Contagion

Starring:

It's all very well making a film about an epidemic that wipes out thousands of people, and it's all very well making it more about the infectious spread of fear, panic and greed than the virus, and it's all very well avoiding scenes of people dying all over the place in favour of a handful of personal, interconnected stories, but when you've got Jude Law wearing a flat cap and saying "Crikey" in what may or may not be an Australian accent FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER, you may as well just watch Outbreak. At least the monkey could act.

That said...

Best post-screening freebie, like, ever.

We Need To Talk About Kevin

Naturally predisposed as I am to not reading any book that the entire population of any given tube carriage is also reading at the same time (see also The Da Vinci Code, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, One Day), I was blissfully unaware of the contents of Lionel Shriver's novel We Need To Talk About Kevin before seeing the film. I don't want to get into a long and boring debate about whether or not this is a preferable course of action when viewing literary adaptations, but in this instance I was so overwhelmed with disbelief and horror at one of the film's final-act events that I thanked my lucky stars I hadn't gone anywhere near the book.

We Need To Talk About Kevin (the film) unfolds in an initially irritating fashion: it hops between four different timelines like a malfunctioning DeLorean, and although it does well to clearly let you know where (and when) you are, sometimes you just wish it would decide on one timeline and stick with it for more than a minute or two. But when the aforementioned event rolls around, tying up neatly with the film's very first shot, the effect is devastating and the method in the madness becomes clear.

That's just one of the positive aspects of Lynne Ramsay's direction, and I mention it first because I don't want this review to seem too negative, hence my burial of the next bit in the fourth paragraph, which the tl;dr generation probably doesn't even realise exists.

If you are still paying attention, then you're probably the kind of person who will find Ramsay's constant in-your-face symbolism as annoying as I did, i.e. quite. Tilda Swinton spends most of the film trying to clean red paint off her fingers: could it be that she feels like she has someone's blood on her hands? YES. A snapshot of a happier time in her life takes place in front of a massive UPS truck: could it be that this was one of the "ups" of her life? YES. The soundtrack is riddled with songs about mothers or sons: could it be that this film is about mothers and sons? YES, WE GET IT. If the film was any more heavy-handed it would need anti-gravity gloves.

And the red! There's SO MUCH RED in this film. I'm not thick, I know why it's there, but at times Ramsay's insistence on cramming as much blindingly obvious red stuff into her frame is in danger of becoming distracting:

Fortunately the rest of the film, particularly the performances of Swinton and Ezra Miller as the titular sociopath, is balls-out brilliant enough to forgive it its faults. If the 'nature vs nurture' debate isn't really explored in satisfying depth, then at least the almost unbearable tension of waiting to find out how Kevin's sister lost an eye is excruciating enough to make the film an unforgettable experience.

Ramsay has, by and large, done an amazing job here, and We Need To Talk About Kevin will easily be the film on everyone's lips, rather than the book in everyone's hands, come awards time. Whether or not the whole world talking about it makes you want to see it is a different matter, but you can take it from me that you really should.

*

UPDATE: I wrote this review after several glasses of wine, and reading it back the next day I note that it dwells perhaps a little too intensively on the negatives. Frankly though, I can't be arsed to rewrite it and I'm quite pleased with the anti-gravity gloves bit so you'll have to put up with it. Just to clarify, the film is brilliant. Sorry.

LFF 2011 Reviewdump #2:Carnage / Strawberry Fields / Headhunters / Take Shelter

If you've still got your fingers crossed from yesterday, you can uncross them now: LFF 2011 is getting better already.

Carnage

Based on a French play, Roman Polanski's bite-sized film adaptation makes no attempt to hide its theatrical origins. On a single set over just 79 minutes, four actors exaggeratedly gurn and yell like they're projecting to the cheap seats in a real-time story of the anger, misery, bitterness and disappointment that lurk beneath the surface of middle-class politeness. It's immensely watchable, surprisingly funny (it's got one of the year's best vomit scenes) and doesn't even come close to outstaying its welcome.

A 75% excellent cast make it worthwhile: only Kate Winslet's embarrassing drunk act lets the side down, but watching Jodie Foster screwing her face into a ball of rage in close up (the most obvious benefit of a film version) makes up for it. Unfortunately we never find out much about the characters we don't already know after the first five minutes: their collective arcs just seem to involve going from sober and restrained to drunk and shouty. It's hard to complain about something with such a zippy running time though, and if you can make peace with the stagey feel then Carnage is classy but throwaway entertainment. Wed 19, Sat 22

Strawberry Fields

Sadly not the spin-off about Gemma Arterton's character from Quantum Of Solace (hilarious Bond in-joke) but rather a tedious bit of whiffle about an annoying girl, her annoying sister and the annoying man they fight over while picking annoying strawberries. Recommended for people who like to be annoyed. Wed 19, Fri 21

Headhunters

When you take a step back from a film for a second and look at what you're watching out of context, a shot of a man covered head to toe in human shit escaping from a killer in a tractor with a skewered dog swinging off the front of it is fairly high on the bonkersometer. And while Headhunters doesn't maintain that level of crazy for its entire running time (that would be exhausting), it does repeatedly come up with crowd-pleasingly hellish situations through which to put its hapless protagonist, and it's this that raises it above the standard of most Euro-thrillers.

While the plot isn't watertight and the dull, flat cinematography lets the side down a bit, Headhunters' tale of a semi-professional art thief in over his head (at one point literally, hence the faeces overcoat) barely stops for breath while delivering gruesome thrills and blackly comic LOLzaplenty. I was going to make a joke here about expecting a US remake to have been announced by the time you read this, but in between me writing and you reading it's already happened. Wed 19, Sat 22

Take Shelter

Shit-hot boggle-eyed character actor Michael Shannon gets another chance to headline a film after Werner Herzog's limply-received My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, and he's immensely watchable. When he pops up as General Zod in 2013's Man Of Steel, he'll "steel" that film from under the nose of everyone else in it. STEEL! Ah, dearie me. *wipes eye*

Take Shelter is as weirdly gripping as Shannon's fizzog, despite not much actually going on. His character's apocalyptic visions of an approaching cataclysm are fairly terrifying, and his apparent mounting insanity, which leads him to build a giant metaphor in his back garden, is convincingly portrayed. But while it's definitely About Something, Take Shelter is more interested in building atmosphere and tension than delivering anything as straightforward as an explanation of what's going on. Not that it has to - I'm all for ambiguity, me - but it is likely to cause a lot of head-scratching when it hits multiplexes next month. Fri 21, Sun 23

LFF 2011 Reviewdump #1:The Machine That Kills Bad People / Oslo, August 31st / Nobody Else But You / Let The Bullets Fly

Right then, here we go. I'll be figuratively squatting on your internet and metaphorically curling out a series of "reviews" of films from this year's London Film Festival over the next week and a bit, so that you can then respond with one or more of the following:

• "Great! I'll buy a ticket now!"
• "Great! Now I know not to buy a ticket!"
• "Great! I've already bought a ticket and am now super excited!"
• "Balls! I've bought a ticket and now I want my money back!"
• "I don't care about the London Film Festival! Leave me alone!"

So without further ado, here are two to consider, one to avoid and one you've already missed. Enjoy! Or don't, I don't care.

The Machine That Kills Bad People

As good as it was when I saw it earlier this year in Bologna, not that it matters because the last screening was on Sunday. Sorry.

Oslo, August 31st

A complex and meditative (i.e. catatonically slow) portrayal of a drug addict trying to find his place in the world, reconnect with family and friends and deal with crippling self-loathing, Oslo, August 31st is fairly gruelling stuff. Still, this is the London Film Festival and therefore European orgies of bleakness are the order of the day. This one makes for a fairly interesting character study but I'm hard-pressed to remember much about it a week after viewing, except that there's a man in it who looks a lot like Noel Edmonds. I bet they don't mention that in Sight & Sound. Wed 19, Thu 20

Nobody Else But You

This French comedy drama, about an author investigating the death of a girl who believed she was the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, looks lovely but doesn't get nearly interesting enough for anyone to care who did her in, or indeed why anyone in the story should care either. In fact the only thing it really made me want to do was watch Some Like It Hot again.

Destined to be labelled "Coenesque" (it's got some weird characters and some scenes in the snow) and, God help us, "Lynchian" (someone's trying to find out who killed a pretty young girl), Nobody Else But You is definitely influenced by both but ultimately nowhere near as satisfying as either. It's occasionally funny, well-acted all round and has a great soundtrack, but the pedestrian execution of its unoriginal and uninvolving plot means it finds a home in that sadly overcrowded box of film festival films marked "three stars". Thu 20

Let The Bullets Fly

The opening train hijack sequence - in which bandits flip a locomotive in the air head-over-heels (not that trains have heads or heels but you get the idea) - is inspired, but is an all-too-obvious metaphor for the train wreck that follows. Supposedly a battle of wits between a bandit and a mobster (a tragically wasted Chow Yun-Fat) in 1920s China, Let The Bullets Fly becomes more a battle between confusing plotting, messy direction and the audience's patience. The audience loses. Wed 19, Thu 20


Join me again soon for Reviewdump #2! And cross your fingers that it gets better.

The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn

Under normal circumstances, the thought of watching a motion-capture film makes me want to puke shit from my cock. Those creepy characters floating through space occupying a horrific netherworld between the cartoonish and the photorealistic just leave me cold and uneasy, their dead-eyed lifelessness coming across like bad taxidermy but without the LOLs.

Finally though, someone has not only found the perfect subject for mo-cap ["actually I think you'll find we call it performance capture these days in order to distance ourselves from Beowulf" - Peter Jackson], but has done it better than anyone else, and has made it serve the story and the action rather than stick it in your face and hope you don't notice the yawning lack of substance it's trying to hide.

And thank sweet zombie Jeebus that that person is Steven Spielberg, finally atoning for the heartbreaking Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull with The Adventures Of Tintin, a film that finally sees him relaxing and having fun like we haven't seen him do since Jurassic Park.

It's no coincidence that Tintin contains several nods to Old Beardy Features' greatest hits: Jurassic Park, Jaws and - most obviously - Indy are all referenced in such a way that it's like he wants us to know that he's rediscovered his mojo, and while this film doesn't hit the heights of those masterpieces, it's still a welcome return to vintage 'bergery. A lengthy chase through the streets of a Moroccan port done in a single shot, with the camera flying through impossible spaces, is easily a contender for action set-piece of the year.

From the ingenious Catch Me If You Can-ish titles through to John Williams' cockle-warming end credits music, The Adventures Of Tintin is classic rollercoaster filmmaking. The mix of breakneck action and considered sleuthing is spot-on, and with the running time a breezy 107 minutes, Peter Jackson's sequel is a mouthwatering proposition. There's room for improvement next time, though: Tintin himself is a little bland in this film, with all the backstory and character depth going to Captain Haddock's whisky-soaked sea-dog, and bumbling fattards Thomson and Thompson feel like they've been shoehorned in to please hardcore Hergé fans rather than to add much to the story.

Still, with a pleasing amount of gunplay and a surprising amount of alcoholism, The Adventures of Tintin at least feels like it's been made for kids and adults without resorting to tiresome winks at the older audience, and there's so much detail packed into the frame that repeat viewings are destined to prove rewarding.

The cast do an excellent job too: they've been chosen for their talent rather than their recognisable voices, so The Clooney Effect is avoided and at no point does the image of Daniel Craig leaping about in an all-in-one lycra suit leap to mind. Unless of course you want it to, and so what if I do you do?

A pleasant surprise, then, for someone who a) usually can't bear mo/perf/whatever-cap, b) didn't give a parp about Tintin beforehand and c) had all but given up on Steven Spielberg. In fact The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn is almost good enough to persuade me not to mention how pointless the 3D is. Only almost, mind.

Semi-Naked Old Man Birthday Nipples Of The Week #2

84 today and still he hasn't played (or indeed been made) the Prime Minister. What kind of a world do we live in?

Made Up Reviews 4.0: Live Free Or Make Up

As another week trundles by with a bunch of releases I haven't seen, it's time to fall back on the old ideas again and make up a load of balls that's of no use to anyone, anywhere. I think this feature might be single-handedly responsible for Rotten Tomatoes' stubborn refusal to let me on their list of so-called "Top Critics".

First Night stars long-faced ham Richard E Grant and ageing warbler Sarah Brightman as Adam and Eve, and is an explicit, X-rated account of the events that occurred on their first night in the Garden of Eden. With thought-provoking scenes of temptation, desire and eye-watering fisting, First Night goes where few biblical epics fear to tread. The BBFC have cut sixteen minutes from the ejaculation scene for "extreme slapstick violence". Nicolas Cage plays the snake.

Dolphin Tale stars Morgan Freeman as Dolphin "Dolph" Lundgren in this daring biopic about the marine mammal who famously became human after swallowing a magic turtle or something. The movie focuses on Dolphin's journey to becoming an action star with the body of an adonis and the brain of a cetacean, and reveals fascinating hitherto unknown facts. For example, I had no idea he was paid in mackerel for playing He-Man in Masters Of The Universe, or that he once broke Sylvester Stallone's nose after Sly stuck a banana in his blowhole.

Albatross is a documentary about the crazy life of movie star Jessica Alba's world-famous bottom which, for the sake of this feature, she has always referred to as her tross. Features previously unseen footage of the Alba tross from its early days being sat on for a living, through its difficult teenage years when it started to develop its undeniable talent but hid from a public unable to legally admire it, right up to the fateful day where it met its soulmate in Alba's Fantastic Four lycra outfit. Nice to look at but essentially full of shit.

Footloose is a remake of the classic '80s film about Ren, a man born with Jellyankles, a rare medical condition which renders the feet permanently loose and uncontrollable. When Ren's girlfriend Louise pulls him off of his knees his troubles deepen, and it becomes a race against time for his best mate Jack to get back before all his leg joints fail and he literally cracks. This version stars a bunch of nobodies and THE QUAID, who staunchly refuses to remove his Sunday shoes in a cavalier fashion.

Real Steel stars Hugh Jackman as a debt-ridden steelworker who, in an act of mad desperation, makes off with all the steel from his factory and replaces it with papier-mâché painted to look like steel. He gets away with it until a skyscraper built with the fake steel collapses, killing thousands, and now the police and probably the mob and maybe also some aliens are after him and the real steel. In an astonishing twist it turns out he's actually a robot made of steel and could have paid off all his debts by selling his hi-tech detachable penis to a time-travelling Japanese inventor.