Spectre

For all of the things that it did well, 'Skyfall' remains, for me, an awkward movie. Certainly an awkward Bond movie. On the one hand, it strives to be resolutely unBondian, documenting its protagonist's psychological depletion and building towards a low-key finale (by the standards of the franchise, anyway) in which 007's past is effectively obliterated; yet on the other, it shamelessly panders to the fan-boys (the Aston Martin with modifications; M's old office). 'Skyfall' stretches an act of transition across two plus hours, maneouvring Daniel Craig's Bond from the origin story and flawed coda of 'Casino Royale' and 'Quantum of Solace' respectively to a point of reference recognisable from the early Connery to mid-period Moore years.
 
'Spectre' was mouth-watering in its potential: a cold, ruthless Bond going head to head with a re-imagined Blofeld, the antagonist back after a decades-long rights wrangle.

Then the reviews started coming in and they were lukewarm; some outright hostile. With expectations at rock-bottom, I hauled myself off to my local multiplex and caught a screening the day before its run ended. Maybe it was the low expectations that did it, maybe it's because I never quite embraced 'Skyfall' the way everybody else seemed to, but I enjoyed 'Spectre' a lot.

There are, I should add with some degree of haste, caveats. First and foremost, 'Spectre' suffers from a two-and-a-half hour running time not remotely bolstered by anything resembling a plot. "Bond looks into some things that pissed him off from the earlier movies" is about as sophisticated as things get narratively. Basically, Bond receives a posthumously instruction from Judi Dench's M to take out an entirely disposable bad guy, after which he joins a series of heavily telegraphed dots, finally ending up at a secret base owned and operated by our old mate Ernst Stavro. Said dots serve as a tying up of loose ends from the preceding three movies (Quantum, in turns out, is little more than a sub-contractor to Spectre), but whereas those movies each have something at stake, the only thing 007 seems to be racing against the clock to prevent is the new M (Ralph Fiennes) being made redundant.

In a subplot that has more nuance and credibility than the main action, an MI5/MI6 merger is on the cards and politically-savvy hatchet man Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott) is hellbent on shutting down the Double-O programme while brokering an information-sharing agreement between security services on a global level. There was a moment in the film where I really hoped that Christoph-Waltz-as-villain was merely a feint and Scott would be revealed as Blofeld, nicely exploiting his already iconic turn as Moriarty in 'Sherlock'. But no. Waltz plays Hans Oberhauser, a figure from Bond's past who fakes his own death and re-invents himself. Blofeld's his mother's name. Yes, the revelation really is that ho-hum.

On the plus side, however, the pre-credits sequence is Craig's best yet (which is saying something after the fantastic set piece that kicked off 'Skyfall'). Even its immediate supplanting by Sam Smith's truly fucking horrible theme song and a title design that is bizarre to the point of hallucinatory can't detract from how good it is. Even if it does homage 'For Your Eyes Only' a little too slavishly. The rest of the action more or less maintains the quality: a car chase, a plane/jeep chase (one of the film's best self-contained sequences), a speedboat/helicopter chase, a shedload of explosions and an extended bout of hand-to-hand combat in the narrow confines of a train. Even if it does homage 'From Russia With Love' a little too slavishly.

In fact, let's just call it: 'Spectre' is the most self-reflexive Bond movie since 'Die Another Day' wallowed in the non-hilarity of its parade of in-jokes. Granted, director Sam Mendes and scripters John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth attempt to work them cohesively into the narrative, but it doesn't take long for deja vu to set in. In addition to the above cited examples, we have the mountaintop clinic from 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', lifestyle porn hospitality as a prelude to torture from 'Dr No', and the collapsing building/trapped heroine finale from 'Casino Royale'.

Speaking of the heroine, let's drag this review back on course and notch up another high point for 'Spectre'. All hail Lea Seydoux, the most capable Bond girl and character-in-her-own-right since Diana Rigg provided the franchise’s apex in this regard in 'OHMSS'. And also the most unlikely. Seydoux plays Madeleine Swann (a clunky but more-or-less thematically valid nod to Proust) – Mr White (Jesper Christensen)'s daughter. Not much further down the cast list, but with criminally less screen time, Monica Bellucci provides Bond with the frisson of a dalliance with a woman who isn't young enough to be his daughter; although she's little more than a plot device to take Bond one step closer to Spectre and Blofeld, she achieves an edgy chemistry with Craig that works to the film's benefit.

There's also a nice vibe going on between M, Q (Ben Wishaw), and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris). Mendes has great fun throwing them together for a little fieldwork during the extended (perhaps overly extended) finale.

And here I find myself unable to escape the defining tone of this review: everything I liked about 'Spectre', every aspect of it I thoroughly enjoyed, triggers a caveat. Believe me, I'd love to have pounded out 1,000 breathless words, adjectives cascading like spent cartridges from a semi-automatic weapon*, and sung its praises. But there's no avoiding the fact that 'Spectre' is flawed; not tonally as 'Skyfall' was, but structurally and narratively. Simply introducing Blofeld as a fully formed supervillain and giving him some kind of doomsday device would have helped matters no end. After pursuing the Bond origin story and its psychological fallout over three consecutive films, staging 'Spectre' as the Blofeld origin story seems equally transitional. Maybe next time we'll get a straight-down-the-line Bond movie.



*Yeah: I’m classy, me.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

The end credits of ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ prominently acknowledges the inspiration of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. I’ve never read anything by him, but if his work gave Wes Anderson – one of the most unique talents in contemporary cinema – the impetus to make something as witty, inventive and sublime as this, then I need to read everything by Zweig I can get my hands on.

Remember the sequence of nested flash-forwards that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s ‘The Lives of Others’ ends with? Anderson reverses the trick, opening in the present as a studious young woman visits a cemetery and stands before the monument to an author (the author is referred to solely as The Author). The monument is hung with hotel room keys. The woman begins reading from one of The Author’s books. Flashback to The Author as an older man (Tom Wilkinson) being interrupted by a potato-gun wielding grandchild as he delivers a monologue to camera on how he came to write his most famous work. Flashback to The Author as a younger man (Jude Law), sojourning at The Grand Budapest Hotel in 1968. The place is run-down, a shadow of its former self. In the bath-house, The Author meets the establishment’s reclusive owner Zero Moustafa (F Murray Abraham), who happens to me a fan of his work. Zero invites him to dinner and proceeds proceeds to tell him the story of how he came to own the hotel. Flashback to 1932 and … And here let us pause a moment.

Remember the opening sequence of Friðrik Þór Friðriksson’s ‘Cold Fever’ where the 1.66:1 aspect ratio for the crowded Toyko scenes is superceded by the full 2.35:1 widescreen as soon as the action shifts to the rugged vista of Iceland? Anderson reverses the trick, reducing the screen to a smaller aspect ratio as the 1932 story (i.e. the rest of the film) plays out. Contrapuntally, the screen floods with colour and the hotel in its glory days comes bursting to life. There are entire articles to be written on the production design, the look of the hotel and the matte painting landscape it occupies; personally, I’ll go for one of those “x-meets-y” cheats – imagine ‘The Shining’ made by Powell & Pressburger circa ‘Black Narcissus’ – and leave it at that.

The hotel is run to sycophantic perfection by its concierge, Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes, in what the history of cinema may well record as his finest performance), who becomes mentor to newly appointed lobby boy Zero (Tony Revolori, making his acting debut). Gustave insists on discretion, servility and good manners, and personifies every aspect of the old world civility that he holds dear … until something annoys him and he fires off a litany of curses as inventive as it is vehement. Gustave also offers services of a more intimate nature to a succession of eccentric and lonely dowagers. When one of these grande dames, Madame D (Tilda Swinton), dies under mysterious circumstances, she leaves Gustave a priceless painting, Boy With Apple, in her will.

It looks for a moment as if Gustave’s ship has come in. One problem, though: the will is subject to several hundred codicils and solicitor Deputy Kovacs (Jeff Goldblum) cautions that her extended family – headed up by the villainous Dmitri (Adrien Brody) and his psychopathic associate Jopling (Willem Dafoe) – should be patient while the legal formalities are completed. Decidedly unwelcome at the wake, Gustave and Zero expedite the matter of Gustave’s inheritance by simply making off with the painting. Meanwhile, the political face of Europe is changing, with troops are amassing at borders; Gustave, however, is able to rely on his connection with Henckels (Edward Norton), commanding officer of a battalion which later occupies the hotel. But even nepotism can’t be relied upon when he’s accused of Madame D’s murder. Arrested and imprisoned pending trial, Gustave falls in with a group of hardened criminals led by Ludwig (Harvey Keitel), who are planning a jailbreak. But some outside help is required. Gustave ropes in Zero and the young baker’s assistant, Agatha (Saoirse Ronan), with whom he has become smitten. Cue the best “cake with a file in” gag ever.

By the way, we’re merely half way through a 100 minute film at this point. To say ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ is rich in incident is like saying Metallica play a bit loud. And there is still plenty of incident to come: a break-out that plays like ‘Escape from Alcatraz’ re-orchestrated as a minuet; an “on the lam” sequence which sees Gustave call upon the services of The Order of the Crossed Keys (cue cameos from Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Bob Balaban, just in case, y’know, the cast wasn’t awesome enough already); a couple of pure horror movie moments courtesy of Jopling; and a subplot wrapped up in espionage thriller imagery regarding Gustave and Zero’s pursuit of Serge X (Mathieu Amalric), the one man who can clear his name.

In lesser hands, ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ would be a curate’s egg at best, and a tonally schizophrenic disaster at worst. Anderson’s control of the material, however, is so intuitive, so masterful, so sure-footed that there isn’t a wrong note in the whole thing. The balance is absolutely perfect: visual dexterity; knowingly ironic nods to diverse genres; intellectual wit tempered with beautifully timed moments of lowbrow humour; a propulsive screwball narrative of the type that even the Coen Brothers don’t trade in anymore; and (with the possible exception of Ronan’s slightly bewildered turn) a cast who are utterly in tune with their director, who “get” what he’s about and bring their A-game and then some.

Am I gushing? That’s because ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ is one of the finest films I’ve seen in quite some time. It’s Anderson’s masterpiece in a filmography that is uniformly excellent. It provides the perfect material for the fullest synthesis yet of his trademark visual style and aesthetic concerns. Its touches of melancholy are acutely judged and give just the right amount of weight to a film that otherwise puts the fun in fin de siécle.

BOND-A-THON: Skyfall

Let’s talk about the mythical “third Bond movie”. There is a school of thought which avers that the third outing is where an actor truly settles into the role, the formula really clicks together, God is in his Heaven and all is right with the world. This bunch of hogwash is based on the fact that Connery’s third Bond movie, ‘Goldfinger’, was when the producers really ramped up the whole “girls, guns, gadgets and globetrotting” ethos, while Moore’s – ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ – marked the point at which the filmmakers decided to stop trying to force him into the Connery mould and let him be more, well, Moore-ish. Oh yeah, and they went to town on the girls, guns, gadgets and globetrotting as well.

It’s a rule of thumb you can’t even apply to Lazenby and Dalton because, respectively, they only appeared as Bond once (mercifully) and twice (tragically). And let’s utterly confound the theory by pointing out that number three Brosnan was the god-awful ‘The World is Not Enough’.

Now let’s talk about a couple of things I’ve said on this blog previously apropos of ‘Skyfall’, the expectations attached to it, and its director Sam Mendes. Two years ago, in a rambling review of ‘Quantum of Solace’, I said this: “I came across an article on the net last week speculating whether Sam Mendes was on board to direct the next Bond film or just as a consultant and I groaned inwardly. Don't get me wrong: ‘American Beauty’ - belter; ‘Road to Perdition’ - handsomely mounted; ‘Jarhead’ - moments of brilliance. But nothing in the filmography that says "hey, you know what, that Sam Mendes bloke has got Bond movie director written all over him". I shook my head and thought, Great, first Marc Forster and now Sam Mendes ...”

Re-reviewing ‘QoS’ – which is only one letter removed from ‘PoS’ – nine days ago for this very blog-a-thon, I concluded: “ ‘Skyfall’ doesn’t have to do much more than be edited properly and have a coherent script to emerge as infinitely better than its predecessor. But, please EON, please please please, after a four year wait and with only a finite amount of times the now 44-year old Craig can reprise the role, please let ‘Skyfall’ be awesome.”

With regard to that first comment: please accept my apologies, Mr Mendes, you’ve turned in a damn good film. With regard to the second: although ‘Skyfall’ does a lot more than just deliver better editing and a coherent script, it stops just short of awesome. But damn good is more than acceptable, particularly after the shoddy and joyless place Marc Forster had taken the series.

‘Skyfall’ gets off to one hell of a bloody good start with Bond (Daniel Craig) in the middle of a mission that’s swiftly going tits up. He’s in Turkey where a generic bad guy has swiped a hard-drive containing the identities of a fuckton of deep cover MI6 agents. A car chase segues into a motorcycle chase (which pisses all over the motorcycle chase in ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’), in turn segueing into a fight on the top of a moving train (which pisses all over the fight on the top of a moving train in ‘Octopussy’), the whole thing concluding with a “wait a minute, this can’t happen in a Bond movie” moment akin to the ostensibly downbeat pre-credits payoffs in ‘You Only Live Twice’ and ‘Die Another Day’.

Following a pretty effective opening credits sequence (kudos to Adele for delivering the most appropriately Bondian theme song since Tina Turner kicked ass with ‘GoldenEye’), the focus shifts to M (Judi Dench). Notwithstanding that Dench’s M has come to redefine the character, the secret service hasn’t had an easy ride on her watch. Between the bad decisions motivated by personal feelings in ‘The World is Not Enough’, her mistrust of the 14-month imprisoned Bond in ‘Die Another Day’ and the revelation that a long-term member of her personal staff has been working for the enemy in ‘Quantum of Solace’, it’s kind of surprising M’s still has a job. In ‘Skyfall’, she faces some pretty harsh questions from the establishment with new intel chief Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) pressuring her to take voluntary retirement. Meanwhile, axe-grinding politician Clair Dowar (Helen McCrory) forces M to give evidence at an enquiry over a series of MI6 debacles culminating in a terrorist attack on HQ.

During all of this upheaval, Bond returns to duty albeit physically unfit, psychologically battered and borderline alcohol dependant. There’s a Metallica song that contains that lines “breaking your life / broken, beat and scarred / we die hard”. A pretty good description of the bad place Bond is in. And it doesn’t get any easier as he sets off in pursuit of Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a cyber-terrorist and an unwelcome blast from M’s past, who is orchestrating a campaign of revenge.

This is about all I can give away in terms of the narrative. ‘Skyfall’ is the most spoiler-laden Bond movie yet made, with a final act sucker punch that gives it real weight. It’ll probably be all over the internet within the next couple of days, but I’m honour bound to keep it under wraps. This also restricts me in terms of discussing the film on any deeper level.

Here’s what I will say: ‘Skyfall’ is at one and the same time a Bond film for the modern age (and manages to be so without the horribly misjudged Bourne-stylee crapola of its immediate predecessor) and the most regressive Bond movie in ages. Its modern age credentials take the form of a debate, which forms the backbone of the movie, of the purpose and relevance of MI6 – and therefore, by extension, of Bond himself – in an era where the geo-political map of the Cold War has long since been blurred and enemies of the state can literally be anywhere.

It’s no coincidence that, of all the Bond movies, ‘Skyfall’ spends the most time on home soil. Of the three major action sequences, one is chase/shoot-out plays out through London’s cavernous and sepulchral Underground system and then erupts into its crowded streets, while the denouement takes place in Scotland.

As to the regressive elements, most of them gel with overall aesthetic. Mendes finds a way to balance the fanboy imperative with his personal vision as a filmmaker. And with ‘Skyfall’ marking 50 years of Bond, he includes some nifty in-jokes to far greater effect than the horrible parade of references in ‘Die Another Day’. The Aston Martin DB is a case in point: brought quite literally out of cold storage and still boasting all the bells and whistles from ‘Goldfinger’, it’s a startling moment of discontinuity since Craig’s Bond won the thing at cards in ‘Casino Royale’ (which, in the current timeline, was essentially Bond #1) and yet its machine guns and ejector seat explicitly recall Connery’s third outing. (We’re back to the mythical Bondian rule of thirds again.)

Elsewhere, ostensible Bond girl Severine (Berenice Marlohe) is written in, bedded and written out even more perfunctorily than Gemma Arterton’s Agent Fields in ‘Quantum of Solace’. Bardem’s characterization of Silva sails very close to outright camp and, sad to say, a borderline homophobic scene reminiscent of the mincing Wynt and Kidd in ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ got the biggest laughs at the screening I attended. At least Silva isn’t out for world domination and presents a definite threat to 007, sparing us a return to the flamboyant but laughably ludicrous villains of the Moore era.

Q returns – kudos to Ben Wishaw for sweeping away all thoughts of John Cleese in the last couple of Brosnan movies – as does another staple of the franchise, while the baton is passed on in terms of … but that would be telling. In its concluding scenes, ‘Skyfall’ totally eradicates Bond’s past and joyfully re-establishes the expected tropes, a decision which seems almost contradictory. Indeed, there’s a puppy-doggish eagerness to evoke the Bonds of old in the very last scene that’s tonally at odds with the dark drama that’s occupied the preceding two and a quarter hours. There is, in other words, a sense of transition where I’d expected consolidation.

So, yes, perhaps the “third Bond movie” ethos holds true: just as ‘Goldfinger’ and ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ weren’t necessarily the best that Connery and Moore delivered but rather the clearest distillations of the formula, ditto ‘Skyfall’. Let’s hope that whatever comes next doesn’t relapse into the formulaic.

PERSONAL FAVES: The Constant Gardener

Posted to coincide with Fernando Meirelles’ 56th birthday


Reviewing ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ got me thinking about how well-served John le Carre has been in terms of adaptations. The seven-part TV adaptation of that novel, starring Alec Guinness, is one of the small screen’s finest achievements. It’s big screen counterpart is arguably a classic-in-waiting. Martin Ritt’s ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ is one of the bleakest, most compelling cinematic renderings of the spy story, with a blistering performance from Richard Burton – one of his best.

Even the second tier of le Carre adaptations – Fred Schepisi’s ‘The Russia House’, George Roy Hill’s ‘The Little Drummer Girl’, John Boorman’s ‘The Tailor of Panama’ – are perfectly accomplished and entertaining films. There’s no reason to suspect that Anton Corbijn’s ‘A Most Wanted Man’ – currently in pre-production – will be anything less than a class act.

But above all of these – albeit only by a very short head where ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ and ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ are concerned – is Fernando Meirelles’ ‘The Constant Gardener’, a riveting thriller, a humanitarian manifesto and a j’accuse against corporate greed and political chicanery. A beautiful and emotionally devastating work of cinema.


An opening scene peppered with lacunae gives us a deserted stretch of African coastal road, an overturned vehicle, men piling out of a jeep. The next scene has junior diplomat Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) learning of the death of his wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz) from his seemingly avuncular superior Sandy Woodrow (Danny Huston). Tessa was quite the humanitarian – aid worker, activist; the kind of person it would be easily to mislabel a bleeding heart liberal except that the woman had the tenacity of a particularly stubborn bulldog. As well as an unfortunate tendency to rub Justin’s British High Commission colleagues up the wrong way.

The nature of how this extremely unlikely couple got together is the subject of an extended flashback. And as unlikely as their romance is, Meirelles’ portrayal of it is natural, convincing, unforced. It helps, of course, that Fiennes and Weisz – two actors who have never given a bad performance – are on absolute top form here. Weisz’s Academy Award was one of those stand-up-and-applaud moments of Oscar getting it right.


With the murder mystery element in place, and genuine emotionalism underpinning it, Meirelles begins to unravel – unhurriedly but with a palpable sense of tension – a complex web of deceit, secrecy, underhandedness and naïve political allegiance. In one of the most telling moments, a morally compromised but jingoistically indefatigable politico weighs the unholy alliance between government and pharmaceutical corporation in terms of 1,500 British jobs. Murder, conspiracy, malpractice and the violation of a depressed country’s already beleaguered human rights. But 1,500 British jobs, so what ho chaps?

Le Carre’s novel – his best, for my money – is that rarest of beasts: a literary thriller that powers through its narrative with balls-out ferocity; and an incredibly elegant piece of writing that nonetheless seethes with righteous outrage. And so it should. From the existential despair of Alex Leamas in ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ to the moment of almost unwitting complicity on which his latest novel ‘Our Kind of Traitor’ turns, John le Carre has, throughout his career, transcended the inherent cynicism of the espionage drama and grappled with the thorny moral conundrums at the heart of his characters’ tarnished lives.


If, however, le Carre approaches the material from the perspective of an Englishman sick of the snobbery and the bullshit and the old school tie network and all the sneaky nasty little things that are done by the establishment supposedly for the good of all, then Meirelles brings to the table the authenticity and immediacy of his breakthrough film, the magnificent ‘City of God’. With these two movies – ‘The Constant Gardener’ was his follow-up – Meirelles took shaky-cam to an art-form. The African scenes are vibrant, alive, as gorgeous as they are harrowing. Elsewhere, though, he knows when to step back from the action, when to frame his actors in long-shot. When to hold a shot and just let it play out, an all too rare capacity in contemporary filmmaking. Simply put, every frame of ‘The Constant Gardener’ contributes to its whole.

Two other things to mention: the film was produced by Simon Channing Williams, who died two years; le Carre’s latest novel is dedicated in memoriam. Whilst filming on location in Nairobi, the cast and crew were so appalled at the levels of poverty that they established The Constant Gardener Trust (go here and be amazed at what the Trust has achieved), of which le Carre, Meirelles, Weisz and Fiennes are patrons.

One great work of literature; one great work of cinema; one awe-inspiring humanitarian organisation. That’s a pretty good batting average.

Nicht echt Deutsch: The Reader and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

With ‘The Reader’ up for just about everything Oscar-wise apart from Best Tea-Boy, I feel the need to pull the plug, burst the bubble, spit on the icon and have a word with the sacred cow about McDonald’s.

‘The Reader’ isn’t that good a film. It is, at best, deeply average. The cast is heavyweight (Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Bruno Ganz, Lena Olin), the cinematography is by two of the best practitioners of the art currently working (Chris Menges and Roger Deakins), the script is courtesy of David Hare and Bernhard Schlink’s source novel a breakout success beyond its original German-language publication, and yet the whole thing never quite adds up to the sum of its parts. As a viewing experience, it’s curiously antiseptic.

I could almost feel sorry for director Stephen Daldry – if, that is, I wasn’t so sure that he’s going to clean up on the 22nd – because the man genuinely seems to want to make profound and thought-provoking films. There was the inexplicably popular ‘Billy Elliott’, which aimed for a triumph-of-the-spirit aesthetic set against the potent backdrop of the miners’ strike. There was ‘The Hours’, with another heavyweight cast and ‘literary’ source novel. But the former was bogged down with clichés – from the gay best friend to the gruff no-son-of-mine father who, awww bless, comes through for the lad at the end – and made ‘Brassed Off’ look like cinema vérité; while the latter was just plain bogged down.

Next up, Daldry is helming an adaptation of Michael Chabon’s ‘The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay’ and I could weep into my beer that such a wonderful and iconoclastic novel has fallen into his hands. Chabon’s prose deserves a Guillermo del Toro, a Christopher Nolan, a Darren Aronofsky. Not a Stephen Daldry.

I started this blog to rave about the films I love, so wasting words on ‘The Reader’ runs contrary to the remit. Besides, there’s a blandness, a tiredness to it that inspires a similar malaise in yours truly. One of my favourite bloggers on film, Tim at Antagony & Ecstacy, provided an eloquent review of some 1,200 words, and yet summed it up perfectly in his pullquote: “What if they threw a Nazi porno and nobody came?”

Similarly, you could throw at ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ the question “What if they told a Nazi bedtime story and somebody died?” Okay, I’ll admit it: that was snide. I’m a little more inclined to be charitable to ‘TBITSP’ – it’s adapted from a children’s novel and I’ll make the assumption that director Mark Herman has pitched the film at an audience of similar age range. Not that I saw many children in the audience when I went to see it. They were probably in one of Cineworld’s thirteen other screens, pledging allegiance to Pixar, Dreamworks or Disney. I tip my hat to them.

The problems with ‘TBITSP’ are several. Like ‘The Reader’, it has a director who wants to be serious and challenging but just doesn’t have what it takes to engage with the material. His previous outings, the aforementioned ‘Brassed Off’ and the terminally confused ‘Little Voice’ (is it a comedy? is it a drama? is it meant to be realistic? is it meant to be theatrical? does Brenda Blethyn have to screech all the time?), are not the work of a director ready to tackle the Holocaust.

Never mind if you’re doing it from a child’s point of view, if you’re making a film about the Holocaust then you’re making a film about the Holocaust. That carries as serious a responsibility as any subject a film-maker can pick. A responsibility, first and foremost, to historical accuracy. And yes, John Boyne’s novel is narrated in a deliberately naïve ‘voice’, the better to show the scales falling from his young protagonist’s eyes as he realises the lies his high-ranking SS officer father has told about “Outwith” (his mis-heard name for Auschwitz) are just that – lies – but a novel is a construct of words. Film is visual. So if you’re showing a concentration camp through the eyes of a child, then you’re still showing a concentration camp.

This is where the disconnect occurs in Herman’s film. All of the key scenes between the SS officer’s son and the young Jewish boy, an expanse of barbed wire separating them, take place in some forgotten corner of the camp where no guards patrol, no-one notices anything from the watchtowers, the boy can skive off work detail for long periods at a time and the other inmates in his work gang are unsupervised by guards.

And yet ‘TBITSP’ at least tries to do something, I think. More so than ‘The Reader’, which just says look at me, I’m a profound and important film about a thorny subject, I’d like to thank God, the Academy, my agent … ‘TBITSP’ at least tries to use its child protagonists to make accessible (if that’s the right word) to a younger audience a subject they probably haven’t encountered before and likely have no foreknowledge of. Also it boasts some good performances, most notably from Vera Farmiga – her work here is the equal of anything by this year’s quintet of Best Actress nominees.

Ultimately, though, in the current climate of German cinema demonstrating the fearlessness to tackle its own difficult history, ‘The Reader’ and ‘TBITSP’ suffer from being English-language productions with British directors and chiefly British casts. Had they been made by German directors, I have no doubt that the results would have been a lot more interesting.

PERSONAL FAVES: Wallace & Gromit in Curse of the Were-Rabbit

A second viewing might alter my opinion, but I have to admit to a slight feeling of disappointment at Nick Park’s latest Wallace & Gromit animation, ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’, screened on BBC1 on Christmas Day. An inspired title, but for the first time in their 19-year partnership, encompassing four shorts and one feature-length film, it seemed like Wallace & Gromit by-the-numbers.

Was it really 1989 that the incomparable duo – cheese-loving, mild-mannered eccentric inventor Wallace (voiced by ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ stalwart Peter Sallis) and his faithful, if much put-upon, pooch Gromit (voiced by no-one; a world of emotion is contained in the movement of his eyes) – were introduced in the offbeat ‘A Grand Day Out’? According to IMDb it was, and boy does that make me feel old!

It was 1993’s ‘The Wrong Trousers’, boasting superior production values, that fully realised Park’s 1950’s-tinged vision: the small-town Northern locale (not too dissimilar from the Holmfirth of ‘Summer Wine’); the genre-based storyline (the vaguely sci-fi musings of ‘A Grand Day Out’ here replaced by a heist caper); and a frenetic commitment to high-speed visual inventiveness (Gromit and the penguin’s lunatic and hilarious model railway chase).

Two years later came ‘A Close Shave’, arguably the best of the short films. Another crime plot (sheep rustling); Gromit set up to take the rap (a priceless in-joke has the incarcerated canine sitting morosely in his cell reading ‘Crime and Punishment’ by Fido Dogstoyevsky!); Wallace’s inventions taking on a ‘Thunderbirds’-style level of intricacy. Marvellous stuff.

But, for me at least, the high point was their triumphant transition to the big screen in 2005 with ‘Curse of the Were-Rabbit’, co-directed by Park and Steve Box. The narrative, entirely in keeping with Park’s nostalgic ’50s aesthetic, conjures up a plethora of cheesy horror genre B-movies.

Starting as it means to go on with deliberately lurid lettering for the title credit and ominous music, ‘C of the W-R’ sees the daring duo running a vegetable security firm called Anti-Pesto. Business is good and their clients sleep soundly knowing that their prize cucumbers and carrots and cauliflowers are being protected from a village-wide rabbit infestation. And with Lady Tottington’s Annual Vegetable Competition imminent, Wallace & Gromit’s very reputation is at stake should anything go wrong and the goods get gnawed or nibbled.

Something, of course, goes wrong. Summoned to Tottington Hall to rid the grounds of rapacious rabbits (note to self: enough with the alliteration already!), Wallace hits it off with Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter) who is particularly taken with his humane treatment of the captured bunnies: he houses them in the cellar of chez Wallace and feeds them while he puts the finishing touches to his mind-control device. In arguably the most imaginative send-up of ‘Frankenstein’ since Mel Brooks’ legendary spoof, Wallace hooks himself up to the machine, intent on brainwashing the rabbits into an aversion to all vegetables. More ominous music; flashes of lightning. The experiment goes horribly wrong. Wallace creates a monster.

A huge, bounding, almost criminally cute monster.

With said were-rabbit on the rampage, allotments attacked, vegetables violated and Anti-Pesto’s reputation ruined (seriously: enough with the alliteration, Neil!), Lady Tottington’s roundly rejected but pitifully persistent smug suitor Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes) proffers the services of himself, his hunting rifle, and his borderline psychotic bulldog. And he doesn’t care if Wallace & Gromit get in the way …

‘Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ spends a good half of its 90-minute running time setting out its stall: establishing characters, situations, locations, narrative and internal dynamics. Then Box and Park unleash a series of frenetic set-pieces culminating in a showdown at the vegetable competition which homages ‘Jaws’, ‘King Kong’ and – in the film’s standout mise-en-scene where Gromit and Quartermaine’s dog battle it out in model aeroplanes – ‘The Blue Max’.

The jokes come think and fast: “I think it’s a case of arson,” Peter Kay’s P.C. Mackintosh deliberates; “Arson?” someone echoes; “Aye, someone’s been arsin’ around.” There’s a “beware the moon” gag that’s worth the price of the DVD alone. Visual puns are everywhere, from Gromit’s graduation photograph (he went to Dogwart’s!) to a greenhouse being locked and alarmed by a keyfob as if it were a car.

There is something happening – some sly joke, or unexpected detail in the background – in every frame of ‘Curse of the Were-Rabbit’. I’ve seen it now, I think, half a dozen times and I’m still spotting things anew. It’s Wallace & Gromit at their finest and earned Park perhaps the most well-deserved Oscar the Academy has yet bestowed.

In Bruges

"Two manky hookers and a racist midget. I'm outta here," opines Ken (Brendan Gleeson). "I'm coming with you," his friend and fellow hitman Ray (Colin Farrell) replies mournfully, their evening's misadventures yet another blow to Ray's already jaded opinion of Bruges.

It's to this history-heavy and nightlife-light Belgian town that Ken and Ray have been sent by their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) after a bungled job. Ray, all bored sighs and mumbled disenchantment, is like a moody teenager. "If I'd grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me," he grumbles upon arrival, having barely seen anything of the place, "but I didn't, so it doesn't." He only brightens up when they come across a film crew shooting a pretentious dream sequence for an art-house movie. "They're filming midgets!" he exclaims delightedly, rushing off to watch.

Said midget, Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), prefers the epithet dwarf. Ray, however, isn't above demeaningly calling him Shorty when his coke-addled rant turns to the race question. Not that Ray isn't a walking xenophobe himself. He heaps abuse on Belgium in general and Bruges in particular, gleefully gets into a fight with an American (he twats the fellow with an almost cheery "that's for John Lennon, you fucking Yank cunt") and is visibly deflated when he discovers later that his antagonist is actually Canadian.

Or how about this exchange between Ken and Jimmy:

Ken: Are you American?
Jimmy: Yes, but please don't hold it against me.
Ken: I won't. Just try not say anything too loud or crass.

Martin McDonagh's debut film 'In Bruges' is essentially a two-hander for its first half, a post-Tarantino 'Odd Couple' with its contract killer heroes (I use the word 'heroes' loosely) bonding, bickering and bantering against a picture postcard backdrop, while Jimmy and on-set drug pusher Chloe (Clemence Poesy) weave in and out of their interactions. And it's very funny. McDonagh's script zings with hilarious and quotable lines, even if you wouldn't drop any of them in front of your mother. I can't remember a film since 'Sexy Beast' with so many instances of the 'c'-word.

Take the following conversation, the film having veered into darker territory with revelations about the nature of the bungled job and Harry's arrival in Bruges to take matters in hand. Ken stands up to his boss and offers him a few home truths:

Ken: Let's face it, Harry - you're a cunt. You've always been a cunt. The only thing that's gonna change is that you'll become an even bigger cunt. Maybe have some more cunt kids.
Harry: You retract that bit about my cunt fucking kids.
Ken: I retract that bit about your cunt fucking kids.
Harry: Insulting my fucking kids! That's going overboard, mate.
Ken: I retracted it, didn't I?

The 'Sexy Beast' comparison is apt, not just for the language but in the usually suave Fiennes's full-throttle performance as a dangerous mob boss, a la Ben Kingsley's in Jonathan Glazer's film. But whereas 'Sexy Beast' lost the plot after a rivetting first half, 'In Bruges' doesn't put a foot wrong, ramping up the tension and sense of danger once Harry puts in an appearance, but without sacrificing the surreal humour or losing sight of its characters' humanity.

This last is the ace up McDonagh's sleeve. You shouldn't really give a damn about any of these characters: Ken, Ray and Harry are killers by profession (Ray's blunder, revealed at a key moment, weighs heavily against him), Jimmy is a coked-up self-important bit part actor who parties with - well, Ken put it best - manky hookers, and Chloe deals drugs and wastes herself on a thuggish skinhead boyfriend. Shit, just typing that sentence is enough to make me appreciate just how heavy-handed and grim 'In Bruges' could have been in lesser hands.

However, Martin McDonagh, an acclaimed playwright set to garner the same kind of encomium in the film world, brings enough insight, intelligence and lightness of touch to the proceedings to make you care about the characters (even Harry is a man of principles who takes care not to endanger a pregnant woman), and - Peckinpah-esque ending notwithstanding - to make you laugh out loud. The performances are uniformly excellent, with Farrell proving a revelation.

'In Bruges' doesn't necessarily want to make me go to Bruges (at a guess, it wasn't endorsed by the Belgian Tourist Board) but I do want to go back to my local multiplex and see it again.