Review: The Departed

There may be bigger films this year, but there isn't going to be one as big as The Departed. From the opening minutes when almost all the main star cast are introduced, you know that there's going to be a lot on screen from Martin Scorcese.

Leonardo DiCaprio gives a tense performance as seconded trainee Boston cop Billy Costigan, sent undercover as a mole in the city's major Irish-American crime gang, led by a crackling Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) with muscle from Ray Winstone's Mr. French.

Meawhile, brilliant but bent cop Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is also playing mole within Martin Sheen and Mark Whalberg's Special Investigations Unit, helping Frank stay one step ahead of plod. So the race is on for each side to uncover the traitor in their midst, whatever it takes.

Scorcese plays the story for all its cinematic worth, with huge performances, acres of eyeball-to-eyeball stand-offs and tense moments, not to mention more than the odd flash of extreme violence and bloodshedding.

If there's any criticism, it's that not all of the complicated plot turns are fully tied up (at least on first watch) and it's a little overlong. It also seems that all villians in Boston study the Penguin Dictionary of Classic Quotations, ever ready to drop in a bit of Freud or Wilde when the occasion demands it- normally before, during or after giving someone a damn good going-over or shooting them in the head.

But you're never not watching, wondering who'll make it to the end and who'll get whacked. Big, brutal and bloody brilliant.

Review: Little Miss Sunshine

After 'Crank' (below), Little Miss Sunshine is exactly that - a warm ray to restore your faith that there is someone up there making positive, life-affirming films.

The blue-collar Hoover family of misfits take their daughter from Alberquerque to California to perform in the Little Miss Sunshine contest, and learn more about themselves and each other on the journey.

Although pitched as an indie film, the cast has a solid A-list of actors, rather than stars. led by frazzled mum Sheryl Toni Collette, who has yet to turn in a bad performance in a film, whether playing Aussies (Muriel's Wedding), Americans (The Sixth Sense) or Brits (About a Boy). Then there's dad Richard (Greg Kinnear), who believes he's struck gold to market his shonky nine-step positive thinking programme. Sulky big brother Dwayne hasn't spoken for nine months, but perfers to communicate through scribbled messages such as 'I HATE EVERYONE'.

Meanwhile Granpa Edwin (Alan Arkin) is quite content to see out his days smoking heroin and cursing like a trooper to anyone who tries to cross his path. That means on-the-brink depressive brother Frank (Steve Farell), who is left under his big sister Sheryl's supervision. And of course the family is completed by Little Miss Sunshine Olive herself.

What follows on their journey is a series of mishaps, disasters and general bottoming out for everyone in the custard yellow VW Camper van they ride in, which is as temperamental as the rest of them. Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Farris frame the whole trip very matter of fact with natural direction and long pauses, showing us Arizonan gas stations, the LA fringes and Californian costal concrete intersections with the same love and affection. In all but a couple of scenes they keep what could have been a nudge-wink farce or engineered tearjerker into a piercing thoughtful image of a very unnormal, normal family learning to rub along together and appreciate the little things in life.

Review: Crank

First of all, apologies that this review is so late. If i thought that a single other soul had been hard at work, then decided to spend some of that hard-earned money on going to see this film, then may a thousand misfortunes plague me for eternity.

I can't remember that last time I really felt like walking out of a cinema- in fact, i don't think I ever have. After all, how can you criticise a film you've not seen all the way through? But two-thirds of the way through 'Crank', the latest with gruff whispering shorthouse Jason Statham, I was so gasping for daylight and real human contact that i almost- almost - did.

But let's be fair- Jason Statham's only mistake was saying 'Yes' to this film. After all, Transporter I and II weren't bad. Fun even. The real criminal prosecution should surely be served upon writers/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, previously ad men who clearly have issues.

But what can be so bad, you're asking? Well, the plot is simple: JS has been injected with a lethal cocktail that will mean he will die if his adrenaline level drops. So far, so Speed. But what could have been a clever, real-time race against town starts off that way, then suddely decide it would be more fun to shock and offend everyone who might be watching.

Statham's character quickly shows himself to be really not very nice at all. Yes, he's a hitman but he crashes through a hospital knocking patients out the way and pointing guns at doctors. He then steals an Arab man's cab and to distract passers-by, throws him to the ground and yells "Al-Quaida!". And then, when his girlfriend doesn't believe his story, he decides the best way to prove it would be to basically to rape her outside in front of hundreds of people.

But when the directors aren't trying to make the teenage Beavis and Buttheads in the audience grunt with laughter, their style is so frenetic it makes your head spin. But all the handheld camera shots, 80's Nintendo graphics and use of Google maps just try and disguise the unrelenting awfulness of this film. And the 80's straight to Betamax finale and poorly CGI'd final scene feels like a huge 'gotcha' to the audience- 'ha ha, we made you watch it all!'

You can wash, but after watching this film, you won't be clean.

Review: John Legend at the Royal Albert Hall

On Monday night I caught John Legend live at the Royal Albert Hall in London, in a special one-off gig before a bigger tour later in the year to support the new album, 'Once Again'.

Firstly, for me it was a concert of two halves really. The first five or so songs was spent up in the Gallery at the very top of the famous dome. While the view up there was great, the sound was dreadful, echoing and booming around the roof.

So we asked if we could move down into the half-empty main floor, where the orchestra normally sits. And we weren't the only ones- the ticket desk was a steady stream of people asking how to move or even asking for their money back. But they happily swapped our wrist passes and let us in, and- what a difference.

Clear and warm, you could hear every note and what John was singing & saying perfectly. Only a dozen rows from the front, it was great to see and hear him go through songs from the first album and the new one, which sounds just as good.

But the place really erupted during 'Number One' when KanYe West strode on stage to deliver his rap live! John picked it up with him, the two swapping sides of the stage, and he stayed to sing on just one other song.

John spent the rest of the set switching between standing at the mic and sat playing the piano, ending with a croud-silencing rendition of 'Ordinary People', sounding better live than on the album.

The gig was clearly a pre-promotional event as well. It was streamed live on MSN and also looked like it was being filmed for TV or a DVD as there were cameras everywhere. Also, the lighting was much brighter than you'd normally expect for a gig, presumably again for filming, and there was more than a few drunken 'VIPs' out on a corporate freebie to see John SomeoneOrOther.

John name-checked the album and release date very clearly twice (for the kids at home?) and, of course, KanYe West putting in an appearance doens't happen every day!

But with what sounds like another good album on the way, John looks sure to build on his reputation as the man, the Legend. :)

Review: Volver

There's a lot said and written about Pedro Almodovar, with praise heaped on him with every new film, to the extent that he's become a sort of Iberian Woody Allen who can virtually do no wrong.

But with 'Volver', he's really onto something special. Instead of elaborate and flamboyant but often unbelieveable characters , in 'Volver' we have a warm, funny and achingly touching portrayl of real, rounded and caring people.

The story is the 'volver'- return - of the mother of Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) and Sole (Lola Duenas), who had both believed she was dead. Living hidden away in a Castillian village and keeping a family secret, Sole at first believes she is an apparition and hides her in her flat, telling visitors she is a Russian immigrant.

But Volver is the return of much more as well. In the case of Raimunda, it is the return to her childhood village and the discovery of family secrets, but also the return of her passion for life. After her oppressive husband dies, she re-opens the barrio restaurant to great acclaim, and finds again a passion for singing that even she had forgotten about.

As is typical Almodovar, (straight) men play a fleeting, and often negative, role in this film. But in Volver, this allows the female characters to breathe and develop, in such as way that suggests Pedro as a writer director is finding a much more confident, personal and human voice than ever before.

Review: A Scanner Darkly

Director Richard Linklater ('Before Sunrise'/'Sunset', 'School Of Rock', 'Fast Food Nation') has tackled Philip K. Dick's famous novel of substance abuse and paranoia 'A Scanner Darkly' and, from what I can tell, has done a pretty good job.

I say from what I can tell for two reasons: first, I haven't read the book, and second because if his intention was to create the feeling of being drug-induced while watching a film, he's done a pretty good job.

Keanu Reeves plays Bob Arctor, a cop who is so undercover he wears a scramble suit, a cloaking device that constantly changes to disguise his appearance. But when Bob is assigned to investigate a suspected high-level dealer of an addictive drug called Substance 'D', he finds he's spying on himself. So far, so trippy.

But it's the rotscoping animation overlayed on all the actors that really messes with your mind, forever ebbing and shifting. Add to that the petty, confused babblings of the characters Bob lives with- played by Woody Harleson, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane and, best of all, Robert Downey Jr.- and you can feel both the film and your head going sideways very quickly.

Towards the end, the film shifts tone and alludes that the private company controlling the public's rehabilitation from Substance D may actually also be the ones making and peddling it. But this feels a little rushed given the rest of the film's stoned tone, like spending 15 minutes discusing how a second-hand bike seems to have had half of its 18 gears "stolen".

But overall, a trip worth taking.

Sabotage marketing

Seems I'm a bit late on the uptake on this one, but there is a strategy to target consumers called 'sabotage marketing'.

I'd call it reverse marketing, and once you've heard of it, you sense you've probably known about it all along. The idea is this: that products and services are deliberately dressed down to encourage those who can afford it to 'trade up'.

The experts at this it seems are Starbucks, with a drink called the 'short cappuccino'. It's cheaper, stronger and technically more like a proper cappuccino than the Grande, Venti or the other silly-named one. But it's not on the menu board and the cup isn't on display with the others on top of the counter.

The aim is this: people who can afford it or who don't even look at the prices will blindly buy those on display. Only those who are watching what they spend will ask 'Do you have anything smaller?', implying they don't have the money like the rest of us. It's like assuming youwant to super-size on your meal unless you ask to 'go small' please. Coffee Republic do the same thing.

And when you stop and look around, shops and other names are doing it all around us. Another example is the 'Tesco Value' lines. Deliberately designed to look basic, they were all in fact 'normally' packaged products some years ago given a downmarket makeover.

This way, Tesco look like they're helpfully serving the financially challenged, while actually persuading everyone else to 'trade up' and buy their higher priced, nicely packaged products or name brand equivalents. Nearly all of the UK's other supermarkets pull the same trick, such as Sainsbury's 'Basics' and Asda's 'Smart Price' ranges.

Airports are another example often given. Lounges are designed to be not as comfortable as they could be, to encourage well-heeled travellers to fly Business or First Class so they can relax in the Member's Lounges. And of course, computer companies, car manufacturers and beer makers are known to make a standard product, then slow the processor, limit the engine or water pints down and market the result as a more basic product.

This tactic says two things really: how companies systematically try and extract more money from consumers for essentially the same product; and just as tellingly, how most of us are quite happy to go along with it and pay up every time.