The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Ok, the basics.

David Fincher's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's thriller, starring Daniel Craig as an investigative reporter tasked with looking into the decades old death of a millionaire industrialist's niece, and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, a pretty mentally damaged computer hacker/researcher who assists him/does all the heavy lifting for him because he's not really that bright.

These are pretty great performances, but overall, the film has a problem, which is best seen in comparison with the earlier Swedish film. It's too short. That might be an odd thing to say about a film that's two hours and forty minutes, and actually longer than the Swedish cinema version. The problem is, the Fincher version wastes quite a bit of time. I say wastes, that's not fair, you can look at snow all you like, I'm not going to criticise a filmmaker for that. But if two hours and forty is what you have to play with, I think more of that time was needed on the dialogue.

If I may trivialise the original book for a moment, what this is, is a story of a dark secret from the past that has remained secret because a collection of very private and reticent people are reluctant to talk about it, and the reporter investigating it isn't even that sure he wants to know either, at least initially. In the Swedish version, this led to a lot of conversations like:

"Tell me about the girl"
"Can I get you a drink Mr Blomquist?"
"No, thank you, now, about the girl..."
"Ah go on. I'm having one."
"I'm fine for whiskey thanks."
"Ah you will. You will, you will, you will."
"Oh alright then."

...before getting on and talking about the girl. In the Fincher version, that scene goes.

"Tell me about the girl"
"Can I get you a drink Mr Blomquist?"
"Yes please."

Which then leads to scenes like:
"Tell me about the girl then"
"I'm very reluctant to tell you about that."
"Please?"
"Oh, alright, seeing as its you, Mr Bond."

Ultimately, it feels like it was made by someone who thought that the book was fine and all, but it was a bit *talky*, it had too many *words* in it. And I'm not going to be so cheap as to say that it was *all* style and *no* substance, but having seen a version that very much erred on the side of substance, I can't say that moving towards the style was the best treatment for the story.

Sherlock Holmes: Game Of Shadows

I said of the last film that the whole thing was a case of Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law lurching around the place like a pair of drunk Victorian ninjas. Well, why change a winning formula?

This time around, the whole thing is marginally more coherent, focussing as it does on Moriarty's attempts to twirl his moustache and take over the world, and Holmes attempting to overcome his own ridiculousness in order to stop him. Jared Harris makes a better villain for the piece than Mark Strong did last time, because he hams it up a little more, and is clearly having a good time with it.

I feel like this time around, Sherlock's super-power of working things out is presented rather better, as we occasionally get what looks like a psychic episode, either reading the future from the likely actions of his opponent, or, as in one occasion, deducing how a given room was built, and thus where the secret exit is, from a tiny number of cues. Whilst all the time apparently being too preoccupied to bathe.

It's still being played for laughs, but the thing is, I laughed. A lot. As an action thriller it might be seen as barely adequate, if that. Add a really thick layer of really very good comedy writing and performances, and ludicrousness becomes playfulness, and the whole thing suddenly works, despite being utter nonsense.

Put it this way; Stephen Fry is Mycroft Holmes. He would not be in a thing like this, good Sherlockian that he is, if it didn't have a lot of comedy to recommend it.

The Ides Of March

Quite a workmanlike political thriller, sort of like an extended episode of The West Wing from some point in season six, only with everyone being a lot more sleazy under the surface. What's really strong, and at the same time weak about the film is that everyone's just about exactly as sleazy as you expect; it's a film with no heroes, but nobody truly vile either.

My Week With Marilyn

Dramatisation of the time Marilyn Monroe spent in Britain filming The Prince and The Showgirl with Laurence Olivier. Lovely little film, great performances from all, especially Kenneth Branagh as Olivier. And not as fluffy as the trailer suggests, given that the affair suggested by the title, with the film's third assistant director, is much more about Monroe's neuroses and insecurities than it is about any sort of romance.

Moneyball

Really interesting real life story, about how Billy Bean, manager of the Oakland As, gamed the whole player trading system, by fielding a team of players with peculiar reps, odd problems, and thus very low price tags, allowing him to win more points per dollar spent than any other team. Demonstrating that whatever you think sport is about, it's really all about spreadsheets and money. There's some implication that this was done to prove the system is rotten, and get some weird kind of revenge for his own disappointing professional career. Ultimately, though, it's a film that's a bit like The Damned United, but without the vitriol.

Anonymous

Apparently the Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans) wrote all of Shakespeare's plays. No he didn't. If this film has an objective, it appears to be to demonstrate how preposterous the whole idea is.

In time

Take a clever sci-fi idea; everyone gets genetically fixed to stop ageing at 25 (yay). They also get a fixed such that basically every second they live beyond that costs money, and if they run out of money on their wrist bank, they die (boo). If you like to think science-fictional thoughts, you probably think of some interesting ideas about that. All I can say is, maybe you should have written it, because all this really is, is a series of against the clock chase scenes with really high stakes.

The Adventures of Tin Tin

A jolly good digimation adventure romp, with really lovely use of special effect sequences. Only criticism: Sometimes the characters kind of look like grotesque puppets made of meat. Tin Tin has a perfectly spherical head. Seeing that with skin rather than cartoon skin-tone, that's a bit weird.

Justice, or Middle Of The Road Nic Cage Thriller.

So, Nic Cage's wife, January Jones is raped, and a shadowy organisation lead by Guy Pearce offers to deal with the culprit, and after umming and ahhing for a bit, Nic Cage agrees. He is then left with having to assist the shadowy organisation with their next revenge killing, which he has some problems with, motivationally. And then a really average thriller happens about this organisation's increasingly elaborate attempts to make him do it.

The Rum Diary

Take Withnail and I, transpose to Cuba, make it a little bit about Hunter S Thompson. It's entertaining like Withnail, and it's bitty and episodic like Withnail, but ultimately, it's at best about half as good as Withnail. Still, half as good as Withnail is a height a lot of films cannot hit.

The Help

Well meaning enough film about exploitation of black women as house maids in 50s-60s USA. Well meaning, but sort of over-cute. The major problem is that while the characters *are* portrayed as mistreated, it's  nothing compared to the stories of what actually did happen, and you kind of feel that someone decided to forget about the institutionalised rape to make a cosier film, and I don't think you get to pick and choose to that degree. The other problem is that while Emma Stone is absolutely a lovely light comedy actor, there's a scene where she's required to bring her best acting game, and she fails, sadly.

Roundup

Ok, so I watched a few films, and didn't blog them. And so catching up became a task, so I avoided it. Then I watched a few more, and didn't blog those either. And so catching up became a big task. And I avoided it some more. Long story short, I'm way behind. So, I'll do short capsule reviews, just so that future archaeologists won't think I slacked.

We Need To Talk About Kevin

Harrowing stuff, but, as Douglas Adams once said, sit back, relax, and be harrowed.

The film starts as a stream of consciousness, almost. Tilda Swinton is going about her business, living a pretty nasty seeming life. She's in a run down house, which someone has attacked with red paint; goes for an interview at a run-down travel agent, is confronted by people in the street who hit her and call her names, and virtually every second of this seems to trigger a flashback of some kind to her past, when she seemed much more affluent, is married, and has a child; this is Kevin. So from the outset we know two things; something has happened in her life which has resulted in her being broke, alone, and hated by the community, and that she has a son with whom she fails to bond with from the start, even before he's born.

At the start of the film, this is a very jumbled mess, and I have to say, half an hour in I was thinking "Well, someone needs to talk about Kevin... and soon please?" but as time passes, the vignettes become longer, and more coherent, as I suppose your recent memories are, and we are gradually clued in to what actually happened.

In a way, this flashback device is initially frustrating, with snippets of knowledge arriving in seemingly random order. However, this isn't an accident, and is part of the power of cinema; yes, it's frustrating, confusing, and disquieting, but that's no accident, and being glued to your seat for two hours, it forces you to take your medicine, and eventually this builds into an understanding of the situation that goes beyond the narrative.

It's a film of two key performances, and three actors; Tilda Swinton is pale, awkward and emotionally devastated in a way that I suspect only she can be; by contrast, Ezra Miller as Kevin the teenager (and you know, I really wish that phrase didn't constantly pop into my head) and even more impressively I thought, Jasper Newell as Kevin as a young child, possess a dead eyed confidence, indifference and malevolence, which I think will make them both a long remembered pair of screen psychos.

Ultimately, this is a horror film. A secular horror film. This is Rosemary's Baby meets The Omen, without the comforting fact that, as there isn't really an Antichrist, none of this unpleasantness could really happen. Because he's not the anti-messiah, he's just a very naughty boy. It's a portrait of a psychopath, without the showy theatrics of a Silence of the Lambs. It's just a kid, who we can see just isn't right, and the knowledge that one day he's going to do something appalling that will destroy the lives of everyone near him, and the film delivers a series of emotional punches to the gut which don't let up, right up until the very end.

Red State

Look, up in the sky. Do you see in the distance up there, a four legged beast, which is being ridden by a large fat man? That's Kevin Smith on his high horse again.

In short, in a nutshell, this is Kevin Smith telling us exactly what he thinks of religious fundamentalists. (Hint: Kevin Smith does not like religious fundamentalists.) We start off with some scenes in which three high school lads are considering meeting a woman on a dating site, who says she wants sex with three guys at once. When they finally get there, they end up being drugged, and when they wake up, they're in the compound of some Christian fundamentalist types, whose idea of a good time is luring in homosexuals and fornicators, and putting them to death, having first ranted scripture at them.

Things get more out of control, as the local law enforcement get wind that there's something going on, there's a bit of gunplay, and the ATF are called in, under the command of John Goodman, and it all goes a bit Siege of Waco.

So, we have Fundamentalists and Government forces shooting at each other, and in the crossfire are these three kids who're basically having the worst day of their lives. Hilarity occasionally ensues, but not as much as you'd think for Kevin Smith; this is bitter, biting satire, not a sign of Jay or Silent Bob anywhere.

Basically, this is Kevin Smith preaching, the whole film is Poe's Law in movie form - "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing." He sets himself up a parody of a fundamentalist church, then lays into that straw man for all he's worth. And then, for balance, parodies the government handling of the situation, and lays into that too. I mean, there's straw all over the shop by the end of it.

Having said that, by the end of it, you're shocked and entertained, and constantly wrong-footed, which only goes to prove that Kevin Smith is still a talented film-maker, even if you get the sense that he's not a very responsible one.

Drive

Oddly, just the other week we had Colombiana, which was a virtual remake of Leon. And films do tend to travel in packs. And so here's another, not a remake by any means, not at all, but more a spiritual successor. Ryan Gosling is a driver (that's his identity, he's not referred to as anything but "the driver" or "the kid" throughout the film.) He is, like Leon, an apparent innocent in all ways, but one specific, savant like area. Where Leon was apparently the perfect killer, this guy is the perfect driver. He does getaway driving, he does stunt work for films, there's some suggestion of him getting into racing; he drives, that's what he does, that's who he is. In all other contexts, pretty much, he quietly sits, with a faint smile on his face, apparently taking in the world, but not being of it.

Things begin to go wrong for him, as they did for Leon, when he meets a girl, in this case Carey Mulligan, who lives down the hall from him, who is herself a sweet, quiet girl, bringing up her son while her husband is in jail; he befriends her, and there's an air of innocent romance about them. Her husband finally gets out of jail, and soon he's in trouble; he must commit a robbery in order to pay back debts incurred in jail, and his wife and child will pay the price if he doesn't. The Driver won't have this, so resolves to help him. And then things really go south, as betrayal layers upon betrayal, and the driver must overcome his naivety in order to extricate everyone from the mess.

It's a beautiful, stylish film. Where you would expect this to be a rowdy film about car chases, this is no Tony Scott movie. There's a sense of the culture of the car in the US (and LA in particular) as we see the night cityscapes as the cars move through them. There's moments of quiet and stillness, which are contemplative, and moments of extreme violence which rise up out of nowhere, to great, jarring effect.

So, that, in a nutshell is it. A stylish, highly stylisised crime thriller, with a great poetic sensibility.

Jane Eyre

Interesting adaptation, in that what you'd expect from Jane Eyre is a Gothic Melodrama. Whereas this is relatively sedate. We start with Jane fleeing from a big house, and clearly Something Terrible Has Happened. She runs out onto the moors, gets a bit lost, gets thoroughly soaked, is close to death, and is eventually taken in by a vicar and his two sisters, who nurse her back to health. And then we get, in flashback, how Jane has got to where she is right now, from her dreadful, dreadful childhood, to her becoming governess of the ward of Edward Rochester, a well-to-do gentleman of dark moods and a dark past. He and Jane hit it off immediately, apparently through a mutual belief that everyone else in the world is a blithering idiot, and a forbidden and probably doomed romance begins to blossom. I say probably doomed; she runs out onto the moors to die of exposure right at the start, so they've blown that one.

It's odd, I think, in that the two principal characters, Jane and Rochester, both have the air of almost modern characters; everyone else is very much buying into the social mores that bind them, whereas Jane and Rochester more sort of seem to accept them with the eye-rolling reluctance of teenagers who have to accept the ludicrously outmoded rules set by parents. That modern image isn't exactly dispelled by casting either Mia Wasikowska (who played the teenage daughter in The Kids Are Alright) or Michael Fassbender (Magneto!). Neither of them really puts a foot wrong, performance wise, and they've got ample support from the likes of Judi Dench and Sally Hawkins. However, I do get the sense of liberties being taken.

I can't claim to be a scholar of the text, nor really having paid attention to previous adaptations, but what I really get a sense of is a script and director trying to give the film a modern sensibility. And while that does make it undeniably watchable, I'm wondering whether it really does the text a service.

Troll Hunter

Cheeky stuff. A fake, found footage mockumentary, which you can see as a variant on Blair Witch Project or This Is Spinal Tap, at your discretion. Essentially, a bunch of film students are making a documentary about bear hunters, and get interested in this one guy who all the other hunters say isn't one of them and thus must be a poacher. So the film crew try and interview him, and he rebuffs them, acting all mysterious. This only intrigues them more, so they tail him, and film him going about his business - which turns out to be hunting trolls.

Norway, it seems, has trolls. These are wild creatures who live in remote areas, usually having nothing to do with humans, but occasionally straying into settled areas, where they cause all kinds of bother, so the government calls in Hans, their troll hunter, who takes care of it, then the government cover it all up by framing a bear. Lately, though, it seems that the trolls are restless, and Hans is getting brassed off with the shitty working conditions, so he agrees to let the film crew film his work. So we're off hunting trolls, and investigating why there seem to be so many of them about right now.

The joy of this is the same joy as This Is Spinal Tap; it's played straight, but the subject is so ludicrous that it's hilarious. The trolls make it funny. They're funny because this isn't a case of doing the horror film thing of taking a legendary monster, but giving is a cool, modern, scary redesign; these are the big-nosed flappy-eared trolls from storybooks, with all the mores and behaviours that implies. Which is not to say they're not bloody impressive when in action, in fact, that's what really funny - they look absurd, but are 15 foot tall, roaring and crashing about the place, smashing trees, eating people and generally causing utter mayhem. Hans, meanwhile, treats this ludicrous situation in a stoic, morose, matter of fact way, reminiscent of someone who tracks badgers in a BBC wildlife documentary.

So, there you have it; part monster movie, part snarky satire, all tremendous fun. If there's a complaint, there's occasionally sequences in which we're driving around in cars too much, and seeing too few trolls, but when it all kicks off, it's absolutely worth the wait.

Warrior

Ok, I'm going to lay upon you the completely unbelievable bit of the plot now. There's a Mixed Martial Arts tournament which is for the top sixteen competitors in the world to duke it out for a big cash prize (plausible).  Two estranged brothers, neither of whom have ever taken part in a MMA competition get into the competition as wildcard outsiders (implausible). Ignore this. It's macho sub-Rocky bullshit, but this is not where any of the useful stuff in the film is. So just go with it.

Ok, brother number one is an ex-Marine played by Tom Hardy, who rocks up on the doorstep of his recovering alcoholic father, Nick Nolte. The two haven't seen each other in years, since the son and his mother left, because the father was beating their mother while drunk. The mother has since died, and the son has returned, but with no apparent interest in reconciliation. Then he finds out about the tournament, and manages to swing himself an entry by essentially leathering the middleweight US champion in a sparring session. Having done so, he insists his father, who was his high-school wrestling trainer, train him for the tournament.

Brother number two is a physics teacher played by Joel Edgerton, who's about to lose his house because he can't afford the payments (having basically bankrupted himself paying medical bills for his daughter), and so starts doing exhibition fights in parking lots for a little extra money. The school catches on, he's suspended without pay, and all of a sudden, he's forced to make the fighting his main job again (having retired from the sport years ago). Using his old connections, he manages to get an entry into the tournament. He is also estranged from his father (for the same reasons as his brother), but also from his brother (because when his brother and his mother left, he refused to follow them, and stayed to be with his girlfriend.)

Anyway, what this film is really about is the epic amount of rage and pain within Tom Hardy's character, and his inability to allow his family to help him through it. Instead, he is effectively torturing his father, by being around him, but throwing any attempt at reconciliation back in his face. And that's where this film is absolute dynamite, the abusive relationship between Hardy and Nolte. It's filled with epic levels of bitterness and recrimination, and has a level of emotional brutality that eclipses any of the mere girly slaps going on in the MMA ring. Eventually, of course, it comes to a head as the two brothers inevitably meet in the ring, and the physical pain becomes a metaphor for the emotional pain.

Overall, powerful stuff, and something that is absolutely worth digging beneath the surface layer of slappy fighting to get to.

Thirty Minutes Or Less

Your Plot: A pair of idiot ne'er-do-wells need to get a bank robbed. They don't want to do it themselves, so they order a pizza, and when the delivery guy arrives, they kidnap him, strap a bomb to him, and tell him that if he doesn't rob a bank and get them some money, he'll be blown up. So the delivery guy enlists his mate, and they go and rob a bank. Meanwhile, the idiots have hired a hitman to kill the father of one of the idiots, and the bank robbery money is to pay him off, and he gets more than a bit pissed off as things don't quite go to plan. Light blue touchpaper, retire, watch the fireworks.

Your Cast: Idiots - Danny McBride and Nick Swardson, with Danny McBride as Lead Idiot. Basically, he's really funny, as a puffed up egotistical moron; Supporting Idiot is fun as an ex-military bomb-tech, who's really naive.
Deliverer - Jesse Eisenberg, who's always good value for money. We've seen him before in this kind of role, and while it's no stretch for him, it's smart casting. Aziz Ansari is his sidekick, and while I'm usually pretty immune to his comic charms in stuff like Parks and Recreation and Funny People, he delivers the goods here.

The Verdict: This isn't the most original film you've every seen, but the script has the right pace, if full of funny dialogue, which is in the hands of comic actors who know what they're doing. In short, it's a comedy that'll make you laugh, nothing more, nothing less. And let's face it, these days, that's far from guaranteed.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I have to be careful about this one; it's clearly a quality piece, and has gained rave reviews, but personally, I haven't much positive to say about it sadly.

The story is quite straightforward in many ways. There has been a little coup at MI6, and Control (John Hurt) and his right hand man George Smiley (Gary Oldman) have been forced out, in the wake of some of his subordinates having done an end run around him and set up an immensely valuable intelligence source, despite his reservations and suspicions.

However, it comes to light later on, after Control's death, that one of the top men at the Circus (MI6 HQ), is a mole, one of the very men, perhaps, responsible for running this new source. Hence, the Ministry bring Smiley out of retirement, and set him to smoking the mole out.

The film plays out as a sequence of short, often silent vignettes of Smiley entering a room whose significance isn't immediately obvious, sighing, looking pensive, and then cut to the next bit, where someone else does likewise. Information about what's going on dribbles out at a miserly rate, until we finally have enough to piece together what's going on. And this is what defied my best efforts to engage with the film. It's not just that there's scenes where nothing much happens. It's that there's lots of very short scenes in a row, apparently nonsequiturs, in which nothing much happens. Maybe it's because I was tired, but I just couldn't get into the flow of the film, and I think it was entirely down to the directorial and editing style.

Which is not to say I didn't get anything out of it; the whole British acting community turns up, in order to prove that there's life after Harry Potter, and it's like gladitorial combat of powerful but quietly understated performances. And the betrayals are so numerous, and the reasons so obscure, that there's much to be gained from thinking about what happened after the event. Actually watching the film, however, felt like a chore at times.

Fright Night

Simple, simple stuff. Vampire moves in next door to kid, nobody believes kid, people go missing, kid recruits occult expert to help him fight vampire, kid fights vampire. The film is an absolute straight-line-from-A-to-B, three-act fantasy thriller. It's not a horror movie, unless for some reason Colin Farrell with Big Teef scares you; horror is about the terrible things that cannot be faced, whereas a monster movie like this is all about using a bit of ingenuity to stand up to the bully.

So that's what it is; is it any good? Yes it is. I mean, it's not The Lost Boys, but it's in the same ballpark. Anton Yelchin is good as the high school kid with way too much on his plate, and Colin Farell all but steals the film off him as your old-school charming, remorseless killing machine vampire. No fucking shiny vampires in this film, and in fact, they take the piss out of Twilight a few times.

Problems? One major one. David Tennant. What? Heresy? David Tennant's brilliant isn't he? Yes. That's the problem. David Tennant's character is the older guy, the mentor. The Obi Wan to Anton Yelchin's Luke. Only that's not all he is, his character, Peter Vincent, is a leather clad, hard drinking, womanising, quipping stage magician. He's not just Obi Wan, he's Han Solo too. And he's also, let's not be coy about this, The Doctor. Which is not just to say that David Tennant owned the role of The Doctor for four years, and you can't look at him without remembering that, it's also that Peter Vincent is the flaky genius who knows everything and flaps about the place in a really good coat. So yes, he's absolutely great, but in many ways, he leaves Anton Yelchin in the dust, as far as being the hero is concerned. It's like Pirates of the Caribbean; good film, but nobody left that film doing an Orlando Bloom impression. Star Wars got round the fact that Han Solo is awesome by splitting him and Luke up after the first movie. PotC basically didn't solve the problem, and increasingly sidelined Orlando Bloom to the point of him disappearing.

The latter is increasingly likely in this film; once he arrives, David Tennant doesn't take over the film, but you do want him to. I kind of found myself resenting the fact that the script inevitably sidelines him. So in that sense, the film fails to be satisfying, because really, the wrong character is featured front and centre.

The Guard

Brendan Gleeson is a police sergeant in the west of Ireland. He's one man covering a wide area, and is effectively a law unto himself, which is the way he likes it. In fact, he revels in it, being corrupt in the sense that he has the power to do as he likes and as he sees fit, with nobody to tell him otherwise.

However, into this scenario arrive some flies in his ointment. First, a young policeman from Dublin is assigned there, who he has to take charge of, which is effort. Second, it seems that there's a bunch of drug smugglers in the area, looking to find a place to land cocaine in Ireland, with a view to moving it into the UK. Third, an FBI guy (Don Cheadle) turns up looking for assistance in tracking the above smugglers, and generally expecting the local constabulary to do their jobs.

From there, the situation gets rapidly out of control, as general misunderstanding causes the smugglers to get in Gleeson's way. If they'd just quietly smuggled their drugs through his patch, he probably wouldn't have given a toss, but what with them murdering one of the few people he gives a toss about, he gradually gets about to feeling like he ought to do something about it.

It's a great, hilarious, deeply dark film. The core of it is Gleeson's performance as a wilfully self-contradictory man who's simultaneously a disgrace to the uniform and seeming the last honest man in Ireland - he may take drugs he takes off suspects, and spend his vacation time in hotels with prostitutes, but he's totally up front with that.

The whole thing comes to a head in what is simultaneously a spoof and spot-on homage to John Wayne westerns, as the lone sheriff finally has to do what a man's got to do, and leaves us on a suitably ambiguous ending, allowing us to choose between the legend and the reality of the man.

Pretty much note perfect throughout, it's a bright spot in what's pretty much been a murky few months of cinema.

Colombiana

It's Colombia, it's twenty or so years ago, and a Colombian drug cartel is having a bit of an internal squabble. The squabble ends with the head of the cartel sending a hit squad after one of the higher up guys in the cartel; he and his wife are killed in front of their young daughter, who flees and under her father's instructions seeks help from the US consulate in Bogota, trading some information (on a suspiciously modern looking memory card) for a US passport. She then finds her uncle in Chicago, who takes her in.

Twenty years later, she's Zoe Saldana, and has become an assassin working for her uncle, with a hidden agenda; leaving a calling card on her victims, trying to send a message to the now-deep-underground cartel boss who killed her family, in the hopes that he will break cover looking for her, and she'll be able to find him and kill him.

There's very much a sense that this film is a derivative offshoot of Leon. In that there's a young girl whose family is murdered in front of her; however, in this case, the Leon character is missing, and she's taken in by the guy who arranges the hits, so she has to train and become the unbeatable assassin for herself. And in a twisted way, that's kind of an empowering message; don't have a man do it for you, women can be just as lethal all by themselves. And Zoe Saldana puts in a pretty great turn as the calculating assassin. She's not Jean Reno, but then who is?*

Unfortunately, Jean Reno is not the only person glaringly missing from the film. Gary Oldman is also missing. This is a bigger problem, because they've not really got a decent replacement in for him. Lennie James is good as the FBI guy tracking her movements, but it's a decent, human performance. There's no great villainous antagonist here; there *is* the cartel enforcer who killed her family, who's in that role, played by Jordi Molla, but it's nowhere near as awesome a part as Gary Oldman. In short, nothing as awesome as this line happens.

So, really, that's the review in a nutshell. It's a assassination revenge thriller that's a bit like Leon, but a good 40% less awesome all around.


* Answer: Jean Reno is.

Cowboys and Aliens

I feel sort of "If that's all the effort you're going to put into the film, I'm not going to put any effort into reviewing it."

On paper, it sounds good, and on trailer, it even looks pretty good. Daniel Craig wakes in a Western desert, with no memory of who he is and how he got there, with a weird alien looking wristband, and a stinging arsehole*

He heads into town, only to find that the identity that he has quite forgotten is that of a notorious outlaw, and he soon finds himself in trouble, and under arrest. He's to be transported to trial somewhere, when all hell breaks loose, as lights appear in the sky, and UFOs start blowing the shit out of the place and kidnapping people. The wristband turns into a gun, and Daniel manages to shoot one of the (surprisingly small) UFOs down; the rest of the UFOs scarper with their captives.

The townsfolk find that since the downed UFO's pilot is bleeding and escaped on foot, they can track it, they put together a posse to go after them, and with a wince each time the horse jolts his poor punished ass, Daniel Craig rides along with them.

And they head off into the wilderness, run out of script and enter the land of Who Gives A Fuck. Really, everything I just said above was pretty cool and awesome, and found its way into the trailer, and everything else afterwards is just a bit of a drag. There are characters here, most notably Harrison Ford as a grizzled old ex-military guy, and it's not them that's at fault. It's that they have basically fuck all to do. There is a reason for this.

The aliens are fast moving, and live off screen, only appearing for brief moments of RAH JUMP IN YOUR FACE! They aren't interested in anything other than gold and Daniel Craig's arse, and have no dialogue, either among themselves or with the humans. In short, they are practically absentee bad guys. They're not even interesting in the Alien From Alien and Aliens sense, of being a bit mysterious and their lifecycle and habits being part of the puzzle of what's going on; they're just a bunch of uncommunicative gold miners and bottom-troublers. They are a blank area where the plot ought to have been.

As such, the thing just sort of ends with a badly shot, badly thought out, mess of a gunfight, which in principle has something to do with everybody working together in some kind of plan, but that's so because they *said* it was so, rather than there being any visible evidence of that happening.

Then the film ends and you can go and do something else. I quite enjoyed that bit.

Overall, I would say the problem with this film is that if you're going to make a film with a crazy premise, you've got to keep piling on the crazy, and really explore the outrageous thing you came up with, not just say "Well, we have cowboys and we have aliens. Job done, let's have lunch."

* There is no direct evidence in this film that Daniel Craig's character has been anally probed, but it's an entertaining thought, and one of the few suggested by this film.

Conan The Barbarian

I'll break this down for you. This film is about 10% dialogue, 10% carousing in bars, and 90% Sheer And Utter Fucking Mayhem. Mathematically minded people might question how that adds up, but the thing is, there's times when there's Carousing In Bars and Dialogue happening at the same time, there's times when there's Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem and Dialogue happening at the same time, and even times when Carousing In Bars, and Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem are happening at the same time. It should be noted that when Dialogue happens at the same time as something else, you'll be doing quite well to catch it. There are occasionally times when the dialogue gets to happen all on its own, but there's always the spectre of Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem looming large, ready to jump in at any time.

So, what plot can be gleaned. The hero of the piece is a guy called Khalar Zym, who, with his daughter, is on a desperate quest to save his wife from the fate that an uncaring world has bestowed on her. Obviously, most people think that he's the villain, because his wife was put to death for being an evil sorceress attempting to enslave the world, and Zym's quest is to reassemble a forbidden bone mask with necromantic powers, reactivate it with the blood of a pure and innocent girl, raise his wife from the dead, and with the knowledge thus gained from her sojourn in the afterlife, become a god and dominate the world forever. But I think he's the hero. It's all for love.

Anyway, Zym is tirelessly working his way through the barbarian tribes, slaughtering villages left and right, until he finally catches up with the last piece, hidden in the village run by Conan's father, Ron Perlman. (Ron Perlman, I think, has long since forgotten that what he does for a living actually involves acting, or at least, tells the movie makers that acting costs extra. So for all intents and purposes, Ron Perlman pretty much *is* Conan's dad.) Despite a valiant (and Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem filled) defence, the village falls, the mask is completed, and Conan is pretty much the only survivor, having had to watch Ron Perlman die a nasty death. Skip forward to Conan's young adulthood, and having sworn vengeance, Conan finally gets on the trail of his tormentor, having run into one of the distinctive novelty henchman than Zym goes around with, and getting the information that he needs from him. Zym is apparently now pretty much the unquestioned Lord of the whole continent, which kind of suggests that Conan is not the World's Greatest Detective.

Anyway, Zym has his objective (become god), Conan has his objective (kill him and smash everything). Game on.

I may have given the impression there that there's some plot in this film. Well, there's not. It's pretty much just that, and the rest of it is killing. The overall impression I got was of one of those DVDs you can get which is are just a long sequence of skateboarding mishaps; no plot, just a series of wince-making spills. Most of the time, there's no particular need to remember why we've got to this point of the plot; we have, and now there shall be violence. With that in mind, with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek, this is quite a fun bit of nothing. I think it'd be best watched in the company of friends, on DVD, with the understanding that it's OK to generally comment and take the mickey out of it throughout.

Return of the Son of the Revenge of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes

There's too many "of thes" in this film.

So, James Franco is a scientist who works in a science company owned by a guy who hasn't the faintest idea how science or companies work. He's working on a compound that can encourage tissue regeneration in the brain, and his tests on chimps show several years of good results. They're showing off the product to some investors, when one of the chimps gets a bit cross, escapes, and scares some investors. So the whole product has to be destroyed, all the science thrown away, all the chimps put down and the chemical that obviously works has to be re-researched from scratch. No, I don't know why either. Me, I'd have given the product a new name and relaunched it three months later.

Anyway, while they're killing off all the chimps, we find that the reason the chimp who went ape (see what I did there?) went ape was because she had just given birth to a baby, and was protecting it. Which is why she broke out of her cage and went on a rampage, leaving the baby in the cage. Obviously. Not sure whether I'm more surprised that the chimp got pregnant while kept caged on her own, or that the scientists working with her failed to notice that she was pregnant. Anyway, this baby chimp is rescued and taken home by James Franco, where he raises it, finding that it has better than human equivalent cognitive abilities in some areas. The chimp is named Caesar, and as he grows, he finds that the world isn't fair, that he's always going to be treated like an animal despite his human level intelligence, and things kind of progress from there, with Caesar's dissatisfaction with his lot and James Franco's desperation to get the drug working so he can treat his father (John Lithgow) who's rapidly declining with Alzheimers.

This is a film with plenty of good SF ideas in it. Most notably, if you made an animal more intelligent, what would it be? Not a human, but not an animal either. Which of course leads to the more general animal rights question, how should we treat animals in general, even if they haven't the intelligence to present a coherent objection to their treatment. And that's the good bit of the film; we're with Caesar all the way through, and his treatment at the hands of humans is pretty outrageous, while being reasonably believable. The CGI creating Caesar is pretty impressive, and you can see Andy Serkis's performance shine through. (Having said that, I don't think he actually looks much like a chimp.)

Sadly, where it all goes wrong is towards the end, as the ideas run out before the film does, and we're treated to a scene of a gang of apes attempting to cross a bridge to freedom, and a bunch of humans trying to stop them with a roadblock. It's a pretty embarrassingly dumb scene, and it breaks the spell pretty much, altering the stance of the human protagonists from merely thoughtless, to actively idiotic.

Worthy of note, is the sad, sad fate of Tom Felton, who after being one of the best known characters in fiction for the last ten years or so, is now reduced to the status of a guy who shovels primate shit for a living. He even ends up losing a wand duel with a chimpanzee at one point. Tragic.

Super 8

Remember 80s films set in small town America? Sure you do. They were the best. The Lost Boys, Back To The Future, The Goonies, Gremlins, all that sort of stuff. Big city is where all the important 'stuff' happens, but in the little corners of America, when nobody's looking, that's where the magic is. I've never been quite clear on whether this is supposed to make people in small town America feel that their life is magical too, or just massively resentful that not only are the big cities more interesting, there are also small towns out there that are more interesting than theirs too.

Anyway, we're back in small town eighties America, as established by a young kid at one point amazing an adult with his new Walkman. This particular small town is home to a kid called Joe, whose mother has just died. His father is a local Deputy Sheriff, who's never been a particularly close father, and who doesn't know how to cope with his son without his wife. Joe, therefore, spends a lot of time on his own, or with his friends, who are led by his best friend Charles, who is a would-be director, and who has co-opted Joe to do his make-up and special effects, his other friends as actors, and together the lot of them are going to make a zombie movie.

They're out filming one night (having snuck out of their bedroom windows as all good American kids seem to do) at the nearby train station, which is scene to a massive train derailment. And during this derailment, something escapes. The Air Force turn up, seal off the scene, and we find that it was an Air Force train, and they were transporting something. Then there's a series of weird disappearances of people and property in the town. The Air Force claim it's nothing to worry about, but Joe's Dad and Joe and his mates aren't buying it, and so independently of each other, they decide to find out what's what.

So... we know the genre, we know it well. Is it any good? Well, yes, it really is. I mentioned four pretty big movies at the start, and this film can easily take its place alongside them. Top marks really go to the ensemble cast of kids; They're all really good. All of them. Three very classy performances from Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning and Riley Griffiths (the latter being a great performance and a great role, in that he's the fat kid of the group, but rather than the chocolate guzzling comedy relief, he's pretty much the leader, and a serious guy.) And the writing for them is pretty top notch too; these roles are written as real kids, not the kind of monstrous creatures of pure wit and sarcasm which pass for kids in many movies today.

The direction's great, there's a proper sense of mystery and menace, and the gradual reveal of what's going on throughout the film is fast enough that you don't find yourself getting bored, but gradual enough that there's enough left for the finale.

Is it perfect? No, sadly. It's J. J. Abrams, and as with Lost, he's really good at building a mystery, but not really good at endings. There's a sort of satisfying ending which mostly explains all, but leaves you with a bit of a "oh, so that's that then" reaction. I suppose in many ways, whether you like this film is based on whether you judge a film on the last five minutes (which isn't always the wrong response), but if you feel that a great film can have a merely average ending and remain great, then you'll probably think this is a great film.

The Devil's Double

It's well known that Saddam Hussein had body doubles, who he maintained to send in his stead into dangerous situations. At some stage, it is claimed, his son, Uday decided that he would also like to have one, and so recruited Latif Yahia, someone he knew from school who was said to look just like him, as his own. Latif didn't want to do this, for all sorts of reasons, but was forced to, under threat of violence towards himself and his family. Being kept close to Uday in this way, he had a ringside seat for Uday's crimes.

In this film based on these events, both Latif and Uday are played by Dominic Cooper, and it's Cooper's performance that you really want to see the film for. In that Latif is a serious, fair minded man, and Uday is a twitchy, out of control psychopath, with enough personal power to do as he likes. And while not only is this a dual role, but also a role in which one of the roles is of a man impersonating the other man, you are left in no doubt at any time which you're looking at. It's a pretty masterly physical performance.

There are a couple of serious flaws, though. First, it doesn't really ring true. There's a romantic subplot, which doesn't feel right. The portrayal of Uday as an inadequate man, jealous of the upstanding man he's forcing to be his pet is a compelling one, but feels like it might well have been added on. And if you're of a suspicious mind as I am, a quick Wiki seems to suggest that some of the events allegedly witnessed by Latif actually occurred before Latif was recruited. Overall, I just didn't get a ring of truth from the film. Serious questions have been raised as to whether any of it is true, or whether Latif Yahia is just a fantasist.

The reason for cinematic embellishment might well be the second flaw: Uday is of little significance. Now, I would be the last person to suggest that for instance Hitler was anything other than among the worst humans to ever live. But his actions had undeniable historical significance, and resonate today. Hence, a film like Downfall has a purpose. Uday, however, was nothing more than a raping murderer, and remembering his existence serves little purpose other than to remind us the dangers of allowing anyone too much power. The film, then, is just a plotless sequence of grisly acts on his part, with Latif standing mute witness - mute, I suspect, because I couldn't personally think of a thing I'd want to say to Uday other than "Die, you utter arsehole."

So, yes, this is a film that's long on performance, but pretty short on plot, because it's effectively the biopic of a man whose life served no purpose whatsoever, told from the perspective of a man who may well have never really met him.

The Big Picture

A French film whose original title was "L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie" or "The man who wanted to live his life", which while a bit clunking in English, is a better and less trite title than the one they've come up with.

So... Paul Exben is by any reasonable standard, apparently a very successful man. He's a successful lawyer, has a beautiful wife, lovely kids, lovely house, everything is just about perfect. However, not all is as it seems. He's a lawyer because he was pressured into giving up his dreams of being what he wants to be really, a photographer. And he's supposedly a great photographer, but traded all that in for the big money, and fills his house with all the fancy photographic kit money can buy to compensate. His wife (in what seems to be an unreasonable double standard) seems to resent him for a) having gone out to be a bread winner so she can concentrate on her writing, where she feels like a trapped failure and wants to give up on her artistic ambitions, and b) having given up on his own artistic ambitions. So much so that she's conducting an affair with a guy who's basically what Paul would have been if he hadn't sold out, a struggling photographer.

The domestic drama comes to a sudden end, when there's a bit of a calamity. Without saying what, Paul is suddenly in a position where he looks guilty of a very serious crime, and decides he has to cover his tracks and disappear completely. Which he does, disappearing off to somewhere in the former Yugoslavia (Montenegro, I think, but details are sketchy), where he begins a new life with a new identity, and begins to live the life he always wanted really, as a professional photographer, a life which comes to have meteoric success, which threatens to put him under the light of publicity, and expose his identity.

It's a great film. Romain Duris puts in a great performance as Paul, whose calm, self assured exterior gradually unravels as the film goes on; there's never a visible jarring change of character, yet by the end, Paul is quite a different man than he was at the start. The film's beautifully shot, lots of lovely vistas of the Adriatic coastline, which links well with the films theme of artistic photography (though at one point, I did find myself thinking that the cinematographer was clearly much better at framing a shot than Paul himself.) And ultimately, it's one of those films that makes you reflect on your own life, and what it would take to knock you out of your rut; there's times when you think maybe Paul is overreacting, whether he even needs to run, or whether had it all been left to come out he'd have been exonerated. But then you realise, he *wants* to run. And that made me at least reflect on what might be needed to jar me out of a safe existence, and if I had to run, where I would go, and how I would live. And if a film can inspire that kind of navel-gazing introspection, it's clearly got a lot going for it.

Captain America

I've always liked Captain America. Captain America was conceived in 1940, long before the USA entered the war, and represents the author Joe Simon's belief that what America should be doing is getting involved and punching Hitler in the face. You can't argue with a character genesis like that.

The film starts just after America's entry into the war, and we see asthmatic pipsqueak Steve Rogers serially trying and failing to get himself enlisted. We also see him ineffectually standing up to bullies a lot. Lots of heart, but no muscle to back it up. On his latest attempt to get enlisted, he is spotted by Dr Erskine, a German scientist who has a serum which gives people super powers. He was forced to use it once before on Nazi Bad Guy Johann Schmidt, but he's now defected to the allies, and is almost completely sure he's worked out the slight dermatological side effects now.

After an almost complete success in the first test (i.e. Steve Rogers gets Super Powers - Good; German spy assassinates Erskine, and all samples of the serum are lost - Bad) America is left with having only one super soldier. Who ends up somehow becoming a celebrity in a traveling USO show, under the name Captain America.

This isn't enough for Rogers, he wants to be fighting the bad guys on the front lines, not selling war bonds, so at the first sign of trouble he's off on an unsanctioned solo mission to rescue some captured allied soldiers from the clutches of evil Nazi science think-tank Hydra, commanded by Johann Schmidt. Schmidt, meanwhile, has managed to nick an awesome power source that used to belong to Thor's dad, and is using it to build weapons which will allow him to win the war at a stroke. And someone's really got to do something about that.

Basically, this is all dumb, good-hearted nonsense. Captain America as a proper good guy, no side to him, no dark edginess, just basically a guy who's going to stand up for what's right, no matter what. Schmidt, on the other hand, is a proper creepy Nazi megalomaniac, (it's Hugo Weaving! Of course he is! He made Elrond seem like a creepy Nazi megalomaniac!), and the whole thing starts off as a stirring tale of this brave kid taking a huge risk in order to be able to stand up to assholes like Schmidt, then it all kicks off in an epic maelstrom of punching things and shooting them.

It's easily as good as any of the other modern Marvel films; taken singly, I think any one of them is great. Taken as a body of films which are going to come together as The Avengers next year? My only problem is *next year*? Why not *now*?

Horrible Bosses

Jason Bateman, Chris Day and Jason Sudeikis have Horrible Bosses. Bateman works in some sort of unspecified corporate office, where Kevin Spacey screws him around, dangles the carrot of advancement, and generally treats him like dirt. Chris Day is a dental assistant working for dentist Jennifer Anniston, who basically sexually harasses him all day. Sudeikis works for a chemical company, for Colin Farrell, who's a scumbag cokehead with a bad combover, who's just inherited the company off his much nicer dad (Donald Sutherland), and is intent on driving the company into the ground so he can extract as much money as he can out of it.

So, the three of them get talking about their problems (Chris Day's problems being notably taken less seriously), and joke about how they should kill their bosses. Then realise that none of them is really laughing. So, they begin to hatch plots to bump off the banes of their existence.

Cue a tale of bungling ineptitude, as three guys who have neither the natural inclination or talent for murder attempt to bump off their bosses.

There's really only two performances in the film; one is the collective performance of the three hapless employees - singly, they aren't really up to much, but somehow, as a gaggle of wisecracking incompetents they manage to turn out one pretty good comedy protagonist. The other is Kevin Spacey, who as anyone who's paid the slightest attention to his career to date, will know is excellent at the bullying psycho boss type.

Is it funny? Yes. Could it be funnier? Oh yes. The black comedy isn't black enough, Spacey's performance is great, but basically exactly what you're expecting. Jennifer Anniston's good at what she does (flirty psycho), but really, she's the comic relief, and you don't really need comic relief in a comedy. Colin Farrell's character actually looks like he has the most promise, and he's sadly underused. I got the impression from the blooper reel in the trailers that they shot more scenes with him, so either they cut back on him to focus on Spacey, or the scenes just weren't funny, but the scenes he's in he puts out such a really creepy vibe, he's amazing fun to watch.

Ultimately, I think this film might have lost more than a few points in the cutting room; it looks like it might have been re-edited by committee, and we might have lost some of the better stuff. That's just me speculating though. As it stands, It's a film thats worth paying some money for, but not one that's going to make it into your DVD/Blu-Ray collection until it hits the bargain bins.

Harry Potter Seven And Three Quarters.

So, finally, the inevitable has happened, and the series drags itself over the finish line, is wrapped in a foil blanket and given a complementary bottle of Lucozade Sport for its trouble. It's been a long hard slog, and there was an alarming dip in pace towards the end, resulting in eight films out of seven books, but now it's all over bar the shouting and the special edition Blu-Ray boxed sets.

Obviously, any attempt to review the plot is futile. I don't think the book surprised anyone when it came out, much less the film of the most read book in the world. It is what it always is, well made, slavishly faithful to the text, with a few abridgements and practically no deviation. The performances are what they've always been; everyone by now very comfortable in their roles, and obviously aware, in-character and out, that this is the final act. In the last film (HP7a: Harry On Camping), it was very much a three hander between Harry, Ron and Hermione, and you'd have thought this would be rather different. But actually, much as it's possible to be alone in a crowd, despite basically everyone in the franchise coming back for their curtain call, this leads to very few scenes of any depth at all between Harry and anyone other than Ron and Hermione. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say Ron gets a bit short changed; Hermione stands revealed as the real support that Harry needs to prevail. Everyone else seems more or less to just say a few pleasantries and words of encouragement to Harry before he moves on, like he's having a big birthday party, and in having to talk to everyone, he hardly gets to talk to anyone. And in a way, that's how it should be. For all that he's got the greatest supporting cast in literary history (I think it's fair to say), ultimately, Harry is almost a man alone.

As to the film, well, I have my doubts. It's not that you can sit there and actually criticise it, call any of it rubbish, because it's not. It's well directed, and well acted, but ultimately, it's two hours of things that must dutifully be done before the end; a real sense of putting the chairs up on the tables, sweeping the floors, and turning the lights out before locking up. I think of the films of my own childhood that stand out, your Back To The Futures, and your Top Guns, and I can't see, much as it should be, that this is a film that will have that kind of impact as the backdrop to the lives of today's kids.

I couldn't help comparing the film to other films, to classics, because this is a would-be classic. The first half hour or so of this film is essentially a bank heist. And while the bank gets heisted because the plot demands it, this is no Ocean's Eleven. The meat of the film is essentially a siege; but this fails to convey either the doomed tenacity of the soldiers at Rourke's Drift in Zulu, or the shock and awe of the Imperial assault on Hoth in Empire Strikes Back. It's too inevitable now. Is anyone really going to be taking Voldemort up on his offer to leave them be if they hand over Harry? Even consider it in their darkest moments? No. Everybody, characters and audience alike, knows how this ends, Harry and Voldemort, to the death, for better or worse. The inevitability of it, for me, saps the tension right out of it. We finally have it explained to us the precise nature of the relationship between Harry and Voldemort, but this is no "Luke, I Am Your Father" moment.

This is as much a fault of the structure of the book; and you can hardly fault a book for not being structured like a film either. So there we have it, a sometimes time-consuming, but not unenjoyable chore is finally put to bed. I feel much as you might when you've just finished the washing up; basically quite pleased that all the dishes are now clean and put away in the cupboard.

Bridesmaids

So, the set up. Kristen Wiig is Annie, whose life is falling apart. Until recently, she had her own bakery, a nice (she thinks) boyfriend and looks set. The bakery gets hit by the recession, her boyfriend leaves her, and she's left working in a jewellery store selling engagement rings while labouring under the impression that love cannot ever last.

Her best friend friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) however, announces that she is getting married, and that she wants Annie to be the Maid of Honour, which pretty much leaves arranging stuff like the hen night and the bridal shower to her. At which point she's introduced to Helen, a relative of the husband to be, apparently wealthy and perfect, and seemingly Lillian's would-be new best friend. And so a neurotic game of one-up-manship ensues.

Now, on the face of it, this is The Hangover, With Ladies. And this is certainly something which I think people who haven't seen either film say, in mutual condemnation of both films. However, The Hangover was a lot better than the sum of its parts, and so is this. Because what's important about The Hangover is that it's about how men are around other men, and this is a film about women's relationships with each other. One thing I'd point out is, while there are significant male characters in the film, the husband to be is not one of them; I don't think he gets a line, and if he does, it's hardly significant.

What this film is about, and where its heart is, is how you deal with the fact that as you get older, your life will go in quite different directions than your oldest friends, and how you can adapt to that. The core relationship in this film is Annie and Lillian, not Lillian and Whatever-His-Name-Was-It-Matters-Not.

If the film has a weakness, and you might not think that it is, is that the tone is all over the place. There's scenes between Annie and Lillian which are honest and truthful, and up there with the likes of films like The Kids Are Alright. And then ten minutes later, we're in the midst of a massively broad and crude extended vomit and diarrhea gag. And I guess it's really up to the audience whether they feel that makes the film an incoherent mess, or whether it's a case of a film with a pretty broad palette of where it'll go for its laughs. Myself, I enjoyed being caught off guard, as it wasn't entirely clear at any time which direction it would go next.

Bad Teacher

Let's look at the trailer first... So, it looks like Cameron Diaz is a appalling, couldn't-give-a-fuck teacher, whose only reason for being in teaching is to keep herself in money until she can snare a rich husband. The new teacher in school (Justin Timberlake) has family money, and she sets her sights on him, deciding she needs a boob job in order to get his interest. And thus sets about getting the requisite money in the most thoroughly morally reprehensible ways she can. Meanwhile a thoroughly good, through and through teacher decides to expose her as the menace to children everywhere that she is.

Aaaaand yeah, that's the joke, that's the film. I'm not saying that there's no other laughs at all in the film, but they're all variations on that; Cameron Diaz acting like the worst human on earth, and mostly getting away with it. If they'd taken the time to do a 15 second cut of the end of the film, stuck it on the end of the trailer, that'd be the film precised in as much detail as you'd need.

So, it's pretty shallow. So really if it's going to save itself, this film needs to tell that joke in a lot of funny variations. And to an extent, it does. Bad Teacher does bad things, then worse things, then even worse things, and Good Teacher basically drives herself mad attempting to expose same. And there's actually a pretty decent frisson of dark amusement as you realise that the film isn't even slightly interested in letting the good guy win. And that is the only thing that elevates this above being a pretty dumb average Hollywood comedy.

The Hangover: Part II

Do we recall The Hangover? Well, they did it again.

In what is such a rerun of a sequel that it's practically a remake, we follow the same bunch of idiots who get so blotto on a stag night that they wake in the morning with no idea what happened last night, and with one of their number missing. A few details are changed; a different one of them is getting married, the stag night is in Bangkok not Vegas, and the missing person is the bride's brother, not the groom. All else is the same. And that's not absolutely the wrong thing to do; in Die Hard 2, John McClane couldn't believe the same kind of crap could happen to him twice, and he had a point. With this, if you give the same bunch of idiots alcohol, it's not inconceivable that they'll wake up in dire straits again. It's a repeatable experiment.

Not quite the same, of course. In that this movie is out to trump its earlier incarnation in many respects. So, the humour is broader, blacker, crasser, and more insensitive. Which might sound like a criticism, and if you've no tolerance of that kind of mularkey, it is a criticism. However, if you're interested in a film about three idiots going off the rails on a stag night, Crass Up or Go Home, I say. The only way to make it funny twice is to push it harder.

Taking a look at my portable laughometer, which I take with me to all films*, I can see that I laughed about 75%-80% as often as I did with The Hangover, that on average, these laughs were only about 10% less hard than the laughs for the original, but analysis of the timbre of the laughs suggests that the laughs were about 10-15% more evil this time.

In an odd way, I am minded of the film Saw, and its sequels. The original was a grisly bit of torture porn, but mostly held up as a movie that normal people could like, because of the interesting gameplaying proposition play scenario. The sequel, however, was less broad ranging in appeal, and appeals mostly to those who were fans of the first, and attempts to give them more. And of course, by film six of the franchise, we're reduced to just the sick fucks who like watching mutilations. Well, I imagine the Hangover franchise like that. The first has a broad appeal as a buddy movie, for all it's black slapstick, the second will appear more to people who specifically enjoy black slapstick. If it goes any further along these lines, it really will only appeal to fans of Dirty Sanchez, but we're still early enough in the sequence to appeal to people with only borderline personality disorders**.




* - lie
** - that is, me.

Green Lantern

The Basics. One of the oldest civilisations in the galaxy is a bunch of blue dudes who call themselves The Guardians of the Universe. Seriously, that's what they call themselves. They live on a planet called Oa near the center of the Universe, from where they essentially dictate that there must be law and order in the universe. Essentially, they're Time Lords, only they specialise in Weapons of Mass Destruction rather than time travel.

Anyhoo, after a brief, disastrous flirtation with imposing order on the cosmos with an army of android killing machines (not mentioned in the film, but they totally did it. The Guardians are a bunch of reckless assholes, for all of their sitting on big rocks pretending to be Yoda), they came to realise that it was maybe a better idea to allow the peoples of the universe to police themselves, maybe. So they split the universe into 3600 sectors and appointed one suitable individual from each sector to police that sector. These individuals are given Power Rings, which are weapons of immense power and versatility, capable of interstellar flight, firing big bolts of energy, and creating constructs of green energy. All this stuff is powered by the combined willpower of the universe, channeled by the willpower of the user. So if you can think it, you can create it, and the harder you can think it, the more powerful it is.

These guys have nice green uniforms, are called Green Lanterns, and form the Green Lantern Corps. They're this weird combination of 60's optimism, the corps consisting of the most multicultural mix of aliens conceivable (including a sentient planet, a sentient virus, and a sentient mathematical equation), but also a pretty authoritarian stance (the Guardians impose their chosen Lantern on a sector, and you don't get a vote. At least one Lantern in the past has been discovered imposing order on his sector through fascist dictatorship, and this went on for years without the Guardians taking an interest.)

Anyway, the Lantern for our sector, Abin Sur, a purple humanoid bloke, is fatally wounded fighting a being of pure Fear called Parallax, and crash lands on Earth. He instructs the ring to go find a suitable candidate, and it finds Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a hotshot test pilot, who at least initially is not as full of willpower and lacking in fear as a Green Lantern ought to be. However, the fear creature thing is about to devour the Earth, so it behooves him to become so pretty quick.

As a film, it's really quite good, I thought. I had very low expectations, having heard some dreadful reviews, but I don't think they're all that fair. It's pretty much your standard Joseph Campbell "Hero with a Thousand Faces" monomyth, and in not deviating much from that template, it's a pretty satisfying structure, if not the most original. I've seen some criticism of the film lacking a proper bad guy, the big conflict being against an amorphous cloud of fear and evil. In my view, though, this is where Green Lantern should be. The Green Lantern ring is practically an Ultimate Weapon. If a Lantern isn't up against a big World Eating Monstrosity, then it's a bit overkill. It's all about scale, and scale is delivered.

I would say, however, the film suffers in comparison with Thor. In that the two characters have a similar sort of storyline, and power level, but Thor just being quite a bit better and more fun. Overall, though, not a bad superhero flick, and so what if you're the season's Second Best Superhero movie?

Senna

I wouldn't normally be too worried about posting spoilers about a documentary. One does not spoiler The World At War by telling people that the Nazis lose and Hitler dies in the end. However, this is a different kettle of fish, because this feels much more like a movie. Imagine you yourself were to plan a film of your life. You would weave a narrative including all you greatest achievements and most crushing defeats, and you'd then have to work out how to film those scenes, because, of course, when they happened to you, nobody was filming. However, in Ayrton Senna's case, that's simply not true. Everything he's famous for was captured on film, either by race cameras, TV sports cameras, or the voracious lens of the TV interview after the fact. At least on the sporting side of his life, it seems like his life could scarcely be better documented, and there's some sense that as he lived for the sport, no other side is necessary.

So, as the footage is actually available, the director Asif Kapadia has seemingly taken on the task of sifting through the - probably in total - years of film of Senna's life, and assembled two hours of it into a narrative. There's not a moment on screen that's not film from the time that's being portrayed - no modern returns to old scenes, no talking head interviews, with much of the voice over being taken from contemporary interviews and commentary. Hence, it's very "in the moment", and I was at times catapulted into the nostalgia of my youth, and the cigarette branded cars, Marlboros racing against John Player Specials.

Once we get into the main body of the film, the real story is the rivalry between Alain Prost and Senna. I'm not sure how fairly this is portrayed; Senna's this paragon of pure racing for the sake of racing, whereas Prost is this conniving, calculating prick who does what he has to do to win, like some moustache twirling Dick Dastardly, only with a healthy slathering of French arrogance on top. I don't think that was fair at all, as the whole Renault Williams episode shows. Prost starts driving for Renault Williams, who are pioneering traction control, which seemingly makes Prost unbeatable, and then there's this interview with Senna complaining about how all this electronics is unfair and any idiot could win in that car. Yet, when Prost retires, who's driving for Renault Williams the following year? Mmmm-hmm...

And if this was a documentary, pure and simple, I'd be booing and throwing eggs at such plainly partisan filmmaking. However, it's not, It's Only A Movie, and as such, we've picked our hero and our villain, and judicious editing shows them in that light. I'd be surprised if Prost isn't at least a little peeved by the final cut.

The film itself is thus a little odd to watch. In that if you watch it as a movie, you occasionally have to remind yourself that this is real contemporary footage, and thus there were no retakes, and no reshoots if the film quality was a bit poor. There are moments, however, that I think no action movie can remotely approach for thrills. In particular, we get car camera footage from Senna's drive in the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix, and watching that, I swear that he must have been superhuman or insane. Pod Racing in Phantom Menace is a game for five year olds in comparison.

So, is this a good documentary? No. It's too partisan. Is this the most hair raising racing movie ever made? Certainly. Especially when you consider the stakes involved.

X-Men - First Class*

* - not a review

I expect we've all been waiting for a film which establishes why Professor X and Magneto are at odds with each other, despite once have been friends. No? Oh, you were quite happy to accept the few lines of exposition, and self-evident conflict of ideas between the two men? So you feel this movie's a bit superfluous then? Oh well. Here it is anyway. Seemingly unable to break away from the formula of the Superhero Origin Movie, this is the prequel origin movie to the original X-Men origin movie, which establishes the origins of Professor X, Magneto, Mystique, and a few others who don't actually appear in the subsequent continuity, and Beast, who is missing for two of the movies then pops up in the third without so much as a sicknote to explain his absence from the previous two.

So, the setup. We saw Erik Lehnsherr, who's going to be Magneto some day, in the first X-Men movie use his magnetic powers to attempt to open the gates of a concentration camp, until he was subdued by guards. It seems that this was witnessed by Sebastian Shaw, a mutant who was then working with the Nazis in a Mengele-like capacity, with his own agenda of creating a mutant master race. He takes young Erik as a protege/experimental subject, and attempts to unlock his powers by essentially inflicting physical and emotional pain on him. We then cut to twenty years later, the war is over, and Erik Lehnsherr has become an absolutely kick-ass Nazi hunter, obsessed with hunting Shaw down.

Shaw himself has been busy in the interim, forming a group of mutants called the Hellfire Club, with whom he is attempting to influence the US and Russian militaries regarding strategic placement of nuclear missiles. The CIA are interested in him, and he's being investigated by CIA Agent Moira McTaggart, who discovers he's some kind of genetic mutant thing, and so seeks the advice of world expert on the subject, the newly qualified Prof. Charles Xavier of Oxford University.

This leads to the formation of a mutant group under CIA auspices to hunt down Shaw, and soon they cross paths with, and recruit Erik. Together they recruit more mutants, with Charles' idealist and Erik's suspicion of authority working well to moderate each other. And the hunt for Shaw is on in earnest.

Now, despite my reservations that this is an origin movie, it's actually a pretty good one. Significant liberties are taken with the Marvel Comics continuity, but that's all to the good in my eyes. In the comics, the Hellfire Club were a bunch of self-sabotaging pillocks who dressed in fake 18th Century costumes, and who were basically a ripoff of that one episode of The Avengers than Chris Claremont saw once. Here, instead, we have Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) as a properly psycho Bond villain with all the trappings; secret base under a go-go-dancing nightclub, big yacht which doubles as a submarine, he's got the lot. His Hellfire club, then, rather than the bunch of squabbling doofuses you find in the comics, are a more or less random assortment of mutant henchmen, most of whom have the sense to shut the fuck up and let Shaw do the talking. The only bit of miscasting there, and I think of it as Near-Miss casting is January Jones from Mad Men as Emma Frost. Now fair enough, she looks the part, and should have no more trouble inspiring the kind of nocturnal tributes from comic geeks than previous versions of Emma Frost, but she's also supposed to be really witty and urbane, which isn't working here. However, had they just looked one name further in the Mad Men cast list, they'd have seen Christina Hendricks, who would have been perfect. Ah well, near miss.

The will-be X-Men are pretty good. Michael Fassbender's awesome as Erik, playing him as a basically decent man who's never going to put up with the slightest oppression from anyone, ever again. McAvoy's good, playing Xavier as a naive idealist whose cushy background causes him to have an almost condescending misunderstanding of the situations other mutants have found themselves on. There's excellent support from Nicolas Hoult as Beast, and Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique; a pair of really classy performances which really fill the movie out, and prevent it being all about the headlining characters.

Ultimately, though, the script prevents this being a really good film, as it's no more than the usual tick-box list of plot points that prequels have to establish before the end, and that doesn't actually amount to a story.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

There's one clear winner in all this, and that's Tim Powers. In that this film is nominally "Suggested by" his book "On Stranger Tides", an occult pirate tale which involves Blackbeard and The Fountain Of Youth. And however much money Tim Powers got, he got it for the title, and those two concepts. Nothing else seems to have made it through into the film intact. Both of the concepts are public domain by reason of being a real life person, and a well established legendary concept. So Disney has given a man a fat stack of cash for the words "On Stranger Tides."

And, amusingly, these are actually the least strange tides that Jack Sparrow has been sailing for a good long time. Yes, fine, he's going to an island home to mermaids and a magical water source, but last time he'd gone beyond the realms of death. So really, this film should be On Tamer Tides.

So then, the plot; There is a legendary Fountain Of Youth, and its whereabouts and method of use have come to light. Everybody wants it, where Everybody is defined as the British (sending Capt. Barbossa, now a privateer working for the crown), the Spanish (sending some people who don't really get names or a lot of dialogue) and Blackbeard (played by Lovejoy). There's a bit of a scavenger hunt, as there's four things you need to have, or need to know in order to use the fountain, and everyone's busily stealing them off each other.

The film itself is the usual for a film of this type, i.e. one which some exec somewhere ordered off a pizza menu, and which everyone concerned just baked to order without any concern for whether it actually works. Starts in London with a big chase scene, then some bits at sea, then some bits on an island, all of which are just inevitable one-after-the-other setpieces which rollercoaster us towards the conclusion without ever really feeling like vital bits of the plot.

It's hard to criticise Pirates for behaving like a rollercoaster, given how much actual rollercoaster there is in its DNA. What is worthy of criticism is that there's bits of it that really drag. Like you made a rollercoaster and put a section of it in the middle that just pootles along on the flat for a while before pulling its finger out and getting back to the loops and big drops.

The performances are what you've come to expect by now, but certainly no more than that. I think Geoffrey Rush has pretty much got bored by now, in particular. Some of the lines are good, but nothing much you'll be quoting incessantly as with the first film.

There's an adage in film-making, I understand, which states that a sequel, to be considered successful, should take 60% of the box office of the last outing. And while this isn't a film without a redeeming feature, it's clear that it was made solely with that ambition.

Blitz

Alright. So. Hmmm.

First off, we have Aiden Gillen. He is a serial killer who's decided to kill a bunch of coppers in Southeast London. That actually overstates the issue; we're not talking about a sermonising madman in the Kevin Spacey in Seven mould. Rather, then than call him a serial killer, he's basically just an arsehole. A violent arsehole with a chip on his shoulder. So, he's off on a killing spree to kill some coppers.

Now, as you are probably well aware, the Police in the UK, especially in the Met are all wide eyed innocents, utterly lacking in street smarts, and complete strangers to the ways of violence, which makes them basically helpless targets. That is all but Jason Statham, who's an old school copper who wishes he was Gene Hunt but hasn't the material. He's on notice for having beaten up three young thugs robbing a car, which the papers have blown up into a police brutality thing. And in fairness, it *was* a police brutality thing, but the youths were more armed than the paper suggested.

Anyway, in light of this idiot on the loose killing coppers, Statham is put on the case, under newly promoted Inspector Paddy Considine, who's a gay officer who's previously had a lot of hassle from fellow officers for being gay.

And the hunt is on.

I wanted to really like this film, because the idea is basically what's happened earlier in the month with Attack The Block; take a trad standard eighties US B-Movie plot (in this case, renegade cop vs sociopathic killer) and give it a smart, lo-fi, British makeover. But sadly, while they nailed the lo-fi and the British bit, unlike Attack The Block, this film falls woefully short on the Smarts. For instance, without giving much away, part way through the film we have the standard trope of "cops know they have their man, but have insufficient evidence to charge, so have to free him." Fair enough. Except that sitting there in the cinema, I could see that there was something they could *easily* have used to charge him with, a piece of physical evidence which he had on him when they arrested him, and which they gave back to him when they released him. I mean, for god's sake, did nobody making the film even notice that? And this point should be regarded as illustrative of a generally slapdash plot.

So, while I really would have liked the film they probably *hoped* they were making, unfortunately, the script wasn't up to the job in either the plot or dialogue departments. Performance wise, everyone does the best they can with the material they're given; Statham is Statham, and faintly pissed off as usual. Gillen is a convincing petty psycho who thinks he's a genius, and Considine is great as a just slightly fey gay man, who's still hard as nails where it counts. That much, we can enjoy, and prevent the film being a complete waste of time, but it's a pretty flawed and rickety structure overall.

Hanna

Here's an odd little thing. Part espionage thriller, part fairy tale.

Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is a young girl who lives in a remote forest alpine
forest, with her father (Eric Bana). They live off the land, in a log cabin,
where her father is evidently training her to be some kind of killing machine
assassin. One day, as a young girl growing up will, she tells her father that
she's ready, and wants to see the world. In response, he produces some kind of
transponder signal box, and tells her that she only needs to flick the switch,
and the people looking for them will come and find them, and that there will be
no going back. After some consideration, she flicks the switch. And all hell,
of course, breaks loose.

After the dust settles, and some significant escapade, she finds herself in
Morocco, where, after some stumbling about, she hooks up with a British family
who take her for a girl backpacking on her own, and tags along with them as
part of her instructions to rendezvous with her father in Berlin. And thus, in
the words of a great man, she Goes On Holiday By Mistake, and has a voyage of
self discovery through the off-the-beaten-track-but-still-quite-touristy bits
of Europe. Meanwhile, sinister forces are tracking her down, in the shape of
CIA Person/Wicked Witch (Cate Blanchette) and her creepy off-the-books henchman
in terrible sports casual wear (Tom Hollander). Things gradually come to a head
as she and her father approach the rendezvous point (a deserted Brothers Grimm
themed theme park) where all, and more, is revealled.

It's quite an interesting idea, in that the idea of a character who is nothing
but a perfect killer, who gradually learns some humanity is now part of the
mythology of modern cinema, and this film goes the step further and casts such
a character into a modern day fairy tale. And like a proper, pre-Disney fairy
tale, a lot of blood is going to flow before the end.

While it's interestingly done, it's not perfect; There's a lot of odd camera
shots which dangerously skirt the line between arty and self-indulgent. The
performances are a bit sparse and archetypical rather than fleshed out
characters - Hanna and her father are very much ciphers who give nothing away,
Cate Blanchette hams it up a bit as a wicked stepmother/witch type, and Tom
Hollander is in possession of a very camp and pervy German accent.

What is good about it, though, and the reason it should be seen and considered
rather than prejudged and avoided, is that something interesting is being
attempted here, and while it's not an unqualified success, it's a step into
less well-travelled cinematic territory, and there's much here to enjoy.

Attack The Block

It's an odd thing; written and directed by Joe Cornish, and featuring (albeit in a minor role) Nick Frost, I was expecting this to be a straight up comedy, with a literate knowledge of the genre it's spoofing, like Sean of the Dead. And while it's not definitely *not* a comedy, in as much as some of the characters are funny people, and others are funny by virtue of being fish out of water in the situation they find themselves in, this is much more of an Alien movie than a comedy.

The situation is, on her way home from work one night, a young nurse called Sam is mugged by a local gang of youths. During the mugging, something literally falls from the sky next to them, and destroys a car. On investigating, the youths find that it's some kind of weird beast, which attacks one of them, then runs off into the night. They pursue it, corner it, and kill it. They take this thing, a weird, grey, slimy eyeless thing, all teeth and claws, home, because they think that it might be worth something. However, further things are falling from the sky. Much bigger things, which seem intent on attacking the block of flats that the youths (and the young nurse) live in, and the inhabitants have to form a wary alliance to defend themselves against Rampaging Killer Beasties From Outer Space.

First off, cards on the table, skip to the end - it's a really good film. Reminds me of your low-budget 80s creature features of the CHUD/Critters type, but with a very healthy dose of British wit and style. I think the characters are well observed; the gang of youths are charming, amoral kids, with no qualms about petty crime, and an air of injured innocence about being hassled by the Police, despite actually being habitual criminals. This doesn't stop them being brave, likeable characters, willing to stand up for them and their own. Likewise, the mistake of making the group bond out of necessity never comes too easily, or too deeply. It's very well judged.

The creature effects are lovely; one of the character puts it best, they're "gorilla-wolf motherf*ckers", bounding about the place with night-black fur that makes them difficult to make out, and eerie-blue glowing teeth. If I have a criticism, it's perhaps that these creatures aren't quite badass enough; a few of them get killed in some quite ignominious ways, which in some ways takes away from how scary they are. On the other hand, by the end, there are a *hell* of a lot of them.

So, really, it's quite peculiar, being a teen creature slasher film, but with some honest-to-god social commentary in it. And for my money, if something can be both peculiar, and really good, that film is worth taking time out to see.

Priest

It is The Future. The world has been all-but consumed as a result of an endless war, with the wasteland dotted with heavily fortified urban metropoli, ruled by an all-powerful totalitarian state. It could be Judge Dredd, but it's not. It's Priest.

In this case, the all-powerful totalitarian state is The Church, who are getting away with this, because the endless war in question is against Vampires. It's been a pretty even fight between humans and vampires throughout history, because while the vampires are faster and stronger, we have all the cool advantages that being a tool-using species, and being able to go out in sunlight entail. This stalemate position was eventually broken, however, when The Church unveiled their ultimate weapon - Priests. Sadly, this does not mean that the war was won by signs reading "Down With This Sort Of Thing" and "Careful Now." It means that Priests are highly trained martial artists and hand to hand warriors, trained in the art of taking on vampires in combat. (All this comes from a Japanese manga originally, and according to some, is a deliberate misreading of Christian religion which parallels Western misrepresentation of Japanese culture. Fun.)

Anyhow, the Priests won the war, and were then disbanded, because for some reason the totalitarian state couldn't think of a reason to keep on a squad of fanatically loyal super-warriors. So the priests get by on menial jobs, until one day a sheriff from the badlands outside the city comes to find one of these ex-Priests (Paul Bettany), to tell him that the vampires are back, and have kidnapped his niece. He wants to go rescue her, the Church won't let him, because that would mean admitting that there was a vampire problem, he goes anyway, and the church bring some more priests out of retirement to hunt him down for breaking his vows of obedience. Game On.

All else is your standard plot of a posse following a trail to hunt down the bad guys and rescue the girl. The film is not so much riddled with cliches in the same way as a house cannot be said to be riddled with bricks. The cliches are the film, are part of the construction of the film, and nothing good about the film could exist without them. It's part Western (with the posse whizzing around the wild west desert on jetbikes), part post-apocalypse sci-fi, and part alien bug-hunt. And I say bug hunt, because these aren't boring shiny Twilight vampires. Nosiree. These are big hissing eyeless alien creatures more reminiscent of xenomorphs from Alien, with the power levels dialled down a little so that it's mildly feasible that a human could survive an encounter with them if he's very, very skilled. And fortunately, they are very skilled, with Paul Bettany and Maggie Q (as a Priestess) being in possession of some serious crowning moments of awesome.

I'm not sure everyone will like this movie. If you can't bear a cliche, then stay away. If, however, you enjoy watching the conventions of genre being *rigidly* observed, as I do, then you'll enjoy it. Atmosphere wise, well, you can go Fun, you can go Serious, or you can go So Damned Serious, It's Funny. In my view, it's the latter. Paul Bettany wanders about the place being all gloomy and portentious the whole time, and it's stupidly over the top. Bad bits? Well, Karl Urban, as the big bad guy, is saddled with some awful dialogue. And the Sheriff sidekick, Snoozy McFallsdownalot, is so tragically inept in comparison with The Priest, that you almost have to wonder why he's there at all.

A final point - the 3D, slapped right there in the title, is either poor or nonexistent throughout. I don't know if they're distributing it in 2D at all, but if they do, that's probably the better option. Again.

Hobo With A Shotgun

Philosophical question: If you set out to make a rubbish film, and you make a rubbish film, have you succeeded or failed?

To consider this film, you have to look at what it is. Hobo With A Shotgun was one of the trailers submitted by the public in a competition in the run up to Tarantino's Grindhouse project, and won the regional prize for Canada, and was included in the trailer reel for the Canadian release. It's a parody of Troma non-classics such as Surf Nazis Must Die. So this is the important bit; this is a genuine and affectionate attempt to make a schlocky low-budget 80s action-horror movie. Which kind of leads me to wonder if anyone's going to win here.

So. Rutger Hauer (for it is he, and god alone knows how they persuaded him to be involved in this), is a Hobo. He arrives in a new town, and finds it dominated by thugs, crazies, rapists, etc, led by some guy in a white suit calling himself The Drake, who has the manner of a TV Preacher, and whose MO seems to be to keep the entire town in such fear that he can do what he likes.

Anyhow, the Hobo tries to get by as best he can, until finally, he can stands no more, gets himself a shotgun, and goes on a rampage slaying all evildoers before him. The Drake, on the other hand, counters this by setting the whole town on him by putting a bounty of sorts on all homeless people, and it all gets violent and pointless, until the inevitable conclusion. Along the way, the Hobo takes under his wing a hooker who's only doing it because there's no other work, and is a really nice girl really (not that there's anything wrong with being a hooker, but there seems to be a distinction made by the film), and she becomes the sidekick/screaming assistant. But not love interest, thankfully, more like a surrogate daughter.

There's a few other characters of note; The Drake has a pair of sons who could probably get work as John Cusack and Tom Cruise impersonators. But not highly paid work. These two are a couple of baseball jacket and rayban equipped psychos who drive around in an 80's style sports car killing people. There's also a pair of purportedly demonic armoured bikers known collectively as The Plague, which make you think "What, really?" the moment you see them.

Anyway, this whole thing is an excuse for scenes of pointless sadism, and bloody retribution for the above pointless sadism. If it were remotely realistic, you'd be disgusted, as it is, as the gore and dyed corn syrup flies, you just have to laugh.

Ultimately, I suppose the film succeeds in that it manages to make the 90 minutes pass pretty quickly and amusingly; there's a lot of criticisms you could make about the film, but the vast majority of them could be answered with the phrase "that was the whole point". However, as my eye alights on all the films that I own that I've never got round to watching, films of quality and renown, I really feel I should ask myself "Was this really the best use of my time this afternoon?"

Thor

Seen Iron Man 2? That. Mostly. Only with magic.

In many respects, Thor needs no particular introduction, even if you don't read comics, because he's the Norse God of Thunder. He lives in Asgard, his dad is Odin, king of the gods, he fights ice giants a lot, that's him. Only not quite for the Marvel version. Presumably because of the theological implications of introducing Norse gods into an otherwise strictly Judeo-Christian, Asgardians aren't exactly gods; they're massively powerful, immortal, magic-wielding aliens. They used to appear on earth hundreds of years ago, because they were fighting a war against the Jotuns (ice giants), and Earth was a bit of a battle ground for this. Having freed Earth from the Jotuns, they left, only to take their place in myth and legend. So, inasmuch as there's any difference between a god and a massively powerful immortal that looks after mortals, and between magic and a Sufficiently Advanced technology, they're not really gods.

So, it's many centuries since the Asgardians beat the Jotuns, and peace has mostly reigned. However, following a minor incursion of three Jotuns into Asgard, Thor ignores his father's wishes, and travels to Jotunheim via Bifrost (the rainbow bridge of the gods, or a pandimensional wormhole projector, take your pick) to kick some ass, take some names, and demand some answers. This of course shatters the fragile peace, and for this Thor is stripped of his powers and exiled to Midgard. You know. Earth. Where we're from. There he meets astrophysicist Natalie Portman, who's kind of interested in this interdimensional wormhole thing that Thor's just appeared through. Additionally, SHIELD (the mob of secret service guys that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has been running behind the scenes in all the recent Marvel movies) turns up, interested in Thor's Hammer, Mjolnir, which has also appeared, and which due to a geas put on it by Odin, can only now be lifted by someone worthy, and who will gain the power of Thor if they do. (Shame they haven't got Captain America on the team yet, because he apparently qualified as worthy at one point.)

All of this mucking about is, of course, due to the machinations of Loki, Thor's younger brother, who's plotting to improve his position.

So, Thor must prove himself worthy, get his hammer back, and save the day. Easy.

As with all of this stuff, it's only ever going to work if it's fun. Fortunately, it's a lot of fun. Principal in making it all fun is new guy Chris Hemsworth. There may have been some suspicion initially that they were casting a relative unknown to keep the wage bill down when they finally got round to making The Avengers. However, these fears prove unfounded. He plays the role of a swaggering, arrogant seven foot tall mountain of Nordic muscle with gusto, but also with all the seriousness that it deserves - i.e. not that much. Hence, as much as this is a supernatural, superhuman, sci-fi action epic, it's also a bit of a fish-out-of-water comedy, which makes the whole thing eminently watchable inbetween the bits when things explode. Having said that, boy howdy do things explode.

I was wondering just what kind of a widescreen explodo-movie we could expect out of Dear, Dear Kenny Branarrgh. Turns out that despite the low-key pedigree of his earlier stuff, he's got an eye for a good special effect. One of the key special effects here is The Destroyer. The Destroyer is an enchanted suit of armour, about twelve feet tall, filled with magical flame which bursts forth as a lambent energy beam whenever it opens its visor. And under the direction of Loki, this engine of destruction is unleashed on a New Mexico town, which it proceeds to trash like a cross between a Toho Film monster and Gort from The Day The Earth Stood Still (the proper one.) It is deeply warming to see a sequence crafted to pay such homage to such classics of mayhem and destruction.

The film is perhaps not without its flaws - perhaps we linger on the human level stuff too long in the movie's midsection, leaving us with not enough time to enjoy Thor cutting loose and trashing stuff when his powers eventually are returned to him. But it's a small criticism. This is a film which takes the terribly restrictive box-ticking formula of the superhero origin movie, in which the hero isn't even the hero until the final 15 minutes, and makes something of it which is very entertaining. Looking forward to The Avengers all the more now.