VICTORIA & ABDUL

Lavish costumes and location photography cannot help this thinly plotted, dull film with its anachronistic politics.  It takes what is a genuinely fascinating late life obsession of Queen Victoria with a handsome young Indian clerk and drains it of its spikiness and shoe-horns it into politically correct nonsense.  While still apparently in mourning for her long-dead husband Albert, Victoria had already conducted a scandalous romance with her Scottish servant Mr Brown (also depicted on film with Judi Dench as the Queen.) In her final decade, she took fancy (literally, creepily) to a young muslim Urdu-speaking Indian.  The spikiness of the relationship comes from its objectification of the young male, but also the fact that she used him to learn about the culture of her dominion which she had never visited. In reality, he was the fawning man we see on screen, but also potentially a chancer (as are all courtiers more or less). His brother in law was selling Victoria's jewels in London and he was using her to advance the cause of his father's pension.  Did Abdul really believe in deference and service or was he on the make?   Stephen Frears banal film never bothers asking the tough questions - about Victoria's frustrated sexuality and exploitation of Abdul - about Abdul's motivations - about the dangerous situation in India with the rise of the independence movement, and Abdul's potential role in gaining favour for the Muslim League.  It's only interested in an anachronistic tale of love across the class, race and religious divide.   Judi Dench's Victoria is thus a radically anti-racist Queen with an enquiring mind, embattled by her small-minded Royal Household, as embodied in her pantomime-villain son, Bertie (Eddie Izzard).  The whole thing is slow-moving, and so uncurious about motives as to be a profoundly boring watch.

VICTORIA & ABDUL has a running time of 111 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film played Venice and Toronto and opened in September 2017. 

THE CHOIR aka BOYCHOIR

The hackneyed story of an angry kid called Stet (Garrett Wareing) from literally the wrong side of the tracks who's dumped in an elite choir school by his philandering rich father and of course turns out to be a musical prodigy who defies his hard-ball music teacher (Dustin Hoffman) to become the star.  

It's the sort of movie that tells you a kid comes from a bad home by having his his mum literally wake up in front of a bottle of vodka, and literally has him throw rocks through a window. Dustin Hoffman portrays uptight harshness by walking out of every meeting and then giving the kid one of those "you don't want this" speeches at an elevated emotional pitch that comes out of nowhere. Naturally he is also hurting, because he wanted to be a concert pianist. Naturally, the two end up bonding and the choirmaster helps the kid overcome his stage fright.

There are pompous speeches about the power of communal singing and affecting an audience and mistily filmed scenes of faux-English school buildings in the manner of DEAD POET'S SOCIETY.  The evil nemesis (well, the cocky current choir-leader) even has a dodgy peroxide blonde dye job like Draco Malfoy.

So it is clear than from a cinematic perspective there isn't much new or to like here.  But the film isn't entirely unwatchable because it at least takes the movie takes music seriously, not least in being directed by Francois Giraud,  who is also an opera director. And if you were in a serious choir at school, as I was, the familiarity of the rehearsals, the concerts, the repertoire will at least add a nostalgia factor.

BOYCHOIR has a running time of 103 minutes and is rated . The film played Toronto 2014 and was released earlier this year in Singapore, Canada, the Netherlands, the USA, Croatia, Serbia, Portugal, Turkey, Kuwait, Israel and Greece.  It is currently on release in the Philippines, the UK and Ireland.  It opens in Hong Kong on September 3rd, in Germany on September 10th, in Japan on September 11th, and in Italy on December 3rd. 

VALKRYIE - superficial conspiracy procedural

VALKYRIE is a straightforward conspiracy procedural about Claus von Stauffenberg's failed assassination of Hitler and anti-Nazi coup. Given that we all know the bare bones of the story, it's laudable that writer Chris McQuarrie and director Bryan Singer manage to sustain tension. Indeed, when Stauffenberg gets back to Berlin, convinced that Hitler is dead, and starts convincing territories to join his cause, I almost believed that the SS might capitulate to the sheer force of Tom Cruise's personality. In particular, I really like the fact that McQuarrie manages to open up the movie from being about an assassination to the wholesale seizure of power - a far more difficult feat.

Where the movie fails is in its ham-fisted, clumsy dialogue. Lines like, "To understand National Socialism, you must understand Wagner". The movie also has a tendency to slip into kitsch. Note the fetishistic treatment of Stauffenberg's glass eye. Would Stauffenberg really have put his glass eye into a glass of whisky to summon the attention of Fellgiebel?

I was also a bit disappointed that Singer didn't have more ambition. To say that this movie basically succeeds as a B-movie is to admit that Singer hasn't even bothered to make a more psychologically involved film. After all, the key point of this movie is that in a country where decision-makers were too self-interested, weak-willed, callow and drunk on power and ideology to make a stand; a small group of men did. Why them? Yes, Singer and McQuarrie do hint at Stauffenberg's faith as a driver, but what about his sense of obligation as an aristocrat or his political views? This movie raises more questions than it answers.

VALKRYIE is on release in the US. It opens on January 22nd in Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea and the UK. It opens on January 28th in Belgium, France, Russia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. It opens on February 12th in Egypt, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Singapore, Brazil, Estonia and Poland. It opens on February 20th in Denmark; February 27th in Italy; March 12th in Croatia; and March 20th in Japan.

IGOR - bizarrely pitched

IGOR is a kids animated film that subverts the Frankenstein legend. Igor is a humble hunchback who dreams of breaking through the class ceiling and becoming a bona fide Evil Scientist. To do this, he creates a monster that he'll enter in the annual Evil Science Fair (!) But Igor has three problems. First, his monster isn't an mass-murderer but an aspiring actress, who just wants to sing songs of joy and hope. Second, he's not actually that evil. In fact, he's a sweetie and he's falling for his monster. Third, evil Dr Schadenfreude wants to steal Igor's monster and win the science fair himself.

The movie is quite bizarre. I'm not sure how young kids are going to react to a movie populated with patchwork beasties rather than cute bunnies. Or a movie where the humour is aimed far more at adults than kids - knowing pop-culture references rather than prat-falls. And IGOR isn't even going for the sort of adult humour that drives a movie like SHREK. Rather, it's going for the sort of arrested development geeks (myself included) that love watching movies like BRAIN DEAD or YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN or Tim Burton's animation. To that end, while I had a nice time watching IGOR I'm not sure if it really works as a kids flick. But if you like John Cusack and Steve Buscemi and loved the combination of ghouls and Harry Belafonte in BEETLEJUICE, this movie could be for you.

IGOR is currently on release in the USA, Israel, Taiwan, the Philippines, Greece and the UK. It opens in Iceland on October 31st. It opens in December in Russia, France and Portugal and in Argentina on January 1st.

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN - Sunday School goes Gossip Girl

It's hard for me to separate my critique of the NARNIA films from my dissatisfaction with the source material. I am an avid fan of Tolkien precisely because he eschews easy allegory and pays such close attention to the consistency of his fantasy world. Tolkien would never have put fauns and Father Christmas in the same imaginary space and he would never have used a device as obvious as Aslan. All of this I would overlook if the resulting films were well-made and captivating qua cinema. However, the first movie, THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, failed on this count. The technical aspects - shooting style, lighting, costumes - seemed amateurish and clunky.

PRINCE CASPIAN is far more satisfying than the first movie, but it's still far from perfect. The special effects, make-up, costumes and shooting style have improved, although key set-pieces still feel like weak versions of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Take, for example, the scene where Aslan summons up a river storm to wash away the enemies of the Narnians. It is typical of the clunky imagery employed in PRINCE CASPIAN that the river takes the form of God as depicted in one of those Biblical Epics - an old white man with a beard. Compare this with the visual beauty and simplicity of Tolkien/Jackson's charging horses.

As for the plot, what we have here is basically one long battle. The four Pevensie children return to Narnia 1300 years after their original visit, to find their land over-run by Spanish-sounding men and Aslan a myth. They unite with their enemy's nephew, Prince Caspian, to reclaim his throne and an independent Narnia. Of course, they are only successful when they fight in the name of Aslan, rather than for themselves.

The battle scenes are fine, although I couldn't help wondering whether younger kids might get bored and/or frightened - especially by the first night-time raid in which half of the Narnian army is massacred. By far the bigger problem with the film is the emotional content. Peter has a clash of egos with Prince Caspian in which they both come off as whiny and there's a tremendously embarassing teen crush story-line between Caspian and Susan. Not sure if that's bad direction, script-writing or acting. Either way, it sorely undermines the serious dramatic content surrounding the children's loss of faith in Aslan and their temptation by the White Witch. It's rather hard to be swept up in a story about religious faith when the director keeps pulling you into Sweet Valley High.

PRINCE CASPIAN is already on release in Indonesia, Russia, India, Mexico, the USA, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, Poland, Egypt, the Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong, Israel, Argentina, Estonia, Iceland and Venezuela. It opens this weekend in France, Hungary and the UK. It opens on July 2nd in Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden. It opens on July 11th in Turkey; on July 17th in Portugal; on July 31st in Germany and on August 20th in Italy.

MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND - weak rom-com

MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND is a flaccid romantic comedy starring Luke Wilson and Uma Thurman. I say flaccid because it's not really that funny, but it is quite sweet and would serve as a mindless Friday night date movie. The deal is that Luke Wilson plays a nice, if slightly nerdy, architect who picks up a nerdy looking chick (Thurman) on the tube. It turns out that she's actually wild in bed and, more to the point, a super-hero called G-GIRL. (No ribald sub-text there, then!) Problems arise when the nice guy dumps the neurotic super-hero and she turns into a bunny-(well, goldfish)boiler. But, as the genre requires, it all ends up with everyone happy and loved up in their gorgeous designer apartments. In other words, this is a movie for those kind of dates wherein what is happening on screen is not of primary concern.....One final thing to mention is that a lot of the marketing for this movie focuses on the fact that it is directed by the man who gave us the seminal 80s comedy classic, GHOSTBUSTERS. This is a misleading signal.

MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND is already on release in Australia, Puerto Rico, the US and UK. It opens in France and Singapore on August 9th 2006; Argentina on August 17th and Egypt on August 30th. The movie opens in Estonia on September 1st; Greece and Portugal on September 14th; Belgium, Hungary and Finland on September 22nd and in the Netherlands on September 28th. It finally rolls into Germany on October 5th and Spain on October 20th.