THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED) - Day 4 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

In a London Film Festival where the prevailing tone has been one of a wake, in the words of Meester Phil, "Thank god for some wit and arseholery." The arsehole in question is paterfamilias Harold Meyerowitz (Dustin Hoffman with a raffish beard), a retired sculptor full of passive aggressive nastiness and jealousy. On the last of many marriages, Harold lives an indulgent life bitter that his supposedly less talented peers have achieved more commercial success, and demanding that his three children dance to his needs. The eldest is his son Danny (Adam Sandler) - an utterly charming but insecure man who has been constantly overlooked in favour of Harold's younger son Matthew (Ben Stiller), who is far more successfully financially and seems to have discovered a better way of dealing with his father. And then poor Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) is so overlooked that her grievances with her dad taking a back seat and comically inserted in parenthesis. 

The film is, then, a very darkly comic one.  There are properly laugh out loud moments to be sure - but the tone is bitter and tragic. And this is where the casting is absolutely spot on. I love it when Stiller and Sandler play straight roles because there's a certain manic comic energy underlying it. And when they ARE called upon for their slapstick chops, the payoff is all the better for the surrounding dark context. If I have any criticism to make, it's that the film felt over-long and occasionally lost momentum.  I felt that this was particularly the case in the scenes involving Harold's fourth wife Maureen (Emma Thompson).  Nothing wrong with her performance at all, it just felt a bit redundant. Otherwise this was a truly superb film as one would expect from a Noah Baumbach picture. 

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES has a running time of 110 minutes and will be released on Netflix on October 13th. 

A MONSTER CALLS - BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Day 3

A MONSTER CALLS is the best film I have watched this year - a visually stunning, genuinely moving, imaginative and yet profoundly real film about a young boy who retreats into a world of fantasy to cope with his mother's terminal cancer.  The film is directed by JA Bayona (THE ORPHANAGE) using a screenplay by Patrick Ness, based on his own book, all credit is due to the imagination of both.

The create a world in which a boy called Conor O'Malley (Lewis McDougall) lives with his young mother (Felicity Jones - ROGUE ONE) in a house overlooking a spooky looking old church with a giant yew tree in the graveyard.  The boy is plagued by nightmares in which he loses his mother to a chasm that opens up in the graveyard.  One night, at 12:07 he is visited by a monster - the yew tree turned into a kindly/scary old man - and he promises that he will tell Conor three stories,  after which Conor must tell him his story - his truth.  Conor is sceptical about the relevance or power of fairtytales - especially ones as tricksy and dark and conflicted as those told by the monster.  But we soon realise that that monster is there to help Conor understand that in real life there aren't good guys and bad guys and happily ever after.  That belief and love are important but sometimes they aren't enough.  And that sometimes just honestly expressing how you feel is the hardest battle of all.

INGRID BERGMAN: IN HER OWN WORDS - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Preview

For anyone with even a passing interest in cinema the story of Ingrid Bergman is well known. The iconic actress from CASABLANCA came from a theatre background in Sweden to fame in Hollywood but at the height of it all was ostracised for leaving her husband and child for Roberto Rossellini.  Re-inventing herself as a European arthouse actress she was a forceful advocate for freedom from societal judgment and the quality of her work meant that the opportunities found her, even in exile. 

What's different about this documentary is that director Stig Bjorkman has managed to get such amazing access to Bergman's letters, home videos and photographs. Most of all, he has access to all  her children.  And so while this is "just" another linear re-telling of an extra-ordinary life, what you're actually getting is Ingrid speaking to her best friends in real letters, or the interpretation of her children and their interpretation of her life.  Moreover, the focus here really is on her life rather than the films.

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS

Listen to a ten-minute podcast review of the film here:

EXODUS: GOD AND KINGS isn't a good or a bad film but rather a collection of films that may or may not hang together as a sweeping biblical epic of the Charlton Heston kind.  It's long, uneven in pace, and takes too few chances to be really memorable. 

In its first act the movie feels like GLADIATOR.  The dying king is transposed from a Roman emperor to a Pharaoh played with surprising majesty by John Turturro. His jealous, power-hungry and paranoid son is transposed from Joaquin Phoenix to a shaven-headed and bejewelled Joel Edgerton.  And the rival for power who will lead a down-trodden people to freedom is transposed from Russell Crowe to Christian Bale.   This section is the most satisfying of the film - literally awesome in its lavish costumes, Egyptian cityscapes, jewels and vistas.  It feels like an old-fashioned big-budget epic of imperial power-politics, pitting two alpha males against each other.  Ben Mendelsohn is superb as the effete toady who reveals Moses' Jewish origin to both Moses and Ramses and I love the genuine conflict as Moses struggles to come to terms with his true identity. The only sadness was seeing Sigourney Weaver as Ramses mother use an anachronistic broad American accent and then become sidelined for the rest of the film.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 5 - RAMPART

When I walked in to RAMPART I was expecting the movie equivalent of The Wire or The Shield - an examination of corruption and institutional racism in the police force, based on the real Rampart scandal in 1990s Los Angeles. To be sure, director Oren Moverman (THE MESSENGER) and writer James Ellroy impressionistically hint at the wider malaise.  We have cameos from Steve Buscemi and Sigourney Weaver as the ass-covering establishment. But there's no clear picture of the wider context - no attempt to connect the dots and take the viewer to the heart of the corruption, in the  manner of LA CONFIDENTIAL. Rather, this movie is a character study of a fictional policeman at the centre of the scandal - Woody Harrelson's Dave Brown.  

To that end, the centre of the story isn't the police department or the patrol car, but the home Dave shares with the mothers of his two children, who also happen to be sisters (Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon); the bars he frequents; the woman he picks up (Robin Wright).  Because, let us be clear - RAMPART is a scathing depiction of a delusional man, so corrupt he can't even see it, or own it - a self-destructive charmer, who thinks he should be rewarded for "doing the city's dirty work" but can't see that he's destroying his family in the process.  

If you accept the movie as a character study rather than a thriller or procedural, you have a far greater chance of enjoying it. Frustrations with the ambiguities of the graft and the uneven pacing - the lack of real "bite" - are compensated for by the powerful, charismatic and complex central performance by Woody Harrelson and the impressionistic use of intense colour and feeling of claustrophobia created by DP Bobby Bukowksi (ARLINGTON ROAD). Because, in the final analysis, RAMPART is not a great movie - it doesn't hold you in the way that it should - it is, rather, a highly successful mood piece that contains a superlative central performance. I just wish that that performance had been anchored to a stronger supporting text.

RAMPART played Toronto and London 2011.

Michael Stipe and Woody Harrelson at the UK premiere
of RAMPART at the BFI London Film Festival.

iPad Round-Up 3 - PAUL

What is it about British comedians that they go to America, garner a little success, and then get the urge to mock the key difference between America and Britain - Christian fundamentalism. Don't get me wrong - people who believe in Intelligent Design give me the heebie-jeebies - but there does seem something rather odd, and pathological even - in these movies that delight in undermining religious belief. I speak here of Ricky Gervais' THE INVENTION OF LYING and, now, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's new film, PAUL.

The plot is simple.  Frost and Pegg play two best friends and sci-fi geeks who attend a convention in the US. They pick up an alien who needs to get home, voiced by Seth Rogen, and so set up a comedy road-movie that could've been a clever satire on genre films, just in the same way that SHAUN OF THE DEAD brilliantly spiked zombie movies, or HOT FUZZ spiked cop films.  But  no, Frost and Pegg add a fourth character to their movie - a religious fundamentalist (Kristen Wiig) whose entire world-view is over-turned by her realisation that there is life on other planets.  

Of course this could've been as funny as anything in HOT FUZZ or SHAUN, but somehow - maybe the sensitivity of this material in the US, or maybe the real Hollywood money behind the picture - dulled their wit. (Or maybe it's that Frost and Pegg are without their usual collaborator - Edgar Wright?)  There are still flashes of the kind of ribald, laugh-out-loud comedy that we got in the earlier films, but overall this seems like a much tamer, and less memorable affair.  That unmistakeable damp squib sensation that settles in at about the hour mark isn't helped by a rather flat cameo by Jason Bateman as the spooky Fed, and can't be saved by a cameo from Sigourney Weaver. I also feel that Seth Rogen is straying into the territory occupied by Jack Black - that of always playing himself - even when voicing a CGI alien. 

PAUL was released earlier this year in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, Canada, the US, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, the Ukraine, Australia, Croatia, Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Hungary, Malaysia, Singapore, Iceland, Italy, the Philippines, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Lithuania. It is currently on release in Sweden, Thailand and Turkey. It opens in Spain on July 22nd.

AVATAR - you can have too much of a good thing

AVATAR is the much hyped new film from writer-director and special effects obsessive James Cameron - the man who brought us TITANIC, ALIENS and TERMINATOR. Let us say that James Cameron has consistently pushed forward the technology of film, and has produced consistently thoughtful sci-flicks. Indeed, I would argue that he deserves more kudos than Spielberg - creating fewer but more consistently entertaining and polished blockbusters. But let us also admit that Cameron is the master of hyping himself, and has saddled us both with Celine Dion and with a 130 minute movie of arse-numbing proportions.

First, the praise. AVATAR is a technical marvel. Not because it does anything new - rather, it pulls together all of the advances of the last five years and pushes them further and does them better than anyone else. The 3-D is immersive rather than trying to shock us. The CGI is photo realistic. The characters and animals have weight and heft. The natural science detailing on the plants and animals is breathtaking. Fantastic creatures seem real. It is easy to mock a director who goes to the lengths of actually inventing a new language for his fictional race, the Na'vi. But it works. Much like LORD OF THE RINGS, AVATAR works because it makes us believe in an alternate world, and through believing, we care about its future.

AVATAR is also tightly structured and directed so well that it maintains momentum throughout its runtime (which is not to say it couldn't have done with being a good forty minutes shorter). Cameron may be a master of CGI but he never forgets that story comes before technical wizardry. The movie plays a three-act drama. We are in a dystopian future where humans live on a dieing world, and have colonised a planet called Pandora, in order to mine a precious metal, whose main deposits lie underneath the "hometree" of the indigenous Na'vi people. In Act One, the audience invests its sympathy with the hero and heroine. A disabled jarhead pilots an avatar Na'vi body in order to infiltrate the tribe and negotiate a relocation by any means necessary. Problem is, he becomes fascinated by their respect for nature and falls for a Na'vi chick. In Act Two, the stakes are established. The army, impatient for profits, decimates the hometree, scattering the Na'vi people, and destroying their trust in the Jarhead. The science team establish that the whole ecosystem of the planet is connected and a powerful source of energy. In Act Three, we have the dramatic climax and resolution. The Na'vi regroup and with their human allies take on the colonials.

The strength of the AVATAR story is that James Cameron knows who to weave successful aspects of genre fiction into his more modern allegory of environmental degradation and ruthless military exploitation. We have a good old-fashioned romance between the jarhead and the Na'vi chick. We have a coming of age story, as the jarhead learns the rules of the new world. We have a buddy movie as the jarhead bonds with the science officer. And finally, we have a spiritual story of redemption. I love the fact that Cameron is willing to tackle both issues of science, politics and religion in the same film - to that end, it reminded me a lot of the better aspects of Ronald D Moore's BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

Given all these positives, it isn't a surprise that I had a good time watching this flick, even though it did seem just too long to spend in a cinema for what should just be a bit of entertainment, albeit intelligent entertainment.

But there are negatives. AVATAR features some of the most hokey dialogue and two-dimensional characterisation seen on film since STAR WARS. And maybe that's no coincidence. Maybe when a writer-director is having to balance different genres, a large cast, action, technology and romance, it's just too much to ask to have good dialogue and nuanced characterisation too? But then again, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA did, by and large, pull that off. One of the strengths of that series was its ability to present conflicted characters who changed, evolved, and felt three-dimensional. By contrast, in AVATAR, you're either a righteous hippie earth-child or a cigar-chomping, profiteering rat-bastard. And characters say the stupidest things. Towit, jarhead to Na'vi chick: "why didn't you kill me?" Na'vi chick to jarhead: "Because you have a big heart." I mean, no-one, not enough imaginary aliens, speaks like this! There's also something slightly hypocritical in a movie that thinks nasty evil people who blow shit up are bad, but nevertheless wants us to be excited by a final act which is basically about people blowing shit up in more and more noisy ways.

Ultimately, AVATAR is such a feat of imagination that, like STAR WARS IV: A NEW HOPE, it survives the hammy dialogue and weak characterisation. It's nice to spend time in this world. It would've been even nicer to have been all done in two hours.

AVATAR is on global release.

Random DVD Round-Up 5 - IMAGINARY HEROES

Derivative and poorly directed drama about a disfuntional suburban family dealing with teen suicide is elevated by strong performances by matriarch Sigourney Weaver and a troubled young Emile Hirsch.

IMAGINARY HEROES played Toronto 2004 and was released in 2004 and 2005. It is available on DVD.

BABY MAMA - at best mediocre, at worst hypocritical

BABY MAMA is meant to be a warm-hearted romantic comedy about an uptight career woman who hires a white trash surrogate mother to give her a baby. It's meant to be an "odd couple" movie in which both women emerge better for the experience. It's also meant to be a rom-com in which the path of true love in kinked by the fact that the career woman doesn't tell her implausibly understanding boyfriend what she's up to.

The problem is that BABY MAMA isn't very funny, despite being penned by SNL writer Michael McCullers and starring brilliant comediennes Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. There aren't enough insightful gags, and what gags there are rely on really lazy sight/aural gags - for instance, the birthing teacher with a lisp.

While you're not laughing you might notice the pedestrian direction, the lack of chemistry between Tina Fey and her love interest (the always charming Greg Kinnear), and the fact that Dax Shepherd and Romany Malco almost steal the show. You might also notice the remarkable irony with which a script that supports a woman's right to have a baby at 37 goes right ahead and mocks another woman having kids at an old age. Huh? You might also notice that the writer loses his balls in the final reel to give us all a soft slushy ending that is utterly unearned.

BABY MAMA is on global release.

WALL-E almost lives up to the hype

Short of Heath Ledger's performance in THE DARK KNIGHT, WALL-E is the most hyped film of the year so far. Indeed, it's been praised by all and sundry as the CITIZEN KANE of animated cinema. Well, I didn't think it's a perfect film, more of which to follow, but it's certainly beautifully drawn, emotionally engaging, and laugh-out-loud funny. Surely that's praise enough?

WALL-E is based in a dystopian future. Humans have so polluted the earth that they're living in a space-ship run by a monolithic hypermarket called Buy'n'large. Here, the movie acts as a savage indictment of crass commerce. The human race is obese and all human interaction is mediated by computers. However, it takes us 30 minutes to reach this world. Up until that point, we're back on earth with WALL-E, a cute ET-like robot, who's compacting rubbish. WALL-E is adorable in the way that curious toddlers can be adorable. He is excited by packaging rather than it's contents. He makes us laugh in the same way the Charlie Chaplin made us laugh.

WALL-E falls in love with a rather aggressive robot called EVA - sent to earth to find signs of regenerated life - and follows her back to the spaceship to play out his own little romantic dream of holding hands with the girl-robot he loves. Once on board the spaceship, I felt the movie lost a lot of its charm and actually moved too slow. The social satire is funny at first, but it's also fairly crude. Things picked up again once the ship's captain started to rebel against the HAL-like autopilot, and the ending is truly lovely. Still, ACT II was a little boring in parts.

Having said all that, WALL-E is still a great animated film. In terms of its visuals, its sound design and its homage to the best silent comedy, it's far ahead of anything else in terms of ambition and scope. Still for the complete package - a film that kept me interested throughout its run-time - I'll take RATATOUILLE by a small margin.

WALL-E is on release in the US, UK, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Uruguay, Kuwait, Ukraine, Mexico, Argentina, Israel, Iceland, Lithuania and Poland. It opens next weekend in Gong Kong and Hungary, and on July 20th in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. It opens in August in Egypt, Spain, South Korea, Latvia, Venzuela, Thailand, Indonesia, Portugal, Estonia, Singapore, Slovenia, Denmark and Norway. WALL-E opens in September in Bulgaria, Finland, Romania, Sweden, Australia, Greece, New Zealand, Germany and Turkey. It opens in Switzerland and Italy in October and in Japan on December 20th.

VANTAGE POINT - tedious, exciting, laughable

VANTAGE POINT is an action movie about a terrorist attack on the US President. The concept is to have the attack re-hashed from the points-of-view of different characters until the audience can piece together the truth, Rashomon-style.

The first third of the film must have looked really clever on paper, but is actually pretty tedious to watch. We see the attack around four or five times, each time learning a little more about the conspiracy, but not enough to justify rehashing the story *yet again*.

The second third of the film picks up in inverse proportion to the film-makers' willingness to drop the Rashomon conceit. A further plot twist is revealed and the movie settles down into an exciting political thriller, complete with betrayals and a high-adrenaline car chase.

But the film-makers drop the ball in the final third of the film, which is literally laughable. We are asked to believe that various people would survive hideous car crashes and that a hardened terrorist would swerve to miss a child.

The movie has its moments but overall it's rather forgettable. In such a large ensemble cast, no single actor has a chance to shine, or to capture our imagination. We never get a clear handle on the terrorists' motivations, and the whole thing seems rather mechanical. The attempt to graft on a sentimental story involving a divorced parents and a small girl is simply toe-curlingly saccharine.....Basically, this is a movie to avoid.

VANTAGE POINT is on release in the Philippines, the US, Hong Kong, Qatar, Austria, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Argentina, Germany, Kuwait, Russia, Swizterland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Sweden, India, Estonia, Japan and the UK. It opens later in March in Indonesia, Australia, Croatia, New Zealand, Slovakia, Brazil, France, Chile, Portugal, Singapore, Bulgaria, Finland, Bahrain, Belgium, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Greece, Israel, Lebanon, Nigeria, Slovenia, the UAE, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway and Romania. It opens in April in Peru, Thailamd, Ecuador, Kenya, Latvia, Polamd, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Turkey, Colombia, Uruguay, Bolivia and the Ukraine.

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.

Overlooked DVD of the month - SNOW CAKE

SNOW CAKE is a fascinating low-budget film directed by Marc Evans (MY LITTLE EYE) and written by first-time screen-writer Angela Pell. It stars Alan Rickman as an uptight English middle-aged man travelling by car through Canada. He is approached by a kookie young girl called Vivienne in a road-side cafe and reluctantly offers the emotionally-open, talkative young girl a lift. As a result, his journey takes a detour to Vivienne's home town, where Rickman's character strikes up an unlikely friendship and respect for Vivienne's high-functioning autistic mother, played by Sigourney Weaver.

This is, more or less, the extent of the plot of the film. It's success relies in making us - the viewer sceptical of the meet-cute in the opening scene and the too-familiar odd-couple story-line - form an affection and respect for the central characters. Alan Rickman's character invites our sympathy as the vulnerability underneath the stand-offishness is revealed. And Sigourney Weaver's character has a remarkable inner strength and a charming ability to be direct and bang-on. Their scenes together are surprisingly funny: despite the subject matter, this is not a dour film.

I was initially put-off by Sigourney Weaver's performance - which seemed exaggerated to the point of parody - but before long I was swept up in the developing friendship. I'm not sure whether the performance toned down as the film developed or whether I, like Rickman's character, just overcame my prejudice and became accustomed to it. It's certainly one to ponder. At any rate, this is an interesting and unusual movie that goes beyond typical Hollywood stereotypes and, bar the last scene, avoids any sentimentality or patronising its central characters. Definitely work a look.

SNOW CAKE played Berlin and Edinburgh 2006 was originally released in the UK in September 2006. It is available on Region 2 DVD. It opens in Belgium on March 14th and in the USS on April 25th.

INFAMOUS - Capote as genuinely tragic

Another year, another film about Truman Capote which features strong performances but is flawed nonetheless.

The story is the same. Truman Capote is a famous author who mingles with ladies who lunch in New York, leading a pampered existence. One day he reads about a well-respected farming family that has been brutally murdered in its home in rural Kansas. Capote journeys there to write a magazine article on how the murders have affected the town but soon realises he has enough material for a new kind of book - a non-fiction novel. In order to flesh out the novel, he partially feigns friendship with one of the murderers - Perry Smith. The relationship has a slim core of genuine empathy but Capote exploits Perry. And by the end, he has sold his soul. Capote knows he can only publish his perfect novel when his friend hangs for murder. Capote didn't write anything substantial again.

The films, however, are rather different. In last year's CAPOTE, Truman is portrayed as chillingly calculated. He is mean to his best friend, Nell (Harper) Lee and resentful of her success with To Kill a Mockingbird. He shamelessly manipulates Perry Smith. I found that movie over-long though beautifully shot and acted. Most of all, I resented the fact that Perry was again exploited - a mere mirror to reflect back the emptiness of Capote.

By contrast, this new movie, INFAMOUS, is not well-shot. It's not well put-together. I hate the device of having big-name actors playing big-name socialites. Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rosselini, Hope Davis, Juliet Stevenson, Peter Bogdanovich and Gwyneth Paltrow look like they are participating in a cheap version of STARS IN THEIR EYES. It's even worse that instead of simply telling the story and allowing us to infer the message, the director has these famous people make like they are in a documentary, talking to the camera about Truman in front of a New York cardboard backdrop.

The bizarre thing is that while I find the purely technical aspects of cinema were better used in CAPOTE, INFAMOUS is, to my mind, the better film. For for the first time we see something of Perry Smith, played with the right mix of strength and vulnerability by Daniel Craig. The movie does not see him as merely a person to throw-up the ruthless ambition of Capote. And this touches on the real strength of the film - which is the nuanced performance of each lead actor.

Sandra Bullock's Harper Lee is a revelation and proves that Bullock is a far better actress than the roles she takes on. And Toby Jones is a fabulous Capote. He captures Capote's love of ease and his own eccentricities - his spitefulness and love of gossip. But in sharp contrast to CAPOTE, Jones' Capote is a man with a heart and a soul. He really does fall for Perry Smith and at once sees the unbearable contradictions this has thrust upon him. There is a tremendous scene after Capote and Smith have kissed where Capote goes back to his hotel room and looks in the mirror. He is giddy with joy at first. But then, without uttering a word, you see his face crumple. Because he can foresee the cruel dilemma facing him - to love a man and yet need that man to die because you cannot live without writing. In other words, instead of Philip Seymour Hoffman's monster, Toby Jones gives up a genuinely tragic figure.

INFAMOUS played Venice, Toronto and London 2006. It opened in the US earlier this month and opens in he UK on January 19th 2007.