The Shop Around the Corner

You've Got Mail's most direct, telling influencer, this charming 1940s rom-com tells the story of Matuschek's shop in Budapest, in which two employees unwittingly fall in love. 

It remains entirely satisfying to discover that the humour and intrinsic playfulness of The Shop Around the Corner has not dated one bit, even if simultaneously the performances and setting clearly evoke another, distant time and style of acting. Stationary angles and set-piece scenes characterise this wonderful film, but it's really sold on the central protagonists' believable, enjoyable portrayals of Alfred Kralik (Stewart at his drawling best) and Klara Novak (Sullivan, all bite and bright eyes).  Kralik is lead salesman in Matuschek's, butting heads in a well-judged father-son conflict with his bumbling boss (Morgan). Meanwhile, Klara arrives on the scene and bullies her way into a position. Kralik and Klara do not see eye-to-eye. More than that, they intensely dislike each other.

Of course, it emerges fairly swiftly that their respective pen-pals, of whom they both speak so highly, are in fact each other. There commences a delicious discrepancy of understanding as Kralik first faces his true feelings for Klara, and then begins to machinate to ensure that when he reveals his true identity, she won't turn him down. It's well paced, engaging and all a bit soppy in the nicest possible way. Laughs come regularly, while the other characters in Matuschek's provide perfect foils for Stewart and Sullivan to spring from. William Tracy as Pepi Katona is particularly enjoyable to watch.

I'm not saying anything new; but they got romantic comedy down to a fine art, and this is a beautiful example of it. Tight writing, excellent execution, and heart-warming and Christmassy to boot.  

~~~

1940

Margaret Sullivan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, William Tracy

dir. Ernst Lubitsch

Boy

Boy tells the story of the eponymous 11 year old New Zealander and his younger brother, Rocky. Effectively ophaned by their criminal father, Alamein, and the death of their mother, they live with cousins and their grandmother in extreme poverty. But the return of their dad forces them to reconsider their position, both in regard to each other, and how they have built up legends surrounding their absent father.

It's a fairly standard story of family values and growing up, but packaged so beautifully and thoughtfully (even the website is a dream) and given director Taika Waititi's particular stamp. If you're not sure quite what that is, consider Eagle vs Shark (trailer here) or Taika's episode for the hit HBO series, Flight of the Conchords (little clip from his episode here). It's a certain quirkiness, but more than that, a reconsideration of some of the obvious themes (love for EvS, family for Boy) from a detailed, unexpected perspective. The trailer really doesn't do justice to the range of emotions this film stirs. Boy (Rolleston) and Rocky (Eketone-Whitu) have brilliant fraternal chemistry, while Waititi as Alamein is a delight, pure and simple. But to rave about them is, unfortunately, selling short a sensitive, multi-layered film that uses humour not just to entertain but also to elucidate and quietly poke fun at its protagonists. 

Boy lives in his own dream world; but why shouldn't he, if it gets him through the harsh times of caring for his siblings and struggling without guidance? He's a strange one but takes himself entirely seriously, yet not for moment did I feel as though I was mocking him with my laughter, especially after the arrival of his father and the realisation that Alamein has had far more influence on his sons that he ever wanted.

Beautifully shot, carefully put together and interwoven with moments of heartbreak and magic, Boy is an underrated joy definitely worth your time.

~~~
2010
James Rolleston, Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu, Taika Waititi
written and dir. Taika Waititi

Update

I've been a little off the boil with reviewing. I am not going to sit with a huge backlog and fret about it. My resolutions for the blog are a) to promote a bit more regularly and b) to write more selectively and critically. I think that seems fair.


So, onwards, back into the swing of things we go.

The Best of McSweeney's - Volume 1

What do eighteen short stories from eighteen different American writers of all sorts have in common? Nothing, it would seem, apart from being published by Dave Eggers' McSweeney's and making it into the first best-of collection. And that's a very good thing.

This collection certainly pays homage what might be considered more conventional short story telling, such as Paul Lafarge's The Observers, in which the story of making an observatory becomes emblemmatic for the more traumatic changes a man might go through, or Rick Moody's The Double Zero, the story of a family failing in the Mid-West. But McSweeney's also ranges into less traditional territory. Gary Greenberg's In the Kingdom of the Unabomber is a non-fiction account of Greenberg's communications with Ted Kaczynski; Zev Borow's Haole Go Home!: Small Gestures from the Hawaiian Secessionist Movement documents some of the different factions and actionists at work in Hawaii in, as the title suggests, the Secession movement there; perhaps the most haunting work in the collection is another non-fiction piece, Sean Wilsey's The Republic of Marfa, recording the weird and wonderful in Far West Texas' outland of Marfa, cattle-rustlers and artists alike. 

Egger's own contribution, Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly, certainly deserves its place there. He tells the story of one Rita, who has decided to climb Kilimanjaro, perhaps to forget some of the pressures her life back in the United States has put upon her. It's an excellent study in letting small details speak for themselves, and as it traces Rita's physical journey, we see the gentle unravelling of her mental processes as the freedom and difficulty of her trek work upon her. 

Another story of travel, of a slightly more malevolent bent, is Ted and the Megalodon, by Jim Shepard. Even now, the final scene of that adventure lingers hauntingly with me. It's an excellent piece of suspense writing and well-worth a look. But that's just the point: this collection deserves its best-of title. These stories are weighty in their own right. Even a cursory look at the contents page makes me wonder if I shouldn't mention George Saunders' Four Institutional Monologues, wry, excellent faux-businessman pieces that are terrifying in the very fact they are so square, or William T. Vollman's Three Meditations on Death. But then I'd be missing Zadie Smith's The Girl with Bangs, again, a more conventional story, or John Hodgman's Fire: The Next Sharp Stick?, which is marvellously entertaining, as cavemen start to talk about fire as though it is a business opportunity, and they corporations. Perhaps that's my favourite story. But I just can't tell. 

Definitely worth dipping into; a must for any short-story enthusiast.

~~~
2005
Penguin Books
edited by Dave Eggers

Daybreakers

Daybreakers takes the premise that after the emergence of the vampire strain, all was conquered swiftly in its path. Humans now exist in the minority, hunted for their tasty blood and shying away from cities which now have underground tunnel networks to allow vampires to get around even by day. 

Ten years on, by a rather crafty series of news bulletins, mini-scenes and overheard snatches of conversation, we discover human blood may be drying up. Humans may in fact be going extinct. Blood deprived vamps, the poorest of the poor, are mutating into monsters, while blood investors start withdrawing their human capital to save the blood for themselves. And in the centre of the mess stands chief haematologist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), an unwilling vampire at best, and  certainly a humanity sympathiser (even if he's embraced the vampire look pretty slickly). 

Hawke's performance is perfectly fine. He scowls a lot and looks pasty. He's entirely outdone by the delicious Audrey (Claudia Karvan, who must have been sexed up so that the audience might feel a fraction of Dalton's own longing for her blood) and even more so by a star turn from Defoe, who plays the hicky-gung-ho Lionel 'Elvis' Cormac, leader of the human resistance. (Why wouldn't I use that image again? Look at Defoe's expression!) It's an entertaining, absurd performance and Defoe shines, southern drawl and all. He's a consummate performer who demands attention throughout, and his intensity and slightly crazed leer match his character's perfectly. 

Meanwhile, plot and design complement each other comfortably. Despite a lamentably obvious human-capture setpiece, the supporting characters are used to full effect and the story trots along merrily and enjoyably. There are a couple of needlessly gory deaths; but there is also enough blood and madness around for it almost to make sense, especially given the well-told background of riots and vamps losing their nerve. After all, in a world that's running short on blood, any time there is bloodletting, there's that tinge of useless waste underlying my usual gut reaction of 'oh needless gore'. It's a subtle detail, but it pleased me some. 

I had expected something along the lines of Blade 3 - action, laser bows, idiocy. Instead I got a rather terser, tighter piece, filled with energy and engaging detail. It wasn't the most sophisticated film ever, but I'd watch it again to catch all the details I missed, and first time through, it was a joy to watch.

~~~

2009

Ethan Hawke, Claudia Karvan, Willem Defoe, Sam Neill

dir. Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig

30 days of night

So continues a little bit of my vampire interest writing. I’ve done a couple of I Am Legend look-sees (here and here) along with more mainstream jabbering (here for example). 

30 Days of Night was hailed as one of the darkest, goriest vampire flicks ever. Updating the blockbuster hyperbolic action of the Blade trilogy, it would usher in a return to the vampire-as-true-horror genre, rather than namby-pamby 'sexy' vampires with diamond skin and such. In the small town of Barrow, northernmost of American outposts in Alaska, a thirty-day night is just beginning, a period of darkness marked by the departure of nearly half the 1,500 inhabitants who flee to warmer, brighter climes. And into this one long night arrives a stranger (Ben Foster), and, of course, a whole bunch of very thirsty vampires.

The strained relationship between town sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) and his estranged wife Stella (Melissa George), who happens to find herself in Barrow just in time to miss the last flight clear, is established nicely enough. Early attempts at meaningful, emotive dialogue are pulled off just about. Night begins to fall. The first killings occur, and a sense of mystery infuses the air.

Unfortunately, that sense of mystery is not particularly engaging. The cinematic beauty of watching the sun set for the last time for an entire month, coupled with some rather nifty opening credits, is not enough to cancel out the fact that the opening drags, and ‘Day 1’ lasts almost half of the film. Once the survivors of the initial onslaught are boarded up in an attic hideout, it already seems inevitable that they will all die. The desperation, the hope and the excitement that might have been worked into fighting off a vampire siege is wholly removed. ‘Day 8’ adds little to the thrill, the next milestone we are given. Where did days 2 - 7  go? An old man, trying to break out, is carried off. Somehow the vampires, who have engineered this conquest, fail to understand that there might be other people hiding in the building. These master monsters, who've been clever enough to think of hitting up an entire town that's dark for a whole month fail really to follow through with their design.

How should one redeem such a piece? Can adding conversations between vampires, a line about how they had tired of hiding in the shadows, enhance the threat they pose? Not really. Instead, it makes the conquest of Barrow, tiny and insignificant as it portrayed to be, into some kind of battleground to protect all of America, and it doesn’t work. Heroism can be found anywhere. Why not make Eben the hero of Barrow, not of America, the world, as a whole? Why try to make this about the entire human race when the audience might want in fact to care about the people of Barrow instead. 

Rapidly descending into trite melodrama. Not dark enough to remain true vampire horror, or swiftly paced enough to add proper tension or expectation in the audience. Adding gore to a weakly carried out film doesn't rocket up into must-see lists, I'm afraid.

~~~

2007

Josh Hartnett, Melissa George

dir. David Slade

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Transformers 1: all right, all told. Remarkably. Transformers 2: a minefield of atrocity. The way this film was put together was infuriatingly, insultingly bad. For a piece to lack coherence to such a degree is horrific. It’s borderline racist, sexist, ageist, and everything-ist. Horrible. It doesn’t deserve any more words.

~~~
2009

Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox

dir. Michael Bay

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

I've tried to write something insightful and measured about Oliver Stone's resurrection of his 80s Gordon Gekko (Wall Street). But I'd rather let my feelings have a bit of a voice too for once. After all, this is a film deeply interested in emotion versus reason, good sense versus business at all costs. 

Eight years in prison, and a further seven and a book deal later sees Gekko (Michael Douglas) return to New York; his book, Is Greed Good?, puts him on the periphery of Wall Street. The collapse of young Streeter Jake's (Shia LaBeouf) firm and the subsequent suicide of his boss Zabel (Frank Langella) sees Jake lose his job and attend a talk by Gekko to fill the time. He's taken with Gekko's no-nonsense approach. Oh and he's dating Gekko's daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan), who, despite her father's misdeeds, is still happy enough to shack up with another yuppie.  (That decision is never explained. While that irks, it's clearly a sensible choice to get going in medias res and avoid the awkward, unbeliavable wooing scenes we might have been subjected to. The audience is left with a frustrating gap, but one they can blithely try to ignore.)

So Jake and Gordo get to trading info and hatching plots. Jake wants revenge on whoever screwed over his ol' boss; Gordo wants a relationship with Winnie. LeBeouf and Douglas are both watchable; it's certainly Shia's best performance. He squeezes out a tear or two, even if I struggled to understand why we should quite like him. At heart, that's what really left me astray here: in a world in which everyone's either a bastard or dating a bastard or related to a bastard, should we really want to watch or care?

But the show's stolen by the supporting cast anyway. The clueless mother (Sarandon, complete with noo yawk drawl), Zabel (who's a bear, if a woefully underwritten part, and whose choices clearly underpin the entire drama) and Bretton James (Josh Brolin), hulking around screen and truly a little bit evil. The chap pulls of a burgundy suit, for crying out loud. Can one get any more satanic? They're all eminently watchable, and they cover up the flaws of the film marvellously. Meanwhile Mulligan pulls every tear she can out of the bag and we have a wet (read: needy, lovable, cute) love interest to keep Shia's eye.

There are flaws: the effects, the flow of ticker tape numbers across sped up cityscapes and the laughable fusion animation (A weak strand to the story: recession blocks fusion break-through. Really?) are all fairly needless. As are the scene changes that one can animate straight from a desktop: who's used a shrink-to-centre-of-screen-circle since Jimmy Bond? It's glossy but meaningless. 

And of course that's a good thing, that's a great thing, if it reflects the message of the film, that all this wealth, and money for money's sake, is empty and worthless compared to love, life and time with those you care about. Jake's story is meaningful as far as one hopes his failures will teach him that Wall Street is a corrupt, greedy and evil system made up of unthinking drones and hateful prospectors, a system he should avoid. For a moment it really, really looks like he might escape. He gets burnt and I prayed he'd learn his lesson. 

But damn, Hollywood, even with a strong script and great director and talented cast, you have to go sugarcoat the ending. Gekko gets his happily ever after; Winnie receives her father and son and Jake gets her back. And the yuppies are all there too, sitting around celebrating riches and success, as the financial system writhes in near-death throes. There's no comeuppance, no punishment, no lesson, if not keep kidding yourself you're still human. 

Perhaps it is I who remains the fantasist. Wall Street is horribly faithful to real life and recent history in that regard. Crooks did make a pot of dollars out of the 2008 crash and subsequent defaults and debt. They did get away with it and get government bailouts to boot. And there's been no punishment. So then the fault remains my own: Wall Street will always be an unhappy ending, precisely because it's happy for the antiheroes of the film. But does that make it enjoyable viewing, if one is watching something fairly horrid, and it's not provided with any kind of moral condemnation at all? Perhaps this is where Stone and I part company: he's happy to make a film that tells a story, and ends happily for those involved; I'd rather see the bankers strung up from the rafters.

~~~
2010

Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin, Susan Sarandon, Frank Langella

dir. Oliver Stone

The Gone-Away World

Post-apocalyptic adventures across the globe populated by literally every imaginable nasty, kick ass ninjas, some gung-ho super fighters and a wee dose of humour every other word or so doesn't get any better than this, Nick Harkaway's debut novel, The Gone-Away World. 

For a start, The Gone-Away World struggles to be put into a genre-specific box. Sure, it's adventure, and there's a large dose of hard sci-fi in the form of the weapons that bring about the destruction of civilisation as we knew it. But the description on the back of the book suggests bleak action (or once one sees the protagonist's name - Gonzo Lubitsch - bleak, over-the-top, hyperbolic, if not comedic, action) and the opening chapters have their fair share of macho posturing and rushing off on missions in a balls-to-walls kind of way. But more than that, we are launched into an autobiography. Well, it's a biography too. Gonzo's closest friend, his childhood playmate and nearly-brother, begins to tell us all about himself, and all about Gonzo too. So we receive far more than standard adventure narrative or harrowing war ganderings; Gonzo and his buddy instead treat us to school days and a first introduction to gong-fu and girls; to university and first jobs (how I giggled at the Spanish archer, of which I'm a proud fellow recipient); and finally to a war in almost precisely the middle of nowhere in which our brilliant, witty and introspective narrator bemoans the hell of not being shot as civilians and sheep duck for cover and wish everyone would just leave their once pleasant land alone. 

Finally, finally the bombs begin to drop. The droppings hit the metaphorical fan and everything goes batshit crazy. If you've been smiling and marvelling up to this point at Harkaway's imagination, his skilful storytelling clearly underpinned by a strong sense of timing and poise, his ability to pull the rug out from under you repeatedly takes off on a rather more epic scale and mundane tasks like shopping or cooking get narrated with wit and energy. It's as though simply being in the presence of the narrator means things are a) funny and b) likely to get blown up, knocked down, atomised or otherwise in the turn of a page. 

So it's funny. But it's also moving. One can't help but smile that a martial arts fight to the death starts to involve tupperware, but suddenly becomes serious and painful. Or the grin is wiped off one's face with the  romance of the story, of which there is a fair dose, which starts off boyish and playful and gets seriously in the blink of a eye and becomes another way in which the humorous is transformed into the emotionally weighty. To try to create a novel and fill it with a whole gamut of emotional bathos and pathos, while also bouncing around merrily with all kinds of irony, understatement and linguistic creativity, is a very bold undertaking indeed. 

Is there a weakness to The Gone-Away World? Is it too clever for its own good? No, except in one tiny, dangerous way. It'll be an awfully tough act to follow. 

Buy it, read it, read it again, and hope Nick Harkaway has some more gems up his sleeve.

~~~

2009

Nick Harkaway

Windmill Books

Year One

Year One comes across more as a variety show than a narrative film. Purportedly about the beginnings of humanity’s very existence on the earth, it is in fact a series of cameos and skits strung together loosely by a weak storyline.

Zed (Jack Black) and  Oh (Michael Cera) are two cavemen who leave their village, disaffected with hunter-gatherer ways, to search for better times. They wind up on a quest to rescue their former village mates, and travel across the Holy Land meeting Cain, Abel, Abraham, Isaac, some Roman legionnaries and party pagans in Sodom, before finally being reunited in freedom with their respective love interests.

It’s a funny enough film. I’m unashamedly a Jack Black fan, and feel he can (and has) carried films in the past on the weight of his own bombastic performances. But even he could not save this ragtag collection of scenes. Perhaps it was the fact that the narrative is forced, so clearly at odds with the material, onto such a disparate selection, that I was left distinctly dissatisfied. It felt a lot like a narrative had been  hastily pasted over the top of what should have been a series of sketches. Perhaps it’s the fact that the performances do nothing particularly special at all. I’ve cooled towards Cera (best displayed in my upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs The World review - apologies for the delay in getting that posted) and this did little to change my mind. 

There are some beautiful cameos too. A film built so heavily around bringing together most of the Hollywood comedy elite should be able to pull together some gems. Bill Hader as the village shaman is brilliantly dead-pan, while Hank Azaria’s Abraham was a real show stealer for me. Every time he says the word “God” he spits it out with ever increasing vehemence that starts understated but builds to a near-frenzy. Poor Abraham (click for video!). 

A shame, because the film is lively and silly, but it never quite takes off.

~~~

2009

Jack Black, Michael Cera

dir. Harold Ramis

Kindergarten Cop and Back To The Future

I had the pleasure of rewatching Kindergarten Cop and Back To The Future this week, the latter in a theatrical press preview celebrating its 25th anniversary. I think it's a rewarding exercise to revisit these films, because I remember so little about them from my childhood except that they were good. Were they really any good? And do they stand the test of time?

Confidently I can aver they are, and they do. Schwarzneggar is at his best as Detective John Kimble in Kindergarten Cop. I mean really. It's a mushy film all right, but heartfelt, and streaked with moments of real tension and enough red herrings to keep a casual viewer thoroughly engaged. It also dares to bring in child- and substance-abuse, again quite casually, suggesting a director entirely on top of his material. I boggled to think I'd loved this as a child and not understood at all some of the big issues being bandied around. At its heart, Arnold is both lovable and tough, and it's before the time when he starts to look simply terrifying (He's formidably muscled, as it is). He walks the line between action hero and soulful chap, and the plot elements are all there to make it work. Big tick!

Meanwhile, Zemeckis' '85 classic remains exactly that. The film received cheers and spontaneous applause as Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) and Dr Brown (Christopher Lloyd) get trapped in 1955 and Marty has to bring about his own parents' coupling. There's a big dose of incest awkwardness alongside humour and tension in equal measure, again, something I had entirely no recollection of as a child and now marvelled that I'd ever missed it. McFly's prudish mother turns out to be a real go-getter, much to Marty's own terror. It's great fun; like a joyful wedding, it demands smiles and happiness from its viewers. I couldn't quite believe that I didn't hold the film in even higher esteem, because I hurt my face smiling. Even the device of time travel, a slippery slope to losing an audience entirely, is kept just about simple enough, while being hammered home repeatedly, that one can feel like trying to wrap one's mind around the physics of it all isn't ruining the delight of Fox bouncing about a stage rocking out to bring about his parents' first kiss. Entirely wonderful.

Two classics that in my estimation deservedly remain so. 80s to early 90s blockbusters with punch and feeling.

~~~

1991

Arnold Schwarzneggar

dir. Ivan Reitman

1985

Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd

dir. Robert Zemeckis

Wonder Boys

I'm a great Michael Chabon fan. I reckon he can't really set a word wrong, all told. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and Summerland are both books that really deserve glowing write-ups here (I read them both after this blog began). But I'd not come across Wonder Boys, an early outing of his, and I didn't know it had been adapted to the screen. Imagine my surprise to discover not only that there's a film adaptation, but it features Michael Douglas, Robert Downey Jr, Tobey Maguire and Katie Holmes. They're popular names, if nothing else.

Wonder Boys traces a few days in the life of Prof. Grady Trip (Douglas). He's had that first break-through novel, which has earned him an esteemed, if low-key, position in the great American canon. Now he's teaching creative writing, but he's in a rut. Just as his editor, Crabtree (Downey Jr), comes to visit he discovers a gifted student, James Leer (Maguire). So begins a journey of discovery for professor and student, as the tangled webs of their lives are slowly unpicked. Of course, it helps that Leer's creative talent might stem from a compulsive desire to lie. Fabrication seems to have penetrated every aspect of his life.

This is a remarkably well-observed drama. The dialogue is at times too obvious, and tends towards cliche, but never quite grates, and it's skilfully enough put together that the personalities of the film (Douglas, Maguire) are comfortably negated, or at least softened. It's easy with such big players to expect certain tropes or kinds of performance. But the eccentricities of some (Downey Jr) are underplayed, even if other characters (McDormand in particular, as the long-suffering dean and sometime lover of Douglas), are not really given an opportunity to shine.

It is, in the final analysis, a very American film. It's saturated in questions of creation and discovery, and funny and moving at the right times, without quite taking itself above and beyond the ordinary. It has traces of Chabon's excellence, and one can detect echoes of his emotional charged writing in scenes that never quite soar to the heights they should. But it works, all the same, and remains enjoyable.

~~~

2000

Michael Douglas, Robert Downey Jr., Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Katie Holmes

dir. Curtis Hanson

Speed Racer

Bit of a guilty pleasure here for me. As a proud owner of a Speed Racer red t and a quiet fan of the 60s series, I have to put hand to my heart and declare this is a well put together film. I think I might be the only one.

The film has many of the hallmarks of a Wachowski production. Emphasis is placed heavily on effects and on the power of emotions to overcome any obstacle (Neo's love-gamble anyone?). But it's also marvellously fun.

Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) has always dreamt of following in his brother Rex's footsteps and being a racer, from his earliest schoolboy daydreams. Ably assisted by the family-run crew of Racer Motors, he becomes a racing car driver, only to discover operating independently is not only dangerous but also extremely difficult when the major corporations want to dominate, and rig (ooh, ahh!), the sport.

It's a bright, vibrant film. Apart from ill-judged comic episodes from the youngest of the Racer progeny, the film sparkles. The Racer parents (Sarandon and Goodman) are both excellent presences, while Hirsch and girlfriend Trixie (Ricci) are both entirely laudable. The tension ratchets up rapidly, and the racing scenes are gloriously over the top and colourful. But beyond any individual performance or the suspense or colours or score, it's essentially a film about going it alone and fighting for something you believe in. And I approve of that.

~~~
2008
Emile Hirsch, Matthew Fox, Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman
dir. Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski

The 13th Warrior

I hesitated before posting this up, partly because I have so little to say about the film and partly because it's just not very good.

Banderas plays Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan, an Arab poet sent as diplomat to the north. He meets some Norsemen, and by a tiresome twist of fate, ends up the thirteenth warrior in a party setting out to rescue a tribe from supernatural enemies.

The film is fairly standard 90s blockbuster fare. So little attention is paid to plot, which creeps predictably onwards, while location and costume are similarly neglected. One imagines that most of the budget must have gone on getting Banderas, and maybe trying to get his English passably accented, that what remained accounted for the poor set and setpieces. It's also a prime case of a Michael Crichton novel being essentially misunderstood. After early commercial successes in adapting the bestselling author to the big screen, there were a spate of poorly made adaptations that fail to capture the essence of his writing and sufficiently translate that into a workable film. So we have a film with poorly imagined characters and dialogue, simply because the makers relies too heavily on a novel. For all novel-film cross-overs, it seems to have been proven that it is not about relying on copying the novel from page to screen, but on finding a film equivalent for many of a given novel's devices. The 13th Warrior expressly fails on that account.

Laughably bad. But not worth one's time for the laughs.

~~~
1999
Antonio Banderas, Vladimir Kulich
dir. John McTiernan

The State Counsellor (Fandorin 6)

I've already reviewed the first five Fandorin adventures (starting with The Winter Queen) State Counsellor has been regarded by many as the best Fandorin narrative. It was the first book to be made into a film, and maintains popular support.

But I did not feel Akunin managed anything novel or thrilling with this offering. A gruesome murder implicating Fandorin sets the wheels of an investigation in motion. Very soon we see that dangerous nihilist revolutionaries threaten Russia. Different police inspectors and special agents get thrown into the mix; they all have their own reasons for helping or hindering the investigation. And in the middle, Fandorin, trying to piece together the evidence as best he can. The nihilists do not seem to particularly threaten. In fact, it felt almost as though Akunin was in some way attempting to foreshadow early twentieth century history by the actions of these revolutionaries, and that barely added anything to the narrative.

Part of The State Counsellor's weakness surely lies both in style and in villain. For the former, no distinct narrative voice deprives Akunin of one of his successful stylistic tricks (Compare Turkish Gambit or Special Assignments). Meanwhile, the latter, an altogether unimpressive character, Green, leaves much to be desired. There never seems to be a great threat to Fandorin. In fact, he is dispassionately removed from the majority of the drama. When one compares Green with earlier villains, particularly the master schemers of The Winter Queen and Turkish Gambit, or the terribly precise murderer of The Death of Achilles, he does not come off well. There are no major distinguishing features.

Fandorin's love interest for this story at least has a spark to her. Esfir Litvinova, a young society beauty, with revolutionary sympathies, is both unpredictable and fiery, making for a beautiful foil to Fandorin's inscrutable routines. Her very disdain for him, softening to attraction and even love, is a familiar pattern for females to follow with regard to Fandorin, but it's executed excellently here. The humour evoked by Fandorin's double confusion both with his case and the affairs of the heart is also particularly enjoyable.

The writing remains lively and I raced through the drama. But I was not wowed or awed like I have been with earlier Fandorin books. Has Akunin used all his tricks up? Am I missing a beat?

~~~
2008
Boris Akunin translated by Andrew Bromfield
Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Special Assignments (Fandorin 5)

Erast Petrovich Fandorin returns in two short stories, this time narrated by the young Anisii Tulipov. Akunin remains on form with these two tales of Fandorin's intelligence pitted against devious, dangerous Moscow criminals.

In The Jack of Spades, chance has Tulipov, who feels as though life has always gone against him, assigned to support the Deputy to the Governor of Moscow for Special Assignments (Fandorin of course). In such a position, Tulipov relates the strange habits of the young, grey-templed sleuth. Their quarry, a master of disguise, gives them the run of the city.

Then in The Decorator worlds collide as it seems Jack the Ripper may have made it to Moscow. The second story is a thrilling re-imagining of Ripper mythology, made all the more exciting both by Fandorin's intellect and the filter through which we gain access to it: Tulipov.

Akunin has struck a familiar tone with a third party narrator. While Turkish Gambit was perhaps my favourite of the Fandorin books, Special Assignments, despite this familiarity, does little to rise above the very high bar Akunin has set for himself. But the host of well imagined characters and locations, and the ability to spin a gripping story remains intact and I devoured both tales voraciously. Onwards!

~~~
2007
Boris Akunin, translated by Andrew Bromfield.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK); Random House (USA)

Predators

A sequel twenty-one years after the 'original' sequel is no mean feat; Predators claims to be a sequel. It even references the Alien films in its nomenclature, that subtle addition of an 's'. But consequently it's riddled with the same problems most sequels have to face.

For a film as limply plotted as Predators (Selected elite soldiers plus one hapless doctor are ditched on an alien hunting preserve for the predators to practise their skills on... That's literally it.), there were some surprisingly effective moments amongst the dross. Adrien Brody is passable enough in Swarznegger's shoes, remarkable as that might sound; the conversation that directly refers to 1987 (the year of Predator's release) is comicly rendered. But he's not passable enough, and the film never really accepts that it's comic. It's so deadly, dully serious throughout, one can't help but get a little tired of it all.

The film also falls flat on the simplest of moments. The dialogue drags throughout; the landscape changes every five minutes (Continuity people, did you put jungle to evergreen in two minutes down to the planet being 'alien'?); the characters are sketchily drawn at best and killed off in the most meaningless of ways. But I cackled through it. I embraced the idiocy, Hollywood churning out drudge in a style true to form. I'd not go out of my way to see it again. Then again, I probably wouldn't for most films.

~~~

2010

Adrien Brody, Alice Braga

dir. Nimrod Antal

Hot Rod

Saturday Night Live's party boys team up to deliver a charming gem out of leftfield. This film has all the hallmarks of a conventionally dire comedy, but its quirks and erraticism rescue and elevate it beyond the mundane.

Rod (Samberg) is a down-and-out stay-at-home chap desperate to be a stuntman. Ably assisted by his crew (Taccone, Hader & McBride) he performs insipid stunts. Usually he messes them up. And he fights, literally fights, to earn his stepfather's respect. But in a neat, if predictable plot twist, Rod has to take his stunt work to the next level to save the man he so abhors.

The performances are just shy of absurd, but silly enough to keep the laughs coming. Rico taking on a redneck made me guffaw, while Kevin's dancing and mild manners were similarly enjoyable. Meanwhile, the linear and uncreative thread is spiced up with a host of interjections and wrong turns. Sketch comedy's influence is in evidence throughout. But that adds to the film, rather than detracting from it. I was reminded, remarkably, of Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine, two films that contain fairly standard plots and directions, but are riddled with comic episodes and wrong turns.

There's a rock soundtrack too, that's again just short of all out parody, and plenty of quotable, if idiotic lines. When Rod has to take himself to his "happy place" and the next scene we are provided with is him punchdancing his way to happiness, I had to stop the DVD and rewatch. It's delightfully stupid. I wanted to own this film, for repeat views. That's a great way to feel when watching a movie.

~~~

2007

Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Bill Hader, Danny McBridge, Isla Fisher

dir. Akiva Schaffer

Curse of the Golden Flower

Spectacle and simplicity combine in this Tang dynasty drama depicting the destruction of the emperor's family. The emperor rules with an iron fist, while his second wife, the empress, and three sons machinate busily behind the scenes to seize power.

It's a beautiful film. In fact, I was saddened that this film has been compared to Yimou Zhang's earlier work, because that set up expectations of high-flying action and martial arts drama, and while there is some, it is no way central to what this film really concerns. Instead, the poise and routine of imperial life takes centre stage. That's fitting too; beneath the calm surface things bubble away vigorously, players scheme or cheat. The juxtaposition works very well, between rhythmic order on the surface and mad plotting beneath. A casual viewer would not comprehend the gravity of a solitary stroll through one of the many identical corridors the film depicts. It is only through snippets of dialogue or exchanged looks that we begin to see what is coming together, much like the players themselves. And of course, there are people, servants, everywhere. One starts to doubt how much secrecy there can be with so many people around all the time. It's another neat juxtaposition.

The performances are touching, especially the emperor (Yun-Fat Chow) and empress (Li Gong). Their roles demand a certain soullessness underpinned by broiling emotions. It's admirably pulled off. There's a magnetism they portray that demands an audience's attention. Even when they are at their most jealous and hateful, one can't help but watch.

Overall, I thought this a very emotive, immersive film. It builds like a wave, slowly but surely, before cresting inevitably with devastating effect. The final act is worth watching the whole film for.

~~~

2007

Yun-Fat Chow, Li Gong, Jay Chou, Ye Liu

dir. Yimou Zhang