Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010)

Briefly:

Any filum in which Max Von Sydow is introduced in the repose of Alastair Cookie is worth your time.

One Pill Makes You Larger, and One Pill Makes You Small

Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton, 2010) - a short and non-illuminating review.

I enjoyed myself. It was a jaunt, better than I feared, given the dreck trailer. Particular delight was to be found in the visual design, Bonham Carter (she's always So Great in her hubby's work)(how fucked up/cool must their kids be? Marla Singer and the man who conceived of Edward Scissorhands? Parents so warped you just know the kiddies are going to grow up to be Republican-voting investment bankers) as the hydrocephalic wobbly-bottom-lipped Red Queen, Depp switching to a passable Scottish brogue to recite the Jabberwocky, and a certain key aspect of the Jabberwock itself.

- However - However -

I gather that Tim Burton was first attempting to make Alice in 1995, at a budgetarily constrained juncture in his career. That's nestled just post Ed Wood, just pre Mars Attacks!. So as much this Alice flew by, the filmic equivalent of a mouthful of choux pastry and a faceful of icing sugar, I would've much preferred to see what the crazier, financially constrained, non-CGI dependent Burton of '95 would've come up with. I've no doubt it would have surpassed the 2010 trifle.

(There'll be a great many more Alice adaptations by all sorts in the future, but for the moment the estimable film-making genius Jan Svenkmajer's 1988 incarnation, Alice, remains my firm pick as the best Wonderland movie going. If you haven't seen it, do, soon)

From the 'oh-so-accurate' files . . .

Facile music choices for tv and film are all-too-pervasive.

Adam Buxton, you are a short, hairy, shouty genius.

A Single Man - review

There's a Dylan Thomas quote that's loomed large in my considerations over the last few months, "What stands for grief, a vague bewilderment/ at things not turning right." 'A Single Man' (Tom Ford, 2009) is an achingly stylish portrait of a man awash in that bewilderment. George (Colin Firth, deserves every accolade he's getting) is a gay college professor who has lost the love of his life, now planning his own suicide. On what is potentially the last day of his life, he falls into Proustian reveries of moments past and delights in the smallest of pleasures - a little girl's blonde hair, a beautiful set of lips, a scent, sunlight, the drag of a cigarette.

As helmer Ford is a mammothly successful former fashion designer the film has copped considerable flak for being an exercise of style over substance, but this criticism misses the film's point. The style IS the substance - the sharp colours and delectable beauty of the moments where George loses himself in the minutiae stands to illustrate how the beauty and value of something comes into sharpest focus right at point where you are about to lose it. The film is not plot-driven, and many have argued it is shallow, but I would argue it is about nothing less significant than the question 'what is worth living for?' George has no valuable answer to this following the loss of his love, and the film languidly follows George as he wrestles with it.
A striking and accomplished debut from Ford.

Also, I'm incredibly grateful to Colin Firth for remaining so Smokin' Hot as he ages. I initially fancied him as a 12-year-old, his 'diving into the pond scene' in Pride and Prejudice a catalyst for my nascent sexuality, so that he's still hot tottie now that I'm of age shows particular dedication on his part. Thanks, Colin.

Oscar Oscar - The Hurt Locker

Come Sunday night, Katharine Bigelow is going to be the first woman to walk away with a ‘Best Director’ Oscar for her film The Hurt Locker (2009). As we all well-know Oscars are not a genuine meritocracy and the best films of the year can usually be spotted in the ‘Best Screenplays’ and ‘Best Foreign Film’ categories rather than the designated ‘Best Films.’ Yes, the Academy runs so much on hype. Let us put that aside and rejoice in Bigelow’s imminent, and well-deserved, anointment.

The Hurt Locker is a muscular film, the work of an assured film-maker. It adheres to what I remember Morgue discussing as the ‘Aliens effect’* – a film that simply never puts a step wrong, regardless of whether or not it ends up being a perfect film (Apologies to Mr Davies if I’m inaccurate in my paraphrasing). Essentially a series of set-pieces, each extended scene layers upon the last to form a meaty and perfectly lucid (I appreciate that things that are meaty may not generally appear lucid. Although grease turns paper transparent, so perhaps that works) portrait of both the psychology of the reckless, brilliant bomb defusing lead, SSG William James (Jeremy Renner) and the mind-skewering effects of war on all involved. That it is gripping and incisive is all the more impressive a feat given how film has already flogged the subject of the ‘horrors of war’ to death.

Renner’s performance is superb – easily transcending his distracting resemblance to a slightly-chubby-cheeked Nathan Fillion. The strength of his performance lies in the fact that you never catch him ‘acting’ – his naturalistic portrayal (you gotta be naturalistic. You gotta be naturalistic as hell) anchors the bomb-defusing scenes, which owe much of their tension and immediacy to the fact that Fillion-doppleganger sells you on the idea that he really is there, playing with life and death.

I’m delighted that the first female Best Director is going to be awarded to a work not related to ‘women’s issues’ or an examination of the sisterhood but instead a tense, vital look at a specific aspect of war, deftly free from proselytizing or sentimentality. I say this not to diminish films about women, but rather to note that it’ll do something to mark that women directors have just as much scope and adeptness in discussing wide-ranging subject matter as men do. A woman may make a brilliant film about men at war, just as a man may make a brilliant film about ladies foxy-boxing - I mean women in childbirth or the like.

I am going to rue my certainty if Bigelow is defeated. Rue like a fox.

*(I do not want to make comment on irony of Cameron being the Aliens director and Bigelow being his ex-wife. The more people refer to her as Cameron’s ex-wife the more they do a disservice to the notion of her being one an accomplished director in her own right).

P.S. Roger Ebert’s review is very fine, indeed.

Movies What I am Looking Forward to in 2010

The Rum Diary Director of Withnail & I (one of the funniest melancholy films of all time) takes on lesser-known Hunter S Thompson with Johnny Depp taking a brief respite from gurning in execrable kiddie fare to make something that hopefully be actually, you know, good. Like films Depp used to be in.

Inception Chris Nolan proves he ain't no Dark Knight whore. Here's a cast that features Cillian Murphy, Joseph Gordon 'who'd have thought that kid from 3rd rock from the sun would grow up to be such a stellar actor?' Levitt, Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Tom Berenger, and best of all Marion 'I'll watch you sit around ironing tea-towels, you're that magnetic' Cotillard.

Bad Lieutenant Mad Bavarian helmer Herzog remakes a Ferrera classic he hasn't seen with unleashed Cage (unleash the Cage? Was Cage in a cage? Confusing) snorting coke and ranting about iguanas. Can. Not. Miss. (Or it'll miss spectacularly, but either way I want to be there)

Paul Greg Mottola made one of the sweetest filums of last year, Adventureland. I will not listen to criticism of Adventureland because at one stage the protagonist listens to 'Pale Blue Eyes' with the girl he fancies and a guy I fancied once gave me a mix-tape with 'Pale Blue Eyes' on it. Ergo, Adventureland is my youth so don't knock it. Now Mottola is directing S-Pegg and N-Frost as comic-book geeks (should be a stretch) who encounter Area 51. I hope to laugh.

Also: Green Hornet (Michel Gondry!)
Kick Arse (Yet more unleashed Cage and helmed by Matthew Vaughn, who made both the very fine Layer Cake and Stardust)
Adjustment Bureau Dick adaptation starring smoking hot Emily Blunt.

Anything else I should be looking forward to?

Pep-talks

40 inspirational speeches in two minutes.

All it is missing is Malcolm Tucker barking "Fuckety-bye-bye" at the end and I'd be raring to do anything.