see him revisit the bowling alley here he is, of course, being "very un-dude" and making it clear from the outset that his Oscar-winning turn as an alcoholic, down-on-his-luck, country singer known as Bad Blake is different from his now iconic turn in ‘The Big Lebowski’. Indeed, Bad Blake is not so easy going and, more importantly, he is less content with his lot in life, harbouring bitterness that he is poor and playing to small crowds whilst the younger Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) enjoys far greater success.

Much like other recent films about musicians (such as ‘Nowhere Boy’, ‘Dreamgirls’ or ‘Walk the Line’) ‘Crazy Heart’ is at its most effective when conveying the energy of live performance, with Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell impressing greatly as singers. I am not a fan of country music by any means, but ‘Crazy Heart’ manages to convincingly show us country music as something approaching white blues music rather than Billy Ray Cyrus-style cheese. Credit for this must go to T-Bone Burnett, who wrote many of the songs in Bad Blake’s repertoire, all of which convince as the memorable country standards we are told they have become within the film. Bridges is an electric presence as Blake on stage, and a duet with Tommy Sweet at the film’s midway point is arguably the film’s highlight (I wanted to cheer at its conclusion as though I were at a real concert).

The second half of the film, which concerns Blake’s relationship with a young, single-mum called Jean (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal), is much less appealing as it pulls us away from the stage and into movie cliché territory. Jean castigates Blake at one point by saying that he’s let her down like every man has before, which made me cringe, whilst (potential spoiler) Blake easily overcomes his years of alcoholism within two scenes late in the film. ‘Crazy Heart’ also presents Jean as a typical Hollywood movie single mum, in that despite the fact she has a fairly low income job (as a local journalist) she owns a pretty nice house and has no problem juggling a career with providing for her son (in a way reminiscent of Rene Zellweger’s character in ‘Jerry Maguire’). Blake’s poverty is similarly non-existent as, despite the fact that he tells us early on that he has ten dollars to his name; he also seems to get along fairly comfortably. America, it seems, is a good place to be poor.



This lack of any social realist elements is perhaps the film’s main problem, as whilst Aronofsky’s ‘The Wrestler’ deals with many of the same themes and issues as ‘Crazy Heart’ (right down to the detail that both include a plot thread about an estranged father begging for redemption), it does so with a cynicism and a seedy, gritty edge, which is lacking here. One interesting scene cuts between Blake’s fairly simple abode and the glamorous home of his LA agent, as they speak on the telephone, but whilst the contrast raises interesting questions about Blake’s exploitation (again like ‘The Wrestler’) none of these are really answered.

In the end (major spoiler) Blake gets sober, writes a big song and makes a ton of money, with one of the films closing scenes featuring Blake in happy conversation with his agent, who it seems has the right idea about life: in ‘Crazy Heart’ Blake’s lack of success is his own fault and when he changes his outlook, he becomes free to set about living the American Dream which is (as always) purely financial. Mickey Rourke’s wrestler is spat out, exploited and abused by American society which lets him down just as much as his own messed-up personality. ‘Crazy Heart’ is the more palatable film for audiences, but it is arguably a less honest one for it.

In fairness, the first half of ‘Crazy Heart’ was one of the most enjoyable times I have had in a cinema this year so far. Whatever its flaws, the film boasts a great soundtrack, some stunning performances and has provided one of my favourite actors with a plethora of well-deserved awards. If you are a fan of Jeff Bridges or country music and want to watch a lighter, less socially conscious version of ‘The Wrestler’, then ‘Crazy Heart’ is the film for you!

'Crazy Heart' is still playing across the country and until this Thursday at the Duke of York's in Brighton. It is rated '15' by the BBFC.