July: Fantastic Four | War Of The Worlds | Festival | Overnight | Batman Begins

Fantastic Four

Cast
Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic: Ioan Gruffudd
Ben Grimm/Thing: Michael Chiklis
Sue Storm/Invisible Woman:Jessica Alba
Johnny Storm/Human Torch:Chris Evans
Victor Von Doom/Dr. Doom:Julian McMahon
Alicia Masters: Kerry Washington

Directed by Tim Story
Written by Michael France, Mark Frost and Simon Kimberg
Based on the comic book and characters by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Running time: 105 minutes

Reading Fantastic Four comics as a youngster, there were a lot of areas that never occurred to me - such as - The Thing is supposed to be made of rocks but he looks all rubbery! This did occur to me while watching Tim Story's effort to create a film out of this venerable Marvel Comics institution. Fantastic Four was always great fun as a superhero comic, but you can see the strain it took to bring this to the big screen - it comes off as ridiculous, and worst of all, totally dull.

Directory Story and his screenwriters Mark Frost and Michael France do their best to expedite all the predictable introductory business about cosmic rays and the feud between Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and Victor Von (check those painted eyebrows!) Doom (Julian McMahon), but then it all gets bogged down in the lab at the Baxter Building "What happened to us?" and "How can we reverse these superpowers?". Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would have had them fighting off a ginormous atomic mole creature by this point. What we get instead is an effort to build some relationships and motivations into a comic franchise that has never really held much interest for adults.

Michael Chiklis is convincing enough as tough guy Bruce Willis-wannabe Ben Grimm, who gets transformed into the less-than-convincing rock creature ("The Thing"); He suffers poignantly and puts in some good clobbering time; but it's still one of those visuals that doesn't quite translate on to the big screen. Oddly enough, it's Johnny Storm (Chris Evans - no not that one) as the Human Torch, who provides the high points of the action (there's a decent enough flying scene through Times Square as a heat-seeking missile chases him down). Reed Richards is suitably humourless and obsessive, and the Invisible Girl (Jessica Alba) has all the expected attributes: plucky, wilful, and constantly camera-aware throughout.

I think the key question in adapting any comic book to the screen is, 'do the filmmakers get it?' Tim Story and the writers have completely missed the bonkers, absurd charm of the comic and what they've come up with is a fairly generic superhero story with a bargain basement look to it. As a director, Story has no idea how to charge an image, and the production designers were all on autopilot. Gone are the dimension-hopping, time-travelling sci-fi head games of the comic. It's only in the last ten minutes, with a well choreographed battle on the streets of Manhattan, that this movie finally unleashes some decent visual super-team entertainment.

War Of The Worlds

Cast: Tom Cruise, Miranda Otto, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins, Justin Chatwin, Rick Gonzalez, Daniel Franzese

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

In the beginning there was H.G. Wells' 1898 book entertaining the prospect of alien invasion as a symbol of an approaching world war. Then Orson Welles brought Martians to our doorsteps with his almost-too-realistic, 1939 radio broadcast. Now, Steven Spielberg may have to change his name as he joins this elite group of contributors to the War of the Worlds legacy.

Just as he did with E.T., Close Encounters, Jaws and Jurassic Park, Spielberg has made the right movie at the right time. In War of the Worlds he takes our fears, our strengths, our compassion, and especially our resiliency, and brilliantly feeds it back to us in an electrifying, anxiety-laden tale complete with a heavy dose of digital dynamite.

When his ex-wife (Miranda Otto) drops their two children off for a rare weekend visit, it's fairly clear that ex-husband Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) will not be winning the father-of-the-year award. His fridge is almost empty, his teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) calls him Ray, and he eventually learns that his daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning) has been allergic to peanut butter her entire life. But their already fragile relationship is severely tested when a brief but strange, and terrifying, lightning storm hits the area and sucks the electricity and power from everything - even cars. While the children wait at home, Ray walks to the site of the lightning strikes and witnesses the beginning of an E.T. close encounter of the worst kind when a metallic, alien robot-thing emerges from underground and uses its death rays to vapourise everyone in sight.

While in the past Ray may have been a miserable father, he quickly takes the job seriously as he and the kids stay one step ahead of the aliens while trying to leave the city - along with millions of their fellow citizens. But the danger comes from all directions, and not just from the aliens. Cruise's portrayal of Ray is convincing, but the inherent personality of the character doesn't lend itself to an actor's studio kind of performance. Ray is like the guy who saves a hundred soldiers in battle but we wouldn't think twice about as we pass him on the street. He's full of bad decisions and selfish intentions. But when life is in the balance, he makes the life-saving choices.

Fanning is wonderful as Ray's young, terrified daughter, screaming her way through scene after scene as only an eleven year old can do. And Tim Robbins' brief performance as a gun-toting nutter is creatively used as the shakey voice of both doubt and reason.

Spielberg has begrudgingly been brought into the world of digital filming, preferring the smell and feel of real film. But his friend George Lucas helped him see the light, and like a fish to water, Spielberg has embraced the technology by using it to its fullest advantage. Some of the images are masterful. Real disasters both natural and man-made are incorporated into the film as aliens blow apart the upper section of a motorway, tossing 18-wheelers like matchbox cars. Also the memories of 9/11 and London this July are stirred in many of the film's dramatic moments. The obvious references aren't so much exploitive as they are just sincere responses to the immense grief people have shared since these atrocities. Spielberg not only reminds us of how vulnerable we are, but also how people can evince courage and tenacious optimism even in the darkest of times.

Just like Wells' original novel, the symbolism of Spielberg's War of the Worlds is there for contemplation. But in the end all we really want is a good story to entertain us and in that Spielberg succeeds magnificently.

Festival

Director: Annie Griffin
Cast: Amelie Bullmore, Billy Carter, Raquel Cassidy, Megan Dodds, Duncan Duff, Jonah Lotan, Lucy Punch, Mereditch MacNeill, Stephen Mangan, Lyndsey Marshall

It's August in Edinburgh and the historic Scottish capital finds itself filling up through the main streets, roads and venues with actors, directors, street performers, comedians, media high flyers and audiences.

Annie Griffin (writer-director of TV's 'The Book Group') makes her big-screen debut with this darkish feature. It's crammed with busy eccentric characters fluttering through the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which would seem to be a natural setting for an ensemble comedy. "Festival", sad to say though is overly ambitious with its cast size of 18 characters. Central to several of the overlapping tales is Sean Sullivan (Mangan), an apparently famous comedian (off the telly) on a non-peforming stint in the capital as a judge on the Comedy Awards. Clashing with fellow panellist and BBC radio hack Joan Gerard (the excellent Daniela Nardini), he exposes his vanity whilst Joan's own story includes an unlikely flirtation with drunken flabby hirsute Irish comedian Tommy O'Dwyer (O'Dowd) - which isn't sufficiently developed to achieve credibility.

Connected characters include Sullivan's exasperated recovering alcoholic p,a, Petra (Cassidy) and his new flame Nicky (a sparky performance from Punch) as a novice comedienne.

A series of 'fringe' characters include a one-woman-show actress attracted to a bearded thespian portraying a paedophile priest (who moves dangerously close to method-acting realism) and a group of surreal Canadians all of whom are too lightly sketched. The British stand-up stereotypes are all here, multiple effs, cees and shits splatter the booze fuelled dialogue, but ultimately Griffin's attempts to cram too much into her debut ruin the effect, albeit resolutely reflecting the tiresome drivel that pervades 99% of Festival Fringe performances.

Overnight

Featuring: Troy Duffy, Willem Dafoe, Billy Connolly, Jeff Skunk Baxter
A documentary Directed by: Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith

A savage documentary gleefully charting the rise and fall of obnoxious Troy Duffy, the writer-director of The Boondock Saints. Never heard of The Boondock Saints or Troy Duffy? It's hardly surprising, considering that the film had the smallest of theatrical releases in America before heading to a marginally less low-profile afterlife on video/DVD (although Duffy actually managed to put a cast together that included high-wattage talent like Willem Dafoe and Billy Connolly). Duffy himself made more of a splash back in 1997 when Miramax's Harvey Weinstein offered him a million-dollar deal to make the movie. In addition, Weinstein offered to buy Boston native Duffy the Los Angeles pub J Sloan's where he was then working as a barman.

It all seemed far too good to be true - and of course it was. The story of how Duffy's deal fell apart is chronicled by his former pals Smith and Montana, members of his close inner-circle until everything started to go pear-shaped. Eventually Duffy and Overnight's directing duo parted company after a messy argument over money. By this stage, however, Smith and Montana had more than enough footage to perform a real stitch-up on their one-time friend. Duffy is so unsympathetic, however, that many viewers will reckon he fully deserves to be done up "like a kipper". Also, for this to be done in a film which apparently gained more acclaim than his little-seen film is a pleasing combination of poetic justice and cold-served revenge.

Utterly convinced of his own genius in the fields of writing, directing and filmmaking, Duffy takes the Weinstein deal as an utter vindication of his sledgehammer arrogance. Revelling in his status as "Hollywood's new hard-on" he proceeds to humiliate almost everyone he has any dealings with - including his long-suffering brother Taylor. Even those he doesn't have any dealings with receive the full-on Duffy treatment - "Ethan Hawke is a talentless fool," he blusters at one point, careering into Spinal Tap territory as he brags about his "logpile of creativity... a deep cesspool of creativity."

Duffy's egocentric rantings are undeniably amusing up to a point - Smith and Montana basically allow this loudmouth more than enough celluloid to hang himself. After the on-screen 'sacking' of Smith and Montana by Duffy - one of his innumerable unwise moves - Overnight effectively becomes a tool for the settling of personal scores. We never actually find out what went wrong with the Miramax deal, and Duffy himself is made to look so terrible so often you may find yourself, against all better judgement, feeling a little sorry for the smug arrogant git.

Although his energy was misguided, it was his supreme self-confidence that led to Smith and Montana getting their big Hollywood break. They've clearly ended up in a much better position than their subject/victim, who's briefly glimpsed in longshot at the end standing outside a Sloan's-type Hollywood bar - though we aren't told whether he's there as a customer, barman or bouncer, one of the film's numerous frustrating information gaps.

Duffy doesn't deserve our sympathy by any means - but Overnight, for all its entertaining moments, is essentially just the so-what-ish downfall of a creep: the kicking of a man when he's down followed by the gratuitous twisting of the knife. It leaves a slightly nasty taste in the mouth - the end-credit sequence is accompanied by footage showing the ultimate fate of Sloan's (which looked a decent enough little boozer), rounding things off on a thoroughly downbeat and depressing note.

Batman Begins

Since his first appearance in 1939, 'The Bat-Man', masked vigilante over the streets of Gotham City, has proved to be an enduring favourite of the comic book superheroes, due to his darkness, his mortality and, most importantly of all, the adaptability of his myth to changing times.

On the big screen he has fared less well - 'Batman 1966', the feature-length outing for Adam West and Burt Ward's corny television series, is actually one of the funniest films ever made, but its high camp high-jinks hardly do justice to DC Comics' brooding original. Tim Burton's Batman (1989) certainly nailed the legend's noirish, gothic look, but was less assured in its handling of tone - and a rash of sequels brought the predictable diminishing returns. Now, however, Christopher ('Memento') Nolan's 'Batman Begins' wipes the slate clean, taking viewers right back (again) to the caped crusader's origins - and in this far more earnest adventure, the bat has well and truly abandoned camp and headed into more epic territories.

Haunted by anger and guilt after witnessing his parents gunned down in cold blood, and frustrated in his desire to kill the man who did it, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has turned his back on Gotham City and his father's legacy. Travelling incognito amidst the world's thieves and murderers in an attempt to understand the criminal mind, Wayne ends up in Bhutan, where he is recruited and trained in fighting and stealth techniques by Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) on behalf of Ra's al Ghul, leader of the secretive 'League of Shadows'. Rejecting the group's merciless brand of vigilantism, Wayne returns to Gotham, where the judiciary and constabulary are corrupt, and crime boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) now operates with impunity. Determined to put his new skills to good use, Wayne becomes the masked crimefighter Batman. Aided directly by his trusted family butler Alfred (Michael Caine), and less directly by the head of Wayne Enterprises' Applied Sciences division, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), by old childhood friend turned Assistant DA Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), and by honest cop Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), Wayne soon uncovers a far more catastrophic threat to the city than Falcone and his thugs. In a plot involving Arkham Asylum's chief psychiatrist Dr Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), his mysterious backers and a panic-inducing hallucinogenic drug, Gotham is about to be visited by some very rough justice.

Fans of the Dark Knight's on-screen iconography will not be disappointed by this new film, which traces Batman's customised suit, car, utility belt, weapons and secret cave right back to their very beginnings, while giving them a more functional and rationalised feel. While still at heart a dark fantasy, this adventure is more grittily realistic than Batman's previous outings, with stunts and effects that are mostly physical rather than computer generated. The fights are close and hard, although in perhaps the most visually striking sequence Batman is reduced to a black blur in the midst of a crowd of toppling criminals.

The ever excellent Christian Bale manages to make Wayne seem a real, complex individual, while giving Batman a formidable physical presence - the very opposite of Bale's previous, skeletal performance in The Machinist. He is well supported by an excellent (and stellar) cast - most notably Michael Caine seemingly born to be Alfred, Gary Oldman for once getting to play the nice guy, Cillian Murphy creepily nerdy, and Liam Neeson bringing a clever twist to his previous 'guru knight' roles in The Phantom Menace and Kingdom of Heaven.

'Batman Begins' is emphatically concerned with retributive justice and the politics of fear - themes which have an inescapable geopolitical resonance in a post-9/11 context. It is gratifying to see that Nolan's film depicts the morality of justice in a manner that is anything but cartoonish. As Wayne struggles to do what is right, he is informed as much by the values of the judicial system, of law enforcement and of patriarchal philanthropy (values embodied respectively by Rachel, Gordon and, through Alfred, Wayne's own father) as he is by anger, fear and a desire for vengeance (an ideology represented by the fascistic 'League') - and so the film's dialogue, scripted by David S. Goyer, weaves an ongoing, highly nuanced argument about crime, punishment, and the uses and and abuses of terror. It is inevitable that Wayne becomes an extra-judicial vigilante - for that is the very core of his legend - but the film ends not on a celebratory note, but rather with dark mutterings about 'escalation', and a suggestion (fulfilled by the films to which this stands as a chronological precursor, if not quite a prequel) that the beginnings of Batman also mark the beginnings of a new, more dangerous sort of criminal, modelled on Batman's own underground methods.

From this it is not difficult to unmask a multi-faceted commentary on America's current flouting of international law in its War on Terror, and a subtle warning about what the consequences may be. Such serious and intelligent engagement with the issues that darken our own times make 'Batman Begins' more than merely an entertaining blockbuster about a man in a cape.

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