Tag Archives: 2012

Total Recall  (2012)    55/100

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Rating :   55/100                                                                     118 Min        12A

Total Recall looks very, very good. It’s a remake of the classic 1990 Schwarzenegger film, itself based on the Philip K. Dick short story ‘We Can Remember It for You Wholesale’. The previous two incarnations of the tale all featured Mars – here it’s set in a dystopian future Earth where only the United Federation of Great Britain and the more impoverished ‘colony’ of Australia survive after global chemical warfare. Not too sure why they thought it would be a good idea to reduce Australia to colonial status once again, but the British element does give director Les Wiseman (‘Underworld’ 03) good basis to cast not only his wife, Kate Beckinsale, but also Irishman Colin Farell (Bill Nighy also appears, with what I think is supposed to be an American accent..). Graphically the settings are detailed and convincing, the only problem is there’s not much more to the entire film.

As it gathers pace, ‘Total Recall’ descends into an endless series of chase sequences and set piece gun battles, which are well constructed but nevertheless become tedious. Kate Beckinsale’s ‘Underworld’ training is put to good use and it is fun watching her whirl around like a peeved dervish of destruction, admittedly with trademark skin tight clothes on, but the story really needed a lot more depth put into it. Jessica Biel also has a sizeable role to play, but her character is fairly pointless and only really exists as an accessory to the inevitable conclusion.

It’s been a long time since The Red Dragon watched the original, but I think it’s fair to say it had more going on than here, though pleasingly they have stuck with some of the famous lines (sadly not the one from Sharon Stone and the retort) and also the three breasted girl element. If you like films with lots of mindless shooting and an attempt at a believable plot then there’s no reason you won’t like this.

The Possession  (2012)    60/100

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Rating :   60/100                                                                       92 Min        15

This is very much a standard exorcism film, which is decent in its own right but brings nothing new to the table at all. It’s not as scary as the new wave of horror films that have followed in the footsteps of ‘Paranormal activity’ (07), and it doesn’t have as many jumps as the likes of ‘The Woman in Black’ (12), but it does have a little more in the way of narrative in the guise of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Clyde, the recently separated father of two young girls, one of whom is about to discover a strange old box…..

The Expendables 2  (2012)    62/100

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Rating :   62/100                                                                     103 Min        15

One is very much aware from the onset that this is an ACTION movie. Stallone’s super team up of action stars continues with a second instalment and even more famous faces than before, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis also get larger parts than in the last outing. The style and set-up is exactly the same as last time, and it’s a decent action romp. It’s also impossible to deny that it’s nice to see them all onscreen together, and it’s equally impossible not to notice they’re having a really good time making it! Having said that, ‘The Expendables 2’ has sadly had to include itself in the list of films where people died on set, after a stuntman was tragically killed during a set piece accident.

‘The Expendables 3’ is a dead cert, and rumour is Nic Cage is already on board, and the filmmakers have approached Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford. How about the original bond Mr Connery for a final touch of class? The set-up here is great, but it would be nice to add more to the fray than just a shoot ’em up bursting with one-liners, and it does kind of feel like cheating when you have all these super fit action stars and they all have automatic weapons….

Keith Lemon – The Movie  (2012)    1/100

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Rating :   1/100                                                                         85 Min        15

The Red Dragon does not get this movie. AT ALL. It’s trash, and quite why so many pop celebrities (two Spice Girls, Ronan Keaton, Garry Barlow etc.) have debased themselves in it is a complete mystery. Once upon a time Britain had Monty Python, now we have the likes of Leigh Francis (Keith Lemon). Sad times. It receives a single point purely for Kelly Brook – The Red Dragon leaves it up to your imagination as to why that might be.

The Imposter  (2012)    69/100

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Rating :  69/100                                                                        99 Min        15

Very interesting. Always remember when you are watching a documentary that you are often being manipulated, both in terms of character and narrative, just as with a work of fiction. The film tells the true story, through interviews with the actual people involved, of how a Frenchman living in Spain was able to pass himself off as the long disappeared son of a Texan family. Gets off to a slow start but worth sticking with it. Also features someone who may be the worst FBI agent ever….

Worth remembering too whilst you watch this that when someone looks up and to the right with their eyes they are accessing the imaginative part of their mind, as opposed to up and to the left, which means they’re accessing the visual cortex and long-term memory (that is, according to Samuel L. Jackson in ‘The Negotiator’ {98}. Which I’m told is a simplified version of the truth …).

Shadow Dancer  (2012)    62/100

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Rating :  62/100                                                                      101 Min        15

Beginning in Belfast in 1973 and based on the novel by Tom Bradby, Shadow Dancer mainly takes place in the early nineties and focuses on one family and their involvement with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It stars Andrea Riseborough as the main character Colette McVeigh and Clive Owen as the British MI5 agent assigned to deal with her, supervised by Gillian Anderson in support (who played an MI7 chief in ‘Johnny English Reborn’ last year) who has spent the last eight months profiling Colette and working on a strategy to use the girl against her own Republican activist brothers. The scenario feels real, but the biggest problem with the film is that the characters do not.

Clive Owen gives Colette his real name on their first meet in order to gain her trust, for example. Clive Owen is dependently good throughout, but the central performance from Riseborough leads to other problems. We are given the very strong sense she is someone heavily involved in the Troubles and violent IRA activity, and yet she seems strangely disinterested, or disconnected from most of what’s going on around her. It creates a disingenuous feeling that permeates the whole film, as if the entire whole is an attempt to artificially create tense drama, rather than the audience witnessing a dramatic scenario happening to real people. The film has a grainy texture to it, making it seem older than it should, and the protagonists are given an equation to solve that only has a few possible solutions, but it still takes them a pretty long time to solve it.

Unfortunately, anyone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and watched ‘W.E.’ (11) and was, presumably, scarred by it, may find it impossible to shake the associations with Andrea Riseborough’s last cinematic outing. The film was so bad laws should be passed to prevent Madonna from ever opening her mouth to talk about British history again, or from ever making another film for that matter. In it, Riseborough played Wallace Simpson, and the film aimed to paint the American woman who seduced a British monarch, and forced his abdication from the throne, in a better light than is usually cast upon her. The overriding memory is that she comes across as a wanton slut in the film, but the same sort of hopelessly vague and insincere aura that surrounded her performance there, seems to have many ‘shadows’ here. That said, her Belfast accent is very good, and remains so throughout. It’s pretty rare to find really convincing and consistent accents on the big-screen as actors transcend different nationalities, though quite frequently during the film the dialogue becomes muffled and difficult to make out.

Director James Marsh, who won an Oscar for the documentary ‘Man on Wire’ (Sean Connery describes this as one of his favourite movies incidentally), has created a fairly linear, small scale piece that he’s tried to give a distinctive feel. He hasn’t completely failed, the beach scenes are lovely and memorable, but it’s only the suitably dramatic ending that saves it from complete mediocrity. Documentaries don’t always start at the very beginning, and perhaps here it would have been better to save the opening flashback for a while and simply introduce the characters more. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if Marsh had been very much inspired by ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ (11), and was trying to emulate a similar feel for this work. The book is probably a lot better.

Red Lights  (2012)    58/100

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Rating : 58/100                                                                       114 Min        15

In Brief : Interesting, with strong performances all round by the cast, but ultimately let down by a screenplay with more than a few oversights.

Contents :
Mini Review
Plot
Full Review

Mini Review : ‘Red Lights’ is a film that needed enigmatic performances from its lead cast and an intelligent, intriguing screenplay in order to succeed. It definitely scores a thumbs up in the first category, but is left lacking in the second with a less than polished final product. The whole has a sort of early eighties feel to it, and the tension mounts as we follow the main characters on their crusade to explore and disprove the paranormal. But then it kind of stutters along, and delivers a less than awe inspiring finale. Although the main story arc looses momentum and is at times a little dubious there are still a few nice touches to enjoy here, but on the whole it feels like it’s ambling in the footsteps of similar fiction before it rather than portraying a bold vision of its own.

Plot : Margaret Matheson and Tom Buckley are two university colleagues who have a mandate to debunk supernatural phenomena. Their work progresses successfully until the return to the scene of one of the world’s most high profile claimants of supernatural gifts. For one, he is a spectre of the past, and one that should be left there; for the other, he represents the ultimate challenge.

Full Review (Contains spoilers) : Robert De Niro, Cillian Murphy, and Sigourney Weaver star in this tale of fraud and supernatural realisation from Spanish writer and director Rodrigo Cortes, following on from the success of his ‘Buried’ with Ryan Reynolds in 2010 (not on writing duty in that instance). The story begins with Murphy and Weaver’s characters (Tom Buckley and Margaret Matheson respectively) exposing a séance and incumbent medium as bunk. Initially, we the audience are unsure as to what we are about to be treated to, whether or not Sigourney Weaver may be playing a sort of ‘super psychic’, as becoming of her acting calibre, brought in to help with this super scary, difficult case. It becomes apparent after this séance that she, and her physics graduate-sidekick Tom, work in academia exposing such hocussing professionally. It allows the director to play with familiar horror film techniques, something which he continues to do in parallel with the story; playing it off against Robert De Niro’s Simon Silver and whether or not he has real psychic abilities, and is thus the exception to the rule. Indeed, in this sense the beginning, and to a lesser extent the whole, is very similar to ‘The Awakening’ released last year (with a wonderful turn by the rising star that is Rebecca Hall).

This question regarding Silver’s legitimacy forms then the crux of the piece. The two protagonists are given a little more depth, mostly via relation to their profession. We learn Tom’s mother may have been given a bogus medical diagnosis from a psychic and died from it, but then later he refers to his mother, to someone else, in the present tense. Matheson’s back story gives the plot a little more meaning, as we see her son lying in a vegetative state in hospital and she tells us the nature of her work doesn’t allow her to give up hope and turn off the machine as she has no evidence or faith that anything awaits us in the afterlife. We also learn she has met Silver in a televised interview thirty years ago and during it he made reference to her hospitalised son, making even her want to believe for a moment. She uses this anecdote to emphasise how dangerous he is to Tom, who seems to be becoming obsessed with exposing Silva as a fraud to the world.

This back story proves interesting, as even though De Niro and Weaver never meet onscreen we are given the distinct impression that their characters’ pasts are a little more involved than we are being told. Perhaps Matheson witnessed something so awesome at the hands of Silver, that she felt compelled to begin a saga to disprove every seemingly supernatural phenomenon, unable to come to terms with what she witnessed. Or perhaps Silver met his match with Matheson, fell in love with her, or even sensed some latent dangerous talent in her akin to his own. It is even possible that he is Buckley’s father, or there is a much more sinister and earthly secret between them. The final answer comes as a misdirected mixture of some of these things, but the acting talents of Weaver and De Niro make the dynamic compelling.

For Tom, he is set up as the naïve headstrong apprentice heading for disaster, a concept not particularly original but nevertheless a wonderfully compelling artifice of storytelling. He is given a love interest in the form of Elizabeth Olsen, a young undergrad in Matheson’s class. It’s unfortunately a completely frivolous and pointless role whose only purpose is to provide a sounding board for some background conversation and, perhaps, a pretty young girl for male members of the audience to look at. Doubly unfortunate for Miss Olsen as this follows directly on from ‘Silent House’ (11), a bad remake of an already terrible Spanish film ‘La Casa Muda’ (10), where the audience were invited to look down her top and nowhere else for pretty much the entirety of the film. Her breasts did perform their role quite admirably, and here she herself does likewise so expect to see more from her in the future, though hopefully with more of an involving role next time.

Further support is given from Toby Jones, a research scientist at the university whose department gets way more funding than Matheson’s and is placed as countermeasure to herself, trying to scientifically prove supernaturalism rather than disprove it. Toby Jones is an incredibly prolific, diverse actor (see his own take on Capote in ‘Infamous’ 06) and he is as usual good here, though again the role is solely in service of the narrative. Cillian Murphy himself gives a convincing performance throughout, complete with what looks a pretty skilful coin flourish, although, thanks to poor camera direction, his magic tricks look less than convincing. Joely Richardson also makes an appearance as Silver’s PA, infusing the role with sex appeal as she does so well, but again, despite adding a little more glamour, the role is entirely 2D and very short (The Red Dragon would like to personally confirm that Joely Richardson is as alluring in real life as she is onscreen).

Before the Silver story really gets going we see the myth busting duo expose a would be psychic in a theatre full of people – breaking into the blacked out box next to theirs where radio messages were being sent to the performer below, who had been busy achieving the seemingly impossible task of knowing private information about random people in the audience. Earlier in the car park outside they pilfer the notebook of one of the performer’s accomplices who seemed to be taking down registration numbers, no doubt to look up information about the vehicles owners and cross reference it with ticket sales. It’s interesting, because although here it is in the context of fake faith healers, and results in criminal prosecution for the perpetrators, this doubtless has parallels with how many perform stage magic today. Derren Brown, for example, commonly seems to pull information from random audience members’ heads, and also mysteriously matches seat numbers to the same people as their introduction. It would be interesting to take a good, close look at the legal context of purchasing a theatre ticket, and the information you give out at the time …

In any event it’s a good scene for the film. When in jail, the con artist tells the zealous Tom to beware of Silver, his mentor, as he has no idea what he is meddling with, increasing the sense of danger and power that De Niro’s character is given to exude; a sense that De Niro is expertly able to deliver. From here we are led to the most interesting part of the film, when the headstrong Mr Buckley decides to go it alone and head back to what appears to be the same box in the same theatre in order to hopefully expose Silver as an artful deceiver. Though this does seem to be a rather dubious theatrical booking, given his understudy was arrested on the very same stage for falsely doing pretty much exactly what Silver is proffering to do mere days/weeks previously.

During this particular performance all eyes are on Silver on centre stage, as an overweight patient is wheeled out on a small operating table, fleshy belly and midriff exposed, and he seems to achieve a small miracle – reaching into the flesh of the man before him and pulling out the bloodied, diseased tissue inside, then somehow closing the wound with his powers and leaving the prone body cured and healthy. When performed on stage this trick almost certainly makes use of a false stomach. Here the audience is wowed, but the scene continually cuts to an increasingly desperate Tom, who is beavering away with his radio equipment as it randomly begins to explode in bursts around him, as if Silver’s cognitive special powers can sense the attempt and they take action. Though the fact real psychic abilities would not need to protect themselves leads us to think it is simply sabotage. All of this though, is not what makes it so interesting. What makes it worthy of special note, is that The Red Dragon has seen this before.

Bizarrely, almost this entire, complete scene appears in an old issue of Spiderman. Now, exactly what issue, or indeed exactly which comic, The Red Dragon isn’t sure, and can’t be without going on a particularly involved search … actually the wonders of the web (no pun intended) have revealed it was in fact ‘Web of Spiderman’ issue 41, ‘The Cult of Love part 2’, if anyone wants to check it out and test my hypothesis then please do, as The Red Dragon freely admits he is working on a many years old memory here. This issue was part two of a four part story that seen Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spiderman, join a cult in order to try and rescue a girl who had become indoctrinated by them. I never got hold of the subsequent edition so never found out how it ended, but during the story Parker is seated in an auditorium watching the exact same procedure being carried out.

The panels of the story clearly show the performer’s hands going into the flesh, coming out bloodied, and then the same flesh washed and mysteriously healed, with fresh water on it just as in the film. In the comic Parker begins to doubt himself as a narrative voice-over tells us such shows are how cults groom their members, daring even the inquisitive and intelligent to believe. Although in the film Tom appears to be preoccupied, the suggestion is still that the performance and the increasingly paranormal activity surrounding it (the whole building begins to tremble) are sucking him in and begin to take a noticeable toll on his mental health, as what his eyes witness clashes so dramatically with the faith he has instilled in his career proving such things to be false. Although this is purely working from memory, the images of the comic and the film are graphically so similar in my mind it seems difficult to imagine one was not influenced by the other.

Interestingly, in each of the three interviews The Red Dragon has seen with Cillian Murphy and Rodrigo Cortes together, Cortes makes mention of the fact he spent a year and a half doing research for the film. Every time he says this, there is a noticeable shift in the expression of Cillian Murphy – is this because he’s slightly bored? Or because he knows this is somewhat misleading or bombastic? Did Cortes simply spend a year and a half reading Spiderman comics and watching spooky films? It’s not plagiarism per se, and certainly such shows in real life no doubt look very similar to the ones depicted in the comic and film, but it is perhaps a little too similar to the inspirational material for its own good, just as the beginning is too close to that of ‘The Awakening’.

From this point on the supernatural element of the film intensifies dramatically. Tom ends up in hospital after the show, then discovers that mysteriously Matheson has died whilst he was there. We learn that the rational explanation for this is a pre-existing medical condition, and indeed we have seen her taking some form of medication throughout. All manner of strange things occur around Buckley, including semi-explosive birds and bodily ceiling suspension. Beginning to lose the plot, his determination to find the truth deepens and he even attempts to confront Silver at one of his secret one-to-one sessions. Cue another nice scene where Tom is separated from Silver by what appears to be a line of salt on the floor, and he sits in awe of the mystic, afraid to speak out lest he give his identity away, and yet the enigmatic Silver seems to know anyway. The finale ensues with Silver undergoing a series of scientific tests and then putting on his last show in the city, and a desperate Tom adamant to prove fraud in the former as he heads for a showdown in the latter.

Here all the big revelations are unveiled, as Tom is beaten up by a paid heavy in the toilets at the show, proving to us that Silver is a fake (and prompting us to wonder if the untimely death of his main public enemy years ago was in fact murder), just as his friends at the university uncover falsity in the earlier experiment. The main aspect of this is that Silver is in fact not blind, something the characters have taken for granted but we have been invited to question early on when the camera gives us a close-up of his eyes and, given the whole thing is a question over his legitimacy, the obvious thing to ask is, well how do we know he is actually blind to begin with? The narrative offers us no hardcore evidence, he certainly appears to be, but then he is a showman. This revelation may also seem a bit of a let down not just because of its set up and delivery, but also because of the success of ‘The Prestige’ back in 2006, replete as it was with such disguises and showmanship. When Tom flicks a coin at him on stage to test him and he catches it, revealing his normal ability to see to the world, it’s a little too easy, surely he would have had the wherewithal to simply ignore it and let it sail past him?

Having said that, he is distracted at the time by the complimentary revelation of Tom’s actual supernatural powers as the whole place begins to shake, much as it did the last time around. Silver shouts repeatedly ‘How are you doing this?’ but surely a professional supernatural fraud such as himself would simply run with it? It could well be a trick not too dissimilar to one of his own. We come to learn the real story has been that of Tom, who has long suspected there was something different about himself, but who was unwilling to accept it, and instead devoted his life to disproving such fantasies. The anecdote he told about his mother, may or may not have something to do with himself, just as Matheson’s death and illness may similarly have something to do with him.

Indeed, his power seems to be haphazardly destructive, increasing when he’s under stress. One of the most curious incidents of its manifestation happens when news of Silver’s return to the scene has been announced and Matheson answers the phone. No one seems to be on the other end, and when she returns to the mug she’d left to take the call, the spoon in it is bent. She doesn’t seem too fussed by this. So we know very early on supernatural forces are at work and from this it points to either Silver, Matheson, or both. But Tom? Why the spoon? It’s nowhere near the phone and nothing else seems affected – does Matheson not react because she’s used to spoons randomly bending and thinks it’s normal? It works for the story at that point, but, well it’s a bit too silly and random.

Similarly, early on Matheson is questioned during a lecture on her beliefs and the possibility of real psychic phenomenon. She replies with the very sound point that real life and nature can often be fantastical enough. She uses the case of Beethoven composing whilst deaf as one example, but it’s interesting when we consider the wealth of information that science is now uncovering about ourselves and the universe we live in. Biologists have come to realise that an organism can evolve significantly within its own lifetime but are only just beginning to unravel the secrets of the human genome and all its potential. Physicists have discovered the best evidence yet to prove the existence of the Higgs-Boson particle, showing we’re making huge leaps forward in terms of understanding our world, yet also illustrating just how much we still don’t know and just how much we are intimately connected to the micro and macro world around us. After all, atoms in our bodies were once at the hearts of stars burning away, stars which themselves came from one infinitesimally small point in existence, or perhaps, more correctly, non-existence. Put in this context, the spooky goings on in Red Lights are pretty lame.

It is perhaps worthy to note on the fact that filmmakers invariably portray the supernatural as a dark and sinister force, partly the essence of horror films, partly maybe our natural fear of the unknown. Yet, we as a species floating in space are so fragile that it would hardly take anything at all to wipe us out. Alien virus. Dead. Asteroid. Dead. Alien invasion by pretty much any alien species capable of space travel we can think of. Dead. Ghosts that can hurt people. Dead. (Like the ghosts in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ – why didn’t they just recruit them in the beginning? They’re indestructible! ‘Hmm, what do we have to bargain with… I suppose we have the only living being that can free them from eternal slavery. Hmm… or we could give the ring to two hobbits, take an enormous gamble, and sacrifice half of the population of Middle Earth. Decisions, decisions…’).

It might not be ridiculous to draw a conclusion from this that the universe is actually a fairly benevolent place for life, and that rather than waste time worrying about all the ways it could end, we should simply enjoy it. I suppose you could argue if it was really looking out for us we’d be impervious to disease and fire etc. but perhaps it likes us needing to look out for one another. To bring us back to the point, mental trickery of the sort going on here still very much remains science fiction to us, but who knows, in the future perhaps there will be a quantum understanding of the likes of deja vu as we unlock the mysteries of the mind, and just as once upon a time seeing a rainbow must have felt like seeing a snapshot of some godly realm, and we can now produce the same effect from a simple prism, perhaps one day seemingly improbable tricks of the mind will be child’s play.

The director has stated he wants ‘Red Lights’ to ask questions, and it does stay with you afterward quite well and linger on. However, this has more to do with the cast and the cinematography which succeed in creating a distinctive sense of something, but a something that is ultimately hollow and too ill defined by a randomly whimsical screenplay that is creative on its surface only. A film like this should have people wanting to see it again, armed with full knowledge of the story, but it’s let down by an underlying structure simply not crafted well enough to ever allow it to work on the grand scale it aims at. Decent, but a shame it isn’t better.

The Five-Year Engagement  (2012)    72/100

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Rating 72/100                                                                         124 Min        15

In Brief : Well worth going to see.

Contents :
Mini Review
Plot
Full Review

Mini Review : ‘The Five-Year Engagement’ is a well rounded piece that sees both the main and the supporting cast deliver throughout. It follows in a similar vein to producer Judd Apatow’s previous work, romantic comedies with drama as subterfuge and a free rein on the actors to improvise. This, together with the familiarity of some of the cast and co-writer/director/producer Nicholas Stoller (Segel also co-wrote the script), has a telling effect on the production which gels together nicely. The film cleverly has at its core something everyone in a long term relationship can probably relate to, and yet despite the fact it plays out over the length of the film it never feels overstated or forced. Segel and Blunt combine to make a realistic and engaging (no pun intended) couple and a film that all involved with can be justifiably proud of.

Plot : Tom and Violet are madly in love with each other and decide to embark upon the adventure of marriage. Before they can set a date for the wedding though life interferes, and an extended period of postponement forces them to re-evaluate what they mean to each other.

Full Review (contains spoilers) : ‘The Five-Year Engagement’ opens with Jason Segel’s Tom fumbling his proposal of marriage to Emily Blunt’s Violet. She drags his plan out of him and they follow it through anyway, culminating in a rooftop restaurant scene with a New Year’s eve fireworks display over the Golden Gates Bridge as a backdrop. It’s a lovely scene, and it sets the tone for the entire film which in its entirety is well shot, edited, acted and written, with the gags shared between the leads and support in fairly equal measure.

We get some more of their back story – how they met exactly one year ago at a New Year’s eve party whilst Van Morrison’s ‘Sweet Thing’ played around them (which is from his very excellent second solo album ‘Astral Weeks’ – you can listen to the song here…)

 

Everything starts with them on a high after the marriage proposal is accepted. Tom works directly under the head chef in a swanky restaurant, whilst Violet is hopeful of getting into Berkeley to begin postdoc work in her field of psychology. Then of course things become more difficult. Violet is offered a position at the University of Michigan, the wedding is continually postponed, and their relationship is tested as Tom spirals downward, forced to endure work he feels is beneath him, whilst his friend Alex (played by Chris Pratt) back home takes the job of head chef at a new clam shell restaurant that otherwise would have been his. This allows the real centre of the film to play out, a drawn out examination of the realities of choosing a lifelong partner.

Judd Apatow has said of the moment Tom decides to go to Michigan for the sake of Violet’s career that it’s like he does it to score points for later, as if by doing so he gains ‘relationship chips’ that can be traded in at a later date, and that he himself, and probably lots of other people, has done the same thing, but that it’s a fantasy and there are no ‘chips’ – once it’s done you’ve agreed to it and that’s that. The assumption being if it then eats away at you then it’s your own fault. It’s a very interesting point, and one that will probably be familiar to anyone in a relationship, one half has accepted the decision and then largely forgotten about it, whilst the other is still expecting some sort of continual reward having made a sacrifice for the other’s benefit, perhaps sewing the seeds of resentment… It is true that because of this the audience do sympathise with Tom as we see him lose himself to a large degree over the years, becoming almost feral in a situation and place that he hates and, as he puts it, working at something he isn’t proud of. This is especially true when we are introduced to the suave university lecturer of Winton Childs played by Rhys Ifans. His introduction as the ultra cool psychology professor is very good, replete with pyrotechnics, but we know instantly he is going to be the contesting love interest for Violet. We the audience want him to fail because we feel what’s happening to Tom is pretty unfair and Childs seems somewhat insincere from the beginning (even his name suggests he might be praying on a younger generation). Rhys Ifans has said himself he was attracted to the character because he loves to see the ‘cool’ guy fall from grace, and that’s exactly what we are hoping for here. One can easily imagine a lonely life of academia leading to its abuse or payoff, depending on which way you see it, with attractive and impressionable young graduates/undergrads. The character then feels predictable but realistic, at one end of the scale of debonair cinematic professors perhaps, with Indiana Jones winning hearts and treasure at the other. The script is careful though not to alienate Violet in the process, which it manages to successfully avoid.

One of the worthiest moments comes at the dinner scene with Tom and his parents, who are still married to one another and seem pretty happy together. Tom has split from Violet and is seeing a young girl in her early twenties (the actress who plays her, Dakota Johnson, is the granddaughter of Tippi Hedren {‘The Birds’ 63, ‘Marnie’ 64} no less) and they rather directly tell him to get his act together and get back with Violet as he clearly loves her. When he says they aren’t one hundred percent right for each other, they reply that they themselves aren’t even sixty percent right for one another, but they are still the loves of each other’s lives. And this is essentially the main message behind the film – that if you find someone you really like, accepting they are never going to be perfect is paramount and once you’ve accepted that your responsibility to one another is to simply get on with enjoying yourselves. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were one of Hollywood’s couples that stood the test of time, happily married for fifty years right until his passing in 2008, and one of the reasons he gave for it was that they had some things they only ever did independently of one another. He loved racing cars, she couldn’t stand the sport, for example, but that was fine, the only thing that mattered was that they loved each other (I suppose having a legitimate break from each other with your separate hobbies also has a lot going for it. When asked about his devotion to his wife he famously once remarked “Why go out for a hamburger when you have steak at home?”). In the film, this concept is mirrored in sharp contrast with the deliberately accentuated coupling of Violet’s sister Suzie (played by Alison Brie) and Tom’s friend Alex, neither of whom seem right for each other but after an accidental pregnancy everything changes. They end up happy as can be, despite their lives having gone in the polar opposite direction from where they had each planned. We don’t see any of the interim period between the revealing of the pregnancy and their wedding, so the realities of their particular scenario are ignored in order to provide a counter point to the main couple. This is hammered home during the wonderful scene where, doing Elmo and Cookie Monster impressions respectively for the sake of the listening children, Suzie and Violet have their own version of the dinner table conversation, with the former suggesting it’s best to just pick a cookie and take a bite. It was actually Brie’s ability to impersonate Elmo that apparently may have landed her the part in the first place, despite the fact she is also the only cast member who had to learn an accent for her role. Full credit is due to her, not only for a very good Elmo impersonation but also for a convincing English accent to boot.

The film works so well because all of the constituent parts are good in their own right, and come together almost seamlessly. All of the support is good and Blunt and Segel are a joy to watch together. Segel in particular delivers the goods here and co-wrote the script along with director Nicholas Stoller (‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ 08, ‘Get him to the Greek’ 10). This is the third outing for the main stars together, after ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ (10) and ‘The Muppets’ (11), with Stoller taking writing credits on both of these films too, and their familiarity with one another doubtless helped things along. For Emily Blunt it’s one of three very good releases in a short space of time (the others being ‘Salmon fishing in the Yemen’ 11 and ‘Your Sister’s Sister’ 11), indeed it’s difficult to think of many other performers with a similarly good back to back trio. It’s great to see after the misfires and waste of her talent in the aforementioned ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and ‘Wild Target’ (10). Red Dragon did notice the one gratuitous shot of her in this film, as she mounts Tom after he has agreed to go to Michigan and the camera pans around the back of her body as she does so, almost as if the director had decided ‘Right, I’m going to show off Emily Blunt’s figure at least once in the film no matter what!’. The two of them sell the story of their characters perfectly, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see them collaborate together again in the future.

As with other Apatow productions the comedy is set against the backdrop of the emotional journey of the characters, and on set a lot of leeway was given for improv. It’s good to see a filmmaker who’s not afraid of the costs running over in favour of the actors and crew enjoying themselves with improvisation. After all, as John Rhys-Davies says on the special features of ‘The Return of the King’ (03), a high percentage of improvisation is probably going to be bollocks, and thereby result in extended shooting times and the use of more film. It may be that it’s one of the fundamental reasons his films do so well, and there is doubtless a lot to be said for a shoot that is constantly fresh and exciting, where the fun the actors have transfers to the screen and the audience. Much like when you see a comedy play on stage where the actors have delivered the lines a hundred times before – as the saying goes, it’s not just what you say but how you say it, so when suddenly one of them decides to mix it up a little and throw a bit of a curve ball delivery to their co-thesps, the obvious pleasure they get from doing so, and of course the enlivened retorts, makes it so much more engaging and pleasurable to watch.

The worst thing about the film would actually have to be the poster chosen for the main advertising campaign as it doesn’t bear witness to any scene in the film. In fact, it’s almost certainly been chosen to play off of the success of ‘Bridesmaids’ (11), something made all the more obvious by the ‘from the producer of Bridesmaids’ that’s splattered over the top of it. Perhaps understandable given its success, though with Bridesmaids the focus was on the comedy first and story second and here the story takes more of a precedence. The film could also have done without the scene which has Violet’s mother scolding and shouting at her whilst holding her sister’s new born baby – not a very nice introduction to the world that, it could easily have been filmed without the child, or they start bickering after they leave the room etc. The situation by the end of the film has also been reversed with Violet seemingly giving up her career in the immediate future in order to be with Tom, but the difference is made by the fact it’s her choice rather than a suggestion from Tom (even though he was also going to propose to her) and the progression of the film suggests both parties will now be happy and move on together, though it would be interesting to see if Violet was so happy with this a few years down the line…

Throughout the narrative periodic funerals of grandparents are edited in, which works well as a sort of pressure gauge on the main relationship but also to subtly and darkly make a deeper point from the stance of the usually neglected or trivialised romcom elderlies. Another constant theme, that of the doughnuts, is interesting – the premise of Violet’s experiment being to say to people in a waiting room there is a box of one day old doughnuts, which she apologises for, but that they will be replaced with new ones shortly; and to see who just eats the old ones, findings from which suggest a direct correlation between people eating the old ones and being ‘screw ups’ in their everyday lives. It’s used as a direct metaphor for relationships throughout, enjoying what’s in front of you instead of waiting for what might never arrive (as Tom points out, quite correctly). But are one day old doughnuts really that bad? What if someone thought ‘you know what, I’ll eat some of these ones now because they’re still pretty much fine, and then there’ll be more to go around for everyone else later’, in a sort of form of self sacrifice. Although this is based on real psychological tests used, both Tom and Violet end up eating stale doughnuts, uniting them forever via sugary bakery products. Red Dragon recently received a bundle of bakery goods that were otherwise going in the bin and neither he nor his friends thought twice before devouring them, admittedly there was no ‘better quality ones will arrive soon’ option in this scenario. Many eateries dispose of perfectly good produce each day because they have to by law, but most of them also forbid their staff from taking them home for fear of someone getting ill and it leading back to them. Red Dragon would like to suggest caveat emptor would be a more sensible approach in these situations, and would lead to less food being wasted, and more doughnuts for all.

Anyone really taken with the film might want to have a look at their blog – tomandviolet.com

iLL Manors  (2012)    52/100

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Rating 52/100                                                                         121 Min        18

iN Brief : A pretty decent addition to the canon of modern British gangster films, but one massively let down by a false premise and a sickeningly ludicrous plot decision towards the end.

Contents:
mINI Review
pLOT
fULL Review (contains spoilers)

mINI Review : iLL Manors appears in cinemas as the days count down to the London Olympic games. Set in Forest Gate, the Olympic park looms in the distance as we follow the story of multiple characters in the area through their dark world of narcotics and gangland culture. In true modern gangster film style, all of their stories begin to interlink and though some of the story is engaging, there is the distinct feeling of seeing exactly what we expected to before going in. It fails spectacularly to raise any sort of agenda. With even people in good jobs being forced out of areas like Forest Gate, as their rent is increased astronomically for the games, and no mention of this or any other socio-economic factor relating to the underprivileged of today, it’s an opportunity missed. If you have enjoyed British gangster films in the past, there is no reason you won’t like this. Nevertheless, Ben Drew has to have a very deep rethink of his strategy if he wants to adhere to his mission statement, and use the art form of film to redefine the class system in Britain. If anything, such fare can only entrench it further.

pLOT : People holding various positions in the London criminal fraternity go about their daily business. Meanwhile, some of the local youngsters are trying to break into the gangs, whilst others are trying to leave them.

fULL Review (contains spoilers) : iLL Manors is Ben Drew’s directorial debut. Who is Ben Drew, I hear you ask? He also goes by the professional moniker of Plan B. Who is Plan B? I hear most of you still cry. He is a rapper who has been on the circuit for a few years now and who has enjoyed limited chart success, having occasionally strayed into the UK top ten. The I.M.D.B. also reliably states he played one of the main hooligans in ‘Harry Brown’ (09) pitted against Michael Caine’s housing estate pensioner, and also had bit parts in both Noel Clarks ‘Adulthood’ (08) and ‘4..3..2..1’ (10) (if memory serves he was a jealous ex-lover in the latter who made comment regarding his successor having a larger male appendage than himself, perhaps indicating he’s OK with not taking himself too seriously).

Most movie goers will probably recognise him from the irritating Hewlett-Packard ads that have been playing before the trailers in cinemas. In these ads we are to believe Plan B is already highly successful, and it feels a little forced. Similarly the trailer for his first film at the helm describes him as a ‘visionary’, and herein lies the most immediate problem with iLL Manors. A gangster film, set in London, written and directed by a London rapper. Hmm. Is this really going to appeal to a wide audience? The British cinema viewing public will be pretty familiar with the regular appearance of British gangster films, invariably set in London, previously normally featuring Danny Dyer until he suggested it’s a good idea to scar the face of your ex-girlfriend so that no one else will want her (though his publisher Bauer Media did admit ‘an extremely regrettable production error’ had taken place and Dyer was adamant he had been misquoted, the damage was nevertheless done), and now quite often with Adam Deacon in the credits somewhere instead. These films will feature hip hop/rap music, a high percentage of black cast members, an abundance of swearing, drugs, and a reasonably high mortality rate. This is the modern template for the British gangster film, perhaps worryingly almost a cult genre in its own right.

There are exceptions of course, films that belong to the group but that add a little more originality to it, such as the aforementioned ‘Harry Brown’, the ending of ‘The Veteran’ (11) with Toby Kebbell, Dexter Fletcher’s recent ‘Wild Bill’ (11), but your average punter could well be forgiven for thinking this particular outing into the field will simply yield more of the same, with the only exception being it will also act as a vehicle for Plan B’s music. However, armed with the knowledge that Plan B released the single iLL Manors prior to the film, with the subject matter of the English riots of 2011 and, as he puts it, “society’s failure to nurture its disadvantaged youth/yoof,” we already have this set out to be a little different from the normal gangster fare. Especially since Drew has suggested the film and the single are the beginnings of a movement, led by himself, to address the class system in Britain. How then does the film actually bear up?

Not terribly well. Certainly not for the first third or so, where we are flung into the world of drug dealing gangsters, pretty much all of whom seem to be black, in what appears to be Drew’s own home turf of Forest Gate in London. We are introduced to a variety of characters, all different facets of the same prism, and some of the narrative is told via rap by Plan B, effectively rendering much of this dialogue indecipherable. Eventually there is a mention of ‘David Cameron’s Britain’. This is the first and last attempted link to any kind of social agenda, other than showing a fictional snapshot of what it might be like to be a drug dealing scumbag. And let’s be honest, the vast majority of the characters here are scumbags, with little to no room for sympathy or empathy from the audience. This, together with the soundtrack and story told via the director’s own rap, has the effect of suggesting this is more about the career of Plan B than anything else, of giving the appearance he is trying to appeal and ‘look cool’ to his target audience rather than comment on a larger social agenda, and that he is quite willing to use the banner of a social crusader for a misunderstood demographic to further entrench the music-culture-stereotypes-money in his pocket symbiotic relationship, feeding the loop whilst attempting to be a self professed hero to a generation of people that probably take a good deal of their vocabulary and mannerisms from music and film.

It’s a massive wasted opportunity. J.K.Rowling has made comment that she is always amazed at someone who cannot see the relationship between crime and poverty. With a view to the upcoming climax of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, in ‘Batman Begins’ (05) this theme is completely central to the story, and Bruce Wayne himself admits to losing many preconceptions about criminals when he is forced to steal food to survive after abandoning his name and fortune for a time. The current ruling political coalition of the United Kingdom have introduced changes to the welfare state, as part of their ‘austerity’ measures, that have seen the poorest and most vulnerable people in society left with nothing. Those without any other support network are increasingly being left with little choice other than to turn to crime, or beg, in order to survive. Mostly this will lead to a criminal record, making it increasingly unlikely to find normal employment and encouraging an endlessly downward spiral. On the back of these changes, England last year experienced the worst rioting of the modern era. The government backlash was to hit the perpetrators hard, someone who stole a pack of cigarettes received a lengthy custodial sentence for example, circa nine months, and a big deal was made in the media that the majority of the people involved had previous convictions. No doubt there were a great many opportunists and ‘hoodlums’, but equally there were probably those who were simply sick of being treated like animals and of having no democratic voice or, as far as they are concerned, choice. The driving force for these changes is the Conservative party who have effectively silenced their politically weak partners the Liberal Democrats for the time being, and who are doing a very impressive job of conforming to their centuries old stigma of being a party for the rich. There may be a sinister undertow to all of this, in that in the minds of the wealthy if you are poor, then you are a criminal, or at the least you soon will be. Indeed, the case has been made that if you are in jail you in many ways actually have more rights than if you are unemployed.

Indeed, job seekers currently have the pleasure of watching their section of the welfare state being privatised. Meaning that they have to deal with private companies who are being paid tax payers money to effectively cheapen the lives of the poor, forcing them to do demeaning and often pointless tasks in order to receive state benefits and commonly forcing them to work for the equivalent of two pounds something an hour. The thinking behind this is that’s it’s good for the poor to be told what to do as they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves otherwise. In reality an unworkable and corrupt environment is created that sees agencies profit, while thousands of people fall through the cracks and become destitute, and for the ones that don’t they have to endure the humility of being denigrated to nothing more than slave labour as there are aren’t enough jobs to go around, while the government continues to make it easier and easier for employers to lay off staff. Indeed, one of the private companies used in these schemes, A4e, are themselves being investigated under charges of fraud by the police, their head having resigned over the charges but not before netting herself a bonus of millions. This individual, prior to disgrace, was the government’s top advisor on unemployment. By the same token people put under the cosh by the state have to watch as bankers and the heads of other big businesses award themselves personal bonuses of millions, even though it was their own greed that caused the world recession in the first place. On a similar vein, there has been a particularly vehement attack on disability benefit that seems to have been started with the premise that most people on it are fraudsters. The end result is a huge backlog of complaints and appeals that the medical profession are expecting to be largely upheld, after many of society’s most vulnerable have been harassed and labelled as criminals. iLL Manors then could have been a double reference to the harsh realities of poverty stricken disadvantaged housing estates, together with the political ignorance and indifference of the actual manors of the richest in society.

Despite this heavy, target rich backdrop, iLL Manors has the one line with the mention of David Cameron, and that’s the full extend of its political content. The rest is just another gangster film. The bulk of the narrative follows the parallel between two characters. One, a youngster looking to score some weed and perhaps break into the social network of the area’s resident gang, but who is quickly used and led down a spiral of increasing violence, and another young man (Rhiz Ahmed) who is already a part of the local criminal fraternity, but who appears to be of a generally kind nature and who eventually tries, and succeeds, to get away from the lifestyle he was born into. The message of the film from this point of view is at least very clear.

Also to the film’s credit, is the introduction of characters suffering from forced prostitution. Sex grooming and slavery has been a huge problem in Europe’s biggest cities for a long time, and it is good to see a film reflecting this as British law also begins to buck a trend that previously seen seventy five percent of police forces around the country effectively turn a blind eye to the problem, their cited difficulty often being convincing the abused women, commonly girls, to testify. Similarly, showing two young kids from the neighbourhood lured into a dealer’s flat under promise of a ‘modelling’ prospect, and then being introduced to crack, highlights an all too common criminal problem. After about forty minutes or so these elements creep in and begin to make the film more interesting, though this does also coincide with less story telling rap. As a stand alone gangster film the whole then shapes up nicely, nicely that is until a certain incident. Red Dragon would like to categorically state that it is never acceptable to drop a baby out of a second story window. Especially when you then have someone catch it in a towel on the ground below and it’s completely fine. It’s pretty horrific to watch. Not to mention completely unbelievable, filmed as it is. Thrown from a room filled with smoke, but not yet with fire, could the perpetrator not have perhaps sat on the window ledge and waited for help instead? Surely there would have been enough air? The perps subsequent fall from the ledge and death would seem to paint him as a hero in the end, as if underneath he’s actually alright, but this is entirely at odds with every single other aspect of his character leading right up to that point.

The direction overall is fine, with some experimental elements creeping in, such as splitting the frame into multiple views. ‘Hulk’ (03) was slated for this, but the practise goes back much further, Peckinpah’s ‘The Ballad of Cable Hogue’ (70), as one example. Similarly the ensemble cast do a convincing job of playing heavies and dealers, though more than a few pieces of dialogue could have done with being re-recorded. There is a consistent message of violence begetting violence, which is to the film’s credit, and similarly characters straying into the underworld of gangs and drugs do end up being hurt. With possibly the most immediate example in film history when one of the young innocent girls decides to try crack, then receives a fatal bullet to the chest seconds later.

Not bad, but the potential to make a bold statement and stand out from the crowd has been wasted completely.

The Dictator  (2012)    37/100

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Rating 37/100                                                                           83 Min        15

In Brief : Sacha Baron Cohen falls foul of success with ‘The Dictator’. Heavy on production costs, but light on satire and comedy alike.

Contents :
Mini review
Plot
Full review {contains spoilers}
Quotes

Mini Review : Even die hard fans of Sacha Baron Cohen will probably admit he got the script wrong on this one. It may be that a couple of changes to the writing group he worked with on ‘Borat’ (06) and ‘Bruno’ (09), have made all the difference. However, with the same director, Larry Charles, on board as for those two successful films, it seems the most important change was that of the narrative. Here we see the mix of the archetypal modern romantic comedy, one designed to leave a smile on your face at the end and so distract you from the fact you didn’t really laugh much during the film, and a familiar type of character from Cohen, a despotic African dictator replete with toilet gags galore. All of the candid camera reality show intrigue of his previous work is gone, and what’s left simply isn’t witty, funny, or interesting enough to be particularly worthwhile watching. Unless of course a missile being called ‘The Beard of Doom’ has you rolling around in stitches, in which case you will LOVE this film. A successful PR campaign involving Cohen appearing in character along with his female virgin model bodyguards on numerous talk shows, admittedly using the same jokes most of the time, has ensured an overly long run for ‘The Dictator’ in movie theatres. On the strength of the final material, it is likely he will find that a bit more difficult to repeat in the future.

Plot : Admiral general Aladeen, dictator of the African nation of Wadiya, rules his country with an iron fist. He has all that money can buy, including Megan Fox, but secretly he is lonely, and longs for some higher meaning in his life, along with the destruction of Israel. The double crossing of his right hand man and procurer of women, Tamir, proves serendipitous, as he is put on the path of true love on the streets of New York City. But will he embrace this new opportunity, or will he reclaim his rightful throne in time to prevent Wadiya adopting a new democratic constitution?

Full Review (Contains spoilers) : Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest cinematic effort falls flat right from the word go. Well, almost from the word go. The very first thing the audience sees is a dedication to the late Kim Jong-il, suggesting that maybe what follows will be a biting political satire interfused with Cohen’s very particular style of comedy and perhaps moments where we once again find ourselves cringing at the plight of his onscreen victims, both wanting to turn away but also unwilling to miss what their reaction is going to be. This time, however, the famed for controversy Cohen has gone for a much more mainstream style of film, one in which he simply plays a character in a story full of actors rather than a mixture of thespians and chosen public targets. The result is a pretty formulaic romcom, with Anna Faris providing the rom, and racist toilet humour filling in for the latter.

Red Dragon likes the premise. The idea of sending-up the archetypal dictator, which still describes many autocrats around the globe, has a lot going for it. Imagine if you will, young members of the North Korean military watching their late leader on parade, humming ‘I’m So Ronery’ behind his back, under their breath, having gotten hold of an illegal copy of ‘Team America’ (04). It’s a wonderful image, but fantasy or not, that film produced a lasting legacy of jokes and caricatures, accidentally as much of Matt Damon as of Kim Jong-il. The titular character in this case proves to be someone we’d probably quite like to forget, and quite quickly too. His only real attempt at satire comes from a speech at the end, where he states if only America was a dictatorship then the majority of wealth could be distributed to one percent of the population, the rich could get tax cuts and be bailed out when they gamble and lose etc etc. It’s not bad, albeit a little obvious.

Cohen plays Aladeen, from the fictional north-east Africa country of Wadiya (wadi is the traditional Arabic word for valley). Wadiya encompasses parts of the real countries of Eritrea and Ethiopia, neither of which are actual dictatorships, though both are very far from what anyone in the West would consider democracies. The concept for the project was apparently thought of before the Arab spring took place. Perhaps not so fortuitous with much of the source material being deposed from power, but Wadiya is nevertheless well placed to ape parties from both North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The film’s biggest problem is that once you remove the scathing realist element from Cohen’s work, that which was so prevalent in ‘Borat’ and ‘Bruno’, what’s left behind is pretty crass. We see, for example, Aladeen relieving himself whilst suspended over a New York street and the ensuing excrement knocking a lady beneath him unconscious. The lady in question had just been robbed of her handbag and was shouting for help, as if Cohen is now literally going to poo on the stereotypes of cinema, and shortly afterward he just can’t resist showing his privates to the world once more, though in a much less confrontational way than in ‘Bruno’.

Even worse than the infantile nature of a lot of the humour is the fact that some of it is downright sick. Racist comments appear every now and then, some of which can be carried by the nature of Cohen’s character, and some of which don’t come off so well, but by far the worst offence is when we watch the dictator playing a video game based on the Munich Olympics, in which we see him first person shooter style bursting into the contenders homes and gunning down the Jewish Olympians. The fact that Sacha Baron Cohen is Jewish probably means that in his own mind anything anti-Semitic in his work is fine, with his character out to destroy Israel anyway, but I think it’s fair to say that for the average viewer this is probably going a little too far.

It’s not that the whole is completely devoid of laughs, it’s just that they’re few and far between. When they do come they are pretty predictable, and most of them were in the trailer anyway. The decision to have a romantic undertow, which eventually redeems the dictator to a large extent and makes him see the error of his ways, is instigated in such a plain and blasé manner that it’s impossible not to see it in many ways as a U-turn on Cohen’s previous hell raiser antics. Has he now received one too many lawsuits? Though, with Anna Faris in the love interest role it is kind of a package deal, with a similarly lacklustre romcom adventure in her back catalogue for every other film of value. The idea of a ruthless dictator being seduced and softened is not without merit, it’s a valid point of theological debate whether or not the despots of the world have ever known love in their lives to be capable of the things they do, or if they ever suffer from nightmarish regret when they have a family and children of their own. Here though, with the one exception of a scene where Aladeen helps birth a child, it’s simply a very dull plot device.

There are a number of big name stars who make an appearance throughout the piece – the most frequent of them being sir Ben Kingsley, who plays his duplicitous role of Aladeen’s top general very well, but for whom this will rank just above ‘The Love Guru’ (08) on his CV. John C Reilly delivers a couple of choice lines and proves the best of the supports before making an impromptu exit from the film. That is, of course, unless you include the support given by Megan Fox’s bra, as she slips out of Aladeen’s bed looking sleek and resplendent, having been paid to spend the night with him and stating she’s off to see the Italian Prime Minister but complaining her ‘goody bag’ doesn’t contain as much as Katy Perry’s did. Is someone on the production good friends with Russell Brand? Bizarrely Edward Norton also appears briefly, having similarly prostituted himself to a Chinese man in a toilet – a lineless cameo even shorter than that of his in ‘The Invention of Lying’ (09). Is he simply embracing those shunned by the Hollywood establishment after the troubles he had on ‘The Incredible Hulk’ (08)?

This is Sacha Baron Cohen’s most expensive outing yet and you might be slightly entertained by it, but unfortunately it’s much more likely you’ll simply be disappointed. Give this one a miss, go and see the Avengers again instead.

The Red Dragon

Quotes

“Listen, while you’re here, I highly recommend a visit to the Empire State building. Before you, or one of your sand monkey cousins, takes it down.”   John C Reilly/Clayton

“Why are you guys so anti-dictators? Imagine if America was a dictatorship. You could let one percent of the people, have all the nation’s wealth. You could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes, and bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You could ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education. Your media would appear free but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wire tap phones, you could torture foreign prisoners, you could have rigged elections, you could lie about why you go to war. You could fill your prisons with one particular racial group, and no one would complain! You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests!”   Admiral General Aladeen/Sacha Baron Cohen