Men In Black III

This is a rather belated threequel, coming a full decade after the crushingly disappointing  part 2. The question is can it recapture the fun and the chemistry of the highly entertaining original. The answer is only partially - the film is nowhere as good as you might hope but it is at least better than you feared it might have been following part 2.

The film starts promisingly enough, introducing the villain, Boris the Animal (Flight of the Conchords' Jermaine Clement) in an escape from a lunar prison. At first glance Boris seems an appropriate villain who offers both weirdness and a sense of menace, but after the initial set-up Boris seems to fizzle out as a character apart from one or two moments (including an argument with himself) a by the finale totally fails to live up to his billing as a major threat.

Then there is the plot - which features Will Smith's J heading back in time to stop Boris killing off his partner, Tommy Lee Jones's K before they even met. The film keeps promising answers to questions such as why K is so grumpy and why only J can remember him in the present, without ever delivering satisfactory answers. Then the film commits the epic fail when it comes to time travel movies and finishes as a complete paradox loop whereby the ending totally negates the beginning which in turn negates everything else in the film including the ending, so none of it really works. That is bad plotting.

The other weakness of the film is Tommy Lee Jones, who seems far too old for this shit and clearly can't be bothered and even Smith seems tired and jaded in his company. This actually makes the films' biggest gamble of ditching Jones for most of its running time it's biggest success, as Josh Brolin playing the younger K gives a pitch perfect Tommy Lee Jones and is actually here far superior to the original. Smith appears to perk up when playing off him.

Elsewhere, Emma Thompson shows her comic skills as Agent O and Michael Stuhlbarg is good value as an alien who simultaneous sees many possible universes and timelines. There are also some good moments, such as Smith's speech after being pulled over by the police in the 60s. However, most doesn't hold up to too close an inspection.

Overall - 6/10 Entertaining in parts, but patchily so.

Movie Catch-up

OK, I've been neglecting the blog for a little time whilst I've been caught up with other things, so here's a brief catch up on what I've seen in the past few weeks:

Safe. Jason Statham is probably the closest thing to a genuine action star that there is at the moment, but he has made some truly dreadful films. Safe is one of his better films, with halfway decent material to go with the action. The Stath tries to redeem himself by trying to save a girl-genius caught up  with competing Chinese and Russian mobs and dirty cops. The body count is ridiculously high, but there are some good sequences and nice twists along the way. Overall: 6.5/10

Dark Shadows is the big screen adaptation of a cult (read pretty dreadful) TV supernatural soap opera from the 60s which is really not known over here. Tim Burton's at the helm and Johnny Depp (of course) stars as the vampire dug up after 200 years to find his family's fortunes in decline and the witch who cursed him (Eva Green). It is imbued with Burton's rich visual style and a very dry dark humour. Depp fits in perfectly and Green vamps it up to great effect. As is not uncommon with TV adaptations, there's not really enough space in the film for all the characters to really shine through despite the strong cast and Tommy Lee Miller's playboy and Chloe Moretz' teen with issues probably suffer most from a lack of space, but overall this is an entertaining watch. Overall 7/10

The Dictator Sacha Baron Cohen is now too well known to get away with the Borat trick on real people, so moves into the fully scripted area with The Dictator. Cohen is a bright fellow and there are moments in the film when it really shows - the final speech to the UN drips with layers of irony and the way he talks himself out of being tortured is one of the comic highlights. Too often though he still goes for the cheap laugh and the supposed shock. A mixed bag of a film. Overall 6/10

The Raid the much hyped Indonesian action film with the Welsh director follows a rookie cop on the titular raid on a high rise apartment building controlled by the local drug lord, and that's it in terms of plot. What it is very raw and vibrant and inventive in its almost non-stop action and fight sequences. As the lead, Iko Uwais has the makings of a new martial arts action star, but the non-stop action could actually fo with a few lighter or slower moments to give the audience a breather and make it feel less like it's you having your head pounded repeatedly against the floor. It's certainly something different though. Overall 7/10

Jeff Who Lives at Home. It's quite refreshing to see Jason Segal trying something a little bit more different and less obviously commercial. He plays the eponymous Jeff, a thirty something who still lives in his mum's basement and is convinced that everything is connected (the film opens with a knowing monologue on Signs) and after receiving a wrong number phone call, ends up pursuing various Kevins round the city on a journey that will also take in his brother's (Ed Helms) marital problems and his mum's (Susan Sarandon) secret admirer, all the while leaving you guessing as to if there is some greater purpose or if it is all just coincidence until the ending which will either delight or annoy. Overall - 8/10.

A Lesson in how not to do Expectation Management

So, over a week on from the local elections and what are to make of that. The dominant narrative in Scotland seems to be that it was a disappointing night for the SNP. Maybe that's not so surprising -I mean 2007 was a breakthrough year for them when they first overtook Labour at Holyrood and broke through in many new areas, using the new voting system to gain a presence on all councils bar Orkney and Shetland. Perhaps it's only natural that after 6 years in government they will have fallen back since then.

Except they haven't of course. The SNP vote share is up almost everywhere in Scotland compared to 2007 and the gained around 60 extra councillors. But two things have happened since then - firstly the stunning (and I suspect unrepeatable) result last May raised expectations that the Nats would sweep everything this May. And secondly, the SNP spin machine seemed to get carried away with their own success and started to talk up their chances - they were going to become the largest party in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow - they might even claim a majority in the latter.

Of course, they did none of this. Hence they had a disappointing day. In fact, they only gained a majority in Dundee and the SNP stronghold of Angus. Except -- look at the facts, they increased their vote and gained seats in Edinburgh. In Aberdeen they actually won the popular vote with Labour only gaining more seats by virtue of better vote balancing and a bit of luck. In Glasgow itself, the SNP vote was up by 8% across the city, a 2.5% swing from Labour and they gained 5 seats relative to 2007. By most standards, a pretty good result and if they hadn't talked up their chances so much (and in doing so probably galvanised the Labour vote as well) the narrative might be different - of steady SNP progress in the Labour heartlands.

By contrast, Labour were at a low point in 2007 - unpopular in government at both Westminster and Holyrood, yet they kept majority control in Glasgow. In 2012, in opposition everywhere losing control of Glasgow should never have been in question (even given their own internal difficulties). But the SNP have enabled them to put keeping control across as a great success.

For the other parties, the Conservatives lost seats, perhaps a few more than expected. For the LDs it was grim, but maybe not quite as grim as it could have been (at least outside Edinburgh) and the Greens made slow but steady progress, doubling their seats in Edinburgh and gaining their first seats in Striling, Midlothian and Aberdeenshire.

The results have seen a number of unlikely Labour-Conservative coalitions form across Scotland. This was considered in Edinburgh too, but here Labour leader Andrew Burns was wise enough to realise the voters might not like it too much unless the Greens were involved, as well. However, the Greens were wisely unwilling to be involved in a coalition where their votes were not necessary (ie they had no real power) and so Labour went with the SNP as coalition partners. It's perhaps not the worst result for Edinburgh, but alot will depend on how adept Burns is at managing Cardownie. Time will tell.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

In some ways this film is the spiritual successor to Calendar Girls - an ensemble piece for a Who's Who of British Acting talent of a certain age. Indeed, here you could argue that only Helen Mirren and Julie Walters are missing for the complete set. Like Calendar Girls it's also a pleasing but slightly uneven affair.

The set-up is that a collection of elderly British people move to a retirement hotel in India run rather haphazardly by Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel. There is probably a certain amount of cliche about the way that India is presented - temples and cricket in the streets, etc... and this certainly lacks some of Slumdog's bite, but director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, The Debt) does succeed in capturing something of a vivid atmosphere of colours and busy-ness all around.

At its best, the film is both moving and inspiring. The most sensitively handled threads revolve around Tom Wilkinson's retired judge and his personal quest from his youth and Judi Dench's widow who has been left bankrupt by her husband, but is determined not to to let that hold her back. And both actors excel in their respective roles. Elsewhere, Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup are both used pretty much as the comic relief in their respective searches to find a late romance. The younger romance between Patel and Tena Desae also struggles from a lack of room to breathe and a lack of depth compared to some of the more mature story-lines.

Maggie Smith gives a brave performance as a racist former housekeepeer only there for a hip replacement, but her story-line is the one that most needed more space in order to make her change of heart more credible. Elsewhere, Penelope Wilton is the poorest served of the cast as the nagging wife who simply can't cope with India and apparrently lacks a single redeeming feature. Bill Nighy does his unassertive Bill Nighy thing as her hen-pecked husband and their relationship even includes a final act race to the airport (although with rather unusual outcomes).

Overall - 7/10 At its best this movie is beautifully shot, funny, moving and inspiring, but its held back by a little uneveness and not enough room for all the story-lines.

Avengers Assemble

After years of build up through several movies, Marvel's Avengers movie (now called Avengers Assemble which is almost inviting the sequel in the title) is finally here. It arrives carrying a weight of expectation that few films could live up to.

Marvel have made a few smart choices in their recruiting for this film. Firstly, in Joss Whedon they have a director and screenwriter who is used to managing large ensemble casts (Buffy/Angel and Serenity/Firefly) and giving each character their own arcs and moments to shine. He manages all the characters who've capably led their own films well as well as incorporating the newer characters (Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow). So Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man is allowed to steal all the limelight (or even all the best lines) and this feels like a true ensemble piece - even Samuel L Jackson's Nick Fury and Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson are given their share.

The socond success is Mark Ruffalo as the third recent big screen attempt at the Hulk. Following Eric Bana's interesting attempt and Edward Norton's largely unsuccessful, Ruffalo is a great fit for Bruce Banner and finally makes the big green monster work for the big screen (plus he gets one of the best lines in the film).

The villain also works well with Tom Hiddleston's Loki returning from Thor to provide menace combined with wit and intelligence. If there's a disappointment it's that his much vaunted army of aliens are rather unimpressive - some of the visuals are good, but overall they're a bit characterless and end up as rather anonymous cannon fodder. The other main weakness is that there's maybe just a wee bit too much of the ego-clashing and fighting each other from the good guys before they actually gel - maybe one or two punch-ups too many. It does however produce a beautiful pay off in the closing battle with one particular Thor-Hulk moment.

Otherwise watch for some entertaining action, witty dialogue, a strong ensemble cast, some interesting interrrogation techniques by Black Widow and surprise early exit for one of more minor, but loved, characters. 

The Avengers has been an interesting cinematic experiment - building up over several years with different characters in separate films. The build-up has been mixed, ranging from the surprisingly impressive (Iron Man) to the disappointingly messy (The Incredible Hulk). The payoff is well worth it though- a thoroughly entertaining spectacle that comes very close to meeting expectations.

Overall - 8/10 With new offerings on the horizon from the big three superheroes (Superman, Batman, Spiderman), Marvel's team effort has set the bar quite high.

Resist Vote Management

Tomorrow Scotland goes to the polls to elect new local councils. For local elections up here we now have the more proportional Single Transferable Vote system with larger wards electing 3 or 4 councillors and voters being asked to rank the candidates in order of preference.

This has led some parties in wards where they have more than one candidate issuing voters with vote management instructions or suggestions in their leaflets, so half the ward will be asked to rank candidate A 1st and candidate B 2nd and the other half the other way round. If you live in such a ward and have received such instructions then I'd invite you to stop and think before following them. Who does it really help? Sure, it helps the party to balance their vote and increase their likelihood of getting two (or more) councillors elected, but it's rather insulting to your intelligence. They're telling you that's there nothing to choose between the candidates, but make your own mind up - one might be a really strong candidate and the other a complete numpty (and there are far too many numpties on councils already). Decide for yourself.

The other line that some parties are taking, which I really cannot understand, is in some areas they are suggesting that voters just rank their candidates and then stop. For example, John Mason MSP (SNP) published his completed ballot paper on Facebook showing 1st and 2nd preferences for the SNP candidates and no other preferences. Does he really not care if the other 2 seats in his ward are filled by LDs, Labour, Conservative, Green or somebody else? It's nonsensical, when you are electing 4 councillors not to express at least that many preferences unless there are people that you really could not vote for.

So make your own minds up, most importantly use your vote, but use it how you see fit with as many preferences as you wish to add.

Lockout

Lockout is the latest Luc Besson production (based on his own "original" idea) and he's got tired of having Liam Neeson beat people up and has returned to the world of sci-fi. He leaves the direction to relative newcomers Stephen St Leger and James Mather.

I say "original" because there is actually little original in the whole set up. The central premise - a rogue agent (Guy Pearce) is sent on a mission to a space prison in full revolt in order to rescue the president's daughter (Maggie Grace) - is basically Escape From New York in space. Once actually in the prison, the action becomes Die Hard in space with all the politcal conspiracy subplots of 24  in space, before a finale which just gives up and decides to be Star Wars and the attack on the Death Star.

Lockout is not a good film. It's stuffed full of cliches, far too many sub-plots for its own good and none of the action actually makes all that much sense - bits of dialogue seem inserted to make sense of what is about to happen, rather than relating to what has just happened which is what is ostensibly being discussed. And could somebody please explain to me why when people jump from a space station in space they fall? And why they don't burn up when they re-enter the atmosphere?

No, Lockout is not a good film, but it really quite enjoyable. (In other words it's a typical Luc Besson film). This is helped in no small part by a fantastically dry and sardonic turn by Guy Pearce who hogs most of the best lines, but also enjoys some good banter with a surprisingly unirritating Maggie Grace. Vincent Regan and Joseph Gilgun also add good value as the Scottish (of course) psychopaths who take over the prison.

Overall - 6.5/10 A true guilty pleasure - there's a lot wrong with this film, but it's still very enjoyable.

Salmond, the millionaires and the historian.

I was going to do a rant about Trump, but the guy kind of satirises himself with the likes of "I am the evidence" and so self-evidently deluded, what's the point of saying any more.

Instead I'm going to offer a few thoughts on the current woes of Alex Salmond. Usually the SNP spin machine is quite literally second to none in Scotland in terms of controlling and manipulating the stories. However, things haven't been running all their way in the last few weeks.

The Millionaires 

First there were the headlines about millionaire SNP donor Brian Soutar having bought Big Eck's recommendation for an honour with his donation. (Although a more interesting question, given the policy u-turn on bus regulation shortly after the donation, was whether he also bought their transport policy).

Then this week we have the twin barrels of Mr Murdoch and Mr Trump. Murdoch's advisor tells the Levenson enquiry into phone-hacking that basically Salmond offered to speak to Jeremy Hunt (who has his own heap of woes to deal with) whenever they (news international) needed him to. Then in wades Mr Trump with his claims of assurances offered to him that no wind farm would be built...

Now here's the thing, I don't trust Salmond, I certainly don't trust Murdoch and I my opinions of Trump are probably best not put in print, but his attempts to effectively blackmail a democratic institution are not welcome here! I'm also not altogether convinced I care who is the wrong or right here, it's a bit sordid whichever way you look at it. The things is that Salmond has gone out of his way to court support (financial or otherwise) from these millionaires and to play in the big boy's game. Maybe now he's realising the true cost of that.

The Historian

The other story that caught my attention was the "historian" David Starkey making comments comparing Salmond to Hitler. Now that's not really what I want to get into - comparisons to Hitler are always crass and hardly ever justified (certainly not in this case), but let's face it Starkey has never been shy about stirring up controversy for the purposes of promoting his own ego.

What interested me was the response from Salmond's office, which included the phrase that this was"an insult to Scotland and the people of Scotland". Er, no it wasn't! It was an insult (and a nasty one) to Salmond individually but not to Scots in general. This isn't the first time I've noticed Salmond and the SNP using this kind of rhetoric - and it's dangerous. A criticism or questioning of the SNP is not a criticism or questioning of Scotland, but too often they make it out to be. It's a habit that they need to break before the real independance debate begins otherwise any real debate on the merits or otherwise will be impossible if the response to any query is an accusation of anti-scottishness. All that will serve to do is enflame English-Scottish tensions and stifle real debate and that is a dangerous game to play!

The Cold Light of Day

There are some action films where you leave feeling that it would have been a decent film if only somebody had shot the cameraman early on in proceedings, or at least given him some tranquilisers. The Cold Light of Day is not one of those films for two reasons - (1) I doubt you'll get more than thirty minutes in without wishing something nasty before whoever is responsile for the unbearably shaky visuals on the screen and (2) even without the migraine-inducing camerawork this would still be a bad film.

Will (Henry Cavill) is on holiday with his family in Spain when he returns to their boat to find them missing. Going to the police seems to land him in more trouble, until his dad (Bruce Willis) turns up to sort things out, tell his son he's really a CIA agent and then promptly get shot, leaving Will to try and put all the pieces together, aided by some Spanish girl he picks up along the way who turns out not to be the romantic interest (thankfully, given one of the plot twists) and by this point I'd given up caring enough to bother with much more of a plot summary.

On the positive side - Henry Cavill shows some potential as at least watchable in the leading role, let's just hope Superman gives him more decent material to work with. And Sigourney Weaver makes for a badass villain at times. And that's about it. Bruce Willis looks like he can't really be bothered. There are so many continuity errors and nonsensical plot twists that you'll be continually scratching your head and going 'If they really are that, then why are they doing that? And more importantly, why should I care?'

Overall - 4.5/10 A good case study in how not to make a thriller, the most entertaining aspect of watching this film is spotting all the things wrong with it.

Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror  is the first of this year's two Snow White films to be released and is probably the most familiar looking for those harking back to the classic Disney version. The colours are vivid and visuals stunning.

All the familiar elements are there, although given a decidedly 21st century twist - so the seven dwarves are social outcasts turned bandits, it is Snow White who rescues the Prince from an enchantment with true love's kiss and so on. In fact this Snow is far more of an action heroine than the traditional Disney princess (although probably less so than Kristen Stewart's warrior maiden to be seen later this year in Snow White and the Huntsmen). That said, the "message" of Snow White discovering her true self/believing in herself feels very Disney.

And if all of that seems a bit too worthy, fear not. Director Tarsem has a track record of films that are very inventive, with lots of ideas and energy, but also a bit messy (see The Fall). Here he also throws into the mix bits that feel like they come from other legends, like the mysterious beast in the forest and an  interesting interpretation of the mirror, but on this occasion it really works for him and the film is a lot of fun to watch.

The dwarves, both individually and as a group, are great value and wonderful to watch. Lily "daughter of Phil" Collins does a decent job in the lead and Julia Roberts clearly enjoys getting to play the bad guy and does so with relish. However, the real revelation here is The Social Network's Armie Hammer who brings the physique of the romantic lead with the comic timing to make himself a bit ridiculous when required.

Overall - 7/10 A suitably modern twist which is genuinely fun and inventive.
 

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games is the latest big screen adaptation from a successful series of teen-lit, but don't let that put you off. Unlike many, it's actually both an entertaining film and a genuinely cinematic one.

Whilst the plot has a definite debt to the likes of Battle Royale (outlying districts are each required to provide two youngsters each year to compete in a contest to the death for the entertainment of the rich capital) the setting also owes something to Metropolis in its distinction between rich and poor.

Our hero is Katniss (the excellent Jennifer Lawrence combining her steeliness from Winter's Bone with the action elements of some of her other roles) who volunteers in order to save her little sister. She's joined from her district by Josh Hutcherson (not bad but the weakest link in the film), who is secretly in love with her, whilst she has her own fellow back in the district. These emotional sub-plots remain just that - they add depth to the action, but unlike certain other teen franchises don't swamp it.

The action within the games remains firmly 12A certificate so as not to alienate the target audience as Katniss fights for survival against the specially trained volunteers from the richer districts. Meanwhile, outside the arena, we are shown the manouevring and conspiring to provide a spectacle whilst remaining in control. The adult cast is very strong with particularly good turns from Woody Harrelson as the drunken mentor to Lawrence and Hutchison and from Donald Sutherland as the cynically manipulative president.

At the end of the day the satiric points about violence as entertainment and the use of the media to enable to control, etc... are not very subtle, but crucially the story and the film are entertaining and thrilling enough to bear the load.

Overall - 8/10 What it may lack in originality it makes up for in being so well done throughout that it still feels fresh. A genuinely good film.

Delicacy

Delicacy is the latest "quirky" French film starring Audrey Tautou. She plays Nathalie, who we see in the opening 10 minutes meet, fall in love with and marry the love of her life, Francois. Then he's killed in a road accident whilst out jogging and Nathalie starts to lose her way. Unfortnately so does the film.

It starts with the heavy-handed voice-over at the funeral - "what if I freeze this moment and wall myself up in my grief". We're about to be shown her doing this for the next half an hour, we don't need her spelling it out for us. Then the film can't really decide what it wants to be. It's been marketed as a sort of rom-com and it has elements of that as Nathalie years later rediscovers love through the affections of the unlikely Marcus (Francois Damiens). And the film has moments of humour and moments where it tries to touch on the deep emotions involved both for Nathalie overcoming her grief and for Marcus overcoming his shy clumsiness. However, the moments when it successfully manages to merge these into a coherent film are few and far between.

The main problem seems to be with Damiens' character and how the film treats him. Damiens was the comic-relief sidekick to Romain Duris in Heartbreaker and was great at it. The problem is that the directors here seem to want him now to be both comic relief and romantic lead, which is a very difficult balance to find and they miss it by quite a margin  by going for a humour that is too broad and makes Marcus look too ridiculous for them to then be able to find pathos in the character when it is required. Part of the point of the film seems to be an encouragement to look deeper than the surface awkwardness and lack of looks, but that is kind of undermined when we are also asked to laugh repeatedly at just that awkwardness.

Still, the film has some good moments and Tautou is as watchable as ever, although we've seen her do this role many times before.

Overall - 5.5/10 It has some funny moments and some moments of feeling, but all too few moments when they combine successfully.
 

Edinburgh Council Elections Hustings

Purely for information purposes, these are the hustings that I'm aware of for the City Council elections over the coming weeks:

19th April 19.00 - 21.30  Spurtle, St mary's church, Bellevue Crescent, Leith Walk Ward.

19th April 19.00 - 21.00  Edinburgh City RC Justice and Peace Group, St Mary's Metropolitan Cathedral Hall, 

19th April 19.00 - 21.00 Active Citizenship, City Chambers

19th April 19.00 - 21.30 Craigmillar Question Time, Hays Business Centre

19th April 19.00 - 21.30 Muirhouse, Muirhouse Millennium Centre, Muirhouse Medway

19th April 19.30 - 21.30 Craigleith/Blackhall CC, Large Hall, Blackhall St Columba's Church 

19th April 19.30 - 21.30 Almond, Cramond Kirk Millennium Hall 


23rd April 19.30-21.30 Murrayfield Community Council and Murrayfield Parish Church, Murrayfield Parish Church.
  
24th April 19.30-22.00 Drylaw & Telford Community Council, Drylaw Neighbourhood Centre

25th April 19.00-21.30 Broughton Spurtle City Centre Hustings, St Mary’s Parish Church, Bellvue Crescent

25th April 19.00 - 21.30 Portobello Hustings, Portobello Town Hall

 26th April 18.00-20.00 Unison Hustings, Augustine Church, George IV Bridge

26th April 18.00-20.30 Forth Hustings, Royston Wardieburn Community Centre

27th April 17.30pm EUSA (Edinburgh Uni Students), Teviot Study, Bristo Square 

If anyone knows of any others please let me know and I'll add them.

21 Jump Street

Have a few film reviews to catch up with here. So, starting with 21 Jump Street, the latest in the conveyor-belt of big-screen adaptations from long past TV series. To be honest, I don't remember the series being that much of a thing in the UK, but it did lauch the career of a certain Johnny Depp.

As is tranditional in these adaptations, it features the obligatory cameo by the star of the TV series - although in this case it is one of the highlights of the film and wins extra marks for having Depp on the screen for some time before you realise it's actually him.

The film as a whole keeps the central idea of cops going undercover in High School and then just tries to have a laugh with it. The humour varies hugely from some quite witty and "meta" cleverness about reviving old programmes from the 80s and passing them off as new to appear clever. Most of it however is very broad humour (at times going way too far), however it is done with such an endless enthusiasm and energy that it will probably get you laughing for at least some of the running time. It's just that afterwards you might feel a bit embarasssed about laughing at it.

Channing Tatum proves a surprisingly reliable comic hand as one of the cops, whilst Jonah Hill is on less irritating than usual form as his partner. However, it's Ice Cube as the angry black lieutenant ("embrace your stereotypes") who comes close to stealing the whole film.

Overall - 6/10  Done with lots of energy and enthusiasm and the odd moment of inspiration. It's a bit hit and miss, but could be worse.
 

Some thoughts on the upcoming elections for Edinburgh City Council

It's nearly the start of May, which means it getting close to election time!

In Edinburgh this year, this means we get to vote for the wonderful city council. Now many people might feel that after the debacle over the trams last year, when it took the intervention of Holyrood to stop the muppets coming up with the most crazy solutions possible to a calamity largely of their own making, that none of them deserve to get back in and I would have some sympathy with that view.

Actually there are some decent councillors in all parties. Unfortunately there are also some complete numpties and in party politics, unlike in a bottle of milk, the cream doesn't always rise to the top.

What are they standing for?

This is a completely biased and firmly tongue in cheek view of what the various parties will do if elected, gathered from the various bits of paper they have so far put through my letter box (and the ones that I have put through other people's on behalf of the Greens).

SNP - are very proud of their council tax freeze and reducing council spending (that's what's known as cuts when the evil coalition do it at a national level). They're also very proud of taking absolutely no responsibility whatsoever for anything unpopular or cack-handed that the current (LD-SNP) administration has done - and there sure are a lot of them.
Conservatives  - seem to be very unhappy and very concerned about any number of different things. (Well, let's face it, as Tories in Scotland they have a lot to be unhappy and concerned about).
The Lib-Dems - seem to be very proud of lots of roadworks and holes in the ground and buiding sites- their leaflet featured at least 4 photos of such. Given the current state of Edinburgh this seems like a curious electoral strategy, but maybe they can see the writing on the wall and it's all just an elaborate electoral suicide note.
Labour -  have yet to give me a leaflet - odd as they actually do have a councillor for this ward. But I do know that they, in contrast to the LDs, are promising no more holes in the ground, ever, even if they're desperately needed. Oh, and they're hoping that you will have forgotten that they were in power up until 2007 and helped to contribute to the mess that the current lot have made such a mess of sorting out.


And nobody, but nobody is mentioning the Trams.

Being equally biased, but less tongue in cheek, the Greens are standing for promoting renewables and energy efficiency on a community level, safer cycle routes, protecting local businesses, giving local communities more say over how money is spent in their areas through initiatives such as £eith Decides and protecting the city's green spaces, amongst other things. I could go on, but you can read more here if you're interested.

So what's likely to happen?

One thing we can say for sure is that no party will have outright control of the council for the simple reason that no party is fielding enough candidates to take outright control.
The LD vote is likely to crash as it did last may and in the City Cenre by-election in August (when they lost almost two-thirds of their vote share). They recognise this - only fielding 1 candidate per ward and effectively giving up two seats before a vote has been cast. Many of the sitting councillors are not re-standing.
The SNP will probably gain seats, but maybe not do as spectacularly well as last May.
Labour should also be looking to pick up seats - 2007 was not a good year for them. But they should have been looking to make gains last year as well and look how that worked out for them.
Having looked into it, I'd hazard a guess that the post-election council chamber may look something like this:
SNP 19 (+7)
Lab 18 (+3)
Con 11 (no change)
LD 6 (-11)
Grn 4 (+1)
Although I'm hopeful and cautiously optimistic that there may be a few more Greens than that.

Now, according to the unwritten rules of Scottish politics, nobody wants to work with the Tories. The SNP group leader, the delightful Steve Cardownie, seems to be doing his best to alienate all possible coalition partners and even if an agreement could be reached for a traffic light coalition (red-orange-green) they may not have the seats for a majority.

Now, a minority administration might not be a bad thing, it could force a lot of issue-by-issue negotiation which could bring creative solutions to Edinburgh's many problems. It would require skill and delicacy in handling though, neither of which are qualities the various party leaders in Edinburgh seem to possess in much abundance. Which leads me to: 

An passionate plea to voters in Forth ward:
If you are thinking of voting SNP, give the guy who's not Cardownie your 1st preference and then put your ballot in the box without a 2nd thought. Edinburgh will be always in your debt.

Meadows/Morningside - a 2nd preference dilemma.

We all know who's going to get my first preference and I'm fairly confident that the Green candidate here, Melanie Main, will get in and do a great job as councillor. However, I'm not sure how to then express my other preferences. I have a choice of 6 other candidates: Conservative, Lib-Dem, UKIP, SNP, Labour and Pirate. It may all well be academic as Melanie may not be elected until the 3rd or 4th councillor for the ward, in which case the vote transfers will matter little, but just in case...

Normally my second choice would be Lib-Dem, but their candidate is now council leader Jenny Dawe, moving here from her previous ward as she was going to be outperformed there by her party colleague and lose her seat. I just cannot bring myself to express any preference for her at all. Similarly, I could never express any preference for UKIP except in a straight choice between them and the far right.

The conservative councillor actually seems to have done a decent job, but is probably the most likely to be elected first without the need for transfers. Besides which, I don't like what the party stands for and I'm proud of my record of never having voted for them (even a second preference). The same record applies to Labour and their councillor seems to have been rather anonymous in this part of the ward from what I've seen apart from failing to get elected as an MSP last year.

The SNP are not a party I'm overly fond of at the moment either and they've certainly contributed to the mess of the current council, but their candidate quite impressed me when he stood for Westminster in 2010.

So, I'm thinking:
1. Green (of course)
2. Pirate (as I may never have another chance to vote for a Pirate)
3. SNP (on the off-chance the final seat will come down to either them or the LDs).

UPDATE  - I've now had a leaflet from Labour and am none the wiser what they're standing for.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists.

Pirates! marks Aardman's first claymation film since 2005's Wallace and Gromit outing, following the luke-warm success of their digital animation efforts (Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas, both of which were rather enjoyable and underrated IMHO). But this is Aardman back on their own territory and back on great form.

There is something very British about the whole effort - from small visual gags including a Blue Peter badge to the overall silly and anarchic sense of humour that owes at least some of its comic DNA to the likes of Monty Python (the illustrated map journeys are at least somewhat reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's illustrated interludes).

There's also much here to love - from the character names that part inspired, part lazy (Pirate Captain, Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, Pirate with Gout) to the visuals that feels both homemade and impressive at the same time to the more clever and subtle gags about Darwin's theory of evolution. There are moments of genius in the mix - like the monkey who speaks through the medium of speech cards.

The voice cast is strong (Brendan Gleeson, Martin Freeman, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant) but special praise should go to an almost unrecognisable Hugh Grant who brings something special to the Pirate Captain.

Overall - 8.5/10 The whole film is filled with such an inventive and exuberant sense of fun that it will keep you laughing right through the closing credits.

Bradford West - what a shocker!

Yesterday's Bradford West by-election was supposed to be a straightforward hold for Labour. They had held the seat comfortably for a long time and with their nearet rivals suffering a post-budget, alleged fuel crisis slump in the polls, surely nothing could go wrong.

It was also meant to be a last hurrah for Respect/the George Galloway vanity project. They had been suffering a decline in the polls almost as bad as the BNP's and were facing being wiped off Birmingham city council this May and reduced to a couple of councillors in Tower Hamlets (where local politics is decidedly "odd").

The voters of Bradford didn't read the script however and Galloway took the seat with a massive 10,000 vote majority and a 36.6% swing since the General election (the second largest post-war swing, topped only by Simon Hughes win in Bermondsey). It's also the first time in over a decade that the main opposition party have lost a seat in a by-election.

Normally, I quite enjoy seeing the big parties come a cropper and seeing safe seats fall. Normally it restores my faith in democracy, but I find it difficult to see this as a good thing. Here are my reasons:

- George Galloway is an egotistical demagogue who spent most of his last stint as an MP shamelessly promoting George Galloway away from the Commons rather than doing his job in it. (I'm sure I don't need to remind anyone of his Big Brother antics.

- I understand that he spent most of his victory speech last night, as he did in 2005, shamelessly attacking all and sundry and implying some sort of conspiracy to stop him getting elected. (In truth, if there had been anything dodgy about this election I rather suspect it would have worked in his favour rather than against him).

- Respect are not some cuddly anti-war party. They play on the worst kind of sectional interests and stir things up in order to get votes and power in the muslim community. In some ways, they stoke the same fires as the BNP. (I also wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of backlash boost for the far-right in response to this result). This is not a result which aids a harmonious Britain for either muslim or non-muslim.

That said, although it's a disastrous result for Labour and scarcely better for anyone else it is a one-off and its wider political implications can be easily over-stated. And hopefully the voters of Bradford will take the opportunity to kick George out again at the earliest opportunity.

Contraband

Contraband is just about as predictable as you might expect from the trailer, but is also surprisingly more enjoyable than expected. It also confirms the recent dearth of Hollywood creativity in genres they once ruled, as this film which feels so American is actually a remake of Icelandic thriller Reykjavik Rotterdam.

Mark Wahlberg plays Chris Farraday an ex- master smuggler who is forced into the ever familiar one last job in order to extricate his brother-in-law (Caleb Landry-Jones) from a debt to drug dealers (Giovanni Ribisi) he was smuggling. From there on the twists and turns are fairly predictable as three smuggled cargos end up being juggled through a sea of mishaps and betrayals. The film can't really decide what it wants to be - at times there is a real menace to it (especially when Ribisi is threatening Kate Beckinsale (Farraday's wife) in the film's nastiest moments). At other times it goes for a twisty kind of playfulness and at others still for out and out action.

There is a strong cast - but none of them are really stretching themselves - we've seen Wahlberg's blue-collar criminal hero, Ribisi's redneck psycho and Ben Foster's redneck with issues all before. Beckinsale is underused, as is Diego Luna, whilst JK Simmons comes close to stealing the movie as the freighter captain on whose boat the smuggling takes place.

Somehow, though, it all kind of works and director Baltasar Kormakur (who was also producer on the original) keeps things moving quickly enough that you don't have time to think about why nobody notices huge bundles of forged dollars floating in the middle of a major waterway.

Overall - 6.5/10 Solid but predictable genre piece that is surprisingly enjoyable.

John Carter

John Carter marked quite a gamble financially speaking - a $300 million film based on books from the start of the last century, with a lead best (un)known for an underwatched TV series (Friday Night Lights) and a director making his debut in live action films (albeit with a strong track record in Pixar animations with WALL-E and Finding Nemo).

The initial box office returns from the States show that this gamble may not have been entirely successful financially. And that's actually rather a shame, because, despite being heavily dependant on modern special effects, John Carter is actually a rather entertaining movie in a slightly old-fashioned blockbuster kind of way. This shares more cinematic genes with the original Star Wars films than the more modern prequels and is all the better for it.

The story (once you get past the double framing device which only really pays dividends at the end) follows the titular hero as he is accidentally transported to Mars where the much lighter gravity gives him almost super-powers and he gets involved in the ongoing conflict between warring tribes. It's hardly ground-breaking stuff, but director Andrew Stanton brings at least some of the visual flair from his Pixar works and creates an exciting vision of life on Mars, but also some of the humour, making this a fun watch. Taylor Kitsch shows that he has potential as a leading man, even if he's not quite the finished article yet. Elsewhere Mark Strong does another pleasing bad-guy, Dominic West is still playing McNulty and James Purefoy is clearly enjoying himself too much, but the end result is a really rather enjoyable film.

Overall - 7/10 State of the art, but rather old-fashioned in feel makes for an entertaining watch.

How many supermarkets do we need?

It was with dismay this week that I saw that Peckham's in Bruntsfield is to become yet another Sainsbury's local, although there was a small glimmer of hope when it became apparent that they had rather jumped the gun with their coming soon posters as permission has yet to be formally granted. (Unfortunately, I missed the deadline to register objections with the council).

Bruntsfield Place and Morningside Road are one of the few parts of the city that retain a distinct character, with different and unique local shops. Sainsburys will add nothing practically that isn't already available close by, whilst their standard isue store frontage will be completely out of place with the aesthetics of the street which retains a great deal of character.

There is also the question of how many supermarkets we really need in this city. My half an hour walk home from Princes St would now take me past or very close to 2 Tesco and 2 Sainsbury in a very small geographically area at Tollcross, plus a Scotmid, then the planned Sainsburys in Bruntsfield, another Tesco at Holy Corner, Waitrose on Morningside Rd, Marks and Spencers Food and then another planned Sainsburys at the bottom of Morningside Rd.

Of course, most of these shops are relatively small, so the overkill in this area pales into insignificance compared to the sheer lunacy of the council's planning decisions in nearby Gorgie, where (against the advice of officials) planning permission has been given for a large Morrison's at Hutchison Road and a large Sainsbury's on the old B+Q site at Longstone. Taking into account the already existing massive Asda at Chesser and the new Sainsburys at Gorgie that makes 4 large supermarkets in a chain with each one separated from the next by no more than a few hundred metres. Bearing that in mind, treat any claims that this LD-SNP administration is supporting local business with a big pinch of salt come voting time in May.

Personally, I'm setting myself a target not to shop in either new Sainsburys when they open and try to make as much use as possible of the excellent local shops already in the area. Resist.

Safe House

Safe House, from relative unknown director Daniel Espinosa, desperately wants to be a Bourne-style spy-thriller. It has the visuals, certainly, having cleverly pinched Bourne's cinematographer, and the exotic location (Cape Town in this instance). However, it lacks Bourne's smarts and cohesiveness.

Tobin Frost (Denzel Wahington) is a rogue CIA-agent and expert in psychological warfare/interrogation, etc... In order to escape people who are after him, he turns himself in to the US consulate and soon finds himself being interrogated in a safe house run by bored but ambitious operative Ryan Reynolds. Within minutes the safe house is hit and the pair are on the run across the city and surrounding countryside to evade the bad guys, the CIA and each other.

The story-line from there on in is all rather predictable - you can see who the bad guy at Langley is a mile away. The action holds up fairly well though and makes for an entertaining watch. Washington is on cruise-control, but then again Denzel on cruise control is more watchable than many actors on full throttle. The problem is that the character never feels fully developed. If you make your central character an expert on psychologically manipulating others then you need to expect that their every move will be scrutinized. Frost doesn't bear up to the scrutiny - there is one point where he apparrently clumsily gives a massive clue as to where Reynolds might be able to find him later, perhaps suggesting that maybe he wants to be caught and that there's more going on here than the obvious motivations, but these hints are never developed and the character ends up neither one thing nor another.

Washington does pull a decent performance from Reynolds, who is a frustrating actor who occasionally shows glimpses that he's capable of more (Buried, The Nines) but too often coasts through poor material on the strength of charm alone. Elsewhere a strong supporting cast is essentially wasted, especially true in the case of Vera Farmiga underused in a role very similar to her one in Source Code.

Overrall - 6/10 Entertaining action flick that could and should have had more to offer.

Star Wars Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace in 3D

Revisiting the most disappointing movie in the history of cinema (although not necessarily the worst) many years on. First thing to say is that for once the 3D actually works. The iconic opening crawl of text going up the screen is surely the kind of thing 3D was made for and is undeniably cool. The 3D also enhances the most thrilling visual sequences of the film, like the pod race.

What it doesn't do is hide the films many shortcomings. Like the dreadfully, exposition laden script, some of worst crowd acting ever and the leads not much better, the overly convoluted plot and of course, Jar Jar - a cinematic crime so horrendous that not even double ended light-sabers can redeem the film. There is some fun to be had spotting the before-she-was-famous Keira Knightly and wondering if Jake Lloyd ever recovered from the trauma of growing up to be Hayden Christensen, but overall time has done nothing to improve the film (although the visual effects still hold up well). The one consolation - it was still better than Episode II!

Overall -5/10 The 3D works, the film still disappoints though.

Rampart

Woody Harrelson really has come a long way since Cheers. Rampart marks his second collaboration with director Oren Moverman. Last time, with Iraq-war film The Messenger they received much critical acclaim, an Oscar nomination for Harrelson, and a worldwide audience of around 10 people.

Rampart is possibly Harrelson's best performance of his career, but it's neither an easy character or an easy film to like. He plays Dave Brown, a corrupt, racist cop caught on camera using excessive force on a subject in the midst of the Rampart corruption scandal of the late 90s and the film charts his decline into ever increasing paranoia as he fights to clear his name whilst alienating all those close to him.

It is both a strength and a weakness of the film that we are so tied up with Brown and his point of view that there is little space to work out to what extent he might be being set-up or scapegoated and to what extent he is becoming delusional. The skill of Harrelson's performance is to make a character who is never likeable, engaging enough for the audience to bear with for the running time. He even manages to bring pathos to scenes where his daughters come to visit only to leave pretty immediately.

Harrelson is aided by a strong supporting cast - Sigourney Weaver, Steve Buscemi, Anne Heche, Robin Wright and Ice Cube all play minor roles well, but this is Harrelson's movie. It's not perfect, there are scenes that feel unnecessary and confusing, but maybe that is an illustration of Brown's state of mind, and there's maybe not quite enough story to sustain the character.

Overall - 7/10 A very strong central performance and a challenging film, but maybe not enough to it to be great.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Being the sequel to Journey to the Centre of the Earth, the 2008 version. Journey 1 got by on being one of the very first of the new wave of 3D films, which at least created enough interest in the effects to get over the seriously wobbly story and allow Brendan Fraser's charm to carry the audience the rest of the way through the dodgy CGI.

In Jouney 2 gone is the novelty factor, Brendan Fraser and the woman nobody remembers. Remaining are angsty Josh Hutcherson, the central idea that the novels of Jules Vernes were actually real life accounts and the basis for modern day expeditions (this time they throw Swift and Stevenson into the mix for good measure), and the dodgy CGI and plot holes. Added to the mix are Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Michael Caine and Luiz Guzman all competing to be the comedy sidekick and Vanessa Hudgens as Hutcherson's romantic interest.

The Mysterious Island is not without its funny moments - Johnson and Caine do their best to enliven things and there are some nice touches, like the miniature elephants and the ruined city of Atlantis, but overall the film still feels too reliant on the same 3D trickery that made the first one a success, but without the novelty factor its not enough to cover over the plot holes - like every time there's a problem, Johnson will suddenly turn out to be an expert in something really handy (including bizarrely enough soil liquefaction and summarising the plot in song for those who dozed off). And why is it when the island has been rising and sinking quite happily for millenia is this occasion so cataclysmic. And how do all the weird animals and insects survive two hundred years at the bottom of the ocean. And how in the name of genetics could Hudgens possibly be Guzman's daughter?

Overall - 5.5/10  This franchise has hopefully run its course now.

The Oscars 2012 - Final Thoughts

Well the Oscars have been and gone and the clear winners were The Artist in the artistic categories and Hugo in the technical ones. So here is my annual moan at the obvious injustices.

Except there aren't any glaring errors this time. Personally, it would have been great to see Gary Oldman get a deserved award, but that never looked likely to happen. Michelle Williams and Jessica Chastain will clearly get their turn sometime, but it's hard to argue with the winners in their categories. And Chico and Rita would have been a braver choice for best animated feature than Rango.

But those minor grumbles aside, Oscar did not too bad at all this year. That's it for another year.

The Muppets

I was never a huge Muppets fan as a child (or indeed as an adult) so I approached this film (good reviews not withstanding) with no real expectations. I left the cinema having laughed more than i had at any film for quite a while.

The plot, such as it is, is rather inconsequential. Gary (Jason Segal), his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) and brother Walter (who happens to be a puppet, for reasons that are never explored, thankfully) go on a trip to LA. Whilst there they uncover a plot by dastardly oil baron Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) to tear down the Muppet studio, so get the Muppets back together to put on a telethon to save the studio.

As a story, its both predictable and full of inexplicable holes, but that's the Muppets. The joy here is that after a slightly slow start, it keeps hitting the right notes comically. The laughs keep on coming - from the 80s robot, the sight of Oscar winner Copper rapping, travelling by map, gathering the gang by montage to save time, Animal's anger therapy, Emily Blunt reprising her Devil Wears Prada  role as Miss Piggy's assistant, a nice final gag with the telethon scoreboard and so on. The laughs keep coming.

The human cast are also good - Segal and Adams go a long way to confirming their position as the nicest people in Hollywood (even as their love story plays second fiddle to that of Kermit and Piggy), Cooper is a delightful bad guy, Jack Black and Zach Galifianakis haven't been in anything this funny for a long time. The decidedly quirky edge of Flight of the Conchords Brett Mckenzie also proves to be a great fit for the songs.

The bonus is a delightful Toy Story short film from Pixar at the start, which would almost be worth the admission price by itself.

Overall - 8/10  Consistently funny in a wonderfully good-hearted way. The Muppets are back!

Man on a Ledge

A man checks into an expensive hotel, eats a meal in his room, wipes his prints off everything and then climbs out the window threatening to jump. There follows a tense psychological will-he won't-he thriller as the police try to talk him down. Except there doesn't, no sooner has the premise been established than the filmmakers loe interest in it and cut away to show you what's really going on (just in case you haven't seen the trailer and already know the plot).

You see the man (Sam Worthington) is an ex-cop and escaped prisoner wrongly framed for stealing a huge diamond from an evil businessman (Ed Harris). Whilst the police negotiator (Elizabeth Banks) tries to talk him down, he's more interested in providing a diversion for his brother (Jamie Bell) and his brother's girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) to actually steal the diamond and thereby prove his innocence. As plans go this is maybe not the best thought out. Meanwhile Worthington's ex-partner (Anthony Mackie) is wondering creating questions about whose side he's really on (the only question not really answered by the trailer).

Actually, the constant cutting to a new supposed twist probably works in the films favour - the whole thing is ridiculous and doesn't really bear close examination (not least the huge variations in accent in one family), but by constantly shifting the action it's entertaining enough to keep the audience involved.

Sam Worthington's continued popularity as a leading man rather escapes me. It's not that he stinks as an actor, just that he's rather bland. Fortunately he isn't required to carry the film, and the supporting cast are great - Ed Harris chews the scenery delightfully in the bad guy role, Bell and Rodriguez provide most of the comic relief and William Sadler keeps cropping up in random places.

Overall - 6.5/10 It's nonsense, but quite entertaining nonsense.

This Means War

Tom Hardy and Chris Pine play two best friends who also happen to be spies. Both fall for the same woman (Reese Witherspoon) and end of using the full resources of the CIA in order to win her (or at least stop the other one winning her). The love triangle is hardly a new plot device, but the spy element should add a bit of fun and a bit of action. After all, director McG (however bad his track record on the big screen) has some form in the knockabout spy comedy from TV series Chuck.

Watching the film, it has moments and it has potential, but is overall disappointingly flat. On the fun side, there are definitely laugh out loud funny moments - a few of them were even not included in the trailer - a paintball date and a viewing of Klimt paintings stand out as being amongst the funnier moments. However, as far as the action goes, the spy plot kind of feels crammed in round the edges of the film. Only the final car chase feels really satisfying, with earlier sequences feeling rushed, clumsy and poorly cut.

The characters are largely underwritten, but the cast are game. Witherspoon and Pine are old hands at this kind of thing and gamely give it their all and their side of the triangle is probably the one with the most zing. The usually great Tom Hardy suffers the most. This is partly due the character, who is supposed to be the earnest, straightforward one to Pine's more playboy-ish, the Bourne to his Bond if you will. However, it feels a bit more than that and you can't help the nagging sense that maybe, great actor though he is, he is a little bit miscast here. Certainly the bromance with Pine falters when it should fizz.

Overview - 6/10 There have been a lot worse comedies made. This one has genuinely funny moments, but takes a long time to get going and never really totally loses a slightly flat feel.
 

Martha Marcy May Marlene

As the tongue-twister of a title might suggest, this is a film that raises questions about identity and belonging. It also raises questions about the effects of experience on our perceptions.

Martha is a young woman who has recently left a cult led by the charismatic Patrick (John Hawkes) where she was renamed Marcy May. Now staying with her sister and her husband (Sarah Paulson and Hugh Dancy) at their lake house, she struggles to adapt to 'normality' and what is expected of her.

Relative newcomer Sean Durkin, acting as writer and director, has produced a challenging, but subtly engaging film. The structure switches between Martha at the lakehouse and her surfacing memories of life in the cult, drawing both links and contrasts and leading the audience to deduce the reasons for her behaviour which starts a little out of the ordinary - going swimming without a costume - and becomes gradually more unhinged. Much is left suggested rather than spelt out and Martha remains throughout rather silent on her experiences, whilst some details are foregrounded, others are glimpsed in the back of shots, like a chair propped against a door.

Durkin also marshalls some strong performances. Hawkes is superb as Patrick combining a real charisma with a menacingly sinister edge - watch out for the moment when he gives shooting lessons. The secret weapon here though is a mesmerisingly human and vulnerable performance by an Olsen sister (and that's not a sentence I thought I'd ever be typing). Elizabeth Olsen (younger sister or Mary-Kate and Ashley) is simply brilliant in portraying the traumatised young woman.

Its's never comfortable viewing and it has a deeply ambiguous ending that will divide and frustrate the audience, but it will get you thinking and/or talking.

Overall - 8/10 Challenging and thought0provoking cinema, often beautifully put together and wonderfully acted.

Chronicle

Chronicle is a low-budget sci-fi built around a really good premise. What would really happen if a group of average-ish real American teenagers were given superpowers? Would they become superheroes (with great power comes great responsibility and all that jazz) or would they use them to have fun, play practical jokes, etc...? Then what would happen if one of those teenagers was a socially awkward boy with a dying mum, an abusive alcoholic father and rather poor impulse control.

Of course, a lot of low budget films have great ideas, it's the execution that lets them down. Here, director Josh Trank gets close to getting it right. The young cast generally do a really good job - Dane DeHaan as the troubled Andrew is particularly good and carries most of the film - and they are aided by some strong supports in the (few) adult roles. The script is generally strong and the pacing is good. We have a nice introduction to the characters prior to the encounter with the alien object that gives them their powers (telekinesis and levitation), there's a real sense of menace in the scenes involving Andrew's father, mixed with lighter moments as the three boys experiment with their powers to pull off magic tricks and play practical jokes, etc... and a slow build up to the finale when Andrew fully goes off the rails.

The finale is not bad, but it does let the film down a bit. This is almost entirely due to the decision to place the film in the found footage genre (i.e. the entire film is supposedly shot from camera(s) actually there in the action.) There have been some stunning examples where this has worked really well - think of Cloverfield or last year's Troll Hunter. In these cases the the medium actually served a narrative and artistic purpose - footage as evidence surviving a catastrophe or a government cover-up - and actually enhanced the story that was being told. Also, in those examples all the footage came from a singular source. Here, it's not totally clear why they took that route (except perhaps budgetary reasons?) but it doesn't really work. The single source route is abandoned early on and by the finale they are cutting between so many sources, so quickly and having to work so hard to get all these "cameras" into the action that it becomes distracting and confusing. Even then there are moments when you'll be left scratching your head thinking who's actually shooting this.

Overall - 7/10 There's clearly talent here and a great idea which almost makes a very good film, but is let down by one bad choice.

Carnage

Two sets of middle-class parents meet to discuss and try and sort out a fight that happened between their two sons leaving one boy quite badly hurt. From the intially civil, gradually the polite and correct masks begin to slip, the arguments deepen and alliances continually shift.

Carnage is decidedly stage-y for a film. There are two reasons for this - it is adapted from a French stage play and (due to his well-publicised legal difficulties) director Roman Polanski shot the whole thing in a Manhattan apartment completely recreated on a French sound stage, rather than on location. There are disadvantages to this - the reasons that one couple don't just leave sometimes feel rather implausible, the characters become drunk that little bit too quickly - in other words, at times it feels contrived. But it's worth bearing with it, because once it really gets going this is a brutally funny satire of middle-class mores. It's probably the best that Polanski has produced in a decade.

The strong cast are all on great form too - Christoph Waltz's lawyer is probably the most emotionally, morally and physically detached, spending half the time on the phone trying to hush up a scandal with a drug company he's representing. He also seems to almost delight in the mayhem that ensues and gets most of the best lines. Kate Winslet does well with perhaps the most difficult, least defined character who swings the most from compliant to resistant. Jodie Foster is perfectly cast as the liberal writing a book on Darfur, the most attached to doing the right thing as she sees it, but unaware of her own hypocrisy, whilst John C Reilly is great as her blue collar husband pretending to go along with her values whilst pining for the world of John Wayne. There are some great moments like the men bonding in mourning over the drowned Blackberry.Also notice the moment not in the apartment over the closing credits and what this says about the point of it all.

Overall - 7.5/10 Funny, at times brutally so. Get past the theatricality and there's a brilliant ensemble with great material.

The Descendants

The Descendants is Alexander Payne's first full length film since 2004's Sideways. It is the tale of Matt King (George Clooney), Hawaiian landowner and descendant of the original royalty, having to come to terms with his wife being in a coma, needing to take a more hands on approach to parenting his two daughters and learning that prior to the coma his wife was having an affair. On top of this he also has a decision to make on behalf of his extended family about who (if anybody) to sell a huge bit of untouched Hawaii real estate to.

As in his previous movies (Sideways, About Schmidt and to a lesser extent Election), Payne takes complex human situations and mines them for both pathos and humour, the humour sometimes straying into the apparrently inappropriate but nonetheless funny - the scene where King and his oldest daughter verbally disect his wife's lover (a surprisingly good Matthew Lillard) whilst standing in front of him is one standout. Here, this is also combined with a strong sense of place, giving the audience a real feel for Hawaii (even if the music does begin to get irritating after a while). The story goes to some rather predictable places (the ultimate decision about the land-sale) and some unpredictable ones, but ultimately that's not really the point. It's the humanity of the characters and very real emotions they face - even the most apparrently shallow (Nick Krause's Sid coming across rather like Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted mode) get moments that reveal another side.

Here Payne is aided by some stunning performances. Clooney has gathered all the praise and he's on note perfect form here (although maybe not career best) from the comedy running to the moments of real feeling. As he gets older, the comparisons with the likes of Cary Grant become more telling - it's a great performance and yet you never forget that you're watching Clooney, but really that doesn't matter. The really amazing thing is that someone who you never forget is such a big star can still make a millionaire into an everyman hero and that's what puts Clooney in a class almost by himself and where the Grant comparisons are so valid. For my money, he was better in both Syriana  and Up in the Air than he is here, but still deserves the Oscar nom (although either Oldman or Dujardin would be worthier winners for me).

The buzz around Clooney has also distracted somewhat from two amazing performances by the young actresses playing his daughters. Shailene Woodley (as the older Alex) is particularly good and is clearly a name to watch for the future.

Overall - 8/10 Intelligent, heartfelt and funny. Payne and Clooney combine well to make this well worth watching.

Haywire

Haywire is one of those confusing films that leaves you with the feeling that it's not anywhere near as it should be and its not immediately obvious why. I mean, it's not a bad film, its well shot, has some OK performances and cool touches, but the whole just feels that little bit flat.

Steven Soderbergh continues with his experiments with non-professional actors in the lead roles (following The Girlfriend Experience) casting mixed martial arts star Gina Carano in the lead as the independant contractor (read spy) betrayed and set-up by her employers. She's not the strongest of actors, but then again she's better than the likes of Stallone, Arnie or Statham and has the moves and the potential to be better still, but is let down by the film.

Soderbergh does surround her with a lot of the best male actors in the business (and Channing Tatum), but here there seems to be hugely different approaches - Ewan MacGregor (yet again, making some horrible attempt at an American accent) and Michael Fassbender are too smirky, like naughty boys enjoying themselves and highly amused at the prospect of getting beat up by a girl. Antonio Banderas and Michael Douglas at least put some effort in, but seem to think they're in an action flick with a comic side, whilst Tatum and Paxton are all deadly earnest. Even that would not be a big enough fault to sink the movie, if only...

The action held up, but it doesn't. Soderbergh, for all his undoubted strengths, just doesn't seem to be the right director to handle this kind of film. There are a couple of good fight scenes which really work, but otherwise the action is slow, laboured and flat. Carano can clearly handle herself, but too often Soderbergh creates scenes that feel too choreographed and fake with moves that look more like a pre-arranged wrestling move. Carano is also a fighter, not a free-runner and the Dublin rooftop chase seems dreadfully slow and laboured compared to many other examples.

Overall - 5.5/10 There's potential here, but the end result is disappointingly flat and unengaging. A case of a good director being wrong for the film.

2012 Oscar Nominations - first thoughts

Part of the fun of the Oscars is all the speculation beforehand, so here are my first thoughts on the nominations and some questions for Oscar. I'm not claiming to have seen all the nominated or overlooked films, but that's never stopped me being opinionated before.

First up, where's the love for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Gary Oldman fully deserves his nomination, but the film is grossly under-represented elsewhere - it's better than at least four of the Best Picture nominations and would be a better shout for Best Director than many.

Best Picture - Midnight in Paris, seriously? Have you watched it? Similarly from the advance reviews - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The Help was more predictable but arguably no more deserved. No Tinker, Tailor... No Girl with the Dragon Tattoo... No We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Best Director - Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris. Again, that's a joke right? Ahead of Spielberg and Fincher and Alfredson. Did he get to pick the nominees himself?

Actors -  Demian Bichir is a surprise (not seen the film, but nice to see a bit of an oddball nomination). Brad Pitt for Moneyball rather than The Tree of Life -  surprising but not necessarily wrong. Can anyone stop Clooney here?

Actresses -  that perennial favourite - how come Viola Davis is up for best lead in The Help when Emma Stone was the lead in that movie, whilst Berenice Bejo is up for best supporting role for her leading role in The Artist? No Tilda Swinton? Its probably down to Maggie vs Marilyn though, and in Hollywood you have to make Marilyn favourite.

Best Animated Film - No pixar and deservedly so - when was the last time that happened?

War Horse

War Horse is the film adapted from the stage play adapted from the children's book by Michael Morpurgo. It tells the story of the titular horse's (called Joey (although he later gets both French and German names too)) journey from a small Devon farm to the battlefields of the Somme via an ill-fated cavalry charge, a couple of German deserters, the care of the grand-daughter of a French jam-maker and finally a German artillery unit. And its the latest from a little-known director by the name of Steven Spielberg.

In many ways the film is a good fit for Spielberg, giving ample room for both his strengths and weaknesses. On the strengths side, the story falls somewhere between rambling and epic, with its shifting locations and series of characters being introduced who each get their moment in Joey's life, but Spielberg tells the story with verve and panache, allowing each of the characters some life whilst never getting distracted from the story. This allows the audience to buy into the film despite the main character being a horse.

He has also lost none of his ability for a beautifully framed shot - the sight of a young girl, standing in a doorway with the sunlight behind all shown through the reflection in the horse's eye is pretty close to the quintessentially Spielbergian shot. Also look out for the cavalry charge through a ripened corn-field, whilst Joey's eventual flight through no-man's land is a bravura piece of film-making and the most thrilling sequence of the film (and a early contender for scene of the year).

On the other hand, Spielberg's greatest weakness has long been a tendancy to excessive sentimentality and that really needed to be reigned in (pun fully intended) at times here. It kind of works in the early scenes in Devon, partly due to the performances of Jeremy Irvine, whose earnestness sells the difficult part of Albert (a naive young man who'll do anything for his horse), and the ever reliable Peter Mullan and Emily Watson as his parents. David Thewlis also provides good value as the comically villainous landlord. You can stomach this slightly romanticised rural idyll because you feel it is providing a contrast for what is to come.

Its when the film shifts to France and the idyll continues that you feel Spielberg is over-romanticising and over-sentimentalising. The period where Joey is being looked after by the plucky sick grand-daughter of French jam-maker Niels Arestrup  that this is at its most jarring. The war is only a few miles away and yet everything is so perfect - the strawberries couldn't be any redder, the farmhouse any more perfectly rustic, even when the war does intrude, the German soldiers seem more comic than genuinely threatening. The sin is compounded by that fact that in moments leading up to this, it has felt that Spielberg has been deliberately shielding our eyes (in one case literally, by the use of a windmill sail, in other cases by judicious cutting from machine guns to empty horses) from the reality of war in order to maintain this idyll.

From here we are catipulted into the full horrors of trench warfare and the film regains its footing. Albert is now in France fighting the war and there is a nicely underplayed subplot about his relationship with the landlord's son. Meanwhile, Toby Kebbell manages to bring humour and emotion together in a nice scene of a Brit and a German working together to free Joey from barbed wire. The touches here, athough a different style for a different war and different genre, remind you that this was the director who brought you the beach landings of Saving Private Ryan.

Overall - 7/10 Good but not great. Spielberg at his best and worst with beautifully images and storytelling let down by an overdose of sentiment and romanticism.