The final film fight of the month, before the finale. A good selection of films included.

The Nines unexpectedly casts Ryan Reynolds, previously a bit of a goof ball, as the main dramatic lead, in this tale of inter-related lives. Reynolds does a surprisingly good job as all 3 characters that the stories here centre on, but is let down by the messy nonsense he is given to work with. If the film had stuck to it’s strong central premise (the relationships between actor, writer and character in creation of each other’s worlds), it could have been brilliant. It’s sadly let down by meandering scenes and fairly cack-handed plot tie-ups. Even if the interweaving story had been tied up with a neat device (it really wasn’t), showing the device would be preferable to one of the characters simply saying it. A real shame.

Based on the “His Dark Material’s” trilogy, The Golden Compass is set in an alternate universe where people’s souls live as animals outside their bodies, and a mysterious substance called Dust is leaking in and changing things. Having never read the book, I can’t say much about the criticisms that the film makers have faced from staunch fans about the downgrading of the religious overtones. What I can say is that although it’s clearly aimed at children (and is a little simple and easy because of it), it’s a decent, watchable movie. Worth it to see two giant bears fight it out.

Richard Kelly made strange indie hit turned mainstream success, Donnie Darko. At some point after that, someone must’ve told him to just go nuts. And he did: Southland Tales is the execrable result. Before I go on, I’ll say now that I very nearly made a Film Fight Special just for this movie, to show the myriad ways in which it is terrible. I decided it’s not worth the effort. What you get here is a massively self-indulgent film, which is all over the place in terms of tone, terrible B-movie acting, awkward balancing of the back story with the cinematic story (yes, I’ve read the comics), many characters that are near enough pointless (Justin Timberlake’s pilot being top of the list — why he was allowed to shove a music video in the middle is beyond me), atrocious editing, some of the worst dialogue you will ever hear, and an ending that I’ve best heard described as “if I told it to you plain and simple, you’d think I was making fun of it”. The third worst movie I have ever seen.

On a higher note (but still somewhat weak) is the Dreamwork’s animated film, Bee Movie. Rather than be content with jokes in its own self-contained little world, it goes down the “it’s all the same as the human world BUT WITH BEES!” route and suffers badly for it, a few too many puns and bad sight jokes pulling it down. Surprisingly for a film with a decent cast, the voice acting is all either atrociously flat or alarmingly over the top. Despite the criticisms, the movie is OK in so far as it’s cheery and harmless.

It’s been getting a lot of high praise, but The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford leaves a lot to be desired. The pacing is glacial and paints a mediocre picture of both the titled character, leaving little desire to see either get anywhere. It also suffers from the increasingly frequent issue of knowing where to end. Because the film can’t decide which character to focus on, it insists on showing a lengthy period after the titular event which drags on for a little too long. It does, however, manage to capture some moments beautifully, the cinematography proving to be startlingly crisp and dramatic; however desperately Oscar-baiting it comes across as at times.

Gus Van Sant’s latest effort, Paranoid Park, looks good in synopsis: a kid who accidentally causes the death of a security guard is increasingly racked with guilt, becoming more and more distraught as time goes by. The filmed version is remarkably dull, Van Sant failing to convey any of the drama that he intended to. What we get is a short film where, despite the aforementioned accident, not a lot happens. Shots are held too long, the acting is non-existent, and the story doesn’t got anywhere. Very close to the definition of mediocre, but little more than time wasting.

Finally, I Am Legend is the 3rd adaptation of the book by Richard Matheson, and the question on every fan’s minds is whether or not they’ll go anywhere near the excellent ending of the book. While I won’t spoil that (go read it), I will say that they hint at it a few times and then do an incredibly lame ending instead, horribly twisting the meaning of the title. While the opening hour or so is interesting, filled with some reasonable set pieces and a decent structure, it never really gets anywhere and is badly let down by the final third. If you want to see this, go watch The Omega Man instead. It does a better job at doing the same thing with the source.

The winner? With no strong contender this month, the Assassination of Jesse James almost snuck it on cinematography grounds, but The Golden Compass was more entertaining so wins pretty much by default.

With the year out of the way, the Film Fight Finale for 2007 will be along very soon.

As the many, many film reviews on this site might suggest, I’m a big fan of cinema. Away from my penchant for low budget zombie films, I’m a big fan of laughing at awful movie subtitles (you may recall my rant about xXx2: The Next Level).

Recently, as Disney peddled yet another straight to video sequel, further diluting a once great brand into nothing more than a drudge factory, I started to think that movie sequel subtitles are actually getting worse. Sequels are being called things like “Die Hard 4.0” and “Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time”. Clearly, film-makers are incapable of coming up with decent subtitles.

Thankfully, I have a plan: a series of standardised subtitles for films. Rather than let script writers and marketers worry about what to tack onto a film, let’s just mandate a set of standard subtitles that must be used, largely culled from previous movies. Let’s use The Lion King in our examples:

1. The Lion King (no subtitle required)
2. The Lion King 2: The Wrath of Khan
3. The Lion King 3: The New Batch
4. The Lion King 4: Electric Boogaloo
5. The Lion King 5: Mission to Moscow
6. The Lion King 6: The Empire Strikes Back
7. The Lion King 7: The Edge of Reason
8. The Lion King 8: The Sequel
9. The Lion King 9: Die Harder
10. The Lion King 10: When Nature Calls
11. The Lion King 11: Part II
12. The Lion King 12: Judgement Day
13. The Lion King 13: Fellowship of the Ring
14. The Lion King 14: The Motion Picture

I think we can all agree that prescribed sequel subtitles are a much better idea than the current method (which involves pulling hackneyed phrases from a sack).

Shockingly, a film fight that’s on time. Onward.

Interview is Steve Buscemi’s latest directorial work, and it’s a bit of an oddity. It focuses on only two characters: a gossip magazine featured actress (Sienna Miller) and a political journalist (Steve himself). What we get is an acting piece; a real opportunity for the two stars to show off their chops. It’s somewhat self-indulgent, with the little story given really suffering from the quick mood changes. Not awful, but not great.

I’m not against adaptations making major changes to the source material but 30 Days of Night really gets it badly wrong. It keeps the same premise (vampires realising that during the heart of winter an Alaskan town has 30 days of darkness in which they are free), some of the same character names (Stella, Eben), but loses much of the rest (like the character). Instead of an interesting premise, subtly done, we get a bad action-horror movie. The vampires are idiotic, with their new language, and the human cast are annoying. Really poor.

Robert Rodriguez knows B-movies and, more importantly, how to parody them with a deft touch. This is all too evident in the smirkingly good Planet Terror. All the over the top trappings are present: lame-but-funny dialogue, oddball characters, comically gruesome monsters, and a nutty plot. Everything has just the right mix of polish and rust to keep the film entertaining. A must-see film.

Ridley Scott manages to pull together a great cast (Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe) for the excellent American Gangster; the story of a Harlem druglord taking over the business from his mentor. As good as most of Scorsese’s work in the area, Ridley finds the right balance between building up his characters and boring people with excessive slow backstory. The pacing is spot-on, except for a slightly extended ending, and the cast really shine throughout. Very good stuff.

The story of Beowulf has been adapted many times before, so it seems like an odd choice for Robert Zemeckis. The main difference this time is that the film is animated, in 3D. The 3D (RealD) works surprisingly well once you put the glasses on, with no real colour oddities seen in previous 3d attempts. The depth really adds something to the feel of the movie. Sadly, that’s where the praise ends. Almost the entire film reeks of being an extended showcase for the admittedly interesting technology. Ray Winstone is dreadful as the titular hero, and the rest of the cast are all over the place. Not a great film, by any stretch.

I’m a big fan of Wes Anderson films (older readers may remember that The Life Aquatic won the 2005 Film Fight Finale), they tend to be a whole lot more interesting than most mainstream releases. His latest, The Darjeeling Limited, has all the trappings: dialogue light characters, quirky framing shots, beautiful art direction, a plot about finding yourself and letting go of the past etc. It’s all very familiar ground, with one exception: it’s lacking a lot of the humour of his previous films. While it’s by no means a bad movie, it is his weakest. Worth seeing, but not a patch on other efforts.

Finally, Eastern Promises is a gangster film that gets a lot wrong: flat or steretyped characters, plodding pace, predictable plot, notably bad sound direction, and very little else going for it. If someone told me a first year film student had directed it, I would not be shocked. Instead, it was the usually excellent David Cronenberg (let’s forget eXistenZ). The one saving grace for this film is Viggo Mortensen who puts in a great performance, settling comfortably into uncomfortably levels of violence as easily as showing an almost tender side. It doesn’t make up for everything else though, and the film is something of a failure.

This month is a genuinely tough call between American Gangster and Planet Terror. I think the latter slips past, with it’s tongue in cheek comedy. So the winner is Planet Terror.

Observations:

Time of Expectation

The period in which a Linux user believes a few simple additions are all that are needed for Linux on the mainstream desktop. “When we get better wireless support, then we’ll be ready for the desktop”.

Time of Denial

The period in which a Linux user evangelises to non-technical family and friends about Linux. “You can play all your games now, so there’s no reason to keep paying Microsoft”. This is sometimes known as the Time of Delusion, as they become deluded that anyone in the mainstream cares.

Time of Realisation

The period in which a Linux user realises that Linux isn’t ready for the mainstream after all. Usually after an incident caused by the Time of Denial: “I guess piping command line arguments out of files and into other processes is a little obscure, Grandma.”

If you think the problem is technical, you’re almost certainly wrong. We can fix all the holes we see in Linux support, that’s really the easy part. What we’ll never end up with is something that normal users will see as normal. We’ll never create what they’re used to, because we’re not trying to create that; we want something better.

No, the problem is social. People need to be educated about what makes a good system, about all the options available, about secure practices, about strengths and weaknesses. That’s a hard problem, and it’s one that your compiler can do very little to help you with.

October was a big month for viewing, as we approach the pre-Christmas clearance.

Death Proof is Tarantino’s segment of the Grindhouse double feature. While, sadly, it was split for the European release (look out for the Planet Terror review in November’s Film Fight), this part of Grindhouse still delivers the goods. Kurt Russell plays Stuntman Mike, a thrill-seeker who loves hurting and scaring young women. Without elaborating much more on the plot, it meets expectations of how ridiculous a b-movie should be. The characters are over the top, the dialogue is a little over-boiled (but not hard-boiled), and everything comes together nicely. Where it falls down is the length. This release is around 30 minutes longer than the original cut, and it shows. I enjoy Tarantino’s dialogue, he’s a master it believably, but it does go on a little long in places. So, a good film, but not great.

Having enjoyed prequel Night Watch, it was with some disappointment that I realised Day Watch‘s makers had gotten it so spectacularly wrong. The original had an odd epic battle going on between the two sides of Day and Night, with each character having their own power, the set-up being quite dark, and the mysterious Gloom unsettling. This time round everything is pulled out of the writer’s ass. Characters develop new powers and find artifacts to help them when it’s plot convenient, the story is all over the place (dozens of nonsensical slivers), the upped budget has produced some pretty brash effects (a bad thing), an abysmal ending, and the whole thing smacks of not knowing what to do. It lacks cohesion, intelligence and style: the very things that the original had going for it. A real shame.

Recent Farrelly brother films and Ben Stiller films have been pretty poor. That’s why it’s such a surprise to find that the pairing has produced a pretty decent movie, The Heartbreak Kid. The plot is thin, but the farce that develops around it is quite amusing. It features a good performance by Michelle Monaghan, some great back and forths between Stiller and Monaghan’s family, and a strong supporting cast. The layer upon layer of ending is, as always, a pain point, but the rest of the film is strong enough to survive it. Good, light entertainment.

It’s sad to see a good premise go wrong. Sadly, that’s what happens with the remake of The Invasion. As body snatchers take over, the film really let’s you see that the tricks used to fool it are noticed by other people much earlier than the main character, bringing with it a sense of realism. Throughout, there are moments of well-taut pressure followed by bursts of panic, but the whole facade falls down because the plot takes too long and makes the main character’s son plot critical. Sure, seeing the big victory is nice, but having viewed it through minor eyes for much of the film, it smacks of laziness to pull this particular ending.

The Counterfeiters tells the terrible (and true) story of Jewish bankers, artists and counterfeiters treated like kings in their own private camp, while being forced to manufacture fake notes. It’s an affecting drama, showing the struggle between survival and fighting injustice, as demonstrated by the film’s two main protagonists. It pulls you in every direction, perfectly executing each scene through the dramatic conclusion. Pitch perfect, and a contender for film of the year.

As most people know, making charming little animated films is what Pixar does best. Their latest, Ratatouille, doesn’t disappoint. While the main human character is a rare mistake for the company, the eponymous rat and the rest of the cast never fail to delight. The sense of adventure, light-handed morality, and carefully handled plotting that Pixar are known for shine through once again.

Finally, Mr Brooks looked like being a good Kevin Costner film, but failed to deliver the goods. The premise is that of a meticulous serial killer, with an invisible friend (his murderous side) advising him when things start to go wrong. It’s really just an excuse for some incredibly lazy acting and storytelling. Rather than Costner showing us what he’s feeling, he’ll get started and his invisible friend will then explain it to us through pretty painful dialogue. The other characters are numerous but largely superflous, given far too much screen time for what amount to plot strands that mean nothing to the film (Demi Moore’s character could have been in another film entirely). Mr Brooks gives up on it’s own internal logic, and gives up the ghost on what could’ve been an interesting film. Shame.

The obvious winner this month is the fantastic war time movie, The Counterfeiters.