Before I Go To Sleep

Christine Lucas (Nicole Kidman) not only wakes up every day with no memory of the events of the previous day but she also wakes up alongside Colin Firth. Yes the girl has problems. Just when she’d thought she’s got over the Railway Man, here he is again.

Every morning she looks across at Firth, looks confused and maybe a bit pissed off before heading off to the bathroom where she is confronted with a wall of photographs. These are of herself and of herself with Ben (Firth) including several of their wedding.

Back in the bedroom, Ben confirms the whole horrible truth. Yes, she is married to Firth, again, and what’s worse is she can’t even remember doing it.

Well actually it’s worse than that, she has no recollection of the last twenty years. Which might appeal to some people but does seem a bit inconvenient.

Ben goes on to explain that she’d had an accident and can now no longer retain memories, then he buggers off to work and her doctor (Mark Strong) rings her. He tells her that she has been recording herself on a video camera to help remember things. Each day she’ll start to piece things together until it's time for bed again... and they’ll all be gone again.

Problem is he has to tell her where she’s hidden it. This incident, hiding the camera from her husband, sort of gives the plot twist away in the first ten minutes and undermines what is to come.

Her doctor gradually helps her unravel the mental mist and she also meets up with an old college friend Claire (Anne-Marie Duff) who disappeared from her life under somewhat dubious circumstances as the films builds to a somewhat grisly finale.

It's an odd but quite good film with a lot of ‘hang on but...’ moments. The overall premise is intriguing but ultimately once you’ve grasped that the film on the whole disappoints and peters out at the end. Kidman is again excellent though, Strong is good and Firth is, well, Firth. Probably a bit out of his comfort zone to be honest but he copes well enough.

Tinker Tailor Solider Spy

Now I remember the 1970’s BBC TV Series of John le Carre's 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'. I vaguely recall it at the time but have re-watched it since, although even that would have been some time ago. I found the series fascinating but it also baffled the hell out of me and that was a seven part series that had over five hours to tame the meandering plot. The new film version however intends to do this in just over two hours...

So perhaps they’ll cut out those long pregnant pauses of unspoken dialogue and those lingering meaningful stares that didn’t convey very much... Nope.

Like the TV series the film nonchalantly tosses little bits of raw information or ‘hints’ at it’s largely unsuspecting audience and says make of that what you will. It is not big on explanations. In fact so little is made of the revelation of some vitally important points that you’re likely to miss them. So concentrate, don’t blink. Don’t even think about going to the toilet.

Essentially there is a double agent, a mole, amongst the heads of British intelligence, known here as the ‘Circus’. At the time all this was very current affairs, now it’s a 1970’s cold war history lesson. Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) is sent to Budapest by boss man ‘Control’ (John Hurt), to bring in a Hungarian General who wants to defect to the west and will reveal the mole's identity but the meeting is a set-up.

The meeting at a Budapest cafe ends with Prideaux shot and taken away to endure months of vicious interrogation, cue a particularly shocking scene, before he is eventually returned to Britain where he is ‘retired’ to live in a tatty caravan and to teach at a public school. Which is very 1970’s, these days even public schools don’t employ shady men who invite young boys into their caravans.

Back at the Circus, Control has died and his deputy George Smiley (Gary Oldman) has been forced to retire in shame at the botched operation. Yet the investigation is reopened when agent Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), a loose cannon if ever there was one, turns up with pillow talk corroboration of the mole theory gleaned from a love affair with the wife of a Russian intelligence officer he was tracking. Smiley is subsequently drawn out retirement to track down the mole.

Tarr promises to help Smiley, if he can reunite him with his Russian blonde, a promise he cannot possibly keep. Smiley’s suspicions fall on four men:- Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), who is now head of the Circus and three other top ranking officials, Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds) and Toby Esterhase (David Dencik).

I’m giving a more linear version here, which the film does not, instead relying on the dreaded flashback. You soon lose count of how many times we end up back at that Lenin themed staff Christmas party.

Assisted by Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), Smiley investigates. Talking to the increasingly bitter Prideaux and the sacked head of research Connie Sachs (Kathy Burke) who suspects that the Soviet Cultural Attaché in London is really a spy. Smiley discovers that pages have been removed from the duty officer's log book for the night Jim Prideaux was shot. So he speaks to the duty officer himself, who tells him who was the man in charge that night...

The Circus's Russian intelligence source ‘Merlin’ is looking increasingly dodgy as indeed is the entire operation coded name ‘Witchcraft’. Now who was the man responsible for that, and could the same man simply be shagging Smiley's wife to make any accusations levelled at him by Smiley look like sour grapes.

Having gleaned enough, Smiley set a trap and catches the traitor. If you’ve not blinked the mole’s identity is no great shock and perhaps that’s part of the problem with the film. I think perhaps the film makers knew it too and jazzed up what happened next.

Some say this is a masterpiece. So you're supposed to describe it as compelling, tense, absorbing, involving etc etc and in some ways it was. Some would say dull. In reality, it's probably somewhere in between. It’s well made with strong performances all round. Gary Oldman's portrayal of Alec Guinness, sorry Smiley is excellent. Just gen up big time before you see it.

Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass is another of those superhero spoof movies and I’ve been talked into seeing it... However, this one is funny, very knowing, it has a plot, a sharp script and ermm, even character development.

Unpromisingly it starts out like teen romcom with Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) living an existence that is mundane but typically normal. He is unnoticed by most people and particularly by girls, especially the girl of his dreams, the lovely Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca). His only chance of getting her to even talk to him is to turn gay, perhaps... or perhaps not.



Our Dave wonders why no one ever tries to be a superhero and then decides to fill that particular void himself, despite the obvious flaw in his plan, that he has no super powers. All the same it would be nice to not have to keep handing his cash and mobile phone over to the local thugs. Plus it might just get him his girl.

So he dons a dreadful green wetsuit, calls himself ‘Kick-Ass’, heads out to thwart crime and promptly gets his ass kicked. He winds up in hospital but he is undeterred. Once patched up, with metal plates holding his bones together and with severed nerve endings, he is now less susceptible to pain. Belief slightly suspended.



His modest ambition for Kick-Ass, simply to rescue a cat, ends up with him accidentally intervening in a mugging and when he gets filmed fighting off three men he becomes an overnight internet sensation. He also finally gets Katie's attentions, although for the wrong reason. Yep, she assumes he's gay, told you it works.



When he attempts to do a good deed for Katie, in dealing with some unwanted attention she is getting, he gets himself in over his head. He has stumbled into the world of gangster Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong). Luckily for him he discovers he is not the only super hero in town as 'Big Daddy' (Nicolas Cage) and his homicidal killing machine of a daughter, the twelve year old 'Hit Girl' (Chloe Moretz) come to his rescue.



On the plus side, he unmasks Kiss-Ass in front of Katie, confesses he’s not actually gay and once she gets over the initial disappointment, he gets his shag. Result.

This is perhaps ample compensation because from this point onwards it is no longer his movie. The insanely violent Hit Girl simply takes over, dominates every scene she's in and gets all the best lines to boot. She is the character even Quentin Tarantino hasn’t thought of. She whirlwinds through the movie, slaughtering anybody who gets in her way, hurling unrepeatable dialogue as she does so and boy does she look smug about it. Her enjoyment of mass murder is simply infectious and the violence... well it's never ending as she racks up the body count. It’s all very entertaining but I have no idea how the film gets away with so much under its 15 certificate.



Then there’s the great soundtrack. Good stuff from Primal Scream, The Little Ones, Sparks, The New York Dolls are all used at exactly the right moments but then any film that has the The Dickies’ ‘Banana Splits’ in it has got be on the money. Daughter will kill me if I don't mention The Prodigy. Oh and there’s also music from that woman, Ellie Goulding, too. Every silver lining has a cloud of course.

As you can perhaps tell I quite liked this one. It’s a blast. The bad guys are good, or rather bad, and believable. In fact there are very few, if any, unbelievable bits or ridiculous plot twists and when someone dies, they stay dead.

The acting is good too. Mark Strong, as ever, makes a good villain, his character getting more and more violent as things go against him. Cage is excellent as Hit Girl’s doting father and Moretz herself is simply brilliant. Oh and I nearly forgot our Dave, Aaron Johnson, yeah he's pretty good too.

If there is a criticism it is that it probably gets too carried away with itself and moves from being a clever pastiche into simply being a superhero movie itself. I also have a problem with Red Mist, who's dressed up like a drag queen and Hit Girl is uncharacteristically under-prepared for the final battle but it's kind of hard to slate.