THE ANOMALY

THE ANOMALY sees actor-director Noel Clarke (STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS) return to our screens with an ambitious sci-fi thriller that pulls off a stylish look on a low budget but is ultimately the victim of weak script and two-dimensional characters, not to mention gratuitous female nudity.

Clarke stars as a soldier suffering from PTSD who keeps waking up in a future world for just 10 minutes before zapped back.  He realises that he's being used to battle with an evil baddie called Agent Harkin played by Ian Somerhalder and his only ally is a hooker with a heart of gold. The whole thing drips with references to other, better, bigger-budgeted films such as THE MATRIX and SOURCE CODE.  And I'd feel better classing this as an honourable failure it it weren't for its retrograde sexual politics. I'd like to say that after ADULTHOOD and 4.3.2.1. Noel Clarke was developing his own directorial style but he really isn't. This is a film made by a guy obsessed with mimicking the films he love, but without changing them, improving them or melding them in the way. 

THE ANOMALY has a running time of 94 minutes and is rated 15 for strong language, violence, sex and nudity. The movie is on release in the UK and Ireland and opens later this month in Vietnam. It opens in January 2015 in Japan and in March 2015 in Brazil.

iPad 5 Round-Up - 4.3.2.1.

From the laughs, authenticity and social relevance of ATTACK THE BLOCK to the turgid, sexually exploitative own-goal that is 4.3.2.1.  Tragic that promising young writer-director-actor Noel Clarke, who started off with material like KIDULTHOOD that was a serious look at modern British youth culture, should descend into directing a piss-poor genre flick.  Because 4.3.2.1. is essentially a derivative caper movie, complete with MacGuffin (bag of crisps stuffed full of diamonds), and a "high concept" that sees the same day replayed through the point of view of four above-average pretty and under-dressed young girls.  The movie wants to have the tight pace and clever interlocking plot of a Guy Ritchie flick, itself derivative of Tarantino, but ends up looking brash, weak and ordinary.  Not helped by fairly anonymous performance from the four lead girls (Emma Roberts, Ophelia Lovibond, Tamsin Egerton and Shannika Warren-Markland).   Still, I pity them the leering lads mag treatment they get from Clarke, unhappily veering away from what he knows about to a sort of teen boy fantasy of guns, girls and heists, that is an embarrassment to all involved, including, inexplicably, Kevin Smith.

4.3.2.1. was released in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and Greece in 2010 and in Kazakhstan and Russia in February 2011. It is available to rent and own, but why bother?

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL - Spasticus Autisticus

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is a fast-paced, manically inter-cut biopic of Ian Dury, New Wave singer, genius wordsmith, ladies man and radical. Born working class, crippled by polio, trained by Peter Blake, married to a middle-class portrait painter, father to two kids, living in suburbia. That's how we meet Dury - a punk radical playing shitty pubs with a dodgy band, desperate for fame, and deeply at odds with his suburban home life. Somehow his wife puts up with his shit, even when he shacks up with a pretty West Indian girl much younger than him and moves out. Somehow the Kilburn and the High Roads turn into The Blockheads, the seminal songs are written, and the money comes rolling in. Before you know it, Dury and his crew are in a swanky rented country house, generally pissing about and not getting much work done. His girlfriend and wife are both simultaneously in love and at wits end with him. His young son is much loved but exposed to drugs and not much schooling. His young daughter is basically ignored. The End.

If the plot summary above seemed to have no structure, well, neither does the film. It survives as entertainment purely on the strength, charisma and sheer bravado of Andy Serkis' (best known as Gollum) leading performance. You get a good sense of Dury as wordsmith but you don't really get how he became famous. One minute he's playing pubs, the next he's famous. You never get how his character might have changed. His girlfriend Denise (Naomie Harris) complains that fame has changed him, but the audience doesn't see it. He just seems as much of an egotistical but charming arse as ever. His wife (Olivia Williams) evolves - moves on - but Dury never changes. He's just too clever by half, too selfish by half, and a lot of fun to be around.

If you love Ian Dury's music, you'll get a kick out of this film. Serkis is genius, and ably supported by Olivia Williams and Naomie Harris. But if you don't know who Ian Dury is, this film isn't going to help. You get a lot of stuff about his early life, but it doesn't tell you about art school and how he became a radical performer. You get the starting point (the film posits that being crippled was the defining change) and the final product, but nothing inbetween. You don't have a clue why he's married to an RA.

So, all in all, this is a great little film that could've done with a bit more substance, and a bit more exposition, a little more context.... As it is, it's unlikely to get an audience beyond the core fanbase. Still, anything that makes you dust off your old vinyl, it's no bad things.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is on release in the UK.

ADULTHOOD - compelling, terrifying, British drama

Writer-actor Noel Clarke steps up to direct this sequel to the terrifying urban drama KIDULTHOOD. Once again, Clarke shows us 24 hours in the life of the thieves, drug-pushers, drug-takers and thugs of contemporary West London. Once again, this film brilliantly captures the language and concerns of a section of British society painted by the Daily Mail as generic "hoodies". There are no concessions to outsiders, and one can imagine Americans finding it hard to understand the dialect.

Six years after the events of the first film, Sam is released from prison, having served time for murdering a boy called Trife. Trife's friends want Sam dead by nightfall, and he has to run around town making apologies. Sam tried to act "big" in the first film. In the second, he faces the consequences. Indeed, the whole film is really a tour of the victims of crime. For all that, this is not an overwhelmingly grim film. Adam Deacon stands out with his hysterical, quasi-Ali G depiction of Sam's nemesis, Jay. And Clarke does indulge in a rather sentimental denouement. But I was willing to forgive this because I'd so bought in to Scarlett Alice Johnson's desperately moving portrait of damaged coke-addict.

ADULTHOOD is on release in the UK.

KIDULTHOOD - flawed but fascinating

One of the things I love about living in Central London is the sheer social and racial diversity of the place. It's not that you *can* meet people from all walks of life, but that you *have* to. It is pretty hard to live in an isolated camelot when next to every wide avenue skirted with townhouses you have a hard-as-nails council estate. This is apparently what drove a young British actor, Noel Clarke, to write the script for KIDULTHOOD - a new low budget British movie. Clarke grew up in the council estates bordering the streets of NOTTING HILL - the underside of the fantasy London made famous in the saccharine luvvie-fest movies of Richard Curtis. He claims that he was tired of seeing his home depicted on screen in a manner that was so far removed from the reality as to be laughable.

I applaud the intent of the script-writer, and clearly a lot of care has been taken to re-create the language, behaviour and environment of the council estates. The movie is at its best when we simply sit back and observe the kids interacting with each other. There is a bravura opening segment where we see the kids flirt, punch and fuck each other in the school playground, followed by a disturbing scene of brutal bullying in a classroom.

The movie is fascinating as a social document but I feel it is less successful as a straightforward drama. The decision to collapse all the (melo-)dramatic events into a single day undercuts the movie's authenticity. It just seems a little too neat that all the plot strands should culminate in a particular party. Having said that, KIDULTHOOD really is a gripping movie and the minutes flew by. And I have to say that any director/editor who can create such a slick, fresh visual look on such a low budget has to be admired, not to mention the outstanding sound-track featuring British urban sounds. This is definitely a movie to check out.

KIDULTHOOD is on limited release in the UK. No global release dates at present. I suspect you'll have to wait for DVD for this one, but it really is worth a look.