Classic Intel: The Matrix - Blu-ray Review

'Andy and Lana Wachowski's film hums with new poetry placed around a familiar trope'

The Matrix is considered by IMDb users to be the eighteenth best film of all time, the fourth best Science-Fiction film ever and the ninth best Action movie. Other lists such as Empire's 500 films and Halliwell's Top 1000 feature it prominently. Yet The Matrix somehow feels like a film constantly under threat from naysayers. The sequels hang heavy over it, the 'but' on everyone's lips when discussion starts. The fact that, arguably, each and every cast member puts in a career best performance doesn't help those who somehow feel that the wool has been pulled over their eyes, that those who value the film highly are living in a dream world.

Returning to the film thirteen years after its release, it is difficult to give these arguments much credence. The Matrix is an incredible achievement. A rich, densely-plotted Sci-Fi, full of both ideas and kinetic, massively influential, action choreography. Andy and Lana Wachowski's film hums with new poetry placed around a familiar trope (AI has taken over the world), whilst visually the film mixes perfect effects with much more traditional cinematic mastery of the lens.

The non-CGI related look of The Matrix remains under-appreciated and one of the film's biggest successes. As its colour barcode will show you, everything which takes place in The Matrix does so with a green hue, Thomas Anderson's (Keanu Reeves) 'everyday' life linked inexplicably to the green lines of computer code dotted throughout the film. More than that, the world we see in these scenes never resembles our world enough to be recognisably normal. The closest it gets is Anderson's office, so stereotypically uniform, so perfectly every day, with its grey partition walls, that it feels like a fabrication. Everything we see in the early part of Anderson's life is designed specifically to look like a construct.

The perfect arc of the script too, penned by The Wachowskis, also fails to receive enough credit. Its main success is in the perfect mix of high ideas Science-Fiction and low-level yet thrilling Action cinema. In one scene, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) lays out the allegory of the plot (basically a retelling of the resurrection of Jesus Christ). The very next scene is the training montage, arguably one of the film's better action sequences. The end becomes all action, all the time but until that point these dichotomies continue; a crackling scene of gentle intelligence featuring The Oracle (the late, wonderful, Gloria Foster) and Neo (Reeves) discussing the nature of fatalism is followed by the assault on the derelict house, Cypher's (Joe Pantoliano) betrayal and a whole load of guns. Neo's journey, literally from drone to Messiah, is well-realised, well-executed and, in the context of The Matrix's world, perfectly believable.

Did The Matrix need two sequels? Almost certainly not. But, whatever you think of them, do they lessen the first film's achievements? No. In thirteen years, the only Science-Fiction film to come close to this has been Alfonso Cuarón's Children Of Men, another aspirational piece which blends action, dense plotting, innovative camera work and recognisably perfect character arcs. Films like this don't come around very often. Not in the real world.

Bel Ami - Blu-ray Review

'Duroy, desperate for sex, distracts Forestier from her work. Afterwards Donnellan and Ormerod end scene. They are as obsessed with moving past substance and on to sex as Duroy himself is.'

For a film that has content tailor-made for rich exploration of pertinent themes, Bel Ami ends up being rather empty. Robert Pattinson's Georges Duroy arrives in Paris penniless and proceeds to climb to the top of the social ladder by virtue of manipulation and charm, most notably of beaus Uma Thurman, Christina Ricci and Kristin Scott Thomas. Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod's film seems primed to have plenty to say about societal movement in times of hardship but ends curiously bereft, barely pausing to comment on the notion.

Instead, this adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's novel focuses on the saucy, if politely restrained, romp Duroy engages in. The main focus, somewhat surprisingly, proves to be Ricci's Clotilde de Marelle, married with child yet head of heels for Pattinson's womaniser. The key question, confirmed by the final shot, seems to be one of constantly forbidden love. Can Duroy and de Marelle's relationship survive various hurdles, including the honourable (society's structures, their individual net wealth) and the dishonourable (three marriages between them, come the end, neither to each other)? It's an intriguing relationship, portrayed well, muddied only by an occasional lack of focus and an inability to explore their love beyond the physical.

Elsewhere, Duroy is embroiled in the politics of the time but again Donnellan and Ormerod seem disinterested. Thurman's Madeleine Forestier is the closest they get to a politically savvy main character but a key scene late on shows their duplicitous. Duroy, desperate for sex, distracts Forestier from her work. Forestier deals with him quickly to get back to it. When she does Donnellan and Ormerod end scene. They are as obsessed with moving past substance and on to sex as Duroy himself is.

As the charming lead, captivating from the off, Pattinson has his meta-presence to thank for being perfectly cast. Even those with little knowledge of his outside life will find it convincing that ladies fall over themselves to have him enter their boudoir. Even if you do not find Pattinson as captivating as every other person on Bel Ami's planet seems to it is not a huge stretch to believe that others are sold on his charms.

Indeed, Bel Ami's main pleasure is in watching the central quartet work. Thurman, so lacking in good roles, is joined by Ricci as a rare pleasure to watch, both characters uniquely written as clever, conniving even, in individual ways. Scott Thomas gets the shortest shrift of the three but then, she is the actor least in need of being able to show her metal in properly written roles of some substance.

Donnellan and Ormerod's film could have been decidedly deeper of both heart and subtext but as it is it's a satisfying fancy; a one-night stand with all the lace trimmings.

[Rec] Génesis - Blu-ray Review

'[Rec] Génesis is a film made of brave choices'

[Rec] 2 performed a rare sequel feat in that, by adding explanation and backstory, it actually managed to make [Rec] a better film. The scares were better too of course and the layered narrative more ambitious but the fact remains that the [Rec] franchise as a whole was stronger because of the existence of the second film.

Step forward the third film, [Rec] Génesis, to try and continue this tradition. Only it doesn't. Unlike [Rec] 2, there's pretty much no consideration here of the story that went beforehand, no desire to try and embellish the narrative or lead us to new places. Hell, it isn't even clear where we are in the timeline. Other viewers have speculated that the events of [Rec] might be viewable in the background, on a TV at some point but if that is there (and it is an 'if') then it's a pretty obscure reference, rather than a chronological locator. The lack of a continuing story is shame for those looking for more explanation but in its own way it's a brave choice.

In fact, [Rec] Génesis is a film made of brave choices. There's added humour here for one thing, director Paco Plaza (who co-directed the first two films) recognising that you cannot possibly have zombies at a wedding without raising at least a little chuckle. There's also greatly increased gore and a mid-way through abandonment of the found-footage structure that has previously been the franchises' calling card.

Departing from the found footage structure may well be the one gamble Plaza makes which doesn't come off. Whilst his other choices can be recognised as brave departures from the series' norm, before those norms became stale, it is difficult to mount a defence for a found footage film which switches to high-resolution steady-cam half way through. Plaza might point to the fact that the film features a professional cameraman with said equipment (and George Romero-like glasses, surely a deliberate nod) but it is not he doing the filming and the effect of switching from night-mode on someone's handheld to professional quality pans is jarring and questions the nature of the film's fiction. It weakens the strength of the narrative, hinting that, this time, Plaza and co-writer Luiso Berdejo did not have a well-rounded enough story to shoot the whole thing through the camera of his protagonists.

The other changes to the formula though make [Rec] Génesis a welcome addition, free to be considered 'non-canon' by those who dislike the changes. Plaza's pursuit of gore makes this a very different Horror to the quiet jumps of the first and second films but hey, why not? It's a zombie franchise after all and seeing a skilled director have fun with weddings, blood and chainsaws is a nice departure. Quirky and interesting; two things not normally glimpsed in third instalments.

[REC] Génesis is released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray on 3rd September 2012.

Killer Elite - Blu-ray Review

'If an actor can be a 'guilty pleasure' then Statham is it and his growling assassin-with-a-heart Danny grandstands well when the script pauses for a set piece fight.'

Although Clive Owen's amazing moustache may be an unavoidable clue, some 'clever' marketing bod had clearly decreed that all mentions of the fact that Killer Elite is set in 1980 be banished from the film's promotional campaign. Whilst it is marginally understandable that Disney were terrified that knowledge of John Carter being set on Mars could harm the performance of their property, the reasons behind this shunning of the eighties is somewhat less clear. It's not even as though the decade features prominently, the most obvious reminder of the times being every time Dominic Purcell shows his own facial fuzz on-screen, shaming Owen's offering in to second place.

Whilst those uninterested in the plot can indulge further in a theoretical battle-of-the-beards (Robert De Niro's is scraggly, Aden Young's side burns try to overcome Purcell's but are too neatly clipped for this era) it is left to bald supremo Jason Statham to take leading man duties. Statham's rise to a status which puts him on time-relative par with ex-action heavyweights such as Sly and Arnie is in no small part down to Guy Ritchie's recognition of his gruff deadpan wit, used to great effect firstly in Snatch and latterly in almost everything. Killer Elite is much more straight-faced than that and as such comes across occasionally as being dustily efficient but Statham is still assured and charming in a role which sees his screen time greatly increased over De Niro and at least on a par with Owen. If an actor can be a 'guilty pleasure' then Statham is it and his growling assassin-with-a-heart Danny grandstands well when the script pauses for a set piece fight.

Gary McKendry's film deviates from other Statham-led thrillers in the brain department in that the plotting here threatens to become somewhat labyrinth. Whereas other offerings feature a simple equation (Statham as good/bad man must achieve one or more difficult feats) Killer Elite involves morals, espionage and several different antagonists. Keeping up with the motivations of all involved poses more of a challenge than normal in this sort of formulaic offering and one or two red herrings less - particularly those chucked in near the start - could have helped to keep it on the straight and narrow somewhat more.

But dense plotting or not this more than survives as a vehicle for Statham, De Niro and Owen ensuring he is supported by actors of substance, even if their roles (particularly De Niro's) are somewhat one-dimensional. Asked what his career aspirations are at a young age it is unlikely that Statham would have replied 'consistent purveyor of three-star action films' but nevertheless there are worse, less certain things to do with one's life. It is very difficult, at this moment in time, to imagine walking in to a Jason Statham film and leaving unsatisfied. How many other actor's can you say that about?

The Raven - DVD Review

'Cusack may over-act wildly but the subtle support of Gleeson - and a surprisingly adept Luke Evans - pull the film back in to some sort of reality'

Gothic murder-by-candlelight, the foggy streets of Baltimore, John Cusack and Brendan Glesson, Alice Eve as the damsel in distress. It's a wonder that people seemingly approached The Raven with such demonstrable pessimism. At least on face value, there's a lot to like about James McTeigue's surprisingly gory metatextual work; both theoretical biography of Edgar Allen Poe (Cusack) and tick-box exploration of some of his most famous works. With smart execution, surely this was at least worth the benefit of the doubt?

In fact, The Raven is worth very much more than the benefit of the doubt, McTeigue's exploration of Poe proving to be both somewhat chilling and substantially mystery-filled enough to muster appropriate levels of your attention. Cusack may over-act wildly but the subtle support of Gleeson - and a surprisingly adept Luke Evans - pull the film back in to some sort of reality, Poe's characterisation easy to write off as the flourishes of a creative spirit, oft-imbued with a mind-altering substance.

The first act is the strongest, taking place far before Eve is marginalised from the plot and featuring an interesting three-way battle between Poe's unpredictability, Captain Hamilton's (Gleeson) reserved candour and Fields' (Evans) hard-working intelligence, plus the anonymous antagonist stalking the city, most vividly bought to life during the recreation of The Pit And The Pendulum. That McTeigue is happy to go all out with his gore here is commendable - the Poe source story demands it - but it also calls in to question his tone and leaves him problems elsewhere. Whether it is needed or not, crimson liquid is forced into the plot increasingly, as McTeigue looks to keep up the pace from his earlier 'delights' of staging.

The end too is something of a problem, telegraphed by the opening titles, McTeigue can do little about it and The Raven whispers out without the poignancy of the director's earlier Gothic trip in V For Vendetta. Still, enough of interest goes before it to justify more interest in this than there seemed at the time of its cinema release, an injustice it shares somewhat with the similarly maligned From Hell, a close cousin of the style at work here.

Trailer Of The Week - Week #35 - Man On Fire

By coincidence, last week's Trailer Of The Week was a Tony Scott film. Sadly, for entirely different reasons, this week's is also a Tony Scott film. Man On Fire is still one of Scott's best. The end 'gets' me every time. As did the sad news of his passing earlier in the week.



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.

Film Intel's Final Word - Tony Scott, Knuckleball, Pixar Art

Tony Scott - 1944-2012

Obituary: The Telegraph

Our simple tribute to Tony Scott's immense contribution to cinema can be found here and, by coincidence, Scott's Spy Game featured on the site on Sunday. Not every Scott film was a success but his influence on cinema should not be underestimated and, at the age of sixty-eight, he was still shaping the cinematic landscape. As someone remarked earlier in the week, he was one of a handful of people studios trusted to make 'films'. Not franchises or events, real films with a beginning, middle and end, that could be enjoyed as they are and make money whilst people were enjoying them. Man On Fire will probably remain my favourite but Spy Game and Enemy Of The State are also both crackers and that's before we've made it to Top Gun or Crimson Tide, favoured by many. A real tragedy.



Knuckleball Trailer Rides Coat-Tails of Moneyball

Story: Slash Film

This undoubtedly has less mass-market appeal than a Brad Pitt-starring, Oscar nominated film but for those of us who follow baseball the story of the knuckleball pitch (and R. A. Dickey's personal story, for that matter) is a fascinating one. Nice to see this getting some attention.



Pixar Concept Art Collection is Predictably Gorgeous

Story: Empire

I find most of the hand drawn stuff more beautiful than the computer animated renders. This probably makes me old. Get off my lawn.

Brave - Cinema Review

'Pixar still do this sort of tale - any sort of tale - better than most.'

In time, Brave may be seen as a watershed moment for Pixar, when the legacy of this period in the studio's history is written. As many have been quick to point out, this is their first princess. Gone (just about) are the talking animals and the normally inanimate objects, personified. Diminished are the massively caricatured humans; Fergus (Billy Connolly) may be twice the size of anyone else in the film, but he isn't Toy Story's Al or The Incredibles' Mr Incredible; Merida (Kelly Macdonald) and Elinor (Emma Thompson) are startlingly normal. As many have astutely recognised, this is less a Pixar film, more a Pixar-does-Disney film.

This leaves the studio at a crossroads. Yes, Brave is an 'original' adventure, in the same way that Wall.E and Up were, but, unlike those films, its story is familiar and the tricks it has up its sleeve few. Merida is a princess at war with her parents - aren't they all - who has to make a grave mistake in order to realise the error of her ways and reconcile her extended family. As narratives go Pixar are hardly up there this time, chalking another notch in their, at one time, never-ending wheel of invention.

It means that, for the most part, Brave is not about to become anyone's favourite Pixar film. That sounds like it is a very high yardstick by which to measure but this is a studio built on using high yardsticks and then constantly having to build even higher ones. They used to set out every time to invent something new and climb even higher (the short that proceeds Brave, La Luna, shows that they can still do that) yet for much of Brave they settle for calling to mind the past and plodding along in its furrow.

And yet, Pixar still do this sort of tale - any sort of tale - better than most. Towards the end of Brave you feel threat and fear, start to question whether everyone will come out alive, even though you feel assured they will. This isn't the tear-jerking incident at the end of Toy Story 3, where all the toys club together to face their 'certain' doom, but you can see that it's from the same people. The dread is real and it is borne out well.

The characters too are well-drawn in big splashes of humorous lineage. The father-son relationships between Merida's suitors and their fathers are hilarious visually, a fact not quite reflected in the script and the whole of Merida's own family; from father to nanny to horse, has recognisable echoes of kinship.

Next up for Pixar in this period is a selection of films which seem built on a desire to live both in the world of Brave and in the world of Toy Story, Wall.E and Up. Their original takes on the currently untitled film which 'Takes You Inside the Mind', The Good Dinosaur and the idea based around Día de los Muertos could be new Pixar watermarks. There's less hope for Monsters University and Finding Nemo 2. They'll still be good films though. Because good films are what Pixar do.

Look further...

Vue are running a Brave competition to win a Scottish adventure holiday, a Sony Bravia HD TV and bundles more stuff over on their facebook page.

The Kid With A Bike - Blu-ray Review

'A soaring orchestra shows up on occasion to tell you to feel happy or sad as appropriate but other than that The Kid With A Bike ends up being a film slight on emotional resonance'

An affable fable of kindness, anger and The Trouble With Growing Up, it would be easy to pass The Kid With A Bike off as a harmless, gentle whimsy, pleasant enough to relax to for a slight eighty-seven minutes. Indeed, partially at least, that description is accurate. There's little challenging here and leads Thomas Doret and Cécile De France are charming company, the positive narrative of the latter's helping hand extending to the former's troubled youngster a nice change of tone in darkly cynical times.

There is, to a point, brave storytelling here too from writing and directing brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Backstory is eliminated completely. Inference is king. We don't need to flashback to Cyril's (Doret) childhood. We know it was tough, we know his estate is somewhat harsh, we uncover the deceit of his father as he too uncovers it. On many levels this is extremely clever film-making, showing the audience everything as the script is allowed to concentrate on the story in the present.

This though, is where The Kid With A Bike falls down. By eliminating the drama that would come with back story, the brothers Dardenne force the focus on to a present day tale whose actions are so gentle they become mundane. The introduction of local villain Wes (Egon Di Mateo) feels like a desperate plea to spice things up, a nagging suspicion that increases as the directors allow the focus to drift from Cyril's relationship with Samantha (De France) and on to his interactions with his new 'friend'. It starts to feel like we've been here before and the lack of Cyril and Samantha together late on makes it difficult to invest too much in the characters.

As the film peters out into a predictably open-narrative conclusion, you're left mainly to ponder the form and worth of the story you've just watched. A soaring orchestra shows up on occasion to tell you to feel happy or sad as appropriate but other than that The Kid With A Bike ends up being a film slight on emotional resonance and largely bereft of dramatic happenstance. It's a curious flop. A spectacularly non-offensive, gentle failure.

Masters Of Cinema #115 - RoGoPaG - DVD Review

'it is Godard's segment (The New World), which most clearly draws on the apocalypse-like fears of the 1960s'

If The Avengers were 1960s European film-makers of notable repute then there would be some short odds on the inclusion of Jean-Luc Godard and Pier Paolo Pasolini in the final team, though long odds on that very team ever coming together. RoGoPaG brings not only Godard and Pasolini to write and direct their own segments of a four-part anthology but supplements them with Ugo Gregoretti and Roberto Rossellini, no bit-part players themselves. Producer Alfredo Bini is left with the thankless task of playing Nick Fury to the multi-talented, ego-ridden, collective.

As in most anthologies, there is tension within RoGoPaG between story style and tones. Notionally these are 'comic epsiodes' of the 'post boom era' but a dark heart lurks within them to some degree or another, characterised by the film's claim in its trailer and opening titles that the directors are actually concerned with the 'beginnings of the end of the world'.

Certainly it is Godard's segment (The New World), which most clearly draws on the apocalypse-like fears of the 1960s. Jean-Marc Bory can be glimpsed throughout reading newspapers covering The Cuban Missile Crisis, no doubt still high on the agenda in 1963. Yet the real fear here seems to be of oddly similar frivolity to the first segment, Roberto Rossellini's Virginity, in which a beautiful air hostess (Rosanna Schiaffino) has to fend off the unwanted attention of an American tourist. As with the air hostess' husband in Virginity, the end of the world for Bory's character seems to be primarily marked by his love's (Alexandra Stewart) new found freedom. The fear of an external threat - both related to America - taking away a loved one, weighs heavy in both segments.

Where Godard completely masters his tone though (The New World is dark, oppressive, yet shot beautifully; if it premièred at Sundance tomorrow it would win awards), Rossellini seems to know not what he is aiming for. Virginity is a scene away from being a Horror film, blending flirtatious comedy with genuine dread, as Bruce Balaban's lascivious tourist gets increasingly physical with Schiaffino's refined beauty. In the end, Rossellini goes as far as to call Balaban a psychopath but the director is so busy mixing in ideas of an Oedipal conflict and playing around with notions of voyeuristic cinema (Balaban literally loves Schiaffino's image, having captured her on camera) that he never gets round to making his point entirely satisfactorily.

'Virginity is a scene away from being a Horror film, blending flirtatious comedy with genuine dread, as Bruce Balaban's lascivious tourist gets increasingly physical with Schiaffino's refined beauty.'

Also somewhat unsatisfactory in Rossellini's segment is the handling of his lead female character. Annamaria is forced to shed herself of her restrained nature in order to lose Balaban's letch but in doing so she simultaneously alienates her husband. There is no win here for the character but perhaps Rossellini's point is more subtle: the end of the world will be brought about by men whose treatment of women is governed by impulsive desires and an inability to see beyond surface level beauty. Welcome to the rejection of 1960s free love.

If Godard's piece leads the way in terms of interest and execution here, then it is Pasolini's The Ricotta that follows shortly behind. Contextually, this saw the director charged with contempt of religion and certainly there is still much there which may incite some frowns amongst those of faith.

The Ricotta occasionally comes across as confused and the imagery presented in a cave where the protagonist (Mario Cipriani) is peppered by food thrown by the actors in Orson Welles' film-within-a-film, now representing a group of grotesques, seems particularly off-key. Beneath this though there are clear criticisms of a Catholic church which, in Pasolini's eyes, preaches God's words yet lets the poor starve and the rich gorge. Clearly Pasolini's piece is related mainly to the Italian system of the 1960s but that the censors saw fit to take the time to pay attention to him shows that he was potentially on to something and there are wider implications and insinuations here which transcend beyond their geographical and chronological moment. The Ricotta also proves to be by far the funniest of the four 'comic episodes'.

Whilst Pasolini's film is so rich of subtext its plot occasionally gets lost, Ugo Gregoretti's finale, Free Range Chicken, is all overt message, little metaphor. His rather attractively brash couple, Mr and Mrs Togni (Ugo Tognazzi and Lisa Gastoni), are the perfect vessels: here are two people who know their own mind, yet cannot help but get drawn in by the evil grip of consumerism. The message is rammed home when the supposedly 'free range' patrons of a diner, change on screen in to a group of hens, in battery-like stalls.

It is in this final segment that, for the first time, this anthology risks second-guessing itself. In a sub-genre which invites internal contradictions, this must be counted as a success for Bini and his team. Whilst Pasolini has Welles quoting from a text which claims the modern day world understands new structures but not old - in a segment dedicated to finding the place of religion - Gregoretti has Tognazzi failing to find his way in to an ultra-modern diner, as uniformity of message is rejected in favour of individual points being borne out.

Perhaps it is this contradiction which best sums RoGoPaG up. Here is a film which presents the anxieties of a turning point generation, as the 1960s struggled to assimilate varying influences and worries, whilst avoiding the end of the world as it knew it.

Founded in 2004, The Masters of Cinema Series is an independent, carefully curated, UK-based Blu-ray and DVD label, now consisting of over 150 films. Films are presented in their original aspect ratio (OAR), in meticulous transfers created from recent restorations and / or the most pristine film elements available.

RoGoPaG is released in the UK on Monday 27th August

Film Intel's Final Word - Passion, Expendables, Daredevil

Brian De Palma's Passion has Rapace and McAdams Kissing and A Scary Mask. In The Same Film.

Story: IMDb

De Palma hasn't been on fire of late but take a look at the IMDb image gallery above and tell me there's not something to get excited about here. Kissing! Masks! A Clapperboard! Passion will be showing at Toronto International Film Festival for anyone that can get there. I can't get there. Yes, that's very annoying.



Expendables 2 is Out. Lets Talk Expendables 3.

Story: IGN and plenty of others

There's nothing more endemic of a 'me first' news culture then discussing the inner workings of a second sequel before any one has even had chance to see the first sequel. It won't be long before Expendables 4 is being discussed. Expendables 3 is old news.



Joe Carnahan's Daredevil Sizzle Online.

Video: YouTube

Looks interesting but can you watch this without calling to mind the Affleck version? Some properties will just never get over previous rubbish iterations. This might be one of them.

Tony Scott - 1944-2012

'I feel the need...'

'This is the '90s. You can't just walk up and slap a guy, you have to say something cool first.'

'I expect and demand your very best. Anything less, you should have joined the Air Force.'

'You're the only woman for me. You and Janet Jackson.'

'Technology gets better everyday. That's fine. But most of the time all you need is a stick of gum, a pocket knife and a smile.'

'Forgiveness is between them and God. It's my job to arrange the meeting.'

Trailer Of The Week - Week #34 - Spy Game

I watched The Debt this week, and that got me thinking of 2001's unfairly forgotten Spy Game, a Robert Redford/Brad Pitt vehicle with a similar plot somewhat reliant on the twists and turns of love during spy time, loyalty and the moral rights and wrongs of espionage. A solid Thriller and a chance to see a Tony Scott film before he employed Tigger as his editor.



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.

Indiana Jones Blu-ray Box Set Does Not Look Like This But it Should

This is a fake mock-up of what a Limited Edition Indiana Jones Blu-ray Box Set could look like. Its not real, but for now I'm choosing to believe that it is. 8th October can't come soon enough.

Sherlock: Season Two - Blu-ray Review

'We've seen these tales before in Holmes adaptations past and we've seen present-day cops in everything from Morse to Midsomer.'

Like Taggart or Dalziel and Pascoe, Sherlock's second season continues to offer feature-length mysteries for a Sunday night crowd, at an acceptable pace for all involved to keep up. The second of those two comparisons sticks more than the first. A duo who occasionally argue yet offer their own brilliant insights into the case at hand, whilst growling supposed superiors lurk in the background. Sherlock may benefit from Arthur Conan Doyle's mysteries but the reason why it feels so pedestrian occasionally is down to a feeling of familiarity. We've seen these tales before in Holmes adaptations past and we've seen present-day cops in everything from Morse to Midsomer.

So, was the transplanting of Sherlock to the present day a mistake after all? It certainly seems it in Episode Two: The Hound Of The Baskervilles, which makes Baskerville itself a military base, complete with unconvincing BBC military costumes. In twisting this core of the story, writer Mark Gatiss, for probably the first time, loses the romance of Holmes. You can get swept away on the eerie air of Dartmoor and the cold halls of Baskerville Hall. It's very difficult to feel the same way about a brushed steel base, to feel involved with chain link fences and land mine surrounds. The eventual conclusion is hokum, more forgiveable considering that this was always the case with Doyle's original any way.

That this episode follows on the heels of the very strong A Scandal In Belgravia is a shame, although that episode, the first, features one of many cases of Sherlock: Season Two again calling to mind Guy Ritchie's take on the franchise. In Irene Adler (Lara Pulver) the series finds a remarkable character and the closest yet Sherlock has come to a love interest but it's also a direct lift from the Ritchie films, where the same person was played by Rachel McAdams. Sure, Pulver's Adler has a bit more of a kinky side (she's a dominatrix to the rich and famous) but the rest is all the same; flirtatious, clever, an adept thief but well in over her head, treading dangerously close to femme fatale territory. The episode works mainly because of the human relations but again, the series comes close to that which it seemed to want to avoid, namely Hollywood's repossession of the British sleuth.

It's left to the obvious candidate to wrap things up, as Sherlock dips into a legendary Doyle story for the second time in two episodes. The conclusion of The Reichenbach Fall will be known to many but that does not mean that there isn't a thrill in the build up as Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch, still riskily playing the detective a bit too close to smarmy) and Watson (Martin Freeman, brilliant in this second season) chase uber-nemesis Moriarty (Andrew Scott). Scott remains a problem. His line delivery veers from sneer to shout to whisper but never once does he hit on menacing, coming across as psychopathic but un-methodical, his screen presence a mile away from Cumberbatch's. It leaves the final confrontation lacking and reliant on a cliff-hanger to force your attention on to Season Three, due in 2013. Its a cheap trick but again forgiveable when you consider its exactly what Doyle did. Still, you don't see The Wire relying on that sort of thing, and Sherlock's second outing again comes across as a poor, if passable, relation to the better drama infiltrating from the other side of the pond.

The Debt - Online Review

'overtly shows that today's spies are tomorrow's future; what hope for a world run by shadowy men whose history is that of deceit and violence'

Set aside the silly final twenty minutes and a ponderous section of locked-in drama in the middle and The Debt is more fun than you've been led to believe. A tense middle-ish segment following the impossibly pretty collective of Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain and Marton Csokas as they attempt to kidnap Jesper Christensen's Nazi doctor is top level spy game stuff and the stinging juxtaposition of the spiky Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciarán Hinds interactions provides some nice meat in the setup.

Far beyond being just a film concerned with creating tension around spies and their world, this has hints of commenting on something deeper. Mossad's foreign actions in the post-war period (and after other events which saw Jews targeted) are well documented, as are the morals behind those actions and The Debt doesn't shy away from questioning them. Indeed, late on, it overtly shows that today's spies are tomorrow's future; what hope for a world run by shadowy men whose history is that of deceit and violence?

This message ends up marginalised and maligned beneath a finale reliant on Mirren's character Rachel, which messes up something which should have been so simple. There are two ways it can go and fairly simple ways to get to either of them but, inexplicably, director John Madden lets it get away from him, throwing up a needless conflict no-one needed to see and leaving a dissatisfied feeling where closure should have been so simple. By all accounts this sat, inert, on a shelf somewhere, untouched, for a long time. The biggest criticism you can level at the end is that it actually feels like a reshoot, such is the wavering of tone and grubby mishandling of the plotting.

It means that a film just a small amount away from being something special ends up being a small amount away from being nothing at all. You turn away from it with a shrug more than anything else and much of the good work that went before is forgotten. See it for the middle segment but beware what's hiding in the final act.

The Debt was playing on Sky Anytime Plus.

Legacy Franchises: the New Reboot? And Five Franchises That Could See it Happen

When is a remake not a remake? When you put the word Legacy in the title, change the main characters and have at least part of your film happening at the same time as the last one. The Bourne Legacy is an interesting film in that it shows yet another way in which studios are attempting to extend franchises. Whether its splitting The Hobbit in two or rebooting Spider-Man after just five years, there's desperation out there to squeeze every penny from a proven property. Enter the Legacy film and five more 'franchises' that could get Legacy-ised. Legacyed. Lega... needs work.


Collateral

Those familiar with Michael Mann's 2004 effort might see where this is going straight away but for those who don't remember, it features one of the best cameos going, in any film, ever. Vincent receives his case from none other than Jason Statham, who walks on, says, 'yeah, I'm fine mate, don't worry about it' and walks off again. Who is he? What is he doing? Does he drop cases off all the time? These questions must be answered! A legacy film must be made!

Bridesmaids

There's plenty of legacy-friendly material here but here's a niche one: Terry Crews' fitness instructor. Our legacy film would start with the scene where Annie and Lillian try to sneakily take advantage of his rather vociferous training and then leave them to follow Crews and his exploits. Does he have a client he falls in love with? Is he the target of a Globo Gym style takeover? Who knows! Perfect legacy material.

Fast

At some point, Universal will run out of ways to make Fast films in their current guise and some members of the cast will finally find other gainful employment elsewhere. Those two concepts may seem highly unlikely currently but hey, no franchise can last forever (unless you're Bond, which this, erm, isn't). There are several options for a legacy franchise though and the series has kind of already tried it once with Tokyo Drift. How about following a policeman assigned to a task force with the task of researching the crimes linked to street racing, having been alerted to them by Toretto and O'Conner's gang... which sounds an awful lot like the first film. Perfect legacy material!

Mission: Impossible

It's yet to be confirmed but the handover on this may have already happened, with Jeremy Renner's Brandt all set up to take over from Ethan Hunt, if they decide to go that way. A legacy-type plot wouldn't be too difficult to concoct on this basis either. Perhaps Hunt under investigation for some sort of event, perhaps something that cropped up in one of the previous films. Hunt has gone missing and its down to Brandt to find out the facts and clear the name of his former team-mate. Hunt cameo at the end, waving to Brandt with his wife from a distance? You bet. Jeremy Renner to star in two legacy franchises? You'd have to say that one makes this less likely.

The Departed

Come on... who doesn't want to see the extended adventures of very-sweary Dignam!

Classic Intel: Sin City - Online Review

'A lesser offering, with this sort of visual trickery and overall uniqueness of presentation, should be starting to wane... instead, Sin City feels like it could hit cinema screens tomorrow and still wildly impress on a artistic level.'

Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's soon-to-be-sequelised Sin City still looks sharp, smart and stylised. That it manages to look those things without, yet, dating is testament to the quality of the end product. A lesser offering, with this sort of visual trickery and overall uniqueness of presentation, should be starting to wane, the effect of 'being different' wearing thin. Instead, Sin City feels like it could hit cinema screens tomorrow and still wildly impress on an artistic level.

As Rodriguez continues to explore the Machete franchise, throwing a sequel to that in to the mix with other such delights as Spy Kids and his Grindhouse films, he seems to have become an easy figure to mock. Underestimate his creative talents at your peril. On Sin City, Rodriguez acts as director, cinematographer and editer. He composed some of the music, had a hand in mixing the sound, operated some of the cameras and supervised the visual effects. The man is nothing if not driven and if you consider Sin City a success (many do, it is holding on to its IMDb Top 250 spot with resolve) then much of that credit must fall at his feet.

That said, he must also then take the blame for not presiding more carefully over co-director Frank Miller's original narrative, which gets ropey at times and is oft-presented in, perhaps deliberately, shocking ways. The most obvious offenders in both of these elements are firstly The Man's (Josh Hartnett) story, which has little to do with anything until it is shoe-horned in to the plot at the end and, secondly, the relationship between Hartigan (Bruce Willis) and Nancy (Jessica Alba), which is presented as worryingly paedophilic, leading to an unsatisfying and uncomfortable finale.

The more successful threads of the tale though - following Marv (Mickey Rourke) and Dwight (Clive Owen) - are satisfying enough in their own right to ensure the film proves a success, both Rourke and Owen turning in menacing depictions of anti-heroes who feel relateable and dangerous. Alexis Bledel creates a good creep and the late Brittany Murphy is pulled from the plot just when her character started to get interesting. Her performance during the scuffle in the flat is worthy of much acclaim, as is a large slice of the rest of Rodriguez' violent noir.

Sin City was playing on Lovefilm Instant.

The Loved Ones - Blu-ray Review

'plys a brave line in brutality and gore but at its core it's banal. This is ostensibly torture porn with a touch more wrapping'

First time writer/director Sean Byrne's The Loved Ones plys a brave line in brutality and gore but at its core it's banal. This is ostensibly torture porn with a touch more wrapping, which never gets round to exploring the ideas that bubble beneath its plot, thinly conceived and wrapped up in well under ninety minutes.

This is a shame because the wrapping Byrne places around his film is bright, shiny and, occasionally, beautiful. Lola's (Robin McLeavy) pink dress sizzles with teen angst against a backdrop of a revolving glitter ball, the school prom and a lot of crimson blood. Throughout, the nothing-short-of-amazing soundtrack pumps with a mix of Australian pop classics and underground hits even Google can't find for you. If Byrne decides to give up writing and directing any time soon he has a bright future as a DJ. Ollie Olsen's industrial, threatening, score complements the overall sound design nicely.

For all its aesthetics though, Byrne's film needs so much more plot than it gets. Lola and her psychopathic Father (John Brumpton) kidnap school hottie Brent (Xavier Samuel) because, well, they're a little mad really. The Texas Chainsaw massacre is referenced directly (running through hanging clothes, natch) but this has nowhere near the depth Tobe Hooper's effort managed from such simple beginnings. Eventually it thins out into a grim crawl through torture-by-household instruments, Dad proving to be in possession of some rather odd skills, Samuel proving himself to be in possession of a good pair of a lungs and a slightly unearthly scream.

There's subtext here about the reliance of teens on their parents, despite representations to the contrary; Brent has lost his Father and, partially, his way, Lola's Dad is her partner in crime, Mia's (Jessica McNamee) shoulders the blame for her deviance having failed to find her lost brother. Brent's ordeal with Lola is juxtaposed with Mia's difficult trip to the school prom, the unassuming Jamie (Richard Wilson) in tow. Its true that teens have to go through several hardships to make it out of high school/college, but the comparison of dancing with having a craft knife hammered through one's foot feels too obtuse to register.

At just eighty-four minutes, there's no way this should have managed to drag on, but the middle section is directionless and the end features a reveal its impossible to care about. Lola is demented but not enough to carry all of this and her Father, if anything, actually weakens her characterisation. The young cast do well but this needed a lot more than gore to score on its prom.

Trailer Of The Week - Week #33 - There Will Be Blood

As anticipation for Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master grows, Trailer Of The Week takes a few minutes to step back and re-assess the trailer for his last masterpiece, There Will Be Blood. Unexpectedly long - its surely possible to tease what is essentially a character study in less than two minutes - the approach is predictably anchored by a combination of Daniel Day-Lewis narration and Jonny Greenwood's unsettling, industrial, score. It's effective. TWBB's trailer sums up the film's main themes - greed, religion, family - well, sucking you in to the inky-black world of Daniel Plainview with gravitas hidden behind well-managed threat.



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.

Film Intel's Final Word - Incest, Ecclestone, Nebraska

Jennifer Lawrence Goes for Incest as The Hunger Games Antidote.

Story: Film School Rejects

The rule when you're in a major franchise is that you then normally go off and do something a bit off-the-wall and non-franchise-based to prove your acting metal hasn't been softened by all this guff about vampires. May have got confused there. Anyway, Jennifer Lawrence is taking that path and taking it well. This tale about the oil industry and incest has controversy and PROPER DRAMA written all over it.



Ecclestone In Line To Thump Thor.

Story: The Hollywood Reporter

Mixed feelings. Ecclestone is a really solid actor but when he gets given the villain he seems to go into full on Ham mode (see: G.I. Joe). That might have suited Thor's world under Branagh but Alan Taylor is something of an unknown quantity. This feels like a tone-setting risk.



Details on Alexander Payne's Next Film, Nebraska.

Story: Slash Film

Sounds great. It seems to be another film about the troubles and perils of being a middle-to-late aged man but, so what? Payne's output on that front has been high quality so far and I'm happy to watch him do it again. It's a bit strange that its going to star MacGruber though.

Classic Intel: The Driver - Online Review

'bear in mind the clear references to classic literature, most notably Moby Dick, O'Neal's Driver playing white whale to Dern's dangerously fixated detective'

Visiting The Driver post Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive is an eye-opener. Whilst Refn freely admits to being influenced by Walter Hill's film, just how influenced he was by it is an unavoidable conversation when the many similarities become clear. It is not difficult to concoct a very plausible argument that Drive is a pretty straight remake of Hill's tense thriller.

The similarities are obvious in the first twelve-or-so, near-silent, minutes, where the same thing that happens in Drive happens again. Anti-hero The Driver (Ryan O'Neal, note that, like Ryan Gosling, he doesn't have a proper name) picks up some stock hoodlums from a robbery before parting with them on ill-mannered terms; 'there isn't gonna be a next time. You were late.' So far, so familiar, as Drive must have been to those who saw this first.

Where this differs from the more recent offering is in the antagonist. The criminal underworld are here and present and there's a conflict set up with Teeth (Rudy Ramos) which at least partially treads Drive-like routes but the main source of discomfort for Driver is The Detective, a sterling Mick McCarthy-at-his-eagle-like-best-looking, Bruce Dern. In the typical manner of the anti-hero, O'Neal finds himself in possession of some morals, whilst Dern has few, driven by an obsession to catch the un-catchable. If the film sounds like a standard Thriller - and for the most part it is, albeit a very good one - then bear in mind the clear references to classic literature, most notably Moby Dick, O'Neal playing white whale to Dern's dangerously fixated law maker.

O'Neal, who feels like he should have been more famous after this than he seems to have been, is equally assured, although his voice - a tad reedy - fails to backup the machismo his character displays elsewhere. Isabelle Adjani - ostensibly in the Carrie Mulligan role, sans child and dodgy husband - seems to have been given two sole directions to be 'alluring' and 'slightly European', both of which she manages stunningly. There's a hint at one point that Hill is going to follow The Hustler's line of the deep noir femme fatale but eventually he allows Adjani to pass through rather under-used.

This coupled with other elements obviously leaves The Driver lacking the modern sex sizzle of Refn's offering. There's no neon here or electro pop and the script is sometimes too bare for its own good. But where Drive succeeded, so does The Driver. The chases squeal with soul-cutting rubber, the leads are sexy and easy to sympathise with and the simple plot ignites when it becomes clear that no-one is getting away entirely clean. It is not surprising that Refn felt comfortable taking so much from what proves to be an rather outstanding, if simplistic, crime caper.

The Driver was available on Lovefilm Instant.

Sherlock: Season One - Blu-ray Review

'feels lacking when our recent TV diets have consisted of such wonders as HBO's all-conquering Game Of Thrones'

Whilst largely being more-than-functional TV fun, the first series of Sherlock feels lacking when our recent TV diets have consisted of such wonders as HBO's all-conquering Game Of Thrones, or the plethora of other high quality outputs spewed forth by Sky Atlantic. Next to them the BBC's modern-day retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective just comes across as a little flat sometimes, not helped by the meagre offering of just three feature-length episodes per season.

The first two of those ninety-minute tales (A Study In Pink and The Blind Banker) are also beset by plotting problems, which hinder what should have been enjoyable murder mysteries. In the first, the general identity of the killer is telegraphed very precisely from near the opening moments, whilst the second relies on a key character loving teapots (yes, teapots) so much that she would put herself in harm's way to maintain them. Other minor points (Sherlock and Holmes, whilst in a seemingly random area of London, bump into a supporting character who happens to have a major piece of information) continue to add to the feeling of plot manipulation.

Things perk noticeably in Episode Three: The Great Game, which has a plot more in-keeping with something like Saw than a televisual procedural. Director Paul McGuigan does well to examine the intricacies of Sherlock's (Benedict Cumberbatch) psyche, whilst not getting sidetracked in Watson's (Martin Freeman) dalliances in romance with Sarah (Zoe Telford), who features too heavily in Episode Two. The final reveal is very well handled, yet a touch unsatisfying. An actor chosen to play a key role wavers all over the place in terms of accent, coming across as thin, weedy, caricature, rather than evil mastermind.

The design of the thing, perpetrated mainly by a move to modern day London, fits well with the stories and writers Mark Gatiss (who cameos brilliantly as Mycroft) and Steven Moffat work Doyle's stories in to up-to-date versions with a great deal of nous. The only let down is some of the wider production decisions; the music seems to have been directly lifted from Guy Ritchie's big screen take on the detective and Cumberbatch's Holmes follows in the footsteps or Downey Jr.'s perhaps a little too much.

That said, and rather contradictorily, there is a darker side to Holmes' character here too, which many may find difficult to ratify. Holmes, through Cumberbatch, is smarmy. Despite what Holmes himself says during Episode Three, he, and not Watson, Lestrade or a.n.other, is the hero. Heroes can get away with being all sorts of things; unlikeable, nasty, rude, and indeed, Holmes is all of those things. But smarmy? No one wants that in a hero, and Cumberbatch treads a thin line on occasion.

21 Jump Street - Online Review

'If there's anything past cinematic school-set hits have taught us it's that if you get the lingo right, the rest can follow. Add to past stellar examples of teen-language invention, 'Phase 2: Tripping Major Ballsack' and 'Phase 4: Fuck Yeah Motherfucker'.'

21 Jump Street is on to something with its description of the phases users go through when they take the film's drug, and head MacGuffin, HFS. If there's anything past cinematic school-set hits have taught us it's that if you get the lingo right, the rest can follow. Think MacLovin' in Superbad or The Plastics in Mean Girls and you're on to the level of label which translates into a cult linguistic hit. Add to those stellar examples of teen-language invention, 'Phase 2: Tripping Major Ballsack' and 'Phase 4: Fuck Yeah Motherfucker'. There's structure, inventiveness and pleasure in the obscenity.

That very structure, inventiveness and pleasure follows through in to a film which Phil Lord and Chris Miller aren't afraid to make as clever as their sterling animated offering Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. In live action land, Lord and Miller stretch Michael Bacall's screenplay into an impressive narrative, which deals with high school regrets and the changing face of teenagedom alongside a standard Cops & Robbers chase. High-school set films could learn a thing or two from 21 Jump Street's depiction of teenagers as often-segregated from the regular stereotypes; jocks, geeks and goths barely get a look in here.

The leads of Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are ridiculously over-playing to great effect, Hill his normal ebullient self, Tatum finding a new streak of comedic charm; his first experience of Tripping Major Ballsack is a candidate for the film's best scene as the normally macho Jenko collides with the school band. Like, again, the rest of the best in class for the school dramas, this finds hilarity in the side players to keep the duo supported. Ice Cube is perfect as their superior, Rob Riggle is his own level of trademark demented, Dave Franco is necessarily smarmy.

At under two hours Lord and Miller's pacing is near-perfect as the film shunts through gears to a conclusion that goes for one too many bawdy laughs but still puts a satisfying wrapper over the mayhem. Rumours of a sequel though seem somewhat ill-advised: surely the only way to go from here is down, the film-makers perhaps suffering from 'Phase 3: Over-Falsity of Confidence'.

21 Jump Street is available via Google Play.