Rating: MMMM

Review of ‘geezer’ director Guy Ritchie’s adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic character (and the world’s most famous detective) the inimitable Sherlock Holmes.

Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Jude Law, Mark Strong, Kelly Reilly, Rachel McAdams
Running time: 128 mins

Infamous British gangster-thriller director Guy Ritchie’s take on the world’s most famous detective may not be the most faithful or accurate depiction of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian detective, but his new Sherlock Holmes film is likely to be the most fun.
At the point in which the film begins, our heroes, the eponymous Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Doctor John Watson (Jude Law) are soon to be separated from being London’s brilliant and unrivaled ‘consulting detective’ partners by Watson’s impending engagement to his love Mary (Kelly Reilly). However, before the pair are to part ways, one more case must be solved – one that requires all of Holmes’ remarkable powers of deduction, observational skills and helping hands of Dr Watson. It is a case unlike any Holmes has ever confronted, apparently defying the laws of logic and science, one that terrorises London in a chain of strange and ritualistic murders and one that is seemingly orchestrated from beyond the grave by the recently deceased Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong).

The first point of praise for Ritchie’s film is that the plot of Sherlock Holmes is well conceived and structured, being complex and intriguing enough to be a believable case that Holmes and Watson have to solve, but straightforward enough for the audience not to be lost. Some parts are messy but never confusing, and the film as a whole is so damn entertaining that even the odd plot contrivance can be forgiven. There is a wonderful tension between the scientific and the gothic, capturing the tone and flavour of two Victorian phenomenons, coupled with a glimpse of the forward march of progress so omnipresnent in the late nineteenth century. The script is well written, clever and funny, is pleasingly lacking in the “me old china” -isms of Ritchie’s repertoir and perhaps more importantly, captures the brilliance and intelligence of Conan Doyle’s original character.

As is to be expected from a Guy Ritchie movie (in the face of his previous work, Lock, Stock, Snatch, Revolver), there is a certain amount of fisticuffs and bare-knuckle fighting in Sherlock Holmes which some might feel incongruous with the tone of the original source material. Surprisingly, however the inclusion of the violence is not to the detriment of the film – the scenes where Holmes takes on a prizefighter in a boxing match are coupled with a voice-over of him explaining his punches and techniques, presenting the violence as another facet of his detective skills.

In terms of performances, the central pair are without a doubt the stars of the show. Robert Downey, Jr. as Holmes is excellent, intensely likeable and very charming. Likewise, Jude Law as Watson is also very good. The two together are brilliant, exuding charisma and a fantastic physical comedy that elevates the film above being simply entertaining and makes in out-and-out fun – their bickering ‘old married couple’ act is very well done, to the point where the relationship becomes the heart of the film and the mystery plays second fiddle – this is not a criticism however as the friendship dynamic between the two men worked so well, being funny, poignant and enjoyable.
Mark Strong as the villanous Lord Blackwood is deliciously evil and suitably gothic but never descending into camp devilry, maintaining a malevolent sensibility that is genuinely creepy. The only piece of characterisation that perhaps doesn’t work as well as the rest is Rachel McAdams as Holmes’ female foil and ‘love interest’ despite her being a crucial part of the film’s climax.

Sherlock Holmes is a good, solid, enjoyable and hugely entertaining action blockbuster that packs as many laughs as it does punches – Downey, Jr. and Law’s comic timing is fabulous. Go see.

Rating: MMMM

Rating: MMMM

Review of animated post-apocalypse noir 9, directed by Shane Acker and produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov.

Director: Shane Acker
Starring: (voices) Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer
Running time: 79 mins

9 is set in the wastelands of a post-apocalyptic world, following a war between humans and machines. With human life all but extinguished on earth, the only survivors are the numbered cloth bag characters and sinister red lens-eyed beasts, which have more in common with the Terminator than our soft-bodied heroes.

The film opens with a confused 9 (Elijah Wood) apparently lost in the wilderness of what used to be a city. He happens upon fellow cloth-bag 2, who is something of an inventor, managing to fix 9’s broken voice box. The pair are then joined by half-blind 5 (John C. Reilly) but their meeting is cut painfully short by the arrival of the ‘cat beast’, a devilish mechanical feline who captures 2 and carries him off to its lair. What follows is a daring rescue attempt which accidentally brings about the reawakening of the huge machine ‘brain’ which appears hell bent on wiping out every last trace of life on earth. For an animated film with characters that are undeniably cute (their huge Bambi eyes are the clincher), 9 is in no way another computerised story for children.

Packed with moments that are unsettling, frightening and challenging, 9 cements itself as animated fare for adults, to the film’s credit – there are enough genuine horror devices to push the film’s 12A rating, one of which is a horrible dementor’s kiss type sequence that is truly disturbing. The film’s premise and story is highly original and fresh, told with clever flashback sequences that are part of the action and not merely exposition for its own sake. 9 also fundamentally has good storytelling, an element that more filmmakers should prioritise a la Andrew Lasseter and his team at Pixar. Acker presents the characters as rounded and unique (despite being numbered, not named) with neat touches such as 6’s striped asylum-like clothing linking his madman persona and a scene in which fat stooge 8 apparently uses a magnet to get high.

The voice talent is good, with an impressive set of actors enlisted to provide the dialogue, including Christopher Plummer as the aging 1 and Jennifer Connelly as the high-kicking 7. Yet the actors are given a script of such weakness that its cliché ridden holes threaten to bring down a film of such promise. The dialogue is terrible, composed of one hackneyed expression after another, which is disappointing indeed as the premise and plot of the film is original and fresh. However, the film is saved by its unique visual style and its wonderfully endearing cloth bag characters, a clever meeting of the organic and artificial, with their soft bodies and metal parts. Overall, 9 is a well paced, well structured piece of sci-fi animation, beautifully told with moments of terror and poignancy. Great stuff.

Rating: MMMM

Reposting of my review of the new Disney-Pixar film Up, which I saw in June at Glastonbury Festival in the Pilton Palais cinema tent.

Director: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
Starring: (voices) Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai
Running time: 96mins

Up follows grumpy old-age-pensioner Carl Fredricksen following a life-long dream to visit South America, inadvertently bringing a new friend with him, in the form of the eager to help Russell – an 8 year old boy intent on helping Mr Fredricksen in order for him to gain his ‘assisting the elderly’ explorer scout badge. However, it is not the South American adventure section of the film which displays the usual Pixar magic; the portions of the film which take place in Mr Fredricksen and Russell’s home town seem to have a different quality to the rest.

The first meeting of Mr Fredricksen and his future wife Ellie is very well conceived and scripted with touches of physical comedy and charming characterisation – character development which is enhanced by a wonderful montage of Carl and Ellie’s life together (the couple’s families seated on either side of the church at their wedding is fantastic) from childhood sweethearts to elderly couple. This set-piece is heartbreaking, handling the highs and lows of their life with delicacy. Everything about Up’s presentation of the Carl-Ellie relationship is charming and delightful whilst never becoming saccharine-soaked and overly sentimental. Sadly as Ellie dies, Carl becomes a slightly bitter and grumpy old man, but remains endearing and likeable. He does typical old-person things with a familiar dislike of outside help (namely the ever-eager Russell and the prospect of living in a retirement home) which magically seem to maintain an element of freshness; Up demonstrates that characterisation can be thorough and well developed even with such limited running time.

As the action moves to South America (courtesy of the thousands of balloons attached to Mr Fredricksen’s house) the tone of the film shifts also, moving away from sweet and gentle and becomes more of a buddy comedy/road movie with the bickering Mr Fredricksen and Russell making an engaging (albeit slightly odd) pair – the sequences in which they pull the house along by a tether rope are particularly good. As the pair cross continents they meet an exotic wild bird which Russell names Kevin (despite later discovering Kevin to be a female with a number of baby Kevins) and a number of talking dogs – luckily these characters escape the usual Disney talking-animal schtick by ingenious collar devices which project what they are thinking through a speaker, a device which allows for some wonderful comedy, with the evil canine leader apparently having a voice hilariously incongruous to his stature and appearance. That the collars project what the dogs are thinking and not what they are saying means that with their ‘dialogue’ come random outbursts of typical dog behaviour, namely shouts of “SQUIRREL!!!” which are priceless.

With the film’s climactic final act come some excellent action sequences, involving planes and high-altitude antics all of which are well executed and visually impressive. However, as with the the early parts of the film, Up’s character-driven scenes steal the film, with the closing moments belonging to the now firm friendship between Mr Fredricksen and Russell. In all, Up is highly entertaining animated fun with a lot of heart and bags of charm.

Rating: MMMM

Review of sunny, seasonal romantic-comedy, (500) Days of Summer, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (‘3rd Rock From The Sun’) and Zooey Deschanel.

Director: Marc Webb
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Clark Gregg
Running time: 95 mins

From its breezy, whimsical and original opening titles to its warm-hearted closing moments, ‘anti-romantic comedy’ (500) Days of Summer succeeds in bringing something new to a stale and formulaic genre (see article) – that of the aforementioned rom-com.

Where (500) Days of Summer breaks away from its predecessors is that we are told from the very start that the boy-meets-girl relationship we are about to see is one that does not end with our hero and heroine living happily ever after together. Yet this does not hamper the film as a consequence. In fact, knowing this enhances and colours (for the better) our judgment of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer’s (Zooey Deschanel) relationship in each section of the narrative.

Like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind before it, (500) Days of Summer presents the trajectory of a couple’s relationship from start to finish out of chronological order, from day 1 to day 500 – the number

of which is presented by brief intertitles throughout the film – a technique which often makes for interesting and intriguing drama and does so very successfully here. And again, similar to Eternal Sunshine, the film is told from the man’s perspective, a plot device fundamentally crucial to the film’s premise but one which is fresh and original; one of the failings of contemporary rom-coms is that the overwhelming majority are based on female perspectives and hackneyed ones at that.

In terms of acting, the two leads are very good and always utterly convincing as the mostly endearing and sympathetic characters they portray. Joseph Gordon-Levitt in particular should be singled out for plaudits, as his co-star Zooey Deschanel seems to be merely displaying an amalgam of her assorted ‘kooky female’ roles in her performance as the eponymous Summer. Having said this, Deschanel maintains a balance between charming and aloof which at the climax of the film, seems to be a fair summation of Tom’s feelings for her. It may just be unfortunate that Deschanel keeps being offered this kind of alternative yet cute character – she is in real danger of being typecast.

Along with great acting and a fresh premise, where the film also charms is in its design (not that the film prioritises style over its substance) and tone. Where other films exert their American-ness, (500) Days of Summer has more of a European feel: Tom and Summer take a trip to Ikea, not Pottery Barn; Tom listens to melancholic British indie rock music; the movies that display Tom’s misery are burlesques on the films of the Nouvelle Vague.

(500) Days of Summer is a quirky, original and well written ‘anti’ romantic-comedy that ends on a warm high note despite the guy not getting his summery girl.

Rating: MMMM

Review of the latest film of the Harry Potter franchise, sixth film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which sees Harry and Dumbledore unite to search into Voldemort’s past in an effort to discover secrets that will lead them to destroy him.

Director: David Yates
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson
Running time: 153 mins

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the second film about the boy wizard to be directed by David Yates (his first outing in the franchise being film #5, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) with films #1 and #2 helmed by Chris Columbus, the third by Alfonso Cuaron and the fourth by Mike Newell. Interestingly, where the second film suffered with a lack of freshness by Columbus once more taking the reins, Half-Blood Prince also suffers.

But just where the film falls down seems on the surface hard to pinpoint. On the whole (with a few glaring exceptions) the performances are reasonably good, the production value and visual effects are faultless, the dialogue is acceptable and for those wishing to pick holes in the book-to-screen transition, there is little to criticise. Where the problem comes however, is in the film’s pace which lacks dynamism and any sense of rhythm. Some scenes concentrate heavily on the mystery surrounding the identity of the Half-Blood Prince (which Harry comes across in an old school textbook) while others neglect this part of the plot completely. Quidditch seems to feature heavily, which seems incongruous to the film’s advertised tone – the franchise getting darker as Voldemort’s power grows. It must be said that far too much of the film is given over to the pangs of teenage love and raging hormones – all of which are important elements in the source material but here take up far too many scenes.

Having said that the performances are fairly good, this is only true of the adult actors and a very small number of their younger counterparts. Daniel Radcliffe is as ever painfully hit-and-miss, with some scenes feeling cringingly awkward whereas others are fairly good (the scene involving the lucky potion Felix Felicis in particular) . In comparison, Jim Broadbent  is excellent as new Potions teacher Professor Horace Slughorn, as is Michael Gambon as the illustrious Albus Dumbledore. Rupert Grint continues to demonstrate brilliant comic timing and excellent performance skills in his reprisal of Ron Weasley. Sadly, as ever, Emma Watson struggles in her portrayal of Hermione Granger as she has done in the previous films. However, she fares better than Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) who is extremely poor – her relationship and ‘blossoming romance’ with Harry withers on screen with a complete lack of chemistry. However, the two young actors as the young Tom Riddle (at ages 11 and 16 respectively), Hero Fiennes-Tiffin and Frank Dillane are superb, with the two performances maintaining a tension between sinister and eerie and a creepy seductiveness.

Other elements of the film are also good, the visual effects in particular – the inky thoughts tipping into the Pensieve are excellent, as is the fire wielded by Dumbledore near the film’s climax. However, there is an inescapable feeling of mediocrity running more or less throughout the entire film which cannot be evaded even by the aforementioned firy adventures of Harry and Dumbledore and their consequences. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is perhaps the weakest in the canon since the excellence of film number four – and sadly the curse of keeping the same director is set to continue with Yates at the helm of the franchise’s final instalments.

Rating: MMM

Review of British television show ‘Gavin and Stacey’ first published in a January 2009 issue of Spark*, the newspaper of Reading University Students’ Union.

“Oh?! What’s occurring?!?” asks Nessa, arguably the best conceived character of the plethora of offbeat personalities in BBC Three’s Gavin and Stacey. And what exactly is occurring with the show is something short of magical. Gavin is a boy from Billericay, Essex. Stacey is a girl from Barry, South Wales. Together they are the glue that holds together two very different social worlds that collide when Gavin and Stacey’s phone-call romance blossoms into relationship that “stretches across two nations”.

To make a comment on the plot of Gavin and Stacey would give away each series finale, and also it is unquestionably difficult for one reason: nothing much happens (although this is more true of the second series than the first). And surprisingly, this lack of major set-piece event is what makes the show truly inspired. To generate such witty and at times very poignant drama from admittedly day-to-day goings on, like Pam (Gavin’s mum) sending Mick (Gavin’s dad) to Tesco in search of vegetarian food.

Having said this, the sitcom certainly has its share of hilarious and comical situations, but the mileage from it really comes from the characters. Mathew Horne as Gavin and Joanna Page as Stacey are both excellent, giving convincing, sympathetic and wonderfully endearing performances. Despite them being the respective hero and heroine, it is other characters that steal the show – namely Bryn, Nessa and Smithy.

Rob Brydon is on top form as Stacey’s Uncle Bryn, an eccentric who gets very very excited about small things like his new sat-nav or digital camera, “It’s got sepia… although I think it’s faulty because it just makes everything look brown…” The aforementioned Nessa, Stacey’s best friend (played to perfection by the show’s co-writer Ruth Jones) is a wonderful creation, with such a colourful past that it is sometimes hard to keep up with her hilarious back-story. A few gems in Nessa’s past include: dating both Mohammed Al Fayed and Dodi Fayed, being one of the original members of All Saints, travelling the world on a cruise ship and working as a drug smuggler. Fellow co-writer James Corden plays Smithy (Gavin’s best mate) with aplomb, juxtaposing perfect comic timing with genuine pathos.

Gavin and Stacey is a genuinely heart-warming show which is both very sweet (but never overly sentimental) and utterly believable. The dialogue is uncompromisingly real, with none of the stagey sitcom writing seen in shows of lesser calibre, where everything is delivered with awful self-conscious smugness. Although not included in the series 1 and 2 set, the Christmas Special shown in December 2009 was an absolute joy, delivering yet more fresh, witty and wonderful Gavin and Stacey goodness. It’s enough to make you fancy a “tidy” omelette. Fabulous.

Rating: MMMMM