Attack on Titan (進撃の巨人 Shingeki no Kyojin) television review

Attack on Titan is an animated television series adapted from a popular Japanese comic. It’s a thoroughly unhealthy mash-up of Game of Thrones, Full Metal Jacket, Night of the Living Dead, Spiderman and Jack and the Beanstalk. It has a terrifying disregard for the lives of its characters. It features unexpected twists, death, destruction and dizzyingly choreographed action sequences. And it has one of the catchiest, most bombastic, title sequences you’ll ever see.

In a land of castles and feudalism, all citizens live within a heavily walled city. The thick wall keeps out the ‘Titans’, 15 metre, naked, sexless, gormless freaks who live to chase and eat humans. The majority of the Titans have a European/American appearance. It’s not hard to see Attack on Titan as a metaphor for “bland” Western culture invading Japan.

One sunny day, a new titan appears. At 100 metres, he stands higher than the wall. When he rudely breaches it, the city finds it’s streets overrun with mindless titans, scooping up and devouring the population.

The military’s response to the apocalypse is to rally an army of swordsmen equipped with “3D Maneuver Gear”. They have the ability to fire cables which spear nearby buildings, allowing them to swing up high enough to deliver a killing blow to the Titan’s neck. It sounds fun, looks impressive, but felling a Titan is difficult. Many soldiers die in the process, every fight infused with grim urgency.

Twists and revelations soon pile-up, changing the war entirely. Despite an eventful story and crazy ideas, viewers will find their pleasure curtailed by pacing issues. While some of the story zips along, on a dime it will turn a corner into lengthy internal monologue, killing the tension. The animation veers between highly detailed energy and simple static images. These mark the points that the production team found their time and budget stretched. At its best, the imagination on display is frightening and beautiful.

Character design is strong, with Eren Yaeger, Mikasa Ackerman and Levi particularly worth looking out for. In fact Eren and Mikasa (the main characters) have a back-story so complex and compelling, there’s enough material for several spin-offs. It’s their recruitment into the corps which initially drives the story, but a large supporting cast features several brilliant personalities who zing off the screen.

Attack on Titan is a surprising, nail-biting and only occasionally frustrating show. It skews the well-trodden zombie format into something on a far grander scale. It ratchets up the melodrama to equally dizzying heights and represents a high point for serial television animation.

Watch Attack on Titan At Crunchyroll

Marley (2012, dir. Kevin MacDonald)

Reggae, and Bob Marley, were always off my radar. So far off my radar, I was in danger of flying planes into them. (My metaphorical and wholly imaginary job as an air-traffic controller was in jeopardy). Despite this I found myself fascinated and excited by Marley. At times it drew me close to tears. (I didn't of course, actually cry. In fact had I cried I would still probably say that “I didn't of course, cry”).

Bob Nesta Marley was only 36 years old when he died and what Marley, the film, does best is to cover the staggering amount he achieved in that time. He was born to a slightly caddish and elusive white Jamaican Royal Marine and a black Jamaican mother. Bullied in his early years, as a his mixed race boy in Jamaica, Bob's didn't have an easy start. But he turned this around in later life and blossomed into a handsome and charismatic young man with a profound talent for music.

 Marley is notably reverential to Bob but does on occasion, portray him or those around him in a negative light. Director MacDonald's mission to interview as many people as he possibly could was always going to lead to some interesting revelations. Interviewees hint that the head of Island Records, Chris Blackwell (known to some as “Whitewell”), was exploiting Bob by not paying him properly, for example. Yet Blackwell also turns up, happy to discuss his part in the legend.

Bob's own children portray him as an unreliable and often absent father. One rather bleak anecdote tells how he would race his children on the beach, winning and laughing riotously, not even slowing to let them catch up. A devotee of Rastafarianism and a committed hedonist, Bob seems to have lived a happier life than the rest of his immediate family, possibly because he cared more about football and womanising than anything else.

This exhaustive documentary captures some astounding moments, such as the shooting of Bob and his retinue by gunmen at his studios at 56 Hope Road, assuming he was a supporter of the current Jamaican prime-minister. With gunshot wounds to the chest and arm, he still honoured his commitment to a concert two days later. Another moment recalls Bob on stage with leaders of the two warring factions in Jamaica. Forcing them to hold hands, he united political enemies and brought hope to thousands with a message of peace.

Bob's effortless charm and love of life make the closing chapters harder to bear. They detail his battle with the disease afflicting “the white-man part of his body”: cancer. Positive to the last, Bob ends his days in a slow decline, smiling and joking with friends.

Kevin MacDonald's film captures a whole life and if you know little or nothing of Bob Marley this will be rectified by the end. As a documentary it may be lacking style but it is always interesting, often highly emotional and might just change the way in which you view the legend, and the real man behind it. There was more to Bob than is found here but its doubtful so much will ever be assembled again in one place.

The closing credits feature a host of Bob's fans from around the world celebrating his music. Curiously these are the only moments in the documentary which ring a little contrived and hollow.

Marley is released in cinemas and on-demand on April 20^th 2012.

Jo Nesbo's Headhunters (Hodejegerne) review (2012, dir. Morten Tyldum)

Comfortably replete with Jarlsberg Cheese, Vikingfjord Vodka and some wonderful Scandinavian pastries you could be forgiven for thinking I'd forgotten I was here to review a film. But this was just the very genial introduction to a new Norwegian film hitting UK shores in April.

I settled, satisfied, into my seat for what I expected from the trailer to be a straightforward, nuts and bolts thriller but Headhunters is much more than that. It is a surprising and hilariously tricksy film with a darkly comic and quite sadistic inner-core.

Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) has all the trappings of a respectable businessman, complete with smart car, suits, wife and house. His snappy moves have earned him a role as a man for head-hunting the best corporate talent. Only his diminutive stature provides any level of self-doubt. However, his life is a minutely assembled and shock-proofed lie, as it transpires his fortune is amassed almost entirely from art-theft.

At a party he is introduced to the suave Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, known to US/UK audiences from Game of Thrones). Roger spots an opportunity to end his criminal career with the biggest theft of all, the valuable Ruebens painting at Clas's apartment. His accomplice, Ove, will sneak the painting out of the country and onto the black market.

On executing the plan things go disastrously awry. What appeared to be a simple art heist leads to questions about Roger's wife's fidelity. Then the story becomes a chase across the Norwegian country-side as Roger evades a relentless assassin. As he runs, the tension, set-pieces and improbability escalate. Traps and schemes become ever more inventive and no one can be trusted. Headhunters evolves into something wild and unpredictable. Escapades involving skewered dogs, errant tractors, a large amount of faecal matter and flying cars are some of the obstacles added to the delirious brew.

Headhunters won't set the world alight in terms of acting, direction or artistry but for 98 minutes you will laugh, wince and tremble as our hero, Roger, is wrung through the wringer and then wrung again through an ever more twisted set of wringers, each wringer more cruel and twisted than the last. A tense, hilarious and evil viewing experience which will keep you guessing.

Headhunters is released in the UK and Ireland on April 6th. Find the trailer here.

The Woman in Black review (2012, dir. James Watkins)

Daniel Radcliffe bears the weight of The Woman in Black almost solely on his shoulders. Despite being a recent alumnus of Hogwarts it's perhaps too large a burden. The central portion of the film has Radcliffe (as lawyer, Arthur Kipps) alone in a dilapidated house of hell. There is little to do but observe and react. When he's required to interact, with the formidable supporting cast, his weaknesses are more apparent. Not least that he looks just a smidgen too young to be a recently bereaved father and a trained lawyer.

Dispatched to settle the affairs of a recently deceased woman, Kipps arrives in a quaint but markedly rude village in the heart of the Victorian countryside where, beneath its chocolate-box veneer, dark undercurrents flow swiftly. No one wants to talk,. Kipps is warned to stay away, and the children are confined to their homes.

A high rate of infant mortality stalks the frightened streets and hushed voices speak of a vengeful spirit connected to the property of the dead woman. An apparition of a black-clad woman is said to lead youngsters away to their death. Nearby an abandoned house casts a deathly shadow over the place. The house lies across a narrow, sodden causeway precariously crossing the marsh. The path is covered cut off by the tide for several hours a day, effectively trapping visitors there should they visit at the wrong time.

The only friendly face in the village belongs to Daily (A sombre Ciaran Hinds) father grieving over the loss of his boy. Daily drives Kipps across the marsh to the house but doesn't hold with any of this “superstition nonsense”. As a lone voice of reason and science in the village he is severely outnumbered.

Writer Jane Goldman has treated the original novel by Suan Hill as a template, maintaining the bones of the plot and the sense of dread. The Woman in Black is most effective when Kipps is alone in the house, sorting through paperwork. As he works he starts to hear noises, see things in his periphery. Something is with him. Tension is carefully built as he investigates. One sequence calls to mind the 1963 film The Haunting, when. A reverberating, bassy thumping emanates from behind a locked door, ramping up the tension. And the house itself could be a twin of Hill House from that film.

Director James Watkins (director of “Broken Britain” parable Eden Lake and writer of the curious My Little Eye) paces the scares in well-timed ebbs and flows, maintaining a strong sense of foreboding. An accomplished cast bring a touch of class to a tale with little ambition other than to creep under the skin of the audience. A few well-worn tropes serve to distance the seasoned film-viewer: wind-up toys springing to clock-sprung life of their own accord; gaudy, glassy-eyed Victorian dolls observing all, and words etched in blood spewed across the walls. There is a small nod to the debate about the supernatural versus enlightenment but it is soon abandoned when the source of the terror is revealed.

The good news is that The Woman in Black does what a film under the Hammer productions banner is expected to. It provides a roller-coaster of thrills and jumps, some cheesy and some downright scary, while remaining largely free of computer generated imagery. The finale is a little wrought and sentimental, though not enough to derail what has gone before. There are moments of silliness and some straining of credibility in the effort to scare the audience. But, give in to it, leave your cynicism at home, and the hairs on the back of your neck will stand proud. You'll laugh with relief that you survived the next big “BOO!” and grab the hand of your partner. Isn't that what you want from a horror film?

UK general release: February 10th

My Neighbour Totoro (Tonari no Totoro) review (1988, dir. Hayao Miyazaki)

My Neighbour Totoro, from animation house Studio Ghibli, is a beautiful tale of humanity brushing against the gods of nature. There are monsters, but only playful, whimsical souls helping those who need it. And these creations sow the seeds of what comes in Ghibli’s far darker Spirited Away.

Studio Ghibli was founded in 1985 by several prominent players in the animation industry. Outside Japan the best known of these is director Hayao Miyazaki. It owes its creation to the success of his eco-parable Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Since then it has almost exclusively produced his films. My Neighbour Totoro was released in 1988 to modest success. Only later, with repeated showings on Japanese TV, was it catapulted to success with the character of Totoro now one of the most popular in Japan. In some parts of the world he has the cultural pervasiveness of some of Disney’s beloved characters.

The slight plot opens with two young girls travelling to the countryside in the back of a ramshackle van with their father. They move to a summer house which exists in an indefinable place anywhere from modern day to the late 1800s. Peppered throughout are appropriated Western influences. There are buses and trains idling alongside old-English pastoral vistas and horse-drawn carts. Farmers work the land in peasant gear while younger women dress Little House on the Prairie-style. This post-modern mixing pot of charming styles reminds us that this is fairytale land and while anything is possible ultimately no one is going to get badly hurt.

The girls, Satsuki and Mei, clear out the long-deserted house, bumping into dust sprites (free-floating, sooty balls with eyes) and the initially scary old woman who lives next door. With the place occupied, the dust-sprites secretly process from the house that night, returning to the large camphor tree nearby; the home of the king of the forest, Totoro.

Mei finds him first. With her mother in hospital debilitated by Tuberculosis and her father out teaching, the girls have all day to explore. Finding a tunnel in the bushes, she follows it to the underside of the camphor tree and the home of Totoro. The king looks like a cross between a rabbit, a bear and perhaps a squirrel or a badger; it’s hard to tell. Totoro is characteristically hard to define. His eyes grow and shrink to extremes depending on his mood. The mouth grins toothily and then opens as wide as his own body. This “monster” may not move and act according to our physical laws but he allows Mei to fall asleep on his belly before delivering her, still sleeping, safely back to the family.

The tale treads some well-worn ground while Mei struggles to make herself believed. When older sister Satsuki meets Totoro at a bus-stop in the rain we witness two spectacular sequences from the film. His small umbrella creating a drumming noise as the larger drops of rain fall from the trees, Totoro jumps up and down, laughing with manic glee as he shakes more of these drops loose. They fall satisfyingly down on the umbrella as he revels in the “real-world” magic he has created.

Then there is the arrival of the film’s most wondrous creation, Cat-bus. The design recalls the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. The grinning face flows into a bus-shaped body with holes in the side serving as doors and windows. Travelling on about 12 small cat feet and with mice for indicator lights, Cat-bus runs through the forest ferrying forest spirits between the trees, invisible to the farmers he runs past. As with the Totoro’s body he stretches and contorts unnaturally.

My Neighbour Totoro is really about two young girls struggling to cope with the desperate illness of their mother. The forces of nature who rise up to help them bring to mind Pan’s Labyrinth and the vulnerable heroine who retreats from horror into a fantasy world. In the end, Totoro provides real physical and emotional help. It also features some of Studio Ghibli’s strongest character design. The creatures announce their otherworldliness through animation techniques that separate them convincingly and imaginatively from the “real” people.

This film will appeal to all ages and is a perfect demonstration of how a world without any real conflict and danger, un-rooted in any time and place, can charm and stun us with its magic.

Vanishing Point review (1971, dir. Richard C. Sarafian)

There’s a transcendental point you reach driving fast down a straight, deserted country road, turned on and tuned out. At one with the car, you forget your problems and switch all primary brain functions to moving as smoothly and effortlessly as possible. Check yourself in the mirror. That introspective face reflected back is Kowalski’s face. The face of a man leaving his demons behind in a cloud of dust.


Kowalski (“Christian name…and last name”) agrees to deliver a white 1970 Dodge Challenger from Colorado to Frisco in less than 15 hours. Such a high-speed run is welcomed by a man on the run from the ghost of a dead lover (a discarded newspaper reveals she died surfing at sea), a nihilistic career racing cars and a job in a corrupt police department that has left him disillusioned. On the road he is pursued by police from state to state as his journey intersects with drugs culture and the rawness of life in modern America.

The imagination of Super Soul, a blind radio DJ, is fired up by Kowalski’s challenge. He offers spiritual support in the form of a gloriously uplifting soundtrack of soul and gospel music and evangelical words of encouragement. They never meet except for a few reality-blurring moments when Kowalski talks back to him through the car radio.

Vanishing Point’s other major character is the Dodge Challenger itself. Richard C. Sarafian directs with a pornographer’s eye, always choosing the sexiest angle to shoot from, fetishising every wheel spin and drift. “Look at the curves down there.” “Look at the headlights on that!” This is the director showing you a thing of beauty in all its lascivious detail. And sitting emotionless in her driver’s seat is Kowalski; a god of the freeway. Living the American dream as a naturalised Polish immigrant, driving through the heart of the country where you get what you want, how you want, as fast as possible.

Despite the 1971 release date this is absolutely a product of the 1960s. Super Soul might be like a prophet to his fans (one child tries to touch his hand before a policeman pulls him away) but he is not immune to the racism of the era. His radio station is ransacked by white supremacists who smash the windows and equipment and beat up his engineer. Only Kowalski notices the hint of coercion in Super Soul’s performance after this, sensing that something bad has surfaced from the old days of America.


When Kowalski is forced by police road blocks to take a detour into the desert, he uncovers more facets of America. Nature nearly ends the journey there when he is bitten by a rattlesnake, but he is saved by an old man. Later the same man introduces him to the “new people” of America – young Christians singing of love and harmony in the wilderness. They are curiously unfriendly and ignore him in favour of the hedonism of their spiritual lifestyle. One strange interlude has Kowalski picking up two overly camp men on their honeymoon. They pull a gun on Kowalski who ejects them forcibly from the car. Is Sarafian saying that the new America is fostering gay men who represent danger? Or exploiting them to highlight the unbridled masculinity displayed by Kowalski? The intent is strangely garbled in these scenes.

Within the film, Kowalski meets several women who seem to remind him of his lost love, all of them displaying her defining long, fair hair or freckles. A petrol station attendant fascinates him briefly early in the journey. At a later stop-off, a naked girl on a motor bike rides out of the desert. They exchange friendly words and as he tries to leave she offers herself to him, suggesting he might be happier if he stays there with her, taking drugs and making love all day. Kowalski refuses and rides out. The third woman comes at night on the side of the road. A young Charlotte Rampling stands waiting for a ride dressed in a black shawl. Her loose, dark clothing suggests ancient times. Perhaps she represents the death of Kowalski’s lover in contrast to the life and freedom represented by the naked motorbike girl. Kowalski lets her in and in mystical tones she reveals that she has always been waiting for him, always wanting him. They get stoned and have sex. When Kowalski wakes in the morning there is no sign of her. Kowalski shrugs it off and the quest resumes. Curiously, this scene was cut from US prints of the film and was only present on the UK version. Although it has recently been reinstated in the US, it is odd that such an important scene was ever left out. Maybe it was thought too supernatural for a film setting out to tackle real issues.


The film ends where it began. The prologue to Vanishing Point finishes with two cars passing just before they reach a road block of unyielding bulldozers. The film freezes and one of the cars, the Dodge Challenger, fades out, leaving the other, a black Chrysler. Kowalski is now in the Chrysler, delivering it before his next mission begins; the chase back to Frisco in the white Dodge Challenger. This is one of many vanishing points in the film, where black and white cross. The haze on the horizon where the road disappears represents a physical vanishing point. The end of one phase of American history as it morphs into the next represents another. Maybe the wanton destruction witnessed in Kowalski’s racing career was his Vietnam. A place of extremes that leaves young men desensitised and emotionally wrecked. The analogy would be understandable given the mood of the country at the time the film was made.

In the small-town scenes the camera picks out the faces of old men watching on from behind screen doors or through their windows. Some wear cowboy hats, symbols of the old America. They don’t understand what’s going on. They remember the spirit of the old west: to ride out and explore the country. Kowalski represents that pioneering spirit, but he is largely indifferent to what he finds. It’s clear that the new America bears only a superficial resemblance to the old. Kowalski takes drugs to recapture the thrills of his racing days and to escape from the truth of his past. The lawless interstate journey inspires others to see him as a symbol of freedom. An outsider who has shaken off laws and social norms. Look closely at the end scene and you might be lucky enough to see the escape he yearns for. Or is he doomed to repeat events? The answer to that will require your interpretation and a scroll back to the start of the film.


Kowalski is a romantic hero living a life of hedonistic individualism that no one can tame. In refusing to obey the laws of the old order, he achieves near mythical status. In the telling of this story, Vanishing Point becomes an important film about the death of innocence in the wake of Vietnam, personal liberty, freedom of expression and the changes in American society from the 1960s onwards.

Trust review (1990, dir. Hal Hartley)

I only recently heard the news about the death of Adrienne Shelley. I feel bad because it happened in 2006 and I'd let her slip from my memory. In the early 90's I had her picture on my student wall and a medium-sized crush. Chances are you haven't heard of her though and that's OK because she never broke into the Hollywood big leagues. Shelley started her career a young, sweet and spunky actress working in small budget and short films. Later she added directing to her resume.

Tragically, just before the release of Waitress, her biggest film as director, she died when strangled in her New York apartment by an opportunist thief. The killer, in a perversely filmic touch, managed to dress the scene so it appeared she'd hanged herself. Shelley's husband and young daughter believed this for only nineteen days until her remorseful murderer handed himself in.

Of Shelley's acting work the best was under the directorship of Hal Hartley. And my favourite of those films is Trust. More on Adrienne Shelley can be found here: http://www.adrienneshellyfoundation.org/



The first thing to say about Trust is that work is required on the part of the viewer. This isn't a criticism but a warning for anyone new to the films of Hal Hartley. The characters all speak with the voice of the director; it's you who will invest them with a personality distinct from their creator. Let me explain:

Hartley's style is to direct his actors to speak their lines without betraying emotion. In turn the audience has nowhere to go but to project their own emotions, back-stories and desires onto them. None of the conventions of film drama delivery are followed. This is Hartley's universe and that makes it hard to break the layer of stylistic veneer he has brushed over this film. When you put away your preconceptions, fall into the groove and go with it, Trust is a cinematic treat that will have you eagerly hunting down more by this director.

The script is cynical and glacially cool, each character speaking with the same enigmatic voice; (Hartley's) voice. Everyone knows the cleverest thing to say at any given moment. There are no pauses, pondering or any kind of tic that might have a parallel in the “real world”. And all of this delivered to a mostly static camera. A camera that plays no active role in the narrative except to record the events and leave you to fill in the rest. A similar process can be seen in the films of David Mamet but the plot of Trust is less arch than, for example, Mamet's House of Game and without any of the twists and turns in the plot. But both regard film as an extension of the theatre stage, delivering complex, wordy scripts with a passive eye for motion.



Hartley casts the charismatic but criminally underrated Martin Donovan as television engineer Matthew Slaughter - a brooding, violent loner, who carries a live grenade at all times “just in case”. Matthew is an unnaturally talented repairer of electronics but finds himself unemployed after forcing his bosses head into a vice. His anger is exceeded only by that of his controlling father, who keeps their house spotlessly clean. This violent paternal OCD propels Matthew from the house and into a chance encounter.

Adrienne Shelley plays the immature and pregnant high school girl, Maria. Life is turned around for her when she announces her pregnancy to her family. Maria's father calls her a slut, she slaps him and he drops dead on the spot of a heart attack. All very cold, all very Hartley. Turned out of the house by her mother and abandoned by her jock boyfriend she is found by Matthew and reluctantly opens up to him. Luckily Matthew's overbearing father has left town for a few days allowing him to offer Maria place to stay. She repays him by discarding her clothes and cigarette butts all over the house. When the father returns the ensuing violence forces them both out onto the street again. A frustrated Matthew walks into and out again of his thankless television repair job, spitting bile at the world. Only in the face of Maria’s determinism to have her baby does he calm down and recognise a fellow pariah.



On the surface the story of a pregnant girl being turfed out onto the streets may sound an unoriginal premise, but Hartley peppers the whole thing with asides and nuances that take the film to an unexpected place. Look at the scene where a family friend gives an unexpected speech on how great it is to be pregnant, which is strangely incongruous given the context of the film. Another scene at the train station suddenly presents us unexpectedly with a group of men who all resemble Jaques Tati. Trust is not afraid to be surreal and in doing so avoids any detraction in not confronting head-on the abortion protesters that rear their heads when Maria visits a clinic. The fact that she decides to have her baby and then changes her mind when she falls in “love” is simply stated and the film never condemns or endorses her decisions.

Maria’s use of the “c” word in the abortion clinic, when discussing how her previous boyfriend sees her as a “thing”, is one rare moment of true shock. For one thing it seems unlike Hartley to use the word itself but very much his style in that it is delivered so nonchalantly. It prefigures the use of this word in American Beauty almost a decade later; coming again from the mouth of a high-school girl similarly delivered in an everyday manner. The teenage pregnancy plot also reminds us of Juno but Hartley's world is darker and spikier than that adolescent fable.

Motherhood plays a central role in Trust and not just Maria's impending birth. From Matthews absent mother who's dress Maria later wears to Maria's own controlling mother who throws her daughter out for murdering her husband only to let her and Matthew return in a moment of compassion. As we discover this is a ruse to let her try to set up Matthew with her older daughter Peg (played by a young Edie Falco from The Sopranos and Hartleys 2005 film The Girl From Monday).



What's surprising is the real beauty and charm that leaps out of this artifice as Matthew and Maria's relationship develops. When they discuss the nature of love and trust in Hartley's clipped dialogue you sense that these characters genuinely care for each other, for although the style works against them, the power of the relationship draws us back. One theory I have is that despite himself, Hartley allows the actors to sneak in elements of real emotion through his own almost Fascistic methods of film-making. It may seem far-fetched but Hartley's work is so knowing and so carefully constructed it seems a moment of weakness from him that he ever allowed these characters to become so likable.

Trust is a rare commodity. An independent film dealing with society’s outcasts that beats with a real heart at its core. Adrienne Shelley plays a tenacious and stubborn character with great strength and presence; a reminder of a talented life cut tragically short.

The Phantom Tollbooth review (1970, dir. Charles “Chuck” Jones)

"...it's not just learning that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things that matters."

Can children's films qualify as counter-cultural? Where do you go if you want your children to watch a film that makes them think, challenges their preconceptions and makes it all fun, imaginative and exciting? Wouldn't that make it run counter to most of the vapid fare out there?

The children's book The Phantom Tollbooth was first published in 1961. Written by American author Norton Juster and illustrated profusely by Jules Feiffer it was received warmly by critics. A large amount of the charm of the book is down to Feiffer's expressive interpretations of Juster's words. If you're not familiar with his work think Quentin Blake with a more scratchy but assured line.

The film of The Phantom Tollbooth combines live-action and animation. It stars Butch Patrick (Eddie from The Munsters) in person and in voice as Milo. When MGM released the film in 1970 it was the last time they used animation in any of their features.



Milo is bored by school and uninterested in learning. His ennui is a phenomenon that strikes a chord today; the type of direction-less youth that the media likes to portray. The fact that his parents are largely absent from the picture suggests a reason.

It takes a Tollbooth and a small car to appearing in his house to shake him from his apathy. For a while, anyway. Milo remains cynical and distrustful despite the initial suprise of transforming into a cartoon character once past the Tollbooth’s barrier. In the fantasy world beyond he travels to fascinating cities and lands such as Digitopolis, Dictionopolis and the Mountains of Ignorance. Milo meets a Watchdog (half dog, half clock), the Spelling Bee, the Humbug, The Whether (sic) Man, The Senses Taker and the Princesses of Rhyme and Reason. They all help Milo progress with wordplay, puns, irony, wit, metaphor, reason and surrealism. Eventually he shakes of his fecklessness and resolves to rescue the princesses (who turn out to be not exactly helpless anyway).

Shot in a vibrant palette, the real world almost matches the cartoon world for colour and texture, despite having a separate director. The animated sequences (that make up the bulk of the film) really allow director Chuck Jones to make the film his own. As a veteran of both Warner Bros. cartoons and MGM's Tom & Jerry, Jones was already an accomplished animator when he started the film. It doesn't seem to have thrown him moving from animated shorts up to a feature length scale, though.

I can think of very few animators have a natural flair for facial expression and body contortion as Chuck Jones. The ability to illicit a laugh from a quizzical look or leg wiggle makes his work instantly familiar. A master of timing, he could wring all the comedic value or tension from a well judged pause in the mania. In comparison Tex Avery, for example, was a master of lightening quick jumps and starts, his characters morphing quickly from one ridiculous state to another opposing, but equally funny, state. Avery also aimed his work squarely at a more adult audience with frequent sexual references that don't seem to be part of Jones' repertoire. Chuck Jones was deliberate and subtle instead. In The Phantom Tollbooth we meet the perpetual stoners; The Lethargians. They live in the Doldrums, a place where nothing ever happens, and ooze, slip, slide, drop and hang about the place. Their expressions are sleepy and defeated. In the animation you can feel every bit of their physical weight and the heaviness that infects Milo as he succumbs to their laziness.

There are experiments in the esoteric too, that recall the oft-censored early Porky Pig short The Last Dodo (1938). That Bob Clampett film had Porky chasing the Dodo through a dark, disturbing Salvador Dali-esque landscape. In The Phantom Tollbooth we see the same use of Dali's melting clocks, this time to mark the passage of time. This is blended with a Terry Gilliam-esque Sun and Moon morphing into a stopwatch that demonstrates the passing of the seasons before changing again into a large pocket watch, the cogs spinning the car around and around.

Towards the end we meet the villains of the piece, foul demons led by a particularly frightening creature with no face, The Terrible Trivium. Our heroes are set menial tasks by the Trivium to keep them occupied and confused. This last act is where Jones shows some weakness. The previously good-natured jaunt can't be replaced by the required amount of menace and terror we need to feel here. The animation is too lively and charming where it needs to be harder and slower. The rest of the demons are sketchy and chaotic without being scary. They're drawn hastily with vague lines suggesting production money was running out at this point.

The Phantom Tollbooth is undoubtedly dated in comparison to modern animation but it is still an important film. It manages to be subversive in being unabashed in its approach to making learning fun. It shows that language and numbers are a source of awe and wonder. There's plenty here for adults too who will appreciate the more complex wordplay and thrill of learning. Combined with Chuck Jones' brand of animated litheness and some endearingly realised characters, if you track down this film your eyes will be opened, as Milo's are, to the possibilities out there.

Bug review (2006, dir. William Friedkin)

Can swallowing too much toothpaste send you insane? Or the aluminium in your underarm deodorant? Your mobile phone signal can definitely fry your brain. I am pretty sure some people go crazy from the Wi-fi in their homes. Then there's the mind-control-beams. The ones the government fire at our twitching, fearful, bodies at night. And the bugs!

The modern world could send you spiralling into insanity if you think about it too much; an idea that lies at the heart of Bug.

Agnes is bored, lonely and poor but she is also free after escaping an abusive marriage. She stands on the porch of her motel room, works nights at a lesbian bar, and doesn't do a lot in between. Pete appears after an innocuous introduction and he seems interested in her. Agnes resignedly lets him in to her life. He doesn't leave and they live together at the motel by default.

Pete (Michael Shannon) gradually infects Agnes (Ashley Judd) with the notion that bugs are everywhere in her home. It's a disease that Pete has been carrying, ready to unleash on a vulnerable mind. By the time we realise he is paranoid and delusional, Agnes is already snared. Using either luck or design he has entered her life at exactly the right time to get “under her skin”.

Pete sees the bugs everywhere. Insects sent by the government to spy and control us. Insidious bugs that we can't see, but we know they are there because he tells us. Through a creepily charismatic performance he drags her into his madness. Orbiting around them are Agnes's best friend, her ex-husband and someone who may or may not be “looking after” Pete. But this film is essentially a two-hander that can distilled down to the log-line; “a couple go crazy in a motel room”.

It escalates and then, at the end, it escalates again. To say more would spoil it, but plenty of tin-foil and fly paper is involved.

The limited sets and the small cast give it the air of a stage play, and this is no surprise given it was originally written for theatre by Tracy Letts. This economy of scale contributes to the claustrophobia. You can feel that Agnes's life is rapidly imploding. In no time the couple have cut themselves off from the “normal” world, retreating into the confines of the motel room.

What impresses is that this film has two central performances that will keep you mesmerised and that it's overseen by a veteran director who keeps it feverish and unexpected. It has all the bravado and edginess of a first-time director. A director who hasn't been trampled by the studio system yet. It's exciting to see Ashley Judd deliver as intense a performance as this. Michael Shannon brings a probing, uncomfortable, stare and a set of mannerisms that are eerily effective. The director is clever enough to keep this character simmering on just the right side of socially acceptable. When Pete has to show his true nature, Shannon steps up and gives a devilishly manic turn.

William Friedkin has shocked and thrilled before with a diverse resume that includes The Exorcist, The French Connection, To Live and Die in L.A. and Cruising. For critics he may have reached a creative peak in the 1970's and early 1980's, but in Bug he shows that is assessment is not accurate. This film delivers all of the passion and emotion we saw in earlier works.

There may be no strong authorial stamp on most of Friedkin's films but they do share an energy, a bravery and a love of putting human beings through physical and metaphysical extremes. This seems to be a common thread that connects them. Bug is no different. Amongst the body horror and delusion there's points to be made about moral panics in the media, social alienation, diagnosis of mental illness and the culture of conspiracy theory.

A film about paranoia and loneliness that has the power to make you feel dirty and disorientated.