David recommends . . . . . . . . . . . . MY AFTERNOONS WITH MARGUERITTE and THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST

MY AFTERNOONS WITH MARGUERITTE is a little gem featuring the King of French Cinema, Gerard Depardieu, fresh from his internecine dissing of the Queen of French Cinema, Juliette Binoche.  

Much more respect doled out here for a senior lady, in a plot summed up on imdb as "an illiterate and lonely man bonds with an older and well-read woman".  Bit more accurate to say an elderly woman so as not to give the wrong idea. This is Driving Miss Daisy without the car set in France, meets Being There, with Gallic comedy bar room scenes.

MAWM is seasonally appropriate, being like Christmas food:  rich, warm and filling. Clearly a bit too stodgy for some judging by some indifferent reviews. In which the word "sentimental" has featured frequently. True, if your chosen fare is a diet of unrelenting existential angst and misery via Bergman, Tarkovsky, von Trier or Haneke this will induce type 2 diabetes in you. And if you believe happy endings should be banned, well, make sure you leave 10 minutes before the end. 

But make no mistake, MAWM is far less sugary than the average "feel good" Hollywood movie, or even the British equivalent. And it bounces along at a breezy pace ensuring its plentiful sentiment is never dwelt upon for too long. And is interspersed with and counterpointed by excellent comedy sequences involving Depardieu's Germain and his interactions with his mec (bloke) pals in the local bar and his eccentric mother back home. Her home that it, as he lives in a tiny caravan in the garden.  

This is the rural, small town France that the English all know and love, or imagine. Drawing us into the cinema to see movies like this and then go and buy property over there. 

You can also ignore many of the reviews if they gave you the impression the film consists entirely of Germain and retirement home resident Margueritte chatting on a park bench. The afternoons of the title. These episodes provide the structural and thematic spine of the piece. But most of the time we are rollicking around elsewhere. 

If there is any justice Gisele Casadesus ought to be a shoo-in for acting awards all over the place for her portrayal of Margueritte. Whether that happens or not may depend on tricky technical decisions as to whether hers is a leading or supporting role.  Bottom line is, she's great.  Born shortly before the outbreak of World War One her film credits start back in 1934.  She puts in a truly remarkable performance in which she physically embodies her character's situation and motivations.

Bit more debatable is Depardieu.  Don't get me wrong, he's great - only a couple of notches below his best. He succeeds in giving us clownish laughs based on his limited intellect, combined with generating true respect in us for his qualities as a human being and a survivor. For this is a film about being treated badly. Germain has lived a life of constant maltreatment, starting at an early age as revealed in flashbacks. And continuing in the present via the mockery of his friends.  

Survival then, and healing, which are the themes of Germain's encounter with Margueritte. Our relationships with others can hurt and even harm us. But they can also sustain us and enable us to grow.  Just as Germain nurtures wildlife in the local park and the fruit and vegetables in his beloved garden.  The French title is Tete En Friche - literally "fallow head", with its implications of fertility and potential.

The discordant note is struck by Germain's relationship with his much younger, more attractive, and smarter girlfriend, Annette. Sophie Guillemin is a full 29 years younger than Depardieu, raising questions as to the credibility of their relationship. Ideally Germain should have been cast younger and Annette written as a bit less bright.

But French movies are required, for international sales reasons, to feature at least one from a very short list of superstar actors. You can list them - Depardieu, Auteuil, Binoche . . . etc. With a little-known 96 year old in the other major role, Germain clearly had to be played by a star. And it's hard to think of a French actor of the right age with enough box office power to carry this film.

But that is a minor blemish in what is a charming and highly entertaining film. Ignore the snottier and snootier reviews and go and enjoy it. Have a pastis on the way in.

THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS' NEST is the third and final part of the excellent move triptych based on Sitg Larsson's literary trilogy.  And it does not disappoint.  Plot-wise it follows directly on from its predecessor.  We pick up punk-goth heroine Lisbeth Salander in hospital after the violent encounter with her father and half brother which ended . . . PLAYED WITH FIRE.   Trying to recover while simultaneously being menaced by evil conspirators who want her killed and a cruel non-comprehending legal system which wants not only to bang her up in prison but have her declared bonkers.

I described the first in the series, . . . . WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, as one of the best films I've seen.  Then said PLAYED WITH FIRE was a lot weaker.  Hence I approached HORNETS' NEST with the fear that it would obey the law of trilogy ("The Matrix Law") and be even weaker.  Far from it.  This final piece starts very slowly. Glacier pace indeed, as a bewildering array of interchangeable old, white Swedish character actors have conversations about Lisbeth in various rooms.  But it starts to build as the twin threats to Lisbeth head towards fruition.

Meanwhile in a parallel plot, crusading journo hero Michael Blomkvist and the rest of the team at crusading Millenium Magazine are also facing death threats. Which prove to be very real.

And again meanwhile, of course, crusading journo hero Michael Blomkvist and his team are pursuing the various bad guys in a bid to expose them, get a great scoop, and save Lisbeth.

Thus everyone is chasing everyone. Except Lisbeth who is stuck in a hospital bed or prison. Prosecutor and evil psychiatrist after Lisbeth. Mysterious old men and their hired killers after Lisbeth.  Millenium journos after old men conspirators. Killers after Millenium journos. Some other investigators also after the old men conspirators.  Someone after the evil psychiatrist. Half brother in there too.  And Lisbeth's fat slacker-hacker pal, Plague. And a motorcycle gang . . . and . . . and . . . 

Get the picture? What this amounts to is lots of slowly rising tension which gradually but firmly grabs you by the throat and holds you until the multiple final resolutions.  Lets just say all loose ends are tied, as are the interweaving themes of power, patriarchy, abuse, government corruption, justice and revenge.

In Lisbeth Salander we have another movie protagonist representing the human capacity to survive and transcend. Hence the tiniest, and very rare, flicker of a smile as someone's nemesis knocks firmly on the door. Literally.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth offers not one, not two, but three performances of extraordinary power as Lisbeth. It will take something truly astonishing to stop her winning the Oscar for Best Actress.  In the first film she had very few lines to say, and spent much of her screen time confined to a desk and laptop.  Meaning she conveyed Lisbeth's brooding rage and hatred largely via her eyes and facial expressions. Classic movie acting at its best.

In the second, she got to run around a lot and fight. But still had relatively few lines. So ditto, only this time conveying Lisbeth's growing paranoia as she moves from assisting Blomkvist to being the plot's centre.  Finally in the last episode she is once again back to being constrained - in a hospital bed, then a prison cell, and finally a courtroom.  And again, you guessed it, not much to say.  This is not acting as known to the British thespian knights - Gielgud, Olivier, Richardson - with all its wordy delivery.

And to appreciate fully the magnitude of Rapace's performance you need to see her interviewed in real life.  Try the DVD extra features, or YouTube. For she could not be more different from Lisbeth's grim and grimacing personality.  Rapace describes in one interview how she is "far more feminine than Lisbeth", and giggles coquettishly as if to underline her point.  She is visibly softer than what we see in Lisbeth's brutal fashion choices, punk make up and hairdos.  Rapace explains that she went on a special diet to play Lisbeth, and worked out a lot on exercise machines. Both of which gave her a taught, wiry and almost boyish body.  Think Renee Zellweger and Bridget Jones, but in the opposite direction.

Some final words about book to film comparisons. If you've read the books of course this movie will be a lesser experience. You know what is going to happen for starters, a major factor with a film based almost entirely on tension and revealed mysteries.  No surprises for you lot.

And yes, of course "they left bits out".  A two-hour movie script comes in at about 120 pages, most of which is blank, white space.  A lot less room for text than in 300 densely packed pages of a novel.  Movies based on novels are adaptations. Otherwise they would be hundreds of hours long.  And you would still know what is going to happen! (lol)

So if you've read the books, you'll need to appreciate the film for what it is. If you've not read the books, please do not be put off by friends who have and say "you MUST read the book first".  Book first, film second always leads to disappointment, and indeed to the ritual repetition of the "left bits out" mantra. Movie first still leaves you knowing the plot, but then you have all those left out bits to enjoy!

Bottom line: it's very good and worth 2 and a half hours of your life. Rapace alone is worth the ticket price.

David recommends . . . INVOLUNTARY and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Two films offering very differing opportunities to explore the same themes of great contemporary importance. The relationship of individuals to group, community, and society. Is there "no such thing as society", as Margaret Thatcher declared, "only individuals and their families"? Was Gordon Gekko correct that "greed is good" for all of us?  Or do we have reciprocal obligations to one another and for our own actions?

It's that time of year when IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE comes round again for its traditional Xmas slot.  But now with a more acute than usual exploration of differences between good and bad bankers. But more about that later.

Swedish movie INVOLUNTARY is a well-made and thoughtful offering for the World Cinema crowd.  Its Unique Selling Point is its 5 entirely separate stories. All told in parallel, not as a series of shorts - like the dreadful Night On Earth (Winona Ryder as a taxi driver?).  Nor interconnecting at times via shared characters, as Robert Altman used to do. Or in the more recent Crash.

No, INVOLUNTARY cuts between five different narratives which are linked only by the common tension of individual responsibility versus individual rights in the context of misbehaviour within a group.  This intercutting is confusing at the start, but gradually we begin to sort out who is who and which thread is which. Once that settles down we are left to compare and contrast the many characters' differing dilemmas.

Should a teacher intervene when she sees another act violently to a child? Is a teenage girl to blame for what happens to her when she is drunk? Should we confess to a wrongdoing or let others suffer? When do high spirits cross over into abuse? When we are damaged can we accept help or do we have to soldier on? Above all, what duty do we have to intervene when others are misbehaving?

No Swede will be left in any doubt of the political and historical context which necessitates these considerations. For decades after World War 2 Swedish politics was dominated by a stable consensus around the social democratic model. Which delivered high material standards of living combined with considerable collective provision of public services. 

But fiscal crisis in the 90s shattered voter confidence in this local version of the European Social Model. And after dominating national politics for 70 years the Social Democratic Party suddenly fell from power in 2006, after it received its lowest ever percentage of the votes.  Sweden entered the world of what the French call The Ango-Saxon model, with its free markets, low taxes, and reduced state role.

INVOLUNTARY invites Swedes to ask whether that violent change of philosophical direction is truly good for them, at the level of social cohesion. Questions that all of us are now asking in countries reacting to the 2008 banking crisis and facing stark choices over austerity versus economic stimulus.

For in each of INVOLUNTARY's  five stories we see interactions between two sorts of individuals.  Those who live their lives as if greed, or at least the relentless pursuit of one's own gratification, is, indeed, good. And those to whom it is important to consider the impact of one's behaviour on others, and who are willing to go further and intervene on behalf of those others.

But this is no simplistic division into good versus evil. All five stories feature genuine dilemmas. For none of the participants are the choices straightforward. Sometimes acting for the group can reflect one's very individual motives. When does defending the group cross over into authoritarianism? How do we reconcile conflicting wants and needs within communities? 

INVOLUNTARY explores these fundamental questions of political philsophy and social ethics by taking them down to the most concrete and personal of levels, situations which all of us encounter every day. In so doing it avoids the trap into which so many "message films" or "idea movies" fall. Which is to centre around only one message, or only one idea. Thus coming across as rather obvious one trick ponies.

It is precisely the narrative structure of the five different stories, each of them complex in its own way, which enables INVOLUNTARY to provide such a sophisticated exploration of its subject matter. And with no obvious answers or solutions. 

This is very much an intellectual film. Not quite an art movie, but slow-paced enough with its long uncut takes to put off the commercial movie fans. Typical, if you like, of the best of Scandinavian cinema (the GIRL WHO . . . franchise notwithstanding). Reviewed by many as a comedy, you are unlikely to laugh out loud. No thrills or spills. No edge of seat tension.

For these reasons there are many among us who would not find INVOLUNTARY entertaining in the wider sense of the word. Most suitable perhaps to kick off an A Level discussion on Citizenship, or an undergraduate sociology class. But for those with patience and an interest in contemporary socio-political dilemmas INVOLUNTARY is very much worth the detour.

Far more richly entertaining, though morally much more simplistic is IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. A relative flop when it came out in 1946, it has become regarded as one of the best ever US films. The American Film Institute placed it at Number One in its chart of the "most inspirational" American films of all time.

IAWL spent a few decades not getting a great amount of attention. Director Capra never saw it as a Christmas movie. But because of its Yuletide setting it became an annual fixture of seasonal TV schedules in the 1970s. Leading to increased popularity and new recognition as both an entertaining favourite and an officially worthy classic.  Hence its annual place in the TV schedules is now mirrored in the programming of film societies, art house cinemas, and bastions of the worthy like the BFI.

If you've already seen it countless times, no need for a plot resume - just enjoy it again. If you've not seen it, just go and do so and thus join the rest of humanity.

Like INVOLUNTARY, IAWL has serious issues beneath its feel-good plot. And a not dissimilar economic and political provenance. It originated in a short story which Philip Van Doren Stern began drafting in the 1930s. During which the socially disastrous effects of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression were being felt acutely in The Land of the Free Market. 

34 million people in families with no wage-earner. Industrial production down by 45%. Homebuilding by 80%.  One million families kicked off their farms.  Two million homeless people wandering the country.  A period which generated Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath of 1939, made by John Ford into a movie in 1940.

The Great Depression of the 30s was not America's first such experience. The so-called "Long Depression" kicked off in the US with the "Panic of 1873"  and lasted in various part of the globe into the 1890s. As millions were laid off, the 1870s saw a massive wave of industrial strikes across America. Smaller, briefer depressions occurred again in 1918 and 1920.

During these periods something happened in representations of banks and bankers in American popular culture. They became the bad guys. 


As far back as the 1870s the white supremacist murderer and bank robber Jesse James began to be represented in novels and songs as a Robin Hood style outlaw, robbing the rich and helping the poor. Representations which continued into Hollywood movies of the 1930s and early 1940s. 


As late as the 1940s, leftist folk singer Woody Guthrie was recording traditional Jesse songs with words changed to portray him as equivalent first to a union activist and then as a Christ figure.

Throughout the 1930s a series of real life, high profile bank robbers became similarly portrayed as outlaw heroes. John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie (Parker) and Clyde (Barrow) were all without exception narcissistic psychopaths happy to kill anyone who stood in the way of their machine gun toting pursuit of Gordon Gekko's later materialistic ethos. 

It was the banks who kicked people off their farms and out of their houses. And it was the Police who assisted the banks in those tasks, in between breaking the heads of striking industrial workers. So it is less than surprising that popular culture came to lionise those who took from the banks and made fools of the Police with their daring get-aways. 


Life and art imitated each other in considerable working class community support for these Depression-era outlaws, enabling them to elude capture for so long. Like James before them, and Christ before him, the hoodlums of the 30s tended to meet bloody ends via denunciation by a member of their own circle followed by the lethal extra-judicial force of the State.

In both versions of The Grapes of Wrath economic depression is portrayed as something incomprehensible to its victims. Sometimes seen as an impersonal force of nature. Sometimes as vaguely involving the actions of a handful of brutal farm owners, bankers and police officers. The 30s gangsters were represented in a spirit of triumphal personal victory over the Establishment bad guys. 

Whereas in Grapes of Wrath we see a family struggling to find any source of hope in an almost overwhelmingly depressing situation. Economic depression luring its victims into a psychologically depressed state of powerlessness. The surviving remnants of the Joad family manage to keep hope alive, but this is far from the celebration of violent individual resistance present in the bank robber films.

And so, on to IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.  Written towards the end of the Great Depression and produced as a film just as the state interventionist policies of The New Deal were kicking in.

Reflecting the bad times of the 1930s IAWL continues the popular cultural tradition of the Bad Banker in the character of Mr Potter, who takes the Gekko greed principle even unto the stage of straightforward criminal theft.

Nobody in IAWL totes a machine gun or goes on the rampage. No bankers or Police are harmed in the plot of this film. IAWL organises itself around selfless to a fault Good Banker George Bailey's own confrontation with psychological depression, which takes him to the brink of suicide. Thereafter it's a long, long way from the gloomy search for hope in Grapes of Wrath. Pretty rapidly we are on the feel good up and up. 

How do we get there? This is where IAWL lacks the sophistication of either Grapes of Wrath or INVOLUNTARY. 

The antithesis between good George Bailey and bad Mr Potter reflects the simple division of humanity, typical of US evangelism's contribution to popular culture, into fundamentally good people and fundamentally bad people. 


In this ontological and individualist division out have gone the huge social and economic forces of Grapes of Wrath, as well as the interpersonal, psychological and moral uncertainties of INVOLUNTARY. 


Grapes and this new Swedish film represent, if you like, the two ends of a continuum of analysis about social responsibility in hard times: huge and impersonal forces at one end, and individual choices at the other.

By contrast, the struggle of good versus evil is pared down in IAWL to a depiction on film of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. Some of us are destined for Heaven and some for Hell, and who is who is revealed by what happens in our lives.


As directed by Divine Intervention - here in the form of an Angel. In contrast to the alpha male violence of the 30s gangsters, or the arrival of State-funded public services of the New Deal.

Thus the spiritual takes the place of social forces or individual violence in IAWL. In 1946 Frank Capra told an interviewer that he made IAWL "to combat a modern trend towards atheism".

Now in 2010 economic depression is back at the top of all our agendas, How are we going to get out of it? Working together? Or by competing with each other? With machine guns? Or via state intervention?  Or thanks to angels?  

In the UK in 2008 and 2009 bankers had once again become the Bad Guys, objects of popular rage and violence as the greedy and selfish architects of our collective distress. As we near the end of 2010 it seems as though rage against bankers has been almost forgotten. 


New targets of blame and hate are being found. The greedy unemployed. The mercenary sick and disabled. Feckless recipients of Housing Benefit. Profligate occupants of social housing. And, perhaps above all, the selfish, gluttonous and outrageously affluent midwives, care assistants and dustmen of the Public Sector.

Which way will we go? IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE offers the best good time Christmas entertainment to take our minds off current financial anxieties. But INVOLUNTARY provides the better vehicle for sober reflection on what we all owe to our fellow beings. 


A clue is perhaps found in the title as seen on the film's posters. 

The letters "IN" and "VOLUNTARY" are in different colours, enabling the option of reading two words instead of one. Voluntary action, the Swedish film seems to be saying, can be so much more than just a Big Society smokescreen for dismantling the Welfare State. There IS such a thing as society, and it consists in how every one of us treats every other one of us in our every action, every day. 

IAWL turns on a crucial decision whether or not to jump into a river. This week in London a homeless black man dived into the freezing waters of the Thames to save a young woman from drowning. Thus himself winding up in hospital being treated for hypothermia. When he first emerged from the icy water, Adan Abobaker discovered that during his rescue mission thieves had stolen his jumper, coat, wooly hat and gloves, discarded in his unhesitating haste to assist another human being.   

More on that story at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331311/Homeless-hero.html (copy and paste into your browser).

David recommends . . . THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT, CARLOS, and BURKE AND HARE

Best film this week, if flawed, is the witty and intelligent THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT. We're in LA. Julianne Moore and Annette Bening are married lesbians, neither in the first flush of youth, very much in love but with tensions emerging in the relationship.  We know they are lesbians because Julianne wears no make up and sports chunky safari shorts, and Annette has short, slightly spiky hair. And because their sexual orientation is referred to about every 30 seconds. 

Each has a child, product of the same anonymous donor's sperm. Joni, 18, named after Joni Mitchell (geddit? ma is a lesbian).  "OMG I'm eighteeeeen, you have to let me make my own decisiooooons!". And the intriguingly named Laser (boy), 15 and all surging testosterone and moods.

Secretly the kids trace their donor Dad, Paul, and the fun starts. Cue Mark Ruffalo, an actor with much in common with Tony Blair: they both used to be the future.  Ruffalo turns in an excellent performance which makes clear he should have been doing more comedy back when his career nosedived. 

Is Paul a charming, right-on guy? After all he runs an organic vegetable nursery and his own restaurant. But cooking is the single best-known way to get into a lady's pants. So is he a preening narcissist who uses women? We are left in no doubt Paul is hotttt. First, we get to see his hairy chest throughout the movie. Second, the much younger woman at the nursery clearly longs for him. It's OK, it's not sexist cos she's a white chick with dreadlocks. Third, the much younger woman at the restaurant is sleeping with him. It's OK, it's not sexist cos she's a black chick with an impressively retro Afro hairdo - Angela Davis style.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT is great for people who like sitting around dinner tables discussing the wine and being witty. Because it's full of people having dinner and discussing the wine and being witty. Think Woody Allen, if his skin could handle the LA sun.  

It's the sort of film Hollywood does very well, but not often enough these days. Harking back to the screwball comedies and 'social comedies' (Preston Sturges) of the 30s. Via genuine comedy serious issues are raised and discussed - sexual orientation, diverse families, sperm donation and the needs of the offspring, confidentiality, parenthood and adolescents, desire versus honesty. Think how appalling that would be if done without the humour.

Sister: "He donated sperm - that's, like, weird!"

Brother: "But if he hadn't, we wouldn't be here. So - respect."

But the film loses its way a little in the Third Act when suddenly it goes all earnest, letting go the wit for drama and emotion. And another flaw is to drop a major character somewhere before the traditional Hollywood resolution. But once you've seen the film you can ask whether that jettisoning is in fact the subliminal message of the film's social commentary. Answers on a postcard please.

Some may question why two lesbians get played by straight actresses. I guess Ellen Degeneres is not pretty enough, and Anne Heche has gone back to the Boy Side.  But Moore and Bening deserve Oscar nominations for performances whose excellence ranges across both the comedy and the rising emotional tension of the piece. This is Bening's strongest outing since American Beauty and Moore is as good as, well, always. Maybe they can share Best Actress?

For CARLOS we turn to our guest reviewer, Simon King, who is Lecturer in Visual Culture at the University of Arts in London.  Simon saw CARLOS for us and then answered our questions about this Biopic of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, aka 70s terrorist Carlos the Jackal.

Before we go further you need to know there are two versions doing the rounds.  There's the 2 hours 45 minutes version for softies. Or the 'extended version' at 6 hours 34. If you pick a screening with a break and some Q&A you are looking at an 8 hour experience (take a cushion).

DAVID RECOMMENDS:  Give us your 25 word summary.

SIMON:  It's one part Mesrine and two parts Baader Meinhoff Complex, liberally sprinkled with The Life of Brian, then simmer for several hours.

DAVID RECOMMENDS:  Life of Brian?

SIMON: There's a slightly absurd element.  Carlos is not actually very successful.  He gets the nom de guerre of Carlos the Jackal because he is busted in London and the cops find the novel Day of the Jackal.  

Philip French says he is a Scarlet Pimpernel character.  The Bin Laden of his day - seen as behind all outrages, but actually was not.  Always aiming at spectacular coups de theatre - but many actually go wrong.  Partly because he's working with a bunch of disparate and unhinged Left wing groups - with those interchangeable names ridiculed in Life of Brian.  

In the end he gets past his sell-by date and is shunted from country to country.  The 1975 killing of a Libyan delegate at OPEC haunts him for the rest of life.  So Libya won't harbour him.  

DAVID RECOMMENDS:  So would you recommend it?

SIMON:  Definitely. It's very well done indeed.  The viewer is immersed into that very different world. It seems extraordinary now that Carlos and pals keep getting away with amazing political blags.  There's a couple of great set pieces - the OPEC kidnapping in Vienna - that just would not happen now because of advances in hardware and surveillance.  So very relevant to the modern era, and political nostalgia at the same time.

Edgar Ramirez as Carlos gives an extraordinarily compelling performance.  A truthful performance.  At times he enables a faint identification.  Someone taking on the Establishment.  A Robin Hood figure.  At times I wanted to root for him.

DAVID RECOMMENDS:  Is he played as a hero? You mention the French biopic, Mesrine. (French bank robber and murderer, played by Vincent Cassel.) Those films display the cold brutality of Jacques Mesrine and yet there is no doubt he is portrayed as a hero, cleverly and audaciously outwitting the bumbling cops at every turn. Perhaps aimed at the disaffected youth of the Banlieu. Is there a moral ambiguity in CARLOS?

SIMON:  There is no moral confusion. He stands against the Establishment, but I was not seduced at all.  At the height of his powers Carlos explicitly imitated Che Guevara.  In love with own publicity -  presenting himself as an outlaw figure.  In the film Carlos is good looking and seductive.  But he is a bit of an idiot.  Spouting soundbites like "guns are an extension of my body".  A psychopathic idiot. 

And now to BURKE AND HARE, a film which is much better than the sniffy reviews it is getting. 

The Times gave it 2 out of 5, referring condescendingly to the Carry On films. BURKE AND HARE is both better and worse than that, if you know what I mean.  High production values, and excellent design and photography make this rollicking comedy one of the best-looking British films I have seen in a long time.

But most of all it is funny.  The tale of two grave robbers who morph into murderers zips along at an excellent pace. The comedy combines intelligent wit, social comment regarding both the 1830s and the present day, and no opportunity for a sick gag about death or corpses is overlooked.  This is good, black humour.  And it does sit well in the great British tradition of popular comedy. It is in fact an Ealing Studios production, and does not shy away from taking on that heritage. 

Simon Pegg as Burke continues to establish his credentials as a serious actor in an understated performance. Which leaves the space for Andy 'Gollum' Serkis to push the envelope in the more outlandishly comedic role of Hare.  Especially in one of the funniest sex scenes in cinema history.  One which asks questions about today's worship of money.  

Australia's pocket sweetheart Isla Fisher - surely the best contemporary comic film actress - puts in a decent shift as the strumpet / thespienne trying to put on an all-women version of The Scottish Play.  And the three leads are backed up by a long list of British actors, comedians and celebrities to provide enjoyment just spotting and naming them. Another aspect in the great Ealing tradition.  Just wait to see who runs into a coach-related disaster.

BURKE AND HARE lacks the sophistication of THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT. But it is an excellent and very funny piece of traditional British film comedy brought up to date via Pegg's now standardly fine input. Don't be put off by bad reviews. It's fun.