Reviews

Adjusting for inflation, the budget of Metropolis was in the region of $200 million. A more than substantial amount for any studio to pay in 1927. James Cameron's recent Pocahontas-in-space epic Avatar cost close to $300 million. Both are currently on re-release with extra footage added, Metropolis has an extra 25 minutes of film, Avatar has an extra 9 minutes. This is where the similarities end as it's difficult to imagine anyone watching, let alone studying, that glorified computer game trailer 80 years from now.

Technically I have seen Metropolis before, albeit a two hour long DVD version. Add to that the fact it was on a 14-inch television I purchased for £25 whilst at University (the brand name could possibly have been Sorny or Panasonix). Not exactly the best way to view any film but it was still painfully clear how original, relevant and important Fritz Langs masterpiece really was.

Fast forward a few years and I have the pleasure of enjoying Metropolis on a cinema screen and with 25 minutes of lost footage added. What was originally an important film to watch for anyone who loves cinema has become more than that. This landmark vision of the future is truly great on almost every level.

A silent film made in the 1920's is not going to appeal to most of the cinema going masses, and it shouldn't, its not for everyone and takes some effort on the part of the viewer to really become immersed in. But if you like something with a little more depth than Piranha 3D and are willing to invest almost two and a half hours in an 80 year old film, Metropolis rewards you with images that stay in your mind for years.

Most aspects of the film have been pastiched, homaged and sometimes just plagiarized in sci-fi films since its first release. From the beautiful dystopian city set design (Dark City, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element) to the robotic Maria (Star Wars, The Terminator) to the mechanical arm (Dr. Strangelove). The character of Rotwang became the paradigm for almost every 'mad-scientist' character in cinema since.

The IFI will be running a season entitled 'After Metropolis' until the 19th of September. The fact that it includes Brazil, Dark City, Dr Strangelove or :How I stopped Worrying and Love the Bomb and some of the other greatest science fiction films of all time, is testament to the influence Metropolis has had on cinema.

For those who have seen it before, the opportunity to see a restored version of Metropolis on the big screen is not to be missed. For those who haven't, but have an interest in German Expressionism, Science Fiction or film in general, it's an absolute must. The only downside being that any film watched after this will somehow seem slightly dull and insignificant.

Walking down Henry Street on a Saturday afternoon, a particular type of teenager can be spotted. They shuffle from shop to shop, overweight, insecure and accompanied by their Mammy. We now have a name for them; Cyrus.

Sad sack John (John C. Reilly) has never really gotten over his ex wife. His dependency on her, seven years after their divorce, is still obvious, so he decides its time to start looking for someone new. The fact that he has a face thats a cross between Beethoven and Shrek doesn't really help his chances but, against the odds, he manages to find the beautiful Molly (Marisa Tomei). All goes swimmingly at first, until John meets Cyrus. Mollys 20-year-old unemployed son Cyrus is morbidly obese and morbidly dependant on her. Their relationship is a little, shall we say, a little Oedipal. Scrap that, a lot Oedipal. Obviously Cyrus isn't going to take to well to his 'new Dad' but what follows is a subtle masterclass in passive aggressive one-up-manship.

In the wrong hands Cyrus could have been 90 minutes of breast feeding gags and a series of Jackass-style pranks. Luckily for us we are dealing with Jay and Mark Duplass, the golden boys of 'Mumblecore'. For those unfamiliar with the sub genre, 'Mumblecore' refers to a film movement which came out of North America at the turn of the millennium. The films are all made on micro budgets, focus on the relationships of twenty-somethings and rely on improvisation. Basically they are the bastard children of Slackers and Woody Allen's Manhattan.This is the first outing for the Duplass brothers with a reasonable budget and some well known faces. Thankfully they've retained their indie cinema sensibilties and understand the elements that made their early work enjoyable. The dialogue is still mainly improvised and the camera work is still mostly hand-held and makes use of a lot of snap-zoom. Cyrus has been marketed as a comedy and there are laughs scattered throughout, the humour however is closer to the Coen brothers than Judd Apatow. However it's the dramatic elements of the narrative that really give the cast something to get their teeth into. John C. Reilly here echoes his performance in Paul T. Anderson's Magnolia. Both characters are essentially losers, but there's something undeniably likable and sweet about them. Jonah Hill as the titular character really impresses. Fears that he would forever be typecast as a ranty, horny chubby funster are alleviated. He knows how to take a scene forward, he knows when to be serious and most importantly he knows that subtlety can often be far funnier than farce.

Many many people will hate Cyrus and I can see why, the camera work is distracting at times, the subject matter is often dark and the laughs are few and far between. These people probably went in expecting Superbad mixed with some of the fart gags from Step Brothers. For me though, this marks the start of something big for Jay and Mark Duplass.

Its difficult to pinpoint exactly when Will Ferrell's career took a Steve Martin-esquire nosedive. It seems to be somewhere between the needless remake of The Producers and the gag free Blades of Glory. In the early naughties he broke free of the 'Saturday Night Live' crew, starred in some feature films and became a genre unto himself (You seen that new Will Ferrell film?). During that time he gave us some quotable, laugh-at-loud performances, such as Ron Burgundy in Anchorman and Frank in Old School. However overkill is easily achieved by funny-men and Ferrell obviously didn't follow Jim Carey's career too closely. Fast forward a couple of years and we are being given diluted versions of the same characters, but this time he has a film out every second month, how could that possibly get annoying? After a string of not appalling, but also not amusing films (Semi-Pro, Land of the Lost) it seemed he had lost it completely. Luckily he's slowed down in recent years and in The Other Guys he has downplayed the wackiness somewhat. But, one more false move and he's Adam Sandler.

Highsmith and Danson (played by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson) are the two most bad-ass cops in their precinct. They get the criminals, they get the girls, they may not always follow the rules but goddammit they get the job done. Idolising them from a distance are Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz (played by Ferrel and Mark Wahlberg). Gamble is an accountant at heart and has no interest in police-work which poses any danger. Hoitz is hungry for action but has lost his bottle having shot an unarmed sports personality. When New York Citys finest duo get killed in the line of duty, Hoitz sees this as their opportunity to step up, do some real policing and fill Highsmith and Dansons place. Luckily the first case they take leads them to a multi-billion dollar fraud ring. It looks as though The Other Guys will finally be recognised.

Mark Wahlberg seems slightly confused throughout the whole film as to whether he's the straight man or grabbing for laughs too. He also seems to be genuinely frustrated with Ferrell (you can tell because Marky Mark is not the greatest actor). Whilst they both give us some giggles and the supporting cast know how to deliver a joke, its hard to do a lot with poor scripting. Michael Keaton delivers some of the funniest material in the film but sadly has very little on-screen time. The entire film had roughly ten to twelve jokes rehashed again and again. As we all know, jokes get funnier the second time round, so by the tenth time round it felt as if I was being hit with an hilarity stick and it was almost too much to take.

The Other guys is not a great comedy by any means, it delivers some giggles and for those in need of a Ferrell fix it will sate your appetite somewhat. For others, there's a scene about halfway through with Will Ferrell explaining why an FBI mug with 'Female Body Inspector' on it is funny. Wahlberg interrupts him and screams 'Shut up!'. I think it's an outtake.

Ben Afflecks decade long fall from grace was almost a thing of beauty. In 1997 having written and starred in the smash hit Good Will Hunting Affleck, along with co-writer and co-star Matt Damon, was seen as one of Hollywoods great new hopes. But the curse of having "next big thing" preface his name in almost every interview for a year struck Affleck pretty badly. Matt Damon chose some great roles to further his career and has given us some excellent performances. If you don't agree with me, watch the criminally overlooked The Informant!, Damon's portrayal of idiot Mark Whitacre is on a par with William H. Macy in Fargo.

Ben, on the other hand, went on to act in some truly awful films, hitting his lowest point in what is arguably one of the worst films of this decade, Gigli. At that stage it seemed all the votes were in and counted; Ben Affleck just could not act. A somewhat solid performance in Hollywoodland did little to change peoples minds about his acting ability. Then in 2007 he stepped behind the camera for Gone Baby Gone, and his younger brother Casey showed us who had the real acting skills in the Affleck household. However it was the surprisingly good direction of Gone Baby Gone which caught a lot of peoples attention. Surely the man who played a plank in Pearl Harbour could not be such a competent Director?

The Town, like Affleck's directorial debut, is an adaptation of a novel. The story centres around Afflecks character Doug MacRay and his criminal friends living in the blue-collar neighbourhood of Charlestown, Boston. Together they form a team of bank robbers with a 100% success rate so far. MacRay knows that his luck may not last so decides to do one last big take before leaving Boston forever. His friends and family seem to take this as an insult and do everything in their power to make him stay. During his next heist he takes bank manager Claire hostage but eventually allows her to go free unharmed. A chance meeting in a launderette re-introduces the two, although obviously she doesn't recognise him. The two begin a relationship and against his better judgement he begins to fall for her. In the meantime his friends and family begin to resent the new MacRay and plot to bring the criminal out in him again.

Comparisons to The Departed are plenty and justified. The three bank heist scenes also echo the gripping action of Michael Mann's Heat. Whilst the one-last-job storyline is somewhat hackneyed, it is the direction and acting which make The Town a must watch. Like The Departed the cating of the supporting roles is close to perfect. Jeremy Renner does a fantastic job playing MacRay's unhinged best friend, James. However the character is a little close to William James in The Hurt Locker and once again shows that Renner needs a more challenging role to really show us what he is capable of. Pete Postlethwaite and Chris Cooper, as expected, give stellar performances and, in the scenes they have with Affleck, expose just how little on-screen presence the man really has. Whilst The Town will hardly make us reassess our opinion of Ben Affleck's acting abilities, it does show us that when he steps behind the camera, he's a man to watch.

Fear and nostalgia don't often go hand in hand, but the two were riding high in my mind after the screening of The Hole. Coulrophobia, or a fear of clowns, seems to be quite a common phobia amongst my peers and for 99% of us it can be traced back to a certain television show. The Sky One adaptation of Stephen King's It, which aired in 1990. It's main antagonist, a clown named Pennywise, gave me my first real post-horror-film sleepless night. Up to that point the only fear-inducing villains I had been exposed to were Darth Vader and the Wicked Witch of the West. But a samurai robot and a middle-aged woman in green make-up didn't seem quite so scary after watching the terrifying killer clown. Echoes of Pennywise are evident in the ghoulish Jester doll of The Hole. The fact that Joe Dante brings us a family film that manages to instill some levels of discomfort and even fear in adults reminds us why he was such a big name in the 80's. With The Hole, the man behind Gremlins and The 'Burbs goe's back to what he does best; frightening yet family friendly. And he almost succeeds in giving us another great kids film. Almost.

Featuring the aforementioned Jester doll, the corpse of a young girl and some Beetlejuice like nightmare sequences, there are a lot of horror elements of the film to like. These elements are executed well and the use of some traditional stop-motion special effects gave the film an endearing charm. However all of this just served to highlight how awful the 3D was. The digital effect only served to ruin what would otherwise have been a great thowback-to-the-80's look. I ended up watching the second half of The Hole with my Roy Orbison style specs removed.

In my experience, and a lot of people I've discussed it with, the novelty of 3D lasts for roughly the first ten minutes of a film. Afterwards it simply distracts from whats going on and tends to blur any action above a certain speed. It adds nothing to the vast majority of the films released in the format and ultimately becomes headache inducing. Let's hope it's just a Smell-O-Vision style fad that fades away sooner rather than later.

The storyline of The Hole is in no way original and the dialogue is ridiculously bad at times, but on the whole it had a certain charisma about it. Had this been released when I was between eight and twelve years of age it may have been a favourite of mine, along with Ghostbusters and two of Dante's other works Innerspace and Gremlins. It pushes the boundaries of whats acceptable in a film rated 12A, is nicely stylised and has genuinely frightening moments. For a certain age group in years to come, The Hole will evoke great memories of how much fun the cinema can be. If they happen to see a 2D version, all the better.

Hollywood has turned many a hip-hop artist into an actor over the past two decades. Whilst some were surprisingly decent (Tupac, Mos Def and LL Cool J spring to mind), the majority were somewhat painful to watch (Eminem, 50 Cent, DMX). Queen Latifah lies in the former category, she's likable, funny and has a lot of screen presence. The same cannot be said for her Just Wright co-star, hip-hop artist Common. In his first starring role he seems to have channelled Keanu Reeves in his heyday, stare blankly and the audience will fill in the emotion you're trying to convey. It's somewhat surprising that his performance is stilted considering he was being guided by Sanaa Hamri, director of The Sisterhood of the travelling Pants 2........Exactly.

Latifah plays Leslie Wright, a sports physiotherapist who, wait for it, just can't seem to get a man! We know this because its explained to us roughly 14 times in the first 25 minutes. Her god-sister Morgan, played by Paula Patton, is beautiful but shallow and the guys always seem to go for her. To quote one of Common's collaborators, Kanye West; 'She a golddigga'. Her main aim in life is to bag an NBA all-star and become a ballers wife. Scott McKnight is the New Jersey Nets finest player, so when the two girls get invited to his exclusive birthday bash, who does McKnight choose but Morgan. Poor Queenie. After a whirlwind romance the two get engaged. All seems to be going to Morgan's plan until McKnight suffers a possibly career ending injury. Imagining that her multi-millionaire NBA star fiancé will somehow become penniless because of this, Morgan decides to leave him. In steps Leslie Wright to nurse him back to health with a Rocky style training montage. Their blossoming romance is painfully explained to us in a scene where McKnight spoon-feeds Leslie some chicken soup. After his heroic comeback game Morgan appears on the scene once again but McKnight chooses his true love. In the end they're all friends. Ah.

Whilst its not insultingly awful, Just Wright is so predictably formulaic that you have it figured out 10 minutes in and from there it's just a waiting game. In the Hollywood screenwriters edition of Microsoft Word there seems to be a template entitled 'Sports Rom-Com between $15M and $30M'. Change the sport to Baseball and the lead actress to Drew Barrymore and you basically have The Perfect Catch. I've never been a huge fan of romantic comedies, simply because there aren't many decent ones. Just Wright makes no attempts to push the boat out or break the rom-com mould in any way. Its is the film equivalent of a pot noodle meal, whilst its edible, it has no nutritional value whatsoever.

Uncompomising is a word thats bandied around too freely these days. It seems to be applied to any film with darker than normal subject matter, especially if they happen to be 'indie' films. But uncompromising is exactly what Debra Granik's work here is. The self-assured director doesn't shy away from the grotesque or macabre aspects of life for these mountain folk. It's uncomfortable viewing at times, and so it should be, we're not watching The Waltons.

Winter's Bone is shot beautifully on location in the remote Ozark Mountains near the Missouri/Arkansas border. The cinematography makes use of the natural light available as much as possible and the resulting muted, flat tones capture the bleak, broken spirit of the area. The music is straight-forward, simplistic and compliments the narrative without calling for our attention or distracting us from the story. Nick Cave's soundtrack to The Road achieved much the same results. It is the fantastic performances however, that really glue all these elements together to form something brilliant. Walter Salles used the local Peruvians to great effect when he cast them as extras in The Motorcycle Diaries. The same technique is used here by Debra Granik with numerous cast members being natives of the Ozark Mountains. Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes both give stellar performances here in the lead roles, Lawrence in particular is captivating and thoroughly believable as the vulnerable heroine, Ree.

At 17 years old, Ree Dolly is the sole bread-winner and carer for her family. Her two siblings, twelve year old Sonny and six year old Ashlee, as well as their mentally ill Mother, all live together in little more than a shack. They survive in abject poverty by shooting and eating squirrels. Their home and the few possessions they have come under threat when the local Sheriff knocks on their door. It seems Ree's Father, a wanted criminal, has used their home and all their assets as collateral for his bail and promptly disappeared. She has one week to find him or everything they own will be taken. She sets out to confront her Fathers friends and acquaintances in an effort to find his whereabouts. These people all form a 'Hillbilly Mafia' of sorts, a world where people make a living cooking up Crystal Meth and dealing Oxycontin. Putting her own life in danger, she pushes on for the sake of her family. Eventually the truth, or part of it, is revealed.

Having won two jury prizes at both Berlinale and Sundance Film Festivals, rumours are already circulating about this films Oscar chances. John Hawkes as Teardrop and newcomer Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly certainly deserve academy recognition for their strong performances. Also worthy of note is the sparse cinematography of Michael McDonagh. Needless to say, if you're a film fan you owe it to yourself to go see something so bleak, harrowing and desolate that ultimately leaves you feeling hopeful. A rare treat.

17 year-old Bennie works as a waiter on a cruiseship. When the ship suffers engine difficulties and docks in Buenos Aires, he uses the opportunity to attempt to reconnect with his estranged brother Tetro, a once promising writer. He is welcomed with open arms by Tetro's girlfriend, Miranda. She longs to know the truth behind her boyfriends past and what made him the misanthrope he is today. Tetro is hostile towards his brother, his plan was to never see any of his family again, and so keeps him at arms length. Bennie discovers an incomplete play, written in code whilst his brother was undergoing psychiatric treatment. He decides to finish the play and enter it in a festival run by Argentina's most powerful critic, Alone. Faced with this upheaval, Tetro is forced to come to terms with his relationship to his younger brother and his father, a famous conductor.

Tetro is, at its core, a film about family, in particular the relationship between brothers and their Father. A theme Francis Ford Coppola has immersed himself in before, most notably in The Godfather and Rumble Fish. Through a series of flashbacks we are given a glimpse of major events in Tetro's youth, his relationship with his father (played by Klaus Brandauer) and his subsequent departure. There are huge family secrets known only to Tetro and revealed to Bennie in an ending which echoes great literary and operatic works. Coppolas love of opera and theater is stamped all over the script and the city of Buenos Aires seems to be the perfect background in which to set this story.

Shot stunningly in digital monochrome with colour flashbacks, it has some aesthetic similarities to Rumble Fish. Coppola and cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. reportedly site On The Waterfront and La Notte as big influences on the films visual style. There are certainly elements of both here, with the film also retaining its visual sense of self. It is operatic in both its narrative and its mise-en-scene. The idea of cutting between colour and monochrome as well as changing aspect ratios sounds as if it would be jarring, and it typically is. But for the purposes of Tetro it works perfectly.

Seen as a controversial choice by some, Vincent Gallo brings an edge to the titular character that some other actors may have lacked. However it is newcomer Alden Ehrenreich who steals the show as Bennie, a wayward teenager looking for guidance and approval. Maribel Verdu, as Miranda, provides the conduit between the two in a typicaly solid performance.

Hollywood is littered with once great directors who have fallen from grace, which makes Tetro all the more remarkable as a return to form from one of the greatest, Francis Ford Coppola.

Predators begins with the cast of characters being literally dumped out of a spaceship, free-falling towards the surface of a planet. The last thing most remember is a flash of light before landing in thick jungle. How did they get here, and why? They soon realise they are not on Earth and are being hunted by new 'super-predators'.The reasoning behind the prefix 'super-' is the fact these predators are a couple of inches taller than their predecessors and have new shoulder weapons. They are also being hunted by wolf/boar like creatures courtesy of some bad CGI. From there, the whole thing unfolds with grim predictability.

The cast of characters includes members of the Yakuza and Los Zetas, a warlord from Sierra Leone and a Russian hit-man. A group that would seem more at home in the latest installment of Mortal Kombat than a feature length film. Replacing Arnold Schwarzenegger's character is Adrien Brody, here portraying Royce, an ex-military mercenary. Brody seems to have received voice coaching from Tom Waits, resulting in a gravelly, 'tough guy' voice a la Christian Bale in The Dark Knight. A brief and unnecessary appearance is made about halfway through the film by Lawrence Fishburne as Noland, a scavenger with Multiple Personality Disorder. The script itself is a mix of recycled dialogue from the original two films and cringe-worthy one-liners. Brody's lines, in particular, seem more like narration than dialogue, as he constantly explains his way through the jungle planet.

Unsurprisingly, the cast are killed off one-by-one. Most in incredibly similar scenarios to the original Predator. However, the death scene of the Yakuza member, after he finds a katana sword on this alien planet, is a nod to Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Frustrating, to say the least, in a film of this calibre. We are then treated to a 'twist' ending. So bafflingly out of place is the revelation that it feels as if some of M. Night Shyamalan's rejected ideas got literally shuffled into the last few pages of the Predators script . In the final leave-it-open-for-a-sequel shot, our protagonist and his love interest, walk into the sunsets.

The cast and crews initial response to criticism of the visual effects and film as a whole was to refer to the relatively low budget of forty million dollars. Just to put this in perspective Neil Blomkamp's District 9 was made for thirty million. Initial interest in this project was mainly due to Robert Rodriguez' (Sin City, From Dusk til Dawn) involvement. However he chose not to direct, instead recruiting relative unknown Nimrod Antal, director of the mediocre and forgettable thriller Vacancy. Rodriguez advises the fans to view this as a sequel to the originals and not as part of the 'Alien Vs. Predator' series. A wise move to try to distance this from the famously awful franchise, but thats where Predators fits, another badly made sequel. The rumours of a Total Recall remake begs the question which should have been asked of this film. Why?

In order to impress his girlfriend, Tim (Paul Rudd) needs to secure a promotion. So he decides to accept his bosses challenge; bring an 'idiot' to their annual 'Dinner for Winners'. A competition run by white-collar executives and disguised as a celebration of brilliance in unrecognised individuals. In reality, the meal is simply an opportunity for elitist senior-management types to laugh at some quirky and eccentric members of society. Tim's girlfriend tries to convince him the whole idea is abhorrent. Just as he is beginning to agree with her, he meets Barry (Steve Carell). An IRS worker, with a passion for creating art from taxidermied mice, Barry might just be the perfect man to help Tim win the competition.

The US version of The Office has shown us that Carell can do awkward better than most and Anchorman proved his capabilities of making stupidity funny. However, his character here is completely unlikeable and, more often than not, irritating. His bowl haircut, glasses and protruding teeth, evoke bad seventies sitcoms. A time when this look would have been a stylists shorthand for 'socially inept'. Paul Rudd, on the other hand, is given little opportunity to make us laugh, playing two-dimensional straight man, Tim. Director Jay Roach's previous franchises (Austin Powers, Meet the Parents/Fockers) may not have been the greatest comedies of the past fifteen years, but delivered as and when expected. The problems with Dinner for Schmucks lie in the pacing and the writing. With a 114 minute runtime, it is simply too long. Entire characters and subplots are superfluous. It also suffers badly from second-act-drag, believing that given enough on-screen time we will somehow empathise with our two leads.

Producer Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Bruno), seems to have called in a number of favours from celebrity friends and cast them in every available role. The idea, presumably, is that good performances can boost a weak script into something amusing. Of Course, this is not the case. Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) as avant-garde artiste, Kieran, makes the most of his characters nonsequiturs but only manages to raise a smirk at best. The same cannot be said for David Walliams (Little Britain), whose Swiss, aristocratic character, Mueller, is completely redundant in every way. The only worthy gag in almost two-hours is provided by Chris O' Dowd (The I.T. Crowd) as a blind swordsman. However having only a handful of lines and appearing twenty minutes before the credits roll, its far too little, far too late.

Dinner for Schmucks starts with a premise full of comedic opportunities, but spends the next hour and a half ignoring these. The original, a French film from 1998 entitled The Dinner Game, was a social satire focusing on the ridiculous measures the aristocracy will go to amuse themselves. It was full of witty dialogue and, at 80 minutes long, it worked. As often happens, Hollywood seems to have missed the point and delivered a broad and bland remake.