The Picture Show: John Carter and We Bought a Zoo

After a long break for both technical and lack-of-interesting-new-releases-to-discuss reasons, The Picture Show is BACK. This week I am, once again, joined by Michael Ewins to review John Carter and We Bought a Zoo, as well as discuss the times our favourite filmmakers let us down, and a bumper week of UK DVD and Blu Ray releases.

Let us know what you make of the show (preferably that you think it's awesome, but honesty is appreciated), or suggest future list topics, on twitter @24FPSUK and @E_Film_Blog or by emailing sam@24fps.org.uk

You can stream the show below, or download it from the Internet Archive HERE

John Carter [12A]

Dir: Andrew Stanton



Timing is everything. John Carter was conceived 100 years ago by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs. In the time since, while Carter himself has not made the jump to the silver screen, his influence appears to have been felt right across the sci-fi genre, with the terrible consequence that the leader now looks like the follower, the innovator like the thief.

That, while it may not help, is not the whole story as to why this is a bad movie. Often I can get quite animated, quite irritated, by bad films (you may have noticed), but not this time, because while John Carter may be bad it's not in any way interestingly bad. In fact, it's just really, really dull.

The story is really two pronged. First John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) finds himself transported from Earth in the 1890's to Barsoom (Mars), and once there he finds himself becoming a pawn between three warring factions on the red planet and falling in love with the (reassuringly humanoid) Princess of one of those factions (the one with the blue banners, don't ask me, or indeed the script, for more details than that). Both of these things should feel urgent and investable, hell, the war is basically the beginning of the end of the world as far as Barsoom is concerned, and yet the whole film still feels low stakes.

Much of the blame for that can be laid at the feet of a tin eared and tedious script that almost collapses under the weight of exposition and lists of increasingly silly names, which, time and time again are chosen over little things like characterisation. That issue is felt most pressingly with John Carter himself; he's the centre of the film and yet there's really nothing to him, and an uninteresting hero is one it's a struggle to get behind, and that is death for a film like this.

There's a strange imbalance in the casting. Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins are front and centre as the main 'human' figures in the film, and yet they both give notably poor performances. Kitsch is wooden and near expressionless, while Collins is incredibly affected, using a deep, almost purring, voice that sounds hilariously unnatural and distracting, which is a shame because, at least until the last reel, Dejah Thoris is a reasonably strong and independent female character, but Collins is really terrible in the part, and has little chemistry with Kitsch. On the other side of the coin, the film's better actors are almost all buried under piles of pixels, their performances struggling to break through. This is especially true of Samantha Morton, who has seldom been this anonymous before The rest of the cast seem to be cashing their cheques; Mark Strong, doing his 343rd bald villain of the last five years, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, who seems to struggle to decide whether to ham it up or not, all struggle to lift John Carter out of the plodding tedium into which it repeatedly falls.

Despite having a personal love for the books and their lead character, co-writer/director Andrew Stanton fails to translate it to the audience. At a character and story level he gives us little to invest in, and the storytelling itself is just broken, with a framing device, an opening voiceover and reams of other expostition all failing to bring the world of Barsoom to life. On the visual side the film continues to disappoint. It doesn't look bad, but it does look like any number of other sci-fi movies and computer games. There is so little visual invention here, the design all feels derivative from vehicles (the speeder bike type vehicles even SOUND like they've been ripped off from Star Wars) to creatures, even down to small production design items like glyphs and tattoos. It feels as though Stanton and his team have created not a new but a patchwork world. The prevalence of digital effects, the dodgy acting and the endless exposition just add to the disappointment, and in the end John Carter feels as much like a cut scene from a computer game as it does a movie.

I'm not terribly annoyed about John Carter. It's not bad in the ramapagingly dreadful, offensive way that Sucker Punch was, and I don't want to choke the life out of the characters like I did in The Future, John Carter is just dull. Ultimately, it's a fart of a movie: it stinks for a while, but then it's gone, and just like that, you forget it was ever there.

24FPS Around the Web

I'm sorry I've not written here for a while, but I have been occupied with other writing commitments, so here are some of the things I have recently (or relatively recently) written for other sites.

For Cinemart Online
The Shrine: Blu Ray Review
The Insect Woman: Blu Ray Review
Rolling Thunder: Blu Ray Review

For Front Row Reviews
Special Forces: Blu Ray Review
The Woman in the Fifth: Cinema Review
Casting Call: Rosamund Pike
Casting Call: George Clooney
Whisper of the Heart: Blu Ray Review

For Horror Movies.CA
In the Video Nasties Series
Shogun Assassin
Human Experiments
Flesh For Frankenstein
Absurd

For The New Journalist
Obscene Publications: Video, the press and moral panics. Part 1
Visions of Ecstasy: End of the Last Taboo?
The Woman in Black: Cinema Review

The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival 2012: A Preview

This will be my third year attending the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and I'm pleased to see that, after a difficult 25th anniversary last year thanks to the arts funding cuts, the festival has re-expanded, up from a week last year to ten days this time round, and boasting a programme jam packed with interesting and vibrant looking films. I can't possibly cover everything I'd like to see in this preview, there really is just too much, so instead here - in alphabetical order by title - are my personal Top 10 priorities, the films I REALLY want to see at the festival. For the full programme, be sure to visit http://www.bfi.org.uk/llgff/. I hope to see a few of you there between movies.

The short descriptions (in blockquotes) and pictures here are drawn from the LLGFF programme.

ABSENT (Marco Berger)

A schoolboy develops a crush on his teacher in this original and unconventional thriller.


Argentina is a real up and comer in terms of world cinema, and for a little while now has been producing a few break out arthouse titles each year, it's also produced a couple of notable filmmakers addressing LGBT issues. This is Berger's second feature to play at LLGFF, and the clip we saw suggests a taut, tense and intimate little thriller with an unobtrusive observed camera style and a pair of strong leading performances.


AMERICAN TRANSLATION (Pascal Arnold / Jean-Marc Barr)

A young woman discovers her boyfriend is a psycho-sexual killer with a fondness for handsome rent boys.

If you see more than a couple of LGBT films you can become very used to seeing a lot of variations on the same coming out / self discovery story (many of them good, but still), so it's nice to hear about something like American Translation, which appears to be shying away from the cliches, combining a relationship narrative between Lizzie Brochere and Pierre Perrier and a thriller about Perrier's activities as a serial killer preying on rent boys. I'm hoping for a smart and challenging film that evokes some of the same discomfort that powered films like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.


CIRCUMSTANCE (Maryam Keshavarz)

Two young women fall in love while exploring the sub-cultural underground party scene in Tehran.

It's humbling, and important, that in the political climate in which they live (which has recently seen filmmakers arrested, imprisoned, banned from making movies, and in the case of one actress who dared to show her breast on camera, barred from the country) Iran is continuing to make films that explore things that will be extremely controversial at home. Circumstance has been much talked about since it appeared at Sundance last year (where it won the Audience Award). The trailer we saw paints this as a vibrant and sexy film that nevertheless explores some uncomfortable realities about Iran's conservatism. Hopefully it will live up to the good word that has built around it.

THE GREEN (Paul Marcarelli)

A teacher has his life turned upside down when a student files a sexual allegation against him.

I saw a video recently of a speech given AGAINST legislation in Georgia that would stop LGBT candidates being discriminated against for teaching jobs. Against a background where that sort of thing is still a live issue in the US, and the reality is that even an accusation of sexual abuse can ruin someone's life, a film like The Green appears timely.

Beyond that, and my hope that the film will deal in doubt more than, say, Doubt did, I want to see The Green for its outstanding cast. Jason Butler Harner impressed in Changeling, and I'm a longstanding fan of supporting actresses Julia Ormond (as Harner's lawyer), Illeana Douglas (as his supportive friend) and Karen Young (as the mother of his accuser). If nothing else there should be some really standout performances here.


LOVE FREE OR DIE (Macky Alston)

An intimate portrait of Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay and partnered bishop in Christendom.

The selection of documentaries at LLGFF looks especially strong this year, and this film about gay Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson looks like it will give a real insight into Robinson and, hopefully, into those who opposed his appointment. Taking Robinson as a central subject should also distinguish this treatment of the issue of church acceptance of the LGBT community from that of the recent (and excellent) For the Bible Tells Me So.


ORCHIDS, MY INTERSEX ADVENTURE (Phoebe Hart)

A moving autobiographical documentary about a woman's journey to come to terms with her intersex condition.

While it doesn't say so in the title, the LLGFF does screen films addressing all areas of the LGBT community, and this one deals with a young woman and her friends and family coming to terms and dealing with each of their relationships to her intersex status. This promises, as it unfolds through director Phoebe Hart's candid video diary, to be a deeply personal film exploring an issue that still remains almost completely undiscussed in cinema or, really, in public life at all.


OUR FUTURE (Kashou Iizuka)

A pivotal summer in the life of a trans teenager growing up in rural Japan.

I've been falling in love with Japanese cinema for the last couple of years (thanks largely to the films of mad genius Sion Sono), and this semi autobiographical story of a male identifying trans teenager dealing with his parents divorcing and an uncomfortable school life sounds like an intelligent and moving piece of work, providing it's well handled and that the performances convince.


THE PERFECT FAMILY (Anne Renton)

A mother and daughter struggle to accept each other in this funny and poignant all-star family drama.

It's always nice to see, in areas of cinema that are traditionally niche concerns, a film that seems like it might have the ingredients to break out of that ghetto, and certainly this dramedy starring Kathleen Turner as a Christian matriarch whose daughter (Emily Deschanel) announces that she is gay, engaged and pregnant would seem to fit that bill. Hopefully both Turner and Deschanel will be at the top of their games and we'll have a smart, funny, movie here.


THIS IS WHAT LOVE IN ACTION LOOKS LIKE (Morgan Jon Fox)

A passionate documentary chronicling one of the most controversial cases in recent gay history.

It seems that religion rears an ugly head in this documentary about a young man sent, by his parents, to a ministry that promised to 'cure' his homosexuality. It seems that director Morgan Jon Fox has got interviews from all sides of this story, and hopefully he'll use them to present a less polarised picture than we are used to seeing of these issues.

WISH ME AWAY (Bobbie Berleffi / Beverly Kopf)

Country music star Chely Wright's brave coming out journey is beautifully chronicled in this excellent documentary.

I like some country music, but had only heard of Chely Wright through the news, because, having been an incredibly successful country star she came out in 2010, and that decision, thanks to the conservatism of much of the country base, cost her radio play, record sales and fans. In what looks like another deeply personal documentary this film covers the run up to and aftermath of Wright's decision to come out, largely through her own video diary. The clip we saw was very moving, and this is something I'm eagerly anticipating seeing.


There is so much more that I want to see at the festival, from short film selections to documentaries about musicians; the Bowie like Jobriath (Jobriath AD) and Hole drummer Patty Schemel (Hit So Hard) to features from Iceland (Jitters), Sweden (Kiss Me), Norway (The Mountain) and Thailand (Yes or No?). This looks like a great festival this year and I hope more people who, like me, come from outside the LGBT community, will take a chance on a few of these movies.

The Bloggies: 1st Annual British Film Bloggers Circle Awards Winners

Well, now we can officially bring down the curtain on Award Season 2012.
...What do you mean there are still more ceremonies to come? Shut up, this is the important one.

The British Film Bloggers Circle is a brand new body bringing together the best film bloggers in the UK (and me, apparently their selection procedures were a bit lax) and this is our launch event, the first Bloggies, so, congratulations to all the films and people that won a (currently to my knowledge completely non-existent) prize.

While I did vote in the awards almost none of my picks were nominated, and almost none of my picks from the nominees won, so here are the results with a little entirely personal commentary (not indicative of or endorsed by any of the other members of BFBC) and, after the winners, my personal nominating ballot.

THE WINNERS
Film: Drive
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Drive was one of the most popularly acclaimed films of 2011, particularly among the online film press, so these awards don't surprise me. Personally though, I was disappointed by Drive when I saw it for a second time, I had really liked it first time round, but on a second look it felt like a largely empty exercise in style over substance to me. Fantastic soundtrack, a few great scenes, but it just didn't hold up.

Actor: Jean Dujardin

Is The Artist quite as good as it's supposed to be? Perhaps not, but it's certainly a great time at the movies and Jean Dujardin is one of the major reasons why. His deft performance captures the acting style of the late silent era when his character is on camera, but gives way to something more subtle when he isn't playing to a gallery (be that a full cinema or his wife). A performance full of detail and nuance, even in its broadest moments.

Actress: Tilda Swinton

Okay, look, like any sane person who loves movies, I adore Tilda Swinton, she's one of the most exciting, most daring and most talented actresses working... BUT, there was probably no critically acclaimed film I enjoyed watching less in 2011 than We Need to Talk About Kevin. Swinton was unquestionably the best thing about it, but even she was far from her hugely impressive best, and frankly I could fill this category twice over with better female performances from the last 12 months. She's not bad - she's likely incapable of being truly bad - but it's a million miles from her best work in a truly irritating film.

Supporting Actor: tie between Ezra Miller and Christian Bale

This is the first category where I really don't get the results. The others, whether I voted for them or not, I can kind of see the arguments, but Ezra Miller's performance was one of the main reasons I so disliked We Need to Talk About Kevin. I hated his nuance free depiction of Kevin, which made the film play - along with Lynne Ramsay's sledgehammer use of symbolism - like a cartoon about a born evil. I preferred Christian Bale's work in The Fighter, but again, it got nowhere near my ballot, and never stuck out as among his best work for me.

Supporting Actress: Berenice Bejo

I would have liked to have found room on my nominating ballot for Bejo, but the sheer amount of great female performances this year left her out in the cold.  Which is not say I have any sort of problem with this winner either as a whole or in this specific category.  Bejo is so warm, so much fun, so expressive and engaging as Peppy Miller that not only do you forget that she's not actually in The Artist all that much, not only do you want more of her, if you're anything like me you find yourself emerging from the cinema wanting to track down Beauty Mark, before remembering that neither it nor Peppy are real.

Best original screenplay: tie between The Artist and Midnight in Paris

Confession time. I haven't seen Midnight in Paris. I know it's supposed to be Allen's best for ages, but people have said that about everything he's made for the past 15 years (except, to be fair, Cassandra's Dream) and the abysmal You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger put me off this one. I'll have to catch it at some point I guess. However, I'm very pleased to see that both the Bloggies and other awards have recognised that a screenplay is more than dialogue, and that The Artist is a beautifully written movie as much as it is a beautifully played one.

Best adapted screenplay: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I don't have a whole lot to say about this award. Tinker Tailor's screenplay struck me much as the film as a whole did; as something incredibly well crafted, for which I had tremendous respect, but by which I was never particularly engaged. That said, I struggled with my screenplay nominations this year, and really couldn't find more than a handful of scripts I thought were outstanding.

Best film not in the English language: The Skin I Live In

The fact that I haven't discovered Pedro Almodovar (which isn't to say I haven't seen plenty of his films) is one of those things that niggles at me and makes me feel like I'm not a proper film critic. I was hoping The Skin I Live In, as his most genre driven film for years, perhaps ever, would redress the balance, but despite Elena Anaya's excellent performance and the film's stunning visuals, I wasn't convinced by it, finding the structure (which left acres of backstory that I had already guessed to take up the whole of the film's second half) a particular problem. That said, it's an Almodovar I may well revisit at some point, because I think I should like it more, but it was a million miles from being the best foreign language film of 2011, I doubt it would even make my Top 10.

Best British film: Submarine

Erm. Bugger. To be honest, I should have included this on my list of nominations but, in a year in which I struggled to find British films to nominate, I just plain forgot Richard Ayoade's sharp, sensitive, bittersweet and very funny debut. It's a shameful oversight on my part. That said I'd still have voted for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, had it been nominated.

Breakthrough: Jessica Chastain

This time last year I had never even heard her name now she seems to me, both in terms of her astonishing ethereal beauty and of her tremendous versatility as an actress, to be the heir apparent to Sissy Spacek. 2011 was Jessica Chastain's year, she cropped up in what seemed like dozens of films and was utterly different in each. I've not seen The Debt yet but in Tree of Life, Take Shelter, Coriolanus, The Help, Texas Killing Fields and Jolene (which I saw despite it not having come out in the UK yet) she was never less than convincing, never the same twice. If there is justice the world will be at her feet in 2012, she's the most impressive and exciting new talent I've seen for some time, and I can't wait to see what she does next.





MY NOMINATING BALLOT
In each category my top choice is listed first.

Best Film
Melancholia
Incendies
Tomboy
Attenberg
Love Like Poison

Best Director
Lars Von Trier: Melancholia
Denis Villeneuve: Incendies
Terence Malick: Tree of Life
Sion Sono: Cold Fish
Celine Sciamma: Tomboy


Best Actor in a Leading Role
Michael Shannon: Take Shelter
Michael Fassbender: Shame
Peyman Moaadi: A Separation
Brad Pitt: Tree of Life
Jean Dujardin: The Artist

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Lubna Azabal: Incendies
Kirsten Dunst: Melancholia
Ariane Labed: Attenberg
Clara Augarde: Love Like Poison
Jessica Chastain: Tree of Life

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
John Hawkes: Martha Marcy May Marlene
Stefano Cassetti: Love Like Poison
Albert Brooks: Drive
Patton Oswalt: Young Adult
Eddie Marsan: Tyrannosaur

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin: Incendies
Jessica Chastain: Take Shelter
Charlotte Gainsbourg: Melancholia
Judy Greer: The Descendants
Malonn Levana: Tomboy

Best Adapted Screenplay
Denis Villeneuve: Incendies
Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash: The Descendants

Best Original Screenplay
Celine Sciamma: Tomboy
Katell Quillevere: Love Like Poison
Asghar Farhadi: A Separation

Best Film Not in the English Language
Incendies
Tomboy
Love Like Poison
Attenberg
Cold Fish

Best British Film
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II
Kill List

Best Breakthrough Performance by an Director/Actor/Actress/Writer
Jessica Chastain: Take Shelter
Ben Wheatly: Kill List
Elizabeth Olsen: Martha Marcy May Marlene

Rampart [15]

Dir: Oren Moverman



Oren Moverman makes films I feel I should like. Both this film and his previous effort The Messenger are patiently paced character studies that feel, in many ways, like throwbacks to a time when the words 'Hollywood' and 'intelligent' didn't have to be mutually exclusive. But Rampart, like The Messenger, has some very good things in it, but still drastically undershoots its overall potential.

The film takes place in 1999, and sees Woody Harrelson as Dave Brown, a corrupt LA cop with an interesting family life (a daughter by each of two sisters, played by Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon) who has just been caught on camera beating a black suspect who crashed into his car. Brown is put on restricted duty, but as he fights being kicked off the force he drifts further from his family and regards everyone with suspicion.

The trailer is selling Rampart almost as movie version of The Shield; a bald corrupt LA cop, some family drama, a few shootouts, a smattering of sex. You do get all that, but still, this isn't really the film that has been advertised, it's much more a character study of Brown, and that's not entirely a good thing. I'm perfectly open to seeing an actor as good as Woody Harrelson - who is really, properly, excellent in many scenes here - in a character study of a corrupt cop, but a character study can't exist simply on the basis of a strong performance, it has to be backed up by equally robust and interesting character writing, and co-screenwriters Moverman and James Ellroy never really provide that. I was anticipating watching Harrelson peel back the layers of this guy, but all we ever see is another layer of the same remorseless bastard.

The only attempt at really humanising Brown comes in his relationship with his two daughters, who he does at least appear to love. Unfortunately, like every character not named Dave Brown, his daughters are terribly underwritten and so, despite a couple of nice performances from Brie Larson and Sammy Boyarsky, the storyline falls rather flat. There is a great deal of talent allowed to go to waste here, as many of the film's storylines are tremendously underdeveloped. Even Brown's troubles with his colleagues get rather short shrift, and his superiors Sigourney Weaver and Steve Buscemi get maybe four minutes screen time between them (three and a half of those minutes being Weaver's). Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche have far too little to do, and ill defined characters, as Harrelson's ex wives, this is a real shame, as they are both fine actresses and I suspect there's an interesting film to be made about the dynamic between close sisters who each have kids by this man. More troubling is Robin Wright's role, which seems like a fantasy woman written by a man who doesn't like women very much.

Of the supporting cast only Ned Beatty really has the material to come close to matching Harrelson, but again the script leaves him and his motives rather too fuzzy, and even this storyline never quite gains traction. On the whole though the male supporting cast is just as under developed an under utilised as the women; Ice Cube makes a strong impression, but has just three brief scenes, in between which you could forget that he's in the film, and Ben Foster has even less to do and even less effect on the story.

The screenplay never really comes together, the whole film - despite centring totally on Brown - feels bitty and unfocused. There are also a few scenes that just feel totally out of place, such as Brown's red tinged descent into some sort of LA Hell (in the form of a sex club), it looks stylish, but adds nothing to proceedings. Oren Moverman isn't a bad director at all, indeed Rampart is often pretty great looking, managing to feel both modern and classic without its visuals seeming too contrived (most of the time, see previous sentence), but until his writing can match his ambition as a filmmaker he's likely to keep serving up promising, but frustratingly underachieving, fare. I want to like Rampart, feel like I should like it, but ultimately I can't recommend it.

Safe House [15]

Dir: Daniel Espinosa



Safe House is certainly a descriptively titled film, not because it gives you much of a flavour of what happens (there is actually only a little screen time spent in the titular location), but because it sums up rather well the problem at the centre of the film; it's safe. It's not so much a movie as it is an exercise in box ticking, finding a way to reheat previously used ingredients just differently enough to avoid a lawsuit, but not so differently that the mainstream audience will be challenged by seeing or hearing anything that is unlike anything they have seen 200 times before. Now, that's not always a terrible thing - I like an exciting genre exercise as much as the next guy - but Safe House never threw up anything to get my blood pumping.

The basic premise is this: Denzel Washington plays Tobin Frost, a CIA defector who walks into an American consulate in Cape Town to avoid being killed by people chasing him. He's taken to a safe house staffed by bored low level operative Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds). Frost is taken there to be 'debriefed', but the safe house is breached and Weston must escape with Frost to make sure this valuable asset isn't killed or allowed to escape. A bog standard chase movie ensues.

The annoying thing about Safe House is that there's quite a bit of potential here. There's inherent drama - and something that, certainly, we haven't seen that often - in the idea of this traitor being captured somewhere where the law is unclear, and a moral drama ensuing as a less experienced man watches what happens, all confined to a small and hermetically sealed space. But no, things must go boom, and so the politics and morals of the situation are set aside for a(nother) grainy Bourne clone with Denzel Washington as a(nother) smirking badass and an(other) deeply predictable revelation about who the ultimate bad guy is - because clearly it's not going to be the big honking movie star whose face is on the poster.

Everyone here seems to be on autopilot. Screenwriter David Guggenheim's work is not so much a story as it is a collection of set pieces linked by infodumps that land with all the grace of King Kong attempting a pirouette, at least four times the film stops dead and 'treats' us to what amounts to an animated slideshow of background info, narrated by Vera Farmiga on the offchance that you are a cretin. Also specially made for cretins is the film's twist. I say twist, I mean utterly obvious two minutes in actual villain reveal. This twist is so stark staring obvious that in a better film it might pass for a satire of astonishingly lazy screenwriting.

To give director Daniel Espinosa some credit, if you like the Bourne style of action shooting (heavy grain, close quarters filming, fast cutting, shakycam) then you'll probably find these set pieces exciting and well executed, certainly they mark Espinosa out as a competent, fashionable, action director. Sadly for him though, that list above represents everything (well, not everything, but a lot of) that I hate about modern action cinema. The bitty structure and the shaking camera mean we lose the geography of the action scenes quite quickly, and also that action choreography becomes difficult to see, thus losing impact. Seriously, how hard is it to just let an action scene play out, much as Steven Soderbergh did recently in Haywire, which was no masterpiece, but had great fights that you could always understand. The general look of the film is also fashionable, but far from my tastes. It's swarming with grain, but that grain looks like it has been pushed, and become oversaturated and artificial, and so rather than having the desired effect of making the movie look like a gritty 70's production it makes it look over manipulated and ultra modern in an ugly way. Again, if that's what you like your movies to look like then this is well executed, but for me... no thanks.

The acting is also tremendously uninspired. Denzel Washington gives a softly spoken performance I think this is supposed to be menacing, but to me he just came off as being a bit sleepy much of the time. He has two facial expression settings for the duration of the film; menacingly stonefaced and smirking. Equally uninspired is Reynolds, who just doesn't seem to be having any fun, whicch is a shame, because when he is he can be an engaging lead If no great shakes as an actor). The miniscule attempts at depth (like Reynolds' girlfriend played by gorgeous French actress Nora Arnezeder) fall flat, and talented support players like Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepherd and Robert Patrick are wasted. The saddest case is that of Vera Farmiga, who genuinely might be one of the two or three best actresses of her generation, and reminds me of a younger Jennifer Jason Leigh. Here she is reduced to repeating what a computer says for most of her screen time, and we can only hope she took this role to get some cash together for her next directorial project. Again, nobody is terrible, they are asked to do so much less than each of them is capable of.

Overall I found Safe House a real chore. On the other hand, I can't deny that it competently goes through the modern action thriller motions. If you like this style of film then you'll probably find the central set piece at a Cape Town stadium genuinely thrilling, and a late hand to hand fight involving Reynolds viscerally entertaining. It's just not for me though, and if you also miss the days when you could make sense of action scenes, it's probably not for you either.

British Film Bloggers Circle Awards: Nominations

I'm very proud to be one of the first group of bloggers asked to join the (very) newly established British Film Bloggers Circle. Hopefully the circle will be able to point the way to and encourage quality online film journalism from the UK, as well as shining a light on the best of world and UK cinema, and with that in mind, here are the nominations for our first annual awards ('The Bloggies').

Winners will be announced this weekend (before that other, entirely insignificant, ceremony).

I'll post my own full nomination ballot after the results, it looks pretty different to the list below.

Best Film
Drive
Midnight in Paris
Shame
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The Artist

Best Director
Tomas Alfredson – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Paddy Considine – Tyrannosaur
Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist
Steve McQueen – Shame
Lynne Ramsay – We Need To Talk About Kevin
Nicolas Winding Refn – Drive

Best Actor
Jean Dujardin – The Artist
Michael Fassbender – Shame
Ryan Gosling – Drive
Peter Mullan – Tyrannosaur
Gary Oldman – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Michael Shannon – Take Shelter

Best Actress
Olivia Colman – Tyrannosaur
Kirsten Dunst – Melancholia
Tilda Swinton – We Need to Talk about Kevin
Jeong-Hie Yun – Poetry
Michelle Williams – My Week with Marilyn

Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale – The Fighter
Stefano Cassetti – Love Like Poison
Ezra Miller – We Need to Talk about Kevin
Corey Stoll – Midnight in Paris
Nick Nolte – Warrior

Best Supporting Actress
Berenice Bejo – The Artist
Jessica Chastain – Take Shelter
Charlotte Gainsbourg – Melancholia
Carey Mulligan – Drive
Carey Mulligan – Shame

Best Original Screenplay
Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols)
The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)
The Guard (John Michael McDonagh)
Tyrannosaur(Paddy Considine)

Best Adapted Screenplay
Coriolanus (John Logan, screenplay; William Shakespeare, play)
Drive (Hossein Amini, screenplay; James Sallis, book)
The Ides of March (George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon, screenplay; Beau Willimon, play)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Bridget O’Connor, Peter Straughan, screenplay; John Le Carre, novel)
True Grit (Joel & Ethan Coen, screenplay; Charles Portis, novel)
The Skin I Live In (Pedro & Augustin Almodovar, screenplay; Thierry Jonquin, novel)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, Rory Kinnear screenplay; Lionel Shriver novel)

Best film not in the English language
Incendies
Poetry
The Skin I Live In
Trollhunter
Tomboy

Best British Film
Shame
Submarine
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tyrannosaur
We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Breakthrough
Richard Ayoade, Submarine (Director, Writer)
Jessica Chastain, The Debt, The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, The Help, Coriolanus, Texas Killing Fields (Actress)
Tom Cullen, Weekend (Actor)
Andrew Haigh, Weekend (Director)
Tom Hiddleston, Thor, Deep Blue Sea, War Horse, Archipelago, Midnight in Paris (Actor)

Picture Show: Menace and Muppets

This week on The Picture Show, Mike and I reviewed The Woman in Black, Martha Marcy May Marlene, and The Muppets and discussed our favourite ghost movies. Check out the show below, or download it here

The Muppets [U]

Dir: James Bobin



Why did you first start going to the cinema? Do you even remember? For me, the cinema has become many things; a place I go to think and to feel, to be scared and excited, to rail against villains and fall for girls. It didn't start like that though, it started as a place of pure, joyous, escapism, and that's what The Muppets took me back to.

I'm a little bit young to have grown up with The Muppet Show, but I saw the films when I was a kid, the Muppet Babies cartoon was often featured in the Saturday morning shows I grew up on and Muppets Tonight had a short lived BBC run when I was in my mid teens. Most of my affection for the gang, however, post dates creator Jim Henson's untimely death, and is connected to the peerless seasonal classic The Muppet Christmas Carol, which is a Christmas Eve tradition for me.

The Muppets takes place in a world somewhat like our own, in that the Muppets have been off TV and cinema screens for many years (their last film outing was 1999's Muppets From Space), they have been largely forgotten, except by Gary (Jason Segel) and his suspiciously muppety brother Walter (Peter Linz). When Gary decides to take his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) to Los Angeles for their tenth anniversary, Walter tags along so they can make pilgrimage to the Muppet Studios, where Walter discovers that unless The Muppets raise $10 million in the next week, the Muppet theatre will be razed to the ground by oil baron Tex Richman (Chris Cooper). Walter and Gary decide they have to find Kermit (Steve Whitmire), put the gang back together, and do one more Muppet Show to raise the money.

I just don't know where to begin with this movie, which thing that I loved should I tell you about first? The songs? The script? The performances? Which performances anyway, those from the films humans or from the Muppets? Before we get to that, let's just address this quickly... Fox News accused this film of being liberal propaganda because an oil baron is the villain. Okay. First off; he's clearly a cartoon villain. How can I tell? Well... he's got Muppet sidekicks, he's incapable of laughing and instead simply says 'Maniacal Laugh, Maniacal Laugh'... oh and HE'S CALLED TEX RICHMAN! It's a simple conflict for kids to identify with, also it's a JOKE, get over it. The point of The Muppets isn't to indoctrinate people, it's purely and simply there for you to have fun, and on that level it is an unqualified success.

Star Jason Segel, along with Nicholas Stoller, has written a light and witty screenplay that nods to the audience frequently, as in a lovely early exchange when Kermit says he's not getting the gang back together and Mary notes: "This is going to be a really short movie." However, it's not just about delivering the laughs, the film is solidly, if simply, plotted, and not a little moving. The early part of the film finds Kermit and the other Muppets estranged from each other, and Kermit's song Pictures in my Head manages to hit the funnybone and tug the heartstrings, and I defy you not to get just a bit choked up when Rainbow Connection comes along.

For the most part though, the film's stock in trade is fun. If you're a Muppet fan then chances are you favourite character has his or her little moment in the sun, personally I'm a big fan of Beaker and Animal, neither of whom have large parts, but both recur throughout the film and are consistently hilarious (and Animal is one of the funniest things here, with his film long quest to stay away from the drums). Of course Kermit and (eventually) Miss Piggy get the most screentime, and they fall quickly and entertainingly into their familiar roles. There are a handful of disappointments, namely that both Gonzo and Rizzo have very little to do (though that is somewhat made up for by a few very funny moments for Pepe the prawn). The remarkable thing about the Muppets is how readily you can forget that they are puppets. Kermit actually has little articulation, but Steve Whitmire uses tiny gestures, minuscule adjustments that wrest real emotion from what is, in essence, a green sock with ping pong ball eyes, and brings him to vivid life.

The other main cast members; Segel, Adams and Walter are also effective (though Adams, who is as irresistible as ever, is a bit sidelined at times). Their heaviest lifting comes in the opening twenty minutes, which, crucially, hook you in even before we've got to Kermit. The charming and funny first act develops the relationships in Gary's life, and provides the film with its best musical number, the ridiculously hummable Life's a Happy Song (and if you're not finding yourself singing it as you skip out of the cinema, check yourself for a heartbeat). There is no denying though that the film really takes off once the familiar faces arrive.

Famous faces pepper the movie with cameos, which I won't spoil other than to say that most really hit the mark. The human supporting cast is also excellent though, with Chris Cooper clearly having time of his life as Tex Richman (especially when called upon to rap), and Rashida Jones is still adorable, even cast as (this movie's version of) a hard-nosed TV executive.

I don't really know what else I can say. Every word further risks spoiling something surprising and joyous for you. Go and see The Muppets, you'll love it. Or else.