Orphan

Director:                      Jaume Collet-Serra

Starring:                      Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard

Details:                        USA / 123 min / 18

Release Date:             7^th August 2009

In its purest form, cinema is there to excite and entertain and Horror is possibly the best way to do this. Unfortunately for The Orphan it’s predictable throughout. All the excitement has been drained from the screen by depending on the same scare tactics deployed in almost all other American horror movies. A couple adopt, wait for it… an orphan, and even though she seems all sugar and spice at first, her new mother begins to question what’s really behind this façade. This plot keeps up the strong paedophobic tradition in horror that The Omen and The Exorcist are also part of.  But it blends this with the ‘careful who you invite into your home’ thriller as seen in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle among many others. However, the films overall banality prevents it from being anything but a mediocre stab at the genre. For instance, John Ottman has created some great scores in the past for the likes of The Usual Suspects. But here he solely depends on the standard creaky noise for the empty playground, the plinky plonky xylophone for the scare in the big house and so on ad nauseam. It’s more akin to Fr. Dougal’s BBC scary sound effects album. To the films credit, it fully develops the characters involved and keeps your attention for the duration. It should have been much more than just run of the mill.

Inglourious Basterds

Director:              Quentin Tarantino

Starring:                       Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger,

Details:             USA / 153 mins / 16

Release Date:               21 August 2009

I won’t sit on the fence with this one. Even though Inglourious Basterds may be called a masterpiece in years to come, I was checking my watch on several occasions. Critics who say Quentin Tarantino movies are full of realistic dialog and true to life moments are far off the mark. In actuality, each of his movies takes place in a unique comic book world, with over the top characters and scenarios. This time around is no different. A group of American Jewish soldiers are dropped into France. Their sole objective is to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by brutally murdering every Nazi they see. Much like the fantastic “No Country For Old Men”, it breaks a lot of filmmaking rules. After a summer of mediocre movies this is always a relief, but the pertinent question remains: is it worth watching? Well, not really. It’s a classic marketing bait and switch. We’re promised Brad Pitt and his Dirty Dozen gang going medieval on some Nazi’s. But Pitt has only 20 minutes of screen time and only once do we see what the Basterds do best. Instead it’s a movie that alternates between highly tense, farcical and many tedious scenes. Perhaps it was too much of a reach to make a WWII exploitation movie about WWII exploitation movies. In the end, it’s a silly tall-tale, but it’s just not that fun.

District 9

Director:            Neill Bloomkamp

Starring:             Sharlto Copely

Details:            USA/112 min/

Release Date:            September 4^th 2009

Part documentary and part real time action, District 9 follows the activities of a refugee camp for extra-terrestrials in the centre of Johannesburg. I’m sure the idea of science fiction and politics has already turned many people off so I won’t waste any more time on describing the plot. Fortunately, this leaves a lot more precious word space for describing just how brilliant this movie is. Sci-fi movies don’t often get the kindest of treatment. They’re reduced by many to just ‘boys and their toys’. And while this claim is fair for soul-destroying atrocities like Transformers, it does a great disservice to Bladerunner, Alien, Bride of Frankenstein, etc. In these cases, the sci-fi aspect is just dressing for much larger issues. And in District 9 it’s no different. When we meet the protagonist, one could be forgiven for thinking it was an episode of The Office: South Africa. He’s a mild mannered bureaucrat who’s a tad simple. Not exactly John McClane. But precisely because the characters are believable do we become immersed in this new world. Surely this is the most important, but often neglected thing in cinema; to tell a fantastic story. The aliens are just computer renderings, but we care for them deeply too. In this way, director Bloomkamp is similar to Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Orphange). It’s inventive exciting and one of the finest films of the year.

All reviews submitted by Paul Hammond