Crazy, Stupid, Love: The Best Film Ever Made Ever?

After watching Crazy, Stupid, Love I can hereby confirm to you all that I’m not crazy and I’m definitely not stupid, but I am in love. With this film. Which is crazy, but surprisingly not stupid.

It stars the hottest people in the world and Julianne Moore figuring out how to best procreate and apparently the answer is always knock back six gallons of hard liquor. Vodka if you’re a man, whisky if you’re a woman, because who needs gender stereotypes when you can have transgender stereotypes? And yes before you ask Steve Carrell does count as one of those ‘hot’ people, so sue us. It’s fine though because we’re about to write five paragraphs on Ryan Gosling.

Ryan Gosling.

The idea, the man, the abs. Those are just three of the things he has going for him plus the boy can act we have to throw it to him. We like how he acts in leather jackets, in suits, in blood, but mostly we like the way he acts out of his clothes into his car and right to our house, that’s the sort of talent Brando never had. He even acted alongside a toothpick and along with children and animals they’re just a no-no, but somehow baby-duck Gosling pulled it off.

Crazy, Stupid, Love is one of those films that makes you change your mind about ‘those kind of films’ and along the way it makes you wish you had this exact life and when I say, “this exact life,” what I mean is it makes you wish you were one half of the pair Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, it really doesn’t matter who you are because they are both incredible human beings with life’s more fulfilling than whatever it is you’re doing right now: said the girl writing this at 2 am.

In seriousness though (dim the house lights) it was more than just funny, it was a steam train chugging away; all aboard the Emotional Express: destination, your heart strings. You might not actually learn anything that you can put into action because like us you’re a lonely soul, a lone wolf, a lone ranger…you get the gist. The great thing here though is IT DOESN’T MATTER because now that you’ve seen Crazy, Stupid, Love you’re fucked, well and truly and doubly if you’re in a relationship, so sorry guys, sorry. You might be wondering why and I’m going to tell you that after a short paragraph on goddess Emma Stone.

Emma Stone.

The illusion, the woman, the fiery hair. She’s gone from strength to The Helpful strength since her days of teen comedy, wait you thought this was a teen comedy? GET OUT OF MY BLOG YOU VAGRANT. She’s a serious actor now with her films about the issues jazzed up for a new generation, I mean I learnt such important life lessons from Easy A, like never have a bitch for a best friend and that served me well in my life.

Why you’re all fucked, single or not.

Why would you want to be part of any couple where you aren’t with or made up of the genetic code of Emma Stone and/or Ryan Gosling? You wouldn’t. Even when they aren’t having sex and they’re just talking about their sublime lives they’re having better sex than you. Ryan Gosling is the most casually charming six pack you will ever meet mixed with the perfect amount of sleaze. His voice is alluring and confuses us in our quest to have a defined sexuality. Someone make this man James Bond right now, seriously. He’s all vulnerable and secure and smouldering, he’s sort of surpassed ‘man’ status now, he’s a phenomenon and we’re going to start The Church of the Latter Day Ryan’s if you fancy joining?

Emma’s here too dumping the begeesers out of Josh Groban for being a massive knob which is unfortunate because we actually quite like a bit of the wet, sappy Groban, obviously, he’s not good enough for our Em, but then who is? (Ryan). She plays it all empowered woman who doesn’t need love, but her heart soon melts when she gets a load of him. Her hair is fabulous; even when covered in water from the sky. She does her little array of laughs and voices and of course the obligatory snort which we’re convinced is a clause in her contract somewhere. IT’S ADORABLE. She’s so ‘every girl’ which is what the world loves about her, so it’s a real shame when you realise you could never be her, not Emma, not that beacon of worship.

What that all should say is that you might want to watch Crazy, Stupid, Love and change your life in in the trivial ways that really matter. I mean you’ll never get laid looking like that. No, you should be taking tips from this man who doesn’t actually look too much like what he’s aiming for, but you know it’s the thought that counts or something equally meaningful about how it;s great to not be yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTm2ru-APUw

Canne Not

Us Meta Junkies, well me anyway-the other one is happily playing his new x-box games, are devastated that we aren’t at Cannes Film Festival when everyone else in the entire reviewing world is, even the unimportant and YOUNGER THAN US Ultraculture got a yellow press pass. As we live in this bastardised internet savvy environment we can’t even  forget about the event because twitter is making Woody Allen jokes right in our faces and ‘videoblogisodes’ whatever the hell they are are being streamed into our brains. We don’t like it. You’re actually quite lucky this entire thing isn’t in caps as a 21st century representation of my pain.

Instead of living it up in France with the smelly, frog-eating, bread-carrying, French people* we got a bit drunk in Salford, went to a glam-rock night our friend put on, got drunk a bit more, watched Thor and then topped it all off by watching The Thing for the first time. Now I’m going to bear all in a review that will be nothing like all the other one’s you have already read.

After the initial disappointment of having to watch  it in 3D Thor  actually wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t camp and it wasn’t cheesy and it was actually a little bit funny, It’s up there with Iron Man as the best super-hero adaptations. Well done then Ken.

Asgard looked shiny and cool; the bridge to the bi-frost was the strongest aspect. New Mexico was a perfect setting for arrogant hero in small town style slapstick and chaos which turned out to be more than just a little light relief from some big non-human words and names. Chris Hemsworth was perfect for Thor with his flowing golden locks and massive abs and Natalie Portman clearly thought so too as did every woman in his vicinity. Portman might not get the kind of accolades here she did for Black Swan, but it’s got to be better than whatever swan-dive her career is taking from that Ashton Kutcher ‘movie’ and let’s not forget Your Highness, granted I haven’t seen either of these films, but you can’t make me do that so just understand they aren’t very good and we’ll move on to Loki. Tom Hiddleston was a show stealer here portraying a perfect amount of hurt and born-to-be-evil glamour that looked great in a cape, you might recognise him from TV, but probably not. I’m going to say the word SPOILER RIGHT NOW before I go on to ruin it for you all and I’ll even be nice and leave a little gap, but not a big one, so just click away if you don’t want to ruin anything for you and I apologise for making you leave. Please come back.

If you wait till the end of the credits you can see the little Avengers bit that only the geekiest are aware exists at the end of the recent slew of Marvel flicks to hit our screens and you can see a little more Tom with hints to what I can only assume will be a lovely empowered evil role in The Avengers next year.

Right Thor  was good then, The Thing was pretty cool too. It scared the crap out of me actually and I went to bed shuddering. I did get told off for falling asleep in the Alien-esque stomach bursting bit, but I was bloody tired. The monsters were excellently designed and the soundtrack was for me the creepiest bit, Carpenter is always great at that though. Still looks awesome after all these years and may just be one of my favourite scary movies,  in case Ghostface ever comes to ask.

Cannes is still in swing for another week I think so be prepared for another one of these and I hope everybody who is there is having a horrible time.

*No stereotypes were used in the creation of this blog

In which Zack Synder is compared to a drunken frat-boy with an erection.

Once upon a time we at Metajunkies had a dream, a special dream. We wanted to create a website which celebrated art, culture and just a little bit of love. A website which saw not the cruel and stupid and ugly in society but instead recognised all that is beautiful and good and worthy about human kind. Alas, as with all things, that dream quickly, quietly died. Aborted, as like a bird never even allowed the chance to take flight. Nowadays we spend our time reviewing Sucker Punch.

Ah, Zack Snyder, what have ye done? Didn’t you realise you had a good thing going simply taking the works of greater men and adding a slow-motion tracking shot and an anachronistic cover of a popular song? Why else do you think those delivery men kept on dropping off bushels of money at your door?  How the fuck else can you now afford that yacht shaped like The Hulk’s angry fist? It certainly wasn’t your keen understanding of character, or pacing, or even basic coherence.

That’s right, the man who didn’t think there was anything slightly peculiar, if not downright ironic about the latent xenophobia present in Frank Miller’s 300 has been given the opportunity to make a movie about anything he damn well pleases. The results are less a film and more a comprehensive list of Zack Snyder’s personal psychiatric problems, as filtered through the eyes of a monkey masturbating in the throes of a Ritalin dervish.

So, whilst slugging back Bud Lites and catching the game in an idiot’s sports bar Snyder was beset by a drunk academic who smelt of the sea and potential gone to rot. It was in the rough course of the scholar’s gin talk that the director’s brain heard about this computer game or something called The Bell Jar. Snyder soon found himself helplessly intrigued, not by the story of a young woman’s descent into depression and madness, but how this Plath dude could miss out on what all truly great works of art need; the holy trinity of guns, swords and tits, and robots, and Nazis! In the trenches!

Nerdgasm!

Dizzy with possibilities, Snyder fist-bumped the now incoherent wino and raced out of the bar, almost tripping over his unlaced sneakers with excitement. This was fantastic. All his life Snyder felt different, felt special. Now, finally, he was going to prove it to the world. All he needed was to get his awesome owl film out of the way.

Okay, so almost none of that scene took place, but I think it does replicate the basic impulses that drive Snyder onward. If he had decided to simply release a quadrate of music-videos detailing his every stupid fantasy then that would have been… well, not fine exactly, but understandable. Instead he had to place them in a framing narrative that becomes sillier the further down the rabbit-hole we go. That a recently-institutionalised woman should retreat into a fantasy world so as to escape the horrors of her situation makes sense. The fact that this is the fantasy world not of a damaged young lady in the sixties but of a mentally-stunted World of Warcraft enthusiast is less so.

In fact said institution is itself too much of a downer for Snyder, so let’s turn it into a high-class brothel. Sweet! Unfortunately Snyder has a child-like approach to human sexuality and thinks that women spend exactly one half of their time gyrating lustily on a man’s lap and the other half getting raped. In fact ‘getting raped’ seems to be the only threat Snyder can possibly envisage for a woman. It happened in 300 for no good reason and there was a very intense scene again in his Watchmen adaptation which was only alluded to in the graphic-novel. Sucker Punch has been described, by me at least, as the horrible sex-fantasy of a demented misogynist. I don’t actually think that’s the case. The tone of the film is simply too childish to be truly offensive. Then again, Synder mysteriously made some concessions to the ratings board, having to cut several scenes so that it could be a PG-13. You could confidently take your children to watch this film knowing that they will only leave the cinema with a vague sense of depression. In fact I thought that the women of Sucker Punch were almost too beautiful. They made me want to court them Edwardian style, placing my coat on the floor so they didn’t have to tread in peasant shit.

As for the violence, well there isn’t any, not unless you seriously feel for the plight of imaginary orcs and steam-powered Nazi-men. The action itself looks pretty, as it tends to in Snyder’s films, however due to the central conceit of the film, that it all takes place in a fantasy, there is never any sense of risk or danger. In fact with no tangible connection between the fantastic scenarios except for that created in Snyder’s stupid mind, it is almost impossible to care about what happens during these sequences. Which is peculiar considering what happens involves giant samurai with chain-guns which is basically what I think about when I’m taking a dump without a book.

The cast itself isn’t up to much either. Jon Hamm makes the most confused-looking cameo I’ve seen in quite a while, which is understandable seen as by that point the film stopped making sense about seventy minutes ago. The women look beautiful as I said but given the amount of dialogue in the film that is basically all they have the opportunity to do. In fact I don’t think that the ­main-character, Babydoll (Emily Browning) actually says a word for the first forty-five minutes as Snyder is too obsessed with turning everything into a music video to remember that he’s dealing with actors and not backing-dancers. Also I fear that if you decided to speed the film up to real time it wouldn’t last more than five minutes.

Overall Sucker Punch is the greatest example of style over substance I can think of, and when I say ‘style’ I mean a protracted music video involving the cast of Final Fantasy VIII fighting the Helghast in the middle of Arkham Asylum. In fact if you understood everything about that last sentence then this film is probably for you.

You will be unprepared

Zack Snyder, fan-boy without a budget, shows us what his (wet) dreams look like. What ensues is the slaughter of Nazi-zombies by scantily clad ‘chicks’ on a road-trip through a mental asylum/dance-club/apocalyptic game wasteland.

You might think that sounds great and you would be quite right, but as somebody famous no doubt said, theory is different to practice.

Snyder has made quite a name for himself in refashioning everyone’s favourite cultural products of yesteryear; Watchmen, 300, Dawn of the Dead, and his visual style has never been short of stunning. With this, his first original offering, he lets his imagination run away with himself like a feral child. It looks sharp, snazzy, and satisfyingly cool, but then it always would have, what Snyder lacks is depth. Dialogue here is scarce, as are characters that anyone would give two hoots about, and not to mention the distinct lack of anything resembling a plot, but then it does have smoking-hot empowered female leads right? For reasons not quite clear yet everyone expected this to be the case and thus critics the world over have cyber-bitched about the inherent misogyny of a sexualized female cast. I’m not sure if anyone saw 300, but it’s full of men wearing skimpy clothing and nobody cared about that, this really isn’t that bad. Snyder has bastardised himself a bit here by showing too little and leaving the audiences mind to create whatever bizarre sexual fantasy they want. If we had seen Babydoll do a nice little dance a-la Britney nobody would be complaining, instead we’re left to our own sick desensitized imaginations. Sadly it’s a bit ambitious to think the director was trying to confront societies menace.

While the women of the film are busy moaning, groaning, and grunting (mostly in slow motion), the men are getting some half-decent roles. With a quick appearance by John Hamm, Don Draper to you and me, the only interesting and developed character in this graphical showcase is Oscar Isaac as Blue Jones. In each layer of the film, let the Inception comparisons begin, he plays a sadistic ‘manager’ in a constantly emasculating power-struggle with ‘his girls’, a great new talent from the Eli Roth school of evil, Isaac could easily adapt to the scenery of a Tarantino type film. These layers which the film relies so heavily on are presented simply as performances, the film starts with a red curtain, each ‘act’ of the play starts with a mission and a dance, when the music stops so does the un-reality, it’s an interesting technique and the asylum as a club worked beautifully, but go a bit a deeper and the emptiness takes hold. Utterly un-cohesive is the only way to describe the events that take place within this multi-faceted world.

Snyder’s aim here seems to be nothing more than creating a two-hour show reel of music videos. He’s good at that and he used music beautifully in Watchmen, here he drowned in the dreaded remix-album. Any fight scene that includes an industrial remix of a Bjork song is designed only for a game and all scenes in this Nazi/dragon/robot infested world looked and sounded like cut-scenes. If they don’t develop a videogame from this then somebody somewhere should be sacked.

Zack Snyder isn’t a bad film maker; possibly, he’s just not a very good creator. Oozing through Sucker Punch’s every pore is Snyder’s influences from anime, TV, games, films, music, and anything else he may have encountered in his life. As a film maker fully stocked up on Ritalin he tries to show us everything and in doing so shows us little of anything. Just calm down Zack and go back to remaking and remodelling.

In which a Nicholas Cage film is compared to a motorway littered with dead people.

HUAaaRRGH! I mean- what? Hello? When is Up? What colour does red smell like? Hello?

Bollocks. It’s actually happened. After twenty-three years my mind has finally succumbed to madness, snapping like brittle twigs in an autumn park. Now, like Guy Pearce’s tormented amnesiac in Memento, I’ve had to spend the last two days trying to piece together what it is that led me on Wednesday night to tear off my clothes and race through the eldritch corners of Manchester, shrieking horribly that He Has Come.

And as it turns out my spiral into the undulating maw of insanity was not caused by drugs or the Higgs boson particle, or even Sunn 0))). It was Drive Angry 3D, the latest car-crash movie to star Nicholas Cage. Now, when I say ‘car-crash’ I mean that in two respects; the first is that you can only watch this thing with the same kind of startled, macabre awe that you may normally gift a rather unseemly seven-vehicle pile-up on the M6, splintered bones and bits of children smeared across the tarmac, the other respect is much more literal in that if you don’t notice a Dodge Charger smashing hood first into something at least every two minutes then you must have been stricken blind with stupidity.

Drive Angry is so nefariously dumb it almost comes across as a scientific experiment in movie excess, the abstract being: What would happen if we gave a director an unlimited supply of explosions, cocaine and Nicholas Cage’s weird, glowering face? The answer, you would be forgiven for presuming, would be for the Earth itself to rip itself in twain and belch forth a fiery porridge of concentrated evil, and in some roundabout way you’d be right.

Because somewhere below this great ocean of stupid slumbers the ancient coelacanth of a plot. I must admit I can’t remember very much of it, shocked as I was by the twin jumper leads of Cage and Vodka. However a quick perusal of the internet gave me some indicators. Nicholas Cage is ‘Nicholas Cage’, a hard as nails career criminal with a bad attitude and even worse hair. He has just escaped Hell in order to seek revenge on a Satanic cult out to ritually sacrifice his grand-daughter, because that is simply what Satanic cults do. The cult is led by Jonah King (Billy Burke) whose pure, inept malevolence oozes out of his every pore to soak into his ridiculous silk shirt. He reminded me of Peter Stormare’s equally daft role in 8mm, which also starred Nicholas Cage, cinema’s Litmus test of quality.

Along for the ride is Piper (Amber Heard) a sassy waitress clearly impressed by Cage’s ability to beat up her boyfriend and steal her car. There isn’t any actual reason why Piper is involved beyond what must have been a very important clause in the explosions and cocaine contract involving women and the inevitable ogling thereafter. Ah well, she does play a very sassy waitress. Finally, hot on the duo’s heels comes The Accountant, played by That Guy. Y’know That Guy. The dude from the bank robbery scene at the start of The Dark Knight and I think he was in Armageddon and possibly Black Hawk Down and some other things. That Guy is actually William Fichtner, who plays his part rather excellently as the Devil’s right hand man. In fact everybody seems in on the joke in this film, from the lowliest buck-toothed redneck to the, well, the lowliest trailer-trash slag bag. Everybody that is, except Nicholas Cage, who wears a mask of constipated annoyance throughout the film and refuses to take it off.

I was seriously hoping for Cage to go full retard in this film, howling and gibbering, cursing the devil through sloppy tears of anguish. Instead he gives a comparatively restrained performance, as if this entire film acts purely as a means to solve a costly tax problem. Fuck that though, this is Nicholas Cage, Man of Action, which, as a highly evolved race capable of space-exploration and cracking the atom, is what we all really care about. So, action. Once again I can’t really remember much of it except for the aforementioned Dodge Charger driving rather furiously down a seemingly never-ending highway with an entire police force chasing after it. I do recall it being pretty good in a fuck the environment kind of way, plus there’s a fabulous scene where Cage is able to foil an ambush whilst in the throes of (admittedly not very passionate) coitus, never losing his rhythm throughout. This would have been more impressive if it hadn’t already been done in the equally dopey Shoot ‘Em Up. I can’t remember what relevance this scene had precisely, but here it is in all it’s Completely Fine and Safe For Work Especially with the Volume Turned Up glory.

Oh, look’s like it’s been taken down for copyright infringement. Oh well here’s something else you may enjoy.

I don’t begrudge the film for taking my money, I was drinking vodka after all. Also if I’d downloaded it then I would’ve missed out on all the wonderful 3D, which I honestly can’t be dicked about discussing because I said most of what I wanted to say on that subject in my Tron: Legacy review. All that the extra dimension really did is make the person next to me flinch every now and then whenever a chunk of car or pellet of brain matter came flying out of the screen. I’m sure it would be cheaper for everyone involved if they just paid the ushers to throw pop-corn kernels at us instead. Whatever, bollocks to 3D.

And, now that it’s all said and done, what did we learn? Not very much actually, except that a sequel would be excellent, especially if they called it Drive Angrier, and included 100% more of The Accountant, who was shamefully underused. Aside from, that… uh. I think I left the cinema stupider which is probably what led to the pantless shrieking incident, and for me to daub all over my room in blood-black ink: ‘IT DOESN’T MAKE A LICK OF SENSE!’

The End.

Oscar time

It’s that time of year once again where the little Golden man rears his head and I thought I’d do a very rushed prediction of what I think will be the winners in the big categories tonight. I’m an idealist so we can just strike out The Kings Speech from being in this list right now.

 

Best Picture: The Social Network

Actor in a leading role: Colin Firth

Actor in a supporting role: Geoffrey Rush

Actress in a leading role: Natalie Portman

Actress in a supporting role: Hailee Steinfeld

Animated Feature: Toy Story 3

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Foreign Language Film: Buitiful

Original Music: 127 Hours

Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin)

Original Screenplay: The King’s Speech

Sorry for missing out the technical awards I’m in a rush here to watch Outcasts, but I think it’s going to be a bit of a mixed bag this year. Anyway the wait is almost over and we are all excited to see what  one armed puns Franco delivers so get to it.

 

‘A film so insubstantial an automatic door wouldn’t register its presence.’

Shit SHIT! I best get this down quick before Sharpie finishes her breathless remarks about how although Tron: Legacy has a terrible plot it is still utterly brilliant. Christ, she types like the Devil Himself is guiding her fingers. Shit!

2010 has been a stellar year for movies, more or less, but it will be best known as the year of the Spectacle Film; movies which, like firework displays, look pretty but are essentially meaningless. Visual cantrips meant to pacify the critical functions of the viewer through a combination of shock and awe. Neatly rounding off the year we have Tron: Legacy, a film so insubstantial an automatic door wouldn’t register its presence.

I’m going to sound like some old, embittered docent in this review, sounding off about the death of plot and characterisation in cinema in favour of light and sound and extra dimensions that aren’t really there, as if the only films I ever watch are directed by vaguely ugly men smoking unfiltered Gauloises and quoting Sartré. I feel like Kevin McCarthy, gesticulating wildly ‘twixt a traffic jam, ‘Do not be fooled!’ I’m howling, ‘3D is a sham! You may love it now but once the next big thing comes along it shall go the way of smell-o-vision! Never forget Jaws 3-D! Where is Dennis Quaid now!?’

Oh right, a review. Tron: Legacy is the sequel to 1982’s Tron, a film I saw and loved when I was about 10. I can’t really remember the intricacies of that films plot which is a shame because Legacy gives absolutely no indication at all of what fucking happened. The film follows Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) the son of a CEO and computer-whiz who disappeared mysteriously during his childhood. Sam is supposed to be gnarly and subversive and like, totally breaks the rules, so naturally he sports a brand-new leather jacket, a vintage motorcycle and a flagrant disregard for the plight of the honest working-Joe. Think Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk in the Star Trek reboot and you’ll know what I mean. As Sharpie says he is good-looking as well, which doesn’t help my self-esteem, fuck him and his perfect teeth. Anyway, Flynn finds himself entering The Grid, a computer program which should be familiar to anyone who watched VR Rangers as a kid or, well, the last Tron film. There he meets up with Daddy, has to battle someone who looks like Daddy, gets down to some funky beats in the worlds shittest club and falls in love with a woman made up of ones and zeroes. Oh yeah, and Daddy is played by Jeff Bridges.

I’m quite pleased that Jeff Bridges might just be competing with Tom Hanks as the planets favourite actor. The man could give a good performance in his sleep, which is lucky as he practically sleep-walks through the film, making sub-par Dudeisms like your dad might if he were trying to infiltrate a jazz club in the 30’s. When Bridges isn’t being hip to the uttermost jive he is spouting science-fiction jargon so soft it makes Back to the Future sound like it was written by Isaac Asimov. Bridges also plays the antagonist CLU, a computer program hell-bent on getting in the real world to ‘perfect’ it, how he (it?) plans on doing this is never fully explained. As CLU, Bridges performs with an unconvincing CGI mask meant to shave off twenty years, which works fine in the virtual reality of The Grid but looks laughable in the real world. Rounding off the cast we have Olivia Wilde playing The Pretty Girl, because there always has to be one in these kinds of things, and she’s actually alright, bringing charm and humour to a miserably underwritten role. Lastly we have Michael Sheen, attempting to out-act absolutely everything, including the scenery, which is difficult considering how fucking bright the scenery is.

You may have noticed that my principle issue with the film is the writing. The plot attempts to be complex but is ultimately just confusing, finally deciding to jettison all sense of coherence by the final reel. The dialogue is bland and clichéd, (does anybody ever actually say ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me!’ to themselves when faced by something that obviously isn’t kidding them?) and relies too heavily on meaningless technobabble (‘My God, if the Mu-RF doesn’t restabilise, the Index Algorithms could gestate quadratically within the system splicer!’ ‘But, but what does it mean Dr, Francisco?’ ‘Why it means that we would become… obsolete.’). There are about a dozen other reasons I disliked the movie, but Sharpie has just told me not to write another essay and threatened me with actual physical violence. So, with no further ado, let me present (in a very short paragraph) The Good Bits!

Well, it looks pretty, for about half an hour, before you become bored of the same background. I don’t think the makers realised that the original Tron only looked the way it did because of technological limitations. Erm, the music provided by Daft Punk is excellent (see Sharpie’s review of the soundtrack). The special effects are obviously very accomplished but don’t really serve any purpose, the same goes with the 3D visuals.. er, yeah. Cillian Murphy is in it for about seven seconds. That’s it, I’m spent.

But fuck it, just because I didn’t like it doesn’t make it a bad film. It is produced by Disney after all (oh Christ, I forgot to mention the product placement, hats off to Coors beer and the Apple Ipad, amongst others) and it is meant for kids. It’s a fun movie and full of action and the like and one probably shouldn’t put too much thought into the plot, I certainly never did when I saw the original. Youth is for the young, and I think I’m best off left muttering in my hovel, watching my miserable wintery films about death and doom, on a very small black and white TV screen, on VHS, in 2D.

What a legacy

Tron:Legacy

Director: Joseph Kosinski

It’s only right that in the year that 3d has truly come into its own the best thing to shoot you squarely in the face with a double barrel of Imax and 3d technology is Tron, the shiniest thing since Avatar.

Possibly the prettiest thing you will ever see at a cinema, Tron manages to drag you kicking and screaming into its virtual world. Just as relevant now as it was in 1982 it’s a film that has always been at the forefront of technology and I’m sure in some twisted way the sub-plot of Sam Flynn(Garrett Hedlund) falling in love with a computer programme is a comment on modern societies obsession with technology and apps, but I’m not going to get into all that.

The making of Tron:Legacy could have gone terribly wrong and looked like a massive gimmick, luckily it misses that and is just as smooth as looking through a pane of glass. This is what Imax and 3d were invented for and by god it’s amazing. Even Inception looked too big on the Imax screen, but not this. It all feels so sleek and perfect because of the emphasis on colour or lack their of. Light is almost a character unto itself.

While light might not be able to actually act their is no doubt in anybodies mind that the three main leads suffer from that. Garrett Hedlund is relatively new on the scene, having had only small roles in films like Troy and Eragorn, here he comes into his own and could easily be mistaken for Jeff Bridges’ son. The fact that he’s quite good looking doesn’t hurt either and we will surely be seeing him much more now. His female co-star Olivia Wilde, House and The O.C, was beyond brilliant as computer programme Quorra. Her wide-eyed innocence and ability to act so naive while being perfectly trained in anything that was necessary for the scene made her perfect for the role. The main attraction for all involved is undoubtedly Mr. Jeff Bridges. The fact that the man can play two characters equally as brilliant as each other and still bring some of ‘the dude’ to it is just staggering. How does this man sleep at night? Bridges reprises his role as Kevin Flynn and Clu from the original, though this time round Clu has a slightly plastic face, developed by the team who did The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button ageing work. For some people this will be a massive point and may even tip them into dislike for the film, however I disagree, while it could be slightly distracting at times if anything it just emphasises the fact that Clu is a programme while Kevin Flynn is a user. Bridges deserves praise for this dual role though, he has the ability to act with nothing more than his eyes, which is great because the dialogue wasn’t all that. The show stealer though was Michael Sheen as Zuse who seemed to be channelling numerous figures from David Bowie to Riff Raff and was so over the top it was like he was acting in a different film.

It’s a shame for a film that is so aesthetically perfect to be let down by the simple dialogue and over complicated plot. I say simple not because the words themselves were, on the contrary you need a glossary of computer linguistics to understand the majority of it, but when you get down to it they could speak for 20 minutes before you realise nothing has actually been said. In this respect it’s a direct descendant from the first film which is renowned for its impenetrable plot. Legacy doesn’t go that far, but rather takes tangents and liberties which are unexplainable and unexplained.

Don’t let this put you off seeing it though, it was an experience and together with the Daft Punk soundtrack it will stay in your mind, it’s just not the type of experience you want on DVD over and over again.

‘All art is quite useless.’ – Oscar Wilde

It seems that nobody can make a documentary nowadays without someone denouncing it as a hoax; from Joaquin Phoenix having a public breakdown in I’m Still Here to the alien shenanigans of District 9, both of which I maintain to be true accounts of real-life incidents. Now we have Exit Through the Gift Shop, a hilarious, incisive look into the cult of contemporary street-art by its most famous member, the artist and provocateur Banksy.

The film revolves around Thierry Guetta, an eccentric Frenchman living in Los Angeles, and his decade-long quest to create the ultimate film about street-art. That Thierry is a nut is evident from the start as he explains his insistence on documenting every facet of his life and the lives of those around him. Soon he moves from filming his family to street-artists, and from here his little hobby mutates into an obsession. Thierry becomes less of an observer and more an active participant, clambering over walls and up roofs, even putting down his camera to help put up a poster. During this period Thierry racks up miles of film shooting some of the biggest names in street-art except for one, the mysterious and elusive Banksy.

From here the film takes a turn into the surreal, and becomes all the more amusing for it. Thierry basically begins to stalk Banksy around the world, filming the creation of his most infamous works of art, from his defacement of the West Bank wall to ‘Barely Legal’, the LA show that made Banksy a star. Finally Thierry has enough footage to produce his opus, his love-letter to the scene, the result is Life Remote Control, a film which Banksy describes variously as ‘unwatchable’ and ‘shit’.

Although Exit is labeled ‘A Banksy Film’ it is not about him, rather it is about the crazed character of Thierry and, more widely, the superfluous and empty nature of art and celebrity. Clearly bemused by Thierry’s work Banksy challenges him to switch roles; Banksy becomes the film-maker, and Thierry his subject. In scant months Thierry dubs himself ‘Mr. Brainwash’, and begins a career in street-art that morphs wildly out of control. Mr. Brainwash’s output is derivative to say the least, often doing little more than applying an assault-rifle into the hands of a pop icon, or a Marilyn Monroe wig on the head of Marilyn Manson. Much of what Thierry creates, or at least what he tells his legion of professional graphic designers to create, has absolutely nothing to say. This is art for arts sake and nothing more, and the critics lap it up, netting Thierry millions in the process.

This is the point when something begins to smell fishy. Like I’m Still Here the story is almost too strange to be true. Meanwhile the wry comments from Banksy, enshrouded by his hood and with a voice electronically garbled so as to befit the mystique of one whose face the public has never seen, are of a perfect timing and quality. He comes across as a likable gentleman, making bon mots such as ‘There’s no one like Thierry, even though his art looks like everybody else’s.’ I must be a naïf however, because at the time of watching I didn’t think of it as being anything other than the real deal. Thierry’s personality is too bizarre, too idiosyncratic to be a work of fiction. The fact that Thierry is a real person adds to this, as does the fact that his car-crash film Life Remote Control is available on the internet (or is it? I see torrents, and a website, but are these just placemats laid by Banksy in order for us to better enjoy his created reality?). Nevertheless, just as art is meant to make us appreciate the intricacies of real life through subterfuge, so does Exit lay many of our realities bare, particularly in respect to art itself.

What makes graffiti and its little brother street-art so unique is its transience. No sooner does a piece go up, than some council official order it to be destroyed. Street-art can be at most a mordant little comment on life and society, and at best something to make you smile as you walk by. Banksy has never professed to anything greater than that. Exit is an arch criticism of a culture that can apply a sometimes grotesque monetary value on something that is essentially quite useless, and can be seen in its natural environment for free. Street-art was once one of the most democratic forms of expression, free from economic restraints. Graffiti in its modern form had firm proletarian roots, being a member of the sacred Four Elements. However, as Banksy shows, nothing can exist for long in a Capitalist society without a price.

Eurgh, text-book Marxism. I swore off the stuff when I got kicked out of uni, yet here it is again, infecting my prose like a red plague. Just like the style of art that is its subject, one shouldn’t disseminate the film too closely. Exit succeeds because it is entertaining, because it brushes everything with a light stroke. Because of Banksy’s profile he was able to bring on-board a crack team of collaborators, including Roni Size and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow on music duties and Rhys Ifans to lend an amusing narration. The editing is crisp and the film is very accomplished for a first-timer. It also reveals more about Banksy’s personality than anything else he has done, letting us know that he isn’t just some punk-done-good with a spray-can, parka and a big bank balance.

Winter’s Bone

Winter’s Bone

Dir: Debra Granik

Winter’s Bone is only the second feature film from unknown director Debra Granik and, adapted from Daniel Woodrell’s 2006 novel, one of this years biggest indie hits. As the Oscar buzz starts this will prove to be one of the years biggest cross-over films and it deserves all the praise it gets.

What is essentially a very simple story; a girl looking for her father, who has put the family house down as bail collateral, so she can save her family, is told through moving performances and sharp dialogue. Of course nothing is as simple as it seems and Winter’s Bone is thrown into complications by the fact that her father cooks crystal meth and the only way that Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) can track him down is through the local drug dealing community. Let the difficulty ensue.

The film is set against the stark harsh background of the Ozark Mountains and while everything in the community appears to be dead, on the cusp of dying, or deeply impoverished, it is staggeringly beautiful to see. Obviously as a reflection of this landscape the people that inhabit it are all depraved in their own twisted way, with the only exceptions to this being Ree Dolly and her younger siblings and to some extent Teardrop (John Hawkes.)

The main performances by both Lawrence and Hawkes are deeply moving. John Hawkes is a highly underrated actor in my opinion who clearly chooses projects he believes  in and this shines through in his performances. Here he plays Teardrop a man seemingly full of hate towards his brother and his family, but as the plot unfolds we see much more understated emotions unearthed and brought to centre stage. In her performance of 17 year old Ree Dolly Lawrence is unflinching. In an emotionally disturbing scene we see her brought to tears as she holds her fathers dead hands while they are cut off with a chainsaw, this is definitely Oscar worthy and it would be a serious oversight if she wasn’t at the very least nominated. As the only ‘adult’ of her family and the only person with a slight sense of ambition in her community Ree is frustratingly forced to deal with everything her own ill mother is unable to.

It’s hard to know what to describe this film as, it’s unlike anything I can think off. The characters are basically that of a gangster film and it centres around drugs, yet this is not like any gangster film I’ve ever seen. It could be seen as a thriller, but then it doesn’t have any shocking moments of revelation. Drama is probably the closest thing, but then I don’t really like the term, because surely all films are dramatic in some way? and if they aren’t then they should be. Winter’s Bone is quite unique in the way it works. The story unfolds as if in real time and nothing is milked for effect, the film is as natural as the season and people it depicts.

The only unnatural thing here appears to be the relationship of the characters. It comes across that everyone we meet is a bastard and that everybody Ree meets hates her, but then that’s not surprising since she’s prying into things she ought not to be prying into. If everybody hates each other though it seems strange that they are all somehow distantly related and the terms of endearment they use to speak to each other, the most common I can remember being “baby girl” or “girly” are sometimes distracting. Maybe it’s a local thing. It does seem like the worst area you could ever visit. It looks like The Road would if everyone that survived had stayed normal and not turned cannibalistic.

Winter’s Bone isn’t a perfect film, most aren’t, but it’s probably one of the most perfect films this year.