Juno

Juno is Fox Searchlight Pictures (Fox's 'indie' wing...the studio that brought you The Last King of Scotland and classy ensemble The History Boys, amongst other low-key successes) first film to gross over $100 million in the US, and it's followed up in similar fashion across the pond. It makes a captivating and endearing eight and a half fertilised ova out of ten.

I am turning this review into a Multimedia Experience. As you read, I would like you to listen to this song, which turns up about two thirds of the way through the film. The soundtrack is made up of good honest American acoustic pop stuff, and compliments the film so well that you could probably just listen to the song and not bother reading this, but don't do that. I will give you a brief pause to open up the link and press play.

...

...

...

...

Alright, on we go. Juno was written by the improbably named ex-stripper (no, really) Diabolo Cody. The razor-sharp script really does make this film, and it's a surprisingly polished effort from a debutant writer. Cody is obviously a great talent, and she well deserves her nomination - at least - for best screenplay at the Oscars. That said, on (literally) one or two occassions she lets her comedic instinct run away with her at expense of the realism that makes the rest of the film so easy to watch. It's not bad writing, and it's still funny, but it's not quite right...it glitters but it's not gold; it's fool's gold. But then, you only notice fool's gold when you put it next to the real thing. There was a lot more of the real stuff - outright humour of the natural, subtle kind that I love so much - than there was of the other sort; more than I was expecting. This is a Funny Film, as well as being a charming and touching one.

...

But then, like the anenome and the clownfish, the script relies on performances just as the cast rely on the material. At this junction I was going to give a mention to those cast members who particularly stood out, but you might be as well to just read the credits. Oscar nominated Ellen Page is excellent as the charismatic titular teen, as is JK Simmons as her laconic father. I'll stop myself there before it becomes a list, but everyone concerned is superb. This film really relies on the feeling of ease and realism generated by both the cast and the director; if it felt too produced it wouldn't have the charm. In the director's chair was Jason Reitman, and he does an admirable job in letting the film tick over...his role in the film is like that of a good referee. You don't notice him during the action but afterwards, when you see how he let everyone get on with it and kept the flow going, you appreciate the effort.

...

Juno isn't a complex film. It's not an ornate avant-garde masterpiece. It's a clever, captivating film with a devastatingly sharp script wonderfully performed. This is a canny film and, importantly, it's fun and easy to watch. The ninety minutes flew by. You should be two and a bit minutes into the song, if you read at the same speed as me. It's simple and it's earnest and heartfelt, and you're enjoying it.

300

Graphic novel adaptation 300 wins a heartily defiant 227 Spartans out of 300. Those are Spartan shields.

In 480 BC (thank you wikipedia) the mighty Persian army of Xerxes I rampaged from the Iranian Plateaux across the Middle East and through Turkey before being halted by a Greek army at the Battle of Plaatea. 300 is not the story of that battle, but of Thermopylae, where three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians (soldiers from Thespiae, rather than pretentious stage actors) held up the massive Persian force. The Thespians have been sadly neglected by history, in favour of the poetic majesty of the three hundred.

Taking Frank Miller's lead and putting the history firmly to one side, We'll move on to the film. The influence of the graphic novel, even to someone who hasn't read this or any other example of the medium, is glaringly obvious. From literally the first scene to the end credits there's shots that are lifts straight from comic panels. Frank Miller has an executive producer's credit and if we assume he wasn't brought in for his technical knowledge, it must be his artistic vision. I have no doubt that this is an extremely faithful rendition of the comic. Which is great, because the art is just fantastic. Shot on a digital backlot (the whole film was shot in a studio, with the backgrounds digitally added) the whole picture has a comic book gloss over it: the skies are either brilliant blue or tumultuous storms, with black earth and golden sunsets. It's not quite reality, it's stronger, brighter than that. Like reality with the colour turned up. Like reality as told by someone who went there once and has been enamoured with it ever since.

Of course, one cannot talk about 300 without talking about the battle. The glorious battle. The pounding, pulsating, adrenaline fuelled battle. The fights are a mass of squealing soldiers and squelching swords (do you see what I did there?) shot in shades of bronze and silver. Percussion beats in time to sword and spear thrusts whilst outrageous blood splatter arcs across the screen. Limbs tumble about in slow motion whilst the Spartans dance through hordes of Persians. The legendary prowess of the Spartans is introduced to us first in a well-executed prologue and then in a slightly clumsy contrast between the professional Spartans and the unskilled Arcadians. I think their performance could be improved somewhat, however, by the wearing of some kind of armour. Or just a shirt, or something. Much of the film is an exhibition of oiled, waxed, man chest. On the big screen, Gerard Butler's nipples are disturbingly large. The big screen exposes some minor failings in the special effects department. Flawless though the computer effects are, the real ones are a little less so. Most of the buldging Spartan muscles are obviously painted on (here's looking at you, Xerxes) whilst the hunchback's prosthetics sometimes don't stand up to close inspection. Still, it's a minor gripe and perhaps the sheer quantity of greased greek makes up for the dubious quality. As if worried by the burgeoning homoeroticism, director Zac Synder graced us with no less than four gratuitous boobs, and all was well.

But that brings us neatly round to the other half of the story, to the story of the Queen back in Sparta. Unfortunately for the pace of the film, politics is never and has never been interesting. It's almost as if the studio were labouring under the impression that people would be going to see the film looking for a balanced and stimulating drama rather than just a great fight (or lubed up Greeks, I guess). The non-action element of the film, detailing the politics of Leonidas' Queen (Leonidas being the guy in charge) trying to get reinforcements to the Spartans, is frankly dull in places. It's not given enough time to develop into a story of it's own and all the time we're away you get the sense that we're just killing time until the next battle. Being an exponent of cinema as pure entertainment (I refer you to the entry for Snakes on a Plane) the score would have been much higher if we'd simply glossed over the stagnant politics entirely.

300 is a comic book (Is there a difference between a graphic novel and a comic? Only to fans of graphic novels I think.) and it's still a comic book on the big screen. This, of course, is both a gift and a curse. The characters are universally one dimensional, with the exception of Ephialtes who was purely a plot device and didn't get enough screen time to develop. It'd be easy to dismiss it as just another swords and sandals fighting epic but it's just a little more than that. The visuals take a basic story and lift it. It's almost greyscale at times and the atmosphere is really well generated by Zach Snyder (who I was very sceptical about at first). The film is all Frank Miller's melodrama and it shows in the lighting and the cameras and well as in the diaglogue and the effects. It's easily amongst the best comic adaptation and although it's not the most balanced of films it doesn't try to be. It's a shining example of what's great about graphic novel adaptations.

A Knight's Tale

A Knight's Tale borrows it's title and underlying morale (about chivalry and honour and stuff) from one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It wins a thunderous but disappointingly blunted 6 and a half tournament lances from 10.

Set around a fourteenth century peasant trying to make his way through the knightly jousting ranks, this isn't a groundbreaking piece of cinema. Director Brian Helgeland makes sure, though, that we're not bored. What's lacking in tension or depth, it seems, he elected to make up for in colour and charm. There's a terrible tendancy to shoot anything set before 1960 in shades of brown and grey, but A Knight's Tale delivers us riotous stadium scenes ablaze with heraldry and trappings. Each scene is optimistically colourful - every day is a glorious cloudless summer , unless we need atmospheric rain. In which case, it's driving rain with stoic torchlight fluttering in the windows. Bugger realism, it looks great. The score follows similar anachronistic lines (I particularly enjoyed Bowie's Golden Years and The Boys Are Back in Town) as well as the wardrobe.
I wrote only two notes whilst watching this film. Having covered the first (modernity) I alight directly to the second.

Resplendant in a black-trimmed leather trenchcoat, Paul Bettany's Geoffrey Chaucer is magnificent. He first swaggers onto the screen naked as a babe; not many can pull off a swagger without clothes (Try it some time. It's hard. You feel self conscious.) but Bettany plays the writer with such a casual charm one almost doesn't realise that he's stealing almost every scene of the film. Chaucer is written as Heath Ledger's herald... a silken tounged announcer rolling out glorious lyrical hyperbolic introductions. The fact that Bettany is obviously having tremendous fun playing the part makes watching his wit almost as entertaining as delivering it. He's able, along with the rest of Will(that's the Knight about whom the Tale is written)'s entourage, to play off the earnest lead played well, if without frills, by Heath Ledger.

A Knight's Tale is a strikingly average film. The good performances (Mark Addy's squire) are offset by some alarmingly bland ones (the Love Interest). Good writing in the comic scenes is undone by faltering dialogue in the romance subplot. The film would have been better for the removal of that section entirely, in hindsight. The joust scenes are well executed but there's a fundamental problem in that one joust is much the same as any other. In short, it was heading squarely for a 5 out of 10 until a fine young actor by name of Bettany stepped into the shoes of a 14th century poet. Bettany is the difference between this film and a thousand other cinema-by-numbers fairytales.

Stormbreaker

Stormbreaker grinds out a mysterious -yet cliched - five tubes of green liquid out of ten.

Stormbreaker was a book whose author also wrote the screenplay for this film. As far as I know, there are no funny or interesting stories about it's development. Let's move on.

We start well, with a shot of Ewan McGregor throwing dynamite at something (I don't know what, but I'm sure it deserved it.) but we move swiftly on to a car chase with a twist; our hero is riding his bike. Fortunately the scene doesn't last long and we're allowed to forget about it soon. The boy soon graduates from push bike wannabe to genuine quadbike superspy, anyway. On a related note, how do spies manage to run so well in suits? They must have good tailors. The direction, from TV man Geoffrey Sax is pretty sound really, with a couple of good moments - the camera reels and blurs as the lead is depressed, which is useful really; I'm not sure I'd have realised if it hadn't.

The first rule, I hear, is Don't Work With Children (at 15, I'm counting Alex Pettyfer as a child). Failing that, I guess, don't give the aforementioned child a script with more wobbly lines than an arthritic blow dealer. The best actors in the world would struggle with "this doesn't change anything, you're still my enemy". Cut the kid some slack. The leading man is very good at all the climbing, fighting, running and whatnot that kids get up to these days, but he's immeasurably worse when he starts talking. I guess he'll get better.

As a British film, Stormbreaker was obliged to feature Bill Nighy. He plays the spy chief with caricature stoniness and exaggerated gravitas (take notes, Pettyfer) and, with the other experienced thespians, carries the film through it's thinner moments. Mickey Rourke takes an enjoyable turn as our disgruntled would-be school poisoner...I assume the green tubes were poison, I wasn't paying attention. Irrepressibly wonderful Stephen Fry is the world-weary Hamley's based gadgets man, who doles out an ever-increasingly unbelievable toys. I don't care what you say, Stephen, Sodium Pentathol does not make someone do whatever you tell them for one hour. The characters are almost universally carbon copy stereotypes but I think everyone concerned knows that this is essentially the ultimate fantasty of any adolescent boy so we know where we stand. Make what joke out of that you will, but I couldn't think of a better way to word it.

I can't think of a reason anyone other than males aged between 11 and 16 would want to see Stormbreaker (I guess girls of a similar age could admire the lead?). Having obtained my copy because Stephen Fry was in it, I suppose I caught the tail end of the appeal and watched with a cheery nostalgia. A good kid's film I think, and hopefully I will dream about being a teenage spy tonight (far better escapism than all this wizardy nonsense.) but there's expectedly little in the piece to surprise you.

Dr Strangelove or: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Dr Strangelove wins an explosive 10 mushroom clouds out of 10.

Dr Strangelove or: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, to give it it's full title, was released at the height of the Cold War in 1964. It was Stanley Kubrick's fifth film and followed closely on the heels of Lolita (in which the brilliant Peter Sellers first impressed Hollywood). Kubrick was - and remains - a filmmaking phenomenon: writer, director, producer, cameraman. His first exposure to the world of photography was as a teen in New York where he worked as a freelance stills photographer, from where he graduated to documentary shorts and eventually to feature films. His love of the camera remains visible through much of the composition of both Dr Strangelove and Kubrick's later films. The Shining, for instance, pioneered the haunting Steadicam.

Dr Strangelove (as it shall henceforth be known) began life as a straight thriller but during it's scripting transformed into a dark, terrifying satire. In a masterpiece of man management, Kubrick neglected to mention to one of his actors that the film was a comedy; he deliberately hid the script from the actors of one third of his film. Slim Pickens plays the role of Major Kong, commander of a bomber en route to Russia, completely straight. Pickens, a genuine ex-cowboy, plays the role with such earnest hillbilly patriotism as to create some of the darkest - most morbid - moments of the film. Watching him struggle gamely on to deliver his payload to Russia (with love?) gives us a feeling of creeping inevitablility.

Meanwhile, in an American air force base, a paranoid psychotic officer (the one who orders the attack on Russia) is brilliantly juxtaposed with the multi-faceted Peter Sellers. In one of three roles in the piece, Sellers is a British Group Captain on an officer exchange. His dutiful, logical, and overwhelmingly English character stands firm in the face of Bdr Gen. Ripper's crazed ravings: The Communists want his bodily fluids, ladies and gentlemen. It's a good job that he denies women his essence. This is where Mr. Kubrick demonstrates his love of the camera and it's versatility. In scenes involving the US military the shooting is done (by the director himself, naturally) on a handheld, grainy, shaking, reel camera; the sort used by crews during World War Two. The quality is reduced, the screen sways as the cameraman runs after his targets, and objects obscure the screen. We are immersed in the fraught world of the soldier.

And then we return to the War Room, where Peter Sellers' amiable President Muffley is desperately trying to inform the Russian Premier of recent developments and struggling against loud music, whores, vodka, and phone lines and we are reminded that it's a comedy after all. Very little of Sellers' script was set down. Most was improvised by the Englishman, calling on his natural comedic brilliance honed by years of The Goon Show. In one scene, the actor playing the Russian Ambassador visibly breaks into laughter at Sellers and has to quickly regain his composure. In the brewing resentment between the Ambassador and General Buck Turgiston lies some of the more pointed satire in the film. The President is forced to remind them that they can't fight in here; this is the war room!

Fast forward 40 years and you wouldn't find a studio with the stones to make Dr Strangelove. Stanley Kubrick moved to Britain to find a studio that would take him and his project on, although he recieved money from American backers. Not content with making a cinematic masterpiece, Stanley Kubrick provides us with the finest satire set to film. It's also beautifully shot and cripplingly funny.

To cap it all, it's black and white tone matches my colour scheme charmingly.