I had no idea...

As a follow up to my edit to my State of Play review below concerning Brennan Brown, a post on his IMDb page led me to the startling discovery that he is in fact the Wicked Witch in the latest Orange Wednesdays cinema ad. I've seen this ad on numerous occasions and at no point did it even occur to me that it wasn't a woman, let alone "Mr. Dresdan". Now that I do know, of course, it's actually really obvious. Take a look:

If I ever see State of Play again I'll be laughing even harder now...

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State of Play

Based on the acclaimed BBC television series, State of Play is a complex political thriller about a newspaper journalist (Russell Crowe) investigating the death of a young woman working on the staff of a Washingtson congressman (Ben Affleck), who also happens to be an old college friend. Soon it becomes clear that her death was not simply an accident, especially with shady corporations and mysterious hitmen in the mix...

While State of Play is an enjoyable, well-made film with good performances from a strong cast, it ultimately suffers in comparison to the far superior television series. This is to be expected considering that the series managed to fill 6 hours with a dense, multi-layered story, whereas the film only lasts a third of that time. It actually turned out to be a much more faithful adaptation than I would have expected (almost every scene of the movie was derived in some way from the original series), but the fact is that it all felt a bit rushed, and generally lacking in subtlety. What suffers most are the relationships between the characters - in particular I never got any sense that Affleck's and Crowe's characters could ever have been long-term friends, unlike John Simm and David Morrissey in the TV show. I did think that the (non-sexual) chemistry between Crowe and Rachel McAdams as a young reporter was quite successful though.

Overall I did enjoy the film, but there was never anything particularly remarkable about it. Had I not seen the BBC series I may have had a better opinion of it, but even then I suspect that it's not a film I'd go out of my way to see again anytime soon.

VERDICT: It holds your interest but doesn't do much more than that. Watch the TV series.

IMDb

EDIT: Something that I just remembered that's worth mentioning - the presence of Brennan Brown, AKA "the guy from the Orange mobile cinema ads", rendered all of his scenes unintentionally hilarious. I doubt there's a single UK cinema audience in the UK that won't start laughing when he turns up...

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Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in)

Set in Stockholm in 1981, Let The Right One In tells the story of Oskar, a lonely 12-year old boy suffering at the hands of a group of school bullies. When a mysterious girl of his age moves in to the apartment next door, he almost immediately falls in love with her. The only problem is, this particular girl happens to be a vampire who is leaving a trail of bloody corpses around town...

I should probably preface this review by pointing out that horror isn't exactly my favourite film genre and I tend to find vampire films especially tiresome. Nevertheless, Let The Right One In has such an abundance of 5-star reviews and proclamations of "Film Of The Year" that I was sufficiently intrigued. Sadly, it would seem that the film has become a victim of its own hype. I never felt particularly compelled by the story, although I did appreciate the slightly different approach of the vampire in fact being a lonely little girl. At no point did I consider the movie to be even remotely scary or disturbing, and to be honest it wasn't even creepy (well, perhaps the little blond kid playing Oskar...). Even the much-discussed finale of the film was underwhelming - technically impressive and intriguingly shot, perhaps, but in all honestly I actually found it vaguely amusing, which I'm sure wasn't the filmmakers' intention. 

Casting my eye over the numerous critical raves for the film, I can't help but wonder what I missed here. My suspicion is that these reviews were all written with no preconceptions of the film's quality, and as such it turned out to be a genuine surprise to most critics. Unfortunately, so many months later I can't help but the feel that the weight of expectation is now too much for Let The Right One In to bear.

VERDICT: For what it is it's quite good, but ultimately it fails to live up to the critical hype.

IMDb

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I want one

(Click the picture to go to the Philips website)

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TV Review: Dollhouse

It's about time I did something different for a change so this time around I'm going to be reviewing a TV show, not a film. The show in question is Dollhouse, the new sci-fi show airing on the US Fox network. I have in fact been planning to review this for several weeks now, but I ended up delaying things for reasons I'll touch on later. 

Dollhouse is the latest show from Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and most importantly Firefly, the utterly genius cowboys-in-space show that was unfairly cancelled before being resurrected as the feature film Serenity... which then bombed. Ahem. The titular dollhouse is in fact a sinister secret organisation that deals in "programmable people", or "dolls" - hired out to millionaires, crime lords or governments to tackle all manner of engagements, from bank robberies to the perfect date. Needless to say, there is more going on that meets the eye...

Before I go on, it's worth pointing out a few interesting things about Dollhouse:

• It's a Joss Whedon-created sci-fi show airing on the Fox network... just like Firefly.
• It's been placed in the Friday-night death slot... just like Firefly.
• The original pilot episode was ditched in favour of using the second episode as the premiere... just like Firefly.
• The viewing figures have been poor... just like Firefly.

Noticing a trend? Things aren't exactly looking good for Dollhouse right now - Firefly was cancelled after 14 episodes and although Fox have guaranteed that all 13 episodes of Dollhouse will be shown, I wouldn't put money on there being a second season...

But is it actually any good? The answer to that is, overall, yes. But with some qualifications. I can't help but feel that the show has so far been squandering its obvious potential to be truly great. Take for instance the fact that a crucial plot element was not properly established until the 6th episode of the show (I delayed my review as I had heard in advance that this episode would be a "game-changer") - while it did indeed put a significant new spin on the proceedings, the fact is that it was the kind of development that would have made more sense being set up much earlier on, i.e. in the first couple of episodes. Instead the show wastes time with 3 or 4 "mission of the week" episodes that do little to further the plot and are in fact really quite dull. A couple of those episodes are actually very poor and probably will not have helped Dollhouse to build its fanbase. And it has to be said that the two episodes since seem to have temporaily abandoned the latest plot twist in favour of tangential stand-alone stories.

A more fundamental problem with the show is its central concept - the main characters don't actually have any personalities because they are playing different people every week before being wiped again, making it difficult to feel any sense of attachment to them. Even more frustrating is that when we do start to discover more about the back story of the central character, Echo (Eliza Dushku), it actually turns out to be not all that interesting. It has to be said that some of the blame must be laid on Dushku who doesn't seem to have the range to play radically different characters every episode, somewhat threatening the plausibility of the show.

On the positive side, the quality has been steadily improving, the supporting cast is generally very good, the production values are high and later episodes have struck a good balance between the serious drama and Whedon's trademark wry humour. Supposedly the remaining 5 episodes will be taking the show in all kinds of unexpected directions - I just hope that it's enough to warrant a second season, from both the network's perspective and mine.

VERDICT: It's not yet must-see TV but it could be.

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Duplicity

Julia Roberts is an ex-CIA agent and Clive Owen is an ex-MI6 agent who together hatch a plot to make millions by playing both sides of a huge corporate espionage battle between two rival pharmeceutical companies. The only problem is, they can never seem to trust each other either...

Duplicity is the second film from writer-director Tony Gilroy, following on from his Oscar-nominated Michael Clayton. Whereas Clayton was a dark, sombre film, this is almost the complete opposite, a light-hearted comedy thriller that zips along at a nice pace while retaining much of the visual style of Gilroy's first film. It is however, perhaps a bit too lightweight and ultimately just a bit silly. Overall though it is a refreshing change and it's nice to see the director branching out early on in his career.

I was certainly entertained throughout and there's more than a few laughs to be had here. Throw in small supporting roles from Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti in scenery-chewing mode as the two opposing CEOs and you have a recipe for a good old-fashioned bit of fun. As you would expect from a film involving ex-spies, industrial espionage and con jobs, there are twists and turns applenty, but I will admit that the ending of the film was genuinely unexpected and well executed, for which I must commend it.

VERDICT: Good fun. Don't expect anything more.

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