Pantheon movie of the month - BROADCAST NEWS

Before James L Brooks became famous as the writer of THE SIMPSONS, he was famous for making award-winning tragi-comic cinema. Indeed, with AS GOOD AS IT GETS, he proved he could still do it. BROADCAST NEWS is, to my mind, his best film. It's a wonderfully funny, chillingly perceptive movie about the kind of relationships that over-achieving careerists have, and the decline in the quality of public discourse. Unlike NETWORK, the brilliantly cruel satire of the "dumbing down" of television, BROADCAST NEWS has a heart. And unlike George Clooney's more recent homage to the good old days of journalists with integrity, GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, BROADCAST NEWS has a sense of humour. In short, BROADCAST NEWS is the most wonderful of films: intelligent; funny; scabrous, but never despairing.

The movie opens with a brilliant little intro to its three main characters as kids. First up is a cute but dumb kid called Tom who wonders what a cute but dumb kid can do for a living. Answer: network news anchor! We then switch to a high-energy, highly-strung kid called Jane who berates her father for applying the word "obsessively" to her incorrectly. Caption: network news producer. We then switch to a nerdy kid called Aaron, who berates the school bullies as he graduates early: "You'll never earn more than $19,000!". Caption: network investigative journalist. So there you have it: the philosophical and emotional triangle has been established. Jane is the ambitious editor who admires everything Aaron stands for and sympathises with him. They're the smart kids who hate the dumb, beautiful people who are killing intelligent news coverage. Problem is, Jane doesn't fancy Aaron. Worse still, she's falling for Tom's open charm and winning good looks.....

BROADCAST NEWS gets so much right. We care about the three main characters. We ache for Aaron, with his unrequited love; we are confused with Jane; and we fall for Tom's charm. Their emotional entanglements, flaws and foibles seem real. Albert Brooks, Holly Hunter and William Hurt are all excellent in their respective roles. The supporting cast of characters is full of recognisable types and odd-balls - notably Joan Cusack as Jane's assistant and Jack Nicholson as the hard-assed Network anchor. But what James L Brooks really gets is how seductive the adrenaline-rush of the deadline-driven job can be. We all know that it's unhealthy - a little off-balance, but that feeling of camaraderie and achievement when you've pulled it out of the hat at the last minute? Brilliant.

The only tiny flaw with this film is the denouement, which is just a little too pat. And I guess that such a flaw should disqualify BROADCAST NEWS from being a pantheon film on my own rules - a film of which I would change not a frame - of which every component is perfection - and the combination magnifies their brilliance. But frankly, this movie is so damn good other than those three minutes, I can break my own rules!

BROADCAST NEWS was released in the US in 1987 and played Berlin 1988 where Holly Hunter won the Silver Bear. At the Academy Awards, it lost Best Film to THE LAST EMPEROR; William Hurt lost Best Actor to Michael Douglas for WALL STREET; Holly Hunter lost Best Actress to Cher for MOONSTRUCK; it lost the Best Screnplay award to John Patrick Shanley for MOONSTRUCK; it lost Best Cinematography to Vittorio Storaro for MOONSTRUCK; it lost Best Editor to Gabriella Cristiani for THE LAST EMPEROR. On the whole, as much as I love BROADCAST NEWS I can't disagree with these choices. MOONSTRUCK is a great film and both Nic Cage and Cher are outstanding in it. And as for WALL STREET, BROADCAST NEWS is by far the more intelligent, prescient film, but Michael Douglas' performance is iconic. BROADCAST NEWS is available on DVD and on iTunes.

Ali D comments on THE INCREDIBLE HULK...

THE INCREDIBLE HULK - yet another disappointing summer blockbuster

I've been known to read a comic or two in my time but I never cared much for HULK. The story was just too thin: repressed scientist's arrogance backfires when his own gamma bomb explodes, irradiates him, turning him into his suppressed alter-ego - a seething, angry giant. I mean, that's pretty much it. Yes, there's a weak romance with fellow scientist Betty Ross, and yes, the Hulk is hunted down by her father General Ross, and yes there's an even more fucked up mutant enemy, The Abomination........But Hulk never had the psychological complexity of Batman or the sheer exuberant fun of Tony Stark.

Zak Penn and Ed Norton's script for the new HULK feature shoots itself in the foot by collapsing the whole origin story into the opening credits. What this means is that all we have left for the two hour run-time is the following.....

Bruce Banner hides out in Brazil.

Bruce Banner gets chased by US military: turns into Hulk.

Bruce Banner hides out in Culver City.

Bruce Banner gets chased by US military: turns into Hulk.

Bruce Banner hides out in New York City.

Bruce Banner gets chased by US military: turns into Hulk.

Bruce Banner hides out in Canada.........

This is not very interesting. It's especially not interesting because the ludicrously over-worked CGI Hulk looks nothing like Ed Norton. So, even though Norton gives a sympathetic turn as Banner, I didn't care what happened to him as Hulk. Contrast this with Peter Jackson's KING KONG. Thanks to deft motion capture and some lovely scenes between Kong and Ann Darrow I really cared when Kong was being attacked by the military.

But let's end on a positive note. This movie is not a complete failure. Tim Roth chews up the scenery and actually has some fun as Hulk's enemy, Emile Blonsky. Louis Leterrier puts in some stunning aerial photography of the Brazilian favelas and he certainly knows better than Jon Favreau how to direct an action scene. And the movie nicely sets us up for an AVENGERS movie, wherein the dull mediocrity of THE INCREDIBLE HULK will hopefully be leavened by the far from perfect but still much more entertaining spirit of IRON MAN.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK opens this weekend in the UK, the US, Australia, Greece, Hungary, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Brazil, Estonia, Finland, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Turkey. It opens next weekend in Egypt, Italy, Argentina, the Netehrlands, Iceland and Spain. It opens on June 26th in Belgium and Denmark; on July 3rd in Israel; on July 10th in Germany; on July 23rd in France and on August 1st in Japan.

Random DVD round up 1: MR BROOKS

Mr Brooks (Kevin Costner) is a well-respected successful businessman, with a beautiful wife, a beautiful house and a beautiful car. He also gets off on killing people - a genetic trait he has apparently passed on to his beautiful daughter. The resulting movie plays less as a scary psycho-thriller than sympathy for a serial killer. After all, if adulterers can be re-cast as sex addicts, Mr Brooks isn't a criminal so much as a victim of his uncontrollable urges. Shorn of its pyschological edge, MR BROOKS descends into a satistifying if unmemorable CSI style police procedural. Demi Moore is fine in the smart cop role and William Hurt's role as Mr Brooks' personal devil offsets the inherent incredibility of Dane Cook's performance as a fetishistic photographer.

MR BROOKS has already been released in Argentina, Turkey, the US, Bulgaria, Russia, France, Poland, Sweden, Israel, Greece, Norway, Denmark, Indonesia, Australia, Mexico, Kuwait, Chile, France, South Korea, Panama, the Netherlands, Brazil, Finland, Iceland, Hungary, Slovenia and Italy. It is now showing in the UK and opens in Belgium on October 17th, Germany on November 29th and Spain on December 5th.

VANTAGE POINT - tedious, exciting, laughable

VANTAGE POINT is an action movie about a terrorist attack on the US President. The concept is to have the attack re-hashed from the points-of-view of different characters until the audience can piece together the truth, Rashomon-style.

The first third of the film must have looked really clever on paper, but is actually pretty tedious to watch. We see the attack around four or five times, each time learning a little more about the conspiracy, but not enough to justify rehashing the story *yet again*.

The second third of the film picks up in inverse proportion to the film-makers' willingness to drop the Rashomon conceit. A further plot twist is revealed and the movie settles down into an exciting political thriller, complete with betrayals and a high-adrenaline car chase.

But the film-makers drop the ball in the final third of the film, which is literally laughable. We are asked to believe that various people would survive hideous car crashes and that a hardened terrorist would swerve to miss a child.

The movie has its moments but overall it's rather forgettable. In such a large ensemble cast, no single actor has a chance to shine, or to capture our imagination. We never get a clear handle on the terrorists' motivations, and the whole thing seems rather mechanical. The attempt to graft on a sentimental story involving a divorced parents and a small girl is simply toe-curlingly saccharine.....Basically, this is a movie to avoid.

VANTAGE POINT is on release in the Philippines, the US, Hong Kong, Qatar, Austria, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Argentina, Germany, Kuwait, Russia, Swizterland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Sweden, India, Estonia, Japan and the UK. It opens later in March in Indonesia, Australia, Croatia, New Zealand, Slovakia, Brazil, France, Chile, Portugal, Singapore, Bulgaria, Finland, Bahrain, Belgium, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Greece, Israel, Lebanon, Nigeria, Slovenia, the UAE, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway and Romania. It opens in April in Peru, Thailamd, Ecuador, Kenya, Latvia, Polamd, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Turkey, Colombia, Uruguay, Bolivia and the Ukraine.

London Film Fest Day 10 - INTO THE WILD

I always think of Sean Penn as making angry films about disaffected, lonely men: movies that feature alienated members of society but also movies that alienate the audience with their chilly, depressing picture of humanity. I often admire Penn’s performances and directorial efforts. I rarely find myself moved by them. So it came as quite a surprise to find that INTO THE WILD was an incredibly warm and touching movie.

It tells the real-life story of an American kid called Chris McCandless. At the turn of the 1990s, Chris McCandless was a bright college graduate with a fondness for poetry. He was destined for Harvard Law and a solid middle-class life. But he abandoned his car, gave his college fund to charity and burned his petty cash and headed for the open road. He deliberately kept his parents in the dark. With their abusive marriage built upon a tissue of lies, and their typically middle-class fondness for nice “things”, they represented everything he was escaping from. More cruelly, he also kept his little sister in the dark, and we hear her understanding turn to hurt in Jena Malone’s touching voice-over throughout the film.

Before the film, I was prejudiced about McCandless. I thought his decision not to get in touch with his parents was callous. But the film shows him to be a warm-hearted, generous man, capable of empathising with people and of really listening to them. He was a good friend and often transformed the lives of people he lived with. In turn, the world seems to have shown him a smiling face. From the wonderfully caring hippies called Rainey and Jan (Brian Dierker and Catherine Keener) to a an old lonely man called Ron (Hal Holbrook) who actually offers to adopt him. Even when Chris kayaks into Mexico, loses his boat, and then turns up at the border crossing without ID, the immigration guard seems faintly amused and let him through. Throughout his two years of travels McCandless picks up survival skills and starts training for his Big Alaskan Adventure. The loneliness of the Yukon proves the ultimate test of his mission to live a pure life in all of nature’s beauty. But, despite being infinitely less irresponsible than Timothy Treadwell, he falls foul of mighty nature in the end.

Emile Hirsch gives a wonderful portrayal of McCandless. He fills the screen with warmth and a sense of adventure and has genuine chemistry with all the people he meets along his journey. We can see that McCandless is foolhardy in his determination to follow an extreme course, but we are never allowed to judge him for it. But most of all, I think that Sean Penn deserves special praise here. As screen-writer and director, he discreetly shows the audience the home-life that Chris was escaping from and the wonderful beauty of the American landscape that lured Chris on. The visuals are absolutely stunning and are perfectly complemented by Eddie Vedder’s songs. I left the movie theatre grateful to have spent time with McCandless and all the people he had met on his travels. I was deeply moved by his epiphany and the journey’s end.

INTO THE WILD played Toronto 2007 and has already been on release in the USA, Canada and the Czech Republic. It goes on release in the UK today. It opens in Russia, Iceland, Australia and Denmark later in November and in Turkey and Brazil in December 2007. It opens in Romania, Japan and Spain in January 2008 and in Germany and Norway in February. It opens in Sweden in March.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD - the duracell bunny of spy flicks

Like the Duracell bunny, THE GOOD SHEPHERD goes on...and on....and on...with nary a emotional hook or surprising plot twist to keep you going. I swear if I hadn't been on a date I would have walked out. Over designed and directed, this ponderous three hour movie drags its heels through twenty years of the life of the American secret service like so much cement.

The story sees a young Matt Damon recruited into the prototype of the CIA - working for US Secret Ops from London and then Berlin. Married to a woman he does not love (Angelina Jolie) and father to a son he barely sees, he ascends the bureaucrat ladder until, twenty years later, he becomes involved in the Cuban invasion. Insofar as the story has an emotionally sterile man at its heart, it should come as no surprise that I felt so emotionally uninvolved in the film. Damon's performance does what it should, but with the minutes ticking on I felt strangely uninvolved in Jolie's emotional life.

As a spy thriller, the movie fares even worse. The writer tries to inject a little Smiley-Karla competition by pitting Damon's CIA man against a KGB counter-part codenamed Ulysses. The denouement is a weak mirror of the means by which Smiley finally ensnares Karla, for all you fans of the infinitely superior early spy-novels of John le Carre. The film-makers were unwise in bringing such a comparison to the viewers attention. Where le Carre used to be deft, economical, cynical but still a little romantic; where characters were quirky, fascinating, constantly evolving; Eric Roth gives us the most turgid screenplay I have seen filmed since MUNICH. It's no coincidence.

Other minor gripes: Billy Crudup makes a hash of an upper class English accent in his portrayal of a British spy; Alec Baldwin is wasted as a Fed; as is John Turturro as Damon's side-kick/heavy; the make-up do not make Damon look convincing as an older man; ditto Jolie as an older woman.....

THE GOOD SHEPHERD was released in the US in December 2006 and has since opened in Brazil, Australia, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Austria, Venezuela, Argentina, Russia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Poland and the UK. It opens in Latvia and Sweden on March 2nd; in Turkey and Italy on March 9th; in France and Switzerland on March 21st and in Singapore on March 29th. It opens in Spain on April 4th and in Belgium on April 18th. THE GOOD SHEPHERD is released on Region 1 DVD at the end of March.

THE KING - Frustrating, inexplicable, strange....

THE KING is an odd movie to review. I cannot say that I enjoyed my viewing experience or that this is a coherent or compelling movie. And yet I am somewhat reluctant to dismiss it as a “bad movie” that you should avoid. The difficulty for me lies in the script. The story is pretty hackneyed. There is a preacher who lives with his wife, son and daughter in contemporary Corpus Christi, Texas. They are depicted as the kind of right-wing evangelical Christian family that many people whose sole knowledge of the US comes from watching The Daily Show and reading The Onion might reflexively believe populates the entire US between LA and New York. The boys hunt deer and the girls clean up the entrails and cook the food. The young son plays Christian rock and is campaigning for Intelligent Design to be taught in his high school. The father preaches in the kind of Church that has a flashing electronic board advertising prayer times. Into this world steps a young man called Elvis, who has just quit the marines and now works as a pizza delivery boy and lives in a rented motel room. He is the illegitimate child of the preacher, and now, with his mother dead, has come back “home”. Unsurprisingly, the preacher’s first reaction is shock and denial, which pretty much breaks Elvis’ heart. His reactions to this rejection are bizarre and extreme.

Now, I started feeling uneasy at the caricatured picture of the preacher’s family at the start of the flick, but I thought, you know what, this could be a great chance to explore what goes on behind the scary clichés. (And yes, I do find the concept of teaching Intelligent Design in schools scary.) But the film never really does this. You get the idea that the family is made up of essentially good people, if somewhat conflicted, but despite some obvious set pieces involving the mother, I found it hard to empathise with their reactions to Elvis’ appearance. The real enigma, however, is Elvis. Having been rejected by his father, his actions take us into the realms of melo-drama or implausible daytime soap opera. There were storylines here that would make Sunset Beach look like an essay in narrative restraint. Crazy narrative arcs are not bad of themselves. Indeed, the outstanding western, THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA used a surreal storyline to bring home the emotional awakening of its key characters. The problem with THE KING is that I was no clearer as to Elvis’ motives or even mental health at any point of the film. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe we are meant to be left with an enigma. But it makes for an intensely frustrating viewing experience.

Having said all this, in a curious way, this film is worth seeing purely because it is very well put together. The actors are all high-class, not least William Hurt as the preacher, Gael Garcia Bernal as Elvis, and Pell James as the preacher’s daughter. In addition, I though the camera-work was outstanding – evocative, beautiful, sometimes spooky. There is a very nicely done scene (although perhaps not fantastically original) near the end of the film, where the camera tracks through the rooms of the preacher’s house, slowly and quietly, until it comes across a painful scene that we *know* is waiting for us. Stirring stuff. The key question is whether good acting and photography, not to mention a cool sound-track, can compensate for a story-line that strains credulity and empathy. For me, THE KING was still worth a look, but if you watch movies rarely, you can surely pick better films on which to shell out your ten bucks.

THE KING was released in France in January 2006 and is currently on limited release in the US and UK. I do not know of a release date for Australia, Austria or Germany.

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE - Best film of 2005

This review is posted by guest reviewer, Nik, who can usually be found here......

David Cronenberg's A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE is without doubt the best film of the year 2005. It combines suspense, a wonderful but not overly complicated plot, absolutely outstanding acting, good production values and sparing but sensitive dialogue. I seem to have developed a recent reputation for the cynical panning of seemingly worthy movies, especially in my criticism of Woody Allen's underwhelming MATCH POINT, so such a ringing endorsement of a film should rightly been considered exceptional from my pen.

Let's start with the acting. Viggo Mortensen, best known as Aragorn, is brilliant as the mild-mannered Tom Stall. His performance only improves as the plot continues to thicken, and Stall's character takes on new dimensions as his past is revealed. His wife, Edie Stall, played by Maria Bello, is utterly convincing as the small town sweetheart whose life gets turned upside down by the bloody attempted robbery of her husband's cafe-diner. However, it is their performance together as husband and wife that is particularly noteworthy - and especially in a memorable sex scene of such vivid and captivating realism that I was actually embarassed to watch. Their relationship is central to the plot - and so strongly acted as to totally immerse the viewer.

The male and female lead are equally well supported by the psychotic-looking Carl Foggarty, played by Ed Harris - who excels in his role as villain - and Ashton Holmes as Jack Stall - son to Tom and Edie and victim of schoolyard bullying. The way that Holmes handles the character development of Jack - and the way that development is juxtaposed with that of his father - is masterful and shows immense promise for a young actor.

Next, the plot and dialogue both pull off the trick of being hugely powerful but quietly understated at the same time. Whereas many modern movies attempt to compensate for a lack of originality through overly-complex plot or timelines, and sharp, witty dialogue - A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE relies on a fairly simple plot, realistically acted and developed, with dialogue that says enough but not too much, and action in proportions that are strictly necessary. That's not to say it's boring - it's never that - rather the relationships between the characters, and the dark history that the film unfolds sustains an incredible tension in the audience. Noone was talking during this one - you could have heard a pin drop - and that made the action, when it came, all the more thrilling.

Finally, the film is wonderfully shot - the camera gets it just right in every scene - capturing the expression, the mood, the feeling of the moment perfectly. The locations are spot on - and it goes to show that you don't need millions of dollars and endless special effects to make a great movie. It makes such a refreshing change to see a Hollywood picture reject explosions, gun fights and CGI and get back to the basics of capable acting and strong characterisation. It's not a thrill a minute, that's for sure - and the kids won't understand it until they're older - but you get plenty of bang for you buck.

If you've yet to see a HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, look it up right now, and beg, steal or borrow whatever you need to get to your local cineplex and hire a seat. Perhaps I'm just a member of the hysterical conservative right, but this is a truly worthy film, and it saddens me that it will be passed over for awards in favour of lesser films that just happen to be about homosexuals. It's okay to be gay, but it doesn't mean you deserve an Oscar - and anyway, it's better to be violent.

HISTORY OF VIOLENCE is still playing in a few cineplexes but is also available of Region 1 DVD. It is released on Region 2 DVD on March 27th 2006.