Lars and the Real Girl

Even for a dedicated film fan like yours truly, the release schedules for the past few weeks have been somewhat ... dull, unexciting, lacking in quality or interest or anything that would make me actually really want to go to the cinema. The shining, solitary exception to this is this surprising indie oddity.

Don't be put off by the plot - which concerns a shy, lonely man (Ryan Gosling) who creates a delusional "real" relationship with a sex doll he buys on the internet. Becoming convinced that she is a real Brazilian missionary called Bianca, crippled by an illness. Following advice from the local psychologist (Patricia Clarkson) the whole community buys into this delusion in order to help Lars.

Don't be put off either by the fact that director Craig Gillespie's only previous film was the woeful Mr Woodcock. Aided by a great script from Nancy Oliver and some great performances, he manages to create a film that is subtle, funny, surprising and tender where his previous film was loud, brash, predictable and more than a little crap. Amazingly, it also a film with barely a hint of sleaze - no mean achievement given the subject.

It's not perfect - it does lack something in realism and is somewhat rosy in its portrait of small town America - surely somewhere there would be somebody shouting abuse or something. But it is a compelling portrait of loneliness and delusion, as well as support and love. Gosling (Half Nelson) is again superb - a picture of stumbling awkwardness who visibly grows in stature as the film progresses. He's supported well by the rest of the cast from the ever-excellent Clarkson to Emily Mortimer and Paul Schneider (you'll know the face even if you can't place it) as his brother and sister-in-law and Kelli Garner as the colleague who really rather likes him.

Overall - 4/5 A surprising delight that will amuse and move far more than it will make you squirm.

Movies to look forward to...

Now that awards season has ground to a halt and your local multiplex is gradually emptying of the oh-so-worthy oscar-bait, what is there to look forward to in the coming months. Here are a few of the films that are exciting me at the moment:

Son of Rambow (due March 28th) - gathering much love on the festival circuit and looking great from the trailer - promises to be both very funny and touching. Possibly the best British film of the year.

Iron Man (May 2nd) Could be the movie to breath fresh life into superhero flicks. The presence of Robert Downey Jr in the lead is promising

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 23rd) The movie event of the year! Not the most promising of titles, but the trailer looks great - Harrison Ford can definitely still cut it and adding Shia LaBouef into the mix should be a good move.

The Happening (June 13th) The new one from M Night Shyamalan looks typically intriguing from the trailer and might represent a return to the twist-master's best form.

WALL-E (July 18th) The new one from Pixar - you know its going to be good.

Valkyrie (August 8th) Cruise and Branagh as Germans plotting against Hitler directed by Brian Singer - could be the first contender for next years Oscars. Alternatively, could be terrible, but I'm going with the former at the moment.

Quantum of Solace (October 31) Another odd title, but Bond is back - can they maintain the form of Casino Royale - lets hope so!

And thats without mentioning the likes of The Dark Knight, Prince Caspian, Harry Potter or Sin City 2.

Catch-up

So, as you may have noticed, I’ve not had time to blog much recently, which means that there a few different movies that have been viewed and yet to be reviewed. What follows is a brief summary:

Vantage Point – 3/5
Described as 24 meets Rashomon – an assassination attempt on the president viewed from multiple perspectives – each adding something new to the mix. On the whole it works as good entertainment – the multiple perspectives change enough and add enough new information to avoid a feeling of repetition. There’s a quality cast who guarantee good value – Dennis Quaid, Forrest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt and Lost’s Matthew Fox. Most of the action set pieces and car chases work well and then they rather mess up the ending to leave it feeling too messy and contrived. Good, but should have been better.

Conversations with my Gardener – 3.5/5
OK, this one’s from the French film festival and isn’t on general release yet, but is well worth checking out when it comes around. It tells the story of an artist (Daniel Auteuil) who moves back to his home town and develops a friendship with his gardener (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) who is also a childhood friend. The film successfully treads the line – managing to both be genuinely funny and also giving a touching portrait of the friendship between two men. We’ve seen Auteuil do this kind of role often before, but it is Darroussin who gives the film real heart and steals he credits.

Margot at the Wedding – 2.5/5
Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to The Squid and the Whale treads the same ground – a darkly comic look at dysfunctional families. Margot (Nicole Kidman) and her teenage son go to visit her sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh) as she prepares to get married to an underachieving Jack Black. It maintains the humour of its predecessor, but is a messier and much less likeable affair, mainly due to the fact that none of the characters are particularly likeable.

The Spiderwick Chronicles – 3.5/5
Following a family break-up, a mum (the excellent Mary-Louise Parker) and her teenage daughter and twin sons (both played by Freddie Highmore) move into a big old house in the middle of nowhere. Soon a book is discovered that opens their eyes to the magical world of creatures around them and the danger that brings. Yes, its another children’s fantasy, but a more or less successful one – visually and emotionally (with the underplayed break-up situation) it comes close in feel to Bridge to Terabithia, which is actually a recommendation. The cast, which also includes David Strathairn, are all on good form and there are some real PG-level scares. Recommended for viewers of all ages.

10,000 BC – 2.5/5
It would so easy to knock the latest blockbuster from Roland Emmerich (Independance Day, The Day After Tomorrow) – you could start with the obviously multi-ethnic origins of the stone age tribe (presumably working on the logic that as long as they all look foreign nobody will notice), there’s the not entirely successful mixing of real actors and CGI mammoths, the script which might have been written in the stone ages, the ridiculous plot elements (including one pinched from Androcles and the lion). At the end of the day, though, if you go to watch this, you ain’t going to be expecting high art and as mindless entertainment and spectacle following in the footsteps of Apocalypto, it works OK. It also takes itself so seriously it becomes unintentionally hilarious in places, but it does, mainly, look great.

The Other Boleyn Girl – 2/5
Or Elizabeth:the Early Years. This film has many faults, but the main cast isn’t one of them – Eric Bana, Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman all do a creditable job and manage better than average English accents. The plot is historical soap opera, but that’s to be expected. The script is poor – with heavy handed moments of Tudor history for dummies inserted into dialogue. But the main fault is with the direction and cinematography – I’m not quite sure what was being attempted, but it doesn’t work – the odd camera angles, jerky shooting and odd cuts are more suggestive of a psychological thriller or slasher flick and are far more distracting than effective. Approach with caution.

The Boss of it All – 2/5
Lars Von Trier (Dogville, Breaking the Waves) is not a director renowned for making people laugh . Here he attempts a comedy, or so he tells us at the start. The set-up has good comic potential –company owner, Ravn, is too afraid of offending his employees so he invents a fictional boss to take responsibility for all the unpopular decisions. Due to circumstances he then has to hire out of work actor Kristoffer to play said boss – the problem being that the “boss” has told all the employees different things. The result isn’t without the odd wry smile, but leaves you with the feeling it should be much funnier. This seems to mainly be down to Von Trier seemingly being more interested in picking apart the genre than actually making people laugh – his closing words will leave you with the impression that he is the only one who is truly amused, and that at the expense of the audience.

The Bank Job

Going into an average film with low expectations, one can come away pleasantly surprised having actually quite enjoyed it. And The Bank Job is an average film - despite the apparent true story premise (one suspects that there is one heck of a lot of supposition at work) and political intrigue additions, this is effectively just another London-set gangster movie. From the loveable cockney thieves to the posh spooks, there's not much in the way of characterisation here beyond the stereotypical.

The plot follows Terry (Jason Statham) and his mates, tricked into the robbery of some safety deposit boxes by the intelligence community in order that they might get their hands on some incriminating pictures of a royal personage. In the process they also manage to rob various persons of ill-repute, who all want to get their stuff back.

What follows will leave you with a distinct sense of deja-vu - despite the political element to the set-up there's not much that hasn't been done before and done better. Statham in particular struggles with a role which requires him to be more restrained than usual and only really seems at ease in the last act where he gets to be menacing and violent.

There are, however, redeeming features - the script by Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais keeps things moving at a lively pace and keeps things clear and coherent with all the different groups and their motivations. Peter Bowles is very watchable as the intelligence chief, as is Stephen Campbell Moore (The History Boys) as Terry's photographer friend. On the downside, some of the violence feels a bit gruesome for what is otherwise quite a light tone to the film.

Overall - 2.5/5. Neither as good nor as bad as it might have been. Lacking in originality but fairly well executed for undemanding lively entertainment.

Be Kind Rewind

Writer-director Michael Gondry is certainly a man with an almost boundless imagination. After all, this is the man who directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and brought us The Science of Sleep. Be Kind Rewind is not in the same league as either of those films, but it does have its inspired moments of lunacy.

The plot follows Mike (Mos Def) left in charge of the local video store only for his friend Jerry (Jack Black), who has become magnetised following a freak accident whilst sabotaging the local power plant, to wipe all the tapes. Rather than replacing them, the pair decide to shoot the films themselves, in doing so bringing their community together, etc... And yes there are strong elements of that old standard plot about a community uniting to save the store from the evil developers who want to rip everything down and the sentimentality comes pretty thick at the end.

The cast is strong - with supporting turns from the likes of Danny Glover, Mia Farrow and a blink and you'll miss it cameo from Sigourney Weaver. The leads aren't bad - Mos Def borders on the too whiny at times and Jack Black is in full manic mode, but given the overall lunacy of the plot, its more appropriate and watchable than he's been for a while. The film also takes its time to get going and slides into sentimentality at the end, but really hits its stride in the middle stages where the films are being re-shot, often hilariously. As one reviewer put it, you'd probably rather watch their version of Rush Hour 2 than the real thing. Disappointingly, some of the more intriguing ideas are only hinted at - I'd love to see Jack Black doing a twenty minute vesion of Lord of the Rings.

Overall - 3/5. It is a bit messy with too many ideas going in different directions, but at times its very funny and inspired in its lunacy.

There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood is not an easy watch - let's get that clear at the start. If you're looking for an evening's undemanding entertainment (and let's face it, we all need that some times) move along and try something in the next screen. Its starts with about 20 minutes without a word being spoken. The discordant score creates a tense, uneasy almost threatening atmosphere. It features moments that in illustrating the brutality of the early oil industry, will make you wince. There are no clear good guys in this film and it ends on a note that is either perfect or completely wrong - I'm still not sure.

But then director Paul Thomas Anderson has never been one to make easy choices. He followed up his multi-stranded masterpiece Magnolia with an Adam Sandler film (Punch Drunk Love) and now this. Its not easy but it frequently borders on greatness. Daniel Day Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, an oil man at the turn of the last century who adopts a young boy after his father is killed in a drilling accident. Plainview's motives are never entirely clear. He is brought into conflict with hellfire and brimstone preacher Eli Sunday (Little Miss Sunshine's Paul Dano) - both men acting parts as they try to win the upper hand in a power struggle.

Daniel Day Lewis' performance is superb - more mannered than you would usually expect from him, but he's playing a man who's all about a projected public image with little clue as to what lies beneath the surface. That Dano, not only lives with the pace, but challenges for the upper hand in most scenes is a testament to his talent. Together they make these not very likeable men watchable and interesting. The whole is shot stunningly and often beautifully, deservedly picking up the Oscar for cinematography.

Overall - 4.5/5 Another great film from Anderson - not easy to watch, but shot through with brilliance.