Everything Is Illuminated (Liev Schreiber, 2005) Cert.15

To describe Everything Is Illuminated, the best-selling novel by Jonathan Safran-Foer would be, at best, a tremendously difficult task. To describe its screen adaptation by Liev Schreiber, however, would be close to impossible. Indeed, Safran-Foer's greatly acclaimed literary outing is so eccentrically crafted, so complexly structured, so phenomenally daring, that many might consider it to be unfilmable. How fortunate then that Liev Schreiber's admittedly muddled interpretation not only has a fair crack at it, but succeeds in delivering one of the most refreshing and visually stunning films of recent times.

In fact, Schreiber brings so much of his own vision into the adaptation, and diverts away from the source material in so many ways (the book consists of two separate narratives, Schreiber focusses only on one) that Everything Is Illuminated, his first feature film, could stand alone as an original piece of work, inviting those who have not read the novel as well as reflecting elements that will be familiar to those who have. Schreiber's narrative tells the story of Jonathan (Elijah Wood, generously branching out into a less-mainstream feature), a young Jewish man who collects memories of each of his relatives. All he has to remind him of his late grandfather Safran, however, is an amber necklace and a faded photograph of a Ukrainian whom Jonathan believes helped his grandfather escape from the Nazis. Determined to uncover the truth about Safran's past, Jonathan travels to the Ukraine in the hopes of finding the girl from the photograph. This leads us to Alex (Eugene Hutz of punk band Gogol Bordello, in an astonishing acting debut), an idealistic young man from Odessa who, along with his senile and wildly anti-semitic grandfather (Boris Leskin), acts as Jonathan's guide. The trio travel blindly (quite literally - Leskin's grandfather, who acts as driver, claims throughout to suffer from total blindness) through rural Ukraine, with little success. Trachimbrod, the village-home of Jonathan's grandfather, appears to no longer exist. That is, until they discover an old shack surrounded by sunflowers and inhabited by an elderly collector called Lista. When asked if she knows where Trachimbrod is, she replies simply: 'You are here. I am it.' What follows is a series of tragic and incredibly moving revelations that quite literally illuminate the trio on-screen as well as those watching in front of it.

Schreiber, best known for his roles in Scream and The Manchurian Candidate, delivers a remarkable debut behind the camera. Though not strikingly unconventional, his directing methods contain subtleties that would suggest a filmmaker of far greater experience. The changes in Ukrainian culture is one aspect that Schreiber conveys particularly well; a revealing pan from a quiet elderly couple to a gang of Westernised youths practising BMX stunts in the park behind them being a good example of this. Schreiber also excels in juxtaposing the bleakness of contemporary Ukraine - concrete tower blocks, barren wasteland and derelict, war-torn buildings - with its undeniable beauty - the sunflower-bordered homestead, the tragic, battle-strewn meadow. Sheer cinematic artistry. Though the talent this film showcases is not exclusive to writer and director. Much is to be attributed to its three-strong cast.

In the lead role of Jonathan, Elijah Wood gives a quiet, sensitive performance, letting his eyes deliver the emotion while the rest of his body remains as stiff and pristine as his clipped lines of dialogue. Contrasting this is Eugene Hutz, whose gangling frame, wide-eyed curiosity and imaginative vocabulary, make for an incredibly memorable character. Despite such contrasts, the chemistry between the two performers is faultless and the characters of Jonathan and Alex establish a very believable understanding, each undergoing dramatic and poignant transformations. Amidst all this stands the incomparable Boris Leskin, a renowned Russian stage performer, whose character of Grandfather, a foul mouthed, prejudiced curmudgeon (think of Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine, only more tormented), undergoes the most illuminating transformation of all. Schreiber takes a bold step by drastically altering Grandfather's revelation, a move that may bewilder fans of the novel. But it is a credible solution to a plot twist that may well have proved impossible to commit to film.

Overall then, a more than impressive directorial debut for Schreiber and another superb piece of work for Wood to add to his already momentous resume. While the complex and sometimes muddled storyline may bewilder some viewers, whether they've read the novel or not, the end result is one of pure, life-affirming joy. Definitely worth a watch. 8.5/10

The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, 2007) Cert.15

Wes Anderson has to be one of the most exciting directors of recent times. The few films that he has crafted so far (Rushmore (1998), The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004) and, most notably, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)) have rapidly created an auteur status for the young filmmaker and achieved a somewhat cult following, while still appealing to the general mainstream. Anderson’s films have a very independent feel, revolving around eccentric protagonists and mostly dealing with down-to-earth issues such as strains within family life, and yet they possess an extremely likeable quirkiness that many indie films lack, making them very accessible to the average cinema-goer and attractive to big stars who continue to add themselves to Anderson’s credits.

One such star is Owen Wilson, largely known for his roles in such high-concept comedies as You, Me And Dupree (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2006)and The Wedding Crashers (David Dobkin, 2005), neither of which can be considered as particularly impressive contributions to the actor’s resume. And yet, through Anderson, Wilson presents himself as an extremely versatile and inventive performer. His turn as drug addicted author Eli Cash in The Royal Tenenbaums is hilarious and moving in equal measure, while his role as long-lost son Ned Zissou in Life Aquatic possesses a quiet sensitivity that only the most talented of character actors can achieve. However, the artistic ties between director and actor do not end at casting. The two met at the University of Texas and together wrote Anderson’s very first feature, Bottle Rocket (1996), in which Wilson starred. The writing partnership continued with Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaums, confirming the collaboration as one of the most exciting of recent times. Is it any wonder then that Wilson agreed to feature in Anderson’s latest outing, The Darjeeling Limited? His participation immediately predicts an outing that will prove every bit as engaging as the pair’s past efforts, a prediction that proves itself to be true within the very first frames of this incredibly innovative piece of cinema.

Appearing alongside Wilson is Jason Schwartzman, star of Anderson’s first major film, Rushmore, in which he portrayed a bespectacled nerd. In Darjeeling, Schwartzman plays Jack, a suave, moustachioed master of seduction. Quite the opposite of his aforementioned performance yet just as captivating. The only real newcomer to Anderson’s cast is Adrian Brody, best remembered for his earnest performance in Roman Polanski’s masterpiece The Pianist (2002). Brody, however, proves admirably that he is equally comfortable amid the quirky atmosphere of Anderson’s world with his portrayal as tormented Peter, a neurotic father-to-be who is in deep mourning over the death of his own father. Also making appearances are Angelic Huston who worked with Anderson in Royal Tenenbaums and Bill Murray, another of Anderson’s long-standing muses, who makes a glorious cameo appearance as a floundering businessman. Wilson himself plays the ever-positive Francis, a recovering crash victim who throughout the film appears swathed in bandages, an element that acquires a great deal extra depth due to the star’s recent suicide attempt.

In terms of the directing itself, The Darjeeling Limited is utterly flawless. Anderson utilises his beloved slow-motion technique yet never to gimmicky effect. In fact, the tastefully selected soundtrack and perfect framing combined with the slow movements of the actors produces a strangely refreshing result. Anderson also masterfully employs cross-cutting, hand-held camera and indeed just about every cinematographic technique known, as well as crafting a stunning montage sequence traversing various compartments of a train and revealing the activities of the numerous eccentrics to which we are introduced throughout the film. Never before has something quite so stylish or inventive been displayed on screen.

The narrative, written by Anderson, Schwartzman and Roman Coppola, follows three estranged brothers (Wilson, Brody and Schwartzman) who have not spoken since the death of their father a year previously. Brought together by concerned Francis (Wilson), the three meet up in India, aboard the eponymous train, The Darjeeling Limited, destined for the rural monastery at which their widowed mother (Huston) has become a nun. The exotic setting allows for breathtaking set-pieces and foreign environments ranging from flower-filled temples and bustling market-places to quaint pastoral villages and stunning mountain ranges. And the chemistry between the three leads is such that the subtly comic scenes such as those involving a flawed Indian ritual or a brawl aboard the train, appear that much more hilarious, while the sensitive sequences such as a daring river rescue and a traditional Indian funeral (masterfully inter-cut with a flashback of the trio at their father’s funeral) achieve an intense sense of underlying tragedy. Such is the talent of Wes Anderson. The dialogue, performances and narrative developments contain a warmth and realness that speak volumes to the audience and provide a unique form of entertainment that easily matches, indeed surpasses, that of The Royal Tenenbaums and all of Anderson’s previous films. 9/10

Step Brothers (Adam McKay, 2008) Cert.15

Will Ferrell just seems to move from strength to strength. Stranger Than Fiction was generally well received by critics, Blades of Glory was an enjoyable piece of mindless fun, while Anchorman, along with Ferrell's alter-ego Ron Burgundy, has become something of a cult comedy classic amongst a lot of young people, with memorably ludicrous scenes and extremely quotable lines. The fact that a friend of mine, after making the comment ‘it’s so hot!’ in a nightclub bathroom, clearly heard a voice from a cubicle reply ‘milk was a bad choice!’ shows just what an impact Ferrell has made on the modern comedy circuit. So is his latest outing, Step Brothers another step towards comedic immortality? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Not by a long shot.

Step Brothers, also starring John C. Reilly a.k.a. Dewey Cox, features the two comic stars as a pair of loutish, unemployed thirty-somethings who mooch off their single parents, dad Robert (Richard Jenkins) and mum Nancy (Mary Steenburgen). When, during the film’s opening, the two parents meet, hook up and decide to marry, Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (Reilly) are forced to confront one another and accept their roles as step brothers. Such a plot-line seems perfect for low-key comedy, with the two spoiled slobs being forced to get used to one another’s presence and habits. However, a major flaw in writer/director Adam Mckay's formula is that Brennan and Dale aren’t just immature. They’re presented as hyper-active kids in adult bodies, mugging at the camera and hurling things around. This approach immediately dumbs down the film’s material and makes Ferrell and Reilly's attempts at humour much more difficult to appreciate.

To me, Step Brothers seems like a children’s film, but packed with enough swearing to give it a 15 certificate. I’m sure a young audience would greatly appreciate the sight of Ferrell and Reilly clowning around, pulling faces at the dinner table and getting bullied by school kids. But this kind of juvenile humour is totally lost on a sophisticated adult audience for whom fart jokes and slapstick have a very limited appeal. Not even the dialogue can save this film from what it immediately brands itself to be. The witty, part-improvised ramblings that made the films of Judd Appatow, such as The 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up so popular, fail to appear in the Step Brothers script. Instead the writers seem to think that by randomly placing the word ‘penis’ within a sentence, laughs will be raised. They aren’t. The remarks that escape Ferrell and Reilly’s lips are more along the lines of; 'I feel like a lightning bolt just struck the end of my penis' and 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but I'm gonna kick you repeatedly in the balls'. That’s about as witty as it gets. Not that there aren’t some funny moments in the film; a sleepwalking scene raises a few smiles and a bunk-bed accident is nothing short of hilarious, but mostly the jokes are completely unsuccessful.

Also, the narrative never really seems to know where its going. The film loses steam when Brennan and Dale decide to become friends instead of enemies, though they continue to misbehave, causing stress and desperation for their parents. The mother is inexplicably patient and understanding with the destructive pair for the entirety of the film, while the father all but disowns them, though, equally inexplicably, takes an immediate shine to Brennan’s older brother Derek (Adam Scott) a high-flying businessman who is presented to us as a totally one-dimensional character with no positive qualities whatsoever. Slightly confusing but, sadly, it gets much worse. After the destructive duo accidentally destroy father Robert's beloved yacht, the two parental characters decide to separate and find their own personal space, leaving Brennan and Dale to fend for themselves. During their first night home alone, they randomly attack one another, a conflict that escalates to the point that Dale drags a seemingly dead Brennan into the garden with the intentions of burying him alive. Until Brennan wakes up, knocks Dale out with a shovel and then starts to bury him alive. Dale later bursts out of the ground, having apparently been fully buried for some time, and the fight continues. The whole sequence makes literally no sense.

Thankfully, the pair eventually decide to settle down, go their own separate ways and, at long last, grow up. Brennan ends up working for his arrogant brother Derek in events management, while Dale becomes a successful caterer. It all seems like a happy, sensible ending to a juvenile, nonsensical film, until the pair meet up at a wine-tasting festival organised by Brennan and catered for by Dale. The parents Nancy and Robert, also show up but, bizarrely are not impressed by the success of their children. Instead they seem to bemoan the fact that they have forced them to act their age and long for the old, juvenile versions. Cue a cringingly over-the-top resolution that sees Brennan and Dale cast away their hard-earned success and become wild, annoying slobs again, dragging the entire narrative mercilessly back to square one and thus making the entire film completely and utterly pointless.

Overall, a disastrous mess with none of the fun or wit that made Ferrell as popular as he is. Tedious, juvenile and ridiculous, not to mention deeply unfunny. Without a doubt, one to avoid. 2.5/10

Hellboy II : The Golden Army (Guillermo Del Toro, 2008) Cert.12a

After the massive critical success of Del Toro's recent masterpiece, Pan's Labyrinth, and the promises that this sequel to the boisterous fantasy-thriller Hellboy will be the most impressive English-language movie the director has produced so far, Golden Army is a film that you desperately want to be impressed by. And in many ways, Hellboy II is every bit as impressive as Del Toro's fans could have hoped for. The lavish sets, rich colour pallet and imaginative creatures reflect everything that made Pan's Labyrinth such a wonder to watch. However, in a number of ways, it could be argued that Del Toro's latest offers nothing but disappointment.

One of the great assets of Hellboy as a superhero movie is that it remains mercifully tongue-in-cheek. Unlike the well-known Marvel heroes such as Spiderman, Hellboy never takes itself too seriously, Del Toro treating it exactly as it is; a piece of mindless entertainment. Thus, when the film opens with a miniature red devil in pyjamas watching an episode of Howdee-Doodee (a cringingly twee image), we can't really identify it as a flaw because it was never intended to be anything other than 'a bit of fun'. We certainly have no reason for complaint when this scene is followed by a hugely imaginative sequence in which the events of a great legend, as told by John Hurt, unfold in young Hellboy's mind. The story of man versus elf, which shortly becomes the main narrative, is portrayed in the form of wooden puppets reminiscent of Howdee-Doodee, the character that Hellboy has just been watching. The sequence, a bloodthirsty one, is void of any real violence due to this substitution. It conveys childish innocence and, crucially, means that the captivating fantasy creatures are not properly seen until later in the film.

This is undoubtedly a smart move as the most obvious improvement Golden Army holds above the original Hellboy is its vastly increased cast of striking and grotesque beasts. So to delay their emergence is to keep the audience glued to the screen in anticipation, which does not go unrewarded - the characters introduced throughout Golden Army are some of the most majestic and nightmarish creations to ever be portrayed onscreen. The elves, headed by the villainous Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), look as though they are made of cracked ivory - delicate yet deadly; Johann Krauss, a new protagonist voiced by Family Guy's Seth McFarlane, is a mechanical humanoid housing the spirit of a witty German professor; the Angel of Death, much like the monstrous Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth, has an element of obscene beauty about it; and the much-loved Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) enjoys a greatly increased role. Even the Tooth-fairies, harmless-looking pixies that swarm and devour their prey en masse, have a darkly comic appeal reminiscent of the flesh-eating scarab beetles that made The Mummy so memorably disturbing.

But impressive creatures alone cannot save what is ultimately a flawed and clearly rushed narrative. Del Toro attempts to juggle two separate stories; that of the elf prince Nuada's onslaught against the humans, and Hellboy's (Ron Perlman) internal struggle for acceptance with his pyrotechnic wife (Selma Blair) and the human society he battles to protect, with little success. Stunning characters such as the Angel of Death are pushed to the sidelines and given the bare minimum of time onscreen, the final battle between good and evil ends before it truly begins and the ultimate 'twist' that sees the downfall of Nuada is far too predictable. Hellboy himself remains boorish and arrogant, making him a thoroughly alienating protagonist and Del Toro blatantly overdoes it on the aforementioned 'tongue-in-cheek-ness', grasping for comedy at every opportunity. Thus such scenes as Hellboy and Sapien drunkenly singing Barry Manilow's 'Can't Smile Without You' in between sequences of battle and carnage, appear horrendously misjudged.

All in all, a disappointing outing, especially with regard to the excitement that preceded it. However, despite its flaws, of which there are many, Hellboy II : The Golden Army, remains a visually impressive piece of work, containing every imaginative element that has helped Del Toro to achieve his much-deserved auteur status. An improvement on the original Hellboy, we can only hope the saga will continue to improve. 7.5/10