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Rating 2¾
Directed by Shūsuke Kaneko
Written by Tetsuya Ôishi, based on the manga comics and anime series by Tsugumi Ôba and Takeshi Obata
Starring Tatsuya Fujiwara (Light Yagami), Ken’ichi Matsuyama (L), Takeshi Kaga (Soichiro Yagami), Erika Toda (Misa Amane), Shunji Fujimura (Watari), Shin Shimizu (Kenzo Mogi), Hikari Mitsushima (Sayu Yagami), Michiko Godai (Sachiko Yagami), Masahiko Tsugawa (Police Chief Saeki), Shido Nakamura (Ryuuk, voice) and Shinnosuke Ikehata (Rem, voice)
As the owner of a book known as a “Death Note”, Light Yagami has been using it rid the world of criminals, causing their deaths simply by writing their names in its pages. Light is a first year Law student, whose father is a high-ranking police detective. L, a mysterious and secretive investigator who employs unusual techniques, is working with the Japanese police and the FBI to track down the vigilante killer, whose actions have polarised public opinion. L and Light engage in an intricate game of cat and mouse, as L tries to expose Light’s true identity.
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I chanced, somewhat accidently, to watch ‘Death Note’ approximately six months ago, without any prior knowledge of the film, the manga comics on which it is based or the anime series. I was intrigued enough to want to watch the sequel (the two films are actually two parts of one complete story), but have only just got around to doing so. ‘Death Note’ was first premiered in Japan on 17 June 2006 and ‘Death Note: The Last Name’ followed on 3 November 2006. The sequel was the eighth highest grossing film in Japan in 2006 and the fourth highest grossing Japanese film.
The first thing to say is that there is no point watching ‘Death Note: The Last Name’ without having watched the first film. Effectively, it is not two films, but one film split in half. The combined running time of the two films is nearly four and a half hours – and I think the second film, clocking in at nearly two and a half hours, is a little too long. However, the psychological game of chess played by L and Light is effectively staged and although I did not find myself engaging with the film on any deep intellectual or emotional level, it maintained my interest and attention. To some small degree it reminded me of the 1972 Joseph L Mankiewicz film ‘Sleuth’ starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, even though the two films are actually light years apart.
I don’t have any great insight to offer into a film like this and I have no idea if it appealed to fans of manga comics or not. I imagine it must have done. I didn’t find it any way irritating, which given its very stylised presentation it could have been, but equally I suspect it probably would not be of much interest outside of its target audience.
Review posted 17 September 2009
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WARNING: This review contains a major spoiler and should not be read if you have not watched it and you have any intention to do so.
Rating 2½
Created by Barbara Machin
Written by Declan Croghan
Directed by Andy Hay
Starring Trevor Eve (Peter Boyd), Sue Johnston (Grace Foley), Tara Fitzgerald (Eve Lockhart), Wil Johnson (Spencer Jordan), Félicité du Jeu (Stella Goodman), Stacey Roca (Katrina Howard), Sharon Maughan (Elizabeth), Cian Barry (Michael O’Hare), Bosco Hogan (Father Quinn), Lynda Rooke (Sister Rooke), Adam Best (Young Father Quinn), Alki David (Coban), Tam Mutu (Zafer), Sam Vincenti (Olgac), Daniel Lapaine (Samuel Knight), Danial Pirrie (Tony Muller), Denise Gough (Kathleen), Lisa Hogg (Teenage Elizabeth) and Elizabeth Barrett (Young Elizabeth)
A woman is found wondering naked and bloody along a country road. She seems to be suffering from amnesia. DNA tests places her at the scene of an unsolved crime that took place in a Soho club in 1966. When a crashed and abandoned car is discovered close to where she was found, it is traced back to her home, where her husband has been brutally tortured and murdered.
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‘Magdalene 26’ is the opening story of the eighth season of the BBC police drama series. In keeping with previous seasons, it is told across two one-hour episodes broadcast on consecutive evenings. The series began with a pilot story broadcast at the beginning of September 2000. The first season began in June 2001.
The main cast from seasons six and seven all return here, but not for long. Stella Goodman (played by the French actress Félicité du Jeu), who had been first introduced into the series during season five in 2005, had been noticeably underused during season seven and the same thing seemed to happen again in this opening story of the eighth season. In fact, it was referenced that Stella had become something of a spare part, rather ignored by her boss, the perpetually angry Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd. It also seemed odd that another character, Katrina Howard, was introduced into the story, appearing to fill a space already occupied by Stella, although she was not actually a part of the team. All was revealed in the closing scene when we learned, somewhat unexpectedly, that Stella had died following what had earlier seemed to be a fairly innocuous gunshot wound to the leg. I like this character and feel they really didn’t make the most of her, in season seven especially. Whatever the reason for her departure, it is a shame to see her go.
The story itself drew on themes already familiar from previous episodes, including a less than positive depiction of Catholics nuns, something Declan Croghan, the writer here, had delved into in the season six opener ‘Wren Boys’. Although initially quite typical of the long established style of the series, somewhat far-fetched but diverting, the story does become increasingly ludicrous during the second episode and ends up being completely barmy – involving long lost twins, barbaric nuns, Soho brothels, Turkish gangsters, as well as commentary about Britain’s less than flattering role in Iraq and the unregulated widespread greed that led to the worldwide financial crash in 2007. However, the real joy of watching ‘Waking the Dead’ is the interaction between Boyd and the team’s psychological profiler Dr Grace Foley – and the performances of Trevor Eve and Sue Johnson in these two roles. That hasn’t changed.
The series has, I suspect, long since past its best days, but it’s good to see it back and I am looking forward to the remaining three stories in this latest season.
Review posted 14 September 2009
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Rating 2
Directed by Hettie Macdonald
Written by Stephen Churchett, based on the novel by Agatha Christie
Starring Julia MacKenzie (Miss Marple), Benedict Cumberbatch (Luke Fitzwilliam), Margo Stilley (Bridget Conway), Shirley Henderson (Honoria Wayneflete), David Haig (Major Hugh Horton), Russell Tovey (PC Terence Reed), Steve Pemberton (Henry Wake), Sylvia Syms (Lavinia Pinkerton), Lyndsey Marshal (Amy Gibbs), James Lance (Dr Geoffrey Thomas), Tim Brooke-Taylor (Dr Edward Humbleby), Camilla Arfwedson (Rose Humbleby), Anna Chancellor (Lydia Horton) and Jemma Redgrave (Jessie Humbleby)
Miss Marple meets Lavinia Pinkerton during a train journey, who tells her she is travelling up to London to report a double murder to Scotland Yard. When Lavinia dies, seemingly after a tragic fall on an escalator at an underground station, before she can report her suspicions to the police, Miss Marple travels to the village of Wychwood to investigate her claims. She discovers a web of secrets and intrigue and before long more murders occur, disguised as accidents.
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‘Murder Is Easy’ is the second episode of the fourth season of ‘Marple’, the ITV production based on Agatha Christie’s much-loved amateur detective. Geraldine McEwan played the title role in the first three seasons (twelve episodes). As brilliant an actress as McEwan is, I didn’t really take to her interpretation of the character or, more to the point, the style in which the stories were presented. They seemed to be forever winking at the audience, as if telling us that they were in on the joke that these are rather dusty and quaint old stories from an age that, if it ever really existed in the first place, is long gone. It became, almost, a parody, and Miss Marple, as portrayed by McEwan, was, for my tastes, far too obviously knowing.
Part of the problem, I imagine, is that I grew up initially with the Margaret Rutherford interpretations (four films in which she played a boisterous larger-than-life Marple modelled on herself as much as the character created by Agatha Christie) and then the classic BBC adaptations of the 1980s and early 1990s, with the definitive portrayal of Miss Marple by Joan Hickson. All twelve Miss Marple novels were dramatised, the last adaptation in 1992 when Hickson was 86 years old, six years before her death. Hickson is an impossible act to follow and McEwan quite rightly adopted a different approach, one that I didn’t particularly enjoy.
Season four of ‘Marple’ sees Julia MacKenzie take over the role of Miss Marple. MacKenzie’s approach is closer to the source material than McEwan and the first two episodes (‘Murder is Easy’ and, before it, ‘A Pocketful of Rye’) are less stylised, but there seems to be a spark missing. The BBC version of ‘A Pocketful of Rye’ starring Joan Hickson, first broadcast in February 1985, is one of my particular favourites and I struggled with the new adaptation, giving up on it less than an hour into its two-hour running time (with adverts). I stuck with ‘Murder is Easy’ until the bitter end, but came away feeling that it was all rather flat and uninspiring.
‘Murder is Easy’, although an original Agatha Christie novel, is not a Miss Marple story. It is, in fact, one of five novels featuring the character Superintendent Battle, this one first published in 1939. The story has been radically reinterpreted here to remove Battle and insert Miss Marple into the narrative, rather unconvincingly at times. Other changes have also been made to the original novel (which I have not read), including the motivation behind the murders.
The characters remain rather indistinct throughout. Although there are six deaths in quick succession, five as the result of apparently tragic accidents and one, it seems, because of suicide, all of them actually murders, nobody in the close-knit community of the tiny village seems unduly alarmed, apart, of course, from Lavinia Pinkerton, herself one of the victims.
A number of sub-plots are introduced that do not amount to very much. One of the subsequent murder victims appears to be suffering from a potentially quite serious illness (coughing up blood), but nobody, including the local doctor and the usually eagle-eyed Miss Marple, appears to be in any way concerned about this. In fact, this illness, whatever it might have been, is simply a way of creating a means to allow for her murder, a very contrived and rather obviously signposted one at that. A young American woman, allegedly visiting the village to take brass rubbings in the local church, is clearly there for another purpose altogether, but although both Miss Marple and Luke Fitzwilliam, the former police officer she collaborates with, know this, they seem quite content to allow it to slide until the eventual dénouement.
Following a coroner’s inquest into the apparently accidental death of one of the victims, at which Fitzwilliam expresses his opinion that it was, in fact, murder, the coroner adjourns the inquest to allow police enquiries to take place. These are conducted not by a detective or team of police officers, but by a young constable, who asks questions that are fed to him by Miss Marple, sitting in an adjoining room, listening in. While some degree of suspension of disbelief is necessary to allow a scenario in which Miss Marple is allowed a role in the investigation, this is a particularly flimsy and unlikely set-up.
Julia MacKenzie seems, at this early stage, to be a reasonable choice for the new Miss Marple and there is a decent supporting cast here. The setting looks authentic and there are good production values, but the result is not especially satisfying.
The next instalment, ‘Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?’, is, once again, an adaptation of a Agatha Christie novel that does not feature Miss Marple.
Director Hettie Macdonald directed the brilliant and acclaimed 2007 Doctor Who episode ‘Blink’.
Review posted 14 September 2009
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Rating 3
Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller
“Special Guest Director” Quentin Tarantino
Written by Frank Miller
Starring Bruce Willis (John Hartigan), Mickey Rourke (Marv), Clive Owen (Dwight McCarthy), Jessica Alba (Nancy Callahan), Jaime King (Goldie / Wendy), Brittany Murphy (Shellie), Rosario Dawson (Gail), Nick Stahl (Yellow Bastard), Elijah Wood (Kevin), Rutger Hauer (Cardinal Patrick Henry Roark), Powers Boothe (Senator Roark), Benicio del Torro (Jack ‘Jackie Boy’ Rafferty), Alexis Bledel (Becky), Devon Aoki (Miho), Michael Madsen (Bob), Makenzie Vega (Nancy Callahan, as a child) and Josh Hartnett (The Salesman)
In Basin City John Hartigan, an aging police detective with a heart condition, tries to rescue a young girl from a notorious and sadistic serial killer, Marv goes after the killers of a prostitute, having been framed for her murder and Dwight McCarthy gets involved in gang warfare between the prostitutes in Old Town and a gang of mercenaries after the killing of a “hero” police officer.
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‘Sin City’ is a 2005 film based on a noir graphic novel series written and drawn by Frank Miller, specifically ‘The Customer Is Always Right’, ‘The Hard Goodbye’, ‘The Big Fat Kill’ and ‘That Yellow Bastard’. It also draws on ‘A Dame to Kill For’, which Miller has indicated will be the basis of a planned sequel. Miller’s other work includes ‘Batman: The Dark Knight Returns’ and ‘300’, which was adapted into a film in 2007 and grossed in excess of $456 million at the box office. I have next to no interest in comic books (or graphic novels) and had very little knowledge of Frank Miller’s work prior to the film’s release.
The film was made using a digital backlot. The actors worked in front of a green screen and artificial computer-generated backgrounds were inserted afterwards. This is not an uncommon technique and it was not the first time it had been used on this scale – another obvious example is ‘Sky Captain and the People of Tomorrow’, released the previous year. The film’s use of black and white cinematography with isolated splashes of colour has been much commented on, but again it is not new. ‘Pleasantville’ in 1998 used a similar trick and, in fact, the influence of the classic 1946 Powell and Pressberger film ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ might be mentioned. The film does have a striking stylistic quality, intended, I assume, to replicate the original comics, although I found that the novelty wore off very quickly.
The proliferation of very graphic and highly stylised violence contained in the film has been much discussed. While it might be tempting to be momentarily in favour of a sadistic paedophile serial rapist and killer having his genitals ripped off, It isn’t shocking or provocative or thought-provoking, compelling or exciting; it’s just incredibly bland and boring. The film is around two hours long and seemed a lot longer to me because I quickly lost interest in the stylised presentation and mind-numbingly boring violence.
The film seems to be making a statement about the treatment of women within society – all the female characters are femme fatales who are invariably brutalised in some shape or form. However, I could not help but think it took too much delight in this depiction and was doing nothing more than pandering to and perpetuating the most reprehensible of fanboy fantasies. Just like the depiction of violence, it seemed to me that the filmmakers enjoyed the idea of women being brutalised just a little too much, although I am undoubtedly biased because of my generally disinterested reaction to the film and probably a long way off the mark.
‘The Faculty’, the 1998 Robert Rodriguez horror film inspired by ‘The Puppet Masters’ and ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, is a favourite film of mine, but I have not particularly liked any of the other films of his I have seen (I haven’t seen the ‘Spy Kids’ films or ‘Planet Terror’). I don’t really like Quentin Tarantino, who Rodriguez has frequently collaborated with and who directs a scene from the ‘The Big Fat Kill’ section here – admittedly, one of the scenes that most stood out for me.
‘Sin City’ is undoubtedly attention-grabbing, up to a point, and I imagine very successful in what it sets out to do. I didn’t particularly enjoy it and although it is clearly quite clever and, perhaps, adventurous, I did not find it especially appealing, despite having a interesting cast and one or two notable performances. It has a 77% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 230 reviews and grossed a little under $159 million at the box office against a production budget of $40 million.
Review posted 13 September 2009
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As the owner of a book known as a “Death Note”, Light Yagami has been using it rid the world of criminals, causing their deaths simply by writing their names in its pages. Light is a first year Law student, whose father is a high-ranking police detective. L, a mysterious and secretive investigator who employs unusual techniques, is working with the Japanese police and the FBI to track down the vigilante killer, whose actions have polarised public opinion. L and Light engage in an intricate game of cat and mouse, as L tries to expose Light’s true identity.
The first thing to say is that there is no point watching ‘Death Note: The Last Name’ without having watched the first film. Effectively, it is not two films, but one film split in half. The combined running time of the two films is nearly four and a half hours – and I think the second film, clocking in at nearly two and a half hours, is a little too long. However, the psychological game of chess played by L and Light is effectively staged and although I did not find myself engaging with the film on any deep intellectual or emotional level, it maintained my interest and attention. To some small degree it reminded me of the 1972 Joseph L Mankiewicz film ‘Sleuth’ starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, even though the two films are actually light years apart.
