Bring Back Bridget Fonda: Singles [12]

DIR: Cameron Crowe
CAST: Campbell Scott, Kyra Sdegwick,
Bridget Fonda,Matt Dillon

Cameron Crowe's second film as writer and director (following a classic debut in Say Anything) is quite a curious thing; it's so evocative of a specific time, and yet it has ideas and moments that will resonate with any audience, even those born after the cultural context in which the film takes place had run its course. Nearly 20 years on from its release, and probably 15 years since I last saw it, Singles played not as dated but as nostalgic.

The film is set in an apartment complex - a set of 18 single units - in Seattle in the early 90's and charts the ups and downs of the relationships of the people living there. Among them are Steve (Scott), a yuppie with a looming important presentation; Janet (Fonda), a sweet girl so hopelessly in love with her musician boyfriend Cliff (Dillon) that she's considering a breast enlargement so that he'll be more attracted to her and Debbie (Sheila Kelley), a brassy maneater who hires a director for her video dating ad. We also meet some people from outside the apartment complex, notably Linda (Sedgwick), who Steve meets at a concert and swiftly begins dating.

Singles is, like a lot of great films, about things that, in the grand scheme of events, are small, but which feel huge for the people living them. That's probably best expressed by Janet's story. Cameron Crowe's script paints her as a girl to whom the little things are terribly important; notably the moment that she realises that her insensitive boyfriend doesn't say 'bless you' when she sneezes. In other hands this might come off as annoyingly twee, but writes her and Bridget Fonda plays her, as a creature of simple sincerity, and rather than irksome she's actually adorable. At one point in the film, Campbell Scott's Steve says of a girl he's just met 'If I had a personal conversation with God, would ask him to create this girl', and at a certain point I found it hard not to feel that about Janet. Obviously she looks like Bridget Fonda, which is a fine starting point, but what really makes her so lovable is the way she reacts at her lowest point. Even as she's deciding whether or not to have (totally unnecessary) breast surgery, she sees that someone else (the surgeon accessing her, played by Bill Pullman) is feeling down, and is kind and funny and sweet to him even at that moment. I love Janet, and I love Bridget Fonda's performance because you believe in that fundamental goodness she gives the character.

It's not as if Fonda is alone though, all the performances are excellent. In the lead Campbell Scott is quietly brilliant as Steve; who seems to mask real insecurity with outward self confidence, but, for the most part, do it well enough that people don't see the mask. It's a testament to how fine an actor Scott is that he's able to communicate this to the audience while credibly not letting other characters in. Along with Crowe he also crafts a guy who is desperate for connection, in a way that feels much more real to me now than when I last saw Singles aged 15. It's both sad and funny how recognisable Steve is. Matt Dillon has done a lot of nice work over the years, but when somebody says his name to me the first thing that always comes to mind is Cliff Poncier; stuck up singer of middling grunge band Citizen Dick (who are filled out by members of Pearl Jam). He's incredibly slappable in the role, largely because the girlfriend he's so inattentive to is the adorable Janet, but again, though it's a smallish part, Cliff isn't a caricature, Crowe's script begins, late in the day, to peel back this guy's layers and show the slow process of his realisation of how he's behaved, and of course up to that point Cliff's always good for a laugh, especially when he's talking about the title of his band's signature song 'Touch me I'm Dick' to a journalist played by Crowe.

The film's women fare slightly less well, with Kyra Sedgwick (another in this films veritable parade of underrated actors) has perhaps the least defined character, which is odd given that she's really the female lead, Crowe's written an independent 90's woman here, who isn't sure if she wants commitment, or even a relationship, when she falls into something serious with Steve, but she's not very specific, feeling more of a type than a really rounded character. Her flipside is Debbie; Sheila Kelley's hilarious, orange haired, man hungry caricature. She's a cartoon, but Kelley plays the cartoon to perfection, never more so than in her dating video, and while Debbie isn't terribly real she's certainly a good deal of fun.

Of course one of the defining features of all of Crowe's movies is the use of music (from the sublime moment with In Your Eyes in Say Anything to the ridiculous road trip soundtrack in Elizabethtown). Singles doesn't have a single iconic musical moment, but weaves the Seattle grunge scene through the movie as the characters experience it; as he soundtrack of their lives. It meant little to me last time I saw the film, because music only became a big part of my life in my 20's, but on this viewing it leapt out at me how the music - the songs and the score by Paul Westerberg - becomes a character, tying the people and the setting together. If you're informed about the scene there are also a lot of treats scattered through the film in the form of cameos from the aforementioned Pearl Jam, to Alice in Chains playing in a dingy club, to Chris Cornell (of Soundgarden) as a friend of Cliff's and probably more I didn't spot. Speaking, by the way, of cameos, Singles is packed with 'it's that guy' moments, all of which are fun; Paul Giamatti has one line, Jeremy Piven and Eric Stoltz have one scene each, Tim Burton plays the director of Debbie's dating video and Bill Pullman is notable as Janet's smitten plastic surgeon.

The main thing I really liked about Singles this time out was the tone. It's reflective, but never melancholy. It's funny, but never knockabout or silly. It's serious, but never solemn. The dialogue, in typical Crowe style, is specific, smart, sharp and witty (Janet: People need people, Steve. It has nothing to do with sex. OK, maybe 40 percent. 60 percent. Forget it.) I also like its untidiness, Crowe isn't afraid to let the loose ends hang as the credits roll, we get a sense of where things might go, but this isn't a biography, it's a glimpse of a few months in a few people's lives, and that means that things aren't neat, because things aren't over. It would be interesting, I think, to revisit these characters, to find out who they are in their mid 40's, whether they still know each other, if Janet's still so sweet, if Cliff's still making music, that, to me, would be far more interesting than Thor 2, or Ice Age 4.

Bring Back Bridget Fonda: Touch [15]

DIR: Paul Schrader
CAST: Skeet Ulrich, Bridget Fonda,
Christopher Walken, Tom Arnold

Touch is a bizarre film. It's got a weird cast, a tone that feels slightly off and a director who appears not to have quite decided which of two possible films he's actually going to make. This definitely means that Touch is no lost classic, but it also means that it's never uninteresting, because it always keeps you on your toes.

The film revolves around a young former missionary named Juvenal (Ulrich, who looks so eerily like Johnny Depp you suspect he might be a life size action figure) whose apparent stigmata and powers of miraculous healing attract the attention of Bill Hill (Walken), a former church owner who now sells RV's for a living. In order to speak with Juvenal, Hill sends his friend Lynn (Fonda) undercover to the alcohol rehab centre in which he works. Juvenal and Lynn become friends, then lovers, while around them people vie to exploit Juvenal's gift.

Watching it for probably the first time in a decade, I was struck by the fact that there is something of a tug of war going on to determine what kind of movie Touch will be. Is it the relatively serious minded movie documenting Juvenal's relationship with Lynn? Or is it the knockabout comedy that contributors like Tom Arnold, Lolita Davidovich and Walken are performing in? Paul Scrader never quite seems able to choose one or the other, and the mix is often uneasy, especially when the two collide.

In and of themselves though, both sides of Touch work nicely. In the comedy, Walken leads the cast, turning in a deliciously loopy performance, even more packed with odd inflections than his work tends to be. I like the details of his character too, the affectations like the huge gold chain that says 'Thank You Jesus' (ripped right from the source novel by Elmore Leonard). We really should hate Bill, he's no more than a cynical guy out for a buck, but Walken's profound strangeness is hard not to love. Tom Arnold also plays it broad as the leader of a group that wants to restore the latin mass to churches throughout the US, but he's less able to get away with it, because the character isn't really crazy enough to be funny, nor crazy enough to be threatening. However, there are plenty of laughs in Touch, be it the simple visual of the fact that the first thing we see a formerly blind housewife do when her sight is restored is begin sweeping up the dishes her husband has just broken, or Gina Gershon's brassy, up to 11 performance as a small time talk show host.

For me though, though it is less explored, the drama here is what is compelling. Juvenal is an intriguing character; a true innocent in many respects, but one who isn't naive. That's a rather fine line to walk, and Ulrich (despite being a bit young for the part) walks it well. You also see why Lynn would be attracted to him (aside from the fact that he looks like a young Johnny Depp, which I'm told helps) he's kind and gentle and unassuming, and these seem to be qualities that the initially pricklier Lynn wants to take from him. Fonda and Ulrich also exhibit nice chemistry together, and their friendship, which grows into romance, feels quite genuine (as I've mentioned before in this series, I imagine this is something that you can put down to the innate warmth Fonda projects on screen, even though she's somewhat muting it here, as if Lynn's dissatisfaction with her work and long association with con artist Bill have muted it in her). Neither performance has any great actorly moments, nothing showy is going on here, but that works to the benefit of the story, you buy into these two as simple, human, characters, which is remarkable in a film so otherwise full of cartoony personalities.

Touch is unfocused and doesn't really come together, but moments, scenes and performances work well on their own merits. It has ideas, but doesn't always communicate them totally successfully. It can be a frustrating watch, but at least it's a film that is reaching for something, even if it ultimately misses.

24FPS at LLGFF 2011: The Four Faced Liar [15]

DIR: Jacob Chase
CAST: Marja-Lewis Ryan, Emily Peck, Todd Kubrak,
Daniel Carlisle, Liz Osborn

The Four Faced Liar is the first feature film written by 25 year old Marja-Lewis Ryan, and while it is far from perfect it marks her out as someone to watch in the future. The story is very generic; gay college student Bridget (Ryan) and her flatmate Trip (Kubrak) meet Molly (Peck) and Greg (Carlisle) in the titular bar one night, and they hit it off, Bridget and Molly in particular begin spending a lot of time together, and it becomes clear that there is some attraction between them, which places strain on Molly and Greg's very sweet and rather conservative relationship. You can probably guess, given that this is the closing film in this year's London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, how things develop from there.

That's really the problem with the film, being generic is one thing, but almost every beat of The Four Faced Liar is predictable, down to almost the last detail. Every scene you expect to see in a dramedy about a lesbian and a straight girl getting together is played out almost exactly as you'd expect it to be and the film rounds off with the last in a long series of tremendous clichés.

That said, it's hard not to like this film, thanks largely to the details of Ryan's screenplay (based on her earlier stage play). The general shape of the film is familiar to the point of being hackneyed, but the character writing is top notch. Ryan shows a real knack for establishing an individual voice for each of her characters, and for detailing the relationships between them. Too often the characters in movies all sound like the writer, not so here, there aren't any moments where you feel the dialogue could be interchangeable; none of Bridget's speeches could be delivered by Molly, none of Trip's by Greg. There is also a nice sense of the closeness between old friends Bridget and Trip, and of the growing relationships between Molly and Bridget and Trip and Greg.

These qualities in the writing are also aided by strong performances. Ryan and Peck are both excellent, giving natural low key turns, and playing the film's often funny dialogue entirely straight and real. Kubrak, courtesy of a more outgoing character, has fun giving a larger performance which has most of the film's funniest moments. The only slight problem acting wise is that Daniel Carlisle can come off somewhat flat, but then Greg is such a drip that this may be a choice on his part.

24 year old first time feature director Jacob Chase handles the largely hand held visuals well, usually making sure that the camera remains unobtrusive. There is a definite guerilla feel to the filmmaking; it's not polished, and a few scenes (notably the love scenes) are perhaps a little darker than they should be, but for the most part the direction serves the film well, and energises the film enough that it doesn't feel like a filmed play.

The Four Faced Liar definitely has its issues, but there is plenty here to like, and to suggest that many of the people involved will go on to make better more fully realised films in the future. I'd certainly suggest checking this one out though, whether at LLGFF or when it comes to DVD next month.

If you'd like to buy this film on DVD (UK Release April 11th), and help 24FPS out at the same time, please use the links below.

Bring Back Bridget Fonda: Doc Hollywood [12]

DIR: Michael Caton Jones
CAST: Michael J. Fox, Julie Warner, David Ogden Stiers,
Woody Harrelson, Bridget Fonda

It's a strange film to have an attachment to, but I will always have a bit of a soft spot for Doc Hollywood, if only because it was where I first saw breasts. Thanks, Julie Warner. Memorable moments for an eleven year old aside, however, the film does have other things going for it.

This is a Capraesque tale of a young surgeon (Fox) who is waylaid on his way to a big plastic surgery job interview in LA when he crashes his car, demolishing the fence of a small town judge. He's sentenced to community service as the town's doctor, and immediately all the residents begin working to try and ensure that he stays there. There's romance with the local ambulance driver (Warner) and a flirtation with the Mayor's daughter (Fonda) makes one of the locals (Harrelson) very jealous.

Doc Hollywood is gently funny, and doesn't lack for charm, but it's hard to shake the feeling that it's a little empty. Michael J. Fox was never the world's best actor, but he can be magnetic, unfortunately he's not great here, he's a little miscast as a soon to be high flying doctor who is more than a bit of an asshole, but worse he just seems to be coasting here, and the growing relationship between him and Julie Warner - who is perfectly good as Lou the ambulance driver, but is outshone by another performance we'll come to - never really convinces.

What works better is the depiction of this bible belt town and its inhabitants. The script and direction poke gentle fun, never pretending that this depiction of Grady is of a real place as much as it is of a romantic cinematic vision of a small town. Though the characterisations are broad, outside of the rather drippy main story, everyone is having fun. David Ogden Stiers is blustery and funny as the mayor desperate to keep this new doctor in town, while Woody Harrelson does his patented 'amusingly dim, while a side of menace' thing to perfection.

Bridget Fonda reunites with director Michael Caton-Jones, who gave her a big break in Scandal two years before. Here she plays the mayor's flirty and oversexed daughter, who wants Fox to take her away from the provincial life to the bright lights of LA (and this, for me, is where the story strains credulity, because really, who could resist?) It would have been easy for this role to have been played as no more than a punchline, but as ever Fonda invests her character with a real spark, she's effortlessly likable, and that as much as her beauty makes her a much more interesting potential match than Warner. Saddled with a thankless role, Fonda makes much more of it than was likely on the page, it's both one the film's greater qualities and eventually one of its greater failings.

You'd be hard pressed to dislike Doc Hollywood, it's too amiable for that, and for all its problem it is frequently funny, and its gentle charm does end up rubbing off on you, even if, at the end of the day, you know it's not especially brilliant.

DVD Review: Patrol Men [18]

DIR: David Campion / Ben Simpson

Making films is hard, and when two people manage to gather the will and the money to, fresh out of university, make a feature off their own backs, and then get it released, you have to give them some credit. Sadly, that is all the credit I can give co-writers and co-directors David Campion and Ben Simpson for Patrol Men, which is so inept at every level that it makes Ed Wood look like Martin Scorsese.

It's set on a small island just off the British Isles, where there has been a curfew in force - enforced by the titular gas mask sporting 2x4 wielding nutters - for 30 years, following a brutal murder on the island. All Campion and Simpson have done here is taken bits of (much) better films and jammed them together. The setting recalls The Wicker Man, the look of the Patrol Men is a lift from Dead Man's Shoes, the boogeyman looks exactly like one of The Strangers, and his backstory is a lift of Michael Myers' backstory (yeah, cause no horror fan is ever going to spot that). There are more, but itemising them would take more space than I have here.

The film is ineptly made. It looks as though it was shot with a Hi8 camera, through a filter made of a used teabag. The lighting is appalling and the shot design suggests that angles were decided by rolling dice or (more likely) simply plonking the camera down in the first convenient spot. If the filmmaking is poor, the acting is an abomination, an offence against all good movie loving people. It ranges from lifeless (star Chloe Van Ark's scenes with the actor playing her father are like watching two people slip into comas) to the relentlessly overblown (Jonathan Hansler as the Lord Summersile style mayor). There's no sense of a consistent tone, no signal that the directors had anything specific in mind about how to tell this (stupid, derivative, boring and confusing) story.

Even the violent scenes are terrible. For the most part the Patrol Men do nothing but stand around looking 'menacing', and then when they finally get around to doing something the choreography and filming are beyond shoddy and the blood looks hilariously awful, as if the directors took Alfred Hitchcock's tip about using chocolate sauce to heart and just forgot they were shooting in colour.

Patrol Men is an embarrassment, it may be an achievement to make and release a film, but really, I wish Campion and Simpson hadn't bothered. The only way you might enjoy this (and even this is a stretch) is as an MST3K film.

24FPS at LLGFF 2011: Break My Fall

DIR: Kanchi Wichmann
CAST: Kat Redstone, Sophie Anderson,
Collin Clay Chace, Kai Brandon Ly

Almost more frustrating than a truly bad film is one that just misses the mark, one you can see the potential in, and yet have to watch as it trips over the hurdles on the way to the finish line. That's what Break My Fall is like.

The film shows us the final stages of the breakdown of the relationship between girlfriends and bandmates Liza (Redstone) and Sally (Anderson), which seems to have reached a stage where it vacillates between the two having a deep desire to remain together, but fighting whenever they are. Things are also complicated by a mutual friend, Vin (Ly), who earns a living as a rent boy, but has clear designs on Sally.

There are plenty of things to admire in Break My Fall. The script is sharp, and defines its characters clearly and quickly, though it does remain dedicated throughout to making them all (except perhaps Collin Clay Chace's supportive gay friend Jamie) as unsympathetic as possible. The four leading performances are also a strong centre for the film, with Kat Redstone especially impressive as she engages with the most difficult character, one whose mood swings seem near bi-polar. There are some real standout scenes here too; a funny confrontation with a café owner made me wish that the rest of the film had a bit more humour about it, and a supremely awkward band practice after Liza and Sally have fought is both the quietest and the best scene in the film. It's also worth mentioning the excellent, uber-cool, indie soundtrack.

The problem is that while these individual bits are fine, the film just doesn't knit together as a whole. The biggest issue is that it's very hard to really identify with or care about the central relationship. We see nothing of how it was, of the happiness that Liza sometimes speaks of, and so it's hard to care much about the broken state the movie depicts it in, or root for it to get mended. It's also guilty of real longueurs, many scenes run much longer than they need to (an endless scene in which Liza goes home with an older butch woman after a night out, for instance) and the last twenty minutes are an extended exercise in redundancy; this film ends with a missed phone call, the following twenty minutes change nothing, add nothing.

Break My Fall ultimately feels like an overextended short film, and that's a shame, because I suspect a 30 minute version would work really well. That said, there's enough going on here that I'll be keeping an eye on, in particular writer/director Wichmann and Kat Redstone, as I suspect that there is much more satisfying work in their future.

Bring Back Bridget Fonda: Introduction

Welcome to Bring Back Bridget Fonda. Over the next couple of weeks, across both of our sites (and a few special features at MultiMediaMouth, where we both also write) Michael Ewins and I will be starting a campaign for the return of the charming, beautiful and talented Bridget Fonda to the world's cinema screens. We've got reviews, features and collaborative pieces coming your way over the next two weeks as we take a look at a career that seems to have come to a very premature end. We're unashamedly taking the perspective of fans, but don't worry, we're not abandoning our critical faculties, and we're well aware that even people we love sometimes make crappy movies.

If you're also a Bridget Fonda fan (good chance really, since you've read this far), then join the campaign. Send us an email at sam@24fps.org.uk or darjeeling_myworld@yahoo.com. Tweet us on @24FPSUK or @darjeelingmike. Or, if you're also a writer, join in; write up a blog entry and send us a link, we'll showcase whatever we can and we're looking forward to hearing from you. Let's get this done so Mike and I can retire to the home for fully contented humans.

We weren't quite sure how to kick this feature off, so we decided just to have a chat about why we decided to mount this campaign. Here's what was said...

Sam Inglis: Well, I guess the whole thing came about while you and I were talking about movies and blogging and plans for our sites, and I happened to mention to you that I'd been planning, but not quite got round to, writing a series called "Bring Back Bridget Fonda".

Michael Ewins: Which I was instantly on board with because I was (and still am) a huge Bridget Fonda fan. It was just one of those great moments where you're talking with somebody who's as passionate about films as you are and you find a point you totally agree on. For us it was Bridget Fonda.

Sam Inglis: It's something that's really bugged me, because she vanished both just as she was becoming a really great actress, and as I was becoming, having grown up seeing (often illicitly) her films, a really big fan.

Michael Ewins: It's the same for me. I was 11 when she retired and was a huge fan of 'It Could Happen To You', which was a film I became very attached to in my youth as it's very idealistic and romantic. As I got a little older I discovered some of her more adult work and was very sad to discover that she'd retired, pretty much the moment that I'd discovered her.


Sam Inglis: For me she was an actress, rather like her contemporary and one time co-star Jennifer Jason Leigh, that I only slowly realised how much I liked her. For a while I hadn't noticed that this attractive girl in Singles, and Single White Female, and The Assassin, and It Could Happen to You, and Doc Hollywood, and Scandal and a few others was the same girl and it was then that I started tracking her work down deliberately.

Michael Ewins: Singles was the one that really unlocked it for me. I was at that point where the mindset of those characters really clicked with me, I was starting to see reflections in my own life. They were ten years older than me but the collective voice was really powerful, and Fonda just stood out. She's so lovable in that film. After that I saw her in The Assassin and the transformation just blew my mind. Looking back, that was around the same time I was considering being an actor. There were more conscious influences I can list you as to why I wanted to do that, but I'm sure Fonda was just as important as any of them, for her versatility and screen presence. It was her films I watched most over the course of my dramatic education, certainly.

Sam Inglis: I don't love The Assassin, as I recall it it's a very close and rather weaker remake of Nikita, but you're right about her performance, she's doing a lot of her own stunt work and the ferocity that you see from her in that film, especially as compared to the sweet, insecure, girl in Singles, is really an impressive transformation. But as much as her acting, and she was always good and only got better, there's something else to why I liked her so much on screen, and why I really miss her, and that's just her presence. Movie stars have something innate, something that draws you to them, however interesting their character may or may not be, however good the film is or isn't, you can't take your eyes off a movie star, and she's got that in spades.

Michael Ewins: Absolutely, and it probably originates with her parents. People forget that her first screen appearance was as a child in 'Easy Rider', perhaps the most revolutionary film of the 1960s. That presence probably comes from being born into a time in American cinema where nobody really cared about the rules or commerce but made art, and they made it with passion and soul. In 1987 she was in Aria, which is a portmanteau film with directors as diverse as Ken Russell and Jean-Luc Godard, and that's probably where some of the ferocity comes from too. Working with very uncompromising and ambitious people, and living with them, pretty much from being a toddler. She was directed by Francis Ford Coppola when she was 26, for Godfather Part III. The presence comes from a natural root in the history of cinema, and how many other actresses can boast that?

Sam Inglis: It's easy to charge third generation actors like her with nepotism, but honestly I think here early work; the fearless, literally naked, turn in Aria in particular, gave the lie to that charge from the start. It's interesting you mention Godfather III as well, that's not a great movie, but again, I just found her to be one of the most interesting things in it, negotiating that relationship with Andy Garcia just as he's on the rise in the mob.

But you're probably right that she gets a lot from her dad in particular, she's talked about both him and her grandfather Henry Fonda as big inspirations in the past. But I just want to go back and pick up something you mentioned about Singles... noting how lovable she is (and she really is) in that movie. That's something else I often find with her performances, and too in the interviews I've seen with her, there seems to be a genuine warmth about her, something else that just leaps off the screen. It's especially felt in Singles, and It Could Happen to You, but for me it's a very important part of Single White Female, in the way she relates to Jennifer Jason Leigh's character.

Michael Ewins: I agree, and Single White Female is a great example of how that warmth is kind of manipulated and used to quite unconventional effect, because that's a dark film. I think she always challenged that warmth as well, with a wide variety of roles. The Assassin comes to mind again, as a film which has you rooting for her but is defiantly antagonstic in terms of star persona. Everything about her in that film is dangerous and spiky, but you're engaged just as much by her as you were when she played the perky character in 'It Could Happen To You', where I've never loved her more. Her career seems somewhat built on always doing what you least expect her to do, right up to the 2001 double bill of Monkeybone and Kiss Of The Dragon. It's amazing really, to consider how natural a screen presence she is, and how she flits between genres and characters but retains that indescribable allure.

Sam Inglis: Well, and it's amazing we have managed not to touch on this for as long as this, it has to be said that part of that allure is down to the fact that she is - even in Hollywood terms - unreasonably good looking, and has a smile that could light up a city.


Michael Ewins: Absolutely, she's stunningly beautiful, but in a very natural way. You never get the sense that she wanted to be seen as a glamour queen or something, she looks quite plain (or as plain as she can be) in many of her roles. She's not like, for example, Angelina Jolie, who plays super spies who look like they've had hair and makeup done between every take. Fonda's is just a radiant beauty. An honest one, if you will. She normally played the average person you'd see on the street, and she's the sort of person you'd stop dead in your tracks if they walked past you. It's that kind of beauty.

Sam Inglis: And that's used to tremendous advantage in Singles, because it's so nonsensical that her boyfriend wants her to change her body to become some sort of ideal.

Anyway, I think we should talk briefly about her retirement, and for me the tragedy of it is that she did so much great work in the years just before it, and was only getting better; Jackie Brown, Touch, A Simple Plan and then... gone.

Michael Ewins: Definitely. A Simple Plan especially is worth noting as it's probably her best performance. She's part of a really solid trio there and once again you just totally believe her character and are warmed by her. Perhaps it's because she's kind of the moral voice in that film, and she really nails that central dilemma the film proposes - she kind of channels the audiences feelings, if I remember rightly. I can't imagine any other actress in that role, and the same can be said for her brief but hugely memorable appearance in Jackie Brown. I mean, she's kind of like the punchline for an effective joke, but it wouldn't be half as funny without the deadpan, cynical, eye-rolling bikini-girl performance she put in before Tarantino gets there.

Sam Inglis: I love her in Jackie Brown, and for me it's a perfect example of how great she is, because it's such a thin role; she basically lounges half dressed on a sofa the entire time, smoking a bong, but what she gets out of Melanie is incredible, you actually get a real sense of her, she's more rounded and more human than most movie characters in mainstream American cinema in the last 5 years, with that little to work with.

Michael Ewins: Absolutely. Ironic actually, that she's probably one of Tarantino's most human characters and she has the least to say. But that's what Fonda can do with a role. She physically and mentally embodies them so even if they're on screen smoking a bong for two minutes, you're engaged by them.

Sam Inglis: So we know what she's doing in retirement, and you have to be happy for her; she's married to Danny Elfman and a full time parent to their son, and that's lovely, but other Hollywood parents still make movies, and it seems a terrible waste to not have her on screen anymore. And yet, she's 47 now (and still, at least as recently as the Inglourious Basterds première, as beautiful as ever) and there's not much for a 47 year old actress to do in Today's Hollywood, and I don't want to have her back after a decade just so she can play Jonah Hill's mom and glare disapprovingly at him in three scenes. That's beneath her. What someone needs to do is write her an amazing lead in an indie script, give her something she can't resist (and can win a long deserved Oscar for).

Michael Ewins: Definitely. It would be tragic to see her come back in supporting roles which actresses of her age so often get. It's a tough market at the best of times, but she's been out of the business for nearly ten years now, and I don't see what would be available to her considerable talents. An entire generation growing up now won't know who she is, because she's been away for a decade.

Well, without further ado, let's get going, we'll have the first review in the series ready for you tomorrow, and do please be sure to check back in with the sites for new content every day over the next fortnight.

Trailer: The Man From Nowhere

I don't usually post much in the way of news and trailers (though I think I'll be doing it more in the future), but I was sent this trailer for Korean action movie The Man From Nowhere yesterday, and since it's brand new, and not that widely available online yet, I thought I'd share it with you guys. After an amazing renaissance, South-Korean cinema has had a couple of lean years, but it seems to be mounting a comeback again, and this looks like an action heavy treat from director Lee Jeong-beom and star Won Bin (last seen in Mother).

Check out the trailer below, I'll have a full review nearer the DVD's April 11th release date.

Early Review: Potiche

DIR: François Ozon
CAST: Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini,
Jeremie Renier, Karin Viard, Judith Godreche

Every time I go and see François Ozon's latest new film, I steel myself. I have to prepare myself for the fact that this, finally, might be the one that trips him up, the film that after over 15 years at a rate of a film a year, finally spoils the best directorial batting average in cinema. Potiche hasn't done it.

An adaptation of a 1980's play, Potiche casts Ozon's 8 Women star, and general legend of French cinema, Catherine Deneuve as the titular 'trophy wife' of Fabrice Luchini, who runs the umbrella factory inherited from Deneuve's Father. After an employment dispute in which he is taken hostage by his workers, Luchini is hospitalised, and his wife steps into the breech, after asking advice from an old friend and communist politician (Depardieu).

The above may not read like the ideal recipe, but Ozon mixes all this, and much more, up into a brilliantly sharp and witty comedy. Ozon speaks of balancing the film's comedy with the potential for melodrama, and he's done a masterful job, even during its more melodramatic moments the film tends to remain funny, because the comedy seems woven into the fabric of the film, right down to its perfectly executed 70's aesthetic, which doesn't stop at period detail like the velvet covered telephone and Judith Godreche's Farrah hair, but carries through into such small things as the use and even design of the split screens that are occasionally employed and even Ozon's shot choices and cutting rhythms.

As ever with Ozon's work, Potiche looks outstanding. It's a return to the technicolor aesthetic of 8 Women; the film fairly explodes with colour, and the use of colour as a signifier of mood is, if not subtle, beautifully executed (for example the umbrella factory instantly transforms from a grey to a multicoloured world when Deneuve takes over, signifying her warmer approach to the day to day running of the company).

Potiche isn't a reserved or subtle film, the performances are as overblown as the visuals, and the tone is often one redolent of the title of Ozon's first feature; Sitcom. Deneuve is wonderful in the lead, her forced (and enforced) perkiness in the first act giving way to a character who is much happier, in a much more meaningful and real way, during the second half of the film. She's also radiant in the part, 66 when the film was shot, she has aged like a fine wine, becoming perhaps fuller bodied, but remaining tasteful, elegant and beautiful. Unlike Deneuve, Geradrd Depardieu hasn't worked with Ozon before, and this anticipated first teaming sees the great actor at his most animated for a while. Depardieu can often be a gruff and dour presence, and so it is a real treat to see him cut loose in a broad comedy, and do it with such apparent zeal. He and Deneuve share great chemistry (just look at the lovely scene where they do a dance number together), and the very obvious fact that they are having a great time is infectious for the audience.

The supporting cast is also strong, with Fabrice Luchini turning his raging patriarch up to 11 in some hilarious scenes, Karin Viard surprisingly complex in what initially seems to be just a play on the saucy secretary of a lot of 70's films and Judith Godreche and Jeremie Renier (returning to Ozon for the first time since the underrated Criminal Lovers) effective as Deneuve and Luchini's polar opposite children.

All too often over the last five years I have found myself sitting in cinemas and watch 'comedies', sinking into a spiral of depression and wondering how the world got to a point where it's trying to convince adults that poo is intrinsically amusing. Happily Potiche doesn't do that (sorry poo joke fans), it's a warm film, not a cruel one, where the comedy comes from incongruity, absurdity and the day to day silliness of the way people behave. Ozon also gets a lot of mileage in what we neither see (Luchini's reaction when his son goes to negotiate his release with the workers holding him hostage), nor hear (a very funny scene with Sergi Lopez - best known as Capitain Vidal in Pan's Labyrinth - making a silent cameo as a trucker who gives Deneuve a ride).

The film takes an unexpected detour into politics towards the end, but it does so without sacrificing the carefully judged tone that has prevailed throughout the film, and Ozon finds an ending which is at once gloriously barmy and utterly perfect for the film. Potiche is, at the end of the day, a souffle, it doesn't have the power of Ozon's best dramas like 5 X 2 and Le Refuge, but so what? This is a perfectly executed piece of entertainment, no more or less, it's accessible, charming, and brilliantly made, as well as being yet another confirmation of the fact that, yes, this director really can do anything.

François Ozon is why I go to the cinema, and he's why you should too.

Battle: Los Angeles [12A]

DIR: Jonathan Liebesman
CAST: Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez

Boom! Bang! Ratatat! "WE'RE NOT DYING HERE!" Boom! Bang! Boom! "GET THIS TO MY WIFE!" Ratatat! Bang! Boom! "RANDOM MILITARY FILM CLICHE!" Oh dear God, Battle: LA is awful.

I can deal with movies not working, there's so much to get right that it's inevitable that most of the time some things will work better than others, that the odd bad line, or shoddy performance, will slip through. That's fine. What I object to is when I get the sense that nobody working on a film cares about even trying to make it good, and that's how I felt while watching this one.

Battle: LA isn't just bad, it's inept, at any level you care to name it's just about unwatchable, budget really is all that separates it from a shitty DTV movie shot in someone's back yard. My problem in itemising its failings is really with knowing where to begin. Well, let's begin where filmmakers should begin; the script. I understand that true originality is astonishingly rare, that finding a totally new story at this point in history is all but impossible, but that's no excuse for doing something like this. The script on show here (which, one suspects, ran to about 15 pages with blanks filled in by the phrase 'stuff go boom now') is an abysmal cut and paste job, apparently assembled by a computer programmed to put together all the most hackneyed clichés of both alien invasion and the military action genres.

The film opens with about 20 minutes of the most hackneyed and perfunctory excuses for character development you'll ever see. We meet Aaron Eckhart (playing a 20 year veteran of the marines, who is just about to retire) and then the soldiers he's going to end up leading, and I'm not going to pretend, I don't know who any of them are and couldn't tell you which of them died. One guy is black, wears glasses and is getting married, by this film's standards he's a rounded character. Another is young (ooh, deep), another apparently has some form of PTSD, well, for five minutes anyway. The rest don't even have traits, let alone personalities, they hold guns and bark largely unintelligible things at one another as stuff goes boom. A little later Michelle Rodriguez comes into the action, when she's asked if she can use her gun she says "I didn't get here on my good looks"; a line that rather lacks the usual intended irony coming from a woman who looks like Michelle Rodriguez.

Stupid dialogue abounds (few lines are dumber than Bridget Moynahan's offer to help dissect an Alien because "I'm a veterinarian") and so it's hard to blame the actors for being terrible, but terrible they most certainly are. Thankfully most of them are so forgettable that it probably won't hurt their careers much, but while you're watching them these are MST3K levels of actorly ineptitude. Only Aaron Eckhart, a great actor, even attempts to rise above, but he's crippled by a script so totally broken that God himself couldn't give a decent performance in it.

What makes Battle: LA such an incredible trial to sit through isn't, at the end of the day, the acting or the script, it's the direction; the hideous, hideous direction. I'm going to start a charity drive, I'm now accepting donations to buy EVERY film unit in Hollywood a tripod. PUT THE FUCKING CAMERA DOWN! I liked The Bourne Identity, and even The Bourne Supremacy, but what has followed in their wake; the increasing dominance of this ugly, boring, nonsensical 'shakycam' style is threatening to destroy action cinema as I know and love it. Battle: LA's action scenes (and there are a lot of them) make absolutely no sense. The shakycam style is so bitty and indistinct that all sense of the geography of the scene is thrown out of the window. This also takes any tension (that hasn't already gone because you don't know who any of the characters are) out of the scene, because you don't know where the threat comes from, or the spatial relationships of one character to the next unless they are in the same frame. I'm all for equal working rights, but I'm really not sure that a constantly fitting epileptic is the best choice for the role of camera operator and focus puller.

This isn't to say that the rest of the film makes sense. Cuts between locations often threw me ('how'd they get there so fast?'), and in the final scenes there is an 'it's night... now it's day' moment that Ed Wood would have been proud of. Battle: LA is abysmal; ineptly written, acted and shot, boring, stupid, annoying and basically unwatchable. If you go and see it (don't, for the love of all that is holy, don't) please don't say I didn't warn you.

The Company Men [15]

DIR: John Wells
CAST: Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper,
Rosemarie De Witt, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello

Lately a lot of movies have been addressing the financial crisis that engulfed the western world in 2008. John Wells; former head honcho at ER and show runner for The West Wing's patchy post Sorkin years looks at it from a slightly different angle with this, his feature directorial debut. Rather than follow the model of most of the films that have examined the crisis so far - rage laden documentraies questioning why no bankers have yet been prosecuted - Wells follows several people who have just lost their jobs at GTX, a fictional transport infrastructure company.

The major miscalculation here is where on the ladder Wells opts to focus, the poorest individual we follow is Ben Affleck's Bobby; a happily married (to Rosemarie De Witt) mid-level exec earning $160,000 a year. We're apparently supposed to empathise as he realises (or rather fails to realise), that he can no longer afford his Porsche, or his golf club membership, or even his ridiculously large house. We're supposed to identify as he metaphorically sticks his fingers in his ears and bawls 'la la la, I'm not listening' as his wife suggests they reign in their excesses. I think we're even supposed to cheer when, insulted at being interviewed for a job paying a measly $65,000, he behaves like a petulant child. And this is the guy on the bottom of the pile in this movie. It's tough to care.

The annoying thing about The Company Men is that, despite the fact that it's so hard to really care about these obscenely well paid people who are, apparently, plunged into poverty the second they are laid off, it's not a bad film. Wells' writing and direction are both solid, if a little middle of the road, though the film's imagery is lent occasional beauty (see Chris Cooper lighting up in his garage in silhouette) courtesy of cinematographer Roger Deakins, but the performances are generally excellent.

I was never as down on Ben Affleck as many critics seemed to be, okay, he was never DeNiro (but then nor has DeNiro been for the past 15 years), but he was always a solid, likeable, leading man. Happily over the past few years he seems to be somewhat reinvograted as an actor, and he's good here as Bobby, it's not a loud, showy, performance, but it feels credible. Reliable character players Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper deliver the goods too, with Jones notably relying less than usual on the grizzled tics that his work can degenerate into. Another actor I've more time for than most; Kevin Costner, is also solid, he's settling into middle age nicely as a character actor, and has become better now that he's less able to coast on good looks and charm. On the downside, the reliably excellent Maria Bello is wasted ; she has about 12 lines and flashes her breasts, but there's no real reason for this role to go to an actor of her estimable talents.

For me, the performance that really makes this movie is Rosemarie De Witt's. As in Rachel Getting Married, she's not doing anything big (if anything she's underwritten here, a slight cliché of a supportive but concerned wife), but she's an actor of simple conviction; you just believe her. Thanks to her performance there's some investment in the marriage between her character and Affleck's, and you believe in them as a long term couple. If there is any sympathy at all engendered for Bobby it is through this relationship and this performance. On a personal note, if 'happily married to Rosemarie De Witt' were part of the equation, I'd take my old job at McDonald's back.

At the end of the day The Company Men is a perfectly well crafted film, but because it's hard to get too exercised when - oh no - someone might not be able to afford a $275,000 table anymore it is tough to get very involved with it. The performances are good enough to make it a worthy rental but I would find it hard to insist that you go and seek it out a big screen.

24FPS on MultiMediaMouth

It's been a while since I last collected the work I've been doing over at www.multimediamouth.com and presented it to you in a single, easily digested, post. So here's a bumper helping of bits and pieces.

WHY HAVEN'T YOU SEEN...?
My weekly feature for MultiMediaMouth focuses on obscure and lesser known films that you probably haven't seen, but should.

Not Here to be Loved
Celia
Hardcore
Little Manhattan


THIS WEEK WE'VE BEEN WATCHING...
Our newest feature at MMM brings the whole film team together, with each of us contributing mini reviews of a few film, old and new, that we've seen in the past few weeks. Listed below are the titles I personally reviewed.

Week 1: Eyes Without a Face / No Strings Attached / Women of Hamas
Week 2: Grown Up Movie Star / Fucking Amal / Ironclad

THE SCREENING ROOM PODCAST
For as long as I've been working at MultiMediaMouth I've been planning a podcast and, after some nightmarish editing, we've got the first episode up. This episode features me and MMM editor in chief Eoin Mason offering reviews, lists and features. I'm very happy with it, please give it a listen below.

Confessions [15]

DIR: Tetsuya Nakashima
CAST: Takako Matsu, Yukito Nishii,
Ai Hashimoto, Kaoru Fujiwara

Acclaimed Japanese director Tetsuya Nakashima's latest is the first of his films that I've seen. It will not be the last.

Confessions is, in generic terms, perhaps closest to being a revenge thriller, but putting it in a box like that is almost an insult. It begins with a teacher (Matsu) addressing her class of 12 and 13 year olds. She tells them this is her last day of teaching, and then drops a bombshell; her four year old daughter was murdered by two of these students, and she's going to take revenge, because Japan's juvenile responsibility laws will protect the killers otherwise. This is her confession. The film then unfolds with further confessions from various other characters, going back and forth in time as it views the events from several different perspectives.

The opening of Confessions is utterly extraordinary, it's almost a self contained short film, a mini masterwork of its own, much like the Omaha beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan, as with that film the question then becomes; how can the film possibly live up to this? Where Saving Private Ryan came up empty, Confessions has an answer: 'Like THIS!' Nakashima seems to say, juggling perspectives and timelines and throwing up ever more shocking moments up until the film's shattering, jaw dropping, denouement.

As well as teacher Moriguchi the film focuses on three students. There are the two murderers; Shuya (Nishii) and Naoki (Fujiwara) and Shuya's girlfriend Mizuki (Hashimoto), and there is also an important role for Naoki's Mother (played by Yoshino Kimura, who Western audiences may remember from Fernando Mierelles' Blindness). Each of these characters offers their own confession, their own spin on events both before and after the central murder. Happily the performances are exceptional all round, perhaps especially from the young leads (who, refreshingly, actually are the age they're playing). These are complex roles for young actors, each has multiple layers; faces and motives they show to the world and those they keep hidden, it's a testament to both the actors and director Nakashima that there's never a false note struck.

The best work in the film probably comes from Yukito Nishii, who makes Shuya both utterly chilling and convincingly vulnerable, and it's vital that you believe both for the ending to have any hope of working. Ai Hashimoto is also excellent; all sweetness and light just barely masking contempt for the world and its people.

Confessions is a 106 minute display of virtuosity by director Tetsuya Nakashima. It is an exceptionally beautiful film. Much of what Nakashima is filming is rather mundane, but his framing is always exceptional and the heavy use of slow motion, especially in sequences with rain, is stunning. The compositions in the film range from amusing (the students popping into frame to sing That's the Way I Like It) to images that are much more difficult; some violent, some simply haunting, all rendered in Nakashima's cold, steely, colour scheme. Startling as the visuals can be (and a slow motion shot towards the end of the film is, frankly, jaw dropping) Confessions is not some abstract artists film, it's a constantly twisting thriller that just keeps on surprising and shocking us. Both times I've seen it the cinema has been deadly silent as the end credits rolled, the audience trying to collect their thoughts. That's a testament to how strong the characterisations and plotting are in Nakashima and Kanae Minato's screenplay.

It's also well worth mentioning the soundtrack, as through a mix of bands like Radiohead and Japanese noise merchants Boris and original score that often sounds suspiciously like Sigur Ros, the film creates an almost omnipresent undertow of sound that pulls you into it's world, without instructing you how you should feel at any given moment.

Confessions was a thrill for me, I never knew where it was going next, just that I could trust that it was going to do something pretty extraordinary. The ending certainly lives up to that promise, delivering an unexpected - but plausible - gut punch in the film's final minutes. This is the first great film of 2011, and it's going to take something pretty special to beat it this year.


You can pre-order Confessions on UK Blu Ray or DVD (released April 25th), and help out 24FPS into the bargain, by using the links below. Thanks.

Blu Ray review: And Soon the Darkness [18]

DIR: Marcos Efron

The Film
As a big horror fan I get really annoyed when people dismiss the genre as merely an endless cycle of dumb movies about stupid people getting chased and brutalised. I hate it even more when filmmakers appear to go out of their way to make those people's case for them.

Music video director Marcus Efron here makes his feature length bow with yet another horror remake (this time of a near unknown British film of the same name from 1970), and sadly this one has to go on the ever increasing pile of piss poor reboots. If you've never seen a horror film before then there is perhaps some hope that you'll be entertained by And Soon the Darkness, but if you've experienced more than... oh let's be generous and say three other horror films, then this one will hold no surprises and no thrills in its 91 minutes. To give Efron his dues, he's clearly learned how to make his pictures look pretty. He's immeasurably aided by the Argentinian scenery amid which And Soon the Darkness is set; there are some really beautiful images here, notably in the film's last half hour, which is set in a deserted town which looks bombed out. Unfortunately everything else is a total disaster.

First there's the story, which concerns two girls (Amber Heard as goody two shoes Steph and Odette Yustman as party girl Ellie) who miss their bus on the last day of their cycling holiday in Argentina, go out into the countryside, argue, separate, and then one of them goes missing. It's pretty much the definition of generic, and if you give it even 30 seconds thought then you'll know how Karl Urban's 'mysterious' English speaking stranger and local law enforcement figure in the plot, and pretty much everything that happens to Yustman and Heard. Nothing is unexpected. The Plot O Matic 3000 clanks relentlessly away, the cogs groaning with every hackneyed scene (a coincidence really, since I did the same).

Then there's the acting. You can't fault Yustman's energy or effort, but she's seriously let down by the character, who is insufferable, which really doesn't help you care when she goes missing - point of fact it's a blessed relief. You can, however, fault Karl Urban's energy and effort. He shows up for perhaps ten minutes, and 'acts' as though the message we (and director Efron) are supposed to take away is 'look mate, you paid for my time, I never said I was going to betray an emotion or have an expression'. Performance wise, co-producer Amber Heard's major contribution is to speak intelligibly and look pretty. You could have put just about any actress her age in this part and have got something as good or better. This too is a major problem in getting the film to engage, because Heard never exhibits enough spunk to be an interesting or formidable final girl; there's no sense that what this character goes through has much effect on her at all.

Despite running a scant 85 minutes before the credits roll, And Soon the Darkness is long, drawn out and boring. Nearly an hour passes after a (very) brief teaser before anything remotely thrilling or scary happens, and when the film finally decides to ramp up in the last twenty odd minutes it does so in a way that feels like a sigh of contractual obligation, rather than out of any desire to scare, appall or engage the audience. Even at the basest level the film fails; it's not even violent enough to be engaging at a visceral level.

And Soon the Darkness is a shrug of a movie; a brief distraction for all concerned, now almost certainly forgotten, and best left that way.

The Extras
The check disc I was sent boasted only the trailer and six minutes of deleted scenes. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to whether they're worth watching?

The Disc
And Soon the Darkness may be crap, but it is beautifully presented crap. The 1080p transfer is brilliant; looking at the scenery is almost like looking out a window. It's just a shame that so much effort has gone in to the presentation of a film that does so little to warrant it (it is, however, a bonus in the scene where Yustman and Heard strip down to bikinis).

Unknown [12A]

DIR: Jaume Collet-Serra
CAST: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones,
Bruno Ganz, Aidan Quinn

I'm terrible at maths, but here's an equation for you. The Fugitive - Harrison Ford + the Bourne franchise - Matt Damon + slumming German actors + January Jones + rentahack = uninspiring Liam Neeson vehicle.

The premise of Unknown isn't uninteresting; Liam Neeson plays Martin Harris, a scientist who goes to Berlin to give a speech but he's involved in a car crash (while in a cab driven by Diane Kruger). He wakes four days later and, on going to find his wife Elizabeth (Jones), discovers that another man (Aidan Quinn) is saying that he's Martin Harris, and is married to Elizabeth, who now says that she's never met Neeson's Martin. With the help of the cab driver, 'Martin' must now find out who he is, and who is trying to be him.

Unknown isn't awful, it's just unremarkable; a slightly undercooked stew of ingredients that were better when served separately. Neeson's performance is energetic, he runs around Berlin trying to put the clues together, and biffs people fairly convincingly in the last 15 minutes of the film (which is, Taken fans be warned, light on action until then), but I'd be lying if I said he was terribly good. It's a workmanlike turn, rather like watching a slightly bored bricklayer make a nice sturdy wall; you can't fault it, but it's tough to be excited by it.

The focus is almost entirely on Neeson, so the other characters are undeveloped ciphers that give the talented supporting cast little to do. Diane Kruger is a good actress (and she can be great, see Anything For Her) but her character has little to do but be imperiled by her association with Neeson, the last thing she does that is of any real use is pull Neeson from a sinking car (how plausible, the 5' 3" Kruger rescuing the soaking wet, unconscious, 6' 5" Neeson) and that happens before she's spoken a single word. January Jones is flat as Neeson's 'wife' and Aidan Quinn gets too little screentime to be threatening as the man who replaces Martin (nice to see you though Aidan). The real shame is the wasting of talented German performers like Bruno Ganz and Sebastien Koch in roles that give them little to do but exposit.

The film is unevenly paced, and director Jaume Collet-Serra lacks the chops to inject real intrigue or excitement into it. The car chases don't really get the pulse racing, and the action is toned down in deference to the 12A certificate. The big twist is mildly surprising, but others are telegraphed well in advance. The real downfall is that neither the script nor the direction (nor indeed the performances) put enough flesh on the bones of these characters to make Neeson's quest feel all that important (and if anything the twist undermines any sympathy you might otherwise have).

Like I said, this isn't terrible, but you're better off watching The Fugitive or the Bourne films really.

Blu-Ray Review: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time [12]

DIR: Mamoru Hosoda

The Film
In the (relatively limited) anime I have seen I have become used to its makers taking me to fantastical worlds, showing me things that would be be near impossible to replicate in live action. On hearing the title 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time' you might expect Mamoru Hosoda's first self penned film (he apparently worked on the Digimon movie before this) to fit the sci-fi mould that a great deal of anime seems to fall into, and to a degree it does, but only in concept.

The film is about a high school girl named Makoto, she's a pretty typical 17 year old; a little awkward, in love with one of her male friends, but unwilling to admit it, and wanting more than anything just to have fun. One day, completely by accident, Makoto discovers that she has the ability to leap back in time. To begin with she uses this power for frivolous things, but as time goes on she begins to see that her small changes are having big, and often very negative, effects.

As with Hosoda's subsequent Summer Wars, there are a lot of things going on in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and it mixes tones very freely. The first half of the film is largely comedic, as Makoto uses her abilities to extend her time at karaoke, avoid making a fool of herself at school, and eat the pudding that her little sister had previously stolen from her. These sequences also include a big helping of slapstick, as Makoto crashes into scenes repeatedly after her time leaps. As the film continues it becomes more dramatic, as Makoto's seemingly insignificant changes to the timeline begin to have serious effects on the people around her (few more so then her friend Chiaki, who is clearly in love with her). Without it feeling heavy handed or arbitrary, Hosoda introduces both real peril and real emotion into the film's last half hour.

Acting often goes unremarked on when it comes to animated films - something that continues to baffle me - but the performances here are excellent. Riisa Naka makes Makoto an absolutely believable character; fun loving and carefree at first glance, but filled with all the turbulent emotions and doubts that come with being a teenager. It's a bubbly and engaging piece of acting, one that makes the central pull of the story - the suggested unrequited triangle between Makoto and her two male friends Chiaki and Kosuke - feel genuine. The other vocal performances are also strong, with particularly nice work from Yuki Sekido as Makoto's aunt, who was able to time leap in her own youth.

The look of the film is quite plain for the most part (bar a few brief segments in which Makoto travels through time), but the relatively simple, unexaggerated, character design and realistic backgrounds serve the film well, putting it squarely in the real world rather than emphasising the film's sci-fi elements, which, for me, only served to allow the emotion to come through stronger and more honestly. The animation may not always be hugely complex, but it is a joy to watch. The time leap sequences especially strong, capturing the exuberance of Makoto and her joy at this ability, in this they become not just transitions but key character moments, to say nothing of the fact that they almost always provide the film with a laugh. There are also some extremely beautiful sequences in the film, none more so than when, with Makoto desperate to save her friend from danger, time stops abruptly. Here the film takes on a painterly beauty as the camera observes the small details of this frozen world. Overall, Mamoru Hosoda gives this film a strong look, but one that is unshowy, and draws you into the drama because of that.

While, obviously, I won't disclose details I will say that, having become so invested in the film and particularly in Makoto, I was anxious that Hosoda find a satisfying ending. He does, without becoming overly mushy the film comes to a genuinely moving close (I'm not ashamed to say I teared up a little), and resists the temptation to give us an ending that makes everything okay again.

I loved Hosoda's Summer Wars (review here), and so my hopes were high for this film, but still, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time exceeded my expectations. It comes highly recommended.

The Disc
The HD picture is sparklingly good, rendering the animation with clean lines and smooth movement. The sound serves the film well, but the real world setting and lack of explosions means that there are only relatively trivial demands made on it. The subtitles are serviceable, and generally easy to read. A solid disc. NO EXTRAS

THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME is available now on DVD, on March 28th it will be available in a boxset with Hosoda's SUMMER WARS on both DVD and Blu-Ray. if you'd like to buy any of these releases, and support 24FPS at the same time, please use the links below. Thanks!