The Greatest Trick

“Look, I just don’t think I can kill my mother, my best friend and my girlfriend all in the same day!”

That is my favourite line in one of the best horror film spoofs ever made; Shaun of the Dead. There are no one-liners that quite equal it in director Edgar Wright’s follow-up, Hot Fuzz, but this should nevertheless do for action movies what Shaun of the Dead did for zombie movies.

Top London copper Nicholas Angel (the always excellent Simon Pegg) is transferred to the sleepy village of Sandiford, because his colleagues are worried his ludicrously high success rate is making them look bad. At first he hates it. The local police are completely inept, and the pursuit of an escaped swan is about as exciting as law enforcement gets. However, a series of gruesome murders that keep being passed off as accidents make Nicholas suspicious, and he and his partner Danny soon discovers this seemingly charming English village has a very dark heart indeed.

What makes Hot Fuzz so refreshing is the way the conventional story of big city man finding the meaning of life in the countryside is reversed. The picturesque Sandiford turns out to be rife with crime and corruption, and somehow this rings completely true. Certainly in my own experience I have visited obscure villages and towns where I have imagined all manner of dubious activity to be going on just under my nose (especially in Cornwall).

But more importantly, Hot Fuzz is consistently hilarious, and full of amusing characters. Simon Pegg’s Nicholas Angel is a brilliant creation; at once irritatingly overzealous, and politically correct to a fault. For instance, he keeps reminding his bemused colleagues of the correct newspeak type terminology – police service, not police force; “force” being considered too aggressive. Yet a genuine sympathy is gradually built into the character, and his transformation from annoyingly legalistic jobsworth to flamboyant action hero is immensely entertaining.

Elsewhere there are amusing performances from Nick Frost’s Danny, who provides a very funny spoof of the male-bonding “buddy” cop movies like Lethal Weapon. Jim Broadbent, Edward Woodward, Paul Freeman, Olivia Colman and a wonderfully slimy Timothy Dalton, all provide hilarious support. There are also fun cameos from Steve Coogan and Bill Nighy.

Particularly in its final act, Hot Fuzz brilliantly satirises gruesomely violent and absurdly foul-mouthed action flicks such as Point Break and Bad Boys II (not to mention TV’s CSI with its “attention-span-of-a-goldfish” epileptic editing). As a result, the film is inescapably gruesomely violent and foul-mouthed. Whilst much of this is very funny, those unfamiliar with the genre may find it offensive. What’s more the film is a bit too long, especially in the latter half, and as a result it ultimately becomes numbing and tedious; much like the interminable Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer pictures it is sending up.

That said, if you liked Shaun of the Dead, you’ll like this, and whilst it falls short of classic comedy, it is hugely engaging, and very, very funny.

Simon Dillon, February 2007.

In this day and age most of us are not used to black and white. Some of us are not used to watching films in another language, or documentaries in the cinema. There are almost none who are used to seeing bare-faced propaganda, and this film is a combination of all four, which was clearly designed to impress the German cinema-going public of 1935. And while jarring and disturbing to watch what would become one of the most evil regimes of the 20th Century promote itself so openly, I must confess to falling slightly asleep at certain points…

Hitler appointed director Leni Riefenstahl (personally, apparently) to document the Nazi party rally of 1934, so it is unsurprising that the film has a distinct political bent. What you get to see goes as follows: ranks and ranks of the amassed, newly-fortified German army, displaying both numerical and technological readiness for the years ahead (of course, watching this in hindsight must be a very different experience to how the original viewers saw it); speeches from the Nazi top brass - Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess and several you won’t have heard of unless you’re a historian all get their time in the limelight; endless shots of marching and motorcades (the afore-mentioned napping opportunities); Hitler, specifically, being treated like a superstar by all and sundry (which, of course, he was - viewers must remember that this was the man who had been vital in the re-building of Germany, and that the people he was leading had no reason at this point to suspect him of tendencies towards dictatorship - he had only been Chancellor a year in 1934) - you start to think “if only they knew” over and over again; swastikas hung liberally over every possible building; and most troubling, the Hitler Youth being instructed in the ways of the party and intoning a kind of call-and-response liturgy detailing their unwavering loyalty to country and Fuhrer.

Most reviewers give the film very high ratings, because it is done beautifully - hence its power and terrifying nature. But among the glorious overhead shots and sweeping vistas of the German army in all its glory, there were moments of boredom for me. The IMDb review says that the film defies a star rating; I can agree with this, but not for quite the same reason - what you are watching is history playing itself out, and yes, it’s been shot and edited in a certain way to make the audience feel or think a certain thing, but nothing here is fake. And if nothing else, the film is important because if we ever see a regime displaying this kind of self-promotion again, we know to be extremely mistrustful. From a Christian point of view, there are none of the usual things that would upset viewers (sex, violence, language) - but don’t expect to watch this film and not be disturbed by it to some extent.

Over a year ago we rented a movie called ‘Lagaan’, for no reason other than we were curious about Indian cinema, had seen its name/the DVD fairly well-advertised, read a couple of reviews and thought it would be interesting. Little did we know it would spark off a whole new world of cinema for us. We might be slow on the uptake on this, or just weird for getting into it at all, not being in the slightest bit Indian ourselves, but we’re coming to love these movies as we watch more.

So, for those readers for whom Bollywood means very little, here are the basics: Indian films, mostly in Hindi but with smatterings of English, with lavish colours, big musical numbers, cliched plots, very long running times, intermissions, stereotyped characters, often poetic-looking subtitles (but we’re never sure how much that’s down to translation or not - I love this aspect, especially during the songs, because the English translations don’t rhyme, so they remind me of reading Psalms or Song of Songs, particularly the love songs, naturally). I suppose the closest crossover reference points recently have been Bride & Prejudice and Monsoon Wedding, only the latter of which we’ve seen, but it was a watered down version of the real thing. I will VERY swiftly review the 3 movies we’ve seen so far, and do all subsequent ones properly…

Lagaan (Tax): down-trodden villagers in the Raj days rebel against local British cads who are imposing stringent taxes on them by challenging the Brits to a game of cricket - the Indian underdogs must gather a very inexperienced team, train and win to keep their livelihoods, basically. Wonderful, brilliant, really glad this was the first one we saw. Very charismatic leading man in Aamir Khan, and genuine tension at the end.

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something’s happened to my heart): Rahul and Anjali are best friends at college, but she is a tomboy and he doesn’t realise she loves him. Rahul gets married to pretty girl Tina who bears him a daughter but dies in childbirth - they name the girl Anjali, and she, 8 years later, becomes determined to reunite her father with the love of his former life. Again, 3 great leads, especially Shahrukh Khan as idiotic charmer Rahul, but the 2 women are also very good in their roles. It looks dated at first, but that’s because A) it was released in 1998 and B) it’s to do with events taking place at the end of the 80s, at least in the first half.

Dil to Pagal Hai (The Heart is Crazy): same actor, same character name, more or less the same character. Khan is this time a theatre director whose leading dancer (who’s in love with him) breaks her heel, and he must search for a replacement. He finds the perfect girl, and they begin to fall in love, even though she is engaged to her childhood sweetheart. Jealousy and dancing abound, in a slightly weaker film, and yet the great numbers are GREAT. Khan seems to play the same character each time, but is still worth watching.

We love these films cos they’re fun, lively, predictable, amusing, innocent, gorgeous-looking, tuneful and, above all, different to what we normally watch.

Great musicals are a rarity these days, and despite a good deal of critical acclaim and a few Oscar nominations, Dreamgirls isn’t exactly great.

Director Bill Condon is best known for films like Gods and Monsters and Kinsey, but Dreamgirls is probably his most commercial work to date. Adapted from a Broadway musical about the rise and fall of fictitious sixties girl group the Dreamettes, this is in no way based on Diana Ross and the Supremes (honest).

Three young women Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles), Effie White (Jennifer Hudson), and Lorrell Robinson (Anike Noni Rose) who have always wanted to be pop stars get their big break when they land a backup gig for the legendary singer James “Thunder” Early (Eddie Murphy). Eventually, they form a band of their own, but ruthless manager Curtis Taylor (Jamie Foxx) and Effie’s brother C.C. (Keith Robinson) decide Deena’s bland vocals are more likely to cross over to the mainstream charts, which upsets talented vocal lead Effie. Effie is eventually persuaded to go along with it, but the trappings of riches and fame soon drive a wedge between her and the rest of the group.

Essentially this is a Faustian tale, the likes of which have been seen umpteen times before, and done better. Early in the film, valid points are made about how white artists stole songs from black artists to make them bland and acceptable to a mass audience, but as an unashamed pop/disco apologist I couldn’t help but be irritated by the way the latter part of the film depicted disco as a soulless commercial sell-out.

Some of the songs are quite good, and the cast acquit themselves well. Newcomer Hudson is good, and Eddie Murphy is excellent, particularly in the latter part of the film as his character becomes increasingly washed up and descends into drug abuse. Beyonce Knowles has gone from spouting such clangers as “I’m not gonna diss you on the internet/‘cos my momma taught be better than that”, to actually being pretty passable as an actress; a rare exception to the usual rule that pop stars can’t act. Jamie Foxx is also very good, and Danny Glover makes a welcome appearance.

In final analysis, Dreamgirls is better than the hugely overrated Chicago, but nowhere near as good as Baz Luhrmann’s masterpiece Moulin Rouge. Obviously it’s a far cry from the great musicals like Singin’ in the Rain, but it should appeal to fans of the genre.

Simon Dillon, February 2007.

1960s London: a black American engineer takes a job in a rough East End school to tide him over, and discovers that the kids just need to know that someone respects them to enable them to show respect themselves.

As a teacher myself, films about teachers annoy me on the whole (with the exception of Les Choristes). In the interests of drama, and I do understand why this is, they are invariably about teachers in ‘inspirational’ subjects (music, English, sport) where rules can be broken far more often while studying the subject - a film about a maths or history teacher (or, God forbid, modern languages!) just has far fewer opportunities for showing the pupils really growing as people because of the lack of dramatic spark in that academic area. The other thing that happens is that, with the exception of Dead Poets Society, movies about teachers changing the lives of kids tend to fall into the category this one is in, of rough kids being made polite or at least more able to get out of the social situation they’re in through the intervention of their teacher. (Of course, DPS is about kids breaking free from restrictions, but in no way are they under-privileged.) All that said, I enjoyed watching “To Sir, With Love” - it was unfussy, subtle yet clear with its messages, and contained some very solid performances from the leads, especially Sidney Poitier.

Poitier was Hollywood’s clarion call for changes in race relations in the 1960s, as he continually pushed boundaries and forced reconsiderations in perceptions of the black community. To be honest, the race issue isn’t massive in this film - there is more prejudice about him simply being American - but the fact that a black man can win over the hearts and minds of 20-odd tough white London teenagers is a deliberate choice. The film sees Poitier’s character, Mark Thackeray, inherit the class of a teacher who has just left under rather unpleasant circumstances. The kids lack any semblance of order, discipline or aspiration to anything higher, but above all, they lack respect - from their peers, their parents, their teachers, anyone - so this is where Thackeray begins. He lays down rules for addressing one another, which sets the atmosphere for the classroom, and then begins, through teaching them about why they feel rebellious, discussing sex and marriage, and how to make a salad (!), to earn their respect. It’s very clear from comments made by the other teachers at the school that basically they are containing these kids, and any educating they can actually get in is just a bonus (hence the very poor comparison between this film and, well, my teaching experience at least) - which is why Thackeray has the opportunity to teach them in this way.

The themes of the film are obvious, as is the overall message, but it’s directed in an ‘interesting’ 1960s kind of a way, with some musical montages that you wouldn’t get (or that would use power ballads!) in today’s cinema. The actors playing the kids are effective, especially Judy Geeson and Christian Roberts as the girl who falls for her teacher and the tough lad in the class respectively, and Lulu turns up too! But what sticks in the mind most for me is the wonderful communication of respect towards teenagers, which engenders respect for their elders in turn - many people who are past their teenage years forget that this is the way it has to be with kids, especially ones who haven’t been shown much respect by parents as they have grown up. It’s a method of teaching (and parenting) I do my best to live by, and believe it is wholly in agreement with Jesus’ example.

Judi Dench is not the kind of actress one usually associates with dark, twisted characters, yet her performance in Notes on a Scandal as bitter, clingy and vengeful secondary school teacher Barbara Covett is a remarkable achievement. At once venomous yet vulnerable, she manages to avoid the psycho thriller clichés inherent in such a role and instead presents us with a fully rounded character, whom whilst not exactly deserving of sympathy, does evoke a certain empathy and even pity.

Barbara forms a close friendship with wet-behind-the-ears art teacher Sheba (Cate Blanchett). Sheba immediately confides in Barbara regarding her stable but boring marriage to Richard (Bill Nighy), and the struggles she has faced with her daughter and downs-syndrome son. However, when Barbara discovers Sheba is having an affair with one of her male students, 15 year old Stephen, she sees a way to keep Sheba in debt to her forever. Barbara tells her the affair must end, and Sheba initially agrees to this, but finds it hard to keep her promise. In the meantime, Barbara becomes increasingly clingy and unreasonable, and Sheba begins to wise up to her manipulations. However, she can do nothing because Barbara is blackmailing her.

Aside from Judi Dench, performances from the rest of the cast are all strong, not only from Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy but also Andrew Simpson as Stephen; an entirely believable 15 year old turning on the Irish charm and trying his luck with a teacher, but with none of the maturity to deal with the consequences.

Speaking of which, the fling between Sheba and Stephen is a rare example of a cinematic extra-marital affair that is not glamourised. It is a realistically awkward, fumbled business, where the audience is no doubt that the liaison has nothing whatsoever to do with romance. In fact, for much of the film, Sheba is portrayed far less sympathetically than Barbara, especially in the way she justifies her unacceptable behaviour. She says that because she has been so good for so long that she is entitled to a little fooling around, and actually believes this. From a spiritual perspective, this is a fascinating insight into the insidious nature of sin, temptation, and how a single moment of letting down one’s guard can lead to misery and ruined lives.

Although Barbara initially appears to have the moral upper hand, it ultimately becomes clear that she cannot sustain relationships because of her unreasonable, destructive demands. Towards the end it is hinted that she may be a lesbian, trying to destroy Sheba’s family out of jealousy in an attempt to seduce her. Sympathy at this stage shifts firmly to Sheba, who tries to make amends, but the damage has already been done, and the wages of sin become abundantly clear.

With Notes on a Scandal, Richard Eyre directs with unfussy, unsentimental fashion, and Patrick Marber’s screenplay is appropriately gritty. Although there is a lot of strong swearing, and some sexual scenes, none of it seemed gratuitous.

Bizarrely, Notes on a Scandal brought to mind One Hour Photo; another (much underrated) film that at first glance appears to be a psycho thriller but evolves into something much classier. There are a number of similarities in the way audience expectations evolve and are toyed with, primarily through the exceptional lead performances in both movies.

Judi Dench’s Barbara is a remarkable character who lingers long in the memory. In the last year or so, there have been several extremely good female performances, and it seems that Hollywood is finally returning to what it used to do so well in fashioning multi-dimensional interesting roles for women. Let’s hope it lasts.

Simon Dillon, February 2007.

Short one this, as I didn’t feel there’s a great deal to say. This is a very by-the-numbers disaster movie which really didn’t fire either myself or Heidi up in the same way as The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure (which I only saw in its entirety a couple of weeks ago! - review to come shortly). Charlton Heston is the hero battling to save pretty young mum Genevieve Bujold and as many others as he can along the way. There are some nice dangerous set-pieces, such as the sequence where a group are ‘chair-lifted’ from one floor of a building to the next down, or the electrical wires dangling into the storm drain where a boy lies unconscious. But the problem was that none of the characters were really loveable or well-written enough to care what happens to them. I was particularly unbothered about whether Ava Gardner’s character lived or died, cos she was just annoying. Give this one a miss.

This might end up being rather pompous and pretentious, but I feel like writing it anyway, as both these films have been viewed recently in our family, and very much enjoyed, and have also begun to reveal more depth than I had previously appreciated. There are some films and some stories that bear repeated telling, and it is sometimes only when you know the story by heart that the underlying themes become clear enough.

Anyway, the stories are doubtless very familiar to readers, so I will include a whole plot synopsis - if you haven’t seen either of these movies, why on earth not? and do it now! The Jungle Book, adapted from Kipling’s novel, recounts the tale of Mowgli, a human boy found in the jungles of India by a panther (Bagheera) and raised by a family of wolves. When the impending danger of Shere Khan the tiger being on the search for the boy becomes clear, Bagheera decides Mowgli must make the perilous journey to the nearest man-village, for the boy’s own safety. On the way, they meet Kaa the boa constrictor, the pack of elephants led by Colonel Hathi, King Louie the funky orang-utan, and Baloo the fun-loving bear, with whom Mowgli forms a particularly strong bond. Of course, Mowgli has no desire to leave what he has known as his home in the jungle, and the struggle of the film is in getting him to the village without being killed by the numerous pitfalls that await, one of those being the final encounter with Shere Khan. The tiger defeated, Baloo and Bagheera get Mowgli to the man-village where he spots a girl (with the ubiquitous huge Disney-eyes!), who sings about having a husband in the future and coquettishly drops her water-pitcher for Mowgli to pick up, and he cannot help but follow her in.

Monsters Inc. is, on the surface, vastly different. The concept states that the monsters of our childhood imagination are real, live in a parallel world to ours and creep in through cupboard doors to scare children in their beds, collecting their screams to power the monster city. The company’s top scarer, Sully - a furry blue giant with claws, teeth and a ferocious roar - accidentally lets a child into the monster world (they are considered toxic, though this is clearly a myth perpetuated by the company brass), and the film details his and his friend Mike’s attempts to return her to her room. What they discover is that it wasn’t an accident in fact, and that the CEO of Monsters Inc Mr Waternoose (voiced by James Coburn), terrified of losing the company due to the increasing fear thresholds of children in our world (a very enlightening comment!), has kidnapped this little girl to extract screams by force. Sully and Mike (a big green eyeball with arms & legs) must battle on Boo’s behalf to keep her safe, keep their jobs and eventually return her to a safe place.

Now firstly it must be said that both of these are brilliant films. The Jungle Book is widely regarded as one of the best, if not THE best, of the classic Disney animated movies, and I can’t help but agree. The songs are almost all superb, and Louis Prima adds a touch of class to the proceedings by giving voice to King Louie. The range of animals, and the skill of the animators in giving life to them, is most impressive - just watch the job they do with Shere Khan’s movements in particular; throwing a Beatles parody into the mix with the vultures, and then getting them to sing as a barbershop quartet, is just inspired. And most importantly, the characters are well-drawn and likeable. The same is true of Monsters Inc - you won’t forget the villain Randall (voiced by “funny-looking” Steve Buscemi) or Roz the slug receptionist or the work experience monsters whose voices are in the process of breaking (”You’re making him lose his focus!”) or Boo, whose vocal contributions to the film were recorded by following the actress round the Pixar studios with a microphone waiting for some noise to come out of her mouth. What stands out the first time you watch it is the comedy and heart - Mike is voiced by Billy Crystal who, it seems, was given free reign to do his ‘thing’ in certain sections - and the working of various human myths into a realistic parallel-world scenario (e.g. the Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster are all monsters who have been banished to reside in the human world. And John Ratzenburger’s turn as the Abominable Snowman is genius - “Abominable! Can you believe that? Do I look abominable to you? Why can’t they call me the Adorable Snowman or…or the Agreeable Snowman, for crying out loud?”). And again, the animation is gorgeous to look at; a couple of films on from Toy Story and Pixar had developed their technology to a point where Sully’s fur, for example, could be done really well.

What I have begun to notice is how these 2 films each contain a representation of the family, and the messages that are associated with that are interesting to ponder. Baloo and Bagheera are effectively Mowgli’s parents, though I can’t quite decide which is which. A few weeks ago I said to Heidi that I saw Bagheera as a sort of nagging mum, and Baloo as the fun-loving dad who does the tickling and silly dancing. But I also think that Bagheera has the ’strict father’ personality, and Baloo the ‘caring mother who finds it harder to let go’ characteristics. In Monsters Inc, Sully more or less takes on the role of both mother AND father, with Mike playing the part of a friend who finds it very hard to deal with his best friend’s new role as father. I find this interesting from a social history point of view - in the 60s the idea of a one-parent family was much less widespread and acceptable, whereas in the early noughties audiences are totally happy with this; in fact, in our times it has been suggested that friends are the new family (sitcoms like ‘Friends’ show this really clearly), so this change in representing the famly is unsurprising.

The scenes in both films where the ‘parents’ say goodbye to their ‘children’ are key. The Jungle Book contains a lovely and memorable scene where Mowgli hears a young girl singing, is enchanted by it, has to look closer, and through a combination of embarassment, curiosity and manipulation, ends up following her into the man-village. Baloo recognises that Mowgli is about to have an epiphany, and tries to discourage him from exploring the world of females (”Forget about those, they ain’t nothing but trouble.”), and he and Bagheera then stand there urging Mowgli in different ways (Baloo: “Come back! Come back!” Bagheera: “Go on! Go on!”), which again all reinforces their mother and father positions, the mother traditionally finding it harder to let go of the son and wanting to continue to provide and care for him. It is the sexual awakening within Mowgli that causes him to leave his ‘parents’ and move on into the world he was always destined to be in - and here we see very close parallels with what the Bible talks about. “For this reason a man shall leave his mother and father and be united to his wife” is from Genesis, and we see this traditional view from the 1960s Disney expressed in story form here - basically Mowgli experiences the whole of puberty and teenagerdom (without all the strops and arguments) in a couple of minutes and then leaves the family home with a silly smile on his face. As Baloo puts it, “He’s hooked”.

Clearly Monsters Inc is different, especially as Boo is much younger than Mowgli, but there is still the theme of growing up to contend with, even if it’s not all with Boo. In their final scene together, Sully & Mike say goodbye to their 24-hour charge, and Mike gently tells her to “Go grow up”, which is interesting as it has been him who has actually done the most of that in the course of the film. Just an hour of film time earlier, as Sully was trying to work out a way to return Boo to safety, Mike was concerned about himself - his job, his safety, his reputation. As the film progresses, and Mike & Sully’s friendship faces its most difficult test over the little girl, he comes to the understanding that Sully ONLY cares about Boo at that point in time, that she has become his no. 1 priority, and that if they are to continue being friends he needs to come to terms with that and help Sully in the struggle. Hence his not-quite-heroic-but-well-timed return from banishment, from which point on, he and his girlfriend Celia are only helpful. Again, these are themes explored to a certain extent by ‘Friends’ - changes in family situations, including babies & children, have been a prominent feature since the start of the series, and may give readers a different reference point if Monsters Inc is not as familiar to them as it is to me, thanks to my son! Does this give us any insight into the film-makers’ views or experiences? Clearly, yes, and I find it fascinating that in the three Pixar movies with clear parenthood themes (this, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles), the growing up is mostly done by the parents rather than the kids. Boo is a catalyst for the changes in Sully and Mike, and perhaps what the film-makers are trying to tell us is that parents being responsible and grown-up when looking after kids is vital, and really makes a difference to how the kids turn out (at the start of their respective films, Nemo is rebellious and tells Dad he hates him, and the Incredibles kids are painfully introverted and hyper with a streak of naughtiness - all three have distinctly changed by the end), without of course losing their fun-loving side (à la Mike’s antics at the end - they have discovered that laughs are more powerful than screams in terms of power, and adjust their working practices at the factory accordingly) - all views I can totally agree with!

Like I said at the start, if you haven’t seen these two, get to it ASAP; and if your kids haven’t, well, they are missing a couple of treats. And it’s worth saying that no matter what it is that kids watch, it’s all telling them something - messages can be subtle or obvious; physical, mental, attitudinal, spiritual etc. - which is why we’re pretty careful about Caleb & Elodie’s viewing, but delighted that they love these films!