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.
Evangelion 1.11 is out on DVD and Blu-ray today.
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).
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.
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 think that — along with 
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.
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.
Choke is adapted from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, and you can tell.
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 
And 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 
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 
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.)
Despite the numerous film versions of the Faust story, this is the only one that adapts Christopher Marlowe’s A-level-favourite 1588 play. It’s a shame, then, that it’s heavily edited from the original text and, despite also being a filmed version of the Oxford University Dramatic Society’s 1966 stage production, has clearly been inappropriately chosen as a vehicle for then-couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
Elsewhere, Burton and Coghill’s vision of Faustus is stylistically reminiscent of a Gothic Hammer Horror, which is either wholly inappropriate or an ingenious genre mash-up — after all, such a genre-mashing trick has been pulled many a time with Shakespeare over the years. There are repulsively horrific corpses, a harem of naked ladies, an array of special effects, plus a medieval-styled gothic atmosphere to all the sets and costumes, though the scene where Faustus mucks about with the Pope feels more Carry On. Using inanimate objects in the roles of the Good and Evil Angels — respectively, a statue of Christ and a skull — is a small but inspired touch.
perhaps just to heighten the presence of Helen by losing scenes she couldn’t have been shoehorned into; but in the process it both loses some of the best material and destroys any hope the film had of being a definitive filmed version of the play. Ultimately, such oversights proved to be the final straw for the film’s already-tenuous grip on a three-star rating.
Million Dollar Baby currently places 143rd on the 
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.
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.
Pre-release hype pegged Lesbian Vampire Killers as the next 
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.
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.
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.
Anatomy of a Murder is a courtroom drama, adapted from a novel by a real-life defence attorney (“defense attorney”, I suppose), who in turn based his fiction on a real case. This background not only adds to the veracity of what we see, but likely explains the film’s style and structure.
A lot of this support is down to Stewart’s performance — it feels wrong to be cheering the defence counsel of a murderer, even if he had a justifiable motive (which, remember, he may not have) — but we’d probably cheer Stewart on if he was the murderer. His Biegler is always in control, from investigation to courtroom, even when by rights he should be completely out of it. He manipulates the judge, the prosecution, the jury and the crowd to perfection; the viewer sits by his side — we know he’s playing them so we can revel in it — but, in turn, he manipulates us too, tempting us to his team — to laugh at his jokes, to support his case, to loathe the prosecution, even though they might be right. It’s a stellar lead performance.
I could just as well go on to praise Ben Gazzara, Arthur O’Connell, Eve Arden, Brooks West, even the smaller roles occupied by Kathryn Grant, Orson Bean, Murray Hamilton and others. Some criticise Joseph N. Welch’s judge, and it’s perhaps true that his performance is a little less refined than the others, but as a slightly eccentric judge he comes off fine. And to round things off, there’s an incredibly cute dog. Mayes’ screenplay is a gift to them all, finding room for character even within the ceaselessly procedural structure, using small dashes of dialogue or passing moments to reveal and deepen each one.
I always assumed this was British, probably because it stars Billy Connolly and has a suitably quirky premise — one can see it fitting in with the school of British comedy that’s brought us 
100Films.co.uk 