Reviewing In The Name Of

****

Director: Danny Boyle

Starring: Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Madhur Mittal, Freida Pinto

DANNY Boyle is often held up as one of this country’s great contemporary directors.

It’s a bandwagon I’ve often struggled to keep up with; or, more accurately, one that I’ve watched with curiosity and scepticism as it has trundled past.

Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, his opening shots across the bow, are, indeed, very decent and enjoyable films. But thereafter his work seemed to decline quite dramatically: 28 Days Later begins well but gradually descends into nonsense; the same can be said for Sunshine; A Life Less Ordinary is flimsy and poorly executed; Millions is sweet but hardly a milestone; and I’d rather not go into The Beach for fear of being unable to restrain my rant about a film that is such absolute tosh that it makes you question whether or not you’ve stayed awake or accidentally dropped off and dreamt the shoddy ending, the stupid plot holes and the woefully misjudged video game sequence - for anyone still unsure, you were awake and your dreams would probably have been better than this tropical tripe.

But aaaaanyway, we leave all that behind now; all previous missteps and naffness are forgiven, for Boyle has produced a wonderful new film that is stylish but not too flashy, heartwarming without being schmaltzy and, crucially, a coherent, engaging and thoroughly rewarding piece of storytelling.

The film opens with India’s version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, where 18-year-old Jamal Malik (Dev Patel, from UK teen drama Skins) is just one question away from the 20 million rupee grand prize.

A sudden cut then throws us into a dirty police cell. Jamal is being tortured by officers who are trying to force him into confessing that he cheated on the show. How else could a child raised in the Mumbai slums - a “slum dog” - know the answers to all of the questions?

Reviewing each question individually, Jamal proceeds to explain how he knew the answers, delving into the experiences from throughout his young life that have taught him such facts and, in the process, narrating the gripping, funny and emotional life story of a poor child growing up in modern India.

Indeed, this is very much a film about its host country, its Dickensian social problems and its changing place within the world. And it is a great strength of both Boyle’s direction and Simon Beaufoy’s (The Full Monty) script that the film is able to convey so much about the country while also telling an enthralling story. Matching the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? format for tension building at every turn, each question takes us further forward in Jamal’s life, revealing often tragic events and details as we edge towards the present, each chapter adding a new piece to the jigsaw that explains the sad and confused young man we see answering questions on a TV quiz show.

There are plenty of directors who could have made a great movie from this story, but I wonder how many of them would have nailed it as well as Boyle. His decision to use the fast and frenetic editing skills of Christopher Dickens (Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead etc) is spot on, lending such immediacy and excitement to the more action-packed scenes, particularly an early chase through the labyrinthine slums.

And such scenes benefit immeasurably from Boyle’s admirable eye for the dramatic angle and the fast, fluid camera work. The finishing touch is a great soundtrack (using music is something Boyle has always done well); a blistering collection of contemporary Indian hip-hop and dance that thumps its way along to traditional Indian instruments, melodies and scales, capturing the feel of this nation in transition, of heritage and modernisation, and the dawn of a new era.

Coming at the start of January, it’s hardly a compliment to say that Slumdog Millionaire is one of the best films of the year so far, but it is certainly Boyle’s best work since Trainspotting and may well offer him his first stab at an Academy Award. Either way, it’s a great achievement.

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Did You Know? Danny Boyle couldn’t find a suitable actor in India to play the lead role, and ended up casting Dev Patel after his daughter saw the young actor in UK teen drama Skins and urged her father to check him out.

****

Director: Alex Gibney

Starring: Hunter S Thompson, Johnny Depp, Jimmy Carter, George McGovern

“SO much for objective journalism,” wrote Hunter S Thompson in Fear And Loathing: On The Campaign Trail ‘72. “Don’t bother to look for it here - not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as objective journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”

This quote and Thompson’s rather stark irreverence for his trade spring to mind when watching Alex Gibney’s new documentary, Gonzo. For while the film is thoroughly entertaining and conveys just how important a voice Thompson was, it still falls some way short of objectivity.

Not that this is a real problem; it is, perhaps, the point. Thompson himself scorned “the built-in blind spots of the objective rules and dogma”, for allowing his bete noire Richard Nixon to “slither into the White House”, and you get the feeling that Gibney’s impassioned and erratic film has been designed to reflect its subject - in style and tone, if not in pace.

As such, many potential criticisms are diluted or left at the door, and the life of this countercultural hero and inventor of “Gonzo Journalism” is told, for the most part, by his friends and admirers. Among them are Johnny Depp, who narrates the film, former US President Jimmy Carter and failed Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. And they join a wide spread of doting talking heads who all fondly reminisce, reflect and analyse the work, life, politics and death of one of the most important American writers of the 20th Century.

From Hells Angles, his first major publication, through to his suicide in 2005, Gonzo takes its time as it moves through Thompson’s life and his many great achievements. There are necessary omissions, but the key chapters are all given substantial hearings, so that you leave the film enlightened and with a genuine understanding both of the man and of the turbulent times he chronicled.

There is no rushing through his path into journalism, his run for Sheriff of Aspen (a town in Colarado, in 1970), his time at Rolling Stone magazine, the conception of his most famous work, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, his celebrated coverage of the 1972 presidential election and the national stardom it bestowed.

Thompson’s wild, drug-crazed antics do, of course, feature heavily in the film’s narrative, alongside his love of guns and the seemingly contradictory fondness for San Francisco in the 1960s. We learn how deeply affected he was by the violence at the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago, and how the majority of his best-known work - his hedonistic journeys “to the heart of the American Dream” and so on - were ventures of disillusion, chaotic expressions of the disappointment he felt that the idealism and promise of the 60s had ended with Nixon in the White House and the nation embittered, turning in on itself.

Old clips of “Dr Gonzo”, as he was often known, and his knack for a colourful quote, lend plenty of easy laughs (”I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”). But his life was so fiercely chaotic, berserk and often absurd that even the driest retelling couldn’t fail to entertain.

The only real problem with the film is that it is simply too comprehensive. When the credits rolled, after two hours, I couldn’t help wishing Gibney had shaved 20 minutes off the running time - easily achieved without sacrificing any depth, namely by losing some of the curious (read: crap) reconstructions and occasional dramatic interludes.

The director is, quite obviously, a Thompson fan, and his film will most probably delight the legions of co-devotees, while amusing and entertaining many a newcomer.

Is it an impartial and balanced look at Thompson’s life? Not really, but such an approach would seem a little inappropriate for a man who traded in venomous denunciations and tales driven by warped states of mind.

Above all, the film is a great reminder of Thompson’s skill - some might say “genius” - and his enduring importance today. In his words: “Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”

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Did You Know? Along with Don Johnson, Hunter S Thompson wrote the script for a two-hour TV movie called Bridges, about a former alcoholic and drug-addicted LA cop. NBC rejected the idea but bought the script and turned it into the series Nash Bridges.

**** 

Genre: Drama

Director: Toa Fraser

Starring: Jeremy Northam, Peter O’Toole, Sam Neill, Bryan Brown

“HOW on earth did they get the green light for that?” asked a friend incredulously after listening to my summary of Dean Spanley’s plot.

How indeed. This is a film about the Edwardian upper classes but without even the slightest hint of romance, hanky panky or upstairs-downstairs shenanigans; it’s a costume drama without Keira Knightley, in which the closest we get to a stunning, pale-faced beauty is a grumpy elderly maid; there are no lavish location shots, with much of the dialogue-heavy film taking place around a dinner table; and the narrative hinges on the past-life recollections of a man who apparently used to be a dog.

Okaaaay. So a period drama about reincarnation with an almost totally-male cast. It hardly screams “money-spinner”. Maybe next we’ll have a western about crystal healing. Either way, you can’t help thinking that it somehow slipped through the vetting net and was only made through pure fluke.

But, however it happened, it was worth the gamble, for Dean Spanley is a surprisingly charming and emotionally rewarding film.

As much about reconciliation as reincarnation, it centres on the strained relationship between Henslowe Fisk (Jeremy Northam) and his ailing curmudgeon of a father, Horatio (Peter O’Toole). Fuelled by the death of Henslowe’s brother in the Boer War and Horatio’s apparent failure to mourn his son’s killing, the difficulties and lack of affection in this father-son bond create a solid and interesting emotional core for the film, which is surrounded by the light-hearted whimsy of the reincarnation story.

This comes in the form of the titular Dean (Sam Neill), a taciturn and abrupt man who becomes considerably more vocal and engaging after a glass or two of a rare Hungarian wine - the catalyst for regression into his past life as a springer spaniel.

It takes some time getting there - during which you may wonder if the film has lost its way or become bogged down in the excessiveness of its own flowery prose - but Spanley’s past-life recollections eventually unite the reincarnation and reconciliation themes in a denouement that is deeply moving but never overstated.

In fact, the lengthy build up and its gnawing sense of inevitable failure only add to the reward and fulfilment of this wonderful closing chapter. For it is here that the frost covering the rest of the film suddenly melts away to reveal a genuinely heart-warming piece.

It is also the point at which a strong central cast fully demonstrate their abilities, with O’Toole in particular reminding us that age has diluted none of his consummate charm, wit and astounding ability.

Dog lovers and reincarnation believers are in for a treat with Dean Spanley - but so are the rest of us. As unlikely as it might sound, this is far more than niche nonsense and I for one am glad for the brave backers who funded it.

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Did You Know? The film is adapted from the 1936 novella My Talks With Dean Spanley by Lord Dunsany, although the father-son relationship was created for the film.

**

Genre: Comedy

Director: Barry Levinson

Starring: Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, John Turturro, Stanley Tucci

HOLLYWOOD has a long tradition of poking fun at itself. Take Singing In The Rain or The Player for example: just two - of the best - films that playfully mock the industry that produced them, but also creations of a fairly productive self-deprecating gene.

In a similar way, so-called “serious actors” have a tendency to sign up to silly self-parodying roles every once in a while, the goal being a similar one: “Hey look, paying audience members all over the world, we’re really just ordinary Joes who like to have fun and don’t take ourselves too seriously. Don’t mind what you read in the gossip pages about us having tantrums about this water being too cold or that coffee too hot. The fact is, we’re just fun-lovin’ guys ‘n gals like yourselves (except for the multi-million dollar salaries of course).”

Not to suggest this is always the case, but when actors or Hollywood itself start in on the self-mockery it often feels so horribly self-serving. Or - only marginally better - like one long in-joke.

This is how Barry Levinson’s new film, What Just Happened, comes across.

Written by film producer Art Linson, adapted from his own memoirs, it gives both Hollywood and its stars the chance to slap each other on the back and feign self-criticism in a rather flaccid satire that is neither sharp nor insightful and only marginally funny.

Robert De Niro reunites with Levinson for the first time since Wag The Dog (a far superior satire), playing a successful producer during two very unsuccessful weeks. As well as coping with two ex-wives and two sets of kids, the middle-aged producer has to mollycoddle a drug-addicted premadonna film director (Michael Wincott) into editing his film to meet the studio’s approval, while delicately persuading a heavily bearded, fierce and violent Bruce Willis into shaving for a new film - or, at the very least, getting Willis’s slippery agent (John Turturro) to do the persuading for him.

Humour manages to rear its head every so often, but is conspicuous by its absence for much of the film. Unlike Wag The Dog, none of What Just Happened’s characters have any great depth or spark to them, and there is barely a glimmer of the wickedly funny writing that made the previous film so enjoyable. Even slapstick moments that should be milked for easy laughs (Turturro falling in an open grave at a funeral, by way of example) feel botched and not nearly as funny as they should be.

It’s possible the story and characters might have worked better in a TV show; maybe one of those Aaron Sorkin walk-and-talk numbers. But even then, this would have been only a mediocre pilot.

We occasionally pass an amusing window onto the movie-making process, but much of what is meant to be insight is already plainly obvious to anyone with a passing interest in film-making (by that I mean anyone who goes to the cinema occasionally). Some directors throw hissy-fits about compromising their artistic vision to please the studio….yes, and? The whole game is run by money-men and has little to do with art….well, duh!

Some people might get a laugh out of Bruce Willis pretending to be a brute or Sean Penn having a jibe his own “edgy” standards, but they barely raised a smirk from this cynical corner.

As I said before, What Just Happened feels like Hollywood brown-nosing itself in one long in-joke. Check out Wag The Dog to see how satire should be done, or Tropic Thunder for a far more fun and uncensored look at film-making in all its muck and mayhem.

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Did You Know? Robert De Niro is currently back working with director Michael Mann (Heat) in a film called Frankie Machine, about a retired mob hit-man lured back into his former profession.

***

Genre: Thriller

Director: Ridley Scott

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani

ASIDE from The Green Berets, a turgid and racist piece of blind patriotism starring John Wayne, it was not until several years after the end of America’s military involvement in Vietnam that Hollywood started making films about the conflict.

The same could never be said for Iraq or the war on terror. While battles continue to rage and an end to this sprawling conflict becomes ever more distant, Hollywood has been churning out the war pics like its trying to keep up with the body count.

And, whether its Robert Redford’s dialogue-heavy Lions For Lambs or the up-front action of Nick Broomfield’s docu-drama Battle For Haditha, much of the offering has been of esteemable standard.

Ridley Scott’s latest journey to the Middle East is not up there with the best WOT films (WOT, for war on terror - an apt anagram if ever there was one), but is still a gripping and enjoyable action-packed thriller.

The subject here is the murky world of global intelligence, in which the CIA takes centre stage. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Roger Ferris, a skilled field agent who takes his orders from cold and calculating agency veteran Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe) in a campaign to find the leader of an elusive terror cell that has unleashed a campaign of devastating bombings in cities all over the west.

It’s a standard plot that is more interesting and intricate than it sounds, spiced up considerably by inter and intra agency conflicts, not least the subterfuge that characterises the CIA’s relationship with its Jordanian counterpart and the proud head of Jordanian intelligence, Hani (Mark Strong).

Concepts such as extraordinary rendition have left us with few noble illusions about this dark and ruthless world, and screenwriter William Monahan duly shows us a culture that makes up for its lack of moral governance with dispassionate focus on strategy and cold hearted professionalism.

Terrorists remain the villains of the piece, but supposed good guys are still a long way from being, well, good. Crowe, in particular, epitomises the matter-of-fact bureaucrat, casually ordering death warrants like he’s ordering pizza, and always from his large suburban home while going about ordinary fatherly business - giving his young son toilet training, taking his daughter to school and so on.

“There are no innocent people,” he repeats to DiCaprio’s morally distressed agent; a chilling justification for the acts they carry out in the name of freedom but a comment he might as easily have directed at himself and his CIA team. And, just as there are no innocents, there are no heroes either; just a bunch of spooks who connive with and against one another in an uncomfortable marriage of convenience.

And it’s made abundantly clear just how difficult this relationship is for the US. For all their technological wizardry, we continuously see these Langley wiz-kids out-smarted in the unfamiliar and inhospitable terrain. The well-shot set pieces find us speeding across endless desert, sprinting through labrynthine alleys and milling around in crowded streets, the locations adding to the cultural boundaries that seem to repeatedly scupper the yanks’ satellite-heavy strategy.

There’s no denying that Body Of Lies is cinema for Tom Clancy readers, but it’s a long way from being a flag-waving fourth of July parade. It beats its chest and bangs the drum - a little - but it offers up cracks and holes more regularly than saluting the cause.

A potentially brutal and hard-hitting conclusion is aborted at the last minute (a Hollywood cop-out in other words) in favour of a bog-standard shoot-em-up and some sanctimonious moralising, but it doesn’t take much away from this slick, fast-paced and wholly likeable espionage thriller, whose strong central cast help to create an engaging contribution to the ever-growing WOT genre.

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Did You Know? Ridley Scott is again working with Russell Crowe, this time on a Robin Hood film called Nottingham, due for release next year. Crowe will play the beloved outlaw, with Sienna Miller taking the role of Maid Marion.

**** 

Genre: Drama

Director: Fernando Meirelles

Starring: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover

DECIMATED cities. Human carnage. Mankind’s return to animalistic survivalism. Apocalypse.

Take a look back at cinema over the past seven years and it plays like a parade of disaster, with everything from aliens (War Of The Worlds) to zombies (too many to list) to monsters (Cloverfield) to mankind itself (Children Of Men) ravaging our cities and reflecting the unease of the post-9/11 world.

Blindness, the latest film from acclaimed director Fernando Meirelles (City Of God, The Constant Gardener), is an interesting, thoughtful and devastatingly bleak step along this post-apocalyptic path, with disease assuming the role of mankind’s havoc-wreaking nemesis.

Adapted from the novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramango, the film shows the effects of a sudden and highly contagious pandemic of blindness that envelops an unnamed city and, presumably, its host country and perhaps the globe.

The focus is on a small group of sufferers who are among the first to be affected. Among them is Danny Glover’s wizened and one-eyed waffler, Mark Ruffalo’s annoyingly earnest eye doctor and his wife, the only person not to be affected by the blindness disease (yet another excellent performance from Julianne Moore).

Being the earliest victims, they and dozens of others are quarantined in a disused hospital, under the surveillance of heavily armed guards but largely left to look after and govern themselves. And it is here, in these squalid, soulless corridors, that the film plots the debasement of humanity. While the Ruffalo-Moore gang try to establish a semblance of order - even community - the anarchic Gael Garcia Bernal and his cronies unleash a brutal rein of terror.

It is a decent into Gomorrah that thoroughly chills and revolts to the pit of the stomach, and proves considerably more shocking than the current fashion for torture porn. There are no deranged madman at work here; this is a vast swathe of mankind after the hands of its moral compass have been ripped off, with half the population now reduced to depraved, vicious beasts. Saying that this is a disturbing film is a bit like saying Charlie Chaplin was amusing or that 9/11 was a bad day.

And Meirelles never shies from the horrors of his Lord Of The Flies. His familiar manipulation of focus and light are, perhaps, put to their most effective use in Blindness, persistently testing the viewer’s own senses as he pitches curve balls of sudden noise, high pitched frequencies, moments in pitch black, then dazzling white, sudden and fast editing, blurred focus and extreme closeups.

The film’s most shocking scene takes place in virtual darkness, yet is still - by a long way - one of the most distressing pieces of film I have seen in a long time; a testament to the director’s skill.

There are a few holes - Danny Glover’s rambling and misplaced narration, the trudge towards a seemingly forced and unsatisfactory conclusion - but Blindness is, by and large, a thoroughly gripping and arresting film, and a thought-provoking portrait of the human race in our troubled and anxious times.

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Did You Know? Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation Of The Blind, has said the organisation “condemns and deplores” the film and its source novel, claiming it uses blindness as a “metaphor for all that is bad in human thought and action”, while depicting characters’ whose reactions to their blindness are “one-dimensional”. The group have organised protests against the film.

****

Director: Oliver Stone

Starring: Josh Brolin, Richard Dreyfuss, James Cromwell, Thandie Newton, Elizabeth Banks, Jeffrey Wright

THERE’S no getting away from the fact that the presidency of George W Bush has been a hugely significant chapter in American history, and one that will continue to define the American political and global landscapes for many years to come.

With this in mind, it seems less surprising that a penetrating biopic of his life and presidency can be released while the man is still in office. Film-makers could, in theory, have done the same with any president, but you just can’t see anyone bothering to put together a timely feature about Clinton or Bush Snr, or even Reagan for that matter.

“Dubya”, however, is a unique case: he is perhaps the most provocative and polarising president in living memory, inspiring the strongest and most extreme feelings of love and hate. Which makes it all the more surprising - and refreshing - that the notoriously left-leaning Oliver Stone has taken such a remarkably sympathetic view of him in his new film.

For his second presidential biopic (after 1995’s Nixon), Stone has carefully chosen some choice moments of mockery, having obvious fun with his so easily-ridiculed subject (how could he not?) but also showing the kind of restraint and fairness that observers predicted he would be incapable of. This is not a film of endless jibes and cheap shots, and actually paints the 43rd president as a tragic figure; it might sound hard to swallow, but Bush almost comes across as the victim of the piece.

In Stone’s eyes, he is an insecure prodigal son; a charming but self-destructive screw-up who spent his first 40 years drunkenly stumbling from one failed venture to another, spurned on by an inferiority complex that came from living in the shadow of both his father and his younger, higher-achieving brother.

And Stone makes a convincing case for this. Scenes of Bush’s presidency are interspersed with segments of his notorious younger years, tracing the life of the leader of the free world from drink driving Yale jock, through failed oil worker, failed congressional candidate and failed baseball team owner, to an eventually successful Texan governor, via a drink problem and the redemption (sobriety) he found in evangelical Christianity.

There are some strange omissions - dodged military service, suspected drug-taking, the controversial 2000 election - but the chosen episodes build a coherent and entertaining narrative that really hammers home just how unlikely a president this man really is.

Some of this makes for uncomfortable viewing, but the film’s hardest face slaps come from inside the White House, principally because the conversations and events depicted are still so close to home. Rather than trying to cover all bases, W. has a thankfully sharp focus, confining the presidential material to foreign policy (read: war) discussions in the two year period between the “axis of evil” speech and the aftermath of Iraq, when the administration realised that Saddam never had weapons of mass destruction. There are no domestic issues at play; simply the formation of the “with us or with the terrorists” mentality and the reprehensibly aggressive foreign policy it spawned.

Which is not an easy watch, by any means. Yes, we know what happened, we know the thinking that led to it and we know about the people behind it. But this doesn’t make it any easier to fight the feelings of shame, horror and hatred when we see even characterisations of people so irredeemably loathsome as Donald Rumsfeld, and are forced to accept that he and other such cronies were allowed to get away with all that they did.

Credit is, of course, due to an impressive cast in this regard, each of whom captures their subject without sinking into caricature. But it is Josh Brolin as the man himself who really steals the show. After his revelatory performances in No Country For Old Men and In The Valley Of Elah this late-blooming actor proves just how capable he is, with a pitch-perfect performance that is utterly convincing and several steps above mere impersonation.

W. is a confident and entertaining biopic that finds director Oliver Stone returning to familiar territory, with pleasing results. Some have tried to dismiss the film as a hastily thrown-together indictment of an unpopular incumbent president. Rather, it is an altogether decent portrayal that will most likely stand the test of time. If nothing else, we’re sure to look back on it more fondly than we do its subject.

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Did You Know? Christian Bale was initially cast as Bush and underwent weeks of prosthetics tests before pulling out at the last minute. Rumour has it that Warren Beatty and Harrison Ford were also offered the role.

*****

Director: Steve McQueen

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham

LONDON-born artist Steve McQueen has received plenty of acclaim for his previous work, the Turner Prize being just one of many accolades.

But the former Goldsmith’s student can now count cinema critics and prestigious film festival juries among his many admirers, for his first foray into commercial cinema has produced a gripping and powerful film that is remarkable on many levels.

One the most impressive things about Hunger is how utterly compelling it manages to be while entirely eschewing many of the conventions of mainstream cinema. The structure represents a bold leap into virtually uncharted waters; seemingly important characters suddenly disappear without explanation when the film enters a new chapter; the first 40 minutes and the last half an hour contain virtually no dialogue, but bracket a central section that chatters away about morality and religion for 25 minutes.

We are obviously a long way from pretty much everything else you’re likely to find in the local megaplex this autumn, but then we were never going to get a straightforward drama from an artist whose most celebrated work to date was a film of him pushing an oil drum around the streets of Manhattan (artistically impressive but hardly Disney territory).

Hunger tells the story of IRA prisoner Bobby Sands’ (Michael Fassbender) 1981 hunger strike inside Maze Prison’s notorious “H-blocks”, with the narrative broken into three very distinct acts. The first shows the build up to the hunger strike and the prisoners’ prolonged dirty protest (smearing their faeces on the cell walls), though it is more of an evocative scene setter than an introduction to characters, an atmospheric slope that sucks the audience into this inhumane world. As an opening chapter it is incredibly effective at conveying the life of these prisoners, dumping us all amid the shit-smeared walls and piss soaked floors; a dark and depressing portrait that sharpens rather than smooths its edges, hanging interminably on the mundanity of confinement (one shot stays in close up of a prisoner moving his hand around a window grill, toying with an injured fly, for something close to two minutes), but then startling its audience at every turn with sudden eruptions of cacophonous violence. These then give way just as quickly to lingering silence; silence that is almost more terrible and unsettling.

The second act is the famed 22 minute real-time conversation between Sands and Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham), the vast majority taking place in one static shot. This alone is an audacious and exciting move on McQueen’s part, but the thrill of the scene and what makes such a long stationary shot of two people talking so enthralling and intense is the consummate skill of Fassbender and Cunningham. It is difficult to find fault in either of the perfectly measured performances, but Fassbender in particular is utterly mesmerising, holding your attention like he’s reached through the screen and grabbed you by the lapels.

You feel both exhausted and exhilarated coming out of this scene, the effect made more pronounced by the sudden cut in dialogue. After such an extended conversation, the absence of talking then hovers like a ghost over the taciturn final chapter. Fassbender’s performance becomes increasingly revelatory as we watch him portray Sands’ slow and painful but determined starvation, the actor himself having undergone a 10 week supervised fast to properly show the emaciated end of his character.

There is no gloss to cover the grim reality in McQueen’s brave, thoughtful and all-round exceptional debut feature. Much like the H-Bloc prisoners, Hunger audiences are given no where to hide on a relentlessly difficult cinematic journey.

This won’t be to everyone’s tastes, nor will the unconventional structure, or the fact that seemingly prominent characters disappear half way through the movie while an apparent bit-player becomes the sole focus. But these are, in fact, the defiant strengths of a film that I defy anyone not to be intensely moved - if not disturbed - by.

Bobby Sands may well be the role that propels the fantastic Fassbender into a much higher (ie Hollywood) profile. And Hunger will certainly establish McQueen’s status as a director, making him a great asset to British film as well as art.

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Did You Know? Michael Fassbender is currently filming Quentin Tarantino’s new World War Two feature Inglourious Bastards with Brad Pitt and Mike Myers (among others). He is also rumoured to be starring with Ray Winstone in a new film version of hit 70s TV show The Sweeney.

**

Director: David Koepp

Starring: Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Téa Leoni

THERE’S no getting away from the fact that Ghost Town resembles a rather sizeable number of similar “I see dead people” movies.

It’s a bit Ghost, a bit Truly Madly Deeply, very Sixth Sense (the comedy version), a little bit Scrooged and even a teeny bit It’s A Wonderful Life (I know, no dead people but trust me).

This alone doesn’t matter a great deal as the idea behind the film is actually quite funny: a cantankerous, people-hating dentist (Ricky Gervais) dies for a few minutes during a basic hospital operation, returning to life to find he now has the annoying ability to see and converse with ghosts. New York’s innumerable gang of bored spirits then descend on him like a swarm of moths around earth’s only remaining lightbulb, badgering the misanthropic tooth doctor to give messages to loved ones, fill out tasks they didn’t manage to finish in life and various other bits and pieces that suggest The Seventh Sense might have been a more appropriate title for the film.

It’s a potentially hilarious scenario - a man who hates people is pursued by them at every turn, and not even ordinary people but an annoying bunch of needy loser ghosts who pester him for favours. Unfortunately, not nearly enough is made of this concept and the comedic foundation it provides.

Instead, in a way that is painfully inevitable, Ghost Town opts to pursue a flaccid rom-com plot with all the conviction of an embarrassed teenager forced to sing hymns in church. Along comes the ghost of Greg Kinnear (a likeable actor but given very little to work with here) who convinces the dentist to help foil his widow’s (Téa Leoni) marriage plans, promising to get rid of all the other pesky spirits in exchange.

Shock horror, the dentist falls for the widow and the plot bumbles along from here to a tune as repetitive as a mobile phone ring tone, tripping on its way in enough plot holes to sink the Titantic - again…and again…and again.

Ricky Gervais’s exceptional television comedy has made him a box office draw on both sides of the pond, but he struggles to carry an entire movie and often falls back on watered down versions of David Brent and Andy Millman to see him through.

Both characters are fantastic comedy creations, Brent being in the same league as Basil Faulty and Del Boy, but Gervais doesn’t seem to posses the range to deliver much beyond them - or not when he hasn’t scripted the parts himself at least. The unmistakable Brent-esque quips were hilarious the first time around, but we’ve seen him follow that style so much that they are now quite bewilderingly tiresome.

He manages to raise some laughs in Ghost Town, particularly as the bitter character he starts off as. But his lack of depth as an actor becomes rapidly evident and you can’t help wishing someone like Bill Murray had taken the role instead.

Even if he had, however, there’s no getting away from the fact that this film is a half-arsed affair; a funny idea that has been executed in the most unimaginative way possible.

Like Gervais’s character, I felt like I was pulling teeth for much of the movie.

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Did You Know? Ricky Gervais claimed in an interview that the script for Ghost Town was “absolutely the best script I’ve read for a movie”. Hmm. Well Ricky, either you’re lying to promote the film or it’s time to get a new agent.

***

Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Staring: George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton

TWO-bit opportunists driven by greed. Screwball shnooks meddling in matters they don’t understand. Very different people from very different worlds meeting and getting mixed up in ways they never should - often with tragic circumstances. Situations spiralling out of control. Bizarre coincidences. Deception. Desperation. Mid life crises. Bloody murder.

Sound familiar? Like a Coen brothers’ movie? Well yes indeed, and the latest film from cinema’s favourite siblings is stuffed full of these usual hallmarks, to the point that it would be impossible to mistake it as anything but a Coen brothers movie.

Say what you will - at least they’re consistent - but Burn After Reading is about as archetypal to their favoured themes as it’s possible to get. And it’s stars Frances McDormand. And George Clooney!

But of course, none of this matters a great deal. The premise - what happens when the worlds of CIA agents and gym employees collide? - is a fair old leap from any of their previous films. The problem is that, for all its quirky cleverness, Burn After Reading simply doesn’t have the mood or charm that enriches much of the Coens’ similarly-themed back catalogue.

There are elements of Fargo, The Big Lebowski and No Country For Old Men, but very little of their unique class and distinction. And, coming so soon after No Country, it’s hard not to see Burn After Reading as a rather insignificant and flimsy career cough, cowering in the grand and towering shadow of the brothers’ Oscar-winning masterpiece.

That said, there are some classic moments, courtesy of a classic plot.

John Malkovich (playing very close to his excellent assassin from In The Line Of Fire) is CIA analyst Osborne Cox, who quits the agency when they try to demote him because of a drinking problem (prompting the fiery and amusing reply: “I have a drinking problem? You’re a Mormon! Next to you we all have a drinking problem.”).

He decides to fill his newly unemployed life by writing his memoirs, much to the horror of his wife (Tilda Swinton, cold and brutal as ever), who is already deep into an affair with the unhappily married federal marshal Hary Pfarrer (Clooney).

Meanwhile, the seemingly unconnected Linda Litzke (McDormand) is agonising over how to afford a wide-ranging package of cosmetic surgery, and moans about the situation to her friend and co-employee at Hardbodies gym Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt as an amusingly clueless fitness nut). When a computer disk of Osbourne Cox’s memoirs is found at the gym, Chad mistakes the information for secret intelligence and tries to convince Linda to help him blackmail Cox for the return of the disk. Desperate for her new ass, boobs, face and whatever else, she agrees.

At the same time, Clooney’s serial womaniser has begun a relationship with Linda via an Internet dating site…and so the web is woven.

There are, as you’d expect, some funny instances (put the words “dildo” and “chair” together and you’ve got one of the best ones), but many struggle to raise much more than a chuckle. And the brothers’ fondness for surprises and bucking convention (sudden deaths, killing key characters off screen and having bit players casually relay what happened) are also present.

But there’s more to producing a great meal than throwing a few tried and tested ingredients together. It’s hard to fight the feeling that this one is a meal of leftovers, a film the Coen brothers have thrown together in the absence of any better ideas.

By their standards at least, Burn After Reading is a fairly average dish.

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Did You Know? The Coen brothers wrote the screenplay for Burn After Reading while also adapting Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country For Old Men (released last year). They would apparently alternate scripts every other day.