IDENTITY THIEF

Type casting - a double edged sword. It keeps you in business and helps with the mortgage repayments but on the other hand it can propel you away from your fans and box office receipts as they see you again and again deliver the same ol' same ol'.

Since his cult raise to fame with TV's under-rated classic show Arrested Development, Jason Bateman seems to be stuck in the role of "put upon average Joe." This was perfectly shown in his Horrible Bosses role as out of the criss-cross would-be murderers, Bateman's was the most normal.

So, if it ain't broke...  Director Seth Gordon reunites with his 2011's  Horrible Bosses star to explore the all-too-real world of identity theft. Of course though, this being Gordon who's cut his teeth on the likes of Modern Family, The Office and Community, facts and seriousness aren't included here on the menu.

Instead, what we are given is what feels like a poor man's combination of Planes, Trains & Automobiles and Midnight Run. Now, on paper, that sounds like a match made in heaven - both being fantastic comedies of their generation that have stood up against the ravages of time. But here in practise, the result is less-than-impressive.

Mazin and Eeten's screenplay tries to recreate the mis-matched road travellers of Steve Martin vs John Candy (Planes, Trains and Automobiles) and Charles Grodin vs Robert DeNiro (Midnight Run). What doesn't help the wanna-be's Bateman vs McCarthy is the reason that they're thrown together in the first place on their cross-country road-trip. McCarthy's fraudster willingly goes with her mild-mannered mark from her Florida home where he has tracked her down, to his in Denver to help him keep his job that she's put in jeopardy. So we have to believe that the woman who has stolen his entire life wants to now save it.  This just doesn't sit right despite the obvious nods to McCarthy being a broken heart that does what she does for friendship, so the storyline becomes irrelevant and thus the jokes are left to fend for themselves. Which doesn't really help them. Or the audience that much.

There are some nice touches thrown in here and there, but that's Identity Thief's problem - it's too sporadic for what should have been a balls-to-the-walls all-out comedy. Even with some humorous cameos - Modern Family's Eric Stonestreet, The Office's Ellie Kemper and Robert Patrick as a Terminator 2-esque bounty hunter -  their appearances, and the laughs they add, are both fleeting and quickly forgotten.

Let's just hope the Horrible Bosses 2 sequel that Gordon and Bateman are in pre-production on doesn't hold back like this outing did.

UK release date: 22.03.13
Certificate: 15

STOKER

The genre of horror has dramatically changed over the years - originally  they were all about fear and suspense, whereas now it seems that the key factor is gore and how grizzly the deaths can be.

Recently, the likes of The Woman In Black has gone back to the "good old days" where mounting tension and off-camera scares are pushed to the fore to create the desired effect from the audience. This movement towards old school continues with an unlikely source - the director of the violent and kinda-gory vengeance trilogy (Oldboy, Lady Vengeance and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.)

Director Park Chan-wook brings to this Western tale of a family and its secrets a very Asian flavour, bringing to mind the creepier moments of the likes of the Ring, The Eye and The Grudge franchises. Just like those cult classics, every image seems to have been contemplated and dissected before it's inclusion in the final film. Nothing it seems has been left to chance in either those films or here too. Imagery is key. For story purposes and for fear-inducing purposes.

The point here is fear caused primarily by uncertainty - of what's happening and of what some of the characters will do next. Imagine the various family members of say The Munsters, Beetlejuice or The Addams Family - condense them into just a handful of characters, and then mix in a decidedly 18 certificate feel and you will be someway to realising the Stoker family. Chan-wook, along with his (alien-to-him) English-speaking cast has delivered some of the more weirder individuals to be placed upon the silver screen in recent memory. This, along with striking visual imagery and a book ending of the film with the same scene, helps the events that unfold take on a certain "troubling dream-like" quality. The opening credit sequence starts this off with its imaginative placing and removing of the names not unlike those of Night Watch where the images upon the screen - Mia Wasikowska standing by the roadside - affects the words and their visibility. This use of imaginative imagery also shows such striking dissolves as Nicole Kidman's brushed hair blending into a field of wind-swept grass, and Wasikowska's tiny frame walking along the middle of a highway followed by her just discovered Uncle Charlie in his open-top Jag, into her walking up her driveway still followed by the ever-increasingly strange Uncle Charlie in his open-top Jag.

Kidman, who is no stranger to sexually-charged but emotionally-fragile roles (think of Dead Calm,  The Others and To Die For) nails it as the recently widowed Evelyn who becomes more-and-more enamoured with Mathew Goode's Uncle Charlie. Goode delivers the perfect amount of smiles and uncomfortably long stares towards Wasikowska's just-turned-18 and greiving daughter - India - who seems to be channeling a mixture of young "angsty" Winona Ryder within the looks of a young Claire Danes. Running throughout the entire Stoker, as with these three characters, nothing is at all what it seems.

With its swings-and-roundabouts plotline of just exactly who Uncle Charlie is and his connection to the recently widowed Evelyn and emotionally-closed down India, the film boasts a not-too obvious story arc that has a great but disturbing flashback in it that breaks the mainstream cinema taboo of killing children which still doesn't fully shed light on events that will unfold afterwards.

Intriguing, interesting, inventive, imaginative and incestious, Stoker is a rare breed of film that mixes its horror with thriller and adds dysfunctional family as well just to create a more heightened emotion to it all. You'll never view distant family members in the same light again.

UK release date: 01.03.13
Certificate: 18

OSCAR PREDICTIONS 2013 - UPDATED WITH THE WINNERS!

So, with all the major players, award-wise, out of the way - BAFTA, Golden Globes, Screen Writers Guild etc - it's the 85 year old man himself left.

On 24th February, the world, and anyone who's interested, will be put out of their misery as host Seth MacFarlane leads the congratulatory back-slapping award show through what some people have already called "predictable" in the recipient category.

But Oscar is nothing but surprising in some awards so nothing can be taken for granted across the board. So, here is a breakdown of the hopeful "gong-getters" and who I think will win and, just for fun, who I think should win. Any bets placed because of my predictions are placed at your own risk - remember, guesses can go down as well as up...

BEST PICTURE

Amour

Argo

Beasts Of The Southern Wild

Django Unchained

Les Miserables

Life Of Pi

Lincoln

Silver Linings Playbook

Zero Dark Thirty

Oscar Winner - Argo

Shoulda Won'er - Life Of Pi

ACTUAL WINNER - ARGO (score 1 point for nailing it!)

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Daniel Day Lewis (Lincoln)

Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook)

Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables)

Jaoquin Phoenix (The Master)

Denzel Washington (Flight)

Oscar Winner - Daniel Day Lewis

Shoulda Won'er - Daniel Day Lewis

ACTUAL WINNER - DANIEL DAY LEWIS (score 1 point for nailing it!)

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)

Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master)

Robert DeNiro (Silver Linings Playbook)

Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln)

Alan Arkin (Argo)

Oscar Winner - Tommy Lee Jones

Shoulda Won'er - Christoph Waltz

ACTUAL WINNER - CHRISTOPH WALTZ (score 1/2 point for wanting it!)

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty)

Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)

Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts Of The Southern Wild)

Naomi Watts (The Impossible)

Emmanuelle Riva (Amour)

Oscar Winner - Jessica Chastain

Shoulda Won'er - Jessica Chastain

ACTUAL WINNER - JENNIFER LAWRENCE (score 0 point!)

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables)

Amy Adams (The Master)

Sally Field (Lincoln)

Helen Hunt (The Sessions)

Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook)

Oscar Winner - Anne Hathaway

Shoulda Won'er - Anne Hathaway

ACTUAL WINNER - ANNE HATHAWAY (score 1 point for nailing it!)

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Brave

Frankenweenie

The Pirates! An Adventure With Scientists
Paranorman
Wreck-It Ralph

Oscar Winner - Brave

Shoulda Won'er - The Pirates! An Adventure With Scientists

ACTUAL WINNER - BRAVE (score 1 point for nailing it!)

DIRECTING

Life Of Pi - Ang Lee

Lincoln - Steven Spielberg

Amour - Michael Haneke

Silver Linings Playbook - David O. Russell

Beasts Of The Southern Wild - Benh Zeitlin

Oscar Winner - Ang Lee

Shoulda Won'er - Steven Spielberg

ACTUAL WINNER - ANG LEE (score 1 point for nailing it!)

MUSIC (Original Score)

Anna Karenina

Argo

Life Of Pi

Skyfall

Lincoln

Oscar Winner - Argo

Shoulda Won'er - Lincoln

ACTUAL WINNER - LIFE OF PI (score 0 point!)

MUSIC (Original Song)

Chasing Ice ("Before My Time")

Ted ("Everybody Needs A Best Friend")

Life Of Pi ("Pi's Lullaby")

Skyfall ("Skyfall")
Les Miserables ("Suddenly")

Oscar Winner - Skyfall

Shoulda Won'er - Skyfall

ACTUAL WINNER - SKYFALL (score 1 point for nailing it!)

WRITING (Adapted Screenplay)

Argo

Beasts Of The Southern Wild

Life Of Pi

Lincoln

Silver Linings Playbook

Oscar Winner - Life Of Pi

Shoulda Won'er - Silver Linings Playbook

ACTUAL WINNER - ARGO (score 0 points!)

WRITING (Original Screenplay)

Amour

Django Unchained

Flight

Moonrise Kingdom

Zero Dark Thirty

Oscar Winner - Zero Dark Thirty

Shoulda Won'er - Moonrise Kingdom

ACTUAL WINNER - DJANGO UNCHAINED (score 0 point!)

Care to challenge me or question why I've made the choices that I have? You've got until the end of the 24th to put your money where your mouth is... bring it!

So, out of a possible 11 points, I scored 6 1/2. You've gotta love the unpredictability of the Oscars, even when it seems like there are such things as certainties! 

Here's to next year!

CLOUD ATLAS

And so it seems that the time of "unfilmable books" turning into films continues. After the huge success of Life Of Pi we now have another piece of monumental movie making mountaineering to climb. This time however it was not the technology holding things back like Lee faced with bringing a Bengal tiger to life in the confined space of a drifting lifeboat, but of the multi-layered and many plot lines of the source novel itself.

The team that brought the now immortal line of "I know kung fu," were not the people that would easily spring to mind to be able to handle such a time-spanning and worldly-hopping experience such as those that unfold during the many centuries of Cloud Atlas but attempt it they did.

And succeed they have.

Along with Tom Tykwer - the man responsible behind the almost equally multi-layered plotting of Run, Lola Run, The Wachowski's and he have both adapted David Mitchell's novel for the screen and then, just to add to their plate, directed it too. This is by no means an easy task. There are 6 different stories that take place all in different time zones, different locations, different dialects and, spoiler alert, different planets entirely.

To do this, the trio have taken the source novel and its framing and, although nodding to whilst keeping true to it, have opted for a more novel but satisfying cinematic approach to the stories and their inter-connectedness. This doesn't mean that they have made it an easier experience for those who do not wish to or who are not used to having their films demand things from them such as attention, retention and suspension. Some may not like the idea of "souls" moving through time and continuing their journey towards their respective goals - continuously "meeting again and again in different lives and different ages,"- but to help the viewer make this connection, the trio have devised a plan.

And a rather cunning one it is at that! The central actors all play different parts in all of the six stories that weave across the silver screen, however, they are not the same characters. Some are not even the same gender. This gives way to a nice little side line during the films just-shy-of three hours running time - spot the Tom Hanks/Halle Berry/Jim Broadbent/Hugo Weaving/Jim Sturgess/Doona Bae/Ben Whishaw in all of the six stories. They are all there, even in the background, so if you feel the time-jumping, soul-swapping stances of the film itself are slipping away from you, you could always play the Where's The Actor until the end credits reveal them to you.

The actors themselves seem to have a great time, revelling in the different types of challenges that their characters face in the seemingly different styles of genre film-making presented - a futuristic The Handmaidens' Tale-esque world which is the closest to The Wachowski's The Matrix where all is not what it seems and revelations of The One who is to open every ones eyes to the truth; a 1970's conspiracy thriller of Watergate proportions; a 1930's tale of forbidden love and doomed souls due to society and its constraints - all these and the others are presented together yet very much apart.

The key to this is the editing of the film itself and of the six plots. A significant reveal or image on one story quickly cuts to another with that point carried over thus helping you to not only make the connection but to keep it and then keep track of it when the next jump takes place, whether it be on a ship in the 1800's or on a hover-bike in the far-flung future. This type of confidence in their work and in the capacity of the viewer to not only to connect but to enjoy is both brave and rewarding for all involved. The only big leap of faith that the trio have taken is with the dialogue - in particular the dialect that bookends the film. The story of a world where the earth is inhabited by the peaceful tribes of Tom Hanks and the cannibalistic tribes of Hugh Grant has its own futuristic language which is at times hard to follow and can create a distance between the viewer and events, but overall the message does break through that barrier and balance is easily restored.

A film that shows that when given the chance, The Wachowski's along with Tykwer can deliver a complex story and not let it get crushed under its own message - part two and three of The Matrix trilogy to be exact. All whilst utilising effects to help rather than hinder the overall experience, Cloud Atlas is a brave piece of movie-making and one that is well worth the time and effort that it asks of you.

UK release date: 22.02.13
Certificate: 15

HITCHCOCK

So, we all know that buses come along in threes. We also know that the movie industry has a similar trait where rival studios seem to try and bring out the same type of film sometimes only months apart from each other.

Spielberg's latest saw him focus on a (US) national treasure and rather than a full bio-pic, he concentrated the camera on just one chapter in the life of Lincoln. Well, here's your next bus pulling up!

Hitchcock, like the Berg's ode-to-the-stove, presents no back story nor events that preceded the focus of the cinematic story. You either know things that took place before the projector starts running or you don't need to know them to understand and appreciate what is about to be revealed.

And like Lincoln, what is revealed is, not unlike Hitch's Saul Bass' opening credit sequences on his films, strangely mesmerising.

Considered one of the industry's finest (or for those who wish to argue that point, then "most known") directors, Rebello and McLaughlin's screenplay focuses on the large man's struggle to deliver what would become his most greatest critical and financial success - Psycho. Aficionados of the man Hitchcock may find that this telling of the battles between him and the studio along with his more personal battles a tad "over simplified" but then for them there is the films source - the book Alfred Hitchcock And The Making Of Psycho. For the rest, Hitchcock the movie is an insightful, and like the persona that he presented in his many ditties direct-to-camera on his TV show and in his trailers, a somewhat playful observation on events infront of and behind the camera.

The playfulness comes from the films two heavy-weight (and in the case of Alfred himself, over-weight) leads that, whilst still delivering very powerful performances, appear to have some fun with their roles. Especially when sparring against each other over the jealousy's concerning their partners possible infatuations and infidelities. What you get, and what you so quickly begin to accept, is the dynamic between these two with Mirren's Alma easily guiding Hopkins' Alfred towards Psycho's greatest discoveries and moments - the casting of Perkins and Leigh; the death of the leading lady much quicker than half way through for increased shock value. When she argues that she's been there for him over three decades of his movie-making, you believe it.

Like day-Lewis' performance in Lincoln, Hopkins' helps carry the film on his capable shoulders with the rest of the cast bouncing off of him ever-so-easily. Johansson as Leigh nails the "Hitchcock blonde" trying to remain professional around the man who notoriously had a unrequited thing for them whilst Biel as the example of how cold the man could be if he felt abandoned by them has to float in the background, ignored by her once biggest fan.

First major motion picture director Gervasi (his only directing so far was the documentary Anvil!) has fun playing with the camera, allowing it to move as if Hitchcock were directing himself - the long pan down through the rain across a neon-lit cinema, the fast edits when Hitch shows how the shower scene stabbing should be - which helps add to the feel that this is not only about him but could be made by him.

Enlightening, entertaining and overall a fun reenactment of a serious part in Hitch's life story, it is a film worthy of watching, which if you do, you will surely have, as he used to introduce himself, a "good evening."


UK release date: 08.02.13
Certificate: 12A