JUROR #2****

I am not exactly sure why JUROR #2 slipped from view and made poor returns but it is a good old-fashioned, handsomely made, twisty courtroom drama. 

Nicholas Hoult (NOSFERATU) stars as Justin - a recovering alcoholic with a heavily pregnant wife.  Early into a criminal trial for murder Justin realises that the man on the stand is innocent of brutally bludgeoning his partner because it was actually Justin who was returning from a bar, having nearly relapsed, and thought he had hit a deer. He did get out of the car to investigate, but not finding anything, drove off.

So what should he do? Should he confess, knowing his history of DUIs will make his testimony unreliable? Should he agitate in the jury room for a mistrial?  And what of the prosecutor (Toni Colette), who needs a conviction for her re-election campaign?

The film works as a backward-induced whodunnit. Is the jury going to figure out what really happened?  It also works as case study of moral code, much as SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE will. How far has Justin truly reformed? 

As I said, there's nothing particularly new or inventive here, but the script was clever and tight, the performances solid, and I was thoroughly engaged throughout. It's kind of amazing that nonagenarian Clint Eastwood can still churn these things out.  It feels like a film that we used to make in the 80s - intelligent smart thrillers for adults. Maybe that's why it couldn't find its place at the Box Office.

JUROR #2 is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 114 minutes. It was released last month.

SATURDAY NIGHT - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 8

This is not a review of SATURDAY NIGHT as, for logistical reasons, I had to skip the final thirty minutes. That said, I was not that invested in it and I doubt I missed anything.

The problem may be that for British people, SNL is not part of our cultural fabric. And even from a contemporary perspective, whenever I come across skits on social media I don’t find them especially funny. So for sure I know about Ackroyd or Chevy Chase or Billy Crystal but these guys feel pretty vanilla to me. I appreciate George Carlin but he’s not really part of the SNL crew. And as for Belushi, it’s complicated and complicated in a way that the first hour or so of this film did not seem willing to engage in.

I am also not sure that the ninety minutes leading up the first ever episode of SNL fifty years ago really warrants the full Robert Altman treatment, or whether writer-director Jason Reitman (GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE) has the technical ability to make that shooting style feel organic rather than forced.  So yes we get the rapidly moving camera weaving in an out of dressing rooms and the stage and the control room and it’s all meant to feel claustrophobic and chaotic and kinetic. But it’s also felt stagey and shouting attention to its own cleverness in a way that was distracting. The overlapping Altmanian voices were probably better at conveying atmosphere but again to what end when the character arcs become harder to follow.

Worst of all, Reitman and fellow writer Gil Kenan (MONSTER HOUSE) seem desperate to inject some stakes into proceedings but I wasn’t convinced.  Producer Lorne Michaels has too much material. Okay fine just move half your skits into next week’s show. It’s not as if it’s topical satire. And as for Belushi going missing no shit he’s a raging drug addict: you have too much material just fill the gaps! 

All of which is to say that what I saw of the movie was not for me with the exception of every time writer Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey) was preaching revolution to the franchises or ripping into the censor.  That was absolutely delicious.

SATURDAY NIGHT is rated R and has a running time of 109 minutes. It was released in the USA on October 4th and opens in the UK on January 31st 2025.

THE FRONT RUNNER - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Six

In 1988 Gary Hart was the charming, popular Democratic candidate running against George HW Bush for the president. The Oval Office was his to lose, and that he did, when he was exposed as having an affair with a young woman called Donna Rice. More than is typical, it wasn't the crime but the cover-up - his stubborn refusal to admit that he was morally culpable - his privileged outrage that the press even had the temerity to ask him about adultery. This film does a great job of showing that complete tone-deafness to the reality of then-modern politics.  That you can't hide your poor judgment and immorality behind a facade of gentlemen's silence anymore. That the press aren't your friends (as he was in fact a friend of Bob Woodward) but sceptics who should expose your malfeasance.  

THE FRONT RUNNER is a new film by director Jason Reitman (THANK YOU FOR SMOKING) and a script by Reitman, Jay Carson and Matt Bai.  The movie is whip smart and technically superb. It's opening hour has a kinetic feel that perfectly sums up the shabbiness and chaos of the campaign trail and makes you feel like you're living on those campaign buses and inside the WashPost editorial room.  It feels like Reitman was going for a Robert Altman vibe - lots of layered voices -a lens that shifts curiously from conversation to conversation. The effect is a collage of impressions and moments that build to a nuanced understanding of the issues and events.

What I really liked was the very light way in which the deeper issues of gender politics and power imbalances were handled in this film - typically through the female characters who act as its conscience.  In the WashPost newsroom the one female editor tells the naive young trail reporter that Hart's lapse of judgement matters - and wonders if anyone has heard from Rice.  In the Hart campaign, it's the young woman who's left to shepherd Rice back to Miami - and actually tries to protect her thereafter, and gives an honest answer to Hart's belated inquiry after her. Most of all, it's Vera Farmiga as Hart's wife Lee who embodies the moral highground with a quiet but rage-filled performance. And while I've been reading a lot about Hugh Jackman potentially being nominated for this performance (he's fine but nothing special), for me it's Farmiga who deserves the plaudits. 

My only real criticism of this film is that it really lost pace in Week Three of the campaign when the scandal comes out. Maybe it was just hard to sustain the very fast-pace of the opening hour, but I strongly feel that it could lose at least ten minutes of its final, say, 45 minutes. This seems to be a repeat offence for Reitman - his films often start strong and then sort of fizzle out. 

THE FRONT RUNNER has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated R.  It played Toronto and London 2018. It will be released in the USA on November 7th and in the UK on January 25th 2019. 

JUSTICE LEAGUE

After a dismally dull experience of BATMAN VS SUPERMAN and walking out of SUICIDE SQUAD after 30 minutes, it was only my recent enjoyment of WONDER WOMAN that made me vaguely interested in seeing the new DC multi-character action film, JUSTICE LEAGUE. I'm pleased to report that, given incredibly low expectations, I actually had a good time watching the film, thanks to the fact that Superman remains dead for much of it, and the charisma vacuum that is Henry Cavill, and sheer flabby uninterested of Ben Affleck are diluted by both Wonder Woman's earnest awesomeness and a trio of great new additions to the franchise. I was genuinely amused by Ezra Miller's nerdy, funny Flash, and suspect that his character benefited most from Joss Whedon taking over the reins as director once the portentous heavy-handed Zack Snyder left for personal reasons. That Miller went from playing a genuinely unnerving psycho in WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN to a disarmingly hapless teen here shows great range.  I also really liked the teasing of a more earnest backstory involving his incarcerated father played by Billy Crudup - who manages to communicate pained selflessness in a few brief scenes. Perhaps most surprisingly, I loved Jason Mamoa's rock-star ragged Aquaman. This was a great shock after he failed to impress in the CONAN remake and GAME OF THRONES - but that suggests scripts and directors that cast him for his body and not his evident charisma and ability to turn a genuinely comic line.  His AQUAMAN is an ancient hero, pissed off with the world, performing small acts of kindness while blind drunk. Insofar as he has an arc, it's realising that he has to take responsibility for saving the world and be a true heir of Atlantis. Similarly, in this film, Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman also has to assume the mantel of leadership and become an icon of  hope, just as Superman had been.  The final new addition is newcomer Ray Fisher's Cyborg, Victor Stone.  He has the most serious role to play, as he struggles to come to terms with his powers and the role his father played in mutilating him.  In the context of a rather silly film, it's his character that is the most moving.  Against this cast of genuinely funny and moving characters, it was easy to quickly move past Ben Affleck's continuing banality as Bruce Wayne and Henry Cavill's po-faced, charisma-less Superman.

LA LA LAND - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 3

Here’s the thing. I love classic Hollywood musicals of the Ginger Rogers - Fred Astaire variety and I love classic tragic Hollywood romances like Casablanca. I even love jazz - and not the smooth jazz muzak that this movie decries but actual jazz. I also thought that Damian Chazelle’s WHIPLASH was by far the best movie I watched in 2015. I was one of the people in the Odeon Leicester Square who gave it a ten minute standing ovation at last year’s London Film Festival and then bounced into the afterparty in a wave of energy inspired by its audacious premise, breakneck pace, astounding acting and cinematography. So to say that I was looking forward to his next feature, LA LA LAND, was an understatement. As we entered the festival, LA LA LAND rolled into town on the adulation and plaudits received at Toronto and Festival Director Claire Stewart announced to the audience that this was the “hot ticket” of the festival.

But, dear reader, I hated LA LA LAND from its opening moments, and while my feelings toward it softened through its two hour run-time, I feel it is a deeply flawed, over-ambitious, uncontrolled, mis-conceived film. I am calling The Emperor’s New Clothes on the critical acclaim.

ZOOTOPIA aka ZOOTROPOLIS

ZOOTOPIA/ZOOTROPOLIS is a pointed but obvious commentary about racism and sexism in supposedly multicultural western society. As such, its trenchant criticism comes at an apposite time in world politics.  But it rather wants to have its cake and eat it.  And I'm not sure it's any fun for kids. Because, after all, this is a kids animated feature!

The movie comes from directors Rich Moore (WRECK IT RALPH) and Byron Howard (TANGLED).  It posits a world full of anthropomorphic animals who live in apparent harmony because they have evolved beyond the predator/prey instinct. This is meant to be a world in which anyone can achieve anything - a spin on the American Dream. Of course, the real world is not, in the words of Captain Bogo, "some cartoon musical where you sing a little song and all your insipid dreams magically come true. So let it go." In other words, this movie is a clash between those hokey Disney values of yore, and our more post-modern cynical sensibilities. 

TERMINATOR GENISYS

TERMINATOR GENISYS is a straight forward film that makes no sense. In its first half hour we are in 2029 AD, in a post-apocalyptic world where a rebel leader called John Connor (Jason Clarke) leads surviving humanity in a fight against a sentient computer programme called Skynet.  The rebels destroy the computer but not before it sends back a Terminator robot to 1984 to kill John Connor's mother.  So he sends back his number two, Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), to intercept the Terminator and save Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke).  The surprise is that Sarah and an aged Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) are already tooled-up and ready, both for the original Terminator (young CGI Arnie) and Reese.  In the second half hour of the film, Good Arnie, Sarah and Reese realise that they haven't prevented Judgement Day, the day when Skynet killed humanity, but merely postponed in to 2017.  The humans time travel forward to 2017 and are greeted by an even older Good Arnie and a suspicious  J K Simmons with a plan to blow up Skynet again before the release of its deadly Genisys programme.  The third half hour sees the biggest plot twist in the film which, once you see it, you'll know it was coming. And this sets us up for the inevitable action packed showdown at Skynet.

WHIPLASH - LFF14 - Day Eight

You can listen to a podcast review of this film below, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.



Writer-director Damien Chazelle's second feature, WHIPLASH, is a tour-de-force that's getting all the buzz at this year's London Film Festival and should, if there's any justice, clean up at Awards season.  The lead performances from JK Simmons and Miles Teller (THE SPECTACULAR NOW) are astounding in their commitment and intensity - the photography and editing push forward the boundaries of how we capture the energy and intensity of live performance - and the score is just sensational.  This movie works on so many levels - in front of and behind the lens - that I left the screening wanting to watch it again and really get under its skin beyond the initial reaction of just Wow.

The movie is basically a two-hander between Teller and Simmons as music student Andrew and teacher Fletcher.  Teller is at an elite music school and wants to be a legendary jazz drummer to the exclusion of all else. Simmons is the man to impress - his band the one to get into - but he runs that band as a dictator and cruelly abusive bully.  The first hour of the movie sees Andrew punished mentally and physically, drowning his bleeding hands in ice water to practice to the level that'll impress the impossible to impress game-player Fletcher.  This culminates in a set-piece so thrilling it could be in a David Fincher where each of them pushes each other to breaking point. In the final stretch we see the ultimate bait and switch that results in an on-stage concert that plays like a shoot em out between two obsessive characters.  What's spectacular about this is that so much is communicated between the two of them merely by virtue of who's giving the other cues and recognition via the eyes and hand movements.

The resulting movie is high octane, engrossing and memorable.  JK Simmons' Fletcher has to be the most charismatic and quotable bully since The Thick Of It's Malcolm Tucker. And you have to admire Miles Teller's work in being able to play the virtuoso jazz pieces. One final point to make is that I watched this film with a friend who hates jazz but loved this film. You don't need to like jazz or indeed music to find this move compelling but if you do it'll add another layer of enjoyment to the experience.

Teller and Simmons at the press conf yesterday.

WHIPLASH has a running time of 106 minutes.  The movie played Cannes, Sundance, where it won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize, and London 2014.  It went on release in the USA last week and opens this week in Hong Kong. It opens in Australia and New Zealand on October 23rd, in Thailand on October 30th, in the Netherlands on November 13th, in Sweden on November 28th, in Norway and Romania on December 5th, in France on December 24th, in the UK on January 16th, in Poland on January 23rd, in the Czech Republic on January 29th, in Portugal on February 5th and in Germany and Denmark on February 19th.

MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN - LFF14 - Day Three

Whatever happened to Jason Reitman?  He started off with these scabrous satires like THANK YOU FOR SMOKING - that were wicked and smart and hugely enjoyable.  But last year his movie LABOR DAY - a holy overdrawn melodrama starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin flopped onto the screen at the London Film Festival only to be trumped by this year's banal, trite and utterly superficial attempt at social comment: MEN WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

The film is meant to be an insightful and tragic depiction of the nefarious influence of IT on modern life but it has nothing new to say. Yes we know teenage girls find it easier than ever to fall into body dysmorphia in online chatrooms, and we know porn is easily and corrosively available, and we know that some people see reality TV as a means not only to be successful but as a validation of self.  This stuff was done with FAR more credibility and subtlety and artistic integrity in Sofia Coppola's BLING RING, for example. Or indeed, the second time I'm quoting this film in two days - Gus Van Sant's TO DIE FOR.  

All we have here is a very conventionally filmed portfolio movie in which a wide cast of characters struggle with their own isolation and anomie - something, by the way, that wasn't invented with Facebook or even Durkheim.  It's a waste of a stellar ensemble cast and god forgive Reitman for the pretentious Voyager satellite metaphor and the utter embarrassment of a narrative voiceover from Emma Thompson.

MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN has a running time of 116 minutes. The movie played Toronto and London 2014 and opens wide in the USA on October 17th. It opens in the UK on October 24th, in France on December 10th and in Germany on December 11th.

jOBS

jOBS - the too cutely titled Steve Jobs biopic - is a ruthlessly efficient but frustratingly unenquiring film that is ultimately saved by the convincing central performance by Ashton Kutcher.  Kutcher goes beyond his striking similar resemblance to adopt the loping walking and speaking style of the iconic computer developer, and allied with superb production design and authentic Los Altos locations, this make the film compelling despite its stylistic problems.  These must rest with the director Joshua Michael Stern (SWING VOTE) and debut screenwriter Michael Whiteley..   To be sure, they don't sugarcoat Jobs - they show his immediate and early ripping off of fellow collaborators - his harsh rejection of his daughter - his frustrating single-mindedness - but they never investigate it.  Why - on the first deal they did together - did Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) off?  Where did he get the drive and knowledge to cut such a financially astute deal with venture capitalist Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney)?  Why did he cut out early collaborators such as Daniel Kottke (Lukas Hass) out of the lucrative Apple IPO?  Why did he deny he was his daughter's father for so long?  And why did he then recant?  This latter issue is perhaps the most frustrating.  In a movie that uses Jobs' eviction from Apple a major psychological turning point it's incredibly annoying to reunite with him a few years later where he's apparently turned into a doting father, husband and zen father. 

So if we're not getting psychological depth here, what are we getting?  A fairly straightforward corporate history of Apple. It reads as follows.  Woz is the IT genius who creates the PC but Jobs is the marketing and design guru who sells it to the financiers and then to Wall Street.  His search for perfection and naivety leads him to a position where the greedy capitalist CEO John Scully (Matthew Modine) forces him out, causes a personal crisis for Jobs and a corporate crisis for Apple. Years later he's called back, annoints his design successor Jonny Ive (Giles Matthey) and announces the design of the iPod.  The rest is final credit success and deliberately avoided death.  I'm no expert on Apple's corporate history so I can't tell you if the account is broadly accurate and fair, but it IS compelling, if a little bit TV movie of the week.  And that's how I'd advise you watch this: on the small screen.

JOBS has a running time of 128 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA.

JOBS played Sundance 2013 and was released earlier this year in the USA, Singapore, Canada, Turkey, France, Argentina, Kuwait, Portugal, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Australia, Israel, South Korea, Brazil, Poland, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland, Croatia, Serbia, Thailand, Estonia, Greece, Hong Kong, Finland, Lithuania, Spain, Taiwan, Colombia, Latvia, Mexico, Bangladesh, Macedonia, Japan, Norway, Peru, Sweden, Italy and Chile. It does not yet have a UK release date.

CONTRABAND

CONTRABAND is about as perfect as a caper movie gets - fast, fun, thrilling, intelligent.  To be sure, it's basic plot components are pretty conventional, but it has a tricksy enough story, and enough good humour to be the perfect Friday night-forget work-have some fun movie!

Mark Wahlberg plays a former smuggler turned straight, drawn back into "one last job" to save his idiot brother-in-law from the local drug dealer (a typically over-the-top Giovanni Ribisi).  He assembles a crew that's going to smuggle in forged currency from Panama in J K Simmons freighter. Of course, "one last job" movies are never simple.  And this one involves a double-cross back home; getting caught up in a Panamian armed robbery; an art heist; and a superbly choreographed fit-up job.  A few plot twists are predictable but there are enough genuine surprises, and I love that no plot thread is left untied.

The movie is directed by the Icelandic actor-writer-producer-director Baltasar Kormakur (JAR CITY) who wrote and starred in the original.  Together with DP Barry Ackroyd (GREEN ZONE) he directs the movie with real style and pace, and a surprisingly light touch!  There are many scenes and lines where it's clear that the smugglers are having a great time, despite or even because of the high stakes - more young kids up to some japes than Michael-Mann style existential angst.  I also really liked the casting (ex Ribisi) - being particularly impressed by Kate Beckinsale, of all people!, actually doing some proper acting as Wahlberg's wife. 

Flicking through the IMDB review page it becomes clear that CONTRABAND has taken a bad rap for being too genre-cliche-ridden.  Whatever. I had a bunch of fun watching it, and it's in my Best Of list for the year. Not every film has to be a heart-wrenching, life-changing Iranian art-house flick. There will always be room on this blog for good honest popcorn entertainment.

CONTRABAND is on release in the USA, Kazakhstan, Russia, Singapore, Bulgaria, Canada, Pakistan, Israel, Kuwait, Estonia, Iceland, Romania, the Philippines, India, Syria and Poland. It goes on release in Hong Kong on February 9th; in Australia and New Zealand on February 23rd; in Portugal on March 1st; in the Netherlands on March 8th and in Germany, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Turkey and the UK on March 16th. It opens on March 22nd in Belgium, Denmark and Hungary; on April 19th in Argentina; on April 27th in Brazil and Lithuania; on May 4th in Sweden and on May 16th in France and Italy.

MEGAMIND - A pocketful of Kryptonite

Right, you've all seen Superman? in every episode or comic strip, evil Lex Luthor kidnaps the feisty journalist Lois Lane in order to lure Superman to rescue her. Lex is clever, but truth, justice and the American Way wins out. Superman rescues Lois and she goes back to work with the trusty dull Clark Kent, unaware that he is really Superman. And poor photographer Jimmy Olsen never catches anyone's attention, as the Spin Doctors rightly observed. So, imagine what would happen if one day Lex Luthor actually defeated Superman and took over Metropolis. No Superman, Lois at a lose end, Jimmy tries to make his move, but is rebuffed, and Lex bored without an arch-enemy, tries to create a new superhero by zapping Jimmy with Superman's DNA. Only, turns out Super-Jimmy has been brooding with resentment all these years, as the Spin Doctors told us, and uses his powers for Evil, which of course, gives Lex the chance to...er....do good?!

Of course, you can't imagine DC Comics letting Superman get publicly mauled like this, so instead, you get MEGAMIND, wherein Superman isn't so much spoofed as Alan-Moore'd except, of course, with about a tenth of his wisdom and Tina Fey's jokes. The end-result is a ball of laughs, rather sweet, and definitely worth watching.

Will Ferrell plays Megamind - the Evil Genius who thinks he might just want to be nice for a change, wooing the feisty chick Roxanne Ritchi (Tina Fey). It's a a role Ferrell has played a number of times in recent years, typically in movies that alternate with his cruder SNL comedy skits-turned-features. MEGAMIND is one of the few films that allows him to be both vulnerable-sweet AND grossly-comical and the mix is a treat. The typecasting continues with the rest of the cast. Tina Fey does her usual sweet, neurotic, charming thing as Roxanne - Jonah Hill does his creepy, slacker, irritating schtick as Jimmy/Hal - and Brad Pitt basically plays Superman, sorry, Metro Man, as Brad Pitt - a famous star tired of the limelight.

The comedy is definitely three steps wittier and more consistent than DESPICABLE ME. I mean, just look at how good the physical comedy is when Megamind is pretending to be Bernard in his Evil Lair. Or just look at how funny the Minion losing oxygen scene is. That stuff doesn't happen without the intervention of a director like Tom McGrath (MADAGASCAR 1 and 2) and actors like Fey and Ferrell. But for all that, Megamind doesn't have the heart of a movie like DESPICABLE ME, and I really wonder how far young kids will keep up with a movie in which a major plot point is that characters can switch bodies at the touch of a wristwatch - or where a large part of the humour, and a major plot point comes from the lead character putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable of words?

MEGAMIND is on release in the US, Canada, Russia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Egypt, Kuwait, Georgia, Portugal, Argentina, Croatia, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria, Brazil, Spain and the UK. It opens next week in Australia, Venezuela, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Serbia and Estonia. It opens on Christmas Day in Finland and Sweden, on December 26th in Norway and on January 7th in Poland.

London Film Fest Day 9 - EXTRACT

What is EXTRACT doing in the London Film Festival? It's not a high-brow art film looking for UK distribution. It's not the latest movie from an acknowledged auteur - Jarmusch, Egoyan, Haneke. And it's not a high profile glitzy premiere designed to lure the sponsors - a necessary evil. Nope. EXTRACT is an enjoyable but ultimately lightweight comedy from Mike Judge. Worse still, it's less conceptually interesting than IDIOCRACY, if better executed.

So, let's approach this as if it were just another Saturday night movie. Jason Bateman stars a successful businessman called Joel. On the surface he has it all: great house, great car, pretty wife, and his own business - a flavouring factory. But everything's going wrong for Joel. His staff are morons; his wife won't sleep with him; his neighbour's a creep; and he's falling for a con woman. Worst of all, his best friend (Ben Affleck) keeps advising him to do drugs and other crazy shit.

As the movie opens you think the con woman (Mila Kunis) is going to be the star but she drops off the radar. Then the movie almost becomes a bromance with Joel as Dante from CLERKS and Ben Affleck as his Randall. (Without the swearing and Star Wars jokes, of course.) It all feels a bit PG Kevin Smith. Stuff happens; Affleck, J K Simmons and the guy who plays Brad the gigolo are funny; a few laughs are had and it all winds up happily enough.

Not bad but nothing special either.

And will someone please give Mila Kunis a decent part?

EXTRACT was released in the US and Canada in September. It opens in Iceland on November 20th and in the Netherlands on April 29th 2010.

London Film Fest Day 5 - UP IN THE AIR

My friends typically work for former-I-banks, private equity houses and fund managers, and travel to at least one European or long-haul destination per week. They are nice, interesting people but every time we get together the conversation at some point descends into comparing airline frequent flyer programmes, blackberries and check-listing the best restaurants and concierges in various European capitals. We are the cohort that knows exactly the quickest route through any airport and always turn left upon boarding. But that's not all there is to life. Some have kids - some an unhealthy obsession with movies. We are all aware that the big corporates target insecure over-achievers: smart young graduates who will so identify with the corporate brand that their self-esteem lies in the coolness of their new laptop and how many miles they fly per year. It's as though the apparently elite status they have been sold compensates for working insane hours. Stick with it, kid, and one day you TOO can become a Lufthansa Hons member and make Managing Director. We too were once shiny bright 23 year olds, unleashed upon the world with dreams of summer houses and Porsche Cayennes. Ten years later, the 2001 dotcom crash and the credit crunch later, heartbreak, marriages, divorces have come and gone, and we'll settle. And no, it doesn't seem like failure.

I give you this little round-up to tell you that when it comes to reviewing UP IN THE AIR - the new romantic comedy from THANK YOU FOR SMOKING director Jason Reitman, I know whereof I speak, and I know whereof he speaks. Problem is, I think he's set up a straw man. The fact that he occasionally hits the mark with some biting dialogue doesn't make up for it.

Reitman's central character is a mono-dimensional corporate man called Bingham (Clooney). He's the classic air-miles junkie, happiest in the air, avoiding a real relationship with his family or a potential girlfriend at all costs. The movie is about how he reacts when he falls for a whip-smart woman who is just as career-focused as he is (Vera Farmiga). Along the way, he realises just what a shitty profession he is in (a consultant brought in to fire people) when he sees it afresh through the eyes of the new hire (Anna Kendrick). Reitman has Bingham go through one of those classic rom-com epiphanies, where the caricatured hard-ass central character realises it might actually be nice to have a relationship with someone. (See THE PROPOSAL, THE FAMILY STONE, MANAGEMENT et hoc genus omne). It even comes complete with a running through the night to tell the one you love that you love them scene. I only just forgave Reitman for that hackneyed move. The problem is that the really interesting dynamic isn't about ultra career focused people suddenly realising they'd like a relationship. It's about people, like the new hire, who do want both, know they want both, but can't seem to make it work out. That's the rub.

Anyways, let's be generous and grant that Jason Reitman's fictive career-focused lone wolf is credible and interesting. Given that, how does the movie work out? Well, I like the overall bleak tone, especially the final act twist. Totally brought it back from the rom-com vibe I was getting in the penultimate act. I also really like the way in which Reitman plays the scene between the career woman at 23 and the career woman at 33: very psychologically accurate and superbly done. Other than that, I thought the movie contained too much dead air, and much like THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, wasn't even in tone. Ultimately, I wasn't engaged by the characters, because the central struggle didn't seem real to me, and I thought Reitman didn't really have the balls to deal with the critique implicit in his subject matter of mass lay-offs. It all felt rather exploitative.

UP IN THE AIR played Toronto 2009. It opens in November in the USA. It opens in January 2010 in Australia, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, Russia and Denmark. It opens in February 2010 in Mexico, Turkey, Hungary and Singapore. It opens in Finland on March 19th.

I LOVE YOU, MAN - lame

Another day, another piss-poor Hollywood comedy. Do not be fooled by a cast list including members of hit comedies like ROLE MODELS (Paul Rudd) and FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL (Jason Segel). This movie is tame, formulaic and just plain dull.

Paul Rudd plays against character as a dorky metrosexual who discovers, pre-wedding, that he doesn't actually have any close guy friends. He turns to his gay brother (Andy Samberg) for advice, a character presumably only written into the movie to defuse any puerile quips from the audience. Eventually, the dork meets a cool guy (Jason Segel), they hang out, the fiancee gets jealous, people argue in an attempt to create some dramatic tension, but it all ends happily.

Jason Segel seems like a genuinely likeable guy. It would be good to see him in more flicks. Paul Rudd is over-exposed. And he also needs to stick to his core strength, which is being a dead-pan wise-ass rather than a low-self-esteem metrosexual. The only thing that kept me from falling asleep was an early cameo from J K Simmons. 

Seriously disappointing.

I LOVE YOU, MAN is on release in the US, Iceland, Romania and the UK. It opens next week in Australia, Germany, Hungary, Brazil, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Mexico and Spain. It opens on May 15th in Italy; on May 28th in the Netherlands and New Zealand; on June 4th in the Czech Republic; on June 11th in Belgium, Argentina, Portugal, Russia, Norway, Sweden and Turkey. It opens in Singapore on June 18th; in Chile on July 9th; in Denmark on July 10th; in France on July 29th; and in Finland on August 7th.

POSTAL - Crude political satire from Raging Boll

The almost comically terrible German director Uwe Boll is better known for his critically derided adaptations of video games, and for his Raging Boll, challenge to critics to "put up or shut up". Still, there's no denying the man is clever - if only at self-publicity - apparently he has a PhD in Literature! POSTAL is another of these low production values-poor taste flicks. The plot is ludicrous and overtly politically crass. A small-town hick and his Cult Leader Uncle hijack a shipment of porn dolls that Bin Laden (oh yes) has infected with biological weapons. In a serious of plot developments too ludicrous to explain, Uwe Boll gets kicked in the nuts, Verne Troyer gets raped by a thousand monkeys the hicks take on Al Qaeda, George W Bush bombs places and Bin Laden looks to him for protection.

It's all very crude and, I'm ashamed to admit, sporadically very very funny. Nonetheless, it's nowhere near tightly enough written to merit it's own marketing tagline, "Like a live action South Park".

HIJACK played Frightfest 2007 and was released in Fall 2007 and Spring 2008. It's available on DVD.

London Film Fest Day 15 - JUNO rocks my world

JUNO is another of those films that you feel wouldn’t have happened before Wes Anderson and Sundance took off and Napoleon Dynamite became a sleeper hit. You know what I mean. The faux-naif acoustic soundtrack featuring Kinks songs and Lou Reed. The quirky characters that say ever-so-slightly unrealistic things about life and love. The over-designed sets, crammed with bad-taste props and trashy clothes. The use of carefully designed credits with a hand-made feel – this time half-animated. The insistent campy visual motifs – in this case Michael Cera’s track-suit and the joggers who run across screen every now and then. I mean, Sweet Tap-Dancing Little Miss Sunshine, it even features a beat-up camper van.

For all that, JUNO remains a very smart, very witty and thoroughly engaging film. That’s largely down to a whip-smart script by new-comer, Diablo Cody, the good comic timing of director Jason Reitman (THANK YOU FOR SMOKING) and flawless dead-pan performances from Ellen Page (HARD CANDY), J K Simmons and Allison Janney. In addition, Michael Cera gives a stealth performance that is so quiet it’s easy to overlook how good he is.

Page plays an intelligent but, yes, fundamentally dumb, 16 year old girl called Juno, who gets knocked up by her best friend Paulie Bleeker (Cera). At first, she thinks she’ll just get a quick abortion but almost on impulse decides to give the baby up for adoption. Her parents (Simmons and Janney) are flummoxed but supportive, and while Juno gets odd looks at school she has enough moxy to front it out. The putative adoptive parents are played by Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner. Bateman is suitably slippery as the cool older guy. There’s a lot of sexual tension between him and the much younger Page – and I suppose it doesn’t hurt that viewers will partially read Page’s precocious, flirtatious character from HARD CANDY onto her portrayal of Juno. Garner is also fantastic as a slightly snobbish but fundamentally decent yuppie who’s desperate for a kid. She makes what could have been a rather cliché’d annoying character sympathetic. There’s also a hysterical opening cameo from Rainn Wilson as a clerk.

Performances and big belly-laughs aside, the great thing about JUNO is that it’s a proper story with characters that develop and change and events that take us by surprise but also seem plausible and credible. Moreover, instead of letting this become some day-time TV serial cliffhanger about whether the adoption will go ahead, Reitman/Cody rejig the focus to the love story between Cera and Juno. All this adds up to a movie that’s funnier than the already decent THANK YOU FOR SMOKING but which has more narrative drive and a more satisfying emotional pay-off. Instead of drifting in the third act, JUNO actually gets better. And while JUNO doesn’t quite pip SON OF RAMBOW at the post for best comedy at London 2007, it gives it a damn good run for its money.

JUNO played Toronto and London 2007 and goes on release in the US on December 5th. It opens in Australia and Sweden in January 2008, in Finland, Italy, Spain, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands in February and in Germany in March.

SPIDERMAN 3 - in which Spidey jumps the shark

SPIDERMAN 3 was a big event in Bina-world. I'd arranged a posse of like-minded individuals to go see it at the big fat Odeon in Leicester Square. There's nothing like a packed house of fans cheering the opening credits and laughing at all the gags - it's popcorn entertainment at its best.

The opening hour was fine. Peter Parker was back, even more nerdy that usual and a little self-satisfied at Spidey's popularity among New Yorkers. Sure, his best mate Harry wasn't speaking to him, believing Spidey had killed his dad. And his girlfriend Mary-Jane was getting panned by critics in her new Broadway show. Oh, and there was that annoying photographer, Eddie Brock, trying to muscle in on a staff job at the Daily Bugle. But basically, Peter was okay, the film zipped along happily and the higher quota of comedy was fun. In particular, there was some broad physical comedy in a restaurent scene where Peter attempts to propose to MJ.

But around half way through bad things happen. And I'm not just talking about the meteoric slime that attaches itself to Spidey and brings out his aggressive nature. Sam Raimi - a man whose judgement has previously been impeccable, simply lets Spidey jump the shark.

By which I mean that the ueber-confident "black" Peter Parker strutts down the street spoofing Saturday Night Fever. Raimi makes Spidey look bad-ass by making him wear his fringe forward and givin him black eyeliner! He dances with Gwen Stacey in a jazz club spoofing Jim Carrey in The Mask. The humour is broad and it really works. I laughed myself silly. But I was laughing AT the movie, and worst of all, I think Raimi et al were laughing at the movie too. They were sending the Spidey iconography up. Going for cheap laughs also totally destroyed the emotional credibility of the franchise. By the time we'd been through Tobey Maguire's moody teenager impression I was in no mood to hear him pontificate about moral choices and forgiveness, and I certainly wasn't emotionally invested in the movie's ending. An ending which, by the way, rivals LORD OF THE RINGS for its inability to pull down the curtain.

So, SPIDERMAN 3 still has all the cool CGI stunts, and some decent turns from Kirsten Dunst, J K Simmons and Bruce Campbell. Thomas Haden Church is perfectly cast as the Sandman - he has such sympathetic eyes you can't help feeling for him. There's also a woefully brief cameo role from Topher Grace as Venom. Venom is such a great character - a complete bastard - and Topher Grace gave such a fantastic performance that he should have had more screen-time or a movie where he was the only villain. Tobey Maguire proves he can play comedy. I just wished he hadn't proved it in this film. And I remain unconvinced about James Franco's ability to pull off a serious dramatic role.

Overall, I was highly disappointed. As were Nikolai, Movie Matt, Richard and Alan, who'd come all the way down from Edinburgh for this, the first Yippee-Kay-Yay Meet Up. (Although Matt thought it would be a fun night out for kids.) Swedish Philip also gave it the thumbs down. He makes the brilliant point that he expected Spidey 3 to be the most dark and psychologically penetrating given that it featured the Black Spidey. He was expecting the mood to be more BATMAN BEGINS than Broadway Musical. Swedish Lizzie thought it was "utter crap" (although she's so generally amiable and looked so happy I mistakenly thought she liked it). Ken and Graham thought it was okay (see comment below), John kind of enjoyed it, but John thought it ripped off SUPERMAN too much. (I agree. Over-wrought religious imagery up the wazoo, let alone a ridiculously cheesy shot of Spidey in front of the Star-Spangled Banner.) Rav liked it but thought it ripped off THE MASK and Stoogy actually thought it was better for the first one! So out of 12 "votes", we have 7 Nays and 5 ayes.

SPIDERMAN 3 is on global release.