Warner Attempt To Better 'Titans Will Clash'. Fail.

As the marketing campaign kicked off for Wrath Of The Titans, the world was on tenterhooks to see if the genius bods behind the Clash Of The Titans' marketing campaign could beat their previous - winner of Best Tagline Ever - effort from the 2010 film. Could they!? Would they?! Erm... should they!?


No. They could have at least gone for 'Feel The Titans'.

Senna - Blu-ray Review

'there's no letup from corners whizzing by at over one-hundred miles per hour, no break from the shockingly bad protection afforded to F1 drivers in the eighties and nineties and no relief from the fatalistic movement towards the still-depressing conclusion'

Remarkably similar to fellow 2011 documentary TT3D, Asif Kapadia's Senna - covering legendary driver Ayrton Senna's F1 career - and Richard De Aragues's motorcycling opus should both find themselves competing for major awards when the end of year reckoning comes around. As it is, the unique nature of awards categorisation, disqualifications and politics looks set to ensure they both miss out. Don't let that fool you.

Kapadia's film both differs from and loses out to De Aragues' in terms of style, a shortcoming Kapadia seems to have embraced by only including archive footage for the entire one-hundred and six minutes Senna runs for. There's new interviews but no new talking heads, the dialogue instead playing over footage of Senna relaxing or, more often, racing.

The stylistic choice serves to suck you in to Senna's story to a remarkable degree. There's no letup from corners whizzing by at over one-hundred miles per hour, no break from the shockingly bad protection afforded to F1 drivers in the eighties and nineties and no relief from the fatalistic movement towards the still-depressing conclusion.

Kapadia's film inspires both anger and admiration towards the governing bodies of F1 and the drivers respectively and significant thanks should be heaped on Bernie Ecclestone for allowing the film-makers access to footage from a period that hardly covers the sport in glory. Credit to Kapadia too for not merely watching Senna admiringly through a long lens. There's elements of his dubious temperament on show here and time also reserved for the supporting players to shine. A well-rounded documentary, which falls to TT3D only in terms of its look and feel. Fans of F1 will soak it up effortlessly, whilst newcomers should approach ready to be wowed.




Look further...

'exciting, uplifting, inspiring and tragic, Senna is one of the best documentaries I have seen.' - Film Drivel, 8.5/10

Classic Intel: Intolerable Cruelty - TV Review

'whilst The Coens were kicking Clooney into comedy overdrive, they seem to have forgotten to write him a proper script'

If Intolerable Cruelty proved one thing it's that The Coen Brothers do know how to get the best out of George Clooney. Burn After Reading may not have been anyone's finest hour but in this and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Clooney gives the kind of unrestrained, subtly comedic performance that informed his brilliant Mr Fox (Fantastic Mr. Fox) and dynamite Lyn Cassady (in the ultimately flawed The Men Who Stare At Goats). Clooney can do suave with the same amount of effort it takes a skunk to create a stink but to do comedy, he needed the talents of Joel and Ethan to give him a kick start.

Unfortunately, whilst The Coens were kicking Clooney into comedy overdrive, they seem to have forgotten to write him a proper script. Intolerable Cruelty starts well (Clooney's divorce lawyer Miles is pitted against Catherine Zeta-Jones' man-eater Marylin) but quickly digresses into a flumping non-entity of a final third, rushed, unsatisfying, not clever; very un-Coen.

There's some lovely stuff that happens in between all this, which does very much feel like Coen magic at its finest. Wheezy Joe (Irwin Keyes) is one of their better characters, typifying the fascination with all things funny, grim and a little bit stupid. But, equally, although Donovan Donaly (Geoffrey Rush) sets the ball rolling, he, like a lot of the plot, feels like a marriage of convenience, rather than someone who went through a proper development cycle.

The Clooney/Zeta-Jones pairing is an ace card but its played too early, unlike Steven Soderbergh's Out Of Sight, which kept anti-hero and heroine (played by, on that occasion, Clooney and Jennifer Lopez) apart for just the right amount of time. It leaves the film with nothing to show and nowhere to go come the end and the increasing reliance on comedic relief Wrigley (Paul Adelstein) is endemic of the plot's shortcomings. Fleetingly fun but lacking in a several percentage points of Coen smarts.




Intolerable Cruelty was showing on Sky Movies in the UK, for users with an appropriate subscription.

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'The Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, make significant strides towards classic "screwball" territory with Intolerable Cruelty, a much more tolerable comedy than we've been led to believe.' - IMDb Staff Review

Scream 4 - Blu-ray Review

'Craven starts to give the impression that he is throwing stuff at the screen in the hope that something icky sticks. It doesn't.'

If Scream 2 and 3 did not prove that the Scream concept does not have enough legs to sustain a franchise then Scream 4 should be the film that finally does. Lazy, poorly scripted, bloated with incidental characters ripe for a stabbing or two; Wes Craven's return to Woodsboro has more than a few similarities with his shockingly awful My Soul To Take, with only the comforting blanket of familiar characters to hide that fact from the audience.

Starting from the beginning, Craven bequeaths us with not one pre-title sequence (so important in the previous films) but with three. Could he not settle on one good one? It starts to give the impression that the director is throwing stuff at the screen in the hope that something icky sticks. It doesn't. The model that the sequences take seems like it is trying to teach us something about watching horror films (oh, how original) but is it? It says nothing and goes nowhere and once you chop out the not-needed first two, the third is obviously recycled and incredibly bland.

Once the film proper starts the list of characters you are given no reason to care for extends with every meaningless scene they feature in; Rebecca (Alison Brie), Jill (Emma Roberts), Jill's Mum (Mary McDonnell), Olivia (Marielle Jaffe), Deputy Judy (a particularly awful Marley Shelton), Robbie (Erik Knudsen), Charlie (Rory Culkin), the list could go on. The only one of the non-original trio (Courtney Cox, Neve Campbell and David Arquette) who even gets close to having a proper character arc is Hayden Panettiere's Kirby and the only reason you care about the returning stars is because you've seen the first three films.

The tension that has always been inherent in the Scream franchise - and the reason why they are unsustainable as a franchise - is their dutiful adherence to providing lecture after lecture on the shortcomings of various films, whilst steadfastly failing to heed their own guidance. In Scream 2 it was Sarah Michelle Gellar running up the stairs, in this there's an example every five minutes or so. Someone mentions the un-originality of the 'character appearing behind the fridge door' shot. Is that really any better than, late on, having one of your characters turn round to bump in to a hitherto out-of-shot hanging basket?

If the eventual reveal had have been revelatory then perhaps Scream 4 could have been marginally saved but it is actually possible to work out the initial unmasking by simple process of elimination; who has not been there during every killing? Lazy in the extreme. The coda too is weak and relies on a flawed bit of logic, disregarding the film's own claim that everything is 'all over the internet', one of many lines from Kevin Williamson's script that seems to suggest he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to technology. The more worrying thing is that, on the topic of the horror genre, it is starting to seem like Craven doesn't either.




Look further...

'there is some fun in Scream 4, but it’s made rather soggy by the nods and winks which never end... the ghostface killer from the film used to generate some energetic, fun movie-going excitement. Now I feel like the screaming face is actually just a yawn.' The Movie Snob, C

Classic Intel: House On Haunted Hill - Online Review

'there's no attempt to expand things out, to show people isolated and alone, to give us a genuine feeling of being haunted in a large and isolated abode'

Starting with a black screen and a series of floating heads explaining the preamble, you'd be forgiven for thinking that House On Haunted Hill is a film that can afford to mess around with lengthy audio scares and prolonged exposition. It can't. At just seventy-five minutes, William Castle's 1959 horror ends just when it threatened to get going, whilst wasting far too much time with a flat and dreary introduction.

The second act (at that length, you can only really consider this a two-act piece) much improves on the first, with some effective scares and the believable development of Frederick (Vincent Price) and Annabelle Loren (Carol Ohmart). Both are convincingly ambiguous characters who flit between charming host/hostess, victimised husband/damsel and conniving murderer/murderess. Their development and silent battles hold the heart of the piece and semi-hide the sociological horror of the film, namely the awkward and distasteful situations that arise when a marriage goes sour.

Scares are pretty few and far between, although there are some neat moments in the basement. Part of the reason for this isn't because Castle has no idea how to scare us - he clearly does - rather that he just doesn't seem that interested in doing so. The house, large and imposing from the outside, is made up of only three or four interiors (bedroom, living room, basement). There's no attempt to expand things out, to show people isolated and alone, to give us a genuine feeling of being haunted in a large and dramatic abode.

The end, rushed and hurried, is still satisfying to some degree, although it can't wait to wrap itself up and dispense with a final act. The limitations on fifties technical effects also come into play, although not quite to the degree that you have to snicker at them and the staging of the final scene, which starts the victim too far away from the method of their demise, is horrible. Still, House On Haunted Hill has got is place in classic horror, if only it had given itself a bit more time to cement it.




House On Haunted Hill is available on LOVEFiLM's Watch Online service.

Look further...

'keeps us guessing right up to the end, yet this mystery is but a single piece in what turns out to be a very scary, very entertaining puzzle' - My 2,500 Movie Challenge

GasLand - DVD Review

'what would happen if mumblecore ever did documentary'

GasLand, fronted by writer/director/narrator Josh Fox is what would happen if mumblecore ever did documentary. Fox, receiving a letter offering him a sizeable amount of money to drill natural gas on his property, finds himself embroiled in a web of intrigue and corporate denial by accident, bumbling along in the style of the accidental mystery solvers from Cold Weather.

Some will find this style of documentary difficult to swallow. Fox exits his car at one point to play the banjo with a gas mask on in the middle of a field of natural gas drilling outposts. Why? Because he can. Because the thing is unregulated and unprotected. Because there's no-one to stop him.

See past Fox's quirky style though and there is a serious issues film here with several shocking images. The most notable is the now infamous footage of Americans across the country with the ability to light their taps on fire but equally, the image of one man taking a blow torch to water and turning it into plastic and the brown water described as 'fit to drink' by one company provide plenty of shock content for discussion.

Fox can't quite get the film to last the one-hundred and seven minute runtime though and a ninety-minute cut would have reaped benefits. The case against the lack of legislation and the drilling companies themselves is all but made sixty minutes in but Fox perseveres, eventually creating a bit of a 'get to the point' atmosphere. That said, this is intriguing and well-argued stuff from a talent who looks like he could do this again and again with similarly successful results.




Look further...

'Gasland proves that there is more to documenting than being 100% accurate. Josh Fox's journey is one of self-discovery and eye opening science' - A Life In Equinox, 8.5/10

Christmas: Not Complete Without A Gremlin

It's Christmas day and, therefore, the only thing worthy of your attention here is a Gremlin in a Santa hat.


Now, go and find some mince pies and a brandy. Actually, forget the mince pies.

Merry Christmas to everyone who's stopped by Film Intel this year.

Christmas Puzzler: What Do You Get If You Cross James Franco and Premier League Footballer Gareth Barry?




You're welcome Where's Waldo? producers. With help from the BBC, I have just solved any casting problems you may or may not have had in the first place.

Elite Squad: The Enemy Within - DVD Review

'like the first film, the main joy of Elite Squad 2 comes from watching an honest character battle both the dishonest ones and his own internal beliefs'

The return of director José Padilha to the Elite Squad story is marked out by several very wise decisions by the Brazilian director. Elite Squad: The Enemy Within starts by bringing the first film's most interesting character, Lt. Colonel Nascimento (Wagner Moura) back into the fray, then makes an even better decision by markedly reducing the amount of time it allows him to spend narrating. The result is a slick-moving action flick with an intellectually sound grasp of the politics that surrounds its kinetic gun battles.

Nascimento is once again the conflicted heart of the film; he's doing well but is he unintentionally helping a new criminal element to succeed ahead of Rio's drug dealers? Like the first film, the main joy of Elite Squad 2 comes from watching an honest character battle both the dishonest ones and his own internal beliefs and feelings. The conflicts are set up externally within the opening half hour as new character Fraga (Irandhir Santos) is brought in to represent Nascimento's more liberal side. Some lazy scripting also has Fraga as the new partner of Nascimento's ex-wife but no matter, accept this and the film moves on with it as a concept more often than a character choice.

Structurally, Padilha again starts with the end and plays around with our expectations as much as possible. Nascimento is seen leaving a hospital but who's in there? Nascimento is seen in a bullet-riddled car but is he dead? It's a simple device but an effective one and - with a better managed plot when compared to Elite Squad - it works its delicate magic, increasingly getting you to ask questions about what you've seen as the narrative develops.

Moura again proves the highlight (although his in-character facial ticks - watch for the near-constant blinking - are a bit off-putting) and Nascimento's continued development is again the thing that keeps you watching but it's nice to see that, this time, the whole thing is wrapped in a significantly better-produced package. Highly enjoyable and, occasionally, searingly political.




Elite Squad: The Enemy Within is out in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray from Monday 26th December.

Look further...

'The film's key weakness is the use of Nascimento's voice-over. Largely simplistic and informal, it comes across as redundant to the energetic imagery which it recounts' - Andy Buckle's Film Emporium

Classic Intel: Elite Squad - Blu-ray Review

'firmly a police film where character archetypes take over from character development'

Elite Squad has a good reputation and a good pedigree, currently holding an 8/10 IMDb average and a writing credit from City Of God screenwriter Bráulio Mantovani respectively. This seems a tad odd because, despite some ambitious structural work and a compelling lead, there's little here to love about José Padilha's film above and beyond that which can normally be found in most Cop Thrillers.

The tangled narrative weaves around Wagner Moura's Nascimento who, with a new kid on the way, wants out of a dangerous profession. So far so standard, as is the rest of the plot, when you really boil it down to its individual particulars; Nascimento wants out but he's an honest cop with an honest assignment (clear out the slums ahead of a visit by the Pope) and he needs to find a replacement.

Step forward potential replacements Neto (Caio Junqueira) and Matias (André Ramiro). Again, the development here is bog standard and artificially manufactured. Are Neto and Matias both high quality candidates that can only be separated by a matchstick's worth of difference? No, of course not, they're complete opposites; Neto hot-headed and ambitious, Matias educated and optimistic. We're firmly in a police film where character archetypes take over from character development.

The exception to this is Nascimento himself. Moura plays the Captain perfectly; he's our narrator but he's unreliable, he's brave but he's visibly nervous, he's tough but he wants to do good by his wife. He's a complex character with a huge wealth of competing emotions and a great desire to see everyone good succeed and everyone bad punished, but he's also cracking at the seams, desperate to exit a brutal game of political posturing.

And this is where the weight of Elite Squad's characterisations finally falls in on itself; Nascimento is of course one part Neto, one part Matias. He is the cop the Elite Squad need but can't have. He is the obvious central message the film can't quite afford.

Beyond Moura then, there's some nice camera-work, the occasional nice-looking piece of action and an ultimately fairly pleasant end to the tale. Also though, there are the problems that blight many a Cop Thriller; one-dimensional characters, good vs bad played out ad nauseum and, in this case at least, a vast over-reliance on story-through-narration. Fine, but problem-riddled.




Look further...

'powerhouse world cinema' - The Telegraph

Rare Exports - Online Review

'the whole thing has a fairy tale glow, even whilst axes are being thrown through heads'

Piece of marketing genius or distribution nightmare, it has taken a while (almost a year exactly in fact) for Rare Exports to gain a UK home market release. If ever a film was going to benefit from being delayed that long though then this is it; Rare Exports (subtitled A Christmas Tale) is a dark Christmas fantasy from Finland featuring murderous elves, a twisted take on Santa Claus and a few nice segments of dark humour to warm the cockles on a cold winter night.

All of it is co-ordinated rather well by writer/director Jalmari Helander who frames the story through the eyes of youngster Piiparinen (Rauno Juvonen), giving the whole thing a fairy tale glow, even whilst axes are being thrown through heads and other youngsters are being turned into scary wooden-looking dolls. There's levity behind the horror that makes the film a success as a Christmas story and as something horror aficionados might take an interest in.

If there's a problem then it's with the end. Primarily the whole thing goes a little South into a messy action spectacular and then even further South into a fumbled attempt to explain the title. There's an argument that the latter of the two doesn't even really make sense. Then again, it is a film about Santa Claus (and did we mention the murderous elves?) so a little bit of dramatic licence might be granted by some, whilst others will undoubtedly remain perplexed.

Either way, there's some good work here from everything preceding the final third with only the English-speaking actors looking out of place. The nice riffs on Christmas lore (being nice, being punished, Santa's sack, etc.) are great and the locations Christmassy enough to fall in love with, despite all the surrounding kerfuffle. Charming and deadly in equal measure.




Rare Exports was playing on Lovefilm's Watch Online service for users with an appropriate subscription.

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'if John Carpenter ever goes festive and makes a holiday special of The Thing, it might end up looking something like Rare Exports' - RossvRoss

Classic Intel: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - DVD Review

'Looking down Kilmer's role list it is difficult to pick out a better performance.'

In 1996, Shane Black wrote, but crucially did not direct, The Long Kiss Goodnight, a sharply scripted action-comedy with a miss-matched leading pair (Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson). The Long Kiss Goodnight was a fun film with some notable flaws but it was also something else. It was practice.

The thing that was being practised for, although Black cannot have known this at the time, was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, another sharply scripted action-comedy with a miss-matched leading pair (Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr.). Whilst The Long Kiss Goodnight was the warm up, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the main event. It thrills for the entirety of its one-hundred and three minutes, the script never drops from being utterly hilarious and the superb casting hits high note after high note.

Black (writing and directing this time) signals his intentions to make something above and beyond the typical action film when he breaks the fourth wall within the opening minutes, 'I'll be your narrator', Downey Jr.'s Harry Lockhart tells us, 'I don't see another Goddamn narrator, so pipe down'. Shortly followed by the introduction of genius casting choice number one: Val Kilmer as homosexual private detective, Gay Perry. 'Still gay?', asks Lockhart, 'Me? No. I'm knee-deep in pussy', Perry replies, 'I just like the name so much, I can't get rid of it'. Thus forms the beginnings of a beautiful friendship.

Whilst Downey Jr. is good as the out-of-his-depth lead, it is Kilmer who makes the film and gets all the best lines. Lockhart has miss-heard Perry telling him that he is 'talking money'; 'a talking monkey?', he asks. 'Talking monkey, yeah, yeah. Came here from the future, ugly sucker, only says "ficus"', comes the witty response. Any one with any doubt as to whose film this is should look to one of the very last scenes, a confrontation between Perry and Harmony's (Michelle Monaghan) father. There's no real reason why Perry has to be in this scene - it could just as easily be Harry - but he is because the character has made everything else crackle to life throughout, just as he does here. Looking down Kilmer's role list it is difficult to pick out a better performance.

The dense plot, orchestrated perfectly by Black, can be difficult to follow but the reveals are well-paced and the intrigue high. A late bought of having Perry and Lockhart jump in to and out of custody too quickly forms a rare miss-step.

Other than this, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the perfect action-comedy, up there with anything else you care to name of similar ilk. There's even no marginalisation of the female lead (Monaghan), who gets as many killer lines as the male duo and has as much impact on the plot, a sadly too rare occurrence, which Black should receive serious praise for.




Look further...

'Be certain, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" isn't merely nudge nudge wink wink cinema, it is shove shove I'M WINKING AT YOU cinema' - Cinema Romantico

Classic Intel: Black Christmas - Online Review

'Clark, not content with glorifying in the typical slasher 'kills' or letting the camera hang limply outside of the girls' sorority house, returns again and again to the film's scariest image'

Before the slasher was defined by Halloween in 1978, Black Christmas (1974) was doing its best to lay down the foundations of the sub-genre. All of the elements that would come to typify the slasher are here, four years before John Carpenter's film would arrive to wow audiences. There's a group of young - mainly female - protagonists, led by Olivia Hussey's Jess, terrorised by an unknown assailant. The camera pirouettes from regular shooting angles to 'killer's eye view', lurking outside windows and behind trees. And the now infamous (thanks largely to Scream) 'menacing via telephone call' happens frequently, often signifying an imminent attack.

For sheer voracity of timely ideas, Bob Clark's film is significant and, more than that, significantly well handled. Clark, not content with glorifying in the typical slasher 'kills' or letting the camera hang limply outside of the girls' sorority house, returns again and again to the film's scariest image. The very first murder sees a girl suffocated with a plastic bag. The killer hides her body from the characters but Clark can't resist returning the audience to it time and time again and every time he does so the visual shock of it increases tenfold.

At a decent ninety-eight minutes it's surprising that one of Black Christmas' prevalent problems is pace. Whilst Clark starts the killing off quickly he gets bogged down soon enough afterwards by spending too much time with both Mrs Mac (Marian Waldman) and Barb (Margot Kidder, who would go on from this to be Lois Lane in the same year Halloween was released).

The film is also beset by flawed logic and the typical idiotic character decisions. Why Jess goes upstairs towards the end of the film is mind-blowing and Clark's playful ending would have been umpteen times more powerful had he cut to black a couple of minutes earlier, retaining a little more ambiguity. Still, as historical evidence for the evolution of a sub-genre this is unmissable and as a claustrophobic creep-fest in its own right, it easily does better than average.




Black Christmas was available via Lovefilm's Watch Online service for users with an appropriate subscription.

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'though I don’t want to get into a lot of the urban legends and historical context about Black Christmas and Halloween, I do think it’s more than safe to say that if we didn’t have the former – and the template it provided for future horror filmmakers – then we wouldn’t have the latter' - Wonders In The Dark

Trailer Of The Week - Week #51

A tradition started by Trailer Of The Week #34, when a big star's birthday falls on or near to a Sunday its nice to celebrate one of their more obscure offerings on these hallowed pages. And when we say 'nice', we mean 'pretty hilarious'. Birthday wishes today then to one William Bradley Pitt who followed up Thelma And Louise with Johnny Suede a music, erm, 'drama', which contains such wince-inducing scripting as 'they're one of a kind black suede shoes... my name's Suede by the way, Johnny Suede'. Vomit. When you're finished vomiting feast your eyes on Pitt's massive hair piece, which is probably justification for the admission price alone. That and the scene where he seems to be cleaning his shoes with a toothbrush. Thrilling stuff.



Trailer Of The Week is a regular Film Intel feature which picks a different tasty trailer of delectable goodness every week and presents it on Sunday for your viewing pleasure. Sometimes old, sometimes new, sometimes major, sometimes independent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes a load of old bobbins: always guaranteed to entertain. If you want to make a suggestion for Trailer Of The Week, see the contact us page.

In The East Mr Bond, Advert Sells You!

Here's the top half of an advertisement featuring the very dapper Pierce Brosnan...




Now, what's he selling?

Anyone whose guess did not include the phrase 'a pretty crappy convenience store' is wrong...




Brosnan: handling the post-Bond casting lull with care.

Captain America: The First Avenger - Blu-ray Review

'there's real heart here, genuine romance, a care and craft to produce a period superhero film'

Whilst other Marvel releases have groped far and wide to find a range that both satisfied a two-hour narrative arc and a two-year-plus Avengers story, Captain America: The First Avenger benefits markedly from being set within the limiting confines of World War Two. Of course, this doesn't stop Marvel producer Kevin Feige and others with 'greater concerns' from inserting as much Avengers malarkey as they can; there's that subtitle to start with and the traditional epilogue that sadly seems to rule out any chance of an obvious continuation of Caps' story from this point forwards.

Set those concerns aside though and Captain America emerges as the best Marvel film since Iron Man and, probably, one of the better superhero films the current leaning towards the genre has produced full stop. There's real heart here, genuine romance, a care and craft to produce a period superhero film and a fantastic lead performance from Chris Evans, who leaves the right amount of cockiness from his The Losers outing at the door. The whole point about Cap, stressed by Stanley Tuccis' Dr. Erskine from very early on, is that he's a humble man with a respect for his power. If Evans had brought his cocky jock-air to proceedings this could have been a disaster. He doesn't and it isn't.

What it is is an origin story which feels fresh despite the fact that it must be the fifth or sixth we've seen in a very brief period. The hero's historical link to the villain (Hugo Weaving's Johann Schmidt, with Werner Herzog-esque vocal inflections) is hardly new territory but the reveal is well paced and the story well developed. Hayley Atwell has the unenviable job of being pandered to in the position of powerful female lead surrounded by all this male gusto but she - and director Joe Johnston - plays it well, never coming off as the 'quiet but feisty' type and instead emerging as a character with real purpose, desire and intelligent influence over everyone near her. The conclusion of her and Steve Rogers' (Evans) story is engaging, tastefully performed and probably one of the best pieces of emotional manipulation we've seen in this sort of thing.

The subtleties contained within Cap too are a joy to behold. Where Thor had a supporting cast consisting of a monosyllabic Idris Elba and a badly judged Warriors Three, Cap has Tommy Lee Jones in full gruff one-liner mode ('I ain't kissin' you'), Tucci in scene-stealer mode and Dominic Cooper in, erm, Robert Downey's Jr.'s Dad mode. It all meshes brilliantly, as does the decision at the start of the final third not to make us watch Cap counter-attack after Cap counter-attack, Johnston instead opting to skip straight to the meaty plot-based stuff. It's a wise decision and this is a wise film, smartly delivered in a very slick-looking period package. More of this, less of the Iron Man 2s please.




Look further...

'bold, if not entirely successful, [attempt] to do something fresh and different with the superhero and war genres' - From Oedipus To Samuel L. Jackson's Wallet

Classic Intel: Hot Fuzz - DVD Review

'the kills are fun and well conceived but the perpetrator is a lazy spoilsport'

If you'd have asked me about it a week ago and caught me on the right day, time and phase of the moon, I might very well have attempted to argue that Hot Fuzz is actually better than Shaun Of The Dead, Edgar Wright's first film in what has come to be called The Blood And Ice Cream Trilogy. Sadly, thanks to a repeat viewing, I'm probably never going to attempt to argue that ever again.

It's not that overnight, Hot Fuzz has become a terrible film, it's just that, on repeat viewing, its problems are more apparent. The end - overlong and uninteresting - doesn't mesh with the under-played and nuanced start, for example. Even though it's parodying action films, it doesn't escape all of the problems with them and the action itself isn't that well directed. If any of the previous elements are an on-purpose nod to the failings of the genre then that's fine, but doing things wrong on purpose doesn't necessarily make them right.

What's still great about it is the barely-concealed fear of the weird goings on in all of the little villages dotted around England. They're alien and slightly frightening and it seems as though no-one on the planet could have ever discovered them all. They have things like 'fêtes' and church fund-raisers, where people called Mildred reveal hitherto unseen skills for basket-weaving and cross-stitch, sometimes at the same time. Nicholas Angel's (Simon Pegg) bungled entry to this world comes about because he is 'too good', too much of a hard worker, for the City, ensuring everyone - whether city or village dweller - gets a good hard dose of parodic criticism.

That the first two thirds of ludicrously well-conceived entertainment are let down by the third is a shame but so is Wright's decision to have the villain as a masked-man in Scream-esque black. The touchstones of the film - most literally Point Break and Bad Boys II - never had this sort of horror trope in them and even the wider references - from Chinatown to Karate Kid - didn't need this sort of storytelling conceit to function. The kills are fun and well conceived but the perpetrator is a lazy spoilsport, the logical flipside of which would have been to have Will Smith wandering in to Shaun Of The Dead in order to dispatch all the zombies.




Look further...

'the movie asks what would happen if you asked Michael Bay to make a balls-to-the-wall action movie in a small English village' - The M0vie Blog

The Tourist - Online Review

'where Indiana Jones watched speedboats get crushed at a rate of knots, Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp) merely watches the handrail fall off one'

Far from being the travesty it was proclaimed to be upon its release, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Tourist is merely one of those films that suffers from being a little bit dull. The German director's script, co-penned with Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes, never fires or ignites substantially, the action is minimal and badly-directed and the intrigue barely palpable. It is exactly what you would imagine happens when the writer of the slow and purposeful Downton Abbey (Fellowes) tries his hand at an espionage script.

Accusing a film with two big stars in it of spending all of its money on them is hardly solid accounting practice but the look of The Tourist suggests this to be the case. Several scenes in Venice, where much of the film takes place, appear to be propped up by ropey cosmetic CGI and the action, when it does make an appearance, is limited to only mildly destructive scratches. Where Indiana Jones watched speedboats get crushed at a rate of knots, Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp) merely watches the handrail fall off one.

Depp and co-star Angelina Jolie seem to suffer from the weight of the malaise the script must have induced. Both under-perform and under-act. Depp, reticent and unconvincing as a mathematics teacher, comes off by the far the worst whilst Jolie, lacking the intangible twinkle in her eye that characterises so many of her roles, fares little better.

Instead, the twinkling of eyes is left to Paul Bettany's Inspector Acheson and his superior (Timothy Dalton), whilst a near-silent cameo from Rufus Sewell is handled exactly as cameos of this nature should be. Dalton, who plays the forgiving role of a character only there because the plot needs advancing a step or two, could (and should) do this sort of thing on a regular basis.

The song playing over the end credits is from Muse's Black Holes And Revelations although a suggested lyrical change for the film would see the word 'Black' replaced with 'Plot' and the final word with 'Limitations', a messy and unsatisfying ending ensuring the dullness pervades throughout.




The Tourist was showing on Sky Movies Anytime and Sky Go for users with an appropriate subscription.

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A live blog of the experience of watching The Tourist over at Sick List.

Megamind - Blu-ray Review

'forces Megamind himself to consider the place of evil when good no longer exists. For a time it gets quite existential'

The sort of harmless animation that ticks all the boxes without getting anywhere near greatness, Megamind does at least come out just ahead of fellow lets-focus-on-the-villain-for-a-change effort, Despicable Me. Where that film relied on its 'minions' to get all the laughs, this goes for pure and unadulterated star power; Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, Ben Stiller and J K Simmons all pop up in a variety of voice roles.

Although there's the increased quality behind the vocal work, the main reason for Megamind's glorious victory over its rival is the route writers Alan J. Schoolcraft and Brent Simons choose to take once we've established we need to sympathise somewhat with the villain (Ferrell). Where in Despicable Me this occurred almost solely through a 'love conquers all' type story, Megamind takes a much more interesting route entirely, showing nous and understanding of comic-book structure and forcing Megamind himself to consider the place of evil when good no longer exists. For a time it gets quite existential.

That said, director Tom McGrath has little option but to take us back to making Megamind look slightly better than the next best/worst alternative (Hill) and from then on the film largely resorts to type.There's some decent jokes and a few nice bits of action but everyone feels very one dimensional and the film's very own Minion (David Cross - its a singular Minion rather than Despicable Me's plurals) doesn't get the laughs he needs to and, therefore, the sympathy the plot somewhat relies on.

The other noticeable element to the film on home viewing is just how weighted it is towards a 3D market. It's no secret that films 'shot for 3D' look to use the medium in every way possible and once you know this it's easy to pick out the shots that particularly seek to take advantage of it. In Megamind, they're present every seven minutes or so. Things flying into the camera, people pointing at you for no reason, floaty things where normally there wouldn't be floaty things. If your eyes are attuned to it it'll be distracting, unless you're watching on a 3D TV of course, in which case this may be the best tech demo currently available.




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'maybe I’m too old to appreciate the humor in using songs like “Kung-Fu Fighting” in a movie where a panda uses kung-fu, or maybe I’ve been spoiled by Pixar. But these little things continue irk me in just about every Dreamworks film I see' - Careful With That Blog Eugene

Classic Intel: Tremors - Online Review

'Hick Hokum Horror crossed with Slacker Comedy'

Tremors sets its tone with its opening shot of Kevin Bacon relieving himself over the side of a cliff. Ron Underwood's film is Hick Hokum Horror crossed with Slacker Comedy, in the vein of modern creature-feature imitator, Eight Legged Freaks.

Getting the laughs right in this sort of material is the key to alleviating the pressure of the horror moments and Underwood largely does well. Val's (Bacon) early bit of toilet humour is followed shortly afterwards by another lazy joke involving a septic tank but for the most part, Bacon and partner-in-crime Fred West get the timing of S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock's screenplay spot on.

The above concept falls down in relation to Tremors when you take into account that its horror isn't all that horrific. The creature effects - overseen by Tom Woodruff Jr. - are fairly rough even for this sort of offering and the slug-like beasts offer little true terror. Wisely, Underwood ramps the gore up a minute notch further than it first seemed willing to go, a much-needed amendment to ensure the film at least has a chance of being taken seriously.

At some point just after the hour mark some of the momentum of Tremors goes missing, presumed eaten by a large earthworm with teeth. The first hour rattles by spectacularly well but the stodgy section concerned with being on, and escaping from, the store roof gets bogged down in people running all over the shop and escape plans being expositioned ad nauseum. The finale is fun-ish but, again, doesn't stand up to the start, although the presence of, and chemistry between, Bacon and West pulls it through.




Tremors was showing on Sky Anytime and Sky Go for users with appropriate subscriptions.

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'As for the creatures themselves... they defy all logic, and applying any rational thought whatsoever to their existence will bring the film’s credibility to its knees' - My 2,500 Movie Challenge

Trailer Of The Week - Week #50

This week's launch of The Lorax trailer set me thinking back to previous Dr Seuss adaptation Horton Hears A Who, which I personally remember chuckling manically along with during a rather long plane journey. Maybe it was the heightened oxygen levels but I thought Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino's film was a bit of a Whoot (sorry), with nice visuals and some well crafted jokes. Not that you'd know any of that from this awful trailer, laugh free, charmless and a bit, well, boring really. Large marketing failure ahoy.


Trailer Of The Week is a regular Film Intel feature which picks a different tasty trailer of delectable goodness every week and presents it on Sunday for your viewing pleasure. Sometimes old, sometimes new, sometimes major, sometimes independent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes a load of old bobbins: always guaranteed to entertain. If you want to make a suggestion for Trailer Of The Week, see the contact us page.

Scenes From Good Recent Films In Which People Sit On Couches, Looking Slightly Pensive, Amongst Overly Brown Set Dressing

Never complain again that Film Intel doesn't carry revelatory material. This might make for an appalling amazing on-going feature.





Rio - DVD Review

'Blu is part of a long line of animals whose basic functions are manipulated for laughs'

Rio joins the seemingly ever-growing queue of recent animated films which do just about the bare minimum to keep you interested and make you laugh and not a lot more besides. Throwing an all star cast at the screen and hoping something sticks in the recognition banks is merely one of the regular tricks on show here, with Jesse Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway's intonations distracting anyone familiar enough with the actors to notice them.

Eisenberg's parrot, Blu, whose surname is presumably Ray, features that neat animal animation trick of not being able to perform one of his key functions in life, in this case, flight. Like Bambi, the nimble deer who who couldn't stand; Scooby-Doo, the investigative dog who suffered from cowardice and Monsters Inc's scarers, who were just as scared of their targets as their targets were of them, Blu is part of a long line of animals whose basic functions are manipulated for laughs. Its lazy but, hey, you can't argue with the tropes ability to generate a few moments of solid slapstick.

Early scenes with Blu and 'parent' Linda (Leslie Mann) are amongst the most charming, as are the earliest moments of parent and parrot's journey to Brazil, with Jewell's (Hathaway) introduction also a highlight. From here on in though Rio gets bogged down in a standard kidnap drama with human villains that never feel anything other than comedy and a ropey looking bird villain (voiced by Flight Of The Conchords' Jemaine Clement), who feels misjudged, non-threatening and a bit out of kilter with the rest of the film.

After a strong period during the early noughties, culminating in the magnificent Wall-E, animated films feel rather like they've slipped back to being satisfied with average. There's no way Rio is a bad film but nor can it claim that it looks as high or touches as deep as Pixar's robot, which moved in such unexpected genres as Science-Fiction and Silent cinema, where director Carlos Saldanha has here merely settled for plopping comedy animals on the screen. Where are the Wall-E imitators? Where's the aspiration? Where's the plot that doesn't need a third act comedy bulldog to function?




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'cute, adorable, vibrant and totally entertaining. It may not have taken Dreamworks to a Pixar level (and it's certainly no How to Train Your Dragon) but it's still great fun' - His Eyes Were Watching Movies, 8/10

The Tree Of Life - DVD Review

'if David Attenborough ever bothered to sit down and craft a fictional drama but maintained his fascination with all things natural then this is what it would look like'

Terrence Malick - the easiest director to parody or mock who never seems to get parodied or mocked - returns after, by his standards, a comparatively short absence with The Tree Of Life, a film that, once again, features his trademark 'floaty' narration and obsession with trees, grass and butterflies. If David Attenborough ever bothered to sit down and craft a fictional drama but maintained his fascination with all things natural then this is what it would look like.

Of course, Attenborough might restrain himself to a story which makes solid narrative sense, rather than pausing his story to take in the big bang, single-celled organisms' emergence from the primordial soup and a sympathetic dinosaur or two. Only Malick can make this sort of thing. How do you pitch something that involves dinosaurs as a throwaway gesture if you're not him?

Easy though it is to second-guess Malick's cosmic meandering, the first hour of the film, which takes in all this and more, is a joy to behold. Inter-weaved with the story of Jack (Sean Penn) and Young Jack (Hunter McCracken) is an ambitious, beautiful, experiment of a film, flashing through nebula with the care and craft of Kubrick's 2001. Nothing in this first segment appears quite where you expect it to although - and this is testament to Malick's lengthy editing process - the jumps between the modern façades surrounding Jack, the abstract look at Universe creation and the Fifties heyday of Young Jack, never feel like they jar.

Come the second hour though, where the focus is much more on Young Jack, Malick loses some of the film's magic. Gone are the unexpected visual treats (although the camera work remains excellent) and in their place a much more predictable parent-and-child drama, Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt (effectively playing against type) providing the support and aggressor dynamos to McCracken's temperamental youngster.

In the end it is a shame that The Tree Of Life is at its best when Malick is being Malick - abstract, brave and unconcerned with the conventions of film language - and at its worst when he slips closer to something more approaching standardisation. Perhaps it is the jarring of the two, the fact that Malick does move from experimentation to life narration, that creates this effect. Regardless of its cause, the glimpse of genius afforded by the first hour is all the more delicious given how quickly the film moves away from it, returning again to this level of daring only in the final twenty minutes, which prove dazzling once again.




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'The cast talk as if they are in a dream, they walk, and walk, and walk while mumbling what's going on in their minds. This works for a few scenes, then grows old.' - Rambling Film, C

Treme: Season 2 - TV Review

'plot wise there's a lot going on, all of it developing no faster than a lazy steam boat ride'

Treme disappeared from Sky Atlantic's airwaves recently, not with the cacophonous thud of a cliffhanger but with the quiet whisper of slow character development ticking over yet again. It's a sound that fans of the series have grown accustomed to, although there's no doubting that its relative inaudibility also contributes to the series' meagre viewing figures. As pointed out by Alan Sepinwall though, the fact that Treme is a HBO property means that its viewing figures are less important than a 'regular' show and Season Three has already started shooting, with Season Four reportedly not far behind.

HBO's willingness to support series creators Eric Overmyer and David Simon has, in the first instance, produced this second season of the slow-burner which, implausibly enough for those who saw the first, moves even slower than its predecessor. The best characters from Treme's previous outing - Janette (Kim Dickens), Albert Lambreaux (Clarke Peters), Antoine (Wendell Pierce), Davis (Steve Zahn) and Toni (Melissa Leo) - are all back and they've been propped up with some worthy additions, perhaps the most innovative of which is Oliver Thomas, a real-life New Orleans Councilman, who plays a semi-fictionalised version of himself rather well.

Of the rest of the new crowd, David Morse - who's been a fantastic minor screen presence for a while now - sees a welcome increase in his role as Lieutenant Colson, but sometimes struggles under the one-dimensional development of his character. Ditto The Pacific's Jon Seda, whose shady Nelson follows a predictable track which seems to eliminate him from the running for Season Three, making you wonder why Overmyer and Simon allowed you to spend so much time with him in the first place. If there's a trend here it's that newcomers are going to struggle to make an impact on viewer's hearts, especially when characters who were fairly marginalised but nevertheless present in the first series (Michiel Huisman's Sonny) get their chance to shine too, the latter benefiting from an already well-established backstory.

Plot wise there's a lot going on, all of it developing no faster than a lazy steam boat ride. Redemption and forgiveness obviously feature in Toni and Sofia's (India Ennenga) story, whilst the corporate corruption angle weaves through the tales of most of the players and is highlighted by Thomas. Recovery is also very much on the agenda as Delmond (Rob Brown), who still fails to ignite much interest, finally finds a way to help Albert and Antoine gets a band together.

It's all very softly softly until a storytelling jolt in Episode Nine pulls the narrative into some formal order, preparing for a finale which delivers little apart from a feeling of careful unease under the assumption that no-one is safe from the unpredictability of Overmyer and Simon. Inevitably, nothing much happens but watching two master storytellers whisper tales of beautiful characters to you beats watching action-shtick turned up to eleven any day of the week and Treme is still one of the best-produced dramas the networks can offer.




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'"Treme," like "The Wire," is a show that teaches you how to watch it. What can seem like plotlessness is, again, the writers taking the long (but often very entertaining) way around to making big points about character.' - HitFix

X-Men: First Class - DVD Review

'considering just how many cooks the screenplay had it's a wonder there's still so much ripe dialogue contained within'

Director Matthew Vaughn does a fantastic job bringing an individual style to X-Men: First Class, which sees it at least try, on several occasions, to mark itself out from the superhero herd. Two scenes in particular see Vaughn doing something a bit different; Beast's (Nicholas Hoult) transformation is seen from the character's eye-view, accentuating the standard X-Men theme of difference and, in particular, how to address and cope with it. A key scene towards the end of the film involving Eric (Michael Fassbender) and a coin is also notable, Vaughn taking time out from the standard conflict narrative to produce a bit of a shock, particularly amongst younger viewers.

At a script level, X-Men: First Class is one of those screenplays that looks like it has been produced by committee. Sheldon Turner and Bryan Singer have story credits whilst Vaughn, screenwriting partner Jane Goldman, Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz are all credited with scripting contributions. Considering just how many cooks it had it's a wonder there's still so much ripe dialogue contained within. An early scene of Charles Xavier chatting various people up in a bar is painful, whilst the scene where the young mutants choose their names is chalkboard-draggingly awkward. 'We should all pick code names, I want to be Mystique', says Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), like a child advance-reserving her favourite toy.

At one-hundred and thirty-two minutes, the film takes its time to tell its story but does come up with a well-worked narrative that provides several distinct acts, each of which are different but none-the-less rather pleasant. The first and middle thirds, concerned with the mutants individually and then with the assembling of the team, are the best, Vaughn keeping the pace fast and the limited action joyful. As the middle third turns towards the finale though, it feels like we get a bit bogged down. Character interactions become obvious and clichéd and action scenes become more and more drawn out. It's hardly the build-up the climactic battle required.

There's also probably too much here for Vaughn to deal with, even within that expanded runtime. Certain characters - Moira (Rose Byrne), The Man In Black (Oliver Platt), Angel (Zoë Kravitz), to name but a few - get absolutely no meaningful backstory or development, save a couple of throwaway lines. Even the main relationship (Eric and Charles) doesn't seem to get the time it needs or deserves and it ends up bowing out on a premature note. Vaughn brings a lot to the party but its a party that feels over-crowded, occasionally immature and often fluffed. The First Class report would probably read something like, 'working well within themselves, could do better'.




Look further...

'This retro X-Men is sexy, smart and sophisticated' - ComicBooked.com

Rabbit Hole - DVD Review


Although its eighty-six per cent Rotten Tomatoes score might suggest otherwise, Rabbit Hole somehow took on the aura of critical disdain during its awards run last year. John Cameron Mitchell's film was labelled as having 'good taste', as having created a sense of 'overriding sadness' and of being 'decorous', all phrases you can find in the negative reviews, positive barbs thrown at the film accusingly like spears at the enemy. Apparently, being great at what you set out to achieve now qualifies as a bad thing.

Mitchell's film does set out to be tasteful and demonstrably glum and, yes, 'decorous'. It is exceptionally well made and exceptionally well acted and it creates not just a sense of sadness and isolation but an accurate sense of not knowing how to escape those very things. It does all this without treading roughshod over its subject matter and without grandstanding with large pieces of poorly judged melodrama. It is beautifully photographed by Frank G. DeMarco, in pastel shades that hint at repression and sepia homes that speak of middle-class disaster.

The subjects of the film, Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart), are grieving over the result of an accident Mitchell wisely never shows you. In fact, he doesn't even tell you about it directly. When we join Becca and Howie we just know that something is wrong in suburbia and the grim details emerge remarkably naturally from David Lindsay-Abaire's script. The tense nature of approaching grief and loss in this shielded, almost hidden, way, speaks volumes for how the film both treads carefully around a difficult subject and for how the naturalistic reveal - mainly in half-completed conversations - is even more shocking than screening the event itself. Sometimes it's the little practicalities, like calling a friend for the first time after a sad event, that prove the most poignant and the most difficult to complete.

Whilst Rabbit Hole might, at times, involve scenes that are troubling to observe it is never, as a whole, a 'difficult watch'. The subject may be maudlin but Mitchell's film is refreshing in its honesty and revealing in its portrait of two loving souls, trapped in the wrong version of their reality. It is, largely, bereft of humour and there is little break in the storm clouds, but this is part of its success. Mitchell has made a film that doesn't just talk about grief: it lives and reflects it, pushing everything else down and trapping you in its hapless colour palette.




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'it always felt like I was watching a movie about manufactured tragedy that was supposed to make me rub my hands together and lick my chops at all of the delicious schadenfreude' - Nathan Adams And The Temple Of Reviews, 3/5

Trailer Of The Week - Week #49

Now we're in December, there can be no excuse for Trailer Of The Week not going all Christmassy on you, like, erm, every other site on the entire Internet.We've talked briefly about the under-rated genius of The Muppet Christmas Carol before and with the new Muppets film due in the UK in February, this seemed an excellent excuse to do so again. Muppet Christmas Carol is genuinely funny, perfectly acceptable to watch at any age and subtly heart-warming. More than that, the songs are absolute aces and the choice of Gonzo and Rizzo for the narration is wonderful. Potentially our favourite Christmas film.


Trailer Of The Week is a regular Film Intel feature which picks a different tasty trailer of delectable goodness every week and presents it on Sunday for your viewing pleasure. Sometimes old, sometimes new, sometimes major, sometimes independent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes a load of old bobbins: always guaranteed to entertain. If you want to make a suggestion for Trailer Of The Week, see the contact us page.