Michel Gondry's new film Be Kind Rewind sums up all of this filmmaker's brilliance and limitations in one frustrating package. The picture's subject matter offers ample opportunity for the director to play with his determinedly lo-fi aesthetic, but it also exposes his weaknesses as a storyteller, and his inability to mould his light-headed adventures into a coherent whole. Be Kind Rewind is the name of a dilapidated video store – yes, that's right, a video store – in Passaic, New Jersey whose sole claim to fame is that it may have been the birthplace of jazz legend Fats Waller. That's what Mr Fletcher (Danny Glover) tells people anyway, and he has instilled a love of Waller's music in his both live-in employee Mike (Mos Def, appealingly low-key as ever) and Mike's reckless best friend Jerry (Jack Black, not quite so low-key), but the store is under threat, with town planners hoping to renovate the area. If Mr Fletcher can't raise $60,000 before the end of the month then his store will face closure, so the last thing he needs is a magnetised Jerry (don't ask) erasing every VHS in his shop.
Mike and Jerry's decision to reshoot the missing films themselves allows Gondry to display all of the childlike creativity that has characterised his career as a director of music videos and feature films. Gondry is a cinematic alchemist who can spin gold from the most rudimentary materials, and the first hour of Be Kind Rewind sees him at his best. There's a fantastic sight gag early on involving camouflage suits which, like the best of Gondry's work, is so simple and yet so ingenious; and as Mike and Jerry race around town haphazardly shooting scenes from Ghostbusters (the film requested by their most loyal customer, a spaced-out Mia Farrow), their enthusiasm and commitment to the cause seems to exemplify the director's belief in what cinema should be. In this age of slick, flawless visual effects, Gondry's adherence to trickery based in clever camerawork and editing is refreshing and often breathtaking – last year's The Science of Sleep had some gorgeous moments – so the tale of two nobodies trying to recreate blockbuster movies on a tiny scale is right up his street. I loved the way Mike and Jerry overcame the problem of filming a daytime scene at night, or the use of pizzas as pools of blood under a body, or their method for staging a birth scene; at times such as these, Be Kind Rewind simply dazzles with its boundless creative energy.
Those of us watching Be Kind Rewind aren't the only ones dazzled by the pair's efforts, though, and soon the whole community is queuing up outside the door demanding "Sweded" versions of their favourite films. They hire a pretty local girl (Melonie Diaz, adorable) to help with kissing scenes, and when their customers prove willing to pay for these more personal versions of mainstream hits, their productions gradually grow more ambitious. In a great tracking shot, Gondry follows the actors from one remake to another – When We Were Kings, 2001: A Space Oddyssey, Men in Black, King Kong – and the mind boggles at some of the titles that run down the sides of the screen during this sequence (I'm not sure I want to imagine a "Sweded" version of Last Tango in Paris or Gummo). This is all great stuff – it's fresh, funny and gleefully silly – but in Be Kind Rewind's second half, Gondry allows the narrative to run away from him.
The shadow of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind continues to hang over Michel Gondry's career. That wonderful 2004 film allied Gondry's idiosyncratic direction to a heartfelt, thrillingly inventive screenplay from Charlie Kaufman, and Kaufman's emotionally resonant script seemed to have an anchoring effect on the director. Such weight wasn't present in Gondry's flimsy follow-up The Science of Sleep, and Be Kind Rewind – for all of its pleasing traits – doesn't have enough going on to fill out its running time, with the pacing becoming increasingly poor as the film progresses uncertainly. Sigourney Weaver turns up as a lawyer charged with enforcing copyright laws, and then the film focuses on Mike and Jerry's attempt to film a Fats Waller tribute documentary, although "focuses" is perhaps too strong a word to use in relation to this picture's plotting, with threads being picked up and dropped in a random fashion. While that might just be a simple by-product of the anarchic, freewheeling style Gondry's going for, it leaves the film feeling horribly disjointed, and its grip on my attention had almost evaporated by the close.
Be Kind Rewind is a film full of heart; in fact, it seems to have nothing but heart, and if you can fully engage with it on that gut level – overlooking its myriad problems – then you'll probably have fun with it. The climax pulls together elements from Cinema Paradiso, It's a Wonderful Life, and Gondry's own documentary Dave Chappelle's Block Party; it's a celebration of community spirit and the unifying power of cinema, but it comes off with no impact because Gondry hasn't properly set down the groundwork for this finale, and the closing scenes also feel oddly truncated. Both Be Kind Rewind and The Science of Sleep seem to suggest that Gondry is at his best when bringing his unique aesthetic to bear on other writers' material; and while scripts like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are pretty hard to come by, one hopes Gondry does find a screenplay capable of keep his imagination grounded in reality, and imposing some discipline on his work. Michel Gondry is one of the most naturally brilliant directors in cinema, but all of his whimsy and magic counts for nothing if he can't tell a story in a satisfying way.
It's Sunday, it's 1am, and I've spent the past hour watching various celebrities walking up and down a red carpet repeatedly being asked the odd question "who are you wearing?" (disappointingly, nobody appears to have taken the Björk approach to red carpet attire, although Tilda Swinton's bin bag is perhaps an unwise choice). Yes, it's Oscar night, and for the next four hours or so I'll be documenting the winners and losers from the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles as the American film industry celebrates the year's greatest achievements. Of course, most of the time the genuinely great achievements in a given year have little or nothing to do with The Oscars, and at first glance the 2008 ceremony appears to be no exception, with wonderful films such as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford being ignored in the major categories, and films like the masterpiece 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Zodiac being completed overlooked. But wait – there is hope! This year's set of nominations really does contain films that deserve to be mentioned among the year's best, with the likes of No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood leading the charge for Oscar glory. So, with the writers' strike finally settled, here we go, with the 80th Annual Academy Awards. Jon Stewart is your host, and I'm struggling to stay awake.
1.30am – The night begins with a dreadful CGI sequence that mixes iconic images from movies past and present, and then Jon Stewart appears onstage for an opening monologue which, predictably, leans heavily on the strike. He decries the amount of violent pictures nominated before adding "thank God for teen pregnancy!", and he says Hillary Clinton thought Away From Her – a film about a woman forgetting her own husband – was "the feel good movie of the year". Stewart then mentions Diablo Cody needing to take a pay cut as she moved from being a stripper to a screenwriter, and in reference to the upcoming election he warns "the only time you see a black man or a woman as president an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty". He's on good form, but the laughs appear to be a bit thin on the ground; maybe that's down to the appalling acoustics, though.
1.42am – Best Costume Design
My Prediction – Atonement
My Choice – Sweeney Todd
Jennifer Garner is the first presenter, and she looks very classy indeed. She's handing out the Costume Design Oscar, which I think might go to Atonement purely on the strength of that green dress. But no! The voters have been swayed once more by those big Elizabethan frocks, and Alexandra Byrne wins for Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Her speech is fantastically short and to the point – well played that woman!
1.47am – Oh George, don't you look dapper this evening! Clooney saunters on stage to present an amusing montage of classic Oscar moments. There are plenty of "what were they thinking?" moments on show, but the effect is slightly ruined by having Celine Dion wailing like a dying cat over the top of it.
1.52am – Best Animated Film
My Prediction – Ratatouille
My Choice – Ratatouille
Anne Hathaway and Steve Carrell are together here, with the theme from Get Smart playing in the background (hmmm....are these guys promoting something?). Carrell fakes a funny panic attack, and then announces Ratatouille as the winner, surprising precisely nobody. Brad Bird has a nice anecdote up his sleeve, but he struggles to thank everyone in the allotted time and faffs a bit at the end.
1.56am – Best Makeup
My Prediction – La Vie en rose
My Choice – You know, it would be quite funny if Norbit won an Oscar.....
An amazingly nervous-looking Katherine Heigl presents this award to La Vie en rose, the only genuine contender in this category. The two recipients are very gracious and in the audience Marion Cotillard seems close to tears already. Keep it together girl, you need to save those precious tears for your own big moment!
1.59am – The first nominated song from Enchanted – Happy Working Song – is performed by Amy Adams. That film has three ditties nominated, so Adams will be a busy girl tonight. It seems like the kind of song that probably worked better on the screen than in isolation.
2.06am – Best Visual Effects
My Prediction – Transformers
My Choice – Transformers
Why does this category only ever look at the big blockbusters? Aren't the genuinely beautiful effects from Sunshine worth a nomination here – particularly as they were achieved on a fraction of the budget – while the effects work in Zodiac was sensational precisely because it was so invisible. Instead, we've got three of 2007's loudest and stupidest films in contention once again; but never mind, because here comes The Rock! Actually, he prefers to be called Dwayne Johnson these days (who prefers to be called Dwayne?). Anyway, he opens the envelope, and the winner is.....The Golden Compass? Blimey, that's a dodgy call.
2.10am – Best Art Direction
My Prediction – There Will Be Blood
My Choice – Sweeney Todd
A pregnant Cate Blanchett hands this award to the great Dante Ferreti and Francesca Lo Schiavo for Sweeney Todd. Between them they say "thank you" about 27 times in 30 seconds.
2.15am – Best Supporting Actor
My Prediction – Javier Bardem
My Choice – Casey Affleck
Now then, this is where it gets serious. The first acting award of the night is presented by Jennifer Hudson and, unsurprisingly, Javier Bardem's indelible psychopath is the winner. He thanks the Coens "for putting one of the most horrible haircuts in history on his head", and then he sends a message to his mother in Spanish, the words flying out of his mouth at a hundred miles an hour. Few will argue with this award, Bardem has created an iconic character who will live on through the ages, and it's the first award of the night for one of the major contenders.
2.23am – Jon makes another writers' strike gag, suggesting the whole show might have consisted of just montages if it had carried on.
2.24am – Keri Russell introduces the song Raise it Up from her movie August Rush. Sadly, the song isn't performed by Robin Williams (did I mean to say sadly there? Actually, that should probably read "thank Christ the song isn't performed by Robin Williams "). It's a mediocre entry, mostly sung by a young black girl with a fine voice.
2.28am – Best Live Action Short
My Prediction – ?
My Choice – Well, The Tonto Woman is based on an Elmore Leonard story, so that's good enough for me.
Owen Wilson is here and, thankfully, he's looking well. He awards the Oscar to Le Mozart des Pickpockets, and Philippe Pollet-Villard has just enough English to get through his speech, before finishing with a flourish in French.
2.31am – Best Animated Short
My Prediction – Hmmmm.......
My Choice – One of the above.
Jerry Seinfeld's character from Bee Movie introduces a montage of bee-related movie scenes, and then announces Peter & the Wolf as the winner. British pair Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman collect their Oscars with modesty and good grace.
2.35am – Best Supporting Actress
My Prediction – Cate Blanchett
My Choice – Tilda Swinton
This is the tightest category of the night, and young Saoirse Ronan is the only one I'd rule out at this late stage. Alan Arkin is on hand to do his presenting stuff, and the winner is......Tilda Swinton! That's a fantastic result. She give a funny, slightly nutty acceptance speech, making fun of Clooney and dedicating the award to her agent. That dress still looks wrong, though.
2.44am – Poor old Jessica Alba reveals that she was forced – sorry, I mean "honoured" – to host this year's technical awards earlier in the week. That's no way to treat a pregnant lady!
2.46am – Best Adapted Screenplay
My Prediction – No Country for Old Men
My Choice – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Josh Brolin and James McAvoy are the odd couple presenting this award. Josh Brolin does a bad Jack Nicholson impersonation, which gets a typically comical reaction from the man himself (do they have a camera trained on him throughout the night?), and then McAvoy calls the names of Joel and Ethan Coen! A big boost for No Country's Best Picture hopes. Joel speaks first and then Ethan seems a little tongue-tied, or maybe he's just saving himself for later in the evening.
2.49am – an explanation of the Academy's voting system.
2.52am – A young lady called Miley Cyrus (Google informs me that she plays somebody called Hannah Montana on TV) introduces Enchanted's second nominee, That's How You Know. It's a weird, and not very good, song.
3.00am – Jon muses on the amount of pregnant actresses around these days:"Angelina couldn't be with us tonight, it's tough to get 17 babysitters on Oscar night".
3.02am – Best Sound Editing
My Prediction – The Bourne Ultimatum
My Choice – There Will Be Blood
Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill – looking like identical twins – introduce this award, and the winner is The Bourne Ultimatum. Karen Baker Landers and Per Hallberg are halfway through their speech when the picture suddenly cuts elsewhere, so I can't report on what they said.
3.05am – Best Sound Mixing
My Prediction – No Country for Old Men
My Choice – No Country for Old Men
Hill and Rogen are still on stage, although now they're pretending to be Halle Berry and Judi Dench. This award is for Sound Mixing – which, as any fool knows, is a completely different award to Sound Editing – but they ignore that reasoning and give it to exactly the same film! The Bourne Ultimatum wins again, but it's hard to focus on the winners' speeches because I was distracted by the remarkable similarity between Hill and Rogen. Couldn't they have at least worn different spectacles?
3.08am – Best Actress
My Prediction – Marion Cotillard
My Choice – I'd really, really love to see Laura Linney win this, but I'll be happy with Christie or Cotillard.
This is another really tight race, and it's too close to call between the two main contenders. Last year's Best Actor Forest Whitaker has the results in his hand, and when he opens the envelope he ends all of the speculation by announcing the name of Marion Cotillard for her superb performance in La Vie en rose. "You rocked my life!" she tells director Olivier Dahan and she follows that with "Thank you life! Thank you love! It is true that there are angels in this city!" She seems genuinely overwhelmed and she just manages to keep her tears under control. A lovely speech and one of the evening's highlights.
3.18am – Colin Farrell slips onto the stage as he introduces Falling Slowly from Once. Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová perform the song, which will hopefully be earning them an Oscar later in the evening.
3.23am – Jack Nicholson, The Oscars wouldn't be The Oscars without him. He introduces a montage of every Best Picture winner. The list from around 1994 onwards is pretty damn depressing.
3.28am – Best Editing
My Prediction – No Country for Old Men
My Choice – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
I remember the Coens saying a few years ago that if "Roderick Jaynes" won an Oscar they would send Albert Finney up in a wig to collect. Alas, Mr Finney is nowhere to be seen as Renee Zellwegger squints at her envelope and announces yet another award for The Bourne Ultimatum. Christopher Rouse thanks everybody in the usual manner.
3.31am – Honorary Oscar
Nicole Kidman announces a special award for 98 year-old production designer Robert Boyle who, as a montage reminds us, has worked on some pretty cool films, including both The Birds and North by Northwest with Hitchcock. Incidentally, I hate the applause that always arises from audiences at events like this whenever somebody's age is announced; it's so condescending. Applaud him for his achievements, sure, but not simply for the fact that he's still alive at a grand old age. Boyle gives a nice speech, thanking Don Siegel, Norman Jewison and, of course, Hitch himself.
3.42am – Best Foreign Language Film
My Prediction – Oh, I don't know. Let's say, Beaufort
My Choice – Some film that's nowhere near as powerful as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
Yeah, I'm still pissed off at the exclusion of Christian Mungiu's extraordinary film, but it's time to forget about that as Penélope Cruz opens to envelope and reads out the name of The Counterfeiters. This was the only nominee I've seen, and it's a decent picture, but it's really nothing special, and the very idea that it's a better picture than 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days makes a mockery of the whole category. Yeah, I'm still pissed off....
3.45am – The third, and thankfully final, song from Enchanted. The songs in this category all presumably worked a hell of a lot better on screen than they have done on the Oscar stage.
3.49am – Best Original Song
My Prediction – Falling Slowly from Once
My Choice – Come on the Irish! (and the Czechs, of course)
John Travolta dances on stage (can't he just walk on like everyone else?) to present this award. Will the three Enchanted songs cancel each other out as Dreamgirls did last year? Maybe they did, because Falling Slowly has won! The zero-budget Irish film from last year has won big at the Oscars, would you believe it? Glen makes an excitable, rambling speech and Markéta is played off by the band before she can say anything. Still, an extraordinary story for them both.
3.57am – Ah, well played Jon. He brings Markéta out to make the acceptance speech which she was prevented from doing initially.
3.58am – Best Cinematography
My Prediction – The Assassination of That Guy by the Other Guy.
My Choice – Roger Deakins all the way.
Cameron Diaz has a few problems pronouncing the word cinematography, but she gets over it and presents the award to Robert Elswit for There Will be Blood. He's a worthy winner and he pays suitable tribute to all of those involved in the production, from Jack Fisk to Daniel Day-Lewis; but you've got to feel sorry for Roger Deakins. The guy really should have about six Oscars to his name by now.
4.02am – In Memorium
A montage of those who passed away in the previous 12 months. Unless I missed it, they seem to have overlooked the death of Brad Renfro.
4.08am – Best Original Score
My Prediction – Atonement
My Choice – Ratatouille
Jesus, these are lame nominations. The only one I can really remember is Atonement and that's because it mostly consisted of a typewriter clacking away. Without The Assassination of Jesse James or There Will Be Blood (eliminated on some ridiculous technicality), this category is a pale shadow of what it might have been. Still, Atonement's Dario Marianelli seems happy enough as he collects the Oscar from Amy Adams, giving a nicely low-key and gracious speech, but Nick Cave and Johnny Greenwood's work towers over anything in this field.
4.12am – Best Documentary Short
My Prediction – Er..........
My Choice – Um.............
Well, this is odd. Tom Hanks comes on to introduce a group of soldiers out in Baghdad, and they introduce the nominations live by satellite before announcing the winner, which is Freeheld, by Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth. Their speech is tearful and passionate.
4.15am – Best Documentary Feature
My Prediction – No End in Sight
My Choice – I've only seen Sicko, but that really isn't good enough to win.
Tom Hanks is still with us, this time to present the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. The winner is Taxi to the Dark Side by Alex Gibney and Eva Orner, and Gibney's speech is rousing. "Let's hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and enter the light", he says.
4.21am – On Sky's coverage the idiotic Claudia Winkleman is suggesting to the panel that Atonement's Best Original Score victory might mean it can win Best Picture. The panel are shaking their heads in disagreement, or perhaps they're shaking their heads in sad wonder that Winkleman has been asked back after last year.
4.23am – Best Original Screenplay
My Prediction – Juno
My Choice – Anything but Juno, honest to blog.
Harrison Ford drawls in a monotone fashion through his intro, before opening the envelope. Alas, the Juno backlash wasn't enough to stop Diablo Cody's God-awful screenplay winning this award against a couple of infinitely more well-crafted screenplays. Yeah, she seems like a nice enough woman, and she starts to cry just before the end of her speech; but my goodness, that script was torturous.
4.29am – Best Actor
My Prediction – "I. DRINK. YOUR MILKSHAKE!"
My Choice – "I DRINK IT UP!"
We're into the home stretch now, people. Stay with me! With only three awards to go, it's time for one of the most predictable categories of the night, with Daniel Day-Lewis having this one under wraps for months. Helen Mirren opens the envelope and the winner is....VIGGO MORTENSEN!!!!!!! Nah, I'm just kidding. Daniel Day-Lewis wins his second Oscar for one of the best screen performances you'll see anywhere. "That's the closest I'll ever get to a knighthood" he says after kissing Mirren, and then he gives a nice, heartfelt speech in which he thanks everyone who has helped him get to this stage. It was a hell of a strong category this year, with every performance an Oscar-worthy one, but Daniel drank their milkshake.
4.40am – Best Director
My Prediction – The Coen Brothers
My Choice – PT Anderson
Martin Scorsese is back after his long overdue triumph last year to present the penultimate award. The Coen Brothers take it, and who can say they don't deserve it? "I don't have a lot to add to what I said earlier. Thank you" Ethan says, before Joel offers a (slightly) more expansive speech. They walk off stage clutching their Oscars, but they might be called back in just a few minutes.....
4.45am – Best Picture
My Prediction – No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood
My Choice – Um....No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood. They're both really great.
So here it is, the final award of the night with two magnificent pictures going head-to-head. After the last award, it comes as little surprise when Denzel announces No Country for Old Men as the best film of the year. Scott Rudin makes a fine acceptance speech which provides a pretty good Oscar show with a fitting end. Personally, I might have a slight preference for There Will Be Blood, but at the end of the day does it really matter which one came out on top? In a year when the Best Picture race comes down to a straight fight between The Coen Brothers and PT Anderson, surely we're all winners.
Oh Sly, why did you have to go and make another Rambo film? After scoring an unexpected hit with last year's Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone has obviously decided that there's still more mileage to be squeezed from the cinematic icons of a bygone era, but this ghastly film – the fourth in the series – only succeeds in pissing away all of the goodwill his surprisingly tender boxing film built up. Twenty years after we last saw Vietnam veteran John Rambo in action, the starkly titled Rambo opens in pretty much the same way the previous one did – with John Rambo alone, disillusioned, and having renounced the violence of his past. He is now in Thailand, and he scrapes a living capturing deadly snakes which he later sells in the village. As ever, he's a surly and monosyllabic figure, and when a group of missionaries ask him to take them into Burma where they hope to provide much-needed humanitarian aid, he tells them they're wasting their time. They tell him they're trying to change the world – "Fuck the world" Rambo replies.
Of course, Rambo is eventually swayed by the pleas of pretty missionary Sarah (Julie Benz, useless), and he reluctantly takes them upriver; but when they are captured and imprisoned by Burmese troops, old John is forced to forge a machete, have a flurry of flashbacks to the earlier films, and join a rag-tag band of mercenaries (including cast-offs from Casualty and Coronation Street) in a daring rescue mission. It's easy to forget now that 1982's First Blood, the picture which introduced John Rambo to the world, is a modest and surprisingly compelling affair, with only one fatality occurring as the drama played out on a recognisably human scale. It's a world away from the ludicrous action favoured in the lesser sequels – Rambo II and III – films that took on the proportions of a live-action cartoon, as the previously tortured Vietnam vet and his rippling torso single-handedly defeated whole armies. This fourth, completely redundant Rambo film is another one from the "ludicrous cartoon" side of the franchise; in fact, the film most closely resembles a video game, with heads exploding and bodies being mowed down by an unending supply of bullets everywhere you look, and the whole ugly business proceeds without any hint of weight or consequence.
Stallone's direction of these sequences is frequently choppy, making it hard to ascertain who exactly is doing what to whom, and often all we can see is one pulverised body after another. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Rambo – beyond the lame dialogue, stilted acting and shabby plotting – is the astonishing levels of violence. During the course of this 90-minute film, people get blown up, limbs get severed, heads get sliced off, throats get ripped out, one man gets eaten by pigs, women get raped and children get bayoneted. The film boasts a hit rate of 2.5 deaths per minutes, and we see every one of them in all their dubious glory. That's not the film's ugliest element, though; Stallone's incredibly offensive depiction of the picture's Asian contingent takes that honour. Aside from the cackling hordes we see indulging in the most violent massacres imaginable, Stallone also shows us that the chief villain is a sadistic pervert who preys on young boys, while the pivotal rescue sequence takes place as some hundred-strong group of Burmese soldiers indulge in a mass-rape of five terrified dancing girls. It's jaw-dropping in its tastelessness.
Stallone has stated in interviews that he wanted to expose audiences to the true horror of the atrocities being committed in Burma, and that's a fair enough intention, but you can't have it both ways, and the seriousness of Rambo's subject matter is undermined by Stallone's handling of it. The film opens in a sombre fashion with news reports and documentary footage from the region, but soon Stallone is employing all of the usual overblown action movie tricks in his direction. We get people running away from fireballs, a burning village reflected in the sunglasses of a smirking baddie, and at one point Rambo seems to detonate a nuclear device in the middle of the jungle (although I'm not sure how) and then outruns the explosion; but when set against this context, such ludicrous and gory action feels inappropriate at best and pornographic at worst.
Rambo climaxes in a numbing orgy of violence, with even the missionary who earlier decried all forms of violence finding time to beat a man to death with a rock (this is what's known as a "character arc", you see). It's hard to know how Stallone could have gone so far wrong with this picture after hitting just the right note with Rocky Balboa, but I think it ultimately comes down to the fact that John Rambo simply doesn't inspire anything like the kind of affection that Rocky does. As Balboa, Stallone brought a sensitivity and charm to his underdog character, but here he's just a silent brute, grunting and glowering his way through a wretched picture. "You can drop the thousand-yard stare" one character tells him, "I've seen it all before and I'm not impressed"; I couldn't have put it better myself.
As soon as we first lay eyes on the title character in All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, we can see she's something special. In the opening scene, Mandy (played by the fetching Amber Heard) strides down a high school corridor, the camera caressing her body, while every male student in the vicinity is transfixed by her beauty. All the boys do indeed love Mandy Lane – or at least, all the boys are driven half-crazed by lust in her presence – but as yet nobody has managed to win her heart. One unfortunate soul even lost his life in an ill-advised attempt to impress the object of his desire, a nasty incident that drove a wedge between Mandy and her onetime best friend Emmett (Michael Welch). Still, Mandy's admirers remain unwavering in their attempts to crack this tough nut, and when she agrees to join some friends for a weekend at an isolated ranch, the male members of the group feel that this is their chance. Buoyed by alcohol and drugs, they all make a play for Mandy, but as the night draws on they gradually become aware of a figure lurking outside the house, somebody who is willing to kill the competition in order to have Mandy Lane all to himself.
That's right, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a teen slasher movie, a term which has almost become a pejorative one given the risible nature of these pictures in recent years. It would be unfair to lump Jonathan Levine's feature debut in with the likes of Wrong Turn, or House of Wax, though, because this feels like a film made with more care and attention than most, and the filmmakers appear to understand the value of tension and measured pacing instead of simply serving up the shocks. Much of the opening hour unfolds at a surprisingly languid pace, allowing us to spend some time with the characters before they are despatched; and while the film's major players do fit the archetypes for this kind of film – there's a smooth one, a nerdy one, an airhead one – they are all solidly played and first-time screenwriter Jacob Forman shows a knack for developing plausible group dynamics. The teenagers in All the Boys Love Mandy Lane are primarily driven by hormones and pride, and the opening half of the picture tends to focus on the sexual tension and petty games of one-upmanship between various characters.
Of course, the killing must eventually start, and when the bodies do start turning up Levine and Forman make no attempt to conceal the identity of the culprit (it won't be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention anyway). So the film's hold on its audience ultimately rests more on the way Levine handles the stock situations his narrative throws up, and even if two murders in particular were a tad unpleasant for my taste, he mostly shies away from the explicit sadism of recent horror pictures in favour of developing a nicely sustained sense of dread. Throughout all of this, Amber Heard provides the film with a magnetic central figure – simultaneously inviting and rebuffing male attention as the enigmatic Mandy. She's a real find, and the whole picture has a similar sense of discovery about it; the striking, 70's-style aesthetic and lack of ironic detachment making it feel like a throwback to an earlier era of horror filmmaking, quite apart from this post-Scream age.
It's not my intention with this review to make All the Boys Love Mandy Lane sound like anything more than it is – the filmmakers have hardly reinvented the wheel, and a late, unconvincing twist almost derails the whole show – but the film does merit praise for the simple things it has managed to do right. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane has been made with some intelligence, some class, and a solid directorial vision – slight praise, you might think, but it's still enough to make a film which is way above average for the genre.
Despite its title, The Italian is not a story about an Italian character, and it is not set in Italy. Andrei Kravchuk's film – made in 2005 but only reaching these shores now – is actually a Russian tale, with the bulk of its opening half taking place in a shabby orphanage based in the middle of nowhere. This is where six year-old Vanya (Kolya Spiridonov) resides, along with other abandoned children of various ages, and a flurry of excitement explodes through the building's otherwise dingy halls whenever prospective parents appear, strangers arriving with the promise of a better life. The picture opens with a couple from Italy travelling towards the orphanage to find a child, and after examining the cream of the crop – as selected by the imposing 'Madame' (Mariya Kuznetsova) – they fall for the angelic Vanya, promising to return in a few months to complete the required paperwork.
This development earns Vanya the nickname "The Italian", and it also earns him the envy of his fellow orphans, each of whom wants nothing more than family of their own, but Vanya himself is a little unsettled by his good fortune. When a distraught mother turns up out of the blue, demanding to see the child she left there years previously, Vanya starts wondering about his own mother, and whether it's likely that she might come back to claim him one day? If there is a chance of being reunited with his natural mother, then surely the last place he'd want to be is in another country, no matter how nice life might be in Italy. So Vanya, resourceful little tyke that he is, decides to track down the woman himself, and this is where things start to get a bit silly.
Vanya persuades a kind-hearted teenage prostitute (Polina Vorobieva) to teach him how to read, a skill he picks up with remarkable ease, and then he's running around the place like a tiny Russian Jason Bourne, stealing his personal files and embarking on a perilous trek home, with "Madame" and her gormless sidekick in pursuit. The subsequent plot puts Vanya in all kinds of potentially perilous situations, but the level of danger we'd expect to feel as we watch an innocent orphan being chased through Russian backstreets never accrues. Kravchuk lets the film fall into a repetitive pattern; every few minutes Vanya will meet a stranger who is either benevolent or malevolent, and they will either endanger him or help him on his way. The whole film is given a chocolate-box coating by the rich visuals provided by Aleksandr Burov (Aleksandr Sokurov's regular cinematographer), and an absolutely ghastly score by Alexander Kneiffel, and these layers of aesthetic sweetness soften the film's edges. The Italian retreats from anything resembling genuine hardship or threat in favour of playing safe and pushing the picture towards the mainstream – it's little wonder the film was Russia's official entry for last year's Oscars.
Two things kept me watching The Italian when every instinct was telling me that it wasn't going to get any better. One factor in the picture's favour is the central performance from Spiridonov, who's appealingly cute while also being blessed with a toughness of spirit that makes it hard not to warm to him. It's a display which is worthy of joining the likes of Kolya Burlyayev, Aleksei Kravchenko and Ivan Dobronravov among the ranks of great Russian child performances. The only other hook which maintained my flagging interest in The Italian was a nagging question about Vanya's mother, and whether she would actually want to be reunited with the child she gave away years previously. Was our little hero's quest a futile one? Had he blown his chance of a happy life in Italy in the ill-conceived pursuit of a pipe dream? As far as I could see, that was pretty much the sole source of the film's tension, but I needn't have wondered; Kravchuk goes straight for the tear ducts in the film's final minutes, closing with a happy, soft-focus finale which is deeply underwhelming. The Italian is apparently based on a true story, but when subjected to this sort of treatment it can't help feeling anything other than resoundingly false.
