TV Review - THE 84th ACADEMY AWARDS

Every few cycles the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences give up on trying to appeal to the elusive young ‘uns and play to their loyal audience of blue hairs. Sunday night was such a night. In a nice recovery from 2011′s flop-sweat-stained Oscarcast, which saw Anne Hathaway and James Franco miserably failing to bring youthful cool to a ceremony dominated by the decidedly uncool The King’s Speech, Billy Crystal presided over an evening that was well-paced, confident and entertaining. It was well-suited to the cinematic year it was honouring; reasonably strong, with scattered instances of greatness, but not particularly remarkable or destined to linger in the collective memory for very long.

Despite a bumpy opening, wherein most of Crystal’s traditional song medley was (mercifully?) drowned out by muddy audio, the show recovered with a series of fastball jokes that helped goose the energy. Some of the gags were pretty corny, if not downright out of touch (Mother of Pearl, kids are watching movies on phones?!), but they came quick enough that even the clunkers were mostly forgotten. The nine-time host was at his best when he indulged in his talent for winking snark, noting the absurdity of “millionaires presenting each other with golden statues” in the current economy, or acknowledging the emergence of a giant songbook prop with a bored “Eh.” He also scored big with a gravel-throated impression of gruff Warrior supporting actor nominee Nick Nolte.

Trophies were handed out with refreshing regularity, and speeches kept fairly short and snappy (not many shout-outs to accountants and lawyers, thankfully). As expected the silent movie homage The Artist won best picture, director for Michel Hazanavicius and leading actor for the suave Jean Dujardin (“I love your country,” the star exclaimed at the start of a charming speech that closed with an ecstatic impromptu soft-shoe routine), while popular faves Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer scored in the best supporting categories for their turns in The Help and Beginners. At 84, the ever-classy Plummer officially became the oldest recipient to bring home an acting Oscar.

There were a few minor surprises, though. Meryl Streep’s prevailing over The Help frontrunner Viola Davis for best actress was a slightly controversial choice, given The Iron Lady’s frosty critical and commercial reception. The much-lauded actress herself even seemed to recognize that fact. Joking that half of America was no doubt irritated by her bringing home her third statue, she immediately launched into a self-effacing, warm and irresistibly humble acceptance speech (“Thank you for this inexplicable career”) that went a long way towards pacifying even the most ardent detractors. In the technical categories, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s win for best editing left even the victors in a state of shock (“Let’s just get out of here…!”), and Hugo’s triumph for achievement in visual effects upset expected champion Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Many thought Apes was a lock since praised mo-cap performer Andy Serkis was snubbed in the supporting actor category.

By dropping the usual song numbers and extended best picture clips, the Oscar cast’s small handful of special segments were given more time to breath and settle in. A series of interview clips with actors talking about the magic of movies, and the films that inspired them (few would have guessed Brad Pitt fell in love with acting after viewing the Toho monster campfest War of the Gargantuas) were a fun treat, as was a gravity-defying performance by Cirque du Soleil that, allegedly, replicated the experience of going to the theatre. The true show-stopper, however, was a side-splitting recorded bit in which the amazing Christopher Guest and his crew of improv all-stars (Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Catherine O’Hara and Jennifer Coolidge) recreated a 1939 Wizard of Oz focus group session. With Levy muttering cluelessly about the disconnect between Kansas and Oz, and Willard waxing poetic about flying monkeys, it was an embarrassment of comedic riches that just kept building to deliriously new absurd heights. The Academy should seriously consider handing 2013’s ceremony over to those guys!

All in all, it was a pleasantly old-fashioned affair that honoured cinema, and the legacy of the awards, with enough nostalgia, glamour and good humour to keep viewers engaged for the three-plus hour run-time. Sure, it was often tempting to poke holes in the committee’s stodgy nomination choices, but you know what? Hopefully they’ll get it right next year. Or maybe the year after that.

The complete winners list:
Best Picture: The Artist
Actor: Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Actress: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help
Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants
Original Screenplay: Midnight in Paris
Animated Feature: Rango
Foreign Language: A Separation, Iran
Documentary: Undefeated
Film Editing: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Art Direction: Hugo
Cinematography: Hugo
Costume Design: The Artist
Make Up: The Iron Lady
Sound Editing: Hugo
Sound Mixing: Hugo
Visual Effects: Hugo
Music, original score: The Artist
Music, original song: "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets
Short, animated: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Short, documentary: Saving Face
Short, live action: The Shore

Film Review - GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE

In the annals of Marvel Comics motion picture adaptations, 2007’s Ghost Rider is a sad, misguided footnote barely worth expending the energy to mention. Helmed by Daredevil director Mark Steven Johnson, it was a tediously limp franchise launch that impressively managed to render a tragic flaming biker skeleton boring. No mean feat, that! However, despite toxic word of mouth and a flurry of critical jabs, the lifeless origin tale managed to gross a respectable, if somewhat discouraging, $228-million dollars worldwide. Remarkably quickly, the usual studio sequel chatter withered on the vine, as audience demand for the next chapter was roughly as voluble as the sound of a lone tumbleweed lazily rolling across the barren desert plain.

Of course, never underestimate the motivational power of being forced to forfeit the rights to an iconic fanboy property! In an effort to keep the languishing superhero under the studio umbrella, and away from rival Marvel Studios, Sony dusted off a near-decade old script by Blade and Batman Begins scribe David S. Goyer and enlisted deranged directorial duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor of Crank fame to reignite the Rider. The off-kilter end result, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, is a crazed hallucination of nonsensical, frenzied idiocy that somehow manages to out-stupid its insipid predecessor while still crossing into shameless guilty pleasure territory. Make no mistake; as a film it’s ten tonnes of terrible. That said, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m compelled to confess that I was occasionally amused by its unrepentant bargain barrel trashiness.

Stripping away most of the elements established in the original, Spirit of Vengeance picks up with cursed stunt-artist Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage, the sole casting leftover) adrift in strangely desolate Eastern Europe. Nomadic, friendless and plagued mercilessly by the powerful demon raging with him, he’s recruited by a wine-guzzling monk named Moreau (Idris Elba) to help prevent the Devil (Ciarán Hinds) from achieving unimaginable power. His villainous plot centers on a young boy named Danny (Fergus Riordan), whose actual parentage is a secret long kept by his resourceful and tough mom Nadya (Violante Placido). Now hunted by a team of bounty hunters led by vicious pretty-boy killer Ray Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth, who dons a bad rockstar wig after being transformed into the evil Blackout), the family has no one to turn to except the unpredictable and dangerous Blaze, who desperately needs to succeed in his grim task if he ever hopes to regain his long lost humanity.

Neveldine/Taylor – as they concisely credit themselves – have never been particularly skilled at storytelling. Their Crank movies, and the spastic, migraine-inducing Gamer, were intentionally obnoxious exercises in chaotic, go-for-broke insanity and guerilla-style filmmaking showiness (the pair are known to shoot their action by whizzing around on rollerblades). For better or worse, Ghost Rider 2 cheerfully follows their usual manic modus operandi, with cheerfully dopey visuals – slightly more subdued than usual, probably due to the sadly underutilized 3D – propping up a sloppy joke of a script. There is some fun stuff here, amidst the flotsam, such as a massive fiery mining crane smashing enemies into cinders or a scene in which the hero pees fire. Seriously.

They do a good job giving presence to their walking matchstick crusader. The Rider is usually silent, doesn’t move around much, and his primary power of staring people to death isn’t overly cinematic, yet he’s a genuinely cool vision in bubbling leather, flame and smoke. And, unlike last time, his oddball abilities, such as spewing back molten bullets, transforming random vehicles into apocalyptic death rides and using his trusty chain to drag baddies to Hell are given a fitfully goofy showcase. As a dynamic on-screen protagonist, he grabs your attention.

It’s hard, though, to watch the disjointed Spirit of Vengeance and not notice the significant resemblance it bears to the notorious comic-book box-office disaster Jonah Hex, which Neveldine/Taylor penned and later derided as not being representative of their work. As was the case with that pitiful waste of celluloid, this movie has been edited to utter shreds – a possible sign of studio interference – so that characters pop in out of the story whenever convenient (Christopher Lambert’s abbreviated appearance as a tattooed monk is a true head-scratcher), and there’s no momentum or logic to its feeble Terminator 2-lite chase plot. There’s also a reliance on extended sequences of quirky animated exposition, darkly comedic instances of raising the dead and a climactic final battle that takes place in two realms simultaneously. It often seems as if the duo are trying to right the (infinite) wrongs of the Josh Brolin western with Ghost Rider 2, only to stumble into the same clumsy, obvious filmmaking traps that thwarted Hex director Jimmy Hayward.

To his credit, Nicolas Cage refuses to play it safe. The often fearless actor, who reportedly got into Blaze’s headspace by walking around set in Baron Samedi voodoo god makeup, channels his loony, foaming-at-the-mouth Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans protagonist on numerous welcome occasions. In one mesmerizingly bizarre moment he shakes down a black market criminal by giving in to his darker supernatural urges, twitching and sputtering with wild abandon. It’s not a particularly good performance – it feels driven less by character than by a demand to dial up the crazy for crazy’s sake – but he makes his share of the wretched dialogue work, and his idiosyncratic style is greatly appreciated when contrasted against the rest of the largely forgettable cast. Only Hinds is brave enough to try to go toe-to-toe with Cage, delivering a hammy performance that’s operatic in its unabashed ludicrousness. He makes Al Pacino’s scenery-chewing turn in The Devil’s Advocate look restrained by comparison. Fan-adored Thor co-star Elba, boasting a beyond cartoonish accent, is a good sport as the gun-toting warrior monk. Too bad he’s largely wasted in a frankly uninteresting and pointless role.

Like the similarly schlocky Marvel sequel Punisher: War Zone, Ghost Rider 2 wears its bad B-movie aspirations on its sleeve, ironically aware of its own pointlessness and bubble-headedly content to revel in hyper-silly violence and cheap empty thrills. No real attempt has been made to add dimension to the tormented antihero and his shallow universe, or spin an engagingly demented yarn worth caring a lick about. Which is kind of unfortunate, because, by Spirit of Vengeance’s end, there’s no mistaking the fact that this Rider’s tank is running perilously close to empty.

2 out of 5

*Originally published at Converge Magazine.

Handicapping the Oscar Best Picture Race

Okay, we all know this year's Best Picture race is something of a foregone conclusion. But why not have some fun analyzing which films are most likely to stand a chance against the unstoppable awards juggernaut that shall not be named here?

Head over to 24 Hours Vancouver to read my full thoughts on this years nominees.

Epi-Cast: Episode 33 - "An Oscarmoron"

Move over Weinstein, the Oscar season isn't all about you! And, as a reminder of that indisputable fact, Cam and Tom have emerged from deep deep cover to toss out another hot digital joint for y'alls. Want to know who our hosts think will win Best Animated Feature?! Well, strap yourself in because you are in for one wild, bumpy,senses-shaking ride!

Epi-Cast: Episode 33 - "An Oscarmoron"

With the Academy Awards just under a week away  (contrary to what one of the illustrious hosts states in this very episode), the diligent duo go toe-to-toe with Oscar queen Meryl Streep's The Iron Lady. Are Cam and/or Tom sick of biopics? Only one way to find out! Well, okay, that's not quite true. But there's only one way other than scanning Cam's recent reviews! In addition to the main course, Cam tells you whether Safe House or Chronicle are worth your $10, while Tom classes up the 'cast with eloquent critiques of Anonymous and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. And, if that's not enough wonder to satiate you, the two also debate the merits of recent trailers for The Amazing Spider-Man, Jack the Giant Killer and The Bourne Legacy, as well as offer up their choices for who should win at this year's Oscars. So plug in, chill out and let loose, cyber-brothers and sisters! 

To download, simply right-click and save on any of the episode titles above. Then you are free to indulge in one of the wild worldwide web's most majestic mp3 treasures.


P.S. We are, of course, available on iTunes! Simply do a store search for "Epi-Cast" and, WRECKER-MYSTERIO!, you can subscribe to our feed and receive instantaneous downloads whenever we bother to upload a new episode. Oh, and we are the "Epi-Cast", not the "Epicast." It's very unlikely that insightful interpretations of the Bible will be included amongst our heated ramblings.

P.P.S. Don't hesitate to leave a review on our iTunes page. As always, we sincerely welcome your hyperbolic praise/earth-scorching venom.

Film Review - SAFE HOUSE

One single alarming, unlikely thought nagged at me incessantly during Daniel Espinosa’s slick, hyper-edited Training-Day-meets-The-Bourne-Supremacy mash-up Safe House — a thought I never dreamed I’d have: Boy, I really wish Denzel’s usual collaborator Tony Scott had directed this nonsense! For at least Scott, a shameless four-decade veteran of flashy, enjoyable trash such as Unstoppable, Enemy of the State and Man on Fire, would have injected his own brand of off-beat stylistic weirdness and hyperkinetic razzle-dazzle into these beyond routine proceedings. Under his heavy guiding hand, we might have at least been treated to a delicious fromage-scented symphony of ludicrous idiocy, as opposed to this weary, derivative dirge of spy thriller cliches.

Set in vibrant Cape Town, South Africa, Safe House stars Denzel Washington as Tobin Frost (a stellar movie name, if ever there was one), an awesomely formidable CIA super-agent gone rogue. How formidable, you ask? We’re told — in appropriately solemn, awed tones — that he’s “the most brilliant operative” the CIA has seen. Wanted on four continents for espionage, he’s also single-handedly responsible for sending multiple highly-trained agents into permanent retirement from life. Yup, he’s that good! And now, without warning, he’s casually walked into the American consulate and surrendered to the not unreasonably shocked authorities.

Frost, of course, has ulterior motives for giving up the chase. He’s carrying a secret with him in the form of a self-injected capsule of information that threatens to expose all of the intelligence community’s dirty little secrets, and there’s a deadly hit squad of hired guns viciously nipping at his heals to recover it. Transported to a long-vacant nearby safe house for aggressive questioning, Frost finds himself explosively thrust into the care of the site’s inexperienced overseer Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) after the pursuing assassins blast their way through the facility’s (strangely modest) defences. Soon the unfairly matched duo are on a mad dash from certain death, with Weston doggedly trying to locate a new secure location to accommodate his unpredictable charge, while the wily Frost, plotting his own escape, attempts to worm his way into the untested agent’s increasingly taxed mind.

Cribbing heavily from Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day playbook, director Espinosa attempts to recapture that film’s fierce, memorable Crafty Mentor vs. Naive Protege dynamic, but sacrifices character in favour of frantic action spectacle and hackneyed scenes of energy-sapping exposition. Safe House's script, by David Guggenheim, relies purely on shallow dramatic shorthand, shoe-horning in all-too-brief “character moments” without properly developing the rocky relationship between its two polar opposite leading men. There’s no natural progression of their life-changing battle of wills, only a handful of awkward conversations in between bouts of fisticuffs, and by journey’s end they still feel like total strangers. Frost, who, we learn, rewrote the rules of CIA interrogation, boasts to Weston that he’s in his head and in total control, but the film stops frustratingly short of actually exploring the extent of the senior agent’s manipulative powers, or highlighting their powerful effects. Reynolds’ taciturn hero’s transformation appears to be informed less by actual psychological torment than by repeated vicious blows to the noggin. A cautionary tip to screenwriters: if you’re going to write a dumbed-down script, don’t repeatedly emphasize the brilliance of its characters without any evidence of said brilliance!

Given the pedestrian nature of the material, it’s tough to place much blame on the actors for failing to register in their rain puddle-deep roles. Washington, who inexplicably helped shepherd this project to fruition as an executive producer, is doing a pretty shameless variation on his Training Day/American Gangster charismatic villain persona. But he’s fun to watch and, because we know this character so well from his better past efforts, we project more onto Frost than is actually present. Reynolds, however, isn’t so lucky. Continuing his troubling career transition from magnetic scene-stealer to vanilla movie star, the charismatic actor is rendered inert by his sweat-streaked void of a protagonist, grunting and wincing his way through the entire picture. He shows admirable physicality here — we believe he’s capable of the violent feats of daring-do on-screen — but there’s no inner fire, and no reason to invest ourselves in this handsome blank. Filling out the cast as CIA higher-ups, Brendan Gleeson, Vera Farmiga and Sam Shepard — an invaluable combination that, in a film with ambition, would inspire spectacular pyrotechnics — are criminally wasted in nothing parts, tediously debating whether Reynolds’ Weston is on their side or not.

Overseeing his first major Hollywood production, Swedish import Espinosa seems timid to establish his own unique directorial voice. Instead, he approximates Paul Greengrass’s queasy Bourne shaky-cam — a conceit that’s fast becoming a crutch for helmers incapable of staging coherent action — with terribly mixed results. An early car chase, which memorably begins with Frost locked in a trunk, has pounding, propulsive momentum, but as the film continues the set-pieces become progressively sloppier. A night-time pursuit through a crowded shantytown is a confusing headache of epileptic editing, and the confined-quarter climax involving shoot-outs and bruising martial arts clashes jumps around too much to build any intensity. Compounding the visual ugliness, Espinosa and Bourne cinematographer Oliver Wood smear every frame with sickly grey and brown bleariness, as if the unfolding events were being viewed through the eyes of the stumbling town drunk.

There’s just so little to latch on to in this film; it’s such a bland, middle-of-the-road offering, filled with paycheck-cashing actors in full-on slum mode, that it doesn’t even manage to offend. Free of surprises — the third act mystery bad-guy reveal can easily be predicted by observing the ancient rules of typecasting — or anything resembling a creative spark, it’s a vapour of an action picture; dissipating immediately from memory once the credits begin to roll. Joylessly wasting talent and countless resources, Safe House crumbles under the sorry weight of its own shoddy construction.

2 out of 5

*Originally published at Converge Magazine.

Film Review - THE GREY

“They know we’re wounded…”

Those ill-omened words, spoken with characteristic gruff solemnity by Liam Neeson during a tense encounter with a hostile wolf pack, strike right to the anguished heart of director Joe Carnahan’s meaty, contemplative survival thriller The Grey. Deceptively marketed as a fist-pumping man vs. nature action flick on steroids, the film is, in all actuality, a grippingly bleak macho meditation on life, death, faith and redemption, dressed up in rugged genre picture attire. This movie doesn’t just entertain mightily; it cuts to the bone as harshly as a chilling blast from an oppressive Alaskan winter windstorm.

Leading the charge into the great, grim unknown is Neeson, as Ottway, a world-weary wolf sniper stationed at a remote Alaskan petroleum company outpost. Depressed and suicidal, finding comfort only in brief recollections of a beautiful brunette, he’s en route to liberation from his isolated refuge for “men unfit for mankind” when his passenger plane explosively crashes into the pitiless white wilderness. Stranded in the desolate, punishing environment with a small handful of fellow societal outcasts (including Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts, Nonso Anozie and an almost unrecognizable Dermot Mulroney), Ottway determinedly rallies everyone to push forward on a perilous, uncertain journey in search of safety. Unfortunately for the group, though, their fragile hopes for a speedy rescue are violently dashed when they draw the unwanted attention of a ravenous pack of timberwolves, who are none too happy to have strangers encroaching on their fiercely protected territory.

Unlike past outdoor survival pictures like Open Water or Frozen, The Grey isn’t overly interested in striving for gritty realism. Instead, Carnahan and screenwriting partner Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, who penned the short story, “Ghost Walker,” that inspired the film, have fashioned their red-blooded adventure yarn into a stirring tale of tired lost souls (“ex-cons, fugitives and drifters”) rediscovering their long-buried humanity and resolve to fight for their existence. These men have landed in an earthly purgatory, a primal, will-testing space between life and death – the very “Grey” of the title – where personal salvation is achieved only by embracing your fate and going out on your own terms.

To this end, the movie’s wolf villains take on a more supernatural, thematically rich role. Although revealing themselves initially as GOTCHA! monsters, springing out of obscurity in dizzying displays of carnage-strewing horror (there’s a fantastic early moment wherein one four-legged aggressor overtakes an injured lollygagger on an dense, snowy plain, with the rest of the party helpless to sprint to his aid), they soon take on the more profound role of eerie carriers of the dead, savagely transporting their fatigued mortal prey into the next realm. Whether on-screen, as glowing eyes in the night or disconcerting howls on the soundtrack, or not, their terrifying ominous presence looms large over every single scene, keeping both the characters and audience in a constant state of intense agitation and dread.

Joe Carnahan has been building to this film for a while now. Over the course of his short, uneven career, he’s shown an unmistakeable fascination with high-testosterone relationships under exceptional pressure. Stripping away most of the playfulness that coloured The A-Team and Smoking Aces, and pumping up the sober frankness that made 2002’s Narc such an audacious discovery, the helmer feels, for the first time, totally in control of his philosophical tough-guy vision. Carnahan isn’t exactly a subtle director – Ottway’s idyllic sun-drenched memories skirt dangerously close to caricature – but he knows exactly how to tap into cinema’s full visceral potential. Whether during the chaotic, you-are-there plane crash, or the utterly perfect poetic final moments, he feels engaged and in the moment, consistently excited to be taking the viewer on this unrelenting introspective quest.

The helmer is well-teamed with the ever-reliable Neeson. The statuesque noble warrior star bears the haunted eyes of a man who has seen things – a crucial trait given the shadowy nature of his protagonist. At one point he talks a dying man through the final moments of his slow demise and there’s an unspoken sense this isn’t the first time Ottway has performed this difficult service. Among the actor’s finest gifts is his steadfast ability to sound utterly persuasive, no matter how crummy the dialogue or outlandish the situation (remember in The A-Team how he almost had us all convinced that tanks could indeed fly?!). He does exceedingly fine, nuanced work here, chewing purposely through The Grey’s crude four-letter-word-packed existential musings, and ringing every ounce of sad, impotent fury out of Ottway’s frustrated one-way conversation with the seemingly indifferent heavens above.

Watching The Grey, I was often reminded of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 masterpiece The Wages of Fear. That movie, about four shady, damaged men in an impoverished South American town trucking ultra-combustible nitro-glycerine over miles of bumpy dirt road, rickety bridges and impenetrable jungle terrain, generated just as much unbearable suspense from the slowly developing interpersonal dynamics as the perilous cliffhanger setpieces. Carnahan’s film, with its stock supporting cast and relatively simple philosophies, doesn’t have quite as much on its mind as Clouzot’s remarkably complex epic – to be fair, few films do - but the picture does display a similar mastery of pitch-black irony and authentic working class honesty, as well as a delirious knack for constructing skillful sequences of escalating white-knuckle tension. It’s an undeniably bold work.

Vigorous, awesome and surprisingly poignant, Joe Carnahan’s latest is a smart, rewarding left of centre approach to material that, in clumsier hands, could have resulted in routine “When Animals Attack” b-movie filler. Just like its ferocious furry antagonists, The Grey grabs hold like a vice, and mercilessly shakes you to your very core. And it doesn’t let go.

4 out of 5

*Originally published at Converge Magazine.

Film Review - THE IRON LADY

Few genres come burdened with a heavier air of self-importance than the biopic. For they are expected to not only tell an entertaining story, but also serve as a compelling tribute to their famed subjects’ profound importance and exceptionalness. Muddying the waters further is the fact that, frankly, reality isn’t cinematic; serious artistic license and dramatic flourish is required in order to transform it into anything approaching an engrossing viewing experience. Filmmakers have to walk a tricky balancing act, dishing out equal parts invention and accuracy. And the majority fall well short of brilliance. Great entries like Raging Bull, Ed Wood, The Social Network, Malcolm X or The Coal Miner’s Daughter succeed because their protagonist's personal account arrives tightly wrapped in a richly layered narrative that cleverly tackles universally relatable themes. It’s not enough to simply tell us a person is significant. We need to be able to connect emotionally with them and derive meaning from their unique journey.

Alas, The Iron Lady, the new Meryl Streep-fronted examination of the life and times of Britain’s controversial first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, couldn’t be any less vital. A cobweb-riddled grab-bag of musty old biopic clichés, archival footage and shallow historical bullet points, the picture falls prey to the same brand of lazy, trite screenwriting and overbearing stuffiness that hobbled Clint Eastwood’s dreary J. Edgar. It’s as if the filmmakers, fearful that audiences wouldn’t grasp or respect the magnitude of Thatcher’s achievements alone, decided to overcompensate by dressing up their effort in clumsy TV-movie obviousness and forced sentiment. It’s been a while since a biopic championed its own cause harder than this one.

Set largely in the modern day, The Iron Lady presents Thatcher (Streep) as a stately, good-humoured senior citizen, whose grip on sanity is being tested by frequent hallucinations of her deceased husband Denis (Jim Broadbent, twinkling with mischievous wit). Still grieving his loss, and unable to bear moving his belongings from her bedroom closet, she finds comfort by escaping into the past, recalling key personal milestones involving their courtship, her working class youth (in which she’s played ably by Alexandra Roach) and early forays into politics, first as an Oxford student, and later as a Conservative M.P. and education secretary. As well, we witness her miraculous rise to power, and her unprecedented 11-year reign as Britain’s leader, tackling fiery issues such as the 1981 Brixton riots, the 1984 miner’s strike and – most interestingly - the Falkland Islands military conflict.

Unlike similar, superior fare such The King’s Speech or The Queen – which used a single captivating event to explore their main character – the film spreads itself way too thin by trying to cover so much terrain. At just 105 (thankfully well-paced) minutes, The Iron Lady’s script, by Abi Morgan, hops, skips and jumps hastily through Thatcher’s lifetime without ever pausing to delve deeper into any of the crucial events. Did no one realize viewers might actually be intrigued to learn why exactly this woman was able to excel as she did? Or see how her role as a wife and mother affected her role as a leader and vice versa? This final product is like Coles Notes cinema, communicating only the barest of details without any of the desired context, curiosity or dynamism.

The picture’s creaky structure does it no favours. Can we please call for a moratorium on biopics that feature actors in old-age make-up using faded photographs, videotapes and brief memory snippets to recollect their lives in nearly precise chronological order? It’s a beyond-exhausted story device that reeks of artificiality. The Iron Lady relies on this conceit so heavily, it’s kind of amazing. The lion’s share of the movie’s attempts at poignancy and truth are stuffed into hokey, bewildering sequences of Thatcher being pestered by Denis’s ghost (who often wears funny hats!) and devolving into bouts of pitiful hysteria. And since her career spanned such a lengthy period of time, and ended so mundanely, there’s no grand, moving final note to close on. So the film just sort of peters out with a series of concocted fictional moments in which she confronts her demons and achieves blissful serenity. Under the direction of Phyllida Lloyd – who previously guided Streep in 2008’s Mamma Mia! – these scenes play more like parody than honesty.

It goes without saying that Streep is, as per usual, a mesmerizing force of nature on-screen. She doesn’t imitate Thatcher. She inhabits Thatcher. And her performance is so dead-on smart, funny and authoritative that she almost single-handedly redeems the whole uneven affair. Portraying the character over four decades, the legendary actress is completely convincing every step of the way, and brings more dimension to the role than anything offered by the page. In one of her many crackerjack bits, she verbally demolishes a long-time colleague for being unprepared for a meeting, and we sense both her innate anger and stubbornness, and, conversely, her sad regret at having to behave so harshly. Streep also forms a warm union with Broadbent (who, unfortunately, is relegated mainly to popping up in the fantasy sequences). It’s too bad the film doesn’t spend more time with them in the countless flashbacks.

If only this movie wasn’t so timid and unwilling to think outside of it’s safe, unchallenging prestige picture box. With Streep giving it her all, this could – and should - have been an exciting, absorbing portrait of one of the 20th century’s most complex and contentious figures. Agree with her politics or not, Thatcher was a woman of tireless drive, fierce intelligence and vision. She deserved a movie far better than The Iron Lady, which fails on all three of those counts.

2 out of 5

*Originally published at Converge Magazine.

Film Review - CONTRABAND

There’s not a whole lot in Contraband, the new heist thriller starring Mark Wahlberg, you haven’t seen done better elsewhere. This is another one of those B-movie plots about a former criminal being forced, through unpleasant circumstances, to abandon peaceful retirement and take on One. Last. Job. You know the type of job I’m talking about: a final convoluted journey into the seedy underworld where everything that can go wrong does so spectacularly, every pre-established rule is broken and yet, somehow, the hero manages to emerge triumphant and mislead the sinister antagonist, as well as the audience.

It’s a fun, seemingly inexhaustible, formula, and one that can very easily become repetitive and tediously predictable. However, Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur has managed to imbue his Americanized remake of 2008’s little-seen Reykjavik-Rotterdam – which was helmed by Óskar Jónasson and featured Kormákur in the lead role — with just enough grungy off-beat charm to warrant its own rather slight existence. Contraband is the kind of movie you unintentionally come across on TV one night and, after a reasonably engaging two hours, find yourself reflecting on why you have no memory of it ever being in theatres.

Wahlberg treads familiar thespian terrain as Chris Farraday, a soft-spoken working class New Orleans family man with a mean right hook and a gift for smuggling. How good a smuggler is Chris? So good that other characters often feel compelled to remind him of his top-notch credentials. Like every other heist movie hero, Chris is the best there is at what he does. Unfortunately for him, his specialized services are desperately required after his ne’er-do-well brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) botches a drug operation and infuriates local crime lord Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi). Soon, thugs are threatening the Farradays’ safety, and Chris is tasked with transporting millions of dollars worth of counterfeit cash from Panama to U.S. shores. Aided by his recovering alcoholic right-hand man Sebastian Abney (Ben Foster), our crafty, muscular protagonist books passage on a dingy cargo ship on a perilous mission to outsmart the ever-vigilant authorities and make it home alive with merchandise in hand.

One of Kormákur’s film’s most endearing qualities is how refreshingly low-tech it is. Unlike most modern heist pictures, which typically involve high-pressure internet surfing and goofy gadgets,Contraband – like Ben Affleck’s superior The Town – wears its blue collar attitude like a badge of honour. Outside of some brief ship manifest doctoring, Chris has little use for computers, relying instead on mundane, practical methods for deceiving the powers that be. He succeeds not because he has more gear or brains than his opponents, but rather due to the fact that he’s adept at improvisation and sizing up a situation, and never underestimates the importance of dumb luck. Or grade 8 science.

The scrappy street-smart tone of the picture also inspires three wonderfully weird performances that breathe much-needed life into the conventional story. Chief among them is Ribisi as the lowly scumbag drug kingpin. Repulsively greased up, python-voiced and operating out of a pathetic ramshackle apartment complex, the actor creates a fascinating case study in terrifying incompetence. No matter how badly Farraday beats Briggs down, he just keeps picking himself up and continuing the pursuit like a possessed cockroach. Ribisi’s sole competition in the scenery-chewing department is Diego Luna, playing a deranged, agitated Panamanian gangster whose sweaty psychotic unpredictability more than makes up for his lack of physical fearsomeness. On the lower end of the crazy-scale is Ben Foster — an eminently watchable beacon of offbeat light in any movie — who doesn’t necessarily have a lot to do here, but adds impressive anguished, twitchy dimension to the ever-rattled Sebastian.

Contraband’s unremarkable script, by Aaron Guzikowski, hums along nicely when it’s tracing our hero’s journey through the movie’s criminal universe. It stumbles awkwardly, however, whenever the action shifts back home to Chris’s wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale). The actress has alarmingly little to do, beyond acting frantic and having her beautiful head slammed into walls by vicious aggressors, and the picture completely deflates once she becomes a key element in the climax (Hallelujah for conveniently loud ring tones!). A more effective film would have either excised the majority of her subplot, or brought more originality to it than hackneyed, eye-rolling “woman in peril” clichés.

It is a telling sign that this film has been released in sleepy mid-January, when studios traditionally refrain from pushing exciting A-grade fare into theatres. Neither particularly good, or bad, it’s an agreeable enough timewaster that won’t tax your patience and serves as a modestly tense and satisfying tide over until 2012’s more ambitious popcorn fare arrives. Like Wahlberg’s world-weary protagonist, Contraband gets the job done with minimal flash or flare.

3 out of 5

*Originally published at Converge Magazine.

The Bottom 5 Worst Films of 2011

As I said in my countdown of 2011′s Top 10 Films, there was no shortage of rewarding film choices this past year. Unfortunately, though, as is always the case, there was also no shortage of cinematic landmines; dreadful movies that made you want to flee the theatre in barely muted horror, and perhaps  motivated you to question the value of the art-form all together.

I know I suffered through my fair share. And I didn’t even bear witness to Jack and Jill or Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star!

Here are my 5 Worst Films of 2011:

1) The Three Musketeers   Everyone involved in this pathetic, crass exercise in unimaginative brand-building should be ashamed of themselves. Taking little more from the Alexandre Dumas classic than a title and a few character names, this $75-million-dollar dud instead ineptly rips most of its inspiration from the Sherlock Holmes (Steampunk weaponry!) and Pirates of the Caribbean (Pirate ship battles in the sky AND a fey, mascara-wearing Orlando Bloom!) properties. Charisma void Logan Lerman stars as a smarmy, Americanized D’Artagnan, who joins up with the now-personality-free rapier-wielding trio in order to prevent ninja assassin Milla Jovovich from sparking war between England and France. Directed with zero energy by schlockmaster extraordinaire Paul W.S. Anderson, The Three Musketeers is a monotonous waking nightmare of embarrassing CG effects, cringe-inducing witty banter, cement-shoed swashbuckling and ludicrous air battles. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the whole disaster crashes to a final, unresolved close with a blatant cliffhanger for a sequel! Fortunately for mankind, future punishment is unlikely as this burgeoning franchise clumsily falls on its own sword right out of the gate.

2) Apollo 18   A cheap, opportunistic attempt to cash in on the Paranormal Activity craze, Apollo 18 sets a patience-testing new low for the already inconsistent Found Footage horror genre. A “true life” account of NASA’s top secret final moon-landing mission, the movie takes a pretty solid concept and renders it utterly unwatchable. A chaotically edited visual mess of several ugly film formats mercilessly smeared with every imaginable post-production distortion effect and audio burp, the whole ordeal is like a film school video art project gone horribly awry. Director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego not only fails to break the crushing boredom with ultra-telegraphed jump scares and by-the-books icky body horror, he often cheats too by placing cameras where they frankly have no business being. It’s tempting to say that Apollo 18 stalls on take-off, but that would imply someone even bothered to fuel it up in the first place.

3) Target  Rarely have I encountered a motion picture as confused and narratively incoherent as Russian writer/director Alexander Zeldovich’s science fiction epic Target. Opening with a group of wealthy Moscow citizens travelling to a remote fountain of youth in the year 2020, the picture soon wanders off in a number of bewildering disconnected directions - including border law intrigue, extramarital hedonism and deranged game shows. The helmer deserves points for ambition, but so little of anything on-screen sticks its maddening. He wants to make bold statements about Russian society, geopolitics and human morality (measured by groovy sunglasses!), but the messages are all but swallowed up by the meandering, nonsensical script, which abandons plot threads by the handful and doesn’t give any of the characters even a hint of dimension. Zeldovich also lacks the ability to establish a convincing sci-fi world; the film frequently introduces strange technological concepts without a lick of explanation. Target may boast some lovely cinematography, but all other positive qualities seem to have been utterly lost in translation.

4) The Roommate   The latest in an apparently endless string of teen-friendly PG-13 erotic thriller copycats, The Roommate shamelessly runs 1992’s Single White Female through the trusty ‘ol Sanitize-matic 2000 with predictably vanilla results. Preppy college freshman Minka Kelly is, like, totally psyched to have visibly loony art student Leighton Meester as her roommate. At least, that is, until the crazy-eyed roomie starts donning the heroine’s deceased sister’s necklace and running kittens through the spin cycle. Drained of all characteristic moral ambiguity, escalating tension and sexual charge, director Christian E. Christiansen’s exhausted checklist of poorly-delivered genre tropes is redeemed only by the ridiculous sight of a fancy hat-wearing Billy Zane as a dandyish sleazeball fashion professor. That part is genuinely scary for reasons purely comedic. The rest of The Roommate is so timid and dumb it should be aired as an afterschool special on the dangers of bad teen flicks.

5) Season Of The Witch  No movie featuring Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman as a wise-cracking 14th century knight duo transporting a suspected witch to a hazardous mountain-top monastery should be this deadly dull. Against all mortal odds, though, director Dominic Sena accomplishes this miraculous feat with Season of the Witch, a generic, cruddy-looking sword ‘n sorcery cheese-fest that’s too concerned with being dour to have any fun with its goofball B-movie premise. Heck, even the dependably bizarre Cage is on autopilot, trudging sleepily through the flick’s endless dank, chilly forest locales with a look of melancholy obligation. At one point a wounded Perlman, in an act of climactic heroism, violently head-butts a shoddy CG demon. Brave this slog and you too will be able to share that demon’s pain.

Dishonourable Mentions: Cars 2, The Eagle, Green Lantern, J. Edgar, Just Go With It, Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows.

The Top 10 Best Films of 2011

It’s easy to mistake 2011 as a weak year for cinema. After all, how else should one sum up a year that had few universally acclaimed masterpieces-in-the-making or zeitgest-altering blockbusters? A year that will likely lead to Michel Hazanavicius’s adorable, but inconsequential, The Artist nabbing the top prize at the 2012 Oscar ceremony?

However, scanning over the 90+ releases I saw in 2011, I’m surprised at how consistently good – and occasionally great – the output actually was. The sizable number of commendable efforts actually made it significantly tougher to assemble this list than in the past; there were so many titles I tried valiantly to sneak on without success. While you might disagree with a few (or all) of my final choices, think about how nice it is to have a rare year where all the Top 10 lists aren’t boring carbon copies of one another.

Now, without further adieu, my Top 10 Films of 2011:

1) THE TREE OF LIFE  Terrence Malick’s ambitious, awe-inspiring head-trip through the Big Bang, life, death, religion, childhood and 1950s suburban America daringly endeavours to unlock the mysteries of the universe through cinema. More metaphysical visual poetry than clear-cut narrative, The Tree of Life certainly isn’t for everyone. But for those interested in delving into its gorgeous, unforgettably epic sights and sounds, subtle performances – from Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn and Hunter McCracken - and heady concepts, it offers an immersive, unrivalled spectacle that reveals powerful new insights, both filmic and intensely personal, with each revisit. Malick has fashioned a film to interpret, debate, dissect and hold dear; it respects the intelligence of the audience, and rewards active participation. An enthralling culmination of the reclusive helmer’s career-to-date – combining the intimate, small-scale storytelling of his 1970s efforts, Badlands and Days of Heaven, with the dreamy, reflective philosophical musings of his more recent The Thin Red Line and The New World – The Tree of Life operates on the grandest of scales and will, without a doubt, continue to amaze, frustrate and challenge cinephiles well into the foreseeable future.

2) WAR HORSE  Alfred Hitchcock famously declared that he loved to play the audience like a piano. With War Horse, a captivating period tale about a majestic horse named Joey navigating his way, owner by owner, through battered WWI Europe, renowned director Steven Spielberg masterfully tickles every finely tuned, spellbinding note in his arsenal, conducting an impressively potent orchestra of wonder, joy, horror and, of course, tears. Inspired by the classical filmmaking of John Ford and David Lean, War Horse is sweepingly picturesque, deliberately paced and refreshingly old-fashioned in its approach to melodramatic emotion and thematic messages. Spielberg again richly tackles the torments of war – nobody else captures on-screen combat with such virtuosity – while also underscoring the heartbreaking irony of mankind’s contradictory relationship with animals; using and abusing them to meet our own “civilized” needs, yet still depending on them to fill our human yearnings for hope, friendship, courage and love. It’s a special film that wears its heart on its sleeve and speaks directly to the soul of the viewer.

3) HUGO  I’m not exactly sure which children Martin Scorsese’s marvellously peculiar, sumptuous 3D celebration of golden age silent film was aimed at, but we should all be thankful Paramount agreed to bankroll it! A whimsical sensory feast, Hugo chronicles the exploits of its titular hero (Asa Butterfield), an orphaned clockmaker, secretly living in a bustling 1930s Paris train station, who becomes entangled in the life of disgraced pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès (a mesmerizing Ben Kingsley). Scorsese’s passion for the material radiates from every single exquisite, affectionately-assembled frame, and in its themes of illusion and fantasy, the importance of film preservation and art’s ability to unite people of all ages and backgrounds. There’s such an abundance of charming pleasures to be uncovered in Hugo, from the audacious cinematography and striking art direction, to the sweet performances and stunning advancement of 3D as a storytelling tool. It transcends mere movie-making and becomes something else entirely: magic.

4) SHAME  Steve McQueen’s second directorial effort is a profoundly uncomfortable, wrenching experience that I’ve yet to shake. A harrowing portrait of one man’s bleak descent into loathsome excess, Shame traces the day-to-day life of a dashing New York professional, portrayed by 2011 MVP Michael Fassbender, who, after his disturbed sister (a brittle Carey Mulligan) reappears, attempts to escape his deep-seated anguish by surrendering, body and soul, to self-destructive sex addiction. Shame is uncompromising and often shocking in content – depicting its protagonist’s sad behaviour in cold, clinical detail – but McQueen never fails to generate raw honesty and breath-taking passages of visual artistry from the sordid squalor. This cinematic downward spiral is as magnificent as it is ugly.

5) THE DESCENDANTS  Rarely has a family unit felt as authentic and relatable as in Alexander Payne’s droll, observant study of a dysfunctional Hawaiian clan blindly navigating their way through the grieving process. George Clooney, in amusing dorky dad mode, hits a career high as a loving, but distant, father who reconnects with his kids while preparing for his wife’s untimely death, while Shailene Woodley, as his rebellious oldest daughter and confident, is a true discovery. The Descendants is relaxed and delightful, content to show us flawed, decent people trying their darnedest to do right by those closest to them. It’s the kind of breezily endearing low-key gem you almost wish wouldn’t end, if only so you didn’t have to bid farewell to its enchanting cast of fully-realized characters.

6) DRIVE  Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s visceral neo-noir tribute to vintage cinematic cool is an invigorating blast of slick, attitude-drenched style. With brooding, toothpick-chomping driver-for-hire Ryan Gosling sitting intently at the wheel, and stellar supporting players Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman and an unsettlingly shark-like Albert Brooks adding dimension to the requisite stock roles, Drive adds a dazzling, flavourful dash of art-house meticulousness to an oft-rehashed B-movie chestnut of a plot. Backed by a propulsive, insanely catchy soundtrack, Refn’s picture doesn’t simply riff on beloved old Hollywood clichés; it lovingly reassembles the parts into something new, alive and visionary. The result is a picture that has one foot planted firmly in the past and the other in a bold, electric future.

7) X-MEN: FIRST CLASS  This is one movie that really shouldn’t have worked. A questionable venture at prequelizing a series that petered out of creative gas in 2002, the picture was rushed through production without a finished script in 11 head-spinning months in order to meet its release date. Against all odds, wiz director Matthew Vaughn – coming off 2010’s sneering superhero triumph Kick-Ass – delivers a thrilling James Bond-influenced adventure yarn with serious dramatic oomph! The picture not only pumps new blood into the brand, it actually ranks as the very best of the X-Men pictures; as vital, fun and inventive as a beloved Chris Claremont-era panneled page-turner. Populated by a cast of colourful, compelling mutants led by James McAvoy’s groovy, well-intentioned Professor X and Michael Fassbender’s tragic, seething Magneto, and drawing boundless inspiration from its 1960s Cold War setting, First Class is a pure popcorn rush that merrily lives up to its own cheeky title.

8) BRIDESMAIDS  Kristen Wiig finally received the career launching pad she’s long deserved in this uproarious comedy smash that gleefully gunned down Hollywood’s long-held stodgy belief that women can’t be as funny as men. A hilarious, freewheeling exploration of wedding party pressure-cooker stress, Bridesmaids mines endless comic gold from the wacky group dynamics of its enthusiastic go-for-broke female cast – which also includes Rose Byrne, Maya Rudolph and raunchy scene-hijacker Melissa McCarthy – as well as the dizzying lows journeyed to by its basket-case protagonist. Directed with casual, hands-off confidence by Paul Feig, working off a sharply truthful and witty script by Wiig and her writing partner Annie Mumolo, this brilliant, endlessly rewatchable laugh-fest is the rare major studio comedy that’s worthy of its hype.

9) WARRIOR  This rousing MMA family drama was one of the year’s most welcome, fist-pumping surprises. Starring heavy-hitting up-and-comers Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy as over-burdened blue collar brothers working out their demons in the ring, Warrior is the rare sports film that knows how to make its well-worn genre tropes feel bracing and impactful. Loaded with exhilarating martial arts action sequences and nuanced performances (especially by Nick Nolte as the clan’s recovering alcoholic patriarch), Gavin O’Connor’s modern day Rocky skilfully builds suspense by setting genuine emotional stakes and never making the climax seem like a foregone conclusion. By the time the final blow is landed, and the fractured family’s tumultuous trip towards reconciliation reaches an explosive, cathartic end, Warrior nearly has us on our feet in rapturous applause.

10) MELANCHOLIA  Whereas The Tree of Life astonished us with the explosive origin of the Earth, Melancholia sees controversial director Lars Von Trier wiping it out of existence in gloriously operatic splendour. A haunting, sad and sometimes darkly humorous examination of crippling depression, this elegantly assembled drama casts Charlotte Gainsbourg and an ethereal Kirsten Dunst as a pair of strained sisters grappling with insurmountable mental illness, as well as the impending apocalypse. Never succumbing to overly-morose stabs at misery exploitation, the always unconventional Von Trier has made a film that dives unwaveringly into the darkest depths of mortal despair, yet still manages to find beautiful, sweet release and a tiny, shining sliver of undying hope.

Honourable Mentions: THE IDES OF MARCH, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL, MONEYBALL, TAKE SHELTER, 13 ASSASSINS.

*Originally published at Converge Magazine.

Film Review - SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS

2009’s surprise smash Sherlock Holmes, which reinvented Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective into a hyper-aware bundle of anti-social neuroses and peculiarities, was a decent enough film hobbled by a number of problems. Director Guy Ritchie was saddled with a script heavy on exposition and world-building, but light on actual mystery and depth. While Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, as Holmes and Watson, infectiously batted their roles out of the park, the picture separated them – to great detriment - for too much screen-time. It also failed to supply a memorably dastardly villain or a lively love interest.

My hopes were high that, with its gorgeously ugly steampunk Victorian London universe up-and-running, and the key figures firmly ingrained in the public consciousness, Ritchie would use his sequel to actually spin a ripping yarn worth telling. Alas, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is an obnoxious, confusing slog of a motion picture; one that mistakes bombastic franticness for charm, revels in tiresome snarky smugness, and criminally wastes one of literature’s most indelible bad guys. It’s a prime example of lazy franchise filmmaking; taking what everyone loved the first time around and cranking the dial mercilessly up to 11.

Picking up a few years after the initial entry, the movie opens with Sherlock (now with even more enhanced psychic powers!) on the trail of fiendish mastermind Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), a cold, sinister intellectual who may have a hand in a series of anarchic bombings that threaten to kick-start war in Europe. Unfortunately for the crazed detective, his trusty right-hand man, Watson, is about to embark on his honeymoon with the lovely Mary (Kelly Reilly), and firmly resists helping to unravel the truth from the uber-tangled ball of conspiracy theories and misdirection. However, an action-packed visit to a gypsy fortune teller (Noomi Rapace) soon brings an abrupt, explosive halt to Watson’s romantic plans. The delightful deciphering duo are then launched on an extensive cross-country fact-finding mission, where they face unbelievably dangerous cliffhanger predicaments, and, ultimately, find themselves drawn ever closer into Moriarty’s sinister web of deceit and murder.

In theory, the script for a Sherlock Holmes adventure should operate like clockwork, with all of the seemingly disconnected plot threads fusing together into one grand, climactic “A-ha!” moment of glorious revelation. Whereas the 2009 film sort of half-heartedly toyed with that trope, A Game of Shadows’ terrible script, by Michele and Kieran Mulroney, basically abandons the concept all-together! There isn’t a great deal of mystery here at all - only an endless series of convoluted happenings obscuring what is essentially a very, very routine villain scheme. Sure, there’s a last minute reveal, but it’s a shameless cheat. It depends solely on introducing never-foreshadowed elements that the audience has no chance of predicting. The film really wants to play like a Victorian-era Indiana Jones/James Bond adventure, with its characters skipping across locations willy nilly, carried almost solely by a string of dynamic action sequences. Problem is, those series depend on fast-paced, broad-stroke storytelling to succeed. Holmes, on the other hand, is simply at odds with that mode of high-flying adventure because it’s fixated on the minutiae of each moment, exhaustively explaining every new development and detail. Call it Cinematic Square Peg, Round Hole syndrome, if you will.

To complicate matters, director Guy Ritchie's stylistic skills have always far outweighed his ability to convey a satisfying narrative. His best efforts – Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels – are jolting, showy snapshots of attitude, visual virtuosity and scruffy, street-level cool. Here, though, working with a script that’s as incoherent as the last two Pirates of the Caribbean pictures, he flounders, unable to mould this overlong, shapeless mess into a compelling whole. That said, working with cinematographer Philippe Rousselot and production designer Sarah Greenwood, he has made a fairly striking mediocrity. Victorian England has rarely looked as wonderfully cluttered and ominous (you can practically smell the filthy cobblestone streets and soot-covered extras). And, although his livewire energy seems absent from the majority of the movie, Ritchie does still find a handful of moments to shine, among them an artillery-shell-packed jaunt through the forest, a nifty battle inside the cabin of a steam engine, and an amusingly awkward horse-riding montage - scored, improbably, to Ennio Morricone’s hee-hawing theme from the 1970 Clint Eastwood western Two Mules for Sister Sara.

It bears mentioning that Downey Jr.’s Holmes is beginning to creep perilously close to Jack Sparrow-ville. He’s fun in short bursts, but becomes grating when standing centre stage for too long. In A Game of Shadows he runs wild, consuming everyone in his presence, save Law’s suitably aggravated Watson. This picture desperately needed well-rounded supporting players to add flavour and build the series’ mythology into something nuanced and involving. Steps have been taken, with the addition of Moriarty and Holmes’ spy brother Mycroft (Stephen Fry – a winking, jovial presence in search of a purpose), but these characters aren’t given enough to do. Despite an effective last-act verbal chess match with Holmes, Moriarty never feels like the iconic villain he should be. Harris has a diabolical exactness that’s largely underutilized, and we never really get a good sense of the true malevolence he’s capable of unleashing. As for poor Noomi Rapace – cinema’s fierce original Lisbeth Salander – she’s stuck here in the type of useless, one-dimensional role many gifted imports must slum through on their debut trip across the pond. May her future burn brighter.

Draggy and nearly devoid of joy or thrills, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows soullessly vacuums up the accumulated goodwill generated by its predecessor, leaving only an uninspiring promise that a third instalment is definitely in the cards. The fact that the film is helpless to mine good escapist entertainment from such rich, fertile source material is baffling and, to be honest, more than a little concerning. If Ritchie and Warner Bros. really want this franchise to endure, they’d best make it a priority to avoid screenplays this ridiculously clueless.

1.5 out of 5