Reviews

Sex, the City and Me deals with an important, compelling subject (the persistent sexism in the City of London) and has a very good cast. It begins very well, with the characters addressing the camera directly, in an almost Brechtian manner, shaking up the conventions of TV drama. It's also brave in that the central character is pretty unsympathetic, but we are forced to side with her.

But then something goes astray. The clichés come out: the two-faced boss; the boorish, alpha-male colleagues; the ice-maiden HR boss; the adoring nerd; the vile American; the back-stabbing younger woman; even the hippyish sister who doesn't have the big bonuses, but is happy. The husband is so wet, you could grow cress on him. The only character who defies these out-of-the box tropes is Sarah Lancashire's solicitor, who is unconvincing, but at least you can't predict exactly what she's going to say and do after five minutes.

The final resolution is simply ludicrous, a deus ex machina ploy that's set up, left hanging, forgotten about, then thrown in just when we think everything's done and dusted.

This is an issue that many still don't take seriously. It's a pity that we need such a lazy, unambitious script to make it palatable to a mass audience.

The Man Who Broke Britain is a mockumentary by the team that went on to achieve notoriety with the 2006 movie Death of a President.

It shares a number of stylistic tropes with the later movie: setting in the very near future; little-known actors as talking heads, playing participants in the crisis; clever use of news footage, with occasional unobtrusive effects work; several twists to wrongfoot us, and expose our prejudices.

However, I found it more effective than DoaP. The assassination of POTUS, or the threat thereof, is a concept that has been done to death (sorry) in drama and fiction for decades, especially since the death of Kennedy. The Man Who Broke Britain, however, takes a less trodden path, exposing a major threat to the stability of what we like to think of as civilisation. Not terrorism (although that plays its part); not environmental meltdown; but that a small number of highly-paid gamblers in the derivatives market have the potential to screw up and bring down banks, businesses, pension funds, governments, not just in Britain, but across the world.

We all have a mental picture of what might happen if the President takes a bullet: The Man Who Broke Britain reminds us that there are some things bigger than the President. And it doesn't even need a bullet to destroy them.

If you're a fan of Cold Feet, Friends, Coupling and similar banal, unchallenging pap, you will enjoy wasting an hour you'll never get back on this anodyne, utterly predictable one-off, with Peter Capaldi, who used to be good, Sarah Parish, who I think was in that thing about hairdressers, some skinny bird in a bikini and a Spanish bloke. At one point I thought the couples were going to pair off boy-boy girl-girl, but that really would disturb the surface of the stagnant pool that is your imagination. Or maybe someone would drown in the pool, or die of food poisoning, or something. Oooh, someone smokes dope. How blimmin revolutionary.

Nothing happens, just like in your own life.

And I bet you buy your clothes from Boden and read the Daily Mail too.

Possibly the most astonishing piece of music TV ever broadcast. Otis in scintillating form, charismatic, warm, intense, genius, a man possessed by spirits beyond the understanding of mere mortals; a band so tight you couldn't slip a Rizla between them; dancers shaking thangs you didn't know they had; crowd goes insane; and, possibly best of all, Eric Burdon and Chris Farlowe, not quite sure whether they should be showing off their own (pretty damn impressive) talents, or just enjoying the experience. There's one extraordinary moment when Eric looks across, and you can tell he's thinking "bugger me, I'm singing with Otis".

Dissing this movie makes me feel so bad, because the creators are clearly good people who want the world to be a better place. But herein lies the problem. The 'messages' are so unambiguously morally right that they become grindingly obvious clichés. Sexism is bad. Racism is bad. It's OK to be gay. The children of immigrants often have trouble reconciling two cultures. Growing up is tough, but kids and parents can usually get along if they work at it. All these are perfectly sound observations, but they're laid on with such a lack of subtlety that you just want to scream.

And scream I did during the exchange between Jess and her coach, when he reminds her that he does understand prejudice as well, because "I'm Irish". It's almost as if the writer was just tidying up the final draft, and suddenly realised there was an oppressed minority group that hadn't been included in the mix.

This is not the time and the place for a debate about political correctness, because that only leads to platitudes as dull as those in the film. But if the creators had been a little braver, and dared to risk offending just a little, BILB would have been a far, far better movie.

Crash is a well-made, extremely well-acted (Dillon, Cheadle, Pena, Ludicrous especially) ensemble movie that inevitably brings to mind such multi-stranded efforts as Magnolia, Traffic and the best of Robert Altman.

However, it has been over-hyped as a movie that tears down taboos and doublethink, exposing the prejudice and inhumanity of modern L.A. Well, perhaps if the audience lived on the moon. The general message seems to be that most people, of all races are prejudiced or self-serving or both, but most of them have redeeming features as well. Duh. So a bored, rich housewife gets annoyed with the Hispanic maid. So a young, criminal black man gets tied up with conspiracy theories. So an Iranian guy who loses his shop goes a bit crazy. Nothing wrong with these, but to define Crash as brave or shocking is really overstating the case.

There are shocking moments (the stand-off involving the shopkeeper, the locksmith and his daughter); the young, upright cop's moment of panic; but they don't really tell us anything we don't already know. People are flawed. Well, who knew?

You thought On The Buses was crass and obvious? You thought Don't Wait Up was smug and bourgeois? You thought Up The Elephant And Down The Castle was knuckle-chewingly embarrassing?

You ain't seen Don't Tell Father. Nothing in the history of British sitcom can prepare you for the electric combination of blandness, incompetence and abject tedium on display. Tony Britton shouts a lot. Caroline Quentin sulks. Some fat bloke looks uncomfortable. And Susan Hampshire does nothing. For 30 minutes. In every episode.

It's like a Beckett play adapted for TV by a small piece of cheese. But not that good. I had a sinus operation that was more fun. Everyone connected with this disaster should be drowned in sacks.

Televisual pus.

Sometimes great art hurts to watch, and Bodily Harm is an example. Timothy Spall, pouting like a dejected guppy as ever, is fired and cuckolded in rapid succession - and only then do things really start to go bad.

This is bleak, black humour, encompassing sneaky blowjobs, botched suicides and terminal cancer with the same laconic tenderness. I found myself inextricably bound to the fates of this posse of frayed losers, and by the end I was wailing like a baby.

This is the kind of TV they tell us never gets made any more. It does, but it's increasingly marginalised by celebreality prolefeed. Do yourself a favour - the next time Paris Hilton or some such parasitic cretin oozes into your frame of reference, swat her aside like the rancid cockroach that she is, and watch something like Bodily Harm instead.

Despite the kitsch, 80s context in which we now see it, and Tarantino's hysterical spiel about how, deep down, Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise just want to be saucy with each other's bottoms, this really is a pretty drab movie. Cruise is an ugly, obnoxious dwarf and Kelly McGillis appears to be watching a promising career slip away from her as the film unfurls. Tim Robbins is wasted, and never trust a man called Val.

When I first saw Top Gun, I fell off my seat laughing at the bit where Anthony Edwards dies. This is, and this alone, makes it worth two marks.

It's just a load of vacuous pish and poopoo, with a glossy production sheen.

Breillat's movie at first seems to be the sort of French coming of age movie that we've seen 100 times before. The older sister is very much in the mould of Vanessa Paradis or Ludivine Sagnier - perky, pouty, coquettish and not averse to getting naked when it's artistically justified. She gets naked, the viewer gets turned on, then remembers she's only meant to be 15. Confusion, confusion...

Of course, this is clearly not an idyllic, soft-focus loss-of-innocence-on-summer-holiday romp. Breillat's sexual politics come through clearly, as the two main male characters are seen to be obnoxious abusers, exercising their control through sex (the boyfriend) or paternal/capitalist power (the father).

The ending, shocking as it is, is too ambiguous. Presumably the violence is meant to remind us that the other male characters are equally guilty, but in a more socially acceptable way. However, an alternative interpretation is that such real, extreme, sociopathic violence puts the actions of the boyfriend and father into context. Are their behaviours really so bad, when compared with the behaviour of the transgressor in the car park.

So... watch if you want an essay in feminism. Or if you like cute, naked girls. How very postmodern, Catherine.

A candidate for the most overrated movie of the 80s? Scarface is regularly described as visceral, involving and, above all, influential, but watching it is like sitting through one of those straight-to-VHS action flicks with people like C. Thomas Howell and Frank Stallone.

OK - the good stuff first. Pacino is watchable, as he always was before he made Scent Of A Woman. Robert Loggia's quietly effective. And the sets are impressively garish.

But there's so much else wrong, and the movie just doesn't convince. Maybe it's because hardly any real Cubans would touch the script, and most of the lead roles went to Italian-Americans (with the exception of, er, F. Murray Abraham). It feels like a Mafia movie (Godfather I & II being the obvious comparisons) done on the cheap.

The music is utterly dreadful, especially those unintentionally hilarious stabs when Tony gets jealous about his sister (a character introduced far too late to make psychological sense). Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is weak, not helped by silly hair and mauve underwear.

Some of the set pieces are incompetently executed - during the riot at the holding camp, during which Tony carries out his first hit, I'm convinced some of the extras are giggling. The disco sequences are like something out of a Jackie Collins movie, or, worse, Basic Instinct. Lots of Caucasians fulfilling stereotypes. Luckily nobody is wearing a Michael Douglas-style v-neck, but it's close.

As for the idea that it was influential, sure. On Miami Vice, and that was naff as well.

What an extraordinary cast! Two of the Doctor In The House mob (More and Bogarde), two future Basil Brush sidemen (Fowlds and a blink-and-you'll-miss-him Rodney Bewes), Sergeant Wilson from Dad's Army, Alf Garnett, Captain Beaky, an ex-Goon, Barraclough from Porridge, Slartibartfast, the old bloke from Waiting For God, the even older bloke from Dr Finlay's Casebook, the old woman from The Rag Trade and that mad French-Russian bloke who was in Hellzapoppin and things (Mischa Auer).

Pity the movie's a bit lame. Thurdsday afternoon viewing at its ultimate.

Disco was on its deathbed even as Joan Collins boogied in her mules during her 70s comeback (The Stud, The Bitch). So, what new moves could she try as the 80s dawned? Rejecting the idea of leading a troupe of bodypoppers, she simply remade her previous disco films in the ballet milieu. All the crucial elements are there: Joanie playing a tough cookie, lithe young things taking their clothes off, and once-respected character actors (hello, William Franklyn) standing around looking embarrassed.

Kitsch fans will particularly relish the performance of Cherry Gillespie (ex-Pans People, and "Disco Girl" in The Bitch. Or was it the Stud?)

Paul Nicholas is in it, some time after he got his kit off in "Hair", and before his glory days advertising Farah slacks and Rougemont Castle British wine.

Do not watch when sober, it's quite dull in such circumstances.

Animal Farm, like several other anthropomorphic classics (eg Watership Down) faces serious problems when it comes to movie adaptations. Conventional animation has overtones of Disney cuteness, as a previous cartoon version proved. This is a political horror story.

With the technical developments wrought by the Jim Henson company, however, it seemed as if it might be possible to render the greatest allegory of the 20th century as a film, while retaining the essential message that Orwell intended.

But they blew it.

The cutesy topping and tailing with the loveable sheepdog, giving the story what is essentially a happy ending, is unforgiveable. OK, so Soviet Communism, the subject of Orwell's book, is no more, but dictatorship still exists around the world. And to identify the new "owners" of the farm as a cheery, Clintonesque family is just an abomination.

Many of the effects are excellent, and some of the voice performances (especially from Pete Postlethwaite and the magnificent Peter Ustinov) are superlative. But why the hell couldn't they have just stuck to the story?

As many others have said before me, READ THE BOOK!