Ari Folman for Congress
Ari Folman, director of the sublime Waltz with Bashir is looking set to tap into the power of animation once again, as he’s slated to write and direct a live action/animation crossover of Stanislaw Lem’s short story “The Futurological Congress” for the big screen.
Congress is the story of a seemingly utopian society with a dark underbelly of drugs and prejudice, and Folman’s ideas sound like they’re going to do justice to the scale of the story: “Think of your favorite young actress. She’ll appear that way at the beginning, and then as the film goes on, she’ll be drawn like she’s 50.” This won’t be the first time on of Lem’s works has been adapted, as both Steven Soderbergh and Adrei Tarkovsky have directed versions of Solaris.
Meanwhile, dystopia seems to be rife in Hollywood, as Ridley Scott - a man with experience of dark futures, Blade Runner style - makes inroads on his adaption of Aldous Huxley’s masterpiece Brave New World.
Review: Australi-yawn…
Australia is long. Very long. Then again, so was Titanic and Jurassic Park 2, both of which were awesome, in very different ways. The difference here is that Australia doesn’t justify its length. Whilst the story is unquestionably epic, that’s more because it’s like two one and a half hour stories patched together with a bit of narrative duct tape rather than one epic story in its own right.
An ambitious marathon of a movie set in the time leading up to Japan’s pre-WW2 bombing of the city of Darwin, Australia is a love story plagued by lazy writing that even the grand vistas of red rock and dry desert can’t hide. The characters are poorly developed, and I’m not sure if Kidman’s decision to not read the script before signing on paid out. She does her best impression of a British aristocrat – a performance which is at first sphincter-clenchingly cringeworthy, but …Read more
Twilight’s Alright
I was, I admit, dreading this one.
An adaption of a book designed to win over the hearts and minds of fifteen year old girls, in the hands of Catherine Hardwicke, the woman who previously directed the dire Nativity Story (although some hope glimmered with another name on her CV – Thirteen), and Melissa Rosenberg, who wrote Step Up, is not an idea to soothe this critic’s savage breast.
Surprisingly, though, Twilight is not the film I had expected to see. It’s a vampire romance of real subtlety – a sentence I never thought I’d write. Twilight maintains a darkness throughout, without ever becoming overwrought or even too ridiculous, and Robert Pattinson does a remarkable job in …Read more
Slumdog Millionaire: Every Dog Will Have It’s Day
After years of zombie plagues, smack-head toilet-diving and big-budget sci-fi horrors, many people may be surprised to find that Danny Boyle’s latest is a disarmingly charming character piece set in the beating heart of India’s largest city.
Yet as 2005’s Millions has already shown, Boyle knows ‘intimate’ and he knows ‘heart’. While comparisons can be drawn to that movie, Slumdog Millionaire is boosted by its unique, intoxicating and bewildering mash-up of Hollywood’s Fable-like sensibilities with Bollywood’s relentless sense of energy and passion.
The ‘I can’t believe they actually pull this off’ plot follows 18-year-old slum-dweller Jamal Malik’s (The Skins’ Dev Patel) extraordinary performance on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and the way in which every significant moment in his life, from the heart-wrenching to the heart-affirming, have helped form his knowledge of the answers. As the first day’s show concludes, Malik is arrested on suspicion of cheating and he is forced to recall and relive each experience to a suspicious but increasingly intrigued police officer (Irrfan Khan) in order to clear his name. …Read More
Changeling: Angelina’s Grand Finale Fares Well
If this is Angelina Jolie’s last film, as she has suggested it may be, then she is at least going out with a bang. In fact, this is her most powerful performance ever, and she stands out from an excellent cast of relative unknowns (with the notable exception of consistent tour de force John Malkovich doing his best menacing deadpan) as a single mother who has lost her child and been fobbed off by the LAPD with a fake son.
Changeling represents a considerable departure from some of the turgid turds Angelina Jolie usually seems to pop up in (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Tomb Raider, Gone in Sixty Seconds, anyone?) and seems like a full circle back to the last film in which she got committed to a mental asylum, the brilliant Girl, Interrupted. As in that film, Jolie handles scenes of desperation, hate, hope and horror with real subtlety and nuance in Changeling. It’s refreshing to see a Hollywood face and perennial tabloid favourite reminding us that she’s also has the capacity to be a truly remarkable actress, who seems to have matured from the volatile sex Read rest of review
Bond misses key ingredient in ‘Quantum of Solace’
General release from 31st October 2008
Why is it so difficult to consistently give Bond fans what they want? It really isn’t a complicated formula. But not since the days of Sean Connery has anyone managed to make two good consecutive Bond movies and raise their hands in triumph. Casino Royale: perfect.Quantam of Solace: just another name to add to the tally as if positioned above James Bond’s head board.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not longing for the days of Roger Moore’s ‘embarrassing dad at a wedding’ Bond, plucking a pun from the most impossible of angles but a little bit of quirkiness wouldn’t go amiss. Daniel Craig constantly looks like he just sat on a garden spade and he’s so robotic at times that you have to wonder whether after each take someone had to plug him in and recharge him.
Frustratingly, it doesn’t need to be this way. Other Bonds have proved that it’s a combination of cool explosions and well, coolness that makes Bond so irresistible. In Casino Royale, Bond’s scenes of ‘mantalk’ (as Ian Fleming would put it) were cinema at it’s finest. That, after all is what Bond is all about. I want to see a man that is far cooler than me waste time drinking martinis in swanky bars before handling a twenty minute car chase. Any schmuck can drive sober, Bond should be wreckless. Quantam of Solace starts with action and continues throughout like one big comical chase scene. In fact the only person seemingly unable to predict the next pursuit is a rather dazed and confused camera man who spends his time shaking vigorously like a fat man trying to keep up with an ice cream truck.
Still, there are moments of class. Judi Dench finally looks like a half convincing M and the opening scene between Bond and Mathis is particularly funny. But ultimately there is something missing in this outing. This is not a Bond film with personality and sometimes it feels as though if you blinked suddenly you might see Bruce Willis on screen yelling ‘Yippe ki ay’ or Matt Damon generally trying to look tough and competent. So, A good action film? Yes. But a good Bond film? Well, lets say it’s more like a martini without a twist of lemon: missing a key ingredient.
By Craig Woods
‘W.’ reveals a new side to George Bush
W. Screened as part of the London Film Festival
General Release from 7th Nov
It is deeply odd to release a biopic of a man who is the serving President of the United states, yet W., Oliver Stone’s latest film is eerie, surprising and most of all intriguing.
Starring Josh Brolin as George Bush Jr, with excellent supporting performances from the likes of Richard Drefuss as Dick Cheney, Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush and an unrecognisable Thandie Newton as a slimy Condaleeza Rice.
This is not so much a tale of an evil boogeyman who took the world to war because he was profoundly, enormously dumb but rather, it is the story of a son who desperately wants his father’s approval.
It opens on the Oval office as Bush discusses with his advisers the infamous ‘axis of evil’ phrase. It is a suitable starting point as there are two stories that shape the film- the war, in which Bush goes from success to failure, counterpointed by the story of his private life- in which he goes from a failure to a success.
A partying, drinking, charismatic man’s man, the young Bush is an alcoholic and trouble maker but somehow Josh Brolin manages to give him an enormously endearing quality so that you find yourself actually just liking this man a lot, despite his flaws.
But therein is the complexity of the film, as no matter how much you may like the man, there is no doubt that history will look upon his presidency as a disaster. Here, Stone gives insight into the man as well as the president. A truly engrossing film and a fascinating story.
By McGee Noble
Watching ‘Wendy and Lucy’ is even more Frustrating than Losing a Dog
Wendy and Lucy is screening as part of the London Film Festival
Friday 24th November, 6pm, London Odeon Leicester Square
Sunday 26th, 4.30pm, Ritzy Cinema, Brixton
Wendy and Lucy is a tale about a girl who loses her dog and….well, that’s it.
OK, so Wendy (Michelle Williams) is already down on her luck and there are emotions involved with losing a dog, especially if the hound-less is a fragile girl with nothing much else, but 80 minutes of a girl looking for a dog really drags on.
Losing something yourself is really annoying. Watching somebody else lose something, even if it is a cute dog called Lucy, and then looking for it in really long slow shots is just torturous and if I had spent my money and/or free time on this film I would be more p*ssed off than Wendy is post dog-loss.
The synopsis claims that Wendy and Lucy is well thought out and I don’t doubt that, but I spent more time thinking out my lunch than I did admiring this film. One shot that sums up the pace of the film occurs when Wendy is told that the dog pound don’t have Lucy, but she can have a look anyway. Then follows an agonisingly slow dolly shot across a never-ending row of cages (some even without a bloody dog in them) that we know don’t contain the right dog.
Don’t get me wrong, I love dogs, but the pace of this film is non-existent, and we all know that the dog isn’t really lost, it’s just a film. After initially wanting Wendy to find Lucy, I actually ended up horribly hoping that Lucy or even Wendy for that matter would be in some way mutilated or murdered, just to liven things up.
By Charlie Coffey
Review: Hard-hitting but Fantasmical ‘Waltz With Bashir’ will Leave You in a Spin
Waltz with Bashir is screening as part of the London Film Festival
Friday 24th October, 8.30 pm, London Odeon Leicester Square
Monday 27th October, 6.30pm, London Phoenix
An ambient but breathtaking exploration of consciousness turns into a journey of the conscience in this animated docufilm.
Multi-faceted and deeply personal, Waltz with Bashir successfully explores the power of dreams and memories as the auteur and protagonist Ari Folman takes a guilt-trip into his past as an Israeli soldier involved in the 1982 Sabra and Shantila massacre. A friend’s account of his recurring nightmare of 26 baying hounds provokes Ari into a spiritual and physical exploration of how the human mind copes when overwhelmed by emotions too shocking to fully comprehend.
The premise that gaps in memory can be filled by the imagination leads to recollections in which reality is tainted by the mind’s ability to replace aspects that it would prefer not to acknowledge. Think of the fantasy of ‘This Waking Life’, evolving from psychological exploration in theory into stark reality on the gritty battlefield.
Rarely would such harrowing subject matter be so successfully explored using such lush and ambient hallucinatory visuals, yet Waltz With Bashir manages this effortlessly, creating an original piece that can be enjoyed on many levels in the process.
The pace of the film constantly switches between fast-paced daytime memories of war and the slow, semi-conscious, often fantastical recollections of night-time and dreams, resulting in an exhausting but highly pleasurable 87 minutes.
By Charlie Coffey
Review: ‘Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist’ will Reignite Your Teenage Fire
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is screening as part of the London Film Festival
Sunday 19th October, 8:30pm, Odeon West End
Wednesday 22nd October, 3:30pm, Odeon West End
Remember those heady teenage days when a guy making you a mixed CD made you blush your face off because it undeniably meant he must, like, think you’re the ONE and by choosing these songs surely totally understands you in every way? Nevermind that you didn’t quite get the meaning of some of the lyrics (many of which, cosy synonyms for sh*gging)- they must be saying something sweet, right? Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is like getting in a time machine and getting all caught up again in the fumbling anticipation of young love.
Nick (the wonderful Michael Cera, though again, playing his usual soppy self) is a downtrodden, sweet guy, who’s had his heart trampled on by his shallow, perfectly-formed tramp of an ex-girlfriend, Tris. Norah (Kat Dennings), the quirkily smart daughter of a famous guy, takes no crap from Tris, who she knows from school, and despite never having met him, adores the mixed CDs from Nick that Tris just bins.
One night, Nick, who plays bass as the straight third of three-piece gay indie band, The Jerk-offs, and Norah are thrown together when on a mission to ‘find Fluffy’, an unmissable band, whom they both adore (and Norah’s wandering drunken friend). As the night goes on, they proceed to fall first for each other’s music tastes, and then each other.
Delightfully, the film avoids the pure camembert stench of other teen romance films. Its sharp dialogue and erratic cityscapes as they hurtle through Manhattan in Nick’s broken down car and his mate’s van renders it wholly credible and means the vom bucket need not be close at hand- not for the sentimental bits anyway. Director, Peter Sollet, ensures that scenes with the battered friend and a distinctive storyline involving a piece of chewing gum serve to make NANIP, at times, sickening in anything but the romantic sense…
With an awesome soundtrack that takes you back to the days when there was little else to do but believe in the all-encompassing power of music and spend your evenings chasing good times, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist will reignite your teenage fire.
By Susan Allen
