from the cheap seats

DVD: The Dark Knight

2009-01-07T19:03:00.001Z

Imagine sitting down in a stylish restaurant with an erudite friend to a nice meal. Before the menus have arrived they try to make some grand point about the world. Then before you've ordered something you said leads them to make the same point in a different way. Then as the starters arrive it sparks something that leads to another mini-lecture on the same subject. That is basically how The Dark Knight feels.

There is no knocking the credentials of this film which is well cast, looks great and has some memerable characters. However all of the set pieces return to the same question of "when is it justifiable to take a life or take liberties". Initially this looks like an interesting idea but after the third time it deadens the effect. An argument is always best made succinctly and eloquently. The more you go on about something the more people drift off.

Think of the final scene in Seven with Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey and the box. The reason it works so well is that the film spent 2 hours getting you to the right place and then asking the question. The Dark Knight lacks this restraint and discipline.

The other problem the film has is that it's characters are now so well established that even someone who hasn't read a comic book knows exactly what is going to happen with the Joker and Harvey "two face" Dent. This rather wrecks any dramatic tension.

The performances of the cast can't be knocked, with Heath Ledger's dry mouthed turn as the Joker likely to become iconic, and deservedly so. However despite some well executed action scenes I had ceased caring quite a while before the end.

DVD: Iron Man

2009-01-07T18:54:00.001Z

Iron Man is exceptionally silly film. In many ways this shouldn't be an issue as there have been action films that have done things as scarcely believable as knocking up a robot suit that allows you to fly around the world and pretty much into space. Oh, and you can knock up a working prototype in a cave from spare parts.

The problem with all this silliness comes when the film wants to be taken serious and makes profound statements about the nature of war and the weapons industry. I'm happy to be entertained, informed or a combination of both. But preaching from a film that appears to have only seen the real word in a magazine article is just annoying.

Robert Downey Jr does a good job, mainly because his life story fits so well with his character that you project depth onto the role despite the script failing to supply any. Gwyneth Paltrow is less fornuate and basically is required to stand around and occasionally squeak. It's tempting to mock her for this, but it's more depressing to note that a bankable oscar winning actress feels that she needs to take parts that are thinner than her waist to maintain a successful career.

If this is the golden age of superhero films can I go back to the dark ages when these kind of films were actually fun.

Film - Australia

2009-01-07T18:47:00.001Z

Australia comfortably fits into the tradition of epic films such as Titanic, Pearl Harbour and Gone With The Wind. However whereas these three films concentrated on a single subject - the sinking of the Titanic, the Japanese attack and the American Civil War - Australia attempts seems intent on covering as much Australia history as physically possible.

The film starts with the English Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) taking over a cattle farm in the Australian outback and attempting to run it with assistance from the coarse Drover (Hugh Jackman). This section veers between Once Upon A Time In The West and City Slickers in an uneasy mix of grandeur and slapstick that feels like Norman Wisdom doing La Boheme. This plot strand is dispensed with halfway through to focus on World War 2 and the Japanese attack on Sydney which acts a great excuse for CGI. Strung all the way through the film is a subplot about the 'stolen generation' of mixed race white and aboriginal children who were taken from their families. Finally there are bucket loads of picture postcard shots of the outback to make the Australian tourist board happy after they pitched up a sizeable chunk of the budget.

With all this subject matter to cover the film regularly relies on stereotypes and intensely broad directorial touches. Within the first 10 minutes it is clear that any 'spot the cliche' drinking games undertaken whilst watching the film would result in a fatality for anyone with a constitution lesser than Oliver Reed's.

The actors all try their best with the weird mix of farce and sentimentality they are handed. The film also looks pretty dramatic at times, albeit in a way that leaves you expecting Judith Charmers to enter stage left at any moment, but you are left feeling that the writers and director needed to say "no" to some of the proposed ideas. Maybe Jim Carrey was acting as a consultant on the film while preparing to make Yes Man. The end result is a 6 hour mini series that has been hacked down to half it's length by stripping out all the subtlety and depth whilst lacking the good grace of including a pee break.

The film's energy and eagerness to please mean that it is not a great disaster. Had it been edited down to having a single plot it might have even made for a perfectly agreeable 'lesser film'. As it is you are surprised they didn't try to cover the shipping of convicts out to Australia before the credits and bung in a tribute to Shane Warne at the end.

Baz Luhramnn has always undertaken ambitious projects in his time in cinema so it's inevitable that he would overreach at some point. In the end Australia is the sound of 100 recently spinning plates crashing to the ground. However approached with reduced expectations and a recently evacuated bladder there is still some pleasure to be had from the wreckage.

Film: Quantum Of Solace

2009-01-07T18:46:00.001Z

It's quite a feat for the alarm bells to start ringing about a film before you've got past the BBFC certificate, but staring at a title as lousy as Quantum Of Solace in plain text on a big screen makes you think that it that's the best they could do with Bond then maybe they should hand the reins over to someone else. The ringing gets louder when you realise that this is the first Bond film that acts as a direct sequel to the previous film. Clearly since the Daniel Craig bond has borrowed so much from Jason Bourne it may as well borrow the idea of a continuing narrative. However this requires a memorable plot and the memorable bits of Casino Royale (poker scene, collapsing venetian towers, running along cranes, muscles and swimming trunks) had as much to do with the plot as the popcorn you bought in the foyer.

Hence we have a pissed off Bond busting heads and being told to get some perspective for little discernible reason. Now most of the Bond franchise has got by without a particularly coherent narrative thanks to charm and good set pieces. Quantum Of Solace however wants to be a serious picture so charm has been jettisoned and the set pieces are a bunch of fast cut punching that gets you intimately associated with Mr Craig's chin.

The serious down to business ethos of the new bond means an inherently simple plot is told so obliquely you feel the script was written in an ancient code and traded memorable lines for high brow references to oil prices and the environment. Yet even the film makers lose faith in this dark, satirical, political feel by including a character called Strawberry Fields who wears nothing more than a raincoat and whose sole purpose appears to be to allow a punch-in-the-face subtle reference to Goldfinger.

There is at least lashings of style in the set dressing and use of locations which gives a feeling of quality and a production budget well spent. However the short running time (for a Bond film anyway) feels less like a relief and more like a consequence of cutting out narrative, character and a few more long shots in the set pieces. Even the credit sequence is lackluster.

With a strong lead in Daniel Craig and a fairly indestructible formula it would would be harsh to describe Quantum Of Solace as failure. However something that feels like a po-faced Bourne facsimile is a waste of a Bond film. For all the talk of a new dawn for Bond this is the fourth consecutive Bond film written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade - writers who also came up with Johnny English - and here it feels like they are trying to turn out something that feels unnatural to them to fit with a perceived fashion. More worryingly the next Bond film looks set to continue the story and make the same mistakes all over again.

DVD - Black Sheep

2008-07-29T22:34:00.001+01:00

With Peter Jackson's empire now seeming to employ most of New Zealand either directly or through the WETA workshops special effects labs, it was only a matter of time before someone made a decent fist of making a worthy successor to bad taste.

Black Sheep is not only a B movie, but conciously cheap and silly on. Any film that decides to have it's pivotal scary scenes composed mainly of stock footage of sheep running around hill-sides is either very clever or very silly. In this case probably both.

The plot is fairly simple, sheep-phobic city boy returns to farm to find his brother is genetically engineering sheep, bumps into a improbably attractive female animal rights activists and a need for mint sauce increases rapidly.

The film flies through it's 80 minutes aiming for humour and gore rather than tension and surprise - and generally hitting the target. It's not a great film by any stretch, but if ewe like cheap comedy horror you won't find this baa-d at all.

(sorry about the puns)

Gig: Duke Special

2008-06-17T22:53:00.001+01:00

There is a lot of presentation going on in this solo show by Irish balladeer Duke Special at Birmingham's Glee Club. As the lights going down a jumpy and scratchy piece of 1930's film plays (coming from a state of the art video projector). Mr Special (lets face it calling him Duke sounds just as pompus) walks out in a battered bohemian style suit nervously eyeing the audience through a ton of mascara. He winds up an old record player and drops the needle on a crackly backing track (played from a dat?) and wanders over to his battered piano (actually a keyboard in a wooden frame).

All of this should lead to derision, except that when he starts singing songs of love and loss you forget the pretence and start to believe. His voice grabs your heart and squeezes it with lyrics that splash a little poetry and a mass of drama together. Tracks like Freewheel and Salvation Tambourine from his breakthrough album Songs From The Deep Forest shine brightest however his new material appears strong as well. Mid-set he hands out lyric sheets and gets the audience to sing along to some old music hall songs and it's clear everyone is in the palm of his hand.

Because in the end it's not what's real, it's about what you believe - and Duke Special can make believers out of most.

Book: Predators Gold by Philip Reeve

2008-06-16T22:48:00.001+01:00

Set in decades into a post apocolyptic world where the surviving cities have been turned into mini Death Stars that stalk the scorched surface of the earth, Predators Gold is the second in Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines series. A ripping action yarn it follows young outcasts Hester Shaw and Tom Natsworthy as they flee from London and end up heading into the icy wastes of America.

Reeve's talent for a page turning narrative is spiced up by beautifully observations of how our contempary life is remember in folklore many years from now with our history having been destroyed in a nuclear flash. Aimed at kids but enjoyable for all.

Book: Saturday by Ian McEwan

2008-06-11T23:06:00.001+01:00

Any book that deals with mortality, poetry, the blues, parenthood and the war on terror should know that if it's doing it's job properly it doesn't need to jump around for the readers attention. For the most part this tale of day in the life aging neurologist Henry Perowne does this, treating the big subjects with a subtle touch and a narrative of ambling pace that allows you to smell the flowers and inhabit Perowne's body.

The march against the Iraq war is seen from the perspective of someone trying to drive across London to play squash and the musing on family life are pulled into the context of an impending evening get together. However it seems like McEwan paniced at some point as he feels the need to through in a needless set-piece of gangland violence to spice things up. It jolts the reader out of medidation and back into the world of convention narrative, unfortunately ruining an otherwise strong novel.

Film: Sex And The City

2008-06-10T19:10:00.002+01:00

Being a man who can only use the words Manolo Blahnik in this sentence after looking up the spelling on the internet and whose general view of romantic comedies is that it's amazing how they have managed to invent a form of comedy with no laughs it's fair to say that I'm not the target market for this film. In fact I'm merely a part of what the marketing folks would think of as the secondary market of blokes who will be dragged unwillingly into the cinema hoping the film will be over soon. A case of close your eyes and think of Jean Claude Van Damme.

The film picks up 3 years after the TV series ended with the girls (surely women by now?) having spent the whole time in stable relationships. You would have thought after having six series of man-trouble cropping up on a weekly basis they would regard this period of calm as a freakishly unnatural phenomenon like bees disappearing or the New York streets being free of dirt and rubbish. However like Michael Myers appearing at Halloween, you know it won't be long before disaster strikes and they will have nothing to protect themselves except sassy girl chat, kooky outfits and designer names.

When it started Sex And The City was viewed as shocking TV that broke taboos like they were a credit limits in a Gucci store, however time and the transition to the big screen means that there is unlikely to be a raised eyebrow let alone a shocked gasp. Thankfully the show really sustained itself more through through it's script and wit rather than it's potty mouth and there is still enough zing to the chat to sustain itself.

The characters may be drawn broadly, so much so that magazine editors to can whip up a "which SATC girl are you" feature in their sleep, but they remain engaging. Sex And The City has always been about the life behind a newspaper column, so the whole thing is a fantasy world anyway and to expect Mike Leigh style rigor in the characterization is like expecting Steven Seagal to fight like a normal human (or even deliver dialogue like a normal human for that matter).

The film's main surprise is it's confident visual style. Every shot is soaked in style and glamour but they are also well crafted and it's nice to have a film where the money shots don't require CGI - just a bunch of designer names. This does mean that the film has more product placement that the average ad break. In fact it's amazing the film doesn't just get itself sponsored by Vogue and be done with it. The montages are clearly fashion porn rather than plot development, but they are as integral to the film as big ass fighter planes are to Top Gun.

The success of Sex And The City may be due to the fact that other romantic comedies have set the bar so low it's difficult to know whether we are playing high jump or limbo dancing. In this climate the film should be welcomed with open arms, even it stretches itself less than Jabba The Hutt's wetsuit being worn by Kate Moss. Some judicious editing might have improved the film, but the 2.5 hour length doesn't feel like a drag, and the sensible focus on Carrie, to the exclusion of the other girls, means that it feels like one film rather than four.

Finally, for worried males out there, just remember it's not the end of the world and the works of Jean Claude and Mr Seagal are still available from all good DVD retailers.

DVD: Sweeney Todd

2008-06-09T18:54:00.001+01:00

If you closed your eyes for 90 minutes and tried to visualise what a Tim Burton film incarnation of the tale of the demon barber of Fleet Street would be like, you probably wouldn't need to spend your hard earned cash going to see it. You put Johnny Depp with a Pepe Le Pew style haircut in the lead and Helena Bonham Carter with her "had it this way so long it's no longer scary"backwards through a hedge hair alongside him. The city of London would be a victorian Gotham City and the blood would fly akin to Sleepy Hollow.

All of this makes Sweeney Tood sound like the work of a tired director who has run out of ideas. But Burton's visual style is so strong the familiar nature of the film feels like having you favourite dish at a local restaurant - you know what you want and you know it won't be bad.

The tale is fairly simple, agreived barber returns to London after being robbed of his wife and afflicted with Bowie from the 70's accent. Menacing stares, slashed throats and tasty "meat" pies ensue. Sondheim's music contributes strong but verbose songs, and here Burton seems to struggle with the lack of the kind of catchy choruses that he dished up in Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. As such a strong start starts to run out of pace towards the end, with a tragic denoument that appears postively rushed.

The Moulin Rouge style fast forward zooms across the London skyline are one of a number of cases where the CGI is too obvious and flashy. However despite these faults Sweeney Tood is unlikely to dissapoint. The chef may have served up better before, but you will still be returning to order more of the same.

DVD: Crank

2007-02-15T21:57:00.000Z

Crank is quite literally 78 minutes of non-stop adrenaline pumping action, with a few minutes of credits tagged on the end. Jason Statham wakes to find he has been injected with a "Beijing Cocktail" that will kill him within the hour. The only way to postpone death is to keep adrenaline flowing through his veins. He decides that two things need to happen before he dies. He must say goodbye to his girl and kill the man who injected him.

Most action films have a pretense of depth about them with directors trying to show they are the new Tarrantino or choreograph their action scenes as if they are balletic high art. Thankfully in this regard Crank is like a child overdosing on Red Bull who has just come off a big rollercoaster, it follows one set piece with another with hardly a pause for breath. Mexican stand-offs are eschewed as they are simply too darn slow. The film veers so much into the absurd that you start to forget what normality looks like and pulls a range of stunts that seem to have come straight out of the Jackass handbook.

Statham seems to have been tailor made with films like this in mind. His wired, pissed off expression doesn't crack for the entire film and there is occasionally time for a nice few one liners. The film is a cheap, trashy, vacuous B movie that solely wants to hold your attention for every minute of it's brief running time. If only there were more films like it.

Film: Hot Fuzz

2007-02-12T23:06:00.000Z

Parodies generally make for hit and miss fun that passes ephemerally by. Whilst Airplane and Naked Gun managed to maintain an audience over the years it is unlikely that recent fodder like Scary Movie will be appearing anywhere other than late night repeats on lesser digital TV channels in future years. Therefore the quality and success of Shaun Of The Dead stood out like a talented individual in a Pop Idol final. To call it a cult parody would be to undermine both it mainstream success and the emotional heart and tight plotting at it's centre.

Hot Fuzz, the new film from Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, attempts to repeat the formula. This time the shallow but amusing premise is that a highly successful London based policeman is shunted out to a quiet country beat to stop him showing up the rest of the Metropolitan Police force. How will has hard-line urban approaching work in little England. Cue Bad Boys in a village near Bath.

Much of the cast of Shaun Of The Dead re-appear, including Nick Frost playing a markedly similar role to his previous character Ed. However the big difference is that Simon Pegg has abandoned his slacker persona to portray Britain's most effective cop. Choosing such an exceptional high flyer as the lead character makes it harder to empathize with the central story than in Shaun. Pegg's restrained acting suits the part, but it's like watching a talented footballer just playing short passes rather than attempting jaw-dropping through balls. It's only when the action cranks up in the final third that he employs his full comic range and the film lifts noticeably at this point.

Edgar Wright uses the fast cutting, amped up visual style that has served him so well and deploys it good effect, effectively taking classic Michael Bay and John Woo shots and giving them an absurd spin by way of the surroundings. His major achievement is managing to create scenes that are both adrenaline pumping and laugh out loud funny.

The cast is so ridiculously packed with stars it almost becomes a parody of it's parodic self as each minor character is taken by a starry cameo by the likes of Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan and Martin Freeman. However in the main supporting roles Timothy Dalton and Jim Broadbent are superb, with Dalton mugging more than a royal dalton factory and Broadbent underplaying to sublime effect.

The laughs in Hot Fuzz are frequent and hearty. The main comment it will attract is "it's not quite as good as Shaun Of The Dead", but since few films are half as good as that, we will gratefully receive one that is 90% as good.

Film: Perfume - The Story Of A Murderer

2007-02-12T23:04:00.000Z

As soon as a novel is described as "unfilmable" and starts to amass a list of big name directors who have toyed with the project and moved on, any adaptation seems doomed to partial or total failure. Even ideal matches such as Terry Gilliam directing Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas failed to do much commercial business. So Perfume, the book of aromas that Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick apparently walked away from, would seem to be damned from the off - whether by reason or just self-fufilling prophecy.

The story revolves around an orphan called Jean-Baptiste Grenouille who is born with the finest sense of smell in the world. This we know because is seems that half the film is taken up by shots of his nose twitching followed by a camera charging like a demented rugby player towards the source of the aroma. Jean is not the best adjusted of men, and his quest to distill the perfect sent starts to take a very dark and ugly turn, as the films full title "Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer" rather gives away. What next, "Titanic: A Ship That Sinks" or "Pearl Harbour: A Historical And Filmic Disaster".

The film is directed by Tom Tykwer who had a huge cult hit with his debut Run Lola Run. He also has past form with bringing troubled projects about murderers to the screen having done an excellent job with Heaven in 2002, the film that Krzysztof Kieslowski was working on when he died. Since then he has taken a long break from film-makingand the un-even tone of Perfume may reflect an uncertainty that has crept in during the years of stasis.

The source novel is very dark and serious in tone, however the film elicits a number of laughs through it's length, some clearly un-intentional and some maybe less so. The most farcical section features Dustin Hoffman as a washed up perfumier whose career is re-ignited by the talents of Jean-Baptiste. Allowing for the horrific accent that careers between Italy and America faster than Concorde ever managed, Hoffman turns in a magnetic mannered comic performance that is in completely the wrong film.

Perfume is visually stunning, as befits the most expensive German film ever made. However the story it tells is art-house rather than mainstream and the over-bearing hand of producers trying to lighten the tone lingers like the smell of burnt toast in a kitchen. So yet another "unfilmable novel" seems to justify it's billing, but there is enough here to make for an intriguing, if ultimately unsatisfying watch.

DVD: The Proposition

2007-02-12T23:03:00.000Z

Nick Cave's first outing as a screenwriter feels like one of his more damned and blasted songs. To save his younger brother from the noose Charlie Burns must murderer his outlaw older brother.

However despite the film lingering heavily on Guy Pearce as he wrestles with Charlie's dilemma, the core of the film is actually the English police captain played by Ray Winstone and his wife Emily Mortimer. As he struggles to bring civilisation to the alien land of Australia he sees around him he finds his strength and morals stretched to breaking point.

Despite capturing some marvelous scenery and featuring some brutal violence, The Proposition is a verbal film, to the extent that you could believe it originated as a play. However the dialogue is not sharp enough and the film not focussed enough to truly dig it's claws in. As a single coloured mood piece that draws heavily on Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia it will appeal to those who like their films black, blasted and with damnation inevitable, but there is not enough here to rise above it's origins.

Book: Seeing by Jose Saramago

2007-02-12T22:56:00.000Z

On a wet day in Portugal officials wait as an election takes place. When the votes are counted 80% of them are found to be blank. The confused government decides to re-run the election a week later imploring voters to cast a meaningful vote, but the result is the same and the government steadily enforces a martial law on where is starts to fear is a terrorist plot.

Seeing picks up four years after Blindness, an earlier work by Saramago based around the idea of a plague of white blindness. Both books have a gripping central theme that allows many analogies with the political state of the modern world, but both struggle to draw the reader in. Seeing is especially problematic in it's absence of paragraphs and quotation marks, requiring a high level of concentration and focus from the reader that distances them from the narrative.

Whilst Saramago clearly has a knack for great ideas, he may need to refresh his mind on some of the more basic ideas of the novel.

DVD: Aeon Flux

2006-09-02T10:47:00.000+01:00

There is a theory that some films are so bad that they are good. Films with farcical plots, terrible acting and shaky sets that remind you of the cheap antics of directors like Ed Wood. Aeon Flux is not a film that supports this argument. It is crushingly mediocre in all departments, with blank acting performances, cliched storylines and dull production design.

The basic set-up is that four hundred years into the future a virus has wiped out all bar a final outpost of human civilisation, that lives separated from the rampant nature that has over-run the rest of the planet. Here they live in a perfect world, that resembles a fashionable shampoo advert. However something dark is happening beneath the surface and Aeon Flux sets out to find out what.

As it limps from one tired set-piece to another you wonder whether the film was every properly scripted or whether they just filmed the thing following an early brainstorming session. Aeon Flux, so bad it's bad.

DVD: Capote

2006-09-01T19:10:00.000+01:00

A quiet and focussed view of the climax of Truman Capote's career, this is a film that bucks the trend of recent biopics by eschewing the traditional three act structure and rewarding those who know about the subject.

DVD: Grizzly Man

2006-08-02T22:32:00.000+01:00

Grizzly Man is billed as the tragic tale of a man competing with nature as he spent 13 summers camping close to wild bears before being killed by one. The film itself is more a battle between two men, failed actor Timothy Treadwell who re-invented himself as a protector of bears and Steve Austin style wild-man and notorious director Werner Herzog who fashions this documentary about Treadwell into his personal quest to understand the man.

The footage Treadwell shot in the wild is certainly impressive stuff, and as with anyone left alone for long periods of time with just a video camera for company he soon starts opening up and giving a glimpse into why he left a life waiting tables and narrowly missing out on the Woody Harrelson part in Cheers to spend time in an awe-inpsiring Alaskan national park. In fact, phrased like that why is he being painted as the crazy one? Oh yes, that will be because of the big old bears that eat people.

More disconcerting in terms of the film is Herzog's very personal voiceover as he strains to empathize with someone who has a totally different view of life. Where Treadwell sees peace and beauty, Herzog sees chaos and barely sustained rage. This tension gives the film a real edge and avoids any cute simplifications, but too often you feel the two men are competing for your attention. in one bizarre scene Herzog films himself listening to tape of Treadwell dying before boldly instructing a friend never to listen to it and then to destroy it. This serves only to place Herzog centre stage and to pull him into the narrative of events.

As well as Herzog's physical presence, the direction is strangely artificial, with the brief pauses and wandering pans during a number of the interviews giving the piece a Brechtian avant-garde nature. All this sums up to a documentary which is constantly challenging and intriguing, but often frustrating. One to watch in a group and discuss.

Film: Pirates Of The Caribbean Dead Man's Chest

2006-07-12T23:13:00.000+01:00

I blame Star Wars, I really do. Every since the George Lucas cash cow redefined Hollywood's view of how you make money in this game the idea of a movie trilogy has acquired some sort of divine status. Any film that rakes in a decent haul at the box office doesn't provoke thoughts of a single sequel, but two sequels. These are not cheap cash ins. No, these are the artist being able to complete their vision with adequate breathing space.

This of course is all cobblers. And on the heels of The Lord Of The Rings, The Matrix, X-Men, Underworld and others not even worthy of breath comes the second film in the Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogy. Filmed back to back with part three this allows Gore Verbinski, the auteur behind films such as Mousehunt, to complete his grand vision for this tale that was based on a Disney theme park ride. All that said the first film looked like a train wreck from a distance and proved to be a highly enjoyable piece of matinee fun, so maybe lightning will strike twice.

The film opens with the wedding of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly) being knocked somewhat off schedule by them both being arrested under threat of the death penalty for allowing Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) to escape the clutches of those flat footed British soldiers. It's a reversal of fortune that recalls such glorious sequels as Ghostbusters 2. Before Will and Liz are swinging from a gallows, Will is offered a way to save them both that involves him heading out to sea and finding Jack and before you know it swash is being buckled and main-braces are being spliced.

The film doesn't so much have a plot as a tenuous chronology that links various CGI heavy set-pieces, many of which repeat themselves in various guises throughout the film. Whilst these are executed in a perfectly competent fashion they are far from memorable and none of them stand out as a good action sequence should, like the government lobby in the Matrix. The sword play is executed without any style, often being closer to a pub brawl fought by ballerinas scared of a scratch rather than either the mesmeric samurai work of Crouching Tiger or the brutal rage you would expect of scurvy sea dogs.

The cast all reprise their roles from the first film, generally with diminishing returns. Depp is still amusing but the added screen time of his character, now pushed firmly centre stage leaves him mugging all too often to cover a barren script, whilst the attempts to make him a good guy are clear evidence that the Disney corporation wants everyone to be a role model, even a pirate with no morals. The exceptions to the "not as funny as last time" rule are Mackenzie Crook's one eyed pirate who has found good and studies his bible carefully, despite being illiterate and Orlando Bloom who couldn't have been much worse last time round.

The enemy this time round is Davy Jones, played by an unrecognizable Bill Nighy under a mass of CGi tentacles. He and his crew look like fish theme Orcs that were rejected from the initial design stages of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and whose principle purpose is to sell action figures. They are neither scary nor amusing, just clearly a computer construct. One is left wistfully remember Geoffrey Rush ghost pirate crew of the original who thankfully were human enough most of the time to actually deliver performances.

The film also suffers from character creep with too many of the original films characters returning for cameos as well as new people arriving. Any sane editor would have hacked the film down to 90 minutes rather than the needless 150 it runs. The film is flat enough that you could randomly remove half it's length and improve it by making sure that it doesn't outstay the welcome of it's charms.

Whilst the film briefly gathers real momentum for a spell two thirds of the way through the ending, stolen straight from Empire Strikes Back, is unsatisfactory, confirming the clear feeling that the film was always going nowhere fast. If you are prepared to be patient the film's good humored banter should suffice for pantomime style fun, but less would have been so much more.

Book: Columbia Road by Matt Whyman

2006-07-06T21:44:00.000+01:00

A book written by an internet agony uncle should probably contain two main ingredients, high technology and relationship issues. Columbia Road has both. The basic set up is that a mismatched group of tenants are unable to cover their recently inflated rent. Instead of turfing them out on the street their landlord offers them a deal. Have webcams installed to make the house a 24 hour show home for his other properties and they can stay rent free. But soon they find they have given up more than they think.

Whyman is a very immediate writer, working with short chapters and keen to throw in a cute turn of phrase to keep his readers attention. His background in writing short, light hearted insightful articles makes Columbia Road an enjoyable page turner, but the broad characters leave little room for any deep empathy.

DVD: Walk The Line

2006-07-06T19:57:00.000+01:00

Enough already with the childhood trauma. It is becoming a painfully banal Hollywood truism that any issues that arise later in a person life can be explained by something bad that happened to them as a child. It's like an understanding of psychology based on reading a single paragraph of a Sigmund Freud book. And like the boy who cried wolf, when there is a film that might justify use of an explanation like that, you are so tired of hearing it you don't believe.

As such we have Walk The Line, the biopic of Johnny Cash. If you have seen Ray you know the plot. Brother dies as a child, no decent Father figure, marries childhood sweetheart, becomes famous musician, starts taking drugs, cheats on wife, finds new love, quits drugs and everything ends happily ever after. Thus seems to be the life of any musician according to Hollywood.

What is damning is not that we have seen this type of thing before, but that the film tells you no more about Johnny Cash and his music than Ray did, despite the latter film being about a completely different person. All we learn about his music is that he wrote Folsom Prison Blues after watching a film and he invented his musical style on the spot when Sam Philips told him his gospel was as dull as Dido slowly painting a wall Magnolia. The film is almost entirely disinterested in his music. It's as if being a great musician is of now interest to an audience, but being a bastard and a junkie is.

Despite the cliched plot and absence of insight the lead performances have be justifiable acclaimed. Both River Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon bring their characters to life and give them more depth and empathy than the script deserves. It is the acting equivalent for feeding 5000 with a fish and a slice of bread. And while the ever-so happy ending rings false, with Cash acting the bad man but being portrayed an angel, the acting and the music carry the film through. Just don't expect to learn about the man inside.

DVD: Once Upon A Time In The Midlands

2006-06-27T22:37:00.000+01:00

Once Upon A Time In The Midlands bills itself as a tinned spaghetti western. It could also bill itself as awarding British director Shane Meadows attempt to make a jolly mainstream film. Yet despite the number of billings you could give it the film doesn't know what it is trying to be.

It starts out heavy on the Western parody with Ricky Tomlinson being a country music obsessed father and Robert Carlyle being the stranger with trouble not far behind him blowing into town. However the pace and energy of the knockabout opening soon dissipates into a turgid kitchen sink drama with the characters too stereotypical to draw the audiences sympathy.

The profusion of faces from British TV only aid the feeling of the script creating archetypes rather than full drawn characters whilst the jokes are too sparse to make this an effective comedy. Whilst a film that deals with common British life is something that should be welcomed, Once Upon A Time In The Midlands is a misfire in director Shane Meadows cannon. Thankfully he has since found his footing with Dead Man's Shoes.

DVD: Stealth

2006-05-29T09:47:00.000+01:00

Stealth is a high technology Top Gun film that's stupid with a capital S T O O. In fact it would probably make a satisfying double header with Team America World Police. The basic plot is that group of crack US Navy pilots are trained to fly advanced experimental planes. Then are then told that there is a fourth plane that is flown by an advanced computer brain. they call it Eddie but you may as well call it HAL.

Before you know HAL, sorry, Eddie, has used it's artificial intelligence to learn from the American pilots. What it has learnt it is to disobey orders and blow things up regardless of the collateral damage. Before long 1000 Asian farmers and the entirety of Pakistan is covered in nuclear fall-out, but the generals still think they can keep things under wraps. The energy of the films fist pumping patriotism drains after the 90 minute mark with a pointless coda involving the destruction of North / South Korea border to try and save the heroes girlfriend leaving empty explosions punctuating the absurd situations and by the end you are longing for the wit and excitement of Maverick, Goose and Ice Man.

Music: The Best Of 1996-2002 by Hefner

2006-05-15T22:24:00.000+01:00

When they proclaimed themselves "Britain's Biggest Small Band" Hefner effectively wrote their own epitaph. One of many bands championed to a cult following by John Peel they never troubled the mainstream with songs that feel like a spikier Belle And Sebastian.

Their high point was second album The Fidelity Years, which is well represented on this retrospective. The Hymn For The Cigarettes is a stomping indie anthem that tells a tale failing love through fag manufacturers and contains the gorgeous chorus refrain "how can she love me when she doesn't even love the cinema I love". Slower tracks The Hymn For The Alcohol and Don't Flake Out On Me showcase the raw emotion of singer Darren Hayman's voice, a wonky taste that once acquired allows you to glory in the crystal clear diction.

Later albums continued to turn out moving odes to life outside the norm such as The Greedy Ugly People whilst The Day That Thatcher Dies still shocks with it's brazen celebration that 'the witch is dead'. The late electronic experimentations capture a band becoming bored and straining for something and losing their special touch. Despite it's 20 track length there are few tracks here that are anything but a joy to those who like their music wonky, witty and independently minded.

DVD: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

2006-05-15T20:20:00.000+01:00

There are few films that are too clever for their own good but many that are ruined by being nowhere near as clever as they think they are. The tongue in cheek narration that guides us through Kiss Kiss Bang Bang often veers towards smug and self congratulatory ground but the sharpness of the script and the frequency of one liners means that you will end up amused rather than annoyed.

Lethal Weapon writer Shane Black has taken what appears to be a pulpy noir detective novel and covered the cliche ridden set-up and far fetched plot with a fast past knock-about script that sees small time crook Robert Downey Jr end up partnered with Val Kilmer's butch gay private eye. Nothing really makes much sense during the film and like the best of Raymond Chandler's work by the end you don't even care whodunnit, but laugh you will.