Popcorn filler for a busy week...

Can be found here.

Cinema 2011 #83: The Inbetweeners Movie

Bar changing the location to the clubber’s holiday paradise of Malia, Crete, there’s nothing particularly original going on in the big screen adaptation of Iain Morris and Damon Beesley’s teenage odyssey. Those looking for an epic tale that thrusts four boys out of an in-between state of adolescence into fully-fledged manhood may as well go and watch Stand by Me again, The Inbetweeners Movie is not a contemplative study on growing up and growing apart. Instead, the writers, director Ben Palmer (who helmed the entire second season of the E4 sitcom) and the series regulars do what they’ve always done best; mercilessly ripping the piss out of each other, the way only best friends can, and making the audience laugh with the finest British gross-out comedy to date. 

Cinema 2011 #82: Glee: The 3D Concert

While there is simply no denying the Glee gang’s infectious charm for rebranding classic soft rock, contemporary pop and big-ballad show tunes into a flashy up-tempo package, for many viewers the main attraction remains Jane Lynch’s acerbic cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester. This makes her absence from the 3D concert movie all the greater, with a purveying sense that all that’s on offer here is some very upscale karaoke attempting to cash in on fan favour and residual interest in the concert shenanigans of Cyrus, Bieber and Jonas, Inc.

The cast of the show, a hodgepodge ethnic mix of Ohioan high-schoolers united by a love of music and some serious vocal talent, come together here, some contractually bound, to perform as McKinley High’s New Directions Glee Club, performing a number of popular songs and dance routines from the first two seasons of creator Ryan Murphy’s contemporary twist on the Fame formula. And who better to take the helm from Murphy on directing duties than Kevin Tancharoen, the man behind the 2009 reboot of the leg-warmer antics of the New York Academy of Performing Arts. 

Cinema 2011 #81: Fright Night

“The kids today,” complains Roddy McDowall in the 1985 original version of Fright Night, “don’t have the patience for vampires. They want to see some mad slasher running around and chopping off heads.”

Well, 26 years later and it’s a somewhat different market. The slashers need to slice your skin off in a series of increasingly elaborate traps and vampires have never been more in vogue, with seemingly every single channel showing some sporty Scandinavian sucking Sookie’s sanguine assets, while on the silver screen Edward gets busy with the body glitter and pre-marital chastity. It makes director Craig (Lars and the Real Girl) Gillespie’s remake all the more ironic, really, given that the running joke behind the Tom Holland original was that vampires weren’t all that cool anymore, so nobody would believe you when you told them that one was your neighbour. These days, if there were Cullens in the cul de sac, it would presumably increase the market value of your home. 

New Directions on the other side...

Check it out here.

Cinema 2011 #80: Cowboys & Aliens

Summer 2011 has really been out of this world for producer Steven Spielberg. Although the most powerful filmmaker on the planet hasn’t deigned to sit in the director’s chair himself, that Spielberg sheen has dominated our movie screens nonetheless, with three collaborations with other directors, and a slight sense that the chap is running out of ideas. We’ve had automobile aliens fighting off the onslaught of vehicular villains in Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Then we had some good old-fashioned Goony-fun as a mysterious monster from beyond the stars rips a town to shreds in J.J. Abrams’ Super 8. And now, taking the Ronseal approach to film titles, Spielberg produces director Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens, which is, unsurprisingly, about cowboys and aliens.

But to say that this is Spielberg’s show is a tad unfair, as Favreau’s style dominates the film, and the Iron Man man clearly stamps his sense of dry humour and gritty emotion onto this loose interpretation of a 2006 graphic novel of the same name. 

Cinema 2011 #79: The Devil's Double

Where did it all go wrong for Lee Tamahori? With his 1994 Once were Warriors, the Kiwi received worldwide acclaim for his brutal portrayal of contemporary Maori culture, but since then has struggled to reach the same heights with contrived genre-flicks (xXx , its sequel XXX: State of the Union, the Nicholas Cage vehicle Next) and effectively brought about the death of Bond as we new him with the dire Die Another Day. Tamahori’s private life also hit headlines, when it was revealed that in 2006, whilst dressed in drag, he was caught by an uncover LAPD officer allegedly soliciting oral sex, resurfacing old rumours about his somewhat saucy double life.

This is perhaps what attracted him to The Devil’s Double, the story of Latif Yahia, a man forced to become the body double of Saddam Hussein’s psychotic son Uday, with British actor Dominic Cooper in the lead as both men.

While serving at the front in the Iran-Iraq war in the late 1980s, Latif is pulled away from combat by the secret service and brought back to Baghdad. There he is reintroduced to Uday Hussein, with whom he had gone to school and always shared a similar appearance, so much so, that Uday claims him as his new brother and has Latif surgically altered to make the resemblance uncanny. Now forced into sharing in the decadence of Uday’s life, with cars, drugs, clothes and women thrust upon him, Latif struggles to cope with the heavy weight of losing his identity and living at the beck and call of an increasingly unstable and violent man. 

Who new the Kaiser Chiefs were so prophetic?

Pretty much does what it says on the tin. Can be found here.

Cinema 2011 #78: Super 8

J.J. Abrams has always been something of a collaborative filmmaker, with his back catalogue of hits and critical successes consistently feeling like a genuinely cumulative effort. Whether it’s big budget remakes of classic anorak-favourite television shows steeped in years of constructed history and expectations (Star Trek, Mission: Impossible III), or cherished high-concept cult, in the broadest sense, television shows of his own invention (Alias, Lost, Fringe), there’s always a sense that the man is open to ideas and input from everybody and anybody on set, and ready to lend an ear to the rising talent he, and his production company Bad Robot, surrounds himself with.

While this generally works out for the best, there is also no denying that Abrams’ pet projects can sometimes suffer from an unnecessary fussiness that pulls away from clever and concise to grandiose and tangled. When his twists and thrills become the story, rather than adding to it, the audience loses the affection earned at the beginning, their enthusiasm for shocks and awes ebbing as his stories reach their convoluted coda and get, ahem, Lost in their own grandeur.

As such, it is important that Abrams chooses wisely whom to work with, and here, with Super 8, a nostalgic sci-fi romp that rekindles memories of summer favourites of yesteryear, he’s gone right to the source of the summer blockbuster itself, Steven Spielberg. And it almost works perfectly.

Cinema 2011 #77: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

While Tim Burton’s 2001 reimagining of the simian sci-fi saga Planet of the Apes managed to greatly revamp the make-up and prosthetics work that had won the original 1968 film an honorary Oscar, in many ways the Mark Wahlberg starrer lacked the searingly bleak intelligence and dark heart of its Charlton Heston ancestor. In short, while the primates looked and sounded prime, Burton’s baboons just weren’t damned dirty enough to appeal to fans old and new. With Rise of the Planet of the Apes, itself something of a spiritual reimagining of 1972’s Conquest of the etc., director Rupert Wyatt offers audiences a long awaited prequel to the Heston Planet, telling the story of one genetically altered chimpanzee named Caesar, who like his namesake, rises to power to create a new world order.

In a near future San Francisco laboratory, scientist Will Rodman (James Franco), is struggling to concoct a viral cure for Alzheimer’s disease, of which his father, John Lithgow, is a patient. Will’s ALZ 112 formula seems to be the Holy Grail for banjaxed brains, but an unfortunately timed bout of monkey business results in corporate suit Jacobs (David Oyelowo) shutting down the project and pulling the plug on the test chimps. Rodman chances upon an infant primate, a brilliant mo-cap performance by mo-cap maestro (King Kong, Gollum) Andy Serkis, and adopts the little scamp, taking him in to share his home with his worsening father.

A number of years later and Caesar has developed far beyond the intellectual capabilities of either his species or human children of the same age. Able to communicate by sign language with his de facto family (suck it, Chomsky), Caesar offers Will the chance to rebuild his scientific career as well as save his father from the degenerative effects of the disease claiming his life. Together with veterinarian Freida Pinto, Caesar lives a carefree life, solving puzzles and leaping lithely from every nook and cranny of his attic, with a knowing sparkle in his CGI eyes.

Cinema 2011 #76: Beautiful Lies

French-Corsican director Pierre Salvadori is something akin to the Nora Ephron of the Hexagon, having carved out an unlikely career in the intense and emotionally charged arena of French cinema through the medium of the romcom. Best known for Cible émouvante (remade as Wild Target with Emily Blunt and Bill Nighy last year) and the wonderful Hors de prix/Priceless, here he reunites with Priceless star Audrey Tautou in his latest love letter to the comédie romantique. 

The other side of the fence...

Mirror mirror on the wall... where's the bloody link?

Here.

Cinema 2011 #75: Beginners

Beginners, the story of a man finding new beginnings in his life after unexpected changes, bereavement and new love, is the second feature from director Mike Mills, a man so unattainably hip that the French band Air, for whom he’s directed numerous music videos, named a track on one of their albums after him.

Mills’ film is a semi-autobiographical story revolving around Ewan McGregor’s Oliver, weighed down by grief following the death of his father Hal (Christopher Plummer), from lung cancer at 80 years of age, five years after Hal revealed himself to be gay. Still bereft and caring for his father’s Jack Russell terrier, who poses subtitled questions throughout, Oliver may just find solace in the shape of French actress Anna, herself no stranger to daddy issues. But this relationship forces him to confront deeper issues concerning the very nature of love, from his parent’s marriage in the 1970s through to his father’s short-lived experiences in the gay community and his romance with Goran Visnjic’s Andy. 

Cinema 2011 #74: Horrible Bosses

A really great premise – 9 to 5 meets (a name-checked) Strangers on a Train – and some decent comedic performances get squandered in director Seth Gordon’s homicidal workplace comedy that simply isn’t wicked enough to be truly deadly.

Three put upon drones (Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis) working in Los Angeles really hate their bosses, and not without reason; Bateman’s corporate dogsbody Nick is devotedly on the leash of all round business bastard Dave Harken, a Kevin Spacey treading water in a watered down version of his Swimming with Sharks Svengali, in the hope of getting a promotion. Day’s dental nurse Dale, unemployable anywhere else, is subjected daily to hostile sexual harassment courtesy of nympho cougar Jenifer Aniston’s diabolical dentist.  While Sudeikis’ sex-addicted accountant Kurt, unwilling to let his workplace go to the dogs, suffers from the paranoiac whims of Colin Farrell’s coke-addicted heir to the chemical plant Donald Sutherland’s cameo death leaves behind. 

For the land of the free, and the home of the delayed...

Okay, so some things went awry with this one, and then I went to Berlin for the Wochenende. But should you choose to follow the weekly ones, it can be found here.

Also, reviews coming very soon: Horrible Bosses, Beginners, Super 8, Friends with Benefits.

Aim is to have them all done by Friday.

"Too much," you protest, "Your pithy reviews of fizzling critique and brazen bons mots require more time."

Yes, well... I got made redundant today. So... yeah... time.