28 Weeks Later...

Following on from Danny Boyle’s ingenious dystopian horror 28 Days Later, we pick up the story – you guessed it – 28 weeks after the rage virus has devastated Britain, in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s confronting sequel.

The first thing about the film is that it’s got more of everything. More characters, more chaos, more violence, more terror. Not that that’s a bad thing. Set against the American military’s efforts to re-populate Britain after the apparent eradication of the virus, we could have expected something overdone and stupidly violent, but the film is more nuanced and clever than the half-baked sequels that seem to be squirming their way out of Hollywood lately.

It starts with Donald Harris (Robert Carlyle) escaping a house and leaving his wife (Catherine McCormack) behind, then races through the repopulation of London in a small army facility. Harris is reunited with his children (the improbably named Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton), everything seems dandy despite his guilt over the loss of his wife… and then the virus works its way back into the fledgling civilisation.

The film is instantly brutal, with dizzying camerawork and disorienting editing, creating a genuine sense of panic and pandemonium. No person is safe from the virus or the chase of the infected – despite how high his or her name may appear on the poster. It’s like Saving Private Ryan for the noughties, the audience not spared a single moment of the violence due to necessity, rather than gratuity, and never allowed to become desensitised.

It’s a study in everything good about horror, and about the original: questions of authority, the family, technology, group paranoia, sacrifice and violence arise and refuse to be ignored. It’s difficult to watch at times, frantically emotional at others, and is the way real horror should be – memorable and truly frightening.

Zodiac

David Fincher’s Zodiac should be much more than it is. Based on a bestselling book about the unsolved San Francisco murders of the sixties, it has a great premise. It stars Jake Gyllenhall, Mark Ruffalo, and the always-brilliant Robert Downey Jr. It has the director of Se7en and Panic Room on its side.

Yet, somehow, it falls short.

It’s a worthy story – Jake Gyllenhaal’s political cartoonist manages to become involved – and eventually obsessed - with the case of apparently uncatchable murderer Zodiac, who sends codes and threats to newspapers in a deadly mockery. It is Robert Graysmith's (Gyllenhaal) story, and his uneasy alliance with Inspector David Toschi (Ruffalo) and drunkard writer Paul Avery (Downey Jr), which drives the film, as he peers under every stone and pores through every file.

At its heart it’s a meticulous crime mystery, but it spends too much time being redundant and going over all the facts instead of providing some actual interest. There are a few thrilling scenes at the start but it’s as though we’re watching the rest of the film under a microscope, too distracted with the details to really connect with our characters or see the big picture.

In the end (which fizzles forgettably), it’s its own worthiness that causes the downfall. Fincher knows the story is great, but makes it far too cool for its own good, and the constant updates on the timeline are annoying rather than helpful – especially as Avery seems to be the only one aging over the long years of the investigation.

It simply thinks too highly of itself, when the only thing especially extraordinary is the interminable three hour running time.

Spiderman 3

With all those sequels looming on the horizon (Fantastic Four, Shrek, Pirates etc), it’s hardly a surprise that one of the biggest films so far this year is a franchise films. Statistically, it was inevitable.

Emotionally, Spiderman 3 was quite the surprise.

That shouldn’t be, with Sam Raimi at the helm again, guiding Spiderman through the inevitable gauntlet of villains, heroes, romantic entanglements, and souring friendships. And with all the whiz-bangery and gaudy set-pieces it might be easier to look at the flashy merchandising and forget the heart that it delivers in spades.

Pulling together story-threads from both Spiderman 2 and 3, the film is the conclusion to an already triumphant trilogy.

The usual cast of players return. Tobey Maguire is at his usual exceptional standard, his sweetly awkward Peter Parker and agile hero juxtaposed perfectly without losing their innate humanity. Kirsten Dunst has improved impressively, and it’s nice to see that she’s finally learned to emote without looking half-asleep. James Franco returns as Spidey’s best-friend-cum-bitter-enemy Harry Osborne, and the rest of the supporting cast, notably Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) and J Jonah Jameson (J K Simmons), make inevitable impacts, despite the briefness of their appearances.

But it’s the new characters that make the story. The teaming of two villains – Flint Marko/Sandman (Thomas Haden Church, Sideways) and Eddie Brock/Venom (Topher Grace, That 70's Show) – makes things more than a little sticky for Spidey this time around, and adds to the already full story. At a little under two-and-a-half hours, it must have been a tricky task to keep in all the important conflicts – friendship, love, villainy, celebrity, personal darkness – and a few components do fall by the wayside (Bryce Dallas Howard’s Gwen Stacy is more an occasionally swattable fly than a truly threatening love-interest) – but for the most part Raimi keeps everything on-track and accounted for, weaving the story as tight as one of Spidey’s webs.

The new characters are given believable back-stories and the old are kept emotionally consistent. The action is fast-paced, without detracting from the narrative. The comedy is quick, witty, and self-referential. The special effects are seamless. Oh, and Bruce Campbell gets a show-stopping cameo.

Raimi may drop the thread occasionally, but for the most part his Spiderman is less a tacked on money-maker, and more the third act of one truly great piece of art.

La science des rêves (The Science Of Sleep)

The Science Of Sleep is another one hot off the surrealist grill from director Michel Gondry except, unlike his former Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, he’s holding the Kaufman.

But while Eternal Sunshine had Charlie Kaufman’s writing to hold it down, Gondry’s writing is vaguer, unpinned by those pesky things called ‘narrative’.

It has a sort-of-a-story. Artist Stéphane (Gael García Bernal, Bad Education) moves back to France to be with his mother following the death of his father in Mexico, and ends up across the hall from Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Unfortunately, neither of them have a particularly stable grip on real-life, and reality and fantasy begin to overlap as he attempts to woo her.

The direction is signature Gondry. Hand-held camera, forced perspective, and all sorts of giant-hand, stop-motion, bath-desk weirdness combine to make something that is certainly not without visual splendour. His characters, too, are instantly likeable. His couple's nervous interactions are an utter delight, and our hero's co-workers at the dead-end job his mother squeezes him into are brilliantly funny. Dialogue-wise, it never fails, drawing every laugh and tear effortlessly and creating real emotional connection.

Every scene, likewise, is a joy to watch, and undoubtedly will reveal something new in every viewing. It’s the way they’re pieced together, though, that seem to create the feel that there is, actually, no story to speak of.

It’s really a film that depends on taste. Fans of linear narrative should steer clear. But for those with a taste for the surreal, for extremely likeable characters, and with no compunctions about a film with no ending - and no beginning or middle either - there’s a lot to be found in what basically amounts to a ten minute story mixed with a very good extended music video.