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.