GAMER - sporadically interesting Running Man remake

GAMER is a remake of the seminal Schwarzenegger sci-fi flick, RUNNING MAN. It's set in a dystopian future, where sex and violence are commercialised in computer games, allowing obese couch potatoes to fuck beautiful women and teenagers to control ultra-violent prisoners in live-action shoot-em-ups. Why have a virtual avatar when you can remote control actual people? The game is controlled by billionaire Ken Castle (a typically mischievous Michael C Hall) and peopled by set-up con Kable (Gerard Butler) and his wife turned hooker Angie (Amber Valetta). As in the original flick, the action really takes off when the "running man", Kable, escapes the game, aided by revolutionaries (Ludcaris, Aaron Yoo and Alison Lohman).

Despite all the CGI, GAMER doesn't have the visceral thrills of the action sequences in RUNNING MAN - for a start, there are no ridiculous baddies - remember the ice-hockey guy with the chainsaw?! In fact, the action sequences were pretty dull, which has to count as a big negative in a summer action movie. It was more interesting seeing how the film-makers had updated the dystopian future to capture the full weirdness of modern gaming. In terms of style, I was pleased to see Neveldine calm down the frenetic style of the CRANK movies, delivering a film with a nice bleak, almost monochrome look, while retaining their ability to mesh computer graphics and standard live-action film. I also like the fact that this film has more layers to it than the CRANK films - simultaneously critiquing and glorying in the voyeurism and nastiness of modern entertaining culture. And let me not forgot, a song-and-dance sequence in which Michael C Hall plays to Sammy Davis Junior's I've Got You Under My Skin. Worth the price of entry alone!

GAMER is on release in Greece, Canada, Finland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the USA, Belgium, Estonia, France, the Philippines, Russia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia, the UK, the Czech Republic and Austria. It opens next week in South Korea and Bulgaria. It opens in October in Brazil, the Netherlands, Iceland, Croatia and Lithuania. It opens on January 7th in Germany.

London Film Festival Day 5 - NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST

NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST is a charming romantic comedy about two music geeks who fall for each other over a night running around New York City looking for a secret gig. Yes, they both have toxic ex-es, but finally they stop being cute and get down to it so that we can all go home, our cockles warmed and what-not. It's not unentertaining, although the laughs are thinner than they should be, way too dependent on gross-out toilet humour, and the romance is incredibly forced. Such are the pitfalls of the genre.

NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST is also a movie that, upon consideration, I think I despise. Everything about it is contrived to suck up whatever droplets of cool remain in the hipster movement and spit them out in bland commercial form for the mass market. I knew it was over for the indie rock movement when THE O.C. started merchandising mix CDs of Modest Mouse. This movie tries to ride the crest of the wave that combined the runaway success of JUNO and VAMPIRE WEEKEND but crashes on the roadblock of its own hypocrisy.

The movie opens with animated credits that are so desperate to be this year's JUNO it's painful to watch. And then we dive into the meet cute. Michael Cera plays the typical Michael Cera character - Nick - a nice guy geek who's being treated woefully by his domineering girlfriend (the disturbingly baby-faced Alexis Dziena). He makes her ueber-cool mix-CDs. She tosses them. Her friend Norah (Kat Dennings) picks them up. When Norah finally meets Nick his gay best friends put her in a wonderbra and wish her luck. We then get an hour of nonsense (but no actual discussion of cool bands, natch!) Clearly these characters are designed to be together and their ex'es are so godawful that there's no dramatic tension at all. When they do get together we get the most absurd sex scene in recent cinema. It takes place in a recording studio where Nick has the temerity to accuse Norah's dad of being a "hippie turned yuppie peddling...to the mass market."

I couldn't have said it better myself. Especially when you consider that the guy who directed this film started out making genuinely gritty indie movies like RAISING VICTOR VARGAS.

NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST played Toronto and London 20078. It is currently on release in the US and opens in Iceland on December 5th. It opens on January 22nd in Australia and Germany; it opens in the UK on January 30th; in opens on February 13th in Italy; on February 20th in Finland and Sweden; on February 27th in Denmark; on March 4th in Belgium, Egypt, Argentina and the Netherlands and on March 11th in France.

THE WACKNESS - a goofy story about stoned losers

THE WACKNESS moves at the lackadaisical langurous pace of the stoners it portrays. Essentially, it's a coming-of-age movie, dressed up as original thanks to its early 1990s setting and its cast of narco losers. For all that, it's still as charmingly goofy as its hero, and despite the occasional ennuis, who doesn't love a story about a broken heart. Josh Peck plays Luke Shapiro, a resourceful kid who sells weed to the popular kids and frets about his parent's financial difficulties. When all the cool kids leave town for the summer he gets his chance with a bored popular girl called Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby). She is genuinely charmed by the guy - as is the audience - and they hang out - but everyone knows it won't last. Shapiro is shepherded through this pivotal experience by his similarly messed-up shrink come client, Dr Squires, who happens to be Stephanie's dad. Squires is basically an infantile pot-head with a failed marriage to a similarly messed up wife (Famke Janssen). The overall message seems to be that life is harsh and messy and that you have to find love and friendship while you can and when you can. It's testament to the Jonathan Levine's script and Ben Kingsley's acting that these goof-ball characters ring true and that we care about them. And after all, they're far nicer, and their own way, far more in touch with reality than the popular kids or the "normal" parents..... 

THE WACKNESS played Sundance where it won the audience award. It was released in the US earlier this uear and is currently playing in the UK. It opens in France on September 24th.

21 - far less interesting than you might have hoped

21 is a movie about a bunch of MIT math geeks who go to Vegas, count cards, make a pile of money, but then incur the ire of their svengali-like professor and a Vegas security guard. And no, I'm not spoiling the plot. The trailer does that already, and even if it didn't, you'd figure out all the plot twists well before they occured. The movie evidently wants to dazzle us with a story of an improbable rise to wealth and equally precipitous fall; it wants us to enjoy the vicarious ride from geek to cool. Let's all buy in to that Ocean's Eleven glamour! Sadly, it doesn't live up to its billing. Like I said before, this is mainly because the story - as bizarre as it is - simply isn't interesting enough to hold our attention for two hours. How many times can we really get interested in a geek becoming popular, being mean to his childhood friends, losing everything and learning what "really matters"? The narrative arc contains no elements of surprise and the supporting characters are insufficiently drawn. Added to this, beyond Jim Sturgess in the title role, the rest of the cast was pretty unimpressive, not least Kevin Spacey in one of his trademark over-bearing, hammy performances.

21 is already on release in the US, Israel, Brazil and Germany and opens this weekend in the UK, Greece, Iceland, Spain and Sweden. It opens on the 17th in Belgium, Argentina, Russia, Estonia and Italy. It opens on April 25th in Turkey. It opens in May in Portugal, Australia, Finland and Japan. It opens in June n France, Singapore, Mexico, Norway and the Netherlands.

Overlooked DVD of the month - ROCKET SCIENCE

ROCKET SCIENCE is an alpha-gamma movie. Or rather, it's a gamma-alpha movie. The opening sequence was a blatant rip-off of Wes Anderson. A Max Fisher-style character, complete with bow-tie and preppie confidence, is speaking at a school debate. This is over-laid with a self-conscious, portentious narration by an actor called Dan Cashman who sounds just like Alec Baldwin in the opening sequence of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. As we moved onto the meat of the movie, I still felt wary about the movie's derivative feel. The sound-track, shooting style, dead-pan comedy and focus on eccentricity and quirk all had me bewailing the pervasiveness and same-ness of modern American independent movies.

The good news is that once the movie settles down it becomes really rather wonderful. Writer-director Jeffrey Blitz paints a convincing picture, evidently drawing on his own experience, of a sweet, intelligent boy who can't express himself because of his stammer. Rather improbably, the school's star debater picks him to join the debating team. Our hero is thus forced to find his voice.

What I love about ROCKET SCIENCE is that the director doesn't make it a conventional triumphing-over-adversity movie. There's no magical denouement where our hero takes to the stage and, thanks to some little trick, becomes the most articulate and eloquent debater in the state. But he does find his voice in another sense: he becomes confident - active rather than passive - and while still puzzled about life and love ("it shouldn't be rocket science"), more engaged with it.

ROCKET SCIENCE played Sundance 2007, where Jeffrey Blitz won the Directing (Drama) Award. It went on limited release in the UK and US last autumn. It is now available on DVD.

DISTURBIA - Hitchock meets The OC

Oh, the marketing genius that combines the conceptual hook of a Hitchcock film with the pop-cultural references and hormonal teen angst of The OC! As distasteful as this REAR WINDOW remake may seem to us old cinephiles, Grinch-like critics are missing the point. Even as diluted and dumbed-down as this teen-thriller is, isn't it better that teens are getting their rocks off to Hitchcock-lite than to woeful spoofs like EPIC MOVIE?!

Clearly not one for adults or people who have any familiarity with the original, DISTURBIA is a reasonably well put together movie for the target demographic. Shia LaBeouf plays another troubled teen - he witnessed his father's accidental death and punched out a school teacher. As a result, he's under house arrest and resorts to spying on his suburban neighbours when mum (Carrie-Anne Moss) cancels cable. Lucky for him, the neighbours include hottie, Sarah Roehmer and for the first hour DISTURBIA plays like a goofy teen dating movie, complete with a charmingly inept side-kick played by the scene-stealing Aaron Yoo. In the final furlong, the screen-writers wake up to the fact that DISTURBIA is meant to be a thriller and put in some mildly tense scenes involving David Morse's serial killer next door.

Director D.J.Caruso handles the project with competence but no memorable visual signature. Christopher Landon's script may be derivative, but he is convincingly "down with the kids". Overall, a slick, undemanding movie that is not as completely dumb as most teen fare.

DISTURBIA is on release in the US, Australia, Argentina, Mexico and Russia. It opens in Icelasnd on May 18th; Malaysia, Singapore and Bulgaria on July 26th; Norway and Turkey on August 3rd; Denmark on August 10th; Germany, Italy on August 16th; Belgium, France, the Netherlands on August 23rd; Spain and Hungary on August 31st; the UK on September 7th; Brazil, Estonia and Finland on September 14th and in Sweden on September 21st.