Juno

16-year old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) has a jaunty walk. She looks like a tough Little Red Riding Hood – jeans, sneakers, red lips, black hair. Swigging orange juice from a huge bottle, she saunters to the local store. Actually, she’s filling her bladder to take yet another pregnancy test. The results are a major bummer. One bout of sex with her dorky best friend Bleeker (Michael Cera) and now this. Forgoing a ‘smashbortion’, the unconventional Juno decides to go through with the pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption to a ‘perfect’ couple (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman). Of course things don’t go exactly to plan.

This smart, sweet comedy from director Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking) and stripper-turned-scriptwriter Diablo Cody has already proven itself a critical and commercial success. The reasons are clear. The dialogue is whip-smart, packed with pop culture references and hilariously vulgar at times. Yet these small-town American characters are people you’d actually like to hang out with. Especially Juno. The hugely talented Page (Hard Candy) gives us a clever, wise-cracking teen who’s still soft and innocent enough to be confused by first love.

Rochelle Siemienowicz
(This review first appeared in The Big Issue, 28 Jan)

Charlie Wilson's War

God forbid that every film should follow the Hollywood three-act plot structure, but in this case a decent third act probably wouldn’t have hurt. The film starts out interestingly enough in 1980, with Texas Democrat Senator Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) learning about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan while sitting in a Vegas hot-tub surrounded by showgirls. The all-true tale that follows is slickly told, with playboy Wilson teaming up with a rich right-wing socialite (Julia Roberts) and a gruff CIA agent (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) to get anti-helicopter missiles to the Afghani resistance.

Director Mike Nichols (Closer) clearly relishes the more farcical aspects of his tale (the war scenes are less impressive), while the trio of leads all have fun with their larger-than-life roles. But the story never goes anywhere: Wilson wants to help the Afghans, he helps the Afghans, then it’s all over, bar one brief scene pointing out that once the war was over no-one wanted to help Wilson save the gun-toting and radicalised Afghans from themselves. That moment is the entire point of making this film today. Skimming over it does this otherwise interesting story no favours.

Anthony Morris
(This review first appeared in The Big Issue, 28 Jan)

The Kite Runner

In 1978 Kabul, before the Russians, and before the Taliban, two young boys fly their kites in the clear blue skies of Afghanistan. Amir is the son of a wealthy intellectual, while his best friend Hassan is the son of the family’s long-time servant. The boys are like brothers until a single act of violence and cowardice shatters their bond. Fast forward to modern-day Los Angeles, where Amir, now a budding author, receives a phone-call summoning him back to strife-ridden Afghanistan to make amends for his childhood sin.

Based on Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling novel, this film covers epic emotional and physical territory. Director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) vividly brings to life the complexities of a history and culture we only know from sketchy news coverage. The backbone of the story, and its greatest strength, is the patrician father (Homayoun Ershadi) courageously adapting to life’s reversals, maintaining his dignity even as he serves as an LA garage attendant. Not so strong is the adult Amir (Khalid Abdalla), whose performance feels stilted and unnatural – though perhaps this is just the burden of shame he’s supposed to carry. Nevertheless, a beautiful and enlightening film.

Rochelle Siemienowicz
(This review first appeared in The Big Issue 14 Jan)

3.10 to Yuma

After years of revisionist westerns and post-modern westerns, seeing a western done straight seems almost shocking. And director James Mangold’s remake of the 1957 film about a dirt-poor farmer and family man (Christian Bale) who joins a rag-tag posse to escort a captured outlaw (a never-more charismatic Russell Crowe) on the long journey to the train to Yuma prison is about as straight as they come.

Yet as the odds against the farmer mount – the captured outlaw’s gang is hot on their trail, and the posse numbers are constantly shrinking – his stubborn refusal to simply surrender ceases to be a straight-forward plot device (if he gives in, the movie ends) and becomes something much deeper and more powerful.

While Mangold does a fine job of staging the numerous action sequences, and Bale’s performance as a battered man with a core of iron is quietly compelling, it’s Crowe’s electrifying turn as the gang leader that powers this film. Honourable, murderous, and as slyly tempting as any devil, his performance would earn a more media-friendly actor a sack of awards. This gripping adventure isn’t just a great western; it’s a great film.

Anthony Morris
(This review appeared in The Big Issue 14 Jan)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Trailers are often as interesting for what they don't say as what they do: the big secret behind the Sweeney Todd trailer is that this is a musical - as in everyone sings pretty much all the time musical based on the Stephen Sondheim musical type musical. As for why they're keeping this fact under their hat when musicals have been doing pretty well of late... well, presumably a musical with a lot of bright colours and young people dancing around is a lot easier to sell than one that's pretty much all shades of 19th century London grey except when someone's getting their throat cut. As for why Sweeney's slashing necks with toe-tapping abandon, he's not exactly happy about having spent fifteen years overseas in a penal colony after a bent Judge (Alan Rickman) framed him to clear the way for a move on Sweeney's wife. Worse, he returns to London to be told by local pie-shop owner Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham-Carter) that his wife's dead and his daughter's been adopted by the Judge. Sweeney's scheme for revenge starts out simple, as he returns to his old trade of barber with the hope that once he gets the Judge in his chair his razors can give him a very close shave. But Sweeney just can't help killing, and once Mrs Lovett gets the idea of disposing of the bodies via her pies, pretty soon both of them are doing a roaring trade. It's a dour story told in melodramatic style, and director Tim Burton doesn't hold back on the spurting blood whenever a throat gets cut. As a musical it's impressive rather than toe-tapping, not to mention that it's fairly heavily edited down from the Sondheim original and the cast are good rather than great at singing. But if you're in the mood for some gothic grandeur, there's no denying that this vast, creaking edifice has a grim power to it that makes it, if not exactly enjoyable, at least a experience that's hard to forget.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #420)

American Gangster

The gangster genre is one of the most time-tested there is in movies, and while American Gangster might be based on a true story, it's sticks to the formula straight down the line: when Harlem mob boss Bumpy Johnson keels over in the mid 1960s, his driver Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) decides to follow in his bosses footsteps. After the usual combination of business smarts and murder takes him to the top, he figures out that the real money's in drugs. With the Vietnam war raging there's plenty of people going to and from the place where they grow the drugs, and soon the Mafia is coming to him to ask for a piece of his drug trade. Meanwhile Ritchie Roberts (Russell Crowe), AKA the most honest cop in New York, is put in charge of a anti-drugs taskforce designed to take down the Mr Bigs of the thriving trade. But with Lucas keeping a low profile and with his family making up his trusted lieutenants, Roberts’ has his work cut out just finding him, let alone taking him down. All the ingredients are here for a truly epic film: Washington is perfect as a businessman with a heart of steel, and Crowe's not far behind as a cop so driven everything else - common sense, self-preservation, even his family - gets left behind. Director Ridley Scott keeps a tight rein on his sprawling story, keeping the focus firmly on these two men and giving Washington and Crowe room to explore their characters (who don't actually meet until close to the film's end). But what's missing from this film is any kind of moral judgement - we might see people dying from Lucas' drugs but there's never any sense that he's a bad man for doing what he does. Other gangster movies were fuelled by this tension: whether it's Scarface or Goodfellas, the gangsters knew what they were doing was wrong and they didn't care. Without that sense of transgression this is just a movie about doing business.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #419)

Aliens vs Predator: Requiem

"People are dying! We need guns!" You can't just make up dialogue like that - you have to pay a Hollywood scriptwriter a six figure sum to get them to create such deathless prose. And AvP:R, as the marketing people would have you call this instead of something more accurate but less printable in a family publication, is full of great dialogue like that. But don't worry: the rest of the film works on that same lofty level, so you won't be distracted from the gaping plot holes, pathetic acting, insultingly dull fight scenes, and total disregard for logic that makes this film one of the bigger pieces of junk to float down the movie sewer in recent months. At this point you're probably shaking your head and thinking "well, what did he expect - all anyone could seriously ask from a film like this is some enjoyably stupid monster-on-monster action, not Shakespeare". And you're right: the standards for this kind of film are pretty low, and yet this fails to even come close to that. For starters, why is a third of the film taken up by a jocks versus geeks plotline that no-one cares about? Why does a tiny rural town have sewers you could drive a truck through? Why does the predator - sent on a mission to kill off an alien infestation and erase all traces of extra-terrestrial life on Earth - go around punching holes in the road and skinning human beings? How many aliens are supposed to be on the loose anyway? Why doe the Predator only fight aliens in dark, wet places where you can't tell who's fighting who? And most importantly of all, why would anyone in their right mind pay to see this?

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #419)