CINEMA: Terminator Salvation

So, after all the rants, the raves, the ratcheting up of tension, can this, the latest instalment of the Terminator franchise, really live up to the hype? The answer is a resounding yes, because there’s never been a summer blockbuster where the money has been more up there on the screen. If you want action, thrills, spills, amazing CGI and make up effects then look no further because Terminator Salvation delivers on absolutely every front.

In this particular episode of mankind against the machines we visit events in the future Sarah Connor never told her son John about – mainly because this fourth part of the story hadn’t even been envisaged when the original came out. However, scriptwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris do well to keep in all the facts we do already know and then augment them with a new, well thought out story strand.

In our own time Sarah Connor has been visited by a man from the future who becomes the father of her son, John (Christian Bale), who grows to lead mankind’s resistance against the deadly machines. Also in our own time the newly introduced figure of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is facing the death penalty for killing his brother and two policemen. Believing himself to be damned, Marcus is offered a “second chance” to redeem himself by scientist Dr Kogan (Helena Bonham Carter) who, after his execution, wants him to donate his body to a special experimental procedure she hopes will help cure cancer in the future.

Unfortunately, she has no idea what a nightmare the future will turn out to be, so when Marcus reawakens he finds the last dregs of humanity, including a young man named Kyle (Anton Yelchin), valiantly battling machines intent on wiping out mankind. There is a rumour that a brave leader named John Connor is their last best hope of winning the war and so an amnesiac Marcus and Kyle set out to try and find him. Their frequent encounters with Terminators on the way throw up more questions about just who the seemingly indestructible Marcus is than they answer, and by the time Marcus finally meets John, no one – not even Marcus himself – is sure what he has become and whose side he is on.

Although the storyline may sound slightly complex, in fact it is so straightforwardly explained the audience is left to concentrate on what Terminator Salvation is really all about – spectacle. From the very opening scenes of a resistance attack on a machine base through to some truly awe-inspiring chase scenes (by car, Terminator bike and by fighter plane) to its last showdown in the Terminator factory, this is real seat of your pants stuff. The film creates an almost unbearable atmosphere of paranoia and fear and you’ll be gnawing your knuckles down to bare bone with the tension of it all.

Christian Bale’s intensity sears white hot from the screen but this isn’t, in fact, John Connor’s movie. For long passages of the film he’s not even on screen as the action sits firmly on Sam Worthington’s shoulders as the confused, tormented Marcus. Worthington – in the absence of an Arnie Terminator character – provides a perfect foil for Bale while Anton Yelchin (so brilliant in Star Trek) once again adds youthful energy as the idealistic Kyle, innocently hero-worshipping John Connor.

So, if you want stupendously explosive action with seamless special effects and real heart-pounding excitement, look no further. The summer blockbuster has landed.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Tormented

Yes, it’s yet another teenage, bloodfest horror flick, but this time the kids are not in high school, they’re in a British school and there’s actually a serious message behind all the screams and silliness.

Welcome to suburbia and posh grammar school Fairview High. Here, the pouting princes and queen bees are Bradley (Alex Pettyfer), Alexis (Dimitri Leonidas) and their gang, and Tasha (April Pearson) and her followers. Head Girl Justine (Tuppence Middleton) steers well clear of them all, but when bullied fellow pupil Darren (Calvin Dean) commits suicide, the whole school, including all the nerds, goths and emos who never made it into the in-crowd, are thrown together in horrible circumstances. Although overweight Darren may be dead and buried, his ghost is out for vengeance against everyone in the school who bullied and tormented him. Soon, pupils are dropping like tenpins, dying from decapitation, drowning, scalpel slashes, penis chopping and guillotining.

Although the movie is played for laughs and has a definite whiff of MTV about it, its anti-bullying message comes through clear and strong. There are also a couple of sex scenes where the safe sex message is never mentioned but illustrated through the use of condoms. It’s firmly aimed at the teen market with the gore being of the blood sprayed across the whole room variety rather than anything remotely realistic and isn’t at all scary.

However, it does act as a showcase for plenty of young British talent with Olly Alexander as nerdy Jason impressing and Tom Hopper as Bradley’s minder Marcus coming on like a fresh-faced Freddie Flintoff.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Awaydays

Yet another movie about football hooligans probably won’t appeal to much of the cinema-going public, but there’s way more going on in Awaydays than a bunch of violent oiks in bovver boots. This film is actually more a poignant and tragic love story than a straight depiction of violence.

It’s 1979 and 19-year-old Paul Carty (Nicky Bell) is football and music mad. He’d love to run with The Pack, a notorious gang of Liverpool fans, famous as much for their outfits as their violent clashes before, during and after matches. But in order to join them he has to be accepted by them and pack leader Godden (Stephen Graham), and Godden sees him as an outsider. Then one night Carty runs into Elvis (Liam Boyle) at an Echo And The Bunnymen gig and his life suddenly changes, for Elvis is an aloof and enigmatic member of The Pack and he can get Carty an introduction to the gang. Soon Carty is in the thick of it, fighting with the best of them and getting closer and closer to Elvis. But, Elvis has two secrets, secrets that would tear him apart if anyone knew, so when he decides he has to confide in Carty he puts them both in terrible danger.

Although the utterly senseless violence of The Pack is sickening and doesn’t make for great cinema, if you can get beyond that and concentrate on the growing bond and rather complicated relationship between Carty and Elvis, you’ll find much to impress. This is the real heart of Awaydays and writer Kevin Sampson (from his book of the same name) skilfully creates a friendship of real substance and emotion – brittle and sometimes confrontational, but strong and enduring.

Liam Boyle as tortured soul Elvis, dreaming of a better life anywhere but in Liverpool, perfectly captures Elvis’s frustration and yearning. The mighty Mersey and the even mightier ships that sail down it are used throughout the film as a metaphor for escape and release and the scenes shot at the river’s edge are probably the most memorable of the film. Unfortunately, however, the accents are so thick subtitles would not have been a bad idea as deciphering the dialogue is difficult, but then there is the glorious soundtrack of The Bunnymen, Magazine, The Cure and Joy Division to listen to when you give up on the words.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Night at the Museum 2

The saying goes “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, which is why this sequel of the hugely successful NATM 1 is more of the same with a few new characters thrown in for good measure.

Ben Stiller resumes his role as museum nightwatchman Larry, although he has now left to set up his own business. However, on a trip back to the museum to play with the dinosaur and chat with Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams) he discovers all his favourite exhibits are being shipped out to be stored in the basement of the Smithsonian in Washington. Larry knows he can’t forsake his old buddies including Attila The Hun (Patrick Gallagher), General Custer (Bill Hader) and miniature cowboy Jed (Owen Wilson), Roman Octavius (Steve Coogan), or that infuriating monkey and so travels to Washington to find them. However, the Smithsonian is huge and spread across a number of different venues so while on the quest to find his mates he bumps into Egyptian ruler Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria), Napoleon (Alain Chabat) and Ivan The Terrible (Christopher Guest) and eventually has to enlist the help of Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) to foil their evil plans for world domination.

This is one of those movies where it is almost inevitable that setting the story will take an age as there is so much backplot to get through and so many characters to reintroduce, but director Shawn Levy then exacerbates the slow pace of the film by intercutting the (too few) action scenes with longueurs where nothing much of anything happens. These are mostly scenes dealing with the nascent romance between Larry and Amelia when all the audience really wants is to know how the familiar characters are faring.

Unfortunately, as they spend most of the movie stuck in a cargo container, when we do return to them there’s nothing much going on anyway. This is a great pity as there is so much imagination in this film (a wonderful scene with ‘wobble head’ miniature busts of Einstein is inspired, but is over almost before it begins) it could have been a great old-fashioned action romp with a host of famous historical figures and assorted fauna stampeding through the vast areas under the museum. Instead, by concentrating on the twee romance and neglecting the action it becomes a vapid ghost image of the original.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: French Film

It looks like 2009 is firming up to be something of a fine vintage for a certain Eric Cantona on film. Not only does he have a rather charming starring role here, but he also stars in Ken Loach’s new movie, making him our favourite footballer-turned-actor du jour.

Here he is acclaimed French filmmaker Thierry whose musings on life and love are at first pooh-poohed by bluff English journalist Jed (Hugh Bonneville) who has been commissioned to interview the Frenchman. However, when Jed’s long-term girlfriend Cheryl (Victoria Hamilton) and his mates Marcus (Douglas Hensall) and Sophie (Anne-Marie Duff) question Jed’s romantic credentials, he starts to see there may be more to this l’amour stuff than he at first thought. Jed finds it difficult to talk about his feelings so Cheryl carts him off to couple counselling where she begins to realise he really doesn’t have a clue and it slowly dawns on him that “other people fall in love, they talk about it all the time, they write songs about it. I think I might want to fall in love; I’m nearly 40 and I’ve never done it.”

There are plenty of great lines in this rather grown up take on love and all its complications, however the film suffers from the same smug middle-classness that stymied Love, Actually – when the characters start talking about smoked fish and chip ice cream you know the movie has lost the plot somewhat. But it does have a certain rather wistful charm about it (Victoria Hamilton is particularly affecting) and had the editing been slightly slicker and Monsieur Cantona had more scenes, this could have been a real left-field gem.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Synedoche, New York (Part 2)

When screenwriter Charlie Kaufman burst onto the scene with the wonderfully left of centre Being John Malkovich, it signalled a new and very singular talent had arrived, and this was confirmed by subsequent films such as Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Now Kaufman returns with a film he not only wrote but also directed and sadly, the resulting pile of self-satisfied, smug triteness is so far up its own sphincter it looks like Charlie boy is going to have to return to the drawing board and start all over again.

Welcome to the world of theatre director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who is suffering something of a midlife crisis. However, his middle-aged angst seems to be doing his directing the world of good and when he is awarded a substantial bursary to start a new work, he rents out a vast warehouse in New York where he plans to produce the ultimate in heightened realism. He builds a set of the city itself and gets actors to play real people, including himself (Tom Noonan) and his one-time girlfriend and collaborator Hazel (Samantha Morton in real life, Emily Watson in the play). But as the line between real life and theatre gets evermore blurred he comes to realise he has created a house of cards that will inevitably fall and bury him.

Kaufman has assembled the most astounding cast on this project including Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams and Dianne Wiest, but he has given them material that is so dry and abstruse it’s a bit like watching a really bad acid trip. While Kaufman plays with time frames, genres, people’s identities and chronologies, he takes his eye off the main reason why the film should exist in the first place, namely to entertain. He is, in effect, entertaining himself, leaving the audience to go hang.

After two hours of such impenetrable onanism you may find yourself yearning for that good old-fashioned story format of beginning, middle and conclusion that doesn’t include a house that is inexplicably on fire for the entire duration of the film.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Angels & Demons

Although this was a mega blockbuster hit for Dan Brown when it was published as a book, as a film Angels & Demons is anything but a thrilling page-turner.

Tom Hanks returns as academic Robert Langdon, the man who cracked the Da Vinci code, much to the chagrin of the Catholic Church. He is therefore, rather surprised when on the death of the incumbent Pope the Vatican turns to him to help discover the whereabouts of a group of the church’s leading cardinals who have been kidnapped. Langdon rushes to Rome where he discovers the cardinals are not the only things missing; an Italian scientist (Ayelet Zurer) working on the huge CERN particle accelerator project has also been summoned to discover the whereabouts of a container of anti-matter that has been stolen from CERN. Can Langdon, the scientist and the acting head of the church, the Camerlengo (Ewan McGregor) unravel a series of clues left by the Illuminati – a secret society sworn to oppose the church – in order to get to the anti-matter before it turns itself into a huge bomb, destroying not only the Vatican but much of Rome itself?

This being a Dan Brown story, conspiracy theory, symbols and mysterious signs abound as the movie turns into a mad dash from church to church around Rome. Because the background to the story is essential in order for viewers to have any clue as to what is going on, the exposition at the beginning is interminable – and yet still leaves things as clear as mud.  The location work around Rome is glorious but you don’t get to see enough of it as Langdon looks at a statue, immediately grasps its relevance and is racing off to the next clue in yet another chapel or crypt.  It’s kind of Indiana Jones with a cod-serious plot and absolutely no sense of humour and by the time the totally unbelievable ending comes around (revealing – shock horror – a plot within a plot within the bigger plot) you’ll probably have lost the plot!

The money is most definitely all up there on screen but it is the story itself that lets the film down, never giving itself or the audience time to take stock and work out if it is all actually hanging together.  Tom Hanks does an awful lot of pointing, McGregor’s Irish accent is appalling and the poor old Italian gendarmarie and the Vatican’s own Swiss Guard have to suffer a rising body count. It’s really all cloak and dagger, smoke and mirrors, and is about as convincing as Elvis on the moon.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Synedoche, New York

Charlie Kaufman wants to get inside your head!

He wants his audience to try and figure out his films and for them to find their own unique connection with his work, be it the awesome Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the mind-warping Being John Malkovich or underrated Human Nature.

In his new film (and first time he has stepped behind the camera) he sets about constructing a film with a play within the film within the film which is enough to give even old Malkovich a headache.

Put simply, the film is about a theatre director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) building a lifesize replica of New York inside an enormous warehouse as he struggles to complete a play telling the story of his own life.

There is so much to say about this film – which on on one level is the study of a man’s whole adult life and relationships, while on another is about health and the steady descent to death – so let’s look at things other than the story which is something that will divide audiences right down the middle.

The performances all round are absolutely brilliant, particularly Hoffman’s central role of the always-ill Cotard simply trying to hold his life together and find truth in his work. He imbues the character with depth and gravitas so that we actually care about his troubles on screen. Michelle Williams as his second wife Claire proves again that she is an actress growing in strength with every new role. Hope Davis as Cotard’s shrink is as good as ever while kudos should go to the casting of not only just Samantha Morton as Hazel but to Emily Watson who ends up playing the character of Hazel in Cotard’s play.

Spike Jonze was originally going to direct, and unfortunately the direction is the one problem with this film, as Jonze’s stylistic flourishes and touches are sorely missed. Kaufman is simply not experienced enough behind the camera to make this really sparkle. The camerawork is often stagey and static and although this fits in with the idea of filming a play, it’s not enough to raise it to same level as the astounding script and great cast performances.

Synecdoche, New York will confuse and enrage many who will see it as pretentious shite, but there is enough intelligence and strong ideas in the script to make this worth watching in the cinema.

Mark Cappuccio

CINEMA: Cheri

The novella Cheri by Colette happens to be one of my favourite stories, being a sparse, raw reflection on age, beauty, unfulfilled ideals and dreams, and a love that cannot survive, shot through with Colette’s flashes of piercing humour. So how director Stephen Frears and writer Christopher Hampton have managed to turn it into some tacky travesty of itself – where the laughs are broad and cheap – is beyond imagining.

This Paris set doomed love affair takes place in 1906 when ageing former courtesan Madame Lea (Michelle Pfeiffer) takes Cheri (Rupert Friend) the young, untutored son of her colleague Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates) as her lover. Lea indulges the headstrong Cheri, spoiling him and enjoying his youth while realising how she herself is now showing signs of ageing.  In her heart she knows it will only be a matter of time before Cheri leaves her for a younger woman and when the beautiful, innocent Marie Laure (Iben Hjejle) arrives on the scene, she must accept her days with Cheri are numbered.

While the book is all about nuance and subtlety, Frears almost turns the film into farce, his jaunty voiceover at total odds to the feel of the novella. Whereas he plays much of the action for laughs, Colette’s written barbs were not so much funny as cruel – and in the scene where Cheri finally leaves Lea, his speech is all about cruelty and the fact he loved her for her kindness.

By overplaying the humour at the expense of Lea’s personal tragedy Frears does the book a disservice, and one wonders whether this very female book written by a woman would have fared better with a woman screenwriter and director at the helm.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Coraline

This 3D stop-motion children’s animation is far too good and imaginative to be left to the kids so if you find yourself accompanying children to it, don’t think of it as a chore, just sit back and enjoy.

Coraline is a precocious 11-year-old who moves with her mum and dad to a ramshackle old house with two old dears living in the basement and an eccentric Russian living in the attic.  Both her parents work from home and as the deadline for a seed catalogue they are writing looms, Coraline finds she is being left to her own devices.  She befriends a local boy and starts to explore her new house, which is when she discovers a door that leads her into an alternative world where her ‘other’ mum and dad always have time for her and spoil her with treats and gifts, but have buttons for eyes. It seems the ideal world to Coraline, but she can only stay if she agrees to give up her eyes and have buttons sewn on in their place.

Based on the book by Neil Gaiman, the film is full of clever and wondrous images; in the alternative world snapdragon flowers actually become dragons, her dad rides on the back of a giant, mechanical praying mantis and the two old biddies downstairs turn into vaudeville stars swinging from high wires.

The attention to detail is tremendous and there is always something new and glorious on screen. However, the story is quite dark and very young children may find some sequences quite unsettling. The voice cast – including Dakota Fanning as Coraline, Teri Hatcher as her mum and Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French as the two biddies – do sterling work and the 3D effects (especially a sequence containing hummingbirds and a frog) show just how far this increasingly popular format has come in the last few years.

Dee Pilgrim