SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN

There's a lot to love and a lot that doesn't work in this radical new adaptation of the Snow White fairy-tale from debut feature director Rupert Sanders.  

The stuff to love centres around the characterisation of the wicked stepmother, Ravenna.  She's written and played as a deeply insecure, emotionally scarred woman who has had to use her beauty to survive in a misogynistic patriarchy where women are sold as chattel and discarded when their looks fade.  There's a superb scene early on, when she's addressing the mirror on the wall, where we move to the perspective of her brother, and we're not sure if the Queen is just imagining it all.  Charlize Theron is absolutely stunning in the role - both in terms of the costume design and her performance. And fans of Games of Thrones will forever regret that she wasn't given the role of Cersei Lannister, more of which later. I was so involved in the story of Ravenna, that in the movie's final battle scene, I was willing her to win. She reminded me of Edmund in Lear, with his radical, demonic argument for meritocracy against the old established order.

Other things to love in this movie? As one might expect given Sanders background in commercials, the visuals are beautifully shot.  Indeed, one of the strengths and weaknesses of the film is that the narrative often feels like a weak excuse to get us from one beautifully imagined background to another.  The motivations for the moves, the narrative drive, seems secondary to the indulgently imagined costumes and scenery.

The tragedy is that all this beauty and Theron's wonderful performance is wasted upon a movie that is poorly paced, and plays like a second-class echo of better imagined fantasy worlds, created by George R R Martin, C S Lewis and Tolkien.  The character of Ravenna, complete with her incestuous relationship with her brother Finn (a marvellously creepy Sam Spruell) is straight out of House Lannister. As is the visual use of sigils and banner-men.  Snow White's long journey through different worlds before she finally faces off against Ravenna is straight out of the Lord of the Rings, with the dwarves recast as hobbits and Bob Hoskins' blind seer as Gandalf. And finally, Snow White (Kristen Stewart) has been recast as an Aslan like figure, reciting the Lord's Prayer in full (surely a first for modern teen cinema?), exhibiting healing powers over man and nature, and finally not even sealing the denouement with a kiss - rather standing alone, in power, neuter, a Virgin Queen.

This, of course, brings us to the weakest aspect of the film - its romantic core. Stewart's resentful mopey screen persona is ill-fitted to an active, action heroine who must imspire a people to revolt.  Chris Hemsworth as the Huntsman is more charismatic but suffers from an unhappy attempt at a Scottish (?) accent.  It's not as bad as Russell Crowe's attempt at regional English in ROBIN HOOD, but it's still unfortunately reminiscent of Mike Myers in SHREK. Still, the two young actors have a convincing rapport, which is more than can be said for Snow White and her aristocratic childhood sweetheart William (Sam Claflin).Claflin's character is so thinly written - his performance so uninspired - the potential love triangle so quickly dismissed - that what should be a powerful love story is reduced to a whimper.

One can only conclude that the movie is irredeemably let down by a poor script from Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock - THE BLIND SIDE, and Hossein Amini - DRIVE. It's just too derivative, too thinly developed, too lacking in narrative drive.  And worst of all, they try to include an emotionally manipulative death scene that's utterly unearned. 

P.S. Why does no-one wear helmets in battle?  Stannis Baratheon I'm looking at you.

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN is on release everywhere except: Cambodia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Finland, India, Norway and Sweden, where it opens on June 8th; Belgium, France, Switzerland, Russia and Japan where it opens on June 13th; in Australia, New Caledonia and New Zealand where it opens on June 21st and in Italy where it opens on July 11th.

HUGO

HUGO is a movie about the wonder and beauty of cinema - an elegy to the age of celluloid and hand-made special effects - a plea to preserve the fragile, crumbling history of this fantastic art form.  In this aim, HUGO is a wondrous, magical success.

But, far from being, conservative and nostalgic, legendary film-maker Martin Scorsese has shown us not just the past but the future of cinema.  The nostalgia is matched by an equal wonder at the new technology of 3D - not piss-poor retro-fitted 3D - but delicately aligned, beautifully designed 3D designed to give us that same immersive, spectacular thrill as when those first cinema-goers gasped at the Lumiere Brothers' train arriving at the station.  In this aim - in showing us both the past and future power of cinema, HUGO is a technical achievement that surpasses AVATAR and redefines what we thought was possible with 3D. HUGO is, if ever there was one, a movie that demands to be seen in 3D and on the biggest screen you can find.

HUGO is also meant to be a children's adventure - a physical comedy - a plea not to give up on love, or yourself. In that aim, HUGO is a tedious bore.  

So let's tackle these elements in reverse order. Hugo is the story about a young orphan boy (Asa Butterfield) who lives in a train station in a 1931 Paris heightened by fantasy and stunning production design.  Hugo is a tinkerer - he loves to fix things - in particular the beautiful automaton his father left him.  His love of mechanics lies in his loneliness and his need to find his own place in the world.  Together with a plucky little bookworm called Isabelle (Chloe Moretz), Hugo scampers through the station, stealing little mechanical parts to finish his work, and desperately trying to avoid the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his hound-dog.  These chase scenes through the hidden passages and platforms of the station make up much of the tedious first hour of the film.  The dialogue is minimal, as are the genuine belly laughs. Poor Sacha Baron Cohen does his best, but I get the feeling that Martin Scorsese just cannot direct physical comedy.  Moreover, too many of his chase scenes through the train station are there to showcase the 3D and the spectacular production design but nothing else. They become repetitive.  They don't advance the plot.  The first hour of this two hour film could easily lose forty minutes. 

Then again, let's talk about that 3D and the production design.  Dante Ferretti (SHUTTER ISLAND, SWEENEY TODD) has created a beautifully detailed, rich set that evokes a kind of super-Paris - a Paris as we would all imagine it to be in our wildest romantic moments. Always snowing - couples dancing - accordion music - little plucky girls in berets - steaming croissants -  book shops that groan under the weight of beautifully engraved volumes - the Eiffel Tower always in the background.  All this forms the environment for a kind of 3D cinematography that combines achingly superb attention to detail with Scorsese's trademark breath-taking tracking shots.  The opening scene of this film, where we swoop through Paris, itself a giant automaton, then into the station, along the track, weaving through the crowd until we reach Hugo hiding behind the face of a clock - is a tour de force to match the Copacabana tracking shot in GOODFELLAS.  Martin Scorsese and longtime DP Robert Richardson - both new to 3D - deserve credit for such an achievement - not just in creating a particular look for their own film - but in echoing and recreating some of the seminal scenes of early cinema.

And so to the history of cinema. The second hour of the film, where the children are led through the history of cinema, first from Professor Rene Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg) and then through Melies himself (Ben Kingsley) is just an absolute pure joy for any lover of the artform.  I already mentioned the recreation of the Lumiere Brothers' train scene, but the pivotal recreation is of Melies film, "A Trip To The Moon" - see the Youtube clip below. The movie shows us the joy and wit of those early special effects and spectaculars, and the final montage is a thing of awe and beauty. I defy any film-lover not to start crying at the skilful direction of a scene that is at once a culmination of the technical achievement of the film, and its emotional high-point.

The resulting movie is one that is, as I have said, not without its flaws. The first hour drags, and I do wonder whether children will engage with it.  But for cinema-lovers, the second hour is pure joy and an experience I would happily repeat at the cinema, because this is a movie that assures us that despite the fashion for watching movies on mobile devices - sometimes magic demands a communal experience and a big screen.

HUGO was released last weekend in the USA and Canada. It was released this weekend in the UK and Turkey. It opens on December 14th in France; on December 21st in Belgium; on December 23rd in India; on December 30th in Mexico; on January 5th in Russia; on January 12th in Australia and New Zealand; on January 26th in Israel and Spain; on February 3rd in the Czech Republic, Italy, and Poland; on February 9th in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Portugal' on February 16th in Hong Kong and Brazil; on February 27th in Finland; on March 15th in Denmark, Singapore, Norway and Sweden; and on April 27th in Lithuania.

RANGO - Wonderful, radical, revolutionary

RANGO is a revelation. It is one of the best films I have seen this year, one of the best animated films since TOY STORY, and must surely raise the bar in terms of what is seen as appropriate material for a children's film, and the level of ambition one can bring to the visuals in an animated film. I wonder if history will judge it as revolutionary as AVATAR in terms of bringing the craft of cinema forward and - contra AVATAR - showing us just how dazzling and immersive visuals can be without 3D, but when the CGI animators are guided by one of the best cinematographers working today, Roger Deakins (TRUE GRIT, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN).

The movie has been put together by the team behind PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN - director Gore Verbinski and star Johnny Depp - and it's their best film to date - capturing the sheer energy and comedy of the original POTC film, but allying it to a stronger story and imbuing it with an indulgent love of cinema. For this is, above everything, a film for cineastes - a film about the joy of transformation - of being part of a story that you craft - and about living up to the Heroic Ideal. To that end, John Logan (GLADIATOR)'s screenplay leans heavily on the plot of 70s film noir, CHINATOWN, but lives in the shadow of all of those wonderful Clint Eastwood westerns, not to mention doffing its cap to FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and APOCALYPSE NOW among others.

Johnny Depp plays a pet lizard with no real friends but a vivid imagination. The lizard is the ultimate cinephile, indulging in wild cine-literate fantasies, but ultimately lonely and confused about who he really is. When a car accident leaves him wondering into a old western town in the Mojave desert, he takes the opportunity to reinvent himself as "Rango" - a gun-slinging hero along the lines of The Man With No Name. And boy does this town need a Hero. Some Evil man (obvious to anyone who's seen CHINATOWN) has been hoarding water, leaving the town to run dry, forcing humble farmers from their land....In order to sort this mess out, Rango has to over-come his fear, make good friends, and become a Real Hero, helped out by a wise armadillo (Al Molina) and a surreal dream featuring Timothy Olyphant as the Clint-like Spirit of the West.

What I love about Rango is its evident love for the genres it's referring to (in sharp contrast to the risible YOUR HIGHNESS) and its evident love for the textures of the western. I've never seen an animated film - typically full of shiny, bright, smooth CGI - look so dusty, weather-beaten and worn. The details of the fur, the clothes, the buildings is quite stunning and the film is drawn as if it really has been shot on old fashioned 35mm by the best cinematographer in the business. Add to that a story with real stakes and real emotional heart, voiced by actors at the top of their game. (Special mentions for Isla Fisher as Beans and Ned Beatty as the Mayor.) But most of all I love that this film neither patronises its young audience nor bores its adult audience - and yet doesn't pander to quick, cheap laughs with post-modern winks at popular culture - a trait I particularly detest in the SHREK films. Which other animated movie would dare to have a joke in which the word "thespians" is confused for "lesbians" - or a sequence in which the Hero cross-dresses?

All of this makes RANGO at once marvellously old-fashioned in its cinephilia, its textures and its wonderful photography, but also marvellously modern in its subversive adult humour and willingness to use surreal dream sequences. This really is a wonderful film - and one can only hope that other animated features rise to the challenge of matching its attention to detail and depth of vision.

RANGO is on global release in all bar Japan where it opens on September 23rd.

EDGE OF DARKNESS - Curiously flat

EDGE OF DARKNESS is a curiously anemic political thriller starring Mel Gibson as a straightlaced cop whose daughter is assassinated by her employer - a shadowy military defense contractor. While the police are distracted with the idea that the killer was really after the cop, the father begins his own investigation that takes him into the upper reaches of government and business. The marketing campaign for this film led me to believe that the film would be akin to the recent Liam Neeson vehicle TAKEN - in which a vengeful father murdered and tortured his way through Paris. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that EDGE OF DARKNESS is a far quieter, more talkative film. Indeed, barring one or two scenes, it is hardly an action movie at all. Rather, the movie takes the form of a series of conversations. Mel Gibson is actually rather sympathetic and credible as the grieving father and his scenes opposite Ray Winstone, who plays a government fixer, are marvelous to watch. Winstone is more modulated than is typical, and keeps us guessing as to his true motives. But I was rather disappointed to see Danny Huston roll out the same oleaginous sinister performance as the corporate boss. I was also disappointed by the technical quality of the film, despite being shot by the team behind CASINO ROYALE, and by the complete lack of tension. Indeed, the film was so baggy that after an hour I was tempted to leave. The mechanics of the plot - the secret everyone is trying to hide - is very mono-dimensional and obvious. There is no real attempt to work out the ramifications of the secret either politically or in the media. Indeed, despite a rather impressive corporate HQ, the movie has a rather parochial air (all the more because only Gibson attempts a Boston accent.) This extends to one of the most flat and brushed aside endings to a thriller I've seen in a while. So, all in all, despite a rather sympathetic performance from Gibson, this is ultimately a rather frustrating film.

EDGE OF DARKNESS is on release in the UK, the US, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Singapore, Brazil and Canada. It opens next weekend in Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, Finland and Sweden. It opens later in February in Belgium, Slovenia, France, the Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Romania and South Korea. It opens on March 4th in Argentina and Germany; on March 12th in Taiwan and on April 2nd in Estonia.

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.

London Film Fest Day 4 - 44 INCH CHEST

44 INCH CHEST is the debut feature from Malcolm Venville and written by the people behind the superb British gangster thriller SEXY BEAST. SEXY BEAST was not only magnificently profane and visually stunning but it took Sir Ben "Gandhi" Kingsley and presented him as possibly the most scary gangster this side of the Thames. Any script that could allow such a transformation was worthy of praise. 44 INCH CHEST is transformative, but not in such a powerful or compelling a manner. It starts off in the comfort zone of British gangster movies. We open with a plus suburban home wrecked in a vicious fight, and Ray Winstone's character, Colin Diamond, lying on the floor looking dazed. We then watch four mangy-looking East End gangsters, played by four outstanding British actors (John Hurt, Ian McShane, Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Dillane), abduct a French waiter and gather in a vacant house. There friend Colin has been cuckolded and they, as good friends, are going to facilitate him exacting revenge on the fucker locked in the cupboard and the cheating wife. The twist in the tale is that Colin Diamond, East End gangster that he is, really loves his wife, and knows that if he kills her lover, it'll be over between them for good. What then follows is a slow burn psychological thriller, and the lads wait for Colin to beat up Loverboy, and Colin builds up the stomach to either do that or, worse still, tell his mates that he's setting him free.

The movie looks great - all grimy, discoloured yellows and browns. John Hurt puts in a bravura performance as Old Man Peanut - the meanest of the gangsters - but McShane, Dillane and Wilkinson are fine too. There's also a lovely little cameo of Steven Berkoff losing a packet at, what happens to be, the casino I frequent in Mayfair. The script is taught and full of some beautifully inventive swearing. I really admire screen-writers Louis Mellis and David Scinto for trying to explore the pyschological workings of Colin Diamond. Problem is, as the movie progresses, I found myself becoming as frustrated as the lads waiting for Colin to get on with it. Maybe I'd been mis-sold. Maybe I'd been misled by the momentum of the early scenes. But, in the end, despite the solid gold cast and script, this movie didn't really work for me.

44 INCH CHEST is already on release in Australia. It opens in January 2010 in New Zealand and the UK.