Barbara

It can’t be overstated as to how subtle this film is. Like a puzzle or an enigma you are given clues as to what is happening and has happened, and who each person is in the story and what their significance is. It just takes on e further piece of information for that all to change, rather like the game Go really. The board can change from black to white, or vice versa with the introduction of piece in a particular place at a particular time. Maybe that is the best way for there to be more showing and less telling. The thing is as well here is that even when people do tell, you’re not entirely sure that they’re telling the truth.

Such is the world in Barbara, a film set inEast Germany in 1980. We are not in Berlin; we are in the provinces, away from the bright lights and the big decisions. The eponymous Barbara is a hospital doctor and we see her start a job in a new hospital, somewhat under a cloud. As I said we are left to discover how she got to get where she is, somewhat. She as well is less than happy and not too easy to trust at the beginning of the film.

We see as the film progresses that Barbara is subject to her flat and herself being searched by the police. It is these goings on that explains her nature and how she would not fully trust someone that she has only just met. We know now how insidious the workings of the Stasi were in East Germanyand we also know about how ordinary people were only to willing to inform on their friends and neighbours. I don’t know what it says about human nature when you hear that in a large number of cases this was done without a tangible reward.

The message from this film is all about choices and how those choices can give you a certain amount of freedom. It’s also about how people can enact change not just by change what’s around them by changing themselves as well. Sometimes for things and prospects to change perspective and position needs to change as well, maybe sometimes as well it’s only the slightest change that is required. I urge you to see this film.

Skyfall

Cinema these days seems to be obsessed by numbers. How many people have seen a film, how much did it make, how many Oscars did it win? We also see now that this is the 23rd Bond film, or the 25th, the series has been going for 50 years. That’s fifteen more than Star Wars, with six films, soon to be seven. Bond seems far more prolific even though the Quantum of Solace seems so long ago now and seemed such a long film as well.


On the other hand Skyfall seems to fly by. As with the Bonds of old the locations stack up, Istanbul, somewhere in South East Asia, Shanghai, Macau and the London Underground, etc. He visits a casino, he drinks a vodka martini, he’s given gadgets by Q, all as you would expect. In all the years of the Bond films he’s met with the uber-villain and has had a verbal spar with them. I don’t recall thigh caressing and overt flirting between them, hello!

In Sam Mendes’s hands as well we have a bit more character development of Bond and M. This is all a bit curious though as we were presented with a new agent in Casino Royale and now we have this grizzled old agent in this film. Judi Dench develops her role as M for mother, but then M has always been able to make Bond feel like a naughty schoolboy. I would say more but then I would be shot for it.

I did enjoy the film; it is after all at the top end of recent Bond films. I did also keep being reminded of the World Is Not Enough, Bond back story, M back story, Istanbul, explosions. The World Is Not Enough had Scots playing Russians; Skyfall has an Irishman playing a Scot. That’s not unique in the history of Bond though.

The film is as well beautifully shot, there are some gorgeous shots of Scotland, breath-taking views of Shanghai and exhilarating sequences in Istanbul. I also loved how the seeds were sown for Bond films in the future as well as reaching back to the past. It was also good to see a classic Aston Martin back, even though it was really shoe horned in. Bond has some of his swagger back, but this film also retains some of the recent seriousness, therefore reflecting today’s serious times, to an extent.

Helter Skelter

It’s easy to say that a Japanese film; about an actress and model who’s attempting to keep her looks that have been given to her from plastic surgery, who is also an icon to a legion of schoolgirls, is plasticky and sometimes annoying. The film though does try to go deeper into the subject and to look at what this means to the individual, those that surround her and those in her fanbase.


The beauty in question is Lilicia, she makes women and girls swoon, men lust after her and makes a number of people realise her potential as a commodity. She’s about to embark on a film career, when she appears on a magazine cover the edition sells out, she’s at the top of her game. Although it’s speculated that her plastic surgery will fail and that she will fall apart. It’s here that the film explores the psychology as well as the physical nature of what happens to her. When her looks begin to fail she starts to lose her grip on reality and hallucinate. I suppose really that reality went when she changed her looks and effectively became another person.

The trouble with psychological dramas is that they can become overwrought. This is especially true when a character is portrayed in having major problems distinguishing reality and fantasy. There is as well the thought that the people that are talked about in this film don’t inhabit the real world anyway. That the talent, as it were, have their ego massaged by those around them and that they may have been protected from certain truths and that when these truths coalesce and build up the end can come as a nasty shock. On the balance though the film could have been far more annoying than it was, I just couldn’t bring myself to like it very much though.

Killing Them Softly

There are gangster films that talk about the social impact of crime. Often you can see how crime affects the family life of criminals and victims alike. Killing Them Softly does this differently by linking what politicians say with what criminals and gangsters do. At the beginning of the film we’re shown a billboard of McCain and Obama, this places the film in 2008 and the election that happened during that years massive economic downturn.

The film continues to punctuate the story with speeches made by the then President Bush and the then leading contender Obama. Are they saying that politicians are criminals? The filmmakers may be saying that what criminals say, to each other about the crimes they commit and the deals they make, is similar to the promises made by politicians to the electorate.

The story is concerned with two men hired by another man to hold up a card game and steal all their money. The thing is that this has happened before and that it was actually previously masterminded by the man running the game, Ray Liotta. He’d confessed to this while drunk once, luckily not to anyone that had been robbed. Anyway they steal they hold the game and steal the money. Unfortunately word of this gets out to the next layer up or down of the underworld, whichever way you want to look at it.

This leads to Richard Jenkins having to manage the situation, using Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini. Managing the situation by third person involves very violent methods. It also leads to some situations not panning out the way they had been expected to and other situations developing. Brad Pitt's mode of work explains the title, he it seems is a thinking and feeling hitman. He likes to kill his targets softly. As softly as repeatedly shooting them, but he doesn't like to know his victims he doesn't what his job to be too difficult. To an extent there is an irony there, as is the soundtrack. It's full of American classics and standards and it doesn't include the song you'd expect it to.

What we end up with then is a well written and well acted tale of modern America. It is set at the scene of one of George W Bush’s greatest defeats where the sea half destroyed the city and he didn’t act on it. Amidst all of this devastation is where this bunch of criminals try and make as much money as they can from each other by fair means or foul, usually foul. When it all goes wrong we find that they will blame each other and take action against those who have failed.

Dredd

This film about Judge Dredd begins with a view of the post-apocalyptic Cursed Earth which lies to the east of Mega City One, the city which Dredd tells us is the city of 800 million people, covers are large proportion of the eastern seaboard of the USA is full of crime and has the Judges who act as police, jury and executioners. This is set in the twenty second century, although we’re not told this in the film.


Anyway the story is concerned with Judge Dredd and the rookie Judge Anderson being trapped in a tower block and having to keep themselves alive whilst a large number of gun toting gang members and drug dealers try and kill them. The two Judges are trapped in the lair of the deliciously named gang leader Ma Ma, the only motherly instinct she shows is being a bad mother from what I can see.

We are treated on occasion to some beautiful shots of people taking the drug, Slo-Mo, which Ma Ma’s gang peddles on the streets of the Big Meg. This does as well include shots of people being shot and killed in a number of imaginative ways. This does leave you with the feeling that drug dealers are thoroughly nasty people who are not altruistic at all.

I was initially annoyed with this film; Dredd began with chasing down a VW camper van on a highway, they're still maiking those in the 22nd Century? That got me thinking that this was not the Mega City One I remembered from the comic 2000 A.D., there were also nothing flying in the air, apart from a Department of Justice drone. There were also none of the bizarre, funny characters that used to appear in Judge Dredd comic strip, like Max Normal, Dredd’s crazed cleaning lady Maria or Walter the Wobot. Curiously there was a mention of a memorial for Fergee which could mean that this is a sequel to the monstrosity that appeared all those years ago.

Anyway, once you get past all that and the fact that Anderson is not a Psi Judge, and also someone that was she now never encased in Boing because of being possessed by Judge Death the film is quite watchable really. Well, there is gore and blood as I’ve mentioned as lots of people are killed in the film. It does make you feel better about the amount of crime in our world today and that we have a largely effective Police Service. One of the major plus points in this film in comparison with the other is that Dredd is unremitting in his quest for justice, doesn’t kiss anyone, keeps his helmet on, and really makes you thankful that he’s not needed here.

To Rome With Love

Woody Allen follows his recent films made in and about London, Barcelona and Paris with his love letter to Rome. We are treated throughout the film to shots of the stunning architecture of the Coliseum, the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain. We see young men riding scooters through cobbled streets and we see people eating meals at pavement cafés.


We also see though a city that’s full of American tourists and students that share the city with the Romans. They are introduced through a number of vignettes in which we discover what life in the city is like, or what Allen thinks life is like. The film has as well a number of characters that share Allen’s outlook on life, that have a number of neuroses and are quite frankly different versions of the character he’s been developing, at least, since his stand up days.

This is not unique, even to Woody Allen, he’s written this character for a number of other lead actors before, but I don’t recall others playing the part when he’s in the film. There’s the architect going headlong into a ménage a trois, an clerk who no-one finds interesting, a retired operatic impresario (played by Allen himself), and most intriguingly a newly married couple who both seem to be based on him.

As the story, or stories, progresses we are given a piece that is out somewhat like A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There is the exploration of fantasy and dreams which adds to the surreal nature of some of what we see in the film. At times Allen explores daydreams about celebrity and success, but also explores what these statuses actually mean. He looks as well at what fantasises we have today, to be a celebrity, to sleep with your girlfriend’s best friend, to sleep with a movie star, to still be useful after retirement.

The surreal element of the film is heightened by the use of time. It’s apparent in the film that one of the stories takes place over one day, while the others seem to take place over a number of weeks, one takes place throughout the whole Summer. The stories though start together and end together, even though there’s that differential. One of the stories as well seems to have taken place in no time, as if it was a daydream in the mind of an ageing architect.

I was on the whole pleasantly surprised by this film. I had expected that with its title the film would be over sentimental, it’s largely anything but. I suspected as well that this would be more evidence of Allen’s waning powers. I think what works though is that he’s not too proud to look ridiculous and that he’s not afraid to let someone else be the star of the show.

Ted

Bears in Hollywood have had a number of different depictions over the years. There’s the straightforwardness of Winnie The Pooh and Yogi Bear. A bear in A.I. Artificial Intelligence was given a persona that allowed him to become friends with the ersatz boy, David. Lotso Huggin' Bear displayed malevolence and a need to control other toys in Toy Story 3. Added to these luminaries and more is Ted.

He came to be one Christmas when young, John Bennett wished for him to be real, as he didn’t have any other friends. Through the years John and Ted became inseparable, Ted also grew up with John to become a foul mouthed, drug taking, hard partying plush toy. He’s really an anti-Woody in that he doesn’t need to be played with in the same way, he has no air of innocence and he certainly isn’t noble. At times Ted comes across like Brian from Family Guy. Albeit less urbane and not as well read, Brian likes to drink cocktails as well, I may be wrong but I’ve never seen him use a bong. They do have a similar taste in women in though.

The conflict in this is that John has a girlfriend who lives with him, and therefore Ted. In a way this makes the film a bit like You Me and Dupree in that the girlfriend has John decide between her and his childhood friend. The film is funnier than You Me and Dupree, but then if you’ve sat through that you’ll understand that everything is relative.

That’s the shame of this film really. I like the bits with Flash Gordon and Tom Skerett, and there are some lovely surreal touches. But when you consider that this is made by Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, American Dad and the Cleveland Show you might expect more from this. You may think that there should be ore to the plot when there’s so much character development. You may just think that the whole think is underwritten. This is another shame when you consider the way MacFarlane can juggle a number of storylines in 24 minutes and take you down a number of blind alleys.

I was left feeling that it was a very odd but distinctive film, due to the appearance of the badly behaved bear. I felt frustrated all the way through, I’m not sure if we’re supposed to believe in this world were whenever some people speak they appear to be lying even though they’re telling the truth. Perhaps though this would be the world where Peter Griffin could have become president. At the end I was unhappily left with the feeling that this film could have been so much better.