Up

I have seen quite a few movies lately, most of which I have not yet had time to write about. Up is by far the pick of the bunch. It is a wonderful and highly enjoyable animation from the ever reliable Pixar. It features some great voice actors, including Ed Asner, John Ratzenberger (Cliff from Cheers) and Christopher Plummer. The art work is gorgeous and it looks a treat in 3D, a technology which is now pretty much perfected and will become the standard for animation. It is very funny. There is plenty of humour that will appeal to kids and adults alike. But what makes Up really special and makes it stand out from the crowd is the story. The story is complex, magical, entertaining, heart-warming and yet believable and not at all sentimental. Its an extreme rarity to see a new and original story this good. Up is destined to become a Walt Disney classic. Pure brilliance.

The Corporation

Any film that features as talking heads the unbearable lefty likes of Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and, worst of all by far, the Jabba-the-hut role model for the self righteous and self promoting, the sloth-like and always disgusting Michael Moore, is not likely to gain a sympathetic viewing from me. Just as I was getting over my initial revulsion for these three and starting to think that the movie made a fairly good case for the need for corporate ethics, it descended into complete, gibbering nonsense. By the end it was holding corporate America responsible for everything from global warming to Nazi death camps. It would be entertaining for taking itself so seriously and for some of the more inane comments if it was not so overly long and repetitive. In the end it is merely dross.

District 9

Compared with the rest of the CGI inflated dross that has been dished up this year (see Transformers 2 and GI Joe as prime examples) this rough-hewn and gritty parable is a masterpiece.  It’s a parable (an allegorical story designed to illustrate or teach some truth, religious principle, or moral lesson) because of the obvious connections between its South African setting and the story of displaced aliens being separated from the human population in the cordoned-off District 9.  The title itself is an reference to District 6, the area of Cape Town where for a while all races lived in harmony only to be forcibly displaced under Apartheid rule.  The grittiness of the South African location also lends authenticity to the story, which is at least partly filmed in a mockumentary style.  There is much to like here.  It is original and unexpected.  The cast of relative unknowns are terrific, particularly Sharlto Copley as the hapless Wikus van der Merwe, the officious bureaucrat out of his depth.  That you end up rooting for him is testament to the effectiveness of the story telling.  This is Copley’s first feature credit.  He does not even have a profile photo on IMDB.  But he is great, playing a character with some real depth.  Incredibly, I understand that he ad-libbed all his lines.   At times he is quite funny and its particularly funny (for me) to hear him swear in Afrikaans.  Generally, it’s very unusual to see a South African film with this kind of blockbuster status.  Although its credited as a USA/NZ production (because of Producer Peter Jackson), its South African roots are undeniable, with Director Neill Blomkamp and the unmistakable (at least to me) Johannesburg location.  This is also Blomkamp’s first feature.  The film is perfectly set up for a sequel and I’m sure the Kaspers (a South African brand of armoured car) will be rolling into District Ten soon.  By the way, my first comment is not meant to deride CGI.  All the aliens in District 9 are created with CGI.  The point is that here it is being used in support of a worthwhile and entertaining movie, not propping up a no-brain spin-off based on a child’s toy.      

Double Indemnity

One of the early Noirs, this one by Billy Wilder, from whom one can always expect a quality product.  It’s hard to fathom the real motivation of the pair of murderers, played by Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray.  They kill her husband, ostensibly to collect a $100,000 “double indemnity”  life insurance payment and because they are “crazy about each other”, but their passion is never very convincing and soon completely fades after the killing.  Neither even seem particularly interested in the money.  Nonetheless, it’s an effective and suspenseful tale.  An interesting twist is the relationship between the Fred MacMurray character and the claims manager at the insurance company played by Edward G. Robinson.  Fascinating too are the manners and technology of the day (the 1930’s, although the movie was only made in 1944).  The voice-over is spoken into what must have been one of the first Dictaphones and the boss of the insurance company seems put out by one of his staff not wearing a jacket to come and see him. 

El Norte

A lovely, sad and simple tale told by director Gregory Nava about a brother and sister who escape the persecution of the indigenous population by the junta in Guatemala in the early eighties. After their father is murdered and mother taken prisoner, they travel across Mexico to "the North" (El Norte) - the USA. They enter the country by taking a harrowing journey through a disused sewage pipe. They eventually reach Los Angeles where they become part of the large number of illegal workers and find that they have escaped one form of suppression just to become trapped in another. Its a sad and ultimately not very hopeful tale, particularly from the current perspective where almost thirty years later not all that much has changed. Immigrants continue to enter the US illegally in the hope of finding a better life and general find life pretty tough even if they manage to avoid being sent back. True, conditions in Guatemala appear to have improved to the extent that it seems to be a well-functioning democracy, but it still suffers from a great deal of crime, fuelled by the drug trade. Nonetheless, El Norte is well-made and its sad theme is lifted by some beautiful cinematography using the broad palette of Mexico and Central America.

Bruno

Bruno is very, very funny, but not as funny as Borat and therefore a little bit of a disappointment. I watched Borat again to try to figure out why. I think the answer is twofold. One, Borat is a funnier character in his own right. You laugh at him even before he begins to draw out funny reactions from his hapless victims. Two, the satire in Borat is more shotgun than laser. He baits religious nuts with as much enthusiasm as red-neck college students. Bruno is focussed primarily on trying to elicit reactions to his gayness. He is looking for homophobia and the bad news (from the standpoint of wanting to make a funny film) is that, on the whole he doesn't find very much of it. The funniest Bruno victims are the parents who will agree to anything to get their babies a film role and the crowd at the climatic bare-knuckle fight. The least successful are the reactions of Ron Paul and the self defence expert. You feel sorry for them in their efforts to politely deal with this weirdo. Even the anti-gay protesters just seem to want to get away from him. Nonetheless, this is another expansion of the boundaries of what can be shown in main-stream cinema and what people will laugh at. Sacha Baron Cohen remains a comic genius and a very brave one. I can't wait for his next incarnation.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Episode 6 of the continuing Harry Potter saga. It's amazing to look back at the DVDs of the previous episodes and see these children grow up to young adulthood before our eyes. I enjoyed this one, its long at 153 minutes, but manages to fit a lot in. The series has grown increasingly darker and more suspenseful with each episode and for this first time this one has some real adult scares. The first romantic inklings that cropped up in Goblet of Fire are of course expanded further as the older Hogwarts students, including Harry, become interested in a bit of snogging (or snoggling as Ebert calls it). If anything, I miss some of the enchantment of the earlier movies that revolved more around the "routine" of school days at Hogwarts (if there can be anything routine about a school for wizards) and less around the battle with Voldemort. I remember reading Enid Blighton's Famous Five novels growing up (which by the way I am rereading to my young sons now) and liking the opening chapters that set the scene, usually of some idyllic English summer holiday, more than the later chapters when the focus would shift to some adventure or other. By the way, Harry Potter owes a real debt to Blighton and other novelists who wrote so prosaically about English school day adventures.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I discovered Douglas Adams at around the end of high school. Probably the perfect time to read his highly imaginative and wildly funny Hitchhiker “trilogy”, which actually consists of five novels starting with the Hitchhiker’s Guide in 1979 and ending with Mostly Harmless is 1992. I loved, absolutely loved, the books. When I saw Douglas speak in Sydney just before the Millennium (he was here to promote his excellent PC game Starship Titanic) he spoke about the forthcoming movie and I remember being a little doubtful about how well the books would translate to film.

Fortunately, thanks to CGI nothing is unfilmable and the movie is by no means a disappointment. It is very well cast. Martin Freeman is perfect as the bemused Arthur Dent, whose house is bulldozed to build a bypass just minutes before his entire planet is demolished to make way for an intergalactic express way. The delightfully cute and quirky Zooey Deschanel is great as Trillion and no one could have done the Guide voiceover as much justice as Stephen Fry. Some of the visuals are quite strikingly beautiful and awe inspiring such as the scenes in the planet factory with Slartibartfast, well played by Bill Nighy. It’s such a shame that Douglas Adams died before this movie was released. I think he would have liked it.