fresh movie reviews and yum cha daily

dir: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
It's not easy being tiny
The wait in between new Studio Ghibli releases is too long, way too long. Being a man with a level of patience a saint would envy, I still find this particular wait too painful, but then, only a few new animated films are truly worth waiting for.

One of the most awesome things about being a movie-obsessed lunatic who also, by the grace of God, Allah and Satan, has been blessed enough to become a father, is having a new person to inflict my obsession upon.

Scratch that, reverse it, play it again. What I meant to say is that it’s tremendous, a tremendous thing to have a daughter to watch flicks with. And, with Studio Ghibli, it’s a tremendous thing having animated movies to watch with my kid in a cinema that are this nice, and don’t make me want to gouge out my own eyes and eardrums.

Sure, Pixar this and that, but surely we all know that the vast majority of stuff made with an eye towards the kid market are visual abominations and a stain upon our collective soul as a species. Most of these visual and auditory atrocities are the artistic equivalent of red cordial, whose only purpose is to overstimulate the kids until they become so het up and ADHDed that, upon leaving the cinema, a parent or guardian has no choice but to buy some merchandise to shut them up, calm them down and cork their cry hole.

And yet, on the other hand, it almost seems like a film like this, or Spirited Away, or Howl’s Moving Castle, are so patiently constructed to be the antidote to Those Other movies, that it’s a surprise that any kids like them at all, and that includes Japanese kids.

Especially Japanese kids. They must be different from the other ones. Hey, wait a second, I’m not getting all revenge-for-Nanking-and-Pearl-Harbour or racist or anything, if anything, they’re better than everyone else’s kids.

All that rigmarole and foofaraw being said, after we walked out of the cinema, my daughter declared, “Arrietty is the best movie I’ve ever seen.”

So, make of that declaration from a five-year-old girl what you will. It’s the best movie she’s ever seen.

Of course, I should have pointed out that she says that after watching every new movie at the cinema. It’s part of the joy of watching stuff with her.

dir: Guy Ritchie
Tally-ho what, we love each other and we're not going to hide it anymore
Mr Ritchie, is there something you’re trying to tell us? Your last three films have had, shall we say, a curious subtext considering the material (all violent action-y crime capers), and yet now, in the sequel to your inexplicably successful Sherlock Holmes flick, that subtext has now just become text. Congratulations? Are you making progress? Are you getting somewhere with your, um, feelings towards other men?

Long have people joked or slyly nudged nudged and winked winked over the potential for the fictional sleuthing characters of Holmes and Watson to have been, shall we say, better than the best of friends and companions. The last flick with Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law as the principles humorously alluded to it in a plethora of ways. In this one, it’s flat out right up there on the screen. Holmes is jealously needling Watson over whether he’d rather be spending time with him or his wife on their honeymoon, he’s dressing up in drag whenever he can, compelling Watson to lay down with him. And, just before the film’s climax, at some diplomatic ball at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, they even dance a loving waltz together. And no-one bats an eyelid. Which is progress, of a sort.

At the conclusion of their dance, Holmes jealously says to Watson, “Who taught you to dance like that?”

You know what’s coming, don’t you? Watson whispers lovingly to him, “You did.”

Love, oh careless love.

Holmes pursues, through this shadowy game of a story, his greatest nemesis, his only worthy adversary, Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), who seems to be operating from the middle of a very complicated web. From there, or from Oxford, at least, he pulls the threads connecting countless people, with waves of his malign influence expanding across a Europe which he is priming for war. The year is 1891, so I guess he just can’t wait for 1914 to start his hoarding, profiteering and the selling of weapons to both sides of the conflict.

Holmes, as played by Downey Jnr, is just as nervy, just as dishevelled as in the previous flick, though he’s possibly even more Aspergers-like in this instalment. This characterisation rankles with a fair few people, and I’m not going to defend it. It’s a take on the character that fans, devotees of the many renditions of the character or of Arthur Conan Doyle find harder to stomach than the general public, methinks. The thing is, though, whether it is or isn't a worthy characterisation, the question for us should be whether we’re entertained by it or not.

It’s a hard question for me to answer. It’s impossible for me to see the character beyond Downey Jnr’s array of tics and affectations, in that this character feels more artificial than his suit of super armour in the Iron Man flicks.

dir: George Clooney
I Believe in Ryan Clooney
Cloons. Cloooooons. He’s not content having every woman over forty getting wet in the gusset or drooling over him, or buying coffee just because of his ads. No, he has to direct flicks too. He has to get shiny golden statues to make him feel loved too.

And he’s directed a doozy here. Sure, the point of the flick is that politicians are arseholes, a novel and radically new idea never captured on film before, but the solid performances and commitment to following through on its depressing premise carries the picture through. And mostly these prized hams don’t overact, so they’ve all done pretty well.

Clooney can’t resist being in the flick as well as everything else, including the catering, but he doesn’t give himself the plum role, nor could he. He is Governor Mike Morris, the genial, charismatic front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in some fantastical place where democracy actually works. But he’s not the main character. That role is taken by man of the moment Ryan Gosling.

He plays Stephen, a young campaign manager on the governor’s staff, whose brash and cynical enough for the role, but not so brash and cynical that he can’t be disappointed in the brashness and cynicism of others. Hey, he’s Ryan Gosling, he can do anything at this point and people will take it and say thank you no matter how good or terrible.

Thankfully, he’s very far from terrible. He’s actually quite good here. I do feel like I’m seeing him in a film every two weeks or so, but this is probably a good performance from him. It’s much better, at least, than Crazy Stupid Love and Drive, though there’s nowhere near as much washboard abs action.

I’m going to get cut with a straight razor for saying that. Anyway, as a campaign manager, he’s not a babe in the woods, but he believes, at least, that Mike Morris actually intends to do some of the things that he claims he’s going to do, and that he should win so that he can do them, for the good of some / many / all, take your pick. Yet Stephen is not so much of a true believer that his ego can’t lead him astray when the other side come knocking.

Morris’ main opponent in the primaries (the lead-up which decides who the Democratic nominee will be) is some other guy called Pullman, who barely exists as far as the flick is concerned. But Pullman’s campaign manager is played by Paul Giamatti, so obviously the character matters. At least to them.

He has a meet-and-greet with the other side’s Karl Rove, and Stephen is completely floating on a cloud of his own awesomeness. All the flattery in the world doesn’t convince him to change teams, though, but he is told that it’s a moot point anyway, because Pullman has the endorsement of a key senator, which will really fuck up Morris’s plans for world domination.

dir: Lee Tamahori
Golden boy
Jesus Christ, or maybe by the grace of Allah, this Uday Hussein was a sick fuck!

I remember the stories from back in the day, around the time of the first Iraqi Adventure, where the tales of Saddam’s sons being monsters were coming out, and I just thought, “Eh, they’re just being mean.”

And then the many and varied stories of what a demented sociopath he was, to the extent where he shamed his own tyrant of a father, slaughterer of innocents and torturer of people who disagreed with him, and there was little doubt.

Of the many controversies regarding the second Iraqi Adventure Part II in 2003, one of the only aspects that has never troubled me were the reports of the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein. See, in my limited knowledge and understanding of history, and especially history as it applies to people, the only monsters often worse than the despots and tyrants who seize power in bloody times and rule their people with an iron fist caked in shit, are their sons.

See, Saddam was as bad if not worse than everything ever said about him, obvious even to someone who’s village didn’t have nerve gas dropped on it. But he’s the one who seized power. He’s the one who maintained complicated social – tribal – regional ties intact in order to maintain his steely grip on power. He’s the one who earned the fear that his name invoked. He’s the one who sent people to Abu Ghraib to be tortured to death, who invaded Kuwait, who started the war with Iran and sent a millions souls to their doom. He earned the fear his name engendered.

Shitbirds like his sons, bored feckless fuckwits, got away with all their numerous, icky crimes against their own people, worked only on their sense of unique entitlement, and exhibited no control over their own impulses because their father’s power kept everyone else in check.

dir: Mike Cahill
Double the fun
No, it's not a movie version of the soap opera that ran for a thousand years, the only rival for the daytime soap crown against Days of Our Lives. This is Another Earth.

The five people that will see this outside of the film festival circuit and at ‘special’ screenings might argue, if they found themselves at the same coffee shop or crack house, whether this is actually a science fiction flick at all. I’m not sure myself, and I’ve had a few days to think about it.

A teenage girl with the unfortunate name of Rhoda (Brit Marling) gets drunk at a party, and, whilst drink-driving her way home, hears a news story on the radio about the discovery/appearance of a celestial body in the sky that looks a hell of a lot like Earth. She tries to spy this phenomenon in the sky, losing track of the fact that she’s meant to be watching the road.

She plows into a car, killing most of the occupants. It’s a very bad thing she’s done, no-one’s saying any different, you know, so no need to get on your high horse. She is/was a bright girl, planning on becoming an astronomer, astrophysicist or astrologer to celebrities, but now that’s all gone. Once this moment of hideous negligence occurs, that bright future she envisaged disappears in that instant.

She’s released from jail several years later. Because she did not stop for Death, no, because we did not know her prior to the accident (which happened in the first few minutes of the film), we assume she’s changed by her experiences in jail, and with her deep, deep regrets over what happened. We don’t really know how much, though, because she’s something of a blank slate, and could certainly never, ever be accused of overacting.

dir: Craig Gillespie
Those dreamy eyes, that over-compensating axe...
I… I don’t know what to say. I’m almost ashamed of myself for saying this.

I enjoyed this remake of Fright Night.

I think it matters that about the only thing I really liked about the original was nothing. Well, almost nothing. I kinda liked Roddy McDowell’s performance, because he was always a camp delight to behold on any screen. But I found the flick way too silly to ever like it or be scared by it, even as a kid, watching it surreptitiously on video without parental consent or knowledge. Though, to be honest, I still get the heebie-jeebies from the poster.

No, it was just too silly. Chris Sarandon was just too odd and wacky to be scary, and I hated the guy who played Charley, and always did for ever more. Especially on Herman’s Head, which is a tv show and war crime the Hague should get around to prosecuting any day now.

This remake isn’t particularly great, groundbreaking or goddamn gothically grotesque either, but it’s definitely better than the original, and its even dumber sequel.

I’m not sure if Anton Yelchin is that great in the role either, but he’s a likeable chap. Even though he’s a total dweeb, or perhaps because of it, he plays the role in a relatable or even believable way.

Charley, in this version, has managed to caste-jump in high school, an almost impossible feat. As we all painfully know, and television continually keeps reminding us, whatever strata you were in at school was permanent and irrevocable, and completely dictated who you were and how people treated you. And it also basically dictated all that you would achieve for the rest of your life.

But Charley has achieved the unthinkable: he somehow jumped up two or maybe even three castes, so that he’s below the jocks, but above the intelligent and well-adjusted kids, which means attractive girls want to fuck him now. He even has an attractive girlfriend called Amy (the delightfully-named Imogen Poots), and life in the outskirts of Las Vegas could clearly not be better.

dir: Joe Cornish
If children are our future, we're doomed
Did you ever wonder what all those British youthful scumbags were doing before they started rioting through the streets of London?

Apparently, they were saving us from the alien scum of the universe.

Someone had the idea recently of ‘what if aliens invaded the Wild, Wild West?’ That movie was made, and was known as Cowboys and Aliens. Someone else had the idea ‘what if aliens invaded people’s arses?’ And that masterpiece was made. It was called Dreamcatcher. And now some dickhead thought to himself or herself ‘what if aliens invaded a British public housing estate?’

And lo and behold, Attack the Block was made.

It’s impossible to set a flick in or around a council estate, or housing commission flats, or the projects, or the Parisian banlieu or any form of public housing, without much of the underlying story being about the social commentary opportunities the location throws up. Having said that, this flick uses it as an opportunity to comment more on the actions of the protagonists, who live in these places, rather than the supposed ethics of the people or the system that places them there.

What this really means for us, the viewers, is that our protagonists, unless we share extended sympathies with them out of experience or through, what’s that term again, oh yeah, liberal guilt, is that our protagonists are fucking brats we ourselves wish we could punch in the face, let along watch an alien rip their throat out. The film has to, you’d think, if it matters to you, manage and manage well the transition from hating them to actually caring if they survive or not.

dir: Jon Favreau
Say I'm underacting one more time, I double dare you
It’s not even Cowboys VERSUS Aliens. It’s Cowboys AND Aliens, as if pitting them against each other in the title would be too aggressive and off-putting to audiences who just want to see them together on the screen at the same time, peacefully co-existing, standing nonchalantly side by side.

Well, they’ll still be disappointed, because the Aliens attack the Cowboys, so all hope of gentle understanding and interspecies acceptance fly right out the fucking window.

However, in the flick’s greatest conceit, rugged outlaws, cattle men, Mexicans and Apaches fight together to conquer the alien menace, which transcends the genre bounds of science fiction and enters into the realms of purest fantasy.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not an example of my natural contrariness when I say that I actually enjoyed this flick. Nor have I suffered a stroke, or a fruity outburst of dementia, nor was I on film-enhancing drugs whilst watching, or receiving passionate head for the duration.

More’s the pity. Still, I somewhat enjoyed this strange flick despite the lack of the aforementioned, or any tangible reason as to why.

It’s strange in that considering the jokey premise, a premise that’s a definite head-scratcher, along the lines of Pirate versus Ninja, or Samurai versus Penguin, or Man versus Hygiene, it’s not a jokey flick. It’s played straight down the line, with zero camp, and with a high degree of perhaps unnecessary seriousness. Every actor in it treats the story like it’s a credible, believable, relatable, worthy story.

What’s not strange is how it all plays out. Even though I can’t think of another flick I’ve seen with this premise and setup, there’s nothing here that’s overly new or shocking. The only real deal is that we would think or imagine that, for people of that time, predating as they would a time where the prevalence of sci-fi concepts that would make the existence of extraterrestrial species more comprehensible, they’d be even more bamboozled by these beasts than any other set of theoretical people.

I would have thought the idea and the appearance of these aliens would make these hardy frontier folk’s heads explode, showering their Stetsons, their spurs and their wholesome gingham bonnets and dresses with their own brains. But apparently they’re a bit more comfortable with mind shattering contradictions that we’d thought.

dir: Jake Kasdan
She's so bad she should be punished. Repeatedly
Look, I find it strange that people keep equating or comparing this flick with the Terry Zwigoff flick Bad Santa. As far as I can tell, having watched both, the only thing they have in common is the same adjective in the title. Other than that, there’s no connection.

I mean, does Cameron Diaz piss her pants at any stage? Does she sodomise a plus-size woman in the change rooms at a mall? Does she generally indulge in behaviour that would get most people arrested, let alone fired from their job as an educator of young minds?

Well, actually, on that last point…

Maybe they’re linked in spirit, but Bad Santa was such a singular act of misanthropy that it seems churlish to compare anything to it, even despite the ridiculous ‘happy’ ending the Weinsteins forced onto the end of the flick. Bad Teacher’s trading on something less radioactive, but probably more enjoyable.

As well, as opposed to any flick by Terry Zwigoff, the main purpose of Bad Teacher is to be a funny, and a funny workplace comedy at that. And I found it pretty goddamn funny, truth be told.

dir: J. J. Abrams
Yeah, I thought the flick was about haunted oil rigs based on this poster too
Homage to the 70s, homage to old cameras, homage to Steven Spielberg? Do any of these things really need to be honoured and celebrated? The 70s isn’t exactly the forgotten decade, the Super 8 camera is missed by no-one with a half decent mobile, and Steven Spielberg has made more money at the box office than Jesus and is plenty celebrated by Hollywood and all its legions of sycophants.

So what worthy thing is J.J. Abrams really bringing to the table? He’s made a summer blockbuster aping elements of Spielberg’s early blockbusters, except he has access to a whole bunch of CGI and a cast of people pretending to be characters from ET and That 70s Show. And in which gentle world worth living in is any of that necessary or ever desirable?

None. When younger directors honour the most well rewarded and celebrated directors of all time, it’s kind of like having a fund raising pass-the-hat around in honour of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett: like they’ve not had enough payola and praise already over the decades?

And surely if someone wants to see something like the Close Goonie Encounters of the ET Jaws kind, they could just watch Close Encounters, ET, Jaws etc in their own sweet time. It’s not like they’re rare films unavailable for decades in any format or media. Who needs J.J Abrams, the ‘creative genius’ behind Lost and Alias, to remix the greatest hits of the 1970s for our amusement and patronage? No-one.

And yet… and yet…

Yeah, it already sounds like I’m being snarky, or that I didn’t like it, so let me just admit upfront that I enjoyed the flick a lot. Oodles and heaps. Abrams may be a ham and an arch manipulator extraordinaire, but he apparently learned from the best hams and arch manipulators, a lá Spielbergo. Right upfront he delivers his mission statement: to thank and honour three of the biggest directors of that generation that came of cinematic age in the 1970s (Spielbergo, Coppola and Lucas) who inspired him to pick up a camera, and to deliver a flick the way he thinks Spielbergo might have back in the day. Sure, it’s a monster flick, but the monster barely figures into it, because most of our time and focus is on the protagonist kids. Won’t someone please ignore the children for once? No, children are the future, so… it’s all about the kids.

dir: Kenneth Branagh
You think you're Thor, I can hardly walk!
More comic book movies. More Marvel comic book movies! See, the waddling Comic Book Guys of the world don’t have enough to entertain themselves with and bitch about across the vast expanse of the tubes of the internets already.

There weren’t enough goddamn Spider-Men, Supermen, X-Men, Iron Men, Batmen, Hulk Men, Man Men flicks out there stinking up the joint as it was?

Of course it’s never going to end because the golden age continues. They make billions of dollars, and they convince grown adults to buy merchandise for themselves to put on their desks at work, without the least amount of shame or reluctance. That’s a fucking money spinner, that is. Comic book franchises make money rain from the skies, so it makes sense that the Microsoft of the comics world, being Marvel, invested a shitload of money setting up their own studio to make these delightful and delicious flicks themselves with greater regularity and with more direct profits to themselves.

And thus, Marvel Studios brings us The Mighty Thor!

As tempted as I am to keep ripping the shit out of them and this flick just for the mere fact of their lazy existence, I’m not going to. Mostly, I’m not going to because I actually enjoyed Thor, ridiculous as that seems. Embarrassing as it might be.

dir: Patrick Lussier
He looks more Perplexed than Angry. Drive Perplexed should be the sequel
Drive Angry. Drive Angry 3D, no less. A film that, in any just universe, would have been the last 3D flick ever made, because it finally displayed in a definitive form just how wretched and pointless the format is.

This isn’t a just universe we live in, though, as you should well know by now. According to this flick, however, there is some kind of eternal balance sheet at work, with debits and credits just itching to be calculated.

If you want to know whether it’s possible for you to enjoy this flick, this is the litmus test for you: the premise of the flick is that a bad, bad man called John Milton (Nicolas Cage) breaks out of Hell in order to save his granddaughter from some loathsome cultists. They never explain how, but they just explained why.

If you’re the kind of person who then sits there in the cinema muttering under your breath “Well, how the fuck did he get out?”, perpetually dissatisfied and disgruntled because of that lack of crucial explanation, then nothing that comes after will seem at all tolerable. No manner of shootings or blood spattered breasts will satisfy that niggling voice in your head with such a mindset.

If you are, on the other left, Satanic hand, the kind of person who accepts that very trashy action flicks don’t exist because of a rigorous adherence to Earth logic and sensible thinking, then you might possibly glean that it doesn’t fucking matter as long as Nicolas Cage shoots a lot of motherfuckers and a lot of shit blows up real good.

Me, little old me, well, I’m a blend of the two positions. I can truly appreciate trashy-as-fuck flicks that deliberately set out to be 70s exploitation flicks, but I’m also the kind of nerdy shmuck who sits there stewing over details other saner people couldn’t give a fat rat’s fuckhole about.

How did Nicolas Cage burst forth from the gates of Hell? Well, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he did. And he’s out for revenge. Sorry, REVENGE!