November roundup : ANOTHER YEAR [7/10]; THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT [6/10]; JACKASS 3D [6/10]; SKYLINE [6/10]

Published on: November 16th, 2010

Another Year.
The usual Leigh combination of high hopes, bleak moments and laughter in the dark – this time more formally structured than usual in terms of screenplay, as four sections – one per season – follow a middle-aged couple (Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen), their friends (Lesley Manville, Peter Wight, etc) and family (Oliver Maltman) over the course of twelve months.
   Performances are predictably the strong suit, and while Manville has been getting all the attention and awards “buzz” for her showy, touching turn as a chatterbox neurotic alcoholic (like Wight’s character, Manville’s never simply drinks when she can gulp), veteran David Bradley – who only appears in the “winter” segment – is at least as effective with much lower-key work as an uncommunicatively glum widower. 
   As ever with Leigh, the comedy veers close to a dependence on caricature on occasion - especially via Karina Fernandez´s gratingly upbeat Katie, who could have wandered into nearly any Leigh picture of the last decade. But this isn´t enough to significantly detract from a novelistic, nuanced and pleasingly ambiguous work that easily sustains attention over what looks on paper like a dauntingly protracted running-time.

Jackass 3D.
Third instalment of the TV spinoff is once again little more than a series of discrete stunts and Candid Camera style gags, performed by a gigglingly juvenile all-male ensemble whose chief priority seems to be making each other laugh. The results are unsurprisingly uneven - only intermittently making any use of the 3-D gimmick – and more amusing than side-splittingly hilarious.
   Among a string of somewhat random celebrity cameos (Will Oldham?!), that terrific young comic actor Seann William Scott shows up for a brief, pointless “cameo” as himself – perhaps constituting the most minor entry in his filmography. Much more impact is made by the four-legged interlopers, including a delightfully bad-tempered ram and an even more aggressive bull.  Having a rather less rewarding time are a bunch of hapless snakes, hurled roughly into a pit during one of the more underwhelming sequences.
   The Jackass crew themselves, as before, display varying levels of charm: it should surprise no-one that Chris Pontius, who cavorts semi-naked at the drop of anything resembling a hat, but who’s also by some way also the brightest and most articulate of the bunch, should be carving out a “legitimate” career with non-comic appearances in “straight” pictures like Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere. A smart move: on the current evidence, this particular Jackass would appear to be pretty close to its last legs.

The Kids Are All Right.
Or rather, the film is all right – Lisa Cholodenko’s comedy-drama passing muster despite the essential soap-opera/sit-com nature of its decidedly unlikely premise. Mothers to two teenage children (Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson as the implausibly-monikered “Laser”), a  lesbian couple (Julianne Moore, Annette Bening) in California experience a crisis in their relationship when their daughter, turning 18, is asked by her younger brother to track down their sperm-donor father.
   This turns out to be a hunky, vaguely hippie-ish wholefood restaurateur (Mark Ruffal0) – who charms Moore’s kooky landscape-gardener to the extent that the pair end up in the sack. Complications ensue, though nothing too alarming: Cholodenko and her co-writer Stuart Blumberg are evidently much too fond of thuer characters to ever really risk an unhappy ending, and given 21st century social trends it’s a given that (a) lesbian partnership/motherhood and (b) sperm donation will be endorsed, while (c) tracking down one’s donor is perhaps less advisable.
    In what’s essentially a five-hander ensemble, Moore and Bening manage to convince as a chalk-and-cheese couple; Ruffalo gamely reveals his character’s inner asshole and the kids are (more than) all right. Given the recent American controversies over “gay marriage”, such positive presentations of unorthodox family units are to be welcomed – even if this picture’s presentation of same-sex relationships (shying away from actual bedroom intimacy, whereas straight copulation is more graphically shown), veers towards the excessively pussyfooting.

Skyline.
Cheesily enjoyable sci-fi/horror so shamelessly cobbles together elements of Cloverfield, District 9 and The Matrix that one almost expects those predecessors’ screenwriters to obtain script credits alongside Joshua Cordes and Liam O`Donnell - or at least a mention in the acknowledgements. But admirers of the genre`s more venerable practitioners  may also pick up nods to John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes), and even a fairly recent episode of Dr Who (The Sound of Drums) as the shenanigans noisily unfold.
   The directors – pompously billed as “The Brothers Strause” – chiefly concentrate on delivering special-effects set-pieces, strung around a hand-me-down basic scenario: vast alien spacecraft materialise over Los Angeles, sucking up the inhabitants into their bowels for gruesomely unpleasant ends. Focussing on a rag-tag bunch of youthful survivors hiding out in the penthouse of an opulent beach-side apartment block, the picture is a very stop-start affair in which the aliens’ appearances are frustratingly rationed – presumably because of budgetary restrictions – and numerous sequences involve bickering over what to do next.
   This has the unfortunate consequence of putting an excessive emphasis on the very ropey dialogue and character-development – it also doesn’t help that performances range from the serviceable to the cardboard. Plot-holes abound from start to finish, but proceedings are carried off with such breezy, dopey b-movie charm - and enough nicely unpleasant CGI interludes – to make the ride more than worthwhile.

Neil Young
16th November, 2010

ANOTHER YEAR
[7/10] : UK 2010 : Mike LEIGH : 130m
seen 7/Nov/10 at The Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle (£7.50) : 20/28

JACKASS 3D
[6/10] : USA 2010 : Jeff TREMAINE : 94m
seen 14/Nov/10 at Empire, Sunderland (£7.75) : 15/28

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
[6/10] : USA 2010 : Lisa CHOLODENKO : 106m
seen 11/Nov/10 at Vue, The Light, Leeds (£5.40) : 15/28

SKYLINE
[6/10] : USA 2010 : ‘The Brothers Strause’ (i.e. Colin STRAUSE & Greg STRAUSE) : 93m
seen 14/Nov/10 at Empire, Sunderland (£6.25) : 16/28