HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 - creepy fun

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 is the first of the successful Disney teen musical franchise to get a theatrical release. Everything is bigger and shinier but the plot is essentially the same. Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) is conflicted. He's the high school basketball star and his dad wants him to take up a sports scholarship to his alma mater. But Troy also loves singing in high school musicals with his girlfriend Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens), the math geek who might leave before Prom for the Stanford summer school. Meanwhile, Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) wants to steal Troy and Gabriella's limelight (and a scholarship to Juilliard) and enlists her brother Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) to help. Troy and Gabriella provide the gloopy romance and ballads - Ryan and Sharpay provide the comic relief. It's a simple formula and it works well. The dance numbers are professionally done with lots of energy. The kids clearly have buckets of talent.

So, HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 is a good movie. It gives the fans exactly what they want: more of the same. Parents and guardians may, however, be less happy to sit through HSM redux and find themselves wondering how healthy it is for their kids to think that the world is filled with squeaky clean straight kids whose biggest problem is whether to accept that ivy league scholarship or that place at the prestigious music school. I grew up watching GRANGE HILL where Zammo got hooked on smack. This whole movement seems spookily STEPFORD to me.

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 is on release in the US, UK, Sweden, Denmark, Egypt, France, Austria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Kuwait, the UAE, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Italy, Belgium, Indonesia, Peru, Portugal, Iceland, Italy and Panama. It opens in Russia, Romania and Turkey on November 14th; in Chile and Vietnam on November 20th; in Argentina, Slovakia and Venezuela on November 28th; in Australia, the Czech Republic and New Zealand on December 4th; in the Netherlands on December 10th; and in Japan on February 7th.

London Film Fest Day 16 - SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is a bizarre hybrid movie from the incredibly versatile British director Danny Boyle. He's done urban grime (TRAINSPOTTING), quasi-zombie movies (28 DAYS LATER), sci-fi (SUNSHINE) and now a sort of English-language Bollywood movie. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE has the art-house director's eye and a willingness to depict the horrific truth of life in the Mumbai slums. But it splices this with the schmaltzy romantic ending of your typical Bollywood movie. It's a tricky balance to pull off. Moreover, the film carefully and elegantly weaves together scenes showing its protagonists at age 7, 12 and 18. Danny Boyle shows his quality because he manages to control the conflicting styles and inter-weaving script.

The movie is about a boy called Jamal who grows up in the Mumbai slums with his older brother Salim. At age seven, anti-Muslim riots make the boys homeless orphans. They are lured into becoming beggars for an organised gang and only escape when it becomes clear that the gang-leader will blind Jamal because blind singers earn double. It's that brutal. In escaping, the boys leave behind their friend Latika. At age 18 the boys return to Mumbai and search out Latika, who is being trained to be a whore. They rescue her, only for Salim and Latika to fall back into the clutches of a gang boss - now transformed into a property developer in the Maximum City Mumbai of 2008. Jamal is reduced to working as the teaboy in Mumbai call centres.

So far, the movie plays like a British independent movie dissecting the social truth of life in Mumbai in 2008 - the call centres, rising middle-class wealth, gated luxury apartments alongside the old slums, the corruption, the hazard.....It's all brilliantly well done - well acted and beautifully shot on handheld DV by Anthony Dod Mantle.

Where the movie ultimately lost me (and our Gmunden correspondent) was in its high concept framing device. 18 year old Jamal (Dev Patel of SKINS fame) has decided that the only way he can contact childhood sweetheart Latika is to appear of the Indian version of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? - a TV show she watches. Through sheer luck, he knows all the answers to the questions and as taping ends on the first day he is on the verge of being a millionaire. The show's oleaginous host (Anil Kapoor doing a brilliant impression of Amitabh Bachchan) suspects him of cheating. How can an uneducated slumdog know all the answers? So over-night, Jamal is interrogated by the police (Irrfhan Khan). In explaining his answers to the policeman, Jamal gives us the flashbacks of his life and the story to date. The copper believes him and lets him go so he can finish taping the show and hopefully find his girl. Jamal may be a slumdog but he's actually not in it for the money.

The high concept allows Danny Boyle to give the movie a melodramatic, schmaltzy Bollywood ending. I can see why this would be the popular choice, but it tipped the movie over the edge. I like my social commentary undiluted. Still, while SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE isn't quite my thing, you can't deny that it's a well-made, audacious, truly original hybrid film - and manages both to provoke and to entertain!

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE played Toronto (where it won the People's Choice Award) and London 2008. It opens in France on January 7th 2009; in the UK on January 9th; in Belgium on January 14th and in the Netherlands on April 2nd.

London Film Festival Day 16 - RACHEL GETTING MARRIED

RACHEL GETTING MARRIED is in that sub-genre of indie movies that does family dysfunction. Think THE SQUID AND THE WHALE or MARGOT AT THE WEDDING. Think of a middle-class American family gathering for a big occasion, being truly horrific to each other until, hey, they all realise that they are family and they love each other, thus making the first hour's histrionics seem a bit pointless. All this in played out against the background of perhaps the most forced politically correct wedding in cinema history - moreover, in a movie where director Jonathan Demme seems far more interested in the outstanding score that in the narrative arc. He's more wedding planner than engaged director in this film. Nonetheless, the movie is worth seeing for Anne Hathaway's raw performance as recovering junkie, Kym, who is reinserted into family life for her sister Rachel's wedding. Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) resents the fact that Kym is the centre of attention - Kym resents everyone judging her. The arguments between Kym and Rachel build to an almost unbearable crescendo. It's a shame that it all disintegrates into an extended world music video.

RACHEL GETTING MARRIED played Venice, Toronto and London 2008. It is currently on release in the US. It opens in Germany on March 26th, in Belgium on April 22nd, and in the Netherlands on April 30th.

London Film Fest Day 15 - QUANTUM OF SOLACE - the Bond that dare not speak its name

Health warnings up-front. I despise the Ian Fleming Bond novels. They are vulgar, misogynistic, sado-masochistic fantasy novels that miss the mark on international espionage as far as Michael Bay missed the mark with PEARL HARBOUR. Give me the grime of John Le Carre any day. As far as the movies go, I appreciated the pre-Daniel Craig franchise insofar as it was camp, ludicrous, gratuitously luxurious and balls-out ridiculous. To me, Bond was only good insofar as he was driving pretty cars and the villains were stroking a white cat. I can, however, see why many people didn't like the old Bond flicks. The boundary between being camp and just being bad is easily transgressed viz. DIE ANOTHER DAY.

I think a lot of people who hate typical Bond movies liked CASINO ROYALE because it was trying to be a BOURNE film. It had characters with real emotions, a decent plot, proper actors and some okay action scenes. I, on the other hand, hated CASINO ROYALE on the grounds that if I want to watch a decent spy thriller, I'll watch THE BOURNE IDENTITY. If I watch a Bond film I want a Bond film. I don't want Bond driving a fracking Ford Mondeo and playing Poker in the Hotel Splendide.

My view is that the Bond franchise has now boxed itself into a corner. It's too ashamed to do anything too Bond - random rumpy-pumpy, gratuitous violence - but feels that it has to nod to the genre-tropes. So, in QUANTUM OF SOLACE, Bond does have a random shag with Gemma Arterton but it's all very perfunctory and joyless. On the other hand, the movie wants to be both an emotional character drama AND an action film. So you find yourself in a very odd mish-mash of a film. In the case of QUANTUM OF SOLACE, it's directed by Marc Forster (THE KITE RUNNER, STRANGER THAN FICTION) who knows how to do drama. Problem is, he can't direct action movies for toffee. It's all hand-held close-ups and frenetic editing so you can't tell what's going on. I was just praying for him to pull back, keep the camera still and just let the action unwind.

All this is to delay the inevitable point where I attempt to tell you the plot of QUANTUM OF SOLACE. This is tricky because QoS is a really badly written, poorly assembled film, with a narrative (and indeed a title) that never quite make sense. It's a terrible waste of Daniel Craig and Mathieu Amalric as the baddie. Gemma Arterton barely gets a look-in and Olga Kurylenko is once again just a body. The basic idea is that Bond is on the warpath after the shadowy evil organisation that forced the suicide of his lover, Vesper Lynd. So Bond goes ga-ga, indulging in a plethora of chase scenes in the company of similarly vengeful Camille (Olga Kurylenko). They are chasing down Dominic Greene (Amalric), head of a Smersh like org called Quantum (a-ha!) We know he's a purveyor of evil because he's essentially a utilities trader! And that's it. Welcome to Bond does Enron.

Obviously, all the deeply annoying crap from CASINO holds over here. The shameless merchandising; the endless chases; the embarassment at being Bond at all. But even if you liked CASINO ROYALE I think you might be disappointed with QUANTUM OF SOLACE because it doesn't even have the compensation of tight plotting and emotional engagement.

QUANTUM OF SOLACE played London 2008. It goes on release in the UK, France and Sweden this weekend. It opens next weekend in Bahrain, Belgium, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Oman, the Philippines, Switzerland, Argentina, Bolivia,Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Syria, Thailand, Ukraine, UAE, Italy and Norway. It opens on November 14th in Hungary, Austria, Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Guatemala, Honduras, Iceland, India, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Panama, Poland, Romania, Taiwan, Turkey and the USA. It opens in Australia on 19th November; in Spain on the 21st; in South Africa on the 28th; in New Zealand and Venezuela on the 4th December; in Uruguay on the 26th December and in Japan on January 10th 2009.

London Film Festival Day 14 - LION'S DEN / LEONERA

This festival has seen a trio of movies anchored by powerful performances by men - HUNGER, IL DIVO and THE WRESTLER. So it's refreshing to finally come across a movie that centres on the performance of a woman, and also highlights the specifically feminine issue of motherhood, and more powerfully, raising a child while incarcerated.

As the film opens, our protagonist, Julia (Martina Gusman), wakes up in bed, bruised, bloodied and in shock. She automatically goes out for the day and returns him, and only then does she realise that there is a dead man in her house. She's arrested and charged with killing the man - the lover of her boyfriend (Rodrigo Santoro). Prison overwhelms this shy pregnant woman, unwilling to shower naked, spurning the lesbian advances of her fellow inmates. By the time she is tried and convicted, three years later, she has become as brazen, strong, and willing to accept intimacy as the other prisoners. As her son grows, the question arises of what should happen to Julia's son Tomas. Julia's mother thinks that prison is no fit place for a child to live. But Julia thinks that the best place for her son is with his mother. And so we build to a tense denouement in which Julia goes to extreme lengths to protect her child.

LEONERA isn't the kind of film that's full of action and plot points. It's essentially the story of a woman who grows in self-knowledge and strength through her friendship with other women and her love for her child. Despite it's apparently dour subject matter, I can reassure you that it never drags, moves along at a swift pace, is utterly engrossing, and ultimately, uplifting.

LEONERA played Cannes, Toronto and London 2008. It was released in Argentina and Spain earlier this year. It opens in France on December 3rd and in the Netherlands on December 11th.

London Film Festival Day 14 - THE BROTHERS BLOOM

THE BROTHERS BLOOM is the visually delightful but ultimately self-indulgent follow-up film from writer-director Rian Johnson. His first film, BRICK, reinjected noir with a teen sensibility and seemed genuinely unique. It's tragic, then, to see Rian Johnson decide to make a film that seems to be something of a Wes Anderson rip-off. The elaborately designed sets; the anachronistic costumes; the richly choreographed sight-gags; the international jet-set milieu; the suffocating family relationships; the longing romanticism........oh, it's all there. And if the best of Anderson is present in this movie, so too is the worst. All that carefully placed beauty and absurdity does get a bit, well, boring after a while. And the layers and layers of artifice alienate the audience, and prevent us from feeling the reality of the attempted emotional ending. So much for the critique, what of the substance? THE BROTHERS BLOOM opens with a tour-de-force prologue which is narrated entirely in rhyme in a sort of Dr Seuss fashion. Two orphan brothers grow up poor in a rich town. The younger romantic boy wants to talk to a sweet girl but can't work up the courage. So his protective older brother comes up with a complex con in which he'll make some cash, his brother will impress the girl and all the kids will think they've stumbled upon a magic cave. Fast forward twenty years and the elder brother (Mark Ruffalo) is still trying to find the perfect con and the younger brother (Adrien Brody) is still looking for real love. They are joined by a female Japanese equivalent of Silent Bob (Rinko Kikuchi) and their mark, cloistered millionairess Penelope (Rachel Weisz). The first hour of the film is brilliant fun. Kikuchi steals every scene she's in and Weisz shows that she has real comic acting ability. Even Ruffalo and Brody are fine. The problem is simply that the fun and games go on too long and deaden the impact of the ending. 

THE BROTHERS BLOOM played Toronto and London 2008. It goes on release in the US on December 19th.