Film review - The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Walter Mitty – writer James Thurber's dull everyman, who in his fantasies is a hero famed for his derring-do – is one of those rare characters who has had a psychological complex named after him. Ben Stiller's new version takes this basic idea as a starting point, but moves very far away from the original tale. The result is not wholly successful.

Walter (played by Stiller himself) works at Life magazine, locked in the negatives department but dreaming of a more exciting life with one of his co-workers (Kristen Wiig). When the new owners of Time Life decide to close the title, Walter receives a package from a mysterious photojournalist (Sean Penn) supposedly containing the perfect photo for the last issue's cover. Unfortunately, the photo is missing. In an effort to find it, Walter embarks on a journey that will change his life.

This is essentially a very sweet film about finding yourself and those you love, and you can tell that it is a very personal project for Stiller. It is also very beautiful to look at, with gorgeous shots taken in parts of the world that Hollywood very rarely explores. Stiller is in his best straight man mode, Wiig is adorable as always, and all the performances are solid. There are some problems, though.

Firstly, I would question the need for this to be called a Walter Mitty film at all. Mitty's fantasies occur mostly early on, and are not necessary for the plot at all. They are also some of the least enjoyable parts of the film. Since the original story was written, dream sequences have become such a cliché, and I suppose it doesn’t help that I personally had my fill around 2001 when TV was full of them. They ruined the otherwise perfect Sopranos, and I’m sorry, but if Ally McBeal was really seeing a dancing baby, she is suffering from serious psychosis and needs to be hospitalised.  It does not mean that she is "ditzy".

Although I didn’t like the fantasies, if they have to stay you almost need more of them to properly set up Walter’s world. While watching this, I had a feeling that a lot had been cut out to shorten the running time, and perhaps some fantasy bits had to go; more worryingly, there were a few times when characters referred to things that hadn’t happened earlier in the film, or the plot seemed fuzzy.

And what a plot it is! I must say, it is the most specific plot I have seen for a while, with Walter working for a specific magazine (another problem with the film – too much product placement) in a very specific job, looking for a very specific McGuffin in some very specific places. It is also extremely surreal and basically completely ridiculous, requiring a liberal amount of belief suspension from the audience. It must be remembered, though, that while on the surface this is a big studio comedy, it really is an indie at heart, and most reminded me in tone of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

All in all, Stiller's take on The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is moving, and it is funny at times. There was just something stopping me completely going along with Walter's journey of discovery. Perhaps I'm just not enough of a dreamer to understand.

London Film Festival review - The Spectacular Now

This indie coming of age tale provides an interesting counterpoint to Superbad. Both films are about a confident, mouthy, academically unremarkable high school senior who concentrates on drinking and partying to avoid contemplating the future. The Spectacular Now takes a much more serious look at this condition, and at times is truly heart breaking.

Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) thought he had it all – a great girlfriend, a job, a car. But when his girlfriend leaves him, his latent alcoholism and lack of direction become harder to hide. He meets Amy (Shailene Woodley), a good girl who really should know better than to go out with him, and love begins to blossom. But will Sutter allow himself to be happy?

Both leads are excellent, and look young and normal enough to make you feel they are real. The script (from the writers of 500 Days of Summer) is a lovely mix of funny and poignant. Amazingly, the film lasts only 95 minutes but feels much longer (in a good way), with ample time to breathe.

A quick look at director James Ponsoldt’s CV shows that all three of his films so far have been about alcoholics. This is obviously a subject close to his heart, and it shows in the sensitivity with which he treats the characters. The Spectacular Now is a sweet film, which while it doesn't particularly break new ground, takes you on an engrossing journey.

London Film Festival review - En Som Deg (Must Have Been Love)

Eirik Svensson's debut feature is a low-key, poetic romance that is more about loneliness than love. The film opens in Istanbul, where Kaisa (a Finnish girl) meets Jakob (a Norwegian guy) on holiday. They have an instant connection, but he leaves before they can swap mobile numbers, or even tell each other their surnames. When she moves to Oslo, she bumps into Andreas, who looks a lot like Jakob, and begins a relationship with him. But he just isn't the same.

What is lovely about this film is how naturalistic the conversations are. Unafraid of using silence, the characters talk to each other in awkward English and much of what is said is through the eyes.

And what eyes. Pamela Tola is luminous as Kaisa. Alone in a new city, we can feel her longing for warmth and familiarity. Espen Klouman-Høiner does an amazing job of playing two characters – I really didn't realise he was both Jakob and Andreas until I saw the credits (though that may have been because Klouman-Høiner looks 10 times more attractive without a moustache than with one).

The cinematography is beautiful – all four featured cities are crisply realised in muted tones. A soundtrack full of acoustic Nordic folk rock matches this perfectly.

This is a film where very little happens, but what does happen means a lot. It explores how people can project their past onto those around them, seeing what they want to see instead of what is there. Ok – so of course I wanted them to just friend each other on Facebook, which would have instantly solved all their problems, but I still enjoyed this quiet and heartfelt journey.

London Film Festival review - All Cheerleaders Die

Sianoa Smit-McPhee and Caitlin Stasey vamping it up.

Do you like zombies? Do you like vampires? Cheerleaders? Lesbian witches? If the answer is yes, then this is the gloriously demented film for you.

Maddy (Caitlin Stasey) is a beautiful outsider in her high school who has vowed to take revenge on the popular kids. When she infiltrates the cheerleader squad, she inadvertently sparks off a series of very unfortunate events that leave her and her teammates undead and thirsty for blood.

This film is a mishmash of tones, genres and stereotypes – and you can definitely see the joins. Frenetically lurching from one set piece to another, with little logic in-between, it is a wild ride for those happy to surrender to its many charms and ignore its many shortcomings.

All the girls in this film are a hoot – gorgeous, but with a lot more character than your usual bland horror beauties (Australian Stasey is certainly pretty and sassy enough to be a star). The script has some hilarious lines, and the soundtrack is as loud and brash as it could possibly be.  

This All Cheerleaders Die is actually a bigger-budget remake of directors Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson’s first film (though the new budget could only stretch to some very ropey special effects). By all accounts, the pair followed the original with a string of iffy horrors. Second time around, they have still not created a “good” film, but it has a certain kind of brilliance.

Easily the stupidest, weirdest and most fun film I have seen this year, All Cheerleaders Die is a cult classic in the making.

Film review - Django Unchained

After the disappointment of Inglorious Basterds, I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing Tarantino’s latest offering, so I suppose I can no longer call myself The World’s Biggest Tarantino Fan™. I needn’t have worried, though, as Django Unchained avoids (almost) all of the ridiculous, poorly-judged moments of Basterds and is a thoroughly entertaining epic with a poetic script. It also manages to depict slavery in a more interesting and (I can’t quite say accurate, so I’ll say…) appropriate way than one might expect.

The setting is the Deep South in the 1850s. Verbose German bounty hunter Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) buys a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) because he can recognise the faces of three wanted men. Django quickly shows natural flair for the bounty hunting business, so the two partner up to kill the South’s worst offenders and to rescue Django’s beloved wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington).

Quentin’s script is detailed, funny and shows his brilliant use of language. He is most famous for his chats about American popular culture, and in Inglorious Basterds these became chats about German cinema of the 1930s. As this is his first film set before the moving image, he has had to forego all that, making Django Unchained feel a little less referential and arch than his other films.

Instead we have the wonderful Christoph Waltz rat-a-tat-tatting through line after line of flowery prose. His character really is the best thing about this film – a charming, cunning murderer with morals. Why he is nominated again for best supporting actor rather than full actor, I do not know. Foxx’s Django is a tower of quiet strength, and he is impressive in the role, but Waltz is on screen just as much and has a lot more to say.

Perhaps the most surprising performance comes from Samuel L. Jackson, who is almost unrecognisable as an elderly house slave. He’s the one who should have been nominated for best supporting actor. The part is quite small but crucial, and asks uncomfortable questions. And he plays it exquisitely.

Slavery is an issue that is hardly explored in cinema. Apart from a few worthy films that focus on it, it is generally glossed over in tales of the Old South, or just given a gentle nod to make sure we know the filmmakers are aware of it. Here it is integral to the plot, but it isn’t the plot alone. And it is shown to be brutal in the extreme – Tarantino isn’t taking the subject lightly, as Spike Lee presumed without seeing the film. Although he is often accused of making violence seem fun, the violence inflicted on the slaves is that other type of Tarantino violence – shocking, real and deeply unsettling.

Unfortunately, the film does go downhill a bit at the end. After a wonderful build-up of tension we get a lot of silly shootouts. These go on for too long and aren’t as beautiful, or cool as any of the sequences in Kill Bill, and instead are a bit jokey. Of course the redemptive aspect to the violence is nice, but if it was done in a more majestic way, it would have been the ending the film deserved.

Which brings me to the one truly stupid bit of the movie. A scene which took me completely out of the story and made me truly despair of my favourite director. It is the scene close to the end in which he plays an Australian ranch hand.

An Australian.

In 1850s Mississippi.

I’m not going to take cheap shots at Tarantino’s acting ability (I actually like him in From Dusk Till Dawn and Pulp Fiction), but it isn’t even a good Australian accent.

Some switch must have flipped in Quentin’s head in 2008, and he can no longer tell when an idea is good or hideously embarrassing. This is why he is playing an Australian here, and why the whole scene with Mike Myers in Inglorious Basterds exists. If he had been walking this tightrope in 1994, one step to the left and he’d have had Jules and Vincent whacking each other over the head like the Three Stooges before bringing Brett breakfast.

So, if you ignore that bit, Django Unchained is a very enjoyable cinema experience. It does not reach the majestic highs of a few scenes in Inglorious Basterds, but it doesn’t sink to that film’s lows either. There are no truly great Tarantino moments, but this is mature filmmaking with only a smattering of self-indulgent childishness.  

Film review - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I am not a Lord of the Rings fan. Kevin Smith got it right when he described them as “three movies about walking to a fucking volcano”. So I was not looking forward to ruining another three Christmases in a row with Peter Jackson’s new endurance tests. Yet somehow I quite enjoyed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Maybe it was because Cate Blanchett’s celestial droning was kept to a bare minimum. Maybe it was because Martin Freeman got to use Tim from The Office’s “Really?” face in a scene with Gollum. Maybe it was because I feel more kindly to Peter Jackson after watching West of Memphis. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t bored half to death.

The film tells the first part of Bilbo Baggins’s epic adventure helping the dwarves of Erebor regain their kingdom from the fearsome dragon Smaug. All the great effects, scenery and cinematography from the Lord of the Ring films are here again, and the cast give good performances. I particularly enjoyed the scenes with Sylvester McCoy’s Radagast the Brown (I believe these did not appear in the original book, so I risk the wrath of Tolkien geeks by saying that).

My problem with LOTR was not that they were bad films, just that they went on and on and on. If you are mesmerised by this universe, you want as much detail as possible and every incident from the books to be shown on screen. If you are not, it can be quite punishing. The Hobbit is a lot lighter in tone, reflecting its origin as a children’s book. Here you get the quality from LOTR with added fun.

Yes some scenes could probably have been shortened, and yes I am concerned about how another two films are going to be strung out of this one, reasonably short, book. But I will not roll my eyes when my family suggest seeing The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug next Christmas. I might even be the one to suggest it.

Film review - Pitch Perfect

When I saw the trailer for Pitch Perfect, I got all excited. Though it is transparently a Glee rip off, it looked funny and bitchy and it stars Anna Kendrick (little miss actressy actress who is so amazing in 50/50 and Up In the Air – I love her!), Rebel Wilson (the strangely-Australian one in Bridesmaids – I love her!) and Adam DeVine (writer/creator/star of Workaholics, my new favourite stoner comedy series – I love him!). I even did a happy little dance in my cinema seat when it ended.

I should have quit while I was ahead.

This really is one of those films where the only good bits are in the trailer. The full-length cinema cut of Pitch Perfect contains exactly 27% of the wit of a season one Glee episode (which is equal to 43% of the wit of a season three episode).

The film follows college freshman Beca (Kendrick) as she is forced to join the uptight Barden Bellas a cappella singing group.  Now, Beca takes her music seriously, and doesn’t like the Bellas’ attitude and dreary, out-of-touch song choices. Can the Bellas change their image with the help of Beca and win Nationals? I think they just might.

My problem with Pitch Perfect isn’t that it is predictable, or even that it is silly (though it is both these things). My problems are:

1. Beca is extremely unlikeable, moping around for no reason and being horrible to everyone around her because she is “artistic” and “deep”. She is supposed to be cool and have a serious taste in music, but she seems to like only David Guetta and La Roux, neither of whom are cool. Someone must have explained contemporary music wrongly to the screenwriter.
2. Almost all of the humour fell flat for me because the director just didn’t get me onto his side. Vomit slapstick is not my favourite comedy style, but it seems to really tickle director Jason Moore. And the film also makes fun of Asian people much more than you would expect for a mainstream comedy from whatever-we-decide-to-call-this-decade (the Teens?). Usually I try to give people the benefit of the doubt about things like this, but it seemed mean-spirited and lazy in this case. 
3. A lot of Beca’s romance storyline is predicated on you believing that The Breakfast Club has the best ending in cinema history. And that you could understand why from watching just the ending without seeing the rest of the film. And that characters who were born in approximately 1993 could ever think these things. 

While there are some funny moments and lines (mostly from Rebel Wilson), this is a waste of a lot of talented people’s time.