March Film Reviews

This month we review: The Illusionist, Ghost Rider, The Good German, Becoming Jane, Fur, Factory Girl, Fast Food Nation, 300 and Mr. Bean’s Holiday.

The Illusionist
Releases 2 March

Both the recent The Prestige and The Illusionist revolve around stage magicians who may or may not have supernatural powers. Both films are likewise set more than a century ago in that Victorian/Edwardian era in which both fashion and feel were so similar as to make the precise dates all but unidentifiable to those not familiar with the period. Both films also have a good number of impressive names above the titles – with The Illusionist it is Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Jessica Biel.

Norton plays the titular illusionist, a magician in turn-of-the-century Vienna who takes a fancy to Jesica Biel’s high-ranking young beauty and decides to use all his charms to win her for himself. On the surface it hardly sounds like the sort of role that an actor once touted as the next Brando or De Niro would find much of a challenge, yet the very presence of Norton – backed up by the superbly subtle Giamatti as the detective trying to work out precisely what he is up to – adds an extra layer of menace and mystery to the story.

Ghost Rider
Releases 2 March

Nicholas Cage is one of the biggest comic book fans in Hollywood, the owner of a vast and valuable collection of classics. The guy’s a genuine connoisseur of comics, and has long been looking for the right project in which to star.

At one point he was lined up to play Superman, before the project fell through in the late 90s. That may well have been his ultimate dream but, for Cage at least, Ghost Rider comes a close second. The actor even has a tattoo of the flaming-skulled avenger, which amusingly had to be covered with makeup for him to take on the role.
But Cage’s attempts to bring a comic to the cinema have been hit by repeated setbacks and only now is it finally making it to the big screen.

Superhero flicks remain popular despite the fact that there are so many of them these days. The basic concept here – of a motorcycle stuntman who does a deal with the devil that turns him into a flaming skeleton of vengeance at night, zooming around on a chunky bike with burning wheels – certainly has the ability to be visually spectacular. Whether the storyline is up to scratch is likely to be a matter of opinion – some prefer their superhero flicks simplistic, some more psychologically complex.

The only thing that does seem certain is that, despite his love of the character, Cage with jet-black hair dressed all in black leather is a decidedly odd sight.

The Good German
Releases 9 March

The place is Berlin, just after the end of the war, and the feel is no doubt deliberately similar to that of The Third Man’s Vienna – no one knows quite how the division of the city between the British, French, Americans and Russians is going to play out. The place is in chaos and the black market is increasingly rife.

It has long been said that George Clooney has the looks and style of one of the screen stars of the Hollywood golden age, so it’s about time Clooney finally got his hands on a 1940s period piece. The fact that his best buddy and director Stephen Soderbergh has opted to film in grainy black and white only adds to the illusion that old George has somehow been transported back in time.

Clooney is his typical, likeable self throughout as the put-upon officer who comes to realise that something is amiss while the victorious allied powers jostle for post-war political gain. The presence of Cate Blanchett as a femme fatale adds yet another touch of 40s glamour, her unusual good looks here recalling those of Great Garbo. It is only her accent that lets her down – though supposed to be German, it slips occasionally more towards generic eastern European and even Russian.

And herein lies the problem with this 1940s pastiche – these modern movie stars lack something of the formality of the original stars of the period. Clooney is a touch too laid back, Blanchett seems to be trying a little too hard to be mysterious, and Tobey Maguire – as Clooney’s driver – is poorly cast, his whiny adolescent voice detracting from the slightly sinister nature of his character in ways other than intended.

The film is undeniably stylish but far too similar to The Third Man to come off well in comparison. All of which is a great shame.

Becoming Jane
Releases 9 March

Fresh from her starring turn in the hit comedy The Devil Wears Prada, rising starlet Anne Hathaway returns to drama to prove that she is rapidly becoming one of Hollywood’s most versatile young actresses.

One traditional route of past rising pretty female stars – from Gwyneth Paltrow through Kate Winslet, Kate Beckinsale and Keira Knightley – has been to star in an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel to prove their acting skills but filmmakers have run out of Austen books to adapt. So, instead, Hathaway is taking on the role of Austen herself in this partially fictionalised account of her early life, before her writing brought her fame, and her doomed romance with a young man who may have been the love of her life and was to become the inspiration for Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Darcy. In other words, this is a biopic of Jane Austen as if she were a character from a Jane Austen book – life meeting art, and all that.

The real question with any screen version of an Austen novel – which is what this effectively is – is whether the principle leads are charming enough. With Hathaway’s classic looks and easy nature, the filmmakers are on to a winner. Paired with James McAvoy as the charming Tom Lefroy, the man who has been expanded from a brief mention in some of Austen’s letters as someone she flirted with into the prototype Austen love interest, they’ve hit on a top-notch and entirely believable pairing.
Add to that an excellent supporting cast that includes the likes of James Cromwell, Julie Walters and Dame Maggie Smith, some typically beautiful scenery and costume design, and a sensitive, entertaining script, and fans of Austen adaptations should be more than pleased with this new, slightly unusual addition to the genre.

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
Releases 16 March

For anyone who’s been following Kidman’s career over the last decade or so, the fact that she is one of the best actresses currently working should be more than obvious by now. Here, Kidman gets serious again with her portrayal of one of America’s quirkiest 20th Century women, the photographer Diane Arbus. Not a name overly well-known on this side of the Atlantic, Arbus’ striking and often controversial black and white images have gained an influential following amongst the arty set of the United States, her reputation only growing following her suicide in 1971, at the age of just 48.

Arbus’ relatively well-documented life has been given the full Hollywood treatment, with the introduction of an entirely fictional extra-marital affair, supposedly the trigger for the photographer’s artistic exploration of the world of the freakshow. Despite being played by the almost always excellent Robert Downey Jr, the introduction of an entirely fictional, furry-faced lover seems little short of trite.

Rather than the hard-hitting emotion of the standard Oscar-hunting biopic, this is instead an entity unto itself, and a very odd movie at that. If anything, the closest comparison might be Tim Burton’s truly wonderful – yet highly fictionalised and bizarre – 1994 biopic of the low-budget filmmaker Ed Wood. Both inhabit the same world of society’s rejects, and both explore controversial artists largely through entirely made-up versions of their lives. The two leads, as should be expected, do sterling work, yet with such an odd – and entirely fictional – premise at the heart of what purports to be a work of biography, it can be hard to take them overly seriously.

Factory Girl
Releases 16 March

Andy Warhol is undoubtedly one of the defining icons of the 20th Century. As well as his iconic paintings and weirdly subdued art films, it is for his studio-cum-club The Factory, based at East 47th Street in Manhattan, that he will long be remembered. It was at this fifth floor apartment, during a five-year period between 1963 and 1968, that Warhol’s infamous parties would come to define a decade.

Their reputation for unfettered hedonism quickly spread – not least because of the various attendees, ranging from surrealist legend Salvador Dali through literary genius Truman Capote and the rock icons Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger. This was a 1960s equivalent of the golden age of the French court – artists and assorted beautiful people getting to know each other better, and producing some of the defining and groundbreaking musical and artistic collaborations of a decade.

It is unsurprising, then, that Warhol’s circle has continued to be the source of such fascination, with numerous films devoted to him and his followers. Warhol has been played by some fine quirky actors, from Crispin Glover in Oliver Stone’s The Doors through to David Bowie in the much-underrated Basquiat. Now it is the turn of the equally talented Guy Pearce.

But here Warhol himself is not the focus – which is perhaps just as well, as Pearce’s portrayal is sadly nowhere near as good as that of Bowie, who had the benefit of being part of the artist’s circle, and was able to mimic his former mentor to a tee. Instead it is socialite Edie Sedgwick – a sort of 1960s Paris Hilton, as portrayed by our own Sienna Miller, who is currently taking America by storm.

Miller does a very sound job here, which is more than can be said for the rest of the film. It would appear that the old adage that “if you can remember the 60s you weren’t there” has been proved to be false, with an ever-increasing array of former Factory types lining up to denounce inaccuracies and the quality of the film making alike. While at the heart Miller’s sensitive performance shines through, it would appear she has been let down by those around her.

Fast Food Nation
Releases 23 March

Eric Schlosser’s investigation of the American food industry began life as a series of articles in Rolling Stone magazine in 1999 before being published as a book in 2001. It was an instant bestseller, and has become something of a modern classic in its battering of corporate irresponsibility, inspiring numerous imitators, most notably Morgan Sprulock’s Super Size Me. One thing that Schlosser’s book was not, however, was a traditional narrative, with plot, characters and the like.

Maverick indie director Richard Linklater however, has decided that the best way to make a six-year-old factual book based on top-notch investigative journalism into a film is to turn it fictional. Schlosser himself was all for it and even weighed in to help with the screenplay. What Linklater has ended up with is effectively a fast food version of Stephen Soderbergh’s masterly exploration of the drug trade, Traffic although it is a measure of the book version of Fast Food Nation’s success that there is little here that will surprise.

The multiple, interconnected storylines here, all revolving around one particular (fictional) burger chain – from the company executive trying to find out precisely what goes in to their product, through the illegal Mexican immigrants who work in the slaughterhouses to the high school kid flipping burgers for pocket money – do at least help put a human face on the issue.

Nonetheless, as we all know the message, the preachiness might get a tad grating. This is not to deny that the message is important, or that the film makes a very good stab at delivering it – but surely this should have been made at least five years ago, when the message was still fresh?

300
Releases 23 March

With the huge advances in computer technology in recent years, it’s little wonder that filmmakers are beginning to start experimenting with the visual potential of merging live action and computer animation. But where computers have, to date, mostly been used to create science fiction and fantasy worlds so far, few filmmakers have tried exploring the true visual potential of computer technology. 300 should, in years to come, be regarded as one of the pioneers.

Based – like Sin City before it – on a graphic novel by one of the masters of the form, Frank Miller, the plot revolves around the near legendary Battle of Thermapylae of 480BC, at which King Leonidas of Sparta led just three hundred of his own men, aided by a few hundred additional volunteers, in a desperate defence against an invading Persian army numbering somewhere between two hundred thousand and two million strong. Yet, where a film version of the battle could easily have just become an ancient Greek version of Zulu, director Zack Snyder, to date best known for his effective remake of Dawn of the Dead, has opted for something rather different.

Snyder and his cinematographer Larry Fong, backed up by a vast team of special effects experts, have taken the relatively pedestrian two dimensional artwork and, through the power of computer animation, created a stunningly crisp, colourful and mysterious visual world unlike anything before seen on the big screen. It really does have to be seen at the cinema for their work to be fully appreciated, for this is, at least visually, a work of art.

The macho storyline and over-the-top violence may not be to everyone’s taste and some of the acting is suspect at best but, nonetheless, the sheer bravado with which the moviemakers have pursued their experimental approach to the film make this a cinematic event not to be missed.

Mr Bean’s Holiday
Releases 30 March

Rowan Atkinson’s bumblingly incompetent creation Mr Bean first hit our screens back in 1990. After the verbal wit of the four Blackadder TV series, Mr Bean’s shift back to a more slapstick approach to comedy was bizarre – Bean could easily have been a character from the age of silent cinema.

Nonetheless, despite the very different comic style, Mr Bean was also a huge success for Atkinson. Quite how, is hard to fathom, though this early success was nothing compared to the worldwide success of the 1997 film version, Bean. That movie holds an honoured place in film history for being the first to have grossed more than 100 million dollars before being released in the United States, and remains one of the highest grossing British comedies of all time.

This time Mr Bean is off to the south of France for some foreign hijinx, with plenty of excuses for cultural stereotyping, implausible set-ups and face-pulling, all accompanied by Atkinson’s strangely baritone mumbling and squawking, which mostly makes do for the character in lieu of a proper voice. In the half-hour television version this was just about bearable but, as with the previous film, feature-length Bean simply gets irritating.

But still, fans of the character will doubtless still find much pleasure in this latest outing – not least in seeing that Atkinson doesn’t appear to have aged much at all, and can still do the character as well now as he did a decade ago.

It’s probably also going to be more than enough to win Mr Bean a whole new generation of young fans, with the decidedly childish humour being more like a live-action Tom and Jerry cartoon than anything. And those who simply find him irritating can, at least, avoid this as much as any sane person would the real Mr Bean, were we ever to see him wobbling down the street.