Buyers Guide UK: June 2012: Weeks 1 and 2

We're nearly into the sixth month of 2012 already, and there are plenty of exciting DVD and Blu Ray releases to come during June. Here are my personal, week by week, picks of the best and most exciting discs from the UK release schedule for the first two weeks of the month. Some I've seen, some I haven't, but I'm interested in every single one of them. You'll find purchase links at the bottom of this post. If you want to buy one or more of these releases please do so through my links, it won't cost you extra, but you'll be supporting 24FPS.

4th
BLU-RAY

Goon [Also on DVD]

Goon was one of the nicer surprises of the first half of 2012 at the cinema. While it looked from the outside like a(nother) moronic sports comedy, with Seann William Scott playing a(nother) variation on Stifler, the truth turned out to be rather different.

While it ticks many of the expected sports comedy boxes, Goon largely gets by on two things; first off it's plainly, simply, funny. The jokes come thick and fast and the humour both verbal and visual hits a great deal more than it misses, and Eugene Levy is as entertaining as ever as Scott's Father (odd casting, given their mutual presence in the American Pie films. More unexpected is the second standout quality of Goon; its charm. Scott excels as an incredibly nice guy whose only real skill is fighting, and Alison Pill is irresistible as his love interest (giving that story more weight than you'd think). It's not a classic, but Goon is great entertainment, and it's nice to see a comedy that is warm and charming, given the way the genre has gone of late


David Lynch Boxset [Also on DVD]

I'm hardly the world's biggest David Lynch fan (though I believe I know her, Hi Marcey), but I love many of his films, and for all that he can be absolutely infuriating at times, he's never dull. This Blu Ray boxset includes six films covering the whole gamut of his career from the widely acclaimed Blue Velvet to the much derided Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (the other titles in the set are Lost Highway, Eraserhead, Wild at Heart and Dune).

With the exception of Fire Walk With Me, each disc appears to be rammed with extras, mostly in the form of Lynch's short films. For me this represents a chance to rediscover films that I've long loved (Wild at Heart and Lost Highway), get in to some I may have missed the appeal of first time round (Blue Velvet and Fire Walk With Me) and try our two that I've never seen. It should be a strange journey, which is why I'll look forward to it.


Return of the Living Dead: Ltd Ed Steelbook [Also on DVD]

If, by some horrible accident of fate, you're a horror fan and haven't seen Dan O'Bannon's ridiculously fun directorial debut, this is pretty much what you've been waiting for. Return of the Living Dead still combines gore, scares, nudity and laughs with as much verve and as much entertainment value as it ever did. The smart and speedy zombies - the first to explicitly wish to feed on braaaains - are brilliantly realised at a technical level, and actually become recognisable characters in the film too.

The Blu Ray release is backed up by a large selection of extras (five hours of them) including a two hour documentary on the making of the film, including interviews with, seemingly, just about everyone who worked on it. This will be a treat if you already love the film, and a great way to see it for the first time.


Spider-Man Trilogy [Also on DVD]

The Spider-Man series is one that I have a lot of fondness for. I've been a Spidey fan since I was a kid. The first film was my birthday movie when I was 21, and, oddly, the reboot will be my birthday movie at 31. Despite that I also know that it's deeply flawed both in terms of the individual films and how it works as a trilogy.

For every great action scene there's a few minutes of a poorly written, less than faithful, rendition of Mary Jane. For every moment that Tobey Maguire nails as Spidey or Peter there's one that he misses, and for every bravura creative decision made by director Sam Raimi there's a botch job like the Emo-Parker sequence. That said, the highs are strong enough that all the films entertain for the most part (the much maligned Spider-Man 3 may be the best of the series if you delete the symbiote stuff). This boxset retains the spectacular transfers that the Spider-Man trilogy has already had, along with the option to watch the (better, if only by dint of having an extra action scene) 2.1 version of the first sequel, but it also looks as though the extras for the first two films, which went missing from the initial BR releases, will now be included.

This is a mixed bag of a trilogy, but I'm a big enough Spider-Fan to forgive the flaws, if you are too it's an essential purchase.


DVD
Babycall

Why should you see Babycall? Noomi Rapace. Right, that's that conversation over.

In all seriousness, while the presence of Noomi Rapace, unless you've only seen her in the Sherlock Holmes sequel, really ought to be enough to make you want to see just about anything, and she's extraordinary as a paranoid single Mother, on the run from an abusive relationship, there is much more to recommend Babycall. Kristoffer Joner also contributes a strong performance as the introverted, and rather sad, shop assistant who tries to befriend Rapace, and director Pal Setalune introduces a note of creeping paranoia early on, which builds and builds throughout the film, making the narrative and your understanding of the story and characters constantly malleable.

The last fifteen minutes lurch off the rails somewhat, but Rapace is worth watching throughout, and the film will likely repay repeat viewings thanks to the shifting tone.



11th
BLU RAY

The Muppets [Also on DVD]

So, it turns out you CAN bottle happiness. The Muppets remains my film of the year to date, and that's largely because it's the one film that really reminded me why I love films. It's hilariously funny (Beaker as part of a barbershop quartet singing Smells Like Teen Spirit), tells a solid, character based story, and is even genuinely moving at times (if you got through Pictures in my Head without wiping away a tear, I would check for a heartbeat).

The story, involving Jason Segel's Gary and his Muppet brother Walter helping Kermit put the gang back together for their first show in years may be slight, but it conjures a magical mix of nostalgia and a film that is accessible and fun for new fans, be they young or old. The whole human cast nails the tone brilliantly (especially Amy Adams as Segel's love interest and Chris Cooper as oil baron villain Tex Richman), but it's the muppet performers who steal the show; the nuance that Steve Whitmire gets from Kermit is especially astonishing.

The Muppets is a perfect comeback movie and I can't wait to revisit it over and over on Blu Ray.


Sling Blade

Billy Bob Thornton's directorial debut, expanded from his short film Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade (which, inexplicably, STILL doesn't appear to be among the extras, though the others from the special edition DVD do make the trip to Hi Def), was a blind buy for me, and one that really paid off.

Thornton himself plays Karl; a man with learning disabilities who has recently left the facilty he was sent to as a young man after committing a grisly crime, and the film revolves around his friendship with a local boy and his Mother. It would be very easy to overplay Karl, and Thornton's performance can be broad, but it's the sheer detail, and the empathy with which, both as a writer and as an actor, Thornton approaches the role that makes it not just more than a 'full retard' performance but one that feels true and allows you to really understand Karl.

For me, Thornton hasn't come close to matching this film as a director, and has seldom given a performance as good. Sling Blade is highly recommended.

DVD
Grace is Gone

There are plenty of reasons to complain about release patterns for movies around the world, but few delays have infuriated me more of late than the fact that for four years this film has sat on the shelf, unreleased in the UK. It's great that this drama about John Cusack as a Father of two young girls whose wife is killed while she's on duty in Iraq taking his daughters on a road trip to prepare himself to break the news to them is finally emerging, but it's a crying shame that it is only doing so as a barely publicised DVD release.

Cusack has perhaps never been better - or further from his established persona - than he is here, and he's aided by a sensitive screenplay and by remarkable performances from the young actresses playing his daughters. It's a sad film, but never mawkish, and though you never meet Cusack's wife, through him you feel the loss. Grace is Gone is a great movie and you should not let the long delay in its release put you off seeing it.

The (In)Complete Jennifer Jason Leigh: 1978 - 1984

Prior to her cinematic debut in 1981 slasher Eyes of a Stranger, Jennifer Jason Leigh had a handful of guest spots on TV shows, and was in a couple of TV movies [The Young Runaways and Angel City] which I intend to review if I can get my hands on them. Aside from a few cinema roles, which included her great performance in classic teen movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Leigh spent the late 1970's and early 1980's on the small screen, racking up roles large and small in TV movies and specials (one I'm trying to source, called I Think I'm Having a Baby also boasts Helen Hunt and a debuting Ally Sheedy amongst its cast). If her work was sometimes uneven in this period so were the scripts she was working with, but there are frequent glimpses of a great actress, and a handful of fully realised performances which still, sometimes more than 30 years later, stand alongside the best of her work.

I've not been able to see absolutely everything absolutely in order, so this post will be updated with new reviews as an when I see the films, watch Twitter @24FPSUK for updates.

With that said, let's dive right into the films.

NOTE: Huge, huge thanks are owed to reader and fellow JJL superfan Derek Purtell, who has sent me almost every rare piece of Jennifer Jason Leigh footage I can think of (there are certain things, like the scenes she shot for Eyes Wide Shut, which we'll never see). Cheers Derek, there will be a load of DVDs coming your way soon.


The Young Runaways (1978)
Dir: Russ Mayberry

You couldn't, honestly at least, call The Young Runaways a great film. It's a simplistic and often preachy TV film about a couple of terrible parents, C.L. and who place their two middle children in foster care while they and their eldest; Rosebud and her mute little brother Joseph T go on the road to move to Alaska. Largely treated as baggage by their Mum and Step-Dad, Rosebud and Joseph T sneak into a motor home headed back to Los Angeles where, with the help of some local kids, they try to kidnap their brother and Sister so they can all be together again. Of course they also get caught up in a convoluted plot about stolen money.

The Young Runaways may not be great, but it is good honest fun. As Rosebud, Alicia Fleer is no Jodie Foster (who had put Disney behind her with Taxi Driver), but still she makes for a spunky and reasonably appealing lead and the film moves at a pretty relentless pace, seldom lacking in fun and generating a few good slapstick moments as the bad guy whose motor home the kids hitched a ride in looks for them and his missing money (which, apparently, a 13 year old thought was play money... yeah... not buying it, Kid)

The sexual politics leave something to be desired, as a male cop treats a colleague (to whom he turns out to be married) with barely masked professional contempt, and it gets worse as the ending essentially informs us that women can't have both a career and kids... that would be silly, but frankly the film is such a romp anyway that it's silly to think those things through, the target audience wouldn't have.

A sixteen year old (and very young looking) Jennifer Jason Leigh comes a LONG way down the credits, but actually has a slightly larger part than I'd expected. As Heather she's the girl next door who is infatuated with Eric; the kid helping out Rosebud and Joseph T. The character is an aspiring TV personality, but even so, Leigh's breathy performance often comes off as silly. Looking at it in isolation it's amazing to think that just three years later she'd have performances as good as those in Eyes of a Stranger and The Best Little Girl in the World. Like so many very early roles, this is inauspicious, but the film is enough fun to make it a worthwhile curio for fans.

Angel City (1980)
CBS Afternoon Playhouse: I Think I'm Having a Baby (1981)


Eyes of a Stranger (1981)
Dir: Ken Wiederhorn

Eyes of a Stranger is a pretty obscure title by any standards. Its UK release suffered cuts for an X at the cinema in 1981, and the surrounding video nasty panic of that time probably attests to why it was in limbo until sneaking out on video, with 1 minute and 25 seconds of cuts, in 1986 (ironically it would probably have a much higher profile now if the distributor had tried to sneak it through in '81 or '82, when it almost certainly would have landed on the video nasty list).

Ken Weiderhorn's slasher is pretty unpleasant at times, it's about a serial rapist and murderer who is terrorising a Miami beach community, and the film is pretty unflinching when it comes to depicting the attacks. However, beneath what sometimes feels like a mysogynistically leering camera style, there are some really effective things going on here. A TV reporter named Jane (Lauren Tewes) becomes obsessed with the case and believes that her neighbour (John DiSanti) is the killer (and, in one of the biggest mis-steps it makes, the film never even attempts to fake us out in this respect). Jane's sister Tracy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is deaf, blind and mute; a condition brought on psychosomatically following a traumatic incident in her childhood, this obviously makes Tracy vulnerable, and Jane's obsession with the killer makes them both targets.

For much of its running time, Eyes of a Stranger sort of plods through the motions, finding the odd arresting image (the killer seen through a shower screen; a too easy, but nicely done, decapitation courtesy of effects by Tom Savini) and a handful of scenes which, while we always know where they are headed, play out in pretty creepy fashion. Other moments fall far below their potential, such as a scene where the killer gets his car stuck in some sand while dumping a body. A creepy set piece could have been made out of the moment when a good samaritan gets out of his car to help, but instead it just serves to provide a bit more gore, which is fine as far as it goes, but definitely less than what the scene could have delivered.

For the bulk of the film, Leigh's Tracy is a side character, coming to the fore only in the final act, but as ever, Leigh doesn't let the size of the role give her any excuses to offer up less than 100% effort. Most of the time you can see that people playing blind are merely playing blind. You'll see their eyes catch something, take note of it. It may just be for a moment, and it may be a totally natural thing for the rest of us, but it just breaks the illusion. You'll never catch Jennifer Jason Leigh falling into that trap here, it doesn't even really occur to you that she doesn't share her character's afflictions, so profoundly natural is her performance, and that also goes for Tracy's deafness as she also manages to suppress all those tiny natural reactions we have to sound around us.

The fact that Leigh is so good is what makes the film's last twenty minutes take a huge jump in quality, as Weiderhorn has the blind Tracy menaced by the killer in her apartment. It's a brilliant sequence; terrifying because you can always see just how close the danger is, and just how helpless Tracy is. Adding to this is the fact that the 18 year old Leigh looks even younger and incredibly delicate here, and we've already seen this killer dispatch victims who should be much more able to fight back, it all adds up to a brilliant suspense scene. Weiderhorn also throws a reasonably predictable but nevertheless effective twist into this final sequence, which throws up some great images and, thanks to Leigh's sensitive playing of the moment, turns what might otherwise be a totally gratuitous moment of nudity into something that says a lot more than 'look, boobs'.

Eyes of a Stranger is no lost horror classic, but it certainly has quite a lot to recommend it, all of the performances are solid, and while Ken Weiderhorn's direction is wildly variable, the scenes he gets right are beautifully self-contained mini-movies, most notably that fantastic final sequence. It's recommended for horror, and especially slasher, fans, and is an essential watch for any Jennifer Jason Leigh fan, as her remarkable performance really holds the film together.


The Killing of Randy Webster (1981)
Dir: Sam Wanamaker

A fairly typical 'ripped from the headlines' type TV Movie, The Killing of Randy Webster is about a young man who was shot dead by Police after stealing a van. The case appeared open and shut; there was a gun lying right next to him, but Randy's Father (Hal Holbrook) refused to accept that his son would have either had a gun or attacked a Police officer, his determination led to the prosecution of the officers who shot Randy and covered up what really happened.

With the film now 31 years old, and the events of the case having happened 35 years ago, The Killing of Randy Webster has really lost what impact it might have had at the time, and now appears as something of a curiosity largely for the presence, some way down the cast list and a year prior to Fast Times, of both Sean Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It's a terrible shame that Penn doesn't play Randy Webster, because if there's one especially glaring problem with this film it's that Gary McCleery, who has made a grand total of nine films since this, is appalling in the role, making Randy even less sympathetic than he might otherwise be, and delivering his dialogue with little or no intonation. Penn has little to do as one of Randy's friends, but he's Sean Penn, there's something that just jumps off the screen about him.

Jennifer Jason Leigh has three scenes, and only the third is anything more than functional, but despite a ropey script that fills her mouth with trite dialogue, she plays well off Hal Holbrook. She's not bad as Randy's shellshocked girlfriend, but the reason she's been so upset doesn't quite have the weight it should because we hardly get to know the character or see their relationship.

The rest of the performances are solid, with a dignified Holbrook providing a strong centre, and a better performance than the rather bald script and visuals deserve. The Killing of Randy Webster is a competent, rather than a great, film, but it tells its sad story reasonably well, and is interesting enough for fans of the cast.


The Best Little Girl in the World (1981)
Dir: Sam O'Steen

It may have a screenplay as subtle as a punch in the face, but The Best Little Girl in the World, following the promise of Eyes of a Stranger, was perhaps the film that really confirmed Jennifer Jason Leigh as a young actress worth keeping an eye on. She inherited the role of anorexic 17 year old Casey Powell after Jodie Foster turned it down, in favour of continuing her studies at Yale.

Leigh, as became her custom, began the process of utterly transforming herself for the role. Under medical supervision she dieted her then 98 pound, 5 foot 3 frame down to under 90 pounds (sources quote weights from 89 to 83 pounds). The physical transformation is striking; Leigh, always a delicate looking woman, seems tiny, emaciated, almost breakable. There's an especially shocking scene when she takes her shirt off at the doctors (from behind, it's a TV movie) and we see ribs and spine jutting out frighteningly. However, the transformation is more than physical. The emotional distance between Casey and her family is what really comes across, along with a very convincing depiction of her illness. She's especially outstanding when, the morning after her parents have found diet pills and laxatives in her room, she makes breakfast for the family. Leigh's robotic performance here absolutely nails Casey's calculating and desperate deception, and the way she's sleepwalking deeper into her illness. It's a performance much affecting and much more subtle than the film around it suggests or even earns.

Taken as a whole there are a lot of things that clunk here; a cliche riddled script which moves mechanically through every expected scene and Charles Durning's bombastic and overblown performance as Leigh's frustrated Father among them, but at times, thanks to the strength of the central performance, The Best Little Girl in the World transcends these problems. She would do much better work soon after, but this is still another impressive early hint of the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh would become.


The First Time (1982)
The Man With the Deadly Lens [a.k.a: Wrong is Right] (1982)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Dir: Amy Heckerling
[Slightly revised version of a previously published article]

In 1982, three raunchy American teen comedies came out. Porkys was ribald, and held the promise of loads of nudity, The Last American Virgin - while interesting and underrated to this day - never quite reconciled its comedic first and dramatic second halves, but Fast Times at Ridgemont High got it just right. The backstory is quite famous now. Aged 22, Cameron Crowe, then a journalist for Rolling Stone, returned to high school for a year to research a novel. That novel (notes for which were often taken, apparently, during frequent bathroom breaks at parties) became Crowe's first screenplay, and fortunately for Crowe and debuting director Amy Heckerling it came to Hollywood just when a glut of young talent was also arriving.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High IS the 80's, aside from the brat packers, everyone is in it. Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Nicolas Cage, Eric Stoltz, Forrest Whitaker, Amanda Wyss and Anthony Edwards are all familiar names, and then the cast is filled out by 'oh, it's THAT guy' actors like Scott Thomson, Robert Romanus, Brian Backer, Ray Walston and Vincent Schiavelli. It's a great cast, and it's easy to see why such talent gravitated towards the film (well, leaving aside the ever present need of young actors to no longer be living on their best friend's floor), because the screenplay gives them all sharply defined (even archetypal in some cases) characters, and fantastic dialogue, as well as an effective mix of comedy and drama to play. That's perhaps why it's such a joy to watch, because you can see how much fun everyone is having, how much they are enjoying these characters and these words.

This is especially true of the two leads. Sean Penn is now known as an incredibly intense and serious dramatic actor, but here, in his first really significant role, he's playing Jeff Spicoli; the stoned surfer dude that every stoned surfer dude since, in movies or otherwise, has to live up to. He brought his customary intensity to the set; insisting that everyone call him Spicoli, even when they called him at home, but his on screen performance is totally relaxed, and hilariously funny (perhaps more so now, viewed through the prism of 30 years of absolute seriousness). His rivalry with Ray Walston's authoritarian history teacher Mr Hand is the comedic gift that just keeps on giving from the beginning of the film ("You DICK") to the end ("What Jefferson was saying was, Hey! You know, we left this England place 'cause it was bogus; so if we don't get some cool rules ourselves - pronto - we'll just be bogus too! Get it?").

And then there is Jennifer Jason Leigh, also in her first really significant cinematic role. Ever the method actress, Leigh got a job at the exact pizza place where her character works, and worked there for a month between getting the part and filming. She doesn't so much act Stacy - the most challenging role in the film, as she has the most happen to her, and does the most growing up in the course of the story - as become her. She does this so completely that, when reviewing the film, Roger Ebert asked; 'How could they do this to Jennifer Jason Leigh? How could they put such a fresh and cheerful person into such a scuz-pit of a movie?' Now, I'm sure he's right that Leigh is 'fresh and cheerful', but one thing the last 30 years made clear she's not is delicate, or afraid of immersing herself in a scuzzy world for the good of a movie. What Ebert's done here, essentially, is mistake the actress for the character. That is how good she is here.

But I don't want to get too serious here, because Fast Times doesn't get too serious, oh sure, it deals with the trials of being a teenager, from disappointing sex, to shitty McJobs, from awkward dates, to break ups and even to abortion, but for the most part it deals with everything with a smile on its face and a really good joke not more than a minute away. Crowe crafts the dialogue beautifully, but Heckerling's direction often proves equally droll, be it the graffiti she focuses on as Stacy loses her virginity or the comically huge chairs she uses to make Stacy and her nervous date Mark Ratner (Backer) look tiny as they eat together, Heckerling packs the film with fun little visuals. Visually though, there's one thing most people remember from this film. Well, no, two things; Phoebe Cates' twins. Cates (who I wish had kept working after she had a family with Kevin Kline) plays Linda; Stacy's outwardly worldly wise friend, but plays her with the implication that, actually, she's far less experienced and worldly than she portrays herself. Her nude scene, a dream sequence in Brad's (Reinhold) masturbatory fantasy, is the scene that launched a generation on the way to puberty, and in the age of VHS you could hardly rent a copy on which the tracking remained sound in that moment.

Fast Times does have an overarching story (two really; Stacy's and Spicoli's) but it is more a film of moments, and that's fine, because actually that's being a teenager; you aren't thinking about the grand overarching scheme of things at 15, you're living from one moment, one experience, to the next. In this respect the film, written as it clearly is, is a good reflection of that time in your life, and while the fashions and the soundtrack (especially the soundtrack, and especially Somebody's Baby) have dated massively, the film itself still feels fresh and relevant as it passes its 30th birthday. The laughs haven't dated either (I don't want to live in a time when the fact that someone has written Big Hairy Pussy on a bathroom mirror isn't funny) and the performances are strong all round. Among the cameos Vincent Schiavelli's science teacher may be my favourite (his opening line "I just switched to sanca, so, have a heart" is one of the film's biggger laughs), but just about everyone gets their moment to shine here.

I wish there were more American high school movies this good (the last one to get close was perhaps the still underrated 10 Things I Hate About You), but this one remains a real joy and even though my heart sinks every time we hear Somebody's Baby it still makes me laugh, and, actually gets me on an emotional level too, because it's easy to feel, so well written and acted are these characters that you know, and largely like, these people. That's why it's endured


ABC Afterschool Special: Have You Ever Been Ashamed of Your Parents? (1983)


Easy Money (1983)

There's only really one question that matters in considering any comedy film: did you find it funny? You can't really argue the point with somebody because, more than the question of whether or not a shot is technically competent, or whether a dramatic performance is delivering the required emotion, there really is no 'right' answer. I don't think Rodney Dangerfield is an especially funny man, you may, I don't, and that's a real problem for someone trying to enjoy Easy Money.

The story is basically a riff on Brewster's Millions only when his Mother in Law dies Dangerfield doesn't have to spend money in order to get the big inheritance, he has to give up junk food, alcohol, gambling and many of the other things he loves. It's not a terrible framework on which to hang a script that is, largely, a selection of one-liners, but the problem is that it's so very flimsy. Dangerfield doesn't so much play a character as he plays himself (or at least his comedy persona by another name, Monty Capuletti, and would that the film had done more, or something, with that Romeo and Juliet nod). The dialogue seems, for most of the running time, to be verbatim gags from Dangerfield's one-liner heavy stand up, and much of it isn't even directed at anyone, Dangerfield is just talking out loud, throwing 'zingers'. This would be a smaller problem, but for the fact that most of the gags would have been considered dated in 1883, never mind 1983, and that the film boasts an occasional, but nevertheless troublesome, streak of casual sexism and racism.

For Jennifer Jason Leigh fans, she's cast - barely credibly - as Dangerfield's 18 year old daughter, and the opening half hour of the film is set in the run up to her wedding. In just one of many disappointments her wedding cake is used for a joke you can see coming from across an ocean, but the issue is never addressed after the slapstick moment has been had. The better news is that the scenes between Leigh and screen husband Taylor Negron are some of funniest in the film. sequences set on their disastrous wedding night and when Julio comes to win back Allison boast by far the film's funniest lines, thanks especially to Negron's ineffective attempts to be a badass "Allison, I am bad. I am so bad I should be in detention". Leigh, not a natural comedienne, is really the justification for Negron's comic antics, and is given little opportunity to stretch, though she nabs the odd funny line, and delivers them well. Like many of her early films though, Easy Money fails to use Leigh to her, and its, best advantage.

There are good things here; the friendly and comic chemistry between Dangerfield and Joe Pesci as his best friend, and the always amusing Jeffrey Jones playing, another of his buttoned up authority figures (though he's nowhere near scheming enough here), but the clanging predictability of every joke just killed the film for me - how can you be expected to laugh when you arrive at every punchline before the comedian does? There's a lot of love for this film out there, but I'd only recommend it to fans of Dangerfield's comedy and Jennifer Jason Leigh completists (Hi).


Death Ride to Osaka [a.k.a: Girls of the White Orchid] (1983)
Dir: Jonathan Kaplan

The two titles for this film exist because it exists in two different cuts. Girls of the White Orchid is the original TV movie cut, while Death Ride to Osaka is the video version, with some added nudity (including some by the never shy Jennifer Jason Leigh). The version I was able to get my hands on is the extended, very much R-Rated, cut.

Death Ride to Osaka has a pretty functional story and, like a lot of TV movies, seems to attempt a little commentary on what is perceived to be one of the issues of the day. If anything the human traffiking theme, though addressed in little depth, feels more pertinent now. The film centres on Carol (Leigh), a young singer trying to make it in LA. Having had no luck, Carol applies for a two month contract at a nightclub in Japan, but when she arrives she discovers that she's expected to supplement her income by sleeping with customers at the club, and that the triads who run the club and the girls have taken her passport. At the same time, having just left the Air Force, Carol's boyfriend (Thomas Byrd) is looking for her.

What lifts the film comfortably out of the run of the mill is threefold; a screenplay which - for the most part - rises above its origins as a social concern film, a solid directorial job from Jonathan Kaplan, who would later make The Accused, and, predictably, a shining lead performance from Jennifer Jason Leigh. I've read other reviews that say Leigh, with her apparent youth and innocence, is miscast here, but nothing could be further from the truth. Carol has to seem the wide-eyed innocent for us to believe that she would fall for such an obviously dodgy job offer as the one she receives to take her to Japan, and indeed for us to believe that she can see herself making it, under any circumstances. Despite her estimable acting talents, singing is not Jennifer Jason Leigh's forte, she appears to be doing her own vocals here, and the overwhelming impression you're left with is that she's slightly, but not much, better at singing than your average mentally divergent X Factor contestant.

Where Leigh really succeeds here is in making Carol naïve and trusting rather than simply dumb. From her extremely naturalistic performance you get a sense of this young girl who is too trusting, and perhaps too quick to brush things off (early in the film the Police pull her over, apparently assuming she's a prostitute, and Carol remains as cheerily unaffected as ever as she demonstrates that she is not). Even without her description of it there's a sense of history here; that she's been looking for an audition without success for some time. One of Leigh's best moments comes early in the film when the agent for the Tokyo club asks if she has an agent of her own, she says 'I'm between agents' but then, in a moment that tells a lot about both her innocence and her integrity, and really sets the tone for her character, confesses that this is a lie, and that she actually has no agent. In the Japan set bulk of the film, when it becomes clear that Carol is expected to prostitute herself, it would be all too easy to slip into melodrama when she steadfastly refuses (we've seen that in the opening scenes with another girl), but Leigh keeps the scenes totally grounded, and the character totally consistent.

It has to be said that the film, while not the racist 'beware of forrins' message movie it could have been, devotes rather less time and effort to making rounded individuals of its Japanese characters than it does the white ones. However, that's not to say that there isn't some good work from the Japanese cast, especially Richard Narita as Shiro, who recruits Carol, but seems to take a liking to her and has at least some sympathy when she refuses to go along with the extra things expected of her. Mako also appears, ever his inimitable self, playing a mid-ranking yakuza and Soon Tek-oh is at least entertainingly eeevil, even if all his character really lacks is a moustache to twirl. The most disappointing aspect of the film comes from the story involving Carol's former boyfriend trying to find her. The storyline is underwritten, and the whole history of the relationship is meant to be implied just because they both have the same photo of themselves as a couple on their respective bedside tables. It also somewhat undermines Carol's status as a strong character when, ultimately, she has to be saved by this man who really has no other function in the story.

Death Ride to Osaka is an oddly mixed bag; an unsubtle script about the evils of exploitation, anchored by a strong female lead, yet liberally splashed with nudity. It's saved from an inconsistent tone by a very down to Earth performance from Jennifer Jason Leigh, which gives the film moments of resonance that it really fails to earn. It's definitely recommended for fans, and is a fine early example of how Leigh would go on to bring class and quality to many exploitation films that could have been totally uninteresting without her.


Grandview USA (1984)

The Picture Show: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp / The Raid

In this episode Mike and I tackle two very different films; Powell and Pressburger's reissued classic The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and Gareth Evans' Martial Arts movie The Raid. There is also a continuation of last week's 'Secret Weapons' list, and another selection of DVD and Blu Ray recommendations.

You can listen to the show in the player below, or download it HERE


Next Show: Men in Black 3 [2D], Lost Films list, Moonrise Kingdom and more

The Raid [18]

Dir: Gareth Huw Evans

I'm a big fan of martial arts movies and of action movies more generally, and while we've had a few great ones of late it's been something of a fallow period for the genre for my money, so here comes The Raid, riding a wave of hype so boundless that you'd have to bet that there is no possible way it can live up to what has already been said and written about it. I walked in excited, but also wary because I was seriously burned by the hype with Cabin in the Woods, so, does The Raid deliver?

The third feature by Welsh writer/director Gareth Evans, but the first to gain a high profile, The Raid has an almost embarrassingly simple story. The film is set in Indonesia, but really could have taken place anywhere in story terms as all you need to know is that there is a building filled almost entirely with members of drug dealing gang, and that a force of about twenty cops (including Rama, played by Iko Uwais) is being sent in to take out the the leader and take down his operation. Shooting, machete fights and kicking ensue.

The Raid isn't deep, but it does at least tell a coherent story, and present one reasonably surprising twist in between the action scenes that are its raison d'etre, which is a step up from a lot of martial arts films. The action shifts emphasis as the film goes on, and Evans refines his style accordingly. Early scenes are frenetic and more about gunplay, and here Evans employs the shakycam and rapid editing style that has been so modish in action cinema lately, but as the film moves from larger scale fights between groups of distant opponents to ever closer quarters battles as the number of people in the tower shrinks the cutting rhythm slows a little, and the camera becomes more sedate and stays further back. To his immense credit though - and this is likely testament to his involvement, along with star Uwais, in choreographing the action - Evans always manages to keep the geography of his action scenes intact, we get who people are, and where they are in relation to each other, which makes even the scenes that employ shakycam more fun.

While the first act is tremendously entertaining, the film really hits its stride when most of the guns are empty and the fights become more up close and personal affairs, it's also at this point that Iko Uwais - largely in the background for the first act - steps up and demonstrates that he's a force to be reckoned with on screen. The first real showcase comes in a scene reminiscent of Oldboy's hammer fight - Evans, in the best possible way, wears his influences on his sleeve throughout - in which Rama has to take on an almost endless stream of knife wielding bad guys while also protecting an injured colleague. It's here that we first really see what the film has in store choreography wise, and it's mightily impressive.

The martial arts style on display here is Silat, which I had neither heard of nor seen before (I love martial arts movies but, for the record, am not a practitioner of any style). Looking at it here there are certain aspects that seem to relate to Muay Thai (use of knees and elbows), but there seem to be influences from Chinese styles too. The pace of the moves is often blistering, and the impact is definitely felt (without, so far as I can tell, the use of much in the way of 'power powder'), and Evans' refusal to back down from the extremes of violence suggests that as a filmmaker he owes more to the directorial style of Sammo Hung than to Jackie Chan.

While it's always fun to watch a great martial arts or stunt sequence (the only problem being that at the cinema you can't rewind any of the 'holyshitdidyouseethat?' moments), it's a nice touch on the part of Evans' screenplay to bring a personal dimension into the film in its third act. By doing so he raises the stakes and creates a degree of tension in the film (we KNOW Uwais won't die, but that doesn't make anyone else safe), which makes the big three way set piece fight that caps the film's action off more narratively gripping than most final set pieces. As I said, it's easy to see the influences on Uwais, Yayan Ruhian and Evans' action, but they don't copy their heroes, rather they reinterpret, finding their own very particular and hugely entertaining and impressive style. There are scenes here - the drug lab fight for example - that can stand with the best fight scenes I've seen on screen.

The Raid is a great calling card for Evans and Uwais (who gives a strong performance, and is much more charismatic than martial arts cinema's last anointed new star, Tony Jaa), but more than that it's just a great night out. I always try to evaluate a film on how well, for me, it achieves what it is attempting to do. On those terms these 100 minutes are just about flawless; the film grabbed me early on, and refused to let go until its final moments.

The Picture Show: Dark Shadows

This week Mike and I are joined by guest MaryAnn Johanson of Flick Filosopher to review Jeff, Who Lives at Home and Tim Burton's Dark Shadows. We also discuss some of our favourite 'secret weapons' in cinema; those actors who may not be famous, but who we always love seeing in movies and DVD and Blu Ray releases for May 21st.

Please note that due to mic issues, MaryAnn's audio is of lesser quality than mine and Mike's. We'll get that fixed for next time she's on.

You can listen to the show below, or download it HERE


Next Show: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Secret Weapons Vol. 2, The Raid and more

Early Review: Himizu [18]

Dir: Sion Sono

Over the last 18 months Sion Sono has become one of my favourite filmmakers thanks to the brilliantly bizarre likes of Noriko's Dinner Table, Cold Fish and his 4 hour long lunatic masterpiece Love Exposure, so I was really looking forward to this film, and hoping it would be a step up from the slightly disappointing (but heavily compromised) Guilty of Romance. Unfortunately, with the possible exception of Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method, Himizu is the most disappointing film I've seen this year, and is terrible to a degree I just didn't believe Sono capable of.

Himizu is an adaptation of a Manga, but as Sono was preparing the project the Japanese tsunami and the Fukushima disaster happened, prompting him to re-set the story in the wake of those events. 14 year old Sumida (Shota Sometani) lives at his family's boat house, his Mother has run off with her lover, and his drunk Father drops in occasionally to assault him and 'confess' that he wishes Sumida had died in the tsunami. Sumida's only friends are a group of older men - refugees living around the boat house, and his only dream is to live a completely normal life. Also trying to be Sumida's friend is his classmate Chazawa (Fumi Nikaidou), who is hopelessly in love with him, but despite her sunny disposition and attempts to help him, Sumida is annoyed by and dismissive of her. After being driven to an horrific crime, Sumida decides he should rid the world of bad people, and begins walking the streets with a knife.

Where to begin? I suspect that Sono fans will read that synopsis and recognise several of the director's recurring themes; a put upon teen abused by their family (this also applies to Chazawa), parents who abandon their children, violence, sin, forgiveness and whether certain people 'deserve' to live are all things that Sono has examined before, and watching Himizu is often like watching him put all his favoured themes and ideas in to a large sack and give it a vigorous shake, before pouring out a confused mix of elements that never gel into a satisfying whole.

Tone is often an interesting balancing act in cinema, and previously Sono has maintained a solid grip on films that balance it very delicately, Cold Fish, for instance, balances on a knife edge between brutal violence and comedy, but here the ability to balance opposing tones seems to have utterly deserted him. Violence is always present in Sono's work, and it's often harsh, but while Himizu doesn't contain his most brutal violent scenes it does feature much violence against women, and does so in a way so casual and so accepted that it fast becomes offensive. Chazawa, despite repeated scenes of her saving up her 'grudges' against Sumida in the form of stones she intends to throw at him, often seems like little more than a willing sponge for abuse.

When Himizu isn't offensive, or baffling us with abrupt and grinding tonal shifts, it's often simply boring, thanks to the fact that we are treated to tiny variations on the same scenes over and over again. Besides Sumida hitting or insulting Chazawa there is much repetition in scenes of Sumida's relationship with his Father, and of the scenes in the second half that see him stalking the streets looking for evil people, or explaining his actions to other people, this too is a hallmark of what I've seen of Sono's work, and I wouldn't mind so much about the repetition if the scenes all added up to give us a complete picture of the film's characters, but I don't really feel that they do. Sumida evolves a bit during the film, but his journey from mild-mannered teen to possibly insane future serial killer is much less credible than the very similar journey undertaken by Mitsuru Fukikoshi in Cold Fish, and unfolds in stuttering fits and starts rather than as a credible arc. Chazawa feels even thinner, never really progressing beyond her starry eyed adoration of Sumida despite how badly he treats her.

With the exception of its young leads, Himizu's cast is largely composed of the growing stock company that Sono works with. Cold Fish cast members Fukishoki, Denden, Asuka Kurosawa and Megumi Kagurazaka all appear, as does Love Exposure's Makiko Watanabe, the problem with these and the lead performances is that it's hard to tell how good they are through the film's uneasy and often shrill tone. With the older refugee characters - who, for some reason, seem almost to worship Sumida - Sono seems to be going for gentle comedy much of the time, and so the brutal violence that ensues when the gangster played by Denden shows up jars badly. Later next month we'll see William Friedkin's Killer Joe, and would that Himizu had one scene that combined darkness and humour as deftly as that film does when its gangster character shows up to demand payment on a debt.

While Sono's films are always turned up to eleven it's only with this one that I have felt that style begin to grate, and I think that's because this time round there's really nobody to identify with. I could sympathise with Yu in Love Exposure, and with Syamoto in Cold Fish, but from the minute he began slapping Chazawa around, this film's lead character really began to alienate me from both him and the film, and given how extreme and sometimes outlandish the events of the film are, lacking a connection to its main character fatally undermined my interest in the ensuing two hours. As the film went on the bellowed dialogue, the repetition and the constant casual violence became boring, because I just couldn't see what, beyond stating his usual themes, Sono was saying here.

Despite the setting this doesn't feel like a film that addresses Fukushima or the tsunami in any meaningful way (hopefully Sono's next, Land of Hope, will prove more interesting on that front), nor does it develop any of those themes I mentioned above in any but the most prosaic way, which is deeply disappointing given how fascinating some of the director's previous films have been under their often crazy surfaces.

There are isolated moments that suggest something interesting, but they tend to go unexplored. Most notable is Chazawa's home life, in which we see that she locks herself away in her room because her (sigh) abusive Mother (Kurosawa) is so awful. The hilariously odd moment in which we see that Chazawa's Mother is building a gallows in her living room is striking, but it amounts only to a couple of small moments and never really comes into play. The whole film is also as strikingly shot as you'd expect of Sono, with a pivotal murder scene especially well designed, but this can hardly rescue the film from its frequent lack of internal logic or that the things being so prettily lensed are frequently dull or annoying.

By the ending, my screening was the scene of openly derisive laughter (some of it, sadly, coming from me) as we tried to restrain ourselves from joining in the seemingly endless bellowing of the last line. That last ninety seconds seemed almost to sum up the film for me; I felt like Sion Sono had just shouted at me for two hours, and I really wasn't sure what he had said or why.

Goodbye First Love [15]

Dir: Mia Hansen-Løve

If there was ever a film I should like it's probably this one. A couple of years ago I saw and loved Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard, and predicted big things for its young star Lola Creton, who is the lead here, but it's more than that. I'm notably fond of coming of age movies, and recently there have been a lot of great entries in the genre coming out of France (Love Like Poison and Water Lilies to name just two), and this personal feeling story from Hansen-Løve has been feted as one of the best recent examples, but eventually, and despite its several undoubted qualities, it left me underwhelmed.

Goodbye First Love takes the long view of the coming of age movie, seeing it not as a snap of the fingers but as a ten year process in the life of Camille (Creton), we meet her as a 15 year old, head over heels for her first boyfriend Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky), Sullivan is about to leave for a 10 month trip to South America, without Camille, who is crushed. The film follows her through other relationships until, almost 10 years later, she meets Sullivan again.

In that summary I have given away much less than the film's trailer, which is essentially a two and a half minute digest of the film. This is a huge problem, the trailer hits almost every important emotional point of the film, almost completely in order, and so when you see the actual film it feels almost like a clunkily expanded version of an elliptical (and rather good) short. It's a real problem when your trailer is better than your film. That ends up being the case because Goodbye First Love is incredibly repetitive. Over and over and indeed over again we get basically the same set of scenes of Camille telling Sullivan she loves him so much she'll die without him, Sullivan saying she has to stop talking like that or he'll dump her, them arguing, and them reconciling. The early part of the film, before Sullivan leaves for South America, takes up perhaps 50 of the film's 110 minutes, but it feels much longer.

This is also because, well observed though they are, neither Sullivan nor Camille has much personality. One of the reasons I love Fucking Amal so much is that even when they aren't easy to be around, Agnes and Elin are really interesting people, that's never true of this pair, and Urzendowsky's flat acting doesn't help. What comes close to rescuing the film is Lola Creton's performance. Just seventeen when the film was made, Creton is spectacularly good throughout (which makes the already dull Urzendowsky a total non-entity). In the early scenes she seems tiny and delicate, and very very young. For the later scenes, in which she ages up to about 24, there are no real efforts made to age her artificially, but Creton visibly grows up. It's all in the way she holds herself; taller and more broad shouldered, and less inclined to passivity. It's very subtle, but the effect is felt throughout the film's second half.

That second half would be more interesting if key beats hadn't been given away by the trailer, the relationship that Camille forms with her architecture professor is very different to the one she had with Sullivan, and Magne-Håvard Brekke does nice work with a character who is a shade underwritten, but come the third act, Camille's actions don't feel all that convincing (though Creton is as good as ever) because if I'm honest I don't really buy into the connection she and Sullivan have.

Mia Hansen-Løve has plenty going for her as a filmmaker; she's got a nicely unobtrusive eye, and the cinematography is beautiful, and while one of the performances here falls flat she otherwise gets great work from her actors, finding little moments of truth in her sprawling narrative. On the other hand, Goodbye First Love is overlong and often feels repetitive, and the central couple just aren't that interesting. Creton's fantastic performance is worth seeing, but it's the only thing I can whole-heartedly recommend here. Hansen-Løve has said that this is a heavily autobiographical film, and perhaps she should consider moving away from that aspect next time, but still, the biggest problem is one that could quite easily have been fixed: Goodbye First Love's trailer totally undermines the experience of the film. I'm not saying it would have been great if that weren't the case, but certainly had more of the emotional beats come as a surprise I suspect I'd have liked this film rather more. Oops really doesn't cover it.

Dark Shadows [12A]

Dir: Tim Burton

Like, I'm sure, the great bulk of UK critics, I walked into this film knowing nothing about the American TV show from which it was adapted, other than that it was a daily soap, and so ran for a truly ridiculous number of episodes, and that it involved some supernatural characters.

Perhaps this expansive amount of material to draw on is part of the problem with Seth Grahame-Smith's screenplay, and thus Tim Burton's latest film. The basic story goes like this: In 1776 Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp, I mean, obviously Johnny Depp, it's a Tim Burton film) spurns the affections of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), given that Angelique is a witch, this is a poor idea. In revenge she kills Barnabas' parents, hypnotises his fiancé (Bella Heathcote) into jumping off a cliff, turns Barnabas into a vampire, and then buries him in a steel coffin. In 1972, that coffin is dug up, and Barnabas returns to find his family's fortunes have nosedived and that Angelique is now the main businesswoman in town, and that she's still evil, and obsessed with him. Around this there are a mass of side stories, most of which die on the vine, in a film that manages to feel both overlong and very heavily edited.

There are definitely other issues, but the script really does feel broken-backed, and sometimes unsure of its tone. Is it going for the horror inherent in Angelique's curse on the Collins family? Is it going for fish out of water comedy with Barnabas? Is it going for drama and intrigue among the Collins family? It tries all of them, with wildly varying degrees of success from scene to scene, which negates any real attempt at an overarching narrative, and robs things that we should be invested in of much importance or interest. Many characters go under-developed, for instance the Collins children; Chloe Moretz is reduced to playing a collection of sullen teenage clichés as Carolyn, giving a performance that suggests bored irritation (to be fair that may because she was bored and irritated or it may be a character choice, it's tough to tell, or to care much), and while the film talks endlessly about David's (Gulliver McGrath) psychological issues the scenes actually dealing with them must currently be on Tim Burton's cutting room floor. Sub-Plots about the family business, a secret stash of wealth (ripped, to a large degree, from the first Addams Family film) and Roger Collins' (Johnny Lee Miller) shortcomings as a Father are all short-changed as well.

Most problematic among the underdeveloped threads are two that involve Barnabas, first a tentative alliance with matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), which promises interesting conflicts it never delivers, and second and more problematic still the romantic storyline with Bella Heathcote, who plays both Barnabas' fiancé Josette and the Collins family's new nanny Victoria. This romantic storyline should be what drives Barnabas throughout the film, given that Josette is one of the main reasons he becomes a vampire, but Victoria disappears for huge swathes of the film and the beautiful but blank Heathcote has little chemistry with Depp.

The tone is sometimes baffling, as it veers from soap opera to parody, unsure which to go for. The parody sometimes works quite well, even if you can feel Burton repeating himself (an early joke about ghost feels like a lame Beetlejuice homage, which bodes well for the sequel that Seth Grahame-Smith is currently penning), Depp sometimes gets the tone right, especially in the first half, as Barnabas explores the world of 1972, the fish out of water jokes are hardly new, but there is a certain joy in Depp tearing the back of a TV off and shouting 'Reveal yourself, tiny songstress' as Karen Carpenter sings. The one person who really gets the tone - more so, frankly, than her director - is Eva Green. Whenever she's on screen Dark Shadows improves by approximately 76%, because she, more than anyone else, is having an absolute ball. Green hams it up fantastically, taking equal joy in Angelique's attempts to seduce and to destroy Barnabas. That old phrase - deliciously evil - that was made for this performance. There's a small issue created by just how much fun Green is: the whole film is really about how Barnabas wants to escape this woman who wants to seduce him and make him hers forever. Oh no, what a horrible fate, to be trapped forever with an eternally youthful Eva Green, I do hope he manages to avoid that.

Ultimately, even if you leave aside the storytelling and the messed up tone, there's a problem at the heart of this film, and it seems to be creative fatigue. This is Burton's fifth film in seven years, and every one of those films stars Johnny Depp. The two are very much into cookie cutter kooky mode, and seem to have become each other's yes men. Twenty years ago, Burton pulled Depp out of his teen idol persona with the gift of the lead role in Edward Scissorhands, today it feels like his direction extends to 'weirder, Johnny'. Once again, Depp dons pale make up to play an English accented freak, and it's wearing very, very thin at this point. Even when the jokes hit, even when everything else is working, Depp is always visible, 'oh look' you think 'it's Johnny Depp being odd', never once does the actor disappear and leave the character on screen, something Depp used to be remarkably good at.

This feeling of Burton being on autopilot is hardly mitigated by the fact that much of Dark Shadows feels very reminiscent of other films (his own and others, with particular accent on Beetlejuice, The Addams Family and Death Becomes Her) and that once again he's wheeling out his regulars; Danny Elfman, Helena Bonham Carter, Christopher Lee. It's almost Tim Burton's paint by numbers.

All this said, there are moments that work, moments where this clunky thing stutters to life. Eva Green is fun throughout, and when Burton accents the comedy he hits more than he misses, with Barnanbas' flowery and old fashioned language and lack of comprehension of the 'modern' world, often good for a laugh. One especially good joke involves a McDonalds sign. The film also looks great, with Rick Heinrichs doing some wonderfully detailed set design, and a nicely retro feel to the visuals provided by DP Bruno Delbonnel and Burton blends practical and CG effects to fine effect (Eva Green's look in the last scene is probably a little of both, and it's beautifully done).

Ultimately Dark Shadows is just far too inconsistent and unsure of itself to really be recommendable, but the bits that work mean that it's not all that easy to completely write off, and it's probably worth seeing just for Eva Green. It's also, sadly, the Burton film I've got most out of since Big Fish. Perhaps what is needed is a sequel that learns the lessons of this film.

The Picture Show: American Pie: Reunion

This week Mike and I individually review Beauty and the Beast 3D and Goodbye First Love. We also discuss some of our favourite detective movies, and the American Pie franchise (on the way to reviewing new installment American Pie: Reunion) and recommend DVD and Blu Ray releases.

You can listen to the show in the player below or download it HERE



Next Time: Dark Shadows, Jeff Who Lives at Home, Secret Weapons list and more.

American Pie: Reunion [15]

Dir: Jon Hurwitz / Hayden Schlossberg

When things that happened when you were a teenager (and in your late teens at that) start getting nostalgic reboots, you begin to feel a bit old. Can it really be 13 years since I sat down in a cinema to watch Jim (Jason Biggs), Oz (Chris Klein), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), Kev (Thomas Ian Nicholas) make a pact to all try to lose their virginity at prom? Can it really be 13 years since Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) told us that 'this one time, at band camp, I stuck a flute in my pussy'? Since Stifler (Seann William Scott) drank beer with an extra ingredient? Since the term MILF was coined? Yes it can, and this fourth (or eighth, depending how you're counting, and I'm going with fourth) slice of Pie reunites us with most of the old gang.

This time the guys and girls are in their thirties, and attending their 13 year high school reunion (they know that's not a thing, there's a throwaway line about it). Jim and Michelle's marriage is in a sexual rut, prompting advice from Jim's Dad (Eugene Levy). Kev is a house husband, Finch is telling tales of his adventurous lifestyle and Oz is a sportscaster and minor celebrity. The group of old friends (and Stifler) get together and plan to have a fun weekend, re-connecting and re-capturing the old days.

You know those friends you had at school... the ones you don't see for years and then when you finally see them again they haven't changed a bit? At first it's sort of fun, but then it's a bit tiresome, because you've grown up, and they haven't. That's pretty much what watching American Pie: Reunion is like, and that's rather a shame.

What I really like about the first three American Pie films is that, in between all the sex jokes, the boobs and the gross out, it really did find time to grow its characters. It created a group of friends who, even if they weren't always massively compelling in their own rights (Kevin), did actually feel like a plausible group of friends, and who, over the course of the series, did actually change and mature to some degree. Okay, it's hardly Ken Loach or anything, but I always bought into the central friendships, and especially what became the central relationship between Jim and Michelle, so well developed in the much maligned American Pie 2. While the sequels did hit some of the same beats with their set pieces, the overarching story felt fresh and somewhat organic (more so with American Pie:The Wedding), and everyone but Stifler evolved. Part of the reason this is true is, I suspect, that the first three films were all written by Adam Herz, whose work seemed underpinned by affection for and interest in his characters. American Pie: Reunion is written by directors and Harold and Kumar creators Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, and the difference is rather marked.

ALL the characters are back, and that does create some of the same problems that dogged the mixed bag of American Pie 2, simultaneously the best and the worst of the series. The focus here is far too scattered. Jim and Michelle have been the centre of the series since the first sequel, and you'd think that with their 2 year old son and their marital problems, their relationship would again be the perfect prism through which we could see the series grow. Unfortunately, in their desperation to accommodate everyone, Hurwitz and Schlossberg reduce the presence of Alyson Hannigan's Michelle to only a handful of important moments.

Instead the film focuses on the guys, but the problem is that two of them are bores (Kev and Oz) and the other three are just the exact same guys we saw last time. Stifler is the epitome of that guy who refused to grow up, and while his antics are amusing from a guy in his early twenties, now that the character is supposed to be in his thirties he just looks like a douchebag, which would be fine if the writers didn't shove him front and centre so much, and instead gave us more of the sad clown that is sometimes glimpsed (and which Scott could easily pull off).

It's frustrating watching this films because there are moments that work - like a nicely staged scene of Jim waking up naked from the waist down after a night out and trying to hide the fact from Michelle and her friend, which comes complete with something that nobody needed to see - but also many that don't. These largely consist of the storylines, and I use the word lightly, involving Kev, Oz and their respective old flames Vicky (Tara Reid) and Heather (Mena Suvari). Reid looks impressively human like, given the surgical disaster zone her body has become over the past decade, but her acting hasn't improved and she is bored and wooden. As for Thomas Ian Nicholas, his entire character contribution here seems to have been growing a beard. Their story never catches light, indeed it's barely a story... and worse it's the exact same barely a story they had in Pie 2. Oz and Heather always struck me as dull, and their storyline here is no exception as they both try to decide whether to break up with the partners they've brought to the reunion.

On the plus side, Jim's scenes with his Dad are as much fun as ever (I suspect that Eugene Levy improvised much of his dialogue), though unfortunately Levy's expanded role does become rather too much of a good thing. Some of the set pieces also work rather well, with the central one in which Jim has to get a topless 18 year old he used to babysit (Ali Corbin) upstairs without her parents seeing, hitting a lot of big laughs (and a couple of cringeworthy moments along the way).

Where it starts to come together properly is at the reunion itself. There we get the nostalgic cameos, the threads are drawn together much more satisfyingly, and Jim and Michelle get the kind of scene that you've been wanting for them all movie; sweetly heartfelt, absolutely in keeping with their characters, but also funny. The problem storylines are somewhat glossed over, and there are a couple of great unexpected jokes, one involving Stifler and the other reuniting the MILF guys. I'll give Hurwitz and Schlossberg this: when you can get both laughs and poignancy from two guys just saying the word MILF, something is going right.

If the rest of the movie were as satisfying then this would be a slam dunk, but the good bits are fewer, further between, and still less satisfying than the best of the other films (particularly when they ape the other films, as in the opening sequence), but when it does come to life you do remember why you liked these characters and this series in the first place. There are laughs here, and there is nostalgia for a viewer of a certain age, but neither is really enough, and for the most part this feels like what it is; a contrived reboot, missing one vital part.