The Karate Kid (2010 remake)

As I was about to start watching this last night, a friend of mine told me to bear with it as doesn't really get going until a little way into the film. Very true. The first half hour was boring. In less than a week, 12 year old Dre played by Jaden Smith (mini Will as I will call him from now on) moves to China with his mum, meets a girl, gets his butt kicked by a group of mini kung fu experts and goes on a school trip to the forbidden city. Busy week.

It is not till the kung fu bullies decide to enlist some big strapping lads (who are probably in their twenties in real life!) to help beat up little Dre that the genius that is Jackie Chan steps in… and then the fun starts. There are impressive scenery shots of the Great Wall of China and other spectacular Chinese landscapes and the sequences where Jackie Chan and mini Will practice are very good.  The ultimate fight scenes at the tournament are also surprisingly well done (I was wincing through most of it). Oh and taking the infamous "wax on, wax off" to "jacket on, jacket off" is pretty funny.

Try to forget that it is set in China, not Japan, and Dre learns Kung Fu, not Karate, and you might be OK. It won't win any respectable awards and certainly won't go down in history as one of the best films ever made… but not every film can be Oscar worthy - it doesn't make them unwatchable. If you fancy watching something silly where you don't need to concentrate too much and you can marvel at yet more Jackie Chan moves (and mini Wills impressive skills by the end!) then get it. If I had seen this at the cinema, I might have felt cheated - but on DVD?... I'm OK with it.

Enjoy!

LE xx

Top 5: Foreign films

Foreign films became a passion of mine for two very different reasons. Firstly, two old school friends used to come over to my house and watch scary Japanese films with me, freaking my poor big sister out, who would sit in her bedroom next door and hear our intermittent squeals and screams (and often giggles!) and wonder what on earth we were doing.

And that was the start of my love for Japanese horror - Battle Royale, the Ring Trilogy and Audition were the favourites but we were also highly amused by the Tartan Extreme trailers that would come at the beginning of the DVD. Hard Boiled had the funniest (unintentionally!) trailer of Chow Yun-Fat cradling a baby and shooting everyone around him. Then came Hard Boiled 2 with its new tagline (which we created!) of more guns, more blood, more death and more eggs!

Then at university, I started to learn Spanish. And I started to take trips down to the local Phoenix cinema to watch the latest Spanish releases. Then I started to buy DVDs. It was at this point that I started to expand my foreign film viewing to other languages besides Japanese and Spanish. And I got to see the joy that is Amelie and the stunningly beautiful Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Spanish films are still my favourite overall. Only in a Spanish film could Penelope Cruz play an HIV positive, pregnant nun and keep the plot plausible (All About my Mother) or Antonio Banderas play an ex-mental patient who kidnaps a porn star and still be funny (Tie me up, Tie me down).

But my real love of foreign cinema is their ability to be completely un-Hollywood. The American remakes of foreign films always leave something lacking (see review) - case in point: The Ring, Vanilla Sky etc. The characters do not always walk off into the sunset, nobody is shy about sex or violence, the plot is not thinned for the viewing public and the ends do not always tie up in a neat little bow. And for all that, I thank you foreign films, from the bottom of my slightly twisted heart.

Here are 5 you absolutely must see:

• Amelie (French) - beautiful, romantic without being cheesy, heartwarming for the deepest and darkest cynic.
• All About my Mother (Spanish) - to explain it would ruin it. Just watch it!
• Battle Royale (Japanese) - a class of Japanese school children are put on an island and forced to kill each other. Violent but very very clever!

• Ring Trilogy (Japanese) - Still creepy, will stand the test of time as one of the greatest horror films ever made!
• Pans Labyrinth (Spanish) - visually stunning and incredibly acted. Magical and very dark all at the same time.

And if you fancy a giggle - try "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down" (Spanish). Antonio Banderas is hilarious and if you can get past the graphic sex scenes it's absolute comedy genius.

LE xx

Top 5: Funny films

Last week I was asked what my Top 5 films are. An easy question you might think - but not to me. That depends what you mean by top 5... because the top 5 films ever made (in my humble opinion - Shawshank Redemption, Pans Labyrinth, To Kill a Mockingbird, Singing in the Rain and It's a Wonderful Life) are not my favourite five films of all time. And then there are films which I have seen thousands of times but I still wouldn't class them as my top 5 favourites.

I came close to deciding but it then became top 10 because other favourites kept popping into my head and I couldn't choose between them. It was marginally easier to class my top 5 films by genre. Top 5 80s movies, top 5 funny films, top 5 animated, foreign, horror (you get the point!)


So here is today's question: what are your Top 5 funny films of all time?

Mine are:

• Monty Pythons Life of Brian (genius, in film form)
• Airplane (Leslie Nielsen and co deliver some of the funniest lines ever uttered on the big screen!)
• Top Secret (80s classic with a very young Val Kilmer)
• Zoolander (come on, you know you've done blue steel in photos!)
• Monty Pythons Holy Grail (most random of all MP films but has the best one liners of them all)

LE xx

Can a film ever be as good as the original book?

Many people believe (as do I more often than not!) that when a book is turned into a film it is done so badly. The characters are lost, the complex plots trivialised, favourite parts are removed due to time constraints and the imagery you had when reading the book just doesn't translate onto the big screen.  The Harry Potters, for example (though I still watch them all!) have nothing on the books, have removed fights that lasted for chapters, important plot points and changed endings. When people claimed that making the 7th book into 2 films was simply a marketing ploy, I breathed a sigh of relief and was pleasantly surprised to see the film do the first half of the book justice (See review)

Other flops include Memoirs of a Geisha (probably because the book was so popular to begin with!) and the disastrous My Sister's Keeper. The film version of the fantastic Jodi Picoult book got so many complaints from her fans that she had to put a link to the producers website on her own site to say that she did not authorise the ending change (they kill the wrong person!) and if you wanted to make a complaint it should be with them not her.

However, there are a few exceptions that I can think of - though the film never surpasses the book it is on a par with it by staying true to the original.

Examples:

• The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (though the end is changed slightly, the point of the book is not lost and the end works well in the film version).
• To Kill a Mockingbird (both phenomenal!)
• Battle Royale (both versions are in my top 10!). Highly recommend!!!
• Shawshank Redemption (the book was short so perhaps this explains why they were able to pull it off).
• The Godfather (haven't actually read this but my sis has and she said it was just as good as the film).

So what do you think? Can a film ever really do a book justice or should some books just be left well alone?

LE xxx

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

To explain the uphill struggle that this book has been needs an analogy - and the closest that comes to mind is what I imagine climbing Mount Everest would be like (a hell of a lot easier on the way down than on the way up!). 

I can completely see why this book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize but I'm stumped as to what Richard and Judy were thinking when they named it their winner for Best Read of the Year. This is not summer reading.  By any stretch of the imagination, I cannot see someone plowing through this in a couple of days while sunbathing on their holidays. However, I do believe this book will stand the test of time.  I can see people in years to come studying this book and its view of the future in great depth. And if you have the patience and commitment for a book like this then give it a try and see how you do.

Firstly let me say that David Mitchell is nothing short of a genius - the man manages to compile six narratives that on the surface have nothing to do with the others and not only link them but construct them linguistically to show the different eras.  And no I don't just mean using 1920s English and modern day English - the man goes into the future with a servant robot who says things like "Last nite" (no that isnt a typo!) and "xperimental" and "thru" and then even further into the beyond where the language was so difficult to understand it reminded me of Joseph's rants in Wuthering Heights.

And then he takes you back again. Through 529 pages, Mitchell transports his readers to the past, present, future, back to present and then back to the past. He does so using a diary, letters, an interview, and standard narrative - and what a brilliant ride home. By the second half, I have to admit that I had entirely forgotten who half the characters were because I have been reading this for a few weeks now and excuse me for not remembering a secondary character that was last mentioned 400 pages ago. But it doesn't matter. I stopped trying to retain information and just decided to go with the flow, skimming over text that didn't really make sense to me and not being concerned with why I couldn't remember who that guy she just mentioned was. And then it got really good. As often is the case in both books and films, when the plot is complex and the millions of loose ends start to tie up in neat and tidy little knots, the confusion evaporates - and evaporate it did. I laughed out loud while reading one part on the train and was gripped in others to the point of almost missing my stop.

There are a select few books which are not easy reads but are well worth the effort - Wuthering Heights, Lord of the Rings and War and Peace spring to mind - and I can now happily add Cloud Atlas to that list.  I think in a couple of years I may try it again and realise all the points I missed this time round.

But for now... I think I need to go and lie down. My head hurts.

3/5 FOBLES

LE xx

The King's Speech

In a time of blockbusters, 3D, car chases and stunning dream sequences (see review for Inception! (Review) it makes a welcome change for a film buff like me to see something a little more character-focused. Of course, the Oscar people were all over The King before he'd even made his speech, lavishing high praise on its stellar cast - Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Michael Gambon and that hilarious little girl from Outnumbered to name but a few... - but hey we have dibs!!!

Of course, you couldn't get more quintessentially British than having a cast of British celebs acting their stiff upper lips off in a tale about our very own royal family. Factor in that it's about the underdog stuttering prince who we all know becomes the King who leads the British people through the second world war - well if you don't please go and read a history book! - and you've got yourself a film.

Watching the relationship develop between the prince and his vocal coach makes for brilliant viewing especially when the King-to-be tries the different techniques which seem to get ever more comical as the film progresses. And Colin Firth has never been greater than as the stuttering royal, taking the audience along with his awkwardness, making us will him on and feel his pain.

For those of you who, like me, thought Colin would never be better (or more compelling viewing!) than his Mr Darcy back in 1995 (oh that wet shirt...), there's a brilliantly funny reunion in this film when the King meets the wife of his vocal coach, played by Jennifer Ehle (who starred alongside Colin as his Elizabeth Bennet in the TV show) that had me grinning from ear to ear.

I'm sure there will be BAFTAs and Oscars a plenty for this film but for now, just get yourself a cup of tea, put on your finest hat and get yourself down to your local cinema and watch it.

4.5/5
LE xxx

Inception

The latest DVD to arrive on my doorstep (thanks LoveFilm) I was told great things about this film but that I might need to watch it more than once because it's so complex and quite confusing at times. So I chose to watch it when I wasn't too tired, prepared to be confused.

Well the good news is that I wasn't. Not once did I get totally lost with the plot. Though I did need to pay attention throughout, the film easily takes you on a dark but visually stunning ride through people's dreams as the still fantastic Leonardo DiCaprio and his partner in crime Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who I still picture as the awkward teenage boy in 3rd Rock from the Sun) invade people's dreams and steal the secrets buried within them.

To explain the plot would be pointless because it wouldn't make any sense - so all I will say is you need to see it to believe it. The cast are all amazing and the dream sequences are mind blowing. Unlike most Hollywood blockbusters, the plot is so brilliant that you will have no idea what is about to happen, right up to the final scene! Would appeal to male and female cinema fans - just make sure you watch it when you are awake and paying attention! 

I can see why it has been dubbed the best film of 2010 - a title it clearly deserves!

4.5/5

Enjoy :)