REVIEW: Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

S'alright.

REVIEW: Living With The Truth

It can be difficult to face up to the truth, and many people avoid it at all costs, but it's difficult to avoid when the anthropomorphic personification of truth decides he is going to hang out with you for a few days.

This is the premise of Jim Murdoch's debut novel Living With The Truth.

Jonathan Payne is an aging bookseller who has all but withdrawn from the world when, one Tuesday morning, a young man turns up on his doorstep, introduces himself as, "Truth. Mister Truth. Or you can call me 'The' if you like. Or even plain ol' Truth," and makes himself comfortable as Jonathan's companion. Jonathan is initially overwhelmed by this stranger's effrontery and doesn't believe he is who he claims to be; but then the stranger demonstrates an uncanny knowledge of Jonathan's private life, his dysfunctional family, his lamentable love life, what books are on his shelf and where, his favourite type of coffee and the fact that every time he sees an attractive young woman on the street he habitually thinks, "It's not fair."

Truth's presence is a bane at first as he openly discusses the embarrassing minutiae of Jonathan's personal life in public and scrutinises aspects of his character that he has avoided confronting for years. Over time, though, Jonathan's strange new companion forces him to realise that many of his perceptions of people and events in his life are or were mostly superficial, that if he had been less self-absorbed and a little more communicative then he would have had a deeper understanding of their feelings and motivations. He also learns, however, that the truth is that a deeper understanding of those close to him may not have necessarily improved his relationships with them: knowledge can be both a blessing and a burden.

Truth himself is a mischievous character who fluctuates between tactlessly discussing taboo subjects out loud, such as Jonathan's masturbatory habits and pornographic preferences, and humouring people's secret aspirations - thanks to Truth, Jonathan is astonished to learn about his estranged sister's creative side. Truth, however, makes no distinctions between good and bad - there is only the truth: "I am not hampered by pity or anything like that. She does her job and let me do mine." This abstract-concept-made-flesh is not a new idea, one thinks of DEATH from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels or Neil Gaiman's Sandman (indeed, there is a sly wink to Gaiman's creation at one point) - but Murdoch's novel is less a fantasy story than a down-to-earth examination of facing up to the reality of untapped potential and failure. Despite that, the book is very funny and Murdoch tackles his heavy theme with a lightness of touch that, although uncomfortably honest at times, retains a mostly positive outlook.

Jim Murdoch's debut is an intelligent, funny and moving novel that any discerning reader should enjoy.

Living With The Truth by Jim Murdoch is available to buy from the publisher, Fandango Virtual.

Or you can buy it from Amazon.co.uk via my own humble web store.

The Coens on fire, Camden burns

I was very shocked to wake up this morning to the news of a major fire at Camden Market. I'm not intimately familiar with the place but I have strolled around the market and drunk in many of the pubs around there. There are several great gig venues in the area too like Koko, the Electric Ballroom and the Roundhouse that I visited several times last year.

Damn, a real shame, that.

---

In an attempt to rekindle my interest in films, I made the effort to go and see The Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel No Country For Old Men. And what a relief it was. After two disappointing films, Intolerable Cruelty and the utterly pointless (if beautifully shot) remake of The Ladykillers, No Country For Old Men sees the Coen boys on cracking form. I read the novel last year when I heard that The Coens were making a film of it and I immediately realised that McCarthy's sparse, violent and melancholy neo-Western was perfect material for them. And how. It is reminiscent in tone and pace of the brothers' first film Blood Simple but in an older and wiser way. Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones are all wonderfully understated in their roles, Kelly MacDonald is strong too.

I can understand why the ending has pissed people off but, having read the novel, I was prepared for it. I don't think I would have minded anyway: I wouldn't have expected a nice, tidy and typical thriller-style ending from the Coens anyway - that is not what the film (or the novel) is about.

To find out what it is about, I suggest you go and see it, think about it for a while, see it again and then read the book. Or read the book first; I always prefer to read the book first for some reason.

Anyway, the film is good enough to make you think that it should be law that all McCarthy adaptations are made by the Coen Brothers. Having said that, The Road is currently in production under the directorship of John Hillcoat, the fella who made the Nick Cave scripted The Proposition, a powerful film that stayed with me long after I left the cinema even though I didn't really know whether I liked it or not as I was watching it. I think Hillcoat and McCarthy will be a good match. Also, Blood Meridian (which is on my ever-growing "to read" shelf) is on the slate for Ridley Scott. McCarthy... Ridley Scott... hmm, it could work; Ridley is nothing if not eclectic in his choices.

In Review (finally): 2007

2007: The year I stood up in church during a friend's wedding ceremony and read out an extract from The Velveteen Rabbit - a moment I will always remember with great fondness.

2007: The year we lost Kurt Vonnegut. The discovery of his work in my late teens was pivotal in my development as a serious reader. Having gobbled up Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett I felt the desire to adventure deeper into the literary landscape. I was in the habit of picking books at random from shop shelves, reading the blurb, scanning a few pages, impulse buying. One book I found using this method was Jack Womack's Random Acts Of Senseless Violence, a disturbing and vivid vision of social breakdown. I enjoyed it immensely. One of the quotes of praise on the dust jacket likened Womack to some guy called Kurt Vonnegut so I went out and bought Slaughterhouse 5, the title of which sounded vaguely familiar.

The book was a revelation. Funny, serious, wise, angry and compassionate, a moving story of war and the bombing of Dresden that somehow involved time travel and extraterrestrial zoos. Reading this book I realised that serious fiction could be funny and stories didn't have to be told in chronological order. I was amazed how effortlessly Vonnegut took all these fragments, all these disparate threads, and somehow tied them all together on the final page. Most of all I was won over by Vonnegut's wry charm and humanity; reading him was like being taught life lessons by a favourite uncle. "Come here, son, I want to tell you a few things about the world."

Reading Vonnegut is liberating in that he shows you that you can do anything you damn well please in fiction - his books are like permission slips. I'm very sad he is gone but I'm happy that he was here at all and gave us so many wonderful words.

2007: the year I read Ulysses and I finally finished Boccaccio's Decameron. I experienced something of a reading renaissance in 2007: I always have a book on the go but for some reason my appetite became particularly voracious (which maybe explains my resolve to conquer James Joyce's colossal tome). I read a lot of excellent stuff including Pamuk's My Name Is Read, John Fowles' The Magus, Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual, several Richard Brautigans (what a beautifully quirky turn of phrase that man had), The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch, Slow Chocolate Autopsy by Iain Sinclair and José Saramago's Blindness, the last of which affected me the most with its harrowing vision of the ease with which "civilised" society could collapse.

If my appetite for reading increased in 2007 then my interest in film waned considerably. I know I've complained bitterly about Hollywood remaking every good Asian film barely five minutes after its released but it now it seems studios are cannibalising every nation's celluloid history including their own. We're going to get Paul W.S. Anderson's remake of The Long Good Friday pointlessly relocated to contemporary Miami, Ron Howard doing Michael Hanecke's Caché (Hidden), Michael Hanecke doing an American remake of his own Funny Games (why Michael, why?), The Taking Of Pelham 123 and Fritz Lang's Metropolis for fuck's sake. What happens when you've flogged a franchise to death with increasingly shite sequels? Why, you simply start again by remaking the original! Hello Halloween! And talking of John Carpenter, hello Assault On Precinct 13 remake! Hello Escape From New York remake! Apparently John Carpenter is happy to piss all over his own back catalogue of DIY cult classics by endorsing uninspired remakes.

The event that epitomised this trend for me is the fact that Martin Scorcese finally won his long-deserved Oscar for his laziest, most derivative film. Not only is The Departed inferior to its Hong Kong progenitor but it also feels like Scorcese simply imitating his own past glories. You'll say I am taking this far too seriously but watching The Departed and witnessing the subsequent praise and adulation Marty received actually kinda' hurt.

Thank Whoever, then, for David Lynch who delivered three hours of magnificent dread and weirdness in the form of INLAND EMPIRE. It doesn't matter that I didn't follow the half of it, I loved every damn digitally videoed frame of it. Even when I had no idea what was going on I never felt that Lynch was wasting my time with mere self-indulgent waffle - which, coincidentally, was exactly how I felt reading Ulysses. I seemed to be in that kind of mood in 2007. The only other films I enjoyed at the cinema were Zhang Yimou's Curse Of The Golden Flower which, despite the lukewarm critical response, I really enjoyed, and Hot Fuzz, the most gloriously absurd and entertaining film of the year.

Never mind, I procured lots of good music this year. I got stuck into two genres that I have long-intended to investigate properly: Post-punk and classical. By "classical" I really mean "orchestral", I suppose, because the era I have been drawn to has been that of 20 Century modern composers. Yes, I'm loving all that dodecaphonic atonal shit.

Best albums released this year? Chicago, Detroit, Redruth by Luke Vibert, Book Of Dogma by The Black Dog (well, OK, I admit that this is a compilation of previously released material but much of it has only appeared on vinyl so it still counts), Whisper Me Wishes by Kettel, Oblivion With Bells by Underworld, Foley Room by Amon Tobin and the magnificently barmy Tromatic Reflexxions by Von Südenfed.

I managed to keep a New Year's resolution for once by going to some gigs, something I hadn't done for a long time. I went to see Aim, Bonobo, Underworld and Amon Tobin and I'm so glad I made the effort. Music really is one of the things that makes life worth living - a world without music doesn't bear thinking about.

But otherwise 2007 sucked. Let's see if I can get my shit together in 2008, eh?

Ha. I say that every year.

UN-REVIEW: INLAND EMPIRE

I've been trying to fathom how to write a meaningful review of David Lynch's new film for over the last week since I saw it but I just don't know how. I could explain that it begins with Laura Dern playing an once popular actress whose career has settled into a rut. She secures the lead role in a movie that she hopes will rejuvenate her career but it comes to light that the movie is a remake of Polish film that was never completed because the lead actors were murdered.

That synopsis covers about the first 45 minutes of Lynch's film... except that I forgot to mention the sitcom with the rabbits who talk in stilted non-sequiturs but whose words are greeted with hysterical canned laughter. Oh, and the crying woman watching said bunny sitcom on a TV in a hotel room. But apart from that the first 45 minutes of INLAND EMPIRE kinda' makes sense.

And then after that Laura Dern goes on some kind of nightmarish journey where the real world, the fictional world of the film she is making, the Polish film upon which it is based and the true story of that film's making collide, merge, blur, overlap and loop back on themselves.

But I was expecting that so before I went into the cinema I resolved to not attempt to make sense of the narrative as it went along and simply allow INLAND EMPIRE to happen at me. And I loved it, all three hours of it. INLAND EMPIRE is a natural successor to Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive in its multiple layers of reality and fiction and Lynch's immense skill in wringing every ounce of tension and terror from the dark spaces in familiar, ordinary environments. The film is shot entirely on digital video and some critics have complained that this results in an cheap, amateurish look. Personally, I found the look of the film wonderfully disorienting. No, it doesn't have the look of traditional film stock, it is something different, something that is visually striking in its own right. The sound design, as always in Lynch's films, is tremendously atmospheric and greatly contributes to the sense of unease that pervades the film.

In conclusion I can conclude nothing. One viewing simply isn't enough to take it all in and start to process the information. As with all Lynch's films, there is no definitive interpretation of what it is and I suspect that it will take many subsequent viewings on DVD before I will even begin to formulate an opinion on what it's all about. As I watched it, I felt some subliminal intuition that INLAND EMPIRE does make some kind of sense, that it is actually about something on not just a load of random weirdness that Lynch has thrown at the screen for a laugh.

Laura Dern gives a wonderful and varied performance that is by turns timid, awkward, angry, bitter, heartbroken, compassionate, distraught and disturbed.

Many people would find this film utterly infuriating, maybe even those who have enjoyed some of Lynch's work in the past. It is therefore a difficult film to recommend. All I can say is that I am so grateful that, despite the dearth of imagination and rabid pursuit of commercial success that dominates contemporary culture, people like David Lynch are still sometimes able to get their mad ideas out there into the world. At a time when I feel that dogmatic rules dictate mundane formulas for what films and books and music and art should be, I needed something as wilfully barmy and disobedient as INLAND EMPIRE to come along.

Thank you, David.

REVIEW: Sunshine

I have a strange relationship with Danny Boyle films. I always feel a little underwhelmed immediately after seeing them but, in the days that follow, they stay with me and I eventually feel compelled to see them again. This happened with Trainspotting and 28 Days Later in particular. My opinion of both films grew with subsequent viewings. I believe the same will be the case with Sunshine.

Boyle directs an Alex Garland scripted tale of everyday astronauts travelling to the sun while strapped to a massive nuclear bomb. The sun is dying, y'see, and if our eight space-faring heroes can't reignite it with aforementioned bomb then all life on Earth will die. No pressure, then.

The first thing to say is that this film is gorgeous. Danny Boyle fills the screen with some truly awesome imagery. The vessel upon which our heroes make their journey, the Icarus II (no, really), is a beautifully rendered modular spacecraft hiding behind a massive umbrella-like reflective shield. But the real star of the film is the sun itself. I can't remember ever seeing the scale or power of the sun so impressively presented on the cinema screen with such deserved reverence. It is, after all, the source of all life on our planet and this film certainly does it justice. Indeed, this is one of the film's major themes. What's even more impressive is that the budget for the film was a modest $20 million - you could easily believe that it cost ten times that amount. The visual splendour of the film is complimented by brilliant sound design that makes an invaluable contribution to the sense of space and atmosphere.

The performances too, from the likes of Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh and Chris Evans, are strong and believable even if the characters do feel like archetypes rather than complex human beings. Indeed, Sunshine suffers from a problematic script such as the decision to call the ship Icarus II. Even the least superstitious of scientists wouldn't call a spacecraft heading for the sun Icarus II - that's just asking for trouble, isn't it? And please note: that's Icarus II. Yes, this is the second mission to the sun called Icarus. The first mission, Icarus I, set off seven years prior to the events in this film and disappeared without trace. Didn't anyone think that maybe calling not one but two missions to the sun Icarus was perhaps tempting fate?

There are bigger problems, though. The film-makers seem to be unsure of what kind of film they are trying to make. It is clearly influenced by many sci-fi predecessors - 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, Silent Running, Alien, Event Horizon - but can't settle on whether it is a philosophical rumination of the nature of humankind's relationship with the universe, a taut psychological thriller or an horror flick. The answer is that it flips from one to another and doesn't quite satisfy as any of them.

Having said all that, it is definitely worth seeing, especially in the cinema. As well as the aforementioned beauty of the ship's journey to the sun, director Boyle sustains the tension throughout brilliantly as one disaster after another afflicts the mission. There are some brilliant moments such as the spacewalk across the ship's gigantic shield where cameras inside the space helmets create a true sense of claustrophobia. It is only in the final act that he seems to loose his way and bombards you with frenetic, confusing weirdness.

I was lucky enough to see Sunshine at a special "bloggers' preview" about a month ago (thanks to Suw Charman for swinging that for me). I was quite down on the film when I came out. But, as I mentioned at the top of this review, I feel more sympathetic towards it and, now that it has a nationwide release, I want to see it again. It is, without a doubt, a flawed piece of work but it is an intelligent sci-fi film for grown-ups with some thought-provoking ideas and some truly stunning imagery. And it's a British film.

Because there just aren't enough movie reviews on the web already... Episode III

Other Most Disappointing Movie of 2005: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

After some twenty years in development hell - and four years after Douglas Adams' sadly premature departure from this world - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy finally made it to the big screen.

I really wanted to love this film, I really did. I was not going to be one of those hardcore fanboys who would be horribly upset at every little deviation from the novels that I love so much; after all, the novels deviated quite a bit from the original radio series - the plot to Hitchhiker's has been nothing but maleable over the years.

Early statements and reports from the filmmakers demonstrated that everybody involved was in love with Adams' creation and wanted to remain as faithful to the spirit of his work as possible without sacrificing too much to Hollywood conventions.

The resulting film was, indeed, different from the novels and the radio series. I didn't mind that Ford Prefect was played by an American; I didn't mind the way that Zaphod's secod head was realised; I didn't mind the new plot strands and characters that were introduced. And the whole thing looked fantastic.

But the film didn't work.

The charm of Douglas Adams' writing is in the tangental ramblings, the imaginative and absurd linguistic riffs. That is a difficult thing to translate to a two hour movie. Obviously, a lot of material would have to be ditched but instead of picking a handful of the best bits and letting them play out in full, the filmmakers picked lots of bits and severely truncated them. The conversation with Prosser as Arthur Dent lies in front of the bulldozers at the start, the explanation about Babel fish... many of these classic scenes were present but horribly cut short.

The pacing was too fast. The gags did not have the time to breath. The actors' performances suffered because they were trying to get through the dialogue as quickly as possible so that they could get to the next scene. The whole thing needed to be taken down a gear.

And the romance between Arthur and Trillian? I was ambivalent about that. On the one hand, it was understated and not too schmaltzy but, on the other, the whole point about Arthur Dent is that he has lost his home and is hopelessly out of his depth in the wider universe. Baffled, confused, frustrated, anxious: Arthur Dent is a loser, an essentially nice man who is embittered by the more exciting and dynamic people who succeed where he fails. And for him to decide that he doesn't actually need to return to that mostly harmless little blue/green planet simply goes against every incarnation of the character that has gone before.

In fact, Arthur Dent as portrayed my Martin Freeman doesn't leave much of an impression at all. He sort of bumbles around looking surprised and a bit confused and... that's about it. The banter between him and Ford that was central to previous versions of Hitchhiker's is almost entirely absent. Many people criticised Mos Def's performance as Ford but I think he could have been fine if he had had the opportunity to take more time over delivering his lines. Even the usually faultless Bill Nighy - the perfect actor to portray Slartibartfast, you would have thought - gave a rather flat peformance.

There are some fine moments: Arthur's reaction to the spectacular planet factory is genuinely affecting and real; Stephen Fry was the perfect choice as the voice of The Guide; the graphics that accompany the Guide entries are simple, inventive and very funny; Bill Bailey as the voice of the whale; the "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish" song.

All the ingredients were there for a great adaptation but, despite the obvious love that went into the making of the film, they botched it.

Because there just aren't enough movie reviews on the web already... Episode II

Two more runners up for Favourite Movie Of 2005 which I completely forgot to mention when writing my previous post and then couldn't be bothered to add later once I had remembered

• 2046 - Wong Kar Wai's follow up to In The Mood For Love. Tony Leung Chiu-wai (who is one of my favourite actors - check out Infernal Affairs if you haven't already) is trying to deal with life after his almost-affair with Maggie Cheung's Su Li-zhen from the previous film. He becomes strangely obsessed with a hotel room baring the number "2046", moves in next door, and conducts a series of relationships with the women who move into "2046". These relationships inspire a short story, a science fiction tale about a place in the year 2046 where you can go to forget and live in eternal happiness. A gorgeous, meandering, dream-like film that takes its time but is definitely worth the effort.
• Team America: World Police - Utterly profane and hilarious marionette fun. A film without prejudice: everybody is mercilessly ridiculed. But there is also a profound insight into the human condition about how there are three types of people in the world: dicks, pussies and arseholes.

Because there just aren't enough movie reviews on the web already...

Yeah, well, hardly original but here are my utterly inconsequential thoughts on the movies I've seen in 2005.

Favourite Movie in 2005: A History Of Violence

Cronenberg was back with his best film since Dead Ringers. I always enjoy his work but the films he put out in the last ten or fifteen years - Naked Lunch, Crash, Existenz, Spider - were all a tiny bit undercooked as if he struggled to find stories that fully engaged his intellectual and artistic faculties. A History Of Violence, on the other hand, hit the bullseye. Read my review (if you like).

Other Favourite Movie in 2005 if only some bugger would distribute it to UK cinemas: Mirrormask

Dave McKean's and Neil Gaiman's beautiful and surreal fairytale. Why hasn't anybody put this onto cinema screens in Britain where it belongs? Why do we have to suffer crap like Fantastic Four but we don't get a chance to see genuinely inventive films like this in our multiplexes? Read my review (if you like).

Runners Up

• Sideways - Funny, smart, painful, brilliantly acted; it felt like a movie from the 1970s or the sort of film that Barry Levinson used to make where people sat around and had funny, smart and painful conversations.
• Batman Begins - The best of the summer blockbusters... Batman regains his cinematic dignity after the Schumacher neon nightmares of Batman Forever and Batman And Robin.
• Kung-Fu Hustle - just... mad.
• Serenity - A curious beast in that it felt like more than simply an expanded episode of its television progenitor (Firefly) but not quite a fully cinematic piece of work. Not that it really matters: it was bloody good fun, well written, well acted and looked marvellous despite its relatively small $40 million budget.

Biggest Cinematic Disappointment of 2005: The League Of Gentlemen's Apocalypse

There were plenty of worse films knocking around than the League's first full blown cinema outing but Apocalypse was disappointing because the Gents are capable of so much better. Their three wonderful television series - and their feature length Christmas Special - are littered with movie references and filmic flourishes in amongst the wonderfully macabre comedy so for them to make the transition to the big screen was a logical thing to do. Sadly, they opted for the tired old postmodern premise of fictional-characters-stumble-into-real-world-and-meet-their-creators. A real shame. Like I said, not an awful film by any standard but it should have been so much more.

Movie That Will Be The Source Of Baffled Ambivalence Until The Day I Die: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith

Why do I like this? It is rubbish on so many levels. Admittedly, it is better than the first two Star Wars prequels... but I still kinda' like them as well... OK, maybe I only bother to watch two scenes from The Phantom Menace and I skip the excruciating love scenes in Attack Of The Clones... It's no good: I can't justify liking these dreadfully scripted, woodenly acted, CGI-soaked, pumped up video-game trailers but...

What's wrong with me?

Worst Film Of 2005: Sin City

Quite how I have the audacity to condemn Sin City for being a mind-numbingly shallow sequence of film noir clichés after admitting that I like Revenge Of The Sith, I don't know. I realise that I am in the minority by disparaging Frank Miller's and Robert Rodriguez's movie and am expecting an enraged comic-book fanboy lynch mob to kick down my door any second to inflict a little of the old ultravoilence to my person; but that will not prevent me from categorically stating that Sin City is shite - wonderful looking shite, I admit, but shite nonetheless.

Coming as soon as I can be bothered to write it... Films I am looking forward to in 2006...

REVIEW: Mirrormask

During the Q&A session after Tuesday's London Film Festival screening of Mirrormask, Dave McKean mentioned that while he and writer Neil Gaiman were holed up at Lisa Henson's London home thrashing out ideas for the film (and, for the first time in their longstanding partnership, having a bit of a bust up), Terry Gilliam popped round and took them out for a drink. This association is so apt as there is a comparable blurring of reality and fantasy in McKean's feature debut as director and Gilliam's work.

Mirrormask tells the story of Helena (Stephanie Leonidas), a 15 year-old girl frustrated by life in the circus, living her parents' dream. This frustration manifests itself during a hurtful argument with her mum, Joanna (Gina McKee). Most kids dream of running away to the circus, argues mum, but Helena wants to run away to real life. Helena then gets a big dose of real life when her mum collapses later that night, stricken by an unspecified growth or tumour. Helena is shipped off to her grandmother's dreary council flat in Brighton, passing time covering the walls with fantastical drawings and visiting her mum in hospital while Dad (Rob Brydon) negotiates with bank managers to find the money to pay for his wife's life-saving operation while still keeping his dream, the circus, above water. "Dreams only take you so far," says one of the circus performers. "After that you need cash."

It is against this troubling backdrop that Helena stumbles into a surreal fantasy world one night, a world of two opposing lands - Light and Shadow - where unwanted books return to the library under their own volition, shoals of fish swim through the air, cats with human faces issue riddles and married giants orbit each other above the ground; a world where everybody wears a mask to show how they feel and Helena's naked face is considered weird and confusing by the inhabitants.

Helena befriends one such inhabitant named Valentine (Jason Barry) - "I'm an important man. I have a tower." - but is soon mistaken as the ersatz princess that ingratiated herself into the Queen Of Light's confidence but then stole a secret charm, the eponymous Mirrormask, sending the Queen (McKee again) into a deep sleep and disrupting the balance between Light and Shadow. Helena takes it upon herself to retrieve the mask, restore the balance between Light and Shadow and return to her own world.

On the face of it, Mirrormask is standard fairy tale stuff filled with familiar archetypes: the young child transported from her ordinary life into a world of fantastical creatures; the local inhabitant who befriends her but must make a choice between looking out for his own selfish needs or facing danger to protect his new friend; the opposing forces of good and evil personified by the Queens of Light and Shadow. But the film succeeds in transcending these stock elements for several reasons. Firstly, it would be impossible for any movie directed by Dave McKean to look anything less than astonishing. The fantasy worlds he shows us is one stuffed with beautifully weird creatures, buildings and textures. Once we step foot into the Lands of Light and Shadow every single frame is stuffed with wondrous computer generated creations. But compared to something like the Star Wars prequels, where the screen suffers from pristine CG overload, McKean's impressionistic, dreamlike imagery is mesmerising and draws you in to the story rather than bombarding the senses. Even the scenes set in the real world that bookend the film have a curious, otherworldly quality to them.

Then there is Gaiman's thoughtful, warm and witty script. As with his comics and fiction, Gaiman is very good at keeping even his most fantastical scenarios grounded by putting ordinary people into extraordinary situations. Once in the world of fantasy, Mirrormask could have so easily succumbed to the portentous, pseudo-Shakespearean gibberish that blights the Star Wars movies. However, Gaiman never lets this happen and the characters in Mirrormask react to all the strangeness surrounding them in very real, down to earth dialogue. This is aided by the superb cast. Stephanie Leonidas carries the film with great skill, portraying an initially stroppy teenager without appearing obnoxious, a concerned daughter fearful of her mother's illness without being overly sentimental and a curious observer in a strange land without resorting to manic, bug-eyed astonishment. McKee, Brydon and Barry offer equally strong support delivering believable and sympathetic performances. The scenes between Leonidas and Brydon as they anxiously await the outcome of Joanna's operation are particularly touching and understated rather than manipulative or sentimental.

In recent interviews to promote his film The Brothers Grimm, Terry Gilliam has been lamenting the current climate of fear with regards to parents wanting to shield their children from anything in the media they deem to be too frightening. This is a mistake, reasons Gilliam: fairy tales have a useful function because although they are traditionally dark and frightening they always have a happy ending and therefore teach children that there are dangers and demons out there in the world but they can be overcome. This is surely a better lesson to teach to the young rather than wrapping them in cotton wool and pretending that the world is just lovely. This kind of thinking can be seen at work in Mirrormask which has its fair share of frightening moments: the arachnid-like eyeballs on legs, the mysterious black gloop that consumes its victims or attaches itself to creatures' faces in order to possess them. Such images might be enough to compel younger viewers to watch through the gaps between their fingers but there is nothing in the film unsuitably graphic.

As I mentioned earlier, it is easy to see similarities between Mirrormask and Gilliam's films such as Time Bandits, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Brothers Grimm - but where Gilliam's films are anarchic and messy (in a good way), McKean and Gaiman's film has a more measured, contemplative pace. Some reviews that have been knocking around the interweb have complained that, despite the spectacular visuals, the film's narrative is slow and tiresome. Other criticisms have been levelled at the plot saying that it simply doesn't make sense. It is true that anyone used to the Michael Bay school of frenetic editing and nausea-inducing handheld camera work may be on unfamiliar territory. Likewise, anyone who takes the Robert McKee/Syd Mead guidelines of screenplay structure as gospel will scoff at the dream logic of the film. But it is a mistake to judge this film by such dogmatic, inflexible criteria - that would be missing the point. As with Gaiman and McKean's graphic novel collaborations, Mirrormask sets its own rules. The story is perhaps an allegory, a visual manifestation of Helena's fears that she could lose her mother. The Queens of Light and Shadows could represent Helena's adolescent confusion over her love of her parents and her resentment about being trapped in their dream life with the circus. That there are many possible interpretations of what appears onscreen is not a weakness in the film's narrative but rather a reflection of the ambiguity of real life.

Mirrormask is a beautiful, layered film that can be enjoyed by both children and adults and deserves to be widely seen. And the last line of dialogue is perfect.

REVIEW: A History Of Violence

Summer 2005 won't go down as a classic blockbuster season both in terms of quality and box office revenue. Star Wars Epsiode III was fine despite George Lucas' defiantly rubbish dialogue and some crap editing; War Of The Worlds delivered the carnage but was strangely soulless for a Spielberg flick. Batman Begins was better: dark, intelligent, exciting, well acted, directed and photographed. OK, Katie Holmes as a hard-nosed D.A. was rather hard to swallow and Cillian Murphy's creepy Scarecrow simply faded from view in the final act but, nevertheless, Christopher Nolan did a fine job in reinvigorating the most interesting of superhero franchises. The most fun had to be Stephen Chow's joyously demented Kung-Fu Hustle. If you didn't see it at the cinema, rent the DVD. Now.

So bring on the autumn, the serious cinema-goer's friend. Now is the time for all the curious arthouse films, cult movies and Oscar contenders. Two of my favourite directors have new films to see this autumn. Terry Gilliam finally returns after an seven year absence with not one, but two films: The Brothers Grimm and Tideland (although the latter has yet to secure distribution in the UK so we may have to wait until the New Year before we can see it). And David Cronenberg has returned with A History Of Violence, adapted from the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke.

Cronenberg is mostly thought of as a horror director but this quiet, thoughtful Canadian is much more than that. As far back as his intensely visceral early "body horror" films such as Rabid and The Brood, he has explored the relationship between body and mind and themes of disease and identity. His films are influenced more by the likes of Descarte than Dario Argento.

On a superficial level, the simple plot of A History Of Violence could be that of any number of Westerns: the secret past of an apparently wholesome family man catches up with him and threatens to destroy the new life he has made for himself. Viggo Mortensen plays Tom Stall, husband, father and owner of a diner in a decent, anonymous town in Middle-America. He enjoys a tender and still passionate relationship with his wife, Edie (Maria Bello), and is altogether the caring and decent patriarch.

One night as Tom is closing up the diner, two armed thugs arrive demanding coffee, pie and the contents of the till. Initially, Tom offers up the money and asks them to leave but when the lives of his staff are threatened he swiftly disarms and kills the robbers.

Branded a local hero, Tom's face appears all over the TV news and newspapers. Business at the diner booms but his actions draw the unwanted attention of the black-suited and scarred mobster, Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), who claims that Tom is not Tom at all but a man with a violent past called Joey Cusack.

Tom then has to face not only the threat to him and his family at the hands of Fogarty and his associates but also his family's growing doubts that he is the man they thought he was.

It is a straightforward and predictable plot but what raises this film way above the standard of a typical b-movie thriller is the intelligent, probing script by Josh Olson, Cronenberg's assured direction and strong performances from the cast.

The film depicts violence as a virus that gradually infects the entire Stall family. The teenaged son, Jack (Ashton Holmes), at first tries to diffuse confrontations with the school bullies with words and jokes but, in the wake of his father's "heroics" at the diner, then responds to their harassment with a savage beating. Violence also infects Tom and Edie’s physical relationship: sex becomes less a tender act of love than a rough, bruising act of anger and mistrust. It's as if they are testing the limitations of their capacity for violence to themselves and each other.

Cronenberg's direction throughout is superb, understated but effective. The early domestic scenes with the Stall family, the unexceptional small talk between Tom and his staff, the bored, ironic banter between Jack and his girlfriend and the harmless, almost mundane teenaged fantasy Tom and Edie play during sex create a believable naturalistic context for the brief but brutal confrontations scattered throughout the film. It is a credit to Cronenberg that the unflinching scenes of violence have real impact and are genuinely shocking even to a modern audience desensitised to cinematic viscera. But there is something else going on: the bloody scenes are shot in a slick, choreographed and stylised fashion familiar to any viewer of contemporary action flicks. This juxtaposition between the naturalistic and artificial makes you realise how you would usually take such onscreen violence for granted in a thriller and how much you would enjoy it. Cronenberg manages to disturb and exhilarate you at the same time. He makes you think, goddamnit.

All the performances are strong but a special mention must go to Mortensen's subtle and unnerving portrayal of Tom. As his family increasingly doubt if this man they thought they knew is actually who he says he is, so too does the audience. There are points of great tension in the film when you genuinely don't know what Tom is going to do and he remains an ambiguous character right up until the end credits.

As the film draws to an end, there are no tearful reconciliations, no great epiphanies, no convenient Hollywood closure. Some issues have been resolved, some haven't, and we are left wondering where the fuck the characters can go from here. Cronenberg does not provide any easy answers and the film is all the better for it.

Where Rodriguez and Miller’s graphic novel adaptation Sin City was nothing more than a hollow, bloated and relentlessly tedious sequence of riffs about violence plundered from hard-boiled detective thrillers and film noir, A History Of Violence is the best cinematic meditation on violence in life and in the media since Man Bites Dog.