THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN - Sunday School goes Gossip Girl

It's hard for me to separate my critique of the NARNIA films from my dissatisfaction with the source material. I am an avid fan of Tolkien precisely because he eschews easy allegory and pays such close attention to the consistency of his fantasy world. Tolkien would never have put fauns and Father Christmas in the same imaginary space and he would never have used a device as obvious as Aslan. All of this I would overlook if the resulting films were well-made and captivating qua cinema. However, the first movie, THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, failed on this count. The technical aspects - shooting style, lighting, costumes - seemed amateurish and clunky.

PRINCE CASPIAN is far more satisfying than the first movie, but it's still far from perfect. The special effects, make-up, costumes and shooting style have improved, although key set-pieces still feel like weak versions of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Take, for example, the scene where Aslan summons up a river storm to wash away the enemies of the Narnians. It is typical of the clunky imagery employed in PRINCE CASPIAN that the river takes the form of God as depicted in one of those Biblical Epics - an old white man with a beard. Compare this with the visual beauty and simplicity of Tolkien/Jackson's charging horses.

As for the plot, what we have here is basically one long battle. The four Pevensie children return to Narnia 1300 years after their original visit, to find their land over-run by Spanish-sounding men and Aslan a myth. They unite with their enemy's nephew, Prince Caspian, to reclaim his throne and an independent Narnia. Of course, they are only successful when they fight in the name of Aslan, rather than for themselves.

The battle scenes are fine, although I couldn't help wondering whether younger kids might get bored and/or frightened - especially by the first night-time raid in which half of the Narnian army is massacred. By far the bigger problem with the film is the emotional content. Peter has a clash of egos with Prince Caspian in which they both come off as whiny and there's a tremendously embarassing teen crush story-line between Caspian and Susan. Not sure if that's bad direction, script-writing or acting. Either way, it sorely undermines the serious dramatic content surrounding the children's loss of faith in Aslan and their temptation by the White Witch. It's rather hard to be swept up in a story about religious faith when the director keeps pulling you into Sweet Valley High.

PRINCE CASPIAN is already on release in Indonesia, Russia, India, Mexico, the USA, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, Poland, Egypt, the Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong, Israel, Argentina, Estonia, Iceland and Venezuela. It opens this weekend in France, Hungary and the UK. It opens on July 2nd in Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden. It opens on July 11th in Turkey; on July 17th in Portugal; on July 31st in Germany and on August 20th in Italy.

BLACK BOOK/ZWARTBOEK - provocative war-time thriller

BLACK BOOK is a Dutch film that deals with the tricky business of Dutch collaboration with the Nazis. Much like the history of Vichy France, this is a vexatious issue, and BLACK BOOK does much to chip away at the image of the Netherlands as the country that attempted to save Anne Frank. There are no comic-book evil Nazis and brave heroic Resistance leaders: everyone is complicit to a greater or lesser extent. In this sense, it is a movie with a very important message.

The movie is at its best when it shows the real vulgarity and mob-violence of the Nazis. We see fat, decadent Nazis singing kitsch songs as prisoners are executed beneath them. And then, in the final act, we see so-called freedom fighters carrying out vicious punishment beatings and petty humilations on alleged collaborators. The Dutch are seen as sometimes heroic, sometimes anti-semitic - always self-interested.

It is full credit to Paul Verhoeven's instincts as a mainstream entertainer than despite it's flashes of sociological and political insight, BLACK BOOK never bows under the weight of its subject matter. Despite a run-time of two and a half hours, the movie rips along at a rollicking pace thanks to its structure as a thriller, or whodunnit. Our charming, beautiful heroine quickly moves from her hide-out with an ironically anti-semitic family, to a botched rescue attempt, to working for the Dutch resistance. She infiltrates the Gestapo headquarters and seduces the man in charge. She is stitched up by a Dutch traitor who is shopping rich Jews to the Nazis in return for a share of the loot. In the final act, she must clear her name with the aid of a certain lawyer's Black Book.

The film works well as a thriller, although the final half hour, with a chase through the countryside and a painful exposition of whodunnit seemed a little bit Scooby Doo. (If it weren't for you pesky kids....) The orchestral score is hammy and patronising and there are just a couple of scenes - notably the use of a pendant near the end of the film - that teeter over the edge into sentimentality.

In the final analysis, while this is a Dutch independent film, it is still a Paul Verhoeven flick, and to that end the best and worst of Hollywood are evident here. Slick production values, yes, but also that tendency towards emotional manipulation. Nonetheless, BLACK BOOK really is a thrilling thriller, featuring a great central performance and a provocative political agenda.

BLACK BOOK/ZWARTBOEK premiered at Venice, where it won the award for Best International Film, and showed at Toronto and London 2006. It has since been released in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Israel. It opens in the UK on January 19th 2007. It opens in Italy, Spain and Switzerland on Feb 9th and in LA and New York on March 9th. It opens in Argentina on April 5th.