One Day

I love a good romance film, not necessarily a romantic-comedy (I'm not a great fan of most of what passes for comedy at the moment). One of my favourite films is Big Fish which is, amongst other things, a great romance. The trailers for One Day looked promising and although I've not read the book that it is based on, I am reliably informed that it is one worth reading. I loved Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada although not so much in Bride Wars and I thought that Jim Sturgess was great in The Way Back.

The story takes place over 20 years from when Emma (Hathaway) gets together with Dexter (Sturgess) on their university graduation night in Edinburgh. The date they met is 15th of July (St Swithin's Day) and the film focuses on each 15th of July for the next 20 years.

The film charts the various ups and downs of Emma and Dexter's lives and how their relationship changes as they do. Emma starts the film being a waitress in a Tex-Mex restaurant, whereas Dexter becomes a successful TV presenter. As the film progress, Emma becomes a teacher and then fulfils her dream of becoming a writer, while Dexter's career falls apart as he becomes addicted to alcohol, drugs and women.

They both have relationships throughout the film, Emma with comedian Ian and Dexter with Sylvie, but there is something that keeps bringing them back to each other (at least as friends) until they finally decide that they should be together.

There are problems with this film; the first being the character of Emma. Who is she? Where does she come from? What does she want? Why on earth does she like Dexter? We are told that she is intelligent and attractive in a 'normal' kind of way, but if she was so intelligent, then she would know that someone like Dexter is no good for her. I appreciate that love is blind, but this is ridiculous.

I'm not going to harp on about Hathaway's accent as some reviewers have, being a profoundly deaf person, it's not such a big deal for me, but I think consistency seems to be the issue.

Then we move on to Dexter; such an unlikeable character in the beginning, and barely redeems himself towards the end of the film, but it was incredibly difficult to see why he was so attractive to Emma and others. 

The film has no real passion or intensity, there were only two episodes in the film where I saw something vaguely bordering on emotion, both involving Dexter and his parents and both were played very well by Sturgess. However the film was devoid of any depth or connection. I had no empathy or engagement with the characters and if you've read the book, you know that it isn't a fairytale and even at that 'moment', I simply didn't care.

I also found myself cringing each time Emma's boyfriend Ian was on screen, because he kept reminding me of Lou, a character from Little Britain played by David Walliams and I just couldn't let that go.

Verdict: You can see that this really had the potential to be a great romantic film, and I'm not sure where the fault lies. Sturgess was good as Dexter, but Hathaway is wildly mis-cast as Emma. The production was good and there were no lulls in the film, but I found it a bit irritating and I simply didn't care about any of the characters.

Super 8

As a person who started watching films in the 80's, I have a real soft spot for Steven Spielberg; films such as The Goonies and the Indiana Jones films (ignoring the last truly dreadful film released in 2007) were a backdrop to my childhood. In my teens, films such as Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan gave me an insight into something that I'd only read about in school text books. In short, he has given us some fantastic films. So I was quite excited when I heard that Super 8 was a venture back to those Spielberg classics. Although, it has been written and produced by J.J Abrams, the Spielberg influence was evident even in the trailer, and my appetite was whetted even further. . .

The film is centres around Joe (Joel Courtney) and starts with the wake for his mother who died in a factory accident. The film moves on to his group of friends who are trying to make a zombie film to win a competition lead by Charles (Riley Griffiths). As is with these things, the parents disapprove and the friends have to be very secretive about where and how they they make the film. They ask Alice (Elle Fanning), to play a part in their film and to film her scenes, they need to be at a railway station (as they want a train to be part of the scene), very late at night.

The shoot goes ahead and suddenly the train derails (in truly spectacular fashion) and things start getting a little mysterious. . .

First of all, the U.S Air Force come in to control the crash scene; cats and dogs run away to other parts of the county, electrical equipment vanishes and finally people start disappearing. Joe's father who is a Deputy in the town, tries to find out more from the Air Force, but is turned away by the authorities.

I don't want to tell you too much, needless to say that there is a monster involved (although, you don't really see it until the very end) and as is typical with Spielberg films, its not a 'bad' monster as such, just very misunderstood and one that wants to go home. Again, as is a Spielberg trademark, there is an audacious rescue using nothing more than fire crackers and a heart-felt conversation.

Although, this is a predominantly a science fiction film, there are the standard relationship issues that early Spielberg films had. First there is the grieving father and son who can't communicate; the teen squabbles between younger brother and older sister and finally the innocent and very sweet, blossoming romance between Alice and Joe. The film deals with this particular issue in an incredibly sensitive way, looking not only at the joy of finding someone who 'likes' you, but also the pain of having someone who you like, not 'like' you.

The film is a massive homage to Spielberg and does indeed hark back to those glory days where kids and only kids could solve the problems facing entire towns. And that's the issue I have with this film, there's nothing new or exciting about it, it really has all been done before. The film that I felt it most resembled was The Goonies, right down to having a 'fat, shouty' kid and the main character Joe is almost identical (at least personality wise) to the lead character Mikey from The Goonies.

The child actors are great, the script is fairly sharp and tight, the special effects are reasonable, but if you are my age (almost mid-30's), then you will know what is going to happen at every stage as it is a mixture of all those Spielberg films you've seen before.

Verdict: Excellent if you've never seen any early Spielberg films, predictable if you have happened to have seen E.T, The Goonies or Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The Devil's Double

I will be honest, when I heard that Dominic Cooper was playing both Uday Hussein and Latif Yahia in The Devil's Double, I wasn't sure what to think. Could somebody who had been in Mama Mia! really play such different characters? The surprising answer is yes.

The film is about Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday who enlists (or rather coerces) former classmate Yahia to be his body-double. Uday is a particularly unpleasant individual who regularly partakes in the raping of women and murder of anyone who crosses him. Yahia is portrayed as someone who stands up to Uday and refuses to carry out some of his orders particularly on the occasions that Uday asked him to commit murder. The love interest is shoe-horned in by Sarrub (Ludivine Sagnier) who is a favourite of Uday's, but is more interested in Yahia.

Cooper is excellent in this film and he has shown that he is capable of taking on roles which are diverse and not within his normal range and fully deserves the credit and hopefully potential award nominations that should go his way. My problems with the film firstly start with that there is no real attempt to explain why Uday is the psychopath that he is and because of this there is a real lack of depth in the film. There is an insinuation that his relationship with his mother could be a reason for his madness, but this is barely touched upon and could have been explored. There were several scenes in the film where Uday is played to comedic effect, then goes on to commit appalling crimes; this disrupted the flow of the film somewhat and I'm sure the director wouldn't have wanted to hear the ripples of laughter that were in the screening I attended.

Another issue is that the film is based on Yahia's book and not historical fact, nor has it been verified by other sources. The writers have acknowledged that they embellished elements of the story to make the film. I would be interested to know more about whether the relationship between Yahia and Sarrub actually existed as it seems implausible that Sarrub would risk her life for Yahia. I also don't believe that Yahia was involved in the assassination attempt on Uday, simply because it doesn't make sense. Essentially I couldn't buy that Yahia was the hero that he's made out in this film.

Verdict - An entertaining and interesting film which gives a fascinating insight into the life of someone who was quite mad on power, at a time when very little was known about the regime. Cooper is a revelation and I sincerely hope that he reaps the rewards that he thoroughly deserves.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I should point out that I've never seen any of the Planet of the Apes films, either the original series from the 60's or the more recent Tim Burton effort in 2001 (it's one of the very few Tim Burton films I haven't seen). Not really sure why I haven't seen those films, I will be honest, I wasn't that interested until I saw the trailer for the Rise of the Planet of the Apes and it looked as though it could be a film worth seeing. And it is.

The story is interesting and well-executed without resorting to the easy cliches that a lesser film could have used, the CGI is seamless and probably the most realistic I've seen in a while.

Unusually the story is viewed through the eyes of the apes, namely Caesar (Andy Serkis) who was taken from the laboratory as a baby chimp and raised by scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) and his father Charles (John Lithgow).

Will is working on a cure for Alzheimer’s (which his father is suffering from) and Caesar's mother (Bright Eyes) initially reacted positively to the drug that Will created called ALZ-112, unfortunately an episode of aggressive behaviour meant that all the chimps have to be destroyed, but Will was able to save Caesar.

Caesar inherited some of the ALZ-112 through his mother and grows to be a super-intelligent chimp who displays human emotions, but also retains an aggressive streak. After an incident where Caesar tries to protect Charles from a particularly unpleasant neighbour, Will is forced to send Caesar to a local Primate Sanctuary run by John Landon (Brian Cox) and his son Dodge (Tom Felton) where Caesar is exposed to other apes for the first time.  This is the point when Caesar realises how intelligent he is and starts to work out how he and the other apes can escape.

The humans in the film are weak if truth be told, but not through the lack of good performances, the quality of the script clearly wasn't a priority. Franco did the best he could with Will, but there really wasn't much for him to do, however the warm relationship between him and Caesar was very tangible and convincing. Again Lithgow and Cox didn't have much to do, but did it well and Felton just played another version of Harry Potter's Malfroy, albeit with a tan and slight American accent. I didn't think much of Freida Pinto's character Caroline Aranha who plays Franco's love interest, again she had nothing more to do than look pretty.

The real star of the film is Caesar played brilliantly through the art of performance capture by Andy Serkis. Although the dimensions of the ape in comparison to humans doesn't always work (I can be very picky about things like that), it is Caesar that holds the film together and keeps it interesting. Caesar is a very believable, noble, flawed character and I suspect that a number of the audience will identify with him, as I did.

As I mentioned, the CGI is stunning and the scenes on the Golden Gate Bridge where thousands of apes go into battle with humans deserves a special mention, although one small scene was not really necessary, I can see why it was included.

Although the director (Rupert Wyatt) hasn't confirmed whether a sequel is happening, the ending of the film leads me to think that there will be and I sincerely hope that this stylish director and the fantastic Serkis are part of that.

Verdict - With a stand-out performance by Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a very watchable blockbuster, lets hope that any future sequels are of the same standard.