DRIVE ANGRY 3D

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Starring Nicolas Cage

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NICOLAS CAGE FIGHTS SATAN WHILE DRIVING A CAR THAT’S ON FIRE

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT

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Starring John, Paul, George and Ringo

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You don’t see many of these around anymore. Comedies are nasty, superheroes are stuffed with issues, kid’s films are here to sell you a bear with a raised eyebrow. When was the last time you saw a film that’s them was pure, unadulterated joy? (Pixar. PIXAR PIXAR PIXAR) Ignoring Pixar, you didn’t, so tough. Let’s go back to 1964.

After revolutionizing music and inventing pop culture in the space of a couple of years, four kids from Liverpool decide to kick the movies up the arse as well by hiring a Goon Show upstart called Richard Lester to follow them around and film them taking the piss out of things. Seriously. That’s it, for an hour and a bit. They laugh at everything: themselves, their management, the millions of fans who buy their music, World War II veterans who fought for them to live, old people, girls, fashion, music, Wilfrid Brambell. There’s a glorious sense of spontaneity and vigor about their endless ribbing, culminating in a dazzling scene where they simply spazz out in a big field, leapfrogging and jerking about to the strains of one of their own songs. It’s wonderful. It’s literally full of wonder, as well as setting the directing template for the rest of the century; the quick cuts, the edits in time to the music, the bizarre nature of the narrative, all Lester’s, responsible for a bulk of all the cool things you see today. Each Beatle gets a chance to shine, from Paul’s hilariously earnest attempts to read the lines to Ringo’s lonely sojourn through London that culminates in him looking like a big-nosed pedophile in a flat cap. It’s utterly bizarre, brilliant and completely worth watching if only for the scene when one of history’s greatest artistic geniuses pisses about in a bubble bath whilst speaking in a comedy German accent. And it features some of the greatest songs ever written. Gear!

MELINDA AND MELINDA

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Radha Mitchell

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Moving successfully into the field of extreme punishment, chief whip Woody here produces two rubbish films at once in order to doubly waste everyone’s time. The inherent problems are exactly the same as every other lump he’s made in the last eight years, so let’s focus on the positives: Radha Mitchell. Somehow rising wraithlike above the maelstrom of awful she’s signed on for, she delivers both a touching, pitiful performance as the otherwise-punchable ‘tragic’ Melinda whilst simultaneously emitting sweetness and light from her eyelids as the ‘comic’ turn. In a way she’s too successful; by making the characters of Melinda and Melinda so utterly different and complete she destroys the central conceit of the film, that ONE person’s life can utterly change when seen as comedy or tragedy. Allen’s writing of a completely different story for each doesn’t necessarily require the same actress to play both parts, making the idea a gimmick, but nevertheless a gimmick that steals the whole film. At this point he’s being beaten by his actors, his casting agents, his own ideas and his own glaring lack of competency at anything. It’s almost a comedy. And the fact that Mitchell’s had bugger-all work since this nightmare-tandem? That’d be the tragedy.

TRUE GRIT?

TRUE GRIT

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Starring Jeff Bridges

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TRUE GRIT

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Starring John Wayne

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Pound for pound the old one wins. A hundred years of rootin’, tootin’ and scoundrel-blastin’ in American film has made the fictional west the real west, and consequently it’s Old Grit that looks the most like the Western you have in your head; the Coen’s new update splashes the story with a lick of old but can’t avoid looking the same as their similarly hewn contemporary effort No Country For Old Men a couple of years back. So Old Grit has the edge in the visuals department, looking even more distanced from our workaday world than the sepia-filtered detail of the new one, even if it does look like Oz in comparison. What’s most disappointing about the remake (and it is a remake. IT IS. Tim Burton invented the phrase ‘reimagining’ and now no one uses it and Tim Burton smells of sick) is the lack of ‘Coenness’ about it, the simplicity of the piece as a whole. It’s a perfectly competent showing of the novel which loses the underlying fizz that runs with their best work, the best lines shared by both versions and not from the Coen’s digits, no genre subverted, no stones upturned. It’s still perfectly entertaining and there are aces: the little lady is incredible and probably should have grabbed that Oscar, the cinematography is vast and landscapy and beautiful. And of course, there’s Jeff Bridges, atoning for falling asleep in Tron Legacy by bringing all his spit-fleck mastery and quiet fury to a touching, grizzled old man who has nothing left but heroism.

But Old Grit has John Wayne. And John Wayne is the Old West.

AIRPLANE!

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Starring Robert Hays

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It’s like going back to choke Hitler. Prior to his immolation phase Der Fuhrer was probably the funniest comedian in hyper-inflation Berlin, his act being a Borat-style deranged artistic failure with a penchant for buggery. His subsequent unveiling as a deranged racist mass-gasser puts him straight in line for a Timecop style proto-throat-slit, if it weren’t for the strength of his dancehall act. Hmm. Airplane! (The exclamation mark is law) faces roughly the same problem. Funny as heck with a joke rate of eight per second it sits high up in small pantheon of genuinely chucklesome films by chucking every amusing thing the writers could ever think of at the screen and hoping they explode. It’s fast, it’s utterly ridiculous and it still stands up today. But… it’s responsible for Scary Movie. And Date Movie. And Disaster Movie. And the suicides of eighty four esteemed film critics worldwide. Vampires Suck alone is known to have caused tumors in every one of Roger Ebert’s white blood cells whilst Meet the Spartans killed Pauline Kael during the scene where they reference that thing from six years ago… that thing… it was in the news? Pure blind evil the lot of them, bleach in the eyes and venom in the ears.

So what to do? Just stick to the original. As always, the answer is to create your own reality and block out whatever those weird box office figures are watching. Who are they? Are they real? Are they that stupid? Hail Nielson!

MATCH POINT

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers

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Ohhhhh, right. This is just what his films are like. Woody Allen films are different. They don’t have to be realistic, they don’t have to have relatable characters, they don’t have to make sense. They’re all classical theatre transposed to the modern day, exclusive tales of upper class dandies falling from grace, dabbling with boredom and occasionally flashing their tits. Allen himself thinks Match Point is his best film. The world would respect his opinion if he hadn’t spent the last decade making terrible films. He’s wrong. He’ll make better in Scoop and Vicky Christina Barcelona, and for the sake of this blog’s sanity this year he has to have made better in the past.

At best Match Point is vaguely interesting, like an Abercrombie and Fitch advert repeated for two hours, the models occasionally shooting each other in the face or saying something ridiculous. As a study of passion, obsession and social climbing it’s so glacial and removed from reality that it’s impossible to feel anything towards the chiseled protagonist, but not Brechtian enough to step back and consider his predicament. The other characters flit about with little to do or say, all again played by various English thesps desperate to work with the Master on his European Holiday. It’s boring. It’s just boring as hell.

… His films always have the same titles at the beginning. This makes for a good sense of synergy across his output. The way he lists his actors alphabetically is nice.

What’s the sound of grasping at straws?