DISCLOSURE DAY**

Bless his heart! Steven Spielberg still thinks that network news is relevant. Steven Spielberg still thinks that if people watch something on network news that they'll believe it. Steven Spielbering still thinks that Roswell is cool. Steven Spielberg is still obsessed with midwest middle-class childhood Americana. Steven Spielberg still believes that, in the words of Woody Allen's MANHATTAN, "you have to have a little faith in people". FFS. Have you not seen the past decade? In the words of Peep Show's Super Hans, "People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people, Jeremy." Which is not to say that Spielberg hasn't made a simultaneously schmaltzy AND cyncal film. How else to explain the very deliberate care to tell ticket-buyers in Red States that the existence of aliens is compatible with the Book of Genesis?

Okay so what's the plot? Super intelligent aliens have been making contact with man since Roswell, and man - or at least American men - have been hushing it up and exploiting them ever since. A bunch of rebels (Colman Domingo, Josh O'Connor) steal the video proof and rather than just uploading it to TikTok they partner up with Emily Blunt's TV weather girl to put it out on local TV. That's it.

Now there are a bunch of MacGuffins and side hustles involving Blunt's character being able to suddenly speak a bunch of languages, and O'Connor's character being a maths savant, and Eve Hewson's character having a crisis of faith, but it's all just bollocks really. Colin Firth occasionally turns up in a turtleneck as a cross between Dr Evil and Basil Exposition and almost every line reading of a deeply hackneyed script (David Koepp and Spielberg) prompts unintended mirth.

And my enjoyment is not helped by the fact that Emily Blunt now falls into that category of actor (Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Nicole Kidman) whose plastic surgery and over-filled face is a distraction. I spent the entire movie wanting to give her an antihistamine. 

Oh yes, this being Spielberg there's also a weird-ass interlude featuring a Hansel and Gretel house and some poor kid has gone through CGI. I was wondering if Emily Blunt's face is now so waxy and unreal that they were forced to CGI a real kid to make her look like Blunt's younger facsimile.  The CGI is really bad by the way. The CGI animals are rubbish. I have seen a more convincing and emotionally affecting fox on Lego Masters Australia.

It's sad to see an old man stuck in 1987 and churning out sci-fi as if the past thirty years of film-making (or politics for that matter) didn't happen. Has he not watched any Gareth Edwards or Denis Villeneuve? Are we meant to be impressed by car chases that look like the Dukes of Hazzard when we just saw Paul Thomas Anderson break cinematic ground not once but twice in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER? 

Retire, mate. Retire.

DISCLOSURE DAY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 145 minutes. It is on global release.

THE FALL GUY**

My two stars for THE FALL GUY are a weighted average of 90 minutes of flaccid, obvious, juvenile action-romance followed by 30 minutes of a super-fun sparky high-stakes romantic comedy. The difference? In the final 30 minutes of the film its stars Ryan Gosling (BARBIE) and Emily Blunt (A QUIET PLACE) are actually on screen together, in on the plan together, MacGuivering a trap for the Bad Guy, and vibing of each other. The two actors are superfun and have real chemistry. The problem is that this film contrives to have them at odds with each other for most of its running time.

Gosling stars as stunt man Colt Seavers who doubles for douchebag superstar Tom Ryder, clearly based upon Tom Cruise, and played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson (KICKASS).  When the star disappears from the set of his latest blockbuster, which happens to be directed by Seavers' old flame and debut director Jody (Blunt), her agent Gail (Hannah Waddingham - Ted Lasso) persuades Colt to go find the star and save the film. Crucially for some reason Colt has to do this without telling Jody. And this is what separates them for the majority of the film.

I dunno. I just didn't vibe with this film. The humour didn't catch fire for me. The meta jokes about action films and Hollywood and the 1980s, which is totally my era, just felt forced and off.  The action sequences from director David Leitch (DEADPOOL, ATOMIC BLONDE) never excited me. And the script from writer Drew Pearce (MI: ROGUE NATION) lacked any romantic fizz or genuine laughs. I feel Blunt and Gosling were doing all the heavy lifting, and it worked when they were allowed to get into it at the end of the film, but that was too late to save it for me.

THE FALL GUY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 126 minutes. It is on global release. 

OPPENHEIMER*****

I have found Christopher Nolan's films deeply frustrating. I regard him as our most accomplished technical film-maker since Stanley Kubrick. And yet I have serially struggled to be truly emotionally involved in his films. I admired them. I was intellectually provoked by them. But they were arid, sterile things that failed to move me or to tell me anything insightful about the human condition. 

With OPPENHEIMER everything has changed. For the first time, Nolan has trained his IMAX camera onto a deeply personal, ethical, political, sexual story of a great but troubled man.  He has given us a film that feels at times more like an Oliver Stone political conspiracy film that takes us under the skin of American history. But at the same time, he gives us images and sound design of surpassing beauty and power.  Best of all, he allows us to view it on actual celluloid IMAX film.

Nolan's film is an interrogation of the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the genius physicist who ran the US government's Manhattan Project and delivered them the atomic bomb that was controversially used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  One might think this would earn him a nation's grateful respect but in the Cold War anti-Soviet hysteria of the McCarthy witch-hunts, Oppenheimer was refused his security clearance on the basis of his 1930s sympathy with left-wing causes and effectively publicly silenced. Was Oppenheimer a Communist? No. But he was a fellow traveller who donated to worthy causes that were Communist front organisations. After all, as a Jew who was funding the escape of fellow Jews from Nazi Germany he was deeply sensitive to the plight of refugees. Was Oppenheimer a traitor? No. He hated Hitler and feared what would happen if the Nazis got the A-bomb. It was Klaus Fuchs who was leaking Los Alamos' secrets to the Soviets.  Oppenheimer - even after everything his country did to him - loved it to the end.

Oppenheimer was not, then, a traitor. But he was indeed guilty of naivety and highhandedness.  He was naive about how far his celebrity would protect him from the political machine. He was naive about how far a prurient establishment would excuse his incessant womanising, not least with the actual Communist Jean Tatlock. He was naive about how far he could cover up for his Communist friend Haakon Chevalier without being seen as complicit.  

Oppenheimer was also high-handed.  Perhaps this should be no surprise for the wealthy son of first generation Jewish immigrants who grew up in an apartment filled with expensive art and who had the resources to travel throughout Europe to lear from the champions of the New Physics. For a man who could be devastatingly charming at a dinner party, he was careless of appearing rude to powerful politicians. He had no time for the Game, and Game beat him in the end.  

In this film, politics is embodied in and personified by Oppenheimer's nemesis, Lewis Strauss. Strauss was also a second generation Jewish immigrant but unlike Oppenheimer didn't have the money to study physics at university, becoming a shoe salesman to raise the tuition fees. Despite later wild financial success and political success he never lost his insecurity over this lack of formal education. After World War Two, Strauss maintained his interest in science by chairing the Atomic Energy Commission, and so butted heads with Oppenheimer.  While never publicly regretting creating the A-bomb, or its use against Japan, Oppenheimer used all of his influence to try and steer US policy toward collaboration, containment, and against developing the H-bomb.  By contrast, the pragmatist Strauss simply wanted the US to be better armed than the Soviets.

Nolan's framing device for his film are the two trials in all but name of these two men that took place in the febrile McCarthyite political climate of the 1950s. The latter is the 1958 Senate hearing of Strauss, shot in black and white, where he fails to be confirmed for a Cabinet position.  The reason?  The vindictive kangaroo court he inflicted upon Oppenheimer in 1954 when the AEC refused to renew his top security clearance, and all but accused him of being a Soviet spy. Publicly shamed, Oppenheimer public life was effectively ended. 

The vast centre of the film within this framing device is the story of Oppenheimer's life as told by him in his statement to the 1954 Gray Commission.  In this part of the film we are in vivid colour and firmly in the subjective experience of our protagonist. From young student in Europe to charismatic Berkeley professor, to impressively driven manager of the Manhattan project.  We see him trying to balance his politics with his top security cleared job, and his ethics with the need to win the war against Hitler.  This becomes infinitely more muddy when Nazi Germany surrenders and it becomes clear that the bomb will be used against civilian subjects in Japan.  That decision is still debated, and it's unclear how much influence the scientists ever really had on the politicians. But Oppenheimer's self justification went along the lines that a demonstration of the awesome power of the A-bomb would scare politicians into co-operation within the United Nations for arms control. Evidently, this was not the case.

What can we say about this infinitely complex, nuanced, moving drama? Nolan's writing is a masterclass in concision and precision. Every line is considered - every intertwining of timelines adds meaning.  His direction is masterful. Working with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema he conjures up the magisterial beauty of New Mexico; the claustrophobia of the Commission's interrogation room; the vivid abstraction of quantum physics; and the awesome power of nuclear fire.  Working with composer Ludwig Goransson, Nolan creates a sound design and complementary soundscape that is at moments tender, at moments tellingly silent, and at moments so powerful and literally awesome that it shakes your entire body.  And working with his actors, well Nolan is simply a master.

Let's start with Cillian Murphy's haunting central performance as Oppenheimer - arrogant, haughty, stubborn, guilt-ridden, hunted.  But let's also speak of Robert Downey Junior as Strauss - puffed up, prickly, wiser, harder. And then we have the balancing presence of Matt Damon as General Groves - physically intimidating, no nonsense, practical, but humane. In smaller roles, I loved the interrogatory intensity of Jason Clarke's Roger Robb; Dane De Haan's sinister precision as security officer Nichols; and a truly intimidating cameo by Casey Affleck as his superior, Boris Pash. 

For the women, well, this is Nolan's weakness. I feel that both of the female stars are given short shrift. Florence Pugh is all too brief a presence as Oppenheimer's true love, Jean Tatlock. She is reduced to being naked, demanding, capricious.  We don't see her brilliance. But we get something of her brave, troubled nature. I also think (but need to rewatch to confirm) that Nolan inserts a slippery quick shot of a gloved hand intervening in her narrative. Similarly Emily Blunt has little to do for much of the film as Oppenheimer's wife Kitty.  A brilliant botanist who resented giving up her career to be stuck at Los Alamos with the kids, Kitty is a brittle alcoholic from the start in this version of her life. She exists to urge Oppenheimer to fight back - perhaps cathartically for the audience.  And to provide a channel for our anger when he is intent on being a martyr.

The short-changing of the female characters is a minor blemish on an outstanding film that pushes Nolan from technical mastery into the realm of "complete" film-making. He is now to be considered with the true masters of cinema.  This is a film that is intellectually and emotionally provocative, that excites visually and aurally, and that showcases outstanding performances. Please try to see it on IMAX celluloid. 

OPPENHEIMER is rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK and has a running time of 180 minutes. 

EDGE OF TOMORROW

Aliens are invading earth and its military has formed a United Defence Force with one trick up its sleeve, PACIFIC RIM-lite super-soldier suits.  A slick adman called Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is a self-proclaimed coward drafted into a Normandy-style attack on the enemy position. He dies, but is looped back to the start of his deployment and soon realises that he needs to make contact with Emily Blunt's war heroine, Rita. She too went through the time-looping and realised that the Aliens are winning the war by resetting and replaying their attack every time they die.  She and now Cage have somehow hijacked the ability to reset and by doing so can now win the war. She therefore sets about training Cage to be a military hero, shooting him to reset the day so that they can start again. 

I'll go on the record and say that I have deep problems with Tom Cruise and that this kind of CGI heavy action movie is not something I usually connect with, but I really enjoyed EDGE OF TOMORROW. Part of that is to do with seeing Tom Cruise on the back foot for the first half of the movie, playing a cowardly doofus who is literally getting beaten up by a girl.  But the other half is seeing just how cleverly the director Doug Liman (THE BOURNE IDENTITY) handles the time loop story.  Because let's be honest, this concept could've gotten pretty boring pretty early, and actually pretty smug.  Nobody wants to see Tom Cruise lord it over everyone as he cannily predicts just what they're going to do before they do it.  But somehow, Liman keeps everything on track and tense and actually emotionally evolving.  The payoff comes in the final scene, which I won't spoil, but where we'd actually seen emotional growth.  I really enjoyed the journey. 

EDGE OF TOMORROW has a running time of 113 minutes and is rated PG-13.  The movie is on global release.

INTO THE WOODS

INTO THE WOODS is a sanitised an anodyne version of the Stephen Sondheim musical that supposedly shows us the dark side of fairytales.  This is, of course, material far better and more deeply explored by Angela Carter in her books and with Neil Jordan in his 1984 gothic horror classic THE COMPANY OF WOLVES - a movie on which I have recorded a full length DVD commentary, which can be found here.  The Sondheim musical is, by contrast, a work that tries to show the dark backing of the mirror - death, disenchament - but never reached the psychosexual depths of Carter.  It has a two act structure - in the first a variety of familiar fairy-tale characters journey into the woods with many of the threads tied together in the story of the baker and his wife who need to collect a handful of fairy-tale items and so lift the curse that prevents them from having a baby.  We meet Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, some Princes and Jack and the Beanstalk and all more or less get what they want. But then, in the second act we see that fairytales don't end happily ever after. We see death, infidelity, and the high cost of "winning".

All of this is good post-modern stuff, except a few decades too late to pack a real punch.  I wonder how kids in the post-Shrek era will view this rather tame revisionism.  None of this is helped by Disney trying to keep the movie to a PG certificate and running shy of a 3 hour running time. This means that the pivotal, albeit it largely off-screen character of the baker's father - the man who starts so much of the plot - is omitted.  Much of the violence is toned down and character motivation is subtly altered. The result is a wolf with a lesser bite.

Overall, I did still enjoy the film although I wouldn't want to see it again. The acting is just fine, the production design beautiful and the cinematography really very good indeed.  The only misfires are, for me, too (and two) campy performances from Meryl Streep as the witch and Johnny Depp as the Wolf, and the aforementioned ellipses.

INTO THE WOODS has a running time of 125 minutes and is rated PG. The movie is on release in the USA, UAE, South Korea, Canada, Kuwait, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Kenya, Romania, South Africa, Australia, Czech Republic, Croatia, Macedonia, New Zealand, Slovenia, the UK and Ireland.  It opens later in January in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Belgium, Luxembourg, Peru, Thailand, Spain, Iceland, Pakistan, France, the Philippines, Brazil, Chile and the Netherlands. It opens in February in Argentina, Mexico, Poland, Taiwan, Austria, Germany, Israel, Turkey, Venezuela and Japan. It opens on March 14th in Japan, March 26th in Denmark, March 27th in Norway, on April 1st in Sweden, April 2nd in Italy, on April 17th in Estonia, on April 19th in China and on April 24th in Lithuania.

LOOPER

Oh dear.  I very much admired Rian Johnson's neo-noir debut, BRICK, and loved the style if not the substance of BROTHERS BLOOM.  But his third feature, LOOPER, is to my mind the most over-rated film of 2012.  Now, I realise that it is not Johnson's fault that the marketing department called his film the MATRIX of our times.  No film was likely to live up to that billing.  But LOOPER is so intellectually and emotionally disappointing that the blame must lie with Johnson as much as with the PR department.

The central conceit has promise.  In 2044, the USA is a decrepit ex-superpower, its people impoverished, its currency debased, beholden to China.  Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Joe, a contract killer who dispatches men sent back by the mafia from 2074, where time travel has been invented but also outlawed. This exposition is deftly handled and the key emotional problem set up: Joe has to kill his future self to fulfil his contract, but his future self is desperate to live.  Both trapped in 2044, Future Joe tries to assassinate the child who will become the mafia kingpin in 2074 - the child that the yoiung Joe has become emotionally attached to.

There are three problems with this film.  The first is that the events of the film violate the rules of time travel as set up by Rian Johnson.  (There's a brilliant article explaining why in the Huffpost.)  Admittedly, Johnson admits this failing, giving 2044 mob boss Abe a throwaway line telling Joe, and us, not to worry about it lest our "brains get fried".  This is all well and good in a movie that is emotionally gripping - the audience will willingly suspend disbelief when their heart is engaged.  But in LOOPER that just isn't the case.

That's because, just as the movie has set up its intriguing premise, it suddenly takes a left turn from sci-fi into paedophobic horror, with the little kid who will become the 2074  mob boss behaving like something from THE OMEN.  He has telekinetic powers you see - a random conceit that was mentioned in the first five minutes of the film and then completely forgotten about until Johnson had written himself into a hole.  In other words, LOOPER isn't a sophisticated well thought out sci-fi thriller along the lines of THE MATRIX, or TWELVE MONKEYS, but two halves of two films, both of which show promise, but neither of which is particularly well developed.

But the absolute killer - the thing that absolutely ruined the movie - that made it jump the shark, was the casting, acting, and editing that made the little kid with TK powers an  object of absurd comedy.  It's hinted at that he killed his mum in a TK rage, he is preternaturally smart and emotionally sophisticated and utters his lines with such an implausibly earnest air that everyone was laughing at him in the screening I attended.  The movie had just lost all credibility.  And with no emotional stakes, the supposedly big emotional ending had no force whatsoever. 

The upshot is that LOOPER is not a movie that lives up to sci-fi greats like THE MATRIX or time travel greats like TWELVE MONKEYS.  It doesn't even live up to SOURCE CODE or MOON.  

(Insert cheap time travel joke about me never getting back those two hours of my life.) 

LOOPER played Toronto 2012 and is currently on release in Australia, Croatia, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, New Zealand, Russia, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Bulgaria, Mexico, the UK and USA.  LOOPER opens on October 12th on Argentina, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Singapore, India, Norway, and Turkey. It opens on October 19th in Chile, Slovenia and Spain.  It opens on October 31st in Belgium, France, Finland and Poland; on November 29th in the Netherlands and Taiwan; in Taiwan on November 30th; in South Africa on December 14th; in Japan on January 12th and in Italy on January 31st.

THE FIVE YEAR ENGAGEMENT

THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT is a banal, over-long romantic comedy firmly in the will-they-won't-they-oh-get-on-with-it.  Jason Segel and Emily Blunt as two people so manifestly right for each other, that one can only lose respect for them and their relationship by the amount of faux-obstacles they put in the way of the final, compulsory, over-the-top, wedding scene.  

He's a successful San Francisco chef who moves with her to Michigan for he dream university job. Reduced to selling tacos he becomes resentful, and she resents his resentment.  A mild indiscretion on each side leads to a temporary break-up and a third act epiphany and reconciliation.  I say that very quickly - in reality it's an hour of really dull cinema. 

Whatever comedy there is, is provided by Community's Alison Brie as Blunt's sister, complete with pitch perfect English accent, and her husband. They even steal the show at the leading couple's wedding!  Poor Rhys Ifans is saddled with the most unbelievable Professor in film, and Mindy Kaling, as his research assistant, is utterly wasted. 

What's really sad is that the dilemma posed by this movie is a real one. Lots of us have been in relationships where one person has to take a back seat to the other's career, whether because someone had to move to get a degree or a job, or whatever. It's a real everyday problem.  This movie had the potential to introduce some authentic, clever, observational comedy.  But I'm guessing that neither screenwriter has been in that position and that neither really gets it.

Overall, this is the second piss-poor film that Jason Segel and writer-director Nicholas Stoller have been involved with since GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. Enough already.  

THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT was released earlier this year in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Serbia, Slovenia and Taiwan. It is released today in the UK, Ireland and Lithuania. It opens next weekend in Croatia, the Netherlands, Russia, Poland and Turkey. It opens on July 5th in Israel, on July 12th in Germany, on August 1st in Belgium and France, on August 10th in Mexico, on September 7th in Spain, and on September 28th in Italy.

The movie is rated R and is 124 minutes too long.

iPad Round-Up 2 - GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

When I was a pre-teen and we all obsessively watched the lo-rent sci-fi TV comedy, RED DWARF, the phrase "almost Swiftian in its rapier-like subtlety" became a standard term of praise, long before we'd read Swift in class and fully appreciated the radical, deliriously scabrous nature of his political satire. That was back in the day when schools taught children useful shit like calculus and Latin.  Nowadays, family audiences have no use for political satire - although one might have thought that in the post global financial crisis world - with governments insolvent and political systems ossified by special interests - now would be EXACTLY the time for it.  And so, dear reader, we get the movies we deserve. Towit, Rob Letterman's utterly banal children's movie, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS - a film based on Swift only insofar as it incorporates a man who wakes up in a land filled with tiny little people called Liliputians.

So, Swift aside, how does it fare as simple family entertainment? Shockingly poor.  A mindlessly simple plot, piss-poor CGI effects, hammy acting from the largely British cast of character actors, and Jack Black playing the character he always plays - the childish, rock-obsessed but ultimately love-able frump. Director Rob Letterman and writer Joe Stillman display none of the wit or imagination seen in MONSTERS VS. ALIENS or SHREK. Must try harder.

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS was released over the 2010/2011 holiday season. It is now available to rent and own.

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU is a slick sci-fi thriller based on a story by Philip K Dick and adapted and directed by George Nolfi, the scrennwriter behind THE  BOURNE ULTIMATUM. Photographed by John Toll (THE THIN RED LINE, VANILLA SKY) to depict contemporary New York as adjusted to be slightly shiner and sharper than it really is, the movie starts Matt Damon and Emily Blunt as a politician and dancer, for whom The Adjustment Bureau has bigger plans than to "just" fall in love and be content.

I loved the look of the film, and I found the chemistry between Damon and Blunt convincing. I even found the idea of Damon as a young, charismatic politician credible.  But I hated pretty much everything else about the film.  Anthony Mackie's inert performance as the Adjuster with a heart was unconvincing, and the fact that these angels/aliens? wander round Manhattan in Mad Men style suits and hats just seemed anachronistic and laughably obvious. I also had a problem with the central premise that these Adjusters have allowed us to have free will on small things, like which colour tie to wear, but not on big things, like who to fall in love with. I mean, haven't we all been raised to believe in the Butterfly Effect - that everything matters? Surely, when it comes to free will versus determinism you can't be in a half-way house. This inconsistency and poor-logic extends to the ending, which, without spoiling it, is very unsatisfactory.   

The other problem with the concept at the heart of the movie is that it reduces the stakes of the film.  We are meant to empathise with the Damon and Blunt characters - to root for true love - to want them to be allowed to be together.  But when we discover that they only want to be together due to a kind of psychic residue from an earlier version of The Plan, frankly I didn't care too much. All of a sudden the movie wasn't about true love being hindered, but mopping up after an old version of the plan.

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU is on release in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Ireland, Philippines, Poland, Spain, Turkey, UK and Denmark. It opens on March 11th in Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Egypt. It opens later in March in Egypt, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Hungary. It opens in April in Mexico, Colombia and Israel. It opens in May in Brazil, Peru, Japan and Panama. It opens on June 16th in Argentina, Chile, Italy and Venezuela and on June 24th in Paraguay.

THE WOLFMAN - anaemic

Joe Johnston, hack director of such memorable fare as HIDALGO, JURASSIC PARK III and THE ROCKETEER (oh yes!) creates another cine-clunker with his ill-conceived remake of the Curt Siodomak classic, THE WOLF MAN.

The story is simple. Innocent Lawrence Talbot is bitten by a werewolf on Blackmoor while investigating his brother's savage death. He has to fight to stop the beast, while battling with his own lycophagia, all the time being hounded by the police and the psychiatrists, and with the help of his brother's attractive fiancée, Gwen.

Neither gory enough to be convincing as horror, nor well-acted enough to be convincing as familial drama, the movie occasionally plays as a campy spoof. It's surprising to me that the production design is so hi-rent - with richly textured costumes, and decadent gothic sets. And yet, the make-up design for The Wolfman is distinctly unconvincing, running a close second to Ang Lee's bouncing luminous green HULK as the most implausible filmic creation. You watch the sub-par transformation scenes, and the Teen-Wolf-laughable Wolfman bounding across London and you're taken out of the movie immediately. And as for the acting, despite the high quality cast (Anthony Hopkins, Geraldine Chaplin, Benicio del Toro, Emily Blunt, Antony Sher), the performances seem flat and uninspired. Only Hugo Weaving, as a mis-placed Inspector Abberline, looks like he's having any fun at all.

What a waste of a fine cast. What a waste of the beautifully decorated sets, period costumes, and lush Danny Elfman score. What a waste of my time and money.

Additional tags: Joe Johnston

THE WOLF MAN is on global release in all bar Russia, Australia and Poland where it opens next weekend, Israel where it opens on April 1st and Japan where it opens on April 23rd.

SUNSHINE CLEANING - shameless cash-in

SUNSHINE CLEANING is a worthless film. The script is derivative, the tone mis-judged and the execution poor.

Essentially, the film is a shameless attempt to cash-in on the sleeper-success of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE by recasting its characters in another setting. Once again we have a family beset by financial crisis and suburban failure. Admittedly, instead of a married couple we have two sisters – one, a high school sweetheart turned mistress and cleaner – the other a troubled college drop-out. But, in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE style, we have a central relationship between an eccentric grandfather and an eccentric grandchild. The plot, such as it is, consists of the two sisters setting a crime-scene clean-up business in order to finance the kid’s private education.

The tone of the film also attempts to ape the black comedy of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE but the script isn’t funny enough for that. Rather, we get a poor attempt to make a light-hearted film about painful subject matter – suicide, drug use and failure.

Finally, there are the difficulties with the execution. Amy Adams is cast as the older sister, but looks and plays younger than Emily Blunt. Emily Blunt’s accent is unsure. And casting Alan Arkin as the eccentric grandfather only confirms the movie’s attempt to capture the same tone as LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. Technically, the film suffers from a muddy colour palette and uninspired camera-work, relieved only by two exceedingly clumsy pastiche slow-mo shots of the two sisters at the start of the film, in the style of Wes Anderson.

SUNSHINE CLEANING played Sundance 2008 and was released last year in the US. It was released earlier this year in Canada, Sweden, Israel, Greece, the Netherlands and Germany. It is currently on release in Belgium, France, Australia, South Africa and the UK. It opens next week in Denmark, the following week in Singapore and Japan and on August 6th in New Zealand.

THE YOUNG VICTORIA - all this useless beauty

THE YOUNG VICTORIA is a luscious-looking film in which two rather beautiful, warm-hearted people - Queen Victoria and the future Prince Albert - meet and almost instantly realise that they will be in love for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, this happens in the first thirty minutes of the movie, and isn't enough to hold our attention for the next seventy minutes. So a lot of time is spent watching a cast of supporting characters harrumph about the lavish sets kicking over pot plants and shout like sulky teenagers* - everyone from the then Princess Victoria's uncle, the King (Jim Broadbent), to her mother's controlling adviser (Mark Strong) to Queen Victoria's slipper adviser, Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany). Poor screenwriter Julian Fellowes even resorts to throwing in a rather ridiculous act of heroism to add to the stakes, but this is all stuff and nonsense. He knows it and we know it. The simple facts are these: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert fell in love and were deeply devoted to each other, spawning nine children who went on to rule Europe. It's enough to warm the cockles of your heart, but not enough to fill a feature film. All the beauty, all the perfectly serviceable performances, are thus rather wasted. Although I must say that I was rather impressed by Rupert Friend for the first time.

(*Maybe not coincidentally, as this was a major component of director Jean-Luc Vallee's previous film, CRAZY.)

THE YOUNG VICTORIA is on release in the UK. It opens in Israel on April 2nd; in the Netherlands on April 23rd; in Russia on April 30th; in Belgium on May 6th; and in Norway on September 11th.

Overlooked DVD of the month - THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB

THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB is remarkably like a Jane Austen novel. It's peopled with a group of women searching for love. Althought the women face obstacles, not least their own inability to see love when it's staring them in the face, everything ends happily and order is restored. The entire process is charming and witty and involving and entirely harmless. The ensemble cast do a great job. I particularly liked Hugh Dancy is his role as a relentlessly optimistic IT-geek called Grigg. I've never been particularly impressed by Dancy before but he utterly won me over with his performance in a role which is hard to take seriously. He makes Grigg more than just a two-dimensional nice guy. The upshot is that I finished the movie in a sunny mood entirely at odds with my usual callous, cyncical demeanour.

Once the optimistic glow had subsided, my usual cynicism kicked in and the house of cards collapsed. The whole movie was contrived from top to bottom. The idea is that five women and one man meet once a month and discuss one of Austen's novels. Such is Austen's universal wit and wisdom that they can draw piquant life lessons from her novels and apply them to their own lives in contemporary California. Problem is that a lot of the lessons seem misapplied, or stretched to say the least.

Consider PERSUASION - a wonderful novel about second chances. The lessons are applied to Prudie and Dean. Prudie has delusions of a Left-Bank life; Dean is a neanderthal. Apparently having him read PERSUASION will lead to a rekindling of their romance. Sorry. Not buying it. The whole set up of the film is that they are congenitally unsuited. Reading a novel won't change that. And what about the relationship at the core of the film - between a repressed older woman, Jocelyn, and the younger man determined to win her love - Grigg. Apart from the completely predictable way in which they come together, I really hated the fact that the reasons for Joceyln to be so closed off were never explained. This made it hard to sympathise with her. She just seemed mean.

Apparently these issues are dealt with at more length in the novel and I look forward to reading it. And I suppose any movie can't be all bad if it makes you want to spend more time with its characters....?

THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB played Toronto 2007 and was released last year. It's now available on DVD.

DAN IN REAL LIFE - Two words: Pig Face

Peter Hedges is a screenwriter who has an uncanny ability to write about real life and real relationships in a way that you can relate to, that touches you, but isn't mawkish. After brilliant adaptations of WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE? and ABOUT A BOY, and a really great indie drama called PIECES OF APRIL, he returns to the screen as writer-director of DAN IN REAL LIFE.

This new movie is a far more conventional, mainstream effort than his previous work. The story is familiar to rom-com fans, not least to those of us who sat through the vastly inferior THE FAMILY STONE. Basically a man falls in love at first sight with the one woman he can't have - his brother's new girlfriend. Watch them squirm through the family weekend! Watch true love win despite the initial anger of the betrayed! In this case we have Steve Carrell playing an earnest, heart-broken widower and father of three called Dan Burns. He's basically just a warm, funny, messed up guy - who wouldn't fall in love with him?! And so he meets-cute with a woman called Marie, played by Juliette Binoche. Marie is basically apparently a 100% Peaches and Cream wonderful women. Problem is, she's dating the younger brother, Mitch, played by Dane Cook.

The script has a few problems. I don't understand why these two seemngly perfect people would be alone in the first place. I also don't really buy into how quickly Dan's parents, kids and brother forgive him in the end. And as for the production, I thought Juliette Binoche was mis-cast. It's not so much that she can't play comedy but that she, Carrell and Cook make such odd pairings. There's simply no chemistry.

Set against all of this, DAN IN REAL LIFE is refreshingly real, occasionally very funny, and features a wonderful cameo from Emily Blunt. Most of all, Steve Carrell really has the sympathetic loser character down pat. He's totally infringing on Greg Kinnear's territory, but he's so winning you just have to forgive him! So, on balance, I guess I'd have to recommend DAN IN REAL LIFE. It's not as good as ABOUT A BOY but if I stumbled upon it on TV I'd find it hard to switch channels.

DAN IN REAL LIFE opened in the US, Iceland, Russia, Greece, Israel, Russia Greece, Israel and Slovenia in 2007. It is currently playing in Singapore and the UK. It opens in Australia next weel and in Norweay amd Spain in February. It opens in Sweden, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy in March and in the Netherlands in April 2008.

CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR - funny/scary morality tale

CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR is whip-smart, viciously funny and scarily based in fact. Wilson was the Republican Congressman who channelled monumental sums of money to the Afghan militias fighting the Soviet Union in the 1980s. In doing so, he forced the Soviets to retreat ignominiously and precipitated the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. But as Wilson realises in the moment of his greatest triumph, "we fucked up the endgame." By pulling funding as soon as the fighting stopped - y refusing to rebuild Afghanistan - the US left a power vacuum that was filled by all those CIAl-trained Islamists, armed to the teeth by Charlie. They went on to wreak havoc in Afghanistan, and later, the world.

The movie is brilliantly funny, thanks to an incisive, ballsy script from Aaron "West Wing" Sorkin and the fundamentally scoundrelous subject matter. The paradoxes abound. Wilson is a Republican Congressman from Texas, expert at wheedling favours out of Committee-men, but he's also a womanising, cocaine-snorting, whisky-swilling good-time boy. Wilson has the private morals of a skunk but he's curiously good to his word when it comes to the big stuff. He does what he promises and he's intelligent enough to feel the tragedy of his Committee's refusal to fund a reconstruction. That's why Tom Hanks is perfectly cast here. He's made a career out of being charming and decent, so that even when he's sleazing around a hot-tub you still love him. Wilson is matched pound for pound by all-time scoundrelous CIA agent and bad-ass Gust Avrakotos. Philip Seymour Hoffman's is on top form as the angry, devil-may-care but politically astute CIA fixer who finds his ultimate sugar daddy in Wilson. The only down-side is that, chaps aside, the women in this flick get short thrift. Julia Roberts is magestic and menacing as the Christian fundamentalist fund-raiser Joanna Herring but you never really understand why a Texan socialite would become obsessed with Asian politics. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are wasted in small roles as Wilson's PA and mistress.

Some critics have complained that there isn't enough politics in this movie. Specifically, that the script does not explicitly show the impact of Wilson's war on the Soviets occupying Afghanistan, or the way in which the arms and training fuelled Jihadists that ended up in the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Iraq. Frankly, I think they're missing the point. We all know the grim repurcussions of the Afghani war. We're living with them. It's far more incisive to see how that sad misadventure began. And frankly, it's a lot more entertaining.

CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR was released in the US in 2007 and is currently playing in the UK, Greece, Kuwait, Japan, Portugal and Greece. It opens later in January in Belgium, France, Iceland, Argentina, Australia, the Netherlands and South Korea. The film opens in February in Estonia, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Venezuela, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Turkey, Slovakia, Spain, Egypt, Singapore and Brazil. It opens in Russia on April 24th 2008.

WIND CHILL - workman-like supernatural thriller

On the hottest day of the year so far, Doctor007 and I ducked into a blissfully air-conditioned but absolutely empty theatre to catch whatever was playing. That turned out to be an under-the-radar spoooooky thriller from the Clooney/Soderbergh production camp. The plot is simple. A beautiful college student cadges a ride home from a geek. They get stranded in the snow and seemingly enter an eternal loop of road accidents and other wacky shit. It's pretty formulaic but gets a marginal thumbs-up for three reasons. First, DP Dan Laustsen beautifully photographs the sinister snow-swept mountains. Second, it's nice to see a pretty heroine in a horror flick who actually has brains. Rather than a ditzy, bikini-clad blonde, WIND CHILL presents us with Emily Blunt's gutsy engineering student. And yes, she is perfectly capable of saving herself, thank you very much. Third, both Emily Blunt and Ashton Holmes (HISTORY OF VIOLENCE) give credible performances as two teens. Indeed, the blossoming of their relationship is far more interesting than the supernatural nonsense surrounding them.

WIND CHILL was released in the US in April 2007 and is currently on limited release in the UK.

SPOILER ALERT: I also think the movie could've been improved by ending 10 minutes earlier, with the chick caught in a nightmarish constant loop, rather than stumbling sentimentally after her guardian-angel love-interest to safety.....

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA - infuriating

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA started life as an infuriatingly trite novel by Lauren Weisberger documenting her trials as assistant to Anna "Nuclear" Wintour - editor of American Vogue. The novel no doubt filled the vacuum in the heart of thirteen year-old girls who dream of one day owning a Gucci handbag all of their very own. Accordingly it sold in bucket loads. I found the novel to be infuriating. The heroine is a whiny wannabe journalist who thinks she is above fashion journalism but it just as cut-throat and get-ahead as the rest of us. Her nemesis - the she-devil boss of the title is merely a string of cutting one-liners and seemingly sadistic demands. Admittedly, Weisberger lets her heroine fall from grace. But the plot machinations are so melodramatic as to be ludicrous and the ultimate message is not that you should work hard at something worthwhile, but that you should screw everyone, write a book, make a killing and thus clamber back onto your high horse.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA the movie is similarly trite, except it doesn't even have the balls to convey a proper rise-fall-redemption arc. The heroine's primary-school teacher geek boyfriend becomes a cool, crumped chef in the Village. Her best friends are more together and her family less emotionally blackmailing. Oh, it goes in all sorts of small ways - the heroine of the movie is allowed to succeed in ways that the heroine of the novel is not.

The only change for the better in the movie is that the screenwriters have taken great pains to make Meryl Streep's evil boss humane. My god, she even cries! Well, I wonder if this was a genuine decision on how to improve the plot or whether they just decided that Meryl does a good break-down. (Didn't they do the same thing in THE HOURS - giving Meryl a break-down that her gay friend had in the novel?) Seriously though, Meryl Streep gives a fantastic performance that just about elevates this post-Sex and the City trash into watchable - maybe even entertaining - material. She is ably assisted in this task by Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt who both turn in decent comedic performances. As for our heroine, played by Anne Hathaway, I am on record as saying that I really like Hathaway as an actress, but I wish she would do more work that challenged her.

Other than that, this is a pretty sloppy affair. High gloss for sure, but sloppily thought out. What's their message? That it's impossible for a woman to have a family and a career? That a woman has to be bitchy and back-stabbing to survive in the corporate world? What kind of crap is this? It's also pretty sloppy in the editing. There is an exchange between our heroine and a seductor on the steps of a museum after a benefit that clearly refers to a conversation that has been excised.

So, all in all, this movie is pretty unedifying. In fact, the message of the film is fairly discouraging and would dismay any genuine career woman. Yes, yes, Meryl Streep is fantastic, but that doesn't quite stop this from being a deeply infuriating cinematic experience.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA is already on release in the US, Puerto Rico, the, Philippines, Singapore, Israel and Hong Kong. It opens in Brazil, Denmark, France, Argentina, Australia and Thailand in September. It opens in Italy, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Slovenia, the UK, Finland, Latvia, Spain, Turkey and the Ukraine on October 5th. It opens in Germany, Greece and the Netherlands on October 12th and in Iceland, Sweden, Belgium, Estonia later that month. Finally, it opens in Lithuania, Egypt and Japan in November.

MY SUMMER OF LOVE - over-looked DVD pick of the week

There is a famous monologue in the 1990s cult flick TRAINSPOTTING, wherein the hero, Renton, talks about all the entrapments of consumer culture. "Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments." Renton and his mates escape this British consumer drudgery through hard-core drug addiction.

In a sense, the heroine of MY SUMMER OF LOVE, Mona, starts at much the same point as Renton. She is a working-class girl, living in the boondocks of Yorkshire. Life holds no hope, and given her intelligence - an intelligence frustrated by the lack of opportunity surrounding her - she is painfully aware of this. When asked what she'll do with her life, Mona responds, dead-pan, "I'm gonna get a job in an abattoir, work really hard, get a boyfriend who's like... a bastard, and churn out all these kids, right, with mental problems. And then I'm gonna wait for the menopause... or cancer." That quotation should hopefully give you a flavour of both the humour and the underlying despair in this delightful, much under-discussed, flick.

Mona is pushed to the edge of despair in the summer in question when her brother, Phil, converts to evangelical Christianity. Unlike Renton, Mona escapes not through drugs but love - namely with a glamourous, reassuringly knowing "posh" girl who lives in a manor house. The film charts the consequence of this love affair on the three protagonists. For a film whose subject matter is rather dour and problematic, the tone is light, sometimes fey, and a sheer pleasure to watch. Kudos to the director, but especially to the three lead actors who give performances of integrity. In particular, Natalie Press, most recently seen on UK TV screens as Caddy Jellyby in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House, plays Mona as having a combination of fragility and inner strength. I feel she could be the Samantha Morton of her generation. The brother is played by Paddy Considine gives another edgy, intelligent performance

If Ang Lee struggled to get Brokeback accepted for being more than just a "gay cowboy" movie, Pawel Pawlikowski must also struggle to have MY SUMMER OF LOVE accepted as being more than just a "lesb*an coming of age flick." This movie has so much more to it and I strongly encourage you to check it out.

MY SUMMER OF LOVE was shown at the 2004 London Film Fest and went on limited release in the US and Continential Europe in summer 2005. It is now available on Region 2 DVD replete with cast and director interviews.