Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life

To all those who have been kind enough to read the reviews posted on this blog over the past five years - who have put up with the hastily penned diatribes - the typos - the random rants - the inarticulate, breathless praise of the unexpected masterpiece - it is with great regret that I am writing to tell you that I have decided to stop posting reviews on this blog.

This blog started off as a way of answering my friends who asked what I thought of the recent releases. I never imagined it would have a readership beyond that group. Since then, I have thoroughly enjoyed having some sliver of a justification for the hours spent in the cineplex. However, it has been some years since I have worked professionally in the film industry and the pressures of my real life day job as a greedy capitalist bastard have started to take their toll. Indeed, I am now in a position not just to lose my clients' money but to do tangible damage more widely. Therefore, I have decided to focus on not fucking up in real life.

The choice I face is to review movies sporadically, days after release, rather than every single day, weeks before release. I have come to the conclusion that doing the latter will add little value given the haze of opinion already littering the internet. Moreover, I'll just feel bad for not posting more regularly.

So, essentially, this is goodbye.....for now, at least. Unless, any budding cineaste out there wants to take over at the helm? If so, contact me at mexalexandros@hotmail.com.

Over and out,

Bina007.

I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS - Spit or Swallow?

A (very true to the) real life story of Steven Russel (Jim Carrey) - a Christian, a family man, and a closet homosexual - who after a devastating car crash decides he's going to ditch the lies and be true to himself. And that means moving to Miami, becoming as queer as a $12 note, and starting a life of crime, deception and fraud to fund his exuberant "out" lifestyle.

When the conman is finally caught - he goes to prison in Texas where he meets and instantly falls in "love" with the effeminate, vulnerable Philip Morris (Ewan McGregor). The rest of the story documents the jail-breaks, cons and increasingly incredible antics that Russel employs to get close and stay close to Morris. The true story (1, 2) is faithfully represented on screen - and is so strange that it warrants the "This really happened... It really did" on-screen message in the titles.

So that's the basic plot - but what is this film really about? I think the whole experience can be summed up in four points:

1. An unflinching and uncompromising look at gay sex. You expect some boundary-pushing stuff from the directors of BAD SANTA - and I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS doesn't disappoint. If you're uncomfortable with seeing men bone, you've got a real problem here. Whole sequences revolve around homosexual fellatio. Russel's sexuality is revealed by a graphic and unexpected scene of anal intercourse. Ewan McGregor gives more head than a hooker on a Saturday night. The big black guy behind me in the cinema repeatedly told his girlfriend "I'm not comfortable with this" while squirming. The depiction of sex in this film is pretty gritty and down to earth - and very funny - and challenges the Hollywood status quo of not depicting graphic homosexuality. It's an acquired taste - don't take your Granny.
2. A parody of the "gay" scene, and the prejudice it faces. "Golf? But you're a homosexual!" says Morris to Russel as he tries to fit in in a homophobic Texan workplace. The gay stereotype is exposed as fake - Russel's obsession with being as "gay" as he can be takes him to a caricatured extreme which reflects his real character and feelings but little. Russel's wife and colleagues on the other hand comically reflect southern homophobia (and racism). "So does the gay thing and stealing thing go together?" asks Russel's evangelical Christian wife to his boyfriend. In this way both extremes are held up to ridicule. You could argue that they were easy targets though, and the attacks aren't substantial enough to form a really coherent thread.
3. A raucous comedy that shows that real life is stranger than fiction. There's no doubting this film is funny. It wasn't made to shock - rather it was made primarily to amuse. Carrey and McGregor carry off the smitten gay couple perfectly - Carrey especially amuses throughout and gives a performance that thankfully relies little on rubber-faced humour, and far more on talent and comic timing. The sheer bare-faced cheek of his antics, and the exuberant gayness of whole flick, makes it utterly entertaining from beginning to end. It's worth seeing just for a laugh.
4. A dark and tragic portrayal of a broken man. Other reviewers have interpreted I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS as a romance. Don't be fooled, there's nothing romantic about it. Russel suffers acute separation anxiety due to his adoption and later summary rejection by his birth mother. He becomes the ultimate people-pleaser - defining his sense of worth by what others think of him, unable to tell the truth or approach anything resembling intimacy. This vacuum in his sense of identity drives him to attach to models and stereotypes of what he feels he ought to be - the best Christian ever, the best husband and father ever - then the most screaming queer ever, the biggest liar ever. Progressively deadened spiritually and emotionally, he seeks some sort of connection with life and feelings through compulsive thrill seeking - addictive spending, compulsive lying. Finally, he defines himself through a love-addicted and completely dishonest attachment to Philip Morris. Morris is complicit as the co-dependent in this - flattered by Russel's attentions and turning a blind eye to his obvious dysfunctions. Ultimately, Russel becomes nothing more than his pathology - a borderline personality in the truest sense - his sense of self completely eroded.

So in summary, this is a very black comic tragedy, looking the audience straight in the eye and never flinching from giving us reality, however ugly, sweaty or gay. The real tragedy of course is that it's a true story - Russel is a genuine product of a abandonment, dysfunctional family life, prejudice and stereotype.

His various addictions and compulsions are funny, but only in the sense that a visit to the asylum is funny. He represents the spiritual corruption and emptiness of man. His wife, through her prejudice, unwittingly stumbles on a truth - asking whether the gay thing and stealing thing go together. In Russel, we cannot be sure whether any part of his personality is genuine - or whether it is merely another attempt to self-define or self-affirm through some outside object or activity.

Russel is a pathetic character in the truest sense - his tragic end the inevitable conclusion of his many character flaws.

So, overall expect a shock, expect a challenge, expect a laugh - but don't expect to walk away happy.

This is a really solid film - the acting is consistently excellent, the way the story is told is clever, and it covers some very challenging subject matter. But it's not a romance, it's not DUMB AND DUMBER, and it's not for the fainthearted. With that caveat, it comes highly recommended.

I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS played Sundance and Cannes 2009 and was released earlier this year in Belgium, France, Russia, Taiwan, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania and Kazakhstan. It is currently on release in Japan, the UK and the Philippines. It opens next month in Iceland, Brazil, the Netherlands and Germany. It opens in the US on May 7th.

THE BLIND SIDE - insidious, manipulative schmaltz

THE BLIND SIDE is a deeply insidious movie that has been rewarded with Oscar gold, one suspects, as a gesture toward Sandra Bullock's track record in bringing home the cheques with her trademark fluffy romantic-comedies. It is based on the true story of Leigh Anne Tuohy, an All-American soccer mom who gives a home to an enormous black kid from a deprived neighbourhood, seemingly on a whim. Once she has committed to raising him, Leigh Anne does so with ferocious commitment, eventually seeing him into a successful American football career. There is no dramatic tension. Neither is there suspense. It is quite clear that from the polished veneer that we are in the kind of territory where good triumphs over evil and where racial politics are reduced to offensive bland statements. Note how Quinton Aaron, as Michael Oher, is essentially objectified - a passive object with a skill, merely there to respond to Bullock/Touhy's sympathy and actions. I find the Academy lauding this film, and Sandra Bullock's role in particular, rather fascinating. On the one hand, the racial politics of this film affirm the Liberal credentials of the Academy, and you can see them just desperate to acknowledge this film in the same way that they acknowledged CRASH. On the other hand, Leigh Anne Touhy is a character straight out of a liberal humanist's worst nightmares. And I quote, "If you so much as set foot downtown you will be sorry. I'm in a prayer group with the D.A., I'm a member of the NRA and I'm always packing." And so, ladies and gentlemen, we have the current aspirations of both left and right wing America wrapped in a one lady - racially aware but also gun-totin' and bible-quotin'. It does rather feel like Hollywood is trying to have its cake and eat it.

THE BLIND SIDE was released last year in the US and Canada. It was released earlier this year in Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Uruguay. It is currently on release in Argentina, Kuwait, Brazil and Mexico. It opens this weekend in Germany, Portugal, Austria and the UK. It opens on April 19th in Finland and on May 6th in Denmark. It is released on Region 1 DVD today.

Additional tags: Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Jae Head, Lily Collines, Ray McKinnon, Kim Dickens, Alar Kivilo

GREEN ZONE - too simplistic, too late

GREEN ZONE is Matt Damon and Peter Greengrass' risible attempt to sucker the fanbase of the BOURNE films into watching a movie with a more avowedly political subject matter. Which just goes to show that the mainstream audience isn't that dumb. Just because it's got shaky handheld camera work and Matt Damon running around looking earnest and puzzled, doesn't mean that a movie is suspenseful or fundamentally politically interesting. I think the basic problem with GREEN ZONE, other than that it's not BOURNE 4, is that it's trying to make something we now taken as read look interesting. Yes, yes, it's a crying shame that we were taken into war in Iraq on the false premise that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction. But, seven years later, I think the public is too jaded to really care. We were lied to - we're in a mess - now what? Kathryn Bigelow broke through the apathy with her micro-psycho take on the archetypal figure in a street-fighting war - the bomb disposal expert. Her film, THE HURT LOCKER, was tense, but also took us into a side of the war that we genuinely might not have know about before. But GREEN ZONE, for all its earnest good intentions, tells us nothing new, and shows us nothing new. Roger Ebert says that GREEN ZONE looks at war in a way no other war film has, insofar as the US is the dupe not the hero. I beg to differ. Hollywood has been making great films about the vicious lie at the heart of most wars for decades, not least about Vietnam and more recently with THREE KINGS. Ebert also damns with praise here: "By limiting the characters and using typecasting, he [Brian Helgeland] makes the deceit easy to understand". Respect to Ebert, but no. If you have to debase yourself with typecasting, then you're just not up to the job. And at any rate, this film really just isn't that complicated. The trick missed is to show the personal human price paid. As THE HURT LOCKER took inside the insane world of the lead character, we should've seen more about how a stand-up guy like Damon's CWO Roy Miller would've reacted psychologically to realising that he'd been duped. What happens when the naive man grows up? That to me is more interesting than how fast and where he runs around.

GREEN ZONE is on release in Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Singapore, Canada, Finland, Indonesia, Norway, the Philippines, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the USA, Egypt, Germany, Kuwait, Switzerland, and Austria. It opens this weekend in Denmark, South Korea and Estonia. It opens on April 14th in Belgium, France, Argentina, the Netherlands and Brazil. It opens in Italy on April 23rd, in Turkey on April 30th, in Japan on May 14th, in Hungary on June 3rd and in Poland on June 4th.

THE GHOST WRITER - the joy of skewering Bliar

I eagerly anticipated the release of Roman Polanski's latest film, THE GHOST WRITER. Partly because I think Polanski is a fascinating director, with a technical mastery beyond many of his contemporaries and an obsession with the sinister that is as compelling as it is unwavering. Partly because I have always loved Robert Harris' intelligent, well-researched, political thrillers. And partly because his novel, "The Ghost", is a thinly veiled skewering of a particularly slippery figure - Tony Blair. I was not disappointed. THE GHOST WRITER reminded me a lot of MICHAEL CLAYTON - it's intelligent, suspenseful, provocative and beautifully made. Indeed, quite superbly photographed by DP Pawel Edelman.

The plot centres on an un-named writer (Ewan McGregor) who has been hired to ghost the memoirs of an oleaginous former Prime Minsiter, Adam Lang (a perfectly cast Pierce Brosnan). The plot is driven by his investigation of the accusation that Lang illegally handed war criminals to the CIA. The Ghost doesn't know whether to trust Lang, his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), his mistress (Kim Cattrall) or his aides. And of course, this being Polanski, there are no idealistic pay-offs for truth-seekers.

When I left the screening I had a wistful feeling. Because as polished and convincing as THE GHOST WRITER is, somehow, because you know it was made by Polanski, and you know what he is capable of achieving, you end up feeling a little short-changed by a "mere" good thriller. I loved the Hitchcock reference, but it wasn't necessary to the plot. And that kind of slight mis-step seemed to me indicative of a true auteur turning in a "place-holder" film.....

THE GHOST WRITER played Berlin 2010 where Roman Polanski won the Silver Bear. It is on release in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, the US, the Philippines, Belgium, France, Canada, Greece, Israel, Estonia and Italy. It opens this weekend in Denmark and Norway. It opens on April 8th in Portugal and on April 16th in Finland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It opens in May in Thailand, the Netherlands and Romania. It opens in June in Hungary and the Czech Republic, and on August 19th in Argentina and Slovakia.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO - a faithful adaptation of a great thriller

Niels Arden Oplev's screen adaptation of the wildly successful Stieg Larsson thriller, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, is a sure crowd-pleaser. Though still coming in at two and a half hours, it is an admirably condensed and faithful adaptation of a complicated thriller. As fans will be well aware - and I'm assuming most people who see the film will have already read all three books - the movie is about two people who form an unlikely bond in order to investigate an old crime in one of Sweden's most prominent families. Years ago, a young girl disappeared from the wealthy island inhabited largely by her family - the Vangers. In old age, her grand-uncle hires disgraced investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist to re-examine the case and the rogue's gallery of former Nazis and selfish old bastards that make up the Vanger family. Blomkvist is a like-able decent guy - and in his relationship with his long time mistress and best friend Erika, as well as with his new found aide, Lisbeth Salander, he proves that he is a "man who loves women". He enjoys their company, enjoys making love to them, treats them as equals and with respect. But Lisbeth Salander - the true star of the books and this film - is a prickly character - highly intelligent, gifted with computers, a victim of extreme abuse, and as uncomfortable in her skin as Blomkvist is at peace.

I found the direction to be workmanlike in all but the elegant way in which the IT hacking was depicted. What set the movie apart was, source material notwithstanding, the genuine sympathy between, and charisma of, the two lead characters. Michael Nyqvist is superb as the laconic Blomkvist, and Noomi Rapace commits physically and psychologically so fully to being Lisbeth Salander that you can feel the ferocity. And this is important, because inevitably, in order to compress the film, the side relationships - and the smaller characters at Millenium and Milton Security - have been stripped away. As a result, the film lives and dies by whether you are emotionally affected by an abused woman opening a small sliver of her life to Blomkvist. This is much more pivotal than solving the "whodunnit". After all, if there's any real message to Larson's novel, it's that the establishment in its entirety did it.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO was released in 2009 in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Hungary, Finland, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Spain, Iceland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Greece, Austria, Poland and New Zealand. It opened earlier this year in Japan and Estonia. It is currently on release in the US and UK and opens next weekend in Australia. It opens on April 23rd in Brazil.

Additional tags: Jacob Groth, Jens Fischer, Eric Kress, Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Lena Endre, Peter Haber, Sven-Bertil Taube, Peter Andersson, Ingvar Hirdwall, Marika Lagercrantz, Ewa Froling, Tomas Kohler, Gosta Bredefeldt, Niels Arden Oplev.