Poseidon (2006)

Whenever Hollywood decides to remake a film already regarded as a classic the inevitable response is 'Why?!', followed by a general critical mauling in the press. Poseidon, a remake of 1972's The Poseidon Adventure, is no different, as evidenced by the appallingly low 'Rotten Tomatoes' critics rating shown on the left.

Sometimes though we see the past through rose-tinted spectacles and, having watched the new 'special edition' of that original movie, released here a month or so ago, it has to be said the original film hasn't stood the test of time as well as one would hope. The characters are paper, shouty stereotypes that will have you wanting to rip your own fingernails out before the film's less than half way through its running time, and the whole thing is far more campy and cheesy than a film referred to with such reverence, deserves to be.

The problem with this newer version is that, despite director Wolfgang Petersen's claims to the contrary in the accompanying featurette, this is really a pretty redundant carbon copy of the original. If you can deal with it on that level you're in for a fairly enjoyable ride, although the deaths seem more brutal this time around and leave a rather nastier taste in the mouth as a result. Subtlety has never been Petersen's strongpoint, as evidenced by the director's previous effort, the execrable Troy.

The doomed characters aren't quite as annoying as most of the original 'shouty' one-dimensional cast of the 1972 version were, but against that neither Kurt Russell nor Josh Lucas deliver anything like the strong performances Gene Hackman and Shelley Winters gave in the original. The real stars here are the special effects - and the water - and the effects have been very much updated, with that ridiculously large budget all pretty much evident on screen. Water is very much Petersen's medium of course, having previously made Das Boot and The Perfect Storm.

The new film, clocking in at just over 90 minutes, is shorter than the original, but felt just as long somehow, even though the pace never felt sluggish. If you're looking for strong character development and a great story this isn't for you. If you're looking for pretty brainless, but well executed eye candy hokum on a Saturday night the film's well worth a look.

The picture transfer is good, with excellent use of surround sound, as one would expect from a bug-budget disaster movie like this. Extra's wise, there's just a single 22 minute featurette and a trailer, although the featurette is not the usual marketing fluff and gives some interesting behind-the-scenes interviews and explanations of how the effects were achieved. With not much else out this week you could do worse than pick up a copy of this, particularly if you like to see special effects done the way only very big budget Hollywood movies can do them.

The Lake House (2006)

The Lake House doesn't fall into a genre I really appreciate: for some reason most rom-coms or 'chick flicks' just leave me stone cold. So I was pleasantly surprised that the film held my attention throughout, and although I wouldn't say it's a film I'd particulary want to see again, it's nowhere near as bad as some of the critical reviews had lead me to believe.

Probably more of a 'date movie', than a rom-com per se, the idea of taking the traditional 'boy and girl fall in love but seem destined never to meet' story (for the girls) and then introducing a sort of science fiction time-travel twist (for the boys) is quite a good one. If you swallow the central conceit, and can happily suspend disbelief from the get-go, you're in for quite an enjoyable ride, at least from the basic story point-of-view. Unfortunately the ending 'twist' does rely somewhat on you not spotting a clue in the first act (I didn't!) so I guess your closing judgement will depend on whether or not you've predicted the ending an hour before it arrives!

The cliched 'good looking but lonely' single guy and lonely single girl live alone in the lake house of the title, but separated by a two year time period. Through a device that's thankfully quickly explained and dismissed, they find themselves corresponding via a postal box that seems to transport their messages between the two time periods. To further bond the couple it seems they are both owners of the same dog. Yes, it's all very silly, but have you ever seen a rom-com that wasn't?!

What makes the film just about sufferable for guys is that some of the twists caused by the time travel are quite nicely done, and the movie doesn't take itself too seriously. Plus Keanu Reeves isn't quite as wooden and as hopeless an actor as he usually is!

Unfortunately the film does fall down somewhat because of a lack of chemistry between the two lead actors, the afore-mentioned Reeves and his partner from Speed, Sandra Bullock. Part of the problem is that they're physically separate for most of the film's running time, but even when they're together in the same time period there's a distinct lack of fizz between them. The 'madly in love' situation is made even more unbelievable because of the casting of Dylan Walsh (best known as the 'sensible' partner in Nip/Tuck) as Bulloch's boyfriend, who supposedly lacks the spark that she is looking for, but comes across as sexier, better looking and far more committed than Reeves ever does. The script really should have made him more of a heel, instead of relying on one night of him working late and a restaurant reservation that he didn't plan ahead enough to try and make the audience believe Bulloch's character will be better off choosing someone else. As it is, Walsh's handling of their affair over the two year period, particularly when he finds his girlfriend kissing a stranger she's only just met, makes him far more the 'hero' of the piece (and hence Bulloch's character the 'villain') than the author and directors can surely have intended.

As is becoming the norm where a DVD release is made within weeks of the original theatrical release, The Lake House is pretty much a vanilla release. There are five deleted scenes (one is actually an out-take) and a trailer and that's it. This is also one of those annoying releases where one has to scroll through pages of languages to find the United Kingdom, only to realise that all this really does is force that wretched 'anti piracy' trailer on you as reward.

It's good to see the rom-com formula given a new idea, and although The Lake House doesn't really exploit the idea as much as it should, it's an enjoyable enough 90 minutes. But it's definitely a 'rental' rather than a 'purchase'.

The 50th London Film Festival

The 50th London Film Festival kicks off in just a week or two's time. I've never really bothered with this before, but having just joined the British Film Institute I got a programme guide and it's hard to resist the many temptations on offer. One of the nice perks of BFI membership is you can book tickets before they go on sale to the mass public. Rather scarily I got all the tickets I asked for, even those for the big gala performance of Babel which I'm really looking forward to (together with the accompanying volume from the wonderful Taschen Books.

I just hope work doesn't interfere with my plans. Despite trying to rein in my enthusiasm for so many classic films, I've managed to end up with tickets for the following:

• Saturday 21st October, 1.30pm - Dustin Hoffman Screen Talk


• Sunday 22nd October, 6.30pm - Of Mice and Men


• Sunday 29th October, 4.00pm - For Your Consideration


• Monday 30th October, 8.30pm - Hollywoodland


• Thursday 2nd November, 7.00pm - Babel (Gala performance)

I would have liked to have booked The Last King of Scotland which is the opening Gala performance too, but it was all getting a bit expensive and weekdays are very hard to commit to with the work situation at the moment.

United 93 (2006)

We've had a spate of 9/11 documentaries on TV lately, and with World Trade Center hitting cinema's this week, there will probably be more to follow too. But it's hard to imagine anything equalling the powerful, harrowing United 93, released on DVD this week.

I approached this with some cynicism. We all know how the story ends, and most of what is believed to have happened before that end has been documented thousands of times in our national press. So just how intense or suprising a film could this be? A lot more than I expected, that's for sure. Told almost entirely in real time, the strength of the film is the way the documentary style pulls you into the 'story' from the get-go. Most of us have been in busy airports and can identify immediately with the activities that the passengers of that ill-fated United 93 flight had to go through, before the event that changed the world, and the lives of those passengers and their family and friends forever.

What's clever about the film is the way the director doesn't rely on cheap sentiment or emotions, letting the events that unfold speak for themselves, and based largely on the results of the 9/11 commission report of the events of that day. For example, a weaker director would have focused on the recipients of those last 'I love you' phone calls that the passengers made when they realised they were on a doomed flight. But there are no such sentimental shots here, with everything being kept to the claustrophobic confines of the ill-fated aeroplane to make the viewer feel as trapped as the doomed passengers. Shot in documentary style, with hand-held cameras, often held at waist level to give the viewpoint one typically has as a passenger strapped into a plane seat, the viewer is really made to feel like one of the other passengers.

There are no long back stories here, in fact there are no back stories at all. We barely know any of the people we meet on the plane through the duration of the film. The random snatches of conversation we would hear on any sort of flight are our only 'way in' to the characters we're seeing depicted. As a result most appear anonymous and remain so until the end of the film. According to convention this should alienate us, make us feel distant from the people we're watching, and leave us with nobody to really understand or root for. And yet we feel part of the action, one of those anonymous passengers ourselves - we feel we're on the plane alongside them, stunned into disbelief, as events unfold and the mad reality of that day and its events slowly become clear.

Director Paul Greengrass pitches the film perfectly, eschewing the use of any familiar faces amongst the actors, opting for a very low-key delicate music score that's used sparingly, and interspersing action on the plane with that of the various control centres around the U.S. The illusion of reality is strengthened by using many of the the army and flight tower professionals who were working that day rather than trained actors. Nor does the director attempt to take sides, showing events as they unfold in an impartial 'fly on the wall' manner, rather than attempting to force any kind of moral viewpoint on the audience through the use of invented or cliched dialogue.

United 93 is not easy viewing - indeed many will find it harrowing. But it's one of the most powerful films you'll see, deceptively simple in its execution. It's a film that shows the real tragedy (on all sides) of the current divide between the West and the more extreme Islamic movements. It's a film everybody should see!

It seems odd to be reviewing extra's, given the subject matter of the film, but one extra - the hour long United 93: The Families and The Film -deserves special mention since it serves as a powerful documentary in its own right. The stories of those passengers we've seen in the main feature, albeit briefly and without any real identification, get fleshed out as we meet the families of those who were killed - those people who in the real world were the recipients of those 'farewell' phone calls we have seen depicted earlier in the film. It's an incredibly moving documentary, albeit one that will have you fighting back the tears in a way the main feature didn't because the real damage and sense of loss of those left behind is still very real and very raw. Actors who meet the different families are greeted as if they were the dead passengers brought back to life, and break down in tears at the emotion on display and the responsibility they feel for the part they are playing. It's an extra that doesn't distract from the main feature in any way, but illuminates and puts a new perspective on it.

The only other extra is a commentary from the director. To be honest, it's a rather dull affair. The director speaks slowly and with a sense of reverence, clearly trying to maintain the right air of sincerity and without giving any offence to friends and family of those involved in the tragedy. Whilst there are some interesting observations about the approach taken when making the film, for the most part Greengrass opts for the option of 'stating the bleeding obvious' with regard to what's happening on screen to fill out what would otherise be long silences.

United 93 is probably not a 'must have' purchase, but it is a 'must see' rental. And if this doesn't get a nod come oscar time there's no justice in the world. United 93 is a remarkable film, and it's not hard to see why the families of those killed on that fateful day on the 11th September, whilst initially sceptical, have wholeheartedly endorsed the film. Highly recommended!

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

X-Men: The Last Stand is the third film in the X-Men franchise - and the first that I didn't bother going to the cinema to see. The troubled production shoot, caused initally by original director Brian Singer's decision to move on to make Superman Returns instead, quickly followed by the 'leaving for personal reasons' departure of replacement director Matthew Vaughn was one reason. Final director Brett Ratner (I'm not a fan!) was another. Add in the over-the-top 'tentpole' marketing and hype which has the likes of Empire, SFX et al. turning a 'featured article' into a free 30-age advertorial, and there was little to seemingly appeal to this viewer.

Catching up with the film on DVD (in stores tomorrow) I think I made the right choice, although the movie is by no means the disaster it looked like it was going to be. All things considered it's a pretty good popcorn flick.

That beind said, the film is the weakest of the three released so far. For me the script doesn't really keep to a consistent path, too often taking little side turns that don't really add to the story and seem to be there just to keep the overly-vocal comic book fanbase on the internet happy. Too many characters don't have any real purpose, whilst others are suddenly given ridiculously prominent roles. Halle Berry goes from having nothing to say or do in the first two movies, to.. erm, well actually pretty much the same situation in this third movie, except that this time around she has about 20 times the screen time and number of lines to say that she's had in the past!

Newcomer to the franchise, Kelsey Grammer (best known as Frasier from the comedy TV series of the same name), thankfully gets a fair crack of the whip, which is warranted by his role in the story as The Beast, but the desire to keep the minor subplots that were established in previous films moving forward as well as adding three new charactes all prove too much for the rather short 90-odd minute running time. Did we really need the new 'Angel' character, the 'Iceman and Rogue with new girl Kittie Pryde' storyline, the 'Iceman vs Pyro' storyline, the ongoing 'Wolverine vs Cyclops' storyline as well as the main story (a 'cure' for mutants arrives at the same time as the new powers of former X-(wo)Man Jean Grey)? The net result is that the film always has something interesting happening, but the attention seems to wander all over the place.This is a problem the first two films didn't have.

The dialogue and story-telling smack, to this viewer, of too many late-night, last-minute rewrites, with all the plot inconsistencies that inevitably result. Take the 'big bad' Magneto villain (played by Ian McKellen) as an example - the writers can't decide whether to play him as an honourable, if misguided, man, or as callous, selfish pantomime villain. In one scene he chastises one of the villains for making a wisecrack about his arch-nemesis Professor Xavier, pointing out that Xavier is a great man who should be honoured. Then a few scenes later when his most loyal, long-time supporter (and possibly his mistress) takes a hit intended for him that turns her from mutant to mere mortal, he dismisses her as swiftly as one would dismiss a fly. There's no character consistency here (nor in Ian McKellen's accent which switches between English and American for no apparent reason, sometimes even mid-sentence)!

The acting is pretty much of the 'No acting required' variety, although Hugh Jackman, given less to do here than in previous films, manages to impress in his role as Wolverine. Patrick Stewart repeats a good performance from previous films, albeit one where he's just playing himself (this is NOT the Professor Xavier I remember from the comic books!). Quite what the first director, Matthew Vaughn thought he was doing in casting Vinnie Jones as The Juggernaut is beyond me. OK, so it's a 'no acting required' role, but even so, with so many out-of-work actors around at the moment, hiring an ex-footballer with the acting chutzpah of a plank of wood seems a rather insensitive move.

Fortunately the cinematography and special effects (aside from an appallingly bad 'Xavier and Magneto as younger men' introductory scene which looks more like a not very good XBox game than a 'real life' movie) lift the film out of its poor script, and whilst there's little originality here (the much-touted 'finale' scene on the San Francisco bridge is shockingly short and comes across as an inferior version of the bridge scene in The Fantastic Four) there is a LOT of special effects work on show. It's hard to remember a movie that had so much eye candy going on throughout its entire playing time. It's the small attention to detail in even the background shots in some 'blink and you miss them' moments that have presumably endeared the film to its intended audience and resulted in the multiple viewings and leveraged box office takings.

Is it the last movie in the franchise, as initially indicated? Somehow I doubt it, and fans who think there is a nice tidy ending to the franchise with this film should make sure they watch to the end of the credits where an extra scene gives a very nice get-out for the film-makers!

It ain't clever, but X-Men: The Last Stand is a dumb, mindless, but fun popcorn movie that the whole family can enjoy and which kids will no doubt be happy to play repeatedly.

The 2-disk DVD set looked to be a strong release for a successful 'big' film that's this recent. After all, the temptation might have been to 'double dip' with a vanilla release first, and the 'special edition' a few months later. Unfortunately it quickly becomes clear that this DVD set has been rushed together and corners cut right, left and centre.The shimmering picture quality on the main trilogy documentary is appalling, as is the navigation system for the featurette and the main film. On my player the individual scenes selection indexes didn't work at all, constantly refreshing the same menu whenever a specific chapter index was selected. And it's not just the execution that's rushed: delve beyond the sheer quantity of advertised number of extra's and it's hard to find much that has any real quality or depth to it.

Disk 1 has two commentaries, which I didn't have time to listen to (work is still pretty manic at the moment!) but allegedly include a 'dull but fact-filled' one from the producers and a 'fun but content-free' one from the director and a couple of associates. The first disk also features Deleted Scenes turn out to be a disappointing set of incredibly short alternative takes where the titles introducing them more often than not last longer than the scenes.

Disk 2 kicks off with an excellent 40 minute Brett Ratner's Diary, which nicely edits down 'home movie' footage made during the entirety of the film shoot, covering the production from the first day's shoot to the premiere at Cannes, in a way that is exciting without giving the lie to the fact that most of the time spent on a film set is just plain boring and very unglamorous. Ratner comes across very well as the natural leader who inspires his troops on a difficult shoot, but there's nothing remotely controversial here unless you count James Marsden's minor strop to camera about the film suffering from too many ego's and minor comment about how someone now thinks she's the star of the movie (Halle or Famke? It's hard to guess - both appear to be rather up themselves!)

X-Men: Evolution of a Trilogy is 43 minutes of tired marketing guff covering all three movies, one at a time in sequence, and is incredibly pointless. This is stuff from promotional tours, intended to 'sell' the films just before their initial theatrical release, with the likes of McKellen and Stewart telling us who each character is and what their powers are - as if anybody who's seen the film doesn't already know. To add insult to injury although the picture is widescreen anamorphic the picture quality is pretty dreadful shimmering and phasing all over the place, which is inexcusable on as high profile a release as this!

X3: The Excitement Continues is, unfortunately, more of the same, effectively an alternative version of the final third of the 'Evolution of a Trilogy' that precedes it. The featurette X-Men Up Close is a navigation nightmare allowing you to read the history of each of the character (ie just stuff they could advertise on the sleeve to make it look like there's a lot of stuff here) and there's a short featurette on the San Francisco bridge scene. Curiously the most interesting stuff is tucked away in a section labelled Vignettes.

At the asking price it might seem churlish to criticise this two-disk release, but the extra's really aren't as voluminous as the packaging implies. That being said, kids will love the package and as such it's a 'purchase' rather than a 'rental' recommendation, albeit a rather grudging one, given the fundamental flaws in the package that appear to be down to a distinct lack of any kind of quality control in the haste with which the film has been rushed onto DVD, presumably to avoid getting lost in the deluge that's about to hit us in the lead-in to the Christmas rush.