10,000 BC - don't scratch my soca!

Cinegeeks crack me up! Seriously, there are people on IMDB complaining that 10,000 BC contains factual errors. Ye gads, it's a Roland Emmerich big-budget studio action flick! It's not a National Geographic segment! This is the man who had Bill Pullman and Will Smith destroy invading aliens by uploading a virus into their improbably compatible computer network!

Thing is, if I see a movie like 10,000 BC, I don't expect it to be factually correct. In fact, if I'm going to have spend 2 hours watching actors in cheap wigs speaking gibberish I need A LOT of absurd craziness as compensation. I need good-looking people, scantily clad, running from bad-ass hairy mamaluks.

Tragically, 10,000 BC falls between the two stalls. It has great pretensions toward serious drama and gut-wrenching action but has neither the intelligence nor the sheer heart-busting adrenaline-rush chase scenes of APOCALYPTO. (And, frankly, if actors are going to have to utter such ridiculous dialogue - viz. the scene where our hero politely asks a sabre-tooth tiger not to eat him - I'd rather they did so in ancient Mayan or some other incomprehensible language.) More than once, I thought I saw the awesome Cliff Curtis smirking as he looked upon the ridiculous action before him.

Still, 10,000 BC isn't a complete write-off. First, the landscape photography from DP Ueli Steiger is truly beautiful to contemplate. Second, there's an unintentionally comedy performance from Mona "Auntie Susu" Hammond as Old Mother. That was enough to send me on a whimsical tour of old episodes of Desmond's whenever the action got too tedious to pay attention to.

10,000 BC is on global release.

Overlooked DVD of the month - THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE

THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE fits all the usual criteria for the overlooked DVD of the month: it's really bloody good but slipped under the radar on original release - perhaps because it was shown on around two screens in Shoreditch for a millisecond. Anyways, it's out on DVD now and is definitely worth checking out.

THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE is a powerful drama about "finding yourself". And yet it's not at all a steaming pile of pretentious horse-dung. It stars the outstanding actor Daniel Day-Lewis as an ageing hippie called Jack. He lives on the remains of an old commune and shoots at greedy capitalist bastard property developers. Problem is, he's ill and worried about what will happen to his beautiful teenage daughter, Rose, when he carcs it. So, Jack gets the woman he's been casually sleeping with to move in with her two teenage sons. Not unsurprisingly, Jack's daughter Rose feels threatened by this invasion of her isolated home.

Writer-director Rebecca Miller creates two eccentric lead characters that are unlike anything I have seen on screen before. Camilla Belle, who plays Rose, matches the intensity of Daniel Day-Lewis note for note. It's a mesmorising performance. Given Belle's more recent work in piss-poor 70s horror remakes one can only hope she gets back to the path of righteousness and Indie cinema soon. The supporting cast is also strong: Catherine Keener brilliantly conveys the conflicting motives of the girlfriend and we even get a cameo from Paul Dano - the brother from LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. As the movie reaches its crescendo we have more than just a glib tale of how hippies are nice and capitalists are bastards - and more than just another exploitative tale of transgressive love. This is a cruel and complex take on the acquisitive instincts in all of us - whether emotional or physical.

THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE showed at Sundance 2005 and was released in the UK earlier this year. It is available on Region 1 and Region 2 DVD.