Never Let Me Go

From a book by Kazuo Ishiguro, this is a quietly British dystopian tale. In 1957, a public information film type info card tells us at the start, there was a major leap forward in medicine. By the early sixties, the life expectancy was well over 100. And this, it seems, has created a need.

Cut to the seventies, and we see a quaint British boarding school, in which live (amongst others) Kathy, Ruth and Tommy. The school is at once idyllic and run down, and there's something just a bit wrong about it. Like, they don't have teachers, they have guardians. Everything seems worn, and second hand. You think maybe that they're in an orphanage; there's no talk of parents, going home or anything at all about the outside world. Presently, it becomes clear that these kids are part of an underclass, second class citizens created for a very specific need. In this setting, where they have basically nothing but each other, childish relationships flourish, first between Kathy (soon to be played by Carey Mulligan) and Tommy (soon to be played by Andrew Garfield), who are sweet young kids, only to be scuppered as Ruth (stbpb Keira Knightley) sweeps in and poaches Tommy.

We then cut to their teenage years, again lived at a remove among others of their ilk, then finally to adulthood, as the future that's been planned for them from birth plays out.

There's two levels to this film. There's the surface plot, and then there's the allegorical meaning underneath. At heart, this is a film about people who are born with very little hope, very little opportunity, who try and live the best life they can under the circumstances, while enduring the crushing sadness of a hopeless existence, with resigned acceptance and stiff upper lip. And looking about the world today, you can certainly see that as a message worth sending. The characters are conditioned from birth to accept their awful fate, and really, aren't we all? I wanted to be Han Solo when I grew up, and I now work in insurance.

On the surface, however, the message is more muddled. We're basically being asked to believe in a system where, if you keep the kids poor and teach them to settle for less, when you finally let them off their leash a bit, they'll lack the ability to rebel. And I don't believe in kids like that, like you could have a system where everybody does as they're told and never rebels, just because they've never been allowed to listen to Rage Against The Machine. I wanted these kids (and I think of them as kids, even into adulthood) to turn around and refuse to submit to the terrible future mapped out for them, and really, I just can't accept this fictional construct where nobody does. An element always rebels, disobeys, becomes criminal if it must. While these characters elicit your every sympathy, and while they're beautifully drawn and acted, I can't believe they could ever exist.

Overall, though, the film benefits from being a film because of this - a book, I think, I would put down, disagree with, and ultimately be put off by. A film carries on, imposes its reality on you, makes you see it through to a very, very bitter end. It's a compelling, beautiful film, shot in pale, bleached tones which are reminiscent of the NHS, and of public information safety films. Almost like a Magritte painting; it's of something impossible, but on the other hand, there it is in front of you, executed in clean lines which demand you look at it and think about what it might represent.

Paul

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are a pair of nerds visiting the USA. By which I mean, in this context, they are playing the characters of a pair of nerds visiting the USA, in addition to their general state of nerd-dom, and their undoubted presence in the USA to make a motion picture.

Anyway, they're in the USA, visiting San Diego Comic-Con, and then decide to take a road trip in an RV through desert country, visiting the various UFO hotspots. And, soon enough on their journey, they run into a Real Live Alien, who's fleeing the authorities. Turns out he's called Paul, crash landed in 1947, and has been with the government ever since. And hence is so familiar with earth culture that the weirdest thing about him is how unweird he is. He does, however, fall into the "big head, big eyes, small body" Little Green Man stereotype, and so he's a bit conspicuous. The boys agree to help him travel north, to somewhere he can be rescued, and a Buddy Road Movie Comedy Ensues. Along the way, they pick up a fundamentalist Christian girl (Kristen Wiig), who becomes a born-again atheist in the face of the existence of life on other planets, and are pursued, variously, by a pair of hapless Secret Service Guys, a pretty competent Secret Service Guy (Jason Bateman) and the girl's fundamentalist father, who's convinced the devil has kidnapped her.

Anyway, the whole thing jollys along in an pretty predictable way, until we reach the inevitable conclusion. Really, there are no bits where you're thinking "hmmm, I wonder where they're going with this?" But, for all that, this is still Simon Pegg and Nick Frost at work/play, and so while the plot is predictable, the dialogue and the gags are great.

Performances... well, Simon and Nick are as we've always known them; Simon's more bumbling idiot than in Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, and Nick is somewhat less, which means they're close to meeting in the middle. It's the same basic double act that we're quite familiar with, though, a nerdy bromance which seems to preclude female company, however much they might want it. This is a good thing and a bad thing. Bad, because we know this joke of old. Good, because we love this joke of old.

Kristen Wiig is a great choice, in that she's very funny, very sexy, and *38*. In films, there's usually a tiresome need to pair a fortysomething (or more) male with a twentysomething female, and it's sometimes as if women between 29 and 50 don't even exist. So, patting them on the back for making a casting decision which is both absolutely right, but also so infuriatingly rare these days.

Seth Rogen... well, much as I like the guy, this wasn't the right choice. Sorry. Not because Seth Rogen isn't good, he is, I heart Seth Rogen. It's that he wasn't there for the filming. I recall an Andy Serkis interview regarding the voicing of Gollum, and how he was present on set even when they weren't going to be filming him, because it was vital that he be running his lines with the on-screen actors. That's not what happened here, because Seth Rogen was too busy and expensive. Instead, apparently, they had a guy run his lines for him on set (one of the guys playing a clueless Secret Service guy apparently), then had Seth Rogen dub the lines in some booth somewhere after the fact. And this shows, I'm afraid. Not all the time, but enough for Paul to seem pretty disconnected from the naturalistic madcappery coming out of Simon, Nick and Kristen. And that's a big problem if your film's called "Paul."

The only other criticism I have, if you can call it that, is that this is pretty lightweight fare, compared to Shaun of the Dead. Both Shaun and Hot Fuzz managed a very clever trick of being both a spoof of a genre, but also a pretty good example of the genre. This, however, is firmly a buddy comedy, and while it references sci-fi heavily (though not as heavily as it might, given who made it) it's no sci-fi movie itself. The other thing I'd observe, you may not realise how much of a fan of Edgar Wright you are until you see someone else directing Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

All in all, while this isn't a hardcore geek comedy, it is a pretty funny, geek-friendly mainstream comedy film.

True Grit.

My most anticipated film of the year so far. Coen brothers, directing Jeff Bridges, remaking a seminal John Wayne western. Now, I know they'v denied they're remaking the John Wayne film, and have gone back to the original novel and thus are presenting something completely original. I call bullshit on that. Yes, fine, you went back and developed you own script. But you can't stand around pretending that you, your actors or your audience are not going to be aware that John Wayne went here first, and won his only Oscar for it.

However, while I don't believe that it's wrong to make the comparison, nor do I think that the Coen brothers should be afraid of that comparison being made. Because what they've done here is produce a far superior film.

Jeff Bridges plays Reuben 'Rooster' Cogburn, a legendary, notorious US Marshall, notorious for his relentless nature, and high mortality rates of those he tracks down.

Hailee Steinfeld plays Mattie Ross, a 14 year old girl whose father has recently been killed by a man called Tom Chaney. She is absolutely determined that Chaney will be brought to justice, and that she will be there to see it. To this end, she offers Cogburn a bounty to help her bring him in.

Matt Damon plays LaBoeuf, a Texas Ranger who has his own reasons for tracking Chaney.

The three of them form an unlikely alliance, with all three of them at any given time probably wishing they could do the job alone. They head into 'Indian Territory' to pursue Chaney, who is said to have banded up with an outlaw called Ned Pepper, who Cogburn is also interested in bringing in.

What's great in this film is the interplay. While the John Wayne film had essentially one great performance, this one has at least three. Cogburn is by turns a steely eyed killer and a rolling drunk. Mattie is a prim little girl, capable well beyond her years, with implacable iron will. LaBoeuf is a bit of a puffed up tit, full of aphorisms and opinions. At any given time, any two of them can and will team up and side against the other for their shortcomings, with the girl often being the sole voice of reason. They bicker and fight, and it's *funny*. I was surprised to realise that though the film has its melancholy side, the Coen brothers film it most reminds me of is The Big Lebowski, which gained an awful lot of its comedy by taking a pretty standard Raymond Chandleresque plot and inserting instead a bunch of oddballs. Same rules apply here. You could happily watch these three do just about anything.

But, as I said, this film also has its melancholy side. Not to the same degree as, say, A Serious Man, or No Country For Old Men, but there's that same sense of unfairness and futility of the world. Mattie's dad's dead, and nothing will bring him back. Cogburn is well past his best, and nothing's going to change that. The outlaws, Chaney included, aren't sinister, powerful, evil men. They're men on the wrong side of the law, scratching out a pointless existence, until some day someone like Cogburn eventually comes along to put a stop to it - and that's the only way out of this life for them, being eventually hunted down for money by a man who's barely any better than them. Chaney himself is a pretty pitiable wretch, and there's a sense, when we finally meet him of "all this, just for him?" This, to me, is where the film scores highest over the John Wayne version. John Wayne faces down his foes at the end, and there's a sense of his rebirth, of the old man being young again. A cheery little patriotic tune plays. Whereas here, there's no big celebration. Ignoble men are brought to an ignoble end, by a man who's only really any use for killing.

This, then, is the genius on show here, because for all the protests, the raw scripts seem pretty similar to me. The Coen brothers, however, do not want to show us a tale of heroic exploits, they're showing us something altogether darker, and more human.

The Mechanic

STAAAAAATHAAAAAAAAAAAAM!!!!

It's Jason Statham Time! I feel a bit of a dual standard coming on here. Just last week, I gave Natalie Portman a right old slating for not having more than one facial expression, and yet here I am, enjoying the work of Jason Statham, who has only *ever* had one expression himself. However, for some reason, I am always entertained by it. Probably because that expression is Faintly Pissed Off. He is never more than Faintly Pissed Off, he is never less than Faintly Pissed Off. Having sex? Faintly Pissed Off. Confronting the man who killed your best friend? Faintly Pissed Off. Whatever it is, the impression he gives is that there's something he'd rather be doing, and the eight million people he's about to maim and dismember are just an irritating distraction. I would love to know what that thing is that Jason Statham would rather be doing is, but we have never seen it on screen, and I doubt we ever will. Though I would love it to be revealed to be something like painting Napoleonic wargaming miniatures, or growing marrows in his allotment.

I suppose if he were in Black Swan, I'd have some reservations about his unwillingness to waver for an instant from that singular emotion. But he's not. He's in The Mechanic. A Mechanic, it seems, is a specific form of hitman, one of those craftsmen who knows every way in the world to kill someone, make it look like an accident, make it look like suicide, make it look like someone else did it, make it painless, make it messy; if you want to order from the A' La Carte menu of murder, you hire a Mechanic.

Jason Statham is a Mechanic, and Donald Sutherland is his mentor, now an old man in a wheelchair. Donald has a son, Ben Foster, who's a bit off the rails. Perhaps inevitably, once he is revealed to be Jason's only friend, Donald is dead in pretty short order, leaving his son grieving and full of rage, and Jason grieving and Faintly Pissed Off about it. Ben needs something in his life to give it meaning, and that turns out to be being a Mechanic also. So, Jason agrees to train him.

Cue a series of hits which form an apprenticeship for Ben, in which we basically see his desire for violence and bloodshed makes him ill-suited for the subtleties of the Mechanic trade, but nonetheless an effective, if messy killer.

Then, of course, the true facts of the circumstances of Donald's death come out, which puts Jason and Ben at odds with their former employer, with typically "everybody in this film who's had a speaking role so far ends up dead" results. The ending, which I'm not going to get into in too much detail is a bit unsatisfying, because while it defys the standards of the genre, which is often a good thing, does so to no real apparent purpose, leaving us really just thinking "So... now what?"

Until we get there, though, it's a great, classic style thriller, in which somehow both condemns and glorifies the amorality of the contract killer. Something which particularly struck me; Jason has one of those stereotypical hitman modernist design houses, filled with modernist furniture, macbooks and audiophile hifi equipment, but which hasn't a hint that a real human lives there. Later in the film, we see the interior of another, rival mechanic's apartment, and it's just the same. This is the message, the job pays well, you can buy all the exquisitely tasteful things with it you like, but it's in lieu of having a real life.

So, it's a typically stylish, typically amoral, typically violent Jason Statham film, and if you like a bit of that, then this is another one. If you don't like that, well, this is still another one.

The Fighter

So, we have Mark Wahlberg as a down on his luck boxer, Micky Ward, being managed by his mother and his ex-boxer and now-crack-addict brother Dicky Eklund, played by Christian Bale. Essentially, we follow him from his last unsuccessful fight, through a period in which he quits the sport, gets back into the game, and, through a change of attitude and management, manages to turn his career around, and get a shot at a world welterweight title. This is based on a true story, by the way.

All this is as maybe, though. We've seen plenty of films following this plot, and many of them are about boxing. One of them is Rocky. So really, this needs to be a bit more than a boxing movie to distinguish itself. Fortunately, it does.

What this film is about, more than anything, is the pressures of family. Because for all that he's a big tough boxer, he's under the thumb of his mother, backed up by her impressive array of incredibly chavvy daughters, who is determined that only she knows how to run his career best, and that his brother is the only man to train him, given how he's a local legend boxer. Ward himself is a bit of a mumbly cipher, without much to say for himself; the real powerhouse performances in this film are by Melissa Leo as his domineering mother, and Christian Bale, who'd better be getting an Oscar, frankly.

Bale has basically completely submerged his usual brooding psycho screen persona, and is playing a the Massachusetts equivalent of a cheeky chirpy cockney, who's full of himself, and his past glories, full of big promises, but just as likely to abandon his family and go missing in the local crack den as anything else. This is the performance to see the film for, because it's him who has the real personal journey, hitting rock bottom before he can rise again and be of some use to his brother. There's a clip at the end, over the credits, of the real Dicky Eklund and Micky Ward, and you immediately know who you're looking at, because in the past two hours, Bale's caught him to the life.

The direction's pretty workmanlike, a sort of Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler Lite, nice and gritty and realistic, but nothing that does anything more than document the story. The script's pretty lovely, and adds some nice and understated comic touches to what otherwise would be a grim and dour underdog sports movie. Certainly worth a watch, definitely if you like a boxing film, but also for anyone who likes to watch an actor like Christian Bale on top form.