Win Win

As an actor, Thomas McCarthy is one of those faces that keeps cropping up but you can never put a name to. However, as a writer-director, his previous two films (The Station Agent and The Visitor) have been underseen slices of brilliance. He has a gift for crafting compelling stories out of very real but unlikely relationships and human contact.

Win Win is lighter in tone than his previous two films. Paul Giamatti gives us another performance as a put upon everyman as Mike, a lawyer with financial problems, who takes on the guardianship of an old man because he needs the fees. Things start to get complicated when the man's grandson, Kyle, turns up to stay. But what would you know, the kids a star wrestler and Mike coaches the local, not very successful, team. Of course, things don't turn out that smoothly.

In different hands, this could have turned into a standard comedy, with Mike going to ever more desparate lengths to cover up what he's doing. McCarthy doesn't go there, preferring instead to keep some very real, sometimes funny, but sometimes painful relationships at the core. At the heart of the film is a true-feeling relationship between Mike and his wife (Amy Ryan) and their growing bond with Kyle. Given this, the ending is a bit of let down - feeling too neat and not quite real somehow, straying into the kind of Capra-esque feel-good factor which is fine in its place, but feels out of place in this film.

Elsewhere, the acting is superb - Giamatti and Ryan are every bit as good as you'd expect. Bobby Cannavale and Jeffrey Tambor add most of the laughs as Mike's two friends and fellow coaches.

Overall - 7/10 The ending's a slightly off note, but otherwise this is a funny and moving film with the ring of truth to it.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

The first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was an unexpected delight - a genuinely fun and exciting film, so much better than anyone would have expected from an adaptation of a theme park ride. It also unleashed a truly memorable cinematic character in Captain Jack Sparrow. The sequels suffered from trying to make it a formula, too much plotting, a surfeit of Orlando and Keira and the incomprehensibility of Keith Richards.

In those last two respects, On Stranger Tides has a headstart - no Bloom or Knightley and Richards is amazingly intelligible in his brief cameo (and has one of the best lines of the movies - "Does this face look like its been to the fountain of youth"). In fact, the film starts promisingly enough with the nonsensical court scene and Sparrow's escape from king's custody. Unfortunately, from then on its downhill most of the way, with a brief upswing for the mermaid attack (which is the best action sequence in the whole film). Yes, the production values are still great and yes, the film still looks gorgeous, but its not enough.

On Stranger Tides, despite a new director, falls too closely into the short-comings of Dead Man's chest and At World's End. There's too much plot without any real reason - three different groups all seeking the fountain of youth, only one person actually seems to really want to find it, one group are completely sidelined, we have zombie sailors, giant flamethrowers and real ships in bottles for no apparent reason other than somebody thought it was a good idea. There are also still too many characters. Of the new characters, only Penelope Cruz's Angelica has any real presence (and more chemistry with Depp than Angelina Jolie in The Tourist). Ian McShane's Blackbeard is the real disappointment - the pirate all other pirates fear lacks depth, conviction or menace, coming out much worse than Bill Nighy's Davy Jones in the villain stakes. The romance between missionary (Sam Clafin) and mermaid (Astrid Berges-Frisbey, yes, really) is so starved of room and bland that you might find yourself getting nostalgic for Orlando and Keira. Even Geoffrey Rush' Barbossa seems to be running on empty.

Director Rob Marshall (Oscar nominated for Chicago) strangely seems afraid to try anything original, so we get a fight reminiscent of the forge in the first movie, and a climax in cave with numerous reverses which seems to lifted straight from the original. Which wouldn't have been such a crime, if only it had been carried out with some energy and conviction, but instead it feels rushed and half-hearted lacking the twisting sense of the first film. Whisper it quietly, but on of the main problems here is with Jack Sparrow himself. In the first film, he was a breathe of fresh air who had a rock'n'roll sense of unpredictability. Now on his fourth outing, we know him too well, there are no surprises left, we know exactly what he's going to do in any situation. Depp seems to sense this and appears less invested in the character than ever before. In fact, with this on the back of The Tourist there is a worrying possibility that Depp is starting down the De Niro route of lazy performances to pick up a paycheque (although to be fair, Depp has yet to make anything equivalent to Little Fockers).

Overall - 5.5/10 Its still a well-produced and mildly entertaining film rather than a bad one, but it feels half-hearted and over-familiar.

Catching up on films

May elections and personal developments have been rather occupying my time lately, so I've fallen rather behind in the film reviews. Here then is a whistlestop overview of what I've seen over the past few weeks.

Red Riding Hood - 5.5/10 Gorgeous looking but rather flat fairy-tale updating which doesn't manage to match The Company of Wolves. Amanda Seyfried is left rather stranded in a love triangle with two men competing to be the most wooden whilst Gary Oldman does a rare turn demonstrating how to go truly over the top.

Your Highness - 3.5/10 Deeply unfunny so-called comedy in the genre of those 80s fantasies. Krull was both a better movie and funnier. Oscar-winner Natalie Portman (why????) gamely tries her best, whilst Oscar-nominee James Franco seems to spend the whole film laughing at a joke that is lost on the audience. Maybe its just me, but I just don't get Danny McBride's appeal.

Thor - 7/10. Portman is better served here in the latest from Marvel. Kenneth Branagh directs and manages to do a good job of making it fun without descending into self-parody (given that we need to buy into the hero being a Norse god, thats no easy feat). Anthony Hopkins and Stellan Skaarsgaard add the gravitas, whilst relative newcomers Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston give star-in-the-making turns as hero and villain respectively. It also gets The Avengers back on track after Iron Man 2 plugged it rather too heavily - watch out for Jeremy Renner's cameo and the post-credit teaser. Next up - Captain America.

Cedar Rapids - 6/10 Frank Capra updated for the gross-out generation. Small little comedy drama which is pleasantly watchable, but at its best when it goes meta with its riffs on The Wire.

Hanna - 7.5/10 The latest from director Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice) is a slightly strange combination of Bourne and fairy-tale. The film combines action and comedy well, but could have done without the soundtrack that tries to bludgen you into submission. Tom Hollander makes a truly creepy bad guy (referencing the Fritz Lang classic M) whilst Cate Blanchett also enjoys a trip to the dark side, but Saoirse Ronan holds the film together with a performance thats part cold killer, part naive innocent but never jarring.

Rio - 6/10 Over-trailed, but quite watchable family entertainment. Even as an animated bird, Jesse Eisenberg is still Jesse Eisenberg, but the film is almost stolen by the Jermaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) as the villainous cockatoo, but why did they only give him one song - which is the film's only moment of true genius.

Attack the Block - 7.5/10 Aliens take on inner city yoofs in a British film that effectively combines humour, action, elements of gore and horror and Nick Frost. The Aliens look a bit too much like shaggy dogs to be genuinely scary, but the cast of largely non-professional youngsters add a sense of authenticity to the dialogue and setting.

Elections - who will be the happiest?

So the votes are all counted (except Northern Ireland) and there were some predictable features - the failure of the referendum, the collapse of the Lib Dem vote. Others were more surprising - the SNP gaining an outright majority, the conservatives making gains in the English local elections. Who will be the happiest?

1. SNP A no brainer really. Watching the seats fall was the closest to the experience of the '97 landslide there's been since. An outright majority at Holyrood is a remarkable achievement. Of the four big parties, the SNP are the best to govern at the moment. My main concern is that large majorities (of whatever party) without an effective opposition tend to produce bad governments - the SNP need an effective opposition to sharpen and balance them. Labour are clearly in no position to provide that, so its going to be down to the Tories, but with only 15 seats that's going to be tough.

2. Conservatives Their vote held up reasonably well in Scotland, they progressed in Wales and finished the second largest party and they won the referendum. They gained seats and councils in England - far fewer than Labour, but this was an election where they were supposed to lose seats by the hundreds, so their achievement is more remarkable.

3. Labour Overall, it will have been a slightly disappointing night - they obliterated the Lib Dems in the English metropolitans, but failed to take the number of seats that they would have hoped for overall. They made progress in Wales, but missed the outright majority. They won the Leicester South by-election, but without the huge bounce they enjoyed in Barnsley. But the major fly in the ointment was an absolute disaster in Scotland, losing seats that they previously thought they owned by right.


4. Greens Will be disappointed by their failure to gain extra seats at Holyrood, despite promising pre-elections polls. Also failed to gain their first Welsh Assembly member, but in both cases increased their vote. They also did better than expected in the English locals, where they were expected to struggle against a resugent Labour, they held most of their seats and made gains elsewhere to finish 13 seats up overall and the largest party in Brighton (the first time ever they've been in this position).

5. UKIP Failed to build on promising by-election performances. Missed out on gaining a Welsh AM. Disappointing result in Leicester and finished with only 7 councillors elected across England - exactly the number of seats they were defending. Treading water.


6. Plaid Cymru Totally failed to emulate the SNP's success - finished down 4 seats in Wales and in 3rd place. Disappointing.


7. BNP  Defending 13 council seats in England - won just 2. Vote in Wales almost halved. In almost terminal decline, but probably thankful they aren't the... 


8. Lib Dems Surprisingly, what looked like being their worst result at the start of the years - Wales - actually turned out to be their best - they only lost 1 seat. In Scotland, their vote collapsed and they were reduced from 16 seats to just 5, with Orkney and Shetland being the only constituencies held and with no representation at all in 4 out of 8 regions (remarkably including Lothians). In England, they lost over a third of their councillors up for election and lost countrol of 9 out 19 councils. Their best result was arguably in Leicester South where they held on to second and only had a 4% drop in their vote.

Thursday - some predictions

Scottish Elections

This should have been an election tailor-made for a Labour victory. Now in opposition at both Westminster and Holyrood with unpopular cuts being forced through. Two months ago, Labour looked unassailable for Holyrood - surely they couldn't blow it from here. Step forward Iain Gray and co. Most polls now have the SNP consistently in front. An admittedly rather suspect one for STV today had Labour down to the mid-20s in both votes. Whereas it looked like Labour would be reclaiming the seats it narrowly lost to the SNP 4 years ago (Glasgow Southern, Stirling, Edinburgh Eastern; Almond Valley, etc....) now it looks more like a question of which seats the SNP will add to therir gains from Labour - Linlithgow is the most likely to go, followed by Aberdeen Central, then maybe Clydesdale where the absence of a Lib Dem candidate could produce an unusual result. (There are also large votes for parties no longer standing in Glasgow Kelvin and Strathkelvin and Bearsden, which make them slightly unpredictable).

Both parties will look to capitalise on the Lib-Dems unpopularity. Labour will almost certainly take Dunfermline off them and will look to take Edinburgh Southern (where the sitting MSP has a strong personal vote and potentially a lot of Tory/SNP votes to squeeze). The SNP will be looking to take the Lib Dems two Highland seats and also Aberdeen South (where Nicol Stephen is standing down). There are even some rumours that Tavish Scott may be in trouble from a Independant in Shetland (I reckon he'll still be pretty safe though).

The fall away of Labour's campaign has left most of the Tory constituencies looking a bit safer. McLetchie should now hold Edinburgh Pentlands. Galloway might possibly be a gain for the SNP though. They might also lose some list seats

The Greens are of course focussing on the list vote. Their most likely sources of seats in order are (I reckon)
Lothian, Glasgow, Highlands, North East, Mid and Fife, South, 2nd Lothians, West, Central.

My prediction:
SNP 54
Lab 46
Con 15
LD 7
Grn 6
Margo 1

Wales
The Labour campaign here seems to have held up better. The may or may not get an overall majority - I reckon they might come just short. It might be a funny election in that the Tories could lose most of their constituencies, but still finish up overall. On the other hand Plaid and the LDs could both hold their constituencies and finish down. Also a chance of UKIP getting their first AM.

I'm going for
Lab 30
Con 15
Plaid 11
LD 4


AV Referendum
After an amazingly poor campaign by both sides, the referendum will be lost, by something like 59% to 41%.


Leicester South by-election
Lost amidst all the other elections, there's a by-election in Leicester South (a seat the Lib-Dems won in a by-election in 2003 - they won't get close this time). It will be another smooth ride for Labour.

Lab 57.3
Con 19.9
LD 14.8
UKIP 6.8
Loonies 1.5

English Local Elections
 Inevitable gains for Labour, but they are coming back from a very low point. I do get the sense that they have lost a wee bit of momentum and the results won't be as pleasing as they would have liked. They might finish about 1200 seats up (900 from the Tories; 300 from the LDs). What will be interesting to see to tell how much Labour are actually winning voters back, or how much the coalition is losing them, is how Labour fares against parties like the Greens where they are in contention in places like Brighton and Norwich. Looks like being a bad set of locals for the BNP though ;-)