SURF'S UP - the dude abides!

SURF'S UP is one of those films that puts you in a happy, sun-kissed mood. It's charming, it's funny, and it made even the most evil greedy capitalist bastard all warm and fuzzy inside. This is because the writers do old fashioned things like having a proper story and like-able characters. What you won't find are machine-gun-rapid pop-culture references and movies spoofs. (Shrek, anyone?)

The movie takes the form of a reality TV show following a young surfing penguin called Cody Maverick on his way to the annual Big-Z Memorial surfing championship on the island of Pen-gu. The writers send up the genre, but don't overdo the smart jokes. Cody (the omnipresent Shia LaBeouf) is befriended by a cute life guard (Zooey Deschanel), a stoner chicken (Jon Heder) and the now reclusive Big Z himself (Jeff Bridges). So begins a patiently-told, coming-of-age story interspersed with a scene-stealing side-plot featuring Jon Heder's junior dude, Chicken Joe. Seriously, this is probably the most innocently expressed animated movie since the original TOY STORY. Not to be missed.

SURF'S UP is on release in the US, Russia, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Portugal, Indonesia and Turkey. It opens in Egypt, the CZech Republic and the UK next week and in Spain, Argentina, and Hungary the following week. It opens in Belgium and Serbia on August 23rd and in Iceland on August 31st. It opens in Australia and Germany in September and in Italy, the Netherlands, France and Brazil. It finally rolls into Sweden, Finland, Norway in November and in Japan in December 2007.

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.

300 - truly a spectacle

300 is truly a spectacle. It dazzles the viewer with stunning images of finely-hewed, red-caped Spartan warriors; decadent Persian courtiers; a gold-flecked, jewel-bedecked god-king; and enough stylised spear-fights to satisfy the most ardent Total Warrior.

The movie is based on Frank Miller's graphic novel which told the story of the Battle of Thermopylae. Thermopylae is a narrow pass in Greece, and in 480 BC King Leonidas of Sparta defended that pass with a small army of his own Spartans and other Greeks against a vastly larger Persian invading force.

Writer-director Zach Snyder beautifully renders Frank Miller's graphic novel: feeding our imaginations with the sort of old-fashioned glamour, excess and epic sentiment that old-fashioned big-studio Hollywood used to specialise in. The director uses the same techniques as in SIN CITY - mixing live-action with CGI to create highly stylised visuals that approximate the graphic novel. Famous plates are re-created closely - specifically Leonidas pushing the Persian ambassador into the well; the Spartans herding the Persians off a cliff; and the final spear throw that grazes Xerxes face. The casting closely matches the facial features of the characters in the graphic novel too - especially the case of the effete Xerxes and Leonidas himself.

The plot is also fairly close to the novel, with no key scenes ommitted. The key difference is that the role of Queen Gorgo is massively enhanced, perhaps as a sop to Hollywood's need for a strong female character and a love-interest. (They did the same thing with the role of Arwen in LOTR). Thus, the film breaks away from the battle-scenes to Gorgo's struggle to get the Spartan council to send the full army in support of Leonidas.

So much for what 300 is. What 300 is not, is a history lesson. It is not a political tract. Nor should we beat it up for failing to give us an exact rendering of the key battles and fighting styles or for simplifying the clash between Persia and Greece as one of freedom versus tyranny. (Although, in its defence, Dominic West's Spartan politican rightly points out to Lena Headey's Queen Gorgo that not all men are born equal, even in Sparta.)

300 does not pretend to be a serious politico-historical discourse. It is, simply-put, epic, fascinating, sensually-luxurious entertainment. The concubines, giant-mutant beasties, scabrous priests and other exotica pander to our most basic desire for the strange and exciting. I defy anyone not to take pleasure in the finale to Gorgo's council speech or Gerard Butler's Connery-like drawl as he refuses to kneel to Xerxes on account of his "cramp".

Moreover, exotica aside, the battle scenes do give us a sense of the scale of the battle and the key tactical necessity of forcing the Persians to abandon an open assault from the beach and attempt to pass through the narrow gorge at Thermopylae. I doubt whether Frank Miller's novel or this film would have been successful as they are without this key central fact: dress it up how you will, the true story of a small band of men defending their home against a mammoth invading army and inflicting disproportionately large injuries upon it is, in a word, quite literally: awesome.

300 is on release in the Philippines, Greece, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, the US, South Korea, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Turkey, the UK, Belgium, France, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands and Russia. It opens in Bulgaria, Estonia, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Romania and Spain tomorrow. It opens in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Slovakia, Slovenia on the 29th and in Brazil, Denmark, Latvia and Venezuala on the 30th. 300 opens in Sweden on April 4th and in Australia, Germany, Israel and Portugal on April 5th. It opens in Austria and Finland on April 6th and in Japan on June 9th.

FLUSHED AWAY - a very British comedy

For some strange reason, FLUSHED AWAY did terrible business in the US - at least relative to the huge budget. I say strange because Swedish Philip and I went to see it today and it was absolutely hysterical. I mean, laugh out loud funny throughout. I haven't had such a good time watching a comedy in ages, and it beats alleged adult fare like TENACIOUS D, and TALLADEGA NIGHTS hands down. That the movie is seriously funny comes as no surprise when you realise that, despite being CGI animated, it comes from the people who brought you WALLACE AND GROMIT: CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT. So you get the characteristic physical comedy, classic movie references and proper old-fashioned plotting and characterisation. The visual comedy is so rich that I suspect you’d have to watch FLUSHED AWAY a number of times before you’d even begun to recognise it all.

However, it has to be said that the movie has a peculiarly English feel, which may explain its comparative failure in the US. (The root cause of the English-ness is easy to identify - the movie was co-written by Dick Clement and Ian LeFrenais – veteran script-writers for classic British TV comedies, The Likely Lads and Porridge.) The iconography of Zone One London is used to full effect – it’s all Piccadilly Circus & London Bridge. The fish-out-of-water plot plays off Cor Blimey Guv’nor sewer rats with a pampered pet mouse from The Royal Borough of Kensington. The movie features the regulation Knight of the Realm (Sir Ian McKellan) camping it up luvvie-stylee. A good dollop of the jokes are made at the expense of the cheese-eating surrender-monkey French; vulgar American tourists; grannies who throw their knickers at Tom Jones and the English football team.

In short, if you think football is a game played with twenty-two men and a round ball in which England lose on penalties to Germany in the final, I can almost guarantee you’ll have a good time watching FLUSHED AWAY. What's more this movie has everything that a certain Bond film lacked: exhilerating chases; a smooth hero in a dinner jacket; wicked gadgets; cheesy pick-up lines; an evil megalomaniac threatening humanity; and a ticking clock counting down to devestation before the hero saves the day!

FLUSHED AWAY has already opened in Israel, Singapore, the US, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. It opens in Hong Kong, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Spain, Sweden and the UK next weekend. It opens in Germany, Bulgaria, Estonia and Norway on December 8th, in Brazil, Mexico and Turkey on the 15th, in Australia, Slovenia, Italy and Latvia on the 22nd. It opens in Argentina in January and in Japan in March.

ANGEL-A - utter tosh

I sent an Englishman, an Austrian and a Swede to report on the new Luc Besson flick, ANGEL-A. I called the Swede this morning and here is a summary of the conversation.

Bina007: So how was the movie?

Swedish Philip (laughing maniacally): Utter bloody tosh! The Danish girl was quite good looking. But as I said to Georg, just having a slutty-looking blonde is not enough to save a movie, Still, she was pretty-looking. It would have been better not to have subtitles because then we would only have understood 50% of the lines because our French isn't that good. Oh my fucking word! - the lines in it - seriously! It's like the guy says to her "you don't have a past, but let me guide you into the future." Maybe it's not the lines. Maybe it's the translater was just wacked out producing this bollocks translation.....Is the message coming across?

Bina007: At least you didn't have to pay to see it.

Swedish Philip: But I felt embarassed because Georg still had to pay to see it.

Bina007: True. I'm sorry about that. How did Movie Tom find it?

Swedish Philip: He decided not to go. I got this phone call at 5pm and he said he had done some research on the film and decided not to go, and as I was watching the movie I thought "Tom, you had a point!" But seriously, the movie was beautifully shot - all in black and white - and I really liked the first ten minutes. Up until the point where she said, "I'm an angel". Then it was utter tosh. But, it almost got me back into the tall blondes - into the whole Nordic look - but not quite. I think I'll stick to my R.I.A.C.s*

So there you have it folks. ANGEL-A is utter tosh. But if you still want to see it I should add that it is the latest film from Luc Besson, the guy who directed NIKITA, LEON and THE FIFTH ELEMENT and other movies starring Milla Jovovich. In fact he used to be married to her so he obviously has a thing for leggy models falling for less attractive guys. His films seem to be on a downward trend. In this movie, Jamel Debbouze (who starred in AMELIE) plays a loser who is about to throw himself off a bridge into the Seine. He is rescued by the tall blonde who sorts out his life. She is an angel, geddit?! That's it. And it's shot in black and white so it must be art. Plus it's only 88 minutes long so even if it sucks it's over quickly.

ANGEL-A was released in France last December and has since opened throughout Europe and in Japan. It opens in the UK tomorrow and in the US on September 29th 2006. *Random Inter-Changeable Asian Chick.

PIERREPOINT took my breath away

PIERREPOINT is the kind of movie that leaves you struggling to articulate your emotions when the lights go up in the cinema. To paraphrase my friend, Swedish Philip, with whom I saw this movie, "it affected me inside." I can think of no higher recommendation for any film.

PIERREPOINT is a multi-faceted portrait of England's most prolific executioner, Alfred Pierrepoint. Pierrepoint executed over 600 people in his career in the 1940s and 1950s including Lord Haw Haw, various Nazi war criminals and, perhaps most controversially, Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis. He was essentially a good and decent man who had a strong sense of duty and service to his monarch and state. He was also a quietly religious man. He was entirely uninterested in what his victims had supposedly done. It was enough for him that the State had judged them guilty. His vocation, as he saw it, was to deliver them the most efficient, humane and merciful death. And, once they had atoned for their sin, to treat their bodies with dignity and care. Pierrepoint certainly took a sort of school-boy pride in being the quickest to take his victim from cell to noose, or in being picked by "Monty" to administer swift British justice to Nazi war criminals, but somehow his pride does not seem selfish. Indeed, it can be selfless. In the most affecting scene of the movie - moreso because it is factually correct - Pierrepoint has to execute a man for whom he feels a great deal of affection. He knows this will plague his conscience for the rest of his life - despite the fact the man is uncontrovertably guilty - but goes through with the execution anyway. He knows that he can reassure the man, and ensure that his death is painless.

But PIERREPOINT is about more than one man's psychological and emotional journey. It is about the great social change that took place in British society in the 1940s and 1950s. At the start of the film, Pierrepoint is a man who administers Edwardian justice in a world that treats him as a war hero for it. By the time the film closes, the calls for an end to capital punishment are gathering sway and both Pierrepoint and his wife are no longer able to repress the emotional and physical reality of what he has done.

To my mind, this is one of the most amazing scripts that I have seen brought to the screen. The screenwriter lures us into Pierrepoint's world and psyche. I felt that I could finally understand why a good, affable chap could be an executioner, and why, in the end, he could not. Praise must go to every single member of the cast but especially to Timothy Spall, who plays Pierrepoint, Juliet Stephenson, who plays his wife, and to Eddie Marsan who plays "Tish". The production design, photography and score all combine to create the claustrophobic, repressed world of the 1940s and 1950s. (The movie is shot by Danny Cohen, who also shot the wonderful DEAD MAN'S SHOES.) The achievement is all the greater when we learn that the film was shot in four weeks on a shoe-string budget, and on 16mm film.

What more can I say? This is movie making at its finest with real creative talent and artistry devoted to bringing the singular life of a singular man to the screen. Please, do try to see it.


PIERREPOINT: THE LAST HANGMAN premiered at Toronto 2005 and goes on release in the UK today. It goes on limited release in the US on September 15th 2006.

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE - "Welcome to the SUCK"

When I went to the first instalment of The Chronicles of Narnia last night, one of the trailers was for the Gulf War flick, Jarhead. In the trailer, a character said to a new recruit, "Welcome to the suck." It's not a particularly witty line, but it worked all too well as a prelude to one of the most disappointing blockbusters of the year. However, before I go on with my review let me, in fairness, point out that I seem to be in the minority. All the famous critics have given it two enthusiastic thumbs up. 

THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE is based upon the famous novel by C.S. Lewis. It tells the story of four children who are evacuated from London during the Second World War. While playing a game of hide and seek in their new country home, they stumble through the back of a wardrobe into another world called Narnia. Narnia is governed by the evil White Witch who has made it permanently winter, but never Christmas. The children go into battle against her aided by the rightful king of Narnia, the aforementioned lion, Aslan. 

So what's there to like? The child actors are all decent and the youngest is almost winning. Their English middle-class reaction to the bizarre events is very funny. When told he must lead an army into battle, the eldest child, Peter, points out that they "aren't heroes." His sister Susan follows up, "we're from Finchley". Similarly, the children are helped out by a very funny married couple who happen to be beavers. (I kid you not.) Mr. Beaver is a perfectly rendered Cockney cab driver. Superbly funny, but one wonders how far this humour will travel outside of England. 

Unfortunately, the Suckfest begins where the intentional humour ends. Where to begin? The set design looks clunky and has none of the depth of design as those used in THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Everything is rendered in simplistic primary colours and looks like drawings out of a colouring book. This serves to undermine the emotions we are meant to feel in the battle scenes. How can I take seriously the possibility that the kids might die in battle when they are walking around in ten-dollar rented knight costumes? In the final scene where we see the kids grown-up, the costume designer has seen fit to give the lads bouffant 1970s Bee-Gee hair-dos and droopy moustaches. This, as well as the surfer-dude Californians accents used by the talking horses, raised a mocking titter from the London audience.

The special effects are also distinctly poor, not least when you consider that Disney spent $150m on the film. At one point, as the kids stand against a background of a country scene, you can see them outlined in black where the foreground images have been "cut and pasted" onto the background. The score is also mis-judged. Instead of a traditional orchestra-based score we get some new-fangled semi-Enya semi-club music score that jars horribly. The costumes are also pretty crappy. 

The more well-known actors are are mishandled. The usually brilliant Jim Broadbent as Professor Kirke (kirke=church, geddit?!) has little scope to impress given the script-limitations and largely sleep-walks through his part. Worst of all, Tilda Swinton is not at all awe-inpiring as the White Witch. She is neither fearsome in battle nor charming in seduction. What a waste. The only vaguely interesting portrayal is given by James McAvoy as Mr Tumnus. 

However, the biggest problem with this movie has nothing to do with errors in the cinematic process but derives from the source material. The kicker to the Narnia stories is that much of this boys-own adventure material is a clunky allegory for the New Testament story. To be sure, Disney has played this aspect up for all it's worth in its effort to target the American fundamentalist segment of the market, but the fault lies squarely in the source material. Don't get me wrong. I have no objection to religious themes and concepts in film, but in this film the blindingly obvious symbolism suffocates any enjoyment one might have taken from the whimsical fantasy world. The cinema audience wants to feel out the story for itself, not have the Giant Director in the Sky join the dots for them.

The more I think about this movie the more angry I get at Hollywood's seeming inability to move off-formula and finance some interesting cinema. This flick is nothing more than a shameless attempt to cash in on the religious market in the wake of the huge success of Mel Gibson's THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST and the fantasy market on the back of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The fact that such a formulaic, derivative piece of crap was directed by the guy who made SHREK is even more lamentable. The sad part is that the studio will no doubt be proved right. The reviews are fantastic and we await the opening weekend gross with interest. Is this the movie that saves Disney from a year of flops? You, the cash-paying cinema-goer can decide.

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE goes on general release in the US, UK, Germany and Austria today. It opens in France on the 21st December 2005.

MAD HOT BALLROOM - A wonderful, genuinely "feel good" movie

Here's yet another great movie to come out of this year's Sundance Film Festival, although I have to confess that it completely slipped under my radar. So first of all, let me give big mad props to that audacious fellow, Swedish Philip, for the "hot tip". I am really happy to be able to pass on the tip - MAD HOT BALLROOM is glorious piece of work and I strongly recommend it, if only for the fact that it is a very rare thing in Hollywood - a genuine example of a feel-good movie.

So, on to the nuts and bolts: MAD HOT BALLROOM is a documentary film about a bunch of eleven-year olds from deprived backgrounds in New York City. Many of them are on track for teenage pregnancies and a career in petty crime, and it is heart-breaking to see them speak with such candour and wisdom about drug dealers, adultery and shattered families.

However, this is not a downbeat documentary. In fact, it is one of the most relentlessly upbeat films I have seen all year, but not in an annoying, manipulative, sacharine way. The big heart of this movie stems from two things. First, a lot of the warmth derives from the sheer brilliance of the children on which it focuses. They have wonderful and winning personalities and their musings on life, love and the opposite sex are often unintentionally hysterical. In particular, the little kid on the left in the photo above cracked me up, especially when he got paired up with a ridiculously tall girl at dance class - "She was practically an adult!" he complains, before running away as fast as he can. And then there is a really cool kid called Cyrus who is truly the Zen master of the eleventh grade with a righteous ginger 'fro. Believe me, I don't normally find kids "cute". I am not a warm and cuddly person. And even *I* found this kids charming!

The second reason why this is such a "feel good" movie is that we are witness to a little miracle at work. A group of Latin American ballroom dance teachers have gotten together to run in-school dance classes in around 60 public schools in New York City. The programme runs for 10 weeks and is a complusary part of the school curriculum so even the toughest kids have to take part. At first, the boys are reluctant to dance and the girls think the boys are dumb, but sure enough they start to respond to the attention they are getting from perhaps the only male role models in their lives as well as the joy of dancing itself. The lessons go way beyond how to tango. The kids are learning how to be a partner to someone, how to tuck their shirt in, how to make eye contact, how to have some self-respect. You watch these teachers at work and feel very humble about whatever money-grubbing day-job you happen to be in. And believe me, I don't often get pangs of guilt about my own self-indulgent lifestyle. (You will be pleased to know that they have since passed.)

So what more can I say? It's a film that made me like kids and respect people who choose to earn minimum wage. I call that something of an epiphany. Go check it out, and if you need a second opinion, check out my mate Nik's blog

MAD HOT BALLROOM was released in the US in May, in France and Germany on the 25th October and in the UK and Austria on the 26th November 2005. It is already available on region 1 DVD