MARJORIE PRIME

I liked the ideas in MARJORIE PRIME far more than the film itself.  The ideas surround the nature of memory and AI.  In a near future, AI has developed to the point that grieving people can buy a "prime" - a lifelike robot who can learn to remember your family memories. As the film opens, we have an old lady called Marjorie (Lois Smith) who interacts with a younger avatar of her dead husband (Jon Hamm).  What's fascinating is that she is teaching him their shared memories but chooses to alter some of them - making his proposal more romantic so that that becomes his version of events. And then, as her memory fades and he becomes her factual record, it's the fake memory that becomes the shared history.  Marjorie's daughter (Geena Davis) is initially horrified by the concept of her mother having a relationship with a Prime, while her husband (Tim Robbins) sees it as a boon.  But as the film develops, we see the two of them have their own relationships with Primes and the position shifts as they too start to re-interpret history through shared but altered memories.  Most impressively, in the final scene of the film, we see the Primes themselves interact and share those memories, moving further away from the truth.  The film, then, raises important and nuanced questions about the nature of shared memory and the ethics of altering it. Should the truth be privileged or is it better to tell white lies that comfort people?

The problem with the film is that it reads like a didactic treatise rather than a living and breathing drama. Matters aren't helped by the fact that director Michael Almereyda largely keeps the action in the closed confines of the family home, paces the film slowly, and does little with his camera. To that end, the movie feels like a filmed stage play, and it is indeed based on a play by Jordan Harrison. I found myself admiring its ideas and some of its performances but deeply deeply bored.  

MARJORIE PRIME has a running time of 98 minutes and is not yet rated and does not yet have a commercial release date.  It played Berlin, Sundance and San Francisco. 

WELCOME TO ME

WELCOME TO ME is a truly unique, moving and darkly film from debut feature director Shira Piven and writer Eliot Laurence.  It stars Kristen Wiig as a bipolar woman called Alice Krieg who goes off her meds and uses her lottery winnings to fund a daytime talk show in the manner of her heroine, Oprah Winfrey. Except this show is an unfiltered expression of all of Alice's insecurities, obsessions and historic persecutions.  Despite the fact that she is clearly unhinged, a commercial production company takes her money and puts the show on air, to surprisingly decent growing ratings, until Alice suffers an emotional crisis and runs out of the necessary cash. Along the way, we come to admire her ever-loyal support network of parents, ex-husband and best friend Gina, and have some hopes that a nascent relationship with one of the show's producers might be sustainable.  We also come to have huge sympathy for Alice, despite her bouts of hurtful narcissism.  

The performances from the first-rate cast are superb.  Kristen Wiig allows herself to be utterly vulnerable and yet also manages a laconic deadpan humour that takes us through the movie's most awkward and disturbing moments. Linda Cardellini has the most to do as Alice's best friend and their final scene moved me to tears. It's also a pleasure to see Joan Cusack, James Marsden (as the show's producers), and Alan Tudyk (as the ex-husband) and Tim Robbins (as the psychiatrist) in smaller roles - all won over by Alice in the best way.  Only Jennifer Jason Leigh's producer stands in for those viewers put off by Alice's antics - or feels morally queasy by the fact that this entertainment is the result of mental illness.

A movie tackling the subject of mental illness that also purports to be an albeit very dark and dry comedy treads on this ice.  But the results here are provocative, assured, moving and unique.  This has to be one of the best films I've watched this year.

WELCOME TO ME has a running time of 87 minutes and is rated R. The movie played Toronto 2014 and was released in the USA and Canada last year. It is currently on release in the UK.

GORE VIDAL: THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA - LFF 2013 - Day Six

Nicholas D Wrathall's Gore Vidal biodoc is a fascinating movie for anyone who's a fan of Gore Vidal! I'm not sure it'll have a wider appeal except maybe to social historians of twentieth century America.  For Gore Vidal was at the very heart of things - a novelist, essayist, public intellectual and social gadfly. A man who was born into immense wealth and privilege in 1925 - a stepbrother to Jackie Kennedy - who turned his back on his class to become one of the leading defenders of the liberal left on TV, in print, and on the podium.  

The documentary benefits from great access to Vidal in his final years, still witty, still biting - and we see him guide us through his life, loves, politics and triumphs.  If you love Gore, there's a lot of him here!  This leads to a problem: there's no criticism.  We get hints of his disagreement with The Hitch, when The Hitch joined the neocons.  But in general, those who oppose Vidal are seen as numskulls (many of them were) - but is it really helpful to have Vidal skewering William Buckley in that infamous TV debate, but no real right wing voices to give context and perspective to Vidal's career? 

I love Gore Vidal. I enjoyed reading his essays in the New York Review of Books.  And I miss his voice. But this movie was more like 90 minutes of nostalgia rather than telling me anything knew. And if you can't tell the fans something knew, what are you here for? 

GORE VIDAL: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA has a running time of 83 minutes.  The movie played Tribeca and London 2013. 

GREEN LANTERN - the fifth rule of cinema: all green superheroes suck big honky ass

The Green Lantern strikes me as a remarkably anachronistic, even parochial, name for a superhero, considering that it's meant to have been invented by a bunch of super-intelligent Nietzchean aliens, who police the world with their Green Lantern corps officers powered by the energy of Will. I mean, can we take seriously any super-hero who has a magic ring (my precious!) powered by an old-school lantern - whose special power is basically manifesting his imagination as kids toys and power-tools? A superhero so crappy that his friends see right through his mask to his real identity? A superhero whose evil nemesis is basically a mean-looking Cloud, and whose human enemy basically looks like a weedy version of The Elephant Man? Colour me unimpressed.

And what can we say about the translation from comic book to screen? Well, sadly not much. Ryan Reynolds is certainly buff, but the screenplay doesn't take advantage of his talent for comedy, or of his genuine acting chops, as last seen in BURIED. Blake Lively, so impressive in THE TOWN, is limpid as his love interest, Carole Ferris, and about as believable as a test pilot as Jessica Biel in STEALTH. Tim Robbins is a caricature, Angela Bassett is under-used, Mark Strong, as Sinestro, looks like some camp Flash Gordon throwback, and as for Peter Sarsgaard as The Elephant Man, full marks for effort, but he chews up the scenery like he's in JURASSIC PARK.

GREEN LANTERN fails on every level. The plot is simplistic and predictable; the acting wooden; the special effects goofy (despite alleged millions spent on the CGI green suit); the action set-pieces unengaging. I didn't give a crap about any of it. And the tragedy is that we KNOW all these actors can act, and we KNOW, having watched X-MEN:FIRST CLASS, that origins movies that grapple with big ethical questions about the use and abuse of superpowers can be genuinely profound. I blame Martin Campbell, sometime BOND director. He looks like he was overwhelmed by his first big CGI action block-buster, and never really had the balls to bring some subtlety to the script. And the depiction of both the aliens and their perfect planet also looks like a lo-rent throwback - production design so goofy and unimpressive that kids were laughing at the alien Guardians in the screening I attended.

GREEN LANTERN is on release in the UK, US, New Zealand, Belarus, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, Canada, India, Ireland, Poland and Qatar. It opens on June 23rd in Armenia, on June 30th in Argentina, on July 17th in Azerbaijan, on July 22nd in Japan and on July 29th in Belgium. Germany, Estonia, Spain and Sweden. It opens on August 5th in Australia, the Netherlands, Finland and Norway. It opens on August 10th in France, on August 11th in Hungary, on August 19th in Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay and Portugal. It opens on August 26th in Turkey and on August 31st in Italy.

CITY OF EMBER - inventive, beautiful and after a slow start, engaging

I can overlook a lot of faults in a film it it merely looks wondrous and CITY OF EMBERS is certainly one of the most wonderfully inventive films I've seen. Based on a children's fantasy novel by Jeane Duprau, the production designer beautifully recreates a self-contained subterranean world in which generations of people have lived after an apocalyptic "disaster" above ground. The look of the City mixes Dickensian London, art-deco design and a general feel of labyrinthine grunginess. The city is powered by a failing generator and a system of crusty old pipes, and the people live in fear that the supplies of tinned goods are running low. Bill Murray's oleaginous mayor tries to keep their spirits up while hoarding canned goods and the fear of the unlit outer regions keeps them from trying to escape.

If the movie starts off slow, it's because Gil Kenan (who directed the brilliant animated kids flick MONSTER HOUSE) takes time to establish how the city works and the mythos of the Builders. I suspect that audience's less keen on simply mopping up the atmosphere of an elaborate set will start to wriggle. But once the plot gets going CITY OF EMBER works well as a standard children's adventure movie. Saoirse Ronan (ATONEMENT) plays a standard-issue cinema Plucky Teenager, who inherits a scrambled version of the exit plans, and pieces them together with another similarly enterprising teen played by Harry Treadaway (BROTHERS OF THE HEAD).

Admittedly, the final scenes play a little like INDIANA JONES and the discovery of above-ground - which is never really in doubt - is a bit of anti-climax after the visual richness of the City. Still, for all that, this movie is a perfectly enjoyable fantasy adventure with better design and acting than most. How many kids films throw in actors of such quality as Martin Landau, Tim Robbins and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, like so much confetti?

CITY OF EMBER is on release in the UK and US. It goes on release in Iceland and Portugal on October 23rd, in Russia on October 30th, in Argentina on November 20th, in Singapore on November 27th, in France and the Netherlands on December 17th, in Belgium on December 24th, in Australia on January 1st and in New Zealand on January 22nd.

THEN SHE FOUND ME - indigestible

THEN SHE FOUND ME is a very busy film - jampacked with tragic, dramatic events that somewhat overload what had the makings of an interesting, emotionally engaging adult drama. First-time director, and lead actress, Helen Hunt, handles all the material without missing a beat, but the resulting film is indigestable. The movie focuses on a mousy, middle-aged primary-school teacher called April, played by a suitably dowdy-looking Hunt. Within a week, her husband Matthew Broderick) leaves her, her adoptive mother dies, she meets a really lovely bloke (Colin Firth), but finds out she's actually pregnant with her ex-husband's child. And, by the way, her biological mother (Bette Midler), a talk-show host, turns up with lots of tall tales about how she gave April up. The impact of all this on the key players unfolds over the next hour, finishing up with a rather trite repetition of a proverb that was told at the start of the film. As well as the overly-dramatic plot, THEN SHE FOUND ME also contains some of the corniest dialogue this side of Mills and Boon and I pity Coln Firth having to play the stock bumbling, inarticulate Brit. 

THEN SHE FOUND ME played Toronto 2007 and opened earlier this year in the USA, Israel, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Portugal and Poland. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in France on October 1st and in Argentina on November 13th. THEN SHE FOUND ME is available on Region 1 DVD.

Timely reminder 1 - BOB ROBERTS (1992)

We sit at the fag-end of a bitter Presidency: the US preaches liberal free-market democracy but is perceived to practice illiberality, protectionism and to award power by judicial fiat. We distrust our politicians and distrust big corporations and self-medicate with brain-benumbing reality TV. Many movies have chronicled our greasy slide into decrepitude. Some achieved acclaim upon release, and others feel like sadly overlooked markers in the sand.

BOB ROBERTS falls into the latter category. It's a razor-sharp satire on all that is most grasping and petty in politics. The anti-hero of the piece is a Republican gubernatorial candidate. Bob Roberts is a successful businessman, former Marine and passionate campaigner against drug use. He's also a popular singer who peddles easy answers to a catchy folk tune. Consider the following couplet from his hit song:

"Grandma felt guilty 'bout being so rich and it bothered her until the day she died. But I will take my inheritance and invest it with pride, yes invest it with pride."

And what about the opening lines to his song mocking the poor:

"Some people will have / Some simply will not / But they'll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain / Some people will work / Some never will / But they'll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain / Like this: / It's society's fault I don't have a job / It's society's fault I'm a slob / I'm a drunk, I don't have a brain / Give me a pamplet while I complain / Hey pal you're living in the land of the free No-one's gonna hand you opportunity."

In other words, Bob Robert is smug and rich and, by the way, implicated in an Iran-Contra style narcs-for-guns scandal.

Now, Tim Robbins' evidently doesn't go for a subtle approach here. Bob Roberts is a good old-fashioned screen villain, painted with a broad brush. And the whole side plot with a Spike Lee style angry independent film-maker trying to expose Roberts thinly-veiled fascist tendencies is more distracting than incisive. So why is this movie so great? First off, Robbins really captures the feel of a documentary with talking heads, hand-held camera footage and those little shots of people caught unawares. Second, the spoof songs are absolutely hysterical - not least the mock Bob Dylan and Robert Palmer promo videos. Third, Robbins takes Bob Roberts into territory so evil that it will stun even the most jaded of hacks. Fourth, the movie works as a sort of elegy for all those elder statesmen who really believed in public service and human decency. They are distilled here in Bob Roberts' opposition - a patrician incumbent of evident intelligent and mortal certitude. Time was....

So, if you like your comedy intelligent and your politics sharp, check BOB ROBERTS out. Robbins may have been looking back to Reagan, but this movie is a fair place to start as an indictment of Bush 43.

BOB ROBERTS was originally released in 1992 and is available on DVD.

CATCH A FIRE - earnest, important, dull

CATCH A FIRE is an earnest drama based on the true story of a black South African man called Patrick Chamusso. He was a successful foreman in the power-plant that supplied half the country's electricity. He cared for his wife, his two daughters and coaching the local footie team: he kept himself away from the ANC's rising campaign of terror and fight for liberation. The defining moment of his life was the point at which he was wrongfully arrested for committing a terrorist attack on the power plant. The white South Africans' brutal treatment of his wife prompted him to leave the country, join the ANC and return as fully-trained freedom fighter.

The movie is nicely-filmed and well-acted. Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher) does well in his role as Chamusso and the supporting cast is fine, despite Tim Robbins risible attempt at a white South African accent in his role as the head of the Anti-terrorist squad, Nic Vos. However, the film falls well-short of the claim on the poster that it is a "thriller". There is a little chase at the end as the army tries to hunt down Chamusso before he blows up the power plant, but for the most part this is not an action film in the BLOOD DIAMOND vein, but a drama about a man's coming to political consciousness.

And here we find a problem. Because the movie never really gets inside the skin of the lead character. Chamusso is never more than a cipher - observing the surrounding political events and leading the viewer through the landscape. In particular, the movie skips over the two parts of Chamusso's life that I thought would have been really interesting: how he got through his long imprisonment on Robben Island and how he came to forgive Nic Vos. I find this whole concept fascinating: the idea that a whole country could go through a truth and reconciliation process. And here, through two men, we could have had a glimpse at how such a process worked. Sadly, this second act is wrapped up with undue haste by the director.

So, while CATCH A FIRE is an important story, it also makes for 90 minutes of desperately dull cinema. Moreover, it's a big disappoinment for fans of Phillip Noyce's previous films, RABBIT PROOF FENCE and THE QUIET AMERICAN.

CATCH A FIRE was released in the US and Australia in 2006 and in Kuwait, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Singapore, Japan, Egypt and France earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in the Netherlands on April 19th and in Italy on June 23rd. CATCH A FIRE is also available on Region 1 DVD.

TENACIOUS D: THE PICK OF DESTINY: awesome songs, okay story

TENACIOUS D is the cult rock band fronted by movie funny-man, Jack Black, backed up by lead guitarist Kyle Gass. For those who've never seen them, the joke is that they're a pair of out-of-shape middle-aged men channeling three parts Led Zep to one part Spinal Tap. Their feature length movie sits firmly in the canon of films like Wayne's World - where two unlikely ordinary idiots grapple with greatness after a training period reminiscent of movies like KARATE KID. In THE PICK OF DESTINY, JB and KG have to break into the Rock and Roll Museum to steal the aforementioned pick - apparently fashioned centuries ago from a tooth of Satan and capable of turning any idiot into a genius rock musician.

I had a fine time watching the film. At its worst, the film has a sort of low-level background hum of humour and good-will, even if that resides in dick and fart jokes and the odd superstar cameo. (Ben Stiller and John C Reilly are hysterical but Tim Robbins' part is seriously under-written/just not funny....) But whenever the movie gets off of the actual story and into the songs the humour ratchets up to an altogether higher level. The guys clearly know whereof they spoof - the songs are really fantastic and echo all the worst excesses of the rock genre. I loved the final rock-off with Satan and the homily on how Satan is inside of all of us was Pure Comedy Gold. So, I guess I have to give TENACIOUS D: THE PICK OF DESTINY a qualified thumbs up. It's patchy for sure, but when it works it really makes you laugh.

TENACIOUS D: THE PICK OF DESTINY opens in the US on November 22nd, Singapore on November 23rd and in the UK on November 24th. It opens in Argentina on November 30th, Finland on December th, the Netherlands on December 21st, and in Iceland and Norway on December 26th. It opens in Italy and Australia in January 2007, in Germany in February and Belgium in March.

WAR OF THE WORLDS - the greatest B-movie ever made?

In the wake of the over-blown quagmire that was MUNICH, my friend Nik suggested that Spielberg "stick to dinosaurs". It was a good suggestion - after all, JURASSIC PARK is the last genuine blockbuster movie that Steven Spielberg directed, at least in terms of box office success. However, the purpose of this review is to stake a claim for WAR OF THE WORLDS as one of the greatest B-movies ever made. The opening of the movie is high-class, with some nicely-observed modern family dialogue between divorced parent, Tom Cruise, his moody adolescent son and his precocious daughter, played by Dakota Fanning. And then, without wasting too much time, the aliens start attacking the earth and the whole thing just goes popcorn-tastic. Roads are ripped up, burning trains hurtle through railway stations, airplanes fall out of the sky. It's just a giant disaster movie with all the best bits rolled into one. Of course, this is Spielberg so all the whistles and bangs and explosions work well, especially when they ape scenes from Jurassic Park. (Just compare that scene where the tripod tentacle is sniffing round the basement with the raptors stalking the kids in the kitchen.)

But the great thing is that this movie also has some great dialogue that allows the characters to show "real" emotions. Tom Cruise is not a simple action hero - he is often more freaked out than his kids are and while this is clearly not the kind of iconic performance that he gave in Magnolia, it is leagues above the kind of cock-sure twit he usually plays in action movies. Dakota Fanning does what she does well too - she looks cute, is scared and screams a lot. For some reason the costume designer decided to give her the kitsch on-acid wardrobe of a seventies muppet, but that only adds to the charm. There are even some nicely handled patches of humour. "They came from somewhere else. Like Europe? NO, ROBBIE, NOT LIKE EUROPE." And we get the added bonus of seeing the always slightly creepy Tim Robbins as a loon.

Of course, the film does have its flaws, but even these are rather endearing. As we all know, the movie is based on the famous novel by H.G.Wells, wherein a bunch of super-intelligent aliens attack the earth and start exterminating humans using tripods that were buried underground millenia ago. Back when H.G. was writing I bet that spindly-legged tripods seemed really scary, but now, well, they just don't cut it. I reckon Spielberg would have done better to either redesign or show the devestation caused by the tripods rather than the tripods themselves. In addition, while the ending is true to the novel, and made a new and interesting point about evolution back in the day, to me, a contemporary viewer, it seemed a little bit weak. But you know what, this is WAR OF THE WORLDS, and I think you just have to go with it. Ditto the moment where I thought the movie really jumped the shark - when Cruise starts singing a "lullaby" to his daughter. I mean, it's painfully cheesy, but even here there is a certain charm in Cruise being willing to do something quite that ridiculous outside of Oprah.

WAR OF THE WORLDS is available on DVD.