It could almost be a “Beatles or Elvis” or “Mac or PC” question, this: are you an Inconvenient Truth person, or is The 11th Hour more your bag?

I really came to this expecting a tragically hip makeover of Al Gore’s dull scare-mongering slideshow (that description should let you in on my answer to the above question, lol). But though there’s certainly something about Leonardo DiCaprio squinting at the audience that’s at times potentially as annoying as Gore, and the movie does feel at times like a good sit-down-telling-off session, it’s probably put best towards the end by one of the ‘experts’ when he says, “It’s not just global warming …”

I found the movie overall much closer to the “What the Bleep?!” movies (1 2) – though all the talking heads in some way support the overall message that we need to do something about global warming, they’re all very distinct personalities and have very different philosophies about the why of it all. My favourite line in the documentary comes towards the end (sorry to those concerned, I didn’t note down any names): “We need to be slower and we need to be smarter. That means disengaging from consumerism as the main avenue of experience.” It’s really as much about us being plain better as a race as it is about turning off the lights when we’re not in the room. To complete the first quote I began with, “It’s not just global warming – it’s an outward mirror of an inward condition.”

Like I said, it does feel a lot like being told off for 90 minutes. Oddly, my response to that is: if you really feel like you’re above being told off just ‘cos you left school a few years ago, then perhaps you deserve the shitstorm that’s coming. I found it a much more intelligent movie than Al Gore’s, perhaps because the things it’s asking people to do – which really amount to just being a little more considerate – apply whether global warming is real or not. Viewed that way, I can’t deny, this movie really kinda gave me chills.

At one point when I was just discovering how amazing cinema was, I was a huge fan of the classic Seventies political thrillers like The Parallax View this harks back to at times. I probably still am, though I haven’t even so much as watched All The President’s Men as recently as I’d like. Perhaps needless to say, at this time of year, with a no-name director at the helm, a title that doesn’t quite gel, and despite the cast, I really didn’t expect this to even touch those classics. Well, to be as brisk with my point as the movie itself is at 86 minutes … I was very pleasantly surprised.

To call this a thriller is an understatement. There’s one point – you’ll know it when you see it, I don’t wanna spoil anything but let’s just say “little girl, middle of the road” – where I literally almost started hyperventilating. As you may have heard, the movie covers the same succession of events – the shooting of a president followed by a series of explosions somewhere in Spain – from multiple points of view. On more than one occasion, these snippets reach an unbearable peak only to freeze and “wind back” to another perspective just before the end is revealed. It’s at times overwhelmingly effective, and to say it’s a movie with twists is the second understatement you could make of it.

For me, it’s the Forest Whitaker “segment” that will really stay with me and that I’ll come back for. It’s always interesting to see what actors do after they win an Oscar and while this does slightly follow the old, “now I’ll do a dumb blockbuster” thing that I think began with Nicolas Cage following Leaving Las Vegas with The Rock, I think more interesting here is how vastly different Whitaker’s character is here from Idi Armin. He plays almost literally a nobody who just happens to get caught up in the story and he does it so endearingly and believably I was on the verge of tears just watching him be so natural before the stuff with the little girl.

No, it’s not up there with the 70s classics – it’d need to be 30 minutes longer and put in a blender with either last year’s American Gangster or Zodiac for that. It is, however, the kind of pure ride I haven’t seen in a while. I remember the interviews with Jennifer Garner and Jamie Foxx over last year’s The Kingdom and while I got nothing from that production it almost seems like this is the movie they were selling. I really loved it.

“9/11 … it’s the only thing real that’s ever happened to them.”

There’s something about this, kinda as with Hedwig and the Angry Inch, that made me certain at all turns that I shouldn’t have been loving it as much as I was. I’ve written far too often of how the world at large’s insistence on the binary separation of male and female as something ever-defining etc pisses me off (I mean, Jesus wept, today I had to tell a machine what was between my legs before I could sit in the waiting room at the dentist’s …), and on the whole, this movie (ironically, again like Hedwig) doesn’t have as much leeway on this matter as you’d think it might: in so many of these self-proclaimed open-minded pieces, you’re still either male or female or, if you’re lucky, inbetween – which is great; but ... if you are inbetween in movies like this, you’ve got to be somehow overly extravagant, flamboyant or offensive – I mean, whoever heard of a boring, down-to-earth deviant, right? All that said, as with Hedwig, in this case it works: because, as I’ll say over any cliché thing that should annoy yet doesn’t, the rules don’t apply if such behaviours come from believable characters; and this movie is among the most human I’ve seen.

I still think that anyone who lets sex rule their lives to this degree is really missing out on 10 times as much as I’m sure they’d think I’m missing out on clinging to my virginity … if I met these people in real life, I’d steer clear of them. But, put on film, I don’t know, it’s every bit as much a celebration of life and humanity and finding yourself as Hedwig was. There’s something about having this stuff laid bare in an undeniably artistic (as opposed to pornographic) context that makes it get seriously under your skin with a passion. I personally didn’t find it as explicit as I’d heard; though certainly there are things shown that I’ve never seen in anything so “mainstream”, I feel more offense is likely to be caused by things like the sexualisation of the Statue of Liberty and the shelf of dildos overlooking Ground Zero at the start.

I’ll watch it again if only for its raw beauty. Between this and Hedwig, I’m pretty sure one day John Cameron Mitchell is really gonna wow me – in fact, I have to admit, it’s probably only that hunch and a second viewing keeping this and Hedwig from that elusive 5th heart.

“Isn’t fun GREAT?!”

Ah! What an idiot! I watched this at a loss tonight if only because it was short and starred Dominique Swain. I was hooked before the opening credits even finished running, and then, finally, the writer-director’s name appeared – Daniel Waters. I knew this already, but it’d totally slipped my mind; even when I considered watching this last, a few weeks ago, I saw the name but didn’t make the big Heathers association. I should’ve known this movie would be good, and I should’ve watched it way sooner.

It is just a fantastic, funny, scary look at the whole summer camp thing. It reminded me a lot of the This American Life episode, Notes on Camp, which attempted to close the gap between people who “get” camp and those who don’t and for the most part, considering I was in the latter party for most my life, succeeded. Dominique Swain is perfect as the far too perky for her own good counsellor, exemplifying the ongoing subtext of the truth bubbling under the surface gloss of these places. I still think I’m yet to see a better camp movie than Addams Family Values such is, even after more considered examples as this and the TAL episode, my overriding attitude to the places; but this is certainly worthy of Waters’ name and the Heathers connection. The shot of 3 teenage girls standing by the lake tasting “salty pancake batter” is just about as hilariously inappropriate as the mass teengasm scene in Ginger Snaps Unleashed lol and there’s more such irreverence to behold as the movie gets more and more out of control.

I remember being surprised by this the last time I watched it (alas, another review seems to have vanished), and my heart leapt as it hit its stride this time around when I remembered Jim Hawkins is voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt I guess I wasn’t such a fan of his the last time I watched. He along with Emma Thompson, David Hyde Pierce, Laurie Metcalf and Martin Short among others make for a great voice cast for a movie populated by more speaking characters, I noticed this time around, than you can shake a stick at.

It’s the “hand-drawn” (mostly) Disney animation feature I forget about most often, and that’s a shame, because considering how late in the game it came for them, it’s actually probably among my favourites. Going back to Gordon-Levitt, it’s right they should have someone so cool voicing this hero – I think I’ve said a number of times how badly the Disney males have sucked (and not just in my general, admittedly sucky, “most males do anyway,” way, lol) ... but second only perhaps to Tarzan, Jim Hawkins is really startlingly endearing. I love when the one song moment here comes seemingly out of nowhere triggering a flashback to Jim’s father leaving, and you just get all of his hangups thrown at you like a slap to the face, so when you see him slump against John Silver’s chest and start crying, you’re just completely with him.

To counter all of this is the feisty back and forth humour between Thompson’s sexy feline captain and Hyde Pierce as, well, as always something approximating Niles from Frasier never fails, lol. There’s the cute Morph, Michael Wincott’s spider thing, Martin Short’s B.E.N., and some gorgeous visuals. It’s a surprisingly ambitious project, one that really in the midst of Home on the Range, Brother Bear, etc, makes me once again wish they’d kept on with the handdrawn* – I noticed looking at the big list of the Animated Classics that it came out the same year as Lilo & Stitch, which clearly overshadows it … perhaps that’s why it’s so forgettable. Like I said, it’s a shame, ‘cos it’s one that makes me smile and laugh and cry everytime I see it.

* I wrote most of this review a couple of days ago now – since then I’ve been reading all kinds of amazing things about what Glen Keane is doing with Rapunzel ... there may be hope … it’s not hand drawn, but damn, finally somebody realises what computers can do …

“Oui! Oui! Bean! Sabine! Russ! Cannes!”

LOL

I don’t think there’s much to add to the first review of this but to say that the whole spectrum between the bad and the good parts of this widened exponentially for me on a second viewing. When it’s unfunny, it’s really pretty excruciating – the restaurant scene at the start, the “amuse the boy” scene on the train shortly thereafter, and the “falling asleep at the wheel” scene towards the end being amongst the most painful; but when it soars, like pretty much from the scene where Bean wakes in the middle of the movie set, the yellow mini approaching, and thereon to the end with him walking down to the beach – yes, even the sing-a-long – I found it even more joyful and beautiful than I did before.

I think the one disappointment most people will have over the movie is that, like the first movie in fact, it’s not just straight-up laughs like the TV show, and because of how bold they’ve been in doing it the same way (it only just struck me this time how many subtitles there are given this was a total Easter holidays movie last year for kids), there are unavoidably moments where it feels awkward (there are even moments like this in Mel Smith’s only slightly better first movie). If you come to it just wanting to smile at France, though, you really can’t go wrong. The boy’s tooo cute when he dresses as a girl too (sorry but I have to say these things sometimes – ok, all the time – lol)

May 16th, 2007:

I was sort of desperate to like this not only because I loved, really loved, Mel Smith’s Bean, but also ‘cos I’ve been informed my favourite cousin Fiona laughed her way all the way through this new installment over the Easter holidays. The reviews weren’t too promising, though …

The movie couldn’t begin better, it’s almost like it’s trying to win me over – Bean stops over and gets led astray in Paris and we get quite a nice video tour of the place – but after an excruciating restaurant scene (in which at least two old gags from the TV series threaten to resurface, and some business with mussels ends up just being plain unpleasant), I honestly thought I was going to go the way of Mark Kermode and wind up really being let down by the rest. But then Bean meets the boy, and there’s a scene on a train platform where he starts to mimic Bean, and what can I say, it just won me over in about 30 seconds.

Sure, you can look at the set-up and in this horrible world we live etc and say, ooh, creepy. Alternatively, you can see a simple-minded, foolish but harmless man and a young boy who ultimately thinks the world of him running around France getting in hijinks. I think there’s something really almost classical here, and if it doesn’t fit in with your dark view of the world, it’s a real shame I think. Rowan Atkinson and the kid work beyond adorably together, Howard Goodall’s music and Steve Bendelack’s direction really lift the whole thing and you can’t help coming out in the end feeling warm and fuzzy inside. Keep watching after the credits, too, btw, there’s a little bit of added cuteness.

Yes, the humour tires towards the end, but as with Bean, there is really more to this than the laughs. There’s this real sense of the camera trying to find the humanity in Bean, and when it finds it, it’s always kind of startling how easy it was. He’s a beautiful character when dealt with correctly, and this movie really didn’t let me down like I thought it would. The more I think about it, the more I want to see it again.

“Damn, Hansel – I can’t believe you’re not a girl. You’re so fine …”

The moment this began it made me feel for a moment like maybe I’d been right to avoid it for so long, despite all the things that for obvious reasons indicated to me I’d be an instant fan the moment I came into contact with it. What can I say but that it touched some places in me that get touched so little I tend sometimes to forget them entirely ‘cos they hurt too much through lack of touching. If I haven’t hinted at it lately, let it now be said that there are times when I really almost wouldn’t mind an angry inch of my own if it was the only available option; it’d be like the lesser of two evils or something. The joy and self-assuredness expressed by the characters here is frequently overwhelming to me.

Hansel/Hedwig first struck me as far from the sexiest transexual to walk the celluloid screen, but she grew on me – we basically see her at her highs and lows, at times indistinguishable from any real girl, at times a broken mess; likewise the music, at first struck me as not my taste at all, but it eventually works its way to a slew of numbers that threaten to never stop making the hairs on my neck stand on end. It’s kind of Myra Breckinridge meets Rent (a connection that definitely goes beyond the cute direct reference) and I’ll absolutely check it out again. I’ve already got a whole bunch of tribute albums and cast recordings that I’ve been holding off listening to till I saw the movie itself, and now I can’t wait

I won’t deny, this movie is practically batsh*t crazy, but it’s certainly not the mess I’d been led to expect (Mark Kermode said it was practically unreleasable). It’s actually pretty damn compelling with a phenomenal central performance by Tim Roth, a beautiful score, and highly memorable images, most notably the final one that took my breath away like few things do and made me almost immediately want to watch it over again.

It should really be 30 minutes shorter, and I’d recommend the slightly similar The Fountain (which, incidentally, is 30 minutes shorter) more … but this is far from the failure some have painted it as. I hope Coppola isn’t put off by the criticism, ‘cos this movie if nothing else shows him trying harder to use the medium for all its worth than most film makers dare.