Fearless Writer ... Reviews

Stars: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, Alex Reid
Director: Neil Marshall

As a lifelong horror fan it takes a fair bit to get me excited about a fright-flick these days, but ‘The Descent’ had me rubbing my hands together. Back in 2002, British director Neil Marshall did the impossible and breathed new life into the werewolf archetype with his gory indie film ‘Dog Soldiers’. I was lucky enough to interview him around the time of its DVD release and he was obviously a guy who knew his horror. So when I heard that The Descent was being hailed overseas as the scariest thing since ‘The Blair Witch Project’, I was pumped. Neil Marshall with more than $5 to spend? Hell yeah!

‘The Descent’ starts out well, with a flashback road accident that is the stuff of nightmares – enough to make even a hardened horror veteran flinch in his seat. The present-day narrative begins as we are introduced to Sarah, a woman who has recently lost her daughter and isn’t taking it well. Juno, supposedly Sarah’s friend, is an outwardly tough woman who has more or less abandoned Sarah in her time of emotional need.

The estranged pair meet up again at a log cabin deep in the American forest, where they join a group of acquaintances – thrill-seeking women who plan to rappel down into an underground cave and squeeze through its tight shafts to get their kicks. (Strong yet believable female characters – an all-too-rare cinematic achievement.)

They’re a good mile or so underground when a rockfall blocks off the way they came in. No problem – this cave is supposed to have two ways in and out, and the girls ask Juno to check the guidebook for information. Trouble is, the risk-loving Juno has taken them to an uncharted cave, hoping to claim it and name it. As they search for a way out, it becomes clear they aren’t alone in the complex subterranean system. Something else is in there with them … and it’s not friendly.

Neil Marshall, what have you wrought here? ‘The Descent’ is like a deformed hybrid of ‘Aliens’, ‘Pitch Black’ and ‘Predator’ that fails to measure up to any of its forebears. For a sadly short 20-minute period, ‘The Descent’ does create a cloying sense of claustrophobia akin to ‘Aliens’, and as he did in ‘Dog Soldiers’, Marshall caters to horror buffs by weaving homages unobtrusively into the plot. But these elements only serve to make the other 75 minutes a bitter disappointment.

So what exactly is wrong with ‘The Descent’? Cheap frights are one problem – the unconvincing CGI bats that burst out of the cave entrance are an unpleasant entree hinting at the meal of the horror clichés to come (including those tired old ‘Look behind you!’ moments). The overuse of high-speed shutter is another – in small doses it can give a scene a frenetic feel, but Marshall employs so much of it that it’s often hard to tell what’s going on at all. Lastly – and this would be forgivable if everything else was up to scratch (see Pitch Black) – the science regarding the cave creatures is all over the place.

Now, apparently there are two versions of the film out there, one for UK audiences and one for US audiences. The UK version (which we are getting in Australia) has a rather more ambiguous ending. But frankly both climaxes are unsatisfying and make The Descent seem like a $9 million version of the stories we all wrote in primary school that ended with, “… and then I woke up.”

By no means is The Descent a bad horror movie. The central premise is good, the acting more than competent and some of the sets are exceptional. But its significance in the overall history of horror films has been grossly exaggerated.

3/5 stars

Stars: Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino, Charlize Theron

Director: Taylor Hackford

Flush with birthday cash and keen to experience some quality cinema, I had a quick browse of the top 250 on imdb.com, noted down a couple of likely titles, then headed for the nearest JB Hi-Fi. One of the titles I acquired was The Devil’s Advocate and I threw it on one hungover Sunday afternoon.

For what is a fairly complex film, the basic premise of The Devil’s Advocate is quite, erm, basic. Young Florida lawyer Kevin Lomax (Reeves) is something of a phenomenon, having won over 50 cases straight. It is ostensibly this record that attracts the attention of New York law firm Milton Chadwick & Waters, which offers him big bucks to join its ranks. Kevin and his wife Mary (Theron) are put up in a huge swanky apartment and paid more money than they know what to do with.

But there’s something hinky about Milton Chadwick & Waters – especially its chief partner, John Milton (Pacino). He too has a remarkable win-loss record, and as Kevin soon learns, his new boss apparently doesn’t sleep and has quite a way with women despite his average looks and diminutive stature. In fact, it soon becomes clear that Kevin has been hired by the devil himself to get acquittals for some of the least desirable elements of society. Kevin’s unhealthy obsession with his work and her lonely, isolated lifestyle begins to take its toll on Mary, who breaks down and is committed. And just wait until Kevin finds out what John Milton has in store for him.

Interestingly, in the period between first looking up The Devil’s Advocate on imdb.com and watching it, it’s rating has fallen to a 7.1, pushing it out of the top 250. This is fine by me, because although it has a superb script and polished performances, it somehow adds up to less than the sum of its parts. The centre section, while still doing enough to make the viewer watch on, becomes ponderous – it’s clearly building to a dazzling climax, but wends and rambles and philosophises its way there.

One other criticism needs to be fired at director Taylor Hackford, who for some reason decided the final ten-minute confrontation between Kevin and John needed to be shouted. What could have been played for mounting aggression and tension winds up as a tiresome, expository screaming match that robs the climax of some of its power.

Yet The Devil’s Advocate also possesses manifold strengths – Pacino’s gifted performance being number one with a bullet (or several bullets, as it turns out). Charlize Theron does an excellent job of spiralling into madness and despair (actors tend to overdramatise mental illness, but her descent is perfectly weighted) and even Keanu Reeves manages to strip away most of the bark from his classically wooden acting and come close to something like real emotion. Oh, and those who are familiar with Paradise Lost by John Milton (hence the name of Pacino’s character) and Dante’s Inferno will be able to play an intellectual game of ‘spot the reference’ if the narrative isn’t holding their interest.

Without doubt, The Devil’s Advocate is blue ribbon cinema, but as for being a classic on par with say Pulp Fiction or Chinatown – well, you’ll have a devil of a time trying to convince me of that.

4/5 stars

Stars: Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum, Julie Hagerty

Director: Andy Fickman

Modernising Shakespeare’s works has been a favourite pastime of film-makers ever since Baz Luhrman was did it so brilliantly with Romeo + Juliet (1996). Some interpretations have worked well enough (10 Things I Hate About You, which was inspired by The Taming of the Shrew) and some have been cinematic disembowellings fit to make The Bard turn in his grave – if you have never seen Michael Almereyda’s pretentious fiddling with Hamlet (2000), do yourself a favour and don’t.

In the case of She’s The Man, it’s Twelfth Night being reengineered to suit the palates of attention-deficient teenagers. Viola (Amanda Bynes) and her friends are mad-keen on soccer, but their team is cut from the schedule due to a shortage of players. They confront their coach and demand to be added to the boys’ team, but are laughed off as being too weak to bridge the gender gap. Viola decides this is unacceptable, and in an elaborate false identity scheme, poses as her brother so she can enter the male tryouts.

Initially she is only picked as a ‘second string’ player, so she makes a deal with her superstar roommate Duke (Channing Tatum) – if he trains her up to first-string quality, she will help him get a date with the girl of his dreams, Olivia. But in classic Shakespeare style, a chain reaction of misunderstanding throws everything into chaos as Viola falls in love with her roommate and the object of his affections falls in love with Viola.

In its opening montage, She’s The Man gives the impression it is going to be a juvenile insult to one of Shakespeare’s great dramatic comedies, and in this it doesn’t entirely disappoint. Yet for all its groan-worthy moments and lame tweeny jokes about feminine hygiene products, She’s The Man has an amiable goofiness that manages to snatch it from the maw of disaster and turn it into a largely watchable teen comedy. Kudos must go to Bynes, who somehow uses bubbliness to carry off each ridiculous scene – she’s far from convincing as a boy, but her earnest, unassuming face helps the viewer mindlessly accept the abject nonsense filling the screen. In fact, it’s the actors generally who elevate She’s The Man off the dungheap where it rightly belongs, with David Cross’s over-tolerant principal stealing laughs from situations that were twee 20 years ago and Julie Hagerty hamming it up wonderfully as the prim and proper Daphne.

Of course, it would take a special kind of director to cripple the latent genius of a Shakespeare play – and in the end, it’s the Bard himself, not Andy Fickman or the cast, who should receive praise for this movie’s limited merits.

VERDICT: 3/5 stars

Stars: Nicholas Cage, Michael Caine, Hope Davis
Director: Gore Verbinski

He might be well paid and have minor fame, but Dave Spritz (Nicholas Cage) is dissatisfied with his life. He and his wife Noreen (Hope Davis) are going through a trial separation and their children are troubled – his son Mike (Nicholas Hoult) is seeing a counsellor after being busted smoking pot and his daughter is overweight and apparently depressed. Dave is the weather man on a local morning news program, but even that brings him grief – it seems silly and insignificant compared to the career of his Pulitzer-prize winning father Robert (Michael Caine) and for some reason Dave’s job incites members of the public to throw food at him from passing cars.

Things fall further apart when Robert is diagnosed with incurable lymphoma and Noreen announces that she is marrying the chump she has been seeing, Russ (Michael Rispoli). The only silver lining in Dave’s life is a potential job with Hello America, a national news program starring Bryant Gumbel, but even that is tainted – situated in New York, he would have to move away from his family. Labouring under a fog of depression, Dave will need to reshape his attitude to life is he is to emerge out the other side and move on.

The first foray into drama for director Gore Verbinksi, The Weather Man often plays like a black comedy thanks to Dave’s wry and frequently hilarious narration on the turmoil in his life. That, however, does not detract from the impact of the film, instead giving it a unique appeal amid shelves full of self-important melodramas.

Nic Cage is perfectly cast as Dave, believable both as a bubbly TV celebrity and an everyday chump who is forever seeking his father’s approval and trying too hard to live the life he thinks he should be living. The Weather Man’s central theme – clearly articulated but not spelled out for the mentally handicapped – is that “this shit life” is as changeable as the weather and trying to alter or predict it is a waste of time. Dave must accept who he is and the talents he has before he can move on.

Alternating with agility between poignant moments and an amusing use of profanity, The Weather Man’s weakest point is probably Michael Caine’s dithering American accent. And when that’s a movie’s biggest failing, it’s in pretty decent shape.

VERDICT: 4/5 stars

Author: Stephen King

These days I find myself approaching each new Stephen King release with a sense of hope rather than a sense of expectation. It’s somewhat like watching an athlete who is clearly past his prime but still able to pull off occasional acts of brilliance. I watched through parted fingers as he fumbled with the disaster that was Rose Madder, delighted to his brilliant performance with The Green Mile, and ground my teeth as he ruined the otherwise brilliant Dreamcatcher by trying to suffuse it with a spiritual subplot and give it “meaning”. King’s collections of short fiction have always been personal favourites, so I anticipated excellence from Everything’s Eventual – only to find it an uneven ride, with spikes of literary greatness (‘All That You Love Will Be Carried Away’) and depressing troughs of mediocrity (‘Autopsy Room Four’ – some say contemporisation, I say borderline plagiarism with a vulgar and uninteresting twist). Then there was From a Buick 8, which King described as a “strong novel” but which in my eyes was a lot of talky melodrama threaded onto a flimsy and incidental string of supernatural plot.

So I picked up Cell with a combined sense of hope and dread, desperate for it to be good and terrified that it would not.

The opening two hundred pages – otherwise known as half the book – made me fear the worst. While the first few chapters (where the world is thrown into a violent chaos courtesy of a mysterious ‘Pulse’ sent through mobile phones) were sufficient to draw me in, they were also repetitive. Pages and pages are devoted to describing explosions – which constantly interrupt characters at key points – and out of control vehicles. But these scenes of destruction are unpleasantly familiar. King wrote them in a slightly different form back in the late 1970s, when he was tapping out The Stand. Those affected by the Pulse (later to be known as the ‘phone crazies’ or ‘phoners’) also provoke a sense of déja vu, but we’ll discuss that in due course.

Likenesses to The Stand continue, as a small band of ‘normies’ get together and decide to head off on a pilgrimage north to Maine (in The Stand it was an east-west axis) mainly because our protagonist, Clay, wants to see if his son and estranged wife are still alive. During this period, King’s manipulation of language is flat, even lazy, and somehow editor Chuck Verrill has missed his repeated use of the already trite phrase “in hell”, ie, “it was like a [insert phrase] from hell”. (Ironically, King thanks Verrill for his quality work in an afterword.)

Then, around the two-hundred-page mark, a literary miracle occurs. It’s almost as if King warms to his own tale and his brain snaps into gear. The reader’s intrigue over the Pulse and resulting race of phoners is piqued as the concept behind it is revealed (sort of, the characters can only speculate) and a small guerrilla war begins. The language switches from mundane and hackneyed to inventive and even experimental (one image that really impressed me was when Clay saw Tom’s clenched fist as a metaphor for the brutal post-Pulse world). Because King cares, we start to care too. Shocks come as actual shocks, and – thank your choice of deity or higher power – the ending is satisfying while also permitting the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that Cell is in the league of The Green Mile or anything King wrote pre-Misery. Aside from its scratchy opening half, it also suffers from the author’s tendency to push the reader’s credulity one step too far – in this case, it’s the utterly unnecessary addition of levitation to the phoners’ telepathic abilities (which on their own beg to be compared with those in Carrie and Firestarter). Over-explanation is once again apparent, with facts the reader has already attained from implication being spelled out in extra, superfluous sentences. Moreover, King’s age is beginning to show, both in his dialogue and his outdated depiction of female characters (who are forever screaming or swooning over something). And while the book explores its core concept of the human brain as an organic computer well enough, it also recycles a horror archetype (George Romero’s zombies) and a classic horror theme (from Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend) – unoriginality King then chooses to highlight by dedicating his book to its two sources.

Yet for all the deserved criticisms that can be levelled at Cell, it cannot be labelled a bad book. King’s famously indefatigable writing style transports the novel over its patches of bumpy terrain - and besides, Stephen King at his worst is still better than the lion’s share of bestselling authors that litter the bookstores. I’d stop short of labelling Cell a triumph, but it does have the power to teleport the reader into a gruesome, speculative universe – and it is redolent of a writer rediscovering his groove in the afternoon of his career. King’s next book, Lisey’s Story, will be a fascinating read for that reason alone.

Stars: Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco
Director: Judd Apatow

Save for those who blundered into a sexual encounter at age 13 (and usually regretted it) there probably isn’t a boy walking this earth who did not obsess over losing his virginity. No number of magazine articles to the contrary can alter the importance and significance of this rite of passage – after all, it’s a desire fuelled purely by hormones and instinct. Intellect has nothing to do with it.

Andy Stitzer (Carell) is a 40-year-old man who whiles away his evenings painting miniatures, playing video games and watching Survivor with the elderly couple upstairs. Through bad luck and ineptness, his virginity is still sealed in the original plastic, just like the innumerable collectables that line his walls.

When Andy is invited to a poker night with some work buddies, his secret is exposed and they make it their mission to see that his cherry is popped, STAT. Cue scene after scene of well-conceived sexual hi-jinks as Andy tries everything from hitting on drunk chicks to attending a speed-dating service, all with disastrous results. Along the way he meets the woman who runs the store across the road, Trish (Catherine Keener), a mother of three – and grandmother of one – who can see the decent guy suffocating under the stigma. Thing is, she doesn’t know is that he’s a virgin and can’t understand why he is so reluctant to move their relationship into the realm of the physical.

Forget the one-dimensional Will Ferrell – if anyone is going to legitimately assume the Master of Comedy mantle that Jim Carrey left vacant after turning his hand to drama, Steve Carell is the man. His timing and inflection are impeccable and this performance is a worthy successor to his comic brilliance as the boneheaded Brick in Anchorman and the irritating Michael Scott in the inevitably shortlived American version of The Office (fuck Bewitched, let it fade into obscurity where it belongs). It doesn’t hurt that Carell is surrounded by such a muscular comedy ensemble, with Paul Rudd, Romany Malco and Seth Rogen just a few of the talented actors contributing to a continuous stream of belly laughs.

Such compliments bestowed … what is it with the sudden bloating of comedy run-times? Once, it was rare to see a film from this genre making it past the 90-minute mark, with occasional aberrations like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels only serving to highlight how rare drama-length comedies were. Recently we have had Wedding Crashers, which somehow managed to stretch two jokes out over two tedious hours, and now The 40 Year Old Virgin also makes a play for 120+ minute territory.

Granted, there is no ideal running time for comedies, and nor should there be. But both these films scream self-indulgence. The 40 Year Old Virgin runs out of jokes around the 90-minute mark and then outstays its welcome as its grasps fruitlessly for some sort of message or cultural relevance the way a teenage boy fumbles at a bra strap. It’s no coincidence that both it and Wedding Crashers have flaccid endings (pun intended) since they intentionally diverge from their humorous storylines and have to try and get back on track for a comic finale. (Virgin’s subsequent song and dance routine is both weird and embarrassing.) Other comedies have managed to incorporate dramatic or poignant moments without fumbling the ball – Planes, Trains and Automobiles comes instantly to mind.

The 40 Year Old Virgin is quality comedy from witty writers and a talented comedic cast. But it should be put and kept in its place, lest it gives rise to a whole generation of overlong comedies from vain filmmakers who cannot grasp the notion that sometimes less is more.

VERDICT: 4/5 stars

Stars: Kirsten Dunst, Paul Bettany, Sam Neill, John McEnroe
Director: Richard Loncraine

Ever since playing sport became a profession, debate has raged whether or not sex detracts from an athlete’s performance. Does it hamper or improve their concentration? Does it tire them out physically or help them relax? There is no definitive answer to this question and lightweight rom-com Wimbledon doesn’t even come close to providing one.

English tennis player Peter Colt (Bettany) is moving into the twilight of his career. Once ranked as high as 11th in the world, he is now in his early 30s and languishing in 119th spot. He scores a wild card entry into Wimbledon and decides that, win or lose, he is going to retire.

In the first of many improbable plot developments, Colt accidentally lets himself into the wrong hotel room, walking in on the game’s up and coming female star, Lizzie Bradbury (Dunst). From what should be a mortifying situation, the pair strike up a relationship that Lizzie’s father (Neill) strongly opposes. The affair actually helps Peter’s game, but Lizzie is knocked out of the comp – and she blames her lover, who decided to visit her for some nocturnal shenanigans. Will they get back together? And will Peter win Wimbledon? Gee, let me think…

Had its themes been explored more thoroughly, Wimbledon could have been a strong example of the genre, on par with Love Actually. Instead, it was taken straight out of a ‘please everyone’ rom-com recipe book and makes for a bland meal indeed.

The casting doesn’t help either – Bettany is at least kinda believable as a professional athlete, but trying to pass off the knock-kneed Kirsten Dunst as an attractive version of Lindsay Davenport is a real double-fault. Toss in some painfully threadbare lines (“Peter Peter Colt”) and you have a celluloid code violation. A couple of amusing quips and some good acting make it tolerable, but if Wimbledon was a tennis match it wouldn’t be played on centre court.
VERDICT: 2.5/5 stars

ON THE DVD
WELCOME TO THE CLUB Begins with a monumentally stupid comment from Dunst, then shows (in three minutes) how the real grounds and crowds at Wimbledon were used for the movie.

BALL CONTROL Explains that while the actors were trained to look like professional tennis players, most of the balls you see on screen were added in post-production. Loncraine describes this process as “Very boring and time consuming.”

COACH A RISING STAR Failing to reach even the three-minute mark, this shows us how former Aussie tennis star Pat Cash trained the actors and arranged some of the tennis choreography.

WIMBLEDON: A LOOK INSIDE Making-of documentary explains, among other things, how some of the real tennis stars, such as John McEnroe, were enlisted. The only featurette to beat the ten-minute mark.

COMMENTARY Far and away the best bonus, with Loncraine and Bettany providing an honest and gap-free talk about the ups and downs of the shoot.

Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver
Director: M Night Shyamalan

Some people seem to dislike M Night Shyamlan’s movies for the same reason some don’t like Quentin Tarantino’s works: they have a unique style, they’re usually clever in some way, and you kinda know what you’re going to get before you sit down and devour them. Check out some message boards and you’ll see film geeks bemoaning the fact that all Shyamalan’s film’s have a twist, that they’re all style over substance, that this or that doesn’t make sense.

Much of this is just simple envy, the sort of bitter displeasure at others’ success that says more about the person criticising than it does about the recipient. Shyamalan is a terrific young filmmaker and has not let his fans down yet, mixing surprise and suspense while not being afraid to include a few arty bits of cinematography and symbolism.

With The Village, however, he came very close to blotting his copybook. It’s still a good movie by the standards of most LA directors, but totters on that line where clear creative vision and self-indulgence co-exist.

Reiterating the synopsis is pointless: suffice to say there are a few moments of sheer terror, there are a couple of good plot twists and Shyamalan gets the best out of all his actors. But in a few things – the obtuse use of colour, the film’s “message” and the hokey 19th Century dialogue – Shyamalan’s hand is dangerously close to his penis. Let’s hope the downward spiral doesn’t continue.
VERDICT: 3.5/5 stars

ON THE DVD
DECONSTRUCTING THE VILLAGE A range of mini-featurettes that cover all the usual bases, from the specifics of the shoot to editing, scoring and the difficulties of making a believable monster. Many of the interviews are done during the shoot, so some of the actors are still in “he/she/it is so wonderful mode”, but there’s also plenty to absorb – especially from Night.

DELETED SCENES These are done the smart way, with intros from the director, then the scene, then an explanation for why each was cut. The best is perhaps the “ghost story” tale relating how a creature took August’s brother.

BRYCE’S DIARY The actress takes us through the shoot by reading passages of purple prose from a diary she kept. Quickly grows tiresome.

M NIGHT’S HOME MOVIE An artefact from Shyamalan’s formative years, here he recreates the idol-stealing scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, replete with gardening gloves and a German Shepherd “monster”.

Stars: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride
Director: Steven Spielberg

Viktor Novorski (Hanks) is a man who has fallen through a loophole in international travel laws. While in transit, his home country of Krakozia (apparently situated somewhere around Hungary or Bulgaria) is subject to a coup – making his passport and visa redundant. He is, for all intents and purposes, a citizen of nowhere.

The Department of Homeland Security in New York – run by the anal-retentive Frank Dixon (Tucci) – restricts him to the international airport terminal until order is restored in his home country. Dixon expects Viktor to walk out the door and become someone else’s immigration problem, but the Krakozian is too smart for that. Over the course of nine months, he finds a way to earn American money, makes friends with the airport staff and even finds a love interest in stewardess Amelia Warren (Zeta-Jones). Why does he persist in playing it by the book? The answer lies in a can of peanuts.

The Terminal is a likeable film populated by amiable characters and buoyed by just enough intriguing subplots to avoid drowning in its own sentimentality. We can mostly buy Hanks as an Eastern European caught in a dumbfounding snarl of bureaucracy, however it’s far from his best performance in recent years and he occasionally bursts into moments of Hanksian excess that are too American.

Unlike Hanks, however, the plot has some major believability issues. The finale was clearly cooked up on a Hollywood scriptwriter’s Powerbook and cheapens a tale that was inspired by real events. Ironically, the Catherine Zeta-Jones subplot is true to life – but its realism ultimately makes it redundant to the greater story.

With its warmth, laughs and agreeable characters, The Terminal is a very pleasant way to lose two hours of your life – but it does have the aroma of a fascinating yarn homogenised for consumption by the masses. In other words, this is a Steven Spielberg film down to its government-issue bootlaces.
VERDICT: 3.5/5 stars

ON THE DVD
BOOKING THE FLIGHT Too short to be thorough, this featurette instead looks at some of the more unusual elements of the scripting process. The screenwriter actually spent a couple of days at an airport to get a feel for the people who inhabited it.

WAITING FOR THE FLIGHT How do you build an airport from scratch? This mini-documentary shows you. Step one is to find an empty hangar (no studio was big enough). To their set designers’ credit, the finished product is totally convincing.

BOARDING No doubt this is the pick of the featurette litter. It deconstructs several of the characters, looking at their motivations, their personalities and how each actor approached their role.

TAKE OFF A standard-issue but nevertheless enjoyable making-of documentary. There seems to have been a genuine élan on set, which the cast and crew attribute to the unusually airy, well-lit set. Other topics covered are the ridiculous logistics in extras and lighting, plus costume design and special effects.

IN FLIGHT SERVICE Composer John Williams (Jaws) talks about the subtleties required to score a movie that brings together different cultures and swings between light romance, drama and comedy.

LANDING Brief stories from the cast and crew about their real-life airport experiences. Catherine Zeta-Jones has a funny tale, Spielberg professes to have never had a problem. He should buy himself a lottery ticket.

Stars: Sean Connery, Trevor Howard, Vivien Merchant
Director: Sidney Lumet

When we first meet Detective Sergeant Johnson (Connery) he has just punched out several of his fellow officers and what appears to be a suspect. He’s obviously a distressed man (director Sidney Lumet puts this first sequence in slow motion, just in case we missed its import) but we don’t know exactly why.

Cut back to a couple of days earlier. Johnson is one of the British coppers trying to track down the latest victim of a serial paedophile. He finds the unfortunate girl in the underbrush, terrified, dazed and violated. After she is brought in, a city-wide sweep is instigated and a probable suspect brought in for questioning. No one is getting anywhere, but Johnson manages to wangle some alone time with the man, Kenneth Baxter (Ian Bannen), and in the course of his interrogation, beats him to death.

Sent home, Johnson has an ugly row with his wife, then is brought back to the station to be the subject of a one-on-one enquiry into the suspect’s demise. Through a series of non-linear flashbacks, we learn the source of the rage that finally made this hard-as-nails detective snap.

The Offence is a drama that examines the day-to-day pressures put on homicide police and also delves into the darker areas of the human heart. Trouble is, anything resembling a storyline has been kidnapped. If not for Connery’s intense, perfectly weighted performance, this would be nothing more than what it is – a talky, melodramatic stage play written by John Hopkins.

VERDICT: 3/5 stars

Stars: Monty Python
Director: Terry Jones

It’s not hard to see why this comedy was banned in more deeply religious countries – it is ruthless in its satire of theology, particularly religious fanaticism.

The Monty Python crew introduce us to Brian, the bastard son of a Roman soldier and a Jewish woman, who is born on the same day as Jesus. The Three Wise Men mistakenly bring their gifts to Brian before realising their error and taking them back.

Because of his hatred for the Romans, Brian joins the People’s Front of Judea and tries to bring down the Roman Empire – but when his band of revolutionaries run into another group (The Judean People’s Front) they end up fighting each other rather than their common enemy. Brian finds himself a reluctant martyr, crucified and singing a Pythonised version of “The Bright Side of Life”.

While some of the religious factions this movie was parodying have taken on different forms or disappeared altogether, its comments on the disorganised, bureaucratic nature of “organised” religion and the unthinking willingness of disciples to read spiritual significance into everyday events are scathing. This is offset by the Pythons’ trademark ridiculousness, such as the famous “Biggus Dickus” sketch. Arguably the best of the Monty Python films.
VERDICT: 4/5 stars

ON THE DVD
DISC QUALITY Not superb for what is a widely admired movie. The picture is slightly grainy and the sound certainly has its limitations.

THE PYTHONS A BBC documentary filmed on location in Tunisia back in 1979. We’re given a snapshot of where each cast member was before the formation of Monty Python, what they’ve done since, and their attitude towards getting back together for the movie. Often amusing and quite valuable.

Starring: James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, Bob Rock
Directors: Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky

Few bands have had a love-hate relationship with their fans the way Metallica has. Refusing to be caged by tradition, the core of the group – Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield – all but left their thrash-metal roots behind with the self-titled or “black album” and took it even further with their follow-up records Load and Reload. They encountered an incredible backlash from both critics and older fans but that didn’t stop the albums from selling in their millions. And Metallica have never apologised or capitulated to pressure. They are something fairly unique in a whorish industry.

So when, in 2001, things started to turn to shit, it made sense for a couple of smart filmmakers to make a documentary about the process.

The heart of the problem – even though it’s never really articulated – is that these guys have had enough. They’ve been Metallica for 20 years, they’re approaching middle age, and they want to have a life. This nurtures creative tension, and because everyone is at each other’s throats, the joy that fuels good music is being burned up elsewhere. When Hetfield eventually goes into rehab for his alcohol addiction and discovers the delights of home life in the process, Metallica’s future really does hang in the balance. It’s the sort of unscripted drama – with no bias or agenda – that has been sadly absent from documentaries in recent years.

Certain circles of people – mostly fans – dislike Some Kind of Monster, suggesting it depicts a bunch of rich, past-it rockers who should have quit ten years ago and now have nothing better to do than whine about how bad their swanky lifestyles are. This attitude completely misses the point. The bloke with a park bench for a bed and a few sheets of newspaper for a blanket would probably find your concerns about mortgage payments and electricity bills a touch whiny as well. Wealth and happiness are relative, and just because someone has more money than you, it doesn’t make their emotional anguish any less sincere or legitimate.

Don’t forget, too, that if every emotional outburst during two years of your life was condensed into a two-hour documentary, you’d probably look like a neurotic whinger as well.

Maybe Metallica should have just chucked in the towel after they put the finishing touches on Reload, but their decision not to has resulted in one of the most frank and interesting music documentaries in years. Even if you have no interest in the music or the band, watch Some Kind of Monster to see the highs and lows of human interaction stripped bare and laid out for all to see.

VERDICT: 4.5/5 stars

ON THE DVD

METALLICA COMMENTARY Good luck getting through more than 20 minutes, even if you’re a devoted fan. The boys don’t have much to say, and even when they do, you won’t be scrambling for a pen and paper to write it down.

FLIMMAKERS’ COMMENTARY The directors open the hood and explain the mechanics of making such an unusual documentary. There’s also plenty of trivia along the way to keep the less technically minded awake. Not a bad effort at all.

ADDITIONAL SCENES These aren’t your usual bits of lame exposition that were cut for good reason. If you add all 28 of them together you almost get a second documentary, much of it as interesting as the finished product itself. Highlights include Kirk and Lars surprising some people in a chat room, a collaboration with Ja Rule and some other rap stars and Kirk sweating while trying to nail a tricky riff. Plenty of extra angst, too.

FESTIVALS AND PREMIERES Everything from a Sundance press conference to an interview via satellite from Australia. Hear from Lars regarding the controversial Napster issue.

THIS MONSTER LIVES Another dozen scenes, with lots more psychobabble from Metallica’s quack of a therapist, extended whining, and Jason Newstead having a sook.

MUSIC VIDEO For the title track “Some Kind of Monster”.

Stars: Blanchard Ryan, Daniel Travis, Saul Stein
Director: Chris Kentis

Since wowing the film wonks at Sundance, Open Water has fallen victim to comparisons. From the “successful indie” perspective it has been compared to The Blair Witch Project and Pi, while its subject matter means it has been likened to Steven Spielberg’s 1975 masterpiece, Jaws. While such juxtapositions are inevitable, they also smack of lazy critical evaluation – while Open Water may have its limitations, it is no clone.

This thriller is based on a true story – and we strongly recommend you don’t research the facts first at the risk of spoiling the movie. Ryan and Travis play Susan and Daniel, a couple whose high-pressure working life is wearing them down. They arrange a last minute holiday on a tropical island and do their best to leave the stress back in America.

The day after their arrival they go scuba diving several miles out to sea. Entranced by eels and other aquatic life, they are the last pair to surface … and when they do, the charter boat is nowhere to be found. Due to a mistake in the head count, the boat has departed without them and they are left floating at the mercy of the ocean currents with no water and no hope of swimming back to shore. Reef sharks constantly cruise by, but they are (initially) a minor problem compared to what the couple must face if they are to survive and be rescued.

Open Water has much to commend. From the moment Daniel and Susan are deserted, the film maintains a low-key suspense that occasionally spikes to outright fear or horror. There are no cheap scares, and, at least in terms of the narrative, the film is believable.

Chris Kentis’ direction works best when he is not trying too hard. Early scenes of the couple at home have a film student feel about them, with too many unnecessary cuts and angles, but the naturalistic style he employs for the remainder of the movie is effective.

What really weakens the film, however, is the casting. While Ryan and Travis are both good actors (and before this, unknown), their looks make them the one “Hollywood” thing in a movie otherwise devoted to realism. Had Kentis foregone the pointless nude scene and cast a couple of regular looking people who blended into the scenery, it would have been that much easier for the audience to buy into it.

One other thing: Open Water feels rushed. With a running time of less than 80 minutes, Kentis really could have indulged himself (and the viewer) with a few more scenes. Susan and Travis’ night spent in the water (what could be more uniquely terrifying?) runs for about a minute and generates minimal emotional response.

Individual weaknesses aside, Open Water is a competent horror/thriller. Plausible, primal and honest, it might not put Jaws to shame but it sure beats much of the forgettable fluff the big studios have come up with in the past 10 years.

VERDICT: 3.5/5 stars

ON THE DVD

COMMENTARIES One with Kentis and his producer wife Laura Lau, the second with the two main stars. Both are middle-of-the-road efforts, listenable but far from riveting. Kentis and Lau point out how much of their own lives were in the film and talk about technical specifics, such as the advantages of using small cameras. Ryan and Travis are more light-hearted but also very thoughtful, mentioning the music quite a bit. Neither party comes up with a suitable justification for the nude scene.

ATTACKING THE SHARK MYTH This documentary explodes shark myths that have been exploded many times before, and also looks at how Kentis kept the events in his movie as close to reality as possible (unlike the merciless killing machine in Jaws, the title of which they studiously avoid mentioning).

CALM BEFORE THE STORM Intimate making-of doco exploring how Kentis and his wife brought the film together over two years of weekends. They knew nothing about digital filmmaking and had to research it from scratch on the internet.

THE INDIE ESSENTIALS Outlines what big studio executives look for when deciding whether to pick up an indie film for wider distribution. They say the key is typically a unique idea – witness Blair Witch, Saw, Pi.

DELETED SCENES Not much to see here, save for the alternate opening which more or less gives away the ending.

OPEN WATER SURVIVAL GUIDE An expert explains the procedures divers should follow were they ever really in a situation like that in Open Water. Many new signalling devices have been developed in the past 10 years or so.

Stars: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Marc Anthony, Radha Mitchell, Christopher Walken
Director: Tony Scott

The general public’s insatiable appetite for fast food cinema is just a fact of life these days, but sometimes you feel like waiting outside the doors of the newest no-brain blockbuster and urging them to eat a nutritious meal for once. Something like Man On Fire.

Featuring a mouth-watering cast, Man On Fire introduces us to John Creasy (Denzel Washington), a former special forces operative whose chief skill now is tipping a glass of Jack Daniels up to his lips. With his self-esteem in tatters he travels to Latin American and seeks the company of an old military friend, Rayburn (Walken), who urges him to take a job as a bodyguard. Kidnapping for ransom is seen as a profession in that part of the world, so rich families must protect their children at all times.

Creasy is hired by Samuel, a businessman with a wife, Lisa (Radha Mitchell), and pre-teen daughter Pita (Dakota Fanning). Initially Creasy is stand-offish towards Pita, using his job as an excuse to be aloof, but her precocious charm wears him down and they become friends.

Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, a group of gangsters make a kidnap attempt on Pita. Creasy guns several of them down and takes a few bullets, but the bad guys succeed. Later they make their ransom demands, which Samuel agrees to, but the exchange is ambushed and the kidnapping ringleader says he has no choice but to kill Pita.

Creasy survives his shooting and learns of Pita’s death. With the help of Rayburn, a journalist and her federal agent lover, Creasy begins a merciless war of vengeance against anyone involved in Pita’s kidnapping. As he works his way up the chain, the trail of profit leads to some highly unexpected places.

Even though it clocks in at more than two hours, Man On Fire is an efficient movie – nothing is wasted, nothing is superfluous. Director Tony Scott has even found a way to use subtitles as more than a mere translation device, the text also accenting the film’s drama and tension.

Washington is excellent as always (even if this isn’t his best performance) but the shining star here is Fanning. Precocious child characters almost always come across forced or false, but Fanning is eerily adult in her expressions and delivery of lines.

Man On Fire is a film anyone could be proud of. Equal parts action and drama, it’s also something every movie buff can and should appreciate.

VERDICT: 4.5/5

ON THE DVD

DISC QUALITY Flawless. Crystal clear visuals with no edge enhancement, audio that understands the dichotomy of the film’s subject matter.

COMMENTARY Director Tony Scott manages to hold your attention for most of the two-and-a-bit hours. There are plenty of technical details – film stock, use of different cameras and lighting – and also anecdotes galore, partly a consequence of shooting on location in volatile Mexico. Just what a film of this calibre deserved.

DELETED SCENES The first of these just had to go – it ruined the film’s impact or as Scott notes, “Gave up too much, too early.” Several of the others are worth watching, however, if only for more of Washington and Fanning’s masterful performances. Scott’s optional commentary is useful and intelligent.

Stars: Sandra Cassell, Lucy Grantham, David Hess, Fred J Lincoln
Director: Wes Craven

If George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead started exploitation horror in 1968, then Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left was the template it would follow for much of the 1970s. The key difference between the two is that Night still works as a movie; Last House now looks like what it was: a cheap flick populated by porn stars and directed by a filmmaker with precisely no credits to his name.

Its story ripped with embarrassing shamelessness from The Virgin Spring (1960), Last House concerns two teenagers who visit a “bad” town to see one of those godless rock ‘n’ roll bands – apparently in the vein of Black Sabbath (ooh-ah!). Along the way they try to score some marijuana (quaintly referred to as “grass”) and make the mistake of approaching one of several escaped criminals. He lures them back to a crummy apartment where one of the girls is raped. They are then thrown in the boot of a car, driven to an out of the way place, assaulted some more, and ultimately killed.

Unbeknown to the crims, the “out of the way place” is right near one of the murdered girls’ homes – and compounding their error, they convince her parents to let them stay the night. Already freaking out because their daughter is missing, mum and dad find out they’re harbouring their daughter’s killers and inflict some DIY justice.

The Last House on the Left is most famous for its trailer, which suggests film-goers keep telling themselves “it’s only a movie” to avoid fainting. If this was the true uncut version it might be sage advice, but contrary to what it says on the box, it’s not. The full-length version is practically impossible to come by, due to the number of edited prints that were made. Without the extended rape scenes and gore, laughing at the ridiculous dialogue or falling asleep due to the sluggish narrative are both more likely outcomes than fainting. Not as graphic as I Spit On Your Grave and possessing none of the cloying atmosphere that made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre a cult favourite, Last House is not only badly dated, it has been referred to as “the worst movie ever made” – a description that is more literal than ironic.

VERDICT: 1/5 stars

ON THE DVD

DISC QUALITY Sitting through the movie is hard enough without having to squint at this dark, grainy transfer. It’s almost impossible to tell what’s happening in some scenes. Curiously, the clips used in the bonus material do not suffer from these defects, suggesting they come from a different print.

COMMENTARY 1 Writer/director Wes Craven and producer Sean S Cunningham offer a very facetious commentary – neither can seem to believe how cheap and naïve their movie was. Still, it has its funny moments and they punctuate it with some good trivia.

COMMENTARY 2 Three of the film’s “stars” spend an hour and a half either cracking jokes about the movie or bickering with one another. Certainly a unique commentary, if not likely to suit everyone’s taste.

CELLULOID CRIME OF THE CENTURY Retrospective documentary takes an in-depth look at the film’s modest production via contemporary interviews. Informative, but not the most entertaining beast of this ilk.

SCORING LAST HOUSE Interesting piece on how star David Hess also came to provide music for Last House on the Left. Giggle as he tries fruitlessly to find the right note on his guitar.

Stars: Bruce Lee, Nora Miao, James Tien
Director: Lo Wei

Before the uncut versions were finally released on DVD, Bruce Lee fanatics spent dozens of frustrating years trying to find proper cuts of his movies on VHS. Most copies of The Big Boss, Way of the Dragon and even Enter The Dragon were cut severely – in some cases to get them under an R-rating, in others it just seemed to be for the hell of it. Fist of Fury suffered the least in this respect, but it’s nice to have it on DVD all the same.

Acquiring a knowledge of Chinese history will help you appreciate this movie, which more or less sees Bruce taking revenge on those nasty, oppressive Japanese. As with most of his work, storyline doesn’t play a terribly big part and the English voice they chose to dub over him is totally inappropriate, but Lee’s charisma and unmatched kung fu techniques comfortably overcome adversity. This movie features the famous fight scene where Lee takes on an entire Japanese karate dojo – a piece of choreography that would be copied again and again over the next 30 years, but never bested.

Every martial arts film connoisseur has their favourite Bruce Lee film and this definitely isn’t mine. When the fists aren’t flying, the narrative tends to drag, which doesn’t happen so much with The Big Boss or Way of the Dragon. But it’s Bruce Lee – you’ll be skipping to the fight scenes anyway.

VERDICT: 3.5/5 stars

ON THE DVD

DISC QUALITY You’ve never seen it better. Apparently remastered from a decent original, the image is sharp and clean and the audio nice and strong.

COMMENTARY Conducted by Bruce Lee biographer, Bey Logan, who also does the honours on The Big Boss. What he doesn’t know about the film isn’t worth knowing. He’s able to switch between the complex historical background of the film and bits of trivia so piddling and obscure even a devoted fan will learn something new.

INTERVIEWS GALLERY Two of them, both with a text intro. Max Lee, who was involved in the fight choreography, is rather dull, but Bruce’s co-star on Fist of Fury, Tony Liu, is very animated and talks candidly about his relationship with the late Lee.

ANIMATED BIOGRAPHIES Narration of scrolling text, just in case you can’t read it for yourself.

Stars: George W Bush, Michael Moore, Khalil bin Laden, Barbara Bush, Al Gore
Director: Michael Moore

Launching from the platform of George W Bush’s rather dubious 2001 election win, Fahrenheit 9/11 is another two-hour socialist diatribe from the maker of Bowling For Columbine, Michael Moore. Like its forerunner, 9/11 combines emotionalism with selected facts to express disgust at the Bush administration and generally whinge about the deleterious effects of capitalism.

Starting with the protests at Bush’s inauguration, we move on to the close links his family has always had with Saudi oil barons. From this Moore builds an elaborate conspiracy theory, suggesting the war on terror and invasion of Iraq were nothing more than scams to create a climate of fear where Bush and his buddies could profit from their military investments. Furthermore, he claims that most of those killed in action come from America’s poor families – and in one of Fahrenheit’s more pithy scenes (see photo), he attempts to get US senators to enlist their children in the army.

If even half of what Michael Moore alleges about the Bush family is true (and it probably is) then the current American government must be one of the most corrupt in history. In typical Moore style, however, he is so one-eyed and pushes his agenda so hard that his credibility suffers. His attempt to paint Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s regime as a really lovely place where kids spent all their time flying kites is unintentionally hilarious. It’s as faulty as showing footage of the Hollywood elite and saying they represent greater America. No doubt the people of Flint, Michigan – which Moore seems to view as the moral and emotional epicentre of the US – would have something to say about that.

Certainly, the world needs a left-wing discontent like Michael Moore to keep things in balance, but if people take his entertaining films (let’s not call them documentaries) as gospel, then he is really no better than the politicians he is striving to bring down. Two wrongs don’t make a right, not even where a “goofy child president” (as the late Hunter S Thompson so aptly described Bush) is concerned.

VERDICT: 3.5/5

ON THE DVD

FEATURETTE Not a making-of, but rather reactions to Fahrenheit 9/11 and further rhetoric from Moore himself. The Cannes jury gets all misty-eyed about his desire to make movies rather than political statements, a White House communications director makes a stupid remark that he “doesn’t need to see it”, then Moore tops him by ranting about capitalism and limits on free speech, apparently forgetting that the US government did nothing to censor his film. One of his supporters comes perilously close to paranoia when they suggest that 9/11’s R-rating was “politically motivated”.

IRAQ PRE-INVASION A film crew went over to Iraq just prior to America’s “invasion” and this, as Moore so carefully qualifies it, is SOME of what they saw. It amounts to a bunch of interviews where Iraqi people express how happy they are. Again, it ignores the fact that thousands of civilians were slaughtered under Saddam’s reign.

PRISON RELEASE – ABU GHRAIB Painted in the film as being victims, here the American soldiers are depicted as brutal. Which is it, Moore?

URBAN HAMMID A Swedish journalist who went on a campaign with the American troops offers his “impressions” – basically a long-winded affirmation of Moore’s stance.

BUSH ROSE GARDEN Michael Moore is wasting his time trying to discredit Dubya – ol’ Georgie does a perfectly good job on his own. Here Bush emerges from a meeting with the 9/11 Commission and blabbers on about nothing, refusing to give the media any real details. He says, “It was a good discussion” about five different ways, sidesteps a couple of questions with all the grace of a drunken rhinoceros, then leaves. Maybe this lack of information is in the interests of national security … and maybe it’s in the interests of George W Bush.

OTHER EXTRAS Mostly more of the same, with the exception of a piece on Arab-American comedians who developed a wealth of material from the anti-Arab sentiment following 9/11. Much of it is very amusing, although one or two of them break the comedy rule by getting preachy. Unlike Columbine, there is no commentary from Moore, which is rather odd.

Stars: Bhaskar, Jardine Wong, Rhonda Fultz, George Patterson
Director: David E Durston

Back in the 1960s, with horror movies it was all about the title. Studios would give filmmakers funds on the strength of a name that sounded marketable, before a single word of script had been written. In the case of I Drink Your Blood, writer and director David E Durston had given it the much more sensible moniker of Phobia – but then how could that run on a double bill with the rather more tame I Eat Your Skin (1964)?

Whatever you call it, I Drink Your Blood was pretty extreme for a 1970 American production. Taking its cues from several elements worrying (and fascinating) middle-class America at the time – Charles Manson, drug use, the occult – the movie opens on a group of young people performing a satanic ritual. One of them, Andy, has invited his new girlfriend Sylvia to come and watch secretly. Naturally she is found out and two of the cult members chase her through the forest before raping her.

Sylvia’s grandfather (a veterinarian) finds out about this, and with shotgun in hand, heads over to the abandoned house where the cult is squatting. They rough him up as well (even dropping a tab of acid into his open mouth) then send him packing along with his young grandson, who has followed him.

In an act of retribution, the grandson shoots a rabid dog, syringes out its infected blood, injects the blood into some pies, and gives the pies to the devil-hippies, who chow down. Soon they’re frothing at the mouth and carving up anyone in the immediate vicinity, including each other. But things escalate further when some randy dam workers pick up a buxom hippy (not yet showing symptoms) who proceeds to spread her “love” around. The cops expend lots of ammo trying to prevent the infection from spreading.

You couldn’t call I Drink Your Blood intelligent, believable or even coherent, but the lead actors have a certain charisma that prevents it from being dull as well as silly. Plus, you just can’t help but love such an over-the-top storyline – nothing like this would ever get the green light in Hollywood today.

The score is composed of sharp, annoying noises (“which was the style at the time”) and the characters’ motivations tend towards the puerile (two days after being raped, Sylvia is ready for a roll in the hay with her boyfriend), but you can see why this is a cult fave among exploitation horror freaks.

VERDICT: 2.5/5 stars

ON THE DVD
DISC QUALITY Actually not a bad restoration considering. Some film damage has made it through the remastering process but the artefacts are fairly minimal and the colours are as vibrant as they ever were. Sound – crackly and muffled in parts – isn’t so good.

COMMENTARY The director and main actor Bhaskar cough up some pretty decent information, even if they appear delusional about how good the movie is. Durston does much of the talking, Bhaskar chipping in only when the director asks him a question.

OUTTAKES More like Clayton’s deleted scenes – not funny and not interesting to watch. Really quite pointless.

I DRINK YOUR BLOOD SHOW Durston invites several of the actors to his house and interviews them about their experiences with I Drink Your Blood. If you can stand the litres of smoke blown up their arses, there is also plenty to learn here.

DELETED SCENES Gramps having an unconvincing acid freak-out, a “downbeat” Pet Sematary sort of ending and some talky bits.

Stars: Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor, Rip Torn
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber


What do Dude Where’s My Car and Dodgeball have in common (apart from being comedies)? They are both examples of that frustrating movie experience with All The Best Bits In The Trailer.

Lord knows, Dodgeball had more potential than that. Vince Vaughan stars as Peter La Fleur, the owner of a small, run down, but honest gym filled with all sorts of physical unfortunates and people with social and mental problems. Across the street is the massive GloboGym, run by White Goodman (Ben Stiller), a gym junkie and egotist who wants to buy out Average Joe’s Gym.

Peter isn’t interested in selling, but when an attractive tax lawyer Kate (Christine Taylor) comes sniffing at White’s behest, she discovers a $50,000 unpaid tax bill. Peter and his group of misfits have to work out some way to scrape together the cash, and when a hand car wash doesn’t work, they end up trying to qualify for a national dodgeball competition – which naturally has a $50,000 cash prize. Prepare to yawn as the film follows the predictable formula like a train follows its tracks.

There’s no shortage of talent in Dodgeball and there are several cracking one-liners, but it spends too much of its 80-odd minutes firing on three cylinders – and you’ve heard 90 per cent of the best jokes in the trailers. A shame.

VERDICT: 3/5 stars

ON THE DVD

ALTERNATE ENDING Average Joes lose and the credits roll. In his commentary, writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber explains that the stars preferred his ending, but the studio wrung its hands after negative test screenings. He then proceeds to get all precious about “creativity”. Okay, negative endings always offer a surprise, but come on mate, this isn’t high art – it’s a regulation comedy. Get over yourself.

BLOOPERS/GAG REEL A reasonable length and quite amusing.

FEATURETTES Some conventional making-of stuff, plus extended Dodgeball Dancers sequences with the gals dressed in various coloured outfits. Other pieces look at the actors learning how demanding the game of dodgeball can be and the intricacies of physical comedy (ie, why it’s funnier to be hit in the groin than the arm).

DELETED/EXTENDED SCENES Mostly lame stuff left out for pacing reasons.

COMMENTARY Semi-scripted dialogue with Vaughan, Stiller (who turns up late) and Thurber. The latter supposedly storms out when Stiller refers to him as a “piece of shit director”. Nice try, fellas – it might be original but it’s just not funny.

Stars: Simon Cox, Stephanie A Hoeller, Mark Oxbrow

If you’re not one of the 450 trillion* people who have read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, for the purposes of this review you should know that it is an adventure/thriller in the tradition of The Celestine Prophecy that unearths a conspiracy theory surrounding the church and the falsification of history, specifically Jesus Christ’s mantle as the only son of God. Some of Brown’s book is based in fact, and it’s this which documentary Cracking the Da Vinci Code sets out to explore.

An interesting premise soon turns to farce as a bunch of unwashed intellectuals make fanciful interpretations of Leonardo Da Vinci’s artworks, then move beyond the borders of common sense by claiming the carved cubes in a Scottish church might actually be a code that unlocks the truth about the Christian religion. It’s so wacky, you almost expect them to burst out laughing – but nope, they’re deadly serious. Adding insult to idiocy, the Yank narrator mispronounces “Thames” and “Edinburgh”.

It’s entirely possible that Christianity was adulterated somewhere along the line for nefarious purposes, but this undergraduate fairy story takes us no closer to discovering the truth – or anything else.

*This may not be the exact number, but it’s probably pretty close.

VERDICT: 1/5

THE FILM
The next time you get out of taxi muttering about what a surly bastard he was, ask yourself if you could do the job. Inconsiderate motorists, traffic jams passengers who can’t pay their fare, passengers who are drunk and/or abusive, 12 hour days … it’s a wonder there are any polite cab drivers at all. Max (Foxx) is a rarity among cabbies – not only is he polite, he keeps his vehicle immaculate. He one day dreams of opening his own special limousine service, one that’s so good you don’t want to get out at your destination.

One night Max picks up the attractive Annie (Pinkett-Smith) and he’s charming enough that she offers him her business card. A few moments later he gets another fare – the business-like Vincent (Cruise). Cool and well-dressed, Vincent wants Max to drive him to a few destinations, then drop him off at LA airport. In fact, there’s $600 in it for him if he makes good time. Seems like a nice deal until a body comes flying out of the building Vincent has just entered and lands on Max’s taxi.

Yep, our Vincent is a professional hitman hired to knock off a bunch of witnesses and now Max is forced to chauffer him around at gunpoint until he can find some way to get out of his murderous predicament.

The pandering reviews this movie received suggest many critics have a very short memory. The narrative thrust is as old as filmmaking itself and Collateral doesn’t bring anything new to the table, save for a smooth, dark tone. It tries, through its dialogue, to be philosophical, but for all the characters’ introspection the parting message is that power stems from the barrel of a gun – nothing very insightful there.

As usual Cruise is good without breaking through that metaphysical performance barrier that leads to a Jack Nicholson or Robert DeNiro level of brilliance and Foxx is more than competent. Collateral does manufacture genuine tension and you want to keep watching, but there are also slack periods that some judicious editing would have fixed – the nightclub scene being an obvious example. It’s recommended viewing, but far from the groundbreaking cinema some people seem to think it is.

VERDICT: 3.5/5

ON THE DVD
COMMENTARY Director Michael Mann hasn’t been a big fan of the audio commentary so this is a welcome bolt from the blue. Mann delivers the goods too – providing just as much insight as techno babble. Nice.

MAKING OF Fairly comprehensive piece (though nothing on some of the great making-ofs we’ve seen lately) that covers everything from the actors researching their roles to the film’s well-choreographed stunts.

OTHER EXTRAS A few things worth a gander: "Special Delivery" is a short featurette that has Cruise "going undercover" and not being recognised at a local market, “Shooting on Location” is about filming the scenes in the high-rise at the end of the picture, there’s also a deleted scene, and a piece on the visual effects – which isn’t terribly gripping.

Starring: Jackie Chan, Alan Tam, Rosamund Kwan, Lola Forner
Director: Jackie Chan

It’s a popular pastime pointing out all the creative ideas western cinema stole from Hong Kong, but it was hardly a one-way street. For proof you need look no further than Armour of God (1987), which was a kissing cousin in tone, plot and sets to Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).

Jackie Chan (playing a character called Jackie, how inventive) is a fortune hunter whose girlfriend is kidnapped by a religious cult. He infiltrates their secret society to effect a rescue and also get his hands on some unique treasure.

As far as movies go, Armour of God isn’t much. Really, it’s a bunch of brilliant fight scenes tacked together with boring dialogue. Of all Chan’s Hong Kong movies, this is the one that benefits most from the fast forward button so you can get to the good parts.

VERDICT: 2.5/5

5/5 The Empire Strikes Back
4/5 Star Wars
3/5 Revenge of the Sith
2/5 Attack of the Clones
1/5 The Phantom Menace

Stars: Diane Keaton, Sarah Jessica Parker, Claire Danes, Dermot Mulroney, Craig T Nelson, Luke Wilson
Director: Thomas Bezucha

If one were to judge The Family Stone from its opening pastiche, the first word coming to mind would be ‘trite’. Rich city couple doing some last minute shopping before heading to the suburbs for a nervous Christmas encounter with his parents (and he has secret plans to propose). When they arrive, her uptight demeanour clashes with his family’s loving, liberalist and somewhat overbearing atmosphere. So far the plot is interchangeable with any of a dozen Christmas or rom-com flicks.

Then something strange happens. Out of this rather barren parking lot of a setting, interesting characters start to emerge like spring flowers. Everett Stone (Mulroney) is sure he wants to marry Meredith Morton (Parker) until her sister Julie (Danes) turns up and he makes an unexpected connection with her. Meredith feels like an outcast in her beau’s family until the black sheep Ben (Luke Wilson) makes it his mission to set her at ease. Everett’s parents, Kelly (Nelson) and Sybil (Keaton) seem to be perfect, but they are hiding a dark secret from their kids. And then there's the fuss over Grandma's wedding ring... Holy three dimensions, Batman, these characters actually have some internal conflict!

The Family Stone is one of those movies that manage to rise above their station, both through winning its performances and the way it effortlessly vacillates between genres. Where many such films stumble from comedy to drama with all the grace of a drunkard in steel-cap boots, The Family Stone guides us from one to the other so gently that it’s hard to pin down exactly where the transition took place. It also conjures up a pleasant yuletide atmosphere – even if you happen to watch it on a Thursday night in March.

Sometimes The Family Stone goes too far. The slapstick mini-climax feels like one genres too many thrown in the pot, the addition of a gay couple seems rather gratuitous (one’s deaf and one’s black too, just in case we missed the Stone family’s open-mindedness) and the swift change in characters’ attitudes stretches plausibility. But it’s easy to forgive these faults because of the blissful, almost dreamy viewing it provides. And if it wasn’t for all the nauseating, saccharine and far inferior films that have been labelled ‘feel-good’, The Family Stone might deserve that tag as well.

VERDICT: 3.5/5

5/5 The Empire Strikes Back
4/5 Star Wars
3/5 Revenge of the Sith
2/5 Attack of the Clones
1/5 The Phantom Menace