Reviews

While the "Short Cuts" comparisons are justified (LA setting, multi-story structure, climax with a freak of nature) Magnolia is still a fine film in its own right. Anderson has followed up "Boogie Nights' with an ever better film. While some may call Magnolia sentimental, its a refreshing change from most recent American art movies, which seem to regard any human feeling whatsoever as lamentably unhip.

Whatever else happens to him, Anderson can claim that he succeeded where the late Stanley Kubrick failed, by getting something resembling acting out of Tom Cruise. While Cruise's Goebbels of the sex wars is the flashiest example, Magnolia features several other against-type castings. Most notably, Philip Seymour Hoffman finally gets to show that he can play competent and dignified.

The only unfortunate thing about the film is the soundtrack. The Aimee Mann songs aren't bad, but the incidental music is some of the most annoying and intrusive I've ever heard, often detracting from the action rather than complementing it.

Incidentally, if you want to know what the opening narration and the frogs are about, keep a careful eye on the books Stanley reads in the library... then head to your local "cult" bookshop.

Being John Malkovich undoubtedly has some marvellous ideas, but there's a frustrating incongruity of tone. The first half of the film is perfect, sophisticated comedy, but as Craig starts to really lose it the laughs drain away to leave what is one of cinema's few philosophical horror films. The ending seemed one of the most sinister in living memory...

Overall, I'm left with the same disturbing feeling as I had when watching Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - that if the film-makers expected to create this sensation the film is marvellous. If, however, Jonze intended this as a pure comedy (and a great deal of reviewers seem to have taken it this way) then I feel as if I'm dealing with people whose armour of hip cynicism has grown so thick as to rob them of all human sympathy for their characters. Still worth seeing, though.

Sure, it's not a faithful adaptation of Highsmith and Ripley is made far too much of an accidental murderer. Remember, though, this is the woman whose first novel was too dark for Alfred Hitchcock to adapt faithfully. I don't think we'll ever see undiluted Highsmith on screen, but if you take the film on its merits it's a fine piece of work. Matt Damon is surprisingly good, Law's excellent, Paltrow is embarassingly bad at times but who expected anything else. See it, but don't expect to see Patricia's Ripley on the screen - that'll have to stay in your head.

Fight Club is the most hilarious, profound p***-take of a film I have ever seen. The film relentlessly lampoons the manner in which ordinary men create alter egos in their minds to fulfill their dreams of transcendence, while simultaneously pointing up the puerile nature of the teenage Ayn Rand rhetoric of rebellion. Finally someone has made a film that points out that extreme experiences do not bring some mystic wisdom, that the superficially rebellious are often the most unoriginal and conformist, and that an asshole with big ideas is just an even bigger asshole.

The sensational twist, which I will not reveal here, is not the unnecessary piece of cleverness that some allege. Instead, all I will say is that it is absolutely pivotal to the film's true message. Moreover, Marsha is *meant* to be an undercharacterised stereotype - she's exactly the kind of sexually perverse screw-up that men whose lives lack excitement fantasise of meeting.

I went to see this movie expecting a callous black comedy on the lines of "Shallow Grave". Boy, how wrong I was. This film suckers its audience into letting their guard down, but before you realise it you're genuinely feeling for characters you were expecting to see as cannon fodder. Billy Bob Thornton and Bridget Fonda are the stand-outs, Thornton again suckering you - you're expecting a rerun of his Sling Blade simpleton so his character's skewed intelligence shocks you every time.

On the debit side, Gary Cole phones in his role (it seems as if Raimi just phoned him up and said "Why don't you come over and do Lucas Buck again?"), and a few of the plot twists are a little predictable. But the ending will get you in the gut. "Some days... we don't think of anything at all".

A lot of the people who liked this film try to intimidate people into agreeing with them by snobbery. If you don't recognise this movie is great art, you must be a low-class ignoramus who'd be happier seeing "Plunkett and Macleane". Well, I've seen great art, and this is twaddle.

"Affliction" uses all the appurtenances of Deep Thought, but I've never walked out of an art film feeling less touched or intellectually engaged, except for trying to find words to explain how disappointing it is. This movie has great performances, a faultlessly oppressive atmosphere, and for what? To explain that abusive parents mess their kids up, and machismo is a Bad Thing. Thanks Schrader, I'd never have guessed. It stumbles towards an ending that tries for epic and falls flat on its face, then wraps it all up for us like a psychology lecturer talking to an audience he suspects is uneducated.

Nolte and Colburn give fine performances, but in a ground-out manner that exhausts the viewer. The film is like watching rhinoceri fight to the death in slow motion. I might have felt more if we'd seen some hints of a happier time for the protagonist, but this guy started out screwed up and got worse, leaving me feeling like a voyeur watching a predictable disaster. Why Spacek's wonderful short-order cook got involved with him I'd never understand.

Overall, I'd say that when Wade snarled at his father "I wish you'd just die" I hoped he would, and take the movie with him.

The US government's latest secret weapon is stolen, and the only man who can find it is an alcoholic ex-superhero. Captain Invincible returned to obscurity in his native Australia after a nasty run in with HUAC...

Captain Invincible is a hilarious, rock-opera parody of DC/Marvel superhero comics. To give away too much of the ridiculously ramshackle plot would be to spoil it, but you suspect this film was inspired by Christopher Lee's lament that he never starred in a musical comedy.

Lee steals the film as the dastardly arch-villain Mr. Midnight, belting out his numbers in a fine bass-baritone, as scantily clad slave girls massage his jodhpured thighs. Unforgettable.

I saw "The Apostle" with a friend in London, and for close to three hours it riveted an agnostic (myself) and a hard-core anti-clerical atheist (my friend). At last, a film about Christianity that is neither a high-pressure sales pitch or a one-dimensional debunking. I will remember Duvall preaching for his life in a church surrounded by SWAT teams for the rest of my life.

A truly feel-good movie. A Balkan "Only Fools and Horses on hallucinogenics. You'll like it.

Little Voice is *not* a masterpiece, it isn't even a good film. The prevailing tone is of unspeakable snobbery and patronisation of working class people. The attitude is "Oh aren't working-class people horrible when they try and be cultured? They should stay at home, meditate on the lowliness of their position, and not impose themselves on us cool people." From the moment when a scene of a fat woman disco-dancing is presented as a piece of comic horror, the film sneers at its characters. The "happy" ending occurs when LV and Billy decide, in the style of Caliban "to be wise hereafter, and seek for grace", ie to reconcile themselves to their lowly place in the film makers' worldview. The saddest thing about the film is Brenda Blethyn's appallingly OTT performance as Mari - we know she can do better than this from Secrets and Lies, so we can only blame the director for forcing her to play such a caricature. Ray Say is, by the close of the film, utterly destroyed as a human being, yet the film-makers appear to regard this as a just punishment for crimes against taste.

Everybody involved with this film should be forced to go and see John Water's "pecker", to see how a similar plot can be presented in a warm-hearted manner which is funny without spitting on its characters.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein claims to be the first faithful adaptation of Shelley's book, but is nothing of the sort. Most of this is down to Kenneth Branagh's insistence on making his character heroic: Shelley's Victor Frankenstein is selfish, self-dramatising, hysterical and indecisive. Time after time the plot is altered to Victor's credit. (And I won't even mention the BIG plot change towards the end, where things go really haywire)

There are a lot of good things about the film - the sets, photography, make-up are all superb, and De Niro's acting as the Creature is far better than many people give him credit for. In the end though, it's another missed opportunity.

I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle is the definition of "Good Bad", from the title that describes the entire plot, to the broad-brush performances, to the suspension of disbelief that comes when you know the budget is laughably small, but you *don't care*. Those who love the work of Troma will discover that the British can do the same thing, and with even more gore and humour.

Neil Morrissey, pre "Men behaving Badly", plays Noddy, an innocent young Birmingham motorbike courier who buys a classic Norton with a dark history. What follows provides a hilariously imaginative reworking of every scene you'd expect from a self-respecting vamp flick, but on two wheels and set in Birmingham. The special effects are zero-budget but enthusiastic, and the title creature in its mutated hunting guise is a highly impressive piece of kit, complete with Ancient Briton-style axle blades. Morrissey looks as terrified and bemused as the script requires him to be, but the film is stolen by Anthony "C3PO" Daniels as a camply gung-ho biker exorcist, complete with razor-sharp throwing-crosses. Michael Elphick provides sterling support as a Sweeney-esque copper with a life-saving taste in snacks. As the punk rock soundtrack pounds (complete with inevitable theme song "She Runs On Blood...She Don't Run On Gasoline) and the severed heads of Hells Angels fly across the screen, you will revel in thrills, spills, cheap sexual innuendo, and low comedy. See it.