Searching for Sugar Man; Total Recall; The Watch; St George's Day
As we all learned from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, there's a truth in legends that transcends mere facts. If you're still unfamiliar with the quasi-mythical story of Sixto Rodriguez (as most people outside South Africa and Australia apparently were until this award-winning documentary made headlines) then Searching for Sugar Man (2012, StudioCanal, 12) tells a story so seeped in intertwining fact and fiction that you may start to wonder whether the whole thing isn't a set-up. Which, to some extent, it is...
Having recorded a couple of inspiring but utterly overlooked albums (Cold Fact and Coming from Reality), Detroit-based Rodriguez bizarrely became a cult figure among disaffected Afrikaner youth in the mid-70s, enjoying a popularity on a par with Elvis Presley or Simon and Garfunkel. Having first made inroads into the middle-class party scene thanks to bootleg recordings, Rodriguez attained folk-hero status among those who knew only that he had taken his own life after being ignored in the US â€" a powerful voice of protest snubbed out by corporate indifference. According to one version of the story, the unappreciated singer-songwriter had set himself on fire on stage, going out in a horrendous blaze of sacrificial glory.
Mixing interviews, music, and inventive animation, Malik Bendjelloul's riveting film follows Rodriguez's cloud-covered trail back to Detroit, picking its way judiciously through the debris of archival evidence, following the money (at least up to a point), deliberately using the trees to stop us from seeing the enchanting narrative wood. On one level, it's as knowingly manipulative as Catfish, the controversial (mock?)doc that purported to follow the wide-eyed infatuation of an internet romancer while clearly knowing from the outset where this story would end. Yet Searching for Sugar Man has none of the cynicism of that altogether more spurious journey, instead spinning its extraordinary yarn as if from a pre-internet age, relying upon the honest testimony of those who were genuinely cut off from the wider world, and for whom the cold facts of Rodriguez's life were indeed a foreign country.
No matter that the big reveal may be nothing of the sort â€" particularly given the high-profile coverage that the recent rediscovery of Rodriguez's music has sparked; this remains splendidly uplifting and life-affirming fare, heartfelt and joyous in its love of its subject, unabashed in its desire to "print the legend". Extras include commentary and "making-of" doc.
The biggest problem with Paul Verhoeven's 90s sci-fi flick Total Recall, which had been through several stars, writers and directors on its tortuous route to the screen, was that Arnold Schwarzenegger never for one moment looked like "just another worker" (both his body and accent were exotic), so it was little surprise to anyone when he turned out to be a secret space agent. Len Wiseman's reboot Total Recall (2012, Sony, 12) credits both the Philip K Dick story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale and the screenwriters of the 1990 movie, and benefits from an altogether more convincingly schlubby performance by Colin Farrell as the production-line drone who signs up for a superspy fantasy that turns out to be so life-like it has to be real â€" or does it? Other than changing the primary palette of the film from the bold reds and blues of Verhoeven's vision to the default greys of latterday neo-noir (once again, a sci-fi actioner looks toward Blade Runner for its inspiration), the main innovation here is to replace Mars with Australia, which is joined to the United Federation of Britain via a liftshaft that runs through the centre of the Earth. Really. The result is a strange mish-mash of Dick and Daleks Invasion Earth 2150AD, with scrungy physical effects replaced by ubiquitous CGI and thrilling innovation making way for unremarkable updating. On the plus side, the gender balances are corrected, with Kate Beckinsale making up for Sharon Stone's formerly early exit, and Jessica Biel getting to punch above her weight. Not a disaster then, but still a movie that you will have little difficulty in forgetting, wholesale. Blu-ray includes extended Director's Cut.
Watching The Watch (2012, Fox, 15) made me reassess my initial reservations about Joe Cornish's Attack the Block. Having charged Cornish's sprightly home-grown romp with a lack of cutting-edge clarity, I now concede that his tale of ordinary folk tackling extra(ordinary)terrestrials did a far better job of juggling action and comedy than this altogether more bloated Ben Stiller vehicle. Vince Vaughn is in typically irritating form as the boorish bozo who joins Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade in Stiller's neighbourhood patrol on the eve of an alien invasion. Issued for home viewing in the now inevitably triple-monikered Ruder, Cruder and Lewder edition.
The most surprising thing about actor-turned-director Frank Harper's St George's Day (2012, Metrodome, 18) is that Danny Dyer isn't in it â€" this despite the fact that the film runs the gamut of romanticised cockernee geezer cliches as two cousins only go and get themselves into a bit of serious with some Russians and have to go to Europe as part of some crafty diamond caper before sailing off into the fakkin sunset. Harper (who co-writes, stars, and narrates) clearly imagines this to be some sort of generic cross between Goodfellas and The Long Good Friday, although it's often unclear whether the script is more tongue-in-cheek than foot-in-mouth. "You haven't got an achilles heel," runs one more memorable line, "you've got an achilles cock!" Quite.
DVD and video reviewsFolk musicArnold SchwarzeneggerBen StillerColin FarrellDanny DyerJoe CornishJonah HillRichard AyoadeDocumentaryScience fiction and fantasyThrillerComedyMark Kermodeguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/dec/16/searching-sugar-man-total-recall
Alex Proyas Alex Taylor Alexa Rae Alexander Korda
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