Incendies

Director: Denis Villeneuve (which might just be the coolest name of all time)

Starring: Lubna Azabal, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin
After her death, a mother sends her adult children on a mission to find the father and brother they never knew they had. Their journey takes them to the Middle East and the village where their mother was born, as they find the truth about her past.
I originally wanted to see this because I loved the play - also called Incendies, or Scorched in English, by Wajdi Mouawad. The story is an intriguing albeit formulaic "going back to my roots" one, but the beautiful performances from the mother and daughter leads - particularly Lubna Azabal as the mother, Narwan - and the washed-out, harrowing cinematography kept me riveted from the very beginning. The hard-hitting reveal unfolded with delicacy and grace and when the penny dropped for the majority of the audience there was a rustle of horror through the cinema. The film is a little too long and could have benefited from some culling of unnecessary scenes and the titles which separate each "chapter" are joltingly out-of-place with the stark beauty of the landscapes or the classic method of storytelling. However the end product rises above all this and puts this among the best films I've seen this year.

X Men: First ClassDirector: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender

Just putting it out there, I am a massive fan of X-Men. I saw the third one at the movies three times. Being that the third one has a pile of tripe in place of a plot, that's true commitment. I even enjoyed the hackneyed, overblown Wolverine spin off, although that might have been because of the triple leading-man whammy of Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber. When I heard Matthew Vaughn was following up last year's reboot of the superhero genre, Kick-Ass, with this, I pretty much actually wet my pants.

Vaughn, of course, is a fan of muscular violence and gritty realism, something which was much-missed from the last X-Men movie. And from the very beginning, he whips us into a fully-realised world. It's the 1960s, but not as we know them (actually it looks nothing like the 1960s, even though James McAvoy does say "groovy"), Professor X and Magneto don't yet exist, or rather they exist only as Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, young men struggling to hone their mutant powers. Both are recognised archetypes: Lehnsherr a brittle and emotionally-scarred Holocaust survivor, hooked on vengeance as he travels the world to find the Nazi who killed his mother. McAvoy is the foppish and affable young professor, arrogant with success and always capable. It was a real stroke of casting genius to ask two character actors to ham it up like this: their budding friendship and mutual appreciation provides the beating heart to the film, and they look like they're enjoying not starving to death in an Irish prison or suffering from gangrene on the beaches of Normandy. In fact, their chemistry is so palpable and their charisma so awesome that really, it would've been better if there had been no other characters in the film, save for Kevin Bacon's multilingual baddie. The other mutants, which clearly exist for the fan boys alone; the sometimes sloppy CG effects, a dull subplot involving Beast's burning desire to be human and Rose Byrne's boring love interest should really all have taken a backseat to the development of these guys' powers. Instead, we are left with a rather cluttered plot which, despite cleverly incorporating the Cuban Missile Crisis and being helmed by Vaughn, never feels truly real. When your current competition in the superhero canon is Christopher Nolan's Batman and Vaughn's own Kick Ass, realism is essential. McAvoy and Fassbender shine when they're allowed and when Fassbender remembers to drop his native Irish accent, and the rest of the time is just filler between the sometimes tense, sometimes touching scenes involving these two.

However despite this, it's still X Men. Did I mention it's X Men? I am happy to ignore all its faults because, well, it's X Men...

Paris, Je T'aime ****
Tales From The City of Lurve ...

This is that rare thing: an innovative, brave and beautiful idea which actually worked when translated onto celluloid. The idea originally came from two Frenchmen: Tristan Carne and Emmanuel Benbihy, and basically went like this:

"How about we, like, get some of the best directors working today, right, and get them each to make a short film about Paris, and then put them all together ..."

And then, somehow, in a bizarre Blue Brothers-like fashion, they managed to get some of the most innovative, talented directors around to each write and contribute a five-minute film. These included Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run; Perfume), Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho; Good Will Hunting), Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham), Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo; Barton Fink), Wes Craven (90s schlock-horror king, credits including The Hills Have Eyes and Nightmare on Elm Street) Alfonso Cuaron (every interesting film of the last six years or so ... including Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Big directors meant big names and big names meant widespread release, and suddenly eighteen quiet, unassuming films became one long, beautiful, star-studded extravaganza.

Not all of the segments work, but the ones that don't (the final tourist monologue, the bizarre dreamlike sequence set in the Chinese quarter) are few and far between, and short enough that you never really get bored. Standout sequences include the Coen brothers' short set in a metro station, starring Steve Buscemi as (surprise!) a slightly pathetic, humble but loveable loner, alienated in a strange city; van Sant's touching story of a love which transends the boundaries of language and Tykwer's fast-paced, hectic love story, which stars Natalie Portman as an American actress (that must be a stretch). Other big names include Elijah Wood, playing moody to perfection in Vincenzo Natali's dark and mystical vampire sequence; Juliette Binoche giving an amazing, subtle performance as a bereft mother; Maggie Gyllenhaal as a spoilt American film star doing drugs in her trailer, and Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell in Craven's bizarre but oddly warming piece set beside Oscar Wilde's grave in Pere Lachaise. But my favourite piece is Cuaron's (I am nothing if not predictible): a charming, well-planned love story with a twist.

It's the Paris of the people, with few shots of the Eiffel Tower and many of the cobbled streets; the people are undeniably French; even the tourists have an odd, bohemian charm. It makes you want to pack up your things and take off for the city of love, convinced that once there you will find the missing part to fill your loneliness.

CONCLUSION: There are too many great shorts here to mention them all, so see the film and choose a favourite for yourself - you will fall in love with Paris all over again.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age ****


Like A Virgin ... Touched For the Second Time

Director: Shekhar Kapur

Writers: William Nicholson, Michael Hirst

Stars: Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Abbie Cornish, Samantha Morton, Clive Owen, Rhys Ifans


The first Elizabeth is epic filmmaking at its best: it reinvented the staid costume drama with an enema of sex, poison and jolting violence. Blanchett and Rush are both on the record as saying they would never consider a sequel unless a great script came along, and it is a full nine years afterwards that we see this: reportedly the second in a trilogy about the Virgin Queen.

The film opens a good twenty years after the previous one ended; technically the Queen is in her fifties (although Cate Blanchett is looking mighty good) and still refusing suitors left, right and centre, most notably from Germany and Spain. We see that has grown into herself since the last film; where there she was bewildered and tentative, here she is wise, whether playing the Amazonian warrior (complete with armour and somewhat inexplicable hair extensions) or holding court. It is in matters of the heart that we see her conflict: in order to maintain her power and peace in the kingdom, she has sacrificed personal relationships, and her closest friendship is with one of her ladies-in-waiting, Bess (Cornish). Then Walter Raleigh (Owen) returns from across the seas: tanned, buff, bearded, buckled ... and bringing gifts of potatoes ("you eat it"), tobacco ("you smoke it"), and syphillis* ("you ... never mind...") As he sweeps the Spanish ambassador out of the way (yes, really ...) begins to tell the tales of his journeys, violins begin to play (yes, really ...) and the Queen and Bess are both transfixed by the swashbuckling hero.

For a film about Britain's most beloved sovereign, the cast boasts a lot of Antipodeans, with three of the four lead roles held by Australians. Rush is, as ever, charismatic, seedy and powerful reprising his role as Walsingham, and it should really go without saying that Blanchett is commanding, tempestuous and conflicted as the mighty Virgin Queen. Cornish, a magentic screen presence in Australian indies Candy and Somersault, is very beautiful but a little insipid here, which may be down to a hastily-sketched character rather than her own shortcomings as an actress. She is also the only of the Aussies not to get the accent quite spot-on.

The script is preposterous at times but the epic scale of the film and the talent of the actors masks the clunky dialogue. The writers have played hard and fast with history (the affair and marriage between Bess and Raleigh happened long after the Armada, and in fact Raleigh was safe on dry land and nursing a cold while Sir Francis Drake led the British navy to victory). They have included several nods to the myths of the time (Raleigh's first meeting with Elizabeth, in which he sweeps down his cloak to cover a puddle, is the stuff British myth, as is her address to the troops in Dover) and the audience is carried along at a thrilling pace.

* This is, obviously, a lie. Syphillis was around long before Raleigh made it popular... Elizabeth's father himself actually died from it.



CONCLUSION: Overblown it may be, but this is still a rollicking good ride, full of intrigue, passion, conflict and treachery. The heroine is sharp and the performances all strong, but you can't help but think the first film deserved a more worthy successor.

Stardust ***

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Writer: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn

Stars: Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert deNiro

Customs? I have a few things to declare ...

1. I love Neil Gaiman (on whose novella this film was based)

2. I hate Johnathan Ross (whose wife adapted the screenplay)

3. I find Claire Danes insipid and irritating. She possibly has the most annoying voice in cinema. She is very beautiful, but unfortunately that is as far as the interest goes for me...

4. When I heard Matthew Vaughn would be directing, I wept.

Now with that out of the way, on to the movie ...

The story revolves around Tristan, a village boy who wants to win the heart of Sienna Miller's Victoria, who is outrageously flirtatious and reasonably pretty, albeit a little too California beach blonde for England in the 1800s. One night while he is trying to tempt her into bed - sorry, holy matrimony - with a midnight picnic, they spot a star falling to the magical land beyond their village. He promises that he will venture forth to bring the star back for her, if she will marry him. When he finds the star, he finds that she is more than a lump of rock: she is in fact, Claire Danes, almost but not quite entirely not generating enough charisma for us to believe this proposition. But he is not the only one after the star, with Michelle Pfeiffer's seductive witch and various men-who-would-be-king also wanting to claim her powers for their own.

It's actually very good. It is hugely entertaining, funny, quirky and has a great plot (thanks Mr Gaiman). Cox is excellent as the starstruck (ha ha) Tristan, Danes has little to do beyond whinging prettily (can anyone believe she was once wistful Juliet, so full of potential and promise?) and there are enough jokes and twists to keep adults and little ones entertained. All instances of violence and sex (the novella contained rather a lot of both) are cleverly skirted over and, aside from one truly awful sequence where Danes tells the hamster-bound Tristan that she loves him (memo to Vaughn: LESS head movement = more sincerity) the direction is pretty inoffensive. It's a fairly faithful adaptation although in going from paper to celluloid some of the imaginative charm of the book has been lost. And while Robert deNiro's camp pirate draws on every homosexual stereotype you can imagine (cross-dressing, wrist-flicking, tea-drinking, mouse-fearing ... God help us) he does provide some of the best laughs in the film.

Please allow me to have a bit of a Ricky Gervais rant here. I know people love him. I know people think all he needs to do is walk onstage, utter a line (usually, "Are you havin a laff?") and the audience will be in hysterics. But this DOES NOT give you a licence to go straight from a successful BBC comedy into cameos in Hollywood films. He writes good comedy and he is amusing because he is a wheedly little man with a sweaty forehead and a nasty goatee, a high-pitched voice and an inflated sense of his own importance. Unfortunately these are not qualities for which he has to act, and I would go so far as to say that he cannot. He plays the same character in every film and show that he is in, and in this one, it just doesn't fit.

There now. Overall, a decent way to spend your Sunday afternoon and your $14. Just don't expect Sandman.

The Lives of Others *****
Die Leben Der Anderen

Yay! It's 2006's First Five-Star Movie!

Director: Florian Henkel von Donnersmark

Writer: Florian Henkel von Donnersmark

Stars: Ulrich Muhe, Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedenk

This is the best film of the year so far. Everything about it is exquisite. The tone and place is set with style and assurance, all grey square Soviet buildings, clunky plastic technology, and brown tweed clothes. Its pace builds slowly, drawing us in with intrigue, then building to a nail-biting thriller in the final twenty minutes. A tale of fear and rebellion under an oppressive regime, it's got it all: tragedy, excitement, fear (as the Germans would say, angst), and then finally, beautiful, clear blue hope.

The story centres around two protaganists: the idealistic (and really rather dishy) playwright Georg Dreyman (Koch) and the calculating Stasi loner Gerd Wiesler (Muehe), who is charged with spying on him. As he watches the somewhat bohemian existence of the writer, he first becomes jealous of his popularity and charisma, then angry at his impudence, and eventually comes to identify with him. This change is brought to life by Henkel von Donnersmark's fine, sure-handed direction (made even more amazing by the fact that this is his debut feature) and Muehe's muted pathos. The ending reduced my five companions and I all to tears: it is one example of a "several years later" sequence being used to great effect and fully rounding out a story, rather than being tacked on the end as an afterthought.

Above all, this is a very human story: it is about humanity triumphing over inhumanity. All this made it deserving of winning the Best Foreign Film Oscar. And it must be good. Its competition was Pan's Labyrinth.

This is another in a long line of great films to come out of Germany in recent years: as their economy becomes stronger, the Germans are beginning to draw on their rich history to make amazing films helmed by sure-handed, innovative directors: Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) and now Henkel von Donnersmark are certainly directors to watch. It will be interesting to see what Bryan Singer (Superman Returns - eek) et al can do with this rich, multi-layered history in Valkyrie, out next year. Will they blockbuster it up? Or will they rise above Hollywood conventions to show the delicate and intricate aspects of the story of Hitler's attempted assassination. Either way, it is unlikely that they will come up with something as rich and moving as this film.

CONCLUSION: It's hard to pick apart a film so perfect. This is filmmaking at its best. Seek it out.

The Simpsons ***

Spider-pig, spider-pig ....



Director: David Silverman

Writers: Matt Groening

Voices: Nancy Cartwright, Hank Azaria



Anyone who has been in my immediate vicinity in the last couple of months has been driven batty by me singing "Spider-pig, spider-pig, does whatever a spider-pig does ..." so it will come as a relief to some of you that I've finally seen the movie. You'd think that the time for a Simpsons movie had been and gone with the 1990s, but there are obviously enough cynical geeks out there to warrant this film (the cinema was packed with shave-headed trenchcoat-wearing minions when I went).



The story centres around the aforementioned spider-pig, who Homer saves from the knife, for about the first half-hour, when it suddenly goes off on an entirely different tangent. We then follow the world's most dysfunctional family (apart from The Brady Bunch) to Alaska and back, and hilarity ensues. You know the drill.



Obviously it is typical of the Simpsons to include a plot device which is dispensed with as soon as it's fulfilled its purpose but in a movie, plots need to be a little more cohesive. The usual cast is all present and accounted for, although by now they could probably sleepwalk through their lines. It really is just an extra-long episode, but that's OK, because that's all the punters are there for, and the writers take a stab at them before the opening credits (Bart: "Why would we pay to see something at the movies we already get free at home?". But honestly, who will see this movie? People who love the series, and they want to see Homer say "doh!" and drink lots of Duff; they want Lisa to mournfully play her sax; they want Bart to skateboard to Krusty's in the nude, and the film delivers. It IS hilarious: cynical, political in parts, but not scared to make willy jokes* or take a cheap stab at Disney.



The running time is slender but it doesn't feel too short (probably because we're used to taking these characters in bite-size pieces) and it gives you plenty of time to head down to Grape for a couple of drinks afterwards.



Conclusion: You'll get your money's worth in belly laughs. Just don't expect anything new.



* NOTE: Bring back the word willy! It is underutilised in our society.

Evey Has Been Away

I know legions of you* have been checking in every day, constantly disappointed that I haven't reviewed anything since April, and then it was Factory Girl. I have been gaining spiritual enlightenment in India, and gainful employment in Australia, and now I am just about ready to start this blog up again. Here is a list of films I have seen since April that I might just feel like reviewing at some point in the near future:

Spiderman 3

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

Ocean's Thirteen

La Vie En Rose

The Lives of Others

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

28 Weeks Later

Zwartboek

Infamous

Paris, Je T'aime

Amazing Grace

Knocked Up

But don't hold out hope.

* Alex

Sunshine ****

It's Getting Hot In Here ...

Director: Danny Boyle
Writer: Alex Garland
Stars: Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans

Danny Boyle, seemingly master of any genre (bar possibly romantic comedy, but I'd be willing to see him give it another bash), has done it again. His slowbuilding sci-fi borrows knowingly from the masters (2001, Event Horizon, the Alien trilogy, and appropriately, Solaris) but reinvents the genre with a fresh young international cast (the only American here is Fantastic Four's Chris Evans), cutting-edge direction and a great premise: that we are killing the very thing which supports life as we know it: the sun.

When we meet our protaganists, they have been living in the claustrophobic hold of a spaceship for a couple of years, and there are the usual inevitable tensions. In fact, the first hour or so plays out as an intense character study, looking particularly at the psychological impact of sharing close quarters: Big Brother set in space, if you will. The mission (to drop a nuclear bomb on the dying sun in an effort to reignite it) is almost secondary to the inter-character relationships: the attraction between Murphy's engineer Cappa, and Byrne's Cassie; the disagreements between the calm, pragmatic Cappa and the hot-headed Mace (Evans at his most shrewd and charismatic), and the cultural differences between the American and Chinese members of the crew. Garland's dialogue is tightest when exploring these relationships, and the performances are superb, particularly Cappa as the reluctant hero, Byrne as the troubled heroine, and Evans. At about the hour mark, this is a five-star film. Then comes the disappointment.

For some obscure, one might almost say alien reason, Boyle decided to go in for a genre shift. Suddenly the slow-building sci-fi was a fast-paced teen slasher. The tension breaks into chases, gore and explosions. And while this is still thrilling, it becomes too unrestrained to be fulfilling. It holds our interest, sure, and the entire thing is beautifully rendered, but you can't help thinking that a filmmaker of Boyle's talents, and a scriptwriter of Garland's, might have thought to tauten it all up a bit.

CONCLUSION: The genre-shift jolts a little, but from beginning to end this is a rollicking, thrilling ride. Not a classic, but hugely entertaining, it leaves a slightly bitter taste. It was on a path to be so much more.

Bored At Work? Check This Out ...

This is a quiz website of scenes from movies with the actors blacked out, leaving only the clothes. For the true film buff, it's harder than it sounds.

http://filmwise.com/invisibles/index.shtml

Factory Girl **

Andy Warhol Looked a Dream ...

Director: George Hickenlooper

Writer: Captain Mauzner

Starring: Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Hayden Christensen

Oh yeah, Sienna Miller is fine. She's cute and naive and looks nice in a miniskirt (it has been maliciously suggested that she is really just playing herself). But don't see this movie for her. In fact, if you must see this movie (because you are dragged along by a pre-teen relative or because you have a secret crush on Sienna Miller/Hayden Christensen or because you haven't been pre-warned), see it for Guy Pearce's malevolent Andy Warhol, channelling everyone from Truman Capote to David Bowie's Thin White Duke to Dracula.

You do have to question the thinking behind making a movie about a tortured but ultimately dizzy poor-little-rich-girl with Daddy issues. The clothes look great, as does Miller's hair. But there isn't much else there. She has a clingy friendship with Warhol ("muse" seems a little excessive as a word to describe their relationship as shown here) and a failed love interest in "The Pop Star" (Christensen, doing a passable job at not playing Dylan) and then gets more and more heavily into drugs. The film is bookended with an annoying and unnecessary voiceover and inexplicably leaves out the last years of her life (including her marriage, divorce and death) which are arguably the most interesting.

It all looks like a grubby 2007 version of what the 60s might have been like if you were part of the glamorami - or, as Warhol might say, a superstar. Everyone having a good time doing not-sure-what-exactly (shown by swapping jumpers in a restaurant or making out with a horse on film) and taking drugs and wearing opaque tights, miniskirts and fur coats as they stroll through Central Park. Nothing actually happens, but that's kind of the point, as Edie herself might say - the inaneness of it all is what the Factory was all about. But I don't buy it. It's dressed up but has no grit, no intrigue and no ambition. Which is probably more to do with Edie's personality than with the movie itself. If someone were to make a film of Paris Hilton's life in forty year's time (we can only hope her fame will be as short-lived as Edie's) would we really expect to see a realistic portrayal of life in the Noughties?

Having said all that, this film could have worked if Edie's story were used as a backdrop for a character study of Warhol or Quinn (read Dylan), or of the changing times of swinging New York in the Sixties. As it goes, they could have paid their scriptwriter more, and gone without some of the minks.

Oh yeah, and the sex scene? Almost as bad as 300. There is no way they're actually doing it, despite what The Sun/Hickenlooper's PR team would have you believe. Terrible music, dim 90's lighting and a Desperado-style montage of positions? Come on, surely we've progressed further than that ...

IN CONCLUSION: It's hard to generate intrigue with such a vapid, spineless and naive central character, but it could have been done. If you must see it, leave your brain at home and go to look at the costumes or to gain inspiration for your next haircut.

Black Book ****

Zwartboek

Titties! Explosions! Paul Verhoeven is bringing sleazy back ...

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Writers: Paul Verhoeven, Gerard Soeteman

Stars: Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman

If you were thinking of making a film about the Dutch Resistance of World War Two, and you had a number of resumes in front of you, Paul Verhoeven's would probably be the least impressive. Showgirls, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers are all there, but class and nuance are not. Of course, no one said the Second World War was classy (see Cabaret for further information). This film plays hard and fast with history, borrows from every resistance film in the book (if Hollywood is to be believed, the entire French population was covertly fighting the Germans, as opposed to the 2% who actually were), and is out to shock and awe with full-frontal nudity and big-budget explosions. Like a 50's hooker, it's crass, glossy and knows all the tricks.

So why bother? Because it's fun! Because history doesn't have to be boring. And because despite the sensationalism of it all, it does have a good basis in facts and Van Houten and Koch are attractive and capable.

Koch is handsome and charismatic, up next in The Lives Of Others, winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar over my beloved, Pan's Labyrinth. Van Houten is a real find, rolling with the punches, landing on her feet and somehow still finding time to develop character. She doesn't need to speak: her eyes say it all. It's classic goodies-versus-baddies and there's an extraordinarily high body count by the end (well, there is a war on) but you can't help but enjoy it. It's fast-paced and possibly unhealthy, but steers clear of playing too dumb. And it's high time we had a war movie with a sense of humour.

In Conclusion: It's not subtle, but it is clever, and if it's rude adrenalin you're after, give it a go. Just don't make the mistake of equating subtitles with understated elegance.

The Good Shepherd ***

Spies In Their Eyes...

Director: Robert de Niro

Writer: Eric Roth

Starring: Matt Damon, Billy Crudup, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin

It was such a great idea. A taut thriller about the beginning of the CIA with an all-star cast of serious thespians and the ultimate Serious Thespian himself directing it. How, then, did we end up with this?? A flabby, meandering drama where an all-star cast somehow manages to mistake boring for nuanced, with poor direction and no editing process to speak of?

The story centres around Damon's overworked spy Edward Wilson - based on the founder of the CIA's counter-intelligence operations, James Angleton - who is recruited into the CIA after university through his connections with the Skull and Bones society. Married to Clover (a perpetually thirty-five-year-old Angelina Jolie, doing what she can with a thinly-written role), who he rather carelessly managed to get pregnant while dating the love of his life (?) he is sent off to wartime Britain, where he meets his British equivalent (a simpering Billy Crudup). At this point of the movie, things are looking quite good - shots of Skull and Bones initiation ceremonies and lamplit, rain-drenched London streets fit in nicely with our preconceived ideas, and the web of intrigue is growing. But two hours later, fifteen years have passed, Clover is still thirty-five (although fraying a little at the edges), things with Russia have gone from tense to full-blown cold war, and Robert de Niro has limped through a few minutes of screen time as the CIA boss. Somehow none of the central characters seem to age, except for Wilson's son, who goes from seven to seventeen in the space of about ten minutes. Somehow America is the centre of the world (and anyone who doesn't agree is either a sadistic Russian or a pathetic Brit). And we're still no closer to understanding how the preposterous framing device fits in with the central storyline. By the time this is revealed, you are well past caring.

This film doesn't so much wear its allegiances on its sleeve as take it out, wrap it in wood, and batter you over the head with it. After more than three hours of colourless characters (ironically, it may be the most accurate spy movie ever made in this respect - spies have to blend in) and God-Bless-America propaganda. It gets a star for Tammy Blanchard's screen-lighting performance as a deaf girl and a star for its worthiness, and a star for the scenes in postwar London, all rainy noir and moody nights.

CONCLUSION: Overlong, overcooked and overblown, a decent set-up is ruined by the meandering storyline and a refusal to visit the cutting room. Maybe some great actors were just not meant to direct.

300 ***

The Wargasm Lives Up To Its Name

Director: Zack Snyder

Writers: Zack Snyder, Frank Miller, Kurt Johnstad

Starring: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham, Rodrigo Santoro, Dominic West

As he is about to slaughter a messenger sent from the invading king Xerxes, King Leonidas is told that his actions are madness. "Madness?" he says coolly. "This is SPARTA!!"

The film - which otherwise is spurred along by a preposterous sscript and stunning visuals - is peppered with similar powerful non-sequiteurs. It's a shot of speed in the arm, an adrenalin rush and a teenage war fantasy - which is as you'd expect from a comic book movie (although so many fail to deliver - see Ghost Rider review). It offers a Spartan plot (ho ho) and doesn't demand much of its actors beyond shouting and dying quietly. In fact, whenever they are required to do more than this, the film veers dangerously close to B-movie territory, with the main sex scene being among the worst in recent memory. Yet Gerard Butler is a commanding, toned presence onscreen, Rodrigo Santoro cuts an impassive figure until he opens his mouth, and David Wenham is a little too muted but otherwise stoic in the face of such an appalling script. I mean, it's all very well to lift straight from the comic book when you're making a self-deprecating, noir thriller (a la Sin City) but this film is not self-conscious enough to entirely pull it off.

Comparisons with Sin City are inevitable - after all, it is based on the graphic novels by Sin City creator/co-director Frank Miller, and is shot using the same technique (apparently Frank Miller insisted on it). And like the Old Town of Basin City, Sparta is brilliantly realised, burned sepia-brown, wind-scorched and teeming with women wearing assorted sexed-up versions of the toga and buff men in underwear and not much else. There is much talk of freedom, of resisting oppression, of respecting women and similar narcissistic things which don't really exist in this society but which are often brought up to rouse men to fight.

Snyder - best known for commercials and his dark, dank 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake - is a little overly fond of the slow-mo button (used especially well once, as Leonidas slices through Persians in the early stages of the battle), but other than that utilises the CG-technique to great effect. It is very violent, but the violence is so stylistic that it never truly cuts deep. Like most of the movie, really.

300's racial politics - at best out-dated, at worst blatantly racist - are simple: black baaad, white gooood. The Persians are played by a range of actors from non-white backgrounds - African, Indian, Chinese - and all decked out in gold regalia (to symbolise their preoccupation with wealth), even though Persia is in modern-day Iran (and presumably Persians looked similar to modern-day Iranians). In a movie so graphically polemic, there is no room for nice Persians. Baddies are often hideously (and inexplicably) deformed or surrounded by willing and mystical women to show just how bad they really are, and just in case you didn't get the message, Xerxes' army is led by a group of highly-trained fighters who seem to be wearing Darth Vader masks.

Yet in a film so fraught with tension, drama, violence and visuals, it is churlish to quibble over a little thing like historical accuracy or racial representations. It is better to eat your popcorn and enjoy the blood-drenched, homoerotic, fiercesome spectacle of the battle scenes, and the mythical world Miller created.

IN CONCLUSION: Sin City it is not, but it doesn't pretend to be. A comic book movie that watches like a video game/teenage wet dream, the visuals alone are worth paying the ticket price for. Which is good, because there's not much else here.