ParaNorman (2012)

 "What do you think you're doing firing at civilians? That's for the police to do!"

I don't recall having even heard of this nice little animated film before this weekend, so I assume it doesn't loom all that large in popular culture. If so, that's a shame as I rather liked it. 

I'll confess I haven't seen Coraline, and this film (and its animation) is very much in the same vein. I'm hugely impressed by the fact that this, a twenty-first century animated film, is stop motion rather than CGI. That's a huge point in its favour. So is the fact that the cast is comprised of a mix of unknowns and character actors rather than huge stars.

This is a nice little spooky tale based on the curse of a girl wrongly hanged as a witch three centuries ago (although I'm not sure Puritans in Massachusetts would still be wearing clothes like that as late as 1712, even with the rather sensible American disdain for wigs?), and yes, there is a certain amount of sentiment and moralising, about parenting and how we ought to be more accepting of people who are "weird".

But the film is genuinely funny, both in terms of verbal wit and having fun playing with the tropes, and there are some gleeful little satirical one liners in there. It's only a fairly short film at ninety minutes, and an underappreciated little gem.

Skyfall (2012)

 "You were expecting an exploding pen?"

And so here we reach unexplored territory for me- until yesterday, I hadn't seen any James Bond films since Quantum of Solace because... well, you know. But this, the very next film, is an absolutely superb return to form, and I'm not only talking about the brilliant theme song.

One of the things you tend to notice at the start of a film, before you get "used" to it, is the artiness of the direction, the composition of the shots, the camera angles, that sort of thing. And yes, Sam Mendes shoots this film very creatively. And yet at no point does he forget that he's shooting an action film. The set pieces, the action sequences, they're particularly magnificent in this film and that's down to Mendes.

The script is superb too, though. This is a Bond who's getting older, past his peak, but determined to keep going. We have a new Q, more of a computer whiz than a purveyor of gadgets- nice idea, but let's see how long that lasts. This is M's swansong, of course, with Judi Dench doing a bloody good death scene and Ralph Fiennes taking over as the new M to whose name, shockingly, we are actually made privy.

Oh yes, and there's Eve. I like the reveal about her at the end... and it's a new spin on the character to have her be a former field agent. Even the villain has motives that are closer to home. Indeed, while this is in some ways a typical Bond film on the surface, with big action sequences in Istanbul and Shanghai, it's fundamentally more about character, with the climax being a siege in Bond's rather posh childhood home. And yet, still, it never forgets that it's an action film.

This is the best Bond film in a very long time.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

 "No guns. No killing."

"Where's the fun in that?"

I've been putting off this film for years. Oh, its predecessor was a good action film, and was centred around a sublime performance by the late Heath Ledger. But it wasn't a good Batman film. I was expecting the same of this.

I was wrong. This is both a brilliant action film- the set pieces are universally sublime- and an equally brilliant Batman film. The typically wooden performance of Christian Bake matters not: the characterisation of Bruce Wayne, eight years after Batman has retired and Rachel has died, is at the centre of everything. He slowly regains hope, is beaten away from it, and symbolically rises from mpossible odds. It's all sublime.

I know not of Bane from the comics. He was after my time. Yet Tom Hardy, despite some accent slippage, is excellent as the muscular, pseudo-intellectual ewpitome of the sort of characters that could only have existed in the '90s.

A more pleasing character is an unusually engaging Catwoman: Anne Hathaway is both charismatic and brilliant, with so many little nuances to her performance. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is superb as a young, orphan cop who identifies with Bruce becausevof how he lost a parent. Morgan Freeman, as Lucius Fox, commentts wryly on the corporate side. Alred, meanwhile, has lost his stiff upper lip. Yet, if he's played by the extraordinary Michael Caine, who cares?

Yes, everybody bloody knows Bruce is the Batman. But I found this film to be excellent. Both the direction and the performances were sublime .

Cockneys vs. Zombies (2012)

"I've got tits, you tit..."

Why oh why oh why have I not seen seen this film until tonight, a bloody magnificent triumph that's a cross between... well, like it says over there on the left. But the feel reminds me just as much as Severance, and you can certainly see James Moran's influence in the script.

This is a deliciously plotted and made film, with splendid zombie set pieces, and the decision to make it in large part a riff on gangster movies is an obvious thing to do. But to set so much of it in an old folks' home, with the hero and star being Alan Ford, is inspired. The zombies vs. zimmer frame chase with Richard Briers alone makes the film worth seeing. Then we get Zoe Slater from EastEnders with a series of massive guns and swords, West Ham supporting zombies fighting Millwall supporting zombies, and the bloody London bus. Oh, and that final speech. This is a film that knows and bloody well skewers its zombie cliches.

Not only is it as funny as Shaun of the Dead and, at heart, full of likeable if rogueish characters, but the zombie set pieces look just as good too and the cast, with a last hurrah from so many British acting stalwarts of an earlier generation, is wonderful. I should have seen this film years ago and learned to embrace the awful title. I love Cockneys vs. Zombies.

Django Unchained (2012)

"Kill white people and get paid for it? What's not to like?"

This is, to date, the only film by Quentin Tarantino that I've seen since Kill Bill. It is, like all his films since then, removed from his particular strong point of witty, pop culture-peppered dialogue by being set in the past. It's as though Tarantino likes to challenge himself, but then that's what he does. He's doing a Western this time- well, a Southern- complete with classic style opening and Ennio Morricone opening tune.

He may deny himself the indulgence of cool dialogue here, but he delivers a hugely entertaining, gory and beautifully shot film as he always does, giving us the full graphic detail of slavery in the antebellum south. This is a refreshing antidote, brutal though it can be to watch, to the whitewashed Gone with the Wind version of the south. Before 1865 the place was backwards, feudal, pre-capitalist, savage. And it wasn't even that long ago.

Jamie Foxx is great as Django, a freed slave with a mission to save his wife who grows throughout the film from enslaved beginnings to the assertive badass hero he was destined to be. Leonardo Di Caprio is superb as the slaveowning baddie, the kind of part he should play more often. Samuel L. Jackson is deeply disturbing as the collaborator, Stephen. But it is Christoph Waltz, as Dr Schultz, the educated, witty German bounty hunter and the only civilised white person in the film, who steals the show, oozing coolness at all times.

Tarantino seems incapable of anything short of brilliance. This film is so good we can even forgive his brave attempt at an Aussie accent...

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

"I'm having woman cramps..."

Meh. Is that it? That was decidedly, boringly average, but then this is 2012 and Sony have to crank out any old Spider-Man film every few years. Still, those of us who have seen Fox's 2015 Fantastic Four know it could be much worse.

Not that this is a bad film, you understand. It's well-shot, adequately plotted and scripted, Andrew Garfield is a good-enough Spider-Man in spite of being blatantly too old, and the whole "cross-species" thing is a clever way of tying together the origins of Spidey and the Lizard. No; what's annoying is that they're doing that damn origin again, and Sam Raimi made that film in 2002.

Oh, they try to make things different- there's an emphasis on Spidey's dead parents. We get Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane and there's a twist at the end where he seems to decide not to dump her for her "own safety" after a promise to her dad in which two men agree her future between them. Patriarchy much? Still, at least this time it's subverted, even if the trope of Peter Parker's girlfriend always being a character integral to the plot is becoming a little groanworthy. We also get a more streetwise, skateboarding Peter whose academic geekery is downplayed, in spite of the fact that this time we get actual web-shooters. But we still get that damn origin story again, and the whole thing feels so uninspired that even a hilarious Stan Lee cameo can't save this film from mediocrity.

Dredd (2012)

"Life without parole? That's a deal you're offering?"

This film, unfortunately, exists in the shadow of a much bigger and distinctly awful film made in 1995 and starring Sylvester Stallone who (shock horror) removes his helmet. This film, on the other hand, tells a tale on a much smaller scale and, in Karl Urban, has an actor good enough to entirely subsume his ego beneath the helmet. He's sublime.

There's a monologue at the start establishing judges, Mega City One and the Cursed Earth, but this is essentially set entirely in one tower block controlled by one criminal gang. Dredd is the Dredd we know, hardly a character with depth or development potential, so he's paired with rookie Judge Anderson, a pysychic who is put through a baptism of fire before finally (and understatedly; no sentiment here!) passing her assessment. Olivia Thirley is essential in a much-needed past to add character and drama, not to mention oestrogen. Lena Headey is similarly excellent as Ma-ma, the big bad.

The world of the comics has been thoughtfully recreated for cinema. Given the grotesques and slightly cartoonish artistic style of the comics, a slavish recreation would not have worked, but its spirit remains even though there has been a necessary injection of realism. The grotesquerie and dark satire is all present and correct, and Dredd even gets a kick-ass speech. The effect of the slo-mo drug is achieved with particular creative brilliance in what is an extremely well-directed film. Dredd is nothing less than a triumph, with the decision to go small-scale completely vindicated.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2012)

"I finally got everything I wanted- and I'm wearing tights."

Yes, I'm finally starting to go back to the Marvel films that I've seen but never blogged. Captain America: The First Avenger may not be among the very best of Marvel's recent efforts but it's a damn fine film, with a proper and well-thought through usage of Cap's origin to tell a good story while remaining faithful to the spirit of Simon and Kirby's original. It's usually a bad idea for superhero films to begin with the origin story but this is an exception.

Oh, and there are also a couple of fun cameos from Jenna Coleman and Natalie Dormer.

We begin, after a brief establishing scene of something found in the ice in the present day, in Nazi occupied Norway, with a nice scene involving David Bradley, the Red Skull and some dialogue that firmly ties the Cosmic Cube (as it isn't called here) to Norse mythology as a nod to the recent Thor. We then move on to establishing the personality and, importantly, the heroic character, there already, of the 90 pound weakling version of Steve Rogers, rattling through the origin and the super soldier serum stuff while also establishing the excellent Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, here shown as a sexy ice maiden frustrated by the glass ceiling. She really ought to get her own series.

We also, interestingly, get the origin of HYDRA: a faction of Nazi scientists led by the Red Skull that, in an interesting twist, "declares independence" from Nazi Germany. That's a departure from the source material which shores up HYDRA much better as a long-term antagonist.

It's a nice touch to have Cap initially reduced to a performing monkey selling war bonds, giving a credible reason for the costume and also allowing us to see the actual original costume from Captain America Comics #1, a copy of which is actually seen in-universe!

It's nice that the Red Skull's, er, red skull only gets revealed halfway through, to dramatic effect. And interesting that Cap's shield is pure vibranium here: it seems that adamantium belongs to Fox.

This is a brilliant film: it has the script, the characters, the action sequences and the pathos to be, if anything, a slightly underappreciated gem. Cheeky of them to give Samuel L Jackson such billing for such a tiny cameo, mind.

Cosmopolis (2012)

"Talent is more erotic when it's wasted."

I haven't read the original Don DeLillo novel, or indeed anything by him: bad English graduate! But as a script it's superb, fizzling with ideas of Great American Novel standard. And on top of this we get the inspired, stylised directing style of the truly great David Cronenberg. Not all his fans will agree- this is significantly artier date than his better-known work- but it's among his best.

The ideas are superb. Eric Packer is a twenty-eight year old finance billionaire, and he's profoundly alienated from his world. But this alienation isn't existential angst, not even when he murders his own security guard on a whim in a presumed reference to The Outsider. No, this is something much more modern, alienation caused by the deeply abstract, chaotic randomness of our financial system. None of us understand it, but all of us gamble on it in some way and it has the power to wreck our society with crashes and economic storms. And none of it is real, not any more. Not even money is real: most money in the world is just IOU's written by banks, and if it was all called in then the system would collapse. It's absurd, but not in an old-fashioned existentialist sense. It's post-modern capitalism, heady and dangerous, and Eric employs a "head of theory" to pontificate about it. This is a world where financial markets can be thrust into uncertainty by the interpretation of a pause in the speech of the Chinese finance minister.

Eric, over the course of a day, seems to engineer his own self-destruction- casually ending his marriage by blatant infidelity, gambling his fortune on a Quixotic gesture against the yuan and, finally, seeking death. Only there can be find reality.

The visuals of the film complement the themes superbly: most of it is set in cars, and Cronenberg lingers over their erotic visual power in ways that remind me of Crash. The effect is claustrophobic: Eric is limited in where he can go by the chaos (that theme again) of the New York traffic as the president visits, and we see this with the narrow spaces in which he spends the film.

I'm not a fan of Robert Pattinson but he's superb here. And Paul Giamatti is outstanding. But isn't he always?

This is a brilliant film, one packed with far more meaning than I've been able to tease out, and a thing of true beauty. It is also, incidentally, notable for its positive portrayal of Muslims. A superb film.

The Woman in Black (2012)

"She makes us do it..."

This is the first of the new wave of Hammer horrors I've seen and, if this is anything to go by, I'm glad that Hammer are back. It's also interesting to see Daniel Radcliffe excel in his first true cinematic adult role- as a father and widower, no less. How very pointedly adult.

This is a solid and impressive adaptation of Susan Hill's 1983 novel by Jane Goldman, who has written many excellent films of a fantasy bent. I'd still like to see the 1989 TV adaptation, as it's written by the great Nigel Kneale, but this script is pretty awesome. Similarly, it's odd to see the likes of Jessica Raine and Roger Allam in such small parts but the cast here is excellent. So is the direction. In short, it's good.

I should probably be clear that I haven't read the original novel, but I found the plot satisfying and the film even a little scary. A little bit, at least. And I'm so much of a rationalist that, unlike my endearingly terrified wife this evening, I'm rarely actually scared of horror films.

Rationalism versus superstition is a theme here, of course, with Sam Daily holding out as the only person in the village who isn't superstitious. In the real world he'd be right, of course, but this is a horror film. And, I think, we're meant to notice the unfortunate class overtones of the rationalist country squire and the  superstitious peasants. But the film's theme, at heart, is the human cost of high infant mortality, which may have been a fact of life a hundred years ago it still must have absolutely destroyed people.

This film is really about the imagery, though; the creepy dolls, the revealed writing in blood behind the wallpaper, the sudden shocks and the innate horrors of Victoriana. It's true horror; in this modern world of "horror" films where the spectacle of gore overshadows true suspense and shock, this is the real deal, brought right up to date and more than worthy of the Hammer name.

Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

"Burn the witch."

As per this film's predecessor, I ought to make the point that I know sod all about any of the computer games. Nevertheless, this is even better than Silent Hill, and bloody scary to boot. I understand the critics don't like it, but then they know the game (Silent Hill 3, my wife tells me); I suspect that's why. My wife, incidentally, is playing the game as I type. I've promised to protect her from the monsters.

Yes, there's a plot and yes, it works fine, but this film is all about the scary imagery and set pieces and that's what I plan to focus on. If you haven't seen the film, look away now.

It's a very nightmarish film, hence the narrative style, and so of course we begin with a dream sequence in which Heather (as she's now calling herself), the daughter from the previous film, sees images of Pyramid Head and other delights and is ominously warned to stay away from a certain West Virginia town called Silent Hill.

I like Heather's little speech in class; she moves around, won't be around long, and there's little point in the other students getting to know her. We quickly get a sequence of scary kids, reminding me a little of Village of the Damned. But we soon shift to a dream sequence and, after sequences introducing fellow student Vincent, with whom she muses philosophically on dreams vs. reality, reflecting exactly how the film is narratively structured, and a mysterious detective called Douglas Cartland, who promptly dies. Several delightfully unnerving dream sequences later, the action finally shifts to Silent Hill itself. The direction is already superb.

Having learned the backstory- fire burning underground, religious zealots etc- Heather, alongside Vincent, gains a McGuffin, loses both Vincent and her Dad as hostages, and gets some expository guff about how she's the only good part of Alessa's soul. More interestingly, we get a deeply scary scenes with shop window dummies which I very much hope strongly influences any future appearance of the Autons in Doctor Who. The plastic mannequin spider in the middle of its web is amazing. This is by far the highlight of the film.

Of course, we get scenes of Pyramid Head chopping off prisoners' hands, and we get to see the dilapidated amusement park again as the denouement plays out. The film ends very abruptly, it must be said, and I'm not sure a happy ending could ever have satisfied, but I very much enjoyed this film.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

"I have found it is the small things, the simple deeds of everyday folk, that keep the darkness at bay."

I have a sort of rule with this blog; no remakes before I've blogged the original, and no sequels or prequels before I've blogged the original. So technically I shouldn't be blogging this before blogging the excellent Lord of the Rings films but... ah well, just this once.

It's an odd beast, this trilogy. The Lord of the Rings were big, long and epic because the source material was big, long and epic. But here we have the first of three big, long and epic films based on, er, a children's book. And The Hobbit is very much a children's book on terms of both tone and content, with none of the political or religious content (strenuously denied, of course, by Tolkien) of The Lord of the Rings, although the tropes of Old English literature are present and correct, with a treasure-loving dragon straight out of Beowulf.

So we hit upon an important point; these films are only superficially an adaptation of The Hobbit. The story of Bilbo Baggins co-exists with extensive material dramatising and expanding the Middle Earth backstory as seen in the interminable appendices to The Return of the King to show us the tale of how Sauron slowly rebuilds his strength.

The Lord of the Rings films are superb, and justly are often present in lists of the best ever films. This trilogy will never be able to earn such praise, simply because it is more of the same. It is, nevertheless, good. Peter Jackson seems incapable of escape from the epic mode, so we were never likely to get the small, charming, intimate film that a straightforward 

adaptation of the novel might perhaps have given us. But I much enjoyed this first film. It's a massive exercise in fanwank which may perhaps alienate the children whom one might expect to be its audience, but I can't deny it's exciting to watch. I suspect the trilogy will end up being rather good, if not so Oscar-winningly acclaimed as the previous trilogy.

Right. That's the commentary out of the way. Let's spend the rest of the blog post on some (mainly) fanwanky bullet points.

* Martin Freeman is good in this, and The Office, and Sherlock, but his acting seems very dependent on some idiosyncratic mannerisms, doesn't it? Still, I suppose you can say the same of the likes of Robert Downey Jr.

* Two hours and forty-three minutes!!! This may be co-scripted by Guillermo Del Toro but at that length it's definitely a Peter Jackson film. Two more to go, too...

* Apparently this film has a huge rate of frame per second which is supposed to be really jarring. didn't notice.

* I saw this film while chomping on my wife's magnificent Italian meatballs, the best food in the word aside from her coq au vin. Just saying.

* The dwarves, obviously, come from wider Germanic myth but, in their exile from Erebor at the hands of Smaug, I wonder if there may be something of  the Wandering Jew to them. Probably reading too much into it, although I note the original novel was published in 1937, not a good time to be both German and Jewish.

* There's a long framing sequence; Ian Holm starts out narrating as the older Bilbo on the day of his eleventy-first birthday, and there's even a pointless cameo appearance by Elijah Wood as Frodo. All this sort of stuff elevates the bombast levels and tells us clearly that we're getting something Big and Epic and Not For Kids.

* Ian McKellen and the nonagenarian Christopher Lee are playing younger versions of their characters while being ten years older, and just about getting away with it. McKellen's performance, naturally, is extraordinary.

* Gandalf is an increasingly rare case in today's Hollywood of a character who smokes and isn't a baddie. 

* On the other hand, for a character who pretty much defined the modern fantasy wizard archetype as seen in D&D etc, Gandalf never does any bloody magic. 

* The best thing about the whole film is the song about "What Bilbo Baggins Hates". That is all.

* The Old English roots of all this are obvious, which should not surprise us as Tolkien was a great Old English scholar. The dwarves, with their feasting and drinking in halls, are Anglo-Saxons via a bit of Wagner. The riddles between Bilbo and Gollum are very Anglo-Saxon too. And I've already mentioned Smaug and Beowulf.

* Sylvester McCoy is fantastic and very Doctorish as Radagast, but then that's probably exactly how fanboy Peter Jackson wanted him to pitch his performance. Radagast is an interesting character; in D&D terms he'd be a druid and definitely not a wizard. I note, too, that Radagast is mentioned but never actually appears in any of Tolkien's works. Fanboy Peter Jackson is expanding the mythos.

* The film looks magnificent. New Zealand looks magnificent. The CGI looks extraordinary. This is a brilliantly made film.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012)

"I remember how to undress myself."

"Yeah, but I do it so much better."

It's been a while, but it's time I finished off everyone's favourite vampires-and-fundamentalist-Christian-sexual-morality franchise. Fortunately, this time there's more of the former and less of the latter, as our two main protagonists are now married and all that, but we still have a lack of charisma or sexual chemistry from both of our leads which continues to bedevil these films.

We begin as Bella awakes and gets very maternally protective about her ridiculously named baby daughter, insisting that Jacob, imprinting or no imprinting, stays away. She spends some months acclimatising both to her new family and her new life as a vampire. Oh, and she gets to have sex. Because apparently it's moral, and in no way completely failing to take the relationship seriously, to refrain from sex before marriage. After all, it's not as though the pill has been around for fifty years or anything.

Still, after a few months of undead Mormonism there are stirrings of an actual plot stirring, even if this plot amounts to "the Volturi mistakenly believe that baby Renesmee is one of these nasty immortal children, and want to kill both her and the family without bothering to check first." This is very silly, but admittedly we do get a superficially exciting film to watch.

Bella is now strong, unable to tire, able to have vigorous sex but tempted by human blood, which is probably some sort of metaphor for sin or something. Thing is, though, I lie her even less than before. She and her new family are so haughty and superior, her new husband remains a wanker as always, and unforgivably she plans to cut all ties from Charlie, her father, who gave so much for her. Notably it is Jacob, and not her or one of her in-laws, who  stops this happening. But things are still not explained to Charlie, who does not "need to know" about his own family. This leaves a really bad taste in the mouth. So does the sense of Carlisle's vampire family as being elite and super-rich, part of the 1%. I note that Bella and Edward are just given a house by the family, many of whom do not seem to have to work for a living.

There are good things about his film: Michael Sheen is a great baddie, for example. But is it me who is a little perturbed that the baddies are all decadent Europeans with British accents, while our heroes are all wholesome, Fox News watching, Republican voting New World types, including a veteran of the American War of Independence to hammer home the point? The reads like a defence of Christian American family values against those evil liberal Europeans who threaten those family values. I'm on the Volturi's side. Go Aro.

The end is a nice bit of deception, I suppose, with lots of people dung in what turns out to be a dream sequence shown by Alice to Aro. Everyone agrees to be friends and there's a bit more romantic blah between Bella and Edward. Uuuurgh. I'm glad the Twiglet films are over now.

Ted (2012)

“Come on, I do NOT sound that much like Peter Griffin!”

 

We’ve all seen Family Guy. We’ve all seen American Dad. Well, if we haven’t, we should have, but I digress, which is rather worrying as thus is only the second sentence. But we all know what to expect from a film by Seth MacFarlane- exactly the same sort of thing but with live action instead of cartoons and that. And that’s exactly what this film delivers, and rightly so. Anything else would be disappointing.

Yes, the plot may be a bit clichéd: a man in his thirties has to choose between his girlfriend (who represents responsibility and adulthood) and his best friend (who represents childhood, literally, in fact, as a bear!), but eventually gets to have his cake and eat it. It’s a cliché, and a rather simplistic one, which rather insultingly implies that all men are children and all women are boring. None of that really matters here, though. The plot is just something to hang the cool stuff from.

Ted himself is not only voiced by Macfarlane, but probably represents a side of him which we also see in the similarly voiced Peter Griffin. Other familiar elements are the involvement of Patrick Stewart and the many pop culture references. I’m pleased to see that Macfarlane loves Flash Gordon as much as I do. I’m also pleased to see that Ted has managed to achieve promotion in his chosen career in the same way I used myself! I’m amazed, though, to see such a massive bong. Ted knows how to party. It’s interesting, not for the first time in a recent Hollywood film, to see how liberal the United States is these days when it comes to cannabis. We Europeans have a lot to learn.

Mila Kunis is brilliant and sexy, while Mark Wahlberg carries the film with charisma. But neither of them can match the sheer awesomeness of the film’s two stars: the gorgeous, historic city of Boston, one of my favourite American cities, which looks stunning here, and Macfarlane himself, who is obviously a genius. This film is brilliant for the exact reasons that you would expect it to be. Giggity giggity!

Rock of Ages (2012)

“Now look at him. Married to a woman who looks like she’s been hibernating in Margaret Thatcher’s bumhole.

I think I’ll just drop the obligatory opening sentence about not usually liking musicals when reviewing musicals. It just doesn’t wash any more. Instead I‘ll talk about ‘80s rock, which, being of the Grunge generation, I’ve only come to appreciate since my late twenties (I’m now 35). I love a lot of these songs (much as, like everyone, I now loathe that song by Journey for the usual reasons), and it’s interesting, being a little deaf and a user of subtitles, to learn lyrics to an awful lot of songs.

This is a fairly standard musical love story, plot-wise, but there’s a lot of fun along the way. The music is superb, and I particularly like the mash-ups. Even Tom Cruise can sing a bit, and is actually tolerable enough to justify his casting, bizarre though it is.

There’s a lot of wit and fun along the way, though, much of it in the person of Russell Brand. He gets all the best lines: The reference to “body porridge” had me convulsed with laughter. He’s an odd fit in this film, and it’s surreal to see him of all people in a gay kiss with Alec Baldwin, but he’s the best thing about it. I also have to praise Paul Giamatti (as I always do) for a splendidly hissable turn as the baddie.

The film takes a deliciously ironic look at the rock ‘n’ roll dream, skewering loads of rock clichés while also making it clear that it’s all done with love. Catherine Zeta Jones’ Tipper Gore-like character is made to look as stupid as Gore was in real life in the funniest part of the film, and gets her comeuppance.

There’s one slight niggle, though. I realise that ‘80s hair rock is intrinsically bound up with misogyny and very much a man’s world, but a lot of this is shown here without comment: the bands are all male and Zeta Jones’s character is essentially brought down by being slut-shamed by a man. I realise that this sort of film is hardly the place for lengthy discourses on gender politics, but perhaps the balance is a little too far the other way.

That aside, though, I loooooved this film.

Henry V (Richard Eyre, 2012)

"Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it."

In a way, it's rather annoying that I've done so much musing over the disconnect between Shakespeare's plotting dialogue, specifically written to be performed on a stage, with all the limitations that implies, and the medium of television, and sumptuously shot location shots to boot. If I'd waited until now to talk about I would have had so much to say. After all, consider the chorus here- a gloriously metatextual character, probably played originally by Shakespeare himself, who refers to a "wooden O" and apologises for the compression of time which all historical dramas do and which his bits help to elide. It's particularly eyebrow-raising to hear John Hurt declaiming apologies for not being able to represent the battle scenes properly as we watch brilliantly realised battle scenes. It's a juxtaposition that seems almost deliberately intended to highlight the tension between media.

Metatextual stuff aside, though, and briefly mentioning that this is my first experience of the play, not just there's an intriguing political subtext. This play follows on directly from its predecessors, even to the point of featuring Bardolph, Pistol, Mistress Quickly and (sort of) Falstaff. We can assume, then, that there's a continuity of theme, and that the examination of the nature of kingship should be understood in relation to this continuity. In fact, There's an interesting scene, on the morning of the battle, when he pleads with God not to punish him for the sins of his father, insisting that "I Richard's body have interred anew". Hence, presumably, his determination to attribute his eventual victory to God alone, and perhaps even his very determination to pursue his claims in France- an assertion of royal legitimacy and, perhaps, one his usurping father could not have made.

Hal may be very different from his former self, as we clearly see when he approves the hanging of his old mate Bardolph. The prevention of looting in captured towns is more important to a king than old friendships, however oddly this may sit with his later orders to kill all the prisoners!!! But is he really all that good a king? Because, unusually for Shakespeare, I think I can detect a definite authorial voice at work in this play. And that voice is asking why on Earth should ordinary people suffer and die in war just to satisfy the "honour" of lords and kings. Shakespeare, I think, would have seen honour as Falstaff did, not as King Harry does here. Which, then, is the more virtuous? Shakespeare gives us a king who seems to fit all the conventional notions of the good king, and then questions that. After all, he kills prisoners, betrays his friends, and wages war for his personal "honour". It's a very different angle on kingship from its three prequels, but it's fascinating, important, and rounds out the thematic whole that is the four plays on kingship.

Tom Hiddleston is extraordinary, and pulls off the task of making Hal and King Henry seem simultaneously very, very different and yet absolutely the same person. His two main speeches are surprisingly low-key and un-Olivier-like.

To finish, it's interesting for this Leicestershire native to hear Pistol addressing his new wife, the former Mistress Quickly., as "me duck!" It seems that our ways of speaking once spread much further southwards than they do now. And it's a bit of a bolt to be reminded that King Henry died at 35, the age I am now. He conquered France… what have I done?

Henry IV, Part I (Richard Eyre, 2012)

"Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world!"

"I do. I will."

I'd never seen or read this play before, this English graduate sheepishly admits. There are rather a lot of them, and those pesky academics are pushing to include more and more to the fortyish plays. For the record, I've seen or red fourteen including this one. That said, it's surprising, as ever, how much of this play, a lot of it concerning Falstaff, was familiar.

That gives me a bit of a challenge. When I reviewed Julius Caesar and Richard II I was discussing the production rather than the play, which I already knew. I'll endeavour to keep this review in that same spirit, but I hope you'll forgive me a small digression on my first impressions of the play.

The play continues the theme of kingship from Richard II, with Henry IV, a usurper, plagued by guilt and incipient rebellion. Fascinatingly, there are two pairs of doubles who dominate the play. The dour, guilt-ridden, dutiful, rebellion-plagued Henry is contrasted with the fun-loving, cheerfully cynical but emotionally vulnerable Falstaff, giving Prince Hal two polar opposites as "fathers". Meanwhile, Hal, a dissolute young man who contains greatness within him, and is much cannier than he looks, is contrasted against the brave, honourable but impulsive and not-too-bright Hotspur. We get a lot of foreshadowing that Hal will put away childish things when he starts, er, kinging, and that he will, indeed, on that day, banish plump Jack and banish all the world. Hotspur, in getting himself and a lot of people pointlessly killed, illustrates, I suppose, that Hal's strategy, if we can call it, of making himself seem to be a bit of a waster so he can surprise everyone, is a good idea. Although robbery is perhaps pushing it a bit far.

Underlying this is a sense that something is rotten in the state of England; Henry's speech about rebels at the climax, given his own actions, rings hollow, and it is the rebels, not him, who speak of honour. The only hope lies in the next generation.

Interesting, then, that this more rotten England gets a far grittier and more lived-in mediaeval look than did Richard II, which seemed much more on the High Middle Ages. We get constant contrasts between earthy taverns and a cold, grey, empty, joyless castle which really emphasises, in the use of setting, how this play cuts between two very different worlds, one joyless and rooted in a terrible sin, the other merry but ultimately without honour or values. For all it's japes, and its sack, and its misguided honour, this is an England that has lost its way. It's notable that the final battle is shot mainly in close shots to give a sense of confusion, chaos and claustrophobia. There's bitter snow, and fog clouding everything. The battle is won, but things are not right. This generation has failed, and the throne itself is still in question.

Jeremy Irons is superb as the recast, older, rather depressed Henry IV, who has gained only misery by seizing the throne. Simon Russell Beale, my first Falstaff, made me fall in love with the character and want to see more interpretations. But I suspect it's Tom Hiddleston, Loki himself, who will make the biggest impression over the three plays. There are broad hints of how his character will develop, and I'm looking forward to what happens with his performance. Perhaps it's the battle scene, more even than the play-acting in the tavern, that points the way. This is not Falstaff's world, but Hal belongs.

Richard II (Rupert Goold, 2012)

"For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings."

This is the first of four plays to be screened by the BBC under the title of "The Hollow Crown". Coming next will be Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, followed by Henry V, all of them, like this play, filmed as full dramas, with elaborate costumes, sumptuous location filming and the full visual feast of modern, high budget, television drama. And that isn't something that has been done since the 1970s, a very different age of television. This is not one of those occasional BBC 4 dramas, based on current theatre runs, which still have one foot in the theatre, with only limited use of the moving camera. This is the full medium of television being applied to Shakespeare. Modern methods of visual storytelling, unheard of the 1590s, are fully utilised. Realism is the rule; the locations and settings straightforwardly evoke the real world of the late fourteenth century. This is television, not theatre.

And that's very interesting, because there's a constant tension between the theatrical medium of Shakespeare's playscript and the medium of television to which that script is being applied here. Modern television drama, with its fast pace and fast cutting, adheres to a philosophy of "show, don't tell". This fits awkwardly with those scenes, so frequent in Shakespeare, where characters describe battles, gruesome happenings and other things which happen off-stage. This was a necessary device for the Elizabethan stage, of course, where it was best to avoid having to depict such things. But it sits awkwardly with the medium of television, where beheadings by the cliffside and location filming at real beaches, woods and castles are all possible. There are many scenes in which speeches are juxtaposed with a visual depiction of what is being described. On the one hand, all of this is brilliant. On the other hand, it is often made awkwardly obvious that Shakespeare was writing for a very different medium.

That isn't always the case, of course. The television medium can often serve instead to emphasise meaning; Richard's last minute decision to cancel the trial by combat between Mowbray and Bolingbroke is made all the more effective by the visual depiction of the sheer expense of organising the event. Nevertheless, there's a tension between the two mediums.

Ben Whishaw is superb as a fey and effete Richard, famously based on Michael Jackson and a little reminiscent of John Hurt's Caligula from I, Clavdivs.  It's a stand-out performance, showing us a Richard who seems to care little for affairs of state, and robs his nobles for his wars as but a casual afterthought. The pet monkey pretty much symbolises his fickle, pleasure-loving nature. This is a man who ill befits the rather warlike nature of mediaeval kingship. He's a camp king in a very butch world. I recall at University I studied this play in conjunction with Marlowe's Edward II. The parallels are strong in any case, but such a very camp Richard makes them all the more so. This is the first time I've seen Ben Whishaw (I've yet to see The Hour), but he's truly a revelation here. I don't doubt that his Hamlet would probably have been superb.

The rest of the cast is hugely impressive, too, from Rory Kinnear's troubled, more than usually conscientious yet determined Bolingbroke to Patrick Stewart's outstanding John of Gaunt. The "This Sceptred Isle" speech is delivered slowly, with deliciously bitter irony, in one of the standout moments of the production. Yet the highlight is undoubtedly Whishaw's self-pity, as power slips gradually away from Richard. David Morrissey's merciless Northumberland and Tom Goodman-Hill's anxious Sir Stephen Scrope are also worth singling out for praise. The play's awesomely rich themes of the nature of kingship, whether any subject has the right to depose a king anointed by God, and how Richard, in denying Bolingbroke his rights of succession, thereby undermines his own, are brought out anew by the performances. These themes may seem as if they belong to another age, but they don't really. They point forward, of course, to the follies and the death of Charles I. And we see the same power relationships everywhere, whether within the ranks of the Mafia, in the boardroom, or in the dynamics of teenage gangs. Because that's what mediaeval aristocrats and kings always were: gangsters.

This is only the beginning, of course. Henry ends the play in deep penitence, filled with a mixture of regret and paranoia. He's dismayed to hear of Richard's death. This original sin will lead to profound and bloody consequences…

Julius Caesar (Gregory Doran, 2012)

"How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown?"

There's a lot of Shakespeare on BBC4 at the moment, and it's all piling up, unwatched, rebuking me. I did a degree in English, many years ago, and yet it's possible that I haven't read or seen any Shakespeare since. I've only read around twelve of the forty-and-counting plays, which is sort of pathetic. My degree certificate is staring sternly at me as I write this: something must be done, and so it shall.

So here's the first of many of these reviews. Generally they'll be looking at the BBC4 productions, which are essentially filmed versions of recent stage productions but with some concessions to the medium of television, although that won't always be so, as in the case of the forthcoming history plays. There'll also be films and whatnot.

This particular production is very topical indeed, being that it's currently running in Stratford upon Avon. There's a contemporary African aesthetic, with everything about the play's look and directorial style strongly suggesting the slow slide from liberty to authoritarianism, driven by one charismatic figure, that seems to be happening in places like Uganda and Ethiopia. There's also, of course, a hint of the Arab Spring. The cast is led by the outstanding Patterson Joseph as Brutus, a slightly subdued Cyril Nri as Cassius and Ray Fearon as Mark Antony.

Lots of people don't like the idea of Shakespeare in modern or non-contemporary dress. I do. For one thing, certain plays (including this one) are very common, and it's nice to have a little variation in the visuals. For another, the anachronisms are already there. These are Romans who hear clocks chiming and allude often, and eloquently, to the effects of the four humours. Realism has its place, but to be shackled to it would be dull indeed. And the setting serves to emphasise certain of the plays themes, and remind us of their universalism. There's nothing exclusively Roman about the power relationships we see here. The only unfortunate side to modern dress is that it renders awkward those features of Shakespeare that reflect the style or technical limitations of the time, with battles always taking place out of shot and wives dying off-screen

It's hard to judge the full effect of the setting, though; it's devised for the stage and, although the crowd scenes (including Mark Antony's speech) are essentially just a camera pointed at the stage, the rest of the play was filmed on location, hence the plotting between Cassius, Brutus and Casca takes place in a urinal, complete with mimed peeing(!), while the "ambitious" Caesar is killed, symbolically, on a broken escalator. I'm almost tempted to go hunting for symbolism in the peeing, too…

The only version I'd previously seen was the 1953 film version, in which the most prominent and foregrounded performers were Marlon Brando as Mark Antony and John Gielgud as Cassius. So I was a little surprised, at first, to see the superb Patterson Joseph cast as a surprisingly wily Brutus, whereas Cassius might have been a more natural part for him. But I came to appreciate this more intelligent Brutus, calculating but never cynical. Nri's Cassius, meanwhile, was far more fallible, and less Machiavellian, than I'd expected. Fearon's performance was strong, but there were too similarities to Brando's iconic portrayal to fully escape from its shadow.

I love this play, and there are always new things to be seen. I love Shakespeare's cynical yet true depictions of the fickleness and murderousness of the mob, who are easy prey to demagoguery and mistake Cinna the poet for Cinna the conspirator as easily as they mistake paediatricians for paedophiles. There's a universal human truth right there. And Mark Antony's speeches, cynical and practical deployments of rhetoric though they are, are things of such beauty.

It would be wrong, I think, to judge the production too much by its camerawork, as it has only one foot in the televisual medium, at best. But the scene in which Antony and Octavian (a Laurent Kabila-like Ivanno Jeremiah) casually discuss their proscriptions is nicely punctuated by short, sharp cuts to hooded figures being shot in the back of the head, which I found very powerful.

Perhaps the production is let down slightly by the sometimes overly restrained performance of Cyril Nri, but the use of the African setting works well, and Patterson Joseph is outstanding.