Am I the only person in the world that doesn’t get Jerry Maguire? How did this movie manage a Best Picture nomination? Now, before I go on a rant, I should concede that the film has two things going for it: the kid is cute and Cuba Gooding Junior is astounding. But that’s it. Jerry Maguire has reached such sky high status that it’s weaved its way into popular language. Almost everyone knows “you had me at hello” and “show me the money.”. But why? There are many better films filled with better lines that deserve a place in the consciousness of regular moviegoers.

My problems with Jerry Maguire are many and varied. For one, Tom Cruise’s character is not likeable. We’re told that most sports agents are crude and cut throat and we’re supposed to believe that Jerry is a Gatsby like figure; a paradigm of righteousness in a world of brutality. This idea is key to the entire movie and yet the only “proof” to back up the notion is a bizarre office memo and the opinion of a naive, lovestruck accountant. The tense final football game manages to momentarily sway the viewer onto Jerry’s side, but by that time they’ve had to sit through over two hours of his hypocrisy.

And as for the romance, it’s entirely unconvincing. This film doesn’t know if it wants to be a realistic romantic drama or a fantastical love story. On one hand you have Renee Zellweger’s character with her desperate and doomed illusions of reciprocated love and on the other you have Tom Cruise declaring “you complete me.” Because of course, everything has to work out; even a marriage literally based on a misunderstood proposal. What’s most annoying about this is that it negates one of the few endearing scenes in this film, when Zellweger’s character walks away from her marriage. All it takes is a “hello” and Jerry Maguire has her wrapped back up in the illusions that she’d finally overcome. Why should an audience cheer for the undoing of a character’s bravest moment?

Jerry Maguire is full of these questions. It requires too much of the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with happy endings but they don’t work in a movie that swings between schmaltziness and harsh honesty with no regard for continuity. Jerry Maguire is an unsuccessful patchwork, a rip-off of many better movies. It should be avoided. 

Ian McEwan shared the stage with his friend Craig Raine, founder and editor of Areté, the literary magazine, whose first novel, Heartbreak, will be published in July.

McEwan read from his most recent offering, Solar, and quickly had the audience nodding and chuckling with his amusing introduction to the book’s protagonist, Michael Beard. In this novel he has ambitiously tackled the political minefield that is climate change in a characteristically unconventional way – through the story of a womanising physicist on the brink of his fifth marital breakdown. As with all attempts by writers of fiction to take on ‘controversial’ political topics, McEwan ran the risk that his work of fiction would turn into a dry moral fable. Fortunately those afraid of being righteously preached at from behind a thin sprinkling of adjectives can rest assured that McEwan is quite aware of this danger: he emphasised that his concern is with reflecting the world as he sees it, not in telling people how to live. If the first few pages of the book are anything to go by, McEwan’s timeless wit and eye for psychological detail will ensure the book is enjoyable for Greenpeace fanatics and polar bear haters alike.

Raine’s reading was less assured than that of his better known contemporary: the section he read detailed one character’s loss, and subsequent ingestion, of the crown from his tooth. While McEwan admitted that Raine’s book had twice brought tears to his eyes, I couldn’t help but feel that either he selected the wrong part to read, or that I have suddenly developed a heart of stone: my eyes remained stubbornly dry. The move from poetry to prose is always a tricky one to get right, and the two writers disagreed on whether he had written a poet’s novel or a novelist’s novel – McEwan contended that the decision to use paragraph breaks urged the reader to pay attention in a way which novels rarely demand. Perhaps this works, I shall withhold judgement until I’ve read it myself – paragraph breaks don’t make much of a difference when you are being read to.

The pair have known each other for thirty plus years, since their days as contributors to New Review. Apparently Raine used to write ‘FLF’ in the margins of McEwan’s work when he spotted a cliché (FLF standing for, he explained, Flickering Log Fire). Their interest in one another’s work has not diminished: McEwan informed Raine that he had circled the word ‘somehow’ in his new book, and suggested that he remove it before the second edition. The general feeling between the two was, however, very much on the warm side, and the audience were rewarded with various shared anecdotes amassed during their long-standing acquaintance. This meant, however, that the style of discussion did descend into a slightly tedious in-joke marathon from time to time. I would compare it to the experience of listening to people you barely know sharing their holiday photos – guess you just had to be there.

One of the most enjoyable things about the festival was the insight we were afforded into the relationships between figures in the British literary scene. With Raine and McEwan the underlying rivalries and pointed critiques were glossed over with friendly banter and extensive compliments about each others’ work. While both are highly regarded in their separate fields, I thought that the McEwan/Raine combination didn’t really work – neither fully got to grips with the work of the other, and their desire to drive the conversation back towards each other was as distracting as it was noble.

This was, however, nothing on the Craig Raine/Martin Amis pairing two days later, which was, to put it mildly, a disaster. Throughout the interview, the barely concealed friction between the author and his former tutor made for interesting viewing: the sight of their egos bouncing off each other was certainly very entertaining. Amis was actually quite rude to Raine, which, literary giant though he is, made the interview quite awkward to watch at times.

The choice of interviewers during the festival as a whole could certainly have been more careful: the one-size-fits all approach meant that there was often a lack of preparation, and the interviewees were not always posed questions which were thoughtful enough to induce them to reveal interesting insights into their work. Some of the questions asked in other interviews were just downright silly: choosing the right pairings is a delicate task, but it certainly pays off.

A part of me wishes I could wrap Philip Pullman up in a blanket, hand him a pipe and take him home to be my new grandpa. There’s something about the way he talks about his childhood, telling you stories in his soothing voice, seeming to share in all the wonder of children’s literature you had as a kid; you can’t help but fall in love with him a bit. Adding to the atmosphere, his talk in Christ Church Cathedral School brought an audience full of children as young as four and I was there with my younger sister and mum – a real family affair.

Soothing as his voice may be, that’s not to say Pullman doesn’t challenge his young fans. After all, the series His Dark Materials, a trilogy aimed at children, covers broken families, betrayal, war, loss of the soul, death, the afterlife, sexual discovery, unrequited love, and even the end of God. For this reason parts of the books have been censored in some American editions, and the books and film have faced much criticism and protest from Christian groups.

Indeed, he is likely to hear even more protest about his latest publication, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, about which he gave another talk later in the festival. But in the classroom that morning he was focusing on children’s books and childhood, prompted along the way by the sixteen year-old Anouchka Harris, his interviewer. Charming as she was, I enjoyed it a lot more when the audience were asked if they had any questions, especially when a five-year old asked him how old he was when he wrote his first book. “Eight,” he responded, insisting that it wouldn’t be long until she could start too, if she hadn’t already.

Pullman treats his younger fans with care and respect; he listens to them and doesn’t patronise them whatever the age, a quality too rare amongst adults in general. It’s one of the things that make his stories so compelling. In fact, he railed against patronising children’s books where all the characters are happy all the time and nothing really bad ever happens. “Children aren’t stupid; they know the world has bad things in it”. They might have a dying parent, have seen a car crash on the way home from school or any one of a hundred other terrible things. Pretending it isn’t real, that the world isn’t a scary place sometimes is lying to children; it’s more important to let them have somewhere they do feel safe and protected: a home.

He was not afraid to throw out criticism of the film based on his book as well. He pointed out The Golden Compass had been a compromise between a lot of people’s creative visions. He was frustrated that they had cut the film half-way through the book (a point which got an appreciative clap from the audience) and there were production decisions he really didn’t like, such as the slickness of the design in what should have been a far more dirty and haphazard London. He has a keen eye for such things, having painstakingly drawn all the illustrations in Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife himself on tiny squares of white card. I personally would be a lot more liberal with my own criticism of this incredibly disappointing film. However, he loved the spectacular National Theatre production, and admitted the daemons rather stole the show, though was disappointed with the Oxford stage version. He thought it didn’t quite work as well because the puppeteers didn’t wear masks; their faces spoilt the magic.

One element of the talk that was particularly refreshing in this book festival of big egos was how Pullman seemed proud of his novels but not as evidence of his own genius, more because he genuinely cared about these made-up characters and wanted to do them justice. And though he had a slight tendency to give a bit more information about the type of pen he uses or what has happened to his old shed than I think anyone really wanted to know, his ability to tell stories, particularly about his childhood travels, keep you and even the youngest audience-member absorbed.

It is easy to be fooled into thinking Shutter Island isn’t a big release. For some cynical financial reasons, Paramount thought it would be best to focus on promoting Where the Wild Things Are, and consequently to push this film’s release date, and thus, in turn, to push Martin Scorsese (what on earth were they thinking?) back until after the Oscars. This means Shutter Island will get nowhere near the attention and praise it deserves. That is why it is my duty to praise it here as much as possible and try to ensure that no-one misses out on a maestro’s continuation of lifelong top form.

Before the film started, I was trying to establish just how Shutter Island would fit into Scorsese’s body of work. He has seldom set foot outside of the gangster genre, and when he has, with the exception perhaps of Cape Fear, it has never been to delve into the world of horror and film noir. I don’t think anyone would have guessed Shutter Island would be a Scorsese picture, were it not for his name being tagged on at the end.

Justifiably so, for in no shape or form at all does Shutter Island resemble classic Scorsese. It is completely new territory for him, but he masters it as if he has been making this sort of film all his life. From the very first scene, in which DiCaprio’s character, Teddy Daniels, descends upon the island, we get the impression that he’ll be arriving at a horrifying place. It’s like the arrival at Skull Island in King Kong: the water is fierce; the cliff faces are high. We’re not exactly sure what awaits.

An ex-army man involved in the liberation of Dachau, Daniels is now, we’re told, an investigator. He is arriving on the island to solve the vanishing of an infanticide mother. It’s a bizarre and seemingly inexplicable scenario, and Daniels gives us good reason to believe the people running Shutter Island are doing bigger things than common knowledge suggests. With time, however, we come to doubt, believe again and re-doubt whether this is the case. We assume the search for the missing patient will dominate the plot, but in one of many twists it is soon brushed aside and replaced by a new issue, as the film whirls forward amidst the hurricanes and horrendous weather towards an incredible climax. I wish I could say so much more about what happens, but I can’t, because Shutter Island‘s magic lies predominantly in its unexpected plot intricacies.

This is not to the detriment of the quality of acting or directing, however. Di Caprio’s best performances in his previous films have always come in scenes where he’s frustrated or fearful. Think of the cast-cracking scene in The Departed and the chair-breaking bust-up with April in Revolutionary Road. Shutter Island gives him over two hours of such high-intensity scenes, and he uses them perfectly to create the impression of a fragile, hallucinatory mind that’s being tortured on an island of hell.

The nature of the storytelling is equally brilliant. Scorsese litters Shutter Island with homages to Hitchcock (we see a shower-head face on, referencing Psycho, and the plot’s deceptive nature certainly parallels Vertigo), and Kubrick’s presence is felt in the pulsating music reminding one immediately of The Shining. The world, or rather the island, that Scorsese creates is incredibly creepy, and the film ends with the most aptly ambiguous final line imaginable.

It should come as no surprise to us that Scorsese nails it again with Shutter Island. He has produced consistently excellent material for over forty years, and this film is not just a continuation of this trend; it is a progression from it. As he diversifies further next year with a film on Sinatra, let’s hope this is a sign of further brilliant things to come from the God of American cinema.

five stars

It is testament to Singh’s reputation as a fascinating writer and speaker that such a crowd turned out during a furious thunderstorm in Oxford on Thursday. The Blue Boar Lecture Theatre was packed with dripping spectators, and they were not disappointed.

Singh has clearly given this same talk many times before, but only as of Saturday has he been able to begin it with a picture of a newborn baby; his and his wife’s first child. Such endearing minor changes aside, all the practice has made him an interesting, often hilarious speaker, with a really important message about alternative medicine and, more importantly, about the need for libel reform in Britain.

Singh’s ongoing libel case is over an article he wrote in The Guardian on the claims of chiropractic medicine. He recounted how, after being told he was going to be sued by the British Chiropractic Association, he ran to The Guardian legal team. ‘What are we going to do about this?’ he asked, to which their automatic response was, ‘Hey! What do you mean “we”?’

However, unlike his last speech at the Oxford Union, the Oxford Literary Festival hosts a considerably older audience and, while they laughed appreciatively at this well-delivered anecdote and Singh’s more scientifically accurate re-recording of Katie Melua’s 9 Million Bicycles track, I couldn’t help but feel that many had long ago made up their minds about many of the issues he was discussing.

‘Well, he simply didn’t seem to have a proper grasp of the memory of water involved in homeopathy’, I overheard one older woman mention as we left the event. I found it hard to fight the urge to grab her, shake her and insist, ‘No, you simply don’t seem to have a proper grasp of the extent to which he has scientifically analysed both the claims and the research about homeopathy and come to a highly informed opinion about it as covered in his detailed book Trick or Treatment!’

My frustration with the audience did not stop there. After his speech there were several questions asking whether he could have made clear that his article was his opinion rather than fact in order to escape the libel case. One cannot help but feel such a line of questioning rather misses the point of why he is standing by his article and fighting the case. He thinks what he said was right and attempts to water it down, even if it might have saved him a legal battle, would have prevented important information being available to the public. He is doing what he thinks is right.

Constant self-censorship amongst journalists and scientists for fear of expensive libel cases is one of the unquantifiable damages of having a system which works in favour of the wealthy and the big corporations rather than those with points to make in the public interest. We clearly need better libel legislation in Britain when even winning a libel case can result in un-reclaimable costs in the hundreds of thousands – equivalent to the value of a small house – for the individual or publisher.

Sadly, this particular Christchurch appearance just seemed to lack the buzzing and open-minded atmosphere of the Union event. I think the Literary Festival really should be attracting more student audience members; while opening Oxford up to members of the public is admirable, I cannot help but feel Oxford students could are missing out on a varied, interesting, and well-organised series of events because of a lack of publicity and, possibly more importantly, because of a need for student discounts.

Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial by Professor Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh is published by Corgi Books and available on Amazon