COP SECRET***** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 2

Hannes Þór Halldórsson is the Iceland national football team's goalkeeper who once saved a penalty by the greatest footballer who has ever played, Lionel Messi.  That's reason enough to be famous.  But Hannes has obviously also spent A LOT of time watching cheesy American buddy cop action movies like BAD BOYS as well as, I suspect, ZOOLANDER and has created an absolutely hilarious low-budget buddy cop spoof called COP SECRET.

The movie stars Auðunn Blöndal as Bussi, a cliched drunken loner cop who drives around Reykavik in a suped-up shitty car at great speed with no respect for the rules. As we would expect, Bussi comes into conflict with his hard-as-nails boss Þorgerður (Steinunn Ólína Þorsteinsdóttir),  His rival is super-buff ex-model suburban cop Hörður, played by Egill Einarsson.  One of the most brilliant decisions in this film is to make explicit the implicit homosocial tones of many of these movies, and have beer swilling, fast-food eating hyper-macho Bussi admit that he's totally into his rival and vice versa.  The two cops are united when a dastardly criminal gang led by disfigured ex-cop Rikki (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), starts robbing banks but apparently taking nothing.  What are they really up to?  And how is this going to impact the upcoming England-Iceland football match?!

 

The resulting film is fast-paced, genuinely funny and a great time, but only if you're familiar with the tropes its spoofing. Highly recommended!

COP SECRET has a running time of 98 minutes and has played Locarno and the BFI London Film Festival 2021. It will be released in Iceland on October 20th.

SPY

SPY is a genuinely funny spy movie spoof starring Melissa McCarthy as a frumpy back office analyst allowed to go on a mission to save James Bond-esque boss (Jude Law).  On the way, she's hindered by an ultra-macho but feckless spy played by Jason Statham and poses as a bodyguard for a bitchy evil villain played by Rose Byrne, who frankly steals the show.  The film rolls along at a frantic pace taking us through the glamorous capital cities of Europe. The running jokes are at the expense of slick heroes, and champion the under-dogs. Byrne gets all the best lines and McCarthy's charm carries along the rest of the film. But kudos to Law and Statham for having the comic timing and general good humour to rinse their screen personae so well.  Another hit from writer-director Paul Feig (BRIDESMAIDS).  I could happily watch a sequel.

SPY has a running time of 119 minutes and is rated R. The movie is on global release.

KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE

You can listen to a podcast review of KINGSMAN here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes:



What exactly is it that Michael Vaughn wants to do with KINGSMAN?  Is he trying to make a didactic film about class and style?  Is he trying to remake the vintage bonds for a new audience? Or is he spoofing them?  The difficulty of working out what's going on makes KINGSMAN sporadically entertaining but ultimately dis-satisfying and occasionally baffling.

The conceit of the movie is that the Kingsman are an elite spy organisation run in the interests of the public good, above and beyond corrupt governments. A Kingsman agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth) sponsors a young kid called Eggsy (Taron Egerton) into a competitive entry test to become a Kingsman.  He isn't as posh as the other entrants, but Harry reassures him that to be a gentleman is about manners rather than breeding.  In the process, Eggsy becomes an active spy trying to bring down the evil super villain slash internet billionaire Valentine (Samuel L Jackson) with the help of the Kingsman's tech specialist Merlin (Mark Strong).

THEY CAME TOGETHER

THEY CAME TOGETHER is a high quality spoof of the romantic-comedy genre from writer-director David Wain (ROLE MODELS) and Michael Showalter. It stars Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler as the lovers and features comedians of the calibre of Ed Helms, Bill Hader and Jack McBryer (30 ROCK). It comes out of the gate strong - absolutely nailing every cliche of every dumbass Jennifer Aniston or Katherine Heigl movie you've ever seen.  "New York is almost another character in the story" leading to those opening credits where a helicopter sweeps over the city on a bright sunny morning. The romantic lead Joel (Rudd) is a nice guy with a bitch girlfriend who he catches cheating.  He has close friends who fit all the stereotypes - the married one with kids, the dickhead womaniser who isn't as hot as he thinks he is - and as they rightly point on the basketball court - he needs to combine all their strengths to win!  Meanwhile, the romantic heroine Molly (Amy) is a classic manic pixie-dreamgirl in the Zoe Deschanel mould - running a cutesy shop threatened by evil corporates where, you got it!, Joel works. They meet cute at a party, and ultimately get over their immediate antipathy.

As I said, the film is absolutely spot on in how it skewers lazy rom-com screenwriting. Let's be honest - has there been a good romantic comedy since WHEN HARRY MET SALLY?   And it's absolutely the right choice for all the actors to play it straight.  But even with the short running time of the film (80 minutes) it still got pretty boring and felt a bit like an SNL skit stretched beyond itself.  The movie didn't run out of steam but I did.

THEY CAME TOGETHER has a running time of 83 minutes and is rated R in the USA.  The movie played Sundance 2014 and was released earlier this year in the USA and Canada. It went on release in the UK and Ireland this weekend.

A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST

I'm not exactly sure why critics seem to pissing on a great height over Seth MacFarlane's new comedy, A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST.  The only legitimate criticism is that his highly concentrated humour, with visual and verbal hits coming at you at a rapid-fire pace, is hard to take for over two hours.  But other than that, what's not to like?  This film is funny, wry and has genuine heart and I honestly don't see what there is to criticise in the performances either.  

The movie works in the same way as MacFarlane's smash hit comedy, TED.  Take some outlandish premise and apply that extreme harsh MacFarlane humour. In this case, we're put in the Wild West, complete with shoot-em-outs, warehouses and corrupt oligarchs and asked to laugh at how absurd it is.  Hence the title of the film. The West isn't a place to romanticise but a filthy, disease-ridden misogynistic and racist era in which nature and man conspired to kill you.  So if you get the one person in the film, played by Seth MacFarlane, bitching about how absurd life is within the context of a spoofily all-happy Western, then that, to me, is really funny.

The plot is as follows. MacFarlane plays Albert Stark - a hapless sheep farmer who has been rejected by his sweetheart Louise (Amanda Seyfried) in favour of the rich moustache-bearing merchant Foy (Neil Patrick Harris). Albert then forms a friendship with Anna (Charlize Theron) who teaches him how to shoot properly so he can survive a duel with Foy. Little does he know that Anna is really the wife of an outlaw called Clinch (Liam Neeson.)

So what we have is the classic rom-com set-up where a guy tries to impress the one girl while really falling in love with the other.  We even have a song and dance number that is absolutely brilliant and probably the best thing Neil Patrick Harris has done since Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog.   We also get a side plot that pokes a lot of fun at an earnest guy (Giovanni Ribisi) dating a whore (Sarah Silverman) who refuses to sleep with him until they are married.

Like I said, I loved TED and I loved this film. It was half an hour too long, for sure, but I found its analysis of the absurdity of the Western myth spot on and its casting superb.  

A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST has a running time of 116 minutes and is rated R. The movie is on global release.

COMPUTER CHESS - LFF 2013 - Day Three

Man, I loved, loved, loved COMPUTER CHESS! Then again, I think I'm its target demographic, if a movie as wilfully indie spirited could trade in such a concept. It's a movie that's geekily indulgent and indulges in the geeky, lovingly recreating a fictionalised computer chess tournament in the early 80s.  Director Andrew Bujalski (FUNNY HA HA, THE PUFFY CHAIR) clearly had a lot of fun casting a group of misfits and dressing them in massive 1980s glasses and ill-fitting suits, as well as kitting them out in the sexual and racial mores of the time.  But where the real joy comes is in seeing all those old skool clumsy computers and overhead projectors and reels of computer paper.  I could almost smell our old high school computer lab.  

To be fair, the movie doesn't really have a plot.  It doesn't really care about which team of brainiacs wins the computer chess tournament, or whether machine will beat computer by 1984.  It's all about the observational humour:  seeing a nerdy teen propositioned by the swingers also staying at the hotel. Or the well meaning IT professor trying to spin his programme's failure as a win for science.  Or the cocky, scene stealing Michael Papageorge begging to be let into anyone's room for the night.

Like I said, I am the perfect audience for this film.  I was laughing steadily throughout in a kind of nostalgic geek reverie.  But even if old tech isn't your thing, you've got to admire Bujalski's scrupulous use of in- period cameras and props to so wonderfully create the mood of the time.

COMPUTER CHESS has a running time of 93 minutes.

COMPUTER CHESS played Sundance 2013 where Andrew Bujaski won the Alfred P Sloan Feature Film Prize "for its offbeat and formalistically adventurous exploration of questions of artificial intelligence and human connections."  It also played Berlin, Sydney and London 2013. It opens in the UK on November 22nd. 

THE WORLD'S END

So here's the latest podcast review, covering the new film from the team that brought you the hilariously funny SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ.  Where the team stick to that original premise of schlubby suburban Brits tackling ludicrous otherworldly scenarios, the movie retains its laugh out loud brilliance. But, sad to say, director Edgar Wright has brought some of his ueber-stylised, comic-book action over from SCOTT PILGRIM and it's just tedious.  Still, despite that CGI, over-choreographed excess, when this film works, boy does it work, and it's definitely worth checking out. 

The film has a running time of 109 minutes and has been rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK for strong language and strong sex references.

THE WORLD'S END opens on July 18th in New Zealand; on July 19th in the UK and Ireland; on July 31st in Iceland; on August 1st in Australia; on August 23rd in the USA; on August 28th in France; on September 5th in Russia; on September 12th in Germany and Singapore; in the Netherlands on September 19th; on September 26th in Italy; on September 27th in Sweden; on October 3rd in Denmark;  on October 4th in Finland; on October 16th in Belgium; on October 18th in Norway; and on October 25th in Brazil. 

DABANGG 2

Watching DABANGG 2 is like watching an episode of The A Team. The plot is nonsense, the tone camp, and the audience knowing. But the end result is a bunch of mindless fun that delivers exactly what it promises. In the case of DABANGG 2, that's a funny spoof of 70s Bollywood cop-hero dramas, masala films and "item" girls. And, given that modern Bollywood is at home with Hollywood cliches, the shooting style and score reference Spaghetti Westerns and spoof Zach Snyder's over-stylised bullet-time photography. In other words, this is a film able to mock the faux heroic in Indian and US cinema history, while lovingly recreating the cheap thrills of those genres. It's a film with its heart on its sleeve and its sunglasses clipped to the back of its collar.

The plot, such as it is, sees our hero, police officer Chulbul Pandey (Salman Khan) relocate to a provincial town with his new wife Rajjo (Sonakshi Sinha) and father. Chulbul picks up where he left off in the original wildly successful movie, besting up mafiosi with wild abandon, incurring the wrath of local politician and goon Baccho Singh (legendary screen villain Prakash Raj). Naturally, Baccho retaliates against Chulbul's family resulting in an epic final fight.

The movie sticks very closely to the formula that made the original a success. Salman continues to combine self-mockery of his pumped up physique with a childish sense of humour. Some of the best scenes in this film see him prank call his father, for instance. The vainglorious hero continues to dote on his wife and have a childish giggle while at the same time murdering goons in outlandish fight scenes.

The close similarity extends to the movie's score, which mirrors every song from the original film, reprising playback artists, lyrical motifs and musical themes. Composers Sajid-Wajid are back in charge, and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan's reinterpretation of the first film's breakout hit, Tere Mast Mast Do Nain, Dagavaaz Re is simply beautiful. And in place of Item Girl Munni (who cameos in another song) we now have Kareena Kapoor in Fevicol Se, an instant classic item number which shows that Kareena is the best at self mocking, hilarious item numbers.

Overall, DABANGG 2 is not going to win any awards for its deft plotting or originality.  And if anything, the pacing and direction by debutant, Arbaaz Khan, is less deft than with the predecessor, helmed by Abhinav Singh Kashyap. But for all that, DABANGG 2 has cracking songs, and loveable, ridiculous hero, who respects his old sweet father. What's more, in its ability to ingest, mock and worship Bollywood and Hollywood history, it provides a more sophisticated brand of entertainment than might at first appear.

DABANNG 2 is on global release.

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS is not a movie you're going to enjoy on date night, sober. It's the kind of  movie that requires a few beers and a college dorm room so that it's inconsistency and sheer ridiculousness becomes a virtue.  It'll also help if you, the viewer, has a much of a geeky knowledge and love of The Shaw Brothers martial arts flick, and also with to pay homage to Gordon Liu.  This movie may be "presented by" Quentin Tarantino, but don't be fooled. RZA's directorial début is not like KILL BILL - tightly written, slickly produced, allowing all viewers a point of access. This is definitely a B-movie - not grungy enough to be pure blaxploitation wushu, not well-made enough to be taken seriously.  The plot is stupid, character development non-existent and the leading man (RZA himself) has about as much charisma as former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.   But when the movie works, in one or two key scenes, it really will make you laugh out loud, and the martial arts sequences are all excellent - as they should be, considering they star many of the genres most famous fighters. 

The movie is set in "Jungle Village" - a dirt poor town in 19th century China, that happens to have a kick-ass freed slave blacksmith (RZA) and a super luxurious whorehouse, presided over by Madam Blossom (Lucy Liu). It also houses the Blacksmith's hooker/sweetheart (Jamie Chung).  The blacksmith is forced to make kick-ass weapons for various rival gangmembers, not least Silver Lion (Byron Mann) and the late Golden Lion's real son The X-Blade (Rick Yune). Into this potent mix comes the Governor's gold shipment, which the Lion gang attempt to steal from the Geminis, and who knows where Mr Knife's allegiances lie?

The real fun of this film lies in a gloriously overweight Russell Crowe playing Oliver Reed playing Mr Knife. Pure Comedy Gold, especially in his interaction with Lucy Liu's proto-feminist brothel-keeper.  Crowe and Liu are joined by the wonderfully camp Bryon Mann in taking this movie about as seriously as it requires i.e. not very much, and all three are having a ball. It's a shame the other characters didn't join suit.  Sadly, whenever they're not on screen, you just get heavy exposition and boredom while waiting for the next fight scene. But these are worth waiting for. MMA star Dave Bautista is used to great effect, and I'm guessing we'll all remember what Gemini stance is from now on.

Overall, THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS is far from a classy flick, but it drips with love of the genre and if you're in the mood to go with it, with a beer in hand, it's more than a fun time. And please will someone give Crowe more roles like this?

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS was released in November in the USA, Canada, Kuwait, Spain and Germany. It opens on December 7th in the UK, Ireland and Australia. It opens on January 2nd in France and Belgium; in January 11th in  Bulgaria; on February 8th in Sweden and the Netherlands; and on February 21st in Argentina and New Zealand. 

London Film Fest 2012 Day 1 - FRANKENWEENIE

Tim Burton's FRANKENWEENIE is, despite its black and white mock horror gothic style, a warm-hearted and cuddly family feature, quite at home in the Disney stable.  It transports the story of Frankenstein to that typically Burtonesque 50s style contemporary American suburbia, where little kids can be see the weird and cruel in the everyday.  There are even characters that look and feel and sound like previous Burton characters - notably Winona Ryder voicing a little girl who could've become Lydia in BEETLEJUICE.  Her male counterpart is Little Victor Frankenstein, a good-hearted loner so upset when his beloved pet dog Sparky dies, that he uses the town's preternatural lightning to re-animate him.  Problem is, his creepy school-friends (all junior versions of well known horror tropes) find out about his scientific breakthrough and perform their own reanimations with gruesome and chaotic results.

It took me a while to warm up to the characters - I spent the first twenty minutes more wrily smiling at the horror movie in-jokes and admiring the beautiful hand-made stop-motion animation.  But soon Sparky and Victor stole my heart, and anyone's who's ever had a dog will appreciate the wonderful observation that went into capturing just how a pet dog acts.  As the movie built to its dramatic Godzilla inspired climax, I became genuinely nervous about Sparky's fate!  I can confidently say that if you go and see this movie with an open heart, whether or not with kids, you'll have a good time.

But this film is far more interesting than "just" a superior kids film - not that there's anything wrong with that.  Because FRANKENWEENIE is an absolutely darling film full of affection for the power and history of cinema, and simple delight of making things.  It opens with a film within a film - little Victor showing his parents his home made super eight starring Sparky as the Sparkosaurus.  The celluloid burns, but Victor's unpeturbed -"I can fix it!" he declares.  So much of the mood and spirit of the movie is set by that phrase.  It's a film about the wonder of film - the crazy illusions that we build with props and costumes and trick-shots - the almost juvenile glee that lurks behind even the most accomplished film.  

Tim Burton at the European
Première of Frankenweenie

Of course, director Tim Burton is making a more profound statement about the nature of good film-making.  He's saying that it's better to make a film with love and sticky-tape, then with crass showmanship in mind.  Science and celluloid can be used for good or ill - it needs to come from the heart.  Burton also makes a subversive political comment about the contemporary American anti-intellectual strain within the religious right.  The poor scientist is evidently a European emmigre, who knows what horror he has seen.  He finds himself attacked by a mob of suburban parents angry at "science". This leads to the funniest and most profound scene where he angrily calls them ignorant and stupid: "they like the things science gives them but fear the questions that it asks".  

Maybe I'm being too earnest about the political metatext of FRANKENWEENIE? But I don't think you need to scratch too hard on the surface of the seemingly Spielbergian family adventure to get to its more scabrous heart. And it's that doubling, that wonderful enchantment coupled with deeper provocation, that makes this by far Tim Burton's best film in year - maybe since EDWARD SCISSORHANDS.

FRANKENWEENIE played Fantastic Fest and is currently on release in Canada, Colombia, Paraguay, Romania and the USA. It opens this week in Russia and Spain and next week in Belgium, Ireland, the UK, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Thailand, Ukraine and Iceland. It opens on October 25th in Australia, Chile, Malaysia and Switzerland and on October 31st in France. It opens on November 2nd in Brazil; on November 22nd in Argentina, Greece and Lithuania; on November 29th in Singapore; on December 15th in Japan; on December 28th in Turkey; on January 3rd 2013 in the Czech Republic and Hungary; on Jnauary 11th in Sweden; on January 17th in Denmark, Italy and Norway; and on January 24th in Germany.

IRON SKY - Moon nazis!

There are lots of movie with hilarious titles, but few that live up to them. (SNAKES ON A PLANE, I'm looking at you.)  IRON SKY is, on the whole, a movie that's worth checking out.  After all, it would take a total bah-humbug kill-joy not to enjoy a movie who's concept is Moon Nazis!  The idea is that in the final days of World War II, the Nazis sent a colony to the Moon, which has since gathered strength and is now returning to invade a near-future USA run by Sarah Palin.

First off, for what is presumably a low-budget feature, the movie looks fantastic. All the space effects, space-station sets and costumes are superb, and the scenes on the moon are definitely the best in the film.   Second, the movie has a handful of absolutely on-point black-comedy moments. Like when the Moon Nazis use a highly edited version of Chaplin's Hitler spoof, THE GREAT DICTATOR, to make it look like its Hitler propaganda.  Or when the President's aide tries to tell her Moon Nazis are coming and she thinks that it's merely a WAG THE DOG like set-up to get her re-elected. Or when she totally identifies with the Blut und Boden values of the Nazis.   

That said, the movie has its weaknesses. Half the time the humour is just too broad for my liking, and veers from black satire to cheap lampoon. I guess that's just what you have to expect from an Udo Kier movie. I didn't particularly get or feel comfortable with the plot line that sees a US soldier turned white. And Sarah Palin is a pretty easy target. My suspicion is that there is a very funny, more intelligent 45 minute short film hiding underneath this baggy full-length feature.

IRON SKY played Berlin and SXSW 2012. It was released earlier this year in Finland, Norway, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Croatia, Poland, Australia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Ireland, the UK and Fiji. It will be released in Romania on June 22nd, in Singapore on June 28th, in Lithuania on June 29th, in the Czech Republic, Russia and Slovakia on July 12th and in New Zealand on August 12th.

iPad Round-Up 4 - ATTACK THE BLOCK

ATTACK THE BLOCK is the tightly written, brilliantly observed, laugh-out-loud hilarious directorial debut of British TV comedian, Joe Cornish.  The concept is brilliant - what would happen if aliens didn't invade LA or New York, but a South London council estate? Suddenly all the anti-social behaviour that the Daily Mail readers like to pillory looks like basic survival skills, and the essential paedophobia of modern British society is turned on its head. The muggers, dope dealers and bad-boys are shown to be lost kids with mad skills who save the day.

What I love about this film is that while it's making a serious social point - all the more serious after this summer's riots - it wears its learning lightly.  It gets the whole Castigat Ridendo Mores point I was making in my review of THE CONSPIRATOR.  It never forgets to make us laugh - it has characters we believe in and care about - and it immerses us in the messy details of modern life on a London estate.  And it goes to show that you can make a great movie that's just 90 minutes long.  

Kudos to Joe Cornish for the genuinely funny, intelligent script. But also real kudos for pulling off some cool sci-fi effects on a low-budget, and for assembling a mostly unknown cast of kids for the film.  Once again, young Sammy Williams (WILD BILL) steals every scene he's in, but there are no weak links here.  A must-see movie, and likely to become a cult favourite on DVD.  Moreover, one of the few films that exploits its SHAUN OF THE DEAD connections, that deserves to do so.

ATTACK THE BLOCK played SXSW 2011 and was released this summer in the UK, Ireland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Belgium, France, Iceland, the Netherlands, the USA, Turkey, Kuwait, Germany, Singapore and Israel. It is currently on release in Sweden. It is available to rent and own.

OSS-117: LOST IN RIO - sporadically funny French spy spoof

The OSS-117 movies are French parodies of the early Bond movies, where Bond was a slick-haired, cock-sure spy in a flash car and a shiny suit, bedding women to cheesy 1960s background music. The latest release, RIO NE REPOND PLUS or LOST IN RIO, sees the hapless French spy Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath dispatched to Rio to purchase a microfilm containing the names of French collaborators from a Nazi colonel. On the way he teams up with a beautiful Mossad agent called Dolores, the Nazi’s hippie son Heinrich, and a CIA agent called Trumendous. As with the previous OSS-117 flick, when the movie works, it works because of star Jean Dujardin’s tremendously funny facial expressions coupled with the fact that he really does have the cheesy grin and good looks of Sean Connery. There’s also a lot of verbal humour around Hubert’s verbal clumsiness in dealing with women, Mossad and Germans. The resulting film contains more than its fair share of laugh-out loud moments, even if the source of the humour is sub-Austin Powers. The problem is that this film is too long and contains too many scenes that just don’t work, especially early on in the film. For instance, the character of CIA agent Trumendous, who seems to just laugh and swear for no reason, simply doesn’t work as a spoof of Felix Leiter. I would’ve preferred a shorter, more tightly written movie, with a runtime of maybe 80 minutes rather than 100 minutes. This would’ve put the sequel up there with the first movie, CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES, which felt like it had a lot more energy and more consistent laughs. So, maybe one for DVD.

OSS 117 - LOST IN RIO / RIO NE REPOND PLUS was released in Belgium, France, Latvia, Greece, Russia and Kazakhstan in 2009. It is currently on limited release in the UK.

SUPERHERO MOVIE - Not as risible as I've come to expect from this franchise

I'm not usually a big fan of the SCARY MOVIE franchise - indeed, I make a solid attempt not to see these films. I prefer to remember Leslie Nielsen in the Golden Age spoof movies like AIRPLANE!: flicks that threw physical and verbal comedy at you so fast you had to watch the movie a couple of times to get all the jokes. These new MOVIES are much less tightly packed with gags, and often don't actually spoof movies rather than just reference pop-cultural phenomenon. Still, Craig Mazin's SUPERHERO MOVIE wasn't as bad as I expected - lightly lampooning the SPIDERMAN franchise which, let's face it, did loose all credibility in the third installment. Some of the jokes are unbelievably crass and unsuccessful but in general, this isn't a bad watch and there are enough laughs to justify the rental.

SUPERHERO MOVIE went on release in summer 2008 and is available on DVD.

THE SPIRIT - disastrous noir spoof from Frank Miller

"The only thought in my mind was, 'It's too big — I can't possibly do it.' And I refused. And about three minutes later as I was at the doorway, I turned around and said, 'Nobody else can touch this,' and I agreed to the job on the spot".

Frank Miller should have trusted his instincts and passed up the opportunity to go solo and direct the feature length adaptation of Will Eisner's seminal 1940s weekly serial. 

The strip was a noir thriller about a rookie cop brought back from the dead, living under his grave stone, investigating crime in Central City. Miller gives the book the same treatment as SIN CITY - using digital backgrounds penned largely in gray scale with occasional flashes of iridescent red - and the film is extremely stylish as a result. Miller also does the decent thing in consigning The Spirit's politically incorrect sidekick "Ebony White.

Every other directorial choice Frank Miller makes is wrong. First, let's talk casting. Gabriel Macht lacks charisma as The Spirit. All the other actors turn in hammy, self-referential performances that are painful to watch. It's not entirely their fault. Miller has directed this movie as a pastiche. The movie literally takes the piss out of itself like some dumb SCARY MOVIE flick. The result is a complete waste of time: alienating, unfunny, plain embarrassing.  I just feel that Samuel L Jackson in particular needs to be really careful about taking these sorts of role - after SNAKES ON A PLANE and his increasingly mannered performances he's in danger of turning into a self-parody.  Jackson plays The Octopus.  Uh-huh.  Not only do we see The Octopus' face but we get to see him dress up as a Samurai, and as a Nazi, for no reason than because Miller wanted a bit of sport.  I mean, seriously, how crass can you get?

Avoid at all costs. 

THE SPIRIT is on release in Indonesia, Italy, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, the USA, Australia, Taiwan, France, Iceland, the UK, Denmark and Israel. It opens next week in Israel, New Zealand and Poland. It opens on January 15th in Russia, Brazil and on January 22nd in Argentina, Finland, Iceland and Norway. It opens on January 29th in Germany, on February 19th in the Czech Republic, on February 25th in Belgium and the Netherlands. 

OSS 117: CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES - if you can't beat them....

A few years before Ian Fleming invented James Bond, Jean Bruce invented his French equivalent, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, alias OSS 117. Both fictional spies travelled the world, fighting megalomaniacs, shagging hot chicks and generally saving the day in a manner that now seems hopelessly out of date. Both also inspired movies, although the Bond series was exponentially more successful. By 2006, both franchises faced the same problem. The classic spy thriller had fallen into self-parody - the gadgets and chicks formula had been discredited - and spoofs like AUSTIN POWERS were making more money. The Bond franchise responded by becoming more serious and stripped down and, to my mind, boxed itself into a corner with CASINO ROYALE. By contrast, the OSS 117 franchise decided to co-opt the critics, exploiting the camp, kitsch tendencies of the 60s spy flicks - essentially spoofing itself.

The resulting movie is a beautifully crafted spoof that had me laughing out loud throughout. The plot sees Agent 117 (Jean Dujardin) sent to Cairo to investigate the murder of another Agent and good friend, Jack Jefferson (Philippe Lefebvre). In addition, 117 has to bring peace to a country riven between royalists, islamists and various colonnial powers. On the way, he'll fight with chickens, shag an Egyptian princess, face-off with Nazis and generally cause offense! The movie has a lot of fun exploring the latent homo-eroticism of the relationship between agents (not least between Bond and Leiter in the novels.) But the most fun comes from the film's recreation of the shooting style of Dr No era movies: period costumes, dodgy fight scenes, rubbish back-projection, jazz-filled sound-tracks...!

Jean Dujardin is absolutely perfect as Agent 117. He looks like a young Gallic Sean Connery in his 60s suits and brilliantined hair. But he also has a real talent for physical comedy and several scenes are up there with the best of Inspector Clousseau. Just keep an eye out for a scene where he dances the twist at an Embassy ball. I can't wait till the next 117 movie. Absolutely perfect for a miserable Sunday afternoon!
CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES / OSS 117: LE CAIRE NID D'ESPIONS was released all the way back in 2006 in France, Belgium, Greece and Russia. It was released in 2007 in the Philippines. It was released earlier this yaer in Spain, the US and Brazil and is currently on release in the UK.

TROPIC THUNDER - worth seeing for the odd moment of genius

There are many problems with Ben Stiller’s new Hollywood spoof, TROPIC THUNDER. It’s over-long, too many of the jokes fall flat, and many of the main characters are under-written or just plain redundant. That said, TROPIC THUNDER does contain a handful of genuinely hilarious scenes that are, on balance, worth the price of admission.

The movie features three recognisable types of Hollywood actor – the action hero Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller); the gross-out comedy star Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black); and the method actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Junior). Each actor is insecure. The Sly Stallone-spoof Tugg Speedman is desperate to be seen as a real actor, hence his disastrous attempt to play a mentally disabled kid in an I AM SAM type movie called SIMPLE JACK. The Eddie Murphy-spoof, Jeff Portnoy, is upset that he’s only famous for farting on-screen, and consoles himself with Class A drugs. Finally, the Russell Crowe-spoof, Kirk Lazarus, goes so far into his method-acting that he can barely remember who he is any more.

The movie opens with all three actors filming a war movie in Vietnam that’s behind schedule thanks to their tantrums. Under pressure rookie director (Steve Coogan) takes them on a Werner Herzog style journey into the jungle, where they will face real fear and thus give good performances. Problem is, the gun-fire is real, as the actors stumble into the territory of drug war-lord.

The aim of the film is to poke fun at Hollywood actors, producers and agents, with their big egos and insecurities. In addition, the movie spoofs the shameless avarice that creates life-less franchises and paint-by-numbers genre movies as star-vehicles. Most famously, the movie spoofs actors who try to win awards by doing something apparently earnest and issues-based – such as method-acting their way to Oscar by playing a mentally disabled person or an ethnic minority character. This is all good stuff, and I profoundly disagree with anyone who thinks that the movie is being racist by having a character wear black-face, or that the movie is being offensive by having another character play a mentally disabled character.

TROPIC THUNDER succeeds when it proposes an intelligent satire on Hollywood excess. Robert Downey Junior is superb in his nuanced portrayal of a method actor so far under-cover he’s lost himself. The movie also succeeds in its sheer balls-out excess. I defy anyone not to rejoice in Tom Cruise’s cameo as foul-mouthed, angry studio producer, dancing Usher-style and tempting Tugg’s agent (Matthew McConaughey in a brilliant performance). Some of the physical humour also works brilliantly. There’s a scene where a small kid gets tossed off a bridge that’s desperately funny.

TROPIC THUNDER fails miserably when, for the majority of its run-time, it moves down a notch from satire into spoof. Spoof is all well and good, but it’s frightfully thin and one-note. In other words, you can laugh once at Jeff Portnoy needing a fix, or Tugg Speedman being a stupid ass, but you can’t laugh at it again and again for a near 2 hour run-time. In fact, you could’ve lost the Portnoy character altogether. The ancillary characters are also poorly sketched. Poor Danny McBride – so hysterical in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS – is wasted here. Steve Coogan is given no funny lines as the rookie director. Nick Nolte is given nothing to do as the Vietnam vet. And the two characters who act as foils to the three big egos are also given little to do. Jay Baruchel makes the most of his part but poor Brandon T Jackson only exists in the movie as insurance. His character is basically there to diffuse the tension of having Robert Downey Junior dressed in black-face. It’s like the film-makers thought – a lot of African-American people watching this are going to want to slap Downey Junior, so let’s just put an African-American character on screen and have him to do it for them.

TROPIC THUNDER is on release in the US and Russia. It opens later in August in Australia, Iceland, Mexico and Estonia. It opens in September in Argentina, Hungary, Romania, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, the UK, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Norway and Spain. It opens in October in Belgium, France, Venezuela, Singapore and Italy. It opens in November in Egypt.

THE LOVE GURU - not quite good enough

Here's the thing. I don't find dick and fart jokes particularly funny. (This isn't judgmental - just a a matter of taste). Nor do I find comedians putting on ethnic accents at the cutting edge of humour: Peter Sellars had that down decades ago. Having said all that, I love WAYNE'S WORLD and the first AUSTIN POWERS movie. They were such warm-hearted joyful pastiches of genre-movies, I could overlook the occasional crude joke. Mike Myers' latest movie, THE LOVE GURU, tilts the balance firmly in favour of the crude and away from the thoughtful spoof. That's fine and if you like that kind of humour, as many of the people in the cinema I was in last night did, you'll have a really good times. The litmus test is this: is the idea of two lychees wrapped in pastry to look like balls funny to you? If so, go forth and enjoy!

If you don't find that funny, as I didn't, is there enough in this film to keep you satisfied? My answer is wishy-washy. I can't say I'd want to watch THE LOVE GURU again, and I did cringe every time Ben Kingsley portrayed a cross-eyed Indian guru. (Has Ganndhi come to this?!) The running joke using Marishka Hargitay's name may not play in the UK and Justin Timberlake is definitely worth more than his cameo as a camp Quebecois hockey player. And the scene where the trainee gurus joust with urine covered mops was truly tragic.

But there are a handful of genuine laughs in this movie, and I had an okay time with it. The basic idea is that Mike Myers is a LA based celebrity Guru, always striving to be bigger than Deepak Chopra. If Guru Pitka can reunite an ice-hockey star and his wife in time to restore his game and win the championship, the Guru will appear on Oprah securing his position as number one Guru. Pitka has a bunch of risible self-help techniques, signified by trade-marked acronyms, and the titles of all his books ARE funny. The early sight gag of the motorised cushion is also brilliant. I even liked the Bollywood song-and-dance number spoofs with Jessica Alba.

Still, as funny as the soft spoofery was, I couldn't help but think that THE LOVE GURU would've worked better as a SNL sketch. And, if truth be told, the funniest thing in it IS like a SNL sketch - Stephen Colbert's satire on sports commentators was sharper and edgier than anything Myers brought to the table.

THE LOVE GURU was released earlier this year in the USA, Australia and Israel. It is currently on release in Iceland, Italu and the UK. It opens later in August in Singapore, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Turkey. It opens in September in Belgium, the Netherlands, Venezuela and France. It opens in October in France, Germany, Austria and Spain.

Random DVD Round-Up 1 - BLACK SHEEP

New Zealand is like the Wales of Asia-Pac. All the jokes revolve around villagers shagging sheep. Well, now, thanks to genetic engineering, the sheep are pissed off and biting back, resulting in human-sheep zombies! All this is naturally a bit of a shock for our hero - a younger son shunned by his family after a childhood scare made him afraid of sheep and reject his farming inheritance. He's backed up by a much-mocked hippie as they take on corporate greed and childhood fear.

I am unlikely to hate any movie that takes the piss out of vegetarian hippies. And I love that BLACK SHEEP satirises hippies and greedy capitalist bastards with an even hand. I also love the lashings of squelchy, bloddy gore that drenches this film, courtesy of the Weta Workship (of LOTR fame). So on those counts alone, BLACK SHEEP works as a decent comedy - certainly good enough for DVD if not for the cinema. Where I think BLACK SHEEP is weaker is in terms of genuine horror. The movie is way too tongue in cheek to provide any real scares, unlike SEVERANCE which trod the fine line on horror-comedy perfectly, and SHAUN OF THE DEAD which is the benchmark of perfection for this genre.

BLACK SHEEP played Toronto 2006 and was released last year. It is available on DVD.

Overlooked DVD of the month - OFFICE KILER

Still photographer Cindy Sherman is famous for photographing herself in poses taken from B-movies, horror movies and film noir. In 1997 she made a feature length film called OFFICE KILLER that has been described as a mix of all these genres. It's a story about a dowdy secretary who starts killing people in her office. While not short on gore, the movie singularly fails, however, to work either as horror movie or as noir.

In fact, the film only really works as an increasingly ridiculous and perhaps unintentionally funny spoof. Carol Kane is wickedly brilliant as the dowdy copy editor turned killer, with her high-pitched voice, frowsy costumes and nervous ticks. Molly Ringwald is cast against type as the office flirt and is clearly having a ball in her pastiche-50s outfits. Barbara Sukowa (of ZENTROPA fame) is ridiculous as the Joan Collins'-style magazine editor. All together, we have a pastiche of the way in which women have been represented film.

Apart from the unintentional laughter, what else can OFFICE KILLER offer a contemporary audience? Well, there is a hint of the middle-class neuroies that hit the US and UK when "off-shoring" and "down-sizing" became buzz-words. And the way in which the staff react to the introduction of email and laptops makes for fascinating social history. Finally, Cindy Sherman's use of colour is admirable. I particularly love the exterior shots of the office building - shaded purple - contrasted against the unhealthy acid yellow coming from the windows. Sherman also frames her shots particularly well - always looking through desk lamps, over in-trays, and through doors.

OFFICE KILLER played Toronto 1007 and was released in the US that year. It played the London Fashion in Film Festival 2008. It is available on DVD.