Random DVD Round-Up 2 - BARRY MUNDAY aka THE FAMILY JEWELS

I rather liked THE FAMILY JEWELS, although I must admit it was rather betrayed by its marketing. I was rather expecting it to be a gross-out frat-boy comedy in the manner of a Judd Apatow flick. After all, the central conceit is that Patrick Wilson's character - Barry Munday - is a promiscuous, misogynistic David Brent-style loser who gets his balls cut off by the vengeful father of a teenage girl. Just as he realises he can't father children, he's told that a plain-jane one-night stand (Judy Greer) he can't even remember fucking, is knocked up.  What then follows is actually a rather sweet, rather earnest little romantic drama, in which Barry comes to accept fatherhood and his baby-mama, Ginger, comes to accept his attentions. The movie may be rather predictable and the direction is certainly workman-like, but it's also peppered with some delicious cameos from the likes of Billy-Dee Williams as Barry's boss; Malcolm McDowell as Ginger's dad; and Cybill Shepherd as her mum. Overall, the movie is not particularly memorable but it was enjoyable enough at the time, and Patrick Wilson is so funny and convincing as Barry Munday I would love to see him do more out-and-out comedy. 

THE FAMILY JEWELS played a bunch of minor festivals in 2010 and had a very limited US release in October 2010. It is available to rent and own.

GAMER - sporadically interesting Running Man remake

GAMER is a remake of the seminal Schwarzenegger sci-fi flick, RUNNING MAN. It's set in a dystopian future, where sex and violence are commercialised in computer games, allowing obese couch potatoes to fuck beautiful women and teenagers to control ultra-violent prisoners in live-action shoot-em-ups. Why have a virtual avatar when you can remote control actual people? The game is controlled by billionaire Ken Castle (a typically mischievous Michael C Hall) and peopled by set-up con Kable (Gerard Butler) and his wife turned hooker Angie (Amber Valetta). As in the original flick, the action really takes off when the "running man", Kable, escapes the game, aided by revolutionaries (Ludcaris, Aaron Yoo and Alison Lohman).

Despite all the CGI, GAMER doesn't have the visceral thrills of the action sequences in RUNNING MAN - for a start, there are no ridiculous baddies - remember the ice-hockey guy with the chainsaw?! In fact, the action sequences were pretty dull, which has to count as a big negative in a summer action movie. It was more interesting seeing how the film-makers had updated the dystopian future to capture the full weirdness of modern gaming. In terms of style, I was pleased to see Neveldine calm down the frenetic style of the CRANK movies, delivering a film with a nice bleak, almost monochrome look, while retaining their ability to mesh computer graphics and standard live-action film. I also like the fact that this film has more layers to it than the CRANK films - simultaneously critiquing and glorying in the voyeurism and nastiness of modern entertaining culture. And let me not forgot, a song-and-dance sequence in which Michael C Hall plays to Sammy Davis Junior's I've Got You Under My Skin. Worth the price of entry alone!

GAMER is on release in Greece, Canada, Finland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the USA, Belgium, Estonia, France, the Philippines, Russia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia, the UK, the Czech Republic and Austria. It opens next week in South Korea and Bulgaria. It opens in October in Brazil, the Netherlands, Iceland, Croatia and Lithuania. It opens on January 7th in Germany.

DRAG ME TO HELL - works better as loving pastiche than as horror

DRAG ME TO HELL is a very funny, loving pastiche of 70s exploitation horror flicks. It sees Sam Raimi of SPIDERMAN fame return to his roots, and every frame of this movie speaks of the fondness he has for the ludicrous nature of lo-fi horror. The colouring, the low-rent special effects (big on oozing bodily fluids), the two-dimensional characters, the absurdity of the central premise - it's all there. And in every case, the Bad Things that happen aren't scary at all, but just plain funny. This is, then, a movie, with it's tongue firmly in its cheek and, indeed, its pulse firmly on the zeitgeist. After all, in these recessionary times, who doesn't want to see the loan officer foreclosing a house get well and truly skewered?!

The plot is simple. Alison Lohman (WHERE THE TRUTH LIES) plays a sweet little push-over called Christine Brown. Fearing she'll be out-manoeuvred for a promotion by the office kiss-ass, she takes the unprecedented step of foreclosing the creepy Mrs Ganush (Lorna River). The boss at her bank (David Paymer) is impressed, but it all goes Pete Tong when the creepy Mrs Ganush puts a gypsy curse on Christine. For the next three days, she gets all manner of gross bodily fluids thrown at her, before the goat demon comes to take her soul. Her only chance of escape is to transfer the curse to someone else....

Lohman is perfectly fine as the scream-queen, but the movie belongs to the supporting cast. Reggie Lee is hysterical as the office kiss-ass, Justin Long is suitably straight-faced as the drippy boy-friend and Dileep Rao is spot on as the Indian mystic, to whom Christine turns for help. Overall, DRAG ME TO HELL is Sam Raimi at his most entertaining. But horror fans, take heed, this movie is PG-13 for a reason.

DRAG ME TO HELL played Cannes 2009 and is on release in the US, UK, France and Lithuania. It opens next weekend in Malaysia and South Korea. It opens on June 12th in Germany, Singapore, Estonia, Finland, Norway and Sweden. It opens on June 18th in the Czech Republic and Denmark. It opens on July 2nd in Belgium, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Turkey and Vietnam. It opens on July 9th in Russia and on July 31st in Spain. It opens on August 14th in Brazil, and on August 20th in Argentina and Mexico.

I am Beerwolf and I am here to kill your Monst-AH!!!!

This new performance-capture version of BEOWULF is a noble addition to the genre of meat-headed sword-swinging action flicks, of which CONAN is the best example. It's transparent nonsense - wilfully sending itself up at every turn - and bears precious little resemblance to the Old English epic. It's laugh-out loud funny rather than noble and moving - but hey! there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

In this 3-D animated world, Ray Winstone - an old fat East Londoner - is transmuted into BEOWULF - a ludicrously buff sword-swing Hero with a capital "H". In fact, he looks more like Sean Bean in Lord of the Rings than anything else. He harrumphs around Denmark shouting stuff like "I am Beerwolf and I am here to kill your Monst-AH!" and "My name is strenff! And lust! And power! I am Beerwolf!!" He is in Denmark to kill an evil beastie called Grendel who is terrorising King Hrothgar's mead-hall. Unfortunately, he is then seduced by Grendel's mum and sires a dragon who will come back to haunt his mead-hall twenty years later. This all unwinds against a background in which the crumbling Roman Empire is giving way to Christian kingdoms and Heroes of old are giving way to feeble martyrs. Whatever intelligence there is in Neil Gaman and Roger Avary's script lies in its tackling the issue of hero-myths versus reality.

But let me be very clear. This is not a subtle, magical epic poem brought to life with sensitivity and pathos. No, no, no. It's full of swearing, jokes about deflowering virgins and blow jobs. There's a lot of nudity and a lot of violence. It is absolutely amazing to me that the movie got a 12A certificate in the UK. The acting is also completely hammy, with John Malkovich in particular having a lot of fun as a camp pseudo-villain. The accents are also all over the place. Robin Wright Penn and Alison Lohman decide to give their Danish characters accents that are sometimes English, sometimes Welsh, sometimes Scottish. Anthony Hopkins as Hrothgar has a pronounced Welsh lilt. Angelina Jolie does that bizarre thing she did in ALEXANDER as Grendel's mum and Beowulf is, as we said, from Aldgate East.

Still, for all its many flaws, Beowulf is a visual feast. The 3D works brilliantly and the performance capture has come on in leaps and bounds. The animation is magnetic. You have to see this, but just think twice before taking the kiddiwinks.

BEOWULF is on release in Indonesia, the Philippines, Germany, Hong Kong,Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the UK, Italy and the USA. It opens next weekend in Belgium, Egypt, France, Argentina, Greece, the Netherlands, Russia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Spain. It opens on November 29th in Australia, Hungary, New Zealand, Slovenia, Brazil, Lithuania, Sweden, Turkey and Japan.

London Film Fest Day 8 - THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE

THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE is directed by the Danish helmer who gave us AFTER THE WEDDING, one of the most powerful movies that I've seen this year. AFTER THE WEDDING is a film about a charity worker who returns to Denmark apparently to negotiate a grant for an Indian orphanage. But he is ambushed by a series of revelations and thrown into an affluent world that changes his life. It is a quiet movie based on powerful performances, realistic dialogue and beautiful photography that often uses extreme close-ups to create a sense of intimacy.

On the face of it, Susanne Bier’s first English-language project shares much of the same emotional and narrative territory with AFTER THE WEDDING. Both concern the mourning process and what happens when people from very different social strata form relationships. They are also both films whose plot hinges on a major and unlikely turn of events.

Just as Mads Mikkelsen's former drug-addict was at the heart of AFTER THE WEDDING, the heart of THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE is a warm-hearted recovering heroin-addict called Jerry (Benicio del Toro). His best friend is an affluent property developer called Steven (David Duchovny). Steven is married to Audrey (Halle Berry) and has two cute kids and a solid successful friend called Howard (John Carroll Lynch). Although Steven's wife and friends are suspicious of Jerry - seeing him as a parasitic bum - when Steven is tragically killed they propel him into the centre of their world. Audrey takes Jerry into her house despite the fact that he's a recovering, then relapsing addict. Howard arranges for him to qualify as a mortgage broker. Jerry's good and frank nature helps them all and they in turn get him clean. It's a story of redemption and rebuilding a life in much the same way as AFTER THE WEDDING was. It's also well acted, with Benicio del Toro and John Carroll Lynch the stand-out cast members.

The problem is that THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE is a far less original and haunting drama than AFTER THE WEDDING. The shooting style is a watered down version of what we saw in AFTER THE WEDDING. None of the performances ever touch the raw emotion of Mads Mikkelsen in AFTER THE WEDDING. And even the zig-zagging time line seems derivative of other ponderous, self-important flicks like CRASH and BABEL. Overall, I came away unimpressed. It's all well done but slightly derivative. It never grabbed me by the gut and wrenched me out of my seat in the way that AFTER THE WEDDING did. And that is a great disappointment.

THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE played London 2007 and is on release in the US. It goes on release in Mexico on December 28th 2007 and in Belgium, France, Argentina, the UK, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands in January 2008. It opens in Finland, Iceland, Australia, Sweden and Turkey in February and in Norway in March.

THE BIG WHITE - so bad, it went passed cult-status and back to bad

What did I do when I wasn't laughing at alleged black-comedy THE BIG WHITE? 1. I wondered how it could be that British director Mark Mylod could come up with such hysterical stuff for TV (Shameless, The Royle Family) but on the big screen had saddled us with cinematic stinkers such as ALI G IN DA HOUSE. 2. I applauded Robin Williams for trying to do something a bit left-field. 3. I wondered whether the Coen Brothers were going to sue script-writer Collin Friessen for biting their style so badly. Seriously, not only does he set this "comedy" in Fargo-like snow-drenched nowheres-ville, but he tries to replicate all those eccentric quirky characters. The casting director even managed to con Tim Blake Nelson and Holly Hunter into participating. 4. I wondered if Collin Friessen's directorial effort FARM SLUTS was available on DVD, and if so, whether or not it would be more entertaining that this shambolic enterprise. I actually looked up FARM SLUTS on the internet while I was waiting for England to win the Third Test match. The guidance warned that it contained "partial nudity, language and untimely random acts of perversion." I sadly have to report that FARM SLUTS was probably even less funny than THE BIG WHITE and certainly had no other entertainment-related merits. So, overall, the whole BIG WHITE experience was fairly disappointing.

THE BIG WHITE got an indicatively small release in the US at the fag-end of 2005 and is now on release in the UK. The Germans get the pox on April 20th 2006, and the Austrians on June 2nd 2006.

WHERE THE TRUTH LIES - sleazy thriller, no more, no less

Expectations run high for WHERE THE TRUTH LIES. It is directed by that darling of the Indie scene, Atom Egoyan and stars Colin Firth (the original and best Mr. Darcy) and Kevin Bacon, who dazzled me with his sympathetic portrayal of a paedophile in THE WOODSMAN last year. In addition, the love interest is "rising star" Alison Lohman, last seen with Nic Cage in MATCHSTICK MEN. Not only are the cast and crew high quality but the director's aim is grand. Atom Egoyan has attempted to create an old fashioned film noir - those wonderful 1940s movies that were intricately plotted movies with tough guys, wicked women, murders, incest, theft and glamour. Re-creating that kind of ethereal, dangerous mood is difficult in these days of colour film and special effects but a few movies have pulled it off with great success, not least the superb L.A CONFIDENTIAL. WHERE THE TRUTH LIES is nowhere near as successful but neither is it a bad film.

The plot centres around a 1950s comedy double-act in the style of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Colin Firth plays the straight man and Kevin Bacon his comedy stooge. They live the "Frat pack" lifestyle to the max - hot chicks, fast cars, alcohol, hotel rooms. However, when an actress is found dead in their bath-tub it all goes wrong. Fast forward to the 1970s when a young ambitious reporter tries to unravel the hushed-up scandal.

The plot synopsis makes the movie sound a lot more interesting than it really is. At heart, it is just another sleazy erotic thriller. There is nothing wrong with that but it seems a bit of a waste of effort for Egoyan and his cast to come up with something so one-dimensional. Sad to say that in years to come, if this movie is remembered at all, it will be as a footnote in film school text books on censorship. Thanks to a menage a trois between Colin Firth, Kevin Bacon and Rachel Blanchard, featuring lots of "thrusting" the movie received the rarely used NC 17 rating in the US, limiting its ability to earn back its budget.
WHERE THE TRUTH LIES is already on limited release in the US and the UK. It goes on release in France on the 21st December 2005 and in Germany on the 2nd February 2006.