Film review: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

Designed by Ben Whitesell

Well, it's over. The final film in Christopher Nolan's Bat-trilogy is here, wrapping it all up. Sort of.

Two warnings before you read any further: I'm gonna get all SPOILERY up in here and this is less a "review" and more a grab-bag of thoughts on the film and trilogy as a whole.

And one final thought before I get further into the "review" or whatever I'm going to call it of the film itself. As we are all aware, someone made the horrific decision to fire upon and kill 14 people at a midnight showing of Rises in Aurora, Colorado. I'm going to try and keep my own thoughts and opinions about this frightening incident out of this post, as I frankly don't think this is the proper forum for me to be talking about it and I don't know that I'm even qualified to offer an opinion past the obvious horror and sadness. Honestly, what can I even offer that a multitude of other, better, writers haven't already? Instead this post will be solely focussed on the film itself and my thoughts on same.

With that said, on with the grab-bag.

The reason for it being more a grab-bag, more a series of impressions and thoughts than a well-rounded review? Well, to be honest, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I thought of the film. I came out of the two-and-a-half plus hours with a shrug of the shoulders and a vague feeling of "that's it?"

Let's get all the plot guff out of the way first shall we? 8 years on from The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne is a hobbling recluse and the Batman has disappeared. However, ol' Brucie ventures out of the mansion when a slinky, seductive cat-burglar by the name of Selina Kyle swipes his mother's pearls. And just as Bruce is coming out of his self-imposed exile, a new villain arrives on the Gotham scene: Tom Hardy's massive and masked Bane. He's in town to follow through on Liam Neeson's plot to destroy Gotham from Batman Begins, with an overly complicated plot designed to net him a fusion-powered nuclear reactor or something. Which, after breaking Batman and tossing him down a hole, he sets on the looooongest countdown in history. Seriously, the bomb has a 5 month countdown. Why? Who the hell knows?

That 5 month countdown is really just a convenient plot device to allow Batman time to heal. Bane makes some mention of the wait being to allow the citizens of Gotham to hope for a saviour but... you never see a regular Gothamite or their reaction and the intangible idea of hope never coalesces in any meaningful fashion.

With Nolan's previous Bat-films, he has used them to explore or, at the very least, raise interesting themes and ideas and explored them through the Bat-villains. With Begins it was Fear tying into the Scarecrow and, on a larger scale, the League of Shadows and Batman himself. With Dark Knight it was Anarchy and Chaos, embodied in Heath Ledger's ghoulish Joker, as a directly opposing force to Batman's Order. With Rises... I hesitate to call it thematically inconsistent, as Nolan doesn't seem to really be truly engaging with any themes here. There are a number of possible avenues opened up (Hope? Evil?) but none that are fully explored. There are dalliances with popular uprisings and a tip-toe into the waters of the financial crises but the scatter-gun approach leads to the film feeling muddled on a fundamental level. What is it, exactly, that Bane represents? Whatever it may or may not be, it's completely undercut by the completely unnecessary and obvious twist reveal before the end. And once his usefulness to the plot is done with, he is summarily dispatched. Almost offhandedly.

Something I'm still processing, as a comic-book reader more than anything, is that this may not be Batman as we know him but it is unequivocally Nolan's Batman. The Batman I, and many other comic-book fans, know would not have quit after the events of The Dark Knight. In fact, the end of that film seemed to give Batman more impetus to continue his mission.

Which brings me to another point. Every other death in the trilogy has meant something; has resonated somehow. Whether it be Ra's al Ghul/Ducard in Begins or Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. In Dark Knight Rises, they just... happen. They don't tie in to the life of Bruce Wayne/Batman or the larger thematic concerns that Nolan may (or may not) be exploring.

Is Batman a conservative hero? What, if anything, is Nolan saying about the Occupy movement? Should Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Officer Blake have taken up the mantle of the Bat earlier in the film? Can anyone but Bruce Wayne be Batman? Where did Bruce Wayne's secret stash of inheritance money come from? Why did he have a bum leg if he quit crime-fighting? There's more to consider with The Dark Knight Rises but, for now, these are my thoughts.  

Also, Liam Neeson's ghost dissolve?! Really?! And "Robin"? C'mon. It's just so... off. 

Quick review: CORIOLANUS (World Cinema Showcase)

You gotta give Ralph Fiennes credit for the size of his balls. Not only does he make his directorial debut adapting Shakespeare, but he does so with one of the Bard's lesser known plays and one that has never previously been filmed. That takes chutzpah.

One of Shakespeare's tragedies, Coriolanus is set in ancient Rome. The title character is a gung-ho general in the army, happy to charge into fierce battle with his men and with a prideful disdain for the common citizens. Events take a turn for the worse when Coriolanus is pimped up for a place on the Senate and two slippery types decide to turn the people against him. He is banished from the city; from the home he has fought and bled for and surrenders himself to the city's great enemies, to help them overthrow the Roman people. Through prideful vengeance he turns on the people of his home and visits ruination upon them.

So, it is a play with a lot to it; with a lot of meaty themes to chew over. And Fiennes updates the setting to modern times; to a modern Rome as an obvious stand-in for the United States. He makes ample use of CNN and "action-news" style cutaways to cover a lot of exposition. But where, say Baz Luhrmann invested his retelling of Romeo & Juliet with fizz and glam, Fiennes keeps things sombre.

Frankly, I've never really been a big fan of the Bard. Perhaps that is thanks to years of dreary high-school and University lectures and monotone recitations by students who don't understand the language. But in a film like Fiennes', and with the mouths of such skilful actors as Fiennes, Vanessa Redgrave and Brian Cox playing with the poetry, the language truly flows and lives.

I don't really know if the rest of the film does though. The story seems almost too big for the film. I know this will be seen as an impossible heresy by some, but I couldn't help thinking that this would have been better with the story used as a jumping-off point for a miniseries or TV series. In this way, the modern setting could be more fully embraced and there could be more time to delve into these characters and their lives. Coriolanus is not the most sympathetic character around - he is prideful, vengeful and full of contempt for those ordinary citizens who make up the masses but fight in no army. But there is much to intrigue about him - his anger is understandable, he has a domineering mother constantly pushing at him and he has little interest in parading himself and his wounds to "prove" his service to Rome. He is a complex and intriguing, but haughtily unsympathetic, tragic figure.

Coriolanus is an interesting adaptation that so very nearly works. And again, the sheer stones on that man Fiennes. 

Film review: 21 JUMP STREET

Poster design by Bemis Belkind

I perhaps fall into a strange demographic with regards to 21 Jump Street: I wasn't old enough to watch the show when it first came out but I am not so old I don't remember high school - all of 12 years ago.

The film adaptation 21 Jump Street is a film with a very knowing, self-aware script. There are more than a few little jabs at the entire concept behind re-invigorating the "franchise" with a remake of the TV show (more of an "in-universe" cinematic sequel) and the studio culture that encourages it. It is also a film very aware of the cliches of the cop-action genre and, like Hot Fuzz before it, plays up to them and plays them up.

From a script by Jonah Hill and Michael Bacall (the actor/writer on something of a hot streak lately) this incarnation finds Jonah Hill's Schmidt and Channing Tatum's Jenko as guys on opposite ends of the high-school spectrum. However, years after high-school, when they find themselves both signing up for the same police academy intake they become fast friends: Schmdit, the chubby brain helping Jenko with his tests and Jenko, the handsome but dim jock type, training Schmidt up for the physical side of things.

Due to, frankly, their own damn ineptness at anything approaching actual police work they find themselves swiftly bounced to the newly re-opened undercover operation at the eponymous address. There's a new drug doing the rounds at one of the local high-schools and Schmdit & Jenko must assume new identities and infiltrate the dealers and find the source.

But hey, high-school culture has moved on significantly since these two were last wandering the hallways. And due to Jenko's well-meaning stupidity theses two find themselves in the wrong identities: Jenko is hanging with the science geeks, while Schmidt finds himself, for the first time in his life, with the cool kids. Hilarity, explosions and tests on the bonds of friendship ensue.

Jonah Hill is in his known and recognised Jonah Hill mode, his comedy schtick now perhaps approaching Seth Rogen levels of saturation and awareness. More of a surprise is Channing Tatum, who has bounced around a number of attempts to really break out; from self important dancing movies to teary romantic drama, smaller character focussed roles and big silly fun action flicks. He brings a real sweetness to the dumb-jock Jenko, and an insecurity that really fuels his need to fit in and be 'cool'.

The film is directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, making 21 Jump Street another recent instance of animation directors making the transition to live action. These are the two behind one the most gloriously demented animated films of recent memory, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and they bring that sense of comedic timing and a pretty good, if not outstanding, eye for action. In fact, a fair amount (and more than really necessary) of the action scenes are filled with strange, slightly unfinished looking CG effects. I don't know if the pair just felt more comfortable working in the computer when it came to these moments but they weren't really necessary; just about every instance could have easily been accomplished in camera.
21 Jump Street certainly doesn't re-invent the wheel when it comes to bromances, buddy comedies or cop-action films but then, it doesn't ever set out to. It is a film blessed with a script that knows exactly what it is, and with a couple of wisecracks and jokes that help elevate it above what it otherwise would have been.  

Film review: THE HUNGER GAMES

Poster design by Ignition Print

Suzanne Collins' trilogy of YA novels have been called the new Twilight but they are much, much better than that. Where Twilight had an insipid young woman unable to define herself past the men (a sparkly vampire and shirtless werewolf) in her life, the heroine of The Hunger Games is a flinty, mature and ass-kicking young woman.

For those unfamiliar with the source material (or the numerous reviews and marketing materials spelling out the set-up): in a far, far future the remains of North America are constituted in the new country of Panem. Panem is made up of the Capitol and 12 outlying Districts, with each District providing some much needed service to the Capitol. The Districts that lie closer to the Capitol, such as 1 and 2, share some of their wealth while those outlying Districts, such as 11 and 12, are poverty stricken and all but forgotten. To punish the Districts for daring to rebel against the Capitol 74 years previous, each of the 12 Districts must put forth a young man and a young woman to compete in the annual Hunger Games - a televised fight-to-the-death where teenagers compete against one another (and the Game-makers) to survive.

It is into this hard life in District 12 that Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen finds herself - with a dead coal-miner of a father, an emotionally crippled mother and a younger sister, Prim, who Katniss loves more than anything and would do anything to protect. Katniss and her best friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth) supplement their meagre food rations by illegally hunting game in the wild - something that will come in handy for Katniss. It is Prim's first time in the ballot for the annual Reaping - the ceremony that randomly selects Tributes - and, of course, it is her name chosen as the female Tribute for District 12. Willing to do anything, Katniss instead volunteers herself in her sister's place. And so she finds herself questioning how far she'll go to survive and what it will cost her to get home.

As premises go, it's hardly an original one, with the novel and film sharing DNA with a number of sources/influences; everything from Lord of the Flies to The Running Man to Death Race 2000 to, yes, Battle Royale and Winter's Bone. But, quite frankly, that is nothing to hold against it. The Hunger Games is not a direct rip-off of anything in particular, but merely uses similar situations and setting to explore its own ideas and themes.

Gary Ross, the director of Pleasantville and Seabiscuit, is not the first choice one would assume for a big sci-fi franchise starter. But it was an incredibly astute choice: his previous films have a focus on character and means his is a more subtle touch. He is comfortable allowing a look or a small action to stand in for a long, expository and didactic speech. I'm not so sure about the choice of using shakey-cam throughout the film. The style has begun to grate with me lately; instead of the intended affect of making me feel closer to the action, it in fact just draws attention to itself. The introduction to the world of District 12 is especially choppy, Ross constantly careening the camera around and cutting before we can get more than a glimpse of anything. It does settle down, thankfully, and allows the film to work its way into you.

The anchor for the whole film, the character and actress it all hangs around is Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen. She was astounding in her debut in Winter's Bone and in The Hunger Games she amps it up further. There's a lot beneath the surface of the character of Katniss, a lot that is left unsaid. But it's all there in Lawrence's performance. Whether it be as the provider for her family, the person who desperately volunteers as tribute to save her sister from the barbarity of the Games, the tough country girl attempting to preen for the cameras or the girl who finds herself, moments before the Games begin, shaking with a fear she cannot quite control.

For those of us that have read the novels, there are some revisions and additions to the text of the novel as there should be in any decent adaptation. And they all serve the story, as they should do with any decent adaptation. The Hunger Games is a serious minded science-fiction film, with a compelling lead character and a fair few interesting ideas hidden beneath the young faces and genre trappings.

Also, as a final note: The Hunger Games is not, as has been "hilariously" tweeted and retweeted "Battle Royale with cheese". I love Battle Royale but, godsdammit, it was not the first film to pit kids against one another and it CERTAINLY wasn't the first time audiences were entertained by death-matches. Did you catch all the very Roman names in The Hunger Games? Yeah, there's a reason for that. Sorry. It just feels like a lot of people being very lazy with their criticism towards The Hunger Games, with more than a whiff of the "Hunger Games are so lame 'cos I remember when I saw that cult foreign film that one time". Yes, there are similarities but it really wouldn't be the first time this has ever happened in the history of fiction. 

Film review: THE IDES OF MARCH

It has taken me a little while longer than usual to come around to writing up George Clooney's latest directorial effort. Part of that is due to my scriptwriting MA and the increasing demands on my time. But an equal, or even larger, part is down to just being unsure what I made of The Ides of March.

Yes, the film is an intelligent, well acted and fairly involving peek behind the curtain of the world of politics (adapted from the play Farragut North by Beau Willimon). But beyond the film's obvious pedigree, I found myself feeling like something was not quite there; that the film hadn't completely enveloped me.

The world's current favourite heart-throb/internet meme Ryan Gosling is Stephen Myers, a young career campaigner who has managed to, somehow, maintain his idealism so far. The latest campaign he's working on is for George Clooney's Governor Mike Morris, running in the Democratic primary. Morris is the front-runner but his challenger is nipping at his heels; the contest isn't over yet. Morris has made a believer out of Myers - Morris is, essentially, the dream liberal politician and the man a lot people have pinned their hopes on.

That all changes when Myers agrees to a meeting with Paul Giamatti's Tom Duffy - the campaign manager for the other side. When Phillip Seymour Hoffman's campaign manager for Morris, Paul Zara, finds out he fires Myers. Myers, in the act of having his ego stroked and initially keeping it from Zara and Morris, finds his bright, fledgling career over. Not even Duffy will take him. The Ides of March is the story of the downfall of a, more or less, innocent man. How a good man can become a cold, calculating political animal. There's more to it, involving Evan Rachel Woods' smart, beautiful intern who Myers finds himself involved with

George Clooney's strength as a director lies in his unflashy presentation and ability to get out of the way of the material. He has, happily, moved on from the overt visual chicanery evidenced in his debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. He has built a library of obviously personal films and usually casts himself in a role that plays with his public persona; here as a Democratic candidate full of more Hope and Change than Obama and with the charm, charisma and intelligence of, well, George Clooney. But the film isn't the Clooney show - the role of Mike Morris is little more than an extended cameo with Gosling taking and owning the centre spotlight, while Giamatti, Hoffman and Marisa Tomei all do excellent work around him.

I cannot help but feel the story of Myers' descent would have been better served with a series; like a flipside to the optimism of The West Wing. An HBO mini-series would have allowed more room and time for the characters to really breathe. As it is, there are more than a couple sudden character reversals; one being a suicide that feels less like a real character decision and more like a plot device that was needed to get the story and characters into their required places. Very good, but falling just short of great. The Ides of March is a solid, intelligent and well-acted film that is not entirely remarkable. 

Film review: TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

There have been any number of film and television adaptations of John Le Carre's celebrated work but, until very recently, I had never read one of his novels. Before watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy I finished The Looking Glass War - a dry, intelligent and involved work with no happy ending. An ending, in fact, that I could see coming from the beginning but that was no less effective in its bathos.

Le Carre's spies are as far away from the globe-laying, gadget carrying, running, shooting, jumping Bond archetypes as it is possible to get. These are far more believable, flawed, human characters, with the upper echelons peopled entirely with Old Boys -  no women or lower class people here thankyouverymuch These are spies that deal with intelligence, counter-intelligence, misinformation, disinformation and the blurred lines between them all. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy concerns the hunt for a Russian mole who has penetrated the inner circle of the Secret Intelligence Service, the Circus. George Smiley - recently forced out of the SIS along with John Hurt's Control after a botched attempt to flush the mole - is tasked by the Minister to hunt out the mole amongst them. Smiley is a spy, spying on the spies in an attempt to find the spy among them.

The film unravels at a perfectly measured and mesmerising pace. Not being packed with action scenes and shaking cameras, director Tomas Alfredson instead allows the characters to do all of the talking and heavy-lifting. It is a spy film filled with a lot of people sitting around talking. And it is absolutely riveting; I barely moved for the entire run-time, so absorbed was I.

It surely doesn't hurt any when there is a cast as accomplished as this. Gary Oldman, headlining as George Smiley, is a magnetic presence able to hold the attention of the camera with but a look. He speaks only when necessary and keeps everything beneath the surface. At first glance, Smiley is a buttoned down man; a typical English stuffed-shirt. But Oldman lets us see the fire and iron lying just behind the eyes when needed.

Tom Hardy as field-operative Ricki Tarr is the closest Tinker Tailor comes to the traditionally thought of cinematic spy. He's one of the men the Circus sends out into the field, to spy on foreign targets and eliminate or turn them as required. Ciarin Hinds, Toby Jones, Colin Firth and David Dencik are the men running the Circus, one of whom is the turncoat. Toby Jones' Percy Alleline is a weasel of man, with Hinds' Roy Bland seeming to serve as his right-hand man. Firth is the smooth talker of the office, easily hopping from office-girl to office-girl, the only man in the office exuding any sense of charm or charisma. And Benedict Cumberbatch is Peter Guilliam, the only man inside the Circus that Tarr and Smiley trust and who often finds himself in the lion's den.

Alfredson doesn't talk down to the audience, instead trusting them to keep up with the oft-confusing details as he sets the steady, steady pace and cold-soaked atmosphere. Tinker Tailor is a very English spy story, in a very English setting (with some influence from real events) and captured with an outsider's eye. The film, like the characters, can be cold and grey but there lurks a tension beneath it all. Come the end, mole or not, almost everyone is hurt or destroyed in some way. No-one comes out clean; no-one comes away happy or victorious.

Film review: HUGO

Martin Scorsese's first foray in to new territory - a 3D family adventure film - is nothing short of a cinematic wonder and further proof that Scorsese is a master of cinema working at the top of his game. Surprisingly, the film also serves as something of a call to arms for film history and film preservation; a fact that is all but excluded from the advertising material.

The opening few minutes of the film contain no dialogue, Scorsese telling us what we need to know through the visual language of film: a wide cityscape shot of Paris, the life of the city briefly becoming a cog in a larger machine, before sweeping through into and around the train station that plays home to the film and then (still on the same, long, single take here) close in on the peering eyes hidden behind one of the clock faces: Hugo.

Hugo is an orphan boy living in the walls of the train station, running from clock to clock and ensuring they all run on time. His father (Jude Law) was a watchmaker who worked a second job in a museum. It was in the museum he found the small mechanical man he and Hugo have been working to fix and it is also in the museum where he dies. This leaves young Hugo, and the automaton, in the care of his drunken Uncle (Ray Winstone), the man who cares for the clocks at the station.

The train station is patrolled with relentless and vicious determination by the prat-falling Sacha Baron Cohens Station Inspector; he and his Doberman hunt the station for thieving orphans, to pack away to the orphanage in cages. Hugo has to dodge him while stealing gears, cogs and more from the old toymaker's store. The toymaker catches him though, and is revealed to be all but forgotten cinematic pioneer Georges Melies.

It is around this point that the film becomes less about Hugo and his quest to complete his and his father's automaton and more about the lost work of Melies. The two are connected - it is soon revealed that Melies is the man who created the wondrous automaton and Hugo comes across Melies' god-daughter Isabelle, who carries the key to the automaton around her neck. It's a shift of focus I wasn't expecting but was wrapped up in nonetheless. 

There are no villains in this film; though Hugo comes up against Melies and, of course, the Station Inspector these people are less villains and more broken people. Baron Cohen is especially effective as the orphan persecuting Station Inspector with a shy affection for the pretty flower girl (Emily Mortimer). He was an orphan himself and badly injured his leg in the Great War - leading to bouts of physical comedy as he swings about the station and moments of quiet desperation as he attempts to approach the flower girl.

Grace Moretz as the bookish but adventure seeking Isabelle is a fizzing joy of a character, easily outshining Asa Butterfield's Hugo. She loses herself in the imaginary worlds of the adventure books she finds in Monsieur Labisse's (Christopher Lee) book-store; always wanting to have an adventure of her own but never taking those steps until Hugo brings her along. Sir Ben Kingsley as Melies himself is a commanding, sorrowful and broken performance.

I remember the first time I watched Melies' Le voyage dans la lune in film class. I was absolutely blown away. Floored. Here was a short film, from the dawn of cinema with no sound and no colour, that was a technological marvel and a wondrous film. It was a fantastical adventure with effects that left me gobsmacked - moreso than any number of computer effects in recent years. And one of the joys of Hugo is the opportunity to, within the film, witness Melies' films as they were meant to be: on the big screen. They have even been, interestingly, post-converted to 3D. It is a choice I am sure Melies, the magician and pioneer would have approved of. 

The 3D in Hugo is easily the best use of the effect/gimmick that I've seen. Scorsese knows exactly what to do with it, exactly how to use the effect to help tell his story. It is truly immersive and a tool wielded by a master movie-maker. But for all of it's technological gimmickery, it is a film firmly focussed on the past; on the ongoing need for the preservation of our film history. In Hugo, Melies is all but forgotten; a magician tired of his tricks and a man with no more stomach for the fantastic after the horrible reality of War. The majority of his films (and, indeed, many of the world's earliest films) are thought lost - destroyed, reconstituted, left to moulder and rot. Even the surviving film are films that may never again be experienced on the big screen, that may never hold the attention of an entire audience. As much as I love my Buster Keaton DVDs, nothing beats seeing The General and Steamboat Bill Jr. with an audience (and live accompaniment).

Hugo, despite some (very) minor flaws, was the first film this year to truly, utterly hold me. I was rapt from to start to finish, caught up in the adventure, the emotion and the sheer joy of cinema that exudes from every frame. Scorsese has crafted something beyond a "family adventure film", though it certainly works as that. It's a love-letter, a call-to-arms, an impassioned plea, a ride, an adventure, an entertaining history lesson. I loved Hugo. 

Film review: SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS

I LOVE that there's even an official
character poster for the frakkin' dog

My first choice for my next film was Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, to complete the Benedict Cumberbatch triumvirate. However, A Game of Shadows maintains some sort of consistency to the pattern: Cumberbatch of course plays the famous detective in the recent BBC miniseries and A Game of Shadows also continues the World War I through-line begun with War Horse - SPOILERS! - as Moriarty's big plan is to start WWI some 25 years early.

I enjoyed the first Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law starring Sherlock Holmes enough. It was no definitive edition of Doyle's famous sleuth, but it was a bit of rock 'em sock 'em adventure with a wonderful chemistry between the two leads; it was pulpy, a little silly but it had enough momentum to it to carry you through. Since that first film, however, I have gone back and re-read the original short stories and have become enamoured of the BBC series. Guy Ritchie's less nuanced approach to the Great Detective can only pale in comparison.

Jude Law's Dr. John Watson is soon to be married, while Holmes obsesses over a new, grand case involving many tenuous links, seemingly masterminded by one man: Professor James Moriarty. Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime, is a villain who looms large not just over the Sherlock mythos but over literature in general and is one of the few people able to match wits with Holmes. He is an equal opposite number; the flip-side of the coin. Holmes is chasing him down and, once again, uses Watson in his deductive quest. A gypsy fortune teller in the guise of Noomi Rapace is also swept up in the cross-country gallivanting as Holmes et al chase Moriarty - as he travels about on a book tour no less! It all culminates, as we all knew it would, in Switzerland at the Reichenbach Falls.

There's plenty of running about in between, with Ritchie really pushing the use of speed ramping during action scenes. Because, I dunno, it's cool or something I guess. It's a technique that makes some story & character sense in the mental planning Holmes does before each physical confrontation - the audience can see precisely how Holmes goes about disabling an opponent. But when the action slows down and speeds up while shit explodes around the characters, it becomes more of an affectation with no real basis beyond looking cool.

The relationship between Holmes and Watson or, more specifically, the chemistry between Downey Jr. and Law seems decidedly more strained, more high-pitched than the previous film. Where in Sherlock Holmes you genuinely felt that these two were close to being a bickering old married couple who feel a closeness and affection for one another, in A Game of Shadows the feeling is more one of one-upmanship and yelling at one another. Rachel McAdams' Irene Adler makes a return from Sherlock Holmes, although really makes less of an impact than her character deserves while The Gypsy With No Tatoo seems to have just been brought along for the ride.

Both Holmes films have taken the "who" out of the central mysteries; there is never any doubt as to who is behind the dastardly deeds (Mark Strong in the first and Moriarty here), rather the mystery is in the "how" and "why". And, frankly, the "why" behind Moriarty's grand plan is really rather pedestrian and boring. Hell, he's just doing it all for the money. Woop-de-doo. It strikes me as really far too vulgar a reason for the greatest criminal mind in history to do what he does.

A Game of Shadows was enjoyable enough, with a number of nods and shout-outs to Holmes history. But it is a film I struggled to remember anything about a day or two after.

Film review: WAR HORSE

I initially had absolutely no intention of seeing Steven Spielberg's adaptation of the World War I set novel & play, War Horse. Almost nothing about it appealed to me; in fact the only things that did were the WWI setting and the Beard himself. However, after reading a number of positive reviews and reactions online, I decided to give the film a chance. This was Spielberg after all, and World War I is a war far less cinematically enshrined than it's sequel, WWII.

Unfortunately, after the two-and-a-half hours of runtime my reaction to the film was very under-whelmed "Meh".

Which is not to say there aren't moments of sheer beauty, horror and genius. Moments that use the full array of camera, editing, performance and music tools at Spielberg's disposal to brilliantly moving effect.

But those moments, as fantastic as they are, could not get me to connect with this film. Essentially World War I through the eyes of a horse, I found myself unable to connect emotionally. Spielberg does his utmost to invest the horse, Joey, with a surfeit of personality even going so far as anthropomorphising him at times. But, as great as these efforts were, I couldn't connect to the horse and, by extension, the story.

I certainly couldn't connect to Joey like lead human character Albert Narracott (newcomer Jeremy Irvine) does. The love this young man has for this horse is... well, intense. He's there at his birth and, when his father (Peter Mullan) drunkenly outbids their landlord (David Thewlis having oodles of scheming bastard fun) for Joey young Albert is overjoyed. However, to keep the farm afloat Albert's pa ends up having to sell Joey to a young officer in the Army. The young Army officer, a kind eyed Tom Hiddleston, is the picture of upper class English politeness. The Great War was a new kind of warfare; old rules of engagement were becoming obsolete as new, more advanced weaponry, made a mockery of them. When the English charge a German machine-gun nest it is a massacre, Spielberg masterfully cutting around the bloodshed with shots of riders in a field and riderless horses leaping over machine-guns.

Young Joey then ends up in German hands being looked after by two young brothers. From there he's taken in by a young French girl and her grandfather before being re-drafted by the German army. In this way he criss-crosses the borders of the war, his story giving all-too brief glimpses into different lives and experiences of the War.

And that's what they are - glimpses. Spielberg knows how to get a lot out of them, but I was still left with no central character I felt connected to. Not all of the images are immediately striking - or at least, not in a good way. Spielberg's usual cinematographer Janusz Kaminski saturates the film, laying the soaked in syrup tones a bit much at times.

And one of the things I found myself most annoyed, perturbed and a little confounded by was the continuing cinematic trend of having foreigners speak to one another in perfect English; something that is especially noticeable when there are English characters in the film as well. It is a cinematic tendency I understand - the folk are talking to one another in their own language but the audience are "hearing" it as English - but I think it's long past time we moved on from it. It really is a piece of arch theatricality that only served to take me out of the film and, frankly, I would have expected different from Spielberg.

I can see what was being aimed for with War Horse and, for a number of people, it definitely worked. I just wasn't one of those people. I never felt nakedly manipulated by Spielberg; it simply never connected with me and thus there was no emotion to pull on. 

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

Like a lot of people (including producer Peter Jackson), I enjoyed the adventures of Herge's coiffed boy reporter when I was young. Heck, my Dad enjoyed Tintin books when he was a kid; Tintin is a character who has been around world literature for some time with any number of kids growing up with him. I can still remember the first adventure I ever read - Tintin in America - and still have a firm favourite in the two-part Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon (somewhat betraying my early interest in sci-fi). So the Peter Jackson produced, Steven Spielberg directed, performance-captured Adventures of Tintin had my interest piqued.

It is an interesting choice Jackson and Spielberg made, going down the route of performance capture. They wanted to capture the distinctive look of Herge's characters and world but with a more realistic look; an exaggerated realism if you will. This of course meant that they could then cast pretty much whoever they wanted. Nevertheless Jamie Bell as the eponymous hero and Andy Serkis as the irrepressible drunk Captain Archibald Haddock are spot-on.

Opening with a fun credit sequence filled with the sorts of adventures typical of Tintin and reminiscent of his Saul Bass inspired Catch Me if You Can, Spielberg then takes us into the world of the film via a rather neat cameo. It's not long at all before the boy reporter finds himself in a whole mess of trouble - at the market he finds a rather stunning model ship which he purchases just before two other gentlemen show an interest. One is a little more forceful - the devious Sakharine (Daniel Craig). This model ship leads Tintin and his faithful terrier Snowy on a globe-trotting adventure with mutineers, a water-plane, kidnappers, a desert, pirates, the bumbling detectives Thomson & Thompson (Simon Pegg & Nick Frost) and a drunken no-hoper ship's Captain by the name of Haddock.

The script by Brit geek-geniuses Stephen Moffat and Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish is a propulsive ride, taking Tintin & Snowy (and, later, Haddock) from encounter to encounter with barely a moment to catch your breath. Those three writers are a trifecta of perfection, in terms of genre filmmaking and writing; Moffat's run on Dr. Who has been universally acclaimed as he balances single episodes with a larger mythology and Wright & Cornish have, between them, made four modern classics, each film fully aware and playing to it's genre. Spielberg makes the script dance and Tintin, Snowy and the audience are all quickly caught up in this adventure; this quest for the secret of the unicorn.

And I think there's a distinction that has to be made here - between action and adventure. The Adventures of Tintin is sure filled with its fair share of action but it is primarily an adventure film. A film about adventure, directed and produced by two of the greatest purveyors of modern-day adventure cinema. Spielberg, when firing on all cylinders as he is here, can craft an action sequence like few others, knowing exactly when to bring them in and how to play the audience through them. He melds that with Herge's world and sense of humour, as filtered through Moffat, Wright & Cornish, to create a number of stand-out gags throughout. There's Tintin attempting to grab a set of keys from a room full of sleeping thugs - one who is notably missing his eyelids altogether; there's Snowy leaping in and out of the background and foreground, going after sandwiches and seeing off big dogs; there's Captain Haddock misfiring a bazooka, shouting in splenetic fury and drinking every drop of alcohol he can get his hands on.

Andy Serkis once again proves himself to be the pre-eminent performance capture artist working today; his Haddock is the life and soul of the film. Where Bell's Tintin is intentionally left as something of a blank, Serkis' Haddock is a rough, world-worn and soulful character. And a lot of that is thanks simply to the performance of Serkis. You can add Haddock to the growing list of timeless characters Serkis has brought to life. The criticism I have with regards to the performance capture animation may just be me but I occasionally felt like the characters were lacking in weight. Some of their movements struck me as 'off' and unnatural; understand that none of this is poor work or a large distraction. Indeed, I have some trouble really putting my finger on what I felt to be 'wrong' here - is it just because I knew it was performance capture? Or were there really some moments that were not quite right? However, the entirely digital creation of Snowy is a wonder, helping to bring mischief and care to the adventure and he always feels entirely real.

Spielberg (with the more than capable assistance of the lads and lasses out at WETA) swings his camera wherever he damn well pleases. While this is another aspect of performance capture filmmaking I am on the fence about; where a swooping camera is allowed to go anywhere within a scene that can do anything with characters able to achieve impossible physicality, this is Spielberg and he is working with one of the most adventurous characters in literature. The Beard is a director who knows precisely where the camera needs to go and how to use the effect of 3D. I'm not the biggest supporter of 3D but neither am I the biggest detractor. When used correctly it can achieve effects like opening up huge vistas. When used incorrectly it can make the film look like a cheap diorama. While The Adventures of Tintin is a film I would happily watch in 2D and feel like I wasn't missing anything. In fact, it might even closer approximate the world of the original comics. It helps that Spielberg is one of the master directors of the modern age and thus understands how to utilise every tool at his disposal, 3D included.

Working from timeless and much loved source material (and culling from a number of Tintin adventures), Moffat and Wright & Cornish have worked up a fun, propulsive and intelligent script. Spielberg and Jackson have then gathered a note-perfect cast to help bring the characters to life. Spielberg, with WETA, has then taken all of these elements and filtered them through his own brand of cinematic alchemy to give Herge's intrepid reporter big-screen life. The Adventures of Tintin is Spielberg at his "fun, globe-trotting adventure time Spielberg" best. I look forward to seeing what Peter Jackson does with his follow-up adventure. 

09.12: THE HELP

I know I'm coming to this film fairly late in the game, but it was one of the ones that got lost in the shuffle between the States and home. I was able to catch up with it thanks to the Penthouse Cinema's $8 "Oscar buzz" deal - films that are beginning to get some Oscar talk, playing twice a week for $8 a pop, a different film each week. I'm interested to see what else is coming up.

It's fairly obvious, but I'm just going to go ahead and state it upfront anyway: I am a white, middle-class male who grew up in New Zealand suburbia. I have never experienced racism first hand and my knowledge of 1960's America is limited to what I have learned from pop culture (my own historical proclivities tend towards the ancient). And through that (largely white male dominated) pop culture I have learned that minorities always need the help of a kindly white person to rise up and overthrow/stand up to the prevailing social hierarchy. Just look at the cinema of Ed Zwick who is the most recent purveyor of this kind of condescending film-making. Hollywood doesn't seem comfortable, or at least thinks audiences wouldn't be comfortable, with heroic minority lead characters. There's far more to be written (and has been) on the representation of African-Americans and Hispanics in American media and pop culture; far more than can be encapsulated within a movie review.

The Help is one of the least egregiousness examples of this type of filmmaking; the maid characters of Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) wrestle as much of the film away from the limp protagonist of Skeeter (Emma Stone) as they can, forcing the focus onto them by dint of their performances and stories.

Skeeter is a newly graduated journalism student, newly returned to Jackson, Mississippi and all hot and bothered to start writing something life changing and full of meaning. Instead, due to prevailing social attitudes of the time (and the fact that she is newly graduated with zero professional experience behind her) she is assigned the cleaning advice column of her hometown rag. Through needing cleaning advice of her own, Skeeter begins interviewing her friend's maid Aibileen. But she very quickly (immediately, essentially) uses the cleaning questions as a cover for interviewing Aibileen on what its really like to be a maid and raise white children, even at the cost of raising her own. These are the days of Jim Crow segregation and on the cusp of the Civil Rights movement; their interviews have to be in secret and, at first, Aibileen is the only woman willing to talk. There is the possibility of very real danger that is never fully exploited.

The only real danger and villain of the piece is the racist and bitchy Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard), the queen bee of Skeeter's society circle. She is a deeply racist character, convinced of the lower nature of African-Americans and works to have separate outhouses for the maids installed in each house, to halt "their" diseases from spreading to whites. Hilly fires her longtime maid Minny when the woman dares to use the inside bathroom during a storm. Minny, all sass and with a large brood of children, ends up working for the socially shunned Celia (Jessica Chastain) and their times together actually provide some of the strongest moments in the film. Celia is a bundle of joyous nerves, with no idea of how to cook or maintain a household and with something of a white trash vibe about her. Despite, or perhaps because of this, she is more grateful than superior to Minny. It becomes a case of the maid trying to tell her mistress how things are supposed to run and, essentially, taking the woman under her wing. These two have a couple of powerful scenes between them and are more engaging than most.

It's a shame about the supposed lead character, Skeeter, then. Stone does her charismatic best to bring life to her, but crusading writer is barely more than a thinly sketched author surrogate. There's a mildly intriguing subplot with the mysterious firing of her family's much loved maid but a subplot with a boyfriend (all three scenes of it) are fairly forgettable and add nothing to the film but running time. This leaves the majority of the last half to stand with Aibileen and Minny; which is all for the better even if it initially feels uneven. Davis is powerful as the maid who gives all her love to the white children she raises and Spencer has deft comic timing in her role of the "sassy best friend" (and pie comeuppance giving) Minny. Howard and Chastain dive into their roles of villain and ditz with vigour. Howard seems to be enjoying the challenge of playing unsympathetic characters at the moment and it was a  joy to see Chastain with more to do than appear ethereal and angelic (Tree of Life).

But all this great character work by an ensemble of strong female actors is in service to a film that feels over-egged and dramatically limp. The entirety of this well-meaning drama made little emotional connection to me. It aimed for too much, perhaps, and felt a little forced at times. It is a decent enough film, I just felt that there was more to be discovered; harsher truths to be felt and a wider world to be seen. But then I am likely looking at the film through a different lens - this is no Malcolm X but a light, almost feel-good drama.

Fairly smart, if middlebrow and nonthreatening, expect to hear more from The Help around Oscar time. Especially when it comes to the acting nominations.