Inkheart

Mo Folchart (Brendan Fraser) has the gift of a 'silver tongue', which means not that he can charm the pants off the ladies but that he has the skill to make characters in books come alive as he reads the story.



Nine years ago, he carelessly lost his wife Resa (Sienna Guillory), presumably short for Theresa, this way as he was reading to his daughter Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett) from the book 'Inkheart'. His 'gift' also causes real people to disappear into the book, whilst leaving the characters from 'Inkheart' roaming the real world, which they kind of grow to like.

Mo claims he's searched long and hard for another copy of this rare book, nine years or so, whilst travelling all over the world in the guise of a 'Book Doctor'. Hmmm, sounds like he's been living it up a bit to me. He's probably privately, been reading Princess Leia out of Star Wars whilst catching up with Catwoman every other Sunday. Well you would wouldn't you.

I mean surely he's heard of 'Google' or 'ebay' or could he not just have reached for a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and got Holmes and Watson in on the case? Oh I should have been a script writer.



When he finally finds the book in the Italian Alps, one of its characters Dustfinger (Paul Bettany) stops him in the street to try to persuade Mo to read him back into the book, he, for one, wants to go home. Meanwhile the evil gang lord from the book, Capricorn (Andy Serkis), has no wish to return and pursues Mo.

They all end up locked away in Capricorn's castle where Capricorn wants Mo to read money and other riches out of books for him. He's been employing a less skilled 'silver tongue' which means they have amassed quite a zoo of imperfectly read-out characters. The story mentions loads of great books along the way but regrettably doesn't develop this part of the story.

All this time, Mo has kept his powers secret from his daughter but whilst they are locked up with the crocodile from Peter Pan ticking away next door, he goes for an explanation. Now I know its an odd request to demand realism in a fantasy movie but if your Father told you such a weird secret, that he read some weirdoes out of a book in exchange for your Mother, how would you react? Wouldn't you instantly think, oh that explains everything... or think perhaps he was joking, mad, drunk or perhaps all three? Then to top it all, it turns out that Meggie has the same gift as her father but she just hasn't noticed...



It comes down to Dustfinger to rescue them with the help of a lad called Farid who fell out of 'Arabian Nights' or was it 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves' and they all search out the author of the book (Jim Broadbent) for another copy and end up with the manuscript.



At the finish, with them all recaptured, Capricorn forces Meggie to read something awful called the 'Shadow' out of the book whilst the author is hurriedly trying to rewrite the ending. For God's sake somebody write and read anything, nobody said it had to be a good book. In the end it's down to Toto the dog from the Wizard Of Oz to deliver the new page to the Meggie, without eating it, my dog couldn't have managed that, and listen girl. When you're reading the new ending and it's clearly working, helping to get rid of the bad guys, rescue your friends and your family, what is the last thing you should do... durrr stop reading. Silly girl.

It's an alright film but it gets progressively messier as it goes on. It's a shame, there are some good special effects, the baddies are superb and there's some decent acting, although I thought Mo was played by a rubber dummy but the others disagreed, assured me it was human and that he did ok. It also boasts the acting skills of Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren but both their parts are mainly irrelevant to the story.

The film is based on the first book of a trilogy and probably leaves itself open 'to be continued'. The last film to attempt to start a franchise like that was, oh yes, 'The Golden Compass'. At least its better than that.

Suddenly at the end, out of nowhere, there's some love interest between Farid and Meggie. Which just highlights the lack of character development there's been throughout the film. There wasn't any chemistry between any of the other cast, not even Mo with his Daughter and certainly not with his wife. Whom they find and eventually free. She's spent the last nine years in what appears to be near slavery and has also gone mute, so perhaps that's why they're so estranged. Bet you wish you hadn't spent so much time with Princess Leia now eh Mo?

Hancock

The idea of the film is quite ingenious because Hancock (Will Smith) is a drunken bum of a superhero who causes more damage than he prevents and consequently he is roundly hated by the general public.

The film started off very promisingly but as soon as Hancock started to get a PR make over, by Jason Bateman, whose life Hancock saved, it started to lose track of the original great idea. I thought it was going to pick up again and possibly get quite edgy when Charlize Theron looked as though she was going to try to bed a superhero but it turns out she's a superhero too. Doh, don't you just hate it when that happens.



Generally a fun film but not the best use of a great idea. This is rare case that when the remake is made, a few years from now, it's going to be a better film.

White Christmas (1954)

I can't really slate 'White Christmas' now can I, in fact if modern rom-com's were like this the world would probably be a better place but it's all just as implausible as the modern equivalent.

By 1954 when the film was made, the song 'White Christmas' was already a 'classic', so they made a film around it and Bing. Exactly the sort of thing they'd do these days.

Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby) is coerced into becoming a song-and-dance duo with Phil Davis (Danny Kaye) in repayment for Phil saving his life when they were in the army. They are successful as a duo and Phil tries to pair the workaholic Bob off with a fellow performer Betty (Rosemary Clooney) one of the Haynes sisters, so that he can get some time for his own philandering. Bing must have been 50 when he made this, whilst Clooney was in her mid-twenties. Nice work if you can get it.



They follow Betty and her sister Judy (Vera-Ellen) to their next show in Vermont.
The inn in Vermont, is practically empty because despite it being December its 68 degrees fahrenheit and there's no snow. It turns out the inn is owned by their former army commander, General Waverly.

So they bring their show up to the inn, to try to drum up some business for him. Then it gets all rom-com, Betty thinks they are just doing it for some free publicity and goes AWOL, whilst Judy and Phil think that if they stage a phoney engagement it will encourage Betty to go for Bob. It doesn't.



In the end Bob gets all the troops from his division to surprise the general on Christmas Eve, this is the best bit of the movie. Betty realises Bob is her 'knight on a white horse' after all and they all live happily every after.

A fun and enjoyable film, despite some awful songs. Such as the cringe worthy 'Snow' sung in the dining car of the train to Vermont and another called 'Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep'...

Changeling

Tonight Clint Eastwood's 'Changeling', which is a true story that explores the dark side of 1920s Los Angeles.

Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) is a single parent who works as a roller-skating supervisor for Pacific Telephone in what looks like the equivalent of a modern day 'call centre'. One weekend she is asked to work a Saturday shift and has to leave her young son Walter home alone. When she returns after work, she is greeted by an empty house. Walter is missing and when she contacts the police, they are extremely unhelpful.

She hears nothing for months but then, when all hope seemed lost, the police produce a child whom they claim is Walter but from the moment he steps off the train, Christine insists that he is most definitely not. The LAPD, who are portrayed throughout as being a corrupt gang of thugs who answer to no one, are desperate for some good publicity to restore their tarnished name. Their thinking is that returning a missing kid to his hard working, single mother would do the trick, no matter if it's the wrong child.



So, they tell her to smile for the press and take him home, telling her she's in shock and anyway young children can change so quickly. They dismiss the ton of evidence supporting her claim. Saying it would not be usual for a child to shrink three inches, acquire a completely different set of teeth to those in his dental records, forget his teacher and all classmates and even get himself circumcised in the months he was missing. Although didn't she have an old photograph of her son that could have helped clear all this up?



Christine continues to challenge the force and their particularly obnoxious chief J. J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), who is corruption personified. She is determined to uncover the truth and find her real son but the police continually deny any wrongdoing and try to discredit her as an unfit mother.

The only person willing to believe and help her is the Reverend Briegleb (John Malkovich), a man trying to expose the LAPD on his radio show.



When she tells all to the press, Jones invokes ‘Code 12’, a rule under which citizens can be committed to a mental asylum without a warrant. Scary. She is told she will stay there until she agrees to tow the line. The mental institution, like a lot of the film, does not make easy viewing.

Meanwhile, at a ranch outside the city, a good cop, Detective Ybarra (Michael Kelly) find a young Canadian boy who has chilling story to tell and so unfolds the tale of the Wineville Chicken Murders. The police trace and convict the perpetrator; serial kidnapper and killer, Gordon Northcott played to perfection by Jason Butler Harner. Slowly the details emerge of the grisly murders almost in the style of a horror movie as Detective Ybarra uncovers what really happened to Walter and many other boys.



The uncovering of the murders, helps Briegleb and a lawyer, who is working for free, to get Christine out of the asylum but unfortunately as a survivor of the abductions turns up and tells his story; there is no happy conclusion.

Overall, a good film, disturbing in some scenes and sometimes difficult to sit through, but still impressive. Jolie, who isn't really used to roles that test her, is convincing without being outstanding.

It's certainly not for the casual viewer who's after a bit of the usual Hollywood escapism but in my opinion, all the better for that. Just don't expect to leave the cinema with a smile on your face.

Waltz with Bashir

Israeli director Ari Folman tells a personal tale about the first Lebanon War in 1982. It's basically a documentary but in animated form.

Folman meets a friend in a bar who recounts a reoccurring nightmare he has where he is chased by 26 ferocious dogs. This, they conclude, is connected to his involvement in the war. Folman himself though, does not remember much about it. So, he meets up with other army colleagues, as well as a psychologist and the journalist Ron Ben-Yishai to try to jog his memory which he seems to have effectively repressed, especially concerning events leading up to the notorious Sabra and Shatila massacre. Through a series of conversations, Folman slowly reveals his past, showing the events he witnessed and was involved in, in the form of flashback.



It's an interesting history lesson, although taken from his point of view, but I found it a bit messy and bitty. It didn't really flow to any set pattern, like his memory I suppose, as we gradually build up to the massacre.



The allies of the Israelis were the Lebanese Christian Phalangists and when the Lebanese President, Bashir Gemayel, is assassinated, they are allowed to go into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps to hunt for terrorists. Instead, they killed at least 800 Palestinian civilians in revenge, including women and children, whilst the Israelis stood by and watched. The army even fired flares into the night sky to provide lighting for the Phalangist's mission. At the end of the film, real footage of the discovery of the massacre is shown, presenting graphic pictures of the corpses.

I think being animated, and there was no doubt that the animation was magnificent, it was hard to identify with Folman and there was no character building to help you with this. I didn't feel I knew Ari Folman at all, so although I cared about what happened generally, I didn't particularly care about his own involvement.



Why did they use animation? Probably simply because they could be more controversial than they could have been on film.

Still it was a thought-provoking comment on the war, the dreadful massacre and the soldiers, who came across as a confused, scared and ill prepared bunch. In that sense, it got its message across. It was a decent, powerful piece of art but as a film, for me, it didn't really cut it.

Baader Meinhof Komplex

A group of West German students are demonstrating against the Shah of Iran, who is visiting the country. They are also protesting against their own government, who they accuse of being a puppet in the hands of imperialist America. Then aided and abetted by the police, supporters of the Shah pick a fight with the students. Together they senselessly beat the demonstrators to a pulp. The police threaten a protester with a gun to his head, it goes off, although possibly by accident but a martyr is born.

On this violent note the film starts and it doesn't get any less horrific from there onwards. Some of the protesters have no time for peaceful objections, they want revolution now. They form the Red Army Faction (RAF), whose aims are to turn things around by stronger means.

Among these are journalist Ulrike Meinhof, known for writing biting critiques against the government, and part-time criminal Andreas Baader, because of their involvement the RAF became known as the Baader-Meinhof group. The film focuses primarily on these two and Baader's girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, a unwavering fanatic if ever there was one.

At first, the group content themselves with committing bank robberies for the cause and gain some sympathetic support from normal Germans but soon they turned to killing people.

What follows in the film is a detailed history of the actions of the RAF and their battles with the German establishment, as the film attempts to squeeze 10 years of history into two and a half hours. The sheer magnitude of the events makes this difficult, so the movie travels through history at breakneck pace without taking time to delve into any particular aspect at any length or to attempt to decipher the thoughts of those behind the RAF. Not that many of them seemed to have much idea of what they wanted to achieve anyway.



It may not be hot on detail but the film does at times have you clinging to the edge of your seat as it captures the essence of the tensions that existed at the time. Kidnaps, executions and explosions come fast and furious as plans are hatched and then usually messed up. It's still a fascinating story and I remember many of the events happening at the time.

When they are not killing or blowing things up, the group spend a lot of their time naked or with a cigarette in their mouths. Both seem to be compulsory if you're in the RAF.



Eventually the authorities catch up with them and the ringleaders are dumped in prison. Not happy with the conditions they are in, they go on collective hunger strike and after the death of one of them, Holger Meins, they are all reunited in Stuttgart's Stammheim prison where their trial would eventually take place.

Collectively their mental state starts to crumble and Meinhof falls out with the others as plans to get them released continually fail. She doesn't make it to the end of the trial and hung herself in her cell. Although it was claimed by the RAF that she was murdered by the authorities. After a long and expensive trial, the remaining defendants, primarily Baader, Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Outside of Stammheim, the violence continued, driven by a new generation of fighters in a campaign in support of their jailed comrades, still trying to secure their release. Their motivations remain a mystery, you think perhaps some of the group just joined because they fancied a bit of bloodshed. In a final throw of the dice, the RAF kidnapped Hanns Schleyer, the chairman of the German Employers' Organisation, and a group of Palestinian's hijacked a Lufthansa Flight on behalf of the RAF.



It was all in vain, the German government had no intention of ever releasing them. The terrorists saw the writing on the wall and inside Stammheim, they agreed to a suicide pact. The next morning, they were all found dead in their cells. None of this saved Schleyer, who was later executed in the woods.

After the pace of the film, the end credits seem to come upon you a bit abruptly.

It's an excellent and well acted film that neither approves nor disapproves of it's subject matter. Today, many people are still objecting to much the same things, just less violently, re: the Bush administration, Iraq, Afghanistan, capitalism in general. Horst Herold, the director of the German Police said that he could only cure the symptoms of the RAF disease but not the disease itself. In part admitting that the RAF were not altogether wrong in their thoughts, just badly wrong in their actions.

Mýrin (Jar City)

Jar City is based on a novel by Iceland's most successful crime writer, Arnaldur Indriðason. Not that I've heard of him. I also don't know any Icelandic actors and I'm not sure how many the country has, so we've probably witnessed all of them in one go.

The story begins with the discovery of a body in an apartment and separately, a genetic researcher called Örn burying his four-year-old daughter who has died from a rare illness. Experienced detective Erlandur investigates and the trail takes him back 30 years when there were allegations of rape, police corruption, an unsolved disappearance and the death of another young girl from the same rare illness.



Erlandur also has his hands full with his own drug-addicted daughter who is constantly trying to get money off him and has now gotten herself pregnant.



In the end, the mystery is untangled and everything ties together, along the way, we are treated to some dour Icelandic characters and dodgy criminals, some of which are on the police payroll.

I wasn't expecting much but I quite liked it and it sustained my interest all the way through. An intriguing film, which managed to go back thirty years without any flashbacks. Then just to catch me out, it flashed back a couple of times to the later day murder. It was particularly confusing because two of the lead characters looked a bit similar.

Jar City is an excellent thriller, although a bit like a TV police series, Colombo meets CSI, that sort of thing. The difference was, it was cliché and unnecessary swearing free, which obviously it wouldn't have been had it been made in America, unless of course they just omitted them from the subtitles. Then of course, they had the advantage of the outstanding location. We were treated to some great shots of the bleak terrain, although there wasn't enough snow.



The pièce de résistance was the gruesome scene of Erlandur pulling up at the fast food drive-in, ordering his takeaway meal and then taking his sheep's head home, where he eats it with his penknife, starting with the eyeball of course. Welcome to Iceland.

Burn After Reading

The story to 'Burn After Reading' involves a CIA analyst called Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) who quits his job before he is pushed because of his 'drinking problem'. Thinking his role in intelligence was more important than it actually was, he starts to write his memoirs.

When a CD with it on ends up at Hardbodies gym, he finds himself being blackmailed by two of the gym's employees who believe it to contain sensitive CIA shit, as Brad Pitt puts it. Pitt plays a clueless workout freak called Chad who is egged on by Linda (Frances McDormand). Linda is a wannabe gym bunny, that is once she can get the cash together for the plastic surgery.



When Cox laughs off their bribery attempts, they take the CD to the equally disinterested Russian embassy. The film's a kind of espionage thriller without the espionage, instead the film moves around from one eccentric situation to another in a random manner, as the various story lines are intertwined. As usual, with a Coen's film, you don't get from A to B without going via X, Y and Z.

Brad breaks into Cox's house to try to get more of the 'CIA shit', only Osbourne isn't there but Harry is. George Clooney is Harry, in a role, which seems to send up his own image, a man who just can't stop hopping into bed with different women. For reasons known only to him, he's getting extramarital with Cox's icy wife Katie (Tilda Swinton), a woman with about as much sexual charm as a crocodile. I find Swinton unnerving in this role but then I'm still thinking of her as a boy in Orlando.

When Harry comes across Chad hiding in the wardrobe, he somehow, accidentally, shoots him dead. Harry is already paranoid because someone has been tracking him, he doesn't know it yet but it's a private detective hired by his wife, who, of course, is also cheating on him. Thinking Chad is a spy, he dumps the body in the river.

Harry, traumatised by this and presumably from having to sleep with the reptilian Katie, seeks a bit of light relief and solace in a new bed partner via internet dating. The lucky female turns out to be Linda.



In his spare time between his affairs and a spot of jogging, we see Harry constructing something, which is supposed to be a present for his wife. It turns out to be a mechanical sybian machine. Linda seems very impressed.

Osbourne meanwhile, has to break into his own house with a hatchet because the reptile has started divorce proceedings and has changed the locks. There he comes across someone at his computer. It's Ted (Richard Jenkins), a former Greek Orthodox priest, now boss of Hardbodies, who because he gets a bit of a drool on whenever Linda is around, not that she notices, has decided to help out with the 'CIA shit'. Osbourne's had enough; he shoots Ted and then finishes the job off with the hatchet in the street. So as you can see it's a comedy... well only just and a dark one at that.



Where does all this go? Well, it doesn't go anywhere but brilliantly so. It's a clever film about 'intelligence' colliding with people with no intelligence.

It all finishes a bit suddenly, very Coen like, but unlike a normal Coen's film, we do at least get closure. The loose ends are tidied up and summarised in the offices of CIA, as they try to make sense of the nonsense that has happened.

Two dead bodies and Osbourne himself in a coma after being shot by the real CIA. Harry has been seized trying to board a flight to Venezuela, he fled in terror from Linda when she revealed she was working with Chad, the body in his wardrobe. The CIA understandably very keen for him to catch that flight. Linda, of course, will forget about the whole thing, if they pay for her plastic surgery. Result.

I was a little disappointed at first because the Coen's make some great 'serious' films but their less serious ones have been a bit of a mixed bag and this certainly fits into that category. For anyone else though, this would have been an excellent film.

I reckon they knocked this script up in their lunch hour, had they had a few beers and took the writing on into the evening they could possibly have written the best film of the year but then perhaps they didn't want to knock 'No Country' off the top spot.

It's been criticised for having a lame plot but I think that's the whole point. Perhaps that was the challenge they set themselves. Just how good can we make a movie that doesn't actually go anywhere? Bet they're having a right laugh at the reviews.

Whilst the rest of the movie industry are rehashing the same old stuff or doing pointless remakes and sequels, the Coen's are still coming up with something different. How could anyone object to that?

The Boy In Striped Pyjamas

'The Boy in Striped Pyjamas' is about another lad who doesn't realise that the Holocaust is going on but unlike Giosué this is down purely to his own innocence. Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is a German boy who is forced to move to a new house when his father (David Thewlis) becomes the commandant of a concentration camp. Bruno hates their new home and misses his friends. He spends a lot of time sulking in his bedroom, where, through his window, he spots a fence behind which he sees people wearing 'striped pyjamas'.



Bruno is forbidden to leave the confines of their new house and garden but eventually, out of pure boredom, he goes exploring and finds the camp. There, amongst some implausibly slack camp security he meets a fellow eight-year-old, a Jewish inmate called Shmuel (Jack Scanlon). He soon becomes Bruno's friend and Bruno starts to visit him regularly.

It also had the implausible premise that Shmuel had not been sent straight to the gas chambers and instead, he had been set to work in the camp but still manages to sit at the camp fence undetected long enough to talk to Bruno everyday. No wonder they never seemed to get any further building the hut they were allegedly working on.



Back home, Bruno and his sister are being schooled by a private tutor. He sets about trying to brainwash the children into the Nazi way of thinking.

Bruno's mother (Vera Farmiga) isn't impressed by this and then when she finds out what they're really burning at the camp, she goes mad at the thought of her husband's part in such barbarity. She plans to take the children back to their old house but before he goes, Bruno, probably taken in by the cheery propaganda film of life in the camp that he had seen, he agrees to go under the camp fence to help Shmuel find his missing father. To do this Shmuel supplies Bruno with a set of striped pyjamas.

They are unable to find Shmuel's father but before Bruno can return home, the inmates are all marched into the shower block. Someone probably found out they hadn't really been building that hut. Both Shmuel and Bruno are trapped in there as they pile in the Zyklon B.

Everyone sat quiet right up until the end of the credits but I felt little emotion at the end.

For me, the film really missed the spot. Perhaps it was because we saw the superior 'Life Is Beautiful' on the same bill and that had a more powerful ending. The main problem with the film is that you're supposed to feel sympathy for the Germans and I simply didn't.

The camp commandant deserved to feel some grief and Bruno lost the sympathy vote when he betrayed Shmuel by giving him food when he was summoned to clean glasses in their house and then saying he stole it. This was despite the fact that he must have known the consequences because he'd already seen what had happened to their Jewish servant Pavel when he made the mistake of spilling some wine.

Also the long Hollywood build up to the ending also took the shock away. Then there's the fact that that everyone had a flawless English accent rather than their native German. The film desperately wanted to be 'Schindler's List' but it wasn't. Despite that the acting was good, some of it excellent. David Thewlis was very convincing as the camp commandant. Just as his wife described him, a monster.

La Vita è Bella (Life Is Beautiful) (1997)

Made in 1997 in Italian by Roberto Benigni, who also wrote, directed and starred in it. I believe his real life wife played his screen wife too.

Its 1930s Italy and carefree Guido is careering downhill in a car without brakes, through a village where he is mistaken for the King. This is the first of many comical scenes as he falls for a schoolteacher called Dora, who 'fell out of the sky'. He calls her 'Princess' and despite the fact that she is engaged to another guy, Guido actively pursues her, popping up all over the place where she is. Including one scene where he pretends to be a school inspector and ends up giving an impromptu speech on Arian superiority, a hint to what is to come later in the film. Guido is Jewish.

Swayed by his persistence, his humour and the fact her fiancé is a jerk, she gives in and he gets his girl, whisking her away on a green horse. Green because they painted over the anti-Jewish slogans that were daubed on it. Guido and Dora disappear into what appears to be a greenhouse and when they emerge, five years have passed. They are now married and have a child.



Guido opens the bookstore he's always dreamed of and they live a happy life, until the occupation of Italy by the German army. Then the film gets more serious. Guido is sent to a concentration camp along with his son, Giosue. Dora, who isn't Jewish, drives to the train station and demands to be put on the same train.

Once at the camp, the men and women are separated and a child is usually immediately disposed of but Giosué refuses to take a shower, and unknowingly escapes being gassed. His elderly uncle isn't so lucky. Guido manages to hide Giosué, and to help his son survive the horrors of the camp, he tells him that it's all an elaborate game and that the prize for collecting 1000 points is a tank.

Guido's quick mind saves Giosué from the truth when a German officer requires a translator. Despite not speaking a word of German, Guido volunteers and makes up the words to back up his claim that it's all a game, while cleverly adding that Giosué cannot cry, ask for his mother or say he's hungry.



As the end of the war approaches, time runs out for Guido, he hides
Giosué for the last time, telling him that everyone is looking for him. Guido jeopardises his own survival while he attempts to find Dora and he is taken away and shot.

The next morning, the Americans arrive at the now almost deserted camp. Giosué emerges from hiding just as a tank pulls around the corner. He is thrilled to have won the game. Hitching a ride on the tank, he finds, and is reunited with his mother.

Complete silence after the film and everyone obeys the unwritten art house cinema rule and stay for all the credits. Even I felt a bit choked at the end.

An excellent film, that controversially mixes humour with the Holocaust. It won Academy Awards for Best Actor, Best Foreign Film and Best Dramatic Score. Despite that, it's been criticised for not giving a true depiction of a concentration camp. Which is true, it doesn't dwell on the horrors of the camp and the camp security is at times laughably slack, but nor does it totally ignore these issues.

The film is primarily about a man's relationship with his family and in particular, his son. It shows the great lengths and the sacrifices, in the end the ultimate sacrifice, that a desperate father will go to, to protect his son.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

It's 1939 in London and the Second World War is on the horizon. Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) is a middle-aged governess who finds herself forever falling out with her employers, so much so that her agency refuses to help her find work anymore. Destitute, homeless and dressed as Oliver Twist's mother, in the only set of clothes she owns, she steals a client's card from the agency and intercepts an employment assignment at the apartment of a nightclub singer named Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams).

Delysia needs a social secretary to sort out her chaotic life. What she actually needs is a good slap but that doesn't actually happen. Delysia is determined to become famous on the London stage and by sleeping with Phil, a young West End producer, she hopes to secure a lead role. Problem is she now needs him to leave because the bed he auditioned her in and the flat in which she lives belongs to Nick, a smarmy nightclub owner who she sings for and also dallies with.

Using her initiative, Miss Pettigrew bluffs her way through the situation and gets rid of Phil. The film is a screwball comedy of sorts and at first, she thinks Phil is Delysia's Son. The 'comedy' continues with boyfriends coming and going, underwear hanging from the chandelier, clothes hidden under rugs, characters missing each other in the lift and several double entendres but nothing is particularly funny.



Unfortunately, for Miss Pettigrew, Delysia is an ongoing crisis, a bimbo who needs a lesson in life. Delysia, not her real name, is really just a normal girl who craves to be a social climber but who isn't very good at climbing. Amy Adams plays her perfectly, I suppose, basically reprising her role from Enchanted. She really gets on your nerves but I guess she's supposed to.

Her messy love life is completed by her piano player, Michael. A guy who accepts her for who she really is, and he wants to take her to New York on the Queen Mary but Delysia isn't interested. Her career and desire for the high life cloud her sense of reason.



Miss Pettigrew hangs on to Delysia's coat tails for a day, kind of living the high life. Also being called upon to help a fashion editor called Edythe (Shirley Henderson) try and patch things up with her fiancé, an older lingerie designer (Ciaran Hinds).



It's all very undemanding and in the end, Miss Pettigrew manages to help Delysia see sense and set sail with Michael, and in the process, she herself gets off with Ciaran Hinds. Somehow, Ciaran Hinds always seems to get the girl.

Angel

'Angel' is based on a book by Elizabeth Taylor (no, not that one). The ironically named Angel Deverell (Ramola Garai) lives with her mother above their grocery store. Angel though, doesn't live in reality and isn't remotely angelic. She refuses to accept the world as it is and instead creates her own, through her vivid imagination, where she is a renowned writer who lives in the nearby Paradise House, where she dreamed of living when she was younger.

Nobody thinks she has the ability to be a writer but amazingly, despite little or no life experiences to draw on, a publisher (Sam Neill) takes a wild punt on one of her romantic novels. Even then, he has his reservations and questions among other things, a glaring mistake in her book where she writes that champagne is opened with a corkscrew, but when she throws a tantrum and refuses to change it, he publishes anyway. Fortunately, after this, we are not treated to many more nuggets of her writing.

His wife (Charlotte Rampling) clearly thinks he's mad and can't stand the rude and childish Angel. She suspects it's just because he has the hots for her.

You can't help but agree with his wife about Angel, from the moment the wretched woman appears on screen, she is simply too vile to inspire any sympathy.

Amazingly, the book is a success and one by one all her dreams come true. Angel gets to live like one of the made-up heroines in her books and buys Paradise House but continues to live a life of complete fantasy. She isolates herself from everything else in the world, including the First World War, when it breaks out.



I think the film tries to hammer home the fantasy point because some of the scenes when they are travelling are so badly done, using superimposed backgrounds, that you think you've fallen into a parody of something from the 1950's. Surely, this must have been deliberate.

She meets the Howe-Nevisons. Nora (Lucy Russell), is her obsessive number one fan who begs her to let her be her personal assistant, and her brother Esme (Michael Fassbender), an untalented painter, with whom Angel falls in love with.



At first, he appears to be almost as unlikable as she is and I think they deserve each but then, because Angel is so selfish and so possessive of him, I start to feel sorry for him. She is so annoying that I can't imagine anyone putting up with her.

He goes off to war, the war that Angel pretends doesn't exist, probably just to escape her and comes back wounded. Trapped with Angel and the wheelchair she 'lovingly' provided for him, he hangs himself.

The war is also her undoing, she starts to incorporate her anti-war feelings into her novels and her readership deserts her, at a time when the country are pulling together in the war effort. You almost want to cheer when she herself falls ill and dies.

Oddly having aged badly, the make-up was a bit dodgy (shades of 'Love In The Time Of Cholera'), on her deathbed she seems to rewind back to her late twenties.



I wouldn't say it was a bad film because I found it quite enjoyable. The problem with it was that you never felt anything for the main character and not much for any of the others either. Throughout you just wanted someone to give her a really hard slap.

Orlando (1992)

The film adaptation is by Sally Potter, a brave lass, because I think she's tried to film the unfilmable.

It's all a bit Shakespearean to me with a touch of Ian McEwan. Although as L points out Ian McEwan's usually have a plot. If Virginia Woolf had one when she started out, she soon lost it. From the moment Jimmy Somerville appears as a falsetto angel, you know this is going to be hard work.

Orlando is a young noble man during Queen Elizabeth I's reign. Tilda Swinton plays Orlando, a woman playing a man. Quentin Crisp plays Queen Elizabeth I, hmmm, but he's more convincing as a woman than Tilda Swinton is as a man. This, as I know that during the film Orlando becomes a woman, rather gives the plot away in the first few seconds.



Orlando is offered a house and land by the Queen, if he can stay forever young. The film follows Orlando as he moves through several centuries of British history, experiencing life along the way, and during this time, impossible as it may seem, he doesn't age a day.

He falls in love with a skater during the winter of the Great Frost, the skater is Sasha, a Russian Princess. A young woman who also dresses as a man and as unconvincingly as Orlando does. She toys with his feelings and one night, when they plan to run away together, she fails to turn up. The cow.

Throughout his amble through the centuries, Orlando bumps into people briefly before moving on. Many historical figures appear but aren't properly introduced. So, if you didn't know the story you'd miss them, such as when Nick Greene and other poets, show up. All the monarchs of the passing years are briefly mentioned.

At some point Orland falls into a coma and when he awakes, he's become a woman. Yes really. Orlando doesn't look unduly bothered or even surprised. Suppose we'd all like to try it but I'd like an assurance that there was a way back. There was a previous scene where Orlando also appeared to have a long sleep and I had thought he'd already gender hopped because with Swinton in the lead, it's hard to tell.



This transformation causes him to lose his grand house. Firstly, because he is legally dead but also because he's now female and this amounts to much the same thing. Women were not allowed to own property.

Orlando continues to be unlucky in love and things get no better when he/she falls off his/her horse and is rescued by Billy Zane. They promptly jump into bed but ultimately, he/she is dumped again.



A quick rush through the twentieth century and then we are in the present day, where Orlando is handing his/her memoirs to a publisher. The film closes with Orlando and his/her child back at the house she acquired centuries ago.

They say it's not the getting there but the journey. Hmmm, I'm not convinced. A truly strange film, to say the least. Rambling and largely plotless. It's allegedly a film about self-discovery but Orlando's character seems to learn little throughout the years. You feel he/she's somewhat wasted his/her time. I suppose Orlando learns that each gender has its faults, no matter what century it is, but despite amassing several centuries of experience, he has little to show for it.

In 1941, Woolf committed suicide by filling her pockets with stones and wading into the River Ouse near where she lived. She probably couldn't find her real self either.

Elegy

'Elegy' is based on Philip Roth's short novel 'The Dying Animal'. Which really makes you wonder why they called it 'Elegy'? Because as film titles go, they don't come any better than 'The Dying Animal' where as an 'elegy' is a poem about mourning or something like that.

David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) is a professor of literary criticism, and is probably around 60 years old (my sort of age). Lecturing to his class, he assesses War and Peace and explains that you bring yourself to any work of art. You see it through your own eyes, through your own situation, with your prejudices etc but whatever your thoughts on it, the work will live on well beyond your thoughts on it. This is an essential theme of the film.

Kepesh may be a respected college professor but he's also a bit of a lecherous old man (well aren't we all) who lusts after his female students (don't we all). Kepesh though appears to be a bit of a success on this front (the swine) but he thoughtfully never attempts to bed any of his students until the final grades are in, when he throws a cocktail party for them and all previous rules are suspended.

Kepesh knows he's an old git with an aging body but he doesn't want to grow up, his mind he reckons still functions as a teenager. Hang on a sec; I can relate to that sentiment but no one would seriously want to be stuck with the mind of a teenager. Heaven forbid. Mid twenties would do me nicely please.

This term's lucky target for seduction is Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz). Consuela is a doe-eyed student considerably younger than Cruz herself is but she scrubs up well for it. In fact, she looks great, even with her kit on, and her acting is pretty good too. I have had no time for any of her previous films. Both L and I thought the much touted 'Volver' was rubbish. As for her so called beauty, it's never done anything for me.

The suave Kepesh successfully woos her with flattery, charm, a bit of theatre and some tinkling on the piano. Which is all very annoying because it works; and he promptly falls head over heels in lust with her. So it's another film about old men's fantasies about getting it on with women thirty years their junior. So let's suspend belief, well maybe not. It's no more unbelievable than an OAP like Max Mosley, entertaining five girls in the middle of the afternoon.



They embark on a passionate relationship but Kepesh is realistic and knows it won't last. Therefore, there's little chemistry between them only sex. Thing is Kepesh doesn't usually care if it lasts or not because he shuns commitment anyway, when one of his students inevitably leaves him for a younger model, he just charms another one.

In fact, to fill any gaps Kepesh has a regular-ish shag lined up, three weekly I believe the arrangement was, with Carolyn, a business woman (Patricia Clarkson). They seem well suited but surprisingly, given their arrangement, she gets annoyed when she realises she's not the only dish on his menu.

This time though, his desire for Consuela clearly destabilises him and his cynical façade begins to crack. His friend, award-winning poet, George (Dennis Hopper), we also get an appearance by Deborah Harry as George's wife, comes out with the nugget that 'beautiful women are invisible' because we don't get beyond the 'beauty barrier'. Like admiring a work of art, we see in another person what we want to see. In his case, Kepesh sees the sexual side of the beautiful Consuela and fails to see the person underneath. Bringing his prejudices into it, just like with War and Peace.



He is so blinded by his infatuation that he starts behaving like the teenager, he says is still in his head. To the point of ducking out of attending functions with Consuela and avoiding meeting her parents. I find this a little hard to believe, surely, he's mature enough to not care whether they disapproved and of course, they would. Why should he care if it all ends in tears when he's convinced it will do so anyway? What will be will be. It's an imperfect relationship but aren't they all? The result of not attending her graduation party is that he doesn't see her for two years.

Kepesh also has an estranged 40-something son Kenny (Peter Sarsgaard), a man married with children, who appears on the scene to tell his father that he has been having an affair. Kepesh is too involved in his own predicament to bother dishing out advice or sympathy. Even though he's done plenty of what his son calls 'serial tomcatting' when he was married to Kenny's mother. He left his son and wife many years ago and Kenny has never quite forgiven him.

Cruz is very free with her flesh throughout the film, and when Consuela reappears, her breasts become even more central to the plot. She tells Kepesh that she has breast cancer and expects to lose one of them in the operation. This upsets her because she feels that she will no longer be beautiful. Does she return to tell to Kepesh because she knew his desire was for her body and not for her? Is her beauty all that matters to her? Will he still want to read War And Peace with the best bits ripped out? Or can Kepesh now see beyond the 'beauty barrier'? It's very un-PC these days not to say 'its ok love it doesn't matter what you look like'.

I can see it coming and he asks him to photograph her breasts. What he did with the photos I'm not sure. Were they for her or for him? Are they hanging on his wall above the fireplace?



The ending is inconclusive, we see a couple on the beach. Has Kepesh made a late conversion to true love? I'm not sure.

This film is going to have so many critics because of its subject matter and because of the way it was told, in a slow, pondering character based way. The film takes its time telling its story but I like that approach.

In my opinion, it's a cracking movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. There are sublime performances by Kingsley, Cruz’s nipples, and even a pretty good one from Penelope herself. Never though I'd say that.

Somers Town

The film is sponsored by Eurostar and was originally conceived as a plug to mark the train service's move to the new St Pancras International station but when they asked Shane Meadows to make it, I think he got carried away.

What they got was another typical gritty Meadows' coming-of-age story that looks small budget and is shot almost completely in black and white.

Tomo, played by Thomas Turgoose, the star of Meadow's 'This Is England' has runaway from Nottingham and ends up in London, or more precisely the district of Somers Town, the area between Euston and St Pancras.

Tomo isn't as tough as he seems to think he is and within minutes of cracking open his first illegal lager, he gets mugged by the local lads, as well as getting a good kicking. Typical Meadows stuff.

Tommo refuses a sensible offer of a train ticket and instead meets the shy reserved Marek (Piotr Jagiello), a Polish immigrant, who is his polar opposite. Marek spends his days taking photographs and trying to occupy himself while his father works as a builder on the new station.



Somehow, despite Tomo stealing Marek's photos, they form an unlikely friendship. Most of Marek's photos are of the love of his life, a sexy French waitress called Maria, who he barely knows. Tomo quickly shares his appreciation of her. Although Maria is clearly a lot older and wiser than both of them and well out of their leagues.



Tomo has nowhere to stay and hides out in Marek's bedroom, surviving on scraps from his meals. It is all kept secret from Marek's father, Tomo is even persuaded to do his number two's in a plastic bag so as not to be discovered. That is until the boys get riotously drunk and are found out anyway.



Tomo also has nothing to wear but stealing clothes from the local launderette doesn't help and leaves Tomo dressed as (in his words) a 'female golfer'. Poor old Marek meanwhile is given a knock-off 'Terry Henry' Arsenal shirt by the local wide boy, a chap called Graham, who keeps him money in his thong.

The film meanders to no conclusion in particular and ends with Maria back in Paris and the boys in pursuit, via Eurostar and the film bursts into colour.

As usual with Meadows, a pleasant thought provoking tale. Not one of his best but still very watchable.

The Magic Toyshop (1987)

The story concerns 15-year-old Melanie and starts interestingly with her preening herself naked in front of a mirror. Later though, when the climbing the apple tree naked scene comes in, it's done fully clothed. These people do take liberties with vital plot elements when they convert books to the screen.

After her parents are killed in a plane crash, Melanie, along with her younger brother and sister, are sent to live with their Uncle Philip (Tom Bell) and his family. This family consists of his mute Irish wife and her brothers, Francie and Finn. He rules authoritarian like over all of them, although once his back is turned; they indulge in forbidden pleasures, such as dancing and drinking.

He is also a toymaker and owns a toyshop. He puts on surreal and often violent plays with his life like puppets that his family have to watch. He soon gets Melanie to take part in these productions alongside the puppets. He asserts his dominance over his wife by making her wear a silver collar whilst she watches the shows. L tells me, that in the book, this isn't the only time he gets her to wear it.

Finn develops a 'thing' about Melanie and in particular her long dark hair. Although he doesn't repeat the cool chat up line from the book:- 'You've got lovely hair Melanie, black as a pint of Guinness; black as an Ethiopian's armpit.' That'll work down your local pub.

Finn likes her hair down and doesn't like it in the braids she seems to prefer but she's probably just doing it to be a tease. They go on to develop a relationship of sorts, helped or possibly hindered by her Uncle who gets Finn to rehearse the part of a swan puppet that will molest Melanie in his next play.

Many strange and surreal events go on, things that I often lose track of and which often hint at things that only reading the book can explain. Thankfully, I have L on hand to explain these to me. Through these happenings, Melanie discovers more about her adopted family including their incestuous secrets and that her aunt isn't mute after all.

It all ends happily with the Uncle being depicted as a dummy and being burned on Guy Fawkes Night.

The story is totally bizarre and all terribly immoral, perverse and wonderfully un-politically correct. Which may be why it's been so hard to get hold of. It was made by the Granada TV network and screened on television before having a limited theatrical release. It is also, from what I can gather from my limited exposure to her books, very typical of Angela Carter, who wrote the original book and wrote the screenplay of the film.

All good family fun.

Amityville Horror (2005)

A remake of the 1979 film Amityville Horror.

The story of course relates to the alleged haunting of the house the Lutz family bought at a knockdown price. It was cheap because Ronald DeFeo, Jr. had murdered his entire family there. Scary happenings occur almost as soon as they move in and the film recounts their 28-day stay at the house until they fled. Most things happen at 3.15am, the time of the murders, this also seems to be the time when Mr Lutz gets it on with Mrs Lutz, so no cut-off times in that household. Some things have been changed; their daughter begins seeing one of the dead family, a girl called Jodie, who was actually a pig in the original but hey, small detail. Also, George Lutz is portrayed as more of a maniac in this one and even axed the family dog to death where in fact, I'm pleased to report, the dog escaped intact with the rest of the family. That apart, a decent enough film.

The Edge Of Love

It's a film about Dylan Thomas, which doesn't tell you much about him at all.

The film opens during the Blitz, where Ikea Knightley, sorry I mean Keira Knightley, has returned to the scene of her death in Atonement and is singing 'down in the tube station at midnight' or something like that. She's Vera Phillips and she's about to make the same mistake again and fall for another solider that goes off to war.

She wanders into a bar where she bumps into her childhood sweetheart and first shag, a Mr Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), who is currently churning out not very poetic government propaganda films. She has high hopes of picking up where they left off until he introduces his wife, the manic Caitlin (Sienna Miller), not that this will make any difference to his interest in our Keira.



From this point on Dylan Thomas becomes pretty much a side issue as the film focuses on the two feisty women but mainly on Vera. Despite their rivalry over Dylan, the women form an uneasy friendship. Caitlin likes her own infidelities, possibly for the money and probably because her husband is supposedly servicing a long line of infatuated women but the film offers no evidence of this. Dylan justifies his actions by saying that a poet cannot remain faithful, as he needs to experience his vices to the full, of which heavy smoking and drinking are clearly two others. There's an awful lot of smoking in the film, probably putting the anti-smoking campaign back years.

Vera meets and marries an annoyingly persistent admirer of hers William Killick (Cillian Murphy), who promptly knocks her up and then buggers off to war, seemingly for at least eighteen months. During which time the others begin living as a threesome in two cottages atop a Welsh cliff top, where they all somehow resist hurling themselves off.



It was absolutely certain that William would return from war assuming Vera and Dylan had been at it like rabbits, I'm sure he decided this before he even left. That is even before you add in the fact that he is now traumatised by war. So are we, after they undercut Vera giving birth with an amputation on the battlefield. Therefore, it's no great surprise when he attacks Dylan with a shotgun. The surprise is that he misses.

It's a pretentious film with little focus, which gives only a slight insight into Dylan Thomas and his poetry. It's impossible to care about any of the characters. The film is supposedly about the friendship of the two women but we never get the impression they actually become friends in the truest sense. L hates Dylan's character; I hate William's character, so we kind of agree.



Acting wise, the men are ok, they even get a native Welsh speaker in to play Dylan, which is unusual casting these days. Keira Knightly is not that bad, she tries hard, bless her and she is easily out-planked by Miller, who is more Wurzles than Welsh, and makes Keira's lapses in and out of her accent look positively impressive.

No 'edge', no 'love' and if it was meant as a tribute to a supposedly 'great' poet, then it was totally uninspiring in that as well but then I always detested 'Under Milk Wood' after studying it at school. As for my class, if you'd handed us a shotgun, we wouldn't have missed.

Penelope

'Penelope', which has proved very popular with the women of our household. Although this may be more because of the men in it rather than the story itself. Anyhow, I'm about to find out. I will review this in trepidation of upsetting them.

Apparently, a member of the 'well to do' Wilhern family once knocked up his maid but then dumped her causing the distraught girl to top herself. Her irate mother, who by chance is also a witch (probably why he dumped her daughter), places a curse on the family. Subsequently the next baby girl born to the Wilhern's will be born with the face of a pig until one of them finds true love with 'one of her own kind'.

No legitimate girl is born to the Wilhern's for generations but then Penelope appears complete with a pig's snout. Although the curse must have weakened over the years because it's hardly the whole 'face of a pig' deal that was promised. Even so, after attempts at plastic surgery fail, her parents (Catherine O'Hara and an underused Richard E Grant) fake her death, I assume to throw the paparazzi off the scent, and Penelope is (kind of) locked away in the tower, in true fairy tale style. That is until she is older, when in an attempt to break the curse; her family lure potential suitors with a large dowry.

Are you with me so far? Well now suspend belief because once faced with Penelope's horrifically disfigured face, all the potential suitors run screaming from the room and even dive through glass windows to escape... Ahmm.

Hello? What's not to like? Penelope has the body of Christina Ricci, the hair of Christina Ricci and with the exception of the nose, the face of Christina Ricci. It's simply Christina Ricci in a Halloween mask.

One of the suitors, Edward, even says he cannot bear to kiss her. Oh come on. Penelope isn't the least bit terrifying. In fact, she's really cute, in a Christina Ricci sort of way and doesn't research show that 95% of people kiss with their eyes closed anyway. Any 'normal' male would shag first, ask questions later... 'great sex Dear... by the way how did you get that awful nose job'

Right, so that's the obvious plot flaw out the way. Perhaps if they'd set the story in ye olden times and not in modern day, then this hypothesis might have worked.

Edward reports his 'horrific' encounter to the police but when he isn't believed, he decides to rebuild his name by teaming up with the tabloid reporter Lemon to expose Penelope. They hire failed pianist and gambler Max, played by a pre-Atonement James McAvoy and looking less of a wimp than usual, to pose as a prospective suitor and get a photograph of her.



Max though cocks it up and falls for her but then decides he cannot pursue her because he is not of her kind and therefore cannot break the curse.



Fed up, Penelope does what teenagers do, throws a strop and runs away from home, wrapping a scarf around her 'hideous' face. Once out in the 'real' world she befriends Reese Witherspoon and her Vespa. Then when she is finally exposed to the world, she becomes a bit of a celebrity and presumably nets a multi million pound contract with 'Hello' magazine. So, she didn't really need to sell her own picture to the tabloids.



The studio had apparently sat on this film for two years, despite it's all-star cast. Among others, Nigel Havers, Lenny Henry and that guy from 'Shaun Of The Dead' all pop up. This makes you feel they thought there was something not quite right about it.

It's a similar cute fairy-tale to the recent 'Enchanted' and 'Stardust', it's very Walt Disney but actually with more in common with Shrek or Edward Scissorhands. Although without the humour of the former or the charm of the latter.

It's all over in around 80 minutes, just as I was getting into it. It would have been nice to have seen more of Penelope discovering the 'real' world. In the end, Penelope cures the curse herself by declaring herself happy as she is. So, Penelope gets her James McAvoy and lives happily ever after but it's difficult to believe the message about being ugly not mattering and it being the person inside that counts when Christina Ricci is gorgeous even with the nose of a pig.

My partner simply loves the romance of it but I though the romance was sadly lacking because the two leads spent so little time together. There are some good side jokes and good performances from Ricci and McAvoy but it could have been a lot better but in the end was just alright.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss

The film opens with tasteful shots of numerous couples romantically entwined while in the background Frank Sinatra is singing 'As Time Goes By'. Then we cut to Wilson (Scoot McNairy) who quickly lowers the tone. Wilson is new to Los Angeles, recently split from a long-term girlfriend, fed up, and lonely. We see him using Photoshop to paste his flat mate's girlfriend's head onto the photo of a naked female body. He is pleased with the erotic nature of the resulting photo, until his flat mate Jacob (Brian McGuire) walks in and catches him with his pants down. Oh dear, it's so embarrassing when that happens.

Unable to believe what he is seeing, Jacob calls his girlfriend over to ask her if that really is her on the computer screen. By now Wilson is hiding in the bathroom.

It's New Year's Eve and Jacob decides it's best if Wilson gets a life. So he persuades him to post a personal ad on Craig's List.

The ad 'Misanthrope seeks misanthrope' gets a response from the strong-willed but neurotic Vivian (Sara Simmonds), who is holding openly cut-throat interviews to try and find the 'right guy' to be with at the stroke of midnight. Despite having reservations about Wilson, he seems the best option and the two of them 'hang out' around Los Angeles. Two lonesome souls who don't wish to spend New Year's Eve without having someone to kiss at midnight.



Vivian admits she had to look up what a misanthrope was. As did I! A misanthrope does not trust other human beings; they possibly do not even like them. Initially Vivian seems to fit this description to a 'T' but as their relationship develops over the evening, our first impressions of the two of them change. Vivian turns out to be more human than she would have us believe. Deep down perhaps she's a philanthropic person. Wilson too grows before our eyes to be more substantial and interesting than we first thought.

In order to get to know each other better they both agree to make a confession to each other. Wilson, for reasons only he can fathom, confesses to the Photoshop incident. This unsurprisingly doesn't go down well and after that revelation, the date takes some rescuing. Things get worse when Vivian discovers condoms in his pocket. She'd already made it crystal clear they'd be none of that sort of entertainment this evening and certainly not something requiring the five, which were forced upon him by Jacob.

Wilson empties his bank account and wins her round with a meal. We find out that Vivian's dumped her long-term boyfriend, although she doesn't really seem to have told him yet, after finding out he was sleeping with someone else. When she finally answers the phone to her ex, she tells him the news and he threatens to torch all her belongings and do worse to Wilson. So Wilson helps her out in a mission to rescue her belongings from their apartment.



They eventually turn up at Jacob's New Years Eve party where he is about to propose to his girlfriend, Min (Kathleen Luong). Min though, rather than be annoyed by the Photoshop incident, seems flattered by it and comes on to Wilson. God, girls are weird. Shocked by this, Wilson immediately leaves and takes Vivian with him. Even after that incident, Min still accepts Jacob's offer of marriage.

Wilson and Vivian end up where they were always destined to, in bed together, where Vivian's confession comes, that she's pregnant by her ex.



In the morning, she waves goodbye to him from a taxi and is seemingly gone for ever and Wilson is back more or less, where he started but with more of a mess as regards his flatmates. The upside is possibly his own ex, who's given him a call, and perhaps could be up for reconciliation.

A good film with definite shades of 'Before Sunset'. I liked it but it's the sort of film L and I go for. A cheap fun film with lots of rough edges. Just like life should be.