Slumdog Millionaire

First things first. Feelgood Film Of The Decade, the poster and advance
publicity claims. Yeah, no. Mamma Mia is the feelgood film of the decade.
Slumdog Millionaire, by contrast, does not have any weddings on Greek islands,
constant bursting into song, etc. It has a young man being tortured and
interrogated by the police, after being accused of cheating in Who Wants To Be
A Millionaire, with the sole evidence of this being that he's a slumdog, a kid
from the shanty towns, and what could he possibly know? The movie then tells
the story of his unremittingly unpleasant life, showing us how some awful
moments in his life told him the answer to the various questions, as he
attempts to explain himself.

Ultimately, the message of this film is that many of the children of India live
in filth and squalor, experiencing violence and deprivation every day of their
lives, have to resort to various forms of criminality to survive, and even if
they were to have the amazing fortune to be given an opportunity to get out
(like Millionaire) the majority will lack the education to make use of those
opportunities. The feelgood factor of the lad's unlikely success in the quiz is
tempered by the very implausibility that the few things he knows came up. And
that even as he does well, he faces the scepticism and brutality of the police
as his reward. That and, even if he won a million, if he split it between all
the people in India who also desperately need it, they'd have less than a
quid each.

This is a blisteringly good film, in that it doesn't shy away from showing the
appalling conditions they live in, while never letting that become a sermon
that takes away from the story. Feelgood film? No, it's much, much better than
that.

Valkyrie

In 1944, a conspiracy of high ranking German Army officers plotted to kill
Hitler. To this end, they recruit Col. von Stauffenberg, a brave, charismatic
and principled German officer, played in this film by a LEKSVIK chest of
drawers from IKEA.

At least, it bloody might as well have been. Seriously, all Cruise bloody does
is stand their looking stoic, trying not to show his emotions. The addition of
a sock drawer would at least have made him somewhat functional. It's very easy
these days, what with him having gone Tom Cruise Crazy, to criticise Tom Cruise
for his bizarre behaviour. That's not what I'm doing here, I promise you. I
believe that Tom Cruise is still well capable of turning in a charismatic
performance, and there's ample evidence that he can act. However, in this film,
he's just standing there being a big lump of stoic. And by all accounts, the
real von Stauffenberg wasn't even like that.

The rest of the film is actually very good. You've got the likes of Kenneth
Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Terrence Stamp, Eddie Izzard, all taking it
in turns to act Tom Cruise off the screen. The plot is gripping, as only a plot
to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich can be, and you're on the
edge of your seat waiting for the inevitable moment where it must, sadly, all
fall apart. And in the middle of this, is Tom "LEKSVIK" Cruise, draining some
but by no means all of the dramatic tension.

Anyway, 8/10, good film, let down by an oddly flat lead performance, but saved
by the supporting cast.

The Wrestler

Oooh, look at the poigniancy!

So, Mickey Rourke is this wrestler. He's a has-been, used to be a top ranking
wrestler, and now he's older is reduced to wrestling in local rec centres for
the odd few hundred bucks here and there, which he pretty much spends on hair
bleach, sunbeds, steroids and painkillers. Essentially, it's a portrait of a
hasbeen who can't move on from what he used to be, and is instead slowly
killing himself putting himself through ever more serious punishment in the
ring, for ever more diminishing returns.

It's well written, it's well shot, in a low-budget kind of way, by veteren
chucklemeister Darren Aronofsky. Mickey Rourke's performance is very powerful,
all the more so because he is, himself, famously a guy who had the arse torn
out of his career, and ended up in professional boxing and got his face badly
messed up. In a way, you end up wondering how much he's acting at all.

I'm not sure what I was supposed to feel in this film. If the objective was to
make you pity the guy, then mission accomplished. However, the tagline for the
film is "Love. Pain. Glory." and I didn't see much other than the pain.

I'd certainly give it 8/10 and a recommendation, but it didn't entirely chime
with me.

The Spirit

I loved it, but the odds are, you won't.

The What: The Spirit is a seriously old school crimefighting dude, created the
same year as Batman. He wears a little domino mask, wears a suit and fedora,
and his main superpower was that everyone thinks he's dead, so he can get away
with being a vigilante. I had a go at reading some of the original Spirit
comics, but I gave up on them, because The Spirit has a black sidekick who's
depicted in a mindbogglingly racist way (even for 1939), and I couldn't get
into it.

Fortunately, in his crusade to reinvent The Spirit, Frank Miller (for it is he
who amazingly has been allowed to make a film) has glossed over that. And from
what I can tell, he's pretty much changed a lot of other aspects of The Spirit,
and done it in the style of Sin City instead. For starters, in twelve years of
writing The Spirit, Eisner never showed The Octopus's face. In the film, you
get a good look at him no more than five minutes in, and Samuel L. Jackson
steals the camera every chance he gets. That, if nothing else, shows you that
this isn't so much an adaptation as Frank Miller taking inspiration then going
nuts.

It's a complete mess of a film. It's done in that black/white/red style that
Sin City was shot in. Half the time it's crass and leaden and makes you faintly
embarassed that you're watching it. The other half it's mad, cheesy, glorious
and brillant. I don't think I've seen a film in the last six months with a
moment as bad, or as good as one you'll find in The Spirit. You might, like me,
really love this film. On the other hand, if you walked out after ten minutes,
I'd have to concede that you had a point.