Reviewlet #1

"Sex, Drugs and Suits &Ties". That's what Leo and Marty's The Wolf of Wallstreet screamed to me. A true Scorcese film in all its glory Wolf was fast paced, exciting and above all really funny! In the same way that Anchorman gets a lot of its humor from grown men acting completely stupid, insane or outright random Wolf was just as stupid, just as insane and just as random, except when these Wallstreet guys did it you knew why... They where snorting mountains of coke every minute of every day just to get them to the next board meeting.

This is my first of what I hope to be a series of mini-reviews which give you an idea of the best reasons to see a film, or not see a film, and there is none better to start with than The Wolf of Wallstreet. Far from being a stuffy film about finance and politics it is a crude, rude and very real account of a near psychopathic man who for a while was the epitome of the American Dream.

But if all that doesn't sway you then know this; if you don't see this film you'll be missing out on a chance to see Matthew Mcconaughey in one of the best parts he has ever played (possibly save for his upcoming film Dallas Buyers Club). Mcconaughey, whose lost an amazing amount of weight for Dallas Buyers Club in which he plays a man suffering with AIDs, was the biggest surprise to me. It wasn't a huge part for him but it had character and made me believe that Dallas Buyers Club will be a film to be reckoned with.

So if you get a chance watch The Wolf of Wallstreet, but I suggest you don't watch it with your mum because it will get weird!

(Dallas Buyer's Club comes out on the 7th of Febuary)

No Wolfman is an Island

Do you hear that howling? That, my friends, is the sound of a Werewolf in London. That’s right, tonight is a full moon and through happy coincidence, or ill-fated happenstance, today’s review is on that howler of a monster movie, The Wolfman (2010). I say coincidence since originally I chose this film because another monster movie is due to be released on the 29^th, I, Frankenstein. With Aaron Eckhart portraying the Frankenstein Monster some 200 years after its creation I do not know whether to class this as an adaptation, a sequel or a reimagining of Mary Shelley’s classic horror novel. Perhaps on the 29^th we’ll find out but for now we have The Wolfman (2010) a remake of the original Universal Pictures monster movie, The Wolf Man (1941), to focus on.

The Wolfman (2010), much like the original, is about dealing with parents, resisting new urges and, of course, growing hair in strange new places... in a lot of ways it’s a lot like puberty. Unlike the typical teenager, however, the main problem that Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), aka The Wolfman, has to deal with is that of his own sanity. After all, becoming a Man-Wolf hybrid can put something of a toll on one’s personal image. On the one hand having someone you trust can really improve your day when you learn that you’ve contracted an ancient curse/disease but on the other hand the whole “I turn into a slobbering dog-man” has never been a great pick up line. So love can be a little tricky for a Wolfman.

In An American Werewolf in London David Kessler (David Naughton) had his Nurse, in Wolf Will Randall (Jack Nicholson) had his bosses daughter and in The Wolfman (2010) Talbot has his brothers grieving widow; it seems fair to say that Wolfmen have a habit of getting involved with women who they have no right to get involved with.

But how do you know the one you love will be safe? Just because you love her doesn’t mean the beast inside you feels the same way. So what do you do? Do you lock yourself up; send her away or... if all else fails... put a silver bullet in your brain. Talbot quickly decides to send the woman he loves away, back to London, but, as you might expect, good love is hard to be rid of.

The love that Talbot and his brother’s widow, Gwen (Emily Blunt), share is founded on the isolation they feel in his father’s home on the moors and grows through Talbot’s attempts to discover the secret behind his brother’s death. Through a shared feeling of not belonging and a little bit of the “woman tending to a wounded hero” scenario they grow close, without actually becoming intimate until Talbot escapes from Bedlam Mental Asylum. I imagine that “psychotherapy” like electro-treatment and being tied to a chair and plunged into an icy pool probably gave him that handy push he needed to make that relationship a little more physical.

So, let’s talk about insanity. As we all know the first sign of madness is hair on the back of the palms. The second sign is checking for hair on the back of your palms.

That’s a joke I heard in the playground when I was about 9. It was a long time ago but it stuck with me. Werewolf films are all about that “first sign of madness”. Whether it’s a werewolf trope or just sensible thinking the hairy hands are often the first thing the main character sees change in his transformation. Who wouldn’t think they’ve gone loopy when their hands are growing more hair than on a bearded woman’s face? In The Wolfman (2010) this madness is a huge problem for Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) and has been ever since his dad sent him to a mental asylum.

But the hairy hands are not the first sign of potential madness for Talbot. Far from it, Talbot has spent a lot of his childhood in Bedlam Mental Asylum because of that whole “mother’s suicide” issue. It’s his time in Bedlam Mental Asylum which makes Inspector Aberline (Hugo Weaving) begin a line of inquiry which ends with Talbot being sent back to Bedlam for some extreme “treatments”. This section of the film is where The Wolfman (2010) could have been really original.

If only the psychological trauma had been pushed as a theme this film might have been a pioneering film for Werewolf Cinema. A scene in which the main character is electrocuted, tortured and plunged into an icy pool all for his sanity's sake might have become the focal point for a whole new journey for the character. Had his reconditioning worked and the doctors removed his “delusions” of lycanthropy Talbot might have been forced to look at himself in a new way which would make this film as much about madness as about the Wolfman. But there is no deep thought past this scene. No questions of sanity. No werewolf delusions or moments of mental clarity. Instead what we are given is a werewolf wrestling match.

It’s like the writer stopped after writing the Asylum scene and said to himself, “Ooh, careful, you’re dangerously close to making this clever... let’s put some werewolf fighting in. That ought to fix it.”

In truth, whilst The Wolfman (2010) isn’t an awful film, it does seem to put more effort into creating an exciting gothic style rather than improving upon the substance that could have put it up there with An American Werewolf in London. 

That hairy man-wolf look wasn’t great either... a little too “Teen Wolf” for my taste.

How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love Walter Mitty

If the sitcom M*A*S*H has taught me anything about life it’s that comedy is often just a way of blocking out the tragic reality of life. For those of you who don’t know M*A*S*H this amazing sitcom is about an American medical outfit during the Korean War and is comedy through and through. That being said this doesn’t mean that the main character, Benjamin “Hawkeye” Peirce, and his colleagues aren’t affected horribly by the blood, the death and the sheer horrors of war. For Hawkeye his ceaseless “goofing off” and his terrible puns are just covers for how inside the war has broken his spirit and changed him forever.

But how does this relate to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? Well I admit I got a bit side tracked talking about one of my favourite sitcoms but there is a point. Ben Stiller is a comedy actor. He was in Meet the Parents, Dodgeball and Zoolander, all popular comedies, but now the comedy has been put on hold and Stiller has undertaken a new project; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. This new film is certainly no comedy; it’s a drama about a real person living a sub-par life who needs a push to start living. Stiller’s not the first to make that leap from comedy to drama of course there are quite a few films which are actually about people saying “yes” to life rather than wallowing in their incredible ordinariness. We had Jim Carey trading in his mask for the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2004, Will Ferrell shaving his ‘tash and staring in Stranger than Fiction in 2006 and before Steve Carell even picked up his Freeze Ray he was in the wonderful drama Dan in Real Life in 2007.

We have all that comedy genius going into serious dramas and for what reason? Me, I would say because of the contrast. Contrast is one of the most important things in this world, without it we have nothing to compare the good and the bad to. There are only so many times a comedian can make a person laugh before he gets serious. It’s like the contrast of being drunk and being sober;  when you’re at a party and you’ve waited just a little too long between drinks and suddenly everything feels very real, very melancholy and you know that if you don’t have another drink soon you’ll be stuck in that sobering down limbo for the whole night. That’s what happens to comedians... except they like the reality. It’s refreshing.

 Ben Stiller has gone from comedy to comedy, save for the independent film Greenberg, and frankly it must be a relief to make a film like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty; a smart “real world drama” directed, produced and starring Stiller himself. It’s intelligent in its creation, carefully put together and helped along by a soundtrack which seamlessly melds into the story. The plot is simple and has been done numerous times; it’s about a man living a boring life with daydreams as his only escape. And yet it is done in a way which feels new, his daydreams push him to live life and start exploring a new kind of Walter Mitty. It’s a story which we all can relate to, about seizing life and discovering that you are so much more than you gave yourself credit for.

Walter has a life which is best described as drab, or maybe grey, he lives in a drab apartment, in a drab building, on a drab street and everyday goes into his drab job where the only person who appreciates him is the wild man photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn) who has never even met Walter face to face. All this changes though when Walter has to trade in his daydreams of heroism and adventure for the real thing and go on a globetrotting journey to find Sean O’Connell and a missing photo negative.

What makes this film great, other than the fantastic scenery (seriously it’s like if National Geographic had a good story line), is the contrasting differences within the film. Without the drab life at the beginning of the film then Walter’s vibrant transformation would mean little, and without the icy seas of Greenland and Iceland then the trek through the Himalaya’s would just be quite amazing. Daydreams mean nothing without a seriously dull life to put them into context. The drab Walter Mitty means nothing without him becoming, as Tom (Patton Oswalt) from eHarmony puts it, a man who looks like “Indiana Jones decided to become the lead singer of the Strokes”.

After I saw this film I asked my friend what I thought was the most important question one can ask after seeing a film like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty; did that film make you want to change your life?  We both decided that if you can sit down and watch the whole of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and not feel that pang of adventure then you’re either a little bit broken or, maybe if you’re lucky, you’re already living life to its fullest. If it’s the former, seek professional help... the story of Walter Mitty is incredible and inspiring and I cannot imagine not wanting to skateboard down a volcano or have a shark fight or climb the Himalaya’s after seeing it... and if it’s the latter I should imagine you’re probably pretty pissed that you just sat down to watch a film that’s telling you what you already know.

I couldn't recommend this film highly enough; it is funny, clever and moving. Ben Stiller has proven himself as a high class film maker, someone who knows exactly what he has to do to create a deep and entertaining motion picture. And for those of you who think, “Maybe I’ll just wait for it to come out on DVD” I feel obliged to tell you what the film told me...

“Stop dreaming. Start living.”

Not perfect advice for the Cinema/DVD dilemma but that’s life.

A Hobbit Hole of One's Own

“Heeere’s Hollywood!” Peter Jackson yells as he knocks down the door to that secret little room so many of us used as kids to hide from the reality of life. That little fantasy-world cubbie-hole which, much like a Hobbit hole, provided a comfortable and relaxing escape from the horrors of the outside world.

With The Desolation of Smaug now out in cinemas there is only one more nail to go before the classic children’s adventure story is sent down into its little Halfling sized grave. Oh woe is me, the drama has overcome me and I have been reduced to a series of metaphors. Let me pull myself together a little so I can talk for a moment about the first film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey or as I like to call it Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring without that snotty little shite Frodo to ruin everything.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is based on the first six chapters of “The Hobbit”, a book made up of a series of sort of misadventures had by a party of dwarves and a reluctant Hobbit. Their main goal: to get back the lost treasure that was once theirs. This treasure is what’s known as a MacGuffin, an object of desire that sets the characters on their way, allowing the plot to move on. The main focus of the book is the small issues the diminutive party are met with and how, quite unexpectedly, Bilbo finds himself gradually becoming more valuable.

I feel like we should all take a moment and think about what Tolkien was trying to say here...

...Have we all got the idea?

...So we’re on the same page?

...Good then I shall continue.

I’m being a little childish really... which is just perfect because what I’m trying to demonstrate was that Tolkien was writing this for kids, it is enjoyed by adults of course but the intent was that it is for kids. It being for kids it has a sort of message to it, one which kids might subtly pick up on and go, “hmm” to...

The message is this- Hobbits are small. Really small. Like, they make dwarves feel tall... small. So Bilbo... small... making his way up the ranks of these dwarves (many of whom are battle hardened and all that jazz) is proving to these kids that even a small voice can have a big impact. A lesson, by the way, that can also be learnt by the way from watching Disney’s Lilo and Stitch Television Series... but I digress. Bilbo is an example for kids to follow.

When you bear this in mind the fact that he has a substance dependency problem, which is canonical to the way the One Ring works in The Lord of the Rings films, he is a bit of a mixed up person in Jackson’s interpretation. The Hobbit teaches us that no matter how small you are you can always do great things, but The Lord of the Rings was a story of treachery, betrayal and great evil. One does not exactly compliment the other, not without being vastly altered.

Do you want the point? Okay, well here it is...

The point is that whilst Peter Jackson was the right man for the job when it came to creating the epic battles of The Lord of the Rings his take on The Hobbit does not keep in mind that the two adventures are very different. One is for adults the other for kids, one is about finding Mordor the other is about finding yourself and finally one is about a heap of battles and the other has Bilbo get knocked out at the beginning of the only battle so we cannot see any of the bloodshed at all... it's just not Hobbit-y to see all that blood.