David begs . . . PLEASE do NOT go and see SEX AND THE CITY 2

OK, I admit, I've not actually seen it. On the other hand, I have always been a huge fan of the series. Just like the Guardian's Hadley Freeman, who has seen this Crime Against Cinema.  She says,

"I'm not asking too much. I just don't want to be sick in my mouth. I don't want to leave the cinema feeling like I've paid £7.50 to be mocked, patronised and kicked in the face. . . . the pink-fringed, cliche-ridden, materialistic, misogynistic, borderline racist SATC2".

The dual thrust of Freeman's blitz is that the TV series was wonderful but that the two films are a travesty in their distortion of the original and feminist themes of that series. 

" . . . the show was fantastic: smart, funny, warm and wise . . . It was about four smart women, three of whom had no interest in getting married . . . it had genuine emotional truth".

Whereas in the films we see "self-obsessed babies with breasts", and in SJP's Carrie, " . . . a demented harpy, one whose response to having been jilted at the altar was 'How am I going to get my clothes?' "

This betrayal of women in general and the series in particular is best seen, says Freeman, via what happens to lawyer Samantha's career. Miranda's partner Steve was unfaithful in the first film because her job meant she did not give him enough time and attention.  Thus the trauma of sudden singlehood was clearly her fault. So in the second film she leaves her job, responding positively to Steve's suggestion she could "be at home and help around the house". Freeman: "Sorry I think I just burned my fingers while retrieving my bra from the fire".

Then there's the racism. SATC the TV show was always vulnerable to that charge.  Without major black or ethnic minority characters, "the only ethnic minorities you see . . . are waiting behind counters to sell the women expensive handbags".  SATC2 cranks this up a notch, as the gals decide, bizarrely, to take a holiday in Abu Dhabi.

"Not since 1942's Arabian Nights has orientalism been portrayed so unironically. All Middle Eastern men are shot in a sparkly light with jingly jangly music just in case you didn't get that these dusky people are exotic and different".

Thus Freeman concludes "The death of Sex and the City is not just a shame for fans, but for all women".

Just from seeing "the hideous trailer" (and so before reading Freeman's review) I was instantly struck by that "beyond its' use by date" feeling you get when smelling a particular object just taken from the fridge. Readers, in the next sentence you will think I am being appallingly sexist, but please persist. Because the fabulous foursome just look TOO OLD.  Samantha looks like she has been dead for a week. Charlotte's Kristin Davis, one of the most beautiful and elegant women on the planet, looks like an over-made-up tart. But I do NOT mean as women they ARE too old.  I'm 54 so all 4 of these women represent spendidly attractive younger women to me.

In the film they LOOK to old for the function the characters play in the too-long extended narrative theme of the overall SATC project. The actresses are NOT too old for the characters, who are meant to be women in their 40s and 50s. It is the characters that are too old for the socio-economic narrative which lies beneath the personal human stories. 

Freeman seems in touch with this: "A woman can love fashion without looking and behaving like an international call girl".  In fact Hadley, in recent years Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera have done exactly that in music videos to great artistic and commercial effect. All of them building on the principle established by Madonna back in the 80s that women's autonomy includes the right to dress like a whore.

The difference is not just that Lady Gaga is 30 years younger than Samantha's Kim Cattrall. The characters in SATC are past their sell-by dates in two other ways.

Freeman rightly, being a feminist, deplores that the women now "want a ring at all self-abasing costs".  That "self-abasing" is the clue.  Like ageing prostitutes they have all left it a little bit late for the ring-snaring, Hence more and too many layers of make-up are needed. That's not your reviewer being sexist. That's the reality of the situation the characters find themselves in, living in a patriarchal, sexist society and having spent 10 years since the series began in 1998 enjoying a crypto-feminist life of independent careers, independent sex and, um, independent shopping. 

Having suddenly decided to jump back into Doris Day-land they are playing an embarrassing catch-up. Hence Samantha's 44 pills per day "to trick my body into thinking it's younger".  And Miranda's retort that she has "tricked my body into thinking it's thinner - Spanx!" I assume this is not what suffragettes starved themselves and threw themselves under horses for.

As an outsider on the female race, I found SATC 1 and the trailer for SATC 2 embarrassing precisely because of this 'self-abasing".  Especially when unsuccessfully spun as feminism - we are asked to be on board with it being these strong, independent women's right to choose to dress like this and look to snare a man.

But there is a level here deeper than Freeman's rather routine feminist analysis and critique.  For her this all amounts to a male patriarchal conspiracy, in the world at large but also in the Hollywood system that has subverted the genuine feminism of the TV series. All of which is true.  

But patriarchy brings about a downside for men, which more and more of us began to understand in the late 20th Century. It is correct that men in general have more wealth and more power globally than women in general.  But patriarchy, strictly speaking, is the rule of SOME men over the rest of us.  All women are subordinate, but so too are many men. Hence the 'pater' (Father) in patriarchy and the Mr Big in SATC.

Freeman is correct to lament that "There is a deep sadness in the sight of Carrie and her friends defining themselves by . . . their ability to snare and keep a man".  But we can reach deeper than her feminist analysis via Marcuse, who lamented that human beings define themselves by their consumption of pointless commodities. Jimmy Choos, anyone?  Throughout the high-flying period of the TV series, no one, least of all within the programmes, did anything other than enjoy and envy the 4 women's glorious lifestyles. In which buying clothes and accessories were actually more important than careers and sex.

For Marcuse, the enjoyment of this consumer lifestyle is not only illusory but damaging. It makes us "unfree". We are enslaved in the minds just as once humans could be enslaved in their bodies.  In this state of unfreedom "consumers act irrationally by working more than they are required to fulfill actual basic needs, ignoring the psychologically destructive effects, ignoring the waste and environmental damage it causes, and also by searching for social connection through material items" (Wikipedia).

Throughout the TV series, Miranda, Carrie, Samantha and Charlotte were never, um, actually seen working very much, though all had jobs or careers. Something else in SATC2 is past its' sell-by date, not just the make-up and fashions of the foursome. In a patriarchal system it is men who are expected to pay for all those consumer items as the 'father-provider'. Both women and men work to create the commodities. But a small minority of men have far more purchasing power than the rest. Few men watching the TV series could afford to buy their wife or girlfriend a pair of Jimmy Choos. 

This is what Mr Big represents - the patriarch, the father, the rich man.  When the women get round to self-abasement time they are not bothered if he oppresses them. They just want him to pay for the shoes. They are now, as Marcuse would say, so addicted to their high-end consumer lifestyles that they will do anything to catch-up and snare their meal ticket man.

SATC was at its' height throughout a lengthy but ultimately fake boom in consumer capitalism. Which began to fall around our ears in 2007. Both the boom and the bust resulted from an over-reliance on financial services and banking.  Real economies, like the current Chinese one, manufacture things. The late 20th Century free-market economies of the USA and UK relied increasingly on people making fake, digital money out of fake, digital money.  And then spreading enough easy but unreliable credit around for buying and selling in an over-inflated property market. And buying Jimmy Choos at the top end.

That system has not now ground to a halt. But a lot less of us will be able to afford Jimmy Choos. Hence back to SATC2. Any young gold-digger knows very well that you need to snare your millionaire early in life. That way, when he dumps you aged 40 or even 30 for a younger model you can already have squirreled away enough to live on. Not to mention that divorce settlement. The unreality of SATC is that these characters are desperate to snare their men at the sort of age when any self-respecting Mr Big would be dumping them. 

The fantasy that got millions of women to pay to see Bridget Jones was that you can be fat and snare Colin Firth (yum). The fantasy of SATC2 is that you can be in your late 40s or early 50s and snare Mr Big and his millions (yum, yum).  During the worst global recession in 70 years.

Hence the self-abasement. I repeat, the 4 lead actresses of SATC2 are all beautiful, desirable women.  The characters they play are past their marry-by date in a patriarchal and consumer capitalist society.  The designer clothes and hideously excessive make-up which makes them look like "international call girls" represents a huge denial of that depressing fact.

Millions of women will pay to go and see SATC despite my and Freeman's imploring to the contrary.  They will face a deep psychological choice as to the message they derive from the film.

Level One is the anti-feminist message that Freeman deplores: you MUST snare a man and your appearance will determine your success. Level Two is even more misogynistic: same as before, but if you are over 30 at the very oldest then you've left it too late and will look like a trollop.

Sadly most of us will also not realise that the financial services-based, free market, inequality-stretching, brain-numbing consumer capitalist system on which the SATC franchise is based is also past its' sell-by date. It will limp on, smelling worse and worse like that thing at the bottom of the fridge as long as fashion shoes are so important to us.  "This is the best mirage I've ever seen", says one of the random male sex / money objects in the film.

So true, comrade, so true.

David recommends . . . that you go and see LEBANON

Das Boot, without the Nazis, meets Waltzing With Bashir, with real actors.  Claustrophobia, traumatisation, atrocity and extreme moral dilemmas.

Lots of you, especially women, won't go and see LEBANON because it's a war film. Others won't see it because it is an Israeli film and you fear a whitewash of that country's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Some of you won't see it because you are Jewish and you fear a condemnation of ditto.

That would be a shame. 

First because this is an excellent and well-made film with high production values and so ticks all the artistic boxes. 

Second because it cleverly manages a balance between honestly exposing some of Israel's less appealing actions in that conflict, with enabling us to enter into the world of ordinary young Israeli men who find themselves in combat and terrified.

The film enables a strong identification with the four-man Israeli tank crew.  LEBANON'S USP is that through the whole film we are inside the tank.  Our only view of the outside world comes via the viewfinder and cross-hairs of the tank's gunner.  Sharing his point of view we see vividly the horror of war and especially the tragic and brutal fate of civilians caught in the way of the invading Israeli war machine. 

Punches are not pulled.  A breach of international law over weapons options is made clear. The worst horror of that conflict, the actions of Israel's Christian Phalangist allies, is referenced when a Syrian solider is captured.

But macro-politics is brought down to the level of individual distress and dilemma. Our gunner sees, in shocking technologically-enabled close up, the faces of civilians fixed in his cross-hairs. He is ordered to fire. Will he pull the trigger?

One review of LEBANON praised it for it's understanding that war is hell for soldiers. But criticised it's failure to address the reasons why the Israeli troops were in that situation in the first place. I disagree entirely with that view. Our gunner is traumatised by being in peril. But even before the tank reaches that stage it is clearly he is equally traumatised by his moral dilemmas and just by witnessing the horrors of civilian casualties.  For whether he pulls the trigger or not, there are dreadful consequences either way.

LEBANON is based on writer-director Samuel Maoz's experiences as a conscript in 1982 Lebanon. Hence his focus is on the claustrophobic and terrifying experiences of his tank crew. The Guardian has called this an 'anti-war' film.

Two criticisms. 

The photography is beautiful. Lots of light reflecting off liquids and glass. Sweaty, dirty faces caught with one side lit and the other dark. Splendid close ups. But after a while I stopped enjoying this and thought maybe it's a bit discordant? Does this, almost Malick like cinematography really fit the subject matter? Make your own mind up.

Also a bit too pretty are the four actors who play the tank crew. Had me imagining those pastiches of Hollywood movies in which everyone could be a model. The Chippendales Go To War.  Maybe this was to enhance the audience's identification with these poor young men in danger. After all, who cares if an ugly fat guy gets killed?

But all in all this is a fine movie, with excellent performances all-round. 

I hope women will go and see it. Many years ago a UK TV documentary revealed for the first time the day to day lives of soldiers in combat. Next day at the water cooler, I remember vividly one female colleague's astonished reaction. "I never imagined they would not be able to wash!". LEBANON takes this to a whole new level. When you are in a tank and under fire, what happens when you need to pee?

David recommends . . . that you go and see ROBIN HOOD

OK, so it's time for regime change.

The long-term, pugnacious, bullying leader is out. In comes the younger, smarmy posh boy. Who immediately finds the coffers are empty. Railing against the previous regime's fiscal imprudence, public spending is immediately reduced (no more foreign wars) and a savage round of tax increases instigated. Which of course fall overwhelmingly on the poor.

That's right, it's England in the 12th Century, The Lionheart is dead and in comes John. Even more presciently, cracks appear over, yes, Europe. We discover that John's evil coalition partner, Godfrey, is in league with Brussels, sorry the French King, who wants to invade and impose a single currency.

Luckily for the struggling English, two Ozzie heros are on the way to save us in the shape of Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett as Robin and Marion.

For the new Robin Hood is a thoroughly enjoyable, well-filmed romp with a good blend of gags, romance and fighting.  Making it as good as any in it's lineage and better than most. Certainly better than Kevin Costner's crime against cinema that was RH Prince of Thieves.

But before we list the good points, the downside. 99% of you won't care, but this film sets new record levels of historical, cultural and even geographical inaccuracy. You won't care, but the pre-release propaganda has so emphasised the film's claimed greater accuracy than past versions that you are required to sit through the following.

Big combined cock up in the production design and music departments.  Wherever we find ourselves around Nottingham the landscape is studded with celtic stone crosses and standing stones inscribed with celtic designs. Surely part of Britain's heritage and thus present at the time? But every time the English peasants fancy a knees up it's basically Ceilidh night, with traditional Irish music and instruments. Presumably Ridley Scott thinks Nottingham is in the West of Ireland.

Now onto Cate. There is a Law of Hollywood that all modern movies must feature a Strong Independent Woman character.  And traditionally (Maid) Marion has usually been that. But Cate's performance and the script combine to take this to unheard of levels of anachronism. Wasn't sure whether to laugh or cringe in the final battle scene when Marion suddenly appears on a horse in full knight gear.

Medieval female aristos were often, indeed, strong women. Eleanor of Aquitaine for one. But patriarchal social mores restricted such women to behind the scenes influence on sons and husbands. Not kitting up in armour and swinging into sword-flailing action.  Any such inclination would have been ruthlessly repressed.  Maybe we need a law revision limiting SIW's to films with contemporary settings?

But then Cate has other problems over her social role. In scenes where the audience must grasp that she is a posh lady and Russell her smelly ("You stink!") social inferior she makes Joanna Lumley sound like Eliza Doolittle. But when she is hobnobbing among the peasant hordes she suddenly goes all ee-by-gum Emmerdale trooble at mill. What's going on? Were you not listening to her, Ridley? 

And Robin Hood may not play too well in France, for our cross-channel neighbours are The Baddies. Their invasion-minded King is a bizarre Gollum-like creature who clearly does not shave, probably eats raw garlic, and permanently looks as if he just woke up after a late night of continental-style debauchery.  

President Sarkozy may complain that France did not, in fact, invade England at the time. Or he may not bother, being too occupied laughing at the French invasion fleet. For the Gallic army arrive in what appear to be balsa wood versions of World War 2 landing craft. Except that, get this, they are being rowed, ancient Greek trireme-like. Which does not prevent them hitting the beach at a fair old lick.  And the CGI on the wide shot reveals hundreds of them. It is Troy meets Saving Private Ryan. Ridley, Ridley! Did you learn nothing from the disaster that was Kingdom of Heaven?  Time for the remedial class with Terry Gilliam on Less Is More.

Finally the geography. News reaches Robin and the English Army when they are in Nottingham. 5 minutes later they are on a beach to meet the invaders. What? Have they made it all the way down to the South Coast by plane? Or have they nipped to the nearest bit of beach - on the East coast -  and the French have rowed all the way up the North Sea?

OK, I forgot. This is made for a US audience who do not know their own history or geography let alone that of medieval Yoorp. So time to shut up and tell you the good bits.

Russell Crowe is excellent, in a suitably low key, understated performance befitting a character who starts as a humble peasant archer kowtowing to the nobility. Which sets him up for his epiphany in the obligatory Braveheart-type speech about freedom and liberty.  After which the entire army and nobles and even King John silently accept him as their new leader. Instead of stringing him up on the nearest tree as would really have happened to any 12th century advocate of democracy and equality.

The whole thing looks great, much of it having been shot on location. So lots of rolling green hills, long beaches and imposing cliffs. And the music, even with it's incongruous celtic themes, is great. All combining to make for stirring stuff, plenty of derring do. Strong performances from the obligatory gang of Little John, Friar Tuck et al.

But finally a word on demographics. Russell is excellent, and Cate, despite the accent fluctuations, is good. But are they not both a little, um, old at 46 and 41? Don't get me wrong, I am 54 and as opposed to ageism as the next wrinkly. (Glad that B and Q have that job waiting for me.) But romantic leads in an action picture with combined ages of 87? Surely not.  

Raises two questions about Hollywood thinking.

First, where are the new, young, male leads? Is there a next generation of hunky male stars coming through? I cannot think of any. Contemporary youthful male leads tend to the girly, with Zac High School Musical Efron and Robert Twilight Pattinson. Neither could make it as Robin Hood, unless there is a gay version.  So Hollywood has a real problem here.

All the more surprising that this movie is going down very well with the female under 30 crowd. It was a representative of that demographic who recommended I go ("It's really exciting!").  I saw it in a packed Camden Odeon Screen 1. With lots and lots of young women. Not just couples, but small groups of 3 or 4 young women as well. Is this their return to the action movie? Surely not queuing up to see middle-aged Russell with his top off?  Just coincidence and nothing else worth seeing on at the time?

Or are we back to the Strong Independent Woman thing? For the obligatory SIW is not there because of any Hollywood commitment to radical feminism. It is all about female bums on seats and money money money. The previous generation was happy with Bridget Jones and her giant underpants, accidently tumbling into happiness despite being, um, fat.

The current under-30 generation is maybe no longer satisfied with trad chick-flicks. Brought up on Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft and Uma Thurman's whateverhername is from Kill Bill.  And recently primed with 11-year-old assassin Hit Girl in Kick Ass.  For it's not enough for Cate / Marion to kick ass, she has to be lean and mean so no Bridget Jones cellulite on her, ta very much.

Blame it on Thatcher, or maybe the Spice Girls, but it looks as though testosterone is no longer a male preserve in contemporary Hollywood.