Sherlock Holmes 2

A-

Holmes doesn't play the violin in this second romp through Victorian London settings, where the movie's salvation is the depiction of Moriarty.

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If Alvin and the Chipmunks can have a Squeakquel, can Sherlock Holmes be allowed a "shequel"? Such an atrocious wordplay may have prompted some of the plotting for A Game of Shadows, credited to (Mr and Mrs) Kieran and Michele Mulroney. Their only previous joint credits are as writers and directors of a 2009 bomb, Paper Man, a gossamer-weight comedy in which Jeff Daniels almost died and Emma Stone glistened weakly.

Whatever, somebody at Silver Pictures decreed (and wasn't second-guessed by director Guy Richie, Village Roadshow or Warner Bros), they can carry on the new Holmes tradition. Presumably, for a cheaper fee than the previous writers.

Their Holmes (Robert Downey) had a brother, Mycroft (Stephen Fry), who called him "Sherley", and eyes were raised during that initial reboot of the Holmes franchise by homoerotic overtones in the dialogue and body language of Holmes and his trusted associate, Dr Watson (Jude Law).

This time, the new creative team decided, Holmes would don drag and lipstick in order to protect the honeymooning doctor and his wife (Kelly Reilly) from the evil plotting of Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris). Later, Mycroft/Fry had to parade his semi-frontal nudity and outspoken rejection of female companionship, while double entendres flapped feebly, more explicably for UK audiences which know that Fry has long been a very out personality in real gay society.

However, just to be sure that global audiences don't get too many queer ideas about the new version of a 19th-century sleuth who's a cocaine-addicted chemicals-imbibing psychotic character, Holmes's original female interest, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) is brought back ... so that she can be killed off (through an injection of instantly fatal TB) by the dastardly professor and his sharpshooting English hitman (Paul Anderson as a credibly devoted lieutenant).

Holmes doesn't play the violin in this second romp through Victorian London settings, but the non-stop musical soundtrack (Hans Zimmer) includes cascading Celtic string bands as well as almost every known version of mood-heightening ear-challenging orchestral outburst. Thus Holmes has more screen time to indulge in 19th-century forensic science, ride a donkey, shoot and punch various evil henchmen, lurk in comical wigs and bad disguises, and meet a gipsy fortune-teller (Noomi Rapace) whose face-lifted brother will present an explosive conclusion.

Although the efforts at wit and whimsy are not quite as condescending and cringe-worthy as those foisted on Downey in his second Iron Man outing, they are as strained as Law's face is much of the time. The movie's salvation is the character and depiction of Moriarty. Jared Harris, the 50-year-old son of Richard Harris and Elizabeth Rees, finally has a lead movie role that suits his talent and looks, augmenting the TV reputation he's gained since 2009 in Mad Men.

He and Downey swap tricks of their trades, one-upmanship IQ ploys, arch glances and speedy chess moves, with convincing brio, and Richie rightly lingers on their clear rapport as actors with faces worth watching. The director is less forgiveable for his over-frequent slow/stop-motion sequences anticipating or explaining a fast-action setpiece of calculated fighting finesse.

At the end of the movie, however, when Holmes hasn't died in the Swiss waterfall and Moriarty may have, no one should over-analyse such a broth of cinematic fun and games. It's a beguiling entertainment, and I do hope Moriarty returns. It's a great change to see an abnormally-clever villain who's middle-aged, looks normal, and is a worthy match for a foolish hero like the new Holmes.

We need to talk about Kevin

A-

Swinton conveys states of mind brilliantly, as do the faces of the playing Kevin as a pre-teen manipulative little monster and spiteful narcissistic 15-year-old planner of a massacre.

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Tilda Swinton was plucked from the ranks of little-known and gifted indie British actresses, by fellow-Scot Danny Boyle, and put on The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio in 2000. It took a few years for the oddly beautiful and charismatic talent to became a mainstream top-billed star in the UK and then the USA; her latest award-winning role (2011) also arrived courtesy of another Scot: director Lynne Ramsay.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is based on the Orange Prize-winning novel of the same name by Lionel Shriver (a London-resident American woman who adopted a male name, as many successful female writers have done). Probably influenced by the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, it examines the development of a psychopathic child. His character is reviewed through the recollections by his mother following his murder spree.

The screenplay by Ramsay and her partner Rory Kinnear took several years to get into production (by BBC Films and the UK Film Council, with extra funds from Steven Soderbergh and other movie angels. Ramsay's previous movie was Morvern Callar (2002), which followed her breakthrough debut feature Ratcatcher (1999). She remains a distinctive indie director, utilising hand-held cinematography, non-linear narrative and assertive editing effects to engage her audience's attention. Excessively so in her over-usage of symbolic red (as blood, in a festival of tomatoes, highlighted in jam, lights, lampshades, dresses and more) to reflect the mental states of the anguished mother and amoral child.

Swinton conveys states of mind brilliantly, much of the time without dialogue. Her eyes, facial lines, footsteps and glances mesmerise. So do the faces of the two young actors playing Kevin as a pre-teen manipulative little monster who refuses to communicate or get toilet-trained, and then as a spiteful narcissistic 15-year-old planner of a massacre. One day, near his 16th birthday, he takes his longbow to school and slaughters fellow students, having already shot down his father and young sister.

He'd previously blinded her in one eye, and the story stretches credulity with its failure to suggest that no person other than the mother was ever worried about the boy's personality (which supposedly only flowered when his mother reads him a story about Robin Hood's archery skills). Almost risibly too, the father (John C. Reilly playing yet another spineless non-character) always makes excuses for a child whose malicious cunning he doesn't see or sense.

Barely credible too is the decision of the mother (a published travel book author) to stay in the overly hostile and vengeful local community, and become a travel agency assistant, visiting her son's prison each week only to sit silently and avoid looking at him. At the movie's end, reached slowly via an increasingly tense sequence of flashbacks, the son - facing a "new school" in adult prison - shows nerves and expresses self-doubt for the first time.

The mother embraces him, coolly, and her audience will be no wiser whether she's proof that evil is bred in genes and/or nurtured by misguided parents. All that matters in the end is Swinton's spell-binding performance, well worth a 2012 Oscar nomination [which it didn't get].

Warrior

B

Tired variant on old theme: the modern blood sport of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) in a fighting family saga.

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Anyone who saw The Fighter, or others example of the genre, might guess that Warrior features two poor fighting sons (Brit Tom Bronson Hardy and Aussie Joel Animal Kingdom Edgerton) of a reformed alcoholic fighting trainer (Nick Nolte with a rasp) living in a stereotypically ugly macho US city (Pittsburgh). If writer-director Gavin (Pride and Glory) O'Connor wrote his plot before The Fighter appeared, he must feel unlucky.

All three male leads have unresolved family issues, so we know they'll all get punch-drunk, drunk, and be finally punched into states of smiling forgiveness and understanding. There'll be one loyal wife hanging around, and a lot of hand-held cameras bobbing and weaving around scenes of bare-chested men.

It takes more than two hours to reach the non-surprising conclusion that the brothers will come to blows in the final of a super-MMA championship. Despite good acting by the leads, it's hard to care about their drives and dramas when their situations and dialogue are tiringly cliched and sentimental. MMA fans will like the movie.

Carnage

B

Petty social commentary whose direction adds nothing visibly special and quartet of stars posture lazily.

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A successful stage play becomes a worthwhile movie if its narrative intensity is heightened by close-ups of actors' faces and reactions. God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza's French comedy of modern parental manners, was a hit in Paris and then (translated by Christopher Hampton) in London and New York, and might have been the basis for a movie triumph in the mode of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Like that stage and cinema classic, the French satirical, farcical and bitter comedy had a quartet of strong acting roles; it was retitled as Carnage, and got an accomplished director (Roman Polanski).

Unfortunately, a whole generation has passed since Edward Albee wrote his truly dramatic play (1962) about an academic's acerbic marriage, for which Mike Nichols directed the 1966 on-screen magic pairing of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. By comparison, four decades later, Reza's 70-minute extended sketch is a weak concoction.

Maybe Hampton's original translation worked well in the theatre. Given a new translation by another writer (suggesting Hampton's disapproval of the film production), which was turned into a screenplay by Reza and Polanski, the story looks and sounds more of a petty social commentary than any sort of indictment of modern parenting or social attitudes. The direction adds nothing visibly special, and the talented quartet of stars posture lazily.

Jodie Foster is an uptight socially-aware very PC prig married, incredibly, to a flabby bullied red-neck housewares manufacturer (John C Reilly). Similarly, Kate Winslet is the ill-matched socially-vacuous second wife of a sneering corporate attorney (Christoph Waltz) who lives through his mobile phone. All four are phony stereotypical metropolitan characters, who've met to deal with the fact that one son knocked out two of the other couple's son's teeth.

The couples' dramatic highlights are the off-screen abandonment of a hamster, and vomit on precious art volumes. The prickly quartet exchange niceties, barbed insults and drunken confidences, and the non-drama's theatrical box-office success may have depended on one actress having to vomit on stage in each performance. In the movies, that's no big deal and nothing else is worth watching.

Devil's double

B

Feebly-linked sequence of cliched scenes for Dominic Cooper's dual role as Saddam son and his double.

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Michael Thomas wrote a few screenplays based on novels or reality in the 1980s, including Scandal (the fact-based tale of a UK politician, prostitutes and Russian spies). In the 1990s, Thomas's Backbeat dramatised the fate of an original Beatle. His latest effort (2011) created a docudrama from the characters of Uday Hussein, Saddam's sadistic oldest son, and the Iraqi lieutenant lookalike (and former classmate) who was compelled to act as The Devil's Double.

The unlucky doppelganger, Latif Yahia, survived to write novels about his dangerous life inside the gilded, debauched, evil palaces of Iraq's "Black Prince". Inevitably, given the man's collaboration on the screenplay (and an uncredited bit part), he's depicted as a moderate moralist who saved his family's lives by taking Uday's place in public and in dangerous situations. The screenplay also shows Saddam and one of his doubles at work but doesn't explain why the dictator's younger son, Qusay, didn't play the same game.

The key factor for such a movie plot is the actor playing the superficially identical characters, and Dominic Cooper fills the two pairs of shoes attractively. This could have been the breakthrough movie for the young English actor, after various good supporting roles recently (An Education, Captain America, Brief Interviews), but Thomas and/or his producers (Europeans) opted not for a subtle psycho-political character study but for the R-rated Caligula/Scarface type of bio-drama, including rapes, beatings, cocaine snorts, wild gunfire and a dis-embowelling.

They gave the directing job to a known talent, New Zealander Lee (Die Another Day, Next, Along Came a Spider) Tamahori (who'd only worked on action-adventures after the failure of Mulholland Falls in 1996 and the lost promise of his 1994 multi-award-winning Once Were Warriors). Maybe the screenplay he had to work with already included poor-quality newsreel clips from Iraq's wars with Iran, Kuwait and the US, as well as its feebly-linked sequence of visually and verbally cliched scenes.

The overall tone is patronising and semi-racist. All characters speak English with bad accents, which demeans them, a la Arab stooges for Indiana Jones etc (except, remarkably, on account of his actor's facial firmness, Saddam). Cooper's two loads of changing accents are interchangeable, whether he's camply maniacal Uday or primly outraged Latif.

Uday's henchmen are heavy-smoking slouching mafiosi, the female interest who deserts Uday for Latif is an undesirably deadpan actress, and Latif's mournful court mentor and indiscreetly gay social organiser are dramatic contrivances with no dramatic purposes.

There possibly was an interesting story to be woven from the life and times of Uday/Latif. Let's hope the screenplay/s that will docu-dramatise Gaddafi's heir apparent will be a better vehicle for another deserving actor.

Winnie the Pooh

A-

Old-style tribute to older tastes, adorned modestly with golden honey scenery, childish songs and cute 2-dimensional use of printed words.

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Disney's first animated feature based on the Winnie the Pooh tales of AA Milne (The Many Adventures of WtP), issued in 1977, combined three existing featurettes. Consequently, the 2011 "remake" is effectively the Pooh's first dramatised animated feature. Mistakenly, at little more than an hour long, it's not a full-length movie. That surely partly accounted for its relatively poor gross box office takings: only US$33 million globally, barely covering half its reported budget cost of US$30 million.

It's a sweet movie, fittingly for the ever-hungry honey-loving bear. The hand-made drawings are the usual old-fashioned Disney delight, the cels creatively given CGI visual enhancement through the cute device of using the books' printed words, paragraphs, letters and pages as film-stage props.

English accents are rightly maintained for all the characters, from Christopher Robin (a very characterless schoolboy) to Pooh and his pals. Jim Cummings voices both the bear and Tigger, while John Cleese enunciates the narration well, without histrionics. Other voices remind the audience that Eyeore, Piglet, Kanga and Roo are very thin characters and boring fall guys.

Adult jokes or wordplays are rare, though long, big words remain the semi-comic speciality of pompous Owl. Overall, this is a simple tale designed for pre-teens. There are minor potential threats from a forest setting and a comic yeti-like Heffalump (whose appearance at the end suggests a putative spin-off that won't happen).

The short duration of the film, and the relatively small budget, indicate a lack of fully-funded confidence in the old product by Disney's animation team (now headed by Pixar's John Lasseter). They created an old-style tribute to older tastes, adorning it modestly with golden honey scenery, childish songs and an appropriate two-dimensional use of printed pages in honour of Milne's original book and its classic characters. More likely, their primary intention was to create advertising material for valuable Pooh merchandise.

The people vs. George Lucas

A-

Love-hate docu complexity for Star Wars and its creator.

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Documentary features can be entertaining ways to learn things one didn't know, or even realise one wanted to know. The People vs. George Lucas took 90 minutes to show me that a true force of film fans willingly exhibit a love-hate complexity for Star Wars and its creator.

They, and Alexandre Philippe's interesting film essay, initially appear to be making a lot of fuss about nothing really special. Bit by bit, though, the charges leveled at Lucas add up to a damning indictment of the commercial film industry (and its unstated dumbing-down of movie audiences).

1. Lucas's "special editions" of the initial trilogy re-wrote Hans Solo's character so that he wouldn't be seen cold-bloodily shooting an assassin. The fans' rage isn't directed at hypocritical PC squeamishness by Lucas's Hollywood associates.

2. The introduction of Jar Jar Binks as an unfunny (to the older fans) creature apparently designed for a new generation of kids expecting silly voices and fart jokes.

3. The prequel trilogy's diminution of "The Force" into a genetic disturbance.

4. Lucas's control-freakery and apparent deliberate slights for Star Wars fans.

5. The fundamental commercialism of an entertainment industry that either overpowered Lucas or encouraged him to exploit, preventing him ever making another creative film, instead devoting himself to a Darth Vader-like existence running his Star Wars empire.

The most damning evidence of the sixth charge is the Star Wars Christmas [aka Holiday in Wikipedia, probably for the usual modern pc reason] Special for TV in 1978, which Lucas subsequently attempted to deny and destroy. A quarter of the two-hour disaster reportedly comprises an un-subtitled setpiece of growling for Chewbacca and his newly-introduced family.

Although the documentary tries to present a balanced critique of aspects of Lucas's achievements and failings with Star Wars, the non-cooperation by his empire and Hollywood production associates leaves the field clear for the fervent fans' rants (most of which are fairly comical, including an early Simon Pegg send-up).

Clips from many of the fans' home-filmed parodies, satires, animations and denunciations (one re-working Misery to great effect) provide the heart of the documentary, and confirm its claim that Star Wars inspired a generation of film-goers. Lucas "raped their childhood", some fans assert, self-mockingly, even though his sins provoked a new art form of amateur cinematics.

The professionals do the best job though: an excerpt from South Park's condemnation of the Lucas-Spielberg re-launch (depicted as a two-man rape of Indiana Jones) offers the blackest comic commentary on the whole business.

Mission Impossible 4

A-

It's soon clear why Tom Cruise and his multi-million-dollar production team entrusted the ageing star actor's very valuable franchise to Brad Bird.

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The subtitle of the fourth Mission Impossible would only interest movie geeks seeking a Trivial Pursuit triumph with Ghost Protocol. More geeks and most mainstrean movie buffs will probably remember that it was the first non-animated feature from director Brad Bird (whose Pixar hits included included Ratatouille and, most memorably, The Incredibles, which featured his own unforgettable super-shrieky voice-over for its bossy fashion dominatrix).

It's soon clear why Tom Cruise and his multi-million-dollar production team (including MI3's director JJ Abrams) entrusted the ageing star actor's very valuable franchise to Bird. Their action-adventure vehicle is virtually an animated CGI movie itself, employing a few competent humans to stare, fret, sweat and leap out of the stances stuntmen got them into. At that level of film-making, MI4 is almost as good and definitely less credible than The Incredibles.

Cruise has assembled an able new team. Paula (Deja Vu) Patton joins him for the first time as a gungho lite-black (Obama-style) fighting woman, along with Jeremy (Hurt Locker) Renner as an IMF analyst and new tough buddy role. Simon Pegg, the back-office comic IT boffin in MI3, returns as a field agent, a bumbling Brit smiler counterpointing his US partners' deadly seriousness.

What they are all doing, why and how is little explained. The scenario rushes from one of the setpieces of mega-bucks explosions and car crashes to one of the seconds-counting procedurals in which wires are spliced, magnets and robots teeter, and face masks are manipulated.

There is a stereotypical group of well-cast villains, spies, Russian henchmen and anti-terrorists pirouetted by the screenplay around a calmly mad Swedish nuclear mastermind. Their antics in Moscow are worth the location work around the exploded Kremlin. Similarly, Cruise's gecko-style climbing of Dubai's tallest tower is jolly scenic sensationalism, albeit with an unimpressive sandstorm. India gained a less admirable image for its tourism industry by allowing the team to create a lavish Bollywood ball in which Anil (Slumdog Millionaire) Kapoor had to squander himself as a Lothario billionaire buffoon with supposedly crucial codes to a satellite.

The really crucial plus factor for MI this time is its musical soundtrack. It was hard to imagine any further variations on Lilo Schifrin's mesmerising and ideally tense driving themes being created, let alone the addition of complementary new music which pounds a cineplex's walls and brilliantly underscores the fast-moving action and stunts. Composer Michael Giacchino (who worked on both The Incredibles and Ratatouille for Bird) should be nominated for an Oscar, alongside the sound crew.

(A personal thankyou will go to the first reviewer who explains, with citations from the screenplay, why Ethan Hunt's wife was, and then wasn't, killed and why she - Michele Monaghan - then appears in the movie's very jejune epilogue.)

The epilogue also suggests that Ving Rhames will be returning to the franchise as the MI5 team's boss (replacing the assassinated and uncredited Tom Wilkinson). Maybe Cruise realised that he needs to give himself a bit of female company if his Ethan Hunt is to measure up better beside Bond, Bourne and all the other ageing action stars.

Princess and the frog

A+

Delightful dialogue and rich plotting made this a cartoon adults could admire, a non-stop pageant of appropriate animation conceits.

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When Disney fully merged its animation business with that of Pixar, there were concerns that its distinctive hand-drawn artistry might vanish into an ocean of CGI. The Princess and the Frog was cheering proof that old-fashioned techniques were still in effect in 2009 and still brilliantly effective.

A poor black girl dreams of fulfilling her dead father's goal to open a niterie of fine fare and happy jazz in old New Orleans. Her mother worked for a rich white family, whose happy-go-lucky tomboyish daughter remains her best friend (voiced with glorious self-mocking nouveau riche joie de vivre by Jennifer Cody).

An irresponsible outcast young French prince arrives in the city with his plump put-upon manservant, planning to marry the rich man's spoiled "princess". The voodoo conman Dr Facilier makes pacts with the two men, tricking the prince and turning him into a frog.

He accidentally transforms the black girl into a frog too; together, the lazy male and tomboy female amphibian must defeat the evil Shadows and achieve their dreams. Helped, naturally, by a typically Disneyish crew of bizarre characters - a romantic glowworm in love with the Night Star, a cowardly obese alligator who's a jazz sax maestro, and a cantankerous old voodoo lady (Oprah Winfrey) with a loyal versatile snake.

Delightful dialogue and rich plotting (mostly credited to Disney's experienced writing-directing duo of Ron Clements and John Musker) made this a cartoon adults could admire, and it's a non-stop pageant of appropriate animation conceits. Although the overall drawing style evokes old-style New Yorker magazine sketching, the usual tricks of the Disney trade are displayed in colourful and convincing swirls of smoke, fire, bubbles, water and shadows.

The Broadway-style comedy musical's songs (two nominated for the Oscar) were typical Randy Newman delights, and the animation's socio-political colour-blindness (featuring Disney's first black princess) was admirable, probably made more acceptable in some US states by its "foreign" setting and prince. A sequel, and a further US$100-million investment in hand-drawing would be welcome.

X-men origins: wolverine

A+

It shows, a la Spiderman, that an action-fantasy can dare to have thoughtful conversational pauses.

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Two years after its release date (2009), X-Men Origins: Wolverine looked better than I'd thought it would. The director's name, Gavin Hood, deserved research, as he should have gone on to further glory on the block-buster scene. [*]

Hugh Jackman also gave himself an above-average supporting cast. Liev Schreiber was an ideal equally indestructible elder brother with murderous mutant skills and vicious extendable finger nails. Danny Huston yet again perfectly personified sweet-talking evil intent as the obsessed Dr Hyde of mutant research.

Fellow mutants were cameo roles played competently (including Ryan Reynolds in a breakthrough comic macho performance). Even the female interest, a First Nation Canadian schoolteacher, was well written and characterised (played by Texan Lynn Collins).

The SFX were handsomely explosive: it was clear why Jackman lost his cool when an un-effected print was stolen and widely spread on the internet.

The good and innocent victims were too good to be true, but they always must be in the graphic novella empire of Stan Lee and Marvel DC comic books.

This spin-off from the X-Men franchise did more than fill in Logan/Wolverine's background (originating two centuries earlier according to the comic-book military capers sequence in the brothers-at-war action prologue). It showed, a la Spiderman, that an action-fantasy can dare to have thoughtful conversational pauses.

[* South Africa-born Gavin Hood's career path stumbled. After the former lawyer and actor studied film at the Uni of California, he wrote, directed and took the lead role in the SA-set 1999 award-winning A Reasonable Man (co-starring Nigel Hawthorne). Replacing the sick director of a Polish film on location in South Africa (2001) and the follow-up TV mini-series, he stayed there to write and direct his breakthrough 2005 Best Foreign Film Oscar-winner, Tsotsi, adapted from an Athol Fugard novel. That led to Hollywood giving him Rendition, a 2007 political thriller that flopped. Subsequently, he directed three TV series/dramas while preparing Ender's Game, his adaptation of a Mormon author's sci-fi fantasy, due for release in 2013.]

James and the giant peach

A

Director Henry Selick maintained the acerbic edge that was Dahl's distinctive edge as a children's writer.

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Tim Burton co-produced James and the Giant Peach and it sports similar styles to his live action fairy tales (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland) and his clay or other animation fantasies (Corpse Bride, The Nightmare Before Christmas). It's a UK-based 1996 production and a successful adaptation of yet another Roald Dahl comic horror fable for intelligent children.

Dahl's young heroes are always troubled by evil grown-ups; orphan James's are two spiteful spinster sisters (Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margoyles) merrily sneering at the surreal scenery of their seaside hilltop.

James was a first-time boy actor, Paul Terry, who appeared in a few children's TV episodes, played in a band at uni and never returned to the entertainment industry. The only other major human being in the scene-setting intro is an elderly mystery man (Pete Postlethwaite) who gives the ill-used lonely lad a bag of crocodile tongues, one of which turns into the titular Giant Peach.

The enormous deus ex machina has no personality per se. Instead it is home for a wrangling group of animated insects with a variety of powers and personalities: star-voiced by Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Jane (later Frasier TV regular) Leeves, Susan Sarandon and David Thewlis. When James flees his horrible aunts and enters the peach, he becomes a stop-motion animation figure too, as a charming accidental hero leading the peach and his new friends on their flight to NYC courtesy of spider web strings attached to a flock of seagulls.

Their trip is packed with fearsome adventures and several insect songs and dances (cue the ubiquitous Randy Newman). Infant viewers may gyrate, adults will ho-and-hum: the material is better than children's TV, but it isn't old-style hand-drawn Disney cartoon quality. It has a grittier less homely quality.

All ends well in NYC, except for the aunts; and director Henry Selick (Nightmare with Burton, and Coraline most recently) rightly maintained the acerbic edge that was Dahl's distinctive edge as a children's writer.

Cowboys & aliens

B

Painfully trying to be comic and cool, like geriatric Harrison Ford.

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There's a great satisfaction to be found in a commercial disaster when it's been engineered by Hollywood honchos high on hubris. As was Cowboys & Aliens.

His self-promotional Wikipedia entry indicates that a Scott Mitchell Rosenberg parlayed a profitable business from comic book rehashes and personnel poaching. His claim to movie business fame was his development of the Men in Black scifi action comedy (a claim IMDb does not appear to credit).

He then, self-reportedly, created the genre-bending concept of a Wild Western town in which a gang of cowboy bandits would be obliged to join forces with a cattle baron's gang, the sheriff's posse and the local Indian tribe to save scores of townsfolk abducted by giant alien bugs whose enormous spaceship is sucking gold out of the hills prior to their eventual destruction of Earth. But there's a hero to unite the anti-ETs: he's an amnesiac escapee from the spaceship and he's taken one of its death ray wrist bracelets.

The resultant screenplay for that indigestible brew of bizarre concepts was written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who'd previously collaborated on TV series, The Island and Legend of Zorro (2005), Mission Impossible 3 (2006), Transformers 1 and 2 (2007/9) and the Star Trek reboot (2009): a track record of entertainment blockbusters to make Hollywood accountants salivate.

Yummy, salivated Steven Spielberg, I'll executive produce this sure-fire sucker! Let's spend about US$160 million. My old pal Harrison Ford can play the old rancher. He's very convincing playing old men a la Henry Fonda. We'll pay that Brit Bond Daniel Craig to be the macho antihero with a blank Eastwood-meets-Bronson face.

Somewhere in the Hollywood witches' brewing room, it was realised that the trademark Spielbergian potion of sentimentality was lacking. So the coven added a refugee woman from another planet, the macho man's dead wife, a boy and a dog, the rancher's whimpering bully boy son (Paul Dano) and loyal Indian sidekick - and a kindly preacher and a scared saloon keeper and his Latina wife. A black? No, even Hollywood witches know not to push their luck too far.

Finally, though, to make sure the film was totally incredible and could be seen painfully trying painfully to be comic and cool, like geriatric Harrison, Jon Favreau was given the director's megaphone and the SFX talents were let loose.

Characterless, constantly clanging with cliches, cant and cringe-worthy dialogue, this cornfield of movie-making managed to gross little more than its ludicrously over-ambitious budget. It's probably one of 2011's biggest net losers. Deservedly.

Snowtown

A+

Scruffy world of an irredeemable underclass which finds release in drugs, booze, prayer meetings, and rabble-rousing kitchen gatherings.

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Australian directors continue to excel at suspenseful timing, as Justin Kurzel proves with Snowtown, his debut 2010 feature that's a terrifying movie based on two books about Australia's worst serial killer, John Bunting.

He and his pals' ten victims lived in the suburban slums of Adelaide in the 1990s, in a squalor populated by fundamentalist and homophobic white trash. The docudrama, written by another newbie, Shaun Grant, focuses on Bunting's domineering relationships with a divorced woman and her three under-educated maladjusted teenage sons. He grooms the oldest (16) to become another of his murderous accomplices, pursuing the boy's soul with mesmerising empathetic stares.

Bunting is played brilliantly by the movie's sole professional actor, Daniel Henshall, who'd previously only made a few TV series episodes. Short, stocky, bearded and amiable, he smiles intensively, eyes glinting hypnotically, and it's only on the rare occasions when Bunting loses his cool that his menacing and amoral character is revealed. The rest of the time, he's exercising a quietly effective, controlling personality.

The family he moves into, and its neighbours, are easily-controlled social misfits, some mentally disturbed, some on drugs, mostly surviving on welfare benefits and petty crime. They are depressingly nasty bigots or weak-minded fools, and it becomes clear that Bunting tolerates a local cross-dressing middle-aged homosexual mainly as a source of potential victims.

Bunting's new teenage disciple (played movingly well as a tearful, passive schizophrenic by first-time actor Lucas Pittaway) is the lead to a step-brother who'd raped the boy when he was younger. There's also a palpable tension in the teenager's relationship with Bunting, in which the boy seeks a family role model while Bunting's eyes suggest the killer may be failing to acknowledge his own desires.

The opening urban scenes set the mood and style frighteningly well, as the boys' mother leaves a male neighbour to house-sit with them and he orders the blank-faced kids to strip naked for photographs. Bunting's arrival on the scene soon after begins with him showing the teenager how to cut heads, limbs and tails off newly-shot kangaroos in the back yard. The blood-stained scraps are thrown at the paedophile's bungalow.

Theirs is the muddy, scruffy world of an irredeemable underclass which finds release in drugs, booze, prayer meetings, and rabble-rousing kitchen gatherings reviewing the grisliest ways to punish perverts. This isn't the admirably brave-faced and amusingly-confused working class characters who populate the sets of Mike Leigh and sentimental neo-realists. This is the ugly reality of human failures, characters which a Bunting can feel superior to, manipulate and kill.

Most of the killings take place off-screen, between scenes, and their details and sequence will only be clear if a viewer reads about them in Wikipedia. The one motive for them - fraudulent use of victims' credit cards and benefits - is only hinted at once; Bunting and his three older associates are never shown with jobs, and Bunting guides the boy's enrolment for the dole.

The pace of the editing (and a nerve-jangling musical soundtrack of metallic banging and electronic sounds) amplify the tension, because a viewer's never sure what type of scene will appear next and how draining it will be. The only elongated murder scene, in a bath, is presented with hand-held objectivity, augmenting its almost unbearably vivid impact.

Less positively, several scenes are mysteriously non-linear non-sequitors. Bunting and the teenager shave each other's heads, but are not seen bald-headed again, except once when only Bunting is. Another time, Bunting bullies the boy into shooting Bunting's own dog, but plays with the dog in a subsequent scene. The scenes jut out of the movie, looking like a cluster of deleted scenes that got spliced in arbitrarily to create a two-hour feature.

At the end too, there's a collage of finely photographed images of urban ugliness that appears gratuitous. The ending itself is an abrupt halt, a door firmly shut, suggesting that the teenager has become a cold-hearted tear-less killer too.

End credits then note the prison terms being served by the killers, giving the audience no fairy-tale closure to a human horror show. As a debut movie, though, this is a winner for Kurzel.

Pusher

A+

Within its action-thriller genre, a small-budget masterpiece.

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Nicolas Winding Refn rated highly for Valhalla Rising and Drive; it was time to watch the Danish writer-director's first Pusher movie, his 1996 debut feature, an action-thriller about Copenhagen drug gangsters.

Within its genre, it's a small-budget masterpiece. It won no awards in Denmark other than a Best Supporting Actor accolade for Croatian-born Zlatko Buric (as Milo, the Yugoslav top drug dealer). Unfortunately for Refn, the competition that year included not only Lars von Trier's Oscar-nominated Breaking The Waves but another multi-award-winner, Jan Troell's Hamsun, starring Max von Sydow.

And that was also unfortunate for Kim Bodnia, a stage actor taking his first major screen role as stocky, tattooed Frankie, a middle-ranking dealer with an attitude problem and a girlfriend who's a whore keeping her heart of gold open for him. He has a loyal best friend too, Tonny, played with dazzling flair by then-young Mads (Casino Royale, After the Wedding, Clash of the Titans) Mikkelsen, sporting a bald head with the word Respect tattooed on it.

Day by captioned day, the docudrama-style plot and hand-held cameras follow the week of Frankie's progress from carefree contentment to imminent death, while deals are made, go wrong, and lead to gory deaths and mutilation. Refn's Copenhagen is a low-lit, shadowy city that feels as if it belongs in a black-and-white and very noir thriller.

Refn had no training (having abandoned film school after a month, when he gained the funds to transform his projected short into this feature), but his father was a Danish film director and his mother a cinematographer. Childhood environment probably counted for more than genes did, as with the offspring of many other entertainment industry professionals.

Intriguingly, Pusher was remade in 2010, with the same title, as a Hindi-language production set in the UK. Even more amazingly, it's now been re-made again in English as a low-budget British production due for release in 2012; its cast includes Buric reprising his role as Milo.

The finest flattery for the film came from Refn himself. After the failure of his Fear X English-language feature bankrupted his production company, Refn hurriedly wrote and directed two further Pusher drug-dealing thrillers to capitalise on his first film's commercial success. The first sequel (2004) focused on Tonny (Pusher 2: With Blood on my Hands), for which Mikkelsen collected a handful of Best Actor awards; the next (2005) on Milo (Pusher III: I'm The Angel of Death).

Punished

A-

Looks like a mediocre TV series segment, whose lack of tension is announced by bland background music.

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Punished has a slim storyline that could have been compressed into a couple of episodes of a standard TV detective series. But Hong Kong does have a movie industry that needs to deliver Cantonese-language products to cinemas at home and abroad (and dubbed Mandarin versions to mainland cinemas and genuine DVD stores).

The 2010 product from the Milkyway production team (led by Johnny To) can only be damned with faint praise: it's a competent vengeance movie with the crime genre's regular themes of middle-aged male bonding, corporate loyalty, painful violence and unfilial spoilt children.

The first third of the stretched-out 90-minute action thriller piques an audience's interest with flashbacks from and to the choking death of the obnoxious ransomed daughter of a property developer (Anthong Wong as angst-ridden as ever). His palatial home houses a second wife who's a young business brain, a housekeeper who's a black-clad mystery character, and a right-hand man (Richie Ren) who's a divorcee with an objectionably dismissive schoolboy son.

Having already paid 50 million HK dollars for the girl, the developer pays his loyal henchman the same amount to exact revenge on the kidnappers. Observers might want to know who they were and why they killed the girl, even though her death held no dramatic import, but soon realises that they had none either. They are disposed of, brutally, one by one, after low-calibre fisticuffs, and the screenplay had to add an inconsequential sub-plot and schmaltzy surreal conclusion to fill its allotted time.

Director Law-Wing-cheong does nothing to flesh out the skimpy tale. The movie looks like a mediocre TV series segment, whose lack of character or tension is announced feebly by its bland background music.

Drive

A+

Artful use of lighting and shadows, high-decibel retro electronic pop and slow-paced silent pauses, warm close-ups and chilling long shots, created a cinematic experience that's exciting and disturbing.

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Many movies get made by outsiders (from Europe or Sundance) who've attracted attention with their debut efforts and gain bigger productions that seek stylish direction at small cost. In the case of Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn was already a young Danish veteran when he got the director's chair for his fourth English-language feature.

His first was Fear X, a 2003 psychological thriller adapted from a Hubert Selby story by Refn. Its lead actor was an unwise choice: John Turturro's name didn't help at the box office and the film's failure bankrupted Refn's production company. Forced back into Danish-language work, Refn made two sequels to his successful 1996 debut, Pusher, and its successor, Bleeder. Their glossy shock value gained him British production funds for two screenplays: Bronson (2008) and the virtually wordless and visually thrilling Valhalla Rising (2009).

Drive, based on a 2005 crime thriller by James Sallis, is the crisp story of a taciturn garage mechanic and part-time stunt driver who moonlights for robbery gangs. Initially a Universal project for Hugh Jackman, it ended up as a low-budget (US$13 million) indie production headlined by rising Canadian star Ryan Gosling. He reportedly chose Refn to direct the book's screen adaptation (by Iranian Hossein The Wings of the Dove Amini). English Carey Mulligan, got the key female role as a single mother who needs saving from vicious gangsters.

The film is Gosling's latest "breakthrough", like almost every other film he's ever made: The Believer (2001), Murder by Numbers (2002), The Notebook (2004), Half Nelson (2006), Lars and the Real Girl (2007), Oscar-nominated Blue Valentine (2010). With two years' work as a child performer on TV (Mickey Mouse Club), and solid supporting roles recently (Crazy, Stupid, Love and The Ides of March) Gosling has a track record ready for recognition by Oscar voters.

Refn has got the recognition he's deserved for Drive, winning Best Director award at Cannes 2011. It's easy to see and sense why. His artful use of lighting and shadows, high-decibel retro electronic pop and slow-paced silent pauses, warm close-ups and chilling long shots, created a cinematic experience that's exciting and disturbing. There are moments when the facial studies of the actors is just too long for the retention of dramatic pace, and there are gruesome gory blood-letting head-butting scenes whose sense of reality is too real for comfort.

Overall, though, this is a movie that grabs the eyes, ears - and brain - from its sharply-paced car-chase opening action sequence. It's a cleverly constructed screenplay whose key elements could have been B-movie cliches: conflicted criminal (Oscar Isaac), adorable Latino boy, limping older colleague (Bryan Cranshaw), foul-mouthed racially-stereotypical gangsters (Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks), slutty moll (Christina Hendricks).

Such standard characters needed above-average actors, and the whole supporting cast is a galaxy of movie acting talent; they support Gosling well. His toothpick-chewing shyly-smiling quietly-spoken man of vengeance is a very modern anti-hero with the stylishness of a repressed 1980s action hero. His survival at the end of the saga, and his parting drive, into the LA nightscape, left an open option for his reappearance. It would be unwise: a very good film is unlikely to be bettered and the attempt would be commercially and artistically unwise. For now, very wisely, Gosling has stepped into lead role for Refn's next screenplay. It sounds an extra-ordinary concept, set in Bangkok, co-produced with French funds and Kristin Scott-Thomas: something to really look forward to.

Page one: inside the NYT

A+

If columnist David Carr didn't actually inspire Page One: Inside the New York Times, he attracted the focal attention of the documentary's makers.

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David Carr, a reformed drug addict and ex-convict, scruffy and off-balance physically, shuffles around the Grey Lady's stylish palace of news like a Method Actor in search of a back alley. Vaguely deadpan, eyes seething, his face looking like a lost character from a Chandler short story, Carr tip-taps his laptop, recording interview notes about media morality with fierce self-righteousness. His existence and survival in the NYT is vital proof of the newspaper's unique character and role.

Inevitably, having been given access to the financially troubled paper's editorial offices and meetings, writer-director Andrew Rossi doesn't dig for dirt. He briefly acknowledges and then totally ignores the role of the NYT's white knight, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, (whose multi-million-dollar loan saved the paper, and will surely give him long-term possession of its valuable real estate.)

Much of the time, the documentary and NYT personnel fret about the future, the actual existence, of the printed newspaper business and the NYT itself. As they see it, the Internet era's media barbarians are not at the gate, they're ransacking the whole castle and destroying its viability.

One of bearded crusty Carr's many dramatic moments is his put-down of Gawker, after the news aggregator's owner joins a debate proposing that the demise of mainstream media is welcomed. Carr holds up a print-out of Gawker's front "page", from which he's cut out all the news items provided for it by the mainstream. There's just a sheet of holes.

Media buffs will enjoy many other moments when the virtues of well-researched news stories and backgrounders are displayed. Even more, they'll savour the Media desk's expose of the despicable characters who took over and pillaged the Tribune group, and Carr's role in forcing its CEO's resignation.

The documentary records an eventful period in the paper's history: Wikileaks was working with it, it was recovering from self-inflicted wounds from a lying journalist and the Iraq-WMD scandal, and the mercenary menace of Rupert Murdoch's empire was becoming clearer. The documentary shows that if ever there was an American institution that's too important to be allowed to fail, it's the NYT.

West is west

A-

With incredible contrivances, the Brit-Paki plot is neither full comedy nor coming-of-age drama, neither culture-bridging nor racially sensitive.

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West is West, released in 2011, was a belated sequel to 1999's East is East, a semi-autobiographical comedy featuring the dysfunctional family of a mixed marriage in the north of English (Salford) in the late 1960s.

Punjabi-born Indian actor Om Puri returned in the role of Pakistani George Khan, grumpy owner of a chippy shop and husband of English Ella (Angela Bassett). It was his 205th credited film role in a 35-year career, her 54th, and their inter-racial love is still credible. Another Indian actor, Rajasthani Ila Arun, provides a strong third adult character as Khan's first wife.

The screenplay's central figures are the family's two half-English sons. The weak-willed elder brother can't find a wife back in his father's home village, while the teenager has coped with racism at school and divided loyalties outside by becoming a truant shoplifter. The father takes him back to Pakistan to force him to accept a Pakistani heritage.

Very much a storyboard construction with incredible coincidences and contrivances, the plot is neither full comedy nor coming-of-age drama, neither culture-bridging nor racially sensitive. There's a stereotypical wry English-speaking sage with no apparent livelihood and a smiling acolyte who becomes the teenager's pal, daughters who have no roles to play, and a nephew who on-screen purpose is never revealed. Loose ends are left loose, except for the older son being married off to a sassy village girl from Rochdale whom he'd never noticed.

Racial characteristics are not explored with wit or insights, and religious factors are ignored completely. Even in the plot's time setting (1976) it is not possible to believe that none of the characters would have thought and talked about Islam, Western materialism and ancestors. Such a world of semi-comic make-believe can just about be imagined in rural Indian Punjab (where the film was made) but not across the border in rural Pakistan.

[Retired UK TV series actor Ayub Khan-din, born in Salford, wrote East is East as an award-winning play, which was staged in London in 1997. It was soon filmed, winning more awards and many for Irish director Damien O'Donnell. Maybe it was better fun.]

Margin call

A+

Commendable effort to present harsh reality of mathematic and materialist thoughts on Wall Street.

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You're a wannabe feature film writer and director, with just one short to your credit. How do you get your project off the ground? One of the better ways is to find an actor with ambition and spare funds who'll star in and co-produce your debut feature.

Zachary Quinto, a US TV series actor (Heroes) who landed the Spock role in the renewed Star Trek movie franchise, was an ideal choice for writer-director J.C. Chandor. He could play a lead role in Chandor's Wall Street docudrama, and help attract a small galaxy of big names for cameo parts as well as encourage enough co-backers. Economically, too: Margin Call was made for only US$3,395,000.

On the strength of that potentially highly profitable venture, Chandor gained a two-film writing deal from Warner Brothers, working with one of Leonardo DiCaprio's production companies. His indie debut feature is a docudrama inspired by the Lehman Brothers collapse, profiling the overnight reactions of a Wall Street firm's leading players to the discovery that over-exposure to bad market positions could wipe out the company.

Such a contemporary parable of greed and amorality depends on credible characters, and Chandor's are mostly very believable market and personnel manipulators. The plot is reminiscent of David Mamet, but without that stage playwright's larger-than-life histrionics.

The one actor in the galaxy who shines brightest is Jeremy Irons as the fiercely wily English chief executive. Quinto wisely didn't over-emphasise his own role as a real rocket scientist working in the firm's risk assessment department, standing aside and letting Paul Bettany, Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker, Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci inhabit the heights of Wall Street.

Chandor's non-flashy direction maintains an increasing tension for the first hour, while the firm's options and inevitable scheme to sacrifice some staff and betray the system are debated. The scheme's implementation is a rushed conclusion, messily adorned with a symbolic burial scene that's derisory rather than dramatic. Overall, though, the feature is a commendable effort to present some of the harsh reality of mathematic and materialist thoughts which create the atmosphere sustaining Wall Street.

Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy

A-

Le Carre's plot was more of a period overview, a socio-political portrait, than a straightforward spy thriller.

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Viewing the original BBC TV serialisation (1979) of John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy before watching its 2011 movie version ensures that one knows who the mole is. This has two advantages.

Undistracted by red herrings, one can better assess the screenplay's ability to compress almost five TV hours of dense, albeit slow-paced, drama into two hours of cinema. And compare two generations of British actors (and cameos by two actresses).

After 32 years, the TV serial was a mixed blessing on its BBC DVD. Good value is given by a one-hour documentary extra, The Secret Centre, made in 2000. It includes an interesting set of autobiographical comments by Le Carre, excerpts from the Smiley films, interviews with relevant figures (his ex-wife, college mentor, KGB and East German spymasters), and readings from the books (by Le Carre himself, aka in the real world as David Cornwell). If only more money had been spent on re-mastering the seven TV episodes' fluctuating sound and murky lighting. Their award-winning direction (James Irvin) and cinematography were diminished by the antique film qualities.

Although the serial looked its age, its dialogue rarely sounded dated. It'll be interesting to hear how the 2011 version presents bitter anti-materialist opinions that match those of the current Occupy movement.

It's easy to see how almost redundant characters in Le Carre's plot could have been dropped for the modern movie, including Smiley's nymphomaniac wife (Sian Griffiths), an exasperated schoolmaster (John Wells), a sacked research maestro (Beryl Reid), exasperating ex-spies (Nigel Stock and Joss Ackland) and an eight-year-old schoolboy who's a retired agent's protege (credited as "Duncan Jones", and already looking like the adult film director son of David Bowie, even though Jones's PR reps or IMDb haven't yet wanted to put two and two together).

The discredited spy (Hywel Bennett) who provides information leading to the mole plays a bigger role in the storyboard, too big, seemingly being an excuse both for some overseas location filming in Lisbon and the appearance of a female agent and sexual side-attraction in Le Carre's novel. Le Carre's key KGB maestro, Karla, is seen only as a non-speaking role in a flashback showing Smiley's feeble efforts to turn him (an unrecognisable bearded Patrick Stewart).

Such gratuitous roles were sharp reminders that Le Carre's plot was more of a period overview, a socio-political portrait, than a straightforward spy thriller. The identity of Russia's mole in the British secret service is signposted very early, simply because he's the only one of four possible traitors shown to have relationships with other people. All members of the quartet are stereotypical figures of post-War Britain, the upper class providing a glib bisexual cynic, a pompous fool and an embittered poseur, while the working class was mined for a Communist thug's son holding a technical role in the corridor of power.

Many of them smoked and puffed pipes heavily; that will have to be revised in 2011? And the homosexual overtones (Le Carre's acknowledgment of the characters of two among the "Cambridge Five" spies) might need spelling out even more clearly for modern audiences? If so, the preparatory school setting for another character may well be abandoned for the film to better fit into mainstream US audiences' comfort zone.

The lead characters in the 1979 serial must be the same in 2011. Chief investigator and forcibly retired spymaster Smiley (deadpan Alec Guinness) wasn't as cunning as my memory had expected, while the betrayed spy (close to emotive Ian Bannen) played a larger role than it recalled. The only active brain in the intelligence "Circus" (Ian Richardson) brought his saucer-lidded cup of tea into meetings in a giveaway fashion, just like a disaffected outsider would, and Smiley's aide (Michael Jayston) was too clever and loyal by half to have been allowed to remain in the service.

Although Smiley and his team, and the top civil servant empowering him unofficially, mention concerns about the mole being aware of their activities, his apparent total failure to do so is hard to credit (but may well illustrate the Oxbridge amateurishness of British espionage during the Cold War).

Is the 2011 version a deeper study of intelligence masters at work? Its task is easier, in my eyes, after the relative flatness of the 1979 original.