War Horse (2011)

Spielberg. Animals. War. Lost Innocence. West Country Accents. Rescue. Reunion. Gob-Smacking Tracking Shot. God Light. God Light. God Light. God Light. HEARTWARMING. Hanky.

Rating: 4/5

Cyborg Girl (Boku no kanojo wa saibôgu) (2008)

Ho-hum. Another month, another Korean directed human / cyborg rom-com.

Jiro is just your standard issue shy and nerdy student until, one lonely birthday, a kick-ass robot chick from the future drops in and turns his life upside down. Director Jae-young Kwak, who had already scored a massive hit with the more conventional romance "My Sassy Girl", here directs in Japanese in a wholly more ambitious project, but still feels at his most comfortable when on familiar ground. Keisuke Koide as the gobsmacked Jiro is initially a tad irritating with his dumbstruck jaw-on-the-floor performance, but gradually settles into a likeable and more rounded character. While Haruka Ayase as the beautiful machine from the future is not half as bad-ass as her Terminator-homaging introduction would like us to believe, and is all the more charming for it.

For most of its running time, Cyborg Girl (aka: Cyborg She) is sweet and gently amusing as this odd couple figure out their relationship and get involved in a bunch of life-saving scrapes, before proceedings climax quite unexpectedly in a massive set-piece with surprising emotional punch. Had things been tidied up around this point I would have nothing by praise for this unconventional but sweetly satisfying genre hybrid. However at around the ninety minute mark, Jae-young suddenly remembers he's also making a science-fiction, and we get a largely superfluous extended denouement involving A.I. style departures to new time zones, additional secondary characters and time-looping repeated scenes. It all goes on a bit and makes little sense, but fortunately doesn't completely undo the goodwill generated earlier. Nonetheless a tighter edit would have probably earned it an extra star.

Rating: 3/5

A Town Called Panic (Panique au village) (2009)

A manic, ADHD suffering, surreal, stop-motion masterpiece, delivered by the team behind the Cravendale Milk ads... from Belgium.

A horse, a cowboy and a red-Indian live together, argue over the shower, order a bazillion bricks, get stuck in traffic, stake out their own walls, do battle with underwater aliens, get abducted by a snowball throwing mega-penguin, and play cards while falling to the centre of the earth. Then things get really strange.

Apparently animated using a tub of plastic toys by a bunch of Ritalin dodging five-year-olds on a Sunny-D bender, A Town Called Panic is not the most coherent of films, but it is brilliantly inventive and frequently ball-achingly funny.

Rating: 4/5

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)

As his first full animation, Tintin may appear to be something of a new departure for Spielberg, but in every other respect, what we have here is a familiar and vintage caper that demonstrates just how easily the Bergster can knock this stuff off in his sleep these days.

The unavoidable comparison that springs immediately to mind is with his Indiana Jones movies: The period setting (not exactly specified, but easily 30s / 40s in feel) bathed in a nostalgic glow,  a globetrotting adventure in search of some lost treasure, voyages by tramp steamer or bi-plane, even a chase through some north-African market streets. Just a quiff instead of a fedora, and the formula is all in place. Now it's fair enough to point out that Raiders and its sequels were hugely inspired by an older generation of serial comic book adventures from the 40s and 50s in which Tintin rightly holds an esteemed place, but seen from a modern filmic perspective, there is a strong sense that we've seen this done before, and in at least some respects, better.

First, the good stuff. Tintin is beautifully animated, in a manner which is rich and detailed, but also retains a touch of period comic-book style which never draws attention but feels just right for this world. There are many stunningly visualised edits between locations, or shifts in time from story to storyteller, that match the very best that Spielberg has ever delivered in his live action movies. There are also several bravura action sequences, all of which are executed with wit and perfect pacing and never feel forced or out of place, and usually come with some charming touches of humour. While some of the broader slapstick moments fall somewhat flat (no pun etc.), just keep watching that dog, often in the corner of the frame away from the main action for some of the most gentle moments of incidental pleasure that the movie has to offer.

However, for me, there's no getting away from the most glaring problem with Tintin, and that's Tintin, the personality vacuum at the centre of the whole enterprise. Utterly devoid of any notable or involving character traits, he functions purely as a nominal protagonist around whom a plot can revolve, but never to whom our empathy may adhere. And speaking of plot, therein lies the secondary failing of Tintin (which sounds like a title for a sequel if ever I heard one). Many adventure stories may rely heavily on a MacGuffin to drive them along, but in the best examples (and again, there's no getting away from the Dr. Jones comparisons here, and all of them unfavourable to the cherub-faced reporter), this is merely a plot device to lead our hero to some greater and more profound end (reconciliation, enlightenment, the saving of a life, or the world, or a little piece of home), but in Tintin the MacGuffin is the whole plot, and so, having been kept pleasantly charmed, if not totally thrilled along the way, I arrived rather unexpectedly at the end, with things much as they were at the beginning.

Beautiful to look at, charming to watch, easy to forget.

Rating: 3/5

Contagion (2011)

A highly efficient medical thriller that lends a solid impression of verisimilitude to the kind of hard science, dangerous politics and social chaos that might accompany a really disastrous pandemic, Contagion goes about its business of scaring the audience into sealed plastic bubbles with a commendable lack of melodramatics. There are perhaps a few too many fractured storylines to really maximise the dramatic impact of the overall narrative, and the somewhat overly starry cast are occasionally in danger of impacting negatively on the documentary feel. As a result Contagion does somewhat give the impression of a TV movie that got lucky with the level of talent involved, but it does what it needs to do with understated yet brutal effectiveness and sets a new high-water mark for the epidemic disaster sub-genre.

Rating: 4/5

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011)

Much better than I had hoped. Surprisingly dark and gritty, it feels tonally well placed in relation to the classic 1968 original and is anchored by magnificent performance capture work from, of course, Andy Serkis in the lead ape role. The film has less time for some of its human characters, of whom a couple of cliched supporting turns represent the films' only significant missteps. But these aside this is a solid piece of proper sci-fi with thrills, genuine emotional weight, and a stunning climax that is intense without ever feeling overblown.

Rating: 4/5

Cowboys And Aliens (2011)

Simple comic book adventure mash-up that is precisely as good, and bad, as the title concept suggests. There's little in this to really surprise or thrill. The story is perfunctory and motivations are minimal. But it does have James Bond and Indiana Jones striding around being cool and tough and gruff. Does exactly what is says on the tin.

Rating: 3/5

Super 8 (2011)

Great fun, warm and nostalgic tribute to childhood adventures from a simpler time. Endearing performances, effective slow build of thrills. Not so engaging once the big mystery has been fully revealed, resulting in the final denouement being rather less emotionally impactful than the 80's kids adventure masterpiece it so clearly wants to be. But it delivers plenty of old school charm and thrills along the way.

Rating: 4/5

A Tale Of Two Sisters (Janghwa, Hongryeon) (2003)

Was right with it until the last half an hour. So, she's dead, or was dead, or she's her, and is she also her, or imagining her, and how come she's just turned up for the first and second time and wasn't she her before all along, and wait is this the beginning or the end and... WHAT?


Rating: 4/5

Black Swan (2010)

Black Swan is not really a ballet movie.

Nina (Natalie Portman) is a young dancer in a prestigious ballet company, obsessed, as artists often are, with the perfection of her craft, and seemingly also driven by that age-old dramatic staple, the overbearing and overprotective mother. When she is promoted to Prima and has to take on the dual role of darkness and innocence at the heart of Swan Lake, she is pushed by the egotistical and possibly predatory director (played by Vincent Cassel) into exploring a darker, more sexual, more aggressive side of her nature.

Darren Aronofsky has made films about brilliant obsessive types, reaching for perfection and being driven to the point of madness in the past. His latest shares a lot in common with his stunning low-budget debut "Pi". Black Swan may have the big money and a star at its centre, but Aronofsky has lost not a jot of his obsessive intensity.

No movie about ballet, with a melodramatic plot centred around a fragile girl pushed to her limits can avoid comparisons with the legendary ne plus ultra of this micro sub-species, "The Red Shoes". However, while they share a common subject, stylistically this is a very different and altogether scarier proposition. Channelling the arch gothic thrill of Brian DePalma's Carrie, and a whole bunch of Dario Argento 1970s giallo chillers, along with the reality blurring bodily distortions of Cronenberg movies such as The Fly and Dead Ringers, Black Swan gradually builds to a fevered dream of madness and terror and doesn't let up till the credits roll.

So far, so unexpectedly, but entertainingly genre. But unlike many of its forbears, Aronofsky's picture is executed with exceptional art and precision. Close-up hand-held shooting keeping the frame tight in on every player, stripping away the artifice and closing in on the bone-crunching physical intensity of the ballet performances, or prowling the grimy backstage corridors, seeking out every darkened corner or artfully fractured mirror. There are fine performances from Cassel and particularly Barbara Hershey, as Nina's failed dancer mother, in a role that could easily have been grating and false. But at the heart of it all, and the making of the whole enterprise, is a heroically controlled performance from Natalie Portman, easily a career best. She runs the gamut of emotional states in a role which requires pushing them all to the extremes and yet she never hits a false note. Raw, honest, and totally empathetic, it's a miraculous achievement.

An intense, exhausting, brilliant, full-on, operatic, psychological horror. Black Swan is all these things; it's just not really a ballet movie.

Rating: 5/5

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

While Kick-Ass was busy gobbling up the lion’s share of the attention and Daily Mail outrage, there was another genre-bending alt-superhero comedy mash-up last summer that rather slid under the radar, which is a great shame as, while it may not be as in-your-face outrageous, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a more engaging, funny and sprightly movie that mysteriously failed to storm the summer box office in the face of bigger, badder, swearier competition.

A geek’s paradise, Scott Pilgrim is chock full of gamer references, 8-bit soundbites, and teen-rocking wannabee heroics, however what makes it more than the sum if its slacker culture nods and winks is a genuine warmth and affection for its inhabitants and their world. Brit helmer Edgar Wright, who showed he knows a thing or two about game-obsessed overgrown boys in Shaun Of The Dead, tackles his first transatlantic mega-budget project with a breezy lightness; blending together bitter-sweet moments of awkward teen romance, and heart embiggening scenes of rock & roll camaraderie along with the madcap fights, and surreal flights of fancy.

The young cast, headed by eternal dweeb plus ultra Michael Cera, are largely excellent, with quirky but likeable supporting roles given the same care and attention as our eponymous hero. As a teen ensemble comedy it recalls the films of John Hughes, such is the ease with which it takes its outlandishly fantastical premise and grounds it with deft, easygoing character work.

On the minor negative side, the film is rather undisciplined, being about twenty minutes longer than needed, with an occasional repetitious tendency brought on by its own multi-life, game-level structure, and somewhat lacks a solid dramatic shape as a result. But with so many charming, engaging characters and a sharp, witty script overflowing with quotable banter and inventive non-sequitur moments, the movie carries its excess baggage with a light touch and a giddy energy that is hard to resist.

Rating: 4/5

Far North (2007)

In an unspecified land of tundra and ice, a mother and daughter, estranged from their tribes-people, alone and on the run from a brutal hired army, are struggling to survive in this harsh, desolate landscape. Into their lives walks an escaped press-ganged soldier, barely alive, and a tragic chain of events is set in motion.

London born film-maker Asif Kapadia knows how to capture isolation. He finds it in the sombre monochrome landscapes of this Arctic tale, and equally in the eyes of his lead actress, Michelle Yeoh. She plays Saiva, a woman who has borne a curse since birth foretelling that she will bring misfortune upon anyone who gets close to her. Forced out of her tribe, she lives nomadically, with only her grown-up daughter for company. Theirs is a never ending routine of hand-to-mouth survival and constant relocation to ever more lonely shores. The films' establishing shots of expansive ice flows are set to a soundtrack of groaning, creaking tension and cracks beneath the surface. Once Sean Bean's on-the-run Soldier arrives to upset the balance of their simple existence, it soon becomes apparent that Saiva shares much in common with the ice pack surrounding her.

So effectively does Asif conjure the quiet, contemplative mood and pace of much Scandinavian or Russian cinema that it comes as quite a shock when the main trio of characters open their mouths (which they do only rarely) and talk in English. The point is that it does not matter what language they speak, as the location and even the precise period of this story is kept deliberately vague. Just as it matters not what strange language it is that the other invading soldiers speak to themselves, only that it is not familiar. They are the aliens here.

For much of its short running time not a lot seems to be happening here, but there is not a wasted moment or unnecessary scene. Judicious use of flashbacks provide insight into the moments that have forged Saiva's tough and ruthless survival instincts. While in the present, much is communicated in silence by the glances of desire and jealousy that the trio exchange. Sean Bean comfortably inhabits the role of decent but morally weak man, but it's Michelle Yeoh's steely, haunted central performance that grabs and pulls you in. Like some Merchant-Ivory period drama stripped of all its airs and finery, we are in a world of suppressed emotions and mounting tensions. The palpable sense that something has to give is the overriding drive towards the startling climax.

Rating: 4/5

Paprika (Papurika) (2006)

A trio of scientists are working on the psychiatric possibilities offered by a remarkable new device that can record patients dreams. When the device is stolen their own subconscious minds begin to be invaded and hijacked by an unknown assailant and the boundaries of reality and imagination start to blur. With the help of the mysterious alter-ego Paprika, and a police detective who is himself a patient, the team try to infiltrate this unconscious world to track down the missing machine and the person controlling it.

While Miyazaki may have the lions' share of international recognition for his masterful Japanese animation; in the west, science-fiction anime is for the most part still the reserve of a particularly geekish brand of teenage boys. Twenty-odd years on, Akira still dominates this violent and neon-lit landscape and a tendency to  excess has marred much of what came after and disguised the fact that genuinely brilliant and original work has been quietly going on.

Director Satoshi Kon, whose career was tragically cut short by cancer earlier this year has been responsible for several vibrant, feverish slabs of dark but mature storytelling since his minor breakout hit debut Perfect Blue in 1998. Paprika was only his fourth feature as director and sadly will now probably be his last (there is an unfinished fifth currently in limbo), but he's left behind a stunning piece of work. Spritely creative; at times madcap and surreal, with armies of dream monster toys crashing through the walls of reality, time stopping, physics distorting, characters running through alternate films playing in their own mind. It's a bit of a head rush in parts, but still takes the time to establish meaningful characters with complex motivations.

Sci-Fi stories of dreams and subconscious have of course been around for years, and in the concepts and visual ideas present here, one can detect hints of Strange Days, Brainstorm and Blade Runner. But Paprika takes these several steps further and creates a dizzying sense of multi-layered reality. Its most recognisable aspects are those that it has itself gone on to influence, because if any film might hold a candle to the creative invention on show here, it's Inception, and director Christopher Nolan has made no secret of the dept he owes to this obvious forbear.

Compared to the clockwork precision engineering of Nolan's masterwork, Paprika is a touch freewheeling and can occasionally loose the viewer during some bizarre left turns. Plus some dialogue comes across a little awkwardly, although this might just be an issue of the subtitle translation. But these are very minor quibbles. This is grown-up animation of dazzling invention and well worth seeking out.

Rating: 4/5

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009)

OK, the joke is over.

For those who missed it, MSvGO as I will henceforth refer to it, is a zero budget, zero talent, direct-to-dvd exploitation knock-off that generated a little internet buzz last year through a combination of a daft trailer with a few bad looking but utterly OTT monster-mash moments, and its glorious none-more-b-movie title. I never had any intention of actually watching it of course but it popped up on TV one indolent evening and so, ninety pointless, wasted minutes later, here we are.

There is an over-used maxim of b-movie-dom that holds that a movie can be so bad that it is good. This is very rarely, if ever, true. Bad movies, and I mean REALLY bad movies, are just plain bad. They do not come out the other side and attain some nirvana of unintentional silliness that renders them an inverse masterpiece. They simply reek of depressing, incompetent, disastrous badness that makes them an absolute headache to watch.

It's hard in the space of one review to list all the things that are wrong with this movie. The story is naturally non-existent, just a few lines of insanely nonsensical set-up to get straight to the action. Unfortunately the action, of which you saw the whole shebang in the trailer, is so shoddily staged as to render even guilty entertainment value void from the off. The creatures we've all come to see rarely appear and look utterly fake and dreadful in the moments that they do. Strange white flashes keep invading the screen, perhaps signaling explosions or missile launches? I don't know, because the whole thing is so incompetently edited that I can't tell what events follow from which scene. Abuse of physics in a movie may well have a new record holder; we are told that the undersea leviathans are traveling at 500Mph, yes, that's right, five-hundred; underwater! and in one sequence a nuclear submarine is taken entirely in the jaws of the shark and shaken like a rag-doll whilst inside, the crew just stumble around with less enthusiasm than Kirk's gang during a mild phaser attack.

There are barely three sets in the entire movie, two command rooms on opposite sides of the planet which appear to be, remarkably, the same room; only with slightly different coloured lighting, and a lab which has been built from the leftovers of a 60s Doctor Who episode (but with some handy furnishings available for impromptu lovemaking). Oh, and in my favorite scene we are treated to a cockpit interior made from a cardboard box with no windows, a handful of oversize Christmas tree lights, and equipped with a pilot screaming some tosh about “going down” a full thirty seconds before encountering anything.

It seems churlish to even mention such basics as acting or script at this point. It's easiest to simply report that both are notable only by their complete absence. In their place, former pop teen wastrel Debbie Gibson and a clutch of am-dram extras chew on random clichés as though being fed on solids for the first time.

Most movies that are simply not any good usually fall down on such things as character development, dramatic structure, internal logic or the niceties of pacing etc. But however much fun it might be to fling the mud it is probably fair to say that most are at least made with a fundamental level of basic competency that suggests the Director and DOP may have spent a few evenings at film school night classes. MSvGO however, is so many leagues of ineptness beyond this that as I sat there dumbfounded I became genuinely convinced that I could have walked on that set, having never held a film camera or written a line of dialog in my life, and directed any of those scenes with improved results.

Utter bilge, do not watch under any circumstances.

Rating: 1/5

Put The Right One On

It's a widely held belief amongst many moviegoers and critics alike that if you are going to remake a movie, it's usually best to remake a bad one. Right off the bat there are a couple of good reasons why this might often hold true. Principally it seems logical that as the film-maker, your remake is far less likely to suffer from critical comparison or emotive negative reactions from a loyal existing fan-base if you make-over a half forgotten mediocre movie than a beloved classic. However, from a more objective position, the likely advantage of remaking a bad (or at least not very good) movie is that it probably leaves a lot more creative elbow room for re-interpretation. If the script, or the performances, or the staging or pacing of the original left a lot to be desired then it seems reasonable to assume that the makers of the new version are more likely to throw out a larger amount of what came before, and start again with just the bare bones of the concept or story. Rather than simply reshooting the same movie to the same, usually diminished effect, this freedom then brings a corresponding increase in the chances of actually improving on what came before, and if you are not aiming to do at least that, then why are you bothering at all?

David Cronenbergs' '80s version of The Fly for example, started life when Cronenberg watched the 1950s original, and left the theatre fuming about technical issues regarding mass loss and gain as a guys' head ends up on a fly, at fly size, while the flies' ends up on a man, with a corresponding increase in volume of matter contained therein. When he finally got his chance to remake it therefore, he and his co-writer took a fresh look at the original short story concept, and along with a modicum of improvement in the science (still somewhat outrageous, but slightly more rationalised from an internal logic point of view), the resulting movie comprehensively trounced the original in every department. From the grotesquely inventive special effects, through a beautiful and tender central relationship, one the finest ever to grace the horror genre, to Jeff Goldblums' career best performance of a brilliant man physically and mentally disintegrating.

Then a little more recently we had Ocean's Eleven, which in comparison to the above example sticks more closely to its forbears' formula. In this case an all-star comedy crime caper which was a fun, but rather lazy and unfocused vehicle for its Rat-Pack stars. Through fine, pacey direction, tight-as-a-barrel scripting, and a clutch of well oiled performances, Soderbergs' superficially similar retread soundly beats it for cunning, wit, thrills and all-round cool.

So if the above wisdom is so commonly accepted, it begs the question of why we so often get subjected to inferior remakes of top-rank classics. Was anyone really asking for re-imaginings (a hateful phrase that tries vainly to smear some creative justification onto this vile process) of Planet of the Apes, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Wicker Man, The Ladykillers (proving that even the masterful Coen Brothers could not overturn this rule) or Psycho?

The answer of course is money. Old films have a limited scope for reaping further financial rewards for the studios that own them. There is but an ongoing trickle of budget DVD sales and some small royalties from TV showings which cannot attract high fees as the smaller audiences for each successive showing result in ever-diminishing advertising revenues etc. But there is a ready market of millions of people who wouldn't dream of sitting down on a Sunday afternoon to watch The African Queen on the telly, but who would pay top dollar at the box office if they heard of a new movie with the same name starring Angelina Jolie (yeah, I'd probably watch it too!).

The above list of recent offenders is of course evidence enough to all but the most cinematically-challenged observer that remakes of great films are generally a waste of time, money and creative talent that could have been so much better employed on something original. None of this is exactly news and frankly most of the time I couldn't care less about them. I, like most people who might give a damn, have seen those marvellous classics, I know them to be great, and should I be unfortunate enough to encounter one of these misbegotten cash-cows, it won't make a jot of difference to my love of the originals.

There is however, an evil, and insidious second thread to the remake scam and that is the remaking of recent foreign language films (foreign to us Western, English speaking audiences I mean of course). The motivation here is similar, but the effect, I believe, is far more damaging.

A high quality foreign-language film gets a bit of attention, maybe wins a couple of awards somewhere and earns itself some admirers. Now, if this were an English language film, with luck, a major distributor would pick it up, put a ton of money behind promoting it and make it the big hit it deserves to be. But it isn't, it's got, "GASP!", subtitles on it, and sadly there is (or is assumed to be) a huge proportion of the English speaking audience, particularly in America, where most of the big money is to be made, who just would not dream of seeing a subtitled movie, no matter how brilliant it may reputedly be. As English first-language speaking countries, we largely bring this on ourselves. We are notoriously lazy with regards to other cultures, having had the luxury of being brought up with one of the worlds' premiere international languages as our mother tongue. People in many other countries are used to seeing films, hearing music, and experiencing culture from around the world in multiple languages, such that seeing subtitles and dealing with tongues that they may not be so fluent in is part of daily life and not given a second thought. But not so here, and crucially not in Hollywood.

So what happens to our theoretical gem of a foreign movie? It may get a good critical response, perhaps does well in its own country, and is seen by a small, but fervently enthusiastic band of admirers around the globe. Now it is in the nature of cinematic enthusiasts (i.e. nerds like me), that when they discover a great film, but particularly one that hasn't been seen yet by every man and his dog, that they will recommend it to their mates, or take people to see it, because they want to share the experience of what they have found. In doing so, over time the films' reputation will spread, the screenings and the sales will grow, and it may, with luck, gain at least a share of the success that it richly deserves.

Except that is doesn't. What increasingly happens now is that Hollywood spots a good idea, just in the "wrong" language, and says "We'll have that!". And so, before the original film has even left the cinemas, a remake is in the can, made with ten-times the budget, pushed out there with a hundred times the promotional muscle and it's on the side of every bus before you can say "God damn you all to Hell!"

Is this so much worse than bad remakes of old classics? After all, in both cases the original version still exists for all to see if they so choose. Well, yes, in my opinion it is, for several reasons but the principle one is this: There is a magic in seeing a great movie for the first time (as there is of course with reading a great book or hearing a beautiful song), and that can never be experienced in the same way again. If you have already watched a remake of a movie before seeing, or indeed even being aware of, the original; you will never get to experience that movie the way it was meant to be experienced. You will know where the story is headed, you will be aware ahead of time of the fate of characters that you might have cared greatly about, or twists that change the meaning of everything you thought you understood. You will compare and contrast scenes, and dialogue, and performances, sometimes without even being aware that you have been removed from the first-hand experience of the tale and instead that you are now sitting outside of the world on-screen.  You are analysing the movie, rather than being immersed in it. The remake has robbed you of that gift, and you can never have it back.

So I come to Let Me In. It comes out here in the UK in just a few weeks. It looks pretty good, the trailers and posters look moody and atmospheric. It's directed by Matt Reeves, who made Cloverfield which I thoroughly enjoyed, and it stars that little cool-as-fuck girl from Kick-Ass. Sounds good? Let's go.

Except... have you seen Let The Right One In (or I should say "Låt den rätte komma in", and therein lies the problem)? Yes? Good on you. We can discuss the nerdy details later on. No? Well think carefully about where you spend your next 8 quid, because for me, Let The Right One In, which came out barely a year ago over here, is a true cinematic masterpiece. One of the most moving, melancholic, atmospheric and original films I have seen in a very long time. I could talk for hours about the stunning cinematography, the remarkable and captivating performances by the two child leads, the heart-breaking score and the sheer exhilaration of experiencing such an original take on an apparently familiar genre. But I won't, because you can experience it all for yourself, for the first time, and then get back to me and we'll talk.

In spite of having been a sizable hit for a foreign-language film, I regularly find myself talking to friends who have yet to hear of this movie, and of course I do my best to turn them on to it when I do. There are doubtless millions of people around the world who haven't experienced the dark enchantments of Let The Right One In but would in time do so. But in a few months time many of them will have seen the no doubt more commercially successful Let Me In, and the chance to have the same experience that I did when seeing it for the first time will be lost.

I have yet to see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by co-incidence another Swedish movie out in the last year and with excellent notices, and I thoroughly intend to do so at some point. However I have just recently learned that a remake is on the way (is it something against Sweden? Did the head of Sony Pictures get knocked down by a Volvo?). On paper the remake could not look more impressive. Directed by the formidable David Fincher who helmed Seven, Fight Club and Zodiac. Scripted by the same screen-writer as Schindler's List. I should be excited about this; it has every chance of being excellent... and yet, and yet... All I can feel is sadness and anger at the shameful pilfering of another apparently excellent work the minute it has gained a glimpse of recognition as such.

I will be making damn sure I see the original version of that movie before I go near the remake, if I do at all, and I urge you to do the same. However, before that, I implore you, see Let The Right One In. See it because it deserves to be a huge hit. Making a commercially successful movie in Sweden, with a small film industry and a modest ten million native speakers is a tough challenge at best, and the makers of this stunning work of art deserve all the success and recognition that they can get. See it because, by making original foreign language films more successful and snubbing American remakes a little more, we will be sending a message to those with the money to get films made and distributed that we, the audience, value originality, variety and creativity and will spend our money where we find it; and what we don't need, and crucially won't pay good money for, is to be spoon fed with lazy retreads and moribund imagination. This could pay us back dividends in the future by resulting in a greater choice of quality cinema, made by those who have the best creative minds, rather than simply by those with the most commercial nous. But most of all see it now! See it before the remake gets you and steals the magic, forever.

Doctor Who and the malaise of British TV Sci-Fi

I suspect that some of us have a rather fuzzy rose-tinted childhood memory perspective on how "good" the old days of Doctor Who were. For me Tom Baker will always be the man, but I think it's likely his tenure too would leave me cold if I were seeing it for the first time today. However looking back at the earliest shows, well before my time, the first actors (Hartnell and Troughton in particular) managed to carry off their roles with genuine weight and grit in the midst of an embarrassment of shitty FX and cardboard sets. There is a sense that serious Science Fiction and original creative work was at least being attempted in the face of a hopeless lack of resources.

I did have hopes for the modern series in the early stages of the Ecclestone re-launch. He seemed to tame the worst excesses of the hammery that the role often seems to have brought out in many of the preceding, otherwise capable actors; and Billie Piper I thought was a genuine revelation as a real equal in character and not just a mini-skirted bit of fluff on the sidelines. But the scripts just became increasingly dire with every episode. full of lazy in-joke references and jaw-droppingly bad rip-offs from better SF (does anyone remember the "spiders" in an Ecclestone episode just months after Minority Report had given us the exact same thing? I couldn't believe what I was seeing). Tennant, a fine actor in better fare by all reports, seems to have been worn down by a mixture of poor scripting and lazy directing into gradually replacing performance with just a bag of overblown ticks and mannerisms. His eyebrows rise higher than Penfold's to express interest in anything.

What infuriates me the most are the audience-insultingly low aims of the whole venture. When you compare this to the best of US Science Fiction (the recent Battlestar Galactica reboot or the best of Star Trek for example), but even more when you compare it to the BBC's own world-class output of what they label as “proper” drama, the writing is just so smug, childish and lazily repetitive. That the BBC can lavish millions on what is considered to be a flagship program, but hand it over to such talentless hacks can to me only be explained as sheer arrogance. The attitude seems to be “It's Science Fiction, therefore it's only for kids who don't know any better, and it's Dr. Who. Everyone loves Dr. Who, so why should we try any harder? Everyone will watch it anyway, especially if the lead actor is good looking and we throw a few b-list celebs into the mix”

This sort of under-achieving attitude has been a sadly predictable feature of most attempts at home grown sci-fi in recent years. There seems to be an utter failure to grasp the kind of dramatic and conceptual scope that the genre, at its best, is capable of. Other recent disappointments include "The Deep", and the shockingly bad "Primeval". It is remarkable to consider that of all programs, the space set sitcom "Red Dwarf" is probably the most sophisticated and original sci-fi series to have made it off the BBC's drawing board in the last quarter of a century.

Meanwhile, as far as the good Doctor is concerned, I bailed the moment Catherine Tate appeared. This marked for me the point when any vestige of interest in making SF/Drama was stomped on by a BBC in-house back-slapping fest and spin-off marketing machine.

Made in Dagenham (2010)

Social drama and comedy can be a tough balancing act. In telling the story of how a small group of women working in a factory in the late 1960s began a minor industrial dispute that rapidly escalated into a spearhead movement for gender equality in employment, Made in Dagenham plays it mostly for drama and keeps the laughs low-key and naturalistic. A closer kin to say, Billy Elliot, than to The Full Monty.

Sally Hawkins, best known so far for her breakout role in Happy Go Lucky, becomes the accidental spokesperson in this dispute, and delivers a beautifully nuanced performance of a woman who is angry and frustrated at the injustices of her situation, but has never felt able to voice them until now. In her quiet, sometimes faltering delivery we can sense the well of deep-seated conviction that has been struggling to find its voice. However, it is in the relationships of the women that the film finds its most compelling moments. Few movies these days even attempt, and very rarely succeed, in painting such an honest and heartfelt picture of female relationships and interaction.

By comparison to the core group, some of the surrounding roles (Bob Hoskins magnificently excepted) are rather more coarsely sketched. A pair of dopey civil servants in particular seem to be intended (although certainly not succeeding) as comedy sidekicks and feel rather out of place.

However the story is told in such an understated manner, easy on the grandstanding, and rather working its way under the skin with warmth and honesty; that after being little more than mildly entertained for much of the running time, I was genuinely caught off guard by how I was suddenly seething with anger at the unfairness of their plight, or elated with each little success. In a tale with huge nationwide consequences, it's the personal victories that count the most.

Rating: 4/5

Outlander (2008)

Vikings vs. Aliens vs. Disappointment

Let's be clear about this: As concepts go, Vikings vs. Aliens is indisputably the finest idea in cinematic history. How could such a perfect storm of genre-mashing possibly fail?

Well, let's start with the limp and creaking script; barely functioning to join the dots of the minimal story it offers us zero characterization, even less wit, great black holes of logic or just plain common-sense, and has everyone talking in a steadfastly modern parlance that might be anachronistic if only it could summon the energy.

Then there is the acting: Nary a flicker of emotion to be had from among any of the weary looking cast. Everyone speaks earnestly about something, but it might as well be directions to the bus stop for all the meaning that is imparted. Jack Huston as Wulfric in particular seems to have been shipped in as part of the set and accidently given a speaking role instead of "door frame no.7" as was clearly marked on the box. John Hurt however is an old hand at giving weight to grizzled royal pronouncements, but even he seems to be out to lunch for most of this one.

The effects are very much in the modern b-movie-cheap-CGI mould. Things are kept dark and mostly indistinguishable for much of the running time, with good reason, as when the monster is fully revealed in the light of day it comes across as a flat cartoon mash-up of bits of The Host and Godzilla, with none of the sense of weight or menace of either.

The story is essentially Beowulf, with a bit of Predator thrown in to the mix. But it totally misses the brooding atmosphere of the former and the outlandish fun of the latter. It has no memorable characters or frightening monsters. It is neither funny, nor scary, nor exciting. Nor for that matter is any of it even slightly original. When it's not stealing plot points from the above, it's playing out familiar scenes nabbed from The Descent, Reign of Fire, War of the Worlds and most criminally, several shot-for-shot sequences stolen wholesale from the excellent Disney fantasy Dragonslayer.

The film has just two moments where it momentarily threatens to spark in to life. The first is the apparently welcome entrance, half an hour into the proceedings, of the wonderful Ron Pearlman, who arrives by crushing someone's head between two massive war hammers. He then gets to make one brief speech which alludes to intriguing events which are never referred to again and then exits the film five minutes later to zero effect. The second is when the nominal hero of the piece (Jim Caviezel, scowling in neutral throughout) gets to explain his back story with the monster to the proto-feminist heroine (Sophia Myles), and of course, us. He words his story in ways that her native people might understand, but we the audience get to see through his memories scenes of intergalactic genocide that put a modern and more sympathetic spin on the monster's plight. While hardly Kieslowski, this is a momentarily interesting concept, which is also then promptly abandoned for the remainder of the film.

All of this might still be forgivable if the movie actually had a sense of fun, but it is a long, flat and dreary stumble through deeply familiar territory to an underwhelming finale. Some stuff just happens, people speak just enough to direct us to the next scene, some more stuff happens and two hours later it ends, finally. 

Rating: 2/5

Gran Torino (2008)

Clint! You just gotta love Clint. Yes it's a touch predictable at times, but there are few greater pleasures in cinema than watching mean old Clint being old and mean and still tougher than chewing a mountain of bricks while taking double calculus. There's mostly great support from some believably rough-edged young unknowns (and some cranky old ones), who are assuredly handled by Eastwood's usual unfussy directorial style, which effortlessly avoids the melodramatics that could so easily have mired such a story in less experienced hands.

Though a much smaller film, in both theme and execution, than Unforgiven, this sits perfectly as a companion piece to the former: A final deconstruction of the unstoppable vengeance-laying legend of yore, and if this is, as is rumoured, to be Clint's final stand in front of the camera, then it could not be a more perfect send-off. Full circle for both a definitive character and the career of this great screen legend. Would that some other elderly icons (I'm looking at you Sean) choose so wisely. I'm still not sure about the singing though.

 Rating: 5/5

The Mist (2007)

A thoroughly enjoyable creepy monster movie that disguises its relatively low budget with some wonderfully creative old-school creature FX. Director Frank (Shawshank) Darabont turns the screws on a colourful clutch of characters with a taught, claustrophobic and paranoid atmosphere (very reminiscent of The Thing which it knowingly references in the opening scene) and mixes in some nicely-judged black humour to keep you on board for the duration until he then punches you in the face with a desolate final act that will stay with you for quite a while.

Rating: 4/5