Twilight: Eclipse

The first twilight movie, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, was a moody atmospheric piece that was really rather good. The second one was directed by the man who murdered the Northern Lights/Golden Compass adapatation and was flat and dull. The third installment comes from the hands of the David Slade, who did Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night, maybe not an obvious choice, but he's done solid job that's a definite improvement on part 2.

The three main leads, Kirsten Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner are all definitely growing into their roles, but the problem is there's really not that much more interesting to do with the whole love triangle thing, apart from the odd-good one-liner - what could have sustained one movie is being dragged out over 4 or 5. Similarly, Dakota Fanning is again underused in a very slow set-up for a later film. The scenery is still stunning though, and we get some more back-stories for the other Cullens, which is diverting, but makes it feel more like a TV series than a movie. But fear not, there is a good final act battle with invading new-born vampires to liven things up.

Overall - 6/10 - It is an improvement, but you still feel that there isn't enough actual story here to sustain the number of films.

Splice

Writer-Director Vincenzi Natali's Cube was an intelligent and very different sci-fi thriller that achieved something of a cult status. Since then he has been relatively quiet on both the directing and writing front. So Splice marks something of a comeback.

It's a modern day take on Frankenstein. Two scientists (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) bend the rules in creating a creature which blends human DNA with several other species and then details their complex relationship with their creation as she develops at an accelerated rate.

Is it any good? Well, one of the three or four different movies that seeming to be competing for space and clashing here is actually rather good. The middle section which shows the development of the creature, Dren, through childhood and teenage years and the bonding between her and her parents, together with the confusion her unique status brings, is actually really well done, largely down to an amazing performance by Delphine Chaneac, bringing a real child like wonder to Dren.

However, the start and finish lurch between satire, broad comedy, cliched creature-feature scares and who knows what else, resulting in jumps in tone that jar hugely and a film that leaves Brody and Polley stranded with no idea where to pitch their performances. And final act is best just avoided.

Overall -5.5/10 It's a very messy film, with some really good parts, but a very incoherent whole. Overal, the good bits probably don't make it worthwhile.

Heartbreaker

This is a film which goes to show that the French can take a Hollywood staple genre like te rom-com, stick to the format pretty well and still make something much more entertaining than anything Hollywood has produced in the genre for a long time.

The story: Alex (Romain Duris) is hired by people to break-up relationships (only where the woman is really unhappy, but unwilling to face it) by making the women fall for him. In this he is aided by his sister and her husband. Problems come when he is hired by Vanessa Paradis' father to stop her relationship with nice guy Brit, Andrew Lincoln, and he actually starts to fall for her.

So far, so Rom-Com. And all the staple elements are there, but they're handled in a way that feels slightly more knowing, as if the director is winking at the audience and saying "Ok, I know its a cliche, so lets make it fun". So you have the last act run, only this time its from the airport (and on foot). Meanwhile, Paradis proves a surprisingly good leading lady and Duris ladles on the comic charm. There are some good use of stunning locations, Julie Ferrier and Francois Damien provide the broader laughs as the sister and brother-in-law, the movie plays nice games with spy movies, etc... and the high-tech set-ups and the script is smart and funny. Oh, and there is some hilarious takes on Dirty Dancing.

Overall - 7.5/10 A Rom-Com that is genuinely smart and funny, I don't think I've laughed so much at a rom-com for years.

Inception

Rather like Pixar, but with very different films, Christopher Nolan is on a very strong run of films as director from Memento to The Dark Knight, taking in the likes of The Prestige and Batman Begins along the way. Inception, his latest, deals with some familiar themes on the boundaries between perception and reality, coping with loss, etc...

Leonardo DiCaprio is Cobb - an expert at extraction (or stealing secrets from peoples dreams). For reasons to do with his wife (Marillon Cotillard) he is unable to return to the States to see his children until Ken Watanabe offers him the chance back through one last job. Therefore he assembles a crack team (including Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy) to perform an inception (planting an idea in somebody's head through a dream) which involves a complex set-up involving a dream within a dream within a dream. Meanwhile, problems in Cobb's own subconscious threaten to de-rail the whole endeavour.

As you may have noticed from that, its a difficult story to describe and there are quite a few exposition moments. However, the exposition is well handled and accompanied by such stunning visuals that it will carry you along. Shots of Paris folding up and the paradoxical architecture are wonderfully executed. Thus its complicated but never too confusing. Nolan credits his audience with the intelligence to follow and keeps things moving along well. He's aided by a great cast who fit their roles well and some great set-pieces, including gravity free scenes in a hotel and a bond-like final layer. Dicaprio (who keeps getting better and better) holds a strong centre to the film, whilst Gordon-Levitt and Hardy make a good double act for both the action and humour.

Put it altogether and you have an intelligent action thriller which will keep you hooked throughout its two and a half hour running time. It never tries to pull the rug out from under you in the way that, say The Prestige, did, but rather takes you with it through all its twists and turns. Be warned though, the ending might really infuriate!

Overall - 8.5/10 Not quite Nolan's best, but still a really good intelligent thriller with an ending that might delight or frustrate but will definitely have you talking.

Toy Story 3

Have Pixar done it again? They've been on a great run since the slight mis-step that was Cars, so how does their return to the characters who started the whole thing off hold up?

Andy is now growing up and about to head off to college. For the toys this leaves a fate of either the attic, the trash or being donated to the local daycare centre. They end up at the daycare where things are run by the rather less than benevolent Lots-a-Huggin' bear. From here the movie plays like a prison escape film.

But is it the Toy Story we all know and love? The answer would have to be a resounding Yes. The film strikes all the right character notes for the existing characters who all get some lovely moments. The new characters are all fresh and add something fresh - Ken and Barbie are possibly the most effective and funny, whilst Timothy Dalton's Mr Pricklepants is slightly underused (but that's a small criticism). The action is well handled, the visuals as stunning as you'd expect, but as ever these things only ever serve the story.

There are probably not quite the sublime emotional moments of the opening of WALL-E or the silent montage in Up, but the film is more consistently excellent throughout and there are still some great moments including Buzz's spanish mode, the opening sequence and the aliens and the great claw.

Overall - 9/10 Pixar have definitely done it again and provided us with a great and fitting goodbye to the characters who started it all off.

Skeletons

This is one for those who like their movies with a healthy dose of strange and quirky. The Skeletons in the title refer to those that we keep in cupboards and which the two main characters specialise in extracting in an extended metaphor that becomes not quite literal but close (one of several in the film).

Bennett and Davis are psychic extractors whose own frailies come to light when they are faced with a particularly difficult missing person case. This is ultra-low budget - the special effects stretch to some lights in a wardrobe and possibly a smoke machine and the only recognisable name in the cast is Jason Isaacs (sporting a raspy voice and scar for reasons that are never explained) - but nevertheless first time writer-director Nick Whitfield has produced a charming delight of a film from the opening shot of two men in suits walking across moorland discussing the merits of Rasputin. The performances border on the mannered but that is quite fitting and in creating a slightly different world, the script is explanation-lite, but rather credits its audience with some intelligence. It come across a bit like Beckett jointly directed by Gilliam and Kaufmann.

Overall - 7/10 Intelligently offbeat and gently charming. It won't be to everybody's taste, but if you fancy something a wee bit different, its worth checking out.

Get Him to the Greek

Being a long way from being a Russell Brand fan, I approached this with some trepidation. (It wasn't first on my choice of films to see, but I was outvoted this time). Its another comedy from the all conquering Judd Apatow production team. This is a spin-off from the aptly forgettable but still entertaining Forgetting Sarah Marshall with Brand reprising his role as drug and booze soaked rock star Aldous Snow and Jonah Hill as the hapless record company exec who has to get him from London to LA for a big concert.

Well that's enough of the plot, which is utterly predictable, even from that one sentance summary. Of the surprises - it wasn't as bad as I expected and there were a few laughs (most of them courtesy of Sean Coombs, who is by far and away the best thing in this). Also, Brand wasn't the worst thing in this - that prize goes to Hill, an actor who seems to be getting less likeable, funny or watchable with every movie he makes. In fact the movie is so generally bad, that Brand within it seems quite reasonable by comparison.

Most Apatow produced movies have a few moments that strain the bounds of taste and decency and the odd moment that make you cringe and not in a good way, but they generally balance this out with a lot of genuine laughs and a real tender heart underneath the humour. In Get Him to the Greek the cringes outweigh the laughs by a huge ratio and the heart is totally absent. There isn't a single likeable character in the whole ensemble.

Overall - 4.5/10 There are a few laughs, but having to sit through the rest of the film is too high a price to pay for them.

The Reform Bill

Running a bit late for thoughts on this one, but for what itc worth here are some thoughts on Nick Clegg's proposed political reforms.

Fixed Term Parliaments - the proposals here seem to have been changed both to head off backbench opposition and to undermine Labour resistance. Gone is the idea of 55% to remove the government, instead a simple majority in a no confidence vote would remove a Prime Minister (this should satisfy the rebellious nutters on the Tory backbenches). Meanwhile for the government to dissolve parliament early would take 66% of MPs. Labour would struggle to have much objection to this as this is very close to the system they set up for the Scottish Parliament.

Reducing the Number of MPs. Its impossible to say without new boundaries being suggested who this would favour the most, but its very hard to argue against equal sized constituencies, so Labour need to watch out with their accusations of gerrymandering. The current system does have an inbuilt bias towards Labour and attempts to protect this look like self-interest and could play very poorly for them. Jack Straw's comments that this is an attack on Labour are absolutely incredible and unbelievable - to accept this is to accept that voters in small urban seats deserve more say than those in large rural seats. Our system is deeply unfair in many ways, such defences of the status quo should be avoided.

Of the exceptions, Orkney and Shetland are so remote that a separate seat is warranted. The geograhical cap size also seeems reasonable as for an MP to cover a vast area would make the job unfeasible. I'm less convinced about the Western Isles exception - historically it has been joined to the mainland in single seat and I see no particular reason it can't be again. Especially if you consider that rigid sticking to the size rules will produce a situation where the Isle Of wight is split into two constituencies with half forced into a seat straddling the Solent. Curiously the main beneficiary of this exception are the SNP.

The AV referendum. This is going to produce one of the most bizarre things in British politics that I can think of. The two coalition parties will introduce a referendum bill for something in neither manifesto. The one party who did have it in their manifesto (Labour) could well oppose it in the Commons. If it does get through parliament, the two coalition partners will then fight on different sides of the campaign.

I have mixed views about AV. I don't see it as a more proportional system. It could as its critics say, produce bigger swings to the bigger parties. I would hate to see a No vote for AV mean an end to the chances of electoral reform for another generation. But could a YES vote be a stepping stone to further change, or would we be stuck with AV for the foreseeable future.

Conventional wisdom suggests that its easier for smaller parties to break through under FPTP, but in close elections their vote tends to get squeezed in FPTP (as happened to the Greens is all but two or three seats thios time around). AV would provide some protection from this and enable a build up of votes election on election, but ultimately might make it harder to win seats. So I'm still torn as to which way I would vote should there be a referendum. I also think that somebody needs to pay attention to what Mr Salmond is saying about the timing producing a clash of focus in the campaigns for the referendum and Scottish elections to the detriment of both.

On more positive news, the announcement of a review into counter-terrorism measures is to be welcomed. Whilst I remain dubious about some of the coalitions decisions, the noises being made about civil liberties are rather more encouraging.

Shrek Forever After

The first two Shrek films were funny, inventive fun for all the family with such attention to detail and multi-layered humour that they paid repeated viewings. The third film was a crashing disappointment - an unfunny string of celebrity cameos without a plot to string it all together (none of the people I went to see this with, could even really remember what happened in it!). So can Forever After see a return to form or further debasement of what was once a quality franchise.

The answer, rather predictably, is somewhere in the middle. This is a vast improvement on the last episode - there is a plot (a kind of spin on Its a Wonderful Life, where Rumpelstiltskin tricks Shrek into an agreement which finds him marooned in a world where he had never been born), there are some good sequences (shrek's first moments enjoying being a real ogre again are a delight reminiscent of the first picture), both Donkey and Puss are used much better and Fiona leading an ogre rebellion works well. Add into this, some nice riffs on the likes of the Wizard of Oz, and you're starting to head towards what made Shrek great.

However, the film never really gets there. You can't escape the fact that the entire concept, four films and many imitations in, is feeling a wee bit tired. Its good but never gripping, funny but never hilarious, clever at points but never inspired.

Overall - 6.5/10 A definite improvement - a much better place to finish the franchise, but they do need to finish it now.

Greenberg

Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding) gives us wry, emotionally detached, often blackly comic observations of messed-up people and the ways they relate (or fail to) with each other. Greenberg is another such slice of brokeness. Ben Stiller's Roger Greenberg, is the eponymous hero (of sorts) recovering from a nervous breakdown, house-sitting for his successful brother, looking up the friends of his youth and starting a tentative and not always healthy relationship with his brother's PA (Greta Gerwig) and generally aiming to do nothing for a while.

Stiller gives what may be the best performance of his career, subtly restrained with none of his usual manic energy. Gerwig is superb as the sympathetic heart of the film, as is Rhys Ifans as the childhood friend. However, the film starts very slowly and with Greenberg not being the most likeable character, it takes work to stick with it. Its worth the effort as the second half picks up greatly both in terms of pace and interest as we begin to get a bit of character development. Its neither as funny as The Squid and the Whale, nor as acutely observed as Baumbach's other films, but its still an intelligent, character driven piece.

Overall - 6.5/10 A long way from the director's best and never an easy watch. Ultimately, it just about rewards the effort it demands.

Death at a Funeral

Death at a Funeral is pretty well a shot for shot remake of a British film of the same name from a couple of years ago. Thus Matthew MacFadyn becomes Chris Rock, Rupert Grave becomes Martin Lawrence, Peter Vaughn becomes Danny Glover, Kris Marshall becomes Columbus Short, Alan Tudyk becomes James Marsden and Peter Dinklage becomes, well, Peter Dinklage. The plot follows a family gathering for a funeral and there following a whole host of complications including blackmailing dwarf and accidentally ingested hallucinogenics.
The original, directed, by Frank Oz, was by no means a great film but it had a kind of energy and fun to it that made it funny and entertaining, in many resembling a 21st Century take on an old-fashioned theatrical farce.

So what of the American version. Well, its well done, the cast do a solid job - Chris Rock makes a surprisingly good straight man caught at the centre of the maelstrom, Martin Lawrence manages to turn down the irritation factor, Zoe Saldana shines and is the one unquestionable improvement from the original. The direction from Neil LaBute is certainly slick and eveything feels very professionally done, but maybe that's part of the problem, or maybe its that it just doesn't feel so fresh as the original and there are no surprises here. Whatever the reason, the result feels well polished and well executed, but rather flat and lacking the crucial sense of fun and energy of the original.

Overall - 5.5/10 - Very well done, but rather flat. If you've seen the British version, this adds very little, if not it might be entertaining enough.