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Review: Sex and the City: The Movie, Untraceable, Shine a Light, Leatherheads, Happy-Go-Lucky, Brick Lane, Adam’s Apples, 21 and Prom Night

By Cinema, Reviews

Never hav­ing seen an epis­ode of Sex and the City on tele­vi­sion, I’ll have to leave it to oth­ers to place it in con­text. From what I can gath­er, though, it appears to be about four women in Manhattan, not too bright, not too nice and not too deep, who are look­ing for love, suc­cess and shoes. The cent­ral fig­ure in the group is Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) whose on-again, off-again rela­tion­ship with Mr Big (Chris Noth) is about to become very much “on” with a huge soci­ety wed­ding and a pent­house 5th Avenue apart­ment with a closet big­ger than the apart­ment build­ing I live in. Amazingly, it is the closet that causes the most excite­ment, even when empty.

Meanwhile, Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is bliss­fully happy with her hus­band and adop­ted daugh­ter Lily; Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is some­what less than happy to find out that her hus­band (David Eigenberg) has cheated on her and sex kit­ten Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is find­ing life in the shad­ow of a hand­some day­time soap star to be less than fulfilling.

It all comes to a head at the wed­ding but not before (as well as dur­ing and after) we are forced to listen to many, many long con­ver­sa­tions mostly about events we have just seen.

Untraceable is a per­fectly ser­vice­able thrill­er set in rainy Portland. Diane Lane is a wid­ow work­ing the FBI cyber-crime night-shift who dis­cov­ers a crazed loon string­ing up vic­tims in front of a web­cam. The more eye­balls he receives the faster his vic­tim dies mak­ing every­one com­pli­cit in the even­tu­al murder. Director Gregory Hoblit has an unparalelled tv back­ground (“Hill Street Blues”, any­one?) and also dir­ec­ted the tight mind-games thrill­er Fracture last year and Untraceable is bet­ter than it sounds, effect­ive and not nearly as exploit­at­ive as the trail­er led one to believe.

Just like the U2 con­cert movie earli­er this year, most of the people at the front of the Rolling Stones 2006 Beacon Theatre show (recor­ded for pos­ter­ity by Martin Scorsese as Shine a Light) watched it via the screens on their cell­phones. Heavens, people! Stop try­ing to record the life going on in front of you and just get in there and live it! (Written from the back row of a darkened cinema on a sunny day). Shine a Light shows the Stones off superbly – the sound is mag­ni­fi­cent and the per­form­ance (from Jagger in par­tic­u­lar) is stun­ning. Not enough Charlie Watts for my lik­ing but that’s a minor quibble.

It does­n’t take long to estab­lish why the latest George Clooney romantic-comedy has been bur­ied either at ses­sions no one can get to or cinemas no one wants to vis­it. Leatherheads is an indul­gent romp, feed­ing off Clooney’s nos­tal­gia for old-time foot­ball and clas­sic movies – a lim­ited mar­ket. Set in 1925 at the birth of pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball, Clooney plays “Dodge” Connelly, an age­ing play­er try­ing to keep his ath­let­ic dreams alive via the unpre­pos­sess­ing Duluth Bulldogs. As a last gasp attempt to get crowds to pro games he signs col­lege star and war hero Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to an exor­bit­ant game by game con­tract and inad­vert­ently changes the sport forever. He also gets hard-boiled newspaper-woman Lexie Littleton (a much less annoy­ing than usu­al Renée Zellweger) who is try­ing to uncov­er the truth about Rutherford’s war record. Vaguely remin­is­cent of fast-paced verbal com­ed­ies like His Girl Friday and Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels (and even The Sting), the best thing about Leatherheads is Randy Newman’s won­der­ful score.

Every great artist has major works and minor works. For Prince, for example, Sign O’ The Times is a major work and Alphabet Street Lovesexy isn’t. Mike Leigh’s major works include Naked, Secrets and Lies and All or Nothing and his minor list fea­tures Topsy-Turvy and now Happy-Go-Lucky, about primary school teach­er Poppy (Sally Hawkins) and her fam­ily and friends. There’s not much story and not much devel­op­ment, but I think the reas­on why Happy-Go-Lucky fails is the lack of empathy for the char­ac­ters (pos­sibly caused by Leigh not hav­ing act­ors like Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall to make the emo­tion­al con­nec­tions for him).

The second half of my con­tem­por­ary work­ing class London double-feature was Brick Lane, based on a nov­el I’ve actu­ally read. On the death of her moth­er, Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) is mar­ried off to prig­gish Karim (Christopher Simpson) in London where a life of grimy coun­cil flats and racist neigh­bours awaits. Clumsily con­densed and fussily dir­ec­ted, Brick Lane nev­er quite over­comes it’s own clichés.

Totally cliché-free and like noth­ing you have ever seen, Adam’s Apples is a very odd black com­ic fable about a white suprem­acist, Adam, sent to a remote coun­try church to see out his parole peri­od. There he meets a gaggle of eccent­ric, dam­aged or just plain bark­ing char­ac­ters, not least Ivan the priest (Mads Mikkelsen) who turns the oth­er cheek so often it might as well be inside out. Full of surprises.

Finally, a couple of dis­pos­able (though prob­ably not bio­de­grad­able) enter­tain­ments for the yoof: 21 is based on a true story about MIT stu­dents who use their phe­nom­en­al abil­it­ies at, er, count­ing to cheat the black­jack tables in Vegas. MIT is in Massachusetts and cent­ral char­ac­ter Ben (Across The Universe’s Jim Sturgess) is a fath­er­less schol­ar­ship boy so the film could have been called Good Will Counting. If it had any heart or soul or wit. 21 also fea­tures Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey in their third film togeth­er in less than four years.

And Prom Night is a run-of-the-mill slash­er film fea­tur­ing a high school sci­ence teach­er with an infatu­ation for Brittany Snow (Hairspray). He kills all her fam­ily and then, three years later, escapes from deten­tion to wreck her Prom party. Totally forgettable.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 11 June, 2008.

Notes on screen­ing con­di­tions: All unre­mark­able screen­ings at cinemas not­able for their atten­tion to screen­ing qual­ity except for Adam’s Apples which is pretty scratchy and has a dam­aged soundtrack (Paramount) and Shine a Light which looked and soun­ded simply superb at the Embassy.

Review: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, American Gangster, After the Wedding, Clubland, Death at a Funeral, Alien vs. Predator- Requiem, Elsa & Fred and Lust, Caution

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest, Reviews

Sweeney Todd poster2008 is shap­ing up to be a year of great films about people being beastly to each oth­er and the first cab off the rank is Tim Burton’s majest­ic adapt­a­tion of Sondheim’s broad­way opera Sweeney Todd. Based on the true-ish story of the Victorian barber who murders his cus­tom­ers to provide fresh meat for his girlfriend’s pies, Sweeney Todd is pos­it­ively Shakespearian in scale – meaty, sav­age, sin­is­ter and poignant.
Johnny Depp plays the tal­en­ted scissor-man who returns to London 15 years after he was trans­por­ted to the colon­ies by crooked Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who had desires on his pretty wife. Consumed with a pas­sion for revenge Todd goes back to work above the shop selling London’s worst pies, made by the redoubt­able Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter). There, more by acci­dent than design, they dis­cov­er that his skills with a razor might be prof­it­able in more ways than one.

Sondheim’s music and lyr­ics are as good as any oth­er writ­ing for the stage in the last cen­tury and the film ver­sion hon­ours that tal­ent uncon­di­tion­ally. When young Toby (Ed Sanders) sings “Not While I’m Around” (prob­ably the most beau­ti­ful song ever writ­ten) to Mrs Lovett you can see the look in her eyes that shows he has just sealed his own fate, the tem­per­at­ure in the theatre seemed to drop a few degrees. Not just any­one can pull that off.

American Gangster poster

The best of the rest at the moment is Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, a pacy and obser­v­ant look at the life of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), Harlem’s most notori­ous and suc­cess­ful drug deal­er of the 1970s. Russell Crowe plays Richie Roberts, the only hon­est cop in New York. It’s an inter­est­ing story well told by three cha­ris­mat­ic film personalities.

After the Wedding poster

After the Wedding is a lovely, layered drama from Denmark star­ring the watch­able Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale) as an aid work­er at an Indian orphan­age who is summoned back to Copenhagen by a mys­ter­i­ous bil­lion­aire (Rolf Lassgård). Lassgård wants to donate enough money to save the pro­gramme – mil­lions of dol­lars – but there are strings attached. Those strings turn out to be less nefar­i­ous than they seem at first but the choice that Mikkelsen’s Jacob has to make is still a heart-breaking one. Totally recommended.

Clubland poster

Totally un-recommended is the Australian comedy-drama Clubland about an unusu­al show­biz fam­ily led by dom­in­eer­ing moth­er Brenda Blethyn. Asinine in con­cep­tion and hor­rible in exe­cu­tion, it struggles to get one good per­form­ance out the entire cast put together.

Death at a Funeral posterDeath at a Funeral isn’t much bet­ter, although a couple of per­form­ances (Peter Dinklage and a doughy Matthew McFadyen) rise above the cheap and nasty script. The funer­al is for McFadyen’s fath­er and vari­ous friends and fam­ily mem­bers have assembled to form a quor­um of English ste­reo­types. Standard farce ele­ments like mis­taken iden­tity and acci­dent­al drug-taking are shoe-horned togeth­er with the help of some poo jokes.

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem poster

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem man­aged to dis­ap­pear from my memory about as soon as I left the theatre with my ears still ringing from the noise. An Alien pod being trans­por­ted across the galaxy crash lands in Colorado and starts lay­ing eggs – cause that’s just how they roll. A creature from the Predator home-world tries to clean up the mess and a whole bunch of ran­dom cit­izens get caught in the middle. All the sig­na­ture moments from the ori­gin­al Alien (the chest-bursting, the almost-kissing a whim­per­ing young woman) are repeated often, to dimin­ish­ing effect and, I know I some­times see cine­mat­ic racism every­where, is it really neces­sary for both malevol­ent extra-terrestrial races to look like big black men with dreadlocks?

Elsa & Fred poster

There’s a fact­ory in China, I’m sure, stamp­ing out films like Elsa & Fred on a weekly basis, mak­ing subtle cul­tur­al and gen­er­a­tion­al changes where neces­sary but pre­serving the for­mula like it’s Coca Cola. And fair enough as these films will always sell: un-challenging, easy to decipher, vaguely life-affirming. Elsa (China Zorrilla) is a batty old woman in a Madrid apart­ment block. Fred (Manuel Alexandre) is the quiet wid­ower who moves in oppos­ite. She decides to point him back the dir­ec­tion of life and he tries to make her dreams come true before it is too late.

Lust, Caution poster

Finally, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is an extremely well-made but over­long erot­ic thrill­er set in Japanese-occupied China dur­ing WWII. Stunning new­comer Wei Tang plays Wong Chia Chi, per­suaded in a moment of youth­ful, pat­ri­ot­ic weak­ness to join a stu­dent res­ist­ance group. She is sent under­cov­er to try and woo the mys­ter­i­ous Mr Yee (Tony Leung) who is a seni­or offi­cial col­lab­or­at­ing with the Japanese occu­pa­tion forces. Unfortunately, for them both he is inter­ested but a chal­len­ging mark and it is sev­er­al years before she can get close enough to him (and believe me she gets very close) for the res­ist­ance to strike. Ang Lee is the poet of the stolen glance and he is in very good form – I just wish it hadn’t taken quite so long to get going.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 23 January, 2008.

Nature of Conflict: After the Wedding is dis­trib­uted in NZ and Australia by Arkles Entertainment who I do some work for; Clubland is dis­trib­uted in Australia and NZ by Palace whose NZ activ­it­ies are looked after by the excel­lent Richard Dalton, who is a good mate.

At present Reading Cinemas are not offer­ing press passes to the Capital Times. This means that their exclus­ive releases (such as Cloverfield) will go un-reviewed unless I can work some­thing out with them or the dis­trib­ut­or. Maybe I’ll just down­load them …