The Iron Lady

Well, she's done it again. Within the first five minutes of Iron Lady I forgot that Meryl Streep was even in this film. It's a cliche to say it, but she's unrecognisable in her much-lauded role as Margaret Thatcher, she disappears into it completely and plays Britain's most divisive Prime Minister across the course of three decades without breaking so much as an actorly sweat. But I have to say that this is where my praise for this film ends. Iron Lady is nothing more than this performance. The whole film is just structured around Streep's powerhouse ability to be Maggie Thatcher. Everything else about it is a disappointment.

I mean, this is the plot of the bloody thing - elderly Maggie Thatcher wanders around her house as she succumbs to dementia, and then she works up the courage to throw out her deceased husband's shoes. That's it. That's the plot and the climax of the whole movie. She watches a few old videos of herself and we flashback to a few key moments of her life, but overall it's a wash out. Streep is brilliant and very watchable, but the film is rubbish. When are biopic writers going to give up on using these elaborate framing devices? This is a woman with a very big story, and instead we get this very abbreviated collection of 'greatest hits'. There's just too much to say in too short an amount of time, and too much time is spent on her as an old biddy having conversations with herself!

Iron Lady takes great pains to show us Thatcher in both her old age and her youth in order to set her up as figure of sympathy. According to the film, she's both a forgotten relic and a young girl unable to assimilate into the boys' club, a figure forever laughed at by the establishment and derided by layabouts who insist on being unemployed. The poor thing! There's something very wrong with a film that suggests that the worst thing Thatcher did was neglect her kids a bit. It's very one-sided and whoever made this seems to have made it for the wrong reasons. They try to pass a bit of comment on the contrast between her feminity and her fierce leadership (there's a great scene where she asks "Shall I be mother?" after vehemently defending her decision to battle Argentina) but it's all a bit tokenistic and glorified. And if it doesn't sit well with me (a 30 year old Australian), then I can't imagine how poorly it must sit with the average middle-aged Briton!

The whole film felt very piecemeal and abbreviated, a bit like a very short TV mini-series. The negative impact of Thatcherism is glossed over too much, and the use of contemporaneous punk music in these too-few negative sequences made it all feel a bit trite and conservatively-weighted. It could've been a great film about a truly fascinating and influential figure, but once you get past the excellent casting everything else about it feels like a real hack job.

DIRECTOR: Phyllida Lloyd

WRITER/SOURCE: Abi Morgan
KEY ACTORS: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Alexandra Roach, Harry Lloyd, Olivia Colman, Anthony Head, Richard E. Grant, Roger Allam

RELATED TEXTS
- Other films and TV movies about Thatcher... The Falklands Play (starring Patricia Hodge), Thatcher: The Final Days (starring Sylvia Sims), The Long Walk to Finchley (starring Andrea Riseborough) and Margaret (starring Lindsay Duncan).
- Some other recent movies about Western heads of state: Nixon, W. and Frost/Nixon.
- Meryl Streep has also played real-life figures in Evil Angels, Julie and Julia, Silkwood and Out of Africa.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Actress (Meryl Streep) and Best Makeup.
AFIs - won Best International Actress (Streep).
BAFTAs - won Best Actress (Streep) and Best Makeup and Hair. Nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Jim Broadbent).
Golden Globes - won Best Actress - Drama (Streep).

The Iron Man

This is a wonderful, albeit short, children's book from celebrated poet Ted Hughes. I have seldom seen such efficient and effective writing in children's fiction, nor anywhere else for that matter, and the way he writes is every bit as fascinating as the unique story itself!

The Iron Man is a massive robot of unknown origins who finds himself roaming the countryside. He feeds on metal and iron, much to the detriment of the local farmers - who find their tractors and barbed wire fencing destroyed or gone in the wake of the Giant. They resolve to trap the being in a large pit and to cover it over with dirt. When this fails they listen to the local boy who first spotted the giant, who suggests they try to befriend it and make some kind of deal with it.

But the Earth is a wicked place. Our fighting and warring has become so clamourous that it brings terrible trouble to us in the form of a massive space dragon. This is a being so large that it covers all of Australia and it seeks to subject the Earth to a horror unmatched. The Iron Man might be the Earth's only hope of salvation.

This is pretty much most of the book. Like I said, it's short. It runs for about sixty pages or so and runs in a linear and slightly episodic fashion. No dialogue is featured until the last chapter, the book's climax, where the book gains most of it's meaning and the frightening urgency of the situation becomes all too apparent.

The Iron Man is a timeless tale and a memorable parable on war, peace and technology. The farmers' first reaction to the Iron Man is to destroy him but little do they know that his help will be sorely needed. Unfortunately, the world remains - mostly - a wicked and inhospitable place and the messages here are just as clear now as they ever were. And, sadly, they seem just as fanciful and unattainable. A wonderful story for everyone, to read to children and to be enjoyed by adults alike.

The Battle of San Pietro

John Huston made this war documentary whilst on assignment in Italy during WWII, and it has since become immortalised as an influential milestone in documentary filmmaking. Covering a brutal engagement between American and German soldiers, The Battle of San Pietro made waves for being a little too honest for war propaganda. Huston broke free of the usual constraints of wartime coverage by pushing the bar for realism higher, getting his camera in amongst the actual troops and daring to show war for what it was. For anyone with a passing interest in WWII this is an invaluable resource - an actual account of a battle made as it happened.

At 30 or so minutes I expected there to be a stronger narrative but this is mostly just pure footage narrated by Huston. The soldiers aren't heard, their story is entirely organic - they're just filmed doing what they do and it's all put together in a moderately linear fashion to show the course of the battle. I can't even imagine how frightening it would've been for people to see this documentary in the 1940s... this level of realism wasn't really seen again in fictional or documentary films until the 1970s with the Vietnam War, and The Battle of San Pietro wasn't really shown to the public at the time due to the army's disapproval of this. As a result, it was initially only used for training purposes by the United States Army, although this wasn't the audience Huston had intended for his film.

Huston's account is so brutally honest in its depiction of the cost of warfare that some parts are still hard to watch now. There are some rather harsh images of fatality, such as the image of troops marching across the ruined battlefield while the head of a dead soldier lies limp in the foreground. Huston was accused by some of deliberately making an anti-war film, but all he did was film the reality of war. It actually ends with the emergence of happy and relieved San Pietro village children, so despite being labelled as anti-war propaganda it's actually kind of an affirmation of America's place in the European theatre of war as a force for liberation.

DIRECTOR: John Huston
NARRATOR: John Huston

RELATED TEXTS:

- John Huston also made the war documentaries Winning Your Wings and Report From the Aleutians.
- For a fictional Huston film about WWII, see Heaven Knows Mr. Allison.
- Other American WWII documentaries made by famous directors: The Battle of Midway (John Ford), Why We Fight (Frank Capra), Sex Hygiene (John Ford), Torpedo Squadron (John Ford), December 7th (John Ford), You John Jones! (Mervyn LeRoy), Memphis Belle (William Wyler), Tunisian Victory (Frank Capra), Death Mills (Billy Wilder), The Fleet That Came to Stay (Budd Boetticher), Here is Germany (Frank Capra), The Last Bomb (Frank Lloyd), Know Your Enemy (Frank Capra), The Town (Josef von Sternberg), The True Glory (Carol Reed), Two Down and One to Go (Frank Capra) and Your Job in Germany (Frank Capra).

The 2012 Oscars

BEST FILM
Millions of people around the world are probably now scratching their heads over an 'old' movie winning Best Film. Hopefully a small fraction of these people actually go out and see The Artist now, it's a wonderful movie and it's nice to see something so positive and winsome get a bit of recognition for once. I think most of the other nominees were worthy of mention, it would still be quite easy to boil the list down to just five films, but I think that's not really the way it should work (as the whole process is basically about boiling it down to just one film anyway).

The Artist (full review)
A glorious return to the early days of cinema, this was a predictable case of the frontrunner winning, but a year ago I doubt anyone could predict that a silent black and white film would be on everyone's lips as the Best Film winner of 2012. As you might've guessed from above, I support this win wholeheartedly and I hope it inspires people to get outside of their comfort zone and really enjoy something a bit different for once. The Artist's nostalgia and inventiveness both justifies and earns the Best Film tag, I love that this movie beat out the usual Oscar-baiting types of movies that also got nominated.

Hugo (full review)
This was my number one pick as I quite easily liked Hugo the most out of any of the Best Film nominees, but if it was going to get beaten then I'm more than happy for it to be beaten by The Artist. Martin Scorsese continues to show that he's at the top of his game with this movie. I'd argue that this is the best film he's made since Casino, and it couldn't be a more different film so maybe he should experiment with other genres and demographics a bit more. More family adventure films Marty!

Midnight in Paris (full review)
I haven't been keeping up with Woody Allen's career so I can't really comment on this in the context of his last few films. What I can say is that it's an urbane and witty piece of filmmaking that's as uncompromising and artistically valid as Terence Malick's The Tree of Life. Allen is fiercely courageous in bringing his own brand of intellectualism to the screen... it isn't a film that will appeal to everyone but I have to applaud him for just making the films he wants to make and doing it with such verve and passion. I enjoyed it a lot.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Probably the most controversial of the nominees, and not for the right reason either. In the past a film about a tragedy like 9/11 would've been seen as brave and envelope-pushing, but now it's very much the done thing when it comes to Oscar season and so Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close feels like far too easy and obvious a choice for Oscar recognition. The film isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be, but I won't be the one to defend its many flaws either. It's just a shame because it's based on such a fantastic novel and the chance for this novel to reach a wider audience has now been squandered. Perhaps it was the casting of Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock that pushed so many people away from this film. What I find unforgiveable is simply the fact that this got nominated and Drive didn't.

The Descendants (full review)
I like this movie but it didn't seem 'big' enough to warrant all the attention. I guess this was the token indie nomination for 2012, there always seems to be at least one of these. It's an enjoyable flick but no one could justify a Best Film win for it. The best thing about its loss here is that writer-director Alexander Payne will keep striving for greatness, and I'd love to see him keep making superior quality indie films with that hunger behind them.

The Tree of Life (full review)
I think this was the most unexpected nomination of the lot. Malick has invented a unique film language all of his own, and I can imagine many Academy voters getting stuck halfway through this just because they didn't get it. It's more a work of art than a film so it's probably hard to justify any serious contention, but I'm still glad it got nominated nonetheless. This film is deep, and I don't mean that in an ironic or facetious way. It's the closest we'll probably ever get to seeing a film made by God.

Moneyball (full review)
Sports movie! I really enjoyed Moneyball but again, it just didn't feel like a serious Oscar contender to me. It's a great and hearty true story that combines the entertainment factor of sports with some worthy messages about the failure of sportsmanship in America. I can definitely get behind a film like that, but when you watch this next to something like Hugo or The Artist it's pretty clear that it just isn't up to scratch.

War Horse (full review)
Some people groaned at the nomination of Spielberg's War Horse but these are clearly also the same people who would (unfairly) not give this movie the time of day. This is a film for fans of epic old-school filmmakers like David Lean, John Ford and King Vidor. It's a bold and unashamedly sentimental look at a devastating piece of history, and I challenge the sceptics out there to watch it and not be impressed by how effortlessly Spielberg can tell a complicated story like this in such a visually simple way.

The Help (full review)
I'll back this movie as well. Sure, it's Oscar-bait, but everything about it is so perfectly pitched that it's hard to argue with its success. This film is like Forrest Gump without the mental retardation or embarrassing right wing agenda, and how can you not like that? Much like War Horse, I'd award points to this film because it dares to be a little old fashioned in an era of sceptics and hipsters.


BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
This one was pretty much a dead certainty, my only fear was that Max Von Sydow could split the 'old man' vote somehow. I was backing Plummer and was glad to see him get it. I loved his acceptance speech, it was so witty and relaxed and pleasant. What a class act.

Christopher Plummer (Beginners)
Plummer is part of a disappearing generation of great older actors, and he didn't get nominated for the first time until 2009's The Last Station. A Best Supporting Actor nomination was probably the best he could hope for, so it's great to see him get some real recognition with this win, and it's great that it was actually for a performance that deserved it. His depiction of an elderly gay man who comes out of the closet in his last few years of life is very endearing, and Plummer makes it sing without being over the top.

Kenneth Brannagh (My Week With Marilyn)
I found it interesting to hear that Brannagh wasn't even the first choice for the role of Laurence Olivier in this film, it was originally meant to be Ralph Fiennes. I could see Fiennes doing it, but for Brannagh there's that shared history of both Olivier and Brannagh being the kings of screen-Shakespeare in their respective eras. Brannagh is uncanny as Olivier, and I'd love to see him win an Oscar for something one day, he's a great actor and director and I think he's underrated in both fields. Just compare his acting in things like Harry Potter to his Shakespearean work, and then he goes and proves himself a more than adept mimic as the great Olivier as well (and he doesn't do it a sentimental way either).

Max Von Sydow (Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud)
Look, I like Max Von Sydow, the guy is a living legend, and yeah he usually doesn't get roles with much substance to them these days (usually he gets cast in the role of sinister old man) so it's nice to see him in the important but all-mute role of 'The Renter'. It's a slightly quirky role and he's emotive enough without overdoing it, but (having read the book) I just think the character's depth wasn't achieved. It's a hard character to put on the screen, and whilst Von Sydow does the best possible job with the script he's given, it isn't Oscar worthy.

Jonah Hill (Moneyball)
Definitely not! You can't nominate a comedian just for not being funny. I still can't believe Hill got nominated for this, all he did was not act like an arsehole. That's nomination worthy? It just feels like the Academy is (as usual) desperately trying to prove it's still hip by putting someone younger in there next to Nolte, Von Sydow and Plummer. I generally like Jonah Hill, but this nomination should've been Albert Brooks for Drive.

Nick Nolte (Warrior)
I love that Nolte got a nomination for this, he was a standout in Warrior and his performance showed a certain depth of experience that's hard to fake. There was real restraint in his combination of unexpected vulnerability and toughness, I loved it, it was a great characterisation and Nolte has long been an undervalued character actor. He's always had an unusual but strong screen presence, and hopefully he'll get more chances to show this now.


BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
We all knew that Spencer had the Oscar, this one was in the bag, and I guess I can't really fault it too much. Second hottest favourite was probably Bejo for The Artist, but if I had to choose from the nominees I would've chosen Melissa McCarthy... her performance will live on beyond the Oscars in a way that none of the others will.

Octavia Spencer (The Help)
Everyone loves a sassy black lady, and when you team it up with a sympathetic political agenda it's pretty much unbeatable. The author of the novel The Help actually created the role with Spencer in mind, so half her work was already done for her. It's a character designed to evoke inspiration and empathy, and Spencer did it with enough strength for it not to seem manipulative, and I don't really think you can overvalue how effortlessly she does it.

Berenice Bejo (The Artist)
Bejo is charming in this film but I guess charm alone doesn't do the trick when you're up against Octavia Spencer and the potent message of American civil rights that Spencer's character represents. Bejo is fun in The Artist but she isn't really the 'supporting' actress in the film, she's the leading lady to Dujardin's leading man, so it feels odd that she's in this category in the first place. That aside, I can take or leave her work in this film, she's great and all but it just didn't grab me.

Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs)
I really don't agree with McTeer's nomination. I guess she got it for the double-combo of gender-bending and adopting an Irish brogue, but I was just never convinced by any of it. She's meant to be a woman living the life of a man in 19th century Dublin, but to me she looked more like K. D. Lang.

Jessica Chaistain (The Help)
Chaistain virtually came out of nowhere in 2011 with both this role and her work in The Tree of Life, and the two performances couldn't be more different from one another. Her character in The Help is a buoyant and flighty creature unsuited to life in the deep south of 1960s America, ostracised by the women in her community and uncomprehending when it comes to their ingrained racism. It's a great character and Chaistain does the character justice, but as it's her first nomination she was probably just considered lucky to even get nominated.

Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids)
I love that McCarthy got nominated for this, and I really wanted her to win it but I knew it would never happen so I just had to be happy with the fact that she got nominated. Great comedy work doesn't always get the recognition it deserves at the Oscars, and I'd like to think that McCarthy's nomination for Bridesmaids is in the spirit of Kevin Kline's Oscar-winning work in A Fish Called Wanda. McCarthy really threw herself into her Bridesmaids role with such enthusiasm and a truly impressive lack of dignity, she stole the whole movie as far as I'm concerned.


BEST ACTOR
Dujardin was the favourite but I'm still a little surprised that he won. I never underestimate America's love for their own, so I was afraid Clooney or Pitt might take it because they've been waiting a little while. Dujardin deserved it though and the power of his acting defied 'the rules', so it's great to see him rewarded for an iconic performance. I guess those other eager Hollywood veterans will have to keep chasing the dream.

Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
Physicality was pretty much all that Dujardin had to work with in The Artist, and he doesn't so much as work with it but lets it do all the driving. He embodies three archetypes of the silent era - the dashing action man, the physical master of comedy, and the swooning matinee idol. For anyone else this would be positively schizophrenic and fragmentary, but he marries these personas together so joyfully that every second he's on screen is an absolute pleasure.

George Clooney (The Descendants)
Apparently it's a big deal that Clooney played a 'regular' guy in this film, but when the most interesting thing you have going for you is the fact that you're not wearing a suit, well, it doesn't exactly say much, does it? Clooney has a magnetic screen presence, so if he's in a well-written role like this he's still pretty much untouchable, but I'm not ever going to believe in a Best Actor win for him unless he breaks the mould a bit more and gets outside of his comfort zone.

Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
Everyone loves Gary Oldman and his ability to disappear into a wide range of quirky roles, so it's amazing that this is his first actual nomination. I guess it was always going to take something special yet underplayed to finally get him noticed, and that's what this role is. George Smiley is one of the great modern literary characters, it's a role that requires subtlety, and Oldman does stillness just as oddly watachable as he does animated. He was never going to win this award (especially when put next to an A-lister like Brad Pitt) but at least now he's on the scoreboard.

Brad Pitt (Moneyball)
I just don't get this nomination. It's starting to feel like Pitt is now getting Oscar nods just for hanging around long enough and accumulating enough fans. I've always felt that Pitt is best when put into smaller character parts (Twelve Monkeys, Snatch, Burn After Reading) that allow him to be a little bit more colourful. When he's given a lead role he always seems to fall short of achieving any actual emotional depth, and Moneyball is no exception. He's too distant in the role. And for some reason he was always eating. Demian Bichir (A Better Life)
I love these Oscar curveballs where they nominate some nobody from a small independent film, but who are they really kidding? Bichir's prize is just to be nominated, I reckon he would've had the least votes out of any of the nominees simply because he doesn't have any history behind him and his film was too small in scope. But having said that, his performance feels so authentic that I'd happily rank him as one of the top three nominees in this category. It took me a while to realise he was the crooked politician out of the TV show Weeds, which just goes to show that the right role can give any truly talented actor the opportunity to really shine.


BEST ACTRESS
This was the one I was least sure about. I couldn't make my mind up about whether it would be Viola Davis or Meryl Streep (though I was personally backing Michelle Williams). Seeing Streep get it felt good, the last time an actor broke that two-award barrier was Jack Nicholson's Best Actor win in 1997 for As Good As It Gets, and Streep is easily as good as him if not better. While her peers (De Niro, Pacino, Hoffman) flounder and struggle to recapture their former glories, Streep is still at the top of her game after nearly five decades, making her the greatest actor of her generation.

Viola Davis (The Help)
I don't really get this. Davis is a good actress, but she felt like a bit like a supporting actress in this film. It's a good role and she's good, but yeah, I don't see it as an Oscar frontrunner and for me it's probably the weakest of the five nominees. Hopefully it at least means she'll keep getting good roles.

Meryl Streep (Iron Lady)
The Streepster is a machine. She's unrecognisable as Thatcher, and that's not just down to the extraordinary make-up job (including the false teeth and nose). She comes across as the real deal - voice, mannerisms, body language - it's all completely new for her. She must be pushing 60 now and she's still able to diversify in ways that no other actress (or actor) can touch. Sorry if I'm gushing a bit, but she's a living legend and part of the reason she isn't deified like De Niro or Brando is simply because she's a woman, and that's not cool at all.

Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs)
I think Close did an amazing job in this role. It was a dream project that she spent nearly three decades trying to get onto the screen so she must be a little bummed out that she didn't get the big gong. I think the issue with this role is that the film wasn't accessible enough (period drama based on play = niche audience) and that Close's character didn't have any big moments or a satisfying story arc.

Michelle Williams (My Week With Marilyn)
Williams was fantastic as Marilyn Monroe. I was sceptical because she didn't really look the part to me, and Monroe is such a huge icon that it's a big ask for anyone to do her justice. Despite all that, Williams managed to physically embody the iconic aspects of Monroe's public persona whilst also delving into the personal world of a fragile and tortured artist, and that's a pretty big achievement. This is Williams' third Oscar nomination and I'm thinking she'll at least have a few more before she's done.

Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo)
To be honest, Mara was not on my radar at all prior to this nomination. I can't say I've noticed her in anything before, so I went into The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo without any preconceptions. She does a good job but I'm not convinced that this was all her, I think a lot of it was just down to Lisbeth Salander being such an original and interesting character. I'll reserve judgment until I see her in a few more things.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The highly-stylised and fetishistic opening credits sequences (accompanied by an amped up version of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song) makes it feel like a female James Bond film, but David Fincher's English-language adaptation of the bestselling Swedish crime novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo shoots for more of a film noir feel. I haven't read the books or seen the original film, so I went into this cold, and therefore I can't really comment on how it compares to the other versions. What I will say straight up though is that Fincher's return to crime territory didn't really do much for me, but I will concede that this could be partially due to flaws in the source material.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo starts out as a character piece about two unlikely heroes, the disgraced journalist Michael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) and a punk-chic security specialist named Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara). Through different circumstances they both become involved with a hidden history of unsolved murders in Sweden, and eventually they join forces in the hope of linking these murders together and finding a previously undetected serial killer. It's a fairly pulpish idea; a forty year old missing person's case unfolds into something a lot more sinister, but I guess the selling point is via the character of Lisbeth (the 'girl' of the title), an enigmatic and emotionally damaged heroine for a new era in crime fiction.

The pairing of Blomkvist and Salander is an interesting take on the odd-couple dynamic you find in these sort of films, and whilst Daniel Craig seems to enjoy playing a bit of a wuss I think he needs to push himself into more diverse roles and get away from thriller/action territory altogether. His complete lack of a Swedish accent sticks out amongst everyone else's better efforts. Also, I have certain reservations about the character of Blomkvist. Knowing that the book's author (Stieg Larrson) was a controversial journalist, I couldn't help but think that Blomkvist is a bit of a mary sue. I mean; older journo helps save the soul of a hip youngster (who he also gets bonked by over and over again)... come on, really? That's the hero of your story? Fantasise much?

Depictions of anti-authoritarian subcultures (IE. Punks, hessians, straight-edgers) are always going to be problematic in mainstream texts, so I went into this with a certain hesitance in regards to the character of Lisbeth. It's all well and good for a million middle-aged pro-establishment readers to see this character as 'fresh' and 'different', but I'm always wary of that element of patronisation when it comes to using counter-cultures as fodder for fiction. So there's that question of whether Lisbeth is a true representation of a subculture, or if she's more a case of damaged goods aping a certain look, or if she's both. It seems most likely that she's both of these things, but it does place certain negative connotations on the subcultures the writer has traded on. I know this is a small and negligible aspect for most viewers (for a lot it will be a complete non-point), but it rankles me a little that this is the only kind of serious exposure most people will have to this kind of character. Don't get me wrong, she's a cool character (and Mara keeps it as subtle as she can), but I find it all a little weird.

So I'm giving this film a bit of a thumbs down... for a long time I was scratching my head over why there were two protagonists and I just kept waiting for the two storylines to link up. I know this story is essentially setting up a trilogy, but it just takes too long to get going into the actual guts of the plot. It should've been a bit more stand-alone. The story itself isn't anything super special either, it's just a murder mystery with ominous 'important' music. If you're a David Fincher fanboy (or fangirl) you'll probably still love this movie. It's dark and a bit twisted, and there are at least two rather graphic scenes that most will find shocking (I can't believe my 82 year old nan read this book and liked it!), but overall I just thought it wasn't anything great.

DIRECTOR: David Fincher
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Steven Zaillian, based on the novel by Stieg Larrson.
KEY ACTORS: Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard, Robin Wright, Steven Berkoff, Geraldine James, Joely Richardson, Goran Visnjic, Alan Dale

RELATED TEXTS
- The novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson. He followed it with two other novels before his untimely death, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Overall the series is known as The Millenium Trilogy.
- All three novels have been adapted into Swedish language films starring Noomi Rapace: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
- Other David Fincher crime films: Se7en, Panic Room and Zodiac.

War Horse

It feels like ages since Steven Spielberg has made his 'own' film. The only other films he's directed since Munich (which was 7 years ago) were Indiana Jones and Tintin, so it's good to see him sinking his teeth into something a bit more substantial. War Horse marks the first time the director has focused on WW1 (previously he had done WWII in at least four films) and it has a real 'old world' feel to it, calling to mind the classic work of iconic directors like David Lean and John Ford. The old fashioned style of epic filmmaking that he evokes could be construed as cheesiness by some, and initially it seems to have a lighter touch than one might expect, but the characters and the hero of the film (an actual horse) pulls the viewer into this historical period and landscape. Spielberg works through some rather heavy themes with all the skill, delicacy and expertise that has made his previous body of work so uniformly successful and entertaining. This is very much the family-friendly version of Saving Private Ryan.

In case you didn't guess from the marketing materials (and the name of the film), War Horse is about a horse. Much like the classic western Winchester '73 and its eponymous gun, War Horse follows this horse as it passes from owner to owner throughout the duration of the First World War. In the opening scenes a good-natured but alcoholic farmer (Peter Mullan) drastically overpays for this horse (named Joey) in a fit of whimsy, much to the glee of the local landowner who hopes to repossess his farm. But the value of this animal is more than monetary, he will end up being priceless as he travels from soldier to British officer, to the Germans and to the French, and a determined farmboy (Jeremy Irvine) enlists in the war just to try and find Joey so he can keep him safe.

I have to admire Spielberg for daring to tackle such an old-fashioned concept. Very few people these days are prepared to invest themselves in a film that doesn't have a narrative engineered around human characters. The horse in this film isn't really anthropomorphised too much, but if you can't handle the idea of people talking to horses as if they're people then you're probably going to have a hard time taking this movie seriously. It is a serious movie though... WWI was the last war for horses, and as such it wasn't a war where they really belonged, a conceit that allows Spielberg to explore ideas relating to old 'honourable' warfare in contrast to newer forms of warfare. Did horses ever belong in human-made wars? The tragedy of WWI really hits home when you consider the cost of life felt by these animals, and War Horse explores this alongside all the other classic parts of WWI mythology - the idea of horses on a modern battlefield, the unexpected ceasefires, the classism that prompted officers to fire on their own men, and ideas relating to honour amongst enemies.

There's something about the modern masters (Spielberg, Scorsese) in that they're always able to show everything clearly and memorably. The action is never messed up by unneccessarily flashy editing, everything is blocked and choreographed in relation to how the viewer can perceive what's happening. Character takes precedence and this follows through into the action in terms of the perspectives used. I mentioned earlier that Spielberg pays homage to David Lean in the way he directs this film, and this can be seen especially well in the shot where Rose Narracott (Emily Watson) is shown knitting at the end of a scene and it dissolves perfectly into the image of Albert and Joey toiling on the field. It reminded me of that classic dissolve in Lawrence of Arabia that introduces Omar Sharif.

This is a really solid film that stands alongside Spielberg's canon of classics. There are a few scenes where I was very much like 'not cool!' because I have a hard time handling cruelty to animals in any form (even when it's fictional). This made it a little hard to watch at times, but I guess this is also why Spielberg didn't make the film too dark or revisionist. I watched the whole thing with a lump in my throat, it was very moving and spirit-rousing.

DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg

WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis. Based on a book by Michael Morpurgo.
KEY ACTORS: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Marsan, Toby Kebbell, Niels Arestrup

RELATED TEXTS
- The 1982 children's novel War Horse by Michael Morpurgo.
- Spielberg's other war films: Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Empire of the Sun and 1941.
- Some other big WWI films: All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory, A Very Long Engagement, Gallipoli, Grand Illusion and Sergeant York.

Bullhead

I went into this film not knowing anything about it and found something profound and indelible about loyalty, cowardice, friendship and consequences. I can't really talk about this Flemish film any further than that without spoiling certain parts of it so all I'll say is that you should stop reading now if you don't want to know any more and just try to check it out. Otherwise read on.

Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a cattle farmer who gets involved with a dodgy black market beef trader. This trader has been implicated in the murder of a policeman and Jacky's former friend, Diederik (Jeroen Perceval), is working as an undercover informer. Things get a bit complicated and the police start to get interested in Jacky as a major suspect in their investigation. But none of this is really what the film is about. Jacky is a 30 year old man who takes bucketloads of steroids and hormones to reinforce his masculinity due to a disturbing and horrific act of childhood bullying that has left him without testicles. It sounds like a sick joke when you put it on paper, but this is actually a serious film abut a man with no balls, and it pushes the envelope in the way it explores the resulting psyche of such an adult - he's a wounded animal, a danger to others and himself, and the film takes a cautious delight in playing with our ability to empathise with such a protagonist.

When the film gets to that illuminating point where we flash back to Jacky's childhood, the unfairness of these events won't be for the faint of heart. It's a horrible situation because the perpetrator has mental/developmental issues so the blame and responsibility should fall on the shoulders of the parents who let him terrorise Jacky. The film isn't much interested in exploring this idea too much, the parents are criminally connected so there's no justice for Jacky, and nothing is going to bring his balls back either. The farreaching consequences of this include Jacky's inability to form meaningful relationships and some insurmountable problems with aggression (no doubt exacerbated by the crazy amount of steroids he takes). The situation with the beef dealers and the police eventually spirals off in unexpected ways, and Jacky is forced into a relationship with his former childhood friend Diederik.

The more brutal aspects of the film aren't gratuitous but they are confronting. I didn't see the dramatic ending coming either, it's a real punch, but I was glued to the screen from start to finish as this unexpected gem unfolded in a variety of surprising ways. It's raw but restrained, an intriguingly subtle examination of a wounded psyche that will push more than a few buttons. A real class act.

DIRECTOR: Michael R. Roskam
WRITER/SOURCE: Michael R. Roskam
KEY ACTORS: Matthais Schoenaerts, Jereon Perceval, Jeanne Dandoy, Barbara Sarafian, Frank Lammers

RELATED TEXTS:
- Roskam's only previous film works were the short films One Thing to Do and Carlo.
- Bullhead has drawn comparisons with Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, in the way it combines crime with personal turmoil relating to aggression.

The Artist

The hot favourite for the 2012 Oscars is undoubtedly The Artist, a heady return to the glory days of silent cinema that should appeal to the romantic in any film fan. There's been some criticism that the film is too lightweight to accrue such acclaim, but the comedy and entertainment elements are entirely a part of the film's fabric. You couldn't make a silent film today without it being populist... only the most hardy of film historians would sit through a more downbeat return to silent filmmaking without complaint, and a great deal of the triumphs of the silent era were films that wore their hearts and senses of humour on their sleeves so openly. You can't pay homage to that without emulating it, and the fact that The Artist is such a riproaring success is because it captures all of that so authentically.

So why make a silent film today? Films started out silent because the technology to match audio to film had yet to be invented. Between the late 1890s and about 1928, the medium of film grew to become something else - both art and entertainment. The lack of sound meant that filmmakers and actors had to work extra hard to tell their stories, giving rise to an unfettered creativity that has forever made film a visual medium. The Artist is a film that looks at these roots in a metatextual way... the story is about fictional actor-director George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a superstar of the silent era who finds his career on the skids when he refuses to adapt to the rise of the talkies (talking cinema). The subject matter is reflected by the fact that The Artist is a silent film... it's a silent film about the end of the silent era, so it's a piece of art that comments on itself. The methods used to tell the story reflect the story itself.

You don't need to be a film historian to appreciate how fun and visually inventive The Artist is, but anyone with a passing knowledge of cinema's earliest days will note that it's rife with the mythology of silent cinema. The film references Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, the Wall Street Crash and the sob stories of the various actors left behind by the talkies. Dujardin is wonderful as George Valentin, able to embody not one but several archetypes of the era - he's an action man like the swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks, a romantic icon like the tragic Rudolph Valentino, and a physical comedy king like Chaplin, Lloyd or Keaton. The rest of the cast is equally perfect in their roles, Berenice Bejo and John Goodman both look their parts and act them out accordingly, with verve and enthusiasm.

There are a few little surprises in this film in regards to inventive sound design but I won't spoil any of them because the fun is entirely in being ambushed by the way The Artist plays it all out. This is a charming, innocent, visually imaginative and evocative film that tells a deceptively simple story in a big way. It's an A+ effort, and in an ideal world we'd see a few more filmmakers experimenting with telling stories in purely visual terms.

DIRECTOR: Michel Hazanavicius
WRITER/SOURCE: Michel Hazanavicius
KEY ACTORS: Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Missi Pyle, Penelope Ann Miller, Malcolm McDowell, Ed Lauter

RELATED TEXTS:
- Hazanavicius and Dujardin previously worked together on the comedy spy-films OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost in Rio.
- The other film of 2011 to pay homage to the earliest days of cinema is Hugo.
- Other films about the end of the silent era: Singin' in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard.
- The last silent film to be made was Mel Brooks' Silent Movie, in 1976.
- And if you enjoyed The Artist and want to check out more silent cinema, I'd recommend Sunrise, The Crowd, Broken Blossoms and City Lights.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

"We should be fighting communists, not each other"

Any modern attempt to adapt John Le Carre's seminal spy novel comes laden with certain issues. Foremost amongst these is how to make it relevant to contemporary audiences... for most people the all-pervading fear of the commie is a joke of the past, and then there's the fact that any espionage thriller tends to be held up in comparison to whatever James Bond has been doing lately. So Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy could've very easily been a complete washout, but Tomas Alfredson wisely pushes it as far from James Bond territory as possible, and he makes the cold war stuff feel real. In this respect it's barely even a thriller in the way that modern audiences would see the term... instead it's a cerebral throwback to the espionage thrillers of the '70s, a cold war period piece that has more in common with The Ipcress File and The Conversation than it does with The Bourne Identity or Casino Royale. This is a film that requires the viewer to have all their wits about them, and it views the cold war almost as if it were a parallel universe.

George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is a retired spymaster called out of retirement to find the 'rotten apple' at the top of MI6. The film combines multiple timeframes and a Shakespeare play's worth of character actors to wheedle its way into an incredibly dense and complex whoddunit. There are lots of clandestine meetings in locker rooms and cafes, suspicious looks and accusations, and enough intrigue to keep Miss Marple busy for a year. These are the most powerful men that the world has never heard of, many of whom were loosely based on real-life operatives by author John Le Carres, and the way that they talk and deal with each other in a semi-childish manner seems incredibly bizarre at times. And this is in contrast against the taciturn Mr. Smiley, a man who plays his cards so close to the chest that it seems like he isn't playing at all. Smiley's effectiveness is down to his mild manner, he's cornered the market on being underestimated, and so he's pretty much the anti-James Bond in every way - a hero for the thinking man.

There are so many important characters in this complicated film that it threatened to completely overwhelm me a few times. They did the right thing in casting such a good range of recognisable faces, and Oldman is so fantastic as Smiley. He plays against type and gives a really restrained performance, affecting a cultivated oldboy inflection and doing things small. The attention to detail in this performance is magnetic, he draws you in and wraps you up in this great character. In an ideal world he'd win the Oscar for Best Actor, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that at least three of the other 2012 nominees are more likely to get it. Other standouts in the cast are Mark Strong, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy - they all make their characters stand out despite the fact that this isn't a story that dwells too much on performance or characterisation.

Director Tomas Alfredson came to this project after his chilling work with Let the Right One In, and his European sensibility lends the production a certain authenticity (perhaps because Europe is still a few decades behind the UK). There's an interesting subtext about the contrast between 'real' war (percieved as honourable) and the cold war (seen as a sneaky conflict after the A-bomb forced all the world's animosity to go underground). I feel a little unsure about putting my complete stamp of approval on the film, the script and novel are both rather dense and complex, so I don't think that just one viewing was enough for me to fully appreciate everything that was going on. I enjoyed Oldman playing the bespectacled librarian-avenger, but I can't completely say I grasped all the mechanics of the plot or even fully appreciated what Alfredson was doing as a director. It looks great and it feels great, but it's one to watch again methinks.

DIRECTOR: Tomas Alfredson
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan. Based on the novel by John Le Carre.
KEY ACTORS: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciaran Hinds, David Dencik, Simon McBurney, Kathy Burke, Stephen Graham

RELATED TEXTS
- Based on the novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre. The character George Smiley also featured as the lead in the novels Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, Smiley's People and The Honourable Schoolboy.
- Smiley was also played on the screen to great acclaim by Alec Guinness in the TV films Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People.
- The character has also featured in the TV film A Murder of Quality (played by Denholm Elliott) and under a different name in the '60s film A Deadly Affair (played by James Mason).
- Other film adaptations of John Le Carre novels: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, The Constant Gardner, The Little Drummer Girl, The Russia House, The Looking Glass War and The Tailor of Panama.
- Tomas Alfredson previously directed Let the Right One In, the success of which led to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. There is also some subject and tonal similarity to the German film The Lives of Others.