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.

Christmas movies suck, but egg nog makes it all better

Today, we take a break from normal programming as Bina007 finds herself unable to sit through another saccharine, manipulative, pile of poo Christmas movie. Christmas movies suck and if you don't believe me try watching the god-awful Susan Sarandon flick, Noel, or the even worse Arnie vehicle, Jingle All the Way, without vomiting over the kid sitting next to you.

However, I am all about Christmas, and in an attempt to redress the balance, here is my recipe for highly toxic Egg Nog. Not only is it guaranteed to make you feel super-happy, if you are forced to watch some disgusting festive movie starring Ben Affleck, at least you won't remember any of it the next day.

Take 4 eggs and split the whites from the yolks. Whisk the whites till stiff. Whisk the yolks with half a cup of sugar. Fold the yolks into the whites along with 1 1/2 cups milk and half a cup of double cream. Finally fold in a cup of rum and a cup of brandy . Sprinkle with nutmeg

This should make 8 cups if you are sharing with friends or enough to get you paralytic enough to watch The Sound of Music for the seven hundredth time.

Share and Enjoy! (Ideally while watching the anti-Christmas movie, BAD SANTA, released last week on Region 2 DVD.)

WHERE THE TRUTH LIES - sleazy thriller, no more, no less

Expectations run high for WHERE THE TRUTH LIES. It is directed by that darling of the Indie scene, Atom Egoyan and stars Colin Firth (the original and best Mr. Darcy) and Kevin Bacon, who dazzled me with his sympathetic portrayal of a paedophile in THE WOODSMAN last year. In addition, the love interest is "rising star" Alison Lohman, last seen with Nic Cage in MATCHSTICK MEN. Not only are the cast and crew high quality but the director's aim is grand. Atom Egoyan has attempted to create an old fashioned film noir - those wonderful 1940s movies that were intricately plotted movies with tough guys, wicked women, murders, incest, theft and glamour. Re-creating that kind of ethereal, dangerous mood is difficult in these days of colour film and special effects but a few movies have pulled it off with great success, not least the superb L.A CONFIDENTIAL. WHERE THE TRUTH LIES is nowhere near as successful but neither is it a bad film.

The plot centres around a 1950s comedy double-act in the style of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Colin Firth plays the straight man and Kevin Bacon his comedy stooge. They live the "Frat pack" lifestyle to the max - hot chicks, fast cars, alcohol, hotel rooms. However, when an actress is found dead in their bath-tub it all goes wrong. Fast forward to the 1970s when a young ambitious reporter tries to unravel the hushed-up scandal.

The plot synopsis makes the movie sound a lot more interesting than it really is. At heart, it is just another sleazy erotic thriller. There is nothing wrong with that but it seems a bit of a waste of effort for Egoyan and his cast to come up with something so one-dimensional. Sad to say that in years to come, if this movie is remembered at all, it will be as a footnote in film school text books on censorship. Thanks to a menage a trois between Colin Firth, Kevin Bacon and Rachel Blanchard, featuring lots of "thrusting" the movie received the rarely used NC 17 rating in the US, limiting its ability to earn back its budget.
WHERE THE TRUTH LIES is already on limited release in the US and the UK. It goes on release in France on the 21st December 2005 and in Germany on the 2nd February 2006.

DOOM - Why outsource the blowing up of shit?

DOOM is a decent first person shooter video game that has been, for reasons unclear to much of the Western hemisphere, transformed at great expense into one of the most pointless movies ever made. Pointless because seeing The Rock blow shit up is clearly less satisfying than blowing shit up yourself, especially given the fact that the graphics in most video games are better than the CGI effects we get here. Admittedly, if the screenwriters had actually bothered to give the movie a plot or decent characters, it could have been a more satisfying entertainment experience than playing the game itself. But they haven't so it isn't. 

There are four very slight redeeming features to this movie. 1. Guys get to see the blonde Bond girl from "Die Another Day" run around a lot. 2. Girls get to see Eomer from Lord of the Rings open a can of whoopass. 3. We also have the nostalgia trip of seeing that cheeky Yank from kids TV show The Press Gang playing a character called Pinky. 4. Oh yes, and let me not understate the unintentional comedy value of seeing The Rock lovingly handle his "big gun." 

DOOM went on general release in the US in October where it failed to make even half of its budget before dropping down the charts. Since then it has failed to earn money in Germany and France. It opened in the UK yesterday and I trust that the Great British Public will also consign it to the trashcan of shame.

LOWER CITY - a Brazilian tale of corrosive passion

I guess it is not particularly original to make a movie about how a beautiful woman can corrode male friendship, but LOWER CITY takes this hackneyed material to a higher level of brutalilty and intensity. The camerawork, acting and plot lines are not quite as searing as CITY OF GODS, but then why should they be? Instead of an epic tale, we have here a smaller character study which, compared to your average Hollywood fare, is a memorable and racy ride. The movie opens with a young, beautiful girl called Karinna. She is hitch-hiking her way to Salvador de Bahia in Brazil by whoring herself to men with boats and trucks. (The movie takes its title from the "Lower" part of that city.) Her first lift is with a couple of close friends, Deco and Naldinho and it is with these men that she will spend the rest of the film. While their first relations are commercial, as the film develops the sexual attraction and tension grows. Not least because, in the confined spaces that poverty inflicts upon these characters, two characters make love in front of another. The relationship settles into a seemingly workable menage a trois for a while, but the stability rests on a knife-edge. The boys slide into the territory of pimps, colluding in conning dumb-ass "clients" out of their money. But as the male possessive instinct is awakened and events take a turn for the worse, the movie races toward a brutal climax.

The movie is filmed on 16 mil but looks fantastic. It captures perfectly the claustrophobic small rented rooms and the seedy, heady atmosphere of sawdust bars and strip clubs. We would expect nothing less from a director - Sérgio Machado - who comes to film from a background in documentaries. Some of the most intense camerawork is of a brutal cock-fight. Animal-lovers who find this sort of thing distateful should beware, but also reassured that it is not gratuitous. The cock-fight between the black and white animals serves as a chilling metaphor for the relationship between the two male leads.

LOWER CITY showed at Cannes 2005 where it won the "award of the youth" and goes on limited release in the UK today. It opens in the US on June 16th and in France on June 28th 2006.

FLIGHTPLAN - slick but derivative thriller

FLIGHTPLAN is a perfectly decent thriller set on board a commercial airliner. Jodie Foster plays a recently believed mother of a six-year old girl. She is flying back to the US with her dead husband in a casket in the hold. She wakes up to find her daughter missing. The only problem is that no-one believes that the daughter even boarded the plane. This sets up an interesting (if derivative) thriller: is Foster's character delusional or not? And will her frustration and anger put the flight in danger?

As I said, the movie is a well-made if conventional thriller. The production is slick and features good actors such as Peter Sarsgaard and Sean Bean, although they are not asked to strectch themselves as actors here. If you like thrillers and you don't watch that many movies, I suspect that FLIGHTPLAN will provide a good piece of entertainment. However, if you have even a cursory knowledge of cinematic classics, you will feel increasingly frustrated at the collage of other - better - movies.

FLIGHTPLAN is on global release.