THIRST - As I live and breathe, you have killed me

Full disclosure: I am a massive Park Chan-Wook fan. I love everything about him: the carefully designed visuals; the black comedy; the ultra-violence; and at the heart of it all, the concept of the innocent caught in tragic circumstances. For many, OLDBOY is their favourite movie. It's arguably got the most fucked up plot motivation, and the infamous octopus scene. For me, LADY VENGEANCE is his most visually dramatic work. The only out-and-out failure was his previous, I'M A CYBORG BUT THAT'S OKAY. Daniel Plainview and I went to say that and could barely get through it. Shorn of the violence and the wicked humour, we just had this cutesy love story among mental patients. Once the "things to make and do" production design had been wondered it, there was nothing left to do.

Park Chan-Wook's new film, THIRST, sees him take a love story, as in CYBORG, but meld it to the crazy mixed-up world of the VENGEANCE triology. SYMPATHY "old-boy" Kang-ho Song plays the classic Park Chan-Wook protagonist, a genuinely good guy caught in crazy circumstances, Priest Sang-hyeon. He's such a nice guy he plays recorder to coma victims and volunteers for a deadly medical experiment. And no, he's not in it for the suicide martyrdom kick. Problem is, he gets a transfusion with vampire blood, which helpfully kicks the nasty illness, but only if he keeps drinking blood. The central tragedy and comedy come from this situation: a good men has an instinct to fuck and kill - tragic; a vampire priest starts nicking blood from a hospital and spewing blood over his recorder - funny! And so would have developed your classic tightly structured, insane-brilliant Park Chan-Wook movie.

The problem is that Park Chan-Wook inter-weaves his vampire flick with a domestic drama inspired by Zola. The vampire priest falls for an unhappily married girl called Tae-joo, played by Ok-vin Kim. She's married to a snotty arse called Kang-Woo (another SYMPATHY regular Ha-kyun Shin) and subjugated by his hideous mother Lady Ra (Hae-sook Kim). As a classic Park Chan-Wook heroine, this weedy looking girl successfully manipulated the good priest into killing her snotty husband. Once again, both tragedy and comedy come from this. Tragedy in that the priest knows he has been manipulated, and that the girl delights in vampirism, but can't help loving the girl anyways; comedy in the way in which Park Chan-Wook depicts guilt.

THIRST contains some of the best work in Park Chan-Wook's oeuvre. The touching love scene where the priest lifts up the girl and puts her in his shoes. Or the scene where the guilty lovers fuck but the dead husband is literally between them. But I couldn't help thinking that this would have been better if Park Chan-Wook had focused on one story or the other rather than trying to cram everything into an over-long, meandering two and a half hour movie.

THIRST played Cannes 2009, where it won the Jury Prize, and was released earlier this year in South Korea, the USA, Canada, Singapore, Brazil and France. It is released in Germany, Poland and the UK on October 16th. It is released in Russia on October 29th and in Norway on December 26th.

Some thoughts on THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS is a beautiful, dark, wondrous, mischevious film. Every scene is full of visual delights and rich metaphors. PARNASSUS is film as spectacle - taking us back to the earliest tradition of cinema. But perhaps the most spectacular fact about PARNASSUS is that is was made at all, given the death of its star, Heath Ledger, half way through filming, a fact that evidently floored Terry Gilliam, and had the money-men, always troublesome in a Gilliam production, running for the exits. If the PR surrounding "Ledger's Last Film" gets Gilliam better distribution and audiences than he typically attracts, it's a poor motive, but a good result. Because people should see this film. And not just Gilliam fans, or fantasy fans, or fans of Dickens and Inkheart and the Brothers Grimm. THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS pleases and works on many levels.

Before I get to how it pleases, let's dwell a moment on the fact that it really does work. People who love Gilliam tend to start with an apology for the baggy structure of his films and the crazy, too large worlds he creates. It's as thought they love what he's doing but wish he'd find a stronger producer and editor, and someone to just package him up neatly like a Tim Burton film. Surprisingly, I've even read some reviews of PARNASSUS alleging the same thing - the movie is, to these critics, hard to follow, rambling, jam-packed and simply strange. Well, I have to say, I found it one of the most tightly structured and dramatically satisfying of Gilliam's films. Each episode propels us from the opening conceit to the final showdown. Each is necessary. And each character develops upon the journey. So don't let the patronising apologists fool you - PARNASSUS is a great film because of its rich visual style and wide-ranging scope, but it's also easy to enjoy because it's structurally tight.

As the film opens, an antiquated travelling troupe of players is pitching its stall in the modern-day City of London. Well, modern, yes, with its drunken chavs, but timeless too, with its Dickensian grimy pavements and desolate vacant lots. The troupe is led by Doctor Parnassus - a thousand year-old mystic, devoted to telling the truths of life through stories. Centuries ago, he gained immortality in a wager with the Devil. (Just how his side-kick, Percy, gained immortality is unexplained). When passers-by go through his looking-glass they enter a world of their imagination, where Parnassus and the Devil battle for their souls. If Parnassus loses, his daughter Valentina will be forfeit. Around this larger story of life and death is wrapped a smaller tale of love. Parnassus' has raised his daughter in an atmosphere of magic and wonder, but what she really wants is a normal life in consumer Britain. A young boy called Anton, who has been taken in by Parnassus, wants to run away with Valentina, but she is more attracted to the mysterious Tony - an amnesiac in a white suit who promises to modernise the Imaginarium and make them all more money. But who is Tony? And why did they find him hanging by a noose underneath Blackfriars Bridge?

PARNASSUS works as a touching love story - where the girl is too dazzled by the handsome stranger to notice the honest, simple man who loves her. It works as a moving coming of age drama in which a young girl rebelling against her father discovers that she loves him; and the father who cosseted his daughter learns to let her go. PARNASSUS works as dark and brooding cautionary tale about the inability of escaping the consequences of one's actions. In the world of the film, imagination is not an escape but being brought to account. PARNASSUS works as a memorial to Heath Ledger, and all stars who became icons by dieing young. PARNASSUS works as a sad comment on the Death of Narrative Cinema, insofar as Parnassus stands up for stories, and the modern world has no time to hear them. Perhaps most cheekily, PARNASSUS works as a critique of Tony Blair's Britain - the pre-Credit Crunch Britain of housing market bubbles and conspicuous consumption and relentless "modernisation" - Ikea catalogues and "Norm-porn" - of eroding civil liberties in the name of greater security - of policeman clubbing G-20 protesters - of politicians with genuinely good intentions somehow messing up.

On the most basic level, PARNASSUS works as an old-fashioned fair-ground attraction. It's just delightful to look act, and when the actors are playing their characters as performers in the show, they are simply wonderful. All the big-name actors, from Christopher Plummer as Parnassus, to Ledger, Depp, Farrell and Law as Tony, to Verne Troyer as Percy, are just fine, and Lily Cole holds her own as Valentina. Tom Waits is brilliantly cast as the rogue and charmer, Old Nick. But the person who absolutely steals the movie is the young British actor Andrew Garfield (LIONS FOR LAMBS, THE RED RIDING TRILOGY). Garfield as Anton, the poor boy in love with Valentina, but also the fairground entertainer, is an absolute revelation - and worth the price of entry alone.

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS played Toronto 2009 and opens next week in Bulgaria and the UK. It opens on October 23rd in Spain; on October 29th in Australia, the Czech Republic, Italy and Vietnam; on November 5th in Argentina, and New Zealand; on November 11th in France; on November 19th in Portugal; on November 20th in Iceland; on December 3rd in Slovakia; Switzerland; Norway and Sweden; on December 25th in Canada and the US' on January 7th in Germany and Poland; on January 28th in Russia and Japan; on February 5th in Estonia; on February 11th and on March 12th in Turkey.

Eventual tags: terry gilliam, charles mckeown, fantasy, johnny depp, heath ledger, jude law, colin farrell, christopher plummer, lily cole, verne troyer, tom waits, andrew garfield, jeff danna, mychael danna, nicola pecorini,

JENNIFER'S BODY - how convincingly scary can Seth from The OC be?

From the director of piss-poor sci-fi flick AEON FLUX and the writer of over-hyped teen comedy JUNO comes the US box office flop, JENNIFER'S BODY. The movie is basically a vehicle for Megan Fox of TRANSFORMERS fame. She plays a pretty high school girl called Jennifer who hangs out with a plain girl called, I kid you not, Needy (Amanda Seyfried - the girl from MAMMA MIA!). The relationship dynamic between them is sinister: Jennifer puts Needy down, always wanting to be the "pretty one" who gets the attention, whereas Needy, despite her boyfriend, clearly has a crush on Jennifer. One fateful night, the girls go to a rock concert in a local bar, where the hot, devil-worshipping, high-school virgin-seducing lead singer is played by (I'm really not joking) SETH FROM THE OC! I mean, talk about casting against type! The willing suspension of disbelief continues, as Jennifer fends off Seth's evil attentions and becomes a teenage vampire. In fairness, she doesn't burn up in sunlight TRUE BLOOD-style, which is convenient given that the film is set in high school. Still, if she doesn't seduce, eviscerate and then feed off dumb guys every once in a while her hair loses that magic lustre and she starts getting spotty.

The movie is basically a ludicrous confection. I think writer, Diablo Cody, is trying to go for the lacerating black humour of HEATHERS while referencing classic horror flicks. Problem is, Diablo Cody doesn't write High School dialogue that anyone in High School would actually say. I mean, who actually calls hot guys "salty?". And, OK, Jennifer may be a narcissistic bitch, but she's nothing on Heather Chandler, with or without blood-lust. And as for the horror scenes - notably an early vomiting scene - the best you can say is that they are unintentionally funny.

And so, this ludicrous, sporadically unintentionally funny movie, limps along to its predictable, equally ludicrous ending. One can't help but feel that Megan Fox, while laudably trying to distance herself from the slick but vapid Michael Bay franchise, has taken something of a wrong turn.

JENNIFER'S BODY played Toronto 2009 and opened earlier this year in the US, Iceland, Canada, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mexico. It opens on October 15th in the Netherlands and on October 22nd in Belgium, France, Croatia, Brazil and Estonia. It opens on October 28th in Egypt, Australia, the Czech Republic, Greece, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Denmark and Poland. It opens on November 5th in Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway and the UK. It opens in Finland on January 22nd.

Eventual tags: Karyn Kusama, Diablo Cody, Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfriend, Johnny Simmons, Adam Brody, j k simmons, amy sedaris, m david mullen,

PANDORUM - lo-rent sci-fi

I was rather looking forward to PANDORUM, having discovered a love of sci-fi watching MOON, but the movie was rather a disappointment. It's basically a lo-fi reworking of ALIEN but with less water-tight plot machinations and less memorable characters.

As the movie opens, two astronauts wake up from hyper-sleep to relieve the crew on a long space mission. Problem is, they can't contact the bridge or remember anything. Peyton (Dennis Quaid) guides Bower (Ben Foster) through the ship in a fairly spooky opening sequence, but as soon as Bower stumbles upon some other crew-members the suspense is over. The whole zombie-mutant-space-psycho concept has been done better in ALIEN for pure action and in SOLARIS for pure psych-thriller. Even MOON did the deep space paranoia/hallucination thing better.

PANDORUM was released in September in Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, the US, France, the Philippines, and Switzerland. It opened this week in the UK, Germany, South Korea, Austria, Estonia, Latvia and Taiwan. It opens next week in Sweden and Portugal, and on October 15th in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Russia, and Singapore. It opens on October 22nd in the Netherlands and Mexico and on October 30th in Poland, South Africa, and Turkey. It open s on November 6th in Spain and on November 27th in Finland. It opens on December 4th in Norway and on February 4th in Australia and New Zealand.

Eventual tags: sci-fi, horror, christian alvart, travis milloy, dennis quaid,, ben foster, cam gigandet, antje traue, cung le, eddie rouse, norman reedus, wedigo von schultendorf,

THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE - fascinating alpha female study

THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE is an absolutely fascinating documentary, regardless of whether you're interested in fashion, or have ever heard of Anna Wintour aka Nuclear Wintour, the Editor in Chief of American Vogue. Sure, viewers looking for DEVIL WEARS PRADA craziness will find some nuggets, and surprisingly, lovers of BORAT will find a self-parody in ludicrous Editor-At-Large (emphasis on the LARGE) Andre Leon Talley. But what this documentary really gives us is a very recognisable portrait of alphas fighting it out at the top of a corporate entity - and the private neuroses that underlie corporate alpha behaviour.

There are two major characters in this film but only one of them really seems to passionately care about fashion qua fantasty, beauty, art. That person is former model turned Fashion Editor Grace Coddington. It's her passion that produces those wonderful Vogue layouts, and spots the trends in advance. She came to fashion by chance, from a North Welsh mining village, and seems utterly charmed to be there, and often utterly pissed off when her artistic vision is stamped upon by Anna Wintour. You get through this film and wish you could have dinner with Grace Coddington - she seems like she'd have lots to say about a great many things.

Anna Wintour, the apparent focus of the documentary (though largely over-shadowed by Coddington) is also a fascinating, if rather tragic character. Despite great success in fashion (it's positively excruciating watching fashionistas suck up to her) she's evidently deeply insecure about how her siblings, who do worthy things in serious jobs, view her work. Even her daughter mocks the triviality of the fashion industry. She seems to have entered fashion because a highly intelligent alpha woman didn't have the choices in the 60s that they do today. She gets angry because she cares about perfection and her opinion, not about fashion per se. You can imagine that she would've been equally successful as Editor of The Times, but wasn't allowed to consider it. The documentary is surprisingly raw - brutal even - on this point. Still, I think Annna Wintour comes out of it well - or rather humanised from her Ice Queen image, even if every icy "thank you" has the subliminal Malcolm Tucker message of "Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off".

THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE played Sundance 2009. It was released earlier this year in Australia, the US, Iceland, Sweden and is currently on release in the UK, US, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Singapore, Denmark, Spain and Taiwan. It opens in Japan on November 7th.

Eventual tags: r j cutler, anna wintour, craig riche, robert richman, documentary, azin samari, sundance, grace coddington, mario testino, patrick demarchelier, oscar de la renta, vera wang, jean paul gaultier

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 3D - perhaps the most depressing kids film of all time

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 3D is a really quite shockingly depressing film. Everywhere its glance falls, the result is cynicism and hopelessness. It posits a world alarmingly like our own. Geeky girls have to get a make-over and dumb-down to get a career. Fathers and sons are incapable of communicating. Politicians are venal. Child stars coast on their early success for life. Highly qualified professionals from third world countries end up working menial jobs in the US. Worst of all, when given a chance at unlimited food by new hi-tech agribusiness, humans exercise zero self-discipline and become clinically obese, entering an ERASERHEAD like nightmare.

Now, this being a children's animated 3D movie, you can almost look through this continual self-hatred. There's some impressive 3-D animation of cheeseburgers falling from the skies, thanks to the new Real 3-D technology. And I really like the 80s pastiche production design - this a world filled with Ghetto blasters. And, admittedly, there is a final act reprieve. But this movie is basically a continual downer - depicting with an incredibly keen eye - the moral vacuum at the heart of modern consumer culture.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticising the message, but it's got to be possible to convey such material without being utterly depressing. Indeed, I know there is, because WALL-E made largely the same points, but had real heart too.

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS is on release in Egypt, Israel, Canada, the UK, the US and Japan. It opens next week in Hungary, Mexico and Poland. It opens on October 1st in Argentina, Malaysia, Singapore and Brazil. It opens on October 16th in Estonia and South Africa. It opens on October 22nd in France, the Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria. It opens on October 30th in Romania. It opens on November 26th in Australia and New Zealand. It opens on December 4th in Spain and on January 8th in Iceland. It opens on January 15th in Italy and Norway. It opens on January 20th in Belgium, Denmark and Sweden. It opens on January 28th in Germany and the Netherlands. It opens on February 5th in Finland.

Eventual tags: andy samberg, animation, anna faris, benjamin bratt, bill hader, bobb'e j thompson, bruce campbell, children, chris miller, james caan, mark mothersbaugh, mr t, neil patrick harris, phil lord