THE 15:17 TO PARIS

Remember back in 2015 when that terrorist nutter tried to cause chaos on a high speed train to Paris, but an Englishman a Frenchman and some Americans took him out?  Well, Clint Eastwood has made a film about the attack, taking the interesting angle of looking at how the three Americans grew up, in order to cast some light on why they took that courageous decision to have a go.  Eastwood is even more experimental - shockingly so - in that he casts the three real life men - Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, and Spencer Stone - to play themselves. The result is a film that is disarmingly simple, direct, authentic and surprisingly affecting. 

As the film opens we see the three men as kids, getting into scrapes at school, being split up as one leaves for school in another town.  You get the feeling that they're just normal boys, albeit boys brought up with strong mothers and for one of them at least strong faith and a strong sense of (military) service.  There's a kind of simplicity to their basic human decency and - at the same time - their almost moronic banality. They sound like most twenty something friends, when they're ordering beers and food in a Dutch bar with a raging hangover. To be sure they can't act - but that's kind of the point. That extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people.  But not all ordinary people react in the way these boys did.  Military training helps. Knowing your way around a gun probably does help, as much I hate to say it. And having strong moral values that compel you to insert yourself into the situation probably helps.

To be sure, Eastwood's brand of folksy patriotism and family values will grate on some viewers. I found myself having to detach myself for the allegory that could be made to a kind of interventionist military pro-gun policy.  But it's hard to be cynical when faced with such common decency and bravery. And as much as I was irritated by the lack of focus given to the French and British men who also fought back, I guess that's just the nature of the beast. And after all, Eastwood does give the final most emotional speech to a real life Francois Hollande. And I honestly did shed a tear when he spoke about humanity countering terror. 

THE 15:17 TO PARIS is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 94 minutes. It is available to rent and own.

I LOVE YOU, MAN - lame

Another day, another piss-poor Hollywood comedy. Do not be fooled by a cast list including members of hit comedies like ROLE MODELS (Paul Rudd) and FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL (Jason Segel). This movie is tame, formulaic and just plain dull.

Paul Rudd plays against character as a dorky metrosexual who discovers, pre-wedding, that he doesn't actually have any close guy friends. He turns to his gay brother (Andy Samberg) for advice, a character presumably only written into the movie to defuse any puerile quips from the audience. Eventually, the dork meets a cool guy (Jason Segel), they hang out, the fiancee gets jealous, people argue in an attempt to create some dramatic tension, but it all ends happily.

Jason Segel seems like a genuinely likeable guy. It would be good to see him in more flicks. Paul Rudd is over-exposed. And he also needs to stick to his core strength, which is being a dead-pan wise-ass rather than a low-self-esteem metrosexual. The only thing that kept me from falling asleep was an early cameo from J K Simmons. 

Seriously disappointing.

I LOVE YOU, MAN is on release in the US, Iceland, Romania and the UK. It opens next week in Australia, Germany, Hungary, Brazil, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Mexico and Spain. It opens on May 15th in Italy; on May 28th in the Netherlands and New Zealand; on June 4th in the Czech Republic; on June 11th in Belgium, Argentina, Portugal, Russia, Norway, Sweden and Turkey. It opens in Singapore on June 18th; in Chile on July 9th; in Denmark on July 10th; in France on July 29th; and in Finland on August 7th.

A GUY THING - disposable rom-com

Disposable, bland, rom-com, that tries so hard for every character to be nice and earnest that no-one's interesting. Jason Lee is ironed out into a decent guy called Paul who just happens to sleep with his fiancee's cousin on his stag night. Except that he didn't really, because that's how nice he is: they just passed out. The lovely fiancee, Karen (Selma Blair), is always a hair's breath away from finding out the messy truth, but fate always lets Paul off the hook. All of which leads to a stagey denouement in which Paul has to summon the balls to tell Karen that he's really in love with kooky Becky (Julia Stiles, who really cannot play kooky). It's all very, very unfortunate.

A GUY THING was released in 2003 and is available on DVD and on iTunes.

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.

Justifiably overlooked DVD of the month - RENO 9-11 MIAMI

Let's give RENO 911 MIAMI the benefit of the doubt and say that it's the latest in a long line of funny TV shows that spawn pathetically unfunny movies. In fairness, I've never seen the Comedy Central original but judging from the movie it's a sort of mockumentary about ineffectual rozzers in Reno. The ne plus ultra of this genre is, I suppose, THE OFFICE, which creates genuine humour from close observation of the minutiae of real life. It's so close to reality that it actually makes you cringe. RENO 911 MIAMI, on the other hand, is very broad and rather lazy in its humour. Instead of exposing the little habits of the ordinary people we work with, the movie creates freakish stereotypes. And the stereotypes are very dated and borderline offensive. So, we have the supposedly hillarious concept that a camp gay man could be a cop. We have a sub-Carry On "joke" about a slutty, big-chested female cop. The hispanic characters is "obviously" a drug-dealing Tony Montana spoof. And we have a black woman wearing a prosthetic big ass. I mean, seriously people, did the 1990s never happen?

RENO 911 MIAMI was released in the US, USA, Australa, New Zealand, Spain, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and Singapore earlier this year. It is available on DVD.

CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN - stylish adult drama

CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN is that rare thing - an intelligent, witty, perceptive drama. Even more rare, it is a movie with a technical conceit that adds to its emotional weight, rather than simply being a gimmick.

The plot is simple. Two people who once had a relationship meet by chance at a wedding many years later. They start flirting, have sex and then part.

The technical conceit is that the movie is shown in two separate vertical panels. Even when the protagonists are having sex, they are shown on separate screens. Sometimes, they speak to each other in one panel, while the other panel shows the people they are talking about or flashes back to their previous relationship. Other times, one of the protagonists will play out two responses to the same act in each panel.

The editing together of the two panels - by director Hans Canosa - really makes you think about the interior lives of the protagonists. We become highly conscious about how much they have changed since they first met - physically and emotionally - and the impact their meetings have had on each other. The conceit also serves to deliver one of the most imaginatively shown sex scenes in cinema.

I love that the film uses the split screen to explore the nature of memory, missed chances, and ageing. I love that the script is truthful rather than sentimental. I love the occasional flashes of comedy from Olivia Wilde as an uptight bridesmaid and Thomas Lennon as the wedding videographer. But at its core, this movie is a showcase for the actors, and Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart deliver performances that are brave, incisive and thought provoking.

CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN went on release in France, Canada, the US, and Israel in 2006. It opened in South Korea, Japan, Turkey, Singapore and Belgium earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK. The movie is also available on Region 1 DVD.