Film
Had HG Wells been given the ability to travel to 2002 and see this second cinematic adaptation of his novel The Time Machine, I have the distinct feeling that he may have locked his manuscript in the deepest, darkest of vaults and thrown away the key...
The storyline has been embellished through the input of Simon Wells - HG's great grandson - changing anonymous time traveller into Guy Pearce's Alexander Hartdegen, an eccentric but brilliant scientist whose fiancée, Emma, is murdered on the night he proposes to her. He consequently spends the next four years building the time machine which he intends to use to go back in time to prevent her murder. But, alas, tragedy strikes again as she is run over by a horse (as funny as it sounds) and Alexander's despair leads him far into the future.
800, 000 years into the future, to be precise, is where I began to worry most about the film. You would have thought in this many years of cultural and biological development the elite of mankind would have developed a little further than Samantha Mumba and her ethnic, pan-pipe mood listening clan of Elois, but apparently this is indeed the case. Meanwhile, a lower caste, the Morlocks, has developed underground and, bearing strange resemblance to Fraggles, are led by an exceedingly pasty-faced Jeremy Irons. Rather than the intended reaction of horror at this caste division, these big-headed, hairy, once-human carnivorous monsters are merely laughable.
The Time Machine has few redeeming features - even Guy Pearce looks rough as hell for most of the film - if you've read and enjoyed the book I'd advise you to stay well away. This said, if you haven't and need to entertain younger siblings over the summer, there are probably worse ways you could spend an hour and a half. But it's hardly a stunning indictment, and a debatable one at that.
The Scarecrow is the Talbot brothers' first film after their adaptation of Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale, which won the inaugural 'Filming Literature' competition, and it triumphs on the back of these high expectations. Beautifully photographed in black and white 16mm by Russell Talbot, this symbolic narrative of a soldier's return from war is complemented by the brothers' choice of shots, which creates a haunting disjunction between the summer countryside and an expressionist rendition of the soldier's desolate interiority. Bravely ignoring the showbiz mantra about children and animals, the Talbot brothers' film builds tensely up to the soldier's shell-shocked encounter with the eponymous scarecrow using surreally exaggerated sound effects, as well as the contrapuntal cries of the crow accompanying the soldier on his journey, to great effect. A common criticism of war films, that the imagery relies on somewhat trite shorthand - flowers blowing in the wind, photographs of sweethearts - can be levelled here. However, The Scarecrow does overcome these shortcomings through the high standard of directing, Daniel Swain's perfectly judged music and Matthew Daw's impassive and beautifully underplayed soldier, which brilliantly hold the production together.
The production values of this film bear comparison with any professionally produced short film seen by this reviewer and represent well the level of talent in student film-making, which has now produced a succession of impressive shorts, despite lacking the funding and acclaim of OUDS productions. The Scarecrow ranks as one of the most striking student film-making efforts to date, along with Dicky Chalmers' The Onion Club and Sebastian Godwin's Too Close to the Bone, and is a must-see for anyone with even slight interest in films and film making.
Dog-obsessed director Brian Levant (Beethoven, It's a Dog's Life) serves up yet another slice of canine mediocrity with this fish-out-of-water comedy about a dentist who inherits a team of sled dogs. Said dentist (Cuba Gooding Jnr) learns the trade and (yawn) in the process learns many interesting things about himself.
Poor Cuba Gooding Jnr. Five years ago he won an Oscar for his role in Jerry Maguire. Now, he's playing second fiddle to a bunch of Alaskan pooches.
Mediocre acting, a horribly contrived script which touches every cliché in the book and a garbage truck full of trite sentimentality ensure that laughs are thin on the ground. Even as children's entertainment (which is after all, what the film is and should be judged as) Snowdogs fails miserably.
The comic set pieces fail with alarming alacrity and there just isn't enough action to sustain any level of interest.
All in all, Snowdogs is only likely to appeal to very easily amused and animal-obsessed seven-year-olds.
Powerfully sensitive, yet unsentimental, drama shows Halle 'the vessel' Berry finding love with the racist prison guard who executed her husband.
Starchy remake of erotic French original La Femme Infidele, in which an explosive affair wreaks destruction on an apparently perfect marriage, with fatal consequences.
Black comedy featuring obsession and obesity, pornography and paedophilia in suburbia expertly extracts humour from misery and humiliation.
13th Jun 2002