MOONRISE KINGDOM

Wes Anderson was, for me, a film-maker like Tim Burton.  A man with a distinct and beautiful visual style but whose tendency to rework the same themes, with the same actors, playing essentially the same characters, had begun to pall.  I particularly hated his last live action film, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, for its self-absorption, narcissism, rather exploitative attitude toward its Indian context, and ultimately for just being dull. With this in mind, I went into  MOONRISE KINGDOM with barely any hope that I would find the kind of film - at once whimsical and yet also profound (echoes of Tarsem Singh's THE FALL!) - that I had fallen in love with while watching THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS.

Well, my fears were groundless. MOONRISE KINGDOM is a simply wonderful film.  It is, of course, beautifully designed, rich in background detail, empathetically scored, and well-acted.  It affects a sweet yet knowing innocence - it's full of characters struggling to deal honestly with themselves and their loved ones - it deals with the darkest of emotions but it drips with hope - in friendship, in people doing the right thing - in family.  It's as if everything that began to feel so clichéd about Wes Anderson has finally been re-united with sincere emotion - and that this emotional authenticity has cut through the stagey-ness of the costumes, locations, soundtrack - and transformed a whimsical confection into something altogether more lasting, provocative and memorable.  It's as if Wes Anderson finally gave in and just told the story he always wanted to tell - about first love.

Suzy B (Kara Hayward) falls in love with an eagle-scout called Sam (Jared Gilman) one golden summer in 1965. The carefully hatched plan to leave together triggers a sequence of scrapes, jams, shenanigans, emotional revelations and deeds good and ill.  

Anderson perfectly captures that intensity of feeling when you're a kid and you feel nobody understands you apart from this one perfect person. Suzy's trying to escape her family - her kid brothers, her distant father (Bill Murray) and the mother (Frances McDormand) she suspects of sleeping with local policeman (Bruce Willis). Sam's an orphan and a misfit with a good heart. In one of the most affecting scenes, written in exact mimicry of how we speak at that age, Sam tells Suzy he loves her but she's talking nonsense for hating her parents. Suzy and Sam run away together.  They're at the age and living in the time when you're hold world fits into a suitcase, and you take your're favourite adventure stories rather than clothes. When you can place you're entire life into the hands of another person without second-guessing yourself.  

There's a deep vein of melancholy running through the film. Most of the adults seem desperately lonely, none moreso than Ed Norton's majestically decent scout leader.  The exception is the almost mechanical Social Services, played by Tilda Swinton with steely efficiency. But the kids are in their own world, where all things are possible, and where adults barely skim the surface, except as occasional constraints and only too rarely as facilitators. There's excitement and wonder and threat and crushing disappointment. As the movie builds to a pivotal final scene (superbly scored to Britten's Noye's Fludde) I realised that I deeply cared about these kids.  I wanted desperately to know what they happened to them, and not just to download the soundtrack they were listening to. It's been a long time, but we finally have a Wes Anderson movie that makes us feel as well as admire its surfaces.  

MOONRISE KINGDOM opened Cannes 2012. It is on release in France, Germany, Ireland, Turkey, the UK and he USA. It opens next weekend in Belgium, Iceland, Hungary and the Netherlands. It opens on June 6th in Sweden, on June 8th in Norway, on June 15th in Greece and Spain, on June 21st in Russia, on June 2nd in Portugal and Lithuania, on August 16th in Slovenia and Argentina and on August 30th in New Zealand.

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is an offensive film based on a faithful adaptation of an offensive novel. To that end, the blame for this exploitative, incredible (literally) movie lies with Jonathan Safran Foer - the novelist who exploited 9-11 to further his narcissistic fictional stylings.  It's hard to see how screenwriter Eric Roth could've adapted the film while minimises the absurd central conceit that powers the film.  And as for Stephen Daldry - once again, is it his poor judgement or his inability to disentangle himself from the mawkishness and self-indulgence that pollutes the novel?

The Big Idea is that a kid called Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), borderline autistic, is so traumatised by his father's death in 9-11 that he obsesses over the idea that his father might have left him one last puzzle - a key with the name "black".  So he roams Manhattan interviewing every black, looking for the lock that his key will fit - some of the time, accompanied by a mute old man call The Renter (Max von Sydow) who turns out to be his grandfather (no real spoiler there).  Eventually, he finds the lock, and we discover why his mother is being so apparently irresponsible, but none of it really feels credible.  And, as with all high concept films, the incredible nature of the premise truly undermines our empathy with the characters. That said, even without the ludicrous concept, EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE would stretch any viewers patience.  The characters either fall between the downright irritating (Oskar Schell and his mother) or the unbelievably good-hearted (Oskar's father - surely the most attentive screen dad in history).  One can only assume that it's the presence of Hanks and Bullocks - Oscar sweethearts - that got this film nominated.  Max von Sydow is sympathetic - sure - but his nomination looks like an end-of-career pat-on-the-back rather than a specific acclamation.   

All I can say is that this is hands down the most irritating, exploitative film I have seen in quite some time. I discard it.

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is already on release in the USA and Canada. It will play Berlin 2012. It opens on February 16th in Germany, Portugal, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, the UK and Japan. It opens on February 24th in Argentina, Australia, Chile and Finland. It opens on February 29th in Belgium, France, Singapore and Brazil. It opens on March 8th in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands; on March 16th in Italy, Spain and Turkey; and on March 22nd in Slovenia.  EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE has been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and Max von Sydow has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 8 - THE IDES OF MARCH

THE IDES OF MARCH is a cheap thriller full of plot holes that wants us to believe that it's an insightful, intelligent political film.  It tries to mask poor writing and construction with an all-star cast, but I'm not buying it.  This is, for all its pretensions and earnest good intentions, a bad film.  Now, I haven't seen the play on which the movie was based - Beau Willimon's Farragut North (a road on Washington DC full of political consultants).  But my friends tell me that this movie makes a departure from the closed world of that play in the final forty minutes - in other words, the movie is not content to stick with the play's obsession with the mechanics of political campaigns - and "raises the stakes" in the jargon of Screenwriting 101.  The result feels amateur and undermines the momentum and spark of the opening half hour.

As the movie opens we feel we are in good hands. The movie has pace and wit and does what a lot of great political films do - it gives us the feeling we're peeking behind the curtain at a world we're fascinated by.  We love how Stephen and Paul (Ryan Gosling and Philip Seymour Hoffman) intricately plot and plan Governor Mike Morris; (George Clooney) Ohio Primary Campaign. We love the Machiavellian scheming of their opposite number, Tom (Paul Giamatti).  We love the whip-smart dialogue from the pushy intern (Evan Rachel Wood) that Stephen's sleeping with.  The dialogue is almost Aaron-Sorkin-esque and the action takes place in seedy hotel rooms and cheap offices and bleak parking lots.  It all seems to be going so right!  We care about whether Morris' will cheapen himself in order to get an endorsement from sleazy Senator Thompson (Jeffrey Wright).  We care about whether he will win.

The problem is that the movie then takes a turn into nonsense.  The event upon which the action turns is that Stephen will take a meeting with Tom. This is anathema during a campaign - the press will jump on it. So why would a guy so smart for for it? OK, I thought, I'll go with it. But then Stephen needs to get just $900 petty cash to propel another key plot point. Does he just draw it from an ATM thus involving no-one else? No! He asks his sidekick to get it out of petty cash leaving no receipt in an open plan office! Not so smart! And if you don't believe Stephen is smart, you don't believe he can rescue the mess he gets himself into, other than through the divine right of the hero in  mainstream movies.

And what about the politics? THE IDES OF MARCH is not telling us anything new by "revealing" that idealistic politicians can make low deals and do bad things. We are a decade after Clinton. We know about sex scandals. It all seems rather old hat. 

So we're left with a film whether the story is simply not credible and falls from grace into cheap thriller. The only things we can cling to are superb supporting performances from Evan Rachel Wood (who manages to make a stock character sympathetic and nuanced) and the always legendary Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Where's the elegance and sophistication that coloured Clooney's earlier directorial effort, GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK?

<< Philip Seymour Hoffman (Paul Zara); Evan Rachel Wood (Molly Stearns) and George Clooney (Governor Mike Morris and Director)  at the photocall for THE IDES OF MARCH at the BFI London Film Festival.


THE IDES OF MARCH played Toronto and Venice 2011. It opens in the US on October 7th; in the Netherlands on October 20th; on October 28th in France Portugal, Ireland and the UK; on November 4th in Sweden; on November 11th in Finland; on December 22nd in Germany; on January 5th 2012 in Hungary and on February 14th in Russia.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2

After the turgid teen-moping of DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1, it comes as quite a relief to see the HARRY POTTER franchise close with what is essentially a two-hour epic battle between good and evil. Director David Yates' DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 is visually stunning, beautifully constructed, and never falters in pace or tone. Indeed, in its tight pacing, Steve Klove's adaptation beats J.K.Rowling's baggy source-novel hands down.

It feels somewhat superfluous to provide a plot summary for one of the most popular children's books of all time, but for those of us who read the book on release and have since forgotten the mechanics of the ending, here it is. The movie takes place in contemporary England, where ordinary people live unknowingly alongside a world of magic. Young wizards are trained at a boarding school called Hogwarts, and older wizards are governed by the Ministry of Magic. But over the past seven films, we have seen the world of good magic over-turned by the reappearance of the evil Voldemort - a former Hogwarts pupil - with a particular vendetta against our improbable hero, Harry Potter. We pick up the story with Harry Potter and his side-kicks, brainy Hermione and loyal Ron, on the hunt Horcruxes - the magical objects into which Voldemort poured his soul. If the kids can kill the Horcruxes they can save the world from a reign of Black Magic; their school from a fierce magical battle; and Harry from a fateful confrontation with his nemesis.

The resulting film opens as a kind of heist movie, with Harry and co. breaking into Gringotts bank on the hunt for a horcrux, but pretty soon we are back at Hogwarts and into the final battle which absorbs the vast majority of the run-time. The visuals are simply stunning. I have always been impressed by the make-up and CGI effects that transform Ralph Fiennes into the snake-like Voldemort, but the image of his foetus-like horcrux was incredible and unforgettable. And Hogwarts is evocatively photographed in murky gloom (yes, even without those awful and unnecessary 3D glasses), and is hauntingly battered and bruised by the final act. We are basically in the realms of a war movie - and the producers do not shy from showing us death and destruction. The post-battle scene, with nurses dressed in WW1 style costumes, was both deeply affecting - as well as deeply British - as they all sit around and have a nice cup of tea! 

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the film is that the main characters are rather over-shadowed by Professor McGonagall's "Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more"-style battle-cry and Matthew Lewis' scene-stealing turn as Neville Longbottom. Indeed, on the back of his appearance in this film, 6 foot tall and looking for all the world like a young Clive Owen, one can't help but suspect that he might have a brighter post-Potter future than Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint!

If I had any difficulty with the film, it was the use of 3D. I didn't feel that it added anything, and enveloped an already hauntingly dark film in yet another dark veneer. My other two problems rest with the book rather than the film, which after all, has to be faithful or risk disappointing the fans. I continue to believe that J.K.Rowling lost her gumption when it came to Harry's final choice - that there was a darker but more satisfying ending that she could've written. And I rather felt that Neville Longbottom was short-changed in the epilogue.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 is released globally on July 15th.

THE TREE OF LIFE

This review contains spoilers.

THE TREE OF LIFE opens with a mother in an idealised 1950s American Suburbia reacting to a telegram telling her that her that her son has died. This is inter-cut with a middle-aged man in a contemporary American city - a prisoner of the sterile modern architecture that he has helped create.  We intuit that this man is her son, the elder brother of the child who died. And he too is trying to make sense of his grief - to unravel the meaning of his life and his brother's death - and to understand - on the most profound existential level - "how did I get here?"  

This opening prologue sets up both the style and themes of the movie that is to follow.  Stunning photography of the natural world set against the world that ambitious men have created. Whispered voice-overs questioning the meaning of existence - the choice between Grace and Ambition.  The audience left to intuit what is really happening - and to glory in the sensory experience.  I suspect that most viewers will know at this point whether they are going to find the film a pretentious, wilfully obscure film over-loaded with hokey spiritual themes, or a cinematic masterpiece that pushes the boundaries of narrative cinema and has an earnest engagement with spiritual matters that leaves most contemporary cinema looking superficial and banal.  I fell into the latter camp. 

And so, after its opening prologue, the film moves into its first act - the most challenging in the film and presumably the point at which many audience members walk out. Because the questioning brother, now grown-up, tries to answer his questions by taking us right back to the beginning. Not to the beginning of his brother's life, but to the beginning of life itself.  We are immersed into a twenty minute display of creation - Kubrickian visuals that are quite simply wonderful in the literal sense of that world. Writer-director Terrence Malick wants us to wonder at the glory of nature - the power and beauty of it - but also to see that the tendency toward brutality was always there - even from the time of the pre-history.  My reaction to a scene where a dinosaur holds down the head of another injured dinosaur, and then tentatively lifts up his foot, was to see this is the same questioning of grace versus brutality.  I wouldn't blame others if they thought, WTF?  

In the second act we return to 1950s suburbia, and see the birth of three sons of the family.  Brad Pitt plays the father, truly loving but also a strict disciplinarian. It is a nuanced performance and arguably the best of his career. He has a harsh self-improvement philosophy, and is feared rather than loved by his children. The mother, played by Jessica Chastain, is cast as a kind of Virgin Mary figure - loving, forgiving, gentle, a source of succour.  She looks on mournfully as she sees the father castigate the children.  And so we have embodied the battle between the Ambition and Grace. It is a battle that the father ultimately loses - his musical career and his patents come to nothing  - and they have to leave their family home in a scene that ends the second act. He admits in a voice-over that his striving has brought him nothing but estrangement from his family and disappointment. He demands kisses from his children, he knows that they hate him.  The one son he is truly proud of - who he accompanies on the piano in a marvellous scene - is killed. And the elder son, who watches this scene of intimacy from outside the window, is left resentful.  

That isn't to say that this section of the movie is depressing - there are scenes of children goofing around that made me utterly nostalgic for my own childhood - and all portrayed with an intimacy that is captivating.  The camera is typically placed at the height of a child, looking around table-legs or looking up at adults. And the mother is portrayed in one particular scene as floating in the air - just as a little kid might ideate his mother as a kind of angelic figure. It is truly beautiful. 

In the final act of the film, we move into a kind of dream world, where the questioning middle-aged son is reunited with his family from the 1950s - including his kid brother. The mother and father are overjoyed to see the little boy, it feels to anyone familiar with the Bible like a reunion in paradise. And then we have, after two hours of questioning, a scene that I found utterly cathartic - a scene in which the mother seems to accept that God has taken her son, "I give him back to you", surrounded by the supporting embrace of the people on the beach.  A lot of reviewers have criticised this scene in particular as being an unnecessary epilogue - detracting from the scenes in suburbia. But to me, this is the most crucial part of the film. Without it, we have no resolution, no closure, and the film really has been for nothing.

I am fully aware at how earnest and pretentious this review might seem. What can I say? Malick approaches his material with such a sense of wonder and goodness and earnest questioning - his films are quite without cynicism and it seems mean-spirited to approach them with anything but that same degree of earnestness.  I suspect that this unabashed, heart on your sleeve approach - this wide-eyed wonder at the beauty of nature and the goodness in the world - is what irks so many modern viewers, so used to post-modern irony and nihilism.  This is a film that comes from a time before ironic detachment. In fact, it wants us to jump into our sensory experiences, without barriers, and to really feel everything.  It is, in that sense, a truly radical, truly stunning, beautiful, graceful film. It is, to my mind, Malick's best work since Badlands, a worthy winner of the Palme D'Or, and a true pantheon film.

THE TREE OF LIFE played Cannes 2011 where it won the Palme D'Or. It was released earlier this year in France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Greece, Israel, Portugal, Sweden, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Poland, Germany, Austria, Taiwan, the Philippines and Australia. It was released this weekend in Hong Kong, Thailand, Ireland, the UK and the USA. It opens on August 12th in Japan; on August 25th in New Zealand and Finland; on September 2nd in Norway; on September 16th in Spain; on December 9th in Estonia and on December 15th in Argentina.

THE KING'S SPEECH - wonderful pantomime

In the mid-1930s, Britain was still a proud Empire that ranged from the Caribbean territories in the West, via East Africa, to India, Australia and Hong Kong. But the home country was still reeling from the Great Depression and fearful of the second Great War in living memory. The Empire needed leadership, both from its politicians who had the real political power, and from its monarchy, whose job was to inspire loyalty and imperial unity in the face of adversity. But the politicians fell grip to appeasement, and bar Winston Churchill, utterly failed to anticipate Hitler's aggression. As for the monarchy King George V was dying; and his son, David. the short-lived King Edward VIII, abdicated so that he could marry the scandal-ridden divorcee Wallis Simpson. Thus, David's younger brother, Bertie, the Duke of York (father of the current Queen Elizabeth) was thrust onto the throne as King George VI, with the task of leading his country and his Empire into World War Two. Pity then, the man, courageous and dutiful, but hampered by a debilitating stammer induced, the movie argues, by a shockingly loveless and brutal childhood.

THE KING'S SPEECH is, then, the story of how Bertie (Colin Firth) persevered through humiliation and fear to become technically more accomplished at public speaking and emotionally able to take on the burden of monarchy. He did this, the film posits, through sheer courage; the love of a good woman (Helena Bonham-Carter); and through the advice and friendship of the radically informal, Antipodean speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). 

So here's the thing. THE KING'S SPEECH is basically a really well made and emotionally involving film. It comes to our screens dripping with critical praise and smothered with awards. Director Tom Hooper eschews the typical lavish costume drama production design and shooting style, instead trapping his King in fog-bound streets and narrow corridors. The cast give fine performances. The script is beautifully written. I was deeply caught up in the drama. But, as I write this review some days later, I am less impressed by the film. Because, essentially, I was in the realms of pantomime cinema.

Colin Firth is, after all, playing an essentially Good Man.  Firth's Bertie is understandably angry; occasionally very funny; a warm, loving father and a dutiful king. He is an under-dog hero without faults, played by an actor at the top of his game.His wife is also without fault in this film - determined to help her husband, utterly sympathetic to him, charming to commoners, but conscious of maintaining her regal authority. And even Lionel Logue is a man without fault and dripping with charm! He is wonderfully brash, believes in Bertie's essentially goodness, and constantly helps him, even when Bertie sounds off at him. Even the minor characters are basically charming and lovely.  Logue's wife (Jennifer Ehle) in a few short scenes is a picture of calm concern and wise advice.  The horribly politically wrong Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin (a marvelous cameo from Anthony Andrews) is noble and humble in his failure.  And even Chrurchill (Timothy Spall), the towering personality who seemed to win the War single-handedly through sheer bloody-mindedness and brilliance, is humanised by the admission of a youthful speech impediment. 

And what of the villains of the piece? They too are essentially mono-dimensional. David (Guy Pierce with a pitch-perfect voice impersonation) is basically a bullying, selfish cad, utterly beguiled by the domineering Wallis. The late King George V (Michael Gambon) and his wife are distant, uncaring, bullying parents. And Derek Jacobi's Archbishop of Canterbury is an obsequious passive-aggressive arse.

So there you have it:  THE KING'S SPEECH is the ne plus ultra of feel-good movies, with the added bonus of being about glamorous royals. It comes complete with palaces and princesses - evil villains, unimpeachable heroes, the love that conquers all, the buddy movie, the under-dog story. And the biggest signal that we are in the realms of blatant emotional manipulation? The lazy use of the adagio from Beethoven's 7th symphony and the adagio from Beethoven's 5th piano sonata as we hear the King give his final, triumphant speech and wave to his adoring public on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

THE KING'S SPEECH played Telluride, Toronto, London and the AFI 2010. It was released last year in the USA, Canada, Greece, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. It is released on January 7th in the UK, on January 21st in Estonia and Finland, and on January 28th in Slovenia, Iceland and Italy. It will be released in France on February 2nd, in Hungary on February 3rd and in Brazil and Sweden on February 4th. It will be released in Portugal on February 10th and in Germany and the Netherlands on February 17th. It will be released in Russia on March 17th.

At the British Independent Film Awards, THE KING'S SPEECH won Best Film, Screenplay, Actor (Colin Firth), Supporting Actor (Geoffrey Rush), Actress (Helena Bonham Carter). It was nominated for Best Director, Supporting Actor (Guy Pierce) and Production Design (Eve Stewart). It has also been nominated for seven Golden Globes and four SAG awards.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 - Everything is possible and nothing is meaningful

David Yates continues his plodding, faithful, uninspired direction of the Harry Potter series with the first half of the final book. After ORDER OF THE PHOENIX and HALF-BLOOD PRINCE we should've known what to expect - a workmanlike film adaptation of the novel, with neither the gothic style of Alfonso Cuaron's AZKABAN, nor the ability to portray emotion without mawkishness from Mike Newell's GOBLET OF FIRE. In David Yates hands, this franchise has become a dreary endurance test for anyone other than hard-core Potter fans - descending from the banality of the last installment to unwatchable boredom interspersed with cringe-worthy emotional scenes in this film. I'd blame screenwriter Steve Kloves too, but somehow I can't imagine that these emotional mis-steps can really be the fault of the man who, in a happier earlier career, penned WONDER BOYS.

The upshot is that HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 is unwatchable - dull, badly acted, ploddingly paced, full of failed attempts to tug at our heartstrings and basically a complete waste of time. The producers should have had the balls to condense the admittedly baggy source-text into just one film, cutting out scenes where the teenagers sit and brood and focusing on the destruction of the horcruxes. Because this film basically reads as two and a half hours of prologue. I left the cinema thinking, "Is this it?" and worst of all, "Dear God, if Guillermo del Toro wanted to direct this, why on earth didn't they let him?!"

In fairness, it must be hard to inject these films with suspense and emotional shocks - after all, most of us have read the books. Indeed, I am lucky enough that having read them on release, and forgotten most of the detail in the interim, I was more likely to be drawn into the plotting than true fans. As the movie opens another year is beginning at Hogwarts but Harry, Ron and Hermione aren't going back to the happy, colourful adventures of the early films. The world has changed - fascist goons fill the Ministry of Magic; Dolores Umbridge has installed Snape as headmaster of Hogwarts; and there are dark rumblings about registering all muggles. The tone of the film is established - it will be dark, cool-coloured, cold, and full of mis-trust and peril. The film opens and closes with the death of a trusted character and the death of minor characters litters the film throughout.

As the movie opens Harry is being transported by convoy from the Dursley's house, where he has spent the summer, to a safe house run by the Weasleys. The friends are betrayed and Harry, Ron and Hermione set off to destroy the horcruxes that contain Voldemort's soul. Problem is, they don't know where the horcruxes are, or even how to destroy them. And in carting the horcrux around, it fouls their temple, Ring-style. As the film progresses the kids find the sword of Griffindor; discover that Dumbledore had a brother; and that a kid called Grindelwald has been nicking stuff from Bellatrix Lestrange's bank-vault. But we don't really get much further along in understanding the bigger picture of what is actually happening. The plot of the film is thus made up of long periods where the teens sit and brood, inactive, and short spurts of danger where they find, or destroy a horcrux or escape the clutches of Death Eaters. By the end of the film, you are no clearer as to key characters' motivations than at the start.

I was so bored by the inaction, or numbed by the CGI fuelled action, that I started to contemplate the logical holes in the plot. Harry is in such danger his friends have to put him in hiding. And yet he can walk through the Ministry of Magic for a good few minutes before any of the fascist goons recognise him! And, even before that, Harry's friends risk his life to transport him to safety. Why don't they just apparate him to the safe-house? And why didn't Ron, Hermione and Harry just apparate out of the Ministry of Magic once they found the horcrux? After all, apparating is used to get them out of plenty of holes later on in the film - unless the director feels we need a good chase scene. And if apparating has been used too much, they can use the convenient fiction of the house-elf, who can apparently go where he pleases and find what he wants. If it's so easy for Creature and Dobby to locate Mundungus and bring him to Harry, why don't the kids ask them to find the Horcruxes and sit back and relax? Now I know that's just ridiculous, but by using these deus ex machina so often, J K Rowling damages our belief in the rules of her universe and makes everything possible and nothing meaningful.

So, is this film worth seeing? No, not unless you're a mega-fan. The only things that really work as cinema are a beautifully animated sequence telling the tale of the Three Brothers, made by Ben Hibon; and the character Dobby the House-Elf, voiced by Toby Jones, who alone delivers lines that are genuinely funny and genuinely moving. Together these two factors make up perhaps twenty minutes of screen time leaving two hours of dross. Low-lights include a scene where Harry tries to cheer Hermione up by making her dance - the actors looked as embarrassed as the audience - and a gauche scene where Ron imagines Harry and Hermione kissing.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 is on global release in all bar France, Switzerland and South Africa where it opens next week and Hong Kong and South Korea where it opens on December 16th.

TAMARA DREWE - who?

Stephen Frears has an odd body of work. He started off with spiky costume drama (DANGEROUS LIASONS), moved to equally spiky contemporary British drama (DIRTY PRETTY THINGS) but then segued into what can only be described as English heritage drama, with the banal MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS and the over-hyped TV drama THE QUEEN. His latest flick - an adaptation of Posy Simmonds Grauniad strip, continues his run of diminishing returns. It's a movie that, for all its lush location work and occasional stabs at spiky social commentary, is dangerously structurally imbalanced.

As far as I can tell, the problems stem from the source material - you can read it all online at the newspaper's site in about an hour. It's apparently based on Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, but other than the fact that the central character is sexy and has three lovers, there are very few parallels. Not least because Tamara Drewe simply doesn't hold the centre of our attention in the way any eponymous heroine should.  In the strip, the centre of the story isn't Tamara Drewe at all - but Beth Hardiman, wife of an Ian Rankin-type crime novelist called Nicholas. She's fat, cheated-upon, taken-for-granted and generally quite bitchy. Essentially, she's as much as fault as her lecherous, narcissistic husband for the pitiful state of their marriage, insofar as she enables his shitty behaviour. She likes that he's dependent on her, and smothers him with baked goods and motherly attentions, rather than being his wife. The Hardimans are classic English middle-class yuppies, who've made money, buy a nice run-down farm in the country, and then fill it with Cath Kidston and Waitrose shopping, much to the ire of the locals who are bid out from the local housing market. (I aspire to being such a "banker-wanker"). The farm also serves as a writer's retreat, which suits them both just fine. Nicholas gets fawning acolytes - Beth has more people to mother and feel indispensable for. So basically, the two protagonists at the heart of the strip are pretty unlikeable, but at least you get what makes them tick.

And so the story goes, until Tamara Drewe turns up in hot pants, newly beautified by a nose job, baring all in her self-referential newspaper column. She decides to move into her late mother's house at Winnard's Farm, and write a novel - just like that. In the strip, we read her columns, but never read drafts of her book. We're meant to think she's not much cop at writing, but there's really not much else there. I have no idea what makes the girl tick - and maybe that's deliberate - maybe she's just meant to be a sex object - but that seems a weird authorial choice. Shouldn't we care about, and understand, the eponymous heroine of the strip? Anyways, following Hardy, Tamara has three potential suitors. First up is local gardener, Andy Cobb - earnest, nice, dull - presumably in the Gabriel Oak mould. We have no real understanding why he should be so interested in Tamara or vice versa - they seem entirely unsuited. But maybe I'm wrong - as neither is fleshed out as a character, who knows? Second is minor rock star, Ben aka Sergeant Troy. Except that he's not really a love-rat, and actually an okay guy, and basically, Tamara's never really at risk from him. Third up is Nicholas Hardiman - old, oleaginous author - who is never really at risk from Tamara in the way that Boldwood was at risk from Bathsheba. Yes, after a few quick shags he wants to finally leave Beth, but there's no subterranean violence. And without that deep sexual tension the motive of the plot can't be sexual violence - rather a couple of bored teenage chavs who send a few prank emails, and a herd of bored cows. Deus ex machina have never been as bizarre - okay - maybe Hardy's stampede, and then that odd scene of puncturing sheep's bellies - but the final strips - with two acts of violence that have no build-up, no foreboding atmosphere in the preceding columns - just seem random and insufficiently dealt with.

And so, now, we get the movie. This is, in essence, a very faithful adaptation. All the key characters are locations are there. The houses and farms look exactly like the script, and all of the better, spikier one-liners are kept in. The underlying tension between impoverished locals and wealthy second-home-owners is still there. And the most authentic part of the script - the insecurity and narcissism of writing - and the jealousy between writers - is translated wholesale. But screen-writer Moira Buffini has made several improvements - in particular, several of the characters are more convincingly drawn. Roger Allam's Nicholas Hardiman is far more sinister and slippery and real than in the strip and Tamsin Greig's Beth is less bitchy and more put-upon - in her portrayal of Beth you can see a million failed marriages where the wife has simply lost the ability to conceive of herself alone. Moira Buffini also does a good job in beefing up the role of writers-retreat-ee Glen McGreavey (Bill Camp). In the strip, he's just a contra-Nicholas - an academic, writing obscure books that no-one reads, utterly appreciative of Beth's nurturing - whereas Nicholas writes commercially successful nonsense and takes Beth for granted. In the movie, Glen becomes perhaps the most interesting character of all - standing for integrity and appreciation, but ultimately becoming just as slippery as Nicholas himself. Moreover, he proves once and for all that Beth is a co-dependent - looking for someone to mother and be used by, even when Nicholas is out of the picture.

But the biggest breakthrough - for better and worse - is in the characters of teenage chavs Jody (Jessica Barden) and Casey (Charlotte Christie). In the strip, they serve as a counter-point to the middle class angst at the farm and as a means to the Hardy-esque email that triggers Tamara's affair with Nicholas. They are bored, smoke in bus shelters, and are utterly obsessed with celebrity. But in the movie, partly because of the higher proportion of screen-time they get, and partly because of the quite superb performance by Jessica Barden, they completely steal the show. The angst of being stuck in a small town, knowing that nothing will ever happen unless you back yourself, and then realising that in the real world there are consequences - now that's an interesting story. Jody's journey from fantasist to realist is superbly essayed and deeply engaging.

Now here comes the problem with the movie. Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton) and Andy Cobb (Luke Evans) are as thinly sketched in the movie as in the strip. But Jody is far, far more interesting. And so, you end up with a movie wherein the supposed heroine is almost irrelevant, and certainly not the centre of the viewer's attention. No amount of witty one-liners, or glossy location photography, can offset that fundamental structural weakness.

Additional tags: Ben Davis, Mick Audsley, Leo Davis, Bill Camp, Luke Evans, Tamsin Greig, Jessica Barden, Charlotte Christie, James Naughtie, John Bett, Josie Taylor, Bronagh Gallagher, Zahra Ahmadi

TAMARA DREW played Cannes 2010 and plays Toronto 2010. It was released in France in July and is currently on release in the UK. It is released next week in Belgium, in the USA on October 8th and in Germany on December 30th.

THE GHOST WRITER - the joy of skewering Bliar

I eagerly anticipated the release of Roman Polanski's latest film, THE GHOST WRITER. Partly because I think Polanski is a fascinating director, with a technical mastery beyond many of his contemporaries and an obsession with the sinister that is as compelling as it is unwavering. Partly because I have always loved Robert Harris' intelligent, well-researched, political thrillers. And partly because his novel, "The Ghost", is a thinly veiled skewering of a particularly slippery figure - Tony Blair. I was not disappointed. THE GHOST WRITER reminded me a lot of MICHAEL CLAYTON - it's intelligent, suspenseful, provocative and beautifully made. Indeed, quite superbly photographed by DP Pawel Edelman.

The plot centres on an un-named writer (Ewan McGregor) who has been hired to ghost the memoirs of an oleaginous former Prime Minsiter, Adam Lang (a perfectly cast Pierce Brosnan). The plot is driven by his investigation of the accusation that Lang illegally handed war criminals to the CIA. The Ghost doesn't know whether to trust Lang, his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), his mistress (Kim Cattrall) or his aides. And of course, this being Polanski, there are no idealistic pay-offs for truth-seekers.

When I left the screening I had a wistful feeling. Because as polished and convincing as THE GHOST WRITER is, somehow, because you know it was made by Polanski, and you know what he is capable of achieving, you end up feeling a little short-changed by a "mere" good thriller. I loved the Hitchcock reference, but it wasn't necessary to the plot. And that kind of slight mis-step seemed to me indicative of a true auteur turning in a "place-holder" film.....

THE GHOST WRITER played Berlin 2010 where Roman Polanski won the Silver Bear. It is on release in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, the US, the Philippines, Belgium, France, Canada, Greece, Israel, Estonia and Italy. It opens this weekend in Denmark and Norway. It opens on April 8th in Portugal and on April 16th in Finland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It opens in May in Thailand, the Netherlands and Romania. It opens in June in Hungary and the Czech Republic, and on August 19th in Argentina and Slovakia.

A PROPHET/UN PROPHET - Powerful, tense, exhilarating.

French writer-director Jacques Audiard's new film, UN PROPHET, is a devastatingly good film - even more searing than the already impressive 2005 flick THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED. It's the kind of film that has you on the edge of your seat, wincing with unease throughout, and yet leaves you exhilarated and re-energised in your belief of what cinema, at its best, can be capable of.

The movie opens with a teenage kid being admitted to prison. Malik El Djebena is a zero. He has no politics, no religion, no friends, no ambition and no clue. Within ten minutes of the two and a half hour run-time his fate is sealed. The Corsican chief Cesar has demanded that Malik kill the Arab chief Ryad, or be killed himself. The means by which the murder has to be committed, and Malik's practising it, is one of the most insanely horrific scenes in recent cinema history. Half an hour into the run-time and Malik has established his modus vivendi, protected by the Corsicans, educating himself, working up his own network. He's still an outsider: too Corsican for the Arabs and too Arab for the Corsicans, but he is on the ascendancy. Once again, while he shows some initiative, this is basically success by default. When Sarkozy's new policy sends Cesar's goons back home, Cesar has no choice but to depend on Malik, and to exploit his day-release passes. During this middle-section, the movie seems to drift a little. There are excursions and petty deal-making - it all seems rather banal. But this is, in fact, the genius of the film's structure. Because it comes almost as a surprise that, inch by inch, Malik is now the man in control - and Cesar just a pathetic, lonely old man.

I shan't say more because I feel that UN PROPHET is a movie that works best when you know as little about it as possible. Suffice to say that I think this is a movie that is a worthy contender for Haneke's DAS WEISSE BAND as the foreign-language film of the year. Moreover, Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestup, as Malik and Cesar respectively, deliver powerful and nuanced performances worthy of praise in their own right.

Not to be missed.

UN PROPHET played Cannes, Telluride and London 2009 and Sundance 2010. It opened last year in Belgium, France, Russia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Greece and Portugal. It is currently on release in the UK. It opens in February in the Netherlands, the USA, Argenina and Spain. It opens in March in Germany, Israel, Taiwan, and Finland. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes.

JULIE & JULIA - boring and brilliant respectively

JULIE & JULIA has the dubious honour of being the first movie based on a blog - the blog of a thirty-year old failed writer called Julie, cooking her way through the legendary cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child. I say legendary, and there's even an SNL spoof by a young Dan Ackroyd showing how far this 6 foot 2, preppy woman had entered the American mainstream with her cooking show. I'd never heard of her.

The movie, written and directed by Nora Ephron of WHEN HARRY MET SALLY fame, is a bit of a mixed bag. To my surprise, I was utterly captivated by the story of Julia Child. Meryl Streep is absolutely enchanting as Julia - no-nonsense, up for any challenge, relentlessly optimistic, and yet hard-working too. In Paris after World War Two, she took Cordon Bleu courses designed for professionals and peopled by men. She studied hard, tested and tested recipes, honed her skills, and many years later received great success. All this with the unfailing support of her charming husband, Paul, a US diplomat, played by Stanley Tucci. They seemed to have a rather wonderful marriage, appreciating each other's eccentricities. Indeed, this is one of the most wonderful depictions of a happy marriage I have seen on screen (and stands in contrast to the mawkishness of AWAY WE GO.)

I would have loved a proper biopic of Julia Child. But, the price we pay for this new-found interest in Julia Child is dealing with Julie Powell, the blogger. Now I know that there is no little criticism of Julie Powell on the blogosphere - that she exploited Julia Child for fame* - but that strikes me as partly envious of her ensuing book deal, and overlooking the naive and casual ways in which most of us start blogging. Okay, she didn't study like Julia, and so maybe didn't deserve her success as much. But she never claimed to be a master chef. No, my objection to Julie Powell is more simple. She takes time away from Julia Child. A mousy Brooklyn wife, who can't really cook and throws temper tantrums and moans about how poor she is really isn't any competition for Julia Child - a pioneer, self-taught expert and true-life eccentric.

The result is a movie that's still worth watching, purely for the Streep-Tucci segments, but which is boring during the Amy Adams segments. My only other criticism is that, unlike BIG NIGHT, this movie never had me drooling over the food, and surely that's a must?

*Judith Jones, senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf, and Child's editor and friend, shared Child's sentiments with Publisher's Weekly: "Julia said, 'I don't think she's a serious cook.' ... Flinging around four-letter words when cooking isn't attractive, to me or Julia," Jones said. "She didn't want to endorse it. What came through on the blog was somebody who was doing it almost for the sake of a stunt."

JULIE & JULIA was released earlier this year in Canada, the USA, Germany and Austria. It is currently on release in the UK, France and Argentina. It is released next week in the Czech Republic and Estonia. It opens on October 2nd in Finland and Norway. It opens on October 9th in Australia, Bulgaria, Poland and Sweden. It opens on October 15th in Belgium, Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, the Ukraine, Brazil, Denmark, Romania and Taiwan. It opens on October 22nd in Greece, New Zealand, Iceland and Italy. It opens on October 30th in Croatia and Mexico. It opens on November 6th in Spain, on November 19th in Portugal and on November 28th in Japan.

COCO AVANT CHANEL / COCO BEFORE CHANEL - yawn

I am the target demographic for this film. A woman of a certain age with a penchant for period romance and a handbag collection worth the output of a small African country. Coco Chanel defines a large part of my wardrobe, shoes, handbags and cosmetics. More profoundly, I am a career woman, and Coco Chanel was not just a radical fashion designer but also a formidable businesswoman who founded a global brand.

Why, then, did I find this movie so dull? The problem is that COCO AVANT CHANEL wants to tell us how Coco got to Paris, rather than how, once in Paris, she built her global business. The film argues that to know Coco as a young woman is to know all - a highly reductive stance. So we see very little of Coco designing anything, or of her famous business sense. Rather, the film focuses on her struggle to break out of the role pre-WW1 France had ascribed to her: resigned to being a working class shop-girl, a bauble for rich men to be traded like property, trussed up in corsets and unable to breathe.

It's a shame that a woman as radical and, yes, politicised, as Coco didn't get a movie as brave as she was. Rather we get a rather schmaltzy period romance in which our poor young heroine foists herself upon a rich Milord, only to fall for a young English businessman who will marry for money. The whole thing is filmed beautifully, in sumptuous period settings, with a lush score from Alexandre Desplat. But Coco's spikiness is near-smothered by the sepia-tint. It's also deeply hypocritical for the movie to praise Coco's iconoclastic stance and her fierce independence, while, at the same time, reducing her life to one thwarted love affair.

Shame.

COCO AVANT CHANEL was released earlier this year in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Israel, Australia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal and Poland. It is currently on release in the UK. It is released in August in New Zealand, Germany, Argentina, Singapore, South Korea and Norway. It is released in September in Japan, Sweden and the USA. It is released in October in Russia and Brazil; in November in Greece, Finland and Bulgaria and in December in Denmark.