NEW MOON: all filler, no killer

For anyone over the age of 16 NEW MOON is the dreariest possible experience. This second installment in the Twilight triology is a hundred and thirty painful minutes of teenage moping and mumbling interspersed with unfeasibly pumped-up shirtless adolescents (one of whom also appears to have pumped up - or least pumped out - his nose) running around in the rain.

Time slows to an agonising crawl over broken glass as Bella (Kristen Stewart) moons and mopes for scene after scene over her lost vampire love Edward (Robert Pattinson). Almost anyone who's ever been a teenager can identify with the heightened emotions which make separation feel like the end of the world but NEW MOON wallows in the misery with the same demented delight of a pig in you know what. 
By thirty minutes in I was ready to scream out "for god's sake get over it!" but I didn't because I didn't fancy being lynched by the mostly female, softly sniffling audience around me. 
NEW MOON is devoid of the sense of adventure and discovery which made "Twilight" such an enjoyable watch. That film had a beginning, middle and end and looks like "Citizen Kane" in comparison. NEW MOON is all middle. 
Granted there are a couple of moments where the pace drags itself up a notch beyond comatose but these flurries of excitement are so brief and unrewarding that they completely fail to scratch the itch that the film has created. 
Just as Bella and Edward are fated never to get it on, so was I destined for total frustration in my hopes for a satisfying cinematic climax.

MANPOWER: Eddie G blows a fuse over glamorous German

MANPOWER's most impressive achievement is in making the marriage of squat ugly Edward G Robinson to glamorous over-sexed Marlene Dietrich appear almost plausible - almost.
Otherwise this 1941 Warner Brothers drama is pure hokum, but hokum of the solid gold variety.
Robinson plays Hank McHenry, a lineman on a power company road crew  who earns the nickname 'Gimpy' after his foot touches a live wire while 100 feet up a pylon fixing a break during a torrential thunderstorm. Hank's also got a hot temper and short fuse and relies on his best mate Johnny (George Raft) to extricate him from the barroom bust-ups he's constantly getting into, usually over some dame who's given him the brush-off.
Enter Dietrich as the improbably named Fay, a hard-as-nails clip joint hostess and daughter of Hank's terminally dull (and soon to be terminally dead) pal 'Pop' Duval. The quintessentially American Pop talks so slowly and deliberately that he never gets around to explaining how his daughter came to speak with a strong German accent before he pops his clogs leaving Hank to console the not particularly distraught Fay. Hank pursues her with the relentless vigor of a terrier chasing a rabbit down a hole, finally convincing her to yield to his proposal of marriage when he makes it clear that he doesn't expect her to love him in return. 

So what is Johnny doing while all this unlikely wooing is going on? After all if it's a choice between Robinson and Raft one might reasonable expect a woman of Dietrich's stature to opt for Raft who at least looks like he might have some idea how to make her happy even if he can't act. But Robinson clearly had a smarter agent and got it written it his contract that he got the girl while Raft is relegated to the role of hero's loyal best friend whose job it is to give Fay the stinkeye because he knows she's no good. 
The whole implausible menage-a-trois builds up to a fairly predictable climax but there's plenty of enjoyment to be had getting there, starting with Robinson's no-holds-barred performance and Dietrich gamely giving it her all despite being completely wrong for the part (Ann Sheridan would have been a better bet). There's added lustre courtesy of Warner Bros stock company members Alan Hale, Barton MacLane, and Ward Bond which more than offsets Frank McHugh's irritating schtick and trademark asthmatic laugh, while action specialist Raoul Walsh directs with the total conviction of a man determined to prove he can turn a B-picture script into an A-grade movie.
He can't but it's fun watching him try.

ACT OF VIOLENCE: a thriller more taut than something really taut

The name and the face of Robert Ryan should be familiar to any self-respecting admirer of film noir. If you are and they're not you should be ashamed of yourself. Ryan is one of the finest actors ever to grace the genre. He made dozens of movies big and small in the 1940s and 50s in a range of genres and he gave a great performance in everyone one of them but he was never better than when he was prowling the dark streets of film noir-town.
Ryan had a face that was perfect for expressing a tightly coiled anger, bitterness and frustration which could explode into violence at any moment. His expression told us his character's backstory without the need for lengthy exposition - here is a man with a cynical mistrust of anyone who wants to do good; who believes that everyone has a price, and the only way to get ahead is to disregard emotions like compassion, love and consideration for others.
ACT OF VIOLENCE from 1948 is a superb example of his work. Ryan plays Joe Parkson, an embittered ex-soldier out for murderous revenge against his former commanding officer who betrayed an escape attempt by his men to their German captors, resulting in their deaths. Parkson is relentless in his quest and his complete lack of concern for his own welfare makes him an even more unnerving figure.
Van Heflin is equally impressive as the increasingly terrified object of Parkson's obsession. His Frank Enley is a family man, community leader and war hero, hiding a guilty secret from everyone including his naive young wife, played by Janet Leigh. Parkson's reappearance causes a nervous breakdown which takes Enley on a bizarre and disturbing detour through LA's skid row and an encounter with an unrecognisable Mary Astor in a performance so devoid of glamour or beauty that it's disturbing.
Director Fred Zinneman doesn't waste a minute of screen time on unnecessary or self indulgent story-telling. ACT OF VIOLENCE is as taut as a drumskin and totally compelling. In the context of the late 1940s it's also a brave piece of mainstream cinema. At a time when any criticism of the American way of life was increasingly being viewed as unpatriotic and even treasonable, this film dares to suggest that not every American performed nobly and heroically while in uniform; that the pressures of war pushed some to acts of cowardice and treachery, and deformed others mentally as well as physically.
What's even more surprising is that ACT OF VIOLENCE was made by MGM, that flagwaving bastion of patriotic conservatism and home to wholesome stars like Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable and Ava Gardner.
Tension, terror, a gripping tale, and standout performances - this film has it all. ACT OF VIOLENCE is essential viewing for anyone who claims they're serious about cinema.

500 DAYS OF SUMMER: 500 reasons why global warming is a bad thing

500 DAYS OF SUMMER is 450 days too long. 
A Chavy-looking young man called Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) falls in love with beautiful co-worker Summer (Zooey Deschanel). She makes it clear from the start that she's not looking for anything serious but then appears to lead him on before abruptly dumping him. Tom's life goes to hell in a handbasket.
Is she a bitch or is he a deluded fool?
Director Marc Webb jumps backwards and forwards in time across a span of 500 days offering us snapshots of the relationship's peaks and troughs which seem to confirm both assessments.
But Tom and Summer and their "relationship" are all so boringly normal that it's very difficult to summon up any emotional response beyond yawning.
It's a who cares, so what kind of film which desperately wants to be an off-beat rom-com but only succeeds in being dull.

2012: John Cusack gets his Shelley Winters moment

I had to check the date on my cellphone on leaving the cinema just to make sure it wasn't actually 2012. This film goes on an awfully long time without offering one single original idea on the subject of the end of the world but, really, should I have expected anything else from the director of previous end-of-civilisation blockbusters "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow"?
All of the genre's crucial cliches are present and correct. The story opens wide with heads of state and scientists grappling in secret with the impending end before zooming in to make the political personal in the form of a fractured American family. John Cusack is Jackson Curtis, a self-absorbed writer turned chauffeur whose lack of attention to his nearest and dearest - wife Amanda Peet, son Noah and Daughter Lily - has resulted in him losing them to nerdy, unlikeable but wealthy plastic surgeon Gordon. Noah, of course, resents his dad for not being there, while Lily expresses her distress by wearing silly hats and wetting the bed. Believe me, I'm not giving anything away when I suggest that, given this premise, the odds are really pretty good that it'll fall to Jackson to save the world and in the process prove to his disfunctional family that he's worth a second chance.
The story is more predictable than the plot of a pantomime.
Great cities fall in spectacular orgies of CGI destruction, famous landmarks crumble before our eyes, the US President (Danny Glover) demonstrates the kind of selflessness we rarely see in real politicians, and the Curtis family (plus Gordon) enjoy the kind of miraculous good luck that sees them survive countless brushes with death while those all around them succumb to collapsing skyscrapers, earthquakes, car crashes, tsunamis, and stampeding crowds. The only element missing is New York City. 
In an astonishing display of self control director Roland Emmerich deviates from the tried and tested apocalypse movie formula and resists the urge to include scenes of the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and Times Square disappearing beneath a monstrous tidal wave. This unspoken acknowledgment that the graphic dismemberment of Manhattan has been done to death by disaster movies is however his only deviation from the formula.  
That means that while the story is about the destruction of the entire world, the only country that really matters is the United States. Aside from a token nod towards an Indian scientist and his family, the only people who are given anything approaching a rounded character are American. Other nationalities are portrayed as rioting, praying, or hysterical masses devoid of individuality and, therefore, not in need of our sympathy.  
The strict adherence to formula aside, my main gripes are the blatantly in-your-face product placements for Sony's widescreen tvs and Vaio laptops, and Woody Harrelson's scenery chewing performance as an end-of-the-world prophet. Thankfully he's the first one to get smacked in the head by a house-sized chunk of rock proving that justice can prevail even in an apocalypse.

Emmerich deserves credit for stirring this stale collection of ingredients so vigorously that it never has time to congeal into the offensively smelly lump it deserves to be. 2012 hurls He hurls Jackson from one near death experience to the next at the breakneck speed of a themepark rollercoaster ride generating something akin to genuine excitement in the process. Meanwhile US scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who's seen the whole thing coming, runs around saving humanity (the faceless mass variety) while falling in love with the President's daughter (Thandie Newton). Yes it's patently ridiculous but so brazenly so that it's fun.

Emmerich saves the best for last, giving Cusack his Shelley Winters moment just when you thought it couldn't possibly get anymore implausible. If you've seen "The Poseidon Adventure" you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't it's worth digging out a copy of this 35 year old disaster blockbuster to see how Hollywood did it before they had computers to do it for them.
I can't see 2012 being as fondly remembered 35 years from now. It's undemanding escapist fare - and the $65 million opening weekend box office take would suggest there's a big demand for such fare - but there's nothing memorable about it. Fun but forgettable.

CITY OF GOD: hell on Earth

CITY OF GOD is the ironic name given to a housing project built by the Brazilian Government on the outskirts of Rio in the early 60s to house thousands of poor families. It rapidly became a breeding ground for organized crime and drugs, as its younger inhabitants discovered the only way to make something of themselves was with a gun in their hand.

Fernando Meirelles stunning directorial debut takes us through three decades in the life of this real life slum, as seen through the eyes of Rocket, a poor black kid too scared to embark on a life of crime, but too bright to accept his lot.

Through him we follow the rise and fall of his friends and enemies as they struggle to survive. In particular, the film charts the spectacular ascent of L’il Dice from pre-pubescent murderer to city ganglord.

As Rocket battles against fate to stay on the right side of the law, L’il Dice revels in the power of the gun. What starts as something to do to relieve the boredom rapidly becomes a way of life when he discovers it’s the quickest way to win respect and become a man.

But once he’s won that respect the only way to keep it is to carry on killing. One of the film’s most disturbing aspects is the casual attitude to violent death – L’il Dice isn’t the only child who executes gang rivals with the same amount of thought we give to changing our socks.

CITY OF GOD is a bleak, disturbing film, but not without hope or flashes of humour. After watching a newspaper photographer in action at a murder scene, Rocket decides that’s what he wants to do, and he sets about realizing that dream by delivering the papers he hopes one day will print his pictures.

Shot on location in and around the actual City of God, Meirelles has created what big budget American movies like "Traffic" failed to achieve – a genuine sense of realism. There are no big name stars hogging the screen desperate to showcase their acting chops here. Most of the cast were discovered in the slum’s community centers and required little coaching to learn their parts.

Powerful, moving, and emotionally draining, the Rio Convention and Visitors Bureau certainly won’t be a fan of this sprawling epic, but you will.

WICKED AS THEY COME: Arlene's been a very naughty girl

The entire premise of this 1956 melodrama depends on convincing the viewer that Arlene Dahl is so irresistibly beautiful that the briefest glimpse of her will turn grown men as solid, dependable and dull as Herbert Marshall into dribbling fools totally unable to control their baser instincts.

Measured by this self-imposed yardstick WICKED AS THEY COME falls at the first hurdle.
Miss Dahl is differentiated from the hundreds of other bottle blondes that Hollywood has tried to foist on us over the decades as the next Jean Harlow or the next Marilyn Monroe solely by the very prominent mole clinging to her upper lip.
Even minus the mole she's just another averagely attractive actress with few outstanding assets in the physical or talent departments and that averageness is just compounded by her character's lack of personality.
Dahl plays Kathy Allen, a poor but beautiful factory worker living in the slums of Boston, MA, who wins a rigged beauty contest (having bewitched the judges) and uses the prize of $1000 and a trip to Europe to reinvent herself and snare a man with the money to keep in the style she believes she deserves. 
You'll guess from the film's 95 minute running time that she doesn't snare him the moment she steps off the plane in London. She has to work her way through several other men first, including the dull and dependable Marshall before she reaches the man with the really big wad. But all the while that she's wrecking careers and marriages she keeps returning to tough-guy advertising exec Tim O'Bannion, played like a send-up of an actual tough guy by a perpetually trenchcoat-clad Phil Carey.
Kathy Allen is like Barbara Stanwyck in "Babyface" without any of Stanwyck's charisma or style. Her paucity of allure simply makes the men who fall for her look like even bigger fools than they're supposed to be.
The film, however, does offer plenty of other distractions to keep us occupied and entertained. They start with the attempt by Sid James to sound like an American, which is slightly more convincing than director Ken Hughes' efforts to pass off the suburbs of south west London as Boston, Massachusetts. Add to that the aircraft which changes model in mid-flight (the stock footage of the plane taking off and landing doesn't match the film of the aircraft in flight), and the beauty competition organised by a very smalltime fashionware trade magazine run by a dad and his son out of a basement but which manages to get its grand final shown live on tv. That might explain why the trip to Europe part of the big prize only goes as far as London and doesn't include paying for stay in a swanky Mayfair hotel. And did I mention the cast of British actors who can't sustain an American accent for the duration of an entire sentence? 
Shoehorning big name American stars on the slide into British made movies was all the rage in the 1950s. For the waning stars it offered the kind of paycheck they were no longer being offered in the States, and their name above the title helped British studios to sell their product in the US. But the two elements rarely fitted together comfortably. The American stars were just too big and too Hollywood to be convincing in small, cheap, drab British made stories with their low production values.  
There is a perverse pleasure in watching this mismatch in action. WICKED AS THEY COME has it by the bucketload and it's that which kept me watching.

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS: almost as much fun as it sounds

The plot of THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS is as bizarre as its title.
Briefly put, it involves Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a smalltown newspaper journalist who travels to Iraq in search of adventure and an opportunity to prove his worth to his cheating wife. There he hooks up with Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) a mysterious special ops guy on a mission who regales Bob with tall tales about a secret US army battalion trained to fight using paranormal powers instead of guns.
The plot though is less important than the way in which it unfolds. It's Clooney's deadpan delivery of ridiculous explanations and McGregor's understandably bewildered reaction, together with the numerous slyly humorous flashbacks which illustrate Clooney's story which make THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS worth watching. Getting there is more fun than arriving because the climax is distinctly anti-climactic. 
All the air goes out of the story when the two finally reach the end of their quest. The quirky sense of humour is replaced with a deadening seriousness. It's as if director Grant Heslov and producer Clooney have decided it's not enough simply for their film to entertain; it must have a message as well. The abrupt shift in mood and pace is not just unsettling, it ruins the whole party, erasing the memories of the good time I was having just a few minutes earlier.
GOATS is a minor entry in the Clooney canon. It bears all the hallmarks of his slightly subversive sense of humour but it's not in the same league as "Burn After Reading" or "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" although it will definitely remind you of them. Cassady is yet another Clooney character who may or may not be all that he claims to be, but is most certainly not the hero of the story despite Clooney's star billing. That role goes to Jeff Bridges as a most unconventional US Army officer who recruits and trains the battalion of psychic warriors.
Amusing rather than laugh out loud funny with a decidedly off-beat sense of humour that some will find off-putting, THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS is an acquired taste which may find more success at the art house than the multiplex. 

MALAYA: one swansong and one very odd couple

I had one reason only to watch MALAYA - Sydney Greenstreet. This 1949 MGM War World Two drama (known as "East of the Rising Sun" in the UK) features the final screen appearance of my all-time favourite character actor, and I wanted to see how he signs off.
I have no idea whether he knew at the time that this would be his last movie, but he goes out in a reasonable amount of style. Playing a character called "The Dutchman" even though there's nothing remotely Dutch about him, he effortlessly dominates every scene he's in, which is no small accomplishment given that he sharing the screen with co-stars of the calibre of Spencer Tracy and James Stewart. 
Despite this it's certainly not an outstanding performance. The Dutchman is little more than a watery retread of his Senor Ferrari in "Casablanca" and Greenstreet seems rather listless. It was illness which prompted his retirement and it's possible that he was unwell at the time of shooting, although it's hard to be sure since the tropical setting requires that he look sweaty all the time.  
Aside from Greenstreet's swansong, the only other element of any interest in MALAYA is the unusual pairing of Tracy and Stewart. The two stars get equal billing in the opening titles and it's Stewart who does the early running as a journalist with a plan to steal a large amount of desperately needed rubber from under the noses of the Japanese forces occupying Malaya.
To close the deal Stewart needs the help of a con called Carnaghan, played by Tracy. 
This is where the only other item of interest comes in, because the moment he first appears on screen he grabs the film off Stewart and never hands it back. Stewart wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders to begin with but when Tracy appears he simply gives up completely, relegating himself to a colourless supporting role which could have been played by any number of lesser lights in MGM's sizeable stable of star names.
What makes this situation even more bizarre is that the character of Carnaghan is not even a comfortable fit for Tracy. Carnaghan's a supremely confident, two-fisted ladies man with no conception of danger. He treats the Japanese military like a bunch of third rate punks who just need to have their collective ass whupped a couple of times to understand who's boss. While everyone around him's focusing on the deadly serious subject of trying to win World War Two, Tracy's playing the whole thing for laughs.
To add insult to Stewart's injury it's also Tracy who gets to get the girl, even though he looks more like Valentina Cortese's grandfather than her lover. 
MALAYA really is a bad deal all round for Stewart.