CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
Thursday 30th January 2003
Stratford Picture House, London E15 VISIT

Steven Spielberg's latest film, 'Catch Me If You Can,' is very different to last year's hugely entertaining Minority Report but definitely still falls into the ‘great story and confident storytelling’ bracket. It is based on the escapades of Frank Abagnale Junior, who in the mid-1960s impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor and a lawyer to successfully fleece millions of dollars from US banks in a series of cheque frauds. What makes the story remarkable is that when he was finally caught and sentenced to 12 years in prison (in solitary confinement), Abagnale was only 19 years old. This is a frothy, satirical and enjoyable film, with Leonardo DiCaprio starring as Abagnale and demonstrating that, when properly cast (in this case as a much younger character), he can be both talented and charming. Everything, in fact, that he failed to convey in Gangs of New York (see below).

What also makes this film a success is that, as well as the humour and the Fugitive style plot – with Abagnale always one step ahead of the FBI – the story is also strongly character-driven. Devastated by his parents’ divorce, Frank Junior runs away from home and whilst it is clear that the first of his scams are to find money to survive, his efforts are later to try and unite his mother and the father he adores. Frank Senior (wonderfully played by Christopher Walken) has not been averse to passing a bad cheque or two in his time and Spielberg implies that the father is in part to blame for the behaviour of the son. As young Frank Junior becomes ever more skilled as a forger and impersonator, however, the life of a fugitive becomes an increasingly lonely one, with only fleeting meetings with a father sinking further into depression. Abagnale's only moments of genuine honesty are with dogged but dull FBI agent Carl Hanratty (a strong and very effective performance by Tom Hanks), with whom a ‘surrogate father’ relationship develops despite Hanratty’s relentless pursuit of his suspect.

There are many great comic scenes in Abagnale’s journey from airline pilot to ER doctor and eventually to Louisiana state prosecutor. The most memorable include a rather different use of a bath full of model aeroplanes, Abagnale’s attempt to transform himself into James Bond (complete with the Aston Martin DB5), his ability to even make a profit when propositioned by a call girl and his final escape from Miami airport, surrounded by a bevy of air hostesses. Throughout, DiCaprio gives a thoroughly convincing performance of a crook that everyone can nevertheless admire, even though the idea that all Abagnale’s crimes were ‘victimless’ doesn’t really hold water. For example, when almost exposed whilst posing as a doctor, when a child is brought in covered in blood, you realise that Abagnale always played with people’s lives with no thought of the consequences for anyone but himself. He was also willing to unceremoniously drop people, like the trusting and emotionally vulnerable fiancée he later claimed to love, when they were no longer useful to him (and perhaps because acknowledging this would distract from the heroic but tragic figure Spielberg is painting, we never do find out what happened to her).

Still, this film is well acted, properly paced and a very entertaining period piece, with great music and even stylish opening titles, all of which is more than can be said for January’s other DiCaprio film (the one with all the Oscar nominations - why?!). The way that Abagnale becomes poacher-turned-gamekeeper by working for the FBI, using his skills to catch other fraudsters, is handled with tension and humour. And the answer to the one question that Hanratty can't answer - how DID Abagnale fake his Louisiana Bar exams - is intriguing: he was so clever that he apparently studied for just two weeks and passed them legitimately. No wonder he was such a talented grifter.

Definitely worth watching.

ABOUT SCHMIDT
Saturday 25th January 2003
Newham Showcase Cinema, London E6 VISIT

All films are made to entertain, but I have this theory I would like to share – great stories and confident storytelling can cope with only average or even mediocre acting. This explains why big dumb summer blockbusters can so often be immensely entertaining. However, great acting on its own is never enough. It must have a good story. Of course, sometimes directors can get both story AND acting wrong – and then you get Star Wars: The Phantom Menace....

Although I could never work out the fuss about Jack Nicholson’s performance in As Good As It Gets, I decided to see About Schmidt, his latest film, for three reasons. Firstly because of it’s star, one of the most watchable actors ever to grace the screen. Secondly, because his performance was reputedly Oscar-worthy. And finally, on the strength of Peter Bradshaw’s five-star review on the Guardian website where Bradshaw claims the film “ might just turn out to be an American classic.”

Praise indeed, hard to live up to and, unfortunately, far from the truth. Whilst there are undoubtedly some very funny and observant moments in this melancholic comedy, I have to disagree with the overwhelmingly positive reviews this film has received. About Schmidt is neither as good, as clever or as entertaining as the critics have claimed or the director may have hoped for.

The film revolves around Nicholson’s character, Warren Schmidt, whose life faces crisis point when he retires as Vice President of an insurance firm in Omaha, Nebraska. Reminiscent of Willie Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Schmidt finds himself without a purpose after years of routine, filling in puzzles and following orders from his wife, Helen, whose many quirks he suddenly finds immensely irritating. Helen has her heart set on travelling around the country in thr giant Winnebego parked in the driveway. But whilst Schmidt wonders whether he did the right thing marrying her, he is also facing the prospect that his daughter, Jeannie, is soon to be married to a ponytailed waterbed salesman he does not consider worthy of her.

Suddenly wife Helen dies, leaving Schmidt with a big empty house and the discovery that she had, many years ago, been having an affair with his best friend. Revelling in his new-found freedom, Schmidt completely lets himself go, gorges on junk food and (after previously being forced at his wife’s wish to urinate sitting down) pisses all over the bathroom. His innermost thoughts he writes down in long letters to Ndugu, a Tanzanian orphan he sponsors for $22 a month through a charity he sees advertised on late-night TV. Then, hoping to be closer to Jeannie before her wedding, Schmidt embarks on a road trip to see her but, in the course of a soul-searching journey, he ‘discovers’ things about himself he had never before realised.

Whilst Nicholson plays an shallow old man extremely effectively, the trouble I have with About Schmidt is that, in the absence of a more dynamic and involving story, his slack-jawed, emotionless stare soon becomes very boring to watch. Some have apparently seen this as great acting – though half the time it seems like Nicholson is barely acting at all – but on its own it is just not enough to entertain. By contrast, the character of Warren Schmidt does come to life when Nicholson’s rich melodic ‘Jack’ voice narrates the ranting letters Schmidt writes to Ngudu, which illuminate the complex and often hilarious thoughts inside his head. Sadly, these brief scenes reveal a great deal more about the character of Schmidt than much of the rest of Nicholson's time on the screen.

Another problem is the number of tired clichés in the story, from the awkward retirement dinner, the uncomfortable conversation with his replacement at the insurance company (to illustrate Schmidt is no longer needed), to his discovery of his old files dumped with the company rubbish (to really ram the point home!) Later, when Warren drives to the town where he was born, hoping to find some solace through the recollection of his past, he discovers, rather like the hitman Martin Blank in the film Grosse Point Blank, a store where his childhood home once stood. No really, that old chestnut. By this point, I couldn’t help hoping that this scene would suddenly spark into life with Warren Schmidt engaged in a gunfight with a Basque-whacking killer and with the store blown to smithereens.

There are, it has to be said, some fine moments in this film. Jeannie’s sexually opinionated mother-in-law to be, Roberta, played by Kathy Bates with characteristic skill, muses on the state of Jeannie’s sex life and attempts to seduce Schmidt in her hot tub - both scenes are very funny. Schmidt’s meeting with a younger Winnebago couple, who invite him to a dinner with disastrous consequences, is almost too unbearable to watch. And Schmidt’s toast to his daughter at her wedding reception is genuinely riveting – at any moment he seems about to say what he truly thinks and to ruin her day. Once again, though, it is the opportunity to watch Nicholson both move AND talk – basically to act – that brings this moment alive.

However, the scene where Schmidt tries to conduct a séance with his dead wife, sitting on top of the roof of his Winnebago with a collection of her tacky figurines – and then receives a ‘sign’ in the form of a shooting star – is the kind of sappy nonsense worthy only of a bad TV film. And whilst the final scene, where Schmidt receives a painting from Ngudu and a letter written on his behalf, does bring a lump to the throat, it felt like it was intended to manipulate the audience's emotions rather than say something important or insightful. I was left wondering: is that really it? Are we really left with the unbelievably banal idea that Schmidt can find genuine redemption for a life without meaning because he has money, because of the meagre sponsorship of an African child? Is this really what the Guardian meant by an American classic, comparable to, say, a proper classic examining a man facing a crisis in his middle-class suburban life – like American Beauty?

Warren Schmidt’s feels he is a failure, that his achievements have been modest, that he has built little of substance and has even failed in his mission to stop his daughter’s marriage. At one point, Schmidt tells himself "once I am dead, it will be as though I never existed."

Frankly, as soon as I have been to the pictures a few more times, I fear the same can be said about this film.

8 MILE
Tuesday 21st January 2003
Stratford Picture House, London E15 VISIT

So for the last ten days, I have been desperately avoiding reviews of 8 Mile, the first film to star Marshall Mathers III, aka the rapper Eminem. In fact, one morning last week I came close to cracking my head on the radiator trying to switch off the radio at 7am, as even BBC Radio 4’s Today programme joined in the water-cooler gossip that Eminem’s performance is worthy of an Oscar nomination. Is this, incidentally, what people mean by dumbing down at the BBC? In a way, I am almost sorry to have missed this particular debate, as it would probably have been as funny as the time the opera-loving Today presenter, James Naughtie, tried discussing Ms Dynamite’s Brit award nomination, evidently without a clue what he was talking about.

So why all the effort? After all, checking the reviews is usually essential. But for some reason, I really wanted to make up my own mind about this film. Maybe it’s because I liked Eminem’s intelligent film spin-off single, ‘Lose Yourself.’ Maybe it’s because normally, we understand instinctively that the words ‘rap star’ are about as likely as ‘pop princess’ to share a sentence with the words ‘acting talent’ (if you saw Britney Spears’ lame film Crossroads, you’ll know what I mean). Could Eminem be the exception? Anyway, I had to know – 8 Mile had suddenly become my first ‘must see’ film of the year.

And you know what? Eminem gave a surprising and very accomplished performance for a first-time actor. Perhaps not Oscar material but, considering the pretty good performances that members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sometimes choose over great ones, not beyond the realms of possibility. He gives a credible and, considering his hyperactive image to date, very restrained portrayal of circumstances that are obviously very familiar.

Set in 1995 around Detroit's Eight Mile Road, the dividing line between the city limits and the suburbs, the film is centred on Eminem’s character Jimmy ‘Rabbit’ Smith, who lives in a trailer park in a rundown, multi-racial neighbourhood. Rabbit is desperately trying to escape his dead-end factory job by breaking through in the highly competitive world of hip-hop and the film begins and ends at a local club, The Shelter, where rappers engage in 45 second "battles" for lyrical supremacy. Between the painful first scene, where Rabbit suffers the ultimate embarrassment of choking on stage, and the perhaps inevitable triumph, Rabbit hangs out with his friends and copes with problems involving work, his drunken mother (played by Kim Basinger) and his new girlfriend Alex.

As well as Eminem’s charismatic performance, 8 Mile is intelligent enough to understand that the issue that defines much of the US is race and that hip-hop is unquestionably the soundtrack of urban black America. A white rapper like Rabbit is inevitably an outsider who rightly has something to prove to his friends and rivals, as well as to himself. Refreshingly, there is no obvious happy ending, no record contract or sudden fame – in the end, Rabbit wins a rap battle and then goes back to work at the factory. The cinematography of the film, meanwhile, looks great, with washed-out colours capturing the neighbourhood’s decay and there are some very funny moments, such the drive-by shooting of a police car – with a paintball gun. Other comic scenes involve the film’s idiot jester and only other white guy, Cheddar Bob, who always says the wrong thing and later accidentally shoots himself in the groin. And the moment that drew a collective shudder of horror throughout the audience, when Rabbit's Mum tries to discuss her sex life with her son, saying her younger boyfriend “won't go down on me,” is a classic!

Negatives? Well there are a few. Although the film drops (almost) all of the homophobia associated with Eminem, the misogyny is still very evident, with all the female characters (the lying ex, the cheating girlfriend, the mother looking for a free ride from her boyfriend’s insurance payment) coming across extremely badly. The deeply pessimistic idea that the neighbourhood is beyond saving, that the only way ahead for the few with talent or looks is to leave the less fortunate behind and escape, is just taken as read. It is summed up by the meaningless destruction of burning down a derelict house, one that in its better days Rabbit says he had aspired to live in. The occasions when Eminem actually gets to show the lyrical talent that has made him a global star are brilliant but sadly too infrequent. And the final individualist message – that to succeed you just have to go it alone – is somewhat strange considering Eminem would probably still be working in KFC and living in a trailer were it not for the patronage and support of NWA’s Dr Dre.

But still, considering the terrible star-vehicle films other 'artistes' have offered in the last few years, it seems unfair to be overly critical of an otherwise very entertaining couple of hours. Moreover, there is the simple fact that hip-hop could take lounge jazz (playing in the Pizza Express next door to the cinema last night), drag it round back behind the bins - and kick the living shit out of it....

Recommended - definitely worth seeing.

CITY OF GOD (CIDADE DE DEUS)
Saturday 18th January 2003
UGC West India Quay, London E14 VISIT

I had intended to see 8 Mile on Saturday night but my regular film-viewing compadré Z is equally curious to know whether Eminem can act. So instead I headed for the windswept and soulless UGC cinema on the Isle of Dogs, for a subtitled film in Portuguese I had repeatedly heard was good. It turned out to be stunning.

Cidade de Deus is the story of the corrupting influence of violence on life in the Rio de Janeiro slum known as the City of God, beginning in the 1960s when it is just a dusty rural township with no roads or electricity. Three boys – L’il Dice, Benny and Rocket, the film’s narrator – are the brothers of small-time hoodlums known as the Tender Trio, who rob bottled-gas lorries. L’il Dice, however, aspires to more. Given a gun and the chance to kill for the first time, he returns to a robbery at a motel to casually murder its occupants, giggling at the power the gun gives him. By the 1970s, the slum has grown and the influx of cocaine and weed (explained brilliantly by a story of the changing ownership of one apartment by different drug-dealers) has provided opportunities for those willing to use violence. L’il Dice, having killed all but one of his rivals, has become L’il Zé, vicious and paranoid and the most important criminal in the city. There are, though, still rules in the City of God and many residents welcome the absence of robbery and other crimes that L’il Zé can impose but the corrupt police cannot. In one almost unbearable scene, L’il Zé captures two young children who have been shoplifting and, standing over them as they cry with fear, punishes them by shooting one in the foot and ordering a new young recruit to kill the other.

Rocket’s life follows a different path. Having seen his brother gunned down by the police, he avoids violence and, wherever possible, L’il Zé. Even in his one attempt at ‘flirting with crime’, he fails to hold up a store because the girl behind the counter is ‘foxy’ and cannot rob a bus conductor, Knockout Ned, because he is too cool. Rocket aspires instead to be a photographer – and to get laid. His failed attempts to pull the beautiful Angelica are among a number of smaller stories that make Cidade de Deus such a great film. It is not just about the relentless violence of the slum, even as it progresses from a poor district into a war zone with children running around with guns. The film is also about growing up, with wonderfully colourful characters and many moments of humour, such as the transformation of Benny, L’il Zé’s best friend, into the man ‘too cool to be a hood‘. Violence is never far from the surface, however, and Rocket’s own opportunity to fulfil his dream comes when his photos of L’il Zé’s gang are accidentally printed in a city newspaper. In the midst of a war for revenge and the control of the drugs business where the old rules have been abandoned, shooting hoodlums with a camera offers Rocket a way out.

Cidade de Deus is undoubtedly shocking, although the violence is never glamorised. Indeed, the film has in the story of Knockout Ned, a man opposed to violence against 'innocent citizens' who in seeking vengeance for the murder of two familiy members by L’il Zé becomes the catalyst for a bloody gang war, an important message about the way that the path of violence inevitably corrupts those who choose to follow it. Most shocking perhaps is the sight of young children wielding guns as if they were toys, which has an even greater impact when you realise, as the film says at the end, that it is based on a true story. But Cidade de Deus is also very moving and brilliantly constructed with wonderful storytelling that binds together the links between people and events. Anyone put off by subtitles (and I usually am) should put aside their concerns. This film is simply too good to miss.

Unquestionably destined to be one of the films of the year.

GANGS OF NEW YORK
Saturday 11th January 2003
Stratford Picture House, London E15 VISIT

In spite of all the hype, I really wanted to like Martin Scorsese's long awaited film about the gang violence, squalor and corruption of 19th century New York. And it wasn't bad. The sets and the costumes look fantastic and the set-piece gang battle between Protestant 'Nativists' and Catholic immigrants at the beginning of the film is shocking and bloody. There are some great quirky moments too, such as the comedian John Sessions dressed as Abraham Lincoln, suspended like an angel above a theatre stage, or the gangfight interrupted by an escaped elephant from PT Barnum's American Museum.

The problem is the terrible miscasting of Leonard DiCaprio as a street tough. Cameron Diaz is also miscast in the love-interest role as the inevitable tart-with-a-heart (she looks like someone dressed up 'Oirish' for the tourists in a modern St Patricks Day Parade) but I could watch a miscast Cameron Diaz all day! Not Leo though. He's as convincing a vicious gang member as John Wayne was as a Roman centurion, or Euan MacGregor is at Alec Guinness impersonations. He's even less convincing than Dick Van Dyke's "Cockney" accent. My neighbour's daughter could kick Leo's arse. And she's only five.

Worse still for DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, an actor who has until recently been in semi-retirement, manages to steal every scene he is in. He does so partly by hamming madly but also by showing that, even after spending the last few years mending shoes in Italy, he can act better than any load of old cobblers Leo can offer.

The other problem is the plot. The central story is about Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio) seeking to avenge the killing of his father by William 'Bill the Butcher' Cutting (Day-Lewis). Waiting for the obvious showdown between the two protagonists, I thought the middle of the film was way too slow and then the last third tried to pack too much in - there were too many distractions. It seemed that Scorsese had these ideas for set-pieces (the competitive amateur firemen, the brothel scene, the boxing match, the election rally) that didn't advance the story but looked great so they stayed in. Some might have been OK to give a flavour of the times but there were just too many.

The one part of the plot that was just annoying was the attempt at the end of the film to portray the Draft Riots, the worst civil disturbance in US history sparked by the introduction of the compulsory drafting of troops for the Civil War, as in some way 'noble'. Whilst it is true that the rich were able to buy their way out of the draft and so had their homes attacked by the poor, the main target of the mainly Irish mob's fury were black Americans, hundreds of whom were lynched. Scorsese hints at this but prefers the more 'romantic' version of the story. For a film that claims to show the 'true' story of an America born in the streets, that aims to debunk the myth of the great American 'melting pot,' this sanitising of history seems somewhat hypocritical

Still, I guess I'm glad I've seen it, because it looks fabulous. But I'd recommend anyone else to wait until it comes out on DVD.

DONNIE DARKO
Saturday 4th January 2003
Odeon Covent Garden, London WC1

At the end of Donnie Darko, the titles rolled and the lights came on and almost no-one got up and left. Ten minutes after the end of the screening, there were still groups of people in their seats, talking, trying to make sense of a brilliant but strange, intense and confusing film. Donnie Darko is definitely a film to be seen more than once, so when I got home, the first thing I did was order a Region 1 copy from the internet. And yes, it DOES make more sense the second time!

The plot: October 1988. Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal), on medication and in therapy as a result of mental health problems, sleepwalks and thus avoids death when an aircraft engine falls on his house. But no plane with a missing engine can be found. Donnie is then told - by a 'daylight hallucination' in the form of a malevolent giant rabbit called Frank - that the world will soon end. As the clock ticks down and plagued by nightmares, Donnie becomes fascinated by the possibilities of time travel after being given a book written by Grandma Death, a reclusive who was formerly a teacher at his school. All this is set against the backdrop of suburban, New Age obsessed, hypocritical middle America in the late Eighties. And the aircraft engine may or may not be from the future.

Sorry, it's no good. You'll have to go and see it for yourself.

The soundtrack is great too, although I guess I'm biased as I think I bought most of the tracks as an Eighties teenager. But any film that starts with Echo & the Bunnymen's brilliant "Killing Moon" and by the end can make a sappy version of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" sound deeply moving is obviously destined for cult status.

Brilliant film. Watch it at least twice.

Joining a gym was too expensive and seemed frankly too narcissistic. I've already given up meat and smoking and there is NO WAY I'm forsaking booze. So rather than abstinence, this year my New Year's Resolution is to stick to something I enjoy and try to watch at least 'One Film a Week' throughout 2003. Even if this means that occasionally I have to watch a crap film or two. The current worst case scenario is all four screens at my local cinema showing Adam Sandler films...