The Other Guys - Blu-ray Review

'McKay uses the end credits to trot out point after graphed point about the nefarious ills of the banking world, hinting that maybe he at least thought there was some sort of moral to The Other Guys. There isn't.'

A disposable comedy in the same vein as Date Night, The Other Guys is director Adam McKay's fourth collaboration with star Will Ferrell in a formula which peaked at its inception with Anchorman and went downhill significantly with subsequent efforts Talladega Nights and Step Brothers. If not a return to form, The Other Guys is at least a return to fun. McKay might not hit his zany best but segments of the film are reminiscent of the best moments of Anchorman and in Mark Wahlberg, McKay has found a dynamic presence who fits in well opposite Ferrell's never-changing shtick.

Early on though, it is two other presences who raise most of the laughs. Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson appear as two wonder cops, consistently putting the rest of the department to shame and stealing the glory Hoitz (Wahlberg) craves and Gamble (Ferrell) avoids. In the opening title scene, McKay blends knowing cop-film humour with his own blend of shouted joke (Jackson enquiring 'did someone call 9-1-Holy S**t?' is a highlight) to good effect, resulting in a segment that is hard to beat when compared to any other set piece the film has to offer.

When Johnson and Jackson are off screen, the film suffers markedly as Ferrell and Wahlberg take time to find their feet. Ferrell in particular brings baggage to any role he takes on, only successfully shedding it once in recent memory during his standout performance in Stranger Than Fiction. Whilst the partnership grows to produce some gentle humour alongside the more broad and bawdy stuff, you can't help but feel that without Ferrell this might have functioned even better - perhaps putting Wahlberg opposite another actor not necessarily known for his comedic leanings would have paid significant dividends.

McKay uses the end credits to trot out point after graphed point about the nefarious ills of the banking world, hinting that maybe he at least thought there was some sort of moral to The Other Guys. There isn't. Including some afterthought statistics and making your bad guy (the excellent Steve Coogan) an investor, doesn't equal making a point about a popular subject and it largely feels like McKay is trying to cash in on the newspaper coverage devoted to the topic.

The more McKay-stylised humour of The Other Guys won't help to endear him to a new audience and an early extended joke about lions fighting tuna fish is a brave move considering its exactly the sort of thing that has turned people off him in the past. The film does recover though and builds into a more than acceptable comedy piece, even if the moralising would have been better left on the sidelines completely.

Look further...

'made all the better by the mismatched partnership of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg' - Cinematic Paradox, 7/10

Trailer Of The Week - Week #9

The trailer for Mike Mills' forthcoming film Beginners reads rather like a tick list of the common staples of indie cinema.

Whispered or mumbled dialogue? Check. Unexpected life changing event? Check, check. Use of pictures, some hand drawn, to tell the story? Check. Autumnal leaves? Check. Artistically inclined relationship with ethereal European woman? Check. Dog with subtitles? Check.

Fine, laugh at the dog but you watch - it'll be next year's common indie trope. And so, despite featuring some very likable people (and a very likable dog), this is a mixed bag. It looks distinctly too 'floaty' for some tastes but the story is intriguing and Mills' offbeat direction might make this a winner. One to look for at your local arthouse later in the year.

Trailer Of The Week is a regular Film Intel feature which picks a different tasty trailer of delectable goodness every week and presents it on Sunday for your viewing pleasure. Sometimes old, sometimes new, sometimes major, sometimes independent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes a load of old bobbins: always guaranteed to entertain. If you want to make a suggestion for Trailer Of The Week, see the contact us page.

Film Intel's Final Word

What happened this week and why you shouldn't care.



Have We Found The Ultimate 'Why The Hell Is This In 3D?' Movie?

Story: Empire

I'm completely 'for' Luhrmann directing this - he does big, massively dramatic, period pieces very well - but in 3D? Surely this is one of those properties (a classic) that 3D just can't improve?



Malick's Next Surfaces. Has Large, Outstanding, Cast. Sure To Suffer Editing Room Cuts.

Story: The Hollywood Reporter

Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem, Barry Pepper and Rachel Weisz. There's no way Malick's notoriously trigger happy editing figure will allow that brilliant cast to remain unscathed. Weisz is our bet.



Bodyguard Remake Imminent. Plot Will Revolve Around Marc Webb And His Team's Battle With Spider-Man Fanboys.

Story: Slash Film

The fact that this is being produced for a 'young female singer with popular appeal' does not bode well. Our Marc Webb idea is much better.

Classic Intel: The Man Who Knew Too Much - Online Review

'a disposable piece of interest to Hitchcock fans, rather than a must see classic'

Alfred Hitchcock's first of two attempts to adapt Charles Bennett and D.B. Wyndham-Lewis' story (re-written for the 1956 version by John Michael Hayes) of mistaken identity and assassination attempts, this 1934 release of The Man Who Knew Too Much serves as an interesting example of the director's early work, rather than as a hugely successful film in its own right.

At certain moments, the director's famously meticulous crafting is highly visible. A trip to the dentist's chair for protagonist Bob Lawrence (Leslie Banks) soon turns into a prime example of Hitchcock's clever framing and lighting. Bob, realising he has walked into an enemy safe house, turns the tables on the dentist (Henry Oscar), setting the room up with the dentist's light shining on the entrance door to disguise his features. Hitchcock shows Banks swinging the light into the camera and then pushing it closer towards it, white-screening the viewer to replicate how anyone entering the office will view the scene. As this happens, the director cuts between an enemy agent climbing the stairs, simultaneously providing a prime example of the tension-building he would become so famous for.

A later scene at The Royal Albert Hall stands out even above the dentist scene as a prime example of Hitchcock at his early best. Bob's wife, Jill (Edna Best), sits in the audience, obviously conflicted over what to do about unfolding events. In one shot, Hitchcock starts on Best's face then pivots slowly to the right, in time with her head movement, to look up to a box where she suspects a would-be assassin is hiding. The curtain flutters. We see practically nothing. The shot pivots back to Best and then onwards with her gaze in the other direction towards a waiting policeman. In one simple shot, Hitchcock shows the internal trauma of Jill, as well as setting up the action element of the scene, building it up with the music the orchestra is playing until the inevitable end at the crescendo. It's a wonderful example of a confident director, intertwining clever shooting techniques with a tense musical scene that functions without a single piece of dialogue.

Elsewhere though, there are problems here - some related to the time in which the film was made - which make it easy to understand why the director revisited the material to try and better it in the fifties. The final scene, a horribly misjudged shoot-out, rings completely false and fails to fit with the mantra of quiet spy-play the film develops elsewhere. The acting too is spotty; at any point when a character is required to fall down (dead or otherwise) there are problems and the clipped accents of the day don't help the naturalism of the dialogue. Peter Lorre is menacing as the mysterious Abbott but his well-documented language problems are obvious and his henchmen mainly feel weak in comparison. Leslie Banks is entertaining in the lead but he lacks the charisma and delivery of later Hitchcock leading men, a criticism which the film also leaves itself open to, ending up as a disposable piece of interest to Hitchcock fans, rather than a must see classic.

The Man Who Knew Too Much is available free of charge with an appropriate Lovefilm subscription in the UK.

Look further...

'an economic little thriller which “blends droll wit and suspense”' - FilmFanatic.org

Police, Adjective - DVD Review

'one-hundred minutes or so of mind-numbing waiting'

In one fifteen-minute long scene at the end of Police, Adjective, writer/director Corneliu Porumboiu manages to summarise his message, his film's title and the overall reason for its existence. Its a scene that's infused with wit, with a knowledge of the genre his movie purports to move in and with an adept skill at intelligently written satire. It's just a shame that, for this scene to work, we have to sit through one-hundred minutes or so of mind-numbing waiting. And that, let me tell you, is a lot of waiting.

Policeman Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is tracking a student suspected of dealing drugs to his two friends. We watch Cristi as he follows the student around town (mostly the bleak but well shot Vaslui in the film's native Romania). We watch Cristi as he watches the student smoke 'hashish'. We watch Cristi waiting for another suspect to leave his house. We watch Cristi as he returns home and eats his dinner for God's sake. We basically watch Cristi do everything and anything, little of which is of any interest, all of which is mundane and docile.

That this may well be the film's point is all well and good but watching nothing happen for one-hundred minutes just doesn't make for engaging cinema. Nor, does it make for an original concept. Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot famously made an entire play from the concept of waiting and was described on release as 'the play where nothing happens twice'. In Beckett's drama though, there's constantly funny dialogue, several colourful side characters and a general feeling of interest, which Police, Adjective struggles to create.

There are moments, prior to the fantastic final scene where Porumboiu's satirical script burbles to life but they're few and far between and the majority of the film is composed of dialogue-less images of Cristi. It's a concept which defines the film; honest, proud, even clever but even more so isolated, lonely and overbearingly cold.

Look further...

'a captivating tale about the battle between duty and conscious' - A Life In Equinox, 7.75/10

Rapt - DVD Review

'As social comment, it's inaccurate and stereotypical. As kidnap film it lacks tension and impetus'

A kidnap film which is pedestrian almost to the point of being static, Rapt cultivates a critique of the upper classes and their disconnected life which, thanks to an unrealistic central character and some inept direction, it never fully follows up on. As social comment, it's inaccurate and stereotypical. As kidnap film it lacks tension and impetus.

In the lead, Yvan Attal is the greatest asset director Lucas Belvaux has got. In some small scenes, he portrays a shocked, stunned and scared witless kidnap victim remarkably well, deferential to his captors whilst he physically wastes away in what looks suspiciously like a Christian Bale-esque piece of method acting. But his character never convinces. Initially portrayed as a fearless man of passion and brimstone, the Stanislas Graff that we see for most of the film bears little resemblance to the character we see out of captivity. This change renders Belvaux's social commentary redundant: Graff just isn't the capitalist monster he wants to make him out to be.

The pace, which drags throughout the film's two hour-plus runtime, begins to show signs of picking up when a super-cop takes on the task of delivering the ransom money. The kidnappers give him a point-by-point set of directions as his colleagues attempt to follow him on the ground and in the sky. It's reasonably successful for a time but come the end everything Belvaux builds up is torn down by an inept piece of choreography, acting and shooting as the policeman tells one hoodlum he's just killed his friend (with a single punch no less) whilst said friend sits in full view of the camera with his eyes open, blood capsule duly bitten upon and dribbling down his mouth. It's incompetent stuff and it wastes the lengthy build up previously embarked upon.

Belvaux's struggle to create tension is matched by his struggles with the atmosphere of Rapt. Largely devoid of a score, the director places greater emphasis on his actors than he needed to and at many points - particularly when the focus is on the police, Graff's associates or family - the screen is populated with lifeless mountains of dialogue, delivered in a completely flat and listless manner that only seems fit for a TV soap. André Marcon as Graff's business associate is perhaps chiefly at fault in this regard but it seems unfair to pick out just one element in what is a debacle on almost every level and an incredibly un-engaging one at that.

Look further...

'Rapt is ultimately more of a character study than a straightforward thriller, and it impresses on both levels' - Phil On Film

Why Isn't This A Film? - Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

What have we got here then?

Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a now-legendary videogame and the fourth entry in the Call Of Duty series. It was the first game to take the series away from its fact-based World War II roots and in to a recognisable, but fictional, modern day setting.

OK fine. What’s it about?

As has become standard in the Call Of Duty games, the story follows a number of protagonists, chief amongst them being new SAS soldier 'Soap' MacTavish. Soap is in Eastern Europe, attempting to track down Imran Zakhaev, a bitter revolutionary threatening to launch nuclear bombs against the western world if his demands are not met.

Interesting. Is there something more?

Other protagonists include US marine Paul Jackson and Soap's commanding officer Captain Price. Jackon is in a middle-eastern country trying to track down Khaled Al-Asad, another revolutionary who has mounted a coup and is believed to be in possession of further nuclear material. Price's missions are experienced in flashback form and tell the story of his first brush with Zakhaev.

Save me the trouble then – is it any good?

In single-player the game is compelling but short lived. Even when chasing down many of the Xbox 360 achievements, the game can be beaten in around ten hours. Thankfully the 'getting to know you' period of becoming comfortable with the controls and the gameplay style is short and once you get used to the fact that you can't issue orders to your team-mates (indeed, often, they will issue orders to you), it becomes very enjoyable, very quickly. Varied missions, such as sniper assignments or the gunship mission, ensure you don't tire of the more standard first-person 'point and shoot' mechanics.

But…

It does go by in a flash and at times it's supposed 'realism' is destroyed by its low-level difficulty. On the lower two difficulty levels for example, you can run in to a room full of enemies, shoot a couple of them, stab a couple more and emerge without a scratch. For a game so proud of how accurate it is, this can grate. Equally, a lot of time is spent either waiting for squad members to catch up or watching them have all the fun. On several occasions there will be two squad members who 'breach' an enemy hideout, taking out anyone present in the process before you even enter the room. It's nice to have some allies with a bit of intelligence but perhaps giving them a less prevalent role would have resulted in more fun for the player.

What are its chances of being made as a film?

Given how popular the franchise is, it only seems a matter of time before a film appears under the Call Of Duty banner. How closely it will be aligned to the plot of COD4 though remains a mystery and it might well be that this game's core plot is judged as too political to link to what would probably be a more straight up action film. In May 2009, Empire picked up on a Hollywood Reporter article (that most reliable of sources) which mentioned the fact that Activision had made tentative steps towards selling the property although, currently, there's nothing concrete in the works.

But who'd star in it?

Sure fire favourite for a role as one of the SAS officers must be everyone's favourite Scot, Gerard Butler who is no stranger to derivative action tosh and seems made for a part in this. Of the game's voice cast Craig Fairbrass seems the actor most likely to reprise some sort of presence in the film. You might recognise him from... erm, well not much really, although he has been a presence in British TV and film for long enough to justify a minor inclusion here.

Seeing as the main two players, Soap and Jackson are silent characters, anyone could really do a decent shot at bringing them to screen. I've said before that it would be nice to see Sam Riley do something a bit more mainstream following British films Control and Brighton Rock although Hollywood's current favourite hard nut Tom Hardy would be a more predictable fit for a special forces officer, considering his efforts in the snow during Inception. On the American side of things, Aaron Eckhart looks the part in fatigues from what's so far been shown of World Invasion: Battle LA whilst Ben Foster would make a good fit as the more junior Jackson.

Will it be any good?

No. The problem with a film of Call Of Duty is that the franchise doesn't require 'selling' to be a box office hit. Like Tomb Raider and Prince Of Persia before it, the series has enough fans that the film will make money regardless of its quality. History tells you that when that's the case, the quality of the product diminishes substantially, as anyone who saw the two mentioned outings will attest.

Anything else I should know about it?

For none fans: a bit of history on the series. The first three CODs are all based during the Second World War with players taking on roles from different members of the allied forces including, in an unusual step for a mainstream game, Polish and Canadian fighters. COD5, was actually called World At War and returned the series back to its Second World War routes after COD4 had taken us into the modern era. COD: Modern Warfare 2 is the direct sequel to COD4 whilst the most recent game, COD: Black Ops was released at the end on 2010, taking the player through a series of challenges set in and around the 1960s.

Why Isn't This A Film? is a regular Film Intel feature which takes a book (you know... one of those things with pages in, doesn't project on to a screen, makes small rustling noises), comic, video game or graphic novel and assesses its adaptation prospects. One day this feature will get something right and we will win something major and valuable. Possibly.

Heartless - Blu-ray Review

'a veritable melting pot of genre influences and inflections - from science fiction to straight-up family drama - resulting in a film that, whilst tonally unstable, is largely a soaring success'

Blending genres together is a dangerous game. Trying to do a horror-comedy, for example, can leave you with a Stan Helsing. On the flip side though, for every ten or so Stans, there's a Shaun Of The Dead. In Heartless terms, that makes Phillip Ridley's dark and occasionally disturbing film the good equivalent of films like Psychosis, A Perfect Getaway or even, to an extent, Shutter Island. Like those films, Ridley starts with psychological horror but adds in a veritable melting pot of genre influences and inflections - from science fiction to straight-up family drama - resulting in a film that, whilst tonally unstable, is largely a soaring success.

As protagonist Jamie, Jim Sturgess gives a skittish and focused performance which is as magnetic as many of this year's Oscar nominated ones. Uncomfortable with his physical appearance, Jamie is by turns either quietly shy or maniacally aggravated. Sturgess' portrayal of the character - flicking between dribbling mess and composed avenger - works well opposite the straight play of excellent support from Noel Clarke and Clémence Poésy, both taking on equally complex characters who wear their emotions less overtly than Sturgess'.

Without Ridley's brilliant eye for a shot and tense self-penned script though, performances like these could easily have been wasted. On a thematic level, Ridley seems to have something to say about the state of society... he's just not exactly sure what it is. As the film suggests it might swing towards hoody-horror, Ridley mixes in characters who bemoan the 'yoof' culture hooligans but do little to stop them. At one point he goes further, showing a character moaning on the phone one minute and then selling guns the next. It's a dichotomy that's never fully resolved but resolution is of little consequence; the mere fact that Ridley is observing these changing times is enough.

One of the main reasons it is enough is his camera work and cinematography, both of which touch on magnificence. Matt Gray's sharp-shooting adds to the tension and as scenes move through brilliantly-lit colour palettes (from cold-strip oranges, to artificial greens and pastel purples) each one has something to offer the film's heightened sense of urbanisation.

For all its technical know-how though (and there is a lot of technical know-how to make this low-budget a film look this good), it is Ridley's story of the demons in the streets and the demons in your head that captivates. Weaving scenes of introspective torment together with more overtly stylised, almost fantastical, elements he creates a world where little seems certain except death and violence. A Matrix-alike visit to dodgy-deal maker Papa B (Joseph Mawle) is a highlight but there's so many highlights here, the whole film thrills ridiculously well and ends with an appropriate level of punch.

Look further...

'the pieces never add up. Philip Ridley mashes-up so many different genre conventions that the first half of the film is rather incoherent' - Big Thoughts From A Small Mind, C

Trailer Of The Week - Week #8

Followers of our twitter feed may well have noticed that earlier in the week, we caught up with Phillip Ridley's 2009 film, Heartless. A full review is due soon but until then, check out the trailer for the dark and occasionally disturbing film, which plays with all sorts of genres and comes out the other side as a very enjoyable watch indeed. The trailer sums the mood up nicely - the film is firmly in grimy horror territory with a healthy dollop of Matrix-infused science fiction and classic literature mixed in for good measure. If you're after something 'different' to watch tonight then this will doubtless tick several of your boxes.

Trailer Of The Week is a regular Film Intel feature which picks a different tasty trailer of delectable goodness every week and presents it on Sunday for your viewing pleasure. Sometimes old, sometimes new, sometimes major, sometimes independent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes a load of old bobbins: always guaranteed to entertain. If you want to make a suggestion for Trailer Of The Week, see the contact us page.

The BIG Question: The Influence Of Film Awards

Our BIG question this time around was all about what impact the awards season has on you, looking particularly at the BAFTA awards and whether you watched them or not. Always a hot topic at this time of year you responded in your droves with answers ranging from 'they don't effect me one bit' to 'I avidly seek out every nominated film!' Selected answers and informed (ahem) conclusions can all be found below.

hypnogoria - 'once upon a time, in galaxy far far away, I used to watch all the awards religiously... I really just can't be arsed anymore... the selection of movies chosen to have the chance of getting a gong is absurdly limited... the films we remember as classics of their time often aren't the movies that clean up at awards time' (as ever, hypnogoria's brilliant answer is worth searching out and reading in its entirety)

TheMike31 - 'Pay very little attention, except the Oscar noms/winners. Don't go out of my way to see something if it's up for awards.'

missvictoriadee - 'The Oscars are really the only awards show that impacts/influences what movies I watch. The rest are pretty much fluff to me.'

JamesMichaelPar - 'the awards mean something definitely. The nominations for The Fighter certainly influenced me seeing it and it was great.'

thatfilmlover - 'I will watch anything nominated for Best Pic at the BAFTA's/Oscars/ and CANNES, so a lot of impact'

Univarn - 'I only have enough room in my soul to watch one self-serving, narcissistic awards show a year'

sonofkermode - 'I'm always looking forward. Sure, give kudos to those who have done something fantastic but lets see what tomorrow brings'

komaljverma - 'I watched the BAFTAs on TV but I do not pay that much attention to film awards - they don't effect what I want to watch.'

nrm1972 - 'never watch them, mild curiosity to see if they go as expected - and they usually do'

TerilynS - 'I never miss the Oscars because it means I will be with my friends, laughing, talking movies and discussing how foreign and independent movies will always be the award winners because publicly owned American studios don't know how to make anything worth caring about any more'


The Verdict: The level of either general ambivalence or - at the furthest end of the spectrum - genuine hate for the awards season surprised me, although I can't say I was displeased by it. The majority of answers went down the route of saying something negative about the awards but perversely hinting that they did effect their viewing habits, a conflicted group which I would probably place myself in. Having said that, I have a massive respect for the people who can look at awards season without cynicism or general ire. You, ladies and gentlemen, are probably enjoying a fantastic few months of award watching right about now!


Film Intel use Formspring as a way of gauging your reactions to current happenings in the film world and posing questions about you and your taste in films. If you want to take part and share your opinions with us then just make sure we're friends on the site - the choicest quotes from the best responses will be posted in articles we run right here. You can also take part via our Twitter page where all questions will also be posted.

Date Night - DVD Review

'moments of warm comedy make Date Night a pleasant watch, if not an hilarious one'

For those already turned off by Date Night the argument that it 'could have been much worse' might be a difficult one to reach agreement on but lets try anyway...

Director Shawn Levy is the man behind previous films of dubious comedic worth such as both Night At The Museums, The Pink Panther remake and Just Married. His output follows similar tonal patterns of generally family-friendly fun with an occasionally risque joke that backfires significantly. But it's not all bad. Because in someone else's hands Josh Klausner's script about a couple who, on their date night, are mistaken for another couple who have done some Really Bad Things, could have been a romantic comedy.

The elements are all here. Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) are a long-time married couple with hard jobs and dependant kids. They love each other but they're stuck in a rut, in desperate need of excitement. If the film had taken another direction this could have been a horrible mess centered around the Foster's break-up and inevitable pre-credits reconciliation. Instead, Levy - doing what he does... erm... 'best' - centres on the comedy, playing everything for laughs and allowing the Foster's relationship to play through as just another unsuspecting character in a plot centered on unsuspecting characters.

Like his other efforts there are elements that work and elements that don't. When Carell is left alone on screen for example you feel like he's over-improvising in only the way Steve Carell can. His manic screaming ('kill shot... KILL SHOT' is the most recognisable example from the trailers) just isn't funny and when Levy leaves him to his shtick the film suffers.

Together with Fey or another foil though, there are some moments of warm comedy which make Date Night a pleasant watch, if not an hilarious one. William Fichtner is a villain straight out of Levy's stock of bawdy archetypes and with the rest of the film populated with cameos from Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Mark Ruffalo, Kristen Wiig and Mila Kunis there's just too much talent here not to like absolutely everything on show.

Levy won't win over any new fans with the latest entry in what feels like his ongoing series of distinctly average comedies but Fey and Carrel are likable enough and the cast of cameoing stars provide welcome moments of diversion from the otherwise standard script. And honestly... it could have been much worse.

Look further...

'Frivolous and mindless, Date Night sees Tina Fey and Steve Carell transform an uneven screenplay into a perfectly enjoyable comedy' - Anomalous Material, 7/10

True Grit - Cinema Review

'lengthy character development at the expense of concise insight... the film's one-hundred and ten minutes begin to feel stretched by the conclusion'

Unlike any Coen Brother's film before it, True Grit is ponderous, pedestrian even. Gone is the fast moving, often twisting narrative. In its place, a straight-up Western about retribution, redemption and probably a lot of other words beginning with 'r'.

Whether you like it, love it or loathe it might well depend on your current relationship (there's another 'r') with Joel and Ethan. If you're approaching this expecting a No Country For Old Men-esque, dark and focused morality tale exploring worldly themes of modernity and death then you're likely to be disappointed. Similarly, if you're looking for something with O Brother, Where Art Thou?'s lightness of touch then you're looking in the wrong place.

What you do get with True Grit is something much more reminiscent (Goddamn 'r's!) of old-style Westerns. The unlikely hero, Mattie (excellent newcomer Hailee Steinfeld), is flanked by two ambiguous compatriots in Jeff Bridges' Cogburn and Matt Damon's LaBouef. Which one of them can she trust? Which one of them can get her what she wants? What is it that she actually wants in the first place? Whilst the Coens don't necessarily deal absolute answers to these questions they do suggest ambiguous alternatives, keeping the slow story turning over as Mattie and co trek through the distinctly wintry wild west.

If the story doesn't move at regular Coen pace, the script often does. Mattie's early bartering with a town store trader is full of sharp dialogue and subtle wit, fulfilling the dual purpose of establishing Mattie's nous as a negotiator and enabling our ears to re-adjust - much like the opening scene in The Social Network - to the pitter-patter of the screenwriters.

This scene though, for all its good points, is representative of the film's painfully slow problems. Mattie's conversation with the trader runs on, and on, and on. When she returns to his office sometime later you half expect it to continue from where they left off. There's similar moments throughout. Cogburn, obviously lonely despite his rough exterior, confides in Mattie about his prior experiences as they trek onwards trying to find fugitive Tom Chaney (a largely wasted Josh Brolin). Rather than provide insight or entertainment though, this feels like filler. There's no revelation in what Cogburn says and little even of interest. It's lengthy character development at the expense of concise insight and True Grit's one-hundred and ten minutes begins to feel stretched by its conclusion.

What holds your attention is the three leads. Damon, under-appreciated next to Steinfeld and Bridges, is convincing as the unlikable LaBouef whilst the two Oscar-nominated actors predictably shine. Spare a thought too for Barry Pepper, still bearing the stigma of Battlefield: Earth but here outstanding as outlaw boss Ned.

Its by no means a failure but those wanting to experience True Grit's successes will have to put in effort to see them bear fruit and the final confrontation lacks the payoff of, say, Open Range, which went about a similarly slow story with greater brevity and tighter narrative control.

Look further...

'intelligent, adult film-making of the highest order. It reads like the best novel and looks like the finest painting' - Lost In The Multiplex, 9/10

From The Files Of... The Day Headline Writing Died

So, headline writers - you've got a press release in your sweaty palms proclaiming that the new title for Marc Webb's hitherto untitled Spider-Man reboot is going to be The Amazing Spider-Man. Come up with your best, most original, most attention grabbing, strap-line. One, two, three.... Go!

BBC

E! Online

Entertainment Weekly

Guardian

International Business Times

Movies.ie

On The Box

Reuters

Well done lads. Go and have a lie down. Your work here is done.

Takers - Blu-ray Review

'a tick-box exercise in common heist film archetypes and stylistic schemas'

Takers is a stylishly suited film which has the unfortunate pedigree of being directed and written by a man who's only made two films in ten years, a fact which is made painfully obvious by the vast amount of cliches on show as the plot winds down to a predictable set of endings for its ensemble.

Navigating Takers plot is a tick-box exercise in spotting common heist film archetypes and stylistic schemas. There's a good cop/bad cop duo (Matt Dillon and Jay Hernandez), a mysterious newcomer (T.I.) to a group of professional heist men, a wizened old leader who needs to pull one last job (Idris Elba) and a token love-interest with a history (Zoe Saldana).

No cliche is left undiscovered, nor does writer/director John Luessenhop risk not exploring them to their fullest - everything here is as over-wrought and over-explored as it gets. Take the cops for example. Not content with wasting Hernandez and Dillon as characters straight from NYPD Blue's stock list, Luessenhop goes the whole hog; Dillon is devoted to his job but separated from his family and struggling to connect with his daughter, Hernandez is devoted to his family but struggling to earn enough money to support them from the job he loves. Every possible element that could have been lifted from previous examples of the genre is included, right down to the heist method, which appears to come directly from the remake of The Italian Job.

Cliches duly accepted, there are times when this threatens to become an enjoyable action film. Elba is as good value for money as he ever has been and senior partner Paul Walker mainly provides a good foil for him to play off. T.I. is never anything less than a weaselly underling but that is what the role asks for whilst Chris Brown, attempting to carve an acting career out for himself, steals the best action sequence and shows a depth beyond that which you could be forgiven for expecting from a rap-star-turned-action-hero.

For every positive point though Takers has an equal amount of painful opposites. The plot quickly devolves into a set of conveniences (at one point, Dillon and Hernandez hustle an all-too knowledgeable fence for God's sake) which ends too quickly whilst ticking off the ensemble's individual conclusions as if the production was quickly running out of money. It'd be nice to say something good about Hayden Christensen for a change but here it's just impossible to do so: he's the weakest thing on show by a mile, not helped by Luessenhop who gives him a horribly shot, slow-motion nightmare of a conclusion.

Several flash suits, a nice colour palette and some unexpected good work from Brown and others can't save Luessenhop, the director obviously out of his depth when trying to orchestrate a heist on this level.

Look further...

'filled with two-dimensional characters, a predictable plot, and no heart' - Good Film Guide, 6/10

Classic Intel: Evolution - DVD Review

'Reitman's high-colour pallette is more Ghostbusters II than Ghostbusters I but it does work and the sharp, bright, contrasts lend an almost Mars Attacks! feel to the whole piece'

One of those films that has the right ideas but doesn't necessarily execute them all in the right way, Ivan Reitman's Evolution was considered a failure on initial release having spent $80million getting the film to the screen. On a purely monetary basis that seems justified. Big money must have been given over to stars David Duchovny and Julianne Moore, the former seemingly only present to facilitate some of the script's X-Files in-jokes.

On a purely artistic basis though there's a lot here to like including several memorable scenes that stay with you long after your original viewing. Seann William Scott serenading a giant dinosaur-like alien in a shopping mall is probably chief amongst them (sing 'you... are... so beautiful... to me' to anyone who's seen the film and they'll get you) but Ira Kane's (Orlando Jones) brush with an alien invading his suit (and then his body) also scores highly. Reitman's high-colour palette is more Ghostbusters II than Ghostbusters I but it does work and the sharp, bright, contrasts lend an almost Mars Attacks! feel to the whole piece.

Not that Mars Attacks! was perfect but Evolution falls down by not including some of that film's sharp edges. The comedy here is all very gentle and, some of the above pieces aside, occasionally not that funny. It's fine that this is a tame PG-rated film but that doesn't excuse the lack of genuine wit or the lazy development of jokes that sometimes occurs. Julianne Moore's character for example is described as being a 'menace' because she's so clumsy but by that point we've merely seen her trip over once - not exactly the height of slapstick the character seems intended to provide.

The finale also seems to abandon the comedy trappings of the rest of the film, instead opting for straight-out family actioner. Not that this is necessarily a problem although by this point adults watching with kids might have found themselves growing a little weary. Dan Akyroyd's arrival in what is a fairly lazy bit-part is still enough to just about give the film the lift it needs to see the plot out and the final ticking off exercises are easy to sit through, even if the horrendous product placement isn't.

Look further...

'Unfortunately, at a major plot and evolutionary juncture, the movie opts to get dumber rather than cleverer' - Empire, 3/5

Trailer Of The Week - Week #7

This last couple of weeks have involved the watching of both a bad Michael Jai White film and a stunningly incoherent action film (Pathfinder). Spawn therefore seemed an appropriate choice to round the week off. An horrendous and convoluted actioner with White in the lead, flanked by a Just For Men-wearing Martin Sheen and an unrecognisable John Leguizamo this is the sort of film that makes Ghost Rider look successful. The trailer seems to hint that the film might have aged fairly well although a full watch would surely offer evidence to the contrary - this was actually an unforgivable missed opportunity which wasted all the strengths of the dark and twisted comic book. Reboot rumours have continued to fly round almost since this film's release in 1997 but this was so bad, it may have killed Spawn off for good.

Trailer Of The Week is a regular Film Intel feature which picks a different tasty trailer of delectable goodness every week and presents it on Sunday for your viewing pleasure. Sometimes old, sometimes new, sometimes major, sometimes independent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes a load of old bobbins: always guaranteed to entertain. If you want to make a suggestion for Trailer Of The Week, see the contact us page.

Film Intel's Final Word

What happened this week and why you shouldn't care.



Lindsay Lohan 'Offered' Part In Superman Reboot. Other Actors 'Offered' Parts Include; Me, Donald Duck And Greta Garbo.

Story: Movieweb

On a more pleasing note several sites (wisely) just decided to ignore this rumour altogether. More of that please Ladies and Gentlemen.




Several Dark Knight Rises Characters Now Cast. World Can't Cope Without Rumours. Starts Making Up Stuff About Robin.

Story: Movies Online

Seemingly not content with having things confirmed fully and officially (such as the inclusion of Bane and Selina Kyle) several publications have now turned to wondering whether Robin will appear in the film and then, obviously, speculating on who'll play him. You get the feeling that even after The Dark Knight Rises has come out on DVD, there will still be rumours circulating about who will appear in the film.



Garfield Continues To Choose Varied Roles. World's Press Remains Un-Interested.

Story: Slash Film

Fair play to Slash Film for covering this. Andrew Garfield's choice of roles continues to impress and this quiet-sounding drama looks like one to keep an eye out for.

Reagan - Online Review

'a politicised history lesson which, because of its damning rhetoric, is disqualified from carrying the label 'definitive''

Like any documentary which starts out by telling you how everything you previously knew about its subject is wrong, Eugene Jarecki's expose of America's 40th President, Ronald Reagan, puts itself under immediate pressure to deliver the goods and reveal the private man behind the public exterior. To put it bluntly, Jarecki fails in this endeavor. The revered documentary-maker never even comes close to revealing what he feels to be the 'true' Reagan, leaving a film that concludes he was a very 'private and detached' man but not one that is able to summarise what that private and detached man was actually like.

That's not to say that Reagan is a complete failure. Jarecki does a professional and compelling job of tearing down the Ronald Reagan myth which US conservatives hold like a flag-bearer holds a standard. Compelling and honest evidence from Reagan's realist son, Ron, is juxtaposed with evidence from his hero-worshipping son, Michael, the former providing what appears to be both the most honest testimony present in the film and the closest we ever get to seeing the President's persona unguarded. As Republican after Republican trots out his name as a footnote to their point, Jarecki deconstructs the false quoting of his policies and ends up with a well-rounded analysis of what his real legacy as president should perhaps entail.

Equally though, Jarecki can't refrain from a bit of political heckling. He points specifically to the Tea Party movement and Sarah Palin as misrepresenting an icon they supposedly hold dear but then, what's new with that? So Palin doesn't understand her history and often quotes 'facts' that are anything but? There are few people who aren't aware of that and those that aren't are unlikely to be persuaded by a documentary that verges on ultra-critical of the Republicans for a vast amount of its runtime.

What Jarecki ends up with is a politicised history lesson which, because of its damning rhetoric, is disqualified from carrying the label 'definitive'. That said, the director works hard to make Reagan applicable today; there's parallels with Obama's work and popular culture gets more than a mention (Mr Burns is one of the brief talking heads), whilst a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scream from Jon Stewart early on signals both Jarecki's political allegiance and hints that he knows how people feel about politics these days. Jarecki is 'in touch' and the history lesson is easy to swallow. It's just a shame that, even for those of us who agree with him, his politicising isn't as pleasantly diluted.

Reagan was showing at The Sundance Film Festival and is available to watch on the BBC's iplayer until 1st March 2011.

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'[the] cornerstones of his legacy, which aim to cement him as a traditional conservative role model, prove to be the most compelling paradoxes that Jarecki examines' - The Film Stage, B

The Disappearance Of Alice Creed - Blu-ray Review

'a perfect example of both the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional three-hander'

J Blakeson's intriguing three-hander which pits the titular Alice (Gemma Arterton) against kidnappers Danny (Martin Compston) and Vic (Eddie Marsan) serves as a perfect example of the sub-genre's strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, Blakeson gets admirable mileage and tension out of his three stars and limited locations, crafting a twist-happy narrative which has distinct characters, a varied visual style set in none-varied locations and a willingness to try the unexpected with its apparently standard plot.

On the other hand, Blakeson's lack of willingness to show anyone other than these three characters (whether for budgetary reasons, artistic reasons or a mixture of both) shows the problems inherent with this form of genre-limitation. When Vic leaves to phone in the ransom demand you get the impression he's going to be involved in a tense conversation with a terrified Mr. Creed. But we'll never know, because we never see it or hear it. Opportunities like this are missed throughout The Disappearance Of Alice Creed, all because Blakeson is devoted to his limitations, embracing them in an admirable but constricting way.

What he misses out on in terms of other characters, Blakeson gets in variety from his star turns. Arterton as Alice is magnetic and occasionally moving. Obviously terrified by her ordeal, Blakeson isn't afraid to also present her as a rounded individual on occasion. As such, she's shown as selfish, even cruel, developing beyond the normal damsel in distress archetype to something much more interesting although, as Blakeson's final shot roles, you get the impression she's less concrete than her exterior suggests.

Marsan is similarly strong as Vic but Compston, in the best role as the subservient, conflicted, Danny proves less adapt, changing character traits on a whim and turning in a performance that, whilst necessarily unpredictable, is also difficult to get a good hold on in any tonal sense.

Blakeson's final scenes are chilling, lending the film a completely open-ended air which draws you in like an oozing sink hole. The writer/director's penchant for the uncomfortable and unpredictable might not always be easy to watch but it is easy to admire and his grasp of tone and pacing on such limited measures is pleasing to watch even if his film is, at times, much harder to enjoy.

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'too cramped and grimy and high-pitched - a lot of screaming and yelling and sobbing' - The Ludovico Technique, C+

Classic Intel: Pathfinder - DVD Review

'in any other film the large dialogue-less segments would be brave and exciting, here you rather feel like they're there because the creators ran out of ideas'

One of the most incoherently edited films you're ever likely to see, Pathfinder fails on nearly every level due to a basic inability to tell its story in an approachable, succinct, way. The extended edition, which appears to only add in a meaningless eight minutes of blood and gore to push the age rating up, does nothing to address these problems rather just making them go on ad infinitum; a full one-hundred and seven minutes in fact, although it will feel much longer to all those who dare enter here.

The story, about a Viking warrior left behind to grow up with a tribe of Native Americans, is intriguing enough and the opening segment which attempts to tie the film into ancient myth and legend has its ideas in the right place. But from there Marcus Nispel's film sadly devolves into a scriptless mess which is less concerned with telling a story and more concerned with manufacturing occasional conflicts for our Viking/Native American warrior, Ghost (Karl Urban) to wander in to. In any other film the large dialogue-less segments would be brave and exciting, here you rather feel like they're there because the creators ran out of ideas.

Urban, who's much better than this, struggles to elevate the film. He grimaces and growls in the right places but there's no chemistry with any of the other stars and very few opportunities to play off them anyway. Moon Bloodgood provides the only real support of note but she seems distracted and comes off as largely unconvincing, stuck in a romantic plot arc that has no place in this narrative and is quickly dispensed with anyway by Nispel in favour of more shots of head-splitting with axes.

The Vikings doing the head-splitting are one of the few highlights. Their costumes are extraordinary, built up to make them look a number of feet bigger than the Native Americans, their helmets lending them an ethereal, ghostly feel which resembles The Lord Of The Rings' Wraiths.

Perhaps if this could have been moulded together in a more innovative way we would have at least had an average action film but in this cobbled together visage it resembles a student film outing where the student is obsessed with one-second cuts to the point of forgetting to write a full script. Nispel's next film is the Conan: The Barbarian remake, which looks very similar in terms of tone to this offering. Start worrying.

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'The experience of watching it ranged from being confused over the plot to flip flopping back to not really caring' - Movie Moxie

Watching Wallander: TV Moving Closer To Films Might Not Be Such A Good Idea

It's not often I get the chance to catch up on TV series these days but, given how highly I rate Henning Mankell's Wallander series of books - and in particular, Sidetracked, one of the best crime novels I've ever read - I wasn't going to just let the Kenneth Branagh-fronted Wallander pass me by.

Blu-ray duly tracked down I settled in to watch Sidetracked, which happens to be the first episode. Surely, with Branagh in the lead and a solid BBC production team behind it, this would be a worthy English-language adaptation of the Swedish detective's rather disparate and often dark existence.

I couldn't have been more mistaken.

A lot has been written recently on how the values present in televisual productions and those that are made for the big screen have come closer together in the past few years. HBO shows have taken off big time (a fact reflected with the launch of Sky's new Atlantic channel in the UK) and series such as Lost have inspired as much dedication to actors based in television as those who normally make their money in Hollywood.

If ever there's an argument against this though, it's Wallander.

The series seems to have learned everything it could from the world of film. On Blu-ray it looks fantastic. There's beautifully photographed shots of Ikea-stocked interiors and cold wasteland-esque exteriors. The opening moments, in a bright yellow rape field, are dramatic and dynamic in a way few series' openings have managed before. And there's Branagh; a Hollywood star (compulsory in TV series nowadays) who both lends the project credibility and acts his assumedly very expensive socks off.

What Wallander doesn't have is any further acting ability, a script, a semblance of excitement or, really, especially for the non-book fan, a reason to make you carry on watching the rest of the series.

In producing this wonderful, Hollywood-esque, novel the producers seem to have forgotten all of the core components necessary to make Wallander a success. All the elements that make Mankell's novel great are here but that's just it; they're all just here, placed almost lopsidedly in a world where not one actor (save Branagh) can deliver a line of dialogue without sounding like they're in a school play. Rather than fizzing with tension and excitement and building dread, Sidetracked is, well, one of the most boring ways to spend ninety minutes I can currently think of.

If this is the result of television moving towards the 'values' of big budget film productions then please stop now. Go back to focusing on long-term story-telling. Forget about emulating the movies. At least, for God's sake, remember to write a script.

The next episode - based on a more pulpy novel about Internet terrorism called Firewall - follows a much more predictable, linear, plot which requires few embellishments and has no need to run on for ninety minutes. I'm not optimistic.

Please Give - DVD Review

'Several characters refer to 'visiting the leaves'. Would any person not in an indie film ever refer to sightseeing in the country as 'visiting the leaves'? I doubt it.'

Please Give is written and directed by Nicole Holofcener whose previous efforts, Friends With Money and Lovely And Amazing both also feature Please Give's star, Catherine Keener. They both also seem to share a certain down-played indie sensibility with Please Give which is painfully obvious from the opening few moments. Several characters refer to a magazine article about driving out of the city and 'visiting the leaves' at a certain view-spot where the changing of the seasons can be witnessed en masse. Would any person not in an indie film ever refer to sightseeing in the country as 'visiting the leaves'? I doubt it.

When the film steps out from its annoyingly twee comfort zone there's some good work here, mainly by Amanda Peet as one half of a set of sisters (the other being a dressed-down and dowdy Rebecca Hall) who is cold, slightly deranged and more than a little inappropriate. Her hatred of the grandma (Ann Guilbert, also excellent) who her sister is trying to nurse in old age is delivered with bile and without remorse and although at times the character can be shocking her effectiveness is unmatched throughout the film.

The moral compass of the piece, Oliver Platt's Alex, husband to Keener's Kate, is also effective, Platt adapting the indie sensibility of 'less is more' with good results in his pared down version of his usual shtick.

The story Holofcener wants to tell though - centred on the tensions between Kate's devoted altruism and her mercenary job - is flimsy even for this sort of indie offering. Obviously conflicted morally in a business which involves buying furniture from recently deceased people's children, Kate increasing turns to 'giving' to re-align her shattered psyche.

All fine and good but Holofcener never takes us beyond the obvious. From very early on we quickly see that each character, from grandma to Kate and Alex's daughter Abby (Sarah Steele), is stuck in a similar quandary, each one apparently in need of an external force to move them out of it. It's laughable in both its directness and the direction Holofcener takes some of the stories, particularly Alex's, which stretches the boundaries of credibility beyond belief.

For those of a high indie sensibility only. And even you might struggle.

Look further...

'Mary’s personality seems like a fair representation of the film itself. She’s simultaneously smug and insecure and she’s consistently subverting her own mantra by being ridiculous and immature at times. Please Give thinks it has more to offer than it does' - Encore's World Of TV And Film, C

Trailer Of The Week - Week #6

In-keeping with both the Sundance Film Festival theme and the Tom McCarthy theme that have been prevalent on the site for the past couple of weeks (here, here, and indeed, here, but you already spotted that, right?), this week's trailer combines the two of them. McCarthy's latest film, Win Win, premiered at the festival to decent critical acclaim and will go on to hit US screens in mid-March. The trailer shows that this might be the lightest McCarthy film yet. There's none of the darkness of The Station Agent or, apparently, the tougher themes of The Visitor. Not that that's a bad thing. Paul Giamatti and McCarthy are a match made in indie film heaven and the actor looks on top Sideways form here. Alex Shaffer, in his first ever role, looks very good and the return of The Station Agent's Bobby Cannavale is more than welcome. Hopes are high Mr McCarthy. Very high.





Trailer Of The Week is a regular Film Intel feature which picks a different tasty trailer of delectable goodness every week and presents it on Sunday for your viewing pleasure. Sometimes old, sometimes new, sometimes major, sometimes independent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes a load of old bobbins: always guaranteed to entertain. If you want to make a suggestion for Trailer Of The Week, see the contact us page.