21 JUMP STREET

I’m not going to lie; I really wasn’t expecting to like this film. I had a couple of hours to kill and my cineworld unlimited card was just itching to be used so I went in and chose the film that was starting first. So imagine my surprise when I found myself laughing along to what has to be one of the freshest comedies of recent times.

The opening sees Schmidt (Jonah Hill) in full clad Eminem gear - bleach blond hair and all - get rejected by the head cheerleader he asks to prom in front of the lead jock, Jenko (Channing Tatum) in an all too familiar high school prom date rejection scene. However, that is where the similarities to such films end. 4 years on, and the pair meet again at police academy and become friends. Now fully-fledged policemen, they are far from the action they expected on park patrol where high-speed chases are at an all time low. After a show of gross incompetence, and because they still look young, the pair are busted to an undercover unit to infiltrate a local high school to uncover a drug ring.

So far so average, and with a few laughs in this opening I was getting ready for a let down, but it actually gets better. And here’s why: as they give some smart remarks and backchat to their new squad lieutenant (played by a fantastically cast Ice Cube) about their new assignment, he yells at them and says, “embrace your stereotypes!” That’s what the film does. It embraces all of the generic clichés and fully understands them in order to subvert the usual expectations of not only the buddy cop genre, but the high school movie genre as well. The most notable example is the fact that Schmidt is now the cool kid and Jenko is the nerd hanging out with all the science kids.

But what really makes the film work is the comic timing between Hill and Tatum. I never would have pegged Tatum as a comedy actor and Jonah Hill hasn’t really done anything of comic merit since the overrated Superbad - so seeing the two of them on the poster made me a bit more confused than anything. However, it actually works fantastically well and is what really carries the film through its predictable narrative. You see; it isn’t the narrative that makes the film fresh, but the comedy that is woven into it. And this comedy is very 21^st century. Cynical and self-referencing, it embraces the style of its predecessors whilst sharply mocking them. There is even a cameo from Johnny Depp - and a fantastic one at that - which seems fitting seeing as it was the 80’s TV show this film is based on that pretty much kick started his career.

So ultimately, while it isn’t setting the benchmark for originality in its storytelling, 21 Jump Street is a solid entry into the comedy buddy cop genre. Where the story is predictable and on the odd occasion the comedy divulges in gross out humour (probably to appeal to the younger teen audiences), it also delivers enough genuine laughs from a very strong comedy pairing to make up for all its flaws and provide a thoroughly enjoyable experience that’s probably going to be one of the best comedies of the year. 

RAMPART

You like films about dirty cops? You like to watch them run off the rails doing bad things? You like to watch them make wise cracks as they crack skulls and rob perps while they beat them to a bloody pulp? If the answer to most of these is yes, then Rampart will be disappointing. BUT, if you like intense character studies, low key performances and altogether something a little bit different, go and see it because you will not be disappointed.

This pretty much sums up the overall reaction to rampart, which has been mixed to say the least. Woody Harrelson plays ‘Date Rape’ Dave Brown - a police officer belonging to the LAPD Rampart division - a man who is in control, knows his business and isn’t afraid to cross the line in the name of justice both in aid of the court and himself. Based around the true case of the Rampart police corruption scandal in 1999 that subsequently shut down the department, the film’s director - Oren Moverman - takes us away from the overarching big case story and instead chooses to focus on Dave’s life as it begins to fall apart in the wake of the scandal. The result is a very intimate portrait of a man who is so completely convinced he is in the right that he will go further into the wrong to prove it.

This is subjective filmmaking at its most prominent. Moverman really presents the world as seen through Dave’s eyes, from every argument he has with his family (he has fathered two daughters by two sisters and still lives casually with them) to a mad night in a deranged club (which is one of the best club scenes committed to celluloid). This is just as well, because if this story were to be seen from the outside, Dave would seem like a complete prick. And he is a complete prick, but the subjective filmmaking allows us to sympathise with him…OK maybe not ‘sympathise’, it just makes us hate him a whole lot less.

Harrelson goes full throttle into the performance, right down to the big, butch LAPD walk. He’s hyper masculine, yet charming, yet troubled, yet paranoid and so on and so forth. Moverman and Harrelson have created an incredibly complex character that completely carries the audience through the jumpy narrative - we never really see any of the big events break AS they break, just how they’re filtered down to Dave and how they affect him. There is no clear and concise narrative sequence, which can leave viewers feeling frustrated, but once you get settled into the film you begin to connect the various dots and you can really see how adamant this man is that above all things, he is right.

So, as I’ve said before, this film won’t be for everyone. The almost vignette-like narrative combined with a more intimate and emotional approach that doesn’t have any explosions or car chases will leave many fans of the dirty cop genre  (or any other action/thriller for that matter) disappointed. There are some great, straightforward dirty cop movies out there, but not many of them really go into such psychological detail as Rampart, which is definitely a great strength to have. Here is a relatively fresh take on a tired subject that isn’t afraid to delve right into the intimate emotions felt by these people that breaks down the whole myth about the LAPD to reveal that despite their tough image, they are still human.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

Horror films both amaze me, and infuriate me. The good ones are completely nerve shredding and the bad ones cause fits of laughter. It is perhaps one of the most parodied genres of all time (Scream, Scary Movie et. al) thanks to its conventions being so overused and obvious, but it is also one of the most interesting in that treading the history of the genre correlates to societal fears at the time of release (e.g. one can see Ringu as a fear steeped not only in technology, but identity theft, as Sadako kills, leaving her victims almost unchanged, coupled with the need to copy the tape to pass the curse on induces the idea that she steals a persons soul and repeats the process). So where does The Woman in Black fit into this highly varied genre? Well, to put it simply, it’s in the bad pile - but not for a lack of trying.

Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is a man about to lose his job and his home. Working for a law firm, he leaves his young son to work on a job sorting out the plethora of legal documents left behind by an old woman in a big mansion in the middle of nowhere. Pretty standard set up, all delivered in a highly contrived and clunky piece of expositional writing that is so desperate to get on with the scares that it completely forgets the story. In the end, it just means that there is no characterisation and no concern as to what actually happens to Kipps - which dulls the scares quite a bit if you’re planning on putting him in jeopardy. What we actually have here is shoot-by-numbers horror film that stays so true to its gothic horror nature that it becomes predictable and trite - using generic shock tactics that pack all the punch of a soggy marshmallow.

Not that I’m against this kind of film. It can work when it’s done well, but most of the time that means not taking itself too seriously. Drag Me To Hell was a rollercoaster that had small sections of simple story punctuated by big jumpy set pieces that just had a lot of fun with the ridiculous story and just wanting to make the audience scream as much as possible. The main problem with The Woman in Black is that it takes itself way too seriously considering that it follows to a fault all the conventions of a ghost story without the actual story part to back it up. What it has ended up as is a film about a guy wondering around a haunted house and sometimes in the neighbouring town to encounter the strange townsfolk for an hour and a half. There is a story to be had, but it would rather get on with being scary than really get you involved in the world it creates.

So not only is The Woman in Black not a very good horror film, it also is not a very good film as a whole. There are a couple of scares that were effective, and it did show some promise, but its chopping and changing between the house and the neighbouring town isn’t handled very well in creating an overall atmosphere other than it being grey and miserable. This lack of atmosphere is not at all helped by the poor sound design. A horror film’s worth is largely based on a good sound design, whether it be signifying sounds that indicate something is wrong (the beeping of the scanner in Alien), a genuinely freaky sound that send shivers down your spine (the ‘click click click’ sound of The Grudge), or even the really subtle sounds that are grounded in reality (The House of the Devil does this for most of the film and it’s incredibly tense), anything lacking in the sound department can lead to change the mood entirely from something scary to something funny.

Thankfully The Woman in Black doesn’t stray too much into the ‘funny’ side of horror, but a better handling of it could have delivered something much better. But the things it really lacks are a point and a decent story. There is no particular fear that it addresses and nothing has been put in place to make you care about what happens to the characters. It tries to characterise a lot of people and as such ends up painting nothing more than caricatures and because it’s so confused between trying to scare you and trying to make you empathise with people it doesn’t have time to find a fear it’s trying to address.

So as a post Harry Potter vehicle for Radcliffe (I guess it had to be mentioned at some point), it’s hardly anything to write home about. It wasn’t the best casting choice (despite it being biologically possible, his baby face really doesn’t make him look like the father of a 4 year old), but it doesn’t really point to how well his career is going to go. A limited range of being either scared of confused doesn’t really allow him much room to prove himself, but I can’t deny he has this effortlessly likeable screen presence, meaning this film isn’t going to ruin him. But down the line, I don’t think he’ll be reminiscing about this outing to Eel Marsh if he ever picks up an Oscar.

CARNAGE

Parents will always worry about how their children will turn out, and there will always be the debate of nature vs. nurture. Are our kids naturally destined to become reprobates on the Jeremy Kyle show or can strict parenting get them on their way to achieving that PhD from Oxford? Such concerns are those of the parents at the centre of Carnage, Roman Polanski’s satirical stab at the politically correct middle classes who are so very desperate not to offend anyone.

The four protagonists are two sets of parents (one couple played by Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz, the other Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) whose children have gotten into a fight. They decide to meet up and discuss the incident and how to go about reprimanding the children in a civilised fashion. Of course, things spiral out of control, tempers start flaring and everyone ends up acting more childish than the kids. Add alcohol to the mix and…well I’m sure you’ve experienced the emotional effects of one too many.

Originally based on a play (the playwright also helped Polanski pen the screenplay, so at least the spirit of the original source material is there), 99% of the film takes place entirely in one location. For a play, this is advantageous because it doesn’t require set changes and the stage is the actual boundary in which this rather talky story can be told. However, when you get into the realm of film, these boundaries cease to exist. Camera angles and sets, even planets can change with a simple cut, so it’s hard to confine all the action to one space that doesn’t physically trap the characters. What this ultimately means is that you find yourself constantly asking why they don’t just leave. Even at the points where they are practically out the door, something manages to drag them back in again and this repetition causes the opening to drag somewhat.

However, once their manners begin to dissipate, the real comedy starts and the film gets very entertaining and begins to flow a lot more. The humour is witty and snide, backed up by decent performances (from a cast where 3 of 4 have won Oscars, what would you expect?) from the four leads. Each character is has their own set of believable ticks and the character progression from civilised to barbarism is natural. And at a brisk 80 minutes, it certainly doesn’t want to hang around for too long, which is more than can be said about the characters.

There is one big problem with it though - it really isn’t very memorable (apart from Kate Winslet’s no infamous projectile vomiting scene), which leads me to think that maybe Carnage isn’t as aggressive as the title claims it to be. It’s an interesting thematic concept - how adults are trapped by manners and attempts to please everyone, when all they want to do is act like children and lash out at anyone that says they’re wrong - but is it one that really needs addressing? Surely we all know this, even if it’s subconscious, we know it. This intimate knowledge of the driving force of the story then in the end sucks out the venom that Polanski is trying to sting you with.

It’s a shame really, because it really is so bloody entertaining. So by all means, go and watch it, enjoy the great performances and the zinger upon zinger dialogue. Just don’t see it as anything more than watching intellectuals trip over their own political correctness which, let’s face it, is always fun.

THE DESCENDANTS

“Paradise? Paradise can go fuck itself.”

This line pretty much sums up the entire philosophy of Matt King (George Clooney), a middle-aged man in crisis. His wife is in a coma after hitting her head in a boating accident, his 10-year-old daughter Scottie (Amara Miller) is acting out, and 17-year-old daughter Alex (Shailene Woodley) is all too aware how absent her father has been over the course of their lives. Then, just to make the whole matter worse, Alex reveals to her father that his wife was having an affair before the accident.

The Descendants is the long awaited return from Alexander Payne, director of Oscar Winning Sideways (for best adapted screenplay, which he also co-wrote), and deals with themes of the family, uncertainty, and reconnection in the same way as many Indie films of the same ilk. Infused with a degree of honesty that births humour from a bad situation and everyday occurrences, it rings much like Win Win or Little Miss Sunshine in its portrayal of a patriarch struggling with the world he has built for himself.

It’s this honesty that really makes the film shine and coupled with the delicate intimacy that Payne directs the film with, it feels like you’re taking the journey with them. Every character turn and plot twist reveals something new and draws in your sympathies - even with Alex’s stereotypical douchebag surfer friend, Sid, who tags along for her moral support. This is screenwriting at its best and I would be happy if it picks up Payne’s second Oscar for best adapted screenplay (but the prize will probably go to Moneyball, which admittedly, I haven’t seen so I shouldn’t really be judging).

However, it’s not just great writing that make the characters come to life. The performances by the entire cast are great - especially from the younger members. Scottie has a great naivety as she struggles to understand why the people around her are acting so weird, Alex is brash and outspoken whilst hiding her emotions to protect her little sister and Sid turns out to be much more than the 2 dimensional ‘surfer dude’ we’re introduced to. And of course there is Clooney’s master class in restrained acting - bettered this (Oscar) year only by Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - but whether you believe Clooney as a struggling family man will affect whether you believe entirely in his character. But what makes the performances stand out is that they feel completely real.

The realism of the film turns it into a piece of work that doesn’t romanticise everything. There isn’t a sweeping orchestral score dictating our emotions (the music used is wonderful, but I’ll let you see it and find out for yourself), there aren’t explosions of emotions to show how distraught the characters are, the cinematography is beautiful without being like a postcard tour of Hawaii and its neighbouring islands and the comedy all comes from very real dialogue instead of big set piece jokes and slapstick. Yet it isn’t an entirely realistic film in that it depicts real life as we live it, the realism instead is embedded deeper in the subtext and comes about as something that all films seek to explore - truth.

A classic film reveals or explores a particular truth about the human condition (even blockbusters such as Jurassic Park - man’s futile desire to play God/control life), which is why they become timeless. And whether The Descendants becomes a commercial smash hit or not, it will stand the test of time because its honest and real portrayal of a father under pressure explores something we should all think about - what will our descendant generations inherit, both physically and morally, from us?

SHAME

When I first watched ‘Hunger’ - the debut feature film from British artist Steve McQueen - it was hard not to be taken aback by such an intimate portrait of human extremes and where it did have its flaws (creeping into artsy pretentiousness), it was a very strong stepping stone to bridge the gap from art to feature film making. His sophomore feature, ‘Shame’ is a much more refined piece of film craft that really shows McQueen is definitely a director to watch out for in the future.

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a model citizen of Manhattan. He’s top dog in his job, he’s charming, well dressed and lives in a comfortable, modern flat high up in the city. However, he’s also a sex addict - an addiction he works around in his day-to-day life with calm calculation. But when his younger sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), comes for an unexpected (and indefinite) visit, his routine is shattered and he is forced to deal with his addiction.

But to say that this is a film about sex addiction would make it sound like a film that tried to deal with the issues surrounding it: causes, problems and the effect it has on Brandon and those around him. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The causes are only hinted at, the problems it brings aren’t black and white and the effects are not what we would imagine. Not least because Sissy is just as damaged as Brandon. So it’s much more like a portrait of people dealing with their emotional damages and it just so happens that the protagonist we find ourselves with manifests these damages as a sex addiction.

It’s this emotional quality of the film that is the driving force of the story, rather than actual plot. Taking place over the course of a few days, we see slices of Brandon’s life and routine and how once Sissy appears, the utter contrast between the two characters completely disrupts it. They are both complete train wrecks of people who have both developed their own ways of dealing with life. Where Brandon is sophisticated and introverted, Sissy is impulsive and extroverted. But both of them share a traumatic past that is never revealed and all we know is that despite being total opposites, they both share a tragic loneliness. This is most clear during a sequence in which Sissy sings an original, haunting rendition of “New York, New York” at a stylish Manhattan bar. The shots are close and editing is minimal and the emotion is ramped up by the magnificent performances of both actors.

Both Fassbender and Mulligan give the performances of their careers. The lingering shots of Brandon doing very little other than thinking are utterly compelling to watch and to see Mulligan playing the total opposite of her usual quiet, mousy characters is incredibly refreshing. These performances are emphasised by McQueen’s use of the long take, where emotional beats of the script change and the performances change with them. The performances also work in harmony with all visual aspects of the film. Both characters are seen in reflections, shot through glass or we see the backs of them. McQueen places the audience in the position of a voyeur, keeping us visually distant from the characters as they distance themselves from everyone around them in their own ways. It all comes together to produce a film more about crushing isolation than sex addiction.

What really struck me about the film was the audience reaction to when the unflinching and raw sex scenes appeared. There was a lot of awkward laughter, which was intriguing to say the least - the presentation of sex as essentially animalistic seemed to make the audience squirm. Believe me when I say the sex scenes aren’t sexy, not in the traditional Hollywood sense anyway. There isn’t any sweeping emotional music or rich colours with glamorous lighting - it’s just pure fucking.

But the question of the laughter is an intriguing one. Maybe by placing us in a position of voyeurism, McQueen is placing the audience in Brandon’s position when a work colleague discovers his work computer is full of porn - that embarrassment of being caught? Or maybe laughing off the sex scenes is an emotional barrier for the realism involved - we don’t want to admit that we have sex in such an animalistic and unromantic fashion?

Sounds like an essay topic, I’m digressing a little.

But despite the frank and graphic sex scenes, the real emotional plight of the film comes from the parts that made the audience laugh for another reason: seeing two characters having genuinely comic and emotional interactions - little moments showing that both Brandon and Sissy have the potential to engage in an emotional relationship with someone, but their debilitating personalities won’t allow them. That’s what makes this film so ultimately tragic, yet utterly compelling. It’s a weighty film to watch, but if you see any film at the cinema this awards season, make sure it’s this one as it’s worth every single penny you’ll spend on it... 

...just don’t bring your parents or first dates with you.

THE IRON LADY

OK, so I was born in 1988, well into the latter years of Thatcher’s reign and until she left Number 10, I was more concerned with my toys and food than the state of the country. So I’ve never really known much about her politics or what she had done, which actually made walking into this film quite refreshing - I was free from any particular bias towards the woman who is the main subject of the film. However, that was where the refreshment ended as we were propelled into Phyllidia Lloyd’s confused and sentimental biopic about one of the most controversial politicians in this country’s history.

The main base of the story revolves around Thatcher in the present day, going about her day-to-day life. She is a grieving woman growing old and senile, far from the picture that public memory has. From having conversations with her dead husband, she begins to remember times from her formative younger years as a grocer’s daughter to her years as prime minister. We jump back and forth through the narrative as the script (written by Abi Morgan) attempts to contrast the past and the present to reveal Thatcher’s human side, but it only really serves to turn her life into a series of episodes that attempt to define what she stood for.

The biggest problem with the narrative is that as it jumps around, it really doesn’t know what kind of film it wants to be. It’s trying to be an emotional portrait of a woman who no longer has the power she had, it’s a biopic of a divisive public figure, it’s a film about a grieving wife. It deals with themes of power, madness, death, loss, politics, sexism in politics, belief in what is right, belief in one’s self, grief, family, the cost of power and probably a few more that I probably don’t remember. The choice of events to go back to are too varied, pretty much warranting their own feature length film and thus leads the film not only to be rather confused, but it also turns these complex events into ones that are oversimplified and lack any emotional or narrative weight.

I suppose there should be some mention of Meryl Streep’s “please please please give me the Oscar” performance. There, that was it. It doesn’t matter how good her performance is - and there were moments when she was fantastic (but I’ve seen better) - it can’t carry a film that’s as weak as this.

It is nothing but pure Oscar bait, trying its best to please everyone but ultimately, it pleases no one. For the emerging middle class of the 1980’s, who might praise Thatcher for what she did and how she helped the country, the film is a soppy love letter that presents her in a way that totally differs from how they remember her. Then for the working class, who endured and rioted against many of her policies (if they put their political bias aside and actually watch it), its reluctance to engage with the political issues and presentation of them simply as ‘events that happened to her’ could (and probably should) be considered a massive insult.

So as the final frames roll, and Maggie ambles away to carry on with her life, we are left with an empty, blue (the amount of blue in this film is practically insulting, YES WE KNOW SHE WAS A CONSERVATIVE) kitchen and hallway, the camera lingers as the credits begin to roll and the image fades to black. That pretty much sums up the entire film - empty and blue and as confused as the aged Maggie appears to be.

THE ARTIST: REVIEW

Every now and again, a film will come along that dispels the whole “they don’t make them like they used to” belief, but never before have I seen a film that actively enforces it. I mean, many films enforce the belief by being so utterly terrible (just look at last year’s blockbusters), but to see a film that’s deliberately provoking that vintage nostalgia of cinema at its most basic form of storytelling is actually quite refreshing.

Hollywood, 1927. George Valentin is a major star in silent films and at the peak of his career. Outside the premiere of his latest hit, a young aspiring actress - Peppy Miller - waits patiently for an autograph. A chance encounter between the two in the chaotic crowd begins the narrative, charting the rise of Peppy and the fall of George as sound is introduced to cinema and the great depression begins.

This is visual storytelling at its most rich, yet basic. Complex emotions and plot developments are reduced to nothing more than a few simple gestures, dialogue cards (used very sparingly) and visual design. What the director - Michel Hazanavicius - has done here, is create something that appears to be very simple, but in actuality is incredibly complex. The lack of speech has lead every other aspect of the production to do its absolute utmost to convey the emotions, plot points and ideas. Everything here works in harmony to stir emotions in an audience the way that all films should.

Look at this picture as an example. Here, Peppy Miller has snuck into George Valentin’s dressing room to leave a thank you note for an earlier deed he had done to help her. From the initial spark when they first met, we had an inkling of their feelings towards each other, but here we get inside Peppy’s head and what she’s thinking. We see her fantasy and this in turn reveals her feelings for George in an incredibly original way. It’s a brilliant play on vision, being slightly comic, but incredibly intimate. These kind of images perpetuate the film and are what gives it the incredible beauty that it has.

I can’t really talk about this film without mentioning the performance of Jean Dujardin as George, which is one of the most prolific and wonderful performances of the year. Offering charm and charisma, but only as a mask to hide his cynical bitterness and pride. This is a character that is so complex that Hazanavicius’ handling of him is simply masterful. The journey we follow him on is an emotional one, and you really feel for him when he reaches a crisis point, but also laugh when he’s being funny. It’s rare that a character can take you on such highs and lows alone in this way. With a fantastic supporting cast, not one performance takes a bad turn, with John Goodman playing the traditional fat cat in a suit producer, Bénérice Bejo as the young Peppy Miller and James Cromwell as George’s loyal and faithful driver, Clifton. They all have an extraordinary chemistry, which allows you to forgive the incredible typecasting that has taken place.

However, despite the superb direction, incredible cinematography and powerhouse performances, it’s own medium as a silent film is the biggest downfall this film has. Not because it was a bad choice, or because it made it a bad film. It’s because no matter how much publicity or critical praise it gets, no matter how many stars you slap on the posters (believe me, there are a lot), it will not take a lot of money because of the modern mainstream audience’s aversion to anything that doesn’t involve big guns, explosions or fart jokes.

But for me, what is most interesting about The Artist is how relevant it still is today. The main narrative and the sub-plots are all completely universal, and it offers a critique of the industry that it tells the story about. The pride of the old with their reaction to new technology, trying to hold on to their old ways is very allegorical to what is happening today with the rise of digital technology and the industry’s struggle with Internet piracy. But past the struggle between old and new, it ultimately is about how the new can embrace the old and carry it through so that it will last. You can apply it to many industries, but specifically for filmmakers, the new generation my be embracing digital technology for its affordability, but there will always be the utmost respect for celluloid and if the suits let them, they will preserve and look after film as a means of production for decades to come. 

WAR HORSE: REVIEW

When I heard that Steven Spielberg was embarking on a new project, I was sceptical. Having nothing particularly notable to his name since Munich (somewhat underrated), it seemed that he had lost his spark. I need only mention the latest Indiana Jones to send shivers down the spines of anyone that has the slightest hint of good taste in anything.

However, upon hearing he was going to be adapting War Horse - being a colossal success on stage (which in turn was adapted from a children’s novel) - for the big screen, a glimmer of hope appeared. This was Spielberg returning to his classic territory – a story of an unbreakable bond, set in the First World War, between a boy and his horse in a sort of Black Beauty meets Saving Private Ryan affair. Incredibly schmaltzy, but he’s proven he can deal with these themes in an incredibly engaging way (Saving Private Ryan is one of the most shamelessly patriotic, overly romantic, and brilliantly constructed films to come out of Hollywood).

Joey is a horse, bought by a drunken farmer at a livestock auction in Devon, for more money than the poor man can afford. The farmer’s son forms an instant bond with the horse, and the horse pulls its weight around the farm against the odds. World War 1 breaks out and Joey is sold to the army, upon which he embarks on a journey encountering many people and many hardships until eventually, in the depths of the trenches, he is reunited with his original owner – cue the Kleenex.

Drawing from both the original source text, with its story told from the horse’s perspective, and the stage show, with its intensity and incredible visual style, the film becomes confused as to what it wants to do. The film is from the horse’s point of view, focusing on the beast’s power to bring out the best in people. But it also attempts to be violent and intense in a family friendly way. What this leads to is brief encounters with chief characters with which we have no time to empathise with and intense sequences lacking a visceral punch to make it effective.

I can’t say this is true for the entirety of the film though, there are segments where you do see Spielberg’s mastery of this brand of film shine out (2 have stuck in my mind since seeing it), but they are too few and far between to give the film the emotional clout that such a story deserves. The characters are so thinly spread that they become pantomime like tropes in order to make the audience remember who they are and the focus on the boy’s bond to his horse is virtually nonexistent so by the end that you feel the entire first act was a waste of time. There was also a completely schizophrenic cinematic style in the opening that I’m convinced was done entirely to combat the shitty British weather that confused the film as to whether it was trying to be realistic or pure fantasy.

But these are not the weakest points of this film. The biggest shortcoming is the actual horse itself. Where the things they manage to get the horse to do for the film are something quite spectacular, for the entire story to be focussed from his point of view means that we have to find some way to connect with him in the supposed way the characters do. This is pretty hard to do with a live action horse, and where the film could have benefited more from being animated. Allow me to explain; films such as Dumbo or Wall-E – both classic family films – feature protagonists that do not speak. Yet they both manage to carry the entire plot for the film’s duration. Why? Because the animators can control their facial expressions, they can emote. A live action animal cannot convey emotions on cue. If they could, I’m sure we’d be replacing many actors with highly trained chimps (and in the case of Orlando Bloom, I’m surprised they haven’t already). So for a live action film to be from the point of view of an animal just cannot work, as we cannot understand its feelings and thus the film keeps its audience at a considerable distance.

It’s a shame, because as a film, this had great potential. There’s great source material (the stage show blows the film completely out of the water), and you can see the technical prowess of Spielberg at work throughout - from the classic John Williams score that swoops and blossoms in all the right places to the grandiose camerawork depicting a luscious British countryside – but it all falls flat because at the end of it all, it’s just a series of vignettes telling us how incredible the horse is and it’s showing us how emotional we should be without actually invoking any emotions in us by using generic, romanticism in every sequence. Ultimately, it’s just patronising.

DRIVE

Cars and violence, what's not to love?

Holy shit! I have a review out that’s not 3 weeks after the release date! And now that we’re over that, let’s talk about Drive.

You’d think a film called Drive - which focuses on a stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver, on the run from the mob after a heist gone wrong and out for revenge on those responsible - would be full of action, car chases and a pounding soundtrack that sets out to abuse your senses in the same way a drunk hillbilly beats up his wife. But you couldn’t be further from the truth, and thank fuck for that because it shows that you can actually make a standard genre movie compelling, visually complex, and absolutely beautiful without resorting to the plot hole mind fuck stories like Inception.

Yup...I can predict that you needed a plane so I bought an airline for you...

Drive is a simple film, where less is more, and subtlety is king. It’s a very standard Noir Thriller with a simple story, but Nicolas Winding Refn (most known for Bronson) picked up the Best Director award at Cannes this year for this film, and you don’t get that just for making your standard run of the mill genre film otherwise, heaven forbid, Michael Bay would win the Palme D’Or. And if that happened, I would lose my faith in humanity and smear my rancid shit on the walls of a children’s hospital or something.

What Refn has done is to make a film that is rich and textured visually, audibly and most importantly, thematically. It all seems very 80’s but it is clearly set in the present day. There’s all the tacky neon you could want and even the soundtrack beats that 80’s synth pop we all know and love. Even down to the detail of the pink italicised paintbrush type in the credits. It’s got the aesthetic as if they had actually filmed Grand Theft Auto: Vice City without the 80’s campness. But through all of the visual and audible stylisation, it is the themes and character that stand out and the simplicity of the story has allowed Refn to focus thoroughly on it and create this award winning vision.

That’s not to say this film is without it’s flaws though, there are a couple of gaping plot holes and sometimes Carey Mulligan’s Irene seems a little too helpless. There are clichés and the beginning all seems a bit too saccharine sweet for the kind of Jeckyll and Hyde theme that resonates throughout the film. But these flaws are completely overwhelmed by the intricacy with which this film has been crafted.

However, there is a rather colossal flaw, which I don’t really seem to understand, and that’s the UK age certificate. The film’s been given an 18 rating, which is pretty much a commercial death sentence in this country. With the attendance for 18 rated films at an all time low, all the studios are out to trivialise their violent content into cartoonish drivel so that they get certified 15. This is partly to blame for the desensitisation of our youth, but also means films like Drive won’t get to a larger audience in the cinema because the violence here is too ‘real’. But in the US, this film has a RESTRICTED rating. Which means anyone under 17 can go as long as they are with an adult over 18. This rating is MORE SENSIBLE because not only do the studios get the sales of the tickets, the parents can decide if their 15 or 16 year old kids are fit to see the film themselves. But oh no, we wouldn’t want parents to feel responsible for the little shits they spawn would we? We’d rather just park them in front of the TV and let that raise them instead.

After watching Tellietubbies, junior picked up a hammer and bashed is family's skulls in because they wouldn't make him tubbie toast...

Anyway, I digress…

Drive, above all else, is a Jeckyll and Hyde film. The unnamed driver (played magnificently by Ryan Gosling) is a seemingly kind a gentle person, but just under the surface lays a savage beast that really doesn’t take a lot of coaxing to come out to the fore. This is also reflected in the city of LA. It is saturated, colourful, bright and pretty to look at, but just below the surface is a criminal underbelly with gangs and mobs willing to screw each other over for money. Maybe even, we can see a little bit of the unnamed driver in ourselves. We all pretend to be nice, but actually, maybe we all just want to gouge each others eyes out with the nearest piece of cutlery. 

OH NO, THERE IS A FORK IN MY EYE!

This is what Film Noir should be doing. It reflects the darker side of humanity by showing an audience the protagonists relationship with the city in which they dwell, and their natures very frequently fit hand in hand. This is what makes Drive a true Noir film, and what makes it a bloody fantastic one. The violence is visceral, the driving sequences have made driving sequences exciting again (the opening is one of the most intense things I have ever seen), and just about everything in this film is sublime. Go and watch it, thank me later.

And if that didn't persuade you, perhaps a picture of Bill Murray might.

KILL LIST

Wait...what?

Every once in a while I get introduced to something that completely and utterly confuses me as to what the fuck I am actually watching. Like Deal or No Deal style game shows where the contestant wins money without any sort of skill. If it were up to me, to get that £250’000 the contestant would need to have suffered some sort of emotional and psychological trauma that the money would be needed for therapy afterwards.

...and for the cuddly toy, you have to fight a REAL LIVE PANDA!

Anyway, Kill List is one of those things, but that actually works in its favour. I think…

The film follows Jay, an ex-soldier turned hit man with a middle class family life that is slowly unravelling due to him being out of work for the last 8 months. His previous assignment had gone horribly wrong and it’s still dogging him. However, home pressures and a visit from his friend and partner, Gal, lead him to take on another job - an easy job with plenty of money. Of course, nothing is quite as it seems.

So far, sounds like your fairly average film. After hearing a bit about the hype and not reading too much, I was very unsure of what to actually expect, but figured it was going to be one of those usual British crime films about angry men who go around killing people and being all cheeky-like á la Guy Ritchie. In most instances I’d be right, but I was actually wrong on this one, and when I say wrong, I mean REALLY wrong. I mean wrong in the sense of someone eating dog shit and thinking “now why did I think that would taste like chocolate?” Just because it’s the same colour as chocolate doesn’t mean it actually is.

Chocolate, or shit? What do you think?

OK, so maybe there was SOME chocolate mixed in with the shit, because some of the dialogue actually was a bit cheeky-chappy ‘ave a laugh like (my favourite line being “we’re going to do this properly, not just mow him down like some Hackney crackhead”), but the interaction between the characters feels a boatload more natural than that of the typical British crime film. With an absolutely fantastic script, and additional dialogue contributed by the actors themselves, conversation flows a lot more naturally and it feels more real.

But the greatness in the script comes not just from the dialogue, but the structure as well. It takes the standard 3 act story structure and still adheres to it, but as well as your standard turning points in the story it also shifts genres. Which serves to disorientate you and build up your expectations so the final act completely throws you off balance before the closing moments of the film that really deliver that finishing blow.

Yeah...pretty much that really.

Which leads me to my final point and a possible reasoning as to why I’m really unsure about what I think of this film. It does have quite a few flaws, but it’s an absolutely wonderful piece of filmmaking, with dread, menace and tension submersed under the skin of every character and permeates out through their interactions as well as the films construct. It has a great script that offers a very daring and different kind of film and deserves the praise it gets. But above all else, it’s an examination of our relation to violence. There are some scenes that are quite brutal, and they only get more brutal as the film progresses. But they payoff they lead to is more of a punishment for our want (and by the end of the film, Jay’s want) of this cathartic release. It’s somewhat unsatisfying, but it is clearly the film that Ben Wheatley, the director, wanted to make. It’s almost like he wanted the ending to completely throw you out of the door like a violent drunk at a bar. You want to start trouble? Well you can fuck off out of here then.

And after that, you just stumble home, confused and unsure of what the hell is going on.

I'm pretty sure he just drunkenly stumbled into the Whitehouse after hitting the real George Bush with his car...

THE SKIN I LIVE IN

Sensual, Sumptuous, Sexual, Spanish.

One of the most irritating things in the world are people that don’t watch foreign language films because they “can’t be bothered with the subtitles”. It literally makes me want to go all Reservoir Dogs on their ears just so they have to watch everything with subtitles for the rest of their lives for being so bloody ignorant.

"What's that? You can't hear me? Would you like some subtitles now?"

Anyway, now that my rant is over I can move onto the film.

The Skin I Live In is the hotly anticipated new film from Oscar winning Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar (though saying that, the anticipation has mostly been on my part as I’m the weird film geek of my friendship group), and it is an Almodóvar film all over. Yet here we have a director who is an Auteur in every sense of the word, but somehow manages to stay fresher than the Fresh Prince himself.

You get filmmakers like Tim Burton, who, lets face it, are BORING. Oooo a new Tim Burton film, I wonder how much gothic inspiration is going to be swirling around Johnny Depp’s strange character who doesn’t fit into society for whatever reason. He is the Iron Maiden of the film industry, releasing the same thing again and again and again in a never ending spiral that even M.C. Escher couldn’t comprehend (high brow art joke fnar fnar fnar).

If Escher gets confused, you know we're in trouble.

So with this film, you have all the general Almodóvar traits: strong female characters, pushing the boundaries of gender stereotypes, bright colours, obsession and the connections between people. Yet these are all just part of a much grander plot that becomes an incredible feat of genre mashing that keeps you on your toes. Jumping between thriller, mystery, family drama, body horror, suspense, revenge and psychosexual drama with an episodic, almost choppy narrative is definitely an experiment that could have gone horribly wrong, but we are safely in the hands of a master as he navigates us through this utterly batshit insane plot.

Antonio Banderas is our protagonist, a brilliant plastic surgeon who has holed himself away in his country home working on a single project for the last 6 years. He has created a skin that you can graft onto a human that is tougher than skin is supposed to be. His test subject has remained imprisoned in captivity and is the key to his past. That’s all I’m going to say because you really have to see it to believe it.

The cast is amazing, Banderas is suitably intense and brooding, Elena Anaya is the brilliantly fragile, yet menacing Vera and Almodóvar regular Marisa Paredes plays a brilliant matriarch. There is very little I can fault with this film, apart from maybe the pacing is a little slow through the middle. But that doesn’t really matter considering that every frame of film is full to bursting of visual imagery that will make your eyes bleed in ecstasy.

EVEN STATUES OF LIONS EYES' WILL BLEEEEEEEED

This film is an absolute must watch not only for its fantastic direction, or the great performances, or the insane plot, or the beautiful visuals, but because it’s fresh, new. I have never quite seen anything like it and leaving the cinema the only word I could really think of to describe it was AWESOME. What is so great about it is that it has more ideas rammed into it than the karma sutra. A film that is so very much the way I like my men….RICH.*

Would you have sex with a cartoon character if they were rich? I'm considering it...

*Author is aware that this is a terrible joke that you would expect from Sex and the City, or the back of a penguin wrapper.

SHIT

OH SHIT

IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I'VE ACTUALLY DONE ANYTHING

MY BLOG FAILS

BUT NOT FOR MUCH LONGER
(hopefully)

You see, the problem with keeping a blog is that it has to be a habit. And I don't have an addictive personality, and therefore take a long time to pick up habits...the ones that I do have took me years and years to cultivate, such as my habit of eating chocolate...or that massive rock of crack I keep under my bed.

BUT FEAR NOT. I shall hopefully post something soon, maybe, once my life gets a little more sorted. THERE HAS BEEN SOME BUSY BUSY SHIT GOING ON.

I don't even know why I'm writing this, it's not like anyone is actually going to read this right? I should probably become popular before I write stupid ramblings and get on to writing something pointful and meaningful.

Or maybe I should just get really drunk and write a post...

13 ASSASSINS

Yes, well done it has the word ASS in the title...twice!

Rumour has it that if Takashi Miike’s production output falls below 4 feature length films a year the world will end and the gates of hell will open up, unleashing a deluge of demons so great that not even Jean Claude Van Damme will be able to stop them. This may have something to do with why in the last 20 years he has directed more than 80 films. And he doesn’t make just terrible film after terrible film either, he has been responsible for some of the classics of Japanese cinema, notably Ichi The Killer and Audition, which became cult classics in the western hemisphere. 13 Assassins definitely doesn’t show that the movie-making machine is slowing up either, remaining as intense and intelligent as the large part of his back catalogue.

The film follows the story of a Samurai, hired to kill an evil overlord looking to spread chaos and bring Japan back to an age of war. This of course is no easy task, and so he must recruit a band of loyal warriors prepared to give their lives in honourable combat to assassinate this crazy bad man.

If only it was real life...and the evil bad man was Jordan. Life would be good then.

So it’s very much a film that “does what it says on the tin.” At just over 2 hours long it is clearly split into 2 halves, the build up and the combat. And when I say halves, I literally mean it - the combat scene is the entire second half of the film. Now some would say that a whole hour of nothing but combat would begin to loose the intensity after a while, but it really doesn’t let up, it just keeps getting better and better.

Very much like an orgasm then...except with more violence. Well...depends on what kind of orgasm...

So where does the intelligence come in? Well apart from feeling very reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Seven Samurai, it actually turns the genre on its head by playing out very much like many Hollywood films. A build up to a great stand off battle at the end, followed swiftly by a one on one show down between each gang’s leaders. It certainly feels like a film influenced by Hollywood and this could have been a let down, there are certainly some clichéd moments in it. But Miike has managed to keep enough Eastern energy in it for it to set itself apart from the usual generic crap. It is this delicate balance that keeps this film on your toes throughout where you think you know what will happen, but it never quite plays out that way.

Not only that, but there is an absolutely insane screwball character thrown into the mix. A wandering man who had been thrown out of his gang, looking to join in the fight for what appears to be a bit of a laugh and eventually leads to an incredible “wait….what the fuck?” kind of moment towards the films conclusion. He isn’t a samurai, but he’s quite keen to mock them and show them up whenever he can (he takes the phrase “bringing a knife to a gun fight” back to the Feudal Japanese era, using a sling and rocks against an army of swords and bows), even uttering the line “you samurai, you’re quite boring aren’t you?”.

 I don't think he'll be on the Christmas card list then?

So the film, being a bit of a mash up between East and West, manages to turn a rather generic and average samurai story into a film that is epic from start to finish. You can feel the burning sensation throughout the whole of the build up, which culminates in the explosive ambush (literally) and the intense, relentless battle that pushes your senses to a new place, with just enough comic humour to ease up the tension so you don’t feel like your bowels are about to explode after being squeezed too tight by muscular tension.

Let’s hope the next 80 films continue to be as fresh and original as their predecessors. And for God’s sake someone try to find a way to make someone live forever, because if Takashi Miike dies, the natural order of the world will fuck up in a way that makes 2012 look like your little sister’s tea party.

Or something as adorable as this.

THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADÉLE BLANC-SEC

Indianna Jones' really hot French grandma comes to town...

The problem with this age of information we live in is that before you actually go and see a film, you know more about it than the actual filmmakers (but then again, most big budget films have been assembled by a team of mentally challenged monkeys in a terrible bid to save money so the studios can computer enhance the size of Kiera Knightly’s tits). You’ve seen about 30 trailers, read interviews, seen the stars appear on chat shows, read reviews etc. etc. and the general publicity drive is something akin to the way Britney Spears is still trying to convince the world she’s a pop star.

"And after I release my new record, my new range of tampons will be hitting shelves!"

This is why I was glad to see this film without knowing a single thing about it, apart from the fact it was directed by Luc Besson - a man who gave us such fine action films as Léon and Nikita, as well as the hilariously terrible but completely unmissable The Fifth Element. So I figured I didn’t have much to lose as even if it was terrible, it was bound to get a good laugh along the way.

What I got was actually something completely unexpected. With a story that’s quite possibly the most batshit insane story for an adventure film, it makes Indianna Jones look like he was just raiding through that wardrobe in your parent’s bedroom you aren’t allowed to go near at Christmas time. It’s 1912 in France, and a renowned telepathic scientist has found a way to bring to life and control ancient beings, hatching a 130 million year old pterodactyl egg and flying it around the city. Adéle seeks the help of this scientist to bring to life an Egyptian pharaoh’s physician in order to revive her sister, who due to a freak accident has been turned into a breathing vegetable.

So this film seems like a bit of a mash up between Indianna Jones, The Mummy, but of course, this is French cinema, not some cheap Hollywood knock off piece of monkey faeces. It actually has a great sense of humour and will get you laughing at the sheer absurdity of the way it plays out whilst howling through the excitement of a great action film. Of course, being a French production there is nowhere near the sort of budget the Yanks get, but the average CGI only serves to add to the charm of the picture.

No Wolverine, bad CGI isn't THAT bad unless it's meant to distract you from a terrible story...

Charm: this film has it in buckets. It’s as though Luc Besson is sitting next to you, whispering sweet nothings in your ear to distract you from the fact that he’s about to slip a giant dose of LSD into your drink because the film certainly felt like one massive trip, constantly pulling some sort of ‘what the fuck?’ face whilst giggling like a psychotic child at the bizarre capers of bungling cops and the dark one liners Adéle constantly blasts whoever happens to be near her.

So what this film actually is, is FUN! Which seems to be a bit of a rarity nowadays. Not fun in the sense that you go and enjoy a film, but fun in the same way that your 8^th birthday was, except there isn’t any cake involved.

I'm sorry, but you literally cannot mention cake on the internet now without this cropping up...

And this is what seems to be missing from the cinematic landscape as of late. We are in one of the worst economic situations in a long time, and all of the latest releases seem to be deadly serious and grounded in reality. Even the comedies are saccharine sweet with the big emotional kick. Very few films actually just take the plunge and go for an all out adventure that can just really lighten your mood. Besson has really done a fantastic job with this, making an unpredictable, charming, and all round bizarre film in what is set to be a series (the set up for the next potential film is fantastic). I really hope they make another one because it’s indispensable adventures like these that truly showcase the power of cinema in it’s ability to make you temporarily feel like you’re 8 years old again, which to be honest, us depressed and stressed out adults need every now and again.

This kid may be angry, but he really isn't giving a shit about it...