Since November there has been a steady stream of padded envelopes thudding onto the coconut matting. Each containing DVDs of films that the distributing companies want me, as a voting member of BAFTA, to endorse and win them a nice shiny award and a fervent round of applause. Trouble is I’m not sure that I am the best person to give my opinion. There are hundreds of films circulated every year. Impossible to see every one of the them. Therefore I tend to be guided by reviews and what people are saying about them. Guided but not dictated to. Usually my vote is way off. The people I have elbowed are there on the night collecting awards. You might go as far as to say that my vote is the kiss of death. The Bourne Ultimatum. I’d seen the previous offerings and thought they were OK – if you liked your leading man to look like a clone of Wayne Rooney and walk like Felix the Cat. But I was bombarded by statements that made Bourne, Matt Damon, and his problems way above the shenanigans of 007. What? 007, in any of his incarnations, would have sorted out his identity problem as well as seduced the enemy’s leading spy in the teaser at the beginning of the film.
Atonement with Keira Knightley was one film I was going to love. All the critics told me so. Trouble is I can’t remember a single scene from it and was totally confused by the storyline. With Russell Crowe as a supporting actor and Denzel Washington as the leading man American Gangster should have had everything. The thing that was missing was a half-way believable storyline. Plenty of violence and casual murders, but joining up the dots was a bit iffy. I couldn’t sit through Ratatouille. Rats are not my favourite animals. Rats running a restaurant ……….! Then there’s poor old Shrek The Third. They tell me it’s the ‘Best One Ever’. I’m just glad I didn’t see one and two. I guess I’m just about to lose my voting rights but there was a film on two which didn’t disappoint. Remakes are always difficult. Sleuth was on a hiding to nothing. How was it ever going to be better than the original Caine vs Olivier duet? So it is surprising to find that I actually like the revamp with Michael Caine reversing his role and Jude Law taking on his cheeky cockney sparrow role. Better than the original? Does it matter? It’s good entertainment and that is what counts. I’m not sure what 300 is all about. Thought at one time it was animated but was wrong. It is post “I am Spartacus” and depicts the bloody last stand of the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae against the Army of Xerxes. For the Spartans, in the left corner, is King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and in the right corner for the Persians is Rodrigo Santgro. Whish, bang, wallop and nothing to think about for 111 minutes – that’s entertainment.
If you want to think, try This Is England. It’s about skinheads and racism and bullying and friendship and rights of passage and other thought provoking matters. And is surprisingly good. Any moralising is left to the viewer and the film is better for it. Directed and written, but not necessarily in that order, by Shane Meadows. I wasn’t going to like Brick Lane adapted from the novel by Monica Ali, about a Bangladeshi girl, trapped in an arranged marriage to an older man and forced to live a gruesome life in the East End’s Brick Lane. But I was sold on it by the the engaging photography, the relaxing music and the beautiful Tannishtha Chatterjee. And then there is Hot Fuzz. I saw Shaun of the Dead and found it quite funny. If decomposing bodies shuffling around and eating anything with warm blood in it can be deemed funny. Simon Pegg is once more in the lead and does the best he can with a woeful script but the only time I laughed was when they ran the credits – and that was with relief. But I still having a hankering after Elizabeth – if only she had put some offal in it.