George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead

'Shoot me'



Jason Creed (Joshua Close) is a young film-making student who is trying to make a horror movie with his friends. Whilst out in the woods filming they hear that the dead have started coming back to life and, while they are initially skeptic, they soon find that the threat is much more real.

The framing device of 'Diary of the Dead' is that the film is actually 'The Death of Death', a documentary comprising footage shot by Jason, along with clips downloaded from the internet, CCTV footage and whatever happens to be on the cameras the cast find along the way, and which has been edited and narrated by his girlfriend Debra (Michelle Morgan). This is the first of the many interesting things about the film; the film-makers take great pains to explain where the footage comes from and in doing so gives the audience a few hints as to what has happened and where the story is going. It also gives Romero license to use music at certain points ''for effect'' since he has the excuse that the film is being made by a film student, rather than a 68-year old horror veteran. It also allows the film to avoid Cloverfield-style blurriness by saying ''they're all film students, they know how to frame a shot.'' If you think about this aspect of the film a bit too much then you may just disappear into a meta-quagmire, but otherwise it's a conceit that works very well for the film.

It also allows director George A. Romero to make his satirical swipes much more obvious than with his previous work. Debra's narration and the juxtaposition of Jason's footage with the found footage on the internet make it quite obvious that the idea of shooting a zombie film as if it was being filmed by those experiencing a zombie apocalypse is not just a gimmick; it's part of his attack on mass media and its ability to cloud the truth rather than illuminate it. Sure, it's a very heavy-handed message, but also a relevant one, and Romero has never shied away from relevance in his undead-capades.

Messages and satire aside, Romero's departure in style also allows him to play with the conventions of a genre that he arguably invented, bringing a freshness and sheer glee to proceedings that was sorely missing from 'Land of the Dead'. Zombies are dispatched in hilarious and gory ways (few directors have the knack for darkly humourous scares that Romero has) and he even engages in a bit of self-reflexiveness, working in subtle jokes about his past work and references to other zombie films. The finale also seems to owe something to the Resident Evil series (the games, not the films), though that may just be me reading into things a bit too much.

It's fun, it's scary and its message, whilst over-stated, is relevant and well argued. It doesn't reinvent the zombie genre but it does bring a freshness to some of the well-established cliches and has more invention and energy to it than you would expect given the seniority of its creator.

Bloody good fun.

El Orfanato (The Orphanage)

'Uno, dos, tres'



Laura (Belen Rueda) is a woman who grew up in an orphanage. Having been adopted and lived a full life, she decides to buy the orphanage and re-open it as a home for disabled children, taking he husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and young son Simón along with her. It's not long before Simón is talking to imaginary friends that aren't that imaginary and who are in a very playful mood.

Juan Antonia Bayona's film arrives amidst a flurry of hype and praise, much of it describing it as one of the best horror films in recent years. While that may be true, and I would certainly lean that way, it's important to point out that it is in no way an original horror film; it's a haunted house story, pure and simple. As such, it conforms to a lot of the conventions and cliches that have run through this style of story for centuries and which will be known to anyone who has ever heard a good ghost story (doors slamming of their own accord, dark and creepy house, a lone character who believes that something is going on who is met with skepticism from almost all sides). Cinematically, it sits alongside the likes of The Innocents and bares more than a resemblance to (though for my money is much better than) The Others in that it tells a fairly standard ghost story very, very well.

Fortunately, the joy of the film lies not in what it brings to the genre, which is very little, but how well it carries out those aspects of it with which we are so familiar. Bayona's direction is helps to create a taut and uneasy atmosphere and there were moments that had me, quite literally, jumping out of my seat.

The cast all acquit themselves very well, with Rueda being a stand-out as the mother who has to contend with forces that may or may not be real. She's an utterly convincing heroine, even if she does stumble from one obvious horror set-up to another, and the relationship she has with her son is very interesting.

If we take the most basic component of any horror film being how much it scares the audience then, for me, The Orphanage is a very good horror film, even if I'd classify it more as a suspense film than horror. It follows the cliches and the haunted house rule book very closely, no bad thing, so it doesn't reinvent the genre. However, as an exceptionally well made and engaging piece of horror it is a great success.

Lars And The Real Girl

'I was hoping winter was over'



Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling) is a lonely, emotionally stunted man who lives in the garage of his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and sister in law Karin's (Emily Mortimer) house. Lars orders an anatomically correct sex doll which he perceives as a real woman named Bianca. In an effort to help Lars with his delusion, Karin and, reluctantly, Gus act as if she is alive as well. Soon, the whole town is in on the act, and Lars finds himself coming out of his shell.

I loved it. I thought that it hit upon a near-perfect balance of comedy and darkness and much of this is down to Ryan Gosling as Lars who, despite the bumfluff 'tache, was such a sweet and loveable character but Gosling also managed to convey his loneliness and isolation without overselling it. His performance was also one of the main reasons that the central premise worked; you just knew that Lars would not be the sort of creep that would buy a sex doll for the usual reasons, a fact that was reinforced by his assertion that Bianca was deeply religious, and this served to heighten the comedy of the people of the town start finding out about the unorthodox relationship in their midst.

Eli Roth-alike Paul Schneider was also superb as Lars' older brother Gus and his almost unwavering skepticism got the most laughs in the cinema I saw it in. More importantly, though, he and Gosling managed to create a real sense that they were two people who loved each other but who still maintained an emotional distance. Gus' comtemplation about his role in Lars' development was affecting but not overwrought, showing a restraint and unwillingness to patronise the audience that ran throughout the whole film. Emily Mortimer was also very good and only let her American accent slip once in the film.

My only real criticism would be that the metaphor of ice and winter was overplayed and at times quite heavy-handed. Considering the subtlety of the rest of the film, I found this aspect rather jarring and, though it didn't ruin the film even the slightest jot for me, it was distracting and led to a couple of the film's very rare lulls. The film also falters somewhat in its final third as it points towards the inevitable end but meanders a bit too much in reaching that conclusion.

A few reviews seem to have expected a darker, edgier movie and have called it misogynistic but I think they couldn't be more wrong. Lars and The Real Girl is a sweet, touching and oddly melancholic film that is more human than its plastic co-star would imply. It's, and it pains me to say this, genuinely life-affirming stuff and a wonderful, if odd, fairy tale.

All of this is incidental, though, since the most important thing is that it features 'Genius of Love' by Tom Tom Club, and is therefore glorious.

My Blueberry Nights

Lizzie (Norah Jones) is a young woman living in New York who has just broken up with her boyfriend. She finds solace talking to Jeremy (Jude Law), the owner of a restaurant which she starts to frequent and she spends several nights talking with Jeremy about love and life over slices of blueberry pie. However, having only just met each other, Lizzie and Jeremy are separated when Lizzie takes off on a journey across America, encountering a separated couple (David Straitharn and Rachel Weisz) and a distrustful poker player (Natalie Portman).

'My Blueberry Nights' is the English-language debut of Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, whose previous credits include 'In The Mood For Love' and 'Chungking Express' and the film shares a number of similarities with his earlier work; it's beautifully shot and the director makes great use of sensuous colours, particularly red, and the story deals with a number of themes present in his other work, particularly the fragility of human relationships. Sadly, though, the final product isn't up to snuff.

Firstly, there's the script, co-written by Wai and Lawrence Block, which veers between turgid philosophising and forced small talk. The whole thing feels terribly over-written and just doesn't seem to get to the emotions of the characters. Fortunately they have good sense to drop the dreadful pie metaphor that surfaces early in the film, though they do reprise an even more appalling metaphor about doors and keys, but the characters never seem to be interacting with each other, they just seem to be actors in a rather wonderfully lit play.

Having said that, the performers do the best they can with the script and their respective acting abilities. Norah Jones is quite good in her acting debut as Lizzie, in that she is not as terrible as some musicians-turned-actors have been in the past, but she is a tad bland. Though that's not really her fault since all she is required to do is look a bit sorrowful whilst other characters Emote with a capital E. Jude Law is also quite engaging, even if his initial non-descript English accent changes when he reveals his character is meant to be from Manchester, at which point he adopts an unconvincing general Northern brogue which I personally found really distracting.

Speaking of bad accents, Rachel Weisz is lumbered with the unfortunate burden of having the second most emotionally demanding role in the film, the female half of a separated married couple in Memphis, Tennessee, and a very mannered Southern belle accent. Much like Ray Winstone in The Departed, she can do a passable accent but she can't really sell the emotion, so her performance ultimately comes off rather more forced than it probably deserved. David Straitharn, though, is great as Weisz's estranged husband, a cop who is slowly drinking himself to death, and his scenes in the bar that Jones finds herself working in are easily the most interesting and engaging in the film, particularly once Weisz shows up. Natalie Portman is Natalie Portman; a bit wooden but not too bad to look at.

For all these criticisms, I didn't hate My Blueberry Nights, I just didn't find it interesting. That's not to say it was boring; the various little episodes of the film went by at a brisk pace and the central relationship between Lizzie and Jeremy, played out over postcards and lingering stares, did keep my interest, it just didn't really affect me emotionally, though there are a few moments in it that hint at what could have been.

It's hamstrung by a shoddy script and some poor casting choices, but 'My Blueberry Nights' is a pleasant enough little film that's lovely to look at but doesn't really have anything going on underneath. Here's hoping that Wong Kar Wai's next venture into English-language film-making is more assured, since his talents and those of his cast are apparent, even if they are squandered.