ASK ME ANYTHING

ASK ME ANYTHING is a coming of age drama starring Britt Robertson (TOMORROWLAND) as Katie, an 18 year old girl who takes a year out after school, works as a nanny and starts a ruthlessly honest anonymous blog about her life.  At first she seems like your average mixed-up teen, smoking and drinking too much and making bad decisions about her sex life. But as we progress we realise that Katie has real emotional issues to do with her childhood and her family. These play out in her relationships with five men:  her alcoholic father (Robert Patrick); an old bookshop owner she worked for until her stepdad found out he was a sex offender (Martin Sheen); the married man she nannies for (Christian Slater), her older guys she's sleeping with (Justin Long), the college boyfriend she's also sleeping with, oh and yes, a sixth - the clinically depressed  friend she serially lets down.  To say that her relationships with men are highly sexualised is an understatement but what's interesting about writer-director Allison Burnett's film is that while other people try to put labels onto her - she's a whore, or in need of therapy - the film portrays a more nuanced picture.  I really liked Britt Robertson and found that even though her character often does unlikeable things, we are always sympathetic toward her - and that's a hard trick to pull off. Burnett also manages to make a film about a girl who is highly sexualised and vulnerable without making the film feel exploitative or voyeuristic. And unlike many films, the final twist doesn't feel cheap and unearned, but necessary and intelligent and genuinely thought-provoking. I can't wait to read the book, Undiscovered Gyrl, upon which this was based. 

ASK ME ANYTHING has a running time of 100 minutes and is a straight to video 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.

BALLS OF FURY - quite depressingly piss-poor

We went to see BALLS OF FURY on the grounds that in our fragile state (the variety of the wine) we couldn't handle anything too cerebral. On the other hand, as we were soon to discover, there's a level of brainlessness that can exert its own special kind of pain on the poor hapless cinema-goer.

BALLS OF FURY is brought to you by the cinematic gurus (sarcasm) behind the altogether dismal RENO 9-11: MIAMI. This time, writer-director Ben Garant and writer-actor Thomas Lennon try to spoof martial arts and under-dog sports movies. Trouble is, this is territory that has been mined with greater success by recent classics such as DODGEBALL or even BLADES OF GLORY. Dan Fogler plays a washed up ping-pong player called Randy Daytona. Daytona is recruited by the FBI to bring down a sinister triad and ping-pong fanatic (Christopher Walken).

The jokes are weak - alternately sexist or racist. The plot is entirely predictable. And I spent most of the movie feeling embarassed for the actors - especially Walken. And as for Aisha Tyler, she loses all credibility as a guest reviewer on Siskel and Ebert given her choice of script.

BALLS OF FURY was released in the US, Singapore, Russia, the Philippines, Ukraine, Iceland, Slovenia, Australia, Kuwait, Greece, Spain earlier this year and is currently playing in the UK. It opens in Argentina on January 17th 2008.

BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA - the best children's film I've seen in years

BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA is an outstanding film whether you're a child or an adult. It immediately catapults into my list of Best Films of 2007 if not all time.

So much of what I hate about big summer blockbsters aimed at the "family market" is their complete lack of respect for the audience. Kids films are often patronising and formulaic. They tend to be over-populated with smart-talking animals and oh-so-smart pop-cultural references. They tend to be light on tight storylines, engaging characters and some similarity to real life.

BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA bucks the trend. For a start it's based on a proper story by Katherine Paterson that has structure, character development and real emotional pull. It focuses on a young boy called Jesse who's having a hard time. He's being bullied at school, he feels his father holds him in contempt, and his parents have no money. His life is changed when the new girl in school, Leslie, befriends him. Thanks to her vivid imagination, they turn a deserted wood and an old tree-house into a fantasy world called Terabithia. The friendship helps both kids to gain in self-confidence. This self-confidence helps Jesse to cope when the darker aspects of real life.

Director Gabor Csupo deserves praise for filming the movie in muted tones and for showing the real strains of life on the bread-line. This is no sugar-coated un-real Hollywood movie. The director also deserves credit for using the beautifully-imagined CGI effects sparingly. At all times, the emphasis is on the fact that the kids are using their imaginations. To show too much of their fantasy on the screen with CGI would defeat the point. Indeed, the only time the director really lets rip is at the very end of the film when, arguably, the audience needs a positive feel-good visual to compensate for the emotional beating beforehand.

And the film does have a profound emotional impact. So much so that I would recommend parents of small or particularly sensitive childrent to watch it first to check whether it is suitable. However I have to say that at the right time in a child's life, seeing such a film, followed by a parental discussion about the subject matter, could be an important way of recognising that life is not all about fun and games.

The only thing that remains is for me to highlight the strong performances by all members of the cast, not least from Josh Hutcherson as Jesse, AnnaSophia Robb as Leslie, Bailee Madison as Jess' little sister and Lauren Clinton as the school bully. In the adult roles, Zooey Deschanel has a small role as a sympathetic teacher and Robert Patrick, aka the T-1000, gives a suitably steely performance as Jess' stressed out father.

BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA is on release in Germany, India, the US, the Philippines, Hungary, Russia, Iceland, Germany, Poland, Spain, Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, Turkey, Belgium, France, Italy, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Serbia, the UK, Singapore, Estonia and Latvia, It opens in Hong Kong next week, in Egypt, in Denmark and Norway on June 8th, in Australia on June 14th, in Bulgaria on June 22nd and in Finland on August 3rd. BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA is released on Region 1 DVD in June 2007.