Anvil! The Story of Anvil: DVD Review
American Movie: DVD Review

Watching Anvil! The Story of Anvil, the feature documentary about a hapless Canadian heavy metal band, at the weekend I couldn’t help but be reminded of one of my all-time favourite documentaries – American Movie.

Anvil! catches up with the titular rockers some 25 years after they flirted with stardom. We see footage from 1984 of the band playing packed stadiums alongside the likes of Whitesnake and Bon Jovi. Talking heads like Lars Ulrich, Slash and Lemmy explain how influential Anvil were, and how they were expected to be huge stars. “These guys were gonna turn the music industry upside down,” says Ulrich. But that never quite happened.

Cut to the present, and frontman Steve “Lips” Kudlow”, now in his 50s, delivers school meal for a living. But by night he and best mate and drummer Robb Reiner are still rocking out as Anvil – albeit in front of modest crowds in local bars. The chance to embark on a European tour reignites their dream. Can Anvil make a comeback?

Cue scenes of the band travelling around the arse end of Europe in a Winnebago, playing in front of a handful of people in basement clubs, arguing with venues over payment, missing trains, falling out with each other, and generally having their dream thoroughly stamped on.

It’s obviously full of Spinal Tap-esque moments and lines, but it’s more than just a freak show. Both Lips and Robb are eccentric characters, but they also come across as very likeable. “I started out with Robb when we were 14 years old, and we said we’re gonna do it til we’re old men,” says Lips. “And we really meant that.”

What emerges is something of a “bromance”, to use a current Hollywood buzzword. Director Sacha Gervasi was an Anvil fan as a teenager, and here he offers an affectionate, and often very funny, account of two friends who just don’t know when to stop the rock.

Chris Smith’s American Movie, released in 1999, follows independent filmmaker Mark Borchardt as he attempt to make his great American movie Northwestern. Mark, lanky and lank-haired, lives about one step above a trailer park in a run-down part of Milwaukee, and is utterly obsessed with movies.

Before he can get started on Northwestern he needs to complete the horror movie Coven, which he insists rhymes with “woven”. Trouble is he has no money, a dysfunctional family, oddball friends, and a host of personal demons.

Marks’ best friend is Mike Schank, an affable drug casualty (he happily tells the story of a brain-damaging overdose) with a permanent grin and the loyalty of a puppy dog. “We used to do a lot of partying together, but I don’t party anymore,” explains Mike.

The friendship between Mark and Mike is central to the movie – like Anvil! it’s a “bromance”. Throw into the mix Mark’s decrepit but loveable Uncle Bill, with his bizarre improvised poems to his dead wife, and you have a trio of unforgettable characters.

American Movie is fascinating, hilarious, touching and genuinely uplifting, all soundtracked by Mike Schank’s gentle acoustic guitar rendition of Mr Bojangles. Probably as good a feature documentary as you’ll ever see.

Anvil! 9/10
American Movie 10/10

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The Wrestler: Movie Review

Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is a washed-up pro wrestler, popping pills and bandaging limbs in an effort to keep his broken body in the ring and pay his rent. His estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) hates him, and the only person he has any connection with is disillusioned lapdancer Cassidy (Marisa Tomei).

Rourke, with his puffy, reconstructed face and battered body, looks a bit like a plastic He-Man action figure that’s been left on top of a radiator all winter (or, alternatively, Meg Ryan on steroids). He’s essentially playing himself here, but that shouldn’t distract from what is a really gutsy and compelling performance (Jack Nicholson has played himself for 40-odd years, and won three Oscars in the process). Both Rourke and Tomei are deservedly BAFTA and Oscar nominated.

Tomei is a consistently watchable actor who previously won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar a full 16 years ago for My Cousin Vinny. She offers a brave and heartfelt turn as the lapdancer who, like The Ram, knows she is too old for her chosen career. Like Rourke, she puts everything out there on the screen. Surprising film fact: Marisa Tomei is 45 years old.

But the most interesting thing about The Wrestler is that it manages to avoid ‘doing a Rocky’. There is nothing too sentimental or overblown about it, and the ending feels pitch-perfect. It’s a great little movie, sympathetically told by screenwriter Robert D Siegel and director Darren Aronofsky, and driven by two huge performances.

8/10

The Mist: DVD Review

Despite containing only half as much moisture density as John Carpenter’s The Fog, this Frank Darabont/Stephen King affair is fun CGI-monster B-movie, with Thomas Jane leading a group of smalltown folk trapped in a supermarket by a plague of supernatural beasties. It’s pretty standard fare – until the last few minutes, because The Mist has one of the darkest and most memorable endings you’ll ever see in a mainstream Hollywood movie, changed by Darabont from King’s original novella ending, and is worth seeing for that alone.

7/10

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Slumdog Millionaire: Film Review

A former Mumbai street kid takes part in India’s version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and, despite having no education, goes on an incredible winning streak. The show’s host, and the police, reckon he’s cheating, but in fact it turns out that each answer has played a part in young Jamal’s eventful life. How very convenient.

The first thing to say is that Slumdog Millionaire looks great. It’s stylishly shot by directors Danny Boyle and (his overlooked co-director) Loveleen Tandan, and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, and Mumbai makes a thrilling and colourful setting. But is it worthy of the blanket of plaudits it’s currently receiving? I’m not so sure.

The central concept of events in Jamal’s life matching, chronologically, the quiz show questions, is a contrivance perhaps more suited to a knockabout comedy than a sometimes gritty (and sometimes brutal) drama. There are also fundamental holes in the plot – for a start, it relies on the conceit that the Millionaire TV show is transmitted live, which is obviously not the case.

So why so many five-star reviews and award nominations? I dunno. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a decent film. But it’s by no means a great film. (I’m not sure it’s as good as Boyle’s previous movie about a kid magically coming into money, Millions.) It’s entertaining and rattles along a a fair old pace, but if Slumdog Millionaire sweeps up during the forthcoming awards season that doesn’t bode too well for the rest of this year’s offerings.

6/10

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The Happening: DVD Review

If you thought M Night Shyamalan couldn’t make a movie worse than Lady in the Water, or if you thought Mark Wahlberg couldn’t turn in a more risible performance than he did in Rockstar, then I’m here to tell you that you were plum wrong.

The Happening is a pompous, idiotic waste of celluloid that falls most definitely into the category: so bad it’s just plain bad. There has been a ‘Happening’, by which Shyamalan means plants are releasing airborne toxins that make people commit mass suicide. ‘Plants can talk to each other,’ someone with a beard explains. ‘Trees talk to bushes, bushes talk to grass.’ Imagine Day of the Triffids written by a five-year-old.

Wahlberg plays a science teacher (you can tell he’s a science teacher because he wears a tank top sweater), and, boy, is he bad? To be fair, he is woefully miscast, and is forced to deliver dialogue that would make George Lucas blush, but Wahlberg really is pushing hard for the much-contested accolade of Hollywood’s worst leading man. John Leguizamo and Zooey Deschanel (ruining the cred her recent indie-pop record afforded) also go down with this sinking ship. As for Shyamalan, who wrote and directed this gunk, his output has been in total freefall ever since the moment in Signs when the rubbish alien turned up.

The most annoying thing about The Happening is that Shyamalan clearly sees it as some sort of eco parable about us pesky humans getting our comeuppance for treating nature so horribly. It is such a cack-handed effort at persuading us to change our ways that it has precisely the opposite effect. So rev those engines, spray those aerosols, chuck your recyclables into a landfill. If we have to destroy the planet to stop M Night Shyamalan from making another rotten movie then that, good people of Earth, seems a very small price to pay.

1/10
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