The Danish Girl  (2015)    49/100

Rating :   49/100                                                                     119 Min        15

What a horrific mess. A film fundamentally flawed by its not knowing, to put it mildly, what it wants to be or what it is trying to say. Based on David Ebershoff’s 2000 novel of the same name and adapted for the screen by Lucinda Coxon (‘Wild Target’ 2010), this loosely tells the true story of Danish painter Einar Wegener, who goes through a, long buried, crises of identity – suddenly now convinced he is a woman trapped in a man’s body. One would naturally assume this is really a mainstream attempt to portray a strong and explorative transgender theme on the big-screen, and that we would identify with Wegener’s plight and confusion on a human level, but we really, really don’t – in fact he just comes across as clinically insane, which he is diagnosed as at one point by ‘evil’ practitioners of medicine but actually they seem to be quite correct; he has been, for example, banging away quite happily at his young nubile wife Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander) for six or seven years and now suddenly he refuses to even acknowledge this happened and recoils from her, as if every aspect of his previous existence that he can’t be bothered with is now taboo.

If he isn’t psychotic then he’s the most vain, self-absorbed obnoxious little shit one could have the misfortune to marry, as his ‘crisis’ justifies him doing whatever he wants – including cheating on his wife with various men. Eddie Redmayne plays Einar and by God is he terrible here – you would be hard pressed to find a worse example of overacting anywhere, as he cries and cries and whimpers and pretends to be injured (he gets beat up for no apparent reason, oh, and he decides he’s having his period as well at one point) something which he has effectively made a career out of doing. If we look at the header picture above I think even I would make a more convincing human female – although the film at least partially acknowledges this failure, or seems to at any rate, until near the end where people seem to genuinely believe he passes for a woman. The film in general smacks of this kind of insincerity throughout – Oscar bait with a modern-day politically charged topic, and I imagine any endorsement from the transgender community is purely down to lack of many other options.

Tom Hooper directs and to be fair he almost completely avoids having the camera too close to his performers’ faces after ‘Les Miserables‘, and a lot of his shots of countryside and the framing of scenic cityscapes are great; it’s really the story and acting that destroy the film, as melodrama takes an enormous bite out of history in their misguided creepy crawl in the direction of awards season glory. It’s a shame, there was a lot of potential to explore the subject – and indeed in the film’s frank portrayal of nudity there begins to form the semblance of something greater, before it all disintegrates in the second act. Also with Amber Heard, who’s dancing scenes were reportedly cut from the film. Fuck’s sake.

Ted 2  (2015)    49/100

Rating :   49/100                                                                     115 Min        15

Underwhelmed by the first Ted? Then you’ll despise this, writer/director/actor Seth MacFarlane’s sequel to his 2012 hit comedy featuring the talking and foul mouthed Boston teddy bear. Ted (MacFarlane) ties the knot with Tami-Lynn but finds marital bliss takes a little work – though he is faring miles better than his buddy John (Mark Wahlberg) who is now divorced from his beau last time round (Mila Kunis probably realising the script for this one was awful) and is now spending most of his time watching porn and smoking weed. Indeed, an inordinately large amount of the focus of the movie is on weed, so much so that it goes past the sake of comedy or character traits or story and enters the egotistical realm of a filmmaker glorifying the thing in an effort to appear hip but limiting the film’s appeal in the process. Some of the jokes are funny but the majority are too gratingly infantile and many were spoiled by the trailer, although the movie’s cardinal sin is that an enormous chunk of it is taken up with Ted fighting a legal case to try and set precedent for his human rights in law despite being non-human. It’s really, really tedious (ahem), and not in the least bit funny, nor does it function effectively as allegory so the majority of the film is simply time wasted even if you love MacFarlane’s comedy. With Amanda Seyfried as John’s obligatory new love interest.

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet  (2013)    49/100

Rating :   49/100                                                                     105 Min        PG

Dull as ditch water and with moments that will have you thinking ‘did they actually just do that?’ – in concern rather than amazement. Director and auteur Jean-Pierre Jeunet created one of the most loved films of the century so far with ‘Amelie’ in 2001 but the rest of his work, some of it nevertheless very well regarded, has had a tendency to focus on quirkiness rather than story, with elaborate and fanciful props, costumes and characters. No surprise then that Helena Bonham Carter, who has effectively fashioned a career out of doing exactly the same thing, has found her way into one of his films in this, a rare English language departure from his usual French productions (the only other is 1997’s ‘Alien Resurrection’).

The story revolves around the adventures of a young boy of ten, the titular T.S. Spivet (played by Kyle Catlett), who deals with his feelings of guilt over the accidental death of his brother and the lack of acceptance from his family regarding his scientific endeavours by running away from his home in Montana and heading for Washington D.C., having created an operational perpetual motion device and received invitation to give a speech at the Smithsonian, although they are unaware of his age. It’s based on American author Reif Larsen’s debut novel ‘The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet’, and despite the serious nature of the plot it’s delivered to us in a fairly light hearted and whimsical way, trying to evoke the youthful spirit of invention and adventure that Spivet is imbued with. At it’s core though, there is a fluctuating chasm of moral ambiguity as we don’t really see or feel the consequences for his family after he leaves – and they are shown to be relatively loving, decent parents. Similarly, on his journey he hitch-hikes with a trucker who remarks that a couple of Spivet’s ribs are probably broken, but rather than do anything about it he just drives on and takes his photo, which he explains he does with everyone – queue shot of a series of creepy photos with various female passengers and even one with him showing off holding a rifle at the head of what we assume is a Taliban prisoner from his tour of duty in the Middle East.

The way it has been filmed continues this uneasy feeling – we see a goat with barbed wire attached to a fence and looped around its neck and Spivet and his father attempting to free it. Presumably, it isn’t barbed wire that was used, and yet whatever the material actually was how can you film it in that way whilst guaranteeing the animal isn’t going to be hurt? Later on we see a dog apparently being visibly made to chew on an iron bucket, and the same dog being forced fed, by Spivet, something it doesn’t want to eat (the camera cuts off before anything is actually ingested), but the worst is reserved for the humans on set as we watch Spivet hiding under a train when it begins to move, and then he crawls out between the wheels whilst it’s actually in motion. Now, surely this must have been done with camera trickery (if it wasn’t then Jeunet deserves to be in jail frankly) but it certainly looks pretty real, and what wasn’t faked is a stunt later on that sees the youngster take a leap and make a fairly painful looking grab for his intended target (thus the broken ribs). Catlett had a stunt double, but taking all these things together if Jeunet can’t make an adventure film without having it appear he’s putting animals and children in actual harm’s way then he really shouldn’t be operating behind the camera in any capacity, let alone directing big budget films.

Despite all of this, the film’s largest drawback is simply that it drags on with nothing particularly interesting really happening. Catlett is fine in the role, but struggles when the larger emotional moments are called for, and the visuals of some of the countryside are wonderful, but they can’t atone for a lacking and morally uncertain central story.