Boxing Day

Have you ever opened a novel half-way through and begun reading until the end? No? But perhaps, over this Christmas season, you switched on the television and watched a movie that's already started? Why is there a difference? There shouldn't be. The problem is that most books you read you will have paid for, whereas the television is free (relatively speaking). As another excuse, there is the semi-tragic sentiment 'there was nothing better on'. Also, unless you have Sky plus, you can't rewind films once they've started, where you can just turn back the pages of a book. You might also say that films take less effort, they aren't as serious a medium, and it is much easier to 'figure it out as it goes along'. These are weak excuses, but based on some reality: many more movies are light-entertainment than books, especially those you'll find on television. Its shorter history and method of distribution means it is a popular medium, where much of literature aims at high art. This difference explains why most of us have seen many films more than once, but hardly read any books twice. These comparison might be meaningless, or banal, but it is insightful sometimes to question our practices, before assuming them. Happy Christmas.

Sunday

You can sometimes guess how good a film will be by how much the studio publicises it. I heard very little about Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Of course, studio publicity and press coverage form a symbiotic cycle of sorts, but in this case the little advertising the movie received seemed to match the overall quality. I wanted to like it. After all, I loved Anchorman, and love Will Ferrell's performance in almost every other movie. Plus, this film had John C. Reilly and Sacha Baron Cohen. It's possible I wasn't in the right mood (I am a great believer in matching your mood to a movie). I have been quite ill recently. On the day in question, I struggled to eat a sandwich, ran out of breath, sweated, and eventually gave up. My eyes were watering almost constantly. So, not ideal conditions. But this film's problems go beyond my physical condition. At its heart was that Will Ferrell's character isn't very likable. You can't sympathise with him in the same way that you can in Anchorman. This is a great problem seeing as, despite the context, the plot is exactly the same. And, the context is a sporting movie, which are very hard to make interesting, set around motor racing, which is perhaps the hardest to pull off. So, we have to judge the film by the quality of the jokes. Yes, sometimes I did laugh out loud. But it wasn't enough, and it wasn't frequent. I read that Knocked-Up and Superbad with their sensitive humour have sidelined Will Ferrell, and that he may struggle to command such large budgets anymore. On the evidence of this, I wouldn't disagree.

Saturday

Renting videos has become quite difficult lately. I went in to my local store yesterday looking for a new release to watch, only to find that I'd seen virtually all of them already at the cinema. Those that I hadn't seen, I didn't want to see. Most of the time, it seems, I will just have to choose between those that I liked the first time. Luckily, however, there was one movie (and I'm pretty sure only one) that I hadn't seen in the theatre, but had wanted to see: The Black Dahlia. This seemed to me like a bad copy of L.A. Confidential. Perhaps the novel by James Ellroy was good, but the adaptation seemed unnecessarily confusing (although watching it in parts over five hours might have hindered me there). Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank were good, but Josh Hartnett and Scarlett Johansson were miscast. Hartnett was ok, and could be good in this sort of role, but Johansson was too innocent and blank to pull off this role. She has no character or interest. Overall, the film seemed too light, too clear and colourful. The mood wasn't right at all. I was especially disturbed by the unexplained first-person steadicam shot we got at one point of Hartnett greeting Swank's family. Very odd. If it's referencing something else, fine, but it left me perturbed. I've never particularly got along with Brian De Palma. I thought this film might change my mind. It almost did, but not quite.

Friday

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from Lions for Lambs, and I'm not entirely sure what I got. On first hearing of the film I thought, 'directed by Robert Redford, this will be a left-wing movie condemning the war', but with all the Oscar buzz and the big name actors, I for some reason began to think 'this must be a pro-war film'. After watching it last night, I still don't know which one it is. You may know that I've been wanting to see more films produced that deal with the Iraq war, and this wish is slowly coming true. It may be that this is the best of them. I was impressed by the format. The film takes place almost in real time over about an hour, dealing with three scenarios: a journalist interviewing a pro-war senator, a professor meeting with one of his students, and two soldiers stranded in Afghanistan. The limited scale and scope of the movie almost makes it seem like a play. I'd have to say, however, that the dialogue just isn't quite there. I am in some ways glad, though, that this film isn't clearly pro- or anti-war. It condemns the reasons for going to war, but then hesitates - what do we do now? This film seems to be a question rather than an answer. The war on terror cannot be won, and in a similar way this film doesn't conclude. I suppose I have to say I liked it. It wasn't as patriotic as I thought it might be, nor as left-wing as I feared it could be. As a 'movie' movie, if you know what I mean, it probably fails, but it's an interesting work of art tackling contemporary issues. If it has a message, it's 'do something with your abilities, make a difference', and that doesn't appear to have any political bias.

Thursday

I may have mentioned it here before that I like buddy cop movies - such as Stakeout and 48 Hours (although I've never got along that well with Lethal Weapon). Anyway, last night I saw Murder at 1600: Wesley Snipes is a loose cannon detective assigned to solve a murder at the White House. I was expecting terrible, but was mildly surprised by some elements here. Yes, the film was awful, but the plot was a lot more complex and interesting than it should have been. There was potential here, at least, for an interesting drama. The problem was that they went down the buddy cop route, which didn't really suit the material. Of course, another problem was that Snipes doesn't actually have a partner. His fellow detective makes only sporadic appearances, and the Secret Service female agent he's assigned has a bizarre only half-romantic relationship with him. The character Snipes has to play is odd too. He's a loose cannon, as mentioned, never doing things by the book, but he's also sensitive: he's being evicted from the house he lives in, and he makes model replicas of Civil War battles and the early landscape of Washington DC. Yes, you read that right. Bizarre, isn't it? So, something went fundamentally wrong here, that perhaps could have been interesting.

Tuesday

Unfortunately, I watched How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days last night. This is a terrible film. I don't think there was a moment that I enjoyed. The characters are unlikable, and the plot farcical and implausible. Somehow it reminded me of Down With Love, although it lacked that film's irony, and self-knowing ridiculousness. The actors were entirely miscast and lacking in chemistry. Matthew McConaughey is a character actor, really, although I thought he did just about work in Failure to Launch. Kate Hudson was awful. So, there is very little else to say about this movie. It should never have been made.

In other news, how many films has Kenneth Branagh made recently? Shakespeare's As You Like It, Sleuth, and now The Magic Flute. Odd.

Sunday

I watched Zodiac again last night. It still remains a very good film. Unfortunately the two of us watching it were tired and slightly drunk, so we kept falling asleep. This, however, just points to type of film it is, or isn't. It's not a thrilling horror film, or exciting detective movie. It's long, and complicated. The shifts in pace are subtle and nuanced. You have to concentrate, and you'll be rewarded. It doesn't assume anything, or force anything upon the audience. The performances from Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo are excellent. I was still as interested in it as I was the first time I saw it, which much say something for it's quality. David Fincher is an interesting director (Alien 3, Se7en, The Game, Fight Club and Panic Room), I wouldn't say one of my favourites, but I have seen all his films, and make a point of seeing new ones when they come out.

Wednesday

I'm not a particular fan of superhero movies, but last night I watched Elektra. I haven't seen Daredevil, where her character apparently also has a role (and from which this film was spawned), so perhaps I'm missing elements that might have made me enjoy this more. Because for me the main problems were that we don't see her development from 'real' person to 'superhero': this is done later, and only partially, in flashbacks, which doesn't work, or doesn't have the same effect as a straight narrative. We begin the film with her already being a hero. Thus we don't feel grounded, don't get to know her and go through the process with her. Consequently, our sympathy isn't there for her when it should be. She isn't a classically tormented hero(ine), and doesn't particularly have any interesting powers. Overall, the rules of her world are never fully explained. They only get close with vague terms and ideas which seem weak. I didn't ever really know who the enemy was or what they were doing. Thus the conclusion is not exactly satisfactory. Critics are swayed by the attractiveness of Jennifer Garner, but I don't subscribe to this. The director, Rob Bowman, has been almost exclusively a director for television so far, and it is perhaps unfair, but accurate, to say that he hasn't made the step up with this film. The fight scenes just aren't interesting enough to keep you watching when, as it happens here, the characters and plot are this mediocre.

Tuesday

I rented Hero two weeks ago but didn't manage to watch it. I'd never seen any of Yimou Zhang's films. I once watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (not the same director, but a similar style) but I wasn't really paying attention. Last night, however, I saw House of Flying Daggers. I thought it was fairly incredible. In general, however, it received poorer reviews than Hero, so perhaps what I appreciated could just be elements copied from that film. I don't know. It was mainly the effects, the stylistics, that I was impressed by. The sound, too, was astonishing - both in the sword fights, and in the love scenes when intimacy is conveyed through the breathing alone. The battle scene in the bamboo forest (if that's what it's called) was breath-taking at times. The problem came in the plot itself, which was compelling to begin with but undermined itself with a twist towards the end. And then it kind of faded away. Nothing is actually resolved, it becomes almost ridiculous. Although I felt there was less of the 'flying' that there is in Crouching Tiger, which I find a bit annoying. Overall, what I admire is that they're not afraid of making serious, epic films. Anyway, I eagerly await seeing Hero.

P.S. Yes, yesterday I did indeed post a short story (or short something, prose poem?). I hope you enjoyed it. I don't know yet if will become a regular feature or not.

The Grilse

I’m going home. Tell her I’m going home. Tell her it was nothing she said or didn't say. Tell her I will come back, but I will not come back for her. Nothing has changed, tell her that. She remains what she always was. But I am going home. I feel the same, I am the same person, but it is only as a stranger to myself that I exist. I haven’t changed, but I’m going home in the hope that I will change. I don’t know if this is possible. Stories are always about change, and my story so far has been about me not changing. I don’t know if life can become a book. But I’m going home, and I hope to change. There’s nothing I want there, except what isn't here. Tell her that. Tell her you love her, and admit to yourself that you do.

Saturday

Unable to sleep one night earlier this week, I turned on the television at about 3am and found a programme called Dinner for Five on ITV4. Jon Favreau hosts a dinner with four Hollywood friends (you may remember the format from the shows Ruby Wax used to do, although I don't know who came first). With him were Peter Berg (director of The Kingdom), Paul Rudd (Friends, Anchorman), Judd Apatow (director of Knocked Up), and Famke Janssen (X-Men). As you can imagine, this was a pretty interesting discussion - especially as it was recorded before the two directors had really achieved the fame they have now. I don't know if this show is still running, but apparently it started in 2001. The guests have been pretty interesting: guests. If only they'd put it on at a reasonable time!

Friday

Do you remember the other double-bill that came out recently? It was Clint Eastwood's two films on the Battle of Iwo Jima. I had seen one of them, Letters from Iwo Jima, and last night managed to watch the other, Flags of Our Fathers. I hesitate to say which one was better, probably the first. It might be unfair to compare them, though. They show two different sides to the same story, in a way. But the perspectives are not complete. We don't see exactly the same events each time. In fact, I don't think there is much crossover at all. This 'American' version is good with the actual narration of the battle, the problem for me was the inter-cutting with the aftermath when the heroes are back home, and then the present day when they are all old men. It seemed unnecessarily confusing. They should have focused on one time period, and probably one soldier, alone. As it was, the ending went on for far too long as they tried to tell everything that happened in their lives afterwards. The voice-over became irritating, and suddenly patriotic, when it seemed the rest of the movie had been about the pointlessness of patriotism. So, it was good in parts, but contradicted itself in the end. Nonetheless, these two films together are fascinating to watch, and it may have helped if I'd seen them closer together.

Wednesday

I assume Planet Terror, like its Grindhouse counter-part Death Proof, has been extended from its original edit, but I don't know. It did feel a little bit too long. However, it has been getting better reviews than Death Proof, although I suspect this may be due to some critics being bored by the Tarantino fanfare that accompanies his releases. As you'd guess, this film is not as self-referential, or post-modern, as Death Proof. It is, more or less, just a good fun zombie movie. The quality throughout is scratchy, and there is a humorous 'missing reel', but otherwise you might not notice the in-jokes (including a part for Tarantino himself). I really would love to see these two movies together, in one night, whilst drinking beer and eating popcorn. That's what they're intended for, and I'm sure it would be great. However, to judge this film on its own, it is good fun. The suspense builds suitably, although I didn't get the big ending I was hoping for. The eventual conclusion, however, was funny enough to have most people leave the cinema smiling. As the second part of one of modern cinema's more exciting experiments, I'd see this if I were you.

Thursday

I hadn't heard anything about The Lookout until I saw it in the cinema listings. I think you'll only find it at two cinemas in London. It's the directorial debut of the writer Scott Frank (Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Minority Report, The Interpreter), starring Jeff Daniels and the excellent Joseph Gordon-Levitt (star of Brick). Gordon-Levitt is a promising young man whose life falls apart after a car crash - he suffers frontal lobe damage and can no longer function properly. Most significantly, he cannot sequence events. As you can already tell, this film is like a cross between Brick and Memento. He starts to work nights in a bank and soon becomes involved in a plot to rob it. This is, like Memento and Brick, modern, intelligent film noir. The performances are all excellent. It is a little slow in the middle, but picks up brilliantly towards the end. Like Fargo, but without so much of the black humour. It's astonishing this movie hasn't had more publicity. It's much better than, say, Eastern Promises, and a lot of other films out at the moment. Of course, this sort of and greater injustices are happening everyday in the film industry, and I can't do much about it, but at least I can try.

Friday

I've never been entirely certain about the movies of David Cronenberg. Of course I haven't seen them all. I think I've seen some of his early films Shiver and Rabid, as well as the more recent eXisteZ and A History of Violence (and a few in-between). People believe they can easily label him. A friend told me Cronenberg's films were all about the body. Perhaps. But A History of Violence and the current Eastern Promises are a slight change in direction. I don't think I'd say I liked it. It was good, but there was something not quite polished enough about it. It felt amateurish, in a way. The dialogue was stilted and artificial, there wasn't a natural flow to the plot, or the character's interactions. The Russians weren't as threatening as they should've felt. Perhaps because they were mostly played by non-Russian actors. It was intriguing, and better than most of the films you will see in the cinema at the moment, but not great. Overall, I felt that we were only given hints at the depth of the characters. The complexity of Viggo Mortensen's role was just briefly suggested. It seems like there was more here, more potential, than was actually expressed.

Friday

In yesterday's theguardian there was a short article on Wes Anderson. It confirmed many of the things I thought about the director, but never really voiced. He is great, but has yet to make a great film. So far they have been 'whimsical', as the journalist put it, and out of touch with reality. The movies were entertaining, undoubtedly, but still somehow felt like a waste of a great talent. Apparently his new film, The Darjeeling Limited, fails to make any improvement on this situation. The journalist, however, doesn't mention The Life Aquatic, which I enjoyed. This film makes an attempt toward seriousness, but I believe again still fails. Putting serious events, such as death, into your movie doesn't make your movie serious. It is all about how you treat such events and into what context you put them. Earlier this year, though, Anderson made a short film with Natalie Portman and Jason Schwarzman called Hotel Chevalier. I haven't seen it, but apparently this was very good, and crossed over into seriousness succesfully. I'll try to track it down. But for now I'll go see The Darjeeling Limited, and continue to have faith in him.

Thursday

Michael Clayton has been out for a while. You may struggle to find it in cinemas. Its release was not overblown. There were a few trailers on TV, and some posters on bus stops. The reviews from critics, however, have been overwhelmingly positive. This is because the film is brilliant. I had doubted seeing it. For some reason the trailer contains the worst line in the whole film: 'you think you've got them all fooled, don't you?'. Everywhere else the dialogue is excellent. The acting is superb and the direction subtle and intense. The beginning was perhaps unnecessarily complicated, but it does make the ending much more exciting. And the conclusion is one of the most satisfying I've seen. This is a movie made for people who love movies. It allows the audience space and time to figure out what is going on, never dictating to them. I'm not sure about the title. This film isn't a biography, or particularly about Michael Clayton. It's about a situation, or a type of people. I don't want to say too much about it. I loved it, and I think you will too.

Wednesday

Last night I saw a very odd film. Starring Samuel L. Jackson and Milla Jovovich, you might think you'd (or I'd) have heard of it before. It's called No Good Deed and came out in 2002. Apparently its alternative title is The House on Turk Street, which is the name of the short story the film is based on. Looking its author up, you find that he also wrote The Maltese Falcon and other film noir type novels. This helps explain a bit of this film's bizarreness, since it is a film noir movie set in the present day. I believe its main faults are that it's terribly miscast and directed, but there is also a problem with the story. Perhaps this could be rescued by new cast and direction, but I suspect there's a reason a good writer's short story was never made into a film before - because it's not that good. There is very little tension or chemistry here. I didn't engage with anything that was going on. They tried to update some aspects of the story, but left others lingering in the 1940s, which just made it odd. It felt empty and hollow - the house they chose to shoot in, the locations and the camera-work. It looked like a TV movie, and I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't go straight to video (if it even made it to cinemas). The change of title was obviously for the worse, but the ending of the movie shows that there was some glimmer of a good idea in here somewhere.

Tuesday

When I was a young teenager, the movie everyone wanted to see was Navy Seals. For some reason I was never able to see it, and thus felt a large part of my life was missing. I saw the movie for the first time on Monday night. As you can imagine, I was deeply disappointed. I had other thoughts on my mind, and several times drifted away from watching to doing other things. But, still, a good movie should hold your attention. It seems entirely pointless. I can guess why people liked it, but I had hoped there was something more substantial to this movie than it being a cheap Top Gun copy. Charlie Sheen is amusing, perhaps because I now always imagine him as the character he is in Two And A Half Men. In general this film is going to be forgotten very quickly, if it hasn't been already. In other news, I think I discovered why I've been struggling to keep up with my posts here. Alex's gamboling blog has almost entirely ceased to function recently. When he was posting frequently, it in a way kept me going too. But now that he's stopped it feels like something's missing.

Monday

I've decided it would greatly benefit both me and you if I didn't try to catch up a week's posts in one day. Instead, we'll just forget about the missing entries in Stranded Cinema, and start afresh this week. Last night I watched the majority of Mickey Blue Eyes. I've seen scraps of it before - I don't know if I've ever seen the end (although I can guess what happens). It stars Hugh Grant as an auctioneer in love with a girl, Jeanne Tripplehorn, whose father, James Caan, is deeply involved with the Mafia. This, in its purest terms, is a situation comedy. And I think it's reasonably funny. The stereotype of the Mafia is perhaps over-used (and more originally inverted in Analyse This, which came out in the same year), but strangely not much fun is made of Grant's Englishness. Perhaps my liking for this film is influenced by the attractive Ms Tripplehorn, but I think it does achieve everything it sets out to achieve. It's funny, heart-warming, and all those other adjectives you associate with this kind of movie. Probably a very good Christmas movie, although, as I said, I'm still not sure I've seen the end. If they all die in a drive-by shooting, my verdict of this film may be different.

Tuesday

I remember being quite bored the first time I watched Mission: Impossible 2. Since then, however, people have told me they quite liked it, so I decided to give it another chance. It starts with a plane crash and hundreds of innocent people dying. As I've mentioned several times before, this isn't a good way to get the sympathy of your audience. Deaths are ok, as long as they are compensated for adequately, and as long as you don't really care about the people dying. Anyway, aside from this, I have to say the plot was awful and the dialogue not much better. The slow motion sequences were unnecessary - like his star Chow Yun-Fat, John Woo doesn't translate very well. His stylistics seem tacky and overly-sentimental. There were some good set-pieces (jumping out the building and the face switch) but overall I think this film fails. An evil enemy compound surrounded by men in black with automatic weapons is laughable now. We've moved on from this type of action film. As the director of the last James Bond said: as soon as you hear the theme music you feel comfortable. Modern action movies don't let us feel comfortable. The tone of this film just doesn't work, especially considering the woman was essentially prostituting herself for the benefit of Tom Cruise's character. Bizarre.

Monday

Watching Sean William Scott in Bulletproof Monk reminded me that he is one of quite a few young, promising actors who has not done many, or any, good films yet. I liked him in Evolution, but then I like almost everything about that movie. Mentioning Alfie earlier, also made me think that, really, Jude Law has yet to do something really spectacular. He can be quite annoying, but he does have potential. Josh Hartnett and Ryan Reynolds too (although The Nines may exclude him from this list) need to start getting in some good roles. And then I think of Ewan McGregor who seems to have just wasted his opportunities after Trainspotting. Perhaps I'm too harsh. Perhaps no good films are being made anymore? Or if they are, they're out of the Hollywood system where these actors are scared to go. Choosing what films to make must be incredibly hard for actors. They're not writers or directors - they don't really know what's going to be good, and how it will be produced. I suppose we have to admit the best actors do know, and do choose intelligently, but they are very rare indeed. A more succesful approach is to become attached to a great director, like Leonadro DiCaprio with Martin Scorcese, or Owen Wilson with Wes Anderson. The problem then, of course, is knowing which directors are actually good, and then getting them to like you.

Sunday

For some reason I wanted to see Bulletproof Monk when it came out. Perhaps it was merely the combination of Chow Yun-Fat and Sean William Scott, produced by John Woo, that seduced me. Whatever the reason, I only actually got round to seeing it last night. It's pretty bad. There were a lot of special effects - someone spent money on this movie - and sometimes they look good, but sometimes they also look very cheap. All the blue screen action looks terrible. The fight scenes just weren't quite good enough and felt awkward, especially when compared to The Matrix (which this obviously emulates). Chow Yun-Fat is a great comedy actor, but it's unfortunate he can't quite deliver the lines in English. The plot itself is absurd, more like a TV movie, or an episode of MacGyver. There is a scroll that can give whoever reads it all the power in the world. One chosen monk has to guard it, he will not age while it's near him, and he has currently been pursued by a Nazi for sixty years who has set-up an evil empire in its pursuit fronted by the Human Rights Organisation. See what I mean? The acting of everyone but the main characters is awful, and I'm sure some of the voices are dubbed. I suppose this could have been an interesting buddy-cop type film, but it fails dramatically.

Saturday

It may seem like I'm slowly falling behind again this week, and that is entirely true, but hopefully I'll catch up soon. Meanwhile, I thought I'd entertain you with another of my completely useless reviews. This time it's the Jude Law version of Alfie, made in 2004. I only saw parts of it, my concentration kept drifting, and I've never seen the original starring Michael Caine. All I can say is that it seemed to be pretending to be cooler than it actually was. It was more like a 90 minute fashion shoot than a movie. Jude Law just wasn't quite engaging enough. The problem was always going to be updating this film to modern times, and I don't think they succeeded. It still felt out of date. Alfie's philandering doesn't entirely seem plausible, and getting our sympathy is difficult. But there is something engaging about the film - what it was will have to wait until I actually watch it properly. I did like, however, the bravery of the director and the actor to leave the camera on Jude Law for a long time at the end. It's not often in a Hollywood movie that someone is just left to act, with no dialogue and no action, to express conflicting emotions, internal conflict and decisions being made.

Friday

I've been hearing about Stardust for a while now. The first I knew was that it was written by Jane Goldman, the wife of Jonathon Ross. For a long time this coloured my opinion of it. A few months ago they started showing trailers in the cinema. It looked fairly bad. Recently, however, I discovered that the story is actually written by Neil Gaiman (and Charles Vess), and merely adapted to the screen by Goldman (and someone else). Entirely influenced as I am by names and reputations, I then began to think more of this film. The premise sounds vaguely entertaining, but of course also very predictable. The problem was, and is, that this seems like a film out of time. Perhaps it would've worked in the 1980s, but we're just not interested in fairy-tales at the moment. Maybe the studio is hoping this movie will revive our interest in fantasy films, but I very much doubt it's going to do so. The title is awful, and the mere fact that it has so many stars in it makes an audience suspicious. Stars should be hard to obtain for a film, and to see so many cheapens them, in a way. So, it is not top of my list of movies to see, but I will attempt to do so, albeit sceptically.

Thursday

In his interesting comment yesterday, Adrian said how he'd seen Clerks 2 on a plane, and he wondered if that made any difference. The answer is a wholehearted 'yes', but how and to what extent is difficult to answer. I've been told that studios edit movies for planes, and they also have to adjust the format, I believe. Some directors resist this kind of thing, but even if the movie was shown exactly as it appeared in cinemas there are of course still differences. The size of the screen, the sound through the headphones, and the commotion around you. In many ways, I suppose, a plane is like a cinema - especially during a long flight when the lights will be dimmed. I first watched Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World on a plane, and I quite enjoyed it. The problem is, I found, that you keep drifting in and out of consciousness, and the film is normally on a loop, so that you'll watch it three or four times but not all together. I'm not sure how much thought studios put into showing their films on planes. Do they expect to make money at all? One thing I know is that, although it will never happen, it would've been great to see Snakes on a Plane in a plane.

Wednesday

After watching Clerks yesterday I decided to visit the IMDb trivia page on the film. I wonder if there is such a thing as knowing too much about a movie? If there is a picture you particularly love, I'd advise against viewing its trivia page. What I found out about Clerks was that it seemed to be entirely an accident. Almost every piece of trivia points out a different direction that should, or could, have happened, but due to chance didn't. For example, Kevin Smith and his friend Scott Mosier made a pact that whoever of them began a film first, the other would produce. It was just luck that Smith started first, and Mosier has produced all his movies since then. All the main characters were initially cast differently. The only reason the shop's shutters are down is because they could only shoot at night. The film was going to end with Dante being shot in an armed robbery of the store. And even the title was going to be different - Inconvenience. It often astonishes me how films are made at all, and how they get to the finished form which we believe they were initially conceived as. It frequently seems these people have no idea what they're doing, but somehow, sometimes, their collective creative efforts and accidents occasionally produce a good movie (although I am being unfair, the basic script for this film is ok). Anyway, only the very greatest directors appear to be able to force through their ideas whole from conception to completion.

Tuesday

Would you be as surprised as I was to learn that Clerks came out in 1994? And was thus made in 1993? Perhaps I was astonished by my own ignorance, because I only became aware of and watched this film probably in 1999-2000, and it felt contemporary then. Anyway, I watched it again last night for perhaps the first time in about five years. Undoubtedly the dialogue and the characterisation is great. The black and white felt claustrophobic and oppressive, though - even if this was the intended effect. The main appeal of the movie, really, is the character Randal - like Han Solo in Star Wars, you're not really interested in Luke, or Dante Hicks here. Randal is a character who doesn't change, although our perceptions of him may change by the end. Since I last saw this movie I've worked as a clerk, and met people who have worked their whole adult lives as clerks, so there was an extra level of enjoyment, and meaning, for me here. Otherwise, the direction is quite amateur, and seemed deliberately to draw attention to this fact, as if for novelty. The sentiments at the end are rather naive and simplistic, but I'd still say this is a good movie, alive with the force of the generation it was produced by and parodies.

Monday

You may have seen a trailer for the movie Black Sheep. You'll know if you have. It's about killer sheep in New Zealand - the kind of thing that sticks in your mind. I'd really like this film to be great. It could be as brilliant as Shaun of the Dead, or some other similar horror-comedy film. The premise is there, and the humour seems extremely black. I also have a feeling, though, that it might be terrible. We'll see. Also coming out soon is the interesting The Invasion, another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's directed by the director of Downfall, and so promises to be a bit better than your average Hollywood remake, but he could easily just have been 'shipped in' and told what to do, literally (as often happens to successful foreign directors). Again, we'll have to wait and see. The story is always a compelling one, and I hope they've treated it well. In this age of 'terrorists amongst us', the plot has a lot to offer and reveal.

Sunday

I have now finally finished the first season of Heroes (I haven't seen many movies at all recently, sorry). I don't know if it's a modern phenomenon or not that shows are aired before they have finished shooting the series, but it seems to be happening more and more frequently. This is especially the case with the long twenty-two or so episodes of American dramas. The advantage for the production company is that they can get an idea of what the audience does or doesn't like about the show. For example, in the series Vanished, the main character is killed off about half-way through the series and replaced with someone else. The show became popular and the company wanted a better actor in the lead role. Pretty astonishing, you have to admit, but little things like this are always happening. I'm sure changes were made to Heroes for the second half of the series after they realised they had a hit on their hands. The overall plot, surely, must change when the writers are told they are going to get another series. This definitely happened with Vanished, Heroes, and Prison Break, and is quite frustrating for the viewer. Things seem to be coming to a nice conclusion, but then something will come out of nowhere in the last episode to keep things propelling onwards.

Saturday

Finally Day Watch, the sequel to Night Watch, is out in cinemas. But the reviews so far have been mediocre, sometimes bad and sometimes ok. This is disappointing. Perhaps I was lulled by the Russian production and the sense of something different, when really these films are quite ordinary. I don't know. They're trying something unashamedly epic and original (although these movies are developed from novels), which is what Hollywood is increasingly not brave enough to do anymore. The style is glamorous, but the content is ugly - again something America is afraid of. Aside from this, there are still far too many other films out that I need to see. The Kingdom, whose premiere I accidentally walked into on Thursday, seems overrated, as does The Brave One. I'm interested in the westerns, but they've almost disappeared already. Several people have told me Run, Fat Boy, Run is good, but I remain unconvinced. I did see a good review for what looks appalling (and you can tell from the title): Hatchet. Maybe...

Friday

Perhaps the question you want to ask me is, is Death Proof a return to the early form of Reservoir Dogs for Tarantino or is it a mainly stylistic exercise like Kill Bill? I have to say the stylistics weren't actually that intrusive - only at the beginning, then the black and white reel halfway through, and the occasional strange cut (made to look like mistakes). Overall, it was much less than I thought it'd be. Perhaps in the shorter Grindhouse version the effect was more intense, and perhaps that would be better? Anyway, as you'd expect, this movie is relentlessly cool. The dialogue is not quite top notch, not polished enough and some conversations go on too long - like it was someone trying to imitate Tarantino, rather than the man himself. Not much really happens in the movie. The image of 70s cars driving in and out of contemporary traffic, listening to 70s music with people having strained artificial conversations, made me think that was perhaps Tarantino himself - out of place and time. But I don't know. Some of the stunts seemed to have been worked backwards: they come up with the idea for it, then created a preposterous plot and characters in order for them to achieve it. Nonetheless, it really picks up towards the end, and the conclusion is great fun. You really leave the cinema thinking: this is a film by one of greatest directors alive, and everyone should see it.

Thursday

You may have heard recently that this summer has been the best summer for movies in 40 years. Sadly, this was not because the films were particularly good, but because the weather has been miserable here (although, as you'd expect, I enjoy seeing films in sunny weather too). We were apparently up by 27% on last year, which is fairly incredible. Some of this also has to do with the amount of franchises we've seen - Bourne, Bond, Shrek, Spider-Man, Pirates. As Alex pointed out, these are 'pre-sold'. You get people in the door for your first week easily, and even if people subsequently hear bad reviews, they'll probably still go to see the movie because they liked the previous ones and they want to know how it all ends. Conversely, however, this summer can only have been bad for the burgeoning business of showing films outside, in parks, on large screens. This sort of viewing was becoming increasingly popular, but now may have taken a battering. What's coming next year? Indiana Jones, Narnia, and The Happening (M. Night Shyamalan's latest) so far...

Wednesday

Yesterday a film crew were set up outside, opposite the entrance to Birkbeck college. It was possibly the largest crew, with the most amount of equipment, I've ever seen. They had a swinging crane, a big white screen, and a large lamp, as well as a lot of other stuff in-between. There were lots of people in orange jackets, but I didn't see any actors - not that I examined anything carefully. Every time I walked past (I use that walkway perhaps six times a day) they tried to usher us in a certain direction. It seemed a futile effort - directing thousands of unpredictable students. I think they wanted some as extras, but not everyone. Anyway, once whilst walking past with a friend, we did hear the director shout 'roll video', and so we may have got ourselves into a movie. You never know.

Tuesday

I don't know about you, but I feel fully refreshed after Alex's postings. Now I'm only two days behind, which is easily recoverable. Sometime in the near future, I may be able to tell you the reason why I let things slip, but not yet... Anyway, as he said, it was a bit strange commenting on my own blog, but it was all good fun. I haven't been to the cinema in the last week, but I have been watching the entire series of Heroes. I think I'm near the finish now. It got a little bit weak somewhere in the middle, but quickly picked up again to become fascinating. Nonetheless, tonight I should be going to see Tarantino's Death Proof. I've had people tell me that it's the last movie they'd want to see at the moment, which is interesting. Like Alex, however, I'm going to see it purely because it says Tarantino on the poster. He himself is a franchise - all the merchandising calls it 'Tarantino's 5th film' (although of course we know it isn't, and it shouldn't count as his film because it's been split from Grindhouse). I hope someday they'll realise their mistake and give us Grindhouse in the cinema. Anyway, you'll have my review tomorrow.

Monday

[The final part of Alex's examination of film adaptations.]

So if you're still reading four days in you'll know that we are in a situation where we as writers know that the medium is inexorably linked to the story and so we shouldn't adapt the work, but on the other hand we know that it's commercially lucrative to do so. How do we reconcile the two?

Well I'll tell you how most people do it, they fudge it. Most adaptations simply go through the book looking for bits where they talk about where people are and put that in square brackets. And then look for the bits where people are speaking and turn that into dialogue. Everything else gets thrown away and that’s how you get your movie running time. These are generally the worst kind of movies that there are. This, for example, is exactly what they did with the The Da Vinci Code.

The best method seems to be to throw away the actual words and just listen to the story. We've recently learned that this is exactly what happened in the first Bourne film. The director wrote a 25 page short story treatment of the book and demanded that the author not look at the whole book, he had to work simply from those pages. It worked very well and it's difficult to imagine Bourne as a novel while you're watching the film - surely the best compliment we can give.

Finally this is the crux of excellent adaptation, there must be a "re-imagining" of the original. It's difficult because fans of the original, the very fans who are pre-sold on this franchise don't like it when you change their source material. This was a key problem for The Lord of the Rings. In the end I felt they were too respectful of the original, but the fans were widespread and militant so they certainly made the correct commercial decision. Usually it's the other way around. It's always safer to abuse the fans, they'll turn up anyway. On the other hand, if you forget to write a good film everyone else will stay away.

Sunday

[And yet more great stuff from Alex.]

Here's an important lesson to realise about cinema. The economics of film are predicated on you only seeing a film once. Most people go to the cinema, rent or own DVDs - not all three. Most people therefore only pay once for a film (even if you might watch it many times on DVD). What does this mean? It means the studios just need to get you to buy your ticket (or DVD), they almost don't care what happens to you once you're watching.

For small films quality is important because fewer people will walk in the door in the first place, so these films need to count on viewers convincing their friends to go and see the movie. Even for large films where the story is original, posters might not be enough. They still must have positive evangelism from viewers to go out and explain why it's worth seeing the film (even though advertising plays an important role at this level). Finally you have the "Pre-Sold Franchises", in these cases you will hear people say things like "I don't care how bad the reviews are I have to see that movie". Just look at the continued box office success of the new Star Wars films despite the critical panning. The fans still own all of the DVDs and went to the movies "just to see if they ruined it", same with Transformers, same with Spiderman.

Spiderman was interesting because it, and the first sequel, were actually good movies. I don't know how that slipped through the net, but hopefully the success of that and the new Bond film will remind execs that there is an audience out there who weren't sold on the original and they can be tapped only with quality. Two of my friends had never seen Bond until Casino Royale, by reaching out with quality the studio has been rewarded. I hope they take it to heart. Either that or they run out of cartoons to turn into movies. I've talked here about cartoons and so on, but the same is true for all adaptations. The reason that Hollywood turns so many books into film is not just because there are good stories in the books, it's because people will have already heard of the book. In the final part tomorrow I'll talk about the process of adaptation.

Saturday

[More from Alex.]

Adaptation is tricky for film but lucrative. Cinema is essentially a nervous medium. We want it to be bold but with so much money at stake Hollywood wants to be sure.

"Sure things" can't be bold. The best thing "sure things" can be is mediocre; sure things can also be terrible of course. The surest sign of artistic success is the divisive rating; some people loved it, some people hated it but everyone talked about it. Almost always a film that nobody hated is also a film that nobody loved.

You can't make an omelette without shooting some film - they say. Or at least I say. Or at least I said right then.

Adaptations seem like they are safer. They are known as "Pre-Sold Franchise" because the studio believes (probably correctly) that they don't have to do the work to get you to go to the cinema the first time. If you know what Transformers is already then the studio doesn't have to convince you to go and see it. Bad reviews matter less as well. Tomorrow I'll talk more about why people adapt films.

Friday

[In an attempt to get me back into the same timezone as the rest of you, Alex has kindly written some articles for me. Hope you enjoy them!]

Kubrick didn't enjoy the process of adapting the novel Red Alert. Too much of the plot had to be thrown away; he felt that it had basically become a farce, things just suddenly happened for no reason. Of course creatively this worked quite well for him and us as we got Dr Strangelove. After this experience Kubrick concentrated on adapting short stories believing that they were an easier fit with the cinema. (Obviously he made an exception for Barry Lyndon, resulting in Kubrick's longest film – it has an interval). Personally I feel novels are more akin to a television series, the chapters of a book representing the episodes.

The immutable laws of medium are thus:

Film / Television : Show don't tell
Plays: Tell don't show
Novels: Think

The last one might not be obvious, but the greatest structural advantage of the novel is that the author can explain something that happens within the head of a character.

When telling a story one must choose which medium fits the story the best. The question we must ask is why then would anyone ever adapt anything? I'll talk about the reasons tomorrow.

Thursday

The other effect that seeing so many more films in the cinema this year has had is that I find I do enjoy them much more in a theatre. Since I started, many of the movies I saw have since come out on video and I've subsequently bought them - Children of Men, Black Book and Host, for example. They are still great films, but I noticed the loss of the big screen and sound. I wasn't as engrossed as I was the first time. I've become much more attuned to the differences between the cinema and the home experience and have come to value the former greatly. On the other hand, however, seeing them at home means you're not so seduced by the size and sound. At home, you're capable of seeing the film flaws easier, I think. Although, it may just be that watching a movie the second time is not as good as the first.

Wednesday

I may be overly confusing you at the moment by posting four days late but still keeping the original title. Thus, lounging around this Saturday afternoon you are receiving Wednesday's post. It will all make sense soon, I promise. Anyway, over the last year I have perhaps increased my cinema-going by more than one hundred percent. Not only that, but it has had an effect on how many films I see at home too - buying, renting, or watching them on television. And writing these articles means I am thinking about the art of cinema almost every day. What effect has all this had on me? you may be wondering. I feel much more confident analysing a film now. I've seen so many that I've developed a range of tastes within me. I know what I like and don't like to see, and what I've seen before. My knowledge is far from comprehensive, but I start to see clearly within a few minutes of a film beginning the form and the stylistics and how to break them apart. I no longer worry whether my reviews will include everything. It's impossible to include everything, and I know I will make mistakes. I don't worry when I enter a film if I'll be able to form a judgement of it, or whether my judgement will be correct. I always know I'll have plenty to say, and that there is no such thing as a 'correct judgement'. I hope, for you too, it's been a beneficial learning period!

Tuesday

You may not have heard of Breach. It's been out for almost a month now. There were posters, and I think I once saw a trailer on TV. But otherwise its release was fairly limited, and its reception quite muted. However, every review I read recommended it, and so yesterday I saw it. The story concerns the real-life events of an FBI agent who is handing secrets to the Russians. A young agent, played by Ryan Phillippe, is sent undercover as his assistant to take notes on everything he does, and find evidence of how he is leaking information. Whilst this may not sound original, the true nature of the story gives this film a weight it wouldn't have had otherwise. Really, though, this film is a character study of a man betraying his country. You never entirely dislike, or like, him. The director has kept a good balance. Unfortunately, beside Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe's performance is not that good. The dialogue sounded false and strained, and he didn't match the intensity of Cooper. As always with real-life stories, the pacing of events is hard to adapt to that of a movie, but here the job is done well. Most of the drama revolves around moments of 'he's coming back, get out of his room now!', which are quite routinely but nonetheless effectively done. Overall I'd definitely recommend this movie. It's intelligently and seriously made, with great performances from Chris Cooper and Laura Linney.

Monday

Unfortunately, I drank too much on Sunday night and incapacitated myself all Monday and most of Tuesday. I will try to get back on terms with Stranded Cinema as quickly as possible. In my convalescence I was lent the complete series of Heroes on DVD (I don't know if my friend acquired this illegally or not, and I didn't ask). I had been watching it on BBC 2, but have now propelled myself far ahead of such terrestrial dawdlings. Although I've said here previously how television has begun to narrow the gap to cinema recently, I think Heroes must be considered as something that surpasses that distinction. It is compelling. However, very little actually happens in each episode, and it can be frustrating. The series overstates its own importance a little. It could be condensed a lot more. Also, if you take away the special powers, you realise you are left with little more than a soap opera - a daughter feeling alienated from her parents, a struggling single mother etc. So, this is good, but I wait to see how it ends and where it goes (I believe a second series is on the way soon).

Sunday

So, what did you think of Superbad? I forgot to mention that I thought it received one of the most positive reactions I've heard from an audience coming out of a cinema. Everyone was still laughing, reciting the jokes, or reminding each other 'what about the bit when...'. One man behind me on the escalator even switched on his phone and called someone as soon as he could to tell them how great it was. What was more bizarre about this, however, was that he didn't know the name of the film he'd just seen. He called it 'Badass'. He had an American accent so I at first thought perhaps in the US it was released under a different title. But no. The film is called Superbad, you have to say that when you buy the ticket, and it comes up in big letters on the screen before the movie starts. How could you not know what you were seeing? Especially if you enjoyed it so much? All right, he got the word 'bad' right, but otherwise he was way off, and may have directed his friends to go and see an entirely different film. I worry for them.

Saturday

During my viewing of Pushing Tin, a question occurred to me: why do filmmakers always skip the sex scene? We'll see the couple kissing, possibly getting into bed and undressing, but then they'll fade out, music will start, and we'll cut to them the next morning. The obvious reason as to why sex is omitted is because of the rating of the movie. Also, sometimes, the stars will refuse to show themselves naked. Yet in a great many movies people do have sex - we just don't see it. Why don't they show it? The real reason, I think, is that (like a scene of two people talking in a car) there's very little variation a director is capable of. There's not much to work with, if you see what I mean. When was the last time you saw a sex scene and thought 'well, that's interesting'? They're functional scenes, in terms of directing, and it's best to avoid them unless you have a very clear and original idea. Of course, I would say that the better films delay the main couple getting together until the film has finished. However, not that I'm an expert in such things, the best scene I know of is from Don't Look Now, and this is mainly through the way their undressing and loving and cut is together with them dressing again afterwards and preparing to go out. The two acts become the same thing, and it brings a hollowness to what they're doing, but also somehow a humble passion. The rating of the film gives directors an easy way out, and it would be much more interesting if they were forced to deal with it directly.

Friday

Superbad is ironically (or not) very, very good. This is probably the best comedy I've seen since Anchorman, and it might even be better than that. It definitely beats Knocked Up, no question about it. For its humour and human observation, the opening conversation is as good as Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta's dialogue in the car from Pulp Fiction. It's about three boys who want to have some sexual experience before they go off to college. You might think, if you're a woman, 'this film is for men, I'm not interested', but I can tell you that the loudest laughs came from the women in the audience. I was thinking 'why has no one made a film about geeky high school girls trying to get laid?' (maybe they did: Welcome to the Dollhouse?), but I think women will enjoy this movie too. This is mainly because of the sensitivity of the men, and the jokes are always on them. There is nothing really crude here, in the style of American Pie. What is great is the sincerity beneath the surface. Whilst in Anchorman the characters are one-dimensional and you never really empathise with him, here (and in Knocked Up) a lot of effort has been made to make them real. In between the comedy, they deal with real issues of friendship, growing up and separating. Great comedies, as we know, are able to cross this line into sincerity, but still be able to rescue the jokes. As the camera pulled back from the final scene, I prayed for the credits to roll because it was the perfect moment to finish the film. It's not often you get what you wish for. Go see this film.

Thursday

There were three interesting trailers before Disturbia. The first was I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, and not coming to us until January. This film looks big. It's adapted from Isaac Asimov by the same writer who did I, Robot, which can only be a good thing. It's fair to say this was a 'teaser trailer', as it showed very little, but I was sufficiently teased. The scope of this movie looks immense - whole parts of Manhattan deserted - and I've already said here how a scene on one of the bridges was apparently the most expensive ever. As far as I can tell, Will Smith thinks he's the last man left alive, but he soon discovers he's not, and whatever it is (possibly) isn't human.

Secondly came Across the Universe, coming out next week, which started off looking fairly ordinary: an aspiring artist from Liverpool goes to America in the 1960s and gets involved in all the appropriate scenes and political movements, his friends get shipped off to Vietnam etc and it felt in way a bit like Forrest Gump. But then it turns out this film is actually a musical, starring Eddie Izzard. It looks very odd.

Lastly was 30 Days of Night, coming here in November. This started off looking good, then looked awful, then reverted to good again. It's another film adapted from a comic book. In a small town in north Alaska there are 30 days of night. Who is this good for? You guessed it: vampires. The community based there, starring Josh Hartnett, has to try to stay alive until the sun comes back. So, a bit like Pitch Black meets Blade, maybe.

Wednesday

This is the second part of my review of Disturbia. I mentioned before that the roles of the school friend or the girl were not both necessary. Perhaps I'd opt to omit the school friend, but maybe with a better actor it would've been ok. The girl, though, (as strangely in LaBeouf's earlier film Transformers) is really far too attractive. It's not believable that she's into books, or that she'll like him. The relationship happens too quickly. Her absence from the last five minutes, and her sudden unexplainable appearance slightly earlier, highlight her as a plot function rather than a genuinely necessary character. I did like it when he confronted her about her speed in conforming to high school society, however. As for the 'serial killer', I thought too much was revealed too soon. The music cues gives away a lot, and although the possibility that he's innocent wavers up and down until the end, you're never much in doubt. If this hadn't tried to be so mainstream, I think they could've played a lot more with the psychology of the situation. They had a lot to work with - not just him stuck at home, but also the idea of the replacement father figure. They hint at the idea of the Stockholm syndrome, but don't develop it. Hitchcock, you have to say, would've found more depth here - although this film dealt with teenagers, and had a modern indie soundtrack, it is deeply indebted to Mr H. Perhaps it would've been better if the characters were older, and less was explained to you. The final reveal is perhaps too extreme. There are too many moments of 'if he does that, why would he do this?' - 'plot holes' some people call them. Nonetheless, for its one hundred minutes I was engaged and, occasionally, on the edge of my seat.

Tuesday

My review of Disturbia is going to be in two parts. The film stars Shia LaBeouf as a boy who is put under house arrest for punching his teacher. He is fitted with an ankle bracelet which won't allow him more than 100 yards from his house. After several weeks of boredom and observing his neighbours (including a very attractive girl), he starts to believe one of them is a serial killer. As you can tell, this is like a cross between Hitchcock's Rear Window and The 'burbs. It has, however, enough originality to stand on its own. The slight problem with it is that it relies on too many mainstream effects. There were just one too many cliches for me to really enjoy this film. At times, it was loud and brash when it could've been silent and subtle. Some of the music was too sentimental, and wanted to direct us toward every emotion, but equally it was occasionally a cool soundtrack featuring the Kings of Leon (amongst others). The set-up at the beginning was compelling, but too obvious - or cheap - a way to get us to like the main character. Shia LeBeouf's performance is good enough for us to like him anyway. Overall, it was too mainstream in its concepts and construction - it felt at times like an empty show, and there was little chemistry between actors. I don't even know if all the characters were necessary - either his school friend or the girl, not both. Perhaps it's unfair to compare this to Rear Window. It was enjoyable and tense, and borders on the line between whether I want to see it again or not. I think I do.

Monday

Having seen Angelina Jolie in Pushing Tin, I decided to pursue her career further. I wondered why she was so highly regarded, except for having incredibly big lips, and a willingness to be half-naked. Thus I found myself watching Girl, Interrupted, for which she won an Oscar. Winona Ryder is ostensibly the star, as she plays an aspiring writer in the 1960s pressured into going to a mental asylum by her parents. The flashbacks to her previous life I found irritating, as well as the narration by Ryder (this is adapted from a novel, as you can quickly tell). It seems to fit every other 'group of people bound together by hardship' story that you've ever heard of (either in prisons or schools etc). You have an array of characters all trying to get over their various problems. Angelina Jolie is supposedly the most interesting of these, but I found her performance fairly ordinary. She just seemed to be playing herself, or the same role as in Pushing Tin, anyway. I was pretty bored by the end, but maybe this isn't a movie aimed at me anyway. The premise seemed pretty trite and shallow: what is normal? are any of us really normal? Anyway, I'm sure some people enjoyed it, but I shall have to continue in my search for why Angelina Jolie is so respected. Incidentally, the film's director, James Mangold, is the man behind the current 3:10 to Yuma, which does look good.

Sunday

Pushing Tin is a film that fails mainly because of its misjudged tone. As soon as it began, I visualised the probable meeting when a group of producers came up with the idea: 'I know, no one's done a film about air-traffic controllers before, let's do that'. It really is that bad. The music, the credits, the establishing shots all tell you that you're watching a movie that won't challenge you, that accepts certain limits as standard, or certain conceptions of the world. Strangely, it's directed by Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Donnie Brasco, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and adapted from an article by the writers of Cheers. From such diverse sources, you can sort of tell this was a producer's movie. For example, the cast was probably selected with publicity in mind rather than aptness for the role. As such, John Cusack doesn't quite pull this off, and Billy Bob Thornton and Angeline Jolie are just odd. Their characters are cliched, and yet this movie sits awkwardly between comedy and drama and deals lightly with the uncomfortable issue of adultery. It doesn't 'feel' right, is what I'm trying to say, and this can only be because it's been miscast and misdirected. Perhaps, also, this should be an independent movie but it was promoted to mainstream status. Or, maybe it was two movies that have been incongruously put together.

Saturday

Play It Again, Sam is a hard film to place in the career of Woody Allen. He adapted it from his own play, but it's not directed by him. Strangely, however, he had already directed four films before this one. It's just as funny as anything he's ever done, and involves more acute observations than his other early films Bananas or Sleeper. In many ways, in fact, it feels like a draft of Manhattan and Annie Hall, and even stars the same actors in very similar roles (Tony Roberts and Diane Keaton). The slightly disconcerting aspect to it is the frequent references to Casablanca (the movie begins with the end of that one), and the visions Allen's character has of Humphrey Bogart. As he will find out for himself as he matures, he doesn't need to so obviously reference and rely on another work of art, his films can stand on their own without it. Indeed, if you'd taken away those references, you might be left with a better movie. Overall, the direction itself feels rough and rushed, and the sound quality seems bad. There is very little music (again, not done by Woody himself here, and perhaps it would've been helped by his usual blues soundtrack). It does feel like a play, although they've tried very hard to dispel that with frequent location changes. Throughout, we are mostly listening to the monologue of Allen, so that we never really engage with the drama. I laughed throughout (it contains another classic moment where Allen is so funny the other actors laugh too), but I don't think this is particularly a good movie.

Friday

I mentioned two days ago some of my favourite young actors. Of course, Ryan Reynolds isn't young (he's older than me), but I still consider him part of the younger generation. He can still, for some reason, play a high school kid. His comic timing is excellent, but he doesn't just do comedies. I think I've already mentioned his good role in the awful Smokin' Aces. Perhaps more interesting is the upcoming The Nines, where he plays multiple characters, a film written and directed by John August (writer of Go). Unfortunately that won't be with us until December. However, a film came out yesterday starring another interesting young actor: Shia LaBeouf. We haven't heard much about him over here, but I think he's generating interest in Hollywood. I first noticed him alongside Will Smith in I, Robot, and he was respectable in this year's most ridiculous blockbuster Transformers. Anyway, he's now in Disturbia (a contender for worst title of the year, I think), which Alex has recommended I see, and I'm very much looking forward to. You may also be interested to know he's landed possibly one of the biggest roles of this decade in the new Indiana Jones film. Keep your fingers crossed very tight.

Thursday

In a complete reverse of genre, yesterday I saw 1408. It's an adaptation of a Stephen King story starring John Cusack as a cynical writer who visits haunted places and reviews them. He finds out about room 1408 in a hotel in New York and, despite the manager's protestations, books the room for the night. I'm never sure how to review horror films. If their only aim is to scare you, then they succeed too easily. However, with Stephen King, you expect to be more than scared. You expect a psychological trauma that will stay with you, or a story that questions reality as you know it. As this movie began, I was successfully scared, the tension built brilliantly to the moment he first opens the door and enters the room. But, as with all horror films, as soon as you see something you cease to be horrified. You soon discover that whatever the terrifying thing is, it actually can't do much to the main character. There are certain rules that need to be followed. So, for a lot of this film, I found myself on the verge of laughter as John Cusack ran around an empty hotel room going mental. It was a bit like a Beckett play. It was very hard to sustain the tension with only one actor. I imagined that the original story probably worked a lot better - in a movie you need interaction, whereas in a book you can dwell on the psychology of one man for much longer. The multiple twists at the end were annoying, but perhaps necessary. Someone behind me voiced the thoughts of everyone in the cinema as the credits rolled: 'what does that mean?'. As with other King stories, you're never sure what to think by the end, but I'd say this film doesn't sustain its terror as well as The Shining, or The Secret Window. It was good until he entered the room, but quickly became fruitless. Still, John Cusack was very good at a difficult role, and if you want to be scared this will do the job.

Wednesday

Continuing my run of romantic comedies, today I saw Just Friends. I'd been wanting to see it for a while as it stars three of my favourite young actors: Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris and Amy Smart. It's about a guy who returns to his home town and meets the girl he loved at school, but who only ever considered him a friend. Reynolds is as funny as ever - getting humour out of previously humourless situations - and still reminds me of Chevy Chase. The film of course isn't perfect. The drive of the film is lost when we suddenly hear his thoughts, and two minutes later when we start getting the girl's point of view (where previously we've only had the boy's). It ruins the tension considerably. The ending is also resolved too quickly, and quite unrealistically. With the stars that they have, however, this was always going to be enjoyable (for me at least). It is mildly funny, and heart-warming, and seeing as it's set over Christmas, we should really call this a Christmas movie. Worth watching on Boxing Day, at least.

Tuesday

In a surprise twist, I watched the recent Music & Lyrics last night. The surprise is that whilst Drew Barrymore didn't sing for Everyone Says I Love You, she did for this film. And her voice was actually not that bad. Interesting. Anyway, this is an odd film. I remember deciding I'd never want to see it when I heard about it, but then the trailers and the reviews were actually quite positive. Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore in fact work very well together. Grant, especially, is very funny here. I think a problem is that her character is slightly too weird for a mainstream romantic comedy. And any plot-line based around half-real events (an 80s pop star and a Britney-like modern one) is always unconvincing. But don't let that stop you. Despite following predictable plot-lines, this is an original context and concept. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

Monday

Last night I watched (for perhaps only the second or third time) Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You. I realised it's very much like Hannah and Her Sisters: the storyline spans a year, and Allen himself plays the role of a stepfather looking for new love. Nothing much happens, as in a lot of Allen's movies, but it's the journey that you enjoy - more specifically the jokes along the way, and the character observation. There are songs, but is this really a musical? It's more like a film with some music, rather than a musical with some talking. Anyway, things happen, but nothing changes, really. it's all good fun but you don't feel particularly enriched by the end. The dance scene along the Seine is magnificent, but when it's done you feel that it was an empty exercise, rather than heartfelt. Not that I didn't enjoy this film, but it is not nearly as fresh and exciting as Hannah and Her Sisters, nor as powerful as Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Sunday

In a new feature for Stranded Cinema, here is my first non-review of a movie: the film was called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and I saw it last Sunday. The reason this is a 'non-review' is because by the time we watched it we were quite drunk, and I remember very little about it. I'm sure I fell asleep for certain parts of it. (In fact, I recall being fairly drunk for Spider-Man 3, so perhaps that was my first 'non-review'.) Anyway, the film stars Robert Downey Jr, I'm sure of that, and it's directed by Shane Black (responsible for Lethal Weapon, and the very good The Long Kiss Goodnight). It's about a guy who does some stuff, really. I can't quite remember. I think there was a murder, but maybe it turned out not to be a murder by the end, or the wrong person was murdered. I don't know. I remember having that feeling 'this is adapted from a book'. The main point seemed to be the very post-modern humour and ironic narrator. It was slickly told and directed. I remember in particular 'I'm the man who invented dice'. Perhaps this is Robert Downey Jr at his coolest - a role made for him. Overall, though, I really need to see this again to form any kind of judgement of it. Let me know if you think my non-reviewing method is a success or not.

Saturday

Reprise is a Norwegian film about two young writers trying to publish their novels. Like Dans Paris (reviewed by me here) it's shot in the French New Wave style, and similarly deals with mental illness. The movie begins with the two friends putting their manuscripts into a letterbox, and the first five minutes is spent imagining what would've happened if both were published. However, only one is, and the pressures resultant from this drive him to a mental breakdown. We jump forward and backward in time for the next thirty minutes, imagining consequences, then seeing the real ones, having flashbacks for insignificant events, and a narrator that ironically knows everything ('in five seconds she's going to look at him' etc). The film, I have to admit, is relentlessly cool, swept along to the soundtrack of The Hives-like punk music. However, some techniques which start off cute, repeated five times become annoying. It is hit-and-miss. But this is film-making that is at least excited about film. They're interested in style and how it can tell a story. Occasionally you think 'if the filmmaker can manipulate the plot so much, why should I care about it?', but the anguish of these young men is sensitively told. The ending was unsatisfactorily ambiguous, which goes with the style, but I wasn't entirely happy with it. The Independent reviewer calls this film 'early Godard by way of Dawson's Creek', which is cruelly accurate, but also unfair. It's definitely worth watching - immediately you realise how indoctrinated you are to the American sentiment in film, and this movie is a refreshing change.

Friday

I had been wanting to watch Kevin Smith's Dogma for a long time. Perhaps I built my hopes up too high, or perhaps I wasn't fully concentrating when I watched it, but it wasn't as good as I'd hoped. I knew virtually nothing about it (until the announcer told me the plot), except that friends had said it was good. Thus, I was thrilled when Jay and Silent Bob appeared. The problem with the film, I thought, as indeed is the problem with Christianity, is that it works perfectly until you get to the end. The resolution of the movie, as with Christian life, is deeply unsatisfying. You're brought brilliantly into the world of the movie, engaging with the characters and their interaction, building suspense for a big showdown at the end, only for it to fall flat, as it always will, with God. Things end too predictably for a film that has been built on unpredictability. Plus, whilst they have interesting characters, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck play them quite badly, although you do sense the good chemistry between them. I think I wanted more, and felt unsatisfied by the end. It is a good and amusing movie, but not a great film.

Thursday

Is Knocked Up funny? Yes. Is it the funniest film you'll ever see? No, but then you weren't expecting that. At its core, I think, are two good performances of sensitively written characters. You engage with them, and believe in them, almost instantly. Katherine Heigl is not exactly hard to look at, and Seth Rogen has that earnest, honest face that you can sympathise with. I was laughing out loud at several points, but this is not an all-out comedy. The pacing was occasionally off; I didn't see how they suddenly liked each other so much when they'd seemed opposites; the basic misunderstanding as to how she got pregnant wasn't strong enough, and the reconciliation at the end wasn't quite as satisfying as I wanted (perhaps because I had to keep getting up and down for people who needed the toilet, literally two minutes from the finish). They skirt the more serious issue of abortion, but give generally a sweet picture of parenting, and the pains of pregnancy. You may cynically think that the relationship has no chance of long-term success, but the film carries you along without letting such negativism in. I don't know the actress who played her, but Heigl's jealous co-worker was brilliant. I guess overall this is good enough. I don't see how and where it could've been better, but that doesn't mean it's perfect.

Wednesday

There's a comedy starring Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Rachel Weisz and Christopher Walken, directed by Barry Levinson (Bandits, Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam etc). How come we haven't heard of it? It's called Envy and came out in 2004. I have a feeling that it probably went straight to video - which is rare for a film with such big names (you might think they'd get quite a few people to see it because of the stars alone). Watching it last night, I think its main problem is that the situation is only mildly funny, and the characters definitely aren't. Stiller and Black don't have a lot to work with. There's not much tension we can enjoy or sympathise with. Even in Meet The Parents where Stiller's character was fairly blank, the situation he found himself in became funny. Here, there's virtually nothing. Weisz also isn't very good at comedy, which doesn't help, and the strange music makes the film seem like a morality play on the dangers of envy. Plus at the beginning, before we've had a chance to engage with the characters, we keep skipping forward in time. It was all a bit weird. At least, though, there were some good moments: Stiller and Black do get to enjoy themselves occasionally, notably Stiller's long speech at the end, or Black's protestations at the unstoppable carousel. I think the whole thing might have been better with different actors and directors (the script could be funny) but overall this was a failed experiment.

Tuesday

Apparently there are not one, but two films about Iraq showing at the Venice Film Festival this week. The first I mentioned earlier: Brian De Palma's Redacted. The second is called In The Valley of Elah, and stars Charlize Theron and Tommy-Lee Jones as two people hunting for a missing soldier. It's directed by Paul Haggis (who directed Crash). These are the first, big, high profile Hollywood movies about the war - which seem to me to be a long time coming. De Palma's is generally so far agreed to be better, and more critical, than In The Valley of Elah. Their premieres come just days after Ridley Scott was quoted saying it's very hard to get good movies made in Hollywood anymore. He argued against the run of franchises that we've seen, and how the percentage of good films is becoming less and less. To hear this from a successful director is fairly astonishing, but at least Hollywood are putting themselves forward as possibly critical of the Iraq war. Even if these films aren't good, they're at least challenging the mainstream political thought in America, which is something.

Monday

I realise now that I probably saw The Bourne Ultimatum film crew. Passing through Waterloo, as I do almost every day, I noticed a great amount of camera equipment piled up by one of the booths in the middle of the concourse. It seemed more professional, and larger, than any film unit I'd seen before. I didn't see any stars, or indeed a great amount of people recognisable as 'movie industry types' (they were either just setting up, or just leaving), and of course I didn't know The Bourne Ultimatum would have one of its major sequences in the station. But it was at about the right time for them to be filming it, so it's possible. Anyway, this sighting brings me to my main point about how great it is to see London on film. I frequently see film crews of some sort - either for TV, or small independent movies - but very rarely view the end result. Only a few weeks ago there was a line of trailers on Malet Street outside my library, and a bit earlier there was crew on Northcote Road opposite my work. To see the places you go frequently put into film is exciting. We're used to seeing New York, and indeed it was New York's finest director who first got me excited about seeing London on film. In Matchpoint Woody Allen put the places I knew into cinema, and in doing so created an event that might have collapsed the space-time continuum (if we were in an episode of Star Trek): I saw the film in the Chelsea cinema, watching the characters in the film go to the Chelsea cinema to see a movie. I saw them watching me, watching them, in the same theatre, sitting in almost exactly the same seats. Good times.

Sunday

Also in this (now legendary) old theguardian Film & Music supplement, besides the articles by Woody Allen and Martin Scorcese on Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, is a short piece on the brilliance of Liam Neeson. He seems to be a remarkably under-rated actor, although this may be self-inflicted. He has done some big roles, but not consistently enough for us to really consider him a great actor. I thought he added gravity to The Phantom Menance, but it may have been a bad choice career-wise. His role in Schindler's List may be what he's remembered most for, and it is true that he plays the 'great man struggling with difficult issues' character very well. Somehow he reminds me Gregory Peck, whom I also like a lot, and who I think also had trouble getting the right roles. They're classical actors, but nowadays we're more interested in flawed heroes, rather than clean-cut ones. Hopefully, however, there's still a place for him. At the moment he's working again with Spielberg on a film about Abraham Lincoln. Interesting.

Saturday

Reading an old copy of theguardian's Film & Music supplement yesterday, I discovered their original review of The Bourne Ultimatum. You may know that I attempt to avoid reading reviews before I see films - in case they ruin it for me - but then forget to read them once I have. So, this was a little hidden joy for me, and I found out two new things. The first thing is that theguardian, and this reviewer, are overly proud of their involvement in the film. Somehow they miss the point that their journalist is portrayed as an inept coward (Bourne has everything under control when the journalist starts running thus getting the attention of the enemy, and Bourne recovers the situation, by killing two guys, only for the journalist then to decide to run again and get himself shot). It is, however, true that simply by association with Bourne, theguardian is now cool. The second thing is that Bourne uses public transport and is thus an environmentally friendly action hero. Of course, this is the choice of the writer and director, and the particular character and situation of Bourne, rather than the deliberate choice of that character, but it's still an entertaining aspect, and still, I think, what makes Bourne so popular for us. One thing that did worry me, however, was that the reviewer, due to the ending of the movie, suggested a sequel coming soon, which I don't think (and hope) is true at all.

Friday

I don't like political films. This doesn't mean I don't like films that involve politics - quite the opposite, sometimes they're brilliant. I have nothing wrong with politics. It's extremely entertaining - All the President's Men is exceptional, as are many other movies I can't think of, and The West Wing TV series. Here, it is the characters who are involved in politics, hold certain views and struggle with them. What annoys me is when it is the film itself that is political, beyond the scope of the characters, or when the characters become puppets for a political message. This is what aggravated me so much about Days of Glory - it was art for the purpose of achieving a political end (better compensation for Algerian WWII soldiers). Of course, you might tell me that all art is political, whether indirectly or not. Every artist makes a statement by his commitment to art, by his choice of form, and the choice of story he decides to tell. But there are degrees of political involvement, and for some reason I am averse to films that make direct, explicit statements. Perhaps this reveals more about me than the movies themselves, but sometimes it's helpful to know your critic before you read what he's criticising.

Thursday

The Walker feels stilted and staged at points. The dialogue is exceptionally good - to the level of theatre almost - but it strains and occasionally feels artificial. Perhaps this is the performances, not of Woody Harrelson himself who was excellent, but the three women - Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, and Kristin Scott Thomas - who I think it would be apt to say 'phoned in' their performances, though I'm not sure. They don't seem natural. The story concerns a gay man who accompanies high society women in Washington to dinner, theatre, etc. when their husbands are away, or even if they're not. He is their confidant and socialite, catching and spreading gossip. Someone he knows is killed, and as soon as he is implicated in the murder, all his friends start to abandon him to avoid scandal on themselves. I didn't think this story, or this character, needed such extreme circumstances (life and death) to show us who he was. It would've been interesting to do a film without any dramatic events - the death when it happened seemed absurd, and the rest of the plot turns into a bit of an ordinary detective story. What was good, though, was that it gave no explanations for itself. The film began, with no introductions, and let you decide what you thought of this man. At first I disliked him, but gradually grew to respect him. There were some awfully staged moments - the kiss through the iron bars - but also some brilliant ones. The music was out of touch with the emotion being displayed, and the direction was bad, giving us jilted camera-angles and awkward zooms at pivotal moments. These two combined made it at times (and in the beginning) feel like a TV movie. I sometimes thought, although this is a harsh judgement, that this was just a film directed by a writer. Paul Schrader has done better than that here, but there is room for improvement I think. Like I said, it is good almost to the point of being theatre, and when it resolves itself at the end you feel like you've just watched a play, which perhaps isn't a bad thing.

Wednesday

The Venice Film Festival is taking place as we speak. Apparently it, in turn, is now focusing more on celebrity rather than artistic endeavour - following the trend at Cannes. The news has all been about how thin Keira Knightley is, although admittedly I have seen some reports on the Oscar-worthy nature of the film she's starring in (with James McAvoy): Atonement. There are some other big names there too, though. Wes Andersen's new film, along with Ang Lee's, Ken Loach, Eric Rohmer, our old favourite Woody Allen, Kenneth Brannagh (in a remake of Sleuth), Paul Haggis, Miike Takashi, and Brian De Palma. Despite my reservations about the last director, his new film, Redacted, has interested me, centering as it does on the Iraq war (something I've been waiting for for some time). The next western, The Murder of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, is also premiering there. It seems the major companies have realised they can get good press from these festivals, and so are starting to send the big stars over there to start generating interest early. It's a good idea for them, although it's sad to lose the critical nature of these festivals - prizes are still awarded, but they mean little for the big studios compared to Oscars.

Tuesday

Last night I watched the first episode of the new US detective series Numb3rs (yes, that's a '3' instead of an 'e'). It involves a professor of mathematics who catches serial killers using (from what I can tell) advanced chaos theory-like equations (so, a bit like Pi meets Columbo). For example, last night he applied an equation to the seemingly random sites of rape victims to deduce where the perpetrator probably lived - and he was right! With the help of his brother, an actual detective, they found and killed the guy. At times it does feel a bit like an elaborate hour-long lesson in maths (annoyingly 'math' to Americans), but it is rather good. The cast is quite low-key: I only recognised Peter MacNicol (the weird guy from Ally McBeal), and Judd Hirsch (the tall guy from Taxi). The reason I mention it on Stranded Cinema, however, is because it's produced by Ridley Scott and his brother Tony (and bears the 'Scott Free' logo at the end). The style of the show bears some of the annoying Tony Scott-isms, direct from his latest films, of fast camera movements, jump-cuts, and montages to portray otherwise dull 'man writing equations on blackboard' scenes. Overall, whilst this is a brilliantly original idea for a detective series, it is still a detective series - and there are far too many of them around at the moment. Plus the title sequence is awful. Hopefully these little problems will get ironed out as the series progresses - so far it appears there have been a further three seasons in the US, so something must be right about it.

Monday

To satisfy the curiosity of those of you piqued by my mention of It Could Happen To You, here's my review of that movie: it's a romantic (comedy) starring Bridget Fonda and Nicolas Cage. Already you can tell there won't be much chemistry, and that one of them (Cage) is entirely unsuited to the genre. I put 'comedy' in brackets because I don't remember laughing once, so I'm not sure that was the director's aim. Anyway, it's one of those films whose sentiment is so sickly you find it difficult to look at the screen. There's so much 'fate' and 'coincidence' and 'it was meant to be' that I couldn't take it seriously at all. The basic premise, that a cop hasn't got change to tip a waitress so promises her half his lottery money if he wins, wins $4m and decides he will share it with her, is absurd. It's awfully played. They could have so easily made it more believable: he doesn't have enough money to buy the lottery ticket itself and therefore offers her half. This would be a slightly more reasonable moral dilemma. Anyway, the logistics of that don't matter too much. I don't suppose I'm the target audience for this movie, but it had very little of any enjoyment in it. The morality displayed here was awful, and the character 'angel' played by Isaac Hayes just about makes this one of the worst romantic comedies ever.

Sunday

In a controversial move for Stranded Cinema, I'm going to review the novel I just finished reading (rather than the film I watched last night, It Could Happen To You). The book was by Enrique Vila-Matas, and is called Bartleby & Co. It concerns a clerk in Barcelona who decides to leave work to write a book about writers who have stopped writing. The problem, for me, was that the elements of this clerk's life that we find out about are minimal - most of the book is taken up relating the lives of those writers who have stopped writing. Admittedly, some of these writers, and some of the anecdotes, are entirely fictional: you have to pick your way through them, forever unsure of what's true or not. But I still would've liked more obvious plot concerning his life, and his successes and failures in attempting to write the book. When they came, they were refreshing, but too little. Aside from this complaint, the book is exceptionally well written (or translated from the Spanish). A very clear and lucid style. The anecdotes are entertaining, and he weaves them together to create a compulsive mythology about why and how writers decide they don't, or can't, write any more. I did sometimes feel that he was making a legend out of the mundane condition of writer's block, but he does it comprehensively enough that you don't mind by the end. Overall, impressive, subtle, and despite the overwhelming literary references, quite a simple, easy novel.

Saturday

There's a film coming out later this year called I'm Not There. Some of you may wonder if there were any intelligent people there when they came up with the idea. It's a biopic of Bob Dylan played by six different actors at various stages of his life - including Cate Blanchett playing him during his 60s high-point, and a black actor playing him as a young man. I personally think it sounds brilliant, but of course we'll have to wait and see. It's directed by the enigmatic Todd Haynes, which may or may not encourage you to see it more. I've only seen his movie Safe, and not the more popular Velvet Goldmine, or the more recent Far From Heaven. I haven't been especially propelled to, though. And as excited as I am by I'm Not There, I don't know if it's going to be able to match the brilliant Don't Look Back.

Friday

Did you know that Quentin Tarantino has directed six films, not five? Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Death Proof (coming soon) and, as Alex informed me, My Best Friend's Birthday (not to be confused with My Best Friend's Wedding). How could it be that there is another Tarantino film out there that no one knows about? Well, of course, it's not a major movie - home-made, never publicly released, and only half of it survives. We get so used to knowing and seeing everything these days, that we are surprised to find major gaps of information we didn't know. Frequently, however, with important artists there will be a first novel, or a first movie, that was never published/released. They're never perfect on their debut. You can see what remains of My Best Friend's Birthday for yourself on YouTube. Apparently, the best bits were re-used for Tony Scott's True Romance, and some of the ideas, songs, and actors reappear in Reservoir Dogs. As much as I respect Tarantino, there is something in me that wishes he could apply his style and technique to a serious drama. Perhaps you'll argue Kill Bill, and the upcoming Death Proof, are serious dramas, but I don't think so. You're never really allowed to sympathise with anyone - it's all too plastic. Not that I think that's bad, but I'd like to see him try to apply it to a different situation. He seems to be going the opposite way to Woody Allen, strangely, who started off very unreal and has increasingly become more serious. My Best Friend's Birthday was apparently about a guy just trying to do something right. Death Proof is about an invincible car.