ANNIE (2014)

I love big Hollywood musicals - everything from the deeply sinister OKLAHOMA! to the modern glitz of CHICAGO via the genius that is CABARET.   I have a fundamental respect for hoofers - old fashioned song and dance entertainers right back to Vaudeville.  Nothing pleases me more than seeing a musical theatre artist in their prime - not least Ann Reinking in pretty much everything she did, and Liza Minelli in Cabaret.  So despite my reverence for the original 1982 John Huston ANNIE - I was really looking forward to this remake. I didn't quite see the point of it, but I figured the original Strouse-Charmin-Meehan musical could take the reinterpretation. All the best texts can.

I guess I realised something was off with this new movie with the opening number - now, as then, "Maybe" - a song that should be poignant and emotional.  Instead it was delivered by a bunch of apparently well-fed and well-dressed kids doing this kind of finger-snap dance ripping off the "Cups" song from PITCH PERFECT.  Worst of all, I'm not sure if I'm right, but it felt like the lead actress Quvenzhané Wallis didn't have a strong voice and/or was being heavily auto-tuned.  Worse still, her lip-synching was off.  Things got worse with Cameron Diaz' outsized but somehow messy performance as the modern-day Miss Hannigan - now a drunken foster mom - and the STOMP rip-off choreography for "Hard Knock Life."

jOBS

jOBS - the too cutely titled Steve Jobs biopic - is a ruthlessly efficient but frustratingly unenquiring film that is ultimately saved by the convincing central performance by Ashton Kutcher.  Kutcher goes beyond his striking similar resemblance to adopt the loping walking and speaking style of the iconic computer developer, and allied with superb production design and authentic Los Altos locations, this make the film compelling despite its stylistic problems.  These must rest with the director Joshua Michael Stern (SWING VOTE) and debut screenwriter Michael Whiteley..   To be sure, they don't sugarcoat Jobs - they show his immediate and early ripping off of fellow collaborators - his harsh rejection of his daughter - his frustrating single-mindedness - but they never investigate it.  Why - on the first deal they did together - did Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) off?  Where did he get the drive and knowledge to cut such a financially astute deal with venture capitalist Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney)?  Why did he cut out early collaborators such as Daniel Kottke (Lukas Hass) out of the lucrative Apple IPO?  Why did he deny he was his daughter's father for so long?  And why did he then recant?  This latter issue is perhaps the most frustrating.  In a movie that uses Jobs' eviction from Apple a major psychological turning point it's incredibly annoying to reunite with him a few years later where he's apparently turned into a doting father, husband and zen father. 

So if we're not getting psychological depth here, what are we getting?  A fairly straightforward corporate history of Apple. It reads as follows.  Woz is the IT genius who creates the PC but Jobs is the marketing and design guru who sells it to the financiers and then to Wall Street.  His search for perfection and naivety leads him to a position where the greedy capitalist CEO John Scully (Matthew Modine) forces him out, causes a personal crisis for Jobs and a corporate crisis for Apple. Years later he's called back, annoints his design successor Jonny Ive (Giles Matthey) and announces the design of the iPod.  The rest is final credit success and deliberately avoided death.  I'm no expert on Apple's corporate history so I can't tell you if the account is broadly accurate and fair, but it IS compelling, if a little bit TV movie of the week.  And that's how I'd advise you watch this: on the small screen.

JOBS has a running time of 128 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA.

JOBS played Sundance 2013 and was released earlier this year in the USA, Singapore, Canada, Turkey, France, Argentina, Kuwait, Portugal, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Australia, Israel, South Korea, Brazil, Poland, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland, Croatia, Serbia, Thailand, Estonia, Greece, Hong Kong, Finland, Lithuania, Spain, Taiwan, Colombia, Latvia, Mexico, Bangladesh, Macedonia, Japan, Norway, Peru, Sweden, Italy and Chile. It does not yet have a UK release date.

NO STRINGS ATTACHED

Ivan Reitman, of GHOSTBUSTERS, fame returns to our screens with the kind of contemporary social comedy more typically associated with his son Jason (THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, UP IN THE AIR). The result is a movie that wants us to think it's edgy and honest, but when you cut to the meat, it's still the same old rom-com happy-ending bullshit we've been subjected to for decades.

Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher play two emotionally bruised people who react to their wounds in diametrically opposite ways. The girl becomes emotionally repressed, running from anything that could turn sour and hurt her. By contrast, the boy becomes immensely open and vulnerable, rushing toward people who can't return his emotions. Not automatically the set-up for a rom-com, one might think. But hey-ho, this being Hollywood, the two star-crossed lovers meet cute and decide to have NSA sex. Inevitably, they fall in love. He pushes for a relationship and she runs. One suspects that if Jason Reitman had been directing the film that's where it would've ended. But no. Because, while this film tries to prove how modern and liberated it is with its explicit sexual references and a whole scene devoted to period cramps, essentially it is a conservative project. And this contradiction infects every scene. Thus, while there are some rather funny set-pieces, typically involving the superb supporting cast (Mindy Kalinga, Kevin Kline, Lake Bell, and a brilliantly ditzy Ophelia Lovibond), the movie as a whole just doesn't hang together.

Not only does the film not hang together, it also has the faint whiff of desperation about it. It's desperate for us to love it - for us to think it's cool. In fact, it's about as desperate as the scarily need mono-dimensionally good guy that Ashton Kutcher plays in this flick, not to mention last year's VALENTINE'S DAY. I am genuinely puzzled as to why Natalie Portman, darling of indie flicks since LEON, and soon to be Oscar winner for BLACK SWAN, decided to take a role in this film. And it's even more bizarre when you realise that she actually produced it. And perhaps most puzzling of all - what a bizarre and wasteful way to use Cary Elwes!

NO STRINGS ATTACHED was released in January in the USA and Canada. It is currently on release in Bulgaria, Belgium, Indonesia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Portugal, Finland, Norway, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Singapore. It opens next week in Argentina, Greece, Brazil, Estonia and the UK. It opens on March 18th in Poland; on March 25th in Iceland and Spain; and on March 31st in Slovenia. It opens on April 1st in Sweden; on April 15th in Italy and on April 22nd in Japan.

VALENTINE'S DAY - not entirely unwatchable

VALENTINE’S DAY is a romantic comedy along the lines of LOVE ACTUALLY – in which we follow a number of characters, all loosely connected, living in contemporary LA on Valentine’s Day. We have everything from a teenager trying to lose her virginity (Emma Roberts); to a serving officer home on leave (Julia Roberts); from a cynical “player” sports journalist (Jamie Foxx) to an old-romantic florist (Ashton Kutcher) and many many more besides.

It is easy to deride VALENTINE’S DAY. It is a movie that has been so carefully constructed in the Excel sheets of Hollywood producers that is feels about as real and alive as a frozen turkey twizzler. Every actor has been chosen for their essentially good looks and winning smile. Every character is broadly delineated as being wholesome and good and thus deserving of True Love or as being superficial and duplicitous and therefore only worthy of being Alone. It’s the sort of movie that pats itself on the back for being so liberal as to have a gay character but doesn’t have the balls to show him making out. There is no plot development that cannot be predicted well in advance and no satire that hasn’t had its rough edges smoothed down. It’s a movie so shiny and brightly coloured in makes LOVE ACTUALLY - with its depiction of at least two “good characters” who end up unloved at the end of it – seem spiky and socially aware.

Nonetheless, I can’t deny that I had a passably good time watching the film, in the same way that a can of coke is predictable, tasty at the time, but offers no nutritional value. In a rising tide of blandness, Queen Latifah delivers one truly superb line, Taylor Swift was surprisingly willing to play dumb, and Anne Hathaway is always good at pulling off vulnerability. As for the rest of the cast, there’s nothing to write home about. The only thing that really pissed me off was the gaff in the writing that had Bradley Cooper’s character flying coach on a fourteen hour flight when he’s rich enough to have a chauffeur-driven limousine. Please. That guy would’ve been safely ensconsed in his personal sleeper seat in Business rather than propping up Julia Robert’s dozing head.

VALENTINE'S DAY is on global release.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS - you'd better make sure you're sitting down for this one....

So I was expecting to really hate the new Cameron Diaz-Ashton Kutcher rom-com WHATEVER HAPPENS IN VEGAS. For a start, I really hate films that have plots so contrived they make Jordan's tits look natural. We're meant to believe that someone as beautiful as Cameron Diaz would seriously be insecure in her relationship with a schlub investment wanker, and that he would have the temerity to dump her. Further, we're meant to believe that Cameron's character - an up-tight successful Wall St trader - would seriously go to Vegas, get drunk, and get married to a newly unemployed slob played by Ashton Kutcher. Once again, we're meant to believe that despite his good looks and magentic personality, Kutcher's character really has depth, and insecurities, because his daddy doesn't give him any credit. Awwwww!

Yes, yes, I was basically on the verge of vomit for the first twenty minutes of this film. But them something amazing happened. Cameron and Ashton are just so dang charming and goofy that I couldn't help laughing - and the movie is just so dang sweet that I couldn't help being swept up by it!

So, in the most shocking result since Pakistan and India were both knocked out in the group stages of the 2007 Cricket World Cup, Bina007 gives two enthusiastic thumbs up to WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS.

And yes, I know, I am already standing in the corner, thinking very carefull about what I've just done......

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS is on global release.

THE GUARDIAN - wishing for Tom Cruise

Director Andrew Davis makes heavy work of this derivative, ponderous action movie. Kevin Costner stars as a legendary coastguard with marital problems. Obliged to take up a post as a trainer, he meets a cocky young student played by Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher is seriously out of his depth in a serious dramatic role, and shocked as I am to admit this, I found myself longing for the Tom Cruise of TOP GUN, or better still the Richard Gere of AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN. Actually, I was longing for the emotional depth and brutality of a OFFICER all the way through this formulaic clap-trap. Yes yes, we've seen it all before. Kutcher will change from a narcissistic idiot to a mature, battle-scarred coast-guard. The hard-as-nails local girl will fall for him. And Costner's character will learn to respect Kutcher's character. Ron L Brinkerhoff's script offers nothing new. So, while I admired the technical effects and the ballsiness of the denoument, frankly, after two hours of weak bilge my emotional investment was nil.

THE GUARDIAN went on cinematic release in autumn 2006 and is available on DVD.

OPEN SEASON - banal kids flick

OPEN SEASON is another animated kids flick in the fish-out-of-water genre where domesticated, pampered animals/cars find themselves kicked out into the mean, real world. Recent examples include CARS, GARFIELD: A TALE OF TWO KITTIES, THE WILD and the forthcoming FLUSHED AWAY.....A lot of critics have bitten down hard on OPEN SEASON for milking an over-worked genre but I think that's a bit unfair. After all, how many kids - the target audience - are going to care about that? A far better reason to bite down hard on OPEN SEASON is that it's just not that entertaining. From an adult/parent persepective there are none of the cultural in-jokes that hold our attention. And the animation is just fine, but nothing like up to the standards of, say, a PIXAR movie. The message of the movie is rather bland: it's better to have friends and work as a team than be a loner AND nasty evil cute-animal killing-hunters* are bad. (I tend to agree in theory although I have been to known to kill and eat cute animals in my time.) The super-big problem is that the script just isn't that funny. We get a decent laugh every fifteen minutes, if that. And there is precious little chemistry between the two buddies around whom the movie revolves. The first is a big pampered grizzly bear called "Boog", played in an admirably restrained style by Martin "Big Momma's House" Lawrence. The second is an annoyingly hyper-active, apparently infantile deer called Elliott played by the annoyingly hyper-active, apparently infantile Ashton Kutcher. Actually, that's unfair. I have nothing against Ashton Kutcher. I just find that the That Seventies Show and Punk'd schtick gets boring very quickly. In short, OPEN SEASON will no doubt keep your kids quiet for an hour and a half but it's not up there with SHREK and TOY STORY. Although, as I didn't take an unwilling god-child to see this, I'd be interested to hear from any parents out there as to whether even the kids get a kick out of this movie...

OPEN SEASON is on release in China, the US, the Netherlands, Israel, Brazil, Venezuala, Mexico, Poland and the UK. It opens in France, Estonia, Belgium and Slovenia next week. It opens in Egypt, Germany, Hungary, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Spian, Sweden, Australia and Singapore in November and in Czech Republic, Italy, Japan and Argentina in December. *Roman, Nikolai, Niko - this could well be a GERUND.