A Cock and Bull Story (Michael Winterbottom, UK, 2005) May 12, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Comedy, 2000s, Drama, Film reviews , add a commentDir. Michael Winterbottom; screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce; starring Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Keeley Hawes, Shirley Henderson, Dylan Moran, Jeremy Northam, David Walliams, Gillian Anderson, Kelly MacDonald
Said to be an un-filmable novel (and probably rightly so), approaching the movie adaptation of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy you’d be forgiven in wondering just how the hell director Michael Winterbottom pulled it off. Well, he didn’t, exactly. It isn’t that the film doesn’t look at both the ‘life’ and the ‘opinions’ of Laurence Sterne’s titular character, it’s more that it rolls it all up into a bite size bundle of non-linear narrative, film within a film within a film inventiveness, and wry satirical asides which celebrate the originality, humour and post-modern techniques of the original literature. So how do you adapt a selection of books that cannot be cinematised – you don’t. You use the books as inspiration for a film that is as unique, as weird, and as funny for a 21st century audience as the books were to18th century readers.
You’ve got to praise Michael Winterbottom if only for his willingness to take chances. You’ve also got to thank him for giving the British film industry an injection of vitality, always producing edgy films that flirt between mainstream and niche, art house cinema. In many ways, he’s a modern day auteur, one who works within his own constraints, unhindered by Hollywood sensibilities. Sometimes it doesn’t quite work (9 Songs), often it does (24 Hour Party People, Road To Guantanomo), but rarely is Winterbottom’s dark, cynical outlook portrayed without style and intelligence.
For A Cock and Bull Story the director takes Tristram Shandy’s difficulty in finding meaning in his life, or ability to articulate his feelings in a linear form, and weaves them round Steve Coogan’s attempts to portray the character on film. This is all going on while Coogan has to deal with his off-screen relationship issues and the birth of his first child. The film seemingly taps into the rampant market of reality television, providing its audience with a behind-the-scenes look at art imitating life imitating art, with the awkward, surreal comedy of Charlie Kaufmann. Indeed, the film isn’t a far cry from Kaufmann’s own Adapation - a film he wrote for director Spike Jonze about the writer’s struggles to adapt Susan Orleans’ The Orchid Thief.
Coogan’s portrayal of Shandy is intermittently interspersed throughout the movie as he both plays the character and acts as narrator. Fans of the books the film is inspired by shouldn’t see the movie expecting a glorious, Peter Jackson-telling of an age-old story. Indeed, there isn’t much of the page that reaches the screen. This becomes a nicely implemented sub-plot with the characters squabbling about what should and should not be in the movie. But it’s Winterbottom’s use of the literature to mirror that of a modern story, where Coogan’s fictional representation of himself struggles to come to terms with the birth of his baby, and can’t find time for his ‘girlfriend’ (not his wife as he likes to remind people), that is the main draw. There’s an absurd but brilliant moment when Coogan, playing Shandy, is entombed in a freestanding womb as the other characters mock him. It both works as a representation of Shandy’s obsession with his own birth and insecurities, with Coogan’s feeling of entrapment as an actor, a father, and a public figure.
But the greatest attribute of the film is its two leads. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are superb. Friends in real life, the two British actors play off each other with a comic ease that cannot be manufactured. Brydon’s brilliant impression of Coogan’s television character Alan Partridge is one of the film’s funniest moments, showcasing in all its glory the self-reflexive attributes of the movie. In many ways, it’s this self-reflexive, knowingly-cynical, satire that makes the film so appealing. The movie opens with Brydon and Coogan playing themselves in the make-up room as Brydon muses over the colour of his teeth. Later, Coogan complains about the size of heal on his shoes, and while wearing a rather bent latex nose, asks his girlfriend if she would have had a baby with him if he looked like this in real life. The glorious self-mocking comedy is a staple of both Brydon and Coogan’s comic brand, totally lacking in pretension, and works so well in much of their improvised scenes within the movie as well as underlying the difficulty in bringing such literature to the big screen. In a sense, their self-mocking behaviour is indicative of the film’s irresistible approach to adapting the books – if you can’t do them justice, make fun of your failed attempts in doing so. It’s unique, it’s funny, and it’s rather charming.
If anything the film can be too clever for its own good. The non-linear narration of Shandy’s story disjoints the linear ‘making-of’ sections which takes something away from the overall effect. Indeed, Winterbottom’s approach might be too left-field for those wanting a serious adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s work. However, it isn’t as if the director doesn’t take the source material seriously, because the film’s inspired humour and style are clearly influenced by Sterne’s wayward thinking. Further, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the component parts of the movie add up to a whole that is as weird and interesting as Tristram Shandy himself, and rather than mocking the literature, mocks the filmmakers attempts to adapt it for the big screen. Evidently, as the film is as digressive as the novel, what can only be described as a loose cinematic version of ‘The Life and Opinions’, is in fact, a celebration of the books, the forward-thinking technique, and of Sterne himself.
In many ways, Winterbottom couldn’t have made a better stab at it. He’s not only made a very competent movie that is both funny and endearing, he’s made a story for a new audience. Perhaps that oft-used word ‘adaptation’ should really be ‘adaptability’. A Cock and Bull Story is adaptable for an audience pruned on high-concept Hollywood exports. In taking care of that unfortunate problem he’s made sure Sterne’s inventive 18th Century writing isn’t an excluded niche that doesn’t fit the mainstream. That, for me, is the film’s lasting and most important attribute.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Happy Endings (Don Roos, 2005, USA) May 7, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Horror, Comedy, 2000s, Drama, Film reviews , add a commentDir. Don Roos; screenplay by Don Roos; starring Lisa Kudrow, Steve Coogan, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Ritter, Tom Arnold, David Sutcliffe, Laura Dern
Counting how many movies writer/director Don Roos was trying to make with Happy Endings is about as difficult as deciphering Steve Coogan’s unusual pseudo-American accent. Not that I’m saying Coogan is bad in the film. I clocked he was gay from a screen shot of the film based on his feminine poise, which indicates he’s believable in his role as he does indeed play a gay character. Yet, Coogan, like so much else in this film, is wasted. The British comic’s talent is much more akin to the sort of offbeat niches seen in A Cock and Bull Story, 24 Hour Party People and his television roles. He actually suited an American-style character in The Alibi much more because it served his awkward humour, giving him a character on the wrong side of weird. In Happy Endings, anything Coogan brings to the film is lost with everything else Roos is trying to achieve as he can’t find the sum for all his parts. The film is full of quirky story arcs and possibly interesting characters, but the switching from story to story, character to character, makes it very difficult for an audience to keep up. Tarantino was able to make it work in Pulp Fiction with brilliant dialogue and sensationalised stories. Roos, in trying to keep attention on his characters, tries to work the interlocking element of their lives into a coherent narrative but he misses Tarantino’s trick. Instead of the interlocking nature of the plot being a sort of negligible oddity, Happy Endings’ is contrived and predictable.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Reeker (Dave Payne, 2005, USA) May 4, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Horror, 2000s, Film reviews, Thriller/Suspense , add a commentDir. Dave Payne; screenplay by Dave Payne; starring Devon Gummersall, Derek Richardson, Tina Illman
Forgive me for paraphrasing but I believe it was Francis Ford Coppola who said in the documentary A Decade Under The Influence that after Jaws and Star Wars the film industry began to take less risks and simply reproduced the stars, the plot lines, and the theme’s of movies that had made a lot of money. There’s nothing profound in his reasoning, the obvious fact was that the industry had to make money and the easiest way possible was always going to become prevalent. However, it is disconcerting when trash like E.T. cash-in Mac and Me and its ilk dominate the market. The Star Wars-inspired The Last Starfighter, Flight of the Navigator, Enemy Mine, and Battle Beyond the Stars are all enjoyable little movies but the lack of fresh ideas is only detrimental to the medium. You just have to look at how heavily Wes Craven’s Scream influenced the industry with the overbearing number of teen-inspired horror flicks. Did we really need Valentine, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Cherry Falls, and useless remakes of Black Christmas and When A Stranger Calls? I find it hard to say, sad almost, that I enjoyed Cherry Falls immensely, so perhaps I’m helping feed the frenzy, but the others were poor at best.
That brings me to Reeker - a film that might make you think people die from a killer who uses flatulence as his weapon of choice. You’d be wrong, but it’s a rather funny presumption. The film concerns five college students who end up driving down a very lonely, desolate road and run out of petrol at a deserted Motel (stop me if you’ve heard this before). Then as night begins to fall, things start to go bump. People have sex, or at least they try to, and others decide to camp outside in a tent (are you kidding me!). It is amusing how, with all the self-reflexive, post-modern horror films we see today, characters still act like they’ve never seen one. Am I being over-paranoid - even I check to see if an axe-wielding madman is in the back of my car when I’m driving at night. No matter what happens, horror film characters still go wandering alone, say ‘I’ll be right back’, and pretty much ask to get murdered in the most horrific ways possible. Alas, you have to admit that’s part of what makes a horror film so enjoyable, but the great thing about Scream was the way it reversed those conventions and it goes back to originality, something that is all too commonly lacking. And it’s originality that is seriously A.W.O.L. in Reeker which at first glance is influence by The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As you watch the story unfold you see that it is more heavily influence by the recent films Identity and Dead End to the point it’s almost a direct copy. The film basically takes Dead End’s beginning and ending, and attaches it to Identity’s middle. If you’ve seen Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa’s excellent Dead End you’ll recognise Reeker’s stench a mile off, and you’ll have no problem predicting the twist.
Reeker is in many ways the embodiment of what Coppola was talking about when referencing trend changes during the late seventies and eighties. It shows little artistic merit or skill with a script that is nothing more than derivative and direction that lacks any flair. Indeed, director Payne struggles to create tension. His killer is too ambivalent, and the ambiguity at the source of the ‘evil’ is underdeveloped. He looks very much like a man in-at-ease with (comparatively) big-budget, big-studio constraints, and with his back catalogue of rubbish like Alien Avengers II, Alien Terminator, Showgirl Murders, and Addams Family Reunion, you know you’re seeing a film by an under-skilled, awfully average director. He even completely fails to capitalise on an interesting dynamic with one of the characters who is blind. I found it intriguing to have a character which couldn’t see and used his working senses to control his environment. It crossed my mind how the suspense might have an added angle if a character couldn’t see his or her attacker. After all, the likes of Micheal Myers and Jason Voorhees in Halloween and Friday The 13th (well, the second movie onward) didn’t rush on their prey, using slow and controlled methods of capture. But, as victims saw their fate, they tried desperately to escape. Taking away the ability to see seems to me like an interesting set-up, and other directors have exploited disabled characters in the past (see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th: Part II, Friday the 13th: Part V, and Leprechaun) but Payne seems less concerned, simply using the disability as a cheap red-herring as if blind people automatically have something to hide.
If the film had any merits they’d be thrown out in a court of law because it’s all a big con anyway. It’s like sending your car in for a service and getting something back that looks and feels like your car, but is actually an imitation, made from cheap parts, dodgy oil, and wheels that look half on, half off. Even the acting is uninspired. These young actors look desperate for parts and as such took the opportunity to star in this tripe. It all adds up to a nightmare of gigantic proportions, and sadly, it’s for all the wrong reasons.
Rating: 1 out of 5
The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006, USA) April 16, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : 2000s, Drama, Film reviews, Crime , 1 comment so farDir. Martin Scorsese; screenplay by William Monahan; starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farminga, Anthony Anderson, Alec Baldwin
I looked at the running time before beginning to watch Martin Scorsese’s 2006 crime-drama and thought it might be too long. My girlfriend certainly thought so – she was asleep after half an hour and woke up with about forty minutes left. As I tried to bring her up to speed with what had happened, I found myself breathlessly retelling events without a pit-stop for oxygen or chance for her to really take it all in. When I finally said, ‘so that’s it, I’ll just pause it and go for a wee,’ I realised I was on the edge of my seat (an exceptionally comfortable sofa) and had been for the past hour and a half. As I relieved myself of half a bottle of wine I knew, as I reminisced about the film, I was experiencing Scorsese’s most polished and entertaining film since Goodfellas.
The Departed concerns the stories of two recently graduated cops – DiCaprio and Damon – who end up battling, unknowingly, against each other in a world of crime, deceit, and corruption. Damon is Colin Sullivan, a ‘rat’ in the police force who works for crime lord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). DiCaprio is Billy Costigan, a wild new police officer given the assignment to infiltrate Costello’s gang. When Costigan gets on the inside, he learns of Costello’s ‘inside man’ but can’t identify him. Likewise, Sullivan knows a cop is in Costello’s gang but hasn’t the access to find out who it is. It all plays nicely into Scorsese’s hands as he’s able to investigate once again his favourite human dynamics.
There has been talk Scorsese won the Oscar for best director because he was somehow owed it, or had earned it based on his body of work rather than the film itself. It’s easy to look at Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and The King Of Comedy, as better works of cinema than The Departed, which eventually won him the Oscar. Yet, he is such a convincing storyteller that I believe The Departed deserves the gold-gong on its own merit. The Departed flies along like an unstoppable bullet train, leaving you breathless. He works both sides of the complex story to perfection, while presenting thoroughly convincing characters and never once allowing them to become lost in the scenery. Other less experienced directors wouldn’t be able to cope with the material and that’s where Scorsese’s genius comes out most. He has to juggle the lives of two major characters with at least five others who have almost equal importance and you never get the sense that one is under-developed or lost in an over-complicated plot. Indeed, the plot is complex, but under another’s direction could easily be convoluted. Here however, Scorsese is so in control of all facets of the story, it has to be the most polished film he’s ever produced.
Scorsese’s passion for cinema is obvious in The Departed. The film is almost a nostalgia trip for the director. He keeps his camera restrained throughout, allowing the dialogue, story and performances to maintain audience attention, but the assuredness he shows in switching from Costigan’s story to Sullivan’s is one of a man perfectly in tune with his art. He has fun with the story and doesn’t allow the usual big-budget Hollywood conventions to constrain him. Without doubt, the director is having as much fun making the film as the audience is watching it.
With a director like Martin Scorsese, who has a body of work unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries, you do find yourself comparing subsequent films with those of his past. For me, The Departed is undoubtedly his best work of recent times, fixing the flaws that – only slightly – marred his work since Casino. Instead of the brooding, bleak cynicism of Bringing Out The Dead, the indulgent, sentimentalism of Gangs Of New York, or the obvious Hollywood sensibilities of The Aviator, The Departed offers the director at his unadulterated best, let loose on everything he loves about cinema. But unlike Gangs Of New York, a rather self-indulgent film, The Departed is made for an audience that loves genre films and high-octane, cinematic theatre.
Rating: 5 out of 5
The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006, UK) April 9, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : 2000s, Drama, Film reviews , 3 commentsDir. Stephen Frears; screenplay by Peter Morgan; starring Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell
I can’t say ‘The Queen’ particularly inspired me in any sort of way. It was a well-made drama with some nicely-placed humour, but it was also a lot like watching a very average soap-opera. It comes as little surprise it was nominated for Oscar’s – it steers clear of genre sensibilities, deals with the upper-crust, and has a leading performance from someone imitating a famous historical figure. In effect, Oscar gold.
Not that I can fault Helen Mirren who deserves her Academy Award for best performance. Her portrayal of the Queen is mannered and at times amusing. Yet, putting the royal family into a drama about tragedy and loss is both over-sentimentalising a relic that doesn’t deserve such attention, and caricaturing famed figures whose lives are already constructs of media derision and, at times, fascination. It’s most telling that Alistair Campbell’s scorn and egocentric asides are the most truthful and believable attributes of a film that first asks its audience to suspend their disbelief, and then asks us to suspend our disbelief for the over-privileged, out-of-date, out-of-touch royal family. When it comes to the second part, it becomes increasingly difficult and awfully easy to find ‘oneself’ shouting words like ‘robots’ and ‘who are ya’ at the screen.
I did enjoy Frears cynical approach however. Tony Blair having to blackmail the Queen to come out of hiding (I’m paraphrasing but it was something like: ‘Hey, Liz, the public hate you, they want you to show your fake smile on TV pretending to care. Can you do it please, so that at least I look good?’). The idea that both the tabloid press and public attitude is fickle and indeterminate is particularly well-handled. However, he doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know – sensationalism, conflict, death, and division, sells papers and fuels public attention. Most of all, when the bandwagon starts rolling, we’re all ready to jump on, push, or chase frantically behind.
I’ve heard some commentators praise the film for not resorting to caricature but this seems blinded by the fact no one, at least anyone beyond the Queen herself and the closest family members, know exactly what she’s like or what went on. Her persona is based on public performance and tradition. What we know of her is nothing more than the construct built by her public relations advisors. The film is nothing more than a fictional tale weaved around a high-concept, high-impact premise. Therefore, what we get is a sort of Chinese whisper of royal family etiquette. Writer Peter Morgan weaves the characters to his own whim, flirting with parody and taking obvious liberties to tell the story. The script is largely uninspired, resorting to obvious narrative characterisations to provide the film with much needed drama. Prince Charles is the wimp who thinks he’s going to get shot, he doesn’t know what to do but sides with Blair’s idea of putting a brave public face on proceedings, something the Queen is decidedly against. Prince Philip cannot grasp the public outcry, nor does he show any compassion or emotion, while Blair is only tentative at first, in trying to tempt the Queen to his way of thinking. It’s all quite tidy for a dramatic narrative but when you see the Queen mother with her daughter, Philip, and Charles, having a mid-afternoon conversation about the underlings (read: public), you are left with two things in mind. One, is that it doesn’t seem possible that this ever happens, although who is really to know. And two, these ‘important’ bastions of the monarchy and British tradition are really being used by an over-zealous writer who couldn’t think of a more restrained way of depicting the story. Essentially, it’s a soap opera with a reality of the Queen as fake as her real life public image.
In many ways, you’ve got to take ‘The Queen’ for what it is. A middle-of-the-road drama that takes no chances, depicting a British public in transition and a monarchy dealing with an unusual problem there seems no precedence of. As filmmaking goes, it ticks many of the right boxes, interspersing real life footage of Princess Diana’s final months with re-enactments of the car crash that killed her, and the media’s response afterward. We see Tony Blair’s first meetings with the Queen (in what turns out to be one of the film’s finer moments: a nervous Tony Blair is introduced to ‘Her Majesty’ and, having being told not to turn their backs on her, Blair and wife Cherie back out the room like lemmings sent to slaughter), and the family’s retreat to Balmoral. Again, Frears is rather cynical, even sadistic, as he reasons the royal family’s hiding as a way to protect Diana’s young sons from media intrusion and public gaze – a media and public they couldn’t give two hoots about when it doesn’t suit their needs. Later, in the face of public outrage, the royal’s put on their glum faces, take the stage, and play us like the fools they think we are.
However, Mirren’s performance is, in many ways, the reason the film is worth watching in the first place. She commands the screen with little fuss, seemingly infusing the effect the real Queen appears to have on people when she meets them. Mirren has an elegant grace that demands authority and a sense of prestige. The make-up, costume, and production design are all superb, making for a very identifiable, and lasting, image.
Yet the cosy style of the film is only a ‘bells and whistles’ detraction from the shallowness it encapsulates. The warmest thing about ‘The Queen’ is the Paparazzi’s flash bulbs, everything else is damn cold.
Rating: 2 out of 5
City Of God (Fernando Meirelles/Katia Lund, 2002, Brazil) March 25, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : 2000s, Drama, Film reviews, Crime, Foreign Language , 1 comment so far
I’ve heard Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund’s 2002 Oscar-nominated film to be likened to Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Much like Antonia Bird’s drama Priest (2004) been likened to The Exorcist because they both feature members of the church questioning their own faith, the two films couldn’t be more dissimilar. Take away the theme of crime and the time-switching narrative and you’ve got two films as far apart as the geographical regions where they were filmed. City Of God isn’t interested in over-stylised characters that overplay the merits of the metric system or theatrical violence and pop-culture references, it cuts far closer to the bone than that. And perhaps most importantly, unlike Pulp Fiction, City Of God seeks to tell us something we didn’t already know – and I’m not talking about the French new wave.
The most telling sequence of Cicade De Deus (its Portuguese title) arrives somewhere near the middle when Handsome Ned, a law-abiding but unfortunate citizen of the slum, is beaten and forced to watch the rape of his girlfriend. When he returns home his family try to calm him down – he’s understandably angry and wants to make those responsible pay for their actions. Meanwhile, the gang who raped his girlfriend decide they should have killed him so head to his house. In the ensuing gun battle, two of Ned’s family are fatally shot, while he is left with a much greater punishment – he is alive, left to dwell on the last few hours for the rest of his life. His need for revenge takes him to the local drug lord and a late introduction to a life of guns, cocaine, and crime.
However, Handsome Ned is, at first, only interested in revenge. He hates the drugs and doesn’t want his new found gang to commit murder, but he soon becomes embroiled in the day to day business of unlawful profiteering, and it isn’t long before he is the one with the gun in his hand standing over a dead body. It isn’t a profound resonance within the story that stands out, it’s rather simple – the good man is brutally wronged and turns to revenge. Yet it is a distinct resonance, one which beats terrifically hard at the bloody heart of the movie. Growing up in this slum does not mean you are thrown unwillingly into a gun-toting generation who can’t read or write, where drugs become a staple part of your diet, and the police are as much a threat as your best friends, it’s simply part of everyday life. Being unwilling is hardly questioned by anyone in the movie – you are simply part of that lifestyle whether you like it or not. The degree to which you exploit it defines the people of the city of God (crime lord Li’l Ze kills his rivals to control the drugs and gun business; Handsome Ned joins forces with a rival gang to wage a revenge war against Li’l Ze who was responsible for the rape of his girlfriend; and narrator Rocket becomes the newspaper’s inside man, photographing the violence for the rest of the world to see).
The film’s narrator Rocket produces the slight glimmer of hope from the city no one wants anything to do with. His dream isn’t governed by money or power (indeed, the fact he wants a camera champions the power of art as an escape form, and with respect to the film itself, the opportunity to shed light on a subject that would otherwise be left closed off from the outside world). Rocket’s dalliance with crime is beautifully portrayed by Meirelles and Lund – the will-he-won’t-he commit robbery is nicely underplayed. But in all this the directors remain very truthful to both the humanity and brutal nature of this life in the slum. The violence is never over-stylised but they don’t hold back any punches, while even the most hardened and psychotic are given their moment of salvation. In one of the film’s most poignant moments, Li’l Ze is left to ponder his best friend falling in love with a girl and leaving the slum. For what could be a matter of seconds he appears to wonder what could have been – could he find love, could he find happiness – before the moment passes and his need for power and control leads the film to another of its shocking and brutal moments.
Mierelles and Lund hold back, however, the film’s most devastating and ugly aspect until the end. Like an after-thought (very much a metaphor for the way the children of the slum are left to grow up and supplement this cycle of violence and crime) Rocket describes his first introduction to what he calls ‘the runts’. This group of children begin life with nothing but crime to look forward to. In the film’s defining moment, Li’L Ze’s gang corner two of the children. He blames them for breaking his own rules for the slum. The kids, who couldn’t be more than ten or eleven years old, cower in a corner, crying and obviously very frightened. Li’l Ze taunts them before asking them what they would prefer – a bullet in the hand or the foot. They gingerly hold out their hands after much persuasion but he shoots them in the foot anyway. He then orders one of his own gang – who couldn’t be much older than the children – to choose one child and shoot them dead. Meirelles and Lund film the whole sequence with jumpy cuts and handheld camerawork. Simply put, the whole scene couldn’t be any more realistic.
A minute passes while the gang member chooses his victim. You can see he doesn’t want to do it but he knows he’ll be killed too if he fails the task. He aims at one of the boys and shoots. The whole sequence is an ugly but superbly-crafted precursor to the film’s finale when the other members of the ‘runts’ take revenge by killing Li’l Ze and thus propagating the cycle of murder, violence and crime in the slum. The lasting image Meirelles and Lund leave us with is the ‘runts’ creating a black list of everyone they don’t like. Their plan: to shoot them all dead. Welcome to the next generation.
City Of God is a brilliant, perfectly-crafted film that is quite probably the best film to be released in 2003. It was nominated for four Academy Awards in 2004 (the year the third Lord of the Rings movie won best film seemingly be default), and won a Bafta for best editing. 
Rating: 5 out of 5
Children Of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, UK, 2006) March 22, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : 2000s, Drama, Film reviews, Sci-fi/Fantasy , add a commentAlfonso Cuaron directs this bleak but brilliant adaptation of a P.D. James novel that looks at the U.K in 2027 when infertility has caused no babies to be born for nearly twenty years and sectarian violence is rife.
The film is hard-hitting, not just in its graphic depiction of violence and a society overrun by narcissism and government indignation, but in its believable view of a future not too distant from our own.
Clive Owen delivers a powerful performance as an ex-rebel forced into protecting the life of a woman who may be carrying the first child to be born for years. He’s ably assisted by the fantastic Michael Caine.
Cuaron’s photography is as bleak as the film’s outlook, painting London in dirty grays, it’s distinct red buses now blackened by years of wear and tear.
The film is thought-provoking, superbly-scripted, and almost perfectly executed. Cuaron is a director to look out for in the future as he already has the best Harry Potter film under his belt.
Click (Frank Coraci, USA, 2006)
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Comedy, 2000s, Film reviews, Romance , add a commentAdam Sandler’s come a long way from his back-to-school antics in Billy Madison, his golfing heroics in Happy Gilmore, and his coming-of-age in The Waterboy. Indeed, we find him at the beginning of Click with a wife, a good job, two children, and a fairly secure middle-class lifestyle. Yep, he’s all grown-up now.
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from Click. I liked the premise but I found his recent films (50 First Dates - his worst movie to date, and The Longest Yard) to be lacklustre. Yet, my pessimism was quickly turned upside down by an actor back to form - his bumbling antics tempered by a moralistic story and some great supporting actors.
The idea of a remote control that can manipulate life is used brilliantly - in a superbly constructed story arc, and for comedic exploitation.
Sandler is also excellent - he’s likeable, funny, and clearly suited to the role. He’s also the reason the film never gets over-sentimental.
My only problem with the movie is Kate Beckinsale - she’s not a great actress and again she borders on awful in this movie. The only thing she does well is a convincing American accent.
However, despite Beckinsale being simply nice wallpaper, the film is an enjoyable fantasy-comedy that never preaches its morals. It’s also very, very funny - Sandler’s funniest film since Anger Management.
Lady In The Water (M. Night Shyamalan, USA, 2006)
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Horror, 2000s, Film reviews, Sci-fi/Fantasy , add a commentSomewhat of a return to form for M. Night Shyamalan, but Lady In The Water doesn’t reach the glorious heights of his best work Unbreakable.
There’s an innocence to the story that shines through, and Lady In The Water savours good storytelling. Perhaps ironically, it’s the film’s fundamental storytelling that lets it down - for example, there’s far too much exposition delivered in a haphazard way. However, Shyamalan’s love of a good bedtime story that is steeped in mysticism, magic, and folklore, jumps out of the movie with every transition, with every scene change, with every character.
Shyamalan also has time to have a dig at movie critics with the brilliantly realised Bob Balaban character. Balaban’s demise is one of the film’s best moments.
Overall, it’s a good film. I felt the photography could have been more inspired, but Lady In The Water is much better than The Village. Paul Giamatti holds it all together with an excellent performance and Shyamalan himself crops up in his biggest role to date.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Joel Zwick, USA, 2002)
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Comedy, 2000s, Film reviews, Romance , add a commentA likeable culture-clash comedy from the very talented Nia Vardalos who writes and stars in the movie. The initial boy-meets-girl set-up is a little under established but that doesn’t detract too much from the movie’s overall effect. I would have liked to have seen a bit more conflict as the narrative becomes too straight-forward and the eventual pay-off is predictably predictable. Yet, there’s funny characters, some very touching moments and the delightful Vardalos for company, so the film will most likely please most fans of romance.