The Proposal

The proposal relies heavily upon established cinematic trends and gimmicks; all of which have been inexpertly applied into average ‘rom-coms’. It borrows the crazy Granny from ‘Wedding Crashers’, the doomed pooch from ‘There’s Something about Mary’ and the nakedness from ‘The Break-Up’. So it’s immediately obvious that this patchwork of stolen gags isn’t really going to work on it’s own.

Sandra Bullock is expected to hold the film on her own as snobby publishing guru Margaret Tate. However she seems to have fully derailed her comedic ability in a role that has few laughs other than seeing her prance around Alaska in high heels. Her co-star is the much loved Ryan Reynolds who seems slightly embaressed the whole time. Perhaps that’s his character speaking or perhaps he realises that the material is no good. Although the choice for his parents (Mary Steenburgen and Craig T Nelson) is inspired, if they had a child it would look just like Ryan Reynolds.

But genetic craftsmanship in the casting department aside this is a rom-com seriously lacking in the com, not to mention the rom. The chemistry is non-existant; it’s hard to imagine the man married to Scarlett Johannson genuinely falling for Bullock’s prissy, dowdy control freak. And there are certain face-palm moments when Reynolds is running away from Malin Akerman, where people must be shouting through their popcorn ‘WRONG GIRL!!!’

This bucks the trend of hit-and-miss rom-coms by being constantly dull and predictable. More originality and attention to the details of plotting would certainly benefit any future romantic comedies which will be looking at ‘The Proposal’ as a new bench mark for low-intelligence, high-box office weepy chortles.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

The series has grown immensely since it’s baptism with Philosopher’s Stone, and in the time that it has taken to produce six (very fine) movies, great strides have been taken with acting, writing but most considerably with the photography.

Alfonso Cuaron changed the order of things when he was appointed director of Prisoner of Azkaban following the tenure of kid-centric Chris Colombus. The decision was instantly rewarded with a fine film that exceeded adult expectations and proved a hit with younger audiences who had matured to a darkness that went beyond the rubbery animatronic Basilisk of the second movie.

The fourth film reverted back to it’s children’s book roots under Mike Newell who almost scruppered the franchise’s opportunity to rank alongside Lord of the Rings in terms of consistancy of production. But somewhat unknown director David Yates dragged the credibility back into the series with Order of the Phoenix and now with Half Blood Prince which fully delivers on it’s promise and is shot with great delicacy, expertise and a fine appreciation for the tone of the novel, if not for the canon of plotline.

Steve Kloves returns after a sabatical to scripting duties and whilst he was originally a sworn proponent of keeping the magic of the books with the script of the film here he decides to take enormous liberties with the story. Most are negligable and perfectly accepted when viewed as two seperate entities (the opening sequence has Harry chatting up a muggle girl, absolutely fine) but at other times it appears wholly unecessary. The destruction of the Burrow isn’t a jaunt away from the storyline of the novel, it’s an entirely different outlook.

That aside the film feels far more polished than the other five. The actor has gone from strength to strength and the older thespians in particular remain stalwards in defence of the series: Gambon, Rickman and newcomer Jim Broadbent are all on excellent, conquering form. The difference in quality is emphasised no more than by the series first all adult scene, in Spinner’s End with Rickman, Bonham Carter and Helen McCrory. The difference it makes is amazing. Of the kids only Rupert Grint holds his head up against the legends of British cinema that surround him, revelling particularly in the more Rock’n’Roll storyline of his character. Tom Felton also, who sees his role swell in both importance and screentime, steals scenes away from the more highly credited youngsters.

Hogwarts looks, as always, stunning, but this time the palette of colours is deeper and darker, the images coming out are more intense and the decision to desaturate the picture quality in panning shots is highly rewarded; the film looks breathtaking. The score punctuates the action perfectly, and Yates’ disposition towards jolting, hand held editing is keenly rewarded at many points. The film feels like the culmination of six long practice years before the final stretch for Deathly Hallows parts one and two.

The may be too much humour for some peoples liking, but the source material was always designed to be an antidote to the angst that we endured during Order of the Phoenix. As Broadbent says ‘You have to take the light and the dark’ and there’s plenty of both to satisfy the most hardened of critics and ensure that the sense of mystery is not lost in the attempt to make the films continually superior.

The film is a triumph in it’s own right and does not rely on the source material as the others had done. If the final two films can follow suit and exceed Half Blood Prince then the treat in store for us may well be Oscar worthy.

Public Enemies

Michael Mann: director of Heat, creator of a colour, visionary, genius…etc, now turning his hand to crime fithing ol’ fashioned style? There’s a modern flavour about the whole proceedings which go off with hardly a misstep amongst the clatter of machine gun fire and beaurocratic red tape.

The film is the life and times of John Dillenger, the infamous bank robber, starting with a high profile bank robbery and ending with….well, you know. Bang. The process of the films in in getting from one point to another and it gets there on cue, even if the process along the way often feels a little formulaic.

Christian Bale is one side of the same coin to Depp’s bank robber and both men work through their roles with a great sense of professionalism, even if the passion for their subjects isn’t immediately apparently. There’s plenty for them to gawp at, run towards, run away from, shoot at and get shot by, so that the absense of any great performance isn’t as noticeable as it would perhaps be otherwise.

Depp is not working at his usual standard, perhaps because the film doesn’t call for the madcap performances that have seen him labelled by young people as a ‘great actor’. In order to hunt down that elusive Oscar he needs to work on his subtelty and nuance, being The Mad Hatter (Tim Burton’s new Alice in Wonderland) can only get him so far and performances like this are bankable but uninspiring.

Marion Cottilard goes all Juliette Binoche and makes everyone confused as to whether she is actually French or not. But she can cry on cue and it looks sumptuous in super High Definition, a force which makes the climactic shoot out all the more bold. The flares of machine guns add a visual layer that exceeds the expectations set by previous period piece gangster movies.

It’s a step up from the dismal Miami Vice and is undoubtedly cool, rolling along whilst immortalising the bank robbing killers and villainising the FBI. It would perhaps have been better had it been a little warmer, but then it would have been less cool. We can’t have it all.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Dearie me. It seems that Michael Bay after years of being allowed not to reign in his excesses by mindless movie moguls has finally put the deathnail into any idea of subtlety of self-restraint that might have been filtering around the Transformers manufacturing goldfish bowl.

The first movie was smart, sassy and struck at exactly the right points to be a commercial hit and not entirely scorned by critics. With his second film in the franchise he misbalances the golden formula with disasterous effects. It’s a long film that has one major problem, a problem so obvious and forseeable that it’s a mystery to me that the studios allowed it through when they were shown the final cut of the movie: there’s far to much robot fighting.

I relaise that the premise of the entire franchsie is a three way Optimus Prime/Megatron/The Fallen mash up, but there is no need to spend the vast majority of the moviegoers time showing two or three, maybe even ten or twenty, robots fighting each other in increasingly uniteligable ways. The CGI is terrific, but the films mustn’t be viewed as a prospectus for the technology and the balance between- Fighting Robots/Megan Fox/Gormless LaBoeuf must be maintained without swaying too much in the favour of the first. Especially when you have the pulling power of the FHM’s Sexiest Woman in the World 2009 who is criminally under exposed.

This isn’t the sequel we were hoping for and bucks the recent trend of slight improvements with the second flick. Let’s hope the makers of Iron Man 2 take note of Bay’s failures and dab their clapper board with any necessary correction fluid.

In the Loop

A catch up review here of Armando Ianucci’s ‘In the Loop’ a superb political satire based on his BAFTA winning TV series ‘The Thick of It’. The film is now hard to find having largely exited UK cinemas, but if you haven’t seen it, try and catch a performance on the big screen or eagerly anticipate the DVD release.

The plot focuses on dithering politician Simon Foster played by Tom Hollander with superb relish and perhaps a little scorn for that brand of politician. He’s perfectly likeable, perfectly intelligent, but perhaps he shouldn’t be running the country. On the other hand is a show stealing performance from Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker a Scottish PR expert attempting to rebuild Foster’s reputation after an infamous ‘Mountain of conflict’ TV appearence.

The script is wonderful delivering line after line of put down from Tucker and endless soundbites of helplessness from Hollander. ‘You sound like a Nazi Julie Andrews’ is one quote bound to become a classic, whilst a personal favourite is Hollander’s assertion that in Britain we have a phrase ‘Difficult, difficult, Lemon, difficult.’ Classic.

It will bear repeated viewing just so you can keep up with the machine gun dialogue, but it is certainly a rewarding experience especially if you can appreciate a little Scotsman telling you to ‘Go suck my sweaty ball sack.’

Year One

Harold Ramis returns to the big screen with this juvenile comedy which relies on an extremely distorted chronology to keep the gag rate up.

Jack Black and Michael Cera are employed as big comedy names to keep the ship afloat despite the obviously leaky premise; a travel through biblical Israel. The Bible and comedy enjoy a distinct love/hate relationship (Life of Brian/Evan Almighty) and here ‘Year One’ slips towards the latter.

Even the charm of seeing Michael Cera and David Cross (Cain) on screen again together after the regrettable cancelling of Arrested Development can’t save a film which relies so heavily on toilet humour and physical comedy. There are almost no memorable lines, most of the images that stay with you are of Jack Black sauntering around topless or Michael Cera being crushed by an albino Boa Constrictor.

Cera does his best to dither and dally, a practice he has made his own and become the universal advocate of, but even his best attempts can’t save a film that on paper has a demon comedy line up (Cera, Black, Cross, Mintz-Plasse, Azaria, Wilde, Rudd…etc.), and when you seen him imprisoned upside down peeing into his nostrils, well, it might be funny, but this is about as low humour as should be allowed in British cinemas.

A bit of a misstep, but then most films with Jack Black since School of Rock have been missteps. To call it an error of Biblical proportions would be unfair, but there are plenty more entertaining moments in the Bible.

The Hangover

Despite recent rave reviews heralding Todd Philips’ ‘The Hangover’ as the best comedy in years, he’s not treading any new ground with it. It’s an old school bromantic comedy, that owes a lot to the films that have preceeded it. However that’s not to say that it doesn’t manage to be both funny and original; it does.

The premise may seem slightly worn out (Vegas is hunting ground for rubbish comedy as witnessed by last years ‘What Happens in Vegas’) but the approach feels fresh. The build up is a little overblown but it gives a nice introduction to each contigent of the stag night from hell. But it’s not until they swig date rape Jaegar on top of Caesar’s Palace that the movie really finds it’s legs.

The films owes a lot to the charm of it’s leads. Despite just being passed over for ‘The Green Lantern’ in favour of Ryan Reynolds, Bradley Cooper is in much the same mould, expertly delivering one liners and looking cocksure even whilst being tasered. Ed Helms is the neurotic dentist with the overbearing wife whose running gag is him pretending to be in wine country whilst being shot at and getting married. Much has been said of Zach Galifianakis’ performance and indeed the hangover is ‘his movie’ in the same way that ‘Superbad’ was Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s. That’s not to say he’s nothing more than a new McLovin, but the character occasionally feels like it’s becoming a gimmick.

The lines infrequently flirt with greatness: ‘Leave the baby here!’ ‘There’s a tiger in the bathroom’ ‘Oh, I forgot about the tiger’. Too often the joke rate lets up and they have to resort to Galifianakis scratching his crotch, or a tiny naked Chinese man, to get the laughs going again.

But this is a fine start to a franchise (Hangover 2 having already been greenlighted) that could well trouble the Apatow juggernaut and at least add a bit of variety to the comedy landscape.