Review: John Carter

Directed by: Andrew Stanton
Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Dominic West

Written by: Andrew Stanton, Mark Andrews, Michael Chabon, Edgar Rice Burroughs (story)

John Carter is really rather good at jumping. He enjoys it too. So much so, a huge proportion of this 132-minute action spectacular is devoted to John Carter jumping.

John Carter, you see, is an American civil war veteran miraculously transported to Mars which, for the purposes of this film, is inhabited by warring humanoid tribes and 12-foot tall aliens. Carter (Taylor Kitsch), thanks to the shift in gravity, is blessed with a powerful punch and a bounding leap which could be the key to ending war on the dying planet and restoring it to its once lush glory.

Mar is at threat from the maniacal Sab Than (West) who is bestowed with a powerful weapon by the mysterious Matai Shang (Mark Strong). He can destroy battleships in a single movement but is willing to spare the kingdom of Helium in exchange for princess Dejah Thoris' (Collins) hand in marriage. Thoris, naturally enough, isn't best pleased with this deal and turns to Carter for salvation.

On paper, this adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series has potential. Fans have been waiting for many years to see the series adapted to the big screen, and with good reason. Carter made his first appearance 100 years ago and has appeared in novels and comics ever since. Technology has taken some time to catch up, but finally Burroughs' rich world can be recreated.

Disney put its considerable financial might behind establishing a new franchise based on some much-loved sci-fi material. It even recruited the technical wizardry of Pixar and Finding Nemo director Stanton to provide an incredible visual sheen.

John Carter is a gorgeous film, there's no denying it. The neutral thark aliens, who Carter first encounters, are impressively rendered using cutting-edge 3D effects and there are plenty of scenes which took great skill to produce.

For all their technical might however, very few set-pieces will leave you particularly thrilled. Many are overblown, confusing and repetitive while some are far too brief. Carter's new-found jumping ability makes for some amusing slapstick at first, but soon becomes a source of irritation.

As with so many other tentpole films, the plot, despite its wealth of source material, is an afterthought. Stilted dialogue and an unbelievable romantic motive ensures progress from action sequence to action sequence, but does little else. Things are not helped by some uncharismatic performances from lead Kitsch and love interest Lynn Collins.

It seems a shame for the dialogue in this film to be so poor, but it may have been inevitable considering the amount of time the film has to devote to establishing Burroughs' Mars and introducing a wealth of eclectic characters. Still, with Stanton's talent for empathy and a writing credit for critically acclaimed author Michael Chabon, much more could have been done.

Paradoxically, the tharks are the most human of the characters in this film. Voiced by talented individuals including Willem Dafoe, Thomas Haden Church and Samantha Morton, their society is troubled by leadership issues, family conflicts and matters of honour. In fact, the thark community seems much more interesting than the war going on around them.

The story is probably the least of Disney's concerns, however. John Carter will make its money on the quality of the effects and the world it creates. There is certainly some silly fun to be had - the creatures are weird and wonderful and Dominic West's dastardly villain give this a pulpy Flash Gordon-esque feel.

It is possible to enjoy John Carter, even if you're not much of a fan of jumping. Just try not to think too hard about what is going on.

★ ★

Review: Project X

Directed by: Nima Nourizadeh
Written by: Matt Drake and Michael Bacall
Starring: Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper, Jonathan Daniel Brown

Every cliché in the book is thrown at the screen in this wholly unnecessary marriage of the found footage and teen sex comedy genres. Project X has plenty of booze, drugs, gross-out scenes and exposed flesh to satisfy its target audience, but neglects to include much semblance of a plot.

The story, for what it’s worth, revolves around Thomas (Thomas Mann) and Costa (Oliver Cooper) and their attempts to throw a huge birthday party for Thomas at his parent's home while they are away for the weekend.

Costa enlists a cameraman to document the event, which swiftly gets out of hand. Thomas' house is huge, with a swimming pool round the back (which costa insists only naked girls are allowed in). It is the Hollywood ideal for a party and Costa helpfully broadcasts the event by text, internet, word-of-mouth and even radio to the point everyone in the area knows about it.

What follows will be familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the teen genre. The hottest girl at school has an inexplicable attraction to Thomas, all the cool kids show up and show a blatant disregard for other people's property, bodily functions are performed and awkward flirtation occurs. There's even an animal on hand to endure borderline abuse, but it's up to you to decide the comic value of a dog on drugs.

About half of the film’s mercifully short running time is taken up by shots of attractive people drinking, copulating and dancing - it would make a great hip-hop video but as a film it just makes you feel like you live a rather boring life.

Everything is far too splendiferous for us mere mortals to comprehend. Professional DJs are rolled out with an endless supply of alcoholic beverages and a bouncy castle to boot. With the exception of one crusading neighbour, everyone in the area is initially rather understanding of such a massive event. Even the police seem fairly lacklustre in their investigations.

The problem with Project X is a complete lack of merit outside its target demographic. Older viewers will be more concerned with the condition of the house and cost of insurance than the level of debauchery taking place before them. None of the characters seem particularly deserving of a good time and come across as a bunch of spoilt brats with no respect.

Costa, despite providing some of the film’s few good laughs, is loud and obnoxious and bears more than a passing resemblance to Jonah Hill’s Seth in Superbad. He is not the only overly familiar part of the film - despite Nourizadeh’s attempts to bring a fresh twist to this genre with the increasingly tired found footage format, this film riffs on everything from American Pie to Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Any attempt to make us empathise with the characters or give an emotional impact are clearly an afterthought, with the romantic sub-plot given about as much screen time as the generic shots of naked flesh and drinking. All the female characters in this film are completely undeveloped and merely act as plot devices to drive Thomas' development forward. This is the second decade of the 21st century and this kind of misogyny should really be phased out of the teen movie genre.

Despite having little-to-no artistic merit, Project X still has its fair share of awkward laughs, with one scene in particular making you feel particularly guilty for chuckling. The problem is, with the exception of a certain type of young male, Project X will most likely make you feel angry and disgruntled.


★

Review: Martha Marcy May Marlene

Directed by: Sean Durkin
Written by: Sean Durkin
Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson


Look past the frankly awful title of this low-budget psychological drama and you’ll be rewarded with a deeply unsettling yet riveting study of vulnerability and emotional damage.

Elizabeth Olsen stars as Martha, a young woman with a difficult upbringing who becomes part of a mysterious and intimidating cult. After two years she flees and the film is told in flashbacks as she struggles to return to reality at the luxury home of her well-meaning but dismissive sister (Paulson) and polite, yet frustrated brother-in-law (Hugh Dancy).

The film’s strengths lie in its ambiguity. The details of the cult are deliberately left vague and we are left guessing how Martha becomes involved with it. It is led by Patrick (Hawkes in a creepy, unhinged performance), a man adored and revered by his followers. They live under one roof, attempt to be self-sufficient, and share jobs, clothes and beds. They are, in the most twisted sense of the word, a family.
There is no need to know the intricacies of Patrick’s cult - the film is a study of the emotional impact it has on Martha.

If there is any justice, this should be a star-making turn for Olsen (younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley), who fascinates in a distant and paranoid performance. Martha’s erratic behaviour and her struggle to reconcile with her sister often makes for uncomfortable viewing, but the convincing relationship between Olsen and Poulson will leave you captivated.

The film is not for the faint of heart, particularly as Martha’s flashbacks become increasingly sinister. It is rarely explicit, but the sparse but intelligent use of sound and imagery gives a sense of impending fear and danger.

Martha’s bleak situation makes it hard to call this enjoyable film, but this impressive psychological drama will leave you more unsettled than most horror films ever could.

The Artist: Review

Director: Michel Hazanavicius

Starring: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman


This French/Belgian production has swiftly gone from a hyped indie darling to Oscar front-runner for good reason. The Weinstein Company took a gamble by giving their backing to a black-and-white, silent movie but the visual flair of Hazanavicius and the extraordinary chemistry of stars Bejo and Dujardin make this easily one of the most entertaining and charming films of recent years.

The Artist tells the tale of George Valentin (Dujardin), a much-loved 1920s silent movie star who is faced with becoming obsolete as Hollywood begins to embrace “talkie” films. He befriends a young starlet called Peppy Miller (Bejo) whose career begins its meteoric rise just as George’s begins to fade.

On the surface, a contemporary silent movie about a silent movie star could easily be accused of being gimmicky and pretentious but this is never the case. The viewer may need a few moments to adjust to a film devoid of dialogue and sound effects but the expressive, physical perfomances of the leads and the cute narrative will soon leave you utterly enthralled.

The romantic backbone to the story is classic and understated, taking inspiration from Hollywood’s golden age while feeling fresh and easily relatable for modern audience. Without dialogue, Dujardian and Bejo rely on stolen glances and brief moments of contact to convey their feelings. A scene involving multiple takes of a dance for one of Valentin’s silent films will leave you beaming.

The film works equally well as a comedy, taking a leaf out of the physical, gurning performances of the silent movie era. Most of the comedy comes from the undoubted star of the show: Valentin’s ever-faithful canine sidekick. Played by Uggie the dog, it is surely the best film performance by an animal in recent memory.

The Artist is a film of very few weaknesses. Boasting a superb score, star-making performances and accomplished and unique production, it is more than deserving of the attention it has received.


★★★★★

Underrated: Kontroll

FilmFour often surprises me. Just when you think it has become an endless cycle of Mission: Impossible III and second rate Michael Douglas thrillers, it suddenly manages to recapture your attention and fly in the face of a ratings-driven industry. The recent Ingmar Bergman season was a particular example of this; Swedish meditations on death and morality will not exactly pull in audiences, but it was a complete treat for cinema fans. For those of us not blessed with satellite television or bottomless pockets, it was our reward for toiling through the meagre cinematic offerings of ITV2, BBC3 and FiveUSA.


Not long after the Bergman season ended, FilmFour proudly announced a M. Night Shyamalan double bill. I sighed in despair. However, in amongst its once again predictable listings stood Kontroll, a film that has intrigued me for a while now.


Though I was vaguely aware of the film and its setting and plot, I was far more familiar with its director, namely Nimród Antal. Antal strikes me as a man who has become a victim of the Hollywood machine; a talented and creative foreign director who becomes just another helmer-for-hire when they cross the Atlantic.


Kontroll was Antal's first feature film. It was well received and was in competition at Cannes 2003, the first Hungarian film to do so for twenty years. Much like Timur Bekmambetov and Oliver Hirschbiegel, he was identified as a cheap and crowd-pleasing option for helming mid-budget American productions. The three films he has directed since crossing the pond have ranged from the just-about watch-able (Vacancy) to the just-plain awful (Predators).


Most reviewers have expressed their disappointment with Antal's efforts, having seen undoubted talent and flair in his work on Kontroll. The questions that were being asked of Antal are ones that have always bugged me; how are talented international directors so easily sucked into Hollywood's talent vaccuum of mediocrity? Why do so many of them fail?


In Antal's case, you need only go back to his breakthrough film to get your answer.


Kontroll really is an excellent, unique film. Considering I went into it with high expectations, I was surprised not to suffer from any feelings of disappointment. It has so many features that would make an American producer sit up and take notice: a stylised look and feel, the dreaded 'quirky' cast of characters, a wicked sense of humour. However, it simply would not work as an American film; the tone is too cynical and the setting too drab (the film takes place entirely in a filthy underground rail network). The great strength of Kontroll is that, stylistically, the influence of American films is very evident, but the film is very much from a Hungarian, not American, perspective.


Kontroll centres on a team of ticket inspectors in a Hungarian metro station. We follow them, led by central character Bulcsú, on their daily duties and activities as they encounter a strange cast of characters, including threatening (and ticketless) passengers, a mischievous youth named Bootsie, and an eccentric woman dressed as a bear (Bulcsú's love interest). Meanwhile, a mystery figure is pushing passengers in front of trains and characters are engaging in a dangerous sport known as "rail running."


Like Bulcsú, we never see sunshine, but we become part of an underground world that does not seem entirely human. An unnatural, greenish glow lights filthy, graffiti-ridden seats and inspectors struggle with their sanity as they gain no respect or dignity from the vagrants and oddballs they meet. At the beginning off the film, the director of the Budapest Metro appears to assure us that the film is in no way representative of its workers or service, but any subway veteran will be able to recognise that the film is not entirely a work of fiction. There are certain people who you will only ever meet at night in a Tube train carriage.


Antal offsets the dreary setting with a cast of entirely likeable characters; ranging from a fatherly train driver with a drink problem, to an excitable, yet narcoleptic, member of Bulcsú's crew. Whilst we are presented with familiar movie personas such as the rookie, the wise, old head and snarky member of a rival crew, they never once feel like stereotypes. Each character has a freshness about them that belies the staleness of their surroundings.


So, what does all this mean for Antal in Hollywood? Simply put, to make a film like this on a decent budget would be impossible in America. Many of the themes are too dark and the characters too morally ambiguous to risk a considerable amount of money on and Antal is yet to prove himself worth the risk. Predators clearly demonstrated this. What should have been a hot European director breathing new life into a tired franchise became a series of clichés and predictable characters. Antal must take some of the blame for this, but it is clear, like many international directors, that he has had to curb the eccentricities and quirks that originally made Hollywood sit up and take notice, in order to make it in an already crowded scene.


At the moment, Antal is at a crossroads in his career. Predators was not the successful reboot that was expected and there are doubts whether he will be handed a budget like that again. This, in my mind, is a good thing. Antal needs to return to the talents that originally made him stand out; favouring strong characters and setting over driving the plot forward through exposition and set-pieces. Perhaps, even, a return to Hungary may be worth considering. For now, I urge you to hunt down Kontroll and give it a chance; the film that made (and possibly broke) Nimród Antal.


In the meantime, I would urge the powers-that-be to look again at Kontroll. This great film demonstrates strengths that, given the right amount of creative control and a producer willing to take a risk, could yet make Antal a star. After all, Kontroll will always be the film that made (and possibly broke) Nimród Antal.

On Any Other Year: Gregory Peck vs. Peter O'Toole

Ah, Atticus Finch; devoted parent, defender of the oppressed and the American Film Institute's greatest hero in movie history. To Kill a Mockingbird was a peerless adaptation of one of the most ground-breaking books of the 20th century, and at the centre of it all was Gregory Peck as the saintly and crusading Finch. In an era when heroes were heroes, Atticus Finch was arguably the greatest of them all, and Peck had the role of a lifetime. He would never forget how lucky he was to be given the part.

At around about the same time of Mockingbird's release, a very different type of hero rode his camel into the limelight and attempted to steal Finch's thunder. That man was T.E. Lawrence or, rather, Peter O'Toole, a complete unknown who had just starred in the epic to end all epics - Lawrence of Arabia. 

O'Toole's performance is also on the American Film Institutes's list of heroes (number 10) but his actions are far more ambiguous in their virtue. Lawrence is portrayed as an egotist who, by the end of the film, actively engages in a massacre and is on the brink of losing all sense of perspective. However, O'Toole's endless charisma and gravitas leave the viewer remembering Lawrence for his bravery and bravado; the man who turned back to rescue Gasim in the desert, rather than the bloodthirsty avenger he becomes.

Charisma and gravitas are two great strengths that were also possessed by Gregory Peck, and he showed it in spades in his portrayal of Finch. Mockingbird's author, Harper Lee, once said of Peck that "Atticus Finch gave him an opportunity to play himself." Peck often compared his own childhood to that of Scout and Jem in the book and his love for the character and understanding of the film's themes and messages shine through in his performance. Firm and disciplined, yet tender and reassuring, Peck not only convinces as a caring father, but as a lawyer who does his utmost to defend an innocent black man from prejudice and injustice.

For Peck not to win the 1963 Oscar for Best Actor would have been a crime. In my view it is one of cinema's greatest ever performances and perhaps the most perfect piece of casting in a book-to-film adaptation. It is such a shame, then, that Peter O'Toole role as T.E. Lawrence happened to be in the same year.

Poor Peter O'Toole, a man with 8 Best Actor nominations to his name, but not a single win (honorary awards do not count). Lawrence of Arabia remains his best performance and the most deserving of those nominations. For an unknown actor to burst onto the scene in such an epic way is remarkable. The sheer amount of effort required for the role would make other actors balk at the task. The fatigue was genuine, the shoot was notoriously arduous and O'Toole was nearly killed when he fell of his camel. But what we got at the end of it was a film that will never be forgotten, despite its flaws, and a central performance that stands out among the miles of desert and thousands of extras on display. On any other year, O'Toole would have Oscar glory. Forty-Eight years later, he is still waiting.

On Any Other Year takes on the Best Actress category once more next time. Anne Bancroft, Katharine Hepburn (again!), and Faye Dunaway make a hell of a line-up, but how exactly did the Academy choose between them?

On Any Other Year: Marlon Brando vs. Humphrey Bogart

Two very different actors. Two very different shows of masculinity.

As I have written about before, the 1952 Academy Awards saw The African Queen and A Streetcar Named Desire facing off against each other - great films with very different content and a great deal of parallels to be drawn, not least in the performances of the films' stars.

The Best Actress category had seen Vivien Leigh and Katharine Hepburn facing off for the top prize, but the remarkable thing about Streetcar and The African Queen is that their greatest strengths come from the interplay between leading lady and leading man. As strong as Leigh and Hepburn were in these films, their performances would have been diminished without a strong, male sparring partner to face off against, and vice versa. For both films to work, a very special chemistry was required between their stars. That is exactly what we got.

Just as Leigh had put in a landmark performance in Streetcar, Marlon Brando matched her as the repugnant yet compelling Stanley Kowalski. It is surprisingly rare to see a star born over the course of a single film, but for Brando, an unknown in one of his very first films, it was a performance that set him on the road to becoming one of the greatest actors ever to live. Brutal, manipulative and charismatic, Brando perfectly captured a deceptively complex character - a man that has an almost hypnotic hold over his mistreated wife Stella. His routine life is turned on its head by the arrival of the disapproving Blanche DuBois.

It is the chemistry between Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando that makes this film such a brilliant adaptation. The sexual charge behind their exchanges bubbles under the surface as they display their contempt towards each other - elegant femininity contrasted with raw animalism. In all their scenes, a sense of impending dread that something is going to go horribly wrong between the two of them builds. Those who know the play will, of course, know something will go wrong, but the tension developed by Brando and Leigh is a remarkable display of acting talent.

For Leigh, this meant Oscar glory, but Brando was to (unfairly, in my view) miss out. Standing in his way was the legendary Humphrey Bogart.

Bogart was a man in transition. He was, perhaps, two old to hold the role of traditional, dashing leading man. He always had a world weary air about him but, now in his 50's, Bogart was crying out for a role that took the idea of a mature, grizzled man who was been there and done that, and just roll with it. The African Queen  was just such a roll.

It is impossible for Bogart not to be charming, but the character of Charlie Allnut was a world away from Phillip Marlowe or Rick Blaine. The gin swilling and the cynicism are familiar character traits, but Allnut is Blaine without the hope or kindness; a slob who has all but given up on himself. Grumpy to the point of being cruel, Bogart pushes his traditional image to its limits in his early exchanges with Hepburn in the film. But, as with so many films from this era, it takes the love of a good woman to turn him around.

The chemistry between Hepburn and Bogart is perfect. Nowhere near as intense and combustible as Leigh and Brando, Charlie and Rose's chemistry is reluctant, moving slowly from intense dislike to mutual respect and, finally, to pure attraction. It could more or less write the rulebook for the love-hate relationship - something that Hepburn and Bogart were used to, but perfected alongside each other.

Brando should have won this particular showdown, but on any other year, Bogart would have walked this award without a problem.

On Any Other Year will return to examine the Best Actor category once again, and the 1963 competition between Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird and Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia.

On Any Other Year: Vivien Leigh vs. Katharine Hepburn

The 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire would live and die on the actors chosen to portray Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. Plenty of stage adaptations have faltered by casting a Stanley who wasn't raw and animalistic enough. Many more have suffered with a Blanche who lacked a unique enigmatic and alluring quality. The film adaptation nailed its casting.

On Any Other Year will focus on Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski in the next post, but today Filmstubs is looking at the 1952 Best Actress category. Just a year after the award was presented with an extraordinary array of competition, two of the era's greatest actresses went into direct competition in the category. Vivien Leigh had perfected Blanche DuBois in Streetcar. In a film filled with career defining performances, hers was the most extraordinary. Blanche is incredibly difficult to get right, but Leigh's charm and fragility, along with her portrayal of a woman beginning to lose her sanity, was utterly convincing.

As remarkable as the performance was, Leigh's Oscar was no foregone conclusion. She was up against an acting titan who the Academy loved like no other; Katharine Hepburn had just put in one of her most memorable performances in The African Queen. Like Leigh, Hepburn was playing a woman who finds herself placed in a situation with a man she believed was beneath her; a classy lady stuck with a slovenly and unkempt alcoholic. Whilst the chemistry between Leigh and Brando is raw and destructive, the equally engaging combination of Hepburn's Rose and Humphrey Bogart's Charlie is reluctant and classically love-hate.

Charlie is not the brute that Stanley Kowalski is, nor is the initially frigid Rose a Blanche DuBois, so their relationship in far more restrained and slow-burning. The chemistry is there for all to see, however. The African Queen is made great by the interplay between Hepburn and Bogart, who spend long stretches of the film alone together on the boat. Only great actors can carry a film in such a way, and Hepburn and Bogart's charisma shines through.

Ultimately, we were left with two greats of the golden age, both Oscar winners already, competing for the ultimate prize again in 1952. Vivien Leigh won, I would say deservedly so, but 1952 was a ceremony that pitted two extraordinary women at the peak of their powers against each other. It was a rare and great moment for the acting community.

Tomorrow, I will look at the same ceremony, this time focussing on the Best Actor category and the two men who played opposite Leigh and Hepburn that year - Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart.

On Any Other Year: The 1951 Battle for Best Actress

The performances of Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. have been drawing comparisons for all of the 60 years since the films were released. Two classic films, each focussing on ageing actresses desperately trying to cling to former glories, make the parallels impossible to avoid. In reality, however, the performances were very different. The jealous outbursts of Margo in All About Eve have little in common, character-wise, with the dangerously deluded Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd. Their eventual fate demonstrates this; Margo eventually reclaims her dignity, Norma Desmond only reclaims the illusion of dignity.

Where the two performances should draw parallels is in their brilliance. Some found Swanson's performance to be over-the-top but in the case of Sunset Blvd. it was perfectly fitting. A once-glorious and adored silent movie actress, used to over-annunciated and exaggerated gestures, Swanson's portrayal of Norma Desmond is exactly how I'd expect such an actress to behave. The same goes for Bette Davis in All About Eve; witty and talented, she is used to being adored. The transformation of Margo as Anne Baxter's Eve has an ever-increasing influence on her life is remarkable. Davis is brilliant early on as the effortlessly cool diva, but her increasingly confrontational style as her jealousy towards Eve grows is even better.

But enough about these two performances. They didn't win the Oscar after all. Anna Baxter also lost out for the titular role in All About Eve. She had proved more than a match for Bette Davis in the film, evolving from the picture of sweetness and innocence to a conniving and ruthless manipulator with remarkable and wholly believable skill. In fact, one could argue, if they had not effectively split each other's votes by appearing in the same film, either one of them would have deservedly walked away with the top prize.

They didn't, however. The honour went to Judy Holliday for her performance in Born Yesterday. It is a fine performance, with Holliday playing a former showgirl being educated to fit in with high society. At most Academy Awards in the era she would have won the Oscar easily but, of the four actresses, her role is perhaps the least well remembered. That is not because there was anything wrong with it, on the contrary, but because this was a particularly fine year for female actresses and time would look more favourably on All About Eve and Sunset Blvd. (though Born Yesterday is still a very good film).

If I were to choose a winner now I would probably go for Bette Davis, though her cause wasn't helped by the fact she had already won two Oscars at this point and been nominated many times. Baxter also had an Oscar to her name, though Swanson would never win, with this being her final nomination. All the roles have gone down in history, however, and this remains one of the strongest years for the Best Actress category in history.

On Any Other Year will return next time to examine the Best Actress category once more. This time, the focus will be on 1952, and Vivien Leigh's performance in A Streetcar Named Desire going up against Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen.

On Any Other Year: The 1941 Best Picture Battle

On Any Other Year is a new series of short articles for Filmstubs covering the Academy Award moments when voters were faced with a dilemma worthy of Sophie's Choice. 

Often, from the moment the Oscar nominees are announced, we know the clear frontrunners. This is particularly true of the acting categories. This year, for instance, not many people were under the illusion that anyone other that Colin Firth or Natalie Portman would walk away with the top prizes. Very occasionally however, the Academy will be presented with two or more nominees so deserving of winning a certain category that it seems a sin to see one lose out.

Most (though by no means all) Oscar-nominees are good, but sometimes a year will throw together several works of greatness, be it in film-making or acting and force them to fight it out for top spot. Hence "On Any Other Year:" the nominees that would have cantered to the Oscar in a lesser year but lost out to greatness.

We start with 1941, and one of the strongest Best Picture fields the Academy has even witnessed. Then, like now, the Best Picture award was made up of ten nominees. In this particular year, the nominees were a mixed bag of neglected greats (Foreign Correspondent, The Letter) and so-so films that had gained popularity at the time (Kitty Foyle, Our Town). There were, however, four stand-out nominees: Rebecca, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Dictator, and The Philadelphia Story. All of these films occupy places in the IMDb top 250, 70 years after their release.

Rebecca would go on to claim the Academy Award. Few would argue that it didn't deserve it. This was a film that showed a different side of Alfred Hitchcock and the extent of his talent. It was a masterful film, superbly shot and acted. It remains, to this day, one of the greatest literary adaptations made on film.

However, pretty high on the list of great literary adaptations would the The Grapes of Wrath. John Ford brilliantly captured John Steinbeck's classic Great Depression tale and was graced with great performances from his cast. The themes of the film are the sort of thing the Academy loves, and it did, giving the film seven nominations. It says a lot about the quality on display that year that The Grapes of Wrath only gained two awards.

The Great Dictator was altogether something different. An incredibly enduring comedy and biting piece of satire, its timing, as America debated whether to enter the Second World War, was impeccable. As a satire of Nazi Germany it was more effective than any propaganda film the industry could produce. That is not to say it has not remained relevant; anyone with a passing knowledge of history can easily pick up on the themes. If not Charlie Chaplin's greatest work, it is certainly his most accessible.

Finally, we have The Philadelphia Story, probably my least favourite of the four, but perhaps the film that best captures Hollywood's Golden Age. The unbeatable combination of Cary Grant, James Stewart, and Katharine Hepburn give this the class and wit that so many romantic comedies of the era seem to ooze. It remains much loved, and is the only film that James Stewart would ever win an acting Oscar for.


So there you have it: four films, all of which would have richly deserved a Best Picture Oscar. They've all aged incredibly well, but it is only Rebecca that is a Best Picture winner. In my view, of the four, Rebecca was the film that deserved the prize, but I would certainly not begrudge any of the others winning.


On Any Other Year will return to examine the 1951 battle for Best Actress. 

I'm still fairly sure this is an elaborate April Fool's joke

Credit: Karon Liu

I never trust a trending topic on Twitter, particularly when the first day of April is just a few days away. Indeed, on this very occasion when I was browsing the micro-blogging site, a topic was trending that claimed Jackie Chan was dead. He wasn't.

Just underneath this falsification rested Jennifer Garner's name. Apparently she had been cast as Agatha Christie's pensionable sleuth Miss Marple in a Disney reboot of the series. Pull the other one, I thought.

But here I am, two days later, blogging about this very topic because the story seems to have been picked up by every news agency going and we are facing the very real possibility of a 38-year old American playing Miss Marple. If this is actually an April Fool's joke, it's right up there with the BBC's spaghetti crops.

As someone who has never claimed to be a fan of Miss Marple or even Agatha Christie, I am not one of those people who is at the point of rioting over this news. Any Hollywood re-imagining of something so quintessentially quaint and British was never going to be a good idea. Even a sensible casting decision, Judi Dench for instance, would not convince me that this was going to be a great film. I'm more concerned with what this says about the way Hollywood is interpreting its audience.

The simple truth is that a film centred on an elderly spinster will not shift tickets, no matter how good it is. There have been plenty of successful films featuring older characters, yes, but they have relied on word of mouth and attracting a certain type of cinema goer to be successful. But the industry only really wants the attention of one demographic: the 18-30 year old.

When it comes to mining the classics for their rich reserves of characters and plot, we've seen producers stray from the original many times before. More often than not, this is to bring them "up to date" and make them palatable for a modern audience. Hence, Sherlock Holmes becomes a younger, all-action hero and Othello takes place at an American high school.

Some of these re-imaginings work better than others, but when they do work it is because they have stayed true to the heart and soul of the original piece of literature and framed it in a way that the 18-30 audience can relate to. Think 10 Things I Hate About You putting a modern twist on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. When it doesn't work, the point of the story is missed completely and a character is simply mined to make the film more marketable. I know a lot of people enjoyed Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes but the BBC's Sherlock proved you can bring the character up to date without completely changing him.


Sadly, Miss Marple is in the latter category. A completely original detective story starring Jennifer Garner just wouldn't sell, but by attaching the name of a famous literary character, regardless of how unrecognisable they are from the original, you might make some money.

Perhaps we could remake the Famous Five as a group of sexy college students who solve mysteries with their sassy talking dog, Timmy (not to be confused with Scooby Doo). Justin Bieber could star as Oliver Twist, an orphaned street urchin who becomes an international music sensation.

As someone who is in the 18-30 demographic, I like to think that Hollywood woefully underestimates us. That, if they treated us like adults and gave us some straight-up, faithful adaptations we'd flock to see it. That is what my heart says.

My head says we're getting what we deserve.

So, you want us to change the nationality of our film's bad guys entirely? No Problem.

The people behind the Red Dawn remake really are geniuses. They spotted the potentially flawed logic of making China the evil, invading bad guys of their new film, realising that it doesn't necessarily pay to annoy around a billion potential customers in an increasingly lucrative commercial market. Wise reasoning indeed, the only problem being that they came to this decision after the film had actually been made.

So what to do? Scrap the entire project? $75m down the drain is a lot to lose. How about widespread reshoots? Costly, but the only real way to remove all references to China from the film. Or, you can just get it all in post-production like the Red Dawn producers chose to do.

According to the Los Angeles Times the film is having flags, symbols and dialogue digitally altered to turn the Chinese into North Koreans. As the article mentions nothing of any reshoots, we can only assume that the Chinese and Chinese-American actors in the film will miraculously become North Korean. This is hardly surprising - Hollywood seems to have no qualms about pushing the notion that all Asians look vaguely the same (just like people from the Middle-East).

As this Cracked article points out, Hollywood seems to be running out of reliable bad guys faster than you can say "regime change." It seems that the end of the Cold War was the worse thing to happen to action movie producers, which is ironic as so many of their films were about bringing down the Iron Curtain.

North Korea seems to be the frontrunner to become "the new Russia" so to speak, but I still feel uncomfortable about reducing an entire nation of people crushed under a tyrannical regime to a faceless enemy. The first action film to capitalise on the ongoing conflict in Libya will feel my wrath.

Personally, I have no problem with a fictionalised enemy. If I'm watching a film about people defending their American town from an invading foreign force, I'm not going to believe it any more if they're from North Korea, China or the evil Republic of Villainovia. The explosions and the the bullets are all the same. But for some people, the killing just isn't real if it involves those bad guys they've seen on the news. So North Korea it is.

By the way, I'm calling this now: Red Dawn will be the worst film of 2011.

Filmstubs is still alive (and excited about the Oscars)

It's been almost a whole month, but Filmstubs has been on something of an enforced hiatus as I concentrate on my journalistic career (currently giving my time to the New Statesman, since you ask). Anyway, just to prove I still care deeply about this blog, I thought I'd point out that I am very excited about the Oscars tonight. This is partly because there is the strongest competition in at least five years, and partly because I cannot wait for the awards season to be over. Anyway, here's my personal favourites for this year.

Best Picture

The Social Network

Actor in a Leading Role

Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)

Actress in a Leading Role

Natalie Portman (Black Swan)

Actor in a Supporting Role

Christian Bale (The Fighter)

Actress in a Supporting Role

Melissa Leo (The Fighter)

Animated Feature Film

Toy Story 3

Art Direction

Inception

Cinematography

The Social Network

Costume Design

The King's Speech

Directing

David Fincher (The Social Network)

Documentary Feature

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Documentary Short

I'll admit to having seen none of them so I won't comment.

Film Editing

127 Hours

Foreign Language Film

Incendies

Make-Up

The Wolfman (Though I hate to see terrible films win Oscars)

Music (Original Score)

Hans Zimmer (Inception)

Music (Original Song)

"If I Rise" (127 Hours) - Really weak category this year

Short Film (Animated)

I've only seen The Gruffalo and I thought it was fairly poor.

Short Film (Live Action)

Seen none I'm afraid.

Sound Editing

Inception

Sound Mixing

Inception

Visual Effects

Inception

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

The Social Network

Writing (Original Screenplay)

Inception

There you go. I'd give only one award to the King's Speech despite the fact it will probably sweep the board. Six for Inception and five for The Social Network. It reflects the fact I thought they were far and away the best films of last year. If Fincher misses out on best director this year it'll be a crime.

Anyway, I'll be posting again in the not too distant future. See you soon.

Life After "The Wire:" What the Stars did Next

What more can be said about The Wire? A slow burner and never a ratings powerhouse, it was a show that gradually grained more and more respect and a loyal group of fans. Now, nearly 3 years after the show concluded it is more popular than ever, with many critics hailing it as the greatest TV series ever made.

You can see their point. The Wire showed an attention to detail and scope that was not only rare, it was unique. It took a pretty standard TV premise, that of cops tracking drug dealers in Baltimore, and turned it on it's head. Cases were spread out in to an entire series, the intricacies of detective work was shown in meticulous detail, as well as the politics and corruption of the police hierarchy. But this wasn't a police show, it was a show about the city of Baltimore and it's inhabitants. That is why, instead of showing the drug dealers as shallow caricatures, as so many cop shows have done in the past, equal importance was given to the lives and operations of criminal groups in Baltimore. We saw a world with complex politics, ingenious methods of avoiding capture, and incredibly vivid, and often sympathetic, characters.

It was these characters that made The Wire. Almost every major character was well developed and highly believable and the show was never about any one person with others acting as peripherals. For much of the cast, which was largely made up of relative unknowns when the show started, it was the best characters they'd ever get a chance to play. But The Wire had to end at some point, so three years on, Filmstubs is taking a look at some of the principal actors involved in The Wire and where they went after the show that made their name ended.

Dominic West (Jimmy McNulty)

McNulty was probably the closest to being the main character in the show (though many would argue there was no main character), McNulty was something of an anti-hero. Devoted to good policing and developing the best case, no matter who he screwed in the process, he also happened to be something of a hard-drinking, self destructive bastard. It never stopped you liking him though. It seems strange that a tough Irish-American detective would be played by a privately educated Englishman who went to school with none other than David Cameron but Dominic West is just that. In England at least, his work on The Wire has only recently begun to receive widespread recognition, leading to appearances at award ceremonies and on panel shows. His post-Wire career has ranged from bad films (Punisher: War Zone) to above average TV shows (The Devil's Whore). Expect an appearance in the upcoming follow up to Johnny English, which I'm not sure anyone actually wanted.

Idris Elba (Stringer Bell)

Another British actor in an unlikely place. The character of Stringer Bell defied all stereotypes about the drugs trade. Intelligent, articulate and ruthless when he needed to be, Bell was the real brains behind Avon Barksdale's operation and, despite leaving the show at a relatively early stage, remains one of the most memorable characters. Since leaving, Elba has worked at an incredibly prolific rate. Supporting roles in films such as 28 Weeks Later and American Gangster have been common and he has excelled in larger roles such as RocknRolla. He's even got a starring role in his own BBC detective series, Luther, which aired to positive reviews last year. Expect him in this year's Thor.

Michael K. Williams (Omar Little)

Arguably The Wire's most popular character, Omar will go down as one of the most memorable in television history. Baltimore's answer to Robin Hood, Omar is a shotgun wielding vigilante who answers to no-one. Recognizable by a huge scar across his face, Omar always distinguished himself from the rest of the criminal underworld. His complex moral codes always fascinated. Williams probably knew he wouldn't ever get a role as good as Omar Little (how could he?) but his work since has been solid, and as a member of the cast of HBO's new epic Boardwalk Empire he may well become a household name. Apart from that, Williams has popped up in the odd film and guested in several popular American TV shows.

Sonja Sohn (Kima Greggs)

One of several strong female characters in the show, Greggs is a tough detective and one of the few that likes McNulty's way of thinking. Sub-plots revolving around her home life and starting a family with her parter, Cheryl, were always strong but Greggs' police work made her a key character, particular her friendship with her CI, Bubbles. Since The Wire finished, Sohn has stuck to TV work, taking a recurring role in Brothers and Sisters and crime series Body of Proof.

Lance Reddick (Lt. Cedric Daniels)

Daniels is hardly a laugh-a-minute character but his commitment to the cause and willingness to stick up for his team stand him apart from the array of corrupt and self-interested cops on show in The Wire. That said, Daniels does have a mysterious past, but throughout the show he's the glue that holds the show's characters (the police at least) together. Lance Reddick must have a friend in J.J. Abrams as, not only did he have a recurring role in Lost, he is now a major character in Fringe. Just don't mention Jonah Hex.

John Doman (William Rawls)

Arguably the show's biggest bastard, which is impressive considering some of the characters that have shown up, Rawls may not have racked up bodies but he took no prisoners as a Deputy Commissioner for Operations trying not to make Baltimore police, and himself, look bad. Angry, rude, and often hilarious, Rawls is just about the worse boss you can imagine. Naturally, he hates McNulty. Doman has his very own starring role in upcoming series Borgia, a French/German production focusing on the famed Borgia family during the renaissance, one of the more interesting projects a Wire alumni has got involved in. Apart from that there's been the standard recurring roles in TV series (Damages) and supporting in films (Blue Valentine).

Wood Harris (Avon Barksdale)

The focus of the detail that started it all, Barksdale is a key player in the Baltimore drugs trade and heads a vast drugs network that McNulty and co. are determined to take down. Barksdale is known as particularly ruthless and often cruel character, one that preferred to go in guns blazing rather than talking. It's an attitude that would drive much of the conflict in season 3. Things have been steady for Harris since leaving The Wire, with the usual mix of TV guest roles (House, Hawaii Five-O) and film appearances. This year he will star in Sweetwater, a film chronicling the life of the first black NBA basketball player Sweetwater Clifton, played by Harris.

Wendell Pierce (Bunk Moreland)

Bunk could well be the show's funniest character, but that doesn't make him a clown. Cigar chomping, hard drinking and with a bitter sense of humour about his life and job, Bunk is one of the good guys; a homicide detective less concerning with numbers and more concerned with the case itself. Naturally, he is one of McNulty's closest allies. Pierce has been busy since The Wire ended but perhaps his most notable role since has reunited him with Wire creator David Simon, starring in HBO's Treme. A lot of Wire fans have been disappointed with Treme simply because it is not The Wire but the shows are similar in that they require patience and a willingness to immerse yourself in the environment. Pierce is strong as always. Somewhat disappointingly he's going to be in the next Twilight movie, but the less said about that the better.

Clarke Peters (Lester Freamon)

The wise old head of the show. Freamon is a skilled, meticulous detective who has been dealt an unfair hand for much of his career but gets a shot at redemption as part of Daniels team. Whilst Greggs and McNulty prefer the direct approach, Freamon prefers to stay in the office, finding ingenious ways to keep tabs on the team's target, imparting invaluable wisdom as he goes. Peters is another Wire alumni who has found his way onto David Simon's Treme. It's not really a surprise to see them working together again when things went so well with The Wire. Peters also had a stint in vaguely trashy British hospital drama Holby City, and for the life of me I can't figure out why he did.

Andre Royo (Bubbles)

Everyone loves Bubbles. Greggs' reliable informer, Bubbles was a character you really hoped could make it away from the grip of drugs and destitute housing. A low-level user who was effectively disregarded and ignored by dealers and hoppers, this made him a perfect man to study their actions and provide valuable information. Since The Wire ended Royo has kept busy with guest appearances on shows such as Numb3rs and Heroes. He's also appeared with Lance Reddick in Fringe and is set to make a number of film appearances in 2011.

Filmstubs' 2011 Predictions - The Good

Another year, another long list of films that we hope and pray will be great (and some we'd really like to fail). Nothing marks a new year like making ill-advised predictions on what's going to happen over the next 12 months that will inevitably come back to haunt us so Filmstubs has decided to take a stab on which films will be great over the coming years. I decided to not cheat and include the films that are being released this year that we already know are good (sorry The King's Speech!). Also, this is a list based on quality, not box-office performance. It's too easy to predict that the latest Twilight film will make a hat-full of money, but it still won't mean it's any good.

Here's 10 films that I expect to be great over the next year, and if they're not I will be severely disappointed.

1. Paul

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost head stateside and befriend an alien named Paul. Expect pop-culture references galore and great support from some of America's finest comedians. This may not have Edgar Wright at the helm but when Simon Pegg and Nick Frost get together they've yet to let us down. Could be a sleeper hit and launch Pegg and Frost into the stratosphere.

2. Thor

There's a raft of comic book movies heading our way over the summer and Thor's probably the one I have highest hopes for. Hiring Kenneth Branagh as director is a left-field decision but it's crazy enough to actually work. If it takes itself too seriously it could suffer but if we get a dose of epic mythology mixed with popcorn fun it should be a hit.

3. Pirate of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Believe it or not, this could actually be good. The sequels were atrocious and there's a lot of people out there who would rather not see this franchise dragged out. But, gone are Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly and their insipid romance, and arriving are Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane. Now that's a good deal. Factor in a (hopefully) more focused storyline and some new locations and this might just make people love the franchise again. Either way it will be among the highest grossing films of the year.

4. The Tree of Life

It's taking a big risk to say this film will be great because we know so little about it. However, Terence Malick is always interesting if not always coherent and it has massive star power in Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. The trailer doesn't reveal much but it looks fascinating and it's refreshing to know so little about a film and to be incredibly interested in it at the same time. After all, it was around about this time last year that we saw the first footage of Inception and were scratching our heads as to what it was all about.

5. Cowboys and Aliens

When we first heard the title, it seemed like a bit of gimmick. I expected a tongue-in-cheek schlocky film to kill a summer evening and forget about. But Jon Favreau seems to be crafting something a lot more interesting than that. A proper, moody Western with James Bond and Indiana Jones acting side by side colliding head on with an old school alien invasion movie. This sci-fi western means business and combining the two might not be a gimmick and may just be a bit of genius.

6. The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Martin Scorsese is never afraid to try something a little bit different and this seems like an unusual choice for him to direct but I think it will work. A 3D adventure based on the best-selling book of the same name, the cast is simply outstanding. Ben Kingsley, Jude Law, Christopher Lee, Ray Winstone and Emily Mortimer are all due to appear and this could well be a big hit.

7. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Scorsese may have a good cast, but Tomas Alfredson's is better. Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Stephen Graham and Benedict Cumberbatch all appear in this adaptation of the John le Carre spy novel. The 70's mini series with Alec Guinness is a classic and an intelligent, well crafted spy movie is something we could do with more often in cinema and this could well deliver.

8. War Horse

Steven Spielberg's been quiet for a while now. With the disappointment of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull it seems like a long time since he worked his unique magic on screen. War Horse is familiar territory; you can trust Spielberg to deliver an emotionally charged war film. Expect dramatic scenes and a lump in your throat. Spielberg could be back with a bang.

9. A Dangerous Method

The last two collaborations between Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg have been great and there's no reason to believe this film, focusing on the relationship between Sigmund Freud (Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), won't be. We don't know too much about it but somehow Freud and Cronenberg seem a perfect fit.

10. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Swedish version of the pop culture phenomenon was a pretty good attempt and the casting of Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth was perfect. So, why do we need an American remake a little over a year later? David Fincher, that's why. Any other director and I would have had my doubts but this is well trodden ground for Fincher and he's sure to deliver and dark and atmospheric thriller that can surpass the original. It's difficult to tell if Rooney Mara will be well cast as Lisbeth but Daniel Craig as Mikael seems just right.

Special mentions: Hanna, X-Men: First Class, Super 8, Contagion, Your Highness, and Source Code. All of which I hope will be great.

15 Directors Who Went Outside Their Comfort Zone (and Succeeded)

Ah, the inevitable sequel. I felt my list of 15 directors who went outside their comfort zone (and failed) gave off a far too negative message. After all, if directors never went outside their comfort zones, our film history would be far less rich. The 15 directors that failed are at least to be commended for trying something different, rather than sticking to what they know with every new film (a topic that will be covered in a future post). But for every spectacular failure there is a success story and plenty of directors have taken a voyage into the unknown and emerged clean at the other side. Here are 15 that pulled it off.

Danny Boyle

The Film: Slumdog Millionaire

Throughout Danny Boyle's career he has proven he can cut it attempting a variety of different genres. Having burst into the public consciousness with Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, Boyle widened his scope, enjoying critical, but not necessarily commercial success with films like 28 Days Later and Sunshine. With Slumdog however, Boyle took things to the next level, creating an epic feel-good tale whilst retaining the harsh reality and brutality he has displayed in his previous films. Working with a limited budget, a cast of relative unknowns and in unfamiliar territory, Boyle took a risk with Slumdog Millionaire but it paid off massively.

Alfonso Cuarón

The Film: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

This is a strange one. Compared with his other work, Harry Potter seems a step down for Cuarón; it will most likely not be remembered as one of his great works and it is indeed the most lightweight film on this list. Similarities could be drawn with his work on The Little Princess but it seemed a strange choice for Cuarón to do a Harry Potter movie after Y Tu Mamá También. However, he emerged from it with his head held high. The step up in quality for this film compared to previous Potters is obvious, and it is purely because, no disrespect to Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaron is a much more talented director who was able to put his own mark on what should have been a uniform family movie. Cuarón wisely left the franchise after this one movie but his brief diversion into big budget family films still stands up well.

David Fincher

The Film: The Social Network

There was a time when The Social Network was being looked upon with very sceptical eyes. Despite the presence of Aaron Sorkin, there was still a perception that this would just be Facebook: The Movie with very little substance. That was until Fincher came on board. David Fincher has built a career on dark themes such as murder, anarchy and obsession and whilst he had made a slight change in direction with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, he seemed an odd fit for a tale about the bloke who invented Facebook. However, the themes that emerge from the film such as Zuckerberg's obsession, ruthlessness and betrayal were perfect for Fincher. He may not have been dealing with serial killers but the Social Network is still an intense study of human actions. Its core story may have been a world away from what we've seen from Fincher before, but he still found the perfect tone and atmosphere for this film.

Mel Gibson

The Film: Apocalypto

Mel Gibson's career may well be on life support at the moment, but somewhere between enraging a bunch of people with The Passion of the Christ and enraging even more people with revelations about his private life, Mel Gibson made a very good film. Apocalypto managed to enrage its fair share of people too but Gibson managed to combine his experience with historical epics and his experiments with making films in authentic languages to present us with a very different kind of action movie. A brutal and bloody Mayan epic using unknown actors, the history is a bit off in typical Gibson style but he presented us with a culture and era we've seen very little of on screen. We knew Gibson can do historical epics, sure, but with Apocalypto he took a risk and gave us something that's a long way from your typical historical action movies. Whilst other directors were playing it safe with sword and sandal movies, Gibson made something unique. He should have built on Apocalypto, but instead he went into self-destruct mode. It's a shame because on his day, Gibson is a very talented director.

Terry Gilliam

The Film: Brazil

Brazil changed everything for Gilliam. His talent was undoubted and as a director he was incredibly imaginative but his post-Python efforts still relied heavily on the troupes glorious comic style. Time Bandits, fun and unique as it was, seemed a lot like a more family friendly version of Python for example. Then came Brazil. Yes, Michael Palin showed up in it, but this was a clean break. Terry Gilliam was showing what he could do as a director with an enormous amount of vision. His sense of humour was still alive and well but Brazil is a great sci-fi film on its own merit. Without it, Gilliam would not have gone on to make the likes of Twelve Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was the moment where a director said a fond farewell to his past and went it alone.

Peter Jackson

The Films: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Now that he is one of the biggest names on the circuit, it is quite easy to forget what a big step into the unknown Peter Jackson made when he got the job making The Lord of the Rings. Up until that point, Jackson could best be described as a cult director, his most mainstream film being the 1996 effort The Frighteners. He was talented, there was no doubt about that, but there were more than a few eyebrows raised when he was tasked with making such a tricky and expensive trilogy. It was Jackson's passion and vision for the project that helped get it made however, and what resulted was a success that producers could not have dreamed of.

Stanley Kubrick

The Film: Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

In my introduction to the article on directors who had failed when going outside their comfort zone, I marked out Kubrick as an example of someone who did it constantly and succeeded. Dr. Strangelove is perhaps the finest example of this. Kubrick had made some great films before this (Paths of Glory, The Killing etc.) but with Strangelove he took a step into the unknown. He was hardly known for comedy and was often regarded as quite detached and Peter Sellers, genius though he was, was a difficult actor to work with. But Kubrick made one of the finest comedies ever made and certainly the finest satire we are yet to see. From this point on, Kubrick's career began to be remarkably varied and he excelled in almost everything he tried his hand at.

John Landis

The Film: An American Werewolf in London

John Landis was on a roll when he made this film. Coming off the back of the zany energy of Animal House and the Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London was something a bit different but still one of Landis' best films. The humour was still there, although much blacker, but the horror and romance elements of the film worked just as well as the comic side of the story. In truth, Landis had been planning the film long before Animal House or the Blues Brothers but the film was still a big risk and financiers initially baulked at a film that was not a good fit for the comedy or horror genre conventions. Landis managed to create a great atmosphere for the film, which he would go on to recreate for Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

Ang Lee

The Film: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was the film that introduced many people to the modern Chinese martial arts movie and made Ang Lee a true household name. However, it was vastly different from Lee's previous work. The likes of Sense and Sensibility and the Ice Storm were much more intimate character studies and though Ride With The Devil had a bigger scope and budget, Crouching Tiger was a big step up. What we got was a thing of beauty. Made for a fairly small budget, Lee created a classic martial arts film. The action scenes were as graceful as they were kinetic but Lee never abandons story for the sake of action. A return to the genre would be very welcome.

Spike Lee

The Film: Inside Man

Spike Lee does mainstream, and Spike Lee does it well. Inside Man is a very solid film. It's not a classic but it's a smart bank heist film. Of course, Lee couldn't make the film without bringing some racial politics into it but the usually very vocal messages of his films are toned down considerably to make a well crafted popcorn thriller. It was a very interesting experiment for Lee, perhaps something he wouldn't want to make a career out of but he proved there was a lot more to him than meets the eye. The directing of Inside Man is exemplary and if Spike Lee ever wants to make another movie to appeal to the masses, he is more than welcome to.

Christopher Nolan

The Film: Inception

It's strange to think of this as a director going outside his comfort zone when he has constantly displayed an unrivalled level of creative vision in his previous works. However, you have to remember that it took his huge success with his Batman reboot for producers to take a punt on this work. Inception is Nolan's first work since Following that was not adapted from any other material and to create such a high concept, ambitious project from scratch for such a huge budget is the mark of an extremely confident director and studio striding out of their comfort zone. Batman already had a huge fan base, and there was much less to lose with The Prestige and Memento but for Inception, Nolan took a risk and followed his vision. What resulted was a box office success and the film of the year, proving more directors and studios need to take the plunge and go into the unknown.

Bryan Singer

The Films: X-Men and X-Men 2

Bryan Singer was no action director when he stepped in to make X-Men. The Usual Suspects had proved he could craft a great story and it was comforting that the project was being taken seriously with a talented director on board but Singer came with no guarantee he could give the popcorn crowd what they wanted. The first X-Men film was solid but cautious; after all, the comic book movie boom was yet to take off so it always felt like Singer was holding back a little. With X-Men 2 however, Singer made a classic in the genre. His lack of action movie experience never seemed to be an issue but the strength of the film lies in Singer's understanding of key central themes such as isolation and stigmatisation. Singer was regarded as such a sure hand with the comic book movie genre that he was tasked with rebooting Superman. It didn't exactly go to plan but it was evidence that Singer had carved out a new niche for himself as a big budget genre director.

Paul Verhoeven

The Film: Black Book

in the late 80's and 90's you knew what to expect with Paul Verhoeven. His films didn't hold back. They were highly sexual, relentlessly violent and very much in your face. When he got things right, they went very right (Total Recall, Robocop). When things went wrong, they went very wrong (Showgirls). Then, all of a sudden, everything went quiet. Verhoeven didn't make a film for 6 years after the relative disaster that was The Hollow Man, but when a new film did show up, it was a very different side of Verhoeven. Returning to his native Holland, it hardly showed Verhoven becoming a shrinking violent, but the tone was much more serious, dealing with war and Nazi occupation in admirable fashion. It was Verhoeven's best film for years.

Martin Scorsese

The Film: The Last Temptation of Christ

This was not the last time Scorsese would make a film you wouldn't expect (see The Age of Innocence), but having built a career on lowlifes, gangsters and psychopaths, Jesus Christ seemed an unlikely next target for Scorsese. Naturally his take on the matter was hugely controversial, and like the novel, it presented ideas that vary quite a bit from Biblical interpretations but Martin Scorsese has never shied away from controversy. Scorsese had always wanted to make a movie based on Jesus, and though it was a departure from his previous work he did exactly that. What we got was one of the better acted and more intriguing interpretations of the life of Jesus.

Alfred Hitchcock

The Film: Rebecca

We all know Alfred Hitchcock as the master of suspense, but he was a master of a few others things besides that. Adapting much loved novels proved to be one of them, and Rebecca, Hitchcock's first Hollywood film, is a classic quite unlike any he had made before or since. It feels so different from Hitchcock's other output partly because Hitchcock was kept on a much tighter leash for this adaptation. Producer David O. Selznick wanted a faithful adaptation so Hitchcock had less freedom to display his revolutionary tricks and plot devices. Nevertheless, despite working within tighter constraints and beginning a voyage into Hollywood film-making that would change cinema forever, Rebecca is a beautifully made and crafted adaptation. It proved that no matter what situation Hitchcock found himself in he could deliver the goods.

The Joys of the Small Town Cinema

Ask most people to describe their cinema-going experiences and quite often you'll be met with a raft of negativity. Ticket prices are too high, you have to re-mortgage your house and book yourself in for a heart bypass to get snacks and there's always someone or something to distract you from your viewing experience. The cinema industry, somehow baffled as to why people are put off going to the movies have been attempting to get bigger and better to entice punters. 3D films, comfier seating, giant screens, ear-splitting surround sound, multiple screens and full scale meals have become the norm at the cinema. It all seems a long way from the smoky local cinemas we used to see.

They do however, still exist, only minus the smoke. Whilst multiplexes get bigger and bigger and seemingly more and more uniform, there are an ever declining army of independent cinemas catering for towns deemed not big enough for Odeons or CineWorlds. These cinemas are far smaller, have much less choice, and probably won't be able to screen 3D films for another 30 years but they provide a valuable service to those that cannot always travel to the next town to catch a recent blockbuster.

I live in Swanage, a small town in the south of England with a population of around 9000 people. The nearest multiplex is a 30 minute drive away, and, as you may have noticed on my post on in flight movies, I don't always get round to see the latest must-see movies in the cinema. Swanage does have a local cinema, but I have tended to avoid it as the viewing experience is little better than watching a film on TV and it does not always show the films I am desperate to see. However, having missed the chance to see The Social Network on its initial run, I decided to bite the bullet and see the film at my local cinema, and it is there that I rediscovered the charms it can offer.

The cinema in question is called the Mowlem, an independently run theatre housed in a desperately ugly building in bad need of renovation. Upon entering I am greeted by stares of bemusement and borderline hostility. The elderly usher sighs and mutters "I guess we'll have to open up after all." Despite arriving late, it turns out I am the first customer to arrive for the screening. Apparently the film has not had more than 5 people viewing it each night since it started showing at the cinema. It seems the people of Swanage are unimpressed by The Social Network's rave reviews.

I am joined by a couple and we are led up to the cinema. "I'm not bothering to open up the main doors so you'll have to come round the side," barks the usher. We oblige and sit down wherever the hell we want on the horribly uncomfortable and worn seats. The trailers are shown on a screen that seems little bigger than a 40" television with a far murkier picture and the projection doesn't quite fit where it's meant to be.

Then there's the intermission. Remember them? The film hasn't even started but the lights go up, cheesy music begins to play and the usher shouts "does anyone want any ice cream because you'll have to come downstairs for it." The couple want ice cream and I wait patiently while the usher leads them out the cinema and down the stairs.

Eventually the film starts. The picture is murky, the sound is awful but The Social Network is a great film and I am satisfied.

So what did I learn from my horrible viewing experience? Well, despite everything I was charmed. The people that run the cinema work with very little money and judging by the amount of people in attendance, they're hardly raking in profits. The cinema remains open, however, and it is done for the love of film.

You go there and you don't know what to expect; a few years ago my sister went to see Titanic and the projector broke down just as the ship began to sink. You don't know if you'll be the only person in the cinema or if the whole town will turn up. Despite all the faults and the inability to compete with the viewing experience at the big multiplexes, these small town cinemas have heart and soul. The people that work there aren't teenagers earning minimum wage for their Saturday jobs, they are people that genuinely love the place, even if they act offended when you turn up.

If the multiplexes pitched up in every small town and these cinemas began to die out, it would be a real shame. These theatres hark back to a simpler time, when going to the cinema was about the film you were going to see, not the cinema itself.

15 Directors Who Went Outside Their Comfort Zone (and Failed)

What makes a great director? Ultimately it comes down to output; great directors make great films. But there is an extra quality that truly marks out the best; range. Take Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick transcended genres and excelled in every new style he attempted. He made classics in horror, comedy and sci-fi, while all the time keeping his own personal stamp on his work. Kubrick wasn't afraid to try something new and different, and that's what made him the best.

Most directors know what they're best at, but a lot also realise that if they stick to that for their whole career people will begin to question their talent. It takes stepping outside of your comfort zone to prove yourself. Often it means less talented directors biting off more than they can chew but sometimes even the best, and there are some fine directors on this list, can try something new and ultimately fail. This list charts 15 directors that went outside their comfort zone, but misfired.

Kevin Smith

The Film: Cop Out

Kevin Smith is cinema marmite. He has adoring fans and hate filled critics. One thing you can't argue with is that Smith's early films were extremely personal; based on his life and with a script written by Smith that he staunchly refused to change. Kevin Smith movies were all about Kevin Smith. For a while this was successful, but after Clerks and Chasing Amy, the noughties were less kind. For Cop Out, Smith tried something new; making a buddy action movie from a script that wasn't his own. What we got was incredibly generic and bland. It hasn't stopped Smith branching out; his next film, Red State, is a contemporary horror film, but only time will tell if he can cut it away from the chummy pop culture referencing tone of his early work.

M. Night Shyamalan

The Film: The Last Airbender

Shyamalan needed a change. His films were becoming a joke, and he was increasingly gaining a reputation as a one trick pony. Shyamalan needed to move away from the gimmicky plot twist movies that had defined his career and went all out with a big budget cartoon adaptation. It failed, miserably. Poor acting, bad decisions and murky cinematography made this the worst blockbuster of the summer and proved that M. Night's name could no longer act as a box office draw. One struggles to see how he can restore his reputation from here. Unbreakable 2 anyone?

Brett Ratner

The Film: X-Men: The Last Stand

This may not seen like too much of a departure for Ratner; he'd done action before, albeit a very different kind of action. However the jump in quality required for X-Men: The Last Stand was just too much for Ratner. The X-Men series may have been 'just' comic book movies but they were built on very solid foundations; previous director Bryan Singer had approached the movies very seriously and produced two great films but it was always going to end badly when handing the series finale to a less talented director. A lot of the blame has to lie with Singer himself, and the script, but Ratner's directing was messy and confused and he has not been trusted with a major franchise since.

Michael Bay

The Film: Pearl Harbor

As much as it will pain people to admit, Michael Bay is good at what he does. His movies are generally explosive and cheesy and completely lacking in substance but that's all you expect from him. That lacking in substance bit is important though, because you need substance when asked to make a film about the deadliest attack on American soil in the 20th century. Pearl Harbor needed to be handled sensitively and subtly; instead we got a fist-pumping action movie with insincere emotion.

Robert Altman

The Film: Popeye

Proving that it can happen to the best of us, Robert Altman, director of The Player, Short Cuts, and M.A.S.H was given the prestigious job of adapting a spinach eating cartoon sailor to the big screen. Whether anyone actually wanted a live-action Popeye starring Robin Williams is a pretty important question but Altman should have known to steer well clear of this. Even the best couldn't make a good film out of this material.

Marc Forster

The Film: Quantum of Solace

I've made this point before but I'll make it again. Marc Forster is a fine director who has made good films, but to give a director with no experience in the action genre the job of directing the new film in a reinvigorated James Bond franchise was wrong. Yes, new Bond has a stronger emphasis on character and plot, which are Forster's strengths, but at the end of the day James Bond is about the action sequences and Forster directed them poorly, taking too big a leaf out of Paul Greengrass' book and giving us dizzying and rather confusing car chases.

Peter Jackson

The Film: The Lovely Bones

Peter Jackson hasn't always been a genre director. While his roots are in horror, and his stardom comes from fantasy, his work on Heavenly Creatures showed he had a gentler touch. He wasn't right for The Lovely Bones though. If anything, Jackson tried too hard, laying on spectacular imagery where it wasn't necessarily needed and valuing visuals over story. Jackson has evolved into a director of big films, and he does that very well, but for a film as emotional and personal as The Lovely Bones, more subtlety was needed.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The Film: Alien: Resurrection

Jeunet is my favourite director purely for his absolute unique style. His films inhabit their own little world of big characters and whimsy. This meant he was a strange choice to revive a big franchise with its own world and back story. In truth, he didn't do a particularly bad job of it, but his own unique directing quirks and style just looked out of place in an Alien movie. Each Alien movie has very much acted as a showcase for the director's own style but while it worked perfectly for Ridley Scott and James Cameron, the glove just didn't fit for Jeunet and David Fincher. Jeunet has not made a Hollywood film since.

Ang Lee

The Film: Hulk

Ang Lee makes thoughtful and intelligent movies and his Hulk adaptation was thoughtful, and to some extent it was intelligent, but for the most part it was just dull. It's easy to see why Lee was chosen, especially after Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but if you go back and watch it you'd see Dragon is actually something of a slow burner. Hulk is very much a slow burner and while Lee's efforts to delve deep into Bruce Banner are admirable, at the end of the day Hulk is a comic book movie about a big green dude smashing things. It didn't help that the action sequences, when they finally came, were laughably bad. Lee will not jump so easily into Hollywood blockbusters again.

David Lynch

The Film: Dune

David Lynch is absolutely bonkers. David Lynch makes absolutely bonkers films. But the genius about David Lynch is that when he is left to his own devises he makes bonkers films that are really very good. When given a lot of money to work on a big sci-fi adaptation, David Lynch isn't really left to his own devises and instead we get a film that shows Lynch's mad style but limited by the confines of the genre and budget. Audiences just didn't take to Lynch in the mainstream, and Dune became a famous flop.

Roman Polanski

The Film: Pirates!

Polanski did his fair share of hopping between genres but his attempt to make a swashbuckling pirate movie was an unmitigated disaster. Polanski has always thrown up surprises with his work, and he was convinced he could make a great pirate movie, but the material just wasn't right for a man who's directing style has never been a good fit for an action-adventure. Pirates! flopped badly, and effectively killed off the pirate movie until Johnny Depp and co. revived it.

Guy Ritchie

The Film: Swept Away

You can blame Madonna all you want, but Guy Ritchie still made a terrible film and has only himself to blame. Ritchie has always been accused of being a one trick pony and while it is clear that he is most at home with mockney gangster films, you have to wonder how his one time wife ever convinced him to make Swept Away. The jump from gangster caper to island romance is a pretty big one to take and needless to say Ritchie failed miserably. It didn't help that Madonna was atrocious in it, but it must be difficult to tell your lead actress that when she's your wife.

Jim Sheridan

The Film: Get Rich or Die Tryin'

Sheridan was a bizarre choice for 50 Cent's self congratulatory disaster. Sure, I can see the logic on getting a respected director in, especially as Eminem had Curtis Hanson for 8 Mile but this film was such a long way from anything Sheridan had done before it just seemed way out of left field. The transition from powerful Daniel Day Lewis dramas to the tales of a rapper's rise from the mean streets was not smooth and it didn't help that 50 Cent lacked Eminem's charisma. Needless to say, it was no 8 Mile.

Sylvester Stallone

The Film: Staying Alive

It's easy to forget that Stallone is an Oscar nominated screenwriter and when he directs himself in his strongest franchises (Rocky, Rambo) the results aren't too bad. Stallone is more than just an action hero but he should stick to what he knows. What he was doing writing, directing and producing a sequel to Saturday Night Fever is anyone's guess. Stallone has proved he can write, he has proved he can direct, but only with the right vehicle. Staying Alive was a long way from being the right vehicle and was extremely damaging to Stallone's reputation behind the camera.

Chris Weitz

The Film: The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass should have been a sure thing; a beloved children's book, in many ways better than the Potter franchise, with an epic quality that everyone wanted post-Lord of the Rings. Weitz, however, managed to kill the franchise before it even got going. Weitz had done very little to prove he had earned the right to direct a major franchise; American Pie was good but just a teen comedy and About a Boy was fairly diverting but little more than that. In more experienced hands, The Golden Compass could have started a major money-spinning franchise, instead it just reflected the mediocrity of the director.