Reviews

Exquisitely directed as it is, 'Shame' finally seems contrived and unreal. Its joyless hero appears to be suffering from a lack of intimacy rather than sex addiction but then, judging by their public comments, the makers seem a bit confused as to what sex addiction really is. Here it seems to be just a form of depression and 'Shame' is indeed yet another aesthetically beautiful celebration of depression like Von Trier's 'Melancolia'. You could call these films Designer Depression, because they look and sound so exquisite but to such little effect. Yes the cast are all great but that's not enough when it adds nothing whatsoever to our understanding of the subject. Indeed it is as if the writer and director have no more clue about the predicament of its central character than he did, finally abandoning him in a limbo of their own creation. And at times the story is just plain preposterous as when our heterosexually obsessed hero (played beautifully by Fassbender) suddenly and ludicrously goes for a gay quickie in a Dante's inferno sequence so overblown as to be laughable. But then for all its wonderful surface in a way the whole film is laughable. Is this because McQueen is yet to graduate from visual artist to narrative film-maker? Perhaps but we could forgo some of the glitter any day for a better script and story.

Sherlock Holmes is a tricky subject for modern audiences. His cerebral characteristics are, if anything, over-familiar yet if changed too much there is little point in doing the character at all. Guy Ritchie has gone for Holmes as jokey and slightly camp action hero with Downey giving an energetic (if anything too energetic) performance. Whereas in 'Iron Man', Downey perfectly caught the dry decadence of the character, here he plays Holmes as a volatile modern eccentric who seems to spend most of his time sleeping on the floor, jumping around and trying to trick Watson (Jude Law) out of getting married. It isn't enough to make us care about the character, perhaps because he doesn't convincingly seem to care about anything very much himself. In contrast Jude Law plays Watson commendably straight, again as a man of action (though he doesn't have enough to do) and there is a good villain in Mark Strong as an aspiring black magician. The film has quite a look to it and a fast pace but, thanks to the comedic tone, nothing ever seems to be at risk. Even one of the best action sequences (in which Watson appears to be killed) ends not with a bang but a line of dialogue "Watson's alive", which feels oddly like a cop-out.

As for the trade-mark Holmesian deduction, it is derisory. Indeed it typifies the whole problem with this venture in that for something supposed be based on wit, it isn't nearly witty enough. For example Holmes concludes instantly that one character is a Professor because he sees two chalk-marks on his clothes. Why not a school teacher, a surveyor or a pavement artist? Given such low calibre stuff, it's easy to forget the character in the books had flashes of genuine brilliance. Guy Ritchie fans will obviously lap this up, his trade-marks are all here but I'm guessing 'Iron Man'-type success is a very distant hope

I like horror and also the 'Paradise Lost' or 'Back-packer Horror' genre of which this is an example. The premise is OK and even a little original. But even so the film is so ineptly scripted it might serve as an effective teaching tool in how not to construct movies. The real shock is that a company like Dreamworks could put their name to such an amateurish effort. The story starts reasonably enough but once the threat begins nobody bothers with any story logic whatsoever. To give just one obvious example. A vital mobile phone is heard in a dark chasm. The phone is the group's only hope of getting help. People are lowered down at great risk to try and get it. One is injured in the attempt but they reach the bottom and....? And nothing at all! The phone is simply forgotten and they pull up their comrades and settle down for the night! No surrpise then that the ending is utterly feeble, indeed no attempt has really been made to mount any kind of conclusion. And what makes it worse is that the acting is OK, far better than this lame material deserves.

Although its fighting scenes are elegantly visual in places, and there is some pacey action, the content of this film is so tiresomely familiar and cliché-ridden it is remarkable some people have been writing so favourably. Once again we are in a post-apocalyptic western country (England) in which a right wing semi-fascist government is rounding up immigrants and subversives. Once again we meet the Resistance and yes the plot harks back nostalgically to the idyllic freedom of the 60s, even its patron saint being an old hippie (played with usual gusto by Michael Caine). Once again the hero and heroine fight to escape to a Better Place, here some nebulous scientific project across the ocean. At least 'V For Vendetta had flashes of originality and did not, as this does, come over (unintentionally) as a right wing rant, especially in the way foreigners are portrayed as half-crazed. There is something smug and self-congratulatory in the way such ancient themes are recycled as if the makers have been the first to discover them. In fact the merest zombie movie boasts more engaging characters and also seems more accurate-- and less derivative-- about what a breakdown in society might actually look like. Worse yet, even on an action level the plot is riddled with terrible holes. A car chase where the hero's car cannot be bump-started on a steep hill but magically comes to life on a mud flat just in time to save the occupants! The hero and heroine's semi-magical release from a building surrounded by ferocious troops by holding the world's only surviving baby aloft yet while the baby is valued enough to paralyze all action, the troops subsequently ignore it and get back to fighting, leaving the hero and heroine to go free. It's this kind of sloppyness in follow-though that makes the whole film risible specially since such sequences are mounted with gushing sentimentality.

Beautifully visualised with some excellent sequences and a strong central performance from Cage, this new 'Wicker Man' deserves much credit for rethinking and reworking the original rather than just regurgitating it like the recent remake of 'The Omen'. Be warned though that many of this film's better sequences are in its trailer and you will enjoy it much more if you haven't seen the trailer. There are also loose ends, and things that don't tie up properly, which leave the viewer feeling slightly cheated. But the overall conception is wonderfully creepy with the Paganism of the original being given a feminist spin which ties in with the theme of 'The Da Vinci Code' Given the fact 'The Wicker Man' is a hard film to remake, this has enough originality and power of its own both to reward fans of the first and engage those who never saw it.

Given the slightly hostile reception to this movie and one extraordinarily unfair and grossly inaccurate review in 'Variety' I'd like to add a few words to the above. The film is being condemned firstly by fans of the original, secondly by people who hate this kind of film anyway. The two types are very different but have merged into an unholy chorus (fuelled by beefs about the soundtrack which are a complete red herring). If only they had done this for the vastly inferior 'Omen' remake which really was a lazy and cynical disgrace. By contrast here enormous care has been taken to rework the story from scratch. None of the detractors are giving any credit at all to the film's first half which is entirely different from the earlier film and intelligently so.

Indeed the reviewer in Variety appears to have forgotten the plot of the first 'Wicker Man' altogether for he seems to think no changes have been made of any substance! Let me remind him that in the first film the hero was just a dogged ordinary policeman doing his somewhat routine duty. Here Cage is a man returning to find a lost love and his own lost child after an electrifying and very strange opening involving a horrifying encounter with a woman and child who are killed before his eyes. The brutal fact is, Variety, that up to the halfway point this is a completely different movie from what we last saw and in some ways an improvement.

It's true of course that at the climax, the film does revert, in my view rather misguidedly, to the original. I think it would have been far better to evolve a different ending for this very different story. In the first film there was a sense that the narrow-minded hero was bound to meet his end, it was his destiny. Here in contrast it just seems unfair and somewhat arbitrary and not even entirely credible. For the the hero of this film, who has no blinkers, would have seen it coming and acted accordngly. I would submit that here is the reason people are so upset by the film. "An audience will forgive you anything at the beginning of the film and nothing at the end" as Hithcock observed. That is unfair but not entirely surprising. What is surprising is that because of the similarity of the climax few seem to have noticed just how different this film is from its model or paid any attention to its more original elements. And even more that a usually accurate journal of movie record could come up with such a slipshod review.

There have not been many comments or many reviews yet of 'Adrift' aka 'Open Water 2' which takes as its premise a woman with a water phobia (Susan May Pratt seen in '10 Things I Hate About You') on board a yacht with her baby, and a bunch of hedonistic old friends who make a terrible mistake. The film may be German financed but feels utterly American, being well acted in English by an American cast. The lack of comments here so far arises partly because it is yet to open in the UK or US. But I saw a London preview, having been intrigued by the trailer, and was very impressed. I did not much like 'Open Water' which despite its reasonable Blair-Witch-on-water premise had a very amateurish beginning (it began like some terrible home movie) and a stagy last hour--yes stagy despite being set in mid-ocean since it was all dialogue. This quasi-sequel is smarter, far better acted (Pratt is very good), quite obviously higher budget with some keen script construction and it also carries an extremely enigmatic ending too--indeed I long to see the ending analyzed here but I will not do it for I am not offering spoilers. The premise is actually wonderful. How you can have everything you need feet away and yet be contemplating death and destruction at every turn. The cast too is generally very good, making the film quite harrowing in places, far more convincingly harrowing than 'Open Water'. The way they are plunged into their awful predicament is convincing and effective. Others have suggested it is easily resolved, I don't think so for a minute, not if you consider the actual situation. The device of the baby left alone on board is genuinely brilliant. At times you want a little more action and a little less emotion but I can live with that.

There is though the question of how Americans will react. Because this whole plot seems to work not just as a reasonable thriller but as an allegory. Like any good allegory it's mostly inconspicuous, someone with me enjoyed the film but did not take on the allegorical dimension at all. But very early on we see a satirical Vote Bush sticker (with a frown face), later much play is made of the US flag which is torn in half as the desperate cast try to redeem things. Is not this troubled ship a "ship of state", threatened by its own macho hubris, whose owner/captain even bears a resemblance to (a younger) Bush? Finally the rescue comes from a very obviously alien boat. I suspect strongly there is much more to come out about 'Adrift' and that Hans Horn its director may well have a Hollywood future.