Category Archives: 2000s

Reviews of and posts about films released between 2000 and 2009.

The Illusionist (2006)

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2010 #32
Neil Burger | 104 mins | DVD | PG / PG-13

A Blu-ray release of The Illusionist has just been announced. Which is fair enough, of course. But if you were considering a blind buy, probably based on hearing it’s “a bit like The Prestige”, then please allow me to stick the knife in a little first.

Let’s begin with a pet hate of mine: this being a mid-’00s film, it of course begins near the end and finds an excuse to jump back to the start before eventually catching up with itself. As we move into the ’10s, I hope we’re seeing the back of this cheap and irritating screenwriting trick — which, having done my share of creative writing modules at university, I know is the kind of thing new writers are taught as a Good Thing because it allows you to jump right into the action. Maybe this helps you sell your script; personally, I’ve just found it a grating trend that needs bucking. What’s wrong with starting where the story starts?

At the other end — past the bit where we joined — sits a last-minute ‘twist’ explanation for all we’ve seen. But it’s a bit half-arsed, just repeating shots we’ve seen in a new order (with a few additions, to be fair), leaving the viewer to fill in the blanks… which is largely no chore (personally, I’d suspected that all along anyway), but it leaves significant important chunks unexplained, hoping to gloss over them by bamboozling us with a lot of other information. It doesn’t succeed.

The story itself — you remember those? It’s the bit between the attention-grabbing opening and preposterous-twist finale — is mediocre with or without the finale. It’s a something-and-nothing account of a Poor Boy who loves a Rich Girl he can’t have and… oh, I can’t even be bothered to explain it.

Writer/director Neil Burger has some nice effects going to help conjure up the period, using lighting, grading and the occasional wipe to evoke silent movies and the like during some segments, particularly — and pertinently, if predictably — the flashbacks. Other effects are less welcome, however: the magic is all obviously fake. This rather takes away any mystery, leaving the entire film as just a fantasy — very different from The Prestige in this regard.

Performance wise, everyone struggles with their accents. That this is the most notable aspect of the cast is, obviously, not a good thing. Ed Norton, looking rather like Derren Brown, is suitably enigmatic as the titular magician, while Paul Giamatti delivers the best performance as a conflicted detective, torn between his intrigue at the illusionist, duty to the Prince, and respect for the law. He’s by far the best thing about the film.

As comparisons with The Prestige are inevitable, particularly as both films were ultimately released around the same time, I’ll briefly put them head-to-head. Both concern stage magic in a similar-enough period setting, debate about whether the tricks are just that or actually supernatural powers, a love story that goes awry, which involves a fatal rivalry… But they’re actually very different films. The Prestige jumps about in time in a more complex way than The Illusionist, but this also has a point. The former’s story is more original, more engaging, its use of magic — real or not — more captivating. I fear I could go on, but it’s succinctly summed up thus: in this comparison, The Illusionist comes up short.

On the bright side, I avoided a pun there. You know, like, “The Illusionist just doesn’t have The Prestige’s magic.”

Oops.

3 out of 5

Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone. (2007/2009)

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aka Evangerion shin gekijôban: Jo / Evangelion New Theatrical Version: Prelude

2010 #41
Hideaki Anno, Masayuki & Kazuya Tsurumaki | 101 mins | Blu-ray | 12 / PG-13

When I (first) reviewed Watchmen, I commented that it was hard to divorce my opinion of the graphic novel from my opinion of the movie, so faithful was the adaptation. That’s as nothing to this, though: Evangelion: 1.11 (also known as Evangelion: 1.0 and Evangelion: 1.01, slightly different versions of the same thing) is a retelling of the first six episodes of the highly-acclaimed anime TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion, using the original animation and voice cast to recreate the story.

To put that another way: as a retelling of the first quarter of the original series, reconstructed from the original animation elements, some may wonder what the point of You Are (Not) Alone is — why not just re-watch the series? And how well can six episodes of a TV series work when stuck back-to-back as a film? To be frank, I’m in no position to accurately compare the content of the film and the original episodes, as I last (and first) watched them about three years ago. I can say that some of this is very familiar — one is certainly aware it’s the original elements re-appropriated — while other bits I suspect may have been drafted in from later in the series, and others I’m certain are actually all-new.

Despite some animation tweaks, other things go unchanged, occasionally making the future-set story seem already dated. A line mentioning cell phones, in an attempt to cover why Shinji is bothering to use a phone box, is a new addition I swear, while he also listens to a (digital, at least) cassette player rather than an iPod (other MP3 players are available, naturally). It’s not a major flaw — unlike, perhaps, the fact that the “covert” and top-secret Nerv organisation has great big signs plastered all over town and everyone seems to know about them — but, still, maybe a new bit of animation to replace the tape-playing close-ups would’ve been nice.

The original episodes run around 2 hours 20 minutes total (including all titles, trailers, etc) so edits have been made, but it’s intelligently done. Despite the time since I watched the series I’m aware of where some episode breaks fall, so it’s hard to accurately say how it hangs together as a film to a newbie, but it seems to me that it does rather well. It throws you in at the deep end a bit, but then so does the series. It’s a non-stop opening 25 minutes, a relentless onslaught of information and action, before the pace lets up a little. The pace is surprisingly good throughout, a well-considered balance between action, character and mysteries. Anno and co have retained some of the original’s light and shade — this isn’t just a plot recap, but includes some of the humour and character-based subplots. These elements are still the most trimmed, but there’s enough retained that they work in the context of the film. Indeed, it’s been so skilfully done that an uninformed viewer might even accept it was originally created as a film.

The pros and cons of the series remain. Shinji is alternately interesting, perhaps even complex, and a whiney little irritant. Here he has a character arc at least, suggesting he may be more sufferable next time out. His relationship with Major — sorry, Lieutenant-Colonel — Katsuragi, important in the series, seems to have an even greater focus here, providing a key emotional through-line for the characters. Some of the philosophical bits survive too, feeling as pretentious as ever, but — like the occasionally OTT humour — have been reduced by the need to hit a feature-length and still pack the story in.

As best I can tell the English voice cast is entirely the same as the TV series. Though I presume they’ve all been re-recorded for the film, your opinion of their work is unlikely to be changed. I don’t mean this specifically as either criticism or praise, just that there’s nothing to distinguish between this and the TV version vocally.

One thing that worried me was that this would feel less like a standalone film and more like Part One of a much longer story, primarily because I recalled episode six being ‘just’ another big battle — an action sequence, certainly, but no more of a climax than any of the other fights. I don’t know if I’ve misremembered or if work has been done to place a heavier emphasis on it here, but it is unquestionably a Big Climax — an all-or-nothing finale, bringing together the plot, most of the subplots, and a Threat To The Whole World. There’s still a “To be continued…” — not only literally, but quite clearly in a raft of unresolved subplots — but it fits as an End Of Act One, much as does the end of, say, Fellowship of the Ring.

Another factor thrown up by the TV-series-to-feature conversion is the image quality. An HD big screen is a mixed blessing here. On one hand, it looks great on Blu-ray, with crisp lines and solid colours, the result of re-filming, colouring and CGI-ing the original animation elements rather than using the finished TV shots. On the other, such clarity sometimes shows up a lack of detail in the original animation — these elements were created for 4:3 mid-’90s TV, not a hi-def (home) cinema — and the solid colours and money-saving techniques (for example, showing something static rather than a lip-synched (ish) mouth during conversations) can remind the viewer of cheaper TV roots. Perhaps I’m being overly critical though, because much of it does look fabulous; at the very least, the thorough ground-up rebuild means it looks better than the TV series ever will, never mind has.

Ultimately, You Are (Not) Alone works satisfyingly as a film. Arguably it has a slightly unusual narrative structure or slightly unsophisticated animation, but it works much better than you’d expect from six TV episodes stuck together. With introductions, character arcs and a suitably important climax, it even functions as a standalone film, in a similar way to Fellowship or other trilogy/tetralogy/etc first instalments.

Plenty of mysteries remain at the end: who are Seele? What is the Human Instrumentality Project? Why does Shinji’s father hate his son but smile whenever he sees Rei? To mention just a few. They’re not allowed to over-dominate this story, but they let the viewer know that, while You Are (Not) Alone functions as an entertaining standalone tale, there’s a lot left to be revealed and investigated. It’s enough to make one scurry back to the series for answers, though the three movies still to come promise whole new characters, plots and a — frankly, much-needed — brand-new ending. After two misfires (one in the series, one in a film), hopefully Anno can provide something truly satisfying this time.

4 out of 5

Evangelion 1.11 is out on DVD and Blu-ray today.

Wallander: The Revenge (2009)

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aka Mankell’s Wallander: Hämnden

2010 #40
Charlotte Brändström | 89 mins | TV | 15

Krister Henriksson returns as the titular Swedish detective for a second — and final — series of feature-length investigations, though this time only this first has received a theatrical release (which means it’s likely the only one I’ll review, unless the series finale offers something that persuades me otherwise).

This Swedish series (there’s another, incidentally) is most often praised for its calmer, low-key, realist aesthetic, as opposed to the British adaptations’ tendency to turgidly-paced over-stylised over-emotion, but the handful of cinema-released entries tend away from this, no doubt in justification of their big-screen debuts. So rather than a thoughtful investigation into an ‘everyday’ murder, Wallander blazes back onto our screens with the explosive destruction of a power station, a bloody execution — no less than 17 shots fired — and the army rolling into town to handle the fall-out from an extended power cut. Epic, indeed.

What continues to mark Wallander out is the attention to character and detail it shows even while there are large-scale events going on all around. There’s clearly an effort to keep everything grounded and moderately realistic even as more bombs go off and more symbolic executions are, er, executed — the police still have to struggle with a waiting room packed with people wanting to complain about the odd abandoned car or just moan about the lack of power, for example.

The climax is a case in point. There’s no grand shoot-out or serious race-against-time-for-the-last-bomb, just Wallander and the criminal having a calm chat. OK, so there’s a kidnapped government minister, a gun, snipers and a big vest-bomb, but these are set dressing to the conversation. It’s proof if proof were needed (it isn’t) of Henriksson’s controlled skill in this role. As great as Branagh could be, it’s hard to imagine his introspective interpretation of a weepy Wallander slotting into this scene without making it unpleasantly histrionic.

In the series’ first season (and, therefore, the first three theatrical releases), Wallander’s policewoman daughter, Linda, played an equally important role — indeed, in several episodes, including the first, she had a much larger presence than her father. Actress Johanna Sällström sadly took her own life in 2007 and the role is wisely not re-cast; a passing reference is made to the fact Wallander has a daughter, though where she is now isn’t mentioned. It’s easy for one to imagine a future for Linda in the wake of the shocking events of the previous episode, so perhaps the understated style of this Wallander is to leave viewers to their own conclusions.

However, the departure of Linda and death of fellow lead character Stefan leaves a hole to fill. It’s partly done by the return of Martinsson, not seen since Mastermind, but also by adding two new recruits to Wallander’s team, Isabelle (Nina Zanjani) and Pontus (Sverrir Gudnason), and the introduction of prosecutor Katrina (Lena Endre). All are set up as key new characters for this run, though it’s clearly Only The Beginning here. Katrina is a little too blatantly a potential love interest for Wallander, while Isabelle and Pontus are… well, new characters. There’s little to say about them yet.

I suppose it’s this kind of thing that reminds one that The Revenge isn’t really a standalone Wallander movie, but the first episode of a 13-part series. Still, it can certainly be enjoyed in isolation, and it promises the new run will maintain the first’s high quality — perhaps even better it.

4 out of 5

Kung Fu Panda (2008)

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2010 #18
Mark Osborne & John Stevenson | 92 mins | Blu-ray | PG / PG

I nearly watched Kung Fu Panda on a plane once, but planes are rubbish places to watch films so I decided against it. (I watched Superhero Movie instead, just to make it worse.) This story has no bearing on my thoughts on the film, other than to remind me how damn long it takes me to get round to watching things sometimes (look at the date on that Superhero Movie review).

Kung Fu Panda is a much better viewing choice than Superhero Movie. That’s faint praise — most things are a better choice than Superhero Movie — so let’s try again. Kung Fu Panda is a fun film, one of the best computer-animated efforts to come from a non-Pixar studio. It’s suitably amusing with endearing characters, including the titular panda, Po, voiced by Jack Black in non-irritating mode (mostly).

Black mostly carries the film. There’s nothing wrong with the supporting cast but, with the exception of a Dustin Hoffman-voiced wise old master — the only stand-out from a roster of famous names in smaller roles — most have little to do as individuals. Black does a skillful job as the lead, only sounding exactly like himself occasionally, which 95% of the time makes Po a character distinct from the ‘Jack Black’ character he plays in everything else. The remaining 5% do make him the most easily-recognised voice cast member, but then he has so many more scenes to contend with.

Panda features some beautiful animation — not a phrase you usually associate with CG ‘toons (though Pixar are pushing into this area with the likes of Ratatouille), but Panda frequently achieves it: petals swirl in the breeze, panoramic scenery shots look gorgeous, and the character animation is subtly detailed, from rippling fur to realistically low-key eye movements.

Then there’s the action sequences, a thrilling tour de force of the powers of computer animation. There are a few paced well throughout the film, and all are fast, epic, exciting, different; they make full use of the freedom afforded by animation — in particular, 3D CG animation — in both the actual fighting and the camera angles & moves used to cover it. It’s a different kind of beauty to the swirling petals and panoramic scenery, but it’s a beauty nonetheless.

In spite of a daft title/premise and the usual drawback of it Not Being Pixar, Kung Fu Panda shows that other US studios can still make worthwhile animated films. And I’m quite glad I didn’t watch it on that plane, actually, because it deserves a nice big screen.

4 out of 5

Elektra (2005)

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2010 #19
Rob Bowman | 93 mins | TV (HD) | 12 / PG-13

I think that — along with SFX magazine — I may be the only person in the world who quite liked the Daredevil movie (which reminds me that I still need to see the (supposedly better) director’s cut). This sequel/spin-off received even poorer reviews than its progenitor however, which means even I have spent the last five years (and 25 days, to be precise) not bothering to watch it. But when something’s available for free on TV, and in HD at that… well, it’d be rude to refuse. Though a little bit of me wishes I had.

So it goes without saying that most of Elektra’s reviews were right. The plot starts out as sub-Leon assassin nonsense, before turning into sub-X-Men superhero nonsense. The connection to Daredevil is actually minimal: vague flashbacks show Elektra being brought back to life, but the only signifier that this was the same death she suffered in Daredevil is the costume she wears. Said outfit has changed here, as she reverts (occasionally) to a bright red get-up that’s slightly more reminiscent of the comics. “It builds the legend,” she semi-explains. What legend? And how can said legend be built if everyone who sees her in it is promptly killed?

But beyond such surface modifications, the film adopts a different tone entirely. Daredevil took place in an almost-real version of the Marvel universe — ‘real’ if you could accept Matt Murdock’s amazing gymnastic abilities and whatnot were possible, anyway. Elektra starts off in this kind of world, but quickly there’s talk of mystical powers that bring back the dead and let you see a teeny bit into the future, shortly before some baddies explode in puffs of green smoke and some more baddies are revealed to have full-on superpowers. Where did these come from? No idea. The film offers no explanation, be it mutant gene or radioactive exposure or plain old training, instead just assuming viewers will accept that this is the real world… oh, but some people have these cool powers.

The plot is slight, early on padded with childhood flashbacks that the climax pretends to solve but really offers no adequate explanation for. Again. Characters die and we’re meant to care, only no one bothered to make them characters rather than plot-furtherers. Others do things that are almost logical, but not quite. One senses a couple more rewrites might have improved some of this, but then it might’ve been ‘improved’ by adding more explanatory dialogue and no one wants that — there are already enough clanging infodumps here, never mind the generally low standard of the rest. The less said about the performances the better. Terence Stamp plays at being blind quite well. Moving on…

The action sequences aren’t up to much either, their brevity and over reliance on slow-mo belying a too-small budget. Or maybe the budget was fine and they just blew it all on CGI, because that at least looks quite good. If they’d managed to produce something worthy of our attention here there might at least be a reason to keep watching, but the weak action is just icing on the cake of the clichéd story and bland characters. Director Rob Bowman claims he made an R-rated film which he was forced to cut to PG-13, the implication being that neutered the whole thing. Maybe that’s where all the action went, though on the evidence of what’s left I’m not sure I believe him.

That said, IMDb informs me that Elektra also has a director’s cut, though at just a three-minute increase it sounds nothing like as fundamental as Daredevil’s. And I do still want to see the Daredevil director’s cut, even if I should find that, after seven years, I no longer like the film; but I think it’s safe to say that Elektra’s definitely won’t be worth the hassle.

2 out of 5

Elektra featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2010, which can be read in full here.

Choke (2008)

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2010 #27
Clark Gregg | 88 mins | TV | 18 / R

ChokeChoke is adapted from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, and you can tell.

I’ve not read Choke, but I have read Fight Club, and the film was an incredibly close adaptation both in terms of the narrative style and the dialogue’s voice. Here, the distinctive narratorial ‘voice’ is very reminiscent of Fight Club, both book and film, as are numerous other elements: support groups; random encounters; the inclusion of a Big Twist. While an awareness of the author means the latter feels a little formulaic, Shyamalan-style, at least it seems Palahniuk can still pull them off.

The sum of all this is Choke feels like it exists in Fight Club’s shadow; a low-budget adaptation of another of an author’s works after one has been a high-profile success. This is a little unfair to Choke — despite the surface similarities, the meat of the film is in no way an attempt at Fight Club 2 — but the similar feeling and tone it frequently exudes can leave that impression.

It’s also not as funny as the trailer led me to believe. It definitely has moments — several proper laugh-out-loud ones too — but it lacks consistency. The tale is sometimes muddled in what it wants to be and how it wants to cover it. Some very serious issues are touched on, and while they’re not treated lightly (it occasionally nudges at being a dramedy) the comedic tone rubs against them. It isn’t vulgar in the way some comedies are when exploiting serious issues for ‘laughs’, but nor is it conclusive in its own style. Having not read the novel, I don’t know if we need to lay the blame for this at the door of Palahniuk or screenwriter/director Clark Gregg.

The cast are without fault. Sam Rockwell is brilliant as ever, continuing to build a body of work that suggests he’s been underrated. Perhaps there’s a similarity to some of his roles, but he has a sort of rough likability that can make one overlook that. I’ve still not seen Moon (shame on me, I know) but one hopes it might provide a launch pad to wider recognition, even if he ultimately failed to gain any major award noms for it. Also in the cast are Anjelica Huston, in an interesting and constantly evolving part, and Kelly Macdonald, who it’s always nice to see even if her American accent is variable.

Choke has its moments — quite a few of them, actually — but it feels like it’s perhaps missing a few others, with what’s left not quite gelling into the whole its cast and crew hoped for. It doesn’t go far enough down the quotable/zany route to become properly cultish (I may be proved wrong in this of course), nor does it come far enough down the meaningful-undercurrent path to transcend such underground aims. I think I want to like it a bit more than I actually did, and awareness of this may make my mark a tad stingy. I’d certainly encourage anyone who thinks Choke might be up their street to give it a go.

3 out of 5

Saw V (2008)

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2010 #34
David Hackl | 91 mins | TV | 18 / R

Saw VAnd so the never-ending Saw franchise trundles on to its fifth part. Indeed, Saw Part 5 might be a more apt moniker for this film: it picks up directly from the end of Saw IV — which, you may remember, took place concurrently with Saw III, ultimately appending about 30 seconds to that film’s climax. Even if you wanted to start your Saw viewing here, you wouldn’t have a hope of following what’s going on.

For a large part, Saw V’s plot is an exercise in retconning. For the uninitiated, “retcon” is short for “retroactive continuity”, essentially the act of adding something to a previous story in a series that changes its meaning or one’s perspective on it or what have you. I believe the term was coined in relation to comics, a medium that commonly has to explain why a dead character’s sudden resurrection really made sense all along, honest. Saw V’s retcon, then, is to demonstrate that Detective Hoffman was Jigsaw’s accomplice throughout all the previous Saw movies, not just the ones that actually featured him. This means yet more flashbacks, which as you may remember were the blight of Saws III and IV.

But what Saw V suffers in backstory it makes up for with simplicity. Whereas IV was convoluted to the point of dullness, Hoffman’s involvement is quite easily depicted. A working knowledge of the preceding films is essential, true, but with that in hand one can actually follow the story easily this time. Indeed, one might even argue it’s too easy: Hoffman’s involvement is so straightforward that the amount of time devoted to it pushes into the realms of the pointless, while the present-time ‘thriller’ thread (where Special Agent Strahm figures it all out) serves barely any function. The film includes the usual standalone game alongside this, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.

One of the franchise’s Big Things has always been the last-minute twist. Signalled by the Saw theme beginning to play and emphasised with an explosion of very brief flashbacks to earlier in the film, the twist shows us what we’ve missed all along and turns the story on its head. The first film had a great one, the second’s was pretty clever, the third had a mixture of good and bad, while the fourth’s got muddled by the rest of the film. Here, we get the music, and the flashbacks, but I swear there wasn’t a single twist among them. Most of the plot was as obvious as it appeared, while what I suppose was meant as a twist in the final room just seemed obvious — I’m sure the viewer is too familiar with Jigsaw’s methods by now to fall for something as simple as that (unlike Strahm, it would seem).

And even after all that retconning and whatnot, it’s clear that the series’ ongoing story is far from over. It’s not just the existence of (at least) two more films that tells us this, nor even a proper cliffhanger (this time, there isn’t one), but a handful of blatantly unresolved plot points. It’s an annoying habit of perennial Saw screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan to drop in an element that they have no intention of using in this film, but exists purely to pay off something in the next. This time it’s a box delivered to Jigsaw’s ex-wife. Goodness knows what’s in it; hopefully Saw VI reveals all.

Alongside the incessant arc there’s the usual standalone ‘game’, presumably retained to both guarantee the gore content and hold the interest of anyone dragged along to see the film who hadn’t bothered with preceding instalments. This one isn’t bad but, relegated to a subplot alongside the Hoffman palaver, it’s little more than a sketchily-drawn short film. Some of the traps are inventive, dodging the torture porn levels of gore displayed in III and the gratuitous medical gore of both III and IV without skimping on the blood and guts (literally. Twice.) In fact, it’s this side of the film that holds a bigger and better twist than the highlighted arc plot one, though some viewers may miss its significance as it goes so unheralded. (Arguably this ease with which it might be missed says something about how significant it is; equally, perhaps I’m assuming a lack of intelligence on the part of Saw’s regular audience by implying they would miss it.)

And so Saw lives to fight another day. In some respects this entry is an up-tick in form after the convoluted fourth entry; conversely, it’s perhaps over-simplified, definitely over-reliant on its prequels, and lacks any meat on its plot’s bones — Hoffman assisted Jigsaw, this is how, and that’s all the film has to say. And you know, I can be a bit of wuss when it comes to horror films, but this one isn’t scary in the slightest; gory, unquestionably, but even the jump-scares didn’t make me jump.

Sometimes I feel the Saw series deserves congratulating for trying to be as much a thriller as a gore-fest, for having an on-going plot across all the films rather than just providing standalone identikit Jigsaw-games each entry. Other times, I think I’d quite like the latter, as both the third and fifth films have left me wishing for more of the original story and less of the arc plot. And still other times, it seems a waste of time to be thinking so much about Saw.

2 out of 5

Once again I watched the Unrated/Extreme extended cut of Saw V, and once again the differences are numerous but minimal. A thorough list of additions and alterations can be found here, though there’s a briefer overview here.

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

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2010 #14
Clint Eastwood | 125 mins | TV | 12 / PG-13

This review contains major spoilers.

Million Dollar BabyMillion Dollar Baby currently places 143rd on the IMDb Top 250; it’s on the 2010 iteration of They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?’s fairly definitive list of critics’ greatest movies ever (albeit down in the 900s); it was Empire’s 13th best film of 2005 (no doubt lowered by being almost a year old when the list would’ve been decided); and, most notably, it won the 2005 Best Picture Oscar. But it’s also about boxing, a subject I couldn’t care less about, and indeed I don’t think I’ve ever seen a boxing-centric film before. Unfortunately, Million Dollar Baby did nothing to allay my suspicions that I wouldn’t care less about those either.

Despite this, and its adaptation from a book of boxing tales, the boxing is used by Eastwood (and screenwriter/was-going-to-be-director Paul Haggis) as a means to an end: this is really about Frankie (Eastwood’s boxing coach character) and Meg (Hilary Swank, apparently on Oscar-winning form), how they interact, change each other, what their relationship means to them. Unfortunately, my total disinterest in boxing prevents any significant engagement with their story and holds back my care for their characters. The training and fighting sequences don’t help, and even the film’s anti-boxing stance doesn’t do anything to change my opinion.

Dramatically, Million Dollar Baby takes off once Meg’s paralysed and the boxing’s done with. Undoubtedly this is built on the foundation of the preceding 90 minutes — how the characters and their relationships have been built up, what we’ve seen them go through, etc — and it goes some way to make up for all the tedium that’s gone before. That it’s a grim and downbeat finale, however, serves an anti-boxing message I already get but does nothing to redeem the tale.

Eastwood is a skilled actor and director and the film is competently made, and at times it’s even more than that, but it’s far from his best work in either field. The same can be said of Morgan Freeman, essentially recapping his Shawshank role as the wise old best friend/narrator; and also of Haggis — whatever your opinion of Crash, the one-liners he added to Casino Royale alone best any moment here. The same may again be true of Hilary Swank, but I can’t remember her in enough else to say. Certainly her character is the film’s saving grace, incessantly likeable throughout and eliciting a smidgen of genuine emotion once all that boxing malarky is finally out of the way. And it’s a good thing she is so likeable, because if her personality was anything less than perfect the tragic ending would elicit thoughts along the lines of “well, if you’re going to go boxing, that’s what you’re gonna get” (rather than the intended sympathy) from viewers like me.

I’m not sure if it’s deliberate or not but, as I say, it’s an incredibly anti-boxing movie. No good character’s life isn’t in some way ruined by the ‘sport’: Meg is paralysed and ultimately loses her life, not to mention realising how awful her family are; Morgan Freeman’s lost the sight in one eye and is reduced to cleaning up a run-down gym; ‘Danger’ gets beat-up; and Frankie’s lost his daughter, gets screwed over by his protégé, and ultimately loses Meg too. In no way is this a cheery depiction of boxing.

It’s funny, really: give me Jackie Chan, or Jet Li, or Tony Jaa, or some Western star’s stunt double, kicking seven shades of whathaveyou out of each other and it’s a brilliant, fun experience; but two people beating the hell out of each other for real in a ring holds not even the slightest semblance of interest or enjoyment for me. Maybe it’s the choreography of filmic violence that makes it more interesting, or maybe I’m just hypocritical — I don’t know, but I still don’t care. Some day I’ll see the likes of Rocky and Raging Bull, and maybe they’ll stand a better chance, but I’m no longer counting on it.

I’m giving Million Dollar Baby four stars out of respect for the skill of the filmmakers and for what it achieves during the final half hour (and in smatterings throughout), but it flies ever so close to a three.

4 out of 5

Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009)

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2010 #33
Phil Claydon | 86 mins | download | 15 / R

Pre-release hype pegged Lesbian Vampire Killers as the next Shaun of the Dead, a knowing horror spoof/homage destined for cult greatness. Reality showed us something different; a film so lambasted by critics and such a flop at the box office that they actually resorted to giving it away (as a digital download from iTunes just after Christmas). Like most of the country, I consequently ignored LVK on release, but free is free and so here I am.

In retrospect, I wonder if part of the film’s publicly-thorough critical drubbing was down to expectation: from the title and blatant Hammer Horror references, critics and viewers presumed they were set for a Shaun of the Dead-style ready-made-cult-classic horror homage. Instead, it takes widely recognised Hammer tropes and aims the rest of its content at a Nuts-reading audience. I’m not saying the film would’ve been better reviewed if critics had been expecting something more akin to what they were ultimately given, just that it wouldn’t’ve come in for such a public flogging.

Unfortunately, even with corrected expectations, the film fails to deliver on its twin promises of raunch and horror. Aside from a couple of brief surgically-enhanced medieval boobs, a flash of knickers and the odd girl-on-girl kiss, the film’s sexy content is non-existent. Said Nuts audience would certainly get more from their weekly wank mag; this is mostly 12A-level. The horror, meanwhile, is reduced to well-signposted jump scares — and even then few enough to count on one hand — and the odd bit of comical decapitation/melting with holy water/axes in the head. To be fair, this is meant to be more comedy than horror, and in this sense a few such moments succeed passably.

The humour itself is variable. A couple of half-decent jokes are scattered throughout, though a raft of predictable, familiar and vulgar ones threaten to overwhelm them. The opening goes on too long, emphasised rather than alleviated by Phil Claydon’s hyper over-direction. The film only approaches lift off once Gavin and Smithy… er, Jimmy and… no, still can’t remember… Anyway, it’s not until Horne and Corden finally arrive in the village of Cragwich that the plot begins to get moving, everything before it serving only to boost the running time to feature length (just), initiate subplots that are either disregarded immediately (Corden’s child-punching clown job) or disregarded as an inconvenience later (Horne’s on-again-off-again girlfriend), and provide an array of over-familiar suburban-sitcom situations.

Indeed, consistency is not the film’s strong point. Everyone makes a big fuss about the vampires and how hard they are to kill, yet every one is dispatched with ease, the level of threat never allowed to even attempt an increase before there’s white goo splurting everywhere (that’s what happens when they die, incidentally, not someone’s reaction to the lesbianism). The climax is a mere extension of this, substituting a rising scale of action for running around avoiding the easy killing bit. Any good will amassed in the middle — and there may be a tiny bit — is dismissed in boredom.

But Lesbian Vampire Killers isn’t all bad. If you can wade through jokes about a sword with a cock-like handle (not funny the first time, never mind the eighth), or a demon with a name that sounds a little like dildo (it’s a measure of the film’s intelligence that no one ever points out it sounds like dildo, they just leave that for the audience to spot), or any of the countless other inane attempts at being funny, you may come across the odd moment that makes you chuckle. Maybe. I probably enjoyed it (some of it, at least) more than I should admit.

And yet, for film fans Lesbian Vampire Killers is a wasted opportunity: even with its existing plot, more skilled hands could have shaped it into a horror tribute/spoof destined for enduring cult popularity. Instead, the MTV-born screenwriting partnership of Stewart Williams and Paul Hupfield shot for the lowest-common-denominator lad’s-mag-buying audience, though quite what they made of the classic horror reference points that do remain is anyone’s guess. If we’re talking about expectations (and, clearly, I am), Lesbian Vampire Killers did somewhat defy mine — though as I was expecting it to be one of the worst comedies I’d ever seen, that might not be saying much.

Nonetheless, it’s as good a rule as any that if you pay money to read Nuts, you’ll probably enjoy this; if you just browse Nuts’ website (for whatever reason — I hear they have jokes and football and stuff too), you might like it; otherwise, you’d probably be better off watching Shaun of the Dead again.

2 out of 5

Lesbian Vampire Killers is on Sky Movies Premiere tonight at midnight, and every night until Thursday 25th March at either midnight (Friday to Monday) or 10pm (Tuesday to Thursday).

And the Oscar for Best Picture… of 2007…

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You may’ve noticed that it’s the 2010 Oscars this Sunday (technically Monday over here), finally bringing an end to the tale of movies from 2009 (Empire have their awards a while later, which is pushing into the pointless — OK, they’re never going to become an Oscar-predictor by moving up in the schedule, like the BAFTAs aimed for with their pre-Oscar move; but how many people still care about last year by the time we’re a quarter through the next?)

It seems appropriate timing, then, to finally publish this group of reviews for (most of) 2007’s Best Picture nominees (a ‘feature’ I’ve had in the planning for well over a year — oops). Yes, it’s two ceremonies ago, but it’s the best I’ve got.

So, in alphabetical order… with the exception of the winner… which, by coincidence, puts them in reverse viewing order for me… Anyway, here are the reviews:

2010 #25
Juno

“There’s underage sex, swearing, numerous displays of teen independence, divorce, love of rock music and horror films… All that’s missing from a Middle American Mom’s worst nightmare is drugs (there’s no violence either, but we know them there yankees love a bit of that).” – Read more…

2009 #87
Michael Clayton

“The obvious point of comparison is Damages, the excellent TV series that also concerns such high-profile big-business lawsuits, but… Damages sustains it for over 9 hours, replete with cliffhangers and plot twists so far beyond what Clayton’s straightforward story has to offer that Gilroy isn’t even dreaming of being that good.” – Read more…

2009 #7
There Will Be Blood

“not to say it’s a bad film, but it is at times a baffling one… I can’t help but wonder if I missed something crucial along the way because, even after two and a half hours, I had no real idea what the film was about.” – Read more…

And the winner, of course, was…

2009 #5
No Country for Old Men

“it’s really about Fate, randomness, chance. Some clearly think this brilliant; I remain unconvinced. It lacks satisfaction. Maybe that’s real life — no, that is real life: random and lacking closure and satisfaction. But this isn’t real life, it’s a movie” – Read more…



Of the five Best Picture nominees from 2007, the only one I gave five stars was Atonement. As the only one I watched around the time, such a score may’ve been boosted by BAFTA hype and its Britishness, while perhaps the likes of No Country have, conversely, been ruined by their extended hype.

On balance, the film I most enjoyed from the line up was Juno; but does that make it best? Depends what you’re looking for, I suppose.