TRUMBO - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day 3

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

It isn't too hard to imagine a time when an over-weaning government declared an un-ending war against an abstract noun and used that war to invade its citizen's privacy and over-ride their constitutional protections.  But I suppose there is some savage comfort in knowing that there are no new challenges that haven't already been overcome.  And as the protagonist of this new movie tells us, there are no heroes or villains, just ordinary people victimised by the terrible choices they should never have been asked to make.

So let us turn to the particular. It's the late 1940s and America is in a Cold War with the Soviet Union.  It's government has decided to investigate communist party members at home, despite the fact that it is not illegal to be a member of the Communist party.  In Hollywood, a group of right wing fearful and powerful individuals - including Ronald Reagan and the influential gossip columnist Hedda Hopper - make it their business to expose the Communists and blackmail any studio who hires them with picket lines and protests.  They might act from a misplaced sense of patriotism but the tactics are dirty, and hint at the latent anti-semitism in the Hollywood system at the time. 

THE GAMBLER

In THE GAMBLER director Rupert Wyatt (RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES) and screenwriter William Monahan (THE DEPARTED) have updated Karel Reisz' bleak 1974 thriller based on a James Toback script and originally inspired by a Dostoyevsky novel. The basic premise is that the protagonist is a University lecturer with a gambling addiction combined with a self-destructive streak of nihilism.  He feels that if he can't be a genius and a winner he should be nothing - it's not even worth trying or being consigned to being mediocre.  The self-conscious self-willed harmful behaviour is compelling to watch.   The way in which the film works is that every now and then it hands the gambler a lifeline - more money from a loan shark or a family member - and then he blows that too.  Finally,  he ends up manipulating one of his students, corrupting them too.  The tension and the thrills come from the writers making us like the character, dangling that lifelines, and watching him climbing up the rope only to fall again. Does the protagonist even want to pay his creditors? Is he an addict or an existential suicide in the manner of  Camus' The Stranger? The resulting film is compelling, sleek, well-acted although ultimately less relentlessly and purely existential as the original.  I think this is a dreadful shame - and undercuts the philosophical stylings the movie aspires to and which Mark Wahlberg would've been capable of delivering on screen. To cast such a man, even in heavily reduced form, and then not use that balance of vulnerability and violence, is a crime. 

THE GAMBLER has a running time of 111 minutes and is rated R.  THE GAMBLER was released last year in the USA and Canada and was released earlier this year in Denmark, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Cambodia, Mexico, Pakistan, Belgium and Germany. It is currently on release in Azerbaijan, Russia, the UK and Ireland.  It opens on February 5th in Kuwait, on March 19th in New Zealand, on April 9th in Ukraine, and on April 24th in Latvia and Japan.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS - LFF 2013 - Day Seven

Oh man.  So here's the thing with the Coen Brothers.  Sometimes they write goofball comedies.  Sometimes they write movies that take you into dark existential angst. Sometimes they write movies that just take a decent guy and have the world beat up on him unrelentingly.  The last time they did that was in A SERIOUS MAN, which was perhaps the biggest downer of the London Film Festival that year, but was still, in its own way, a movie with a compelling narrative.  With INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, I'm not sure they've even given us that.  Nope.  INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS is a fantastic soundtrack album masquerading as a deep and earnest film.  It's meant to be making the point that talent doesn't rise to the surface, that inane nonsense is popular, and that sometimes good people are so beaten down by life they become their own worst enemy out of frustration.  All that might have made a compelling film, but INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS isn't it.  It's just a dull grey-green dirge - the colour of bruised skin - paced so slowly as to be funereal, in which we watch a man freeze and starve and struggle into submission, giving up on his career as a folk singer on the very night that Bob Dylan's career is about to take off.  Honestly, there's not much to like here other than the music.  They let John Goodman have a comedic cameo at around the half-way market to jolt us awake again, but other than that it's just a plain-chant dirge.  There's not even the characteristic fantastic cinematography, unless you count a moodily lit Llewyn singing on stage.  Just move along here, there's nothing to see.

The plot? Such as it is.  Oscar Isaac plays a folk singer called Llewyn Davis who lives on people's couches and can't quite seem to catch a break.  Everything he does turns to ashes.  He travels to Chicago in desperation, looking for an audition that bombs. He comes back to New York and decides to give it all up to become a merchant seaman again. But even that doesn't go well. And he ends up literally beaten up. That's honestly it - just spiced up by the John Goodman cameo and Adam Driver in an even smaller cameo as a nonsensical backing singer on an absurd song.  

Maybe you think I've spoiled the movie for you? I promise you I haven't.  When you see Davis refuse royalties on the banal record for cash up front, we know it'll be a hit.  When you see him angrily tell his sister to throw out his stuff, we know it'll contain something he really needs.  It's just that kind of film.  This isn't the "sweet sad funny" picture I've heard described, but cinematic sadism.  It wasn't the best movie I saw that day, let alone the best movie at Cannes. 

You can listen to a podcast review of this movie below or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS has a running time of 105 minutes.  

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS played Cannes 2013 where it won the Grand Prize and London 2013.  It opens in France on November 6th; in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the USA on December 6th; in Portugal on December 26th; in Mexico and Spain on January 3rd; on Greece on January 9th; in Italy on January 16th; in the UK and Ireland on January 24th; and on February 6th in Argentina and Denmark. 

THE INTERNSHIP

Here's my ten minute movie review of the new summer comedy from director Shawn Levy (NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM) and stars Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. It would be easy to be cynical about the laziness of reuniting the stars of THE WEDDING CRASHERS as essentially the same wise-cracking characters in a narrative that bears no small resemblance to DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY.  But I have to say that I was entirely won over by this loveable, touching, laugh-out-loud funny and actually pretty intelligent movie. Also, it's not all old-hat - newcomer Max Minghella totally steals the show as the obligatory douchebag.

THE INTERNSHIP has a rating of PG-13 in the USA and a running time of 119 minutes.

THE INTERNSHIP is on release in the USA, Australia, Bahrain, Hungary, Lebanon, New Zealand, Portugal, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Serbia, Russia, Colombia, Poland and Sweden. It opens this weekend in Belgium, Egypt, France, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Israel, Macedonia, Slovenia, Romania, Spain and Taiwan. It opens in the UK, Ireland and Norway on July 3rd; in Denmark, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands, Finland and Turkey on July 12th; on August 2nd in Mexico and Ecuador; on August 9th in Bolivia and Uruguay; on August 22nd in Argentina, Singapore and Venezuela; on August 29th in Peru and Brazil; in Germany on September 19th; and in Chile and Italy on September 26th.

FLIGHT

The first thirty minutes of FLIGHT is worth the price of admission: a brilliantly shot, unbearably tense sequence in which we see an intoxicated but brilliant pilot somehow arrest the freefall of a shattered airplane by turning it upside down and then gliding it to a semi-safe landing.  The rest of the movie is about how that pilot comes to turn with his addiction, and the undoubtedly strong performance from Denzel Washington as Captain Whit Whitaker, has its share of Hallmark Card moments and a superfluous ending.

As the film opens, Whip wakes up from shagging his stewardess, a fellow addict.  He takes cocaine to sharpen himself up from his mammoth hangover, takes a hit of Oxygen, strong coffee and aspirin on the flight to make the take-off, and ten drinks vodka while the plane is cruising.  There is no doubt in our mind that he isn't fit to fly, but also that his intoxication is partly what gives him the balls to land the plane safely.  This irony is paralleled in the final act of the film in which Whip has to give evidence before the investigating commission, but I won't say more for fear of spoiling the second scene of brilliant tension in the movie.

There is no doubt in our mind that it was the plane, rather than the pilot who caused the freefall.  The trouble is, neither the airline nor the manufacturer nor the pilots union wants to accept blame and Whip is caught in the middle.  He leans heavily on his crew and friends, and helped by a brilliant lawyer (Don Cheadle) to absolve himself of blame and cover up for his drinking.  In doing so, Whip is contrasted with Kelly Reilly's Nicole: his love interest who is trying hard to recover.  Reilly does well in a largely thankless role.  By contrast, James Badge Dale steals the show in a brief scene as a dying cancer patient, and John Goodman is good value in the complex cameo of the drug dealer who is at once funny and repellent. 

When FLIGHT is good, it's very good.  No doubt, Robert Zemeckis' experience in CGI (POLAR EXPRESS, A CHRISTMAS CAROL) contributes to the technical perfection of the opening plane crash sequence.  But the final act of the movie also betrays a schmaltzy Christmas Special vibe that undercuts much of the early grittiness.  If the movie only had the the discipline to end at Whip's moment of clarity, this would've been a film more worthy of Denzel Washington's performance. 

FLIGHT was released in 2012 in the USA, Canada, Kuwait, Russia and Turkey. It is currently on release in Israel, Portugal, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Spain, Sweden,  Belgium, Australia, the Netherlands, Ireland, Mexico, the UK, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Finland. It opens on February 13th in France; on February 21st in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Taiwan; on March 1st in Japan and on March 14th in Serbia.

FLIGHT is rated R in the USA and has a running time of 138 minutes.

London Film Fest 2012 - Day 9 - ARGO

This time last year I called THE ARTIST for Best Oscar solely based on the grounds that Harvey Weinstein had personally introduced it at the London Film Festival, indicating that the Karl Rove of Academy campaigns was putting his not inconsiderable weight behind it.  It didn't, of course, hurt that the movie did the two things that Hollywood absolutely loves: a) cast a nostalgic eye back to its own history and b) make us laugh, make us cry but with a outer casing of Profundity to make us feel less superficial while we get our kicks.

This year, on the same logic, I'm calling ARGO for Best Film.  Harvey isn't involved this time, but they flew out EVERYBODY for the red carpet PR fest last night, not to mention the fact that The Hollywood Reporter is already running front cover articles on Ben Affleck's comeback.   And, per my second rule, this movie is an exceptionally well-made crowd-pleasing thriller.  But because it's based on real events in Iran, it makes us feel like we learned something too.  

In short, ARGO is not a film we're going to remember in ten year's time - it's not a movie that remakes the boundaries of the cinema.  But that's okay, we here at MOVIE REVIEWS FOR GREEDY CAPITALIST BASTARDS are all about genre movies that aren't ashamed of what they are, do the job well, and make piles of phat cash in the process.

The basic history is that in 1979, the US embassy in Iran was stormed by pissed-off Iranian revolutionaries and the staff taken hostage.  The Khomeini revolutionaries wanted the despotic Shah of Iran returned from his asylum in the USA to face charges, which evidently wasn't going to happen.  Meanwhile, 6 embassy staff had managed to sneak out and were hiding out in the Canadian embassy. The CIA's specialist "exfiltrator" Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) created a cockamamie plan to get them out: create a real life Hollywood production company with a real life script and pretend the embassy staff were the film crew were scouting locations in Iran.  He flies in alone, gives them their cover stories, and flies out with them through an airport crawling with revolutionary guards.

The genius of a movie like ARGO is that, if done well, even though we know the ending, every time our band of civil servants goes up against a checkpoint, we are completely nervous about whether they're going to make it. This kind of tension relies upon perfect pacing and editing, and performances good enough that we like and care for the characters.   Moreover, with a movie like this, where the stakes are so high but the cover story so ludicrous, it takes a special kind of director who can keep the balance between laughs and tension.  

In this film, the ensemble cast is superb - with small parts for the likes of John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Bryan Cranston to name but a few.  It's a movie in which no-one carries the film, although I'd like to give special props to Scoot McNairy (KILLING THEM SOFTLY) who surprises his fictional colleagues and us with a last minute character turnaround that has us whooping with joy on the inside.   But really, the success of this movie is down to Ben Affleck's direction - his choices, his ability to handle the tonal shifts and intercut scenes of madcap Hollywood with absolutely grave images of hostages, his ability to make us care and have us on the edge of our seats.  The proof of that - if proof I needed - was when the plane took of Tehran airport and left Iranian airspace and the audience watching the movie burst into spontaneous applause.  That really is proof of how good this movie is.

Like I said, ARGO is "just" a factually based thriller.  But it's about as good of a thriller as you are likely to see. It shows the hidden courage and patriotic service of a handful of Hollywood insiders and CIA men, and the public courage of a handful of Canadians.  It makes us feel good about ourselves, and doesn't hide the contemporary relevance and grey shading as to why the Iranian revolutionaries were so angry at the Americans.  Kudos to all involved.

John Goodman, Ben Affleck and Bryan Cranston.

ARGO played Telluride, Toronto and London 2012 and is currently on release in the Ukraine, Canada, Colombia, the USA, Argentina, Serbia, Australia, New Zealnd, Russia, Singapore, Japan and Spain. It opens on November 2nd in Finland, on November 7th in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Brazil, Ireland, Norway and the UK. It opens on November 15th in Hong Kong and Slovenia and on November 23rd in Sweden.

PARANORMAN

PARANORMAN is an absolutely delightful, heart-warming, funny and beautifully visualised stop-motion animation film about a young troubled boy who finds acceptance when he saves his town from zombies.  Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is the classic emo kid bullied at school and a cause for embarrassment at home. The reason: he sees dead people.  The social pain reaches a pitch during the school play when he's carrie back in time to when a little girl was similarly misunderstand by Puritan townsfolk and hounded out, sparking a curse that Norman must lift.  True to the touchy-feely wholesome values of this film, that curse is lifted with empathy rather than pitchforks, with the upside that his family finally accept Norman for what he is, and more importantly he finally feels comfortable with his gift and understands that they truly do love him.  The scene where his blonde bimbo elder sister (Anna Kendrick) grabs his hand and protects him from a mob is positively heart-breaking.  The movie works on all sorts of more subtle levels too - I love that they cast geeky Christopher Mintz-Plasse as the voice of the bully - a role he'd never be able to play in a live action film.  I love the balls-out bravery of the final joke between the elder sister and the guy she's been crushing on. I love the subtle and obvious reverential references to horror films throughout the movie. And I love the gentle humour and genuine chemistry between Norman and his eager best friend: "Don't make me throw the humus - it's spicy!"  Overall, there's nothing not to like about this film.  It's less dark than the Neil Gaiman penned CORALINE which many of the team here also worked on, but what it looses in darkness it gains in sheer heart. 

PARANORMAN is on release in  Mexico, Iceland, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Peru, Canada, Colombia, Taiwan, the USA, Vietnam, Belgium, France, Germany, Russia, Chile, Singapore, Slovenia, Romania, the Philippines, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Estonia, Finland, Pakistan, Greece, Portugal, El Salvador, Ireland, Norway and the UK.  It opens on September 20th in Denmark, Poland and Sweden; on September 28th in Lithuania; on October 4th in Thailand; on October 11 th in Italy; on October 19th in Turkey; on October 25th in Argentina; on October 29th in Israel; on September 21st in December; on January 10th in Australia and Hungary; on January 17th in New Zealand and in Japan on March 29th.

PARANORMAN has a running time of 92 minutes and the movie is rated PG in the USA.

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is an offensive film based on a faithful adaptation of an offensive novel. To that end, the blame for this exploitative, incredible (literally) movie lies with Jonathan Safran Foer - the novelist who exploited 9-11 to further his narcissistic fictional stylings.  It's hard to see how screenwriter Eric Roth could've adapted the film while minimises the absurd central conceit that powers the film.  And as for Stephen Daldry - once again, is it his poor judgement or his inability to disentangle himself from the mawkishness and self-indulgence that pollutes the novel?

The Big Idea is that a kid called Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), borderline autistic, is so traumatised by his father's death in 9-11 that he obsesses over the idea that his father might have left him one last puzzle - a key with the name "black".  So he roams Manhattan interviewing every black, looking for the lock that his key will fit - some of the time, accompanied by a mute old man call The Renter (Max von Sydow) who turns out to be his grandfather (no real spoiler there).  Eventually, he finds the lock, and we discover why his mother is being so apparently irresponsible, but none of it really feels credible.  And, as with all high concept films, the incredible nature of the premise truly undermines our empathy with the characters. That said, even without the ludicrous concept, EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE would stretch any viewers patience.  The characters either fall between the downright irritating (Oskar Schell and his mother) or the unbelievably good-hearted (Oskar's father - surely the most attentive screen dad in history).  One can only assume that it's the presence of Hanks and Bullocks - Oscar sweethearts - that got this film nominated.  Max von Sydow is sympathetic - sure - but his nomination looks like an end-of-career pat-on-the-back rather than a specific acclamation.   

All I can say is that this is hands down the most irritating, exploitative film I have seen in quite some time. I discard it.

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is already on release in the USA and Canada. It will play Berlin 2012. It opens on February 16th in Germany, Portugal, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, the UK and Japan. It opens on February 24th in Argentina, Australia, Chile and Finland. It opens on February 29th in Belgium, France, Singapore and Brazil. It opens on March 8th in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands; on March 16th in Italy, Spain and Turkey; and on March 22nd in Slovenia.  EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE has been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and Max von Sydow has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 7 - THE ARTIST

Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, the stars of
THE ARTIST, at the UK premiere at the
BFI London Film Festival 2011.

Michael Hazanavicius’ charming silent movie about the end of silent movie-making stars Bérénice Bejo and Jean Dujardin (of the recent secret-agent spoofs OSS 117) as actors Peppy Miller and George Valentin, who fall in love against the dreamy backdrop of an early golden-age Hollywood. When the talkies take off, George, the go-to man of the silent picture, finds himself outcast by a determined and winning Peppy, a role in which Bejo dazzles, and where THE ARTIST might have kept up with her singular energy it slows to the nostalgic time spent by George in relative poverty and obscurity. Nonetheless, Dujardin's performance remains a broad and irresistible focus, and there may be no modern leading man better suited to the demands of the silent movie genre. Rare in any case does it seem to enjoy watching actors watching themselves on screen.

THE ARTIST played Cannes, where Jean Dujardin won Best Actor; Toronto and London 2011. It is on release in France. It opens in the US on November 23rd; in Italy on December 9th; in Spain on December 16th; in Greece on December 22nd; in Germany on January 26th and in Hong Kong on February 9th.

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG - the best of both worlds

Watching THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG is a deeply nostalgic experience. It reminds you of how wonderful the old Disney classics were, and the simple delights and warmth of hand-drawn animation. Just as in the good old days, this movie doesn't depend on post-modern pop-cultural references or 3-D gimmicks. Nope. Here we have a lovely story, charming characters, true love and some sweet songs. A charmingly earnest, hard-working waitress called Tiana kisses a charismatic but lazy Prince turned Frog. As they journey through the Bayou to have the voodoo overturned, the Prince learns that for the woman he loves, he'd be willing to work, or to sacrifice his own happiness. And so, true love blossoms, inspired by a sweet little Cajun firefly called Ray, who is in love with a star in the sky - an absolutely adorable side-plot. The lovers are aided in their journey by a trumpet-playing alligator called Louis - who is clearly inspired by Balou the Bear from THE JUNGLE BOOK, and wants to be human a little bit like King Louie from the same film. There's the aforementioned firefly Ray, who is so wonderful, and the wise old Mama Odie.

If nostalgic in style and feel and look, the movie is also nostalgic for a time when New Orleans was the old Big Easy, associated with beignets, Hot Jazz and A Streetcar Named Desire, rather than being a symbol of Federal incompetence. But at the same time, the movie is rather modern. It's not just that Disney has finally given us a coloured heroine, (though sneakily still sidestepping issues of economic inequality by setting the film in the 1920s). It's that it supplements the traditional wishing on a star with hard graft and shaping your own destiny. I like the new empowering Disney. But I like the old-fashioned hand-drawn Disney even more. Long may it continue!

Additional tags: Randy Newman, Anika Nonie Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David, Michael Leon Woolley, Ron Clements, John Musker

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG is on global release bar Japan where it is released on March 6th.

CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC - superficial, derivative drivel

CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC epitomises everything that is most invidious about the romantic comedies. The plot is derivative and formulaic; the characterisation is two-dimensional; the concept asks us to suspend our disbelief to the point of absurdity. 

Isla Fisher plays Rebecca Bloomwood - a klutzy girl who funds her designer wardrobe with her credit cards and dreams of writing for a Vogue-like magazine. Chased by a debt-collector, she creates a double-life as - oh the delicious irony! - a personal finance columnist. So successful are her jargon-free columns that she lands a TV spot and the love of her charmingly rich, but hard-working boss, played by Hugh Dancy. Of course, there are stumbling blocks to happiness - but how happy the addict whose hoard of illicit goods can fund an easy conversion to the straight life?

The treatment of addiction is insultingly superficial - as is everything else about this tepid film. Worse still, it can't even boast the guilty pleasure of seeing the wardrobes of SEX AND THE CITY or THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA. Rebecca may spend like Anna Wintour but she dresses appallingly. The humour is strained - zero verbal wit offset by the odd pratfall and wilfully embarassing dance scene. Where is the genuine wit and energy of LEGALLY BLONDE or, indeed, director P J Hogan's previous hit, MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING?

CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC is on release in Russia, Thailand, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, the US, the UAE, Croatia, Turkey and the UK. It opens next week in Hong Kong, Iceland and Italy. It opens on March 6th in Greece and Finland and on March 12th in Argentina, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands. It opens on March 18th in Belgium and Spain and on March 26th in the Czech Republic, Singapore, South Korea and Norway. It opens on April 10th in April, on May 20th in France and on May 20th in Japan.

Remember when you were a kid and you drank too much cheap cherry cola too fast? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you SPEED RACER

From the makers of THE MATRIX comes a new feature length adaptation of the classic Japanese TV kids cartoon SPEED RACER. It's a technically brilliant movie that beautifully renders the futuristic-kitsch of the speed racer world. The costumes and sets are all acid-bright colours, '50s americana and the shooting style is high-octane in every sense. Camera angles swoop and glide around the racing track and the editing is out-standing. Talking heads rotate as background shots cut in and out - kids' daydreams become gonzo animated - and even the narrative cuts in and out of the past and present with hold-on-to-your-hats speed.

Take, for example, the bravura opening sequence. Over the course of a car race, we are shown the back story of the characters. Rex Racer, is a champion racing driver, idolised by is kid brother Speed. But Rex decides to leave Pops Racer and sign with a corporate sponsor. Soon, he's using dirty tricks, bringing shame on the family. Finally, he's killed in a motor accident. Years later, his kid brother, Speed Racer is also a champion racer, idolised by his kid brother Sprittle, and on the verge of signing with a big corporate sponsor, Royalton Industries. The film picks up at the point where a spurned Royalton is trying to squeeze the Racers out of the industry. Speed teams up with the enigmatic(!) Rx to bring down the corrupt cartel that controls racing, by driving in the hazardous cross-country race, The Crucible.

So far so peachy. The movie is clearly technically amazing. I also loved the self-conscious home-spun wisdom and earnestness of the Little Guy versus The Man message. And there are some very funny moments, usually involving Paulie Litt. He steals the show as Spritle, getting into scrapes, hopped up on sugar, with his pet chimp.

But the movie has a problem. It has no heart. For all the day-glo visual brilliance, and the earnest dead-pan performances from all the actors, the CGI overwhelms emotion. I found it desperately hard to get into the film - to sympathise with Speed's dilemma - to be excited about the true identity of Rx Racer. And if you don't care, all the CGI doesn't mean a damn.

SPEED RACER is on release in the US, UK, the Netherlands, Argentina, Germany, Greece, Germany, Hong Kong, Kuwait, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Italy, Spain and Venezuala. It opens later in May in Hungary, Estonia, Turkey, Egypt and Russia. SPEED RACER opens in June in Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Poland, Australia, Belgium, France, Israel and Norway. It opens in Japan on July 5th.

London Film Fest Day 12 - BEE MOVIE

BEE MOVIE is a new CGI animated flick from Dreamworks. It features a bee called Barry who decides to break out of the monotony of working in the hive and makes friends with a florist called Vanessa. Barry also discovers that big food companies farm hives for honey and get fat off the profits. So he sues them in the Supreme Court and duly wins back all rights to honey for the bees. Now drowning in the globe's honey stocks, the bees no longer need to make any more. So they kick up their heels. As a result, the flora and the fauna of the world dies out through lack of pollination. Barry and Vanessa must therefore make a last ditch attempt to pollinate the last batch of flowers on earth.

The movie is very smart and very witty as one would expect from a project created by, written by and starring Jerry Seinfeld. As a naive bee entering the world for the first time, Seinfeld can comment on all the craziness he sees. And yes, he is basically just Seinfeld as a bee. There is no other characterisation to the part. Luckily, just being Seinfeld is probably enough to give the audience its ticket-price worth of belly-laughs.

Problem is that other than the disposable one-liners, there's not much to this film. The animation is pretty basic - not a patch on recent Pixar efforts or indeed old-school stop-mo flicks like MAX AND CO. Perhaps more seriously, the movie doesn't have much heart. Law suits and work-life balance are not the stuff of memorable films and BEE MOVIE lacks the emotional centre of a TOY STORY or RATATOUILLE. And this seems to me to be a constant complaint with Dreamworks animation films. They are all funny, more or less, but are technically weak and have no heart. The only real hit they've had was SHREK and that franchise has delivered diminishing returns. By contrast, films like TOY STORY, FINDING NEMO and RATATOUILLE have real stories, character development and emotional pull as well as the quick-fire wit.

So BEE MOVIE gets a qualified thumbs-up. You will, no doubt, have a good time. But I doubt you'll take it to your heart.

BEE MOVIE premiered at London 2007. It opens in Russia, the US, Singapore, Mexico Spain and Taiwan in November and in Argentina, Australia, Hungary, Brazil, Iceland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Slovakia, Turkey, the UK, Slovenia, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Sweden amd Norway in December 2007. It opens in Japan and Egypt in January 2008.

DEATH SENTENCE suffers from bipolar disorder

DEATH SENTENCE was a potentially great movie but suffered from a change of concept half way through. The first half is a well-acted and deeply moving tale of loss. Kevin Bacon and Kelly Preston play a middle-class middle-aged couple who lose their elder son in an unmotivated gang assault. The father decides not to testify against the gang member responsible. Instead, after some procastination, and before the self-disgust and sinister pride, he takes revenge.

I really loved this half of the film. It was told with economy (viz. the opening montage of home videos) and I really liked the washed out look of the film. Kelly Preston and Kevin Bacon acted their grief convincingly and Bacon was especially good at showing the different stages by which an apparently normal guy becomes a vigilante. Best of all, it seemed as through the movie was going to have the balls to fling out the conventional vigilante movie ending with something much darker and realistic.

Of course, that would only have given the flick an eighty minute run-time. So director James "SAW" Wan tacks on a 30 minute coda that is pure video-game mindless shoot-em-up violence. The whole look and tone of the flick changes. Not that this isn't a lot of fun. John Goodman's cameo as the gang leader is Pure Comedy Gold. But it just felt like between the reels we'd been sucked into a COMPLETELY different film.

DEATH SENTENCE is currently on release in the UK and USA. It opens in Germany on September 13th, in the Netherlands on September 27th, in Turkey on October 5th and in Belgium on November 21st 2007.

EVAN ALMIGHTY - a mis-marketed film

EVAN ALMIGHTY isn't so much a bad film as a bad comedy. It's just been mis-marketed. The adverts make it look like a Robin Williams-style family comedy. The title makes you think it's going to be an adult romantic-comedy with a goofy every-man magicking his girlfriend's tits bigger. As it turns out there's barely a laugh in the whole ninety minutes. What humour there is consists in birds pooping on people and a few sharp comments from Wanda Sykes. Even the Daily Show sucks in this alternate universe.

So I didn't laugh. But I did rather enjoy the film as a rather hackneyed but nonetheless heart-warming story of personal growth. Steve Carrell plays Evan Baxter, a narcissistic Congressman who's neglecting his wife and three sons and lives in a gated community that was built over a beautiful valley. He's also about to support an evil politician (John Goodman) in his bid to turn protected forests into prime real estate. Then God (Morgan Freeman) asks Evan to build an Ark for the coming flood and Evan discovers the joys of hard work, family bonding and doing the right thing. That's it. It's pretty simple despite the notoriously expensive CGI whistles and bells. But heart-warming and charming all the same.

EVAN ALMIGHTY is available to rent and own.