ALL OF US STRANGERS**** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 5

ALL OF US STRANGERS is the latest film from Andrew Haigh (WEEKEND) and yet another beautifully crafted, intimate, emotionally affecting film. It stars Andrew Scott (Sherlock) as Adam, a gay, forty something screenwriter struggling to deal with the death of his parents when he was a child. On successive visits to his childhood home he imagines he can tell them about his life now, come out to them, and tell them how the world has changed for him.  The scenes can only be described as truly heartbreaking. Adam flits between adulthood and childhood, delighting in being able to be cared for by his mum and dad, but then also bristling at their attitudes to his sexuality. They tell them they are proud of him and he is so riven with self-doubt and pain that he cannot accept the complement. Claire Foy and Jamie Bell are wonderful in these smaller but viscerally emotional roles.  

I found the present day relationship less successful. Adam strikes up a friendship with another man in his apartment block: they are seemingly the only two people home alone at Christmas.  Harry (Paul Mescal) seems more comfortable in his skin at first, or at least more able to articulate his need for connection and intimacy. But as the film progresses we realise that he is also deeply vulnerable.

Andrew Haigh's previous films showed a willingness to mine the emotional nuances of modern relationships. But I feel ALL OF US STRANGERS is a leap forward in its technical skill and visual and aural creativity. In particular, a bravura central scene in a nightclub shows a director increasingly confident in his work and willing to push himself stylistically.

ALL OF US STRANGERS has a running time of 105 minutes. It played London 2023. It goes on release in the USA on December 22nd and in the UK on January 26th.

FANTASTIC FOUR (2015)

One gets the feeling that FOX have never really known who to handle the Fantastic Four IP, and with any luck the poor performance of this film will prevent a sequel and allow the rights to revert back to Marvel. We've had the broadly inoffensive but unmemorable 2005 and 2007 outings starring Ioan Gruffud, a pre-Cap Chris Evans and Jessica Alba.  And now we get a reboot of actively poor quality starring a much younger cast.   This causes as many problems as it solves - sure, the movie might appeal to a younger demographic but as a result the Four meet in a kind of super-nerd school that gives the movie a feeling of ripping of the X-MEN reboot.  Worst of all, the writer-director Josh Trank massively fell out with the studio and disowned the final 90 minute cut, and the resulting film feels incoherent in its editing.

Anyways, back to basics. The movie kicks of with twenty minutes of tedious pre-amble in which a geeky young Reed Richards befriends Ben Grimm and the two work on building a teleportation machine only to be mocked by teachers and students alike. Fast forward to their late teens and Reed (Miles Teller0 and Grimm (Jamie Bell) are recruited by Franklyn Storm (Reg E Caffey) to join his well-funded research org.  They hook up with Johnny and Sue Storm (Michael B Jordan and Kate Mara) as well as the rebellious Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell) and create the transportation device.  Pissed off that pro scientists will get to pilot it, they decide to take the ship out to Planet Zero, shit hits the fan, they get their superpowers and Doom becomes a destructive comic book villain.  Thereafter we get a kind of Hulk goes to Latin America to find his soul interlude and the inevitable showdown.  

The actors are all decent, so why does this movie suck? A hammy derivative script, hamstrung by bad editing and shitty special FX. Move along, there's nothing to see here. 

FANTASTIC FOUR is on general release. It has a running time of 100 minutes and is available to rent and own.

FILTH

Irvine Welsh's Filth was a novel of characteristic brutality and dark humour - depicting corruption, drug abuse, sexual perversion and decadence in contemporary Scotland with an unflinching stare and a complex prose style.  Notoriously, part of the novel was narrated by the tapeworm living inside of police officer Bruce Robertson's abused gut.  Hilariously, the tapeworm later becomes sentient and helps us diagnose the true root of Bruce's current emotional breakdown.

Writer-director John S Baird's approach to the novel is one of courage in taking on the grim subject matter, with barely any concessions to the censors, as well as a pragmatic and inventive approach to solving the tapeworm problem. Rather than trying to do some kind of bizarre POV a la Terry Gilliam, he's given Bruce a nutty psychiatrist, Dr Rossi, who in surreal nightmarish visions does much of the work the tapeworm did, with some nice visual pointers for the book fans.  The result is a movie that is loyal to the spirit of the novel but understands that to make a coherent film you sometimes have to make drastic changes.

So, on to the meat of the film.  Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy) is a nasty corrupt drug-addled cop determined to screw over every departmental colleague in his mission to get promoted. That said, his sense of dark mischief doesn't extend to making trouble for some concrete end - he'll happily taunt his best friend's wife with sexually harassing phone calls, or spike said friend's drinks with drugs and leave him freaking out in a hotel room, for no reason at all.  As the movie progresses, we realise that there is some cause to this malevolence - or perhaps causes - rooted in an unhappy home life in the past and present (isn't it always!)  Thank god the movie makes all of that sound far less hackneyed than the description just sounded.  And even when the movie introduces a character explicitly designed to make Bruce question his morality, it doesn't give him an easy out.  

The framing device for the film is the investigation of the murder of a kid by a group of nasty violent teens in an underpass.  The irony is that despite his deeply unethical methods, Bruce is actually apparently fairly good at investigating the murder - apparently.   But let's be honest, that's not what this movie is really about. It's a character study - or a study of Bruce's psychosis - a study of just how far a human being will descend into mayhem in order to avoid the truth.   And in amidst all that, we have lurid, sleazy, darkly funny visuals and cameos - John Sessions as the homophobic head of department who dreams of writing screenplays - Shirley Henderson as the deliciously sex-starved middle-class wife throwing herself at her phone stalker - and of course Eddie Marsan as her husband, the repressed accountant.   But really, this movie belongs to James McAvoy who throws himself into an incredibly challenging and provocative role and is utterly compelling throughout.  It's his real emotional trauma that keeps us anchored in a movie that would otherwise be a confusing and alienating mess of nastiness.

FILTH has a running time of 97 minutes.

FILTH opened earlier this year in the UK, Hungary, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Serbia, Slovenia, Finland and Japan. It opened last weekend in Australia and New Zealand. It opens in Lithuania on December 6th, in Estonia on December 13th and in the USA in 2014.

iPad Round-Up 4 - THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

This new adaptation of Herge's famous children's adventure stories is a technical masterpiece. Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have come together to create a movie using the latest motion capture, CGI and 3D technology to create a spectacular visual experience.  The problem is that I'm not sure their choices work, and I'm not sure the story can withstand the heavy visuals placed upon it.  

The first problem is that Herge's comics have such a particular style, and the motion-cap work seems to come down somewhere between straightforward animation and live-action, creating a sort of eerie look of humans with plasticine faces and over-large hands.  I  found the mo-cap humans with exaggerated facial features creepy.  

The second problem is that the movie contains so much swash and buckle, so many car-chases, naval-escapades and exotic locales, that I had no idea what was going on or what was at stake.  The whole thing read as a giant MacGuffin, designed to propel us through ever more exciting action sequences. I simply did not care about the clues to treasure that TinTin and his alcoholic sidekick, Captain Haddock, were seeking, nor did I think that they had enough camaraderie to anchor a buddy-action adventure story.

Maybe my whole problem is with the character of TinTin himself? I've never read the comic books and I find this strangely asexual boy-scouty do-gooding journo deeply unengaging.  So much of this film shares the 1920s action serial tropes that made INDIANA JONES so compelling, but without a loveable rogue as the lead character, there's no emotional entry point.

So, count me out for the sequel.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN opened in October 2011 and is now available to rent and own.

JANE EYRE (2011)

You would rather drive me to madness than break some mere human law?

In the context of a literary education dominated by Jane Austen (English all-girls prep school - rolls eyes), Jane Eyre felt radical - a proto-feminist tract in the form of a gothic-romantic novel. Charlotte Bronte presented us with a mid-nineteenth century heroine that was plain and poor, rather than pretty and middle-class. A heroine with a strong morality but who rejects both the piety of Mr Brocklehurst and the Christian "cheek-turning" martyrdom of Helen Burns. A heroine that attracted her lover, Edward Rochester, with moral and intellectual strength rather than sparkling wit. A heroine that rejected that same brooding Byronic hero to protect her moral autonomy and sense of self. A heroine who, even in the very depths of desperation and poverty, was never a "damsel in distress" to be rescued by her cousin, St John Rivers. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is morally and intellectual tough, but never a prig (in the way that Austen's Fanny Price can be), and her happiness resides in finding a man who with whom she can be herself - who gives her permission to be herself - the ultimate philosophical emancipation. And whereas so many romantic novels end abruptly with a marriage, Jane Eyre ends with a resolute declaration and the readers belief that, yes, this really is a marriage of equals that will last. 

Despite my great respect for the novel, I feel that it lends itself less easily to screen adaptation that the sparkling novels of Austen. Gothic tales, if mis-handled, can seem melodramatic and ridiculous. And then there are those few episodes which stretch credulity on the page, and look absurd on screen. How should a modern audience react to the sight of Edward Rochester dressing up as a gypsy woman to read Jane's fortune? How will they react to the absurd coincidence that St John Rivers is Jane's cousin? And how far will Hollywood have the courage to cast a hero and heroine that really are plain and Byronically ugly respectively? To my mind, the most successful adaptations have been the 1944 JANE EYRE with a truly frightening and Bryonic Orson Welles as Rochester, and a script by John Houseman and Aldous Huxley. The only negative was the altogether too pretty and insipid Joan Fontaine as Jane. After that, I very much liked the 1996 Franco Zefirelli JANE EYRE starring a good-looking but suitably old and menacing William Hurt as Rochester and the absolutely perfect Jane in the jolie-laide Charlotte Gainsbourg. Both of these adaptations retained the gothic, dark atmosphere of the novel and showed the struggle between passion and morality. Both are memorable and definitive in their own way.

The new adaptation of JANE EYRE from director Cary Fukunage (SIN NOMBRE) and screenwriter Moira Buffini (TAMARA DREWE) has its moments but must, overall, be judged a failure. And for that, I blame the writer and director. Buffini's screenplay is admirably concise; uses an effective flashback structure; and thankfully omits all episodes that force a willing suspension of disbelief that strains the modern viewer. (No gypsy and the Rivers aren't cousins). But, Buffini also compresses Jane's early years so radically that we do not get a sense of how she came to be the remarkably self-possessed, morally upright woman that Rochester falls in love with. The Red Room is shorn of its Gothic visions; the death of Helen Burns is dealt with in a matter of minutes; and most importantly, the good example of Miss Temple, the kind teacher who forms so much of Jane's character, is omitted entirely. And so, after a few short episodes, we go to Thornfield and see, almost as quickly as we rush through Jane's childhood, Rochester and Jane falling in love. Admittedly, once we get to that point, the love story plays out beautifully, because Buffini finally gives the story room to breathe, and Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender (though both far too beautiful) finally get the chance to show what fine actors they are. 

But as the story develops into its dramatic climax, the movie and the script absolutely fails. For Buffini and Fukunaga have taken the decision to focus on the romance, the intellectual and emotional inter-play, at the expense of the Gothic. There is no "woman at the foot of the bed", no "tearing of the veil"...It's as though they are embarrassed by it, or unwilling to keep faith with Eyre's vision. Indeed, they are so embarrassed by the generally brooding and serious tone of the novel, that they feel it necessary to make Judi Dench's Mrs Fairfax comic relief - pathetic. And so we are left with a very beautifully acted and wonderfully photographed (DP Adriano Goldman) love story yes - and with no little power - the scene where Rochester begs Jane to stay is quite wonderful. But this is not Jane Eyre, not really. The proto-feminism is there - the Victorian romance is there - but the Gothic is cruelly, disastrously under-played.

JANE EYRE was released earlier this year in the US, Estonia, Latvia, Taiwan, Portugal, South Korea, Iceland, South Africa, Singapore, Israel, Kuwait and the Czech Republic. It is currently on release in Hong Kong and Russia. It opens on September 9th in Belgium, France, Ireland and the UK. It opens on September 16th in Sweden; on September 22nd in the Netherlands; on December 1st in Germany; on December 9th in Turkey and on February 23rd 2012 in Denmark.

THE EAGLE - Job. Done.

I really enjoyed THE EAGLE. I loved it in the same way that I love commanding my Roman cohort to form the Testudo against a bunch of screaming German women and wolf-skin wearing savages in Rome Total War. It's a guilty pleasure that works for anyone who ever loved sword-and-sandal epics  or was forced to do a lot of class-civ. as a kid. And let's be honest, "the ninth legion" is a phrase that, for people educated in a certain time and place*, resonates strongly. Raised by Pompey to fight in Spain, the Legio Nona Hispana were definitely massacred by Boudica's Iceni in AD 60's Roman Britain, and were rumoured to have vanished north of Hadrian's Wall in AD 120, but may well have been finally defeated by the Teutons....Whatever happened, they represent the inability of Mighty Rome to hold off the Native Horde - a story that resonates today as we see the superior forces of our modern superpower struggling to fight scrappy insurgents in the Middle East. And this is the parallel that Scottish director Andrew MacDonald and screenwriter Jeremy Brock (THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND) bring to this adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff's popular children's historical adventure, "The Eagle of the Ninth", by giving the Romans American accents and by confronting them with the motives of the "insurgents".

As in the novel, the story is simple and compelling. Young Marcus Flavius Aquila (Channing Tatum) is the son of the disgraced Roman general whose legion was massacred by the northern British tribes. Worse still, those tribes captured the legion's Eagle - its symbol of authority and good fortune. Desperate to restore his family's honour, Aquila deliberately seeks a posting to Hadrian's Wall, and when injured defending his men, he journeys north of the border to find the Eagle without the sanction of Rome. We have, then, the Stakes. But the heart of the novel and the film is the relationship between Aquila and his slave-then-friend, Esca (Jamie Bell). Aquila's emotional arc takes him from viewing the Celts as savage insurgents of little honour and less integrity, to brave fighters defending their homeland against Rome's rape and pillage. The Seal People may do savage things - not least their "crown prince" as played by Tahar Rahim (UN PROPHET) but in death, when the war paint washes off, he is just a young man defending his tribe. So, by the end of his journey, while Aquila is still convinced of the idea of Rome, he can cock a snook at the Senate, and take the lead of a Freed Man (a ham-fisted scene admittedly.)

The resulting film is really well put together. Andrew MacDonald gives us all those little details of life in a Roman outpost that made the novel feel real and alive - we feel the armour chafe, we feel the adrenaline inside the Testudo, we hear the crowd cheer the gladiator. I loved Anthony Dod Mantle's photography - beautifully capturing the Scottish rural landscape and the fog of battle. This isn't Rome as glossy and glorious, but life in the trenches against an enemy that hates you. I was impressed by Channing Tatum as Aquila. He was convincing as the young soldier from the patrician family - born to lead - but also as the demoralised and depressed decommissioned soldier. He had genuine chemistry with Jamie Bell as Esca, and the way in which their understanding of each other develops is the back-bone of the film. Of course, Bell is the better actor, but the pairing didn't feel as imbalanced as I feared it might.

Is the film perfect? Of course not. As I said before, the final scene seemed a little cheesy. (Englishman) Mark Strong's American accent was so broad as to be distracting. We lost some emotional punch in the reduction of Cradoc (the guy on the chariot with knives sticking out of the axle) from a guide-turned-traitor to a generic screaming savage. And by axing Cottia (the love interest in the novel) but refusing to amp up the homo-erotic aspects of the story, MacDonald leaves the relationship between Aquila and Esca annoyingly ambiguous. Still, for all that, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed THE EAGLE. It was beautifully put together, solidly acted, and gave me a real feel for AD 100s Roman Britain. Job. Done.

THE EAGLE was released in February in Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, the USA; Bulgaria, Finland, Romania, Indonesia and Armenia. It was released in March in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, the Philippines, Greece, Kuwait, Egypt, Denmark, Hungary, Malaysia, the UK, Portugal and Singapore. It was released last week in Lithuania and Spain. It opens on April 18th in Estonia and Norway; on April 28th in Croatia and on May 13th in Turkey. THE EAGLE is released on Region 1 DVD on June 21st. 

*And if you think I'm taking this too far, we learned Latin before we learned French; our school magazine was called Aquila (Eagle!), the debating society was the Quintilian Society; the school moto was Alta Petens....To say that I was conditioned as a child to be fascinated by Rome is an under-statement.

DEFIANCE - important and entertaining

Edward Zwick (BLOOD DIAMOND, THE LAST SAMURAI) is back with another professionally put together but visually uninspiring thriller that seeks to educate as it entertains. In the case of DEFIANCE, Zwick teaches us the true story of the three Bielski brothers, smugglers whose shady smarts proved invaluable in forming a resistance group against the Nazis and their Belorussian collaborators during the Holocaust. Thanks to these brothers, 1500 Jews survived in the woods of Belarus. Zwick's movie makes a powerful point about modern movie treatment of the Holocaust in which the Jewish characters are often an amorphous mass of passive victims, to be pitied no doubt, but not as individually interesting as the Nazis. By contrast, DEFIANCE is a film that shows us Jews fighting the Nazis and, indeed, surviving.

The movie has been criticised for being somehow too superficial - too fond of battle scenes and too interested in the heroes' love lives - as if an audience can't simultaneously be entertained and educated. Paul Verhoeven has successfully combined both elements in his work, most recently in ZWARTEBOEK, and Zwick pulls off the same trick here, though will less directorial style. So yes, we see Jamie Bell's character, youngest brother Asael, shyly fall in love with pretty young Chaya (Mia Wasikowska). And yes, we see Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as elder brothers Zus and Tuvia, take lovers after their wives have been killed. But we also see Zus and Tuvia debate the merits of direct action allied with the Communists versus slowing down but giving shelter to the elderly and women. And we see Zus and Tuvia debate the reversal of fortune which sees them - working-class boys, hailed as heroes and respected by the academics and rich.

The result is a thoughtful, well-acted film (Schreiber and Craig excel), that is also fast-paced and compelling. It's not as earnest or ponderous as SCHINDLER'S LIST but it is one of Zwick's better films allied to truly important subject matter.

DEFIANCE is on release in the US. It goes on release in South Korea, Spain and the UK next week and in France and Italy the following week. It opens in Poland on January 23rd; in Croatia on January 29th; in Singapore and Finland on February 6th; in Japan on February 14th; in Iceland on February 20th; in Australia, Brazil and Estonia on February 27th; in Belgium and Germany on March 5th and in the Netherlands on March 19th.

JUMPER - weak performances mar neat-O concept

This poster totally sums up the new sci-fi action flick, JUMPER. On the plus side, there are a lot of cool special effects and glamourous locations thrown up onto the screen. The pyramids, the Colisseum, down-town Tokyo, the beaches of Fiji...The heroes of this film run, jump, speed and slide their way through glamourous location after glamourous location. The problem is that the amount of time and care spent on, oh simple things, like character, motivation, plot and narrative arc, are disproportionately small.

It's a real shame because the basic concept is cool. Certain people have the ability to "jump" - to teleport instantaneously to anywhere in the world. These Jumpers are being hunted down by evil Paladins, who think only God should have that kind of power.

Problem is, the Paladins are led by Samuel L Jackson in a daft blonde dye-job that totally subverts his ability to look scary and threatening. Another problem is the lame attempt to inject a bigger story/possible sequel of the "Luke, I am your father" kind. Yet another problem is the fact that our hero, as portrayed by Hayden Christiansen, comes across as whiny and self-obsessed. There's never any suggestion that David will use his powers to save others. Indeed, the only thing he uses them for is to get with his childhood sweetheart. Rachel Bilson is similarly weak in her performance.

The only person who looks remotely like he's having any fun is Jamie Bell. He camps up his cameo role as a fellow Jumper, and almost, but not quite, manages to turn a weak script into something entertaining.

I'd also like to observe that the two kids playing younger version of David and his sweetheart - Annasophia Robb and Max Thieriot - are infinitely stronger performers than their grown-up counter-parts. So if we must have a sequel, might it not be better as a more fully developed prequel?

JUMPER is on release in Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Kuwait, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Lorea, Taiwan, the US, the UK, Estonia, Iceland, Norway, Poland and Spain. It opens next week in Belgium, Egypt, France, Denmark, Sweden, Israel and Italy. JUMPER opens in March in Slovakia, Finland, Japan, Turkey, Germany and Brazil. It opens in Argentina on April 3rd.

HALLAM FOE - a puzzling little film

HALLAM FOE is an odd, puzzling film and I'm not convinced it added up to much in the end. However, cinephiles will want to see it for Jamie Bell's brave central performance as the eponymous troubled teen.

Hallam is a seventeen year-old boy who is convinced that his mother's suicide was engineered by his step-mother (Claire Forlani with a perfect English accent.) Since the death, Hallam has retreated into his tree-house, snooping on people from afar and nurturing his paranoid delusions. Confronted by the (apparently) Macchiavellian step-mother, Hallam flees to Edinburgh. There, he takes a menial job in a hotel in order to get close to a young woman (Sophia Myles) who happens to look like his dead mother.

The movie is strong on performances and the look is suitably sinister and grim. Hallam comes across as conflicted and borderline insane - but also as charming and warm. I really cared about what happened to him. This is in sharp contrast to writer-director, David Mackenzie's, earlier film, YOUNG ADAM, which I found to be irredeemably bleak and alienating.

Where this film lost me was in the writing. The motivations of key characters seemed a bit random or insufficiently fleshed out. I never got a grip on what the dad (Ciaran Hinds) was up to for a start. And the Sophia Myles character was bizarre - in a good way I think - because instead of running screaming at the idea of having dated her stalker she actually embraces his weirdness. It's a strangely optimistic thought. Apart from all these substantive issues, some of the scenes just don't work. There's a particularly excruciating pre-coital scene in a hotel suite between Hallam and his girlfriend, for instance.

Still, it's another great performance from Jamie Bell and proves that he is maturing into an interesting actor who is willing to take on challenging roles.

HALLAM FOE played Berlin, where it won the Silver Bear, and Edinburgh 2007 and is currently on release in the UK and Germany. It opens in Swizterland on October 4th, in Belgium on October 24th and in the Netherlands on January 17th 2008.

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS - gilt-edged

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is a film that spends a long time making a simple but important point: winning a war takes money, and raising money from the public takes a PR offensive and a PR offensive needs a good story of heroism and victory against all odds, the truth be damned. In this particular case, the war is against the Japanese and the PR men are three US marines who apparently helped hoist the US flag on a Japanese island called Iwo Jima.

There are many aspects of the film that deserve our time and our admiration. Director Clint Eastwood has created an intelligent film that looks with pained realism at the way in which war is carried out and the cost for all concerned. Unlike Spielberg, while he has a great deal of respect for the serving military and creates an authentic 1940s feel to the movie, Eastwood never slips into cheap sentimentality. Even more admirable is the fact that he does not descend into cheap cynicism either. When Ryan Philippe’s young Marine tells a grieving mother than her son is the soldier furthest to the right in the infamous picture, he knows it’s an out-an-out lie. But what would you do in the same circumstances? Rob a mother of her only comfort? After all, her son was there at the battle. This scene is typical of a film that does not rush to judge but presents each decision in its full moral complexity.

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is also to be admired for its superb ensemble cast, its convincing production design and its cinematography. The battle scenes in particular are deeply affecting: cast in grey-scale that has been almost entirely drained of colour. The framing of each shot is considered and effective – not least the fear-inducing shots from the point-of-view of the anonymous Japanese sharp-shooter hidden in pill-boxes above the landing beach.

My criticism of the film lies in its lack of emotional pull. To that end, its restraint and emotional discipline in comparison to, say, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, is also its downfall. The point that the film makes is important and true and needs to be told – especially to a Hollywood studio audience used to the schmaltz of your typical war movie. However, I doubt that such a simple message needed such a long run-time. Nonetheless, Eastwood has created an important film that deserves all the critical acclaim it has received.

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is on release in the US, Belgium, France, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Philippines, Greece, Italy, Israel, Finland, the Netherlands, Singapore, Denmark, Finland, Venezuala, Turkey, the UK, Iceland, Norway, and Portugal. It opens in Spain on January 3rd, in Hong Kong on January 11th and in Germany on the 18th. It opens in Brazil and Estonia on February 2nd and in Russia on February 15th 2007.

UNDERTOW - There are some things we just don't need to see

Josh Lucas mud-wrestling a squealing pig, his pale ass-cheeks wobbling over the top of his muddy britches. No, sir. We also do not need to see inferior remakes of cinematic classics, no matter what the pedigree of the director. No matter how impressive David Gordon Green's first two films were, there is no excuse for this blatant rip-off of The Night of the Hunter. In this version, Dermot Mulroney plays John Munn, the father of two kids, living in the backwoods of Georgia in savage conditions. One day his younger brother Deel Munn, played by Josh Lucas, shows up. He's after some old Mexican coins that Mulroney inherited from his father. This being one of Green's trademark "Southern Gothic" flicks, the fight for the coins soon turns violent. So the two kids abscond, chased by their sinister, murdering Uncle. Now, despite my deep scepticism as to the point of remaking (broadly speaking) The Night of the Hunter, there is a lot to like about UNDERTOW. Apart from Josh Lucas, the cast is outstanding. In particular, Jamie Bell and Devon Alan are captivating as the two young Munn boys. The evocation of mood - from photography to Philip Glass' score - is also first class. However, whenever Josh Lucas appeared on screen I was totally taken out of the movie thanks to his hammy over-acting. He plays menacing by opening his eyes *really* wide and getting all shouty in the manner of Al Pacino's more hammy performances. And when he starts on his sinister rampage he just reminded me of Jason Lee in My Name is Earl. And that's about as menacing as the English pace attack. (i.e. not very.) To sum up, there are worse looking films out on DVD this week, but I doubt if any are more frustratingly mis-cast.

UNDERTOW screened at London 2004 and went on limited release in the UK last autumn. It was released on DVD yesterday.

DEAR WENDY - Billy Elliot goes Gangsta!

DEAR WENDY tells the tale of a bunch of losers in mid-town America. The kids club together and found The Dandies - a club for pacifists who dress well, read poetry..... They also meet in darkened mines, learn everything they can about guns and become crack-shot shooters. Crucially, though, they never fire a gun in "open warfare". The key is to allow the fascination with guns and mastery of them to be empowering rather destructive. And empowered they are. The kids find friendship, community, self-respect - they start playing music again (largely, bizarrely, 60s hits by The Zombies). Their guns become their girlfriends, named, beloved. The kids get laid, get tits, get top hats. Yes, yes. Into this off-whack self-help group steps a black kid called Sebastian. He makes a move on Dickie's gun, his girl and his gang. Is it any surprise that in a movie populated by armed-up, sexually frustrated, jealous teens, it all ends in a gun-fight and tears before bedtime?

This being a Lars von Trier-scripted film, the America of DEAR WENDY is somewhat off whack. Poor white miners can afford to hire black maids and kids drink tea. Perhaps even more bizarre than drinking tea, these US kids sometimes affect a "Brideshead stutter" - mimicking fictional toff and cult figure, Antony Blanche! I mean, seriously, how many mid-western teens have even heard of a novel about a bunch of Catholic aristo repressed homosexuals? Other Trier-isms include the fact that the destructive violence is introduced by a young black kid. And on one level, much as he denies it in interviews, I am sure he would love for this movie to be read as a searing indictment of America's gun culture as well as Bush's foreign policy. A bunch of insecure people armed up and firing first out of fear and misunderstanding. Iraq, anyone?!

But this movie is better than the recent von Trier agitprop. This is because DEAR WENDY is directed by Thomas Vinterberg, one of my favourite directors. He came to notice with the haunting drama Festen, which won, among other things, the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. Handed a dry polemic fuelled by conceptual hocus-pocus, Vinterberg breathed life into the script. The sets are great and shot with intimacy on hi-def video. The kids all invest the film with energy and goofiness. Don't get me wrong - DEAR WENDY is not a dramatic tour-de-force - but it's a perfectly enjoyable coming-of-age story and not as pretentious as the reviews suggest

Best of all, the message of the film, if there is one, is rather the opposite to what the US critics would have you believe. I find the film to be an indictment of liberals who deceive themselves that they are pacifists and immune to the allure of guns, while being as vulernable to gun culture as paid-up members of the NRA. The directer himself was raised in a honest-to-goodness hippie commune in Denmark, where "gun" was a dirty word, and admits to his fascination with guns. Moreover, the movie indicts Dickie, the leader of the gang, for trying to "dandify" Sebastian, the convicted criminal. If there is a moral to this film, it is that liberals should cut the crap, admit how beholden they are to gun culture, and stop talking about redeeming society of violence. The ultimate gunfight is inevitable. America may be damned, but so if everyone else.

DEAR WENDY premiered at Sundance 2005, went on limited cinematic release over the summer and is now available on region 1 and region 2 DVD. The movie cost $8m to make and took $100,000 on theatrical release. This should not be taken as an indication of its quality.

KING KONG - 90 minutes stupendous boredom, 90 minutes cinematic genius

You should definitely see KING KONG and, if at all possible, you should see it on the big screen because it is one of the most beautiful and brilliant love stories ever photographed. However, you should be sure to take a lot of food and a discrete video gaming console for the first ninety minutes which, super visuals aside, suck ass. Let me explain.

00:01. The movie opens in 1930s New York. It is the Great Depression and there are people who have - the rich movie producers who only care if a movie contains boobies - and the havenots - notably the renegade film-maker Denham and our heroine, out-of-work actress Ann Darrow. People wear snazzy clothes and speak in declamatory statements that end in exclamation marks. ("You mean the world to me!" "He died for what he believed in!" "He never met his mother" "Noooooooooooooooooooooooh!" etc.)

00:30. Ann takes a chance on a renegade film production. The Orson Welles-like egomaniacal film director has hijacked a boat and camera crew and is a bound for the uncharted "Skull Island". The captain is spoooooooooky and there are lots of stupid B-movie film tricks, like creeeepy music, and Extreme Close Ups of Jack Black's crazy eyebrows.

01:00. We get to the spoooooky island. It's all a bit Scooby Doo, especially when the locals arrive in grass skirts and spears. Mean locals kidnap lovely Ann and sacrifice her to Kong; film crew go to the rescue shooting awesome footage along the way. Bina007 would not, at this point, be surprised to see Oompa Loompas.

01:30. Movie flips into absolutely convincing and genuinely heart-breaking love story between hot chick and large ape. Thanks to CGI, ape has all the warmth and facial expressions of Gollum a.k.a British thesp. Andy Serkis. Naomi Watts, the fanastically talented actress who rose to prominence in the wonderful David Lynch flick, MULLHOLLAND DRIVE, gives Ann Darrow real warmth and credibility. Despite the clear absurdity of the match, the audience finds itself rooting for the ultimate Odd Couple.

01:40. Skip back to stupid-ass dinosaur scenes. They look awesome, but advance the plot not one iota. Peter Jackson feels very happy with himself for having topped Jurassic Park but to what end? Jackson could have dropped these scenes, saved me half an hour and his production company $50 million. Only slight plus point is crew member's gruesome death by evil giant sucking slug thing.

02:15. Back to New York, where the captive Kong is put on show by the eeeeeeevil Denham. Kong escapes, shares quality time with girlfriend atop Empire State Building, airforce intervenes.

02:53. Jack Black, alleged comedian and actor playing evil director Denham, massacres one of the most iconic lines in movie history: "Well there you have it: beauty killed the beast."

02:55. Credits roll.
03:10. Credits end.

KING KONG went on global release yesterday.