The Wrestler

I've never liked Mickey Rourke and the films of Darren Aronofsky usually leave me cold - with the exception of The Fountain - so I haven't been particularly eager to see this film. Throw in the subject of wrestling and it's a real turnoff. Fortunately the film recognizes the inherent absurdities in (over) grown men wearing spandex garppling with each other in front of a baying audience, while also having a clear-eyed approach to the cost, both physical and emotional, especially for those past their prime. Randy spends as much time on his appearance as any woman - working out, dyeing his shaggy mane blonde, tanning and shaving his body - all in order to live up to his public image. This was fixed during his heyday in the 80s but there's no mistaking that he's getting old. He limps, wears a hearing aid and seems to need support bandages all over his body, not to mention taking a pharmacy's-worth of drugs. Then he has a heart attack. From that point, we're in familiar territory: will Randy risk his health (and possibly his life) for one last shot at glory via a rematch of his most famous bout?
Emotionally he's also a mess, long estranged from his daughter and harboring an affection for ageing lap dancer Cassidy. You might think redemption is in the offing and it briefly appears to be. Randy gives up wrestling to work on a deli counter, hunts out his daughter and attempts to start a relationship with Cassidy. However, Cassidy keeps him at arm's length while his daughter finally cuts off all ties with him after yet another let-down. The only bond that's ever worked is the one Randy has with his fans, his audience. He's a performer, just like Cassidy, only she sees it as a means to an end, finally reclaiming her real name and breaking free. For Randy it *is* the end - and it may just be precisely that.

Push

After sitting through several trailers all featuring heavy use of CGI and, by the look of it, mass destruction of various places across the globe, Push came as a refreshing, pleasant surprise. Minimal CGI, location shooting and NO world-famous landmarks being blown up. Admittedly the plot is insanely complicated but the pace is so frenetic that the viewer doesn't have much time to ponder implausibilities (as anyone who has ever watched The Terminator will know, thinking about changing the future can bring on a very bad headache ...) Instead of the glossy sheen of the vast majority of superhero films, Push is gritty and grainy, making a virtue of a low budget. Rather than the expected expansiveness, there's a sense of claustrophobia, with the tightly packed buildings and teeming streets of Hong Kong pressing in on the main characters, just as the agents of Division relentlessly track them down.
Nor does the film make any concessions to the ADD viewer. Pay attention to Cassie's opening voiceover, and watch carefully, and it's not too difficult to follow. The viewer is very much thrown into the middle of a pre-existing world. I liked the fact that Paul McGuigan left the audience to do a bit of work on their own (we have brains, let's use them!) and I'd much rather watch a film that tried to do too much and didn't quite succeed than one that didn't try in the first place. The main thing that carries the viewer through is the thoroughly engaging central relationship between loner Nick and bolshy teenager Cassie. She gatecrashes his life; he starts behaving like her elder brother ("did you lose a bet with your hairdresser?") while getting beaten up by just about everybody he encounters - there are a couple of wince-inducing moments during his fights with Victor, another Mover. Nick's frequently out of his depth but perseveres and as he does, he gains more control over his powers (there's a lovely look of suprise the first time he deflects a bullet) although he never loses that streak of vulnerability. Chris Evans makes him a very human "superhero" which lends a welcome air of uncertainty to the outcome. And did I mention NO silly costumes anywhere in sight ...

Byzantium

The aspect that most impresses is the incredible detail in the ivory carvings, be they plaques or diptyches. The figures might be deceptively simple but the skill involved is unmistakable. The artists themselves might be anonymous but the works speak for themselves. Likewise, a perfume burner on the shape of a fabulously decorated Orthodox church is breathtaking. It's a tiny step though from the beauty of holiness to outright garishness, courtesy of heavily bejewelled icons or elaborate heavy jewellery that looks like it must have been painful to wear. By and large, the less elaborate items are the most appealing: glazed ceramics, geometrical gold jewellery, carved caskets. Also fascinating are the surving 4th-5th century textiles, faded and worn but the patterns still visible. The geographical spread was also surprising: from Egypt to Armenia to Turkey to Serbia and Russia, reflecting the way in which Byzantine art both influenced and was influenced by other cultures. It was never in danger of becoming naturalistic but then again, much of the art was about expressing the divine light of God (hence all that gold) Just don't judge by the standards of the Renaissance.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

I haven't been to see a Woody Allen film at the cinema for literally years. The accumulation of tiresome, cliched female characters, their annoying male counterparts and increasingly tin-eared dialogue finally made me avoid any future films. OK, I finally cracked. Critics proclaiming Vicky Cristina Barcelona was a return to form weren't quite enough (I've heard *that* one before) but the presence of the mighty Javier Bardem swung it - the logic being that no film featuring him could be completely unwatchable. So it proved. Whenever he and Penelope Cruz were onscreen together, the film was very good indeed. He berates her for not speaking English in front of Cristina, while hypocritically doing exactly that during their altercations. By turns exasperated and affectionate with each other, they bring a sense of a shared past and feel like more rounded characters than the Americans whose lives they disrupt. You know immediately that, despite Vicky's disdain and reluctance to accompany Juan Antonio and Cristina to Oviedo, she will succumb and thus have her nicely ordered life thrown into turmoil, while equally lacking the courage to do anything about it. There's also an oh-so-arch, oh-so-irritating voiceover determined to spell out what's happening, just in case you weren't paying attention. So, better than Woody's recent efforts (not difficult to be honest) but not exactly "great".

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Well, I've now seen all this year's BAFTA/Oscar Best Film contenders. The Reader and Frost/Nixon are both over-rated, Milk is conventional but thoroughly engaging, and Slumdog Millionaire a dark-tinged delight. I so wanted Benjamin Button to be great (I adore Seven, which is still David Fincher's best film) but although it has it's moments and possesses some moving moments, it's slightly disappointing. Benjamin's life may map onto the history of the 20th century but it's oddly bereft of social engagement. Setting the framing story during the onset of Hurricane Katrina is about as far as it goes - and then one suspects it's more because of the dramatic sound and vision of an impending storm than anything actually meaningful. It's one of the few occasions when the action isn't bathed in a golden glow. The film's New Orleans seems to exist in a parallel world where racism and bigotry don't exist and everyone gets along just swimmingly. Blacks and whites co-exist in perfect harmony. In fact, *everybody* is pleasant and well-meaning, draining the film of dramatic tension and certainly making it feel like a fantasy. The most impressive sections are when the act is kicked out of it's comfort zone and a bit more imagination is shown: the early "reversal of time" sequence, bringing the dead young soldiers back to life or the fateful series of incidents in Paris that lead to Daisy's accident. They give tantalizing hints of what might have been.

Revolutionary Road

The Academy may be bafflingly in love with The Reader (literary adapation! Holocaust! accents!) but thankfully it resister the precision-tooled awards-wannabe that is Revolutionary Road. Confronted with two people continually arguing over the course of a couple of hours, the only sensible reaction is to leave them to it. With a lack of context and backstory, April and Frank's dissatisfaction is a self-indulgent irritation rather than an understandable state of mind. A flashback to the couple's first view of their house juxtaposed with April's current reaction to the neighbourhood tells us nothing about *why* she now feels this way. Large house, two perfect kids, liked by seemingly everyone - it takes a huge leap of faith to fill in the gaps and frankly I didn't care enough about the characters to bother. And oh, are you made aware of the fact that this is an "acting showcase"! Raised voices, tears, quivering lips, and the voice of reason froma mentally unbalances man. God, I hated this film.

Rachel Getting Married

By the time recovering addict Kym's mother slaps her during a furious argument, I was wondering why noone had taken such obvious action earlier (Kym responds by decking her mother, so maybe that's why) Her first act upon arrival had been to have sex with the best man, followed by petulantly forcing her sister Rachel to change her maid of honour, and then delivering a typically self-absorbed speech at the wedding rehearsal dinner, totally deflacting the mood of joyous celebration. She will subsequently crash her father's car, which was precisely why he didn't want her to drive, and arrive at the wedding sporting a black eye. The tragic reason for her behavious ought to garner sympathy but it's always tantalizingly out of reach. Long-suffering Rachel finally cracks and vents her resentment about her high-maintenance sibling. Clearly - and thankfully - this is no schmaltzy wedding film. The filming might be handheld like a wedding video, and the nuptials might be accompanied by constant and varied music, but the undercurrent of melancholy ensures an air of unpredictability and a not-totally-happy ending.

Lemon Tree

By the end of Lemon Tree, Palestinian widow Salma's beloved lemon grove has been reduced to a shadow of it's former glory, while her neighbour the Israeli Defence Minister, now has an enormous wall for a view. Noone has won despite the protracted court battle and the co-option of the dispute for political point scoring. It's a telling allegory for the Palestinian-Israeli problem.
The Secret Service decide the grove is a danger to security, despite Salma's protestations that in 40 years no terrorist has attacked from there. She fights this decree not merely because of economic reasons (it's her only source of income apart from what her emigre son can send) but because it's inextricably associated with memories of her father. The law doesn't understand this emotional bond. As every Israeli says, she's been offered compensation (unusual in itself), so what's the problem? The Defence Minister even has the nerve to bemoan the uprooting of Palestinian olive groves elsewhere. The arrogance of the Israeli occupiers is reflected in both the letter in Hebrew sent to Salma (she doesn't speak or read the language), and in the banning of Salma from her own lemon grove (the Defence Minister doesn't hesitate to sent his staff into the grove to pick lemons when they are needed for a party)
Nor does Salma find much sympathy from her own community. She's first of all told there's nothing she can do to fight the order and then reminded that Palestinians don't accept compensation, in effect sentencing her to a life of poverty. Later pressure is exerted because of suspicions about her relationship with the young lawyer who accepts her case. It's no coincidence that Ziad has lived abroad as he's considerably more open-minded than his compatriots. However, as he says later, only American films have happy endings. Their relationship can never be accepted (he cannily becomes engaged to a Minister's daughter and one suspects will never see the daughter that he left behind in Moscow again) and the Israeli state can't be defeated in court. You do sense, though, that Salma has found an inner strength she didn't realize she possessed, while the put-upon Defence Minister's wife summons up the courage to leave him. Although the two women never talk, there's a tenuous bond between them centred on the dispute over the grove. In another place, they might actually get along quite well. The tragedy is that on the West Bank they don't stand a chance.

This Is War!

Actually, this is 3 exhibitions linked by the theme of war photojournalism: Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and 4 modern responses to Afghanistan and Iraq. War photography is a strange genre. On the one hand, there's something inherently morbid (and possibly unethical) about photographing people suffering and dying in the midst of war. On the other, the power of the images can have a huge political and propaganda impact. The photos of Capa and Taro are a perfect example. Some of Capa's most famous photos are here - the Falling Soldier, the Omaha Beach landing - but especially interesting are the contact sheets showing the entire sequence of shots for certain events, and the D-Day and Leipzig pictures subjected to the censor's pen with key landmarks scribbled out, and the face of a soon-to-be-killed gunner blocked out. The images of the young soldier lying in an ever-expanding pool of blood are deeply poignant. Equally moving and shocking is the small Chinese boy lying dead between the chicken and piglet he failed to save from the Japanese gunfire. Nor is it just male photographers who produced such powerful images. Taro's photos of Valencia air raid victims lying in the morgue are as disturbing as anything on show either by Capa or the modern artists such as Geert van Kesteren, with his photos of post-Saddam Iraq. The grief and disbelief on the faces of the Iraqis digging up mass graves prove that war is anything but glorious.

Frost/Nixon

There's nothing wrong with Frost/Nixon but I refuse to believe that it (or The Reader for that matter) is more deserving of a place on the Oscar shortlist than The Dark Knight, and especially that Ron Howard's direction is more impressive than Christopher Nolan's. It's that time of the year when the word "worthy" springs to mind as yet another awards contender is released. Despite impressive impersonations of the two protagonists, I actually wanted to see more of those consummate scene stealers Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell. They possessed an energy lacking elsewhere. I kept hoping that one or both would really shout at the self-obsessed Frost to goad him into action. The film itself is solid, well-made, well-acted and it passes a couple of hours, but it left me totally unmoved.