REVIEW: The Adventures of Tin Tin - Secret of the Unicorn (PG)

 This morning I went to watch The Adventures of Tin Tin - Secret of the Unicorn expecting big things - directed by Steven Spielberg, co-written by Steven Moffat, produced by Peter Jackson, score by John Williams and a trailer that showed some of the finest animation ever produced - I wasn't to be disappointed.



 Tin Tin (let's call it that for simplicity) is a tremendous romp - buckles are swashed with abandon, there's tension and action, fantastic chase scenes and a fair bit of humour and levity.

The movie opens in the visual style of the original Tin Tin books (and the old television series) with a pre-story a bit like the pre-title sequence in a Bond movie before shifting into the modern animation.

The movie combines three Herge stories: Red Rackham's Treasure, The Crab with the Golden Claws and The Secret of the Unicorn. Tin Tin (Jamie Bell) meets Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) and follow clues to find the treasure of the Captain's ancestor, Sir Francis Haddoque. There's Snowy the dog and the Thompson Twins (played by Nick Frost and Simon Pegg) and some great baddies.

The animation is truly magnificent - it's a mixture of Motion Capture and more traditional/CGI techniques. For the vast majority of the movie you forget that it's animated, so good is the animation and characterisation. This does, of course, raise the question.... 

Why not use real actors?

There's truly amazing reflections in multiple mirrors and distortion through a magnifying glass; there's floods and waves and waterfalls and breaking glass.... it's all there. They've moved the bar for animation not an inch or two but several yards.

The use of 3D is good - I mean, the vast majority of the time you don't notice it, it seems totally integrated into the movie and, apart from one moment (you'll spot it) there's no silly 3D gimmicks.

Many of the chases (and much of the finale) feel like they could have been in a new Indiana Jones movie - particularly when he climbs aboard a motorbike:



John Williams' score is, as you would expect, brilliantly cinematic and combines big orchestral sounds with hints of West Side Story-jazz rhythms and even some French (Belgian?) accordion music.  It does, though, lack the big memorable tune that is usually Williams' thumbprint - the 5-note Tin Tin leitmotif isn't, to my mind, catchy enough and feels rather like Danny Elfman's Batman theme.

This is, without doubt, the movie event of the year.

Could an animated movie win best picture at next year's Oscars?

REVIEW: Contagion (12A)

Such is the power and plausibility of Stephen Soderbergh's latest movie I found, to my cost, that when watching Contagion at a cinema it's best not to cough. People give you funny looks. In fact the quietest throat-clearing or little sniffle from someone sitting near you and your brain instantly wonders whether the events on screen are about to become reality.

Contagion tells of a near-future dystopia in which a virus, similar in nature  to (but worse than) Bird Flu or Swine Flu sweeps from  casino in Hong Kong around the world killing millions and beginning the breakdown of society.



The interweaving narrative threads reminded me, somewhat, of Crash, the surprise winner of the Oscar for Best Film in 2006.  It is a superb ensemble piece lead, if there is a headliner, by a great performance from Matt Damon.

Few movies would hire Gwyneth Paltrow's services and then kill her off in the first 10 minutes, but this is a sign that this is story led and not star led. She's also not the only Academy Award winner or nominee to come a cropper during Contagion's tense 106 minutes. Other performances of note include Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Jennifer Ehle and the sensational Kate Winslet, in what I would say is one of her best performances.



There are some squeamish moments including someone being run over and someone else having their skull cut open (yuk!) and there is surprisingly little in the way of swearing - I imagine that in a world where social order was collapsing there could be a few more f-words!

Atmospheric music that never distracts, despite often sounding like Schoenberg's reworking of the score to The Social Network, only adds to the tension.

For me there were two weaknesses that stop this becoming a 10/10 Five Star movie:

Elliot Gould who, despite an illustrious career spanning many decades, fails to shake off being the bumbling and socially inept Jack Geller, father to Ross and Monica in Friends.

Jude Law is just awful in Contagion. He plays Alan Krumwiede, an internet blogger who wears quirky clothes, has an unfortunately timed Tin Tin quiff, dresses up in an amazing home made space suit and hats and has severe accent problems - worse than Russell Crowe in Robin Hood. He begins with a Dick van Dyke faux-cockney accent that has you waiting for him to say, "Cor blimey, Mary Poppins, what you going to do about this bloomin' virus?", turns into the Australian John Torode from Masterchef ("Viruses don't get any tough than this"), and then slipping freely between New South Wales and the Isle of Dogs until the movie ends. His character isn't necessary for the plot (it appears to be a little anti-internet rant from the scriptwriter) and this character should, I suggest, have met his end on the cutting room floor.

It's so nearly a great movie - it kept me, and the rest of the audience, enthralled for its duration and has so much to commend it. It's a shame about it's weaknesses, and it's particularly unfortunate about Jude Law.

If you haven't see it, I'd definitely recommend it - it's worth watching and let me know what you thought.