Out in the UK This Week
The Wolverine (Fox, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD)
The X-Men series has been lacklustre, with too many characters chasing too little plot (X-Men First Class being the exception). But The Wolverine bucks that trend thanks to its tight focus on Hugh Jackman as the wolfman with the salon-sational nails and its decision to just chuck us straight into the plot, just like the comic books do. Japan is the focus, a grungy dirty Japan, where bearded, trashed Wolverine is just trying to forget all that superhero stuff and get on with a normal life. But, as is the way with these things, his past comes back to get him, in the form of a Japanese prison guard he rescued from atomic annihilation at the end of the Second World War, a man who wants what the Wolverine has. What this leads to is what the film is about, so Iâll go no further. What I will say is that James Mangold was a great choice to direct, a man who understands that itâs human drama not superhuman leaping about that makes the best superhero films tick. Though that doesnât mean he doesnât understand the power of good visuals. Enter ninjas, Ron Perlman in wisecracking badass mode and a mighty scene in which a man operates on his own heart.
Night of Silence (Verve, cert PG, DVD)
Proof that Turkey is one of the hotspots of film-making right now, this film by director Reis Ăelik is a one-room drama with a very playwrighty feel to it. The subject matter and the acting are what save it. In the room we have a gnarly old lag just out of prison and an impossibly young girl, his new bride (Dilan AksĂŒt). Sheâs maybe 14. The marriage has been arranged for him as a kind of thank you for taking the rap for a long-ago crime. We then watch as they dance around each other, the old man and the girl, for an entire night of what looks very much like Scheherazadian climax deferral â he proposes, she disposes, the pattern repeats itself. As said, the acting is gorgeous, particularly the way Ilyas Salmanâs face suggests the thousand-and-one disappointments of the old guy, and the camera dances about trying to put some movement into a situation thatâs physically static though psychically frenzied. And, considering itâs dealing with a Muslim country, and marriage at its most unequally âarrangedâ, the fact that the film doesnât wander into newspaper âsocial issueâ territory is a real plus too.
Night of Silence â at Amazon
Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger (E One, cert U, Blu-ray/DVD)
When Martin Freeman starred in the first Nativity film, who would have thought heâd be too big to turn up in the sequel. But when Bilbo calls⊠So hereâs David Tennant as a replacement in what, plotwise, is a fairly standard re-run of Nativity 1 â our underdog schoolkids donât stand a chance in a choir competition they are entered in but they set off to take part anyway. The surprise of Nativity 1 was twofold â that it was funny, and that its undoubted star, Marc Wootton, playing an almost frighteningly over-involved teaching assistant, wasnât the titular star. Wootton has more to do this time around, playing the unhinged funny guy to Tennantâs extremely straight guy as they take the kids across Wales (by bus, foot and donkey â spot the nativity play reference) to the eventual showdown at the singing competition. Tennant plays two roles, for reasons which probably seemed fun at the time, the jokes are still funny and the kids, who are improvising (as are the adults, I think â Tennant almost corpses a couple of times) are adorable. But the film is a good half hour too long, the culprit being the songs, which are terrible. A day in the edit studio and this is a really good film.
Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger â at Amazon
Mary Poppins 50th Anniversary Edition (Disney, cert U, Blu-ray)
Uncle Walt was still alive when Mary Poppins was made. Watching it again for the 50th anniversary edition I was struck by how carefully Disney in those days set everything up. Mary herself doesnât arrive for a while. By then weâve already met Burt the chimney sweep and the kids, a gruff local copper, Mr and Mrs Banks â him a stuffed shirt, her a suffragette â the housekeeper, the retired sea captain down the road who fires the big gun, his whipping boy, the exiting ex-nanny, a line of prospective new nannies, various ladies who enjoy watching Burt play and lark about. Weâve met a lot of people. Weâve also had a few songs. No film these days would hang about so long before introducing its main character, its real plot. But then films in those days were made for captive audiences who had paid to see a film, had heard from others that it was good, and werenât likely to bolt just because a titular character hadnât arrived in scene one. Springboarding off this slow start, Mary Poppins bounces into its key central sequence, the Jolly Holiday with Mary inside the chalk drawing, and then goes just a tiny bit flat towards the end in comparison. Mary Poppins doesnât finish on a big number, which is probably the only negative thing you can say about it, and what weâve had before then has been âpractically perfect in every wayâ â Julie Andrews typecasting herself for ever as a prim proper thing, Dick Van Dyke the epitome of gangly charm as Burt the chimney sweep. As for the â50th anniversary editionâ aspect, the Blu-ray I watched didnât look significantly different from how I remember Mary Poppins, didnât seem unduly sharp, bright, cleaned up or anything.
Mary Poppins 50th Anniversary Edition â at Amazon
Milius (StudioCanal, cert 15, DVD)
Right at the end of this inept film about screenwriter and occasional director John Milius it gives us the information that should have been at the beginning â the âwho is this man and why should I watch this documentaryâ bit. For those who donât know, Milius was considered the brightest of the bunch that included Scorsese, Spielberg, De Palma, Coppola, Lucas. And most of them line up, along with Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood, to heap praise on the man who wrote the âfeel lucky, punkâ scene from Dirty Harry, the Indianapolis scene from Jaws, who wrote Apocalypse Now. OK, so one entire movie â a classic, granted â and some rewrites, a couple of so-so movies he directed himself, thatâs not a huge body of work in 40 years. Milius himself turns up to explain this, claiming that Hollywood is a left-wing town and that there is no room for right-wingers such as himself (he loves a gun, a cigar and favours the Rhodesian ridgeback breed of dog, cuddly old John). Thatâs right, Hollywood is a left-wing town â though in what sort of world patriotism, smalltown values, looking out for yourself, pursuing the American dream and militarism constitute a left-wing worldview, I really donât know. And all those Noam Chomsky films, the ones about redistribution of wealth that seem to be clogging the multiplexes, itâs hard to get a film about guns, or killing people, made these days. Anyhow, back to Milius who, it seems, has been working on a film about Genghis Khan. Yes, heâs working on a film, everybody, at which point the penny really drops. This isnât a biography, itâs an advert.
Monsters University (Disney, cert U, Blu-ray/DVD)
What the hell has happened to Pixar? Its downward drift continues with this prequel to Monsterâs Inc. which reunites the voice talent (Billy Crystal, John Goodman) but not, crucially, the creative team. And as you can guess from the title, itâs about Mike and Sulley meeting at the Monsters University, where theyâre both outcasts who have to fight to show what theyâre made of. And so on. Perhaps Iâm being too harsh â the animation on this film is superb, it really is, with gorgeous detail, backgrounds and foregrounds really beautifully working together. Thereâs even a bit of expressionism â Pixar doesnât usually go in for this sort of thing â in a sequence reminiscent of 1940s-style cop dramas, all torchbeams in the darkness. What Monsters University doesnât have is laughs. Itâs zippy, Iâll give it that, and for seven year olds itâs going to function just fine as a wacky adventure. But the crossover appeal just isnât there, in spite of Goodman and Crystal bouncing off each other brilliantly, as they did in Monsters Inc., and Helen Mirren providing the voice of the testy Dean Hardscrabble. Maybe there was no intention all along of appealing to adults. In which case Iâll shut up.
Monsters University â at Amazon
Stuck in Love (Koch, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
Ooh yuk, this is a grim film, an indie-ish Raymond Carver-like drama of middle-class inadequacy which has Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Connelly as divorced parents, Lily Collins as the up-and-coming young writer daughter, Logan Lerman as the geeky kid whoâs really into her though sheâs just not into him. Stuck in Love is a refugee of the indie films of the noughties, lacking only the hand-drawn graphic interludes to score the full monty. Josh Boone directs competently but you canât say the same about his writing, which is one draft away from skeletal note-taking exposition. The characters, in other words, are as dull as shit. And when theyâre not being dull theyâre the sort of odious self-regard specialists youâd run a mile from in real life. And the actors all know it. So they compensate with earnest over-acting. Yuk.
Stuck in Love â at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2013