I know, I know, it’s a little late, but here’s the five-way film fight for October.

Redbelt is the latest film by playwright-turned-director, David Mamet. It’s a martial arts film about loss, and finding a way to persevere through adversity, while trying to keep true to yourself. If that sounds a little smarter than your average brawler, it should. Mamet continues his line of superior dialogue and characterisation throughout, only really looking a little weak when it comes to the slightly obvious and needlessly feel-good ending. That aside, the film stays true to itself: grim when it needs to be, but light when it can be. Chiwetel Ejiofor puts in a fantastic performance as the lead and proves himself, once again, an actor to keep an eye on. All in all, a film well worth seeing.

Based on the book of the same name, Gomorrah is the story of the modern mafia in some of the poorest cities in Italy. We see this world through a grainy camera in gritty locations, with the cast mostly opting for a naturalistic style. The greatest triumph of this film is just how believable, yet unbelievably horrible, the characters and area portrayed are. That realism coupled with some poor focus and pacing decisions proves to be the downfall of the movie. We follow an array of characters who are, for the most part, dull. Sure, there are some who are involved heavily in the gangland activity, but the film is spread between so many characters that no-one story really gets the chance to shine. For a film that clocks in just under the two and a half hour mark, there’s really very little meat on any of these stories. Disappointing.

The Coen brothers are well-known for plots that really don’t get resolved, but are fun enough journeys that it really doesn’t matter; Burn After Reading continues very much in that spirit. The plot involves the CIA, an ex-agent, some gym workers, a serial adulterer and an array of other oddball characters. The magic comes when you see all these plainly bizarre plot strands come together, but not really finish up. A thoroughly enterataining yarn, with a top notch cast.

I am constantly amazed at how a pretty good young actor like Shia LaBeouf can keep churning out generic Hollywood drivel. In Eagle Eye, however, he has exceeded himself in making awful movies. The plot is some nonsense about terrorising a civilian, seemingly randomly, through a series of set pieces, which start to come together as part of a conspiracy. Sadly, it contains enough plot holes to drive a bus through. The action sequences don’t make up for the story, featuring the worst big-screen excess in the name of entertainment, rather than something more enjoyable. There is nothing to like about this film, from its obvious twists to its painful acting. Don’t go see Eagle Eye.

Finally, Ricky Gervais finally makes his big screen lead debut in Ghost Town, a sweet comedy about a dentist who can see ghosts after an accident. He quickly gets involved in the life of a recent widower, and antics ensue. While, at times, the film is quite heartfelt, it misfires too often to be a good comedy, and makes dumb jokes too much to be romantic. Nothing of the suits it tries to play work, and we’ll left with an awkward mish-mash of genres. It’s not the worst thing you could see, but there are far better films out there. Distinctly average.

The winner is… Redbelt. While I thoroughly enjoyed Burn After Reading, Mamet’s latest work is just a little more interesting, particularly for the lead performance and the dialogue.

I hate seeing those “Sorry, I haven’t been posting much” posts, so it’s with more than a little trepidation that I write one myself to try and explain my two and a half month absence. (I am, in truth, adding this entirely for my own benefit years down the line.) The following things have happened:

• I left my job at the BigCo I’ve been working for since I graduated from university (3+ years of service). There wasn’t any big, deep disagreement, I just felt it was time to try something different and take on a different kind of challenge. I’d certainly go back at some point in the future, if that’s where my path was headed.
• Consequently, I’ve started working for a pretty SmallCo. So far it seems pretty excellent, and is a remarkably different kind of pace. The amount of bureaucracy has decreased dramatically, but the level of support for peripheral items has also decreased. All in all, it seems like it’s a good experience and one I should be taking at this point in my life.
• I’ve moved flat again. Yes, this is my 4th flat in 3 years, but hopefully the last for a good little while. I’ve finally left the city centre of Glasgow behind, and am slowly getting acquainted with the south side (specifically, Mount Florida).
• As I mentioned on Twitter, I was briefly admitted to hospital after my appendix decided it wanted a separation. It was a tough break-up but a few weeks later, I think I’m over it.
• Aside from that, I’ve been catching up on various games. My Guitar Hero skills are coming along nicely, and Fable II was quite a nice diversion. Fallout 3 is just warming up now.

I’d like to say that it won’t happen again, but we all know it will. I do, however, have a reasonably large selection of ideas that I want to write about in the near future so hopefully it’ll be a little less barren here. Look out for the remainder of 2008’s Film Fights, and the Film Fight Finale in the next few days.

Any time, after a little to long on a branch, that I go to merge back to trunk, I seem to forget the magic steps involved in making this easy. For my own reference, tag the head of the branch and then:

`

svn log http://example.com/url/to/branch --stop-on-copy 

` … will get us the revision that the branch happened from. Let’s say it’s 27101. `

svn diff -r27101:HEAD http://example.com/url/to/branch --summarize

` … will let us know of all the files that have changed between that revision and the head of the branch. Then you’re free to take a trunk check-out and do a merge with full knowledge of what’s happened.

Unlike last month’s quiet patch, this month there are 6 films to take in.

The Wackness is about a teenage drug dealer and his psychiatrist becoming friends and going over the edge. The relationship that grows between the two leads is well handled, seeming genuine for the most part, but the same cannot be said for the somewhat forced love story between the teenager and the psychiatrist’s daughter. The dialogue throughout is excruciating (it’s supposed to be the nineties, so we get all kinds of street lingo), but there are some true horrors uttered between these two. Ben Kingsley excels as the psychiatrist but away from that there’s just not all that much to see here. A fairly average film.

The lack of decent US horror movies continues with the amazingly lacklustre yawn-fest, The Strangers. There’s nothing new or particularly well-done about this movie, taking in an alone-in-a-cabin plot and eventually getting to a pretty weak torture set-up towards the end. There’s little to like here, with the only notable moments being the (predictable) arrival of a familiar face going wrong and some of the character set-up in the first act. After that, it was uninspired drudge.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have made another great comedy in Pineapple Express, the story of a dealer and one of his customers (Rogen) who are forced to go on the run after witnessing a brutal murder; not the most obvious set-up for a light and wacky comedy. The writers largely avoid a lot of the more obvious and moronic drug references and instead get into some great dialogue (Danny McBride has some of the best lines) and over-the-top, violent, physical comedy. It looked like the trailer would have the majority of the scenarios in it, but this is not the case, with near enough end-to-end laughs. A great (if not classic) comedy.

It’s courted a lot of controversy for it’s use of Robert Downey Jr. doing a minstrel show and the heavy mocking of the mentally handicapped, but can Tropic Thunder deliver as a comedy? The answer is: not particularly. Sure, it has some very funny moments (Downey Jr. provides most of these, with Danny McBride again bringing impeccable timing) but the whole thing feels quite like a place-holder. The plot is there to hold together some scenarios they writers had built up, but doesn’t tell a compelling story. In the face of the far superior Pineapple Express, this suffers as another cheap-and-easy comedy. That’s not to say it lacks any merit, but it’s not a first choice.

Could a fascist (autocratic) regime rise once again? That’s the question that German-film, The Wave, asks. Based on a required reading book in Germany, the story is that of a teacher who, during project week, builds a cult to show that anything is possible if you’re not careful. We see a wide range of points-of-view, from the outraged to the the subsumed, all of which add a little extra. It’s got a strong message, but falls down on depth: there are too many ideas here and not enough time to develop them, and those previously mentioned views don’t go into as much detail as we might like. Ultimately, it’s a good movie, but could have done with a bit of script editing to give it cleaner focus.

Finally, Taken is a fairly simple movie done extremely well. A man, who we soon learn is an extremely well-trained solder/agent, finds that his daughter who is holidaying in Paris has been kidnapped. Despite a fairly simple progression (the man hunts his daughter’s kidnappers in as vicious a manner as you can imagine), it’s surprisingly good. We see some excellently choreographed fight and action sequences, we see some well-directed and succinct storytelling, and just enough background for it to be somewhat believable. An over-long ending and odd pop singer subplot aside, this is a lean cut of action-thriller. Very good.

The winner for September is a bit of a toss-up. Pineapple Express is excellent, but I think Taken is slightly stronger, though both are very good in their respective genres

Yes, it’s quite late again, which is surprising given there are only three films. Let’s see how they get on.

First up is Get Smart, the story of a bumbling agent in a hand-wavingly explained government spy agency. Ostensibly a comedy, the director manages to fumble the fundamentals with the film suffering from poorly explained sequences, predictability, an over-reliance on slapstick and poor stereotypes. There are funny moments in there (such as the brief fighter jet segment) and the cast (the otherwise excellent Steve Carrell and Alan Arkin) do their best, but there’s simply not much here. A shame.

Shane Meadows has created some of the finest moments in recent British cinema, from Dead Man’s Shoes bleak and grimy revenge story to This Is England’s look at hooliganism and growing up around the wrong people. Unfortunately his run seems to have run out with Somers Town, the story of a boy who has run away to London and befriends a Polish immigrant. Ignoring the pretty obvious shoe-horning of adverts into the work, the plot and characters really lack any depth. The relationships seem hollow and forced, and nothing comes across as natural. Worse, the story really doesn’t go anywhere, with a painful happy ending tacked in rather than dealing with any of the issues raised early on. Had the film focussed on the relationship between the Polish boy and his father, and their lives in London, then maybe it could have done something, but this cut shows the film as shallow; a real pity.

Finally, Step Brothers sees Will Ferrell reunite with collaborator John C. Reilly as two 40-year old brats who still live with their now-married parents. The problem here is that there are very few jokes or funny moments and they almost all extend from this one premise, making the film feel a bit of a one-note wonder. Sure, there are some very funny bits (the wife of Ferrell’s brother is particularly good) but there’s also a lot of dead weight and barely thought out ideas. Still worth seeing, but not up to previous films that duo have worked on together.

So, it’s a bit of a weak recommendation but the winner is Step Brothers.