Prince of ParkourPersia.

So, there's these three brothers. Jeff out of Coupling, The Geezer Out of
Rocknrolla and Donny Darko. Their dad is Ronald Pickup, and their uncle is Ben
Kingsley. And they're the Persian royal family. Isn't genetics interesting?

Anyway, the lads are out on the razz, conquering and suchlike, when they come
upon an ancient holy city, which they have been told by their dad not to, on
any account, under any circumstances, lay siege to and conquer. They have a
brief conference with their uncle, and conclude that it would be best to lay
siege to it and conquer it. Which they do, which appears to involve Donnie
running up walls a whole lot.

The king arrives, and is a tiny displeased afterward, but really not that
much. He's basically no more displeased than your dad would be if you bought
him a really expensive birthday present and he was "oh, no you shouldn't have,
this is too much."

Anyway, as this is Ancient Persia, there is a sudden but inevitable betrayal of
someone by his brother. But since everyone in the film with a name is someone
else's brother at this point, it's not clear who. But we can probably rule out
Ronald and Donnie, since Donnie gets the blame, and has to run for his life,
and Ronald's dead.

So, Donnie goes on the lam with a magical dagger he picked up while looting the
place, followed by Princess Gemma "sulky mouth" Arterton who is sworn to
protect it. And since the Naughty Brother actually has designs on using the
dagger to Do Bad Things, much chasey chasey ensues. We pick up Alfred Molina as
Dodgy Geezer With Heart Of Gold on the way, and the whole matter turns into a
big convoluted thing where we have to put everything to rights and foil the
plans of the evildoer.

It's all quite fun really. There's nothing wrong with any of it, it's all quite
good. My chief reservation is that it's all a bit artificial. It's an adventure
story in the mould of classics like Raiders of the Lost Ark, but that vital
spark is somehow missing. You really don't get the feeling that it was ever the
burning desire of anyone involved in this film to tell this story. It's
perfectly competently constructed, there's not really a bad performance in it,
the effects are good, the story is frankly ludicrous, but not in a bad way, and
it all looks very impressive. I just don't feel like it was made with love, or
any kind of passion, and so it failed to inspire. I wouldn't say it's a bad
film, in fact, I'd say it was quite good. But it's nothing exciting, in a genre
where being exciting is the whole point.

Robin Hood

Ok, some historical facts.
In 1199, Richard I died while laying siege to a small castle in Normandy. His
brother John took the throne, and, amongst other things, taxed the country so
heavily that a number of powerful barons revolted, and forced him to sign the
Magna Carta in 1215, reducing his power. He later recanted, and there was civil
war, which really only ended when he died of dysentery in 1216 leaving the
throne to Henry III, his 9 year old son.

This film is *kind* of interested in these historical facts, in that they all
kind of happen (save for the dysentery and death thing, which I suppose might
have happened in a post-credits sequence), only they happen in a cockeyed
fashion, in a more or less random order, and in the space of, let's be
generous, a couple of weeks. During this two week period, Russell Crowe wanders
around Nottingham (which appears from the accents to be in Yorkshire) like some
kind of Che Guevarra figure. There's some kind of "Return of Martin Guerre"
subplot in which we get to have our cake and eat it, with Robin being the
common outlaw of some legends, and the returned crusader knight of others. I
did hope that this would mean that he would later be revealed to also be Robin
out of Batman and Robin, and ice skater Robin Cousins. Sadly, no. Despite the
limited time available, most of which he spends masquerading as someone else,
he becomes a local legend for doing things he keeps completely secret and
nobody finds out about.

Along with Robin come Will Scarlet, Little John and Alan A'Dale, whose
contribution to the plot are basically drinking, shagging and singing. Cate
Blanchett appears as Maid Marian with a Barnsley accent (when she remembers),
and Max Von Sydow appears, yet again, as Someone's Eighty Year Old Dad Who's
About To Die.

Anyway, the whole thing basically rattles along perfectly well for about an
hour and a half, and looks like it may well turn out to be a good film.
However, it all turns to complete and utter nonsense in the last half hour,
with the Magna Charter (they are definitely saying charter) being waved around
like it's Das Kapital, and the French invading in a scene that's like a cross
between the start of Saving Private Ryan (including staggeringly unlikely
landing craft that the French have apparently rowed from Calais) and the end of
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (i.e. was so stupid that they may as well have
been banging coconuts together.)

Ultimately, though, any Robin Hood film is going to hinge on the question of
whether the actor playing Robin Hood's any good. And he isn't. In that he's
same old sulky Russell Crowe. I could forgive the film a lot if it were any
fun, but it really isn't.

Iron Man 2

Well, it's certainly not Dogtooth, I'll tell you that much.

As per my previous review, Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr, is an
egotistical womanising technical genius who invented himself a super-suit and
declares himself basically Lord Protector Of The Whole World. I'm not seeing
how the Iron Man suit is *that* brilliant, one dude with jetboots is hardly
going to achieve world peace overnight, but hey, let's go with it. Stark is the
darling of the world, and his suit trumps every military in the world to such a
degree that world peace breaks out spontaneously.

This makes Mickey Rourke maaaaaaaad. Because Mickey Rourke is the son of Tony
Stark's dad's business partner. The Starks got megarich, the Vankos got
deported back to Russia and spent a lot of time in a gulag. So, since he's a
genius physicist too (yes, really, Mickey Rourke is a genius physicist.. In a
film with flying robot suits, that's still the stand-out implausible bit) - he
decides he too will build himself a super suit using scrap metal and his dad's
old blueprints, and go kick Tony Stark's ass. Game on. He fails, but not before
beating up the entire Monaco Grand Prix and taking a Rolls Royce Phantom to the
solar plexus with no apparent ill effects. This is one seriously macho
physicist we're talking about here.

Having failed to get anywhere with that plan, he teams up with Sam Rockwell who
is a staggering asshole of a weapons contractor who is a rival of Stark's and
who not unreasonably thinks that all that stands between Vanko and kicking
Stark's ass in public is millions of dollars of investment and resources. And
having millions of dollars and a vested interest in seeing Stark have his ass
handed to him publically, he is happy to oblige.

Meanwhile, Tony Stark is being sub-plotted to death, what with the nuclear
reactor in his chest poisoning him to death, and the US Military and Senate
trying to get the suit off him. Eventually, they manage to do so, which gives
us an excuse to make Stark's airforce mate James "Rhodey" Rhodes into the ever
popular Iron Man knockoff, War Machine.

Anyway, long story short, big robots run amok at the end, and lots of things
explode.

The script's good, full of punchy dialogue, and the casting's great. I was
thinking, if anyone other that Robert Downey Jr was behaving like such an
absolute cockend, you'd not stomach it. Imagine Tom Cruise in the role, he'd be
a nightmare. Robert Downey Jr brings out the self-destructive loser side of the
character really well though, and just makes the egotistical stuff highly
amusing. Gwyneth Paltrow isn't nearly as winsome as she used to be, but that's
OK because we've now got Scarlet Johansson as an asskicking secret agent. Some
have questioned the need for the character in the film, but as far as I'm
concerned, anyone who questions the need for Scarlet Johansson in a leather
catsuit needs their head looking at. Mickey Rourke is suitably scenery chewing,
Sam Rockwell is highly entertaining, Don Cheadle is kind of wondering how his
career suddenly took this turn, and Samuel L Jackson appears to remind us that
like it or not, there *is* going to be an Avengers movie.

Overall, it's pretty good. Gets going nicely, there's quite a bit of big robot
smashy, and unlike, say, Terminator Salvation, the bits inbetween are pretty
fun too. You know what kind of film this is already, so suffice to say, it's a
good one.

Dogtooth

Ummm. What?

I had no idea what this film was all about when I went to see it; I hadn't even
gone to see it, the film I went to see had been inadvertently wiped off the
cinema's digital projector, and this was put on instead.

So... This is a Greek language arthouse film, which was my first WTF moment,
but the first of many.

Essentially, this is a film about a family whose father has contrived to
control his children to the extent that they never leave the grounds of the
house and have no knowledge of the outside world. This is done to the extent
that they don't appear to have names, and that they are misinformed as to the
meaning of common words that refer to things outside their experience - "The
sea" for example, is a kind of armchair. They're also told that it's too
dangerous to leave the confines of the house.

What we see in the film is a sequence of events where this bizarre status quo
begins to fall apart, as the children begin to desire freedom and independence,
even though they lack the vocabulary to think about these concepts.

It's a very bizarre film, incredibly uncomfortable to watch. The father
uncomfortably echoes the likes of Josef Fritzel, and any sense that the film is
unrealistic has to be viewed through that comparison. It's bizarre and
unlikely, but in that light far from impossible.

The acting is good, especially on the part of the three children, who portray
an infantilised innocence very well. You can certainly analyse the film for a
long while afterward, and it gives you a lot to think about. It is,
unfortunately, one of those arthouse films where you suddenly get the end
credits and realise that's the end of the film.

Overall, a lot to see here, and I'd recommend it to anyone who generally likes
chin-stroky foreign language films. If you don't, though, I imagine it'd be a
bit of a trial.