My cinema year: 1984

TOP US FILMS OF 1984

(Number I saw at the cinema then: 1. Number I have seen now: 10)

1. Beverly Hills Cop
2. Ghostbusters
3. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
4. Gremlins
5. The Karate Kid
6. Police Academy
7. Footloose
8. Romancing The Stone
9. Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
10. Splash

I’ve written a fair few film reviews over the years but thankfully have never had to write a review of Ghostbusters. Why “thankfully” you may ask? The simple answer is, because it was such a big film during my early childhood that I really cannot view it impartially. Is it a good film or is it a bad film? I honestly can’t tell.

Perhaps that’s not quite true. I can say fairly confidently that it isn’t a “bad” film per se. It’s also so fondly remembered that it had definitely achieved a degree of classic status. As Adam Buxton has noted, it was also marketed very well. I later had the Atari computer game (“Don’t cross the streams!”). I love the Stay Puft Marshmallow bit. I actually thought he was real for a while too. Not “real”: but I thought he was a genuine US advertising symbol who had been turned into a monster for the film. But he wasn’t. He was entirely made up for Ghostbusters.

Nearly thirty years later, I actually selected Ghostbusters the song to be played at my wedding (although not for the ‘first dance). It was a popular choice. But is it a genuinely good film? I honestly don’t know.

As with E.T., I had a shock early on: the library ghost sequence is easily the scariest bit in a not very scary film. But I was older now (eight, in fact: I’m sure I didn’t see it until 1985) and was now confident enough to still enjoy the film. I went to see it with my mum who didn’t like it at all. I seem to remember her being so bored that she read a magazine during the film. My memory may be playing me false here, however. How would she have read a magazine in the dark? I don’t think she liked it though anyway.

For the first time, I’ve actually seen all ten films listed, so I’ll run through them all quickly. 1984 seems to have been a much better film year than 1983:

Beverly Hills Cop: Really surprised this beat Ghostbusters to the top spot. Okay, but nothing special as I remember. People went nuts about the theme tune though.

Temple of Doom: Okay, but EASILY the worst of the three 1980s Indy films. I first saw it when it was broadcast on TV on Christmas Day a few years later. Part of the problem is that while the first film is based around the mythical Ark of the Covenant and the third one is based around the mythical Holy Grail, this one’s based around the…er… famous temple of Doom? It might as well be called Indiana Jones and ‘the Chamber of Bollocks.” Too silly, too much screeching, too many jumpy bits. And a bit racist, let’s face it.

Gremlins: Was scared to see this for a while after hearing an American relative describe how evil and demonic the Gremlins are. Of course, I saw it eventually, perhaps in my teens and wasn’t scared at all. It’s great fun. And all the “don’t get them wet/don’t feed them after midnight” stuff is genius.

The Karate Kid: Didn’t see this until my thirties when my wife made me watch it to fill a gap in my cinematic education. It’s okay. I suspect I’d like it more now if I had seen it as a child.

Police Academy: The sort of thing I used to end up watching on video at a friend’s house in the late 1980s. Confused me for a while: are all gay men big leather-clad bikers? Generally not a big fan. But I did later see Police Academy 6: City Under Siege at the cinema. No excuse really.

Footloose: Didn’t see this until my twenties. I still like it a lot though. John Lithgow can do no wrong in my eyes. The “Let’s Here It For The Boy” bit always makes me a bit sad though. Chris Penn was clearly so fit and healthy-looking then. What on Earth went wrong?

Romancing The Stone: Good, as I remember. We saw it as an end of term treat at junior school. It was a relatively ‘dangerous’ choice. The sequel’s not as good though.

Star Trek III: It’s easy to forget how popular Star Trek films were at the time. No one really watches them now. This was an odd numbered Star Trek film though and thus DULL.

Splash: An early video choice for the family. Very likeable and the first time I’d seen Tom Hanks in anything.

DVD/Blu-Ray review: The Green Man (1956)

The 1950s was undoubtedly a classic period in the career of character actor, Alastair Sim. This film sees him playing Hawkins, a watchmaker who also operates as an assassin. Early scenes demonstrate how Hawkins has often adopted a variety of ingenious disguises before successfully blowing up his victims. His main target here is an adulterous politician Sir Gregory Upshott (Raymond Huntley) who he tracks to a hotel, The Green Man of the title.

It isn’t long before things take a farcical turn as a vacuum cleaner salesman curiously called William Blake (a young George Cole) and a local beauty (Jill Adams) get drawn into proceedings. With Terry-Thomas playing a philandering cad called Charles Boughtflower and a trio of elderly female musicians also becoming involved, Hawkins’ carefully laid out plans soon descend into chaos.

Although hardly groundbreaking, The Green Man is pleasantly enjoyable fare, packed with familiar faces recognisable to anyone who enjoys post-war British cinema. Can you spot Michael Ripper, Dora Bryan and Arthur Lowe?

And unlike Sim’s hapless assassin, this is a comedy which rarely misses its target.

Vintage Classics

Studio Canal

Directed by: Robert Day

Starring: Alastair Sim, George Cole, Terry-Thomas, Jill Adams, Raymond Huntley

Film review: Vice

Director: Adam McKay Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Tyler Perry

The office of US Vice President was for a long time commonly overlooked. The position was deemed “not worth a pitcher of warm spit” by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first Vice President, John Nance Garner while as Lynne Cheney (Amy Adams) points out here, the job is essentially based around the principle of doing nothing other than waiting for the president to die.

Dick Cheney was a different sort of Vice President, however. Whereas some leaders, such as the late George H.W. Bush have been fully aware of the potential opportunities afforded by the position, (Bush had, after all, spent two terms as Veep himself) and have thus deliberately picked non-threatening buffoons like Dan Quayle as their Number 2, Bush’s own son (played here by Sam Rockwell) recognised he was hopelessly out of his depth and thus when his turn came in 2000, delegated unprecedented power to an older man, much more experienced than himself. Cheney seized this opportunity head-on and exploited it to the full.

Richard Dreyfuss has already played Cheney in Oliver Stone’s W (2008). Now Adam McKay – a director once known for comedies such as the rather good Anchorman and the rather less good Talladega Nights and Anchorman 2, turns his focus onto the last US Vice President but one.

We first meet Cheney (Bale) at a low point. As a drunken hell-raiser in the 1960s, he is encouraged out of his decline only by the words of his strong-willed wife Lynne (Amy Adams, excellent). We then cut to the extremely dramatic aftermath of the September 11th attacks of 2001. Whisked away to a “secure location”, the Vice President turns this terrible occurrence into a golden opportunity for him and his ilk. Using the new atmosphere to test the limits of his power to the limit, Cheney, aided and abetted by the conservative cheerleaders of Fox News conspire to make war against Iraq, a country which had nothing to do with the attacks whatsoever.

Gruff and lacking in charisma, the real Cheney, 78 in 2019, has never been an obvious candidate for dramatic portrayal. Despite this and the fact he bears no real physical resemblance to the man himself, Christian Bale aided by prosthetics which increasingly make him resemble a modern-day Chevy Chase as he ages from his twenties to his seventies, is brilliant as the heart-attack prone Cheney. As with Sir Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995), it has taken a Welsh actor to most perfectly capture a pillar of modern American conservatism.

Steve Carell, who in McKay’s Anchorman played the idiotic weatherman Brick Tamland, (a man who we were told later “served in a senior role in the Bush administration”) is also great here as Bush’s defence secretary and Cheney’s long-time friend and rival, Donald Rumsfeld (he of the “known unknowns).

As in The Big Short which explained the reasons for the last recession in easy language, McKay deploys numerous clever tactics here – a scene performed in iambic pentameter, a false ending, a mystery narrator. Some of these work better than others: a sequence in which Alfred Molina’s waiter offers Bush’s cronies a “menu” of legal options in a restaurant, for example, just seems weird.

But, overall, this is a compelling, well-acted insight into the banality of evil.

Film review: Begin Again (2014)

Review first published on Movie Muser, November 2014  http://www.moviemuser.co.uk/

Starring: Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levine, James Corden, Catherine Keener Directed By: John Carney. Running Time: 104 minutes. UK Release Date: November 10, 2014 . Certificate: 15. Your Rating: 4 out of 5

Gretta (Knightley) is young, English and has some talent as a musician. She also has a good comedy sidekick/friend in Steve (James Corden). But her dreams of musical success in New York lie in tatters. After her recent break-up with boyfriend and collaborator Dave (Levine), she is bound for the next flight home.

Dan (Ruffalo), meanwhile, is middle-aged and seems to be on the way down after both a successful producing career and his marriage come to an end. He happens to see Gretta performing at an open mic session on her last night in town. Could this meeting be exactly what these two lost souls need?

Admittedly, this film from Once director John Carney sounds predictable as hell on paper and to some extent, this is true. But Ruffalo is great, making a potentially sleazy character likeable. Knightly can sing and has some nice scenes bonding with Dan’s teenage daughter. There are no real villains here – even Gretta’s ex has redeeming qualities and yes, this is relentlessly feelgood. But it’s not stupid either. So what’s wrong with that?

There is a “making of” featurette and some music videos on the DVD/Blu-ray. Haters of James Corden or Keira Knightley (and, yes, such people do exist) will want to steer clear and the music might repel some. But everyone else should find this an uplifting and rewarding musical treat.

Overall Verdict: The Hulk and Anna Karenina: together at last and unleashed on New York.

Special Features: The Making of Begin Again Featurette, Music Videos

Reviewer: Chris Hallam

DVD review: Just Like Heaven (2005)

The following review was first published in DVD Monthly magazine in 2005.

Sub-heading suggestions: Reese almighty/High spirits/Spirited away/While she was sleeping.

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, Jon Heder, Donal Logue, Dina Spybey, Ben Shenkman

Director: Mark Waters

Distributor: DreamWorks Pictures Original Release: 2005

The Lowdown: When ER doctor Elizabeth’s overworked, socially undernourished existence is brought to an abrupt halt by a wayward truck, she soon finds her spiritual form sharing her flat with lonely semi-alcoholic, widower architect David. But is Elizabeth really dead? Why can only David see her? And can stoner bookshop employee Darryl help?

Review: While few men would balk at the prospect of suddenly discovering Reese Witherspoon was their room-mate, Just Like Heaven is a rom-com with a supernatural twist. For as with Brad Pitt at the start of Meet Joe Black, here we’ve barely had a chance to get familiar with the overworked singleton lifestyle of Witherspoon’s medic (a sort of cross between Bridget Jones and the one of the cast of ‘ER’) before she has a close encounter with a runaway lorry and is killed.

However, as with the unfortunate couple in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, the next thing she knows she’s back in her apartment and railing against the intrusion of new resident David.

We’ve been here before, of course. In addition to the films already mentioned, Just Like Heaven draws on everything from (most obviously) Ghost, to the 1930s Topper movies and even has shades of While You Were Sleeping. But happily Just Like Heaven is (just) cute enough to get away with it’s somewhat less than groundbreaking premise.

Partly this is down to Reese Witherspoon. While (as with Sweet Home Alabama) she’s clearly working with less incisive material than in her best work (Election, Pleasantville) she is never less than her usual luminous and quirky onscreen self. As David, Ruffalo is less good, never really proving that he has the aptitude either for physical comedy or for the dour ‘sad Tom Hanks in Sleepless In Seattle’ type romantic lead role the screenplay demands of him, though this isn’t a serious problem.

Indeed, comedic honours probably go to Jon Heder who as semi-psychic alternative bookshop assistant Darryl is good in his first significant if small post-Napoleon Dynamite role, a sort of stoner answer to Whoopi Goldberg’s character in Ghost.

The film has its problems. For one thing, it’s rarely that funny. The early scenes detailing Elizabeth and David’s fractious first encounters wherein both argue vigorously over who is intruding upon whose flat are fine. Elizabeth (who like the ‘dead people’ in The Sixth Sense doesn’t know she’s a ghost) reasons that the drunken David is a vagrant who has wondered in off the streets. But the film gets funnier once David recognises Elizabeth is more than a product of his lonely alcoholic mind and enlists a range of solutions to vanquish her from the flat: namely a New Age guru, some amateurish ‘Ghostbusters’ and a priest who repeatedly intones “The power of Christ compels you!” to no discernible effect.

Some too, might lament that Waters, who did, after all, direct the dark edged Mean Girls in addition to cheerier fare such as Freaky Friday hasn’t produced a blacker film. But darkness and romantic comedy can be uneasy bedfellows and it’s probably to its benefit that Just Like Heaven is good-natured to its core.

Sadly, the extras never really rise above the average. The ‘Making Of’ featurette is the usual promotional fare and is supplemented by a similar and fairly unnecessary ‘Meet the Cast’ featurette (high court judges aside, even before Walk The Line was there anyone out there unfamiliar with Reese Witherspoon?). And despite the slightly surprising revelation that the film is based on a French novel (Marc Levy’s ‘If Only It Were True’), you’ll soon find your attention wandering during the filmmaker’s commentary.

Although in fairness this isn’t really the sort of film that readily lends itself to hours of dissection and analysis. For make no mistake: while this won’t linger long in the memory, Just Like Heaven is against all odds, one of the better romantic comedies of the past year. It’s just that as with ‘Great Films Starring Hilary Duff’ and ‘Intelligent Statements Made By President Bush’ this isn’t exactly an overcrowded field.

Final Verdict It’s not going to change the world but if you do fancy a Friday night date movie, you could do a lot worse.

Rating FILM: 6 EXTRAS: 5

Text By Chris Hallam

DVD review: Blue Valentine (2011)

Review first published on Movie Muser, 2011  http://www.moviemuser.co.uk/

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, John Doman, Mike Vogel, Jen Jones Directed By: Derek Cianfrance Running Time:112 minutes UK Release Date: May 8. 2011 Certificate: 15

Rating: 5 out of 5

Happy families are all alike, Tolstoy famously wrote, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. If this is true, then perhaps unhappy marriages follow a similar pattern. What isn’t in doubt and what becomes apparent very quickly in this is that the young couple, Dean and Cindy, portrayed here by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, are a very unhappy couple indeed.

It also becomes clear very early on is that the narrative sequence of the film has been deliberately jumbled up. Yes, it’s one of those films a bit like Memento or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. We might first witness (for example), a scene of a balding, drunken Dean consumed with suspicion, paranoia and jealousy over the suspected infidelities of his desperately unhappy wife. The next minute, he’s a happier, more charming and carefree younger man wooing the willing Cindy by playing (with unintentional irony) You Always Hurt The One You Love to her on his mandolin.

The emotional impact of the juxtaposition of these scenes is frequently devastating. Dean and Cindy can clearly barely speak to each other by the later stages of their marriage and as some very uncomfortable sex scenes make clear she is ultimately physically repelled by him. Neither character is entirely black and white, however, and while Gosling’s Dean is generally the less sympathetic of the two, even he musters some sympathy.

As you’ve probably gathered, Blue Valentine isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. So why on Earth should you want to watch it at all?

The short answer is because it’s a superb, beautifully made film, criminally neglected at the Oscars. Although he perhaps doesn’t need an ego boost, Gosling consolidates his status (demonstrated in the underrated Lars and the Real Girl) as one of the best young actors in Hollywood. Michelle Williams is, if anything, even better, giving a heart rending Oscar-worthy performance. “The Creek” now seems like a very long time ago indeed: Dawson Leery wouldn’t recognise her.

There’s also a solid Bonus Features package including a commentary from director Derek Cianfrance and editor Jim Hendon, a Q and A session from the Sundance Film Festival and a making of featurette. There are also some home movie sequences, glimpsed briefly in the film, played out in full.

But if you’ve ever looked at an unhappy couple and wondered why they ever got together in the first place, this could be the film for you.

Overall Verdict:

Not an easy evening’s viewing: the emphasis is more on the “blue” than on the “valentine”. But both Williams and Gosling are sensational and it’s undoubtedly one of the better films of the past year.

Special Features:

Audio Commentary with Director Derek Cianfrance and Editor Jim Helton

Q and A Featurette

Deleted Scenes

Making of Blue Valentine Featurette

Home Movies Clips

Trailer

Reviewer: Chris Hallam

DVD review: The Last Station (2010)

Review first published on Movie Muser, June 2010  http://www.moviemuser.co.uk/

Director: Michael Hoffman

Cast: Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Anne-Marie Duff, Paul Giamatti, Kerry Condon, John Sessions

Running time: 107 minutes

Russia: 1910. With the First World War and the Russian Revolution still a few years off, ageing War and Peace author Leo Tolstoy (Plummer) might be expected to be enjoying a peaceful retirement. In fact, torn between the conflicting demands of his strong willed wife Countess Sofya (Mirren) and those of his increasingly zealous Tolstoyan followers, the author’s life is barely less turbulent than the events of one of his great novels.

The Last Station is less about Tolstoy himself than the plethora of characters surrounding him. The most sympathetic is perhaps young Valentin Bulgarov (McAvoy), a brainy but self conscious acolyte of the author. Arriving at the Tolstoy Estate as the author’s new private secretary, Valentin soon finds his loyalties divided. Should he side with the clique effectively led by his boss Vladimir Chertkov (Giamatti), in attempting to build a personality cult around the author or with the more reasonable wishes of Tolstoy’s undeniably unstable wife?

For a film dealing with such weighty issues, the first half of The Last Station is remarkably cheery stuff. Perhaps wary of scaring off his audience, director Hoffman devotes much screen time to the sneezing and reticent McAvoy’s tentative relationship with ballsy proto-feminist Masha (Condon). Only in the second half, does the film’s mood darken to a suitably more sombre state, yet the change is so dramatic (McAvoy’s character also transforming overnight) that it unbalances the film. 

The film is beautifully acted, however, Plummer almost looking like an American (okay, Canadian) reincarnation of Tolstoy at times and Mirren equally great as his long-suffering spouse, a woman clearly prone to emotional volatility, expressed through occasional gun-play and chicken impression, but who nevertheless has good reason to feel aggrieved.

The accompanying commentary and interviews give some insight into a project which was apparently in the pipeline for around twenty years. But ultimately it’s a problem of tone. Too lightweight in the first half, while too melancholy (and despite dramatic events, frankly, dull) in the second, somehow The Last Station never quite scales the epic heights it threatens to achieve.
Overall Verdict: Great performances elevate a film which falls just short of Tolstoyan brilliance itself.

DVD review: The Young Victoria (2009)

Title: The Young Victoria

Starring: Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend, Miranda Richardson, Mark Strong, Jim Broadbent, Paul Bettany,

Directed By: Jean-Marc Vallee

Running Time: 104 mins

UK Release Date: July 13, 2009

Certificate: PG

Your Rating: 3 out of 5

Review first published on Movie Muser, July 2009  http://www.moviemuser.co.uk/

Review: Queen Victoria didn’t just reign. She ruled.She in fact ruled for nearly 64 years, longer than anyone else, a record the present Queen may beat if she holds out until 2016 (update: this has since happened).

Yet while most films about, say, Henry VIII see him transformed from a handsome young Jonathan Rhys Meyers-type into an obese Charles Laughton-like glutton, movies about Victoria usually centre exclusively on her later years as a gloomy, sour faced old widow. This is different. Opening in the 1830s, we first meet Emily Blunt’s teenaged Princess Victoria as she develops an initially awkward romance with her German suitor, Prince Albert (Rupert Friend), before we move onto her early years on the throne.

In the meantime, she finds herself in a constant battle to assert her authority over her Germanic mother (Miranda Richardson) and bossy baron, Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong).

Although too tall and, frankly, much too attractive to be Queen Victoria at any age, Emily Blunt is otherwise perfect for the role while Rupert Friend is impressive as the crusading Albert. Some of the smaller roles are less well-handled, however. Paul Bettany just looks weird as the sixty-something Lord Melbourne and Jim Broadbent, while brilliant as ever as Victoria’s eccentric uncle, William IV, is so heavily made up that during the state banquet scene he resembles Bilbo Baggins at his eleventy-first birthday party.Yet, for the most part, the film is both visually authentic and well cast.

The problem really is the setting. Victoria came to the throne at a relatively peaceful time in the nation’s history. Her life wasn’t untroubled by any means, but despite a reasonable attempt to demonise Mark Strong’s Conroy, there’s little scope for dramatic conflict. Recognising this, screenwriter Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) sexes up events by heavily fictionalising a major event towards the end of the film. This contrivance apparently provoked the ire of the present Queen, not a good idea if Fellowes ever wants a knighthood (update: Fellowes was elevated to the peerage in 2011).

The five featurettes here are all less than ten minutes long and primarily focus on the set design, costumes and historical background to the film. ‘The Real Queen Victoria’ is perhaps the best of these, enlivened by diary entries from Victoria herself, even if these are undermined by them being read by someone apparently auditioning for a part in ‘EastEnders’.

For quiet Sunday evening viewing though, The Young Victoria is hard to fault.

Overall Verdict:Blunt and Friend are okay and the central romance is well-handled but anyone fancying something racier should go for ‘The Duchess’ instead.

Special Features:

‘The Making Of Young Victoria’ Featurette

‘The Coronation’ Featurette

‘Lavish History: A Look at The Costumes and Locations’ Featurette

‘The Real Queen Victoria’ Featurette

‘The Wedding’ Featurette

Deleted Scenes

Trailer

Reviewer’s Name: Chris Hallam

Film review: The Iron Lady (2011)

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Starring: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman, Richard E. Grant, Alexandra Roach, Nicholas Farrell, John Sessions

Directed By: Phyllida Lloyd

Running Time: 105 minutes

UK Release Date: January 6th, 2012

Certificate:12A

Rating: 3 out of 5

Review first published on Movie Muser, January 2012  http://www.moviemuser.co.uk/

Review: Nobody divides popular opinion quite like former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. To some she is the nation’s saviour who triumphed in the Cold War and saved the country from an assorted army of lefties, Argentinians and unruly trade unionists, reversing decades of national decline. To others, her selfish and greedy policies wrecked our NHS, public services and schools and left a legacy of rising unemployment and crime from which we’ve never recovered. 

Perhaps for this reason, large sections of this film, avoid politics completely, instead focusing on the octogenarian Thatcher of today as she copes with the onset of old age, senility and comes to terms with the death of her beloved Denis (Jim Broadbent). Streep is firmly in the Oscar class as the elderly Thatcher and Broadbent is great if perhaps a lot more jolly and fun-filled than one imagines the real Denis to have been.

But it’s a shame that so much time is devoted to imagined ideas about the state of Thatcher’s mind as the flashbacks when they do finally get going have so much material to include. We do, however, get a convincing sense of how Thatcher (initially Margaret Roberts, played by Alexandra Roach) rises up from her lowly Grantham origins through the snooty smoky male-dominated Westminster world, surprising everyone, including apparently herself by eventually becoming the first woman prime minister.

A few bits don’t ring true: the scenes of a happy Thatcher family home life seem somewhat idolised (although Olivia Colman is great as daughter “Cawol”) and a sequence where the Lady suddenly reveals she knows the price of Lurpak to her Cabinet seems rather bizarre.

Inevitably, as this is a Margaret Thatcher biopic most of the key events of her tenure are viewed entirely from her own perspective. We see the Falklands War and the Miner’s Strike. For some reason the strike (1984) not the war (1982) occurs first in this version, although as these are her random memories so arguably this is just misleading and needlessly confusing rather than just plain wrong.

But her opponents are never presented as being reasonable: they are either toffee-nosed wets or ugly hairy protesting lefties. Only towards the end, when Thatcher’s relentless single-mindedness on issues like the disastrous Poll Tax and her bullying of unlikely nemesis, Sir Geoffrey Howe (Anthony Head) unwittingly precipitates her downfall, does the screenplay lose sympathy with its subject. And even then it’s implied these failings could be an early manifestation of her illness.

But ultimately, while the strange perspective does effectively undermine the film, it’s hard not to be moved by Streep’s touching performance of a lioness in the winter of her life.

Overall Verdict: A flawed biopic but Meryl Streep deserves an Oscar for her performance. And at least the film doesn’t go on and on and on.

Movie review: The Jungle Book

Let’s just make things clear: despite the name, this isn’t a book, it is a film. Nor is it the famous Disney cartoon, the one you probably saw first as a child and doubtless have fond memories of. It also isn’t the forthcoming one with Cate Blanchett and Benedict Cumberbatch in either. That’s Jungle Book: Origins, due out in 2018. Finally, it isn’t the now largely forgotten 1994 live action version. But I doubt you ever thought it was anyway: it is, after all, largely forgotten.
This one is a live-action film starring Dr. Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters, Nelson Mandela, the Black Widow from The Avengers and Mahatma Gandhi. Mowgli is clearly intended to remind you of the cartoon one with his orange pants and big dark hair but is actually played by a real boy, the excellent Neel Sethi. As in Babe though, the animals are real but have been granted the power of speech by magic.
Although they are mostly celebrity voices, I couldn’t identify most of them when I saw the film so was not too distracted by this. Mowgli is raised by wolves after his father was killed by the evil tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba). The animal pursues the boy throughout occasionally leaping out at him unexpectedly like Richard Parker in Life of Pi. He is much scarier than the 1960s George Sanders version. His face actually looks evil. He is more like the Tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park than Tony from the Frosties adverts. Who would have thought a lethal man-eating predator could be imbued with such a sense of menace?
(That said, the first two lines of Blake’s famous poem literally come true at one point. Spoiler over.)
Mowgli moves from the care of panther Bagheera (Sir Ben Kingsley) to the amiable bear Baloo (Bill Murray). Note to children: bears and panthers are often quite dangerous in real life too. Scarlett Johansson voices the apparently telepathic snake Kaa. And yes, two songs from the old cartoon do crop up, just when you’re starting to miss them.
Only Christopher Walken whose King Louis comes across as a sort of cross between King Kong and Marlon Brando’s character at the end of Apocalypse Now strikes a false note. Have you spoken to any six-year-olds lately? Frankly, most of their cinema knowledge is pathetic. Many haven’t even seen Pulp Fiction or Batman Returns let alone Heaven’s Gate or The Deer Hunter. Very few of them know who Christopher Walken is, so his weird speech patterns are just distracting. Maybe he does want to talk like you hoo hoo, but the fact is he speaks like no one else on Earth.
Is this a good family film? Yes. But it never let’s you forget the cartoon version. And, to be honest, that was much better than this.

DVD review: American Sniper

Director: Clint Eastwood.

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Kyle Gallner, Cole Konis, Ben Reed

American Sniper is based on the story of Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL who served four tours in Iraq and became the most prolific sniper in US history.

Brought up in a strict God-fearing, gun-toting Texan family environment, Kyle (played as an adult by Bradley Cooper) has nevertheless rather gone off the rails by the time we meet him in adulthood, wasting his time on booze, bucking broncos and broads. The solution? He decides to replace his Stetson with a helmet.  Intensely patriotic, Kyle enrols as a Navy SEAL and is soon going through the rigours of an intense beefing up programme, catching the eye of future wife Taya (Sienna Miller) along the way. Soon Kyle is in Iraq, engaged in numerous hugely dangerous combat missions, often involving shooting potential terrorists from great distances.

Kyle’s efforts soon earned him the nickname “Legend” amongst his colleagues, but to its credit, Clint Eastwood’s film does not attempt to glamorise Kyle’s unpleasant, hazardous and ethically dubious work. The real difficulties of family life for a warrior are also laid bare with Sienna Miller excellent as the long suffering wife and mother back home. Cooper is also impressive as Kyle, an inarticulate but apparently moral man who often seemed more at ease in terrifying combat situations than he did with his family on leave back home.

This is a well made, memorable film which continues Eastwood’s latter career as a great director. It would be an incurious soul who did not have a few doubts about the film’s political position though. For example, Kyle is seen first going into Iraq only two scenes after he and his wife witness the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks on TV. The casual viewer would be forgiven for thinking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was actually responsible for the attacks, hence making the US intervention in Iraq logical and necessary. This myth is, of course, believed by many to this day: perhaps Kyle believed it sincerely himself. But the reality is Iraq had nothing to do with September 11^th whatsoever. It is difficult to feel Kyle’s actions, however brave they may be, are wholly necessary when the reasons for the US being in Iraq were so dubious in the first place.

Similarly, few non-American viewers could watch this without being struck by the crazy attitude towards guns. Kyle himself is shown being encouraged to use a gun from childhood, he does the same with his own kids. At another point, in what is supposed to be a playful scene, Kyle even jokingly points a (presumably unloaded) gun at his wife, ordering her to “drop her drawers”. His wife is as amused by this as he is; it isn’t even a cautionary scene. But without wishing to spoil anything, the proliferation of guns in US life leads directly to one personal tragedy during the course of the film. This in fact presented as more as down to pure bad luck: the fact that it would never have occurred if the populace were not so heavily armed in the first place, is totally glossed over.

Yet despite the politics, American Sniper is a genuinely good film, a worthy addition to Clint Eastwood’s directorial portfolio and featuring at least two first class performances from Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller.

DVD extras: One Soldier’s Story: The Journey of American Sniper (30 minute documentary)

Running time: 132 minutes.

Rating: 15.

Man of Steel: A poem/review

Look! Up there in the sky!

It’s time to get cape, wear cape, fly.

Is it a bird, is it a plane?

No, it’s Superman returning (again).

Truth be told, though not a flop,

The last Superman was not much cop,

So now it’s time for a British actor,

To try and win the Krypton Factor.

Henry  Cavill looks the part,

His accent’s decent for a start.

He doesn’t play Clark Kent enough.

But cheer up girls! His shirt comes off!

Michael Shannon excels as Zod,

An evil, contemptuous, little sod.

A tyrant, he is reviled and feared,

(To show he’s aged, he grows a beard).

Young  Kar-El  is under threat from birth,

And becomes the brat who fell to Earth.

Russell Crowe saves his son from Zod,

And doesn’t try to sing (thank God).

At school, Supe faces constant derision,

Cannot control his X-ray vision.

Saves school bus but is often sad,

Attack of wind still kills his dad.

Like this poem, it goes on too long,

Special effects are overdone,

Miss Adams is okay as Lois Lane,

(The best one lived in Wisteria Lane).

That said, this summer, you will see,

No better film than IM3,

For while okay, it’s hard not to feel,

We’ll soon forget this Man of Steel.

I’m sure it’ll make lots of money,

But like Batman should be a bit more funny.

Three out of five is my final score.

Interesting and yet also a bore.

Dredd: A film review and poem.

Who’s that man with the helmet on his head?

It’s 2000AD’s top lawman, Judge Dredd!

Britain’s own Pete Travis directs,

(Perhaps too keen on slow-motion effects).

How good’s this one? Out of 5, say 3,

Much better than the Stallone monstrosity,

Thank Grud this time Dredd keeps his helmet on,

Inside is New Zealand’s Karl Urban.

Mostly in one building, something you’ve seen,

If you watched, Assault on Precinct 13.

Here’s Judge Anderson: resident psychic,

She boosts the film as Dredd’s female sidekick.

Brit Lena Headley is Dredd’s nemesis,

If you don’t like violence, give it a miss.

Dredd speaks like Robocop: “Twenty seconds to comply!”

But really, I’d think hard before you buy.

For Dredd fans will enjoy: he is the Law,

But others may find this a bit of a bore.