When the film opens their mother’s still an inhabitant — if an airily insubstantial one — of their tiny isolated shack. She sits at home or wanders the garden as the brothers prowl the wilderness hunting. (There’s lots of grunting involved, especially when dragging home the deer they bag. Hunting is SERIOUS MANLY BUSINESS.) Once the mother dies — wandering out of doors at night — she’s boxed up in a homemade coffin and lugged through forests, floated along a river, to a forest hollow, to be buried. It’s a journey that takes several days and an obscene amount of grunting and gurning.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that *any* film in which a dead, be-coffined body’s being shoved up and rolled down ravines, and floated — almost used as a raft — along a river would have black comic potential. But not here. There’s no funny patches in this film at all.  There’s a pretty grim in-grave foot-meets-coffin moment near the end that could have been horribly, unwatchably hilarious in another film. No chance of that here; just grim stony-faced silence interspersed with yet more grunting. In a tauter film this lack of laughs could end up very uncomfortable; here the tension is dispelled with lingering, soothing shots of river, sky, trees. A sudden pigeon movement, one third in, almost elicits a laugh. Almost.

My cinemagoing chum recommends that I reference Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness. I’ll do that, then! I can see where parallels might be drawn — a difficult river trip, the lush denseness of the forests — but while Heart of Darkness sounds the depths of the human soul, there’s very little access to these brothers’ internal lives,  and no glimpse of their moral compass. They seem to be driven more by instinct than calculation.

Visually this was a treat, shot on something low-contrast and unsaturated, warm and soft and smooth. It’s very wildernessy; lots of forest, lots of green things growing green and large, almost engulfing the tiny patch of humanity we’re watching. Lots of dreamy slow abstract shots of sky or ground or leaves, and lots of nice closeups of decay and death on the forest floor. And the soundtrack was similarly woozy; several times I tranced out of noticing what what happening on screen at all. (I don’t think I missed much! This film is sparse on action.)

I just wish they could have been less GRUNT MANLY GRUNT about the whole kaboodle.

Hatesfun rating: 7.5/10

The good: well Williams is very good in the role. The talk show sequence where it is difficult to tell if he is laughing or crying is one of the best bits of acting he has done. For a downtrodden schlub, be fits rather well. Daryl Sabara’s Kyle, his son, is just foul – which is pretty good acting for an ex-Spy Kid and anyone who wants an ongoing career. And the script itself is full of nice touches, and follows a pretty good through line. It heads for a slight cop out ending, but only slightly one (better than the previous five minutes stab at emotional wrap up). But the real problem with the film is that whenever Goldthwait wants to move his plot on, or deal with a tricky tonal shift (nasty comedy to grief, grief to black comedy) he pulls out his soundtrack to replace dialogue or throw in a montage. There are five lengthy music sequences in the film where it is clear the not very good AOR soundtrack is there because its easier than writing what would admittedly be tough scene to write. How do you in a comedy, albeit a black one, deal with the accidental death of a child that is supposed to affect his father who previously hated him without derailing the comedy. Goldthwait’s solution is efficient, but by the time we get to the final sequences we have had enough. Perhaps its just as well his next project is an honest to god musical (based on the Kinks “Schoolboys In Disgrace”).

It is still a dazzlingly distinctive comedy, and hopefully one that will now cement Goldthwait as a director rather than the annoying one from Police Academy sequels (well, the fourth most annoying ones anyway). There is a brutal honesty at the heart of these films, which ask some pretty tough questions whilst entertaining – which you just aren’t getting from Adam Sandler films. Out of World’s Greatest Dad we get a view of how people are mythologised after death, how history is bunk, are there are just worthless people, is Robin Williams completely comprised of body hair? Its also a film that openly quotes Simon Pegg, which just shows how individual the whole affair is. My expectations though, are slightly lower for the next one, which is probably just as well.

Aldous Snow returns in Get Him From The Greek, as a lead character, and the film does not quite know what to do with his music. It knows what to do with Snow as a character, Brand plays him as Brand, with a straightforward psychological junkie arc – played for medium laughs, basically his stand-up career over the last ten years. He is very good at it. But what underpins the convincing characterisation is the fact that he is a rock star. So the film has to play some of his songs, and indeed those of his long term lover Jackie Q. And the film doesn’t quite know what to do with these songs.

When Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver we are easily convinced that he is a taxi driver. He drives a taxi. Equally the wonders of film trickery can usually convince us that all sorts of foppish actors are actually hard men policemen and action heroes. But we are both acutely aware of what it is to be a rock star, and yet unclear of the X Factor (to coin the phrase) that makes it convincing. Brand can do all the motions, but when he gets up on stage as a rock star, he is lacking one key thing. The songs. The tracks he gets to perform in Get Him To The Greek are not all that bad, some (Furry Wall, The Clap) are even quite good. But none of them convince as the material of one of the worlds biggest rock stars.

Henry K.Miller in Sight and Sound wrestled with this issue, and part of the problem is that it is unclear where teh band Infant Sorrow really fit in modern music. Their groundbreaking concert was ten years ago (2000!), he swaggers like cock rock, but sings with a noticeable cockney lear and the songs are on the whole dumb. He comes on a bit like Billy Idol, or an imbecilic Bono, especially when he does his daft issue single African Child. Musically they are probably closest to Oasis, but with raunch. And teh dumb lyrics do not gel very well with the clearly very intelligent dandy Brand portrays. Rose Byne’s Jackie Q has a similar problem, a sort of Lily Allen by way of Katie Price. Though at least with her she is again a supporting character so her tracks can at least be funny:

Watch the first five minutes of the film which is a potted biography of these two characters careers (with a surprisingly large One Show advert) and see if you can fit it in to modern music?

The problem the film has is that it would like Aldous Snow to be a parody of rock star excess, yet doesn’t trust itself to make his songs more than 10% funny. African Child is described in the film as the “worst thing to happen to Africa after war and famine” is – bar a few outrageous video moments – no worse than many a bloated rock stars issue sing. In reality it is probably better than Belfast Child by Simple Minds. The film-makers clearly decided that to make his emotional arc work we would have to believe in him as a character, and to believe in him as a character we have to believe in his songs. So it just made the songs dull. Compare that to This Is Spinal Tap, where the ridiculousness of the songs does not really undermine the perceived reality of the band, or indeed our emotional attachment to them, it is just another opportunity for a gag.

There is a whole album of tracks by the fictional band Infant Sorrow that you can hear on Spotify here. And if you listen to it, you will probably be surprised by its competence, but general blandness (Brand is not a terrible vocalist). But it certainly doesn’t convince as a messianic rock experience.

All of this made me think about fake rock bands in films, and the best songs by fake bands. Perhaps my favourite is from the Josie And The Pussycats film, by the fake boyband DuJour – and their fantastic Backdoor Lover. But if you have any favourites, please list them below, I would love to do a set of them at the next poptimism.

So in lieu of saying anything about Billie Jean, here are some other prominent Billie Jeans, or Billies Jeans.

Billie Jean King: Probably the most famous Billie Jean, and almost certainly the most important female tennis player of all time. But was Michael Jackson a big tennis fan. It would certainly make sense when Mike says she is not his girl though, by 1983 she had been outed. Certainly if Mike chose the name to honour her, he would have been way ahead of the US: she did finally receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama last year. But apparently Quincy Jones (who never liked Billie Jean anyway) wanted to change the name of the song because he though people would think it would be about Billie Jean King.

The Battle Of The Sexes is what I mainly know Billie Jean King from, the 1973 match up between on top of her game Billie Jean King and ex-male champ Bobby Riggs. In winning it Billie Jean struck a serious blow for feminism DESPITE it being a game, and Bobby Riggs being 26 years older than her. Indeed I had not realised the age thing until recently, and it does put a bit of a spin on it. Feminism has since been repealed since Jimmy Connors beat Martina Navratilova in 1992.

The Legend Of Billie Jean
Mike clearly isn’t talking about the heroine of this, the second nail in the career coffin of Helen “Supergirl” Slater, as this film came out in 1985. In it some kids get bullied for talking like Jack Nicholson (Christian Slater – no relation), being pretty (Helen Slater) and talking like Bart Simpson before Bart Simpson was invented (Yeardley Smith). I vaguely remember seeing it on video back in 1987, and it is a wonderful piece of its times, plenty of neon cut down wetsuits, denim, power ballads and EMPOWERMENT BY CUTTING YOUR HAIR. Indeed as the clips below show, EMPOWERMENT IS 90% hair cutting. (The other 10% seems to be watching Jean Seberg be burnt at the stake in Saint Joan, which is meant to be a meaningful scene though its hard to note anything like emotion in Slater’s (no relations) face, as she is probably more interested in Seberg’s ginchy bob and making the obvious link between EMPOWERMENT and HAIRDO’S).

As befits a 1980′s teen movie all the characters have ridiculous names (except for Billie Jean, which is merely an unusual name to tie into a song which has nothing to do with, and is not in, the film). Christian Slater (no relation) is called Binx, Yeardley Smith is called Putter and there is even a character called Hubie. If I remember rightly Billie Jean’s rampage of disorderly behaviour all comes about because a mechanic doesn’t fix her brother bike properly, which means she is basically playing the Texas version of Watchdog with Lynn Faulds Wood. With better hair (but then LFW never made Hairdo of the Year, did she?) The teen rebellion is also inspired by Billie Jean watch The driving power rock soundtrack featured Pat Benatar’s Invincible (which also has Helen ‘Did Anyone Say Outrageous Fortune’ Slater all over the video), which Pat always often introduces as being from “the worst film ever”. Truly Legendary.

Billie Jean in Eastenders
Apparently on Eastenders in November they played Billie Jean in the Queen Vic, when Billy and Jean were having a conversation. THAT’s why its the 48th best TV drama of all time!

And d) is what matters right? So what has surprised me in reading reviews, particularly British reviews, that fiathfulness to the book be damned. FAITHFULNESS TO LONDON is to be demanded. And whilst much has been said about them capturing a certain kind of grimy historical Victoriana, they lose every humanities brownie point for all of its assaults on geography. For example, why exactly would one take a Hackney Carriage from 221B Baker Street* to Pentonville Prison via London Bridge. For Holmes and Watson are seen travelling south across said bridge en route (all the better to show off the soon to be important Tower Bridge in construction.

I am not the kind of pedant that says things like this spoil the film for me. I know the realities of filming in London, however the fact that this is filmed in the studio and IN A COMPUTER means that they could for once make a reliable geography. The above trip seems like a sensible cab driving money spinner compared to the conclusion which suggests the following. That somehow one can get from Guy Fawkes old haunt, the cellars of the Houses Of Parliament, to Tower Bridge via the sewers in about two minutes. AND SOMEHOW IN THE PROCESS GET TO THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE RIVER IN THE PROCESS. And then to suggest that there would be a secret passage from the sewers to the top of the UNDER CONSTRUCTION TOWER BRIDGE.

Worth it for the fight obviously. Maybe they took the Thunderbirds Thames Monorail.

*Here seen as an address for an entire house, rather than, as Conan Doyle must have meant, a flat.

All the way through the film of Where The Wild Things Are I kept wondering, why don’t they eat him. Seriously, he is fucking annoying. Of course the reason they don’t eat him (or indeed eat anything through the film) is they are a bunch of BIG EMO WILD THINGS, too worried about being sad and lonely rather than noshing down on some fine kiddie snack. Max, who is the little bundle of ten year old rage, may not have much good eating in it, but even so the decision to make him their king, rather than dinner, seems perverse. Why only the other day I decided not to eat a bit of fish that looked a bit off. I did not however bow down to it, and make a giant camp cum World War 1 trench system at its behest. Admittedly it wasn’t asking.

In the book I am guessing that Max becomes king because that’s what Maurice Sendak wanted to draw, and its lots of fun for the kids to watch the kid playing with these big scary monsters. And the moments in Where The Wild Things Are where Max does take part in what I believe is known as the “Rumpus” is a nice moment of release. Admittedly because its about the only thing in the film not weigh down by needless emotional baggage. Did Spike Jonze think it was a coup to get James Gandolfini to do the voice of the main wild thing? All I can hear whilst he gripe about his loneliness and how he is misunderstood is Tony Soprano, sitting with Doctor Melfi. Of course this may suggest the intorspective side of an otherwise violent character like Tony Soprano but this only works if:
a) You are old enough to see The Sopranos
b) You can’t see through such a blatent device. FOR SHAME SPIKE SO CALLED JONZE.

So after an hour and a half of moaning and moaning and more moaning, Max appears to learn a lesson that it is hard to be a parent, especially to a bunch of suede coloured Banana Splits (kind of over-ripe banana splits). I don’t remember this moral in the book either. He then goes home where his Mum does not punish him one jot because clearly she was watching the rest of the film and thought spending loads of time with oversized Emo sad sacks (LITERALLY) and thinks that was punishment enough. That and having to sit through the Fisher Price Piano hummings of Karen O and some kids on the sound track. As if there is not a PERFECTLY GOOD WILD THING SONG ALREADY IN EXISTENCE.

Other critics have enjoyed the way Where The Wild Things Are manages to conjure up the sensation of actually being a child. For which i say, I pity your tedious, emo filled childhoods. I may not know where the wild things are, I sure as hell know they are not in this film.

Watchmen: One of my favourite movie going experiences of 2009, merely because it made good one of my other New Years Resolutions. Namely I saw it with a lot of people. I think about eight of use sat in a prime location in a packed Vue Islington, and enjoyed watching a comic we had all read being turned into a film which was nearly exactly like the comic we had all read. And in retrospect, what more did we want? We all came out with very few complaints, we all agreed that the one significant change (SQUID) made lots of sense and then also agreed that Watchmen is Ok but not the best thing ever anyway. In a year that I would characterise for its excellent credit sequences, Watchmen had one of the best, a masterclass is effortless world building. The rest of the film was less of a masterclass of adaptation, really too long and not quite as portentous as it wanted to be. But then that is the case with the comic, and we all agreed in the pub afterwards. It reminded me that watching a film with people really is a different beast, and part of the point of cinema. It was a fun afternoon.

Outlander: I saw this with Mark, and he was toying with writing about it so I backed off. In the end though it is a silly little B-movie yet again trying to retell Beowulf, this time with ALIEUMS!!! Outlander is almost as much fun as a film about Vikings and Aliens and Alien dragon monsters can be. It has John Hurt in it. It has a feisty Viking warrior princess. It has a mystery glow in the dark space alien dragon. And unfortunately in the lead role it has about the dullest actor working in Hollywood at the moment, Jim Calveziel. Even his dullness cannot strip the film from its simple b-movie joys, and luckily much of the rest of the cast do overact into his blank alien canvas. He is the acting version of A Spaceman Came Travelling here, which is what he is playing, your least favourite bit of the thing he seems to have become a vital part. So it lacks the complete bonkersness it really needs, but well worth kicking back with for a laugh.

Synedoche, New York: You know the way that no-one likes a smart arse? I sort of feel that way about Charlie Kufmann’s film. Phillip Seymour Hoffmann is a terrific actor, but rarely a sympathetic one, and pile this with the standard Kaufmann conundrum plot and the film is the kind you describe as impressive. It is impressive, but hard to love. And I often wonder if the rest of the world is super dumb if they find all of kaufmann’s ideas so mindblowing. Synedoche, New York’s great idea is that his playwright lead basically constructs a play of his life, in real time, in a smaller scale (which then breeds its own inner play within the play). And it goes on for twenty years, and he still doesn’t get to understand why he is unhappy. And there are no end of great questions about art, theatre, and particularly movies nested in there. But unlike Being John Malkovitch or Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind there isn’t also a master story, or connection with a character I cared about. I cannot say I enjoyed the experience even: I enjoyed the mulling over it more afterwards. Though this time that mulling was heavily predicated on how I might have made it better. I want Kaufmann to continue, but hopefully this has got the blurting everything out stage out of his system.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: I still don’t think I have anything left to say about this juggernaut series. I haven’t read the books and am genuinely enjoying the films as a regular saga, without really buying into the mythology or really caring about the destinies of these characters. Indeed I tend to prefer the slower developmental aspects of the series, the bits where we see the kids slowly growing up, and so Hermione and Ron are at this point much more interesting to me than Harry. And yet, even Harry interests me as a protagonist, as he drifts comfortably away from being the complete Joseph Campbell hero type, and the series is capable of surprising me. I still hate its twee 1950′s throwback public school feel, but since that is central to the premise I won’t escape it. But all the above could have been written about any of the Potter films, and this one has just drifted into the bunch. Nowhere near as badly directed as the Chris Columbus pair, but nothing much of importance really seems to happen in it.

Frozen River: If there is one film I regret not having reviewed this year, its Frozen River. Despite being Oscar nominated, it got the mystery Oscar Nomination slot which meant it slipped in and out of cinemas without being noticed. The mystery Oscar Nom being Best Actress, with is an indictment to the importance and excitement placed on female lead roles. To cap it all Frozen River is an excellent indie border smuggling thriller, with two great female leads, culture clash, and honest to god suspense. ANd there is loads to write about it. There is at the heart of the film a real question as to how a female thriller works, there is a desperation in the film shy from most thrillers these days. There is also a question about the plotting of the film, which arguably fluffs its greatest moment of suspense by stuffing it at one hour rather than nearer the end. The real pity about not writing about it was I was unable to tell people to go and see it. Its probably on DVD now, where it will work just as well. But well worth seeing in the cinema.

Year One: On the other hand I was worried that whatever I wrote about Year One would be taken the wrong way. Its Jack Black and Michael Cera in a stupid knockabout comedy set in biblical times. That may not be a very enticing sentence to you, but it was enough for me, especially when coupled with “From The Director Of Groundhog Day”. Of course one should always remember that the phrase “from the Director of Groundhog Day” is also the same as “from the Director of Analyse This, Analyse That and the godawful remake of Bedazzled”. And for someone with such a great grasp on high concept, the biblical / stoneage mess that is Year One falls apart from its title onwards – in what way is the Year One? Not only does it waste a shed load of excellent cameo’s (David Cross just about redeems himself), but it takes a perfectly goofy Jack Black performance and squishes it with the weigh of plot. What could have been a fun romp through bits of the bible turns into a tirade of gay gags at Oliver Platt’s expense. A real waste. I really should have written about it
a) to warn people off
b) To go on at quite some length about how misleading the title is. I am not sure why calling a film Year One annoys me so much, but it really, really, really did.

So working in reverse order, based on the theory that the most recent films I have had less time to write about…

A Serious Man: The Coen’s evoke an amazing sense of time and place here, and it is almost secondary to the story. And this is one of those non-story stories where we follow an impotent actor in a drama unfolding around him. Indeed this is a story of one mans impotency, how he fights all the way through the film to not make any decisions, or act in any way. This can be incredibly frustrating to watch, but luckily the film is packed with interesting secondary characters and that remarkable sense of time, place and culture. Its an interesting film in the Coen’s career – clearly intensely personal and yet building on what they have learnt from the success of No Country For Old Men. The idiosyncratic ending should be a lot more frustrating than it is, there is a sense that the Coen’s are playing with the audience but the audience have now grown up with them and are ready for their tricks. We are just happy to go on the ride with them.

The Informant!: I really like Stephen Soderbergh, even when he is off the boil. Actually I like him especially when he is off the boil, as he is a clearly talented director who loathes staying in his comfort zone. So for all the faults of the Che project, they were still fascinating to watch and work out why he made the decisions he did. Coming off the back of that biopic pairing and into another sort of biopic, The Informant! is a really odd beast. Much has be made of its:
a) Exclamation mark
b) Unreliable narrator
Both of which are key to Soderbegh’s take of this material – the whistle-blower who eventually is blowing the whistle on himself. Matt Damon plays the role really well, being a likable, watchable presence even when his lies and life spirals out of control. And yet the story of internecine dodgy financial deals is a bit too technical to make it laugh out loud funny, and Soderbergh’s presentation of it in the style almost of a seventies sitcom gibes badly with its actual mid-nineties setting. In pushing some stylistic buttons too hard to be interesting, I think he misses a third way, which is to look at nineties comedies and how they might be presented. But then I find it hard to think of any good nineties comedies off the top of my head so his choice makes sense.

Mesrine: Public Enemy No.1: I though Mesrine: Killer Instinct was terrific. It was my thriller of the year, with a great central performance from Vincent Cassel, and excellent support to show the rise of the criminal and on to an almost bizarre self aggrandizing phase in Canada. Which meant I was looking forward to the second part immensely. And in the end was a bit let down by it. It was not quite more of the same, there were more jailbreaks for one. But in framing the first film with the end of the second, there was little to learn apart from “he commits more crimes and becomes even more big-headed”. In the end the most interesting thing about Public Enemy No.1 was the very brief scene set in a London park which was clearly set in a French park, for reasons I cannot quite pin down. Perhaps the newspaper stall. A sequel which almost undermines the original (and was it a sequel – or just part two of a two part film, same as Che?)

Triangle: The main reason I didn’t want to write about Triangle was to not take the suprises away from people. Not that anyone else went to see it because to be fair to Triangle it also made sure that was the case, potentially scuppering its own potential word of mouth by presenting itself as a Dead Calm rip. Instead it is a clever philosophical horror film which has a few pretty good scars and a load of great ideas. Even better, I believe it is consistent with itself (one scene potentially makes no sense unless you give it a lot of thought). But no horror film since Frailty has excited me by its own internal logic and resultant morality this much. Feel free to challenge me on the logic of this movie, because I think that I worked it all out, but well worth seeing. Basically it is hard to write about a sci-fi, philosophical horror movie when its good, because you want as many other people to enjoy in exactly the way you did.

Coming next: Video games an smug pregnoids.

Efron does his job well here, he is pretty, he is a proper male lead which allows Christian McKay to do his extremely impressive Welles. Clearly there is some impersonation here, but there is more of a sense of quicksilver wit, of capricity of a very clever man before the world had battered him into submission. Showing that even at his high point what an egomaniac he was, whilst showing why everyone wanted to work with him and even a sense of the man whose last film would be Transformers The Movie. All through this Richard Linklater makes that notoriously difficult thing to do, the properly family friendly movie. It’ll appeal to anyone who has seen a Welles film (or remembers any voice-overed advert). It’ll sync with anyone who has ever been involved in any kind of acting school or beyond. There is a sweet romance bubbling under the surface and there are characters who are fascinating to watch. Plus no end of Welles Easter eggs, and Linklater ones for that matter.

Perhaps it shows Linklater’s comfort in the film in that the open five minute contains a massive self deprecating gag. As Efron’s Richard, hanging in the big city, gets chatting to wannabe writer Gretta she starts talking about her writing. She riffs on a story idea from their cold meet, what about a story about two people, who enjoy each others company and then never see each other again. They both dismiss it: though you can see that Gretta is taken with the idea. They are of course describing Before Sunrise, Linklater’s signature film, and there is a sly nod in this internal criticism. Exactly the type of thing that Welles would do. And that slyness, is in the end what makes Me And Orson Welles so enjoyable. While the film does not take itself that seriously, it takes the subject, of putting on a play, deathly serious and the result is one of the best backstage films in years. Couple that with a fascinating Welles act and the winning Zac Efron, you get a film that is just solidly entertaining. Despite its pretty horrible poster.

“Good God,” I thought to myself, licking my lips from a shoe-leather and cardboard sandwich gleaned from the Trocadero’s downstairs Subway sandwich stall. Had this all been a terrible mistake? Not just my decision to see what had become of MJ, but MJ’s own decision to find out the same thing. It turned out — not at all.

As the movie gradually reveals — though it could have been clearer — the rehearsal that “Wanna Be Starting Something” was taken from was an early one, when no choreography had been worked out. There are no backing dancers, no lighting routines, no nothin – just MJ trying to feel his way into the song again. And he looks all of his almost 50 years when he does it. Which makes the transformation of the later rehearsals so amazing: he’s loose and supple and enjoying himself; if not the match for his backup dancers in pure energy, he’s easily their equal with his timing and his moves. He is totally in his element, calling the shots with an unexpected confidence. He knows his stuff, and the musicians and dancers know he knows it.

Much more so than I was expecting, This Is It is not even that much about MJ. It’s about a show. I’ve never before seen a movie that gives you so much of what it takes to put together a modern, rockapalooza stadium gig with the hordes of backup singers, dancers, and techies required to make it all happen. I’m a sucker for that stuff and would have gladly watched an entire hour of MJ telling the band to drop the second verse, or play more behind the beat, and then another hour of the dancers working out how exactly to jump 20 feet in the air with their hydraulic trampolines. In a weird way it’s like a police procedural, or an episode of ER, or Pimp My Ride – you’re watching professionals at work, doing what they do best. It could have a been a TV series!

As far as the new visual stuff went — an abysmally reconceived video for Thriller; a sequence in which MJ is painstakingly CGI’d into a Humphrey Bogart movie; or indeed an Ewokian video for Earth Song in which a little girl plays with a flower in an Edenic paradise before being terrorized by a driverless front-end loader, Christine-style — it was pretty bad.

The music and the performances, however — at least, the stuff taken from the later rehearsals — were sublime. For me the standout is “The Way You Make Me Feel”, a much better tune than most people remember, and probably the last time MJ was considered a current pop star (the original video is forever conjoined in my mind with “Hazy Shade of Winter” by the Bangles and George Michael’s “Faith”). Here it’s given an extended, lazy intro punctuated with fingersnaps and complemented by a cityscape against which are silhouetted the backup dancers, West Side Story style, who gradually climb down from their steel girders and hideaways and help MJ reveal — via the time-honoured media of crotch-grabs and dry-humping the sidewalk — the extent of his feelings for the impossibly gorgeous and flirty object of his affections.

If you were actually at this concert, you’d barely register these anonymous co-stars. I saw Michael Jackson for his Victory Tour at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee, which was at that time the largest arena east of the Mississippi River. He was a tiny maquette from my seat midway up the far end of the stadium. The Jumbotrons helped (as did a pair of binoculars), but understandably the focus was all on MJ – his moves, his sweat, his clenching and unclenching gloved hand. Presumably this new concert would be a similar experience.

This Is It gives you what my grandmother would call something more else — the personalities, passions and expertise of those session singers and dancers who despite their months of hard work are barely noticed, necessary filler for the main event. They joke around, applaud each other, shoot the shit. For each of them, this set of concerts is the peak of their careers. The ultimate pinnacle. Fifty shows at the Millenium Dome on stage with the greatest performer of his generation. And then they never got to do it.

New Moon On Monday – only totally relevant if you see it on a Monday but New Moon On Sunday also works,
Girls On Film – for when Bella gets her camera as a birthday gift. Its digital but how could Le Bon have predicted that?
Ordinary World – What Edward wishes for Bella when he leaves.
Lonely In Your Nightmare – Dull Rio album track for Bella’s dull moping / nightmare combos.
The Chauffeur – Jacob as mechanic is a bit like a chauffuer.
Wild Boys - Gosh those boys are acting wild.
Hungry Like The Wolf – Dude, its because they are werewolves.
View To A Kill – OK we don’t actually see them kill Laurent, but we do see the wolves beat him up.
Come Undone – More of an overall theme for the film, to describe what happens to all mens shirts.
Rio – Where Edward receives the bad news of Bella’s death.
Planet Earth – What Bella traverses half of to go rescue Edward in Italy.
New Religion – What the vampires appear to follow so near ultra Catholic Italian churches.
Is There Something I Should Know? – Yes, stupid Edward, Bella is still alive.
Notorious – What Bella has become in vampire circles.
The Reflex – What Edward uses to fight the other vampires and win!

You basically have the soundtrack if you have a Duran Duran greatest hits CD, or Arena (missing out Lonely In Your Nightmare which is no cop anyway). And you can also imagine that Union Of The Snake is the theme to FACEPUNCH, the awesome film within a film. If only they had done this and we might have been spared a Grizzly Bear track on the soundtrack.

There is a similar sequence in Whiteout, the South pole crime thriller whose trailers pretended it was potentially a horror film. In the Whiteout sequence the camp Doctor gets some newbies to take their jackets off outside, to explain to them how quickly the cold will effect them. There are no happy smiling faces on buckets, just a man vaguely injuring people to tell them how much they would be killed if they were to do something as stupid as what HE TOLD THEM TO DO. It is symptomatic of Whiteout’s stupidity and lack of conviction that this sequence exists to tell the audience that “The South Pole is cold”. We knew that.

Herzog’s documentary is another of his “isn’t nature wonderful – but you know it wants to kill us” films he does so well. There is a terrific section when he realises that the kind of people drawn to working in Antarctica are just travellers, telling more tedious travellers tales about the time they were in Guatemala. He manages in that one sequence (where he cuts a very long story, very short) to humanise everyone on the base. Whiteout, with its flashbacks to Kate Beckinsale’s US Marshall past, doesn’t manage to humanise its characters beyond twinkly eyes or moody frowns. I quite liked the Greg Rucka comic it was based on, a hard boiled crime thriller whose mystery was enliven by its setting. It also helped that the art took full advantage of the very name of the book, on a white page, a few white panels really does convey blindness perfectly, it is something comics rarely does, the white panel*. The same should be true of cinema. Its black canvas is the white cinema screen, though notably a all white sequence of film will still be considerably brighter than a blank screen. But Whiteout never has the conviction of this simplicity, it rarely attempts to represent the Whiteout of its title, and even then we get powdered snow and shades of white thrown at the screen with a cacophonous volume. I doesn’t help that the mystery which just about sustained a few comics, is pretty obvious, or indeed that one characters sex has changed to remove one intriguing aspect of the original. Frankly there is more suspense in Encounters At The End Of The World, albeit waiting for Herzog to go stir crazy and kill one of the hippies he finds himself locked up with!

*Except when multiverses end. Then they are de rigeur.

Tulpin is a bit of an ethnographic film, which is often problematic. Whilst attempting to blend the fiction of an odd one sided love story with the realities of steppes life it invites the audience to make some judgements about this borderline lifestyle. These are modern people doing an ancient job with a few concessions to modernity, but not many. And at the heart of it there is a cultural issue. Asa, ex-sailor now staying with his sisters family, aspires to have his own flock. Demeaned by his brother-in-law, he cannot get a flock without a wife. There is only one eligible woman on the steppes, Tulpan, and Tulpanrefuses to be wooed. So there is a whole load of implicit sexism and it is easy to sympathise with Asa whilst also completely understanding why Tulpin might want to get out of ther (like the best Macguffins however, we never see Tulpan). The film meanders in and out of conflict, all of the time treating us to deafening, poorly sung, Khazak folk tunes paired up with earsplitting Boney M and it ends with a semi-conclusion which seems a bit out of place since All Creatures Great And Small stopped being shown. And yet for all the problems I have with it (not least its volume) it is a film that coasts with massive charm, which makes you disregard some of its less overwhelming moments.

And notably, it is another film that seems to equate Boney M with some vision of hell. The Boney M loving steppes delivery guy is a horrific caricature of what the loneliness of this endless flat landscape can do to a man. His vehicle is plastered with pornography, his gold teeth are horrid and his attitudes are clearly there as some sort of counterpoint tot he gentlemanly Asa. But its his singing of By The Rivers Of Babylon that marks him out as a loveable rogue. Imagine if it had been Brown Girl In The Ring instead – after its own hellish treatment in Touching The Void.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ2ndpZOOzs

Here is a teaser which tries to convince us that the robot puppet movie Surrogates is in anyway the near future of humanity. The idea that in just ten years nearly the entirety of the North American population will be agoraphobic housebound ninnies strapped into chairs controlling a robot version of them seems to fail the basic rule of science fiction. Namely how did we get there? Well according to the film

Step 1: James Cromwell invents the stem chair which can wirelessly and remotely control and feedback data to a user of a remote robot. It is invented for disabled people.

Step 2: Rich people start getting lifelike surrogates of themselves for a laugh.

Step 3: Within ten years the cost of this technology, and the availability of teh surrogates has replaced all humans with their surrogates.

Step 4: Crime is eliminated.

Some of these steps require somewhat implausible leaps. Step 3 strikes me as being a somewhat odd step, just looking at basic economics. Building that many robots? Not to mention the problems with glitches in wireless transmission and what happens when the basic novelty wears off. Because in reality with these perfect superhuman robot bodies, everyone is still doing the same shit jobs they were doing before. So the baker is now a robot baker, the cop a robot cop. And the bum, well a robot bum. Which then leads to the ridiculousness of Step 4.

Step 4 suggests that because we are not in our bodies, there will be no crimes against the body. Murder is eliminated. Completely forgetting that everyone is in charge of a pretty unstoppable killing machine / robot. Which not only can get into any building to kill anyone, but also comes with the cast iron potential alibi that someone has hijacked your surrogate and is using it instead of you. Indeed incidents of theft should skyrocket. And all of these problems come out within the hugely narrow parameters the film has set for itself. Namely that society will not really change except everyone will look a bit plastic.

And all of this in in service to a pretty dumb murder mystery plot which I have already spoiled below but frankly isn’t much of a spoiler. All said Surrogates is 90 minutes of Bruce Willis + fighting robots. Its Westworld where Westworld itself is our world. Basically preposterous, but at least vague fun. Just do not think about its premise for a second or you will want to find a Surrogate to watch it for you.

&*James Cromwell as a cameo avuncular minor character. Hmm, I wonder whodunnit?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6CJenNMsb4

Yes, that’s right. The tagline is indeed: TITANS WILL CLASH.
Which if I remember the original isn’t exactly what happens. More Epic Heroes will kill stop motion creatures with mirrors. But the Harryhausen film holds a soft spot in my heart, even though Harry Hamlin is no-ones idea of Perseus. Anyhoo: TITANS WILL CLASH. Such a simple formation if only other films did that. We could have seen some of these:

KIDS WILL SPY
VAMPIRES WILL BE INTERVIEWED
TAXIS WILL BE DRIVEN

In the theatre: “This Summer, A SALESMAN WILL DIE”

STARS WILL WAR
WORLDS WILL WAR
AND BRIDES TOO

THE KING WILL RETURN
AS WILL THE JEDI

LAMBS WILL BE SILENCED
LAS VEGAS WILL BE LEFT
PARENTS WILL BE MET
AS WILL FOCKERS
CHINESE BOOKIES WILL BE KILLED
THE EARTH’S CENTRE WILL BE JOURNEYED TO (potentially in 3D)
THE BOURGEOISIE WILL BE CHARMING, DISCREETLY

BILL WILL BE KILLED
NUNS WILL RUN
JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD WILL BE ASSASSINATED
THE SOUP WILL CONSIST OF DUCK
THE FEATHERS WILL COME FROM HORSES
THE OPERA IS WHERE THE NIGHT WILL BE SPENT AT
THE RACES IS WHERE THE DAY SHALL BE SPENT
A PENALTY IS WHAT THE GOALKEEPER WILL BE AFRAID OF

THE FOURTH OF JULY WILL BE BORN ON
THEY WILL BE HAD BY SOME MOTHERS
THE SOUFFLE WILL BE ABOUT

WORRYING WILL BE STOPPED AND THE BOMB LOVED
HEAT WILL BE LIKED BY SOME

LOVE WILL ACCOMPANY YOU AS YOU LEAVE RUSSIA
THE GUN THAT THE MAN HAS WILL BE GOLDEN
MOONS WILL BE RAKED
SPIES WILL LOVE

And finally

GOOD WILL HUNTING

(Thanks to Matt, Eli, Mark S, Tom, Jenn, Tim, Katie, Ewan, Hazel, Kat, Magnus, Meg and Rob for coming up with that list in FIVE MINUTES – comments section is for you…)

But does the Julia Child story deserve a film to itself? The plus point of the framing device is the story of Julie Powell’s blog, whilst self obsessed and deliberately small, means the Julia Child stuff takes up just about as much time as it needs to. A full feature Julia Child film may throw some childhood in, extend into the television career and would probably have had extended cooking montages. All of which would have been padding. The Julie Powell section, whilst a lot less interesting, allows us contrast. In the end no matter how winsome Amy Adams is, her self-pitying blogger is always going to come out badly next to star of screen, larger than life Julia Child (and indeed Meryl Streep who also battered her into submission in Proof earlier in the year).

Nora Ephron was the wrong person to tease this set-up into anything more interesting than the sum of its hugely uneven parts. But then its hard to make a successful film about a blog, blogging like any film about writers (see this weeks Bright Star) is a tough thing to make interesting. At least the Julia Child blog was active, and we get the lobster pratfalls et al. But most of the Julie Powell story is not so much about how cooking frees her, but rather how it was an oblique way into what she wanted to do which was have a bestselling book. The modern sequences should have been filmed on DV, gritty guerilla documentary style, possibly by the real Julie Powell. Then you would have had the sense of the different world these two women live in. Expectation of success is a given to Julie Powell, to Julia Child it is almost unobtainable. And thus their sense of entitlement is wholly different. Of course Nora doesn’t really bring this out all that successfully, as she equally fails at making any of the food seem all that nice. Stanley Tucci is usually your guarantee of a decent foodie picture, where here the most significant food sequences involve chopping mountains of onions. Julienne carrots would at least have made thematic sense.

The two words “Star” and “Wars” are however only ever mentioned once, in the context of Ronald Reagan really liking the film..

Bearing in mind that it is Ewan MacGregor doing almost fifty percent of the saying of the word Jedi, there is clearly the most obvious of injokes going on here. But even in a film as often ridiculous as The Men Who Stare At Goats, the New Earth Battalion never, ever has the temerity to start talking about midichlorians. Which makes it at least better than any of the Star Wars prequels, and possibly almost as good as the Ewok Adventure (better than Caravan of Courage). And George Clooney finally brings in a comic performance which, whilst ticking and goggling like an old ham, actually feels in character and importantly funny.

It is more enjoyable than I expected, but its as if director Lone Scherfig knew the audience would be drifting in with a case of the worthies. Because the credit sequence, a jaunty piece of blackboard animation set to Floyd Cramer’s “On The Rebound” just shouts flippancy at you. Its such a carefree track that it completely disarms any pre-conceptions of the film being worthy and also leaves you with a sense of innocence that Mulligan’s Jenny will be constantly battling with.
Floyd Cramer – On The Rebound (’61).mp3

In the end the film really is rather lightweight, and consequences are glossed over on the whole. But then the film should be rather lightweight, Jenny’s concerns that going to University for a woman in the early sixties being pointless do have a ring of truth about them. And whilst it follows a classic seduction of the innocence line, it still manages to seduce us too as an audience (depsite the age difference between Jenny and David in the film, this is not a Lolita story).

The only other issue I had with the film is wholly hung around the time of year it is set. It starts midwinter, and she hasn’t applied for Oxford yet so she should be in her lower sixth (as she would apply at the start of her upper sixth). This also ties into her 17th birthday nicely. But this also means that dropping out and disgracing herself in her lower sixth should be no time bar to her application even if she is not allowed back into School. But then the film shows a (frankly laughable) study montage capped with her being accepted in a whole year later – well after the application deadline. It also restricts her trip to Paris to being before March, hence really much to cold to be picnicking on the banks of the Seine unless they get very lucky. AND THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER SEE A FILM ABOUT UNIVERSITY APPLICATIONS WHEN YOU KNOW SOMETHING THE PROCESS.

Ah, I know you lot just want to watch Sally Sparrow for an hour and a half. And An Education certainly delivers that. And if you don’t knw what On The Rebound sounds like:

2: Adventureland is a sweet romance disguised as a slightly older version of Superbad!
Zombieland is a sweet romantic comedy disguised as a zombie film.
A: 0 Z:2 (Zombieland is the better romance)

3: Adventureland stars Jesse Eisenberg.
Zombieland stars Jesse Eisenberg.
A: 0.5 Z: 2.5

4: Despite being called Zombieland, it isn’t very scary.
Whilst called Adventureland , the real adventure is the one of falling in love and growing up.
A: 1.5 Z: 2.5

5: Zombieland’s high point, the celebrity cameo, also destabilises the film.
Adventureland’s unexpected Ryan Reynolds cameo is the emotional core of the film.
A: 2.5 Z: 2.5

6: Zombieland’s celebrity cameo is remarkably funny.
Adventureland never really makes it to funny.
A: 2.5 Z: 3.5

7: Adventureland strives for some sort of cultural import.
Zombieland knows it is the most disposable film ever.
A: 2.5 Z: 4.5

8: Adventureland is predicated on reasonably smart people doing reliably dumb things to each other. Especially in love.
Zombieland is predicated on character who appear dumb being actually quite smart. Until they fall in love.
A: 2.5 Z: 5.5

9: Adventureland has Husker Du on the soundtrack.
Zombieland has Ghostbusters on its soundtrack.
A: 2.5 Z: 6.5 (this score might have been different if I was 18).

10: Adventureland is an enjoyable if slight “making friends when you do shit work” comedy.
Zombieland is a thoroughly disposable but hughly enjoyable zombie comedy.
A: 2.5 Z: 7.5

There you go, proven by science that of the two Jesse Eisenberg films with “Land” in the title released in the last few months, Zombieland is three times better than the still OK Adventureland.

This is the problem with Jennifer’s Body: there are a lot of good ideas in it, but the mechanics of making its plot work clunk on more than one occasion. No-one is going in cold to this film, we know the basic plot is Megan Fox is a maneating evil high school girl. So the fact she has a geeky bff does not make much sense. When they score some shots in a bar, underage, and then abandon the drinks to see the band, it leaps out at you again. Little things, beyond the suspension of disbelief for the succubus, don’t make sense. Nor does the tagged on coda, which doubles as an odd superhero origin.

What is also interesting here is that horror movies are predominantly seen by female viewers. Forget the mis-step of the advertsing of Jennifer’s Body (teeenage boys will get something out of it, but not what they think*), what we have is a monster flick where the monster is a teenage girl. Fine, but while it may be smart to portray the queen bitch of the school as a flesh eating devil, it forgets that given the chance EVERYONE would be the queen bitch of the school. And how bitchy can someone be when they still hang with their geeky friend? Jennifer, as defined with her relationship with Needy, is actually a lot nicer than – well anyone in Mean Girls. So despite playing with a clever idea for a teen horror, it eventually plays down its effect by making everything a bit off. Its not a scary horror movie, there is not enough action for an action flick and it certainly hasn’t got the laughs beyond a wry symbolic gag or two. The film it most reminded me of, not quite tonally, but just with its misjudgement of its audience, was the Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie.

I wouldn’t put money on a successful Jennifer’s Body TV series any time soon however.

*Actually there is something almost offensive in a film directed by a woman, and written by a women apparently trying to play up to a horny teen boy audience. Having the climactic fight in a swimming pool to ensure wet T-shirts for all, the lingering kiss between Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox are calculated in a way that makes it almost worth it flopping.

There is a visual shorthand which for me comes from the tales in 2000AD, though others may lean on the Mad Max films. Post-apocalyptic wastelands will be full of kids wearing the most bizarre of get-ups, afro-wigs and shoulder pads, gun toting tots in ironically cute T-Shirts, tall strapping gawky lads in wedding dresses. All coupled with state of the art weaponry, bombing down the road in inappropriate souped up cars. The cars in Johnny Mad Dog may not be souped up, but as they travel through their own war ravaged landscape these boys look as bizarre as the gangs in the comics. OK, none of them look like they were drawn by Carlos Ezquerra, which is probably good for them, but from the strange accessories, dumb nicknames and ultra-violence, this could be a 2000AD strip made flesh. Well, that and this war ravages landscape has a lot more greenery than any 2000AD post-apocalyptic dystopia too.

Except the film also peddles a relentless realism. So you have a nasty teenage boys comic fantasy representing some sort of reality, some sort of statement on the effects of these horrible civil wars. The effect is to leave these emotionally dead, aggressive soldiers who are near impossible to rehabilitate. When brutality is normalised, what is left for the individual. Whilst Johnny in the film is sympathetic by virtue of his situation, and seems a touch more forgiving than his troop, he still murders and rapes and is much, much more brutal than any child should be. There are moments of play, set around the violence but its not proper play, just as these kids have had no space to grow up in. The opening may be the closest this film gets to a cliché, with a new recruit proving his mettle by being forced to kill his own father, but it is still remarkably telling as to how that creates these child soldiers.

The film trades its brutality in its final scenes for a clash between Johnny and films other lead: Laokole, a girl who has tried to keep her father, an amputee from a previous conflict, alive. The two threads weave through the film until we get to an ending which is remarkably tense: showing the remarkable agency of both of our leads. The film it most resembles in tone is City Of God, but imagine a less formal, more aggressive and more breathless treatment of even more senseless violence and you will not be far off. But then factor in the 2000AD dress code and you’ll be there. Possibly the best film to come out of anglophone Africa I can think of.

The Ramen Girl, being about an American slacker who finds herself out of luck and depressed in Tokyo who decides to train to be a ramen chef therefore resonated strongly with me. The fact that Brittany Murphy’s Abby barely learns a word of Japanese in her time there also makes the film resonate, it is a bizarre film in two languages where both sides are constantly guessing what the others are saying (often far too well). I was quite interested in seeing if it was possible to work out as well as Abby what her ramen sensei was saying to her, but I couldn’t turn the subtitles off. No matter, The Ramen Girl is not that good a film, but it is an interesting film. Because it is basically a foodie version of a martial arts film. Ramen is presented as a mystical art rather than just a noodle soup, and the training is like any monastical training. Lots of cleaning. Its basically The Karate Kid with noodles.

Brittany Murphy is an odd actress, all squeaks, beestung lips and strange physical presence. But it works here as she cleans toilet after toilet in search of the ability to make a soup that made her happy. And critically the films line of food is very similar to that of Ratatouille. Heart and soul are as important as technical expertise, and its arc from learning to getting the approval of the “grandmaster of ramen” follows martial arts movies perfectly – even down to her qualified success. The soul of the film is important then, and Toshiyuki Nishida as the ramen chef is wonderfully irascible in his clichéd role (I was trying to work out where I recognised him from, he was Pigsy in Monkey!) And there is even a nice link at the end where the Ramen Grand Master is played by Tsutomu Yamazaki who was in Tampopo – probably the definitive ramen film.

The Ramen Girl doesn’t do enough to make it stand out, and didn’t do enough to get a cinema release in the UK, but its pleasant enough. As a bit of travel porn there are a few good views of Tokyo, but unlike the other two Tokyo films it is much more interested in an ex-pat experience (it manages well in having the two other ex-pats in it being total twats). And its message about food, and ambition, are rather nice. But I will remember it for reminding me of having a big bowl of noodles near Ueno station in a grotty old ramen shack and feeling on top of the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GYSwiaNz2o

Or should I have said “comedy”. Because it isn’t funny. It is twee, whimsical and wonderful to look at, but is fatally flawed with its decision to not just play its fantastic premise straight, but also to suggest there is metaphorical weight in it. Because Air Doll, is about a sex doll that comes to life. Its Pinochio for the XXX generation. The film does not use much in the way of special effects to make the transformation occur, or indeed explain it, but just know that the doll Nozomi does not walk around in a permanent state of surprise: she wasn’t that kind of doll. So the film then spends half an hour getting Nozomi to wander around Tokyo in classic stranger in a strange land way, following children, mimicking people, questioning herself and somehow getting a second job as a Video Store Clerk. Second job, because she still keeps up her first job as a sex doll with her owner at night, who has not noticed that she is going out during the day, or that indeed anything has changed. And this is one of the many problems with Air Doll, it does not explain why any of the decisions are made. Why the video store? Why is she still happy to be a sex toy? Why can she not maintain her love of being alive?* Why does Kore-eda keep cutting away to a compulsive eater? We never get the solution to any of these questions and more. Because Kore-eda is more interested in making his big metaphorical point.

SHE IS PHYSICALLY EMPTY – BUT SO MANY PEOPLE ARE EMOTIONALLY EMPTY IN THE CITY.

Not sure that we will get this, it spells it out at a number of occasions. There are interesting moments, particularly when she gets punctured (fixed with sellotape) and falls in love, but as the film crawls towards its end it suddenly feels like a set-up for a slight, but gorey joke. But even when this shocking ending happens, the film doesn’t stop. It then waltzes through another four possible endings, each slightly weaker than the last until its magic realism has dissolved into unmagical tedium.

So what does it say about Tokyo? Well the film would like you to note the fundamental emptiness of peoples lives in Tokyo. But that is not really what you take away. As with the hidden journey’s of the kids in Nobody Knows, Nozomi’s trips through Tokyo shows his eye for the beauty in the ugly dull parts of the city. There are some lovely trips on the trains through the city, and a quaint but scratty small park where much of the film takes place. He makes the unloved romantic, and I remember Tokyo as a strangely romantic city. Baffling in places – which is nicely underscored by the supermarket trips in the film, but with a strange beauty. It is a pity the film around it is so obvious, and needlessly dull.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lPv1zf7GwQ&feature=related

*It is possible that these questions are all answered in the manga the film is based on. Though I doubt it.

With Tokyo Gore Police, its simple. It is a crazy ass film. It knows it is crazy, it wants to be. And often in those moments of self conscious madness and pride that we see the real madness of an impossibly large city like Tokyo. Its the madness of being out of control and not caring.

Tokyo Gore Police is a future set splatter pic which tries to give itself a few airs and graces via the medium of satire. A number of interspersed commercials about the privatised police force however does not dress up what is a gratuitous gore feature, especially if you’ve seen Robocop or Starship Troopers. Plot is perfunctory: it is the FUTURE, Tokyo’s police have been privatised and a bunch of bad guys who call themselves The Engineers have turned up. Somehow the Engineers have modified themselves so that when they get a limb lopped off, a weapon grows in its place. So cue people with swords, guns and – would you believe it in a splatter flick – chainsaws grow in the stump. Our heroine is a remarkably moody young police officer who wears the skimpiest of standard cop uniforms, carries a samurai swords and is really good at killing engineers. She has a convoluted back story which ticks off
a) orphaned
b) cop Dad killed in the line of fire
c) being brought up in the cop shop
and you know that the bad guy at the end will have either
a) killed her Dad
b) be her Dad.

But you don’t (I don’t) watch a film like Tokyo Gore Police for the storyline. Instead there is about an hour and a half of ridiculous fights, outstandingly camp gory moments and the most ridiculous impalements and dismemberments this side of Evil Dead 2. It is cheap, its effects are clever and it is truly bonkers. And you know as much as I usually don’t like stuff like this, I rather enjoyed it.

And it represents Tokyo in as much as, like the engineers, Tokyo is a city which cannibalises itself constantly. Outside the high tech high rises there are a lot of buildings and even shacks in Tokyo that will not be there in five years time. Its a city that eats itself, and then for desert ate Yokohama too. The film has an anxiety about technology, but much more of an anxiety about a semi-fascistic police state. But it can’t really articulate its rage against said police state, certainly not while there is a short skirted woman with a samurai sword chopping in half a man with a chainsaw for an arm is there to distract them.

Here’s the trailer. Starts arty, doesn’t stay that way! (By the way the soundtrack is ace too.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy9TyMZvF3g