Robin Hood

The latest Robin Hood has something for almost everyone, be they Tea Partygoers, Christian radicals, apiarists, Francophobes or fletchers. Fans of Russell Crowe, however, may be disappointed.

His Robin Longstride, later aka Sir Robert Loxley and Robin of the Hood, is a glum middle-ageing archer who's spent a decade on the Crusades serving England's King Richard the Lionheart. Meanwhile, back in the Tower of London, his younger brother, John, hates their mummy (Eileen Atkins as an imperious Graecoid choral figure), frolics with a relative of the French king and conspires with an evil knight, Godfrey, to take over the realm and its northern barons' wealth.

There are many other plot details and historical figures shoehorned into the 2.5-hr-long epic, and most of the star-studded cast strut and fret effectively. Max von Sydow chews the medieval scenery juicily as old blind Sir Walter Loxley who, so miraculously it's comic, enables the sad hero to experience instant recall of his heroic daddy's death.

It would take at least 2.5 hours to note all the screenwriter's other historical footnotes and mythical imaginings. Cut to the chase, moviegoers will be sighing while a further conspiratorial angle is being hatched by the dastardly French. You'll know who's French because they speak a subtitled language. This is helpful, and attentive moviegoers need similar attention to detail (armorial nasal defences) to distinguish who's fighting whom in the battle sequences.

Director Ridley Scott is a good battle maestro. As in a previous Scott-Crowe epic, Master and Commander, sound effects are cineplex delights during fast-cut collages of marine warfare. The final coastal fight is a self-consciously thrilling visual treat too, clearly designed by Scott to show Hollywood that Speilberg's similar set-piece in Saving Private Ryan was nothing special.

Sound effects add valid period details frequently, as when Crowe is disrobed of his thunking chain mail by Lady Marion (Cate Blanchett delivering a welcome less dour personality than Crowe's). This provides ageing fans with their sole sighting of Crowe's overweighty chest and stomach. Compensation may be found with a dull dorsal review of King John, an attractively facially-coiffed breakthrough performance by a Guatemalan Floridian, Oscar Isaac.

His villain is a complex figure of evil fun, matched by the dastardly Sir Godfrey who's a complex figure of scarred evil. Mark Strong is in danger of being typecast, having also triumphed with his wicked ways in The Young Victoria and Sherlock Holmes. Oh, the English do evil so well, I chortled, recalling how Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham had out-acted Kevin Costner's Robin Hood. Then I discovered that Strong (his real given name) is of Austrian-Italian origin. The movie's bumbling Sheriff is the weakest link in this feudal axis of evil. Accidentally, perhaps, the Tower's leading good guy is played by an American, William Hurt, whose accent and stance are dryly English.

On reflection, over dinner with a friend who almost totally enjoyed the movie, I agreed that there was a lot to admire in Scott's visualisation of a convoluted scenario. But, we also agreed, not the over-emphatic musical soundtrack.

Mother

It is possible that the Korean movie Mother proved to be so admirable because few other films in the past year have shown the same high levels of scripting, cinematography, acting and audacity. By comparison with what appeared before, Bong Joon-Ho's latest work of arts and craftiness is a work of genius. Together with The Host, it confirms his status as an auteur with commercial flair.

He conceived a simple storyline. A mentally handicapped young man has been taught by his over-protective mother to react fiercely if anyone calls him a retard. He's the local police stations' obvious culprit when a schoolgirl is found bashed to death. Mother, aided by gossipy schoolchildren and paid-for advice from her son's criminal pal, sets out to prove that someone else murdered the girl.

Out of a such a hackneyed concept, Bong created a perversely witty black comedy slyly transformed into a quirky Hitchcockian thriller. His key ingredient is the multi-award-winning lead actress, Kim Hye-ja, a mesmerising screen presence as an impoverished mum who's an unlicensed herbalist. Whenever she's not in focus, the audience gains a better chance to note how brilliantly, yet unostentatiously, every scene has been framed, composed and edited.

The son's simple-minded, easily side-tracked and confused character is presented credibly, yet he's rarely shown as deformed, mentally or facially. His amoral pal is given a fascinating complexity, as a buffoon, incompetent schemer, sexual object and evil force. Other roles are off-beat cameos, adorned with bizarre quirks that enliven the script and action.

This is a film also rich with visual and soundtrack details that subtly heighten scenes' atmosphere and tension. Acupuncture needles, a smashed apple, detectives' swivelling heads, a field for dancing, guillotined herbs, and more cinematic magic await discovery on a future viewing. Which there will be, which makes this Mother such an unusually welcome movie.

Christmas Carol

Robert Zemeckis went out on a limb a few years ago, when he developed a new form of movie animation, "motion-capture". It wasted Tom Hanks, by transforming his body into a soul-less dead-eyed animated zombie stuck on The Polar Express to the Christmas movie market. More talents were rendered unappealing visually by the technique for Beowulf, but Hollywood producers were impressed by Zemeckis's grosses; he got the green light for his 3-D version of A Christmas Carol.

The box-office returns for this 2009 seasonal outing were unimpressive, at less than US$140 million in North America. Let's hope motion-capture dies an overdue death.

When it's done well, the technique can be very effective, as for Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. The latest Zemeckis effort looks better than those before, mainly because anti-heroic Scrooge crinkles his eyes much of the time. Other, jollier, characters appear to be puffy-faced pop-eyed gnomes who bear ugly resemblances to their real role models (Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins). Anyone who doesn't know will need informing that Scrooge is a de-personified Jim Carrey. His English accent and gaunt body language are convincing, and he's the least wasted load of motions ever captured and twisted out of normal shape.

However, Christmas cheers should have arisen in cineplexes for the 3-D special effects. They weren't noticeably original, thrilling or any improvement on Disney or Pixar standards, but they were fun to watch while Scrooge was flown through London's skies by his guiding Ghosts. Fire and lighting animations provide colourful moments, brightly offsetting the well-crafted grimness of 19th-Century London and Scrooge's cheerless home.

A Christmas Carol is a short fable, and Zemeckis rightly filled his time with much of the original Dickensian mock-pomposity and wordy sentimentality. Less creditably, I don't recall young Scrooge's change of character being psycho-analysed and portrayed so inexplicably, and I suspect Dickens included at least one reference to Jesus's birthday and/or the Christian religion. Zemeckis doesn't, not directly, and Christians have to make do with a few crosses to remind them that Christmas Day is not simply an olde English version of Happy Thanksgiving Families Day.

Parents should be warned : children will fidget when longueurs of non-motion-capture lack any musical soundtrack to distract the audience's vacant stare. Parents may be glad that their children have been retold worthy moral lessons, and should remind the kids that Life's good intentions are often boring.

Iron Man 2

Once upon a time in Hollywood, there was an actor whose father was a movie director. The actor gained acclaim and star billings, then became a drug addict and a Hollywood has-been. Meanwhile, another top-rated Hollywood actor acquired a drinking problem and a tarnished reputation. In the fairy-tale realm that insiders still like to think Hollywood is, Robert Downey Jr and Mickey Rourke arose from the ashes of their self-destructed careers and were given lead roles in Iron Man 2.

That is one of the film's few positive aspects. Another is the vertically-challenged Mr Downey's successful attempt to grow older more gracefully than his lookalike and apparent role model, Dustin Hoffman.

The first screen version of the Marvel comic character presented a sweet acid-tongued anti-hero, an Iron Man whose stylishness and impregnable suit of armour fitted Downey neatly. Gwyneth Paltrow, another child of Hollywood parents, swapped verbal jabs with him, sweetly, as his assistant. The SFX were fun, director Jon Favreau had crafted an above-average blockbuster franchise, and a second serving of the cartoon capers seemed welcome.

The welcome was very short-lived. Too quickly, it was apparent why the production team decided to give all credit for the script to only one name, Justin Theroux. He is the designated fall guy for an overly complex plot packed with sloppy coincidences, story details filched from other cartoon epics, embarrassingly lame comic efforts, ho-hum SFX and cardboard characterisations.

Downey preens and pouts. Paltrow's face and body languages indicate acute ennui. Rourke sends himself up as a toothpick-chewing Russian with banal dialogue and an inborn genius for applied physics, just like the iron Man. Sam Rockwell arrives on the scenery too, to chew it, as a supposedly villainous arms manufacturer whose preenery and pouting may be intended to counterpoint the Iron Man's.

Meanwhile, Don Cheadle has returned as an unimposingly small army bigwig whose motives are inexplicable. Black movie-goers are apparently expected to flock to their local cineplexes to also greet Samuel L. Jackson's unexplained appearance as yet another humourless comic villain. There's a sarcastic senator, of course, and a plump middle-aged male side-kick.

"We need another female role model!", the team must have screeched. It sketched out a plotline on which to pose Scarlett Johansson as a secret government agent. The team decided that it was be kindest to not wake her up during the movie's production, since her only memorable scenes were to be created by an editor wielding a cute pair of scissors.

Two of the pun-ishing efforts to amuse dirty-minded schoolboys are worth listening out for. They involve hemorrhoids and little pricks. By the way, Downey's Iron Man talks a lot, and a lot of pseudo-earnest rubbish, probably so that schoolboys can call him the Ironic Maniac.

Why was the film released overseas a week ahead of North America? That's usually a sign of a lack of confidence by the distributors. I do hope it proves to be one sign of marketing intelligence attached to this Marvel movie mishap.

Brief interviews with hideous men

Many movies are made simply because someone adored a play, book, event or personality passionately. Actor John Krasinski was clearly enamoured by the words and characters in a collection of short stories, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Its author, David Foster Wallace, may have been an acute observer of and listener to males with self-revelatory tales. But they do not add up to a cohesive screenplay.

The peg on which they are hung is a graduate student (Julianne Nicholson) coping with an unexplained abandonment by her boyfriend (Krasinski). She studies anthropology, a convenient excuse to interview a wide range of men and try to understand their mindsets. Instant problem : a good researcher will not guide or pass judgment on her subjects. Nicholson consequently comes across as a po-faced wooden figure who was lucky to have attracted the handsome and sensitive Krasinski.

His tale, the final one in the movie, is a credibly cute explanation of why he felt obliged to dump her. The preceding tales form a patchwork quilt of unconnected, over-written and mostly well-acted male monologues. Some contain dialogue their actors visibly relish, and the final credits should have added visual IDs to help moviegoers identify the cameo stars.

The best tale shows an airport passenger re-enacting his chance meeting with a deserted woman, and for a good ten minutes the acting, direction, editing and photography create a small gem. The worst set piece paraded a black washroom attendant being memorialised by his loving son, in language that self-consciously presented cliched images of a noble savage servant.

Dominic Cooper grabs the chance to shine his smile and have a good thespian cry, and another oddly-placed British accent (Max Minghella's perhaps) arrives in one of a pair of waiters commenting on male motives. Their role as a Graecoid chorus is a reminder of one of the director's probable inspirations, Woody Allen. Even more strangely, the least eloquent tale-teller is Nicholson's professor (Timothy Hutton).

Krasinski may have hoped that this movie would become his calling card in Hollywood. It shows that he can direct actors and technicians well, but if there's a next time, he'll need a producer who knows how to make a full-length movie.