Attack the Block begins with a bunch of teenage miscreants mugging a young woman named Sam (Jodie Whittaker) at knifepoint in the a London street. During the altercations, an alien shoots from the sky, whereupon the kids beat the thing to death then parade it around on a stick. At this point, you’re pretty much thinking, great, I hope this alien’s friends fly down and kick the shit out of all these kids and claim the tall flats they live in as their base. I, for one, welcomed our new alien overlords.
But then you end up following these kids through their incompetent attempts to defeat the sudden influx of aliens and, dammit, after a while you don’t want them to die after all. Led by moodily attractive teenager Moses (John Boyega), the gang come across as quite threatening to begin with until you realise that actually they are all pretty incompetent because they are, well, yoof. It’s Guy Fawkes Night, and they were out to create havoc and striving to be part of the gang led by the block’s main criminal mastermind, Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter). Just as they finally strike it lucky enough to actually be on their path to, well, jail, more aliens rain down on them and everything changes, seeing the gang on the wrong side of everyone, from the police to Hi-Hatz to an irate Sam.
Having kids be the protagonists for a horror/sci-fi movie is pretty interesting, especially when director Joe Cornish chooses to be open about the facts that not all accidental alien-hunters are going to be as skilled as the team from Predators. These are kids who don’t have guns or fighting skills, but instead heed the call to arms with baseball bats, firecrackers, kitchen knives and false bravado. When shit gets real and they finally twig that they’re out of their depth, they can’t call for help because they’ve all run out of mobile phone credit; when they speed down staircases on their pushbikes they inevitably crash into the ground because they are not bicycle parkour enthusiasts. Despite the fact that the majority live quite standard home lives, getting told off by their mothers or told to keep out of trouble by their nannas, they’re all too desperately rough to turn to the grown-ups when being chased by deadly critters. And that’s the other thing, with them being kids: even though the movie is kind of funny, it’s not a balls-out comedy which makes it all the more surprising when you realise that not all of the teenagers are going to live out the film.
The film briefly touches on the state of British youth, when Moses speculates that the aliens have been sent by the Feds to kill the African-British because “we’re not killing each other fast enough”. It’s a nice try, but the fact that the kids, apart from Moses himself, seem to have fairly happy upbringings and some kind of self-awareness of what they’re getting into, means the movie doesn’t go far enough down that path, and you’re not even sure if any of the gang have learned a lesson by the end of it.
Nice touches are the aliens themselves: neon-fanged black holes of colour with no depth, like an orang-utan shagged a yeti in a dark cupboard using a glow-in-the-dark condom with a hole in it. The idea that colour shading would be different on a different hadn’t occurred to me and I thought it was really interesting, to be honest; it makes them shadowy and creepy even when they’re in a brightly-lit flat. It isn’t laugh-a-minute funny (which, as it’s from the writer of Hot Fuzz and stars Nick Frost, I was expecting), but it’s pretty amusing and the dialogue between the kids (who are also great actors) can be pretty hilarious at times. The two nine-year-old boys looking up to the gang are probably the comedy relief, flinging around tough phrases in high-pitched voices. It passes the Bechdel Test and the women in it—Sam, an elderly neighbour, and the girls the gang are all interested in—are pretty kick-ass, either physically or verbally.
Nick Frost’s high billing probably has to do with his star power more than his subdued role as a stoner in the only “safe house” in the building, though he and befringed try-hard Brewis (Luke Treadaway) smoke their way through some fairly funny moments. It was a fun movie that somehow missed a vital point with me, though I can’t think exactly what; I’d recommend it happily, even though it wasn’t quite cranked up all the way on either the funny, poignant, sci-fi or horror dials.
I give Attack the Block seven out of ten rows of glowing teeth. Because rows of teeth are SCARY.
Kenya, 2004: the government has just announced that school is now free for everyone, and kids everywhere launch themselves at high speed—I’m not even joking—at the nearest classroom. Woefully undersupplied and with only 50 desks for the 200 kids there, one particular school is doing it tough. And one more student is determined to attend: 84-year-old Kimani N’gan’ga Maruge (Oliver Litondo), survivor of a brutal uprising fifty years earlier, desperate to get the education he never did, and learn to read so he can understand an important letter he has received in the mail.
The story of Maruge’s taken-from-real-life trials, from the past to the film’s present, are in turns uplifting and devastating, the whole film perfectly pitched for the M rating it has in Australia but far too heartbreaking and reality-based for me to really try and be funny about. The children, singing, getting up to shenanigans and being generally adorable, lighten the tone, as does Maruge himself, who is clearly a man of hope. This is further strengthened when the viewer is pulled into his past, an unfathomable place of violence and horror where your toes and your children will be taken without a thought. Witnessing these scenes is nothing short of horrible and I was openly weeping in the theatre during them. You probably will too, and you’ll know what I’m talking about when it happens. The movie tugs at heartstrings in small ways and large, from moments as dramatic as the spilling of blood or as poignant as watching Maruge’s desperate plight to get into the school in the first place—told he can’t be there without the proper uniform, he uses part of his meagre savings to buy pants and turns them into shorts himself, then turns up in black shoes, long striped socks, shorts, a shirt and a blue jumper. His spirit is what buoys the film; his, and his teacher’s. Jane Obinchu (Naomie Harris) is determined to see him get taught despite the risks both professional and physical she brings upon herself by doing so.
There are moments of obvious exposition at the start, with Maruge remembering his wife and children as he moves about his home, and Jane on the porch with her husband as he tries to convince her to live in Nairobi with him and make babies while she tells him clearly that she wants to help the school. Despite radio announcements about Maruge’s schooling and journalists from the likes of the BBC shoving microphones in his face, you never really get a feel for the scope of Maruge’s influence locally or worldwide on a personal level. Rumours start about people being angry but it’s unconvincing; none of the parents ever come up to the school and give any valid reason why, and one permanently sour-looking father does a lot of glaring and is dangerously proactive about it, then fades into the background instantly afterwards. These aren’t huge gripes, however; you know me, I can’t like anything without pointing at some things and barking, “But if I was director, that would be different! Also there would be smell-o-vision and more Danny Trejo.”
Something as moving and hopeful as The First Grader needs to be seen to be believed, and you should see it. There are virtually no white people, and, thank the movie gods, none who come to save the day; it passes the Bechdel Test; Litondo’s acting is so expressive that he can make you want to cry just by staring into the distance; the enthusiasm of the kids for learning is infectious; the history lesson unforgettable; the message one we can all stand by: Learn. And don’t be an asshole. (I’m paraphrasing.)
I give it seven out of the ten tissues you’ll have to take with you.
There really aren’t enough movies about aliens coming to earth that aren’t nightmarish scenarios, like everything bar Hollywood getting destroyed in Battle: Los Angeles, or Keanu Reeves having to be emotional in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Of course, all the nice-alien ones are all comedies, because it’s tricky to take seriously, right? And hey, I’m no scientist—for all I know, electricity is still made by catching lightning with your kites—but my opinion is that it’s a bit self-absorbed to think that we’re the only living critters on this great expanse called the Universe. And I’ll always be happy thinking that any close encounters would be more likely to produce laughs than terror.
In Paul, nerdy British pals Graeme and Clive (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, stretching their abilities) take off on a UFO-themed road trip across America, hiring an RV and stopping at all the premier sites—the Black Mailbox, Area 51, Roswell, and so on. Despite their open minds, it still comes as a bit of a surprise when they happen upon Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen, so casually he possibly recorded his voice sitting in a beanbag in front of his tv), a green, big-headed alien driving poorly and at speed to get away from the people who are trying to kill him—and who is aiming to get back home. With his car smashed, Paul hitches a ride with our heroes, and they belt away from agent Zoil (Jason Bateman, coolly terrifying) and his bumbling subordinates, Haggard and O’Reilly (Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio, respectively), and even manage to pick up a pretty lady when they rent RV space from religious zealot Ruth (Kristen Wiig) and then kind of kidnap her.
As a proud owner of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz on DVD, I did a little dance when I heard about Paul. Comedies are something I’m shamelessly and vocally thrilled about watching and I was sad that I missed its opening weekend by being overseas. (I know, I know. You feel terrible for me, don’t you?) I finally made it on the weekend, prepared and happy, but honestly—I was disappointed. It wasn’t as consistently funny as their other films, and getting from point A to B did occasionally cause the movie to suffer from dead time. The addition of certain people for the sake of cameos—Jane Lynch’s waitress for one—seemed to serve no other purpose than to have everyone in the audience hiss “Glee!” at each other. Graeme and Clive make some dick moves, like crashing into people’s cars and kidnapping an unconscious woman; they also didn’t have much of a background to work with apart from Clive being an aspiring author and Graeme drawing pictures. What are their home lives like? Are they in the US because they’re skipping child support or murder charges back in England? Despite being infatuated with Pegg and Frost personally, I couldn’t quite bring myself to get attached to them in Paul. Moments of tension arise, like when Clive confesses the reasons behind his anger to Paul, but then everything is defused and the movie goes back to its slow burn.
Of course it is a comedy, and they are talented writers, so I’d be wrong to imply there weren’t some pretty great laughs in Paul. While Seth Rogen’s weed-soaked slacker schtick is a bit tired, Paul himself is such an amicable dude you’re invested in seeing him return home. The realisation of the extent of Paul’s fame—the reason he looks like all the alien pictures around is because they look like him—is good fun, including an amusing phone call conversation with a certain famous director. Ruth’s turnaround from hardcore Christian to wide-eyed believer involves her getting up to all the things she missed before, including cursing at everyone in sight. And like in their other movies, Pegg and Frost do inspire a kind of cosy, comforting hilarity because they’re such everyday flawed and entertaining people who keep getting into comedic scrapes that happen to get caught on camera. Discovering who Paul’s nemesis The Big Guy is, and the final scenes of the movie, are both clichéd and unpredictable, cheesy and perfect. And as Clive, Frost, who can sometimes in these movies be that kind of pain in the arse friend that’s good for an occasional laugh but you wouldn’t actually want to introduce to that attractive potential spouse, steps up and makes the two heroes finally on par when it comes to likeability. Wouldn’t mind seeing Nick Frost be the one who gets the girl for once, though.
In summary: go in with less fangirl hope than I did, and it would Meet or possibly Exceed Expectations, but as it stands, it’s Below Expectations. That still makes it a good movie, because I was aiming high, but it can be slow in points. While I can’t fault Greg Mottola’s directing, I can’t help but wonder if usual Pegg/Frost cohort Edgar Wright would have added that hyperactive excitement and extra edge that those boys deserve. Extra points go to Frost’s long hair, but points are taken off for Pegg’s. And one star extra for making an alien movie—because, frankly, there should be more, and now I’m compelled to go have a Mac and Me/Explorers movie night and sigh theatrically about my childhood.
At work we just got in a stack of new titles from a company called Nobrow Press. I hadn’t heard of them before, because I am mostly wandering around in a forest of book-related information feeling lost and overwhelmed, but let me tell you internets, they make a damn attractive book. We made a display just for the collection, because they are visually appealing, and we all kept wandering over to sniff the glorious, fresh-and-well-bound-book smell and discreetly flick through them and then eventually just buy. Seriously, I don’t know why we even bothered to make a display, it’s half-empty already just from employees with no self-restraint.
Anyway, the title I couldn’t resist was Hildafolk, by Luke Pearson. Nobrow has a graphic short story project called 17x23 and Hildafolk is one of the titles. It’s beautiful, and not very long, which is appealing to someone like me who has a short attention span. So I picked it up and took it home and read it and fell completely in love.
It’s hard to summarise something that has less words in it than the review I’ll end up writing (probably), but a young girl called Hilda lives with her mother, reads books on trolls, has an antlered-fox-type-companion-animal called Twig, and loves to draw and sleep in a tent when it rains. One morning, she goes out drawing, and, well, as she says at the end, “What a noteworthy day.” She learned a lesson about tolerance, made me do these alarming short barks of laughter, and then I sniffed the pages some more in a vaguely creepy manner and sighed at the end. It really is a perfect little story.
Luke Pearson’s big-eyed, stick-legged people and gorgeously coloured mountainous landscape are just the right level of cute and immersive. The snow and wind and Hilda’s fear of trolls are equally as clear and vibrant on the page, Pearson’s lines drawn as clear and smooth with the changing weather as they are with Hilda’s big, happy face. The terrain is familiar, but the critters within are not, trolls and giants as normal as snow and rain. Once I’d checked out other stuff on his site, I realised that his style, with clean lines like a Chris Ware tale but with movement (not to criticise Ware, who is amazing), if maybe Ware had an artistically-inclined baby with Charley Harper, is actually just my favourite style to look at. When it rains in Hilda’s tent, the PT PT PT of the downpour is evocative, and the earth-toned colours are so well-chosen that texture was rendered completely unnecessary. I mean, look, the whole thing has made me do entire sentences comprised entirely of fawning and without any terrible jokes. Surely that is something to be celebrated.
In summary: Exceeds Expectations, and about the most perfect way to spend ten minutes. It’s great, and you should read it. The only downside is the price here in Australia; while it’s a full-colour book with sturdy pages, it’s still only about twenty-four pages long and at twenty dollars, compared to around six dollars for a typical comic single issue, it’s a bit much. Still, it’s actually completely worth it, as both an art piece and as a comic, and you should all read it anyway and agree with me that the world created for Hilda should be the default setting for life. And then you should buy it. Or at least go and visit him over here, and tell him I sent you so he can be all, “What?”
I don’t know when it happened—or if it has always been so—but kids movies always have to have a singing and dancing scene. Inevitably, the fuddy-duddy-est of the characters will do the silliest dance and all the under-fives will fall over themselves laughing. I for one am waiting for the one kids movie that doesn’t require a song or a dance to get its point across. After all, life doesn’t work that way, and apparently I am a miserly old cynic who wants to strip all young children of fun in their flicks so that I don’t have to cross my arms and sigh pointedly when everyone bursts into song. So it’s probably not a surprise to you that there’s singing and dancing in Gnomeo & Juliet. Worse still, it’s Elton John—and while he’s a multi-kazillionaire and well-loved, I don’t actually enjoy his music at all. It’s fun enough for a kids movie, and the glitziness that goes alongside his work helps too (you will see glitter sunglasses, fear not), but he is executive producer and thus it seems like a blatant bit of self-promotion. If I liked Sir Elton perhaps I wouldn’t be so ranty right now—and one of my co-watchers loves him and had a dirty great smile on her face whenever his songs came on—but I don’t.
In happier news, I did quite like Gnomeo & Juliet. Aimed squarely at the kidlet market, though still pretty endearing for the old folks (read: twelve-plus), it’s a story we’ve all heard before, but perhaps not in this style. Gnomeo (James McAvoy) is a rough-n-tumble ceramic garden gnome from the blue Montague house, a bit of a larrikin with a podgy gnome belly. Juliet (Emily Blunt) is held literally on a pedestal by her father over the fence in the red Capulet house. Along with the crotchety home owners, the red and the blue gnomes have been enemies for as long as anyone can remember, but when Gnomeo and Juliet bump into each other in another property across the alley, they spark a forbidden romance that causes much drama as their relationship accidentally brings neighbourhood tensions to the fore. Will it follow the same storyline, with a double suicide at the end? I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say “no”, not when it’s a kids movie, though the smirking statue of Shakespeare (voiced by Patrick Stewart) at the gnomes’ local park insisted with a smirk it would end as he originally wrote it.
Frankly, gnomes just take a while to get used to. We know via the Toy Story trilogy that we can fall totally in love with otherwise inanimate objects, but watching gnomes clunk around the place, tending to their garden, repeatedly fishing for one bored fish, and so on—it’s tricky to connect with them, but you really do. The sound design is wonderful in this film, with the ceramic clacking of gnomes against themselves, each other and the environment completely spot-on and natural. They are less fragile than you’d expect but still can’t fall from great heights, and they will freeze as soon as a human is nearby into all manner of hilarious positions. I’m not sure how sold I was until Gnomeo and Juliet meet at a disused glasshouse where Juliet is hunting for the perfect flower, and the introduction of the two characters is one of the sweetest and most entertaining I have seen as the two—both in disguise—swing around the greenhouse in a nifty little action sequence. Once they fall into a pond and discover—to their mutual horror—that they are from opposing houses, their attraction doesn’t wane but things get a bit trickier when it comes to meeting up.
As in all good kids flicks, the main characters’ pals count for a lot. Gnomeo’s main man is actually a clay mushroom that, despite having no face (seriously, it’s just a mushroom) sniffs around the place like a dog and somehow makes barking noises. (What, THIS is what I can’t suspend disbelief for?) Juliet has an Irish pond frog as her helper, one who spurts jets of water out of the hose in her mouth and is happy to leap about singing, “Doooooomed!” after she discovers the dangerous romance. The most emotionally devastating character is, bizarrely, a plastic pink flamingo named Featherstone that Gnomeo and Juliet accidentally let out of a shed, who attacks everyone with love, knows no boundaries, has a strange Latin accent and, after recounting what led to him being trapped in a shed for twenty years, will make you want to bawl your eyes out and ruin your 3D glasses. (Not to mention, he’s voiced by Jim Cummings, who had a similarly devastating storyline in the substandard The Princess and the Frog. I hope his human life is much happier.) Add to that a bad guy in arrogant red gnome Tybalt—voiced, awesomely, by Jason Statham—and the ultra-competitive lawnmower fights the two groups of gnomes get into, and you’ve got yourself total entertainment.
It’s a bit cheesy, the ending is wrapped up far too quickly and with a bit of a vague hand-wave to some loose ends. There is a big stupid dance finale, if you’re bothered by such things. The 3D is absolutely fine—but underused. While it’s a good-looking movie, it’s restricted to two backyards, one neighbouring lot, and a brief foray into a park. It’s nothing that couldn’t have been done with live action, or puppets—there’s no sweeping panoramic shots, and limited action scenes, mostly lawnmower-related. I understand that the gnomes live a sheltered life, and that I’m overthinking this movie, but I’m not sure why they bothered sticking in a third dimension while keeping it so limited.
However, it’s super cute, pretty funny, and there’s lots of bright colours to keep the kids entertained. It’s not too childish for adults, and grown-ups get to play find-the-Shakespeare-in-joke—the houses are on Verona Drive, and when Juliet tries to stop a huge, drooling dog from entering her yard, she pushes a door against him yelling, “Out! Out! Damned Spot.” The computer having a banana as its logo was also a funny (though done before) touch.
In Summary: Meets Expectations. It’s all you could want from a kid’s movie—laughter, tears, and genuine desire for the couple to get together and live happily ever after with purple babies. (NB: This does not happen in the movie, but if I’d written it I would have made it happen. Maybe when I pitch my sequel to Elton at our next coffee meeting.) Gnomeo & Juliet is just plain good standard animation fare.
While I’m mostly a sucker for a tearjearker—otherwise I’d never go see Pixar films—sometimes I just flat-out refuse to see things that I know are going to send me spiralling into weeks of hysteria, lamenting the death/lost love/actually happy ending of some fictional person/lion/robot or other. It’s why I’ve never seen/read Whale Rider, The Notebook, and, topically, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas author John Boyne has a shiny new release called Noah Barleywater Runs Away. Now, as I haven’t read Boy, I can’t do much in the way of comparing. But I do know that Boy was one of those books that worked for children and adults—that it was set in the world of children, but in a way that adults could understand it differently. Noah Barleywater Runs Away is, I feel, aimed more at children, though I’m a big proponent of Everyone Should Read Whatever The Hell They Want And No One Should Ever Make Them Feel Bad About It, so adults could (and undoubtedly will) read this too. Because while Noah has talking donkeys and magical doors, it also has a tinge of sadness that made me stop reading at one point on the train, lest I burst into tears and cause everyone to move into another carriage at speed.
Noah Barleywater is eight years old, and, upon reflection, doesn’t feel he’s done enough with his life. Sure, he came third in the 500 metres at Sports Day the year before, and he knows the capital of Portugal (it’s Lisbon), but it’s about time he really went out and achieved something. So he runs away from home early one morning to do so. And on the way he encounters many extraordinary places and people, as eight-year-olds are wont to do in books about running away (because a more realistic book would be something short like “he ran away and then hid in a bus stop until someone saw him, called the police and he was sent home.”)
More than a little influenced by the likes of Enid Blyton and glorious old fairytales, he meets a talking tree in the first village who pleads with him not to steal its apples; by the next village, shortly afterwards, Noah’s apple theft has made front-page news and he is considered a menace to society. Luckily for him, the third village is a lot more welcoming, and there he meets a kindly old toyshop owner, whittling away at a piece of wood and ready to share the story of his life with Noah. This old man was a runner so fast he’d be back from the edge of the city by the end of your sentence, and met the King and Queen, amongst other celebrities; but he was also a man filled with regrets. By sharing the story of his life, he causes Noah too to reflect on the real, heartbreaking reason why he’s run away from the family he loves so dearly.
Well I’ve made that sound all very serious, but I think it’s because of Noah’s straight and fairly dignified way of speaking (“Goodness!” he will say, unlike the sweary eight-year-olds I’ve encountered.) Noah does have a sense of humour, and the whole book is very entertaining, filled as it is with great adventures and talking animals and flashbacks of Noah’s recent, real-life adventures with his suddenly very animated mother. It’s definitely aimed at children—but, as it’s a secret little sequel to something much-loved by adults, anyone who likes to have a bit of fairytale fun when they read will have a ball. And then a bawl. (How do I not have a book contract yet with this startling wit?)Of note also is the fact that the cover is illustrated by the fabulous Oliver Jeffers, who not only wrote Lost and Found and 
The Book-Eating Boy (amongst others), but is so visually cool that he recently appeared on The Sartorialist, looking dashing and upsetting people everywhere who don’t own blue shoes. I sent an email with a question to Oliver once, and he replied personally and in a friendly manner, so know that good people were involved in creating this work, and you should make a cup of cocoa, and curl up with a lovely little book. Except not until October, when it’s released. Sorry.
Kevin Broom is a Nazi memorabilia collector and an awkward sufferer of trimethylaminuria, an illness that causes him to smell strongly of fish all of the time. Seth “Sinner” Roach is a pre-WWII Jewish boxer, short, nine-toed, alcoholic, and the best fighter in England. Philip Erskine is a collector of beetles, a devout follower of eugenics, and a bumbling and incompetent fascist who is mostly deplorable, except that you feel some mild pity for him for being a bit pathetic —and he wants to conduct tests on the one-of-a-kind Sinner.
As Kevin deals with an alarming beetle-related kidnapping in the present, he pieces together how Sinner and Erskine, seventy years before, have brought him to the point where a graceless shut-in like himself has to deal with a gun-wielding member of a long-dead Nazi society. The narrative runs smoothly from Kevin’s present-day machinations to the remarkably gritty past of Erskine and Sinner, and it surprised me completely as I generally avoid historical novels (it’s not something I’m proud of, but I am much more likely to read something set right this very moment than something pre-1990s, even though I grew up before that) yet I was much more excited reading their story than Kevin’s. Which isn’t to say that Kevin’s thread wasn’t interesting—of course it was, this whole book is great—but perhaps I learned a Valuable Lesson About Reading; i.e. that I should stop being fussy about stories set before the glory times of New Kids On The Block.
Ned Beauman manages to deal with the serious—anti-Semitism, eugenics, fascists—yet produce a smart book that manages to completely engage by virtue of its characters. From Sinner, small yet alarmingly intimidating even in paper form, and poor inept Philip Erskine, to foul-mouthed pre-teen fibber Millicent Bruiseland and sarcastic social darling Evelyn Erskine, everyone is wonderfully drawn and fantastically entertaining. Even London itself, and the buildings we visit, are as alive as the people, with Erskine’s family home Claramore a frightening place full of oversized appliances that may electrocute anyone unlucky enough to be existing nearby.
Boxer, Beetle is a brilliant, fun-in-a-dirty-way read by someone who has the nerve to be youthful and beardy and intelligent. It’s written in such an immediate, realistic style—despite the level of farce, Beauman doesn’t hold back on the stark violence of the era—that sometimes I had to remind myself in the 30s-set scenes that it was just a well-researched novel and not a well-told historical document. With jokes.
Boxer, Beetle will be published in September.
You know you’re seeing a movie aimed at an older demographic when the overwhelming smell that hits you when you walk in the cinema is Dencorub. Starring septuagenarian Michael Caine, continuing to be the coolest person in any movie he’s in, Harry Brown portrays the gritty fantasy world many people desire, where everyday people—senior citizens or no—turn vigilante to stop the rise of crime on the streets.
Harry Brown lives a lonely life; his wife is seriously ill in hospital, and his only friend is Len, a man bitter about the thugs in their council estate and who moonlights as a caretaker in a local school for the differently abled. (Not really; but as soon as actor David Bradley appears onscreen, I defy you not to stage-whisper “It’s Filch from Harry Potter!” I mean, they even gave him the same hair.) When Harry’s beloved wife passes on, he is anguished; Len consoles him, but still retains his anger for the hooligans, revealing he is now carrying a weapon to fight with. That night, Len is killed in the estate’s pedestrian underpass, as ominous a place as the tunnel in Inglourious Basterds.
Now alone in the world, Harry is determined to wreak vengeance on those he knows killed his friend. An ex-marine, he knows how to keep calm in the face of the enemy. And so he does, the police—next to useless in the fight against these kids—vaguely on his trail.
Like Harry himself, you should probably bring your inhaler along for this, because you may forget to breathe. Tense from the devastating opening scene to the last moment, director Daniel Barber’s gripping style is immediate, shocking and emotional. Silent, heartbreaking scenes are played along with moments of shuddering brutality scored with ominous perfection by Ruth Barrett and Martin Phipps. I’d enjoy saying the movie was cut through with dashes of humour but really, it’s not. It isn’t a hopeless movie, but it’s no comedy; there is little humour to be leached from the subject matter of the decline of council estate security. There may have been a joke once. I mean, I must have been able to relax enough to breathe at some point; the idea that I held my breath for the entire 110 minutes is preposterous, but 55 minutes seems feasible.
When Harry sees the ruffians getting up to their shifty business practices in the underpass from his newfound viewpoint in Len’s ransacked home, you feel like you’re right there with him, watching with teeth-clenching apprehension for something terrible to happen. Drugs are sold, people are beaten; Harry watches it all with the same horror the viewers feel. You’ll be reaching for your phone, wanting desperately to call the police, but knowing their track record in the estate, you are as helpless as Harry is. Of course, you’re probably not an ex-Marine with no family or friends and nothing to lose, so you might not choose the same path that Harry does.
So does Harry Brown idealise vigilantism? It’s hard to say. You can’t argue that stabbing someone to death will stop them from viciously assaulting people, selling drugs in your neighbourhood and pushing burning dogshit through your mailbox. That’s not how society is supposed to work, of course, but if the police are no help, what choices will people feel they have? Of course, because this is real life, Harry doesn’t skip around building traps like Gerard Butler does in Law Abiding Citizen; he gets himself into awkward situations and isn’t immune to injury or ageing. There is a very real sense of danger in this film, with no guarantee of everyone likeable surviving.
Along with Alfie and Filch, the movie also stars Emily Mortimer as the one police officer trying to catch the killers—whoever they may be—in a business where single cases of estate violence are considered a low priority in the seemingly unsolvable bigger picture. She is superb, as are the actors playing the criminals, who are as real as anyone you’ve avoided on the street and will scare the pants off you. One scene, with a strung-out arms dealer who scratches his scalp incessantly and offers his unconscious and overdosing girlfriend to Harry for fifty quid, is especially unsettling.
With enough blood and bodies to satisfy Tarantino’s bloodlust yet never stray into ridiculousness, it’s a movie that isn’t for those with nervous dispositions. It’s not violent to sate the needs of a hungry cinemagoer, but violent to prove a point. It’s an incredible piece of filmmaking, with some of the saddest moments you’ll see in cinema; also, word is it’s Michael Caine’s final leading role. So go see it and give him the retirement fund payout he so richly deserves. And, of course, to hear ol’ Caine refer to his wife Kath as “Kaff”.
Rose Tremain’s new novel, Trespass, is not an upbeat tale. However, it revels in the joy of being alive; the beauty of nature, land, and your own space in the world, until someone dares to trespass upon it. It is also the kind of novel that is serious and makes it hard for me to crack jokes.
For one-time antiques and art superstar Anthony Verey, time is the culprit. Once envied by all of London, he has aged, and the sales of his antique wares are few and far between. He lives trapped in a perfect past where he was adored by beautiful young men and women alike, and where he could create a flawless space that he now wants to try recreating again. His sister, V, lives in the south of France with her partner Kitty, the two of them working on their garden and creating a flourishing landscaping business. Kitty loves the home they have made for themselves, and does not want anyone—least of all Veronica’s condescending brother, Anthony—to impose upon it. Nearby in France, Audrun lives in a bungalow on the edge of the land that once belonged to her family and is now owned by her despised and unhinged brother, Aramon. Aramon is feeling the pull of old age and wants to sell the property, the kind of glorious French home that foreigners so desperately want to own, and live a smaller, cleaner life. His sister is devastated at the idea of losing her beloved home, especially to her horrendous sibling. And as a lonely little girl trips her way along a lush wood path, she sees in the adjoining river a body, but whose?
Books set in France can often suffer from trying too hard to appeal to Francophiles with descriptions of a flawless landscape filled with endearing characters; they can feel like thinly veiled French tourism board propaganda. In Trespass, I felt none of this. France was a character in the book, but just as beautiful, dark and complicated as anyone else, and never overwhelming the human characters in the book. It even showed a neat little concern about foreigners buying property in rural France and making it impossible for young locals to move into homes their own towns. I was utterly pleased by this, I’ve never been particularly interested in France myself, probably because I was terrible at French for the few years I studied it in high school (and in the first year it was an elective subject, there were mostly girls in the class, which completely defeated the purpose for me even being at school at the time, which was: stare at boys and sigh.)
Trespass is an evocative story about time, regrets, and letting go of the past. The characters are flawed but realistic, human and aware of their own luck and misery. Trespass is the kind of book which will have you reaching towards Rose Tremain’s earlier novels, wondering what other worlds she can create.
At some point in this Tim Burton movie you may notice that the characters are calling their three-dimensional world “Underland” instead of the “Wonderland” you’re accustomed to. And at some point you may also think to yourself, “Am I actually hearing them say ‘Underwhelmed’, instead? Because that would be equally appropriate.” (Zing.)
I went to see this film because everyone else had seen it and I was sick of having to run off halfway through conversations at work with my hands over my ears shrieking, “I can’t hear you!” when idle chatting unexpectedly turned towards the plot. General consensus was that the movie was average. It’s not much hype: people will tell you a movie’s terrible and it is rarely as bad as you expect, or people will tell you a movie is excellent and it turns out to just be okay, but when everyone tells you something is meh, it’s usually pretty accurate. And in this case, it was.
With the misleading title of Alice in Wonderland, you would be forgiven for thinking Burton is recreating the story we’ve already seen once before in authentic Technicolor by some little-known company called Disney. In fact, what we have here is Alice’s story thirteen years later, when she is confronted in reality by an unpleasant situation and escapes from it to the world of her youth. Though this time around, she’s having a lot of trouble waking up.
Tim Burton keeps the nepotism going with Helena Bonham Carter playing the Red Queen as bobble-head toy. He also helps bestest pal Johnny Depp pay his bills by casting him as the Mad Hatter, which, of course, he does well, but frankly I am sick of the assumption that Depp is the only actor alive today who can put on a silly headpiece and an affected voice. Too much more like this and he is in danger of becoming a cuter version of Mike Myers, a comparison not helped by the Hatter’s occasional Shrek/Fat Bastard Sco’ish accent. Alice herself is played by Our Mia Wasikowska, who has been accused of appearing to be a crack addict but, as far as I can tell, is only at the mercy of the makeup artists just like everyone else, and her voice is entrancing. In other news, Little Britain’s Matt Lucas plays both Tweedledum and Tweedledee, underused and epic of face; king of stern Alan Rickman says “stupid girl” in an eerily Snape-like voice as the blue caterpillar; Crispin Glover is put on a stretching machine as Carter’s sidekick and Anne Hathaway drifts about with her hands aflutter as the White Queen. There are of course more cameos, and good ones too. The actors are not at fault for the movie: Burton always chooses well, and is lucky that his beloved wife is a good actress seeing as he casts her in everything he does. But the cast cannot lift this movie up from mediocrity.
I can’t quite define what is lacking here. I’ve always been fairly ambivalent towards Burton’s movies, in that I never hate them but can never quite understand the level of obsession some people have for him as a director. Alice is the same: not awful, but not brilliant. The score, by Danny Elfman, is fine. The costumes are quite lovely, especially Alice’s as she grows and shrinks. So as we follow our heroine through this world, trying to save her old friends from the Red Queen’s tyrannical rule, and we cheer her on, but not actually out loud. The theatre contained one of the quietest audiences I’ve ever been part of—and it was fairly full and IMAX-sized—because there wasn’t much to react to. It wasn’t funny, or scary, or anything. It just was.
Avatar, while being fairly crap, has done one thing to audiences: it has spoiled us in regards to visuals. If Alice in Wonderland had come out before Avatar, instead of the other way around, perhaps Tim Burton’s world would have stunned us more. As it is, James Cameron’s world was so captivating that 3D has to hit you upside the head with immersion to have an impact, and Alice did not. Burton’s beautiful use of colour—draining everything in the White Queen’s world, enriching it in the Red Queen’s, and making it blossom in the end credits—is always something to be admired, but still did not lift the movie.
For something that costs a fortune to see—we paid forty-four dollars, even before food—it doesn’t feel worth it. Unlike Avatar, it’s not necessary to see it 3D. Save your money now; hire it on DVD in a few months. It’s worth $5.95, surely, but $22.00? Not much is.
Two notes: one, don’t bother staying until the end of the credits, nothing happens; and two, it is one of the few things I’ve seen recently that passes the Bechdel Test. If anything, see it for that.
In an annoying but impossible to overcome state of affairs, I’ve often been turned away from art in general (music, artworks, acting, writing) when I find that the mind behind the art is a git. One of my friends told me that either Gary Crew or Garry Disher (I now cannot remember which) said that women are terrible writers; I now don’t read either, or any other Garries just in case. Musicians with extreme drug problems piss me off, but I figure if I stop listening to musicians who take any drugs at all I’ll be stuck listening to people like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus and I may as well just fling myself off a bridge now. Actors who have affairs and let their egos run their lives mean there are movies I can’t always be bothered with. I’m a prude. What can you do?
All this means that Sherlock Holmes and its two tabloid-headline stars should have been something I’d be getting on my soapbox and whining about. Jude Law has long been someone I didn’t like, because he always seemed smarmy and annoying even before it turned out he’d been bonking the nanny of his eleven thousand children. Robert Downey Jr had some high-profile drug problems, but, luckily for him, they were mostly when I was a lot younger and I’m vague on the facts, and also he made Iron Man which was a surprisingly brilliant movie. So we had two maybes, but the name that tipped me into seeing the movie—apart from Holmes, of course—was Guy Ritchie. Sure, his most recent outings haven’t been well received, but I love Snatch and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, sensibly never saw Swept Away and really didn’t mind RocknRolla. He makes it, I’ll be there.
And as always, his casting is flawless. Downey Jr is brilliant as the flawed genius Sherlock Holmes, and Jude Law is finally cast properly as the moustachioed Dr Watson. Watson is intelligent, reserved, wants to live a stable life but can’t bear his friend getting into scrapes without him, and the British Jude plays him perfectly. Eddie Marsan, recently alarming as the batshit driving instructor from Happy-Go-Lucky, plays bumbling Inspector Lestrade and is frequently made a fool of by Holmes. Rachel McAdams continues to be wonderful as Irene Adler, Holmes’ love interest and adversary, but is being controlled by a character who is always in shadow and mysterious unless you have a basic knowledge of Holmes lore. Period actor Hans Matheson froths with power as the hilariously titled Lord Coward, and Sunshine crazy Mark Strong’s slicked-back hair frightens admirably atop nemesis Lord Blackwood.
Another of Ritchie’s talents lies in sound design and music; while this movie doesn’t having the banging sixties-plus music that his other soundtracks have, the raucous organ pieces suit the movie perfectly and the dulled effects after someone gets hit in the ear or have an explosion happen near their head (surprisingly frequent) make the entire film really quite immersive. The sets are gritty and expansive; the shenanigans uproarious, the fight scenes bloody and the whole thing a great Boxing Day antidote to Christmas.
Unlike the deductive reasoning of smartypants Poirot, a lot of the clues to this were chemistry-based and not that easy for the audience to figure out. It wallowed in cliché a little when the final fisticuffs occur atop a London landmark and end in an injury convenient to comments made seconds earlier; also, the secret society plotline hovered somewhere between From Hell and Da Vinci Code. But the amicable chemistry between the two leads, who squabbled amusingly like brothers, was great fun to witness, despite the immaturity. In one scene Sherlock points a violin bow at Watson; Watson says, “Get that thing out of my face” and Holmes replies, “It’s not in your face, it’s in my hand.” The audience giggles. Anachronistic perhaps, but fun all the same.
The movie doesn’t really need me to give a summary. There’s Holmes, there’s Watson, there’s a mystery. Fighting and girls and bangs, disguises and rolling about in carriages and pipe-smoking and steam-powered boating down the Thames. A bad guy in a big coat and criminal sidekicks with daft expressions.
And to make the purists giddy with glee, as in the books there is not any moment in the movie when Holmes says, “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
For years now I’ve been asked—nay, HARRASSED—by various friends to pick up a Neil Gaiman book. Author of such famed books as comic Sandman, novel American Gods (amongst many others), and kid’s books coming out the wazoo, he’s a prolific writer of many talents, a man of good looks, great to his fans (get a tattoo, post it online, he’ll love you forever and tell you so) and an all-round fantastic guy who supports important political views and charities.
The readership of The Graveyard Book probably doesn’t give a toss about his politics, however. Aimed squarely at the nine-plus market, but, as with the rest of his books, undeniably readable for grown-ups, this book was where I started finally reading Neil Gaiman. If you’re going to start somewhere with a new author, may as well make it something you can finish in a couple of hours, so if it’s terrible you haven’t wasted to much of your precious life. Good news: it ain’t terrible! His enormous fan base is probaby unsurprised to hear this.
The book begins in a very gloomy way, as a man makes his way through an English home with a blood-soaked knife by his side. He has come to this house to kill a family, and has succeeded, mostly—except for one member, a young baby who toddles his way out of the house to the graveyard on the hill. There, aware of the horrors his family endured, the occupants of the graveyard take him into their care. One such occupant, the mysterious Silas, distracts the boy’s would-be murder who leaves, confused about why he was there in the first place. Thus starts the boy’s new life in his skewed new world.
And what happens over the course of the book is a series of fantastic vignettes that introduce you to characters as Bod—short for Nobody—grows up and meets new people. From the real-life Scarlett, who stops by to play in the park and becomes Bod’s first real-life pal; to the so-called witch Liza Hempstock, tucked away in the unhallowed ground at the end of the graveyard, who is mostly ignored by the other ghosts. Bod goes through all the shenanigans you’d expect of a child, travelling through ghoul gates and avoiding someone intent on murdering him. I remember when I had to deal with the same ballyhoo during my own childhood, and it’s wearing
Bod stays good-natured throughout, and is an appealing character. During his brief stay at school, he can’t help his goodness coming through, despite it bringing about more problems for him. When Silas, his guardian and teacher, leaves him in the care of another woman who, in a terrifying turn of events, feeds him beets—BEETS, seriously, this is the stuff of nightmares—he starts off an arrogant child who you would advocate the return of corporal punishment for and then, after a rollicking and unnerving adventure, sees the error of his ways. He’s a good kid, in all, and you don’t want him to die in a horrible stabby way like his poor family did.
The ending is a little sad, but mostly hopeful; everything is neatly tied up and my opinion of Neil Gaiman raised. Perhaps I will try to finally read all the books I have of his dotted around my home: the graphic novel Marvel 1602, and American Gods. Why do I have these around? Dude, I can’t remember how I accumulated all this stuff either. I can only assume, now, that it’s ghosts.
(I would also be interested to hear if anyone else was confused about what the cover shows apart from a beat-up gravestone. It took me two weeks of it lying about the couch area before tonight, when I yelled unexpectedly, “Oh, it’s his face in profile!” This is why I am not a designer.)
Otherwise known as Ron Weasley and the Incidental Other Characters due to my fierce adoration for Rupert Grint, this, the newest and penultimate-book-yet-third-last-movie is now out on DVD. Praise be! We now have all six movies on DVD, lined up in a neat row with unmatching covers, much to my anal-retentive horror. I’m sure in a few years when all of the movies are out there will be some luscious boxed set that I will be forever coveting but unable to bring myself to buy.
To be upfront about it: I really enjoyed this movie. It’s quite long, and because most of the movie seems to think it’s a comedy the last twenty minutes appear to be a completely different, much more depressing film. Most of you know how it ends, and in a shocking piece of news, I didn’t cry (but then, I knew it was going to happen and have read the final book with the character’s short, er, return, too.)
The movie begins with Harry reluctantly leaving a potential new love with a beautiful young girl to return to Hogwarts. The next two hours are taken up mostly with relationship laughs, as Harry and Ginny are thwarted by the handsome Dean (and Ginny’s newfound few inches on Harry), and the series’ will-they-won’t-they is hindered by hilarious groper Cormac’s lust for Hermione and the nauseating Lavender’s fixation on Ron. Clearly I’m biased, but this really is a Ron-heavy film, with him sweeping me off my feet with lines like: “The Sorting Hat urged us all to be brave and strong in these troubled times. Easy for it to say, though. It’s a hat, innit?” Or when they’re spying on Draco Malfoy in Borgin and Burke’s and Harry wonders why Malfoy would be there, to get the reply from Ron: “It’s a creepy shop; he’s a creepy bloke.” Stick him with his two equally hotter-than-chips brothers and you get one of my favourite scenes, when Harry, Ron and Hermione are in Fred and George’s stunning magic shop, as he asks his brothers: “How much is this?” “Five galleons.” “How much for me?” “Five galleons.” “I’m your brother!” “Ten galleons.”
More hijinks follow, with Ron being the unwitting recipient of a love potion, Harry beaming his way through a scene involving a whole lot of luck and the death of a character nobody will miss, and Hermione avoiding the affections of a deluded Cormac, whose seductive eating of an ice-cream at Professor Slughorn’s party is one of the funnier parts of the movie.
Speaking of Slughorn, I feel I must mention here that there is a very creepy underlying part to this movie. Slughorn, played by the ever-roundy Jim Broadbent, is a new addition; Dumbledore explains to Harry how Slughorn likes to “collect” talented or famous students. Slughorn, however, knows more about the young Tom Riddle than he lets on. The only way to find this out is for Harry to become close to him, and in a slimy scene, Harry asks Dumbledore, “You said Professor Slughorn will try to collect me.” Dumbledore says, “I did,” and Harry asks, “Do you want me to let him?” Dumbledore replies, in a low voice, “Yes.” And the audience shudders. Later, after helping Ron out with a potion, Slughorn gives he and Harry a “pick-me-up” in his chambers in the form of mead—clearly in the wizarding world serving alcohol to students is completely kosher and not at all a giant red flag.
On the shallow side, while the boys don’t all have the glorious long locks they did in the fourth movie, I at least appreciate Snape’s new feathery ’do, which makes him look slightly less greasy. I adore Draco Malfoy’s new emo look, replete with dark, well-cut suits, hysterical sobbing and a permanent look of angst. There are a few characters who I wished to see more of: Hagrid is only in it for about two minutes, apart from lurking in the background of a few scenes; the divine Neville Longbottom does not get the time he deserves up the front; and the absolutely gorgeous Luna Lovegood needs a much bigger part than she currently gets, with the actor playing her perfectly as a girl who is tormented by everyone but always comes through unscathed. When Luna discovers an injured and hidden Harry in the train at the beginning of the film, he apologises for their delay and they have the following heartbreaking exchange: “Sorry I made you miss the carriages, by the way, Luna.” “That’s all right. It was like being with a friend.” “Oh, I am your friend, Luna!” “That’s nice.” Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort is not in it at all—you only see the Dark Lord in a couple of flashbacks as a young, truly creepy Tom Riddle.
Whoever was in charge of CGI must have recently purchased the program How To Make a Swirly Ink Effect because it’s a vastly used image in this film, which is fine. As usual, the effects are flawless and gorgeous, though not heavily required in this movie until the final dramatic scenes, where Harry and Dumbledore are questing in dangerous and inky places for something important and deadly to Voldemort. The best, which I’ve already mentioned, is George and Fred’s magic shop; much like the Troll Market in Hellboy II The Golden Army, it just took you into the kind of beautiful otherworldly place that really made you believe in magic and monsters. The first Harry Potter movie had scenes like this in spades, and I miss them.
I’m desperate for the seventh and eighth movies to come out; I have my tissues ready for all the carnage and am hoping for more jokes than I remember being in the book. I also don’t understand why they’re bothering to split a book with an utterly dull middle into two, but that’s a vent for when the next movie comes out, hey?
