Reviews

It is rather... well, dumb, that a video game should feature on a movie database. Particularly because it's fetching quite a high score for what amounts to single player WoW retread for adults. But I guess when you have Oskar Schindler playing the father this sort of thing was inevitable. It's a role playing game with guns instead of force lightning and much contrived swearing and performance-enhancing drugs crowbared in for R rating notoriety. Well thought out, incredibly well scored and (occasionally) well acted. But video games are still a long way off from being genuine art when a child character warns you of "fu*king fire ants" during clunky exposition, and the plot is transparently Mad Max with zombies and mutants. Aforesaid child bothered me so much I later attempted to sell him to the Slavers. Only changing my mind at the last minute as I didn't want to effect my oh so precious Karma and miss out on the 'good' ending...

The ending, after weeks of play mind, was possibly the single most disappointing event this year. A vague Ron Perlman monologue over still shots and the game is over. In fact, once you enter The Brotherhood of Steel the game is on rails, seriously hampering the will to start over. As the Iron Giant was paving the way to the water purifier I began to think "do you even need me any more?" For years it has been common for single player RPGs to encourage exploration outside of the main mission, however I had NO idea which quests would lead me to the end of the game and which would prolong the experience. Exploration is is made easier by the ability to just bring up your Pip-Boy and jump straight to map locations you have already discovered. However to discover locations requires legwork, and unless you have a walkthrough you have no idea what's out there. As going west had me mauled to pieces by Yao Guai and Deathclaws, East was Super Mutant city and North was chocka with vampire weirdos, I played it safe. And by game's end I discovered I had missed out on so much cool stuff like the the Deathclaw 'Sanctuary' and the ghoul mask. When I found the vault with the Matrix-style VR setup I was sill in the process of enjoying the game, leveling up and saving caps to buy the swanky sex fiend interior decoration for my shack (which I still haven't seen D': ). Hell, I never even got to use the mini nukes.

The game adapts to the style of the individual player. My flatmate liked to sheepishly camp out with long range rifles (where's the fun in that?!) and dress his Will Smith lookin' character like a gay fetishist. Whereas I dressed my Hispanic punk lesbian in evening gowns and went to town with mêlée weapons and spiked knuckles. We both ended up at the end of the game at roughly the same time. Didn't matter that he took great pains to avoid radiation and conserve his mines and I charged in fists flailing, it all ends the same way. The ending is the equivalent of spending 7 years in medical school and getting hit by a bus while walking to graduation. You'll be up at the pearly gates complaining to St. Perlman: "C'mon! I was just getting started!" You could, if it have dawned on the programmers during production, send your Super Mutant pal in your stead. Y'know, because he is impervious to radiation. But I guess it was late on a Friday afternoon when that scenario occurred to them... and he followed me into the chamber anyway *facepalm*

Other little things like predicting President Alex DeLarge was a HAL as soon as I first heard Enclave radio, and the game making every effort to dangle forbidden fruit in front of you and punishing you with that music sting when you take a bite, hinder what was otherwise a brilliant game. It just has no replay value. And seeing Moira goulified on a second play through made me so depressed I shot her in the back and stopped playing all together.

The story of The French Resistance is rarely told. When French cinema did tackle their national shame, the results were oblique, bold, and often the most honest films made about the war. Charlotte Gray is the opposite. It is a dime-store romance novella which uses occupied France as a backdrop. A script and basis which are stultifyingly hypocritical; The heroine (Cate Blanchett) establishing early that the occupation of France is nothing to joke about, then proceeding to trivialise it all in a quest to find her boyfriend. Australian director Gillian Armstrong dispenses with authenticity, and other cumbersome aspects that would hinder her making a popcorn time waster. In other words, she didn't even bother to rent Army of Shadows or Le Corbeau the night before principal photography began.

Grey is not a particularly enjoyable chick-flick either. The faults should be bleedin' obvious, but I will outline those of grating annoyance:

The Accent Problem

The story rests on Charlotte being fluent in French. Blanchett was more than willing to learn French for the part, but Armstrong didn't think that a few months of French lessons would be entirely convincing (or had no faith in Blanchett abilities). Her solution? Have Cate speak in a Scotch accent while in England, then affect an English accent while in France. Er... more convincing? Other actors in the French scenes have accents all over the shop, but then why should a film with such a serious subject matter be realistic?

The Romance(s)

A woman who risks her life, and the lives of others for her own half-baked affair, is a complete flake. Shortly after consummating her relationship with a dashing pilot (whom poses as though for a Biggles cover) he is shot down over enemy territory. The woman embarks on a what would seem like a noble quest to aid The French Resistance, but is actually a way for her to track down her square-jawed love interest. Her bumbling during a first mission gets another woman killed, and doesn't make her at all sympathetic (if all her hypocritical sanctimony at the beginning didn't already). She almost immediately starts peppering a romance with a Frenchman, making the "I will follow you to the ends of the Earth" love between her and Biggles a sad joke. Neither romance is realistic or enjoyable, to the point where you want to see Charlotte lose both.

The Ending

She doesn't lose both, in fact despite all her offensive nonsense throughout the film, she finds and rejects Biggles in peace time, in favour of melodramatic Frenchie! A departure from the book, apparently, and every chick-flick ever made. A slap in the face and a waste of time.

Neo-Realism, as it was in the Italian first wave, and as it is today in the form of Gus Van Sant films, always leaves cinema audiences fidgety and illuminating their watches. It is the cinema of anti-cinema. Filming the mundane aspects of life which movie goers are in the theater to escape. Certainly the few long-winded negative reviews were penned with contemporary concerns over pacing and plot confusion. Looking for that which is not there, whilst missing that which is. The experience is best enjoyed on DVD, where one can pause and ponder the images while leafing through a pulp novella before the second and third acts.

Umberto D. portrays an intelligent man slowly forfeiting his dignity to cold post-war indifference. As his pension is too merge to sustain his retirement, he gradually parts with possessions of symbolic importance of his working life. Trying to sell his watch to other pensioners, selling books of strong sentimental value to a callous street merchant at a loss, the nameless others he encounters seem to survive by adapting to modern change, while Umberto struggles fighting against it. In a conventional film Umberto's plight would have large dollops of pathos spread thick, and many sympathetic ears from supporting characters. However, in Neo-Realism it is as absurd as it would be in life. When he relays his story of a bitter feud with his landlady to a former colleague, it just seems somewhat pathetic. Regardless of his problems, he will never go hungry or homeless. A private war being waged only by himself.

A friendship with the apartment maid, Maria, also departs strongly from cinematic values and is true to life. Pregnant to an unknown father (a moral crime of the time tantamount to witchcraft) and with no other place to go, her situation is far dire than Umberto's. But in her ignorance she is content with her lot. And Umberto's old world shock at her shameless honesty, and the class conscious nature of their friendship (she is still the maid after all) mean that the film skews sentimentality. When they part, it is with much awkwardness. And as in life, there is a gaping emptiness after Umberto has said his last goodbyes, boarded a bus and watched her wave farewell in the window of his old apartment. He continues to look up at the windows of buildings after she has faded from view, as you do when you know you are never going to see a long term friend ever again.

As audacious as this film is in severing cinematic ties, there is an odd conceit in a manipulative score, which one would assume prompted Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Bresson and others inspired by The Bicycle Thief, to drop music completely from their films. Another sentimental aspect at odds with this very unsentimental film is Umberto's dog with the aurally hideous name, Flike. Flike's loyalty and companionship ultimately becoming the one aspect in Umberto's life which he simply can not part with. Choosing acceptance after a failed suicide attempt, it is the purity of the dog's actions which bring Umberto around.

The cinematography of Umberto D. is beautiful, and the acting of a largely untrained cast is superb. Despite the fact that it was later bettered by those inspired by it, the film remains the best of the Italian first wave.

The serious actor loves to play the racist skinhead. It is the male equivalent of a lesbian role, as it shows their diversity. See Tim Roth stride down the corridor with a swastika tattooed on his forehead in Made in Brittan. See Russell Crowe bulk up to play a similar goon in Romper Stomper. And (to a lesser extent) see Edward Norton try and add some pathos to a fellow with ugly tattoos in American History X. This Is England is unique, in that it offers a factual origin of skinhead culture, and distinguishes between the good (nonracist, offshoot of punks and Rastas in the early '80s) and the bad (racist, National Socialist) skinheads.

Shaun is a 12-year-old whom life continually shits upon. Recently having lost his father in the Falklands War, he and his mother have slipped below the poverty line. He receives grief at school for wearing flares, and is shown little sympathy from a Pakistani corner shop owner. After a particularly rough day at school, he bumps in to a group of quite affable 'good' skinheads, who take pity and include him in their activities. Once Shaun is fully inaugurated into their clique, a 'bad' skinhead enters the fray. Combo (someone who seems far too old to be hanging out with teenagers) has just been released from prison, and is seething with bitterness and hatred. He convinces Shaun and half of his 'good' skinhead pals to join the dark side. Shaun, bitter himself at what little life has left him with, takes the National Front role with great gusto. Exacting revenge on the Pakistani clerk whom gave him an earful in act one, and generally enjoying the power trip of pushing around minorities. He also finds a kind of father figure in Combo. And when Combo's bitterness gets the better of him, he loses faith, and as the back of the DVD case attests, learns that "hate will get you nowhere". Collective sigh, now on with the faults...

From the opening montage of all that is '80s (Atari, Margaret Thatcher) there are far too many gauche attempts to make this a period piece, instead of crafting an unspoken zeitgeist. They might as well have called it "This is The '80s", as all the anti-Thatcher graffiti doesn't give the viewer the benefit of the doubt. Made in Brittan had the good fortune to be timely, This is England is all hazy memories.

Then there are the mixed messages. Woody, the 'good' skinhead whom first includes Shaun, is genuinely likable, and has an amazing screen presence. He endears himself to Shaun, and to the audience, when he defuses Shaun's mother while she's on an angry tirade. However, when the baton is passed from Woody to Combo, the film shifts from working class empowerment, to bitter and depressing. Woody drops out of the frame completely. And when he is making excuses to leave a party once Combo arrives, I too was with the antagonists in pleading for him to stay. "No don't leave! This movie will be depressing without you!". It makes it difficult to fathom that Shaun would prefer the company of Combo to that of Woody, once Woody has been established as such a nice guy. It adds an ugly "but" to the text. "Be proud of who you are, but not too proud", "go with the flow, but not if it goes in this direction". It's too muddled and not concise enough.

Shaun also romances a dimwitted girl, nicknamed Smells, who is 4 years older than him, but looks like she's a good 10 years his senior. I know this film is autobiographical, but the coupling of a little boy and a "well versed" teenage girl just doesn't look right. There are a few other nameless characters whom seem either far too old, or too young for the context. You would believe it in real life, but strangely, not in a movie.

The ending is a spectacular misfire. A film which has traded on gritty realism throughout, suddenly tries its hand at art house symbolism in the final ten minutes. It's attempt to choke you up fails miserably through bad choice of song, and TV movie closeup. From the second act on, it is far too depressing, not warm melancholic, cold depressing. Yes, it portrays the resentment of those who had the misfortune to come of age under Thatcher, but its purpose it far from clear. It captures many moments of the lower middle, to working class lifestyle perfectly. Particularly the shoe shopping scene, which everyone who grew up without family money can relate to. And how a child can gravitate to odd social groups though simple lack of opportunity. It is the lack of concise point which hinders this film from becoming a classic. Maybe we should all stop looking for some moral high ground in skinhead films. Unfortunately for This is England, they went for atonement. A conceit to post-American sensibilities, tacked on to very British experience. Which still leaves the ambiguous Made in Brittan the best of the genre.