THE GENERAL - 80 years later, and we still can't touch it!

Not to be a one-note record, but when you watch a movie like North Country, you wonder whether in eighty years time, anyone will give a damn about it. Dear Lord, I wonder whether anyone will remember it a month after the Oscars. By contrast, in THE GENERAL we have a genuine gold-standard movie - a movie that has withstood eighty years of cultural change and critical assessment. Newly restored and furnished with a wonderful orchestral score by Colin Davis, this masterpiece is on release at London's National Film Theatre, and it is pure delight to see it on the big screen at last.

THE GENERAL is a silent feature starring Buster Keaton. He plays a decent but unassuming chap who "has two loves in his life" - his steam engine called "The General" - and his girlfriend. When the Civil War breaks out he isn't allowed to enlist for the South, much to his girlfriend's shame, because, unbeknown to him, he is considered of more value to the war effort as a railwayman. But one day, his engine and his girlfriend are hijacked by spies from the Union army. Keaton gives chase, eventually going behind enemy lines where he overhears the enemy's plan. The chase is on to get back to the South, warn the Confederates and win the respect of his girl and a place in the Confederate Army.

You can watch THE GENERAL for a whole bunch of reasons - not least because it is really really funny. In my screening we had a whole bunch of kids in the audience and it was wonderful to see them connecting with a movie made eighty years ago when CGI ogres were but a blink in the milkman's eye. The second reason to watch THE GENERAL is that, in the manner of KING KONG or an INDIANA JONES flick, it is an all-out action adventure epic. We see whole armies in pitched battle, railway chase scenes of which Spielberg would be proud, not to mention a steam locomotive driving onto a burning bridge and then crashing into the river below. You look at how well the movie is made and wonder just how they did it with the resources available to them at the time.

And remember, Keaton not only stars in but directed this flick - he is a real cinematic visionary - an auteur forty years before a bunch of jumped-up frenchmen coined the term. Which brings me to the thrid reason to see this flick - it is simply one of those films every serious film-lover should watch. Keaton is one of the three greats of the silent movie era along with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. Although he achieved much less commercial success, he is now revered as the greatest of the three. Keaton's physical comedy is much more subtle than that of Charlie Chaplin. Rather than playing "the tramp" or "the great dictator", Keaton usually plays normal guys caught up in wonderful adventures. Moreover, while his comedy is delivered in a dead-pan style that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". As a result, Keaton's work is much more accessible to the modern audience and worth a go even if you've found it hard to enjoy Chaplin or, say, Laurel and Hardy. Do you need another reason to see it? Go on, knock yourself out - books yourself tickets right now!

THE GENERAL has been restored, cleaned up and put back on release at the National Film Theatre in London. Older prints are available on DVD.

ME, YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW - Nutty, but in a good way!

ME, YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW is a gorgeous, whimsical, slightly nutty movie about cute people who think good things, want magic in their lives and refuse to be bowed down by all the emotional brutality we experiece on a day to day basis. It follows a genuine nice guy who "wants his kids to have magical powers". His wife has left him and he works in a shoe store. In walks a beautiful video installation artist who happens to drive a taxi to make ends meet. She falls in love with him - he needs to take a chance on her. Meanwhile, they are surrounded by the kind of kooky suburban goings-on that we'd expect from a Daniel Clowes comic. Somehow, when the guy's little kid starts talking dirty to an older women in an internet chat room, or when the guy's colleague starts leaving lewd messages for two hot teenage girls taped to his door - it all still seems sweet, innocent and magical. And yes, I know how that last sentence sounds, and I know why the MPAA gave this an "R" rating for sexual content involving kids, but really that rating does not reflect the feel and subject matter of this flick. In many ways, this is the modern day fairytale that SHOPGIRL was trying to be. But before I extoll you to "go check it out", I should fairly point out that if you find "cute" annoying in life - if you prefer films to feature guns, t*ts, explosions - then ME, YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW is not for you. And that's also fine. That's why god gave us Arnold Schwarzenegger.

ME, YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW premiered at Sundance 2005 where it won the Special Jury Prize . It also won the Golden Camera and three other awards at Cannes. The movie went on limited release in the US and UK in summer 2005. It went on release in the Netherlands yesterday and goes on release in Germany on the 23rd February 2006. ME, YOU and EVERYONE WE KNOW is available on Region 2 DVD.

WHALE RIDER - North Country wishes it were this good

WHALE RIDER is one of those films you should really try and watch, and now that it's available on DVD there is no excuse. To be sure, this is not ground-breaking cinema in either content or technical achievement. But in this era of heartless movies buckling under the burden of computer generated special effects*, it is nice to see a simple story well told.

WHALE RIDER is set in a Maori community where leadership has been handed down from eldest son to eldest son for centuries. For the traditionalist current leader, Koro, the problems start when his son becomes an artist and travels the world rather than take up the mantle. Worse still, when the son has twin children, only the daughter survives. Paikea, that daughter, breaks all the rules. She is named after a male - the legendary original ancestor - and clearly has all the aptitude, courage and interest to become the new leader. This movie is the story of her desperate quest to show her grandfather that she is up to the task.

Watching WHALE RIDER through the prism of a recent viewing of NORTH COUNTRY one is aware of the fact that these flicks have three objectives in common. First, both aim to give you insight into life in an isolated community. In both films, director Niki Caro successfully captures the faces of the real people of these areas - their concerns, hopes and fears. Second, both films aim to show these communities struggling to translate traditional beliefs and customs into modern life. Where the women go down the mines in NORTH COUNTRY, in WHALE RIDER, a young girl becomes a tribal chief. I feel that WHALE RIDER is far more successful in handling this issue than NORTH COUNTRY. The transition of the traditionalist grandfather in WHALE RIDER seems more organic and plausible than the sudden epiphany of the father in NORTH COUNTRY.

Finally, each film has to make us identify with the heroine and to feel her persecution and eventual triumph. Once again, I found NORTH COUNTRY confused and confusing. Yes, I cried for Charlize Theron but for the wrong reasons and at the hands of some pretty hard-core emotional pornography. There was no melodramatic trick that Niki Caro did not resort to in order to get us to sympathise with Theron. By contrast, in WHALE RIDER we have a movie of such subtlety and poise that when the big knock-out moment comes - Paikea's speech in the school-hall - it takes us by surprise and with the full force of emotion. The slights suffered by Pai at the hands of her grandfather are not anything as dramatic as Theron's rape in North Country, but they carry far greater dramatic weight. Looking back at the delicacy and honesty with which these issues are handled in WHALE RIDER, I can only hope that Niki Caro goes back to quieter movies in future.

WHALE RIDER is available on Region 1 and 2 DVD. *Ironically, Keisha Castle-Hughes next role after the wonderful WHALE RIDER was to play the Queen of Naboo in that crime against cinema, Star Wars III.

THE ARISTOCRATS - I get it. In fact, I got it all too soon.

THE ARISTOCRATS is a documentary about a joke. The joke is a shaggy dog story designed to shock people into laughter. As comedian Paul Reiser says, "It's all set-up". So we see 100 comedians (apparently, I didn't count) tell the joke. It goes like this: A wife, husband, kids, dog (variations thereupon) go into a talent agent's office. They say, "You gotta hire us. We have this great act!" So the talent agent says, "So what is the act?" They then recount the act. It is the nastiest, crudest, most vicious stuff you ever heard of. There needs to be sex (incest, besti*lity, whatever), excrement, the most gross things you can think of. Each comedian goes gross in their own particular way, spins the story wild and large - two minutes, twenty minutes - manic, deadpan - the most disgusting stuff you can think of. The family come to the end of describing the act. The talent agent sits back and says, "Wow. That's some act! So what do you call that?" The family responds in chorus, "The Aristocrats!"

At this point you might be thinking, "I don't get it." And that begs the question whether it is a valid criticism of this documentary that despite the fact that it features many comedians all telling a supposedly hysterical joke, the film is only sporadically funny. In fact, the only two times I really laughed, the humour did not derive from the Aristocrats joke itself, but from the fact that the comediens were doing impressions of famous people telling the joke. Kevin Pollack tells the joke as Christopher Walken and Mario Cantone tells the joke as Liza Minelli. Pure Comedy Genius.

I think it is fine if we don't find the re-telling of the joke that funny. We can still take three things from the movie. First, the movie is a masterclass for wannabe comedians, because from the way in which the different comedians approach the joke you can see something of their technique and talent. Not only that, but you discover some really great comedians that haven't done a lot of TV or film before. Second, you can enjoy this movie in the same way as you get a perverse kick out of a car crash: it's horrible, you feel gross for being interested, and yet there is something compelling about watching Carrie Fisher a.k.a. Princess Leia saying "my mother was a golden showers queen" when we know that in real life her mum is the peaches-and-cream cutie from Singin' In the Rain, Debbie Reynolds.

Third, there is a social point to be understood about how society has changed and what is funny has changed with it. Back in the day when female stand-up comedians couldn't wear sleeveless dresses on network television for fear of immodesty , telling a joke about rim-jobs would have been daring and provocative - almost political. In today's world, sexual acts really aren't taboo. I mean, we have golden showers, rim-j*bs and f*ltching on South Park and a young girl pleasuring herself with a champagne bottle live on British network TV. This is our new "reality". The new taboos are jokes about 9/11 and racism. So unless, you recast the joke, it is devalued.

The comedy masterclass, the bizarro-Carrie Fisher moment and the point about how taboos have changed are all valid subjects for a movie and interesting up to a point. My real criticism of this movie is therefore not that I didn't find it that funny, but that it is just too long. We get all the messages of the film after about 45 minutes and the remainder is just a bit repetitive.

THE ARISTOCRATS premiered at Sundance 2005 and went on limited release in the US and UK in autumn 2005. (The fact that the movie was Unrated by the MPAA meant that some exhibitors would not show it.) It goes on cinematic release in the Netherlands on the 9th February 2006 but was released on Region 2 DVD last week.

NORTH COUNTRY - Manipulative and morally disingenuous

NORTH COUNTRY gets a lot of stuff right: the cast, shooting, editing etc are all fabulous and more power to Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand for their nominations. The minutes flew by, I spent much of the flick in tears, and I really enjoyed it. But I am deeply conflicted about the underlying message in this film and the way in which the director, Niki Caro, handles the material. I can't discuss those difficulties without revealing key plot points, so if you haven't seen the movie you should probably look away now.

The first, and by far the greater of the problems, has to do with the subject matter of this film. NORTH COUNTRY is touted as a movie about sexual harassment and the first successful class action lawsuit in the States. A group of female workers in a steel mine were subjected to degrading and violent abuse, took the company to court and won. However, the victim on whom the movie concentrates has a whole slew of problems. She was raped by her school teacher and bore his child - something she could not admit to in a small and judgmental town. Later, she suffered domestic abuse and fled her husband, taking her two small kids back to her parents. Her father disapproves of her and her mother is powerless to object. Not only is the victim, Josie Aimes, played by Charlize Theron, a victim many times over, but even her best friend is serially downtrodden. Glory, played by Frances McDormand, also experiences sexual harrassment, but she is also suffering from a debilitating illness.

When Josie decides to sue the steelworks the director makes the decision to focus on her as a victim of rape. The courtroom scenes hinge on the idea that if we believe her when she says she was raped, we will believe her when she says she was harassed. In an interview after the screening, Niki Caro, the director, claimed that this was a deliberate choice. She wanted to explore the fact that in the US judicial system (time and again, she singled out the US as being a particularly illiberal, unprotective and invasive regime) a women's sexual history is put on the line. That's true. But surely the point is that even if Josie Aimes had fucked her high school teacher, and slept with every married man in the plant, she still would not deserve to have her life threatened on the job, and would still deserve the full protection of the law. By making her whiter than white, Caro gets dangerously close to suggesting that we should sympathise with her because she is inherently good, not just because she is wronged. On the one hand, Caro wants to say that a woman's sexual history is not what is on trial; on the other, she still feels the need to prove Josie innocent of all charges of inappropriate sexual behaviour. It is for this reason that I think Erin Brokovich is a better film - at least less morally disingenuous. Erin can wear fuck-me shoes and a boob tube, and maybe even be a bad mother, but it doesn't stop her being a damn good lawyer.

A second and related criticism is of the countless ways in which the script steps over the line from epic to melodrama. Two particular occasions stand out. First, in a pivotal scene around two thirds of the way through the movie, Josie Aimes goes to speak at a Steelworkers' Union meeting. Her aim is to be heard, and to try to convince some of her female co-workers to fight the case with her. What happens is that the steelworkers shout her down, and her father, who has previously been dead against her, stands up, goes to the podium, takes the microphone from her, and speaks, eloquently, in his daughter's favour for the first time. I had a number of problems with this scene - it appeared unconvincing that the father would have a sudden shock conversion. Another member of the audience said that she found the scene frustrating because the father was also denying Niki a voice - wresting the microphone from her, underlining the fact that only a man can be heard*. Either way, the scene is one of those Hollywood melo-dramatic moments, where a sudden rush of eloquence silences a room.

The second really melo-dramatic moment occurs about five minutes before the end of the film during a court-room scene, where the truth of the rape has just been revealed and suddenly other female co-workers stand up to become part of the class action law-suit. This is particularly ludicrous and blatantly manipulative when the chronically ill sidekick has to tap her objections on her wheelchair. I like to call this the "I am Spartacus" moment, or if you prefer a more recent movie reference, the "Oh Captain, my captain" moment. It is the moment when the movie simply jumped the shark.

NORTH COUNTRY premiered at Toronto 2005 and is on release in the US. It goes on release in the UK on Friday 3rd February, in Germany on the 9th Feb., in Austria on the 10th Feb. and in France on the 8th March 2006.

*Niki Caro replied by saying that while that particular audience member may have found it unsatisfying, she knew plenty of people who did find it satisfying. The implication was that the audience member was simply wrong. Now I know that I can be strident in my views on flicks, but I always know that everyone has the right to their own reaction. For a Director to simply tell you that you are wrong and she is right - that there is only one valid way to experience and interpret a film - is a massive and unprovable philosophical claim - not to mention massively offensive. I can honestly say that in all my years of seeing directors and actors present their work to the NFT, I have never seen any couple as dismissive of their audience (and indeed, in another comment too long to go into here, of their peers) as Theron and Caro.

UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION & AEON FLUX - when hot chicks in PVC jump-suits aren't enough

There's not a whole lot I want to say about these two movies, both of which are derivative, feature ch*cks in rubber suits, have confused narratives, banal dialogue and zero characterisation.

If your taste runs to vampires, werewolves and British character actors camping it up, you should opt for UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION. Bill Nighy does a hammy five minutes at the start; Derek Jacobi embarasses himself for five minutes near the end; the baddie is a Scottish actor called Tony Curran who was a minor character in the cult British TV drama, This Life; and these are the *good* points. Oh yes, and we get Brit Kate Beckinsale running around in a PVC suit, directed by her husband Len Wiseman, who obviously has a penchant for this sort of thing. He also directs one of the most cringe-inducing sex scenes since Shopgirl. But, hey, what do I know? This movie topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, and took more money than analysts expected. I guess that means we'll get Underworld 3 - at least I assume that is narratively possible because I was so freakin' bored I left ten minutes before the end. Still, I doubt narrative incoherence would prevent Wiseman for committing another crime against cinema if there were enough phat cash in it.

On the other hand, if your taste runs to science fiction flicks like THE MATRIX, you could submit yourself to AEON FLUX - a shameless Hollywood cash-in starring Charlize Theron in, oh yes, a PVC suit. In a distopian future, the last city on earth is Berlin and it is run by a nasty Big Brother type. Aeon Flux - ridiculous name, I know, but then what isn't in this movie? - is part of a highly trained, ruthless efficient, Spanish inquisition, sorry, insurgency. She runs around blowing shit up, doing cool stunts and uttering what are meant to be witty one liners. Clearly, the screenwriter thought "amateurs" was going to be the new "I'll be back". AEON FLUX suffers in comparison to UNDERWORLD 2 for the lack of overtly camp acting, although Frances McDormand does have a totally bizarre hair-do that elicits a few chuckles on first appearance. Still, that is scant reward for handing over your twelve squid on a Friday night. The only hope is that, as AEON FLUX lost money in the US, a sequel is not on the cards.

UNDERWOLRD EVOLUTION is on release in the UK, US and France and goes on release in Germany on the 2nd March 2006. AEON FLUX is already on release in the US. It goes on release in Austria on the 3rd February, in France on the 8th February, in Germany on the 16th February and in the UK on the 17th February.