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.