News item: If we were all armed audiences might show some respect

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is wonderful. The whole thing is a romp filled with humour, authenticity and strong characterisation, combining to form a hilarious melodrama. With Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law as Sherlock and Watson, the close but bickering relationship between the two fictional colleagues reaches into that space originally created by Kirk and Spock and still gets a laugh through the same relentless whimsy.

With the heroine/villainess Irene, and Watson's young lady, Mary, beautifying things, the pair do battle with the evil of Lord Blackwood with his plans to - yes, of course - take over the world! It's not only a predictable and hackneyed plot, it's also the perfect one for the movie having, as it does, charm and a proven track record.

This is a street-fighting eccentric - a Sherlock Holmes we've never seen before. It's also a Watson who commands some respect as an ex-soldier, handy in a fight. I've seen critics saying that they were surprised to like this movie and that they did so despite it being a Guy Ritchie one. I have no idea how that works. I only know that I was in a much better mood for seeing it and that I'd recommend it highly.

Even the montage of film clips that turned into sketches during the closing credits were interesting. A lot of people walked out and missed them once the action of the movie had ended. There's also a brilliant folk song after that, despite our cinema turning up the lights and edging forward before it had finished with their team of cleaners.

A fabulous romp. See it. I hope they do more of them. It's a lot of fun.

Avatar

This movie is a huge experience. The story is a clunky one involving a heavy-handed metaphor: America is bad and Africa is good within the Romantic tradition where nature is good and all civilisation and science is bad. The didactic programmes from the UK's BBC (Peoples' Bullshit Broadcasting Collective) constantly push this lefty agenda and it always distracts from the whole. It's never good. Not ever. Avatar is all about this, too, but once you've frowned at being preached to about exploitation of the noble natives this is a movie well worth seeing.

It's in 3D. That's brilliant. The CGI and the 3D combine to wonderful effect. The graphics are so very good that you find yourself getting mixed up as to which actors are real and which are animated. Facial expression and movement are so perfect that you can't see the trick of it. You'd swear someone was real until you step back and reflect that they're not a possible human shape. Perhaps their head is too large or they have a super-thin long waist. You have to do a double-take when you realise that you're believing in the existence of huge, fast people with tails.

The moon, Pandora, where the action takes place is the rainforest which we're all destroying because we're Western and evil, but step outside the thumpy and judgemental metaphor and what a place it is! Hammer-headed rhino creatures, prehistoric birds, lush jungle with massive trees... The detail is fantastic in its sheer artistic imagination and intricacy. Now, if you think about it, what better combination could you have than such complexity and aesthetic beauty and the power of 3D?

You put on your Roy Orbison glasses and even the titles in the movie stick out a few feet from the screen. The distance peels away; things are visible through gaps in other things, and pure spirits of the mother tree float like fluffy jellyfish over the heads of people sitting in front of you.

This is a movie story on a par with Star Wars, perhaps, rather than Firefly, but it really doesn't matter. It's a ground-breaking demonstration of the fact - obvious to me even as a child in the 1950s - that 3D is better than 2D. Think about it. It has an extra 'D'. Way back then, we used to get stereoscopic picture viewers as a free gift with our breakfast cereal. In the Great Exhibition of 1851 there was a 3D picture of Queen Victoria. The only real surprise with 3D, in fact, is that it's taken this long for the movie and TV people to bring it to the masses.

It may be that this huge improvement will catch on. Of course, it's all been done before and was treated as a novelty. People are put off by the glasses, too. Still, how hard can it be? We've got TVs the size of football fields bolted onto our walls now. The valve operated CRT jobbies of the past are all but gone. If our digital, stereo, HD, HDMI pluggable new-tech could be produced on industrial scales to replace those old clonkers, why aren't 3D sets being rolled out?

Well - maybe they are?

It's been a long, long wait so far as I'm concerned. If I have to wait until I've died of old age I'll be very, very annoyed.

Anyway - Avatar: an exciting romp with aliens and huge battle-scenes between thinly disguised Americans seeking to exploit thickly disguised, animated alien Africans. It's a valid viewpoint. Much more importantly, you get to wear big black glasses and marvel at floaty things. It's an old idea, this 3D, but Avatar manages to make the very best of it so that it seems like something brand new and compelling. You're drawn in by the visual splendour and sheer spectacle.

As a footnote, though, I think my own reaction to seeing this long-awaited technology given full-reign on such a massive scale was always going to be pretty enthusiastic. My daughter didn't like the 3D and my wife considered it less impressive than a Donald Duck movie we saw in 3D years ago in Orlando, Florida where things came right up to your nose.

You'll have to check it out and form your own opinion as to which reaction is correct.

It's mine.

Update:

In the Telegraph, Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, ended his opinion of all the people having post-Avatar depression and his take on the movie like this:

"Avatar is rooted in just about every film Hollywood made about cowboys and Indians. And that is why all those who think this is an anti-American film are also laughably mistaken. Why is Avatar being cheered by audiences of rednecks in Kentucky? Because it is the all-American movie - and not just because the white, American hero is given a messiah role among the blue-noses.

It is a feature of powerful military empires that they like to romanticise their victims and luxuriate guiltily in the pathos of their suffering. Think of the Roman crowds pleading for the lives of captured barbarians in the amphitheatre. Think of the statue of The Dying Gaul. The eco-conscience of Avatar is an example of how a dominant consumerist society is able to exhibit its better nature, to parade its guilt, to feel good about feeling bad.

And I can't believe that many of these gloomy post-Avatar Westerners, when they really think about it, would want to up sticks to Pandora and take part in Na'vi society, with its obstinate illiteracy, undemocratic adherence to a monarchy based on male primogeniture and complete absence of restaurants. The final irony, of course, is that this entrancing vision of prelapsarian innocence is the product of the most ruthless and sophisticated money-machine the world has ever seen. With a budget of $237 million and with takings already at 1 billion pounds, this exquisite capitalist guilt trip represents one of the great triumphs of capitalism."

And, as this took me to an even better understanding of the politics behind the movie, I wrote in with this:

"I'd previously thought the crude PC moral symbolism was about America versus Iraq or about a more generic cry of 'racism' against the West. Your final three paragraphs left me much more enlightened. Thanks."

FlameDruid

on January 25, 2010 at 03:38 PM

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

Because cinemas in the UK are charging a whopping £3.80 for a packet of Skittles, I'm usually in quite a bad mood when I go to see movies these days. Fortunately I picked up a large packet at a garage forecourt for £1.40 on the way and smuggled them in concealed in a pig. Some of that is true. Thus, I was pleased to be alive and very receptive to the movie - and I love vampire movies so the title looked very promising.

On the whole I think Cirque du Freak is entertaining and well produced although it never struck me as scary or convincing, being so clearly aimed at the teenage market. This genre - the vampire flick aimed at teenagers - is something I've written about already on this page if you scroll down to 'Twilight', far below. Much of what I said there will apply here too.

The special effects used to make the freaks freaky was good. It reminded me very much of 'Carnivale' - a brilliant American TV series that was cancelled for being too dark, intelligent, and scary, I expect. Don't ask me to say which I preferred. You might think it was 'Carnivale' but I really couldn't say.

(It was Carnivale).

That's torn it. The cat's out of the bag. Okay, I liked the bearded lady and the believable circus of weirdoes in Carnivale a lot more. If you're a teenager and you don't want a back-story you can believe in and characters that ring true, Cirque du Freak has teenage characters with whom you can identify and some super-fast flitting about. I think that was the same trick vampires could do in 'Twilight'.

My daughter who didn't eat my yellow Skittles because I gave her her very own packet of Rolos, is a teenager still, and she just liked it. She knowledgably pointed out that it was the movie adaptation of the first of a series of novels and said she was looking forward to the rest. With a source of Skittles so cheap, I'm sure I'll be able to sit through them too, and with a smile.

One highpoint for us was one of our favourite actors, Ray Stevenson, as easily the most convincing vampire. Having seen him in 'Rome' he can do no wrong for us. And if he did we'd never dare to tell him.

Ghost Town
and
The Invention of Lying

Both of these movies are great fun. Despite a poor box-office response, each is packed with great gags and wonderful characters. I just got back from seeing 'The Invention of Lying' and it was a lovely story. The writing is funny as people are obliged to be entirely candid in the world where it is set and this is hilarious. The signs on buildings and the advertising alone had me chuckling and the old folks' home sign was so good I nearly fell of my chair laughing.

In Ghost Town, Gervais plays a dentist who becomes able to see the dead. They then want to speak to him and resolve their outstanding issues. The movies mixes comedy with elements of pathos. Gervais's character matures and becomes more sympathetic and likeable as events unfold.

In both movies Ricky Gervais has touched on death and the afterlife as the engine for his comedy. Perhaps this reduces his fan base by eliminating all the offended religious people out there who probably hate them. As an atheist, I think his send up of religion and light treatment of death work at every level. Why the low box-office? I suppose it's hard to predict how the masses will respond to anything. They've certainly got this wrong. These movies mix compassion with lots of great comic lines delivered brilliantly.

I'd recommend both of these films to anyone intelligent with a sense of humour. For the rest, apparently a double-bill reissue of Toy Story did better than 'The Invention of Lying' so, clearly, you can't beat an effortless franchise for getting bums on seats.

My teenage kids and I will be eagerly awaiting further movies from Ricky Gervais.

Creation

This was beautifully made and the performances were fabulous but I didn't like it. I'd heard of Darwin and this was about Darwin. However, I'd seen Darwin as a forward thinker whose 'Origin of Species' had revolutionised thought, sweeping away religious nonsense, replacing it with a viable, scientifically verifiable understanding - not of 'Creation' - but of evolution. In the US, completely mad people make museums based on the fiction that dinosaurs and man walked the earth (created quite recently in their view) together. This is 'Creationism': the fictional belief that a supremely advanced being made us all. The impact of evolutionary theory and the notion of the survival of the fittest, not to mention the controversy stemming from how these contradict traditional made-up notions of Creation, ought - one would think - make for a riveting story.

Unfortunately, we're taken through a period in Darwin's life in which the death of one of his daughters leaves him deranged and his marriage dysfunctional. This, tragically, occupies most of the movie. The angst is well represented and the acting is faultless. However, it makes it appear that Darwin wrote his masterpiece for one reason alone: loss of faith. His voyages and adventures, his collection of data and his copious note-taking prior appear as nothing. Once he is embittered and twisted and riddled by angst that affects his mind and body, only then does he seek to refute God and redefine nature. We can hardly fail to question the motives and reasoning of a man addled by laudanum and so turned around by misfortune. He is presented to us as the worst possible judge of reality.

Although, the movie shows us his great work finished during a period of recovery and positivity, of reinvigorated spirits and marital reconciliation, I fear that the damage has been done. By this time I've sighed too often, seen Darwin look haunted too frequently, and become distracted by the virtuoso piano-playing of his wife a little too much.

Whilst I can't find fault with the quality of this movie, nor doubt the accuracy of the research into Darwin's life and feelings, the leap from maudlin madman to greatest thinker of his time didn't seem right. The impact at something other than an existential level would have been welcome. His life in the face of the debate and backlash from the Church would have been interesting too.

Although Darwin falls out with a priest who is a family friend, and this might be seen as indicative of how his work will be received later by the church generally, this side of things seems underplayed for me.

To portray such a rational and scientific man as forever accompanied by a ghost is to imply that he believed in the supernatural. To add to the credits the information that he was 'buried in Westminster Abbey with full Christian honours', makes an ambiguous point. Is it that he was forgiven by the Church or assimilated by it? Is it that he complied with their views about Creation and therefore sought an afterlife according to their teachings? Who knows?

Richard Dawkins, I find, has long been excited by the 'revelations' about life and the true nature of being as revealed by Darwin. I suspect that Darwin would have come off a lot better had his life been interpreted in fiction by Dawkins. I feel sure that he'd have been a more vital figure with greater enthusiasm and more conviction.

Did Darwin, in truth, give his wife the option to burn his entire manuscript? I shall have to look this up to see.

All in all, 'Creation' is an intelligent film, well-acted, sensitive and beautifully - if darkly -  done, but I have trouble with the notion that a giant of his time and such a genius should be paraded at his worst whilst the best of him and the fruits of his twenty year project - his world-shaking 'Origin of Species' - should be relegated to a pre-publication brown parcel.

Lost in Austen

There are some thick plebs who don't get Jane Austen. We have to accept that. Her incredibly clever, tongue-in-cheek, send ups of the pompous and foolish have entertained proper people for two hundred years but, this being the age of X-Factor and Spastics have Talent, it stands to reason that the Eastenders fodder won't get off on the wit one bit. Her combination of eloquence and grace would never make it into a Big Brother house.

However, should there be anyone reading my lovely page who knows what a fine catch Mr Collins was, or how truly selfless and kind was Mrs Woodhouse, then this is the very daisy for you.

The characters are gorgeously rendered. Jane is so like Austen's own Jane that I'd have recognised her anywhere. Bingley fops about honourably and Darcy scowls up a storm in every shot. Everyone is beautifully realised.

Amanda Price, modern and blunt, a fan of Austen's world, is somewhat surprised at finding Elizabeth Bennett in her bathroom. From this unlikely happenstance begins a four part television treat. Through the looking glass into Narnia - if you'll forgive my over-egging it a little - she goes into the world of Pride and Prejudice and everything changes.

It's funny. It's intelligent. It's charming. It's so good it's going to be made into a movie. Personally, I don't think they're going to better the ITV version with such convincing actors. They've done it justice already.

As a story this is light work and easy meat but sometimes simple ideas like simple songs are the best. All I can say of this four part mini-series is that I've watched eight episodes of it in ecstasies of laughter and I doubt that twelve or even sixteen will be sufficient. My favourite moment - and you must not blink or you'll miss it - is most assuredly when Amanda and Mr and Mrs Woodhouse are discussing Bingley's running off with Lydia. (I know it should have been Churchill...) At the idea of Lydia 'flinging her maidenhead out of the window', Mrs Bennett takes a despairing dive of mortification in the background. It's comic genius and exquisitely timed.

And that, I think, is a description suited to encompass the whole production. It's just fabulous. Well done!

500 Days of Summer

We all like a romantic comedy. Notting Hill and Four Weddings must be and should be burned into our racial unconscious. They're a delight. This movie is kind of the same thing only it messes with the genre. You know when you get Shakespeare done in space-helmets or as the mafia or with everyone on pogo-sticks? This does that. This isn't actually apparent until the end when it breaks with the tradition of boy hates girl, girl hates boy, boy and girl develop common ground, boy and girl feel whirlwinds of emotion, boy and girl split up, boy and girl get back together, boy and girl marry and everyone looks really cheerful.

That's not to say that in the end we're left feeling bad for anybody. In fact it finishes with a visual gag based on a look and we're left with positive possibilities abounding. That's quite reasonable so go and see it and that's how you'll feel at the end - 'quite reasonable'. The leading man looks like a young Keith Ledger so that may sway you.

The time frame is bitty and goes forward and back again in a dizzying and disorganised way, though.

Skittles? You now have to sell your daughters into slavery and kill people for the mob in order to afford them. I used to eat lots but now I merely warm my hands on them in garage forecourt shops and dream of the days when watching a film and eating a packet of Skittles were synonymous.

Star Trek

This is a good movie. My wife didn't like the early back story to Kirk and Spock with which it starts but described the ending as 'magnificent' and she's someone entirely uninterested in any of the Star Trek series. She wouldn't even watch an episode if you stood on her face. She liked this, though.

At the same time, a Trekkie/Trekker would really love this. Though not in that fundamentalist category, I've always liked the various series with the exception of 'Deep Space Nine' in which nobody boldly went anywhere much, and I certainly enjoyed this film.

One of the original actors is actually in it, however, using new, younger actors, Star Trek introduces characters from the original series and throws them together in an excellent romp with fantastic CGI. If it wasn't CGI they must have had a huge budget.  

The first captain, Pike, from the pilot episode is there as well. This shows a readiness to reference the lore and history of the story with some degree of accuracy. Spock's relationship to the Communications Officer is closer than it used to be. Otherwise, things stay quite true to the original.

If you were ever quite fond of James T Kirk, Bones, Spock, Sulu, and the rest of the crew, this movie updates the original, making it fresh and modern. The action is fast and furious and filled with excitement but, when the actors adopt mannerisms and facial expressions from the Shatner and Nimmoy era, there's something respectful and nostalgic about it all.

In 1969, the original series on TV ran as America landed on the Moon. This movie has some of that sense of awe. Kirk is cocky, plucky and heroic. There's a great sense of human character and nobility of purpose in Star Trek. People are honourable and courageous. It's a breath of fresh air which is unusual for a film set in space. More than this, it has many funny moments and I found myself laughing out loud more than once. Highly recommended.

The Prisoner

It's been a long time since 'The Prisoner' burst onto our TV screens. Now there's a remake starring Ian McKellen as Number 2 and James Caviezel as Number 6. This is probably old news in the US but here in the UK I only found out through Google. Here's the original Number 6, Patrick McGoohan, who died in 2009.

It will be interesting to see what they've made of this series. I've just watched all 17 episodes of the old one and here are my thoughts on it.

Firstly, it was a good idea. The notion of a spy resigning and being abducted to a village where various Number 2s are given the task of finding out why he resigned is fascinating. The Portmeirion folly in Porthmadog in Wales is still there if you want to visit the set for the village where he was held captive.

Secondly, McGoohan's on-screen persona as Number 6 was compelling. Handsome, quirky, charismatic - McGoohan created a character that almost crackled with electricity. I was amazed to hear him speak in an American accent later. I'd bought into his clipped tones and public school assertiveness completely. Even now, his performance is perfect.

Thirdly, this was a series that was prepared to push the boat out with the adoption of science and technology, presenting a dystopian vision of social engineering. Like much good sci-fi, some of the notions in it were prophetic. The control room in the village and CCTV control rooms today, for example, show a clear parallel. They're both predated by Orwell's 'telescreens' in '1984', of course.

So, has the original series stood the test of time? Not really! As a big fan when it first came out, having now watched it again all the way through, a lot of the technological predictions seem very clunky. Asking a computer 'why?' wouldn't blow it up. This silly notion was also used in the original 'Star Trek' (Landrew) and the association of computers with devious evil shows a Luddite instinct.

Nothing is digital in the original series. These days this seems odd.

References to modern speech idioms in the final episode and the introduction of juke boxes playing the excellent 'All you need is love' by The Beatles, seem to be a way of borrowing 'coolness' from the pop ethos of the early 60s. Ironically, this decision dates the show now more than anything else could have done, placing it at a fixed point in our cultural history.

Some of the humour, signalled by 'this is a big joke' background music, becomes heavy-handed in the last episodes. It's in the final episodes that the storyline, for me, seems to fly apart. Also, in one episode everyone is concerned not to 'damage the tissue' and in another they're swapping 6's brain with someone else's.

The last episode, in particular, indulges in an acid-trip of unlikeliness. The reintroduction of 'The Kid' whom we saw leap to his death in the cowboy episode, complete with his very nice top hat, but in the role of a very far-out hippy, was a world-beating continuity error.

Some of the dialogue, especially from 'The girl who was death', was very badly written using Commander Data-like speech in a tone so unconvincing that it could have stripped wallpaper.

These are just a few of the criticisms one can easily level at the original 'Prisoner' series from the early 60s, but when I first saw it, over 40 years ago, it was fine. The errors that seem so obvious now weren't apparent then. The technological absurdities of its analogue world that aspired to be cutting edge seemed far less important. The metaphor of state determinism was clear enough, and the startlingly charming Patrick McGoohan was a role model burning with individuality and cool.

This was an iconic series that I'd place side by side with 'The Avengers' during the Dianna Rigg period (when it was at its best).

I'm pleased to see that the BBC haven't got their hands on the remake. Had they done so then there's no doubt in my mind that the Green Dome would have been a mosque. The racial and gender profiling that has made such an absurdity of 'Robin Hood', 'Merlin' and 'Doctor Who', seems destined to blow 'laddish' programmes like 'Top Gear' to bits. By the same token, a distinctively English village would be too much for the BBC to bear and they'd surely have had Number 6 awaken in a detention centre or even Sangette.

Hopefully, this objectionable racial/gender profiling won't be present in the ITV remake, and perhaps the technology will have been brought up to date, too. If the writing is also better then all that will remain will be to see if James Caviezel has the dazzling screen presence of the legendary Patrick McGoohan.

The Boat that Rocked

This film makes charming rogues and stereotypes out of everybody in it. It deals with Radio Caroline but renames it Radio Rock. It's an historical comedy and the relationships of the DJs on the ship as well as of the caricatured politicians who want them banned is amusing.

Francesca Longrigg appears as Branagh's uptight, posh wife in a spectacularly good performance. It's brief but it's very distinguished. She plays this tiny but painfully funny role to perfection. I could have watched her do far more of it.

Bill Nighy is just one of the kings of cool in this star-studded movie. Nick Frost, Kenneth Branagh, Rhys Evans and Emma Thompson are in it too.

The heroic 'Count'

Radio Caroline - in case the younger dudes don't know... man -  was a pirate radio station in the 1960s and a full history can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline

and they even have their own website here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline

Having been a young person at the time Radio Caroline was on the air, I think the movie rather overstates how much the public hung on its every word. The montages of fans, glued to their radios, monitoring the station's highs and lows are heart-warming but very contrived and more indicative than realistic.

That being said, this is a feel-good movie and I felt better for seeing it. The humour is silly; the caricatures of the attitudes and behaviour of people in the 60s actually overstates the extent of the promiscuity whilst understating the amount of drugs being consumed, I thought, and there are continuity errors if you like looking for them. Do the montages of fans reacting to news from the ship correspond to the time of day at which it is transmitted? Not always...

Even so, the lack of reality is more than made up for by sheer style, flamboyance and a devil-may-care spirit that does capture the times.

Assuming you buy sweets at a reasonable price and don't get ripped off by the extortionate cost of, say, Skittles in UK cinemas, this is a relaxing romp at sea and a chance to escape your cares.

The actual history of the original radio station - it turns out if you read the Wikipedia account - isn't that close to the story in the movie, but do read it. In some ways it's actually more interesting. There's a murder, for example, and the end certainly didn't come in 1967 as the movie suggests!

Duplicity

It's always nice to see the lovely Julia Roberts but this was an 'Oceans 11' of a movie - long, indecipherable, complex, and not at all gripping. I fell asleep. My wife fell asleep. My daughter thought we were enjoying it and stayed for the last hour for our benefit. Her boyfriend quite liked the ingenuity and plot twists.

To be fair, my wife and I were tired because a bunch of lads had gone past our house late the previous night, singing Oasis songs very loudly. They were in tune but that isn't important. This led to us sitting up at 3.00 a.m. watching 'Bones' and 'CSI'. Also, it was my daughter's birthday and we'd gone out earlier in the day for a meal that took forever to arrive which we then ate in a room where the general volume was slightly louder than our conversation. So it may have been that we were, in fact, unusually tired.

However, the movie - although it did have some funny bits in it - did little to wake me up. It was a spy-type, industrial espionage movie in which I didn't see a gun or any violence. Plots and counter-plots wove a tapestry - one might almost say 'a duvet' - that lulled me insensible. We might not have been intelligent enough for the experience and, instead, my wife and I gave up trying to fathom out the plot, and dozed off.

Skittles might have helped considerably but they're currently selling for an outrageous £2.80 and I'd had a hard enough day without being robbed as well.

'Runaway Bride' or 'Notting Hill' would have made preferable viewing even though we've seen both of them many times. It was hard work for us all and I can only imagine that someone must have seen this in the form of a novel, liked the twists, and thought it would translate brilliantly into a movie epic.

My wife felt like she'd sat an exam, coming out feeling very tired, and the mood - bearing in mind that this was a treat on my daughter's birthday - was altogether subdued in the car coming home.

Too clever for us, I'm afraid. A silly premise, unlikely developments, over-complicated, and having mystifying character motivation. There's a reasonable twist at the end but by that time we'd lost the will to live.

The Young Queen Victoria

There's just no way I was going to pay £2.80 for a packet of Skittles so, as my local cinema insist on charging that outlandish price - roughly twice that of a supermarket - they can forget it. It's a ritual I shall have to forgo. We saw the price and we were not amused.

Fortunately, the movie was superb. The stock image of a spherical Queen Victoria being unamused was replaced by that of a fully formed girl, trapped by her mother and scheming step-father who sought to wrest her power from her.

The settings and costumes are all perfectly authentic and the Belgian, German, and English accents entirely convincing. The gardens are lovely and the rooms splendid but the obligations of the monarch, her changing popularity, her susceptibility to advisors who are self-interested - these things are core to the movie.

I had no idea that Queen Victoria had the same dog as me - a King Charles spaniel. Mine is called Hendrix and is brown and white; hers was black and white and called 'Dash'. However stressful and formal and filled with power-struggles her life may have been, her interactions with this dog showed up her softer side to good advantage.

Nor did I know, before seeing this film, that Albert died of typhoid at 42.

However, quite apart from the educational value of such historical revelations, this is a movie that shows us a wholly sympathetic view of Victoria, her hopes, and an emotional side. Indeed, the ongoing surprise of the film is that it plays almost like a romantic comedy. The main business is Victoria's relationship with Albert and this is presented with great writing, superb acting, and great style. We may start off with an icon in mind when entering the cinema, but we leave it liking Victoria (Emily Blunt) and Albert (Rupert Friend) and being pleased for their twenty years together.

This is a movie full of rich images and convincing characters. It's almost the total opposite, therefore, of so many lamentable BBC programmes with their insistence on anachronistic and inappropriate multicultural ethnic representation. This was something bigger, something grander, and something much better.The Young Queen Victoria is a lovely movie at every level, quite believable, very absorbing as Victoria grows in power, and ending as twenty years of happiness with Albert still lie ahead of her.

Update: apparently the present Queen thought it was a good film but not very authentic. The clothes were too German, I think she may have said, and Albert simply never dived to take a bullet...

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Due to the credit crunch and deepening recession, there will be no Skittles in this review. Basically, we got a great deal from Woolworth's closing down sale and I'd been eating a lot of them. Normally a movie isn't a movie without Skittles but this time I had to forgo the pleasure. I was pinned to the floor by the weight of my own body.

We arrived late and I rushed to the loo. My wife and daughter went in and I followed two minutes later and went into the wrong screen. After about three minutes I realised that I wasn't looking at Brad Pitt and got up and went to find the right one. By the time I got a seat, Benjamin had already been found on a step.

The premise isn't a spoiler but please bang your face on the wall until you're unconscious or stop reading if you want to know nothing, otherwise I shall carry on.

Benjamin Button ages in reverse. That's the show in a nutshell. However, onto this simple and solid frame are grafted layers of symbolism and shifting cross-references to people and situations. The characters - rather like Gerald Durrell's characters in 'My family and other animals' - strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then leave or die. The question - although it isn't stated so far as I can recall - that runs through the movie is, 'What's life all about?' For different people it turns out to be different things. Their roles can be varied but each strives to accomplish goals or to be something. Loving relationships make life important and worthwhile. People have a good side and affect each other positively.

It's a profound movie with some wonderful ideas and great acting, and it's based on a story by F Scott Fitzgerald. There were moments that sent a thrill down my spine as people said certain apposite or unexpected things or when situations altered unexpectedly. The various deaths add significance to the lives of those who die. Humour abounds and yet tear-jerking pathos isn't long in following.

This is an unusual film of which my daughter said (later when I found her again), 'This is the first movie I've seen in ages that was better than the hype in the trailers.' I don't see as many as she does and I tend to forget bad ones very quickly as a rule, but I'd echo her words and recommend 'Benjamin Button' very strongly. It's compelling, fascinating and more than shores up the fantastic fantasy premise about Benjamin's ageing in reverse with beautifully portrayed characters in whom you can always believe, and about whom you always find yourself caring.

This tale is a gem. If you haven't seen it you're missing something very special.

Wanted

Angelina Jolie makes an interesting read in this great fantasy about assassins. Her body is covered with tattoos and, whilst normally I'd associate this with a day out at Weston-Super-Mare (apologies to Americans who won't get that at all...), she's a bit special-looking and I think we'd have to class her tattoos as literature. This is a movie with some outrageous special effects. Most of the ones involving cars made my wife laugh like a drain. They were so over the top as to be hilarious.  Happily, this was intentional.

Behind the humour lies a riveting adventure which pays homage to 'The Matrix' on many occasions, all of which nick 'The Matrix's' sound effects, super-powered jumps and, especially, its big shoot 'em up scene. If you're in a bad mood, watch the hero as he blasts his way through the bad guys. It's the same as 'The Matrix' only way, way, way over the top. You'll come away smiling.

James McAvoy does much of the charging about. Morgan Freeman might be a good guy/might be a bad guy - I'm not saying. It's all completely insane, rather bloody, and a great romp. Not to be missed.

The Fall

This is available on video and actually came out long ago in 2006. I just got to see it and I have to say this held my attention from beginning to end. I'd never seen anything remotely like it in my life. I think it's fair to class it as experimental and unconventional.

There are a number of elements (I nearly said 'elephants', which would be true too) that combine to make this story within a story completely compelling.

The first one is as huge as it is tiny: Catinca Untaru. She's an actress who has to be seen to be believed and anything else I say about her will be a spoiler. Lee Pace's 'Roy Walker' is a complex and flawed character who is the narrator to the action in the movie as well as a vital actor in it.

More than anything else, however, what makes this movie really shine is the way we are given a child's-eye view of life with lots of detail and cross-referenced images that form a kind of logic of their own.

Much of the action is melodramatic and played for laughs and sometimes you find yourself as upset as the actors. This can be quite disturbing at times.

This isn't a conventional genre movie but if you're patient and let it sweep you along, it's beautifully conceived, filmed in great locations, and sure to move you to tears and laughter.

Twilight

No sooner had we sat down than my son came and started trying to get hold of my Skittles. That wasn't a good start to this movie. I gave him my chocolate orange to try to distract him but my wife still repeatedly argued that I should give him my Skittles too. This was quite alarming. In the end I ate what I could with an air of desperation and then gave him the remainder.

The movie was easy to watch as it had no such distractions. The acting seemed amiable and all the characters very likeable. The teenagers at the school where our heroine meets a vampire were all as jolly as could be. There was no bullying, no drugs, nothing but cheerful banter and precocious giggling. The girls were even happier.

At this point can I just say, 'Romeo and Juliet'?

You see, in that famous tragedy, Shakespeare's star-cross'd lovers have passion and beauty but they're acting in a context of difficulty. That's where the tension comes from. Old Capulet and his wife don't make it easy for Juliet to do her own thing. It's all a big problem and they end up dead because of it.

In 'Twilight' we have just the opposite. There are no significant problems and no dire consequences. Nothing matters. There's an attempt at a bad guy but as he gets sorted without much difficulty in no time at all, why should we care?

This is a movie about style and everyone in it is attractive. Even the police chief dad looks handsome. Do they have any depth? None whatsoever. He's so very compliant, for example.

What about the vampires? Running up a tree like a monkey on acid is clever and chucking stuff around whilst proclaiming the danger of one's passion is quite interesting. Neither are even slightly convincing. The best bit was probably their game of baseball although this is slightly weird to a UK film-goer as baseball isn't part of our national psyche, teen or otherwise. It may resonate better in the US.

And now, at this point, can I just say, 'Buffy and Angel'?

I've loved the vampire genre since the seventies when I used to sit watching Hammer Films with my mum. The high point in their development surely came in the TV series by Joss Whedon (praises be upon him), who created cool teenage vamps with Indie bands in the background. They were witty. They were faced with dilemmas. They rocked. They were so interesting that we would have wanted them as mates. Everyone in these programmes had charisma. Everyone had a back story. We weren't unaware of their sexual attraction but that was the least of the reasons we felt compelled to watch. We mainly cared about them and wanted to see what happened next. How would they survive the next evil plan?

Twilight has none of this. Characters appear and seem to promise a back story - and I'm thinking of the Indian chap in the wheelchair particularly now - but do they turn up with a chief's head-dress and a bow and arrow giving it some chanting? They do not. They fizzle out. There are a few significant looks and that's about it.

It seems to me that this was a movie aimed at an air-head audience of teenagers by someone older and rather patronising. It struck me as something that had been a novel - good or bad I don't know - that someone decided was a good business concept. Make it into a film. Dress up some beautiful people. Make it appealing visually. I'm thinking now, especially, of a scene where our vamp is playing the piano and his doting girlfriend is admiring every note as ethereal light streams through every window. It out Lennons Lennon's Imagine video. The difference is, of course, that Lennon was real, wrote the song, performed the song, and wasn't just a concoction of fashionable and pleasant images to please the eye of teenagers in search of a gothified role model.

In this regard perhaps the film succeeds. As a pretty escape from the mundanities of life, this movie offers a fantasy view of an intense relationship filled with passion and gasping protestations. It offers a world of Peter Pan flying about and wish-fulfilment in which parents are quite understanding as their teenage daughters nip out for an evening with the undead.

The acting is consistently good and the overall effect is quite pleasantly stylish so I wouldn't say that this is a movie to avoid. It's flawed in that it has loose ends, no guts, no engine, no real issues, no deaths (of anyone significant to us), and is somewhat of a coat hanger for fashionable teenage niceness. However, it looks lovely, the characters are likeable, and it gets us away from the credit crunch. Maybe that's enough. It's only a movie, after all. We don't have to believe in it.

Happy New Year!

The Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles

With such a famous franchise, this TV series was always going to be a success one suspects. As a proud owner of the box-set of the three original Arnie movies, I didn't expect this to be very good, much in the way that Star Trek has various greats series out but gives rise to some iffy games. The franchise isn't enough - there has to be some merit to the latest versions other than associated value based on the first one. The Pirates of the Caribbean, for example, didn't get better as it went on. It's a risky business, playing catch-up with a great original idea.

This series manages it sometimes. Some of the original lines from the movie reappear, for example, and the roles of Sarah and John are very true to the first movie, too. As a fan of Summer Glau, having loved 'Firely' and 'Serenity' in which she played the character 'River', my appreciation of this Terminator series goes up and down in direct proportion to how much screen time she gets. As Cameron, an evil robot programmed to be helpful, she's in her element. Because she looks so delicate and pretty, her ultra-violent role is made all the more powerful. She did it as River Tam, and she does it here as a killing machine, and this is good because it really, really works well.

This isn't to say that the other characters lack anything: it's just that Summer is so very interesting to watch and her special abilities, her history, her issues, her Commander Data like attempts to understand human foibles, her sexy and yet innocent demeanour, her deadpan delivery of understated humour - all light up the screen. Sarah and John are at their most interesting when they're reacting to her. Even 'Funny Derek' who has come back from the future too, seems to have most relevance when he's rejecting her attentions thus showing his total hatred of 'metal'.

Over two series, so far - and I hope there are more - the story rambles somewhat, and certainly by the end of series two, it appears to finish with many loose ends dangling. This seems untidy.

Strong points, for me, include the relationship of Sarah Connor and her son, strained by their unusual lifestyle of violence and pursuit by killer robots, and the relationships they have with Cameron. As Cameron blurts out to avoid disconnection in one episode, 'John, you don't want to do this. I love you and you love me!' That's an interesting aspect of their relationship hinted at right there. We learn that they're destined to spend many years together after Judgement day.

The menacing liquid robot who has taken over at a big corporation to work on AI in the basement has a fascinating role as she seeks to win over the daughter of the mother she must have murdered to take over her position. John Henry, the machine she's working on, is becoming more dangerous as it is given the body of a terminator robot.

The best episode was probably the penultimate one in which Cameron befriends keepers of public records armed with a Glock and a packet of donuts. Her detective work is fascinating and the outcome truly stunning. It's possibly even better than the marvellous moment in another episode when she fights another female robot in a lift although the outcome of that is a joy in its own way. Not so much donuts as pretzels, I think.

The worst points, for me, involve anything that drifts the story away from the three central characters into less powerful and compelling areas. The FBI agent who goes to work for the evil liquid robot goes out of character and is poorly written. For him to dig up a terminator and give it to the mad scientists is a stretch of suspended disbelief too far. He doesn't look stupid and he just wouldn't do it. Such writing makes a strong and intelligent, powerful, character seem pretty rash and capable of appalling judgement. They could have done better with him.

Derek's sexy girlfriend/soldier who comes back and meets up with him is an okay diversion from the main threads of the story, but the longer it keeps Sarah, John, and Cameron off the screen, the more annoying it becomes. They're the core and they're the concern. Everyone else is acting well and looking lovely but they're not the focus. They're more the symptoms of a storyline flying out into different directions and falling apart.

In general, these are series with thrills and excitement to offer, with lots of humour as well as dark moments and ruthless violence. It's very recognisable as an extension of the original films and is well worth giving a go just for that reason alone.

At the risk of seeming awfully sycophantic, I'm hoping Fox will release a spin-off called, 'Cameron'.  

The Sopranos Ending

Although this isn't a movie, I have spent about 86 hours watching it. What a fantastic achievement it is! The world of New Jersey gangsters who can be totally charming one minute and vicious, evil killers the next makes for compelling viewing. The plots and themes twist and intertwine and we end up caring about every body. Therefore, I was anticipating a great ending. I knew it would be sad to see the story finish but I figured it would leave a sense of completion and allow real life to resume after so much TV watching. When it came, it was a mystery. It was only after looking things up that I was able to see what it had (probably) been intended to communicate.

If you've never seen it and intend to, stop reading! However, if you don't care or if you've already seen it, the sixth series ends abruptly and without explanation in the middle of the action when the screen goes black. A lot of people just thought their cable companies had gone on the fritz.

Don't get me wrong: it was one of the best things, by far, that I've seen on TV for a very long time and - if you approach the odd ending academically - it's possible to see it as marvellously clever. If you stretch your brain then the ending is fine.

However, dramatically, at the moment I saw it, I thought it sucked. I hate to say that when the show was so wonderful and the characters so brilliantly conceived and acted, but - like many others - I just didn't get it. That was annoying to me, and to those aforementioned many others, too.

Tropic Thunder

I'd been to the gym and had no intention of buying Skittles during this movie but, about half way through, I felt like buying sweets might be a good excuse to take a walk. I'm not sure what the queue was about at the counter. It seemed to have stopped and I decided to take two escalators down to the ground floor to hurry things up. When I got there I realised that the down escalator had dropped me the wrong side of the ticket barrier and my daughter, (still watching the movie), had my ticket. They were very nice about it and let me buy Skittles. They're outrageously expensive but I need my 'e' numbers.

I like all the actors in the movie with the exception of Tom Cruise who is entitled to be a Scientologist if he must, much as I'm entitled to be profoundly unimpressed and disillusioned. Hopefully I can feel that way without being sued. It's only an opinion.

The best bit of the movie is at the start and comes in the form of some excellent spoof ads. After that the whole experience is way too American for me. It's obviously intended to be a comedy and with Jack Black and Ben Stiller on board you'd think it would fly but - for me - it didn't. The UK and America have much in common and I think humour very often translates perfectly well. This movie didn't. It had a way about it that locked out my interest throughout.

It's an American movie that makes fun of movies about the Vietnam war and in which Americans seem to find themselves completely hilarious. I've got a zany sense of humour and I'm here to tell you I mostly only smiled. You don't want that reaction. You want a little bit of wee to come out.

It had a lot of swearing and shouting and played with accents and social stereotypes. Black people got mocked in this way by Robert Downey Junior, whilst the 'Simple Jack' character played by Ben Stiller upset a lot of people when he was described as 'retarded'. Speaking as someone who's favourite song lyric by Tim Minchin about people who have it worse than him is, 'I could be a Thalidomide kid with something in my eye!' I wasn't offended. In fact, that was a comparatively high point.

My problem was that the stereotyping and the zany antics seemed repetitive. I had a sense of having been told the same basic jokes over and over until they weren't funny any more. That's not to say there weren't good bits. The director's demise was brilliant and Ben Stiller's reaction to it very amusing.

Even in zany comedy there's room for someone to have personal growth or loss. The characters in 'Tropic Thunder' were paper thin and I didn't believe in their issues. These are all great character actors and there was certainly plenty of energy put into this movie but that, as my daughter pointed out as we drove home, made it all the more surprising that the film was so weak.

I'd go to see any of them in another movie tomorrow, of course. This just wasn't an ideal vehicle for their great talent. They were definitely firing blanks.

Modern Audiences Suck

In my reviews of movies I've often noted the awful behaviour of audiences. Loud talking or shouting, mobile 'phones being swung around like searchlights, crunching of sweet-papers, crisp packets, etc, that sound like a drum-solo... I've even had kids playing games on their 'phones beeping away behind me and loudly debating their progress who said, when challenged, with a look of complete disbelief that anyone could complain,  'Wazzup? We was only TALKING!'

This is true of the public in the UK in cinemas and in restaurants. It might sound eccentric of me when you learn that I actually take ear-plugs with me whenever I go out for a meal. Sometimes, if the screaming morons are to my right, say, one ear-plug can save the evening. Even then, the solution is imperfect as my own chewing becomes amplified in my plugged ear for some reason. It's still better than having to put up with someone roaring out banalities but it isn't ideal.

In music clubs where I've played at open mikes many times, I've noticed that the solution to ill-mannered audiences with their loud mobile 'phone conversations - ('You'll have to shout up, mate - some bloke's singing!') - is to introduce amplification and mikes. Hence the name, 'Open Mike,' I suppose. But I remember when these were called 'Singer's Nights' and there were no mikes necessary. People weren't so insensitive as to shout when someone was singing a song.

It's a modern and lamentable phenomenon, then. It's to be found more and more in public places: people don't like to listen; they like to have their own agenda and shout and shout and shout without respect or any thought, even, for those around them.

As I type this, in fact, my wife is complaining about just this kind of behaviour that spoilt a meal we went for in a restaurant recently. Clowns in the corner delighting in shouting randomly so that everyone could hear them and be disquieted. They thought it was funny. Rudeness itself, with no added satirical content and with no revolutionary intention, passes for jolly humour in the struggling minds of these lamentable half-wits.

And the reason I'm ranting about the ill-educated, mouthy rabble here?

It's because in the review I did on Dark Knight, I mentioned how loud it was. Since then I've seen this article.

It wasn't just me who thought the speakers were cranked up too high at the cinema in which I went to to see Batman kick people in the nuts. It wasn't just my wife, either. So, why - I ask myself - should movies be so very, very loud? And the answer I give to myself is this: it may well be that the level of complaints about the talkers in cinemas have reached a point where something has had to be done. The strategy (it seems to me) adopted in order to counter the constant bellowing in cinemas may be to turn up the soundtrack in order to drown it all out.

Personally I think this works. I don't really want the sound to actually hurt my ears but worse - far worse - would be having my attention divided between the action on the screen and the drivel-shouting twats who now inhabit every audience in the UK without fail and without exception. In fact, my method of escape from them historically has been to get up and sit near the front nearer to the speakers. Then they can rustle, fart, throw pop-corn all over the floor, laugh, guffaw, fight, stamp, wriggle and die for all I care. I can't hear them and I can't see them.  Nobody likes to sit in the first few rows in a cinema unless it's packed so this works pretty well most of the time and I commend the strategy to you. Give it a shot and your blood-pressure will surely thank you.

However - even though I agree with this cranking up of the often formidable speaker systems at cinemas to combat the moronic 'modernity' of the selfish and crass fools who make such a consistent effort to give everyone else the finger, there's a caveat. Yes, I agree that it works in practise. Turn up the woofers and drown out the ignorant idiots who think they're the only people who matter in a crowd. If I can hear the movie then that's nearly good enough for me. The trouble is that whilst it actually works and solves the problem, it also fails as a matter of principle. Instead of persuading the anti-social hordes and their crisp-shovelling children to shut up and pay attention, we've gone for the easy way out. The non-confrontational trick of being even louder and crasser than they are and gunning them into pulp with decibels is effective but it doesn't change the underlying malaise. They're still twats. The famous kick-boxer and his girlfriend are still shouting because they have to really go for it to get over the bloody speakers!

What if the dribbling classes start arriving with loud-hailers or wheeling in their own P.A. systems? They might be able to find a way to produce even more noise than the speakers at the cinemas. What if they all learn Morse Code and start flashing their mobile 'phones more purposefully than usual in epilepsy-inducing lightning storms of communicative genius?

Will we send in surgeons to remove their hands? Is the solution - in other words - always to be found through technology? What about the death of manners? What about the fact that, by just turning up the speakers, we're telling the rude and behaviourally challenged to just carry on?

There's another solution and it might be a better one though I know it's going to sound a bit odd. I say that - if we're going to use the national volume control to adjust this problem - it's being turned the wrong way. Think about it. At a loud party everyone can shout. At a dance-club, shouting is the thing to do. Think how silly you'd feel if you were shouting away and the music suddenly stopped, though.

Turn the speakers right down so that for the audience to hear the movie they have to make an effort. Then, when someone opens their big, fat, flapping mouth to produce their usual aural effluent, all eyes will be on them. All those people who paid to get in won't be watching the movie. They'll be watching a loud-mouthed twat. Not everyone will have the balls to complain, realistically. That's life. But some would. Someone in every cinema in the land would start marching purposefully to find the manager and demand a refund for having their evening ruined.

This would be expensive and the management would have to think again. How could they stop this sort of thing from happening?

They'd hold meetings and write some reports. They might even do a study or two. In the end, do you know what they'd decide to introduce? Security. The new guardians of acceptable social behaviour could even show people to their seats and be there if anyone had any concerns. They could check tickets to make sure that no Chavs were spending their entire day wandering from screen to screen, shouting comments to each other, before moving on to the next five minutes later. They could have torches and monitor how much litter people were leaving. (Most people these days just leave all packaging automatically...) They could be the friendly but assertive face of  order in these old centres of entertainment.

It's the future! It's the new deal! What could we call them? Hey - I know... how about 'Usherettes'?

Update: here's a Daily Mail article about measures being taken to try to cope.

Mama Mia

Unless you watch a movie on DVD in a booth, you tend to be subject to the machinations of the rest of the audience. Unfortunately, when I saw this movie I had a little girl behind me who kept swinging off the back of my chair or kicking it whilst her mother fed her crisps through a Marshall Stack. I can only report on what impressions remained to me beyond irritation at that.

I couldn't get Skittles as we'd gone to an unfamiliar cinema and ended up with Minstrels. They were quite nice but they don't have the same fruity chewiness, at all.

It's probably - almost certainly - the most cheerful movie I've ever seen. Everyone is running about, flustered, shouting, and filled with adolescent excitement. Meryl Streep plays Donna (seen leaping in the pic) and, whilst I didn't find the story believable, her talent always shines out and she held my attention completely. Julie Walters plays her friend who seems to be modelled on a drunken mum at a wedding reception. That's okay and is clearly what she was shooting for. She's a comedy genius. Christine Baranski played Donna's friend, Tanya, again displaying formidable comedic prowess.

Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth join up with Stellan Skarsgard to be potentially related to Amanda Seyfried's character, Sophie. So - some big names. Stellan played 'Bootstrap Bill' in Pirates of the Carribean, Brosnan was obviously Bond, and Colin Firth is the stud-puppet in most romantic comedies.

The plot in Mama Mia isn't really the point, of course. The point is that it acts as a vehicle for the cast to belt their way through as many Abba numbers as possible. This they do with some great arrangements and they're very successful at it.

With the running and shouting - and also with the Greek Island setting, bright and colourful - theres's some of the classic energy and feel of 'The Hills are alive with the sound of music', although in that, I don't recall anyone using the expletive, as Colin Firth's character 'Headbanger' did, 'Fuck'.

This is so pretty and colourful as a movie, and with so much breathless excitement, that I started to write it off as being 'Very Barbie' and 'Saccharine'. It certainly does have this side. However, the comedic moments are often very funny and you will laugh out loud more than once, so this saves it.

Saving the best for last, the end credits are a real highpoint so don't be in such a hurry to get out at the end, even if the crisp-eating monster and her stupid mother are, by this time, doing a jig on your neck. My daughter and her boyfriend went to see it again the very next night. I wouldn't have wanted to do that, personally, but feel compelled to point out that they did.

Batman - The Dark Knight

In the last but one review on this website - the one on Casino Royale - I recall bemoaning the exorbitant price of Skittles in UK cinemas. They were £2.30. They're now £2.80. That's 50p more if my counting fingers serve me well. That's something like a penny more for each individual sweet. Also, the adverts seemed to go on forever and I'd eaten the entire packet by the time the movie started. An interesting thing not directly connected with the movie and fairly unique to my own experience of it was that the heavens opened up on a heatwave day, lightning flashed, thunder boomed, and all of Birmingham turned into a canal-system with cars ploughing up crests of water. One fat bloke at a bus-stop, dressed for a picnic, threw out his arms inviting my wife to splash him within an inch of his life. She didn't. I definitely would have. He was asking for it.

Another interesting thing was that my son spotted that the bloke in front of us in the queue was the Brummie kick-boxer from 'Last Man Standing' which is a martial-arts based TV programme we've been following. He sat near us inside and chatted loudly with his girlfriend. I've seen him hit tribesmen with sticks and somehow I managed to avoid complaining.

At any rate, once the film got going, I realised that nobody was going to be talking over it. It has really loud bangs in it. Michael Caine actually asks Bruce Wayne if he thinks a gun he's testing is loud enough. This is a film with screaming sirens, engines that explode with power, guns galore, and punches that sound like all of the above.

It's pretty serious and it out-Goths all previous incarnations of the movie.

My daughter pointed out to me that when she saw it, in her opinion, there weren't enough funny bits - almost none. I thought there were a few merry moments. The late Heath Ledger's Joker reminded me of Beetlejuice.

He's whimsical and cavalier, throwing out devil-may-care lines, and he's essentially malevolent and mischievous. Batman, on the other hand, is riddled with introspective angst. Both are nuts in their own ways. Each is what existentialist literature would term 'an outsider'. The Joker is a psychopath who knows no guilt at all, and Batman seems to feel too much. In Freudian terms, Batman is almost all Super-ego and the Joker is pretty much all Id.

The Dark Knight is more to do with an exploration of these weighty character issues than the CGI (even though it is brilliant - especially the shots of the ferries with Gotham at night in the background. Gorgeous!).

Michael Caine's Alfred seemed to be there for someone to whom Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman could speak so that we, the audience, could hear his intentions and perceptions expressed. Aaron Eckhart's decline into another famous Batman villain is skilfully handled and everyone in the movie appears credible in this dark and surreal world.

My wife fell asleep, didn't like all the bangs which. it has to be said. were immensely loud in our experience, thought the movie was 'too full on', and hadn't realised it would take months to watch. My son just said he liked it.

Hot Fuzz

This is Simon Pegg at this mental best in a movie he co-wrote about a policeman so efficient that his superiors send him away to work in an obscure village called Stanford. What I loved about it may be the very thing my wife hated: there comes a point after much clever and funny plot development and superb writing where it goes too far. That worked for me. The madness kicks off and oversteps all reason so that the dead-pan Officer Angel becomes something much sillier. It's worth the wait because the action scenes are great and the quaint old villagers who seem so respectable pack more than just a few surprises.

It's an absurd movie with cameos by Bill Bailey and many notable actors: there's Timothy Dalton, Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan, and a swan, to mention but a few. A personal favourite of mine is Olivia Colman who plays a policewoman. She was hilarious in the excellent series, 'Green Wing' and - as ever - she looks quite staid but delivers the rudest lines with a delightful smile.

We hired this from Amazon on HD DVD and it's the first movie where I've really noticed how good the surround sound and picture quality were. There's a lot of bad language in this movie and blood splatters a fair bit too. I wouldn't want to live there but it makes a side-splitting movie if you enjoy profanity and gratuitous violence. It's much more than that though. This is exceptionally well-written and delivered up with immaculate timing by masters of comedy.

The Vikings

'The Vikings' is a 1hr 51min movie from the 50s starring Kirk Douglas, available at a very low price on DVD.

Looking back in his autobiography, 'Climbing the mountain', Kirk Douglas had a lot to say about 'Spartacus'. I can see why because it was a huge movie with lots of gladiators forming an army to challenge even the mighty Romans. However, a film of his from the 50s that I loved dearly but which he hardly mentions, was 'The Vikings''. I like it more than 'Spartacus'.

Do you remember how Brad Pitt's 'Achilles' is first shown to us in 'Troy'? He's in a tent with ladies having had a threesome! Well, Kirk Douglas' character, Einar, is first seen in a similar position though only snogging someone else's wife. His credentials as red-blooded, laughing warrior thus quickly established, he races on horseback to meet his father, Ragnar, played by Ernest Borgnine. When he hurls a wine barrel, smashing it on a rock, we can see the admiration Ragnar has for Einar. 'Did any man ever have such a son?' he cries. Aged eight, in 1962, I could only wish to be like him. He was handsome; he kissed girls; he raced down hills on a horse laughing, and smashed barrels. Plus his dad liked him. What a great role model!

The romantic interest is supplied by Janet Leigh, fancied by Einar, about to be forced to marry Aella, and yet also attracted to Eric! When she is unable to row because of her dress Eric rips her dress off her back. That got my attention at eight in '62 because - never mind all the swordplay - that was very daring stuff. A lady's bare back! My little eyes nearly popped out.

Sadly, that research further reveals that the director, Richard Fleischer and Kirk Douglas had collaborated before on '20,000 Leagues under the sea' but that they fell out whilst making 'The Vikings'. It seems each man blamed the other for this film not achieving its potential. One can only wonder what they'd have achieved if they hadn't been at loggerheads because, speaking with a hindsight of almost half a century, I enjoyed it just fine and, of course, with this DVD, I'm still able to.

There's an important plot thread concerning who Eric really is and how the significance of that fact eventually becomes apparent.

Does it matter? No, because the feud between Tony Curtis' and Kirk Douglas' characters drives them on and leads the action forward to an exciting conclusion. The storyline relies on coincidence and the threads of circumstance meeting at the end in a Hardyesque manner which, I suppose, is the weakness here. However, this isn't fodder for the academic. This is an exciting joy-ride through clashing swords and men, steely-eyed and willing to fight to the death for their leaders. Hoorah!

As the often repeated theme that began with the horn blowing to celebrate Ragnar's return at the beginning of the movie plays for a funeral at the end of it. (I wont' say who died or how or why...), archers fire arrows into the air from the hills at night to set it alight. Now, I'm not saying that Kirk Douglas wasn't marvellous as he saw his baby and learnt that it was free at the end of 'Spartacus', or that the scene wasn't a classic. I'm just saying that the spectacle of that funeral and those fire-arrows combined with that superb tune swelling all around, held me entranced as a child and, even after forty five years, still does so.

Although I've found out that the Region 1 version of 'The Vikings' on DVD has a good extra feature in the form of Richard Fleischer explaining how the film was made as a voice-over to a photo gallery, my Region 2 version has only got a very old trailer to the movie. This might make a potential buyer who has a multi-region DVD player in the UK consider ordering from somewhere like:

where a quick search for 'The Vikings' will show the Region 1 version is available (as I write) at $10.79 plus delivery.

The Pianist

Adrien Brody plays Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish pianist in this chilling film by Roman Polanski. His suffering and that of his family and, of course, other Polish Jews during WWII at the hands of the Nazis is awful to behold. It's very sobering and although violence in films is probably more commonplace and more widely accepted these days, this is most definitely not a movie for children to see. This isn't the stylish violence of 'The Terminator' or the sharp-shooting Clint Eastwood type. It's brutal; it comes quickly; it happens routinely and frequently, and most of all it's largely deadly and delivered with psychotic and ruthless efficiency.

I'm not going to reveal very much plot as the events of World War II are part of history even though there are crackpot extremists who deny the Holocaust to this day because it doesn't sit well with their hatred for Israel. That isn't necessary. Suffice it to say that we follow Wladyslaw Szpilman's life during these awful War years and see how slowly but inevitably the Nazis set about the total destruction of an entire people.

We are taken on a nightmare journey beginning in happy and successful times for the Szpilman family, and in stages and by degrees we see Nazis coming in, intolerant, mocking and murderous. Their assumption that they are the master race is made vivid by their inhumanity. We see the brutalisation and exploitation as slaves of a once proud people. We see them taken away, murdered in the street should they protest or even if they ask innocent questions. Sometimes they are simply decimated for no reason at all.

As a young man I thought events like these stood as a warning to the world never to let dictators indulge again in such evil madness; since then we've had Yugoslavia torn to pieces amid similar atrocities including the clearly associated practice of 'Ethnic Cleansing' which meant exactly the same thing as the mass murders and brutality by the Nazis against the Jews in this movie. We've had Burmese Buddhist monks rounded up and murdered in the last week as I write this. Mankind never learns lessons from his history but rather repeats these awful atrocities over and over again.

It was sickeningly revealing to discover in this movie that Polish collaborators were given positions of power in the implementation of the Nazi policy of genocide and we get to see how some felt themselves to be quite a high status by virtue of this, even emulating Hitler's haircut and moustache in their attempt to be identified with his aims.

Wladyslaw Szpilman's experiences are true and yet they're so fraught with horror and death as to beggar belief. Surrounded by the constant brutality he is battered down as a human being. Even those who are supposed to be on his side are just as likely to exploit and betray him.

These are times of untold evil, seen through his eyes, where all possible human tragedy and cruelty unfolds. There are moments of great pathos and grief as the weight of those years of occupation and mass murder crush down on Warsaw.

One very vivid image that stays with me in the last parts of this movie involve a hospital. We first see it when it is part of a well-run and ordered society, despite the ongoing persecution and annihilation of the Jews. For the rest of the country things are clearly going on as normal. There's a point later, however, when we see what stands behind that building and the results must have been achieved using CGI effects. The scene of devastation after the Allied bombings is huge and thoroughly shocking.

All the acting is convincing. Maureen Lipman plays Wladyslaw Szpilman's mother and Frank Finlay his father; he also has a temperamental younger brother and a sister. These characters create a comfortable and quite well-off starting point. It's how Wladyslaw Szpilman - the young pianist himself - gets on that makes the movie, though. He finds friends in unexpected places more than once and is able to outlast many of his peers but Adrien Brody's Szpilman isn't just a leaf on the wind. He's inventive, quick thinking and blessed with a great deal of luck. Nevertheless, you can see he's in shock and scrabbling for survival, trying to deal with a force so evil and so beyond anyone's capacity to cope.

This movie was released in January 2003 in the UK. It won three Oscars and got nominated for many awards. It's available for £9.99 at Amazon, although we hired this from them in HD.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pianist-Adrien-Brody/dp/B0001E5TSI

There were no special features on the one disk they sent us which is why I've only reviewed the film itself, but my research indicates that if you buy this DVD there's a second disk with it containing photo galleries and details about the cast and crew as well as a documentary about surviving the Nazi occupation. It seems that Roman Polanski's parents were victims of it so it must have been a very painful task for him to make a movie showing what happened to Polish Jews with such excruciating clarity. It's a serious movie and it stays with you, haunting you long after you've seen it as the inhumane and shocking treatment of one people by another plays back in your memory.

The music is exceptional throughout, not least of all when we see Adrien Brody's Wladyslaw Szpilman play the piano, but throughout the film as well the music is appealing. It seemed to me to stand for the immense capacity for artistic genius and depth of feeling in the people the Nazis were trying to dehumanise, demean and destroy.

I'd recommend this film to anyone who thinks they can cope with the sheer nastiness of the subject. It's not really light entertainment. It's not academic or hard to understand; what's happening is only too clear. Just be aware that the truth is sometimes ugly and awful and that this is a movie to show you it in very blunt terms. 

Run Fatboy Run

No zombies or policemen knocking fences over: it's Simon Pegg in a Romantic Comedy. This is comfortably formulaic and guaranteed to raise a few titters. Pegg does a bit of a 'Runaway Bride' leaving Thandie Newton at the altar, then spends the rest of the movie trying to sort his life out.

He's actually a fit and slim chap who runs a lot in real life so he had to wear a fake beer gut under his shirt to make the film. It's charmingly British with lovely, eccentric and quite unbelievable characters. There's the Asian landlord who is very comical and helpful, a son who is too cute to be true, a gorgeous ex, a caricature of an American, and Dylan Moran as a lunatic Irishman (just for a change).

It's a winning genre and although in real life none of it would happen as it does in the story you're guaranteed a feel-good movie here, the underdog has his day, and you get two random appearances of Moran's bare bottom.

It's a silly movie, then, that runs true to the Romantic Comedy formula. The characters are so utterly charming that all Pegg's character's rival has to do is be rude once whilst hassled and play rough in a race in order to look, by comparison, like an evil psycho.

I resisted the Skittles. I think it was a subconscious reaction to the title of the movie.

Enjoyable.

No Reservations

I've been to see a film again and the experience was most pleasing. 'No Reservations' is a lightly-boiled and politely served up Romantic Comedy. If you like this genre - and I do - then it's very easy on the brain. Perhaps too easy. Still, although the obstacles to 'happy-ever-afterness' are too insubstantial to make overcoming them significant, this film manages to be a charming confection. Catherine Zeta Jones is a gorgeous chef and Abigail Breslin as Zoe - the little girl for whom she is made suddenly responsible - couldn't be sweeter. Aaron Eckhart manages to play the clown against Catherine Zeta Jones's fastidious and uptight workaholic role and, inevitably, thaw her into smiles.

No Reservations is a feel-good movie with no surprises or depths but it raises a few chuckles and puts you in a happy mood.

My only mistake was to try to watch it without buying Skittles. My daughter pointed out that this wasn't the movie to watch snack-free as it was all about food so she'd eaten her entire hand within the first half hour.

Take a wok.

Derren Brown

In a departure from movie reviews brought about by my not having been to one in ages, I'll be turning my hand to UK television shows for a while. The moment I see a movie and eat some Skittles I'll be back on track.