Enchanted

Satirical fairytales are painfully in vogue lately. After the excellent Shrek came Hoodwinked, Happily N’Ever After, then the Shrek sequels, all hellbent on tearing apart the childhood Disney fantasies of princesses, poisoned apples, and magic mirrors.

Disney appears to have joined the club of ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’, and has delivered Enchanted, a film with more heart and truth than all the others strung together.

Princess Giselle (Amy Adams) is a happy little lass. Flitting about her tree-top home with her animal friends, she hopes and wishes that one day her prince (James Marsden) will come to her side, whisk her off to his castle, and make her a bona-fide princess. Of course she doesn’t bet on his evil step-mother (Susan Sarandon) wanting to keep the throne for herself…

Pushed through a magical portal into modern-day New York, its here that the fairytale takes a brisk turn away from the formula. But while the story plays out as the usual riff on fairytale conventions, it does so with a light-hearted, adoring respect for its source material. Rather than tear it down, it holds the myth up against real-life and proclaims ‘yes, it’s fantasy, but isn’t it fun?’

The cast are excellent. Amy Adams sashays and warbles her way through every scene, her naivety delightful rather than grating. Marsden, likewise, plays without a dash of personal irony, and his stalking, proclaiming Prince Edward provides some of the films best comedy moments. Susan Sarandon and sidekick Timothy Spall are delightfully evil, though she seems to be less her own character than a lazy rip-off of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White’s villains. The CGI is fantastic, not trying for perfection, but rather a cartoonish approximation that other studios should take note of.

Overall, it’s a story applicable for everyone. Children are its target audience of course, but even parents will get a wry giggle out of Giselle’s adventures in the Big Apple. There are some nice, if unmemorable, songs, and the film itself radiates a joy and respect that has long been missing from children’s films.

Enchanted is old-school Disney animation at its best, and finally proves that its studio can function in an increasingly media-savvy world.

Alien vs Predator: Requiem

Suffering from what seem to be the two afflictions of pop-culture – the sequel and the crossover – Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (or AVPR for the initiated) has a lot of baggage. At least three brilliant ancestors and a slew of questionable sequels is enough to make this a study in exploitation. Strangely enough, this is where it finds its strength.

More small-town horror than tundra sci-fi spectacular, it automatically sets itself apart from its surprisingly worthy predecessor. As the cunning predator’s ship falls prey to hordes of facehugging foetuses and crashlands on earth, all the usual stereotypes apply. Stock teenagers, the small-town diner clientele, and a redemptive hero type (who looks disconcertingly like The Hoff) end up in the crossfire of what is, essentially, a slaughterfest between our two extraterrestrial extremists and any faceless individual that wanders into the scene.

The characters aside (which is how you’ll basically feel for the whole film), AVPR’s biggest strength is its old-school commitment to a bloody good show. Dispensing with hideous Golden Compass-style CGI, it’s a rollicking good example of the beauty that a man in a monster suit can bring. Gore runs down the screen, as it should, and there’s no shying away from the real biz of war. Pregnant women, small children, and (gasp!) newborns, all fall prey to the parasitic beasties, and rather than be offensive, it truly highlights the need for more guts (pun unintended) in what is becoming a scarily boring and fake genre.

AVPR is hardly perfect. The dialogue swings between gung-ho and sentimental – almost unredeemable is a particular clunker in the last scene – but it’s got what horror’s been missing. Tits, gore, irony, believable monsters, and some awesome old-school carnage.

See it for a bloody good time. Let’s face it: this Christmas, it’s either that or The Golden Compass.

Rogue

There’s not much to say about this new Aussie horror endeavour except: It lives up to expectations. It’s by the same guy that made Wolf Creek (Greg McLean), and is about a bunch of tourists (including the usual whinging Poms, Yank Wanks, jolly Paddies and lovable Aussies) getting picked off on a Northern Territory river cruise by a big croc.

That’s not to say it’s a bad film. In an industry so mired in pretentiousness (the previously mentioned Wolf Creek a case in point), it’s refreshing to see a film so joyfully steeped in its own cliché. McLean is masterful when it comes to direction, building up a surprisingly subtle sense of dread without very much gore at all, and the croc – a.k.a the world’s ugliest Muppet – is way scarier than any all-CGI creature.

The cast are stock standard, and revel in their nameless caricatures characters. Yes, it is enormously irritating to have the sexy American bloke (Michael Vartan) become the hero of the piece when Stephen Curry, John Jarratt, and Radha Mitchell are all on board and have potentially interesting backstories that don’t seem to go anywhere, but it’s the film’s only real drawback. Well, that and the fact that Vartan’s travel writer seems to like communing with grasshoppers.

There are major plotholes, and the last third is uneven, when half the cast seem to disappear and leave Vartan to fill centre stage, but the croc and the carnage make up for it nicely.

Want brilliant dialogue and intriguing characters? Go see something else. Like seeing a large animal twist, break, and dunk puny humans as if they were Oreos? Rogue is the movie for you.

30 Days Of Night

30 Days Of Night was a story with a lot of potential. Vampires prey on a remote Alaskan town where the sun is down for a month? Why hasn’t anyone thought of it before?

Well, they have. There was a very successful and intelligent graphic novel by Steve Niles based on the concept. It was even called 30 Days Of Night. Unfortunately, except for the name, David Slade’s (Hard Candy) film seems almost unrelated.

It starts off well. There’s a creepy guy in a fluffy jacket, and Josh Hartnett’s sheriff looks like he may be one of those reluctant heroes you can rally behind emotionally. But ten minutes in the fun stops. Permanently.

To summarise, Eben (Hartnett), his estranged wife (Melissa George) and their arctic friends spend two interminable hours running from house to house in a clumsy endeavour to keep the uneven pacing moving. The gang of survivors are stock, uninteresting, and unmemorable. The gore is lacklustre and unaffecting, and the occasionally good scene is mired down by the subtitled, pompous gruntings of the bloodsucking beasties and stupid subplots involving rusty machinery and asthma. I’ve just saved you seeing the film because this is, in fact, the whole film.

It’s not fair really, because it looks damn good. Barrow is a place no-one would want to be at night, even without the vampires. Bathed in icy, foreboding tones, and adorned with dark crawlspaces, the scenery creates a stirring sense of dread. The vampires, likewise, are horrors to look at… at first. Without the pounding bass of Muse over the trailer, the 30 Days Of Night experience is reduced to the bare, hollow bones of a good idea.

Casual viewers may weather the boredom to scrounge a humdrum scare from this mess, but for fans of the book, two hours will feel like thirty days of excruciating outrage.

Saw IV

Here it comes again. For the fourth Halloween running, the Saw franchise is crawling its bloody way out of the horror-swamp.

Remember the original Saw? A smart, intriguing thriller in the vein of Se7en that was less about gore and more about mystery, it was simple, ingenious, and made by a couple of clever Aussies with a real eye for good horror.

But with every Saw, the watchwords seem to be bigger, better, and more. Based more on grotesque traps to stimulate plot than a riveting plot that happens to include one or two neat traps, Saw IV follows on from Saw III’s decline and arrives in a muddled, if adequate mess on our pumpkin-festooned doorsteps.

Wan and Whannell have jumped ship, and it’s obvious. The former gleeful quick-cutting graininess feels stodgy under the direction of Darren Lynn Bousman and the plot has found itself crammed awkwardly together, with a gaping hole for every revelation. It's an imitation of the franchise's former glory, with emphasis on all the wrong elements. Rather than be intriguing, it’s frustrating. Rather than be rewarding, it’s simply sufficient.

The plot is decent enough, though revealing it here would ruin the mystery, which is threadbare and the film’s saving grace. It is interesting to guess what’s going to happen next, and it makes for an average thriller, but it’s impossible to even summon the vague gag-reflex that made the original (and to a certain degree, the first sequel) so rewarding. There is the occasional satisfying comeuppance, but the endless march of gory, momentary set pieces is desensitising at best, and the rabid puppy of sentimentality gnaws its boring way through every non-violent scene.

In short, it’s too much of not enough. Too much plot, too much violence, but ultimately meaningless.

Monkeybone

Remember Brendan Fraser? The wacky guy from George Of The Jungle and The Mummy who proved he could act in Gods & Monsters? Yes?

Remember Monkeybone?

No-one seems to remember this wacky, comic-book inspired, semi-animated flash-in-the-pan. But they really should. Because… well, it’s wacky, comic-book, semi-animated goodness

In short, Monkeybone is about Stu Miley (Fraser), comic-book artist and creator of the titular character: a rascally, vulgar primate who’s about to go to television and make him loads of money. But, after a series of unfortunate events (no, Lemony Snickett, I am not stealing your lines), Stu ends up in a coma and trapped in a purgatory nether-world filled with monsters, freaks and figments of various imaginations…including a certain stop-motion monkey (voiced by John Tuturro).

It’s a delicious freakshow all up – Stu whinging his way around limbo with all his new friends (including Rose McGowan, Thomas Haden Church, and a delightful Whoopi Goldberg as Death), while his sister (Megan Mullally) tries to pull the plug. And of course there’s Monkeybone, who only wants to steal Stu’s body and shag his hot doctor girlfriend (Bridget Fonda).

Got all that? Right.

It’s not perfect. At times it does lag and become mundane, despite all the stop-motion, costumed freaks available for viewing. But the slumps are few, and are bolstered by inspired plot-lines involving an ‘evil’ Stephen King, a possessed corpse (Chris Kattan) chased through town by organ-coveting surgeons, some unsettling nightmare scenes, and a lot of tongue in cheek.

Nothing

Canadian director Vincenzo Natali has a tendency toward a certain kind of film. Wildly original, warped sci-fi that seems comfortable with ambiguity, he’s made such mind-fucks as Cube and Cypher.

He certainly doesn’t disappoint with Nothing. Yes, that’s right. A film called Nothing.

Obvious puns aside, Nothing is intellectual silliness at its most enjoyable. Along with Natali’s best friends and usual stars David Hewlett (Cube, Cypher, Stargate Atlantis) and Andrew Miller (er… the autistic dude from Cube), the three craft a fable so original that its simplicity comes as a surprise.

Best friends David (David Hewlett) and Andrew (Andrew Miller) are a sad pair. Acutely agoraphobic, Andrew spends his days selling holidays to people over the phone, while David is tormented by cruel workmates. The only person they can depend on is each other, and their childhood bond seems limitless and eternal.

Then disaster strikes. David decides to move in with his girlfriend of two weeks, who unbeknownst to him has been embezzling money from his place of work. Meanwhile, Andrew is accused of fiddling up a girlscout. Their house is about to be torn down and them evicted, and the lynch mobs are coming from every direction…

…then suddenly: Nothing.

The film rests heavily on its two leading men. As Andrew and David are cast into their world of nothing, with only the house and their pet turtle still in existence and white space all around, it’s up to them to carry the film, which they do with surprising skill for two unknowns. Though Andrew can be a little whiny and clunky at times, the two are perfectly matched as their friendship turns to irritation and the relationship is tested by paranoia and buried feelings. The dialogue is inspired – at times unpredictably funny, there’s a genuine sense of normalcy about our two losers as they traverse this new world and discuss tofu, cheerfully chase each other with garden tools, and ruminate on whether the afterlife has cable.

It looks fantastic as well. The special effects aren’t perfect – there’s clearly not much of a budget – and of course there’s not much to see in a huge, empty space, but the newspaper-cut-out backstory to open and the overall cartoonishness smack of Roald Dahl and Dr Seuss.

If anything, the film doesn’t quite live up to its running time. It provides no definitive answers, not that they’re really expected – this is all about the characters, not the science (you’ll want to stay after the credits, by the way). Anyone who’s seen Cube will know about Natali’s frustrating, ambiguous finales. At times it seems as if the director is just trying to fill in space somewhere between the funny bits at the beginning, and the emotional bits at the end. Still, the brief running time means it doesn’t lag long, and for the most part Nothing is a satisfying, genuine, and truly weird experience.

The Condemned

Sadly, I've seen this Battle Royale/Running Man rip-off.

Also sadly enough, I quite enjoyed it.

Basic plot: Wrestler Steve Austin (aka Stone Cold) and a bunch of death-row crims end up on an internet reality TV show and have to pick each other off until there's only one survivor

It's hardly a great film, and is probably most suited for drinking games where we take a shot every time Steve delivers a line more braindead than a retarded gorilla, but it's enjoyable enough. Vinnie Jones is good fun as the bad guy, and there is a fair bit of good violence, even if you've seen it all in much better films. The romantic and political subplots could have been explored a bit more, but they’re not really what you’re there for – I just wanted to see some people get blown up.

The big drawback is the heavy handed and seriously contradictory anti-violence message. Come on, kids. Just because you fake-fight, it doesn't mean the viewers are watching you because they think TV violence is a bad thing. Yes, reality TV shows suck, but if you're going to blow up/stab/rape/torture/shoot nine people, please don't tell me you're doing it to prove how bad violence is. Because you're targeting the wrong audience.

That aside, it's good, clean, violent fun for the same kind of people who though DOA wasn't that bad.

Rush Hour 3

Rush Hour was an original, amusing riff on the conventions of buddy-cop and kung-fu films. Rush Hour 2 was the same, but a bit less fresh and a bit more annoying.

Rush Hour 3 is the same again, except now Chris Tucker spends most of the time begging for a punch in the head.

You already know the story. Someone’s being threatened, and Detectives Lee (Jackie Chan) and Carter (Chris Tucker) go overseas to investigate (Paris this time), end up having slapstick fights, romance, and the occasional shallow emotion, but it all comes right in the end.

Six years since the last instalment, there’s a general feeling of staleness. Where the first and second film could have functioned as one film, this one feels awkwardly tacked on. Yes, Chan and Tucker do their usual shtick, but it’s too predictable to be compelling. The jokes are too loud and obvious, the romance is perfunctory, and the emotional scenes are cliché. And a climactic fight at the Eiffel Tower? Not obvious at all.

It only works when it doesn’t try too hard. Not really one for subtlety is our Brett Ratner (Rush Hour 1 & 2, X-Men 3), but he has at least managed to be occasionally satirical. The buddy cop genre gets a probing whack, with plenty of gay jokes, though even those become a bit jarring. A decent subplot involving a French cab driver makes for intermittent amusement and a deceptively lighthearted critique of American violence. There are some nice references to other films, particularly the scene parodying Bruce Lee’s Game Of Death, but all in all it’s too heavy-handed to really succeed.

Everything else about the film goes without saying. There’s a lot of banter and some quite good action scenes. Jackie Chan, as always, is fun to watch even if his partner is rapidly losing spark. There are some nice special effects, though at times the cracks in the CGI are gratingly visible, and Paris looks too cardboard cutout to be convincing.

It’s a shame, really, that something initially so intelligent should begin to be nibbled around the edges by the same sort of demons that kept the Police Academy series going.

Somebody, please, stop it before it hurts itself.

Hairspray

I’ve got a new favourite movie. Not necessarily the favourite, but one of those films you become instantly obsessed with and intend to see every week until you can pre-order the first release of the DVD from the US. The kind of film you actually buy the soundtrack to, instead of downloading it. Hell, I bought the original film two hours after seeing this spiffy new remake.

The film is Hairspray.

Based on the Broadway musical, which was based on John Waters 1988 non-musical film starring Ricki Lake, Adam Shankman’s re-imagining is becoming most famous for John Travolta’s cross-dressing fatsuit. But while Travolta is surprisingly radiant in the role originally immortalised by transvestite Divine (redeeming him somewhat for the appalling Wild Hogs), the rest of the cast and crew are by no less worthy of praise.

Vibrant, provocative, and occasionally vulgar, Hairspray takes place in 1960s Baltimore, where plump teen Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonksy) dreams of stardom on the Bandstand-esque Corny Collins Show, where nice white kids dance and sing every afternoon. Her dreams come true, as is usually the case in this sort of film… but rival Amber von Tussle (Brittany Snow) and her showbiz mother Velma (Michelle Pfeiffer) scheme to remove her and exclude black children from the show permanently.

It all seems strangely topical, even with the bright backdrops, quaint dialogue and, yes, elaborately sprayed hairdos. Negro Day – the day once a month when black children are allowed to perform on the show – would seem ridiculously over-the-top if it didn’t ring so true. But with Shankman’s film there is a lighter spin that the scathing satire of Waters original – particularly confronting scenes are left out, and replaced with more civil and peaceful protestations – it’s almost necessary due to the musical genre. But overwhelmingly it retains the intentions of the original, if a little more upbeat. More emphasis is placed on Tracy’s family and in setting up the story, and the film is of a much better quality, neatening the clumsy script and making the kitsch lovable instead of laughable.

The cast are generally flawless. Highschool Musical’s Zac Efron’s turn as love interest Link Larkin proves that he can be credible instead of a sappy Disney warbler, though he still has a long way to go before meeting the calibre of his co-stars. Newcomer Nikki Blonsky shines as Tracy. Christopher Walken and Travolta as her parents are oddly touching, and pluck real emotion from their somewhat carnivalesque roles. The other kids almost upstage their onscreen parents. Elijah Kelley’s black dancer Seaweed complements activist and Negro Day presenter Queen Latifah perfectly, and Brittany Snow is as interesting as deliciously evil Michelle Pfeiffer. Amanda Bynes is genuinely lovable as pigtailed Penny, managing not to be irritating for once in her life, the perfect opposite to hysterically Christian mother Prudy (Alison Janney). The cast are all so wonderful, in fact, that Corny Collins himself (James Marsden) goes almost unnoticed, though he is a standout when he gets a chance.

The songs are delightful: upbeat and comical at times, emotional at others, and every song deserves its spot (though Pfeiffer’s solo could have been cut). It’s toe-tapping, head-bopping fun that, though a remake, is one of the few heartfelt and worthwhile mainstream films of the year.