Film review | What to Expect When You’re Expecting – Five couples on the bumpy road to parenthood

Posted on 24 May 2012 by Jason Best

Wendy (Elizabeth Banks) and Skyler (Brooklyn Decker) in WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING.

After a gestation period far outdoing anything the animal kingdom can offer, Hollywood has turned a quarter-of-a-century-old self-help guide – Heidi Murkoff’s bestselling 1984 pregnancy manual What to Expect When You’re Expecting – into a slick comedy-drama that’s strictly by the book when it comes to wringing laughs, sighs and tears from a contrived set-up.

If you’ve seen those vapid ensemble showcases Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, you’ll know the formula: a film following a diverse bunch of characters through a series of loosely interlinked stories. Here, it’s five expectant couples going through the trials and joys of impending parenthood in present-day Atlanta.

Cameron Diaz’s TV fitness guru Jules and her celebrity dance show partner Evan (Glee actor Matthew Morrison looking like the runner-up in a Justin Timberlake lookalike competition) get taken by surprise by pregnancy, as do food-truck-owning rivals Rosie (Anna Kendrick) and Marco (Chace Crawford) following a one-night stand.

Vic (Chris Rock and Craig (Tom Lennon) in WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING

Then there’s Elizabeth Banks’s baby expert Wendy, a first-time mom-to-be whose rosy view of pregnancy doesn’t match the hormonal reality; and her tubby, timid dentist husband Gary (Ben Falcone), forever trying to emerge from the shadow of his ultra-competitive dad, Dennis Quaid’s ex-racing driver Ramsey. Just to underscore his alpha-male superiority, Ramsey’s trophy wife Skyler (Brooklyn Decker) is expecting twins.

Finally, Jennifer Lopez’s photographer Holly, unable to conceive, is going down the adopt-an-African-child route, prompting cold-footed husband Alex (Rodrigo Santoro) to seek guidance from the ‘Dudes Group’, a support group of frazzled, hen-pecked dads led by motor-mouth Chris Rock.

The cast perform with gusto, with Banks the best of the bunch, but the material they’ve been given is bland and predictable. As rom-coms go, this one is definitely stillborn.

On general release from Friday 25th May.

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Name That Chest: Expecting room service?

Posted on 23 May 2012 by Beth Williams

Who is this mystery star, and more’s to the point, what is she doing?

Any ideas?

Did you guess the identity last week’s mystery Martini drinker?

Yeah of course you did. But anyhow, the birthday boy is pictured here in full.

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Film review | Iron Sky – Lunatic fringe! Bonkers sci-fi satire sends Nazis to the moon

Posted on 23 May 2012 by Jason Best

Iron Sky

Nazis on the moon! What could be more brilliantly bonkers than the lunatic premise of satirical sci-fi action comedy Iron Sky?

Sadly, having kept movie geeks atwitter during the six years his film was in production, Finnish director Timo Vuorensola fails to make the most of his conceit.

The set-up is inspired, all the same. In 1945 fleeing Nazis escaped from Germany in a flying saucer and set up a colony on the dark side of the moon. There they’ve lain hidden, until in 2018 a US spacecraft gets sent to the moon by (gulp!) President Sarah Palin and uncovers the Nazis’ base, shaped like a swastika, of course. In short order, the Nazis capture one of the astronauts and use the computing power in his mobile phone to send a craft to Earth as a prelude to launching a full-scale attack.

And it’s here that things really get crazy. The astronaut, who’s black, gets turned into an albino and falls for a naïve Nazi Fräulein, while her evil fiancé hooks up with the US president’s cynical campaign manager and teaches her the propaganda value of Nazi chic.

Made for a fraction of the budgets commanded by Hollywood blockbusters, Iron Sky certainly looks impressive. The Nazis’ lunar base is spectacular and so is their zeppelin-like space battleship, the Götterdämmerung. But the story is all over the place, the performances are over the top and the scattershot gags miss the target almost as often as they hit home. Destined to be a future cult film, nevertheless.

On cinema release from Wednesday 23rd May. And available on Blu-ray, DVD and on demand from Monday 28th May.

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Couch Potato’s Tuesday Teaser: Which actor dodged Saving Private Ryan’s tough army training?

Posted on 22 May 2012 by Beth Williams

In Steven Spielberg‘s Saving Private Ryan, a small team of US soldiers is sent to find and rescue a young private whose three brothers have been killed in action.

To prepare for the movie, all the principal actors went through several tough days of gruelling army training.

All the actors, that is, except Matt Damon, who plays Private Ryan. He didn’t have to endure this training ordeal.

You see, by sparing Damon, the filmmakers craftily made the other actors resent him and they consequently conveyed that resentment in their performances.

Clever.

Saving Private Ryan is showing tonight – Tuesday 22nd May – on Film 4 at 9pm.

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Small Screen – this week’s top ten DVDs…

Posted on 22 May 2012 by Dean & Ellen

  1. War Horse

    2. Emotional hurdles… Steven Spielberg holds the reins of this war epic, based on the Michael Morpurgo novel of the same name, which charts the bond between a man and the horse he tamed and trained.

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  2. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

    3. Secret service… Tom Cruise scales dizzying heights in the latest instalment of his action franchise, this time directed by The Incredibles helmer Brad Bird.

  3. The Iron Lady

    4. Political maneuvering… Meryl Streep gets under the skin of former British PM Margaret Thatcher in this Phyllida Lloyd-directed biopic.

  4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

    5. Page to screen… Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s bestselling crime thriller gets a second adaptation, with central characters Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander this time played by Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara.

  5. Bridesmaids

    6. Wedding belles… Asked to be her best friend’s maid of honor, Annie attempts to lead her ragtag group of fellow bridesmaids through a series of pre-wedding rituals with disasterous – and hilarious – results.

  6. Captain America: The First Avenger

    7. Holding out for a hero… Chris Evans goes from zero to hero in this action adventure, which pits the titular Marvel Avenger against the evil head of a Nazi research department during World War II.

  7. Johnny English Reborn

    8. Secret service… Rowan Atkinson’s hapless spy gets a second feature-length outing in this action comedy, which sees the titular secret agent tasked with preventing the assassination of the Chinese premier.

  8. Thor

    9. Holding out for hero… Chris Hemsworth gets to flex his pecs as the titular hammer-weilding superhero in this Kenneth Branagh comic book adaptation.

  9. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

    10. Secrets and lies… John le Carre’s classic spy novel gets a slow-burn big screen adaptation with an all-star cast, including Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy and Kathy Burke.

  10. Paul

    11. Space race… Simon Pegg and Nick Frost head the cast of this sci-fi comedy about two British comic book nerds who encounter a wise-cracking alien as they journey across the U.S.


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DVD review | Haywire – Gina Carano bursts on the scene in a B-movie with A-grade action

Posted on 21 May 2012 by Jason Best

GINA CARANO as Mallory in HAYWIRE directed by STEVEN SODERBERGH

Betrayed by her bosses, a freelance black-ops agent goes on the run in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, a taut action thriller that is as briskly efficient and muscular as its heroine.

Played by mixed martial artist Gina Carano, lean, mean ex-Marine Mallory Kane flees after a mission goes awry in Barcelona and she gets double-crossed in Dublin, with both events shown in flashback. The narrative device is a tad cumbersome but all is forgiven whenever Carano launches herself into action, whether free-running over rooftops or trading blows with her male assailants. But Haywire isn’t simply a Bourne-style knockoff that happens to have a female lead. Lethal and graceful, Carano really does have the chops as a fighter. True, Haywire’s generic plot is strictly B-movie fare, but Carano and A-list support from the likes of Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender and Ewan McGregor give the movie class.

Released on DVD & Blu-ray on Monday 21st May by Momentum Pictures.

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DVD review | The Grey – Liam Neeson’s alpha male leads the pack in gripping survival thriller

Posted on 21 May 2012 by Jason Best

A survival thriller with teeth, The Grey pits Liam Neeson’s hardy sharpshooter against a pack of ravenous wolves in the frozen wastes of Alaska.

Neeson’s Ottway is the alpha male among a group of oil refinery workers who survive a plane crash in the wilderness, only to find themselves relentlessly hunted down by the wolves as they try to make their way to safety.

Director Joe Carnahan and his star previously teamed up for 2010’s spectacularly dumb A-Team remake, but they prove much more assured playing things straight here. Ottway and volatile rival Diaz (John Gillo) excepted, the dwindling survivors are sketchily drawn, but Neeson gives the film the muscular heft the genre needs and the snowbound setting is effectively chilling. Be sure to watch to the very end of the credits for the film’s final, hauntingly ambiguous shot.

Released on DVD & Blu-ray on Monday 21st May by EV.

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Thought for the Day from The Kid Stays in the Picture

Posted on 20 May 2012 by Adele Craciun

“Any man who thinks he knows the mind of a woman is a man who knows nothing.”

The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002)

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Film review | She Monkeys – Female friendship falls victim to vaulting ambition

Posted on 19 May 2012 by Jason Best

She Monkeys

The obscure sport of equestrian vaulting forms the backdrop to She Monkeys, an intriguing and unsettling exploration of female friendship, rivalry and burgeoning sexuality that marks the debut film of Swedish director Lisa Aschan. When motherless 15-year-old Emma (Mathilda Paradeiser) joins her local vaulting team, she immediately falls under the spell of the more assertive Cassandra (Linda Molin), the team’s star. But as Cassandra goads and coaxes Emma into small acts of daring and rebelliousness, the balance of power between the friends slowly shifts. Meanwhile, Emma’s neglected seven-year-old sister, Sara (Isabella Lindquist), is beginning to discover her own nascent sexuality. Keeping dialogue to a minimum, Aschan draws striking, naturalistic performances from her trio of actresses, yet at the same time there is something dream-like about the unfolding drama, as Emma and Cassandra’s ambivalent relationship slips and slides between mentor and pupil, love and hate, desire and aggression.

On release from Friday 11th May.

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Pete’s Peek | Dare you enter the House of Pain on the Island of Lost Souls?

Posted on 18 May 2012 by peter

Alongside Dracula, Bride of Frankenstein and Freaks, 1933’s Island of Lost Souls ranks as one of the best classic horror films. But its controversial story, gruesome (at the time) vivisection scenes, and poor distribution has kept it virtually hidden from horror fans these past 80 years. Until now, that is.

A commercial flop on its release, banned in several countries (including the UK until 1958), and condemned by HG Wells as a travesty of his original novel, The Island of the Dr Moreau, the film is actually a superb exercise in cinematic Grand Guignol.

With his Satanic goatee and crumpled white suit, Charles Laughton is perfect as the whip cracking scientist, Dr Moreau, whose grisly experiments in his ‘House of Pain’ have turned caged animals into a grotesque menagerie of beast-men. Even more disturbing is his desire to mate his panther woman, Lota (played by 19-year-old contest winner Kathleen Burke), to Richard Arlen’s shipwreck victim; and letting loose one of his monstrosities on Arlen’s girlfriend (Leila Hyams), after she arrives on the island looking for her lover.

Hidden behind Wally Westmore’s fantastic make-up is Bela Lugosi, who gives a brief, but touching performance as the Sayer of the Law. His distressed voice chanting ‘What is the law – are we not men!’ is unforgettable and has since become legend.

An atmosphere of lurking terror hangs heavy over the studio-bound jungle set (it would next be used for White Woman, and also served as the inspiration for the real-life surrealist garden of art collector Edward James in remote Mexico) – and that’s down to the luminous cinematography and Laughton’s studied performance. But it’s the powerful, shocking ending, in which the beast-men turn on their creator that truly earns the film the iconic status it so richly deserves.

Watching the Masters of Cinema’s brilliantly restored version, you will never see the 1977 remake – which many regard as the best version of Wells’ story – the same way again. Welcome to the House of Pain.

Island of Lost Souls is available in Dual Format (Blu-ray and DVD) from 28 May

SPECIAL FEATURES
The Masters of Cinema release includes restored HD digital transfer officially licensed from Universal Pictures, video interviews with Laughton biographer Simon Callow and film historian Jonathan Rigby, trailer, and very informative booklet.

DID YOU KNOW?
This was the film that coined the phrase ‘The natives are restless tonight’

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