The Moon of Liberty

Ratatouille (2007)

Starring - Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Lou Romano, Peter Sohn, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garofalo

Directed by - Brad Bird

The recent great film keep coming, this time from a hugely unlikely source. Surely a story about a rat who wants to be a chef cannot work? Well, I'm here to tell you, oh yes it can! Remy the Rat is sweeping cinemas, and deservedly so.

Remy dreams of becoming a great chef, depite the major problem of being a rat. He has a highly developed sense of smell with esnures he can feel the full aroma of the finest food. His dad and brother the wonderful Emile, are not so impressed by Remy's love of good food, their motto, 'Shut up and eat your garbage' makes Remy more determined to seek out the finer tastes in life.

When the group of Rats are threatened and have to take a long escape through the sewage works, Remy ends up in Paris, home to the restaurant of his chef hero Gusteau. Gusteau used to run a five star rated restaurant which has since his death been in decline. Remy is also a follower of Gusteau's book, 'Anyone Can Cook.' Remy pays a visit to the restaurant and aids the boy who takes out the garbage take the credit for a soup that goes down hugely well. The evil head chef Skinner then spots Remy and asks the garbage boy, called Linguini, to dispose of him.

With Linguini contemplating his poor position, he realises the rat is sympathising with him, he also realises the rat can cook. They then come up with a bizarre method of the rat controlling Linguini's actions. What follows is a wondeful journey as Remy helps Linguini be recognised as a great chef, He also helps Linguini find love with Collette, the female chef at Gusteau's. All is well until the harshest food critic in France comes for a visit, the rat is revealed to the staff as the true chef, and Remy has to rely on his family and friends (all rats of course) for help as only Luinguini and Colette stick around to help.

The animations are beautiful, the storyline is a pleasure to watch, as the unlikeliest of ideas combine to create a compelling and fun film. The film moves at a good pace and lets face it, how many films have you cheering on a rat? You will be too however, will the flagship Ratatouille dish win over the critics and win Gusteau's it's five star glory back, or does it all end down the sewage? I suggest you go and see for yourself.

MOON OF LIBERTY VERDICT - RATING 'A-'  Remy cooks up a treat, this is great fun with a great story, will surely have to win best animation come the OSCAR's, it really is that good, or should that be yummy.

Michael Clayton (2007)

Starring - George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack, Pamela Gray

Directed by - Tony Gilroy

This film is a joy to wtach and uses one of the most intelligent devices in the book, when it works, and in this it does. I will come back to that later. This film is also, after the in my view unwarranted overhype of Clooney's roles in Good Night And Good Luck and Syriana, George Clooney's best serious performance.

Clooney plays the title role, Michael Clayton, he fixes things for a corparte compnay called Kenna, Bach and Ladeen. When suits are brought that could cost the company, he is the one to fix it. When the company is asked to take care of U-North's (a water company accused to mistrating water and causing cancer) case, lead litiigator Karen Crowder's (Swinton) career is on the line to ensure a successful conclusion is reached. Clayton's loyalty to the company ensures he does everything to help, until the mysterious death of the firms old head, Arthur Edens, leads Clooney to suspect U-North were behind the murder.

At this point Clayton's suspicions lead him on a new journey to do the right thing and try and find a way to destroy the U-North settlement and get justice for those affected by the U-North's profit at any cost attitude.

Clooney plays Clayton with poise and passion on a higher level than anything I have seen before. He is also aided by a magnificent supporting performance by Tom Wilkinson as the slightly mad, campaigning old head of the firm who this law suit was one dirty case too far. Swinton for me fell a bit flat, and the ending could have brought it all together better for me. One great move of the film was what I mentioned at the start, it began with a scene that we then went backwards from, and the full extent of it could only be understood once we got back there, this technique worked a dream here.

A film very much worth seeing, not quite the full emotional depth of a couple of recent films but Clooney and Wilkinson are well worth the effort to see this on their own merits.

MOON OF LIBERTY VERDICT - RATING 'A-'  A fine film with two excellent male performances, the ending was a little flat and lost some of the emotional drive, the main reason I have not quite got this in the 'A' category.

The Kingdom (2007)

Starring - Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Ali Suliman

Directed by - Peter Berg

A film that will send a shudder down the spine of both the United States and the Saudi authorities, The Kingdom explores the cultural differences and similarities that can bind the two countries, and tear them apart.

The start pulls no punches on the relationship between the US and the Saudi's down the ages. Then we get into the meat of the film. A terrorist bomb ruins a simple siftball game as local onlookers through their binoculars appear to have a scary sense of what is about to happen. The bomb kills many American's and leads agent Fluery (Foxx) to put together an elite FBI team to go to Saudi Arabia to try and find justice.

To start with they find their pusuit worthless as the dos and donts of local culture hamstring the investigation, as the Saudi's only want to find the killer on their terms. Foxx's understanding of the importance of learning local way and using the personal touch to get unlikely people on board, including Saudi officers, they eventually turn this around and the team eventually get the right to carry out the investigation they want.

This eventually leads to a realisation that to chatch the killer they need to go outside normal compound boarders and into real Saudi Arabia. Their hosts reluctantly agree. The subplot of the family who saw the initial bomb go off and a look into their life reminds us that we are delaing with human beings with families and children too, but in this case with a deadlt twist, leading the FBI eam to fight for their lives while trying to deliver justice to those murdered in the bomb.

The film is a high paced and chilling ride into the realities all too common in todays world. Foxx leads the way with a first rate performance, The section between him and the Saudi officer discussing The Increidble Hulk and the Six Million Doller Man demonstrated only too well that when different cultures meet, there is still plenty of common ground.  the film is well directed and put together and keeps moving along nicely. The ending is one to test the emotions the full 360 degrees, with a stark reminder of the intractable ultimate problem, the course of the film may offer some starters as solutions, but it works because it is balanced, not an all out attack on one side or the other but a good overview of the strengths and defects of the argument from either side. It is also not so pretentious to pretend there are any easy answers to the middle-east.

MOON OF LIBERTY VERDICT - RATING 'A' - A wonderful film, great action, not scared to take on a huge subject and a performance that may put Jamie Foxx in the frame for this years best actor races.