The EIFF in full swing

I guess I'm playing catch-up here. Let's go back to before my unpleasant experience (see last blog entry) and round up the films I saw on Wednesday. I can barely remember what day it is now to be honest.

HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE
Another film in the Mitchell Leisen retrospective, another romantic comedy. Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray (doing his best James Stewart impression) are the couple at its heart this time and while they make a great pairing the film itself is a pretty standard affair for romcom territory. The ending is predictable but at least there's a refreshing detour into darker territory first.

THE KILLING OF JOHN LENNON
This fractured, hallucinatory effort follows Mark Chapman in the months leading up to his infamous act in New York. The dream-like quality of the film makes the two hours a real slog and eventually the style-over-substance approach just becomes grating. Given the notorious outcome of this story there's a surprising lack of tension and matters are not helped by the film continuing just when you think it's ended. And that happens about half a dozen times.

ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL
Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes reunite after their critically acclaimed GHOST WORLD adaptation but alas this time their cinematic treatment of Clowes original comic material fails to hit the mark. There are too many styles (teen comedy, emotional drama, murder mystery... the film can't decide so how can I?) and the film ends up a muddle. This is only exacerbated by the cast of largely uninteresting characters who aim for the quirkiness of GHOST WORLD but fall some way short. You're always on to a loser when your lead character is one of the most boring in the movie.

THE HOST
Move over Japan and Godzilla, the Koreans are making their mark on the Asian monster movie! The story is simple - chemicals dumped in a river (by the US, and based on a real event) cause a river-bound mutation which grows to enormous size and terrorises the people of Seoul.

It's great fun but manages to be serious when necessary; it's silly but not childish; gruesome without being gross. It might be CGI but it's just as enjoyable as the traditional rubber-suited efforts of Japan. In short it's a big popcorn movie like the Americans wish they still knew how to make. And most pleasant of all, the monster is in full swing within the first quarter of an hour, and in daylight too! None of this slow build up, night-bound, a-bit-at-a-time malarky - it's a full-on monster mash from the word go, and the most fun you'll have at the pictures this year. Particularly if, like me, you're sat next to a woman who leaps three feet out her seat every time the monster appears.