August film roundup

What a month. August started out looking like a bit of a damp squib but quickly warmed up thanks to some of the best films I've seen in the past couple of years.

Happiness ** - A film designed from start to finish to make the audience squirm. For your consideration: domestic violence; obscene phone calls; rape fantasies; paedophilia; and full and frank discussion of burgeoning teenage sexuality which climaxes (ahem) in a now infamous shot of projectile bodily fluid. Oh, and divorce, theft, suicide and murder. This is, incidentally, billed as a comedy. The plot, such as it is, centres around three sisters and the friends, family and neighbours around them, of varying degrees of weirdness and / or criminality. It could be that, on the page, this looked like a daring, unique philosophical work. Unfortunately the film isn't even a fraction as clever as it seems to think it is and instead comes across as pretentious, unsubtle and too calculated to truly shock. Sadly, this turns the film into little more than a freak show in which the only emotion actually evoked is relief that real life just isn't this bad.

Heat **** - A long but surprisingly complex, moody and very effective cops vs. robbers thriller with the leads on each side played respectively by acting heavyweights Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. The tension ratchets up over the entire (nearly 3-hour) runtime and, brilliantly, the audience can find themselves rooting for both opposing parties.

March Of The Penguins *** - Well-regarded throughout the world as a formal theatrical documentary, this might come across as somewhat redundant to a UK audience who have grown up with David Attenborough and BBC Bristol. The story of Emperor Penguins' annual fight for survival whilst tending to their vulnerable single chicks is always a compelling one - and it's easy to anthropomorphise the creatures and believe narrator Morgan Freeman's description of this as a love story - but actually, we've seen it before and familiarity does indeed bring a degree of contempt. Certainly nowhere near as compelling as Grizzly Man.

Porco Rosso **** - In 2001, Empire magazine carried a brief article about the ongoing failure to release Princess Mononoke in the UK, in which a spokesperson for Buena Vista confidently claimed that none of the Studio Ghibli back catalogue would ever be released, as there was no demand for them in the West. Happily, she was quite, quite wrong: nearly all of the catalogue is now available on region 2 DVD. There is always going to be a market for the "alternative" to mainstream cinema, particularly when so well-executed that it puts to shame what most people would consider to be the gold standard of Western animated filmmaking, epitomised by Disney and more recently by Pixar and Dreamworks. Ghibli has been consistently turning out brilliant, near-perfect animations for two decades. Amongst my own humble reviews, the average mark scored by Ghibli films is astonishingly high; there is not a single one that could be considered as even slightly below average. Porco Rosso is one of the lesser-known works by Hayao Miyazaki and is certainly less celebrated than Spirited Away whose critical and commercial success was, in fact, the key factor in the eventual release of the majority of the back catalogue. But this film is, as near as makes no difference, perfect. Two years ago, I would have readily given this the full ***** score and the only reason I haven't is because I now have much more stringent requirements for that (which has resulted in only a single ***** film in the past two and a half years): and actually, Porco won't have universal appeal, even for some Ghibli fans. The title character is an ace pilot and bounty hunter in the inter-war era, battling pirates in the Adriatic and collecting his reward, living alone on an island beach. His real name is Marco, but due to a mysterious "curse", he has been turned into a pig, earning him the nickname Porco. (Of course, the curse can be perceived as a figurative device. We learn that he became a pig after fighting for the Italians in the First World War, when he lost many of his friends and colleagues - shown in a haunting, ethereal, near-silent scene in which they pilots and planes float away to Heaven in a shimmering cloud. His appearance is a physical manifestation of the guilt he feels. What, then, can break the "spell"? But Porco's physical appearance is also an unexpected literalism: he is a chauvinist pig; he is pig-headed.) After nearly losing his plane to an American hired by the pirates to shoot him down, he teams up with the feisty granddaughter of a plane builder and repairer, who happens to be a brilliant aeronautical engineer, as well as the most disgracefully tempting teenage animated character since, uh, Ariel. Overall, the mood is rather different, perhaps more adult and more personal than most Miyazaki films, although it contains many familiar themes (flying machines, no easy good vs. evil categorisation, and strong female characters) albeit without such grand environmental and social subtexts that he has favoured of late. Instead, it's a film about honour and about coming to terms with one's own past, which happens to sit snugly in its historical context, with Italian fascism on the ascent and the romantic, heroic era of early aviation not yet in descent. It's also probably the most beautiful of all Ghibli's animations in its pre-CGI era, which is high praise indeed. In the end, not a huge amount actually happens and the ending feels slightly too abrupt - we could have done with a more emotional pay-off, even if the existing conclusion is entirely in keeping with the character - but it's easy to forgive any minor flaws because it's otherwise so perfectly executed throughout. Even the English-language dub by Disney is successful, with Michael Keaton effective as Porco - who, come to think of it, is almost a Batman-esque avenger in his own right, hiding behind the mask of his curse. Modest as it is, I'm happy to call this the best "new" film I've seen this year.

The Princess And The Warrior *** - Cinderella for the twenty-first century, tied into a taut thriller, with the same director / leading lady pair as the brilliant Run Lola Run. It's not quite as original as that work but explores similar themes of fate and serendipity - this time in a romantic context, but again against a criminal background. The romance is realistic - awkward as much as sweet. But the intentionally dreamy nature of the film makes it feel too long and without the frenetic pacing of Lola it struggles to hold the interest.

Snakes On A Plane *** - Having gained a huge amount of publicity in advance of its release, the filmmakers decided to shoot a handful of new scenes to please the burgeoning fanbase. These scenes tend to stick out like a sore thumb. Whether this fact even matters depends on the viewer's point of view. If you take this as a "serious" disaster flick, it's diabolical, on a par with the very worst that genre has to offer. If you take it as a light-hearted riff on the stereotypical 1970s aeroplane-in-trouble film - which, post Airplane!, is probably the right way of thinking - then it's fun and enjoyably gruesome. The laughs tend to come from knowing the well-worn routines: death coming unexpectedly, or to the most irritating / bravest / stupidest of the supporting cast (with the lead cast never in much danger). There's even an Airplane!-esque "Can anybody fly a plane?" moment [*]. It's a good film in the way that From Dusk Till Dawn was fun and seems destined to find a similar niche market.

[*] Even though it rips off a joke I wrote in my first feature screenplay as far back as 1999. Although, actually, I nicked it lock-stock from Flight Of The Phoenix anyway.

Capote *** - At one time, Truman Capote was the most celebrated author in America, and possibly the world. He was, apparently, also a squeaky-voiced weirdo who struggled to reconcile his friendship with the subjects of his masterpiece, In Cold Blood, with the fact that he really needed them to be found guilty of murder and, preferably, hanged, so that he could finish the book. This biopic pulls no punches and works as a documentary, but whether it works as a film depends on how quickly the viewer starts to find Capote's endless self-absorption irritating. Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance is almost uncanny, but that doesn't make the character any less annoying. As with this year's other celebrated biopic, Walk The Line, some of the supporting characters are almost as interesting as Capote himself, including Capote's close friend Nelle Harper Lee, whom generations of schoolchildren will recognise as the author of To Kill A Mockingbird.

Munich ***** - A fictionalised account of the kidnapping and subsequent murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and, more importantly, Israel's subsequent response to it: Mossad sends a handful of its agents - disavowed, of course - to murder eleven Palestinians that they judge to be instrumental in organising the Munich kidnapping. As mentioned above, it's been a very long time since I issued a ***** review and even in this case, it was not without some agonising. Spielberg still, even now, can't do endings and the film could have been more tightly edited. But, apart from this and a couple of very minor but surprising technical glitches (parts of the dialogue soundtrack were a bit ropey), the film is near flawless. As a straightforward conspiracy thriller, it stands head-and-shoulders above anything else in the genre recently. It's always taut, as the characters must wrestle not only with their own belief systems but also with constant fear as the KGB and CIA appear to get involved in their plotting. As political piece, it's more lightweight, but the filmmakers have evidently gone to some trouble to humanise both sides of the equation. The violence is restrained at first, more bloody later, as the five assassins begin to warm to their task: so although we do not see the aftermath of the first bomb the group plants, we are not spared when they shoot a young woman and leave her, deliberately naked and splayed as a final humiliation. Near the film's conclusion, Spielberg unwisely links the themes of sex and murder in a way that might well have appealed to Kubrick. As with all Spielberg's films, this is about family and home: the lead assassin (played by Eric Bana) has a wife and young child to protect, as well as more broadly his homeland, and of course the Palestinians are mainly motivated by a land to call a home of their own. The film finishes with a shot of the New York skyline with the Twin Towers prominent: a trivial comparison, perhaps, but effective in context. It's a brave project for a top Hollywood director and an even braver one for a brace of mainstream studios to back (Universal, Dreamworks, Alliance Atlantis) but it works and it feels balanced without being unnecessarily restrained.

July film roundup

Grizzly Man *** - The story of one of America's most well-known experts in grizzly bears, Timothy Treadwell, who spent years living wild with the bears until - inevitably, really - he was killed and eaten by one of them, along with his girlfriend. The documentary is mainly footage shot by Treadwell itself. Remember when the Martin Bashir documentary on Michael Jackson was aired on ITV? There were two main reactions. The Daily Mail crowd, perhaps unsurprisingly, were utterly shocked by the self-evident paedophilia on display. More liberal observers might, on the other hand, have viewed Jackson as rather a sad character, so naive and lost in his own inner fantasy world that by default he could not possibly mean harm to any child. Well, Grizzly Man does for bears what Bashir's doc did for children, although with significantly less sensationalism (being narrated, after all, by a dispassionate German man, who reserves judgement until quite near the end of his story and who seems more inclined to a quasi-parental expression of disappointment in his subject than judgement). Treadwell, like Jackson, is shown to be increasingly withdrawing into a fantasy world which deliberately shuts out most human contact in favour of the company of bears. As eccentric as he is, it's impossible not to notice that some of the lesser characters in this story (such as the coroner who examined Treadwell's remains, and the narrator himself) are pretty weird, too. Eventually, Treadwell's mood swings (he seems prone to violent, obscene outbursts directed at his camera) become uncomfortable viewing and one begins to wonder what his motivations really are - leading to unanswered questions about how Treadwell and his partner came to die, particularly as this was recorded on audio but not video. Might he, perhaps, have deliberately provoked the bear into causing his own death, deliberately recording the sound only, to become a grizzly martyr? It would fit his personality. Or, even more sinisterly, might he even have been intentionally responsible for the death of his own girlfriend, but fudged the audio to make it sound like a bear attack? We can, of course, never know; his death is generally accepted to be down to misadventure, caused by a gross miscalculation on his own part about the level of danger he was in. Fundamentally, the whole premise, persona and execution of this one man's mission is so outrageous that it's difficult to take the documentary seriously, despite its tragic conclusion.

The Libertine ** - Johnny Depp insists in his opening monologue that "you will not like me" but then proceeds to attempt to disprove himself with what should be a sympathetic portrayal of the decadent Earl of Rochester: the audience is, I think, supposed to support him and, yes, to like him as he drinks and sleeps his way to certain death. It doesn't quite come off, however. Not because of his debauchery: that might almost be fun. Perhaps it is because, post-Pirates Of The Caribbean, it's difficult to see anything Depp does as being more than self-indulgent swagger on his own terms, which detracts rather from Rochester's own intense arrogance and self-belief. Sadly uncompelling.

Whisper Of The Heart **** - OK, so, we've established that I'm a fan of Studio Ghibli. We've also determined that every Ghibli film is, more-or-less, a remake of the one before (with a couple of notable exceptions - Grave Of The Fireflies principal amongst them). So why do I persist in rating them so highly? Why have I not long-since become bored with these repetitive "kids films"? Because they are so beautiful, so charming, so completely different to anything produced by an American studio. In this case, the story could hardly be simpler: two teenagers meet and fall for each other. What could be cringe-inducing turns out to be brilliantly, sensitively handled and not embarrassing at all. Perhaps the fact that it's an animation (unlike most other Ghibli films, with their creatures and spirits, it really need not have been) helps in this regard. The medium also allows for more detail, more humour and more flights of fantasy than live-action could provide. The English-language voice cast do a good job.

January 2nd *** - Independent film with a strong, infectious sense of humour, good use of location and some remarkably fine performances from its relatively unknown cast, but with too many flaws to make it to the big league of British film. A somewhat mismatched bunch of 30-something friends meet over a New Year weekend in the Welsh countryside. Revelations about prior behaviour and infidelities abound, shattering friendships and ruining relationships. There is a genuine claustrophobic sense that these people are here together in this great wilderness, far from the rest of civilisation, and it's anybody's guess whether they will resolve their differences by the conclusion. Overall a rewarding experience but the technical and logical errors will try the patience of most audiences.

June film roundup

An even quieter month than last, at least I've made up for a lack of quantity with some better quality.

Wah-Wah **** - This autobiopic (is that a word?) from Richard E. Withnail Grant could have been an indulgent vanity project extolling the brilliance of life in late colonial Swaziland; or it could have turned into morbid self-examination, full of guilt and angst. That Grant steers a successful course between these murky waters is to his credit. The tragic aspects (such as his father's drink problem, violence and divorce) are handled sensitively and are offset by moments of warmth and humour (and sometimes out-and-out comedy). It may poke fun at the British class system, but on the whole this is not a political film, nor especially complex, preferring to tell its story through vignettes rather than epic sweep. The cast are universally wonderful.

My Neighbour Totoro **** - Two young sisters move to a new home and find it and the surrounding forest inhabited by strange creatures that only they can see. Critics have argued that animé master Hayao Miyazaki has made his reputation - and that of Studio Ghibli - by endlessly repeating the same story over and over. So it appears here at first glance, with many Miyazaki trademarks present and correct. If anything, this is more lightweight than some of his other films; there are no profound observations on growing up (Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service) or mankind's impact on the environment (Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind). Instead, we are presented with a simple, uncomplicated but beautiful and tender portrait of childhood. My Neighbour Totoro is a sort of cross between Alice In Wonderland and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. It's not a comedy in the Disney sense of the term: when the viewer laughs, it is not likely to be for humour, but for joy.

May film roundup

May was not a particularly good month quantity-wise, but I was looking forward to a couple of the most highly-regarded films of the past year. Without further ado...


Brokeback Mountain *** - A slow-burning melodrama that, despite being as beautiful and unique as all the hype has made out, managed to feel rather insubstantial. Part of this was due to the deliberate attempts to keep the film sensitive and sympathetic both to the characters and to the worldwide audience. The "issue" the film addresses is, of course, that same-sex love is very rarely presented in mainstream cinema. But beyond the "issue", Brokeback Mountain does not offer much insight. For a tragic love affair, it is surprisingly unemotional, uncomplex and offers little insight beyond what we already know (which is that redneck middle-Americans are likely to react badly, maybe even violently, to "threats" such as homosexuality). A gay Romeo & Juliet this most certainly is not.

Lost In La Mancha *** - This documentary records the increasingly hopeless attempts by Terry Gilliam to make a film version of the Don Quixote story. Things commence badly with actors who can't (or won't) cooperate and a star who needs urgent medical treatment just as filming is due to start. By Day 2 of the shoot, when crew and equipment are almost washed away by unexpected rainstorms, Gilliam must have been starting to wish he'd never bothered. The documentary offers a glimpse of Gilliam's perfectionist personality and tantalising details of the film that might have been. However, the only real sting is simply to demonstrate how fickle Lady Luck can be.

The Constant Gardener ** - One of the most overrated films of the past couple of years. When the activist wife (Rachel Weiss) of the eponymous gardener / British civil servant (Ralph Fiennes) is killed in suspicious circumstances, he is plunged into the dangerous world of Big Business, in the form of an ethics-free pharmaceutical company. The story takes some swallowing (although we are told by author John Le Carré that what goes on in real life is much, much worse). In the latter sections (and even more so in some scenes that were eventually deleted), the action takes place across multiple countries and even continents at a highly frenetic pace yet still the film fails to drive home the essential element of menace: like director Fernando Meirelles' earlier City Of God, the handheld camerawork tends to be intrusive rather than naturalistic. Fiennes' performance begins lumpenly and unconvincingly and doesn't really pick up until the closing scenes. Fortunately he and the film are saved from severe awfulness by the brilliant and lovely Rachel Weiss, whose personality is sufficiently passionate and whose story (told mainly in flashback) sufficiently compelling to hold the viewer's interest. Overall, a botched opportunity for a really great film.

Film roundup: the missing reviews, part 1

I try - hard - to review every film as I watch it, not least because it is only really possible to do justice to a film if it's still fresh in my mind. At the time of writing this entry, I have 46 unreviewed films, mostly watched between six and twelve months ago. I have extremely brief notes on these and will try to convey this as fairly as possible. This is the first in a series of minireviews in an attempt to catch up.

Perfect Blue *** - Unusually amongst the animé films I've seen, this is a character-based thriller. If Hitchcock had tried his hand at animation, the result might have looked something like this. A young "manufactured" pop star gives up her place in the most popular girl band around in order to pursue a career as an actress. Soon enough, she finds herself being stalked and people near to her suffering gruesome murders. Increasingly hysterical, it's never really clear whether she is in real danger or whether this is a manifestation of her own internal demons. It's a genuinely taut psychological thriller in which, ironically, the animation is the biggest distraction.

Teaching Mrs Tingle ** - A trio of cardboard-cutout schoolkids accidentally take their overbearing teacher hostage and then, unable to release her, play a series of psychological games on her. The scenario is not remotely plausible and this is best viewed as wish-fulfillment fantasy. Nowhere near the standard of other Miramax films of its time.

Pieces Of April *** - A young woman, misunderstood by her family, plans a Thanksgiving dinner for them, only to befall a series of disasters that threaten to prove what her estranged family thinks they already know: that she's an irresponsible mess. The success or failure of this independent film (shot on HDV) depends on the viewer's ability to imagine two parents who like and trust their daughter so little. The film labours its points a little too hard in places, but ultimately achieves its goal: we do feel sorry for April, and hope that the meal will be a success.

Million Dollar Baby **** - Despite having no interest whatsoever in boxing, I was mesmerised by this brilliant drama about an ageing boxing coach who reluctantly takes on a female student. Clint Eastwood stars and directs, proving once and for all that his extraordinary career is still going from strength to strength. Morgan Freeman is, of course, fantastic. But both are upstaged by Hilary Swank, whose Oscar-winning performance is heartbreaking and utterly compelling.

The Rules Of Attraction ** - On the one hand a fantastic technical tour de force, the only major problem with this film is that it's so incredibly unlikeable. Nasty, horrible, self-absorbed characters do nasty, horrible, selfish things to each other and everybody feels miserable. There are hints that the film is trying to be something more - an ignored lover who commits suicide could be seen as the equivalent of Miss Lonely Hearts in Hitchcock's Rear Window, the one true tragedy in a sea of otherwise rather meaningless lives. But actually, the back story (the central character is supposed to be Patrick American Psycho Bateman's brother) and the director's technical prowess are the only reasons to see this film.