IRON SKY - Moon nazis!

There are lots of movie with hilarious titles, but few that live up to them. (SNAKES ON A PLANE, I'm looking at you.)  IRON SKY is, on the whole, a movie that's worth checking out.  After all, it would take a total bah-humbug kill-joy not to enjoy a movie who's concept is Moon Nazis!  The idea is that in the final days of World War II, the Nazis sent a colony to the Moon, which has since gathered strength and is now returning to invade a near-future USA run by Sarah Palin.

First off, for what is presumably a low-budget feature, the movie looks fantastic. All the space effects, space-station sets and costumes are superb, and the scenes on the moon are definitely the best in the film.   Second, the movie has a handful of absolutely on-point black-comedy moments. Like when the Moon Nazis use a highly edited version of Chaplin's Hitler spoof, THE GREAT DICTATOR, to make it look like its Hitler propaganda.  Or when the President's aide tries to tell her Moon Nazis are coming and she thinks that it's merely a WAG THE DOG like set-up to get her re-elected. Or when she totally identifies with the Blut und Boden values of the Nazis.   

That said, the movie has its weaknesses. Half the time the humour is just too broad for my liking, and veers from black satire to cheap lampoon. I guess that's just what you have to expect from an Udo Kier movie. I didn't particularly get or feel comfortable with the plot line that sees a US soldier turned white. And Sarah Palin is a pretty easy target. My suspicion is that there is a very funny, more intelligent 45 minute short film hiding underneath this baggy full-length feature.

IRON SKY played Berlin and SXSW 2012. It was released earlier this year in Finland, Norway, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Croatia, Poland, Australia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Ireland, the UK and Fiji. It will be released in Romania on June 22nd, in Singapore on June 28th, in Lithuania on June 29th, in the Czech Republic, Russia and Slovakia on July 12th and in New Zealand on August 12th.

THE HUNGER GAMES - eheu o me miserum!

HUNGER GAMES plays like a po-faced, de-fanged version of RUNNING MAN and BATTLE ROYALE. In a dystopian American future, the tyrannical 1 percent demand each district volunteer two kids to fight to the death in a gladiatorial reality TV show. Predictably, the two kids from the poorest district work together to game the system and survive - the only spin being that they become as manipulative as the game they are in to succeed - feigning teen love (or are they?! - who cares) to win public sympathy.  Clearly, the franchise, based on a trilogy by Suzanne Collins', is gearing up for a finale in which the triumph of the 99th percentile inspires a revolution of the Plebs. Which begs the question why, with all their technology, cash, and cunning, the 1% allows them to survive so long. Frankly, any ruling elite so utterly incompetent deserves to die by dingleberries. Dr No, sorry, Snow, is giving us a bad name. 

Anyways, what can we say about this film. It has less pretty lead actors (Josh Hutcherson, Jennifer Lawrence)than the Twiglet series but equally pitiful dye jobs.  (Picture the Celebrity Death Match between Josh Hutcherson's blonde highlights and Twiglet's Nikki Reed!) The acting is better in THE HUNGER GAMES, basically because Jennifer Lawrence can communicate so much nuanced and conflicting emotion without saying a word. But this is offset by some truly shitty production and costume design - so over-the-top, so absurd, that it looks cheap and trashy and completely undermines the attempt at portraying earnest emotion. The worst victim of this is poor Elizabeth Banks in what one can only call the Parker Posey Memorial Role, as inspired by Helena Bonham Carter. By contrast, Lenny Kravitz hardly looks like he's trying at all, and one can imagine an hilarious conversation between the rock musician and the make-up department where he just refuses to go with it. Finally, the direction (Gary Ross - THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX) is also pretty pedestrian.

But my real problem with the whole show was its hackneyed premise coupled with a pretty superficial use of Roman names and concepts.  The world really just doesn't need a desaturated RUNNING MAN. It's like the whole problem with Twiglet: vampires who don't have sex are about as compelling as a Death Match where studio economics require a PG-13 certificate, so that all violence happens off-screen. Apparently the books are more savage, which is great, but then again, Suzanne Collins does try to palm us off with a kind of lo-rent tipping-of-the-hat to Rome.  Clever, clever to call a food deprived land "Panem", and to keep the plebs happy with circuses, but you just can't call major characters Cinna and Caesar without following through. It all felt highly disrespectful coming from a woman who purports to have serious influences. Moreover, where's the subtle satire on reality TV? Where's the subversive politics? The film seems to pick up so many interesting, dangerous concepts, but doesn't seem to have the balls to follow them through.  Oh, and one final thing.  Why give your heroine a name that sounds like "catnip"?

THE HUNGER GAMES is on release pretty much everywhere except Chile and Vietnam, where it opens on March 30th; South Korea and Lithuania, where it opens on April 6th; South Africa, where it opens on April 13th; Spain where it opens on April 20th and Italy, where it opens on May 1st.

JOHN CARTER - Disney's ginger stepchild

JOHN CARTER is a movie so unloved by its studio that before it was released it was almost possible to recast it in its own Hollywood "underdog story".  Over the past six months, articles in the trade press have bemoaned Disney's lack of marketing strategy - the pre-commitment to the 60 second Superbowl ad (which was underwhelming at best) - dropping the "OF MARS" from the title.  The studio chief seems to have been backing his way out of the door, pushing blame for this fiasco on his predecessor - and, make no mistake, this movie IS a fiasco. A tent-pole movie whose budget is a reported £250m plus marketing, with no A-list stars and no brand-name recognisable source text.  Even a superbly made movie would struggle to earn this kind of money back, and JOHN CARTER isn't superbly made.  For that, I guess we have to blame writer-director and Pixar golden-boy Andrew Stanton (UP, WALL-E, TOY STORY, FINDING NEMO).  A director who has come across as so defensive on his UK press tour as to alienate his potential audiences.  His basic stance seems to be "we make the movies we wanna make: so screw the audience and the studio.  Steve Jobs told me we were hired for our taste."  Sub-text: if we, the humble ticket-paying audience don't like the movie, it's on us - we just aren't tasteful enough. It's also completely disingenuous to suggest that Stanton makes movies without studio pressure. If so, why the extensive re-cutting, the expensive re-shoots, the change in title, the retro-fitted 3D?  All of which are the studio's desperate attempt to get back more cents on the dollar than investors in Greek sovereign debt.  (Prognosis - probably about the same i.e. 30 cents on the dollar.)

All the negative press had made me perversely desperate to like JOHN CARTER - to become its champion. But sadly, the movie didn't give me anything.  It was just dull over-produced nonsense - a sort of trashy sci-fi B-movie that, despite its egregious budget, still managed to look pretty cheesy - a movie that hinted at action-adventure serials in the FLASH GORDON or INDIANA JONES or STAR WARS style, but failed to live up to any of them.  (Not that there's anything wrong with B-movies - we all love FLASH GORDON - but there's no need to spend more than, say, £70m, on a B-movie).  Apparently, the movie is based on an early twentieth century serial by Edgar Rice Borroughs (he of TARZAN fame) that ran to some 13 instalments. I have no interest in seeing any more.

So what's it all about, Alfie?  John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) is a Confederate cavalryman, mysteriously transported to Mars where he uses his new super-strength (thanks to low gravity) to intervene in the war between Helios (good guys) and Zodanga (bad guys). He does this by enlisting the help of the hitherto neutral Tharks (the Ewok/Na'avi of this flick).  In the process, Carter falls for the Helios' Princess Dejah (Lynn Collins) saves her from a forced marriage to the Zodanga Prince Sab Than, foils the manipulations of the mysterious Thern (Mark Strong) and brokers a reconciliation between a Thark father and daughter (Willem Dafoe and Samantha Morton). Not bad, huh?!

This is your basic sci-fi, space-romance story in the B-movie style.  All good fun.  So what went so horribly wrong? Well, for a start, it just isn't fun to watch! The dialogue and delivery is remarkably po-faced and earnest.  The only actor who looks like he's having any fun at all is James Purefoy as a Helios General in the HBO Rome Mark Anthony mould.  Purefoy is a scene-stealer, and left me wondering what this movie had been like if he had been cast as John Carter instead of pretty boy and ex-Friday Night Lights star, Taylor Kitsch. Purefoy would've been more age-appropriate for a start, and has so much more charisma than Kitsch, who comes across as a whimpering pasty bouncing ball.  


Which brings me to the next problem: the look of the actors.  The movie is set on Mars, so of course, the Martians have to have red skin. Problem is, they just look like they've have had Essex-style bad fake tans (orange-heavy) and their costumes are so plastic-fantastic they look like cheap action figures.  Which brings me to the next problem.  Poor Lynn Collins - the female love-interest - is made to where a series of revealing costumes that are clearly catering to the same teen-boy fantasy as Princess Leia's bikini.  This sits ill with the fact that Collins is not a conventional beauty. I applaud that casting - it makes the fact that the Princess is a science geek more credible than, say, casting Megan Fox - but it seems hypocritical to make so much of her brains and fighting smarts, while dressing her like Martian Barbie. 

And this uneasy juxtaposition brings me to my final, and biggest problem with the film: its need to bely its B-movie status my pumping up the emotional gravity. Do we really need the father-daughter angst in the Thark storyline, for instance? Cutting that could've got the movie down to a 90 minute run-time for a start. And worst of all, the most crass scene is one where John Carter in battle is inter-cut with a flash-back to him digging his wife's grave on Earth.  No-one needs that kind of crass emotional manipulation in the midst of a good old-fashioned punch-up.  The inter-cutting was utterly unearned and utterly unsuccessful. Much like the rest of this unloved ginger stepchild of a movie.

JOHN CARTER is on global release in all bar Portugal, where it opens next weekend, and Japan, where it opens on April 13th.

iPad Round-Up 4 - ATTACK THE BLOCK

ATTACK THE BLOCK is the tightly written, brilliantly observed, laugh-out-loud hilarious directorial debut of British TV comedian, Joe Cornish.  The concept is brilliant - what would happen if aliens didn't invade LA or New York, but a South London council estate? Suddenly all the anti-social behaviour that the Daily Mail readers like to pillory looks like basic survival skills, and the essential paedophobia of modern British society is turned on its head. The muggers, dope dealers and bad-boys are shown to be lost kids with mad skills who save the day.

What I love about this film is that while it's making a serious social point - all the more serious after this summer's riots - it wears its learning lightly.  It gets the whole Castigat Ridendo Mores point I was making in my review of THE CONSPIRATOR.  It never forgets to make us laugh - it has characters we believe in and care about - and it immerses us in the messy details of modern life on a London estate.  And it goes to show that you can make a great movie that's just 90 minutes long.  

Kudos to Joe Cornish for the genuinely funny, intelligent script. But also real kudos for pulling off some cool sci-fi effects on a low-budget, and for assembling a mostly unknown cast of kids for the film.  Once again, young Sammy Williams (WILD BILL) steals every scene he's in, but there are no weak links here.  A must-see movie, and likely to become a cult favourite on DVD.  Moreover, one of the few films that exploits its SHAUN OF THE DEAD connections, that deserves to do so.

ATTACK THE BLOCK played SXSW 2011 and was released this summer in the UK, Ireland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Belgium, France, Iceland, the Netherlands, the USA, Turkey, Kuwait, Germany, Singapore and Israel. It is currently on release in Sweden. It is available to rent and own.

Guest review by George Ghon - CONTAGION

A ghastly virus breaks out. It kills so fast that any hope to find a suitable remedy in time becomes elusive. A father, whose wife had died, tries to protect his daughter from the evil disease (Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Anna Jacoby-Heron respectively). The government official (Laurence Fishburne) with field experience shows his toughness and rigor to handle the nightmarish situation according to his professional standards. He cooperates with the World Health Organization, which in turn sends a cute epidemy specialist (Marion Cotillard) to analyse the trajectory of the virus and determine where it had come from, ending up on site in Hong Kong. The scientist in the laboratory (Jennifer Ehle) does what she can and all along the viewer waits for an unexpected turn in the plot. 

Is a James Bond villain behind all this? Does the CIA have secret intelligence? Can it be that a Swiss pharmaceuticals CEO has gone insane under the current economic pressure and a little experiment to boost the sales for Aspirin went way out of control? 

No, nothing, the story just continues and the source of the disease is backtracked to an obscure bat population in the Asian jungle. The whole trick box of elaborate Hollywood dramaturgy remains closed, giving preference to a Realistic account of a current-day bio-catastrophe. There is no evil scheme to be discovered. The guys in power are working hard, doing their job as best as they can. The alternative souls (Jude Law as Frisco-based wannabe journalist) are as corrupt and prone to sell their conscience to greedy hedge fund managers as every other human being could possibly be. And even the offices of high profile government organisations, and with them their functionaries, are suspiciously unattractive.

Steven Soderbergh, who wants to see this?Hollywood is the dream factory, not the documentary Mecca! It is easy to dismiss this film as unsuccessful try to wrap an action plot into some layers of the Real. Boring! On the other hand, do we need to see another hyper-stylized, action packed, fast cut, over-dramatized doomsday film? Isn’t Steven Soderbergh here discovering an interesting gap that uses all the tools Hollywood has on display, but does not heighten them to a flasher à la Michael Bay? 

The film is purely led by the prosaic unfolding of a story, which could happen any day, without any conspiracy scheming that goes unnoticed by the public. The lead characters are not immortal (Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, watch out for Mr. Soderbergh’s casting director, he might eventually get you), nor are they overly beautified (ok, Gwyneth Paltrow looks sexy in a party scene, but no one else would show her deliberately with reddened skin irritations on the neck, I guess) or morally beyond (the people having privileged access to the vaccine that is eventually found gladly take it, without making too much fuss about their ius primae seri). Contagion doesn’t bother too much with aesthetic conventions or viewer’s expectations. It just tells it how it is. Hollywood for the quotidian.

CONTAGION played Venice 2011 and opened in September in Hong Kong, Singapore, Italy and the US. It opened in Hungary on October 13th; and in Finland, Ireland, Poland, Sweden and the UK on October 21st; in Norway on October 28th. It opens in Belgium and France on November 9th; in Spain on November 29th; in Australia on December 3rd and in Germany on December 24th.

RA.ONE - a new benchmark in Hindi sci-fi action flicks

Ladai goliyon se nahin, dil se jeeti jati hain.

Hindi cinema has never had a strong tack record in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Its product has tended to focus on the musical rom-com, melodrama and tragedy - sometimes all bound up in the same film.  There have been successful gangster, cop and thriller movies, and a consistently rich seam of independent cinema.  But with a few recent exceptions - KRRISH, perhaps - Hindi cinema hasn't really ventured into the lucrative arenas (in the West, at least) of children's animation, fantasy, horror, and sci-fi.  Perhaps this reflects the fact that all these genres need state of the art technical expertise of the kind that up until recently wasn't available in Mumbai - surprisingly so, when you consider India's considerable edge in IT.  But IT in the creative industries - that's something quite different.  Moreover, these films need considerable and expensive post-production work - again not the kind of facilities easily accessible in Bollywood.

All this pre-amble gives you some idea as to how revolutionary RA.ONE is. Because this isn't so much a new film, to be reviewed as other films are reviewed, but a statement of faith in the future of Hindi cinema on the part of its star, legendary Hindi actor Shah Rukh Khan, and his wife and now producer, Gauri Khan.  RA.ONE represents a massive gamble, and indeed investment, on their part - in creating production facilities in Mumbai - in using the best post facilities in London for effects and retrospective 3D.  They  have shown the world that Hindi cinema can now produce movies of technical skill to match anything Hollywood has to offer, and the box office receipts show that Indian audiences are quite willing to embrace the relatively new genre of sci-fi action thriller.  To that end, RA.ONE must be seen as a technical and commercial success - a seminal film - regardless of the quality of the actual work.

The movie itself is far more conservative than the radical technical achievement.  The story is a strange and not entirely felicitous mash-up of elements from TERMINATOR, THE MATRIX, and TRON, shoe-horned into a typical Hindi family comedy. 

Shah Rukh Khan plays a nerdy video game designer called Shekhar, married to his loving wife Sonia (Kareena Kapoor).  In order to impress his alarmingly feminine-looking son, Prateek (Armaan Verma), Shekhar invents a game in which the bad guy always wins. Problem is, the bad guy avatar, Ra.One (a  play on the Hindi name of an evil demon, Raavan) breaks free of the computer game and enters the real world, desperate to kill his gaming foe Lucifer, the avatar of Prateek. Only the good guy avatar, G.One (a play on the Hindi word for "life", Jeevan), modelled on Shekhar, can save the day.

The scenes of family life, with Shekhar and then G.One playing husband and father, are classic Hindi schmaltz.  It's a culture in which the family unit is idealised - where father is always right, mother is entirely dependent on father (despite a brief reference to feminist research), and the little kid is a spoilt brat who comes to realise that, well, father was right all along.  There are schmaltzy scenes of bonding, and Shah Rukh Khan's brand of typically broad, crude comedy.  He does things here that are so simplistic - donning a stupid perm wig to simulate being a geeky southern Indian - that no other actor would get away with.  But accusations that Shah Rukh Khan is a hammy actor are beside the point. His fans want to see through the thinly veiled disguise of costume and antics to the superstar beneath.  He is his own brand - losing himself in characterisation would be alienating to his admirers.

The handling of the sci-fi material is also pretty cursory.  This isn't THE MATRIX - posing deep questions about the nature of reality and perception. The explanation of how Ra.One and G.One can escape the video game is all a bit Basil Exposition.  No-one here is really interested in the philosophy.  But I have to say that I did appreciate the almost self-effacing way in which the screenwriters (David Benullo, Kanika Dhillon, Niranjan Iyengar, Mushtaq Sheikh, director Anubhav Sinha and Shah Rukh Khan) acknowledge this fact. Shortly after the interval they insert a scene where Sonia, Prateek and G.One meet Rajnikanth in the role of Chitti - the robot come to life that he played in the recent Hindi film ENDHIRAN - a much more subtle and intelligent investigation of the nature of virtual reality.  Sonia explicitly pays homage to the superior creation.

Where the film scores big is in the use of CGI and the staging of the action scenes, that surpass anything in recent Hindi cinema, and even surpass second-tier Hollywood action flicks like THE GREEN LANTERN and THE GREEN HORNET.  The imaginary worlds look amazing, Shah Rukh Khan looks superb in his blue-lit suit, and the set-pieces are just stunning - particularly a train chase sequence that culminates in the (subversive political?!) destruction of Mumbai's colonial Victoria Terminus railway station.  I also liked the in-jokes - the inclusion of Desi girl jokes at Priyanka Chopra's expense, for instance.  And, of course, completing the cross-cultural switch, we have the American rapper Akon singing the two key songs that frame the big musical item numbers.  These scenes work really well, and it's actually pretty surprising to see how convincing Akon is singing Hindi lyrics, although this is undercut by the absurdity of Khan lip-synching to them. Ra.One is also one of the more successful retrospective 3D movies of recent times.

Overall, it's easy to knock RA.ONE - the plot is shaky, the sci-fi exposition cursory - and it's basically just another vehicle for Shah Rukh Khan's brand of cheeky family comedy, newly supplemented by his buff physique. The movie was never trying to be a subtle sci-fi thriller.  What is was trying to do was lay down a new benchmark for CGI-packed action films. And in that respect, it's an unqualified success.

RA.ONE went on global release on October 26th. 

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.

SUPER 8

SUPER 8 is a supremely self-indulgent movie, and whether or not you enjoy it depends on how far you share the nostalgia of the film-makers. Writer-directer J. J. Abrams and cinematographer Larry Fong grew up in the 1970s, making amateur genre movies on Super-8mm cameras, and obsessing over the movies of Steven Spielberg, whose movies were themselves self-indulgent. After all, take away that sense of visual wonder - the spaceship in E.T.; the pirate ship in THE GOONIES; the effects work in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS - and every Spielberg film is basically the same. They are movies that document the struggle of kids growing up in working-class middle-America in an era when mum and dad are divorced, both parents are at work, and the kids are pretty much left to their own devices. The world of Spielberg is full of peril, but the plucky kids always pull through thanks to friendship and smarts. And when they do, well, their previously uncomprehending, distant parents show up with a big hug and a few tears. These are movies of alienated children creating a sense of family where there was none: through their friends - and finally by forcing their parents to notice them. The aliens, the sharks, the pirate ships - these are basically just super-dramatic MacGuffins.

Of course, every genre film has its subtext. Zombie movies from the 60s and 70s are really depicting society's fears of Soviet infiltrators, or the rise of consumerism. So it shouldn't be surprising to find that E.T. is really about divorce. But what I do resent is how Spielberg allows what should be sub-text to dominate his movies. I don't mind it getting a little dusty in the cinema at the end of a movie but I do resent the infantilisation of the audience that characterises his work and the emotional manipulation that swamps the final act in every Spielberg movie - and absolutely ruins A.I. This is, after all, the director who felt it necessary to pick out a little girl being swept into the Warsaw Ghetto in a red coat - as if the tragedy of the Holocaust were not enough. The audience had to be directed to the tragedy. The result is that SCHINDLER'S LIST - in some ways an admirable film - is irredeemably kitsch.

All this may seem a little off the point, but once you understand that SUPER 8 is a love-letter to Spielberg - not a pastiche, but often containing elements of pastiche - it makes more sense. J.J.Abrams and Larry Fong want to take us back to their childhood - to create that same sense of wonder at the magic of celluloid - to a time before the meaningless CGI and fatuous camera angles of Michael Bay. The nostalgia is even wider. The opening shot shows us a sign in an "employee-owned" steel mill - and the film-makers want us to appreciate that this was an era where America made things; where greed wasn't good; where gas was cheap; towns were communities; where kids still called adults Mr. and Mrs; and the most trouble you could get into was to smoke a little pot. In essence, J.J.Abrams and Larry Fong are taking us back to an era before irony and slick production values. Maybe that's why Abrams directorial style (insofar as he has one outside of making Spielberg flicks) is creating lens flares. Lens flares are typically seen as a mistake - as amateur - as something to be avoided. But according to an interview in American Cinematographer magazine, for Abrams "Flares can be purposeful and addictive, and at the right time they remind me, in a good way, that I'm watching a movie. It doesn't take me out of it. I think it draws me in deeper." In other words, Abrams is in love with cinema, and he wants to be reminded that he's watching a movie every once in a while. He is in love with his childhood and he wants us to be too.

The movie takes place in the 1970s in Spielbergian mid-town working-class America. A bunch of school-kids are making a Super-8 zombie movie, sneaking out to film late at night. They witness their school science teacher deliberately derail a military train - an event that triggers their town being taken over by sinister military types looking for the train's cargo - cargo that is messing with the town's electricity, scaring its animals, wreaking havoc with its machinery and abducting its people...With so much real-life Area-51 type activity, the kids at first treat it all as a great opportunity to film some real-life special effects, but when their friend Alice goes missing, the adventure really begins.....

When the film works best, it's showing us the wonder of kids obsessing over celluloid. You get a real sense of camaraderie and fun from the young ensemble cast, and I particularly loved the soft satire of directorial obsession that is Riley Griffiths' Charles asking the photo-developer for a rush job (three days!) and screaming "production values". I also loved the nascent love story between young Joe (Joel Courtney) and Alice (Elle Fanning). The gory special effects are fun - Larry Fong obviously had a lot of fun re-creating the amateur look of the kids' Super 8 film (shown over the credits) - and Ryan Lee as the pyromaniac Cary pretty much steals every scene he's in. J.J.Abrams does a great job in keeping the monster off screen for as long as possible, building up tension, and Larry Fong brilliantly recreates the look and feel of both CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.

But the film is let down by its need to recreate the emotional schmaltz of a Spielberg film. I understand why Joe's bereaved father, deputy Jackson (Kyle Chandler) is distant from his son. But poor Ron Eldard didn't have any time or room to establish why Louis Dainard was such a drunk, why he was so mean to his daughter, Alice, or why he improbably became so caring by the end of the film. Worst of all, I felt it was rather too convenient that anyone who touches the monster creates a "psychic connection". That convenient little plot device allows for a last-act redemption and touchy-feely blast off that is utterly emotionally unearned. The overall verdict is the same as for any Spielberg flick - great camaraderie among the kids, and amazing visual effects - but all ruined by improbable reconciliation and schmaltz at the end.

SUPER 8 was released in June in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the USA, Ukraine, Canada, Taiwan, Vietnam, Belarus, Greece, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Russia, South Korea, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Qatar, Sweden, Turkey, Armenia and Japan. It was released n July in Israel, Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, Finland and Norway. It was released this week in France, Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Mexico and the UK. It goes on release next week in the Netherlands, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It will be released in Spain on August 19th and in Italy on September 9th.




Comment by Blog Contributor Daniel Plainview: Let's be honest about it - it was a piece of fluff fan-fiction BMX-ing late 70s homage to big Steve. But having said that, it was fun while it lasted. You wouldn't touch it with a barge pole on DVD, for all the reasons you've stated. But spending a tenner and seeing it at the cinema was inoffensive, fun, and stupid at the same time. 

I think the only reservation I would have to add to that is that the schmaltz doesn't work. As you say, it is emotionally unearned - we feel no depth of reconciliation with the wee lassie and her father, and frankly we don't care enough about the central character to mind what happens to him. In fact, had the monster given them some fucked up disease, or just killed them all, I would probably have laughed maniacally rather than being upset. Instead, it set up a psychic connection by fingering them, which is gay in so many different ways.

Still a fun movie though

SOURCE CODE - a lot less clever than it thinks it is

Duncan Jones' directorial debut, MOON was a beautifully crafted, emotionally powerful, low-budget sci-fi flick that was arguably one of the best films of 2009. As a result, his new film SOURCE CODE has been met with a lot of good-will on the part of the critical fraternity and has led to what are, in my opinion, overly generous reviews. Because SOURCE CODE is, essentially, a rather simple-minded, emotionally uninvolving movie full of plot holes, featuring at least one awful acting performance and saddled with a piss-poor Hollywood ending. Overall, it's enjoyable enough as a sort of lo-rent thriller, but it's neither good sci-fi, nor a follow-up film worthy of MOON. I am deeply, deeply disappointed.

The set-up of the film, written by Ben Ripley, is half way between Quantum Leap and that Denzel Washington-Tony Scott time-travel/CSI thriller DEJA VU. Jake Gyllenhaal plays an army officer called Colter Stevens who is parlayed by some sci-fi gimcrack into the mind of a commuter called Sean on a morning train to Chicago. That train is about to be blown up by a terrorist as a warning shot before an even bigger dirty bomb goes off in the city. The army keeps sending Colter back into Sean's body for eight minute segments  to find the identity of the bomber so that he can be apprehended before the second attack. But it is made very clear to Colter that he can't change what's already happened - the people on that train must die - and just because Colter has the hots for Sean's girlfriend Christina (Michelle Monaghan), he can't save her life.

Duncan Jones deftly handles the first half of the film. The repeated eight minutes segments on the train, that repeat in variations, GROUNDHOG DAY style, are never dull. There are some wonderfully innovative tracking shots in the confined space and good use of editing. Kudos also to Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan for giving those segments a sense of urgency and intimacy. But I started to lose interest badly in the second half of the flick for a number of reasons. First up, the first big plot reveal - about how Colter ended up in the Source Code - could be spotted a mile off. Second, if Colter knows the bomber has to leave the train to set off the second bomb, why does he bother interrogating people on the train? Third, the introduction of Jeffrey Wright's Evil Scientist character was just thin two-dimensional writing, and his performance as hammy as hell. Fourth, the character of the army-officer-with-a-conscience was similarly thinly written. And poor Vera Farmiga was simply an age-appropriate delivery device. Fifth, the ending. I think even those who really love this film will agree that there is a natural place where this film should end, and yet it goes on for another five minutes in what I can only assume was a studio intervention.

The upshot - disappointment with what was basically a mediocre thriller with a ham-fisted ending and no real ingenuity in its handling of its sci-fi or emotional material.

SOURCE CODE is on release in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, the Philippines, Taiwan, the UK, the US, the Czech Republic, Kuwait, Serbia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Iceland, Turkey and Spain. It opens later in April in Portugal, France, Spain, Hong Kong, Hungary, Malaysia, Singapore, Greece, Italy and Norway. It opens in May in India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Finland. It opens on June 2nd in Germany; on June 9th in the Netherlands; on June 16th in Denmark and on August 5th in Sweden.

LIMITLESS

LIMITLESS is a nicely executed sci-fi thriller but falls down on the screenwriters inability to fully explore the ramifications and consequences of its initial conceit. For all that, a perfectly decent DVD-night film. 

THE HANGOVER's Bradley Cooper stars as Eddie Mora, a hapless novelist with a loyal but alienated girlfriend (Abbie Cornish).  At wit's end, he takes a dodgy pill called "Limitless" from his ex brother-in-law and suddenly has absolute focus and boundless energy. He writes an amazing novel in one day, gets a sharp new suit, and - obviously - this being Hollywood, and greed always being manifested in stock trading - he becomes a day-trader.  His ability to make quick money gets him a job with legendary fund manager Carl Van Loon (Robert de Niro) and all goes well until the dodgy Russian that staked him in the stock market, Gennady, comes looking for money - and then, even worse, the diminishing stock of "Limitless".

The movie start off with real energy and style. Cooper is convincing both as the self-pitying schlub and as the slick trader. Abbie Cornish is sympathetic as the girlfriend and Robert de Niro - well, he barely has to act to look scarily impressive.  Behind the camera, I loved the way cinematographer Jo Willems (30 DAYS OF NIGHT, HARD CANDY) made subtle changes in lensing and film stock to show the difference between the ordinary world and the crisper, sharper world when on Limitless.  But the movie really falls down on Leslie Dixon's (MRS DOUBTFIRE, LOOK WHO'S TALKING) script.  I loved Carl Van Loon's big speech where he talks about having to earn rewards - but that isn't played out in the endgame for Eddie Mora.  Not at all. And one can't help wonder how a darker, more daring director like David Fincher would've treated the material during the black-out.  

LIMITLESS is on release in the US, Belarus, Bosnia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, Turkey, the US, Philippines, the UK, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Brazil and Bulgaria. It opens in April in Greece, Kuwait, Poland, Armenia, Belgium, Hong Kong, Hungary, the Netherlands, Singapore, Finland, Spain, Taiwan, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Mexico, Portugal, India and Sweden. It opens on May 24th in Indonesia. It opens in June in Lithuania, Norway, Colombia, Estonia and Peru.

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU is a slick sci-fi thriller based on a story by Philip K Dick and adapted and directed by George Nolfi, the scrennwriter behind THE  BOURNE ULTIMATUM. Photographed by John Toll (THE THIN RED LINE, VANILLA SKY) to depict contemporary New York as adjusted to be slightly shiner and sharper than it really is, the movie starts Matt Damon and Emily Blunt as a politician and dancer, for whom The Adjustment Bureau has bigger plans than to "just" fall in love and be content.

I loved the look of the film, and I found the chemistry between Damon and Blunt convincing. I even found the idea of Damon as a young, charismatic politician credible.  But I hated pretty much everything else about the film.  Anthony Mackie's inert performance as the Adjuster with a heart was unconvincing, and the fact that these angels/aliens? wander round Manhattan in Mad Men style suits and hats just seemed anachronistic and laughably obvious. I also had a problem with the central premise that these Adjusters have allowed us to have free will on small things, like which colour tie to wear, but not on big things, like who to fall in love with. I mean, haven't we all been raised to believe in the Butterfly Effect - that everything matters? Surely, when it comes to free will versus determinism you can't be in a half-way house. This inconsistency and poor-logic extends to the ending, which, without spoiling it, is very unsatisfactory.   

The other problem with the concept at the heart of the movie is that it reduces the stakes of the film.  We are meant to empathise with the Damon and Blunt characters - to root for true love - to want them to be allowed to be together.  But when we discover that they only want to be together due to a kind of psychic residue from an earlier version of The Plan, frankly I didn't care too much. All of a sudden the movie wasn't about true love being hindered, but mopping up after an old version of the plan.

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU is on release in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Ireland, Philippines, Poland, Spain, Turkey, UK and Denmark. It opens on March 11th in Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Egypt. It opens later in March in Egypt, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Hungary. It opens in April in Mexico, Colombia and Israel. It opens in May in Brazil, Peru, Japan and Panama. It opens on June 16th in Argentina, Chile, Italy and Venezuela and on June 24th in Paraguay.

TRON: LEGACY 3D - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

TRON: LEGACY is the much anticipated sequel to the iconic, pioneering 1982 sci-fi flick that took us inside the computer for the very first time. It is faithful to the original, while at the same time taking full advantage of new technologies, and while I am sure fan-boys will be happy, as a complete newbie, I found it exciting, evocative and literally wonderful. However, as I'll go on to explain, it's not without its problems - and for those reasons - I think the original movie stands head and shoulders above the remake.

As with the original movie, TRON: LEGACY has a simple plot that is explored on two levels: in reality and on the Grid (the computer-world), and characters exist both in real life and as avatars in both. A prologue tells us that back in 1989, talented computer programmer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) disappeared, leaving his little boy Sam an orphan. 27 years later, and Sam (Garrett Hedlund) is lured into the Grid by an apparent signal from his long-dead father, and both will try to battle a Programme more powerful than MCP (the villain of the first film). This time, the enemy is the very avatar Kevin Flynn created to patrol the Grid, called Clu; and Clu has bent Tron, the original security programme, to his will. No matter - for the Flynns have their own programming skills, as well as the help of a pioneering new programme called Quorra (Olivia Wilde), not to mention the attention of an oleaginous show-man called Castor (Michael Sheen).

The first good thing to say about TRON: LEGACY is that is looks absolutely bloody amazing. I watched it in 3D and what they did with the Disney logo - the logo - not even the film ! - had me gasping. We then break into scenes of real-life as we establish the prologue and the back story, but once we enter the Grid we're back into a world of clean fluorescent lines; dazzling car and motorcycle chases; iconic costumes and sets; and simply amazing 2012-like interior design. I can't wait to see this film again just to, quite simply, see it - to luxuriate in its design. I guess this reflects well on the fact that Disney respected the original designs and the camerawork of David Fincher's DP, Claudio Miranda, particularly skilled at working in DV. But most of all, the seamless use of CGI. Take, as just one example, the way in which Jeff Bridges' younger self plays CLU, retro-aged using the same technology that made Brad Pitt old in Benjamin Button.

The second good thing to say about TRON: LEGACY is that the story makes absolute sense. In other words, the screen-writers didn't mess up the logic or the lines of the original but extended it forward in a perfectly reasonable manner. That might sound petty but I've seen many a movie "opened out" by careless writers trying to over-shoot themselves. Edward Kitsis and Adam Horrowitz (veterans of LOST) don't make that mistake. And whenever there's a nod to the outside world - the world outside the movie - it makes sense and doesn't break the fourth wall. So, for instance, TRON the video game exists in the world of TRON: LEGACY but as an Encom product. Another example is using Daft Punk as the house-DJs in the Grid's End of the Line club. This might've been distracting were it not for the fact that Daft Punk's whole style, clothing and music is so Tron-like anyways that they fit right in.

The third good thing to say about TRON: LEGACY is that despite all the technological wizardry, a number of the key cast members give really powerful, believable performances, not least Jeff Bridges as the young, self-assured CLU and the older, wiser, more regretful Kevin Flynn. In the scene where he acknowledges his youthful pride and his love for his son, as the only true "perfection" that can be attained, Bridges just acts everyone else off the screen. Perhaps more surprising is that Olivia Wilde, as Quorra, is actually rather good. Wilde has the kind of linear, hard beauty that makes her superb casting as a computer programme. And the surprise for those of us who knew her from her role as Mischa Barton's love interest in The OC is that, when given half a chance, she can actually act. As Quorra she displays a certain wide-eyed excitement about the real world - what's Jules Verne like? what's the sun like? - that's captivating and engaging. And the movie desperately needs characters we can feel for to counter-act and humanise all the technology and CGI stylings.

But this movie really does have problems too. First up, first-time feature director Joseph Kosinski uses every directorial cliché in the book, especially in the 2-D live action scenes. For example, when Sam rides his motorcycle up to his dad's old arcade hall, we see his reflection in the motorcycle mirror. Why? What for? Except that's what directors usually do. Moreover, while Kosinski can direct high-paced thrilling Grid battles, he can't film a thrilling live action motorcycle chase. The opening cops versus Sam chase is simply dull.

Second, and far worse, two of the key performances are seriously off-beam. Michael Sheen's Castor/Zuse looks like a cross between an Albino and an Oompa-Loompa and he plays the character like Alan Cumming as MC in Cabaret. His performance is so camp, frenetic and outré, that it's begging to be called "scene-stealing" but instead I found it out of place and distracting. But far worse, and the biggest weakness of TRON: LEGACY by far, is the casting of Garrett Hedlund (Patroclus in TROY) as Sam Flynn. According to IMDB, Ryan Gosling was in the running, and would no doubt have pulled off the scenes of emotional heft with greater depth than this wooden-surfaced, persistently-smirking young man. Seriously, this guy gives Mark Hamill in NEW HOPE as the most wooden, peevish sci-fi protagonist of all time. He truly grates. And I guess it's the director who ultimately has to carry the can for a) casting him and b) not directing him better. If you need evidence check out the scene where he meets his father - the person he thinks walked out on him and left him an orphan - for the first time in 27 years. He should be angry, happy, confused, questioning, bewildered - any or all of these things. Garrett Hedlund's Sam can only register far off angst or a smirk or bland acquiescence. Shame, shame, shame.

It says a lot for the visual brilliance of TRON: LEGACY that I still think it's worth checking out despite the ham-fisted live-action direction and Garrett Hedlund's lack of acting ability. But it's desperately sad that a movie that had so much right, has been pinned back from true greatness by poor casting.

TRON: LEGACY will be released on December 15th in Egypt and the UAE. It is released on the 16th in Argentina, Australia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Russia and Singapore. It is released on the 17th in Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, India, Japan, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the USA and Venezuela. It opens on December 23rd in Hong Kong and Russia; on December 24th in Lithuania and Poland; on the 25th in Colombia; on the 26th in Iceland and on the 30th in Estonia and South Korea. It opens on January 6th in Slovakia; on the 12th in Italy; on the 13th in Portugal; on the 26th in Belgium and the Netherlands; on the 27th in Germany and on the 28th in Turkey. It opens in France on February 2nd.

TRON (1982) - Avatar

We all have movies we are obsessed with as children. For me, it was STAR WARS. Star Wars the movies, the toys, the computer games, the novels...TRON passed me by. Not so for a generous of incipient sci-fi freaks and computer nerds, not to mention Daft Punk. For those kids, TRON the movie and even more so, TRON the arcade game, are nostalgia-inducing, iconic, pop-cultural artefacts. So, the other night I Sky-plussed the original 1982 movie and finally sat down to watch a movie, loaded with the baggage of knowing that it was iconic, and the slightly odd recognition from having watched TRON: LEGACY on preview earlier in the day. The movie felt familiar and strange - archaic and modern - technical and emotional - all at the same time. I had a truly great time watching it, and while the visual effects might seem old hat today, the sheer beauty and austerity of the design is still impressive, nearly thirty years later.

The plot is simple but works on two planes - reality, and within the grid - with the same people fighting the same battle in both worlds by means of avatars. In the real world, ruthless Dillinger has plagiarised the work of talented computer programmer Kevin Flynn and then forced him out of Encomm. Now, he is being blackmailed by the Master Control Programme he created to run the company. MCP, like HAL, thinks Programmes are superior to Users, and is hacking military computers to gather programmes. Flynn's friend and fellow programmer has, thankfully, created a security programme to patrol MCP, called Tron, and when MCP ruthlessly lasers Flynn INTO of the grid, using another friend, Laura's super-gadget, he will be helped by their avatars, Tron and Yori, to defeat the evil MCP/Dillinger.

Everything about the film must've seemed amazing and pioneering at the time. Just the fact that writer-director Steven Lisberger thought that the guts of a computer would be an interesting place to set a film would've been radical, decades before MATRIX. And while he didn't have CGI, the way in which he mashed up live action, painted animation, roto-scoping, and good old visual effects is quite superb, and still visually striking. And no wonder, when you realise that the creative vision was the result of collaboration between Meobius and BLADE RUNNER's Syd Mead. It's thanks to them that we get the iconic grid structure, light-cycle races, uniforms and discs. But the key strength of TRON - the reason why we still love it - is that the technical wizardry isn't all their is to it. Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird have created characters we empathise with - whether it's the youthful enthusiasm of Bridges' Flynn, or the love story between Tron and Yori, or the most moving scene in the film which - radical at the time - involved the death of what is basically a computer programme.

So, for me, TRON has it all - visual purity, radical creativity, pioneering technology, but always, most importantly, real heart. I can't believe I waited this long to watch it!

TRON was released in 1982. It was nominated for Oscars for Best Costume Design and Best Sound but lost to GANDHI and ET respectively. Apparently it wasn't nominated for an Oscar because the MPAA, in all its wisdom, thought the film-makers had cheated by using computers! This says a lot about how threatened the academy felt by new technology.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 8 - WOMB

WOMB is a beautifully photographed, beautifully acted, deeply painful movie about an unboundaried relationship between a mother and son. Its entire run-time is basically a wince-inducingly uncomfortable exploration of unconventional emotional relationships - and you emerge from the cinema desperate to breathe. Writer-director Benedek Fliegauf creates - with just a few subtle strokes - a world like our own but with one sci-fi touch - cloning is possible. This is a key idea, but is introduced only after half an hour, and while its ramifications are hinted at, this is not really a sci-fi movie at all. What the concept does is allow an exploration of psycho-sexual transgression. Eva Green - Queen of independent cinema's messed up young women - plays Rebecca. She is reunited with her childhood sweetheart Tommy (Matt Smith - TV's latest Doctor Who). When a car accident robs them of a future together she decides, against his mother's wishes, to birth his clone and raise him as her son - all the while keeping him ignorant of this fact so as not to open him up to prejudice against "copies". So follows a brutal tale of closely observed suppressed emotions. Eva Green is superb - as usual - in portraying the single-minded madness of the thwarted women who comes to confront her guilt - expressing all this complexity with a remarkable stillness. Lesley Manville and Peter White - as Tommy's mother and father - are also superb in small roles.  The atmosphere is morose, oppressive and sinister without relief.  The result is a superb film marred only by one directorial choice - not to have Eva Green age - something that bugged me and brought me out of the movie throughout the second half of the film.

WOMB played Toronto and London 2010. It was released earlier this year in Russia, Germany and Hungary. It goes on release in Singapore on August 11th.

INCEPTION - It'll be just like in the movies. Pretending to be somebody else.

INCEPTION combines the elegant structure and intelligence of Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough indie hit, MEMENTO, with the stunning in-camera visual effects of BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT. More than that, INCEPTION demonstrates for the first time that Nolan can do more than “just” create intelligent mainstream blockbusters. Finally, he moves beyond the assured technique and shining surfaces to deliver a convincing and emotionally engaging love story. All of this is a great achievement. But it does not compensate for the over-use of exposition, weak characterization of the supporting roles, and the fact the questions raised by the central conceit have been explored in many films before this one.

The plot is neither as complicated nor as impenetrable as the critics would have you believe, nor as liable to be ruined by too much information before you watch the film. That’s because, while this movie is a heist movie in the classic tradition of RAFIFI or LE CERCLE ROUGE, the real substance of the film has nothing to do with the heist at all. Still, for what it’s worth, let’s explore the set-up. In the near future, corporate espionage isn’t about stealing files from an executive’s laptop but about stealing ideas straight from his subconscious when he’s in a drug-induced dream. To steal the idea, the thieves also have to drug themselves and enter into the subconscious of the victim – thus becoming vulnerable to any nasties the victim might be hiding down there. In this film, the thieves are paid to not to steal an idea, but to plant an idea in the victim’s mind so subtly than when he wakes up he thinks it’s his own. And this is precisely the engine of the film. Leonardo diCaprio’s Cobb is hired by Saito (Ken Watanabe) to plant an idea in the mind of his business rival Fisher (Cillian Murply), prompting Murphy to break up the massive corporate entity that he inherited from his father (Pete Postlethwaite). To pull off this reverse-heist, Cobb has to assemble a crack-team, made up of all-round side-kick, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); dream architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page); impersonator, Eames (Tom Hardy) and chemist, Yousuf (Dileep Rao). Together they engineer a situation in which they can sedate themselves and Fisher, engineer a dream within a dream within a dream, and plant an idea so deeply that they can achieve genuine inception.

There are, of course, plenty of rules about how this all works and the early parts of the film, and the characters played by Page, Levitt and Rao, do have a touch of the Basil Exposition about them. Even Pete Postlethwaite and Cillian Murphy, as dying father and grieving son, are similarly wasted. Once again, they exist merely as a sort of superbly tailored MacGuffin - the victims of the heist plot that propels the narrative. Only the superb Tom Hardy, through sheer force of personality, manages to carve out a memorable role for himself, stealing every scene that he’s in.

Still, I suppose that one shouldn’t begrudge Nolan the time setting up the intricate mechanics of Inception. There is something satisfying about the fact that, from what I can tell, the mechanics all hang together without any obvious holes in the logic. But for all the veneer of a sci-fi heist, let’s be honest, what we really care about – what drives our interest in the movie – is the central question of how someone so far steeped in the dream-world - in a dream within a dream within a dream – can tell the difference between the dream and reality. And, further, even if you could tell the difference, would you choose to live in the dream? In short, as my cousin Danny, conscious of this movie’s indebtedness to films like THE MATRIX put it, can you tell you’re living in a Matrix, and even if you could, would you choose to take the blue pill?

So, if the issues that Christopher Nolan is exploring aren’t particularly original, what makes this film worth watching? DP Wall Pfister’s beautiful cinematography; the elegant in-camera visual effects, so much more convincing that CGI; the wise-cracking Tom Hardy; and the intellectual puzzle at the heart of the film. All these things make it worth the price of entry. But to my mind, there are two genuine achievements. First, this is the first Nolan film where I feel he moved beyond being clever and technically accomplished to actually creating a relationship I cared about – that between Cobb and his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard). I completely bought into their difficult relationship and felt that diCaprio had given one of his most convincing performances in a decade – Cotillard was typically brilliant. Her central dilemma and his reaction to it are heart-breaking. Second, and most importantly, Nolan manages to involve the audience in exactly the same paranoia that infects Cobb and Mal. He doesn’t so much show us how a mind can get lost in the narrow margins between dream and reality but take us there with his ambiguous and cleverly constructed final act.

Additional tags: Tom Berenger, Talulah Riley, Hans Zimmer, Wally Pfister, Lee Smith

INCEPTION is on release in the UK, Egypt, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Ukraine, Canada, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Taiwan and Japan. It opens next week in Belgium, France, Norway, South Korea, Switzerland, Austrlia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Mexico and Sweden. It opens on July 29th in Argentina, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Austria, Poland, Romania and South Africa. It opens on August 6th in Brazil and Spain; on August 13th in Venezuela; and on August 24th in Greece. It opens in Italy on September 24th.

THE BOOK OF ELI - Spoiler free review before release date notes, spoilers afterward

THE BOOK OF ELI is the latest flick from The Hughes Brothers, the directors behind the impressive DEAD PRESIDENTS and the piss-poor Alan Moore adaptation FROM HELL. ELI lies somewhere in between: it's visually imaginative and audacious in its premise, but it's so ludicrous in its execution as to undermine its credibility. The story has Denzel Washington play a lone man with kick-ass knife- skills walking a lonely highway in post-apocalyptic America. This basic set-up has some similarity with THE ROAD, leading some critics to draw comparisons. But that's just nonsense. Viggo Mortensen looks like he's been walking for years without a haircut or soap or a decent meal in THE ROAD. In THE BOOK OF ELI, all the lead characters sport a look that's more Hollister Hobo - pearly white teeth, skinny jeans, cool boots, latest-season sunglasses. Where THE ROAD is shot in a menacing sombre murky grey, THE BOOK OF ELI is sunbleached and de-saturated. It feels more like the Wild West than the end of the world as we know it. So, back to the story. Our lone man with mad kung-fu skills walks into a Wild West town, run by local fascist Carnegie, played by Gary Oldman. (We know he's a Fascist because he reads Mussolini, because the film is THAT subtle. Seriously, it wouldn't have surprised me if Carnegie were sending out biker gangs to find Unobtainium). Carnegie sends out illiterate biker gangs to hunt down a book - a book that Eli happens to be carrying - that he believes will give him the power to dominate mankind. And, in case you really can't guess what that book is, I'll say no more about it. Everything else about the town is pure movie cliché. There's a seedy bar where the out-of-towner kicks off a fight. There's a cute chick in distress (Mila Kunis) who looks like she has full access to a functioning hairdresser. There's even a general store full of goods that apparently isn't knocked off, despite the fact that it's only guarded by Tom Waits with one gun.

So, Eli realises he needs to get the hell out of dodge and the Hughes Brothers make a lame attempt to have him bond with the cute chick who insists on following him. We pause for a truly bizarre encounter with an old cannibal couple, played completely improbably by Michael Gambon and British comic gem, Frances de la Tour. I'm almost tempted to say that this movie is worth the price of admission for this crazy scene. But that would be a misjudgement.

Because in the final act, THE BOOK OF ELI wraps itself up in a manner so stupidly that you really shouldn't respect anything about the film at all. But, in case you are going to see it, stop reading here. Those of who have seen it, continue on, after the release date notes.

THE BOOK OF ELI is on release in the UK, US, Greece, Russia, Canada, Kazakhstan, France, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland and Romania. It opens on February 3rd in Egypt; on Feb 10th in Belgium; on Feb 18th in Australia, Germany and New Zealand; on Feb 26th in Finland, Italy and Sweden. It opens in March in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Singapore, Argentina, Brazil and on June 19th in Japan.

.....SPOILERS FOLLOW.....

Okay, so there are three major problems with the ending of this film. First, you know that even after Carnegie gets his hand on the book, he's not gonna be able to read it. (I was betting on it being in a foreign language). So there's no suspense. The second major problem with the film is the way in which the rug is pulled from under the audience with the revelation of Eli's blindness. This was just totally lame. A blind man simply would not be pulling off the manoeuvres he had pulled off throughout the movie, and I'm not buying the "divine protection" crap. The final problem is that, even if we buy the blindness and the surprise, what was the point? I mean, the world has been near-annihilated by an apparently religious war and we're meant to be all happy that religious books have survived? Don't get me wrong - I'm not anti-religion - indeed, I am a practising Catholic - but shouldn't someone in the movie at least QUESTION whether Eli is doing the right thing?

Ah well. The whole thing was frustratingly ill-conceived.