Avatar

Cinemagoers unite – throw down your non-stereoscopic projectors, pick up your oversized specs, the 3D revolution is here!

Or so Hollywood would have us believe. With the ever developing crackdown on piracy, 3D films have become a key weapon in the studios arsenal against counterfeit copies of their movies.

The massive adoption across the board of 3D by the major players in motion pictures is generally attributed to be mainly for this reason – after all, the technology has been around since the middle of the twentieth century and IMAX cinemas were up and running by as early as 1985.

The first full length IMAX feature film was James Cameron’s 2003 documentary covering underwater explorations of the sunken Titanic liner, Ghosts of the Abyss.

Six years on from that (and twelve years on from Cameron’s 1997 box-office record breaker Titanic) the Canadian film-maker has taken the technology to another untrodden layer with his science-fiction epic Avatar.

Set around 150 years in the future, the film follows a tribe of indigenous people, Na’vi, as they battle to save their planet Pandora from an invading military presence from Earth.

Their invaders are desperate for unobtanium - a mineral buried within the Na’vi’s sacred lands – but caught in the middle is Jake Sully, a marine originally sent to infiltrate the Na’vi but who has fallen in love with the clan’s princess Neytiri.

Sully has entered the Na’vi’s world through becoming the titular avatar, a hybrid creature created by mixing human and Na’vi DNA, which can be controlled virtually by him whilst in a machine.

Visually stunning, the movie is a hugely immersive experience combining breathtaking CGI with actual footage to create a wonderful hybrid of its own between the virtual and real world in three beautiful dimensions.

Nominated for a bevy of technical Oscars, the film takes the relatively recent advent of CGI to a new level as it combines the incredible natural beauty of Pandora’s mountainous and forestall landscapes with the industrial, sci-fi vision of Earth’s scientific and military presence on the planet.

However it has failed to garner any nods for acting awards and the performances themselves are a mixed bag – Sam Worthington’s portrayal of Sully has a touch of disconnectedness to it, not helped by the fact his lines as an avatar were studio recorded and that working with countless green-spots and blue screens in place of real life actors and places blocks the natural flow of narrative dialogue.

The same fate does not befall his lover Neytiri, given a touch more vigour and richness by Zoe Saldana while Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine plays well as a passionate scientist battling military opposition to her avatar programme.

Other casting decisions such as Giovanni Ribisi as a military head (best known as Phoebe’s horny brother in the TV sitcom friends) are laughable at best while Stephen Lang as Colonel Quaritch, intent on conquering the Na’vi’s territory, has a touch of Duke Nukem to his characterisation.

Cameron’s attempts to make parallels between the conflict onscreen and issues such as the war in Iraq and climate change are admirable in their scope but end being clunkily raised in such an unsubtle way you almost expect 3D red flags to appear, alerting you to their presence.

The dialogue lacks nuance, often drifting into cliché and stultifies the mesmerising images on display – characters shamelessly explain the plot and their own motivations in a style Dan Brown has made his own.

It is, as a whole, baggy in length, clocking in at over two and half hours which is a mammoth amount for what is ostensibly a sci-fi action flick and while one respects the hours of time and effort spent on crafting every scene technically, shedding the weight is one thing the film badly needs.

But nonetheless Avatar is a cinematic event that deserves to be seen for its outstanding aesthetics and technical handiwork which has really paid dividends on screen in an act that will be difficult to follow for the next participate in the 3D timeline.

Just as 1927’s Jazz Singer will never be regarded as a classic and will always be known for being the first “talkie” than for any individual merit, Avatar is a defining chapter in the 3D movement and whilst it is not a great film, it remains cinematically revolutionary in the same respect.

Inglorious Basterds

As the enfant terrible of nineties cinema, the now 45-year-old Quentin Tarantino’s latest pot-shot into our multiplex screens is, on paper, his most daring attempt thus far.

Dealing as it does with subject matter long dubbed sensitive of tyranny against Jews during the Second World War (especially in an avant-garde work such as this) it is a bold move from the American but his charmingly graphic cool-fests of the 1990s hardly went by without a whimper from censors either.

The titular group are a small band of American Jews who have come to war-torn France to seek revenge against the Nazis, presumably for their anti-Semitic genocide although this is never fully explained.

If it wasn’t for the swastikas, sweeping French landscapes and the menagerie of accents, this could easily be a spaghetti Western premise evident in Morricone-like opening music , a violent opening, the needless filmic references scattered throughout the script and clichéd introductions of the Inglorious Basterds’ members.

They are led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) in an ill-advised role that sees the individual in his element as Jesse James two years ago stride about the screen with a demeanour and voice to match of a gurning idiot.

Thankfully however, Pitt is not the lead and is part of a strong ensemble, the gleaming star being Christoph Waltz as “Jew Hunter” Colonel Hans Landa, a menacing well-spoken villain, very much in the Bond-guise.

However the sprawling cast lead a film that still looks like it needs a fresh edit with some sections that neither serve a suitable plot advancers or simply lack narrative and character depth.

The glue holding the piece together is a premiere of a Joseph Goebbel’s (Sylvester Groth) propaganda film the one-man-army exploits of Private Fredrick Zoller who, without a hint of modesty, plays himself (the “romantic lead” Daniel Bruhl).

Zoller is smitten with the cinema’s French-Jewish owner (the shrewd Melanie Laurent) and has arranged for the premiere to take place in her French picture-house, an event which provides Tarantino’s problematic climax.

The fact that this film is not and never tries to be historically accurate ratchets the finely constructed tension that Tarantino is well-schooled in to a new level as no character’s fate is certain and nor is the conflict’s development.

This allows Tarantino to create scenes of Hitchcockian-like power that practically rope the audience forward onto the edge of their seats, most notably a section played out in real time in a tavern’s basement which deserves to be considered against some of Tarantino’s most acclaimed set-pieces with flowing dialogue and an arsenal of twists and turns.

However while this section and the film’s opening in a French farmhouse work well, the major issue with the film is the hatefully postmodern moral bankruptcy Tarantino brings to the fore.

This is not in the form of desperate men acting in desperate ways but requires the audience to support the Inglorious Basterds’ sadistic and somewhat psychotic violence which includes scalping and bludgeoning their victims and a blanket death-wish for anyone in a Nazi uniform.

The culminates in an initially striking scene which then appears to treat the Nazis' to their own holocaust. It is this remorseless approach which made the Nazis so horrific and it is difficult to side with any group which subscribes to a similar mentality.

This is the critical death-knell for a movie which has enough problems without this - overly long, overly referential and with a moral core that makes Mr Blonde look like Mr Bean.

Brüno

Two years on from the cultural phenomenon of Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen returns to our screens with his peculiar incarnation of Brüno.

The gay Austrian TV presenter had already featured on the Da Ali Show and before that alongside Baron Cohen’s other characters on the Paramount Comedy Channel in 1998.

Over a decade on, the fashonista is projected into the spotlight in a film which bears the classic hallmarks of Baron Cohen’s previous productions with uncomfortable interviews, outlandish gags and a fervent desire to push the envelope of taste with relish.

If it was Borat’s racism and sexism that was played up last time out, it is Brüno’s showbiz egotism and flamboyant homosexuality which come to fore here.

Right from the outset, the film lays its cards firmly on the table with a graphically inventive depiction of Brüno’s sex life with his pygmy lover as they involve various household objects in their activities.

This sets out the stall for the picture – sequences designed to shock get smirks and surprised giggles from the audience but perhaps without the belly laughs that greeted some of the most memorable parts of Borat.

Perhaps this is because Brüno is simply not as an effective vehicle for comedy as Borat or that the film sides with jolts of disbelief over the stream of outrageous quips from Borat or those elicited from his victims.

Not that Brüno leaves his interviewees unscatched – a Christian programme designed to convert gay men into heterosexuals is exposed for its crassness and intolerance, Paula Abdul is (perhaps unfairly) shown as a hypocrite, and parents of child models throw their morals out the window as they try to secure a place for their kids in a Brüno photo-shoot.

However they take a back seat to former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul who storms out of an interview with Brüno in a segment which has to be seen to be believed if not for its comic awkwardness then for the sheer bravery of Baron Cohen.

But here is where we hit problems – Brüno is able to rile people into giving strong reactions to the character (none moreso than from a crowd of wrestling fans which quickly develops into a mob) but these as a collective end up being slightly directionless and at points as vacuous as its central protagonist.

Brüno feels bitty at times with tenuous links between sequences and without the cohesive comedy story arc that was present in Borat.

The film is not homophobic but neither does it do enough to show up intolerance to gays in America – are a group of hoteliers confronted by gay bondage homophobic or just uncomfortable with public displays of graphic sexuality?

One of the staples of Baron Cohen is to make his pictures burst the bubbles of celebrity and fame and take no prisoners but this is a piece which ends with some of music’s biggest stars very much in on the joke.

However despite these problematic aspects to the film, it still manages to pack in more than enough laughs to make it a worthwhile watch and the gall and bravado of Baron Cohen remains unabated.

Now having used up his three major creations, he may be forced to pursue a fresh avenue of comedy attack for his next project.

In the Loop

It seems fitting than among the scandals of MP’s expenses and impending political tensions between Iran and the West that Armando Iannnuci’s political satire, In the Loop, should hit our movie screens.

The film follows the backroom boys of UK and US political life when an MP, Simon Foster (played at just the right level by Tom Hollander) makes an on-air radio gaff, referring to war in the middle east as “unforeseeable”. Lambasted as a loose cannon by his parties’ spin doctors and as a surprising hero to an underhand Washington pro-war committee, he is suddenly thrown into the spotlight along with his aides.

But it is not Foster who is the star of the show but vitriolic Scottish spin doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi spouting off expletives and insults to make Gordon Ramsay blush). Tucker’s frightening temper lashes out against anyone in his way as he bids to toe the party line and use any underhand tactic in the book to quash anti-war sentiments.

The film is filled with wonderful gags but no fear of hiding away from what is a highly intelligent and biting critique of the way political policy works backstage and the corrupt and farcical nature of it. The main figureheads of parliamentary and presidential life are kept off screen – the prime minister and president are only referred to in passing - but the message is clear. Something is badly wrong with the system.

Amid the large collection of laughs, Iannuci still has the power to shock, with one line in particular near the film’s conclusion deservedly eliciting audible gasps from the audience I watched it with.

Mix this with sizeable roles for James Gandolfini (otherwise known as Tony Soprano) as a general in opposition to the proposed conflict and Steve Coogan in fine form as an angry resident in Foster’s Northamptonshire constituency and it is a potent blend of well crafted comedy and edgy political comment.

Fans of the BBC4 series In the Thick Of It which this was a spin-off from should expect to see slight recasting from that but with roughly the same ensemble. Despite TV feel of the movie in terms of its shooting style, this is perhaps less nuanced than the series when it stretches itself over 90 minutes but it remains true to its source material, if one can call it that.

The fast flowing journey is neither partisan in its politics nor afraid to push the envelope with cutting comedy. It is an enjoyable and enthralling watch which occasionally gets slightly lost on the big screen but never by sacrificing its originality, humour and acerbic appraisal of 21st century global politics.

Martyrs

One definition of a martyr on a popular dictionary website is someone who endures great suffering. Perhaps then it is me who was the martyr in watching this French horror because endure it I had to, such was the poor quality of a film which has been surprisingly lauded by critics.

The sketchy plot originally surrounds a young woman trying to get revenge on individuals who abused her as a child. This eventually shifts into a torture environment, characterised by such films as Hostel and Saw. It should be noted that writer/director Pascal Laugier has claimed this an anti-Hostel, trying to counterpoint the alleged “torture-porn” genre.

The opening half the film plods along quite neatly, following established tools of the horror genre popularised by modern teen horror movies with a violent unknown figure savaging the female protagonist. The sense that this entity may not be real and may be a perception in the girl’s mind could be an interesting allusion to the irremovable stain of child abuse on a person’s life but this point is not followed up by the movie at all, as a supposed “shocking” film shies away from ever addressing tangible questions of child abuse.

After this initial stage of the movie, it then moves into its torture area. I must admit to not having seen other proponents of the torture genre before yet I did not find the rather pedestrian horror torture frightening, original or exciting. Repetitive scenes of someone being force fed, beaten or what can only be described as “washed with a sponge in a nasty way” become boring with nothing to say other than to ask the audience to watch in a way that felt voyeuristic.

This voyeurism is a major problem – if these scenes are designed for the titillation of some morbid excitement in the audience, it seems they deserve condemnation rather than praise. If however, as they claim, they are trying to make some sort of comment or give meaning then the film fails spectacularly.

The meaning and justification for the individual being tortured in the second half the film (who is a separate character from the female protagonist) is explained in a very loose way by a typical ‘mad female scientist’ character. Pseudo-intellectual babble about transcendence and transfiguration which sounds like it has been written by a below-par arts graduate attempt to purport that those are tortured reach a state so close to death that they have a strong connection to the afterlife. Therefore torturing them gives others an insight into heaven.

This premise leads to the tortured woman reaching this state of “martyrdom” and she informs the mad woman of her experience (only after of course enduring more torture). Without giving away the ending, it feels like the writer is making this up as he goes along with a lack of cohesiveness to the plot, lack of story arc, and the sense that this is two flawed stories spliced together.

If you believe horror should be more about set pieces and eliciting an emotive response from the audience, it also fails with a lack of punch, innovation or the ability to grip the audience with sketchy ideas and uninteresting, bland violence. I have rarely felt so robbed by paying to see A film than I did after seeing martyrs.

Il Divo

The American journalist and satirist H.L Mencken once said “Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.” The operatic tone of Il Divo and the frustratingly impenetrable world of Italian politics (both in being able to understand and to be prominent in it) create a chilling and disquieting atmosphere in what might have been turned into a political thriller or self-serving documentary by lesser film makers than Paolo Sorrentino.

Mencken’s quote also resonates with the film in that its subject matter and question – was three-time Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti involved with the Mafia? – includes exploration of an American connection to the cosa nostra. However don’t be put off by thinking this film is filled with discussion of obscure (to an English audience) events and characters in the alleged massive scandal in the government.

I made the mistake of trying to follow the complex network of politicians, criminal groups and political development’s in Andreotti’s reign but this is not a film attempting to persuade or even inform the audience about the situation. This is a character based film in the guise of Citizen Kane or Downfall with its obsessive focus on a potent but flawed authority figure. The immovable lynchpin of Andreotti is the spider in this film’s confusing web.

Resembling Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Truman Capote, the brilliant Toni Servillo creates a fascinating portrayal of Andreotti despite inhabiting a body that speaks seldomly and moves even less so. This gives the impression of a lazy boss who has no need to show fragrant emotion and motion. But Servillo is more akin an iguana on a immaculate branch, absolutely static but with the implication he could stick out a spiralling tongue and suck a fly inwards towards its doom.

This language is perhaps too hyperbolically elusive than necessary. However the underlying fact is that Andreotti is a very hard character to pin down with even the central question of film left dangerously open by the film’s conclusion. The oft-silent Andreotti breaks out in a searing monologue in the final section of movie in a diatribe resembling Waiting for Godot’s Lucky. Just as Lucky is a slave to Pozzo, Andreotti is in someway a slave to Italian politics, or is he the autocrat pulling all the strings? That the movie leaves these questions unanswered is as much down to a fear that overt criticism of the mafia could mean reprisals to Sorrentino as it is that Andreotti has been acquitted and convicted of involvement countless times, with seemingly no jail sentence forthcoming.

But the Sopranos-like death sequences and exuberant Romanic architecture give Andreotti of an emperor consumed by power, leaving him an empty husk of a man.

It has art direction and visual innovation to rival the most flamboyant movie and this coupled together with a wonderfully diverse soundtrack with everything from belting orchestras to whining guitars makes this film an intricate and intoxicating watch.

If you make the wise decision to see it, please approach it as a character piece on Andreotti and don’t struggle to swallow every nugget of information about the scandal and Italian politics itself. The hypnotic cavalcade of supporting characters, the masterly Servillo and the eye of Sorrentino ensure this is a memorable if slightly intangible motion picture.

Gran Torino

The Clint Eastwood project, in more ways than one, clearly is trying to emulate something of what Streetcar Named Desire was with Eastwood’s cantankerous lead character called Mr. Kowalski and his smarmy salesman son called Mitch. Like Stanley in Tennesse Williams’ seminal work, Walt Kowalski is touchy about issues of race and somewhat of a misogynist. But Marlon Brando’s angry young man is now a grouchy world-weary Eastwood.

Walt is a Korean war-veteran in Michigan, irritable and lonesome after his wife’s death, who lives next door to a southeast Asian family in a Hmong neighbourhood. Hmong is a non-derogatory term for immigrants into America from nations such as Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and so on. The film explores the tensions within Walt related to his rejection of his wife’s church and his racial prejudices and the tensions in the suburb where he lives between the respectable Asian family and Asian gangs.

There is no doubt Eastwood is perfect as the complaining old neighbour, even uttering the unintentionally amusing line “Get off my lawn!” which becomes something of a catchphrase. However the main crux of the film relies on Walt’s relationship with two teenagers from the family next door, reclusive Thao (Ben Vang) and his gregarious sister Sue Van Lor (Ahney Her). While Ahney Her is excellent as the feisty youth who brings Eastwood onto the side of the family, the film focuses heavily on Walt’s efforts to make Thao into what he perceives a young man to be, brash, hard working and with a woman on his side.

This is also an attempt from Walt to try and get Thao to stay away from his cousin’s gang which initially try to recruit him and then begin to trouble his family when he rejects. The problem is Thao’s portrayal by Ben Vang turns what is simply a shy character into a boring one and dialogues with Eastwood feel clunky and without any kind of narrative spark. Another rather lead-footed aspect to the film is between Walt and the priest of the church he and his late wife used to attend before Walt left, Father Janovich (Christopher Carney).

The writing for this character feels very woolly with the focal point being that Janovich believes as a religious leader he understands death with Walt shunning this as the Father has no insight into his horrific experiences in the Korean war. The whole atmosphere of a member of the clergy trying to get an arrogant man to attend church has echoes of There Will Be Blood with Janovich even saying, while discussing the gangs, without any hint of tongue in cheek that “There will be bloodshed.”

The rising conflict between Walt and his neighbours on one side and the gang on the other culminate in the dénouement of the film which while not obvious on paper become very apparent before the pivotal scene, lessening any impact it has. I can’t imagine this is intentional on the part of Eastwood but if it is then there seems little reason to make it so.

The film seems to try and resonate with Eastwood’s famous Western characters in the Dollars trilogy and in Unforgiven and in sense it pulls this off quite neatly but a lack of strong performances from the supporting case, predictable plot turns and character developments and a lack of narrative punch mean it does not compare favourably to Eastwood’s other recent directorial efforts.