ADULTHOOD - compelling, terrifying, British drama

Writer-actor Noel Clarke steps up to direct this sequel to the terrifying urban drama KIDULTHOOD. Once again, Clarke shows us 24 hours in the life of the thieves, drug-pushers, drug-takers and thugs of contemporary West London. Once again, this film brilliantly captures the language and concerns of a section of British society painted by the Daily Mail as generic "hoodies". There are no concessions to outsiders, and one can imagine Americans finding it hard to understand the dialect.

Six years after the events of the first film, Sam is released from prison, having served time for murdering a boy called Trife. Trife's friends want Sam dead by nightfall, and he has to run around town making apologies. Sam tried to act "big" in the first film. In the second, he faces the consequences. Indeed, the whole film is really a tour of the victims of crime. For all that, this is not an overwhelmingly grim film. Adam Deacon stands out with his hysterical, quasi-Ali G depiction of Sam's nemesis, Jay. And Clarke does indulge in a rather sentimental denouement. But I was willing to forgive this because I'd so bought in to Scarlett Alice Johnson's desperately moving portrait of damaged coke-addict.

ADULTHOOD is on release in the UK.

Crimes Against Cinema: The Ten Most Piss-Poor Movies of 2007 OR Why Danny Dyer Should Be Tried as a Serial Offender

Piss-poor cinema is typically lazy, formulaic, badly produced and lacking in ambition or artistic integrity. In previous years, the chief aggressors were studio hacks pumping out weak franchises aimed squarely at the lowest common denominator. But in recent years, we've seen the co-option of the American independent cinema movement, with a certain style of "Sundance" movie feeling as jaded and derivative as the studio fodder it seeks to replace. Hands up all those sick of quirky characters, faux-naif camera-work and self-conscious music choices. So this year's Worst Of List eschews the usual commercial crap that harbours no ambition of greatness. Instead, we focus on movies that really were trying to be good but failed.

My first two picks are both low-budget British erotic revenge thrillers that reach for profundity but stumble into cheap exploitation. Both also star Cockney geezer Danny Dyer in performances that demonstrate his limited range. The first offender is STRAIGHTHEADS - in which a women is brutally raped by a couple of slack-jawed yokels in deepest darkest Worcestershire (from the look of it.) She turns into a psycho-killer and exacts a revenge that will be familiar to readers of Marlowe's Edward II. The second movie is called THE GREAT ECSTASY OF ROBERT CARMICHAEL. In this flick, a young man desensitised by popular culture and political violence brutally rapes and kills a random middle-class woman. We know this is meant to be a "serious" movie about "issues" because the psycho-teen rapist listens to classical music, just like Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. The problem is that neither film has the intellectual gravity of ORANGE or STRAW DOGS. As a result, they just feel like crass exploitation flicks.

The third film in this year's list is yet another low-budget British revenge film featuring Danny Dyer! The only slight difference with OUTLAW is that the pscho-revenge-killings are not prompted by rape. But everything else is depressingly familiar: from the incredible dialogue to the insufficient character delineation to the weak performances. Grim.

As we move away from the low-budget revenge thriller, you might think we'd be leaving territory besmirched by the inappropriately smirking face of cinema's equivalent of Victor Willis. You'd be wrong. Still, in fairness to Dyer, his typically one-note performance was by far not the worst thing about low-budget British comedy THE ALL TOGETHER. He was trumped by the arid wasteland where Comedy Used To Live.

Speaking of which, the fifth item on the list is, you guessed it, a low-budget British flick called MAGICIANS. I'm not sure how it happened but this flick took two of the funniest guys on British TV - Mitchell and Webb - and put them in a feature length film that was almost entirely devoid of laughs. There's a PhD for some poor film student in working out what goes wrong when TV comedians fail on the big screen.

Venturing outside of the UK, we had plenty of examples of formulaic American movies in the faux-naif genre. YEAR OF THE DOG is a case in point. Quirky characters up the wazoo; a cast-list stuffed with darlings of independent cinema; this film has Sundance ooozing from its pores. It's also faintly patronising toward its characters, unfunny and unable to engage its audiences in it protagonist's emotional crisis. These directors need to realise that if quirk is not balanced with genuine comedy, it's just irritating. Moreover, it's a barrier to the audience relating to the protagonist.

The seventh movie on the list proves that the Spirit of Sundance is infecting cinema as far away as New Zealand, and that Mitchell and Webb are not the only successful TV comedians to suffer an embarassingly laugh-free transition to the big screen. In EAGLE VERSUS SHARK, Jemaine Clement of the hysterically funny duo Flight of the Conchords plays a quirky geek who pisses off his long-suffering quirky geek girlfriend. Then he fights a disabled guy, which is quite funny. Then the movie ends. Weak beyond belief.

The eighth movie on my list is THE DARJEELING LIMITED. Wes Anderson is the director who can most clearly take credit for inventing the Sundance style, despite the fact that he actually makes studio films. But as his characters have become more wealthy and his reputation has become more august, his films have delivered diminishing returns. Where we had genuine emotions and love-able characters in BOTTLE ROCKET, we now have ever-more flowery production design and ever-more vacuous characters and thinner plots. I don't care about the characters in THE DARJEELING LIMITED. They are as indulged as this film is indulgent. I despair of Wes Anderson.

The ninth movie on my list is a genuine all-out fiasco called ANGEL. It's a French-produced melo-drama set in Edwardian Britian called Based on a sappy sub-Mills and Boon novel by Liz Taylor, the movie is about a wilful authoress who manipulates everyone around her. Director Francois Ozon will no doubt argue that the over-acting, absurd dialogue, fantastical costumes and sets, are all intentional. But a pastiche is interesting for only so long, and this film certainly does not sustain our interest. I only hope that talented actress Romola Garai's reputation survives.

Note that, despite their failure, I still have more respect for these nine movies than piss-poor studio films that don't even try to do anything different. A noble failure is better than a mediocre, banal auto-flick. Having said that, I can't help mention a string of uninspired shameless cash-ins from our friends in the West - namely HOSTEL PART II, HANNIBAL RISING, BECAUSE I SAID SO, GOAL 2 LIVING THE DREAM or the most piss-poor studio films of the year: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END and SPIDERMAN 3. Of all these movies, PIRATES 3 must take the biscuit as the example par excellence of all the traits that characterise flabby, over-busy franchise films. Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I give you: Ikea Knightley's and Orloondo Bland's* wooden central performances; a plot so convoluted you could catch fish in it; the indulgence of Johnny Depp's ego; the inability of the screen-writers to stick the rules of the fantasy genre that they set up in the first film; the reliance on running and shouting rather than genuine chemistry between the romantic leads or genuine tension in the adventure story plot. *TM BBC Radio 5 Live, Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode on film.

THE ALL TOGETHER shite

Shite comedy from debut writer-director Gavin Claxton. Stars Martin "The Office" Freeman as exactly the same character he always plays - the bewildered straight guy amidst a sea of kooks. He's out for the day producing shite TV for people with no sense of humour (oh, the irony!) Meanwhile, his hapless house-mate, Bob, has randomly let in a couple of gangsters along with the estate agents. Corey Johnson plays Mr Gaspardi like he's spoofing Liotta, badly. Although, in fairness, his entire role consists of emptying his bowels while whistling The Star Spangled Banner. Danny Dyer sinks even further into self-parody as his foul-mouthed spivvy side-kick, Dennis. The whole thing is weak beyond belief, with the exception of Velibor Topic, who plays the housemate with genuine comic timing.

After STRAIGHTHEADS, OUTLAW, THE GREAT ECSTASY OF ROBERT CARMICHAEL and this piss-poor alleged comedy, one wonders what further cinematic crime Danny Dyer will be inflicting upon the British public this year. Frankly, his only hope for career rehab is persuading someone to make SEVERANCE 2.

THE ALL TOGETHER is on release in the UK, god help us.

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.

Thoughts prompted by THE GREAT ECSTASY OF ROBERT CARMICHAEL

THE GREAT ECSTASY OF ROBERT CARMICHAEL is a film whose brave ambition and memorable cinematography are skewered by poor acting, crass socio-politics and insufficiently drawn characters.

The ambition lies in writer-director Thomas Clay's willingness to grapple with the big socio-political issues of our time in a manner that is brutally explicit and uncompromising. He sets his film in a desolate British sea-side town on the eve of the current Iraqi war. Teenagers hang around in town squares with nothing to do but swear, drink and wait for the rozzers to move them on. These scenes are shot with a spare, still beauty that belies the substance of the plot. Fuelled by Ecstasy from a newly released ex-con, they jump from mildly anti-social behaviour to gang rape and murder with a speed that undermines the movie's credibility, to my mind.

Other flaws range from the trivial to the profound. The acting is uneven, with a particularly amateurish, over-acted performance from Michael Howe as Jonathan Abbott. Danny Dyer - the only marquee name actor in the film - is largely wasted in this comic book self-parody of an ex-con geezer.

A more serious flaw is that the profound socio-political point that Thomas Clay is trying to make is rather wrong-headed in content and overly simplistic in the manner in which it is made. Clay wants to draw a parallel between the nihilism and amorality of the teenagers and the Iraqi war. But I rather think that they are two very different things: the difficulty with Blair and Bush was not so much casual nihilistic amorality as a well-thought out, well-intentioned, and yet still utterly vain, disingenuous and misapplied morality. But even if we grant Clay his moral parallel, the manner in which it is made is still crass - simply having a news item on the Iraqi war in the foreground of a gang rape. Hardly, a sophisticated take on the situation.

Perhaps Clay would argue that sophistication is besides the point - that his very aim is to be brutal, heavy-handed, and shocking to the point where even today's desensitised viewer will be affected. Hence the Kurbrickian contrast of classical music and explicitly shot, exploitative violence. He meant it to be exploitative, so that's okay then? My problem with this is that the final rape scene is so egregious as to be self-negating. I didn't feel disgust at how brutal society or war can be, or at how desensitised I had become. I felt appalled at the crass attempt to manipulate the audience and the fact that this explicit scene was serving no greater argument than the rather obvious: haven't we all gotten too used to casual violence?

THE GREAT ECSTASY OF ROBERT CARMICHAEL is available on DVD.

STRAIGHTHEADS is an embarassment

STRAIGHTHEADS is a film that attempts to sit in the rape-revenge-thriller genre. It's a genre that features some of the most emotionally powerful, socially provocative and technically pioneering movies in cinema history. From STRAW DOGS to THELMA AND LOUISE to IRREVERSIBLE, movies in this genre have confronted the audience with brutal imagery, shaking us out of our comfortable lives. The implication of these films is that violence is random and that, in the final analysis, we can only turn to ourselves for justice. Most frightening: we are all capable of violence if forced to it. Given all this, a rape-revenge thriller should be a harrowing, depressing experience.

STRAIGHTHEADS, however, is a joke. Literally. You laugh when you should be outraged. It almost plays like a parody, and with Danny Dyer of SEVERANCE fame in the Dustin Hoffman/Vincent Cassel role, I found myself wondering whether it was MEANT to be funny. But a cursory perusal of the production notes suggests that, no, we the audience are meant to see this as some profound psychological drama. In fairness, Gillian Anderson does play it straight and is fairly convincing until she does a rather absurd thing with a shotgun.

So, who do we blame for this fiasco? First and foremost, the writer-director Dan Reed. His script is under-written and psychologically implausible. Would Anderson's character really do what she does in the final sequence given everything that has gone before? Wouldn't Heffer have simply driven off with Sophia rather than tell her to run off and then run back in? Why did Anderson's character have an austere change of clothes when she and Dyer's character were driving back to London? This raises an interesting point about the film's truncated run-time. I suspect that the film has been under the knife and that the character arcs have suffered as a result. At least, that would be one excuse.

Also, as a side criticism I wonder at the casting of Anderson and Dyer. Like I said, Anderson is great at playing trauma, but she is far less convincing as the sexually confident career woman who picks Dyer up. Playing these sorts of roles takes the devil may care confidence of a Sharon Stone or Monica Bellucci. Anderson falls short of the mark, and the sex-scenes with Dyer are embarassingly unerotic. There's simply no chemistry. And as for Dyer, perhaps the lad is just too funny for his own good. I am yet to be convinced of his ability to play serious drama.

So, a pretty crap movie, unless you watch it for laughs, which would be in pretty bad taste. Still, many thanks to Darkmatt for the invite!

STRAIGHTHEADS goes on release in the UK on April 27th.

SEVERANCE - oustanding Brit horror/comedy

The concept of this movie is simplicity itself. A bunch of people who work for a nasty military defence contractor go on a team-building paint-balling exercise in Hungary. But they end up in an ex-mental institution where a bunch of crazed ex-Soviet soldiers are after them. Cue lots of running through woods, torture scenes and Hungarian strippers with machine guns. I don't know how newbie director Chris Smith pulled it off, but SEVERANCE is both very funny and very scary (in a sort of sub J-horror way.) And, no, this isn't a parody of horror in the manner of the SCARY MOVIE series. It's a genuine balls-cut slasher movie horror that makes HARD CANDY look like a walk in the park. And it's proper comedy too, anchored by great comic actors like Tim 'Lord Percy' McInnerny and Danny Dyer. Go check it out!

SEVERANCE is on release in the UK. It opens in France on October 18th 2006 and in Germany on November 30th.