What's in a movie name?

Film titles – like humour – don’t travel well. Local distributors have a long history of renaming films to suit their market. For example, the June issue of Word lists a dozen or so, my two favourite translations being Alien and Jaws: known as The Eighth Passenger in Yugoslavia, and The Teeth of the Sea in France, respectively.

Two other choice examples are: Please Don’t Touch The Old Women (The Producers in Italy) and Just Send Him To University Unqualified (Risky Business in China).

Japan offers some classics: Icy Smile (Basic Instinct) and Shooting Towards Tomorrow (Butch and Sundance).

That Japanese tradition continues with the Bond movies:
• Dr No = 007 is the killing number
• From Russia With Love = 007 at a critical moment
• Thunderball = Thunderball Fighting
• You Only Live Twice = 007 Dies Twice
• OHMSS = The Queen’s 007
• Live And Let Die = The Dead Slave
• A View To A Kill = The Beautiful Prey

In recent years, thanks to the globalisation of cinema and Western culture, the Bond movies (and most major event movies) rarely have their names changed. But rest assured, even now an oddity can slip through the nets: The Dukes of Hazzard movie was unable to trade o the legacy of its TV origins when it arrived in Spain, and thus the local distributor cut simply and eloquently to the chase: Two Crazy Guys And A Lot Of Curves. Pretty much does what it says on the tin, right?

Review: Agora

An epic film with a one-word name that begins with the letter ‘a’ that everyone should see. Say that phrase on the street, and people will utter ‘Avatar’; I’d rather they utter ‘Agora’.

Not that Agora is a much better film (it’s only marginally better), it’s just that its head and its heart are in the right place.
Directed and co-written by Alejandro Almenabar, a proponent of man’s ability to determine his own destiny, Agora is a sustained attack on religion – and while set in the fourth and fifth centuries, its message remains horrifyingly current.

The film’s narrative focus is on Hypatia, played by Rachel Weisz. Whether you are convinced by the UK’s most kooky actress as her generation’s leading philosopher is really neither here nor there, it’s what Hypatia believed that’s important. While nominally a pagan, the quest that dominated her life was to make sense of life, the universe and everything via her role as head of the Platonic school based at the great library in Alexandria – in modern parlance, she was a scientist.

And what a bad time for her to be a scientist as the great city, one of the unarguable birthplaces of modern civilisation, succumbed to religious tension: the ruling pagans v the jews v the christians.

The siege and subsequent sacking of the library (as depicted in the film) is one of the great crimes of the christian faith – a crime that remains unanswered for. There is still much debate about the events, but one has to accept that the library may well have been sacked several times over the centuries, each time by the followers of a different faith – and each time the collected works of early man’s greatest and most progressive thinkers were damaged and lost.

Almenabar’s pointed approach (not dissimilar to James Cameron on Avatar) paints the Jews as christ-killing merchants, obsessed with maintaining the uneasy status quo they have established with the ruling pagans, and the christians as the mob all too happy to become an army happy to kill in the name of their god. There’s no doubt of where his allegiances lie: with the progressive thinkers of antiquity, leaving behind their beliefs, consumed with the need to understand the world and man’s place in it as the new religions demand punishment for their heresy.

Combined with the sacking of the library, Hypatia’s ultimate fate left me filled with rage against any and all beliefs. Clearly, that’s not Almenabar’s intention. He wants to draw attention to the fact that religious beliefs prevent man from understanding and prevent man from achieving.

Alexandria was a crucible of progressive thought, and the sacking of the library and Hypatia’s fate are held by many scholars as the death of antiquity and the birth of a dark time for humanity, indeed our kind took a step backwards that it took many centuries to recover from. How similar does that sound to where mankind has been for the past 20 years?

Agora’s clear message is that to go forward we must abandon separatist religious beliefs and finally believe in ourselves. Almenabar had me at the metaphorical ‘hello’!

However, the film does have its minus points: a slavish fixation on period detail that draws away from the story, some dodgy casting (although the lack of well-known faces is a benefit), and an overbearing tendency towards grandiose gestures (the celestial pull-backs reminding us – one too many times – of how small we are).

Nevertheless, I’d be much happier if the 300 million people that have seen Avatar (my conservative estimate) saw this instead.
Score: 7/10

Review: Iron Man 2

Tony Stark has been a major player in the Marvel comic universe for the past five years or so, whether as himself or as his alter-ego, Iron Man. He’s one of the most interesting and conflicted characters in Marvel comics, his intelligence and futurist beliefs leading him into morally dubious actions while his libido frequently puts him into the arms of too many women he should not be intimate with – and all the time his history of alcoholism and obsessive/compulsive behaviour lurks menacingly.

Nevertheless, when Marvel Studios (the movie production arm of Marvel) decided to launch itself with Iron Man two years ago, it was a brave move because Iron Man was not, then, a brand with worldwide recognition. But it was a brilliant decision: the first film of the summer, it generated great reviews, repeat business and truly boffo boxoffice.

That film’s success was grounded in strong foundations: a well-updated, perfectly paced screenplay, inspired direction by hitherto lightweight Jon Favreau, and a classy heavyweight cast that really believed in the characters and the material. Frankly, it was the sort of a truly crowd-pleasing summer action flick that it appeared Hollywood had forgotten how to make.

The icing on the cake was the casting of Robert Downey Jnr, revelling in a role he was born to play. His performance was such that it’s impossible to think of anyone who could have done it better.

Thus Iron Man 2 arrives with heavy expectation from the general cinema-going population and this comic geek in particular. And while there is much to enjoy, this sequel fails both to meet that expectation and hit the heights of the original.

Starting with the good stuff, Downey Jnr is still on fine form, grandstanding when he gets the chance, and riddled with neuroses when he’s down. The whiplash dialogue between him and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a lovely throwback to the His Girl Friday-era, and generates real sparks while at the same time revealing the history between the two.

The humour of the first film is carried over successfully – a combination of genuine humour generated by the story and the characters and also a deliberate attempt to ground the film in reality by demythologising the superhero (the throwaway use of Captain America’s shield is outstanding).

Paltrow clearly enjoys her verbal sparring with Downey Jnr, but comes away with a beefed-up role that somehow gives her less to work with (but boy does she look good?!).

Don Cheadle’s replacement of Terence Howard as Rhodey/War Machine is seamless, while Samuel L Jackson, in two telling scenes, completely owns his role of SHIELD director Nick Fury. Scarlett Johansson gets the film’s stand-out scene: as SHIELD agent Natasha Romanoff (complete with red hair and skin-tight black jumpsuit, but thankfully no cod-Russian accent), she takes down eight men in the time it takes Happy (Favreau, who gives himself more to do in this film, but mostly playing as a humorous foil to the other characters) Hogan to finish off one. This scene is brilliantly conceived, shot and edited, and gets closest to the modern comic book look, and is the only time Natasha is given due prominence – the script fails to make the most of her.

Traditionally, Tony Stark/Iron Man has two types of adversary: rival industrialists that want to take over Stark Industries, and maniacs that want to take down Iron Man. This film has both: Sam Rockwell’s Justin Hammer and Mickey Rourke’s Ivan Vanko/Whiplash respectively. Rockwell is a humourously incompetent multi-billionaire weapons manufacturer and the inverse of Tony Stark: a loser with women, low on charisma, somewhat effete, and the maker of weapons that don’t always work. Rockwell chews the scenery to marvellous effect.

The same can’t be said of Rourke’s Whiplash. In the comics, Whiplash was never a major player, so the decision to use him in the sequel is a strange one. Rourke certainly brings a presence, a gravitas to the role – but is then given little to do.

More than anything, what lets the film down is the script. Its attempt to adapt the Demon In A Bottle story from the late 70s (in which Tony is overcome by his alcoholism and damn near loses everything) and to draw on elements on the recent Stark Disassembled run is brave, especially this early on in the audience’s relationship with the character. I’m not saying it’s the wrong move, but certainly the execution, specifically the pacing, runs like a fault line through the movie. Simply, the film takes a long time to get going, almost as if it were just the first half of a five-hour sequel. Let’s be clear, for a summer action movie, there’s a distinct lack of action.

A third edition of Iron Man is not due until at least 2013 (after The Avengers movie hits screens in 2012). I hope the production team learn their lessons from this one, and return to the sleek and lean approach that helped the first film. And they’re going to need to overcome the film’s outcome for the Tony/Pepper relationship.

But back to Iron Man 2: a score is called for. While it’s nowhere near as successful as the first in terms of pure entertainment, the essentials are still there: Downey still is Stark. It has faults, yes, but it also has successes, and as much as its bravery backfires, I still admire the film’s bravery. And to put it in context, I don’t feel soiled and abused like I did after Quantum of Solace – it’s not that much of a letdown. I’ll be queuing round the block for Tony’s next outing.

Oh, and if you’re a comic geek, you need to stay until the very end to see the post-credits sequence… Nuff said!
Score: 7/10

Summer 2012: I can't wait!

While summer 2010 has only just started in movie terms with the launch of Iron Man 2, it is worth noting that more so than any summer on record, 2012 will be the summer of the geek movie.

It opens with The Avengers (left) on 4 May; current rumours put Joss Whedon in the director's chair. My current plan is to see this in the US if it doesn't open day and date in the US and the UK.

The end of June sees the arrival of the JJ Abrams' second slice of Star Trek, followed just one week later by the rebooted Spider-Man.

And then comes the biggie: Christopher Nolan completes his trilogy of Batman films on 20 July.

Also due in 2012: adaptations of both Halo and World of Warcraft; Terminator 5; Sin City 3; Monsters Inc 2; Edgar Wright's take on The Ant Man, and so on.

Jumping back one year, summer 2011 kicks off with Thor, then Pirates 4, then Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class, followed by Martin Campbell's attempt at bringing DC's Green Lantern to the screen in June. July sees the motherlode with Captain America hitting screens. And somewhere in between all that lot are Transformers 3 and Wolverine 2...