This year in Britain started well with a wave of award-winning films from the States. No Country For Old Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Juno, There Will Be Blood and Sweeney Todd were all spectacular films. However, the biggest release of the early months was that self-hyped orgy of mystery, Cloverfield, an excellent popcorn film with skyscraper-sized monsters trashing the majority of the United States.

There were quieter releases to be enjoyed. The Orphanage was a magnificent and intelligent thriller. In Bruges shot, swore and brutalised its way to brilliance as one of the funniest comedies for some time. Meanwhile, the stylish animation of Persepolis provided an insightful look at an Iranian woman’s life and identity.

When summer arrived Iron Man was one of the better releases, with an excellent performance from Robert Downey Jr, WALL·E was a wonderful film, as Pixar brought the magic of cinema to the screen for a new generation of film-goers, but the summer belonged to the stunning The Dark Knight which had the performance of the year from the late Heath Ledger.

However, there were disappointments. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was the most crushing of these, as Spielberg created an entertaining if incoherent piece that blew itself apart with a useless title and a mad, alien-filled ending. Prince Caspian was bigger and better than its predecessor but still failed to capture the magic of Narnia. Nevertheless, both of these had more quality behind them than Mamma Mia! – dreadfully embarrassing and so terrible it was impossible not to enjoy, particularly as Meryl Streep blasted away with her rather idiosyncratic singing.

Come autumn the big release was Quantum of Solace, which was a disappointment, though not as bad as it could have been, whilst one of the year’s lowlights was Brideshead Revisited, which was anaesthetically dull and oh-so-terribly stiff upper lip. Hellboy 2 proved to be even worse than the original and was a classic example of a film that you didn’t need to bother watching if you’ve seen the trailer.

There were many surprises, though, particularly later in the year. Keira Knightley delivered a nuanced performance in The Duchess whilst Josh Brolin was magnificent as President Bush in the otherwise unsatisfying W. The Italian gangster film Gomorrah was genuinely impressive, as was the bold Holocaust drama The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas: somewhat over-sentimental but the bleak message still hit home. Waltz with Bashir, an Israeli-made animated documentary, was an incredible, stylish, and moving personal journey through a horrible piece of history.

As for the rest of the year, much anticipated are Australia, which will see Kidman and Jackman smooch their way through a good two-hour epic; Che, featuring Benicio del Toro as the revolutionary hero; and Valkyrie, starring the predictable Tom Cruise (but the latest word is that it has been postponed until next year).

So all in all it has been a rather disappointing year: the summer blockbusters that promised to deliver didn’t , and the Yule tide colossi turned out to be rather small. Bring on 2009.

Changeling
5 Stars

What just happened?
3 Stars

It is rare to come across a movie which is as beautifully directed, powerfully acted and utterly moving as Clint Eastwood’s Changeling. Not simply another Hollywood blockbuster, it is a breath of fresh air at the cinema.

Screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski masterfully adapts this true-crime story, bringing to life the shocking events which occurred in Los Angeles in 1928 when Walter, the nine-year-old son of Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a switch-board operator, goes missing. The LAPD are less than helpful. However after five months they bring Christine, along with the press, to the train station to be reunited with a boy who they claim to be her son.

One problem: this boy is not Walter. Yet instead of the police admitting their mistake, they persuade Christine to take the child home on a ‘trial basis’. Obviously experiencing emotional imbalance at such a time, she must simply be mistaken. Why would the boy call her ‘mother’ if she was anyone else? Sure he may have shrunk two inches and be a little more circumcised than she remembers, but all these changes are perfectly viable, the LAPD doctor assures; he has been missing for five months.

The audience chuckle with incredulity at the ‘professional’ assertions of the doctor, yet any laughter has a somewhat bitter aftertaste when aligned with Jolie’s entirely convincing and heart-rending portrayal of Christine’s helplessness. We watch as she transforms her terror into a relentless personal crusade, exposing the corruption of those in power. The star-studded cast give consistently excellent performances, especially Jolie, whose skill as an actress is really given credit in this non-action-movie role. Apart from one disappointingly cheesy ending line, it is no wonder that Changeling has been nominated for the Golden Palm award for best movie of the year.

What Just Happened? isn’t a spectacularly good film, but neither is it jaw-droppingly bad. It’s an example of the “Hollywood films that satirise Hollywood” genre, ranking above Burn Hollywood Burn but below The Player. Watching it is a bit like watching a boozed-up sixth former stumble through a comedy routine about George Bush: you agree in principle with what’s being said, and there may be moments of comic brilliance, but it’s been done before, with more subtlety, panache and originality.

The film has a number of positive points. The cinematographer, Stéphane Fontaine (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) is excellent, and there are some gorgeously shot scenes.

The acting is uniformly very good. Sean Penn and Bruce Willis play themselves. Robert De Niro stars, fresh from the critical drubbing of Righteous Kill. He plays Ben, a producer attempting to mediate between his studio’s desire to make money and his director’s desire to create Great Art.

Michael Wincott’s show-stealing turn here as the perennially drugged film director is worth the price of entry. He shoots a film which concludes with the execution of both the hero and the hero’s loveable dog. There is a close-up shot of a bullet imploding in the dog’s skull and splattering viscera onto the camera, a shot which effectively also kills Ben’s career as a producer. It is a mark of how bleak the humour of the film is that this is possibly its funniest moment.

Best of all, the script largely avoids obvious laughs and cheap gags, going instead for black, observational humour.

For example, as Ben enters the bathroom after the icy reception of his latest film, he encounters a film critic and asks his professional opinion. A squirming silence ensues. “I liked the soundtrack,” the critic eventually manages. It does have a very good soundtrack.

So we hope that you opt for Angelina Jolie’s star turn in Changeling this week if you want to sink your teeth into something that will prove more thought-provoking, and more entertaining.

Trying to approach Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman as the story of the attempt to uncover the culprit of a series of murders will not do. Nor is it adequate to see the play’s protagonist, Katurian, as something equivalent to Hamlet. This play requires a new audience, a new economy of representation, and new tools of critical interpretation.

For a start, the cliché that the play is set in some vaguely ‘Kafkaesque totalitarian state’ needs a definite rethink. Indeed, the idea of Kafka himself as the novelist of the ‘totalitarian state’ is in itself suspect – it is a reading that stinks of the liberal humanist hypocrisy of comfy American college campuses, and in any case, it offers no help in our understanding of McDonagh’s play. A more effective analysis of The Pillowman needs to account for its rhizomatic quality, its multiplicity of fictions that never quite cohere and which always remain out of joint.

Dan Wilner’s production of The Pillowman therefore comes as a great relief. It seriously engages with the play’s many fictions, working hard to establish both the interpersonal web that forms the base of characterisation, and the provisional nature of Katurian (played by Rory Fazen), a children’s author whose tales of infanticide are eerily mirrored in real life events. Although Fazen’s performance can at times feel flat, the moments when he really gets to grips with the character are rewarding.

The highlight of this production, though, has to be Krishna Omkar and Jacob Lloyd’s ‘good cop/bad cop’ double-act. Revealing a biting comprehension of the rhythm underpinning the interrogation scene, Omkar and Lloyd’s performance shows how an intellectual knowledge of the power relations that structure a dramatic dialogue can be translated into affective acting.

The blocking is well thought out, and works to increase the play’s startling tone; likewise the set-design is purposeful. Wilner has made a good fist of the material McDonagh has provided, making The Pillowman an opportunity to end Michaelmas with a rewarding piece of contemporary theatre.

The Pillowman will be showing at the Burton Taylor Studio from Tuesday to Saturday of 8th week, at 7.30pm.

4 Stars