Marley And Me

It's my girlfriend's fault. It all started when I got the usual pleading 'please take me' email and being the dutiful partner, that I am, I naturally obliged but I should have known better. I should have trusted my natural instinct and stuck with Coen Brothers films, Che double bills or even something with Leonardo DiCaprio in it. Ok, so perhaps that's pushing it.

Now don't get me wrong, 'Marley and Me' is decent enough film and full of doggie humour, but it really should have been given an 18 certificate. It's horrific, it's no cuddly dog story. It's certainly not suitable for young children or even sensitive forty-something's for that matter. It's quite simply the most harrowing film I've seen in years, probably since 'Lassie Come Home'.

The film is based on the memoirs of John Grogan and about how his dog, Marley, influenced his life. The 'plot' is incidental really, yes there are people in it but the only character development that happens or that matters is that of Marley.

John (Owen Wilson) takes the plunge out of the 'dream' life of a single male, that his friend Sebastian prefers, and into wedded life with Jennifer Aniston. Not too bad a plunge when you think about it. Both are journalists and after their wedding they move to Florida. At which point John brings another blonde into his life and in an attempt to short circuit his wife's 'biological clock' buys her a Labrador puppy. They nickname him 'clearance puppy' because he was going cheap for reasons that soon become apparent. Deciding not to call him 'Bob', John christens him 'Marley' instead. For this point onwards their lives are never the same again but if you've a dog owner, you'll know that that would be the case.

As Marley grows up he never he loses his puppy energy and destructive streak. No object is beyond the capabilities of his teeth, which all sounds spookily familiar. Marley proves almost un-trainable and even humps the dog trainer, played by Kathleen Turner. John sums Marley up as the simply the world's worst dog.

He is also there to intrude on their most private moments; although quite how those full wine glasses remained upright I'm not sure. He also embarrasses John when he is house hunting and plunges into the swimming pool. Yep, that happens.



Instead of chucking him in the skip, although at times Aniston is clearly tempted, but like a child, and again there you're tempted, a pet is not someone you give up on because they are hard work. Well not for most of us. In the end, she realizes that Marley is, and always has been, an integral part of the family.



Meanwhile life goes on but Marley remains the constant denominator throughout. They try for kids, at first they miscarry, and then they manage three of them. There is a stabbing in their neighbourhood, so they up sticks and move. John has by now become a successful columnist and bases most of his articles on Marley's antics. I must mention Alan Arkin who is rather good as his editor but enough about the people. This film's about a dog.



So is it a good film? Well probably not. In fact I'm sure it's a lousy movie if you're not a dog owner. Someone without a dog would just see it as a mediocre chick flick with a silly dog in it and if you've seen one Jennifer Aniston romance you've probably seen them all. Perhaps the film doesn't try hard enough to make non-dog lovers love Marley because he's mostly shown destroying something. Us dog owners know that the rest of the time your dog is loyal, adorable and your best friend but not enough of that was shown.

I take the view that it's a memoir and can therefore gloss over the flaws. The problem with this memoir is that having been shown a period in John's life and all of Marley's, I suppose we had to be there to the bitter end. So if you've a dog lover, I warn you that if you go see this film you need to know what you're getting yourself into and don't forget the tissues.



As Marley grew older and his legs started to go, I saw what was coming and I spent the last thirty minutes or so of the film trying to prepare myself for the inevitable. The whole film connected with me on a personal level because it jolted back memories of the three dogs my parents had when I was younger, that I watched grow up, mature and then leave us and of my two back at home.

When the ending finally came it was far harder to take than I had anticipated, partly because it was way too long and emotional. It was absolutely excruciating stuff for any dog owner, who knows that one day he'll be having that final conversation with his best pal on the vet's operating table. As Marley slowly closes his eyes, knowing that his duty to his family is finally done, John tells him 'You're a great dog' and there's not a dry eye in the cinema. I'm sure there were grown men crying out loud or were they all biting on their knuckles, as I was, to muffle the sobs.

In the end it was quite a realistic portrayal of what owning a dog means. I wonder if John got himself another dog and if he didn't, what the hell did he write his columns about?

Revolutionary Road

It's the 1950's, Frank and April Wheeler, but we’ll call them Leo and Kate, are living the American dream in a nice suburb somewhere on Revolutionary Road. Everything seems great on the outside, but in reality neither is happy. Kate wanted to be an actress but she was crap at it so she became a housewife instead. Leo hates his office job but has no idea what else he could do instead. Leo at least livens up his dreary day by takes a dip in the typing pool but Kate, stuck at home, just becomes the bored housewife from hell and quivers that bottom lip, which has been cut and pasted from ‘The Reader’. Other than that, not much happens. It's rumoured they had kids but you only see them a couple of times, I think they got taken into care. It's perhaps all true to life but it makes odd cinema and it’s hard to feel sorry for either of them.



Then Kate suggests that they move to Paris, just because they can. They don’t have to be like everyone else in the suburbs. They can escape their rut of repetition and have a life instead. She'll work as a secretary for one of the big organizations whilst Leo becomes a kept man so that he can find himself. A good offer but Leo’s a bit sceptical, after all what's life without the typing pool, but Kate quivers that lip and talks him round.



Cue a few minutes of bliss and Leo even jumps her in the kitchen but it's probably not the best eighteen seconds (approx) of her life. Then it all falls apart, it's a costly eighteen seconds as Kate falls pregnant and Leo gets offered a, too good to turn down, promotion at work. The lip quivers some more and their relationship deteriorates. Of course had this film been set in the modern day, Kate would have just taken the boat tickets, the kids and gone.

Poor old Kate, looking a bit haggard I'm afraid, can't even get a decent shag. In frustration she indulges her neighbour Shep (get down boy) who has been panting after her even since they moved in. He takes his chance after Kate's had one too many one night but he can't even match up to Leo's standards.



Kate decides she wants rid of the baby and when the smoking and drinking heavily during pregnancy fails to work, she goes for the DIY home abortion kit instead. At the end you hope Kate is going to shoot herself, in fact you hope she shoots Leo first then herself but no, the abortion goes wrong and she bleeds to death. After Kate dies Leo is shown running down the street, presumably to the nearest bridge to throw himself off but that doesn't happen either. Depressing - yes, but nowhere near depressing enough.

Michael Shannon, steals the film as John, the mentally 'ill' neighbour who's been through the electric shock treatment. He tells it how it is and unsubtly hammers home the message but does it with panache. He was Oscar nominated for the role, where he lost out to that dead guy.

I have to say that my partner loved the film but then she's read the book, I got the impression that a lot of useful background information was missing, including all the character development. The film opens when Kate and Leo meet at a party and you are left to assume they actually liked each other at this point. Then almost immediately the film fast forwards seven years to when they hate each other. Cue lots of yelling and screaming. Whether this was a progressive falling out or whether they just woke up one day and smelt the coffee, I don't know, we’re not told. There are a couple of short flashbacks but any others must have ended up on the cutting room floor.



It's a very pretty, well made film but I can't help feeling it was just a vehicle for Kate and Leo. I think the story got lost somewhere along the way.

Great Gatsby (1974)

The film, made in 1974 and not a huge success at the time, seemed to stick very closely to F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel.

We are sometime in the 1920’s, when Nick Carraway moves into a modest Long Island cottage next door to the large mansion that belongs to the mysterious Jay Gatsby. A man who frequently throws lavish parties but rarely bothers to attend them himself. Gatsby is played by Robert Redford, who somehow to me, just didn't seem right for the role.

Nick is gradually drawn into Gatsby's world, the world of the decadent upper-class, helped by the fact that Nick's cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and Gatsby were once lovers. Gatsby is still totally in lust with Daisy, although she is now married to the immensely dislikeable Tom, who could give her the life of privilege she so desired because five years ago Gatsby had nothing. That’s some women for you; chase the wallet and not the heart. Since then Gatsby had worked his way up the moneyed scale via some highly dubious means.



Now with Nick’s help, because Gatsby comes over as a bit on a wimp on the seduction front, they restart their affair. All this happens amidst a series of indiscretions by, well just about everyone. Daisy's husband Tom brazenly carries on his own infidelity with Myrtle Wilson, the local garage mechanic's wife. While Nick himself longs to get physical with another high society babe, Jordan Baker, but seems to be the one getting the least action.



Naturally they’re all heading for a fall and the film builds slowly towards this. I found the book slowly paced, and it's only like a pamphlet, but the film takes things on to a new, two and a half hour level.

The story culminates in tragedy, several deaths and perhaps a dose of the ‘just desserts’. Myrtle is run down by Daisy but Gatsby carries the bullet for it, literally, despatched by Myrtle’s husband, the only moral person in the story. Who then turns the gun on himself. Despite this triple tragedy, high society and in particular Daisy and Tom carry on regardless, without a care to what had happened. Only Nick and Gatsby’s father attend his funeral.

A pleasant and glitzy period film but not exactly riveting, I’m afraid.

Che Part 2: The Guerilla

'Che Part 2: The Guerilla', jumps forward six years and a lot has happened in the meantime. Che has married one of his troops, Aleida. He has also committed several murders for the cause in Cuba but this is skipped over. As is his part in the Cuba Missile Crisis and there is no further explanation of his appearances at the United Nations as featured in part one. What also isn't mentioned is his visits to many other countries and in particularly when her tries to help the guerrillas in Congo.



Instead the film restarts with him travelling to Bolivia to help the revolutionaries there. It then becomes similar to the first film, lots of build up to various battles and then the battles themselves. It is slightly better this time and also bleaker because it quickly becomes clear that this revolution is going to fail and his army is gradually decimated. When it came down to it Bolivia just wasn’t really bothered enough about having a revolution. Guevara was ultimately captured by the Bolivians and subsequently executed.



The films are undeniably good but I had hoped to come away better educated about Che Guevara but so much is left out that this is not the case.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' is very loosely adapted from a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald.

Benjamin Button tells us he was born 'under unusual circumstances'. To be precise he was born a rather ugly and wrinkled baby of eighty odd years old. In the book, he started as a full sized eighty year old, so it's no wonder his mother died in childbirth but the film is done a bit differently and he is baby sized.

In the film version, his father abandons him on the steps of an old folk's home, where he is taken and raised by Queenie, a carer there. At first they think he's going to die but the ravages of old age are gradually shed from his body and he progresses from wheelchair to walking stick and then beyond. As everyone continues to grow older, he grows younger. Brad Pitt plays Button pretty much all the way through with the help of heavy make-up, CGI and having his head electronically placed on other actors bodies.



We follow his life story, from his birth in New Orleans on the day that the First World War ended right through to his death. It is told in my 'favourite' form, that of flashback, and from the deathbed of his truelove, the now elderly Daisy (Cate Blanchett) as Hurricane Katrina rages outside. Daisy's grandmother was a resident at the same home, which is where she first met Benjamin. They remain in contact throughout their lives, seemingly destined to be together, despite the two of them ageing in different directions.

It is read from his diaries by her daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond). It’s a method I'm not sure I like as it continually breaks up the storyline.

There are also other oddities. The addition of Mr Cake (Monsieur Gateau) and his train station clock that ran backwards in the hope that it would wind back time and undo the death of his Son and others from the battlefields of the Great War. I never grasped why this and its tenuous link to Benjamin's life running backwards was added.

Also, at times the film tries to do too much, like mapping out the sequence of bad luck that led to Daisy's dancing career being ended when she was struck by a Parisian taxi. Then there's the old man who was hit by lightning seven times... a slightly funny diversion but not much more.



Button is lucky he was born in 1918; had he been born in 2009 he would have been all over the papers and labelled as a freak. His life would have been 'I'm Celebrity Get Me Outta Here' hell. Instead, he leaves America working on a tugboat. He visits Russia, where he has an affair with Tilda Swinton, well someone has to I suppose, and he ends up involved in the Second World War.



When he returns, he rediscovers Daisy, now a successful dancer. Yet he turns her down, preferring to wait until he is 'young enough' for her.

After her accident, they eventually end up together and have a child. I think we all worked out long before Caroline did, what her relationship to Benjamin was. She won't remember him though because as he hurtles his way towards short trousers, he walks out of their lives. Knowing that when he becomes Kevin The Teenager, he'll be good for nothing but angst and sulks.



I thought it might end there and that they'd bottle his death as he faded back to zero, but they didn't. In fact, he came back, after a trip around the world, sowing his oats. Teenagers, they're so unreliable. Would Daisy be tempted to have one of the road and see if he was as good aged sixteen, of course she would.

It's all rather sad at the end as Daisy takes charge of the infant Benjamin and nurses him towards death.

The film has been given quite a bit of criticism in reviews but then has also gained a load of Oscar nominations. Realistically I don't see any great acting performances here, but that doesn't seem to matter, although at times the New Orleans accents grate a bit, as a whole it's a very clever film. It's also a long film but it never drags. I loved it.

Button went through much the same plusses and minuses in life as the rest of us, just in the opposite direction. The film tries to show you life from a different perspective. Like all of us, he spent a lifetime trying to figure out how this love thing works and still only just about got there. The message is that age is after all just a number and no matter what that number is, we can choose what we do with our lives but in the end, Button, like all of us, is unable to stop time.

Rachel Getting Married

'Rachel Getting Married' was a film I was looking forward to because on paper it sounded so promising. Take a typical dull family wedding and toss in the hand grenade of a young, unstable female who also happens to be a drug addict, an alcoholic and the sister of the bride, stir well, then stand back and watch the fireworks but...

Of course, it would have been hard for the estranged sister, Kym (Anne Hathaway), to throw a spanner in the workings of this affluent, privileged family from Connecticut because it was already adequately dysfunctional without her intervention.

Kym is back from a spell in rehab and returns home for her sister Rachel's (Rosemarie Dewitt) wedding. All the family's friends and relations have gathered for a whole weekend of eating, drinking, music and vomit inducing declarations of love for each other. That is when they aren't arguing. Director Jonathan Demme invites us to this wedding but just as you often wish you could, when you're invited to a real one, this invite should have been declined. It's like being forced to watch someone else's wedding video. It's even filmed like a home movie, with a hand held camera.



Honestly, you don't want to be there. They have a pre-wedding 'rehearsal dinner' that lasts longer and has more excruciating speeches than most of the worst weddings you've ever been to. Problem is we have to sit through it twice because they do it all again the next day during the wedding itself, which is the most culturally diverse wedding you'll ever see, it ticks every race and religion box on any council application form.

Other people's weddings are usually boring, that is until something 'happens' and not enough happens in this. You think go on Kym, kick some ass, burn the whole place down but it doesn't get that exciting. There's far too much love and hugging for my liking, as well as the arguing. Where was the misery I was expecting?

You just want the wedding all over, so that you can get back to the story, but it never works out that way, there's always another speech just around the corner.

We learn little about Kym, who looks like she's had a colourful past, a seriously baggage laden one but little is elaborated on. When the film starts, she appears clean of drugs and sober, so you can't even reconcile her as an addict. One of her first moves is to get off with the best man, whom she also met at a rehab meeting and I wonder at one stage if she'll kick things off by jumping the groom but no, that would be far too interesting.

Because we learn little about her, there's no reason to like her, feel sympathy for her or even really to hate her. The same can be said of the other characters, who pretty much all come over as unlikeable and self absorbed. It makes you wonder why the groom, a seemingly nice guy called Sidney, wants to have anything to do with them.



Then there's the arguing, two bloody hours of it, which never seems to lead anywhere. Interestingly, Rachel is about to become a doctor of psychology, but she seems to have no insight into the psychology of her own family.

Debra Winger plays the sisters' equally estranged mother, who has chosen to turn her back on the family and to block out her guilt over the death of their youngest child, Ethan. Ethan died whilst in Kym's care, in a car accident, after her Mother engaged her drug addict Daughter as a babysitter. Truth is, she probably left Kym in charge so that she could slope off for a quickie with the man who is now her second husband but they didn't bother filming that bit, their loss and ours.

There's also some inconsistencies, Kym and her mother have a fistfight (nearly exciting that) from which the mother appears without a scratch, whilst Kym takes off in her car, crashes it into a large rock but later we see the car towed away without a mark on it...

Then once the wedding is over Kym simply goes back to rehab. It was such a disappointment; it had so much unrealised potential.



The film would be nothing without Anne Hathaway, who puts in an exceptional performance but she was really the only thing worth seeing. That's not quite fair, as there were other good performances but they just weren't as pretty as her. As a film though, it could have been disturbing, thought provoking, edgy, controversial... but it was none of those.

Slumdog Millionaire

'Slumdog Millionaire' has been billed as the 'feel good movie of the decade', which, as far as I'm concerned, is the kiss of death. I usually cross to the other side of the street and avoid anything remotely 'feel good'. Doom, gloom and depressing is my thing. The trailers also tried to put me off the film but then trailers usually do but I'd read some great things about the film, so I persevered with my intention to see it.

Jamal Malik is an uneducated young boy from the shanty towns. He works as a chai-wallah in a Indian call centre and he somehow flukes his way onto the Indian version of 'Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?', where despite being patronised by the show's host he gets question after question correct because his real life experiences, shown in flashback, give him the answers. They are also asked, conveniently, in the same order as his life story... which is just one of several liberties the plot takes, such as how did a poor boy from the slums who spoke only Hindi for the first half of the film learn to speak English so well? But we'll gloss over them.



As the show ends for the day, with Jamal one question away from the big prize of 20 million rupees the local police arrest him and accuse him of cheating. The officers don't simply question him though they use various horrific means of torture, suffocating him in water, electrocuting him etc etc, to try and extract the 'truth' from him.

So as you can see, so far, it isn't remotely 'feel good', so it scores heavily with me on that score, and it doesn't get any more upbeat. In fact, at times, it's very disturbing. There's a lot of violence and abuse in the film, most of which is towards children. His mother is bludgeoned to death by anti-Muslim extremists' right in front of his eyes. Jamal tangles with a beggars' racket, whose perpetrators blind and maim young children to increase their begging potential. Amongst all this, he falls for Latika, a girl he is destined to love and lose, several times over. Having escaped the racketeers, he and his brother Salem return to rescue her from the jaws of forced prostitution. Whilst Jamal stays relatively on the straight and narrow, Salem has ventured into the underworld and becomes a gangster. Salem shoots dead the leader of the beggars' racket and rescues Latika. Hurrah. Cheers Bro. Then he tells Jamal to get lost, deflowers Latika himself and then gives her to his boss....



I've never been to India but I'm not sure the tourist board will be terribly happy with this film. It doesn't do the country any favours, showing a country, that has one of the world's most successful economies, as a thoroughly depressing, morally bankrupt place, dominated by corruption, even on quiz shows. Whether this is an accurate reflection or not, and I assume not, it's still a cracking film and of course there are plenty of nasty films about western culture around.



There's humour too and shades of director Danny Boyle's Trainspotting as a young Jamal dives into a public latrine in order to meet a Bollywood actor.

The ending was a little disappointing. Having survived the brutal police interrogation and been reunited with Latika, who in another plot hole has, despite being a 'kept' woman, somehow learned to drive. Jamal should have gone on the show for the final question, stuck two fingers up at the obnoxious host, who even gave him the wrong answers, and said 'F*** you, I'll take the money'.



To sum up. Pure fiction, not at all feel good but right up my street. Oh and I thought everyone knew the names of the Three Musketeers?