jack_malvern Reviews

Day Watch (2006)

Diverting but flawed sci-fi

[5/10 · 28 August 2007]

It is sorely tempting to bill Day Watch as Russia's answer to The Matrix, but despite the film's impressive energy and vision it is too incoherent to deserve the title.

The premise is that the population of Moscow is peppered with vampires - both good and evil - who live in an uneasy truce. It is the job of the Day Watch to patrol the streets and make sure the blood-sucking does not get out of hand.

Like all sci-fi, it is set in a world with different rules to our own. The problem here is that these rules, if they are explained at all, are made clear only after they become relevant to the characters' fates.

The film is, therefore, stuffed with deus ex machina moments. The hero, played by a dogged but charismatic Konstantin Khabensky, will be running for his life when suddenly he makes a miraculous escape by leaping into an advertising billboard, which, it turns out, acts as a portal to a train station.

Or the good guys will be bracing themselves for a head-on collision with a speeding truck only for their vehicle to turn out to be pretty much invincible.

Or all will apparently be lost only for a character to deploy a hitherto unused gadget that freezes time, allowing the hero to save the world.

And the conclusion, although neat, falls into the "... and it was all a dream" category that my creative writing teacher cautioned me against using when I was nine.

Despite natty special effects and charming Russian quirks, it would have been a tall order to suspend disbelief for 90 minutes, let alone the 140 minutes shown here. It is an interesting cultural experience, but as a film it is deeply flawed.

Zodiac (2007)

Clean Harry

[5/10 · 9 May 2007]

David Fincher does a stand-up job of recreating 1960s San Francisco in this meandering real-crime thriller, but at two and a half hours it is simply too drawn-out to be enjoyable.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist on the San Francisco Chronicle who becomes increasingly obsessed with the activities of Zodiac, a serial killer with a penchant for confessional letters. He sees the letters at first hand when they arrive at the newspaper, hovers around the desk of the crime correspondent (Robert Downey Jr) and is ultimately moved to research the killings himself for what becomes his bestselling book on the unsolved murders.

But while the story unfolds fairly evenly and with an impressive attention to detail, it is hampered by the inconvenient truth that Zodiac was never arrested, let alone convicted. It rather limits the story's progression, given that the police are no nearer to catching their man at the end than they are in the middle. The result is an epic accumulation of circumstantial evidence that, despite heavy doses of foreboding bass notes, is mildly intriguing rather than exciting.

The last time Hollywood had a go at making a film of the Zodiac killings it came up with Dirty Harry, whose titular hero takes down his quarry with as much observance of due process as his .357 calibre Magnum will allow. Naturally, a realistic portrayal of the story isn't going to feature such pyrotechnics, but watching the cops capitulate to the goddam pencil-pushers at City Hall does not make for riveting viewing.

Not that realism prevents Fincher from nailing his colours firmly to the mast when it comes to his preferred suspect, mind. I was almost convinced myself until one of the closing captions mentions that a recent DNA test all but exonerated him. But still, he's dead, so he's hardly in a position to sue.

Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo, as the dogged cop leading the investigation, put in creditable performances here, but Fincher should have known that the story was only worth 90 minutes.

Klimt (2006)

Aimless, stilted, boring

[1/10 · 14 November 2006]

There is a word, memorably coined by Hugh Grant, for this type of film: Euro-pud. Take some public money from a European government, select a writer-director known principally (if at all) for his foreign-language films, and assemble a cast of one American star and an assortment of European actors. Scramble, and serve in a handful of continental cinemas that need films on the cheap.

Raoul Ruiz's biopic of Gustav Klimt feels like what it is - a polyglot project made to please a national government rather than a cinema audience. It is by turns boring, uninformative, poorly acted, directionless, non-sensical and crass. John Malkovich, in the role of the titular Austrian artist, spends the vast majority of the film looking bored or dead, perhaps appropriately, since the translated script portrays Klimt as a world-weary man condemned to a creeping death by his syphilitic encounters with prostitutes.

Other characters dart in and out of his life with befuddling rapidity, either making imperious statements that are in no way profound or laughing at things that aren't funny. They also appear to be mounted on lazy Susans, as one of Ruiz's irritating motifs is to wheel the camera around his actors so that the background is a dizzying whirl. This, like his other themes (breaking mirrors and requests for water), are so heavy-handed that you wonder if his inspiration was an essay written by a teenage history of art student.

The film is also knee-deep in absurdity, only some of which is intentional. Klimt has two ludicrously staged fist fights on the streets of Vienna, and there is one dreadful scene in which an unexplained stranger is meant to be doing shadow puppetry. It is difficult to suspend disbelief as the prancing figure on the screen is clearly not the man's waggling fingers, but Saffron Burrows's backlit silhouette. Malkovich is obliged to play along, however, and slithers around in front of it, casting no shadow of his own.

Arguably the worst scene features Klimt chatting to Egon Schiele in a bar as the lights go out and a crazed tramp enters, apparently to act out a piece of performance art about war. Schiele leaves in plain view, and yet at their next meeting Klimt exclaims: "What happened to you? You disappeared."

Bags of full-frontal nudity and occasionally brave efforts at acting fail to disguise a film that, ultimately, tells us little about its subject or his art. He was, we are told, foul-mouthed, delusional and constantly thirsty. I'm not even convinced this is accurate. It is a film that desperately wants to be Amadeus, but ends up being like Jefferson in Paris. Pointless and contrived, this is Europud at its worst.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

Dismal

[1/10 · 27 October 2006]

How can one sum up the pervasive awfulness of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Perhaps it is best to quote some lines from a scene in which the crime-fighting league is reeling from an ambush by the villainous "M".

A despondent Dr Jekyll suggests that they are finished. "No," responds Tom Sawyer, a rifle-wielding Victorian CIA agent. "We're alive. If M has any idea to the contrary, that gives us an edge."

Captain Nemo, the bearded owner of a vast and unconvincing solar-powered submarine (I jest not) is unconvinced. "The sea is vast, he could be anywhere," he says.

A good point, but Sawyer is unabashed. "Yeah, well, I'm an optimist, now maybe that's a crime to you twisted so-and-sos but it keeps me from going crazy... Because we'll get out, man... at least, I will. That other agent I told you about was my childhood friend. We were agents together until the Phantom shot him dead. Now you can be done, but I am not. I will avenge his death."

Illuminating exposition as this is, Dr Jekyll is more interested in a piece of East vs West philosophising. "It's not about any one of us, Tom, it's bigger than that."

Sawyer: "Yes, it is, Jekyll! The fate for the world is in our hands... the world! So M tricked you. He brought you all together and you walked straight into his trap. But the way that I see it, that's the part he did wrong... He brought you together."

Jekyll: "He has a point."

James Robinson's back-of-a-napkin script is as bad as anything ever written, but it finds its equal in the quality of the acting and directing. Sean Connery is probably the most charismatic of the bunch, but he delivers one of the blandest performances of his career. His bewigged African adventurer, Allan Quartermain, mainly resembles a fumbling geriatric who looks like he needs a stick to help him walk - until there is a fight scene, at which point he is replaced by a breathtakingly obvious stuntman.

The prize for worst performance is a toss-up between Tony Curran, the cheeky-cockney Invisible Man (who would be better cast as the Inaudible Man, in my opinion), Peta Wilson, a vampire who can't see a giant blood spot on her face despite staring at herself in a compact mirror, Jason Flemyng, who is outacted by his make-up, and Shane West, a character supposedly based on the Huckleberry Finn character Tom Sawyer but who shares no characteristics whatsoever.

The story, in which a clutch of heroes are banded together to overcome a megalomaniac's deadly plot, is fairly standard stuff. What really nails the film to the ocean floor is the reliance on very, very bad computer-generated imagery (CGI). Why, when the solar-powered submarine appears, does all the water flowing off it disappear half way down the side? Why does no one standing next to it get wet?

Why, when Mr Hyde is running across the rooftops of Paris (where he has fled to avoid British authorities and in no way merely to give the characters somewhere new to go), does he not obey Newton's third law?

But the worst aspect of the film is that it is a travesty of its source material. It has taken Alan Moore's much-loved and subversive graphic novel and turned it into a bit of froth on a par with Van Helsing. Stephen Norrington, who I see from IMDb has gone back to his job as a make-up artist, should hang his head in shame.

Driving Lessons (2006)

Interesting but fairly average relationship film

[6/10 · 5 September 2006]

It is a pleasant surprise to see Rupert Grint get to grips with some proper acting. Only the most ardent Harry Potter fan would claim that he was any great shakes in the Potter franchise, so watching his affecting performance here is a relief as much as anything else.

He is the put-upon teenager who manages to break free of his stifling mother (Laura Linney) when he goes to work for a has-been actress, played to hammy perfection by Julie Walters. Like Driving Miss Daisy and Transamerica, Driving Lessons is a film about two people with differing world views thrown together in the confines of a car.

The acting is deft and the dialogue is strong, but ultimately it doesn't do anything new with the genre. While Driving Miss Daisy tackled race and Transamerica dealt with gender identity, Driving Lessons is much less ambitious. It is, at most, the reconcilement of a conservative middle class religious boy with a flamboyant middle class atheist woman. The denouement is neither as dramatic nor as poignant as we have come to expect from this type of film, but that is as much to do with writer/director Jeremy Thorpe's choice of subject matter as his handling of it.

Moreover it is not, as other reviewers have suggested, a family film, unless your family has started using the c-word (one mention, as an adjective) and the f-word (all over the place).

It is a lovely film as far as it goes, but Thorpe, in his directorial debut, never quite shakes off his L-plates.

The Weather Man (2005)

Dark comedy with little to say

[5/10 · 5 May 2006]

The best that can be said of The Weather Man is that it is unconventional, but this alone is not enough to save what is ultimately a rather aimless portrait of upper middle class American life. Dark comedies must be either funnier or more subversive than this to be memorable.

Its bland message - be the best you can be - is an underwhelming conclusion to what, at times, promised to be a savage black comedy, a satire, or at least a parody of suburban living.

Nicolas Cage is arresting as the titular weather man, disillusioned with the jolly facade he has adopted for his well-paid job. The public, if they don't hate him enough to bombard him with fast food, see him only as someone who can tell them what the coldest day of the week will be - a perception all the more demeaning because his predictions are just a guess.

The exploration of his relationship with his dysfunctional family is gently perceptive, but it leads nowhere exciting. His troubled relationship with his father, a successful author played by Michael Caine, should have been the poignant hub of this film. It is, mercifully, not overly sentimental, but nor is it particularly engaging. Ho hum.

The White Countess (2005)

Just as beautiful and slow-moving as other Merchant Ivories

[6/10 · 21 March 2006]

If any other director had created a series of films as unerringly graceful and pitilessly ponderous as James Ivory's oeuvre he would be accused of being stuck in a rut. But at least you know where you are with the Ivory tinkler.

His latest period drama is set in mid-1930s Shanghai, a teeming metropolis where the blend of exotic cultures is overshadowed by Japanese imperial ambitions. We are introduced to Todd Jackson (Ralph Fiennes), a former diplomat who at first appears to be a drunk until we realise he has lost his sight in an accident. He meets Sofia (Natasha Richardson), a member of the exiled Russian aristocracy who supports her family by working as a dancer at a seedy clip joint.

In her, Jackson sees the centrepiece of the nightclub of his dreams, where the erotic meets the tragic. He bets everything he has at the races and wins, allowing him to create the White Countess club and install Sofia as his hostess.

This, you imagine, is the setting for a will-they-won't-they romance as volatile as Shanghai itself, but Ivory's direction turns a subtle courtship into an imperceptible one. Consequently the film is rather empty, leaving us only with Jackson's friendship with a shadowy Japanese man who, as anyone with any historical knowledge will guess, personifies the threat of a Japanese invasion.

Beautiful as the film is, its director has once again failed to provide a particularly stimulating narrative drive. I'm not asking for love scenes and gunfights, but I do want something to distract me from the elegant backgrounds. Even as someone who loves the romance of pre-war China, I was too often bored. It is nowhere near as dull as Jefferson in Paris or The Golden Bowl, but substantially more so than The Remains of the Day or Howards End.

Natasha Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave (Richardson's mother on and off screen) help sustain interest and Ralph Fiennes is dependable as the lead. But even they cannot raise this from the status of most Merchant Ivory productions: a film best watched on television one rainy Sunday.

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

The best opening sequence

[7/10 · 17 February 2006]

A squeaking wind pump, a dripping water tower and the baking sun. The beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West, in which three hired guns wait wordlessly at a train station for their target to arrive, is one of the best openings in cinema history. It is every bit as tense as Sergio Leone's finale in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which he filmed two years earlier.

But good as this Western revenge saga is, it is not as accessible and a good deal slower than the other films in Sergio Leone's series of Westerns (namely A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). What many reviewers describe as its "operatic" and "epic" nature can also be read as "occasionally mawkish" and "overlong".

That said, this story earns its status as a classic for combining the gun-toting fun of westerns with the grand theme of the end of the Wild West, brought about by the arrival of the railroad. The railroad is the villain here as Henry Fonda plays an unscrupulous blue-eyed bad guy paid to force landowners to sell up cheap so the rails can pass through.

Charles Bronson is a darker take on Leone's man-with-no-name character, but it is debatable whether that makes him more interesting then Clint Eastwood's version.

The main characters each have a theme tune, opera-style, which is an interesting motif, but quite an irritating one when you have heard the harmonica tune for the 30th time.

A fine movie, but claims that it changed the western any more than Leone's previous films or that it is better than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War (2002)

Cabbage

[1/10 · 6 January 2006]

Pauline Collins, who shone so brightly in Shirley Valentine, fails to rescue this lamely scripted and poorly acted British comedy. The plot concerns Mrs Caldicot, a widow who is tricked out of her house and into a retirement home, where she is sedated and forced to sign over her property to her son.

She soon realises that she and her fellow residents, who are also sedated to keep them quiet, are being treated unfairly and foments a rebellion against the home's smarmy manager.

But this comedic take on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is mired in pantomime-quality acting and naive plotting in which old people are never disorientated or distressed, and journalists pay for scores of pensioners to be put up in a country house hotel.

I have no idea what Vernon Coleman's novel was like, but it is unlikely that the set decorator who adapted it made many improvements.

It made just £16,400 at the British box office. I would be surprised if most of those who parted with their money did not ask for it back.

King Kong (2005)

By no means a failure, but certainly no classic

[7/10 · 6 January 2006]

How could King Kong go wrong? It has all the elements of a classic blockbuster: a successful director, a starry cast, whizzo special effects and a big gorilla.

The characterisation might not be amazing, but it isn't bad for a special effects romp. The plot is relatively simple, but not mind-numbingly formulaic. And the action scenes are sufficiently tense to make you jump in the right places and imaginative enough to make you wonder what is coming next.

So it is odd that you leave the cinema thinking: "Not bad. But a bit long."

The fundamental flaw is that Peter Jackson has used action as a substitute for drama. No matter how impressive the special effects, they are drained of tension because deep down you know nothing is at stake. Lots of people are crushed and eaten, but they are all minor characters and faceless minions. It is clear that the characters you care about must survive because the plot requires they return to New York.

To Jackson's credit, he develops the relationship between his heroine Ann Darrow and the gorilla very well. Where he fails is the romance between Darrow and Jack Driscoll, the hero. It is a courtship based on her girlish infatuation with his writing and his goo-goo eyes over her golden looks. It's not exactly Shakespeare in Love. Come to think of it, it's not even Doctor in Love.

So we are left caring for a gorilla who is obviously doomed. He is no more likely to settle down in New York than he is to catch a passing ship back to his island.

There are also a variety of plot holes that, without a drama to distract us, become amusingly obvious. When the captain orders the crew of his marooned ship to "throw everything overboard that isn't bolted down" in the hope that the ship will float off the rocks, it is strange that he does not add "apart from the giant arsenal of undoubtedly heavy Tommy guns that might come in useful if we change our minds and go back onto the island".

It is also remarkable that the primitive inhabitants of the island, who have a knack for spectacular engineering projects, magically disappear the moment the plot no longer requires them.

That said, if you enjoy action for action's sake (and I do) then there is much to relish in this film. Just make sure you go to the loo beforehand and save some of your popcorn for the third hour.

Match Point (2005)

Not much point

[2/10 · 27 December 2005]

Woody Allen's luck-themed drama has drawn praise from the critics as the director's long-awaited "return to form". It could well be more accomplished than his recent output, but better does not mean good.

Match Point has quite an interesting premise: that luck, in the end, is more important than skill, faith or endeavour. But the film suffers from both a paucity of characterisation (especially around its charmless protagonist) and a slow-building plot.

Allen might have gotten away with one of these, but the double blow means that it is difficult to sustain interest in any of his somewhat bland characters (none of whom has anything interesting to say) during the unusually long 90-minute setup.

The majority of the plot is a simple love triangle. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is an inarticulate tennis coach who befriends his aristocratic client Tom (Matthew Goode), marries Tom's sister (Emily Mortimer) and has an affair with Tom's girlfriend (Scarlett Johansson). The fundamental problem is that although Rhys Meyers is quite handsome, he is so uncharismatic that there is no reason for the other characters, or indeed the audience, to be remotely interested in him.

The plot twists, when they do come, are interesting but hardly worth the wait. In the meantime we are left to ponder: a) Allen's decision to let his cast stumble over their lines; b) the touristy depiction of London in which Johansson's "cheap" flat is just around the corner from Bond Street; c) the oddity that is Johansson's mouth; and d) the desire to mutter "What a tosser" at Rhys Meyers's pathetic Sloaney aspirations.

You can't really blame the actors. Mortimer does very well in an unrewarding role and both Johansson and Goode are fine. Even Rhys Meyers has the excuse that Allen has written his protagonist as a villain from the start, never allowing him to build a connection with the audience even before he becomes deeply unsympathetic in the final act.

There are some good observations, but not nearly enough to rescue this drawn-out and occasionally stilted drama, which compares poorly with a feature-length episode of Inspector Morse.

Syriana (2005)

A biting drama that is more "political" than "thriller"

[9/10 · 10 December 2005]

It is difficult to pick apart America's strategy in the Middle East without becoming preachy, but this film manages it with an understated finesse. It will not please everyone, mind.

Syriana does not contain the action scenes you might associate with George Clooney or Matt Damon and its split narratives do not lead to a life-affirming conclusion. Nor will it cut any ice with patriots wedded to the idea of America's role as the liberator of the Middle East. But none of this makes it a bad film.

True, it can be a mite confusing. It took me a while to work out what, or who, George Clooney's CIA agent was meant to be doing when he is sent to Beirut. But momentary confusion does little to obscure the function of the film - a masterclass in American foreign policy in the Middle East.

The film, wisely, does not mention Iraq. To do so would enter a debate that has become so polarised as to be meaningless. It gives a broader picture, and by doing so exposes the paradox in American (and British) policy towards the Middle East. While we in the West do believe that democracy is a way of stabilising countries and bringing them into the global economy, it is a double-edged sword. If Arab leaders are elected, they have legitimacy in the eyes of their people. The more legitimacy they have, the less they must rely on Western military support to prop up their regimes.

What Syriana illustrates so eloquently is that when it comes down to a choice, America would rather have despotic Arab leaders it can push around than liberal-minded reformists who would be free to negotiate oil deals with, say, China. It is not a choice without consequences, the film argues. Which leader, the despot or the reformist, is more likely to preside over a society that fosters terrorists?

The performances by George Clooney, Matt Damon, Chris Cooper, Jeffrey Wright et al are spot on. There is no showboating, just solid, close to the knuckle acting. It is more "political" than "thriller", but if that doesn't put you off then you will find Syriana a rewarding and thought-provoking experience.

The Ice Harvest (2005)

So-so film noir

[6/10 · 7 December 2005]

It is always a pleasure to watch John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton, but this noirish thriller doesn't have much up its sleeve. If you know the plot standards of film noir (moral ambiguity, femmes fatale, double crosses etc) then there are few surprises here.

Cusack plays a mob lawyer who, with the encouragement Thornton's strip club owner, rips off his gangster boss to the tune of several million dollars but, for reasons that are only glibly explained, must hang around until the day is over.

So we follow him around for his final hours in town and watch the plan go violently, and occasionally comically awry. The film is both funny and tense at times, yet lacks sufficient wit or thrills to be memorable. Harold Ramis, in the director's chair, has never had a stonker of a film (even if I did like his generally panned remake of Bedazzled) and he does little to strengthen his CV here.

Special mention should go to Connie Nielsen as a splendidly sexy femme fatale. And a firm clip round the ear should be delivered to whichever dud copywriter came up with the tagline: "Thick thieves. Thin ice." The Ice Harvest tries to be many things, but never it is never a goofball movie.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)

Wonderful for fans of brooding French dramas

[6/10 · 16 November 2005]

... but not necessarily something that will appeal to a wider audience. Romain Duris puts on an impressive performance as an apparently amoral landlord who finds his human side when he decides to revive his ambition to be a concert pianist.

The drama unfolds nicely, with the would-be ivory-tinkler struggling to accommodate his day job (releasing rats to scare off unwanted tenants and suchlike) alongside his lessons with a teacher who speaks not a word of French.

His father, another ruthless landlord, and his adulterous friend's wife also appear in subplots, but ultimately we are waiting to see if Duris's character can pull off an audition, or whether he will be sucked under by his clashes with debtors and rivals.

The result, and the epilogue, provide interesting surprises, but this is not a film that fizzes with excitement or tension. Personally, I found it uninvitingly dark and the main character off-puttingly unsympathetic. Duris is watchable none the less and those who like their dramas broody will take to this like a Frenchman to a high-tar cigarette.

The Brothers Grimm (2005)

Not Gilliam's finest hour

[5/10 · 2 November 2005]

"Nothing makes sense here," shouts one of the titular brothers Grimm during the film's finale, and he pretty much hits the nail on the head. Terry Gilliam's latest fantasy is not confusing as such, but it is arbitrary.

Gilliam has crafted a warped fairytale with his usual flair, but a combination of odd plotting and an overload of caricature means that this is more akin to the director's excesses in Baron Munchausen than his successes with 12 Monkeys or The Fisher King.

The story concerns Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm (Matt Damon and Heath Ledger), a pair of con men who fleece credulous rustic-types by offering to exterminate supernatural beasts of their own creation. They become unstuck, however, when a Napoleonic officer orders them to sort out an apparently genuine haunting.

Part of the problem is that the haunting is obviously genuine, causing the plot to haemorrhage tension at a time when it should be building. Logic is also an early casualty - not unusual for a Gilliam film, necessarily, but damaging in a film whose fairytale base requires a lot of suspension of disbelief.

In the final confrontation one of the brothers must break a spell. He has no idea how, and nor do we. The solution, like most of the plot developments, is plucked from nowhere.

That said, there are beautifully conceived moments and fine gags that will possibly rescue the film for viewers who are not overly keen on plot. My favourite moment was when, at the mention of "The Trapper", everyone in the village spits. The chorus of gobbing continues for several seconds until it stops with a final "ding" of spittle hitting a spittoon.

But I found there to be as many clunkers as laughs. The cast members act their little socks off, but by the third time the brothers traipse in and out of the enchanted forest I had concluded that this was no Gilliam classic.

Seabiscuit (2003)

Schmaltz

[3/10 · 27 October 2005]

Only the most sentimental viewer will find this formulaic tale of triumph over adversity anything to coo over.

From David McCullough's homely narration to Jeff Bridges's affable performance as a kindly industrialist and racehorse owner, this film is as clogged with sickly sweetness as a car with sugar in its petrol tank.

The success-failure-success plot structure is bathed in a golden light and consists of two types of scenes: a) off-track scene-setting, and b) on-track views of Tobey Maguire pumping his arms back and forth atop a stuffed horse while exchanging banter with other riders above the noise of thundering hooves.

It is every triumph-over-adversity sports film you have ever seen, but schmaltzier. Like Days of Thunder with hooves and syrup.

Elizabethtown (2005)

Not bad. Not bad at all

[7/10 · 21 October 2005]

There are a lot of reviewers who were disappointed by Elizabethtown. Possibly Cameron Crowe brought it upon himself by having made better films, but reviewers who condemn it for this reason do their readers a disservice.

It won't be as revered as Almost Famous or as popular as Jerry Maguire, but Elizabethtown remains whimsically amusing and well-observed despite its rambling nature. It isn't electrifying and will suffer from accusations that its message is nothing more profound than "don't worry, be happy", but people willing to suspend their disbelief will be rewarded.

And, most importantly for a romantic comedy, it deals with sentimental topics without ever sinking into gloopy schmaltz.

Orlando Bloom - who seemed little more than a catalogue model in Lord of the Rings and Troy - is very watchable as the suicidal shoe designer compelled to visit Kentucky to oversee his father's funeral. Kirsten Dunst, whose career seemed to be stuck in the all-American everygirl role, gets to be a more quirky character and successfully creates a chemistry with Bloom that powers the film along.

The music is wonderful, and there is one scene featuring a performance of Lynyrd Skynrd's Free Bird that is a triumph.

Don't get me wrong. People who don't like this kind of gentle meandering rom-com will hate it with a passion reserved for Anne Geddes and her baby fetishist photographs, but more lenient viewers will be delighted.

Kinky Boots (2005)

Formulaic, if effective, British feelgood film

[7/10 · 5 October 2005]

There's nothing wrong with Kinky Boots, but cinema-goers who have seen Brassed Off, The Full Monty and Calendar Girls will have not so much a sense of deja vu as a feeling of omniscience. It is as formulaic as a Big Mac and, although it works as a feelgood movie, viewers in search of originality will be left with the tongue-scratching taste of junk food.

In this variation, the provincial townspeople who defy their natural inhibition to triumph against the odds are a set of factory workers in Northampton, England. The factory is faced with closure until the owner (Joel Edgerton) is inspired by a drag queen (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to make pairs of the titular kinky boots for the transvestite market.

Will the workers take to the new plan? Will the owner be able to pull off a shoe fashion show in Milan? Will all apparently be lost due to personal differences but somehow come right in the end? Well, take a wild stab in the dark.

Still, Edgerton is quietly effective and Ejiofor is very amusing and occasionally touching as the man in the frock. The supporting cast are fine too, but there is nothing exceptional about Kinky Boots that overcomes its clockwork predictability. Indeed, although the film is good-for-people-who-like-this-sort-of-thing, these people will already have seen it done better in all the films named above. Edgerton, while nicely understated, isn't quite as watchable as Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor or Helen Mirren.

If you think you'll like it, you will, but this is by no means a must-see.

Top Gun (1986)

Your ego's writing cheques your body can't cash

[10/10 · 21 September 2005]

Ah, Top Gun, the movie equivalent of the power chord. Although it was never designed to be anything more than an action-packed blockbuster it has gained classic status because it exemplifies everything that is good about the genre.

Its brash, might-is-right ethos is as rooted in the 1980s as square-shouldered women and Anita Dobson's hair, but the film still has a timeless feel despite the obvious anachronism that the Cold War has ended.

It is remarkable that nearly 20 years after its release it remains the best air-combat flick. Firebirds (aka Wings of the Apache) showed that helicopters weren't as exciting as jets, and Iron Eagle and its increasingly dire sequels were just too silly. Part of me suspects that getting workable footage of military jets is too tall an order for most filmmakers, but I like to believe that would-be directors realise that Top Gun is definitive.

Cheesy moments are plentiful, but they work partly because they are justified by the drama and partly because the silly macho scenes are knowingly undermined by being peculiarly homoerotic.

Tom Cruise perfected his jaw-wobblingly intense brand of acting for this film and, when needed, delivers a surprisingly subtle performance. I could go on about how well-paced the drama is, but all you really need to know is that the flying scenes are gripping and the music is as exciting as finding the treasure of Sierra Madre down the back of your sofa.

I'd also say that Top Gun is one of the most quotable films I've ever seen, although I've seen it so many times that it could just be familiarity. Either way, Top Gun is the most modern classic I can think of.

Where the Truth Lies (2005)

Confusing and implausible whodunnit

[3/10 · 21 September 2005]

There are good bits in Where the Truth Lies that give you an insight into what the film could have been, but they are too sparse to salvage this confusing and ultimately implausible thriller.

Fans of Atom Egoyan's work will relish the chance to see him in action again, but it is Egoyan himself, as both scriptwriter and director, who ruins what could have been an intelligent whodunnit.

It is worth going into the plot to explain exactly why it doesn't work.

Alison Lohman plays a former polio sufferer and journalist who, years after she appeared on a telethon featuring a pair of variety stars, decides to write a book about what they are really like. The big draw is that the pair, played by Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon, split shortly after the show when the body of a girl was found in their hotel room. The crime was never solved.

Colin Firth, the straight half of the variety partnership, agrees to cooperate, but Kevin Bacon declines because he is writing his own book to be released after their deaths.

Despite Bacon's reluctance - and this is important - Bacon's representatives allow Lohman to read several chapters of Bacon's book to show her that her work would be rubbish by comparison. They do what? What publisher, in the real world, would attempt to dissuade a rival by sharing information?

This is the first of a string of implausible plot developments that gnaw at the viewer's will to suspend disbelief and, in my case, consume it completely.

Other elements - confrontations between Lohman, Bacon and Firth and an all-too-convenient tape recording - fail to ring true. Although the denouement is rather poignant, the drama has long since become preposterous. I was still chortling to myself because of a previous scene in which a character does an unwitting impression of Hannibal Lecter. And what on earth is going on when a children's hospital hosts a production of Alice in Wonderland with a woman singing a trippy version of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit?

The acting isn't bad - indeed Firth and Bacon are rather good - but it fails to make an unlikely script appear anything but contrived and, occasionally, unintentionally funny.

It doesn't help that the film is told in a confusing series of flashbacks, some of which didn't happen at all. Egoyan attempts to overcome the confusion by adding lots of explanatory voice-overs, but this also acts as a reminder that the images do not do the talking.

And what of the supposedly controversial scenes that earned the film such a high rating from the censors? Well, there's graphic violence, drug taking and, without wanting to spoil anything, sex scenes that wouldn't appear in a standard Hollywood film. But, really, so what? The controversy is a red herring. The film doesn't work, and it is Egoyan who is to blame.

Lost Highway (1997)

Just because it's out of sequence doesn't make it good

[1/10 · 29 August 2005]

David Lynch has a trick. It's not clever or even original, but his followers seem to love it. He splices his films together out of sequence.

So when watching Lost Highway don't be confused when, after a man is caught for a murder, the film suddenly moves to an apparently different story. It is merely that you have watched the story from its middle to the end, and are now having to watch it from the beginning to the middle.

The trick means that the opening and closing scenes of the film, featuring a dwarf, are the same point in the middle of the story. It also means that when the story ends (in a prison cell) and the story restarts (in a prison cell) in the middle of the film it seems, even to the characters, that one man has metamorphosed into another.

A friend described this trick as a work of genius, transforming the film into a Mobius strip (ie a length of paper that has been twisted before having its ends joined together, meaning that you can draw a continuous line on both sides of the paper before coming back to your starting point). He is a fool.

If you own a DVD of Lost Highway (and God help you if you do) you could watch the story from beginning to end by using the scene selection function. If you did, you would see a rather bland, if wilfully obscure, film that concentrates more on lighting and quirkiness than plot or character.

It is interesting in an artistic sense because it divorces the film from its narrative, but the two hours and 15 minutes are far from interesting in any other sense. It is all rather indulgent and, like Lynch's other narrative-juggling film Mulholland Drive, makes you think that he is using a trick to disguise the mundanity of his writing.

It should be noted that out-of-sequence films do not have to be bad. Memento, directed by the infinitely more talented and less pretentious Christopher Nolan, told the story of an amnesiac avenging his wife's death by showing scenes in reverse order. It is brilliant, not only because it is thrilling and characterful, but because the plot device puts you at the same disadvantage as the protagonist. You do not know what has happened immediately beforehand.

With Lynch, by contrast, his justification for splicing his films together in the wrong order is weaker. He does seem to have something to say about schizophrenia, but it would be a lot more illuminating if his films weren't so incomprehensible and, consequently, boring.

Finding Neverland (2004)

Not a bad tearjerker, but not great either

[7/10 · 26 August 2005]

Yes, I blubbed at the end of Finding Neverland. It played the minor chords on my heartstrings effectively enough, but the film suffers from a slight lack of momentum, largely because of the performances of Johnny Depp and Dustin Hoffman.

Hoffman, a dandyish figure with a mid-Atlantic accent, is a puzzling comic-relief character whose screen presence is distracting rather than engaging. I found myself thinking, whenever he appeared, "It's Dustin Hoffman! What's he doing here? And is he supposed to be American or British?" To be fair to Hoffman, it is possible that his accent was a perfect rendition of what Americans sounded like in J. M. Barrie's time, but he never seems comfortable in the role.

And Depp is just a bit wooden. Again, perhaps he is meant to be restrained - the film is set in Victorian Britain after all. But Depp's soft Scottish tones and phlegmatic response to any event, no matter how dramatic, makes the film a little flat. If someone had run in and shouted "Run for your lives, the house is on fire" you feel that Depp would have looked pensive and cooed "Ooh, dear. We'll have to put it out, then." It doesn't help that the central drama - a main character's disease - is telegraphed so far in advance that you can't believe it is a surprise to anyone when it makes its grand entrance. Still, Kate Winslet is excellent as ever in her English rose role and the children are very good indeed.

If you are fond of a weepie, Finding Neverland will not let you down. But compared to other films ranked in the Internet Movie Database's top 250 it is decidedly weak.

Amadeus (1984)

Beware the director's cut

[10/10 · 26 August 2005]

Amadeus is a wondrous, if factually dubious spectacle, but be careful to watch the original theatrical edition rather than the director's cut. The film critic for the Toronto Globe and Mail said that Amadeus needs an extra 20 minutes running time like the Magic Flute needs a drum solo, and he was right.

It is a rare case of film studio being wise to order cuts. The only other example that springs to mind is James Cameron's pious additions to The Abyss for his "special edition". The added scenes do add slightly to our understanding of the story, but two hours and 38 minutes is simply too long, especially for a director as methodical as Milos Forman.

Downfall (2004)

Well worth watching (once)

[8/10 · 25 August 2005]

Downfall, as it was titled in Britain, is an extraordinary balancing act that is somehow sensitive and brutal, exciting and depressing, numbing and inspirational. It is, admittedly, overlong and thus occasionally dull, but it is worth it all the same.

Like Das Boot and All Quiet on the Western Front, it is able to play your sympathy for the characters' humanity against your instinct that they (mostly) deserve to die. Every time a Nazi kills himself - and this happens on average once every fifteen minutes - you feel a mixture of sadness at the pointless loss of life and guilty satisfaction that it was self-delusion that got them there. How much sympathy and how much satisfaction depends on the character, and so you get the full range of emotions as they drop one by one.

The most poignant deaths are not those of Hitler and Goebbels, who deserve no sympathy, or, at the other extreme, non-combatant Berliners, but those in the middle. Eva Braun is clearly delusional, but does this excuse her guilt? Goebbel's children sing adoringly for the Fuhrer, but cannot be held responsible for their indoctrination.

The audience also has to question whether all Nazis lacked any moral fibre. How should we feel about Albert Speer, the Nazi who escaped death at Nuremberg because he apologised? Or the general who comes across as a professional soldier whose crime was to accept orders from a lunatic master.

The portrayal of the shelling of Berlin, where street combat goes hand in hand with decadent end-of-the-world partying, is equally intense. It is reminiscent of both Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan in its skillful combination grand scale and poignant detail.

My only complaint is that it is a about half an hour too long. The last reel, which is death after death after death, would have been all the more powerful if I wasn't wondering how much longer it would last.

This is fine film-making nonetheless, although I doubt I would ever want to watch it again.

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

A special effects extravaganza

[6/10 · 24 August 2005]

It should tell you almost all you need to know that all the publicity stills from this film were CGI shots.

If you're a fan of CGI, Spider-Man 2 is a real treat - an Internet Movie Database Top 250 of a film. But in other respects it is lacking, and more so than its prequel.

Although Tobey Maguire is billed as the lead, he is on the screen for a relatively short amount of time because, for the most part, his character is played by 69 members of the effects crew. And talented though Maguire is, his appearances have the feel of being a filler while we wait for the next action sequence.

It doesn't help that Peter Parker's superhero affliction has gone from being poor and naive to being the world's most unfairly treated individual. He is dumped by his girlfriend for turning up late to the theatre and shunned by his aunt for confessing that he played an indirect, and entirely unforeseeable, part in his uncle's death.

Still, Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus is a very fine baddie and the plot ticks along nicely, if predictably, for the full two hours. My main issue is that despite its high rating among IMDb's voters, it is not as good as Spider-Man. The hero never appears vulnerable enough to give the scenes any tension and the film begins to look like an action flick by numbers.

That said, as CGI-reliant films go it is certainly better than anything by George Lucas. Let's hope that the third instalment is up to the standard set by Batman Begins.