60) Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 (2010)

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke, Samuel L. Jackson

I've been hanging out for Iron Man 2 for a few weeks now, so I thought I'd reward myself for finishing all my marking with an opening day screening.

Tony Stark (Downey Jr) comes under fire from the US government who want him to turn over the Iron Man weapon to the military. Stark refuses on the grounds that he has ensured peace and America's enemies are years away from being able to recreate his technology. However when Russian physicist Ivan Vanko (Rourke), who has personal motivations for wanting to take down Stark, creates a similar weapon and attacks Stark at the Monaco Grand Prix, Stark's long time friend Jim Rhodes (Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard) has no choice but to steal one of his suits and turns it over to the military. Stark's nemesis and head of Hammer Industries, Justin Hammer (Rockwell) is called in to increase the weaponry on the suit, but what the military don't know is that Hammer has taken on Vanko as an ally.

Iron Man 2 is one of the most hotly anticipated films of the year, and it will be interesting to see how people respond to it, because there was zero expectation the first time round. It is important to remember that the first Iron Man was somewhat of a sleeper hit; Iron Man was a lower profile comic book hero compared to Batman, Superman, Spiderman and the X-Men, Robert Downey Jr. was not at the heights of fame that he is now, the support cast of Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow was solid without being spectacular. But the incredible success of the first film, the loading up of the cast for the sequel will mean, and I guess you can add the fact that The Dark Knight changed peoples expectations of sequels, demanding they go further than originals rather than being pale imitations, all combine to suggest there is a lot of expectation on this film.

Iron Man 2 is unique as a superhero movie because one of the central themes of a superhero movie, the protection of the hero's secret identity, is not in play here. At the end of Iron Man, Stark makes an open admission that he his Iron Man. This creates an interesting situation for Favreau to explore. Stark personally has become a target, not only of the revenge driven Vanko, but also of the US government who want him to turn over the Iron Man technology to the military. His company is in disarray with all of his time being taken up being a superhero. The spotlight and praise that being Iron Man has heaped on him has seen Stark's already healthy ego spiral out of control. In all, Iron Man 2 presents a rather compelling argument for the maintaining of a secret identity.

This film has to have one of the most decorated comic book/superhero movie casts ever assembled. Paltrow is an Oscar winner. Downey Jr, Cheadle, Rourke and Jackson are all Oscar nominees. Rockwell and Johansson are no slouches in the talent department either. Robert Downey Jr is again the star of the show here. Despite so much going on in this film, Favreau does a good job of keeping Stark at the centre of things. Downey Jr rediscovers the lovable rascal Stark, a performance which was such a key to the success of the first film. Rourke is compelling as Vanko, allowing the audience to forgive some of the more ridiculous aspects of his character (the guy gets continuously rammed against the wall by a car, not wearing any armour, and in the next scene is uninjured). Rockwell also deserves a mention for his scene stealing performance as Tony's corporate nemesis Hammer.

Iron Man 2 does not really fit the formula that Star Wars established in regards to the tone of a trilogy. The Empire Strikes Back was a much darker film than the original Star Wars and this pattern has been followed in numerous trilogies since then. Other notably darker second installments include Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, X-Men 2, even Back to the Future Part 2 is darker. While Iron Man 2 threatens to go there early on as we see Stark spiralling out of control, the tone of the film never actually changes. It is always fun, never dark. Favreau's humour continues to shine through with the constant string of one liners.

One area in which Iron Man 2 really amps up from the original is in the planting of seeds for the upcoming Avengers film, scheduled for 2012. The Avengers are Marvel Comics' equivalent of DC's Justice League, a super team consisting of a number of their heroes. What started at the very end of the credits for Iron Man with Samuel L. Jackson appearing as Nick Fury to talk to Stark about a special project being put together by SHIELD, and continued at the end of The Incredible Hulk with Edward Norton's Bruce Banner being approached by Stark, has now become a constant presence throughout this film. Jackson is back as Nick Fury, this time a more constant presence in the film. Johansson's Black Widow, rather than being a villain as anticipated, is actually working for Fury preparing a dossier on Stark. There are also not-so-subtle winks to other Avengers characters, Captain America and Thor.

Without doubt, one of the feel good stories of 2008 was the comeback of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, earning him an Best Actor Oscar nomination. Iron Man 2 couples him with Robert Downey Jr, another star who managed to resurrect their career after hitting rock bottom. Downey Jrs career has never looked stronger and I couldn't help but thinking Rourke could only wish his return would work out the same way. Then I remembered that Robert Downey Jr is handsome, charismatic and charming, whereas Mickey Rourke, as talented as he is, has a face like a smashed crab. You could probably say that his two big films since his return probably sum up the avenues that are open to him now. He can either play weathered old warriors (The Wrestler) or comic book villains (Iron Man 2). You're not going to see him playing a romantic lead.

It lacks a bit of the charm and magic of the original, and the ending is a bit anticlimactic, not to mention very similar to the finale of the first film (super robots fighting each other), but Iron Man 2 is still a very enjoyable movie and I'm sure will make more than enough money to ensure the franchise continues.

59) Star Wars

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

Director: George Lucas

Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, James Earl Jones, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, David Prowse, Peter Mayhew

I haven't watched a Star Wars movie for a number of years. They were a big part of my childhood and I knew them back to front, so even though Star Wars featured quite prominently in some of the research I've been doing over the last couple of years, I hadn't taken the time to rewatch it. That being said, over the last couple of months I've really felt like watching one of the old Star Wars trilogy. I had thought it was going to be The Empire Strikes Back, but after a long day of marking essays I needed something a bit more happy ending, so went with the original.

When Imperial forces, led by Darth Vader (Earl Jones/Prowse) attack a diplomatic vessel which is secretly smuggling the stolen schematics for the Empire's newest weapon, the Death Star, Princess Leia (Fisher) is forced to load the plans and a distress message onto a small droid, R2-D2, and send him off, along with his companion C-3PO, in an escape pod to the nearby planet Tatooine in the hope that he can find the reclusive Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi (Guinness) who lives there. The droids fall into the hands of young farm boy Luke Skywalker (Hamill) who helps them find Kenobi, and then joins him on the mission to transport these plans to Alderaan, with the help of smugglers Han Solo (Ford) and his co-pilot Chewbacca (Mayhew). However, they find that the planet Alderaan has already been destroyed by the now fully operational Death Star. When they get taken on board the space station, their mission becomes to rescue the Princess who can then lead them to the Rebel Alliance's secret base.

Where do you start talking about Star Wars? You could make a fair argument that it is the most influential film of all time. In 1977 Hollywood changed forever. The 'Star Wars moment' effectively spelled the end of the more adult, more artistic films of the Hollywood Renaissance of the 1970s and ushered in the 'high concept' blockbuster mode of filmmaking which has dominated Hollywood since then. Star Wars introduced the idea that a film could be a franchise, revolutionising the way film studios thought about merchandising. George Lucas, who very cleverly made sure he retained merchandising rights to the film, made millions of dollars on action figures, sound tracks, novelisations, bed spreads and more recently video games, not to mention the US$260,000 worth of 'intergalactic bubblegum' sales (a favourite statistic of mine I came across in researching my honours thesis). Star Wars revolutionised special effects and post production. If you take the time to look at the credits at the end of the next blockbuster you go and see it's odds on that you will see Industrial Light and Magic or Skywalker Sound mentioned, both companies founded to work on Star Wars. Star Wars changed the game.

While Lucas managed to write an epic saga which seemed to strike a chord with audiences all over the world, you would never accuse him of being a good scriptwriter. If you watch the film as an adult you will be struck by just how grating some of the dialogue is. On the set of the film Harrison Ford famously berated Lucas on his writing ability saying, "You can write this shit, George, but you can't say it."

As a kid I always thought Luke Skywalker was great, but watching it again I find him to be a bit whingey and annoying. He is definitely the weakest character out of the central cast, compounded by the fact that Mark Hamill is probably the weakest actor in the cast. I also wonder whether he would still have got the part had they known he would quickly lose the boyish good looks he possessed in the first film, becoming quite an ugly man by the third.

Alec Guinness is a cut above the rest of the cast in terms of class, and was understandably frustrated that he was forever remembered for his supporting role in Star Wars rather than his many other quality performances in brilliant films. Harrison Ford fits the bill perfectly as the space cowboy Han Solo, but I do find it strange watching him perform in this role which for 99% of actors would have been a career defining performance, but for him was trumped by Indiana Jones.

Carrie Fisher became the pin up for a generation of nerds with her performance as Princess Leia. When you consider George Lucas had her wearing a bronze bikini in Return of the Jedi it is interesting to note that in the first film he made quite a conscious effort to tone down her femininity, to the point that in some scenes he ordered that her breasts be taped down with electrical tape. As Fisher later joked, "There's no jiggling in the Empire."

There have been numerous releases of Star Wars on DVD, each with slightly different features to prey on the devoted fanatics who will surely re-purchase the film. The version I have is the original DVD release from 2004. For this Special Edition release they did some digital restoration work on the film. There were certain things in the film which needed fixing, certain effects warranted a bit of touching up (the explosion of the Death Star is now a more impressive spectacle), but I whenever I watch it I'm frustrated by the amount of unnecessary effects that have been included in the digitally remastered version. In the early scenes taking place on Tatooine, specifically the scenes at the port at Mos Eisley, a number of digitally created space creatures have been added into the shots. This bugs me for a couple of reasons. Firstly the shots were not composed with those creatures in mind so once they've been added in it makes for a very cluttered, busy looking screen. Secondly, part of the beauty of the Star Wars trilogy was that all the weird and wonderful creatures were done with costumes and puppetry. When you have a digital character (and we're not talking as advanced as you see in Avatar. Things have come a long way in five years) inserted next to a puppet it looks ridiculous. A new scene was also added, and was easily the worst scene in the film, in which Han Solo is intercepted on his way to the Millennium Falcon by a digital Jabba the Hut (which looks very little like the impressive puppet used in Return of the Jedi). Not only is all of the dialogue in this scene effectively repeated from the scene before (obviously the footage of Harrison Ford was from a scene which was redundant and therefore cut), but watching Han 'interact' with a digital creature that wasn't there looks awful (eye lines are all wrong, etc). Looking at those digital special editions, and then at the prequel trilogy, I can't help but think that no one has done more damage to the Star Wars brand than George Lucas himself.

While I may have been momentarily swayed by my recent viewing of Star Trek, the Millennium Falcon is still the coolest spaceship ever. Suck it up Trekkies.

Star Wars is not the perfect film. It is not even close. It is not one of the best films ever made. But it is the most influential film ever made and one of the most beloved films of all time. Worth watching just for the experience (but if you are going to watch the series you watch them 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3 rather than in order. The first three take some of the mystery out of the last three).

58) Midnight Run

Midnight Run (1988)

Director: Martin Brest

Starring: Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin, Yaphet Kotto, John Ashton, Dennis Farina, Joe Pantoliano

Kate was out all day today with her mum doing a rogain (please note rogaining is the sport of long distance cross-country navigation and has no link to the mens hair loss treatment of the same name). I, on the other hand, had a long day of essay marking ahead of me. As I was up reasonably early for a Saturday I decided to watch a movie over breakfast before I dove into marking. Midnight Run is a film I picked up a while ago on the recommendation of Tony Martin. Over the years he has often referred to Midnight Run as being his foolproof movie recommendation. Apparently everyone enjoys Midnight Run. It was reasonably short, and I was looking for something I would enjoy, so I decided to test this theory.

Jack Walsh (De Niro) is an ex-cop who now works as a bounty hunter who works for bondsmen retrieving clients who have tried to skip bail. Jack's boss, Eddie Moscone (Pontoliano) offers him $100,000 to bring back a particularly important client, Jonathan "The Duke" Mardukas (Grodin). Mardukas was an accountant who embezzled $15million from the mob and gave it to the poor. If Mardukas is not retrieved within five days, Eddie forfeits his bond and will be out of business. Jack locates Mardukas in New York and then sets about getting him back to Los Angeles. However, the mafia wants Mardukas dead, and the FBI wants to take him in so he can be their key witness in the trial against mob kingpin Jimmy Serano (Farina). Throw in rival bounty hunter Marvin Dorfler (Ashton), also interested in claiming the reward, and Jack faces an uphill battle to get Mardukas back to LA in time to claim his reward.

Midnight Run is effectively a buddy road-trip movie, as the majority of the story concerns Jack and Markdukas' efforts to get across the USA by the deadline, and in between the action sequences and the laughs it is the central relationship of the two leads that makes this film a gem. De Niro and Grodin have great chemistry as the film's odd couple. At this point in his career De Niro had yet to really venture into comedies (Analyse This, Meet the Parents and to a lesser extent The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle came later in his career) but he shows strong comic timing while also bringing strength to some of the film's more poignant moments. Grodin, who you may know as the father in the first two Beethoven movies (the big dog, not the composer), more than holds his own in what must have been a daunting role, requiring so much one on one screen time with a legend like De Niro. Watching the constantly feuding duo dealing with their own moral quandaries; Jack being an honest cop who was driven out of the Chicago police department because he refused to take kickbacks who now finds himself actively trying to keep a criminal away from the FBI so that he can claim his reward, Mardukas a simple accountant who when finding he has been working for the mob decides to steal from them, justifying his actions by giving the money away, as well as trying to understand the other's makes for engaging viewing.

The film's director, Martin Brest, has one of the more baffling resumes of a Hollywood director. In the 1980s he made two films, Midnight Run and Beverly Hills Cop. They sit together fine. In the 1990s he made another two films, Scent of a Woman and Meet Joe Black. Again, those two movies work together fine, but there is little in common with his output from the 1980s. Since 2000 he has only made one film, the ill-conceived Gigli with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (back when they were 'Bennifer'). Unsurprisingly he hasn't worked since.

There are certain things in movies which lock it in an era (think all of that awful Prince music in Batman), or at the very least make it apparent that this is not the present day. In the case of Midnight Run it is De Niro's smoking. He smokes constantly during this film, but it is the locations of his smoking that stand out. In the course of this film he lights up twice in restaurants, twice in airports and once on an aeroplane. I was waiting for a scene in a hospital to cap it off, but it never eventuated. Each time he lit up I thought, "Hang on, you can't smoke there... oh wait, it's the 80s. Play on."

It was announced recently that Universal studio was developing a sequel to Midnight Run with De Niro reprising his role as Jack Walsh opposite a younger comic foil. It's a bit of a shame that they couldn't find room for Grodin to return as it was the De Niro/Grodin chemistry which made it work, but given he's 75 now (he's much older than he looks) he may not be interested. There's word that the younger target could be Mardukas's son though, a premise which doesn't fill me with confidence.

Midnight Run is great fun. It's got the same blend of action and comedy as an Ocean's 11, and bolstered by some genuinely good performances makes for excellent entertainment. One of the better buddy movies going round.

57) Adventureland

Adventureland (2009)

Director: Greg Mottola

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Ryan Reynolds, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Margarita Levieva, Wendy Malick

Adventureland is a film which seemed to fly under a lot of people's radars when it came out last year. But it did get some quite positive reviews from a number of sources I respect so I was intrigued by it. I was in JB Hifi to try and find Kate a copy of Sense and Sensibility (which comes with a talking keyring! Exactly which marketing genius thought there was any sort of overlap between the Jane Austen appreciators demographic and the novelty keyring enjoyers demographic I don't know) and, God bless 'em, they were having a 20% off all DVDs stocktake sale, so spotting it for under $10 I was willing to give it a shot.

In 1987, James Brennan (Michael Cera... oh sorry, I mean Jesse Eisenberg) is all set to head to Europe for the summer to broaden his horizons before returning to commence study at Ivy League school Columbia. However a change in his parents' financial situation means the holiday has to go on hold and if he wants to go to Columbia he's going to have to get himself a summer job. With his major in comparative literature not opening many doors, his only option is a job manning the games at the local amusement park, Adventureland. He quickly buddies up with the equally brainy but slightly more socially retarded Joel (Starr). He also finds he has a surprising connection with the witty and mysterious Em (Stewart). Their relationship blossoms quickly, but confused by Em's mixed messages, the result of a fair bit of baggage, James's eye starts to wander to the flirty temptress Lisa P (Levieva).

When you see 'from the director of Superbad' you expect the usual Judd Apatow crew to be present. So when you glance down the cast list and there's no Seth Rogen, no Jonah Hill, no Paul Rudd, no Jason Segal you can be forgiven for thinking this one might be a bit B grade. This lack of 'names' probably explains why this film flew under so many people's radars. But this is a different kind of movie to Superbad. If you go into it expecting Superbad 2 you are going to be disappointed. Adventureland doesn't have the same crass, frat boy style humour which oozed out of Superbad. It is still funny, if not seeking to be laugh-a-minute, but has a lot more depth. Our heroes here are smart, moody weirdos rather than juvenile man-boys (I don't want to sound like I'm being overly harsh on Apatow's other stuff, I enjoy it, just stressing this is something different).

While the cast doesn't have the names of some of the other Apatow group comedies, the cast is still very good. I first came across Jesse Eisenberg in the legitimately brilliant Zombieland. Let's be honest, he may as well be Michael Cera (from Arrested Development and Superbad), and it will be interesting to see if there is enough space for both of them, but he's good at what he does and was well cast as James. Having not seen any Twilight I have no baggage when it comes to Kristen Stewart and actually quite enjoyed her performance in this film. She fit the bill perfectly as an emotionally scarred adolescent, and made me think that her upcoming performance as Joan Jett in The Runaways might be worth a look. Ryan Reynolds is quite good as a Fonzie type figure, all the kids think he's the coolest but he is actually tragically pitiful (sorry Fonzie admirers). The rest of the cast is made up of comedic character actors. Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are fantastic as the husband and wife managers of Adventureland, effectively doing what Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig always do.

The film is based on writer and director Greg Mottola's own adolescent experience working at Adventureland. For that reason the film is set in 1987, obviously because that is the era he remembers it from. But I had great trouble remembering that this film was not set in the present day. There is very little there to keep the film entrenched in the late 1980s. Maybe the conspicuous lack of mobile phones. The fact that carnivals don't really seem to have advanced much in the last 20 years means that they all look like they're from the 1980s, but your mind just goes "That's because they're at a carnival." The one thing which seems to try and keep you in the 1980s is the music, but even then you'll still find moody, intellectuals in their early twenties who listen to Lou Reed and I'm pretty sure if you hang around any carnival or fair Falco's Rock Me Amadeus will come over the speakers sooner or later.

Adventureland is not groundbreaking in any sense of the word, but it is pretty good, and the fact that it didn't go gangbusters at the cinemas and doesn't have a huge reputation makes it a bit of a hidden treasure.

56) Wake in Fright

Wake in Fright (1971)

Director: Ted Kotcheff

Starring: John Grant, Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty, Sylvia Kay, Jack Thompson, Peter Whittle, Al Thomas

Mid-semester break is over and I'm back to Introduction to Cinema. We're starting a spell of a few weeks on Australian cinema by looking at Ted Kotcheff's Wake in Fright. I was quite pleased to see that it was on the viewing list for this course because I was actually given a copy of the newly remastered DVD for Christmas last year.

John Grant (Bond) is a well educated school teacher from Sydney. "A bonded slave of the educated department" he has to serve out a tenure in the tiny outback town of Tiboonda unless he can pay the $1000 bond required to enable him to go where he chooses. When school breaks for Christmas, John heads for Sydney to see his girlfriend, but with his plane not leaving until the morning he has to spend the evening in the regional town Bundanyabba. When he visits the RSL that evening looking for a meal and a drink he is taken under the wing of a friendly local policemen, Jock Crawford (Rafferty) who, among other things, teaches him how to play Two Up. After a couple of lucky spins John is within reach of the $1000 which will mean he never has to return to Tiboonda. But he goes one spin too many and ends up losing everything. Thus he is stranded in Bundanyabba for the summer, relying on the hospitality of the locals who seem all to willing to oblige him, provided he is happy to have a drink with them. The snooty John quickly descends into a haze of booze and violence.

Despite being considered one of the landmarks of Australian film history it took a long time for Wake in Fright to get a DVD release. This is due to the fact that for a number of years this film was effectively lost. The only known print of the film was located in Dublin and was deemed to be of insufficient quality to warrant a transfer to DVD. In 1996 the film's editor, Anthony Buckley, commenced an international search for the negative of Wake in Fright. It was eventually established that British company Lancair held a copy. The only problem was they had gone into liquidation and all of their stock had been sent to Pittsburgh, to a company called Eyemark Entertainment. After initial contact with Eyemark, the trail went cold until 2000 when it was discovered that Eyemark had become King World Productions, a subsidiary of CBS. Finally, over 200 cans of negative, triseparations and music tracks were found in a container dump bin marked "for destruction" in the Pittsburgh warehouse, salvaged just in time. In 2004, after eight years of work, the negative for Wake in Fright arrived at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra and work was begun on the restoration. The completed restoration was screened for the first time at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival and went on to be screened at Cannes later that year screened at the Cannes Film Festival, 38 years after it originally appeared there and had received a nomination for the Palme d'Or.

I really didn't know what to expect from this film. I hadn't heard a great deal about it and was unaware of the plot of the story. Based on the title, which the novel's author Kenneth Cook derived from the old curse "May you dream of the devil and wake in fright," I figured it would be a horror of some sort, and it is, but not in the way you expect it to be. The film maintains an air of menace despite the outward appearance of friendly hospitality (as John quickly discovers the invitation to have a drink is more of an order than a request), as well as a strange sense of claustrophobia in a town which is surrounded by nothing but wide open spaces.

While Wake in Fright is renowned as an Australian classic, just how much this is an Australian film is questionable. Yes the film was based on an Australian novel and was filmed on location in Broken Hill, but the director, Ted Kotcheff of First Blood and Weekend at Bernie's fame, was Canadian, the screenplay was written by a Jamaican born Briton, the producer was Norwegian, the two principal actors were British and the production was financed by EMI, a British company. But to me this international creative team seems key to the creation of the outsiders viewpoint of the outback and the Australian culture. Often when we watch films set in the outback we are encouraged to identify with the locals, to feel at home there. Wake in Fright takes a side of Australian culture that we are used to seeing celebrated in films; the inclusive, having a beer with a mate, he's a good bloke, kind of thing, and gives it a sense of menace, treating it with the suspicion of an outsider. One reviewer called Wake in Fright, "the strongest and most savage comment on Australia ever put on film." It's a fair call.

The film famously contains quite a confronting scene of a kangaroo shoot which is not for the squeamish or the animal lover. The scene uses real and graphic footage of kangaroos being shot and dying. There is a disclaimer at the end of the movie which assures the viewer that these animals were not killed specifically for the movie but the footage was taken on a government licensed cull undertaken by professional hunters. Personally, more so than the footage of the kangaroos being shot, I found the footage in the same scene of Joe (Whittle) wrestling with and taunting a wounded kangaroo before slitting it's throat with a knife much more confronting. This kangaroo was credited as 'Nelson - the fighting kangaroo', so I can only assume that it was a performing animal and therefore wasn't actually killed, but either way the taunting of an animal like that doesn't sit well today.

The film is a notable marker in the history of the Australian cinema as not only is it the screen debut of Jack Thompson, but it is also the final screen appearance of legendary Australian character actor Chips Rafferty, who died only a matter of weeks after the film was completed.

Wake in Fright is truly unlike any screen representation of Australian culture that I have seen. It shines a spotlight on an ugly side of the outback existence which is so often celebrated in our national cinema. This film is quite confronting at times, both in terms of what you see on screen and in terms of the comment it is making, and is generally not for everyone but it is a very interesting contrast to the vast majority of outback Australian films.

55) The Departed

The Departed (2006)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Vera Farmiga, Ray Winstone, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Anderson


As I've made reasonably clear over the course of this blog, I'm a big Scorsese fan. I am also an even bigger Jack Nicholson fan. So needless to say, I was super pumped when they teamed up for The Departed. I went in and saw it at George St, I bought the 2-disc DVD the day it came out and was among the many frustrated to find that the feature length documentary Scorsese on Scorsese that was advertised on the box did not actually end up making it onto the DVD. I hadn't watched it for a couple of years so over the last few months had been eyeing it off on the shelf, all the more so since I recaught Scorsese-fever after Shutter Island. It made sense to progress from Peckinpah to Scorsese so this afternoon was the time.

Taking advantage of his family history, the Boston Police Department places new recruit Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) deep undercover in the Irish-American underworld of Frank Costello (Nicholson). At the same time Costello has Colin Sullivan (Damon) working his way up the ranks in the Special Investigations Unit, leaking information back to him. When both Costello and the Special Investigations Unit both work out there is an informant in their ranks, it becomes Costigan and Sullivan's job to try and discover the identity of the other without having their own cover blown.

The Departed is an remake of Wai-keung Lau and Alan Mak's famous Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs. Infernal Affairs is a brilliant film, and that creates a lot of arguments as to which is better, whether the remake was worthwhile, etc, etc. I prefer to think of The Departed as an adaptation rather than a remake, as Scorsese brings something different to the film, more than just an American setting and English speaking actors. Scorsese's films, particularly his gangster films, have always been more anthropological than plot driven. They take the viewer into a criminal world and explore the mechanics of that lifestyle and the psyches of the people who inhabit that world. Scorsese admitted, when receiving his Directors' Guild of America Award for The Departed, that it was "the first film I have ever done with a plot." While this is a slight exaggeration, it does correctly suggest that what we have here is a slightly different style of filmmaking from Scorsese. The Departed is a faster paced film than we are used to seeing from Scorsese, as a result of its greater than usual focus on its core narrative. That being said it is still not as lightening paced as Infernal Affairs. Infernal Affairs sets up in the first 5mins what Scorsese allows roughly 30mins to achieve. Scorsese has taken the narrative structure of Infernal Affairs but made it a Martin Scorsese picture, taking the time to flesh out a lot of the characters, particularly the supporting characters. Both films have their merits and both are excellent films, but they have a different focus, so to suggest that one makes the other redundant is a bit simplistic.

This film has one of the greatest casts of all time. That is a big statement, but I'm willing to stand by it. We are talking a The Godfather, JFK, A Bridge Too Far strength cast. Not only do you have three very strong leads in DiCaprio, Damon and Nicholson, you have a support cast which is second to none. Martin Sheen is a fantastic actor and brings a real sense of nobility to the part of Queenan (the same sense of nobility which made so many West Wing viewers wish he was actually the president of the United States). Mark Wahlberg is fantastic as the abrasive Dignam, and rightly earned an Academy Award nomination, surprisingly the only one from the cast. In the last ten years Alec Baldwin has gone from being a bit of a joke in Hollywood to being one of the best supporting actors going round. He is just a guy who seems to make a film better by being in it. Vera Farmiga wasn't shown up by the names around her in the cast and showed the ability which would be recognised in Up in the Air. But as is always the case, the star of this show is Jack. He makes Costello such a compelling character that we are just transfixed by him when he's on the screen. I don't want to count the great man out, but this could well be the last great performance of Jack Nicholson's career.

The Departed also has a great "what if" cast of people who turned down roles, including Brad Pitt as Colin Sullivan, Robert De Niro as Cpt. Queenan, Ray Liotta as Sgt. Dignam and Mel Gibson as Cpt. Ellerby. There are some pretty big names there. All the guys who got those parts ended up doing amazing jobs so mostly I don't regret any of those changes, though a big part of me would have loved to see Mel Gibson as Ellerby, that could have been sensational (and would have meant I didn't think 30 Rock as soon as Baldwin appeared on screen). Scorsese was also apparently tossing up between Kate Winslett, Hilary Swank and Emily Blunt for the role of Madolyn, before deciding to go with the more anonymous Vera Farmiga.

One thing which did bug me a bit this time, which I hadn't noticed before, was the film's soundtrack. The Departed has a great soundtrack including the Rolling Stones, Dropkick Murpheys and Roger Waters featuring Van Morrison and The Band singing Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, but I it hasn't been mixed very well into the film. At times it's great, but at other times it is clear that Scorsese is interested in one particular part of the song, ie. the intro to the Stones Gimme Shelter, so rather than playing through the song that part repeats, but the repeated remix has not been smoothly mixed. You're not likely to notice it unless you're listening for it, it slipped past unnoticed the first couple of times I watched the film, but I noticed it this time so thought I'd mention it.

Here's a trivia tidbit for you. The Departed uses the F word and it's various derivations a total of 237 times, making it the most F words in a film to have won a Best Picture Oscar. Aren't you glad you know that now.

The Departed is not Scorsese's best film. It is also not Jack Nicholson's best film. But then both of those guys have higher standards than most. The Departed it is none the less a damn good film. It is engrossing to watch these two legends of cinema joining forces and both playing to their strengths; Scorsese making an urban gangster movie, and Nicholson playing a fearsome, maniacal villain. An enthralling storyline borrowed from Infernal Affairs and one of the all time great casts make this easily Scorsese's most commercial film and most accessible film. A real gem.

54) The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch (1969)

Director: Sam Peckinpah

Starring: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Jaime Sanchez, Emilio Fernandez

Kate and I have an understanding where I am to use the times when she is out to watch films I know she will have zero interest in seeing, that way she doesn't feel like she's missed out. So I figured I was in the clear today with Sam Peckinpah's famously violent western The Wild Bunch.

After a robbery gone wrong results in the death of a number of their gang, the Wild Bunch, led by Pike Bishop (Holden), head across the border to Mexico to hide out. They are being pursued by a rag-tag bunch of bounty hunters led by ex-Wild Bunch member Deke Thornton (Ryan), who has been let out of prison on the condition he help catch them. Bishop and his close friend Dutch Engstrom (Borgnine) decide their time is almost up and they decide to do one more big job and then retire. Mexican tyrant General Mapache (Fernandez) offers the Wild Bunch 10,000 dollars in gold to cross over the border and steal a train load of weapons from the American military. The outlaws accept the offer but then have to grapple with the notion they are providing the means by which this tyrant will continue to oppress the Mexican people.

There are a number of similarities between the story lines of The Wild Bunch and another great Western which came out in 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But while Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was much lighter in tone and glorified the film's two protagonists, The Wild Bunch took a much darker, grittier and confronting approach. While both films have been hailed as classics, Peckinpah's film was swept up in a cloud of controversy upon it's release.

What really made The Wild Bunch so controversial was the film's depictions of violence. Bonnie and Clyde had come out two years earlier and had raised the bar to a degree in terms of on-screen violence, but Peckinpah took things to a whole new level with The Wild Bunch. The film is bookended with two large scale shootouts; the first taking place in a busy street after a bank robbery and resulting in the indiscriminate killing of civilians, the last a bloodbath battle between the Wild Bunch and the Mexican army. These shootouts were on a scale unseen in films at the time. The film's final shootout used an estimated 90,000 rounds of blank ammunition (marketing for the film boasted that The Wild Bunch used more bullets than the real Mexican revolution).

But it was not just the scale of the gun battles that made them significant, it was how graphic they were. Peckinpah was determined that the gunshots look real. He insisted the actors wear squibs (small explosives filled with fake blood used to simulate gunshots) on both sides of their body so that the camera could capture both an entry and an exit wound. Unsatisfied with the look of the squibs he then had them packed with more fake blood plus small pieces of raw meat to make the explosive wounds more substantial. His confronting use of violence earned Peckinpah the nickname 'Bloody Sam' and was a feature of not only The Wild Bunch, but many of his notable films including Straw Dogs, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (the film for which Bob Dylan wrote Knockin' on Heaven's Door) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

In my blog on The Last Detail I talked about Hal Ashby as being a director who really personifies that 1960s/1970s Hollywood Renaissance era, but who's drug addiction (arguably just as much as sign of the times) ultimately destroyed his career. Sam Peckinpah is a similar figure. Peckinpah's vice was alcohol (which perhaps adds some significance to the opening scene of The Wild Bunch in which a Temperance Union group unknowingly march into the middle of a bloody gun battle). His alcoholism, and later drug issues, made him quite difficult to work with and there are a number of accounts of on set altercations between Peckinpah and his crew (22 crew members were sacked during the making of The Wild Bunch alone). As respected and admired a talent as he was, much like Ashby his unreliability which stemmed from his alcoholism started to become an issue for studios who were uncomfortable with the notion of handing the reins over to him. He died at the age of 59 from heart failure.

The influence of The Wild Bunch can be strongly felt in films like Scorsese's Taxi Driver and De Palma's Scarface, both of which culminate in a bloody shootout, and when watching the opening credits of The Wild Bunch it is hard not to draw parallels with the opening titles of Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. Sam Peckinpah was a hugely influential director, arguably a director whose true importance to the history of cinema lies in the works that he inspired even more so than the works he created. Without Peckinpah would Scorsese be Scorsese? Would Tarantino be Tarantino? To quote the Italian director Carlo Carlei, "The influence of Peckinpah comes to me filtered by other directors I like who were influenced by him... There is a chain of inspiration like The Bible. Everything comes from Peckinpah when talking about shooting scenes. Other prophets tried to perfect it and are part of an evolution."

Obviously on-screen depictions of violence have come a long way since 1969, so the big shootouts that bookend the film don't quite have the same shock value today that they did in when the film first came out. In general, the things which made The Wild Bunch shocking aren't shocking to us today. But fortunately the things which made The Wild Bunch an excellent piece of filmmaking; the well constructed set pieces, the rapid editing style, the strong characters, remain in tact.

53) Star Trek

Star Trek (2009)

Director: J.J. Abrams

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy, Ben Cross, Winona Ryder

Kate was out this morning and we've got a busy afternoon and evening of social engagements I was keen to take it easy in the morning, so over breakfast I decided to watch something I knew I was going to enjoy and not have to think too much. Cue Star Trek.

Son of a storied Starfleet Captain who famously died in battle, James Kirk (Pine), brilliant but lacking direction, enlists in the Starfleet Academy. Over just a couple of years he shows himself to be very gifted, if a bit cocky. He creates quite a stir when he becomes the first cadet ever to pass the Kobayashi Maru Test, only to be accused of cheating by the setter of the test, Commander Spock (Quinto). When a distress signal is picked up from the planet Vulcan, Starfleet's promising young cadets are forced to crew the newly christened U.S.S. Enterprise in order to provide assistance. However they find the emergency is no natural disaster, but actually a Romulan attack. Using a weapon which creates black holes, the Romulans, led by Nero (Bana), destroy Vulcan and set their sights on Earth. It is up to this inexperienced team of cadets to band together and save the day if Earth is to survive.

While this is the 11th Star Trek film, it is not a chronological sequel to the previous ten. Rather what we have here is a franchise reboot. Abrams has taken us back to the beginning, to the original characters, to allow a new generation of fans to fall in love with Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov. Obviously, rewriting a beloved mythology, especially one with fans as devoted to the point of obsession like Trekkies, has the potential to ruffle a few feathers. Fortunately a bit of clever thinking from the writers, Roberto Orti and Alex Kurtzman, have given them an easy out when they face the questions of disgruntled Trekkies at sci-fi conventions. In the opening scene of the film Nero's ship comes out of a black hole, having travelled back through time, thus when Nero attacks the U.S.S. Kelvin, killing Kirk's father, he changes history's chain of events and in the process changes the destinies of all of the film's characters (a fact which is explained to us by Spock) therefore giving the filmmakers license to deviate from the accepted Star Trek lore of the previous films. Very sneaky indeed.

I found the casting for this film interesting. Early on there was a lot of talk that the new Captain Kirk would be played by Matt Damon. I don't know if that fell through or if it was never any more than a rumour, but in the end the lead role when to Chris Pine. Chris who? Exactly. Pine leads a cast with surprisingly little star power or box office clout for what is obviously an attempt to boot up a big time blockbuster franchise. The biggest names in the cast are Bana (who's character seems unlikely to be an ongoing fixture in the franchise), Simon Pegg (decent profile, but not really a box office draw card, and only in a minor role) and John Cho, that guy from Harold and Kumar, the one who doesn't now work for the Obama administration. Zoe Saldana has a rising profile, but that is largely as a result of her role in Avatar, which had not come out when Star Trek was released. They've gone for a real ensemble feel rather than a star studded, Ocean's 11, type cast.

Oh, and just on casting, which bright spark thought it made sense to cast Winona Ryder as Spock's mother?! I found the sight of Ryder in old lady make up really off putting in what were supposed to be quite touching scenes.

I really loved the fact that Leonard Nimoy was in this film, and not just making a minor cameo, but actually playing an important role. I got a massive kick out of it, which is strange as I have not seen any of the original television series or any of the early movies, I was more of a Star Wars kid than a Star Trek kid, so I have no personal attachment to him as Spock. But none the less, I recognise that Nimoy as Spock is one of the iconic figures of the Star Trek franchise, much like the U.S.S. Enterprise (could you imagine the Trekkie backlash if they had remodelled the Enterprise for the reboot!), and I enjoyed that they payed homage to that fact.

One thing I could have done without was the real effort that went into establishing Kirk as a bit of a rebel without a cause early in the film. The bar room brawl I was fine with, no issues. What I didn't think really brought anything to the film was the earlier scene in which a 13 or 14 year old Kirk steals his step-father's vintage sports car and drives it off a cliff, just because he's cool. It was an unnecessary scene which just had a bit of a groan factor to it.

Star Trek is a really fun film. A wonderful piece of exciting, escapist, sci-fi, with some great action sequences, dazzling special effects and a sprinkling of humour. This is what 'high concept' blockbuster cinema should be; fun. J.J. Abrams is firing on all cylinders and has managed to turn Star Trek into a non-stop adrenaline rush. I'm assured that it is packed with little tidbits which reward the devoted Trekkie, but even if you are coming to it with with a blank slate, you can still really enjoy it.

52) Bull Durham

Bull Durham (1988)

Director: Ron Shelton

Starring: Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Trey Wilson, Robert Wuhl

I was in Dick Smith Electronics a couple of weeks ago and spotted a copy of Bull Durham in the bargain bin going for $2. It was the only film in the bin that I had heard of, but I'd recently been listening to a 3RRR podcast with Tony Wilson and Tony Martin where Wilson was saying he'd recently rewatched Bull Durham and thought it was the best "sportsman who is not quite good enough" movies he'd seen, so I figured it was worth a shot for $2.

Annie (Sarandon) is a small town baseball groupie with a difference. Every season she takes on board one player from her beloved Durham Bulls to share her bed, her incredible knowledge of the game and her unique brand of amateur psychology, and season after season this player under her wing goes on to have the season of their career. This year she has her sights set on young up-and-comer Ebby 'Nuke' LaLoosh (Robbins). Nuke is a very exciting young prospect, a pitcher with "a million dollar arm and a five cent brain". For that reason the Bulls bring in veteran minor league catcher 'Crash' Davis (Costner) to mentor the young firebrand. As the cynical veteran teaches the brash peacock the intricacies of the game, Annie finds herself torn between her commitment to Nuke and her desire for Crash.

I don't know if there is a truer slice of Americana than the Hollywood baseball movie. There have been a lot of movies made about baseball, probably more than any other sport. Within the sub-genre that is the baseball movie there exists a more specific genre that is the Kevin Costner baseball movie. The combination of America's national pastime and Costner's southern drawl seems to have been a match made in heaven and has resulted in a number of films: Chasing Dreams, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, For the Love of the Game and The Upside of Anger (I was working at Blockbuster when this one came out and had to laugh when after a bit of an absence the slightly older Costner returned our screens in a romantic comedy in which he played, wait for it... a retired baseball player).

This film takes a while to lure you in, but once you've settled in to the tone of the film you'll enjoy the ride. Ron Shelton's screenplay, which drew on his experiences as a minor league baseballer, won a number of awards and earned him a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination (it was pipped by Ronald Bass's screenplay for Rain Man). It is a very well written film. It's got brilliant characters, with the main characters supported by a brilliant gallery of oddball supporting characters. It's got a lot of heart, but also some quirky humour. Like the best sports movies, it is not really about the sport. It is about Annie and her lifestyle, and how the arrival of Crash makes her reevaluate things. It is about the mentoring relationship of Crash and Nuke. It is about Crash's frustrations at a career of being not quite good enough, never having the physical abilities to match his mental understanding of the game.

As good as the screenplay is though, it is not perfect. Especially early on there is some rather contrived dialogue which really doesn't fit the tone of the film. The most jarring is Crash's celebrated statement of his beliefs to Annie:

Crash: I don't believe in quantum physics when it comes to matters of the heart.

Annie: What do you believe in, then?

Crash: Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fibre, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents on Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.

With that he leaves and everyone in the audience thinks, "What the hell has that got to do with anything?" Shelton somewhat sheepishly admitted later that that glory speech was a shameless ploy to lure a big name actor. It failed to work with Jeff Bridges or Don Johnson, who both turned down the role, but it worked on Costner.

The performances of the trio of stars, Costner, Sarandon and Robbins really makes the film work. Sarandon strikes the perfect balance of desirability and tragedy in her portrayal of an aging southern belle, who one critic described as half Blanche DuBois and half Mrs. Robinson. Robbins' goofiness enables the viewer to look past his brash arrogance and accept what could otherwise have been an unlikeable. Both Robbins and Sarandon have gone on the record as saying that this is the favourite movie that each of them worked on in their careers. I do wonder though whether that stance has changed given the recent breakup of their long marriage (they met on the set of Bull Durham). Costner turns in arguably the performance of his career in this roll as a cynical veteran balancing his desire for Nuke to reach his potential with his frustration in knowing that despite the fact that he deserved success more than Nuke does, it's the youngster who will make it to the big time. As Tony Wilson suggested, it is a wonderful exploration of the sportsman who is just not quite good enough, a wonderful player in the minors who never made it to the majors.

Bull Durham is a good, fun movie, with enough substance that it is not just fluff.

51) Life is Beautiful

La vita e bella (1997)

Director: Roberto Benigni

Starring: Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Giorgio Cantarini, Giustino Durano, Sergio Bini Bustric, Horst Buchholz

Life is Beautiful really shot onto everyone's radar as a result of actor/director/producer Roberto Benigni's amazing Oscar celebration after the film won the Best Foreign language picture at the 1998 Academy Awards. It did amazingly well for a foreign film at the Academy Awards, not only winning awards for Best Foreign Film, Best Actor and Best Original Score, but also receiving nominations for Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture, an achievement seldom seen for non-English language films. But when you see this film it all makes sense.

In 1930s Italy, the carefree Guido (Benigni) moves to the city to open up a bookshop, working as a waiter for his uncle Elisio (Durano) while he attempts to set up his business. Through a series of serendipitous meetings, he falls for local school teacher Dora (Braschi), and after saving her from her engagement to a stuffy clerk, they marry and have a son, Giosue (Cantarini). All is well in life until Guido, Giosue and Elisio are rounded up to be taken to a concentration camp. Despite not being Jewish, Dora insists they take her too. In order to protect his son from the harshness of their reality, Guido convinces Giosue that they are involved in an elaborate game, with the prize for the winner being a real tank.

Life is Beautiful is film of two distinct halves. The main crux of the narrative, their being herded into a Nazi death camp, does not actually occur until about an hour into this two hour movie. The first half of the story deals with the romance between Guido and Dora, but more importantly it establishes the character of Guido. By giving the audience a good long time to embrace the character of Guido and learn his outlook on life, it enables the audience to understand his actions in the second half of the film, thus making it all the more effective.

I'd never seen Roberto Benigni in anything before. He plays a joyous, carefree, enthusiastic romantic, who if his Oscars performance is anything to go by, is reasonably consistent with his real life personality. The best way I've seen him described is an Italian half Woody Allen, half Jim Carrey. He is a physical comedian, performing a very European style of slapstick comedy, but also has the slightly nerdy Jewish thing going for him, though more of a joyful, life-loving nerd than a Woody Allen manic depressive nerd. Benigni's chemistry with Braschi is fantastic, but that is probably explained that they are married in real life.

Life is Beautiful copped a bit of criticism at the time for being almost sacrilegious, because effectively it is a comedy dealing with the holocaust, a somewhat touchy subject. While this is indeed what the film is, it is a mistake to suggest that just because the film is a comedy it is in any way making light of the horrors that occurred in those death camps. There are different types of comedy which work in different ways. Confusion arises from the fact that the comic tone in Life is Beautiful changes mid film. The first half is a very light-hearted, slapstick style of comedy. In the second half of the film, despite Guido being the same character, the comedy becomes much more rooted in tragedy. His playfulness is not an expression of his not-a-care-in-the-world nature, but stems from an all to great awareness of the darkness of their situation. What we see is simply Guido's refusal to resign himself to such a horrible fate, and his determination to do whatever he can to protect his son. In many ways the second half of Life is Beautiful is as powerful a statement on the holocaust as the brilliant Schindler's List, just with a different approach.

Life is Beautiful is one of a very few films which legitimately has the potential to make you laugh out loud and cry. The film has some real tragic moments and some real moments of elation (when Guido hyjacks the camp PA system and let's fly with a trademark "Bonjourno principessa!" to let his wife know he is still alive, you can't help but get a bit goosebumpy). It is the strongest portrayal of a father's love for his son, and the lengths that he will go to to protect him, that I have seen in a film. It is a simply beautiful film which confronts you with the horrors and injustices of war, but without letting you lose sight of the joy and beauty of life. Maybe it wasn't Saving Private Ryan that was robbed by Shakespeare in Love after all.

50) Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Director: Joe Wright

Starring: Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, Rosamund Pike, Jenna Malone, Carey Mulligan, Talulah Riley, Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland, Simon Woods, Tom Hollander, Rupert Friend, Judi Dench


Pride and Prejudice is one of Kate's favourite books. She reads it at least once a year. A few years ago, being a devoted boyfriend with the best of intentions, I decided I would read it in order to gain an appreciation for something so important to her. Not being a dynamite reader though, meant that it was not long before I drowned under the weight of an excessive number of different Miss. Bennet's and threw in the towel. When Kate recently started reading the book again I decided that perhaps watching the film was a more achievable goal for me. With both of us having just got back from leading a youth camp over the weekend, feeling a bit exhausted and keen for a morning off, I thought now would be a good time to give it a shot, with Kate happy to watch it with me and explain/interpret.

Elizabeth Bennet (Knightley) lives with her parents and four sisters in their middle class estate in Hartfordshire in Georgian England. Due to Mr. Bennet (Sutherland) not having a male heir, when he dies his estate will pass to a distant cousin, Mr. Collins (Hollander), rather than his daughters. Therefore the future security of his family is dependent on his daughters finding suitable husbands. Life for the Bennet sisters is largely uneventful until the wealthy and eligible bachelor Mr. Bingley (Woods) arrives in town, bringing with him the even wealthier but much more abrasive Mr. Darcy (Macfadyen). The eldest Miss Bennet, Jane (Pike), quickly catches the eye of Bingley, while Elizabeth jumps to a hasty conclusion about the character of Darcy, swearing to loathe him forever. However, not everything is so straight forward as the sisters have to work through the the prejudices of the inter-class relations, and the gossip and scandal that ensues.

Pride and Prejudice is kind of a difficult film for me to talk about. Usually when you approach a film like this, one based on a much loved novel, the initial point of analysis is how true to the spirit of the novel the adaptation is. Having not read the novel (beyond the first couple of chapters) this option of analysis is not really open to me. That being said, I can still appreciate it as a film, even if I am not getting the full Pride and Prejudice experience.

As a film, it was good without being anything groundbreaking. It received Oscar nominations for costume and art direction, two fields you would expect a well made period piece to excell in. It contained some quite good performances. Keira Knightley put in one of the best performances I've seen from her, earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination. She was really engaging as Elizabeth Bennet, standing out from the other female characters as an intelligent woman, making her sparring with Darcy quite interesting, and I'm assured by Kate that she did do justice to the character. Personally, I quite enjoyed the performance of Donald Sutherland, who I thought played the part of the slightly bemused patriarch living in a home overrun by six women very well (perhaps he was the character I could most easily relate to). He even made a valiant effort at an English accent. Though the three youngest Bennet sisters, Mary, Kitty and Lydia, all seemed a bit two dimensional compared to Elizabeth and even Jane who was fleshed out a bit more. I'm not sure whether this was the case in the novel or whether it was the fact that the focus on them had to be pulled back in order to keep the film to an acceptable running time.

There were a couple of moments in the film where I thought Wright tried to be a bit too arty and it didn't quite fit the tone of the film, which largely went for a straight forward realism. The first one was in the ball when Elizabeth and Darcy were dancing and all of a sudden all the other dancers just disappear, only to reappear at the end of the dance. I understand perfectly what Wright intended for this to suggest, but I found it quite a jarring moment. The same could be said of a later scene in which Elizabeth looks at herself in the mirror and we see the shadows in the background crawl across the screen as if to suggest that she has been standing there all day. Again, this action was intended to make a point, and it did, but I don't know whether the point it made was worth the breaking of the tone of the film.

I did disgust myself at one point during the watching of this film where I found myself following the story of Pride and Prejudice based on what I knew of Bridget Jones's Diary. It is one of my pet hates when people are more familiar with a copy/cover/reference than with the original source. More precisely my pet hate is when people accuse the original of 'ripping off' the copy (eg. "Blofeld is such a rip off of Dr. Evil", "Queen totally ripped off that Vanilla Ice song"). Either way, when I got to the scene in which Mr. Wickham is telling Elizabeth why his relationship with Mr. Darcy had gone sour and found myself going "Ah, I remember this scene with Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones's Diary", I was ashamed that I was more familiar with the pop culture reference than the classical original.

I'm glad to have seen this film, if for no other reason that I now know what Pride and Prejudice is all about. It is a good film, with some good performances, and I quite enjoyed it, but as you would expect it no doubt has a lot more for the devoted Austen fan than for the casual movie-goer.

49) The Hangover

The Hangover (2009)

Director: Todd Phillips

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Heather Graham, Jeffrey Tambor, Ken Jeong, Rachel Harris

The Hangover was really the surprise packet of 2009. It came out without all that much fanfare, and lacking the big names of other 2009 comedies like Funny People and Couples Retreat, but ended up cracking the top 10 for the year at the international box office, with it's US$461.6million trumping notable blockbusters like Star Trek, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

Four friends, Phil (Cooper), Stu (Helms), Alan (Galifianakis) and Doug (Bartha) head to Las Vegas for a night of drunken debauchery to celebrate Doug's bachelor party. The next morning Phil, Stu and Alan awake in their trashed villa with no memory of the events of the night before to find that the groom-to-be Doug is missing. The trio are now in a race against the clock to find out what they got up to the previous night in the hope that it will lead them to their missing friend in time to get him back for his wedding.

There are few more tired and cliched topics for comedy than the bachelor party. Comedies about a group of men getting blind drunk and getting up to mischief with strippers, drugs, hookers, etc are a dime a dozen and usually pass by completely unnoticed. That being the case, when it first arrived at the box office The Hangover was treated with a fair bit of scepticism. But what screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (of Four Holidays and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past fame) did to make things work here was to completely bypass the drunken party. After a brief prologue, the film really begins when the trio awake in their villa the morning after. So rather than a dime-a-dozen bachelor party movie, what we actually have here is a keenly disguised detective story. The three leads play both the investigators and the subject of the investigation as they go from location to location in search of clues as to just what they got up to last night in the hope that it may lead them to their missing friend. This different approach enables The Hangover to avoid many of the cliches you fear when you first see approach the film.

What really makes this film work is the chemistry between the trio of alpha male Phil, the anxious, whipped dentist Stu and the oddball brother in law Alan. The banter between them is natural, unforced and hilarious. In particular The Hangover looks like it could be the career turning point for Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis. Cooper had been around for a while, I recognised him from his supporting role in Wedding Crashers, but this film showed he has real star quality, and landing a lead role in The A-Team reboot could be the beginning of bigger and better things for him. Galifianakis seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere to be the scene stealer of The Hangover. The classic beardy wierdy, he had been working in films just as long as Cooper but with a much lower profile. He's already locked in to provide the voice of Humpty Dumpty in Puss in Boots, and has supporting roles in a number of upcoming comedies. It will take a few more The Hangover-style flashes of brilliance before Galifianakis can really crack Hollywood's comedy A-list, but he is definitely on the radar now.

The one thing which really didn't work for me in this film was the cameo from Mike Tyson. He did not seem comfortable or natural in front of the camera and it just wasn't all that funny. It just felt really gimmicky, like they were looking for something to create a bit of talk around the film (he did feature prominently in the movie's previews). Oh, and I'll butt onto that a second thing which didn't work for me, Ken Jeong's character. Again, didn't really bring anything to the fold.

The Hangover was easily the comedy of the year in 2009. Even if you are growing a bit tired of the Frat-Pack/Judd Apatow style of comedy we've been overwhelmed with over the last few years, there is enough originality in this one to make it worth a look. It is a very funny film, though some of the humour is a bit crude so if that's not your style, be warned (though really, the MA rating for coarse language and strong sexual references should be warning enough).