I've been to the cinema three times in three days. Unheard of. And on each occasion I went to a cinema I'd never been to before. Here are brief reviews of the films, and the cinemas.
Thursday's film: Knocked Up (15) When a slacker male meets a career female, and mishandles the condom, you can guess the next nine months of plot. What's not quite so obvious is that this film should manage to be one step up from the usual sloppy rom-com. Knocked Up avoids most of the usual character cliches and unnecessary histrionics, and concentrates instead on realistic hilarity. Ben leaves behind his comfortable posse of toking malingerers and learns to live with responsibility, while Alison comes to terms with unexpected belly enlargement and a realigned future. It's proper feel-good stuff, never once wallowing in negativity. The perfect movie to which to take a member of the opposite sex (so long as they don't mind frequent swearing, and close-up birth shots). Thursday's cinema: Vue Greenwich It's the cinema in the Dome! Typical, eh? Peter Mandelson spends millions on a big tent, and here we all are watching Pearl & Dean adverts underneath it. The cinema's up a big escalator, with a ticket machine at the bottom and a nachos & pick'n'mix outlet at the top. The signage for screen 11 (the big one) is appalling, and it's very easy to end up at the top end of the wrong escalator and then having to find your way back down non-existent stairs. The auditorium is huge and comfy, and the screen is supposedly the largest in London. Not from the back it isn't. And the sound quality, oh dear oh dear. There was a bloody annoying echo echo all the way through the film film, yes yes all the way way. I'd like to be charitable and blame the print, but I don't think I'll be rushing back to see if it was a one-off.
Friday's film: Flood (12A) [Contains moderate injury and sustained threat] When a film gets plenty of pre-launch publicity but is then screened in just one tiny West End cinema, that should perhaps be a hint as to its quality. Which is a shame really, because I'd been looking forward to a dramatisation of "Flood" ever since I read (and reviewed) the book four years ago. But the film doesn't stick to the book's plot, not at all, bar the bit about a big surge tide rushing up the Thames and inundating the capital. Cue lots of splashy special effects in water tanks and several CGI shots of central London underwater. The film saves money by concentrating on events at central government command, rather than mass carnage along the overtopped Embankment. Events have been shamelessly shifted from mid-afternoon to after dark, presumably because it's cheaper to shoot with a black background. The laws of physics are frequently twisted for dramatic effect, and the realities of geography twisted even further. We're expected to believe that three of London's flood experts all happen to be related, but not on speaking terms, and that the deluge brings them reconciliation. It's a bit like the melodrama of Casualty, really, but a lot wetter. Robert Carlyle gets to deliver some wholly unbelievable lines, and escapes from the torrent via the most unbelievable route imaginable. And as for the ending, oh come on, you cannot be serious?! Sorry, the book was a whole lot better, and it's clear that much of the destruction wreaked therein proved wholly unfilmable. But OK, I sort of enjoyed Flood really. Because it's always good to be reminded that that one day, maybe sooner than we think, London could very easily go under. Friday's cinema: Apollo, Regent Street There are just 59 seats stacked up in front of this luxurious little basement screen. And only nine of them are filled. We're the only people in the country watching this film this afternoon. Pitiful, isn't it? Still, anything to avoid the humiliation of straight-to-DVD, eh?
Saturday's film: The Bourne Ultimatum (12A) Come on, if you were ever going to see this film, surely you've already been. Matt Damon carves a swathe of death along the Atlantic seaboard as he's chased by scarily-competent CIA operatives from one car chase to another. There are particularly impressive set pieces on Waterloo station (yes really) and across the rooftops of Tangier. And there are several reminders that surveillance techniques are now so good that if the government wants you dead, there's now no place to hide. Unless you're Jason Bourne that is. I'm sure he'll be back. Saturday's cinema: Greenwich Picturehouse I love a good Picturehouse, and this is definitely one step up from my local in Stratford. Luxury reclining seats, an organic tapas restaurant nextdoor and no chavs in the foyer. But also, as it turned out, a grinning moron behind the till. The screening was only a quarter-full but with "designated seating", and she was intent on packing us all into a compact block in the centre of the auditorium. 120 empty seats to play with, and yet she bunged most of us together into the same couple of rows, without even a gap between separate parties. Gibbon. Useless bloody gibbon. Yes, obviously we all shuffled along when the lights went down and nobody else arrived, but that's not the point. Maybe I'll go back to Stratford next time - at least there they treat me like a responsible human.
