ANYTHING ELSE

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Jason Biggs

Trailer

M

You’re better off watching Anything Else than the rest of his output this century, in both senses of the sentence. There are jokes here, funny jokes, which is a marked improvement already. But there’s still that nagging pinch of hell; one of the running gags concerns writers sticking to comedy because it’s where the money is, yet another example of a sad-eyed Allen apologizing for his recent output through other actor’s mouths, the movie as an apology for itself. It’s not all dreck for once: casting naïve youngsters Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci has a positive effect on his mangled language and bizarre characters, the actors trying their darndest to make sense of the thing and imbibe their roles with a likeable quality, and it almost works. Once again it falls to Allen’s role as neurotic clown to provide the film’s highlights rather than his ‘skills’ at writing and directing. Wouldn’t it be great if he made a film that was all funny, all the time, that revolved around the brilliant comic creation of himself, that made insightful insights, carried a gaggle of gags, a simple thing that’s genuinely chucklesome and well-observed and didn’t jump for artistic merit like a leprechaun basket-ball player? Good job the Tardis is set to reverse; history says he gets better as time constricts. But Anything Else? Depending on how you’re watching Allen’s oeuvre it’s either a nugget of possibility or yet another deranged example of a man who’s almost forgotten how to make movies. Please let the 2000s end…

CHUNGKING EXPRESS

dMYD DVD

Starring Faye Wong

Trailer

Y

What’s ‘Pure Cinema’? Mainlining Frank Capra? Vast sacks of dirty money? Chun-King Express? Let’s settle on that one; the film’s two stories and there’s a scene in the second one, the softly lit daytime tale that counters the jagged light-trails of the preceding section, it’s set in love-lorn Officer 633’s empty flat. But it’s not empty. There’s a girl there who works at a food stall and she’s whirling around the room, depositing goldfish, putting up stickers, flying toy planes. She’s bringing little lumps of joy to the Officer’s life without him knowing, by breaking into his house and doing good things. Seven years before Amelie. That scene’s Pure Cinema, forsaking definition, running laps around criticism and jumping around in your stomach like a sherbet creature on a trampoline. It’s beautiful.

Two stories of light and dark, fractured narratives leaping about with a hand-held camera and scrappy scraps of dialogue; it’s not the easiest film to follow. The stories don’t intermingle like the similarly style-affected Tarantino of the time but serve as differing views of love, wondering and escaping, separate and separately shot, alien and disjointed. The visuals are so striking that they’ll drag your eyes away from the subtitles, the soundtrack at times overbearing and repetitive. But you’ll leave with a strange appreciation of The Mamas and The Papas and a wonderful craving for Pineapple. And that’s Pure Cinema.

THOR

dMYD

Starring Chris Hemsworth

Trailer

Y

Thank Gods for that. Anyone giving even a wandering fuck about the state of the Marvel Movie Universe was left bleeding after last year’s Iron Man 2, a frat boy nightmare detailing one man’s valiant battle against a script scribbled on the back of a napkin. Thor redresses those wrongs by actually caring about itself and its audience. The cast’s great (except for Anthony Hopkins), the script’s half-decent (unlike Anthony Hopkins), the sets are ropey (like… that guy.). But whocaresbecause it’s all so likeable, an almost unheard-of quality in the jizz-lobbing money fight that is blockbuster Hollywood today. Two stars are born in the shapely shape of Chris Hemsworth, the man-God who’s made his personal trainer the most hard-working man in the industry as well as his dirty foil Tom Hiddleton, playing Loki as a confused vulpine bastard with an eye on the ultimate villain prize in Joss Whedon’s Avengers next year. It’s fun, in short, while its greatest achievement is to make an uncaring multiplex give as much of a one about a stately race of uptight celestial Vikings as they did for an alcoholic man with a metallic heart. Actually scratch that – its real worth lies in the fact that the blockbuster bar for the summer has been set by Kenneth Branagh, a man whose surname alone makes you want to punch out Shakespeare; well played sir… well played. Though next time write more in the script for Oscar-winner Natalie Portman than ‘Cute up, Doe Eyes.’ Feminism fail, large superhero win.