SUNSHINE CLEANING - shameless cash-in

SUNSHINE CLEANING is a worthless film. The script is derivative, the tone mis-judged and the execution poor.

Essentially, the film is a shameless attempt to cash-in on the sleeper-success of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE by recasting its characters in another setting. Once again we have a family beset by financial crisis and suburban failure. Admittedly, instead of a married couple we have two sisters – one, a high school sweetheart turned mistress and cleaner – the other a troubled college drop-out. But, in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE style, we have a central relationship between an eccentric grandfather and an eccentric grandchild. The plot, such as it is, consists of the two sisters setting a crime-scene clean-up business in order to finance the kid’s private education.

The tone of the film also attempts to ape the black comedy of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE but the script isn’t funny enough for that. Rather, we get a poor attempt to make a light-hearted film about painful subject matter – suicide, drug use and failure.

Finally, there are the difficulties with the execution. Amy Adams is cast as the older sister, but looks and plays younger than Emily Blunt. Emily Blunt’s accent is unsure. And casting Alan Arkin as the eccentric grandfather only confirms the movie’s attempt to capture the same tone as LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. Technically, the film suffers from a muddy colour palette and uninspired camera-work, relieved only by two exceedingly clumsy pastiche slow-mo shots of the two sisters at the start of the film, in the style of Wes Anderson.

SUNSHINE CLEANING played Sundance 2008 and was released last year in the US. It was released earlier this year in Canada, Sweden, Israel, Greece, the Netherlands and Germany. It is currently on release in Belgium, France, Australia, South Africa and the UK. It opens next week in Denmark, the following week in Singapore and Japan and on August 6th in New Zealand.

BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE - derivative, plotless nonsense

BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE had potential, making the final product even more tragic. In post-WWII Japan, half demon / half human Saya (Gianna Jun) teams up with the mysterious "Council" - an ancient and semi-official organisation dedicated to fighting the forces of darkness - to avenge her human father's death at the hands of a particularly vicious vampire - Onigen. Sound a little like BLADE? That's because it is a little like BLADE, except with a female lead, low-tech weaponry, no boning, and massive plot holes.

In fact, the gaps in the plot were so gaping that the whole experience was rather surreal. Several times I thought I'd nodded off for 10 minutes and missed a bunch of stuff - but no, it was just repeatedly non-sequitor. Things just happen ex-nihilo - characters turn on other characters with no discernible motive or cause. There is no build up towards anything - no progression toward some form of resolution - no real character development.

A love story is thrown in there, and just as suddenly thrown out. Demons appear out of nowhere, without any warning or reason, triggering another poorly animated fight scene before the next aimless plot moment. Characters drive along cliff-top roads for no good reason, going nowhere that we know of, only to act as a prop for random high speed sword slashing.

At one point, a demon chases an airplane with the main character in pursuit. We don't know why. We don't know who or what is on the plane, why the demon is after it, or how the main character knew the demon would be there. What is more confusing is that the demon has wings, and thus has no need of aerial transportation. These weird "how did they know that?" and "why is this happening?" and "that doesn't make sense..." moments maintain a sense of almost complete disconnectedness in the audience throughout.

Thus the film "progresses", jumping from vampire to vampire, eventually reaching a climax that was so deus ex machina and anti-climactic that I walked out to go to the loo believing it to be a dream sequence midway through the film. I piss, come back, and to my utter confusion find the credits rolling. WTF? **THAT** was the end?? Ya woh? Nothing actually happened!

So, overall, this is one to miss. The only semi-entertaining moment was when I realised the Army General in the first third of the movie was actually Larry Lamb, Peggy's errant ex in Eastenders, explaining his piss poor American accent. But that, and an uneasy sense of confusion and disorientation, really wasn't worth the eight quid fifty I paid to get in. Two thumbs down.

SYLVIA - dirge

The first film I ever watched at the London Film Fest started a trend of disappointing opening and closing night galas - the programming dictated by commercial interests rather than artistic merit. The movie was Christine Jeffs' dismal biopic of Sylvia Plath: acclaimed poet; wife of the adulterous Ted Hughes; mother to two small children; and suicide. And if you think I'm being reductive, then that is exactly what this movie does: it reduces Plath and Hughes' relationship to a daytime TV melodrama. Oh how pretty tony, young Sylvia (Gwyneth Paltrow) looks! See how her hair shines! See how that devilishly handsome Ted Hughes gets tired of her and betrays her! See how she is martyred in a dismal British flat in dismal post-war London! Oh, how Paltrow emotes inner pain! The whole thing was utterly dull and unconvincing. The fault, however, does not lie with the actors, nor with the score, cinematography or any other matter of execution. It lies in the movie's conception as a touching homage to Sylvia rather than a genuinely engaged, insightful analysis of what was, by all accounts, a passionate marriage and a painful suicide that cruelly left behind small children. The resulting film simultaneously caused offence to Plath's family for daring to be made at all - but causes offence to its viewers by refusing to actually delve into the emotional torment at its heart. It is the same emotional evation that frustrated me in Christine Jeffs' new film, SUNSHINE CLEANING - another film that deals with quite dark, depressing subject matter and yet handles it with all the willingness to truly engage of a rom-com (but without the benefit of actual laughs).

SYLVIA played London 2003 and opened in 2003 and 2004. It is available on DVD.

ELECTRIC DREAMS - doesn't hold up well

According to IMDBPro, Virginia Madsen is trying to remake the 1984 rom-com classic, ELECTRIC DREAMS. It’s a film I remember fondly my childhood, if only for the sound-track featuring Boy George and Heaven 17, but so hazy was my memory that I hadn’t realised that it starred Virgina Madsen or, indeed, the chap who went on to play Harry Smith in TWIN PEAKS. Back in the early 80s computers were new and exciting and oh so slightly threatening. The idea that a computer could malfunction, grow sentient and attempt to sabotage it’s geeky owner’s relationship with his new musician girlfriend was an easy sell. Rewatching the film today, it looks and feels hopelessly dated. The synthesiser music and computer screen visuals are pre-historic. The romantic dialogue between Madsen and Lenny von Dohlen is hackneyed – and seems to come from a more innocent age before social networking and speed dating. And most damning, the movie is shot almost as a series of pop videos – unsurprising given that its director, Steve Barron, didn’t direct another movie until 1990’s TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, but segued into music videos, notably Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. I rather wish I hadn’t revisited the film but had left it as a fond memory of early 80s excitement of a high-tech future. Steve Barron didn't direct another movie till TMNT in 1990 but did film legendary music videos like Billie Jean.

ELECTRIC DREAMS was released in 1984 and is available on DVD.

Late review - HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU

HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU is a deeply depressing film about contemporary thirty-somethings dating, divorcing, marrying and generally entering into sado-masochistic relationships. The basic premise of the movie seems to be that women, and occasionally men, read too much into situations and end up getting hurt when they should just stop being delusional and move on....except for when the studio needs a Hollywood-cute ending, and they shouldn't, in fact, move on, but hold out for the fairytale happy ending. I dislike this movie for being too gutless to pursue its world-view to its logical end. I discard the movie for being so poorly directed by Ken Kwapis, whose priors include the abysmal Robin Williams vehicle, LICENSE TO WED. And I despise it for basically crafting a product aimed at women that seeks to, essentially, mock them for their delusional fantasies while simultaneously pandering to them. All this is not to discount the nuanced performances from Jennifer Connelly and Jennifer Aniston, but to regret their choice of script.

HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU was released in Spring 2009 and is released on DVD next week.

UP - lost me in Peru

Directed by the guys who wrote animated features that set the bar for animation - WALL-E, FINDING NEMO and RATATOUILLE - UP further burnishes the reputation of Pixar. The first thirty minutes are as brilliant as anything in WALL-E. The movie opens with a "meet-cute" - two little kids play together - she gives him courage and doesn't mind that he doesn't speak too much. In an elegant montage we see them marry, love each other, miscarry, grow old together, and grieve alone. It's wonderfully done, and I was crying almost throughout. The movie continues with our hero, now an old man, left alone, holding out against the surrounding redevelopment project and life in a nursing home. The old man has a plan: he's going to hitch his house to thousands of helium balloons, travel to Peru and find a long-missing explorer. Only glitch is, a pesky boy scout was clinging to his balcony as he flew away. As this familiar cine-odd-couple fly off to Peru, I enjoyed the shift from pathos to comedy. But as the movie became a jungle adventure, I struggled to maintain interest. The mad-explorer who has descended into Mistah-Kurtz madness, surrounded by dogs fitted with collars that enable them to speak - seemed to come from a different movie. And seriously, if you had invented a dog-collar that allowed dogs to speak, you wouldn't need to scurry off in disgrace. The movie only just regains it's bearings in a lovely scene where the old man realises that the boy-scout gets no real parental attention.

UP played Cannes 2009 and is currently on release in Russia, Canada, the US, Egypt, Kuwait, Mexico, Argentina, Panama, Romania and Venezuela. It is released next week in New Zealand and the Ukraine. It opens on July 29th in France, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and Spain. It opens in August in Portugal, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Iceland and Greece. It opens in September in Germany, Bulgaria and Norway. It opens in October in Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, the UK and Japan.