The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S COMING?)

[The last of the long delayed draft posts, this bust was prompted by a fantasy sequence from another movie, in which Ben Stiller imagines himself and Kristen Wiig enacting a confused scene from this movie, despite their not having seen it. You just know when comedians make a joke about not having seen a movie, there's something worth busting there ;)

Unfortunately, it's another example of a film that presents the problem of how best to refer to characters when they're portrayed by various actors, at different stages of their lives. On this occasion I've decided to fudge the answer, because the principals are so iconic, by performing an ultra-bust.]

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) is an American fantasy drama film directed by David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

In the end, a hospital bed-bound, former dancer mother, Cate Blanchett, gets distraction from an approaching hurricane and the end-of-life care she is receiving, by persuading her daughter to read to her from a hand written manuscript, stuffed full of postcards, letters and mementos, that recount what is either a very tall tale or the extraordinary life-history of her real father, Brad Pitt, a man the daughter once met briefly and who apparently lived his life growing younger.

Always on the periphery of landmark American events spanning the end of the Great War, to the devastation of hurricane Katrina, it is the Grim Reaper's ever-presence that overshadows Pitt's life, begun as a prematurely geriatric foundling, after his mother dies in childbirth, raised by a woman with the motto "you never know what's coming", amongst the residents of the elderly care home she runs, and ending with him shuffling off this mortal coil, despite the appearance of a perfectly healthy infant, in the very same home, some eighty years later, in the arms of his first love and eventual wife, Blanchett, who he met there as a "man-boy" when she was a girl, many years before.


It's hard not to read this allegorical muse on the fleeting nature of human existence, as one of a few, so far rather unconvincing attempts, on David Fincher's part, to prove that he is more than just a thrill-master par excellence.

Bookended by the story of a blind clockmaker (surly a reference to an argument against the existence of God) who constructs a municipal time-piece that runs backwards, strangely mirroring the inverted life of the eponymous hero, perhaps not since the Bible, has there been a narrative so packed with stuff that just doesn't make sense, even overlooking the story's central conceit of a man who ages in reverse, and seems strangely apart from his surrounding, despite award winning special effects and make-up. And it's not just the set that Pitt is detached from, perpetually out of step with the changing times around him.

Okay, Pitt does learn life lessons from a succession of colourful characters, including a womanising pygmy, a self-tattooed boozing tugboat captain, the loose-knickered wife of a British spy, and a seven-time victim of lightening strikes fellow care home resident. But none of them amount to much more that "life's short, make the most of it." And all that in just a minute over two and three quarter hours!

Clearly, however you care to slice it, what's coming is death!

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mitty_(2013_film)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curious_Case_of_Benjamin_Button_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker

Source Code (2011)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF THE GUY GETS THE GIRL?)

[Now for a bust of a movie that isn't quite what it says on the tin.]

Source Code (2011) is a French-American science fiction/thriller/romance film directed by Duncan Jones, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright.

In the end, the concious remnants of an American military helicopter pilot, declared dead-in-action, Jake Gyllenhaal, escapes the confines of the repeatedly reconstructed events of a terrorist attack, with one of its victims, Michelle Monaghan, who he has become romantically attached to.

Unwitting participant in a secret US military experiment designed to investigate the circumstances immediately preceding terror incidents using the afterglow of brain activity of their victims, Gyllenhaal, whose last memory is of flying a mission in Afghanistan, wakes to find himself on a Chicago bound morning commuter train, opposite school teacher, Monaghan, who is under the impression that he is a friend and colleague, minutes before it is destroyed by an explosion.

Alone and disoriented, Gyllenhaal finds himself trapped inside an unfamiliar capsule, receiving confusing instructions via a video link with a command centre, from a uniformed controller, Vera Farmiga, who explains that he is on a mission to find which of the train passengers is responsible for the bombing, as they have apparently threatened to carry out further attacks.

So Gyllenhaal is forced to re-experience events on the train a number of times in order to search for clues, during the course of which, it becomes apparent that there is no hope of his surviving beyond the life support system of the experiment and its disconnected existence.

Realising the grim prospect of his situation, Gyllenhaal exacts an undertaking from the program's architect, Jeffrey Wright, that he be detached from the system and allowed to die, should he meet with success.

However, when Gyllenhaal eventually tracks a mobile phone attached to the bomb he discovered hidden above a wash-room ceiling, to a man he sees deliberately planting his wallet in a carriage compartment to cover his tracks, before alighting at a station in order to collect a van containing what he describes as a dirty bomb that he intends to detonate in the city, Wright reneges on the deal.

Reasoning that Gyllenhaal is too valuable an asset to discard now that he has proved the program works, Wright orders Farmiga to wipe his memory, in preparation for his next mission.

But Farmiga, recognising Gyllenhaal's despair at being unable to effect the outcomes of the lost commuters and the future torment he is likely to suffer as a continued part of the program, defies the order, agreeing to allow Gyllenhaal one last pass through the event, before switching the system's life-support off.

This time Gyllenhaal has all the information he needs to quickly disable the bomb, restrain the bomber, and alert authorities to his intentions.

Then, with the time he has left, he leaves Farmiga a text message, consoles his estranged father by cellphone, and, paying a stand-up comedian to entertain the other passengers, embraces Monaghan in a passionate kiss, something she has clearly been anticipating, just as Farmiga pulls the plug on him, and against all expectations, Gyllenhaal and Monaghan's alternate reality persists.

The commuter train arrives at its destination, and they decide to ditch work for the day and enjoy a long promised coffee together, as Farmiga receives Gyllenhaal's message predicting the thwarting of the bomb attacks and his part in the top secret project on which she is engaged.


The cod-science underpinning the premise of this movie doesn't bear up to even the most cursory examination. But never mind that, what we have is a Groundhog Day (1993) for geeks, science fantasy romance, that plays to all of Gyllenhaal's guy out of his depth trying to solve complicated puzzle and catch the bad guy while sweeping the princess in peril off her feet strengths, even winning the heart of his let's keep this professional operator. Once again, Duncan Jones demonstrates a talent for successfully balancing mystery, drama, and emotion, with the occasional flash of humour. There is much to enjoy. Though this might very well prove to be the last good movie he is responsible for, having taken up the poisoned Warcraft chalice. Let's just hope he hasn't drunk too deeply from it. (A whole year after this post was originally penned, and there's still no sign of it. (Apparently the release has been pushed back not to compete with J.J. Abrams's Star Wars! Like that was ever possible :P))

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens

Mean Girls (2004)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENT DESPOTS.)

[Now for a bust of a breakthrough movie for a couple of stars whose careers have since seen wildly divergent fortunes.]

Mean Girls (2004) is an American teen comedy film, directed by Mark Waters, starring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams. The screenplay was written by Tina Fey, who also co-stars.

In the end, high-school queen-bee contender, Lindsay Lohan decides there is more to school life than teen machinations (maybe.)

Recently repatriated to the States after a sheltered upbringing in remote Africa, intelligent but socially naive sixteen year old Lohan is thrown into the deep-end of American teenage life when she attends school for the first time.

Totally unprepared for both the demands of education and teenage (mostly female) social cliques, she is offered a lifeline by a pair of student outcasts, in the form of a map that lays bare the prevailing high school pecking order.

As a result of suffering the unwanted innuendo laden attentions of the boyfriend of its leader, Rachel McAdams, Lohan finds herself unexpectedly welcomed into the circle of girls at the pinnacle of the hierarchy.

Sensing an opportunity for revenge against their principle tormentors, Lohan's outcast friends persuade her to sabotage McAdams's group from within, but in the process Lohan becomes just as superficial and venal as the girls themselves.

However, realizing Lohan's treacherous betrayal, McAdams uses the Hoover-esque dossier she has compiled to frame Lohan as the source of all rumour and scandal against everyone at the school, leading to a complete breakdown in order.

Authority is only restored during an assembly when the plot against the universally derided McAdams is confessed by the students, after which a fleeing and distraught McAdams is run down and almost killed by a school bus.

Atoning for the responsibility she feels, the guilt-ridden Lohan gradually manages to recover her sweet personality and shake off her pariah status.

And after triumphing in an inter-school math competition, is sufficiently rehabilitated to be elected end-of-year dance queen, clearing the way for a new intake of wannabe queen-bees, who she fantasizes will also be hit by a bus.

Much of the comic enjoyment on offer here is, perhaps, more easily appreciated by those, like writer Tina Fey herself, with some age perspective on proceedings. For those still ducking the psychological crossfire raking eleventh grade trenches, Mean Girls can read very much more like its self-help survival guide inspiration. Nevertheless, even if the eventual message is a bit pat, there is more than enough sweet badinage to help the teenage medicine go down.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_Girls

The Tree of Life (2011)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER THE EMPEROR IS NAKED?*)

[Now for a bust of a movie so critically acclaimed, you might even be tempted to watch it for yourself. Just don't say I didn't warn you.]

The Tree of Life (2011) is an American existential narrative film written and directed by Terrence Malick, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain.

In the end, middle-aged grown-up eldest son, Sean Penn, of religiously observant parents, Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, experiences a dream-like, shore-line encounter with the people he knew as a child, one of whom, his younger brother, died aged nineteen.

Scenes depicting the creation of the universe, the formation of the stars and planets, and the emergence and development of life on Earth, are inter-cut with those of a young Christian couple struggling to stay together while raising three sons, confused and frightened by the abuse their loving and compassionate mother, Chastain, suffers at the hands of domineering and disillusioned father, Pitt, in what appears to them to be an arbitrarily cruel world.

This movie is crammed full of symbolism, some of which even I needed Wikipedia's help spotting!

Partly raised and currently resident in Texas (where they like to do things differently) Terrence Malick has spent a career making movies that are more art than entertainment, loved by the critics and loathed by practically everyone else. That he is held in such high regard by those either in the film industry or engaged in reporting on it, probably says more about their desire to demonstrate sophistication and erudition, than it does about Malick's work.

Don't be fooled by the Malick's courtiers, though. The best that can be said for this, and his other movies, is that they look good on the big screen, because he does have an eye for a pretty picture. Or rather, in this case, the people who he got to do his potted histories of creation and evolution special effects have.

When left to his own devices, Malick's tendency is to use unusual camera angles, wide-angle lenses and uncomfortably extreme close-ups to fill the screen with actors or objects he finds interesting. Whether you find them interesting probably depends on whether you enjoy watching other peoples' home-movies, which is exactly what this film feels like, albeit one with Hollywood stars and production values.

What Malick does manage to achieve, though, with a combination of image and sound, is a sense of what it feels like to be alive. Whether you need a film maker to tell you what it feels like to be alive, is another matter.

Wikipedia describe this film as an "experimental drama". I'm not sure whether that's because they don't know what a drama is, or can't spell existential or are just being polite? Whatever, if you approach this movie hoping to be entertained, be prepared for disappointment. Unless, that is, your idea of being entertained is a two hour, twenty minute tour of an art gallery filled with someone else's holiday snaps.

*[The spoiler alert refers to the Hans Christian Andersen tale of The Emperor's New Clothes. You can decide for yourself, if you really want to, but, for me, the Emperor is definitely starkers ;)]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tree_of_Life_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes

Stardust (2007)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER?)

[Busting justice can sometimes seem tough, especially when the innocent line up alongside the guilty.]

Stardust (2007) is a British-American romantic fantasy film directed by Matthew Vaughn, starring Charlie Cox, Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, and Robert De Niro.

In the end, unwitting heir to a magical kingdom, Charlie Cox, lives happily ever after, shining brightly for eternity, next to fallen star, Claire Danes, returned to her home in the night sky, after a long and happy reign together, once she saved both herself and him from dreaded witch, Michelle Pfeiffer, who, along with her two scheming sisters, intended to consume the star's heart for the immortality and supernatural power it would confer on them.

Menial shop boy, Cox, learns how to be a hero from a reputedly blood-thirsty closet cross-dressing captain of a flying lightening trawler, Robert De Niro, and in the process, falls in love with a star knocked from the heavens, Danes, his recovery of which, from within an enchanted realm, contested over by seven princely sibling, he hoped would prove his devotion to a girl he mistakenly thought he loved, eventually discovering he is the only son of the rival princes' long-lost sister and, therefore, rightful heir to the throne.


This perfectly demonstrates the short-comings of busting a movie that represents more than the sum of its parts, as much of the pleasure of the dense and entertaining plot-line is lost, because it involves characters who only affect the eventual outcome indirectly. So the contribution of the excellent ensemble players hardly gets a mention, compared with that of the principals, two of whose casting represented such a colossal miscalculation as to have almost sunk the whole endeavour.

Though convincing as a naive, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed pretty boy, Cox's transformation into a hero and resulting romance with Danes, that lie at the heart of the story, could not have been less convincing.

Even so, his short-comings in that role pale into insignificance, when compared to the un-believability of De Niro as a mincing aesthete.

Rightly renowned for his portrayals of psychopaths, and for the comedy roles in which he sends up such portrayals, he completely fails to sell the role of reluctant pirate, in which he just embarrasses himself and all those around him, required to pretend he is doing a good job.

Fortunately, Pfeiffer, Danes and everyone else do such good work covering for these two, that the result is well worth the price of admission, especially to anyone who enjoys revisionist fairy-tales.

Perhaps George Lucas might be persuaded to work some of his digital-replacement magic on a print?

Fingers crossed ;)

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust_(2007_film)

The Judge (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER PAST DEMONS CAN EVER BE SLAIN?)

[Now for a "never mind the quality, feel the heft" movie bust.]

The Judge (2014) is an American drama film directed by David Dobkin, starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Robert Duvall.

In the end, seemingly invincible hard-ball, conscience-free defence lawyer of the guilty rich, Robert Downey, Jr. is reconciled with his estranged, disapproving, hard-ass small-town provincial judge father, Robert Duvall, after unsuccessfully defending him against a hit-and-run manslaughter charge, which sees Duvall briefly incarcerated, before compassionate parole allows him to die on a fishing trip, in the company of Downey, who Duvall now recognises to be the best lawyer he has ever met.

Returning to his home-town for his mother's funeral, Downey is forced to defend the most uncompliant and self-incriminating client of his career, when his terminally ill father is accused of the murder of a recently released felon he had once shown uncharacteristic leniency to in court, only for the man to then commit brutal murder, immediately on his release.


Of course, there is considerably more detail decorating David Dobkin's A Few Good Men (1992) in Steel Magnolias (1989) clothing (with a dash of Rain Man (1988)) concoction than this plot bust would suggest, no doubt meant to invest characters with the audience. Backers and actors, alike, may have even got a whiff of award potential from the dis-functional family scenario, and the serially re-written script's surfeit of crackling one-liners. But Downey and his spouse's production amounts to little more than daytime television viewing, albeit with a stellar cast. In the end, though, it is Thomas Newman's jauntily incongruous incidental music that sucks the tension out of Dobkin's first dramatic outing, which could have done with a few more good men and a lot less rain magnolias.

[Best line in the movie is delivered by Denis O'Hare: [to Downey] "Wow, it's not just an act. You really are that unpleasant."]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Judge_(2014_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Few_Good_Men
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Magnolias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_Man

'71 (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER A RAW ARMY RECRUIT SURVIVES HIS FIRST DAY OF ACTIVE DEPLOYMENT)

[Another of the number of past-their-sell-by-date busts languishing in this blog's drafts folder, this time of a movie plot that proves you don't need big budgets or trick Hollywood endings to write compelling thrillers.]

'71 (2014) is a British recent history action drama starring Jack O'Connell, Sean Harris, David Wilmot, Richard Dormer and Paul Anderson, directed by Yann Demange.

In the end, rookie private, Jack O'Connell is rescued from the hands of murderous republican gunmen by the British Army unit that accidentally left him behind during a riot on the streets of Belfast.

Fresh out of boot camp, on his first day of deployment on the streets of Belfast, at the height of Northern Ireland's "Troubles", O'Connell finds himself abandoned by his unit, along with another soldier, as they try to recover rifles snatched by a mob of republican sympathisers during a street riot following an arrest operation that quickly escalated out of control.

O'Connell takes flight when the soldier with him is shot in the face at point blank range by a pair of gunmen who appear out of the crowd.

Chased through the back streets and alleys, O'Connell eventually gives his pursuers the slip by sheltering in a little used outhouse.

Returning to the body of the dead soldier, the gunmen are rebuked by republican king-pin, David Wilmot, for carrying out the shooting. Despite this, and against Wilmot's specific instructions, their dissident gang leader (Killian Scott), decides they should continue to hunt O'Connell.

Under cover of darkness, O'Connell ventures out, covering his uniform with a knitted pullover, stolen from a washing line.

Lost in the unfamiliar streets, O'Connell runs into a young masked loyalist petrol bomber, but is initially reluctant to accept the boy's offer to lead him back to his barracks.

On the way, though, the boy and O'Connell call at a loyalist bar, interrupting a British Military Intelligence officer, Paul Anderson, as he briefs a pair of would-be loyalist bombers.

Telling O'Connell to wait for him at the bar, Anderson leaves to consult with his senior colleague, Sean Harris, waiting in a nearby car.

But, before Anderson has a chance to return for O'Connell, the bar is blown to bits by the hapless bombers, O'Connell only surviving after momentarily stepping outside to see where Anderson had disappeared to.

Dazed and confused, the injured O'Connell staggers through the streets, before collapsing against a wall, in which state he is found by a young woman and her father, Richard Dormer.

Mistaking him for an injured republican, Dormer carries O'Connell to the flat he shares with his daughter in a republican stronghold, where, realising their perilous error, the pair patch up O'Connell's wound, before Dormer seeks help from Wilmot in smuggling him to safety.

The bombing of the loyalist bar, however, has only intensified the factional struggle between Wilmot and the dissident leader, each of whom blames the other for the attack, leading both to decide that the other must die. And when Wilmot visits Dormer's home to see O'Connell for himself, he unwittingly leads the dissidents to the location of their quary.

Spooked, after Wilmot leaves, by an overheard argument between Dormer and his daughter, O'Connell slips out, unseen, only just before the dissident republicans force their way into the flat and demand to know what business Wilmot has there.

With a gun pointed at the head of her father, Dormer's daughter breaks down, revealing that Wilmot was there to help return O'Connell to his unit. But finding O'Connell gone, the dissidents decide to search the vicinity, leaving a single gunman behind to watch Dormer and his daughter while waiting for Wilmot's return.

Having struck a deal to help Harris and Anderson recover O'Connell in exchange for their murdering the dissident who has been challenging his authority, Wimlot leads the Intelligence officers and a contingent of soldiers from O'Connell's unit, to Dormer's flat, where they shoot their way past the waiting gunman, only to find O'Connell gone. But Wilmot claims that if the dissidents have O'Connell, he knows where they will have taken him.

The dissidents have indeed captured O'Connell, despite him killing one of his pursuers, the murderer of the soldier earlier that day, and take him to a nearby derelict bar, where the leader urges a teenager who had failed to shoot the cornered O'Connell during the original pursuit, to execute their unarmed captive.

Again the boy hesitates, giving Wilmot enough time to lead the British soldiers to the bar, which they storm, allowing Anderson to shoot the teen while Harris goes after the fleeing dissident leader.

Harris then betrays Wilmot by revealing the deal he made for the dissident leader's murder, before allowing him to escape in return for the dissidents dispatching Wilmot on behalf of the British.

And in a second betrayal, having saved O'Connell from execution, Anderson then attempts to strangle him, before he himself is shot by the teenager, who Anderson failed to finish off, only for the teenager to be then shot by O'Connell's squad leader, who happened upon Anderson as he attempted to finish off O'Connell.

An invalided O'Connell is discharged from the army under a cloud, after his senior commanding officer dismisses his and his squad leader's accusations against Anderson.

Disillusioned, O'Connell returns to the mainland to collect a young boy he refers to as "our Darren" from a secure children's home, he himself had spent time in.

The pair are seen riding off into the sunset on a coach.


Despite a plot that includes a few too many improbable coincidences, with his first big-screen feature outing, Demange manages a white-knuckle ride of tension and emotion, that grabs its audience from the get-go (right up until the somewhat laboured and slightly corny ending) and puts recent American offerings, in the same genre, with ten times the budget, to shame. (Indeed, since this bust was first penned, O'Connell has gone on to star as the lead in one such production, to much less effect.) Look and learn, Hollywood. Look and learn.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'71_(film)

Gone Girl (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT AND WHETHER THEY GET AWAY WITH IT.)

[There are still a few more much delayed busts from my time-capsule yet to be posted. Here, at least, is one of more recent ones; an example of a thriller that starts with a bang, only to end with a whimper.]

Gone Girl (2014) is an American mystery thriller film directed by David Fincher, starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, and Carrie Coon, adapted for the screen by author Gillian Flynn from her 2012 novel of the same name.

In the end, cheating husband Ben Affleck is trapped in a loveless marriage to his controlling, murderer wife, Rosamund Pike, for the sake of the unborn child she claims to be carrying for him.

On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, after downing some liquid courage at the bar he runs with his twin sister, Carrie Coon, in the Missouran town of their birth, Affleck returns home to find his wife, Pike, from whom he intends to seek a divorce, missing and their living-room in disarray.

Summoning the police, Affleck's cool and at times glib demeanour soon raises suspicions in the investigating detective, who orders a full forensic search of the property, which uncovers an increasing amount of circumstantial evidence that suggests Affleck may know more about his wife's disappearance than he claims.

The inspiration for a universally loved children's literature block-buster creation of Pike's author parents, it's not long before the media-savvy pair has the whole community involved in the search for their missing daughter, the story being picked up by tabloid television reporters, who have Affleck tried and convicted in the public eye, even before the luminol sweeps for blood in the couple's kitchen have had a chance to dry.

Most damning for Affleck is a diary discovered by the investigating detective while following a series of clues, part of an anniversary treasure hunt tradition of Pike's, in which she documents the gradual decline of their relationship from its fairytale romance beginnings, through disappointment, doubt, distrust and even fear, on Pike's part. And when Coon discovers her brother ushering a strange young woman out of her home, that he is obviously involved with and who has spent the night there with him, even she begins to doubt her brother.

Worse still, when a claim emerges that the missing Pike was pregnant when she disappeared, the candle-lit vigil held to publicise the search for her turns on Affleck, forcing him to bolt for the cover of a police squad car.

Not until Affleck solves the final treasure hunt clue that leads him and his sister to an incriminating cache of up-market purchases he is supposed to have run up huge credit debts buying, hidden on her property, along with a taunting note and Punch and Judy toy from Pike, does Coon realise it is her brother who is the victim of Pike and not the other way round.

In reality, Pike's diary is mostly fiction, part of an elaborate revenge plot after Affleck's infidelity, designed to put him on death row. However, the scheme falls apart when Pike is robbed of the large amount of cash she is carrying while on the run, the final part of her plan to stage her own murder.

Broke and desperate, Pike turns to super-wealthy former Ivy League suitor, Neil Patrick Harris, who is delighted to take her back and use his huge fortune to save her from her, as she says, abusive husband.

Daunted by the case his wife has fabricated against him, Affleck seeks the help of notorious wife-murder defence attorney, Tyler Perry, who, while admiring Pike's Machiavellian brilliance, cannot resist the challenge of representing someone in such a tight spot as Affleck.

Perry's advice is that he should immediately confess his marital sins on national television, and throw himself on the mercy of the court of public opinion.

Watching Affleck's contritious chat show performance, while safely tucked away in Patrick Harris's remote and luxurious cabin in the woods, Pike convinces herself that, having learnt his lesson, Affleck is at last ready to become the perfect husband she always hoped she could transform him into. Unfortunately for Patrick Harris, who is keen for Pike to reveal her survival, he now forms the means by which Pike intends to return from the dead.

After secretly brutalising herself and staging a one woman show of supposed incarceration for the benefit of the cabin's security cameras, Pike completes her framing of Patrick Harris for her abduction by murdering him with a box cutter, before "escaping" in blood soaked lingerie, for a dramatic re-union with her husband, broadcast live by the national news channels camped out on their front lawn.

So relieved is the public by Pike's miraculous return, that not even the F.B.I. question the inconsistencies in her story that seem obvious to Affleck, Coon, Perry and the investigating detective who (for no apparent reason) has (conveniently for Pike) been taken off the case. And despite Affleck's adamant misgivings, Pike still manages to persuade him to continue with their marriage, on account of some fertility treatment chicanery that she has managed to pull off, while all this was going on.

Or, perhaps more briefly...

Psychopath wife frames husband and murders ex-boyfriend to save marriage and gets away with it.


Fincher has such an enviable reputation for producing edge of the seat rides that it is hard to imagine him ever putting a foot wrong on the big-screen thrill-o-meter. Sadly, with Gone Girl, we no longer have to imagine.

Not that there isn't much to admire and enjoy in the first act mystery scene setter, which is 24 caret Fincher, worthy of the film's promotional references to his classic Seven (1995).

Neither can the blame be laid at the feet of his excellent cast, who do their very best as the plot shifts gear into second act soap opera, then slides, unbelievably, into pantomime farce (even the characters laugh at the implausibility of the plot, at times) for the final third of a movie that, despite being a whole hour longer than most Hollywood fare, seems in a rush to wrap things up before anyone notices the sink-holes appearing in its plot.

Only the under-used and under-rated Patrick Harris, who seems to have drawn the short-straw of portraying the one-dimensional rabbit required by the story to be pulled out of its get-out-of-jail-free trick ending hat, struggles to breath believability into his character.

So disappointed was the audience at the screening I attended that there was a collective groan of resignation when the closing scene played. It's the exact same scene that opens the movie. Only our perspective is supposed to have changed, based on what we've learned.

All I learned was that even the considerable talents of Fincher cannot fashion a silk purse movie out of a sow's ear script. To misquote a famously misquoted quote "the fault, Brutus, lies not in our stars. But in our author."

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_Girl_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_(1995_film)

Spectre (2015)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER THERE'S STILL LIFE IN THE OLD DOG, YET or IF HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A STEP-SIBLING SCORNED)

[It's been a while, but here's a bust fresh off the digital projection presses.]

Spectre (2015) stars Daniel Craig and Christoph Waltz, and is director Sam Mendes second contribution to the long-running British espionage action movie franchise.

In the end, licensed-to-kill super-spy Daniel Craig spares the life of cornered step-sibling rival and global super-villain Christoph Waltz, before driving off into the sunset with Lea Seydoux, the daughter of a deceased former enemy assassin.

Following secret instructions from his late former boss, Craig causes an international incident at the height of Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico City, while tracking down and spectacularly murdering a notorious Italian criminal plotting a terrorist outrage.

Suspended from duty on his return to London, Craig nevertheless persists with his secret mission, clandestinely travelling to Rome in order to seduce his victim's widow into revealing the location of the latest assembly of the criminal network for which her husband worked.

Using the man's stolen signet ring to gain access to the gathering, Craig witnesses the murderous induction of his victim's replacement, before being exposed by the organisation's head, Christoph Waltz, the grown up son of Craig's childhood guardians, who Craig thought had perished as a youth with his adoptive father.

Craig is chased from the building by the new chief henchman, racing through the streets of Rome, before being forced to crash the one-of-a-kind Aston Martin super-car, stolen from his MI6 quartermaster, into the Tiber.

Piecing together clues, with the unofficial help of his new boss's secretary, Craig tracks down a former adversary, holed up in an isolated alpine lodge, who confirms, on the brink of death, the existence of the overarching organisation of which he was a part, before being poisoned for leaving their criminal employ.

Seeking further clues, Craig inadvertently leads the organisation's henchmen to the man's daughter, Lea Seydoux, and is obliged to rescue her from them, after making a death-bed promise to her father.

Sceptical of his ability to keep her safe, Seydoux is eventually convinced to take Craig to a north African hotel, long frequented by her parents, where, after interrogating a local rat or unclear allegiance, he uncovers a hidden cache of intelligence that points to an unmarked destination deep in the desert.

As the pair travel by train towards the mystery location, Seydoux demonstrates some of her father's skills, helping Craig dispatch the surviving chief henchman, who has caught them up. Their shared exertions lead to a passionate encounter.

Despite alighting unannounced at an abandoned train stop in the middle of nowhere, the couple are collected and chauffeur driven to Waltz's soon-to-be operational global surveillance hub contained in an ancient meteor crater.

Jealous of the attention shown the adopted Craig, Waltz admits responsibility for his own father's death and reveals his ambition for revenge, proceeding to torture Craig in front of Seydoux. But with the help of an exploding wristwatch, the pair escape and destroy the facility.

Returning to London, Craig is in the process of uncovering Waltz's inside man, the head of a new joint intelligence body that has subsumed Craig's new boss's responsibilities, when he is abducted and delivered to the derelict former MI6 Thames-side headquarters.

There, a now badly scared Waltz presents him with a stark choice of saving either himself or Seydoux from the building's demolition explosion which he is about to trigger.

Searching desperately, while Waltz departs by helicopter, Craig only manages to find and flee with Seydoux in the nick of time, while his boss confronts the traitor, who is killed by a fall, after a struggle.

Firing wildly with his revolver as the couple make chase by boat along the river, Craig damages the helicopter's engines, forcing it to crash-land on Westminster Bridge, where Craig, Seydoux and the authorities catch up with an even more badly injured Waltz, who now wants to be known by a name derived from his maternal bloodline.


If Spectre doesn't quite match the achievement of its immediate predecessor, then perhaps that is to be expected from what could only be described as Bond's Greatest Hits: Volume 2. Even so, Mendes second offering stands head and shoulders above all but his first. Maybe if he gets the chance to do a third there'll be a villain motivated by something other than personal revenge :P

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(2015_film)

Annabelle (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DIES IN THE END)

[Pretty sure this was meant to be a Halloween hit, but Good Lord! I have no idea how I managed to only laugh once during the screening of this movie!]

Annabelle (2014) is an American supernatural horror film starring Annabelle Wallis, Ward Horton, Tony Amendola and Alfre Woodard, directed by John R. Leonetti.

In the end, the life and soul of new mother Annabelle Wallis, is saved by the sacrifice of guilt laden, recent acquaintance Alfre Woodard's.

Woken in the night by a blood-curdling scream from their neighbour friends' home, mother-to-be, Wallis rouses her almost qualified doctor husband, Ward Horton, who decides they should investigate themselves, before troubling the police.

Letting himself in through their front door, Horton emerges moments later, soaked in blood, insisting his wife call an ambulance from the safety of their own home, which she does, only to be confronted by a pair of knife wielding, white-robed occultists, one of whom stabs Wallis in the side, before he is shot dead by police who arrive on the scene. The other locking herself in the couples' nursery, where she commits suicide, while holding Wallis's prized doll, a recent present from Horton.

Lucky not to lose her unborn baby, Wallis returns home, demanding that Horton dispose of her prized doll, the last reminder of their recent ordeal, which he does. Strangely, though, since the incident, appliances in the couples' home start operating of their own accord, eventually leading to a house fire, while Horton is briefly absent, from which Wallis is fortunate to be rescued.

The trauma causes Wallis to give birth to a baby daughter and convinces the couple that they must relocate.

Moving into an apartment with unusually noisy upstairs neighbours, the pair are surprised when the doll Horton had thrown in the trash turns up in the last of their moving cartons, and which Wallis now decides she should keep following their pastor, Tony Amendola's advice that embracing their recent trials will only make their marriage stronger.

Unfortunately, the couples' home appliances continue to malfunction, with Wallis experiencing several unexplainable and nerve shredding incidents, including the ghostly apparition of the woman who killed herself in their home, the daughter of their murdered neighbours, who, according to police, had returned to her home to perform some sort of sacrificial summoning ritual with her satanic cult boyfriend, and a terrifying encounter with a black horned demon in the darkened basement of their apartment building, that makes a grab for Wallis's arm, leaving a short-lived scar that resembles a symbol daubed in blood on the wall beside the suicide woman's body.

Convinced that the doll is the cause, they seek more advice from Amendola, who suggests it is being used to steal souls, and agrees to take it to church, where its influence might be attenuated. But, after also seeing the ghostly apparition of the suicide woman on the steps of his church, Amendola, doll in hand, is brutally flung to the ground by some unseen force.

Relieved to have been relieved of the doll, Wallis welcomes Woodard, who has taken a special interest in her and her daughter since Wallis showed up at her book-store looking for information on the occult, into their apartment, just as Amendola recovers conciousness in hospital, in time to warn Horton, who is at his bedside, that the doll is missing and that Wallis, and not their baby's soul, is in danger.

Unable to warn his wife over the malfunctioning phone, Horton rushes home.

But before he arrives, Willis becomes hysterical when she answers the door to a weirdly demonic Amendola and then finds her daughter missing.

Woodard desperately tries to convince Wallis to leave without her daughter, just as the noises from upstairs reach a crescendo, and the black horned demon Wallis encountered in the basement materialises in her hallway, flinging Woodard out of the apartment.

Trapped alone and frantic, Wallis demands to know what the demon wants in exchange for her daughter?

Realising that it is her soul it wants, she picks up the doll and prepares to throw herself out of the window, just as Horton bursts in with Woodard.

Hauling Wallis back into the room, Horton pleads with her not to kill herself for the sake of their baby, until Woodard decides that she can assuage the guilt she feels for her own daughter's death due to her falling asleep at the wheel, by offering her own soul in exchange for the couple's child.

Grabbing the doll, Woodard launches herself out of the window, falling to her death. And the couple's child duly re-materialises in its cot.

The doll is next seen being bought from a shop by a mother for her nurse daughter whose unnerving experiences with it provide the creepy prologue to Wallis and Horton's story.

Finally the doll is seen displayed in a locked glass cabinet, with a warning never to open it.


[Annabelle is the name of the murdered neighbours' suicide daughter.]

It goes without saying that audiences are expected to slip their critical faculties into neutral, in order to accept that characters in these situations are never going to act in a remotely reasonable, realistic or even consistent manner. But even so, the ridiculousness of this story is hard to ignore. Which is not to say that the players don't do their best with the material they are given. And the makers do provide just about enough dread, menace and jolts to keep the average fright-knight and panic-princess happy. So if you're the type who enjoys the thrill of the haunted house roller-coaster, without requiring it to make much sense, then hop aboard. This spin-off prequel is bound to be the start of another franchise.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annabelle_(film)

The Butterfly Effect (2004)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER TIME-TRAVEL CAN BE USED TO CORRECT THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST?)

['Tis the season to be busy, so here's another bust from the archives, of a film that is a perfect example of Hollywood's willingness to misinterpret the meaning of scientific terms* in the cause of a good movie title.]

The Butterfly Effect (2004) is an American science fiction thriller romance film written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart.

In the end, history-altering, time-travelling teenager, Ashton Kutcher, decides to forsake the love of his life, Amy Smart, for the greater good, by sabotaging their first meeting.

While reading a passage from his childhood journals to a curious date, undergraduate psychology student Kutcher experiences a fit during which he finds himself reliving an episode from his past, filling in one of many previously missing parts of his memory, when Smart's viciously bullying brother burned Kutcher's pet dog to death, tied up in a sack.

The details of Kutcher's recovered memory are confirmed by a childhood friend who witnessed the incident, which prompts Kutcher to deliberately revisit another episode from his past, the details of which he has until now been unable to recall, where his friend was traumatised after being bullied by Smart's brother into placing a lit explosive in a mailbox, the explosion from which kills a mother and baby.

In an attempt to get to the bottom of another lost memory, Kutcher visits Smart who he has not seen since he and his mother moved away following the accident with the explosive. Tragically, Kutcher's visit proves so upsetting for Smart that she kills herself.

Hoping to save Smart from the memory he hoped she might help him recall, that eventually drove her to suicide, Kutcher revisits another blanked episode when Smart's abusive, paedophile father manipulated the 7 year old Kutcher and Smart into making an obscene video. Kutcher uses the threat of Smart's future suicide to terrify her father into leaving her alone and doing something to control her bullying brother.

Kutcher's intervention has a significant impact on the present, where he and Smart, no longer an insecure waitress but also a college undergraduate, are now a happy couple. However, their life together is destroyed when Smart's brother, further brutalised by the discipline Kutcher encouraged his father to inflict, attacks Kutcher in a jealous rage, and is killed in the ensuing struggle, sending Kutcher to jail, where he finds himself surrounded by even more brutality.

Intending to save Smart's brother from a life of violence and therefore himself from eventual jail, Kutcher revisits the incident involving his dog's death.

Claiming that he can atone for the death of the mother and child his friend was responsible for, by helping Kutcher free his dog from the sack, Kutcher presses a shard of scrap metal into his friend's hand. However, instead of freeing the dog, Kutcher's friend uses the shard to stab Smart's bullying brother to death.

So although Kutcher avoids jail, he finds his friend committed to an insane asylum and the equally traumatised Smart has run away from home, descending into a life of drug addicted prostitution.

Determined to set things straight, Kutcher returns to the mailbox incident preventing the deaths that lead to his friend's murder of Smart's brother. As a result, his friend and Smart become a happy student couple, and Smart's brother himself turns into a committed christian do-gooder. But, in doing so, not only loses both arms in the explosion, but also leads to his mother's development of terminal lung cancer from the chain smoking she resorts to as a result of his injuries.

Desperate to save his mother, Kutcher returns in time to destroy the explosive kept by Smart's father in the basement of their home, only for it to accidentally kill the 7 year old Smart, sending the traumatised Kutcher to the insane asylum for life, before he has a chance to begin writing his journals that allow him to undertake his trips into the past.

Kutcher's only remaining hope lies in some home movie footage he persuades his mother to bring him to watch in the asylum, which he uses to revisit the first time he met Smart and her family.

Instead of making friends with her when they are introduced, his is rude and threatening, so that when her parents separate, she and her brother choose to live with their mother, and never become involved with Kutcher or his friend. At which point Kutcher decides to destroy all materials that he could use to trigger any further trips into his past.

Many years later Kutcher has a chance encounter with the grown up and successful looking Smart who he passes on a crowded city street. She only seems to show a vague recognition of the grown up Kutcher, who decides not to introduce himself, and walk on by.


The Butterfly Effect is another example of a movie that almost defies busting, because of the convoluted way in which its plot unfolds. It isn't until the very end of the movie that the full story can be appreciated. Indeed, in this case, the final reveal is so understated that it might go unnoticed.

It sounds obvious to say that you really need to watch the whole movie to know what it's about. But too often, the arc of a story can be divined almost from its opening scenes. One that manages to keep you guessing right up to the final credits is a rare treat, and should be savoured.

*[The title of the movie refers to the metaphorical butterfly effect, a popular principle in chaos theory which states that in any dynamic system, small initial differences may over time lead to large unforeseen consequences. However, the changes that are effected by Kutcher's character in the story are neither small nor insignificant.

The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and "what if" cases where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes.

However, more accurately, what the trope represents and the movie portrays is the cascade effect where an unforeseen chain of events occurs, due to an act affecting a system.

Of course, "the cascade effect" doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "the butterfly effect" does ;)]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butterfly_Effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_effect

The Drop (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF IT'S ALWAYS THE QUIET ONES YOU NEED TO KEEP AN EYE ON?)

[Now for a bust of a movie that is all about performance, set in a world that seems strangely out of time.]

The Drop (2014) is an American crime drama film directed by Michaël R. Roskam, starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini, Matthias Schoenaerts, and John Ortiz.

In the end, socially reserved barman Tom Hardy saves neighbour Noomi Rapace from her psychologically disturbed, abusive former boyfriend, Matthias Schoenaerts, by murdering him as he attempts to hold-up his workplace, at the secret behest of the bar's manager, James Gandolfini, Hardy's uncle.

No longer able to afford his comatose father's spiralling healthcare costs, Gandolfini, a former small-time hoodlum, hatches a plot to rob his Chechen mob bosses by successively holding up the bar he lost to them, which he now runs with his nephew Hardy, and which is occasionally used to bank the daily proceeds of the mobsters' criminal activities.

Following the initial robbery, frustrated that Hardy has revealed a detail helpful to investigating police detective John Ortiz in identifying one of Gandolfini's secret accomplices, their mob bosses make it clear that the pair are expected to recover the stolen contents of the bar's cash register, provoking Gandolfini to murder, so as to leave the incriminating body part with the stolen loot for Hardy to find and return to the Chechens, who, in recognition, designate the bar for all deposits during the imminent Super-Bowl.

Knowing the night of the big take, but having murdered his sole remaining accomplice, who got cold feet following his incriminated partner's disappearance, Gandolfini recruits local thug, Schoenaerts, who has been intimidating Hardy since discovering the badly injured puppy he abused and left in his ex-girlfriend's trash, has been being cared for by Hardy, with her help.

Suspicious of Gandolfini calling in sick on such a profitable night for the bar, and confused by Schoenaerts' earlier failure to collect protection money he had demanded from him for the puppy, Hardy's nerves are set on edge when Schoenaerts shows up at the bar with a reluctant Rapace in tow and little interest in the cash Hardy has brought with him.

Unmoved by Schoenaerts' threatening demands, once the bar empties, that he should open the drop safe, Hardy calmly confesses that he is responsible for the local murder Schoenaerts had built his tough guy reputation on, and promptly shoots him in the same manner, calling in his Chechen bosses for help disposing of the evidence, who subsequently offer Hardy the job of running the bar, having executed Gandolfini.

Withholding her presence in the bar, as a witness, from both the Chechens and Ortiz, whose attention is now focused on Hardy for both the disappearance of Schoenaerts and the murder he claimed to have committed but which Ortiz knows him to be innocent of, Hardy approaches Rapace in the hope of continuing their friendship.


Despite wonderful performances from everyone on screen, save for the Chechen clichés, there's something that just doesn't quite ring true about this rather slight story that seems to hale from a bygone era of crime, involving plot twists that were far too easily divined, featuring yet another character that stretches the high functioning autistic envelope to include criminals that enjoy perfect recall but have a hard time relating to other people.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drop_(film)

The Skeleton Twins (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER SUICIDE IS EVER THE SOLUTION?)

[Now for a bust of a movie that is pure drama despite some comic moments.]

The Skeleton Twins (2014) is an American drama film directed by Craig Johnson, starring Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader and Luke Wilson.

In the end, suicidally depressed serial cheating wife Kristen Wiig is saved from drowning herself by her suicidally depressed gay, child abuse victim, twin brother, Bill Hader.

Interrupted in the midst of her own suicide attempt by the news that her brother is in hospital recovering from his own failed suicide attempt, Wiig flies to Los Angeles and is persuaded to offer him a place to stay in her home in the New York neighbourhood where they grew up.

Meeting his exceedingly friendly and helpful brother-in-law, Luke Wilson, for the first time, Hader is surprised to learn that the couple are trying for a baby, something Wiig was adamantly against in her youth, a fact that she is annoyed to be reminded of by her brother in front of Wilson.

Hader further antagonises his sister when he unilaterally invites their estranged, New Age spiritualist mother to supper, over which old wounds are reopened, when Wiig accuses her of abandoning them for her new interracial family, following the suicide of their father.

Attempting to appease his sister by allowing her to demonstrate her skills as a dental hygienist, out of hours, at the practice where she works, the pair, high on laughing gas, swap secrets, Hader admitting he has experienced heterosexual sex, while Wiig reveals that not only is she sabotaging Wilson's attempts to start a family, but she is cheating on him with her scuba class instructor, the third such liaison she has embarked upon since they were married.

However, when the police find Hader drunk on the edge of a roof top, he keeps secret from Wiig the fact that he has hooked up with and then been rejected by an initially wary English teacher who has married and had a son since being forced to give up his post, as a result of Wiig uncovering his abuse of her brother as a teen, instead blaming his reckless behaviour on disappointment at not having succeeded since leaving school, as their father had assured him he would.

But when Wiig accidentally discovers, during Halloween celebrations, that Hader has been in contact with the abuser she tried to save him from, the siblings mutual support breaks down completely, Hader only making matters worse by cluing Wilson in on Wiig's birth-control subterfuge, leading to her confession of infidelity, that, despite having dumped her lover, ends in the breakup of her marriage.

The emotional confrontation between Wiig and her brother where each blames the other for ruining their chances of a happy life, prompts Hader to seek an explanation of what his abuse meant to his abuser, that finally confirms Wiig was correct in her estimation of events.

With her marriage over, and without the support of her brother, Wiig decides to finally act on her suicidal tendencies, that Hader only recognises in time to save her from, when she sends him a message reminiscent of his own original suicide note.


Despite remarkably convincing performances from both Hader and Wiig that perfectly capture the love-hate nature of sibling relationships and in particular the special bond that can exist between twins, it is hard to know what to take away from this unremittingly grim tale of despair and disappointment, other that the fact that if you're serious about committing suicide, you need to be a bit more secretive about it than either of these two characters manage.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeleton_Twins

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER GOOD TRIUMPHS OVER EVIL)

[There are some movie plot-lines that were just made to be ultra-busted. This franchise reboot is one such.]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) is an American science fiction action comedy film, directed by Jonathan Liebesman, starring Megan Fox and William Fichtner.

In the end, four teenage anthropomorphic turtles, named after Renaissance artists, who were trained by their anthropomorphic rat sensei in the art of ninjutsu, save junior television news reporter, Megan Fox, and the rest of New York, from the evil machinations of a villainous ninjutsu master crime boss and his wealthy industrialist adopted son, William Fichtner.

"Cowabunga!"


Of course, there is a bit more than that to this movie, which is equal parts ludicrous exposition and barnstorming CGI effects action. Unfortunately, the immediate jeopardy evil plot-line is completely overshadowed by the heroes' preposterous origins story, reducing it to more of a curtain-raiser for the inevitable sequels, to come. But what saves Liebesman's creation is the genuinely laugh-out-loud humour of the characters and situations, that is in perfect keeping with the franchise's parody conception, and is bound to appeal to kids of all ages, and a fair few adults, too.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_(2014_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles

Fast Romance (2011)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHETHER GLASGOW IS A PLACE TO GO SPEED DATING?)

If you thought what I said about Keira Knightley's performance in Say When (2014) was unnecessarily cruel, then I am ashamed to say that I may be about to out-do myself, as this is very possibly the nastiest bust I have ever penned.

So buckle up, reader, and prepare for things to get messy, and that right soon.

[Now for a bust of a movie that, if you haven't seen yet, you're unlikely ever to. In which case, count yourself lucky.

Some might say that criticising a movie produced on a shoestring is unfair, because, by all accounts, this team employed the Bowfinger model of movie making*. Unfortunately, the movie they ended up with is no Chubby Rain.

Supposedly, it won some sort of audience award. But if that is true, I can only think that the audience must have been packed with the friends and relatives of those involved with its production. Either that or there were no other films in contention.]

Fast Romance (2011) is a Scottish romantic comedy film starring nobody you are ever likely to have heard of and directed by someone even less famous than that.

In the end, a disparate group of Glaswegians either do or don't make some sort of connection following a series of speed dating encounters.

(At this point, there would normally be a slightly more detailed account of the plot. But in this case, the less said, the better. Here, though, is an idea of the characters prepared to undertake an evening of 3 minute chances on love, in this woefully unfunny and unromantic tale. A pair of incurable romantics. One a terminally single Scots-Italian woman who seems unaware that Romeo and Juliet was set in Italy. The other a down trodden wall-flower, eclipsed by the obvious charms of her scheming office rival. Their soon to be married best friend, only there to provide moral support. A predatory con-man looking to fleece the solvent, desperately seeking someones off their feet. A tongue-tied postman computer-gamer, too shy to reveal his true feelings for the woman he daily delivers mail to. His unhappily divorced boss, seeking respite from his care-giving responsibilities at home. Sounds grim, doesn't it? You have no idea.)


I've seen internet reviews of this film that describe it as a "little gem" and rate it 9/10. Let me put the record straight.

Fast Romance is a movie made by people who clearly know movies, but who seem to have no idea how to make them. It is littered with film references, in particular, to, arguably the best movie ever made in Scotland, Bill Forsyth's coming-of-age comedy, Gregory's Girl (1981). But where Forsyth's story was simple and charming, Fast Romance is confused and charmless. And whereas Forsyth managed to coax natural performances out of a largely young and inexperienced cast, the acting in Fast Romance is mostly stilted and amateur, from grown-ups who seem more suited to pantomime gurning than big-screen exposure.

What acting talent there is, is poorly served by a script so lame that, had it been a horse, it would surly have been put out of its misery, well before a single frame was shot.

Fast Romance tells us nothing about love, life or romance in Glasgow. So if you're hoping to find any of that, perhaps you'd be better to look for it elsewhere.

*["Cash, every movie cost[s] $2,184", Robert K Bowfinger.]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowfinger
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1504385/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory's_Girl

Say When (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW AT WHAT POINT TO INDICATE YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS MOVIE?)

[The above spoiler alert joke only really works for the UK title of this movie.]

Laggies (2014) (released in the United Kingdom as Say When) is an American romantic comedy film directed by Lynn Shelton, starring Keira Knightley, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Sam Rockwell.

"When!"

In the end, twenty-something, perpetual woman-child Keira Knightley ditches her clique of high-school friends, that includes her would-be fiancée, for middle-aged, divorced divorce lawyer, Sam Rockwell, father of high-school graduating, teenage, only-daughter, random acquaintance, Chloë Grace Moretz.

Unwilling to engage with adult responsibilities gradually being adopted by friends from high-school she finds increasingly hard to relate to, Knightley, horrified when her long-time boyfriend attempts to propose marriage during her best friend's wedding banquet, finds an excuse to excuse herself from proceedings, after discovering her ever-supportive father engaged in intimate relations with someone other than her mother, his wife.

Buttonholed on her way into a late-night convenience store, Knightley finds herself relating to high-school senior Moretz and her group of under-age friends, with whom she forms and instant bond, spending the rest of the night in their company, after agreeing to buy alcohol on their behalf.

Unperturbed by his earlier failure, Knightley's boyfriend persists with his proposal of marriage, which she accepts, after he, misconstruing her reticence as an aversion to elaborate celebrations, offers immediate secret elopement as the solution to her nerves.

But when her boyfriend then suggests they wait until after Knightley's friend's honeymoon departure, playing for time, Knightley proposes a further delay so that she can attend a personal growth seminar recommended by him, that she has long resisted.

However, she never makes it to the seminar, when Moretz, asking Knightley to impersonate her absent mother, enlists her help in placating a school guidance councillor who is concerned over Moretz lack of preparedness for her impending graduation.

Now doubly indebted to her, Moretz is persuaded to offer Knightley somewhere to stay, on the pretext of being between accommodations, but is discovered, on the first night, sleeping on Moretz's bedroom floor, by her father, Sam Rockwell, who questions her closely, before deciding to put her up in the spare room, for the night.

Unsure of her motives, Rockwell decides to work from home, the next day, in order to keep an eye on Knightley, whose playful antics with the family's pet tortoise, and sympathetic attitude towards Moretz gradually win him over.

The friendship between Knightley and his daughter is further cemented when Moretz, bunking off school, has Knightley accompany her on a clandestine trip to visit her estranged mother, a self-obsessed lingerie catalogue model, who ran out on Rockwell and her daughter when she realised she had little idea of how to be a good parent.

Aware of his daughter's growing attachment to Knightley, Rockwell steals her away from a sleepover Moretz is having with one of her friends, for shots at a nearby restaurant bar, just as it is closing.

Dis-inhibited by the alcohol, the pair engage in a passionate kiss on their way home, and end up secretly spending the night together, only for Moretz to spy them canoodling in the kitchen, the next morning.

Initially uncomfortable with the idea, Moretz eventually accepts that Knightley might be her father's best shot at happiness, following his marriage break-up, until she uncovers the truth behind Knightley's sojourn, during a trip with her friends to arrange formal-wear for their upcoming graduation dance.

The revelation leads to a chain reaction of heated exchanges between the group during the ride home, resulting in an accident which lands Knightley in jail, after she decides to take the fall for the young driver who was drunk at the wheel, and is herself discovered to be under the influence, having accepted a hair-of-the-dog hangover remedy from Rockwell, that morning.

Assigned his legal services, Knightley destroys any hope of a relationship with Rockwell, by confessing her impending nuptials, before he reveals she is to be discharged with a warning.

Returning to her boyfriend, Knightley is surprised when Moretz's sleepover friend shows up with the evening dress she bought and an invitation to the dance, saying that Moretz is missing her council.

Determined to go through with their secret elopement, after having come to terms with her father's momentary lapse and recognised her parents' commitment to work things out as a couple, it isn't until her boyfriend fails to resist involving their clique of friends in arrangements, that Knightley realises she has to break up with him in order to get away from them.

So after advising Moretz, at the dance, to take a chance on the guy she has so far been unwilling to commit herself to, Knightley sets about winning back Rockwell, which she does with a carton of wine, and a high-school style love note.


Once again Knightley impresses with her ability to secure leading roles that far exceed her acting talents. This is not the first time she has been mistaken by a casting director for some kind of female Hugh Grant, which is fantastic news for Grant, who is made to look very good in comparison.

Her awkwardness in the role is not helped by being out-acted by every other cast member, including the bit-players, (I was going to include the tortoise in that comparison, but realised that would be unfair... to the tortoise, lacking theatrical training, and only a wrangler to rely on for direction) none of whom are well served by a script that gives the impression of having been spit-balled together by a gaggle of the kind of women found endlessly discussing female issues on day-time television, or possibly their daughters, which is a great shame, because Rockwell and Moretz really shine, despite the stultifying presence of "Coco Mademoiselle".

In fact, I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to watch Rockwell and Moretz.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what Laggies requires.

If, like me, you're wondering what the movie's title means, neither Urban Dictionary, nor Lynn Shelton are much help on the matter. The most the movie's director will say is that it means something to the movie's screen-writer and her clique of friends from high-school. Hang on! Is it just me, or is that starting to sound familiar to anyone else?

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laggies
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=laggy
Director Lynn Shelton talks about the meaning of the title of her film Laggies

Interstellar (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER LOVE IS A FORCE THAT CAN REACH ACROSS SPACE-TIME, LIKE THE FORCE OF GRAVITY?)

[Busts aren't really meant to be read before seeing a movie. But this is one of those stories that appears to swallow its own tail. So you might want to prepare yourself before wrestling with it in the wild.

Remember, in a bust, facts are presented as they are relevant to the plot, which is not always the order in which they are revealed on screen.]

Interstellar (2014) is a science fiction film directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine.

In the end, theoretical physicist, Jessica Chastain, receives critical help, via her intrepid astronaut father, Matthew McConaughrey, in solving an equation that enables the evacuation of the remnants of humanity from an Earth that has become uninhabitable.

Growing up with her widowed farming father, McConaughey, a former space engineer and test pilot, forced into agriculture when environmental catastrophe resulted in the world-wide collapse of civilised, industrial society, young Chastain is convinced that her bedroom is haunted by a poltergeist, in reality McConaughey trying to communicate with her from the future, trapped in a higher dimension behind her bookcase.

Dismissive of his daughter's paranormal interpretation, following several machinery failures he attributes to a gravitational anomaly, McConaughey determines that a pattern of lines left on her bedroom floor after a dust storm are the result of the anomaly and represent a set of geographic coordinates, that lead him and his daughter to a secret space research facility headed by his former boss, theoretical physicist, Michael Caine.

Explaining that they are humanity's last desperate attempt to escape the doomed planet through a wormhole in space that has mysteriously appeared near the orbit of Saturn, McConaughey is re-recruited by Caine onto the program, despite the pleas of his daughter, who correctly figures out that the message future McConaughey is trying to send himself, is that he should stay.

Following in the tracks of a number of loan pathfinder astronauts sent ahead, many years previously, McConaughey pilots his small crew through the wormhole, identifying three worlds that deserve further investigation, the first of which proves disastrous to the mission, when their landing craft is swamped and almost destroyed by gigantic tidal waves whipped up by the extreme gravitation of the black-hole at the heart of the system they have arrived at.

Having lost one of their party and despite only being delayed on the planet by a matter of hours, due to the time-warping effect of the nearby collapsed star, on their return they find the crew-member left in sole charge of the mother ship has aged by decades, much of which were spent in sleep hibernation, having almost given up hope of ever seeing his crew-mates again.

Driven to despair by recorded messages that reveal his young son, left in charge of the family farm, is now older than him, with children of his own, McConaughey, desperate to find a suitable planet and return home, determines their next target should be the world showing most promise, which turns out to be a bleak, frozen wasteland.

Reviving the planet's pathfinder from an indefinite period of hibernation, McConaughey discovers, too late, that he faked the data used to lure them to its surface, knowing that it was his only chance of rescue, given the true nature of the mission, which is to find a home, not for Earth's doomed population, but for an embryonic seed bank that they are carrying with them, that Caine's scientist daughter, Anne Hathaway, is in charge of, a fact confirmed by Caine's deathbed confession to Chastain, who grew up to become his successor on the program.

Only just managing to save it from total destruction, after the pathfinder, attempting to commandeer the mother-ship using the crew's lander, instead knocks it towards the planet's atmosphere, McConaughey, resigned to the fact that return to Earth is now impossible, resorts to a suicidal navigational maneuver in order to ensure Hathaway and the genetic cargo reach the third target world, that leaves him and one of the mission's robotic assistants hurtling into the black-hole.

But, far from being ripped apart by its extreme gravity, McConaughey finds himself not only able to communicate via his space-suit's intercom with the robot, whose instrumentation he had configured to study the nature of the singularity, but also with his daughter, who has been drawn back to the family farm, looking for clues that might help her solve the gravitational problem Caine was struggling with.

Realising that he is somehow responsible for his inter-dimensional state in which he can reach back in time to his daughter, McConaughey succeeds in first directing the pair to Caine, and then communicating the robot's analysis of the black-hole's secrets through the flittering second hand of his stopped wrist watch parting gift to her, at which point the super-dimension collapses, transporting him, via a brief encounter Hathaway experienced as the crew originally passed through the wormhole, back to Saturn, where he is miraculously rescued, along with the mission robot, and taken to an artificial satellite, named after his daughter, that acts as a staging post for humanity's evacuation of Earth.

Reunited with his dying daughter, now barely a third her age, she encourages McConaughey to resume his space odyssey and seek out Hathaway, who is shown to have succeeded in establishing the human genetic outpost, on the far side of the wormhole.


Although the cast, when interviewed, resort to describing Christopher, and his writing partner brother Jonathan Nolans' movie as "epic", which it is only in terms of running time, the impression left by what is undeniably a very entertaining bit of hokum, is of having watched a pair of master magicians perform an extraordinarily elaborate conjuring trick, that you are certain could not possibly be real, but which you are at a complete loss to explain.

I must confess that a particularly jaundice review of this film, in a magazine named after the people from the city "So good they named it twice", had prepared me for the worst excesses of Nolan pseud'ness. And yet, despite that, or maybe because of it, I find myself wanting to declare, in my most "Cockneyfied" accent:

# Clap 'ands, stamp yer feet
Bangin' on the big bass drum
What a picture, what a picture
Um-tiddly-um-pum-um-pum-pum
Stick it in your fam'ly album #

(I'm pretty sure that must have been the chorus Nolan sang to fire his actors up before each take ;)

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_a_Sixpence_(film)

Prometheus (2012)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE ORIGINS OF THE ALIEN (1979) ALIEN?)

[I'm not going to pretend that this bust is anything more than an excuse to comment on what was for me, at least, a bit of a let down.]

Prometheus (2012) is an Anglo-American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, and Charlize Theron.

In the end, spacefaring archaeologist Noomi Rapace encounters an ancient survivor of the extraterrestrial super-race responsible for life on Earth, and unwittingly spawns the progenitor of a species of super-predator with a turbo-evolutionary parasitic life-cycle.

Convinced that ancient cave art is proof of the extraterrestrial origins of life on Earth, mega-wealthy space-industrialist, Guy Pearce, nearing the end of his life, mounts an interstellar voyage of discovery, lead by his daughter, Charlize Theron, in the hope of learning the secret of immortality.

Roused from an extended period of stasis, unaware that Pearce has travelled with them, the crew set down on a barren planet near a series of artificial looking mounds, one of which they set out to explore.

Finding the structure riddled with tunnels, the party discover the headless remains of a long dead, giant humanoid, that a holographic projection they trigger shows was killed when a massive overhead stone door slammed shut during a panicked evacuation.

Opening the door reveals an elephantine severed head and further giant corpses, in a cavernous chamber dominated by a gigantic statue of a recognisably human head, surrounded by a large number of stone flasks that immediately begin to leak their contents.

With the party forced, by an approaching storm, to return to their ship, a pair of geologists, who, finding themselves first lost and then cut off, after having earlier decided to head back separately, return to the chamber seeking shelter for the night, only to both be attacked and killed by large snake like creatures that developed rapidly from tiny worms in the chamber's soil floor, since the flasks started leaking.

Examination of the grotesque head recovered from the chamber by Rapace reveals it to be a helmet containing a giant human head resembling the chamber's monolith, tests proving it shares the same genetic heritage as humans.

Delighted with their momentous discovery, Rapace celebrates by having sex with her archaeologist colleague and life partner, neither of them aware that he has secretly been infected with the contents of one of the stone flasks, surreptitiously removed from the chamber by the mission's caretaker artificial intelligence, Michael Fassbender, an android designed by Pearce to maintain the ship and see to the needs of the crew and himself while they are in stasis.

Returning to the chamber, the crew discover the dead geologists, and the monstrously evolved worm-snakes, just as Rapace's partner starts showing disturbing symptoms, which escalate so rapidly, that by the time they make it back to the ship, mission leader Theron refuses him entry, and at his request, flame-throwers him to death.

Appalled by this turn of events, Rapace is horrified to discover she is pregnant, despite being infertile, with a squid-like creature that she uses an automated surgery unit, in the medical bay of the ship's lifeboat, to remove.

Heavily self-tranquillized, following the procedure, Rapace confronts Theron, only to uncover Pearce's presence on-board, and him preparing to lead a party to a still-living giant, Fassbender has separately discovered in a life support capsule, part of a craft located within the structure.

However, before they can leave for their rendezvous, the ship is attacked by the zombie-like corpse of one of the dead geologists, killing several of the crew, leading the ship's captain to speculate that what they have stumbled upon is not the remnants of the civilisation that seeded humanity, but a purposefully isolated biological warfare facility that suffered some catastrophic failure that lead to its dereliction.

Unperturbed, Pearce has Fassbender rouse the sleeping giant, and explain Pearce's ambition to meet his makers and learn their wisdom, only for the giant to rip Fassbender's head off and kill Pearce and his body guards, before engaging the craft's drive and navigation systems, that reveal Earth to be its intended destination.

Exiting the craft, Rapace manages to warn the ship's captain of the danger its departure poses to Earth, should it escape, prompting him to ram the craft out of the sky, in the process crushing Theron, who was attempting to flee in an escape pod.

Reaching the shattered lifeboat the captain had ejected as a refuge for her, Rapace receives a warning from what remains of Fassbender, that the giant survived the crash and is headed her way.

Discovering the aborted squid foetus has grown to monstrously fierce proportions, Rapace releases it from the medical bay, just at the giant attacks, allowing her to escape, collect Fassbender's remains and make off, with his help, in another alien craft located in the structure complex, leaving the monster to impregnate the giant with a chest-bursting alien off-spring. And so it begins...


Unfortunately, this is an example of a production that ignored the first rule of science fiction, which is "If you're going to reboot a franchise, get J. J. Abrams to do it."

Rather rashly, it also ignored the second rule of science fiction, which is "IF YOU'RE GOING TO REBOOT A FRANCHISE, GET J. J. ABRAMS TO DO IT."

Of course, it is entirely understandable that someone like Ridley Scott would want to wrest back one of his (and Dan O'Bannon and H. R. Giger's) most iconic creations from the grip of adolescent beat-em-up-gamer-generation film-makers, and demonstrate that science fiction movies can be about more than just my-alien-is-better-than-your-alien school-yard arguments.

And certainly there is no lack of ambition to the tale he aims to tell, or the sumptuous gorgeousness of the images he uses to do it. But in hitching his creation myth chariot to the discredited ravings of a lunatic from the land of cuckoo clocks, Scott has really betrayed the science fiction purity of its original concept, and firmly planted this movie alongside the science fantasy offering of those he might have sought to distance it from.

Because, although it is entirely possible that in the vastness of reality, some extraterrestrial organism might have arisen and evolved with acid for blood, silica reinforced exoskeleton armour and a nasty habit of parasitizing other species to incubate its young, there is no evidence (let me just repeat myself, for emphasis) absolutely no evidence, whatsoever, that little green men pooped in the primordial soup in order to kick-start life on Earth.

And to try to justify your "little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum" proposition by suggesting that NASA and the Vatican are singing from the same hymn-sheet when it comes to matters creational, is to so misrepresent both organisations stances on the subject, that it is beyond risible.

You can fool some of the geeks, some of the time, Ridders. But you can't fool all of the geeks, all of the time. (Or maybe that should be "some of the Greeks" given the movie's title?)

Perhaps Scott can be forgiven, though, for having taken his eye off the ball with this and his, frankly bonkers, tarantino-ish pulp-fiction-esque The Counselor (2013) given the personal trauma his family tragically suffered.

Let's just hope there's still plenty of lead left in his directorial pencil, because even his a-bit-of-a-let-down productions are better than practically anything anyone else cares to put up on the big screen.

By the way, was absolutely anyone surprised to learn that it will be man's hubris in creating a free-thinking automata servant, that ultimately decides it knows what's best for us and instigates the greatest threat to our survival? I don't know about you guys, but I think it's time we called a halt to all this research into artificial intelligence. Don't you? :P

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(2012_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Abrams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Counselor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000

The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman (2013)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF CHARLIE COUNTRYMAN'S DEATH IS NECESSARY?)

[You'd think that with such a self-explanatory title, a bust of this movie's plot would be entirely unnecessary. But you'd be wrong.

I must apologise for once again describing a character as someone's "true love". It's just that there seems to be an awful lot of them about, lately.]

The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman (2013) is an American-Romanian adventure drama film directed by Fredrik Bond, starring Shia LaBeouf, Evan Rachel Wood, and Mads Mikkelsen.

In the end, jet-setting, hobo with an iPod, adventure seeker, Shia LaBeouf is saved by crack-shot cellist and true love of a few days, Evan Rachel Wood, from certain death at the hands of her violent, ominously fatalistic gangster-enforcer ex-husband, Mads Mikkelsen.

Following the confused advice of a pill-induced spirit vision of his dead mother to travel to Bucharest, LaBeouf finds himself seated next to a salty old Romanian, flying home after a bucket-list visit to the States, who consoles him over the recent death of his mother by recollecting the sad loss of his own wife, many years previously.

Charmed by his candour and friendliness, LaBeouf is later shaken to discover the old man has passed away, in his sleep.

Forced to remain next to the body, when cabin crew are unable to re-seat him, LaBeouf experiences another pill-induced spirit vision, this time of the old man asking him to pass on a gift, together with a message in Romanian, to his daughter, when they land.

Despite a run-in with airport security, when he eventually passes on the message, LaBeouf discovers it was the father's pet-name for his daughter, Rachel Wood, who he is immediately and profoundly attracted to. So much so, that when he later spots her parked by the side of the street, he demands to be let out of the taxi he is travelling in.

Explaining that she was too upset to keep up with ambulance carrying her father's body, LaBeouf offers to drive, but, paying more attention to Rachel Wood that the chaotic traffic, ends up causing an accident that flips the ambulance, when they catch up with it.

Deciding to ride with her father's body in the replacement vehicle, LaBeouf is left with Rachel Wood's car and only the clue that she plays in the Bucharest opera's orchestra, to go on.

Eventually finding his way to the opera house, LaBeouf manages to slip into the building behind a musician, who he follows to the gruff and agitated orchestra leader, who gives LaBeouf a very hard time, until a call from Rachel Wood confirms him as a friend.

Permitted to remain for that night's performance, LaBeouf spots another audience member paying keen attention to Rachel Wood's playing, that turns out to be her ex-husband, Mikkelsen, whose continued interest in her is clearly unwanted.

Annoyed with both men's masculine posturing, Rachel Wood dismisses them, directing LaBeouf to a nearby youth hostel, where he is roomed with a pair of excitable clubbers from Britain, one of whom is trying to break into the local porn industry, who encourage LaBeouf to join them for a drink, which they duly spike.

Out of his head on acid, LaBeouf encounters a contrite Mikkelsen, before running into Rachel Wood, who he insists on tagging along with, to her bemusement, until she finally shakes him off on the steps to a subway station, with some promising sounding words of Romanian, whispered in his ear.

Deliriously happy with himself, LaBeouf races through the streets, until he is struck by a taxi, and suffers a portentous hallucination of Mikkelsen.

Having somehow found his way back to the hostel, the banged-up LaBeouf is disturbed when his room-mates return, one of whom is suffering the extreme consequence of a Viagra overdose, help with which they decide to seek at a local strip club, where they get into trouble with the club's owner, a gangster and former associate of Mikkelsen's, keen to know his current whereabouts.

Released on the understanding that he has 24 hours to serve up Mikkelsen, LaBeouf spends most of the day camped outside the opera house, until the orchestra leader emerges and reluctantly agrees to take him to Rachel Wood's father's house, where a party celebrating his life is under way.

Delighted with LaBeouf's arrival, Rachel Wood ushers him aside, to deliver the kiss she had secretly promised him in Romanian, after which he confesses his encounter with Mikkelsen's threatening former associate, that concerns her considerably, as does Mikkelsen's violently intimidating behaviour towards LaBeouf, when he later interrupts the party, and Rachel Wood is forced to see him off with a passing shot from a revolver, that brings celebrations to an end.

Alone, together, Rachel Wood explains her doomed romance with Mikkelsen and the reason behind his and his former associate's renewed interest in her, that her well informed orchestra leader has just revealed, which is an incriminating video her father was using against the pair, that they are now both interested in recovering.

The next morning, finding Rachel Wood gone, after a passionate night spent together, following LaBeouf's declaration of love, he chances upon a tape with a label that reminds him of something her father mentioned on the plane, that turns out to be security camera footage of a bloody massacre, Mikkelsen and his partner can easily be seen to be the perpetrators of.

Charging off in search of Rachel Wood, he finds her talking to Mikkelsen, who attacks LaBeouf viciously, when he unwisely reveals knowledge of the tape's existence, despite Rachel Wood's own blank denials.

Lucky to survive, LaBeouf is taken into custody, after Mikkelsen flees, before Rachel Wood's orchestra leader bribes police to run LaBeouf out of town.

But on discovering the hostel from where he is collecting his belongings, swarming with gangsters, LaBeouf makes a break for it, and despite losing his perusers in the subway, runs into them again, waiting for him at Rachel Wood's father's house, where he finds the video player empty.

Threatening the lives of LaBeouf and his hostaged room-mates, Mikkelsen's gangster associate is interrupted by a call from Rachel Wood, who bargains for their release, in exchange for the tape.

However, when LaBeouf meets up with her and Mikkelsen, and Rachel Wood explains her destiny lies with Mikkelsen and not LaBeouf, experiencing another vision of his dead mother, LaBeouf rashly decides he must risk all for love, and save her from her ex-husband, which just gets him into further trouble, as Mikkelsen easily subdues him, and LaBeouf ends up dangling head-first from the end of a rope, beside a gigantic set of sluice-gates.

Offering Rachel Wood the chance to demonstrate her renewed commitment to him, Mikkelsen hands her the revolver, with which to shoot LaBeouf. But she deliberately misses, just as police arrive at the scene, shooting Mikkelsen dead, when he pretends to pull a gun on them, allowing everyone to live happily, ever after, or thereabouts.

There are some movie plot lines that progress effortlessly towards a conclusion, and others that lurch along so clunkily, that they give the impression that the director was making it up as they went along. In this case, that might have been due to cuts forced on the production in the edit. Or it might simply have been the result of tossing a bunch of intriguing character and scenario ideas into the air and seeing where they fell.

Whatever the cause, the resulting mess is hard to enjoy as entertainment, although the stonking soundtrack from Buffy the Vampire Slayer stalwart, Christophe Beck, does drive the experience of it along with terrific energy. It's just a shame that the considerable on-screen talent, who are often required to perform sanity-defying volte-faces of emotion and motivation, couldn't have been put to more productive use.

Unless you have a particular thing for former ginger wizards, and the unedifying prospect of a maniacally high Rupert Grint leering over a bar full of fantasized naked women, or getting his infeasibly large chemically induced trouser-schnitzel ground on by a bevy of strip-club dancers really appeals, I suggest we draw a veil over proceeding, and agree to never speak of it, again.

[If this is, in fact, the reason LaBeouf passed on the role Daniel Radcliffe took up in Horns (2013) then he might very well need to have a serious talk with his own representation.

Top marks, though, to Rachel Wood for achieving a very convincing and fetching Ziggy Stardust look.]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Countryman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horns_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggy_Stardust