District 9

There's nothing like a massive and cleverly-directed viral video marketing campaign to get me interested in a new science fiction film. I'm a sucker for watching film trailers and teasers on the internet, so I was pretty hyped about the recent release of 'District 9' - the new film "by Peter Jackson" about aliens who came to Earth and had nothing better to do than slum it up in sunny Jo'berg. The teaser clips seemed to indicate that the film would follow a documentary style, kind of a Cloverfield thing. I'm a big fan of that style, so I'm surprised I even managed to wait for a whole week after its release before seeing it.

I knew before I got to the cinema that this wasn't just going to be a science fiction thriller, but an attempt at a clever piece of social commentary. I love it when story-writers can wrap intelligent stuff up inside a good plot and don't need to signpost the things you're supposed to see. In 'District 9' the aliens are ghettoed in a slum in Johannesburg, without basic rights and demonised by the rest of the population they engage in crime and looting to survive. It doesn't take a genius to work out that this refers to South Africa's Apartheid years and the institutionalised discrimination that surrounded it. There is also a nasty great faceless corporation trying to appropriate the aliens' technology for their own weapons research, not caring who gets in the way in the meantime. It also hints at attitudes towards mass immigration and how the people who settled in a place first react to other populations who come along later.

Apart from all the clever bits, which were fairly predictable, the film threw an exciting curve-ball at me. The documentary style which we had been promised in the trailers lasted only about 25 minutes, right up until the point where the main character gets alien goo on him and starts turning a little weird. The shaky-cam vanishes and we start to get a kind of normal film, the whole thing turns into a proper action film with massive guns, laser weapons, spaceships, explosions, evil Nigerians and a robocop suit. I really was not expecting that; and although I might often shake my head at the disappointing Holywoodness of it all, for some reason I went along with it this time. Maybe it was because the subtexts were so interesting, maybe it was because the film earned a flash-bang ending after a quality start, maybe it was just because the explosions were loads of fun. The bit where all the soldiers get blown apart in sequence by ever-increasingly bizarre weapons - call me a nutter if you want but I thought it was well funny.

It is about time that a film came along that lived up to the billing. So if you want explosions as well as social commentary - look no further. Best science fiction film I've seen this year (not seen 'Moon' yet though).

Anvil!

It is testament to the cultural hotbed that is Bracknell, that when I went along to the local Odeon last Tuesday evening to see the 'Director's cut' - a once-a-week screening of a film which is typically a limited release - absolutely no-one else was there. I say no-one, but there were chums of mine with me, and of course it was fun to act like we owned the cinema without having the inconvenience of annoying other people. However, I would have liked to see as least a small number of people turn out to see a film which has been billed as the real life 'Spinal Tap'. One of the greatest comedy films of all time - but in real life? Who is anyone to say no to that?

The film opens with some typically hazy footage of a rock festival in early 1980s Japan. The voice-over tells us we are watching a band that once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with acts like Bon Jovi and Anthrax. We see a vox pops of Lars Ulrich and Slash telling us how this band were an inspiration. We see an unrealistically-dressed bedraggled rocker desperately trying to play his guitar with a dildo. This band is Anvil.

My first reaction was to assume that this was a clever gag, that in fact Anvil were made up and we were about to witness a kind of post-post-modern Spinal Tap spoof in which the audience were being utterly lied to with a straight face. This fear wasn't allayed in the slightest when the lead singer of the band took us through Anvil's back-catalogue of albums. As the lurid trashy metal designs flew past the screen it was so reminiscent of the same scene in 'A Mighty Wind' that I became convinced I was witnessing a spoof. Then we are introduced to Steve 'Lips' Kudlow, the lead singer and driving force of Anvil - a man who now works in a groceries delivery firm in a cold outpost in Canada and dreams of things that never were. It was only then I realised that no one this sad and deluded could possibly have been created for screen, that in fact him and his drummer - his best friend from childhood Robb Reiner - were indeed the real thing, a band that never made it.

What follows is a surprisingly touching story about a couple of old guys who have seen their lives drift by. After entertaining dreams of becoming rock stars, the simply never made it and have been thrown on the scrap heap of life - where so many ordinary people end up. The band try to re-invigorate their career with a rather sad 'tour' around Europe - in which they play to pubs containing 'crowds' numbering in double figures. At first it is rather funny to see a bunch of sad old men trying to re-create their youthful days; but there's a point in the film when you realise that these people aren't caricatures – they could be anyone we all know in real life, after that the story becomes rather poignant. You can see through the face paint and the leathers and the devil horns and the other trappings of metal paraphernalia, you end up seeing a couple of vulnerable old men who only want to do what they enjoy the most - play music.

The film winds up with the band's attempt to record a new album in the UK, and finally being invited out to Japan to play the morning slot in a day-long metal festival. The film ends on a wonderfully uplifting note as Kudlow and Reiner realise that despite all the adversity of their careers, their failures and aging years, there is always hope for people who have a dream and want to work hard.

That probably sounds really hokey, but I left the cinema with a smile on my face and a renewed faith that getting old doesn't mean that all your best times are behind you. Go and see this film! Now!

The Hurt Locker

Heard some great reviews of this film and so decided to avoid Inglorious Basterds in favour of this when I went to the cinema last weekend. I get the cinema quite rarely these days, so it was quite a big decision for me. I think I'll be going to the cinema more often now that I've worked out I can cycle to the local Showcase from my new house.

Anyway, 'The Hurt Locker', a film about the Iraq war - or is it? Well it's a film about a bomb disposal team operating in Iraq, although the fact that it's in Iraq is fairly irrelevant. There's not a huge amount about the whys and wherefors of the US army's invasion of that country, what they're doing there or how the people react to them. There is a huge amount about peoples' reactions to war, the pressure, the exhaustion and the desire to escape in one piece.

The story is about a unit in Iraq who have the unenviable task (is any task in Iraq actually enviable?) of disarming booby-trapped bombs - Improvised Explosive Devices. The engineer in charge of the unit is killed in the opening scene and a new guy is sent to replace him, the new guy is a bit of a fruit loop who gets an adrenaline high off of taking risks and disarming bombs using traditional methods. The film revolves around the tension between this character and the people who have to live and work with him.

The first thing that impressed me was how the film kept its own tension going. The first time they diffuse a bomb it is tense, when the new guy arrives and does the same it is tenser still. By the third diffusing scene I was starting to wonder when it was going to get boring and repetitive - it never did. The next thing that struck me was the use of fairly famous actors in minor roles. Guy Peirce plays the bomb disposal guy who gets killed at the start, Ralph Fiennes is a British soldier who cops it and Evangeline Lilly plays the wife of the main character, she appears right at the end for only 2 scenes and barely gets any lines. I guess all these characters are supposed to be some kind of statement about loss in war, be it because of death (a la 'The Thin Red Line' but miles better), or by emotionally losing contact with those who have not experienced conflict.

I'm struggling to think of anything bad to say about this film at all. The usual habit war films have of treating 'the other side' as faceless goons doesn't really happen. Even the slightly gung-ho ending (which plays out to a rocking metal soundtrack) doesn't make the film feel any less about war being bad, more that the lead character thrives of the adrenaline war gives him - even if that adrenaline leads to deaths and woundings of others around him.

Overall I'm going to have to give this a big stamp of approval. Shame about missing Inglorious Basterds - saw 'District 9' yesterday (review soon) so I guess Tarantino is going to have to wait for the DVD.

Revolutionary road

Sam Mendes rides again! Ten years after American Beauty the British director returns to poke yet more holes in the suburban nightmare that is the American dream. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio play a couple who are married, have two kids, live in a well-to-do neighbourhood and are desperately unhappy with life. DiCaprio works in a dead-end job while Winslet maintains the household; each wants out, and so they agree to relocate to Paris to chase a youthful dream of excitement and freedom. The fates conspire against them though, and I wasn't really that surprised when the film ended with the dream unfulfilled.

There are a lot of really good and really bad things about this film. Superb acting by the two leads carries the whole movie. There's a spectacularly emotional scene where they have a huge row – wonderfully acted. The less emotional stuff is just as good, Winslet carries off some great facial tics while playing the part of the wife trying ever so hard to appear happy. That's what great film acting is all about – attention to detail.

The subject of the film is really interesting too, but it's also in this regard that I felt the story-telling to be somewhat heavy-handed. So they're a couple in crisis, do we really need them to stand there in their kitchen and tell us that they're in crisis? There are hidden truths in their marriage, do we really need a character to be introduced who has a mental condition preventing from using tact? He then wanders around the set explaining the plot. Honestly, that's one of the lamest plot devices I've ever witnessed. I rather feel that the director should have had more confidence in his own ability to tell a story – ham-fisted plot crowbars are not needed Sam!

It's all about Winslet and DiCaprio though. I've never seen Titanic – but I understand that there was a whole excitement about this pair being re-united for Revolutionary Road. They certainly appear to have a chemistry of some sort, plenty enough to carry the story despite any unfortunate plot Macuffins. I kind of think that Winslet should have won the Oscar for this instead, since even though The Reader is a better film she's hardly been better than she is here. And she looks great in all those 1950s dresses too!

I'm still not going to watch Titanic though.

Valkyrie

Another film about the second world war, another film in which a Hollywood A-lister gets to star in a dramatisation of a real series of events. This time it's Tom Cruise, possibly one of Hollywood’s biggest draws, appearing as a German soldier who becomes involved in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Eagle's Lair in 1944.

I was wondering how Hollywood would go about depicting a failed attempt on Hitler's life, an attempt after which almost all of the conspirators were either strung up or shot. After all, Hollywood doesn't normally get on too well with stories of failure. Rather than any dramatic re-write of history, the film concentrates on emphasising the heroism of what the bomb plotters did. They risked certain death while attempting to bring the Nazi regime down - no less than troops on the Allied side were doing.

I assume that certain liberties have been taken with the historical fact in order to make the characters more interesting, but overall I was pleased with what I saw on screen. Nice to see that the Hollywood world can make a film in which not all Germans soldiers are portrayed as Hitler-loving and in which the German people are trying to do something to bring down the tyrant from within instead of sitting and waiting for salvation from Roosevelt.

One dismal bit of the film was the accent of the guy who plays Hitler. For the most part the accents were good; rather than putting on silly German accents the cast all talk in their own native English-speaking voices. The guy that plays Hitler though puts on a slightly German accent. I was wondering whether this was because the producers didn't think the audience could cope with a Hitler who spoke the queen's English, so had to ensure he had a German accent to make him seem more sinister. I hope this isn't the case, but there doesn't seem to be any other reason for it.