Reviews - 2011

Another Earth (Dir: Mike Cahill)

If you can get on board with the premise of this then there's a little gem waiting to be discovered. It's the second film this year to feature a rogue planet inexplicably appearing in our solar system to shake things up a bit. In Lars von Trier's Melancholia the new planet is on a collision course, spelling doom for the entire earths population, whereas here the new planet turns out to be an exact duplicate of earth, complete with an identical human population doing the same things at the same time as here, up until the point where each population learns of the others' existence. That's the premise of the film and really everything hinges on taking this fascinating but frankly bonkers scenario seriously. I suppose if you buy into the infinite universe theory it's possible, so let's run with it. Rhoda Williams, a young student has just been accepted at MIT to study astrophysics. After celebrating the news with her friends she drives home drunk, and distracted by the news of this new planet in the night sky she ends up in a head-on collision with a family of four, leaving a pregnant mother and her son dead, and her husband in a coma. Fast forward four years - John Burroughs has recovered from his coma and now lives alone in his house in the country. Rhoda is released from prison and decides to visit him to apologise, but is unable to bring herself to tell him it was she that took his family from him. She ends up cleaning house for him and the two eventually strike up a hesitant relationship, all the while Rhoda is feeling desperately guilty not only for what she's done but also for not disclosing who she really is.Their relationship is handled very well, thanks to very naturalistic performances from the two leads Brit Marling and William Mapother, and the film itself has a serene, almost dreamy quality. Things seem slightly unreal, befitting the strange events unfolding in the sky, and they take an interesting turn when Rhoda wins a chance to travel to Earth 2, as the planet's come to be known, and we know at this point that telling John the truth is unavoidable. Apart from being a well-handled and quite moving drama this is one of those films that makes you think. Did the same accident happen on Earth 2 as on Earth 1? Are there Rhoda and John counterparts on Earth 2? Are John's wife and child dead or alive on Earth 2? Is Earth 2s Rhoda an MIT student or a school janitor as on Earth 1? What would you say to your doppleganger if you met them? Mike Cahill directs with a subtle touch and you have to pay attention to the little clues along the way to fully grasp the implictions of what's going on, making the final scene quite rewarding. Consequently this will probably hold up to a few viewings and may well provoke a little debate among viewers - always a good thing.

The Artist (Dir: Michel Hazanavicius)

Every film that aspires to greatness, or even just to watchability come to that - from the most radical avante garde piece to the cheesiest action movie - must have a point. So what exactly is the point of this film? I've wracked my brains and for the life of me I can see no point other than the prospect of making some serious money in a very calculated way. But here's the thing - if you're a fan of silent films then why not watch some Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton rather than some smug riff on their films? If you're not a fan of silent films this is unlikely to change your opinion, as it's been designed to be just like the stuff you don't like. Which means that a lot of this films ultimate financial success rests on the shoulders of people who have never seen a silent film before and are intrigued by the novelty, so it's just as well that the marketing juggernaut's in high gear. This movie is a big in-joke for film afficianados and older sentimental critics who yearn for a bygone era, most of whom are happy enough to pat themselves on the back for spotting all the references to old Hollywood, silent cinema conventions and the like. But despite all the critical clamouring it's hard to imagine this being anything more than a mild curio for most of todays movie-going public. For those familiar with the films of the silent era The Artist has nothing original to bring to the table, and so the very most it can hope to achieve is to evoke memories of those films. But those very films and dozens more that are better than this are still with us, making The Artist ultimately redundant. To be sure, it's expertly executed, but at its heart it's a soulless and knowing affair, and smacks of high concept gimmickry. It doesn't have anything at all to say about anything, except 'look at me - aren't I clever', and in any case, had the film within this film been made in the twenties or thirties I doubt it would have been singled out as anything special. It certainly wouldn't still be talked about and watched today. So the bulk of The Artist, by dint of the fact that it purposely mimics run of the mill fare is in almost every way unremarkable when measured against the best silent films, and thus consigns itself to the rank of clever pastiche. It's merely re-treading old footsteps, re-processing original techniques, re-telling old jokes and reproducing original material like a giant photocopier. And to what end? If this were a five minute parody on a sketch show on television it would be fine. One could appreciate the empty cleverness of it, admire the accuracy of the pastiche, but a full length feature film of meaningless mimicry is just absurd. There's something far wrong when a films greatest achievement is to remind you how much you appreciate other films.

Carnage (Dir: Roman Polanski)

Based on the play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza this is exactly the kind of film I've been bemoaning is almost never made these days. Indeed without someone as famous as Roman Polanski at the helm it's difficult to imagine this film being given a wide cinema release. The problem, as far as distributers and money men are concerned, is that the demographics are all wrong, and demographics are where it's at now. The biggest demographic is teenage boys, and that's why something like the new Transformers film will get a three thousand screen release and this will get a couple of hundred - if it's lucky. Because teenage boys will find this - a film set in one room featuring four middle-aged adults arguing about adult things (albeit getting more childish as the film proceeds) - complete anathema. However, if like me you yearn for the days when there were lots of mainstream films released that didn't feature young models racing cars or shooting lasers but instead focussed on more adult themes and concerns and featured a cast of more mature, less 'fit' but infinitely more interesting characters then you may appreciate this wonderfully written and acted parlour piece. The four actors here - Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christopher Waltz, and Kate Winslet are all fantastic and are obviously having great fun giving their acting chops free reign. Polanski directs proceedings with a sly grin, and although things start off on a sombre note with the two couples very straight laced and quite formal and polite, eventually everyone's true colours are revealed - especially when the drink starts to flow - and it ends up being extremely amusing, as the characters and dialogue are so well drawn and are surely reminiscent of many people and conversations we've all been caught up in or observed in our friends at one time or another. This film is great at showing us just what silly self-important humans we are with our petty foibles, our judgmentalism and prejudices, the psychological games we play with each other and the social heirarchies we establish when we get together, especially in contentious situations like the one here. This is a modern 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' without the nasty bitterness and with its tongue at least partway in its cheek. One of Polanski's most purely enjoyable films, this is short at a mere seventy six minutes, but so very sweet, and without an ounce of fat on it. A delectable tidbit from an old master.

Drive (Dir: Nicolas Winding Refn)

What with all the remakes and sequels being spewed out of Hollywood these day, you could be forgiven for assuming this is a remake of the excellent 1978 Walter Hill film Driver starring Ryan O'Neill but in actual fact this film is based on the neo-noir novel of the same name by James Sallis, published in 2005. Ryan Gosling stars as a Hollywood stunt driver by day and getaway driver by night, and though he gives the impression of a merely strong but silent type near the beginning of the film, by the end we're in no doubt as to his quiet intelligence, his abilities as a driver, and more importantly as someone who's utterly ruthless and has an unbending focus to get any job done, no matter the cost. Although the subject matter involves ostensibly robberies and car chases with liberal helpings of violence and viciousness, the intro sequence at the beginning of the film, complete with eighties style titles and somewhat obvious pop love song which runs intermittently throughout the rest of the film should signal to the attentive viewer that this is actually a love story more than anything else. The driver - he has no name - is a loner and an old-fashioned romantic at heart who believes in honour, loyalty and chivalry, and these qualities, as is so often the way will ultimately lead to his downfall. The double meaning of the title becomes clear very early on in the film - this young man is driven - driven to do the right thing, driven to excel in whatever he sets his mind to, driven to push things to the limit and beyond, and this is one of the aspects of the film - the character of the driver and the way he relates to the people aound him that makes it so compelling. But what really separates Drive from your average Hollywood flick is the tone of the piece. The night scenes evoke a kind of quiet urban dreamworld; all neon signs, yellow headlights and soft sodium streetlamps, and they match Gosling's wonderful slow burning performance throughout the film. This quiet intensity is interspersed with precise bursts of action, and director Winding Refn does a great job of ratcheting up the tension through great pacing, well staged set-pieces and excellent characterisation from a uniformly good cast. Drive may not be faultless, but for a genre piece emerging from the teeth of the Hollywood machine it's surely close enough to satisfy all but the pickiest of cinemagoers.

Hugo 3D (Dir: Martin Scorsese)

This was my first foray into the world of 3D - a world I've been resisting entering for some time now. I'd heard that this film was one of the best examples of 3D done well, and it's a Martin Scorsese picture so I bit the bullet and decided to test the waters. Watching a film shot in 3D is a markedly different experience, but not for the better. I can only hope it's a passing fad, because no matter how well done it is on a technical level it looks very artificial; I was constantly reminded that I was sitting in a cinema, observing the technical wizardry that was being paraded before my eyes, and I found the whole experience very distancing. As for the actual content of the film it's full of Scorsese's vivacious style and looks gorgeous, but it felt too contrived and calculated. Young Asa Butterfield is okay as Hugo, but it seems as though his performance rests on batting those big shiny eyes and staring balefully into the camera too much. And what with his kindly father dying, his abusive uncle mistreating him, the station guard determined to send him to the orphanage everything was too cliched and manipulative - I felt I was being press-ganged into feeling sorry for this little moppet, so it just didn't work. Another problem is that most of the real effort here seems to have gone into the referencing of old films and characters rather than the films own story and characters. Scorsese's enthusiasm for the moving image is obvious. We know through his work in film restoration the passion he feels about old movies, and this passion manifests itself with more references to films both well-known and obscure than most cinephiles could keep up with, but that's just not enough, and is one of the reasons Hugo fails as a film in its own right. It's dripping with nostalgia and raw adulation to the point where nothing seems real; Hugo and his girlfriend, the mean guard at the railway station, even Georges Méliès and his wife, seem more like sketches or caricatures than real people living in Paris in the 1930s. The most serious issue though is that Hugo is schizophrenic. No, I'm not giving away an important plot point, but offering an explanation as to why this film is so problematic. It's trying to be two films, and the whole thing can only half-succeed because the two films clash with each other. The first film is about an orphaned young boy who lives in a train station, is good at fixing things and is searching for the key to his late father's automaton so that he can fix it and discover the secret within. That sounds to me like a straight Pixar style cgi movie; simple motivations, broad characterisation, somewhat sentimental because the movie is primarily for kids. The wit, verve and style of the telling is more important. 3D is more naturally suited to the artificiality of cgi and would enhance the piece, giving it - literally - more depth. However, this film is totally at odds with the second film - the one that deals with Sorsese's deep appreciation and love for silent movies in general, and Georges Méliès' life and work in particular. This film would naturally be more traditional, less flashy and modern, and would ideally suit being in black and white. It certainly wouldn't be in 3D. It's clear that Scorsese wanted to make a heartfelt tribute to the pioneers of cinema - that's where the passion in this film lays. Unfortunately he also wanted to play with his new toys and that's ultimately what lets Hugo down.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Dir: Sean Durkin)

You're probably wondering about the odd title of this movie - I know I was. Elisabeth Olsen stars as Martha, a young girl who's been psychologically scarred after being a member of a weird commune for some years. The other names in the title are not in fact other members of this commune as you may imagine, or even other characters in the film. No, Marcy May is what the charismatic leader of the cult decides to call Martha, and Marlene is the name that all female members of the commune must use whenever they answer the phone. I suppose the title is meant to reflect the inner turmoil and disorientation Martha is going through, as her identity is continually being shaped and re-shaped according to events outwith her control. Olsen gives a convincing if annoying performance as Martha and the rest of the cast is fine. The direction is quite oblique to the point of being a bit difficult to follow, and this isn't helped by the fact that we're constantly shifting timeframes between pre-commune Martha and post-commune Martha. It can occasionally get a bit confusing, and is a little wearing after a while. Again this is possibly intentional in order to give the viewer some sense of Martha's disjointed state of mind, but I found it to be a little irritating. These issues pale into insignificance though when measured against the biggest flaw in the film, and that is the characterisation - especially of Martha herself. This is a film where everything hinges on being able to believe in the protagonist's actions and it's crucial that their personality is consistent with someone who could conceivably find themselves in the situation Martha does. Unfortunately this isn't the case here as Martha seems much too intelligent, independant and strong willed to end up in the commune in the first place, let alone hang around for years being treated as a second class citizen by all the men in the commune, so the whole film falls like a house of cards. Add to this the heavy handedness of many of the commune scenes, and the jarringly unsubtle contrast between the two worlds Martha inhabits - the commune and her wealthy sibling's plush getaway - and the whole thing just seems false and contrived. Independant in spirit this film may be but at the end of the day it's as emotionally manipulative and calculated as most big budget studio films doing the rounds - it's just better at disguising it as something more meaningful.

Melancholia (Dir: Lars von Trier)

With this film Lars von Trier seems to have come up with a kind of weird companion piece to Terrence Malick's Tree of Life. It's like an anti-Tree of Life; a Tree of Death if you will. Despite its themes of loss, regret and man's fall from grace Malick's film is still life-affirming and hopeful in the end, whereas von Trier's is steadfastly bleak. This film is plumbed from the depths of von Trier's own bouts of depression during which he noticed that in times of stress people suffering from depression are very calm. Apart from detailing the destruction of Earth by a rogue planet on a collision course the film deals with two sisters and charts how each deals with the impending doom. It's split into two halves - the first half, entitled Justine concerns one sister who suffers from depression, and who is about to be married. It does a good job of thrusting the viewer into the abyss that is a depressive's life and shows how this affects all those who come into contact with Justine. The second half concerns the other sister, Claire who is the stable half of the sisterly equation. However as the reality of the situation sinks in she begins to unravel, as Justine becomes more calm the closer armageddon looks to be. It's an interesting film to be sure - whether von Trier is to your taste or not at the very least he seems incapable of making a boring film, and there's a lot to be said for that. However there are a few problems here, such as his incessant reliance on handheld camera techniques. Although this was key to the dogme style that von Trier helped spearhead in the early nineties, it doesn''t seem appropriate for this film dealing as it does with huge objects in the distance such as stars and planets, and featuring significant use of pristine CGI effects. Having a constantly bobbing camera becomes very wearing after a while and doesn't tend to add much once you know the kind of effect the director is going after. I also found the whole wedding far too reminiscent of Thomas Vinterberg's 'Festen' for comfort. Having said that the premise of the film is intriguing, the cinematography is sometimes breathtaking, there is some striking imagery to appreciate throughout and the performances are all fine.

Midnight In Paris (Dir: Woody Allen)

It's autumn, so you can be sure of a few things: the leaves will begin to fall from the trees, the evenings will get darker and a new Woody Allen film will make an appearance. This, his fortieth film in as many years is a delightful fantasy set in modern day Paris where a couple of American families and some friends are holidaying. Owen Wilson stars as Gil - a part that twenty years ago would have been played by Woody Allen. Gil's a successful but slightly dissatisfied screenwriter and would-be author who's looking to write the Great American Novel but lacks the drive and inspiration. He's about to be married to a young woman who's a friend of the family, rather than the love of his life, as she's clearly a completely unsuitable match for him. He can see a future laid out before him that's forever uninspiring, until one night while out for a stroll he's beckoned into an old fashioned taxi cab at the stroke of midnight by none other than F.Scott Fitzgerald. And off they go to a club where they rub shoulders with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Picasso and a host of other luminaries from a bygone era. Each night thereafter the same thing happens at midnight - a cab pulls up and he's whisked off to the Paris of the 1920s. This film is reminiscent of Woody Allen's more fanciful short fiction, and while it's no heavyweight in terms of examining relationships it does have an interesting observation to make about art and literature, and the way we feel about them: Most people come to believe the era in which they live to be vastly inferior artistically to previous ones they've read or heard about. Gil has no sense of this truism until he meets a woman while in old Paris that believes her time - the era he is in awe of - is a pale imitation of the 1890s, which she feels was the 'golden age'. It's a nicely realised observation on Allen's part. It's also a rather lovely film to behold and it has a nice air of whimsy about it. Allen is obviously enjoying his old age and at 77, when most directors are either dead or out to pasture, he's produced one of the most enjoyable and accomplished films of his career.

The Mill & The Cross (Dir: Lech Majewski)

Most people consider movies to be purely for the purposes of entertainment, and much of the time that equates to adrenaline fuelled chase scenes, heightened suspense, dark mysteries, murder, deceit and conflict. These are what make up the vast majority of films the casual viewer will come into contact with as they're what the multiplexes are full of each week; genre films, and there's nothing wrong with a good genre film, but when a casual movie-goer becomes bored of the same genre conventions and films made to a formula they start to look off the beaten path for films that offer something a bit different: Not so much emphasis on traditional narrative, more emphasis on thematic concerns, stylistic choices and general form. These are the types of films people talk about when they refer to film as an artform. They're far less concerned with mass appeal and commercial viability and more with intellectual stimulation, or offering some insights into life or exploring particular issues of importance. The Mill & The Cross falls squarely into this latter category. Part rumination on the life of an artist - in this case the great Flemish master Pieter Bruegel the Elder, part exploration of life in 16th century Flanders, and part recreation of Bruegel's 1564 painting The Way To Calvary, brought to vivid life. This was obviously a labour of love for director Lech Majewski and his passion for the subject shows in the painstaking attention to detail in every frame. If you're after compelling and beautifully composed images then this film has more than you can shake a stick at. If you appreciate perfect framing and lush photography then you will most assuredly not be disappointed. This film has much to offer - to art lovers, to historians, and most of all to the more thoughtful and adventurous cinephile. You won't come across many films like this, no matter how much of an intrepid explorer of cinema you consider yourself, and you'll be hard pressed to find a more accomplished and heartfelt love letter to the life and work of an artist, and an appreciation of his time and place than this majestic piece. It may not be to everyone's taste but it's a film like no other and to judge it you really have to see it rather than read about it because words don't do it justice.

Moneyball (Dir: Bennet Miller)

There have been quite a few movies over the years set in the world of baseball - it's the one American sport that arouses more passion in its followers than any other. Baseball is unique among American sports in many ways: it places much less emphasis on physicality - strength, speed and endurance. There is no time limit to how long a game can last. Some of the old time players used to smoke, and to look at them you would never guess they were athletes. Perhaps that's where a lot of the love for baseball comes from - it's an 'everyman' game - it seems much more like a sport you or I could have go at, and we might even be good! Of course anyone who's tried to have a go will realise it's not as easy as it looks. This is a lot of what Moneyball's about; the intangible qualities scouts, coaches and managers look for when they're buying players, previously the domain of the old timers who'd been in baseball for decades and who knew what to look for in a potential star, based mostly on old fashioned intuition a lot of the time. This started to change when a man named Bill James came along and introduced sabermetrics - the notion of statistical analysis of baseball players' performances. Jonah Hill plays Peter Brand, a Yale economics graduate and admirer of James' theories and the film is essentially a recounting of the breakthrough season the Oakland Athletics had in 2002 under general manager Billy Beane when he and Brand took charge of how the players were chosen using sabermetrics rather than traditional means, which basically changed the face of baseball forever once it caught on. Beane is played by Brad Pitt who gives a good performance here - it's one of those films where everyone puts in a good performance. In fact everything is on point here - the writing, the acting, the cinematography all are of a high standard. The trouble is that there's actually nothing special about this film at all. It's a by the numbers standard biopic, which is kind of ironic considering it's about shaking up the way things are done yet it follows the same template used for Hollywood biopics since time immemorial. There's very little tension to be generated here - especially if you're an avid baseball fan, as all the pertinent facts of the Oakland Athletics' achievements will be known to you, and if you don't follow baseball there aren't really any surprises for you either, as everything of any importance is telegraphed well in advance of it happening. So if you're stuck for a movie fix you could do worse than watch this film play itself out; there's nothing particularly bad about it, but really, with a little more effort you could do so much better.

The Tree of Life (Dir: Terrence Malick)

Love it or loathe it you have to give Terrence Malick credit for fully realising his considerable vision with this his fifth feature - a project with a very long gestation period (some thirty years by all accounts) and one that laughs in the face of audience expectations and commercial considerations. The fact that it ostensibly stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn - two of the most bankable actors in Hollywood - is neither here nor there, but merely part of a clever ruse to finance a film that will have three quarters of any average multiplex audience angrily stomping out of the theater within half an hour to demand a refund, and leave most of the remainder either bewildered or asleep. Penn and Pitt aren't at all bad - Pitt in particular is very good here in what is essentially a deeply philosophical and impressionistic meditation on childhood, loss of innocence and man's fall from grace - not your typical summer blockbuster. It's nothing if not ambitious - incorporating as it does the history of creation within it's two hours twenty minutes running time, though the bulk of the film chronicles the lives, loves and losses of a working class family in fifties America - focussing primarily on the children and how they view the world. Watching this film is like closing your eyes and remembering your childhood - you can't remember exactly what people said, rather you remember situations, reactions, colours, textures, emotions - it could almost work as a silent piece; the visuals are so vivid, any dialogue is mostly redundant. Malick has managed to capture the essence of memory with this work and that is quite an achievement. It's full of the most beautiful images you could wish for and is one of the most evocative films I've ever seen. The dinosaur scenes for example, are wonderfully realised. There's a magnificent sense of isolation, stillness and quietude in these scenes (before Man has his wicked way with the world) that has rarely been captured so well. Malick's a master at showing the wonder and beauty of nature and these are the most effective scenes overall. However, the rest of the film isn't without its problems; the two sections of the film don't quite gel together. If the theme of loss of innocence were presented a little less bluntly and a little less often then the film would be better for it, as it would if the ending weren't as melodramatic. These are relatively minor issues in the grand scheme of things though. For me the main problem with the film is Sean Penn, and it's not because he does a bad job; rather that he's criminally underused - so much of his part has obviously ended up on the cutting room floor that his character seems almost superfluous. In fact I began to wonder why Malick didn't just dispense with the part altogether - as it is he only serves to confuse the viewer as to why he's there at all. Rumour has it that Malick's working on a much longer cut of the film and he'd do well to replace most of what was cut from Penn's role, which would also serve to reinforce the contrast between a childhood full of natural beauty, and adulthood with its surroundings of concrete, glass and steel. Of course it's probably folly to criticise such an intensely personal and poetic film as this on the grounds of logic and cohesiveness. When all's said and done this film is a magnificent artistic achievement and will likely stand the test of time better than the vast majority of American films.

Tyrannosaur (Dir: Paddy Considine)

In the realm of independent filmmaking the British seem to have a real handle on misery, and I mean that in the best possible way. Most of the time when I watch a film the number one thing I'm looking for is a feeling of authenticity, and the fact is that for a large proportion of people in the UK this film will ring true, and it could only have been made by someone who is intimately familiar with what it's like to live around people on the breadline in the UK in the early twenty first century. This is the directorial debut of Paddy Considine who you may remember as the disturbed ex-army officer in Shane Meadows' Dead Man's Shoes - another depressing slice of life in a Northern town. This film is set in a bleak and run down area of Leeds, and spends most of its running time between a charity shop, a pub and a worn-out council estate full of lost and angry people with few prospects and little hope. The performances are uniformly excellent, especially Olivia Colman as the middle class woman running the charity shop, and Eddie Marsan as her abusive husband, but it's Peter Mullan that's the glue that holds everything together as a taciturn man full of rage and emotional turmoil who oscillates between naked aggression and a longing for some kind of redemption in life. It's a complex and superbly well-written character played to perfection. We know he's disturbed, but he's introspective in his old age and is self aware enough and honest enough now to admit that he's 'not a nice human being'. It's a performance of remarkable insight and depth and nuance and is the best I've seen this year - and it's not been a year short of good performances. We're not asked to identify particularly with this man - we know he's done terrible things and we see his vicious behaviour and hear his vitriolic outbursts but we also know that he's trying for something better, at least some of the time, and that's just enough. It's that level of character complexity coupled with great acting that sets this film apart from other similarly themed films you may come across this year, and it's a testament to Considine's commitment to tell a story that obviously has a lot of significance and importance to him that he's not shied away from the harsh realities of life. He has us look head on at some very uncomfortable truths about human nature - about how terrible people can really be to each other - physically, emotionally and psychologically. This film packs an emotional punch like few others - not because it's exciting and melodramatic or sensational but because it's real. We feel these are real people and the things that are happening to them are all around us, and the most frightening thing is that they're continuing to happen precisely because we find it so hard to acknowledge that fact and face them. This is a work of maturity and integrity and is an essential watch for anyone who appreciates true gritty realism instead of the processed, high-gloss, sensationalised realism we're used to. Gird your loins though because emotionally speaking it's a bumpy ride.

War Horse (Dir: Steven Spielberg)

This film is wrong on so many levels that it's hard to know where to start. It's difficult to believe the person that directed this cloying, overblown, cliche-ridden mess is the same person that directed Jaws, over thirty five years ago. From the clumsy and overbearing music by a presumably under the weather John Williams to the uneven and intrusive cinematography which mostly tries to ape the work of many John Ford classics, this is not much more than one badly thought out and embarrassing scene after another, with nary a thought given to characterisation past rough stereotyping and only a passing interest in reality. It's depressing that Spielberg couldn't stay true to his original vision which is evident in his early films like Duel, Jaws, Close Encounters and Raiders. These were entertaining, tightly plotted and fast paced movies that everyone could enjoy without cringing at his heavy handedness or shallow mawkishness. The rest of his career seems to have been divided between lazy adventure movies that pander to the whims of teenagers and 'serious' films designed simply to garner critical kudos and hopefully bag a few Oscars. The trouble is that Spielberg just can't seem to help pouring that sickly sweet syrup over everything to the point that those with any sort of discriminating taste can't help gagging on it. War Horse is one of the most egregious cases in a career filled with many such missteps. Set in 1914 it's the tale of a poor Devonshire farmer's son and his relationship with the horse his drunken father puts them all in hock for at an auction just before the Great War, whereupon the horse and boy are parted but each go off to help fight the Bosh. Dangerous territory for Spielberg to be let loose in as his penchant for inflated melodrama could potentially run amok with those raw materials. And indeed it does - with a vengeance. If what we're witnessing were true then this horse is not only a thoroughbred racer, but also a work horse that can out-plough any Clydesdale, withstand any and all adversity and can understand English perfectly. Not that this wonder horse is actually the star of the show though, because it really doesn't have that much screen time. Mind you, neither does its young owner, so what are we watching here - just another war film? A tearjerker? Well, we have to care about the main character to be moved to tears by what's happening to them and we barely know any of the characters here. No. What this film is is supremely cynical. It's as if Team Spielberg decided to construct a machine designed solely for the purpose of moving people to tears in the most efficient manner possible. They've conducted the surveys, they've studied the demographics and have come up with the formula: Horse + Young Boy + War = Hit + Oscar. Have things really slipped that far that people can now be so easily swept away by such artificial sentimentality? If so that's a depressing state of affairs.

Warrior (Dir: Gavin O'Connor)

After about ten minutes of this movie I knew that my meagre expectations were never going to be exceeded, or even vaguely satisfied, because this is a classic example of a movie made to a formula. After twenty minutes I pretty much knew how everything was going to pan out and after about an hour of steady decline in plausibility and realism I knew that the most I could hope for from that point on - aside from managing to get to the end without throwing a brick at the screen - was a couple of good performances and for everything to come to some sort of conclusion that wasn't too stupid. It didn't happen. The set-up here is never going to win any awards for originality, but as long as they develop things in a halfway interesting fashion we might be okay, I thought. After all we have Tom Hardy - one of the most watchable and interesting actors around today, and Nick Nolte's usually worth a watch. Maybe...just maybe. Well, Tom Hardy is good here in so far as he's always good, but he doesn't have much to do in this film apart from snarl a lot and throw himself about a bit. The cold truth of the fact is that Warrior mercilessly cribs much of what it has to offer the viewer from the classic underdog film Rocky, except it's been updated to feature mixed martial arts in order to cater for today's youngsters with their taste for raw power, aggression and outright brutality rather than skill. The whole thing comes off as a cheap Rocky knock-off with characterisations straight out of CSI Miami, to appeal to those wide-eyed teenage boys so many films are aimed at these days. By the end it's unintentionally hilarious in its hysterical determination to grip you by any means possible which here, because of the writers' complete lack of imagination, means we have a series of cliches from start to finish, interspersed with some ridiculously over the top fight sequences and an utterly laughable finale. Warrior makes all the Rocky films (including the really daft one set in Russia) seem like masterpieces of gritty realism and understatement. So unless you're a thirteen year old boy who's never seen any films made before the year of your birth and who can't get enough of David Caruso and the gang on a Friday night after school then I'd give this film a very wide berth if I were you.

X-Men: First Class (Dir: Matthew Vaughn)

It seems like Matthew Vaughn knows a thing or two about comicbooks and superheroes, and he's already demonstrated his directing chops with the likes of Layer Cake and Kick Ass, so he would seem to be a fine choice to lift the X-Men series out of the doldrums after the forgettable Last Stand, and the 'Origins' movie Wolverine. And indeed he is. This is an invigorated entry and for my money the best of the X-Men series by some margin. If you've ever wondered how Xavier ended up in a wheelchair, or how Magneto became the baddie we're familiar with or even how the X-Men ended up living in those fabulous digs out in the country then look no further because those questions and more will be answered through the course of this latest adventure. This time round we have a much more charismatic cast with James McAvoy as the young Xavier and the excellent Michael Fassbender as the young Magneto. As with all the X-Men movies this looks like a million dollars (or a couple of hundred million dollars these days I suppose). It's well paced throughout and there are some eye-popping special effects and set-pieces, which work well together to propel the story forward. It's old fashioned storytelling made to a template to be sure, and it's certainly not going to change anyone's life, but as popcorn movies go it's top-tier. In short, if you have a hankering for a large-scale blockbuster that's well-executed, competently acted and not too silly - bearing in mind this is a story about people with super-human abilities, then you'd be hard pushed to find a more polished and satisfying product than this comicbook adaptation. Certainly when you compare this to something like Kenneth Branagh's dreadful adaptation of Thor the differences become clear, and it's easier to appreciate the relative merits of this movie.