The Filth and the 'Fury' - or, 'Das Boot' on caterpillar tracks.

So there was I thinking that 'Inglourious Basterds' was the last word in second world war movies when along comes 'Fury', with Brad Pitt still killing Nazis in Germany - this time in a tank.

The 'Fury' is a Sherman tank helmed by Pitt, who has led his crew through the best part of the conflict. Logan Lerman is the wide eyed innocent forced to join this battle hardened crew.

Director David Ayer is no Tarantino and this is not as multi-layered as 'Basterds' but fortunately he does understand that what makes this sort of drama work is not the battle scenes but the camaraderie between a group of men who know they could die at any moment.

The cast are uniformly great. Pitt achieves something of a career best here. He plays Don 'Wardaddy' Collier very differently to his Lt. Aldo Raine. This character is stalwart in front of his men whilst teetering on the edge of breakdown in private. Other 'A' listers would have turned the role into a show off piece but Pitt is wise enough to play it subtly; blending into the background but always making his presence known. We get a real sense of the psychic toll the conflict has taken on him as much as his will to get the job done right. Logan is cleverly cast as the greenhorn - it really is as if someone has just thrown Percy Jackson into the frontline. He is the film's conscience. Shia LaBeouf method acts to his heart's content in the background but does more than enough here to silence his haters. Like Pitt, he's not over the top. There's no "look at me acting" ticks - just someone really understanding the part and living it.

It's one of the filthiest, dirtiest, grungiest films of its type and progresses the "authentic" aesthetic of films like 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Das Boot' to the level where you can actually taste the mud, blood and gasoline in your mouth. The attention to detail and the "lived in" feel of the design is just incredible. If Sergio Leone had ever got to make a spaghetti war film (he did try) it would certainly have looked like this.

I once fell asleep in the cinema during 'The Fast and The Furious' (by the same director funnily enough) but there's no way anyone could nap through this. It's LOUD as hell. Every shell fired seems to make the walls of the cinema quake. Really worth seeing this on a big screen if you can. It's also visually rich and I applaud the director and cinematographer Roman Vasyanov for making the cramped interior shots as interesting as the exterior carnage. There's a bravura opening sequence which is as powerful a mood setter as anything I've ever seen. The last shot is pretty good too.

You can feel the gears begin to crunch a third of the way into the film as the pace drops for some lengthy character scenes. This will lose some of the audience no doubt, especially the "show us the gore" crowd (and there is plenty of gore), but these will be the same people who find Tarantino "too talky". Screw you if you can't put up with a bit of talking. The middle part of the film turns to that most modern of movie cliches - 'the uncomfortable dinner table scene'. It's actually very well done but doesn't crank up the tension to the same degree as similar scenes in 'Inglorious Basterds' (and I promise that this is the last time I will mention that film, or Mr T, in the write up of this one - sorry but it's difficult not to reference it repeatedly). It's a necessary scene in my opinion as it shows the two leads trying to hold on to a scarce moment of normality but I'm not sure it pays off to the extent it should. It felt like a manipulative device, a cliche, and that lessened the emotional impact. There's a lot of different ways that scene could have ended and you suspect in real life it would have turned a lot nastier. But that is always the trouble with films like this. Make the milieu as brutal and as authentic as you can but then sweeten it to make it more palatable/watchable for audience. That's fair enough though; otherwise you'd end up with the cinematic equivalent of a Sven Hassel novel. Nobody wants that.

The final part of the film where this single tank has to hold its position against insurmountable odds is one of the most realistic combat sequences ever filmed and also a preposterous '300'-ish war story fantasy. It's a stunning piece of film-making though, by anyone's standards, and rivals 'Gravity' for that cumulative bad-situation-made-worse effect.

In short, if you like your war-is-hell films then you'll love it. It has the claustrophobia and unrelenting tension of 'Das Boot', the cynicism of 'Cross Of Iron' and the mise-en-scene of 'Saving Private Ryan'. If you don't like war-is-hell movies then I don't know....Brad Pitt takes his shirt off...what can I say? The Box Trolls is playing on another screen. Maybe you should see that. Let me know how it was.

I Know You've Got Soul. 'Northern Soul'.

I don't  really like 'northern soul' music, it's too much like chewing the same piece of gum all night for my tastes; I prefer my soul funkier, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the film 'Northern Soul'. It does the job of capturing a very specific slice of British sub-culture and should resonate across generations and tribal cultures.

As you would expect, the film is strong on location and painstaking detail. It doesn't feel like the cast have just put on period clothes. It feels like they're living it. This isn't a rose-tinted look at the seventies with a few funny jackets and wigs, this is the real deal. It's a grimy, smeared glass, beer stained look at the period. The camera lens even seems to capture the light and dust of the past.  This film doesn't go for the easy route of filming in black and white (as in 'Control' the Joy Division biopic) but really strives to get the colours, the textures and lighting right for authenticity and emotional impact.

Two friends get into the scene and live for the weekend. Loyalties are tested, lives are changed, dreams are broken. It's not much of a story and nothing we've not seen before but the music, the dancing and liveliness of the film make it exhilarating to watch.

Director Elaine Constantine believably captures the euphoria of the dance floor but doesn't shy away from the ubiquitous drug use, the elitism, and the male dominance of the scene. She captures the essence of what it is like to be these young men full of energy, full of anger, channeling their focus onto something that makes them feel alive but absolutely nails the claustrophobia and frustration of their lives away from the dance floor too. It's"feel good" but not light, it's political but not overt, life affirming but not sentimental.

The two male leads are strong enough to carry the film (despite having little more than 'Hollyoaks' and 'Casualty' on their cvs) and there's fine support from the rest of the cast. I particularly thought John Thomson and James Lance got their respective DJ roles spot on. Ricky Tomlinson, Steve Coogan and Lisa Stansfield are in it too, but largely irrelevant (especially Tomlinson) and these are little more than extended cameos used to prop up a cast of largely unknown talent. If anything, the film could have been braver in dispensing with the more obvious narrative trappings altogether. But then it probably wouldn't have got made.

I'm glad that northern soul has finally got the movie it deserves. It's good but not great. It's no 'Quadrophenia'. It's no 'Saturday Night Fever'. But it's not a bad attempt. As a drama it does lack something but I'm still glad it's out there and keeping the faith.

Now, if somebody wants to give me some millions to make the definitive c86 / goth / dreampop / shoegaze movie then I am available for talks. Thanks.

Amazeballs!!! I Liked 'The Maze Runner'.

Help the young adult and his friends escape from the maze....

In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was constructed by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete and designed to hold the Minotaur, a half man, half bull creature, which was fed human sacrifice. Each year Minos demanded that Athens send him a tribute of seven young  men and seven maidens to honour him and thus avert going to war. Each year the delegation was sacrificed to the beast until Theseus faced, and defeated, the Minotaur in the King's Labyrinth. Daedalus had constructed the maze with such cunning that he himself was barely able to find the way out and, having killed the Minotaur, Theseus was only able to escape because he could retrace his steps using Ariadne's thread, literally a "clew", or "clue".

I bloody loved the story of Theseus as a small child. It was my favourite and I read this book over and over again.

But as an adult it poses an interesting problem. Scholars agree that the Minotaur was held in the centre of a labyrinth. But a labyrinth is not the same as a maze. A labyrinth is a unicursal path, a winding straight line. The route is secure. It may seem to be chaotic at times but there is always one clear path to follow. In short, you cannot get lost in a labyrinth. How the hell then did Daedalus the so-called "master designer" struggle to find his way out? Why didn't the Minotaur just walk out? And how come Theseus was such a thicko that he needed a thread to find his way out. Idiots! the lot of them.

Anyway, that is why I was never allowed back into the Classical Studies classroom.

But we have learned that a labyrinth is not the same as a maze.

This is a labyrinth

This is a maze

In a labyrinth, you just have to trust the path, find the centre, not get eaten and then leave.

In a maze you have free will. You have choices, there is no middle area goal to reach and you will almost certainly get lost.

A labyrinth is a contemplative path, as is a maze to a certain extent, but a maze is more about the tension between fate and free will.

The maze in 'The Maze Runner' is an ever shifting maze within a labyrinth. Theseus would have lasted about five minutes in this one. Ariadne's thread would have been fucking useless.

Labyrinths and mazes are found all over the world, and they are important cultural works, giving insight  into our history and psyche. Prehistoric labyrinths served as traps for evil spirits or as paths for initiation rites or dances. In Medieval times the labyrinth symbolized the hard path to finding God. Pilgrims to Chartres Cathedral completed their arduous journey by shuffling around on their knees in prayer (possibly whilst being beaten too) following a labyrinth laid out on the floor.

In alchemy and in the Renaissance labyrinths lose their centre. The person in the labyrinth is the centre, a reflection of learned wisdom. Symbolically labyrinths and mazes reveal complexity and simplicity, mystery and design, intuition and received information. Labyrinths and mazes are bloody brilliant!

I am someone who grew up with a love for reading Greek myths, who became obsessed with dungeons and dragons, who lived through the survival horror that was '3D Monster Maze' on the ZX81, who still shudders to think of the number of times that he died in 'Deathtrap Dungeon', who watched The Crystal Maze every week and is someone who can still be found running around computer generated corridors with a blaster in his hand. Mazes have always been a part of my life. And what is the inter-web if not the ultimate maze? What is blogging if not a twisty path of false starts, dead ends and long rambling threads where the writer can't ever seem to get to the bloody point?

So then, what can I say about 'The Maze Runner' without using the phrase "it's 'Lord Of The Flies' meets the 'Hunger Games'". Well it's two of the most entertaining hours I've spent in a cinema this year. There are times when the 12 year old in me just wanted to burst out screaming with excitement because it was that good.

The best thing about books for 'young adults' (as we're calling them now) is that they cut the bullshit, keep you fervently turning the pages to find out what happens next and resonate with those trying to come to terms with all manner of bewildering social structures. It's why grown-ups want to read them too - there's a pace and ease you just don't get in even the best adult "escapism" novels. Most of the young adult novels adapted for the screen are allegories. The dystopian future is already a cliche but a fucked up world already surrounds you when you're 12 years old. Why wouldn't you want to explore that on some philosophical level. What choices to make? What path to follow?

'The Maze Runner' seems to be the purest distillation of the form so far with an idea so simple but so immediately thrilling that it is wonderful.

We are thrown into the action from the very first frame, unable to get our bearings, running for our life, quickly brought down by the first obstacle. It is a tour-de-force opening, probably the best pre-credits sequence this year and indicative of what will follow. This is one of those film that makes you wonder how it passed with a 12A certificate. It's nail biting enough to watch as an adult. It's dark, puzzling and ever threatening. It feels very real.

So you don't know who you are, you don't remember anything at all, but here you are - in an open prison with no guards but also penned in by huge, solid, impenetrable walls. This is the Glade, a green oasis,  and you are not alone. There are others here, the same sex and age as you - but just as lost, just as blank. You survive on what you forage. This community only has rules of its own devising, based on a fragile consensus. Every morning a gap in the wall is opened by some unseen force. Beyond is a vast maze. Every night the gap closes. If you are caught inside you are never seen again. There is something that preys on the trapped and every day the maze is different. Is it better to exist in ignorance in the Glade or look for answers in the maze. What would you do?

Come on - that's brilliant - isn't it? I love it. There's little bits of films that are important to me in there  - 'King Kong', 'Planet Of The Apes', 'Escape From New York', bits of primal fears like 'Alien' along with a bit of cult movie appeal along the lines of 'The Village', 'Cube', 'Logan's Run' and of course, a great big dollop of the good old 'man-hunts-man' plot along the lines of 'The Most Dangerous Game/Hounds Of Zaroff/The Running Man'. Yeah, well I'm all in with that.

It ticks all the boxes for me - but I didn't expect it to be this good. Like 'Hunger Games' I thought we'd spend an hour getting to the chase, I thought we'd have a love triangle and I thought we'd get lots of Californian, shiny teeth moppets to get annoyed by. Instead it was breathless, gripping and superbly crafted. These teens all have interesting faces, like they've stepped out of a Sergio Leone film instead of central casting. They can act too. Will Poulter, from 'Son Of Rambow' and 'We're The Millers' is outstanding once again. If anything, the blandest of the lot is our hero Dylan O'Brien, but that's fine, he needs to be a cypher anyway. It's very well directed by Wes Ball who doesn't have many credits to his name but this film never feels 'safe' or family friendly. The action is visceral and brutal but best of all - you can see what's going on. No shaky cam, no fast edits, just great choreography and camera movement. There is CGI but it is convincingly done and not overused. The 'Grievers' that patrol the maze are a genuinely scary creation but the maze itself is nightmarish as its walls grind and shift into ever more elaborate traps. At times it's pure cinema in as much as the plot doesn't really matter - there's just a universal appeal in seeing people trying to escape a maze.

The ending should be a problem. By now you should know that the nature of films like this is that they are a franchise and exist only as part of a greater whole. I can rant on about how films should always be self contained and like most people I am bored when a  series of books is dragged out into ever more elongated and prolonged sequels. For once though, it felt right to leave wanting more. What is it all about? Other than the obvious themes already touched upon I've really no idea. The film ends by replacing one set of questions with another set of questions. But for once that feels quite fitting. We have come full circle to the starting point.

Socrates describes the labyrinth line of logical argument thus in Plato's Eutydemus: 

"Then it seemed like falling into a labyrinth: we thought we were at the finish, but our way bent round and we found ourselves as it were back at the beginning, and just as far from that which we were seeking at first."

And so there we are, I started out talking Greek mythology and labyrinths and that's where I'm going to exit. In the middle of all this is something like a film review. I liked 'The Maze Runner' a lot and hope it doesn't get lost in the glut of young adult adaptations already out there. Go see it and run your own maze.

HELLo Dolly! It's 'Annabelle'.

I went to play Creepy Doll Movie Bingo with new movie 'Annabelle' but failed to get a full house because I made a stupid mistake. Yep, I sort of assumed that a Creepy Doll Movie would at the very least have a creepy doll doing something other than just sitting there looking creepy. Even, if it wasn't going to do a full Chucky on us it should at the very least have swivelled it's eyes, or talked or puked or something. No. Nothing. This has to be one of the most underwhelming horror movies ever theatrically released.

Even if you find inanimate objects scary you will be disappointed.

If you find women with long hair, sewing machines and popcorn scary than you might just find something here to give you a fright. Otherwise forget it.

It's one of those films where you can say that the trailer really is the movie. Everything else is padding. Apart from one scare lifted directly from 'Insidious'.

'Annabelle' is a sort of sister film to 'The Conjuring' and it makes that particular bland, mainstream horror film for people who don't really like horror films look like 'The Shining' in comparison.

Look, I know it's not aimed at me, I'm a jaded horror movie veteran, but it's difficult to see who will enjoy this unless you are a pre-teen who hyperventilates at the sight of the BBFC certificate card. Find any spooky 70s tv movie on Youtube and it will be scarier, better constructed and more involving than this. The trailer for 'The Babadook' that came on before this is actually better than the entirety of 'Annabelle'.

For a moment I thought it was going to have an edge to it. It alludes to the Manson murders and sets you thinking that this is going to have a serious subtext about how America never really recovered from that dark period where the 60s turned into the 70s. But no. It's just window dressing; shorthand period detail. You could, if desperate, find some subtext, something about the fears of motherhood but it's all been done much better before - most obviously 'Rosemary's Baby'. 2014 and we're still being served up Rosemary's Baby rip offs. Thanks.

As a horror fan, you learn to live with stupid characters doing stupid things, but this takes incredulity to a new level. The wife has to go to the bookshop to look up devil worship. Husband bins the demonic doll and like a boomerang it comes back; wife decides to keep it anyway. Husband hears a noise in the night, ignores the phone on his bedside table, fails to phone the police even though the couple have already been victims of violent assault and wanders around the house to investigate by himself.  Mother constantly seems to leave baby in dangerous situations. None of the incidental characters points out that not only is the doll really, really creepy but that it's butt ugly to boot.

A major part of the appeal of 'The Conjuring' was that it was based on real events and there is indeed a real 'Annabelle' doll. It looks like this:

A really, quite nice raggedy doll.

Not this:

I mean, who would love this? Who would put this above their child's bed?

The thing is....if you're going to go to all the trouble of making a doll look this creepy you'd think you'd want to showcase it in a better movie. But 'Annabelle' is almost incidental in this dull, tired, bland nonsense. The 'true' story is quite interesting if you can be bothered to look it up. Why not make that that the movie? Why not make a movie where something happens? But then again, I guess why would you, when all you need to do is get some no name actors, a no name director (oh, I'm sorry - he did 'Mortal Kombat') and film just enough good material to make a trailer.

Piss poor straight to DVD crap that somehow got released as a major film in the run up to Halloween. Go and see 'Bride of Chucky' instead.

I Shall Become A Bat. 'Dracula: Untold'.

Right, here's the pitch:

"Everyone loves Batman, yeah? Specifically everyone loves dark and moody Batman. Well, what if I told you that Universal is sitting on its very own dark and moody superhero? This guy makes Batman look like a wet wipe. He's super strong, he has super heightened senses, he can see in the dark....and this is the kicker....he can go one better than Batman.... because.... here is a man who can.... literally.... turn himself into a bat! He can fucking turn himself into a thousand bats if needed. Ladies and gentlemen I give you 'Dracula: The Dark Lord Rises'.

Fuck Marvel and their "shared universe". We're going to make "shared Universal" movies and you know how we're going to do it? We're going to take Dracula, and we're going to take Frankenstein, and we're going to take The Wolfman and we're going to take The Mummy and we're going to turn them ALL into superheroes. And we're going to make them appear in each others movies and we're going to make them fight each other and screw each other and team up to fight giant robots and giant lizards and we'll make tv spin-offs and comics and computer games and the future will be ours!.

You know when Dracula was last done right? 1992. Gary Oldman in 'Gary Oldman's Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula' or whatever it was called. And you know that the only bit of that movie that was any good was the beginning, the bit with Vlad the Impaler. Yeah, well we're going to make that bit the whole fucking movie! The kids today weren't even born in 1992, they won't know. They deserve their own Dracula origin movie and we're going to give it to them.

Okay, here's another question for you? What does the the word 'Dracula' actually mean? It means Dragon. And you know what the most popular show on tv right now is? That's right 'Game Of Thrones' - the one with the dragons in it! And you know what we're going to do? We're going to make our Dracula in the style of Game Of Thrones; in fact we'll steal some of their actors. But it's going to be epic, like 'Lord Of The Rings' but with vampires. That's ten years of money rolling in right there.

Imagine Batman with a sword fighting insurmountable odds. That's right, that's our Dracula. Fuck '300' and all those pussies in loincloths. '300'? Fuck 'em. There's only one Dracula and he's fucking hardcore, he can take them all on....by himself. A whole movie of Dracula mowing down some fucking foreigner's armies. That's what people want.

But I know what you're thinking. You're thinking this is going to be expensive. There's too much location shooting, too many special effects and that all costs money. Well listen, we're not going to go to fucking New Zealand for this. We can do this on the cheap. We can go to Ireland. Miserable, dreary, bleak, drizzling, bog filled Ireland. It will make it look authentic. As for the special effects - I know this kid who can do a great looking bat storm thing on his computer. We'll just use that. A lot.

You can't make Dracula without blood and gore though, right? Well, duh, yes you can if you want to get a 12A rating. Fuck blood. Blood is so 20th century. There's going to be no blood in this vampire movie! 

Hey, but what about the girls? The girls aren't going to want to see this are they? Are you kidding me? This isn't old man Dracula sneaking into a virgin's boudoir. This is sexy young Dracula, sensitive Dracula, romantic Dracula. This Dracula reads poetry like whatsit in Twilight and bares his chest like that other whatsit in Twilight and he has really nice teeth. We'll get some up and coming good looking guy. Someone a bit cheap who needs a leg up. Someone British. And you know what else we'll do? We'll make Castle Dracula look like Hogwarts; not just a bit, we'll make it look exactly like Hogwarts.

I know some of you are scared and I can understand that. You're still smarting from 'Van Helsing' and 'The Wolfman' and 'I, Frankenstein' and all that, but this is going to be different, this is going to be classy. I've already thought of some great dialogue:

"The great impaler can't even penetrate his woman." Get it?

I tell you, they'll all be quoting that line years from now.

Look, there's no denying that this is a big important film for us. So what we're going to do is give it to a nobody director. That way, if it goes tits up, we'll blame it on him. If it doesn't, and he's actually good, then we have him tied in to a three movie deal. Win - win. Fucking win!"

"Trust me! It's going to look great."

Having said all that  - I quite enjoyed it....at first. It was nowhere near as bad as I was expecting and the first hour rattles along in an entertaining fashion. After the first bat swarm battle sequence though, I did quickly become bored. It became repetitive and ran out of steam (a sword fight in a tent?) and I just wanted to hit fast forward. To me the whole thing felt like the pilot episode for a tv series. On that level it was just fine. The ending only served to make this feeling more apparent as it clearly paves the way for a series of bland sequels that will sidestep having anything to do with the source material other than the character names. The strange thing about the whole concept is you can really sense this film struggling to make Dracula relevant for today's audiences when there's really no need. There hasn't been a good adaptation for decades. There certainly isn't a definitive version ('Nosferatu"is as close as we get) out there, so why not, just, you know, make a really good retelling of Dracula. That would be more relevant and exciting than pissing about with trying to make a square peg fit a round hole.

The Count gives it five out of ten. It's average entertainment, interesting at times, tedious towards the end.

Creepy Doll Movie Bingo.

Right, I'm off to play Creepy Doll Movie Bingo.

Pretty Gone.

In a week where Sky News, internet trolls, the McCanns, professional pantomime villainess Katie Hopkins and self righteous journalists converged in a twitter storm of news making news about the news (instead of reporting it) - 'Gone Girl' makes perfect sense as a black comedy for our social media/news-bite times.

I'm not sure many people will find it funny and certainly the marketing people don't want you thinking that this is anything other than a mystery thriller. But in the same way that I thought 'Maps To The Stars' was Cronenberg's black comedy I suspect that this is David Fincher's way of having a laugh. It's a battle of the sexes comedy disguised as psychological nightmare. There are intentionally funny lines, deliberate barbs at trial-by-TV reporting, dark twisted asides on marriage and a farcical ending that, though played straight, gets funnier the more you think about it. All of which means there's a lot more going on than in last months similar but dull "Before I Go To Sleep'.

It's probably half an hour too long, but it is worthy of your time and so I'm going to try and keep this spoiler free for you.

The film is constructed like a a bizarre game of consequences and can be sliced into three parts. Part one, the "He Said" part, sees events primarily through Nick Dunne's eyes (Ben Affleck) as he reports his wife missing, attempts to cope with the media circus, the police intrusion and piece together what went wrong. The second "She Said" part focuses on Amy's (Rosamund Pike) perspective. The final third lets the "consequences" play out. It is a clever plot and you can see why it became a runaway bestseller. I haven't read the book but I know it relies on the literary device of unreliable narration, which is preserved fairly well in the film. I started off hating Nick, then quite liking him, then being unsure of him. Both of the main protagonists seem complex, flawed and real. We can't be certain about either of them and therein lies the tension.

David Fincher is of course the king of the thinking person's serial killer movie ('Se7en', 'Zodiac' and 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo') and as you would expect this film is smeared in green/blue hues, is heavy on detail and beautifully shot. It combines the long, talky but cinematic dialogue scenes retained from his work on 'The Social Network' with the more visceral set pieces à la 'Fight Club' and 'Panic Room'. In short, it distills the best elements of his work and leaves us with a thoroughly entertaining two and a half hours.

Ben Affleck is a divisive actor, which actually makes this a canny piece of casting. I don't have a problem with him at all and think he is top notch in this. Rosamund Pike is a revelation. She knows she has the role of a lifetime here and fucking runs with it. There must be a long line of A-list actresses who wanted this part. Pike more than steps up to the challenge. The film is produced by Reese Witherspoon's company and it's easy to speculate that this may have been developed as a project to showcase her own talents. Whatever, Rosamund Pike is perfect in the role and will be in demand after this. The supporting cast is excellent too, with more strong parts for women. Nick's sister played by Carrie Coon and the female detective played by Kim Dickens are fabulous in what could have been perfunctory roles. The only false note here I thought was Neil "Doogie Houser" Patrick Harris who is deliberately cast against type, but jarringly so, to the extent that you become so aware of it that it takes you out of the movie for a bit.

The music score by Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross is unobtrusive but effective and marks a welcome respite from the slashing string section score that usual accompanies films like this.

I suspect a lot of people will be disappointed by the ending and if you're the sort of person who likes to pick holes in plots you will be in your element. The resolution is undeniably ludicrous and doesn't ring psychologically true at all but that's sort of the point. There's something deeper, darker and funnier going on here. If you can dig out the humour you'll find a lot to enjoy. For me the film does shift in tone considerably but it is very subtle and I appreciated that Fincher was trying to do something different within the genre. I liked it a lot. Go see it.

Burn Hollywood Burn. 'Maps To The Stars'.

When the BBFC warns you that 'Maps To The Stars' contains "strong sex, sexual abuse references, violence and very strong language" they aren't kidding.

A new David Cronenberg movie is always something to look forward to. They're a bit like albums by The Fall. You always know what you're going to get but you actually never quite get what you think you're going to get.  Anyway, this for me is his best work since 'Existenz' and while it still has the cool, precise, detached tone of recent offerings like 'A Dangerous Method' and 'Cosmopolis' it is a much more satisfying watch. At times it's even funny in it's own twisted way but you'll feel bad about laughing out loud.

This is a film that holds up a mirror to the heart of darkness that is Hollywood in 2014 and doesn't for a moment avert its gaze. This is Cronenberg's  'Sunset Boulevard' or 'The Player' or 'Mullholland Dr.' but it's nastier and more warped than any of them. As far as I can remember 'Sunset Boulevard' doesn't feature full frontal male masturbation, threesomes, incest, drugs, child on child violence and Robert Pattinson feeling up a burns victim.

Starstruck Agatha (the just brilliant Mia Wasikowska) takes the greyhound bus to tinsel town with no game plan other than knowing Carrie Fisher quite well on twitter. She wears elbow length gloves at all times in the L.A. heat. She is scarred inside and out but the Fisher connection is enough to secure her a position as PA to narcissistic, fading actress Havana Segrand (the quite brilliant Julianne Moore).

Havana Segrand is connected to Hollywood royalty by birth; being the daughter of a legendary movie star mother who died in a tragic fire. Desperate to to take an Oscar baiting  role in the remake of her mother's most famous film, Havana is also working through abuse issues with a (very) hands on new age therapist guru Dr. Stafford Weiss (the just brilliant John Cusack).

Dr Weiss' wife (the just brilliant Olivia Williams) is the ultimate pushy mother and their son is an obnoxious, foul mouthed, drug abusing teen star (the just brilliant Evan Bird) who is surely modelled on Justin Bieber.

And Robert Pattinson drives a limousine. God only knows what the Twilight fans are going to make of this though.

As you may have realised, everyone in this movie is fucked up.

fucked up

fucked up

fucked up

fucked up

fucked up

David Cronenberg

Just how fucked up becomes apparent as the plot unravels and ghosts of the past appear in ways more literal than you'd imagine.

Unlike, say, 'The Wolf Of Wall Street' nothing here is extraneous. Every scene reveals something about plot and character. It's Greek tragedy, it's black comedy, it's a piss take of melodramas, it's a primal scream and it's fucking out there. What does it all mean? No idea, I'm still processing that one. It's probably just a warning to the curious.

The most fucked up movie of the year. In a good way.