Droll in the Hay- TAMARA DREWE Review

As poorly Photoshopped posters and numerous TV spots across the land have proclaimed, Tamara Drewe has Gemma Arterton in it. Surprisingly though, it's more about Nicholas Hardiment, a smarmy and adulterous crime novelist whose long-suffering wife (and skivvy) runs a writers' retreat in Dorset. They offer writers a respite, "far from the madding crowd."

That changes when the titular Tamara returns home, once an ugly duckling of sorts and now imbued with a nose job and new found sexual confidence. She turns the heads of many of the men in the village and more or less delivers chaos into most of the relationships around. A violent conclusion can only follow.

As when I saw Piranha 3D a few weeks ago, I came out of seeing Tamara Drewe thinking about Jaws. The simple reason is that although Arterton is great in the titular role, she's as much the main character in this as the shark is the main character in Steven Spielberg's classic. She doesn't appear until around 20 minutes into the film anyway, and she's only really the instigator in a number of more interesting stories.

We're supposed to come out of this comparing to the works of Thomas Hardy, with connotations that are very overtly lavished upon us throughout. But no, to me, it's Jaws. Our Quint, if you'll stay with me on this one, would be Nicholas, played superbly by Roger Allam. He's not exactly playing against type, but by God, you'll hate this bastard. But there's just the right amount of smarm, juxtaposed with Tamsin Greig's very well-pitched performance as his wife, to make you love to hate him.

Greig gives the same sort of restrained and downtrodden performance that Emily Watson did in Cemetery Junction earlier this year, and she becomes the heart of the film in a way that our supposed heroine doesn't. Arterton acts considerably better than a rubber shark, implementing a bizarre aura of naivete in Tamara. Femmes don't come much more fatale than her, and it's another nice touch.

However, her particular brand of inadvertent emotional terrorism sadly isn't anything like as interesting as that death-by-nom-nom summer that Amity Island endured. Because it isn't riotously funny, nor particularly serious, it's another film that fits best into the cushy Sunday night ITV drama type. A one-off that could be cushioned between Heartbeat and Midsomer Murders. On-screen graphics notify us of the change in season, presumably because the film just looks autumnal, all year round. It's bawdy and yet droll, and that's a mismatch that doesn't work.

The closest we really get to comedy beyond the one-liners and sight gags you've seen in the trailers- yes, they're all in there- comes with Jody and Casey. They're a pair of teenagers, played by Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie, who are so desperately bored in the village that they do despicable things in the course of the film. Jody's the more forthright of the two, and her particular brand of lovelorn delusion makes her a Tamara Drewe in the making. Barden plays it so well, she's actually a more interesting character than the original Tamara.

Disclaimer- Tamara Drewe isn't really Jaws. It's just one of a number of films I've watched in cinemas recently and wished I was watching Jaws instead. It's not a total loss however- there's some nice direction by Stephen Frears, some fantastic performances from all of the cast (especially Allam and Greig) and an unexpected receptiveness for what's essentially a Guardian reader's delight. It's a middle class sex comedy, but if you can reconcile those two factors with your own viewing tastes, it might be worth a look on a Sunday night.

Tamara Drewe is now playing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Tamara Drewe, why not leave a comment on the film and/or my review? If you really have to see Gemma Arterton in undress without shelling out to see this, you still need to see The Disappearance of Alice Creed. Then again, the nudity isn't necessarily sexy in that film...

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.
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Into the mixed bag of video game movies comes Prince of Persia- The Sands of Time. Dastan is a street urchin-made-prince by his adoptive father and King, and is naturally the most noble and fierce soldier in Persia, whose empire spans across the globe at this stage in history. While sacking a holy city purported to be arming Persia's enemies, Dastan happens across a mystical dagger, whose hilt contains the Sands of Time. The holder of the dagger can turn back time, and when Dastan's world is turned upside down by accusations of treason, he must team up with a princess, Tamina, in order to save the world.

Jerry Bruckheimer has obviously done his utmost here to find a film to replicate the barnstorming success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. This one may well be his most likely prospect, but it's clearly just a shame that it had to be set in the Middle East. In the midst of an international conflict, the Disney production is very confused indeed. Gone is the approach of making Aladdin look like Tom Cruise, because that would baffle audiences! Americans aren't from Iran! Everyone is now... British. Yes, and a buffed up Jake Gyllenhaal shall star and put on a decent British accent, and everyone else shall actually be British! Ben Kingsley! Alfred Molina! Jeff from Coupling! To Disney, this might as well register as Galactic Basic.

They've also opted for a heavy handed politicisation of the plot. The Persian army descends upon the holy city at the beginning of the film because they're making non-descript weapons for the enemy- weapons which they naturally can't find once they've subjugated the city. There's also a lot of rumination about whether or not this was a just invasion, and whether or not Dastan should have been "a great man, instead of a good one", and protested against the attack to stop it happening. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we've ended up with a popcorn flick version of Green Zone!

This subtext is scarcely accessible for a family audience, so Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time actually does the one thing you'd think they'd be striving desperately to escape. Every now and then, they stop and stand around so the camera can show whatever battlefield or crowded area they're headed for, while the characters explain what needs to happen. This happens prior to about 80% of the action sequences, and resembles nothing so much as video-game storytelling. You can be forgiven if you reach for a phantom PS2 controller at any of these junctures.


All of this said, it's a lot more competent than it has any right to be. Director Mike Newell does a fine job off the back of having directed the most action-packed of the Harry Potter films to date, The Goblet of Fire, and here brings a similar sensibility to the table. It's always nicely choreographed and doesn't look like a video game fight even if the editing tees it up that way. Neither does it out-stay its welcome at a nice, stream-lined two hours that zips along and doesn't stretch credulity in the way of Bruckheimer's Pirates sequels.

The acting is surprisingly good too, with Gyllenhaal's Dastan ending up a much better action hero than you'd expect of the guy who was once Donnie Darko. Alfred Molina is reliably enjoyable too, but deserves to be singled out for nearly stealing the film in what should really be a thankless comic relief role. Ben Kingsley and Richard Coyle are less noteworthy, but for its female lead Gemma Arterton, I'm hoping it will mark a rethink of her choices.

I thought she was great in The Disappearance of Alice Creed, but seeing as how she's back on eye-candy duty in this one, I feel that what happens next is crucial to her career. Arterton's not put to the best use here with her expositionary role- she delivers most of that cut-scene dialogue I mentioned. She doesn't have the best chemistry with Gyllenhaal either, which makes their bickering as irksome as your average romcom dialogue. Basically, if she can continue with meatier roles like Alice Creed in future, I'll be happy. If she takes over from Megan Fox in Transformers 3, as has been rumoured, then she is dead to me. Come away from the Bay-stard!

The sun-bleached setting sits well in the summer blockbuster season, as does its general sense of humour and exciting set-pieces. In many ways, it's only disappointing that Disney were so precarious about the setting, falling back on their old tropes by evoking both Aladdin and The Lion King in the story, with an unhealthy infusion of war in Iraq allegory. And worst of all, they rely on an almost cynical cop-out ending that exploits the central McGuffin to remove any sense of jeopardy that had been building in the apparently apocalyptic threat that the villain poses. It's the big bum note in the narrative, but if you've had as much fun watching it as I did, you'll probably forgive it.


All in all, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is probably the best game-to-movie translation ever, but that's the best in an extremely weak field. It has a stronger lead performance than the material demands from an actor of Gyllenhaal's calibre, even if it's sometimes obscured beneath CGI and action sequences. The result is mixed and sometimes confused, but when it's fun, it's really fun, and a cut above what you would expect from a video game movie. If nothing else, be happy that it's a lot more enjoyable than Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and keep your fingers crossed that any potential Persia sequels (and I imagine there will be at least one) don't go to such hyperbolic ruin.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is now playing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and want to share your thoughts on the film or my review, why not comment below? Alternatively, if you haven't figured out from a merest glimpse at the poster who turns out to be the baddy in this one, brush up on your actor typecasting and get back to me in the morning.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Look, Ma! Three Hands!

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.

A dramatic three-hander, The Disappearance of Alice Creed is showing in selected cinemas this week, bringing a frequently used theatre structure in for a rare outing on the big screen. And I also saw Date Night. What? Yeah, ok, so there's no pithy connection going on except that Date Night is kind of a thriller, in the loosest sense of the word, i.e. it's not. Convergence aside, these are the films, here are my reviews.
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Date Night finds a put-upon married couple, Phil and Claire Foster, desperately trying to reignite the spark in their relationship. He spends all day in a crap job at the tax office while she tries to sell real estate to dunderheads, and both are distracted by looking after their young kids. So in a change from their regular date nights, they sneak into a swanky restaurant by stealing another couple's reservations, and end up on the run for their lives as they're mistaken for thieves by a criminal gang.

Let's imagine for a moment that Hugh Grant plays Phil and Sarah Jessica Parker plays Claire. Now read that synopsis again. Now you have a fair idea of why Did You Hear About The Morgans? sucked balls. Instead, Date Night boasts the pairing of the two biggest names in American comedy right now, even if it does still have Shaun Levy at the helm. Levy directed the likes of Night at the Museum and Cheaper by the Dozen. With a plot as generic and trodden over as this and a director as pedestrian as Levy, it's easy to see how the film would've been horrible if not for the inspired casting of Steve Carell and Tina Fey.
Look at the other casting, for instance. Mark Wahlberg as Shirtless Man. Common as a cop. Oh, and a lovely turn from Ray Liotta, who hasn't been told he's in a comedy. I feel this film vindicates my view on romantic comedies once again by showing how relatable characters and likable actors can make a humdrum film a lot better. The script for this one is pretty by-numbers, but it's the peerless comic timing of its leads that makes it inherently enjoyable. Although the film later becomes more action-packed than its beginning, I could happily have watched 90 minutes of the Fosters bickering and exhausting each other. This is great comedy, the kind of thing that's missing from a million Jennifer Aniston romcoms that are neither funny nor romantic.

Ladies, Date Night is quite possibly the best film you'll drag a guy to see this year. If you aren't really interested, drag him to see this anyway, because I don't doubt he's going to suffer through Eclipse later in the year if you're so inclined. The action elements are fine, and indeed better than fine in the case of an inspired car chase in the middle that I've never seen done anywhere else before, but Carell and Fey are the heart of the film. I'm dying to see what they could do with a better script than this, so I hope they work together again in the future. Nevertheless, there's enough material to keep you laughing throughout, even if Levy hares off across genres rather than fully building on the leads' chemistry together.

Date Night is now playing in cinemas nationwide.


The difficulty of reviewing The Disappearance of Alice Creed is that it's a film better enjoyed the less you know about it. I can sort of set up the smallest of plot synopses, to say that it centres around Danny and Vic, two criminals who kidnap the heiress of the title and secure her in a dingy flat until their demands are met. Beyond that, I think you're best off finding out for yourself. This review might be brief if I'm trying to skimp on plot information, but I can easily appraise the way the film's assembled. The three hands at work here are Gemma Arterton as Alice, Eddie Marsan as Vic and Martin Compston as Danny, and that they're all pretty bloody brilliant.

Of Arterton in particular, I haven't been the most positive reviewer. In Quantum of Solace, I said she was "eye candy amidst a more angsty and emotionally interesting film." Not by any fault of her own, her biggest films have tended to shove her into this role- see also the recent Clash of the Titans remake. Here, she's given a chance to truly announce herself as a terrific young actress as Alice. No matter what you'd believe from the subject matter, she's a million miles from the damsel in distress she became in those other films. Complementing her performance are her co-stars, with a fearsome Marsan and a mysterious Compston each playing somewhat mercurial characters, albeit in different ways.
Their dynamic is obviously what The Disappearance of Alice Creed hangs on, and the production design brings forward their performances rather than drawing your attention to the one set on which most of the film takes place- the claustrophobic atmosphere of a flat-turned-fortress that serves as both a dungeon for Alice and a domesticated safehouse for her captors. Within this unknown environment, the audience is regularly subjected to twists, reversals and reveals that give the film regular shots of energy. It all comes together with writer-director J Blakeson's superb work to make for an unpredictable thriller that's often unbearably tense. Not Hurt Locker-brand tension, but there's an inevitability about the film that's almost as inescapable as the flat it's largely set in.

It keeps up a head of steam in the wake of several revelatory twists in the first and second acts, but it doesn't quite come to the knockout blow that you might expect. That's the only appreciable flaw I can find with The Disappearance of Alice Creed. Rejecting the traditions of kidnap thrillers, it's a gripping and highly intelligent debut for Blakeson, and it finally announces Gemma Arterton for her acting talents and not her looks. The three actors are all terrific, and this film is never anything less than gripping. Seek it out if the monolith of Iron Man 2 hasn't entirely obscured the film's limited release- this is definitely not a film that deserves to disappear.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed is now playing in selected cinemas nationwide. You can find a longer (still spoiler-free) review from me at Den of Geek.
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If you've seen Date Night or The Disappearance of Alice Creed, or you just want to sign up in advance for my "I Was Dragged To See Eclipse" support group, why not comment below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Greece Is The Word

Louis Leterrier's 2010 upgrade of the 1981 favourite Clash of the Titans essentially amounts to a more simplistic retelling of what was a simplistic retelling to begin with, specifically on the story of Perseus, son of Zeus. When the people of Argos (don't laugh) tear down a statue of Zeus in dissent against the gods, Perseus is caught in the crossfire. His mortal foster family murdered, he vows revenge against resentful under-lord Hades, and rejects his immortal heritage when he discovers it from fellow demi-god Io. Nevertheless, he's drawn into a mission no mortal man could hope to survive- he has ten days to get the tools he needs to slay the hellish Kraken when it is released by Hades upon a helpless Argos.
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As another 2D film that was latterly retro-fitted with 3D to poke the audience in their bespectacled faces, Clash of the Titans oddly suffers from the same narrative stigma as last month's re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland. We're told at the beginning of the story that our protagonist is prophesied to slay a big old beasty. There's a time limit for when this prophecy's going to come true, and so everything in between this proclamation and the film's climax caters to the means of slaying said beasty as opposed to developing characters or creating tension. So even for a popcorn flick, its narrative is found wanting. The other side-effect of the 3D is that the majority of reviewers seem to have reviewed how terrible the conversion looks rather than the film itself, as if 3D was some unimpeachable device before this. Have no fear, I saw it in 2D, and also found myself underwhelmed.

The problem with remakes like these is, as ever, that the advancements in technology just mean that directors either opt for style over substance (i.e. Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes) or just utterly overdo it (i.e. Peter Jackson's King Kong). Clash of the Titans has more CGI scorpions than you can shake a pincer at, and its digital rendition of Medusa is actually laudable for not being Uma Thurman as this year's Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. It's all fairly easy on the eye and it's never really boring, but I did struggle to be actually interested in all of it at various points. Although I still think Sam Worthington is a capable action star, he has bugger all to do here as Perseus, the most Australian Greek you've ever encountered, and he ultimately fails to make the audience invest in his plight or his celestial daddy issues.


Gemma Arterton fares even worse as Io, or as she might as easily have been called, The Woman. See, Warner Bros. doesn't want you to get bored watching a load of beardy men trailing after Perseus, so they needed someone with boobies, and added a few contrived lines along the way to make her actually seem useful to the plot. Sadly, this is the same fate that befell Arterton in Quantum of Solace, where she was solely there as eye candy amidst a more angsty and emotionally interesting film. I have high hopes for her to break this mould in the upcoming The Disappearance of Alice Creed, but thus far it seems that while she's undoubtedly attractive, she serves as set-decoration in most films.

Elsewhere, the cast is rounded out by a mix of very accomplished actors and ones who you will spend most of the film trying to remember what else they've been in. Mads Mikkelson, Jason Flemyng, Pete Postlethwaite, Nicholas Hoult, Liam Cunningham, Danny Huston- you'll try to remember all of them! And as to the former category of course, you have Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, reuniting after Schindler's List in this, of all things. Fiennes' Hades is essentially his Voldemort by way of Chester A. Bum, hamming it up and chewing the scenery almost as much as Neeson's Zeus, who is resplendent and tittersome in a lens-flare inducing suit of armour. Spare a thought for Danny Huston's Poseidon though, who is trussed up in make-up and a wig to look like the Cowardly Lion, only to appear for two seconds or so.
While the cast could otherwise have lent it some credulity, the film is submerged in the aforementioned action sequences, with all else in between seeming ancillary. At their best, they give us genuine thrills in the form of a great face-off with Medusa towards the end of the second act, and at their worst they can be unintentionally funny. All of its best moments are blown in the trailer, which quite successfully made this look like a guilty pleasure in the vein of 300. Even though Neeson's "Release the Kraken!" is gleefully over-egged to become this year's "This! Is! Sparta!", the film itself amounts to about 150, because it's actually only half as good. It's a shame because Leterrier has proven to be an effective action director before with the Transporter films and the underrated reboot of The Incredible Hulk, which actually borrowed elements of Greek mythology to bring Bruce Banner's struggle to a modern context. There's nothing so clever here.

In short, Clash of the Titans resembles nothing so much as a music video based on the 1981 original. Like a particularly butch Lady Gaga video, it stumbles from action sequence to action sequence and generally fails to deploy any of the talents it boasts, at least outside of the special effects suites. OK, I will single out Liam Cunningham as Solon here, because he has a great streak of gallows humour going throughout the film, but he's hardly foregrounded. It's daft and relatively inoffensive, but it seems to lack any kind of magic or charm that might have made it a more memorable retelling. There's the textbook "this might happen again, and this time we'll be ready" ending to make for a clumsy sequel hook, but I can't imagine anyone busting down the doors of the multiplex to see this continued. An underwhelming popcorn flick.

Clash of the Titans is in cinemas nationwide now, showing in 2D and 3D. It was "up-converted" to 3D in post-production, so I reckon you'll be better off seeing it in glorious flat-vision- let me know what you think in the comments.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.