Piranha 3DD

One year after a devastating attack from prehistoric piranhas, Lake Victoria, a once bustling spring break vacation spot, is a ghost town, abandoned by everyone. Meanwhile, in a town which is somewhere far away but not too far away from Lake Victoria, Maddy has returned home for the summer to oversee the running of the water park she part owns with her step father, Chet. To her horror, he has transformed it into a garish, adult themed park with 'water-certified strippers' instead of lifeguards and an adult pool with built-in 'cootch cam'. Chet's biggest change though is the illegal water pump supplying water to the park from an underground lake, where the prehistoric piranhas are waiting... And evolving...

Remember when Piranha 3D came out in the summer of 2010? Everybody loved it. It became one of those 'must see' films amongst teens and casual film goers because of how much fun it was. Piranha never took itself too seriously, it was self-aware grindhouse at its finest with a host of celebrity cameos (including THAT scene with Kelly Brook) and more than a handful of blood, guts, and gore, all tied together with some cheesy, laughable dialogue. More importantly, it made a surprising amount of money for Bob and Harvey Weinstein, and plans for a sequel were immediately put in place. However, it retained none of the original writers, nor the director. Instead, the writers of Saw 3D wrote the film to be directed by the man who brought the Feast franchise to the screen. Can you not see this going horribly wrong already? Well, it did. Drastically.

Piranha 3DD had a lot to live up to, to be fair, but it falls down on pretty much every point where Piranha 3D excelled. It's far too self-aware and loses its charm, the nudity is gratuitous and not sparing in order to keep the audience wanting, the gore is disturbingly sparse, losing its humour, and there aren't any shocks, surprises or tension-building moments. I'll give it this, Piranha 3DD is funny, but unintentionally so. The dialogue isn't 'self-aware bad', it's just plain bad and, at times, ludicrous. When one of the lead characters comes out with the line "Josh cut off his penis because something came out of my vagina", it's funny for all the wrong reasons. It's lines like that that just seem to exemplify the attitude of the writers. There was so much potential for higher thrills, better and gorier deaths, and the chance to do something different in this, but they've just gone ahead and made a sloppier, lazier version of the original, and that's probably the most disappointing aspect of all.

Probably the best thing is about this film is the appearance of David Hasselhoff, and that speak volumes in itself. He (shockingly) plays a washed-up, self-obsessed, fictionalised version of himself well, and comes across as genuinely apathetic in the face of the chaos and terror happening all around him. Elsewhere, Danielle Panabaker as Maddy is cookie cutter in this, given a typical role of the heroine who tries to stop everything happening but fails, leaving her to try and save everyone, though she's not helped by some poor dialogue and lack of character development, something which blights everyone in this. Her two romantic interests are typical bad guy and good guy, nothing special at all. Katrina Bowden gets the worst of it though, having to play the scream queen when she's clearly not cut out for it. Her dialogue, in particular, is atrocious, including the aforementioned line about something coming out of her vagina. David Koechner makes the same kind of appearance he now makes in every film; playing a more evil, worse version of Champ Kind from Anchorman. Christopher Lloyd's cameo is just a reminder of how good he is at playing an eccentric scientist, and Paul Scheer and Ving Rhames make a welcome return, though it's never explained why exactly the two of them are now friends in this, and their appearances are fleeting at most.

The biggest problem with the writing of Piranha 3DD is that the writers seems to have acted like a bunch of frat boys. There are SO. MANY. BOOBS in this, I actually started to get bored. And I love boobs. They also included as many crude double entendres as possible, and substituted those in for actual dialogue. There was no tension built throughout, there was no inventiveness in either plot or story: Water-based scenario established, piranhas come back, major bloodbath at water-based scenario, piranhas defeated. No surprises. It also comes in at a shockingly short 71 minutes. That's not a film, that's an episode of a TV series. This film has direct-to-video written all over it and yet it managed to score a wider release and more publicity than the better original. Nice try, Weinsteins, but no-one's buying it. The box-office should tell you that.

Overall, this is just a bad film. The original had charm and got the balance of everything just right. This one is all over the place. It would have been bad enough if this was just a copy, but somehow they managed to make a real hash of recreating what was a winning formula. I was really looking forward to this after the first one, and this has disappointed me so badly. If you liked the first one, don't see this, save yourself. If you didn't like the first one, definitely don't watch this, you'll want to tear your eyes out. If you didn't even see the first one, still don't watch this, go back and watch Piranha 3D, it's s much better than this money-making exercise. Oh, and the piranhas look crap this time.

Rating: 1/2

Prometheus

In the late 21st century, a group of scientists led by Dr Elizabeth Shaw discover a star map, similar to those already found, all painted by different and unrelated civilisations. Their belief is these maps are an invitation to seek out mankind's creators, or "engineers". So, funded by an ageing Peter Weyland and his corporation, Shaw and a team of scientists have the trillion dollar vessel Prometheus bestowed upon them in which to travel two years through space to reach their destination: LV-223 and to try and find the answers to the creation of mankind. However, they very quickly realise that they may not find what they're looking for. God doesn't build in straight lines...

This is it. The film over 30 years in the making. The Alien franchise, one of the best known, best loved movie franchises of all time. The history of the franchise is impressive: Alien, the 1979 original directed by Sir Ridley Scott (with only his second feature film) is an instant classic. Everyone knows the story. Aliens, the 1986 sequel, is just as good and was helmed by James Cameron in only his third feature film. 1992's Alien 3, though looked on unfavourably, gave David Fincher his directorial debut and still stands up today. Finally, 1997's Alien Resurrection was written by the legendary Joss Whedon and was the only English language film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Finally, the series gets its prequel film, with Ridley Scott, the man who created it all, back at the helm, explaining everything Alien fans could ever want to know about facehuggers, chestbusters and space jockeys. Except it's not. And it doesn't. And it shouldn't. Prometheus is its own beast with "strands of Alien's DNA". Yes, it's a prequel, but it's not a direct prequel. This is a back story about the beginnings. And what a story it is.

Let me start by saying this: The sheer scale of Prometheus is incredible. The visuals are stunning, beautiful and grand. I guarantee this film would look epic on an IMAX screen. The sets are massive and give the film a grander, more event-like feel. The attention to detail and intricacies in the mise-en-scène make this film feel a little bit more special than it already does being associated with the Alien franchise. It shows just how much care and attention to detail has been paid by Sir Ridley, Damon Lindelof et al. Also, the 3D in this is totally justified. Scott's experimentation with the format has paid off, as his entire world becomes immersive. The 3D also achieves something which I believe it should be solely used for. Instead of making it feel welcoming, the 3D makes the audience feel uncomfortable, with things flying towards them and getting covered with goo and falling metal. It's like a cinematic ghost train, but in a good way. Also, the subtle references to Alien and the franchise made me happy, and by the sounds of things made a lot of other audience members happy as well.


From there though, things start to fall apart. Well, not fall apart, but become decidedly dodgy. There are a few scenes in the film which are completely unnecessary. They don't go anywhere, they don't explain anything and are surely only there to satisfy Ridley's appetite for filming erroneous footage. The main problem with this film though are the various sub plots. Some of them make no sense. Some of them are introduced and then forgotten about. Some of them reach a conclusion which is either unsatisfying or plays no part in the overall plot or both. The main crux of the story is good, and there's a lot of tension built up, but it's when we're diverted to a side story that things get confusing and illogical. Believe me, there's a huge amount of 'movie logic' at work in this, too many moments where you end going "What? No. That's not how science works. What?? Why are they doing that? Who would say that? Why go there?! Why are you trusting him?!" many, many times. In particular, the sub plot with Peter Weyland makes no sense in the context of the film, and the 'shocking twist' at the end of the 2nd act is illogical and is never revisited. Bad writing. As for the dialogue, 90% of it is natural and flowing, but there's a definite 10% margin for awkwardness, though I wonder whether or not that's the writing's fault.


I bring to your attention the performance of Logan Marshall-Green as Dr Charlie Holloway, love interest of Noomi Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw and surely the most athletic, good-looking and unlikely archaeologist of all time. Indiana Jones makes sense, this one doesn't. Marshall-Green is, for lack of a better word, terrible. He has no on-screen chemistry with Rapace even though they're supposed to be lovers, his choice of line delivery is questionable at best and even his movements are forced and unnatural. Having said that, he's the only bad actor in a crop of good ones. Charlize Theron has got the 'ice queen' thing down, and she delivers again here as Weyland's representative on board Prometheus. Idris Elba plays the cool, bad ass captain with his usual swagger and style. Michael Fassbender is creepy as hell as the humanoid android David, delivering a perfectly emotionless performance. This guy is money. However, the best piece of casting by a mile is Noomi Rapace. Sometimes her Scandinavian accent slips in, but aside from that, she's perfect. Her motions are natural, her reactions realistic, her delivery near-perfect, and as a side note, there's a scene which takes place in Vickers' cabin *cough cough* where the scenario she's placed in, her performance and her look (mainly her look AFTER the action in the scene) make her seem like a carbon copy of a young Sigourney Weaver from Alien. Seriously, it's uncanny, and it's a really nice touch.


Overall, does Prometheus answer every question the fans wanted answered? No, and it wasn't meant to: Prometheus was designed as the first of three prequels leading up to the events of Alien, so the plot and the conclusion of the film make sense when you look at the bigger picture. However, if you ask whether Prometheus answers every question it raises by itself, the answer is no. So many things are illogical, forgotten or left unresolved,, it's disappointing. I understand leaving some things open ended for future films, but you still need a satisfying conclusion and I don't feel like Prometheus ever achieves one. Having said that, the film is beautiful to look at and an uncomfortable joy to watch. Just don't judge against the Alien films: Prometheus is its own goo-dripping, face-hugging, chest-bursting creature just waiting to jump out at you.


Rating: ***1/2

Marvel Avengers Assemble

The Tesseract is a powerful energy source being stored on Earth under the careful gaze of Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. However, demi-god Loki opens a portal from Asgard to Earth to steal the Tesseract in return for a Chituari army with which he can enslave Earth. This leads Nick Fury to put into place the Avengers Initiative, gathering the world's most powerful superheroes: Steve Rogers aka Captain America, Tony Stark aka Iron Man, Clint Barton aka Hawkeye, Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow, the demi-god Thor, and Bruce Banner aka Hulk must put aside their differences and unite to defeat Loki and save Manhattan...

Fine, in the UK, it's officially Marvel Avengers Assemble, the film I watched was Marvel Avengers Assemble. I thought the name change was stupid, and that no-one would confuse it with either The Avengers UK TV series from the 1960's or the American film remake of the TV show from the 1990's, until I spoke to no less than three different people assumed The Avengers was another remake of the Patrick Macnee/Diana Rigg TV series. Name change justified. However, a name does make a movie not, and whatever you call it, this is arguably the biggest superhero film of all time. The 12 year renaissance of comic book based-films has led to this: An amalgamation of Marvel's finest heroes in one two hour spectacular. Does it live up to the hype? Well, yeah, but it was always going to.

It was always going to because Marvel has set a high standard for superhero films: Thor was surprisingly great, Iron Man was fantastic even if Iron Man 2 was disappointing, and Captain America was refreshingly different for what was becoming a very samey genre. Let's disregard the two failed attempts at making The Incredible Hulk a film franchise, Marvel knows how to transfer its characters from page to screen with relative ease, and given that the task of every MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) film since Iron Man has been to establish characters in the lead up to this, I would say mission accomplished, Marvel. I'll admit, I'm a DC man myself (think Batman, Green Lantern, The Flash), but Marvel have been turning my head for years with their films and now, after this, my head is fully turned and I'm willing to give Marvel my full attention.

In regards to the film, I think Joss Whedon did a great job with something that could have been extremely clusterfucky. He gives each character equal screen time and equal importance when certain characters could easily have stolen the show and hogged the screen time. The exposition was there certainly, given the massive amount of plot wrangling required to assemble the Avengers, but it was kept to a minimum and even then it fit the tone of the film. There was tension, PLENTY of action sequences, and even some Whedon humour now and again to which the film benefited greatly. The film doesn't drag in its 143 minutes, or at least the second half doesn't. While everyone's "assembling" and working out their problems, there's more exposition than usual to fill the gaps and it drags the film, but once everyone gets along, it whistles through to its conclusion. Also, the final climatic battle in Manhattan was fantastic, I won't lie. It so easily could have been another clusterfuck of action and flying heroes, but everything was kept under control by Whedon, who's impressed me yet again after constantly impressing me with his earlier TV work. Every hero is given their chance and their focus, and the camera work is impressive, especially the long crane tracking shots which gave every hero their 30 seconds.

One thing I was extremely pleased with was the development of The Incredible Hulk. For once, the emphasis of the character was placed on Banner, not "the other guy", and the film's re-imagining of the Hulk character pathos (Banner as always-angry but calm on the surface scientist able to keep Hulk under control) was great, and will no doubt lead to a third attempt at an Incredible Hulk film franchise launch within 15 years. However, I was left disappointed by another character. To me, Hawkeye seemed entirely unnecessary and only included because of his inclusion at the end of Thor. His role could easily have been taken by any other missing Avengers member (Ant Man, any one of the Fantastic Four, even Spider Man). Also, he isn't scouted out as a hero like the other Avengers, he's just an agent who's involved with the Tesseract and just so happens to be good at archery as well. It feels as if Marvel haven't given Hawkeye a fair chance before nowm and it reflects badly on the character in this, feeling as though they're testing the waters for a Hawkeye film AFTER this.

Overall, the Avengers film had quite possibly the best set up of all time, with 4 massive franchise films starring characters known the world over, so it was never going to fail unless it was poorly executed, which Joss Whedon was pretty much nailed on not to do. There's something for everyone, from not in the loop moviegoers to action fanatics to full-on comic book nerds (for once, a Marvel post-credits scene where almost no-one knew the tease!). It's hugely entertaining, but then, like I said before, you didn't need me to tell you any of this, because this film has reached $1 billion worldwide box-office faster than any other film. A lot of you have seen it, and though some may not have been as excited as others, the silence coming from the haters is deafening.

Rating: ****1/2

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Academy Award Nominations: 2

• Best Picture
• Best Supporting Actor (Max von Sydow)

Oskar Schell is an intelligent but frightened young boy, so his father Thomas regularly sends him on scavenger hunts to try and cure him of his fears of interacting with the outside world. However, Thomas is killed on 9/11, leaving Oskar and his mother Linda devastated, as Oskar retreats into his own world again. As Oskar goes through his father's possessions, trying to keep his memory and connection with him alive, he accidentally shatters a blue vase, which reveals a small brown envelope with 'Black' written on it and containing a key. Oskar determines that this is his father's final scavenger hunt for him, and becomes determined to find out what it unlocks in order to try and keep his father's memory alive...

If there's one film this year that has "Oscar bait" written all over it, it's surely this one. A young boy as the central character. Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, two of the biggest actors in the world, playing his parents. A 9/11 tragedy forms the context of the story. No laughs, all tears. It may as well have been called For Your Consideration with the way this seems to be desperately craving Academy attention, and God bless the Academy, they went for it hook, line, and sinker. All the elements are there for a quintessential award winner, it's just a matter of putting them together and creating a likeable story with likeable characters that will appeal to a wide range of voters and audience members alike. Unfortunately, this is where the construct falls down. A better name for this film would have been Extremely Long and Incredibly Crass, because it is just that...

The main problem with this film is the central character. The young boy Oskar who losers his father in the 9/11 attacks and so goes on a quest to see what his father's key will unlock in the hopes it will lead him to something greater and keep his father's memory alive. Nice idea, yes, but the problem with that... Is that the kid is an asshole. I mean, a real little prick. There's no way you can feel any empathy for him when he is so consistently annoying throughout this film. There script makes a very brief mention that he had been tested for Asperger's syndrome but that the tests had been inconclusive. This seems like a very lazy way to explain why Oskar becomes as obsessed and neurotic as he is, as well as an easy way to explain why he's being such a dick to his grieving mother, his doting grandmother and everyone around him. I understand that grief takes many forms, but presenting it in this form makes Oskar thoroughly unlikeable and leaves the audience at a distance from the film, which is a major problem when the film tries to evoke emotion left, right and centre.

The only people who get close to evoking said emotion are the two main supports: Sandra Bullock as Oskar's mother, and Max von Sydow as the man who is renting a room with Oskar's grandmother. Bullock plays a grieving mother ignored and mistreated by her angry (?) son well, but is ultimately reduced to a cameo appearance. Max von Sydow, however, is probably the best, and probably only good, thing about this film. I put this down to one reason: The character is mute, and only speaks through a pad and paper and Yes/No tattoos on the palms of his hands. Why is this so good? Well it means he never has to open his mouth and say any of the terrible dialogue the other characters are given, and it means his brief statements and messages and expressions and acting have more impact than any other. Also, if anyone watched the BAFTAs, you'll know von Sydow is having trouble delivering consistent speech, so a silent role suits him down and he does really well here. Tom Hanks's best part of this film is probably the all-too-realistic voicemails he leaves for his family as he is stuck in the North Tower, otherwise when you do see him on screen with Oskar, he seems to be less getting Oskar over his phobias and more breeding Oskar to be an asshole. Viola Davis also makes a welcome cameo appearance as one of the people Oskar meets on his quest to what his key unlocks.

There's nothing wrong with the way the film has been shot, it looks fine and polished as you'd expect. The problem is with the plot and the dialogue and the characters. This entire film is overly romanticised, overly emotional, and extremely heavy when there's no need for it. Maybe as a light-hearted comedy with a serious core this might have worked, but as a serious drama, it fails. There's just no need for this film to be playing for such a strong emotional reaction all the time, it leaves you feeling underwhelmed with the entire concept when it doesn't hit home, so much so that when the film actually stands a chance of evoking the kind of reaction it's aiming for, you're so bored and dulled by it, that all you can do is sit and let the overly-emotional scenes wash over you. If you're anything like me, you'll sit through this to the end purely to reach the conclusion and answer the questions the film raises, not for any kind of morbid curiosity or because the film's enjoyable. Because to be honest it's really not.

Overall, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is Extremely Long and Incredibly Dull. This film has aspirations of being something so much greater but it fails to live up to its own expectations. Max von Sydow is probably the only good thing about this and makes the second act worth watching, other that that though I struggle to find reasons to recommend it really. It's just overly-hyped, overly-emotional slush which misses its target so often, it's incredible that this has made it onto the shortlist as one of the best films of the year. Every year, the Academy makes at least one big mistake. This might well be the mistake for 2011. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? Extremely Loathsome and Incredibly Painful.

Rating: *1/2

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was released on 17th February 2012 and is still being shown in cinemas.

The Tree of Life

Academy Award Nominations: 3

• Best Picture
• Best Director (Terrence Malick)
• Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki)

The universe is born. Earth struggles into existance, dinosaurs roam the land until a meteor wipes them out. In the 21st century, Jack is depressed in his life, and a tree being planted at his office makes him reminisce about his upbringing. In the 1950's/60's, Jack and his two brothers are raised in highly religious Waco, Texas by his two parents: Mrs O'Brien represents the way of grace, teaching her children about the wonders of the world around them whilst being nurturing and supporting, whilst Mr O'Brien represents the way of nature, preparing his children for the harsh realities of the world through a strict and authoritative upbringing. As Jack grows up, he faces the conflict between grace and nature, and must decide which path of his parents' paths to follow, if any...

The Tree of Life is an odd beast, which is an understatement given it's the latest work by Terrence Malick, a filmmaker notorious for his privacy and gaps between work. He took a 20 year break between Days of Heaven in 1978 and The Thin Red Line in 1998, took another 7 years to release The New World in 2005, then took 6 years to release this in 2011. Even then, The Tree of Life is based on a script entitled Q, focusing on the origins of the universe, which Malick had been working on for nearly 30 years since the release of Days of Heaven, so it's little surprise that this is only Malick's fifth release since 1973. What it shows is Malick's insistence on fine-tuning and doing things right, even if it takes him a decade or so. Time doesn't seem to be an issue with Malick though, as he quite successfully covers about 4 and a half billion years of history in The Tree of Life in about 2 and a half hours.

The Tree of Life is a rare thing, in that it's a mainstream arthouse film. The ideas and concepts covered here are far beyond any standard film, and the way in which the film has been shot makes it seem more like a painting than a film; each shot has been carefully crafted and contains very little dialogue to get its ideas across. In fact, there's little to no dialogue throughout the film, the story is told almost entirely through striking visual images and brief lines of voiceover representing internal monologues, all set against a majestic soundtrack. The narrative is entirely non-linear as well, moving the family drama from the 1950's and 1960's into the modern day, before going back to the creation of Earth and somehow relating it to the family in Texas. It shouldn't make sense, but somehow it does. Everything fits together because of how artistically the film's images are created, leaving the film to resemble a poem or a painting, or any other art form other than a motion picture.

Obviously, because of the lack of dialogue, strong performances are required of its leading actors, and they deliver in spades. Brad Pitt is good here as the stern father, struggling to balance his love for his children with his desire to see them grow up and be successful and able to carry themselves in a world which he sees as having gone to hell. Jessica Chastain is also great here, arguably better in this than she was in The Help, and this without the help of words and extended dialogue to portray her character's desire to raise her children more freely whilst placating her depressed and aggressive husband. The kids also do well here, especially Hunter McCracken who plays the young Jack, as the plot essentially revolves around him and the choices he makes during adolescence. He performs well, especially so for a child actor, in a difficult role as a child being raised under contradictory and often clashing ways of thinking. Sean Penn makes a few brief appearances as the adult Jack in the modern day, but all he does is wander about and talk to a couple of people, not enough to warrant any kind of review for his 'performance'.

The Tree of Life deals with a lot of concepts, and even though it has a fairly long run time, it still seems excessively short for the amount of ground it covers. The creation of Earth is told through flickering lights and explosions, really beautiful and inspiring imagery. Then, there's the dinosaur scenes. Oh dear. The dinosaurs look terrible to begin, look totally out of place, and the scenes look out of place in the film in general. It doesn't dwell on that though, as most of the action focuses on Jack's Texas upbringing. Constant whispers of existential questions about life over the top leave its audience thinking about deeper things, which can be good, but not when you're also trying to watch and follow a film which makes its audience work hard enough to find their own meaning and answers. More than anything, The Tree of Life is a brave attempt to create a film with real meaning, and sometimes it nails it, but sometimes it's way off the mark.

Overall, The Tree of Life is not something to be taken lightly. If you're going to watch it, be prepared to pour in a lot of effort, energy and thought into it; this definitely isn't something you can fade in and out of in the background. The only film I can think to compare it to in terms of themes and what it's trying to achieve is 2001: A Space Odyssey, and whilst I think The Tree of Life is far more stylistic, looks far more beautiful on screen and adds more emotion, 2001 is a far, far easier watch and its plot line and structure makes it a more likeable film as well. It's a solid effort, and it definitely won't be for everyone this, but it might be worth giving it a go if you're in the mood for something more than your average Hollywood blockbuster as this is certainly the remedy for that. This may not be my kind of thing, but I can certainly appreciate the effort and artistry put into this. Let me put it like this: The Tree of Life covered 4 and a half billion years in 2 and a half hours. The Hangover Part II did nothing in 90 minutes. You decide which one is more worthwhile.

Rating: ***

The Tree of Life was released on 8th July 2011 and is no longer being shown in cinemas.

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.