SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN

There's a lot to love and a lot that doesn't work in this radical new adaptation of the Snow White fairy-tale from debut feature director Rupert Sanders.  

The stuff to love centres around the characterisation of the wicked stepmother, Ravenna.  She's written and played as a deeply insecure, emotionally scarred woman who has had to use her beauty to survive in a misogynistic patriarchy where women are sold as chattel and discarded when their looks fade.  There's a superb scene early on, when she's addressing the mirror on the wall, where we move to the perspective of her brother, and we're not sure if the Queen is just imagining it all.  Charlize Theron is absolutely stunning in the role - both in terms of the costume design and her performance. And fans of Games of Thrones will forever regret that she wasn't given the role of Cersei Lannister, more of which later. I was so involved in the story of Ravenna, that in the movie's final battle scene, I was willing her to win. She reminded me of Edmund in Lear, with his radical, demonic argument for meritocracy against the old established order.

Other things to love in this movie? As one might expect given Sanders background in commercials, the visuals are beautifully shot.  Indeed, one of the strengths and weaknesses of the film is that the narrative often feels like a weak excuse to get us from one beautifully imagined background to another.  The motivations for the moves, the narrative drive, seems secondary to the indulgently imagined costumes and scenery.

The tragedy is that all this beauty and Theron's wonderful performance is wasted upon a movie that is poorly paced, and plays like a second-class echo of better imagined fantasy worlds, created by George R R Martin, C S Lewis and Tolkien.  The character of Ravenna, complete with her incestuous relationship with her brother Finn (a marvellously creepy Sam Spruell) is straight out of House Lannister. As is the visual use of sigils and banner-men.  Snow White's long journey through different worlds before she finally faces off against Ravenna is straight out of the Lord of the Rings, with the dwarves recast as hobbits and Bob Hoskins' blind seer as Gandalf. And finally, Snow White (Kristen Stewart) has been recast as an Aslan like figure, reciting the Lord's Prayer in full (surely a first for modern teen cinema?), exhibiting healing powers over man and nature, and finally not even sealing the denouement with a kiss - rather standing alone, in power, neuter, a Virgin Queen.

This, of course, brings us to the weakest aspect of the film - its romantic core. Stewart's resentful mopey screen persona is ill-fitted to an active, action heroine who must imspire a people to revolt.  Chris Hemsworth as the Huntsman is more charismatic but suffers from an unhappy attempt at a Scottish (?) accent.  It's not as bad as Russell Crowe's attempt at regional English in ROBIN HOOD, but it's still unfortunately reminiscent of Mike Myers in SHREK. Still, the two young actors have a convincing rapport, which is more than can be said for Snow White and her aristocratic childhood sweetheart William (Sam Claflin).Claflin's character is so thinly written - his performance so uninspired - the potential love triangle so quickly dismissed - that what should be a powerful love story is reduced to a whimper.

One can only conclude that the movie is irredeemably let down by a poor script from Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock - THE BLIND SIDE, and Hossein Amini - DRIVE. It's just too derivative, too thinly developed, too lacking in narrative drive.  And worst of all, they try to include an emotionally manipulative death scene that's utterly unearned. 

P.S. Why does no-one wear helmets in battle?  Stannis Baratheon I'm looking at you.

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN is on release everywhere except: Cambodia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Finland, India, Norway and Sweden, where it opens on June 8th; Belgium, France, Switzerland, Russia and Japan where it opens on June 13th; in Australia, New Caledonia and New Zealand where it opens on June 21st and in Italy where it opens on July 11th.

iPad Round-Up 5 - MADE IN DAGHENHAM

History is written in broad brush-strokes, with the industrial revolution depicted as a battle between capital and workers.  But as an early scene in MADE IN DAGENHAM shows, by the late 1960s - a period we can now see as the dying breath of the British union movement - both capital and workers had settled into cosy set-pieces and horse-trading with white men on either side.   In this film those roles are played by Kenneth Cranham as the Union boss and Rupert Graves as the Ford boss. They are meeting to discuss equal pay for women, and both presume that the women's token representative, played by Sally Hawkins, should simply shut up and let the men decide what's what. That calcified system was ultimately dismantled by a woman - Margaret Thatcher - but she only got the political mandate to do so after the country had been brought to its knees in the mid-70s.  This movie takes place earlier, but still gives us three women bucking the system.  The first - our heroine - is Sally Hawkins' Rita - is a machinist working in Ford's Dagenham factory. She finds empathy from her boss's trophy wife/domestic slave, Lisa (Rosamund Pike) and support from Miranda Richardson's brilliantly spiky Barbara Castle. 

The film is a very easy watch, glorying in its period costumes and kitschy interiors, and rarely showing the true  hardships of a strike. It's all rather day-glo and, worst of all words, "feel-good". Still, insofar as it does make you feel good while teaching you something about the fight for equal pay (a fight still not yet won), that can't really be a bad thing, can it? That said, one might have hoped for a movie painted in less broad strokes and with less of a simplistic moral stance.

MADE IN DAGENHAM played Toronto 2010 and opened in Norway, the UK, Finland, Israel, the USA and Italy last year. It opened earlier this year in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, France, Portugal, Greece, Singapore, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Mexico, Denmark and Turkey. It is available to rent and own.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL - good intentions under-cut by cheap tricks

Bullied as a poor child, Ebeneezer Scrooge has turned his back on love and become a miserly, mean old man, persecuting his good-hearted clerk Bob Cratchett and his kindly nephew in turn. On the eve of Christmas, in smoggy, lamp-lit, London, he is visited by the ghost of his old business partner Marley, and warned to transform his ways. Scrooge is then visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, who show him what he has turned his back upon, how horribly he is viewed by others, and the lonely death that awaits him. He awakes on Christmas morning a changed man, having had his heart melted by Cratchett's young crippled son Tiny Tim, and the shit scared out of him by the hellish Ghost of Christmas Future.

So goes the iconic Christmas tale from the author who was simultaneously England's greatest social critic and the writer of some of our most sentimental nonsense. To that end, Dickens got right to the heart of the Christian message as telegraphed by St Paul: one part tears and mercy; one part hell and brimstone. Accordingly, his books veer between rapier-like, courageous social critique and absurd depictions of innocents and children. The villainous Fascination Fledgby goes hand in hand with the unreal Oliver Twist. The superbly drawn sexual psychodrama of Bradley Headstone stands in contrast with the bizarrely anemic and oddly-motivated John Harmon. Dickens pulls this off because he is a genius.

The sharp contrasts inherent in Dickens can trip up those who try to adapt him for the screen. Oftentimes, a simply crazy and irreverent attitude is best. Thus, you can't not enjoy A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL and I even have a soft-spot for the Gordon Gekko-transposed Bill Murray vehicle SCROOGED.

By contrast, Robert Zemeckis' new Jim Carrey-CGI extravaganza is far more faithful to the source-text and the popular idea of how Dickens should look. His film is all smoky chimneys, candle-wax and handsome whiskers. You simply can't fault the detail of the design, the texture of every surface, and the believable rendering of human emotion on every face. In general, I loved the production design. Indeed, the only character I thought really didn't work was the Ghost of Christmas Present, partly because of the look of the character, partly because the trick of looking through the floor to new scenes didn't quite get the perspective right, and partly because Jim Carrey voice-work didn't do much for me.

Zemeckis tries to pull off the Dickensian double of horror and twee emotion. Early scenes with a ghostly door-knocker and bells-tolling had little kids squirming and the Ghost of Christmas Future and his Black Riders are absolutely terrifying - and so they should be. Jim Carrey's Scrooge looks genuinely horrified and makes a convincing turnaround. I also liked the fact that after every really scary scene, the movie had some light-hearted physical humour to break the tension. Unfortunately, I thought Zemeckis didn't pull off the emotional scenes. The emphasis was somehow all wrong, especially at the end. Schmaltz requires that we see Scrooge and Tiny Tim gathered round a resplendent turkey. But in this adaptation, we just see Scrooge pack a turkey into a carriage and then head over to his nephew. Zemeckis definitely missed a trick with that one.

Still, even with the failure with the second ghost and the missed-trick on the ending, this could've been, on balance, a rather good film, were it not for Zemeckis' fatal flaw: he just can't resist having his characters whoosh through the skies in 3-D glory. Yes, it looks cool. Yes, the kids might love it. But what on earth has it got to do with Dickens? And why on earth would you spend so much time creating an authentic and textured depiction of Dickensian life only to under-cut the whole thing with some cheap, vulgar, hyper-modern stunts? Poor show.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL is on global release.

Random DVD round up 4: THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY - Hubris, Nemesis.

The LONG GOOD FRIDAY isn't quite a pantheon movie, purely because it's early 1980s saxophone-heavy score has dated badly. But to all other respects, this British gangster film is an absolute classic. And in view of Sir Bob Hoskins' role in last weekend's opener, DOOMSDAY, I decided to revisit the film that made his name as a screen actor.

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY was directed by John Mackenzie and written by Barrie Keefe, both of whom had, like Mike Leigh, cut their teeth producing TV plays for the high quality British series "Play for Today". With THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, they got the chance to aim for something altogether more violent, explicit and tricksy.

The movie is set in the East End of London on the cusp of the Thatcherite era when Britain dragged itself out of economic squalor by any means necessary. Gangster Harold Shand epitomises this hubristic desire to make good. Unsatisfied with running the East End, he wants to redevelop the East End partly to give something back to the Ordinaries (as Sir Alan B'Stard might say) but mostly to rake in the phat cash.

Harold has a boat and a posh girlfriend (Helen Mirren) to complete his social aspirant pose. ("The Yanks love snobbery. They really feel they've arrived in England if the upper class treats 'em like shit") He even has some American backers that he's wining and dining over Easter weekend. ("It's Good Friday. Have a Bloody Mary!") But the deal turns sour as his businesses and people start getting targeted by the IRA. ("You don't crucify people! Not on Good Friday!") Just watch Bob Hoskins reactions when he realises that his best mate has been assassinated. It's all there - grief, vulnerability, rage, violence, incomprehension. The rest of the film sees Harold try to uncover who's after him and why, indulging in some vicious torture on the way. It all ends in a plot resolution that is audacious in its nihilism and absurdity and a five minute close up that shows Bob Hoskins at his best and a director brave enough to try it. Pure class.

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY premiered at London 1980. It is available on DVD. Apparently the rights to a remake have been bought and Paul W S Anderson (of RESIDENT EVIL fame) is slated to direct.

DOOMSDAY - Mad MacMax!

DOOMSDAY is a modern version of those creaky dystopian disaster movies like MAD MAX.

In 2008, a deadly virus starts killing thousands of people in Scotland. The British government panics, rebuilds Hadrian's Wall and leaves the Scots to die, thus containing the virus. But the internationally community shuns England for its callous actions and, thirty years later, in an over-populated London, The Reaper threatens to break out again. So the government sends a crack team into Glasgow to capture the immune survivors that will provide a cure.

The movie starts well. Dystopian England is suitably rain-swept and filthy. Bob Hoskins' Chief of Police only has to speak in his grainy, cockney accent and we know we're in for a rough time. He dispatches a skin-tight suited and booted Rhona Mitra to Scotland to hunt for the cure. So begins some cool action sequences with tooled-up government agents fighting off retro-futuristic savages Thunderdome-stylee. Craig Conway, in particular, is superb as the gonzo rebel leader, serving up flame-grilled soldier to his slavering followers.

Problem is, the movie shifts down a gear for the middle sequence in which the soldiers flee Glasgow in pursuit of the Colonel Kurtz-like surviver, Doctor Kane. Despite featuring the legendary Malcolm McDowell, lording it over a re-created Medieval court of the immune, these scenes seem a bit calm and, well, dull, after the Glaswegian punk carnage. After the flame throwers and grenades it all goes a bit lo-fi Robin Hood. Even a decent chase scene featuring a gorgeous Bentley doesn't quite restore the movie to its earlier brilliance.

So it's a bit of a mixed bag. I DO like a film that'll show a bunny rabbit being blown up and a man spit-roasted for kicks. But the thin attempt at political critique and the weedy hint of a love story were weak beyond belief.

DOOMSDAY was released earlier this year in the US, Greece, Cyprus, Russia, Thialand, France, the Philippines, Kuwait, Icleand, Poland, Egypt, the Netherlands and Singapore. It is currently on release in the UK, Belgium and Norway. It goes on release later in May in Hong Kong and Finland. It foes on release in June in Germany, South Korea and Slovakia and in July in Japan and Spain.

OUTLAW - The Return of Auto-Bean

OUTLAW is a piss-poor low-budget British revenge drama from the director of the infinitely better FOOTBALL FACTORY, Nick Love. Comparing it to similar movies in this genre, OUTLAW has none of the intelligence, black humour, sheer terror or narrative coherence of the brilliant DEAD MAN'S SHOES. Indeed, the best thing I can say about OUTLAW is that, as low-budget revenge dramas go, it's at least significantly better than STRAIGHTHEADS.

The production values are all fine. I liked the use of the Canary Wharf location and the film looks handsome enough despite being filmed on DV. But in every other sense it fails. The premise is fine: a bunch of men from different walks of life are united by their disappointment in the ability of the Criminal Justice system to avenge them and so become vigilantes. The problem is that the reasons for which these men turn to vigilante crime are weak in the majority of cases. A barrister's pregnant wife is killed by the local gang boss. A university student has been brutally beaten up for no reason by a bunch of vicious chavs. Fair enough motives so far. But the other vigilantes are there because they're getting picked on at work, their wife is having an affair or because they are plain nuts. Not a great start.

But even if we grant the screen-writer his original character motivations, he isn't consistent as to their motivations and actions as the movie progresses. Characters who feel nervous about stringing up a murdering paedophile one moment, feel quite happy to gun down innocent coppers the next. It makes no sense. Indeed, the ending is the most disapointing part of all: a movie that had just about maintained some tension and the mature feel of a thriller suddenly reverted to an immature, facile, motive-less gun-battle.

Perhaps the inconsistencies and insufficient character motivations in the plot are responsible for the weak performances from the likes of Sean Bean, Rupert Friend and Bob Hoskins. Danny Dyer has another opportunity to display his limited range with genuine dramatic material. It's a shame because he is a charming comedic actor: he is wasted here.

OUTLAW is on release in the UK.

HOLLYWOODLAND - great performances mask a structural mess

HOLLYWOODLAND purports to be a movie about the truth behind the apparent suicide of George Reeves. Reeves was TV's first Superman. The problem with the movie is not so much that it doesn’t tell you who did it. After all, it’s touted as one of Hollywood’s great unsolved mysteries. The problem is that actually, bluntly, I just didn’t give a shit. And the reason why I didn’t give a shit had nothing to do with the acting – which varied from fine to brilliant. It was to do with the way in which the writer and director had chosen to frame his story.

Ben Affleck has won awards for his performance as George Reeves, both as Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. I think that this confusion as to whether or not his character is at the centre of the film is indicative of the fact that the writer and director really haven't made up their minds as to what the focus of the movie is. Is it on the charismatic and tragic George Reeves? It’s certainly a compelling story. We meet him as a slightly out-of-shape actor – a real gent – but down on his luck. He aspires to take on serious parts in quality films but he can’t get a break. He ends up starring in a cheap kids serial just to earn some cash. But, almost to his embarrassment, the serial turns out to be a huge success – to a nation of kids, he is Superman. Reeves drinks heavily and rues his cheap fame. Typecast, he can’t break into serious films. He’s also railing against the possessive hold of his sugar-mama – the wife (Diane Lane) of the VP of MGM (Bob Hoskins) – and takes up with a young brazen actress from New York – “to make him feel young”. It’s a tragic story of a man who, despite success, is not satisfied that he has lived up to his potential – and Ben Affleck portrays his inner turmoil well. It’s his best performance in years – not because Affleck went through a phase of being a lesser actor, but because he chose terrible parts.

Thing is, as fascinating as this story is, we never get a handle on it because it’s essentially a partial story told in flashbacks – little vignettes uncovered by a private detective investigating George Reeves’ alleged suicide. Half of me wishes the director had just used a conventional biopic format and let Reeves’ story have some time to breathe, but the problem is that the over-laid detective story is in some ways the movie's greatest asset. This is because as much as it destracts from George Reeves it contains the stunning performance of Adrien Brody as the private detective, Louis Simo. Simo is hired by Reeves’ mother to investigate the alleged murder. Brody’s performance is pure charisma – he plays Simo as a guy with intelligence, charm and an eye to the main chance. But he’s more than just a natty line in sports-coat and smart line for the press: he’s a good man. Although he starts off on the make – drumming up a little press to keep the mother’s cheques coming, he is genuinely aghast when he realises there might be some truth to her claims. He genuinely wants to protect his girlfriend from the mess and seems to have a real need to get some closure on the case. You sense that the director wants to make a big deal about Louis’ relationship with his young son as well. I can see why the director wants to do this – it helps flesh out Louis’ character as well as show the modern audience just how popular Reeves was with the kids and just how much his death affected them. This plot strand is interesting and well acted – but once again, it just distracts from the main story and further confuses the issue of just who’s story this is.

One final point brings me back to the issue of the unsolved crime. Like I said, this didn’t bother me too much, but it certainly makes HOLLYWOODLAND a different kettle of fish to, say, CHINATOWN and LA CONFIDENTIAL, both of which have Byzantine plots that do eventually resolve themselves. By contrast, in HOLLYWOODLAND, the alleged murder is more of a MacGuffin to allow the director to explore two interesting characters and the impact of Hollywood’s latent corruption and greed on their lives. Of course, CHINATOWN and LA CONFIDENTIAL are also brilliant examinations of the cruelty and decadence at the heart of LA and they do this stuff far better than HOLLYWOODLAND, which deals with corruption on a domestic rather than systemic level.

I am pleased to have watched Hollywoodland and can recommend it purely on the grounds of production design, Adrien Brody’s outstanding performance and some decent play from Diane Lane and Ben Affleck. But Brody aside, I can’t quite understand the Oscar buzz. This week alone I have seen more impressive performances in movies like SHORTBUS, INFAMOUS and BUENOS AIRES 1977. Moreover, performances aside, in terms of narrative structure I think this movie is a real mess.

HOLLYWOODLAND played Venice 2006 where Ben Affleck won Best Actor. It opened in the US in September and in Italy in October. HOLLYWOODLAND opens in the UK on December 1st and in the Netherlands, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Belgium and France in February 2007. It opens in Australia and Germany on March 15th.

STAY - visually stylish but frustrating psychological thriller

STAY is a psycholgical thriller. It is set in modern-day New York and stars Ewan MacGregor as a psychiatrist, Dr Sam Foster. When Foster's colleague suffers a nervous breakdown he takes over one of her patients - a twenty-year old art student called Henry Letham. Letham is threatening to commit suicide on his twenty-first birthday and Foster is desperate to stop him. The problem is that the more Foster investigates Letham's life the more he feels he is losing grip on reality.

The movie is visually stylish and uses jarring edits and dissolves in a clever manner to unsettle the viewer and convey Foster's increasingly tenuous grip on reality. The movie also features a talented cast, including Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling and Bob Hoskins. It is directed by the man who helmed FINDING NEVERLAND and written by the man behind 25th HOUR. But despite the incredibly impressive look and pedigree of the film, I found STAY to be a noble failure.

I love movies that rely on a clever twist or have an unsettling tone, but in this case so few pointers are given to the audience that the viewing experience becomes frustrating, alienating and finally, plain dull. When the final twist is revealed everything does make sense, but short of going back to re-view the movie it is hard to see what the cinema-goer will gain from the overall experience.

STAY was released in the US in October 2005 and is currently on release in Germany, Italy and the UK. It opens in Austria on April 28th 2006 and in France on July 26th.

MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS an offering for the export market

MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS is a bit of harmless fluff based on a true story that one suspects is somewhat more gritty. It is World War Two and those nasty nasty Huns are dropping bombs on London. How are we to keep up our morale? Why, by making a nice strong cup of tea and taking our clothes off! Spiffing. Mrs Henderson, Judi Dench in self-parody mode, is a rich aristo. widow who buys Soho's Windmill Theatre only to discover that there is little cash in serious plays. So she decides to bring French style buck-naked Vaudeville to the West End. The Lord Chancellor is a bit concerned, but Mrs. Henderson cunningly points out that if the naked girls stand still, rather than jiggling their proverbial "bits", then it is ART not SMUT.This is in essence the entire movie. Nice English girls get kit off. The only other point of note is that Bob Hoskins gets his kit off. However, I am hard pressed to discover what kind of audience THAT prospect would attract to the movie theatre.

This is a harmless, eccentric and mildly amusing film about harmless, eccentric and mildly amusing Brits and I imagine that it is designed largely for the export/costume drama market. Don't look for any deep insight about living in London in the Blitz or about landmark legal decisions on freedom of expression. Like a nice cup of tea, it is vaguely warming and heartening, but the effects wear off after about 10 minutes.

MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS went on general release in the UK on the 25th November 2005. It goes on limited release in New York and LA on the 9th December and on limited general release on Christmas Day. It hits France on the 6th January and Germany unaccountably late on the 23rd March 2006.