BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY is a cool dark comedy feature from first time writer-directors Geoff Moore and David Posamentier. It stars Sam Rockwell as a bored suburban pharmacist married to a hyper competitive wife (Michelle Monaghan).  He falls for a glamourous rich bored housewife (a wonderfully slick Olivia Wilde) and their joint use of drugs gives him the confidence to get petty revenge on the people who've held him down until the drug use spirals out of control and the DEA get on his back.  The whole thing gets unravelled in an elegant manner and despite the overall tone of wry dark humour, perfectly captured in Jane Fonda's voice-over and the ironic sound-track, there's actual deep emotion  in there. The final scene between Rockwell and Wilde subverts the fantasy elements of the film in a genuinely affecting way.  I really want to see what these directors do next.  I also really want to see more of Sam Rockwell. Why isn't he a bigger star? When he can do proper gonzo goofball comedy and proper depth? 

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY has a running time of 91 minutes.  It was released earlier this year in the USA and is currently available on DVD.

SOURCE CODE - a lot less clever than it thinks it is

Duncan Jones' directorial debut, MOON was a beautifully crafted, emotionally powerful, low-budget sci-fi flick that was arguably one of the best films of 2009. As a result, his new film SOURCE CODE has been met with a lot of good-will on the part of the critical fraternity and has led to what are, in my opinion, overly generous reviews. Because SOURCE CODE is, essentially, a rather simple-minded, emotionally uninvolving movie full of plot holes, featuring at least one awful acting performance and saddled with a piss-poor Hollywood ending. Overall, it's enjoyable enough as a sort of lo-rent thriller, but it's neither good sci-fi, nor a follow-up film worthy of MOON. I am deeply, deeply disappointed.

The set-up of the film, written by Ben Ripley, is half way between Quantum Leap and that Denzel Washington-Tony Scott time-travel/CSI thriller DEJA VU. Jake Gyllenhaal plays an army officer called Colter Stevens who is parlayed by some sci-fi gimcrack into the mind of a commuter called Sean on a morning train to Chicago. That train is about to be blown up by a terrorist as a warning shot before an even bigger dirty bomb goes off in the city. The army keeps sending Colter back into Sean's body for eight minute segments  to find the identity of the bomber so that he can be apprehended before the second attack. But it is made very clear to Colter that he can't change what's already happened - the people on that train must die - and just because Colter has the hots for Sean's girlfriend Christina (Michelle Monaghan), he can't save her life.

Duncan Jones deftly handles the first half of the film. The repeated eight minutes segments on the train, that repeat in variations, GROUNDHOG DAY style, are never dull. There are some wonderfully innovative tracking shots in the confined space and good use of editing. Kudos also to Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan for giving those segments a sense of urgency and intimacy. But I started to lose interest badly in the second half of the flick for a number of reasons. First up, the first big plot reveal - about how Colter ended up in the Source Code - could be spotted a mile off. Second, if Colter knows the bomber has to leave the train to set off the second bomb, why does he bother interrogating people on the train? Third, the introduction of Jeffrey Wright's Evil Scientist character was just thin two-dimensional writing, and his performance as hammy as hell. Fourth, the character of the army-officer-with-a-conscience was similarly thinly written. And poor Vera Farmiga was simply an age-appropriate delivery device. Fifth, the ending. I think even those who really love this film will agree that there is a natural place where this film should end, and yet it goes on for another five minutes in what I can only assume was a studio intervention.

The upshot - disappointment with what was basically a mediocre thriller with a ham-fisted ending and no real ingenuity in its handling of its sci-fi or emotional material.

SOURCE CODE is on release in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, the Philippines, Taiwan, the UK, the US, the Czech Republic, Kuwait, Serbia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Iceland, Turkey and Spain. It opens later in April in Portugal, France, Spain, Hong Kong, Hungary, Malaysia, Singapore, Greece, Italy and Norway. It opens in May in India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Finland. It opens on June 2nd in Germany; on June 9th in the Netherlands; on June 16th in Denmark and on August 5th in Sweden.

Random DVD Round-Up 3 - DUE DATE

Todd Philips, writer-director of OLD SCHOOL, SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS and the break-out hit THE HANGOVER, returns to our screens with what can only be described as a piss-poor; woefully under-written; shameless cash-in. The structure of the movie aims to rip off what was best in PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES. Robert Downey Junior plays an up-tight architect on his way home to see his wife deliver their first child. Zach Galifianakis plays the creepy fuck-up who manages to get the architect put on a no-fly list, sans wallet and cash, compelled to take a road-trip with the very man who messed up his travel-plans. What follows is a series of comedy set-ups that just don't work for two reasons. First, Downey Junior and Galifianakis have ZERO chemistry (and made me appreciate just how well Jude Law and Downey Junior worked together in SHERLOCK HOLMES by comparison). Second, Galifianakis is, like Danny McBride, the kind of comedy "talent" that works best in small doses. They always play creepy man-child characters - people who are meant to make us laugh with their social ineptitude. Five minutes to leaven an otherwise grown-up comedy is just fine to add a dash of zaniness. But these guys can't carry a feature - they topple it over. For further evidence, check out McBride in TROPIC THUNDER (perfect!) and FIST FOOT WAY (over-dose).  

Other than the lack of chemistry and over-use of the irritatingly weird Galifianakis, the political satire (anti-terrorist airport security, cross-border immigration) falls flat, and the joke about a dead man's ashes kept in a coffee canister just reminds us how good the Coen Brothers are, and how much subtler their treatment of the same comic material was in LEBOWSKI.  And, dear lord, what on earth are Jamie Foxx and Juliette Lewis doing in this flick?  And will their ever be a comedy cameo to match the sheer surprise of finding Tyson in THE HANGOVER or Bill Murray in ZOMBIELAND? 

DUE DATE went on global release in November 2010 and is now available to rent and own.

Bina007's Danny Dyer Memorial List of the Ten Most Piss-Poor Flicks of 2008

Just in case you'd thought I'd gone soft, we return to bitter invective with this year's Trashcan of Shame. To find each nugget of Cinema Redemption your humble servant must crawl through a veritable sewer of lazy, formulaic, badly produced, stinky bilge. Here are the worst of the many offenders, conforming to the usual mix of shameless cash-in genre flicks; politically offensive exploitation flicks and auteurs gone awry.

THE SHAMELESS CASH-INS GENRE FLICKS.

1. P.S. I LOVE YOU. Hilary Swank attempts comedy. The film-makers mistakenly believe you can make a feel-good comedy out of bereavement. Mawkish. Unfunny. And what accent is Gerard Butler going for exactly?

2. MADE OF HONOR. Another offensively lazy, formulaic and charmless romantic comedy - all the more impressive for killing Michelle Monaghan and Patrick Dempsey's natural charm.

3=. 88 MINUTES and RIGHTEOUS KILL. Lo-rent "thrillers" in which Pacino and de Niro live off viewer nostalgia and clip their pension coupons. You know it's gone Pete Tong when Fiddy is far from the worst actor on screen.

HUMOURLESS EXPLOITATION FLICKS.

5. NEVER BACK DOWN. Like Karate Kid without the naive charm, NEVER BACK DOWN was basically misogynistic macho bullshit attracting the same sort of voyeurs who get kicks from happy slapping.

6. WANTED. Again with the misogynistic, macho bullshit. Bored viewers were left to ponder which was more ridiculous: James McAvoy affecting a six-pack or the Loom of Fate?

7. RAMBO. By far the most tragic entry in my trio of macho idiocy because as lurid as FIRST BLOOD was, it at least had a point. How are the mighty fallen.

8. BABYLON A.D. The existential angst of Vin Diesel vanishes in a puff of improbability. Mathieu Kassovitz flushes his art-house rep (LA HAINE) down the toilet with this star-vehicle sci-fi mish-mash. Even Michelle Yeoh as a kick-boxing nun can't save it.

AUTEURS GONE AWRY.

9. W. Liberal intellectuals wanted answers. Oliver Stone gave them a pastiche. 

10. AUSTRALIA. Baz Luhrmann promised us a knowing epic embracing romance, political injustice and war-time melodrama. He gave us a wooden, poorly edited, over-blown vanity project - a failure of monumental proportions.

EAGLE EYE - slick vacuous paranoid thriller

EAGLE EYE is a very slick, not undiverting action movie with a plot to so ludicrous* you could stick a cherry on top and call it Sarah Palin. Two normal people, played by Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan, are plucked out of obscurity by a sinister female voice on the end of a cellphone who seems to be able to control any IT system in America. Naturally, the fuzz, in the form of Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson, are also chasing after our heros, in a movie that splices by NORTH BY NORTHWEST with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and ends up some way south of both of them. There are some flashy stunts and car chases and a suitably paranoid thriller element in which the very systems designed to keep us safe turn against it. As a basic guide, if you enjoyed WANTED or HITMAN you'll probably enjoy EAGLE EYE, but don't expect something of the same quality as DISTURBIA.

EAGLE EYE is on release in the US, Argentina, Australia, Chile, Hong Kong, Peru, Thailand, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, the Philippines, Venezuela, Belgium, Singapore, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Russia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Turkey, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, South Korea, Austria, Estonia, Spain, Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, India, the UK and Japan. It opens next weekend in Iceland and Norway. It opens on December 24th in France and on January 2nd in Japan.

*Seriously. *SPOILER* Would an artificial intelligence so powerful it could control every network need to coerce two dumbass civilians anyways?

GONE BABY GONE - stunning as a mood piece, less convincing as a thriller

GONE BABY GONE is a thriller about a little girl who is abducted from her home in working class Boston. Her mother is a junkie who is evidently an irresponsible mother, but her aunt and uncle are apparently good people who call in the press, the police and private detectives Patrick and Angie. The resulting investigation fails as a thriller. One can only blame Dennis Lehane's source novel and screen-writers Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard's unwillingness to re-work the implausible denouement and character motivations. Sadly, the unconvincing resolution of the case mars the final forty minutes of an otherwise brilliant film.

The brilliance lies in Ben Affleck's ability to render a working class community without being patronising or superficial. The movie feels authentic in its sights and sounds even as the plot gets increasingly hard to swallow. Younger brother Casey delivers a deeply affecting performance as a detective trying to do the right thing; Ed Harris is charismatic as the jaded older cop; and Amy Ryan pulls of her role as the junkie mother well, though I doubt it was really one of the five best female performances of 2007. In smaller roles, Amy Madigan is superb as the pious aunt "Bea". Is all this enough to compensate for the weak plot? Yes, but it's a disappointment all the same.

GONE BABY GONE was released in the US, Canada, Spain, Panama, Russia, Argentina, Mexico, Germany, the Philippines, Colombia, Denmark, Belgium and France in 2007. It was released earlier in 2008 in Israel, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Estonia, South Africa, Sweden, Venezuela, Greece, Singapore, Romania, Turkey, Portugal, Poland, Italy, Australia, and Iceland. GONE BABY GONE was meant to play London 2007 and to be released last year but was pulled because of sensitivities surrounding the abduction of Madeleine McCann. It is now on release in the UK but is also available on DVD.

MADE OF HONOR - a rom-com as weak as the alleged pun in the title

MADE OF HONOR is a desperately weak romantic comedy vehicle for TV star Patrick Dempsey. We know he can be charming and sweet because we've seen him in ENCHANTED. We also know that his lead actress, Michelle Monaghan, can be endearing and like-able because we've seen her in KISS KISS BANG BANG, not to mention as about the only good thing in the god-awful Ben Stiller project THE HEARTBREAK KID. We also know that the movie's director, Paul Weiland, can make emotionally engaging films rooted in authentic history, as he did with last year's SIXTY SIX.

So what went wrong with MADE OF HONOR? The script. Debutant writer Adam Stzykiel has created a collage of rom-com plot points - all of them implausible and none of them grounded in anything so obvious as character development. (Promiscuous, superficial boy realises he is love with his sweet best friend, but it's too late! She has fallen in love with a Scot (Kevin McKidd of ROME fame). So wanker best friend sets about trying to ruin his best friend's happiness so he can get his rocks off. Cue lots of picturesque Scottish scenery and lots of lazy Scottish jokes.)

The whole thing has the artificial, unwholesome, aeriated feel of aerosol can whipped cream and should have been punished for eternity in straight to video hell.

MADE OF HONOR is on release in Egypt, Australia, Estonia, Russia, South Africa, Iceland, the UK and the USA. It opens later in May in Germany, Singapore, Switzerland, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Spain. It opens in June in Argentina, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and France. It opens in Japan on July 12th, in Turkey on August 1st, and in Taiwan on August 7th.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III - There's a point at which boldness becomes stupidity

My mate Nik won't see this film because he does not want to enrich Tom Cruise and thence the Church of Scientology. I paraphrase. What he actually said was, "I’m not going to see MI3 on principle. The principle is that Tom Cruise is a cock." While I agree with Nik's sentiment, I have two words for him and all Tom-haters, and those two words are "air conditioning". Yes, summer is here my friends, and when the going gets hot, Bina hits the Odeon.

But enough of that and on with the show. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III is a half-way decent summer blockbuster. Minimal plot, lots of cool stunts, above-average looking-people, great one-liners. Clearly, it is ridiculous. We are in a world where Tom Cruise can pass himself off as Philip Seymour Hoffman just by donning a latex mask! But that kind of bizarre lunacy is why I love this franchise so much. And, yes, Tom Cruise may seem a tad bizarre when you read the press, but to my mind no-one does mindless action better. We get the added bonus of 1980s nostalgia, most obviously in a scene where Tom rides a motorbike up to a plane on a runway, wearing aviator sunglasses at sunset. I could almost hear "Take my breath away" on the ether.

The plot is beside the point, but for tradition's sake, let me lay it out for you. Tom Cruise reprises his role as Ethan Hunt, a secret agent with a US Government Agency called the IMF. He has quit field work for a training role and a chance at a real life and marriage. However, when his protege is kidnapped, he returns to the field to track down the evil arms dealer, Owen Davian, and secure the return of the dangerous new weapon, codename Rabbit's Foot. And here is where the movie really gets into gear, because we are presented with a host of BADASSES, towit Philip Seymour Hoffman as the evil Davian, Laurence Fishburne as Tom/Ethan's boss and Ving Rhames as Tom/Ethan's side-kick Luther Stickell. These guys steal the show, not least when the hillariously out-of-shape Hoffman kicks the shit out of Cruise. Man oh man, all you Tom-Haters should pay-up just for that vicarious thrill.

But as much as I enjoyed the balls-out ridiculousness of this movie, there is a big problem every time it switches from action to romance. The movie jumps the shark about 35 minutes in thanks to the most stupid, cringe-worthy wedding scene since Four Weddings & A Funeral. Thereafter, every time we get Tom Cruise together with his on-screen wife, you feel the need to laugh out loud. In fact, a supposedly emotional reunion triggered the biggest unintended laugh in the theatre apart from the nauseatingly bad trailor for the latest Bond movie. I know that MI3 is not meant to be a high-fallutin' drama, and maybe I am being harsh to mark it down for making me laugh when I should have been feeling all loved up. But this stuff was so bad it really took me out of my happy, popcorn-tastic vibe. Good action flicks don't deviate from the task at hand. Bad ones have pretensions beyond their grasp. So, like Luther Stickell says, whereas some boldness is required with the stunts and visual effects, there is a point when bold manipulation of the genre becomes stupidity. MI3 may not fall over the line, but it comes too close for comfort.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III is on global release.

KISS KISS BANG BANG - Val Kilmer is GOOD!

Quick review: Perfect disposable Friday night movie - fast cars, small guns, hot chicks, some of which are dead, but at least one is wearing a Santa outfit. Go see it! 

Longer review: Robert Downey Junior plays a thief who runs into a Hollywood audition to escape the cops, and is whisked off to cool LA parties. The producer of the movie is never actually going to hire him, but is trying to scare Colin Farrell, the first choice for the role, into dropping his price tag by a couple of mil. Of course, Robert Downey Junior thinks he genuinely has a shot at the role, and has to shadow a real life Private Detective, "Gay Perry" (yes, Roman, he is, in fact, gay) to prepare for his movie role. Gay Perry is played by Val Kilmer, in his best performance since playing Jim Morrison in The Doors - admittedly not a high benchmark. The trio of protagonists is completed by Robert Downey Junior's old flame from school who just happens to be an out-of-work actress addicted to detective fiction. Cue lots of fast cars, small guns hidden in amusing places, hot chicks, some of whom are dead and have horrible hair-dos. There is also a little bit of (comedy) electrocution. 

The movie was written and directed by the guy (Shane Black) who wrote the Lethal Weapon movies, and that pisspoor Arnie movie, The Last Action Hero. Here he delivers a slick, laugh-out-loud-funny movie that satirises a whole bunch of Hollywood genres at once: film noir, the buddy cop movie, James Bond movies, good old-fashioned farce and all those oh-so-clever post-modern Sundance movies where the protagonist starts talking to you and doing weird shit with the narrative structure. ("Adaptation", anyone?) 

Clearly you're not gonna remember it the day after you see it, but it will make you laugh. And anyone who saw the Crime against Comedy that was The Wedding Crashers will be grateful for any studio movie that can still raise a chuckle on a Friday night. Is this as funny as Doogie Howser MD? Heck, no. Are you gonna get a bigger laugh in pre-Oscar season? Unlikely. It's a toss up between this and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Either way, the dog gets it. 

Nationwide release in the UK and US on the 11th November 2005; apparently it is already out in Germany, which I find kind of hard to believe, insofar as if there is a centre to this universe it is undoubtedly in Zone One, but what do I know....