The Dark Knight Rises Review

It’s generally acknowledged that the problem with film trilogies is that, while one or two films within them might be classed as great, there’s always at least one part (usually the third: see the Terminator and Godfather series’) which lets the side down. Only the Toy Story, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars trilogies have managed it, so when Christopher Nolan decided to return to Gotham City one last time in The Dark Knight Rises, the challenge he faced to create a third Batman film which would stand up next to (and ideally surpass) Batman Begins, and particularly The Dark Knight, seemed insurmountable to everyone except him.

Gotham has had eight crime-free years and, with the police and the Harvey Dent Act ensuring that things stay that way, there appears to be no need for Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) to don his cape and cowl again. That, and the fact that Batman’s still wanted for Dent’s murder while Bruce Wayne is still mourning the death of Rachel Dawes has turned the billionaire into a Howard Hughes-esque recluse. However, Bane (Tom Hardy), a terrorist trained by the League of Shadows (an organisation whose leader, Ra’s Al Ghul, was Batman’s main nemesis in Batman Begins) whose imposing physique suggests that he could probably give Marvel rival the Hulk a good run for his money, sets his sights on shattering the idyllic peace that the city finds itself in, bringing Batman out of his cave and back onto the streets.

That’s about as much as can be revealed without giving away major spoilers, but it will have to suffice. Thinking about it later, it’s staggering how much Nolan, his brother Jonathan and David Goyer have managed to pack into 165 minutes of film – there are themes that take in everything from personal betrayal to the very real economic crisis, knowing nods to and full representations of elements and plotlines from the comics, inevitable blockbuster action (including a jaw-dropping escape from a plane in mid-air by Bane in the first ten minutes), a good amount of screen-time for everyone involved (and with a cast that includes Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard, that takes some doing) and above all a re-examination of plotlines and events from the previous films, bringing things full circle from the trilogy’s first film while suggesting that the story will carry on after its end (although Nolan won’t be aboard – this is definitely it as far as he and probably all of the cast and crew, including director of photography Wally Pfister, are concerned). 

Much of the attention before the film’s release focussed on Bane – as the film’s main villain, Tom Hardy faced the unenviable task of measuring up to Heath Ledger’s chilling, Oscar-winning performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight. It seems unfair to compare them, such was the power and demented energy of The Joker, but Bane is a very different kind of enemy – one capable of physically breaking Batman in half rather than trying to outsmart him. Bane presents himself as a liberator of Gotham, breaking the people free from the shackles they are placed under by the rich and powerful, but in his own way, he causes just as much mayhem and chaos as his predecessor. It’s also worth noting that, bar two or three lines, his voice (which is muffled and distorted due to an anaesthetic-feeding mask that he wears at all times) is perfectly understandable.

While the old stalwarts are as reliable as they have been in the previous two films, two other new characters stand out. Anne Hathaway is something of a revelation as Selina Kyle, a very modern burglar whose night-vision goggles flip up on top of her head to look like the ears of a cat. Playing a character with about six different layers that she can put on display at the flick of her tail, Hathaway ensures that we see every one of those layers, and her dubious morality gives the film much of its intrigue. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays an entirely new character, one who doesn’t feature in the comics – police officer John Blake. He gives the film a much needed dose of morality and honesty as a foil to Gary Oldman’s jaded Commissioner Gordon, never wavering in his determination to rescue Gotham from the clutches of Bane and the gang of mercenaries he commands.

The Dark Knight Rises is by no means a perfect film. There are a few minor plot-holes, a relatively old-hat “ticking bomb” scenario which doesn’t add a huge amount in the way of tension and the effect Bane has as Gotham’s reckoning and as a match for Batman is severely diminished by the end. However, despite these small gripes, the film is a satisfyingly intellectual, highly emotional and always thrilling trilogy-ender on the most epic of scales. Good luck to the director that Warner Bros hires to resurrect cinema’s most famous cape and cowl – they’re going to need it.

5/5

Prometheus Review

Ridley, Ridley, Ridley. There are some people that reckon you haven’t made a good film since Matchstick Men, but we all watched you struggle through the likes of Kingdom of Heaven, A Good Year and Robin Hood, desperately hoping that you’d rediscover your form and make a film to match up to Blade Runner or, dare I say it, Alien. When news came through that you were directing what was being described as an Alien prequel, many of us whooped for joy. In hindsight, perhaps polite applause mixed with apprehension would have been more appropriate.

The film that was eventually entitled Prometheus is compelling in parts, but far from perfect, and a lot of the blame for this can probably be laid at the doors of writers Jon Spaights (whose only previous screenwriting credit was the space-flop The Darkest Hour) and Damon Lindelof. Together, they managed to riddle an awful script with holes more in number and larger in size than the one the xenomorph made in John Hurt’s chest in 1979 – without giving away any spoilers, anyone that sat through all six ambitious-but-ultimately-pointless seasons of Lost, for which Lindelof was a co-showrunner and writer, will know the kind of thing I mean.

 

It’s all the more agonising because there are hints of the film that Prometheus could have been. The general premise involves Dr Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), and a clichéd ragtag team of astronauts/scientists comprised of sarky oddballs played by the likes of Idris Elba, Rafe Spall and Sean Harris, visiting a far-off moon which they believe holds some of the answers regarding who created us and where we came from. Charlize Theron is along for the ride as a representative of the Weyland Corporation, which is funding the mission, while the film’s ace in the hole is Michael Fassbender playing android David. With the exception of Rapace and Fassbender, who plays David in an unnervingly calm and serene way (and if there’s a better actor working regularly today, I’d like to see him), every character’s dialogue and general underdevelopment practically scream “tentacle fodder” – there’s one guy who picks up a gun, is told to put it down by Shaw and then we never see him again. What was the point of creating him for that one line? Things, as they often do in space, quickly go wrong and the whole “why are we here/who created us” question is thrown screaming out of the airlock as the film devolves into B-movie ridiculousness, albeit stunningly well-made.

 

That’s one of the things that Prometheus and Ridley Scott can’t be criticised for – it looks amazing, with no expense spared on huge soundstages and CGI effects. H.R. Giger’s original designs are expanded to great effect here by production designer Arthur Max – you can feel the ambition, but the script cannot match it. Although it’s asking far too much for Prometheus to actually answer the questions that humanity has been struggling with since the dawn of time, touches like David questioning his own creation by humans as they struggle with the idea that their own creators might not have been all that they thought they were indicate that the seeds of good ideas were there, but were lost in the mire of explosions and effects that obscured the last third of the film.

 

Ambitious but ultimately hugely flawed, Prometheus is a difficult film to assess. Although it had flashes of brilliance, its plot holes, weak characters and the fact that it didn’t seem to know what film it was trying to be detracted from it – it’ll nevertheless be interesting to see what the inevitable sequel does with the questions left open at its conclusion.

3/5

The Hunger Games Review

On its opening weekend in the United States, The Hunger Games made $155 million. It became the third-best debut of all time (after The Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2) and earned the most that any non-sequel has earned in its first weekend, with hopes that the Lionsgate film could earn up to $400 million domestically, and that’s not counting overseas sales. The terrifying thing is that this film is only the first of four installations in The Hunger Games series.

What makes this feat all the more impressive is that this is a film that hardly breaks new ground. While certain quarters will grumble that this is just a watered-down version of Battle Royale or The Running Man, the fans of those films are by no means the target audience of The Hunger Games. Based on the series of young-adult novels by Suzanne Collins, the film sees America broken up into twelve districts and ruled over by President Snow (Donald Sutherland) who, along with the rich and privileged, is based in the Capitol. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteers to compete in the Hunger Games, an annual event that sees a male and female between the ages of 12 and 18 chosen from each District as Tributes to battle to the death, when her younger sister Prim is chosen to represent District 12. Along the way she forms relationships with her mentor, a former Games winner (Woody Harrelson), her stylist (Lenny Kravitz) and, most importantly, her fellow District 12 Tribute, Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson). 

This film, the first of the series, looks as though it is going to more than fill the void left by the recent ending of major franchises. The fact that vampires, werewolves, witches, wizards and love triangles (though apparently this last gains greater precedence as the series progresses) are initially replaced with dystopia, brutality, satire and sci-fi means that it appeals to men as well as women. As a standalone film, however, it’s relatively hit-and-miss, though still a good evening’s worth of entertainment. While the central performances and direction are strong, with Lawrence channelling her Oscar-nominated role in Winter’s Bone, the film doesn’t seem able to strike a consistent balance on the subjects of morality and satire, by turns overly heavy-handed and frustratingly light, so many of the deep questions sci-fi often attempts to answer are skimmed over. For instance, the Tributes never really stop to consider their predicaments – with 18-year-old men being told to kill 12-year-old girls, how has civilisation dissolved so quickly? Do they not feel anything any more? In addition, the film’s final moments seem weak and rushed, as though director Gary Ross knows that, now the battle is over, his teenage audience’s attention has already begun to slip.

I have no doubt that The Hunger Games will clean up at various teen choice awards and probably make everyone involved a great deal of money, but it could have been so much more than it ultimately is. Whether the following films get better or worse clearly remains to be seen, but it has a lot more potential than anyone saw in the likes of Twilight, which became a parody of itself within three or four months of it first being released. The challenge for Ross is to find the balance between sci-fi satire and burgeoning romantic storylines – another four-film love triangle melodrama is the last thing anyone needs.

3.5/5

Oscar Nominations 2012 - Thoughts

The Oscar nominations are in and, in many ways, represent the nostalgic haze currently sweeping Hollywood. French sleeper hit The Artist, a dialogue-free, black-and-white film about the death of silent cinema and rise of talkies, gets ten nominations but is just pipped by Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, a 3D celebration of the pioneering cinematic work of Georges Melies, which scooped eleven nominations in total.

As ever when the Oscar nominations are announced, there are notable omissions and inexplicable decisions. The winner in the Best Demonstration That The Academy Is Stark-Bollock Raving Mad category went to the revelation that sentimental drivel-fest Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close received a Best Picture nomination while Drive, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Shame, Young Adult, 50/50 and Melancholia got nothing. In addition, Steven Spielberg may well feel aggrieved that his work on War Horse hasn’t warranted a nomination for Best Director, while the Best Actor nomination for A Better Life’s Demián Bichir also comes as a surprise, especially considering the likes of Michael Fassbender, Michael Shannon and Ryan Gosling were snubbed for Shame, Take Shelter and Drive/The Ides of March respectively. 

The irritating trend this awards season has been the continued love-in for Woody Allen’s time-travelling, evocative blah-blah-blah Midnight in Paris. It’s inexplicable – not only is it yet another Allen film that fails to recapture the magic of his output in the 1970s, but there are also, as mentioned above, a number of arguably worthier candidates battling for nominations this year. Nevertheless, Midnight... gets four nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Stupid Academy morons.

The full nominations for the six main awards are as follows:

BEST PICTURE
The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

BEST DIRECTOR
The Artist - Michel Hazanavicius
The Descendants - Alexander Payne
Hugo - Martin Scorsese
Midnight in Paris - Woody Allen
The Tree of Life - Terrence Malick

BEST ACTOR
Demián Bichir - A Better Life
George Clooney - The Descendants
Jean Dujardin - The Artist
Gary Oldman - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Brad Pitt - Moneyball

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Kenneth Branagh - My Week with Marilyn
Jonah Hill - Moneyball
Nick Nolte - Warrior
Christopher Plummer - Beginners
Max von Sydow - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

BEST ACTRESS
Glenn Close - Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis - The Help
Rooney Mara - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams - My Week with Marilyn

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Bérénice Bejo - The Artist
Jessica Chastain - The Help
Melissa McCarthy - Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer - Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer - The Help

My predictions:

Best Picture - It’s hard to see anything but The Artist tap-dancing off with the top prize. Aggressive marketing and promotion by the Weinsteins has led to widespread award success, and it will probably pay off here. However, the Academy does like to shake things up, so it would not be a particular shock to see of the nominees except Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close winning. I’m sticking with The Artist.

Best Director - Michel Hazanavicius deserves this for having the courage to make a film like The Artist in an increasingly unoriginal and creatively stagnant cinema. Although he may be challenged by Golden Globe-winning Martin Scorsese, it seems unlikely that the Academy would reward the director it has previously overlooked for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Aviator for a 3D children’s film. Payne, Allen and Malick haven’t won enough elsewhere to be considered serious contenders for the prize.

Best Actor - Although it would be perfect for Gary Oldman to win for his incredible reinterpretation of George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, it looks like a straight fight between Jean Dujardin for The Artist and George Clooney for The Descendants. Dujardin is good, but Clooney’s one of the Academy’s darlings, and he’ll probably win here.

Best Supporting Actor - In a fairly weak category this year, Christopher Plummer looks set to win the Oscar because of his age more than anything else (though his role in Beginners, as an octogenarian homosexual, is the kind of risqué fare the Academy likes). Having been overlooked for the last 50-odd years and losing the same award to Christoph Waltz in 2009, he should easily beat his rivals this year.

Best Actress - No contest. Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady. It’s terrifying to think how bad that film might have been had it not had an actress of Streep’s calibre carrying it. Michelle Williams and Viola Davies should count themselves unlucky they’re up against Streep – in any other year, they would have been runaway favourites for the Oscar.

Best Supporting Actress - In another odd set of nominations, the smart money’s on Octavia Spencer for her role in The Help. Jessica Chastain is nominated for the same film but should have been in for The Tree of Life, her best performance in the year she broke into the mainstream. Bérénice Bejo arguably could have been nominated for Best Actress, though it’s unlikely she would have won anything in that category either. It’s also nice to see Janet McTeer get some recognition for Albert Nobbs. 

Right. I’m off to put a bet on.

Shame Review

Shame is a film that you do not want to see with your parents. This compulsive, often painful-to-watch film entirely puts paid to the idea that an addiction to sex is the best kind of addiction to have. Very few have attempted to tackle it as subject matter, for the simple reason that it must be nigh-on impossible to find an actor bold enough to play such a draining role. Fortunately, Michael Fassbender and director Steve McQueen seem to have a shared affinity for bringing difficult themes and topics to the screen, and to audiences who may not appreciate them. It is to their credit that they do.

Fassbender plays Brandon, a suave, thirtyish New Yorker who has a good job and a cool bachelor pad. He is also driven to orgasm several times a day with pick-ups, prostitutes, porn and masturbation in the worst kind of ways. As soon as he wakes, we hear ticking, as if Brandon is constantly counting down and dreading the point at which he has to find release. Pleasure is the last thing he feels now – a sequence towards the film’s end shows his face in close-up as he tries to come so he can move on with his life until next time. His feelings of anger, pain, frustration and despair all appear on his face at some point during that scene. It looks like the worst way to live. He is stuck in a hellish loop which he appears to have little chance of escaping, and comparisons can be made with American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, a similar character with a very different craving.

The film also stars Carey Mulligan, who does a thoroughly convincing job as Brandon’s sister Sissy, another damaged, self-harming and obsessive soul whose gig singing a stripped-down, self-indulgent version of New York, New York in a trendy jazz bar leads to her sleeping with Brandon’s sleazy, womanising-although-married boss Dave (James Badge Dale). We get hints of the experiences that have shaped the lives the siblings lead, but no more. With the BAFTA nominations newly released, it is a surprise to see Mulligan nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category not for the British-funded-and-produced Shame, but for the American-funded-and-produced Drive, in which she gave a solid but hardly earth-shattering performance. One wonders what goes through the heads of the voters at BAFTA and the Golden Globes sometimes.

This is the second collaboration between Fassbender and McQueen after 2008’s equally powerful Hunger about IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands. One of the stand-out scenes in that film was a single-take medium-shot of Sands and a priest talking for the better part of ten minutes, and McQueen utilises the technique again in Shame during an awkward dinner-date conversation between Brandon and his co-worker Marianne (Nicole Beharie). It looks briefly like he might have a real chance of a proper relationship with her, but once the distance he prefers to keep between him and his sexual partners is broken, he runs into problems once again. By the film’s end, his shame is agonizingly laid bare to the audience. 

The film’s greatest achievement is to help bring mainstream credibility to the notion of sex addiction – Brandon, brilliantly and bravely played by Fassbender, cannot change and lacks the mental strength to do so. There is no happy ending, nor is there likely to be. He can only continue to bear the scars of addiction, humiliation and shame.

4.5/5

Review of 2011's Films

So, with the end of 2011 more or less upon us, I thought I’d try my hand at a Best Films Of The Year article. It’s been an odd, but compelling year in cinema, with films coming out of nowhere to knock our socks off while highly-anticipated efforts have failed to capture audiences’ imaginations. We’ve had new efforts from Terrence Malick, the Coens, Martin Scorsese and Danny Boyle, while European directors such as Nicolas Winding Refn and Tomas Alfredson have broken into the mainstream. There have also been career-best performances from such acting luminaries as Gary Oldman, Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst and Natalie Portman.

Television has also raised its game, and is worth mentioning because of it. Favourite imports from America like Boardwalk Empire and The Walking Dead have been supplemented by one-offs like the Kate Winslet/Guy Pearce-starring HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce. Stung by their success, British programming attempted to respond with BBC2's The Hour (the new Mad Men it was not, but it was a decent effort) and The Shadow Line, which gave us one of the year’s most compelling characters of any medium in the sinister Gatehouse, played by Antony Sher, whose work was only matched by Dominic West as serial killer Fred West in ITV's Appropriate Adult. There was also continued acclaim on Channel 4 for Shane Meadows and his three-part continuation of the This Is England series, as well as Charlie Brooker for Black Mirror.

So, to the list. I allowed myself to pick any films I had seen that had been released in the UK in the 2011 calendar year. Unfortunately, there are a lot of films I suspect may have made the list had I got a chance to see them. With apologies, there is therefore no place for Senna, Bridesmaids, The Guard, Beginners, The Skin I Live In, Melancholia, Tyrannosaur, The Adventures Of Tintin, Contagion, The Ides Of March, The Help, The Deep Blue Sea, Moneyball, My Week With Marilyn, Take Shelter, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Artist. There are also films that have come out in the USA but not the UK, so I couldn't include Shame, The Descendants, War Horse, A Dangerous Method, J. Edgar or Young Adult.

With honourable mentions for 127 Hours, True Grit, Submarine, Tracker, Route Irish, Super 8, We Need To Talk About Kevin and (shock horror that it’s been omitted) The King’s Speech, this is my list of 2011’s top 10 films:

10. The Tree Of Life. The film that divided critics and audiences alike. Is Terrence Malick’s meditation on family, love and nature deep and profound or pompous rubbish? The fact that the film appears to be at least partly autobiographic is to its credit, as is the way it has been developed and filmed in defiance of the demands and constraints of Hollywood. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a hell of a discussion topic. 

9. Wuthering Heights. There have been so many adaptations of Emily Bronte’s epic novel that radical changes had to be made for this new version. Fortunately, Andrea Arnold had the balls to do so, and while her handheld camera style and sparse dialogue may not be to the tastes of the period drama purists, she certainly gives future projects another take to consider. Fresh and raw, her Wuthering Heights is not for the faint-hearted, but is rewarding for those prepared to give it a chance.

  

8. Barney’s Version. In the same way that 2011 might be called the Year Of The Gosling, this particular type of film might come to be labelled as the Paul Giamatti Genre. Arty, smart, witty, gritty, literate and touching, this is Giamatti’s finest performance. Barney Ponofsky is a television producer whose life and loves are spanned over forty or so years – while the plot and time-frame is large and rambling, it just about hangs together to produce another hell of a sleeper hit. Dustin Hoffman is a particular delight as Barney’s father.  

7. The Fighter. Possibly the best sports film since Raging Bull? Certainly the best boxing film since Raging Bull. What is about boxing that makes it such a compelling cinematic topic? Maybe the fact that most boxers appear to be massive pricks – certainly the character of Dicky Eklund helps to bear that theory out. Christian Bale is electric in that role, while Mark Wahlberg must be gutted that everyone except him won awards for the film that was his passion.

 

6. Never Let Me Go. This devastating film was largely overlooked by more or less everyone, which it didn’t deserve. Based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel set in an alternative England, Never Let Me Go elicits the best work to date from Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield, ably supported by Keira Knightley. Heartbreakingly elegiac from the beginning, this is a very...English film.

 

5. Black Swan. If you’re in the mood for a massive head-fuck, this is the film for you. While playing the title roles in Swan Lake, ballerina Nina (Natalie Portman in a deservedly Oscar-winning performance) experiences something of an identity crisis which is exacerbated by the influence of fellow dancer Lily. With so many clues to discover and things to notice, this is a film that only gets better with every viewing. 

 

4. Drive. It’s probably fair to say that this was cinema’s biggest unexpected surprise, and is the main reason why 2011 may in future be known as the Year Of The Gosling. The pulsing electro soundtrack sounds like it should be at odds with the driving sequences, but instead it helps to perfectly illustrate the isolation of the Driver, while the sequences of extraordinarily bloody violence punctuate the film like lightning. 

 

3. Hugo. The first ever Martin Scorsese film for kids and the first ever Martin Scorsese film to be shot in 3D. While the merits of 3D remain unconvincing even in his talented hands, this story of a boy who winds the clocks in a Parisian train station and is thrown into the world of early film provides a shot of charm and magic to warm even the most cynical and jaded filmgoer.

 

2. 50/50. The surprise of the year. A bromance about comedy could have been a cliché-ridden embarrassment, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen’s natural chemistry made this tale of two friends trying to deal with one’s sudden cancer diagnosis both hysterically funny and desperately sad in equal measure.

 

1. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. One of the most anticipated films of the year, and it didn’t disappoint. Supposedly our American cousins didn’t “get” it, which will hurt it during awards season, but a Swedish director making his first English-language film had no such problems. Led by Gary Oldman as George Smiley, the superb cast helped to ensure that this stylish, claustrophobic, stiff-upper-lip take on John le Carre’s masterpiece was the best film of the year.

50/50 Review

I think it’s fair to say that 50/50 is far, far better than a lot of people expected it to be. While the cast looked promising, there seemed to be a definite tendency to write this kind of film off as a bromance with cheap depth and little heart, which would have surely incurred the wrath of cancer support groups attacking it for trivialising terminal illness. I was one of the people fearing the worst. I was wrong. 50/50 is a ballsy, one-of-a-kind film filled to the brim with heart, soul, laughter and tears.

Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a young, fit, healthy man, with a hot girlfriend and a cool job at a radio station, but when he goes to the doctor for treatment on a painful back, he is shocked to find out that he has a rare type of spine cancer. As he puts it, ‘I don’t smoke...I don’t drink...I recycle.’ With his chances of survival only 50%, he embarks upon a well-trodden cinematic journey of anger, depression and chemotherapy with his foul-mouthed best friend, Kyle (Seth Rogen), his flaky girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard), his overbearing mother, Diane (Anjelica Huston) and his hospital-appointed but vastly inexperienced therapist Katherine (Anna Kendrick).

Another screenwriter, given the concept, characters and plot fully fleshed out for him to work dialogue in for, could not have crafted a film half as good as this. Only someone who has lived through this could possibly understand the mental, physical and emotional trauma that Adam goes through during the film, and screenwriter Will Reiser has. The film is based on his own struggle with cancer and, though it follows a fairly standard three act structure, perfectly balances male comedy on the juvenile side with shattering emotion of the sort more often reserved for ‘real’ films with ‘real’ actors without ever straying into hysteria or melodrama, with credit also going to director Jonathan Levine for his sensitive direction. It pulls back at the right moments to preserve its credibility and power.

Seth Rogen, who as Reiser’s best friend played this role for real, appears to be playing the role of crude buffoon he’s so often displayed in the past, but displays touches of genuinely heartfelt acting in the emotional final third. Kendrick gives another solid performance, reminding us why she was nominated for an Oscar last year, while Huston’s scenes with Adam are the most emotionally devastating of the film. 50/50 as a whole, though, belongs to Gordon-Levitt, who brings such humour and pathos to the Adam’s journey that it would not be surprising, despite the Academy’s comedy snobbery, to see him on the Best Actor shortlist next year. 

In the kind of film normally reserved for audiences of women to bawl their eyes out with their friends, this astounding film is the surprise of the year, and you’d be hard-pushed to find a showing that doesn’t have at least one man asking his girlfriend for a tissue. 50/50 is beautifully acted, wonderfully written and sure to be completely underrated by everybody until they actually sit down and watch it.

5/5