Reviews - 2007

1408

An old-fashioned haunted house story starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, both of whom are highly watchable here - especially Cusack. He plays Mike Enslin - a journalist cum novelist who stays in reportedly haunted locations in order to debunk the supernatural events surrounding them. When he turns up to check into room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel, the manager tries strenuously to dissauade him from staying there lest he succumb to the evil powers in the room. Of course Enslin ignores his advice and then the fun begins. This is quite an effective ghost story where the tension builds slowly then gathers a head of steam until the final third is utter pandemonium (which is where the film differs wildly from the source material). The short story is a very effective piece of supernatural fiction with a rather perfunctory seeming ending - it was all rather flat and rushed, but the film version is on super strength steroids and I found it more satisfying on the whole. However I did come away from the film with a vague feeling of not knowing what the hell had just happened for the last ninety minutes or so.

3:10 To Yuma

I've always admired James Mangold as a director. He doesn't pile in with the big punches and smash you over the head with whatever point he's trying to make. He usually makes films that are quite reserved and quiet, and makes his point far more effectively for it. 3:10 To Yuma - a remake of the 1957 film - is a good film by all standards, but it's certainly not a great film. There are some very good performances - Christian Bale is as good as always, and Russell Crowe is even better but I was a bit disappointed by the end of it all because I couldn't really get my head round the characters' motivations most of the time. In fact the whole concept of the film - taking a prisoner across country where he's eventually to be hanged didn't seem to make a lot of sense; considering all the random bloodshed along the way it really would have been a much better idea to just shoot him in the head and deliver him to the authorities dead - it would have saved an awful lot of death and misery for all concerned. Still, I wouldn't be too hard on it - I've never been much of a Western fan but it's a noble effort for a dying genre.

American Gangster

Ridley Scott knows a thing or two about making movies. That fact in itself doesn't make this some kind of masterpiece - on the contrary, it's a quality product from a technical point of view, but no more than that. Denzel Washington puts in the kind of effortlessly good performance that everyone's come to expect - he's a class act, and as far as the acting goes this is Washington's film. The problem I have with this film is that it follows the same old Hollywood Film School Formula: We see Crowe's story unfold in scenes 1,3,5,7; meanwhile Washington's story is unfolding in scenes 2,4,6,8, and they will meet near the end because their objectives conflict with each other. Standard, painting-by-numbers stuff. That's annoying, but what's even more annoying is the fact that every scene each of these characters is in simply serves to illustrate to the viewer that Washington will not back away from a fight, and that Crowe cannot be bought off. We're not allowed to think anything else about them because Ridley Scott feeds us just enough information to enable us to form the opinion he wants us to form of the characters, and really there has to be more to characterisation than that. There should be more scope for assessing these men objectively. It would give the whole film more meaning and credibility if the characters weren't so one-dimensional. And so it goes...technically it's a competent film, but the actors are not characters - they're vehicles to advance the plot, such as it is. Disregarding all the smart cinematography, clever editing and accomplished set-pieces this is a film with no soul. It's full of cliches and it's telling a story that's been told a thousand times on screen already. I'm struggling to see the point, other than purely as a money-making exercise.

The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

Westerns are like buses right now - nothing for ages then two come along at almost the same time. The interesting thing from my point of view, being someone who doesn't usually care for Westerns, is that they're both good - I preferred this to 3:10 To Yuma but I enjoyed them both. This films very slow pacing, introspective passages and lengthy running time certainly won't be to everyone's taste, especially if they were expecting a more traditional Western Actioner. This is a much more meditative and melancholy affair. Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck are both outstanding as Jesse James and Robert Ford respectively and the supporting cast are very good aswell. Director Andrew Dominik does a fine job and the striking winter photography is masterfully handled by the best cinematographer in the business Roger Deakins. There are some interesting prismatic fisheye effects used throughout the film which are really effective at evoking that Old West feeling in a refreshingly odd way and the music adds a note of weird authenticity too. There's a lot to appreciate in this film for those willing to take the time to savour it properly.

Atonement

This is one of those films that the academy laps up at the Oscars. It's all terribly meaningful and portentious. Or should I say pretentious. There's not really any doubt that this is a quality product - it's just annoying when the filmmakers are so obviously aware of that fact, and it's even more irritating when they're vindicated at the Oscars and other awards ceremonies - which is why I'll be cheering on the other films come Oscar night this year. The other thing that really irritated me was everyone's plummy English accents; they're pretty hard to tolerate after a while, and I don't like Keira Knightley at the best of times. As the film goes on things improve a little but by that time I was finding it difficult to feel sympathy for any of the characters or really care what was happening to anyone because they were all annoying me so virry virry much by talking with marbles in their mouths. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but it's kind of like listening to a band when you hate the sound of the lead singer's voice - they may be a great band but that voice grating on your nerves constantly is a difficult obstacle to overcome.

Away From Her

Julie Christie was the favourite to scoop the Oscar this year for best actress but now that i've seen this film I'd have to say it would have been a travesty had she won it; Christie isn't in this film a lot and when she is in it she doesn't do much and says very little. On the other hand, Gordon Pinsent - who plays her long-suffering husband - is in practically every scene and is really good and he wasn't even nominated for best supporting actor - go figure. As for the film itself, it's fairly standard stuff. Christie plays a woman in her twilight years who over the course of the film slowly succumbs to althzheimer's disease as her husband looks on helplessly and tries to do the best thing for her. It's a very sad situation to be sure but as a film there's really not much of note here. Most of the emotional impact comes from imagining yourself and your other half facing the same situation and knowing that it could be you in the future, and so it's moving only if you allow yourself to wallow in the misery. In the end it doesn't say anything profound or insightful about life, and so doesn't separate itself from the crowd of similar tearjerkers other than having higher production values and better actors on board.

The Bank Job

Jason Statham makes two types of movies; dumbass American actioners like Chaos and Crank and smart British indie pictures like Snatch. I can take or leave the former, mostly because I'm not a big fan of dumbass actioners. I did enjoy Snatch when it came out but I've seen a lot of dumbass Statham since then and I was a bit wary of this film when I saw his name attached to it. Happily this is smart British indie Statham, and there's a lot to enjoy here. It's set in London circa 1971 so there's the cars and the clothes to reminisce over, and it's a heist movie - a genre I have a particular soft spot for. Statham is fine in the lead role and the rest of the cast are all proficient. The set-up is original enough and the script is slick and witty. It makes you wonder why there isn't a thriving film industry in Britain anymore, because it's a large cut above most of the films churned out in Hollywoodland.

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

Sidney Lumet's new film is a corker and it's mostly due to that man again. Philip Seymour Hoffman delivers another top drawer performance as a real estate agent living beyond his means who comes up with the idea of robbing his own parents' jewelry store. Or rather he gets his brother - Ethan Hawke - to rob it for him. Unfortunately the robbery itself goes pear-shaped and it's all downhill from there. Hawke puts in a good turn as the loser brother but as far as performances go this film's all about Hoffman: When he's onscreen you're not watching anything else. Sidney Lumet directs with an assured hand - plus a few tricks he's picked up along the way. He sets the scene and builds the tension nicely. But this film isn't so much about a robbery as it is an illustration of the complex dynamics of family life in America today and it speculates that the spoiled middle classes' attitude of feeling they have a right to the nice things in life can only lead to inevitable damnation or quiet misery depending on the choices they make.

The Bourne Ultimatum

The Bourne Ultimatum features a top flight cast of professionals who are all doing a competent job. In fact that's possibly the defining characterisic of this film, in the absence of a soul - professionalism. It's like a well-oiled machine run by people who know exactly what they're doing. But it's too clinical and precise - there's no room for much characterisation or passion. Everybody and his dog seems to be saying this film is the best thing since sliced bread as far as action films go but on the whole I have to disagree. I thought it was pretty good - mostly because of Matt Damon, but there are a couple of major flaws; one is director Paul Greengrass' obsession with never letting the camera rest for one second - regardless of whether it's a frenetic action sequence or a quiet dialogue scene. In quiet scenes it's completely unnecessary and extremely irritating, and in action or fight sequences it hampers the viewer from figuring out what's going on. The other problem I had with this film is its similarity to the previous two - poor Jason's still having flashbacks from his past and still hasn't figured out who he really is or why everyone wants him dead. There's nothing new here. I hesitate to totally dismiss it because it's really not that bad at all, I just found too many things annoying to be able to enjoy it fully.

The Brave One

Death Wish: Charles Bronson takes the law into his own hands and sets about cleaning up the streets of New York after some criminal scum brutally kill his wife. The Brave One: Jodie Foster takes the law into her own hands and sets about cleaning up the streets of New York after some criminal scum brutally kill her husband. The difference between Death Wish and this film is that Jodie Foster's skin is really good, her hair's perfect and her eyes are very sympathetic looking whereas Bronson's skin's all crinkly, his hair's a mess and his eyes are all squished up. Most importantly though Foster feels terribly guilty and conflicted about what she's doing, whereas Bronson doesn't for a minute think twice about the course of action he's embarked upon. Well, all I can say is at least Bronson was being honest. Jodie Foster used to do intelligent and interesting films, but that was a long time ago, and though her performance is very good she's coasting. It's kind of depressing to see her sink to the level of doing something as bland and generic as this.

The Bucket List

...or Two Crusty Old Giants of The Silver Screen Team Up For One Last Big Payday. This film received quite a bit of flack from critics because of it's sentimentality but I found it pretty down to earth as these things go. The premise of two old codgers both with terminal diseases travelling the world together to do all the stuff they hadn't got around to doing when they were young is quirky enough to get your attention and it plays out predictably enough. The difference is who you're dealing with in this film. If you like Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman - which I do - then there's a lot of fun to be had watching them do their thing together. Maybe I'm getting old but I enjoyed this film a lot more than I was expecting to. There are a few pretty funny scenes, a dash of folksy wisdom, and a smattering of pathos in this film and that was enough to satisfy me as my hopes weren't too high going in.

Charlie Wilson's War

Tom Hanks stars as Charlie Wilson - a Texas congressman drafted in to raise government funds for Afghanistan freedom fighters in their war with the Soviets in the eighties. Hanks is as reliable as ever in this film but the real acting plaudits go to Philip Seymour Hoffman as a rogue C.I.A. agent with his own agenda. Once again Hoffman demonstrates an uncanny ability to inhabit any skin and not only is he entirely believable but he's frequently hilarious. As far as the film as a whole goes it's engaging enough, if a little light on incident. The dialogue is as crisp as you'd expect from West Wing supremo Aaron Sorkin and that always goes a long way to ensure the acting is good all round, but most people would probably prefer more in the way of a plot. Still, it's intelligent fun and that's thin on the ground these days, so kudos for that.

Death Sentence

There's been a rash of these revenge movies recently which is quite disturbing. It's easy to get people all riled up and baying for blood: Get yourself some nasty-ass crackheads - preferrably ethnic - and unleash them on the perfect middle class white family and then when the family pleads for justice make it so the crackheads escape justice on a technicality. So the head of the family must take matters into his own hands and deal with these punks himself the only way they understand - with brute force; it's the American way. With the all-pervasive attitude in America being one of 'might is right' this type of film is always going to be very popular there because our hero - in this case played by Kevin Bacon who's the only good thing about this film - goes down the road of violence meeting violence and may the strongest, and most righteous survive. The thing about this particular film though is that it's totally gratuitous - it's machine guns at dawn, and car chases through the town centre - it's the wild west! Ridiculous, absurd, and offensive Death Sentence panders to the basest instincts in the audience with an absolutely ruthless cynicism. Nasty.

Die Hard 4.0

The phrase 'flogging a dead horse' seems to carry absolutely no meaning in Hollywood. The second Die Hard film was a drag and the third installment was a joke. This is merely an exercise in corporate branding though as in actual fact Die Hard 4.0 could be any old action film featuring an indomitable hero who's pitted against a gang of evil villains bent on world domination. It's all been done a dozen times already in the Bond films alone, not to mention hundreds more brainless action flicks over the years. The amped-up action scenes are so utterly ridiculous and patently impossible that even the most unfussy action fan must surely balk at the stupidity on display here. The only people I can imagine Die Hard 4.0 appealing to are sub-mental wrestlemania fans because that's exactly the intellectual level we're talking about here. Maybe I'm just too old for this nonsense, but if Die Hard 4.0 is what the youth of today are into then the future is looking very bleak.

Eastern Promises

The second film by David Cronenberg to be set in London (the first being 2002s Spider with Ralph Fiennes). Viggo Mortensen stars - also for the second time in a Cronenberg film - as a Russian mobster working for one of the biggest Russian crime families. Naomi Watts is a nurse who stumbles across evidence that could put away the head of the family and the scene is set for Russian heavies vying for supremacy and devious head honchos scheming for survival. One of the reasons this film works so well is it's sense of place and verissimilitude. Contemporary Londons atmosphere of corruption lurking just below the surface of everyone's daily lives, and the depiction of the Russian ex-patriot gangsters' way of life both seem authentic. The performances are good; Mortensen in particular is fearless in some of the most visceral fight scenes you're likely to see and it's nice to see Armin Meuhler-Stahl in a part he can really sink his teeth into. Nowadays Cronenberg is operating within more traditional areas, but the films he makes are still different enough to mark them out from the crowd - there's still a unique intelligence behind his work that makes this far more interesting than your average gangster flick.

Fracture

Although an increasing number of them range from pretty bad to downright abysmal, I always look out for films starring Anthony Hopkins, because when he's good he's really good. Fracture may not be a great film but I found it to be very enjoyable, really because of Anthony Hopkins (although Ryan Gosling is also good). Hopkins plays a man who kills his wife for cheating on him and what follows is basically him thumbing his nose at the judicial system and taunting the prosecutor with his crafty plan, which he's enacted to perfection. The relish with which Hopkins plays the part of the wronged husband exacting his revenge is what makes the film so much fun, because if you think too long about the details it won't take long to feel a bit cheated. Aside from the odd plot inconsistency the one thing that really bothered me is, once again, the ending. There seems to be an unwritten code among Hollywood scriptwriters that says if a character kills without remorse they absolutely must not get away with it, and that's what lets the whole thing down in the end. It's very clever up to a point, but then everything must conform to the Hollywood Punishment Code and it ends up feeling false. So my advice to anyone watching this on DVD is turn it off at about the ninety-five minute mark, because up to then it's a great little film.

The Golden Compass

Pretty poor adaptation of the first in Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy features a host of famous actors, very high production values and and a whole mess of spiffy cgi work but it's a seriously flawed film. There's just no atmosphere or much tension because everything seems so rushed. It's as if the filmmaker's have received a Cliff Notes version of the book and they're desperately trying just to get it done and dusted in time for Christmas - not much else seems to matter. The Golden Compass suffers in the same way as the Harry Potter films; there's not much in the way of scene setting and precious little in the way of characterisation. The situation's even worse here though because there are also some tricky concepts to get your head around in Pullman's material, and the uninvolving action sequences don't help either. A damp squib of a movie after all the hype this received.

Gone Baby Gone

It seems all these years the Affleck family were a bit confused about who should be doing what in the entertainment business. Poor Ben being shoved into the limelight like that when he obviously couldn't act, and little Casey being left behind. Well it's all sorted now - Ben's behind the camera directing where he belongs and Casey's out there doing a much better job of acting than Ben ever could. Both of them are excellent in their respective fields in this multifaceted film ostensibly about the kidnapping of a young girl but it's much more of a meditation on parental responsibility, the moral choices we make in life and the effect they have on us and those around us for years to come. Gone Baby Gone is very reminiscent of Clint Eastwood's 2003 film Mystic River - not surprising as it's also an adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel: Both films have the same feel and sense of place and both have the same dim worldview and bleak outlook. Ben Affleck has brought Lehane's novel to the screen with skill and subtlety - in fact this is an accomplished film in almost every respect.

Grindhouse
Deathproof
Planet Terror
The new films from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are homages to the sleazy drive-in 'grindhouse' flicks of the seventies. Originally a double feature, seeing the two films separately minus the hilarious mock trailers severely diminishes the effect Rodriguez and Tarantino were looking to achieve and I suspect that somewhere down the road we'll see a DVD box-set of the two back together with all the missing material in between restored. Anyway, as far as getting it bang-on accurate as a pastiche the Rodriguez film is the more succesfull of the two, but I would say Tarantino made a choice with Deathproof; he recognised that the films they were aping weren't actually accomplished in any significant way, and while he wanted to replicate the feeling of those movies, he also wanted to make a high quality film and he couldn't have both so he went more for quality than accuracy. Hence Deathproof is the better film. Once again it's the dialogue that lifts Tarantino movies above the crowd and as daft as it is, it's like a Bergman psychodrama compared to the hammy outrageousness of Planet Terror. Both films are enjoyable in their own way but I found Planet Terror wore out it's welcome long before the end. Deathproof on the other hand (which took a while to get going) was more fun as it got revved up, and left me with a feeling of having watched something a bit more substantial.

Harry Potter And The Order of The Phoenix

One of the better Harry Potter films I suppose. I had highish hopes for this film because each film has usually been a kind of summary of the book and this is based on a book that was in need of some heavy editing. As far as distilling the important incidents in the book goes it succeeds in eliminating all the chaff - the endless quidditch matches, the bickering between Harry and Ron, the detentions etc. However the problem remains the acting. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry and Emma Watson as Hermione are still really bad. Rupert Grint as Ron is a little better but the only person who really shines is Ralph Fiennes who's having a whale of a time playing Lord Voldemort. Not much of a reason to watch the film though as he's not in it much.

I Am Legend

Based on the famous Richard Matheson novel this is a tale of one man stuck in New York on his own after a virus wipes out just about the whole population. There's a lot of Will Smith wandering about the city with his dog, there's some scary genetic mutants out to get Will, but they only come out at night and well, that's about it really. At eighty eight minutes this was the shortest film I can remember seeing for years, and it was padded out at that. There really wasn't enough incident in this story to support a feature length movie. At best it could have been a Twilight Zone episode. And it's rough watching only Will Smith for almost an hour and a half - even if you're a big Will Smith fan.

Into The Wild

Sean Penn's fourth film as director is a real struggle to get through. It's on for over two and a half hours and considering the paucity of interesting incidents that's about two hours too long. Our young hero decides to quit school and pass up the chance of joining his father's law firm in favour of tramping off into the woods to live a life of adventure, independence and self-discovery. So for the rest of the film we watch him live from day to day in the wild. He doesn't do much of anything in particular and he doesn't meet anyone very interesting, apart from a retired army man who befriends him about two thirds of the way in. This thoroughly charming performance by an aged Hal Holbrook is practically the only highlight of an otherwise turgid, self-indulgent and utterly uninteresting film about nothing. If you're not looking for a cure for insomnia you'd better avoid this one.

Juno

Engaging and amusing teen drama about a young girl who gets knocked up. The thing that seperates this film from most of the others of it's ilk is the smart script, delivered with a knowing intelligence by a personable Ellen Page. The supporting cast are all good and includes J.K. Simmons and The West Wing's Allison Janney as Juno's parents and Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner as prospective parents to Juno's unborn child. Michael Cera delivers another quiet, weirdly zoned out performance, similar to the one he gave in last year's Superbad, and everything kind of trundles along unremarkably. There's nothing much to this film, but the quality of the writing and the performances shine through; it certainly doesn't wear out its welcome. I can think of a lot worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

Knocked Up

Second comedy from Judd Apatow and the gang. Seth Rogan stars as perennial slacker Ben Stone who has a one night stand that results in a quick trip to fatherhood. Katherine Heigl (of Grey's Anatomy fame) is excellent as the distraught mother to be and Apatow's regular team are on hand for some extra laughs. Most of the unexpected pregnancy jokes have been done before, but not usually with as much flair and understanding as here and the performances from every single cast member are first class. Aside from Rogan and Heigl, Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann are very good as their married-with-kids friends and the whole film's a lot more intelligent - at times even introspective - than you might expect. It's also funny, daft, good-natured, and romantic without ever being overly sentimental, and it features better writing than most 'serious' films these days. Quite an achievement for a knockabout comedy.

Michael Clayton

George Clooney continues his run of appearing in well made political dramas. He's definitely found a niche that suits him down to the ground with this kind of film. He stars as the title character - a 'fixer' in one of the largest legal firms in the United States who's called in when one of their top attorneys flips his lid, threatenening to expose their firm's lies and misdeeds surrounding a long-running and expensive class action suit. Clooney's understated and intense performance is really enjoyable to watch and both Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton richly deserve the Oscar nominations they've received for their roles as the loopy lawyer and ruthless schemer respectively. The intelligent script is first class and worthy of another Oscar in my opinion, and everything is competently handled by director Tony Gilroy. Also notable for another excellent cameo by director Sidney Pollack - I can take or leave his films but he always entertains me as an actor.

Mr. Brooks

I've always liked Kevin Costner - I find him very watchable. The only problem with him is that he tends to play the same type of character in every movie. You can't really blame Costner for this - it's pretty much the same deal with most really famous stars when you think about it - can you name a film where Robert Redford plays a murderer? So, bearing that in mind it gives me great pleasure to announce that Costner does indeed play a murderer here; The Mr. Brooks of the title. And he's a proper schizo-psycho murderer too. This film is tremendous fun - precisely because the audience is used to seeing Costner play the strong silent character with a good heart. Sure he wrestles with the fact that he shouldn't be killing these people - illustrated here by having William Hurt as the evil side of Costner - but really, he's a stone cold murderer. And yet the viewer will still have sympathy for him, because he's seen as trying to be good. But the really fun thing about this film is the amount of dillemas hurled at Mr. Brooks to knock him off track. We have a witness to his latest crime trying to blackmail him into teaching him the tricks of his murderous trade, there's a dedicated cop on his trail - and closing in fast, and his teenaged daughter seems to be following in his homicidal footsteps - but doesn't seem to be as careful as he is. Through all of this there's the hilarious interplay between the rational Costner and the loopy Hurt - who seems to be having just as much fun playing this part as his character has when Costner's on a rampage. Sure the film's a bit formulaic, and maybe it's just the wrong side of credible, but it's not brainless, it's smartly directed on the whole and the performances are all good and in a time when the films coming out of Hollywood are so utterly devoid of anything fresh or original 'Mr. Brooks' struck me as something of a breath of fresh air.

No Country For Old Men

The Coen Brothers make two types of films - broad comedy a la Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, Big Lebowski and O Brother Where Art Thou? and crime or noir films like Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, Fargo, and The Man Who Wasn't There. These are their best films, but their recent output has been a little disappointing. Well, the Coen Brothers are back on top form with No Country For Old Men. This is a bloody tale of greed, survival, fate, and revenge and it's a tale told with an absolute mastery of the cinematic craft. Nobody working in American cinema right now can touch the Coens for sheer overall quality when they're on their game and this is their best film since O Brother Where Art Thou? In fact it's their most accomplished film to date. Josh Brolin puts in a solid performance as a Texan who stumbles across a drug deal gone wrong and a great deal of money, and Javier Bardem is fabulous as a psychotic and utterly single-minded hitman on his trail. Tommy Lee Jones is also excellent as an old cop on the verge of retirement who just can't keep up with the evils in the world. This film is much more lyrical than your average crime caper, due to the source material by Cormac McCarthy and the attunement the Coens obviously have to it. Jones's musings on the nature of evil and his place in the world give this film a poetic dimension and the cat and mouse situation between Brolin and Bardem is nerve-wracking. All in all this is bravura filmmaking - I want to watch it again right now.

Pirates of The Caribbean - At World's End

It's kind of annoying that one of my favourite actors keeps playing in films that are such a waste of my time and his talent. Johnny Depp's idiosyncratic performance was pretty much the only thing the first Pirates movie had going for it, but it's become more and more exaggerated and consequently less and less amusing. And in the absence of Depp entertaining you there's really nothing much in these movies. The storyline is a jumbled mess, the action sequences are too long and stagey - the whole thing's just silly and confusing but more than that it's way way overlong. A running time of almost three hours is just preposterous for such a slight film, and sitting through it I have to say it seemed more like four. Oh well. At least this was the last one. Or so they say.

Rendition

There's something disturbing about the politics of this film. While the filmmaker is quite pointedly saying that the US government is party to the torture of suspected terrorists around the world, the conceit of the film is that the people actually doing the torturing are Africans, and the rescuing of the suspect - who turns out to be innocent - is done directly by a US government agent. So the events we actually witness on screen are very much at odds with what we're being told, and as everyone knows a picture speaks a thousand words, so what the average viewer will probably take from this mixed message is that when all's said and done America are the good guys. And that's a pity because if this film had been straight ahead honest it could have been very good indeed. In the end though director Gavin Hood didn't have the courage of his convictions, and what's left is seriously flawed. However, there are still a couple of reasons to see this film, not least the stunning performance by Yigal Naor as the man in charge of the questioning. The cyclical structure of the film took me a bit by surprise but was quite interesting once I got into the swing of things. In the end, Rendition is one of those films that can be quite frustrating because on the one hand it had the potential of being a smart, penetrating insight into an issue of great importance in the current climate of global terrorism, but it's been hobbled by the political knots it ties itself in in an effort to not offend anyone too much. A bit of a mixed bag.

Shoot Em Up

About ten minutes into Shoot Em Up I thought I'd start to mentally prepare this review as my brain wasn't getting used at the time anyway. This is going to be tough I thought to myself, because I'd just done a review of Die Hard 4.0 and was running low on adjectives that are a variation on 'stupid'. The big difference between this film and Die Hard 4.0 though is the fact that the Die Hard film isn't aware of how stupid it is whereas this film knows exactly how stupid it is but doesn't care. And that's fine up to a point - over the top cartoon style uberviolence can be entertaining - but Shoot Em Up just doesn't know where to draw the line and ends up being embarrassing in it's eagerness to show off how outrageous it is. The producers obviously think this film is very hip and so they can justify the stupidity on display as 'pastiche' or 'homage', but when the stupidity level rises past a certain point it's just stupid. There should be some sort of logic to the story - some shred of sense to justify what's happening onscreen bearing in mind that it's set in the real world with normal human beings, but Shoot Em Up has no such reservations and so ends up being nothing more than a ninety minute youtube trailer made by a teenaged John Woo fanboy for some third-rate videogame.

Spiderman 3

I just don't get the whole Spiderman franchise. To me each one has been worse than the last - and the first one was absolutely dreadful. I've seen a bunch of the Spiderman cartoons as I was growing up and I'd put any episode up against any of the current Spiderman movies, any day of the week. I don't understand the point of paying hundreds of millions of dollars to churn out three bloated, sappy, overblown teenaged love stories, because that's all they are. Forget Spiderman swinging past skyscraper windows and swooping over downtown traffic, apprehending masters of destruction bent on world domination. Forget the secret hidden life of Peter Parker and the distrust of misunderstood Spiderman by the public at large. Those key ingredients that went into making Spiderman interesting have been side-lined in favour of telling the bland, utterly uninvolving tale of a young man who's fallen for a young girl. Big deal - who cares? Spiderman should be out there fighting power-hungry overlords not booking a table at a fancy restaurant so he can propose to a neurotic teenager on a big date night. Don't get me wrong - I've nothing against love stories, just don't try and spend a fortune to make a superhero movie into one, because that's just a waste of everybody's time.

Superbad

While the rest of the output from Hollywood over the course of 2006 was largely mediocre and frequently downright awful, some of the comedy films were quite agreeable. From the amiably daft Talladega Nights to the more thoughtful Little Miss Sunshine there was some decent comedy fare produced last year - and that's in no small part due to the influence of Judd Apatow (wearing his producer's hat here). The trend is growing this year with Apatow's own Knocked Up, the excellent Juno and now this film from Gregg Mottola. The tone of the movie is similar to Napolean Dynamite in that it's not about anything in particular, it doesn't really go anywhere but everyone has a lot of fun getting there. The performances by everyone concerned are all above average for a comedy - especially Seth Rogan as the manic Officer Michaels - and the whole thing is shot through with some really inspired slacker lunacy. For some reason the scene where one of the boys comes back from getting a fake ID bearing the name McLovin...no first name, struck me then - and thereafter every 10 minutes or so - as absolutely hilarious. I guess if that sounds funny you may well like this film, if not well, maybe it's not for you. Personally, I thought Superbad was good-natured fun and I liked how it didn't seem to be begging for everyone to like it.

Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

There were two reasons I wanted to see Sweeney Todd; Johnny Depp and Tim Burton. Obviously I had grave misgivings going into this film because of course it's a musical and I just can't abide musicals - they belong on the stage, not in the cinema as far as I'm concerned. However I like to catch every Johnny Depp film and I reckon Burton's only done two clunkers so far - Mars Attacks and Planet of The Apes. All his other films have been interesting at the very least. While I was watching Sweeney Todd I was hating it because almost every word out of every actor's mouth is sung. If they had just had normal dialogue then a song every ten minutes or so it wouldn't have been bad at all, but everyone singing ALL THE TIME is just too hard to take. It's a real pity because everything else about the film is absolutely fantastic. Dante Ferreti's production design is stunning, the direction, cinematography, costumes, and most of the performances - all first rate. Some of the singing is a bit suspect, and the songs are of the type that would be strangled at birth anywhere outside of an opera house or theatre but I'm finding it hard to be too tough on this movie because it's the striking visuals and the broody doom-ridden performance by Johnny Depp that have stayed with me, not the songs.

There Will Be Blood

When you look forward to a film so much, and when everyone on the planet is saying that it's a modern masterpiece you start to think to yourself, can it really live up to my expectations? Sadly the answer is usually a resounding no. On first viewing There Will Be Blood is not as good as I was expecting it to be but it's not far off, and after all I was expecting far too much. It's still a magnificent film and a great achievement for P.T. Anderson, and I'm quite sure that it would have bagged a lot more Oscars if No Country For Old Men hadn't been released in the same year. But there are a few problems I had with this film. Firstly, I found the music quite intrusive at times - it's an abrasive, discordant score for the most part and while it may be quite interesting in it's own right I feel it's just too jarring to integrate easily into this film. The other problem I had was that it focussed a bit too much on Daniel Day-Lewis's character being a ruthless tyrant. Although initially fascinating, his quest for wealth and power eventually becomes rather mundane and samey. I would have liked to have found out more about what he amounted to, why he behaved so ruthlessly, and how the wider world perceived him and his actions. The whole film is centered around Day-Lewis's towering performance as Daniel Plainview and as enjoyable as that is, sometimes it dominates the film so much it's hard to focus on anything else. And there's a lot more to appreciate in this film - from the striking cinematography and deftly handled editing to the assured directing and slick camerawork. Minor quibbles aside, I think this a film that will still be watched fifty or a hundred years from now and speaking for myself I think it will improve with each subsequent viewing.