JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM

This film is utterly without merit, joy, wonder or intelligence  It is a shameless cash-in on a tired franchise, without any of the majesty of the original.  Even worse, it teases us with memories of that film with an early cameo from Jeff Goldblum and a late cameo from BD Wong. Worst of all, it wastes the talents of arthouse director J A Bayona, who made the exceptional A MONSTER CALLS. 

In this new instalment, a few years after the dinos go bonkers on Isla Nubar, a volcano threatens to make them all extinct again. Goldblum's rational scientist argues for this but reformed park exec Bryce Dallas Howard now wants to rescue them as living creatures deserving of our help. In doing so she enlists the help of ex-lover and dino handler Chris Pratt, and is funded by James Cromwell's dying billionaire and ex partner of the park's original founder.  Of course, the moral of this series was always that the real monsters weren't the killer dinos but the evil capitalist bastards who sought to exploit them. And so it goes with this non-surprising plot-twist.

The whole thing is over-loud, over-long, emotionally involving and lacking in intelligence. Avoid.

JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM is rated 12A and has a running time of 128 minutes.

X+Y

The cast of X+Y at the BFI London Film Festival.

X+Y is a spectacularly good film - one that makes you laugh out loud, care deeply about its characters, cry in sympathy, and wonder what happened to them next.  That it's a debate feature from director Morgan Matthews and writer James Graham is even more impressive, and I really hope this British indie film gets the release and recognition it deserves.

The film is about a young autistic maths prodigy called Nathan who carries the trauma of his father's death in a car accident.  His loving mother Julie (Sally Hawkins) manages to get him extra maths tuition with a teacher called Mr Humphreys (Rafe Spall) who was also a maths prodigy but has been beaten down by Multiple Sclerosis and know self-medicates with alcohol and a kind of ruthlessly funny defensive humour. Somehow, Mr Humphreys manages to make a connection with Nathan, and gets him to enter into an international maths olympiad, in which he leaves for a selection camp in Taiwan, meets a girl, and discovers what's truly important to him.  

LIFE OF PI

I believe that LIFE OF PI is director Ang Lee's most technically accomplished  emotionally arresting and finely balanced film.  It surpasses even LUST, CAUTION.  LIFE OF PI must also be one of the most beautifully rendered adaptations - and all the more surprising because the novel upon which it is based was widely regarded as "unfilmable".  Ang Lee, using a screenplay by David Magee (FINDING NEVERLAND), has responded with a film that is both faithful to the content of the book, but also to its sense of wonder and its examination of the slipperiness of faith, identity and storytelling itself. 

All this might make the film sound rather dry and earnest, but it is anything but.  Because at its core, this is a movie that asks us to fall in love with a young boy, admiring his resourcefulness and compassion.  That boy is the eccentrically named Pi Patel, born in French India on the verge of independence.  He embodies the loose infinite multiculturalism of India - creating his own patchwork faith of Hinduism, Catholicism and Islam - much to the chagrin of his liberal humanist father.  The family travels with their zoo animals to America in search of a better life, but a storm hits, leaving Pi the only survivor about a life boat with a vicious Bengal Tiger. He is clever enough to be wary, to survive, thanks in no small part to his patchwork faith. And, in the movie's framing device, tells his story, or versions of it, to the French-Canadian writer who will choose which tale to tell.

Irrfan Khan and Rafe Spall have an easy familiarity as the elder Pi and the writer.  But the movie really belongs to Suraj Sharma who plays the teenage Pi who finds himself on the boat alone with the tiger, and holds our attention for over an hour.  It is a performance that feels utterly natural and compelling and draws us into the story. We care passionately about how he will fare, just as we care about the tiger "Richard Parker" - and because of that, we follow him even as his tale becomes bizarre and magical.

In the epilogue, the movie asks questions about the nature of storytelling and the value of faith. I might not agree with the answers it gives, and they have certainly caused some controversy.  But one cannot deny that the movie finely balances spectacle and provocative ideas in the most charming package. This is clearly one of the films of the year, and the best of Ang Lee's career. It also shows what an imaginative director can do with the appropriate use of 3D and CGI rendering when his intention is to marry it to the material rather than shamelessly cash in on higher cinema ticket prices.

LIFE OF PI was released in November in Canada, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, the USA, China, Hong Kong, Macedonia, India, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan and Spain. It is released on December 14th in Vietnam; and on December 19th in Belgium, France; on December 20th in Belarus, Bosnia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Thailand, the UK, the UAE; on December 21st in Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Mexico, Sweden and Venezuela; on December 25th in Denmark and Norway; on December 26th in Austria and Germany; on December 27th in the Dominican Republic and Peru and on December 28th in Turkey. It is released on January 1st in Australia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama and Russia; on January 3rd in Bolivia and Chile; on January 4th in Guatemala, Honduras and Philippines; on January 10th in Argentina; on January 11th in Poland and on January 25th in Japan. 

PROMETHEUS - all that sound and fury....

...signifying nothing.  

PROMETHEUS is a visually stunning, beautifully acted film that makes absolutely  no sense. Apart from a couple of obligatory gore-fest alien-parasite-attack scenes, there's no sense of creeping menace. No fear that in space no-one hears you scream.  Instead, we get two hours of an attempt at a deep philosophical discussion of faith versus science, creators versus created. Tragically, the writers simply do not have the intellectual chops, or the focus, or the respect for the audience to see it through. The result is a movie that plays more like a drama than a thriller, and certainly doesn't play like horror.  A film that frustrates far more than it entertains.  I didn't watch LOST myself, but  I know enough frustrated fanboys to suggest that the blame for this missed opportunity sits firmly on the shoulders of Damon Lindelof, the script-writing genius who also messed up with COWBOYS & ALIENS last year.

The movie kicks off in the not too distant future, around 200 years before the events in ALIEN.  A private corporation has sponsored a scientific mission to a planet who's co-ordinates have been painted in prehistoric caves. The scientists Shaw and Holloway (Noomi Rapace and Charlie Holloway) believe they are going to discover the creators of humanity.  The crew, helmed by Vickers (Charlize Theron) just want to get in and out quickly. All but the slippery cylon, David (Michael Fassbender) who has an agenda that is never really explained  in the course of the film.  Naturally the crew land on a planet which was once apparently peopled by a race of creators, or "engineers", who have since been wiped out by the aliens we all know and fear. All of which begs several questions.  Do the engineers mean humanity well?  Does David mean humanity well? Were the aliens a messed up experiment that got out of hand? Who created the aliens? And who created the engineers?  All of these questions will apparently be answered in a sequel, but frankly, do we care?

This movie, with its superb performances (particularly from Rapace and Fassbender) and beautiful landscapes (Darius Wolszki) could've been astoundingly good, if only it had been more focussed in exploring its themes.  For instance, if David is inspired by Lawrence of Arabia, then let's take that further.  Lawrence is a fascinating character with very specific notions of the interaction between the rulers and ruled, which could've been used here.  If Shaw is a scientist exploring creation who refuses to give up her faith, let's really explore the provocative inconsistencies there.  If David is going all HAL, let's explore that,  And if Vickers is really going to have a relationship revelation near the end, let's explore that rather than just tossing it into the mix for a nanosecond. 

So, basically, worth seeing for the visuals and the acting, but utterly, utterly frustrating.

PROMETHEUS is on release in the UK, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Chile, Denmark, Israel, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Finland, Norway, Ireland, Sweden and Turkey. It opens on June 7th in the USA, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Serbia, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Croatia, Hungary, Kuwait, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, Canada, Egypt, Estonia, India, Lithuania and Romania. It opens on June 15th in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. It opens on June 22nd in Vietnam, on June 28th in Cambodia, on July 20th in Poland, on August 9th in Germany and Spain, and on October 19th in Italy.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 15 - ANONYMOUS

The use of the interrogative tense in the poster for ANONYMOUS is misleading. Director Roland Emmerich and writer John Orloff aren't asking whether Shakespeare was a fraud. They are telling us, without doubt, with complete certainty, that he was. Their theory is that it is inconceivable that a poorly educated provincial dolt could have written plays of such genius and erudition. Rather, they posit that the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, a man of great wealth and learning, wrote the plays. But at a time when theatres were next to brothels, and plays seen as seditious, it would have been degrading for Oxford to be publicly acknowledged as an author.  He therefore allowed the boorish, illiterate actor, Will Shakespeare, to take the credit, and the cash, with Ben Jonson as the unwilling go-between.  If this weren't scandalous enough, the movie further raises the stakes by positing that Oxford was at the centre of a conspiracy by his enemy, the puritan Cecil family, that involved the line of succession, incest and bastards. 

Taken on its own terms, ANONYMOUS is a great success. Indeed, I was quite amazed that Roland Emmerich - director of such dubious, mainstream disaster movies as 2012; 10,000 BC; and THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW - could direct something with such elegance and beauty. Because, make no mistake, ANONYMOUS is a brilliantly directed film. The way in which Emmerich deftly handles the transitions between different periods in Oxford's life is elegant and never confuses.  The conspiracy is woven with great delicacy so that even in the final act, we are genuinely surprised and saddened by the turn of events.  In front of the camera, Emmerich coaxes a career best performance from Rhys Ifans as the older Oxford, and uses CGI to create a completely engrossing and compelling Tudor London.  I was absolutely delighted to see Southwark and the Tower recreated, complete with squalor and grandeur.  Kudos to cinematographer Anna Foerster, shooting with the Arri Alexa (the first feature to do so).  She manages to create a colour palette of warmth and depth, beautifully capturing candelit pageants, and snow-covered country mansions. Most importantly, I cared. I deeply cared about the battle between Oxford and the Cecils - I cared about the fate of young Essex, the Queen's bastard son and pretender to the throne - and I cared about the Queen herself, wonderfully portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave as frail and vulnerable and hounded on all sides. 

Of course, when I stand back from the film, the whole thing seems a bit pointless. I've always thought that these debates - who wrote Shakespeare; was Shakespeare a crypto-Catholic; was the Dark Lady really a boy - pretty pointless, as there simply isn't the documentary evidence to decide it either way. So you're just left with dogmatic people using thin supposition.  In particular, the idea that Shakespeare couldn't have written the plays because they required great education strikes me as peculiarly class-ist. Just because someone is provincial and working class doesn't mean they aren't capable of genius - I mean, isn't the whole point of genius that it's like a lightning bolt. And anyway, according to Rene Weis' superb book "Shakespeare Revealed", Shakespeare attended a local grammar school and was taught by a string of Oxbridge graduates in all the subjects and to the very same standard that the movie suggests Oxford was tutored in and to....

But as I said, there's no point quibbling about the truth. I am perfectly happy to believe Will Shakespeare was indeed Shakespeare.  That didn't stop me having a cracking good time watching ANONYMOUS.  To that end, this movie falls firmly in the same category as SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE - a pleasing fiction.

ANONYMOUS played Toronto and London 2011. It is currently on release in Portugal, Finland and Norway. It opens on October 28th in Canada, Ireland, the UK and the USA. It opens on November 3rd in Germany; in Spain on November 11th; in France, Russia and Singapore on November 17th; in the Netherlands, Mexico and India on December 1st; in Sweden on December 16th; in Hong Kong and Hungary on February 2nd.