The iTunes 99p rental. For many weeks now the bane of my existence, where once i looked with anticipation to discover what had been chosen, i now look with dread. Fatal Instinct, Surfer Dude, Starter For 10, just some of the rejects i’ve been subjected to.

Imagine my surprise, then, when i found that this week’s selection might actually be watchable. Let’s take a look, then, at Layer Cake.

Initially wanting to be an actor, Matthew Vaughn thought better of it, and began in the British film industry. Vaughn served as producer for several of friend Guy Ritchie’s mockney gangster flicks, including Lock, Stock… and Snatch. Watching Ritchie work, Vaughn clearly decided it was a better gig, directing. His first film would follow Ritchie’s in the British gangster genre.

Daniel Craig is XXXX, a terrible conceit, so i’ll refer to him as Craig. Craig is a business man. He has personal guidelines, wears a suit, and won’t deal directly with his end consumers. His business? Drug dealing.

Craig conducts himself in a professional manner, so is perturbed when crime boss Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham) orders him to buy drugs from an amateur, and sends him on a fool’s errand to track down a missing girl. Things go from bad to worse when it is revealed the seller, named The Duke (Jamie Foreman), stole the drugs from a group of ex-military Serbians, killing one in the process. Whilst trying to negotiate the purchase of the drugs, and looking over his shoulder for a Serbian hit man, Craig discovers the missing girl is daughter of rival gang boss Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon). Jimmy has set him up.

Craig takes care of Jimmy, but with a deal still to be done, and his life still at risk, he finds Eddie pulling him in a third direction. Craig was on the verge of retirement, but now has a job on his hands just staying alive.

It’s impossible to judge Layer Cake without reference to Ritchie’s work, so i’ll make use of the comparison. Whilst Snatch et al. feature working class style shady characters, Craig’s smart, intelligent well spoken business man is a breath of fresh air. He is a calm character, but when it all starts to go wrong he finds himself slowly being brought down to the level of the hard nosed villains and petty scumbags he has taken great pains to avoid. Craig’s is a surprisingly well rounded character. He doesn’t like guns, he isn’t a fighter, and he goes weak at the sight of a gorgeous woman. Then, when he is forced to get his hands dirty, he reluctantly does what is necessary, but suffers emotionally for it afterwards. As he tries to plan, and tie up loose ends, it doesn’t come together easily for him.

Layer Cake could easily have slid into predictability, but Vaughn keeps it fresh, with enough surprises along the way to keep you guessing. Where Ritchie introduces a myriad of characters, who don’t get resolution until the big bow at the end, Vaughn cleans up as he goes. Vaughn uses flashbacks in a similar way to Ritchie in Snatch, which here are distracting and feel out of place. There are some genuinely good moments here. The scene where Craig is given a gun by Gene (the excellent Colm Meaney) is simple, yet with some wonderfully nuanced acting, feels like it belongs in a truly great movie.

Little scenes like this scattered about hint at directorial greatness, and it’s only really the more comedic scenes which drag this movie down. The more outlandish characters detract from a serious movie that generally explores some very interesting themes. The main crux is the story of a man who thinks he can stay clean in a murky world. With his rules and manners, Craig thinks he is above the petty criminals that share his circles, but learns the hard way that easy money is a difficult thing to earn.

If you can forgive the somewhat anti-climatic resolution, which suffers a little from fuzzy logic and suspect motivations, Layer Cake is a very good film, with flashes of brilliance. Where Lock, Stock… and Snatch are knockabout light entertainment, Vaughn’s first feature contains some real depth, and many, well, Layers.

I’d been looking forward to Kick-Ass because of the concept and great source material. Now i have another reason, because i think Vaughn has the potential to be a truly great film maker.

Layer Cake is available on iTunes at the discounted rate until Monday Midnight 23rd November, and on DVD now. And is definitely worth watching if you haven’t already.

Bazmann – You can now follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/baz_mann

The way we watch movies is changing. In five years time, the studios believe, all our home entertainment will be delivered digitally. Apple know this, and already have a large quantity of movies available via iTunes and Apple TV.

To encourage us to try this form of media, every week iTunes offers one movie for rental at 99p, a considerable discount from the usual price of £3.50. Every week I  review the movie that has been chosen. This week, to coincide with Halloween, they’ve selected… Airplane creator David Zucker’s Scary Movie 3.

The first Scary Movie was the first proper spoof movie for a while when it was released. Opening at a time when gross-out movies had hit their prime, it was a big success. Infused with The Wayan family’s edge and relevant humour, it was a mix of old style Zucker/Abrams puns and more contemporary American Pie-style sex comedy, and was pretty funny at times.

Scary Movie 2 was unnecessary, but the big box office of the original made a follow-up inevitable. The second film also made big bucks, but the humour fell flat. The Wayan family were out, and Zucker himself, the king of this kind of comedy in the eighties, was brought in to freshen up this third instalment.

Anna Faris is back as Cindy. She is now a news reporter, and when she comes across the story of a crop circle at a farm, she gets a feeling something big is afoot. The crop circle was discovered by Charlie Sheen’s Tom, and his brother, wannabe white rapper George. George travels into the hood to participate in his first rap battle.

Meanwhile, Faris’ friend Brenda is terrified. She watched a haunted videotape a week ago. Anyone who watches the tape dies seven days later. And that’s not seven working days either. Cindy believes the crop circle and the mysterious tape are linked. She tries to warn the country via her news station, but no-one is listening.

No-one, that is, but President Harris, Leslie Nielsen. He travels to find Cindy in an attempt to discover the truth, whilst she learns an ancient lighthouse might hold a key to the mystery. With the video broadcast across the nation, can Cindy stop the evil spirits before the population of the US is murdered by this supernatural phenomenon?

Zucker was obviously brought in to work his magic on the franchise, but it’s clearly an impossible task. Scary Movie 3 is mainly a mash-up of Signs and The Ring, two mediocre movies to start with, offering barely enough material to fill a two minute You Tube short put together in someone’s basement. All the humour is either obvious, repetitive, or just not funny.

Without decent gags, the poorly conceived story (if you can call it that) is left hopelessly exposed. Good endings are notoriously difficult to write, but when you’ve already struggled (in vain) with the beginning and the middle, you’ve got no chance. The only genuinely funny material comes at the beginning during the rap battle, and to be fair Faris’ psychic nephew does get some funny lines. But when Nielsen arrives, it turns into a pseudo naked gun story, with the finale becoming an absolute farce. And not the good kind.

Charlie Sheen is a very good comedy actor, particularly suited to this kind of humour, but is given nothing to work with. The brightest spark is Anthony Anderson (Transformers 2). He is saddled with a very generic ‘token black guy’ role, but has great comic delivery, and can make the lamest lines at least sound funny. Perhaps most impressive is Faris herself. Not necessarily for her performance, but for her unwavering commitment to the role. At the climax, when all around her are losing their acting heads, she sells her part to the bitter end.

Scary Movie 3 made a lot of money, as did Scary Movie 4. The law of diminishing returns may apply to the comedy, but not to the ticket sales. And that’s the true horror. For as long as they keep flogging this dead horse, there’s clearly no shortage of people who will pay to see it.

Scary Movie 3 is available on iTunes at the discounted rental price until Midnight Monday 2nd November. It is available to buy on DVD now, as indeed are 1,2 and 4…

Bazmann

The iTunes 99p rental – so good they do it every week. It’s easy, you go into the films section of iTunes, locate the movie picture that states ‘this weeks 99p rental’, point and click. It only takes 30 minutes to download on my computer, and my broadband is super-slow speed. It’s not surprising the concept is number 16 in the ‘Future 100′ in this months Total Film.

It’s been a couple of bad weeks, with Surfer, Dude and Starter For 10 on offer. So it’s with a sense of trepidation i say… Let’s take a look at Megan Fox and Lindsay Lohan in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.

I must start by saying that i am not, and never have been, a teenage girl. There is no situation in which this movie is aimed at me, but i’ll try and provide balance as far as possible.

Lola Cep (Lindsay Lohan) is a girl from New York, dragged kicking and screaming by her mother to live in a little town in New Jersey. Lola has aspirations of being a star, and has a penchant for being over dramatic. On her first day at her new school she instantly bonds with geeky Ella, over their mutual love for rock band Sidarthur, much to the consternation of resident mean girl Carla (Megan Fox).

A rivalry instantly forms as Carla senses a rival for her spot as coolest girl in school. This animosity is fully brought to surface by the imminent auditions for the school play. Both girls are desperate to win the lead role, an updated Eliza Doolittle, in a contemporary musical set in modern day New York.

Tragedy strikes, however, when the news comes through that Sidarthur have broken up! This is Lola’s last chance to see her idol Stu Wolf sing live at the farewell concert. Thoughts of the play are cast aside as Lola has to somehow get tickets, and convince best friend Ella to lie to her parents so they can get to the concert in New York. All this whilst Carla gloats that not only has she got tickets to the concert, but thanks to her father’s connections she will also be at the after show party at Sidarthur’s apartment. Will Lola pull it off, and fulfil her dream?

Made before high school musical, Teenage Drama Queen could have got a jump on Zac and friends if it had got this right. The resolution to the jeopardy of who will get cast in the lead role is badly telegraphed as soon as Lola starts singing in her audition. The whole play thread is then put on the back burner in favour of the very silly trip to the concert. Hilarity doesn’t ensue, it’s all a bit predictable, and it all gets a bit messy.

As Lola browbeats her friend into the ill-advised jaunt, and coupled with the revelation that Lola lied about her Dad dying, and even her real name (which is actually Mary), it’s difficult to see exactly why you should be pulling for her.

 It’s only when we, finally, get back to the musical that things pick up a bit. When you’ve got someone with the talents of Lindsay Lohan, you should make use of them for the whole movie. Say what you want about her now, here she can sing, dance, and yes even act well. It’s a shame Lohan is taking the film’s lead nowadays and wasting her talents. That’s the most interesting story here. Lohan gets the better of Fox, whilst in the real world the roles have now been reversed. Fox is the more successful actress based on two Transformers movies alone, and with some big movies coming up next year she is one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood. Lohan is now a shadow of her former self. She reached a career low with I Know Who Killed Me, and it’s unlikely her part in next spring’s Machete is going to set the world alight.

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen missed the opportunity to be a trailblazer. There’s nothing here that wasn’t subsequently done better in High School Musical and Mean Girls. The Eliza Doolittle play, and the rivalry between Lola and Carla are the highlights, but are overshadowed by the poorly conceived quest to meet Sidarthur.Oh, and i won’t even go into the embarrassment factor of a 30-something male watching Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, on an Ipod Touch, on a packed train in the morning.

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen is available on iTunes for rental at the discounted price until Midnight Monday 19th October. It is also available on DVD now. But buy the far superior Mean Girls instead.

Bazmann

Digital copy is the future. Apple certainly think so (well, they have to). To this end, iTunes hopes to slowly introduce their consumers to the ease of movie downloads by offering a rental every week at the ridiculously cheap price of 99p. You couldn’t even buy I Know Who Killed Me on DVD for that.

As usual, this is my review of this week’s selection. I can only assume this weeks choice is an attempt to cash in on Zombieland’s popularity, both films featuring as they do one Woody Harrelson. Let’s take a look at Surfer, Dude! (Yeah, i know. Hey, i didn’t choose it…).

 The surfer dude of the title is Steve Addington (Matthew McConaughey). The Tony Hawks of surfing, Addington has just returned from a round the world journey catching the best waves on the planet. He comes back to find all is not well, however. He has no money left, his manager’s lawn mower business is failing, and Addingtons sponsors have sold up, meaning his image rights have transferred to new owner, ex-surfer Eddie Zarno (Jeffrey Nording). Zarno is in the process of putting together a fully-immersive surfing simulator called Free Wave. He is also running a Real World reality-style tv show, with the world’s greatest surfers living together in a house. Already signed up is Latino heartthrob, Lupe La Rosa (Ramon Rodriguez), amongst others.

 Addington however doesn’t believe in contracts, and has no interest in reality tv or video games. He just wants to ride the waves. But with Zarno using every underhand trick in the book to try and force Addington to sign, and a record wave drought across the coast, there are a lot of things weighing against him, harshing his mellow. Going on a weed and women fast until the waves come back, Addington also finds this resolve threatened, when he meets east coast business woman Danni Martin (Alexie Gilmore). Can he continue to rebel against the commercialism of today’s society, or will he be forced to sell his soul to the man.

 Surfer, Dude doesn’t start off badly. The idea of a spiritual man bucking against modern society could have been interesting. A comedy about surfing’s biggest star locked in a house with arrogant young upstarts could have been amusing. In fact, there are several plot threads that could have been picked up to make an interesting movie. Instead, Surfer, Dude paddles about and lets the big waves crash by. It’s no exaggeration when i say nothing happens in this movie. We follow Addington as he smokes weed, talks spiritual nonsense with his stoner friends, and looks wistfully out to sea, desperate for an ocean breeze to pick up.

 The scenes involving Zarno’s attempts to pressure him into towing the line are intermittent and half-hearted. Harrelson (wisely) goes AWOL for the middle part of the film. Not comedy, not drama, it just doesn’t know what it wants to be. Four writers are credited for the screenplay, never a good sign, and it shows.

 The biggest problem i had with Surfer… is that i didn’t find the protagonist the least bit likeable, something the story hinges on. Particularly considering his presence in nearly every scene. The whole idea is that Addington has no interest in technology or commercialism, he wants to be one with the wind. However, he’s just come back from a round the world trip, via commercial airline flights, paid for by his previous sponsors, to surf on his board, again paid for by his sponsors. It’s hypocritical. Added to that, he’s tapping up his manager for cash, a man clearly struggling to support his family, and isn’t prepared to do anything in return. Worst of all, in the end the moral of the story seems to be, if you stick to your guns, and sleep with the right woman, it’ll all be sorted out for you. There’s just too much contradiction between the sentiment and the execution.

 It’s hard to believe McConaughey, so good in Amistad and A Time To Kill, has fallen so low. But on evidence, this actually looks to be somewhat of a personal project for him. He’s an executive producer, and the part of a laid back, spiritual stoner dude seems taylor-made for the naked player of the bongo drums. In fact, he even indulges in some nude musical instrument action here too. The only real spark comes from Rodriguez’s La Rosa. Saddled with the poorly written comedy relief in this year’s Revenge Of The Fallen, he suffers from a similar fate here. However the arrogant, brash upstart gives him a much better character to play with, and he plays it with gusto in the criminally few scenes he’s given. If the movie had focused a lot more on the rivalry between La Rosa and Addington, it would have been much better for it.

 Watching on an ipod touch, i found myself easily distracted by the comings and goings on the train. A poorly written, badly executed mess of a film, Notable only for a great performance by star of the future Rodriguez. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

 Surfer, Dude is available for rental on iTunes for 99p until Midnight Monday 12th October. It’s also available on DVD.

Bazmann

You know the drill by now. iTunes offer a random film for cheap rental every week, I take the bullet and let you know if you’d be better off buying a can of Coke and a Twix.

I aim to raise the profile of the 99p rental, and it’s working already. Just six weeks since I started and in this month’s Total Film magazine they’ve named iTunes 99p rental number 16 in their ‘Future 100′. Nice to know they’re fans of HUG.

Starter for 10 is based on the book by David Nicholls, who also adapted the screenplay. Directed by Tom Vaughan (What Happens in Vegas), it’s the story of Brian (McAvoy), who leaves his working class town and his widowed mother to go off to Bristol University. When he arrives he finds he has nothing in common with his room mates. He meets a girl, Rebecca, at a party that night but his nervous patter screws up any chance he had. Dejected and drunk, he stumbles back to his digs. Along the way, much to his excitement, he finds a notice for University Challenge auditions. At the auditions, he helps an attractive girl, Alice, with her test questions and as a result, she beats him to the final team place. Named as first alternative, he makes the team after all due to one of their team-mates suffering a mishap.

The set-up for Starter For 10 leads you to believe it’s going to be about Brian and his team striving for victory. However, the contest, and indeed Brian’s academic studies, take a back seat to his romantic (mis)adventures. Though he is clearly better suited to the intellectual and sensitive Rebecca, he strikes up a relationship with the sexually charged blond-bombshell Alice instead.

Whether this movie is intended as drama, comedy or romance isn’t clear, but it fails on all three counts. When Brian stays with Alice’s family for Christmas, his poor social skills lead to misunderstandings that are clearly meant to be humorous, but fall flat. The one-liners are weak too. At the auditions, only four people turn up to begin with, and we’re treated to the obvious ‘only the top four will make the team’. The drama should come when Brian’s best friend takes a shine to his love Alice, but by this point we’re past caring.

That’s probably the biggest problem here. Whilst we’re supposed to find Brian’s bumbling charm endearing, he’s really just annoying, and his shallow relationship choices actually fairly obnoxious. James McAvoy, so good in The Last King of Scotland, initially appears to be slumming it here. But then you realise he’s not even doing the best with what he’s been given. The only real acting stand-out is Catherine Tate as Brian’s Mum, and that’s not a great recommendation.

The outcome of the contest, when we finally get back on track, is unexpected. In fact, compared to the rest of the film, it’s almost a stroke of genius, the only good moment. It’s far too little, far too late however. The best thing about watching on an ipod touch was that i could just pick it up and watch the film in short bursts.

Part of the reason i started the 99p rental segment was so i’d be forced to watch films I normally wouldn’t bother to watch. And sometimes I am pleasantly surprised. But I’d give ten points to anyone who could answer me the question – how does anyone see this film as a good investment, when great British films like Academy Award winner Slumdog Millionaire, and the forthcoming Harry Brown struggle to find funding?

So, my opinion of Starter For 10? Even more pointless than Exeter University, the team with the lowest score in the last 30 years of University Challenge. Starter For 10 is available at the discounted rental price until Monday 5th October at Midnight. Is it available on DVD? Seriously, who’d buy it..?

Bazmann