FILM
Twilight
Well, this is quite a curate’s egg. A thoughtful, character-driven high school movie about teens and vampires…. Oh no, just a minute, I forgot about Buffy.
To be fair, Twilight creates its own world and casts its own spell. Like Buffy, it bears little resemblance to earlier undead flicks. This isn’t a fangs and heaving cleavage type of film, it’s as much a love-across-the-divides movie as anything else.
Bella is an outsider, just moved from the sunshine of Arizona to the grey, rainy smalltown of Forks, Washington, and doesn’t seem that bothered about fitting in. But she’s one of the crowd compared to the enigmatic Cullen family, who are pale, arrogant and aloof. Turns out they’re vampires and she falls for Edward, the handsome, brooding one who seems to be wearing more slap than the Joker and would make a good replacement for Heath Ledger in the next Batman movie.
The vamps are super-strong, quicker than a cougar and remarkably restrained; Edward’s clan refrain from feasting on humans, choosing animals instead. They call this being vegetarian vampires, which seems somewhat bizarre. Anyway, they live in a stylish modernist house so no crumbling castle with cobwebbed crypts in this update.
For the first hour, as Bella discovers more and more about Edward and his family, Twilight is compelling and provides a thoughtful contrast to the average high school movie. It loses its way a little in the second half when peril comes in the form of a rival vampire clan who don’t follow the veggie vampire diet and have their eyes on Bella. It has to be said that the film’s climax is a little, well, un-climactic.
Nevertheless, Twilight is entertaining and bodes well as the first instalment of a franchise adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling series of books. There are no stakes, crucifixes or holy water in her vision of a modern vampyrism…
Fangs aren’t what they used to be, and that’s all for the good.
Sunday 11 January 2009
Slumdog Millionaire
FILM
Slumdog Millionaire
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Oscar Wilde; from Lady Windemere’s Fan
Knee-deep in filth, poverty and human degradation, Jamal, the hero of Slumdog Millionaire, is certainly in the gutter. But here is a streetkid with a dream… and despite the film revolving around him competing on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, this is a story about love not lolly.
Danny Boyle’s films often feature stashes of cash (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Millions) but screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) deliberately steers this away from a rags-to-riches tale to make it all about Jamal’s attempts to win back his long-lost love.
He does this by entering the quiz show where he’s mocked for being a cha wallah at a call centre by the smug, creepy host, who then gets Jamal arrested when he’s on the brink of taking the top prize, unable to see how a kid from the slums can possibly have got so far without cheating.
Under brutal police interrogation, Jamal recounts how he’s been able to answer the questions so far, and as he does so his remarkable story unfolds.
Shot with the vivacity and vibrancy of City of God, and with the same feel for ‘photogenic poverty’, Slumdog Millioinaire is an uplifting, feelgood film despite (or maybe because of the triumph over ) the squalor, the violence and the corruption. There is something Dickensian about it, it’s a celebration of life in all it’s beautiful, terrible richness.
It’s a brilliantly realised film by Boyle with Skins star Dev Patel proving an engaging lead and awards said to be in the offing. What’s most heartening is that a mainstream movie set in the gutter can be such a critical and commercial success without being at all mawkish or overwrought.
It’s a film with a sense of wonder that leaves you with a smile on your face, and you can’t ask for better than that.
Slumdog Millionaire
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Oscar Wilde; from Lady Windemere’s Fan
Knee-deep in filth, poverty and human degradation, Jamal, the hero of Slumdog Millionaire, is certainly in the gutter. But here is a streetkid with a dream… and despite the film revolving around him competing on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, this is a story about love not lolly.
Danny Boyle’s films often feature stashes of cash (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Millions) but screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) deliberately steers this away from a rags-to-riches tale to make it all about Jamal’s attempts to win back his long-lost love.
He does this by entering the quiz show where he’s mocked for being a cha wallah at a call centre by the smug, creepy host, who then gets Jamal arrested when he’s on the brink of taking the top prize, unable to see how a kid from the slums can possibly have got so far without cheating.
Under brutal police interrogation, Jamal recounts how he’s been able to answer the questions so far, and as he does so his remarkable story unfolds.
Shot with the vivacity and vibrancy of City of God, and with the same feel for ‘photogenic poverty’, Slumdog Millioinaire is an uplifting, feelgood film despite (or maybe because of the triumph over ) the squalor, the violence and the corruption. There is something Dickensian about it, it’s a celebration of life in all it’s beautiful, terrible richness.
It’s a brilliantly realised film by Boyle with Skins star Dev Patel proving an engaging lead and awards said to be in the offing. What’s most heartening is that a mainstream movie set in the gutter can be such a critical and commercial success without being at all mawkish or overwrought.
It’s a film with a sense of wonder that leaves you with a smile on your face, and you can’t ask for better than that.
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