The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnasus.

Ok, nonsense time. Doctor Parnasus is an immortal travelling showman, with a
travelling theatre which allows punters (one at a time) to enter incredible
dreamscapes, and (little do they realise) make a choice between the
high road of goodness and enlightenment, and the low road of self-
gratification. It seems that this whole setup stems between a wager between
Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and The Devil (Tom Waits. Yes, that Tom Waits.)

However, it's getting near time to pay the piper, and the devil wants his due.
And Parnassus is an old man, and the public aren't interested in his tatty
looking theatre. Into this situation wanders Tony, a highly ambiguous charmer,
who might well be Parnassus's salvation.

And then some stuff happens that's very Terry Gilliam in a Time Bandits/ Baron
Munchausen kind of way.

Is it any good? Well, it's Gilliam, so obviously, *bits* of it are genius. But
in terms of making a film, it's a bit like throwing the pieces of a jigsaw into
a box, shaking it, and hoping. Sure, the pieces are there... Ultimately,
though, you've got to ask yourself which you'd rather have, a jigsaw you've got
to work on assembling yourself, of something great, or a perfectly formed
picture of something piss-poor. I saw a trailer for the new Twilight movie while
waiting for Parnassus to start, and I can tell you, that film will be linear
and expositiony from start to finish, and you'd have to tie me down to make me
watch it. And I'd still be like Jonathan Pryce at the end of Brazil rather than
actually look at it. So, Parnassus is flawed, but better than a coherent but
crap film.

As for the question of Heath Ledger's death... Apparently, Heath Ledger had
done all his location scenes. What needed to be done was do the CGI dreamworld
sequences, and we get round that by saying that Tony is two-faced (or many more)
and thus in a world of imagination presents a different face for each
situation. For instance, when he's interloping in a woman's romantic fantasy,
he looks like Johnny Depp. Makes sense, or so every woman I've ever met tells
me.

Two problems rear their heads. First, Colin Farrell. Farrell has turned in some
good performances, but this isn't one of them. And unfortunately, he's playing
Tony at the climax of the film. I would personally have switched in either
Johnny Depp or Jude Law for him. Second, I just don't get the feeling that this
was how the film was supposed to turn out. I feel there were hasty rewrites to
accomodate the lack of Heath Ledger. And the thing is, that might not be true,
they may have filmed the script with very few changes, but the overall film is
so disjointed that you can't feel confident in it. Definitely worth seeing if
you're a fan of Gilliam, though.

Zombieland

In a nutshell, it's an American take on the Shaun of the Dead concept - take
a zombie movie, and make a comedy out of it. In Shaun of the Dead, the zombie
movie was Dawn of the Dead, and the comedy was Spaced. In this, the zombie
movie is 28 Days Later, and the comedy is, probably, Scrubs (or the like).

In that your main character, Jesse Eisenberg, narrates much in the way JD does
in Scrubs, there's frequent illustrative sequences like JD's fantasies, and he
is, like JD, an awkward boy-man trying to make his way in the world. Along the
way, he teams up with Woody Harrelson who is a pretty awesome zombie-asskicking
redneck. And the pair of them encounter a pair of sisters also trying to make
their way in the world, and an awkward group relationship slowly blossoms.

It's actually quite a sweet little comedy about how the people around you are
your family, just like Scrubs is, only with the medicine taken out, and
sick-as-you-like zombie violence substituted.

Rating wise, it's difficult to score, in that while objectively, it's not that
brilliant, and you should probably score it something like 7.5, I hugely,
hugely enjoyed it. So my personal rating is something like a 9/10. I don't
think it's one of those films that transcends its genre - like say, Reservoir
Dogs is a great film even if you don't like gangster movies. But I would say
that if you think that you might enjoy this film, given the description, then
you probably really will.

The Hurt Locker

Gritty wartime realism. Set in Iraq, present day, the film follows a bomb
disposal squad going about their daily business of dealing with unimaginable
peril, and trying to deal with their new squad leader, who appears to be a
chronic risk-taking adrenaline junkie.

It's essentially a film about American soldiers being put in harm's way, in
constant risk of death from all sides, and how that unimaginable stress is
dealt with, when even a local with a mobile phone is a potential threat, and
every bag of rubbish in the street is a potential landmine. The answer seems to
be that you either crack up, or you go crazy.

There isn't so much a story as a series of events. Each day, the team's called
out to deal with a situation, and they go and they deal with it. And we get to
see a fresh horror of war each time. There are some unbelievably tense scenes,
made more tense by the film's apparent willingness to kill off the characters.
God alone knows what it must be like to actually defuse an improvised
explosive, if watching an actor defuse a fake one is that tense.

I don't think that the film has more to say about war than earlier efforts like
Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now, but it's a worthy successor to that sort
of film. If I have a criticism, it's that it does seem, a bit, to be pro-US
propoganda. Iraqi insurgents are seen in a very bad light, where they are seen
at all, and very little is made of the politics of the situation. We don't
really get to question whether or not the US has any business being there. As
far as the soldiers are concerned, they're there because those are the orders,
and that appears to be sufficient justification. But then, the film isn't
about that.

Still, and interesting film, with a very interesting ending. If you can even
call it an ending.

Adventureland

And while we're on the subject of sweet romantic comedies that don't really
have a lot to say...

This is actually a really incredibly standard movie plot. A protagonist is
forced into a situation they don't like, but finds there love and happiness in
an unexpected place. And if this were a film with Jennifer Anniston or Sandra
Bullock in it, you'd avoid it like ebola.

So, it's not really a question of whether it's an original movie (because it
really isn't), but whether it's a good example of a fairly well represented
genre. And it is!

Set in the eighties, you have Jesse Eisenberg as a guy who's just finished
college, and has to cancel his holidays and work through the summer in order to
afford to go to graduate school the following year. And due to being a English
Lit graduate, he is qualified for basically fucking nothing, and the best he
can do is get a job working the amusements at the local low-rent funfair.
There, he meets a nice girl who's kind of screwed up, and some guys in a
similar position to him.

And so, romance sort of ensues.

It's well written, well acted, and will ring bells of recognition for anyone
who left Uni and thought "now what?" It reminds me in many ways of Juno, and is
made with that kind of indie sensibility, if with a little less originality.

Away We Go

A Sam Mendes movie, which can best be described as slight, but charming.

A young couple, played by John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are expecting their
first child, and find simultaneously that his parents, who they were relying on
for some support, are moving overseas. They therefore embark upon a nationwide
search, visiting places where they have people they know, looking for somewhere
to settle down. Meanwhile, the subtext is that they're quite unsure how they're
going to cope as parents, and are taking a look at all their friends with kids,
to see how they deal.

There follows a series of episodes where they meet with the various odd people
they know, and we kind of learn something about families. Though I have to
confess, I couldn't really tell you what.

And that's the real sticking point for me with this film. It's highly amusing,
it's heartwarming, the performances are great, but it's behaving like that it's
revealing some great truth about family and home, and it really isn't. Where
they end up... well, without spoilering it, I will say that I really couldn't
say why they decided to end up there, rather than where they looked like they
might about two thirds of the way through the movie, which seemed like a much
better option, and *still* looks to me like a better option.

Anyway, a solid eight out of ten, I'd have said, I really enjoyed it, and
highly recommend it. I just thought it'd have rather more to say than it did.

District 9

I think it's a slightly shameful state of affairs that this is in the top rank
of scifi movies these days, but it is.

It's a wicked enough premise, having aliens as refugees, the somewhat dumb
worker bees of a civilisation whose more intelligent leadership are missing for
some reason, and who have limped their way to Earth, only to be placed in the
hands of a private security firm by the authorities who can't be bothered to
render aid to them themselves. The whole thing is a rather grim and nasty view
of humanity, which suggests our compassion is limited to the profit we gain
from rendering that compassion, and that's not a view any student of world
affairs could confidently challenge.

My problem with it is that I don't believe it. I do not believe, for one
instant, that any government is going to let an arms firm have sole
responsibility for managing a resource like an alien race with unknown
technology. The South African government would be fighting to keep control of
it in the face of the UN demanding access to the tech, rather than the whole
thing just being handed to a private concern through apathy. I think that
there's probably a rather more well thought out story to be told on this theme,
which would cast humanity in no better light, but this one is just a bit
simplistic.

I'd recommend it, but it's more like the kind of semi-intellectual low budget
scifi that you used to get in the seventies.

Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One.

See above.


No, really. As I believe I mentioned in the previous review for Mesrine: Killer
Instinct, it would appear that Jacques Mesrine was a charming, amoral, violent
twat. He robbed banks and casinos, kidnapped people for money, and treated the
women in his life pretty shabbily. Well, plus ca change. It would appear that
Mesrine pretty much behaved the same way for the rest of his life. Eventually
the French police got pissed off with him, and shot him. (No spoiler there,
happens in the first few minutes of the first film.)

Which is not to say that this film has nothing to say. Mesrine did his best to
become a celebrity, manipulating the press to cultivate a romantic outlaw
image, which they appeared only too happy to cooperate with because it sold
magazines. I also couldn't help noticing that he'd never get away with his
casual, unplanned style of crime these days, what with modern security, and
that it was people like Mesrine who made modern bank security a necessity.

I suppose it would be fairest to consider the two films as a single film. In
which case, what you'd probably think is that it was a really good film, but a
bit samey and overlong by about an hour.