Predators (2010)

 "This planet is a game preserve. And we're the game."

So continues my ploddingly slow viewing of all the Predator and Alien films in release order, and this time... well, obviously this isn't going to be an all-time cinematic classic, but for a sequel of a sequel of a sequel of a sequel, sort of... it's actually not bad. 

It's not very well shot, admittedly. As one might expect from a music video director, it looks like a music video. Soulless CGI, boringly flat cinematography, texture and lighting. But despite this the script is pretty good, with very decent characterisation for this sort of film. The cast is good, too. Not exactly full of A listers but solid character actors. The likes of Walton Goggins and Mahershala Ali always add quality. And Laurence Fishburne's extended cameo is mesmerising.

The plot is simple enough: predators select and transport hand-picked humans to a planet they use as a game reserve to hunt and kill. Yet the characters are a gemuinely interesting bunch with real quirks, from the extremely disturbing Stans, taken from Death Row, to the stoic and dignified Mombasa. There are nice little twists and turns along the way in a film that manages to do more than simply carry out its high concept premise. And, I must not neglect to add, there's plenty of Predator action, although these are the moments where the CGI soullessness is at its most dismal.

What raises this film above its premise, though, is that it is about something bigger than action and IP. Our two main characters, Isabelle and Royce, are themselves hunters, who enjoy the thrill of the kill... and it is this, in the end, that counts. Yet can they use their hunting natures to survive while retaining their humanity? This question is examined quite excessively, a big part of why I was far more impressed with this film than I expected to be. Pretty good, in the end.

Inception (2010)

 "The smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you."

I can't believe it's taken me until 2023 to watch this uniquely brilliant film. Better late than never, right?

As you can imagine, this Christopher Nolan masterpiece (he has more than one of those, of course) has quite blown me away. It's not the conceit of entering people's dreams, or of dreams within me: that was spoiled for me by the episode of Rick and Morty that was riffing on Inception. Nor, really, is it the intricacies of the plot, brilliant though that is. 

No: it's the very human tragic romance between Cobb and Mal. My mind was blown by the revelation that, after exploring dreams within dreams and spending a subjective fifty years in a self-constructed dream paradise, Mal became convinced that it was the dream world that was the real one... so she demapped herself, as David Foster Wallace would put it, ensuring that Cobb would be framed for her death so he would be motivated to follow her into what she sincerely believed would be blissful, loving happiness. She died pointlessly, and made her husband's life a living hell with his children forever denied to him... out of love.

And then, later, we have bombshell number two. Yes, the main plot concerns a kind of reverse heist trying to plant an idea, an "inception" in the mind of a corporate heir in order to enrich Cobb's client so his life can be unruined, etc, blah blah. And that's all fascinating. But far more mind-blowing is the realisation that it was Cobb who planted the idea of the world not being real in his wife's mind so they could leave their dream world in the first place, by being run over by a train together. And the dialogue exactly parallels that in bombshell number one. It's all quite existentially jaw-dropping.

The ending, with the top still spinning, is nicely ambiguous: can Cobb finally have happiness with his children or is he still dreamimg? I would suggest that the answer to this question lies not in the spinning top, which may or may not fall, but in the fact that the two children have not seemingly aged since Cobb last saw them.

The impressions left in my mind, though, are certainly of admiration at the ideas and the plot, but of deep engagement with the very human emotions at the heart of this film. Cobb and Mal are both decent people, and a genuinely loving couple- indeed, no one in the film can be said to be "bad", just fundamentally decent people trying to do the right thing and sometimes making very human errors. That's quite profound. And both hopeful and horrifying in equal measure.

5 Minute Dating (2010)

 "It's quite a funny story, actually..."

I love a horror film with a punchline.

This is at once a sad little meditation on how unfortunate datring must be for the disfigured while also having fun with the concept. There's a lot of gleeful body horror. And the punchline, of which I shall say nothing, is great.

The comic acting, too, is flawless, from a largely unknown cast. And one cannot but praise the make-up.

The film may be short- it is, ineffect, structured as a one liner, but it's brilliantly executed and bloody hilarious. I shall say no more, as spoilers really matter here, but watching this is an excellent use of four minutes, should nuclear armageddon happen. Although you may well just miss the punchline.

TRON: Legacy (2010)

 "Life has a way of moving you past wants and hopes.

TRON is not, on its merits, a particularly good film. It just benefits from the early Cyberpunk zeitgeist, released two years before William Gibson published Neuromancer. The film caught a wave, and gained a reputation beyond what it deserved, aesthetics aside.

And now we have a sequel. And, despite Jeff Bridges being superb; despite an impressive performance from Olivia Wilde;despire a nice little part for the great Michael Sheen... the film really is utter pants.

Partly, I suspect, it's the dull cinemtography and sleepily blue colour palette, that does the film no favours. But the script isworkmanlike and predictable and, moreover, the Cybrpunk themes just don't have the futitistic resonance in 2010 as they did in 1982. The entirety of not only the aesthetics but the concepts look both retro and quaint. It so doesn't work, however much Michael Sheen may evoke Ziggy era David Bowie in his scene-stealing appearances which certainly manage to liven up a dull film somewhat.

The narrative is fairly exciting, and I'm left suspecting that the workmanlike script, while not setting the world on fire, may have led to a significantly better film if the visual style for this sequel were not so tired and derivative.

A poor and disappointing sequel, but then again a late sequel to a film so very much of its time was always going to be a doubtful proposition.

Monsters (2010)

 "Amigos? These guys have guns!"

This low-budget debut from director Gareth Edwards, a native of my neighbouring town of Nuneaton, is quitely brilliant, leveraging its tiny budget to combine horror via suspense with arthouse, bordering on arthouse, techniques. The scenes feel semi-improvised, which improvs the effectveness enormously, This is a film which manages to be superb by aiming relatvely low yet hitting the target.

Critics have, er, criticised the core performances of Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able, which I find bewildering. Both Andrew and Sam feel like real people and not Hollywood cyphers, and are all the more compelling for it. It also very much shows, not only in the camerawork, but also in the line delivery, that the scenes and dialogue are semi-improvised. This is enormously effective and removes the arificiality of scripted acting that we so often overlook. The characters feel real ro the extent that Andrew really is a bit of a creep, especially in a post-#MeToo context.

Thie whole premise- a NASA probe falling to Earh and releasing alien life into northern Mexico which is swidtly quarantined- is an obvious metaphor for refugees, particularly with the presence of a wall on the US southern border before Trump had even thought of such a very stupid idea. There's a nice little scene where out American protagonists are repped off by traffickers.

The film rather cleverly uses its low budget to its advantage, using television broadcasts and signs to build context to the world we see as Sam and Andrew make their way through the Infected Zone. The alien monsters are glimpsed only briefly until the end, using the devastation they leave in their wake to evoke their destructiveness. Only at the end do we see them as fully realised Lovecraftian horrors.

An excellent film. Not bad for a Codder.

Black Death (2010)

“I believe hunting necromancers and demons serves men more than it serves God."

This film seems appropriate right now, does it not? Personally I'm not scared for my own safety, really, nor that of either Mrs Llamastrangler or Little Miss Llamastrangler. We are all young and healthy. I'm more worried about my retired parents, the likelihood that at least someone I know is probably going to die when our current plague washes over us properly. And, given our circumstances, I've no idea what the Hell we're going to do for childcare if... when the schools close.

Anyway, this is an oddly redolent film and it's an act of defiant black humour to blog it. I suspect that, within weeks or days, it will become tasteless. Some readers, I fear, will already find it so, but let us not be too quick to cast aside the consolations of black humour.

I fear also that this film is rubbish. Oh, it's well-made in its impressive German locations and the cast- led splendidly by Carice van Houten, a very young Eddie Redmayne and the ever-doomed Sean Bean, is magnificent. The plot rattles on nicely with a nice twist at the end with Langiva only having drugged Averill, with Osmund the one who killed her. But it's rubbish nonetheless. I don't mind historical inaccuracies, especially in the name of artistic licence, but this film makes no attempt to research or approximate the England of 1348. The opening narration refers anachronistically to a "germ". All the characters have cod-Anglo-Saxon personal names which would be centuries out of use. And, of course, while mediaeval people lived in a world of superstition, they were not barbaric enough to burn women as witches until at least a century after this. And we may get an amusing tour of the tropes of plague- the obligatory flagellants and plague doctors, but the latter belong to the seventeenth century.

Worst of all, while I love the scene in which the encroaching Christian part is drugged and seized like Vortigern at the Night of the Long Knives, the idea of a whole village renouncing Christianity in favour not even of paganism but what seems to be atheism is not even slightly plausible. A pity; change the details and set the film in a fantasy world and it would be a nicely told and splendidly violent tale. But when historical inaccuracies are this fundamental they are not a small detail but a major flaw. Sadly, this is rubbish.

Tangled (2010)

“

This is another one of Little Miss Llamastrangler's favourites. And yes, another modern bloody Disney Princess film where they’ve turned the title into a past participle form of a verb. They like doing that, and obviously they couldn’t just call it Rapunzel...

Anyway, this is an entertaining and fun retelling of the fairytale, and I can confirm that it is quite astoundingly addictive to little girls. The central character is well crafted- young, naive but resourceful- and its a nicely picaresque riff on the fairy tale as Rapunzel gets to explore the wild and wonderful outside world.

One nice touch is that Rapunzel end up not with a boring old prince but with Flynn Ryder, who is both a bit of a rogue and a bit common, and their relationship is rather fun instead of just being lovey-dovey. There are also a couple of rather good songs, and some rather interesting cameos. The whole thing is quite impressive.

Plus, I haven’t seen this quite so often as I’ve seen Frozen. I suppose I should be grateful. But I’m not expecting that Little Miss Llamastrangler will grow tired of this film any time soon...

Iron Man 2 (2010)

"If there's one thing I've proven, it's that you can count on me to pleasure myself."

I loved the first film. I love this one too. Not as much as the first film, but a lot.

Yes, the plot may meander a bit, and contain a predictable bit where the hero hits rock bottom, but it works. Robert Downey Jr is still born to play Tony Stark. Gwyneth Paltrow is a fine Pepper, yet again, and still has great charisma with Downey. And Don Cheadle is much better as Rhodey. We also get loads and loads and loads of Tony being charismatic and Iron Man action sequences. That gets us halfway there already. And then there’s the Elon Musk cameo...

The conceit works- Tony is dying from the very thing that keeps him alive, and so needs to develop things from his father’s past while Justin Hammer acts as antagonist and this time the baddie is a rather different variation on Whiplash. Plus we get a splendid big set piece at the Monaco Grand Prix, and a lot of world building; there’s a lot about Nick Fury’s Avengers Initiative, we meet Black Widow and discover a familiar-looking old shield. And the post-credits points it all toward to Thor. It’s positively nostalgic seeing all these early MCU films. But the film works on its own terms, carried along by strong characters and a superb cast even if the plot, while perfectly decent, doesn’t quite have the narrative flow if the first film. Three films in and the MCU is going strong.

Buried (2010)

"You American?"

"Yeah."

"Then you soldier!"

I imagine that this, a thriller set entirely in a cramped, poorly lit coffin with only one visible actor and all drama conveyed by means of a mobile phone with a slowly diminishing number of bars, would have made a good short story. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's a good script. It could even, with cuts for length, have made a good TV play. But, much as it's always nice to see films experimenting with the form of the medium, well.... cinema is a visual media. And that's why this film fails.

Not that Ryan Reynolds is anything but outstanding here in what is a real showcase for his talent, but the camera pointing at one an in a cramped space was never going to make good visuals, and good visuals are essential. I can understand the purist motives for doing it this way, but every single other actor is but a voice on the phone or brief video footage on the phone. Can we not at least have had flashbacks, perhaps of Paul's various romantic liaisons, the dirty bugger?

The tragedy is that the script is good- the final ten minutes or so, the false hope, the realisation that Paul's bastard employers have found an excuse to fire him and dodge paying his insurance, meaning he dies knowing his wife and son will inherit nothing but poverty, even the implicit satire of a world where we're forever being put on hold- but the idea of doing a film this way, however cool it may seem on paper, could never have worked without some kind of compromise with the format. And that's a real shame.

Ok, there's the scene with the snake. But this is an odd example of a film where it's probably better to read the script than to watch.

Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)

"A few little tiny murders and everyone just freaks out!"

Yes, I know there are more comedy slasher films out there than you can shake a stick at, but this one has a particularly good twist: Tucker and Dale may look like psychopathic hillbilly killers who are out to slaughter the college kids visiting their patch of West Virginia one by one, but they're only trying to help. It's just that the kids keep randomly dying in increasingly bizarre ways.

Not only is it a good idea, but it works. It needs the precise plotting of an excellent farce combined with a load of slasher tropes to work well, and that's just what we get. We also get a mostly unknown but excellent cast, led by Alan Tudyk of Firefly and Dollhouse fame. There are so many memorable set pieces, not least where Tucker and Dale try to explain things to a sheriff before his random and unexpected demise, but for once I'll avoid spoilers as the film is obscure.

This is a brilliant film and well worth watching. It's on Netflix at the moment on the UK.

Kick-Ass (2010)

"How do I get hold of you?"

"You just contact the mayor's office. He has a special signal he shines in the sky; it's in the shape of a giant cock."

This is a brilliant, quotable, comics-literate film, adapted by Jane Goldman from the graphic novel by Mark Millar and, er, I like to think of myself as comics-literate- I mean, I've read most things by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller when we all thought he was good, Garth Ennis etc, but I haven't read much by Mark Millar. I'm impressed, though.

It's a witty and knowing look at the super hero trope from a writer who knows these tropes. It's also highly metatextual and you know how I love that sort of thing; I particularly adored the bit where Dave points out that we shouldn't assume he survived just because he's the narrator. And Mindy. Mindy is the coolest thing ever, and possibly the finest exponent of extreme swearing in cinematic history. Yes, we could finally have the first genuinely brilliant film since Leaving Las Vegas that Nicolas Cage (brilliantly cast) has appeared in.

The concept is brilliant: what if someone in the real world tried to be a superhero, without powers and where punches do actual damage and stabs mean extensive hospital treatment? This is done with wit and charismatic performances, making a film that whizzes by most enjoyably. And a bloke even explodes in a microwave at one point.

The Runaways (2010)

"This isn't about women's lib, kitties- this is about women's libido."

We're all guilty of seeing rock history in terms of a fixed canon of work divorced from its social context, and I can be as guilty as anyone. This has become more acute by this new age we live in, with music of all styles and all eras available at the touch of a screen. But the social context is key to the music, and The Runaways reminds us of that.

The Runaways may have pioneered women with guitars and begat Joan Jett and Lita Ford, but they were not some kind of proto-feminist precursor to Bikini Kill (fantastic band, incidentally) or Daisy Chainsaw. No; they were a manufactured band, manufactured by a creepy bloke set on sexualising these disturbingly young girls for the male gaze. It's disturbing watching this in the UK of 2014, remembering how young these girls were, with Operation Yewtree providing us with endless reminders of what used to go on in the 1970s. It's incredible to think that the band were all so young, yet they went on tour under the supervision of a much older man and were exposed to all of the drugs of the era in a way which surely wouldn't happen now. The golden age of rock may be over, and that may be a bad thing, but there are certainly upsides.

The quirky Dakota Fanning is superb as Cherie Currie and the show here although it's worth noting, after the tragedy that was Twilight, that Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett can actually act. We begin much earlier in the decade, as the young Cherie dares to openly show her love of David Bowie, whose androgyny as Ziggy Stardust was far more transgressive then than it is now. The rock club she visits is just a rock club; there are, as yet, no sub-genres to speak of. Disturbingly we hear Gary Glitter, and there's a disturbingly relevant subtext that probably wasn't intended.

The band is put together by Kim Fowley for entirely cynical, money-making purposes and he does not seem, given the hostile nature of their early gigs, to give a flying fig about the girls' welfare. Certainly he seems to care not a jot about Cherie's issues with her family. How much this reflects what really happened I cannot say, but the events portrayed are certainly a good argument for the urgent necessity of punk at this point.

Cherie and Joan are sympathetically portrayed, although Lita Ford is shown to be quite the bitch of legend. But the band are largely shown to be at the mercy of events, subject to forces beyond their control in a whirlwind of touring, media ("These chicks can actually play!" says one patronising headline) and rock 'n' roll excess. In this age of major labels, cocaine and, in the words of Black Sabbath, killing yourself to live, the amount of agency wielded by any band, let alone one made up of teenage girls, is questionable.

The much-needed arrival of punk is symbolically portrayed by Joan making herself a Sex Pistols t-shirt to the sound of "Pretty Vacant". Cherie is about due a bit of rebellion, bullied and overworked by Kim; is this rock 'n' roll? There is a definite message to the film in which rock 'n' roll is firmly equated with the raw capitalism of the New Right, a plausible message in a world where the Rolling Stones are actually all card-carrying Thatcherites. Sexualised pictures are taken of Cherie- a teenage girl, let us remember- while she is drugged and incapable. Feminism is here bound up with class politics, with rock stars as the downtrodden working class in gilded cages and Kim as the Gradgrind of the age.

Joan is, of course, the strong one, but a tour of Japan in which privacy is non-existent is the end of the road for a drug-frizzled Cherie; the fans breaking through the window are a rather crude metaphor for her breakdown. It's back to reality but not, ultimately, back to the band, and Cherie has to adjust back to the banality and drudgery of everyday life. We end with a sweetly awkward conversation on a radio phone-in between Cherie and a now-famous Joan Jett, showing us that the natural selection of rock 'n' roll lets some rise and others fall. This is an extraordinary film.

Saw 3-D (2010)

"Game over."

Before we begin, and celebrate with huge relief having been through em the whole damn franchise, a point of order; I saw this on DVD, and thus both in glorious 2-D and under a different title. That aside, we have a puzzle, a film that, despite its box office success, has been panned by critics both professional and amateur. I have no idea why this should be so, other than a preconceived desire to bash the franchise; this may be no classic but it's a neat resolution and a good little film in its own right.

We begin with a spot of nostalgia, as we return to Cary Elwes as the surviving Dr Gordon  from way back on the first film. Perhaps, given that this is the first sign of the franchise beginning to eat it's own mythology, this is a sign that now is a good time to stop but, for now, the intrigue of Gordon's return works, as does the inevitable eventual realisation that he's been working with Jigsaw all the time. And it's fitting that he should be the one to finally dispatch Hoffman and bring the killings to an end.

Even the opening ordeal, with the two men and a woman in the shop window, is almost nostalgic in its basic structure and the use, once more, of that cute little puppet. On a bike, no less. In sure the children love that scene.

Oh, and the woman, Dina. Dies. Painfully, via her intestines. With loads of blood. How charming. 

Still, the film is mainly about the comeuppance of fake Jigsaw survivor and purveyor of typically vacuous self-help shite Bobby Dagen, a neat concept, as he has to navigate a typically ghoulish series of traps which result in his and others' deaths. Again, lovely, although not as satisfying as Hoffman's eventual comeuppance at the hands of, fittingly, Gordon. It's a very neatly plotted series of events. That's a good thing, I suppose, but it strikes me that we never ever seem to find people surviving Jigsaw's little traps by thinking outside the box that is his narrow little mind. That, I think, would be truly satisfying. My main criticism of the films is that they operate entirely within Jigsaw's rules, which could be said to be a sort of endorsement of said amoral psychopath.

That's not all; a bunch of neo-Nazis are tortured in the usual way, too; only with neo-Nazis do I have to actually remind myself that Kramer and Hoffman are both equally psychopathic bastards with no redeeming features between them.

The ending is ironic, and sort of justifies they franchise's increasingly inaccurate title: Hoffman is put in to the same trap as was Gordon at the end of the the first film. But this time there is no saw...

Remember Me (2010)

"What if I die eating my vindaloo?"

This drama, ironically half-forgotten, might be best known for starring Robert "Twilight" Pattinson in a proper film. And its theme- that we could all get run over by a bus tomorrow so, like, carpe diem and that- may be a bit of a truism with a "shock" ending which seems less and less clever with the benefit of hindsight. But this is actually a pretty good drama, well written and acted, and not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.

Death is ever present. We begin as Tyler's family gather round his late mother's grave, ten years after her meaningless death and, and we establish Tyler's fraught relationship with his stuffed shirt of a father, Charles, played against type by Pierce Brosnan. The film charts his romantic ups and downs with Ally, his death-obsessed on-again off-again girlfriend, his brother's recent suicide, the bullying of his sister Caroline and the comparison with his less angst-ridden friend, Aidan.

The film is full of signifiers. The opening scenes around the grave are grainy, full of muted colours and Tyler smokes, a sure sign of youthful rebellion, at least in 2001. (He's 21 but, this being the USA, he's only just started drinking, which seems bizarre to us decadent Europeans.) 

His relationship with Ally is complicated by his getting off on the wrong foot with her police officer father, but the central theme is their date in an Indian restaurant (are they a thing in America, where is always thought Mexican food filled the same cultural space?), and her ideas of living for today. This means more than she imagined to Tyler, whose brother committed suicide following the same pressure from Charles to put the family business before music that Tyler is now feeling.

Things come to a crisis after Alyssa dumps Tyler, he clashes with his dad over his neglect of Caroline and, finally, the poor girl is horribly bullied. But Tyler's furious reaction this eventually leads to a rapprochement of sorts with his dad. It's a straightforward sounding plot but the script does a very good job of developing the characters.

I know the ending, with Tyler in the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001, has been criticised on grounds of taste, but I'd say this sort of reaction was somewhat kneejerk; it works in the context of the film, although it doesn't exactly achieve the pathos intended. This isn't a classic of cinematic drama by any means, but it's a good script performed well. It's well worth seeing.

Despicable Me (2010)

 "Are these beds made out of bombs?"

"Yes, but they are very old and highly unlikely to blow up."

I love Minions. Probably my favourite t-shirt is one with Minions and the TARDIS on it. I am writing this on a smartphone with a Minion cover. They are now ubiquitous, and seem to have much outgrown the film from which they sprung.

Still, this is a modern family Pixar-style animation film like any other and, as expected, while it has both stuff for the kiddies and metatextual stuff for the grown-ups, it is weighted much more towards the latter. It is a perfect concept for a film; a comedy about a supervillain. And Steve Carrell is rather good as Gru, our suburban Dr Evil who is getting a little old, past his best and threatened by younger supervillains.

The main thread of the film- our evil baddie learning to be a big softie as he develops paternal feelings for three little girls he adopts- could easily have been overly soppy, but the tone remains sufficiently silly for this not to happen. It's a very funny film, mashing mundane domesticity with over-the-top supervillainy to great effect.

I love the whole riff on the Bank of Evil- there is, of course, no other sort, and that's part of the subtext of this post-crash film. I also, of course, love any scene involving Vector. 

It's a light and fluffy film, if full of lots of clever little jokes, and it's enormous gun to watch. Let's make one thing clear, though: I did not cry. No. Definitely not.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- Part 1 (2010)

"You're not still mad at him, are you?"

"I'm always mad at him!"

No more do we get to see any wondrously imaginative and charming scenes of life at Hogwarts: the seriousness has fully taken over, it's war stations from the off, and not everyone will survive. Oh yes, and DOBBIE DIES!!!!!!

This is all very Lord of the Rings, right down to the suspiciously One Ring-like effect of the Horcrux on relations between Harry, Hermione and Ron and, while good, just doesn't feel much like a Harry Potter film. Still, I have to deal with the film as it is and, while I'd have preferred something less grim and gritty, I can't say that it isn't a good film, though by no means a great one.

The stakes are high, as is proclaimed by the very dark visual style of the film. Voldemort, Sauron-like, is about to take over everything and there are so many magical MacGuffins in play here that it's hard to keep track of them, much like the absurd number of acting luminaries that are in this film. One of the more notable is recent birthday boy Alan Rickman, of course; Snape seems pretty unambiguously to be a baddie here, right?

Possibly the second most heartbreaking thing in the film (I don't need to say what the first is, right?) is Hermione's decision to make her parents forget her; she is now an orphan, and homeless. And she now has to fight in a war. It's a terrible burden for one so young.

She, of course, is a "mudblood", and it is a sign of whether one is a goodie or a baddie as to whether one approves of this or insists on racial "purity". This is the nearest the film comes to being "about " anything, really, but the ride is an exciting one, with all of our characters being put through the emotional wringer. Harry, certainly, doesn't have the greatest of seventeenth birthdays.

Snape, now headmaster at Hogwarts, institutes a severe regime, and our heroes are all off to Mordor, or wherever. It's all strangely dark for a children's film, with bleak landscapes and a muted colour palette, although it's nice to see an emphasis on a book of wonderfully childlike fairy tales with stylised animation, the highlight of the film.

Harry's invisibility cloak has never reminded me more of Bilbo's, and Voldemort's attacking forces seem very much like Ringwraiths. But there the Tolkien comparisons end as things get very dark, and very complicated, as various MacGuffins are fought over and poor Hermione  has "mudblood" etched into her arm. How will it all end?

It's a good film, yes. Well made and acted, yes. And yes, I enjoyed it. But the tone is surely a little too dark for a children's film? Still, I can't deny I'm excited about the ending.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

"You really shouldn't fall asleep in class!"

I'm really not a fan of unnecessary remakes, particularly all the recent remakes of '80s movies; why not just make an original film? Still, this seemed the obvious thing to blog next, having just reviewed the original. It's an odd beast; this is, to date, the only film helmed by Samuel Bayer, whose career essentially consists of a highly impressive list of music videos, most famously Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", during the recording of which he earned himself a reputation as something of a tyrant. Given that background, he's given us a film that is as technically polished as one might expect, but it doesn't quite work: it's well-shot, but it just isn't scary.

There are many things about this film, not least the dialogue and performances, which can be said to surpass the original, reflecting both the general improvement in quality over time and the relatively higher status afforded to this remake in contrast to the low budget original. The story is more slickly told, more tightly edited, pacier, etc, etc. It's also rather noticeable, incidentally, that teenagers in 2010 appear to be far more mature and intelligent than they were back in 1984! I'm aware this remake has been criticised for its emphasis on Freddy Krueger's paedophile origins, although my impression of the original is that this has always been implicit: he was always a "child killer". Even so, making this explicit arguably distracts from the scares. I think the idea is to make the whole thing a metaphor for repressed memories of abuse, but this doesn't make the film any scarier.

General lack of scares aside, the new Freddy Krueger just doesn't work. The make-up looks good, but it doesn't look scary. Jackie Earle Haley is a good actor, but he's miscast as Freddy. And there are lots of things which, in isolation, are good ideas (the nods to the science of insomnia, the emphasis on the backstory, the twist that Freddy was indeed guilty of abusing the children), but distract from what should be a tightly focussed horror film.

Some minor points: this film, like pretty much all of both American and British popular culture, has a game called "tag" and the phrase "tag, you're it". In the playgrounds of Leicestershire, during my childhood, it was definitely "tig" and "tig, you're on". Is this a regional thing?

The Social Network (2010)

“Your best friend is suing you for $600 million dollars…”

Like everyone else, I’m trapped on Facebook. It’s socially impossible not to be on there- I’d miss out on everything- but the whole thing is a constant battle to defend my privacy against that bastard Mark Zuckerberg. All of us users of Facebook need to realise that it is not we who are the customers, but the entities that pay for access to all of our personal private stuff. And this film, scripted by the great Aaron Sorkin, purports to show how it all started.

I say “purports” not to diss this excellent film  but to recognise that it’s a fictionalised version of real events, a very different animal to an actual depiction of real events. This film isn’t the absolute “truth” and doesn’t make any such claim; how could it? The broad details of how Facebook came to be are known, but the finer details are murky, shrouded in legalistic fog, and highly disputed. Sorkin, quite rightly, has to a large extent decided to print the legend.

This film is superb. The script, as one would suspect, is excellent: a non-linear narrative, with scenes framed by later court scenes in which facts are disputed, and with all of Sorkin’s trademark wit. The soundtrack, too, is excellent, as one would expect from the great Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. But the film rest on three superb performances from Jesse Eisenberg as the insufferable genius himself, flanked by Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake (yes, Justin Timberlake) as the rogueish, washed-up founder of Napster.

It’s tempting to wonder how close the real Mark Zuckerberg is to the highly annoying, focussed, borderline Aspergers business genius depicted here; it’s tempting to conclude “quite a lot”, but the real Zuckerberg is a mysterious figure. Rather hypocritically, he guards his privacy jealously. Interestingly, the film presents him unsympathetically part of the time, but also allows him to be sympathetic at times; as viewers, we’re rooting for him against those insufferable Winklevoss brothers.

The film ends, in a scene shot in the real Facebook offices, with Zuckerberg symbolically alone in front of a screen. He’s wealthy, successful, but in contrast to the free-spirited Sean Parker he seems unable to enjoy the fruits of his success. Doesn’t your heart bleed for the poor billionaire?

I enjoyed this film hugely. If you’re a fan of Sorkin, witty dialogue, or good writing, or also trapped on Facebook, then so will you.

Black Swan (2010)

“Get ready to give me more of that bite!”

This is only the second film helmed by Darren Aronofsky that I’ve seen ( I reviewed π a fair while ago), and already he’s threatening to become one of my favourites. The previous film, an early effort, was low budget and independent, while this is a big Hollywood film, but the directorial style is just as uncompromised. This film, essentially, rocks. It’s intense. It’s clever. Once again there’s a focus on the inner life of one character, although I suppose I‘d have to see more of Aronofsky’s films to know whether this is a thing of him. But this film rules. Sod it, it’s about ballet, and I loved it. Do you have any idea how little I knew or cared about ballet?

In reality, though, this film could be set within any milieu where the competition is intense and overpowering. It’s hard to see a more extreme example of this than in the life of the ballerina, though; out of a large chorus there are only a few who make it big. The dietary restrictions are impossibly draconian. Joints are cracked as part of a regular ritual sure to guarantee consequences later in life. The sacrifices made are huge, and yet it may lead to nothing, as was the case with Nina’s mother, who simultaneously places her hopes in her daughter and jealously puts her down.

This is not a healthy lifestyle in any sense. In the case of Nina there is disturbingly graphic self-harm, sexual favours given for the sake of a good role, and ultimately derangement of a kind which is beautifully demonstrated throughout the film; only towards the tragic denouement do we realise just how many of the events have happened only in Nina’s imagination. The film is a slow unravelling of one obsessed young woman’s life, and it’s riveting.

Natalie Portman carries the film, with credit also due to Mila Kunis as the grounded and stable Lily and Vincent Cassel, so great in La Haine, as Maestro Thomas LeRoy, in the first time I’ve seen him in an English language film. LeRoy is a deeply creepy individual, using his power over these desperately ambitious, attractive young women in ways which are desperately predictable. Also worthy of praise is Winona Rder as Beth, whose fate prefigures the horrors which await Nina and point towards the meaninglessness of such obsession. Only those such as Lily, with a sense of perspective and a life outside ballet, survive relatively unscathed.

The climactic scenes, of Nina’s performance, are deeply clever, sublimely directed, and lead us to question much of what we’ve seen. This is a very clever, very visual and delightfully weird film which takes an art house sensibility and puts it into the relative mainstream. It’s a must see, whether you follow ballet or not.

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

“I’ve been shrunk, stretched, scratched and stuffed into a teapot!”

Well, it was only a matter of time until Tim Burton had a go at Alice in Wonderland, wasn’t it? Three things were pretty much inevitable: it was going to feature Helena Bonham Carter, it was going to feature Johnny Depp, and it was going to be good. Lo, all three of these things come to pass.

Of course, Tim Burton, being Tim Burton, doesn’t actually make an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland; he jumps straight to Through the Looking Glass, but still calls it Alice in Wonderland anyway. It all looks amazing, and as trippy as all versions made since Jefferson Airplane did White Rabbit have to be by default. The early flashback scenes to Alice’s childhood have a very stylised, uber-Victorian look, while the present day scenes have a very un-Burton realism to be contrasted with the, er, wonders of Wonderland. I only saw this film in 2-D, and I’m gutted; lots of shots were quite clearly composed to look amazing in 3-D, and I’d imagine that the contrast with what I assume would be a 2-D “real” world would be even more effective.

The cast is, obviously, brilliant, and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter are both as extraordinary as you’d expect. (Depp effortlessly switches between RP and Scottish; is there any accent he can’t do?) But there are far too many gloriously whimsical performances to. I ought to mention, though, that this is the last ever screen credit for Michael Gough, who was ninety-four years old when he voiced this role.

There’s obviously a moral behind the story: as the White Queen says, “You cannot live to please others. Alice arrives down the rabbit this time in the midst of a very public marriage proposal from an absolute drip of a man, a proposal she’s under huge pressure to accept, and the film shows her gradually coming to realise that she doesn’t need to. In this sense, Wonderland is the “looking glass” of the original title, although the plot is very different. There is also a nice philosophical conversation at the end between Alice and the Hatter in which Alice comes to realise that this world is real, and not a figment of her imagination, subjective though this is; which one of them is real and which dreaming. It’s nice to see the Jabberwocky poem crowbarred in, too; the mosyer itself is a magnificent bit of CGI.

Of course, there’s a heavy dose of feminism in here that was lacking in the novel. There is only a Red Queen and White Queen; kings are absent. The moral of the film presents what would in Victorian times have been a rather shocking message about the role of women. And, of course, the conclusion, in which Alice becomes an apprentice in a huge trading company, is not exactly realistic for the period but is necessary for our modern, and rather more enlightened, sensibilities.

One day I’ll probably give a bad review to a Tim Burton film. But I don’t see that day coming any day soon.