Sneakers - more propaganda

When I got this through the post from LoveFilm I was struggling to remember why I ordered it. Eventually I recalled that one of our resident electronic engineers / tech obsessives at work told me I should see it. After watching it I can see why. 'Sneakers' is a film that anyone with an interest in electronics and gadgets would have loved; especially in the early 90s, years before the modern age of futuristic gadgets. Plus it has an outstanding cast (Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Ben Kingsley, Dan Akroyd, Mary MacDonnel + others), I can see why it came to me recommended.

The film follows Robert Redfords's Martin Bishop and his small band of techies who make a living by having banks commission them to break into their vaults - to demonstrate their weaknesses. One day Bishop is contacted by men from the government and told that they want to use the skills of his group to get into a secret beyond he's ever seen before. Though he initially refuses, he has an 'interesting' past and is somewhat strong armed into helping them. When their plans start to unravel, in classic Hitchcockian style the only way Bishop can escape from a certain fate is to barrel headlong towards it.

Despite being a 15 certificate 'Sneakers' is something of a kids film. There's some comedy mileage and although several people are killed there's no violence shown at all. The film seems somewhat quaint now-a-days, and though standards have changed over the years it's more likely that the early 1990s depictions of the internet and gadgets with flashing lights are what give that impression. It would be rather harmless stuff if it were not for a central plot point that had me in a rage - i.e. the PROPAGANDA. Allow me to expand:

The central point of the film turns on Kingsley's character trying to convince Redford's character that the anarchy and freedom that they sought in their youth as hackers is now possible on a global scale. Kingsley argues that where in the past they could irritate a single bank, now he has the power to bring down the whole system - a world where there's no control, money or power. So I'm sitting there thinking "This is a great idea" - and then suddenly Kinglsey's the bad guy. From nowhere, he becomes this Bond villain with secret lair and goons that Redford's group has to break into and steal back 'the chip'. All because he expressed a vaguely anti-capitalist sentiment.

I believe I've opined several times before that the US government doesn't need to actively control Hollywood's media output, the American movie industry does a better job than the Soviet Union ever could of implanting pro-establishment ideology on to an impressionable population. 'Sneakers' seems to be another in a long line of such movies; in which a character is the bad guy for the simple reason that he opposes the status quo. Seriously, watch 'Sneakers' and tell me what it is about Ben Kingsley's character that makes him the bad guy. I promise you there's nothing in it beyond simple pro-establishment propaganda.

So, yet another moderately entertaining film ruined for me because I like to stop and think about what it is I'm watching. Maybe one of these days I'll turn my brain off when watching a film. This'll probably be the last review of 2011, top 5 of the year coming up in 2012...

Julia's Eyes

Any Guillermo Del Toro 'presentation' is worth a look in. He's got a knack for being involved in making effective and moving thrillers, and I like watching films in Spanish, perfect combination. Julia's Eyes follows Spanish astronomer Julia after the recent suicide of her twin sister Sara. Both sisters have a genetic disorder than means their eyesight will progressively deteriorate with time. Stress adds to the process, so when Julia becomes convinced that Sara's death was caused by someone else her eyesight starts to deteriorate rapidly.

We the audience are aware from scene 1 that something potentially otherworldly is going on, as we see Sara's 'suicide' - a figure appearing out of nowhere to push her off a rickety chair and send her to her death. When Julia and husband Issac arrive at Sara's house Julia struggles with the reduced levels of light and thinks she sees someone else hanging around. Neither Issac nor the police are interested in what she thinks though, so she goes off to meet Sara's friends and slowly becomes convinced that someone mysteriously inconspicuous killed her sister.

As the film progresses, Julia experiences several states of sightedness, each of which is used with some effectiveness to add chills. For example, when Julia is totally blinded for a period the camera never shows us anyone's face. The film shies away from becoming a full-on horror, instead it feels like an X-Files monster of the week episode - reminded me a bit of the Eugene Tooms arc for those nerdy enough to remember. It also holds back on gore until very close to the end, to the extent that you're not at all expecting it when it happens - again, very effective.

An entirely decent thriller without any great histrionics, over-reliance on special effects or mis-placed gore, 'Julia's Eyes' is something of a surprisingly good find.

Weird Film Night Xmas Special - Rare Exports

An occasionally-funny, low budget proper weird film, 'Rare Exports' is a Christmas spoof set in the mountainous wilds of Finland. The premise is this: Santa is in fact a legendary monster a la Grendel who was trapped under ice and rock by the ancients of Finland. When meddlesome English-speakers arrive with tools and dynamite looking for the true Santa - they unwittingly unleash an unspeakable ancient evil. Or do they?

Sounds like a bit of a horror film so far, and it could have been if the main characters were not an inept trio of local hunters and their two intrepid sons, all of whom bumble around in the snow and accidentally kidnap this apparent Santa risen-from-the-earth. It's also pretty low budget film. There are characters that we never see, ropey blood and gore special effects and an ending that in a higher budget film would have warranted at least a small amount of CGI. This is hardly a complaint though, the low budget seems to have kept it trim and to the point. Refreshing in the modern age of 'anything goes' on screen.

The film's probably not well-acted enough to be genuinely a comedy. But at 80 minutes it's a great length for a silly spoof that no-one for a second should take seriously. 'Rare Exports' is an eccentric and subversive film that's an ideal antidote to the now-standard commercialisation of the Christmas period - something it ends up nicely lampooning at its conclusion.

The Box

The second slightly odd film I've seen recently is much more mainstream - 'The Box' stars Cameron Diaz no less, with James Marsden and Frank Langella. The film is made by the same guy who directed 'Donnie Darko', and has a similar unworldly vibe. Diaz and Marsden play the Lewises, an unremarkable couple living in mid-1970s Virginian suburbia. One day they recieve a package containing a box with a button on top and an explanation from Langella's mysterious Arlington Steward; press the button and you will get a million dollars, but someone will die. Or leave the box alone for a day and nothing will happen.

This is something of a mystical film that uses a lot of misdirection, Twilight Zone style (the film is indeed based on an episode of that TV series) music and hinting at science fiction concepts to create an unsettling atmostphere. Marsden's character works at NASA, on a project looking for life on Mars. The NSA are in town, obfuscating, spinning and behaving mysteriously as they might a typical X-Files episode. All the while there's this box, the button and what pressing it might mean. And once that decision's been made, the consequences.

Just who is Steward working for that they would go to such trouble just to test the resolve of the Lewis family? The NSA, a shadowy organisation within the government, Martians, or perhaps an even higher power?

Enjoyable, but I'm sure if you think about it too much it doesn't make sense.

F - Hoodie Horror

Kicked December off with a couple of oddish films. First up was 'F', a British thriller that was made about a year ago in the middle of all the hype about 'feral' teenagers running amok. Remember all that? The story follows Robert Anderson, a teacher who is attacked in his class and becomes obsessed by the idea that kids are out to get adults. A year passes and he is separated from his wife, drinking before classes, estranged from his daughter (a pupil in his class) and generally on the fringes of society.

Cue an attack on the school a la Assault on Precinct 13. Shadow-faced attackers wearing grey hoodies and possessing extra-ordinary ninja powers attack the school in the evening when all the characters we've been introduced to happen to be hanging around. Blood and carnage follow.

Despite setting up a tense atmosphere and delivering several seriously grotty makeup-laden death scenes, the film is only 75 minutes long and fails utterly by bailing out at the end. The film just peters out and fades to the credits just at the point when things are being set up for a finish. Did the budget run out or something? I don't understand how the ending could ever have made sense in the mind of a script writer. Unless they're trying to imply that something other-worldly has happened, or that Anderson has imagined the whole thing and is in fact responsible. But that makes no sense either. To elaborate further would be to provide spoilers that no one wants. It's only 75 minutes, why not have a look yourself?

Green Hornet - the first hour anyway

Did you ever watch a DVD that broke half way through, then you thought "At least now I have an excuse to not watch the rest of this"? Well that was me on Saturday evening. For some reason I had put 'Green Hornet' on my LoveFilm list and I had nothing else to do as Amazon hadn't delivered Skyrim yet. With home-made curry in hand and West Ham's 3-1 victory over Derby secure, I needed entertainment. DVD in PS3, press play, empty brain and try to enjoy...

... 1 hour later and it skips a full 20 minutes. Upon removing the DVD I discover a large crack on the outside of the disc. Ain't no amount of cleaning going to sort that out. Anyway, frankly I'd had more than enough of Seth Rogan shouting "Dude! That's - like - AWESOME!" every 5 seconds so I chalked it up to divine intervention and started playing some of the DLC I'd missed on Mass Effect 2 first time around. I'm going to send it back without telling them it's broken, just in case they try to send me the replacement DVD I could do without.

Since I didn't actually see Green Hornet all the way to the end I feel I can't provide a full review here. But unless something pretty bloody spectacular happens in the last 45 minutes I don't see how it can be turned around. The premise is that Seth Rogan is the son of a media mogul (Tom Wilkinson) who dies in the first scene. Any film that's prepared to waste Tom Wilkinson in a single scene isn't worth much (unless of course he isn't really dead and comes back at the end - which would make a lot of sense actually). Rogan's character then discovers that the guy who makes his coffee is some kind of superhero type, so they build lots of 'AWESOME DUDE!' cars and guns and go around fighting with criminals. Sigh.

Christoph Waltz is very entertaining as the massively arch bad guy. I guess it would have been nice to see how Waltz's character links in with Rogan's and Tom Wilkinson - but I really can't be arsed watching the rest.

The more I think about it the more I'm convinced Tom Wilkinson's character can't be dead and that there has to be some kind of twist. Anyway, I definitely don't care. Honest.

X-Men First Class

Despite spending almost 20 hours in planes over the last month I only managed to watch a single film. Partly due to a delay in the BA entertainment system coming on, partly due to me taking full advantage of the nearly empty flight back to sleep, but mainly due to there being a very poor selection of films available.

6 months ago I would never have watched an X-Men film. To my uneducated brain the X-Men was a rather silly fantasy cartoon in which a bunch of super heroes fly around trying to save / enslave (delete as appropriate) the world. I never really understood what's so interesting about watching people with 'powers' hit each other. Maybe it's nothing more than an escapist fantasy. I want more substance to my fantasy.

Turns out that X-Men actually has quite a lot of substance. I am indebted to my housemate Andy who explained to me that the X-Men comics were created as an allegory for the changing nature of society during the upheavals of the civil rights movement in the US in the 1960s. The mutants who make up the X-Men represent an emergent social force that the world has to recognise and deal with. Andy encouraged me to think of the two factions of the mutant X-men as representing the groups led by Martin Luther King (Professor X) and Malcolm X (Magneto). Both want the same thing, but where Professor X sees an opportunity to create a better world, Magneto sees only inevitable conflict.

'X-Men First Class' tells a re-imagined (from the original comics) story of the origins of these two characters. Professor X (aka Charles Xavier played by James McAvoy) is raised in an upper class American East coast family, Magneto (aka Erik Lehnsherr played by Michael Fassbender) survives the horrors of the Holocaust. These wildly different childhoods give each character a worldview that will define the rest of their lives. When former Nazi camp commander Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) tries to foment war between the US and Soviets by causing the Cuban missile crisis, Professor X's fledgling X-Men intervene. But where Professor X wants to foster peace between the warring parties, Magneto wants only revenge for Shaw's crimes.

It's a classic science fiction film, complete with metaphors for society and a neat reworking of history. There are some exceptional action sequences, nods to the existing X-Men films (a brief cameo by Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in particular) and a rousing finale. It's a story that could have become cheesy in the wrong hands, but Michael Fassbender injects enough pain and realism into his character that when he makes his choice to go down a path to the dark side it's hard not to sympathise. I felt like cheering when he pulls on his cape and announces to the world that he is now Magneto. More proof that Fassbender is the next big thing in acting.

Since I only saw my first X-Men film 3 months ago I was surprised by my own reaction to 'First Class'. I utterly bought into the story of how events can dramatically change people's lives, and how everyone has a choice to react positively or negatively to those events. Amazing how wrong I was about this series.

Oh, and another role for January Jones, another ice queen character (this time literally). Can someone please give her a movie role that lets her shine a-la Mad Men?

In Time

So I leave the country for 4 weeks and when I come back Justin Timberlake's a movie star. How'd that happen? OK so maybe he had a small role in 'The Social Network', but now a leading role in an interesting-looking Science fiction film? Well it's probably for the best that the world continues to surprise me.

'In Time' is one of those great little science fiction premises. The kind of thing you wonder how Phillip K Dick or one of his like didn't think of it. Imagine a world in which time literally is money. Everyone is genetically engineered to stop ageing at the age of 25. At that time you're awarded one more year to live. You're free to then spend this time as currency, earn more time by working and live your life as you wish. Most people struggle with debt and live day to day before they finally get unlucky and expire. A tiny minority are stupendously wealthy though, with millennia to their names.

What we have here is a neat metaphor for the type of hyper capitalism that's ripping the Earth to shreds in real life. Time literally is money, and for the rich to get richer people in the ghetto have to give up their time and die. Timberlake's character (William Salas) has a chance encounter with a wealthy businessman who has seen too much and wants to die, Salas is given 100 years of time - almost more than he can comprehend. He escapes the ghetto to the world of the wealthy, eager to "... take them for all they've got." Though precisely why he resolves to do this is a little unclear; probably cos his mum died, but I don't see how that equates to bringing down the system. Ham-fisted though this metaphor is, it's still the kind of thing that gets my bolshie brain excited. Make no mistake about just how unsubtle 'In Time' is though, but I suppose Marx's theories on wage slavery aren't going to be presented in any other way in a Hollywood action scifi romp.

While Salas isn't explaining the cruelty of capitalism to anyone who'll listen, the film mainly takes the form of a Robin Hood-meets-Bonnie and Clyde heist movie with a number of very recognisable actors from TV and film. Cillian Murphy once again uses his mad eyes to play a sort of Lawful Evil character keeping the Proles in their place, while Vincent Kartheiser - well I guess that's exactly what he does too. Then there's Amanda Seyfried, who has very alluring eyes and does exceptionally well to run around in 6 inch heels and a cocktail dress. Lots of eyes going on in this film.

It'd be remiss to totally gloss over the various plot holes in 'In Time'. There is little consistency between prices in the film. A coffee is quoted as costing 4 minutes, which if you assume £2 for a cuppa means a month is ~£20,000. One of the posh hotels is charging a month for one night - seriously? Also, how do you spend money when you're younger than 25? And why is security at every bank in the city so bad?

Overall it isn't a great film. It's the kind of thing that would have made for a good chin-strokey episode of The Twilight Zone and 100 minutes is stretching the possibilities of the plot. But then it does have an excellent anti-capitalist thread to it, which raises it above a lot of the brainless scifi action films that we get these days. If I was into giving ratings out of 10, this would probably score a solidly-above-average 6.

My American cinema trip

So while I was away in the States recently I went to a cinema to see a film (obviously to see a film, what else am I going to do in a cinema?). The AMC theatre at the Deerbrook Mall just north of Huston, Texas in the town of Humble boasts an impressive 24 screens and on Friday last week was - along with everyone else in the western world - showing the newly-opened 'Immortals'. A film whose main selling point appears to be its palindromic release date, it was not my choice. But my friends were adamant and I reasoned that experiencing the cinema in America would be something of a cultural eye-opener. Surely there had to be some differences to a UK cinema?

First up was the price. $9.50 for a standard adult ticket, which at current exchange rates is about £6 and certainly cheaper than anything you'd find at a large multiplex in the UK. The current exchange rate is historically (well, for the last 5 - 10 years anyway) unfavourable for British travellers to the States, so in theory it could have been even cheaper.

The film was due to begin at 5:40pm. We got into the theatre at 5:35pm to find that adverts were already playing. At 5:40 the adverts stopped and the trailers began. Again, utterly different from the UK where the listed 'start' time merely warns you of an impending bombardment of adverts into your face. Plus, there were loads more trailers than we ever get in England. So in the end I think there was just as much faff time between the 'start time' and the actual start of the film, but at least over there it's trailers.

The trailed films looked universally rubbish. Loads of stuff that'll hopefully never come out in the UK because we don't jump up and yell "Fuck Yeah!" every time someone squeezes a trigger. This for example.

The US citizens in the cinema certainly did a good job of living up to their national stereotype. Plenty of whoops and yeahs and a round of applause at the end. Pretty entertaining stuff, and while I think that the incessant yelling would get on my tits eventually, as a one-off my experience this was far superior to what we get in British multiplexes.

Oh, and Immortals is shite. A single idea, no plot, ultra violent, token female character, blood splattered bastardisation of Greek mythology. To call it a rehash of '300' is to give it small praise it's hardly worth of.

New Idea - Computer Games!

I've been thinking about diversifying my blog for some time now. I'd quite like to blog about some of the computer games I'm playing recently, but I know I expose myself to a narrow range of genres and so there'd be limited use in me dedicating an entire blog to the subject.

So I think I might allow myself the occasional post about what I'm playing at the moment. Unlike my film reviews, I'll seldom be writing about anything that I genuinely don't like. I'm quite picky about the games I play and often wait for several months after they come out before playing them (cos they're cheaper and you can read lots of reviews), so I generally know I'm going to enjoy what I'm playing.

Platform is the first big issue for any gamer. PC or console? Mouse and keyboard & controller? Personally I can't be bothered trying to keep up with advances in PC technology and so I play almost all my games on my Xbox 360. My first console was an N64, but I migrated to Xbox when it came out because a) I couldn't take the GameCube seriously and b) Halo. I do have a PC which was something of a mid-range spec 4 years ago. It's apparently capable of playing a surprising amount of what's coming out these days if you turn all the graphics settings down to minimum. These days the only gaming it sees is the occasional game of Civ 4. Thankfully I am going to be able to play The Old Republic when it's finally released in late December.

I have an Xbox 360 out of partial brand loyalty (I had an Xbox & Xbox Live accounts), but mainly because I don't get along with PlayStation controllers. There are very few games these days that aren't multi-platform - and so I rarely feel like I'm missing out.

To kick this new section of the blog off then, I thought I'd put my cards on the table and rattle off my favourite 10 computer games of all time. Not *the best* 10 games of all time (got to be Tetris), just the ones I've enjoyed the most. You can probably work out my age by reading through this list...

Civilisation 2

If I had decided to put these games in order, Civ 2 would easily have gone in at the top. I shudder to think about the amount of time I spent at university playing this absorbing turn-based strategy game. When I finally worked out how to beat the AI on Deity level I think I reached the height of my nerd nirvana.

Goldeneye

Though probably not the greatest FPS of all time, Goldeneye is up there with the most innovative of the genre. The first game in which enemies reacted differently if they'd been shot in the head or the foot, and one of the first in which it was entirely possible to complete a level by stealth or all guns blazing - Goldeneye blazes a trail. Plus all those drunken evenings playing multiplayer. There's a certain generation of people to whom the phrase 'one shot kill slaps' will trigger a fusillade of memories.

Knights of the Old Republic

With the greatest twist in the history (well at least my personal history) of computer gaming and the first of several games that overlaid the Star Wars universe onto a D&D rules set - KOTOR was a game I played from start to finish a number of times. This was Bioware getting it right.

Halo

The Xbox's killer app was a good 50% of the reason for me buying Microsoft's console 9 years ago. Endless LAN gaming (Blood Gulch has entered the gaming lexicon as a byword for classic & simple 'capture the flag' level design) and one of the best single player FPS games ever, it's a classic. The final level of the single player game is an astonishing countdown-to-zero car chase through alien hordes, I might go and play it this evening...

Mario Kart 64

Endless hours playing this with housemates at university (can you see a theme running through this list) mean it would be remiss of me not to include it here. I will concede that it probably wasn't as good as the SNES version, but I played this the most and so it gets the nod.

Mass Effect

The most modern game on my list, Mass Effect (parts 1 and 2) has taken the Role Playing genre to a new realm. By introducing cinematic dialogue for the player's character, Bioware have given players a whole new level of investment in their character's story. I can't remember being more emotionally attached to the plot of a computer game that when playing through the final battles of Mass Effect 2. It's probably worrying that I got such an endorphin rush out of
navigating Sheppard's team safety through their encounter with the Collectors. Roll on ME3!

Rock Band

I'm sure my housemates would attest that I would be lying if I left this off my list. The various incarnations of Rock Band have formed the basis of a number of social events and wasted evenings in mine and friends' houses.

Planescape Torment

Despite all that's come since, this isometric RPG remains unique in its dedication to character and philosophy as the driving force behind its story. The central premise is a character whom cannot be killed and his response to the question "What can change the nature of a man?". With pages of dialogue to work your way through, the D&D combat system often took a distant back seat as the 'Nameless One' wandered through the multiverse in search of his destiny. It was my first exposure to RPGs, still one of my favourite.

Shogun Total War

RTS battles + turn-based resource acquisition = brilliant game. The original might look dated now, but it's simple paper / scissors / stone battle system gives it something of a charm that I think the later versions have lost a little of.

John Tiller's Campiagn Series

Possibly the most obscure of my choices, this little-known hex-based platoon-level war simulation game from the late-90s has been something I've regularly gone back to over the years. You can play a variety of historically-accurate scenarios and campaigns from several theatres of the second world war. It helped keep me sane when I was working out in Botswana by myself 4 years ago.

So there you have it. Yet more evidence that I'm a huge nerd to add to the mounting pile.

Britain's two best actors...

This is a trailer for 'Shame', a new film directed by Steve McQueen (not him, him) starring Britain's two best actors of the moment*.

I'm excited, you should be too.

* I'm claiming Fassbender for Britain in case that wasn't clear btw.

Attack the Block

An incredibly silly piece of trash film straight out of the heart of the comedy horror genre, Joe Cornish's (that's Joe from the Adam and Joe show to you and me) 'Attack the Block' follows one South London estate's close encounter with an alien invasion. On a single night we see a gang of gangster-talkin' wannabe Avon Barksdales go from petty criminals to alien killers. After robbing their neighbour at knife-point, the gang chase down what they think is a dog - only to discover that they've stabbed something other-worldly.

'Attack the Block' is a cheeky film; part send up of the genre and part straight horror comedy, it makes a lot of mileage out of South London's rich street dialect and saves a lot of money on special effects. The aliens are not much more than black felt-tip pen scribbles on the screen, with green luminous teeth added to give them menace. One wonders if the original idea for the aliens was a budget-saving black patch, with the teeth being added after screen testing. Of particular enjoyment for me was the liberal use of South London's West Indian inflected street slang (though my housemate who is from South London was less responsive to it - he had to put up with it growing up).

Nick Frost is perhaps the most recognisable actor in the film (though Jodie Whittaker has been in a pile of stuff with small rolls). He plays a slacker dope dealer living on the top floor of the estate and lording over the block like some kind of scuzzy drug Baron. The other young actors are kind of OK, but I suspect not all of them will end up pursuing full time careers in Holywood. This is a film that isn't going to win any prizes for acting or directing - or script or effects or anything really. But there's no reason for that getting in the way of enjoying this smart comedy horror. I recommend it to one and all.

Drive - not what I was expecting

Despite a number of friends and reviews telling me otherwise, I still went into the cinema this Sunday assuming 'Drive' was going to be a car chase thriller. By all accounts a very well-made and polished car chase film, but still very much inside the Hollywood mainstream. How wrong I turned out to be. 'Drive' is more of an indie heist film in which the main character - un-named in the film, simply 'The Driver' on IMDB - is an enigmatic stunt driver with shadowy connections to LA's criminal underworld.

Ryan Gosling plays our mysterious lead, a stunt driver who sells his driving skills to anyone in the criminal underworld willing to pay him. He will turn up for a 5 minute window at a given time, and if you need a get away driver in that time then he's your man. He lives alone in a flat next to a woman (Irene - played by my current favourite actress Carey Mulligan) and her kid. When Irene's husband is released from jail and extorted by his former prison-mates, The Driver offers to help.

And that's when the film gets violent. When the violence happens, it's quick, to the point and extreme. With an 18 rating despite having no sex or drugs, it's not really a surprise. At no point does the director get his cameraman to linger on a gruesome shot, preferring instead to use quick flashes of horrific carnage. It's an effective technique that had me wondering "Did I really just see that..." as the action moved on. Much better than the mindless bloodletting you get in the average horror flick these days, and easily enough to warrant the 18 rating.

It is not only the violence that's well-handled. The whole film has a good pace and manages to get through a lot of ideas in 100 minutes. To describe Reynolds' character as enigmatic is to understate his behaviour. The whole plot is shrouded with a noirish 80s styling that gives it a dreamlike quality. I wasn't really a fan of the 80s electronic music or the GTA Vice City-like bright pink italicised writing, but I assume someone thinks the 1980s are cool again. Much better was the slow burn of a story that feels well-layered despite being reasonably short by modern standards.

When I first came out of the cinema I wasn't sure what I thought as I'd been expecting something utterly different. Then just like the slow and satisfying burn of the film's plot, I felt a slow and satisfying aftertaste as I digested what I'd seen. A pleasant surprise of a film.

Depressing Films

Watched a couple of really depressing films last week. The first was 'Neds', that follows the upbringing of a bunch of going-nowhere teenagers in 1970s Glasgow, and the second was 'Exhibit-A', which presents 'found footage' of an English family slowly falling apart. Both are almost relentless in their depiction of ordinary people locked into a downwards spiral of their own doing. Only 'Neds' offers any comedy relief, and then it's very brief.

'Neds' follows the upbringing of John McGill, a bright young kid growing up on a working class Glaswegian housing estate in the 1970s where - as John Lennon said - they hate you if you're clever and despise a fool. He graduates from primary school and is immediately threatened by kids who say they're going to make his life hell at secondary school. I'm sure everyone can relate to that fear of the unknown every child has when changing schools. John moves school though and is put in the second class down, after trying to be moved into the upper class (and getting beaten for failing) he knuckles down and after a term proves himself with his grades. Fast forward several years and John is sitting at the top of his class with his bright future ahead.

How is it then that during the summer months John manages to get in with the wrong people and become something of a lunatic feared by local street gangs? It's a question that the film poses but offers few answers. Perhaps the influence of a drunken father has inevitably driven him here? Perhaps the stress of trying to be the intellectual in a world that hates intelligence finally gets to him? Maybe it's just bad luck. Whatever the answer, the events of the last 2 thirds of the film are so unrealistic and unbelievable that they undermine the film's social realism. By the end I was depressed and confused in equal measure.

Second up was 'Exhibit A'. The opening shot of the film is a police information slide explaining that 'the following footage...' was found at the scene of the murder. So right away we know that someone's going to die. The film follows several months in the lives of a Yorkshire family, the father of which struggles to hold his life together as a number of small things pan out against him.

This is a mercifully short film (85 minutes) given its psychologically tortuous content. It's a film whose main point seems to be that secrets are a good thing, no matter how much we might think openness is a good idea. If you knew what everyone thought of you then the world wouldn't be much fun for anyone. Interesting enough but fairly obvious stuff really and hardly breaking new ground in the found footage genre.

God those films were depressing. You can tell I don't have a Love Film account to be happy, my next film was 'American - The Bill Hicks Story', a documentary about Bill Hicks. Hicks was an anti-establishment comedian who was prone to launching vicious verbal attacks on the government and religious conservatism of the nation of his birth. Sadly Hicks died of pancreatic cancer in the early 90s, yet somehow Jim Davidson lives on.

Again, depressing. What's next...

Troll Hunter

When a film comes out in the 'found footage' mould, one expects certain things. Primarily that it will be a horror, and that there will be plenty of shaky footage of not all that much with glimpses of whatever it is that's meant to be frightening us before a final big reveal. Well, chuck all that out the window. 'Troll Hunter' is a 'found footage' film that eschews the conventions of that genre. It's a black comedy in which a group of film students have recorded their time spent with Hans. Hans has a secret, he is employed by Norway's secret TSS (Troll Security Service) to hunt and keep control of that nation's native troll population. Hans is bored of his 'shitty job' and so allows the students to film him at work.

The students are initially highly skeptical of what Hans is leading them into, but on their first trip into the woods they encounter a massive three-headed troll. A troll that Hans tricks into the open and kills with artificial sunlight. The initial encounter with the troll comes across as standard handheld 'real life footage' stuff as the cameraman runs terrified through the woods with his night vision on. From there on though the film rapidly re-organises itself as a black comedy. Though the troll is undoubtedly a terrifying creature, the encounter with it is treated in a fairly slapstick way. From Hans' unlaboured attitude towards his own extremely dangerous work to the Polish contractors who turn up with a dead Croatian bear to plant as cover for the damage done, everything's just a little bit silly.

There are moments when the film almost pauses as either the sound girl or presenter look into the camera to share their incredulity at what's happening with the audience. Yet more evidence that 'Troll Hunter' is intented as a bleak comedy. A good amount of mileage is made out of references to Troll folk lore (they can smell Christians and seem to spend a lot of time under bridges) as well as the deadpan humour of Hans and his troll-hunting antics. In spite of the apparent low budget, the troll CGI is fine for this kind of film. In fact, all the trolls looking a little bit silly probably helps the comedy roll along.

As long as you're happy for this to be a dark comedy rather than a full-on horror in the Cloverfield / Blair Witch mould then you should enjoy it. I had to go to the cinema at 10:15pm to see it, since they're still showing The Inbetweeners at all other hours just now. There was literally no-one else in there so I don't think it'll be around for very long.

A Lonely Place to Die - Scotland apparently

So normally these days I go and take a punt on films on Wednesday. What with the Orange Wednesdays offer and all. Last Wednesday though I was being all geeky at home, so I went to see 'A Lonely Place to Die' on Tuesday instead. Luckily Odeon have got an offer going at the minute where you can get 40% off (almost) all tickets at any time simply by printing out a voucher from their website. Kerching! £5.39 for a cinema ticket? It's like being a student all over again!

6 people were in Odeon's 6:30 showing of 'A Lonely Place to Die' (two of whom seemed intent on having a conversation throughout until asked to desist), a poor showing for an interesting British-made horror genre flick starring Mellisa George. George was in 'Triangle' and has apparently been in a lot of TV. I'm informed that she nearly landed the part of Lara Croft, and so I assume she has been teetering on the edge of breaking through as a big star for some time. Here she plays Alison, a climber and hill-walker who is out with a group of friends to scale some of the heights of Northwest Scotland. We start out perched on the side of a cliff-face, which Alison and her friend have a near miss on when one of them falls before being saved. The camera pans around the beautiful yet harsh wilderness of the remote Highlands, it's being made obvious right from the start that nature is the enemy here.

Or is it? The plot moves along very quickly as the walkers (after a bunch of stodgy 'getting to know you' scenes) discover an Eastern European girl buried in a box in the ground. Very quickly the film shifts pace, as Alison and her friends realise someone must have done this and that they're probably nearby.

"A Lonely Place to Die" has a number of nice shifts like this. Firstly when it switches from 'nature is the enemy' to 'people are chasing us', and then again when it moves from a rural to an urban environment and introduces a gangster element. There are a good number of deaths, blood and guts and all the kind of stuff you should expect from this kind of film. Overall a solid film in a genre that I've enjoyed a lot over the years.

127 Hours - That's more than 5 days!

Not since 'Touching the Void' has a dramatisation of real-life adventuring sounded so incredible. '127 Hours' is the true story of Aron (imdb spelling) Ralston - played by James Franco - and his incredible 127 hour long ordeal being trapped out in the desert-like conditions of the western plains of the USA. Aron is what we might call a 'free spirit'. We see him setting out by himself on his bike into the great dry rocky plains setting himself a target time to beat, hiking off into the great unknown and showing a pair of female travellers a 'short cut' that involves a death-defying fall into an underground lake - not the kind of guy who pays much attention to health and safety. He's the sort of person you're likely to meet eventually if you spend any length of time travelling away from major tourist traps.

Eventually Aron's bravery gets the better of him when he stumbles into a narrow ravine and gets his arm trapped under a large rock. Everything he tries to do to move the rock fails; he cannot lift, chip away at or budge it at all. The film now provides a claustrophobic view into the terror, hopelessness and despair of Aron's captivity in this ravine - where sunshine comes for only 15 minutes each morning. We see his initial incredulity at being trapped by the natural world he so loves, then his practical organisation of all his equipment, food and water, before finally his slow slide into madness as he looses hope for his survival. Aron's eventual escape (this is not a spoiler - since it's information that was put around quite liberally when the film came out) is accomplished by cutting off his own arm. The scene in which this happens is very distressing, and happens after a trippy dream sequence that paints Aron's experiences as a spiritual journey in which he re-assess his own life.

This is a Danny Boyle film, which means that there's plenty of frantic camera work with running closeups and cameras being put in weird places. Inside James Franco's arm being the oddest camera position with the bottom of his water bottle a close second.

My understanding is that the events pictured in the film are very close to what happened to Aron in real life. If this really is the case then he obviously underwent some kind of revelatory experience while trapped under that rock. He starts out blaming the natural world for his predicament, but then slowly realises that his own stupidity in underestimating nature has led him to dig his own grave. Once he accepts blame on to himself he finally realises that it is not this rock trapping him, but his arm. Only then is he able to take the ultimate step and relieve himself of his own limb.

Despite knowing exactly what's going to happen right from the very start (or perhaps because of it), '127 Hours' is terrifying in putting a microscope up to a nightmare scenario. Part thriller, part spiritual awakening - it's an excellent film.

Rango

My housemate Rich had this on DVD the other day. It's a cartoon in which Johnny Depp stars as the voice of Rango, a chameleon who ends up the sheriff of the wild west town of Dirt after he finds himself stuck there in the middle of a drought.

Sounds all a little weird, but it gets weirder. Our hero Rango starts his journey off by falling out the back of a car and nearly being run over by desert traffic. He then meets a part-run-over armadillo who tells him to head into the desert to find himself / complete his journey / insert stock spiritual phrase here. Then there's loads of psychedelia.

This is a stylish fantasy that pays a homage to Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns and relies heavily on American Indian spiritualism to create a mystical backdrop for the story. Problem is though that it tries to be too many things without really succeeding at any of them. There's a little adult humour, some slapstick for the kids and a heavy dose of spiritualism - but these parts never fit together into a whole.

For most of the film I wasn't really sure what the central narrative was, it only focused on the drought in 'Dirt' as the main story after a lot of flapping around with inconsequential stuff that I think was meant to distract kids.

Perhaps it was a mistake to watch the director's cut (I did suggest we watch the theatrical version - but my housemates 'knew better') as a lot of this stuff was probably taken out of the theatrical release. It ended up being way too long for what it was, it's the best part of 100 minutes for what amounts to no more than a cartoon chameleon flapping his way through banter with frontier animals.

I was kind of hoping I'd missed the point and that in fact had some deeper meaning rather than the spiritualism being a total mess. But checking IMDB drew me a big fat blank.

Four Lions - she's got a beard

They showed this on Channel 4 last weekend. I reviewed it when it came out but I thought I'd share one of its funniest scenes:



Reviews of Rango and 127 Hours coming up at somepoint soon if work isn't too busy this week...

Bridesmaids

With the whole of the nation going mad for the Inbetweeners movie, I joined a small group of my friends on Wednesday last week to see 'Bridesmaids'. It's been out for quite a long time now, so I was surprised to see that the cinema was probably about 20% full. Maybe loads of people had turned up for The Inbetweeners only to have it be sold out in their faces. I might watch the TV series of Inbetweeners one of these days to see what all the fuss is about. As far as I can tell it's a bunch of shameless crudity, which means I'll probably like it.

Bridesmaids is a comedy. Billed as a sort of female version of 'The Hangover' it stars Kristen Wiig (IMDB insists there's a double-'i' in her surname - she played the Christian weirdo in 'Paul') as Annie, a woman who appears to have failed at life. Her small bakery went bankrupt, she sleeps with an idiot, lives with George Dawes, drives a rust-bucket and - to cap it all - her best friend Lillian is marrying into a rich family. Lillian asks Annie to be her maid of honour at the wedding, a choice that rankles with Lillian's new upper class chum Helen (Rose Byrne). Can you see where the central conflict in this movie's going to be?

Cue comedy. We get some David Brent-esque one-upmanship between Annie and Helen as they each try to prove themselves Lillian's best friend, then some ultra-crudity and toilet humour (shitting yourself in a wedding dress for instance). This isn't exactly typical of what is on the surface a bit of a girlie film; but of course 'Bridesmaids' isn't a girlie film, it's a gross-out comedy with the usual male roles all replaced by women.

And it works. I don't know if it was just the novelty of seeing girls in this genre of film being crude and discussing poo without being pre-occupied by boyfriends, but it's very funny. The ending does slide back slightly into territory normally occupied by female-dominated films about relationships, but overall that kind of slushy stuff is well-avoided in favour of crudity. Nice.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - Loads of Apes!

So I'm going to write this assuming that you know what happens at the end of the original planet of the Apes film. In fact, the premise of this film kind of gives away the 'big reveal' at the end of the original, so there's no point even trying to hide it as a spoiler. Which is a bit of a shame, although anyone who doesn't know that the Planet of the Apes is in fact Earth probably doesn't watch films, so probably isn't reading this.

'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' is a prequel to the classic Science Fiction movie 'Planet of the Apes'. The plot is that while developing a drug to cure mental illness, James Franco as an obsessed scientist tests his drug on some apes and ends up creating a super-intelligent baby ape. He takes the ape (Cesar - played by Andy Serkis) home and brings it up as part pet / part child. Cesar then gets sent to a kind of ape detention centre after attacking a neighbour in defence of James Franco's dad. There he turns against humanity and manages to get the apes to rebel...

The film is a triumph of CGI. The main character is a CGI ape, with whom the audience experiences the horrors of scientific experimentation on primates and the mistreatment by those who claim to 'care' for such animals. This is the central theme of the film, that unfettered scientific progress motivated by profit can only end in tragedy. Top marks for all this. 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' is an enjoyable flick with a good message at its core and a few well-placed references to the original. There are a couple of reservations I'd like to raise though.

Why does absolutely everything have to be explained in nauseating detail? If the original Planet of the Apes ending had been done by these guys Charlton Heston would have sat there explaining what the statue of Liberty meant. See how in the clip Heston explicitly doesn't say he's been on earth all along - making you think about what's happening hugely increases the power of the final lingering shot of the statue. In 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' there's a totally unnecessary post-credits scene that shines a huge spotlight on WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. Give the audience something to argue about in the pub afterwards!

The film is laughable in its abuse of the scientific method. This is hardly new for Holywood; some of the worst abuses here are a miracle cure for Alzheimers working overnight, a gas giving apes self-awareness in minutes, the usual array of 3D displays and over-engineered graphical interfaces plus - best of all - James Franco's interaction with his lab. The opening scene has Franco complete an experiment, jump with joy and immediately run off to his boss to proclaim eureka! In real life you'd have to retest, check your data, publish, be peer-reviewed, run out of funding, get more funding - et cetera until you get crushed by a mountain of paperwork. Obviously his boss is British (=EVIL). I do wish that Holywood would stop doing this, especially when the director's English!

But this is Holywood though, and you come to expect this sort of thing. It's just sad that many a member of the general population will have their view of science formed by watching films like this. I got over my reservations very quickly and was able to enjoy an absorbing tale in which humanity as a whole is painted as the bad guy. Even the usual array of gaping plot holes (expanded upon ably by my colleague Jonathan Sharpe) didn't bother me.

One last point - is the dude that played Malfoy in Harry Potter now destined to play dickheads for the rest of his life? Cos he's pretty good at it.

Burke & Hare

Trailered as something of a slapstick comedy, but billed and reviewed as a black comedy - Burke and Hare is definitely a comedy of some sort based loosely around the perpetrators of a series of murders in Edinburgh in the early 19th century. William Burke and William Hare killed people and sold their corpses to local surgeons studying anatomy. Burke was convicted and hanged, Hare testified against his accomplice and was let off for lack of evidence. Here, Simon Pegg plays Burke and Andy Serkis plays Hare. That's right, Andy Serkis doesn't just play CGI apes!

Why do film makers again and again pay so little heed to something as eminently-controllable as accents? When casting for roles do agents ever get a native speaker in as a consultant? I'm English, but while watching 'Burke & Hare' even I had difficulty listening to Isla Fisher - yep, her off Home and Away - add an Aussie twang to every 10th word of her 'Scottish' accent. Lord knows what viewers north of the border would think. Andy Serkis and Jessica Hynes weren't too bad with their Northern Irish accents (they're meant to be from Donegal, which isn't in Northern Ireland but is in the North of Ireland - if you see what I mean), while Simon Pegg had moments when he slipped. I think the cast of the film revealed what was really going on, the producers seemed to want to include as many of their mates as possible - accents be dammed. Of course I've no problem seeing Bill Bailey picking up a pay cheque and this has to be Michael Smiley's first acting job since he played cult club-tripper Tyres in Spaced - good luck to them both. But the least they could do is sort the accents out. As for Isla Fisher - all she contributes to the role here is being pretty and having red hair (both of which she does very well).

None of this would be a problem if there was a decent film to distract my attention. Sadly there's a bunch of slapstick humour and quite a lot of indifferent editing that undermines any momentum or arc. Also the script writers have subtly altered historical events to little benefit. For a start, Burke selflessly offers his own life to save Hare and his girlfriends' rather than Hare turning on him. Secondly, Burke and Hare are portrayed as loveable rogues rather than scummy murderers. That in itself would have been fine within the boundaries of a black comedy, but it's kind of ruined at the end when Simon Pegg & Bill Bailey remind us - to camera - that Burke was a really bad person who deserved what he got. The script writers seem to want their cake and eat it - they want to have all the laughs of blackly cheering a murderer on and at the same time shake their heads, wag their fingers and cheer when he's brought to justice.

Basically it's all over the place, and even coming in at 80 minutes long it's only just watchable.

Post script: So it turns out that Isla Fisher was actually born in Scotland but moved to Australia at a young age. The fact that she must have grown up with her parents' Scottish accents makes her inability to pull one off here even more disappointing.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I was tired of this film the first time I understood the premise. The idea is thus: imagine if you were born old and lived your life in reverse. So you emerge from the womb as a shrivelled and tiny old man, then grow progressively younger until 70 years time when you shrink to the size of a baby and drop dead. It's an idea that sounds interested as a science fiction short story, but a 160 minute Hollywood film? I'm not so sure.

Though heavily nominated at the Oscars, but winning in only the technical categories (deservedly so though for make up and special effects), watching the film didn't make me feel any better about it. It has no story, no plot and - weirdly for a film about someone's life - no real arc. If anything I think the point (and I'm assuming there's meant to be a point as this is a David Fincher film) is that you're only as old as you think you are. Or maybe that it's never too late to do what you want. Unless you break your leg; or get dementia that is. Maybe the point is that life is just life, and you never know what's going to happen. Some people get all the breaks, others don't and that's just the way of the world. Well I knew that already.

Despite some amazing make up effects and Cate Blanchett giving a top performance (as ever), I found little of interest in this film. The make up effects really are impressive though, Blanchett looked every bit a 16 year old girl or a 60 year old woman. I couldn't work out at what point in the film we were actually at the actress' real age. Not worth the 2.5 hour investment though.

Super 8

Trailers for J J Abrams' newest film have been floating around on the internet for a very long time now. The earliest ones made 'Super 8' look like a rip off of The Crazies (already a remake of course), though more recent versions seemed to focus on its young protagonists. It wasn't clear if we were in for a monster slasher or a rerun of the Goonies - or maybe a bit of both.

Some of that was cleared up by the Radio 5 review last Friday. Kermode's on holiday so they've got 'Boyd and Floyd' in for the summer weeks. One of Boyd or Floyd is from Ilford - big up. Sadly I can't tell them apart though. Their review made the film sound like a kids adventure, they even refused to talk about the monster-chasing elements as they said it'd be a spoiler. Obviously they'd never seen any trailers. Their review pointed out J J Abrams' obsession with lens flare, something I would never of thought of without them mentioning it - but annoying once you spot it every 5 minutes. They made a big deal of Abrams' self-confessed obsession with Super 8 film when he was a kid, and how he used to make his own films and even managed to get himself involved with Steven Spielberg's production company as a teenager. 'Super 8' is a film that clearly comes from the director's heart.

This is a throwback film to an age that I presumed never really was, but a world that J J Abrams grew up in (or maybe wished he did). It is 1979, the kids of a small Ohio town entertain themselves by making zombie movies on Super 8 film. When filming a crucial scene at an abandoned train station, they are involved in a huge train crash. Though they survive physically unscathed, the train was carrying something that the airforce don't want anyone to find. It's a massive monster.

It's the Goonies, the Famous Five and a bunch of Roald Dahl staples rolled into one. It's a world where children live lives unconstrained by the emotional baggage of adulthood. The children in the film live in a make believe world constructed under the noses of their parents. It's a world where everything is an adventure and where their imaginations - undulled by years of the strain of adulthood - help them accept the unreality of the fantastic situation going on in their town and work fearlessly to solve it.

I can imagine Abrams pitching this film to Steven Spielberg by getting him to imagine ET with a massive terrifying looking monster instead of a 3 foot gimp. It's a throwback film that romanticises the joy and innocence of youth, it's funny and jumpy in the right places and has a nice emotional kick that makes the young characters people to care about.

There's not much not to like about Super 8 - apart from that bloody lens flare. Also, there's a good end credits bonus that you should stick around in the cinema for. They show the full zombie movie that the kids were making, what I saw of it was pretty funny (missed the first bit).

South Park - Blame Canada!

South Park came out just as I was first going to university. Since that's almost 15 years ago now I am amazed to discover that it's still going. The other night though I was over at my sister's place and they were watching the new episodes. I had kind of assumed that it had gone off the boil ages ago, but I was informed that the opposite is true - South Park is still going as strong as ever.

South Park is on the surface about crudity, fart jokes and being as un-politically-correct as possible. Dig even slightly below the surface though and you quickly find it's a riotously funny satire. It still has crappily-drawn children doing fart and poo jokes though, which is of course quite a lot of its charm. We watched an episode on Friday that was ostensibly about laughing at people pissing in swimming pools. Beyond the crude hilarity of that though, the episode was a subtle satire on pseudoscience as well as poking fun at the elements of middle America who fear the ingress of 'minorities'.

Eric Cartman sings a song lamenting the minorities in 'his' swimming pool, a song that sent my mind back to South park's greatest achievement - south Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut. To you and me - South Park the movie. The plot of the film revolves around a smutty Canadian cartoon that gets blamed for encouraging children to swear and behave badly. The authorities and parents' groups overreact to the film, declare war on Canada and kick off Armageddon. It's a film that some might struggle to take seriously since it features Satan and Saddam Hussein as a cohabiting couple in hell - but it's satirical gold. The film cleverly lampoons its own potential critics and attitudes towards censorship. At the same time it's a musical - with musical numbers and songs that are pure Broadway. Not least of which is the fantastic 'Blame Canada':



"We must blame them and cause a fuss/before somebody thinks of blaming uuuuuuus" - great lyric. All the songs are on Youtube. In fact, all the episodes of South Park are freely available on the internet. Nice to see that Parker and Stone (the South Park creators) have stayed true to their anarchist roots and shunned the draw of big dollars. Maybe that's why they've retained their creative edge after all these years?

Brings back good memories all this. Has it really been that long since I first went to university?

Harry Potter part 7b - the end

So we finally come to the end of the Harry Potter series. With part 7b the story comes full circle as Harry and his chums return to Hogwarts to graduate by blowing up the school (a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer of course). Where part 7a was about hiding in the woods, part 7b is about explosions. Where part 7a was about character drama and angst, part 7b is about - well - more explosions I guess. That's right folks, you've sat through the prelude, you've endured Harry's teenage whining and Hermione & Ron's will-they-wont-they... now it's time for the payoff.

And what a payoff. Hardly any time is wasted before getting on with the big finish. Within minutes of the stylised Warner Brothers logo falling from the screen our trio of heroes are breaking into the Gringots vault in search of another part of Voldemort's soul. As soon as they escape that by riding a dragon over London they're immediately off to Hogwarts for the final confrontation. I didn't look at my watch in the cinema, but there's got to be a good hour of film all set on one night at Hogwarts - where the forces of good and evil finally collide in a climactic battle between Harry and Voldemort. Cue lots of very cool effects, running & chasing, firing off spells and soul-searching. Epic though all this is, I still thought the best scene was Harry's 'dream sequence' with Dumbledore in a ghostly apparition of Kings Cross station. It's here that the emotional heart of the story lies, even in a crash-bang finale like this.

The usual stellar array of British actors are in display as in the other films. It was particularly odd to see people like Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters reduced to little more than vessels for make-up and two lines of dialogue. One nice surprise was seeing Kelly MacDonald turn up for 5 minutes of mad nattering as a Hogwarts ghost, I guess there was at least 1 Brit left who hadn't appeared in this series yet. Her English accent is very good.

Basically this was a great finish to the series. Not as good as the book - although that probably wasn't possible - but essentially true to the source material and a fitting way to end it all. The final scene still grates a little on me though. I never liked it in the book and though I can understand Rowling's motivations for including it I think it's a little lazy. None of the young actors look in their late 30s no matter how much hairspray they put in Emma Watson's hair.

One tiny gripe, why didn't they fade to a 'THE END' logo at the end? Not too important but it would have been a nice way to round everything off. Also - minor point but important - do not attempt to watch this film if you're not seen the rest. Almost no attempt is made to cater to an audience requiring a 'previously on' recap.

A seminal moment for many, the final part of the Harry Potter series was for me the end of an enjoyable journey through a modern re-casting of many of the staples of fantasy fiction. Of the films, I think that HP3 was the best by a nose over HP5. Where the fifth had teen angst and Immelda Staunton hamming up the evil, the third had a big heart and freed the series from the clutches of the money men. Imagine what the series would have looked like if all 7 books had been filmed by Chris Columbus - Nightmare! As it is, the Potter series is an impressive achievement in modern fantasy. Though rarely groundbreaking and sometimes bogged down in maguffins and detailing the minutiae of its own world (what fantasy isn't though?), the series' main driving force was always the characters, their relationships and emotions. It's been an enjoyable decade.

And I watched it in 2D thank you very much.

The Last Supper

Now here's a weird premise for a black comedy: a bunch of liberal postgrad students have a redneck over for dinner and accidentally kill him during an argument about politics. They decide that it'd be a good idea to invite more right-wingers over and - if they fail to be convinced to liberalise their views - kill them too. Such is the premise for 'The Last Supper'.

Apart from the obvious black comedy here, the film has a nice theme running through it about the dangers of taking political dogma too far - be it from the left or the right. Indeed the film takes these positions too far through its characters, do overt racist nutters like that played by Bill Paxton really exist? Perhaps; I'm off to Texas later this year so there's a good chance I could meet some. I remember being a liberal postgrad, but no-one I knew was ever as wet and intellectually superior as these guys. Well - maybe one or too were. But we never lived in a mansion cooking massive 3-course meals for each other and having randoms over for an intellectual discussion between wine courses.

The film gets a bit in-your-face at the end when Ron Pearlman gives a speech from the pulpit of righteousness about how everyone should throw aside their preconceptions and learn to live and let live, but overall it just about hits the right mark.

Watching it made me feel as if I was sitting through a feature length TV episode rather than a film. Stacy Title (a female director - yay!) has done little else, perhaps not a surprise as the camera-work didn't feel right throughout. 'Last Supper' is notable for being an early Cameron Diaz film. With a release year of 1995 it came out just after Diaz's big break 'The Mask', but I assume this was filmed shortly before she broke it through to the big time. Also there's a brief appearance by Elizabeth Moss as the missing girl (she only appears as a photo on a 'missing' poster - so blink and you'll miss her).

It's a funny film that's interesting and has enough laughs to remind you that it's not meant to be taken entirely seriously. Don't expect any major political revelation though, its view of left v right and the US culture wars is far too simplistic for that.

Confessions - revenge Janaese style

So obviously the big film event at the moment is the final Harry Potter. I've been really busy recently so I've not had the chance to get to the cinema yet, I expect I'll be able to see it some time this week. Last week though I was able to catch up on watching some of the LoveFilm DVDs I've had sitting around for a few weeks. The first of these I watched the other day is a Japanese film called 'Confessions'.

Yet another one recommended by the Radio 5 Live film reviews, 'Confessions' is a film in which the opening 15 minutes consists of a near-monologue for the main character to explain the premise. She is a school teacher whose daughter has recently died, she explains to her class how she knows that in fact two of the kids in the room were her killers. She further explains that she has had her revenge on this pair by poisoning their milk with HIV-infected blood. As pandemonium breaks out in her class she tells them how the effects of this poisoning will become apparent in a few months, and that when they return to school after the holidays she will have long quit her job.

Fear of children is a classic storyline. And not just in Japanese film (although 'Battle Royale' is a classic case in point), John Wyndam's 'Midwich Cuckoos' is a classic of modern science fiction that plays up fear of the unknown and portrays children as an enemy within complete with their own codes of conduct, language and culture that adults can't hope of comprehend. Vilification of the teenager is so commonplace in media that it often goes un-noticed - consider James Dean in 'Rebel without a cause' to realise that this is hardly a modern phenomenon.

'Confessions' presents teen culture as an impenetrable web that a teacher can only scrape the surface of, but by making waves in can create unexpected consequences. Our teacher here, by telling the class that a killer lies within, creates a culture of recrimination and whispering that soon turns sour, then descends into anarchy and worse.

Part revenge thriller and part psycho-drama, 'Confessions' is an enjoyable film that's somehow sobering at the same time. It has an odd visual style that makes it look more artsy than it really is, so please don't be put off the first time you see a lingering shot of raindrops. Check it out - it has an interesting ending...

The Fighter

Of the Oscar bait films that came out at the start of 2011, The Fighter was the one that never really appealed. I feared either a rags-to-riches tale or a re-running of Million Dollar Baby (which is a good film, but no need to repeat it just yet). Turns out it's more about conflict and family, and how compromise is actually a rather good thing.

Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale play boxing brothers Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund. Dicky is a washed up drug addict while Micky dreams his fading boxing career can go somewhere. Micky still trains down at the local gym with advice from his brother and support from his huge family of domineering sisters. When a new woman (Charlene - played by Amy Adams) enters Micky's life he begins to question whether his family has been hindering him, and if a making a clean break will let him live out his ambitions.

This is the stuff of Holywood wet dreams. Family, the underdog, a shot at the big time, small-town Americana - plenty of boxes ticked. The twist here is that the influence of Micky's family on him is doubtful, supportive they may be - but is their small town attitude squashing his ambition? Micky realises he has to get away from Dicky to succeed, but who will be left to celebrate his success if he alienates everyone he knows?

In the end the film's about sacrifice and compromise, which is rather pleasing as it doesn't make everything black and white. Add into this an amazing performance by Christian Bale as the wide-eyed Dicky (for which he won this year's best supporting actor Oscar) and we've got ourselves a film that's not all that bad.

And don't ask me why these brothers have different surnames. I'm just going with what IMDB tells me.

Pulp Fiction - Hamburgers

I was trying to work out what my favourite scene from Pulp Fiction is. Although the comedy of watching Vincent and Jules washing bits of brain out of their car and the sheer horror of seeing Uma Thurman catatonic from a coke overdose are both cinematic gold - you can't get away from Samuel L Jackson's career-defining moment when he delivers his Old Testament-inspired monologue.

I know it's not exactly an original choice, but Jackson's delivery of the line "Hmmm, that is a tasty burger" became something of an in-joke with my uni mates so it has good nostalgia for me. It's a scene that provided Jackson with a platform for the rest of his career. It's also a scene that Youtube don't let people embed.

Unknown

Liam Neeson's an odd one isn't he? I think I've wrongly pigeon-holed him as being in more artsy films than he ever is. I guess it must be the remnants of his landmark role in Schindler's List sticking to him as he desperately moves into ever more ridiculous roles. Playing Hannibal in last year's 'The A Team' might have done his bank balance good, but his credibility took a nosedive. Neeson also starred in 'Unknown' last year, a film in which he plays a man who loses his identity after being involved in a car crash in Berlin. This is crucially not to be confused with interesting and small-budget 'Unknown' from a few years back. This version is a big budget Hollywood behemoth.

The premise is that Neeson's character remembers who he is, while everyone he knows appears to have forgotten him - even his wife (played with ease by January Jones - who needs to be cast as someone other than an ice queen at some point). His doctor warns him that head injuries of the like he has suffered can cause delusions, but surely it is the world around him that has become deluded?

I was wondering if the film was going to go down a 'Vanilla Sky' route, and although there are aspects of that in there it ends up being a bit of a Hollywoodised cop out. It's not bad enough for me to deliberately give the plot away, there is an entertaining twist that I don't want to spoil. Don't dig too deeply into the intricacies of the plot or bits will start falling out of it at break-neck pace. The ending is a huge cop out and isn't entirely consistent, but then the whole film is pretty unbelievable if you think about it for more than a few moments. It's a film that can't help but immerse itself in Hollywood clichés - although one plus point was being able to see Bruno Ganz not being Hitler.

I wont advise people to avoid 'Unknown' - it's not worth the effort of getting worked up over. Instead I invite you to think about what's gone wrong with Liam Neeson's career.

Senna

Who would have thought that Winnersh's Showcase cinema - bastion of the mainstream and champion of Holywood's 3D stylings - would sell out a screening of a documentary about a Brazilian racing driver? On a Tuesday. Well it did, which meant I ended up having to go to Bracknell's 'cinema' instead. Bracknell's an uninspirational enough place without the zombie fortress that is the Odeon at 'The Point', with its disinterested staff, neon lights, 'premier' seats, escalator straight on to the street and open air bus shelter ticket office. Bah - bah and humbug I say!

'Senna' is a documentary about the life of Brazilian Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna. Thought by many to be the greatest natural driving talent of his generation (possibly ever), Senna was killed in May 1994 at the San Marino Grand Prix when his car flew off the road at a fast corner. A portion of his car's suspension hit him in the head and wounded him fatally. This film tells the story of his life in F1, and though it largely skirts around his upbringing and personal life it paints a picture of a man intensely committed to what he did who represented hope for the Brazilian nation. I don't think that this view is necessarily over-sentimental or rose-tinted, at the time of Senna's death the outpouring of emotion from the sporting world was overwhelming. Brazil is a nation of extremes that idolises its sporting heros, so I can't accuse the film of using hyperbole when portraying Senna as representing more than just a racing driver.

The film is very simply put-together. By using archived F1 footage, television spots and Senna home movies the film effortlessly shows us the life of Ayrton Senna without the need for dramatisation or talking heads and with a minimum of voice-over. The film faithfully tells the story of the battles between Senna and Prost (this is definitely told from a pro-Senna viewpoint) and builds an emotional momentum towards the fatal day in Italy. Senna is painted as a man outside the F1 establishment who felt wronged by the authorities (who favoured Prost) and who's natural talents were reined in by advances in technology.

Though there is no overt implication, I felt like the film was implying that Senna (and Roland Ratzenberger) was killed by the inexorable progress of technology in F1 - and the lack of accompanying safety procedures. I felt that though there was no accusation of intent to harm, the Williams team were somewhat culpable. Their drive towards computer control and automisation in their cars is subtly blamed for affording drivers less control and turning them into passengers en route to their own demise.

This is a superb documentary that presents archive footage and allows a viewer to make up their own mind about Senna the man and the circumstances around his death. The box office takings for this film have been very high for a documentary. We're a long way from the awards season at the moment, but I would expect this to be in contention come next year.

Solaris - the Russian one obviously

I'm always going on about 'proper' science fiction, so when I actually get around to watching a film in that genre I feel under a self-imposed pressure to enjoy myself. 'Solaris' is a Soviet production from the 1970s, in which a cosmonaut - Chris - is sent to a space station to investigate reports of strange goings on. The space station was once a thriving hub of activity where scientists and military experts studied a mysterious alien planet - Solaris. Public interest in Solaris has waned though, and only 3 scientists remain.

The film opens with a series of 'mood' scenes that are a little pretentious. Lots of water and leaves and such like. We quickly move on to a terrestrial setting in which the viewer has to work hard to piece together this vision of the future from the snippets of dialogue and information provided. Characters talk of 'Solaristics' without ever being specific - at no point does a 'scientist' turn up and explain the premise. Even the background to the main character Chris, which becomes so important later on, is only hinted at. We know that Chris is to travel to Solaris to investigate the situation there, and that everyone has reservations about what he might find.

When Chris arrives at Solaris he discovers one of the scientists dead and the others warning him to not trust what he sees, even though they mysteriously warn him that what he sees will be real. It seems that Solaris is more than merely a planet, rather a unimaginable alien intelligence that manifests in the oceans of the world below the station. Solaris is somehow reaching out to the workers on the station either in an attempt to communicate or to drive them away - whatever it is, the consequences are material and disturbing. When Chris awakes from his first night sleep on the station to discover his dead wife Hari in the room - we know something strange is happening.

The best thing about these 70s style science fiction films is the way that they treat their stories as an excuse for soul-searching and philosophy - rather than reaching for the laser guns. In a science fiction film from the Star Trek mould, a character confronted with an apparition of a long dead lover would probably look for the scientific explanation and spend the rest of the film working out how to 'send them back' or 'fix the universe'. Just like in last year's 'Moon', the protagonists in 'Solaris' are aware that they're very tiny fish in the cosmic ocean. They have no hope of understanding - let alone stopping - Solaris, such is the mind-bending enormity of its alien presence. Instead of working out how to 'put things right', Chris has a crisis of humanity, in which he begins to believe that this apparition of Hari is as good as the original. What does it mean to be human? If you were confronted with a perfect copy of another person, what is the moral difference between them?

This is of course what science fiction told well can be about - by throwing off the shackles of the real world a writer can explore deep subjects with ease. 'Solaris' is a film that many will find unbearably slow, and I'm prepared to admit that several scenes are very pretentious, but it's a classic of a genre that has over the years often been distorted into little more than excuse for action set-pieces. I recommend that fans of science fiction seek it out.

Also, I love the poster for Solaris that I've stuck at the top of this review. It's
sparing with its imagery but captures perfectly the film's central premise of Chris' moral delimma over Hari's humanity. They're both looking in the mirror, and though he's concentrating on her we can only see his face. It's telling us not to worry about who or what Hari is, but how Chris reacts to her. Nice.