KING ARTHUR

I massively enjoyed Guy Ritchie's retelling of the KING ARTHUR myth - it was funny, fast-paced, had some really superb visuals and a kinetic score.  It sets itself up perfectly for a sequel that isn't going to happen because for some bizarre reason no-one else liked it.  Close your ears to their whining and give it a go because it's stonkingly good fun! 

In Ritchie's version of the tale, we have a mythical version of post-Roman Britain in which King Uther (Eric Bana) has been trained by a mage called Merlin and given a magical sword called Excalibur.  His evil brother Vortigern (Jude Law is superb cigar-chomping mode) kills his brother and seizes the crown but has one problem - Excalibur is stuck in a stone and he can't remove it.  He also has a second problem but he doesn't know it yet.  Uther's son Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) was saved as a baby and ended up being raised in a brothel.  The main action of this film sees him extract the sword from the stone, realise his true inheritance, struggle to accept it, but overcome this hesitation thanks to an ethereal Lady In The Lake, and save Britain from Vortigern's black magic. 

So far so good.  I have no truck with purists saying that Ritchie has changed the story.  It's a story that is endlessly malleable. It's a myth from an oral tradition that takes some shreds of actual history and runs wild, and has done for centuries. I also love how Guy Ritchie gets certain things really right - the clash between the forces of modernity and the old beliefs in magicks - this is Britain  at a time of deeply contested philosophy - pagan vs Christian - Briton vs Roman - you name it. 

Anyway, this is KING ARTHUR with all the energy, vivid characterisation, underdog energy and sharp dialogue of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS.  What's even more impressive is that despite all the jokes and lad-humour, the movie worked on a deeper level.  There's a particular character moment that actually moved me because I was so invested in the characters. And the way in which Ritchie imagines the Lady in the Lake is stunning. Of course there's also lots of cheap CGI and silly fight scenes but it doesn't matter - because I liked hanging out with this group of usurpers - I loved the moment at the end when order was restored and Goosefat Bill became Ser William again - I loved the diversity of the Knights of the Round Table, and I want my sequel GODAMMIT!

KING ARTHUR has a running time of 123 minutes and is rated PG-13. 

PACIFIC RIM

You can listen to the podcast review of PACIFIC RIM directly here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.  For a more. extended discussion of the movie with two guys who actually know something about mecha anime head to the Vassals of Kingsgrave

Sea monsters versus robots? No thanks. A cross-dimensional portal has opened up in the pacific allowing big fact Kaiju beasties to plunder San Francisco and Tokyo, and humans have created big dual-piloted mega-machines called Jaegers to fight them? Puh-lease!  At least, until I heard this flick was being directed by Guillermo del Toro - of PAN'S LABYRINTH and HELLBOY fame.  That guy has such an intelligent, humorous, inventive take on fantasy that I couldn't help but be intrigued.  And he has driven this movie to a higher level. The CGI rendering of the massive cylon-style robots is amazing, and leagues beyond anything in TRANSFORMERS, and the action sequences played mostly at night and in driving rain are stunning....until they become boring.  

Where we see del Toro really at his finest is in his inventive rendering of black market Hong Kong - full of all the awe and wonder of the Hellboy hidden market, and presided over by a majestic Ron Perlmen as black marketeer, Mr Chau. Here we get a taste of geek fanboy Toro, as embodied by Charlie Day as the "kaiju groupie" researcher tasked with getting a monster brain. He's the kind of guy who says he can't tell you the secret because it's classified and the proceeds to tell you anyways, because it's so unbelievably cool! Sadly, it's all too brief. 

In fact, it's sad to say that the comic relief side-kick characters are far more interesting than the rather bland, buff protagonists.  Our hero Raleigh is played by Charlie Hunnam as a caring pretty boy with a dodgy American accent.  He's almost as unremarkable as Robert Kazinsky as his douchey pretty boy antagonist with a dodgy Australian accent. When the Jaeger pilots get into a punch up over a girl it's like you've transgressed to 1980s teen action flicks like KARATE KID and TOP GUN and not in a good way.  To be fair, the female lead, a girl called Mako played by Rinki Kikuchi (BABEL), is more interesting insofar as del Toro doesn't ask her to get her kit off and she can clearly handle herself.  That doesn't stop all the male characters infantilising her though, although at least Stacker Pentecost (the majestic Idris Elba) has the excuse that it's part of their character arc.

All of which speaks to the touchy feel hippie politics at the heart of this movie.  When the alien beasties attack, mankind defeats them by coming together and working together and helping each other through our angst. Awww!  Still, it makes a really nice change from all that dark, angsty Christopher Nolan emo stuff that weighed down MAN OF STEEL it's probably plunged to the bottom of PACIFIC RIM along with del Toro's sense of credible dialogue.  Really the only reason to see this film is Idris Elba who is so stupendously badass that he actually lives up to his ridiculous character name.  If the aliens ever come, I'm going to call Idris to lead a rag-tag band of rebels against it.  If they even tug on his jacket, he's going to nail them to the wall. 

PACIFIC RIM is on global release. It has a running time of 131 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK.

CHILDREN OF MEN - dystopia is now

There's a road about five minutes walk from where I live in Central London. I worked there for around four years and I still walk down it most days. In the opening scene of CHILDREN OF MEN, a crumpled, aggrieved Clive Owen walks out onto that street with a cup of coffee in his hand. A bomb goes off shattering the shop front. Clive Owen ducks for cover and then continues on his journey, haltingly. Because in the London of 2027 our fears (and memories, those of us who remember the IRA) are realised: terrorist attacks are commonplace. It is a world where humans have become infertile and the youngest person alive is eighteen. Civil order has broken down around the world and Britain is the last nation still standing. Or rather crouching with its hands over its face as a fascist policeman brings down the boot.

It's amazing just how easy it is to make contemporary London on a wet November afternoon look like P.D. James dystopian future. The crumbling Victorian infrastructure, the half-light and perpetual drizzle, the uncollected rubbish and weary indifference to increasing numbers of armed rozzers. The genius of this movie is not to over-do the differences but insist on the similarities. The incidental cultural references are the same as now - the 2012 Olympics is an icon of the past not the future, but the music, dress and language are the same. When the world's youngest boy is killed, people still have lunatic outpouring of grief, Diana-stylee, and the English sense of humour is still alive and kicking. In fact, this movie, while intelligent and frightening, is also really rather funny. Reassuringly, "Britishly" funny. Now and then though, we are caught off guard by an image that is horrifying because it comes straight from our tele-visual memory. From news footage and documentaries of the Holocaust or the Bosnian war.

In a movie like CHILDREN OF MEN the key task for the film-maker is to create a world which is at once alien and believable. Director, Alfonso Cuarón and cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki succeed by a long chalk. But the movie really works because it creates a series of memorable and believable characters thanks to some brilliant writing and top-notch performances from all the cast. The plot hinges on Clive Owen's character - Theo. He is kidnapped by his ex-wife, Julian, played by Julianne Moore, and asked to help take a miraculously pregnant woman (Claire Hope-Ashitey) out of England and to safety. In this, he is aided by two ageing hippies, played by Michael Caine and Pam Ferris - arguably their best performances on film. The supporting cast is also first class, featuring the ubiquitous Chiwetel Ejiofor as a terrorist and an intense cameo performance from an unrecognisable Charlie Hunnam (that's the blonde teen from QUEER AS FOLK to you and me.) Danny Huston is absolutely chilling as the pragmatic aesthete who sits among his art drinking fine wine while England burns. Among such an accomplished cast it is hard to single out the scene stealer, but it is probably Peter Mullan who takes the biscuit with his darkly comic portrayal of the weed-dealing bent copper, Syd.

I could go on about how superb I think this film is - visually, intellectually, comedically (of all things!) Of course, there are some quibbles. The religious imagery is laid on sporadically thick - especially with the naming of characters and one rather cloying scene near the end. But I think this is a small price to pay for a rare piece of film-making that gets the brain whirring and the pulse racing.

CHILDREN OF MEN is on release in Ireland and the UK. It opens in Japan, Belgium, France, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Iceland, Latvia, Norway, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal and Finland in October. It opens in Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Brazil, Estonia, Chile, Croatia, Italy, Romania, Turkey, Singapore and Mexico in November. It finally rolls into Sweden and the US in December.

GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS - the most rubbish Cockney accent since Mary Poppins

GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS does not suck as much ass as GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN' but it gets pretty close. It is a film made about British football thugs. The only things you need for that are a) people who can speak with a convincing cockney accent b) the ability to direct fight scenes c) the ability to shoot football. First time feature director, Lexi Alexander, has none of the above. This is NOT because she has hired the hobbit in a lead role - he may be unconvincing as a hooligan but that is rather the point. He plays a naive young Harvard boy who gets suckered into thuggery by his brother-in-law. No, her fault was in casting Charlie Hunnam as the lead Londoner. Hunnam has joined the honoured ranks of Dick van Dyke and Damon Albarn as the worst "mockneys" in history. Worse still, as I said before, she can't shoot football matches - we barely keep track with the ball - and she certainly can't shoot fight scenes. Instead of giving us insight into the social drivers of hooliganism all she does is glamourise it with loving MTV editing, and the kind of music cues that try to persuade the audience that it is cool and noble to punch people for kicks. All in all, the result is neither edifying nor entertaining. So, if you want to watch a movie about a "firm", just rent THE FOOTBALL FACTORY instead.

GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS is available on Region 1 and Region 2 DVD. It gets a cinematic release in France on the 7th June 2006.