THIS TRIP IS OVER

I don't need to see The Tourist (the new spy comedy-thriller starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie) to know that it is utter rubbish. How do I know? Well, for a start, the trailer is shocking. I would like to argue that when a trailer is bad, the film is also bad. And it has Johnny Depp in it; who in the last decade or so has possibly been the most under-achieving actor of his generation. I used to blame his downfall on the dreaded Pirates of the Caribbean films and the fact he hangs around with Tim Burton too much but now I just think he's forgotten how to act. How else do I know? It's been sold not on story (the trailer barely discloses any information about that) or director (rather disappointingly he directed one of my favourite films of all time, The Lives of Others) but on star power - Depp and Jolie; two of the biggest names in the movie business. Basically, they are in this movie so you should go and see it. Problem is, no-one gives a hoot about that anymore.

Proof of this can be found simply by looking at the box-office takings for The Tourist - only $30 million grossed so far in America. Not terrible but with an estimated budget of $100 million, definitely not great. Think of Knight and Day as well (also released this year). Cruise! Diaz! Secret agents! Big red motorbikes! Total domestic gross? $76 million. Estimated budget? $117 million.

Hark back, if you can, to 2005. Brad Pitt and Anglina Jolie (again) starred in the rather silly but very successful Mr & Mrs Smith. It grossed nearly $200 million. If you remember, around the time of its release you couldn't escape newspaper and magazine stories about their on-set romance and the impending death of Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's relationship. No-one cared about the film itself. They just wanted to see Pitt and Jolie getting off with each other. But I get the impression now that even if Cruise, Diaz, Depp and Jolie had a foursome during the making of The Tourist and Knight and Day, people still wouldn't have flocked to see them. Mr & Mrs Smith may have been the last successful 'star-vehicle' Hollywood blockbuster.

So why is this? I think it could be down to Mr. Franchise. And by that I mean big-budget Hollywood films, often superhero-based, that build up stories and familiar characters that they hope people will grow to love and get hooked on so that they see the next instalment... and the next... and the next...

If Hollywood is the universe, then actors like Depp and Jolie are the red giants on the verge of collapse and franchises are the black holes eating everything else up. Let's have a look at the evidence:

For a start, 5 of the top 10 highest grossing films of 2010 (worldwide) are franchise films. Toy Story 3, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, Shrek Forever After, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Iron Man 2; they all make an appearance and are all sequels to successful franchise films. The others are Alice in Wonderland (sold on it's 3D aspect), Clash of the Titans (a new, and most likely terrible, franchise in the making), Despicable Me and How To Train Your Dragon (both animations) and Inception (an anomaly but a mighty welcome one, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, who may be the only proper Hollywood star left).

No less than 7 of the top 10 highest grossing films of all time are franchise films - Harry Potter, Batman, Pirates of the Caribbean all feature (and released in the last decade). They may contain big name actors such as Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, but is that why audiences flocked to see them? Or is it because they like cinematic entertainment on a massive scale with familiar characters and loads of CGI and explosions? (Franchise and CGI - each wouldn't exist without the other.)

Which films do Hollywood studios pump the most money into? Obvious answer really. For example, this year Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 was released and cost an estimated $250 million and Iron Man 2 about $200 million.

Hollywood knows where to spend its money now and The Tourist may signal the final nail in the Hollywood stars coffin. Is it a shame? I'm not sure really. A film-goer such as myself ultimately likes to see films that are well made and built upon involving stories with good performances from its actors. Neither stars nor franchises guarantee this.

Depp and Jolie on a boat to nowhere.

TOP 10 FILMS OF 2010

Ignoring how 3D is slowly ruining cinema and the odd financial tragedy (farewell UK Film Council), 2010 has been a pretty decent year in terms of the quality of films on offer. I have seen some truly excellent films and I know I've missed a few as well (I'm yet to see Another Year, Of Gods and Men, The King's Speech, The Kids Are Alright, Winter's Bone and Black Swan).

In my list I have a few films which, asides from being great, are interesting in how they were conceived. Christopher Nolan proved with Inception that multi-million dollar Hollywood films don't have to be dumb in order to reach a mass audience. It is one of the most complex and demanding blockbuster movies I have ever seen, and also one of the best. Another British film-maker, Gareth Edwards, decided to rewrite the alien invasion movie rulebook with his sublime feature-length debut, Monsters. It is an original and startling piece of work that he made on his laptop for a few hundred grand. In my review I suggested it could be a bigger game changer than Avatar, and I still genuinely believe that. Even more impressively, David Fincher not only managed to make an interesting film about Facebook; he managed to make an exhilarating modern masterpiece, confounding all expectations.

In the now over-crowded 'digimation' category, Dreamworks had some huge successes with the likes of How To Train Your Dragon and Megamind, as did Universal with Despicable Me, but for me their efforts fail to move like the almighty Pixar's films do. Toy Story 3 proved once again, effortlessly, that no other film studio (animation or otherwise) makes films as clever, funny and emotionally involving as Pixar. The film concluded arguably the best film trilogy of all time.

Below are my Top 10 films of the year (released in the UK in 2010) with brief explanations as to why I feel they deserve to be there. Enjoy/criticise.

10. The Bad Lieutenant - Port Of Call: New Orleans

Two words: Nic Cage. When on form, this man owns the screen - Face/Off, Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation, Con Air. And you can now add Werner Herzog's barmy not-officially-a-remake of Bad Lieutenant to that list. The story itself is inconsequential, needless to say that drugs play an important part. What is brilliant about this film is Nic Cage hamming it up to unprecedented levels as the corrupt and verging-on-the-insane cop on the edge, Terence McDonagh, and the addition of talking iguanas. Being a Werner Herzog film, it all makes total sense. It is at times hilarious in the darkest possible sense (one of the best scenes of the year involves McDonagh swearing profusely at an ill old lady whilst threatening her with a gun in her retirement home. Even more frightening given the fact it was apparently improvised). So good that I'm almost willing to forgive cage for National Treasure and The Wicker Man. Almost.

9. Buried

Ryan Reynolds. Buried. In a box. For the entire duration of the film. As are the audience. Sounds like a bit of a rubbish idea for a film doesn't it? It doesn't help that Reynolds hasn't really been in anything good prior to this. But Buried turns out to be an innovative and gripping piece of work with a stellar performance from Reynolds. It literally involves a guy, Paul Conroy (Reynolds), a US contractor working in Iraq, waking up in a box underground, having no idea how he got there, trying to call various people on his mobile phone. As boring as this sounds, by the end I couldn't watch due to the tension reaching unbearable levels. Credit must go to director Rodrigo Cortes for managing to somehow make his camera swoop into every possible area of the box apart from Ryan Reynold's mouth. Warning: if you are at all claustrophobic or don't like snakes then this film is not recommended.

8. The Town

Ok, yes, this is pretty much a homage to Heat (a film that has yet to have been topped by any other crime thriller since), but Ben Affleck clearly has so much love for that film that it doesn't feel like a rip-off. Instead it is a well-written, expertly directed and brilliantly acted Boston cops 'n' robbers movie which confirms that Affleck, despite his many past mistakes, is a real talent. In my opinion this is even better than his excellent debut feature, Gone Baby Gone. Jeremy Renner and Rebecca Hall excel and there is great support from the likes of Jon Hamm (from Mad Men fame), Pete Postlethwaite and Blake Lively. This is a crime flick with real characters, real drama and riveting shoot-outs that Michael Mann himself would be proud of. It may take itself a bit too seriously but Affleck clearly doesn't want to mess about anymore.

7. Monsters

An extraordinary experiment in minimalist film-making, Monsters was made on a laptop by some British bloke and is an astonishing achievement. For my full review click here.

6. Kick-Ass

The most fun you could have in the cinema this year undoubtedly came with watching Matthew Vaughn's brilliantly chaotic Kick-Ass. It's pop-culture savvy script, extreme violence and political in-correctness make it a superhero movie with a difference and one not for those that think the idea of an 11 year old girl stabbing people and saying the dreaded 'c' word is a little bit wrong. The story concerns a high-school nobody, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), who decides to become a superhero even though he doesn't have any super powers. Cue foul language and a lot of blood as he teams up with father-daughter superhero duo Big Daddy and Hit Girl (Nic Cage and Chloe Moretz) and Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to fight Mark Strong's mob boss, Frank D'Amico. The casting is superb with top performances from everyone (Nic Cage is again at his demented best) but Moretz steals the show as the potty mouthed Hit Girl. Above everything else though, the best thing about Kick-Ass is that it was directed by a British film-maker and features a mostly British cast (see how many people you can spot from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) but has a decidedly un-British sense of manners and politeness.

5. Toy Story 3

For me, a great trilogy has to not only consist of three excellent films, but to also be progressive, in terms of characters and story, with each instalment being different, maybe in terms of tone, from the previous offering whilst retaining the unique identity it has built up. The Lord of the Rings trilogy pretty much managed this but the ending of the final part was a little, er, long. The original Star Wars trilogy fell apart at the end as did the Back to the Future and The Godfather trilogies. Toy Story 3 is the third and, hopefully, final part of Pixar's magnificent and revolutionary animated achievement. I say 'hopefully' because all three films are such utter perfection that the slightest dip in quality would render the franchise ruined. All at once this film is a hilarious family comedy, exciting prison-break adventure, heart-breaking tale about childhood and parenthood, and scary-for-young-kids horror movie. It's all done so seamlessly and appears effortless when really it must have taken bloody ages to write and create. How Pixar will top this I don't know.

4. Shutter Island

Leonardo DiCaprio is a clever man. In the last decade or so he has turned himself from a pretty-boy actor, starring in tosh such as Titanic and The Man in the Iron Mask, to a mesmerising screen presence choosing more demanding projects such as The Aviator and Revolutionary Road. In 2010, not only has he starred in two of the best films of the year (Shutter Island and Inception, made by two of Hollywood's most gifted directors) but he has also given two of the best performances. Some view Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese's latest, as a minor work in his repertoire. But for me this is a director at the top of his game. It's a big budget yet old-fashioned psychological thriller set in the 1950s about a mysterious island which is home to a mental hospital for the criminally insane. Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) has been sent to investigate the disappearance of one of it's patients. It is completely OTT (in the vein of Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear) and has a goth-horror feel to it. The supporting cast of Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley and Michelle Williams are exemplary.

3. A Prophet

This French gangster masterpiece was released in the UK right at the beginning of the year. When I saw it I doubted I would see a better film all year. I was almost right. It is directed flawlessly by Jacques Audiard and features one of the most horrific murder scenes I have ever seen. But A Prophet is so much more than a violent crime flick, and that blood-soaked scene is a necessary one and shows the turning point in the life of main protagonist, Malik (brilliantly played by newcomer Tahar Rahim), as he begins his journey from bullied inmate in a brutal French prison to a Michael Corleone-esque fully fledged gangster. Malik is forced to work for the 'Don' of the prison, Cesar (Niels Arestrup), and ends up working for him inside and outside of the prison. The performances by Rahim and Arestrup are two of the best of the year. It is an epic saga about power, violence, guilt, race, religion and corruption and reaches operatic heights of intensity without descending into an OTT melodrama.

2. The Social Network

David Fincher is one of Hollywood's most exciting talents. His back catalogue (onwards from the messy Alien 3 and up to the stunning Zodiac) is one that many of his peers would be jealous of. But then came The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Which is rubbish. Things didn't look like they were going to get any better when it was announced his next project was going to be a film about Facebook. Turns out that Fincher is even cleverer than anyone thought as The Social Network is quite likely to be viewed as a seminal piece of film-making in years to come. There hasn't been another film released in the 'noughties' that sums up the 'decade of selfishness' so well. Because, of course, The Social Network isn't really a film about Facebook; it's a film about greed and being disconnected from society.

Jesse Eisenberg plays anti-hero/anti-villain Mark Zuckerberg (a co-founder of Facebook) as an awkward genius and loser in a pitch-perfect performance. He and everyone else in the film including Eduardo Saverin (Zuckerberg's best friend, played by Andrew Garfield) and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (spoilt Harvard twins both played, thanks to some subtle CGI, by Armie Hammer) are wholly unlikeable. Even Justin Timberlake, playing the rich play-boy Napster founder Sean Parker, manages to come across as a pathetic loser by the end of the film (another unexpected thing is how good Timberlake is). These characters are primarily only after power and money, so they are completely unsympathetic. But thanks to arguably the best screenplay of the year by Aaron Sorkin and Fincher's uniquely engrossing and atmospheric style of film-making (normally reserved for his films about psychopaths and sociopaths), The Social Network is never anything less than riveting. The moral of the story is apparent in the very first and the very last scenes; you can have all the money in the world, but that doesn't mean that anyone's going to like you. If it doesn't win any Oscars then there is no justice in the world.

1. Inception

Christopher Nolan is a proper film director. And by 'proper' I mean 'not Micheal Bay.' And by 'not Michael Bay' I mean not someone who makes multi-million dollar works of absolute toss that are badly scripted, badly acted, badly everything, yet inexplicably manage to make shed loads of money at the box office. It's enough to make you think 'wow, people really are stupid.' Nolan clearly doesn't think this. His ridiculously brilliant magnum opus, Inception, shows that he respects his audience. Here is a film that is basically a $200 million art-house project. It is mind-bogglingly complex in the best possible sense. It is a stunning visual tour-de-force. It features another extraordinary performance by Leonardo DiCaprio. It has a booming and brilliant soundtrack by Hanz Zimmer. IT. IS. AMAZING. Audiences worldwide flocked to see it, which is enough to make you think 'ok, so maybe people aren't that stupid.'

The story, in simple terms, involves Dom Cobb (DiCaprio); a thief who specialises in the art of extraction - stealing information from inside the minds of people when they are in a dream-state. He is asked by wealthy businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) to do the opposite and implant an idea into the mind of one of his enemies. If he does so successfully then Saito will use his power to allow Cobb to see his kids again (who he is estranged from as he has been accused of murdering his wife). Cobb assembles a team, which includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy and Ellen Page, to plan their way into the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) to plant the idea in his head that his father, a millionaire oil tycoon, doesn't want him to take over the business when he dies. So on one level it works as a exciting heist thriller. But oh how the levels go deeper. In the end it's actually all about Cobb - his guilt, his loss, his redemption, his reality. It's the kind of film that lives long in the memory after viewing, creates endless discussions in internet forums and demands to be seen again and again.

Inception is rumoured to have been a decade in the making and it shows. One can only imagine how Nolan managed to write the screenplay let alone make the thing and turn it into blockbuster entertainment. If other Hollywood directors put in half the effort he does then the world would be a much better place. If he tops this then I'll eat my hat. Speaking of tops, if you're wondering, the totem really isn't as important as you might think it is...

THE AMERICAN review

Bourne on valium.

The American is the second movie I have seen this week that defies expectations (Monsters promised monsters but gave us a love story instead). The marketing campaign for The American has sold it as a spy thriller, so you would be forgiven for expecting shoot-outs, car chases and shadowy government agents. You get a couple of those things but only a tiny portion of each. This is no James Bourne thrill-ride that unfolds at breakneck speed. Instead it is a slow and ponderous character study about a hit-man going through an existential crisis – it’s Bond with a conscience.

The opening sequence of The American, director Anton Corbijn’s follow-up to his brilliant debut feature Control, is brave and brutal but ultimately rather troublesome. Jack, an ageing assassin (played by an ageing George Clooney), sits by a log fire in a cabin in Sweden drinking red wine with a beautiful woman (there is no such thing as a non-beautiful woman in this film). They seem contented. So far, so Bond. Jack then gets shot at by a sniper in the woods and he doesn't only kill the shooter but also kills the woman he is with simply because she is a witness. It's a stunning and unexpected opening that the rest of the film unfortunately doesn't live up to. Jack is then sent to lie low in Italy for a bit by his boss until this mess is cleared up. Hardly an original premise but, hey, it's George Clooney; a modern movie icon normally full of charm playing against type, so we're interested to see what happens.

And what happens is, well, not a lot really. Clooney is never off the screen and a lot of film simply focuses on his face and his movements (including scenes of him building a gun that are oddly mesmerising). The dialogue is minimalist so it's a good job that he is a magnetic screen presence - his face able to convey about a hundred different emotions at any given moment. It is a film about this man and his thoughts and him seeking redemption. Clooney is very good in the role and one wonders if any other Hollywood actor of his age could have pulled it off, or indeed wanted to try.

Jack is holed-up in a small, beautiful town in the Italian countryside where he befriends a Priest, Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli), falls in love with a prostitute named Clara (Violante Placido) and is asked to make a bespoke gun for a lady, simply known as Mathilde, which will turn out to be his last job. It doesn’t so much stick to genre conventions as live by them. This means there are some unintentionally hilarious intended-to-be-inconspicuous ‘spy talk’ in various cafes. And Mathilde’s hair inexplicably changes dramatically each time she meets up with Jack. You wonder if the director is taking the piss a little.

It is a slow and predictable story interspersed with the odd action scene. Yet, despite this, I found myself gripped until the very end. I think this is down to the presence of Clooney and also how beautifully shot the film is. There is not one scene in the entire film that isn’t visually gorgeous. Corbijn used to be a photographer and it pays off dividends here. He is an artistically gifted film director and one wonders if given a more engaging story whether he might be making classics in the near future.

The American is an old-fashioned spy film that harks back to 60s and 70s thrillers like The Day of the Jackal. It is not about action, it is about thought. It is the story of a man living in his own hell and struggling to break out of it and become someone else; someone better. It is well made with high production values and a gripping central performance. But, with such a talented director at the helm and one of his generation’s most interesting Hollywood actors, I suppose I expected something that little bit more special. And it’s difficult, once the film has ended, not to still be thinking about that shocking opening scene, especially when the final twist at the end doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

3 / 5

MONSTERS review

An alien invasion/love story/road-movie for the post-Cloverfield generation.

British director Gareth Edwards debut feature is a remarkable film in many ways - most notably in how it was actually put together. It is reported to have cost as little as $200,000 and as much as $500,000. Cloverfield, it's closest neighbour, cost about $25 million (and even that is nothing compared to most Hollywood blockbusters). It casts unknown actors as it's leads and Edwards, asides from from doing a great job as director, is also credited as Monsters' writer, cinematographer, production designer and, astonishingly, visual effects supervisor. Astonishing because he did it all on his laptop in post-production (probably not on an Acer). The man is clearly a talent as he expertly handles all of these things. Add in the fact that a lot of it, including the dialogue, was improvised on location and it's a near miracle the film is this good.

The plot, admittedly a little thin on the ground, concerns Andrew Kaulder (played by the brilliantly named Scoot McNairy); a photo-journalist ordered by his boss to escort his engaged-to-be-married daughter Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able) back to America from Mexico. These countries are now separated by the 'Infected Zone' where a NASA space probe crashed 6 years ago containing alien specimens, which have grown into massive octopus-like creatures. There's a reason why I put the human aspect of the film before the monsters, because that's what the film does. Be assured that Monsters is not primarily a sci-fi alien movie. It is a love story and a road-movie that happens to contain monsters.

Therefore, comparisons to District 9, of which many have been made, appear unfounded. That film is an alien invasion movie made on a fairly low budget (and a brilliant one at that). Monsters focuses on character and landscape and is therefore more akin to something like Lost In Translation (how many films featuring aliens have been compared to that I wonder?). So we follow this man and woman as they try to reach America using all means of transport, eventually ending up on foot, and they inevitably fall in love. Dialogue is sparse but thanks to two excellent lead performances we really believe in the progress of their relationship.

Yes, we do see the monsters at points in the film during some genuinely quite frightening moments. Edwards makes great use of the night to conjure up tense action sequences and only gives us glimpses of the odd tentacle until the very end. The special effects, although not perfect, are extremely impressive considering how they were done. Not that it matters all that much. The 'Infected Zone' is as much, if not more, of a metaphor for the dangerous territory their relationship is entering as it is a literal area where giant squids roam around. The audience is asked to focus not on special effects but characters. Refreshing, no?

And Monsters is more a 'mood' movie than a monster movie. It is stunningly shot, by Edwards of course, featuring breathtaking scenery (the film greatly benefits from being shot entirely on location) and the sparse and eerie music adds to whole unearthly feel of the piece. You could also read it as a comment on the brutality of the American military and the complex relationship between America and Mexico, but in all honesty that barely registers. If you go in expecting 'Army Men Vs Aliens' then your thirst for action will only be satisfied during the first couple of minutes. And that maybe the film's only flaw - sometimes it moves to slow for it's own good. There a couple of moments when you expect something big to come round the corner and are left a little disappointed when it turns out to be a mad old lady with a trolley (this actually does happen). But then Monsters defies all expectations.

Edwards has thrown out the sci-fi rule book and made a film that I think will be seen as a landmark in a few years time because of how it was made and how much it cost to make. It could even be more of a game-changer than Avatar (but in the complete opposite way). Who needs Hollywood, star names and millions of pounds when you can get an intelligent, thoughtful and exciting film like this for the price of a very expensive car?

4 / 5