Iron Man 2

The sight of Mickey Rourke, black and white skanky hair snaking out of his head, in chains and clothes that just burned off him, thrashing electrified whips is a sight I won’t soon forget.  The man is just so cool he’s hot, so hot he’s cool.  He seems born to be Russian genius/ psycho Ivan Vanko/Whiplash, Iron Man’s worthy nemesis, someone who can wipe that smirk off Tony Stark’s face, and remind him he isn’t all that.  Vanko dominates the opening titles, as his father dies in the hellhole that is their Moscow home, plotting a colourful revenge.

Rourke has that appealing badboy in his DNA that he can’t hide and he lets him out of the cage in Iron Man’s second outing.  Vanko is a hygiene-challenged computer wizard, part of a dynasty of intellectuals and physicists who work for the highest bidder, regardless of the goal. 

The highest bidder this time is arms dealerJustin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) who is determined to bring down Iron Man, the world peace Iron Man created and the posse of girls that adores him.  Hammer wants his own Iron man suit (really grown up) and figures that Vanko can whip up a sophisticated and deadly one for his private army.

Gwyneth Paltrow is back as Pepper Potts but she has serious competition in Tony Stark’s board room in the shapely shape of Scarlett Johanssen’s Natalie Rushman.  Both ladies are smart and sophisticated but the male writers manage to work up a cat fight.  Potts is Stark’s protective mother and Rushman the girl with dangerous curves and morals.

It’s chock full of winking casting and cameo choices, and that keeps the momentum up, not that they needed to when Rourke is onscreen.  The man is magic, through and through.

The only question mark is the man himself, Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man.  He is an enigma, a loner who loves the ladies and any and all attention.  Stark is able to seduce the entire US government with his charm and words, and get away with refusing to hand over his suit of iron.  That’s about as bad as it gets for him.  He lives a quieter life now, gets jammed up in illness, house wrecking and a couple of fights but he’s never actually in danger.  He’s more a showbiz player at this point, staging Tony Stark events and dazzling all comers.  He seems secondary in his second film. 

The action moves at a good clip, hits the right notes, adds a few, and delights the eye.  The story’s expressed in strongly visual, intellectual, and traditional ways, and its solid fun.

But let’s face it; this is Mickey Rourke’s film.  Whiplash will be the number one costume this Hallowee’en, mark my words.  That’s what I’m wearing.  Rourke is good and back, baby.

Bebes

Thomas Balmes takes a splendid year long journey to four corners of the earth, focusing on a newborn baby in each corner, and following it for a year, to about the time when each takes his first steps.  The camera starts rolling in the mother’s final days of pregnancy culminating with the birth or very shortly after that, depending on Balmes’ ability to get to her from another mother many thousands of miles away. 

What a year!  In a Mongolian desert yurt, we meet one of the happiest babies ever to grace a screen.  In San Fransisco, a reserved little girl is born into a protective new age family, while a baby is born into the red dust of an outdoor home in the plains of Nairobi.  Finally, a Japanese baby is born to a young couple living in a skyscraper overlooking downtown Tokyo.  Four vastly different babies in four different worlds, raised by parents with vastly different attitudes.

The first thing that strikes a viewer is the silence, broken only by baby gurgles.  Human voices are picked up in a desultory way, as we find ourselves living on ground level with the babies, seeing and hearing the world through them.  The grown up sounds are ambient, and we are free to focus on the babies’ faces, activities and social interactions with other babies.  It’s an extraordinary pleasure to watch the film without dialogue, in which children ‘tell’ their own story.

The babies left on their own interact with other babies in their circle, and it’s clear wordlessly what’s going on.  They fight for attention, supremacy, things and their moms.  Fights cause tears and then all is well when they’re distracted by something else.  A petty concern like not being able to put a stick into a hole causes paroxysms of hysteria and rage.  Another baby bursts with natural exuberance, jumping for joy in the Mongolian outback, face lit with pleasure.  Another looks beleagured as his mother constantly coos at her while her father uses the lint roller after she rolls on the carpet.  Her Nairobian counterpart is covered in red dust and eats bugs, and is no worse for wear.  The most vigourous babies are free range, crawling and going where they want, eating things off the ground.  They are allowed their own time and space to discover their surroundings as opposed to being lectured and taught about them.  The most primitive parents trusted in the natural world and their child’s place in it.

It’s interesting that each child has a solid relationship with animals, whether it’s the family cat, a goat trying to drink its bathwater, or cows stepping around him lying nakd in the pasture.  The animals are remarkably aware to the fact that it’s a baby in their midst, and treat it with tenderness and care.  They tolerate being played with, often roughly, even having their jaws yanked open for a good look inside and being poked out of a sound sleep. 

Balmes’ cinematography is breath taking.  It so vividly set the child’s world in perspective; from the long distances and big skies of Nairobi and Mongolia to the man made canyons of Tokyo to the ersatz ‘natural’ world of San Francisco. 

Bébé(s) is a quiet, amusing and endearing film journey.  Balmes captures the diversity of these families and their universality.  The lingering image is the four sets of baby’s eyes, looking at the world as hard as they can, readying themselves to jump in and be part of it.

Furry Vengeance

Here’s another example of a comedy using dopey parents as punching bags to delight youngsters. Brendan Fraser and Brooke Shields lose their integrity as a married couple who are entrenched in a lifestyle that’s killing their integrity, but they can’t see it. He’s a residential developer about to pave over a forest for monster ‘country’ home tract oblivious to the ripple effect of destruction such projects create.

Fraser is an over worked, stressed sad sack whose wife and son dismiss him and his dreams and cast demeaning looks his way. His attempts to win their favour always backfire and he’s finally developed a conscience about the work he’s doing. He tries too hard and it’s painful to watch. Is this supposed to be funny?

Shields’ character does the thinking for for both of them, as he’s completely focussed on hanging on to a job which means being locked in a destructive, co-dependent dance with his sneering boss (Ken Jeong). Their son’s righteous and totally embarrassed by his parents. Again this isn’t funny, it’s uncomfortable.

The animals who live in the woods are banding together to stop the development, they communicate and strategise and generally co-operate far better than the humans. And they have some heavy artillery; each animal has his own unique weapon or skill in the war to save their forest home. There’s nothing subtle about their warfare. And they’re pretty cute at times. In fact, they’re very cute. It’s too bad there are people in the film with them.

The humans are unendingly problematic; they are the careless smokers, the garbage makers, the tree – cutters, labouring hard for the almighty dollar and against Mother Nature. They are the ones who hurt each other and play politics and humiliation games and wonder why they’re so stressed. You can see the outcome miles away. The cute are bound to win. It’s called Furry Vengeance after all.

This is a movie for very young children and one can only hope they’ll soon forget it. And let’s hope they don’t pick up tips on how to belittle their parents. The film’s heart is in the right place with its strong environmental message and there are winning performances by Jeong and Ricky Garcia.

It’s interesting that Fraser co-produced it with Imagenation Abu Dhabi FZ, an up-and-coming production company that brought us Amreeka last year and has full slate of interesting releases this year and next.

Nightmare on Elm Street

Jackie Earle Haley is the new Freddy Kruger, only the second actor to portray the iconic dream killer after Robert Englund, who originated it way back in 1984 in Wes Craven’s pioneering ‘slasher’ film. Haley is a fine dramatic actor. Too bad the script for this remake is so boring. It makes no use of Haley’s abilities, and keeps him bottled up in a one dimensional trap. New Freddy is less a character than a slasher mascot in a big cardboard suit.

Robert Englund’s Kruger was a rarity, an out and out freak of nature, an example of random evil, an ancient evil force, in human form. The new Nightmare casts Freddy as a victim, all too human, with a guilty secret certainly, but who asks us to have empathy. What? Has horror gone soft?

New Freddy sports the de riguer knife-tipped fingers, striped sweater and flash hat, and still comes a-killin’ in dreams, like his predecessor. But new Freddy has this something new – heart. His feelings were hurt and his sense of safety was compromised. It’s the second time Haley has played this kind of perp, and his Freddy’s story bears a strong resemblance to Ronnie’s in Little Children. Granted, original Freddy was neglected as a child, and it may have sparked evil fury, but he didn’t face the earthbound evil that new Freddy did as a result of his illness. Icon or criminal?

The script is marred by repeated sojourns into cliché and it’s not a spoof. They are unacceptable in a genre that is free to break all the rules and create new all new, boundary pushing fantasy worlds. This is so lame, so dull, and mild that it can hardly call itself horror. There isn’t a single fright in the film, even though there is plenty of mutilated flesh, thick syrupy blood, battered and burned people, and things that go thrash in the night. But it all lies there like a sack of trout. It’s a mystery for the ages, how a fine horror brand even mythology, could be a) remade to begin with, and b) fail so spectacularly.

However, and there is always a however, there are a few winning performances by Haley and Katie Cassidy and the unfortunate high school beauty, and hardworking actor Kyle Gallner, a kind of American Robert Pattinson. Connie Britton returns to the big screen as a concerned mother who has her own secrets. Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor, Friday the 13^th remake, The Amityville Horror remake) produced which may explain a lot.

The cinematic look of new Freddy’s film is somewhat grander than previous Freddies, with artistic dreamscapes and crossovers from one world into another. The corpses are prettier and the overall sensation is of ‘art’ with a small ‘a’. But it doesn’t help.

Sure the warning says ‘strong bloody horror violence, disturbing images, terror’, but trust me, it’s an exaggeration.

The Secret in Their Eyes / El secreto de sus ojos

An intense investigative thriller, The Secret in Their Eyes is one of the best films of the spring. The Argentinian phenom has no scheduling axe to grind as it were, because the Oscars have already happened and it already won the Best Foreign Language award. It’s a solid, edge of your seat think piece that delivers emotional body blows and intellectual thrills, which makes it unsual, for starters, and worth the price of admission. How often does a murder mystery do that?

A retired federal justice agent has recently become obsessed with a 25 year old case he worked, the bloody rape and murder of a beautiful new bride. He is writing a novel based on the case; he can’t say why but risks his reputation and official backlash to re-open it.

His onetime love, now the department boss, offers support with conditions. She’s an interesting character with great strength who reads human nature well except when it involves her own heart.

The dead woman’s husband was devastated by her loss and displays a dedication to her that goes to his core. He waits at the train station for a year hoping to corner the murderer who was released from prison to do undercover work for the police. He was obsessed with vengeance, and then he disappeared.

Investigating officers and battling bureaucrats have abundant clues but they don’t recognise them. They are stuck, can’t summon up the killer’s identity. They believe they have his motive based on a chance look at some family snapshots. An investigator remarks that people can change everything they are, their lives, their families, religion and God, but they can’t get change their passion. That’s the key to finding the killer.

Secrets features a hair-raising aerial shot that begins high in the sky over a jammed soccer stadium, zooms onto the field, wings up over the crowd’s heads, focuses on the investigator searching for the prime suspect, meets the eyes of his partner who motions that he’s seen him. I was so stunned that I can’t say whether the single shot continued with the subsequent foot chase without an edit, but I want to think it did.

Another of the film’s strengths is that the acting and direction is so astute that we realise important things just as the protaganist does, and that is powerful. Whether the secrets are new ones or 25 years old, the dawn comes to all at the same moment. It strengthens our engagement with emotional economy and the full force of knowledge.

No one is to be taken at face value but on the other hand, as the title suggests, secrets are in our eyes, and in our demeanour, so the truth is there if you look hard enough or at the right moment. The correct answers come instinctively. Secrets is beautifully shot, and makes use of each moment; there are no lulls, no fillers, no unnecessary subplots. It’s intuitive, lean and cuts like a knife.

The Losers

The Losers’ high pitched intensity blasts onto the screen and goes for broke for an hour and a half, with nary a second to breathe. It’s pure adrenaline comic book fun, only mildly violent and coarse, absent sex, and it’s clear who’s good and who’s bad in this send up of jungle politics.

Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Rocque (Idris Alba), Jensen (Chris Evans), Pooch (Columbus Short) and Cougar (Spain’s Óscar Jaenada) are The Losers, CIA black ops agents left for dead in the Bolivian jungle after a brutal hijack by supposed ‘friendlies’. They attempt to rescue children in a jungle schoolhouse, but a nasty outcome makes them hell bent on revenge. These aren’t guys to do anything to, let alone children in their care.

They have no identity or backing as they try to escape Bolivia. Being presumed dead makes their movements simpler, and their chances at apprehending high tech terrorist, the enigmatic Max (Jason Patric), who engineered the attack against them, are growing dim. Max is an untouchable cyber villain, white suit and sneering attitude, one of the most heavily guarded men in the world. Patric is obviously having fun knocking together Dennis Hopper and Nic Cage to create this outlandish, black-hearted cad.

But someone’s on to the Losers and that would be a woman Clay meets in a bar. Aisha, a CIA spitfire played by Zoe Saldana, is a skilled martial artists and strategist also intent on finding Max. Her role is warrior like, feisty and as non-traditional as Saldana’s Na’vi Princess in Avatar. She is able to deliver high energy pizzazz in roles that are really glorified cartoons, and gives them emotional dimension.

Aisha promises the boys that she’ll get them out of Bolivia and back into the US if they help her put a stop to Max. So they set out for Long Beach, California where guns, gangs and G-Men stand off hard; Max is somewhere in the middle, orchestrating global doom.

The Losers is action adventure and rings all the proper demographic bells, but at its cartoon heart, it’s not about firepower, corruption and cunning. It’s about loyalty and friendship. The Losers are together in battle, in the trenches and that’s a fearsome bond. For instance, Jensen pretends to shoot two men with his fingers while trying to escape a skyscraper. Strangely, his imaginary blasts kill them – Cougar is in the skyscraper opposite and fires at the exact moment to ensure Jensen’s getaway.

There’s a sex scene between Aisha and Clay but it’s so modest that it must have been executed with the Hays Code in mind. There’s all the violence a young video game fan could wish for, but just the faint whisper of sex, means the kids can go to see The Losers in the theatres, with their parents, at least.

There are plenty of cute moves and brotherhood themes, loads of action and things explode, but in the end the film reveals itself as a feel-good, upbeat comic book caper.

Océans

Sometimes it seems cinema was invented so that films like Océans can be made. With its ability to see very small and very big things, to convey unexpected emotion, to present the drama of being alive and part of our universe, Océans must be considered a ground breaking, historic film.

It opens as a young boy stands on a shore and wonders about the sea in front of him. We see and hear majestic crashing waves and are taken inside them. They are big and menacing and they do what they do all the time, as we clutch our phones and lattes. We forget the world we are in and the film reminds us.

One crew spent 200 days waiting for a whale shot; I didn’t know which one. It could have been any of three or four sequences that were as grand and moving as any nature documentary, if not the best that I’ve seen. The question we ask throughout the film is ‘how did they do it?’ How did cameras get inside the vast marine world, get their stunning images that make us feel we are traveling beside massive sea creatures, inches away from a powerful lizard that is as arresting in appearance, as he is fast. The cameras are there at the right moments, as parasites latch onto their rides, inside it and out, as mother sea lions clasp their babies to them, as creatures are born.

There’s a line that narrator Pierce Brosnan delivers that sums up the thrust of the film, that under the sea, nature tries everything. The creatures we see in the oceans are almost impossible to comprehend. Some are stirringly beautiful, some are repulsively hideous; they represent the world’s living underwater circus. Wild colours, textures and forms are the norm – nothing is ordinary. It’s a feast for the eyes and the heart. Flying dragons, rockfish, silk scarves are just a few of the dozens of species we meet.

We are taken on board ships struggling to navigate fearsome storms, and inside swirling funnels of living beings, and a huge battle between two armies of crayfish. A doe-eyed seal stares fixedly at the camera underwater with curiosity. We’re shown creatures reacting to the camera, some do doubletakes, some look up and notice, but keep on their way, and some run from it. But the little seal’s eyes stare into the camera and into ours in a moment of wrenching inter species recognition.

There is attention paid to creatures in the danger of extinction and man’s terrible interference in ther life of the sea and the subsequent collateral deaths, like the dolphins and turtles that get stuck in the tuna nets in Italy, and the garbage that forces animals to extend their hunting grounds beyond what they know. One shocking sequence features a seal examining a shopping cart at the bottom of the ocean, a wet junkheap, as human debris – bleach bottles, sheet plastic and more – obliterates the light.

But the film doesn’t dwell on the threats that we are, showing us instead what a valuable resource the oceans are; to make us fall in love with it and its creatures and do something to protect its future.

Océans has been called a documentary and a drama, which is fair. The drama comes from so many aspects of the film, our place in nature, the world we can’t see that lives and thrives under the surface of the water, the struggle to survive. A group of just hatched sea turtles sprints from the nest to the sea but all but one are eaten by hovering birds, the aforementioned crab fight, and it is drama at its finest and most primal.

Striking images remain long after the film ends - like the flock of birds that dive into the ocean to pick off small fish, the vastness of the whale’s body and its life, a cameraman swimming alongside a shark in absolutely no danger, dolphins playing exuberantly in the water - so many moments.

Océans is a haunting, brave, astonishing and glorious experience that is impossibel to forget. Its part of Disney’s nature series, the first was Earth and the next will be the African Cats. We are lucky that such a series has been undertaken, because too often we forget that we share the world with beautiful, mysterious and hopefully undending varieties of life.

Date Night

It may not be the comic explosion the pairing of Steve Carrell and Tina Fey might suggest, but Date Night is a winning, endearing, and often hilarious night out. Suburbanites Phil and Claire Foster are teetering on the edge of marital boredom. They’re hoping a date night out at the local ‘family’ eatery will add oomph to the sexual / emotional desert of their stressed lives. They clearly love each other, but they’re too tired to show it. Sadly, the ‘date’ becomes a strategy session for the kids’ calendars. But there is hope - Claire imagines out loud what exciting secret lives their fellow diners are leading. At least we know she’s sharp and witty, and was once a fun person when she had the time. Phil is flummoxed by their situation – unable to arouse a score later that night, he beats himself for not caring to ‘do it’ anymore, even their go-to ‘fast version’.

So they decide to go on a real date, to a Manhattan fantasy restaurant that requires bookings a month in advance and an hour drive. They can’t get in Claw past the attitude, so steal a reservation for the Tripplehorns. During dinner, a couple of thugs (Common and Jimmi Simpson) order them to get up and outside, obviously thinking they have something they want. The Fosters just get up and do it like they do everything in their lives and find themselves in the middle of a gangland situation starring a couple of corrupt cops, a missing flash drive and the mean streets of Manhattan.

Claire remembers a real estate client who was a security specialist, a black ops kind of guy (Mark Wahlberg) and tracks him down when they realise their lives are in danger. Phil doesn’t much like him being so shirtless and super sexy, resulting in one of the film’s funniest exchanges.

Before long, our hopeless heroes have tracked down the Tripplehorns, (James Franco, and Mila Kunis) who deliver gut-busting comedy and the flash drive. They make a daring and rehearsed escape leaving Phil and Claire to figure out the rest. Soon the Fosters are delivering big laughs dressed for naughty sex and dancing on a pole in an underworld lair.

Thankfully Fey tones down her trademark juvenile shtick, and Carrell drops his hopeless dope routine. They play actual characters that are real and funny enough to energise the movie but clueless enough not to be ironic. They have to think fast and that’s fun to watch because they are fish out of water, which is where they eventually land, and act on their instincts. Taraji P. Henson is a pistol, a good cop with great instincts and the gift of gab.

The requisite guns and car chases are here and don’t add much. They’re a tad laboured and long. Cameos – Mark Ruffalo, Will I Am, J.B Smoove and others aren’t onscreen nearly long enough.

But the rest is a treat.

The Last Song

So Miley Cyrus is dating her co-star in The Last Song, Liam Hemsworth, a handsome tanned and blonde Australian actor. That’s out of the way. There’s bigger news for Cyrus’ fans in this moody adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ romantic novel. Cyrus doesn’t sing but plays classical piano; instead of spreading her charm far and wide, she mopes and rebels and fails to thrive. She’s irritable, depressed, dressed in teenaged angst black and just wants to be alone. You almost expect her to pull out a cigarette. Hannah Montana, the squeaky clean TV and movie supernova that made the Cyrus family famous and wealthy, is gone. At seventeen, Cyrus is attempting a brand relaunch as a serious actress.

She plays Ronnie, who’s traumatised by the divorce of her parents and struggling to get her bearings in a world she no longer trusts. Rebellion boils over when she’s sent to spend the summer with her estranged father (Kinnear) at his beach house. She refuses to speak to him and takes off at the slightest whiff of parental concern. But the beach volleyball kids write her off as emo, and the tough kids try to lure her into drugs and violence. An alpha guy from the volleyball brigade named Will seems to like her without judging her, but Ronnie resists him because she’s haunted by the fragility and heartbreak of love she witnessed in her parents’ break-up.

But Ronnie and Will get to know each other on the beach, a sensual and romantic setting where sunrises, lapping waves and minimal clothing lead to longing stares and an occasional kiss. They bond over the plight of the sea turtle. But their romantic, sexless idyll is soon broken by tragedy. After all, this is a Nicholas Sparks story; chastity and misfortune make for plenty of bittersweet tears and repeat business.

Cyrus is interesting; she has unconventional looks, a voice like a trucker, atrocious posture, and frequent public lapses of good taste in evening wear. But she is magnetic and appealing with considerable screen presence. She is a star because of her winning persona, not the singing, or the dancing. She does her best to further herself as a dramatic actress and hopefully, she’ll continue to find roles that will challenge her, and her fans.

The film’s technical and artistic elements are easily digestible, the story relatively engaging and Sparks continues his sappy but winning ways. A Walk to Remember, Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John, The almighty Notebook and The Last Song shape a new kind of contempo romance, driven by female performances for young female audiences. In Cyrus’ case, it’s a good start to the journey of growing up that her fans will share.

The Bounty Hunter

Oh, that’s so cute putting Jennifer Aniston’s uptight self in a tattoo parlour, a cheap motel, a gritty industrial neighbourhood at night, handcuffed to a bed, in jail, in the trunk of a car, and oh, driving a rickshaw. The fish out of water story’s usually a promising one but Aniston’s low rent antics had me squirming in my seat. It’s not that she’s above it; it just seems like a massive attempt to broaden her image, bring her down to earth, and be one of the little people. She will never be that, my friends.

There is a chilly air about the actress that I find insurmountable. Her face is permanently frozen, and incapable of smiling. Her delivery is ironic and mean-spirited. Big happy moment, a slightly curled lip, a big sad moment, a slightly curled lip. The woman has no expressive powers. America – is this your golden girl?

She is Nicole, a reporter who may have stumbled onto a big story – a fellow seems to have been pushed off a roof to his death. It wasn’t a suicide as the police ruled, he went down head first, making it certain he was murdered. Her snitch has gone missing and she fears he’s about to be killed to protect members of the police force she believes are involved.

Only thing is, she’s so intent on her story, she fails to appear in traffic court on a mysterious beef, twice, so there’s a warrant out for her arrest. The bounty hunter charged with hauling her to jail is none other than Milo, her ex husband, played by Gerard Butler. He’s a former police officer who got the boot, and still pines for her. So he puts her in the trunk of his car. Not funny and kind of sickening. He does it in front of a huge racetrack crowd and no one offers any assistance as she kicks and screams. Odd choice, filmmakers. And Aniston does all this physical ‘comedy’ in skin-tight miniskirts, barely there tops and five inch stilettos, the garb of newspaper reporters everywhere. Not.

Although there is an interesting plot buried in there somewhere, the film focuses on the fractured, senseless relationship between Nicole and Milo. They bicker, coo, fight, revisit the country inn where they honeymooned and generally irritate each other – and us – beyond bearing. They both nurse revenge plots against the other, but their animal appetites get in the way in the most predictable way. Soon come the car chases, crashes, guns popping – the meat of films that have no where else to go.

The Bounty Hunter is a huge disappointment, starring as it does two of the hottest personalities around. It’s a romantic comedy that like so many in recent memory have forgotten that the romcom is a beloved genre and a good one. To misuse it in this way is sad. The filmmakers should lose their licenses and be thrown into movie jail.

The Runaways

This isn’t a movie about Joan Jett; it’s an homage to her bandmate, lead singer Cheri Curry. Jett’s pretty much a bystander, through the script and Kristen Stewart’s oddly nonchalant portrayal of her. While Jett’s name is remembered today, some forty years after the Runaways made history as the first ever all female hard rock band, Curry, the iconoclastic Bowie obsessed 16 year old who drew the heat, has all but disappeared.

But like all things, good, mediocre, and bad in pop culture, Curry’s back with a bang. Floria Sigismondi’s screenplay, based on Curry’s autobiography Neon Angel, revives the intense rock life she and the band lived, through her eyes. They were pioneers, and tested the limits of sexism, independence and their passion for music. It’s heavy stuff especially considering her age.

It’s not like today’s young moviegoers have ever heard of Joan Jett or the Runaways let alone Cherie Curry, so the filmmakers takes a bit of a chance. Thankfully Curry’s story is interesting and rock video director Sigismondi’s signature Goth style adds a ferocious edge. Not that the story needs it. Her unique visual style makes the hard knocks Runaways story harder and anti-pretty but compelling.

Dakota Fanning is amazingly raw as Curry, a meaty role that begins when she’s fifteen years old and a rebel, takes her to the heights of rock and roll stardom and straight down to the valley of despond. She’d been desperate to join Jett’s all girl band, shaped by music entrepreneur Kim Fowley but she couldn’t bring herself to repeat the suggestive lyrics or enjoy the down and dirty lifestyle. But it was a short trip from mastering the lyrics and the pose; to everything else Fowley offered including drugs and money. He was an abusive jerk who sent the girls on the road alone because he didn’t like traveling, leaving 16 year olds fending for themselves, as roadies, hotel managers and fans preyed on them. It was a sad life. Curry seems to have been painfully aware of it at the time.

Curry and Jett grew up in what people like to call ‘dysfunctional’ families, and came to look on the band as a default family. But Currie began to draw away when she realised she’d had enough, and that nothing in that world would heal her previous wounds.

The real Runways look so tough and confident in the bands photos, with defiant sneers that made them look dangerous. The film reminds us that they were just kids who wanted to be famous. And famous they became, in Japan anyway, where they were treated like rock royalty. Fame was less sensational at home. The film’s look back at an important time in the history of rock music has zero sentimentality. It’s surprisingly tough to the point of being uncomfortable at times. These were children after all.

She’s Out of My League

Nothing new here but She’s Out of Your League is a sweet and very funny retread of that old chestnut – beautiful girl digs homely man. It’s a recurring theme these days as nerdism sweeps the land and people cozy up to their computers for companionship, making it impossible to develop socially or emotionally, let alone go to the gym. The inept male with arrested development is fodder for funny a lot more often than is probably healthy. There are lots of lonely people out there who need balm for their exiled souls and this is the ticket.

Its pure fantasy as the impossible happens to luckless airport employee, a ‘5’ of a man named Kirk (Jay Baruchel). A small favour brings a ‘10’ Molly (Alice Eve) into his world when he finds her phone. She comes to retrieve it, realises he is just what she wants, and makes several plays for him before he understands that she actually likes him. His friends don’t believe that a 10 would be interested in him. He’s had terrible luck with girlfriends in the past plus he’s skinny and odd looking.

Kirk’s former girlfriend Marnie (Lindsay Stone) dumped him but has developed an inappropriately close relationship with his parents and her new boyfriend. They’re planning a holiday trip without Kirk and with Marnie’s new fella. She treats Kirk with unmasked disdain – until he brings Molly around. His family is stunned by his gorgeous new galpal, and throws Marnie for a loop. She begins to rethink her life plan with Kirk in it.

Baruchel is as charming and disarming as it gets, ramping up his inner loser for cinematic reasons because he is one cool cat in real life. Eve is as close to Jessica Rabbit as it gets in human form. But Molly has her problems – her appearance has created difficulties in her life and relationships – potential partners don’t think they’re good enough for her, a source of great pain and loneliness to her.

The supporting cast is outstanding. Improvisational comedian T.J. Miller cares deeply for his little buddy, hates Marnie and hopes against hope Kirk can make it work with Molly. His lightning delivery and seemingly off the cuff remarks are priceless and a big part of the film’s appeal. Mike Vogel who plays their ‘8’ friend, advises him on winning Molly while their sole married buddy and maybe a ‘5’ , played by the hysterical Nate Torrence, offers warmth, support and unquestioning loyalty. He goes beyond the call of duty in the shaving down there sequence. I want these friends.

The film is a heart-warming romcom but it’s also a loving depiction of male friendship that entertains and delights. It’s funny to the core, well directed, and a real joy, especially at this dry time of year. And the de riguer bodily fluids scene is there and it’s a scream.

Alice in Wonderland: an IMAX 3D Experience

This is not your great grandmother’s Alice in Wonderland. Tim Burton has dispensed with Lewis Carroll’s pretty storybook world for once and for all. The charmingly old fashioned has been replaced by state-of-the-art edgy for better or worse. The classic line drawings give way to CGI, with requisite videogame elements for audiences raised on them. The computer artistry is spectacular but it’s not necessarily convincing or dimensional, intimate, and soulful. The inevitably flat, hard edges, the always eerie result of computer generated perfection, wows but ultimately disappoints. Computer art always falls just short of beauty. Its eye popping for sure but lacks meat.

The biggest surprise for the new Alice is that Burton has toned down the psychedelic aspects of the famously druggy story for a kind of wonky surrealism. It is certainly a visual parade of delights sprung from Tim Burton’s weird imagination.

Alice makes a return trip down the Rabbit Hole, conveniently just as a sneering young man proposes marriage. She back in Wonderland /Underland sipping the potions she needs to get in and out of places, reuniting with the people she met there ten years earlier. It seems to be a less ideal place than she remembers. The skies are perpetually cloudy and threatening. War is always around the corner, the Red Queens’ savagery knows no bounds and life in monstrous. BTW, the Rabbit Hole looks like images of a particularly brutal colonoscopy.

John Depp is characteristically quixotic in the kind of role he seems born to play. Flaming red hair and brows, an exaggerated overbite, pink lipstick and plaid lace gloves are perfectly enchanting and weird. He’s manically energetic, which, coming from a super ‘cool’ superstar, is just double the fun. The only quibble is that his accent gets stronger as the film progresses, although that porridge-thick Scottish brogue is a showstopper.

Helena Bonham Carter couldn’t be more storybook evil. Her beauty is tossed on the trash heap, replaced by hilariously icy hauteur and a wicked sense of ironic fun. Evil Queens are evil for a reason, and hers is an unfortunately bulbous head. She has reason to feel short-changed.

Ann Hathaway’s her estranged sister, The White Queen. She’s good, patient, funny and yet exceedingly eerie, the iconic storybook queen with prettily raised elbows and fluttering hands making her seem lighter than air, the stuff of dreams, not bound to the savage ground of Wonderland. Hard to carry off, but Hathaway enters some kind of ghost world to do the job.

Matt Lucas as Tweedledee and Tweedledum is inspired and I particularly enjoyed Alan Rickman’s sexy, dramatic Absalom the Blue Caterpillar. Best news of all, Crispin Glover’s back! He’s the Knave of Hearts, the Red Queen’s evil stooge, all eleven feet of him, a tall, dark, brutally handsome reverse of the fairytale hero.

108 minutes of 3D can be taxing to the eyes and head. It’s a good idea to take the glasses off from time to time.

Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese traverses new territory on Shutter Island where Gothic horror, Nazi atrocities and mad scientists set the tone for a truly creepy nail biter. Set in 1954, just scant years after the liberation of Dachau, and during the Cold War, it unearths rumoured stories of government experiments performed on mental patients in North America. Shutter Island leads us on a dark and anxious sojourn into the tangled woods of the human soul.

Leonardo Di Caprio is U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels is prone to migraine headaches while he grieves the death of his wife. But he sets out over eleven miles of choppy seas to the isolated and imposing Shutter Island, where Ashecliffe Mental Hospital operates. It’s set in an impenetrable Civil War era fort that often loses electrical power and reverts to primeval darkness.

A dangerous female patient has escaped the inescapable and is presumed to be hiding somewhere on the island. Daniels’ job is to find her, but he has another, personal reason for going there. His partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) is obviously concerned for him, constantly asking if he is okay.

But Daniels hits a wall in his efforts to uncover the truth. Hospital officials refuse to allow access to records for their investigation and he decides it’s not worth staying. But the truth is that he is frightened. He and Chuck plan to leave the next morning but a hurricane whips up the ocean stranding them indefinitely. Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) offers sympathy and help but there is a sinister air about him. And Dr. Naehring (Max Von Sydow) makes no pretence of sympathy and Daniels comes to believe he is an escaped Nazi intent on furthering human experiments begun in the concentration camps.

Scorsese’s casting is just about perfect. Di Caprio is un-self-consciously troubled and haggard, and keeps his terror just under wraps, although his physical ailments give him away. His scenes as a US soldier liberating Dachau are memorable.

Michelle Williams is positively translucently radiant here, as an ideal, a woman who appears in Daniels dreams to deliver warnings. Williams, who is a superb young actress, gives a haunting, breathtaking performance. Jackie Earle Haley, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Ted Levine, Elias Koteas, and John Carroll Lynch form a stellar supporting cast, each with defined individuality and his own big moments. These are major talents doing wonderful things with smaller roles, under Scorsese’s direction.

Dread rises in small increments and the story moves along nicely. Anxiety is almost excruciating at times, as new horrors are revealed or suggested. But the third act begins to wear, becoming increasingly complex, layering red herrings and cheese in a stack of improbabilities. I am reminded of that ageless chestnut from F. Murray Abraham - “Too many notes!” But until that point, the film is a steady, nerve chilling decent into human suffering.

Shutter Island may do solid repeat business so fans can re-piece the story together with new knowledge. Nice play Marty!

Wolfman

Wolfman and Hamlet – separated at birth? That’s the implication of this gloriously art directed update on the hirsute horror. Our hero is lonely, tortured, misunderstood, and heartbroken; they are tragic figures that endure in pop culture because they represent our dark side while stirring our tenderest emotions. There is a common mother issue and their fathers are naughty boys. Wolfman and Hamlet have women who love them, but whose unacceptable behaviour and knack for sealing their own difficult fate scotches any chance at happiness.

The latest version of Wolfman is the British born Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), called back to his family’s gothic pile when his brother’s butchered body is discovered on the moors. Talbot who grew up in America is a famous American stage actor playing; you guessed it, Hamlet, on a tour of England.

It’s 1891 and the full moon is hanging over the moors at Talbot Hall. Lawrence is reunited with his edgy father (Anthony Hopkins) for the first time in years; it’s an uncomfortable meet, bringing back disturbing memories of his mother’s suicide on another moonlit night long ago.

His late brother’s fiancée (Emily Blunt) asked him to come home to investigate the murder of her intended as the local constabulary seems unable to capture the killer. Her fiancé’s body was torn limb from limb by a massive clawed predator that dispatched others earlier.

The villagers are in an uproar and roam about with lit torches seeking out the monster. It somehow infiltrates the hunting party, attacks with incredible ferocity and leaves them dead.

The local gypsies are frightened; they know what a werewolf is, that it comes out at the full moon, driven to feast on mortals and woodland creatures. Investigators are the gypsy encampment witness the brutal, lightening fast kills as a creature moves inside.

What passes for life at Talbot Hall is sinister and creepy. Stuffed deer’s heads line the hallways while the dank, suffocating darkness seems to hold terrible secrets. Talbot the elder is strangely uninvolved with the news of a monster on the loose, and spends much of his time in a dungeon locked in by his servant. Lawrence’ mind is in overdrive trying to understand what’s going on; you can feel his anxiety.

But the story is thin. You can’t do much with Wolfman; he’s the same as and perhaps less interesting than Dracula or Frankenstein. That’s a problem the filmmakers can’t surmount but they do a remarkable job given the limitations.

Anthony Hopkins provides us with a no-holds barred re-imagining of Hannibal Lecter; he’s gleefully evil with full throttle energy that burns up the screen. His moments are pure theatre. Emily Blunt on the other hand, is cinematic lavender perfume, wafting about in a feminine Victorian world; we get to see her in action, but it’s unimpressive. Hugo Weaving turns up as a snooty investigator from Scotland Yard, called to the Moors to find the beast.

Geraldine Chaplin seems born to the role of gypsy soothsayer Maleva; she has a singular exoticism and weathered beauty and a sense of decorum that adds gravity to the far fetched story.

The look of The Wolfman is unparalleled; it takes place in what looks like a series of very beautiful, moody daguerreotypes. The filmmakers have created a stunning, and slightly repugnant world that is choked with the dust of generations and the glow of a threatening moon.

The Wolfman marks the return to the atmospheric horror films of the past, set in the far past, just far enough away to be comfortable. I hope there’s more.

Frozen

What’s the worst that can happen when three friends decide to take a final night-time whoosh down a ski run before the chairlift closes? A casual decision made without thought given to a coming storm, the closing darkness, and plain common sense? Nothing but a world of hurt according to horror filmmaker Adam Green whose nifty, solid yet a tad cheesy chiller is a cautionary tale of the Jaws sort. It’s not a character study. It’s a high concept story about something that happens to three people in a certain time and place, no frills or fuss.

What makes Frozen work is the banal familiarity of the people and their situation; they are ordinary joes with few language skills or deep thoughts who are neither brilliant nor stupid, who, like the rest of us, don’t think things through sometimes. Who hasn’t tried to sneak in one final something? Generally things work out. But once control is lost, as in the movie, nature takes the path of least resistance to an inevitable end. It’s like watching a bathtub overflow, only with more drama.

Dan (Kevin Zegers) and his girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell) are skiing with his best friend Joe (Shawn Ashmore) in snowy peaks somewhere in New England. The mountain backdrop is gorgeous and with all the snow bunnies playing in their colourful suits, the wilderness seems innocuous and friendly.

It’s not so upbeat between the friends. Joe’s getting testy that he has to share his long time buddy Dan with Parker so he takes cheap pot shots at her at every chance. Dan’s trying to appease them both but the drama’s upsetting Parker; she’s losing her already iffy confidence fast.

Joe thinks a late night ski will shake things up; he’s annoyed that he’s lost slopes time to Parker’s awkwardness on the bunny hills. Dan and Parker reluctantly agree and off they go, neglecting to tell anyone. The ski lift operator passes his watch off to someone else and that person can’t stay, so one safety falls after another, leaving the friends out there all alone. The lift system stops suddenly, leaving them suspended in the dark night air as heavy snows fly.

What were left with is three people suspended in a chairlift fifty feet high in the dark. And that’s what else makes Frozen work - that it takes place, and works, in a confined space with no distractions or outs. Green meets the challenge providing heart stopping moments and outright horror in a four foot stage and doesn’t allow it to seem forced.

We watch in close-up as the characters become hungry, dehydrated, and desperate, and begin to see that there is the possibility help won’t come. The ski resort has closed for five days. How to escape? Jump down? Climb the cables? Call for help? They do everything one might think to do in the same situation.

The film stays, like a chill, for some time after the credits roll. It’s a haunting, horrific story that is told as well as can be expected given the narrow scope of its setting a well-plotted version of the oldest tale of all - man versus nature.

The music’s terrific and adds a surprising elegance to the tension. But be warned: skiers and hikers will remember Frozen the next time they hit the trails. And the next time and the next.

From Paris with Love

John Travolta continues his bad apple ways in the City of Light, and I doubt that city sees more homicides in a year than his US government operative murders in the first ten minutes of this gritty cops and robbers outing. Once again Travolta plays an assassin with an unparalleled glee, a shtick that is getting to be a bit creepy after all these years. Shaven headed and swaddled in neck-obscuring scarves, Travolta is Charlie Wax, a legendary FBI agent renowned for his punishing efficiency and perpetual good humour in the murder game.

For some unknown reason he is partnered with Reece (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a completely green, over-cautious, but ambitious diplomatic aide to the US ambassador in Paris. He does little favours for the special ops unit while angling for a respect and ultimately, a job in exciting line of work. But once he sees what it’s really like, at street level, with a partner like Wax, will he be so sure?

Wax is a kind of snickering mentor to Reece. He teaches him the direst lessons in international relations, for instance, when in doubt, shoot everyone in the room, take no prisoners – ever, and assume your apartment is rigged sixteen ways till Sunday because someone IS following you.

Wax’ likes to keep Reece off kilter, by feeding him misinformation and putting him in extremely violent scenarios; it is hard to know what’s real and what Wax Real is. He doesn’t divulge exactly what their mission is until more than halfway through the film, but then it’s hard to care. Until that point, we’re meant to be entertained by Travolta’s madman shenanigans. The audience may not be, but Reece is thrilled, he’s never experienced anything like what he’s seeing with Wax – murder, mayhem, deceit and it’s all government sanctioned! He ignores his instincts to NOT follow Wax, and goes along without developing much tension or character. Wax further subjugates Reece by making him carry a huge vase filled with cocaine for most of their journey, rendering him useless during fights with the terrorists.

Reece doesn’t know why these people are dying and cares little; he just craves excitement. He lives the ‘spy’ life by day and by night, the urban condo life with his gorgeous fiancée – it’s nicely and neatly divided, for a time.

The film is a showcase for Wax’s high octane persona, but there’s not much substance in plotting or character development. Travolta can carry it off but with a script as lame as this one, his sizzle fizzles. Rhys-Meyers is given little to do but hang around Wax like a fanboy, and nurse a broken heart when his fiancée turns out to be less than he dreamed.

The awkward scripting in the first hour weighs the film down and it takes more than hour to get going. While most of the film is wanting, the final half hour or so finally gives us something to attract and hold our attention.

There’s a thrilling car chase sequence down a French highway, as Travolta leans out the passenger window with a rocket launcher angling for a clear shot at his quarry; they’re going FAST. Classic action and you feel you’re right there with him.

But it’s not enough to save the day.

Tooth Fairy

Dwayne Johnson in a tutu and wings, tossing fairy dust, shrinking down to a cute 2” to make children’s dreams come true? Not the most promising premise for a film for those over three. But the terrific surprise is that Tooth Fairy is terrific. It’s witty and wise, sly and hilarious fit for man and mite. It is what you’d least expect, frankly, and is therefore a joy. Tooth Fairy is a welcome escape from the terrible news and bad weather that has plagued us for weeks now.

Johnson plays Derek Thompson, a star hockey player known as the Tooth Fairy for knocking players’ teeth from their heads. He’s dating Carly (Ashley Judd), a single mother of two adorable tykes. But Derek’s in a funk because his career is threatened by a young blood player who calls him “Pops”. In a moment of anger and frustration, he dashes a fan’s dreams of hockey stardom with an aggressively unpeppy pep-talk. And then he tells Carly’s little girl there is no Tooth Fairy after stealing her tooth stash for gambling. The Department of Dissemination of Disbelief summons him to Fairy Land where he is sentenced to serve as a tooth fairy for a week for killing kids dreams.

Enter Julie Andrews as the Fairy Godmother who doesn’t like his sassy ways. She tries to slap him into shape with a stern lecture and look, but he seems immune to change. Derek grates at the things he has to do and wear, but he has little choice in the matter. On his first assignment to pick up his supplies in the Tooth Fairy basement he meets a sprightly old man who tells him what’s what. It’s Billy Crystal in an uncredited and gut bustingly funny part that is sure to land on YouTube.

Former WWE superstar Johnson has created a singular niche for himself following his exit from the wrestling ring. He’s easy going, likeable and bold enough to don tights and bubbles on film, and he has the ability to deliver lines with great, warm gusto. Even iffy ones. There are none here, pleased to say. In fact, Johnson’s comic delivery is surprisingly accurate, with great writing backing him.

Julie Andrews relishes her role as the Fairy Godmother who ever so nicely kicks Derek’s rear and rewards him when he turns the corner with one of her dazzling, iconic smiles. Her extraordinary persona perfectly suits the role, in what was obviously a no brainer casting decision. She is radiant, and still your favourite screen auntie. Stay for the closing credits for more treats from Andrews.

The children (Chase Ellison and Destiny Whitlock) are appealing and non-sticky, and Ashley Judd brings it down to earth as an ordinary suburban mom trying to keep it together.

The core team is joined by memorable character actors giving completely hilarious, non ironic performance as fairies, like Stephen Merchant as Derek’s fairy handler and Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane who has an amusing cameo as a ‘stuff’ pedlar, who hooks our hero in buying substandard invisibility powder, shrinking paste, and fairy dust.

Director Michael Lembeck enjoyed a successful career as a comic actor on television and in film, and clearly a special gift for directing light comedies.

Extraordinary Measures

Attention, Lorenzo’s Oil! You’ve been cloned! The 1992 fact-based medical drama with Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon follows a father desperate to save his terminally ill son by creating a new and revolutionary treatment. Extraordinary Measures tells a similar story about a determined father seeking a cure for a disease that threatens the lives of his son and daughter, based on Geeta Anand’s book "The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million - And Bucked the Medical Establishment - in a Quest to Save His Children" .

Extraordinary Measures offers a bromantic twist as Harrison Ford’s scientific researcher and Brendan Fraser’s desperate father join forces to create a cure for Pompe, a deadly childhood disease. Ford plays a scientist and Fraser a biotech entrepreneur united in their fight against the ticking clock.

The men couldn’t be more different – Dr. Bob Stonehill is a brilliant but miserable medical researcher with few social skills and an ugly temper, and John Crowley is a mild-mannered executive driven by love into action. He believes so strongly in taking action that he manages to push his naturally reserved personality up several notches to raise research funds.

The enemy is Pompe, a type of muscular dystrophy that causes the internal organs to swell resulting in a painful and short life for its sufferers. Children with Pompe generally live nine years. Stonehill’s research is promising; he’s developing an enzyme that reduces the swelling and allows for a more normal, longer life for patients.

Crowley’s determination to save his children is impressive. He leaves his cushy executive job in a pharmaceutical company to launch a research and development company with Stonehill. Dramatic tension comes in Stonehill’s awkwardness, which hurts their efforts at every turn. Crowley believes Stonehill’s on the way to developing a revolutionary drug, but he didn’t account for his disinclination to play ball with the money men.

Stonehill eventually recognises there is possibility for transformation and redemption through helping others. His work has been solitary and intellectual. While Stonehill doesn’t necessarily ‘get’ the human component of lifesaving drugs, he’s compelled to wrestle genes and atoms, and that’s what Crowley needs. But Stonehill’s brusque personality nearly scotches their efforts. They’re chalk and cheese walking an emotional tightrope as the clock ticks against the children.

Fraser does his best work so far in Extraordinary Measures, wading through a minefield of emotions - the fate of his children, dramatic business fluctuations, the personal dynamics of working with corporations, and most especially, the challenge of Stonehill threaten to undo him. Fraser is terrifically compelling and sympathetic.

Keri Russell plays the long-suffering, teary wife. She’s wasted in a part that anyone could have done, requiring a shadowy female presence that nags from the edges of the drama.

The plotting is a tad predictable but the bond between the men is interesting. Extraordinary Measures has a well-traveled, familiar arc but top notch performances. The drama created by Stonehill’s behaviour ruffles our feathers but from the opening frames we know that he will be changed somehow by the end of the film.

The film is Harrison’s labour of love; he shepherded it to the screen over six years having a hand in every aspect. Medical dramas can be hard to watch and can seem remote. But Extraordinary Measures does its best to make the subject accessible, interesting, and moving.

The White Ribbon / Das weisse Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte

The White Ribbon is Germany's official submission for the 82nd Academy Award's Foreign Language in 2010.

The White Ribbon is slow-moving, 144 minutes long, black and white and set in a rural village in Northern Germany in the 1910’s, none of which sounds like winning prospects for today’s moviegoers. Michael Haneke sets an unusual crime in this bucolic, picture postcard setting and artfully ramps up the tension, giving us a profound experience that’s hard to shake off. It is agonisingingly intense at times, and feels like a thriller.

The village is a seemingly carefree place where people work hard on their farms or for the Baron, and carry on the family and local traditions. There’s a strog class system but beyond that, it’s an ordinary, place where nothing much happens and the sounds of children playing are never far off.

The idyll breaks one afternoon when the Doctor and his horse take a tragic spill, the horse dies and the doctor is seriously injured. It seems someone set two wires between the trees on his route, cutting the horse’s legs. Investigators arent quick enough to find who removed the wire almost immediately after the accident. No one saw anything out of the ordinary.

A peasant woman falls through the rotten floor at the sawmill and dies. Someone trashes the Baron’s cabbages. A baby nearly dies when its window is opened on a bitter night. Two children are tortured. A man hangs himself; a barn burns down and so on. No one ever sees anything.

The village leaders, the doctor, the priest, the Baron and the superintendant hold the village in a tight moral grip. They share an entitled arrogance which allows them to destroy their children and wives as they preach that good must triumph over evil. They abuse their loved ones sexually, physically, mentally and emotionally in the name of appearances and to satisfy some hidden, sad need. Life in the village is horrific, despite appearances.

The schoolteacher who narrates the story admits he doesn’t know how much is true. He is distracted by his love affair a much younger nanny. But he was present during its troubles and saw first hand the damage done.

Haneke cleverly taps into the weather for dramatic advantage. He shoots several highly dramatic sequences outdoors in heavy winds, bright snow and blinding sunshine, where the elements seem to clean off the charaters decay. Winds are always upsetting the order in the wheat fields.

The indoor scenes, inside the tiny, dark wooden 19^th century houses are claustrophobic, dangerous and inhumane. The heavy sound of ticking clocks permeates the interior darkness where punishment and fear grow like fungus.

It’s hard to talk about the story and its profound weight without giving anything away. But it’s certain the brain will be ticking overtime figuring out how old the characters are and where they will be in twenty years’ time and who will live and die at their whim.

Haneke has created magic. The White Ribbon will live in the bloodstream for a long time.

The Book of Eli

Denzel Washington has stepped where few A-listers dare tread – religion. He stars in and produced this hard hitting morality tale, a seriously devout story about he protection of the only Bible that exists in a post- apocalyptic future. Salvation is possible only through the word of God – that’s the theme and it is embraced not just by the good guy but also by the bad guy.

That’s a radical recipe for a big budget film 2010, light years away from the usual Hollywood thinking that religion is an anathema to movie house audiences. Someone besides Mel Gibson thinks it matters. There’s a lot on the line here including the A-list star, A-list producer Joel Silver and a nice budget.

A disaster has taken place 30 years before we meet Eli, which burned off most of the earth’s vegetation, water, and life forms. He is living on cat but mostly starves like the rest of the population. Despite the absence of the basics of human existence – water and food - the human species has rebounded, and a new generation of people – who never saw a television, is forging a life out of dust and nothingness. We don’t learn what the disaster was but it looks like a big ass nuclear bomb hit, if I know my movies.

Washington plays Eli, a mysterious wanderer who holds the only existing copy of the St James Bible. God has told him to take it to ‘the west’ and that’s his mission – if he can get by the dangers that lurk in the dusty desert. There are roving gangs of thugs who will kill to eat the body.

Eli is surprised to find a small town on the road going west, led by a western style ‘boss’ Carnegie (Gary Oldman). Carnegie wants what Eli has - redemption – through whatever means possible – and the Bible. He remembers how powerful the Bible was ‘before’ and now he will kill to get it. The Bible as a reason to kill. Sounds Biblical. Eli will liberate the enslaved females (Mila Kunis and Jennifer Beales) living under the thumb of the bad guy. His passion to fulfil his bond with God fires his awesome fighting powers and defence instincts.

The film is total instant gratification the way westerns are. Eli knocks heads like a lunatic, personally dispatching endless criminals. The redemption seeker and his posse, road thugs, crazies and a suspicious elderly couple give Eli plenty to worry about.

It’s not just a hyped up revenge fantasy, it’s an emphatic bird flipped in the face of consumerism (Eli: “People had too much before. They threw away things they kill for now”).

The film has a hard edged sepia look, reminiscent and harsh enough to be whatever future can be imagined. The environment recalls Terminator 2 and current Middle East war in which dust is a dangerous character.

Eli is an action-packed adventure with a moral angle, as all good westerns, with a leaf taken from Mel Gibson’s other hit, the dusty Road Warrior. The noble loner is an appealing character especially if he is on a mission. Eli is a survival spectacle, Grand Guignol theatre, an old fashioned western and familiar looking war story re-imagined by the Hughes brothers for an economically worn out world. The idea of good versus evil has rarely been so obvious in a film, and at times it is riveting.

But just a few questions - how do people go for weeks at a time without water in the burning desert wearing heavy clothes and weapons? What makes Eli such a great fighter considering, well, you’ll see? Why does Jennifer Beals’ makeup look so terrific if her character hasn’t shampooed in 30 years?

I’m just saying.

It's Complicated

Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin do their best with ho hum material in this throw back to the 30’s. It concerns the very rich living in gorgeous homes whining about their love lives. As in the 30’s, such a privileged cinematic world represents escape from the crushingly bad economic tone of the current times. So It’s Complicated is both lovely and super annoying.

Streep does Harlequin Lite as Jane, divorced twenty years from Jake (Baldwin) and yet still sensitive to the presence of his hot young wife (Lake Bell) and unable to make a move in her own dating department. As she tells it, she is happy, used to being alone and beyond romance. She has her adoring children who although they’re beginning to separate from her and build their own lives, are fiercely protective.

Jake suddenly develops a super charged passion for Jane, sentimentally replaying those golden moments around the family dinner table, Jane’s abilities in the kitchen and bedroom and his idea of fathering a family. But the irony is that he was never how he remembers it, he and Jane didn’t speak for years, he was distant and did all the bad things.

Even so, Jane if quick to return his advances and they enter into a hot and heavy affair, under the noses of their children and his wife and creepy little step son. Jane and Jake love it, but it’s clear that Jake is becoming obsessive over their lost marriage because his marriage to the ravishing and rotten new wife is empty.

Jake is disarmingly frank about his renewed love for Jane, and for a while, she returns it, but they are on separate agendas. Can they overcome the hurdles?

Enter Adam (Steve Martin) a handsome and newly divorced architect who will build the kitchen extension Jane has always wanted. He’s smitten by Jane but he’s a bit of a pushover.

John Krasinski, who plays Jane and Jake’s son-in-law to be, absolutely steals the film from Streep and Baldwin. He has a natural charm and humour that seems to have nothing to do with acting; he plays Harley, who accidentally sees something he shouldn’t and didn’t want to, which makes him a key player. Later he overhears a conversation and at the perfect moment, does a bit of business that is just enormously winning and funny. And he keeps doing it; he’s a natural.

Nancy Meyers’ films can be saccharin and feel hollow, as this does. While it’s good looking and sometimes tasty holiday treat, and performances by Streep, Baldwin, Martin, and Krasinski are winning, it’s little more than tinsel to be taken down in a week or two and stashed away.

It’s the world Meyers creates, more picture perfect than Martha Stewart’s house, with the prettiest palette around, circa the ‘80’s. Even Jane’s vegetable garden looks as it was put together by Fortnum and Mason working months on end with Findhorn. It’s somehow maddening to listen to people in this rarefied world complain about their high-toned problems.

Sherlock Holmes

Guy Ritchie’s the latest director to the beloved and brilliant Victorian sleuth the business – there are around 130 previous Sherlock Holmes films dating back to Sherlock Holmes Baffled released in 1900. This may be the worst.

Ritchie excels at hitting audiences over the head – in a good way - with a true modern verve. His characters jump off the screen, fueled by sex, drugs, rock and roll and hormones, Rocknrolla, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels are about as much violent fun you can have at a movie. But he’s not the guy to re-envision Sherlock Holmes; I just don’t buy Holmes as a steampunk anti-hero.

What makes the character of Sherlock Holmes unique is the brilliance of his deductive mind, elegant erudition and uber formality. I personally don’t care if he is a superior bare knuckle fighter, or has the ability to dive from great heights into the Thames. He’s been dumbed down (for today’s audiences? Is that the reasoning?) to a tragic extent. Holmes’ elegant erudition is reduced to thought bubbles that might as well read Ker-Pow! And his addictions are played for laughs.

The storyline is minimal to non-existent, and tired, a mish mash of a million previously made films with one key particular plot point lifted right out of Agatha Cristie circa 1942; it’s old news to today’s audiences. They used it on TV’s Eastwick the other night!

And come to think of it, the bad guys use black magic in their move to world domination. The baddest of the bad Lord Blackwood, wears his hair Hitler style. It's hammered together from vestiges of genres, images, symbols and ploys from every corner of the pop culture world. A Franken-Holmes.

Holmes’ bromance with Dr. Watson seems about right; Jude Law can play stuffy more easily than one might have thought, but the bond between them is as it ever was. There’s nothing new, no homoerotic undertones, no Freudian slips, just two fellas at different stages in their lives bound to each other through mutual respect, friendship and the desire to see justice done.

Rachel McAdams comes in as Holmes’ onetime love interest, a criminal mastermind with her own international history, agenda and soft spot for our boy. She’s from New Jersey, apparently, but knows the world’s criminal networks intimately. Not that one cancels the other.

Hans Zimmer’s score strengthens the steampunkiness with music that ranges from Baroque to Acadian fiddle to full on funeral dirge. Unfortunately, the ‘wild’ sound is total cacaphony. Industrial noises made by clashing concrete, steel, steam pressure and machinery tend to bring on the inevitable headaches.

Nine

I really wanted to love Nine given the heart pounding songs, the bringing together of the actresses who play the nine, and the sheer novelty of watching Daniel Day-Lewis in a light and frothy musical, singin’, and dancin’. But it was not to be. Nine is more to be endured than loved, sad to say.

The central idea is that a bevy of marvellous women are in love with Guido, a mother obsessed Italian director, who is experiencing a mid-life crisis that makes him unable to love or commit or even know what he wants. Worse still, he’s creatively paralysed and unable to come up with more than a title (Italia) for the film he’s making, set to roll in a few days. He actually runs away from a press conference where he was to announce that production had begun.

Guido seeks out medical advice, religious leadership and his wise best friend and wardrobe mistress (Judi Dench) but nothing can snap him out of the rut. At first, his habit of running is entertaining and rebellious but as the film progresses, it paints him as a cowardly, self destructive head case.

Day-Lewis’ Guido mopes through most of the film; he’s sombre, defeated and grim with the appeal of last week’s potato peels. But the women seek him out. That’s the weird thing- why is such a chick magnet? He’s charmingly elegant, handsome, and powerful – or was.

He has a strong and unappealing distaste for women. And why not? They throw themselves at him and cry and attempt suicide when he doesn’t pay attention. Of course he hates them. And since abandonment is part of his MO, why is he such catnip? Oh, right, he’s a famous director.

Day-Lewis doesn’t seem the right fit for Guido and further, his unique brand is a tad tarnished by this tits and ass obsessed depressive. Day-Lewis’ power is his interior roles. Nine is as superficial and out there as it gets, and even with him in the lead, it has no heart, soul, or character.

The women (Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Fergie, and mama Sophia Loren) are ideas of women rather than characters. They are hidden behind walls of makeup, lingerie, and wardrobe. Instead of acting, they pose and strut and turn back the hands of time to Hugh Hefner’s sixties, when women were puffed, powdered, padded, and ever ready for action when their master calls. They more than verge on offensive, they wallow in it.

Some of the musical numbers are colossal. Kate Hudson is especially winning in a sixties pop dance – you can easily imagine her mother Goldie Hawn in the part, and Fergie’s sultry (and sandy) sex romp is the definition of earthy. Nicole Kidman’s tired of it all cinema queen is rather interesting as she has the guts to walk away from a situation she realises is going nowhere. Cotillard is electrifying as Guido’s long suffering wife, even within the confines of the shallow script – her musical number is killer and she reveals again her natural born gift wasn’t a one off.

The film tends to drag at points and it wouldn’t hurt to lose a musical number or two, but overall, it’s a cartoon that is glamourous and gorgeous but flatly two dimensional. Need to watch There Will Be Blood to erase the unholy taint of Guido stat.

Avatar

At a rumoured cost of around $265 million, James Cameron’s Avatar is reportedly the most expensive and ambitious film ever made. Could we expect any less of the King of the World? Titanic be damned, and that was how many years ago? Cameron has come to reclaim his title with every bell and whistle known to technology.

It’s also said that he wrote the film years ago and had to wait for CGI to catch up to his vision. One thing is certain; the man with the giant ego has pulled off another giant money-maker and revolutionised animation.

Avatar is sexy, wild, well-written, and glorious to look at and verges on stupendous. The anxiously awaited film is chock-a-block full of amazing creatures, worlds, and motion, from the earth shaking clump, clump of war bots to the daintiest little dandelion seed. Never has animation succeeded at being breath-taking – from gorgeously massive to as tiny as a pinprick, all there to be felt and experienced.

But where there are humans, there is grit and hard edged realism. And that’s aboard a Marine spaceship, where scientist Grace (Sigourney Weaver) chains smokes and barks out orders as Marines are fitted to become avatars, capable of waging war in remotely from pods.

The moon Pandora has a highly developed ecosystem and is inhabited by the Na’vi and human/ Na’vi droids. Humans can’t breathe the air, so the scientists created avatars by twinning soldiers with the Na’vi. The avatars have infiltrated Pandora to set the stage to secure valuable mineral deposits, Na’vi or no Na’vi.

These alien creatures are as beautiful as any cartoon creation; Cameron’s really broken the barrier. They are ten feet tall, blue-skinned, exceedingly toned and agile and at one with their world, as a kind of 21st century human ideal. They’re pantheists and deeply spiritual, but they’re also top notch fighters. The military seeks to wipe them out to get a hold of the unobtainium sitting just under their most scared site.

Jake, a wheelchair bound Marine rookie (Sam Worthington), has come to replace his twin brother who died in battle; his genetic similarities are utilised to keep his brother’s training, work, and characteristics viable in the high-tech, genome based battle plan. It’s 2154 and man has tapped into all sorts of wonders in his body and mind through computers, at the top of their list, the ability to wage war.

Jake slips into his brother’s avatar, and travels to Pandora to carry out reconnaissance missions. He becomes one of the blue skinned aliens and is transformed. He is able to run again.

He falls under the spell of the Na’vi and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) a warrior whose spiritually enlightened way of life opens his eyes. He realises he’s seeing pure beauty for the first time and that he has found his home even as the Marines are bearing down.

We root for the Na’vi and against the humans; the humans are the coming evil into the Na’vi’s spiritually evolved world, a crass and unconscious force of nature, the bad seeds.

Cameron’s film serves as an ecological battle cry. As the Marines sweep in with the machinery of war to raze the glorious, rainbow coloured Pandora, we’re reminded of misguided progress that threatens our world in 2009 and that wars are waged for gasoline /minerals.

The length and noise of the final battles is a tad trying. At points the film’s vastness works against the narrative – catching us just staring at the visuals in awe and tuning out the information. In all, not deal breakers.

Avatar will earn gazillions of dollars and once again Cameron will be King.

Did You Hear About the Morgans?

In the midst of the serious awards contenders of the past several weeks, Did You Hear seems like a harmless, funny bit o’ fluff to ease us nicely into the holidays. Hugh Grant, that funny, edgy Brit, and Sarah Jessica Parker, the eternal New York urbanista eye candy are road trip buddies in a fish out of water domestic boondoggle, the ultimate hash of genres all balled up together.

It’s an agonising waste, sad to say. The Morgans is a cliché ridden mess without a single authentic laugh and a heart as fake as spray snow. It seems inevitable considering the sheer volume of generic traditions the film attempts to fulfill, it plots from A to B to C without substance and is never more than a roadmap.

A Manhattan real estate tycoon (Parker) is estranged from her lawyer husband (Grant) because he slept with someone. He’s devastated that she plans to divorce him even though she strings him along, saying no while nodding yes, as she hides her own infidelities. On the way home from a sexy candlelight dinner, they witness one of her real estate clients, knife in back, fall from the balcony to the street, right in front of them. They escape into the shadows but too late, they’ve made eye contact with the shooter.

Police put them immediately into the witness protection. Her client, a South American arms dealer, has powerful enemies who will kill them to prevent them from testifying in court.

The Morgans board a government jet and land in remote Ray, Wyoming, horrified by the vast, natural expanse. They’re underdressed for blizzards and unsure if they’ll ever see the lights and concrete of New York again. There’s not a store in sight.

The kindly local sheriff collects them and takes them to a big box store where the city slickers marvel at low prices. Funny how the other half lives, eh? Ha ha ha. Once ensconced in the sheriff’s home with is gun slinging wife, they attempt to work out their marriage differences in high pitched yelling matches when they’re not reading up on bear safety. Naturally, a bear shows ups almost immediately and hilarity ensues.

They’re under strict orders not to call anyone in New York or risk endangering themselves. Within moments she calls New York.

The script is 50% telegraphing, 50% actual carrying out telegraphed messages.

And the idea of ‘country’ is a corny ideal as ever we’ve seen in the movies. The standard sly jokes at country folks’ expense are all there - the scary animals and scary outdoors, the nix on electronics, dumb citizens, bumpkin festivals, uncool rustic homes, meat eating, cow’s rear ends, strong silent types and on and on. Country people are unenlightened idiots as Hollywood keeps telling us. Ha ha ha.

Actually city folk fare no better. The two of them are ill equipped to handle life outside New York, she can’t milk a cow (ha ha ha) he can’t split a log (ha ha ha) and they are too sensitive and ‘talky’ (ha ha ha). They’re vegetarians. City folk are unable to adapt as Hollywood keeps telling us. Ha ha ha.

The Morgans is an unfunny and egregiously wrong headed exercise in connecting the genre dots. The poorly observed human behaviour, poorly written and executed lines, and fake revelations are exasperating. It has all the charm of a Franken movie, built by a committee with notes from the cliché handbook. And yet, it had potential to be something fun. Lawrence wrote the delightful Music and Lyrics and the Miss Congeniality movies but he’s dropped the ball with the Morgans.

Invictus

Nelson Mandela said only Morgan Freeman could portray him in a filmed biography and that’s who plays him in Invictus. Freeman, who also executive produces, asked his longtime friend Clint Eastwood to direct. Matt Damon signed on for the second lead. Before it’s even out of the gate, Invictus has pedigree stamped in gold and exceedingly high expectations.

And not too surprisingly, it lives up to the hype as one of the strongest films in this rather dismal year, a shining example of what a film can be when top talents put their shoulders to the wheel.

Invictus is the Latin word for “invincible” and the title of the famous poem by William Ernest Henley that ends with the lines “ It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” How fitting that it inspired Nelson Mandela, held for 27 years in a South African prison, to rise out of that to become president of his country.

But the film isn’t Mandela’s life story – it’s the story of a rugby team and its struggle to win the World Cup, egged on by Mandela and inspired by his favourite poem. Mandela saw the potential for a rugby victory as a way to celebrate the “new” South Africa on the world stage, as it emerged from the shadows of decades of shameful apartheid law. The film is based on John Carlin’s book “Playing t he Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation" and turns it into an event.

Freeman tackles the role of Mandela and runs with it, with the energy and passion we’ve seen in news footage of the leader. It seems he was born to play the part. His partner in the movie, a kind of sports/political bromance, is Matt Damon, who morphs easily into new characters, especially international ones.

Damon packed on pounds, muscles and a thick South African accent to play Francois Pienaar o, captain of the Springboks national rugby union team, who developed a true kinship with Mandela in their mututal desire to re-create the underdog team as world class winnners. Damon’s role isn’t big; he is invisible inside Pienaaro’s hefty body, but he makes a deep emotional impression.

The team represents the country as it lurches into a new age of non-discrimination; there is only one black player on the Springboks team, which is itself is a holdover from an earlier era. Eastwood deals with the idea of throwing off racism in profound ways, and without sentiment, through this remarkable statesman.

Mandela’s ideas generally had multiple good outcomes. For instance, he asks the team to lead sports clinics for children inside the Townships, the impoverished cities of shacks where the blacks lived separate, disenfranchised lives. The team resents the extra work load but finds the experience to be transformative just as they change the lives of the children they touch.

The film examines the post aparthied growing pains of the new country through sports – a way that is understandable and accessible.

Another of Mandela’s brilliant dual outcomes was born of his desire to leave no one behind. He walked the walk in the presidential suite by retaining white office staff from the previous administration and adding white security staff to his own team. Positive moves towards a ‘rainbow’ nation as he calls it, which embraced everyone. So we see the transformation of racism to tolerance through his security team as well.

Invictus is the biggest film ever made in South Africa; scenes in the packed stadium are thrilling and the huge crowds seem enthusastic to help out Mr. Eastwood and Co. with rousing cheers, waves and spirit. He accesses the shantytowns with understanding and compassion, the depths of poverty and despair, never resorting to easy emotion.

Eastwood is one of the greatest living directors. He can tell a story and delivers its nuances and weight seamlessly, effortlessly and artistically. Not an inch of film is wasted; each moment is the product of veteran imagination and efficacy. The energy is Eastwood’s film is palpable. And it smells like victory.

The Lovely Bones

Magic surrealism, lots of computer wallpaper-esque heaven and special effects a great film does not make. Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of the award winning novel about a murdered girl watching over her family and her murderer from heaven is killed by its own striving. The fascinating subject matter which lends itself to our private, perfectly able imagination is spelled out to us as if we’re idiots in Jackson’s estimation of our private imagination. It looks and feels false, misguided, overloaded, just too much. And yet, there are genuine scares and tears.

Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg tackle Alice Sdebold’s story in what could have been a solid thriller inching slowly from an ordinary day to a brutally shocking murder of a youngster, to the aftermath and towards the killer’s soul, but good intentions disappear in manipulative and gaudy computer wallpaper environments. Artificial limbo and heaven seen through the girl’s eyes seem like the stuff of Broadway musicals, perhaps not what was intended, but there it is. The visual environment seriously distracts from the earthly story, which is riveting enough. They have more weight then they deserve overshadowing the rich field of human experience around the mysteries of murder, death and human nature.

Ronan does a good job of portraying a little girl in the untenable, sad shock of knowing too much too soon. Susie Salmon is shy and deep, and filled with the joys of being young and naïve. She is at that stage where her parents are still cool and she is infatuated with a boy for the first time. Ronan shows Susie living her life and on that awful day, realising milli-second by milli-second what is happening to her in her neighbour’s underground lair.

Young New Zealand actress Rose McIvor gives us som of the film’s best moments as Susie’s sister Lindsay. Lindsay obsesses over her sister’s death and determines to find out who killed her and where her body is. She breaks into their neighbour’s home looking for clues in an agonising, pulse pounding sequence - heart attack city!

But Jackson gives us these incredible cinematic moments short shrift, diminishing them inside a dayglo world always just hanging over the action. A woodland scene, mountain scene, and golden field, whatever Jackson’s idea of heaven is at that specific moment. It’s true that many are breath-taking and moving; our hearts break for the family and the people Susie meets in the other world.

Susan Sarandon, God bless her, storms on the scene like a battalion of booze soaked reality checks, as Susie’s grandmother, who holds the family together in the wake of the tragedy. Stanley Tucci as the weird neighbour is so creepy it’s almost unbearable, but Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz as the parents don’t have all that much to do – this is Susie’s story.

A big shout out Jackson for making us understand the events as the sickening, sick horrific things no one should have to know, especially a little girl who has never been kissed. Next time, a little less paint, please.

A Single Man

Colin Firth’s sensitive portrayal of a lonely English professor mourning the death of his lover is as intense as any film role this year. He’s in nearly every frame, often in tight close-up, and sometimes he’s buck naked. The film moves slowly and lingers on him as though he’s a work of art, which he is, in acting terms.

There’s nothing this Firth fellow can’t do – from hilariously fist fighting with Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones to changing his father’s dirty underwear in profound sadness in When Did You Last See Your Father? He is gifted and natural. It’s not surprising that he holds our gaze so easily and powerfully in every moment of A Single Man.

He hears the news of his lover’s death and is told he is not welcome at the funeral. He goes through the motions of his day, gingerly handling a gun, then removing the bullets in a gesture that tells us he doesn’t trust himself to live through the pain. He meets a couple of friends and a sexy stranger. And a student picks this horrific day to pepper the professor with question about Life.

Clothing designer Tom Ford directs the film very well considering it’s a new medium and his first time out. He tells the story through highly evocative imagery, and gives the film space in which we can feel our feelings. My only complaint, and it’s a small one, is that too long dream sequences and too lingering views of walls tend to detract from the momentum. Ford has shown an uncanny ability to tell stories – who knew?

Nicholas Hoult’s grown up since we last saw him tagging along behind Hugh Grant in About a Boy. He’s the university student with a crush on Firth’s professor. The gaping age difference between them is played down by placing the onus of the chase on the boy. He is the aggressive lover, the stalking, predatory animal chasing down his quarry. If it had been the other way around, the story would have posed a difficult marketing problem.

I heard Julianne Moore was in the film but I must have sneezed. She appears as the professor’s lover from an eternity ago, but barely registers because her role is so abbreviated. But her character adds dimension, the Will and Grace angle, that she is lost and drunk because she still loves him. Don’t be fooled by the prominence of her face on the billboards, she’s a ghost.

The dead lover is played by Matthew Goode, who is an actual ghost appearing in the professor’s nightmares showing over and over the moment of his death in a car crash. He’s yet another handsome character in this oh so lovely looking film.

Strangely, A Single Man is a period piece set in LA in the 60’s, but for my money, Ford has ramped it down, allowing his story to unfold anywhere anytime. It could have been a not-so-subtle explosion of 60’s kitsch but thankfully Ford did not choose that route, with the exception of Moore’s pink bedroom. Hey, if you can’t have a lot of lines, a nice place helps.

Me and Orson Welles

Me and Orson Welles is a divertingly entertaining film that feels like a musical in the Judy Garland Mickey Rooney way. But it’s not. It’s a sunny tale of a young man’s love for theatre and how it landed him in Orson Welles’ lap.

The story takes place in the heady early days of Welles’ fabled Mercury Theatre in New York, his vision for a brave new artistic world that produced actors like Joseph Cotton, Agnes Moorehead, Vincent Price, John Houseman and Ray Collins and gave Welles the clout to make Citizen Kane and The Magnifcent Ambersons years later. Welles ran the theatre with a velvet hammer, as a megalomaniac, forgiven and obeyed because he was a visionary.

It’s 1937 and the world’s growing dark. Unrest in Europe seems to be setting the stage for war, and the US is still feeling the effects of the Great Depression. All that is swept under the carpet in Linklater’s narrow but charming backstage story; there are different kinds of wars going on at the Mercury Theatre; the theatre is a universe unto itself.

Zac Efron stars as a young highschooler enthralled by the arts who manages to land a small role in Welles’ first theatrical production of Shakespeare’s tragedy (Julius) Ceasar. The kid’s brilliant, able not only to learn the ukele and his lines in a day, but also to read Welles and respond appropriately thus avoiding his biting insults. He becomes Welles’ trusted sidekick and confidante.

But there’s a girl, the company secretary played by Claire Danes, who we discover is ambitious and willing to do what it takes to get what she wants. It’s an education for our hero when Welles makes no effort to hide his lack of sensitivity and integrity. He’s a man of appetites and will not be denied. But our hero’s no pushover either.

Efron is a gifted artist with tremendous confidence. He made his name singing and dancing in the High School Musical series and in a few light comedies. He does a splendid job in a role that seems tailor made for him, while bringing new dramatic shades to his repertoire.

English actor Christian McKay brings Welles eerily back to life. Not only does he look like him, he has that ‘superman’ quality that Welles had, and a complete mastery of Welles’ whirling, self important physicality. McKay’s American accent is flawless.

Eddie Marsan plays John Houseman, who administered the Mercury Theatre and went on to fame as an actor later in life. Houseman is the only character who stands up to Welles and gets away with it. Marsan shows us that Houseman understands Welles and yet still admires and loves him. Ben Chaplin plays an actor who finds Welles’ condescending manner intolerable but who suffers crippling stage fright on opening night, only to be coaxed out of it by his tormentor.

Me And Orson Welles brings a new aspect to Linklater’s career. From the Bad News Bears, Fast Food Nation, Through a Scanner Darkly, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunset and Before Sunrise to … Me and Orson Welles? Nice.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Compared to Abel Ferrara’s darkly sinister original film about an addicted police officer, Herzog and Nic Cage’s “unofficial remake” is a real laugh riot. Ferrara has gone on record to say how angered he is that his film’s getting a reboot, he should be - this one’s far better.

Cage indulges in those actor-ly things no one else can that he draws from a repertoire of tics and flourishes born of emphasis, movement, and two of the most expressive eyes in the business. These tics have never been more relevant than here in which the bad lieutenant is drug addled, charismatic, personable, ironic and fearless and never fails to see the funny side of things. While some may roll their eyes at Cage’s showiness, others will be rolling in the aisles.

He’s Terence, an addicted rogue cop in post-Katrina New Orleans who has run up sizeable gambling and drug debts that he has no hope of paying. He’s tied himself to the biggest hoodlums in the city who are calling for his blood. That’s the big picture.

The small picture is that he keeps his drug habit alive by bullying citizens he suspects are carrying drugs and getting personal with the cops who run Xanadu – the police property room where dope and money evidence is stashed. He threatens a star football player telling him to throw the game he’s betting on or risk a PR nightmare on a dope bust.

Terence is assigned to investigate the execution style murder of five immigrants in what appears to be a drug turf war. A young boy who witnessed the killings hides out in the nursing home where his grandmother cares for a wealthy English woman; Terence finds him but can’t get him to testify because he’s smart enough to know what will happen to him. He disappears while under Terence’ care. So Terence decides to get heavy with the elderly women. He’s unstoppable.

Terence’ girlfriend (Eva Mendes) is a prostitute with a drug habit matching his; she does petty well in her business and is able to keep them living large. But soon, bad cop is shaking her clients down for money and drugs, ignoring the inevitable world of hurt he’s making for himself in the streets, in the office an at home.

Jennifer Coolidge plays Terence’ beer guzzling stepmotherwho serves as the Greek chorus and conscience. She makes an indelible mark in this rare dramatic role that should expand her career significantly. Val Kilmer co-stars in a minute role as Terence’ partner. It’s okay though, Kilmer has work – thirteen movies on the go.

The supporting players are golde – Irma P. Hall, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Brad Dourif, and Michael Shannon - resumably drawn by the chance to work with Herzog, the brainy German renaissance filmmaker. Xibit nails the gangster who masks his murderous lifestyle as a Southern gentleman.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is seamless, fast, and lean, with a superior script; it could see some action at awards time. Not only does it have the courage to use humour within the darkness of Terence’s world, it has none of the ‘ick’ factor of the original film.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson tries his hand at comedy with first class results in this retelling of the children’s tale. Using classic handmade stop motion animation techniques, he takes us back to a warmer, friendlier cartoon era while retaining the story’s witty and somewhat adult edge. People of all ages will respond to the universe Anderson has created, populated by Dahl’s wild and domestic animals and a few people and set them in an ages old struggle for domination over the land.

Things begin innocently enough as Mr. Fox (George Clooney) and his family live out a life of rural domestic predictability. He makes decent money as a newspaperman and dreams of moving out of their foxhole and into a new home above ground. His first job was a chicken stealer but marriage and fatherhood have sapped the wild animal out of him. He’s made a pledge to his wife (Meryl Streep) never to steal a chicken again because it’s dangerous and illegal. However he secretly longs to do just that – it’s the natural bestial instincts inside him.

The Foxes move into a treehouse edging the properties of the three meanest farmers in the land – Boggis, Bunce and Bean - who will kill any fox who steals their livestock or hard apple cider. Mr. Fox lives for a challenge and before long, he’s stealing their chickens, answering the call of nature, and planning to do a lot more of it. He tells his wife he’s out at book launches and other media events. Chickens pile up in the Fox pantry that he claims he got on sale.

Boggis, Bunce and Bean are onto him almost at once, frustrated that their armed security system can’t outwit a mere fox. They launch a plan to find and kill Mr. Fox; he’s delighted to be challenged unaware that he is putting the other animals at risk. Trouble comes when the farmers trap all the animals underground where they face certain death if they can’t get food and water. Mr. Fox realises he’s gone too far and vows to save the day.

Clooney’s Mr. Fox is 100% charisma - good looking, clever, well-dressed, and physically fit. He’s a persuasive speaker and a natural leader, he’s Clooney, and he has the uncanny ability to pull himself out of fires with his mental powers and ability to dig. Clooney’s vocal delivery is perfection. Schwartzman’s sweetly irritating as young Ash Fox, who feels undervalued and emotional even as he covers his insecurities with adolescent irony and sarcasm.

The cast is top drawer – Clooney, Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, and Jarvis Cocker, with Adrien Brody as the Field Mouse.

Music by Burl Ives, Leadbelly, The Rolling Stones, Cole Porter, The Beach Boys and Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern hints at the film’s uniqueness. The theme song from TV’s beloved Davey Crockett opens the proceedings setting the pace for oddball wonder and amusement.

Anderson has triumphed with this bit of animated delight. The animation has temendous warmth and humanity. The eyes are real, unlike the dead eyes in a certain other aimated holdiay film out there now. His script is funny, witty, sophisticated and tight. And because there is no graphic violence, The Fantastic Mr. Fox should be a slam dunk for all ages.

2012

Roland Emmerich’s up to his familiar old ways – “My films are bigger, louder and splashier than yours are!” and while that may be true, it doesn’t make them good or worthy. Emmerich has never been able to get out of his own way in making films – he requires jothing less than total annihilation of earth. They’re about sound, fury and shallow anthology storylines that signify nothing much. His overused End of Days scenario is as tired as this film is long; he has nothing to say that he didn’t already sayd in Godzilla, 10,000 B.C., Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow.

Disaster epics are so mid- nineties, the golden era of CGI, when computer geeks found ways to blow up the earth realistically and paved the road for a decade long string of high octane, low sense assaults on audiences. Emmerich was responsible for many – as producer or director and cpycats were plentiful. A partial list of interchangeably formulaic disaster films includes Deep Impact, Executive Decision, Dante’s Peak, Volcano, Armegeddon, and Perfect Storm – all triumphs of computer imaging.

But that was then and this is now.

These days, audiences are sophisticated and unnnshockable, well beyond that CGI gee whiz phase. A mobile phone can do everything but wash the dishes, so blowing up the California coastline or flooding China doesn’t really amount to much.

The disaster epic genre hasn’t been in its grave long enough to be of nostalgic interest, and yet, someone spent $265M to get 2012 made. Even the stars are from the mid-nineties - Jon Cusack, Amanda Peet and Danny Glover.

The effects are exciting for the first hour or so, but they begin to grate on the nerves - too much, too many, and too little relief. The storylines are formulaic and predictable –everything that happens you know will happen; every cliché in the book is here. The audience’ intelligence is severely underestimated. But maybe audiences that weren’t around to see movies in the disaster era may take a shine to this slick, weather gone wild porn.

Natural disasters are all well and good, our most troubling challenges at this moment in time are man made – economic collapse, wars in the Middle East, terrorism, crazed shooters, global warming, sex addicted talk show hosts and fights in swine flu innoculations lines. Nature running amok all by herself is really not on our Top Ten Worries list these days. Who has time? And as we have established, we already did that.

We’re doing what we can to improve the environment; we’re trying to be more humane and inclusive, we put a black president into office and we run for the cure. Things have changed since Emmerich first hit us over the head and there is no reason to turn back.

A successful disaster movie should be a fun ride- this is anything but. It takes itself too seriously to amuse. There’s no comic relief and few authentic human moments – even though that excellent British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor tries mightily.

Even so, the film will make potsful of money and inspire yet another wave of computer created disaster epics. Emmerich allegedly has two more disaster films skedded, one about a train heading to destroy New York and another about an entity from space threatening the earth. Whatever.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

This audacious comedy is based on the novel and website by Max Tucker, one of the most egregious womanisers and drunkards in modern literature, if his stories are to be believed. Tucker is a law graduate who has dedicated himself to sexual and alcoholic decadence and blogging about it. His deep disdain for women is clear and his antics intense, but is he entirely honest aout his escapades? Can one person have so many extreme social (or antisocial) episodes and still be alive, not shot dead in some back alley, or dead from liver disease? It would be interesting to follow up on Max in ten years time to determine number one, if he grew up, and number two, lived to tell.

Max privately funded this ‘road’ film based on his scratchings, and created one of the most odiforous, malodorous and malignant ‘comedies’ to draw breath. Sure, he throws around phrases like ‘Gordian knot’ and ‘elysian’ but two dollar words don’t make it right, or raise the tone of this feces-based attack on an unsuspecting public.

Three men embark on a bachelor party that goes awry during which Max’ true charcater emerges, which incidentally is so big it sucks all the air out of the film. Bad things happen and worse things happen because of this guy. He barely notices the wreckage he has inflicted on his friends lives because of his selfishness.

Max’s view of women is low. He finds nomal social behaviour utterly banal and detestable and does his best to arouse abnormal behaviour. His greatest thrill is the idea of having sex with women lacking various senses. Not that these are hanging offences, it’s just that it’s mean spirited, crass and unfunny.

T he character of Max, played by Gilmore Girls grad Matt Czuchry, appears to be suffering from some kind of anti-social, psychopathic, or borderline personality disorder or something – I’m no doctor but I used to watch Movies of the Week. He is calm when he creates disturbances, manipulates even his most hard core dedicated friends, has his way, tests them some more only more cruelly, and remains completely oblivious to their suffering. If it registers at all, he is coolly untouched. He has only a passing acquaintance with feeling and through his need to satisfy his appetites, becomes monstrous.

It’s strange indeed to see this textbook case up there on the big screen and know that people are expected to pay to see it and laugh. That’s audiacity! One must give Max credit for challenging the status quo, even if he had to pony up the cash to do so.

His character’s purpose is to mentally smash others into smithereens and watch them clean up the mess, but the climax comes in one of the most revolting scenes in recent movie memory. He realises others have been cleaning up his messes all his life, leading to a revelation about being a better person. But it turns out to be a fake revelation jerry rigged to manipulate the wedding party.

In what universe is this funny? At its heart, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is sad, sad and scary, as once again, we are expected to root for the worst person in the room. There was the occassional laugh to be sure, but there was plenty of averting of eyes and in the end something like nausea, none of which spells H-I-T.

A Christmas Carol

Jim Carrey plays eight roles in this stupendously visual reworking of Charles Dickens’ iconic holiday tale; he delivers each character in unique ways, through accent, facial expression, and carriage. Each character rendering is unique, capturing him in different life stages, respectful of Carrey’s superhuman transformative powers. Carrey plays the gamut of emotions, and every one works because he is a stone cold genius.

But our boy needs a hit about now following a long underwhelming run that includes The Number 23 and Yes Man. While A Christmas Carol will draw plenty of holiday traffic, and will enter the Christmas classic canon just because … it’s not the greatest offering from the usually explosively terrific house of Pixar. The artwork is nothing short of stupendous, with each painstakingly drafted detail creating myriad emotions and textures as Dickens wrote them, but it may be too much of a good thing.

Technical wizardry tends to overwhelm not only the story but our emotions, knocking the air out of the soufflé. There is no space to experience the story because something big and impressive is bearing down on us, followed by another and another.

There’s also that thing about CGI, the images are perfectly formed, and representative of the real thing, but the living spark is absent, and the things are deadened. Sometimes it can work, but in a story that is already dark and death obsessed, the difference between life and not life is a hairline. There is too little gaiety and colour, too much dust and fear, too much clanging of special effects.

An exception is the brilliant and consistent rendering of Carrey’s eyes.

A Christmas Carol is a tad short of a regular film length so the filmmakers opted to flesh it out, fair enough, as they have in every film version to date. But to put Scrooge in a sewer to stretch for time just indicates a lack of integrity and imagination – a low point.

Colin Firth plays Scrooge’ nephew Fred and Gary Oldman plays his longsuffering clerk Bob Cratchit. Oldman also plays the voices of Tiny Tim and ghostly, ghastly Jacob Marley. Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright, and Cary Elwes have small roles.

Its interesting how some ‘cartoons’ look like exaggerated versions of some actors and others are identifiable by a single strong physical indicator. Where Carrey has those unmistakable eyes in eight roles, Penn has that signature cheekbone structure and Oldman the apple cheeks. They look like themselves but not perfectly so; they look like the characters they are playing.

Our view of Victorian London is staggering, the details and dimensions of the architecture are from a bygone era, erased by WWII bombings, and now animated for our viewing pleasure by the Pixar team.

It’s a mixed bag of blessings, but ultimately worthwhile; we are reminded how broad is Jim Carrey’s scope and talent. Let’s hope this gives him the boost he deserves.

Bronson

Bronson is a hell of a ride. It’s so huge in scope that it’s almost hard to take. You can ‘feel’ this film’s ambition as it examines the cult of personality in the form of a jailed convict.

Michael Peterson served 7 years as Her Majesty’s guest at a variety of English prisons for robbery. Unfortunately, Peterson was a lunatic and psychopath of the first order but his uncontrolled violent anger and attacks resulted an extended of thirty years in solitary confinement.

While inside, Peterson discovered his ‘true’ personality - Charles Bronson. He developed himself to ‘be’ the man and developed not just a personality and swagger to match, he also developed a following. Peterson was known as England’s Most Violent Person which gave him a certain cache around the block, not that he cared. He had so much fire inside that outsiders’ opinions did not matter.

His presence alone was demanding, and beyond that he gave not a whit about others. He was completely fearless – he bashes heads and instils terror and anger in prison mates and guards, and he laughed at their attempts to contain him. He also inspired devotion. It’s the kind of crazy you might feel if your roller coaster seat ran off the rails.

Bronson, based on a true story, is so outsize it’s hard to take it all in. This is a man with an uncontrolled, gargantuan ego locked away like a gorilla in a tiny cage. The film is designed to highlight, send up, glorify, and celebrate him, as though he were onstage performing to the house. His greatest accomplishment aside from his manufactured personality was his will to survive.

Tom Hardy brilliantly brings him into being fully formed and fearsome who can’t squelch himself. He’s a giant of a bad boy, pacing a 5 by 7 jail cell raring to explode. His relentless terrorism is played up in an epic cartoon-like way, and he becomes a vaudevillian Grand Guignol superstar.

The script is searingly funny and engaging (“Prison was heaven –how we laughed!”) and he’s charismatic enough for us to care; as hilarious and compelling as he is, Bronson is also someone you’d cross the road to avoid or buy a ticket out of the country. There is a sense of imminent threat that emanates from him thanks to Hardy’s’ superb performance.

This is when he’s not drugged. Psychiatric nurses manage to stupefy him with regular doses of sedatives and the idea is that he spent many years like out of it. When he is finally pronounced ‘sane’ (with a stamped poster to show us) or the government has found him too expensive to house any longer, he is released into society. His parents retrieve him and take them to their new home where he discovers sadly that his childhood things have been thrown away - it thirty years later and it was unlikely that he would be released.

Bronson is an awesome film in the old fashioned sense, a noisy, big, bold, and shattering journey inside and around a dangerous man. It’s executed with tremendous style reminiscent of Peter Greenaway’s films and heavy on a swelling, sentimental orchestral score. It is elegant, effete, important, regal, and maddening. A superstar off the rails! Now that’s entertainment!

Hardy’s career is on a major upswing. He will appear in Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Mad Max 4 for George Miller.

Boondock Saints: All Saints Day

The brother Saints are back wearing rakish grins, peacoats over bulletproof vests and plenty of firepower. That’s good news for the apparent hordes of fans of the original 1999 Boondock Saints - the original film cost $7M and reportedly earned nearly $60M. It concerned fraternal twins and their father putting down those who would do evil. Their mission is much the same in All Saints Day – kill for the church. Both films are weird amalagms of heartfelt religious / moral passion and deadly brutal violence set in Boston, a town that has demonstrated a similar split personality over time.

Ten years ago Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus played the MacManus fraternal twins. They reprise their roles in the latest Boondocks outing but as much bigger stars, due in part to the popularity of the original film on DVD. Billy Connelly is back as their father and co-conspirator, and they are reunited with many of the characters from the first film. The trigger happy extended family is intact again to raise hell in God’s name.

The action opens as the Macmanus’ hide out on a bucolic sheepfarm somewhere in the mists of Ireland. When the local priest informs them that their beloved Boston priest has been ritally mudered, the boys hie themselves back to Beantown on a mission of righteous vengeance. They meet the same stumblebum local police, murderous Italian mobsters and various hoods from years ago, but make room for a new partner, a Mexican fighter capable of knocking a man out with his wrists chained.

The twins are heavily tattooed with Roman Catholic symbols, crucifixions and Biblical passages; they know andfeel their faith deeply. And they pray hard and bless their victims before the blow them to smithereens. These are the guys we’re meant to root for. Also ‘heroic’ is a tart-tongued, stiletto heel wearing elite agent played by Julie Benz, who is ‘so smart I make smart people feel retarded’. She’s quick with a quip and loaded gun and there forone reason only – the usual one – the young male demographic.

Eccesiastical dirges swell in the background, seeming to give the film religious gravistas, just moments before it veers into second tier character idiocy, including poopy pants and a severely crippled vocabulary.

The schizophrenic nature of the film is also its fascination. Through history, wars waged in the name of God have spread evil; killing for religion is the norm. The Saints are in familiar territory. But the film does boggle the mind in its naked hypocrisy; they should have called it Prayer and Rosaries - The Rock Video.

Still, it’s an envigorating movie experience. Martial arts and creative violence make it sing, an while it’s not high on the cerebral side, it does marry action with cool actors – Peter Fonda as an ageing mobster wannabe, Willem Dafoe as an FBI agent / enabler, JU&dd Nelson as an hysterical – in the psycho sense – mob boss, and TV’s Trailer Park Boy Rob Wells in an extended cameo. A key character died his way out of a possible three-quel while another re-appears in the nick of time to make one a no-brainer.

Writer director Troy Duffy hasn’t made a film since the original Boondocks Saints, but as this has the earmarks of success, either mainstream or nerdstrean, he may be shaping ideas for the next outing as we speak.