iPad Round-Up 2 - THE CONSIPIRATOR

Yet another thumpingly pedestrian issues-film from Robert Redford.  The movie takes the form of an historic court-room drama, with James McAvoy playing the lawyer defending Robin Wright's Mary Surrat of conspiracy to murder President Lincoln (she was Booth's landlady and her son has mysteriously fled.)  This being a Redford film, the politics are naively simple and oppositional: McAvoy's lawyer is the champion of all things good - liberty, the constitution and the right to a fair trial even in the wake of an appalling political crime.  Kevin Kline's war minister represents the forces of evil:  putting ends before means, willing to sacrifice right to expediency, with a contemporary relevance in that Surrat was denied a civilian trial before her peers, and tried under military law. 

The issues are fascinating, the casting top notch, Newton Thomas Sigel's cinematography is superb, and the dilemmas at the movie's heart are clearly highly relevant today.  The problem is that it feels like a college debate rather than a movie.  Movies must entertain. If they educate and provoke as well, then all to the good. But no-one ever learned anything while their eyes were rolling to the back of their head in boredom.  Castigat ridendo mores. Moliere knew this. Redford apparently does not  He needs to treat his subject matter with a little less respect and his audiences with a little more.  

THE CONSPIRATOR played Toronto 2010 and opened in summer 2011 in the USA, Hong Kong, South Korea, Ireland, the UK, Portugal, Australia, Turkey, Kuwait and Germany. It opened last month in Singapore. It goes on release in Belgium on November 16th and in Spain on December 2nd. It is available to rent and own.

Random DVD Round-Up 3 - GOING THE DISTANCE

Documentarian Nanette Burstein (AMERICAN TEEN, THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE) makes her debut feature with the like-able and sometimes authentic romantic-comedy GOING THE DISTANCE. Drew Barrymore and Justin Long - perhaps two of the most charming light-comedy actors currently working - play a couple who meet and have a fun fling knowing she's about to relocate from New York to San Francisco. Trouble is, they really connect, and so attempt to do a long-distance relationship. I love the honesty of it. Lots of scenes will feel familiar to anyone who's tried this. The financial strain of buying plane tickets - the jealousy of "friends" who are closer by - the justification to friends of why it's worth it - the struggle to weigh up career-choices versus life-partners. And the great thing is that Geoff LaTulippe's script handles it all very lightly. I can't say much bad about the script. It's well acted, contains consistent laughs and I genuinely cared about what happened to the characters. There may be a few rom-com cliché moments (do we really need the crude, OTT tanning salon scene?), but so many as to detract from the overall vibe. Basically, it's all good!

GOING THE DISTANCE was released last autumn and is available to rent and own.

YOUTH IN REVOLT - affected nonsense

YOUTH IN REVOLT is an 89 minute quirky hipster comedy that felt like it last three hours, irritated me with its affectations, and didn't make me laugh. It stars Michael Cera as the same character he always plays - an unthreatening, horny teenage boy, desperately courting a cooler girl who stoops to conquer on account of his taste in films and music or whatever. It's the same schtick that was cute in JUNO, became less so in NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST, positively irritated in PAPER HEART, and really, really pissed me off here. He needs to stretch himself and try something different. Or at least deign to inflect his voice on occasion.

Anyways, in this particular film, Cera plays a kid called Nick Twisp, a sensitive loner who has good manners, likes Sinatra, and wants to travel the world. He meets the girl of his dreams and, hipsters being self-involved, she's his female double - an unthreatening hipster loner who dreams of a tall French boyfriend. Both of these kids speak like no-one you've ever heard of, and hatch up plots that are contrived and distancing, including getting expelled, trashing several cars, and drugging people. Of course, Nick Twisp doesn't really need a double to end his loneliness - he already has the voices in his head - his bad alter-ego, European play-boy Francois, and his feminine alter-ego Carlotta. Stop me if I'm freaking you out.

I think we're meant to find the incidental characters amusing - Ray Liotta as the sleezy cop; Zach Galifianakis as the loser boyfriend; Steve Buscemi as the dad; Fred Willard as the liberal neighbour; Justin Long as the doped up brother - but I found them to be under-used and unfunny. I can't disguise how tired I am of Cera. But I guess my real problem is with Gustin Nash's script based on C.D.Payne's novels. This film is too absurd to get emotionally involved in, but not stylised enough to be as good as, say, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS.

YOUTH IN REVOLT played Toronto 2009 and is currently on release in the USA, Canada and the UK.

PLANET 51 - harmless, disposable fun

PLANET 51 is the Meg Ryan of kids animation. It's not flashy, ground-breaking or breath-taking. Rather, it's harmless, banal, and mildy amusing in parts. As Christmas entertainment for bored kids, you could fare worse, but this is no TOY STORY.

The concept is clever. Instead of aliens invading earth, with all the predictable genre-defining consequences, earthlings invade an alien planet. Or rather, a narcissistic astronaut (voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) lands on a planet of little green men and women. The kicker is that the aliens are just as versed in pop culture and B-movies, and are just as petrified of the "alien" as we would be. In fact, one of the most memorable and endearing things about this film is the beautiful and witty translation of the look of late 1950s/early 1960s small-town America to the alien planet.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't really live up to the concept, because there really isn't one. The astronaut lands, gets separated from his ship, hides out with our alien teen hero (Justin Long) and then tries to get back to his ship. On the way, his robot (a dead ringer for Wall-E) tries to hook up with him and his alien helper tries to hook up with a hot alien chick (Jessica Biel). The problem is that the guy we're meant to empathise with as our hero is pretty whiny and dull, and the other person we might empathise with, the astronaut, is an insufferable bore. It's never good when the little robot has more personality than the hero. (As a sidenote, I also don't get why Dwayne Johnson couldn't have voiced a coloured astronaut?)

So, where does that leave us? PLANET 51 works well as a namecheck of alien invasion classics, and adults will get a certain kick out of that. There's probably enough slapstick humour, not to mention the cute robot, and that'll keep the kids happy. Happy, but in a sort of disposable, single-serving way.

PLANET 51 was released in November in the US, Malaysia, Peru, Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Italy, Argentina, Georgia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Cyprus, Mexico and Spain. It opened earlier in December in the Philippines, Germany, Kuwait, Portugal, Iceland, the UK, Australia, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, Bulgaria, Panama and Venezuela. It opens tomorrow in Turkey and on December 31st in Slovenia. It opens in Finland on January 1st, in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Sweden on January 14th. It opens in France on February 3rd and in Belgium and the Netherlands on February 10th.