David Koepp | 98 mins | TV | 12 / PG-13
Before I come to write a review, I tend to check out the sort of scores it’s received at a few different sites. This isn’t to help form my opinion, but actually just a side effect of the fact I go to places to rate the films myself. What one usually encounters is some degree of discrepancy, be it as little as half a mark or as large as several. As you may have guessed, Ghost Town is going to prove the exception: on IMDb, both the DVD and the Blu-ray on LOVEFiLM, and FilmJournal’s own Slate Scrawl, Ghost Town is a three-and-a-half-out-of-five film.*
As some readers may have noticed, I don’t do half-stars, which means Ghost Town must in my eyes become either a three-star or a four-star effort. Which for once is a little irritating, because Ghost Town really is a three-and-a-half-out-of-five kind of film.
This is the point at which it becomes apparent I have far more to say about my arbitrary assessment of the film’s reception than the film itself. It’s a gently amusing affair, with little that’s especially memorable but is absolutely fine while it goes about its business. Many scenes may raise a smile or a giggle, but little more than that. Scenes of hospital bureaucracy, for example, are amusing because we can identify with the legal-technicalities-to-the-point-of-silliness that it plays upon, but it’s both a familiar target and perhaps pushed a little too far.
The high-concept at the film’s centre — that Ricky Gervais sees dead people and doesn’t want to — is neat enough. It largely sticks to its rules, it manages a few moments of humour, it doesn’t get too repetitive, it often plays the most obvious card (someone thinks Ricky’s talking to them when he’s actually talking to a ghost! Oh, my sides.) And Gervais, as you’re no doubt aware, plays himself. He doesn’t do characters but variations on a theme, and while this means he’ll never be a good actor per se, he can fulfil such characters very competently.
Ghost Town won’t have you fighting back tears of laughter (unless you’re particularly undiscerning), but it also won’t have you wondering where they left the humour (unless you’re particularly discerning). It’s quite amiable, quite pleasant, a little above average. It’s three-and-a-half-out-of-five.
The half star’s a ghost. Only Ricky Gervais can see it.
Ghost Town is on BBC One tonight, 28th April 2015, at 11:55pm.
* If you cast the net further afield this collapses, but shh, that’d ruin my point. (Though read the actual review quotes on that link and you begin to wonder how accurate a meter that particular fruit/vegetable-based system is.) And besides, this particular four-way alignment is still rare enough that I find it worth commenting on, especially as IMDb’s out-of-100 system lands it with an exact 7.0. OK, so this is ultimately a largely-meaningless selection of averaged-out and individual opinion, but again, shh, you’re spoiling my point. ^
Ivanhoe is the kind of film they don’t often make any more, a pure swashbuckling romp. And when they do make them they tend to muck it up with over-complicated mythology-obsessed sequels — yes 
Though the final duel that ultimately follows can’t quite live up to this in terms of sheer scale and excitement, it impressively holds its own as a climactic action sequence.
Hammer didn’t just make horror movies, y’know. I’m sure many film fans know this, but the phrase “Hammer Horror” is so ubiquitous that I expect most people think that was the company’s name and all they produced.
It doesn’t all tie together fully. For example, one assumes the town of Bortrey was going to be the site of Newark’s castle, as that’s the only apparent reason why he’d be annoyed at the Archbishop for stopping the Sheriff acquiring it. But then Bortrey is burnt down, and with little reaction or comment from any character. And the opening plot point — a man escaping the Sheriff with a mysterious symbol — is never fully explained. Was he a co-conspirator? Was he aiming to warn the Archbishop? If the latter, where did he get the symbol? Maybe I missed a scene that explained all this.
The cast are adequate, even if Richard Greene’s no Errol Flynn and Peter Cushing’s no Alan Rickman (here at least). Terence Fisher’s direction is rather flat a lot of the time, though a few scenery shots, riding sequences and fights bring out a bit more dynamism.
Public Enemies came out nearly a year ago now, and I remember two things about its release: firstly, that the first review I saw was Empire’s, which 
What it brings here is an unusual quality. It’s clearly fiction, of course, albeit fiction based on fact, and there are still plenty of extravagant angles and editing so that you’re never in danger of thinking Mann is trying to pass this off as a documentary. But couple the raw cinematography with a meticulous attention to period detail, with a sound mix that is consciously rough and real, and you get a sense that this is how it was — it’s not a glossified movie version, it’s a How It Was one. Public Enemies is to the old gangster film as 
The characters do and don’t lack depth. The relationship between Dillinger and Billie is a significant part of the film, receiving roughly equal attention to Dillinger’s criminal deeds — it’s his final words to her that close the film, not his death. Christian Bales’ G-man, Melvin Purvis, on the other hand, is less developed, but to say he lacks any character is to do Bale’s performance a disservice. Behind Purvis’ blunt dialogue and stolid manner, and in slight gaps and lapses around it, one gets a sense of the true man and his real thoughts. The postscript — that he resigned from the FBI a year later and ultimately took his own life — reinforces and confirms the subtleties Bale injects into the performance.
Mann does his best, cutting around Dillinger in the movie theatre, the bizarrely-apt film he’s watching (this isn’t dramatic licence — Dillinger really saw 
is largely well converted to a dramatic piece, if occasionally a little episodic (as is the way with all biopics) and overlong towards the end.
I believe Tim Burton coined the now-ubiquitous term “reimagine” when he remade — I mean, reimagined (sorry Tim!) — 
It’s a moderately interesting cycle to attach it to, one it seems has been missed by its pigeon-holing as “a Tim Burton film” and “another Alice adaptation”.
Among the rest of the cast, Helena Bonham Carter does a speech-impedimented Red Queen that feels as familiar was Burton and Depp’s work; Anne Hathaway’s White Queen is amusingly floaty, her hands permanently raised in a faux-delicate gesture; Crispin Glover is under-characterised and marred by some dodgy CGI (quite what’s been done to him I don’t know, but his movement is frequently jerky), but otherwise a decent enough henchman. In the all-Brit voice/mo-cap cast, Matt Lucas is best as Tweedles Dum and Dee — sadly, there’s not enough of him… um, them… — while Alan Rickman is Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar; Stephen Fry has little important to do as a less-scary-than-usual Cheshire Cat; and others — like Michael Sheen, Paul Whitehouse and Timothy Spall — blend into the background with competent but unremarkable work.
The funny thing about Burton’s Alice is that — despite the ultimately needless 3D, the familiar fantasy-epic storyline grafted onto Carroll’s characters, and the apparent lack of inspiration from either the director or his cast — it’s still quite enjoyable. It’s not going to do much to engage your emotions or your brain, it won’t give you any hearty laughs or edge-of-your-seat thrills, and it may occasionally make you wish it would get a move on — all of which means that, by the end, it can feel a tad slight. Valid criticism abounds on the web, but… well, I enjoyed it. Maybe I’m just too forgiving.
100Films.co.uk 