RIPLEY (TV)**

 

I absolutely adore Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels. They are slippery and subversive and dark and dangerous and about the best crime procedurals you can read. I have also loved many of the iterations by which Ripley has found himself on the big screen, from PLEIN SOLEIL to RIPLEY'S GAME and Anthony Minghella's superlative TALENTED MR RIPLEY.

When I first heard that Andrew Scott (ALL OF US STRANGERS) was cast as Ripley I was excited but I assumed that this would be an adaptation of one of the later books when Ripley was older. I was shocked to discover that this was actually an adaptation of the source novel where the characters are meant to be in their twenties. Johnny Flynn's Dickie is also in his forties.  The problem is that this makes the concept of the book seem ... well ... odd. Dickie Greenleaf dodging his responsibilities on a kind of extended gap year in Italy feels right for pretty young things but doesn't quite work for middle-aged men.  And thanks to Zaillian's choice to go for black and white photography, life in Italy never feels beautiful and lush and seductive. Rather, we start off in a world that is decaying and deserted and rather drab.  It's hard to see what in Dickie and Marge's existence would be attractive to Tom. Their life doesn't feel particularly luxurious. And there's no sexual tension between Dickie and Tom, and certainly no apparent love for Dickie on Marge's part. It's just all so flat.

As we move into the second act, things pick up pace. The crime procedural has its own momentum. Whether it needs five episodes though, is doubtful.  We see the quality of Eliot Sumner as Freddie Miles in their pivotal scene with Tom.  A scene that is played very differently to how Philip Seymour Hoffman played it, but with no less menace.  The problem is that Eliot is a good fifteen years younger than Andrew Scott and seems to be in a totally different film.

So far so problematic, but where this adaptation totally loses it is in the final episode. We begin episode eight with a flashback to Caravaggio which is way too on the noise, and a clear case of a showrunner being given way too much running time to pad out. We also get a confrontation between the police inspector and Tom that's so literally incredible it destroyed any respect I had for this adaptation. Minghella's choice to have them never meet was the more elegant solution.

RIPLEY was released on Netflix today.

BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE**

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green (KING RICHARD) returns to our screens with a biopic that is limp and uninspired. I am not sure how you make a film such a boring film about a musician as talented as Bob Marley, let alone a musician as mired in the violence of his native Jamaica. It is even more disappointing when you realise that the film was written by iconic show runner Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET). The result is a Tab A into Slot B film that portrays Bob as a naive hapless fool and martyr who pumped out a classic album before succumbing to cancer. To be honest, I was relieved when he died. I came out none the wiser as to the political violence that forced Bob to flee Jamaica for England. And I was certainly not allowed to see the darker side of Bob's personality. This film is weak sauce hagiography. And while Kingsley Ben-Adir (Malcolm X in ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI) does a decent enough physical and verbal impression of Bob it just all feels very superficial and performative. 

BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated PG-13. It went on global release last month.

KING RICHARD***** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 10

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green's KING RICHARD is an uproarious, crowd-pleasing, but not completely hagiographical biopic of Richard Williams: coach and father of Venus and Serena. The film succeeds because of a tightly structured and powerful script from first-time screenwriter Zach Baylin. It also benefits from powerhouse performances from Will Smith in the title role (taken as read) and scene-stealing Aunjanue Ellis as Richard's wife Brandi. What emerges is a complicated picture of a complicated and imperfect family that somehow, against all odds, raised a Wimbledon winner AND a GOAT. 

As the film opens, Richard is trying to persuade various rich tennis coaches to invest in his daughters, who he has been raising according to his programme to create prodigies. He works them hard, both in tennis and school, because he wants them to avoid being mired in poverty and drugs like the rest of Compton. The threat of violence is ever-present.  Richard tells us how he was beaten up by white men as a kid. His eldest daughter is threatened by local gangs (foreshadowing her real life tragic murder).  We see Rodney King being beaten up on TV. So Richard's desire to create champions is commercial and callous. He clearly states it could've been any sport and that he literally bred the girls for greatness. But at a very basic level, it's not about money but sheer survival. 

Which is not to say that Richard is perfect. He's clearly egotistical, stubborn, a self-publicist and a tyrant. He drives not one but two coaches mad. He drives his wife Brandi mad. And in one of the most powerful moments of the film's second half, she absolutely lets him have it with details of his life that made the audience both gasp and applaud her.  But at the end of the day, whatever he did worked.

That said, it wasn't actually just what HE did. And this film cleverly both sets up the self-made myth of King Richard before deconstructing it. Brandi powerfully argues that SHE was AS influential in raising and indeed coaching the girls as HE was, and provides a powerful role model of a hard-working black woman. As a result, this film partly cuts off one of the criticisms that was brewing in my mind as I watched it: that for a film about two female tennis stars, their three sisters, and their mum, it was kinda weird to centre the only man in the story.  The entire point is that this is what Richard does, and what the women have to fight against. 

I can't say enough about how joyous this film was to watch in a packed auditorium.  Every argument, every tennis success, every tense game had us all on the edge of our seats. The film left me with an even deeper understanding of, and admiration for, these iconic sportswomen and everything that they have achieved.

KING RICHARD has a running time of 138 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film played Telluride and the BFI London Film Festival. It will be released on Netflix on November 19th. 

SUBURBICON

SUBURBICON is a much-maligned film - so much so that I put off watching it for quite some time. I see the issue with it. Despite his earnest liberal pose, George Clooney has created a film in which the story of a black family victimised by racists in 1950s America is treated as a counter-point to the main story of a white family torn apart by lust and murder. He doesn't condescend to give his black characters names, personalities, an inner life, agency.  They are cookie-cutter martyrs.  In fact, Clooney doesn't even look that interested in what they're going through, other than that a climactic race riot can provide an opportunity for his actual protagonist to mask a murder.  One has to ask oneself how a director who is also an activist could be so tone deaf to his own implicit racism.  Maybe it's just another example of the inability of rich white old men to "get it".  

The problem is that if we write off all of SUBURBICON because of Clooney's racist mis-step, we ignore the evident artistry of its main  plot. In fact, one could imagine someone putting the film through FinalCutPro, taking out the black neighbour side-plot, and coming up with a very finely produced, nasty, subversive, little suburban thriller.  The tragedy of SUBURBICON is, then, not that it's a bad film, but that it's a good film with a side-order of tone-deaf sub-plot. 

So let's get to the main film. It's a Clooney directorial effort based on a 1980s script by the Coen Brothers, whose sensibilities he has absorbed over many years of working for them as an actor. He has reworked the script with producing partner Grant Heslov to create a dark tale of lust and greed. As the film opens, its protagonist Gardner (Matt Damon) is living with his wife and son Nicky as well as his sister-in-law (both sisters played by Julianne Moore).  In an early and tense scene of home invasion, the wife is killed, after which Gardner takes up with the sister, who creepily dies her hair to look like the dead sibling.  This - and other "red flags" raise the suspicions of an oppressively charming insurance fraud investigator played by Oscar Isaac, and we realise that Gardner is in cahoots with two mobsters.

This kind of complex caper, with crosses and double-crosses, small-time crooks and venal men, are common in Coen Brothers movies. But this is not one of their dark comedies. Rather, it's a relentlessly vicious film, centring as it does on a small kid who sees and is victimised by violence and coercion. To that end, I thought Clooney handled the tension and the violence very well - walking just the right balance of holding our gaze vs exploitation.

I also loved Clooney's visual style in this film, his scrupulous use of vintage design - not just clothes and the way the houses are dressed - but the logos on the beauty parlour window and the brochure for a military school - the deep dark oppressive browns of Gardner's office. Everything is just right.  He also knows how to frame a shot.  Matt Damon, broken nose and glasses, trying to intimidate his son, with an absurdly lit fish-tank behind him. In many ways, I think this is Clooney at his most deliberate and controlled and I loved it. And of course Julianne Moore is superb. In other words, there's a lot that's really superb in this film if - and it's a big if - you can overlook the serious political mis-step. 

SUBURBICON has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated R. It is available to rent and own.

ROMAN J ISRAEL ESQ

Denzel Washington gives an impressive performance as the schlubby, socially awkward, but earnest and gifted lawyer in this social drama.  As the film opens, Roman's long-time legal partner has fallen into a coma, forcing Roman to confront the morally messy reality of the law-firm he has spent his life in, and to accept a job with the slick corporate lawyer George Pierce (Colin Farrell). One expects the plot to revolve around the moral tension between the two men. Roman is a veteran civil rights lawyer who wants to file a class action lawsuit to end plea bargains that compromise his clients' civil rights, landing them in prison to apparently save on legal costs. Pierce wants him to do paying work and make money. But actually it's really about the inner fight within Roman - between his old idealism, and the reality that he now has to confront, and whether he will give into that new cynicism.

What I love about this film is its lack of flash.  Even the Colin Farrell character, while slick, isn't a caricature Wall Street style guy - he does actually want to do what's right without going bankrupt.  And the way in which writer-director Dan Gilroy (NIGHTCRAWLER) and his DP film the LA law offices shows them to be messy, cramped, with a camera that sneaks up behind people and lingers over their shoulders. Moreover, it's a courtroom drama without a courtroom scene - which I guess is kind of Roman's point - that the general way in which American law operates, people DON'T get their day in court.

I also love the way the film so delicately walks the line of creating a quirky, eccentric character, but not allowing him to become a collection of ticks.  Roman is genuinely believable, if exaggerated in his look and feel. Moreover, the script allows Roman to be far more morally complex than a mere earnest self-described chivalrous man of old. There's a point at which he makes a decision that is legally and ethically complex and its consequences drive the final act of the film. The result is a drama that is far more adult, nuanced, and perhaps less simply satisfying than the typical fare. 

ROMAN J ISRAEL ESQ has a running time of 122 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK for infrequent strong language and moderate violence. The movie played Toronto 2017 and opened last year in the USA and Canada. It opened earlier this month in Malaysia, Estonia and Poland. It opens in the UK and Ireland on February 2nd, in Spain on February 9th, in Argentina on March 1st and in Germany on April 19th.

INHERENT VICE

You can listen to a podcast review of this film below, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.



I am super excited to talk to you about INHERENT VICE, the new movie from Paul Thomas Anderson and the first time a Thomas Pynchon novel has been filmed, because they're these complex genre-defying novels that talk about everything and nothing and are kind of unfilmable. The resulting film is one of the weirdest, bizarrest films of the year, and I can quite see why you would be totally weirded out by it. But to me this film is the bastard love child of Lebowski and LA Confidential with a strange warm fuzzy heart.  It may not be as austere and brilliant as THERE WILL BE BLOOD or THE MASTER but is it's own crazy beautiful mess and well worth watching.

So what is the film about? It's a kind of film noir, with all the strangeness that goes along with that genre. It has a mood of craziness, corruption and seediness.  There are rich men, damsels in distress, a maze of plot and you never quite know if you're going to make it out in one piece.  Sometimes you don't know if the author or the director have a clue what's going on, and then the film just sort of ends. That's a little bit the case with INHERENT VICE. The first hour has momentum and drive and hilarity, and then it kind of drifts, but I think that's intentional. And then it goes dark and subversive and there's a very weird sex scene, and then it finishes up in a warm and happy place, sort of....

THE BOURNE LEGACY

THE BOURNE LEGACY is very much the B-team continuing a critically acclaimed and commercially successful action franchise. Instead of director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon, we have Tony and Dan Gilroy and director and writer, and star Jeremy Renner (THE HURT LOCKER).  The only sensible move the writers make is to avoid Renner just inhabiting the character of Bourne.  Rather he is another member of the elite programme that created Bourne, who is still at large. The US intelligence service, scared that the programme of genetic enhancement will go public, decides to shut it out, which basically involves a manhunt of all the "mutants" and the scientists who did the work.  Cue a partnership between Renner's agent and Rachel Weisz' scientist as they travel the world looking for the drug that will "lock in" Renner's enhancements.  

THE BOURNE LEGACY is a good enough "tab A into slot B" movie with solid performances from the lead actors and a good enough script and plot premise.  I remain sceptical about whether Renner is really a leading man - whether he has sufficient charisma and screen heft. I wanted more of the danger that lurked just below the surface in THE TOWN - more of the raw edginess. I also remain sceptical about Tony Gilroy as a director as opposed to a screenwriter: too many of the chase scenes felt baggy and boring. There's none of the subtlety, style and confidence that he displayed in MICHAEL CLAYTON.

Overall this film is not as bad as many had feared, but it isn't really in the same league as the original trilogy.

THE BOURNE LEGACY is currently on release in the Philippines, Singapore, the Czech Republic, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, India, Paraguay, the USA, Vietnam, Ireland, the UK, Spain, Australia, Denmark and New Zealand. It opens on August 23rd in Argentina, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia and Mexico; on August 29th in Indonesia, Sweden, Bahrain, Kuwait, Peru, Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Colombia, El Salvador, Estonia, Latvia and Turkey.  It opens on September 6th in Hungary, the Netherlands, Brazil, Italy, Lithuania, Norway and Pakistan; on September 12th in Belgium, Germany and Israel; on September 19th in France, Finland and South Africa; on September 28th in Japan; on October 4th in Greece; on October 25th in Chile and China and on November 23rd in Venezuela.

THE BOURNE LEGACY is rated PG 13 in the USA and has a running time of 135 minutes. 

THE TOWN

GONE, BABY, GONE was a surprise. Who could have foreseen that washed-up screen actor, Ben Affleck, could’ve directed a movie with such assurance and heft – capturing not only the tension of a crime-drama but also the particularity of a neighbourhood. By contrast, THE TOWN is a disappointment. It’s a solid crime thriller but nothing more than that – and given the acting heavyweights on screen, it should’ve been far better. The plot is straight out of the conventions of the genre. Doug (Ben Affleck) is a bank-robber, based out of Charlestown, Boston. As in all good crime thrillers, Doug is conflicted about what he does, feels bad about terrorizing a hostage, and is doing that “one last job” that we know is going to go horribly wrong. Also true to genre, Doug has a side-kick called Jem (Jeremy Renner) who is a bit of a nutcase (Joe Pesci – anyone?) and takes too many risks. It’s because of Jem’s instability that the robbers end up taking the hostage in the first heist, and cross the line into murdering cops and bystanders. Also by convention, Doug’s loyalty to Jem means that he will go through with that One Last Job despite his better instincts. And, of course, Doug has a girlfriend, from whom he is hiding his true nature. In this case, she is the hostage he was sent to stake out.

The script does a disservice to its minor characters, and the high-powered actors wasted in those roles. Chris Cooper plays Doug’s father in a wasted cameo; Pete Postlethwaite plays the local crime boss in another wasted cameo, and John Hamm shows none of the subtlety that makes Mad Men so great, in his role as the FBI investigator. The worst used is Blake Lively, of Gossip Girl fame, presumably cast to draw in the teen-girl crowd, and given little to do but trigger the final betrayal. At least she makes a stab at an authentic accent though. Jeremy Renner doesn’t bother and Ben Affleck fluctuates in how broad he takes his accent. And this works against what should’ve been Affleck’s greatest strength – his ability to depict the neighbourhood and the society that spawns these robbers. Compare Affleck’s portrayal of Charlestown with Debra Granik’s portrayal of the Ozarks in WINTER'S BONE, and you’ll see just how far short he has fallen.

THE TOWN played Venice and Toronto 2010 and is currently on release in the US, Canada, Germany, Austria, the UK, Belgium and Malaysia. It opens later this month in Australia, Portugal, India, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Singapore, Brazil and Iceland. It opens in December in Russia, Finland and Poland.

Additional tags: Peter Craig, Aaron Stockard, John Hamm, Blake Lively, David Buckley, Harry Gregson-Williams

SALT - Ain't nothing wrong with thrills and spills

An  ex-KGB goon walks into a CIA building in DC and outs an alleged Soviet mole, who is planning to assassinate the Russian President in New York in 24 hours time. For the rest of the movie, that mole has to rush to New York; infiltrate the Russian renegades who are trying to trigger a nuclear war; protect the US president; and all the while avoid the clutches of CIA Counter-Intell. Is this a job for Kiefer Sutherland in 24? Or Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible? Nope, in a nice piece of counter-programming, it's a job for Angelina Jolie, as Eveline Salt.

I had a lot of fun watching SALT. It's not a particularly clever film, and certainly not memorable, but for two hours it held my attention with great action set-pieces and better than typical acting for a genre movie. Note, for example, a scene in which Salt is on a boat, surrounded by KGB goons who have apparently done something she should feel upset about. Jolie has to play woman who is deeply upset, but pretending not to be - all the while giving the audience enough ambiguity that they wander who's side she's really on. Added to that, you get a supporting cast of the calibre of Liev Schreiber as her CIA boss, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the Counter-Intell chief. So, all in all, two enthusiastic thumbs up. Not every movie needs to be Bergman. And while we're waiting for MGM to restructure its debt and push put another Bond flick, this will do very nicely.

Additional tags: Stuart Baird, John Gilroy, Daniel Olbrychski, Daniel Pearce, Hunt Block, Andre Braugher, Olex Krupa

SALT is on global release.

London Film Fest Day 2 - THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS - A Funny Idea In Search Of A Plot

From the producer of GOOD NIGHT, GOOD LUCK and the writer of SIXTY SIX, comes a directorial debut that is uneven, misguided and ultimately unengaging, despite occasionally very funny scenes indeed.

The film is about as convincing as Ewan MacGregor's dodgy American accent. He stars as a naive young journalist who goes to Iraq when his wife dumps him. He takes up with a strange man called Lyn (George Clooney in a "trying-to-be-goofy" moustache). Lyn used to be part of a secret US military programme that was training soldiers to use paranormal powers (mind-bending) and so become "Jedi". The title of the film comes from an experiment whereby the Jedi soldiers would try to kill a goat by staring at it. As the Jedi and his acolyte cross Iraq looking for the US Army psych-op/PR-op base, the movie periodically flashes back to the story of how this bunch of kooks got government funding and were ultimately taken down by a cynical soldier jealous of Lyn's power (Kevin Spacey.)

Now, given the sheer ridiculousness of the premise, we could have had a seriously wacky, funny movie. People might reference the Coen Brothers because of Clooney, but I could imagine Guy Ritchie in the old LOCK-STOCK days handling the voice-over and the freeze frames brilliantly. Sadly, director Grant Heslov has neither the flair nor the confidence to pull off the kind of bravado-film making needed to sell such a ludicrous (even if true) concept.

As for the modern day footage in Iraq, as I said before, Ewan MacGregor is mis-cast, while Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges are type-cast as the Antagonist and The Dude respectively. The plot seems to meander aimlessly, just like their journey in the desert. Worse still, when Heslov does try to show something serious - something that's meant to shock - like an IED explosion or incarcerated, tortured Iraqis - the scene is trivialised by the surrounding ludicrous material.

The upshot is that this is a movie that works neither as a comedy nor as a provocation about the war in Iraq.

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS played Venice and Toronto 2009. It will be released on November 6th in the USA: November 19th in the Netherlands; December 4th in the UK; December 24th in Slovenia; January 2010 in Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway; February 2010 in Turkey; and in March 2010 in Germany.

DUPLICITY - slick and twisted, but occasional longueurs

Tony Gilroy follows up MICHAEL CLAYTON with a similarly stylish corporate thriller that substitutes romantic banter for genuine heft. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts create genuine chemistry as the spies scamming corporate bosses, Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti. The fun comes from Roberts' and Owen's charming delivery of witty dialogue as they ponder whether they are really in love or just in love with the paranoid brilliance of suspecting they are mutually scamming each other. Unfortunately, the nuts and bolts that make up the procedural thriller are pretty lacklustre. I gave up caring who was actually scamming whom long before the end. Stylistically, the Ocean's Eleven rip-off kitsch seventies score and split-screen nonsense was deeply irritating. All in all, mildly entertaining, though arguably better for DVD and dinner night than a trip to the multiplex. And what of Roberts? Is this the big come-back triumph everyone's banking on? Frankly, she looked like her prettiness had been piped to the surface of her. But that's just superficial, right?

DUPLICITY is on release in Spain, Australia, Chile, Israel, New Zealand, Thailand, Iceland, Turkey, the UK and the US. It opens next week in Belgium, Egypt, France, Croatia, Germany, Portugal, Russia, the UAE, Brazil, Estonia and Italy. It opens in Greece on April 16th; in Argentina on April 23rd; in Hungary, Denmark and Japan on May 1st; in the Czech Republic on May 7th; in Finland and Sweden on May 29th; in Norway on June 5th; in the Netherlands on June 11th and in Singapore on July 2nd.

REDBELT - well-acted thriller undone by schmaltzy ending and ludicrous paranoia

David Mamet specialises in this sort of movie: brilliant dialogue, solid casting, plot twists up the wazoo. The problem is that the balance is off-kilter in REDBELT. It's a thriller in which the plot twists and depth of betrayal is so complete and, at times, so seemingly random, as to defy plausibility and empathy.

All of which is a shame, because Chiwetel Ejiofor does a great job in bringing the protagonist, Mike Terry, to life. He perfectly articulates the attraction and absurdity of a man like Terry. On the one hand, this martial arts instructer is laudably honest, loyal and intelligent. He's a stand-up guy. On the other hand, you can see why his wife, Brazilian "princess" Sondra (Alice Braga), would be infuriated by her husband's lack of business sense. Idealists are admirable, but who's gonna keep the business going?

Short of cash, Terry and Sondra get a seemingly lucky break. By chance, Terry saves a Hollywood star (superb against-the-grain cameo by Tim Allen) in a bar-fight and suddenly Terry's going to be a Hollywood producer and his wife is going to be a fashion designer. Problem is, Terry's martial arts training method is ripped off to spice up a pay-per-view martial arts fight. Who's the villain? The Hollywood star? His in-laws? His wife?

Terry runs around trying to keep his head above water. Everyone is sullied by greedy capitalism but Terry. The crude contrast of idealism and greed is ludicrous, as is the schmaltzy denouement straight from THE KARATE KID. I'm not sure what Mamet is trying to say. Worse still, I'm not sure I even care.

REDBELT opened earlier this year in the USA, Brazil, Estonia, Spain, Australia, Belgium, Italy and Germany. It is currently on release in the UK.

LA diary day 1 - THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Right now LA is sunny but cold and I'm in town for a few days on business. It's a perfect chance to check out some historic cinemas and some new releases that haven't made it to the UK yet. It's perfect testament to the almost visceral impact of THERE WILL BE BLOOD that I was transfixed by it, despite the fact that I'd just come off a 13 hour flight and was running on nearly 24 hours without sleep. (In fairness, the fact that the Arclight on Sunset Boulevard is super-plush, has killer hot dogs and great coffee also helped, and I was pleasantly surpised to see I was paying just $12 as opposed to $25 in London! Seriously, thanks to the dollar depreciation stuff in LA is basically free now.)

Paul Thomas Anderson's new film is, like 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS, a movie that leaves you breathless with its completeness of vision. Every single aspect of the movie has been carefully thought out and the complete work fills you with renewed excitement about the power of the medium. The cinematography, by long-term collaborator Robert Elswit, is great. Just look at the scene where Day-Lewis is silhouetted against burning oil wells at dusk. The production design places us authentically in the grit and grime of the California oil rush of the early 1900s. More than all of this, technically, the supreme achievement of this film is it's sound design. Jonny Greenwood of RADIOHEAD fame provides a score that feels like Ligetti or Bartok. It's insistent, dissonant and jarring, and almost replaces dialogue as the explanatory aural medium for the film.

Daniel Day-Lewis lives and breathes the enigmatic oil man Daniel Plainview. He advertises himself as a plain speaking family man bringing riches to the poor farmers. In reality he is a misanthrope and arch-manipulator. He speaks with an accent from a history book - some say modelled on John Huston. He is mesmerising. The first fifteen minutes of the film see Plainview find his first mineral mine, and then bringing his first wells on-line. There is little dialogue. Plainview seems to succeed by pure force of will, and brutally brushes of any accidental deaths inherent in the dangerous business of prospecting.

After this prologue we meet Plainview in 1911 as he charms his way into ownership of vast oil reserves. He meets his nemesis in a young kid with delusions of being a faith healer. Paul Dano plays Eli Sunday as an irritating over-confident nuisance. Some critics have complained that he doesn't provide a meaty enough foil for Plainview but I disagree. It's fascinating that Plainview is too mean to allow this small irritant to persist and thrive. His sense of reason bristles at the ludicrous church services. But more importantly, his ego cannot cope with another man absorbing the people's interest. The feebleness of Eli Sunday also makes the scene where Plainview beats the crap out of him even more powerful and pathetic.

As for Paul Dano, maybe he was thrust into the role of Eli Sunday with too little preparation time. Maybe his scenes preaching aren't quite convincing. Does he really have the charisma to make us believe that he would found a church? But for every weak scene there's a great scene. One of the best is when the bullied preacher turns on his own father and becomes a bully himself.

If Dano's casting is one problem, I can imagine the final episode of this film striking some as over-the-top and ridiculous. By that point, I was so suckered into this world that I bought every second of it. And I think that is Anderson's real achievement here. He has created a world that seems alien and brutal and that is filled with characters from the Inferno. And yet, it is depicted with such conviction you can't help but take it to heart.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD played Toronto 2007 and will play Berlin 2008. It opened in the US in 2007 and opens in February 2008 in Austrlia, Germany, Portugal, Austria, Brazil, Estonia, Italy, Norway, the UK, Belgium, Argentina, Greece, Portugal, Russia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, France and the Netherlands.

SYRIANA - pretentious, yawn-inducing and inaccurate

SYRIANA is an over-hyped alleged thriller that attempts to explore the politics of the oil business. Featuring a star-studded cast, and the kind of lush photography that you get in advertising, here is a movie that repackages politics for the HBO generation, and fails miserably. While the movie looks great and the acting performances are all fine, the real faults lie in the conception of the movie and the script by Stephen Gaghan. Gaghan is the man behind the infinitely better flick, TRAFFIC. Like TRAFFIC, SYRIANA has a script that inter-cuts three plot strands that are loosely related. This has led some critics to claim that the movie is complex and hard to understand. Actually I had no problem following the story here. Incomprehension was not my problem.

The first major problem is that the movie tells us nothing that we did not already know about US politics, the Middle East or big business. There are no flash-bulb moments, and in many ways, the issues here are "dumbed-down". I found it a really fantastically facile, trite script by someone who clearly has very little cultural or political feel for the material he is addressing. If you want an expose of US politics, check out John Sayles' SILVER CITY. If you want insight on the Middle East go read some history. If you want to see how "everything is connected" - the platitudionous tagline to the film - go see CRASH.

The second major problem is that the movie is just plain yawn-inducing. I LOVE cinema; I love Middle Eastern politics; I love Clooney, Damon and Cooper; but even I could barely keep my eyes open. I do not ask that movies educate me - although when they claim they are going to it is nice if they live up to that promise - but I do ask that they entertain me. I want my intellectual or emotional interest to be piqued. I want laughter, tears, or provocation. SYRIANA did not deliver.

So, now the broad-brush gripes are over, here are some minor geeky gripes. 1. Why do the Pakistani muslim terrorists speak in Hindi? Granted there are Muslims in India but they speak Urdu. And while many Pakistanis do not speak Urdu as a first language, they will most likely speak Pushto or Punjabi instead. It is frickin' ironic that a movie that attempts to get under the skin of Middle Eastern politics, and establish a credible stance on these issues, can mess up on something so basic. I was, frankly, insulted. 1b. What language is George Clooney speaking when in Beirut? He is complemented on his good Arabic, and claims to be speaking Farsi, but the accent is impenetrable and unless this is some dialect, sounds nothing like Farsi. 2. It is absolutely incredible that anyone would address the an Emir in the manner in which Matt Damon addresses the Prince just after the "Marbella incident".

SYRIANA is on limited release in the US, Germany, France, Austria and UK.