5 Simpsons movies that need to be made

The Simpsons Movie wasn’t great, but the TV show is a yellow goldmine of movies that are just crying out to be made. Here are 5 Simpsons spoof movies I’d like to see made for real:

1) Colonel Dracula Joins the Navy

From: Season 8, The Old Man and the Lisa

Who’d star?

I see this one as a Leslie Nielsen vehicle. I’m one of four guys worldwide who enjoyed Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and think it’s about time Lt. Drebin gave his cape a good airing.

2) Blacula Meets Black Dracula

From: Season 16, All’s Fair in Oven War

Who’d star?

I’d love to see Carl Weathers and Bill Cosby in this one, teaming up to stop a crooked developer from turning their disco into a ‘honkey rink’.

3) McBain 4: Fatal Discharge

From: Season 7, A Fish Called Selma

Who’d star?

We’ve seen from Junior that the Governator has the acting chops to pull off a big-screen discharge. Could he be persuaded to step into the shoes of Reiner Wolfcastle?

Men-do-zaaaaa!

4) The Muppets go Medieval

From: Season 7, A Fish Called Selma

Who’d star?

The surviving Muppets - it’s only a matter of time until they get around to it. The real question is which flesh and blood actor could possibly measure up to Troy Mcclure?

5) Christmas Ape goes to Summer Camp

From: Season 8, The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show

Who’d star?

I’m so sad to say it, but this one has Christopher Lloyd written all over it. Christmas Ape would have the voice of Adam Sandler, and there’s probably room for Whoopi Goldberg in there somewhere. Provided she wasn’t too busy with the Muppets.

Zombieland

Review: Zombieland

Dir. Ruben Fleischer, USA, 2009, cert. 15, 87 mins

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Abigail Stone

Some movies are criminally missold. Zombieland is such a movie. It’s not really a zombie film at all - it’s a surreal road comedy in which a lot of people’s heads come off.

Ever since Romero invented the zombie genre, imitators have been trying to put their own spin on what’s usually the same basic setup; in doing so they forget that Romero’s early zombie flicks weren’t just about zombies - they had their rotten hands deep in the intestines of society. Night of the Living Dead spoke about racism; Dawn of the Dead about consumerism. Zombieland is the first zombie film I’ve seen in a while that isn’t just about zombies. It’s about a few things. It’s about America. It’s about fear. But mostly, it’s about other people.

From the hilarious opening sequence of a wheezing fat man failing to outrun the ravenous zombie that’s chasing him across a football pitch, it’s clear that Zombieland’s tongue is poking straight through its decomposed cheek. For obvious reasons, a voiceover explains, the fatties are the first to go. This voice belongs to Columbus (Eisenberg), a smart-ass student who’s afraid of... pretty much everybody. He’s a walking picture of modern alienation. Zombieland is Scream for the zombie genre. It’s a movie for everyone who’s ever watched Day of the Dead and yelled ‘check the back seat!’ or ‘make sure it’s dead!’ at the screen. Columbus knows all the rules, and that’s why he’s still alive.

On his way across America to find his folks, Columbus bumps into Woody Harrelson’s Tallahassee. Whereas the misanthropic Columbus shuns society, Tallahassee, a surly zombie-killing machine, is positively hooked on all things Americana. His only real goal is to get hold of a twinky, the tacky snack-cake that has sustained American children for generations. He loves Willie Nelson. He worships celebrities. He drives monstrous SUVs - the kind that rappers drive, but splattered with blood. Oh wait... Anyway, the guys also hook up with two wandering con-artist sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin), and the bonding commences. And with a razor-sharp script, it’s very entertaining.

Zombieland is violent, but it’s more Wile-E-Coyote than 28 Days Later. Zombies are smashed, crushed and otherwise maimed with gleeful aplomb. One gets a grand piano on the head, for God’s sake. Eisenberg raises plenty of smiles, but Harrelson owns the film completely. Strolling into a supermarket, he strums on a banjo; ‘you got a purty mouth!’, he drawls, embedding the instrument in a corpse’s skull. Tallahassee is fluent in movie trivia, and Zombieland is chock full of neat little references. When the guys arrive in LA and need somewhere to bunker down, they of course head straight for the celebrities’ houses; fortified mansions set apart from the rampaging zombie hordes (somewhere in there is a subtext about movie fans that I’m not entirely comfortable with). This leads to the funniest celebrity-playing-himself cameo I’ve seen in a long time, though it’s hardly surprising given who we’re talking about. I can’t spoil this. It’s too good.

Above all, Zombieland is damn funny, and has a heart as big as your fist. Comparisons to Shaun of the Dead are inevitable, and not undeserved. But whereas Shaun was a movie about taking charge of your life, Zombieland - both the film and the land - is a joy that’s best when shared. Columbus might have his rulebook, but what really saves his ass is his kooky surrogate family. America may be little more than a memory, but there’s plenty worth living for in Zombieland.

8/10

-James

Up

Review: Up

USA, 2009, Cert U Dir. Pete Docter, Bob Peterson

96 mins. Cast: Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer

Up is a masterpiece.

Not only that, but Up succeeds against the odds. Conceptually it’s Pixar’s weakest offering yet: It’s not about monsters, or robots, or toys. It’s about Carl Fredericksen. Carl is 78 years old with a walking frame and a house full of faded memories, primarily of his beloved wife Ellie. Ellie just died, and her loss is something that you’ll feel for the duration of the film. This is thanks to one of the greatest opening montages I have ever seen, animated or otherwise. Critics have been swooning over this one for weeks, and it’s my turn to join them. It’s the condensed life story of Carl and Ellie, from their first meeting as kids drunk on tales of ‘adventure’ to a closing image of old Carl sitting alone by a table of condolence messages. It’s the most affecting 20 minutes I’ve seen this year.

If you’ve seen a poster for Up, you know the story. Using hundreds of coloured balloons, Carl floats away in his sad little house (hey, it’s better than the Shady Oaks retirement village). But Up is not about a floating house. It’s about Carl. Carl clings to his house like a drowning man to a rock. He needs his stuff, and he has a lot of it. Photographs, scrapbooks, ornaments, furniture - it’s a chintzy museum dedicated to a life that ended when Ellie died. And he’s terrified of letting go. When Carl realises that the two of them never achieved their shared dream of adventuring in South America (his life in montage is full of mundane joys, but none of them involve what he considers to be ‘adventure’), he finds a way to get there without leaving his fully-furnished mausoleum. Did I mention that Carl is a balloon salesman?

The storytelling in Up is nothing short of masterful. Carl is painted so lovingly and with such clarity that it’s impossible not to feel for the cranky old coot. Ed Asner’s voice work is just perfect, right down to the irritated little grunts that make up half of his vocabulary. Despite himself, Carl charms not only the audience but also Russell (Jordan Nagai), a wide-eyed, slow-witted boy scout who happens to be on Carl’s porch when the house lifts off. Russell is part of a small supporting cast that also boasts a talking dog and an LSD-flavoured flamingo straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon.

At once crushingly sad and outrageously funny, Up’s laughs range from classic slapstick to a sublime musical montage set to Bizet (the whole score is first rate). One thing Up lacks is ‘zingy’ dialogue. Thank Christ! Am I the only one who’s sick to death of smart-ass zebras and neurotic penguins? Up’s delicate, honest humour is part of its irresistible charm. Equally satisfying are the action sequences, perfectly paced and choreographed and a thousand times more gripping than the cgi brain damage of the summer’s top action flicks. A briefly-glimpsed thunderstorm into which Carl and Russell accidentally drift might even out-rumble the whirling ocean maelstrom of Miyazaki’s Ponyo.

Up is visual poetry. It speaks on many different levels woven into an outstandingly complete cinematic experience. Most of Carl’s life whizzes by us in a few minutes, but you can feel the passing years as though you’re there with him, and that’s what gives the rest of the movie such a wonderful weight and texture. Carl’s hermit crab-like dependency on his house is never telegraphed; it’s just there, plain as the big round nose on his face. Russell isn’t just bumbling comic relief; he’s a real kid, and he has a sad story of his own that he can barely articulate. But Up can.

See Up as soon as possible, as many times as you can. Whimsical but not saccharine, tight but not contrived, it’s smart, it’s funny and it’s beautiful. It’s also strikingly mature. This is a kids’ movie, but not one in which everyone’s dreams come true. It’s one founded in disappointment and regret, but which then lifts this sadness into a glorious statement about the malleability of dreams. There are new ones out there that Carl just didn’t know about yet. You can tell when a film has been made with love; Up is such a film.

10/10

- James

Surrogates

Review: Surrogates

USA, 2009, cert. PG13. Dir. Jonathan Mostow, 104 mins. Cast: Bruce Willis, Rosamund Pike, James Cromwell

What if you could live a rich and fulfilling life from the comfort of an armchair? If you could escape the limitations of your feeble, pasty body, would you? What exactly does it mean to be human? Surrogates asks some interesting questions.

Surrogates also fails to answer any of them.

In the not too distant future, people, including Bruce Willis’ dour-faced detective, live their whole lives through robotic avatars. These robots can be tailored, like mail-order sex dolls, to look any way the operator chooses. The user zones out in a ‘stim chair’ and enjoys life without the bodily inconveniences of creaking joints, foul odours or chronic ugliness. When a user somehow dies as a result of using his ‘surrogate’, frowny old Willis is called in to investigate.

In the rare moments when he’s not plugged into his surrogate, the real Willis is a bald schlub who shuffles around his apartment in a soiled dressing gown. Surrogate Willis is an airbrushed robotic gigolo with an inexplicable smear of yellow doll hair. But neither has the charisma or sex appeal of a young Bruce Willis. Willis turns in another lazy rehash of the unhappy policeman routine that has become his wearisome trademark. Rosamund Pike isn’t bad as his surrogate-addicted wife, a paranoid shutin who never leaves her room, but their relationship is paper-thin and about as convincing as that hair. That horrible, horrible hair.

Surrogates is riddled with plot holes. Surrogates are seen working office jobs in which they operate computers remotely. Why would anyone send a robot to the office to do a job that they themselves could do from home? Then there’s a bunch of separatists who think that surrogates are the work of the devil and live in a technology-free ghetto in the middle of town (think Ommish). It looks like a set from one of the cheaper Mad Max movies. Why? I don’t bloody know. The less said about the villain, who does bad things for no reason whatsoever, the better. The action sequences are lame and cheap; surrogates fighting a war in some nonspecific sandy country look like crash test dummies mincing around a Doctor Who quarry.

There are plenty of movies that ask similar questions in much more succinct and interesting ways. Hell, Robocop is a more nuanced ghost-in-the-machine story. In fact somewhere, in some dimly lit bedroom, Blade Runner is probably slumped in a stim chair, covered in cookie crumbs, afraid to leave the house. The pitiful robot impostor that’s currently lurching around our cinemas is called Surrogates.

4/10

-James

Funny People

Review: Funny People

USA, 2009, cert 15, 146 mins. Dir. Judd Apatow. Cast: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman

Adam Sandler in a movie about a bloated, unfunny comedy actor whose lust for cash long ago eclipsed his talent? Good move. Someone needs to hook Judd Apatow up with Steve Martin.

Watching Funny People is like watching Adam Sandler joining a support group comprised entirely of comedians. This might be the smartest thing Sandler ever did. He still isn’t terribly funny, but by surrounding himself with the likes of Jonah Hill and Sarah Silverman the guy manages to become entertaining by osmosis. The film is stuffed with endless comedy cameos that range from next big thing Aziz Ansari to, inexplicably, Ray Romano (in some parallel universe of infinite suck this movie exists as a buddy comedy starring Sandler and Romano). Sandler’s integration into this crowd is jarring, but there’s no denying that hanging out with the cool kids is the best exposure he could ask for.

Sandler plays George Simmons, a comedian turned actor who stinks, big time. He’s Eddie Murphy. He’s Mike Myers. But more than anyone, he’s Adam Sandler. George is an obscenely successful movie star and a miserable failure of a human being. An opening montage of gonzo phone gags suggests that the guy may once have been edgy and dangerous, (although none of this footage is actually funny). But these days George slithers about his beachfront mansion screwing supermodels amid mountains of merchandising trash spun off from his rancid movies. When he learns that he has a rare blood disease that is probably going to kill him, George makes an effort to mend his ways, or at least to figure out where it all went wrong. One of his first moves is to hire struggling standup Ira (a spazzy, wide-eyed Seth Rogen) to write jokes for him, sell his dozens of sports cars and talk to him as he falls asleep.

Ira lives with two fellow comedians named Leo and Mark, played by Jason Schwartzman and Jonah Hill. And given that his best friends are two fellow thoroughbreds from Apatow’s stable, it’s a little weird to see Rogen idolising Adam Sandler of all people. Ira is initially thrilled to bits to be a part of George’s life of hollywood despair, but before long is made to understand just how much of a dick the guy really is. Rogen overplays Ira’s golly-gee it’s my hero innocence something awful, but there’s no denying that the big lunk is as lovable as George is vile.

Is Funny People funny? Undeniably. Some of the best stuff comes from Rogen’s roommates. Schwartzman in particular is a riot, playing a young comedian who has peaked too early and is being paid royally to star on TV in a comedic turd of epic proportions. Rogen does alright for himself, despite being outshone by his buddies. Even Sandler manages to raise a smile, if only by being game enough to poke fun at himself. And boy, he gets poked until he’s sore. Clips from George’s craptacular movies (George as a cgi baby, George as a cgi mermaid) are so close to some of Sandler’s own crimes against funny that you almost feel bad for him.

Less hilarious is Eric Bana (who also started out as a standup) as the beefy Aussie husband of George’s long lost love (Leslie Mann), in a third act that drags on way too long. By the end you’ll be wishing that George’s terminal illness would just get its ass in gear. Funny People also suffers from some very clumsy product placement by Apple, who apparently produce every piece of technology in the world. Ironic, since the film is so determined to paint George Simmons as a no-good sellout.

This is by far the most ambitious of Apatow’s films to date, and is certainly the most flawed. Some of the tongue in cheek winks at the world of comedy come off as forced and smug, and some of the cameos are just confusing (Eminem? James Taylor?). The film crams in so many hot young comedy actors you can’t help but feel as though you’re being cheated of some of their best stuff; I for one would’ve liked to see more of Jonah Hill. Also, it’s never clear whether George Simmons is supposed to be a funny guy offstage; either way, he isn’t. How can Sandler admit that so many of his films suck and yet keep performing the same lousy schtick?

Funny People is uneven but highly entertaining, and is definitely up there with the year’s top comedies. It’s worth watching just to see Adam Sandler removed from his fetid comfort zone (alright, I kind of liked Punch Drunk Love). Who knows, maybe Apatow will someday be the one to lure Eddie Murphy out of his latex fatsuit. We can always dream.

7/10

-James

Terminator: Salvation

Review: Terminator Salvation

Dir. McG

Cert. 12a

115 mins

2009

Finally, the future has arrived. Since 1984 the Terminator franchise has been promising armageddon, and Terminator Salvation takes the long-awaited plunge. And you know what? The end of the world was a great idea.

It’s 2018, and John Connor has finally grown out of his larval stages (Edward Furlong and Nick Stahl) and into Christian Bale. Connor has become the prophesised leader of the human resistance, fighting a war against living computer Skynet and its army of murderous Terminator robots. This is the main event; the reason why Arnie spent two movies trying to protect a snotty kid and one trying to ‘terminate’ his mother’s pregnancy. And the film doesn’t disappoint. This is largely due not to Connor, but to Sam Worthington’s Marcus Wright. Marcus is a mysterious (and beefy) man without a past, whose last memory is of being executed back in 2003, and who is undoubtably the heart of the film.

The film realises that Connor works better as a myth than as a man. Terminator: Salvation dares to sidestep the intimidating destiny set up for him by the previous movies, placing the extremely grave and slightly boring Bale in a supporting role, and the gamble pays off. The film belongs to Marcus, who becomes the guardian of a young Kyle Reece. Terminator devotees will realise that this future is as dependent on Reece as it is on Connor - Reece is, of course, the man who has yet to travel back in time to father Connor. The human race depends on Reece surviving for long enough to have unprotected sex with a circa-1984 Linda Hamilton, and then get beaten to death by a circa-1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger. Life is a series of compromises...

It’s the first entry in the franchise to venture outside of its own imagined history, which had, frankly, dragged on for one film too many. There are some cute nods to the Terminator mythos, but they don’t turn into parody like Arnie’s embarrassing turn in Rise Of The Machines. The tantalising glimpses of the future from the other films are expanded into a full-blown dystopian universe with a strong story, solid performances (Worthington is a great action hero) and stunning special effects. Terminators frolic in deserted city streets, as relentless and intense as ever; huge robots roam the wastes scooping up people for loopy sci-fi experiments and mechanical eels prowl the rivers and lakes. And even the eels are pretty cool.

The Terminator movies will never be what they once were. The Terminator was a lean, mean, high-concept flick about a metal monster hiding inside an Austrian monster. Terminator 2 was a game-changing event for summer action movies in terms of star power, effects and scale. Terminator 3 was a disastrous, half-assed stab at replicating the magic of the earlier films. Terminator: Salvation doesn’t make this mistake, forging its own path as a simple, old-fashioned summer popcorn flick that does pretty much everything right.

From the outside, the Terminator franchise looked flabby and worn-out. Terminator: Salvation burns away the saggy flesh to reveal a surprisingly fresh and polished action movie. And if these films have taught us anything, it’s that it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

7/10

-James

District 9

District 9

USA, 2009, cert 15, director: Neill Blomkamp, 112 minutes. Cast: Sharlto Copley, Vanessa Haywood

Take City of God, fill it with the bugs from Starship Troopers and throw in a ton of gross body horror that’s straight out of The Fly, and you’ve got District 9. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of concepts and images, but Neill Blomkamp stitches the creature together with such precision that it doesn’t lurch or moan. It glides, and it sings.

A flying saucer appears over Johannesburg, but when human scientists finally pluck up the courage to cut their way inside, it’s more like the New Orleans Superdome after hurricane Katrina than anything from Close Encounters or 2001. My God... it’s full of shit! Nicknamed ‘prawns’ by the unsympathetic locals, thousands of destitute ETs are tossed into a shanty town where they pawn their ray guns to feed their cat food addiction. Don’t judge them, we’ve all been there...

Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is a middle-management drip sent to trick the ghetto prawns into signing documents so that their forced eviction looks a little less like what it is. Sure, he torches a few fetuses, and he raps on the aliens’ shack doors like the hellish spawn of Inglorious Basterds’ Jew Hunter and the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but he’s not a bad man. He’s just a moron. Then one day he’s sprayed with a weird alien goop, and before long Wikus starts going through some serious changes.

Copley’s stellar performance makes Wikus’ transformation far more real than the film’s formidable special effects ever could. It’s absolutely necessary too, in order to give the silly little dork any depth or emotional resonance. Wikus, goes from laughing stock to action hero within the space of about an hour, and it’s totally, rivetingly credible. Not an easy feat when your costar is a six-foot computer generated prawn, but Copley pulls it off magnificently. The design of the prawns is equally perfect; they’re utterly alien, but there’s a nuance to their movements and expressions that suggests a genuine soul. You really feel for the poor, stinking buggers.

Of course, the movie is all about apartheid. This is old-school sci-fi, making us see familiar problems from new perspectives. Racial hatred is more palatable if you throw in a few prawns. Peter Jackson’s influence is felt throughout; the sci-fi elements aren’t thrust at the audience as an empty spectacle - every special effect and futuristic flourish has a purpose, and the result is a clever, satisfying movie experience with action sequences that are more thrilling than most of the summer’s cash-bloated epics.

Wikus winds up with body parts that don’t match, but he’s far better off that way. And that’s District 9 all over. After Moon I thought that we’d had this year’s quota of cool, intelligent science fiction, but I was wrong. District 9 is sensational.

8/10

-James

Ponyo

Review: Ponyo

Japan, 2008, cert U, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki. 100 minutes. Cast: Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Noah Lindsey Cyrus, Frankie Jonas

The downside to being a bona fide genius with a reputation for producing masterpieces is that your audience becomes spoiled. Miyazaki’s latest is lovely. Of course.

Sosuke (Jonas) is a little boy who lives with his mother on a cliff by the sea. It’s not just any sea, of course; it’s Miyazaki’s sea, the most vibrantly animated ocean I’ve seen since Monstro the whale swallowed Pinocchio. It’s not Disney’s sea, which as we know is full to the gills with calypso crabs, cute clownfish and Angela Lansbury, but a foaming blue maelstrom of frightening beauty. Miyazaki, famous for his love of the sky, has turned his hand to the ocean with breathtaking results. This sea is also home to Sosuke’s father (Damon), captain of a ship, and to Ponyo, who is... less easily defined.

Ponyo (Cyrus) is some kind of humanoid goldfish girl who happens upon Sosuke one day while he’s playing by the shore. Picking her up in his plastic bucket, Sosuke immediately and unquestioningly falls in love with Ponyo, and the two embark on a thoroughly trippy adventure. Sosuke and Ponyo love eachother with a childish intensity that is both moderately insane and positively enchanting. The film doesn’t try to do anything terribly complicated, but it doesn’t need to; for one thing, it’s aimed at a very young but very lucky audience. Ponyo is such a visually rich movie that kids will be absorbed right from the opening credits (as always with Ghibli films these are a delight). It’s the cinematic equivalent of being wrapped up in a warm blanket, a world in which the most mundane sequences are so lovingly rendered that it’s impossible not be swept up. Whether it’s Sosuke’s father telling his wife that he loves her by blinking a morse code message across the dark sea, or Ponyo messily eating noodles for the first time, the film manages to inject tangible joy into every scene. Every scrap of Sosuke’s little town is brought to life by the film’s meticulous attention to detail, and the result is a world you could almost reach out and touch. There’s a wonderful honesty at work in these simple sequences that almost outshines the raging sea just beyond Sosuke’s garden fence.

Ponyo’s dad (Liam Neeson) is an ill-defined sea wizard straight out of Yellow Submarine, and her mother (Cate Blanchett) is a 100 foot tall ocean goddess, the story revolving around Ponyo’s wish to become human so that she can be with Sosuke. There’s no great philosophical battle here - she simply wants it with a mad, childish zeal that is all too familiar to anyone who has kids. Sosuke too acts like a real five year old, and typically of a Miyazaki hero learns self-reliance and responsibility in the course of his loopy escapades.

Impressively for such a weird movie, Ponyo doesn’t talk down to kids... but it sure isn’t afraid to baffle them. As with Howl’s Moving Castle, story takes a back seat to the awesome visuals. That’s the one downside to Ponyo, and it’s one I saw coming; a lot of it just doesn’t make much sense. The third act is simply mystifying, and like Howl the film ends so abruptly you’ll walk out wondering who decided to cut the last 20 minutes. It’d be more tolerable if we hadn’t already seen that Miyazaki is more than capable of weaving a great story into his gorgeous imagery (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke). But it’s entirely possible that there’s a sublime kiddie logic at work here that’s lost on an old guy like me.

If you know who Miyazaki is, you’ll be seeing this movie regardless. If you don’t, Ponyo will show you why you should. He builds worlds of such texture and substance that they dizzy the senses, even if they’re not always the most accessible. Dive in.

7/10

-James

Moon

Review: Moon

UK 2009, cert 15. Dir. Duncan Jones. 97 minutes. Cast: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey

Moon. Once in a blue one, we get intelligent, considered, beautiful science fiction movies.

Sam Rockwell rattles off a virtuoso performance as Sam Bell, a lone space-miner stuck in a small moonbase. Sam’s mind-numbing job is to keep track of the base’s largely automated systems, with only GERTIE, the base’s motherly artificial intelligence, for company. Unsurprisingly, Sam starts to go a little bonkers and winds up crashing his lunar rover. And then things get weird (I refuse to spoil this clever little movie).

Rockwell’s Bell is an endearingly optimistic guy who makes the most of his lousy lot, but he’s clearly getting a bad case of the space-crazies. Sam’s due to return to earth in two weeks’ time, desperate to reconnect with his wife and a daughter he’s never met. The base is plastered with photos of his loved ones, and Sam has spent interminable hours whittling a model town that sits proudly on some upturned crates. He’s a guy in a vacuum, desperately trying to populate his alien environment with something familiar. It’s sad, funny and touching, and Rockwell plays it magnificently. There’s a breathtaking loneliness to every sequence in which he climbs into his lightly soiled spacesuit and trundles off into the darkness. Is there any wonder the poor guy turned to whittling?

There were moments when I worried that the film was going to turn into some kind of 2001 pastiche - there’s ornate furniture sitting in a bleached white room, a bright yellow quilted spacesuit that’s straight out of Kubrick’s wardrobe and a computer that just won’t open the bloody doors. But Moon is bold enough to follow its own trajectory, with a plot that’s fascinating, creepy and moving. And Sam Rockwell... wow.

This is what science fiction is supposed to do.

9/10

-James

Bruno

Review: Bruno

Dir. Larry Charles

81 Minutes

2009

Cert. 18

I knew Borat. Borat was a friend of mine. And you, Bruno, are no Borat.

All the time I was with Bruno, I was thinking of someone else; Borat, doing a better job. The shtick is closely related to that of Sacha Baron Cohen’s other, more famous alter-ego. Like Borat, Bruno exploits the vices and prejudices that simmer below the surface of modern America. Ironically, the corrosively sexual Bruno is no match for Borat when it comes to teasing out salacious foibles. The bumbling oaf from Khazakstan performed the sensual act of satire with far more delicacy than this shrieking pantomime of homosexuality. I never felt any sympathy for Borat’s victims - they were pretty much all asking for it. But it’s hard not to pity a lot of the people jumped by Bruno.

Borat may have been a homophobic anti-semite who screwed his sister. He may have crapped in a plastic grocery bag at a dinner party. But he never meant any harm. This was the beauty of Borat - it was almost impossible for his targets to question the unspeakable things he said and did, because Borat was innocent. He elicited more tolerance than his terrible views merited because he was a foreigner who ‘just didn’t know better’. The hideous blue suit and the manic, over-friendly smile - it all worked to inform people what a poor, ignorant soul this boob was, and made them let their guard down. How can we question the political views of a man with such an unfashionable moustache? Poor guy.

Nobody could feel sorry for Bruno. Firstly, he’s the host of an insipid Austrian fashion TV show called ‘Funkyzeit’, which informs us that this season ‘Autism is in’. It’s not even a pastiche of MTV. It is MTV. There’s really no parodying a channel that runs a reality TV show about Hulk Hogan’s daughter. Secondly, Bruno, a kind of gay bogeyman, is too vain and bombastic to accommodate the gems that some of his victims come out with. In an audition for babies to appear in a tasteless photoshoot with Bruno’s adopted son ‘OJ’, one eager dad declares that his young son ‘loves’ being around lit phosphorous. It’s unbearably funny, but there’s just not enough space for this stuff in the movie. How can such run-of the-mill atrocities compete with the sight of Bruno and his assistant shackled together in bondage gear, shuffling through a hate march organised by the delightful people who protest at the funerals of soldiers because ‘God hates fags’?

The gay angle doesn’t work perfectly either. Sure, it’s wrong for people to be intimidated purely by someone else’s sexual orientation, just as it was wrong for people to join in with the second verse of ‘throw the Jew down the well’. But is it as wrong to be intimidated by a man lunging at you with a dildo flopping around in each hand? The people that react badly to him aren’t really reacting badly to gays - just to Bruno.

This said, Bruno remains riotously funny. The film isn’t as acutely targeted as Borat, and makes a furtive stab at a whole kaleidoscope of modern nightmares, ranging from celebrity adoptions to ‘leaked’ sex tapes. Bruno’s attempt to seduce presidential candidate Ron Paul on film does not go well; ‘oops’, he coyly intones as his trousers slip down around his ankles. It’s also a little obvious that some scenes are staged. One standout moment that could not have been set up, however, sees Bruno inform the leader of the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades (who is now hopping mad at being depicted as a terrorist) that Osama Bin Laden looks like ‘a homeless Santa Claus’ as he asks to be kidnapped for publicity purposes. Say what you will, Baron Cohen has balls. In fact, you get to see them in a pilot Bruno produces for US TV, swinging rhythmically to pounding techno music. The test screening returns the verdict ‘worse than cancer’.

Bruno is a strong contender for funniest movie of the year. It’s just a shame that Baron Cohen doesn’t allow the targets of his setups to provide more of the laughs, relying too heavily on Bruno’s shrillness and hyper-camp. Bruno is a vile, vile man and works better when provoking people into saying terrible things than as the star in his own right. His squealing Germanic twang, punctuated by an unsettling giggle, becomes pretty grating pretty fast and doesn’t measure up to Borat’s loopy lilt. The endless gay sex gags (as in jokes) also wear a little thin.

Bruno, it’s been fun. But I never want to see you again.

7/10

-James

Watchmen

Review:Watchmen

Dir. Zach Snyder

2009

Runtime: 162 mins

Cert. 18

Watching the Watchmen is thrilling, but can also be difficult. Not just because they represent the uncomfortable unravelling of the superhero, one of our most enduring modern myths; the film, although often dazzling, is also a dizzying, unforgiving torrent of cinema that can be as nauseating as it is intoxicating.

Boldly setting itself up in an alternate 1985, in which rising cold war tensions threaten the world with fiery Armageddon, Watchmen concerns a screwed-up bunch of retired superheroes doing their best to solve a murder and stop the superpowers from nuking us all to kingdom come. And by ‘screwed up’, I mean in ways beyond struggling to pluck up the courage to ask Mary Jane to the high school dance. Take the Comedian (Jeffery Dean Morgan), a neo-fascist assassin for president Nixon (the closest the film gets to a traditional supervillain), who has a taste for murder and sexual violence. The magnetic Morgan makes the Comedian one charismatic bastard, and makes you feel dirty just for enjoying his scenes. Patrick Wilson plays Dan Dreiberg, or ‘Nite Owl’, a nice guy who writes for ornithology journals in his spare time. Poor old Dan also can’t get an erection unless dressed in his kinky Nite Owl get-up, and watching this awkward middle aged man come alive and kick/grab serious ass through the magic of playing dress-up is one of the film’s many surprising pleasures.

Watchmen manages, for the most part, to beat the odds and emerge from its labyrinthine source material intact. Despite being a lot of fun, it’s a long and exhausting film, but one that could have easily filled several more hours if not for Snyder’s deft editing choices. The twisting narrative arrives through frequent flashbacks that take us through the imagined history of American superheroes, and also through the book’s main protagonist, the sociopathic ‘hero’ Rorshach. Rorshach, played by Jackie Earle Haley, is more terrifying than the new emo Joker, a man whose commitment to his mission as a crimefighter has eroded his psyche leaving him an almost feral predator. Haley’s performance is riveting as he shows us the depths to which a hero’s iron will can drag him, and Rorshach devours almost every scene he’s in.

The film’s other noteworthy performance comes form Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan, the apparent offspring of Michelangelo’s David and a Smurf. Manhattan is the world’s only superhero to possess actual superpowers (the rest describing themselves as ‘costumed heroes’), and my, what powers he has. With complete control over all matter, Dr. Manhattan’s emergence from an old-fashioned scientific mishap (think radioactive spider bite) changes the world in a myriad of ways. Most significantly of these, the USA hopes that in Dr. Manhattan lies the ultimate nuclear deterrent. He may well be all these things and more, but is he still just a man? Crudup gives Manhattan just the right level of eerie detachment, even through layers of cgi nakedness, for a hero who has outgrown his world. Less inspiring are the performances of Matthew Goode as Ozymandias, the ‘world’s smartest man’, and Malin Ackerman as the Silk Spectre, failing to outperform her skintight latex stockings. Which are excellent.

On the downside, the film is uneven and the pacing, based heavily on the source material, alternates wildly between cape-and-cowl fisticuffs and drawn-out sitting room conversations. The plot lurches jarringly from New York to Mars and back, and loses some of its momentum along the way. Diehard fans will undoubtedly notice the cuts made by Snyder in order to fit Watchmen into 162 minutes, but his choices, as I said, could not have been much better.

Watchmen is a book that demands to be revisited, and the film will most certainly reward this too. Although the bone-crunching action sequences trundle the plot along at a steady rate, there is a wealth of colour and depth packed into each frame that can only be appreciated when the viewer has a little breathing space, something that the film does not give away freely. The DVD release, likely to include a much lengthier cut, will most probably give us that chance. This is a film about how the world messes people up, and the wacky things they do to cope with it. A feast for the eyes and an ordeal for the senses, Watchmen winds up these eccentric do-gooders we call superheroes, pulls off their masks and asks what makes them tick.

8/10

-James

I Love You Man

Review: I Love You Man

Dir. John Hamburg

Cert. 15

105 mins

2009

Is Paul Rudd assembling a how-to manual for the modern man? Just a few months after showing us how to be a dad in the inoffensively silly Role Models, Anchorman’s Brian Fantana is now learning to be a Real Man™ in I Love You Man.

Peter (Rudd) is getting married, but his fiancee is shocked to realise that despite being well into his thirties, Peter has no male friends to serve as his best man. He's loved by women for being such a damned nice guy, but he's as clueless about other guys as a teenage boy is about women. Peter embarks on an absurd mission to pick up guys on so-called ‘man-dates’, and after a few lousy experiences (including the obligatory mistaken gay encounter), he bumps into Sidney (played with filthy charm by Jason Segel). Whereas Peter is sensitive, well-mannered and frankly more than a little tiresome, Sidney is a roaring, big-faced bon viveur, who lives in a gleeful state of arrested development and gradually teaches Peter to rock, drink, and do the revolting things that (apparently) make men ‘men’.

As a thoroughly juvenile, Apatow-esque comedy I Love You Man does an impressive job (boasting a supporting cast that includes Jon Favreau and the always excellent J.K. Simmons), although it's a little too reliant on the humour of embarrassment. The film plays on the totally unwritten code of straight male interactions that we're expected to pick up as kids - Peter just hasn't. He sucks at banter, repartee, and the language that men frequently speak to their buddies (the word "repartee" for example is a big no-no). Rudd, finally given the leading role that he's deserved for far too long, does such a convincing job as this hopeless fluffer of lines that you might wind up squirming in your seat at the clunkers the poor guy blurts out. As Sidney, Segel manages to charm and disgust simultaneously, and to be honest it's a little difficult to understand what this sexually confident, uninhibited beach bum sees in Rudd's awkward estate agent. Still, the two have good onscreen chemistry, Rudd's slight frame and delicate features a funny contrast to Segel, who bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Gerard Dépardieu.

Speaking of real estate, the film's ace in the hole is a weird surprise appearance by Lou Ferrigno, aka the Hulk, as himself. Yes, Peter is somehow Ferrigno's estate agent. I Love You Man is a film about men learning to be with other men. What better way to man up and join the global fraternity of testosterone than to sell the Incredible Hulk's house?

I Love You Man raises a ton of laughs, and the thin plot is carried almost entirely by the strength of the central performances. I'm not entirely sold on the idea that the only 'real' man is a caveman, but if I had to spend an evening with either Peter or Sidney, I would choose the troglodyte every time.

7/10

-James

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Dir. Michael Bay

2009

150mins

Cert 12a

Transformers: ROTF is like bad pornography; simultaneously boring and obscene. It’s hard to imagine how a movie about asexual alien robots can be so nauseatingly, unrelentingly horny.

The first Transformers film was poorly scripted, plotted and acted, and featured huge, overly intricate robots pummeling eachother senseless in an orgy of cgi violence. And orgy is the right word for this hideous sequel. It’s like stumbling into a dimly lit hotel room and witnessing a bewildering jumble of vaguely recognisable body parts writhing around in a distorted heap. You can’t see what belongs to whom, and it’s impossible to tell what specifically is going on... but it’s clear that you need to get out. Fast.

Sam Witwicky (Shia Leboeuf, making a damn fool of himself), is preparing to leave home and start college. This means leaving behind his wacky parents, his pet Autobot Bumblebee, and his girlfriend Mikaela (popular sex object Megan Fox). The Autobots have their hands full too, cooperating with the human military to rid the world of the evil Decepticons. There’s a plot, swinging around uncontrollably, that involves the recovery of some object or other to prevent the destruction of the earth’s sun, but it’s nothing more than a pretext for over two hours of mindless robot-on-robot brawling and juvenile sexual imagery.

The Transformers are legion in this film, but are all indistinguishable from eachother. Every one of them looks like a wad of squashed paperclips, and when they decide to rumble (every few minutes), the camera lunges so violently into the midst of the action that it’s not even worth the effort to try to comprehend what’s going on. The robots aren’t the only victims of this ungodly thrusting of lenses and apertures; Fox, whose mouth is locked in a permanent pout for the duration of the film, is practically violated by the camera, which leers at her pneumatic body with all the subtlety of a frat boy in the girls’ locker room.

Why the heck is the film so oversexed? Sam and Mikaela are horny. Mikaela’s pet Decepticon is horny. Sam’s parents are horny. Sam’s parents’ dogs are horny. Soundwave, the Decepticon communications ‘bot, rapes an orbiting satellite. One colossal Transformer has wrecking balls for testicles, which he dangles cheerfully over the great pyramid of Giza. Seriously. The film shakes a pair of giant robot balls in the audience’s face. I think that pretty much says it all.

Maybe all this ball-shaking is the film’s way of compensating for something. The complete absence of characterisation, for example; the only Transformers to exhibit any distinguishing traits are miserable racial stereotypes - two jive-talking Autobots in particular are just appalling. As the ‘comic relief’, they lurch around spouting toe-curling ghetto speak and foul language. And oh yes, they’re illiterate and one has a protruding gold tooth! Good God.

Perhaps all the sex is to distract us from the film’s diabolical script - practically every line is a woeful clunker. Or it might be to distract us from the soundtrack, which blasts across the film as though every single scene is a climax. Or maybe the sex is linked to the film’s weird military fetish (do we really need to see the entire contents of the US army’s toy box?)

Crude, dumb and very long, Transformers: ROTF is a juvenile mess. If, walking blindly into the wrong movie theatre, you should find yourself transfixed by this baffling obscenity, just back out slowly and pretend that you didn’t see anything.

3/10

-James

The Hangover

Review: The Hangover

Dir. Todd Phillips

100mins

Cert 18

2009

It sucks to wake up not recalling what you did last night. You rummage in your pockets, check for evidence of whatever the hell happened, and prepare yourself to make hurried apologies to people whom you don’t even remember.

Turns out that from an outsider’s perspective, this looks freakin’ hilarious.

After a heavy night on the booze in Las Vegas, three guys realise that their bachelor party has gone monstrously wrong; they’ve lost the groom. A sharply-scripted combination of buddy comedy and light mystery, it’s the funniest thing I’ve seen all year. To their credit, the guys (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianikis) do an incredible job of piecing together the previous night’s events through what is clearly a waking nightmare of a hangover. Their mission is simple: retrace their liquored-up steps and recover the missing groom (Justin Bartha) in time for his wedding. Frankly, anyone who can solve a mystery despite feeling like they have a rat in their brain has my respect. This might be how any great detective would operate in the throes of the morning after; who’s to say that Sherlock Holmes would have performed any better after a heavy night on the opium?

But there’s more to the movie that simply finding the groom; it’s an absolute riot to watch these poor guys realise that after a few hours on the sauce, they all become complete animals. Their hazy journey of self-discovery - all the while bickering and screwing things up even worse than they were before - reveals the depth of their alcohol-fueled error. The laughs keep coming at a steady rate, each fragment of the night before a self-contained anecdote and a lead onto the next loopy revelation. Why is there a live tiger in the bathroom? Where is Stu’s missing tooth? And why is a naked Chinese gangster (Ken Jeong) trying to beat the guys to death with a crowbar? Our queasy Quincys embark on a scavenger hunt across Vegas to rediscover their lost memories - and hopefully Doug, the groom. It’s a pretty smart set-up; as a movie the night in question would quickly have become tedious, but as a madcap tangle of bizarre evidence, it hits all the right comedy notes.

The cast is far from A-list, but together they become more than the sum of their generic parts. The de facto leader, Phil (Cooper) is a married schoolteacher who’s thrilled at the chance to misbehave with a reckless abandon that suggests that he never intends to go back to his life; Stu (Helms) is a dorky dentist whose spirit is being slowly crushed by his bitch of a girlfriend, but who, after a few drinks, becomes one of the coolest guys you’ll ever meet. And then there’s Alan (Galifianikis). Alan defies definition; describing himself as ‘a one-man wolf pack’, he’s just plain weird. A chunky, bearded, overgrown child and implied sexual deviant, Alan winds up stealing half the film with his sub-normal antics.

The Hangover is about as good as dumb summer comedies come, and the added element of mystery is the icing on the cake. It’s nicely acted, cleverly scripted (aside from a painful guest spot by Mike Tyson, who handles comedy about as gently as he handles women) and most importantly is uproariously funny. Despite the appalling state in which the guys find themselves, it’s hard not to wish that you could have joined in the night before. By the looks of things, it was well worth the price of the morning after.

8/10

-James

Drag Me To Hell

Review: Drag Me to Hell

Dir. Sam Raimi

Cert 15

99 mins

2009

Sam Raimi’s wickedly entertaining return to slapstick horror doesn’t need to drag me to hell. This glorious pantomime of giggle-inducing terror will have audiences queuing up to cross the Styx and sip cocktails with Satan himself.

It’s been a long time since horror was this much fun. Drag Me To Hell is in every way a successor to the Evil Dead series that cemented Raimi as king of the splatter-happy spook show. Christine (Alison Lohman), a simple country girl trying to make it in the big city, is told by her boss that she’s just too nice for the mean ol’ world of banking. Unfortunately, Christine’s opportunity to prove herself takes the form of turning down a loan extension to a foul gypsy crone (Lorna Raver, sensationally revolting). The wild-eyed hag sneaks into Christine’s car after work, and the poor girl winds up slapped with a particularly nasty gypsy curse.

Christine spends the next three days being deliciously tormented by a demon called the Lamia, who likes to toy with its victims before literally dragging them to hell. The Lamia’s playful cruelty is a delight: it swings Christine around like a yo-yo, sprays her with ooze and gleefully drives the wholesome farm girl just a little bit bonkers. It’s easy to feel slightly guilty watching all of this… but not enough to stop smiling.

Drag Me To Hell is a perfect marriage of ghoulish shocks to gross-out comedy. Set to a nerve-grating soundtrack, a typical scene builds tension in a classic slow burn, culminating in a sudden fright that’s dripping with several shades of first-rate supernatural goop. The beauty is that once Raimi achieves his big scare, he doesn’t just let the scene drop and move on. After scaring the pants off us, he turns our fear into fits of hysterics at the sheer foulness of his imagination. Eyeballs, gallons of fake blood and buckets of slime are hurled around like some Satanic food fight. The comedic timing of these atrocities is sublime, and more than a little camp.

It’s a horror that plays on the anxieties of the mostly good. Christine is no saint, but she’s a decent person. A former fat kid, she struggles to resist slipping into a bakery for some illicit pastry lovin’ on her way to work. Despite an alcoholic mother and a difficult childhood, she’s managed to become a well adjusted adult and is committed to bettering herself. She’s trying painfully hard to impress her professor boyfriend (Justin Long)’s judgemental WASP parents, who share Christine’s obvious belief that she’s punching above her weight. But one small ethical compromise and she’s being audited by hell’s bank manager. And he has a sense of humour!

Scary, silly and above all fun, this little ghost-train of a film is hysterical, plain and simple. Drag Me To Hell is a blast.

8/10

-James

Star Trek

Star Trek

Dir. J.J. Abrams

127mins

Cert 12a

2009

It just became cool to like Star Trek.

J.J. Abrams’ new take on the franchise does the impossible. Star Trek is cool. Star Trek is sexy. Star Trek rocks. For the longest time this property has been mired in a slavish devotion to its own dreary rulebook. This film dares to be something else. It dares to be fun.

There’s a whole new cast. There’s a whole new ship. In fact there’s a whole new universe, and it’s wonderful. This is a Star Trek free of the burden of its own weight, free of the creaking yoke of decades-worth of trivia, hubris and idiosyncrasies. It’s a lean, agile film that is, for the first time in years, able to bring Star Trek somewhere that is truly unexplored. Take the tired musical score that has accompanied Trek for the past 20 years. It’s been replaced by... the Beastie Boys? Brilliant! And yet it feels like Star Trek. In a good way. The optimism, the humour and the humanity that made the series great in the first place are all back on centre stage.

I won’t overburden this review with the details of the plot, which are minimal in any case. The story is dependent on some unlikely coincidences and involves time travel, but for Star Trek it’s all par for the course, and the film’s so much fun that it’s easily forgiven. The film’s villain, a vengeful Romulan named Nero (Eric Bana, underutilised), is a two-dimensional baddie, but at least his makeup is good and his motives are clear. Nero is bloody ugly, and wants to kill everybody. It works.

The film is really about Kirk and Spock, both of whom are terrifically recast. By its end, Star Trek proves that these characters can outlive their former inhabitants. Chris Pine is now Captain Kirk, and Zachary Quinto is now Mr. Spock. It’s as simple as that. And they’re the same, but different. Pine exudes an insolence, irreverence and horniness that are unmistakably Kirk; at the same time, he’s a more erudite and driven young man than Shatner ever was. The same goes for Quinto’s Spock. Although a close physical match for Leonard Nimoy, this Spock is an intense new presence defined by his mixed heritage, battling to reconcile his human emotions with Vulcan logic (something that, disappointingly, Mr. Spock hasn’t done since the 1960s – this often wound up with a crazed Spock slapping Kirk around, which is always fun).

The remainder of the cast are each given stand-out moments in the film that redefine their characters for the 21^st century. Some work better than others; Chekov’s (Anton Yelchin’s) boyish eagerness to please is endearing, but the new wild-eyed Scotty (Simon Pegg) falls a little flat. Shining brighter than the rest is Karl Urban’s take on ‘Bones’ McCoy, the ship’s crotchety doctor. In a cast made up of bold new interpretations, Urban alone impersonates his predecessor (the late Deforest Kelley). But Urban is such a joy to watch that it doesn’t feel remotely cheap or lazy.

The Enterprise has also undergone a facelift. The bridge is all smooth, Ipod white surfaces, splashed with primary colours. This is a refreshing change from the cloying pastel shades of the past few TV series, with their living-room like bridges and Holiday Inn style crew quarters. This Trek isn’t afraid to be dirty either, the bowels of the Enterprise looking for all the world like they actually have something to do with engineering. The world of Star Trek is no longer limited to painted backdrops and cardboard sets – this universe is on a grand scale, complete with soaring alien skyscrapers, cavernous starships and space battles that actually feel dangerous. Budget well spent.

Aside from putting a big, big smile on my face, Star Trek’s greatest triumph is that it shrugs off that crippling condition of being a prequel, the foregone conclusion. By jerking around with time, the future of the Trek universe is undone, releasing any forthcoming films or TV series from the shackles of their own ponderous history. Simply put, the future is no longer written. As Spock says, ‘our destiny has changed’.

How cool is Star Trek? I would not be ashamed to take a date to see this film. It’s Star Trek, and I would take a girl.

9/10

-James