'My Week With Marilyn' review:

It begins with a sizzle: Michelle Williams is introduced as Marilyn Monroe during a sultry song and dance routine, watched by our besotted, film-obsessed protagonist Colin (Eddie Redmayne) on a cinema screen, in the company of a dozen or so other lecherous men. It's no exaggeration to say Williams makes love to the camera and the sensitive, indie movie actress convinces totally, becoming the hyper-sexual 1950s bombshell before our eyes. Here Colin's leering does something to suggest not only the appeal of Monroe, the movie star, but also the terms upon which she was judged and the slightly sinister way in which audiences implicitly came to own her. Sadly Simon Curtis' movie goes rapidly, dramatically downhill from there.

'My Week With Marilyn' feels like an overwrought Biography Channel drama operating on an unusually high production budget. The presence of Williams - not to mention Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, Derek Jacobi, Emma Watson and Dougray Scott - is all there is to remind us that this is in fact a piece of Weinstein-produced Oscar bait and not a straight-to-DVD knock-off. The film follows Monroe during the time she spent in England in the summer of 1956, starring opposite Sir Lawrence Olivier (Branagh) in light comedy romp 'The Prince and the Showgirl' - the production of which was apparently run like a Gulag under the stage legend's Stalin-like gaze and (in one bewilderingly pointless scene) the tyranny of a unionised workforce.



Based on the memoirs of the young Colin Clark, the fraught production's lowly third assistant director, the film sees Redmayne's Colin very much as the centre of attention: instantly loved by Monroe and soon indispensable to Olivier. A key mediator in the ensuing war between the two actors, he's the reason the film is completed. It is even implied he prevented the troubled, pill-guzzling sex symbol from committing suicide - six years before her eventual overdose. By the end of this alternately zany and maudlin adventure he's improbably become trusted confident and bestest friend in the world to both stars. Along the way he also finds time to casually reject the affections of Emma Watson's doe-eyed wardrobe assistant and becomes accustomed to receiving knitwear from an appreciative Dame Sybil Thorndike (Dench), for some apparent off-screen kindness that's best left unimagined.

The film is so obsessed with our old Etonian everyman hero Colin that the more interesting figures who surround him are only painted as wafer thin archetypes. Olivier, who Branagh parodies with 'Wild Wild West' levels of restraint, is glimpsed several times in dramatic, slow-zooming close-up reciting Shakespearian verse - just like Olivier must have frequently done in real life. You know... because he was famous for doing Shakespeare.

Meanwhile Williams is a more troubling proposition as Monroe, playing her emotionally withdrawn moments as though she were a fay, mentally deficient cousin of Mickey Mouse. She may have been troubled, depressed and paranoid but Marilyn Monroe was, by most accounts, a very witty woman and not likely a ditzy airhead. Yet here Monroe is shown as barely able to recall who Leonardo Da Vinci is, let alone correctly identify his picture of "the smiling woman". Fair enough if you're going to be casual with historical figures, but this doesn't make sense within the context of a movie in which an early press conference scene has Monroe wowing British journos with her quick-witted charms and clever turn of phrase.



In isolated moments Williams nails the quiet vulnerability of the character, just as she turns the vivacious sexpot persona on and off, yet these feel like separate extreme caricatures rather than parts of a fully formed, if conflicted, whole. As with 'The Life and Death of Peter Sellers' or Andy Kaufman biopic 'Man on the Moon', 'My Week With Marilyn' is content to paint a reductive (and only superficially deep) picture of its complicated subject. Yet the performances, though campy turns rather than real human beings, are at least watchable. What really kills the film is Adrian Hodges' literal-minded screenplay.

A good 'My Week With Marilyn' drinking came would involve taking a shot 1) whenever someone tells you exactly what they're thinking or feeling; 2) whenever a character explains who somebody is or reminds you what has just happened; or 3) when something is said to underline a point already made through the characters' on-screen actions. The writing is needlessly descriptive, always telling rather than showing (or showing and then telling just in case). Dialogue often sounds like scene-setting narration rather than speech, whilst Olivier and Monroe routinely self-analyse in embarrassing cod psychology.

In 'My Week With Marilyn', the film star's life is presented as one long tragedy, hidden from public view behind moments of immense, if superficial, glamour. This, it turns out, is a very effective metaphor for the film itself, which only attains any sort of life when Williams is called upon to perform as a woman giving a performance.

'My Week With Marilyn' is out now in the UK, rated '15' by the BBFC.

My Top 30 Films of 2011: 30-21

End of year list season is well and truly upon us. 2011 has long felt like a weak year for the movies, with a few notable exceptions. So much so that I was originally thinking of abandoning last year's "top 30" template for a more conventional, not to mention streamline, "top 10". Yet looking back over the last twelve months I was delighted to discover there were at least 30 films I liked, probably about 20 of which are unambiguously terrific. Maybe the year hasn't been so bad after all.

I was going to wait until I'd seen the much talked about 'Margaret', Nanni Moretti's 'We Have a Pope' and Fincher's take on 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' before compiling this list, but for a range of reasons I'm going to kick off now. For one thing, 'Dragon Tattoo' is based on source material I have a serious problem with - already adapted into three Swedish films that I despised - whilst there is no guarantee I'll get the opportunity to see the other two before the month is out.

It's worth noting before I begin that this list is comprised of films I've seen this year, including festival movies - some of which aren't on general release in the UK until next year. If you're wondering why some of this year's most stunning releases aren't included, such as 'Black Swan' and '13 Assassins' (both seen in Venice last year), that's because they were in 2010's list. So here are my choices, my favourite films of 2011 numbers 30-21:

30) The Green Hornet, dir Michel Gondry, USA

What I said: "Rogen's hero isn't charming and erudite - he is an obnoxious oaf and by and large stays that way right the way through the film. Rogen's delivery - of dialogue he penned with writing partner Evan Goldberg - is superb too, in all its underplayed, mock-macho brainlessness and the relationship between him and Jay Chou, who plays sidekick Kato, is fun to watch."



By no means perfect, it's fair to say that Michel Gondry's 'The Green Hornet' benefited from extremely low expectations when I saw it back in January. A poor trailer, troubled production history and use of much-derided post-converted 3D suggested this would be a creative misstep for all involved - and a potential career-wrecker for writer/star Seth Rogen. Yet - at the box office - the film outperformed the studio's own modest expectations owing to the fact that it's a lot better than we had any right to expect. This comes down to a combination of the brilliant Christoph Waltz as the villain, Rogen's incredulous, hyper-enthusiastic style of delivery which injects humour into every line and, most of all, the director's knack for innovation and imagination.

There are a lot of pretty cool in-camera effects in 'The Green Hornet' and, though Gondry's more personal documentary 'The Thorn in the Heart' (released around the same time) would be the more respectable choice for this list, here is a film very much in the same spirit as 'Be Kind Rewind' and 'The Science of Sleep', if not his superior Charlie Kaufman-penned work. That the action scenes are also quite effective - in what's basically a quirky comedy about a rich douchebag learning to become a marginally smaller rich douchebag - only adds to the pleasantness of the surprise.

29) Winnie the Pooh, dir Stephen J. Anderson & Don Hall, USA

What I said: "As you might expect from a gentle children's tale, this film is very much aimed at youngsters... there are no nods to the adults or in-jokes at all. But it's nice to find a modern animation totally free of any post-modern winking and there is fun to be had here for adults so long as they are prepared to indulge their innermost child. As the credits rolled I found myself identifying with the sentiment of this bittersweet passage from [A.A] Milne's The House at Pooh Corner: "And by and by Christopher Robin came to an end of things, and he was silent, and he sat there, looking out over the world, just wishing it wouldn't stop.""



Let down only by a bafflingly short running length (is 63 minutes technically even a feature film?), Disney's "51st Animated Classic" is as charming as it is beautifully animated. The best of the studio's 90s animating talent returned to work on the picture and a lot of love has gone into the detailed and fluid hand-drawn animation, as well as the faithful voice-acting and delightfully hummable ditties. There isn't much of a story as Pooh, Piglet and company bumble their way through the Hundred Acre Wood, but it hardly matters if you approach it in the intended spirit of open-hearted whimsy. This is potentially only a film for toddlers and animation enthusiasts, but I found it to be one of the year's unqualified pleasures.

28) Contagion, dir Steven Soderbergh, USA

What I said: "It feels slightly too long and, in terms of narrative focus, it's every bit as scattershot as its director's filmography - with some characters unceremoniously forgotten, whilst others reappear just as you've forgotten they were in the film to begin with. Yet it's gripping, frightening, filled with haunting images and, I suspect, it will come to be seen as the definitive film about worldwide medical crisis... It certainly left me wanting to stockpile supplies and seal the exits, too frightened to touch my own face. And that's the sign of a good film."



I love a good doomsday scenario movie and they don't come more frighteningly credible than Soderbergh's 'Contagion', which shows how a new virus could significantly reduce the global population within months of killing Gwyneth Paltrow. After Mrs. Coldplay bites it in the opening moments, we know that nobody in the film's stellar ensemble (Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard and more) is safe, increasing the sense of dread. It's a bit jargon-heavy, filled with clumsy exposition and a little unfocussed, but it's also one of the most memorable and visceral movie-going experiences of the year.

27) Limitless, dir Neil Burger, USA

What I said: "Limitless is a well executed and intelligent thriller which suggests, when the cinema going public finally succumb to that long-overdue Zach Galifianakis overdose, Bradley Cooper will be the Hangover actor left standing. It’s also evident that Burger is a capable hand for exciting, character-based movies. It’s patient, cerebral and unpretentious pulp science fiction fare on a sensible scale."



In 'Limitless' Bradley Cooper's serial underachiever - a deadbeat wannabe writer - gets a taste of the high-life after taking an experimental drug (NZT) that unlocks the full potential of the human brain. Within days he's wealthy, sexy and extremely arrogant, taking on organised criminals and Robert De Niro's morally dubious business tycoon. Released around the same time as Duncan Jones' dispiritingly conventional 'Moon' follow-up 'Source Code', the unsung 'Limitless' quietly went about being the superior film - both in terms of the interesting sci-fi morality questions it posed and the style in which it was made.

For the most part a male-empowerment wish-fulfilment fantasy gone wrong, 'Limitless' goes to some incredibly dark places, with it even suggested via news reports that Cooper has murdered a woman whilst on NZT (a fact which is chillingly never resolved). This is made all the more sinister by an ending which reminded me of Hal Ashby's 'Being There', as Cooper's protagonist contemplates his potential future as President of the United States, implying that hubris and over-confidence - as well as smarts - are key to success in capitalism.

26) Tales of the Night, dir Michel Ocelot, FRA

What I said: "There is a deep-rooted love of basic human kindness here which reminds me of Miyazaki, and yet Ocelot’s films are never cute or sentimental and you get the impression he is resolutely sincere. And though his art style looks simple and even a bit cheap, the fluidity of his animation – particularly when it involves running and dancing – is at the peak of the art form. Added to that, in terms of imagination 'Tales of the Night' is filled to the brim with ideas."



In a year which saw Pixar release a 'Cars' sequel and Studio Ghibli give us the nice but forgettable 'Arrietty', Michel Ocelot's 3D 'Tales of the Night' is indisputably the best animated film I've seen. Ocelot's embrace of multiculturalism and earnest humanism, as seen previously in 'Kirikou and the Sorceress' and 'Azur & Asmar', is heartening, as is his ability to tell simple children's tales with incredibly sophisticated morality. Animated in silhouette, the use of 3D gives this the look of a pop-up book and complements nicely the film's conceit: that the series of short stories we are told are being performed by a secret, nocturnal theatre company with a surplus of imagination.

25) Coriolanus, dir Ralph Fiennes, UK

What I said: "Making the story relatable and relevant isn’t something [director Ralph Fiennes] does merely by enforcing [a] change of setting... This is also made possible by the actor’s Paul Greengrass-style direction: handheld cameras stripping the film of the formalised, sanitised sheen prevalent in many more traditional adaptations. In fact the scenes of urban warfare in 'Coriolanus' are bloody and visceral like those in a straight-up war movie. The other major contributing factor to the film’s success – and probably the most important – is that the dialogue is delivered incredibly naturalistically which makes it immediately understandable."



Resolutely avoiding the pitfalls of stagy, mannered Shakespeare adaptations, Ralph Fiennes directorial debut delivers one of the Bard's lesser known works with a visceral punch in the jaw. Fiennes himself stars, creating a menacing, towering presence as the titular military general whose abilities as a public speaker do not match his aptitude for conflict. Transported from ancient Rome to what looks like a modern day urban war zone, Fiennes uses riots, camera phones and 24 hour news coverage (brilliantly deploying real Channel 4 news reader Jon Snow as a herald) to explore the play's still-relevant themes. He retains all the original dialogue - much like the 1996 'Romeo & Juliet' - having his actors (including Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Cox and Jessica Chastain) deliver their lines in such a way that they are always understood in spite of the arcane verse.

24) Innocent Saturday, dir Aleksandr Mindadze, RUS/UKR

What I said: "Alexander Mindadze’s oppressive style of direction puts the viewer in the same uncomfortable position as his protagonist. You feel unable to escape and paranoid at the threat you can not see. There are very few occasions where the camerawork affords you an establishing shot or even a medium shot, and even fewer times when it is held still. This isn’t a conventional disaster movie and we don’t ever get to glimpse the full horror of the disaster or the eventual mass exodus from the town. This is rather the intimate story of one person struggling with his fears and desires as he grapples with the knowledge that the cheery oblivious, innocents around him – who are busy getting married, playing football and taking walks – are all likely doomed."



This extremely queasy and claustrophobic drama follows one man's doomed bid to escape the Soviet town of Prypiat, modern day Ukraine, in the hours following the 1986 meltdown at the neighbouring Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Valerij (Anton Shagin) works at the plant and, by chance, learns of the disaster before it is belatedly revealed to the public. And yet he can't bring himself to flee town: whether it's morality or fate something compels him to stay and drink the night away with his friends. The almost constant use of close-ups brilliantly gives the sense that something dangerous is in the air they breath, whilst also serving to frustrate the viewer by withholding information. This last action is perhaps the most overt critique of the Moscow government's handling of the disaster in a film which otherwise avoids polemics.

23) True Grit, dir Joel & Ethan Coen, USA

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



Perhaps this one would factor higher up my list if it was fresher in the memory. But, released last year in the US and a contender at February's Academy Awards, it feels like a 2010 movie. In any case 'True Grit' is a superb western and - by all accounts - a more faithful adaptation of the Charles Portis novel than the fondly remembered John Wayne film of 1969. One reason it stands apart as the stronger film is that Jeff Bridges' cantankerous drunken Marshal Rooster Cogburn is a more effective anti-hero under directors comfortable with moral ambiguity.

The Coens don't imagine that the audience has to like their characters, which isn't the same thing as making them unlikable. They just don't feel the need to flag Cogburn up as any species of hero. Any warmth you feel for him comes because of his flawed, grizzled humanity, and Bridges portrayal, rather than because of his effectiveness with a firearm and penchant for frontier justice. Likewise Oscar-nominated newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, who plays young, revenge-obsessed protagonist Mattie Ross, is scrutinised and ultimately scarred by her adventures - something which wouldn't have been palatable in '69 but is actually essential to the telling of this story. The cold, elegiac tone of the piece - so common to Coen brothers movies from 'Blood Simple' onwards - also fits the western myth so perfectly it's a wonder they haven't done this sooner.

22) Beginners, dir Mike Mills, USA

What I said: "'Beginners' is a tearjerker without feeling manipulative and it's life-affirming without being sickly. A large part of its success rests with Christopher Plummer, whose performance as Hal is especially heartbreaking, with the old man facing death when he is at his most vital. His insatiable appetite for new experiences is particularly bittersweet and Mills' reflection on his own father's life as a closet homosexual in the 1950s shows great insight and empathy. All of the characters are well drawn and sympathetic - with each of them coming to terms with misfortune and tragedy without self-pity. As romantic leads, McGregor and Laurent enjoy great chemistry and their scenes together are a charming."



Until this year, with one possible exception, Ewen McGregor hadn't been in a good film since 1996 - the year of 'Brassed Off' and 'Trainspotting'. My perverse love of 'The Phantom Menace' aside, the closest he'd come to being in a halfway decent movie over the last fifteen years had been in Tim Burton's 'Big Fish'. But in 2011 McGregor starred in Mike Mills' 'Beginners', which is much more than a halfway decent movie. In fact it's a beautiful and incredibly moving portrayal of loss in which McGregor is the emotional centre.

Like the aforementioned 'Big Fish', 'Beginners' is about a son coming to terms with the loss of his father. But whereas Albert Finney's Edward Bloom was a dominating figure with a life of extraordinary (if exaggerated) adventures behind him, the father here - played by Christopher Plummer - succumbs to cancer months after beginning to live anything like a fulfilled life, having only recently embraced his long-repressed homosexuality. McGregor and co-star Melanie Laurent have a good chemistry together and the film is life-affirming without being saccharine.

21) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two, dir David Yates, UK/USA

What I said: "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."



With the possible exception of Alfonso Cuaron's early entry, the Harry Potter series has never interested me until the last few episodes as directed by David Yates - a UK TV director. In fairness, he's been helped immeasurably by a number of factors outside of his control - the child actors have become better in their decade in front of the camera, whilst the later books seem to be darker and richer - but he still deserves a lot of credit for the way he has handled the end of JK Rowling's ubiquitous child wizard saga. In Yates' Potter films there is a clearer sense of threat, with some quite nasty goings on in this entry in particular (as when a major character has his throat slit before being savagely attacked by a snake whilst lying helpless). And once pantomime characters, like Alan Rickman's Professor Snape, are fleshed out in ways both pleasing and surprising.

But my favourite thing about Yates' take on the series has been the increased banality in the presentation of the non-magical (or "muggle") world in which Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends must live. Yates seems to understand what Christopher Columbus, Mike Newell and even Cuaron missed: the magic is only wondrous and exciting if it takes place in a recognisable world to our own. The Roald Dahl inspired evil step-family of the earlier installments were larger than life caricatures, meaning that Harry's life was already out of the ordinary and bizarre before he went to Hogwarts school and got all wizardy on their asses. But here magic seems to have a visceral impact on a recognisable world.

In the concluding chapters another pleasing fact has become clear, which I had previously dismissed and for which Rowling presumably deserves credit (I've never read a Harry Potter book). In the past I've bemoaned Harry as this pathetic, passive protagonist - always helped by some deus ex machina or by his more capable friends/members of faculty. But it's now obvious that Harry's special talent is that he is extraordinarily nice to people. All people. He is, however bland it might sound, good. It is this which allows him to succeed because this is why people help him when he's in trouble. It's the same logic that sees the previously bullied, but-of-all-jokes Neville Longbottom (Matt Lewis, above) steal the film's most bombast instances of heroism. Harry Potter isn't about being the smartest or the strongest and an understanding of this allows this megabucks franchise to attain a sort of innocent nobility.

Come back later in the week for numbers 20-11.

'Another Earth' review:

Midway through ‘Another Earth’, feature debut of director Mike Cahill, the camera pulls back to reveal a huge piece of graffiti daubed on the road of a perpetually overcast middle-American city. It reads “spare us” – with the people of this strained, determinedly “indie” drama fearing revelations of the unknown as an exact double of our planet comes into close orbit. I know the feeling: watching this dimly lit affair I was tempted to scribble the same thing on the cinema walls.

The film stars co-writer Brit Marling as a young woman who gets admitted to MIT only to spend four years in jail instead, having killed several members of a family after careening into their car whilst driving under the influence. Just prior to this life changing event, Marling spies a brand new star in the sky. It's, of course, our planet's aforementioned doppelgänger, and it's soon discovered that it's home to exact doubles of every person on our planet. After leaving prison she comes to see the planet as offering potential redemption, entering a competition to win a seat on the first voyage to "Earth 2". She hopes to find a new life in the unknown dominated by one thought: are the people she killed still alive up there?



This is a good idea in theory - potentially a cerebral blending of science fiction and lo-fi American indie drama. Yet, beyond some budget defying special effects, the film lacks ambition and is content to wallow in a rather more conventional, Earth-bound story about guilt and remorse. Even so, these are interesting themes. Yet here they are explored almost without feeling and in an oppressively banal setting. It's a cold, sterile experience set in a gloomy world and filled with people who don't read as convincingly human. Instead they are merely players in what feels like a trumped-up student film, high on its own imagined profundity.

Indeed the single worst thing about 'Another Earth' is a narration from an unseen character who asks all the most searching questions about the ramifications of this new planet - just in case we're too simple to ask them ourselves. It's a clumsy device which plays like a bad Werner Herzog impression rather than an exploration of grand meta-physical themes. Much like the film itself.

'Another Earth' is rated '12A' by the BBFC and is on UK release now.

'Romantics Anonymous' review:

A very slight and shamelessly frothy romantic comedy from French writer-director Jean-Pierre Améris, 'Romantics Anonymous' is a genuinely heart-warming proposition. It sees two highly strung, middle-aged chocolatiers, who use confectionery as a substitute for relationships, meet after Angélique (Isabelle Carré) goes to work at the near-bankrupt company of Jean-René (Benoît Poelvoorde).

Both have extreme social anxiety issues and live lives of quiet regret instead of facing up to their fears. Angélique can't bear to the focus of any attention - and gets tongue tied in conversation - which leads her to hide her superior chocolate making skills from her employer, acting instead as an incredibly meek sales rep. Meanwhile, Jean-René comes across as mean when he is really just deathly afraid of human contact and has no idea how to talk to women.



The title comes from the fact that Angélique belongs to a sort of Alcoholic Anonymous style support group for those with emotional problems, whilst Jean-René is often seen consulting his therapist. These scenes, whilst funny, provide insight into the characters, showing that (though the word is never used) they are autistic rather than just a couple of quirky oddballs. Both lead characters are expertly observed.

It runs for a satisfying 80 minutes and consistently generates gentle, affectionate laughs. Free of cynicism, it's set in a profoundly humane world where people aren't afraid to burst into spontaneous song and where the audience is encouraged to laugh along with the characters rather than at them. The third act isn't encumbered by the usual misunderstanding or childish argument and, as a result, it never outstays its welcome. It won't take a particularly shrewd viewer to predict exactly where this is all headed, but you won't begrudge these two outsiders their deliriously happy ending.

'Romantics Anonymous' is out now in the UK and rated '12A' by the BBFC.

'Hugo' review:

'Hugo' is a rare sort of film that warrants all the trite pull-quotes you read on so many posters. It's a triumph. It's spellbinding. You could even sincerely call it magical. A kids' movie that is full of sincere, cynicism-free wonder about the world and, most interestingly, the value of cinema. Here cinema takes a reverent position with one of its pioneers even afforded a central role in the plot.

As a colourful family film - and a first foray into 3D - it could be considered a departure for director Martin Scorsese, yet conversely this is perhaps the most personal film he has ever made - more closely related to documentaries like 'A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies' than the hard-edged likes of 'Taxi Driver' or 'Goodfellas'.

Hugo, as played by the wide-eyed Asa Butterfield, is the director's surrogate here. He may be a young orphan living within the workings of a vast Parisian clock in the 1930s, but he sees cinema the way Scorsese does and it's through him that we bear witness to its power. To him films stir up powerful memories, recalling trips to the cinema with his late father (Jude Law) who describes cinema as a place you can see dreams in the day.



Other memories Hugo views as though part of his life's own movie, with Scorsese staging a moment of teary recollection as if his young hero were seated in a cinema, with the blue light of a projector filtering overhead. To Hugo films are not merely dreams and memories but also feats of magic. The cinema itself provides a place of comfort and a distraction from his sense of loss and loneliness. The script may call for Hugo to take the final bow, but make no mistake the cinema itself is the hero of this adventure.

After his watchmaker father is killed in a freak accident, Hugo is adopted by an alcoholic uncle (Ray Winstone) and put to work maintaining the clocks of a Paris train station, secretly living within the walls of the building. This isn't a bad fit as the boy has a gift for fixing things, taking comfort in the way machines work - though he's primarily focussed on restoring an old anthropomorphic automaton which was discovered abandoned in a museum by his father.

Years later his uncle is gone and he's an outsider, living vicariously through the station's disparate oddball inhabitants as he eagerly watches them through a network of peepholes - perhaps touching on cinema's appeal to voyeurism. The players here include Richard Griffiths, Emily Mortimer, Christopher Lee and Sacha Baron Cohen, as an overzealous station inspector determined to send him to the local orphanage, and each has their own satisfying and sweet narrative arc.



Hugo's only tangible link to the past, fixing the automaton is an obsession which leads him to steal odd parts (springs, cogs, motors) from an old toy seller on the platform (Ben Kingsley). After falling foul of this bad tempered and sorrowful old man the boy befriends his adopted daughter, Isabelle played by the again outstanding Chloë Grace Moretz, and the two of them set about unravelling the mystery of the robot. This quest proves to be something of a red herring, solved within the first half as the film heads in a very different direction, with the children becoming increasingly fascinated by cinema - for the literary-inclined Isabelle a forbidden pleasure.

They visit a library and read from early books on celluloid history, telling the film's young audience all about the earliest days of the medium. They chat with early film historian René Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg) and learn about how silent movies were made. And Scorsese duly backs these lessons up with no small amount of footage from the films themselves, introducing his prospective young audience to the Lumière brothers' 'Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon' and oft-referenced 'L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat', before showing clips of Chaplin, Keaton and many, many others.

This second half of the film is about the medium of cinema far more than the adventures of Hugo and Isabelle, yet it's hard to find fault with that when the result is this passionate and affirmative. The cinema history lesson here is not relegated to subtext: it is the principle text. This is equally true of the subject of film preservation (Scorsese's other great passion) which goes some way toward becoming the ultimate moral of the story.



But this is also the story of 3D - which Scorsese uses majestically throughout, transporting us into the miniature world of the children as adults loom large and oppressive in an impossibly vast world. By the end he's shown us genuine colour, 3D footage of World War I and even a new stereoscopic version of Georges Méliès' seminal 1902 spectacle 'Le Voyage dans la lune' - which, incidentally, looks magnificent.

By drawing the parallel between cinema, dreams, magic tricks and machines, he makes a powerful case for gimmick as a fundamental and exciting part of cinema from the time of its inception onwards. It's the most persuasive pro-3D argument to date and - even if Scorsese never makes another movie in the format - it's clear that this technology excites and fascinates him as much as the medium itself.

'Hugo' is not the most exciting, consistent or perfectly structured children's film you'll ever see. In fact it often seems like a slick piece of educational programming rather than a fun family movie - with the slapstick chases around the station the least effective sequences. It's almost as if Scorsese has engineered a self-indulgent piece of fan fiction as a clandestine way to educate children about the art form he loves and give some of his favourite film clips a fresh airing for a new audience. But as a fellow lover of cinema I find this entirely admirable. It's heartening to see such an unabashed celebration of art.

'Hugo' is rated 'U' by the BBFC and is playing in the UK now.

'Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai' review:

I don't usually do "spoiler warnings" but if you're incredibly sensitive about plot details then don't read this review. I would hate to spoil this outstanding film for anyone, but it's difficult to talk about properly without mentioning certain events.



That Takeshi Miike has already released his follow-up to last year's remarkable '13 Assassins' should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the Japanese director's career. Prolific would be an understatement for a filmmaker who has made at least two films a year since the mid-90s - indeed, according to the IMDB, he has two films in post production right now. But what is surprising is that his latest film - the first 3D film to play "in competition" in Cannes - is every bit as accomplished as that ultra-violent epic, retaining the feudal Japanese setting but telling a very different type of story. There are thematic similarities between the two, but this is more period melodrama than 'Seven Samurai' styled war film - yet it's no less compelling.

'Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai' begins with a lone rōnin (a lordless and therefore jobless samurai) arriving at a wealthy lord's estate, begging permission to use the courtyard to perform hara-kiri - the highly ritualised form of suicide that involves opening one's stomach with a sword, ideally without showing pain, before having your head cut off by a trusted second. We are told that the higher the status of the premises on which the act is committed, the more honour the act will restore. At a first glance it is this belief in proper social order which brings the sombre Hanshirô Tsugumo, played by veteran Kabuki theatre actor Ebizô Ichikawa, to the estate determined to end his life.



But before granting the request, Kageyu - a sort of head caretaker whilst the lord is away on business, played with trademark intensity by Kôji Yakusho - tells Hanshirô a chilling story in order to test his resolve. In the first of two long backflashes which form the bulk of the film, he tells the warrior about another rōnin, a young man named Motome (Eita), who came by recently with the same request - and whose end was extremely unpleasant (as depicted viscerally). Motome, it is soon revealed, did not truthfully come seeking death, but charity - hoping that the lord's house would sooner give out some food and a few coins than go through the inconvenience of assembling the household staff for such an elaborate ritual. However, he is shocked when the house agrees to meet his request in order to make an example of him and deter future "suicide bluffs".

Hanshirô hears this story and is given the chance to withdraw his request. He declines and, in front of the assembled house, reveals that he has his own story to tell. Of course it barely qualifies as a spoiler to say that Motome and Hanshirô's stories are linked and that the former's death has something to do with the later's arrival on the estate, though I will say that how the two stories link is heartbreaking.



With '13 Assassins' Miike playfully mocked Japanese tradition and criticised the country's historic cultural values. He questioned why honour and death are so often linked and had his heroes kick dirt in their enemies faces - fighting for survival rather than as part of some slickly choreographed pageant. Here these criticisms are foregrounded. Social class, poverty and a culture of obligation are targets, as well as the wisdom of bushido. And just as the child-murdering, woman-deforming lord in '13 Assassins' represented all that's contradictory about a society which saw swordplay as equivalent to penmanship and poetry - outwardly representing all that was considered beautiful - in 'Hara-Kiri' such vanity is attacked again.

Here honourable men refuse to be seen in public after having their topknots cut off, yet are quite happy to watch a boy disembowel himself with a blunt wooden stick. In this society the wealthy would rather see the poor gut themselves than break tradition by asking for help. For the poor (or at least for a poor samurai), trying to live in spite of hardship is seen as a shameful practice. Here the vain pursuit of precise, formal beauty has the effect of destroying that which is genuinely beautiful. That Motome is driven to desperation by a lord's cruelty (he becomes rōnin due to a petty dispute between two nobles) and is destroyed by social convention, expectation and tradition leaves the viewer in no doubt that he is an unlucky pawn in a game played by the ruling class.



When a climactic scene of what could be termed "cool" violence does arrive, Hanshirô is totally non-lethal and his only goal is to force his enemies to commit acts of taboo and break from their preciously held codes. He's shown to be a sane man in an otherwise mad world, ruled by oppressive and ultimately meaningless tradition. Whereas '13 Assassins' arguably contradicts its message by staging such a shamelessly entertaining 45 minute massacre at the climax, here the fight itself is framed as the rejection of violence recalling the sudden brawl in Kurosawa's otherwise sedate 'Red Beard'.

Hanshirô is challenging his attackers to slaughter him in cold blood and, in showing that they can do this without threat to personal honour, underlines the futility and madness of the entire social structure - and even of his own public suicide. It's a brilliantly esoteric triumph but one that is every bit as futile as the social structure he abhors. That Kageyu and his underlings are more frightened and moved by Hanshirô's iconoclastic scattering of a elaborate suit of armour than his sad story - or his doomed appeal to reason - is Miike's final sick joke in another thoughtful and resolutely anti-traditional film.

'Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai' is not yet rated by the BBFC (though it'll be nothing less than a '15'). I saw it at the Brighton's CineCity Film Festival at the Duke of York's Picturehouse, though a limited release should be expected in 2012.

'The Deep Blue Sea' review:

London, a few years after the war, and a desperate woman (Rachel Weisz) is committing suicide, filling her flat with gas after necking a bottle of pills. She is unsuccessful, saved by concerned members of the local community, but in a contrivance of the plot her lover (Tom Hiddleston) soon learns of her attempt and leaves her in a rage. The rest of Terence Davies', by all accounts faithful, adaptation of the Terence Rattigan stage-play is defined by Weisz's pained expression and melodramatic warbling as she regrets that her lover doesn't view her with reciprocal levels of passion. He loves her but, alas, not enough and she just can't take it any more. "Weren't things better during the war?" is the unspoken refrain of the piece.

It is, to put it mildly, a dated story which trivialises suicide and follows a heroine whose problems are very hard to sympathise with - not least of all because Hiddleston's drunken former RAF pilot alternates between being a tedious, war-obsessed bore when ecstatically happy and a volatile, shouty child when upset. It's very difficult to understand why she has "no power to resist him", as she tells her estranged husband - a well meaning but extremely wet judge played by Simon Russell Beale. It also suffers under the weight of its staid fifties-penned script and theatrical origins with Weisz and Hiddleston (actors I'm usually very fond of) going right over the top at every opportunity, often forced to talk in heavy handed metaphor.



Davies, the feted director of 'Of Time and the City', compounds the play's inherent problems by directing the film in an equally lugubrious style, allowing enormous pauses between lines of dialogue amid insufferably long takes. Weisz is driven to kill herself by an intense passion - perhaps too big for the time she is born into - and yet the direction is dispassionate and isolating. The film only truly works during a backflash in which we see Weisz, still with Beale's judge, visiting her bitter old mother-in-law (Barbara Jefford). Perfectly observed, immaculately paced and fizzing with a caustic sense of humour, it only serves as an infuriating reminder of the talents involved.

The biggest problem though is that, whilst 'Brief Encounter' is a brilliant film routed in a specific time and place, doing that sort of old fashioned melodrama in 2011 can't help but read as an unintentional parody - and the film often reads as funny rather than tragic or poignant. It's also hard to shake the feeling that an odd nostalgia for the war era permeates the whole thing, with frequent interludes of perfectly groomed and immaculately dressed people singing gaily together. It's as much a celebration of "the blitz spirit" as anything else, which is jarring given that it's about a suicidal woman. That she mourns the war years to this extent (it's the same grief that's turned her lover to alcoholism - "he's not been happy since the war") is even faintly offensive.

'The Deep Blue Sea' is rated '12A' by the BBFC and is out in the UK now.