Burn After Reading 2008

Another Coen brothers film, only for those with a rather warped sense of humour. Less comprehensible than The Big Lebowski, and with more confusion and awkwardness than Napoleon Dynamite. The Coen brothers seem to love making fun of people who profess to really know what they're doing, and who better to target than the CIA?

John Malkovich plays a CIA analyst who is fired from his work, and so fruitlessly spends his time writing his memoirs. The plot is deliberately complicated, so here goes. His wife, played by Tilda Swinton (famous frosty in Michael Clayton) is having an affair with a neighbour, played by George Clooney. She contemplates divorce, and so tries to steal all of her husband's financial information, and gets the memoirs along with it. She then leaves it in a gym, where Linda Litzke works with Brad Pitt.

Where the film really sparkles in the stupidity of the characters. Brad Pitt is a stupid sports-trainer with a headband constantly laughing inanely and gluggling sports drinks. Clooney is a narrow-minded clown, speaking over his wife at dinner parties and spraying everyone with the food in his mouth at the same time, before coming down with a rash. What the Coen brothers do so well are those films where nobody has any real clue what's going on. Pitt finds Malkovich's memoirs, and rings him up late at night "Osbourne Cox.." "YES THIS IS OSBOURNE COX" "We have...er... your shit..." "What?" "Your highly sensinitive government shit, and we want a good samaritan reward..." "YOU FUCKING MORON! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING".

To describe the plot would ruin the intended confusion of the film, and I'll leave you to enjoy it. What does happen, though, is Malkovich gets increasingly agitated by these idiots pestering him (who eventually go to the Russian embassy!), with a particularly memorable line "No, you are a moron. You are in league with a moron. You are part of a league of morons", he says as brandishing a gun in the top picture.

As relief from all this madness, there are two scenes where the CIA try to work out what's happening, where J.K.Simmons (better known as the editor from Spiderman) has some hilariously awkward lines. "Erm... so report back to me... when.. it...er...makes sense". At the end of the film, they manage to work out what's happened, and of course the chaos doesn't stop till the last minute. Sitting in his office with his junior, the CIA boss says "well, what have we learned? We've learned not to do it again. What it is we did I'm damned if I know".

A complicated film definitely, but remember that it is a comedy, and the confusion is all part of it. Brilliant acting from Pitt and Clooney, and especially Malkovich, who all knock around angrily, but their struggling just gets them deeper into the hilarious mess they're all in. ★★★★★

The Edukators 2004

Daniel Bruhl stars as a young radical intent on bringing down Capitalism through scare tactics. He and his partner in crime, Peter (the pratically unknown Stipe Erceg) break into expensive houses and leave notes that say "Your days of plenty are numbered" or "You have too much money". Each sound very threatening in the original German , "Die fetten Jahren sind vorbei" and "Sie haben zu viel Geld". The pair's love interest is Jule (Julia Jentsch), and not only does a charming and sensitive love story emerge, but the film refreshes the radicalism that has become so commercialised. "Anarchy stickers, Che Guevara t-shirts... things that could get you in prison 30 years ago are now sold in malls owned by the people we protested against"

Jan (Bruhl) is a cautious, introverted, but sweet and clever student who spends his time with circuitry and data. Peter is far more abrasive and loud, and of course, the bastard's got the girl. Jan and Jule bump into each other, and a delicate love grows between them, behind Peter's back. When a break-in to a house goes wrong, and they are forced to kidnap Hardenburg (Burghart Klaußner), a rich businessman, and run off into the country.

The dialogue between these four is what really makes the film. They criticise him with an idealistic naivety, but it transpires that he himself was once a revolutionary, just like them. He establishes an understanding with them, and they each grow to like and admire him. Bruhl and Erceg make an excellent pair of old friends, but Jule comes between them and they fall out. There's not only a charming 3-person romance, excellent played by all 3, which remains tantalisingly unresolved at the end, but a clever and original collision of generations. ★★★★★

Slumdog Millionaire 2008

Dev Patel plays Jamal Malik, a kid from the slums in India, who runs away with his brother during his brother, and experiences all the worst of Indian life. He gets on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and manages to answer all the questions. We see him playing the game, and each question references a part of his life where he learns the answer. So, the tagline is that by strange flukes in his life, he happens to know all the correct answers to win the game. (If that doesn't make your head spin, it is convenient that he has learnt all the answers to the game in chronological order).

Malik's a good kid, and doesn't want to get in any trouble. A lot of people seem to have taken offence to the title 'Slumdog Millionaire', and the various bad images it sends out about life in India. Everyone is either corrupt or powerless to stop the drug lords. Here, Dev Patel is really out of his depth. Better known to many as Anwar in C4's Skins, his face shows none of the signs of a boy with a truly difficult childhood. He acts, looks, and sounds like a posh colonial English boy travelling in luxury through the slums of India.

Anil Kapoor (Prem Kumar) is the show's gameshow host, and in a boringly obvious twist, he himself has a background of poverty and abuse, and does his best to spite Malik as gets suspiciously near the grand prize. He is the one redeeming feature of this film, and acts as a slimy and two-faced man, with a troubled past and a shallow existence. Kumar does a great job of making our skin prickle as he smiles to the audience in a disquietingly underhand showmanship way. Quite how this film deserved such a host of awards, I don't know. It's certainly no City of God in terms of cultural analysis, and Patel is far too weak to be able to say the film is carried by his acting. ★★

The Dark Knight 2008

I loved the original Batman films, and even the spoof comedy series they did, but The Dark Knight 2008 is a massive letdown. Christian Bale is Batman, but doesn't gleam as much as he did in American Psycho, or even the slasher-1984 Equilibrium.

He stalks around in a big plastic suit, which makes his voice several octaves deeper. Obviously, in this, the directors have gone for a dead-serious film about how corrupt the world is now, just as it was in the 80s and 90s, with the first serious Batman. He's supposed to be the people's hero fighting against the problems in society. Shots of 'Gotham', a blend of New York and London, show the alleys plagued with drugs, the AIDS epidemic, and a public with no trust in the government, as a reaction to Nixon's role in Watergate. Admittedly cheesy, but Batman Returns (1992) was a edgy and exciting film.

This new one, however, doesn't seem to have any specific focus. In 2008, Obama was on his way in, with voices all over America shouting 'Yes We Can'. So, where exactly does Batman fit into this? He doesn't. Bruce Wayne is a Fortune 500 yuppie, who plays around with his hi-tech toys in fighting low-level crime at night. In the age of the internet, and banking being done so much online, more and more crimes are committed with computers, like with Hugh Jackman in Swordfish. Batman seems a bit out of date already. Admittedly, he's got a big car that transforms into a bike, with flashing screens, but it already seems eerily like KITT from Knight Rider.

Batman acts more like a disgruntled 5 year old, with Morgan Freeman telling him "when you stich yourself up, you always make such a mess"than a sleek businessman. Gone is Batman's adolescent rage, mysterious set of gadgets and widely-acknowledged cool. Freeman might as well have his hair in curlers, wear a floral apron, and be brandishing a rolling-pin.

Batman's called in to fight The Joker (Heath Ledger). He's scary, wacky, funny, and a character everybody loves when he comes on screen. Ledger outshines all the other actors in this film by a long way, and delivers what is overall a fantastic performance. But, he takes a back seat in the plot to Harvey Dent and assisstant Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gou yllenhall). Dent's a fairly average young policeman trying to crack down on the problems, and Dawes has some history with Wayne, but is now dating Dent.

Surely you can see this for yourself, but she's nowhere near attractive enough to play the leading girl - the love interest of two rich and powerful men. What about Sienna Miller, or even, for God's sake, Judy Dench!?

There's been a lot of rave about this film, and Heath Ledger acting is outstanding. When you come to really watch it properly, you find it's two and a half hours of clumsy plot turns, and predictable baddies. Everybody seems to swap sides at least twice, and at the end, you don't really get the sense you've seen a complete film, just a long narrative list of loud and contradictory events. ★★

No Country for Old Men 2007

A truly scary film. With Scary Movie, and a never-ending pit of dire horror films, typically where a group of Americans (often with a limp-wristed blonde), go out unsuspectingly to their uncles cabin, where some bizarre demon lurks with the single objective of shouting at the children. I mean, really, in an evolutionary sense, how does that work? Sharks, leopards, spiders, tigers, vultures, all these things are scary because of their role in the evolutionary cycle - what does a constantly screaming goblin creature achieve? After it's clawed the blonde girl's top off, and scratched the carefully-made up cheekbones of the Jock lad, does it go home to its goblin family and say "Hey, honey I'm home. You won't believe the day I've had!" then sit down to a nice cup of goblin tea and Strictly Come Goblin Dancing?

No Country for Old Men, however, is just great. Javier Bardem, allegedly a big hit in Spain, has appeared as the mysterious lover in Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona, and comes into his own as Anton Chigurh, a Mexican gangster. He stalks around, clad in black, speaking with a clipped Spanish accent, and ruthlessly murdering innocent Southerners. His encounter with the elderly owner of a gas station is really deeply unsettling, and Bardem comes off as a completely insane and demonic killer.

When I started to watch this film on my computer, I thought I'd half pay attention, and half trawl the intermesh, but a terrifyingly brutal scene where Barden strangles a police officer with a pair of handcuffs, and blood spurts all over the floor, meant I was bolt upright in my seat, and I hurriedly closed down all the other programs.

Charming hillbilly Llewellyn Moss happens across $2m in cash left at the scene of a drugs deal gone wrong, and the rest of the film is spent as he tries to escape Chigurh, leading to an excellent line of dialogue, "You think you can make a deal with Anton Chigurh? If you laid down ALL the money on the ground in front of him, he'd still kill you just for... inconveniencing him".

I won't reveal the ending, but it stays true to the tagline "There are no clean getaways". An underrated film. Possibly so because it is so brutal, and there is no mercy, high-speed car chases, or happy ending. Something in the darkness of the film is oddly compelling, and the building of tension and panning shots of the dustbowl landscape really capture this backward land. ★★★★★

Good Will Hunting 1997

Matt Damon acts capably, and with some flair, as Will Hunting, the autodidact rebellious maths genius. He pokes fun at Harvard snobbiness in an inspired bar scene, "you dropped 150 grand on education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library". Of course, the 'one' woman and him come together (Minnie Driver), and they have a typically stormy relationship, where she marvels at his genius, and in the end he goes of to find her and tell her he loves her.








Professor Gerald Lambeau is a slimy maths professor at MIT "look it's saturday, unless you'd like to have a drink?" "...maybe", who recognises Will's one-of-a-generation mind and is very well played by Stellan Skarksgard. His tall frame, and blonde hair project his wealthy background and we see him looking like an 'old boy' at the MIT reunion, complete with red blazers and barbershop quartet, but his face is babyish, and excellent snarled through much of the film. Skarksgard's acting is the best in the film, notably in a scene where he is forced to accept, despite years of study, his inferiority to Will Hunting, a casual boy from the Bronx.



However, the film is largely focused around conversations between Damon and Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), a psychologist called in to monitor Will. A friend of mine remarked that the poster looks like an advert for pedastry - make up your own mind...Their powerplay arguments are very uninspired, and Maguire seems contrived and unrealistic. Will sees a painting of his, and brutally criticises it, then says "it seems like you're 2 days away from cutting off all your hair". He realises he's found Maguire's weak spot, and questions him about whether he married the wrong woman. In an over-the-top and cheesy scene, it's revealed that Maguire's wife died of cancer, and Robin Williams hugs much of the spotlight as we learn this. Professor Lambeau and Sean Maguire have an on-off relationship where they argue dramatically about the value of their lives, and who is intrinsically better. It all seems a bit silly, with at least 30 references to Lambeau's Field Medal (Maths Nobel Prize), and a passing mention of Vietnam veterans for no evident reason.

So, we have these three characters, Maguire, Hunting and Lambeau. Now, Lambeau is a great sinister character, but Damon falls far short of greatness playing Hunting, and you can feel William's arrogance oozing as he plays the bearded analyst, staring out his rain-dropped window, mulling over his life. Why make up all these characters? Ramanujan is mentioned, and Einstein's remarkable tale, the self-educated 26 year old who changed physics unimagineably, but Will Hunting has no historical base at all.


My other major contention is the portrayal of genius. Terence Tao, child prodigy, Olympiad Champion, PhD at 18, faculty at 21, is the living equivalent of Hunting. In his outstanding blog, he argues that one does not have to be a genius to excel in maths, or indeed any subject. Hunting's background is that he's an orphan, who spent all his time hiding in books in a public library, and is about mid-twenties. The Maths problem he solves is a second-year undergraduate problem, one that undergraduates are expected to routinely be able to solve, described here. A Beautiful Mind shows the sort of lives mathematicians lead considerably more accurately, and with less sop. It's not even a case of the 10,000 hours supposedly required to master a subject - Hunting's achievements are pretty pedestrian.

Overall, it's a good film, and I'm always thrilled to see any maths in anything, but don't for a moment consider something accurate or that will transform your life. ★★★

Office Space 1999

Office space is a hilarious spoof of the minutiae of Tim Burton-style American life. Roy Livingstone, better known for his role as Captain Nixon in Band of Brothers, plays Peter Gibbons, a handsome young man trapped in a cubicle at Initech.














We sympathise with Gibbons, and

They go to a fat, stupid hypnotist with a 'look at me I drink herbal tea' goatee, and he is put under a trance. Other fat couples in tacky plastic clothing look on with naive ignorance, gawping at everything they see. But, the hypnotist has a heart attack part way through the session, and dies immediately, while a woman with curled hair and long plastic fingernails flails about hopelessly. As a result, Gibbons is left in the hypnotic trance, able to speak his mind and do whatever he wants.

Hilarity ensues when he returns to work, and goes about changing his life. Office Space is a small, quiet film about nerds and confusion, but Livingston acts flawlessly, and with great humour. Everyone surrounding him is blinded by their own stupidity, narrow-mindedly thinking of personal gain. Though everyone claims to be working for Initech, they each make their own selfish attempts to destroy the mundane system that traps them all. Jennifer Anniston plays a waitress that Gibbons asks out, who initially struggles to believe that a man would ask a woman out to lunch. But, she faithfully goes along and an odd but warming romance ensues.

Gibbons practically abandons his life, saying "I don't feel like going to work", "but how then are you going to pay the bills?", "I don't like paying bills. I don't think I'll do that any more", and him and two flunkies get involved in a scam of the entire company. Livingston and Anniston deliver a quietly brilliant performance, a film that both of them can look back on. It'll probably be forgotten soon, but retains a cult following, and its innovation and humour is very refreshing, as we are confronted with more films about doom and gloom with big explosions and hoardes of people running from dinosaurs/bombs/planes/transformers/aliens/the catholic church. ★★★★

Star Trek 2009

Shatner to Star Trek fans: "Get a life!". The new Star Trek is an attempt to pay homage to the nostalgia of 716 episodes of Klingons and flashing lights. But, it just can't cut it against the variety of modern films. Much of the film is over-the-top special effects, and lots of unconvincing dialogue.








Having said that, Zachary Quinto is absolutely outstanding as Spock, standing up to his elders, and suppressing the rage at his planet's destruction. But, he's surrounded by a lot of lightweights. Chris Pine plays Kirk, the ship's captain but acts more like Zak Efron than anything else. Chosen for his good looks, he is the handsome rebel who fights with plebs in local bars, drunkenly rejecting the greatness that is owed to him because he doesn't have a father figure.

This already treads ground close to Star Wars, and they end up veering away from any real brooding or character development. A problem with remaking something is you either stick wholeheartedly to the original, or come up with a fresh version that cuts through modern developments. Star Trek isn't bold enough to do either. We see Simon Pegg with an achingly bad Glasgow accent as a dire joke character, and Chris Pine is injected with a virus to make him ill enough to be taken onto the ship (under some beserk intergalactic legislation), comically staggering around, sweating and acting like a fool, but of course in no real danger. It's this halfhearted comedy that is the film's biggest flaw.

The James Bond series had a similar problem in making the new Casino Royale - do we continue making films that are parodies of themselves, with 40-something actors and exploding toupees? Casino Royale stuck its neck out in being entirely serious (except of course the necessary innuendo), but Star Trek attempts to be something sharp, sleek and modern, with Quinto being really quite scary, but these wuvvie characters ruin their attempt. If it was going to be a strong modern film, then it needed the female lead (Uhura) to be considerably more attractive, and present in more scenes. She appears once or twice, rejecting Kirk's inebriated advances, but falling for the allure of Spock's genius. The original Star Trek had fans buying posters of all the characters, but there was no boldness in the characters, all caught in a strange middle ground.

Throughout the film, there was no real sense of danger. When we see the actors get into their ship, it's stressed that it is VERY BIG, then they fly to a VERY VERY BIG station, then the Romulon ship appears like a broken pinecone, and it is VERY VERY BIG. After a certain point, I just stopped caring.

Naturally, everything is alright at the end, and we are introduced to the familiar crew of the ship, lining us up chronologically for a whole set of adventures. Though they have all just avoided the destruction of the universe by a fraction of a second (just like everything else at the cinema...), and the music is playing, the group is nowhere near strong enough to be the characters that gained such a cult following. Star Trek has lived long and prospered, but it existed best in the bedrooms of geeky teenagers. ★★