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Reviews
El laberinto del fauno (2006)
A haunting, melancholy fable
As flawless a fusion of fantasy and reality as any in recent times, Guillermo del Toro's labour of love grabs the audience's attention from the start and doesn't release it until long after the film is over.
In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) comes with her pregnant mother to live with her new stepfather (Sergi Lopez), a sadistic captain in Franco's army, which scours the woods around her fresh home to kill and torture republican rebels.
Terrified and appalled by this new world around her, Ofelia retreats into her books and a fantasy world filled with mysterious insects, magic portals, terrifying apparitions and a gruff faun, who tells her she must complete three tasks if she is to reclaim her place as a princess in a faraway land.
Visually beguiling, entrancing in narrative and heartbreaking in its themes, this is very much a fairy tale of the old school, and is definitely not one for kids although it certainly has powerful messages for audiences about the way children are affected by the adult world around them. As horrible though Ofelia's fantasy world sometimes is, it is dwarfed by the drab reality of the outside world, and it's perhaps that which lends to one to think of it as an Alcie in Wonderland for modern times.
Part fantasy, part history and part horror, the filmmakers have made this film with passion and it shows - from del Toro's rich visuals to the convincing and memorable performances.
The film has its perfect counterpart in the score, with haunting and memorable melodies, a breath of danger and a pervading sadness. Like Pan's Labyrinth, it will remain in your mind and heart when the theatre has long since faded into distant memory.
America's Sweethearts (2001)
Entertaining, but could have been much better
There's something a little strange about writing a review of a film that is based around a junket for press reviewers. If you like it, are you being sycophantic? If you don't, are you refusing to get the joke? America's Sweethearts - fairly relevant considering the recent legal actions in America - is based around one such press junket, for the latest film of the eponymous America's sweethearts, the adorable Eddie Thomas and Gwen Harrison, played by John Cusack and Catherine Zeta Jones. But there's a problem - Gwen has left Eddie, for a fling with a Spanish smoothie (Hank Azaria). So, the studio employs the services of media fixer-uppers Billy Crystal and Seth Green to get them back together for the junket weekend. They in turn enlist the help of Gwen's sister and assistant Kiki (Julia Roberts), who, it just so happens, is in love with Eddie herself. There's nothing really to dislike about America's Sweethearts. Just from the synopsis above, you don't need a degree in literature to work out how a fluffy romantic comedy such as this is going to turn out. Cusack puts in a reliable turn as the sensitive and dependable Eddie, while Zeta Jones is rather entertaining hamming it up as a self-obsessed drama queen. Other cast members also make the most of their roles, even if Azaria's funniest moment is pronouncing junket as 'honket'. Building on his Oscar presentation triumphs, Billy Crystal co-scripted the film, and coincidentally gets all the best lines. But there just aren't enough of them. While the first third is a rather good satire on Hollywood played by a good ensemble cast, Joe Roth's direction is pretty much by-the-numbers and by the end of the film there isn't nearly enough to distract from the standard trundling rom-com conclusion. A very hard film to dislike - but you can't help thinking that with a bit of work on the script, it could have been so much better.
Ghosts of Mars (2001)
Terrible - but entertaining nonetheless
Why any film company would choose to publicise the fact that their product is courtesy of the man whose most notable recent achievement was Escape From LA is a bit of a mystery Unlike that though, while a long way short of being a good film, Ghosts is surprisingly fun. Set in a future where Mars has been colonised, a team of police officers led by Pam Grier and Natasha Henstridge are sent to a mining post to escort public enemy James 'Desolation' Williams (Ice Cube) back for trial. On arrival however, they find the place deserted and a lot of dead bodies - and the remaining former inhabitants turned into mindless painted killers. To say this falls short of good is possibly a little misleading. To clarify, it's awful. It's not giving too much away to say that the cause of the human's strange behaviour is in fact an airborne virus which infects people, then leaves the host for another when that person dies. Realising this early on in the film, do our intrepid heroes come up with some cunning scheme to entrap them and the virus? Don't be silly - they grab the biggest, heaviest artillery in sight and blow every virus-carrier they come across into pulp. Both Grier and Clea Duvall are wasted in their parts, while Jason Statham's cop role is so hammed up it's embarrassing. The flashback structure means that you know exactly who survives at the end, so there's no suspense. Mr Cube, taking a step away from the acting of Three Kings, seems to have scripted a lot of his own dialogue in righteous gangsta speak, but his portrayal of a hardened criminal doesn't really work because, put simply, he looks like a big teddy bear. Nevertheless, the plentiful action sequences are well done, and it's this that lifts the whole thing into the 'so bad, it's good' bracket. So much so that the review audience laughed all the way through and applauded at the end. It's so entertainingly terrible, it's almost worth more praise.
Riding in Cars with Boys (2001)
Too little plot, too much time
As a reviewer, one should really be welcoming the survival of intelligent cinema over brainless blockbuster. But while there's nothing ostensibly wrong with this Drew Barrymore vehicle, it's hard not to have niggles when leaving the screen. Barrymore plays Beverley Donofrio, who falls pregnant at 15 and has her dreams of college shattered as she learns to deal with her son, her dropout husband (Steve Zahn) and her life. Which seems a very short synopsis, and that's the problem. Just because it's a book doesn't mean it should be made into a film, and certainly doesn't mean it shouldn't be cut. Because at two hours 12 minutes this really is stretching the audience. Barrymore's motivation for doing the film is defendable - she displays a whole emotional range and carries it off well. The drawback to this - blame it on make-up or on her face - is that Drew Barrymore isn't capable of looking 35, any more than she is looking 15 these days. The fact that she manages to escape the image of being cute and 25 for as long a she does is a credit to her. The supporting cast are able - Zahn, Lorraine Bracco as Bev's mother and Brittany Murphy as best friend Fay - but to be honest it's only James Woods playing Bev's disappointed father who consistently fills out his role and gives it real class. Mostly however the blame has to rest with director Penny Marshall as to why this film doesn't work. There are funny moments, and dramatic moments - but no sooner has the audience woken up than Marshall goes and buries the slim plot under the next wave of character self-pity and loathing. While you like to think you're as much up for a sensitive chick-flick as the next tough guy, the lingering feeling you're left with is that a car chase wouldn't have been out of order to lift this piece.
New Year's Day (2000)
Emotional and entertaining
Anyone who has ever wondered what teenagers would get up to if they were freed from any obligations to their future will find New Year's Day quiet an interesting little morsel. A psychologist's dream study, it's also a rather effective film. MP's son Steven and under-privileged Jake are best friends at school. The desperation of each others parents, the 16-year-olds even have their own language. When they go on a school Christmas skiing trip, it's a great adventure. But it turns quickly to tragedy when on the first day the group of 11 friends is hit by an avalanche, and Jake and Steve are the only survivors. Returning to England, the pair are swamped in the emotion of a grieving town and a mass funeral (a particularly hard-hitting scene sees a long line of coffins on their way to the grave). As the townsfolk try to come to terms with the loss, Jake and Steven feel separated from everyone - that they should have died in the avalanche as well. So near the start of the film, on New Year's Day, we find Jake and Steve on a clifftop, ready to jump to their deaths - then deciding to live another year, to do the things they dreamed of doing. To cheat fate for a year. And so the film sets off apace, with the pair on a plan to rob a bank, burning down buildings, perform surgery, and so on. Director Suri Krishnamma sets the pace well, with the lads' exploits starting off in high spirits but slowly, uncomfortably, taking a darker turn. The two leads Andrew Lee Potts (Jake) and Bobby Barry (Steven) are both excellent, giving their characters a real sense of depth and direction. On the other hand, the ancillary characters are never really developed, and the film falters particularly in the uneasy sections with counsellor Geraldine (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), who doesn't quite hit the right note as a social worker. On the whole though, this is a well filmed piece of work - emotional and dramatic.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
A great cinematic achievement
IT HAS to be one of the stranger meldings of cinematic history. Steven Spielberg, the virtuoso of emotional audience manipulation, takes on a project originally conceived by Stanley Kubrick, the auteur of clinical cinema. The result is nothing short of breathtaking. In a waterlogged world where reproduction is restricted, 'mechas', advanced androids, are created to serve and help mankind, Professor Hobby (William Hurt) has a dream to create a robot capable of love. His name is David (Haley Joel Osment), and he is adopted as a test case by a Monica and David (Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards), distraught with their own son cryogenically frozen because of a terminal illness. Initially Monica is horrified - but her instincts to cherish take over and the couple activate the robot's love circuits.
David is a strange child - despite his unconditional love, his incomprehension of human emotions is clear. And finally, a series of events lead to the inevitable rift between mother and 'child', and the boy programmed to love is abandoned.
From the detached household environment where we start, David now finds himself alone in the world. A world where abandoned mechas scrabble through scrap piles in a ghoulish attempt to replace their own damaged parts, providing some of the film's CGI highlights.. A world of flesh fairs, where disillusioned humans take umbrage at the insult to humanity they see in the prevalence of robots, and 'celebrate' their humanity by rounding up and destroying unlicensed mechas. Coming across the love mecha Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), the pair embark on a quest to help David achieve his humanity, by becoming a real boy - the way he dreams that Monica will come to love him. Cementing his reputation as an acting prodigy with an astounding performance, Osment carries the film. From the cold mechanical personality he shows at the start, David changes almost imperceptively through the film, and it's only near the end it hits home just how much the character has changed. With every mannerism and quirk precisely executed, for any other actor it would be the performance of a lifetime. Spielberg's creation overflows with questions. From the debate of whether humanity is playing God, who created mankind to love him, to the Pinocchio quest of whether it is possible to earn humanity, and the utopian question of whether we create our villains and then punish them for our mistakes. The film's atmosphere is precisely gauged at all times - the dispassionate nature of David's starting home, the Blade Runner qualities of den of iniquity Rouge City, the 2001-reminiscent air of the strange and distinctly Kubrickian closing scenes. Debates will doubtless rage about whether the very ending, where the film finally gives in to a little sentimentality, is in tune with the rest of the film. But it doesn't detract from the fact that this film does what so many these days fail to do - it transports you to a different world, and makes y
An Awfully Big Adventure (1995)
The worst film I have EVER had the misfortune to sit through
I remember going to see An Awfully Big Adventure. It's an experience that has remained with me ever since, because it is so horrifyingly awful.
Possibly intended as some whimsical and poignant look at the theatre of yesteryear, this is a film that fails to engage on any level. Believe me, I'm as much up for a piece of heavy cinema as the next arthouse fancier, but this really is pushing the levels of patience. As one of my (usually well-behaved) friends said, 'When will this dirge end?'. The problem is that nothing happens. And by the time it does, you've lost all interest, and possibly the will to live. In one of the film's final moments there's a scene (I won't divulge, although please don't take this as an encouragement to see the thing) which is clearly meant to be shocking and emotional. It isn't. Because by that stage of utter audience despair, it could only mean one thing - that it must be nearly over. People have tried for some time to name things that I would less like to do than watch An Awfully Big Adventure (or AABA as I now know it, to limit the horror of reliving the moment) again. Nobody has yet come up with anything. Don't make the same mistake I did. Avoid