Monday 25 November 2013

From the archive: "Hot Rod"


The boyish, Ashton Kutcher-like comedian Andy Samberg made his name in the US posting spoof videos on YouTube; his debut vehicle Hot Rod is a skittish but endearingly silly film from Lorne Michaels' Saturday Night Live stable. Like Death Proof, which only truly zinged in the way Quentin Tarantino wanted it to if you happened to have seen 1970s grindhouse features, Hot Rod might appear semi-incomprehensible to any viewers who've never watched a cheesy 80s sports movie and have only minimal knowledge of old MC Hammer records. 

Samberg plays the eponymous hero, an amateur stuntman in a stick-on moustache who putters about the suburbs on a crummy, clapped-out moped; needless to say, his every death-defying leap usually results in physical injury of a sort. His latest mission is to jump a row of school buses to raise money for mocking stepfather Ian McShane's heart transplant: the best gag in the film is that Rod isn't specifically doing it for this brute's health, but just so he can eventually kick pa's ass in a fight.

Akiva Schaffer's direction subscribes to a broad, anything-goes policy: the soundtrack and fashion date from the Reagan era, but the Internet and mobile phones the leads use suggest all this is happening in our own backyard. (Rootlessness is always a problem whenever comedians in their late twenties and thirties try to relive their youth on screen: take the Wayne's World films, where the least convincing aspect was that teenagers in the early 1990s would be excited by Aerosmith and Alice Cooper.) 

These SNL offshoots are prone to a certain comic sameyness - like Wayne and Garth, or the clueless nightclubbers played by Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan in A Night at the Roxbury, Rod and his entourage are essentially overgrown kids - and here the hero's hobbydom leads Samberg and Schaffer into the fistfights-and-carcrashes crudity of a Superbad or Jackass movie: more than once, a character goes facefirst into an immovable object, a joke that doesn't get any funnier - or less painful - in the repetition. 

There are lulls along the way, and Isla Fisher really ought to move on from having bodily fluids chucked up all over her - she can't do anything especially persuasive or funny with her big speech declaring her love for Rod on the grounds that he hasn't changed (i.e. he's comprehensively failed to grow up) - but Hot Rod nevertheless concludes with a run of very strong gags, most notably the comeuppance of Will Arnett's Andrew McCarthy/Rob Lowe-style yuppie, and the most inspired screen use to date of John Farnham's timelessly inspirational power ballad "You're the Voice".

(October 2007)

Hot Rod is available on DVD through Paramount Home Entertainment; it screens on Channel 4 this Wednesday night at 1.40am.

Sunday 24 November 2013

From the archive: "The Best Man"


The Best Man, a directorial debut for Spike Lee's brother Malcolm D. Lee, focuses on a group of college friends reuniting for a wedding, and it's notable in one respect: where Spike regards the urban environment as a pent-up jungle full of serial killers, racists and revolutionaries, Malcolm's city view is more along the Giuliani/Friends line, with nobody more threatening than an ambitious TV producer stalking the streets. Taye Diggs is the writer whose first, nakedly autobiographical novel has just passed among his friends, some of whom feature in its pages; the set-up - creative type in an uncertain relationship heads home to be confronted by those he left behind - is an African-American take on talkfests like the recent Beautiful Girls, and a more ambitious film would perhaps have explored the inner-circle paranoia beyond the minor revelations and mild fisticuffs we get here, or pushed the art-imitating-life theme to the extremes of something like Deconstructing Harry. As it is, Lee, working from his own script, lets in a little too much poker-table testosterone, and spends considerably more time around the lap-dancers at the bachelor party than he does at the hen do. Diggs gives a charming, laconic performance, but the ladies - Nia Long and Sanaa Lathan among them - get shorter shrift. With few real edges, the material heads into big-day farce that is rather too familiar from countless other wobbles down the aisle; its only real surprise is that the best man doesn't forget the ring.

(January 2001)

The Best Man is available on DVD through Universal Pictures UK; a sequel, The Best Man Holiday, opens in cinemas nationwide from Friday.

Friday 22 November 2013

For what it's worth...


Top Ten Films at the UK Box Office              
for the weekend of November 15-17, 2013: 
       
     
 
1 (1) Gravity (12A) *****  
2 (2) Thor: The Dark World (12A) **  
3 (3) Philomena (12A) ****
4 (new) The Counsellor (18) **
5 (new) The Butler (12A) ***
6 (5) Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (U) ***
7 (4) Captain Phillips (12A) ****
8 (7) Turbo (U)
9 (6) Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (15)
10 (new) Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela (12A)
 
(source: Guardian.co.uk)

My top five:      
     
 
1. Gone with the Wind
2. ¡Vivan las Antipodas!
3. Computer Chess
4. Blue is the Warmest Colour
5. Don Jon 

  
 
Top Ten DVD rentals: 
       
     
 
1 (new) Now You See Me (12A)  
2 (1) Oblivion (12) *    
3 (3) World War Z (12) **  
4 (new) Monsters University (U) **   
5 (2) Behind the Candelabra (15) ***  
6 (new) Snitch (12) **  
7 (5) Cloud Atlas (15) ****  
8 (10) Hummingbird (15) **  
9 (7) Trance (15) ***  
10 (9) After Earth (12)        
   
(source: lovefilm.com)
       
     
 
My top five:              
1. The Act of Killing
2. The World's End
3. Blackfish    
4. Foxfire    
5. The Heat
       

    
 
Top five films on terrestrial TV this week:                
1. The Fugitive (Saturday, five, 10pm)
2. The Happiest Days of Your Life [above] (Saturday, BBC2, 8.10am)
3. Bright Star (Saturday, BBC2, 11.15pm)
4. Hot Rod (Wednesday, C4, 1.40am)
5. The Company Men (Monday, C4, 12.35am)

"¡Vivan las Antipodas!" (The Guardian 22/11/13)


¡Vivan las Antipodas! (U) 108 mins ***

The phrase is “digging to China”, but in fact there are several points where one might theoretically pass through the Earth’s core and emerge on land the other side. Victor Kossakovsky’s documentary curio is essentially a high-concept exercise in matchmaking, pairing and then crosscutting between these polar opposites to illustrate how the other half lives. Stunning, NASA-precise photography maps out the similarities and differences: there’s a clear mismatch between rural Argentina and rapidly developing Shanghai, but shared agricultural interests unite Chilean Patagonia with Russia’s Lake Baikal, and Kossakovsky finds one lovely visual rhyme between Hawaii’s volcanic terrain and the hides of Botswanan elephants. A sympathy for the methods of slow cinema would help – it digs assiduously, using long takes that gradually reveal the minutiae of daily life – but its idiosyncratic gaze refuses any we-are-the-world homilies. You emerge wondering what (and who) might lie beneath your own feet. 

¡Vivan las Antipodas! opens in selected cinemas from today.

"Killing Oswald" (The Guardian 22/11/13)


Killing Oswald (uncertificated) 102 mins **

The week’s other item of JFK ephemera is a decidedly special-interest doc that strays into conspiracy theory in trying to unpick Lee Harvey Oswald’s backstory: a complex, still-murky tangle of links with the FBI, CIA and Cuban dissident groups. Director Shane O’Sullivan ventures some scholarly digging into the archives, emerging with the striking, tableau-like telecast footage of Oswald’s assassination by Jack Ruby, yet his editorial line proves generally prosaic and unimaginative, reliant on authors rehashing arguments already proposed elsewhere and stiff reconstructions that only bury Oswald as an ongoing person of interest. 

Killing Oswald opens in selected cinemas from today.

"Flu" (The Guardian 22/11/13)


Flu (15) 122 mins **

Coughs and sneezes do indeed spread diseases in this amusingly feverish thriller, a Korean attempt to take back some of those lurgies let loose by Soderbergh’s colder-blooded Contagion. A container full of immigrants – tsk – unleashes a new mutation of bird flu on one of Seoul’s ritzier suburbs, occasioning various disaster scenarios pitched around the level of a Channel Five telemovie: the crisis boils down to whether Hunky Rescue Worker can help Plucky Single Mum to retrieve her Adorably Cute Daughter. Frequent spluttering montages provide silly fun, but this sort of doomsday projection surely ought to be terrifying.

Flu opens in selected cinemas from today

"Vendetta" (Metro 22/11/13)


Vendetta (18) **

By the lowly standards of the Danny Dyer CV, this revenge thriller is semi-ambitious and actually partway watchable, boasting enough conviction to strongarm us past its plotholes, and a central turn that suggests its star isn’t solely knocking about for the paycheque: for one thing, our Dan’s pwoper bulked up to play the rogue Special Op whose pursuit of the ne’er-do-wells behind his parents’ murders sparks a national security crisis. Writer-director Stephen Reynolds makes some effort to interrogate this vigilante’s methods – pity he isn’t above the usual leering business in lapdancing clubs, a slapdash attempt to pass off this very newspaper as “London Today”, or a wildly silly, sequel-chasing finale, which repositions Dyer as Canning Town’s answer to the Dark Knight, and does its best to undermine the crude yet vaguely effective work elsewhere. Still better than Run for Your Wife, if that’s saying anything.

Vendetta opens in selected cinemas from today.

Sunday 17 November 2013

For what it's worth...


Top Ten Films at the UK Box Office            
for the weekend of November 8-10, 2013: 
       
 
 
 
1 (new) Gravity (12A) [above] *****
2 (1) Thor: The Dark World (12A) **
3 (4) Philomena (12A) ****
4 (3) Captain Phillips (12A) ****
5 (2) Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (U) ***
6 (6) Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (15)
7 (5) Turbo (U)
8 (7) Ender's Game (12A)
9 (8) Krrish 3 (12A)
10 (9) One Chance (12A) 
 
(source: Guardian.co.uk)

My top five:      
 
 
 
1. Gravity  
2. How to Survive a Plague  
3. Gloria    
4. Philomena    
5. Wolf Children  

 
 
Top Ten DVD rentals: 
       
 
 
 
1 (new) Now You See Me (12A)
2 (1) Oblivion (12) *  
3 (3) World War Z (12) **
4 (new) Monsters University (U) ** 
5 (2) Behind the Candelabra (15) ***
6 (new) Snitch (12) **
7 (5) Cloud Atlas (15) ****
8 (10) Hummingbird (15) **
9 (7) Trance (15) ***
10 (9) After Earth (12)        
 
(source: lovefilm.com)
       
 
 
 
My top five:            
1. Blackfish  
2. Foxfire  
3. The Great Gatsby  
4. Night of Silence  
5. Easy Money
       

 
 
 
Top five films on terrestrial TV this week:              
1. American Beauty (Wednesday, BBC1, 11.35pm)
2. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Saturday, ITV1, 3.45pm)
3. Once Upon a Time in Mexico (Sunday, five, 11.15pm)
4. Winchester 73 (Monday, C4, 12.20pm)
5. Radio On (Saturday, BBC2, 1.20am)

"Future My Love" (The Guardian 15/11/13)


Future My Love (12A) 97 mins ***

This distinctive, Chris Marker-like essay sees Swedish-born, Glasgow-based filmmaker Maja Borg finding a novel means of getting over heartbreak: checking herself in at the Edenic Florida retreat of social theorist Jacque Fresco, an early proponent of free culture whose most radical idea is that we should abandon money altogether – doing everything for love, not financial reward. Theories that almost certainly sounded naïve pre-2008 are returned to the table: Borg’s conversations with Floridians point up how the present system doesn’t work for them, while archival digressions contrast capitalism’s 1950s golden age with the scrapheaps piling up in its wake. If there’s something self-conscious about the framing – where the director’s often mopey internal monologues threaten to overwrite Fresco’s fleet thinking – the core is provocative and outward-looking: in searching for solutions, both for her own unhappiness and everybody else’s, Borg transforms the personal into the unmistakably political.

Future My Love opens in selected cinemas from today.

Friday 8 November 2013

For what it's worth...


Top Ten Films at the UK Box Office          
for the weekend of November 1-3, 2013: 
       
 
 
1 (new) Thor: The Dark World (12A) **
2 (1) Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (U) ***
3 (2) Captain Phillips (12A) **** 
4 (new) Philomena (12A) ****
5 (4) Turbo (U)
6 (3) Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (15)
7 (5) Ender's Game (12A)
8 (new) Krrish 3 (12A)
9 (6) One Chance (12A)
10 (7) Escape Plan (15) **
 
(source: Guardian.co.uk)

My top five:      
 
 
1. Gravity
2. How to Survive a Plague
3. Gloria  
4. Philomena  
5. Wolf Children  

 
Top Ten DVD rentals: 
       
 
 
1 (new) Oblivion (12) *  
2 (new) Behind the Candelabra (15) ***  
3 (new) World War Z (12) **  
4 (1) Jack the Giant Slayer (12) **   
5 (4) Cloud Atlas (15) ****  
6 (new) The Big Wedding (15)  
7 (new) Trance (15) ***   
8 (2) Identity Thief (12) *   
9 (new) After Earth (12)  
10 (new) Hummingbird (15) **         
 
(source: lovefilm.com)
       
 
 
My top five:          
1. Blackfish
2. Foxfire
3. The Great Gatsby
4. Night of Silence
5. Easy Money
       

 
 
Top five films on terrestrial TV this week:            
1. If... [above] (Wednesday, C4, 1.20am)
2. Dirty Harry (Wednesday, five, 10pm)
3. Up in the Air (Friday, BBC2, 11.10pm)
4. Notes on a Scandal (Sunday, BBC2, 10.30pm)
5. White Material (Saturday, BBC2, 1.05am)

Thursday 7 November 2013

From the archive: "Koi... Mil Gaya"


Koi... Mil Gaya is a Bollywood film where the novelty of the conceit - the novelty of seeing something as unoriginal as a Close Encounters/E.T. knock-off translated into Hindi - overcomes any shakiness in the execution. In a prologue, an astronomer who's made contact with aliens dies in a car crash that seriously injures his pregnant wife. Their child grows up to become Rohit (Hrithik Roshan), a slow young man who enjoys jumping in puddles and hanging out with his gang of cherubic of eight-year-old schoolmates. Yet when the aliens show up again, anxious to know why no-one's been returning their calls, it's Rohit who becomes the first to make contact.

What strikes you is the film's sheer simplicity, broadly on a level with that of its hero: only the heavens (and the BBFC) know why Koi... Mil Gaya has been classified 12A, as no recent Hindi film has been so obviously crying out for a universal rating. Among the building blocks co-writer/director Rakesh Roshan (Hrithik's dad) has assembled here: naivete such that perhaps the film doesn't know not to score a sweaty basketball tussle between Rohit and his male romantic rival to the Art of Noise's "Moments in Love"; product-placement such that one of the first discoveries the extra-terrestrials (who resemble Star Wars' Jawas crossed with the Smurfs) make about earthlings is that we enjoy a refreshing cola beverage at bars named after a particular variety of coffee bean.

There aren't many signs of intelligent life among the human participants: Preity Zinta has to dial down her usual screen IQ to play a girl insistent "every woman should be married", and Roshan, generally something of a pretty-boy actor, finds himself in the double bind of having to act a) geeky and b) dumber than he actually is, at least until the film can give him biceps and an excuse to take his glasses off. With its young supporting cast apparently drawn straight from a Children's Film Foundation offering circa 1974, Koi... Mil Gaya is the definition of childish entertainment, although I appreciate you could say the same thing of Independence Day, for example. It also manages to be weirdly appealing with it, sporting the widest of eyes, and songs that aspire, both musically and lyrically, to the status of stings for teatime TV shows. "This isn't meant for kids," Rohit insists at one point. It is, you know.

(February 2006)

Koi... Mil Gaya is available on DVD through Yash Raj Films. A sequel, Krrish, followed in 2005; a second sequel, rather confusingly titled Krrish 3, is now in cinemas nationwide.