Film - Sideways

Genuinely funny and enjoyable film with excellent performances; even moving in places. One of the good ones. 9/10

Film: The Aviator

I am way behind on reviews. Time to start catching up. And where better than with The Aviator? I now have the benefit of being able to incorporate its performance at the Oscars into the review.

But is it any good? It's watchable, but over-rated. DiCaprio doe not bring enough stature to the central role and the cript has serious problems.

I am not a great fan of biopics. They impose a constraint on the story that can be told. For a biopic to work, it has to feature a really compelling character, preferably one that you knew a little about but with plenty of room to shed new light. That could apply to Howard Hughes (most of what I know about him comes from the novels of James Ellroy - not a complimentray portrayal).

I am alo not a fan of screenwriter John Logan, who has brought us such memorable works as The Last Samurai, Gladiator, and Star Trek: Nemesis.

And ultimately, I'm not a great fan of The Aviator, either. The biggest problem with the film is Leonardo DiCaprio, who fails to bring any charm to the role - the great womaniser comes across as a leering creep - and also fails to age convincingly. In fact, nothing about the film conveys the near 20 years that it is meant to cover.

But the screenplay doesn't help. We never get to see what really drives Hughes, or what he is passionate about. Oh, we see that he likes directing films, and likes planes, but it never goes beyond that. There is a scene where Hughes goes to dinner with the Hepburns, fails to get on with them, and tells them that they don't appreciate money because they've never had to work for it. This is an incredible outburst from a man who, at the start of the film, ha inherited a vast fortune from his parents and is risking it all to make a film, apparently for vanity purposes. We catch occasional glimpses of Hughes "working", but it always seems like a hobby. Several times he risks the entire Hughes empire, and the trick quickly get tired - partly because there seem to be little really at stake, and partly because we are never told what the outcome actually is. We can infer it from the fact that his companies continue to operate, but where is the dramatic payoff?

There is also a terribly contrived opening scene featuring young Howard being bathed by his mother and made to spell the word "quarantine". A subtle theme this is not.

Alan Alda turns in a nice performance as a Senator who puts Hughes on trial, but sadly his character is a straw man for Hughes to blow down. Cate Blanchett is good fun as Katharine Hepburn - given how many Oscar nominations this year were for portrayal of real people, no great surprise that she won - and everyone else is fine with the small parts they have to work with.

The film looks nice, has an authentic (if not entirely aesthetically pleasing) period soundtrack, and never drags, which is quite an accomplishment given its length, and probably the nicest thing I can find to say about it. Scorcese is in control of his craft, and this is certainly a step up from the mess that was Gangs of New York. But it's a long way short of his best work, and I'm glad he didn't get a entimental Oscar for it. Hopefully he can hit his past heights again and earn the Oscar that his body of work deserves.

Film: 2004 in review

I like to do a top 10 of the year, a little reflection. Sometimes it's very hard to whittle
films down to 10. Looking back over 2004, I think there were only about 10 films that I really
enjoyed (plus Duck Soup at the NFT, which doesn't really count). Four of those were foreign
language films, 2 or 3 of which probably never made it outside London. But tough. I'm going to jump right in.

Best Films
10 Infernal Affairs 2
The original was a brilliant conceit - a cop undercover in the Triads, and a Triad undercover in the police - and this is the prequel. Not as good as the original (lacking the top-notch actors, for starters), but sharply plotted and always interesting.
9 Incredibles, The
Pixar is always good, but this was over-rated - only the last half hour really zinged (zang?). If it
had all been that good, this would be right up there. I'm probably being too harsh on it because my expectations were too high.
8 Spider-Man 2
Sam Raimi really gets the character, and in some ways an improvement over the original - I
could have done without the "vanishing powers" sub-plot and some of the action scenes were SO fast that you just couldn't take in what was happening (ironic in a film based on a comic, which is of course nothing but "freeze-frames"), but it's very enjoyable nonetheless.
7 House of Flying Daggers
Visually stunning, and even if it cheats by using CGI, it actually lays out its action scenes
so you can see what happens, something Western films are apparently incapable of right now
(and a real bugbear of mine). Nice plot too. A bit over-dramatic, but it's going for epic
and it's better to be overambitious than not amibitious at all.
6 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Not quite what I was expecting and the projector spoiled the last few minutes of the film.
I'd really like to see this again and it could go higher now that I know what it really is.
5 Collateral
Not quite Heat standard, and Cruise's white hair is terribly distracting, but very good stuff
from the most reliable director I can think of.
4 Memories of Murder
Inept Korean murder investigation, based on a true story. Funny and shocking. Maybe the film
I'd least want to watch again, but one of those that I enjoyed far more than I expected to,
yet its qualities fade in the mind... so probably I'd enjoy it again. I just thought that it was very well done.
3 Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Funniest film of the year by a distance.
2 Kill Bill: Volume 2
I probably enjoyed this more than vol 1. I cannot think of a more appropriate adjective than
"cool". Tarantino takes many of the things I've appreciated in Asian cinema this year and
adds his own layers. Excellent.
1 The Twilight Samurai
Lilly will think I have done this just to annoy her because she hasn't seen it, but it really
was superb. It's about the samurai code, honor, and whether it's braver to do
something scary or refuse to do it. Only two fight scenes in the whole film, and they're both
stunning because the camera stays still and they actually look real. I saw this about the
same time as The Last Samurai (see Worst Films, below) and it made TLS look even worse by
comparison.

Worst Films
Or at least the ones that let me down most.
7 21 Grams
A big letdown after Amores Perros, which was 2/3 brilliant. Pretentious and dull with annoying camerawork.
6 Troy
Awful writing, almost uniformly awful acting, gets some things right but could actually have
been a good film with some more work.
5 Ladykillers, The
The Coen Brothers made this? Worse than Intolerable Cruelty. Annoying, and depressing that my once-favourite film-makers have fallen this far.
4 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Visually stunning (entirely CGI backdrops), painfully badly written. It's meant to recreate
(or spoof?) those old adventure serials but misses the boat - they were great, exciting,
cliffhangers all the way through. This is dull.
3 The Last Samurai
I have ranted enough about this in the past. Fails to make the top 2 because of some nice cinematography
and a few exciting scenes, but they don't outweigh the heavy-handed plot mechanics and general stupidity of the film.
2 Northfork
I really liked Twin Falls Idaho, by the same directors. This looked lovely but was
stupefyingly dull. Shame.
1 The Passion of the Christ
The nearest I have ever come to walking out of a film. I wish I had. Probably the most
boring film ever made. A shame, because it looks lovely. Where was the twist ending? Bah!

Others
A Mighty Wind - Fun, but way-sub-Spinal Tap. Which is, I suspect, Guest's curse.
American Splendor - decent film
Big Fish - good in parts, bad in others. Tim Burton shows flashes of what he can do but is a
long way from his best
Bourne Supremacy - solid and entertaining, though I could do without all the hand-held cameras and the rough feel, because it's a big-budget film and you don't have to shoot it with dodgy steadicams.
Garden State - enjoyable with some good sight gags, but little zip
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - plot feels horribly condensed (which I guess it
is), o/w a decent standard and entertaining
Hellboy - very enjoyable first 2/3, beautifully shot, really lost its way in the last act
Hero - some lovely visuals. Would quite like to see the plot again, as it seems rather interesting (if much condemned for its politics) and lacks the heart of House of Flying Daggers.
I ♥ Huckabees - odd. Enjoyable moments
I, Robot - poor film, poor plot, Smith annoying
Layer Cake - quite good, actually - I feared an annoying Lock, Stock type of film, but it was
fairly imaginative
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events - surprisingly entertaining in a pleasantly
black way, though it dragged a little
Lost in Translation - enjoyable enough but massively over-rated and very sedate
Napoleon Dynamite - funny fluff
Shaun of the Dead - very funny in places and just missed out on the Top 10.
Shrek II - it's... fine, some funny moments. The difference between Dreamworks and Pixar is,
Dreamworks seem to want to make a certain film and decide to animate it as realistically as
possible, which is a waste (and their people still aren't very good). Pixar want to make an
animated film and do things they can't do in real life (with cameras etc), and impose real
style on it. And have better scripts.
Starsky & Hutch - generally good fun
The Cooler - quite interesting and enjoyable Vegas flick
Wimbledon - not as bad as feared
Zatoichi - also just missed the Top 10. Stylish and fun.

Not a vintage year - too many bad films (never mind the ones I couldn't bring myself, or Lilly couldn't drag me, to see) and nothing that stood out and screamed that it would be one of my favourites in 5 years' time. Let's hope for a strong start to 2005 for the usual late-running Oscar competitors we have seen yet - The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby, Sideways...