THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOCK IN THE WALLS

THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOCK IN ITS WALLS is a surprisingly entertaining and warm-hearted children's fantasy film based on the book series by John Bellairs, iconically illustrated by Edward Gorey. It's brought to the screen, again surprisingly, by R-rated film director Eli Roth, displaying a soft centre in this funny, handsomely made film.  It stars Owen Vaccaro as young orphan in the 1950s who goes to live with his eccentric uncle (Jack Black) in the titular magical house. Lewis' Uncle Jonathan and his neighbour/best friend Mrs Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) teach young Lewis magic, with which he summons the ghost of his uncle's old enemy (Kyle MacLachlan). We then get a magical showdown that's really more about a profound lesson - that holding onto memories of our loved ones can go too far - that sometimes it's healthy to move forward. 

The resulting film is genuinely funny and as improbable as it may sound, I really loved the banter between Jack Black and Cate Blanchett!  The movie is also beautifully designed. The house is filled with so many uniquely designed clocks, victoriana and gothic furniture, as well as sofas that act like puppies, and garden topiary that throws up!  The costumes are gorgeous - particularly those of the always immaculately put together Mrs Zimmerman.  Most of all, despite all the crazy special effects, this really is a movie that has a lot of heart, and none of its whimsy is unused or superficial. Lewis' wordplay, his love of the word "indomitable" in particular - is ultimately profound. And watch out for that Magic Eight Ball. 

THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOCK IN ITS WALLS is rated PG and has a running time of 105 minutes. It is available to rent and own. 

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS is not a movie you're going to enjoy on date night, sober. It's the kind of  movie that requires a few beers and a college dorm room so that it's inconsistency and sheer ridiculousness becomes a virtue.  It'll also help if you, the viewer, has a much of a geeky knowledge and love of The Shaw Brothers martial arts flick, and also with to pay homage to Gordon Liu.  This movie may be "presented by" Quentin Tarantino, but don't be fooled. RZA's directorial début is not like KILL BILL - tightly written, slickly produced, allowing all viewers a point of access. This is definitely a B-movie - not grungy enough to be pure blaxploitation wushu, not well-made enough to be taken seriously.  The plot is stupid, character development non-existent and the leading man (RZA himself) has about as much charisma as former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.   But when the movie works, in one or two key scenes, it really will make you laugh out loud, and the martial arts sequences are all excellent - as they should be, considering they star many of the genres most famous fighters. 

The movie is set in "Jungle Village" - a dirt poor town in 19th century China, that happens to have a kick-ass freed slave blacksmith (RZA) and a super luxurious whorehouse, presided over by Madam Blossom (Lucy Liu). It also houses the Blacksmith's hooker/sweetheart (Jamie Chung).  The blacksmith is forced to make kick-ass weapons for various rival gangmembers, not least Silver Lion (Byron Mann) and the late Golden Lion's real son The X-Blade (Rick Yune). Into this potent mix comes the Governor's gold shipment, which the Lion gang attempt to steal from the Geminis, and who knows where Mr Knife's allegiances lie?

The real fun of this film lies in a gloriously overweight Russell Crowe playing Oliver Reed playing Mr Knife. Pure Comedy Gold, especially in his interaction with Lucy Liu's proto-feminist brothel-keeper.  Crowe and Liu are joined by the wonderfully camp Bryon Mann in taking this movie about as seriously as it requires i.e. not very much, and all three are having a ball. It's a shame the other characters didn't join suit.  Sadly, whenever they're not on screen, you just get heavy exposition and boredom while waiting for the next fight scene. But these are worth waiting for. MMA star Dave Bautista is used to great effect, and I'm guessing we'll all remember what Gemini stance is from now on.

Overall, THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS is far from a classy flick, but it drips with love of the genre and if you're in the mood to go with it, with a beer in hand, it's more than a fun time. And please will someone give Crowe more roles like this?

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS was released in November in the USA, Canada, Kuwait, Spain and Germany. It opens on December 7th in the UK, Ireland and Australia. It opens on January 2nd in France and Belgium; in January 11th in  Bulgaria; on February 8th in Sweden and the Netherlands; and on February 21st in Argentina and New Zealand. 

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - meh

So here's the thing. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is not a disaster. It's quite watchable and occasionally leavened by good performances, both comedic (Christoph Waltz, Brad Pitt) and dramatic (Mélanie Laurent), not to mention beefcake (Til Schweiger). There are flashes of Tarantino craziness (in a superb basement-tavern set-piece for one) but somehow the movie never takes off - never quite convinces us that we are in a surreal alternate place. In a sense, Tarantino is too good. He does what he's never done before - he creates genuinely dramatic, emotional, credible situations of fear and tension. And then he expects us to switch back in Tarantino the Comic Fantasist mode. As a result, when Tarantino does something that really fracks with reality (e.g. the ending) it just feels wrong. Final reaction: flat. Meh. Walk out of the cinema thinking, what just happened here?

Now, down to the nuts and bolts. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is really two films. The first is a pretty serious revenge movie. Mélanie Laurent plays a young Jewish woman who has watched her family butchered by Nazis, and is now in a position, as owner of a Parisian cinema, to blow up the entire German High Command at a premiere of some Nazi propoganda. Melanie Laurent is excellent as Shosanna Dreyfuss - just watch her suppress her fear when she realises she is taking coffee with the man who butchered her family. Diane Kruger is also notably convincing as a German film-star who has to charm her way into the premiere in order to disrupt it. The tension when she is being interrogated by the same Nazi officer who terrified Shosanna is palpable. The second movie, which surrounds the first, is a more broadly drawn Tarantino comedy in which a bunch of American Nazi scalp-hunters, led by Brad Pitt, team up with Diane Kruger's German film-star and Michael Fassbinder's British soldier, to also blow-up aforementioned Nazis. The comedy comes from Brad Pitt as a sort of Dirty Dozen war hero and his interactions with the Nazi villain played by Waltz (whose performance unifies the two parts of the film). The comedy does not come from a particularly ill-judged cameo from Mike Myers.

My suspicion is that the movie won't satisfy anyone. Tarantino fans will want more Brad Pitt/Basterds craziness and tire of the Parisian drama. Not to mention the fact that, rather bravely, Tarantino has chosen to be vaguely credible in keeping most of the dialogue in French and German. Indeed, he goes further, with a great running gag about Americans not speaking foreign languages. I just wonder whether that gag will back-fire with his target demographic. The cult-fans looking for kick-ass violence and witty dialigue might also object to the fact that, ultimately, this is not really a movie about France, Nazis, the Holocaust or anything other than Tarantino's abiding love of cinema, and his childlike belief that movies really can change the world.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS played Cannes 2009, where Christoph Waltz won Best Actor, Berlin and Melbourne 2009. It is released next weekend in Belgium, France, the UK, Australia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, New Zealand, Russia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Austria, Canada, Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan, the USA and the Netherlands. It is released the following weekend in Iceland, Argentina, the Czech Republic, the Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Denmark. It opens in September in Finland, Romania, Israel and Spain. It opens in October in Italy, Japan, Singapore, Mexico and Brazil.

HOSTEL PART 2 is NOT a horror movie, okay?!

HOSTEL PART 2 is not a horror movie. Objectively speaking, it's primary concern is satire not horror. Subjectively, (and bear in mind my wuss-like nature) I was not scared once in the whole 90 minutes.

It opens with a little prologue featuring Jay Hernandez as Paxton - the survivor from the original HOSTEL movie. The prologue ends with a tableau that is not scary but stylised. We then move to Italy where our three unwitting American girls (Bijou Phillips, Heather Matazarro, Lauren German) are about to be lured to a Slovakian torture factory by a hot chick. It's the same MO as in the first flick. To parochial American eyes, Eastern Europe must indeed seem exotic and un-nerving. But for heaven's sake, these countries are in the EU now, if not the Euro-zone. I simply can't take them seriously as spoooooooooooky Transylvanian settings.

It takes us an hour to get to the first death and it's not scary at all - just lame. Writer-director Eli Roth clearly wants to make some big point about how women can be torturing-murderers as well as men, but the scene just comes off as sleazy. The second and third deaths aren't even shown on screen - rather we see before and after - and frankly neither are that gruesome. And as for the final torture scene, it's just crudely funny - like a fart joke. If anyone tells you this is scary, bear in mind that the nasty evil villains are two bit-part characters from Desperate Housewives. We aren't dealing with Freddie here.

So, this movie is not horrific. After all, as I said in my review of the first HOSTEL flick, it's hard to be scared when the people menacing you are rational human beings who can be bought off. (And call me an arrogant capitalist bastard but I live my life in the certain knowledge that however evil you are, my daddy can buy you off.) That point is made to the n'th degree in this film - resulting in a horror movie that sort of implodes on itself. If you can pay to torture and murder someone, then you can also pay for safety. And that, my friends, is why Breitling make a fortune selling Emergency watches.

At best, this is a weak satire on capitalism and consumer society. At worst, it's a waste of time. The original HOSTEL was eons better. There's nothing in the sequel to remotely compare to Rick Hoffman's genius cameo. So, if you want to be genuinely freaked out at the cinema this week-end, check out SHUTTER instead.

HOSTEL PART TWO is on release in Argentina, Australia, Slovakia, Estonia, Iceland, Russia, the US, Germany, Colombia, Latvia, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Poland, Belgium and the UK. It opens in Greece, Israel, Serbia, France and Finland in July. It opens in Singapore on August 9th and in Brazil on August 24th.

HOSTEL - not scary, occasionally amusing

HOSTEL is a movie written and directed by Eli Roth, but "presented by Quentin Tarantino". I have no problems with friends bigging up each others work, but Tarantino should be aware that he risks devaluing his "brand name" by attaching it to this deeply inferior horror movie. Believe me when I say that I have a very low tolerance for horror: creepy, gory, nasty stuff freaks me out. But I was not scared once by HOSTEL. Worse still, I had a vague feeling of having watched a lot of the scenes that were meant to scare me before, and done better. (I am not accusing HOSTEL of ripping these films off - just of not being terribly innovative.) In particular, people who have seen the wonderful Japanese horror flick, AUDITION, or more recently, SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE will find HOSTEL very very weak indeed.

All of this is a bit of a shame because the story is actually pretty neat. Two American backpackers are travelling through Europe with an Icelander they just met. Their two main preoccupations are getting laid and getting high. A dodgy Dutch pimp recommends a hostel near Bratislava where there are willing chicks on-tap thanks to the fact that all the guys in Slovakia are away at war (huh?). So they go to the hostel, get laid, get high and then bad things involving torture chambers start to happen. For me, the problem is in the execution. Eli Roth just completely failed to build up any tension, or any sense of threat to the key protagonist. That's not to say that the movie is a complete waste of time. Certainly some of the early scenes have a degree of comedy value, not least when they feature Eythor Gudjonsson as Oli the Icelander a.k.a The King of Swing. Rick Hoffman also has a hillarious cameo as a sinister, hyper-active Yuppie in search of gothic kicks. However, any movie wherein a bunch of bumble-gum chewing eight-year olds with koshes are the key menace, is not to be taken seriously.

HOSTEL is on release in the US, UK and France. It hits Germany and Austria on April 27th 2006.