Margaret; John Carter; This Means War; Jack & Jill
Having won widespread critical plaudits with You Can Count on Me back in 2000, Kenneth Lonergan's second feature as director became so mired in endless recutting and acrimonious legal suits that it seemed at one point to be unreleasable. With shooting completed back in 2005 and various edits – running from two to three hours – overseen by such luminaries as Martin Scorsese, the film finally crawled into UK cinemas at the end of last year, where it came and went almost unnoticed by audiences.
After all the hold-ups and wranglings it would be great to report that Margaret (2011, Fox, 15) is some kind of masterpiece. In fact it's a mess – an ambitious, adventurous and occasionally awe-inspiring mess, admittedly, but a mess nonetheless. At the centre of it of it all is a mesmerising Anna Paquin, giving a career-best performance as a disillusioned young woman whose life spirals out of control in the wake of a New York traffic accident in which she is tangentially involved. Like Amores Perros or Crash, this teases out the threads of disparate lives brought together by random collisions, and proceeds to sprawl hither and yon as the increasingly overstretched narrative unravels in the manner of its anti-heroine. Along the way we get low-key star turns from Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, Allison Janney and Matthew Broderick, the latter of whom invested a sizeable chunk of his own money helping Lonergan get the damned thing finished, although, as the multiple cuts suggest, this was always destined to be a work in progress.
Far and away the most entertaining thing about Andrew Stanton's sprawling space opera John Carter (2012, Disney, 12) is the true story of how Disney executives decided to take the words "of Mars" out of the title because their marketing research told them that more people would see the movie if they didn't know it was sci-fi. The fact that this now boringly and incomprehensibly entitled adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars went on to become one of the biggest money-losing movies of all time should dispel once and for all the myth that anyone in Hollywood knows anything.
Of course the title was always the least of JC(oM)'s problems, with the entire movie seemingly existing as a vanity project for Pixar mainstay Stanton, who was somehow allowed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars without even the sensible safety net of a star name (Taylor Kitsch, anyone?), in the manner of Michael Cimino bringing United Artists to its knees with Heaven's Gate. The difference is that there are some critics who will argue passionately that Heaven's Gate is a misunderstood masterpiece, while even the staunchest defenders of Stanton's dirge-fest claim only that it's not as terrible as everyone says. Do not be fooled – it is. Worse, even; a plodding, rambling, shambling headache of an overblown fantasy film, lacking wit, verve, coherence, intrigue or interest. A laughable quote on the sleeve tries to sell this as "Star Wars for a new generation". Sadly it's not even Phantom Menace.
A few years ago the actor Christian Bale was caught on tape having a meltdown on the set of the dismal Terminator Salvation. To date, the only credible explanation for the actor's uncharacteristic lapse is that he suddenly realised he was starring in a film directed by McG (pronounced "McGeeeeeeee!!") and saw both his life and career flashing before his eyes. A "Mini-Me" to Michael Bay (less offensive, more annoying) whose output makes Zack Snyder's films seem subtextually rich, McG's movies make you want to smash your face repeatedly into the screen just to make them stop. In This Means War (2012, Fox, 12) he manages to make preening ninnies of talented actors Tom Hardy, Reese Witherspoon and Chris Pine, who form the three points of a superspy love triangle played for naff laddish laughs. Imagine Mr and Mrs Jones remade as an episode of Charlie's Angels, the script for which is then shouted at you by a guy wearing a baseball cap back-to-front while inhaling helium and you get the general picture. Considering how much I like the stars, it really is remarkable how little I like this film. The DVD comes replete with no less than three alternate endings. No wonder Christian Bale went mad.
There is one good joke in the multi-Razzie-winning stinker Jack & Jill (2011, Sony, PG), which I will now spoil for you so you don't have to watch the movie. Having accidentally broken Al Pacino's Oscar (and yes, it is, inexplicably, that Al Pacino), Adam Sandler's dragged-up heroine says sheepishly: "I'm sure you have others", to which Pacino replies: "You'd think..." Other than that gem – which perhaps unsurprisingly was in the trailer – jollity is in scant supply in this attempt to cash in on the success of Big Momma's House and its "hilarious" cross-dressing ilk.
Sandler plays both titular characters, chalk-and-cheese siblings whose strained relations become even more byzantine when a movie star falls for the ugly sister. As always, the ghost of Punch-Drunk Love lurks horribly in the background, reminding us that Sandler has been brilliant in the past, thus making this monstrosity all the more inexcusable.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jul/01/margaret-john-carter-kermode-dvd
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