Fatso.co.nz - DVD Reviews

THE DARJEELING LIMITED
***1/2

Wes Anderson still hasn’t made a film as endearing and unassuming as his first Bottle Rocket, nor as fully and satisfyingly realised as its follow-up Rushmore. His last two films The Royal Tenebaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, while not without their moments of admirable ambitiousness and delight, were too forced and affected for my liking. The Darjeeling Limited pretty much follows a similar path, containing all the expected Anderson signatures, from the symmetrical widescreen framing to the slow-motion tracking shots scored to some classic pop track (those whip pans are becoming grating...). But there’s a thinness to the story here where without the visual aplomb, the entire thing would probably collapse; as it is, the film doesn’t sustain momentum until the very end. And Anderson hasn’t quite ironed out those jarring tonal shifts. That said; it’s not an unpleasant ride, the narrative equally infused with melancholy and offbeat comedy. Jason Schwartzmann (who co-scripted), Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody - in likeably droll performances - star as brothers reconnecting in India after a year apart following their father’s death. Their “spiritual journey”, on the train of the title, supplies the film with one exotic travelogue sequence after another, with Robert Yeoman’s gorgeous lensing sponging every rich detail in sight. Anderson’s colour-coded art direction is as meticulous as ever - there’s something to be said about knowing exactly how you want your film to look from the first to last frame and pulling it off beautifully.














LIFE ON MARS – SERIES 1
****

A novel and rather brilliant take on the old cop show formula, BBC’s Life on Mars audaciously combines time travel and police procedural into one highly entertaining package that plays even better than it reads on paper. John Simm (Human Traffic) stars as Sam Tyler, a DCI who goes into a coma after being hit by a car and wakes up in.... 1973! There he’s been transferred to work with the loutish and hard-nosed Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), and soon discovers that time has done a lot to change the primitive attitudes and work methods in the police force over the years. Part of the show’s charm is watching Hunt and Tyler constantly square off in disagreement. They rarely see eye-to-eye - Hunt relies on his gut, Tyler wants proof and evidence - but like all great odd buddy couples, they do gradually warm to each other. Each episode contains a standalone plot - a murder to solve, a crim to catch - while Tyler’s on-going puzzlement at his situation provides the backbone for the series. Is he really back in time? Or is he still in the coma dreaming everything up? Usually opening with a hilariously over-the-top chase scene, Life on Mars proves to be an impressive tonal balancing act: it's funny, suspenseful, dreamy, and poignant, with consistently engaging performances and witty writing that’ll keep you hooked from the get-go.














BALLS OF FURY
***

I’m not going to try and convince you Balls of Fury is a good movie, but it is a funny one, a supremely silly Enter the Dragon-meets-ping pong send-up that had me in stitches several times when I watched it on a long distance flight earlier this year. Written by a pair of Reno 911! alumni, the film is primarily a vehicle for Dan Fogler, who plays Randy Daytona, a former child ping pong star who is hired by the FBI to help bring down an illegal, underground tournament run by Master Feng (Christopher Walken in a must-be-seen-to-be-believed role). Rife with your usual kung fu clichés - revenge arc, training sequences, Confuscious-style wisdom - Balls of Fury is watchably absurd stupidity that unavoidably, given its sketchy narrative, runs out of steam two-thirds in. Fogler is cut from some burly mould as Seth Rogen and Jack Black, but while he’s not unlikeable, it remains to be seen if he can hold the lead in further pictures. Maggie Q is um, reliably leggy, as Daytona’s love interest/coach.














SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET
****

Mounted with stunning, full-blooded Gothic splendour, Tim Burton’s adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s smash Broadway musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a deliciously macabre, if overlong, brew of bloodthirsty revenge, throat violence and human pies. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter, reunited from Corpse Bride, play a pair of serial-killing loonies in 19th century England: he’s Sweeney Todd, a vengeful barber who’s taken a liking to slashing the throats of his customers; she’s Mrs Lovett a witchy pie-maker who disposes of their bodies by recycling them into mince pies. It’s pure delight for Burton fans, all gallows whimsy and Grand Guignol frissons. And it’s bloody as hell, the ending possibly the darkest of all Burton’s films. While Depp might not possess golden pipes, he inhabits Todd with deranged gusto, proving his continued collaboration with Burton is still a creatively inspired one.














RESCUE DAWN
****
The Kinskian meltdowns and transcendental moments that characterise Werner Herzog’s best films maybe in short supply in Rescue Dawn, his return to feature filmmaking after a string of fantastic docos, but the German auteur has still made a gripping, tautly crafted tale of survival and endurance. The film revisits the subject of his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly, Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), a German-born US Navy Pilot who, on a covert mission to Laos in 1965, was shot down, captured and subsequently escaped, but not before weathering months of tortuous conditions in a prison camp. Bale gives another solid performance, busting out the Method showiness by losing some pounds (a la The Machinist), chomping on live worms and a snake. As fellow prisoner Duane, Steve Zahn, who’s too often the default comic relief, is affecting. Herzog purists, if not already polarized by the narrative’s relative conventionality, will probably balk at the final moments, a clumsy stumble through gung-ho uplift usually reserved for Hollywood, though one can argue it’s certainly not an undeserved pay-off, especially after everything that’s Dengler’s gone through.

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