Easy A

I do enjoy a well-told teen angst story, here is a film in that mould with a bit of a difference. Emma Stone plays Olive, an ordinary high school girl who apparently makes no impact on the social map and has never been noticed by the boys. Let's get out of the way how ridiculous a premise this is early on in the review. If Emma Stone was a student at my high school she would have been the hottest of the hotties hands down. I guess that teenage boys in California are spoilt for choice.

We can brush over this fairly easily, after all it's not as if the Californian film industry doesn't have a history of casting attractive people as 'nerds' (Buffy the Vampire Slayer anyone?), and enjoy what is a film that displays its message in big neon letters over its head. Olive narrates the film from the future and seems to play the part of the film's writers, overtly pining for the golden age of 1980s teen cinema where Judd Nelson was a rebel, Ferris Beuler had musical numbers and John Hughes was in charge. Olive has amazingly liberal parents and is reasonably happy with her teen high school existence, but to make herself seem cool she pretends to have had sex on a weekend away. Rumours of her promiscuity travel around the school like wildfire, which she then fans when she realises she can pretend to have had sex with guys for money. Having made her bed she now has to lie in it when she turns into a hate figure for almost everyone at the school, but a hate figure whom people want to be seen with none-the-less.

The film heavily references 'The Scarlet Letter', in which an adulterous woman is hounded by her own community, and is eager to comment on the hypocrisy between how teenage girls and boys are perceived throughout school and the rest of their lives. It is emphatically not another 'teen movie' or a series of bawdy gags about teenage promiscuity. It's much closer to something like Juno, in that the main character is a confident young girl with supportive parents trying to work out what her own boundaries are in the modern world (also she has excellent and witty scriptwriters helping her out by feeding her lines).

We get a couple of strong supporting performances (especially from Thomas Haden Church and Patricia Clarkson), a song and dance number, a bit of God-Squad bashing and an ending that's nothing less than all fuzzy and warm - in a good way. It's a film that I think quite a lot of people could enjoy if they're willing to think of it as a throwback to 1980s teen movies as opposed to a lot of the modern flesh-fests that seem to be out there.

3 Idiots

This is a Bolywood film that our guide in Nepal (Kiron) insisted I should watch as an example of how Bolywood can be good and isn't all just about song-and-dance numbers and star-crossed lovers. Although I probably shouldn't have taken him seriously after he showed as an 'excellent political drama' on Indian TV that was literally laughably edited. Anyway, entirely randomly the film was available on the plane back, so even though I initially baulked at the 170 minutes run time I quickly realised I was due to be on a plane for 10 hours and pressed play.

"3 Idiots" is a film in which a bunch of university students get together 5 years after leaving university to work out which of them has done the best. Most of the film is told as a flashback to their university days at engineering college in which each of the characters fulfills a ready-made standard role. There's the studious but failing one with lots of heart, the religious one, the teacher's pet and their friend / nemesis - the naturally brilliant Rancho who defies the impossibly arch faculty head's rules and aces every test thrown at him with his endless talent.

Obviously the brilliant Rancho wins at everything, including wooing the faculty head's daughter and teaching his nerdier mates that they should live their own lives rather than struggling to be the sons that their fathers want them to be. It actually gets quite emotional towards the end as the main characters come to terms with their own dreams and face up to their overwhelming parental expectations.

I'm a little sad to admit it, but there was definitely a tear forming in my eye at this point. Bloody Boeing 777 air conditioning.

It's simple, obviously-plotted and melodramatic to the extreme with a couple of expertly-choreographed dance numbers - in other words, exactly what I would have expected from a Bolywood film. None of this is necessarily a bad thing though. Despite the long running time, hackneyed sight gags, fart jokes and made-for-the-masses love interest I mostly enjoyed it. Certainly not film of the year, but when you're next stuck in an aluminium tube for 10 hours you could do a lot worse.

Jet Airlines present...

There will now follow some reviews of films brought to me by Jet Airlines. I was on holiday in Nepal over the Xmas period and flew Jet Airlines from Heathrow to Kathmandu. This included multiple delays of all kinds - basically, Kathmandu airport is the most inefficiently run on the planet and snow doesn't like Heathrow. On the way back from Delhi (10 hours in a plane) I had a chance to watch three films. On the way out I was too worried about missing our connection to Kathmandu in Delhi and just tried to sleep, on the way back I was in a much more chilled out mindset and so checked out my 6 inch screen for entertainment options.

If this was one of those lifestyle blogs I'm sure I'd post loads of photos and have loads of exciting stories about all the interesting things I saw and did and ate in Nepal. But it's not and I'm going to stay on mission. If you want a description of the insane chaos that is Kathmandu traffic then ask me. I'll also happily tell you about trekking in the Himalayas, Nepalese food, Buddhism, Hindu cremations, icy waterfalls, Yaks & Naks, altitude sickness, Chinese whisky, Apple Raski and Lukla Airport. Buy me a pint why not?

What I'm going to give you here are reviews of a selection of films that you too could watch if you fly Heathrow - Delhi with Jet airlines this month. 3 Idiots, Easy A and Never Let Me Go. See below (or technically above or in your RSS feed, since blogs work like that).

Films of the Year - 2010

It's that time of year again. The end of the year. And with the end of the year every blogger and amateur film critic out there is telling anyone who'll listen which films were their favourites. Given that I lack the imagination to do anything different, I present my top 5 films of 2010:

5 - Paranormal Activity

I guess this is technically a 2009 release, but I didn't see it in a cinema until 2010 so I'm claiming it. Absolutely bloody terrifying, the most effective horror film I've seen in some time.

4 - Toy Story 3

Disarming in its approach but undoubtedly tear-jerking, Toy Story 3 encourages us to lament our long lost childhood and re-enforces Pixar's position at the top of the animation charts. This is also probably the best 'part 3' of any film series of all time (well, Goldfinger is clearly better - but that doesn't count).

3 - Inception

The best Science Fiction film of the year by quite a distance. It wasn't quite as confusing or as mind-bending as the reviews had made out, but it took visual and sound effects to a new level. With a plot straight of a Sci-Fi masterwork book it's an achievement to make it into multiplex cinemas. Mainstream science fiction will never be the same again.

2 - Kick Ass

First class entertainment, stupid outfits and underage potty-mouths all in the comforting guise of a comic book adaptation. And also a bit of an allegory for heroism in real life too. Definitely the most fun I had at the cinema this year.

1 - Made In Dagenham

Anyone who knows me well will be dramatically unsurprised that a story about workers taking on one of the world's largest motor manufacturers is my film of the year. Released at exactly the right time to have as much of an impact as possible, 'Made in Dagenham' is as much a rallying call to the modern disposed as it is a touching drama about ordinary people making history.

Splice

Very much not the film I was hoping for, Splice was a big letdown in several departments. For a film with trailers that made it look like a horror and a plot that made it sound like a remake of The Fly it ended up flitting between genres. I found it deeply unsatisfying and something of a wasted opportunity.

The story is about two scientists working outside the mainstream to create a hybrid human-animal life form. Something like The Fly or Primer for example - films that draw a viewer in by setting up a claustrophobic atmosphere while hinting a mysteries and ambiguities in story and character. Such a shame then that 'Splice' gets nowhere near doing any of these things - instead opting for lazy scripting and hackneyed attempts at shock tactics to scare (which fail anyway). The writing was on the wall early on when our two scientists work hard to try to splice the human and animal DNA together - cue montage! Any and all tension there might have been in this is drained out pretty quickly by the needless application of scientists in white coats furrowing their brows in front of unlikely computer graphical representations of their experiments. I don't remember Primer needing a montage when the protagonists first stumble across their time machine.

The more I've thought about this the more I think Splice has very few redeeming features. At least 'Species' had a well-hot actress in the lead role; Splice is trying too hard to be a serious science fiction film to go down that route, but it fails at every other turn. Especially the end with its 'to be continued' final scene - completely dull, telegraphed and miles short of the 'beware the dangers of science' ending (a la The Fly) they should of aimed at.

I guess it's not really a surprise then that when it was actually out at cinemas the only place it was on even slightly near me was Basingstoke, for once the multiplex distributers have done me a favour and saved me £7.

No Man's Land

I got hold of this DVD after a friend of mine bemoaned the lack of exposure in the western media to Serbian cinema. I readily admitted that I had no real knowledge of Serbian cinema, the only things even vaguely connected to the Balkans I could think of off the top of my head are the Romanian film "4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days" and "A Serbian Film" - so that's a film set in Romania (so not Slavic) and a film with has a plot synopsis so awful I'm not going to talk about it any further.

So, not much exposure to Serbian films indeed. 'No Man's Land' is a black comedy set during the war years in the ruins of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Serbian and Bosnian troops face off against each other, two Bosnians and one Serbian soldier become trapped in a trench in no-man's land. One of the Bosnians is stuck on top of a mine that will kill them all if he moves, the other two have a gun each but are also injured and so agree to a truce until the UN can come to their aid.

Following this set up is an engaging farce in which French UN soldiers try to help the men while dealing with the bureaucracy of NATO. The media on the ground implore the soldiers to help the men, but their paymasters are only after a good story. The commanders of the Bosnian and Serb troops on each side seem indifferent to the men stuck in no-man's land while the men at the centre of all this confusion continue to argue and bicker about the war and whose fault it is. I don't think this takes a genius to decode this as an allegory for Yugoslavia itself; where the man stuck on the mine represents the nation as a whole, unable to move with changing times for fear of setting off a political bomb, while the nations of Serbia and Bosnia work themselves into an ecstasy of rage about each other before finally resorting to violence. All the while the world's media, NATO and the UN look on and try to help - but ultimately are unable. Perhaps it's the bureaucratic nature of the outsiders that prevents them, perhaps it's because no outsider truly understands the nature being Slavic. Perhaps though (as I think is hinted in the film) neither the Serb nor the Bosnian armies get any help because neither do anything to deserve it - they're agents of their own destruction constantly plotting each other's downfalls while the world looks on and sighs.

A lot of comedy mileage is made out of the language barriers between the protagonists, as well as the at-best incompetence and at-worst downright dangerousness of the people 'in charge' in the former Yugoslavia. It's a film that's very funny and provides (I hope) an insight into a conflict that we in Western Europe only ever really see through Kate Aidie style newsreels.

Machete

Guilty pleasures are a wonderful thing. In the same way that a Metaller might admit to liking the odd Bon Jovi track or a Rugby fan might secretly wish there was more American Football on TV, I bloody loved watching 'Machete' at the Bracknell Odeon last night.

'Machete' is the film of the trailer. Not in the same way that normal films are films with trailers though, this is a film made off the back of the fake trailer in the Robert Rodriquez / Quentin Tarantino double bill Grindhouse. In the trailer we see a massive dirty great Mexican scumbag / ex cop (Danny Trejo) hacking, shooting and dismembering his way through piles of dirtier and even less-appealing Mexicans, Gringos and all manner of other goons. Grindhouse wasn't that good, and the Machete trailer was one of the best bits, but when I discovered that Robert Rodriguez was actually planning to turn it into a bona-fide film I feared it'd make a bit of a dud. What looks fun in a trailer can't make for much of a good 90 minutes. Or can it...

The film opens with Machete being backstabbed by his Mexican Federale bosses and his wife being murdered by a local drug lord (Steven Segal - fuck yeah!). Machete is presumed dead; but fast-forward to Texas 3 years later and here he is, struggling to find work with the rest of the dishevelled illegal immigrants from south of the border. The surprisingly famous cast are slowly introduced; Michelle Rodriguez is a legal immigrant helping the illegals get their lives together, Jessica Alba is the local immigration officer and Robert DeNiro is the Texas senator who shoots Mexicans for fun while running for re-election. Machete is hired by DeNiro's aide to 'shoot' the senator. Machete is in fact set up though, the whole shooting incident is to be used as an excuse for tighter border controls and help the senator win re-election. Machete escapes though, and wants his revenge - they've just "... fucked with the wrong Mexican". This is where it gets fun.

We get a bit of Texas politics, a bit of bad Steven Segal hamming it up, a bit of De Niro slipping into his New York accent and a hell of a lot of extreme violence, blood, dismemberment, disembowelling and - strangely - laughs. Especially funny is a part where some hired guards have a conversation about why they're bothering to protect such a nasty man from someone as dangerous as Machete. Thankfully Machete gets past them without having to kill a single one - nice of him to do that.

For a film that involves quite so many extremely hot girls getting extremely naked I think it scores fairly highly on the feminism test. Rodriguez and Alba both play strong characters who are leaders of men. The fact that Rodriguez comes out kicking ass in her bra at one point or that Alba stars in a technically unnecessary shower scene need not detract from that. If anything the film is anti male, as far more simpering male idiots are dispatched by Machete than helpless girls are mishandled by the baddies. The only bit that's completely gratuitous is the appearance of Lindsay Lohan; who remains naked for essentially the whole film and seems to have no real sensible inclusion - apart from the being naked part obviously.

I knew I shouldn't really have enjoyed Machete quite as much as I did, but whether its meant to be a spoof of the genre or a film firmly rooted in that genre it still made me laugh out loud several times. And who can say fairer than that? Sometimes it's the guilty pleasures that are the best.