April was a big month for cinema, but something of a mixed selection.
First, 300 is the film version of the classic Frank Miller comic book. Though I expect most people saw this film, I thought it was fairly bad. The acting ranged from fairly strong in some places to camp, ludicrous and over-the-top throughout most of the film. While much has been made of the epic scale of the battles, it’s hard to be impressed by men clearly fighting in front of blue screens. I don’t know why Hollywood thinks they’re at a level where they can do pure CG convincingly, but the evidence is clearly against them. Everything looks cheap and empty, but on a larger scale than we might have otherwise seen. The story itself is strong (which is why it has survived this long) but the director has not done it justice here. A real shame.
I Want Candy is your typical Brit-comedy: cheap, a little tacky, but fun enough to watch. It’s the story of two struggling film students who, through some convoluted twists, end up making a porno with heart. It has all the usual boy-meets-girl storytelling you’d expect from the genre, but that’s not really a great criticism. Again, as light comedy goes, you can do much worse.
Far more serious is Danny Boyle’s Sunshine. The set-up is fairly obvious sci-fi boilerplate, but the plot is a little wider in scope: the exploration into the unknown, realising you’re a very small piece of a mind-bendingly large universe, and the effects of extremes on the human psyche. While much of this is brilliantly shot and scored, it stumbles in the final act. Writer Alex Garland uses his usual trick of establishing a more manageable crisis and resolving it as a finale, which generally works well. Instead, in this instance, the final third of the film falls in the science fiction trappings that have been so carefully avoided to this point and goes wayward. A real shame.
More comedy can be found in Blades of Glory, about two rival figure skaters who join forces to beat their evil rivals. The plot follows the standard buddy comedy pattern: they hate each other, they agree to work together, it doesn’t work out well at first, they each learn something from the other, a last minute fumble looks set to destroy it all, but finally they win through. Though it isn’t Will Ferrell at his comic-best, it still stands up as a decent film.
The Lives of Others deservedly won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film this year, the reasons shining through in every scene. Focussed on the activities of the Stasi and their invasive and bureaucratic processes, the film shows both sides of the ex-government activities. The main characters are a writer, who gradually rails further and further against the corrupt state, and the Stasi agent sent to monitor his every move. It builds a great tale of frustration and emotional impotence, in the face of a state destroying itself through its own policies and paranoia.
Half Nelson is about the coming together of an addict teacher and a young girl in his class who discovers him nearly passed out. The core of the film is about them coming together despite, or perhaps because of, their differences and trying to better themselves. It’s a fairly formulaic premise, updated a little, but fails in it’s execution: our teacher shows very little in the way of redeeming or interesting traits, his spiral downward being of his own making. It’s hard to sympathise with a character who is given numerous chances to change but doesn’t. Perhaps that’s the point but, honestly, I didn’t care by the end. There was not enough tension or struggle to warrant the time spent here.
Finally, mind-numbing action in the form of Shooter: a completely by-the-numbers political action-thriller. Mark Wahlberg gets caught up in a plot to assassinate the president for no good reason, but consistently evades capture while uncovering the conspiracy. Some terrible performances (excluding the competent lead) and obvious plot holes mark this remarkably bad film as one to avoid.
The winner? Easily, The Lives of Others: an easy contender for film of the year, even at this early stage.