Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager

Matt Sloane/Aaron Yonda (2006)

Date Night

Is this really the best Hollywood has to offer its current hottest male and female TV comic actors? Steve Carrell and Tina Fey are currently pulling in millions of viewers and guaranteed laughs on American prime-time television with their hugely successful Emmy-laden comedies The Office and 30 Rock. So, here they are together starring in a film for the first time in Date Night. You can picture the pitch – ‘So Steve and Tina together; brilliant, huh…well, they’re a married couple set in their routine ways. How about that. They get caught up in a case of mistaken identity and are on the run from some baddies. They get in a boat! They smash up cars!! We could even get them pole dancing!!! In the end they realise their lives are perfect just the way they were. Hey. What a trip. It’s gotta be winner!’ Cue high fives all round…

Well the ‘brilliant’ idea to pair Carrell and Fey does bring some comic style to the proceedings, and their performances are backed up with some decent cameos by Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Mila Kunis and Ray Liotta – doing a James ‘Jimmy’ Conway, which again shows us what a pity we don’t see more of him in decent roles. Apart from that Date Night is no more than a series of bad comic set ups and anaesthetic-type humour. The problem here is with the script. Written by Josh Klausner, who is best known for providing additional screenplay material for Shrek the Third, the script seems to have been the product of a graduate scriptwriter being held at gunpoint and told to come up with something funny in 10 minutes. 2 or 3 scenarios are strung together and our protagonists have to somehow get themselves out of them – sadly, with less than hilarious results.

It’s a shame that so many comedies these days seem manufactured to suit the whims of marketing buffoons, who forego any sense of what is funny in the pursuit of box-office takings and have no sense of risk. Instead Hollywood churns out banal concepts that sound funny, and slaps itself on the back in the knowledge that a safe bet will bring in the money. Date Night is indeed a safe bet.

Frankenstein

J. Searle Dawley (1910)

Centurion

I suppose you have to give Centurion’s director Neil Marshall his due – after directing the triple Ds of Doomsday, The Descent and Dog Soldiers, I’m fairly sure he could be Hollywood’s lapdog at this stage and putting his talents to misuse on unnecessary hollow remakes of horror films. But instead he continues to plough his trade in England. His latest film may not be up to his previous work, but it is mildly entertaining and if this spring sunshine is too much for you, there are worse reasons than this to seek refuge in the cinema.

Centurion is his stab at the sword and sandals genre, telling the story of the alleged mysterious disappearance of the Ninth Roman Legion in Britain in 117 AD. For mysterious, read brutally slaughtered by the Picts – a confederation of Celtic tribes.

Basically, a ridiculous plot is put in place to serve the purpose of a small band of Romans being forced on the run and being picked off (is there a pun possible here?) one-by-one as they are pursued by the painted warriors defying the Roman Empire.

The film chugs along at a frantic pace as the funny-named Roman protagonists, led by Quintus Dias, (spoiler alert!) run and fight, and run and fight…and hide…and then run and fight. Marshall has no intention of exploring any depth of character and motivation here, as simple premises are quickly interjected and disposed off in order to set up the action. As a result it’s pretty hard to actually give a damn what happens to this gang of Romans on the run. Truth be told, I spent the entire film cheering for the Picts. You’ve gotta love them.

Yet in its simplicity there are things to like about the film. The battle choreography is excellent and edited skilfully to provide the necessary thrills. The gore quotient is high and of good quality – there were a lot of ‘eyuch’-type sounds coming from those watching. The production design is top notch and the Scottish landscape is used to great effect; shot in drained steely colours with sweeping camera movements capturing the terrain with a keen eye.

The performances are irrelevant and the dialogue ludicrous. Most of the talent on offer here is wasted. The hardest part of the actors’ performances was probably to deliver their lines without falling about the place laughing. (‘Did nobody tell them never to fuck with the Romans’).

Though visually engaging, Centurion never strays from the template of survival set down in The Descent and Dog Soldiers, With its limp storytelling, superficial characters and repetitive structure, Centurion stubbornly refuses to veer from its basic narrative framework of survival and extend beyond its one-trick pony of a game of ‘kill-chase’.

Ghosts Before Breakfast

Hans Richter (1927)

The Ghost

A slick political thriller, The Ghost is Roman Polanski's adaptation of Robert Harris' novel, which reads as testament to Harris' finger pointing at Tony Blair as a war criminal.

Ewan McGregor plays the unnamed ghostwriter drafted in to re-write ex-Prime minister (Pierce Brosnan), Adam Lang's memoirs after his predecessor's watery demise. His lowest-common-denominator style of writing – his previous book about a magician being I Came, I Sawed, I Conquered – is seen as just the sort of stuff necessary to turn the dullness of Lang's memoirs into a best seller to rival those of the Premiership footballers' successful literary oeuvre.

Heading over to Lang's retreat on a Martha's Vineyard-type island, the ghostwriter soon finds himself embroiled in a plot far more intriguing than anything the memoirs have to offer as he discovers details about Lang that whet his appetite to investigate matters further. Ghostwriter becomes gumshoe as McGregor starts sniffing about (quite haplessly really) filling his nostrils with the stench of conspiracy and deceit. All of this going on while Lang himself is facing charges of war crimes as the Foreign Secretary he fired levels accusations at him.

Polanski builds up the tension well and keeps a steady, anxious pace with his long takes and skilful editing. His palette bestows a moody monochrome setting upon the island in keeping with events taking place there. Its vast open spaces contrast sharply with the claustrophobic confines of the house and McGregor's increasing sense of alienation and isolation. And the rain beats down incessantly flooding the screen with mystery and intrigue.

The fairly basic clue-following and revelation does sometime border on the Nancy Drew-type bizarre coincidence school of sleuthing, and the fairly unoriginal, implausible denouement is groan-inducing, unnecessary nonsense – redeemed, it must be said, by the film’s wonderful closing shot. Despite all this, the story holds up well under Polanski’s control – injecting moments of black humour that beautifully season the film’s conspiracy narrative. He maintains a tight focus on the material and (as always) brings out good performances from the cast.

McGregor and Brosnan are well cast in the two main roles – never really pushed beyond their abilities, but do enough to bring life to Harris’ oily PM and thrown in out-of-his-depth ghostwriter to cinematic life. Olivia Williams provides the film’s outstanding performance as Lang’s wife, Ruth – her detached cool exterior masking a controlling observer of events around her.

The film also boasts excellent cameos. Jim Belushi shines as the shiny-headed publisher. The legendary Eli Wallach devours his scene as the outcast inhabitant on the island who provides vital information. And Tom Wilkinson, who always brings a touch of class to roles he makes his own, excels as a shifty Professor with dodgy connections. His restrained menace is a thing of beauty. The film is backed up with a beautiful score by Alexandre Desplat, which rises throughout the film alongside the growing tension as plots thicken and mysteries unravel.

The Ghost, for all its flaws, is be recommended as a mature, well-crafted piece of cinematic spin.

Cycles

Cyriak (2010)

The Blind Side

How did this dross manage to be nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars®?

The Blind Side is supposedly based on the life of Michael Oher, a rags-to-riches American football star, but really it is the ‘true’ story of the Tuohy family – a rich, squeaky-clean family the likes of which George Bush senior dreamed off when he was quoted pontificating jibber-jabber about how families should be less like the Simpsons and more like the Waltons. Headed by the gun-packing, right-wing, Christian mother Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock), the family wave their magic wand and sprinkle their dream-dust over the poor Michael Oher (Quintin Aaron) and grant him the perfect life he never would have been blessed with had he stayed in that goddamn ghetto where his uncaring, druggie momma dragged him up. Thanks to the divine intervention of the Tuohy family, Michael ‘learns’ how to play football and is 'given' an education so that he can go to college and play his way to the major league, where he becomes a star. Lucky for him he met some rich selfless white folks who save poor helpless black folk. That’s the major problem with this film – it depicts some sort of white saviour syndrome.

Now this may well be based on a true story (interesting to note that Oher himself has virtually disowned the film). But the truth is predicated on the Tuohys’ side of events. In particular Leigh Anne Tuohy. As a result, it is Sandra Bullock’s film (hence her Oscar®). Everything that goes on around her exists to spotlight her performance. While there’s no denying Bullock’s performance, it also stands as testament to the ignorant portrayal of Michael Oher. He is nothing in this film but a stooge that allows Bullock to shed tears, sissy fit about the place and make a home for her newfound exotic pet. There is nothing in the film that seeks to give a voice to Michael’s experience as his discomfort is used as an excuse to starve him of lines, strip him of motivation, and deny his own experience. He is basically a non-entity in the film, lacking any sort of subjectivity and exists as nothing more than an object of ‘charity’.

There is one among many grating scenes when the Tuohy’s provide Michael with a tutor (Kathy Bates) to improve his grades. Determined for him to go to a particular college, she attempts to put him off going to a rival’s college by force-feeding him some gobbledygook about bodies being buried under the pitch to scare him away – so there you have it: his tutor treating him like an imbecilic child who’ll swallow any old crap so that she can get her way. Tute on!

John Lee Hancock directs with all the skill of an ice-skating hippopotamus and serves up as many stereotypes and one-dimensional characters as Rafael Nadal’s aces. The script is full of wince-inducing dialogue and peppered with inanities (‘You’ve changed that boy’s life’…‘No. He’s changed mine’).

This revisionist skewering of biography has all the empathy of those ’80’s Sunday made- for-TV true stories of how heroic humanity can be in the face of despair. But in this film there is no sense of despair; rather an endless parade of backslapping heroism of the haves helping out the have-nots. Its saccharine oversimplification of complex sociological issues is a travesty. Don’t be fooled by Mister Oscar® – this is aneurism-inducing storytelling. At times, it’s like being in a coma and being force-fed heroin by Sarah Palin.