CADILLAC RECORDS - fails to catch fire

Writer-director Darnell Martin has created a biopic, but not of a single figure in music history, as with RAY or WALK THE LINE, but of a record company - Chess Records. Founded by a pair of Polish immigrants (one of whom is excised from this story) who sold records from the back of a cadillac, the label was home to the best and most influential blues and early rock acts: Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Etta James, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry and Little Walter. With such a cast of icons, it's great that Martin manages to quickly essay their back stories, their characters, and to convince us of their musical talent. In this, she is helped by a tremendous score from Terence Blanchard. The movie also tackles head on the race issue: black musicians having their musical heritage appropriated by white people who could play to a larger audience and hence make more money. The acting is fine throughout, but Jeffrey Wright stands out as Muddy Waters and Beyonce Knowles is surprisingly good as Etta James - indeed the only truly dramatic scene is where James is high on heroin and having an emotional crisis with her record producer boss (Adrien Brody). And therein lies the problem, this movie never quite catches fire. Like the worst kind of reverential history, it's just one damn thing after another. Still, blues fans will luxuriate in the period music and the great musical set-pieces.

CADILLAC RECORDS was released in the USA in December 2008 and in the UK, Spain, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Italy earlier this year. It will be released in Japan on August 15th and is available on DVD.

BE KIND, REWIND - a love letter to VHS

BE KIND REWIND is the first of two movies starring Danny Glover as an old man forced to adapt to modernity. In this film he owns a crusty video shop in New Jersey. The building is so decrepit that the local council is going to demolish it to put up some shiny new condominiums. And in the age of DVD blockbusters, all Mr Fletcher's customers are leaving him for his rival West Coast Video. Glover plays Mr Fletcher as hardened to life's knocks. He faces up to reality, decides to move his stock to DVD and, if all else fails, to grit his teeth and move to the Projects. Against Mr Fletcher's realism we have the delightful optimism of Jack Black, Mos Def and Melonie Diaz, aka Jeff, Mike and Alma. These three goofballs decide to replace the videos that Mike has accidentally magentised with a bunch of home-made 20-minute "homages"/spoofs or "Swedes". These movies become super-popular with the customers, tired of homogenised Hollywood fare. Audiences delight in their shared experience of classic movies - the scenes we all know by heart - and finally start taking part themselves. Of course, the Feds stomp on the vids for copyright infringement, but not before one final hurrah - a movie about Jazz piano legend Fats Waller. Never mind that Waller didn't actually grow up in Passaic, NJ. That's the joy of shared memory and experience - we own it, and we can change it!

The first hour of this movie shows us the machinations of how all the video tapes got wiped. It's a pretty convoluted tale and has none of the honest simplicity of the similarly themed movie, SON OF RAMBOW: A HOME MOVIE. The movie only really feels like it lifts off in the second half hour, when the gang starts making the flicks. Cinephiles will take sheer delight in seeing those childhood movies recreated. As Michel Gondry proved in last year's outstanding THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP, he is the king of things to make and do. I also love the theme of the flick - far better to go out and do stuff yourself - gonzo-style - than be the passive recipient of other people's dreams.

You can't deny that the movie has a lot of heart. And I always find that Jack Black is more funny when restrained by a strong ensemble cast and director - so I prefer him here to, say, NACHO LIBRE. Mos Def is charming, and it's great to see Melonie Diaz (who's been consistently impressive since RAISING VICTOR VARGAS) get a proper starring role too.

My only real criticism is that BE KIND REWIND takes too long to get to the good stuff, and that everything about how we get to the Sweded films seems hopelessly contrived. If you like this film, I strongly recommend you check out SON OF RAMBOW to see how the same light-hearted material can be grounded in something real and, therefore, all the more emotionally engaging.

BE KIND, REWIND played Sundance and Berlin 2008. It opens in the US and UK today. It opens in March in France, Israel, Iceland, Norway, Australia, Singapore, Finland, Turkey and Russia. It opens in April in Spain, Sweden and Argentina. It opens on May 8th in the Netherlands.

London Film Fest Day 9 - IN PRISON MY WHOLE LIFE

IN PRISON MY WHOLE LIFE is a documentary about a Black Panther called Mumia Abu Jamal who was convicted of killing a cop and sentenced to death in 1981 after a trial that was condemned by Amnesty International as being unfair. The film is directed by Welsh helmer Marc Evans, known if at all, for the film SNOW CAKE. But really it is a personal story by a young Anglo-American journalist called William Francome, whose activist mother always impressed upon him the fact that he was born the day that Mumia was convicted. Hence, Mumia has been in prison for William's whole life.

The documentary is evidently highly personal and they do well to interview many famous activists. Through no fault of its own, the documentary does, however, suffer from lack of footage of Mumia or any of the people on the other side of the argument - namely the cops and lawyers who hold that Mumia was correctly found guilty. More gravely, the documentary suffers from an incoherent structure. It's starts of as a personal travelogue, mentioning Mumia's crime in passing. We then see a potted history of agitation. We then go through the nuts and bolts of whether the trial was fair. Then we flip back into modern day activism...and so on.

It seems to me like Evans/Francome et al didn't ever decide whether they were making a doc about one man or a history of activism and suppression. Given the scarce footage of Mumia or his detractors, I wish they'd done the latter. Moreover, I wish that they'd tried to give a bit more context about what the Black Panthers were all about. I'm as pro free speech, civil rights and democratic protest at the next guy, but I found the documentary to be a bit superficial in its position that all activists were noble and valiant and all rozzers were scumbags.

Finally, I bring out the two rules against which I judge any new agit-doc: first, does it need to be a feature film; second, is it worth the candle? On the first point, I think that this documentary would have been more powerful if it had been edited more tightly for, say, a sixty minute TV doc slot on BBC2 or Channel 4. It would also have arguably reached a wider audience. There are certainly no visuals that require an audience to see this on a big screen.

On the second point, I do fear that this really is just another agit-doc that will preach to the converted. I can't imagine many anti-liberals shelling out ten squid to see this at the cinema even if it is picked up for release. And as for promoting activism, I don't think it's good enough to rouse the sleeping masses in the way that Al Gore's AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH did. Sad to say, it seems to speak to a battle fought long ago. It may mention Katrina, but it captures none of the rage seen in Spike Lee's recent documentary, WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE, or Chris Atkin's documentary TAKING LIBERTIES. These documentaries made me furious. I mean, absolutely spitting furious and ready to actually agitate as a woman of colour and as a civilised human being. By contrast, IN PRISON MY WHOLE LIFE didn't tell me anything I didn't already know and didn't make me any more angry about them.

IN PRISON MY WHOLE LIFE played Cannes, London and Rome 2007.

16 BLOCKS - superior crime thriller

16 BLOCKS is a crime thriller starring Bruce Willis and Mos Def. The concept is that Willis is an alcoholic, passed-it, cop who has been charged with delivering a witness 16 blocks away to a trial in New York. The witness - Mos Def - is going to testify against a bunch of dirty cops, who naturally try and smoke him as he travels to the court-house. That's pretty much it, and as the movie opened I got rather nervous. It seemed rather conventional. Bruce Willis doing what he does well and Mos Def using a bizarre accent. However, as the movie progressed I got sucked in and the reason is this. It is very will directed (by Richard Donner who did the original Superman) and really well written. It contains a lot more dialogue than one would expect for a movie of this genre - it's really rather talky - and that is a nice change. So I can recommed 16 BLOCKS wholeheartedly - it's superior popcorn and perfect for both mind and heart.

16 BLOCKS is already showing in the US, France, Germany, Austria and the UK.