There are many things wrong with Fantastic Four. These have been related in many places. But it has one thing going for it: it brings the funny. At least some of the in-family bickering is entertaining. It has no pretensions to being a deep and meaningful film, and so I am willing overlook its flaws and gaping stupidities of plot enough to say that I enjoyed it for what it was. 7/10
But is it any good? Only intermittently. I might stretch to 6/10.
This is interesting: Spielberg transplants HG Wells' book to contemporary America, but keeps many of the plot points intact. Unfortunately, most of those make little sense. He wants to tell a ground level film, but cannot resist the odd aerial shot of the tripods soon after they appear. Most of all, he wants to tell a film about an everyman rather than a hero, but sabotages this by casting Tom Cruise in the lead role, giving him a big heroic scene at the end, an implausibly happy ending and a hopelessly annoying bickering family.
Spielberg still has an eye for a great shot, and there are some superb images here, such as the river of corpses, the flaming train, or the white birds against a grey sky. These moments are by far the best thing about the film.
By choosing a ground-up view, we are never privy to the aliens' thoughts or plans, and must speculate (or watch the characters do so), which is fine, or would be if they did not behave in apparently illogical ways. The worst aspect is Spielberg's addition to the book's plot, that the aliens' war machines have been buried under the earth for (at least) hundreds of years. Why do that? Wouldn't their technology have moved on since then? Why do they want to conquer the planet now, but not then? The only conceivable reason is that it has to do with life that has evolved since the machines were planted - but if so, they must have studied that life enough to find it desirable (for food?), which makes the ending even less plausible.
The alien's behaviour towards humans is also bizarre. At the end, they appear to be harvesting humans. So why, when they first appear, are they indiscriminately but inefficiently reducing humans to dust? Is it just so that they seem a bit more like - gasp - terrorists? And is their plan really to search every single building in the world, individually, first with a big snake-like camera and then, when that find nothing, with individual troops? Yes, that seems a sensible and realsitic investment of time and resources.
I could live with this. I could live with Cruise's unprecedented cool-headed act of heroism at the end (though I really don't think it's as heroic as Spielberg would like to suggest, sinc ehe is not risking himself). The real problem is that much of the film is spent on the road with Cruice and his kids, and every one of them is pretty annoying individually. Put together, they bicker and become even worse. This is almost a disaster movie more than a standard action film, but without a large central cast to kill off, so the audience has to care about the main characters. And I actively wanted them to die. That's a big problem.
But is it any good? Enjoyable and sets up what could be a very good sequel/series, but also a little annoying because it could easily have been better in a few key areas. 7.5/10
I am a little conflicted about Batman Begins. Christopher Nolan has a deserved reputation as a very good filmmaker (and a maker of very good films). I also think that he “gets” Batman, the character, and that he creates a terrific mood in the film. On the other hand, Nolan falls prey to the raid-cut-shaky-camerawork that I hate hate hate, the plot of the film is rather poor, and the one gaping hole in the Batman character is the dubious distinction he draws between killing people and not saving people from a situation that he has wilfully put them in.
On the whole, I feel inclined to be generous in my assessment. For me, Batman is possibly the most interesting of well-known comic book characters (along with Spider-Man, and possibly the X-Men ensemble – so no surprise that when handled by people who “get” them, these three have led to the best superhero movies of recent years), and so it is good to see him revitalised for the big screen. On the whole, Nolan understands what drives him – he wants to make
Cillian Murphy is great fun as secondary villain the Scarecrow, a good choice that fits well with the film’s theme of overcoming your fears. (Bruce chooses the emblem of the bat partly to overcome his own childhood trauma with bats and the past weakness that he believes caused his parents’ deaths, which just about stays the right side of contrived.) Liam Neeson is good as his main adversary, although Ken Watanabe is wasted in a cameo and the now-mandatory everything-you-know-is-wrong twist (see also Mr & Mrs Smith) is completely unnecessary, adding nothing to the film. What is disappointing is that Neeson has a completely crazy plan, rather than something a little simpler that could have provided a nice contrast to Batman’s own; you can’t run an “ends justify the means” argument if the means seem completely outlandish and unlikely to meet the desired ends.
The final major complaints are the reliance on a ridiculous contraption for the villains’ plot – a machine that vaporises water from a good distance, apparently no directional, yet has no effect on people right next to it, even though humans are 80% water – and the action scenes. Both fight scenes and the obligatory car chase are nothing but flash cuts that are virtually incomprehensible (I saw this on an Imax screen, which made this even worse). Why?
But I freely concede that I set my expectations high for a combination of Nolan and Batman, and he got close. Mostly this film makes me think that a sequel with the same director and cast could be very good - a better plot and less need to set up the characters would have real potential. If they can film the action scenes properly.
Mr & Mrs Smith has a fun premise: a husband and wife are, unbeknownst to each other, assassins, and each is hired to kill the other. Or, at least, that's the word on the street. The film is most fun for the short period that this premise holds, but there's a ridiculous twist (because there has to be a twist) and it's really all just a metaphor for a relationship in trouble - but look, they have more in common than they thought, and once they discover that...
But is it any good? Passable entertainment, amusing in places.
Despite rumours of on-set problems, Doug Liman is a capable director, though I question his decision to give a minor role to Adam Brody (Liman exec produces The OC). Pitt and Jolie generally seem to be enjoying themselves. But the real problems are with the plot. The film doesn't have an ending (seriously, it treats its own plot so lightly that it simply does not bother to resolve it, or even hint as to how it may have been resolved off-camera). I suspect that rather a lot of footage ended up on the cutting room floor - it is probably too long at 2 hours, anyway - but what really irks me is the twist, which I will discuss in spoilertext (highlight to read - unless I change the background colour of the blog at some point, in which case you'll be spoiled. Sorry, but style is more important, and substantial, than this plot):
There is any number of ways of setting up the basic premise quite by accident. Unfortunately, this film feels the need to have a "big reveal", presumably just because every other film has one these days, and it's nonsensical. It transpires that the two agencies the Smiths work for have just - after 4 (or 5) years discovered that they are married, cannot tolerate this, and decide to get together to bump them off. Which they do by sending Brody out to be assassinated by both Smiths simultaneously, apparently hoping that they will both kill each other in the process, leaving Brody alive. There is simply no need for this ridiculous "reveal" and I blame M. Night Shyamalan.
Bah. Spoilers end.
Titta spends his days sitting in a hotel bar. Once a week, he receives a large suitcase full of money. There seems little else to his life, until he responds (or overreacts) to the attention of barmaid Sofia.
Not far from the end of this film, I was looking forward to extolling its virtues. Chief among them is that writer/director Paolo Sorrentino is thoroughly in control of his film; every scene is precisely shot, every brief flashback feels important, every part feels well-cast. He also laces the film with dry wit and is well-supported by good sub-titles for the Enlgish audience. I also appreciated the ambiguities, and a director who didn't feel compelled to hit the viewer over the head with motivations. I was confident that enough would be revealed in the end.
My problem was that the end of the film fell flat; it feels as if a piece of the puzzle is missing. What happens is clear enough* and most of the "why" is there, it's just that the "why" is rather under-whelming. There are enough cryptic signs that I could be missing something that a second viewing would reveal, and indeed Peter Bradshaw writes a sterling appreciation of the film that very much made me want to see it. I didn't get any real sense of Sofia's motives, or that Titta is repeating past mistakes or, really, why he makes the decision that he ultimately makes. So I nearly really enjoyed this film, but in the end I was disappointed. Shame, ebcause it was so damn stylish.
* With a couple of semi-important exceptions (SPOILERS):
1) Does Sofia's bizarrely under-motivated (a la North by Northwest) accident when she is on her way to meet Titta, or has she already decided not to? The order of scenes would suggest the latter, but then why show it at all?
2) Is that Sofia in the mall with the mustachioed man from the beginning of the film, or just someone else with the same coat that Titta mistakes for Sofia?
But is it any good? Great fun for fans of the series (and possibly for other, less deserving sorts). 8/10
In my opinion (not shared by everyone), The League of Gentlemen are at their best when working with a plot into which their wicked sketches can be injected, and any fears that their Apocalypse would be just an extended sketch show can be laid to rest - this is more Life of Brian (or at least Holy Grail) than Meaning of Life.
If anything, they could be accused of being too clever, as charecters from their fictional world of Royston Vasey escape into the "real" world of the writers. This is not an entirely original idea, but having the characters recognise, and even impersonate, the actors that play them is a delicious twist. A third narrative, in the form of a surreal historical intrigue at the royal court, would be a turn too far if it did not quickly establish itself as very funny (with marvellous, tiny cameos from Peter Kay and Simon Pegg), and wisely does not wear out its welcome.
The "real" writers are sadly under-developed (although this must have been a fine line to tread) and, for a fan of the series, some of the omissions are disappointing - especially in the climactic scenes where, budget allowing, the whole ensemble should have made an appearance, but due to financial constraints we get, as the League themselves admit, a load of Irish wrestlers.
Despite that, I am pleased to report that the film is clever in what it does and says about the nature of the characters within the narrative, but not too clever (see the disappointingly dull final half hour of Adaptation), the pace only lags occasionally, and you are never too far from a genuinely funny moment. The film is not afraid to find previously one-dimensional characters and flesh them out to carry the film, or embrace humour from film references to toilets, and I genuinely enjoyed it. I only worry what the non-locals will make of it...
[I saw this as a preview at the NFT with a Q&A with the League to follow. No sooner had it been announced that all 4 of them were there and would appear after the film than Lilly, in a fit of celebrity-spotting, excitedly pointed a couple of rows behind us and exclaimed, "Look! It's Mark Gatiss!"]
But is it any good? Surprisingly, it is not bad. 7/10
I think my expectation for the Star Wars prequels have finally fallen to a level where Lucas can actually meet them. True, much of the dialogue is stilted, some of the acting (notably Cristiansen and Portman) is awful, and the only character approaching the levels fo charisma of Han Solo is, sadly, Yoda. Anakin's long-anticipated turn to the Dark Side is laughably under-motivated (Lucas gets points for trying but none for actual achievement), and there are more epilogues than in Return of the King - rather superfuously setting up Episode IV.
But - but! - Lucas does play to his strengths far more than in the two previous films. There's not too much dull dialogue to drag or story to get in the way of some very well-staged action scenes and generally good effects. Jar Jar Binks appears, but does not speak. And Natalie Portman's pregnancy apparently skips ahead several months in the space of a few days to set up a nice parallel moment towards the end of the film.
So, if only by comparison to Episodes I and II, Lucas manages a reasonably entertaining conclusion to his opus, which a small nostalgic part of me is very pleased about.
Ridley Scott brings us the extra-ordinary message that religious zealots tend to be a bit wacky, and that we’d be better off if we were moderate and tolerant of others’ beliefs. Sadly, this dazzling insight is not redeemed by anything original or entertaining, and Kingdom of Heaven is a limp mess of a film.
But is it any good? No.
Orlando Bloom, displaying his trademark lack of charisma, is a blacksmith whose child has died and wife has committed suicide and needs to find forgiveness from God, or something. He kills a well-intentioned (if tactless) priest, which seems an odd way to win the audience’s sympathy at the start of a film but is a fairly overt symbol of his rejection of established religion, meets the father he has never known, gets 5 minutes of sword-fighting lessons, and is nearly arrested in a frankly unintelligible opening fight scene. I should note at this point that although Scott and cinematographer John Mathieson put together some lovely compositions, every single fight/battle scene is a mish-mash of Keep! and The! cut Camera! up Moving! editing! which I find very tiresome.
Bloom is then ship-wrecked for some reason and by an amazing coincidence meets a character who Will Be Important Later and is Not What He Seems. He falls out with Guy de Lusignan, one of two warmongering zealots who chew enough scenery that they cannot be taken seriously but not enough to be entertaining. He has the apparently staggering realisation that his inherited land would be better off with a well; flirts with Guy’s wife (played by Eva Green, a real breath of fresh air until she has an attack of hypocrisy and vanishes from most of the last hour in a slightly mental huff); and proves his heroism by leading his men on a charge that (a) should not be successful, since he is sufficiently outnumbered that he shouldn’t be able to deflect all of his opponents from their objective, and (b) is staggeringly unnecessary, relying as it does on the poor leper King (Ed Norton, hiding behind a metal mask) making exactly the same decision he could have made many hours earlier to forestall the whole event.
The film culminates in a large battle set-piece, which is unfortunately reminiscent of similar but better acts in the Lord of the Rings trilogy but doesn’t measure up (not least because Bloom is the only character involved to whom we have really been introduced, Jeremy Irons’ rather good Tiberias having vanished – I think I must have dozed off and missed his exit, although this has the feel of a movie where huge swathes of film have ended up on the cutting-room floor, including a proper fate for Guy, who is supposed to be the main villain of the piece, responsible for thousands of deaths, but is punished only by being made to ride a donkey and is never seen again).
Given that the Arabs are treated very well – the two main characters, Saladin and Nasir, are both level-headed and fair – it’s a pity that Christianity is treated so badly, with heavy use of “God wills it so it will happen!” and very little thought given to what God actually wills. Guy and his sidekick are revealed to be absolute idiots, as Bloom warns them what will happen if they troop across the desert to attack Saladin without water – not that they should need telling – and they do it anyway. (Saladin’s men have no such problems on the return trip, mind.)
The film takes a long time to find a semblance of a plot, and when it does it is driven by idiots and clunking plot mechanics, the supporting characters are under-developed and Bloom is incapable of carrying a film. Apart from Gladiator, the obvious comparator is Lord of the Rings, which benefited greatly from a strong character ensemble, a real sense of purpose and carefully used humour. Scott has taken none of those lessons on board.
Adrien Brody is strapped into a straitjacket and locked in a drawer, which projects him into the future. Tempting as it is to say that 100 minutes locked in a drawer would be more entertaining than The Jacket, it's not that bad. Sadly, nor is it particularly interesting or worthwhile.
This is almost the opposite of 12 Monkeys: Brody is sent forward in time from an asylum in order to save himself. 12 Monkeys is a great film and a favourite of mine. It's also funny, inventive and has decent characters; again, the opposite of The Jacket. About the only thing they have in common is that the viewer is never left in any real doubt that time travel is taking place. Rather implausibly, Brody's doctors come to accept this too and defy all common sense and Hippocratic oaths.
Brody comes across as alternately a wide-eyed innocent and insufferably smug - the latter usually when he has slept with Keira Knightley. (And am I the only one to find it slightly creepy that after sleeping with her adult self, he is very touchy-feely with the same character as a young girl?) Knightley is believable against type as a really, y'know, edgy character, and while there is a decent reason for this, it doesn't make her more interesting to watch. The whole film is unrelentingly dark with very little humour but without grabbing the audience's sympathy, what's the point?
Overall, this is one of those films that is inexplicably described as complex or hard to follow by many reviewers; it's a simple idea that could have been a more interesting film but is ultimately a bit of a bore.
But is it any good? Interesting, well acted character film meets sports drama
Without wishing to spoil the ending, Friday Night Lights (based on a true story) seems an odd choice of tale to film. Why pay for the rights to a true story when you could make up your own? There’s nothing in the plot, of a small town in
The film’s greatest strength lies in showing how much the team means to the community and to the players. There’s a lot at stake here, an inhuman amount of pressure to put on young men’s shoulders – as one says to another, “Do you feel seventeen?” The always excellent Billy Bob Thornton turns in a slightly subdued performance, but the young footballers are terrific.
There is the usual problem of making a film about a whole season – early suspense, then the matches leading up to the final are glossed over, even though you suspect the team should have more problems progressing than it shows. And characters are neglected – Jay Hernandez as Ivy League-bound Brian Chavez is supposed to be a member of the core group of players, but I suspect that most of his material ended up on the cutting room floor. However, the three main players do get generally satisfying character arcs – Don Billingsley’s relationship with his father, a former State-winning player, is particularly good.
The other fault with the film is the hyperactive camerawork. In the steadicam world, it is easy to neglect the simple art of keeping the camera still, and in this case it finds rest only when studying the high arc of a football (the match scenes are pretty well shot). I appreciate the intent to make an almost documentary-style film, but it undercuts some of the dramatic moments. Still, this is an enjoyable outing that makes some efforts to avoid the predictable.
We’ve seen so many versions of Hitchhiker’s by now – the radio serial, the novel, the TV series, even the computer game and the comic book adaptation – and all of them have a number of fundamental plot elements and jokes in common, and all of them (with the probably exception of the comic book) bring new variations. For somebody familiar with all of these – or even just one or two, as most potential viewers probably are – it’s impossible to see this film without certain expectations.
I found that I could separate the film, and especially the jokes, into three elements: old bits, new bits, and changed bits. The old bits are classics and work pretty well, even if you’re expecting them. There are some good new jokes (including the opening song). But the bits that they’ve changed or truncated are really glaring, because you expect one thing and get a weaker substitute.
The most controversial change is making film into more of a love story. I have no objection to this in principle, and it makes for the most fully rounded version of Trillian in any medium. But it doesn’t quite work. It’s a little too abrupt, the time since Arthur and Trillian first met is vague, and it feels like a cute throwaway joke in the original being built up into something that can’t take the weight. Martin Freeman also fails to give Arthur enough “oomph” – not the inspired bit of casting it first seemed (although still much better than Mos Def, who mumbles throughout the film and gradually fades away into the background – his character suffers more than any other in this version).
The other problem is that previous versions of Hitchhiker’s haven’t been afraid to throw in an excerpt from the Guide whenever the plot stumbles or the pace lags. The Guide extracts here, given perfect voice by Stephen Fry, are excellent, but used too sparingly, and there actually are long patches which needed just this sort of spicing up.
There are new ideas here – the best being a knitted puppet version of the cast – but not quite enough of them, and not always a proper understanding of what made previous iterations great. It could probably never live up to my hopes, but nor does it live down to my fears.
a.k.a. Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei (Roughly translates as "The good years are over", a message left behind by the group calling themselves the Edukators).
But is it any good? Not bad - quite interesting, but certainly overlong, and it misses its opporunity to really tackle the interesting questions it raises head-on.
Jule is an oppressed waitress, deep in debt and with no security (she is evicted at the start of the film). She takes her revenge on the affluent diners that mistreat her in simple ways. But she doesn't realise that her boyfriend Jan and his flatmate Peter are striking back in a different way - entering rich people's houses and dramatacially rearranging their contents, so that they (like Jule) lose their sense of security.
The film spends a good deal of time establishing this, and rather unsubtly removing Jan from the picture long enough for Peter to fall for Jule and compormise his better judgment. Stipe Erceg as Peter is rather convincing here.
But the film loses its way a little when events spiral out of control and the three end up kidnapping one of their wealthy targets. Hardenburg was also a dissident in his youth before discovering the benefits of capitalism, so there's some potential for a real discussion of the two sides of the fence. Unfortunately, we never get more than a glimpse of his real character or motives, as he is more interested in provoking the developing love triangle.
While it is hard to predict how the film will end, so some interest is retained, that is in large part because we haven't seen enough of the caharacters, especially Hardenburg, to get a sense of how they should act. The slightly cryptic ending doesn't really satisfy, and the final scene included only in the German version doesn't help much. One question the film wants to ask is Do people change? It doesn't have the answers.
Performances are good and the home movie feel is generally appropriate, apart from a couple of shots where a steadier camera would have been nice. So it's quite interesting, but a bit of a missed opportunity to really hit some targets.
Two playwrights hear a tale. One decides that it would make a very dull tragedy; the other thinks it would make a very dull comedy. Intertwining the two imaginings makes things a little more bearable. Will Ferrell takes on the Woody Allen role and is immensely annoying. Radha Mitchell is more impressive as the two different Melindas (one can scarcely tell that the same actress plays both). A return to form for Allen? Hardly. Less embarrassingly silly than Curse of the Jade Scorpion, but the comedy isn't funny and the tragic characters fail to engage sympathy.
Wes Anderson has a great film in him, I'm sure. Sadly, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou isn't quite it. It's very entertaining in places with some wonderful scenes full of whimsy, the all-new all-deadpan Bill Murray is a treat, and the soundtrack - including lots of David Bowie in Portuguese sung by cast member Seu Jorge - fits like a glove. What Anderson hasn't quite pulled off is switching the tone from silly to serious, as he needs to do at various points. Still, he is a visual stylist, from the remarkable cutaway set of the ship to the Harryhausen-esque stop-motion deep-sea creatures. I wanted to love this film but ultimately I could only like it.
A short guide to popular culture: films, books, etc, and maybe a little sport too
