Now on DVD: The Joneses

David Duchovny proves what a gifted light comedian he is in The Joneses. It's a shame Demi Moore is her same wooden self and the film barely hangs together.

It's a cute central conceit, though. The Joneses are the new family on the block; Daddy drives a sports car, Mummy holds fabulous parties and the brother has arms, and a smile, to kill for. Behind the facade, they're actually at the vanguard of selling; they're clothes horses for hire, they sport the newest watches, eat the most fashionable of fad foods and do it all ostentatiously – but with such confidence and good humour, it's completely forgivable. None of them are related, and all of them are actors.

All kinds of crazy is going down behind the scenes, however. The son is coming out as gay, and the daughter is trying to sleep with the father. Meanwhile the parents are falling in love with one another – and potentially this'll all ruin the business relationship they have with one another. A relationship which involves competing for sales, naturally.

The problem is that it's just too tentative and placid an experience. It's helped by Moore's blank-eyed performance, but it's mostly because it's just not cutting enough to be a satire, not warm enough to be a character study and not tragic or moving enough to be a drama. The film hangs in a genre no-man's land, flirting with a direction before subscribing to none.

A wasted opportunity, then. But watch it for Duchovny.

For Your Consideration? Exit Through the Gift Shop

Firstly, sorry for the lack of postage this last week! Life has got in the way, however I'm back in business now, with some Banksy.

Frankly, Exit Through the Gift Shop is the film world's biggest advert since FedEx turned up in every other shot in Robert Zemeckis' Castaway. It's not a documentary about one man trying to unlock the myth of street artist Banksy, it's an advert for at the very least, the countercultural attitude Banksy claims to represent, or, more likely, an advert for Banksy himself.

And subsequently the main thrust of the film is somewhat lost, not to mention dull. It claims to be about Thierry Guetta, a filmmaker turned street artist, who has an obsessive compulsive relationship with the camera, filming every aspect of his life (from making breakfast to having a wee).

He accidentally stumbles upon street artists in his adopted home town of LA and follows them around, claiming he's making a documentary. He's not making a documentary, he just stores the footage in shoeboxes in his spare room. It's only when he hears of Banksy that he decides to put his footage together into a feature.

For me, there are too many celebrity cameos (even if they are in context), too much of a knowing wink and too many moments which don't ring true enough for this to be diverting. Perhaps it's all for real, and I'm just a cynical curmudgeon. And perhaps I was disappointed that there wasn't very much Banksy in it (there really is only a smattering, buried in the middle of the film). But it's not well rounded enough as a documentary to leave me satisfied on any level.

If it gets the Oscar, I'll leave a brown smear on the streets of Oxford.

The Obligatory Oscar Noms Post

Sorry guys, but I had to squeeze it out. But that's for another kind of blog – I also had to write something quick on the Oscar noms.

Few surprises – this was year was a safe list. All the expected movies got shouts – The King's Speech, in particular, was draped with nominations. Aside from this biggie, Brits didn't do badly at all this time around - Another Year got a look in, and sort-of-Brit-born Inception did well. Where most people would look at Best Film (it's got to be The King's Speech) or possibly Best Director (either Darren Aronofsky'll get the gong for his Brian de Palma and Roman Polanksi impressions in the otherwise quite divisive Black Swan or Boyle will get it for the technical wizadry of 127 Hours), the most interesting category is definitely Best Actress. Some of the others are too easy – Firth and Rush are bound to win for The King's Speech, for instance. And Sorkin will get the adapted screenplay for The Social Network.

But let's break it down Best Actress:

Annette Bening - The Kids Are All Right. That little-seen Hollywood figure, the ageing, but successful, woman is seen here. I did honestly prefer co-star Julianne Moore's performance in the movie, but Bening 's showier role is still more than worthy.

Nicole Kidman - Rabbit Hole. John Cameron Mitchell's, ahem, straightest film to date has got comparatively little buzz, but has been achieving some warm reviews. Kidman won before, but I think she's the dark horse here.

Jennifer Lawrence - Winter's Bone – Long predicted nom for this great performance. An otherwise very indie film, newcomer Lawrence brings Jodie Foster levels of precocity to the screen. She'll be a favourite to win this.

Natalie Portman - Black Swan. She was bound to get nominated, but her performance has divided people. Some say she lacks the depth for the role, others say her fragility is brilliance in itself. I think she has a good chance, but she's no dead cert.

Michelle Williams - Blue Valentine. The deserved winner – a stunning performance in a brilliant film. But will the controversy of the film's oral sex scene spoil her chances, or will it keep it in the academy's, erm, head?

Who wins? Well, find out in a month and a bit!

Laughter in the dark: Five films where you shouldn't really be laughing ...

1. Orphans. 1996, UK, Peter Mullan
Sweary Scottish folk smash statues of the Virgin Mary, manhandle disabled people and get semen in their faces. And it's bookended by a death and a funeral. OK, so it's not all played for laughs but Peter Mullan's directorial debut is melting with dark, wry humour almost winning out amongst the inevitable dour Celticiana.

2. Harold and Maude. 1971, USA, Hal Ashby
The seventies saw suicide becoming painless in MASH so it was almost inevitable that the ultimate form of self abuse would become funny. Bud Cort constructs fake suicides with theatrical abandon in between falling in love with an eighty year old. Oh, that Hal Ashby and his counter-cultural ways.

3. The Idiots. 1998, Denmark, Lars Von Trier
Lars Von Trier's foray into dogme sees a bunch of 20-something pretend to be mentally ill. Just for something to do. As if offending the audience's sensibilities wasn't enough, Trier throws in some penetrative sex for good measure in this ugly, rather patchy, movie.

4. Abigail's Party. 1977, UK, Mike Leigh
Put some of the most awful characters you'd ever not hope to meet into a room, and it'll be something like Mike Leigh's slice of gauche, middle class horror. Alison Steadman rides on a tidal wave of estuary English over the other actors to steal the show in this modern classic.

5. Fargo. 1996, USA, Joel/Ethan Coen
Black as kohl, this is an obvious choice for the list. The key here is Frances McDormand, whose sturdy, but humane, police officer offers a sweetness and warmth which makes the black comedy writhing around her even more delicious.

And on a related note:

You may have missed ... The Infidel

The Infidel attempts something few British films have yet done – portray an everyday British- Muslim family just trying to get by.

It's a shame then that the trowled on contrivances of the comedy and of the plot get in the way. The most irksome is how the central conceit is revealed – the very middle aged Omid Djalili's Mahmud discovers he was born to Jews and adopted by Muslim parents after finding his birth certificate in a box of miscellaneous possessions. It's pretty thin – and you would have thought he'd have seen his birth certificate by his age. This happens to coincide with his son's wedding, to the daughter of a Muslim fundamentalist. And also, of course, becoming aware of a more than Jewish than Jewish neighbour in Richard Schiff's Lenny.

The comedy is equally as ham-fistedly constructed in this feature screenplay debut by David Baddiel. Baddiel's understanding of what works in a cinema is not much different to what works in a TV sitcom and the result is a lot of people speaking and gesticulating in rooms. You feel it should be punctuated by a laughter track. Director Josh Appignanesi tries to add a more cinematic feel with depth in frame, longer takes, panning shots and the like, but his style just doesn't seem to fit the material. The result is a very awkward tone with jokes all but disappearing into the background.

That all said, Omid Djalili is good value as Mahmoud. Djalili is a gifted physical comedian and he's particularly good with mannerisms, inventive comedy dancing and accents. He does get some laughs and it's probably due to him that the material works as well as it does.

Throughout, glimmers of insight and the genuinely funny peep through. However, there's a lot more cons than the pros in this disappointing feature.

Now on DVD: Dog Tooth

Dogtooth is, superficially at least, the oddest film of the last few years. The closest point of comparison is probably to Ian Banks' cult eighties novel The Wasp Factory. In that, a father and his two sons lead, somewhere in rural Scotland, an extraordinarily unconventional life which involves everything from compulsive table leg measuring to bouts of extreme animal cruelty. One of Dogtooth's most memorable scenes also involves a sudden, shocking scene of animal cruelty, but the real similarity lies in both piece’s depictions of families creating their own private codes of conduct and, in Dogtooth, even language.

Again, the location here is remote. We don't know where exactly, but we can presume it's somewhere in rural Greece. The family is dominated by a crazed patriarch who releases fish in the swimming pool and awards his children stickers for behaviour he deems good – behaviour that is, for the most part, nondescript random acts of living. Behind closed doors the kids have all kinds of sex with each other and, in the evenings, the family gather to watch home movies in which nothing particularly happens.

All of this is told in a disquieting still, detached style. The camera rarely moves and sometimes the edit also lingers. The lighting is usually rather bright. However rarely do we feel like voyeurs. The action is so alien and although we see physical, sexual intimacy, rarely do we see any emotional rawness. The camera is rarely at anything other than a mid-shot; this is a close-up-free zone.

Giorgos Lanththimos must be commended for his consistency and endeavour to see his concept play out. But despite the cold humour and the commitment to the increasingly bizarre, there's neither very much soul or very much insight on display here. A family that creates its own language and rich inner world, albeit a violent and incestuous one, is a concept begging for endless excavation, but this film is too interested in confining itself to the grotesque. It's provocative grotesque, sure, which does ask questions. But you've got to have some meat, or chewy sinew, on those bloody bones to take it a little further.

In Cinemas: Blue Valentine

Although Blue Valentine's scenes alternate between the start and the end of a relationship, we rarely, respectively, feel particularly hopeful or particularly dismal. The jarring nature of this alternation instead produces a muddy, complicated effect which makes this indie drama a lot more interesting than it first appears.

We begin with the dismal. The school run is the choice of opening gambit for director/co-writer Derek Cianfrance. We notice that between the clearing away of dishes and ushering out of the front door, that the central couple barely speak to each other. It's an unusually extended scene for the film – probably the longest focus on the one extreme we're treated to. And emotions don't seem too bruised – Michelle William's Cindy could just be upset at the disappearance – and subsequent demise – of the family pet, for which she's printing out dozens of 'missing' posters at work.

It's only when we move into the opposite end of the relationship, where the two first meet – she hesitatingly flirts, he pours on the charm – that we realize what a difference this marriage made. And the extent of the couple's problems and coping strategies are slowly revealed until the incredibly sad pivotal episode in which Ryan Gosling's Dean makes a last ditch attempt at romance by booking them into the unknowingly ironic choice of the 'future room' at an out of town hotel.

The film then, is a constant process of cross-referencing and character illumination by deduction and scene adjacency. BV is the hip, and inevitably less subtle, American cousin of Francois Ozon's 5x2. But with its slightly abrasive and very occasionally overwrought edges, it possesses a frank, sometimes uncomfortably intimate nature. The film's sex is never unnecessary, but surprisingly confrontational. The emotions bleed out out the screen thanks to the heavy use of close up.

And throughout this emotional warzone, we get two very fine performances. Ryan Gosling shouts, sweats and cries as Dean, the soulful handyman. Michelle Williams sulks, internalises then explodes as the unhappy nurse Cindy. Without them, the movie would be an unusual and admirably honest experience. With these actors, it's essential.

In Cinemas: 127 Hours

With a split screen sped-up montage of people racing around a city (as one set of time lapsed images is clearly not frenetic enough), 127 Hours certainly begins with a shot of adrenalin to the arm.

And it continues this way for the first fifteen or so minutes, with the portrayal of real-life adventurer Aron Ralston risking every last bit of himself by ducking and diving through the canyons of Utah. And then he gets trapped in a large crack – his arm wedged into the side of the crack by a rather nasty rock. And this is how the next hour or so of the film continues. And, inevitably, it does feel like the 127 hours Aron spent trapped is showing in real time.

But to say Danny Boyle's new movie is boring is unfair. His lead man, James Franco, certainly helps. As Ralston, Franco is incredibly likeable even when he is being stunningly obnoxious to family and acquaintances in the film's opening act. We want Ralston to escape from his plight, and we feel that every little misfortune that besets the beardy hero in the desert is high drama.

Boyle's direction, aptly enough, fills in the other cracks. From extreme close up to expansive wide shot, fantasy sequence to bleary-eyed half-remembered flashback, Boyle keeps up the pace and dramatic tension. The story's memorable and well-known turning point, where Aron Ralston finds a way to escape, is hinted at throughout before finally happening. Boyle knows how to get his audience eating from the palm of his hand, and his little manipulations and tricks are entirely forgivable for the verve he employs to pull them off. When the scene finally hits, it's both electric and eye-watering.

Like Slumdog Millionaire, the film's emotional tug of a conclusion is perhaps an inevitably of the film's story rather than down to Boyle's skill. The end also Boyle riding on the wave of catharsis for a little too long to truly tingle any spines. And although inevitably there are longeurs (it's hard to think of a filmmaker in the world who could make a mainstream movie about this subject and not have it drag in places), Boyle has done an exceptionally impressive job of bringing a difficult story to film – and, rarely, an experience which is essential to see on the big screen.

Now on DVD: Splice

In Splice, Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley play a married couple working as scientists. Brody and Polley, with their fey charms and killer cheek bones, convince you of their supposed profession in the same way that Jake Gyllenhaal and Gwyneth Paltrow made you believe maths geniuses could have perfect skin and have rippling bodies in Proof. Not a great start, then.

OK, so the casting is a little hokey but the film is surprisingly fresh. The pair foster a genetically engineered human-animal child which they name 'Dren'. In a final nod to complete unbelievability they smuggle it out of their commercially-funded lab (they and only one other person know it exists) and take it home in order to raise it.

This is when the real interest begins. Polley's Elsa sees it as a dry-run for the child she and her husband have never had the time or the interest to have. Brody's Clive (yes, you heard me, his character is called Clive), initially is jealous but his relationship with Dren gets more complex and disturbing over time. Freud would love this movie.

The film with its confused casting and push-me-pull-you subject matter (is it an alien movie? Is it a relationship movie? And, with the constant transformation of its central alien, it body horror?) is subsequently a bit of a mess. However, in its tangle are some eyebrow-raising surprises .

Classic Corner: Through a Glass Darkly

Bergman's knack of presenting unhappy people writhing painfully around in their own psychodramas is as stunningly efficient as ever in 1961's Through a Glass Darkly.

With the aloof patriarch, David (Gunnar Björnstrand) finally returning from overseas, a Swedish family get together at the family home. Unfortunately for them, this happens to be on the desolate, remote island of Faro. David is finishing off his new novel, and with it he's aspiring to greatness rather than his usual barrel loads of sales. His daughter, Karin (Harriet Andersson – in an extraordinary performance) has recently been released from a psychiatric hospital and is still shifting around the edges of sanity with what is, in his view, an incurable mental illness. And the youngest is experiencing an existential, or horomonally-driven, mindfuck of his own. Happy times then.

This all leaves an in-law, Karin's husband Martin (Max Von Sydow) with a lot on his plate. Especially when his wife starts hearing voices and seeing God. But Martin is a largely absent, or at least ineffectual, figure – it's the brother, Minus, who shares the brunt of her breakdown in the house. Minus is Karin's confidante – and with his self-professed hatred of females, it's a curious choice.

The saddest thing about the movie is the feeling that love isn't enough to save these people. The snake that eats its own tale, Ouroboros, seems a good metaphor for the situation – these people are introspective souls and are naturally isolated from their family, this introspection breeds an inability to externalise which leads them to be more introspective and more isolated from each other. The only thing that can exist in these conditions is unhappiness.

What is more is they all see the world through a glass darkly, and for not what it really is. With a spare, Bach soundtrack, austere but hair-raisingly good cinematography and a horribly brilliant sense of doom, you know this ain't going to end well.

Ten days, eight films, I DECIDE: Film Diary 2011, Part I

This year, thus far, I have watched eight films. There may be a ninth tonight, but we shan't talk about that. I have to have some privacy this blogspheric outer space, right? So, in the order of watching, here is my film diary thus far.

Severance – British character actors, and Danny Dyer, get slaughtered in a Hungarian forest. About as scary as an oak tree, but relatively diverting.

The Man Who Would Be King – Colonial wet dream with Sean Connery smouldering in uniform and Michael Caine SHOUTING A LOT ... it also happens to be fiendishly entertaining.

"Fiendishly entertaining"

Gomorrah – hard as bullets Italian mob drama which isn't for those of short attention spans or nervous dispositions, but it's full of intelligence and eye-watering confrontation.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu – life is slow dying apparently, as is this movie; it's well-acted, well-observed stuff but it completely lacks any dramatic tension or verve

White Material – Claire Denis struggles between abstraction and colonial guilt in this muddled thriller which nevertheless showcases Isabelle Huppert's puppy-melting stare at its best.

"Isabelle Huppert's puppy-melting stare"

Die Another Day (second viewing) – not quite the weakest Brosnan Bond (that's The World is Not Enough), but this is a below average caper; it does feature Toby Stephens' glorious (and weirdly attractive?) villainry.

Die Hard with a Vengeance (umpteenth viewing) – a film full of head-smacking stupidity, and it's ridiculously over long, but for all its bells and whistles, your ears will be ring-a-ding-ing afterward

"a film full of head-smacking stupidity"

Lonesome Jim – coming across like a belated gasp of long-forgotten 90s indie cinema, this low-key slow burner features a lead character difficult to empathise with, but it's full of great moments and performances

NEW RELEASE: Nothing to Crowe About ...

After a few years of bad media coverage and some rather unlikeable performances (culminating in the craptacular borefest of Robin Hood last year) Russell Crowe returns showing some rather uncharacteristic warmth in The Next Three Days.

Irritatingly, the film is a less enjoyable, less surprising experience as serial writer/director/ham Paul Haggis stretches believability to the point that your brain will dribble out your ears in protest. And to save any more suffering, you'll encourage it to continue.

Crowe plays a family man and a literature professor trying to break his woman out of jail. She may or may not have murdered one of her rather annoying friends, but reality is of little importance to the crusading Crowe. He shows that someone from a form of skills non-specific academia can fashion explosive devices, find fatal flaws in the US prison system and manage to cleverly evade the cops on more than one occasion. Pass the tissue, that was a bit of my cerebral cortex.

That said, the climax is muscle-botheringly tense and my interest rarely waned throughout the movie. You even get a blustering, slathering cameo from a chain-smoking Liam Neeson injected into the mix. It epitomises the film – it's completely overbearing, barely believable and is prone to spouting clangers. But it's fun and diverting. You could do worse.

Now on DVD: White Material

Last week I wrote a blog about inadvertently distracting things in films. White Material has one of these – Christophe(r) Lambert's face. It is part encased in a surprising agelessness and, perhaps more worryingly, looking like it's about to fall off.

No matter, Isabelle Huppert acts her socks off in an act of desperate compensation in Claire Denis's handsome post-colonial existential horror movie. At least, that's what I think this is. We begin with a helicopter encircling Huppet's wandering French farm-owner, complete with a men shouting down from the chopper, advising her to abandon the African country she is living and working in. Yet something makes her stay. But we're never sure what. Things don't tend to get any less ominous in a film which is a procession of almost-events, from naked tatooed men with gammy feet through to children with machetes.

Consequently, there's very little get a grip on, let alone care about. Denis's evasion of a plot line and backstory is almost as self-conscious as some of the free-falling hand held camera action. And it's incredibly humourless, joyless artifice too.

That said, Huppert is as great as usual. She's got a rare ability to portray a character's inner life all through her eyes. A steely gaze with some terrible trauma bubbling underneath, it's textbook Huppert but it's nevertheless compelling to watch.

And I've no doubt that Claire Denis has something significant to say about colonialism and racism in modern Africa. But in a film which holds its cards very close to its chest thoughout, I just got the impression the oblique and the mysterious was far more important to her than the truth. And that's troubling.

Movies That Are Good For You

Inspired by watching The Death of Mr Lazerescu (think Eastern European art house cinema verite WHERE NOTHING HAPPENS .. SLOWLY) I have compiled a list of Movies That Are Good For You.

Call it cinematic bran, call it a xx hour burst of masochistic endurance, watch one of the following films and you know, be totally on my wave length.

Movies That Teach You Patience
Ingmar Bergman, Scenes of a Marriage. A couple get together, bicker and fall apart. And it takes three hours. The TV series it was edited down from runs for over five hours. Along the way we get involves copious monologues, middle class hand-wringing and strong scenes of Liv Ullmann emoting. And it's absolutely brilliant.

The virtue of experimentation
David Lynch, Inland Empire The question whether it has a plot or not is irrelevant when you get David Lynch's most uncompromising movie since his debut in 1977 with Eraserhead. Succumb to the three hours of headfuckery and bunny-headed soap stars, and you'll get something rather special.

For appreciating Hollywood's golden past
John Huston, The Misfits The tone shifts more than Marilyn Monroe's alleged onset mood swings, but this John Huston film is the quintessential noble failure. Career best perfromances from Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, and you get the elegaic sunset of Hollywood glamour.

To appreciate that you shouldn't take things for granted
Woody Allen's output since 1997. From Celebrity onwards, the comatosed presence of Woody Allen's genius has only shown the odd twitch of genius. It's a cautionary tale though – you can't make films that often, about subject matters that narrow, and still be putting out great stuff forty years on. But you need to see at least a couple of them to appreciate this – and how good he once was.

To appreciate that good does always mean pleasant
Krzysztof Kieślowski, A Short Film About Killing A nasty little film about crime and punishment, this – like Scenes from a Marriage – also came from a TV series – Dekalog. Not only the perfect introduction to that series, Kieslowski's work and Polish miserabism, this is a lesson in how less can sometimes be more.

To appreciate a master of cinema
Charlie Chaplin, Limelight Although not his best film by far, its his most poignant. A visibly ageing Chaplin plays an entertainer struggling to entertain as his act becomes obsolete. Call it a metaphor for his career and the long-gone days of silent cinema – or just call it a perfect introduction to an icon of twentieth century cinema. Your call.

"Young men's love then lies/ Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes"

Like many people growing up in my generation, Pete Postlethewaite will always be the Priest in Baz L's Romeo and Juliet. I've since gone on to see him in all kinds of other stuff, of which he's equally brilliant in too.

Just the other week I saw a production of the play by Pilot Theatre - and their Priest was virtually a carbon copy of PP's performance.

Mr Postlethwaite - you'll be missed.

In praise of Jake Gyllenhaal

There are many things to like about Jake Gyllenhaal. Firstly, and probably most importantly, this:

But lest we forget his acting talents too (heaven forbid). He has delivered us one of the most iconic performances of the noughties before the noughties really began. In Donnie Darko, he brooded his little cottons off and showed that leading barely 20-something men could have something between the ears. In a thespian climate replete with such actorly luminaries as Seann William Scott, DJ Qualls and a pre-Buried Ryan Reynolds, it was nigh on miraculous.

It was a performance he replicated in a note-for-note fashion in the criminally underrated The Good Girl. Well, note-for-note if you replace the sci-fi element with chain-smoking and The Catcher in the Rye. What remained the same was his hotness.

In a similarly indie vein, he starred in an adaptation of Pullitzer Prize winning Proof, almost bursting out of his t-shirt. And cropped up in Nicole 'Please Give' Holofcener's Lovely and Amazing And, er, got stuck in a library in The Day After Tomorrow (I'd totally like to be rifling through his reference collection).

But surely his masterstroke was in Brokeback Mountain. His portrayal of gay cowboy Jack Twist was a masterstroke in hotness understatement.

He then had worked with a bunch of great directors and actors like David Fincher, Dustin Hoffman, Sam Mendes and …

Screw it, here's another picture:

Such a dreamboat.