iPad Round-Up 4 - THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

This new adaptation of Herge's famous children's adventure stories is a technical masterpiece. Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have come together to create a movie using the latest motion capture, CGI and 3D technology to create a spectacular visual experience.  The problem is that I'm not sure their choices work, and I'm not sure the story can withstand the heavy visuals placed upon it.  

The first problem is that Herge's comics have such a particular style, and the motion-cap work seems to come down somewhere between straightforward animation and live-action, creating a sort of eerie look of humans with plasticine faces and over-large hands.  I  found the mo-cap humans with exaggerated facial features creepy.  

The second problem is that the movie contains so much swash and buckle, so many car-chases, naval-escapades and exotic locales, that I had no idea what was going on or what was at stake.  The whole thing read as a giant MacGuffin, designed to propel us through ever more exciting action sequences. I simply did not care about the clues to treasure that TinTin and his alcoholic sidekick, Captain Haddock, were seeking, nor did I think that they had enough camaraderie to anchor a buddy-action adventure story.

Maybe my whole problem is with the character of TinTin himself? I've never read the comic books and I find this strangely asexual boy-scouty do-gooding journo deeply unengaging.  So much of this film shares the 1920s action serial tropes that made INDIANA JONES so compelling, but without a loveable rogue as the lead character, there's no emotional entry point.

So, count me out for the sequel.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN opened in October 2011 and is now available to rent and own.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 9 - WILD BILL

Jimmy and Dean fending for themselves in a Newham council flat.

There are those of us of a certain age who have grown up with Dexter Fletcher. As kids we watched him as the cute wanna be tough guy "Babyface" in Alan Parker's delightful BUGSY MALONE. As teens we watched him in the TV show "Press Gang" playing a cool American wannabe journo.  In our errant twenties we watched him plan a heist in Guy Ritchie's superb caper flick, LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, and more recently, we've seen him cover up for Robert De Niro's cross-dressing pirate in Matthew Vaughn's STARDUST. I guess it was only a matter of time before yet another Guy Ritchie crew alumnus turned his hand to directing, and his first feature was greeted with enormous goodwill toward by the London Film Fest audience. The film itself is really worth watching, despite a somewhat predictable plot once the initial set-up in place.  It's set in the same London of Guy Ritchie's flicks - the East London of drug-dealers, hard-men and hard-ups in council houses.  But it has far more heart, far more subtlety, and is far better observed.  In other words, you gain a whole lot of authenticity and insight, while losing none of the comedy. In fact, one of the great comedic charms of the film is realising that Fletcher has discovered the new "babyface" -  a young kid called Sammy Williams who plays Jimmy - a little kid with an hilariously foul mouth, but also a lot of vulnerability.

As the movie opens we meet Dean (Will Poulter) and Jimmy living alone in a filthy council flat, with Dean taking on the grim responsibility of a father and the age of just fifteen. Their mother has abandoned them and their father, "Wild" Bill, a violent drug pusher and addict, has been in prison for eight years. Bill emerges a reformed man - he wants a clean break in Scotland - but isn't reformed enough to want to take care of his kids.  Problem is, he has to stick around for long enough to fool social services, so that Dean and Jimmy aren't put into care.  What follows is a predictable family reconciliation, complete with a "tart with a heart" character, and an aggressive local mafiosi threatening Bill's conditions of parole.  

From left to right, Sammy Williams (Jimmy); Will Poulter (Dean);
 Charlie Creed-Miles (Bill); and Dexter Fletcher (Writer-Director)
introduce WILD BILL at the London Film Festival

But the film is elevated above that by its genuinely sympathetic characters, the whip-smart dialogue and the fact that Fletcher doesn't flinch from poking holes in the Guy-Ritchie-style myths of East End hard-men.  Many a time we see a guy giving it all that, but turning and running at a key point, and the annoying Ali-D style white boy, Pill (Iwan Rheon) gets a verbal slapping too. I also love the fact that where ROCKNROLLA (a film I still liked) made heavy work of contrasting the poverty of the East End with the redevelopment of Stratford, Fletcher shows the same contrast with much more subtlety. It's enough to show the view of the new Olympic village from the balconies of crumbling social housing - it speaks powerfully enough of the issues facing British society - without being crass or simplistic.  In front of the camera, kudos in particular to Charlie Creed-Miles who has to portray a nasty selfish character at the start of the film but also make his road to responsibility seem credible, and to Sammy Williams who steals every scene he's in.  Behind the camera, George Richmond's lensing use the Arri Alexa is crisp, and the sound-track is superb.  Overall, this is an assured debut directorial effort from Fletcher, deftly balancing raucous humour and pathos - and I can't wait to see what he does next.

WILD BILL played London 2011.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES - Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is, much like its iconic predecessor, a thoughtful, emotionally affecting film.  It feels much more like a character-driven drama than a generic summer blockbuster - which is not to underplay how good the final action set-piece is.

As the movie opens, Will Rodman is testing a potential cure for Alzheimers, ALZ-112, on chimps at the GenSys lab. When GenSys shuts down the trial, Will rescues a baby chimp called Caesar, not having the heart to put him down and unaware that Caesar has ALZ-112 in his genes.  Seeing the impressive impact of ALZ-112 on Caesar's brain, Will starts testing the drug on his father, who is miraculously cured.  

Flash forward a few years and Caesar is an older chimp, very clever, but straining at the leash of domestication.  After a misunderstanding turns nasty, Caesar is finally impounded in an animal shelter while Will appeals for his release. Worse still, Will's father Charles has fallen into remission - his body resisting the ALZ-112 and the Alzheimer's back with a vengeance. This prompts Will to create an even more virulent strain of the cure, ALZ-113, oblivious to its devastating side-effects on humans. And while Charles refuses to take it, Caesar steals it and infects his fellow primates at the shelter. Because, while Will has become ever more confused about his identity as a Man of Science, letting his love and arrogance warp his judgement, Caesar has become far clearer about his identity as an ape. Newly politicised by his brutal treatment in the shelter, and disenchanted by Will's refusal to let him be anything other than a cute family friend on a leash, he leads the apes in a rebellion.

The strength of the film is the depiction of Caesar's journey to social and political consciousness. Andy Serkis, who stole every scene as Gollum in LORD OF THE RINGS, is simply brilliant as Caesar - portraying the journey from youthful naivete, to hurtful rejection, to resolution. I kept thinking that Caesar's story was similar to that of Frankenstein's monster - the creation of an arrogant scientist; not really a man and yet possessing a man's intelligence; confused and eager to fit in, but frightening the humans he meets. So powerful is Serkis' performance that you root for Caesar, even more than for the human protagonist. And when he reaches his final declamatory scenes, the audience audibly gasps in awe.  It was a crime that Serkis didn't win an Oscar as Gollum, and the Academy should not overlook him now.  

The Academy also shouldn't overlook the behind-the-camera work director Rupert Wyatt (THE ESCAPIST), DP Andrew Lesnie (LORDS OF THE RINGS) and the effects team that so vividly created Caesar and so seamlessly blended him into a live-action background.

The weakness of the film is that the humans are by far less interesting than the apes.  James Franco's Rodman is far less powerful and charismatic than Victor Frankenstein. In fact, he just comes across as a sappy dope.  His girlfriend (Frieda Pinto) exists merely as a foil - occasionally pointing to his folly but going along with it anyway. The corporate boss (David Oyelowo), is surprise surprise, amoral and purely profit-motivated.  The father too, is simply there to tug the heart-strings, although John Lithgow is too good to allow a potentially mawkish final scene to become kitsch.  Brian Cox and Tom Felton as the animal shelter guards are simply pantomime villains, and I do hope Felton aka Draco Malfoy, doesn't get typecast as the insecure bully.  

Still, despite the cardboard cut-out humans, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES more than delivered in the character of Caesar, and in the final action sequence.  And I really can't wait to see the next instalment in the franchise.  As we've left the movie, we know that humans are going to be infected by the virus, but we haven't seen their hysterical response. And Caesar is still an ape who loves his human friend, and forbids his followers to deliberately kill humans. In other words, his rebellion is of the Gandhi/Martin Luther King variety. I am fascinated to know whether it is Caesar who is radicalised to the point where humans end up as slaves, or whether he is deposed by the brutalised chimp who was infected with ALZ-113.  I am NOT however, eager to know what happens to Will, his drippy girlfriend or any of the other humans.  




DANIEL PLAINVIEW adds: I agree, the humans are all ineffectual idiots - set-piece props for the more complex apes. 


For me though, this was a more serious omission. There are clearly parallels in this story with the African American civil rights movement - and hence the question of whether Caesar is Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, and how the story develops from here, is key.

However, casting the "white people" as either textbook Republican money-grubbing baddies, or ineffectual liberal good-at-heart nicies, is in this context disappointing. The reaction of society at large to the ape movement is probably more interesting than the ape movement itself, because it gives us an opportunity to explore and comment on different reactions of difference, fear and prejudice.

This films gives us two choices - you're either a full-on exploiter, or a patronising do-gooder. Particularly sad was the way Draco Malfoy was used - he's just a sneering arsehole - and then there's the mentally retarded nice-guy who tries ineffectually to look after the chimps at the shelter. What polarised American nonsense!

Having said all that - it was well made, a lot of fun, some of the performances were excellent, and we can all rest happy knowing that most of humanity is going to be wiped out in Episode 2 - and the remaining rump are likely to be spunkier, more interesting characters (we hope).

THE RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is on release in Malaysia, Indonesia, Belarus, Denmark, Greece, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, Turkey, the USA, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Portugal, the UK, Finland, Ireland and Norway. It opens next weekend in Sweden, Georgia, Hungary and the Netherlands. It opens in Italy on September 23rd and in Japan on 7th October.

BRIGHTON ROCK (2010) - A noble failure

When writer-director Rowan Joffe introduced the preview screening of BRIGHTON ROCK at the BFI last night, he was apologetic. He apologised for daring to take on the Boulting Brothers' classic adaptation, but argued that his movie was borne out deep respect and love of Graham Greene's novel. In the production notes he went further, arguing that Greene's novel was so great, that it DESERVED more that one interpretation. I thought this was a rather odd introduction. Good art should never apologise for itself. And how can one separate the novel from the film in the case where the novelist actually wrote the screenplay?

At any rate, taking Joffe at his word, this is what is likely to happen in any broadly faithful version of Brighton Rock. A violent teenage racketeer called Pinkie murders Fred Hale, a member of the most powerful gang in town. He has to seduce an innocent young girl called Rose in order to find out if she really does know who did it, and prevent her squealing to the police. And while he's trying to placate this needy innocent girl, despite his inward disgust at her masochistic nature, he's trying to out-wit the local gang-boss, Collioni, and avoid the interfering meddling of Fred Hale's friend, Ida. The tone of the film should be menacing, unnerving, sometimes terrifying, but always taut. And running in the background is a debate about the nature of good and evil. Is Ida's simplistic categorisation of herself as good and Pinkie as evil, through and through, like the lettering in the stick of rock, true?  Or is Grace far more complicated and far more grand than her vulgar mind can fathom?

So how does Rowan Joffe's adaptation stack up? To start with the positive, it is a handsomely made film with beautifully observed production design. It takes us from the peeling walls of Kite's house via the faded grandeur of Ida's tea-rooms to the glossy, pretentious interiors of Collioni's Cosmpolitan hotel. DP John Mathieson's (ROBIN HOOD, GLADIATOR) photography captures that watery sunshine of the British sea-side and there is a beautifully lit climax on the cliffs. As for the acting, Andrea Riseborough (NEVER LET ME GO) is an effective Rose, making her delusional belief in Pinkie believable and heart-breaking. She is ably supported in the minor roles by a fine cast, with British actors of the quality of Phil Redmond (ANOTHER YEAR), Sean Harris (24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE) and Steve Evets (LOOKING FOR ERIC) playing Spicer, Hale and Rose's father respectively. Moreover, there is an air of earnest respect and delicate care that overlays the entire project. Joffe claims he loves the novel and is respectful of the original film. Well, you can feel that.

And maybe that's the problem. Because this film just never takes off. It feels turgid. There is no pace, no sense of menace, and for all the nightmare visions of Pinkie at the end of a rope and scenes of Rose praying, no real sense of the stakes - whether literal or metaphysical. The film feels too safe, too sunlit, too designed somehow. It's as though the effort of getting the 1964 costume designs just right - the perfectly appointed suite in the Cosmpolitan Hotel - has resulted in a series of beautifully framed still shots. But where is the seedy menace of Greeneland? I simply wasn't scared of Sam Riley's Pinkie.

If we're looking for culprits, I guess the decision to set the film in 1964 rather than the late 30s would be one. The "pop" clothes and music, the mods and rockers, are a distraction, and far less menacing than the lurid clair-voyants and fair-gound freakishness of the original film. Maybe the youth angst theme is just to temporary - too situated - for a film about mortal sin. I also think some of the performances are too broad and perhaps the writing too reductive. Helen Mirren's Ida is shorn of the 1947 Ida's vulgarity. She comes off as a simplistic "tart with a heart" - and the use of these simplistic tropes is something I noticed, and disliked, in Rowan Joffe's script for the awful George Clooney thriller, THE AMERICAN. Andy Serkis' Collioni is a caricature - and maybe there is some sense in which those glamorous Italian mobsters are self-consciously caricatures - but you don't get the feeling that Joffe and Serkis are playing with that level of sophistication here. 

Just as some of the performances are very broad, the movie also has an incredibly intrusive over-worked orchestral score by Martin Phipps, never ceasing to bring out the Catholic material with its use of religious texts. In fact, the treatment of the movie's religious content is altogether reductive and crude.  Do we really need Pinkie's wooden bedroom to have the paint-stripped in just the pattern to reveal a cross? Do we really need Pinkie and Rose's first kiss to be shot from over-head, Pinkie holding her uncomfortably by the hands in a kind of martyred crucifix pose? Do we really need to see Rose in Church praying before an altar, shot from above the head of Christ? This ham-fisted handling of the religious content is best seen in his choice of final scene - the true test of any screenwriter claiming that he has adapted the book out of love. Admittedly, it was a test that Greene himself partly failed, but that is no excuse.

BRIGHTON ROCK played Toronto and London 2010 and will be released in the UK and Finland next Friday. It opens in Germany on April 21st.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL - Spasticus Autisticus

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is a fast-paced, manically inter-cut biopic of Ian Dury, New Wave singer, genius wordsmith, ladies man and radical. Born working class, crippled by polio, trained by Peter Blake, married to a middle-class portrait painter, father to two kids, living in suburbia. That's how we meet Dury - a punk radical playing shitty pubs with a dodgy band, desperate for fame, and deeply at odds with his suburban home life. Somehow his wife puts up with his shit, even when he shacks up with a pretty West Indian girl much younger than him and moves out. Somehow the Kilburn and the High Roads turn into The Blockheads, the seminal songs are written, and the money comes rolling in. Before you know it, Dury and his crew are in a swanky rented country house, generally pissing about and not getting much work done. His girlfriend and wife are both simultaneously in love and at wits end with him. His young son is much loved but exposed to drugs and not much schooling. His young daughter is basically ignored. The End.

If the plot summary above seemed to have no structure, well, neither does the film. It survives as entertainment purely on the strength, charisma and sheer bravado of Andy Serkis' (best known as Gollum) leading performance. You get a good sense of Dury as wordsmith but you don't really get how he became famous. One minute he's playing pubs, the next he's famous. You never get how his character might have changed. His girlfriend Denise (Naomie Harris) complains that fame has changed him, but the audience doesn't see it. He just seems as much of an egotistical but charming arse as ever. His wife (Olivia Williams) evolves - moves on - but Dury never changes. He's just too clever by half, too selfish by half, and a lot of fun to be around.

If you love Ian Dury's music, you'll get a kick out of this film. Serkis is genius, and ably supported by Olivia Williams and Naomie Harris. But if you don't know who Ian Dury is, this film isn't going to help. You get a lot of stuff about his early life, but it doesn't tell you about art school and how he became a radical performer. You get the starting point (the film posits that being crippled was the defining change) and the final product, but nothing inbetween. You don't have a clue why he's married to an RA.

So, all in all, this is a great little film that could've done with a bit more substance, and a bit more exposition, a little more context.... As it is, it's unlikely to get an audience beyond the core fanbase. Still, anything that makes you dust off your old vinyl, it's no bad things.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is on release in the UK.