Scottie's Movie reviews and musings

Oscar predictions
By popular request, both of you, and you know who you are - here's the list of what I hope wins (in italics) and what I think will win, if I were a betting man (in bold).

Best Actor
Milk - Sean Penn
The Wrestler - Mickey Rourke

Best Supporting Actor
The Dark Knight - Heath Ledger - bet the house. This is the closest to a lock I have ever seen.

Best Actress
Changeling - Angelina Jolie
The Reader - Kate Winslet

Best Supporting Actress
Doubt - Viola Davis

Best Animated Feature
WALL·E - Andrew Stanton - nearly as safe a bet as Ledger.

Best Art Direction
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Donald Graham Burt, Victor J. Zolfo

Best Cinematography
The Dark Knight - Wally Pfister - because it's the best photographed movie I have seen in 2008, nothing less. It is my favourite kind of blockbuster, luxurious and expensive stuff - expert cinematography.
Slumdog Millionaire - Anthony Dod Mantle

Best Costume Design
Australia - Catherine Martin - throwing it a frickin' bone, because it's the one thing it got right.

Best Director
Milk - Gus Van Sant - insanely good authorship of a movie.
Slumdog Millionaire - Danny Boyle - bet against the Director's Guild at your peril.

Best Documentary Feature
Man On Wire - James Marsh, Simon Chinn - Never before in a documentary has my heart thudded against my windpipe in delirious excitement, shock, suspense and full blown horror.

Best Film Editing
The Dark Knight - Lee Smith
Slumdog Millionaire - Chris Dickens

Best Foreign Language Film
Waltz with Bashir - Israel - Gommorrah from Italy was robbed! This makes the entire FL nomination list invalid.

Best Makeup
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Greg Cannom - because it was professional and brilliantly done.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army - Mike Elizalde, Thom Floutz - because it was imaginative and brilliantly done.

Best Original Score
Slumdog Millionaire - A.R. Rahman
WALL·E - Thomas Newman

Best Song
WALL·E - "Down to Earth"

Best Picture
Milk - best of a reasonable lot. Not since 1994 has there been such an insipid collection of Best Picture Nominees.
Slumdog Millionaire - The juggernaut continues.

Best Sound Editing
WALL·E - Ben Burtt, Matthew Wood - Like the animation, the sound editing lent unparalleled characterisation to all the characters. It is a milestone work.

Best Sound Mixing
The Dark Knight - Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo, Ed Novick - uniformly brilliant sound mixing choices. Professional, and backing up an incredible film.

Best Visual Effects
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton, Craig Barron

Best Adapted Screenplay
Doubt - John Patrick Shanley

Best Original Screenplay
Milk - Dustin Lance Black

The mid-year ten best
Okay, I've not written anything in here for months. And for a mid-year ten best, I'm two months late. That's just tough.

1) The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
2) The Dark Knight (IMAX takes this to 1st place)
3) No Country For Old Men
4) The Fall
5) Man On Wire
6) 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
7) Somers Town
8) Taxi To The Dark Side
9) In The Valley Of Elah
10) Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

Eleventh Place
Diary Of The Dead
El Baño Del Papa
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Juno
Shotgun Stories
Standard Operating Procedure
Son Of Rambow
WALL·E

Diary of the Dead
Diary of the Dead - ***1/2

Diary of the Dead exists as a film within a film, admittedly a hackneyed story device these days - but diaries as horror devices are greatly effective. Who hasn't read fiction on which the monster reaches the writer just as the final words are written? Within Romero's treatment, he stamps it with multiple authors and several key viewpoints, which means the author's possible human death is not the end of the telling.

The overarching story returns to the first night of the zombie outbreak and begins with movie-brat Jason Creed (Joshua Close) shooting a student mummy movie. He is with his college friends and perpetually plummy and drunken English professor, who just so happens to be an archery crack-shot. The scene being shot is a woman being chased into the woods, and like Scream, knows the conventions of the obligatory tit-shot, the slow-moving nasties ("Wouldn't their ankles just snap off if they ran!"). Pockets of radio news report an outbreak of the dead returning to life, and the freaked out students decide to leg it to their loved ones in a large caravan.

Diary of the Dead feels most potently allegorical about recent events like Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. The media's feeble handling of telling the stories and the government's ineffective dealing with the human catastrophes hits hard. Romero himself even takes a starring role as the Pittsburgh chief of police, telling the story that authorities want people to know. One immediately recalls the brief spate of Internet bloggers as the Iraq invasion started after Shock And Awe, and the small rivers of stories bleeding out of New Orleans as the central news networks neatly edited it for mass consumption for telethons.

Anyway, Romero keeps doing these zombie flicks blending the carnage with social satire, and oodles of intertextual storytelling. In Diary, he shows a delightfully precocious (yes, I know this is a misomner in terms, given he's 68) fascination with the technology behind instant delivery of human stories. The filmmakers in his story are inexperienced amateurs who can use prosumer camcorders, laptop editing suites and the Internet to show (even only partially completed, yet self-feeding and evolving) work the mainstream media will never show. Also, he satirises their inexperience by dressing with cheerfully cheesy dissolves and overtly ostentatious voice-overs. The film does not linger on the social responsibilities of these youngsters, by leaking their stories, but provokes questions that have no easy answers. Although the camera's seduction emerges as the opening mummy chase is recreated with chilling and hilarious life-or-death effect.

Does the film deliver elsewhere? You bet! The opening scene of unedited footage, uploaded to the Internet by a news cameraman - is Romero's single most terrifying scene since the graveyard scene in Night of the Living Dead. Horror buffs are well catered for, with oodles of offscreen cameos from established celebrity horror fans, immensely creative and foul zombies and death scenes which shock and delight equally. A great sequence in a hospital, full of ravenous nasties waiting to be zapped with the defibrillator, is a standout.

Further additions to the look-like-zombies or sound like zombies roster is a delightful mute Amish chap who will doubtlessly bring the house down in his scene, and an elderly couple in a sickening downloaded movie spliced into the tale seamlessly. There's even a moment reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan's magnificent Signs (itself a great emulator of Night of the Living Dead in it's unrelenting final act) with a video of a birthday party gone horrifyingly wrong.

Romero knits these videos into his narrative expertly, making it a part of the movie we're watching, and cutting to his characters watching it on their laptop - this movie within movie integration is clever, tight and well orchestrated. Although again, and perhaps the greatest acheievement of his movie, Romero makes The Death of Death betray its core idea - documenting the unvarnished truth - with cheap music, complete with musical "stings" and manipulative editing. Sure, this might antagonise viewers that don't get it, but it's easily defended as satire.

The only real story flaw - and it's a biggie - is that his characters do not accept the dead are returning to life until it's far too late. For such a collection of ragtag horror moviemakers, I find it hard to believe that they do not know the rules of a zombie flick, and don't grasp it for a sizable portion of the runtime. Then again, they're rather well cast as the YouTube era misfits. That, and the coda - where Romero reuses the chestnut rednecks from Dawn of the Dead - "are we worth saving?" - as they truss up and blast zombies apart sticks as sheer gory unpleasantness for its own sake.

Youthful, energetic and lively as ever - George A. Romero's cinematic resurrection is a thinking man's horror delight. Stuffed full of ideas, low-budget, with a tight shooting schedule - unlike his slickly overblown and underwritten Land of the Dead - Romero returns with a reboot of his magnificent political zombie dynasty. The candy floss horror Cloverfield may use the same tricks, but Diary of the Dead in another league. It is startlingly delivered and shows the old hand can still teach the newbies a couple of tricks all the while delivering a fine entertainment and gives its genre audience plenty of fresh meat to chew on.

2007's best films
2007, while upon first memory didn't seem to have a lot in it that lingered, upon reading a big list of all the UK releases from 1st January till 31st December, there's been literally TONS of high-quality film splashing out on our screens!

Zodiac - leading the pack by far is David Fincher's best film. Retreading Se7en ground without the shlock horror, but gains a shower of masterful performances, impossibly slick storytelling adapted superbly by screenwriter James Vanderbilt. Fincher has matured immensely from his enjoyable black comedy Fight Club, bringing every bit of technical excellence and filmmaking prowess. Bravo!
Death Proof - Quentin Tarantino, only bound by Grindhouse shackles superficially has fashioned the coolest movie in years. He reinvents the slasher genre, the chick-flick (making it mean something again!) and gives us a treastise on the cinematic gaze that would make Laura Mulvey drop dead.
The Fountain - The most awesome film of the year, dazzling ingenuity from Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky, very nearly equalling it. His great achievement comes from making a cohesive and yet elliptic story construct and making this hang together with faultless acting and grand operatic storytelling.
Water
The Lives of Others
Ratatouille
This is England
Hot Fuzz
The Bourne Ultimatum
Michael Clayton

Twelve films that share Eleventh Place:

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
Black Book
Breach
Control
Letters From Iwo Jima
Paranoid Park
A Prairie Home Companion
Rocket Science
The Serpent
Tell No One
Waitress

Best Director:
Brad Bird for Ratatouille - Impeccable handling of the audience through caricature performance, visual impact and storytelling prowess. (I have seen No Country for Old Men - it doesn't get released over here till next week. If the Coens don't get their Oscar, I shall be pissed off. Runner up: Clint Eastwood for Letters from Iwo Jima and David Fincher for Zodiac)

Best Actor:
Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson (Special Jury Prize for Peter O'Toole in Venus, and as Anton Ego - the Grim Eater - in Ratatouille)

Best Actress:
Amy Adams for Enchanted - she simply made my eyes shine in delight every time she was on the screen. (Julie Christie in Away From Her was also masterful.)

Worst Film:
Norbit - I was going to stick on Good Luck Chuck - a rank and noxious comedy, as juvenile and unfunny as any film I've seen this year. But, locked away in a dungeon of subconscious... there was Norbit. Just... ugh. It's been 20 years since Eddie Murphy got more than a chuckle. He didn't even manage an upturning of my lips this time round.

Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin Award:
Teeth - "They're sharp. They bite. And they're not in her mouth..." From the Edinburgh International Film Festival catalogue.

Biggest Disappointments:

Spider-Man 3
Tales from Earthsea

Biggest Surprises:

Hairspray
Stardust
Die Hard 4.0

Special Jury Prizes (for being just shy of great, but really good anyway!):

Apocalypto
Beowulf
Black Sheep
Black Snake Moan
Bridge to Terabithia
Die Hard 4.0
Eastern Promises
Ex Drummer
Fast Food Nation
Hairspray
In the Shadow of the Moon
Knocked Up
The Last King of Scotland
Little Red Flowers
Meet the Robinsons
Rocky Balboa
Sheitan
Shoot 'Em Up
Sicko
Stardust
Superbad
Them
Venus

Special Mention:
Blade Runner: The Final Cut - Simply awesome seeing it on a big screen in a print that simply takes the breath away. Four stars on the big screen, three off it.

Great Expectations
Great Expectations - ***1/2

Charles Dickens and David Lean do know how to spin yarns! Fresh from his springboard success in Brief Encounter, Lean assembled an outstanding crew, a break-neck script, and solid performances to craft one of the finest book to film adaptations of all time - but his Oliver Twist is even better!

And what of the plot...? A common boy, blacksmith's apprentice Pip does an uncommon kindness to convict Magwitch (a terrifying Finlay Currie), and is spirited away to a queer stately home every couple of weeks to visit an aging lady, Mrs. Havisham and her very beautiful and cold daughter, Estella. Pip grows up into a young man played by Sir John Mills, with and a mysterious benefactor has him brought to London to live as a gentleman... But, he "realised that in becoming a gentleman, I had only succeeded in becoming a snob"
Copy picture

Even from the opening shot of the camera leering over the pages of Dickens, and Mills reading it aloud - David Lean's great achievement with his adaptation is the visual trappings within the walls of the text. Who could ever forget Mrs. Havisham's dank dungeon of a stately home? Or indeed, how well it merges seamlessly and yet distinctly with that we have in our minds eye. The house itself is caked in dust and cobwebs and Havisham herself unable and unwilling to live within the field of time after her wedding-day heartbreak. Her clothes, a magnificent wedding dress worn to rags, and a cake having decayed for decades. The hideous lair calls to mind Billy Wilder's outstanding Hollywood satire, Sunset Boulevard, with the deranged Norma Desmond. Lean is aided immeasurably by cinematographer Oscar-winner Guy Green. He is not in love with his imagery, cutting a well-heeled movie out of his fabulous images. His early scenes set in the graveyard with Magwitch flirt with the visual stylings all so common in horror films, and the quiet, scratching sound design.

Pip suffers, much to the pleasure of Havisham, having crafted a deadly weapon in her daughter to all men in the guise of stunning beauty. Systematic abuse on her daughter pays off against the male sex. This delicate character's thread comes to a head in astonishingly vivid fashion - and improving on the source.

The great aspect of reading Dickens' prose is the fashion in which his characters linger in the memory of their readers, the way in which they linger forever as a flavour of a person's humanity. Lean's success in casting, therefore, is a great deal of the battle, so as to entirely co-exist with the images that the book inspires. Chris Columbus, with his turgid and uneventful Harry Potter films certainly realised this, although he lacked Lean's incisive skill in compressing story and time. John Mills - while looking about ten years too old for our hero, Pip - has certainly the youthful exuberance and the adult knowledge of human habit and sufferings. Other characters who have precious little screentime yet still linger in the memory include Mr. Jaggers, the lawyer whose tumultuous revelations are equally offshadowed by his great, bulky and booming body. Alec Guinness, as Herbert Pocket is wonderful as a straightforward conscience and accomplice - functioning as a way for Pip to externalise his thoughts and ideas directly.

I may have Great Expectations, but it's everything I hoped it would be.

Leaving Las Vegas
Leaving Las Vegas - ****

Leaving Las Vegas is one of the sweetest, loveliest love stories I have ever seen in movies, written with all the surprisingly wry and horrific wit of a well-composed suicide note. It is a story of two lonely souls crossing paths and sharing what little precious time they have. It's an enormously successful film, so achingly sad and strangely fantastical in that we doubt such a story would occur, but the story-teller weaves such a spellbinding tale, that criticism becomes futile.

Nicolas Cage - a richly-deserved Best Actor for this picture - plays Ben, a thoroughly wretched alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter. He's sacked from his job, and has nothing else to live for - we learn of a long-gone family (a wife and son in a photo album). So in cold logic he decides to purge himself of non-essential possessions, drive out to Las Vegas and kill himself through drinking. It's all planned out in sufficient clarity, with "enough for 250 to 300 dollars per day". One can only begin to imagine what demons could possibly drive him to such a slow, inordinate crucifixion. "I don't remember; I just know I want to."

"Are you saying that your drinking is a way to kill yourself"
"Or killing myself is a way to drink!"

He encounters professional prostitute Sera on his first evening in the city, nearly knocking her over in an alcoholic haze in his soon-to-be-sold car. Almost immediately afterwards, he offers her $500 for an hour. But rather than some nonchalant sex, what Ben really wants and needs is a friend, a welcoming ear. For reasons entirely clear while watching the film, yet summarised and written on paper seem somewhat unbelievable, Sera takes the woeful puppy-dog Ben under her wing and into her home.

A early scene with Ben and his boss where he learns he is to be let go, is a curious, affecting moment - we can see the affection that his boss had for him once. Similarly so with Ben and Sera's first dinner together, where she questions him about why he wants to kill himself. What an interesting way Cage has about himself... Totally lucid, behind the glazed-over drunk's eyes an incredible intelligence beneath the dullness of the alcohol.

The real skill of the movie is the performances and the chemistry of these actors, as though no-one told them that they were in a tragedy and should act accordingly. They don't care you're watching them. He drinks to bare oblivion, she fucks random strangers for cash. Their only ground rule for their relationship: No trying to change one another. They deal with these aspects, even if they're not ambivalent to each other's self-chosen purpose in life.

"Maybe I should ask one of your clients what it would be like to sleep with you", Ben asks.
"They wouldn't know"

Elizabeth Shue is a revelation as Sera, having basked in bit-parts for years and sadly continuing back to obscurity after Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man. It's an enormous pity, her performance in Leaving Las Vegas is so gutsy, so human that I'm enormously saddened that her obvious talent didn't lead to more interesting roles afterwards. Her backstory is only fleetingly doled out - through the narrative, short throwaway moments and in a striking dramatic device - therapy sessions cut into the story at optimal points. We only see her face in these situations, and yet the eyes, those deep pure eyes, could move mountains.

A simplified sexuality and clear, pure love soaks through both their work - but they reveal far more than the cheapest stock characterisations of the miscanthropic drunk and the hooker with a heart of gold. Cage and Shue transform them into people, actual believable people that you feel you could talk with - trascending the usual bounderies of the screen and your heart. They also change roles several times throughout the story, they relate with one another as lovers, friends, and a nurse soothing her dying patient. It's such a deep, pure and human movie whose outcome is haunting and unforgettable. The movie is a masterful character study of compulsions leading to tragedy, and in spite of their destinies, they are full of grace. If there's anything to be taken from the story, it is to have empathy and charity for one another.

Mike Figgis, the gifted and risk-taking director of Internal Affairs and Time Code shoots this picture with a raw and heartbreaking simplicity - using inexpensive Super16 cameras and a quick-shoot approach to getting the story elements he needs. The performances throughout feel fresh and spontaneous, without stiffly redrafting the work through practice.

He never takes the easy way out with his story - fully demonstrating the horrors of final alcoholic death and Sera's vicious treatment violation by her Latvian pimp, Yuri and later on brutal treatment at the hands of frat boys. She puts herself in this dangerous situation as a self-imposed punishment - for turning her back on Ben. The movie feels like an exuberantly human blues number; it is so sad for both the outcome, but the warmth with which Ben and Sera share with one another. In this vein, Figgis composes the light jazz score to compliment his great story.

The third character in the movie is the city itself, Las Vegas: a caustic and artificial adult theme park in the middle of the desert. Always much too hot and busy, yet completely indifferent to what these people need.

Superbad
Superbad - ***1/2

Superbad is a movie for those among us who in high-school felt sad, angry and lonely because they felt no-one liked them. It remembers both the pain, and the complete absence of delight in those adolescent years. It is uniquely authentic in its depiction of the high-school social structure, both in terms of characterisation and the fierce intelligence and underdeveloped emotional strength the heroes have.

It's also often deliriously funny and touching. In spite of all its latent foul-mouthedness, hearts of poets beat strongly - similarly with Kevin Smith's debut, Clerks. Superbad is wise, and has little affection for anything other than close friends, for which it makes up entirely. Reminiscent of George Lucas' American Graffiti (and a sprinkling of American Pie), the movie chronicles three close friends final night of high-school. Like the upcoming Death Proof, Superbad chooses to evoke the style and sensitivities (a psychedelic opening sequence, some clever shots reminiscent of the time's cinema) of its inspirational period and embracing modern language and keeping its trappings at arms length. In short, friendship is timeless. The main pair, Seth and Evan compliment each other superbly - dealing with separation as fate deals them into separate colleges - with a delightfully dissociated set of performances.

Jonah Hill as Seth, is a roly-poly motormouth capable of pouring out peerlessly offensive speeches, while Michael Cera as Evan is a tall, skinny, intelligent and repressed wet blanket. It recalls, oh-so-briefly, Laurel and Hardy double-act, and their chemistry and co-dependent performances easily convince that they've been friends for years, far more so than a simple sentance would. The movie is terribly insightful, in that teenage boys recall their deepest and truest loves for their best and closest friends; girls are a secondary pleasure, of which discussion is open, rabid and frank - these inexperienced boys do not know any better. That is how it was for me. Well, that minus a dreamlike stream of uproarious slapstick and knob jokes.

The third, even more ostracised - even by Seth and Evan's standards - friend is Fogel (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). He has the smarts and the means to make a fake Hawaiian driver's license (the only name printed on it - "McLovin") for obtaining booze. Fogel's characterisation is also masterful, reinventing the ultimate nerd for this generation.

It follows the American Pie strand, in that these barely legal teens are chasing a shot at the girl of their dreams - but let's be clear, they're self-aware enough to know that their supposed love is fuelled by adolescent infatuation and momentous crushes. Their only hopes to be the "wrong guy" is an invite to a party from their mutual aquaintances, and the only way they'll get in is if they come with a small truckload of booze. Seth and Evan need Fogel's fake ID, or some other means at their disposal.

The movie chronicles this quest to come up with the goods - knitting the knowing friendship with the outrageous comedy adventure. The script is clearly somewhat autobiographical, writers Rogen and Goldberg recall so many astute memories and details that make it refreshingly authentic. Everything from little painful, embarrassing secrets (a hand-drawn ode to phalluses) all the way to the never-forgotten first real sexual encounters. There's one face shot in there, which reminded me of the shock, delight and unspeakably alien sensation of my previously virgin penis in its intended home.

Some stuff really is universal.

Similarly so with a bedroom scene with a nearly passed-out Seth and Evan, where they declare their simple, pure and true love for one another, bequeathed of sexuality. It's both cringeworthy, delightfully funny and so utterly touching at the same time. I honestly wish I'd written this movie, and I suspect a handful of people my age feel the same way.

Director Greg Mottola keeps things moving very swiftly, keeping the story rattling on at a swift, well-cut pace. The only reason it ever slows down is for sentiment - which sometimes feels like a mistake, a coda for their adventure feels tacked-on - and the overlong cop scenes. There's a scorching 90 minute movie here, which overruns to just under two hours.

Run, Fatboy, Run
Run Fatboy Run - **

"I'm not fat, I'm just unfit" moans sweat-mopped and red-faced security guard Dennis (Simon Pegg) - as he chases after a transvestite thief. Well, he's not just unfit, he's scarily so - a pudgy, chainsmoking no-hoper, who left pregnant girlfriend Libby (Thandie Newton) at the altar five years ago.

Dennis is a loser, living in a basement flat, occasionally being a doting dad to his son Jake while being totally disorganised about it - his failure to get Lord of the Rings Symphony tickets, forgetting his keys all the time. Libby has a suitor, upper-crust American investment banker Whit (Hank Azaria), who is everything that Dennis is not. Motivated, can-do, and well-connected. Whit plans to run in the London Marathon and Dennis, lacking better judgment decides to follow suit - to prove to Libby that he's a changed man. Dennis' best friend, previous best man and compulsive gambler, Gordon provides much-needed motivation and sports injury help - notably, the blister from hell.

Several staples of the sports movie are present - the training montage (surprisingly funny even if it does recycle Rocky for London), the "Am I worth a damn" moments and the self-doubt that clouds over it. As the vessel for this, Simon Pegg demonstrates himself an enormously capable comedy leading man, brightening up the dreary script with an eagerness to hammer out deadpan slapstick - if that makes sense. An inimitably funny Dylan Moran continues to wring laughs from the situation comedy effortlessly, while inexplicably betting the farm on Dennis' predicament. Hank Azaria makes for a splendidly hissable villain, his standout is a cringeworthily funny gym-locker scene. The chemistry between the leading men is good - and gets several laughs. Unfortunately, the luminous Thandie Newton is handed the unfortunate duty of being the bland "too good to be true" girlfriend, she is given little to do other than stand and react.

The movie is considerably funnier than writer Michael Ian Black's previous disgraceful effort, Wedding Daze, which also had a stunningly inept handling of how to write women. It also lacks the mean-spirited and nauseating flavour that plagued Pegg and director David Schwimmer's last pairing together, Big Nothing. Pegg is also credited on the script, which likely elevates the material somewhat - giving some of the stock characterisations, like Dennis's landlord - Mr Ghoshdashtidar, who comes complete with homespun motivational training and the punishing spatula of doom! - some life and wit. The whole affair rings rather hollow when compared to other bloke human comedies about finding yourself, like most of Nick Hornby's adapted works.

Schwimmer's occasionally inefficient and indistinguished direction doesn't really hurt the movie, although a stronger hold on the material, including some judicious cutting would pare down the movie's soggy midsection. There are several completely extraneous scenes - including a cameo by David Walliams, with a tiresome moment straight out of his Little Britain. There are cheesy overwrought visuals that don't work, the "runner's wall" is represented by nothing other than a big brick wall in the middle of St. James' Park - yawn! Furthermore, the morals and themes of the piece are jammed down your throat.

Run Fatboy Run is a modestly entertaining comedy, transposed from its New York origins with nothing lost in translation. Then again, there wasn't too much to begin with...

Knocked Up
Knocked Up - ***1/2

The birthplace of modern comedy exists in that wormhole of constant reinvention through plastering ideas together and seeing what fits. More to the point, with the 40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up (with the promise of more with the upcoming Superbad), Judd Apatow has pulled himself as the leader of delivering raunchy comedy that seems effortless and believable at the same time.

The story is simple, an unplanned pregnancy between two strangers and how it affects their relationship, their friends, family and their work. Ben (Seth Rogen) is a lad's man who's physique is the consistency of cookie-dough. He's fond of clubbing, smoking pot, rollercoasters and faux gladiatorial games with his mates. He also runs a business website for analysing the amount of nudity in a given movie, aka fleshofthestars.com - which really could have used some competition analysis. While I'd want to party with him, he's not exactly father-figure material. Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) is a modern working woman: professional, nice and finally getting a break with her bosses as she is promoted to on-camera talent on the E! network. To celebrate her promotion, Alison and her older and married sister Debbie (Leslie Mann - Virgin veteran and Apatow's wife) head off clubbing. A charming chance encounter later, and Ben is back to Alison's for a late-night drunken bareback one-night-stand.

The premise is hence straightforward - what surprised me was the way that writer/director Apatow ran with it and milked the drama and comedy for its intrinsic value. The film works so sincerely to provide as much human drama as possible, all the while being so very funny that the screenplay's effects multiply when the two written worlds collide.

The only real flaws are that we never truly find out what Alison is like as a person - the script doesn't deal with her enough as a person, rather as a vessel for the raging hormones, morning sickness and physical changes. She appears to have no real friends other than her family, which makes it all the more interesting that Ben, for all his immaturity seems to be the best thing that's ever happened to her. The script is so consistently clever and well written that to oversee Alison seems like a major step-back. However, the actors startlingly adept comic timing and emotional resonance make it work. And, where the sex is awkward, the medical scenes quite scary, they have the ability to make their reactions so human and believable. The double-take from the gynacologist's line - "You look a lot like your sister" had me laughing so loudly people started looking at me funny.

Following the secondary characters for a moment: Debbie and her husband Pete (Paul Rudd - getting the lion's share of lines not by Rogen) are reaching a small crisis in their marriage - they unintentionally antagonise one another, the mid-life strain is getting to both of them. Pete feels the need for some uninhibited male bonding - expressed in sneaking off to a fantasy baseball tournament, or more explosively, for a trip (in more than one sense) in Las Vegas. Debbie is reaching that point in her life when men are no longer hitting on her, causing her to need constant reassurance about her attractiveness. These secondary characters are as carefully written as the main players. Ben's buddies are less well-written, although they steal a mammoth number of funny lines (they dare one of their buddies not to shave for a year - and consequently and constantly tease him to shave) , and seem to have difficulties coming to terms with their friend growing up.

The other really nice part of the movie is the small throwaway moments. These are good, often great scenes - Harold Ramis as Ben's dad offering some self-consciously bullshit advice for his son and apologising later on with the ineptitude of his son's best-laid plans - "Life doesn't care what you plan." Homespun wisdom, to be sure, but it works. Also in a delicious pair of cameos, Kristen Wiig and Alan Tudyk (Serenity) as the Alison's bosses playing passive-aggressive good-cop/bad-cop. Other characters pop in and out, like a painfully candid bouncer, Ryan Seacrest (American Idol) and Steve Carell as themselves. Again, these characters are carefully written and dutifully cast.

To cut these scenes wouldn't do much to the narrative, but to take counter-example, the movie is richer, funnier and more human with them in it, but they do stack up to bolster the running time. The upcoming DVD is expected to have an even longer cut of the movie - so we'll see how that turns out.

The characters throughout stay true to themselves, while growing up and becoming better versions of themselves. Apatow's metaphor of "reading the baby books" becomes a sticking point for Ben's acceptance of his parental responsibilities, getting a new job and astutely preparing to fit in with the flow of modern family life. At heart, the movie believes in marriage, family and duty - which surprised me, as did Virgin's painful and lovable characters. Surprising, as we don't expect this kind of warmth and humanity in our sex comedies.

This is a movie for every smart lover of human comedy, fitting comfortably in the 15-rating demographic and is comfortably vulgar, but never dumbs down to thick teenagers as Chris Columbus' Nine Months did, which covered similar subject matter with movie stars. Knocked Up is a fantastic date movie, it is one which reaffirms our human frailties, strengths and conditions. It might be a little longer than it needs to be, but I defy you not to enjoy every moment.

Death Proof
Death Proof - ****

Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof is a magnificent tribute to the superb excesses of trash cinema. It's also his greatest film since Pulp Fiction, a sneaky and insidious little delight.

The plot, such as it is, is about a psycho - Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell revelling in sheer all-American iconography) - who murders women using his two ton "death proof" muscle stuntcar. He strikes up a friendship with an attractive girl in a bar (Rose McGowan, Tarantino bathes her in virginal light which blooms off), and charms her in a small but stunningly-written soliloquy to take a ride. Biggest mistake she'll ever make.

The film is a glorious collection of the trashy, go-for-broke exploitation flicks of the 70s, known as the Grindhouse genre. By dressing the entirely modern movie with technical ineptitudes like enormous, screen-width scratches, nicks and print defects, dodgy jump-cuts, and simply slotting in a whole reel in black and white simply because it looks so damn cool - it reinforces that like someone found this print under a pile of old crap in someone's basement, and cobbled it together by themselves. And of course, there's a fantastic cut back to fully saturated film.

Sure, it's cheeky (not least the texting, iPodding and juxtaposing Fantasmagoria and Film Comment in the same shelf in a grotty 7/11), but by God, it's fun. In short, like all of his films, it doesn't quite send up the genre, rather take the most interesting elements of this genre, elevate them and turn them into something that is never boring and has plenty to say.

It also boasts a very personal brand of feminism. Equal amounts of misogyny and misandrist story constructs are smeared about for those who will dig for it, but Tarantino is having a good old laugh at their expense while punishing the men of the picture equally - Eli Roth takes a cameo in attempting to charm the ladies. It's all very clever and entertaining highbrow and lowbrow stuff. The women that Tarantino loves are as at home kicking a whole lot of ass as looking delicious - an ironic and loving form of "girl power".

The set of spoiled, catty little whiners who play games with men, before a whorish lapdance, get splattered across the road in multiple action-replays, like they have it coming. Quite simply, Tarantino is hammering home how cheesy and petty our little sex-rituals are, and devotes a great deal of funny scripting on this subject.

The zesty and lively girls in the second half of the movie, quickly snap from passive blind terror and enjoy their revenge with all the caved in skull duggery it deserves. These powerful and strong women, (Two stuntwomen and Rosario Dawson is indentified as a mother, the bearer and deliverer of life while Stuntman Mike takes life for masturbatory gratification) are wonderfully characterised people. The script is careful and smart enough to distinguish these two forms of sexual politics and conquest and still make clever and light humour of their distinction - all the excess dialogue is character-building.

Death Proof celebrates the genre, period and meshes it entirely with modern filmmaking technique and storytelling prowess. Not for nothing does the roar of Mike's rampant carnality - oh sorry, his "ride", complete with phallic duck affixed to the bonnet - sound so clear in digital sound. And like so much of his prior work, Death Proof is dotted in knowing, kidding and loving references, yet all the while Tarantino makes every stolen shot, every re-envisioned cool piece of exposition entirely his own. He steals wholeheartedly, but we are never in doubt that it's Tarantino behind the creative wheel. Far from cut and paste, he's an auteur who instinctively knows why something's cool, and how best to deliver his story within the genre constraints.

It is also a celebration of filmmaking techniques, characterisation and storytelling prowess. The man simply knows how to write great dialogue which exudes character and is snappy. Stuntman Mike's little speech about "good in my book" is both hilarious, menacing, witty and strangely in-character with the rest of his established movie-loving dialogue, and delivered with relish. Every performer in the movie (Tarantino himself included as Warren the Bartender) looks like
they're having a great time.

So was everyone else, the audience was roaring with laughter and squirming in delighted horror, often in the same moment. Indeed, Tarantino fully implicates and invites us to share these gruesome murders for what they are; Mike looks straight into the camera at one point just prior to the first - knowing full well that we're all going to stick around for the money shots of the movie.

I confess, I'm very fond of Tarantino's foot fetish. It's a humanising trait common to his features - which is also like his own choice to become director of photography in Death Proof. There really is an instinctive join between camera and actor instinctively causing them to give their best. The chumminess of performer and director is enthusiastic and fun. It is astonishingly well-acted, with a dialogue-laden script that simply reminds your reviewer just why Tarantino collected his Best Screenplay Oscar.

For all Kill Bill's deliciously effective action, the final 20 minutes of Death Proof tear all this up for a sterling piece of stunt-porn in which Tarantino amazes us with the abilities of his drivers, Kiwi stuntwoman (the rustic and charming Zoe Bell) and editor Sally Menke's cutting. It is the most astonishing driving set-piece I have seen since the mighty Ronin, perhaps even topping it for sheer "go for broke" verve. And refreshingly, Tarantino keeps his word - this sequence is free of any CGI "stick my dick in my Nintendo bullshit", his words, not mine.

Death Proof is as much an experience as it is a movie for those who love movies. See it in a cinema and not on DVD. Don't let it tank like it did over the pond as part of "Grindhouse".

Henry V
Henry V - ****

Lawrence Olivier's adaptation of Henry V is the first entirely serious presentation of Shakespeare within the sound era - there were previous efforts, most notably The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet, but they pale in comparison. Olivier's film is a lavish, luxurious entertainment, adapting Shakespeare's most popular history with lashings of style, wit and theatrical skill, all shot in Glorious Technicolor.

By manufacturing his film within a glorious theatrical falsehood, and using the Chorus to appeal for our imaginations to fill in the blanks - "your humble patience pray, Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play", Olivier allows his film to save money. This frugality means that he could afford a giant battle, and give justice to the spirit of the text. Elegantly cut in half by Dallas Bower and Alan Dent, this is no grandiose bum-number like Branagh's (admittedly, pretty bloody brilliant) Hamlet. It is tight, well-realised and unconstrained by performance or size of vision. It is an epic, the kind of which we enjoy so readily and easily with the advent of CGI, but we forgive; nay, embrace the primitive visuals when the vision is there to keep up.

In an inspired storytelling device, Olivier opens his telling using a model of London. The camera slowly pans across it, letting the viewer take in the full sweep of the city. A historical London, which at the time of shooting the film was previously devastated by the Blitz. We slowly pan towards the Globe Theatre - unseen by the 1944 audience, but familiar to us these days - and watch as a small, unmoving, static flag is raised on the model. It cuts to a full-size flag, flapping in the wind. This cut is so audacious, so silly that we appreciate that all the film seeks to do is put on a good show. The first act is acted out on the Globe Theatre stage, and the film delights in showing us the theatrical fallacies that go hand in hand with such a performance - a boisterous audience, the silent, but tumultuous hive of backstage activity and actors losing their lines, quite literally across the stage. This kind of silly, theatrical fun pre-dates Shakespeare In Love by fifty-odd years, and does what it did better.

But again, Olivier side-steps this once he's had his bit of fun. In a sweeping dissolve that reminds the viewer of the masterful jump-cut in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film jumps right into the fantasy, with painted backdrops, full - if joyously primitive - sets and a belief in itself such that it is easy to enjoy the film without being distracted its elegant crudity. The costumes are a kaleidoscope of chrominance, transferred superbly to three-strip Technicolor in all their richness. The production values, while done on the cheap, take the breath away.

Shakespeare's barbery and zesty language survive the cinematic translation - all the expert wordplay, the poetic couplets and solliloquies of raw power. Director Olivier embellishes it from time to time, using cinematography and situation to great effect. The famous "once more into the breach, dear friends" speech is delivered on horseback, with Henry V dashing into the breach to back up the words with actions. Olivier himself is a terrific Henry V, who imbues Shakespeare's blood and thunder soliloquies with authority - watch, even in the first act as he spits out threats to the French messengers, turning the word "mock" into a verbal weapon.

Much criticism has been levied on the cuts to the original text (most of which are restored in Branagh's excellent 1989 revamp) regarding the charges against the king for rushing into war. The last film review I penned was Transformers, which I demonised its "militaristic self-sucking" - would it be prudent to say that Olivier's Henry V is equally propogandic? Henry V is very much a product of its time, with much of these cuts suggested by Winston Churchill himself as a stirring speech to the soldiers of WWII. "We would not die in that man's company That fears his fellowship to die with us." - jingoistic, but powerful and masterfully performed.

If Shakespeare was in modern civilisation, he'd be a filmmaker. Since he isn't, Olivier does him proud. Bravo!

Transformers
Transformers - *1/2

"This is even cooler than Armageddon" - one character screeches as a robot meteor crashes to earth amid an earth cracking explosion and ball of flame. How presumptuous of director Michael Bay to not only make Armageddon firstly, but to actually think it cool, and to congratulate himself? Thankfully, for him, giant transforming robots blowing ten shades of shit out of puny humans is very cool indeed.

Square-jawed, yet wimpy-looking Sam Witwicky (many mispronunciations of this surname are the first of the many jokes that dive-bomb) is a teenager, eager for his first car and so his first girlfriend. With much persuasion - "What would Jesus do?", he hammers his teacher for the needed A - and raising of cash, he heads off to the used-car dealer (Bernie Mac). While delivering the sales spiel he utters "There's a mysterious bond between man and machine", omens ahoy! Anyway, Sam buys an old sports car, complete with a radio with a mind of its own. This turns out to be Bumblebee, a robot in disguise. By extreme coincidence, Sam's grandfather was an explorer and found a giant metal man at the North Pole.

Oh, yes - there's some backstory for this, but the movie thankfully doesn't hammer it home much. There was a war on the planet Cybertron with the Autobots as slightly wet good guys, and the Decepticons as the bad guys. They each want the AutoSpark, a Cube with the power to make machines come to life. Sam's grandfather had the Cube's location etched on to his spectacles, and in a roundabout way, through a computer hack on Air Force One, all the way through eBay - the Decepticons track down Sam.

Two further plot-threads wind through and clog up this messy screenplay, which is chock-full of token situations and surprisingly disturbing. It is full of weapon fetishing and militaristic self-sucking ("You're a soldier now, son!" - barks a sargeant at Sam) and the story it supports is harried, infantile, superficial and unspeakably thinly scripted nonsense with superfluous characters and idiotic situations. Bay embraces this jingoistic diahorrea and delivers a movie that insults every bit as much as it entertains - it is not merely content to be moronic, it embraces this quality like a virtue. It is overlong, overwritten (the main characters and robots speak only in soundbites) and boring whenever it is not deafening the audience - yes, this soundtrack goes to 11.

The robots themselves - it has to be said, Michael Bay has a gift with superlative defying visual effects and blowing stuff up real good. To see the robots transform, cracking open each rivet and reforming to humanoid shape is something that made me gape in surprised delight, like a child opening the coolest box of tricks in the store. We have finally turned the corner; Transformers is the film with the most accomplished invisible digital effects I have ever seen in a movie. The opening sequence astonished me, one of the Decepticons lay waste to a US military base in Quatar. I simply could not see any of the usual joins between live action and visual effects. The Air Force One hack scene has the extraordinary technical prowess and exquisite timing of the spider-scene in executive producer Steven Spielberg's Minority Report.

Okay - I hated the script, that's to be expected - does it deliver good action? Aside from the opening sequence, it failed. The movie didn't involve me because I cared for no-one in the story. There are no emotional anchors - the humans are boring, and the robots stunningly uninteresting. Bay's framing of the robot-on-robot action almost destroys the sheer coolness factor of the volleys of firepower and mechanical pummelling dished out by our Autobots and Decepticon onslaught. Shaky-cam movements, an edit every .7 of a second and the eardrum shattering soundtrack makes it more of a chore than a pleasure.

Tales from Earthsea
Tales from Earthsea - *

Tales from Earthsea is an embellished tale using the books by Ursula K LeGuin as a springboard. It tells the tale of young Prince Arren in an archetypical conflict between Light and Dark with a mentor, magical artifacts and a Dark Lord villain. Familiar storytelling constructs; they are often interesting in use - but all that has ever mattered in these kinds of stories is how well the resultant story is told.

In a vicious opening sequence, Arren is compelled by forces he doesn't understand to murder his father and steal his enchanted sword. He leaves the kingdom and on his journey to nowhere, he meets the traveller Sparrowhawk. Sparrowhawk is a peaceful, humble wizard - he enjoys being at one with the natural world. The smell of "good tilled earth", the simple pleasures of a hard day's work - his scenes are among the best and most interesting in the film.

He appreciates the natural order of things, which is why he's on a quest to discover why Earthsea's magical equilibrium is out of whack. For reasons best known to himself, Sparrowhawk takes the boy under his wing (pardon the pun) and they travel to Hort Town, in which slavery is rife. The residents have forgotten the wizarding conventions and crafts; wizards are despised as charlatans.

Being a non-reader of these tales, I quickly found myself somewhat lost amongst all the thick exposition - my notebook is coated with names, places and a great deal of solemnly spoken quotes - but I trusted that much of this would pay off later on. Not much of it does, and in spite of a great deal of talk, there are matters that are ill-explained and I would go so far as to say the script employs at least one deus ex machina. Readers of the books may be able to fill me in, but the movie does not.

The visual artistry is surprisingly weak, following the eyeball-scorching Howl's Moving Castle. Character design is flat, and ineffective. The dark wizard Lord Cob is probably the most interesting design, a gothic mixture of witch and androgynous vampire. The rest of them are cut from the usual medieval anime hero/mentor/girl stock of character models. There is nothing fresh in the animation style or skill. The backdrops are sumptuous, however - brilliantly natural and evocative watercolour washes, detailed with peerless skill. The music is also very special - skilfully written melodies for the heroes and grand, large imperial marches for Lord Cob.

However, one of this matters when the storytelling is weak. The script is stunningly incoherent - lacking respect and testing viewer patience in equal measure. Tales from Earthsea is a tiresome effort from Studio Ghibli. A dull, humourless wreck of a story, directed with inexperience and lack of respect for the audience. I never dreamed I would write "tiresome" and "Studio Ghibli" in a sentence without an odd number of negatives in it - they are responsible for some of the finest animated movies ever created (Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbour Totoro), and even interesting misfires like Howl's Moving Castle are worth watching for sheer visual splendour.

It is a crushing disappointment for Ghibli's fans.

Hairspray
Hairspray - ***

What a lovely surprise - a fat-suit sporting movie that doesn't make me want to bury my head in my hands and weep. Based on the screenplay of the 1988 movie of the same name by John Waters - king of renegade and witty trash - Hairspray is a sincere, thoroughly entertaining romp; bursting with boundless energy, inventive choreography and performances that quite simply delight.

This early Sixties musical comedy opens with a bright, starry rendition of "Good Morning Baltimore" by plus-size teenager Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky - perfectly cast, with a voice and personality as amiable as sunshine). No sooner have we left the house than Hollywood and Broadway combine and explode as director/choreographer Adam Shankman (Cheaper By The Dozen 2 - all is forgiven) delivers a voluminous helping of the ol' razzle-dazzle. The heightened, fantastical period set-dressing is perfect, the costumes are bright and colourful, and the pace never flags. And neither do the goofy grins affixed to our faces.
Copy picture

The plot, such as it is, exists to support a fantastic string of often saucy dance numbers and deliciously rude lyrics. Tracy and her best friend Penny have one source of joy in their lives. This is "The Corney Collins Show" - a teenage rock-and-roll programme sponsored by a hairspray company - to which they sing and dance along. Link Larkin (Zac Efron, looking, sounding and performing scarily like Ray from the 2006 season of X-Factor) is the new teenage heart-throb of the show, and Tracy falls for him quickly.

The show auditions for a new replacement for one of their female performers - who has a "nine month" leave of absence - and of course Tracy can dance with the best of them and skips school to be one of the show's "Nicest Kids in Town". The show has an all-white cast, other than one day a month, designated Negro Day, hosted by record store owner Motormouth Maybelle, played by Queen Latifah - capable of firing off zingers like "If we get any more white people in this store, this is going to be a suburb". This being pre-Civil Rights, segregation is still very much in force. Tracy and the black kids come together, learning fresh dance moves and making friends quickly.

The cast is uniformly terrific, with standouts being Christopher Walken and John Travolta as Tracy's parents, Wilbur and Edna. As the stage version and 1988 movie dictate, Edna must be portrayed by a man in drag. So Travolta slaps on the fat-suit and sells the comedy to perfection with drama, pathos and very big laughs without really appearing to try. It's an invisible performance; while his character takes the largest arc, everyone has a ball throughout.

Wilbur owns a joke-shop called the Hardy Har Har, and sells practical jokes and novelties (using Whoopie Cushions for a bed is a gag that never gets tired), all the while fully believing in his daughter, and dutifully having eyes for no other woman other than his wife. Witness the delightful fantasy song-and-dance number "Timeless to Me" with Edna and Wilbur serenading each other. It's a little bit sweet, a little bit sexy(!), but moreover a big and funny idea that pays off well.

Shankman easily exposes the soft and sweet - if slightly more innocent than I suspect Waters (spotted early on in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo) would have liked - core of the story. By slapping on the satire thick and broad, it's fair to say that Hairspray kind of misses the point about race-relations as immutable force, although in itself expressing these issues in song and dance is a brave and clever move. More to the point, arguing for real social melting pots in day-to-day life has rarely been successful.

Hairspray is too much simple and straight-up joy for these charges to stick, however. In the realm of filmed musicals, it's funnier and lighter than Chicago and less-stagey than the empty, slick redo of The Producers.

Goldfinger
Goldfinger - ****

For those of us who grew up on Pierce Brosnan's sickly and weak interpretation of Bond as a public schoolboy, or Daniel Craig's charmless, chiseled and vicious thug (the least said about Roger Moore, the better) - you are in for a treat. Sean Connery proves he's the best of them all: tough, rugged, charismatic and smooth - coaxed and guided invisibly by director Guy Hamilton, who imbues this installment with a delightfully cheerful, suspenseful plotting and sense of humour.

The elements of 007's franchise fall into place stealthily and easily:

* Pre-credits teaser complete with a snorkelling seagull and 007 peeling off his wetsuit to reveal a pristine white tuxedo - a gag repeated near enough note-for-note in James Cameron's True Lies.

* Glorious opening credits sequence - complete with a fantastic number by Shirley Bassey.

* A gorgeous female sidekick, Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore - Connery's double-take is priceless on hearing the name.

* A fantastic chase with the Aston Martin DB5, kitted out with the best set of gadgets in movie history. The Q scene is classic, setting up our expectations ("I never joke about my work!"), while rattling through the car's stunning array of features - machine guns, oil slick, smokescreen, bullet-proof shields, passenger ejector seat, hubcap sawblades - and paying them off magnificently later on.

* The villain's weird henchmen - Oddjob, a midget Korean with a lethal steel-rimmed bowler hat. ("Manners, Oddjob. I thought you always take your hat off to a lady" - 007 quips)

* Oh, bloody hell - almost forgot; those villain speeches. Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) arranges a delightful windbaggy presentation of his grand plan and then nerve-gasses everyone who hears it, other than 007. The scheme itself, I will reveal little, other than it is both diabolical, ingenious and well-realised.

Enough blueprint listing already; I hear you cry... is it any good or not? Thankfully, it's a cast iron classic. Goldfinger is a superior slap-bang entertainment, joyously performed and directed with aplomb and equal measures silliness, joy and suspense. The delightful production design carries on nicely from Dr. No and From Russia With Love. Frobe excels as the demented and brilliant villain, not above cheating at cards, and smart at smuggling.

Slightly jarring moments date the movie somewhat, like 007 spanking his masseuse and the moment in the barn where Pussy Galore succumbs to Connery's masculinity - there's a thin line between fierce hanky-panky and statuatory rape, and its hard to say whether or not this crosses it.

Either way, it's safe to say Goldfinger is the definitive Bond film - if not my favourite (this honour falls to From Russia With Love) - and the opportunity to see it on the big screen should not be missed.

Spider-Man 3
Spider-Man 3 - **

I am inevitably going to compare the second sequel to its immediate prequel. Spider-Man 2 is one of the finest comic-book movies ever made, a film of uniform excellence. The story had mythic resonance, was wonderfully acted and Sam Raimi directed like an excited mad scientist; exciting and dazzling his audience in equal measure.

The same talent - the opening credits are nearly identical, other than the new additions to the cast - does not deliver a movie of equal quality. In this vein, Spider-Man 3 is a monumental disappointment. It is a chronic miscalculation of what made Spider-Man 2 great, sporting a paper-thin story, characters that do not develop, villains that aren't given enough time to do much other than snarl and look buff, and a hero that becomes a bastard.

Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire, 31, and still looking scarily youthful) has none of the problems that plagued him in Spider-Man 2. He's keeping on top of undergraduate college study, has a steady freelance job at the Daily Bugle (J J Simmons, as the editor, continues to provide a laugh every single time we see him onscreen) and is ready to marry the love of his life - Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). Life couldn't be better.

Mary Jane is struggling. Her recent Broadway career has the critics firing stink bombs. All she wants is a shoulder to cry on while her little world falls down around her ears. All Parker has to offer is platitudes about being Spidey. And Parker's former best friend, Harry Osbourne (James Franco), continues to harbour a grudge against Spider-Man for his father's death. He discovers his dad's stash of body enhancing doobriewidgets, grenades and blades, and uses them to make the arachnid pay.

The visceral stuff is well done on a nuts and bolts workmanlike level, although it has to be said that whooshing through and between buildings at high speed over and over again feels like an overdose of Ritalin. A noteworthy moment is saving Gwen Stacy (a wasted Bryce Dallas Howard) from a shocking sequence where a crane smashes through a skyscraper. I guess it's now acceptable to assault the cultural and visual impact of the Twin Towers in mainstream movies again. The highpoint is a visually marvellous dive, dodging debris and saving the lady from a 64 storey drop. The visual effects are technically flawless throughout.

Escaped convict, Flint Marco (Thomas Haden Church), through yet more silly science - "demolecularisation" anyone? - becomes The Sandman. He also happens to be the true killer of Parker's Uncle Ben. The Sandman is a character visually reminiscent of the cooler bits of Stephen Sommers' The Mummy and the T-1000. I doubt that Church has more than a dozen lines throughout the entire film, but he does try to sell the character's morality and bad luck, while Raimi sells his invincibility in marvellously executed visual effects sequences.

Completing the rogues’ gallery is Venom, a polymorphous black blob from a meteor. It lands 20-feet from Parker, oozes out of its meteor and attaches itself to him. Yes, you read that right; a blob from space is a major character. Excuse me while I stop caring. It amplifies strength and aggression, making our hero bad, and gifts Spidey with a nifty new black outfit.

He discards the symbiote after realising what he's become. It then attaches itself to disgraced Daily Bugle photographer Eddie Brock, whom Parker caught being too liberal with Photoshop. The Eighties visual design of Venom is disturbingly out of sync with the rest of the timeless Spider-Man characters, like Doctor Octopus. Either way, it's one underwritten villain too many, haphazardly thrown into the mix, and causes the rest of the film to fold under its own weight. The three-way baddie climax is nauseating, unexciting and full of contrivances.

Raimi, a genius at breathing visual and kinetic life, needs a solid backbone of a script before he can deliver a film of the quality of his immediate prequel. He shares story duties with his brother, Ivan Raimi – Spider-Man 2's sole screenwriter Alvin Sargeant gets a screenplay credit. We don't need Spidey Sense to realise that this is uneventful, thinly scripted rubbish. The story is self-cannibalising and ultimately tries too hard to be everything to everybody. He mixes campy comedy with overwrought visual design and a nasty sense of self-righteousness. Spider-Man 2, to its credit, kept the story well in check, delivering motivation, character and real honest-to-goodness belief in itself. At least, Bruce Campbell gets another hilarious cameo.

I don't like writing reviews for critic-proof movies. As someone who loves cinema, I can't help but feel that while I try to convince the intrinsic worth (or lack thereof) of a film, ultimately it is fruitless against a mighty marketing machine. I guess I'm going to have to learn to deal with it. I recall a quote from Angus Wolfe Murray on Spider-Man 2 - "It makes you feel that there are people in Hollywood who care."

Angus, it's time to take it back.

Meet the Robinsons
Meet The Robinsons - ***

A cheerful and wacky exuberance is evident in this bright paint-box coloured children's film. If you throw Back to the Future II into a giant melting pot with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow with a thick dollop of Robots eye-popping vistas - you'll get something that feels like this. The script is homogenised - with seven writers, you can bet it is! - but director Stephen J. Anderson keeps a tight rein on what it feels like to have the imagination of a child. We all remember the crazy ideas that kids have before they're tempered with reality - this movie demonstrates it better than any I can think of in recent memory.

In a sepia-toned prologue, baby Lewis is left on the doorstop of a New York orphanage. He grows up as a peerless inventor and looks a heckuva lot like Jonathan Lipnicki. He is a very sweet child, but has the knack for scaring off potential parents due to his inventions; perpetually driven by his insatiable desire for knowledge and discovery. He loves tinkering, developing and always moving forward with his outlandish ideas - even . After 136 failed potential parent meetings - believe us, he counted every one of them - Lewis begins to lose hope in finding a family.

Looking for a scrap of memories turns to obsession, and eventually Lewis invents the story McGuffin - a memory scanner which attracts theattention of the Bowler-Hat Guy, and the mysterious Wilbur Robinson. Bowler-Hat makes off with the memory doohickie, and Lewis and Wilbur chase him back to the future. This is a future of a child's wildest fantasies, as far from tech-noir as one could possibly go without returning to Oz.

Plotwise, sure, this is derivative fluff, but it's also well-told, charming and entertaining.

New head of Disney Feature Animation and former Pixar maestro John Lasseter's work is clear - story is king. It may not have the impeccable flavour of Pixar's established classics, but more importantly, it works as well as it can given the pedigree. Heck, I had a lot more fun with Meet the Robinsons than last year's Pixar effort: the sacharrine and technically flawless Cars.

It may be a U-rated picture, but there's a few very very dark and intense moments with a nightmarish alternate future - where the family briefly turn to mind-controlled zombies. There's plenty of humour and knowing wit that doesn't rely on pop-culture - I'm looking at you, Shrek! The bowler-hat wearing villain is helplessly inept and stupid, but is peerless in his delicious Dick Dastardly thicko-baddie characterisation, Rickman-esque posturing and overwrought sneering. He's not very threatening, but as a source of comedy, it's lovely.

High-tech, brilliantly crafted and old- fashioned - it's the year's best kids flick thus far, and perfect Easter weekend fodder. And watch for the tie-in; a hilarious singing frog anti-mobile-phone ad playing before the trailers.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) - ***

I expect those over the age of 30 to pay little heed, therefore I'll quickly summarise. TMNT is a loose sequel to the original movie - like Superman Returns, it's a sequel, but we're invited to forget the events of the latter two, terrible movies: The Secrets of the Ooze and Turtles in Time.

We reunite ourselves with ongoing mechanics of the plot quickly. The Shredder is defeated presumed dead, Leonardo is in exile, on a mission by Master Splinter (Mako) to hone his skills and become a better leader. The passionate Raphael turns vigelante and stalks the criminal element of the city. Immature Michaelangelo works as a party entertainer and tech genius Donatello is left dealing with IT support queries from clueless users. Splinter forbids any surface contact until Leonardo returns. All the while the Foot Clan are still loose in the city, under the pay of industrialist Max Winters (Patrick Stewart), looking for thirteen monsters and break a terrible curse. It's frankly rather daft, but exposition is brief.

It's a visually striking look, both as a potently weird combination of The Polar Express's virtual cinematography and Spider-Man 2's dazzling visual dexterity. The film is soaked in delightful detail, New York dressed up to the urban-cesspit nines, and given beautiful comic-book framing.

The scope widescreen is effectively used in partitioning space, lending a half-baked epic quality, and the camera freedom is fun to watch. Watch early on as Michaelangelo returns from work, surfing the sewers as the camera dodges every which way trying to keep up with him. Also, the level of detail in the CG work is exceptional, clean, effective and stylised. A standout is a climactic rooftop fight in the rain, blanched with red neon. It's just violent enough to stay within the PG rating. (Also, it's noticable the lack of ninja weapon fetishing; they're used, but the camera does not linger.)

There are a couple of major plot holes, but the film realises that thick exposition could kill the momentum - and therefore, like Ghostbusters, embraces that silliness as part of the fun. The main thrust of the story is between Leonardo and Raphael, the other turtles are barely used. Also, the all star cast (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Chris Evans as April O'Neill and Casey Jones) are often distracting and unconvincing in their roles. The turtles themselves are well voiced, I can't help but smile as Raphael utters "We're ninjas!" in his thick New York accent.

This is the Turtles movie that I'd have loved as a boy.

The Number 23
The Number 23 - **

The Number 23 might be more fun to write about than sit through.

Improbability isn't the death of a thriller, but it can cripple it. Joel Schumacher's flair for theatrical silliness continues in this horribly unlikely, indulgent murder mystery, the outcome of which you're likely to guess at last half an hour before the end.

Jim Carrey stars as dog catcher Walter Sparrow, who lives with his wife (Virginia Madsen) and son (Logan Lerman), and also enjoys reading detective stories - in a cheery nod to the Ace Ventura flicks, no doubt - whose mild mannered existence is compounded by his wife's purchase of a red, hand-finished book, entitled The Number 23 by Topsey Krett - ho-ho! He becomes absorbed in this creaky little whodunit and we are sent along dual storylines, the literary and the literal, as he picks up and puts down the book.

The incarnation of the fictional dreamscape is rather clever, showy and pulpy at the same time, aided by Requiem For A Dream's cinematographer Matthew Libatique. Eventually, it gets stupid, as the detective is exposed as a screaming nutcase and Schumacher ramps up the visuals to almost hyperkinetic anime, blended with Max Payne's pulp noir, while Fernley Phillips’s story slowly drowns.

Viewers are soaked in various numerological permutations and combinations of the eponymous digits in pretty much every scene. It is like being locked in a padded cell with a raving loony, without volume control. And yet, with all the signs, letters and numbers, I began to feel a little obsessed, too. The film dovetails several slender plot threads, with first time screenwriter Phillips having a bit of fun with madness and authorship. However, you are likely to be more numbed by it than interested and more confused than involved.

The worst aspect is the hopeless miscasting of Carrey. He may have been the highlight of Schumacher's earlier phantasmagoric Batman Forever, but in this one he cannot convince as a tortured and obsessed ordinary Joe - his James Stewart like everyday qualities are better served in The Truman Show. Madsen is as dependable as always, continuing her run of loving and intelligent women with sunshine sex appeal. Nice to see former Lara Croft model and Verhoeven victim Rhona Mitra show up as a gorgeous corpse-to-be.

Early on, Sparrow rejects the book.

"Have some writer fill my head with nonsense?” he asks. “I'll wait for the movie."

You have a choice. Watch the movie and mess up your head? Or wait for Ace Ventura 3: All Is Forgiven?

The Fountain
The Fountain - ****

How can I describe the synopsis of this movie without seeming mad? Even as I write it for the review, I'm shaking my head at how I'm going to convince someone that they must see this film. The only hope is to spit it out quickly and hope you'll stay with me.

Okay, here goes. Tripartite threads of story, interleaving at various places, all about the quest for eternal life. That's it in a nutshell - told you it was a hard sell. But as with all movies, how I feel about it is rarely to do with what the story or plot serves up, rather how much it stirs me.

The six years between Requiem for a Dream and this has not been time ill-used. Indeed, after The Fountain being shutdown and restarted with a slashed budget sans-Brad Pitt, Aronofsky has had two helpings of creative juice to create this, his masterpiece. The Fountain is an epic poem about mortality and dealing with loss, serving up incredible imagery and emotive storytelling, gorgeously cut and dazzlingly photographed. One early shot sees the main character ascending a Mayan temple staircase, shot to look like a Stairway to Heaven - the American title for Powell and Pressberger's great comedy : A Matter of Life And Death. Life and death, that's all the film is about.

In the present day, Tom is a medical scientist who is studying the effects of new drugs in the treatment of brain tumours using monkeys. His research is motivated by saving his cancer-stricken writer wife, Izzi (Rachel Weisz). In desparation he breaks protocol, and uses a new and untested compound taken from the essence of a Guatemalian tree on the monkey. Izzi remains hopeful, while trying to finish her book, the movie's second story thread - her story sees that of 16th Century Spain looking for the secret to eternal life from the Mayan culture. Our final story thread is far off in the future, where a zen-like Tom is travelling in an ecospheric spacecraft - oh, what a pleasure it is to see a space vehicle that doesn't look like yet another model kit - to the dying star and nebula named by the Mayans as their underworld.

Unlike our other Mayan epic, Apocalypto with all the gross-out and bloody 18-rated bits for the teenager in me, The Fountain - while being cut for a 12A rating - is strictly for adults sensibilities only. It has hopes, dreams and patience, while Gibson's picture is a headlong dive into cheerful grotesquery. The anchors for Aronofsky's potent motion picture - Jackman and Weisz are marvellous. Jackman gives the film his finest performance - certainly not the kind of sensationally emotive acting that the Academy doles out the gold for - his Tom is a human, fallible and noble man. Rachel Weisz, is as desirable and luminous an actress as ever. Together, they keep the film afloat with a deeply emotional thread, and are adept at the deep, believable romance, physicality and drama. They easily aid Aronofsky in guiding the movie to its triumph. Ellen Burstyn (also returning from Requiem for a Dream) gives a lovely, sympathetic performance as Tom's troubled boss.

The visual design of The Fountain is elegant, refined and often fantastic. The present day is superbly lit for maximum invisible drama and impact. It contains the most effective, convincing and beautiful interstellar space travel I have ever seen in a movie - a third of the film containing effects created in a budget of less than $150,000. Aronofsky is creative in his smart use of visual effects, using CG sparingly. But it is the striking finale imagery itself, which I will not reveal, which left my jaw agape.

It may feel occasionally pretentious, preferring not to wait for the audience to catch up, but let's not faff about - The Fountain is astonishing cinema. It's like watching A.I. again, whereupon I just *knew* further viewings are going to yield more of its precious secrets. A youthful work, told with a minimum of showbiz, brave, bold and obtuse. The trailers make it seem a science-fiction adventure, they are mis-selling the film. It is a visual opera of startling passion, reminiscent of Paul Thomas Anderson's equally brilliant and barking Magnolia. And it is as revolutionary as The Matrix in taking science-fiction into the next brave, new and beautiful world. And even if you aren't as moved as I was, you will doubtless appreciate the ambition and craftsmanship.

All that said, watch it flop, ladies and gentlemen. Do yourself a favour and see something great that almost no-one else will - lest it become this decade's Dark City.

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