I’ve watched some 60 new films over the past 10 weeks or so. I get to do this every year (which is nice). Film years seem to fall into two categories: either you get a lot of very watchable films with no real masterpieces, or very few decent films, but one or two real stand-outs.
This year, there have been tons of decent films, but only one that will be nudging into any of my “Best Ever” lists. Here – ahead of the BAFTAs and the Oscars, is my own list of Gronnie awards, which I predict will swiftly become the industry standard:
The “Please Get A Room” Award:
Winner: It’s Complicated!
This should have been called It’s Embarrassing. A bunch of aging Hollywood actors, covering up guts, bald patches and wrinkles (a “W.H. Auden” is, I believe, the collective noun), labour through a banal plot which involves insufferably smug rich late middle-agers having sex and swapping partners. Steve Martin – is he the same actor who used to make us laugh about twenty years ago? – now looks like one of the old soldiers in Dad’s Army in the episode where they apply embalming fluid in order to stay in the Home Guard. I’m about the same age as many of the cast of this film – but even I found the romantic shenanigans utterly toe-curling. Alec Baldwin looks like he’s in desperate need of a huge does of laxatives, and Meryl Streep is in winsome, simpering mode.
The “Vilest Film of the Year” Award
Winner: Funny People
I’ll admit it: I don’t get Adam Sandler. Is he supposed to be funny? Or is the joke that he is stupendously, utterly unhumorous in any way whatsoever, but has nevertheless managed to carve out an evidently successful career as a comic? Here he plays a depressed, lonely, selfish but successful film comedian who teams up with a young, ambitious comedy writer/performer. The language is vile, the jokes are disgusting and bereft of even a scintilla of inventiveness or humanity, the characters are all either vacuous or vicious or both, and you end up in despair for a civilization that could seriously offer this life-hating ordure as entertainment. And the meaningless Hollywood jerks who confect these soul-numbing horrors want to lecture us on which politicians we vote for?
The “Yeah, Well It Was Okay, Sort Of” Award
Winner: Avatar
A decent enough seasonal blockbuster, and a distinct improvement on that detestable pile of dreck, Titanic, which simply proved that it is now impossible to underestimate public taste when it comes to the big screen (Dan Brown, of course, managed the same thing for books) – but most successful film of all time? It moves along at a fair old clip, the effects are enjoyable, and the big blue creatures are appealing.
When it comes to the film’s massively anti-American message, well, that will have done it no harm, and neither will the rest of its tediously predictable anti-Big Business, anti-The West, anti-Capitalism, anti-Colonialism, anti-Militarism job lot of centre-left themes so beloved of Hollywood gazillionaires. The big blue folk are basically Vietnamese or Iraqis or Africans or – well, anyone the Big Bad US of A seeks to push around and exploit in its clumsy, violent, arrogant way. The only way to beat the monster is to resort to violence yourself (well, this is a James Cameron movie) and to call on Nature to help you out, the way Tarzan used to yodel for the jungle animals to come to his aid way back when. (Come to think of it, this really is just an updated Tarzan movie.)
The acting is pedestrian, as is the script, and it shouldn’t really pick up any awards, apart from special effects – but, of course, it will, especially Oscars. As for James Cameron, I imagine that, were he to be plonked down in the jungle to spend a week with some poignantly surviving tribe of hunter-gatherers, he’d be calling in the rescue helicopter by sundown.
The “Most Enjoyable Cheap Small-Scale Brit Movie” Award
Winner: Harry Brown
Runner-Up: Telstar
Harry Brown was produced with lottery money. I can only assume the producers lied through their teeth to get it, because, when it comes to the great law and order debate, this one sits squarely at the Deathwish/Dirty Harry end of the spectrum.
Widowed ex-marine wrinklie Michael Caine’s only friend on the council estate where he lives is murdered by a gang of drug-dealing thugs. The police are too useless to do anything, so Caine, employing his old soldiering skills, starts assassinating the Calibans who brutalise the locals. It’s an extremely enjoyable wish-fulfillment fantasy for everyone who has despaired of the police and the courts ever again acting in the interests of decent people. (If this doesn’t have you chortling with pleasure during the vengeful second half, you’re a Labour supporter or a Vegan.) It’s expertly put together by a director who learned his skills in advertising.
Harry Brown is a Deathwish for our time, but it’s much better made and acted – Michael Caine extracts his digit and gives his best performance in years: I guess this is a subject close to his heart.
Telstar, the story of gay, pill-popping early ‘60s record producer Joe Meek, is a delight. Con O’Neil, despite having the weakest voice of any male actor I have ever heard, is brilliant at veering between farce and tragedy, and manages to make us sympathise with Meek, who must have been a royal pain in the neck.
There are many strong performances - including Pam Ferris as Meek’s long-suffering landlady, J.J. Field as the hilariously untalented dickhead, Heinz, James Corden as the Tornadoes’ drummer, and Tom Burke, who is wonderfully creepy as Meek’s lovesick writing partner. The only wrong notes (geddit?) are struck by Kevin Spacey as The Major – Meek’s manager – and Callum Dixon as the actor/singer John Leyton: they both manage to overplay in a context where I should have thought that was almost impossible. It’s based on a stage play, and it shows it in the quality of the dialogue
I may have been susceptible to the film’s charms partly on account of the subject matter. The era represented is the one in which I became interested in pop music, lying in the dark, clutching the radio aerial to improve Radio Luxembourg’s reception. I could never stand “Telstar”, but I bought John Leyton’s “Johnny Remember Me”, enjoyed “Just Like Eddie”, and, for reasons that escape me, I was in the Juke Box Jury audience the night The Honeycombs’ “Have I the Right” – Meek’s last hit – was featured. But I watched the film with someone much younger than me – and they thoroughly enjoyed it as well.
(By contrast, the Ian Dury biopic, “Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll” was tediously noisy, portentous, foul-mouthed and unpleasant - so that’ll probably pick up the wards.)
The “Most Overblown Made-For-TV Biopic “ Award
Winner: Invictus
Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon (an unlikely but fairly convincing South African rugby captain) rescue an overly-reverent tribute to Nelson Mandela and the power of sport to unite a nation. Despite everything, it had me misting up – but Morgan Freeman only has to do one of his implacable, infinitely-wise old man stares to achieve that. Clint Eastwood deserves praise (a) for managing to produce solid work at an advanced age and (b) for managing not to screw up the rugby sequences – quite a feat for an American.
The “Best Science Fiction Movie” Award
Winner: District 9
Beats Avatar hand down in every department, except, perhaps, r CGI – but it comes a very close second. I’m pretty sure when we do finally get to meet some aliens, they’ll be more like the Prawns than the Na’vi.
The “Worst Adaptation of a Decent Book Ever” Award
Winner: The Lovely Bones
This is cover-your-eyes-with-your-hands bad. The extensive CGI after-life scenes involving the murdererd girl narrator must not be viewed without a dose of insulin within reach. Peter Jackson, the creator of Lord of the Rings, utterly loses the plot. Dire.
The “Proof That Pixar Has Made A Pact With The Devil” Award
Winner: Up
A triumph of animation – the grumpy old man, his fat-kid sidekick and the dog fitted with a talking device who tags along (“Squirrel!”) are all brilliantly realized, the story is consistently inventive and surprising, and the animation is a triumph. If I ever meet a Pixar executive, I will endeavour to touch the hem of their garment. Ten hits in a row is simply supernatural – and every one a work of genius in its own distinct way.
I’ll leave the Gronnie Awards for foreign language films for another day – believe me, there were some good ones.
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