Ultimate Avengers: The Movie

It was nice to finally see this film (in fact, I have already seen the sequel before viewing this), especially as it is more or less based on the first ‘season’ of The Ultimates by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch (with a few tweaks here and there). In this respect, it was more enjoyable than the Invincible Iron Man and Doctor Strange animated DVDs, which played around with the classic origins for no particularly good reason. Which made it slightly irking that it was so short – less than 70 minutes of action. I guess that’s a good thing, if I wanted to see more.

The film starts with the flashback to Captain America’s last mission, where he first meets the Chitauri (the Ultimates equivalent of the Skrulls). The existence of these aliens are the reasons Nick Fury locates Cap’s frozen body to recreate the super-soldier serum, in order to fight the Chitauri. He then has to create a superhero team to act as a first line of defence – bring on Iron Man, the Wasp, Giant Man, Thor and Black Widow, under the lead of Captain America. The Chitauri are shown as a credible threat in the story, but in the end fight, they are killed off in a few minutes, which seems rather pointless build up. The climactic and larger fight scene is the team versus the Hulk, who goes crazy and starts attacking everyone because there are no more aliens to kill (thus getting both parts of the original story from the comic book into the film in one go). This is a bit odd, but it does allow for more classic hero-on-hero fighting. Quite enjoyable, if not perfect, with nice use of slow motion for when Thor hammers the Hulk (although it cuts away so it doesn’t give kids the idea of hitting someone in the head with their dad’s hammer).

There is an interesting documentary on the DVD about The Avengers. This consists of talking heads: Tom Breevort, Kurt Busiek, Joe Quesada, Mark Millar, who are all informative and entertaining and interesting. However also , there is George Perez, who is the bizarrest aspect of the whole thing: what an ego. Everyone else talks about the strength of the original stories and the characters and the abilities of other creators. Perez, in his grating and slightly annoying whine, just talks about himself all the time. He talks about how great he is, how dedicated he is to drawing comic books, about what he added to the Avengers and makes the stories even better than what the writer created. It was so embarrassing; didn’t anyone tell him they were talking about the Avengers and not him? I know that Perez is an accomplished artist (I don’t particularly like his style, but I am aware of his abilities) but obviously his brain has been warped by everyone telling him how great he is. They really should have edited the footage better and cut down on how much Perez there was.

Rating: VID

Futurama: Bender's Big Score

Even though Futurama returned via a straight-to-DVD movie (unlike The Simpsons, which gets a ‘proper’ film), any Futurama is an excuse for rejoicing. Having watched the four series on DVD more than a few times, Bender’s Big Score was something I was looking forward to it (it’s been on my DVD rental queue for months, so I wasn't the only one). I think that the anticipation was perhaps too much.

The plot involves some aliens scamming Planet Express and taking it over. They have discovered a tattoo on Fry’s buttocks that contains the code for paradox-correcting time travel. Using this, they send Bender back in time to steal everything of value in Earth’s history. This leads to other characters doing some time travel, particularly Fry, which leads to convoluted retroactive continuity tweaks and twists, as we revisit various aspects of Futurama history. In the process, the film also manages to cameo practically all of the major supporting characters from the four series of the television show, as well as one-offs. This makes the film enjoyable for the long-term fan, but makes you wonder if they were throwing everything into this film, even though there are three more films on the way.

There is lots of funny stuff, obviously; the opening section mocking the Fox network cancelling the series was hilarious. But the film seems more concerned with the twists and turns of the time-travelling and the playing with the history of the series than making with the gags. This could me my bias – my memory of the series is the jokes rather than the playful nature of the plots. Still, it was nice to see the old team back, and the DVD has some nice bonus material, such as the comic con reading of a Futurama comic announcing the return of show and a ‘lecture’ about the mathematics in the series (it was interesting to discover that one of the writers has a PhD in mathematics). Maybe I’ll enjoy it more from rewatching it, along with all the other episodes.

Rating: VID

Film Review: Iron Man

There is a lot of sense in Marvel producing their own film versions of the superheroes. There have been some excellent films based on Marvel characters (step forward X-Men 2 and Spider-Man 2) but there have also been some awful films (Elektra and Blade: Trinity). Also, and more importantly to Marvel, the comic book film is the perfect summer blockbuster: family entertainment with special effects and comic relief, based on tested characters which have had years of fine-tuning to work out problems. Now, the only job is to deliver on the film itself, which is something that Iron Man does to almost near perfection.

This is the first Iron Man film; therefore, it has to have the origin, with a villain thrown in to show off the special FX and the coolness of a man in a flying suit of armour. This is what we get, albeit with the updated version introduced by Warren Ellis in his Extremis graphic novel: Tony Stark gets kidnapped in Afghanistan after a test of one of his new weapons, he builds the first Iron Man armour to escape and then he improves it and uses it for good, to make up for the misery his weapons have caused.

These are the details, but they are handled very well by director Jon Favreau. In this, he his helped by the presence of Robert Downey Jr on screen. He is absolutely perfect as Stark – smart, sharp, funny, slick, sexy. There has never been such spot-on casting. He has to keep you entertained on his own, such as the funny scenes where he is working on the improvements to the suit, and he makes you believe the transformation due to the realisation of what being a weapons manufacturer actually means. Favreau, being a former actor himself, allows the actors to enjoy their dialogue – the scenes between Stark and his secretary, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), sparkle with chemistry and snappy banter.

The next stage of the film is the villain for the ‘super’ fight scenes. The recent animated film tried to connect the origin story with the villain and failed (as I mentioned already); this film wisely separates the origin and the villain, using Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), Tony’s business partner. He wants the arc repulsor technology that Tony created to make more Iron Men to sell to the military, and doesn’t mind killing Tony to do it. Bridges is great in the role, playing two-faced sneakiness and the shouty bombast of a good villain to full effect without hamming it up.

An aside: the choice of Iron Man villain was always going to be difficult. They need to be something believable and grounded in the hyper-normality that the good comic book films use (thereby eliminating many of the fantastical and outré villains that Iron Man has). Also, the most renowned villain for Tony is alcohol, so using the business contemporary who wants to make money by making weapons to contrast with Tony’s new-found desire to do good is an excellent choice.

With Stane creating his own suit of armour, this leads to the big showdown, where the CGI is excellent and the spectacle of seeing two men in flying armour beating each other senseless is thoroughly entertaining. Thus, Iron Man performs as an excellent summer blockbuster AND you want to see more – this is brought home by the final line in the film from Stark (that had me smiling at its bravery and ballsy-ness) and the scene after the credits, with the perfect cameo and a line that makes me want the film that has been announced for 2011 to be ready NOW. Because, if it is going to be as good as this film, then it can’t happen soon enough.

This is a thoroughly entertaining and fun movie; there is a lovely blend of action and characterisation, where you want to see more of both the actors essaying sharp and funny dialogue AND the explodo superhero action. This film delivers it and delivers it well. It can join the likes of X-Men 2, Spider-Man 2, Sin City and Batman Begins in the pantheon of very good and enjoyable comic book movies. Now, can we please have the sequel with the same people very soon?

Rating: DAVE

Film Review: The Invincible Iron Man DVD

Just to show how up to date and topical I am not, here are my thoughts on the made-for-DVD cartoon film of Iron Man in the week in which the much-hyped Iron Man film reaches our screens. I would say this is irony, but that would be an awful pun …

Tony Stark is trying to raise an ancient Chinese city from beneath the ground; when he goes to investigate the kidnapping of his friend, Jim ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes, by the terrorist group the Jade Dragons, he is injured and is saved by a local doctor and Rhodey’s army medic training, leaving him with a piece of shrapnel in his heart. He is forced to create a weapon to destroy the city, but he makes a suit of technological armour and they flee the encampment. Meanwhile, the reason behind the city is revealed to be the return of the Mandarin, a long-dead rule of the city, and four elementals are woke to recover his rings to return him to power.

Having been framed by his father, head of Stark Enterprises, to make it look like he and Rhodey were selling weapons to the Jade Dragons, he goes to his secret office to reveal that he has been making lots of different Iron Man armours before the one in China. He takes one to fight the Elementals, which he is able to defeat, before returning to the city to stop the Mandarin, who will rise in spirit via the vessel of Li Mei, one of the Jade Dragons who befriended Tony during his capture. Tony fights off an army of terracotta warriors (which are no doubt legally different to the Xi’an Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang-di) and then a huge dragon, before confronting Li Mei, now possessed by the spirit of Mandarin and devoid of any clothes, necessitating a lot of swirling smoke and shadows to hide any hint of nudity. Rather than actually fighting or making a conscious choice in the final process, Tony doesn’t do anything apart from ask Li Mei not to be bad – a spectacularly uninteresting climax to a story. Back in the US, he buys up all available shares in Stark Enterprises so that he can have complete control and make up with his father after their friction earlier, because father–son relationships are so important.

If my slightly sarcastic tone hasn’t come through, I should state that I didn’t particularly enjoy this. I’m not slavish to the origins, but why change so much of Iron Man’s for this? Not only forcing it to tie into the story of the Mandarin plot just to be part of the narrative, but also having Tony already making lots of armour rather than having to come up with it to save his life – surely that was one of the great parts of the origin? The need for the father–son friction just seemed so cheap and melodramatic (in the comics, Tony’s parents have been dead for some time in his life, and this need for boardroom family tussles came off as really bland), and the denouement in which he plays no real part (much like Indiana Jones doesn’t do anything at the end of Raiders) seemed weak. Even the action aspect didn’t really liven things up – animation should be the perfect medium for Iron Man but the fight scenes were rather dull. It just seems that the makers of the film didn’t really get the point of the character – surely somebody could have pointed that out at some stage? I really hope the live-action Iron Man film does it better …

Rating: DA

Film Review: Doctor Strange DVD

Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme

The Master of the Mystic Arts seems like an idea that is great for animation – the cartoonists will be able to bring to life the ethereal quality of magic as envisaged by Steve Ditko and make it even more tangible, the stuff of dreams made real. However, the filmmakers seemed to have completely missed this quite important point at the heart of Doctor Strange and jazzed things up by having all the mystical folk fight with swords.

In one of the extras on the DVD, about the origins of Doctor Strange (with some nice stuff from Stan Lee and Steve Engelhart), the screenwriter for the film (Greg Johnson) talks about the process and the characters. In doing so, he reveals the extent to which he does not understand the idea behind the Sorcerer Supreme – he talks about making the other mystics having their own identifiable form of using magic, which them makes them just like the X-Men. He actually uses that analogy. And this is the guy who wrote the film, someone who admits that he read ‘most’ of the books – he obviously is not a fan of Stephen Strange and he is obviously not a fan of magic, because magic is continually downplayed throughout the film. I can only imagine what Neilalien thought about it …

The film is basically a reworking of the origin story, with the tweak of giving Stephen Strange a younger sister who he couldn’t help when she started having aneurysms as some unnecessary backstory. But the film gets it mostly right, with Strange an arrogant surgeon who loses the gift of his hands in a car crash, loses his money in an effort to heal them, and ending up in the monastery of the Ancient One in Tibet, where he eventually learns magic. All the while, Dormammu is trying to break into this dimension …

The animation style has a nice fluidity and anatomy, and magic is creatively illustrated when it is used. Strange looks good, except his hair and clothing goes a little too far into the zone of ‘New Romantic’ when he accepts his magical abilities. It would have been nice to have had the cloak, even in an updated format, but they decided against that, as well as many other classics of the Strange mythology, such as chanting (I would have liked to hear ‘By the crimson bands of Cytorrak’) and the use of magical incantations that you would expect of the Sorcerer Supreme. Having him fight Mordo with swords seems very silly when they can do bloody magic …

The film is quite enjoyable, despite the deviation from the comic book (why do the creators say how much they like the original stuff, then change it?) – I’m not saying that the film should be the books but at least be on the same page about what the concept is – and tells the story in an entertaining fashion. Just don’t expect anything too dazzling.

Rating: VID

Film Review: No Country For Old Men

Apologies for the hiccup in posting – a sick girlfriend will do that to a schedule. To get back into the swing of things, and in advance of the Oscars tonight, here are my thoughts on No Country For Old Men, which I think will win the best directing Oscars for the Coen brothers but not the best film, which will go to There Will Be Blood.


The first adaptation by the Coen brothers, this film grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shakes you until you drop. This happens from the start – Javier Bardem is arrested by the local sheriff, who takes him back to his office. As he phones his boss, we see Bardem slip his cuffed hands under his legs and use them to quietly and calmly throttle the sheriff to death, before washing his hands in the station sink. In the act, his eyes seem to be elsewhere, as if he isn’t there – a great performance of dead-eyed evil but I’m not sure if it’s the stuff of Oscars (but what do I know? As much as I enjoy watching Alan Arkin, I still can’t believe he got an Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine).

We see Josh Brolin out hunting in Texas desert; he shoots a deer but only wounds it. He follows it to kill it, only to discover the remains of a drug deal gone wrong, with nearly everyone dead. He finds the money and takes it; meanwhile, Bardem has been given the job of retrieving the money. Tommy Lee Jones is an older sheriff (who narrates the opening sequence of the film) who is investigating the deaths that seem to follow in Bardem’s wake. He’s see a lot in his life but wishes he hadn’t, including Bardem’s use of a human animal killer to murder people. Meanwhile, Brolin makes a decision to help someone that sets events in motion for the rest of the movie.

The film is a stunning piece of cinema, especially as it originates from a book by Cormac MacCarthy. There are some amazing near-silent set pieces of pure nerve-jangling suspense and thrills, told in such a cinematic style – obviously, the Coen film that never was of the prisoner of war in enemy territory that is told with almost no dialogue stuck with them more than they said. It’s incredibly daring and exceptional storytelling that never loses sense of the narrative or the characters. All the actors pull off excellent work, with Jones’ craggy face showing the heart of the idea behind the title, but the plaudits are all with the Coen brothers and Roger Deakins’ cinematography. I believe they will be worthy winners of Academy Awards tonight, well deserved after excellent bodies of work.

The only aspect that stops this film being completely perfect is the ending – it feels too much like an ending in a book rather than a film. I’m not asking for a neat resolution to the film, with characters having definable arcs – the problem is that we don’t witness a pivotal point in the story (we are shown the aftermath), which the story has been leading up to, and then we finish the film with a character having a chat with somebody we haven’t seen in the rest of the film. It seems rather odd, falling away from the rest of the film. However, even this deliberately ambiguous end doesn’t stop the (extremely violent) movie from being a superb piece of cinema.

Rating: DAVE

Film Review - Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I was in a quandary about watching Sweeney Todd. On the one hand, I enjoy the films of Tim Burton, especially those with Johnny Depp; on the other hand, I’m not a great fan of musicals. Fortunately, seeing a free preview solved the dilemma.

I had never seen the musical or even knew the story, apart from the obvious facts deduced from the title; I was intrigued after its appearance, of sorts, in Jersey Girl and Kevin Smith’s appreciation for the musical. The story is straightforward – Depp is Benjamin Barker, a talented barber with a wife and daughter, who is sent to Australia by a judge (Alan Rickman) who covets his wife and child. He returns, changing his name to Sweeney Todd, and vows vengeance. He returns to the shop he once had, above the pie shop owned by Mrs Lovett (Helen Bonham Carter), who secretly loves him still and recognises him. Setting up as a barber once more, he thinks of only getting Judge Turpin into his chair. Things get complicated when his young friend falls in love with his daughter, the ward of Judge Turpin, who moves her into an asylum to punish her for threatening to run away with the boy. But vengeance will be had, no matter what the cost …

The most notorious aspect of the story is the killing of men and them turning them into pies, and this is not ignored in the film. Men’s throats are cut and fountains of arterial blood flow on the screen. It still makes for a very bizarre musical. The music itself fits well with the theme and the film, dark and foreboding or lighter when appropriate, but the songs themselves didn’t impact. I have already forgotten the tunes and lyrics of most of the numbers, so little impact did they have. The only two that stick in the mind are the shaving face off (but that is more for Sacha Baron Cohen’s hilarious portrayal of Pirelli, which had everyone in the audience in fits of hysterics) and the duet between Mrs Lovett and Todd about turning people into pies. Still, the story is strong enough to cope with having to burst into song every so often (something that is also noticeable by its absence in the adverts for the film; no singing is shown in any of them).

The main characters are all very good, both in acting and even singing. Depp shows he can do everything, the talented bastard, and Carter is great as Mrs Lovett, pining for Todd and dreaming of a future together even after the pies and revenge. In a reunion of Harry Potter actors with Carter, Rickman and Timothy Spall as his fixer are equally good (although Rickman’s singing voice seems rather higher than one would expect based on his mellifluous speaking voice, especially in a duet with Depp).

As usual with a Burton film, it is the director who has an equally good performance. The film is shot in almost black and white, leaving room for only one colour – the shocking claret of blood. As mentioned, the film is not afraid to show the violence of the piece, as we see throats slit in front of our eyes and blood gushing everywhere. London never looked more Victorian and run down than in Burton’s vision of a bleak and dirty capital city. The camera swoops and haunts the back streets and the passionate faces (Todd in revenge, Lovett in love). It is the perfect story for Burton, one inspired by love but reeking of darkness.

The film is a powerful one, with the effects of revenge and violence being felt on all in the story (this is not a happy movie, just in case you didn’t know; it’s a tragedy but with songs) and, even though you may wish otherwise, you know how it will end. I would agree with an opinion I read – the story is strong enough and the Burton film powerful enough that the singing isn’t really necessary – but then I guess that is what makes it so different from the usual fare. It also has an unexpected turn of events that I didn’t see coming, so I can’t help but enjoy and recommend the film.

Rating: DAVE

Film Review: I Am Legend

I Am Legend starts with banal television presenter banter about baseball predictions over the studio/production company credits (to contrast the silence and lack of background music that accompanies the film) before opening on a news anchor talking to an uncredited Emma Thompson as Doctor Krippin (now there’s some sledgehammer subtlety and foreshadowing in a name) about her genetically re-engineered measles virus that has cured cancer in all the patients in her clinical trials. ‘So, have you cured cancer?’ asks the news anchor. ‘Yes’ replies Thompson. Now, this isn’t a big news show or the main item; it seems to be just a bit of filler on local news. Is that how the cure for cancer will be announced? Is that how the scientist responsible for a world-changing event will represent themselves? I think not, but it does let you know that this is a Hollywood film, notorious for their treatment of scientists.

It is the montage of shots that follow this that I Am Legend grabs your attention – a Manhattan devoid of people, cars and noise, overgrown weeds coming up from the pavement, shoulder-high grass in Central Park, deers running through the streets. It is a powerful visual, well worth the decision to change location from the book’s original Southern California – the contrast is stunning. Of course, it was pretty damn stunning (and more haunting) when 28 Days Later did it first with London, but the affect is still compelling – the best bit of Vanilla Sky was Tom Cruise running through an empty Times Square.

Into this wasteland comes Dr Robert Neville (Will Smith), the last surviving human in New York, and his dog Sam, maintaining their existence in a fortified house on Washington Square while he looks for a cure for the Krippin Virus (he is a virologist as well as a soldier), which mutated and killed 90% of the world’s population, leaving 1% immune and the remaining 9% changed into albino, ultraviolet-sensitive, flesh-eating ‘Dark Seekers’ (note the deliberate avoidance of the word ‘vampire’) who fed on the majority of survivors. By day, he exercises, he scavenges for food, gets gasoline for the generators that provide electricity for his house, hunts deer, waits at midday for any survivors who hear his constantly transmitted message, goes through the local DVD rental place alphabetically and tries to maintain his spirits and sanity when he has no human contact for the last three years.

It is in this section of the film that has real power – Smith (and the dog – great performance from an animal) gives a great performance of a driven man fraying at the edges, and the sequences where the scares are being suggested by the presence of the Dark Seekers are nerve-jangling. The impact of the scenario – what would it be like if you were the last man on Earth – actually comes through, not something a blockbuster would usually dwell on. The combination of an apocalyptic Manhattan and Smith’s reactions drive the isolation and surrealism of the experience. This is particularly impressive when you consider it is just Smith and a dog onscreen for the majority of the first half.

When the Dark Seekers enter the film, their power dissipates; Francis Lawrence should have been aware of Spielberg’s discovery on Jaws, that the absence of the monster is more powerful. It’s not the CGI that does this – visually, they are more arresting as CGI than human actors in make up – rather they can’t live up to the idea they represented when you can see them in the light. They just become generic bad guys in an action flick – compare this with 28 Days Later (which was obviously inspired by the original novel), where the low budget and the immediacy of the Rage virus have more of an impact when the infected are onscreen. The final third of the film doesn’t seem to connect to the rest of the movie, and it ends rather abruptly and not completely satisfyingly, leaving you longing for the earlier section of the movie.

There are some points that highlight the uneven quality of the film. A cute touch is the Batman/Superman logo hybrid poster for a film in Times Square. But do people stick up front pages of newspapers on their fridges which fortunately explain backplot as much as occurs in this film? Neville seems rational and lucid, even though he borders mentally unstable, but then acts completely irrationally at the very end of the film, seemingly based on the butterfly shape that appears on a screen and a tattoo (but seemingly in tone with the end of the novel). Definitely not a legendary film, but a lot to enjoy in places.

Rating: VID

Film Review: The Golden Compass

This isn’t an anti-American thing, but I don’t like the title ‘The Golden Compass’. I can understand the need for a more universal title for Northern Lights (the first part of His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman) but The Golden Compass seems rather derogatory and denigrating towards the alethiometer. It could be just me but it comes across as a kid’s name for it (which might be what happens in the book – I can’t recall exactly) and belittles it. Which is a coincidence, because the film belittles the book. See what I did there?

The Golden Compass the film is the (faithful) adaptation of the plot of the book, not the book itself. In both, Lyra Belacqua is a ward of Jordan College, Oxford, niece of famous explorer Lord Asriel, who is given one of the remaining alethiometers before she leaves with Mrs Coulter to go to London. She then escapes to rescue her friend Roger from the Gobblers, with the aid of the Gyptians and the armoured polar bear Ioren Brynison and aeronaut Lee Scoresby and witch Serafina Pekkala. But that’s it. It’s like someone made a film of the treatment. The book is very plot-heavy, but there is a lot more going on in the book (which makes it so enjoyable) that couldn’t be contained within a film.

It is understandable that the book would be adapted into a visual medium, apart from the plot – the world in which Lyra et al. live is one in which a part of their soul is externalised in the form of an animal of the opposite sex (a daemon) that can change into other animal shapes until they mature (around puberty). This is a fantastic visual, something which the CGI of the film pulls off with élan. Add to this a fight between armoured polar bears, a steampunk alternate England and a fight at the end which includes flying witches with bows and arrows, and you have a combination that deserves to be seen as well as read. Unfortunately, 2 hours doesn’t allow anytime to enjoy it all and it comes off as rushed. People don’t seem to interact, they just spout exposition at each other because there’s no time.

There are some good things – the daemons are exquisite (such as when Lyra’s daemon, Pantalaimon, has his fur turn white when talking about going to the north), the wonderful fight between the armoured polar bears, the final fight scene, the production design of the world in which they live – and 12-year-old Dakota Blue Richards is incredibly impressive as Lyra, especially as she on-screen throughout. Nicole Kidman is perfect as the icy Mrs Coulter (Pullman was right when he could imagine no one else in the role), but she comes off best in the adult roles, with more than effectively cameos for the likes of Daniel Craig (as Asriel), Eva Green (perfectly cast as the ethereal Pekkala), or Derek Jacobi or Christopher Lee as members of the Magisterium.

However, the film never really gels into something special, despite all the good ingredients. The rush of the plot, the lack of substance and, unfortunately, the not-quite-up-to-the-job direction of Weitz (out of his depth on such an epic scale) leave barely an impression at the end of the running time, especially as they end before the book does, robbing the film and the character of Lyra depth and maturation. I can see this as a film enjoyed by children for the spectacle and the presence of a believable and fascinating leading young character, but it will look odd in future viewings on Christmas television when the ending suggests future instalments that don’t arrive (based on US box office), especially as Weitz has gone out of his way to include all the set-ups for the next film.

Rating: VID

Neil Gaiman Week: Stardust (The Film)

Finally, here on Neil Gaiman Week, we come to the raison d’etre for a week of posts about Neil Gaiman – the film adaptation of Stardust arriving in the UK. Even though the film has been promoted on other factors – the ‘Britishness’ of the film, the director (who happens to be married to a supermodel), the stars involved – it is the author of the source material that has been the centre of much of the media coverage. And hurrah for that.

As with most adaptations, the film is a streamlined version of the book. Tristran Thorn (Charlie Cox) learns of his heritage (that his he was born of a union between his father and a woman on the other side of the wall) in the first five minutes of the film, before he has promised Victoria (a perfectly snooty Sienna Miller) that he will bring her back the fallen star to win her hand in marriage. Using the Babylon candle left him by his mother, he travels to the star, to find that it is a woman called Yvaine (Clare Danes). Around her neck, she wears a chain with a jewel, the one that was thrown by the dying king of Stormhold (Peter O’Toole) and which knocked from the sky, the one he has told his remaining sons to retrieve if they wish to become the next king. Three witches are also after the star, for the heart will provide them with another amount of long life – the oldest (and craftiest) of the three (played with relish and enthusiasm by Michelle Pfeiffer) has taken the last of the previous star heart to make her young and powerful again so that she may retrieve the heart. Tristran has seven days to bring back Yvaine (he has her tied to him with a magical chain) while the others chase her too …

And so the race is on. Along the way, they meet Robert De Niro as Captain Shakespeare, pretending to be a fierce pirate but actually a sophisticated gay man (note: De Niro is stunt casting, making the contrast between the gruff pirate and the effeminate reality more shocking and amusing, but he really can’t play gay to save his life), Ricky Gervais playing Ricky Gervais as a fence, and Mark Strong as the remaining prince (after he has killed most of the others – there is a lovely bait-and-switch when we see Rupert Everett enter as one of the princes, expecting him to be the hero, only to be dispatched by Strong by pushing him out of the top of the castle; after, he joins the remaining princes as a ghostly Greek chorus to the events, unable to have peace in death until the Stormhold crown is settled. It has to be said that there is not enough of the princes, played as they are by British comedy types – David Walliams, Adam Buxton, Mark Heap, Julian Rhind-Tutt).

The film doesn’t always work – in trying to capture Midnight Run and Princess Bride, the ‘banter’ between Tristran and Yvaine is rather forced and counterintuitive: how does a star have sarcastic and quippy retorts? It’s necessary, as the film condenses the time frame of the book from several months to a week, so we have to go from initial hatred to love in a short time, but it isn’t always believable. However, the sum of the parts make up for the individual deficiencies. Pfeiffer and Danes do very good English accents (only De Niro doesn’t bother), the princes are very funny, the magical aspect (that problematic fantasy stuff for the general public) works really well – I particularly loved the glowing hair motif for Danes – and the changes to the source material fit well into a film. Most impressively of all, you are left with a wonderfully warm feeling when the film ends – who can ask for more from a film?

Rating: VID

Film Notes: The Fountain

I’m not sure if I understood The Fountain, or completely liked it, but that doesn’t stop it from being an interesting and beautiful-looking film. I’ll describe what I thought what the film was about: in the present, Hugh Jackman is a scientist working on a cure for brain tumours, specifically for his cancer-stricken wife (Rachel Weisz), but uses a Guatemalan plant extract that seems to reverse signs of ageing but doesn’t affect tumours; 500 years in the past, Jackman is a Conquistador on a mission for his queen (Weisz) to discover the Tree of Life in the New World; 500 years in the future, Jackman is an astronaut in an ecosphere spacecraft with the living tree, haunted by visions of Weisz. Present-day Weisz dies, past Jackman gets stabbed but finds the Tree of Life, and the living tree dies in the future – and then it gets into the stuff I’m not sure I understood.

This isn’t a film in the usual sense of narrative structure; if anything, it is a tone poem (whatever that means) about love and death and how we deal with it. It looks spectacular, especially with such a small budget; each time zone has thematic visual elements incorporated into the design. Jackman and Weisz are good, as always, and Darren Aronofsky continues to make interesting and well-made films (after Pi and Requiem for a Dream), this time using Weisz (girlfriend and mother of their child) as a muse. I’m not sure if I can recommend the film because I just wanted to see it because Jackman, as the astronaut, does the Chen-style Taiji compact cannon fist from formulated by Ren Guang-Yi (friend to Lou Reed) – see it here (I’m Chen-style Taiji practitioner myself). Not really a professional stance now, is it?

Rating: VID

Film Notes: Inside Man

In these times of studios fleecing audiences with dreary sequels, dire films of television shows and a general lack of quality, it’s really nice to see a piece of well-made, entertaining cinema. Inside Man is a well-told heist movie, with a nice twist, which has good actors (Clive Owen as the brains behind the heist, Denzel Washington as the negotiator at the scene, Jodie Foster as a behind-the-scenes fixer for the rich and powerful) in a well-directed film (Spike Lee making a non-Spike Lee Joint).

As with all good heist films, the trick is in showing a well-planned heist but keeps you guessing as to how it will end; this is achieved here by turning the heist into a hostage situation, kept going while the bank robbers appear to dig in a back room after stealing something from a specific deposit box that is not listed in the bank records. The setting is believable, the characters are engaging and Lee handles the whole thing like a pro (even throwing in a visual bit with Washington rushing towards the front of the bank without moving, as the camera fixes on him while he doesn’t move but the background does – a bit like a SnorriCam, but not attached to the body). Chiwitel Ejiofor continues his deserved ascent (co-starring with Owen again after Children of Men, he was in Serenity, and he’s going to be in American Gangster with Washington) with a small role as Washington’s partner, Willem Dafoe has a small role as the police captain in charge, and Christopher Plummer plays a powerful old man with a secret with ease. A decent cast in a decent film by a decent director? Will wonders never cease …

Rating: DAVE

Film Review: The Bourne Ultimatum

At long last, here we have the third film in a sequence that is very good and is worthy of its predecessors. After a summer of Spider-man 3, Pirates 3, Shrek 3 (and X-Men 3 before that), it was getting quite depressing watching the third instalment of a film franchise. They were all long and boring and devoid of the magic that made the earlier films (or only the first, in the case of Pirates) special. The Bourne Ultimatum not only continues the special attributes of the previous films, but it builds on the story and enhances it.

Bourne (Matt Damon) has regained his memory, lost a love, revenged that loss, and obtained closure on the first assassination he performed. He was last seen telling Pamela Landey (Joan Allen) to take a rest after she has told him his name. However, this film starts just after Bourne has finished in Russia near the end of the second film – he is escaping the authorities while badly injured after the events that preceded it. Talk about starting with a bang.

A Guardian reporter is investigating Bourne and the Treadstone project, but his phone is being tapped by the CIA, which leads to him being targeted by them at the same time as Bourne contacts him to find out more. This leads to the best use of Waterloo station in a film ever. Bourne is now looking for the people who trained him to be the killer he became …

The amazing thing about this film is the way it keeps the tension all the way through the running time. The number of thrilling set pieces that maintain this is incredible. The direction by Greengrass, and the use of handheld cameras to bring the directness of the action to the screen, mean that the immediacy of the story is always there. This is matched by the commitment of Damon’s performance (in an action film, remember – the reinvention of the Bond franchise took careful notes when watching the Bourne films). This means that the excitement is believable, even if Bourne is almost superhuman in his abilities.

The other amazing aspect is to have the scene at the end of the second film turn up in the middle of this film – which leads to the final third of the film in New York. This is genius. The interconnection in the films has been important in all of them; they’re almost not a trilogy in the strictest sense – it’s just one big story with definite end points. Exciting, dramatic, tense, thrilling, superb – The Bourne Ultimatum is probably the best blockbuster of the season.

Rating: DAVE

Film Review: Death Proof

Even with all the fake scratches, the added-on start to the film, the jumps in film, the loops of a small section, the black and white scene, the bad sound – this is still a good-looking movie. What it is not is a good movie. This is a shame, because you hope for more from Quentin Tarantino.

This could be due to Quentin himself; he certainly gives good talk, chatting up his desire to only make the best movie he can make, that it has to be a great version of the genre it is in, the passion he has for cinema in all its form, the understanding he brings. This is infectious and inspires belief in the product. However, his decision to make this film – a homage? A pastiche? Inspired by? – based on his enjoyment of the grindhouse flicks of his youth seems out of step with his words. This film isn’t cashing the cheques his mouth is writing, as it were.

If you haven’t seen the film, you may think that it is supposed to be about cars and old-school car chases. It isn’t. It’s a film about girls talking. And talking. And talking. The actresses all do a great job on the dialogue, smoothly delivering the long discussions and Tarantino-talk, in that filmic style that he has set in place since Reservoir Dogs. The content of the dialogue, however, isn’t up to much. It’s girls talking about the sort of stuff Tarantino thinks girls talk about in the manner of his previous films (I remember an interview where he boasted of a female friend telling him that the conversations were exactly the same as her girlfriends, and how he thought that was great praise – er, no, Quentin, it isn’t). There are a few funny lines (actually by Kurt Russell as the wonderfully named Stuntman Mike) but this isn’t the great dialogue of his first three films.

The story isn’t particularly absorbing either. The first half sees three girls talk a lot in a car, then talk a lot in a bar, stalked by Stuntman Mike, who follows them out at the end of the night and crashes into them (in a scene viewed in several speeds and from different angles), with the alibi of him being sober and the girls being drunk and stoned. The film cuts to later, where we meet some new girls, who talk a lot in a different car, then talk a lot in a diner (in an admittedly well-done single take), then chased by Stuntman Mike before turning the tables and chasing him. We’re not talking a fascinating narrative here. It was a strange experience – being bored in a Tarantino film, wondering when anything is going to happen.

There are some good things. The performances of the major characters are good. Russell is great – there is a great moment in the film, where he gives a great look straight to the camera, a grin on his face, when you both realise what is happening next – and the girls do a good job (even Zoe Bell, Uma Thurman’s stunt double on Kill Bill, does a good job as herself in the film). QT shoots the whole affair with his usual skill – I may not have the hard-on for cars and car chases that he and others have, but you know you’re not watching a shitty, low budget, ‘70s B-movie, even if that is the idea. And the final payoff made me laugh like an idiot, which was nearly enough to make up for the previous two hours.

These things don’t make up for the poor things. Firstly, Quentin should not be allowed to be on screen – to be frank, he’s not an attractive chap, with his huge forehead, funny chin and cavernous mouth. And his acting doesn’t really qualify as acting. Then there’s the feeling of inactivity the film exudes. There is no sense of tension or drama to keep the film’s momentum. Once the car chase comes along, things pick up but it depends on how much you like looking at close-ups of beaten-up cars driving fast down a Californian road. And please quit it with the foot fetish thing already – it’s like he read about Hitchcock putting his sexual preferences into his films, making him an auteur, so he has to do the same. The bizarrest poor aspect was the referencing of car films within the film; normally, QT will bore everyone in interviews with all the films he has seen and which ones are the best for the type of thing he is doing in the film – here, he has the characters say it, not once but twice. That’s just lazy.

I hope Quentin enjoys this film and thinks it’s worthy to be part of his canon, because I didn’t. An uninteresting disappointment – I wonder what it was like when it was still part of Grindhouse …

Rating: DA

Film Notes: Children of Men

I’ve been planning on posting my thoughts on the bunch of DVDs I’ve watched recently – not full reviews, just some reactions and comments – but I saw Children of Men last night and couldn’t contain the urge to write about how fantastic a film it is.

I've mentioned before how great a job Alfonso Cuaron did on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (and how he should direct all the remaining films), so I shouldn’t have been so surprised at the quality of the film. Yet it managed to amaze, enthral, entertain and affect me in ways I haven’t experienced from all those films I’ve been catching up on via LoveFilm.

Children of Men is set 20 years in the future. Due to an unexplained reason, there have been no births in nearly 20 years. The film starts with news coverage of the death of the world’s youngest man, an 18-year-old Argentinian, who was stabbed. Clive Owen plays Theo, a man heavy with regret and despair, who walks out of the coffee shop (where the television is playing this news), which blows up. That’s an attention grabber.

He goes to visit his friend Jasper (a delightful performance by Michael Caine), a former news photographer who lives in the country with his wife (who is in a catatonic state after possibly being tortured during her reporting days) and grows and smokes his own marijuana – his new blend is Strawberry Cough. An aside – a genius bit of casting, having Caine as a pot-smoking hippy; in a film about serious issues, he brings warmth and humour, and it is possibly the most delightful use of the ‘pull my finger’ in a film.

Upon his return to London, Theo is kidnapped by a rebel group called The Fishes; it turns out that his ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore) is one of their higher-ups, and needs Theo’s help to get someone to safety. Theo used to be an activist himself – it was where he and Julian met – but he lost the faith when their son died during the flu epidemic. However, Theo has a cousin who can get the transit papers (the UK is under strict control, and illegal immigrants are rounded up into a camp at Bexhill) and Julianne trusts him to do this vital job – to take the first pregnant women to the coast to meet with The Human Project, who could help save the human race …

Everything about this film is exquisite. The script, based loosely on a novel by PD James but more a starting point for the story from Cuaron, is razor sharp – the necessary information is provided as economically as possible for you understand what is going on and to become emotionally engaged with the characters. There are large sections without dialogue – the story is told fully through the medium of cinema. Cuaron’s direction is beautiful – the camera flows through the rubble and the dirt of this future version of humanity. There is an astounding single take sequence near the end, a battle in Bexhill, which lasts nearly 10 minutes and is breathtaking, including a contrasting peace and quiet that suddenly develops in the middle of the shooting and shouting. There are many scenes where the camera doesn’t cut but moves fluidly around the action, giving a sense of heightened reality to the situation. It allows the film to exist in its own perfectly realised world, grabbing you and never letting go from start to finish.

(It helps the viewing experience to be a Londoner – the city is used as a backdrop for a lot of the early film, and it looks so familiar yet so alien. Parts of the city have been transformed to reflect the despair that grips the world, even though the UK seems to be the only country that is functioning on a relatively normal level, other major countries suffering unnamed problems, and it hammers home the idea of what happens to a society that doesn’t have children. Although, in some places, the production team didn’t have to work too hard to make the location look even grubbier …)

This is a remarkable piece of film that strengthens my opinion of Cuaron’s abilities, makes me believe that Owen can be a decent actor and reinvigorated my love of cinema and its power. If you have not seen this film, do yourself a favour and see it immediately.

Rating: DAVE

Film Notes: In-Flight Films (Part 3)

You'll be happy to know this is the last in the series. Nine films on four flights (including one where I slept throughout) is quite impressive, even if I do say so myself.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
(or, as I call it, At Wit’s End – I'm so funny ...)

I really didn’t like the second film, even advising you not to see it in cinemas. I took my own advice and didn’t go anywhere near it. However, getting to see for free the end of something I had already paid to see proved too irresistible – I blame the high altitude.

Sluggish. Bloated. Pointless. Tedious. Disappointing. All words that come to mind to describe this sad waste of 3 hours but don’t take away the heartache of having actually watched it. I feel let down by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio – they have written some good movies and dispensed much wisdom about films and the film biz and screenwriting on their excellent website, Wordplay, so it’s contradictory that the script for this film is such a mess. Nothing feels organic about this; it isn’t a film that demands telling or watching. The plot is so pointless – see Rod Hilton’s Abridged Script for a further dismantling – I’m amazed the film lasts for so long. An anecdote from Keira ‘The Chin’ Knightley tells of acting scared in the first few takes with Chow Yun Fat; the director asks her what she is doing acting scared. Well, she says, he’s just kidnapped me and I don’t want to be here. To which Verbinski replies, you haven’t BEEN kidnapped. The script, supposedly for the second half of a film that was being made at the same time, wasn’t near ready and nobody knew what the hell was going on at any particular time. And it certainly feels like it.

There is nothing to recommend about this film. Chow Yun Fat is wasted in two scenes. Bloom and The Chin seem even more wooden. Even Depp can’t liven things up with his over-the-top turn as Jack Sparrow – even he feels tired with it all. The action scenes are inert and the climax of the film is so stupid and blatant in a grab for a spin-off/sequel that you actually feel a little dirty inside. Please avoid this film.

Rating: DA

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Catch and Release

Justification for watching this film:
1. It has Kevin Smith in it
2. I like romcoms
3. It was free to watch on an airflight

Admittedly, it does have an intriguing set up for a film – the groom dies just before the wedding and the bride then discovers secrets about him afterwards – but that’s a huge hill to climb back from to get to the romance. The comedy is mainly down to Kevin Smith in the ‘fat friend/sidekick’ role, which he handles pretty well. As for the romance, we are presented with two options for Jennifer Garner: the quiet best friend of the groom who is stable and genuinely nice; or the annoying, smug tit (and friend of the groom) who shags a waitress in the bathroom at the wake and doesn’t recover in our standing for the rest of the movie. So, when she ends up with the latter (after the obligatory ‘misunderstanding/break up/go after him to show feelings’ turn of events, plus an awkward oration of affection from the quiet best friend so that he can be discarded), you feel cheated – there is nothing to suggest that they would make a good couple. It also doesn’t help that the romantic line at the end is the same as in Clerks II – ‘What took you so long?’ – and the difference between the great delivery of Rosario Dawson and the bland delivery of Tim Olyphant is astronomical, and just highlights the chasm between the two.

Rating: DA

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Blades of Glory

Will Ferrell in mostly plot-less comedy that is an excuse for him to ad lib? Amusing, not great but hysterical in places (see Anchorman or Talladega Nights). Will Ferrell in comedy where the plot is more important? Not so funny (see Bewitched or Old School). Blades of Glory falls into the latter camp. Seeing Ferrell and Jon Heder (basically Napoleon Dynamite in a blond wig) together on the ice in their lycra is very, very funny. Outside of that, the film bumbles along, seemingly satisfied that the concept alone (of two men skating as a pairs team at the Olympics) will be enough to carry them through. They are wrong. Basically, if you watch this on DVD, fast forward through the film except where you see the two of them on the ice rink in front of the crowd.

Rating: DA

Film Notes: In-Flight films (Part 2)

As with before, In-Flight Film reviews come with the caveat of being watched in a cylindrical tube 33,000 feet in the air on the back of the seat of the annoying twat in front who seems to have a constant twitch and likes to recline. A lot.

Next

I’m obviously reaching a stage in my life where I’m becoming more sensitive to the age gap between romantic pairs in films. I’m not talking about the nausea-inducing gap of Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment, which is the extreme of the standard Hollywood practice of putting young women with their ageing stars. In Next, Nicolas Cage, 43, and Jessica Biel, 25, have sex and develop a deep romantic bond (which is important to the plot – Cage’s character can see two minutes into the future, except where it concerns Biel’s character, the vision of his meeting with her coming well in advance of this limit, thus being a sign of true love. Or something.) Now, while I have no doubt that movie star Nic Cage can get women 20 years younger than him to sleep with him, I find it off-putting when watching a film about fictional characters who aren’t film stars. All I could think about was the age gap and the silly hair that Cage has in the film in an effort to make him look young enough so that it isn’t creepy when he beds Biel.

The film is not too bad – there are some nice moments with Cage using his future-viewing abilities, such as the escape from a casino near the start, and the plot (about some nasty terrorists planning to explode a stolen nuclear bomb [are there any other kind?] in America) moves along quite smoothly. Cage, Biel and Julianne Moore don’t embarrass themselves, and cross-dressing director Lee Tamahori handles things well. It is nothing dazzling but it’s not quite as bad as you might have heard (especially for something based on a Philip K Dick novel – he has been abused worse in the past), and I quite liked the ending. Satisfactory in-flight entertainment.

Rating: VID

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Fracture

This wasn’t a first-choice (or even second-choice) film for me, but I didn’t understand the complexities of the airlines system for which films are shown on which flights in which order. But I thought I could bear to watch Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling face-off against each other (with English actresses Rosamund Pike and Fiona Shaw [Petunia Dursley!] doing American accents). And, although they were interesting to watch, this thriller – about Hopkins shooting his wife but getting away with it even though he confessed because the arresting detective was sleeping with his wife and they couldn’t find the gun – hinges on a twist which is so unbelievably obvious that I spent the rest of the movie saying to myself, ‘I really hope that the whole film doesn’t revolve around THAT plot point’. (Yes, I can speak in upper case.) Still, Hopkins plays nasty with ease and Gosling is good in the Tom Cruise role of arrogant hot-shot learning to do things properly, so it could have been worse. If only it hadn’t been so predictable …

Rating: DA

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Becoming Jane

In contrast to English actresses doing American accents, we have an American doing English. Even though this is a right of passage for an upcoming American actress, Anne Hathaway does the accent well – this is necessary in a film about the very English writer Jane Austen.

Basically, this film is a ‘Shakespeare in Love’ for Jane Austen, using a typical Jane Austen plot for the movie – Jane is a proto-feminist who is fancied by the rich nephew of the local matriarch (Maggie Smith) but she wants to marry for love, like her mum (Julie Walters) to her poor reverend father (James Cromwell). Along comes Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy), who rocks her world even though they don’t initially like each other. But they can’t be together.

I’m perhaps being a little flippant with the plot summary, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the film. On the contrary, it was extremely watchable and well-acted – the chemistry between Hathaway and McAvoy is palpable (particularly the scene where they dance – incredibly erotically charged), and the story (if perhaps not completely true – the filmmakers don’t intend it to be a biopic) is emotionally engaging and believable. There are moments of humour and drama and sadness – exactly what you want from a film of this sort.

Rating: DAVE

Film Notes: In-Flight Films (Part 1)

I know I said I wouldn’t talk about the China trip, but this is only tangential – films watched while flying there and back.

I know that watching movies on the back of somebody’s chair isn’t quite the experience that most filmmakers want for their product, but it’s still a valid way to view them (even if they are full screen and have been edited to remove swearing, violence and sex that might shock some child sitting next to you – as if) and make snarky comments about on your blog.

Having said that, Emirates provide good in-flight entertainment, especially on their 777s, where you can select your film from a huge choice and can pause, fast-forward, etc., whenever you want. So, I’ll talk about the films I saw in chronological order for the sake of some sort of organisation.


Shooter

I really liked the book, Point of Impact. Seriously. Stephen Hunter wrote one of the best thrillers I’ve read, with a great sense of ‘men doing what has to be done’ throughout the book. I think the book might have been recommended by Garth Ennis in the letter column of Preacher, which should give you an idea of the macho-yet-sensitive vibe.

Mark Wahlberg is a former marine sniper who now lives alone in the woods. He is charmed by Danny Glover into helping them prevent an assassination attempt by scoping out the sniper shot, only for him to be set up and framed for killing of a priest on the same diaz as the president. He goes on the run to prove his innocence and get the men who set him up.

This is a great set-up for a film – Hunter was a film critic himself (winning a Pulitzer prize for it) – and the book reads very cinematically, but without seeming like an embellished screenplay. However, the film misses the depth of the Bob Lee Swagger character by going for the young man able to do the running around – the book has Swagger as Vietnam vet with a hip from his last mission as a marine who is old and bitter and seasoned, living alone with his dog. It grounds the story in experience and regret, rather than the film having Wahlberg’s ‘three years later’ version of the character. As such, it goes for the action stakes more highly but Antoine Fuqua doesn’t create anything special, so it loses on both fronts.

Rating: VID

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Shrek the Third

In writing this, I’m desperately trying to remember the film and failing. Shrek was a delightful panacea to Disney’s saccharine output, and Shrek 2 was just plain funny. But this was just awful. Not Shark Tale awful, but it felt worse in comparison to its predecessors. Starting off in dinner theatre probably wasn’t a good start, and it just rolled along clunkily from there. I don’t remember laughing; I might have smirked occasionally. A boring story about Shrek getting Artie (as in King Arthur) to take over the throne because he doesn’t want it, while Prince Charming gets the all the bad folk of Far, Far Away to rebel. Snoozeville.

Rating: DA

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Waitress

I’ve never seen Felicity, so the only time I have seen Keri Russell was dying from a bomb in her brain at the beginning of MI:3. Bit of a change – here she plays a waitress in a pie shop (but who also creates new pie concepts as well) with a thoroughly unpleasant husband who gets her pregnant after getting her drunk, and she doesn’t want the baby. She starts an affair with her doctor, the ever-watchable Nathan Fillion, who is also married.

This is a strange little movie, existing in its own world and creating an unusual and unique atmosphere. It looks like it wants to be a traditional romcom, with the two lovers going off together, but it veers away from the cosier ending (although the plot twist that allows our heroine to follow her dream of going to the pie-making contest is telegraphed). However, it does provide a narratively satisfying conclusion for the character, making a positive choice in her relationship with her abusive husband, so you can forgive some of the strange detours the story takes with other characters in the film.

It’s also strange to watch the film knowing that the filmmaker, Adrienne Shelley, who wrote, directed and acted in the film, was tragically killed after the movie was made. Still, she left a mark in this charming film and in the beautiful scene where Russell recognises that Fillion’s odd doctor actually likes her and she smiles no matter what …

Rating: VID

Film Notes: Transformers

It seems almost churlish to ‘review’ Transformers – a film about giant robots that turn into vehicles and fight each other. I mean, that summary says it all, doesn’t it?

That is not to say it is a great film but it is a good film and, more importantly, very enjoyable. It is probably the greatest film based on people’s nostalgia for a cartoon series created to advertise a line of Japanese toys, ever.

I should point out that I’m not a Transformers geek; I’m the wrong age to have got into the cartoon, and I don’t really have any strong feelings about the whole Transformers canon (cartoon, comic books, animated movie) apart from thinking that the idea of big fuck-off robots that transform is genius.

Therefore, I had no preconceptions going into this film. I just wanted to see how cool CGI could make the Transformers look on screen. This attitude meant I was pleasantly surprised. Not only do the Transformers look amazing (my girlfriend and I spent the trip home pointing at cars and saying, ‘Is that a Transformer?’), but the film is entertaining and funny (and deliberately so) and well made. It could possibly be the best film that Michael Bay has made.

The story starts off by introducing us to Sam Witwicky, played by Shia LeBoeuf, who is trying to flog his explorer grandfather’s old things to his school mates in order to help buy his first car. When his dad takes him to buy it, the car chooses him and it turns out to be a Transformer. Due to the necessities of a plot, Sam is in possession of an item (his grandfather’s glasses) which contain a map to the location of the All-Spark (which can create life). The Decepticons (boo, hiss) want it to destroy Earth and the Autobots (hurrah) want to stop them. And that’s about all you need to know, really.

There is some side story, which basically tries to explain what is going on in context of the rest of the ‘real’ world, with a far-too-attractive young girl doing sound analysis for the Pentagon on the hacking the Decepticons do to locate the All-Spark and explaining everything (and not being deported to Guantanamo Bay), but that section of the film is not interesting or necessary and verges on the slightly annoying on occasion, stretching belief to breaking point. Anyway, plot mechanics aren’t important – the MacGuffin is the glasses, which have a map to the All-Spark, but they don’t matter in the slightest because the All-Spark is not actually at the location on the glasses (the government-funded Sector 7 already have it, along with the frozen Megatron, at a secret location), so that was a waste of time and effort.

However, you don’t mind. You are being entertained by the humour and charm of LeBeouf and the sight of robots transforming into cars and lorries and helicopters and planes, and then fighting (there is a scene where Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots, punches one of the Decepticons so hard it knocks out his eye before Prime sticks a sword extension thingy from his arm into the Decepticon’s head – now that’s what I call family fun). The film is a visual treat – the transforming looks stunning and the robots look real enough to believe in, so everything else is almost eclipsed. They even manage to instil some character into Bumblebee (loved the use of radio music for his voice as a source of jokes), which comes into play at the end, and the annoying Decepticon spy robot (who sounds like a cross between a Jawa and Jabba the Hutt's little creature).

Fortunately, LeBoeuf keeps you connected to the film as the very believable human lead, with great delivery and poise in the middle of a big action flick. Megan Fox, who plays his love interest but is also handy with car mechanics (what a bit of luchk), has the misfortune to be incredibly gorgeous (as exclaimed by Sam’s mother in the film, in a very funny scene in Sam’s bedroom); she has a beautiful face and a stunning body (Bay lets the camera linger over her whenever possible), and she has to work the most to remind you that she is also acting rather well in the scenes with Sam. Of the supporting cast, John Turturro has the most fun as one of the top people in Sector 7, realising that you have to act big when you are playing second fiddle to CGI robots.

And it’s the robots that work, and work well. The camera swoops and swirls around them during the transformations, as hundreds of pieces of metal swoosh and clank and whirr in giddying jigsaw puzzle of configuration, and you believe that they are existing in the scene with the actors. Watching this is a joy of mindless action; explosions and chases and punches and mid-air transformations keep you constantly dizzy with excitement. You can’t ask for more than that. In the same way that Pirates of the Caribbean was an entertaining film from an unlikely source, Transformers is a dementedly enjoyable (if not brilliant) movie.

Rating: DAVE

Film Notes: Something’s Gotta Give

Written and directed by Nancy Meyers

I don’t know why I can’t stop watching romantic comedy films. It’s some sort of strange weakness. Perhaps it’s my lack of understanding of romantic impulses, the inventiveness of the ideas, the magic of the moment (even though I realise that it is not real – it is a lie about the thrill of the beginning of a relationship, the connection that drives the love, something which wanes in later life but film makes us believe that it is the only reason for two people being together). Like the films tell us, there are some things we cannot control.

My feeble attempt at justifying watching this was the cast – Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Amanda Peet, Keanu Reeves, John Favreau, Frances McDormand, all in one film. That’s gotta be good, doesn’t it?

Jack plays a rich, eternal bachelor who is dating Peet, the daughter of Keaton’s divorced playwright. The mismatched couple go to Keaton’s place in the Hamptons for a naughty weekend, only for Keaton and her sister (a completely wasted McDormand, even if it is nice to watch in anything – well, except for Aeon Flux, perhaps) to be there. Nicholson than has a heart attack and is forced by the local doctor, Reeves, to convalesce at Keaton’s house. During this time, the animosity that existed between Nicholson and Keaton develops into something more, only for silly plot machinations to get in the way so that there can be an excessively romantic ending in Paris.

The film is a traditional romcom but it’s made more interesting by the ‘What if … ?’ factor of the situation – what if Jack Nicholson stopped running around with women much younger than him and had a relationship with a woman he loved? (It’s a bit like the What If concept behind Notting Hill being the drive behind the story.) The role seems based on Jack, his non-commital nature, this charm, his obsession with younger women, yet with a sensitivity. The realness he brings to the role stops the character being one-dimensional. Similarly, Keaton brings an authority to her role, and the two of them share an amazing chemistry on screen – when it’s just the two of them in the ‘finding love’ stage of the film, their scenes are electric and natural, particularly in the beach scenes; it’s an absolute joy to watch, seeing two pros working their magic. It’s a shame that the film has to split them up with the story engine to get them back at the end – the film loses its sparkle when they are apart.

The rest of the cast are not exactly hard to watch but they don’t get well served. Reeves, who is used to stamp his character with an immediate sexiness but nothing else, is wasted and is not a natural in the romance role. But this is indicative of the casting – why is McDormand used in the small role of the sister other than to make it more real in the limited screen time? Favreau has about three scenes and five lines. Peet is a little more involved but it’s mostly as an excuse for Keaton’s character to come to New York just so she can see Nicholson with a younger woman after they have connected so that she can feel spurned and then write a play about their relationship and start something with Reeves doctor (who is infatuated with her, in a slightly stalker way).

Keaton give a very emotional performance – and not just for the nude shot, which didn’t seem necessary; the build-up to the joke had made it obvious that N