DISTRICT 9: down and dirty sci-fi with a real edge

In light of Hollywood's enduring fascination with space aliens it's a little surprising to realise that DISTRICT 9 is possibly the first mainstream movie to take the idea of technologically superior extra-terrestials attacking helpless earthlings and turn it on its head.
An enormous spaceship comes to a halt over the South African city of Johannesburg and just hangs there. When the military finally plucks up the courage to take a look on-board they discover hundreds of thousands of frightened malnourished aliens who willingly accept the offer of food and resettlement in a hurriedly built refugee camp just outside the city limits. Flash forward 20 years and the camp has become District 9, an overcrowded slum and the focal point for anger directed by the locals towards the "Prawns" (as the aliens are disparagingly called on account of their appearance). The government hires a shadowy Haliburton-esque private company called Multi-National United (MNU) to evict the aliens and relocate them to a new camp deep in the bush.
Shot in a documentary style and interspersed with tv news footage and comment from expert talking heads DISTRICT 9 chronicles the attempts of MNU, under the ineffectual leadership of field operative Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) to enforce the eviction.
Wikus is a self-centred buffoon more concerned about looking good on camera than performing his job effectively but the series of increasingly horrific events which befall him as the story unfolds force us to radically re-assess our opinion of him.
While Wikus' transformation into a most unlikely hero is at the heart of DISTRICT 9 there's much more going on in this sci-fi docu-thriller than gunfights and state-sanctioned evil doings. Anyone old enough to remember the last 20 years of the apartheid system will recognise the analogy between the treatment of the Prawns and the minority white government's repression of the black majority. District 9 is nothing more than a sub-Soweto township and the Prawns are the new blacks, disenfranchised and exploited by everyone including the gangs of Nigerian thugs who live in their midst.
The message would seem to be that even the oppressed are not beyond oppressing others but DISTRICT 9 is not intended to preach or teach a history lesson. The parallels are there for anyone who cares to think about them but they don't detract from what is an exciting, fast-moving, bloody, violent and visceral piece of cinema. Writer-director Neill Blomkamp has created the grittiest piece of sci-fi cinema since John Carpenter's "The Thing" in 1982, and the fact that he succeeds without star-names, Will Smith-esque one-liners, or resorting to the destruction of New York, Washington DC or Los Angeles simply enhances his achievement.

THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE: it's not as good as the book

If Audrey Niffenegger's debut novel THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE is a three course dinner then director Robert Schwentke's film version is little more than a light snack. It fills a hole but only just and only temporarily.
I'm a fan of the book so it's impossible for more to separate my memories of that from my reaction to the movie. I knew going in that it was highly unlikely that the latter would match up to the former. It's a complaint common to almost anyone who's seen the film adaptation of their favourite novel.
That said, THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE is not bad as romantic dramas go. It passes the time pleasantly enough and the relentless and shameless tugging at the heartstrings will leave you a little moist around the eyes. It's one of those movies that audiences tend to describe as "okay" and "alright."
Eric Bana stars as involuntary time traveler Henry DeTamble. A genetic flaw has left him prone to zapping backwards and forwards in time within the confines of his own life. It allows him to talk to himself as a young child for example, and also to meet Claire, the little girl who will grow up to become his wife.
As the adult Claire, Rachel McAdams is required to do little more than gaze adoringly in soft-focus at Henry and tear up on cue. With her endless tolerance for her husband's frequent and often highly inconvenient disappearances she is what many men would consider to be the perfect woman.
Bana is solid if unmemorable as Henry but that is how the character should be. Henry is an ordinary guy who just happens to have a unique but unwanted talent.The film remains true to the novel in not jazzing up the time-shift experience with production number special effects. The process is as understated as Henry's changing appearance. There's no huge difference in the way he looks at 20 or 39 although the film compensates by having the characters confirm their age in many scenes to help us understand just where he is in time. These time checks are provided far more infrequently in the novel which makes the story considerably more confusing but also gives it greater depth.
This film version does little more than skim the surface of the novel, touching on the key points and ignoring much of the richness and texture. It reduces Henry's life to little more than a series of time-travelling incidents and the mood is considerably more downbeat than I remember the novel being. It's unrealistic to expect a 107 minute movie to do justice to a 560 page novel but if it leaves you with a hankering to pick up the book then the efforts of Bana, McAdams and Schwentke will not have been entirely without purpose.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS: the horror and the innocence

I'm struggling to find words adequate to describe my reaction to THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS. It's a beautiful film about an almost unimaginable horror. I say almost because we should be able to imagine it. There are countless books, eyewitness accounts and hours of newsreel footage to tell us and show us what it was like, yet it was so horrendous that the mind struggles to comprend what our eyes are seeing.
If you thought there was nothing new left to say about the Nazis mass murder of the Jews in camps like Dachau and Treblinka and Auschwitz you have to see this film. It's the most heart wrenching and appalling depiction of the loss of childhood innocence that I have ever seen.
Set in Germany during World War II the story reveals the obscenity of the concentration camps from the viewpoint of an uncomprehending eight year old boy. Bruno (a haunting performance by Asa Butterfield) idolises his brave soldier father (a magnificent portrayal of the banality of evil by David Thewlis). When papa is promoted the family moves to a big, isolated house in the country and Bruno becomes fascinated by the "farm" he can see from his bedroom window and the strange people in striped pyjamas who are working on it. Disobeying his parents' strict instructions not to leave the house Bruno goes exploring and discovers the "farm" is actually some kind of camp surrounded by an electrified barbed wire fence and the stripey clothing is being worn by Jewish prisoners.
We've worked out long before the film confirms it that Bruno's brave father has been promoted to commandant of this concentration camp but this doesn't lessen the impact of the story which unfolds. Quite the contrary, because our realisation early on of what's really going on makes Bruno's innocence and naiveity all the more distressing. How can a child be expected to process the reality of what he's seeing? It has no connection with any of his points of reference. This inability allows him to strike up a friendship with Schmuel, an eight year old Jewish boy he encounters on the other side of the fence, and invite him to join him for a holiday in Berlin once "everyone is getting on with each other again." You won't know whether to laugh or cry at this uncomprehending human kindness in the face of such total hopelessness.
With its extremely uncomfortable juxtapositioning of childhood innocence and unspeakable adult cruelty, THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS puts a human face on the cold facts and figures of the Holocaust. A numbing, emotionally draining experience this film should be required viewing for everyone.

SLITHER: a forgotten gem

I had absolutely no expectations when I slipped SLITHER into the DVD player and turned on the tv. All I knew was that it starred James Caan, Sally Kellerman and Peter Boyle, it was made in 1973 and might be some kind of road movie.
The story had me hooked from the get-go. I had no idea who Caan's character was, where he was going, what part of the country he was in, or even what decade it was, but I definitely wanted to know more (even the poster for the film gives you no idea what to expect!). What made the viewing experience so enjoyable was the way that I found out what was going on at exactly the same time as Caan's character (the aptly named Dick Kanipsia) did. To describe what unfolds would be to spoil your pleasure in discovering it for yourself but suffice to say that Dick finds himself in a situation not of his own making, with very little idea what's going on, but with a growing realisation that if he can figure it all out there could be a very big pay-off for him.
Along the way he falls in with a bunch of off-beat characters who draw him into their weird worlds. Kellerman is a kooky, ever-so-slightly unstable free spirit who's unpredictability constantly catches Dick off-guard, while Boyle and screen wife Louise Lasser (why didn't she get her teeth fixed?!) are a truly bizarre couple with an obsession for Airstream campers and big band music.
Boyle is great, but the real pleasure is Caan playing against type and making it work. He'd been around in movies since the mid 60s but had finally broken into the big time in 1972 as Sonny Corleone in "The Godfather." Having established himself as one of 1970s cinema's toughest tough guys he chose to follow up this success by playing a man who's just as big a scaredy-cat as the rest of us when it comes to physical violence. It's genuinely funny to watch Caan confound our expectations time and time again and do it with such style and humour.
It's Caan's performance that gives SLITHER a legitimate shot at claiming the title of a minor cult classic. It's most definitely a forgotten gem - not quite a diamond but certainly not diamonique either.

WHATEVER WORKS: doesn't

WHATEVER WORKS is Woody Allen's first film set in New York City in five years and it's a huge disappointment.
The story has all the components of a Manhattan based Allen movie but they fail to gel into a satisfying Woody Allen-New York experience. He got his mojo back working in Europe but it appears to have been confiscated by customs on his re-entry to the USA.
Larry David plays the appropriately named Boris Yellnikoff. Boris is a professional cynic-pessimist- misanthrope who spends most of the movie yelling his theories about the pointlessness and worthlessness of life, love and hope. We're all doomed to die, he says, so what's the point trying to make anything out of life? Boris is the character that Allen would have played were he acting in the film, not simply directing it, and if Allen had played him he would have made a better job of it than David does.
David is a talented comedian - he co-created "Seinfeld" and stars in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" - but he struggles to raise a laugh here. He plays Boris as a one-note character, barking out his bile for the world in a loud, grating monotone completely lacking in the inflections necessary to make the lines sound funny.
The other big turn-off is Boris's arrogance. He has a total, uncompromising belief in the rightness of his own pronouncements and will brook no dissent. Allen too has played characters who've professed arrogance but it's been clear that they're trying to convince themself that they're right more than they are anyone else. Allen's belief in himself as a great lover, for example, has often been a cover for his own insecurity. Boris is a neurotic hypochondriac but he is not insecure. He's an insufferable prick who deserves a punch in the mouth.
He's so unlikeable that it strains the credibility of the relationship which develops with Melodie, a 20 year old girl from Mississippi who moves into his apartment and falls in love with him despite his best efforts to be as rude as possible to her. Evan Rachel Wood can't decide whether to play Melodie as a sweet innocent or a dumb blonde from the sticks. One moment she's as thick as two short planks, the next she's spouting perceptive insights into human nature. Where David's performance is annoying, Wood's is unconvincing. Scarlett Johansson would have been a much netter bet in the part of Melodie but I guess Allen wanted a change after casting her in his last three movies.
The overall effect is of watching a film made by a writer-director who's studied Woody Allen's style but lacks his talent. It's neither funny enough to be a pastiche nor clever enough to be an homage. WHATEVER WORKS is tired second-rate Allen; considerably closer to "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" than "Manhattan."