BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE**

Director Tim Burton has set himself a high bar in making a sequel to his beloved black comedy BEETLEJUICE. It was a film that blended live action and animation - a heartbreakingly wholesome couple and a ghoulishly dysfunctional family - macabre jokes about suicide and an iconic possession sequence set to Harry Belafonte. How do you top the inventiveness, the zaniness and the hilarity of Michael Keaton's titular performance? How do you make us love characters in the way that we loved Lydia Deetz and wanted to protect her just as the Maitlands did?

Sadly, except for a couple of flashes of brilliance, the sequel fails to live up to the original. We waste a good half hour simply catching up with characters and it must be 45 minutes before The Juice Is Loose.  Over thirty years have passed.  Lydia (Winona Ryder) is now a schlocky TV presenter with an oleaginous TV producer love interest (Justin Theroux). Her stepmother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) is now fantastically successful as an artist, but in mourning for her beloved Charles. Delia and Lydia have made a kind of peace since the original film, but Lydia now has problems with her own teenage daughter (Jenna Ortega).  The family gathers at the original house for Charles' funeral. Shenanigans ensue.

What's to love?  Michael Keaton, underused, but fantastic. Monica Belucci and Danny DeVito criminally underused.  Catherine O'Hara's occasional killer line, especially playing off Justin Theroux.  A fantastic flashback played as a foreign-language black-and-white melodrama. A brilliantly funny use of Richard Marx' Right Here Waiting. But too much of it was plodding through character catch-ups. Not enough of it was funny. Are we really surprised by the silly sandworms as deus ex machina? No. There are no stakes. There are no feelings. What's it for?

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 104 minutes. It played Venice and is on global release today.

A HAUNTING IN VENICE**

We are trapped in a cycle of diminishing returns when it comes to Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot films.  ORIENT EXPRESS was a beautifully done, subtly updated, but largely respectful adaptation of the Agatha Christie source material. NILE was also lavish and earnest in its attempts to update the material, but by changing an intricate plot, Branagh utterly ruined the story.  And now we have A HAUNTING IN VENICE, incredibly losely adapted from A Halloween Story. It works neither as detective fiction nor as a ghost story.

Branagh stars as Poirot, now retired and reclusive, in post World War Two Venice.  He is tempted out of his mansion by his old friend, detective author Ariadne Oliver, played by Tina Fey as if she's in a Screwball Comedy.  It's a great performance but one wonders which film it actually belongs to.  They are not trying to investigate a murder but to debunk a medium called Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), who Oliver and Poirot feel is exploiting the grief of opera singer Rowena Drake (Yellowstone's Kelly Reilly). Rowena recently lost her daughter and gathers a motley crew in her spooky Venetian house to make contact with her. There's the daughter's fiancé Maxime, the family doctor and his precocious son, her housekeeper, and Joyce's assistant.  When a storm sets in, we find ourselves in a locked-house mystery.

Writer Michael Green does not have form in creating his own murder-mystery plot and this one barely hangs together. Worse still, he lazily uses the Holocaust as character short-hand device.  This seems crude, especially in a film where Tina Fey is then trying to be a wise-cracking broad.  Pick a lane! I also didn't find the jump scares and obscure angles particularly frightening or effective. What a waste of a great cast and location!

A HAUNTING IN VENICE was released in cinemas in September and is now available on Hulu or other PVOD streaming services. It is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 103 minutes.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (2017)

Kenneth Branagh's new adaptation of Agatha Christie's iconic murder mystery is sumptuous, dynamic, faithful and great fun.  Set on the luxurious trans-European steam-train in the 1930s, the film is a locked-room mystery.  The train is derailed into snow and the renowned detective Hercule Poirot has to solve the murder on one of the passengers before the train is dug out and the police arrive.  The tension builds as the passengers realise that one of them must have done it - but how can Poirot sift the truth out of the conflicting clues - a woman running through the carriage in a red kimono - a second railway guard with a missing button - charred blackmail notes - and so many frenzied stab wounds.....

Branagh's film is firmly in the tradition of the absurdly over-cast ensemble films of the past - Sidney Lumet's 1974 version starring Albert Finney and Lauren Bacall - and the 2010 David Suchet version with Jessica Chastain and Toby Jones.  This version stars Branagh with a quite magnificent moustache as Poirot; Jonny Depp well cast as a nasty criminal called Ratchett; Dame Judi Dench as the Princess Dragimirov; Daisy Ridley Penelope Cruz; Josh Gad and many others.  For me the two actors who really stood out were Willem Dafoe and Michelle Pfeiffer - but I can't tell you why without ruining character reveals and plot twists!

Random DVD Round-Up 2 - CREATION

CREATION is a handsomely made, beautifully acted biopic of Charles Darwin, focussing on the period during which he wrote his seminal work, ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. Based on the biography by Randal Keynes, the movie stars real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly as Charles and Emma Darwin. They are utterly convincing as a deeply loving couple grown distant because of their differing reactions to Darwin's work, more widely, and to familial grief, more closely. Emma looks to the Church for solace, as represented by the orthodox but genuinely concerned Reverend Innes. Charles turns to his science, and experiences a gradual loss of faith. He also, most touchingly, lives in his memories of his relationship with his dead little girl Annie (Martha West). One of the most brutal lines in the film is where Charles asks Emma whether his fancies are an more a prop than her idea of Annie in heaven.

What I love about this film is that, despite the costumes and the lush period settings, which can so often be distancing, there is an immediacy and credibility to the Darwin family. I completely believed in the emotional and intellectual struggle between the two parents, and I was entranced by the relationship between Charles and his daughter Annie. Martha West (daughter of the Dominic West) has genuine charisma, and it's delightful to see Charles' delight in telling his children fantastical stories of different tribes he has encountered on his travels.

The movie also cleverly sidesteps the highly politicised debate (in the US at least) between believing in evolutionary theory and in the Old Testament. Rather than reducing the movie to a bald and crude debate between the two sides, CREATION makes the struggles personal and nuanced. Reverend Innes is orthodox but no fanatic - he wants to be a genuine friend to Darwin. And Darwin is losing faith, but for a personal reason, and sees in the wondrous variety of nature something to be praised.

Given the lamentful tone of the piece, its considered pacing and focus on internal struggle, I was rather surprised to find that CREATION had been directed by Jon Amiel, the man behind action flicks, THE CORE and ENTRAPMENT. But he has completely succeeded in creating a quiet, delicate film in which deep issues are internalised.

CREATION played Toronto 2009 and was released in 2009 in the UK, Greece and New Zealand. It was released earlier this year in the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, and the US. It goes on release in Brazil next week and in Argentina on April 15th. It is available on DVD and on iTunes.

Additional tags: Jon Amiel, John Collee, Randal Keynes, Jim Carter, Martha West, Christopher Young, Jess Hall.

London Film Festival Day 3 - THE OTHER MAN

THE OTHER MAN is a profoundly disappointing, frustrating attempt at a thriller powered by sexual jealousy. But instead of the emotional tension and mind games of Richard Eyre's previous directorial effort, NOTES ON A SCANDAL, we get a meandering plot, weak motivation and a denouement that is hard to swallow.

The key flaw is the poor quality of the script - penned by Eyre, based on a story by Bernhard Schlink. For the first hour the story stumbles around, often doubling back on itself, making a meal out of plot devices that should be worked through very quickly. Liam Neeson plays a decent but dull man called Peter who discovers that his wife Lisa (Laura Linney has been schtupping a schmoozy Spaniard called Ralph (Antonio Banderas). Rather than confront Ralph, Peter plays chess with him - a clunking great metaphor that the visually unimaginative Eyre makes nothing of. The wife, Lisa, remains enigmatic, and the daughter (Romola Garai) is basically redundant. The movie fails to drum up any tension (sexual or intellectual - dear god - how long does it take to realise that the password is "Lake Como"?)

And then, as the finish line nears, the writers clearly thought it was time to spice things up a bit so they dream up, well, not so much a plot twist, as a diversion into a dead end. This diversion allows Banderas to ham it up a bit and takes us into a final scene that jars completely the character motivation we have been shown in previous scenes.

THE OTHER MAN played Toronto and London 2008. It opens in the US on December 3rd.

DEATH DEFYING ACTS - what a waste!

DEATH DEFYING ACTS is a tragic film, combining a waste of talent, the waste of a compelling story, and betrayal on the part of its studio. The movie is directed by Gillian Armstrong who, with movies like OSCAR AND LUCINDA, proved she could tell dark and complex stories of love and obsession and set them in beautifully created period settings. DEATH DEFYING ACTS also features a talented cast, with Guy Pearce as Houdini, Catherine Zeta-Jones as his love interest Mrs McGarvie, Saoirse Ronan (of ATONEMNENT fame) as her daughter, and the wonderful Timothy Spall as Houdini's manager Mr Sugarman. Finally, the story, while fictitious, features enough of Houdini's real life to have been potentially as interesting and dark as THE PRESTIGE. Houdini was born into poverty as Erich Weisz, and through diligent training became the world's most famous and pioneering illusionist at the turn of the last century. The movie sees him on tour in Edinburgh, mourning the death of his mother and challenging spiritualists to channel her final words to him for $10,000. All this is true: Houdini was deeply affected by his mother's death and did have a side-line in exposing fraudulent mystics. Guy Pearce plays Houdini as a driven man - ambitious and able to shape the world to his will. He is also an unhappy man, never fully at ease in the high society he has now entered, regretting his early life with his large family. Indeed, I would have loved to see Pearce take the leading role in a proper Houdini biography rather than have his character shoe-horned into a cheap romance with a Scottish con-woman. Everything that the screen-writers do with Houdini's character militates against Pearce's interpration of him and their script! He's a deep sceptic and intensely private, and yet he melts at the sight of a pretty woman who reminds him of his mum. For this to really have flown the writers would've have to have made much more about the hints that Houdini was unnaturally close to his mother, but they back away from this as soon as they raise it. And they tack on this deeply sentimental ending wherein the little sprite declares that she and her mother taught Houdini about love. Yeesh. For all that DEATH DEFYING ACTS isn't a complete disaster and fans of period romances might well enjoy a viewing on DVD. Guy Pearce's central performance can't quite offset the muddle at the centre of the film. Ultimately, it falls far short of THE PRESTIGE and even a little short of THE ILLUSIONIST. 

DEATH DEFYING ACTS played Toronto 2007 and was reelased earlier this year in Australia, Israel, South Korea, Brazil, Spain, Greece, Russia, Singapore, Turkey and the US. It is currently on release in the UK. It opens in New Zealand next weekend; in Argentina on October 9th and in Italy on November 14th. It is also available on Region 2 DVD.

Meryl Streep deserves an Oscar for her performance in MAMMA MIA!

The story is slight. Twenty years ago, Donna (Meryl Streep) fell in love with Sam on a Greek island, but he left her to marry his fiancee. She then slept with two other men on the rebound - Harry and Bill. Twenty years later, the resulting child, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) secretly reads her mother's diary and invites her three potential fathers to her wedding, hoping that she'll just intuit who her real dad is. Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) remains a free-spirited traveller, rather flummoxed at the idea of having a daughter. Harry (Colin Firth) is now a straight-laced financier, who is charmed with the idea of even a part-share in a daughter. But for Sam (Pierce Brosnan) the prize is not just a daughter, but lost love.

The resulting movie is a well-crafted balance of the light and dark in Abba's music. On the one hand, we have all the disco classics, with high-energy song and dance routines. Christine Baranski and Julie Walters are laugh-out-loud funny as Donna's female friends and Colin Firth steals a couple of scenes towards the end of the film.

On the other hand, the writer has evidently taken care to listen to the lyrics of the darker material about relationships gone wrong and thwarted dreams. These are played out in the relationship between Donna, her daughter, and her old lover Sam. Meryl Streep is absolutely brilliant as Donna. We really believe that she used to be a wild child, and she pulls off all the physical comedy. But Streep excels in the scenes that demand emotional depth. In particular, her performance of "The Winner Takes It All" - a brutal song - is heart-breaking. I didn't imagine I'd leave MAMMA MIA! having seen an Oscar-worthy dramatic performance, but I honestly believe that Streep has pulled it off.

Phyllida Lloyd's direction is full of energy and in general, feels naturalistic, even when the performers go into heavily choreographed routines. She wisely uses a lot of location work rather than studio sets, and Haris Zambarloukos' photographs the Greek islands beautifully. The only mis-steps for me were the staging of "Money, money, money" and the use of the literal Greek Chorus, which seemed just too camp and jarred with the less stage-y feel of the rest of the movie. Still, the odd gripe aside, MAMMA MIA! was tremendous fun and also surprisingly moving. I was dragged along by a total Abba fan who was desperate to see it on opening weekend, and I felt a little hemmed in by the die-hard fanatics at the start, but soon lost all my prejudices. MAMMA MIA! makes for great entertainment and is by far the most satisfying summer movie this year.

MAMMA MIA opens on July 3rd in Greece. It opens on July 10th in the UK, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden. It opens on July 17th in the US, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria, Estonia and Finland. It opens on July 23rd in Egypt; in August in Spain, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Argentina, Israel and Mexico. It opens in September in Slovakia, Romania, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, Russia and Venezuela. It opens in Turkey and Italy on October 3rd.

SLEUTH (2007) - an alpha gamma movie

Kenneth Branagh's new adaptation of SLEUTH stands on the shoulders of a giant and boxes his ears. It is an adaptation that aggressively throws off the look, feel and subject matter of its original and fails and succeeds in large measures.

The original movie was adapted by Anthony Shaffer from his own play and featured an elegant, enjoyable battle of wits between an arrogant aristo crime writer called Wyke (Olivier) and a "jumped up pantry boy" who is sleeping with Wyke's wife (Caine.) Makiewicz' direction was simple and stagey - allowing the actors and the script to do their work.

In Branagh's version, the script has been written by Harold Pinter. It looses all lightness and malovolent wit and becomes a heavy-handed obvious clunking sort of thing. There is no needling - just a sort of simple play-ground bragging of the "my car is bigger than your car" kind. Highly unedifying. Michael Caine moves from the up-start to the older man character and replaces Olivier's bumptious arrogance with a sort of heavy brooding. It's not a lot of fun to watch. Jude Law takes over the Caine character and in that character is stiff and self-conscious and highly unconvincing. Which leaves the direction. Branagh has decided to gut out the tudor interior and replace it with an aggressively modern interior design powered by hi-tech CCTV. Unlike Mankiewicz, he is going to use the power that the medium of cinema gives him with odd camera angles. Much as the conch symbolised authority in Lord of the Flies, the iPod remote symbolises power here. I found the use of CCTV visuals and the extreme production design incredibly distracting and heavy-handed. It took me a good hour of this film's short run-time to actually focus on the action. I also disliked Branagh's cheap insider jokes. Do we really need Jude Law to ask Michael Caine, "what's it all about?" Do we really need him to appropriate the manic laugh of the wind-up toy in the 1972 film? And is Law in that black leather coat meant to be referencing Gigolo Joe from A.I.?

So, for the most part, this movie is an admirably grand failure. In other words, it fails because of too much ambition and too many new ideas, rather than because of laziness and indifference. (See GOOD LUCK CHUCK). But I did like two things very much. First, I thought Law, in a small section near the end of the movie, known to all those who've seen the original, was very convincing. Second, I very much liked the final twenty minutes. The sexual tension was palpable and for the first time I was genuinely intrigued and thrilled by the script and performances. So, an alpha gamma movie overall.

SLEUTH played Venice and Toronto 2007 and was released earlier this year in Spain, the US, Israel, Italy, Norway and Sweden. It is currently on release in the UK and opens this Friday in Denmark. SLEUTH opens in December in Turkey, Germany and Hungary and in January in Finland and the Netherlands. It opens in Australia on February 7th 2008.