Midnight in Paris

Academy Award Nominations: 4

• Best Picture
• Best Director (Woody Allen)
• Best Original Screenplay (Woody Allen)
• Best Art Direction (Production Design: Anne Siebel, Set Decoration: Helene Dubreuil)

Gil Pender, a Hollywood screenwriter, and his fiancée Inez are holidaying in Paris with Inez's parents while Gil is struggling to write his first novel. Whereas Inez finds Paris as an opportunity to see its sights and view its art , guided by her pseudo-intellectual friend Paul, Gil is far more enamoured with the city, setting his sights on moving there. While on a night walk around the city, he gets lost, and at midnight, an antique car pulls up and ushers Gil inside. He discovers a number of people dressed in 1920's garb, ready to take him on an adventure in 1920's Paris, where he meets his literary and artistic heroes, finds inspiration and guidance for his novel, and meets Adriana, Pablo Picasso's mistress, with whom he becomes immediately enamoured...

I'll admit, I haven't actually seen many Woody Allen films, even though the man is legendarily a film-making machine. Of the ones I have seen, there have been a few I've hated (Match Point, Melinda and Melinda, Cassandra's Dream) and there have been a few I've liked, or even loved (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Manhattan, Annie Hall) and I'm not alone in that. Allen's films universally divide opinion, but the overwhelming agreement is that when he's bad, he's terrible, missing the point by a mile, but when he's good, he's fantastic, using a city and characters to tell a story of neuroses and life in general. Although his foray into London didn't pan out (You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger aside), his recent excursion into Barcelona won him plaudits and now he moves onto Paris, home of the great artists, something which inspires Midnight in Paris. So has he got it right, or has he got it wrong? This time, he's got it right. Very right.

Midnight in Paris is beguiling more than anything, romanticising Paris to an extreme, making this almost like a love letter to the city, something in the vein of so many classic romantic comedies where the protagonists meet at the Eiffel Tower. Allen's repeated image of Paris in the rain just sounds beautiful despite the fact you don't actually get that visual until the end of the film. Despite the fact Paris is a dirty, busy, overhyped cesspit, you start to associate with the protagonist Gil's enthusiasm for the city, and when his time-travelling adventures begin, the city and the 1920's period combined create an even more romantic vision of Paris, creating a beautiful vision of divulging artists and fascinating characters. Admittedly, the concept of the film is somewhat surreal (and later becomes meta when the device is repeated within itself) but that's not a bad thing; it serves to make the film more charming and generally more watchable. You feel without it, this would have been just another Manhattan, but thankfully it becomes its own film and excels because of that.

The film is carried squarely on the shoulders of Owen Wilson, who plays screenwriter Gil who goes to Paris looking for inspiration after struggling. You feel the character is heavily based on Allen himself, not just because of his situation and his quest for creativity in a different city, but because the character dresses like Allen and talks like Allen, using Allen's famous extended vocabulary and squeezing in facts and neuroses about life into very short, quickly delivered sentences. Wilson is able to pull off the pacing of the film, and with that, he holds the film together. A lesser performance, and the film would have fallen down, as it relies heavily on its fast-paced dialogue (so fast, in fact, the film only lasts 94 minutes). Rachel McAdams is reduced to somewhat of a cameo role as his wife, which is a shame, but also not, because she's quite wooden when she does appear on screen. Michael Sheen's brief appearances as Paul, as he plays an upper-class know-it-all quite well, surprisingly enough. Even Carla Bruni is alright in her cameo as the tour guide. In the 1920's, Tom Hiddleston (there he is again) is utterly charming in bringing F. Scott Fitzgerald to life, and Corey Stoll is fitfully deep and poignant and drunk as Ernest Hemingway. Kathy Bates doesn't seem to play Gertrude Stein, she seems to play Friendly Mother Movie Role Which Is Usually Filled By Kathy Bates, while Adrian Brody does a great cameo as Salvador Dali.

However, Marion Cotillard does fantastically well as Adriana, Picasso's mistress and muse who falls in love with Gil and vice versa. Her character seems to be a 1920's equivalent of Gil, with aspirations of something greater whilst reminiscing of an earlier period as a great time than the present. The characters fit together well and Wilson and Cotillard have a lot of chemistry, which is surprising given the short amount of time they're given to develop it in. Although their romance doesn't explore any new territory plot-wise, the fact that their relationship IS full of clichés about romance and Paris is never going to be more fitting than it is here. I will say, Cotillard's character seems far less complex than Wilson's character; Gil seems to be more a man of contemplation and reminiscence and vocabulary and neuroses, it seems as if more thought was given to creating this one character over any other, and as such, Gil dominates the proceedings throughout, becoming the tour de force in any given situation, for which most of the fellow leading characters suffer for, let alone the secondary characters and cameos. Their impact is lessened, but not unnoticed by any means.

Overall, it's a really interesting story Allen has devised here and he pulls it off well, hardly surprising given the years of experience he's had in delivering such films. The wide range of characters and the vast amount of fast-spoken dialogue mean you have to keep up with it; it is blink and you'll miss it at some points. Although some characters seem staged rather than natural, others are allowed to develop and flourish on screen and they do so greatly. The film looks beautifully shot, is directed well, and clearly written well as the dialogue is snappy and the story ticks along at a steady rate, reaching a firm conclusion. It may be full of clichés, but it's set in Paris, what did you expect? At least no-one gets engaged on top of the Eiffel Tower.

Rating: ****

Midnight in Paris was released on 7th October 2011 and is no longer being shown in cinemas.

The Help

Academy Award Nominations: 4

• Best Picture
• Best Actress (Viola Davis)
• Best Supporting Actress (Jessica Chastain)
• Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer)

In 1960's Mississippi, middle class white families hire black maids to clean their houses, cook their food, and raise their young children for them. 'The Help', as they are referred to, are a struggling underclass, and look to be degraded even more soon if a new bill passes and forces them to use separate outside toilets. Meanwhile, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan has just graduated from the University of Mississippi and aspires to be a journalist or a novelist. Upon returning home, she witnesses outright racism from her old friends who are all married with kids and hiring help. Coupled with the fact her own maid Constantine has mysteriously quit, Skeeter decides to write a book about the maids and tell their stories. At first they're hesitant, but eventually two maids step up: Aibileen, the maid to Hilly Holbrook, the 'leader' of the middle class wives in Jackson, and Minny, a maid with a reputation of being difficult...

The Help is one of those films that has 'For Your Consideration' stamped all over it on the surface: Famous faces telling the story of race relations in the south of America in the 1960's. It's award season fodder. However, to pull this off, the film can't be too schmultzy and nostalgic; it needs to be hard hitting and accurate with great performances throughout to live out the characters and give the film a sense of reality and believability. So what does The Help offer with its big screen adaptation? Emma Stone (one of the fastest rising stars in Hollywood), Jessica Chastain (one of the fastest rising stars in Hollywood), Viola Davis (former Academy award nominee), Octavia Spencer (famous character actor) and Bryce Dallas Howard (former Gwen Stacy in Spiderman and diaghter of Ron Howard). So some stellar and non-stellar names leading the way. Pleasingly, they all deliver stellar performances. The story though...

The story of The Help is touching and emotional and funny and realistic, and as a film, it works well. However, you can't help but feel walking away from this that the message of the film was "Black maids oppressed by middle class white families finally gained courage and found freedom with the help of a middle class white girl." The Help seems to suggest that the black maids needed help from white people to gain freedom from... oppressive white people, and that just seems wrong to me, to have that as the moral of the story if we're meant to be focusing on the strong-willed but oppressed black women at the centre of the film. Something seems drastically wrong with that. Don't get me wrong, Aibileen and Minny are the dramatic centre of the film, directing the plot and having the story narrated by Aibileen, showing how they fight against Hilly and her dominant racist views and how Skeeter helps them to gain a mall measure of revenge and equality. My problem is the entire film places Emma Stone's Skeeter as the protagonist, showing her entire life story and following her all the way through, and Bryce Dallas Howard's Hilly as the antagonist, reducing Aibileen and Minny to supporting players, and in a film that's meant to be focusing on the stories and lives of these two women as they try to gain some respect against an oppressive white majority, I find that shocking and downright appalling.

Unfortunately, it is what it is, nothing can be done about that, but Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer deliver two performances in this that blow almost everyone else out of the water, placing them centre stage and keeping them as the focus of attention, despite the narrative attempting to do otherwise. Viola Davis delivers an emotional, heartbreaking performance throughout and is rightly the narrator, setting the tone and becoming the example of the blatant racism and the fight against it. However, it's Octavia Spencer who steals the show, grabbing the focus and attention in every single scene she's in, playing her role as a feisty and strong maid with a heart and plenty of determination perfectly. It's Spencer and Spencer's character which make this film so immediately watchable and direct your focus throughout it's two hour run time, so she deserves a lot of credit for that. Emma Stone plays the cute, spunky, naive girl with a lot of heart here, much as she seems to do in a lot of her films, so her performance is good and solid enough, albeit unspectacular and unoriginal. Bryce Dallas Howard is also great in this, playing a character who is ostensibly 'a bitch' and making her truly unlikeable, using the character traits to portray the character's inherent racism and self-made authority amongst her friend group.

The mystery, or at least for me, is Jessica Chastain and her Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role here. I'd argue Howard portrays the better character and delivers a more striking and powerful performance. That's not to say Chastain isn't good in here role as the working class girl elevated to middle class housewife who needs Minny to teach her to cook and take care of her house, all the while trying to reinitiate herself into Howard's social circle. It's a semi-complicated role which Chastain plays well, but I'm not seeing this as a particularly special performance. She may be a great actress, but this wasn't anything special. Speaking of nothing special, the film has two endings, and though each ending does tie up one or multiple threads from the film, the way the final 15 minutes is structured seems to me to only ruin the impact of the endings. The actual end of the film is fantastic and moving and appropriate, but the film also ends about 10 minutes before that when it didn't need as that plot line could easily have remained open, and it distracts from the proper ending with Aibileen. Another shame, but after the way the film plays out, it's unsurprising, something I put down to the poor adaptation and poor direction of Tate Taylor.

Overall, it's a nice enough film to watch and tells it story solidly, it just seems to do it from the wrong perspective. The film confuses itself as to which side of the story its meant to be showing, and the entire concept of The Help suffers because of it. Saying that, if you're going to watch this film, you should do so for the performances, because there are some really great ones on offer here. The film looks good, but I put that down to the cinematographer rather than the writer/director, who doesn't seem to know what he's doing and only got this job as he knows the author (sad but true story). The Help could certainly use some help to tell its story, but its actresses need no help at all..

Rating: ***

The Help was released on 26th October 2011 and is no longer being shown in cinemas.

The Descendants

Academy Award Nominations: 5 

• Best Picture
• Best Director (Alexander Payne)
• Best Actor (George Clooney)
• Best Adapted Screenplay (Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash)
• Best Film Editing (Kevin Tent)

Matt King is a lawyer based in Hawaii and the sole trustee of a family trust that controls thousands of acres of untouched land, which they are about to sell to a local businessman for redevelopment. However, after an unfortunate boating accident, Matt's wife Elizabeth is left in a coma, forcing him to stop everything and re-assess his life. First priority is looking after his 10 year old daughter Scottie, as well as bringing back his 17 year old wild child daughter Alex from boarding school. When Matt finds out his wife won't recover, he begins the awful task of informing his close family and children. However, Alex has a more surprising revelation: Elizabeth was having an affair, and was on the verge of leaving Matt before the accident. Can Matt and his family cope with everything at once?

Alexander Payne movies are very quickly becoming highly distinctive and templates for fellow American directors: American social critiques with troubled main characters and a provocative supporting cast, where nothing much happens other than the everyday complexity of life itself, told with plenty of dark humour and satire. Before this, Payne wrote and directed Election, About Schmidt and Sideways, three really excellent films that established Payne as a 'force majeure' before he disappeared for 7 years, merely producing a handful of efforts rather than writing and directing. Finally, he's back with The Descendants, starring one of the biggest names in the world. So has he gone Hollywood or was he merely biding his time? Thankfully, it's safe to say he was biding his time, and biding it well.

Almost needless to say, this is another distinctive Alexander Payne film, where there are no major action points, and both plot and story are driven by character and dialogue. It's more a series of mini dramas held together by one leading plot thread, much in the same way his earlier works worked, and the formula hasn't gotten old yet. The Descendants can switch from laugh out loud funny to quietly tense to completely heartbreaking in the blink of an eye, hardly surprising given the subject matter and the range of characters that inhabit this world. It's a really well worked drama with elements of all manner of other genres thrown in for good measure. Payne has most certainly established himself as a great modern day American director, becoming the voice of the disaffected youth who grew up to nothing but disappointment. He lived out the disappointing future of Ferris Bueller in Election with Matthew Broderick, and now he's enlisted George Clooney to deliver a similar performance.

And what a performance it is. George Clooney seems to have only gotten better with age, and in The Descendants he delivers a similar performance to the one he delivered two years ago in Up in the Air, one which was also a perfect portrayal of a highly troubled character struggling to keep everything organised and in order on the surface. He was great in that, and he's great again in this, playing an absentee father, near oblivious to his family until he's forced to confront and control it. In my opinion though, his performance is enhanced by the chemistry he creates with his on-screen daughter Alex, played by Shailene Woodley. Woodley is only 20 years old, playing a 17 year old with a drinking problem and strained relations with both her parents after they ship her off to boarding school, and does so fantastically well. When Alex returns home, she becomes a confidante for Matt and becomes Scottie's surrogate mother in the absence of her real mother. Not only that, but she's the catalyst for the leading plot thread of the wife's affair, she's intrgral to the film's success and Woodley carries it off like a pro. It's a brave and striking performance, one that has gone somewhat unappreciated in the light of Clooney's, but I firmly believe the two of them have made each other better in this by creating a great on-screen relationship with a genuine connection and real chemistry.

Despite how good I've said this film is, I do have a few problems with some of the characters in here. I did say Shailene Woodley played Alex King well, but her character seems fundamentally flawed in that she's supposed to be a wild child, and yet all of that's forgotten by the beginning of the second act, becoming the stand-in adult female lead. It's a shame, because it's seem as if there could have plenty of things to go with down that road, but they drop her defining characteristics and give her new ones so quickly, it seems like a waste. Also, I don't understand the inclusion of the character of Sid at all. Sid is a friend of Alex who tags along with the family as Alex claims he'll "help to keep her calm", but he's completely unnecessary after the first half of the film, as Alex appears to calm herself down and Sid becomes no more than the comic shill, adding laughs which is just far too obvious and unnecessary given the gentle and dark humour already within the script. The supporting cast has problems as well in my opinion. The supporting cast is full of famous faces and names, but their roles are reduced to little more than cameos, which also seems wasteful, especially given the importance of some of these characters. Payne seem so fixated on keeping the focus squarely on Clooney and Woodley, he forgets to give almost anyone else a chance.

All in all though, The Descendants is a great watch, it really is. If you're already a fan of Payne's work, then you'll know what you're getting with this. If you've never seen any of Payne's work, then by all means give this a go, then go and watch Sideways. And Election. And About Schmidt. In that order. It's got some great performances in here, some really sharp and well-written, naturalistic dialogue with plenty of self-depreciating dark humour and genuine emotion coming through. It's funny, it's dark, it's engaging, it's emotional, it's everything you could possibly want in two hours, all with likeable characters and a well-constructed story to boot. The Descendants is so similar to all of Payne's earlier works, and yet different at the same time, and that surely is the mark of a great director: To make something instantly recognisable and yet entirely different, all in one film.

Rating: ****1/2

The Descendants was released on 27th January 2012 and is still being shown in cinemas.

War Horse

Academy Award Nominations: 6

• Best Picture
• Best Art Direction (Production Design: Rick Carter, Set Decoration: Lee Sandales)
• Best Cinematography (Janusz Kaminski)
• Best Original Score (John Williams)
• Best Sound Editing (Richard Hymns and Gary Rydstrom)
• Best Sound Mixing (Gary Rydstrom, Andy Nelson, Tom Johnson and Stuart Wilson)

In the early 1910’s, a farmer needing a plough horse instead buys a young colt his son Albert has followed since birth, and is soon named Joey. Albert soon trains the young horse to plough the field against all the odds. However, after the crops fail, Albert’s father has no choice but to sell Joey to a young Captain heading out to war in order to lead cavalry charges. Joey is trained by the army to be a war horse, and after the British cavalry charge is proven futile against modern machine guns, Joey is captured by the Germans and used to haul heavy artillery. However, his adventures don’t end, as one way or another, this horse is determined to return home...

I should start by saying this: I have not read the famous children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo written in 1982, nor have I seen the award-winning stage adaptation which has been running since 2007. I’ve heard many things about both of these versions of War Horse, and now there’s a third version: The big budget Hollywood film version directed by everyone’s favourite family film maker Steven Spielberg. Therefore, I will not be using this review to compare and contrast versions and adaptations; I will be using this review to review the film as a standalone text. Therefore, having watched War Horse with no prior knowledge of the plot and only general word-of-mouth surrounding the book and play, I can safely say this: Either War Horse is incredibly overhyped, or the film just isn’t that good.

Here’s the thing: I was told by various people that this film, although in particular the play, was highly emotional in certain parts. I was preparing to be an emotional wreck given the sources of said information. Yet watching it, I didn’t quite get those moments, they didn’t connect for me. Now this isn’t me being macho and pretending I didn’t cry when I actually did, I honestly didn’t. I felt the appropriate emotions in the emotional places of the film, but there was no blubbering or bawling. Maybe it’s because I’m not a big crier. Maybe it’s because I’m not a big fan of horses (I hate them after one of those traumatic childhood experiences). Maybe though, and here’s the big’un, the way the scenes and plot points were played out in this film had less emotional effect than they perhaps might have done in the stage adaptation. In my opinion, the points that are played out for major audience reactions are just so blatent and obvious in this, you can see them coming a mile off and they didn’t live up to expectations at all. I really expected more from the man who gave the world E.T.

That’s right, Steven Spielberg was directing here, and it’s no surprise either; the material seem ripe fodder for one of his family-orientated films with high emotions and a winning main character relationship running through the core. Don’t get me wrong, it’s shot beautifully, and the plot rattles along at a steady pace, especially in the second two acts. It just seems as if he wasn’t able to capture the same kind of emotion he was able to get in E.T. or Schindler’s List, which is a shame, Other than that, War Horse has the feeling of a proper family grandiose epic from the 80’s, something along the lines of E.T. or The Goonies, or even Super 8, which was in itself an homage to the Spielberg-ian family films of the 80’s. There’s plenty of interesting characters to drive the plot forward, and plenty of good performances to match.

From the off, the entire Narracott family are great on screen. Young Albert, played by Jeremy Irvine, is solid as the boy quickly becoming a man due to family life and war, and the relationship with his horse feels real. Parents Ted and Rose, played by Peter Mullan and Emily Watson, are also convincing as the struggling farmers, dealing with their own personal problems as well as trying to pay rent and keep their livelihoods. As the film progresses, Tom Hiddleston puts in another good performance as Captain Nicholls to match his recent good performances in Thor and Midnight in Paris (more on that soon). A pair of stand outs though, however brief their role may be, are Niels Arestrup and Celine Buckens as the French grandfather and granddaughter living on a farm, trying to avoid the war and happen to chance upon Joey after a series of events. Their relationship is genuine and probably one of the brighter spots in the film. The best actor though is the horse, or rather the various horses who played Joey. They’ve clearly all been well trained, and use head and eye movements to express emotion in place of dialogue. That’s all fine and well, but when everybody on screen is out-acted by a horse, even if the film is focused on the horse, there’s a problem.

Overall, War Horse is an odd film. It looks good, the premise is nicely played out and the acting is OK. It just seems to miss its marks in the major emotional moments, which is exactly where it needs to pick up and hit home. Obviously, this is just my opinion, other people I’m sure will connect with this film more deeply and will leave the cinema blubbing uncontrollably, but it just didn’t do it for me. It’s also the sheer amount of emotional moments in this film which has annoyed me, the film is full of them and eventually I found it tiresome, so when the big finale came around, not only did I know what was coming, but I didn’t care as much as I might have done.  Maybe I should watch the stage show, maybe I made a mistake in watching this first. But then, if the stage version is as good as people say it is, would I not be even more disappointed with this? I guess War Horse just isn’t for me, I’m afraid.

Rating: ***


War Horse was released on 13th January 2012 and is still being shown in cinemas.

Moneyball

Academy Award Nominations: 6

• Best Picture
• Best Actor (Brad Pitt)
• Best Supporting Actor (Jonah Hill)
• Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian; Story by Stan Chervin)
• Best Film Editing (Christopher Tellefsen)
• Best Sound Mixing (Deb Adair, Ron Bochar, Dave Giammarco and Ed Novick)

The Oakland Athletics baseball team have done well in their 2001 season. However, success next season looks unlikely as budget restrictions means the team is about to lose their three star players to teams like the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, teams with multitudes of wealth. The team’s general manager, Billy Beane, sets about rebuilding his team, not by replacing the players themselves, but by replacing their stats, all on a limited budget. His scouting network comes up with suggestions, none of which Beane is happy with. However, on a recruiting trip to Cleveland, he meets a Yale economics graduate named Peter Brand, whose ‘sabermetrics’ approach to finding players could be just the solution Beane and the A’s need to have a competitive season...

Moneyball is the film of the book which is ‘based on the true story’ of the Oakland A’s 2002 season and how Billy Beane and Peter Brand used statistics to find cheap, misfit players and create a baseball team capable of competing with high budget, all-star teams. The unbelievable nature of the true story makes is perfect Hollywood fodder, but it faced a big problem. It’s a baseball film which isn’t about baseball, and it isn’t Field of Dreams. To put it simply, there’s an awful lot of talking and typing on computers in Moneyball. Luckily, the man tasked to adapting the book of the real life story onto the big screen has experience in writing films and television shows which involve lots of talking and typing on computers. As a matter of fact, he won an Oscar just last year for his last effort: The ‘un-filmable’, ‘un-cinematic’, ‘boring’ story of the creation of Facebook which turned into one of 2010’s best films. Aaron Sorkin, we thank you.

Sorkin has a knack of turning wordy, un-filmable stories into exciting motion pictures which still contain all that long stretches of dialogue and exposition, and Moneyball is no different. Sorkin’s trademark fast paced dialogue is all over this film, and really amps up the story. Sorkin seems to have a real skill in finding the drama and creating the tension in what is otherwise an unlikely scenario. However, saying that, the film also has many other merits which make this ‘business of baseball’ story more immediately watchable. The direction by Bennett Miller is pretty spot-on, the editing switches between fast and snappy and slow and deliberate, creating the right tone and pace for each scene, and the film itself is shot beautifully by Wally Pfister, the man who’s currently making Christopher Nolan’s Batman films look incredible and one of my favourite cinematographers at the moment. All these are pluses for the film, but with such a heavy and intricate script, the performances from the lead actors had to be spot-on, and thankfully, they are.

Brad Pitt is pretty much acting for fun nowadays, any performance he puts in seems to be effortless and the same applies here, acting cool as always and bringing the character to life with real vigour and believability. He captures the anxiety, quiet desperation and contained excitement of Billy Beane and translates it onto the big screen. However, Pitt is somewhat outshone in this by, and I’m even surprised I’m writing this, Jonah Hill. I’m not a big Jonah Hill fan, he’s been in a couple of funny films but he plays the same character every time, which was why I was amaze he got a look in for best supporting actor. Here though, he goes outside his range and it pays off big time. That’s not to say it’s a phenomenal performance, but he certainly puts in a better showing here than he has for his last few big screen outings. Playing the straight guy actually suits him, and when he decides to stop doing comedies, there may be life in his career yet. However, I wasn’t a big fan of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays the team’s manager in this. Whenever he appears on screen, the dialogue seems clunky and the delivery is no better. Also, the players Beane and Brand sign seem like sports movie clichés, with one being the cocky veteran, one being the unorthodox guy with real talent, one being the guy plucked from obscurity to take a leading role. There’s no imagination in the creation of these characters, and whether or not this was a deliberate choice in order to place the emphasis firmly on Beane and Brand I don’t know, but nonetheless I found these characters mildly cringeworthy.

Moneyball seems to be a film of two halves: The first half of the film is filled with a lot of set-up, explaining the situation of the characters, then the introduction of Brand and his 'sabermetrics' along with an awful lot of explanation as to how his economical approach to baseball players actually works. Then, the second half of the film begins, and things really start going from there. With all the plot devices and characters in place, all that's allowed to happen is for events to unfold and unfold they do, creating a seriously gripping piece of cinema. There's drama from watching how the team fares under this new way of thinking, there's glimpses of action as we see the plan put into action. There's even comedy from Beane and Brand as Brand, an economics graduate from Yale with no prior knowledge of the running of a baseball team, is suddenly promoted to assistant GM under Beane and starts asserting his authority, though mainly through Beane's insistence he does what's "part of his job". It's the great mix of all these genres in one film that make Sorkin films so instantly recognisable and watchable, it's just a shame it takes an hour to really get going.

Aside from this, Moneyball is a highly watchable film, definitely in the same vein as The Social Network, with some good performances on show and some fantastic dialogue to solidify said performances. The story drags somewhat for the first hour, but the second hour is the one that’ll reward you for sticking with it. Personally, given what we’re shown in Moneyball, I’d love to see Wally Pfister creating the images of Aaron Sorkin’s words far more often. This isn’t really an emotive film, it’s by far more clinical and factual, so if you’re looking for something that’s going to grab you by the heart, you’re in the wrong place. However, if you’re looking for something to make you think and deliver a great story for a couple of hours, look no further. Even if you don’t know your short stops from your Red Sox, it’s definitely worth watching.

Rating: ****

Moneyball was released on 25th November 2011 and is no longer being shown in cinemas.

The Artist

Academy Award Nominations: 10

• Best Picture
• Best Director (Michel Hazanavicius)
• Best Actor (Jean Dujardin)
• Best Supporting Actress (Berenice Bejo)
• Best Original Screenplay (Michel Hazanavicius)
• Best Art Direction (Production Design: Laurence Bennett, Set Decoration: Robert Gould)
• Best Cinematography (Guillaume Schiffman)
• Best Original Score (Ludovic Bource)
• Best Costume Design (Mark Bridges)
• Best Film Editing (Anne-Sophie Bion and Michel Hazanavicius)

Business is booming in Hollywood in the 1920’s. People are flocking to the cinemas to see the silent pictures, and the man at the forefront of all this is George Valentin, Kinograph Studio’s major star and leading man. But, there’s change coming, as the advent of sound is coming sooner rather than later, and George can’t seem to abide by these major developments. On top of that, his star is beginning to fade in favour of a female star he helped to make famous; a woman by the name of Peppy Miller, who’s fast becoming the face of the ‘talkies’...

The Artist is unique amongst this year’s best picture nominees. Hell, it’s unique amongst all films this year, this decade, this millennium. In case you didn’t already know, The Artist is a black and white silent film, a replica of (or rather an ode to) the black and white silent films of the 1920’s the plot revolves around. I would say it’s refreshing to see something so different, but this was the standard 90 years ago, so technically it’s not new, it’s actually tremendously old school. The problem is black and white silent films were destroyed by the advent of colour and sound. Surely, then, a film like The Artist can only act as an homage to the era, rather than use its tropes and themes to create a 21st century film that can attract and entertain a wide audience. This assumption would be dead wrong. The Artist is an absolute treat.

The Artist is not going to be a film for everyone, obviously. Recent reports of cinema goers in Liverpool demanding refunds because they didn’t realise the film was silent and in black and white exemplify this. However, if people were willing to give this a go, people would see that this isn’t just one of those films exclusively for critics and film buffs. The Artist is compelling viewing throughout its short 90 minute runtime, something that most films with dialogue and action sequences nowadays fail to achieve. It’s romantic and funny and dramatic and tragic and celebratory, all rolled into one. The man behind this? Michel Hazanavicius: Writer, director and editor. Clearly, he knew what he’d have to do to advance the plot without the use of dialogue, and does so brilliantly with sparingly-used intertitles and fast paced editing using 1920’s techniques such as wipes and fades. However, Hazanavicius is not alone in his endeavours.

The acting is one of the key elements here, as more has to be said through expression and attitude, which leaves a lot resting on leading stars Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo. They carry it superbly well though, managing to create associable characters through nothing more than over-exaggerated facial expressions and actions. Dujardin in particular is fantastic, because he seems to not just play the part of George Valentin, rather he becomes the role. I realise this is a terrible acting cliché, but I’ve honestly never seen a truer example of it. Dujardin lives out Valentin’s downfall on screen and does so in a heartbreaking way. Considering the man is an alcoholic failure, the attachment and sympathy you hold for him is entirely down to Dujardin’s performance. Bejo also deserves credit as her performance as the rising starlet makes her the antithesis of Valentin, and yet her performance makes her and Dujardin a brilliant pairing. The expressiveness in her face and her actions, no matter how slight they are, portrays her emotions on screen without the need for dialogue and accentuate her character. Even the dog, Uggie, is great in this! He acts as well as the human actors and, due to the lack of sound, becomes an equal performer, adding comedy elements and creating tension and drama. For a dog, that is incredibly impressive. There is also a great supporting cast here, including John Goodman perfectly playing a fat cat, cigar chomping studio head. It’s good to see a film where there are many recognisable faces, but the most recognisable name is Goodman, and the lead actors are total unknowns before now. There is, however, a key character in the film that is more important than any other: The soundtrack.

I call the soundtrack a character, because Hazanavicius makes the soundtrack become integral to the film’s plot and pacing, not only with his use of music (which is pretty spot-on throughout), but through his clever use of sound effects in certain scenes to add emphasis or create tension. The score is perfect throughout, a mix of period and contemporary compositions played with an orchestra in the style befitting the film’s medium. He doesn’t use sound much, but when he does, it’s great. Moments when the music stops, and the emphasis is placed squarely on the action on screen become tense, and when you add sound effects, breaking the silence, it’s a mix of delight and bewilderment how something so simple can have such an effect both on the characters on screen and to the viewing audience.

Overall, The Artist is undeniably fantastic, one of those films I can’t wait to watch again even though I’ve literally just seen it. If people are willing to give it a go, they’ll find it has something for everyone, as appealing to a teenage market as it will be to an elderly market. The performances are first class, as well they should be, or else it would fall on its own sword. The use of music and sound are measured and pretty much spot-on, and the visual style and editing are a fitting tribute to the silent pictures of the era it attempts to replicate. Michel Hazanavicius has great reason to be proud of this film, and The Artist is most certainly worthy of all the plaudits it’s currently receiving. The Artist hasn’t left me speechless, but my god it’s breathtaking.

Rating: *****

The Artist was released on 30th December 2011 and is still currently in cinemas.

Hugo

Academy Award Nominations: 11

• Best Picture
• Best Director (Martin Scorsese)
• Best Adapted Screenplay (John Logan)
• Best Cinematography (Robert Richardson)
• Best Original Score (Howard Shore)
• Best Art Direction (Production Design: Dante Ferretti, Set Decoration: Francseca Lo Schiavo)
• Best Costume Design (Sandy Powell)
• Best Visual Effects (Robert Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossman and Alex Henning)
• Best Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker)
• Best Sound Editing (Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty)
• Best Sound Mixing (Tom Fleischman and John Midgley)

Hugo Cabret is an young boy who lives inside the walls of a busy Parisian train station, maintaining the station's many clocks in the absence of his alcoholic uncle, the man who took him in after his father dies in an accident. Hanging on to the last remnant of his father's memory, he becomes obsessed with fixing an automaton clockwork robot in the hopes it may contain a message from his father. However, to fix it, he needs gears and springs, things which can be found at only one of the train station's many shops; A small, unassuming shop selling toys, run by an unassuming old man. There's also the matter of the lock with the heart-shaped key...

The Invention of Hugo Cabret, or 'Hugo' (in 3D!), is a whimsical tale about a young boy's extraordinary adventures in a romanticised 1930's Paris, with homelessness, thievery and the history of cinema all running themes in the background. You see, if you look at this story through certain aspects of its plot, you can see why the director of films like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Goodfellas chose to bring this to the big screen himself. However, to be blunt, it seems an extraordinary adventure of Scorsese's own making to create his first ever family-friendly film at this point in his career, especially given his recent tremendous successes with The Departed and Shutter Island, two films with dark themes more suited to his earlier work. But then maybe such a shift in tactics from such a legendary director can surely only mean that he's confident he can do it justice, no? Well, as strange as it is, he does. Kind of.

Hugo is troubling me even as I write this, because although it is a great film, and there are some really great moments of dialogue or cinematography or a combination of the two, that's just it. There are some great MOMENTS. Though there are flashes of brilliance, it is overall a rather generic children's adventure film with no real artistic flourishes other than those enforced by the 3D medium in which it was shot, and that's a real crime. Over the years, Scorsese has established his own visual style with certain shots and themes becoming his trademarks, and they just aren't on display here. That's not to say he's not completely absent from proceedings, there is one moment which is Scorsese through and through: In the pre-title scene, the action follows the young Hugo as he weaves his way through the narrow walls of the train station, and we as the audience follow him all the way through in a single, smooth tracking shot which is reminiscent of the 'Copacabana Shot' from Goodfellas. Other than that, the film is generic, it could have been done by anyone. Not to naysay a directing legend, and a personal hero of mine, but the film left me feeling pretty gutted and somewhat disappointed that there wasn't more Scorsese on display.

That's not to say that is not entertaining because it certainly is. It's two hours of good, clean, family fun with enough adventure and drama running through it to keep an audience entertained, which is down to the performances of the two young actors. Asa Butterfield is great as Hugo, playing his role of the young boy forced to grown up too soon well, bringing a maturity and sadness to his performance. Also, Chloe Moretz is good as Isabelle, Hugo's young companion, believably another young girl with adult sensibilities. You may not that both kids play the roles with maturity, another sign that Scorsese is going outside his comfort zone in this film and is directing a cast of children for the first time, treating them like adults and producing a performance akin to this. Other than that, it's great to see Sir Ben Kingsley in a non-comical, leading role and performing well in it as the master Georges Melies. Note to Hollywood: Sir Ben Kingsley can still act, don't merely reduce him to a cameo where he does nothing but mugs and speaks in an accent. Sacha Baron Cohen, also, does well as the bumbling train station inspector, delivering a near-Clouseau like performance which entertains and delivers heart and warmth to his cold character.

Looking at the film by itself, it's really well done. The Paris train station set was a grand construction demanded by Scorsese, and looking at it on screen, you can see why. Had this film been shot in a standard studio with different sets on a smaller scale, the grandiose feeling of the set would not have been translated to screen. Thankfully, the scale of the train station comes across, and it's actually enhanced by the inclusion of the 3D technology, creating a depth and scale that only 3D could possibly create. The attention to detail in the props and sets is well worth noting as well, as nothing seems out of place or seems to have been an after thought, it seems clear that everything on screen has been carefully selected and placed to add to the on-screen illusion. The plot never drags its feet either, another case of each line being carefully selected and placed into the script to further the story, and thus the story continues at a steady pace throughout, never feeling like the two hours you'll spend watching it. In truth, the film feels as if it could twice the length and you still wouldn't notice, and you probably wouldn't care, given how beautifully the film's been shot, it's a real treat to watch, especially on a big screen.

Overall, there are good and bad things about this film, and by no means is this a bad film, but it just feels so disappointingly generic. It's good that Scorsese has explored other territory at this point in his film making career after achieving so much greatness previously, but the genre, plot and themes are so distinctly unsuited to the director that it neutralises any flourishes he might have been able to add. You can certainly see why he took on this film though; in amongst the story of the lost child finding answers, the film is the story of a long held love affair with cinema, an ode to the magic and legacy of Georges Melies, it's an ode to the birth and artform of cinema, and this at least is done wonderfully. The story is told well, the film doesn't drag, and surprisingly makes good use of the 3D technology, but then, if a master like Martin is using 3D cameras, he's not going to let anything slide. He does get some great performances out of his cast, and the cinematography is fantastic, as are the sets and details amongst the mise-en-scene. I really don't have a problem with Hugo as a film. I just have a problem with it being a Scorsese film.

Rating: ***1/2

Hugo was released on the 2nd December 2011 and is no longer being shown in cinemas.