CINEMA: 27 Dresses

In which the last 27 romantic comedies about weddings are thrown in a mixer, blended a bit and come out as an OK but totally predictable chickflick.

Katherine Heigl stars as Jane, a woman so obsessed with weddings she’s practically organised all her girlfriends’ nuptials, as well as appearing as bridesmaid in 27 of them. In fact, she’s still got 27 assorted (yet all hideous) bridesmaid’s dresses hanging in her closet.  Jane just loves organising weddings (which begs the question, why hasn’t she started a career as a wedding planner?), but her belief in love and marriage takes a big knock when her boss (Edward Burns), with whom she is secretly besotted, becomes engaged to her pushy sister (Malin Akerman). Is nothing sacred? To add insult to injury, she finds herself in the company of celebrity wedding reporter Kevin (James Marsden) and discovers – shock, horror – he actually hates weddings. In fact, he hates them so much he can’t wait to get a new gig as a serious journalist and sees Jane and her strange attachment to confetti, veils and bouquets as the perfect story to kickstart his career.

So far, so tried and tested storyline, and believe me, it doesn’t get any more surprising or innovative. However, there’s something truly endearing about Heigl and she gives Jane such a big heart you can’t help but warm to her, while from this performance at least, it looks like Marsden could be the next Paul Rudd, with a lovely line in self-deprecating humour. In fact, it’s the scenes between these two that are the most convincing and had we seen more of them and not all the extraneous characters, this would have been a much better movie.     Dee Pilgrim

DVD: In the Land of Women

Carter Webb (Adam Brody), a soft porn writer from Los Angeles, is heartbroken when his fashion model girlfriend dumps him. In his moment of despair he decides to travel cross-country to suburban Michigan to care for his ailing grandmother (Olympia Dukakis). While pining for his lost love and taking care of his grandmother he meets the Hardwikes, the ‘women’ from across the road, and soon finds himself tangled up in their complicated lives.

The mum, Sara (Meg Ryan), is a bit of a broken soul. Not only is her husband having an affair but she also has breast cancer. Daughter Lucy (Kristen Stewart), is a teenager full of angst and the normal hormonal confusion, while the younger daughter Paige (Makenzie Vega) is the wisest of them all.

The title of the movie suggests that it’s all about the female characters but this isn’t the case. The film is all about Carter, even when the story seems to be about the ‘women’ it all comes back to Carter. How Carter is feeling, what Carter thinks, how Carter relates to the current goings on… it gets old, fast. He is an unsympathetic character who you never get to know properly.

Early impressions of the film seem to promise much, but there are simply too many flaws. The main problems are a poorly conceived story and a weak script filled with cliches – including angry, urgent ‘I know I shouldn’t but I’m going to anyway’ kisses – one of which takes place in the pouring rain. Lame!

The movie has a wonderful cast but the poor storytelling lets them down. The only one who has undergone any attempt of development is Carter, but Adam Brody is just too bland and delivers a completely forgettable performance. Olympia Dukakis is great at playing a senile old broad, (a role she could have played in her sleep) but seems to be used solely as the movie’s comic relief. Unfortunately, most of the cheap jokes surrounding her fall flat.

Surprisingly, Meg Ryan turns in a reasonable performance, and she plays the ‘poor me, I’ve got cancer’ role with conviction. She brings a degree of authenticity to the part, but again her character suffers from underdevelopment. Her oldest daughter Lucy is the typical rebellious teenager – a shallow mallrat who only wants to be popular. Were this movie predominantly a chickflick this storyline may have worked, but it’s not, it’s an indie/drama with just a dash of chickflick mentality, and as such is a little confused. This is just one of the reasons why the film fails to grab you on both an emotional and intellectual level.

The only character in the movie who manages to completely please is the young, wise and knowing Paige. Sadly her role was too small, which is a real shame because Makenzie Vega would have made the movie that little bit more bearable.

This utterly forgettable film fails to please on so many levels that it really won’t make its way into your heart or your soul. It doesn’t provide food for thought and you won’t even be talking about it hours – let alone weeks – after you have seen it.     Rachel Shaw

You can buy it here.

DVD: The Condemned

A wrestler and Vinnie Jones? Together? The sensible thing to do would be to put the DVD down and walk away slowly. It comes as some surprise then, to advise that to do so would be to exclude yourself from a genuinely fun film experience.

Ten death-row inmates from around the world are flown to a remote island by an unscrupulous internet TV producer where they will battle to the death for the entertainment of the watching millions. The last one standing will be rewarded with their life. This simple premise gives way to an orgy of violence delivered with the kind of clean direction and cinematography seldom seen in films like this, and the overall experience plays out like Battle Royale meeting First Blood with Vince McMahon as gore-covered ringmaster.

Some of the film is quite jarring – including a particularly nasty rape scene, where none of the action is seen, just heard. However, unlike other films which would use a scene like this simply to shock, The Condemned uses it to further the plot and show the turning point for those involved in the show. As the movie progresses, it finds itself in some quite dubious territory when it starts laying a heavy guilt trip on those watching the deaths online and getting their kicks from the onscreen violence, and by association is an indictment on those watching the film. As breaking down the fourth wall goes, it doesn’t pull off the feat with any great finesse, but it is a brave move for a film with a ready-made audience, and any attempt at all to dig a little deeper and make some form of social comment has to be applauded.

As a WWE movie, it’s hard to not compare it to the likes of The Marine and See No Evil, but it really is on another level entirely. Fast paced and well-made, The Condemned is a surprisingly slick movie and shows that Stone Cold Steve Austin could well have a career in cinema and that there is slightly more to Vinnie Jones than a rubbish cockney.

Essentially a B-Movie with a Hollywood budget, The Condemned is utterly daft and grotesquely violent but it does exactly what you’d expect it to – but with a little cerebral content as an added extra.

Get some hardcore death kill action here baby!

CINEMA: 11th Hour

After Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, comes Leonardo DiCaprio’s 11th Hour, another very worthy and worrying documentary about the dangers of climate change. However, whereas Gore’s laidback lecturing style and undoubted charm made Truth both interesting and entertaining, 11th Hour is so choc-full of talking head experts, intent on giving their own tenpennyworth on their specialist subject – everything from marine biology to the ‘Philosophy of Arrogant Sunlight’ (don’t ask) – you soon become so blinded by the science you really won’t care about offsetting your air miles to decrease your carbon footprint. Sometimes, too much of a good thing is actually a bad thing.

Although 11th Hour should be applauded for its intent, someone should have taken a pair of scissors to its content.     Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: The Orphanage

Director Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) turns producer for this Spanish psychological horror/ghost story which bears some striking resemblances to The Others.

Having been brought up in an orphanage and thirty years later remembering only good things about it, Laura (Belen Rueda) vows to give something back to the community.  She buys the now-deserted orphanage building and moves into it with her husband and son Simon (Roger Princep) intending to turn it into a children’s home for those with physical or mental problems. But when Simon starts to talk of imaginary friends Laura is concerned, and when these ‘friends’ seemingly start to steal objects and move them around the building she realises more is going on than she or Simon realises.

As her own childhood, and that of the other orphans who lived there with her, start to manifest themselves in the present, another, darker story from the orphanage’s past begins to emerge.

The film is incredibly atmospheric and the spookiness of the building – which is on a cliff by an abandoned lighthouse – is perfectly realised, but there are certain things about the storyline which cause misgivings.

Laura is a good person, trying to do something incredibly worthwhile, and her son Simon is an innocent with things in his past he does not know about and is not responsible for. So what eventually happens to them is not only disturbing but also unsatisfying. It’s not so much that you wish for a happy-ever-after, it’s just you wish justice to be done and it palpably isn’t.     Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Lars And The Real Girl

This has to be this year’s weirdest movie so far, and yet it also has a certain wistful charm about it.

Timid, shy Lars (Ryan Gosling) lives next door to his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and new wife Karin (Emily Mortimer). They desperately want him to be happy and try their hardest to get him a girlfriend, but Lars cannot even contemplate talking to a real girl and so he orders a blow-up girlfriend instead. Gus and Karin are initially appalled at this turn of events and on a pretext take him to the local doctor (Patricia Clarkson) to see if it is time to consign him to the loony bin, but she tells them to just go along with his delusion as it will probably just come to a natural end. Thus, they and the whole of their sleepy Midwestern town take ‘Bianca’ into their community and homes – with sometimes funny and surprising results.

There’s a sweet naivety to the film which makes you want to root for Lars, but eventually its charm, and its novelty value, do wear themselves out. It’s a fantastic idea but the execution, which is very assured at the beginning, is derailed in the film’s middle section, by which point you may wish for ‘Bianca’ to get a puncture and have done with it.     Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: The Spiderwick Chronicles

Beware: scary gremlins, goblins and spooks lurk in every corner of this rather adult children’s film that has a refreshingly unsentimental feel to it. Based on the best-selling books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black this is a good, old-fashioned story with some surprisingly modern twists to it.

After the break-up of their parents’ marriage, the Grace children – twins Jared and Simon (both played by Freddie Highmore), and older sister Mallory (Sarah Bolger) –move with their mum (Mary-Louise Parker) to the isolated Spiderwick Estate, once the home of their eccentric great-great-uncle. Traumatised by the family split and missing their home, friends and lives in New York, the children bicker and squabble, with the extremely angry Jared being the worst of the bunch. But when he discovers a strange creature called a ‘house brownie’ living behind the walls, things start to take a magical and decidedly dark turn. Soon, the three siblings are locked in mortal battle with a malicious hobgoblin for ownership of Arthur Spiderwick’s magic book and they have nowhere else to go.

Although the film is full of imagination, wit and humour, what really sets it apart from other spooky kiddie fare are the relationships between the three children and their mother. The sibling rivalries, petty jealousies and above all their resentment at having their lives turned upside down are deftly handled. Freddie Highmore does well to show the different personalities of Jared and Simon, while even the special effect monsters and sprites have an authenticity to them. There are some scary moments so do take these into consideration if taking younger children to the film.     Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Love In The Time Of Cholera

Based on the acclaimed novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this is a slow, sedate ramble of a film, which moves as lazily as a riverboat down the mighty Magdalena river delta which is one of its central motifs. While some may find its soporific pace far too pedestrian, others (especially those who have read the book) will revel in the space this gives the film to explore its main characters.

For the young Florentino (Javier Bardem) it is love at first sight when he casts his eyes on the sweet Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), jealously guarded by her rich widowed father (John Leguizamo). It seems Fermina is similarly smitten, but when her papa discovers she has set her heart on a lowly shipping clerk, he sends her far from her Cartagenian home in the hope she will forget her infatuation. His plan works for, on her return, Fermina becomes fascinated by the suave Dr Juvenal (Benjamin Bratt), an expert in treating the cholera that is sweeping through the city. When Florentino discovers his one true love has married someone else, he swears he will never give his heart to another, wanting to keep it pure for her – although his body is another matter.

 

And so through the long years of their lives, the would-be lovers live in the same city, their paths crossing intermittently, until Dr Juvenal finally dies and the elderly Florentino can confess his undying love.

Director Mike Newell makes the most of the film’s Colombian setting, filling the screen with warm, amber light and luscious plants and flowers, while the shots of the extraordinary delta – water stretching away for miles on either side – are truly amazing. Bardem and Mezzogiorno make for a very telegenic couple, even when plastered in ageing make-up. But what really shines through is Marquez’s dialogue, which contains the subtle nuances of real conversations where what is not said is as important as what is uttered.

So, not everyone’s cup of tea, but fans of the book will be delighted the film stays so true to the original tone of the novel.     Dee Pilgrim

DVD: Chaos

It’s not often that a Jason ‘Straight to Video’ Statham movie leads one into a deep internal religious debate. However the final five minutes of Tony Giglio’s 2005 cop-heist drama Chaos leave one pondering the eternal question, ‘Is one good deed, right before one heads to the pearly gates, enough to save a man’s soul after a lifetime of misdeeds?’

If you switch ‘man’ for ‘Chaos’ and ‘misdeeds’ for ‘cliche-heavy action, cringe-enducing dialogue, lack of any palpable on-screen chemistry and a plot holier than the Dalai Lama’, then then the short answer is no.

So as good as it is, the shock twist at the end, designed to leave cinema-goers (!) feeling satisfied with their (ahem) evening out, does not count as a deed good enough to make up for the preceding 90 minutes of pap, however stylish it may look.

The basic plot, without giving too much (anything) away, is: sophisticated bank robbery, hostages taken, grizzled veteran cop (Statham) recalled from suspension after tragic accident, partnered with fresh-faced young buck detective (Ryan Philippe), after bad guys escape the scene the original odd-couple team up to track down the criminal mastermind behind the raid (Wesley Snipes) with interesting consequences.

It ticks all the boxes you could possibly want in a robbery film. Bad guy tells bank customer, “You picked the wrong day not to use the ATM” – check. Cop demands of colleague “I want an ID and I want it yesterday” – check. Cop makes CCTV room breakthrough “Stop… go back… THERE” – check.

There’s even a car chase, complete with speeding down narrow alleyways, smashing through plate glass windows and removal men carrying heavy items bumbling across the road in the path of the speeding vehicles. Classic.

On the other hand you also get one of the worst scenes ever committed to celluloid when a female detective seductively slips her number into Philippe’s pocket and breathes: “… for a list of things you can put in my mouth.”

Statham seems to have really found his niche as a poor man’s Bruce Willis despite the fact that, how do I put this politely, his American accent needs some work. Impolitely, but accurately, it is God-awful. He makes Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood sound like Stephen Fry after a term of elocution lessons.

Despite all this, Chaos does still serve a purpose. It can be used as a light-weight travel shaving mirror or employed to amuse infants by reflecting beams of light onto bare walls.

The conclusion couldn’t quite drag the overall standard up to satisfactory.
Alex Hoad

You can buy Chaos here. You mentalist.

CINEMA: Son Of Rambow

If the release of the new Rambo movie has left you wondering whether the geriatric Stallone’s bandana has been secured a little too tightly, then do not despair. A new British film almost about Rambo, but with far less bloodshed and much more charm, is on its way.

Son of Rambow, directed by Garth Jennings (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), follows two adolescent boys on a mission to win a national junior screen-test competition. Armed with his elder brother’s camcorder, loveable miscreant Lee Carter (Will Poulter) recruits his unlikely cohort Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), a timid member of a pious religious sect – the Brethren – to co-star in his low budget action debut. The collision of their divergent upbringings and characters provides the basis of the film’s charm and wit. Even though Will’s naïve remarks are continually and acerbically punctured by Lee’s sarcastic ripostes, the pair quickly become friends, united by their common desire to escape their home lives.

It would have been very easy for Jennings to allow the 80s setting to consume the plot, and give way to unfeasibly bright clothes and keyboard music, as many weaker films have done. Instead he has executed this with a well-measured dose of nostalgia, augmenting the overall charm and perhaps providing an outlet for those who want to take a journey through the decade that hairstyles forgot.

Although you probably won’t leave the cinema with a greater sense of human understanding, this film serves its purpose. It’s something we can all relate to; being a kid, going on an adventure, and making some true friends along the way. If that’s not enough, then go to see it for Eric Sykes’ cameo as the decrepit, elderly, and senile Rambo. Ring any bells?     Ed Keating