alienlanes

Latest Reviews

2009-06-28T23:08:00.001+01:00

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Chakushin ari (One Missed Call) 3¼ Stars
2004 Japanese horror film, direceted with some inventive flourishes by the celebrated and controversial Takashi Miike. A flat American remake followed in 2008.

The Children 3¼ Stars
Very effective British horror film in which a bunch of small children turn on their parents.

Dollhouse: Needs (season one, episode eight) 2¾ Stars
The eighth episode episode of the new Joss Whedon series.

Fanboys 1 Star
Largely unappealing comedy that follows the adventures of a group of Star Wars fans as they head across country from Ohio to the Skywalker Ranch in California.

Infamous 3 Stars
The second film based on the events leading up to the publication of the celebrated Truman Capote book ‘In Cold Blood’, released into cinemas a year after Academy Award winning ‘Capote’.

Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) 5 Stars
Brilliant and widely acclaimed vampire film from Sweden that won a sackful of awards following its release in 2008.

Night At The Museum 2 Stars
Disappointingly flat and uninventive family film in which the exhibits in the American Museum of Natural History come to life each night after the museum has closed.

Spring Breakdown 1 Star
Painfully unfunny comedy with a great cast, including several Saturday Night Live regulars.

The Unusuals (season one overview) 2½ Stars
Comedy-drama police procedural that never quite managed to find its feet and got cancelled after ten episodes.

Last review posted 28 June 2009

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Dollhouse: Needs (season one, episode eight)

2009-06-28T22:51:00.008+01:00

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Rating 2¾

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Tracy Bellomo

Directed by Félix Enríquez Alcalá

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Amy Acker (Dr Claire Saunders), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (November), Teddy Sears (Mike), Emma Bell (Tango) and Angel Desai (Sophie Alvarez)

Echo, Sierra, Victor and November (previously known to us as Mellie) awake with aspects of their true personalities somehow restored, although most of their memories are still just out of reach. They plot their escape from the Dollhouse, but at the last minute Echo stays behind, wanting to expose what the Dollhouse is doing and free the other Actives. Once the others have escaped from the complex, November goes in search of her daughter, while Sierra goes to confront the man who was responsible for her ending up in the Dollhouse, taking Victor with her. Elsewhere, Paul Ballard has a dream in which both Caroline (Echo) and Mellie (November) appear and realises that the Dollhouse has bugged his apartment.

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‘Needs’, while I was watching it, put me in mind of the ‘Cube’ films and afterwards I thought of old episodes of ‘The Prisoner’ in which Number Six attempted to escape the Village, only to end up back where he started. It’s a very well constructed episode, certainly the most impressive one for me so far, but I still came away from it not caring as much as perhaps I should have done. Early on, we discover that the restored memories and successful escape have been orchestrated by Adelle DeWitt and while I momentarily wondered where this was leading, almost immediately I decided I simply could not be bothered to try to guess and just waited for the revelation to come. When it did, I will admit that it came as a surprise and it was quite clever, but it still did not arouse my interest in the show to any greater degree than my current state of slightly disinterested curiosity. I might have decided to stick with it until the end of the season, but I don’t feel any sense of anticipation about what is coming. This is a pity, really, because the show is clearly getting a lot better after a decidedly shaky start, as has been stated elsewhere.

Early on during the episode Laurence Dominic, the head of security, tells the minders that they should avoid becoming too emotionally attached to their Actives and should, instead, think of them as “pets”. However, we later discover that Adelle DeWitt would appear to have an even colder and morally indefensible attitude towards them and any earlier suggestions that she had an idealistic if skewed take on what the Dollhouse does would appear to be entirely inaccurate. Topher Brink, when confronted by Caroline/Echo, argues that he is just the science guy and therefore cannot be held accountable for what the Dollhouse does; the common argument too often put forward that scientists are not responsible for the appropriation of their scientific breakthroughs for purposes other than good.

I wasn’t very keen on the performance of Dichen Lachman here, although I am not sure that I know why. Once again, though, I was rather impressed by Amy Acker.

Review posted 28 June 2009

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Fanboys

2009-06-28T12:15:00.010+01:00

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Rating 1

Directed by Kyle Newman

Written by Ernest Cline and Adam F Goldberg, story by Ernest Cline and Dan Pulick

Starring Sam Huntington (Eric), Christopher Marquette (Linus), Kristen Bell (Zoe), Dan Fogler (Hutch), Jay Baruchel (Windows), David Denman (Chaz), Christopher McDonald (Big Chuck), Seth Rogan (Admiral Seasholtz / Roach), Allie Grant (Rogue Leader), Ethan Suplee (Harry Knowles), Danny Trejo (The Chief), Billy Dee Williams (Judge Reinhold) and Carrie Fisher (Doctor), with William Shatner and Kevin Smith

October 1998: Eric and Linus were best buddies at high school, sharing a love of comic books and Star Wars, but in the three years since graduation they have drifted apart. Eric is now working as a car salesman for his father Big Chuck. Following an encounter with Linus at a Halloween party, Eric is told by their mutual friends Hutch and Windows that Linus has cancer. The four of them set out across country in an old van from their small hometown in Ohio, headed for Marin County in California, where they plan to break into the Skywalker Ranch to watch a rough cut of ‘Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace’.

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I will start by saying that I am not a fan of ‘Star Wars’. I have only seen two of the films in their entirety, the original one and ‘The Phantom Menace’, neither of which I like, plus parts of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and ‘Return of the Jedi’. As it happens, for reasons I cannot quite recall now, I saw ‘The Phantom Menace’ during its first performance when it arrived over here in July 1999. The auditorium was full and there was a palpable sense of excitement, unlike anything I had experienced previously (or have again) in a movie theatre. When the film was over and the audience were making their way out, the atmosphere was now completely flat and it was obvious that the film had been a major disappointment. I thought it was abysmal, but in any case the fascination with Star Wars and the obsession it generates rather passes me by.

Perhaps if I was a genuine Star Wars fan I would have enjoyed ‘Fanboys’ more, but I don’t think so. I was very much looking forward to watching the film, hoping that it would be funny and affable and fully expecting to enjoy it. I was very disappointed. It barely raised a chuckle and many of the scenes just made me cringe. It really wasn’t very funny at all and much of the time it just seemed leaden and undercooked. A reference to ALF did make me laugh and the insistence of Hutch that only tapes of Rush were to be played in his van during the road trip was humorous and nicely judged. It was amusing to find the judge they were brought before when their van was stopped for speeding and they were discovered to be in possession of a huge bag of peyote was called Judge Reinhold, but these moments were sadly few and far between.

The gestation period of the film during production and editing seems to have become increasingly messy, which might explain why it simply isn’t as funny or engaging as it surely should have been. The Wikipedia entry about the film suggests that it was originally slated for release in August 2007, but this was pushed back to allow for more filming. The release date was pushed back again when apparently reshoots directed by Steven Brill (‘The Mighty Ducks’, ‘Without a Paddle’) took place. One of the changes was to delete the cancer storyline altogether. This resulted in an acrimonious exchange of insults between Brill and online campaigners who wanted the original cut to be reinstated. The film was eventually re-cut by its original director Kyle Newman at short notice and screened at Comic Con in San Diego in July 2008. The film was finally given a proper release in February 2009.

I liked Christopher Marquette in ‘Joan of Arcadia’ and Kristen Bell in ‘Veronica Mars’. They are okay here, as are the other leading actors, but they never really manage to transcend the problems in the material they are working with. Seth Rogan doesn’t raise a laugh, despite his reputation. Even an appearance by William Shatner fails to lift things very much. Ultimately, I didn’t think it was affectionate enough in its lampooning of fans of Star Wars and Star Trek, simply seeming to suggest that all Star Wars fans hate Star Trek fans (which may well be true for all I know) and all Star Trek fans deserve the hatred directed at them (which I am pretty sure is not true).

‘Fanboys’ has a 32% rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 82 reviews, 56 of which are adjudged to be negative. Box Office Mojo records a worldwide box office gross a little under $784,000.

Review posted 28 June 2009

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Dollhouse: Echoes (season one, episode seven)

2009-06-21T20:41:00.020+01:00

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Rating 2¼

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain

Directed by James A Contner

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (Mellie), Brett Claywell (Matt), Mehcad Brooks (Sam Jennings), Josh Cooke (Leo Carpenter), Josh Fadem (Owen Johnson), Octavia Spencer (Professor Janack) and Philip Casnoff (Clive Ambrose)

Clive Ambrose, a high ranking executive in the Rossum Corporation, the world’s biggest drug company and a major funder of the Dollhouse, approaches Adelle DeWitt for help when an experimental mind-control drug finds its way onto a college campus, resulting in the violent death of a student named Owen Johnson. All Actives are programmed to work on the assignment, posing as NSA and CDC agents, except Echo, who is already on an assignment as the fantasy figure of a regular client. When she sees a television news report from the Rossum Building she experiences an immediate compulsion to go there and momentary flickers of her former life begin to flash through her memory.

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‘Echoes’ contains several comic scenes, with horribly unfunny lines like, “I could eat that word,” which, were I to find the prospect of an extremely painful haemorrhoidectomy humorous, might have made me laugh. I didn’t laugh. I thought these scenes, in which we observed previously humourless characters like Adelle DeWitt and Laurence Dominic behaving with drug-induced childishness, completely missed the mark. Presumably, more humour was intended by showing us Topher Brink behaving in exactly the same manner whether under the effects of the drug or not, but this simply acted to heighten the realisation that this character is becoming increasingly irritating without the counter-balance of becoming in any way more interesting.

Ignoring this and the ridiculous outfit Eliza Dushku is required to wear (making Echo a clichéd fantasy figure of clients of the Dollhouse so that Dushku can presumably be a fantasy figure of viewers of the show is becoming increasingly wearisome), ‘Echoes’ certainly pushes the story along a bit further. It has some merit and is cleverly constructed, if a little obvious. However, the whole ‘giant multi-national pharmaceutical corporation acting in a dangerous unethical manner that threatens us all’ conspiracy angle reached its apex at the time of ‘The X Files’. It has become rather stale and over-familiar since then and it is all too tempting to make a negative comparison to that show. ‘Dollhouse’ is no more convincing than ‘Fringe’.

In one scene in the episode Adelle DeWitt tells Topher Brink that she believes in what the Dollhouse is doing and it would appear that she means so in almost an idealistic way. Buying into the Dollhouse because of the power or influence or money is one thing, but it seems inconceivable that anyone could have any idealistic view of its function. Echo, to use her as an example, is more or less a human sex toy, constantly farmed out to be violated by clients, something that is an irrefutable fact, irrespective of how she is treated by them. She has no control over what happens to her. This aspect of the show’s premise is certainly its most interesting feature and I do wonder how it will expand on and argue the apparent idealism of Adelle DeWitt.

The misfiring comedy aside, this was one of the better episodes so far and probably a match for ‘Man On The Street’, which has been identified as one of the high points of the season, although I am not altogether convinced that it is not over-rated, admittedly having only watched it once. In the end, apart from anything else, ‘Echoes’ is undoubtedly a lot better than the previous episode written by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain, the risible ‘Gray Hour’.

Review posted 21 June 2009

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The Unusuals (season one overview)

2009-06-21T15:53:00.014+01:00

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Rating 2½

Created by Noah Hawley

Written by Noah Hawley (three episodes), Alexi Hawley (one episode), Robert De Laurentiis (one episode), Sarah Watson (one episode), Gary Lennon (one episode), Treena Hancock (one episode), Melissa R Byer (one episode), Jorge Zamacona (one episode) and Danny Zuker (one episode

Directed by Stephen Hopkins (one episode), Constantine Makris (three episode), Jamie Babbit (one episode), Peter O’Fallon (one episode), Matt Earl Beesley (two episodes), Rosemary Rodriguez (one episode) and Edward Bianchi (one episode)

Starring Amber Tamblyn (Detective Casey Shraeger), Jeremy Renner (Detective Jason Walsh), Adam Goldberg (Detective Eric Delahoy), Harold Perrineau (Detective Leo Banks), Kai Lennox (Detective Eddie Alvarez), Joshua Close (Detective Henry Cole), Monique Gabriela Curnan (Detective Allison Beaumont), Terry Kinney (Sergeant Harvey Brown), Ian Kahn (Davis Nixon), Susan Parke (Dr Monica Crumb) and Kat Foster (Nicole Brandt)

Rookie police detective Casey Shraeger is pulled off Vice and transferred to the NYPD’s second Precinct to become the new partner of Detective Jason Walsh, on the same night that his old partner is murdered. Secretly, she is being recruited by Sergeant Harvey Brown to look for possible corruption within his team, each of the various detectives harbouring his or her own secrets.

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‘The Unusuals’ was made by Sony Pictures Television and broadcast on the ABC network between 8 April and 17 June 2009. Ten episodes in total were made. Viewing figures reached a high of 6.8 million for the pilot episode and a low of 2.9 million for episode eight. In was announced in May 2009 that it would not return for a second season. The show was created by Noah Hawley, a former staff writer on the Fox network show ‘Bones’ and was promoted as a comedy-drama, a police procedural in the style of ‘M*A*S*H’. The influence is evident from the very start, but ‘The Unusuals’ fails almost entirely to emulate the brilliance of that much lauded, multi award winning series.

‘The Unusuals’ had a likeable cast, but seemingly it never decided what it wanted to be. None of the characters progressed much beyond being the vaguest of sketchy outlines and the initial premise seemed to fizzle out before going anywhere in particular. Although there was some humour, it wasn’t a comedy, even though it clearly drew inspiration from ‘Barney Miller’, a much loved comedy series that ran for eight seasons and 168 episodes between 1974 and 1982.

Each character was given a quirk, but then very little was done with it. Casey Shraeger was the daughter of extremely rich and powerful society parents and had a multi-million-dollar trust fund, but she kept this secret, wanting to be treated like everyone else and live like a “real person”. After the first few episodes, we barely ever saw her parents and when, halfway through the season, she admitted her background to her colleagues it made no difference whatsoever. Eric Delahoy was suffering from a brain tumour that he kept secret. This storyline never went anywhere, much as his relationship with the medical examiner proved to be an inconclusive dead end. His partner Leo Banks had a germ phobia and was convinced of his impending death. This seemingly reached a head in the eighth episode (‘The Dentist’), which was modelled on the classic Alfred Hitchcock film ‘Rear Window’, but there was no sense of an epiphany or any consequence seen afterwards. The same desperate lack of focus and depth affected all the other regular lead characters.

Perhaps most inexplicable is the storyline involving Henry Cole, a born-again Christian who hides a criminal past. That seems to catch up with him and results in this partner being shot. He is also indirectly implicated in the death of the partner of Jason Walsh, but although Walsh discovers the truth, he seems perfectly ready to cover it up because the force always looks after its own. I thought this storyline was a mess that became increasingly unbelievable. More so than that, ultimately there simply did not seem to be any point to it, a problem that affected so many things in the show.

‘M*A*S*H’ worked so brilliantly because the characters were memorable and the show achieved a perfect mix between comedy and making a serious statement about the reality of war. In the ten episodes of ‘The Unusuals’ the characters didn’t go anywhere and the show had nothing much to say. This meant that the implausible nature of many of the cases investigated was brought into sharp relief and instead of being quirky and humorously idiosyncratic they just ended up being silly and too far-fetched. Of course, ten episodes is not long enough to really establish a great deal and perhaps had the show survived into a second season many of these early problems would have been resolved.

In its favour, ‘The Unusuals’ had a more than competent cast who made it very easy to watch. Adam Goldberg is always very watchable and Amber Tamblyn is surely one of the best actresses of her generation. There was the grain of a good idea here and it is quite possible the show could have ironed out some of the early flaws given more time. However, the nature of American network television these days means that very few shows are given more than a handful of episodes to prove themselves – we need only to think back to ‘Wonderfalls’, a show that premiered on the Fox network in March 2004 and was cancelled after just four episodes, even though it showed obvious promise.

I have been critical of it, but I enjoyed watching ‘The Unusuals’ and its early demise is disappointing, although not at all surprising and probably not unwarranted.

Review posted 21 June 2009

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Chakushin ari (One Missed Call)

2009-06-20T23:33:00.010+01:00

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Rating 3¼

Directed by Takashi Miike

Written by Minako Daira, based on a novel by Yasushi Akimoto

Starring Kou Shibasaki (Yumi Nakamura), Shinichi Tsutsumi (Hiroshi Yamashita), Kazue Fukiishi (Natsumi Konishi), Atsushi Ida (Kenji Kawai), Anna Nagata (Yoko Okazaki), Renji Ishibashi (Motomiya), Goro Kishitani (Oka), Mariko Tsutsui (Marie Mizunuma) and Karen Oshima (Mimiko Mizunuma)

A group of friends receive recorded messages, sent from their own mobile phones and seemingly from a future time and date, in which they hear themselves in the moments before death. In each case the call proves to be a true omen of events to come. Yumi Nakamura, one of group, encounters Hiroshi Yamashita, whose sister had died in similar circumstances months earlier, and together they race against the clock to try to solve the mystery in the face of police indifference.

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‘Chakushin ari’ (One Missed Call) was released in Japan in 2004. It follows a similar pattern to earlier J-horror films like ‘Ringu’, ‘Ju-on: The Grudge’ and ‘Dark Water’ and is not particularly typical of the usual style of its celebrated and controversial director Takashi Miike, who is perhaps best known outside of Japan for the films ‘Audition’ and ‘Ichi the Killer’, released in 1999 and 2001 respectively. The film spawned two sequels and an eleven-episode television series in Japan, as well as a 2008 American remake.

The film does feel very familiar, especially during its first half, but increasingly seemingly random editing of clashing scenes and a sense of surrealism starts to take over and it begins to move outside of the influence of the earlier films I’ve mentioned. As a result, the film becomes much more interesting, as well as engagingly perplexing and confounding. Even though it generally conforms to a tried and tested formula, one that is perhaps rather too over-familiar now, it still possesses a freewheeling inventiveness that is completely lacking in the decidedly flat American remake.

‘Chakushin ari’ has a 48% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 25 reviews.

Review posted 20 June 2009

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The Children

2009-06-16T20:43:00.014+01:00

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Rating 3¼

Directed by Tom Shankland

Written by Tom Shankland, based on a story by Paul Andrew Williams

Starring Eva Birthistle (Elaine), Stephen Campbell Moore (Jonah), Rachel Shelley (Chloe), Jeremy Sheffield (Robbie), Hannah Tointon (Casey), Eva Sayer (Miranda), William Howes (Paulie), Raffiella Brooks (Leah) and Jake Hathaway (Nicky)

Chloe and Robbie have moved out to the country and are living a seemingly idyllic lifestyle in a big house with their two young children Leah and Nicky. Their friends Elaine and Jonah come to stay with them for Christmas, bringing their two young children, Miranda and Paulie, and Casey, Elaine’s older teenage daughter from a previous relationship. Casey has been grounded and barred from going to a party with her friends and makes no pretence of wanting to be there. The younger children begin to exhibit signs of strange misbehaviour and irritability, resulting in what at first seems like a tragic accident, but then escalates when they turn on the adults and the house and surrounding woodland becomes a bloodbath.

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‘The Children’ is an excellent British horror film released in December 2008 for the Christmas market, although it is a decidedly different type of Christmas film to what we have become used to seeing over the years.

The two sets of adults are somewhat smug, typically liberal middle-class with bohemian leanings and instantly recognisable. These are very well observed characters. Chloe and Elaine would appear to be long time friends, but Chloe constantly makes comments that seem to question Elaine’s capabilities as a mother. Elaine is, perhaps we are encouraged to decide, over-protective of her son Paulie, who suffers from some kind of condition that makes him have anxiety attacks. Another reason, possibly, is Casey, the older teenager daughter, who was clearly born when Elaine was quite young. The implication seems to be that Casey was a “mistake” and that abortion had been considered. There is, evidently, unspoken competition to demonstrate superior parenting, born out of a kind of arrogance of parenthood. Later on, after the carnage has begun, Chloe blames Elaine and points the finger at Casey, even though she has already been attacked by her own children.

Robbie is, possibly, a little bit too attentive of the teenage Casey, although it is never made demonstratively clear one way or the other, leaving us to make up our minds about this. Jonah is, in the words of Casey, a “knob”.

No specific reason is given why the children turn evil in the way they do, except that they seem to succumb to a virus that manifests itself in the form of a cough. What this virus might be is never explained. The change in mood and the escalating violence is cleverly staged, if a little hysterical towards the end, and when the bloodbath begins it is both believable and disturbing.

What is the film telling us? It might be suggesting that children are evil. There have probably been circumstances when many of us have thought this, even if it is not a suggestion that can be validated in any rational manner. Possibly it is a commentary about the baseless arrogance and feeling of superiority that so often seems to come with parenthood. On the other hand, it might simply be a horror gore-fest for the sake of it. In the end, whether or not there is any underlying meaning to be found here, the film is very effectively done and decidedly unsettling.

‘The Children’ has a 77% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from thirteen reviews and if you find yourself in need of a blood-splattered horror film with a Christmas setting, this one has a lot more to recommend about it than the ‘Black Christmas’ remake.

Review posted 16 June 2009

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Night At The Museum

2009-06-15T08:26:00.007+01:00

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Rating 2

Directed by Shawn Levy

Written by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, from the book by Milan Trenc

Starring Ben Stiller (Larry Daley), Carla Gugino (Rebecca), Dick Van Dyke (Cecil), Bill Cobbs (Reginald), Mickey Rooney (Gus), Jake Cherry (Nick Daley), Kim Raver (Erica Daley), Paul Rudd (Don), Robin Williams (Theodore Roosevelt), Owen Wilson (Jedediah), Steve Coogan (Octavius), Mizuo Peck (Sacajawea), Rami Malek (Ahkmenrah), Patruick Gallagher (Attila the Hun), Pierfrancesco Favino (Christopher Columbus) and Ricky Gervais (Dr McPhee)

Larry Daley is a dreamer whose fanciful ambitions have prevented him from finding steady employment. He is divorced and has a young son. When he faces eviction from his apartment in Brooklyn and talks about moving out to Queens, his ex-wife Erica threatens to take away his visiting rights, pointing out that their son Nick has already been let down too many times before. Larry reluctantly takes a job as a night guard at the American Museum of Natural History, employed as a cost-cutting exercise to replace three elderly guards, Cecil, Reginald and Gus, who have been there for more than fifty years, but are now to lose their jobs. On his first night, Larry discovers that all the exhibits come to life when the museum is shut.

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‘Night at the Museum’ is a 2006 film based on the 1993 children’s picture book ‘The Night at the Museum’ by the Croatian writer and illustrator Milan Trenc. In this original picture book it is only the dinosaurs that come to life, but in the film it is all the exhibits. A expanded novelisation of the original picture book, written by Leslie Goldman, was published in 2006 to tie-in with the release of the film.

The film received mixed reaction from critics and has a 44% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 125 reviews. It had a production budget of $110 million and grossed in excess of $574 million at the box office worldwide. A sequel, ‘Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian’, with an even bigger budget, was released in 2009 and has so far grossed $293 million.

‘Night at the Museum’ is a family comedy action adventure film that relies heavily on special effects. It is very typical of its type and falls into the trap that ensnares most such films coming out of Hollywood, being smothered in lashings of cheesy schmaltz and succumbing to unsatisfactorily simple-minded moralising. However, this is no less commendable than the in-built cynicism that allows us to identify these faults in the first place and the film is moderately passable, up to a point. Unfortunately, there is something missing here and it is not only the disappointing absence of invention. The film is simply not as funny as it needs to be (in fact, it rarely raises a laugh at all) and, ultimately, it just lacks heart. The exhibits may come to life, but the film rarely does.

Robin Williams puts in a disappointingly flat performance as Theodore Roosevelt and his presence reminds us that ‘Night at the Museum’ is a pale shadow of Williams’ hugely enjoyable 1995 outing ‘Jumanji’, which possessed infinitely more verve and inventiveness than this rather spongy mess of a film, which I really wanted to like a lot more than I ended up doing.

Director Shawn Levy was previously responsible for two dire Steve Martin vehicles, ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’ and the 2006 remake of the ‘The Pink Panther’.

Review posted 15 June 2009

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Dollhouse

2009-06-14T01:03:00.011+01:00

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Dollhouse: Ghost (season one, episode one)

Dollhouse: The Target (season one, episode two)

Dollhouse: Stage Fright (season one, episode three)

Dollhouse: Gray Hour (season one, episode four)

Dollhouse: True Believer (season one, episode five)

Dollhouse: Man on the Street (season one, episode six)

Dollhouse: Echoes (season one, episode seven)

Dollhouse: Needs (season one, episode eight)

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Dollhouse: Man on the Street (season one, episode six)

2009-06-14T00:52:00.012+01:00

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Rating 2¼

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Joss Whedon

Directed by David Straiton

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Amy Acker (Claire Saunders), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Kevin Kilner (Joe Hearn), Miracle Laurie (Mellie), Liza Lapira (Ivy), Mark Sheppard (Tanaka), Aisha Hinds (Loomis) and Patton Oswalt (Joel Mynor)

Paul Ballard suspects that Joel Mynor, a very rich and successful businessman, is a client of the Dollhouse and interrupts an engagement involving Echo. Sierra starts acting strangely and it is discovered that she has had sexual intercourse inside the Dollhouse. Suspicion points to another Active, Victor, although it should be impossible for an Active who has been de-programmed to act in this way. Ballard continues to get closer to his next door neighbour Mellie and confides in her about his investigation.

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Many fans have pointed to ‘Man on the Street’ as the moment when ‘Dollhouse’ makes a giant leap forward and begins to genuinely compare to Joss Whedon’s best work. Whedon himself has pinpointed it as an important step up in quality in this first season. It is well done and has many of the hallmarks of a typical Joss Whedon scripted episode, with the action interspersed with soundbites of (actors playing) people on the street, interviewees in a television news exposé, expressing a variety of different opinions about the Dollhouse, whether it exists or not and how they view the service it is alleged to provide to its clients. I didn’t really engage with this, although I guess it is a clever enough conceit.

Paul Ballard gets much closer to the Dollhouse in this episode, actually encountering Echo (or Caroline, as he knows her) and also getting to interrogate, after a fashion, one of the clients, with an excellent performance by the stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt as Joel Mynor. This was all fine, except that it indulged a tedious fight scene early on when Ballard takes on several of Mynor’s bodyguards and security team. However, this paled into insignificance when compared to the truly dreadful fight scene involving Ballard and Echo later in the episode. It was utterly ridiculous and embarrassingly asinine and it went on and on and on for a mind-numbingly interminable length of time. Maybe this would not have bothered me so much if I was not already somewhat less than impressed with the show generally, but it definitely took this episode down several notches for me.

Could it be that this fight scene was supposed to be comic in nature and its setting, in the kitchen of a Chinese takeaway, alerts us that it is a parody of martial arts films? Maybe I am just not in on the joke, although if there is any possibility at all that this is what was intended, which I don’t really believe, it would make it even more awful.

A twist involving one of the regular characters, occurring near to the end of the episode, did not come as a surprise to me. I had already guessed this. Equally, I also knew the identity of the person responsible for having sex with Sierra before it was revealed, although in this case I think perhaps I must have inadvertently read about it at some point previously. The character Topher Brink is starting to become increasingly annoying, without becoming any more interesting.

Once again I found some of the dialogue clunky. In one scene Paul and Mellie have just had sex (he, of course, gives her an orgasm) and he says, jokingly, “So... can I borrow a cup of sugar?”, to which she replies, “I don’t think I’ve got any sugar left.” This is quite a typical Joss Whedon line, but it had me cringing.

I cannot deny that this was a good episode, the fight scenes excepted, and the unfolding story is beginning to throw up some interesting twists and turns, but while I can watch it, I don’t really care, which I would think rather defeats the point of it all.

Review posted 14 June 2009

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Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in)

2009-06-13T20:03:00.011+01:00

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Rating 5

Directed by Tomas Alfredson

Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, based on his novel

Kåre Hedebrant (Oskar), Lina Leandersson (Eli), Per Ragnar (Håkan), Karin Bergquist (Yvonne), Henrik Dahl (Erik), Peter Carlberg (Lacke), Mikael Rahm (Jocke), Karl Robert Lindgren (Gösta), Ika Nord (Ginia), Patrik Rydmark (Conny), Mikael Erhardsson (Martin), Johan Sömnes (Andreas), Rasmus Luthander (Jimmy) and Cayetano Ruiz (Magister Avila)

Oskar, an introverted 12-year-old boy who seems to have no friends, lives with his mother in an unprepossessing apartment in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm. He fantasises about taking revenge on his classmates, who routinely bully him, and when he meets Eli, a strange androgynous girl who has moved next door and initially tells him she cannot be his friend, they find a connection and form a close bond in their shared loneliness. All the while, local residents of the housing complex where they live are dying or disappearing in mysterious circumstances.

...

‘Let the Right One In’ is a very strange vampire film based on a 2004 novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the film’s screenplay. The book, which I have not read and which I believe contains imagery that is much more disturbing than the film, delves into the dark underbelly of Swedish society, a seemingly common theme amongst Swedish authors.

Generally speaking, I am not all that fond of vampire films, which is odd, given that I adore the television series ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and have watched all 144 episodes at least half-a-dozen times, but that is not really about vampires – it just happens to have vampire in it. I want to like the television series ‘True Blood’, but I seem to have stalled at the first episode, unable so far to move onwards from there. As far as vampire films go, once you get past Bela Lugosi intoning, “I am... Dracula,” with melodramatic splendour there is not a great deal more to be said. I don’t like ‘The Lost Boys’ or the cult favourite ‘Near Dark’. ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ is a film I guess I can take or leave, but have no real desire to see again. I have tried twice to watch ‘Interview with the Vampire’ and given up both times, defeated by a storyline that holds no interest for me and some terrible acting. I do like ‘Shadow of the Vampire’, the 2001 film that tells the story of the making of ‘Nosferatu’ and imagines that the actor Max Schreck was a real vampire.

‘Let the Right One In’ is a vampire film, but much like ‘Shadow of the Vampire’ it is not like any other vampire film that I have ever seen. It’s really the story of two lonely and displaced children who befriend one another and form a kind of secret bond for mutual protection from an alien and often vile outside world. It is set in a drab and depressed urban landscape, the permanent covering of snow adding to the greyness instead of creating shimmering wintery beauty.

The film, which is set in the 1980s, although I did not realise this until I read about it after watching it, has a pervading aura of dreariness and boredom and creeping melancholia affecting the lives of the characters it portrays. That is not to say that the film itself is boring, quite the contrary. It is the absence of relentless set pieces and the idea that audiences need a constant supply of thrills and spills that helps to make it such a fascinating film to watch. When the acts of violence do occur, they become increasingly shocking and disturbing, even though they take place mostly off camera. The shock-value is partly, of course, created by the knowledge that these acts of violence are perpetrated by a twelve-year-old girl, although in reality she is over 200 years old, which also provides a slightly unsettling added element to her friendship with Oskar, one that contains a kind of innocent and not-so-innocent sexuality.

The film tricks us into feeling sympathy for Eli, who we view as an alienated and, later on, orphaned twelve-year-old, but Håkan, who the local people think is her father and who she refers to as such when she goes in search of him at a local hospital, is actually her Renfield and Oskar will eventually take his place.

Oskar is a strange character. He is an innocent victim of bullying that is not addressed by the adults and the product of a dysfunctional family environment, but he is also, I thought, rather creepy. I don’t know if this was intentional or not, or if it is simply my misreading of the character, but it was an increasingly interesting facet of the film as his friendship with Eli grew and we were perhaps invited to ponder just how much of a self-regulating moral compass a twelve-year-old should be expected to possess.

‘Let the Right One In’ had a production budget in the region of 29 million Swedish krona, which equates to approximately $3.8 million. It had a worldwide box office gross of $9.3 million. The film has a 98% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 142 reviews, just three of which were deemed to have been negative, and won forty-eight awards from fifty-nine nominations, primarily at various film festivals.

Review posted 13 June 2009

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Spring Breakdown

2009-06-13T09:17:00.009+01:00

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Rating 1

Directed by Ryan Shiraki

Written by Ryan Shiraki, based on a story by Ryan Shiraki and Rachel Dratch

Starring Amy Poehler (Gayle), Parker Posey (Becky), Rachel Dratch (Judi), Amber Tamblyn (Ashley), Missi Pyle (Charlene), Sophie Monk (Mason), Sarah Hagan (Truvy), Mae Whitman (Lydia), Seth Myers (William), Jonathan Sadowski (Doug), Justin Hartley (Todd), Will Arnett (Ted), Loretta Devine (Dr Marguerite), Patrick Fabian (Kevin) and Jay Lynch (Kay Bee Hartmann)

Gayle, Becky and Judi have been best friends since high school, but in the fifteen years that have passed by since graduation they have never grown out of being geeks who are routinely trampled on by the world around them. When Gayle, who runs a dog obedience school, is knocked back by a blind client when she asks him to go to the Amy Grant concert with her and Judi breaks up with her fiancé William, when it finally dawns on her that he is gay, they join Becky on a trip to South Padre for a college spring break. Becky has been charged by her employer Senator Kay Bee Hartmann, who is the frontrunner to become the next Vice-President, to keep her daughter Ashley out of trouble.

...

My decision to watch ‘Spring Breakdown’ was based entirely on the cast. I knew next to nothing about the film and did not check any reviews first, not that they would have affected my decision. From the very first scene onwards, showing the three main characters performing ‘True Colors’ at a school talent contest, I knew the film was in trouble. The cast alone probably makes it worth more than one star for me, but otherwise I think I am being very generous giving it that one star.

‘Spring Breakdown’ is a film that perpetually feels like it might and should, in different circumstances, have been side-splittingly funny, but, apart from a few isolated chuckles brought about by the efforts of a more than competent cast, it just doesn’t raise a laugh. This film manages to be resolutely unfunny from start to finish as we watch Gayle, Becky and Judi get involved in keg parties and wet t-shirt competitions and all manner of outrageous and equally uninteresting college student hi-jinks. This is a film about three very nice people who are constantly put-upon and “unlucky in love” for that very same reason who suddenly get to do all the things they missed out on in college, only to discover, eventually, that they like who they are.

One of the reviews I have read since watching the film makes a comparison to ‘The House Bunny’ and, by coincidence, all the way through the film I could not help but think of Anna Faris whenever Amy Poehler, who I do like, was on the screen. It brought home to me once again just how effortless Faris is at playing comedy and how she seems able to transcend her material.

Poehler, Rachel Dratch, who co-wrote the story that the screenplay is based on, Will Arnett and Seth Meyer are all best known for their work on Saturday Night Live and the hit-or-miss quality of that show equates here. Meyer is currently the head writer on SNL, taking over the role from Tina Fey. He is credited with writing the sketches involving Fey impersonating Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential election.

‘Spring Breakdown’, which apparently had a production budget a little over $12 million (although this seems a rather unlikely figure to me), was premiered at the Sundance film festival, but was then announced for release direct to DVD.

Review posted 13 June 2009

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Infamous

2009-06-11T10:35:00.010+01:00

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Rating 3

Written and directed by Douglas McGrath, based on the book by George Plimpton

Starring Toby Jones (Truman Capote), Sandra Bullock (Harper Lee), Daniel Craig (Perry Smith), Lee Pace (Richard Hickock), Sigourney Weaver (Babe Paley), Jeff Daniels (Alvin Dewey), Gwyneth Paltrow (Kitty Dean), Isabella Rossellini (Marella Agnelli), Juliet Stevenson (Diana Vreeland), Michael Panes (Gore Vidal), Hope Davis (Slim Keith), Frank Curcio (William Shawn), John Benjamin Hickey (Jack Dunphy), Bethlyn Gerard (Marie Dewey) and Peter Bogdanovich (Bennett Cerf)

When, in November 1959, the celebrated New York author and wit Truman Capote reads an small report in the New York Times about the murder of a family in Holcomb, Kansas he decides to write an article about the crime and its impact on the local community, travelling to Holcomb with his lifelong friend and confidant, the author Harper “Nellie” Lee. He soon realises he has enough material to write a book, adopting a new approach that he describes as a “non-fiction novel”. As his research and writing continues, he becomes increasingly wrapped up in the life of Perry Smith, one of the two men responsible for the killings.

...

‘Infamous’ is based on a 1997 book by the late George Plimpton and deals with the events leading up to the writing of Truman Capote’s book ‘In Cold Blood’, which caused a sensation when it was first published in serial form in the New Yorker magazine in 1965, six years after the killings. The film received a limited theatrical release in October 2006 and dealt with exactly the same subject as ‘Capote’, which had been released in September 2005. That earlier film received much greater attention, including the Academy Award for Best Actor for the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role.

Both films deal with Capote’s motivation for writing the book, which he researched in considerable detail, interviewing many of the people connected with the case, including the two convicted killers, and eventually amassing more than 8,000 pages of notes. He did not tape record any of the interviews he conducted, instead transcribing them from memory, and it has been claimed that he deliberately changed some of the detail to suit his own purposes in creating this new style of non-fiction work. He was particularly fascinated by Perry Smith and it has long been rumoured that the two shared a romantic or even sexual relationship during Capote’s visits to the prison where Smith was held, although there is no real evidence to support this.

I had initially avoided watching ‘Infamous’, having already seen the excellent ‘Capote’ and deciding that I did not need to watch two films that dealt with the same subject matter in such a short space of time. However, a friend recommended it to me, making mention of the performance of Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee, whose acclaimed novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ was published in July 1960. Lee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel in 1961. I like Sandra Bullock very much and believe she is a much better actress than many of her film choices and has genuine screen presence. Her performance here is quietly impressive and is, for me, the highlight of the film, although the central focus is on Toby Jones as Truman Capote and Daniel Craig as Perry Smith and the relationship of these two pivotal characters. Harper Lee, who has never published another novel after ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, said in 2007, when asked to address an audience at a ceremony she attended, “It’s better to be silent than to be a fool.”

‘Infamous’ makes a distinction between the small community of Holcomb and the impact it (and Perry Smith) has on Truman Capote and his celebrity lifestyle in New York and the society circles he moves in. We see him with the socialite and style icon Babe Paley, of which he once wrote, “Babe Paley had only one fault, she was perfect. Otherwise, she was perfect.” Paley was one of Capote’s “swans”, as were Marella Agnelli and Slim Keith, both of whom feature in the film. Paley and Keith were the inspiration for Capote’s posthumous novel ‘Answered Prayers’, which when some work-in-progress chapters were published in Esquire magazine in 1975 and 1976, resulted in Capote being ostracised by several friends led by Paley.

The scenes set in New York are somewhat stylised, but I imagine this is deliberate to create a juxtaposition with the reality of Holcomb and the real lives of real people that Capote encounters there. His friends in New York seem like caricatures, but that is what they are, jet set socialites and style icons playing a role. I don’t think the film quite manages to make this mix work entirely successfully, but I can see what it set out to do.

Gwyneth Paltrow plays a nightclub singer called Kitty Dean. The original intention had been that she would portray the singer Peggy Lee and the scene in the film when she goes into a kind of trance during her performance of a song to a nightclub audience, including Capote, is based on a genuine performance by the nightclub singer and Broadway musical actress Barbara Cook.

The film boosts a very impressive cast and there are some very good performances. Toby Jones, in particular, manages to avoid turning Capote into a caricature, even though that is what he was in many ways, and perhaps even more so than Philip Seymour Hoffman the previous year, he creates a real person who found himself identifying with Perry Smith. Capote’s childhood was a long way removed from the circles he moved in later on after his successful writing career was established and both films reference this as a motivator for the strange attraction of the contemplative but explosively violent Smith.

‘Infamous’ has a 71% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 135 reviews. It had a production budget estimated to have been in the region of $13 million and grossed $2.6 million at the box office worldwide.

Review posted 11 June 2009

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It Came From Beneath The Sea

2009-06-10T20:05:00.006+01:00

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Rating 2

Directed by Robert Gordon

Written by George Worthing Yates and Hal Smith

Starring Kenneth Tobey (Commander Pete Mathews), Faith Domergue (Professor Lesley Joyce), Donald Curtis (Dr John Carter), Ian Keaith (Admiral Burns), Dean Maddox Jr (Admiral Norman), Chuck Griffiths (Lieutenant Griff, USN), Harry Lauter (Deputy Bill Nash) and Richard W Peterson (Captain Stacey)

The testing of a hydrogen bomb forces a gigantic octopus up from the depths of the ocean in search of food. It attacks shipping, including a nuclear submarine, before turning its attention to San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.

...

This 1955 monster movie is notable for an early example of the stop-motion special effects created by Ray Harryhausen, although the production budget, just $150,000 for the whole film, meant that this is not amongst his most celebrated work. The octopus apparently has just six tentacles as a way of cutting costs, not that I noticed. Harryhausen worked with the film’s producer Charles H Schneer on many more films after this.

Much of the location filming was done at the San Francisco naval dockyard, including filming on an actual submarine. It’s all a bit stilted, something not uncommon in films like this, and decidedly clunky at times, particularly the love-affair back story involving Pete Mathews, the submarine commander, and Lesley Joyce, the marine biologist. Having said that, it is a reasonably well executed production and generally quite effective, all in all, even if, undoubtedly, it is not amongst the best examples of this genre.

Kenneth Tobey had previously starred in the classic 1951 science-fiction film ‘The Thing From Another World’ and Faith Domergue starred in another 1950s science fiction classic, ‘This Island Earth’, playing Dr Ruth Adams, in the same year as ‘It Came From Beneath The Sea’. Domergue was played by the actress Kelli Garner in the 2004 Martin Scorsese film ‘The Aviator’.

Review posted 10 June 2009

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Dollhouse: True Believer (season one, episode five)

2009-06-07T19:16:00.005+01:00

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Rating 2

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Tim Minear

Directed by Allan Kroeker

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Amy Acker (Claire Saunders), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (Mellie), Brian Bloom (Jonas Sparrow), David Alpay (Seth), Brad Hunt (Jesse), Rebecca Field (Kris) and Mark Totty (ATF Agent Lilly)

Echo is made (temporarily) blind and implanted with some kind of imperceptible high-tec camera and sent in to infiltrate a religious sect in Arizona as part of an ATF operation to gain access to the cult’s compound and find out what they are really up to. FBI agent Paul Ballard continues to try to identify the mysterious young woman named “Caroline” in the photograph he was sent and now receives a disc containing a piece of film of Caroline.

...

This fifth episode was a vast improvement on the previous two, or at least I did not find it anywhere near as irritating and dislikeable as those episodes. However, I still struggled with it, perhaps because my generally negative reaction to the show so far is making me increasingly biased against it. While I would be hard pressed to admit to having enjoyed the episode, I certainly did not find it as tedious as previous ones.

For once, Echo was not called on to be full-on fantasy fodder and that made a pleasant change. The excellent and often insightful Charlie Brooker, writing a negative review of the show for the Guardian newspaper, said, “You’re supposed to want to screw the lead character, because the lead character is the impossibly gorgeous Eliza Dushku.” This comment caused some reaction when fans of Joss Whedon discussed it amongst themselves, with Brooker being accused of, amongst other things, being anti-feminist. That is one thing I do not think he can be accused of, although I don’t especially agree with what he writes here. However, I did very quickly get profoundly bored in previous episodes watching Echo riding a motorcycle very fast while looking hot, huntin’ and fishin’ and screwin’ while looking very hot, being hunted while looking very hot, breaking into a high-tec vault while looking very hot, ad infinitum. As Gareth McLean had suggested, it was teen boy fantasy fodder and I am obviously attracted to other forms of fantasy fodder.

Eliza Dushku’s acting has been commented on a great deal, with the suggestion that she doesn’t have the necessary range needed to successfully pull off this role. Lucy Mangan, also writing in the Guardian, in her weekly ‘Cable Girl’ article, was generally favourable towards the show, but asked, “Can Eliza Dushku act? As the alternative vampire slayer Faith, she was always the weakest link in Buffy – an ass-kicking sexbomb, yes, but in scenes that required her to do more than scissor-kick, toss her hair or undulate suggestively, she was agonising to watch.” I personally don’t think Dushku has been a problem so far, even though she has been hamstrung by some terrible writing, or at least very up and down writing, and horribly hackneyed storylines.

To return to episode five, we were invited to note the parallels between the Dollhouse and the religious sect. It wasn’t exactly subtle. In both cases, people have their individual identities taken away and are programmed to behave and conform to the wishes and demands of those whose motivations are unclear and highly suspect. I got the symbolism of Boyd Langton carrying Echo out of the burning building at the end, although it was surely hardly very helpful to the apparent super-secrecy of the Dollhouse that he walked straight towards television news teams and camera crews.

I noted the various twists, as I have done in all the previous episodes to date, although I still struggle to build up any great interest in them. The Dollhouse is a hotbed of intrigue and double-dealing, but the show is still not interesting enough to me to care about it all that much at the moment. Part of the problem, apart from the style of the show, which just isn’t my thing, is that I have next to no interest in any of the characters. On the plus side, I have been impressed by the performance of Amy Acker in a recurring role that is not guaranteed to continue into season two, because of possible budget constraints, although I believe that Joss Whedon wants her back.

‘True Believer’ was okay, if still not convincing enough to me to indicate that this is anywhere near the quality of Whedon’s best work. However, for all my complaints, I am still watching, so there must be something here that is keeping me onboard.

Review posted 7 June 2009

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Dollhouse: Gray Hour (season one, episode four)

2009-06-06T23:10:00.008+01:00

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Rating ½

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Sarah Fain and Elizabeth Craft

Directed by Rod Hardy

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Lisa Lapira (Ivy), Andrew Bowen (Scott), Anson Mount (Vitas) and Mark Ivanir (Cyril)

Echo is programmed to lead a daring art heist, but her programming is wiped remotely before she has completed her mission, leaving her helpless and putting the Dollhouse in danger of being exposed, unless she can be rescued or eliminated.

...

In his review of the third episode, ‘Stage Fright’, for the Guardian newspaper, Gareth McLean wrote, “The jury’s out on whether Dollhouse is an intriguing interrogation of the nature of identity or just teen-boy fantasy fodder.” To me, it feels like the latter pretending to be the former, or perhaps it is simply trying too hard to have its cake and eat it – or maybe it is neither. Whatever it is, I am enjoying it less and less and since I did not exactly enjoy it in the first place that is quite some feat.

I had hoped and expected that the third episode would be the low point and that the quality would now begin to improve, but I disliked this fourth episode intensely. As with the previous episodes, the twists in the story proved to be a conceit that singularly failed to impress me and left me feeling bored and increasingly irritated. More so than that, it was just badly done, whether as a result of the writing or the direction, or maybe a mixture of the two.

Once Echo had been remotely wiped, Sierra was programmed to become the person that Echo should have been, but to no purpose whatsoever. She got to be smug and condescending and made a phone call to Echo that achieved nothing, before having her personality wiped again. When Echo and her accomplices found themselves locked in the vault they were, so we were encouraged to believe, trapped with next to no possibility of escape and yet Echo, who was supposedly completely helpless, was ultimately able to do just that, escape without trace with an absolute minimum of effort. This is just two examples of what I can only describe as the shoddy quality of the episode, which was as shallow as it was slick.

I probably should give up on the show now, because whatever its merits, I am simply not getting anything out of it at all.

Sarah Fain and Elizabeth Craft, who previously worked with Joss Whedon on ‘Angel’, were the creators / executive producers of ‘The Women’s Murder Club’, a short-lived series based on characters created by the writer James Patterson, which I did enjoy, even though it never quite gelled during its brief thirteen episode run.

Review posted 6 June 2009

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Wallander

2009-06-06T12:24:00.008+01:00

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Rating 3½

Directed by Philip Martin (‘Sidetracked’ and ‘One Step Behind’) and Niall MacCormick (‘Firewall’)

Written by Richard Cottan and Richard McBrien, based on novels by Henning Mankell

Starring Kenneth Branagh (Kurt Wallander), Jeany Spark (Linda Wallander), Sadie Shimmin (Lisa Holgersson), Sarah Smart (Anne-Britt Hoglund), Tom Hiddleston (Martinsson), Tom Beard (Svedberg), Richard McCabe (Nyberg), Polly Hemingway (Gertrude) and David Warner (Povel Wallander)

Sidetracked; Kurt Wallander sees a young girl pour petrol over herself and ignite it. He is then called in to investigate a number of killings in which the victim is scalped and realises that the two things are connected.

Firewall; A teenage girl stabs a taxi driver multiple times and claims it was to rob him of money. A man is found dead in the town square, apparently having suffered a heart attack. When the young girl escapes from police custody and is later found dead and the body of the man is stolen from the morgue, Wallander realises the two are connected.

One Step Behind; When the bodies of three young people who had been reported missing are discovered in a secluded woodland, Wallander realises too late that his colleague Svedberg had tried to tell him something important and has now left clues that somehow connect him to the killings.

…

At the time of writing this review, there are nine Kurt Wallander crime-thriller novels written by the acclaimed Swedish author Henning Mankell, with another one due for publication in Sweden in August 2009. The first novel was published in 1991 and translated into English in 1997. Wallander is a police inspector working in Ystad, a locality on the southern tip of Sweden, near to the city of Malmö. The novels set out to shine a light on the hidden rotten core at the heart of Swedish society.

All nine novels were adapted into films in Sweden between 1994 and 2007, the first eight for the SVT television channel and the last one direct to video. Rolf Lassgård played the lead role. A further thirteen films, with Krister Henriksson in the lead role, were made in 2005 and 2006, one for theatrical release and the others released to DVD and broadcast on Swedish television. The first of these films was based on a Henning Mankell novel and the remainder were new stories, based on plots written by Mankell. A further thirteen films were commissioned in 2008.

The English-language ‘Wallander’ series was produced for BBC Scotland and broadcast on BBC1 in three feature-length weekly instalments between 30 November and 14 December 2008. ‘Sidetracked’ is based on the fifth novel ‘Villospår’, first published in 1995. ‘Firewall’ is based on ‘Brandvägg’, the eighth novel, published in 1998, and ‘One Step Behind’ is based on ‘Steget efter’, the seventh novel, published in 1997.

The three television adaptations run in this sequence – ‘Sidetracked’, ‘Firewall’ and ‘One Step Behind’ – and it is essential to continuity that ‘One Step Behind’ takes place after ‘Firewall’. However, the novel ‘Steget efter’ (‘Firewall’) was published after ‘Villospår’ (‘One Step Behind’). I am not sure why this is and having not read the novels, I do not know how far, if at all, the television adaptations deviate from the books.

The three films are really rather good and although I have not previously found Kenneth Branagh an especially interesting or watchable actor, I thought he was excellent here, even if I suspect he is not necessarily a perfect match for the character of Kurt Wallander. Branagh portrays Wallander as very world-weary. He seems obsessed by his work, but is at once both very emotionally involved in the cases he investigates and at the same disengaged from the world around him. This is explored through his relationship with his daughter Linda and we see parallels in his father Povel, an artist who is in the early stages of dementia. Wallander himself has to face the truth of it in the third story ‘One Step Behind’ when he realises that he knows next to nothing about his colleague Svedberg, even though Svedberg had described Wallander as his best friend.

It wasn’t as unrelentingly bleak as I had expected, which I actually think is to its detriment. I could not help but think throughout that it was just a little bit too slick, almost too hopeful. I found myself comparing it to ‘Jar City’, an Icelandic film based on a novel by the crime-thriller writer Arnaldur Indriðason, and in comparison it was almost like watching an episode of ‘Heartbeat’. I also had to remind myself several times that these stories were taking place in Sweden and the characters were Swedish, even though the location filming was done in Ystad and the interior sets were constructed at Ystad Studios. I felt that the geographical location sometimes rather got lost, perhaps simply because all the actors are British.

Not being particularly knowledgeable about the geography of Scandinavia, I wondered about Wallander’s apparent ability to drive from Ystad in Sweden to Copenhagen in Denmark, seemingly in a couple hours. It was only when I did some research that I discovered that Malmö has a direct link to Copenhagen/Kastrup airport via the Öresund Bridge.

The three episodes were very well received by critics and watched by an audience in excess of 5.5 million viewers. A second series, adapting three more Wallander novels, has been announced. Production is due to start sometime in 2009.

Review posted 6 June 2009

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Dollhouse: Stage Fright (season one, episode three)

2009-05-29T10:35:00.009+01:00

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Rating 1

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon

Directed by David Solomon

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Amy Acker (Claire Saunders), Enver Gjokaj (Lubov / Victor), Kevin Kilner (Joe Hearn), Jaime Lee Kirchner (Rayna Russell), Jim Piddock (Biz) and Graham Norris (The Fan)

When the life of singer Rayna Russell is put in danger by an obsessive fan, her manager, an old acquaintance of Adelle DeWitt, looks to the Dollhouse for help. Echo is programmed to be Rayna’s new backing singer and is also programmed with a sub-conscious need to protect her at all costs. A second “Active”, Sierra, is programmed to be the winner of a “Rayna’s Number One Fan” competition, allowing her to meet the singer and spend time with her.

...

I was not particularly impressed by the first two episodes of ‘Dollhouse’, although I found the second one marginally more engaging than the opener, but I thought this third episode was, in the main, absolutely dreadful. I really did not like it at all.

Presumably, there is a little external message here about the nature of celebrity and also a twist on the old clichéd celebrity / obsessive fan relationship. I didn’t find it remotely interesting. We are also invited to view Echo’s life through that of Rayna, a trick that was used with much more élan in the season two ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ episode ‘Inca Mummy Girl’.

I am not quite sure what the purpose of the second “Active” Sierra was in all this, except that it was a rather heavy-handed way of continuing the storyline that is establishing an increasingly close link between her and Echo (thus the little secret sign between the two of them at the end of the episode, indicating an evolving consciousness outside of their programming). There is a scene in which Boyd Langton is talking to Sierra’s “minder” Joe Hearn, who tells him, “My girl only comes into play in an extreme scenario.” How extreme, exactly? Presumably, more extreme than being kidnapped by a deranged and seemingly homicidal stalker; more extreme than seeing Rayna’s life apparently being threatened, not only by this stalker, but also by Echo, in her guise as Jordan, the backing singer. It all seemed a bit naff and cack-handed to me.

At present, Topher Brink, the scientist who programmes the Actives, would appear to be a kind of watered-down mixture of Warren Meers and Andrew Wells from ‘Buffy’, personality wise. I am not able to get past that as yet, although he has the potential to be one of the more interesting characters. Claire Saunders is also quite an interesting character, and nicely played by Amy Acker, although I suspect I have already guessed where that storyline is going.

I think I am right in saying that ‘Stage Fright’ is generally deemed to be one of the season’s weaker episodes by a lot of fans. I am hoping it does not get any worse than this, because apart from a few vaguely interesting asides in the Dollhouse, I thought it was woeful, a real stinker. In the fullness of time, of course, it will probably be possible to re-appraise the episode in the light of a more complete picture of the overall narrative of the season, but at the moment this is all very poor and a long way below Joss Whedon’s best work.

Review posted 29 May 2009

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Dollhouse: The Target (season one, episode two)

2009-05-25T14:09:00.016+01:00

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Rating 1¾

Created by Joss Whedon

Written and directed by Steven DeKnight

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Amy Acker (Claire Saunders) and Matt Keesler (Richard Connell)

Echo is imprinted to become the companion of a new Dollhouse client Richard Connell, joining him in a number of adrenalin-pumping activities out in the wilderness, but Connell plans to take things in an altogether more dangerous and terrifying direction. Paul Ballard continues to investigate the mysterious Dollhouse, despite the open antagonism of his FBI colleagues, and he receives an anonymous package containing a photograph of Echo, with her real first name “Caroline” written on the back. In a series of flashbacks we observe the aftermath of multiple violent deaths in the Dollhouse and the subsequent arrival of Boyd Langton as the personal “handler” for Echo, who survived the carnage without injury.

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The first episode of ‘Dollhouse’, the latest television series by Joss Whedon, the creator of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, did not engage me and when I tried watching it for a second time I gave up half way through. My partner, who also watched it on this occasion, described it as “turgid”, which is a not entirely unreasonable one-word summing up of the episode. Having said all this, I don’t want to dislike the show and I was sufficiently intrigued to take an early look at ‘The Target’, the second episode of this first season.

The writer and director here, Steven DeKnight, has worked with Joss Whedon previously, on both ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel’. As such, I had some familiarity with his work, particularly via ‘Buffy’, including one of the most discussed and debated episodes of that show, ‘Dead Things’, from its sixth season.

‘The Target’ is constructed in a series of interconnecting scenes cutting back and forth between the past and the present; so that we constantly learn a little bit more as the episode progresses about how certain characters have arrived at this point in time. It’s a very familiar tried and tested formula and one that is executed adequately enough here.

I found that large chunks of it didn’t hold my attention and I became quite bored a lot of the time. This was particularly true of the action scenes out in the wilderness, which I have no doubt were intended to keep us on the edge of our seats, but almost had me reaching for the off button on the remote control. The various twists and turns were so easy to guess in advance that I began to wonder if I should be shouting at the television, “He’s behind you! ... No, don’t drink the water!”, etc, in traditional Christmas pantomime fashion. I should mention at this point that, when watching ‘Buffy’, a series I adore, I generally found the fight scenes least interesting, so it is not necessarily the episode that is at fault here, although it did all seem a little hackneyed.

Of greater interest was the unfolding of some more titbits about the ethical and moral issues surrounding the existence and activities of the Dollhouse. If more time is given over to this in future episodes and less time is spent on flashy, shallow, stereotypically genre-specific two-dimensional running around it would certainly make the series more interesting and enticing for me – more time spent inside the Dollhouse and less time spent out of it. At least Eliza Dushku’s last series ‘Tru Calling’ was quite fun to watch, something that I would not be able to say of ‘Dollhouse’ at this early stage.

I do wonder about the character Boyd Langton, who seems to openly express his qualms about the ethics of what the Dollhouse is doing. Given the nature of the organisation, why would they employ someone who is clearly not entirely on board with what they do? The possible argument that he is ‘the best at what he does’ does not wash, although that is all I can bring to mind at the moment. Also, for an organisation that appears to have enormous power and is able to remain invisible to anyone other than those it wishes to be known to, it seems to be all too easily fooled into accepting clients who are not what they say they are, suggesting abject incompetence or possibly just complacency. Undoubtedly more will be revealed in time.

I am not very convinced at the moment about Paul Ballard, the ‘Dollhouse’ equivalent of Fox Mulder, “the FBI’s most unwanted”, only with fewer quirks. It isn’t the character per se, just the ‘X-Files’-lite cliché of it all. Put simply, the “genius” of Joss Whedon is built up so much that it is constantly tempting to judge him, perhaps, more harshly, something I am sure I am guilty of, simply by comparing all of his subsequent work against the remarkably high standards of ‘Buffy’.

All in all, even though I was bored more often than not, I thought ‘The Target’ was a marked improvement on ‘Ghost’.

Review posted 25 May 2009

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Dollhouse: Ghost (season one, episode one)

2009-05-20T21:13:00.029+01:00

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Rating 1½

Created by Joss Whedon

Written and directed by Joss Whedon

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra) and Amy Acker (Claire Saunders)

General: The Dollhouse is a secret organisation that offers its services to the rich and powerful. “Actives” in the Dollhouse have their memories wiped and are then imprinted with memories and personality traits taken from various real life sources to create a perfect match for the requirements of individual clients. Once each assignment or engagement is complete, the Actives are wiped of these new memories and once again become a blank canvas ready to be programmed for their next assignment.

Episode specific: Echo is programmed to be a tough and highly experienced negotiator when the young daughter of a client is kidnapped and held to ransom. However, Topher Brink, the scientist responsible for programming her, incorporates flaws as well as strengths into the memories of the Actives to make them more real, more complete, and on this occasion it seriously compromises her assignment. Echo’s “handler”, Boyd Langton, seems to have some qualms about the ethics of what the Dollhouse does, but these are not shared by Adelle DeWitt, who runs the operation, or Laurence Dominic, the head of security. In the meanwhile, Paul Ballard, an FBI special agent, is investigating this highly secretive organisation, which some believe to be a myth and others, like himself, are convinced is real.

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Joss Whedon was the creator of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, which began life as a 1992 feature film, released to generally unenthusiastic reviews and a comparatively uninspired box office gross. It was somewhat unexpectedly turned into a television series, initially on the now defunct WB network in America, for a total of seven seasons between 1997 and 2003. It is fair to say that ‘Buffy’, while it was not a huge ratings success, had a profound effect on many levels and it is widely regarded to be one of the best American television series of its time, if not of all-time.

In the aftermath of ‘Buffy’, Whedon was now established as one of the most talented and creative forces working in television. His previous credits included the acclaimed television series ‘Roseanne’ (he wrote four episodes during season two of the show) and the Academy Award nominated 1995 Disney film ‘Toy Story’ (he co-wrote the screenplay). He had also worked as a “script doctor”, contributing to films like ‘Speed’, ‘Waterworld’ and ‘Twister’. His subsequent work has included the ‘Buffy’ spin-off show ‘Angel’, which ran for a total of five seasons, and the acclaimed but short-lived ‘Firefly’, the premature cancellation of which caused considerable criticism of the Fox network.

In the days when ‘Buffy’ was still in production I considered myself to be a fan of Joss Whedon, but in recent times I think it would be more accurate to call myself a lapsed fan. While I consider ‘Buffy’ to be probably the best television series ever made and certainly one of my all-time favourites, I am not as fond of his other work. I quite enjoyed ‘Angel’, but not unduly so. There are very few episodes of that show I have watched more than once and a few I am still yet to see. I didn’t particularly like ‘Firefly’ and I actively disliked its feature film spin-off ‘Serenity’, which I actually watched three times, hoping to understand why it received such effusive praise. I failed. I also found myself feeling at odds with what I thought was over-zealous and sometimes counter-productive efforts by some fans to promote that film and sing its praises.

Whedon has a very loyal and active core fan-base. On the plus side, it is a tight-knit community in which countless lasting friendships have been formed and a quite considerable amount of effort has been put into not only finding novel ways to promote his work but also support causes that are close to his heart, meaning for example that the international human rights organisation Equality Now has benefited from the concerted efforts of those fans. Less commendable, perhaps, is the rather superior attitude displayed by some of them towards anyone who chooses not to watch Whedon’s television shows or dares to be in any way critical of his work – or is simply unaware of it. As an example, when discussing the relatively disappointing viewing figures achieved by the first season of ‘Dollhouse’ during its run on the Fox network, there was some criticism of “the ignorant masses” (to quote an expression used), including those who chose to watch the television series ‘Ghost Whisperer’. It was suggested that Joss Whedon’s fans belong to a select few who would have the necessary intellectual superiority needed to fully understand and appreciate his work. It is not so much the sentiment, as arrogant and impolite as it is, as the manner in which it is expressed that makes me find this attitude, which has also been present in relation to discussion of ‘Firefly’ and ‘Serenity’, rather offensive and ill-informed and not just because I count myself amongst the ignorant masses. I sometimes watch ‘Ghost Whisperer’ and while I make no great claims for it, I enjoy it – and I am perfectly capable of identifying both its merits and flaws.

As a result of feeling, perhaps, slightly disenfranchised by these opinions, I was undoubtedly biased before even watching ‘Dollhouse’. While I had tried not to read too much about it, I was aware of the basic premise and it did not especially tempt me. I was also aware of the mixed reaction the series received in America. The early episodes were, generally speaking, not that well received, although it was widely agreed that the series improved dramatically later on during the season, especially from episode six onwards, with a few people going as far as to claim this might be Joss Whedon’s best show yet, although the concluding episode of this first season was greeted with mixed reviews.

Just over three months after the first episode aired in America the show has now arrived in the UK via the Sci-Fi Channel. The weekly average percentage share of total television viewers for this channel is around 0.2%, meaning that ‘Dollhouse’ is not destined to reach a wide audience over here at present. Out of mild curiosity and a residue of fondness for Joss Whedon, I watched the episode, expecting very little from it, particularly in response to some fairly mediocre reviews. One British critic, writing in the free London newspaper Metro, called it, “A bizarre marriage of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Grand Designs,” which made me laugh. In the event, although I almost switched off right at the very beginning in response to the unutterably naff motorcycle race scene, it was not as bad as I feared it might be. I wasn’t wowed by it by any stretch of the imagination, finding some of the dialogue decidely clunky (“Ever try to clean an actual slate? You always see what was on it before.”), and it certainly did not stretch my avowedly unexceptional intellect to make sense of what was happening! I cannot pretend that I liked it much, finding it bordering on the tedious simply because it did not engage me, but within the constraints of its given genre, which it seemed to conform to rigidly, there are the seeds of what might be a potentially interesting concept.

Some observers have questioned whether Eliza Dushku, who has worked with Joss Whedon before in ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel’, possesses a sufficiently honed acting range to successfully take on the lead role of a character who must constantly change and can never really develop instantly recognisable personality traits week in and week out. I thought her performance in this opening episode was okay. None of characters made a huge impression on me and the same would have to be said of the acting, which was clearly competent across the board. I do feel that Whedon occasionally has a tendency to write “English” characters in rather stereotypical two-dimensional terms and that feeling presented itself again whenever Olivia Williams was on the screen. This is strange in many respects, not least because Whedon lived in Britain and attended school here in his youth. However, I guess the character will develop as the episodes progress.

Had this not been a Joss Whedon show I think it very unlikely I would have watched this opening episode. Nothing I’ve seen so far makes me excited about watching future episodes, although I might try to at least check out the next one or two. I am not sure, however, that I will make it as far as the second half of the season, when, so it seems, things start to get interesting. In truth, there are other things I could be doing that, in all likelihood, will entice me more. We shall see.

It just remains to say that the Fox network has announced that it is renewing the show for a second season of thirteen episodes; good news for fans of Joss Whedon and of ‘Dollhouse’.

Review posted 20 May 2009 - minor changes made on 24 May 2009 after watching (part of) the episode for a second time

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Journey to the Centre of the Earth (2008)

2009-05-18T23:47:00.005+01:00

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Rating 1

Directed by Eric Brevig

Written by Michael Weiss, Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, based on the novel by Jules Verne

Starring Brendon Fraser (Trevor Anderson), Josh Hutcherson (Sean Anderson), Anita Briem (Hannah Ásgeirsson), Jane Wheeler (Elizabeth Anderson), Seth Meyers (Alan Kitzens), Giancarlo Caltabiano (Leonard) and Jean Michel Paré (Max Anderson)

Professor Trevor Anderson, a volcanologist, teaches uninterested students at a Boston university. He learns that funding for his research has been stopped and then remembers at the last minute that his sister Elizabeth is bringing his 13-year-old nephew Sean to stay. Trevor last saw Sean, the son of his brother Max, who disappeared ten years previously, when he was seven. At first, Sean shows no interest in staying with his uncle, but when a box of old possessions belonging to his father reveals a dog-eared copy of ‘A Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, with hand-scribbled notes in the margin that leads Trevor to rush back to his laboratory, they soon find themselves on a flight to Iceland. Hannah Ásgeirsson, a mountain guide, whose late father was a volcanologist who had worked with Max, acts as their guide, but a storm traps them in a cave and from there they find themselves heading to the centre of the earth, where they discover that the wild theories of Trevor’s brother and Hannah’s father were true and that the novel by Jules Verne was a scientific journal disguised as a work of fiction.

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The celebrated novel by the French author Jules Verne, ‘A Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, was first published in 1864. It was the third of 54 novels published during his lifetime, spanning a period of 42 years between 1863 and 1905. Verne died in 1905 at the age of 77. The first film version of the book was released in 1959 and starred James Mason.

This 2008 version, filmed in 3D, had a production budget of $60 million and grossed a little under $242 million worldwide. It was originally intended to make a sequel, this time based on the legend of Atlantis, but the box office performance of the film was not considered to be sufficient and those plans were subsequently suspended. The film received mixed but generally positive reviews and has a 61% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 147 reviews counted.

Brendon Fraser is a likeable and competent actor who has proved himself able to carry an action-adventure story previously in the ‘Mummy’ movies. The Jules Verne story is an early science-fantasy classic. However, I thought this new version was rotten. It was just one long, boring funfair ride from start to finish. The special effects were uninspiring and left me decidedly unimpressed. There was no particular sense of suspense or excitement. The acting was, at best, adequate. It seems to have been targeted at an audience of pre- and early-teens and on that basis it is probably reasonably successful, but it really could and should have been a whole lot better than this.

Perhaps the only notable thing about the film is that the Icelandic character Hannah Ásgeirsson is played by an Icelandic actress.

Review posted 18 May 2009

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The Bunker

2009-05-17T15:41:00.006+01:00

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Rating 3

Directed by Rob Green

Written by Clive Dawson

Starring Jason Flemyng (Baumann), Andrew Tiernan (Schenke), Christopher Fairbank (Heydrich), Simon Kunz (Krupp), Andrew Lee Potts (Neumann), John Carlisle (Mirus), Eddie Marsan (Kreuzmann), Jack Davenport (Ebert), Charley Boorman (Franke) and Nicholas Hamnett (Engels)

During the final stages of World War II seven war-hardened German soldiers are pushed back by advancing American troops and take refuge in an anti-tank bunker in the Black Forest that is manned by a veteran of World War I and a teenage recruit. Convinced that they are surrounded by unseen American forces, they are told of a series of tunnels underneath the bunker, built as an armoury, but never finished and rumoured to be haunted. The old soldier tells a story of a legend of hundreds of plague victims buried on the site hundreds of years earlier.

At first, the soldiers are told to remain in the bunker and defend it, but one by one they venture into the tunnels, convinced that the Americans have infiltrated them, only to turn on one another as the claustrophobia distorts their grip on reality.

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‘The Bunker’ is a 2001 British horror film that uses atmosphere and suggestion to create a sense of foreboding and paranoia, allowing the audience to decide if there is real evil present in the subterranean tunnels or if it is simply in the minds of the soldiers, the result of guilt for actions that are hinted at via a series of fragmented flashbacks.

The film is not entirely successful in what it sets out to do and is prone to becoming a little messy and unfocused at times. The tunnels are, we are informed, a labyrinth stretching over a wide area, but they seem to be anything but that, which does rather take away from the sense that as the soldiers move further into them so the unsettling sense that something evil lurks in the shadows becomes stronger. The impression, unfortunately, is that they never actually venture more than a few yards in any direction. Having said this, it is genuinely quite effective, not least because it uses the imagination of its audience to create the sense of unease and makes good use of a decent cast of actors. It has been compared to the 1983 Michael Mann film ‘The Keep’, which I have not seen. I thought it bore some resemblance to another British horror film, ‘Deathwatch’, released in 2002 and this time set in the trenches during World War I.

There are five reviews collected at Rotten Tomatoes, four of them identified as being positive. The film critic Kim Newman, writing for Empire magazine, called it, “An unusually persuasive, creepy movie,” although he went on to say it was, “Perhaps a little too ambiguous for the video gore crowd,” which sums it up quite nicely.

Review posted 17 May 2009

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The Family Stone

2009-05-14T20:14:00.010+01:00

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Rating 2¾

Written and directed by Thomas Bezucha

Starring Sarah Jessica Parker (Meredith Morton), Claire Danes (Julie Morton), Dermot Mulroney (Everett Stone), Diane Keaton (Sybil Stone), Craig T Nelson (Kelly Stone), Rachel McAdams (Amy Stone), Luke Wilson (Ben Stone), Tyrone Giordano (Thad Stone), Brian J White (Patrick Thomas), Elizabeth Reaser (Susannah Stone Trousdale), Savannah Stehlin (Elizabeth Trousdale) and Paul Scheinder (Brad Stevenson)

Everett Stone takes his girlfriend Meredith Morton to stay with his family for Christmas. Her somewhat up-tight conservative demeanour clashes with their demonstrative behaviour and bohemian outlook. The family has already been turned against her by Everett’s sister Amy, the only member to have previously met her. Amy makes no attempt to hide her dislike of Meredith and she is joined in this by the mother, Sybil. Meredith feels that she is unwelcome and takes refuge at the local hotel and persuades her sister Julie to join her to give her moral support. As Christmas Eve gives way to Christmas Day, the various accusations and recriminations reach boiling point.

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‘The Family Stone’ was released into cinemas in the US in December 2005 and would appear to have been intended as a kind of throwback to and updating of the screwball comedies of the 1930s. It is not a comedy as such, more a drama with comedic overtones, perhaps vaguely similar to the films of Woody Allen, to a degree. Imagine ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ with all the quirkiness sucked out of it, replaced by some slightly awkward physical comedy. The film benefits from a very good cast. Sarah Jessica Parker, in particular, is excellent. So are Claire Danes and Rachel McAdams. Parker was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance.

It is never entirely clear why the Stone family take such an immediate dislike to Meredith, unless we simply assume they are a bunch of hypocritical inverted snobs, which I guess might be the intention. Either that or we are supposed to also react against Meredith because she is not the free spirit they clearly expect any person brought into the family to be. This is apart from Susannah Stone, the older of the two sisters, who is basically a non-character.

Meredith is uptight and a little bit prissy, but she does nothing to deserve the unfriendly way they treat her from the moment she arrives – in spite of a scene later on when the family sit down together for dinner and she makes some embarrassing and questionable comments about homosexuality. They seem to take delight in mocking her and they are so utterly objectionable towards her that even as the story unfolds and individual characters are forced to look at themselves and their actions it is nearly impossible to feel any kind of warmth towards them. Amy is just spiteful and immature, but I found the mother, in particular, quite despicable in her behaviour – and her back-story did nothing to mitigate this, even though I assume we were expected to feel sympathy for her. The film continues in this manner until we reach a kind of wishy-washy final confrontation when truths come out, after which everything is all happy and wrapped up neatly in a ribbon bow.

There is actually a half-decent film hidden in here somewhere. It is done with some degree of expertise and individual scenes are quite effective. The acting is excellent, which is what really holds the film together and makes it watchable. Also, I am a sucker for Christmas films. Perhaps I would have responded more positively to this one had I watched it at Christmas time, rather than on a grey May afternoon.

‘The Family Stone’ received mixed reviews. It has a 52% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 147 reviews. 77 of these reviews were judged to have been positive and 70 were negative. It had a production budget of $18 million and grossed a very respectable $92 million at the box office.

Review posted 14 May 2009

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Eurotrip

2009-05-13T13:00:00.003+01:00

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Rating 2¾

Directed by Jeff Schaffer, Alec Berg (uncredited) and David Mandel (uncredited)

Written by Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer

Starring Scott Mechlowicz (Scott), Jacob Pitts (Cooper), Michelle Trachtenberg (Jenny), Travis Wester (Jamie), Jessica Böhrs (Mieke), Nial Iskhakov (Bert), Kristin Kruek (Fiona), Vinnie Jones (Mad Maynard), Fred Armisen (Creepy Italian Guy), Lucy Lawless (Madame Vandersexxx), Jeffrey Tambor (Mr Thomas) and Matt Damon (Donny)

When Scott is dumped by his girlfriend Fiona on high school graduation day he heads for Germany in search of his email ‘pen-pal’ Mieke; with his best buddy Cooper tagging along. They take the cheapest flight they can get, landing them in London. From there, they have various outlandish adventures as they try to get to Berlin, joining up with their other friends from high school, twins Jenny and Jamie, along the way.

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‘Eurotrip is a crude and puerile teen gross-out comedy that is obsessed with sex and portrays various European cultures in offensively stereotypical fashion. However, although it is not especially funny, it somehow manages to be a lot more likeable than it should be. I cannot think of anything else to say about it.

The film has a 46% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 113 reviews. It had a production budget of $25 million and grossed a little under $20.8 million at the box office, although it undoubtedly would have been a more sure-fire commercial proposition on its subsequent DVD release.

Review posted 13 May 2009

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One Missed Call

2009-05-13T12:51:00.007+01:00

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Rating 2

Directed by Eric Valette

Written by Andrew Klaven, from the screenplay by Miwako Daira, based on the novel by Yasushi Akimoto

Starring Shannyn Sossamon (Beth Raymond), Edward Burns (Jack Andrews), Ana Claudia Talancón (Taylor Antony), Azura Skye (Leann Cole), Johnny Lewis (Brian Sousa), Meagan Good (Shelley Baum), Margaret Cho (Mickey Lee), Rhoda Griffis (Marie Layton), Ariel Winter (Ellie Layton), Regan Lamb (Laurel Layton) and Ray Wise (Ted Summers)

Various people receive a message on their cell phones saying they have one missed call. When playing back the message, each time it is from a few days in the future and they hear their own voices in the moments immediately before death. After each death, a small red candy ball is found in the mouth of the victim. Beth Raymond reports these strange events to the police, who do not believe her, except for Detective Jack Andrews, whose own sister died in similar circumstances.

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‘One Missed Call’ was first released in January 2008 and is based on a 2004 Japanese horror film called ‘Chakushin Ari’, directed by Takashi Miike, the celebrated director of the controversial and ultra-violent ‘Ichi the Killer’. I have not as yet seen the original.

The film has little to recommend it, but it passes the time painlessly enough. It didn’t particularly engage me in any way, but at the same time I didn’t actively dislike it. This is a tired formula now, coming on the back of ‘The Ring’, ‘The Grudge’, ‘Pulse’, etc. It has also been mentioned, quite correctly, that it borrows elements from the ‘Final Destination’ films.

‘One Missed Call’ has a 0% rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 71 reviews and they named it the worst film of 2008. It had a production budget of $20 million and grossed $45.8 million at the box office.

Review posted 13 May 2009

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