Black Swan

Ok, the basic plot.

Natalie Portman is a ballet dancer in the chorus line of a ballet company who is given the opportunity to dance the part(s) of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake. For those not in the know, this means she has a dual role of the pure and innocent White Swan who must find true love to break the spell of having been transformed into a swan, and also the sexy sinister Black Swan, who seduces her true love away from her, leaving her with no dramatic option but to commit suicide at the end. As far as I can tell, the Prince in this story is falling in love with two swans, actually being seduced by one of them. Which leads me to say "careful now, that swan could break your arm" in a slightly uncomfortable voice. I don't understand ballet.

Anyway, this girl is under tremendous pressure. She's got an overbearing, suffocating ex-ballet dancer mother (Barbara Hershey), determined to live out through her daughter the career that she had to give up to have her daughter. Hence, at the age of, let's say, "nearly thirty", Natalie is still sleeping in a pink-decorated soft-toy-infested bedroom, and has probably never had sex or sufficient minute to minute privacy from her mum to even see to her own needs in that area.

She's also got, in Vincent Cassel, an overbearing, slightly pervy (slightly? maybe more than slightly) ballet director who insists that she gets in touch with her heretofore untapped and untrammelled sexy side in order to play the Black Swan properly (the White Swan, she has down pat already.) There's also a rival dancer in Mila Kunis, who's ready to take the role over if she can't do it.

So, with all this pressure, after pretty much a lifetime of similar pressures, it's not too surprising that she begins to crack up, hallucinate and generally start to self-harm and fall apart. And that's your movie.

There is much to like in this movie. The direction is pretty masterful, really; Darren Aronofsky does a very good job of slowly altering the style of the piece, from the start in the hyperrealistic gritty style he shot The Wrestler in, towards the end, where it's a Lynchian nightmare of "everything in this shot is completely normal, and at the same time, completely weird and wrong." So that's brilliant. Vincent Cassel is great, there's a weirdness behind his eyes which is never quite reflected in his actions, and for me it's the performance of the movie. However, nobody starts a paragraph "There is much to like in this movie" unless they have some serious reservations.

Here's my problem. Here is a video clip of Natalie Portman in this movie:

Oh, wait, no it's not. It's a still jpeg. But it may as well be a video clip, because that's the expression she has frozen on her face the whole damn movie. I would be willing to believe that's the expression she's had on her face since the end of Revenge Of The Sith. She certainly had it for the vast majority of V for Vendetta. She's got one "Natalie Portman Is In Anguish" face, and it doesn't shift an millimetre for the whole movie.

I am told that she's been nominated for an Oscar for this performance, and I'm told that she's heavily tipped to win. Well, I personally cannot imagine why, and looking at the list of nominations right now, if she does win, I shall personally be outraged on behalf of Annette Bening (The Kids Are Alright) and Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) who were so much better than this, that it's not even funny.

So, it's bizarre, in that it's an incredibly well shot and put together film, with excellent support, centred around a performance that really isn't worth anyone's time at all in my view. Your mileage may vary, as the mileage of many other people evidently has, given all the fuss and palaver.

Home Team (or, Requiem For A Steve)

Remember Steve Guttenberg? What happened to him?

He had the Police Academies, the Three Men and a Female of Various Ages, Short Circuit, Cocoon. All did pretty well at the box office. Then, there was Cocoon: The Return.

After that, Steve Guttenberg passed out of knowledge and legend; and even so much of his history is known now only to a few, and the Council of the Wise could discover no more. But at last I can carry on the story, I think.

Some background. I've just started a new job, and in my new office, they have this thing they do. Somebody saw and bought, for the princely sum of one pound, a copy of a straight to DVD film called "Home Team". And so, this film does the rounds, and those who watch it must sign the interior of the DVD sleeve, and express their thoughts. And thus, the sad, sad fate of Steve Guttenberg became known to me.

Home Team is, as I said, a straight to DVD film, starring Steve Guttenberg as a disgraced soccer pro, drummed out of the sport for gambling, and who has recently been given community service for some drunken misdemeanor or other. And he's been given the job of maintenance man in a run down children's home.

I imagine you can already see the plot from where you're standing. Initially curmudgeonly Steve Guttenburg is won over by the kids, he and the beautiful woman running the home fall in love, against the background of the kids forming a soccer team, sucking, sucking a little less, then finally becoming a decent team and winning the something or other. And yes, all that happens. If you recall The Hunt For Red October, Sean Connery is heard to say "Give me a stopwatch and a map, and I'll fly the Alps in a plane with no windows." And this is the scriptwriting equivalent. Given the total runtime, any student of the movies could predict the timing of each of these inevitable plot points without ever having seen the movie. Best way to do it, too.

Because this movie is awful. Epically awful. There is nothing - nothing - good about this film. It's not even so bad it's good. It is, however, interesting. In that it is the perfect opposite of a good film, much as a footprint is the perfect opposite of a shoe, and can likewise tell an observer much about what makes films good or even *adequate*. Poorly framed camera shots show what not to do, so much better than an excellent shot, which is so seamless we barely notice it happening. Clunking dialogue shows us how badly out of balance and equilibrium a sentence can be. Leaden performances that show us how even Tom Cruise at his worst is a hell of a lot better than this. The title says it all. They're the Home Team. A Team composed of kids from a Home. They're actually referred to as such in the film. How crass is that?

In 1984, there were two films made; Police Academy and Ghost Busters. Bill Murray was really on the fence about taking Ghost Busters; Steve Guttenberg was offered the same role, and turned it down. It's not much of a stretch, given his similar films like Stripes, to suppose that Bill Murray might have been offered Police Academy. Two seemingly equal choices, one of which takes you to Lost In Translation and The Royal Tenenbaums, and the other which takes you... here. I wonder if Bill Murray ever thinks about that, and wakes up at night screaming.

127 Hours

Aron Ralston is one of those intolerable people who spends their entire time hiking, climbing and mountain biking across unsuspecting areas of wilderness, and videoing themselves doing it. He's out showing his contempt for nature one day, attempting to beat some kind of speed record for traversing a canyon in Utah, when he slips, dislodging a boulder, which falls, pinning him in place, trapping his right arm between the boulder and the canyon wall, and the boulder's got itself good and wedged. In short, he isn't going anywhere.

Now, we know that this is based on a true story, related by the guy afterwards. And we know the film is called 127 hours, so we're looking at him being trapped there for a little over five days. What this film is interested in, is how, in that time, a person is changed by their ordeal, in order to do something unthinkable to survive (if you know what the unthinkable thing is already, well and good, if not, it'll come as a lovely, lovely surprise about 80 minutes in.)

What we find, though the flashbacks, video diaries, and eventually, hallucinations that Ralston has, is that he's up until now been a rather selfish, self-absorbed guy, more interested in what he's doing, rather than what he's thinking or feeling, and who he's doing it with. And it's that lack in himself that he has to overcome, he has to find something within himself to survive.

I'm a bit in two minds about the film. Technically, it's superb; James Franco as Ralston gives an excellent, believable performance. Danny Boyle blends reality, memory and fantasy seamlessly, and you're often left wondering what's real, as Ralston must have himself, after four days trapped. So it's an excellent presentation of the story, as it did happen. And I'm sure the story is in many ways extraordinary; I don't know if I could do what Ralston did to survive, much as I would have recognised as he did that it was the only option. So to that extent, it's a film that asks that question of you; what would give you the strength to do it?

But, sadly, on the other hand, Ralston's reasons are a bit mundane. I feel somewhat of a smug ratbastard saying so, and in the context of the events that happened to him, that's what gave him the strength, I'm not judging him. What I am kind of questioning is that, given that his reflections are "I really should have talked to my mum more" and "I shouldn't have shut out that ex-girlfriend", well, these are not unusual sentiments, and given that we are basically spending 90 minutes in Aron Ralston's head, I just wished the place had more in it. Comparisons to "Buried" come easily, both being about normal people trapped in impossible situations, and I think Buried had more to say, what with the whole political business of the Iraq situation as the background.

In comparison, Ralston is basically in the canyon because he chose to go there for recreation, and got himself out of there because he didn't want to be dead, and found himself a future to hope for, to give him strength. Essentially, it's quite a one-dimensional story. I feel sorry for the guy, and am glad he survived, but I'm not sure his story has even the 90 minutes of drama we were presented. We're told that he still climbs and puts himself in precisely the same positions, with the only difference being that he now makes sure he tells people where he's going so someone can come looking for him if he gets into more trouble. I'm left wondering, given that, whether he actually learned anything at all from his ordeal. It's all very well claiming that the love of your family gave you the strength to survive, if you then persist in putting yourself in danger. I'm sure his mother must now die a little inside every time he goes.

The Green Hornet

Whee! More nonsense!

It's twenty years ago, and young Britt Reid is in trouble with his dad. He's been sent home from school for fighting, having got his ass kicked trying to stop a bully. His dad, however, is not impressed. He's a crusading newspaper editor, and hasn't got time for his son, and is basically something of a jerk. To punish the kid, he tears the head off his son's favorite toy, a Supermanesque doll, and throws it in the bin.

Flash forward 20 years, and Britt Reid is basically a mess; he's become a worthless boozing rich kid, whose sole purpose in life seems to be being a disappointment to his dad, which he's excelling at.

And then, all at once, he's finding that his dad's dead, and he's the heir to the whole newspaper fortune, inheriting everything, including his dad's prized car collection, overseen by the mechanic, Kato.

Britt and Kato bond over, essentially, a mutual feeling that Britt's dad was a jerk, and decide to go and vandalise the memorial statue put up in his honour. While they're out doing that, masked, they run into some muggers, and Britt rushes in to stop them. Kato joins the fray, and becomes clear that he's some kind of human engine of martial arts destruction. This is in addition to being a whizz inventor and mechanic, and having the ability to make a perfect cup of coffee.

Having got a taste of the hero life, Britt wants more, and persuades Kato to get involved too; Kato's insane levels of mechanical genius are put into action building awesome weaponry, and the Green Hornet is born; posing as a rival crime lord, The Green Hornet declares war on the local mob boss, and all hell proceeds to break loose.

So, that's the plot, but what's it like? In a word, Fun. Seth Rogen scripts and stars, which I think is a good combination. His version of Britt Reid is, basically, an adult version of the eight year old was at the start of the movie; a brave, scrappy little kid with basically no talent or skills. All he has going for him is his dubious but undeniable charm, and his unwillingness to back down and ignore what's going down. Kato is his polar opposite, taciturn, Batmanesque talent in the gadgetry and asskicking stakes, but basically unmotivated and happy to be a mechanic who makes the coffee.

The pair of them come together to make one good hero between them; Kato with basically all the skills and expertise, and Britt with all the gusto and conviction that the job has to be done. And the film's really all about that apparent imbalance. Britt brings basically nothing to the table, except for the odd hare-brained idea, and in a way, he strips down the idea of a hero to its very barest of essentially; insisting that they stand up and do what's right, despite lacking even basic competence.

The film itself is beautifully shot by Michael Gondry; he seems to understand that what this is all about is a child's fantasies of heroics and shiny gadgets. Everything gleams and shines, the cars and gadgets are larger than life without seeming like props, the action whooshes and glides around excellently, interspersed with all the nice between-the-fights interplay between Britt and Kato

Playing against them is Christopher Waltz as an old school Russian crime boss whose complete dominance of the LA crime scene is challenged by The Green Hornet, and he rather amusingly spends the whole time playing catchup, not really understanding who or what The Green Hornet is, losing ground as gangs become more impressed by the legend of the Hornet vs the mundane reality of his being merely a vicious criminal. It's a great turn by him, not quite the awesomeness of his role in Inglourious Basterds, but then I suspect a role and performance like that comes along once in a lifetime. If the film has a weakness, it's that he and the Hornet are never really pitted against each other, with each having the full knowledge of who the other is; both Seth Rogen and Christopher Waltz are great, and it's a shame they don't get to really verbally cross swords.

Other than that, I happily recommend the whole thing. Including, to my surprise, the 3D, which is quite amazingly good given that it was added in post-production; the fact Michael Gondry oversaw the process made all the difference, I suspect.

Season Of The Witch

Ahah! This is more like it! As you may have gleaned by now, bad action movies are a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. Although actually, like Stephen Fry (and I am so very like Stephen Fry, Mn'yah!) I refuse to call it a guilty pleasure; as he once unashamedly declared his fond regard for Abba, I likewise pledge my allegiance to the bad hack fantasy action movie, the more ridiculous and cliched the better. And do we have a treat for you in store in that regard!

Nic Cage and Ron Perlman are a couple of crusading knights, apparently slaughtering their way singlehanded across the Holy Land, putting heathens to the sword, with the rest of their army pretty much reduced to clearing up afterwards in comparison. Nic's gone for the kind of noble bit, and Ron Perlman clearly can't be arsed being vaguely medieval, and resembles nothing so much as Ron Burgundy in armour. This goes on for a while until they come across a walled town, which they lay siege to, but when they get in there, they find that they're slaughtering what looks like the population of a small Lincolnshire village. Lots of apple cheeked children and pale and interesting young women. Which is not what you expect to find in Syria at all. Anyway, Nic and Ron round on the priest leading them, and demand to know why they've been told to slaughter these people (although my first question would have been what these people were doing there in the first place). Having got no satisfactory answer, the pair of them desert.

On their way back home, they're passing along the coast of Styria (which is in land-locked Austria, geography fans!) and encounter a walled city beset with the plague. Despite the massive cloud of ravens circling over the city, they decide to go in for provisions, and are immediately arrested, having been recognised as deserters. Presumably their crusading priest commander sent a fax ahead or something.

Anyway, all is not lost, because all will be forgiven if Nic and Ron escort a girl, who everyone says is a witch and responsible for the plague, to a monastery where there's a copy of a book of incantations which dispel witches, goblins, estate agents, etc. They reluctantly agree, insisting that they'll see it's a fair trial, and are equipped with the standard adventuring party of another knight, a priest, a dodgy guide, and the kid from Misfits, who's an altar boy who wants to be a knight.

So, it's an escort mission, and anyone who's ever played an MMO knows how well that's going to go. Spooky goings on go on in the mountains and woods, until we get to the monastery, where all hell breaks loose.

It's a fun film, and especially enjoyable because it's a little better and cleverer than it has to be. The plot's got a nice ambiguity to it, as we can't really be sure whether a) the witch is causing the plague, or b) the church is hysterically burning innocent women. Our perspective that we go in with is b), of course, and there's plenty of evidence for that, but then again, there's all the spooky goings on...

The acting is what it is; Nic Cage is giving it the full Earnest Intense Nic Cage, without being too sheep-eating crazy (shame); Ron Perlman is playing it for gags - the whole "I was in The Name Of The Rose, mate, this monks and plagues bit doesn't impress me" attitude is writ all over him. The accents are bizarre. Pretty much everyone has an American accent, including Stephen Graham as the dodgy geezer guide, and he's from Liverpool. So we are firmly in that marvellous fantasy realm of Hollywood, where everyone is either American, or Irish.

Ultimately, this is a film that knows what it is, and has fun with it. Knowing cliche abounds, from the rickety rope bridge with crumbling wooden boards and fraying ropes, to the character who unwisely waxes lyrical about how he's going to go home to his family and be happy when all this is over. I was practically shushing him as I watched.

All in all, this is a piece of pure, silly entertainment which by the end is like a cross between The Exorcist and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And if that's not a recommendation, I don't know what is.

The King's Speech

So... It's 1925 and Albert, Duke of York (Colin Firth) is making his first radio broadcast for the closing of the British Empire Exhibition, at the behest and insistence of his father (Michael Gambon). Unfortunately, Albert stammers, rather seriously, and delivers unto the nation, essentially, two minutes of really awkward silence. This is obviously of great embarrassment to him, and none of the eminent doctors he's sent to can do anything to help him. His wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), however, refuses to give up, and tracks down an unorthodox speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) who rightly sees that it's Albert's neuroses and fears from childhood that are causing it, and he won't be rid of it until those are faced.

Of course, while this is going on, history is going on apace; his father dies, his older brother Edward (Guy Pearce. Yeah, I thought that was an odd choice too.) becomes king, for a short while, his whole time on the throne looking like such blatant abdication bait that poor old Albert has the threat of that what he fears the most looming over him - becoming king himself. Eventually, Albert accedes to the throne, becomes George VI, and as such has to become the one thing he can't do, be an inspiring figurehead.

It's essentially a two hander between Firth and Rush, with Firth really doing the heavy lifting. I am put in mind of Les Dawson - now, let me finish - and his appalling piano playing, which I was always told by my very musical mother was very difficult to do; one would have to quite skilled to get it so dreadfully wrong in just the right way. The same goes here with Firth; Albert's stammers, chokes, and clenches have a consistent and painful sense of a genuine ailment, such that I really hope that he was able to kick the habit of it when he stopped acting.

The pair of them together have an excellent on-screen chemistry, Rush chipping his way into Firth's brittle reserved exterior, until we really get to see what makes both men tick.

Reservations... well, you know, everyone's so bloody nice. Maybe everyone involved was really nice, but that's not the sense you get from history. As a particular example, George V is said throughout the film to have been basically such a hard and stern father that he contributed to the way Albert was, yet, on screen, there's Gambon Dumbledoring it up as a sweet, avuncular old man. There's a rose tint over this film in general, which leaves you feeling you're watching some sort of idealised costume drama, whereas these are real events, of real people, of just seventy years ago.

So. As a costume drama, it's really a cut above. But, and this might only be a personal prejudice against Royals being portrayed as lovable human beings, I felt that the film as a historical character study felt a little too cuddly to be accurate.

Tron Legacy

First, some shiny new information for Disney. A Legacy computer system is a bit of wheezing, crotchey old kit that you've still got running because you haven't the time and resources to replace it with something better. Or maybe they do already know that.

So. It's the eighties, and Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) from Tron has won control of the computer company in Tron, and is now going about exploring and improving the digital world he's discovered. He tells his young son that he's made a huge wonderful discovery, which he will tell him about tomorrow. He then disappears, to nobody's particular surprise. Except his son's apparently, but the kid's about seven, so presumably hasn't seen many films yet.

Cut to the future, and the computer company has become a sort of cross between Microsoft and Apple, and the kid is a feckless ne'er-do-well who nominally owns the company but doesn't do much other than occasionally sabotage its efforts. He then recieves a page on his dad's old friend's pager, inviting him to his dad's offices. He goes, and through a series of nonsense, is zapped into the digital world.

Once there, he is taken for a rogue program, forced to fight in some games, escapes on a light bike, and discovers that he needs to go to a distant portal to uplink and get back to the real world. Attempting to stop him is a rogue program controlling the digital world.

In short, it's Tron, Again. The film really doesn't know whether it wants to be a sequel or a remake. The rogue program, Clu, is based on Kevin Flynn, and is basically a fork of his consciousness that's supposed to be running things while Flynn is in the real world, but which develops ideas and ambitions of its own.

Which brings us on to the effects. The big showpiece effect is the digitally rejuvenated Jeff Bridges. In the world, we have Old Jeff Bridges playing Flynn, and Creepy Digital Puppet Young Jeff Bridges as Clu. It's by no means a perfect representation, but you'd be able to accept it as Clu is *supposed* to be an imperfect simulation of Flynn, except for the fact the other programs are inhuman only inasmuch as they have white makeup and heavy eyeliner.

The whizzy lightbike etc effects are, sadly, somewhat less interesting than the Rotoscoped originals in Tron. In that in Tron, this was an entirely new and arresting vision, whereas the effects in Tron Legacy are just a bit of neon on black, and nothing particularly different or surprising.

So, suffering from the same leaden pace as Tron did originally, and making no more sense of the "hang on, an eighties mainframe is simulating each program running on it as an apparently living breathing humanoid?" thing, I can really only say that this film is no more necessary or welcome than The Matrix Reloaded. Nominally better effects, but just a pale retread, best ignored.

The Way Back

It's 1940, and Stalin is a bastard.

In particular, he's recently bagsied half of Poland and is now deporting blameless citizens of Poland to work camps in Siberia.

One such unfortunate is a chap called Janusz, who's banged up for being a spy, the Russians having tortured his wife into informing on him. He ends up, as I say, in Siberian gulag, where he's told that the walls, guards, barbed wire and dogs are just the icing on the cake; escape from the camp, and Siberia will kill you. Despite this, he, a group of other Polish guys, an older American guy, and a Russian convict are determined to try. Their trek takes them through Siberia, Mongolia and Tibet to India, where the Polish guys, with apparently typical wartime brio and vim intend to join up with the British army with the objective of killing Russians.

So, they walk.

And that's basically it.

Sorry to sound dismissive, but there it is. Now obviously, there's more to it than that. It's the story of a disparate group of men who barely know each other and who initially see each other only as means for their own escape and survival, and who come to be comrades and friends in appalling circumstances. But they do this while walking, and not much other than walking. Over some of the least hospitable terrain in the world, given. But walking.

This, then, is a story that's very much about the people, and very much one of grim determination. It's beautifully shot, and while inhospitable, there's a lot of beautiful scenery to behold. The acting is top notch; the lead is Jim Sturgess, who plays it with a lot of charm and charisma, as a man practically made of willpower who drags the rest together, and along with him. Ed Harris plays the American, a broken man torn between accepting the Gulag as his just punishment, and escaping in order to defy the Russians. Colin Farrell is excellent as a weaselly rat of a man, escaping purely because he's pissed off some violent men in the camp.

So, it's all very watchable characterisation, and I couldn't honestly say there was any particular part of it that wasn't a great bit of cinema. It's just that the film is a string of very similar great bits of cinema.

Sadly, as this was the case, my brain kind of wandered during the thing, and I reflected on three things:
1) If they'd had Ray Mears with them, they'd probably have had a really nice time.
2) During the wilderness and desert bits, I was expecting the Top Gear team to bowl past in a series of 4x4 vehicles that they'd each bought for less than £1000.
3) If you watch this film backwards, you have The Man Who Would Be King. Only Sean Connery and Michael Caine managed to become Kings of Kafiristan.

But such frivolity does the gravity of the story (apparently based on an allegedly true story of disputed veracity) an injustice. But I maintain that it's ultimately the film's fault for allowing your mind to wander.