The Blind Side

Sandra Bullock picked up the Best Actress gong for her role as Leigh Anne Tuohy, a glamorous Southern housewife who, for want of a better word, adopts a gigantic, black orphan known as ‘Big Mike’. Big Mike just happens to be the Baltimore Ravens offensive linesman, Michael Oher, a fact that certainly didn’t hurt her chances with the Academy; they love a good rags-to-riches tale.

The fact that the film is not quite as good as the performance that Bullock gives has been well charted, but shouldn’t be seen as a problem when you watch the movie. Sure, she’s the best thing in it, but other than the few times when it teeters on the brink of over-sentimentality, everything around her is more than acceptable. Newcomer Quinton Aaron is excellent as Oher, especially in conveying simply how huge he is.

Yes, the film is glaringly obvious in everything it does, but it does it with a good heart. The morality tale that director John Lee Hancock is telling loses nothing in its translation to screen. Deep down this is a story designed to make people want to go out and do good and that helping the disadvantaged has no visible effect on your finances (especially when you own ‘like, a hundred Taco Bells). Perhaps this explains why it has been so popular in America, during these troubled economic times.

Bullock tops all her other performances to date as the mom who finds a place in her heart for ‘Big Mike’, but the film shouldn’t be seen as letting that performance down. If you cry in sad movies and swoon in happy ones, you’ll love this. If not, well, its got some big tackles too.

Kick-Ass

Matthew Vaughn is an extremely confident director. With only two films to his directorial CV you might be under the impression that he would be bow to studio pressures in order to get his blockbusters made. Not so. Kick-Ass is the product of a long struggle against the studio heavyweights who would have been much happier marketing a family (or even teen) flick than the ultra violent, ultra sweary Kick-Ass.

Much has been made of Chloe Moretz’s 12 year old assasin and her penchant for swear words beginning with C. It only happens once and was greeted (presumably at all cinemas) with a mild tittering from the amused audience. It’s a funny line, just one of many in a script co-authored by the director Vaughn with Jane Goldman (Mrs.Jonathan Ross). The combination of her and Nicolas Cage’s Big Daddy is the highlight of the film as they go from stylised set piece battle to stylised set piece battle.

The term ‘stylised set piece battle’ brings images of Zach Snyder’s 300 and Watchmen to mind, but in fact a more reflective doppelganger would be Hit ’em Up or Wanted where it wasn’t just the beauty of the shot, but the imagination of the kill as well. Mark Strong is (once again) the central villain to whom most of the violence happens. He is ably assisted by Christopher Mintz Plasse who, along with Michael Cera, can’t seem to break out of his one character, but doesn’t really need to.

19 year old Dad to be Aaron Johnson is at the heart of the film as the eponymous hero and he brings an everyman display to the table that Hollywood doesn’t get enough of. A great deal of problems come his character’s way but he deals with them with Job-like perseverence and clueless bravery. When assisted by the Father/Daughter killing team, the combination is Watchmen just infinately funnier, sparkier and more human.

Kick-Ass is a triumph for getting your own way against the powers that be. It may well court controversy from those who are easily offended, but for those who have heard swear words before it is a deliriously entertaining trip through the entire superhero genre, via the Apatow school of young souls.

I Love You Philip Morris

Jim Carrey infrequently trys his hand at serious acting, rather than his usual rubber faced antics. Some are brilliant (see The Truman Show) others are somewhere near awful (see The Number 23). What I Love You Philip Morris acheives is a nice split between the buffoonery of Dumb and Dumber and the serious acting chops that he showed in Man on the Moon.

The films set up is a gay, prison, rom-com, a genre that has remained relatively unexplored. Carrey eventually hooks up with bleached blond Ewan MacGregor when he spots him across the canteen during a spell in prison for insurance fraud. What results is a love affair between the eternally optimistic MacGregor and the deceptive but well-intentioned Carrey.

First things first: the film is genuinely funny. Like Up in the Air it suffers slightly from having a funnier pretense than script, but there are plenty of good gags and laugh out loud moments. When it resorts to intense drama, therefore, you might suspect that it would be rather limited. However there’s a moment when a dying Jim Carrey lets one tear roll down his face as he speaks to the man he loves for the final time that was reminiscent of Colin Firth’s superbly realised grief in A Single Man. This isn’t as good a film, but it’s more fun and brings the same repeated comedic twists that Soderbergh employed earlier this year in the under appreciated The Informant!

A good natured romp that is anchored by Jim Carrey on Trumanesque form. You’re left with the feeling that a better film could have been made, but at the end of the day the end product we already have is probably good enough.

Broken Embraces

Almodovar has returned with this portrait of obcession, guilt and desire. The fact that it’s as disjointed in it’s presentation as the title suggests shows that whilst fans of the Spanish maestros indulgent style will be sucked in by another glossy presentation, the filmmaking is not as strong as it once was and unfortunately he seems increasingly to rely on his leading lady, a certain Penelope Cruz.

Cruz’s turn in ‘Vicky Christina Barcelona’ was by far the most outstanding thing in Woody Allen’s most banal film to date, and she reprises many of the characteristics of that role for her part in ‘Broken Embraces’. The character flits between helpless and ruthless with questionable ease. But this schitzophrenia is characteristic of the film itself which loses a great deal of traction as it tries to combine the life of a blind writer in the present day and the story of his past and lost love. The film is so wrapped up in itself that it ends up looking inwards rather than outwards, and as such is an extremely insular film.

The film is undeniably beautifully shot and the actors, especially Lluis Homar and Cruz, throw everything they have at the film. But it can’t shake off the impression that this is the film of a man who has exhausted many possibilities for expressing love and has decided to turn preconceptions of their head. The film therefore suffers from being overlong, with each shot spreading itself out until it’s weary conclusion. It doesn’t make for a particular exciting payoff, even if it is not insufferable. Instead the film is attractive and superficial, much like the film-within-a-film that it is trying to lampoon.

Too good to be bad, but too bad to be anything other than average. There are beautiful setpieces and the acting is often wonderfully realised, but on the whole this spends more time obsessing with itself than it does actually showing itself off.

The Hurt Locker

I have thus far managed to avoid seeing many of the ‘Iraq War’ films, most of which have been greeted with luke warm indifference. ‘The Hurt Locker’ has taken great strides towards turning the Iraq War into the next cinematic Vietnam and it does this with pulsing and nerve shattering action. It’s a long shot from the vanity and self consideration of Lions for Lambs, this is an entirely desensitised portrait of destruction.

The tendancy towards political assertions often seems too much for filmmakers. Only the best directors can distance their characters from the films they make. Take Oliver Stone, an overt liberal, and his opus ‘Platoon’. That distance is integral to the film, and Kathryn Bigelow acheives the same thing with ‘The Hurt Locker’; the film is in Iraq, but it does fall into the parenthesis of Middle East conflicts. The politics in the film lie within the daily risks and malfunctions of a bomb disposal unit led by the psychotic William James, played to perfection by Jeremy Renner.

The big paychecks in the cast (Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, Evangeline Lily) make blink and you’ll miss ’em appearences, so much falls on the shoulders of this relatively unknown cast. But they deliver with the aplomb, not of seasoned veterens, but of people really living on the brink of survival and disaster. It’s so gritty and absorbing, even when it reverts to moments that look like the ads for Sky HD, that the viewer is sucked in beyond the conflict, to the very core of what these characters mean to us.

The film is leaps and bounds ahead of the new generation of war films. Stunningly realised, it’s not a concept that has been translated onto the screen, but an organic process that has been recorded with painstaking clarity, and this makes for beautiful if electric viewing.

Funny People

I previously spoke about ‘The Hangover’ having enough comedy potential to upset the Apatow juggenaught, but having seen the latest offering from the ‘Knocked Up’ writer/director, the creative team behind the new Hangover movie have a lot of ground to try and make up before they tackle this sort of film for quality.

Apatow cast teenage dormmate Adam Sandler as the world famous comedian turned sell-out actor George Simmons. Eyebrows were raised at this casting call, Sandler not having found any real success with recent (and increasingly slapstick) comedies. However the casting call pays off as he and Seth Rogen bounch gags effortlessly off each other as two halves of the stand-up comedy circuit. Whilst Sandler is a success, Rogen has ambitions to emulate his hero and in doing so gains his trust. Or does he?

The film has often been described as a tragi-comedy and it’s a fair analysis. The film deals for the large part with the impending death of George Simmons and indeed when he starts un-dying then the film loses the grip that it had. The film works terrificly as a portrait of a man going back to his roots as he dies, whilst confiding in the only friend he can get; one he employs. There’s a lot of bromance there, and supporting turns from Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman help the comedy factor as well as the sense of doom.

But when the movie tries to redeem itself, and Adam Sandler chases old flame Leslie Mann, it struggles not only with the gag rate but also with still being interesting. The movie works better as an inspection of comedy than it does as a romance. But all credit to Sandler for staying true to character and keeping up being a ‘dick’ throughout the final third. It would have been nice to end on the same sort of note as it began, a 20 year old Sandler making prank calls, but it does manage to end with both the main characters in the same position they were before, a slightly subdued ending considering the vitality of the plot.

One of the funniest films in years, it stands alongside ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ and ‘Knocked Up’ as a truly great comedy trilogy. If it has it’s flaws then lets hope that 145 minute run time can be cut down for a slimmer Director’s Cut DVD release. But til then, go see it in the cinema.

The Time Traveler’s Wife

Watching ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ you’ll be amazed by the way in which the producers have attacked the hit novel. Rather than turning this into the logic transcending romance that it might have looked like, they have made it something else entirely. The film might well therefore, be subtitled, ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife: Boring Characters doing Interesting Things in a Boring Way.’

Whilst my new title might not help it’s box office receipts, it would certainly help in alerting the audience to the fact that 107 minutes of the film go by without much incident. You would think the alarming discovery that the love of you life (Eric Bana) is in fact an out-of-control time traveler who ends up naked everywhere, would make for an interesting plot. But the passionless acting and directing manage to suck what little life it had in it.

Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana are perfectly nice and sensible. They do very little throughout the film and change very little (the director seemed to think that shorter hair and longer beard equated to being a lot older, it actually looked very odd). The promise of appearing in the film of a cult novel and a large paycheck where probably more incentives for their work than any real passion and that does help the dry extended domestic scenes that bloat the small parts of the film that actually hold the viewers attention.

Whilst this isn’t a disaster, it makes very little sense on any level. The plot is a disaster for anyone who cares to think about how it would work and the production value doesn’t seem to compensate for this lack of reason. It seemed to have been an unloved production, and this shines through in the final feature.

Moon

This summer has been riddled with dissapointments. Comedies without the necessary laughs (The Ugly Truth/Year One/The Proposal), Blockbusters that failed to fire on all cylinders (Transformers 2) and less than brilliant would-be-masterpieces (Public Enemies). So it’s not only refreshing, but faith restoring to see a movie that must be a next years Oscar Best Picture 10 lock in.

Moon is directed by Duncan Jones, the son of David Bowie, who has now established himself as a hip young Hollywood director in his own right. The success of ‘Moon’ will undoubtedly see him helming bigger budget movies, although reigning in your excesses when 5 million turns into 50 million can be tricky, see the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ debacle.

But the film that he crafts does not rely on CGI and gadgetry. Indeed it’s not so much a sci-fi film as a psy-fi film, one that uses the context as a tool for spurring on the action rather than as the central plot device. Sam Rockwell plays the only man on the moon, working as a caretaker for a mining company. As his contract ends he begins to lose his mind, and too compoud this delusion he discovers that another version of himself has saved him from the wreckage of a crash.

Rockwell revels in a role that sees him both frustrated and delirious. The little neuroticisms that he indulges in as he goes about his life alone on the moon are both inspired and desperately lonely. He only has GERTY for company, with Kevin Spacey joining the ranks of actors to have voiced onboard computers, a role it seems he was born to play. But the film is all about the various forms of Rockwell that exist there, and it grows into a crescendo of fear and frustration, with his ultimate question being ‘Who am I?’

The ending is handled delicately. It doesn’t have a Shyamalan style twist, but it is cleverly constructed and fulfilling for the audience. The painful revelation echoes even in the vacuum of space, as Rockwell’s spaceman slowly comes to comprehend his life and with it comes the realisation that even if things are not what they seem, the only thing he wants is for them to be just that. It is poignant and disturbing, but at the same time electrifying.

Rockwell turns in a career best performance that leads the race for Best Actor. Whether the film can join him as a favourite for the gong remains to be seen, but there hasn’t been a better film in 2009 or a better sci-fi since Star Wars.

The Ugly Truth

In order to see and enjoy ‘The Ugly Truth’ you will have to spend £7 on a ticket and £3 on a nice soda or popcorn. That means that when you sit down to watch Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler playing verbal ping pong, you’ll have spent £11. And of the £11, 100% of it will have been wasted.

The feeble fremise of the film pitches Heigl’s super ‘local TV’ producer who is experiencing a ratings dip, against Butler’s mysoginistic viewer magnet host. The show they clash over is called ‘The Ugly Truth’ and predictably it becomes something of a battle of the sexes. But like all the worst rom-coms the hints are so unsubtle it’s impossible not to know what’s going to happen. Butler caring for his cute nephew is a good indicator. HE’S NOT A BAD GUY?

Still, attractive people are always appreciated on screen, even if they look like they’re not really fully committed to the material that they’ve been presented with. But instead of channeling her ‘Knocked Up’ super sexy comedy goddess reputation, Heigl flits around hardly ever even trying to press the audience’s funny bones. Sure, the script sucks, but you’ve got to put the effort in as well. Especially if you’re a bankable Hollywood actress.

The ugly truth about the film is that it is just a stroke short of ‘poor, but acceptable’. The film is something of a travesty with almost no attempts to be genuinely funny or remotely intelligent. A completely braindead attempt at movie making.

Coco Avant Chanel

Audrey Tatou increasingly appears to be the only French actress that Hollywood accepts. Marion Cotillard has defected to English speaking roles (Public Enemies) but even despite the travesty that was ‘The Da Vinci Code’, Tatou continues to glow in French speaking roles; even if they won’t make a splash on the critical stage like ‘La Vie En Rose’.

‘Coco Avant Chanel’ (Coco Before Chanel, for non-Francophiles) charts the rise of French fashion legend Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. The film stops frustratingly short of her real success, but then again the title is explicit in what it aims to acheive. Anne Fontaine delivers an affectionate and moving portait of the woman, without having to resort to dramatic hyperbole or focus too heavily on the overt feminism of the movement. Indeed the costume design is beautifully rendered, both in highlighting the undertoned glamour of the Chanel suits, but also in the ostentatious frivolity of the traditional French dresses.

Allesandro Nivola plays the main love interest the English Boy Cavel. Nivola reportedly learnt French for the role, an extremely impressive feat that belies his previous roles (Goal!, Goal II and Goal III). Other than that there’s not much else to look for; an affectionate if creepy father figure, a naive sister and the whoreish yet ‘lovely’ actress.

The shooting of the film basks in everything that is good about French cinema and reminds the viewer (ahead of the arrival of the Mesrine films) that the country is still the finest non-English producer. Whilst Spain has become popular in the adolescant fervour of Almovodar and Del Toro, France has continued to produce risque and offbeat films, as well as showing once again how good they are at handling sweeping and epic matter. Their second major biopic deals with a second major female subject (Edith Piaf, now Coco Chanel) and once again, they’re as good as anyone at it.

‘Coco Avant Chanel’ is touching in it’s adoration of a national hero. There are some moments that seem too light and airy, but there are others that canvas the best of the broad range of French cinema available and capture the full presence of the First Lady of Fashion.