An Education (2009, Dir: Lone Scherfig)

Carey Mulligan plays Jenny, a schoolgirl aged 16 going on 35, who takes a ride from a stranger one rainy day in 1961 London. She’s soaked to the bone and nursing a cello. Quite why she doesn’t just walk home is beyond me. Especially when she admits that she lives around the corner.

She accepts the ride from Peter Sarsgaard as well, and that’s just asking for trouble. Not only does he look a bit slimy, but he seems to be playing Robert Shaw’s English gentleman in From Russia With Love. It’s a good job that he doesn’t order the red wine with the fish – Jenny would have to punch him in the face.

Nick Hornby, presumably bored from writing about himself, treats us to the story of someone else’s childhood - journalist Lynn Barber. It seems Barber had an interesting childhood. Not only was Emma Thompson her headmistress, but Dr .Octopus was her father!

Desperate to make her escape from such a bizarre upbringing, Jenny begins a love affair with Sarsgaard. This makes sense. He’s friends with a Bond girl and one of the History Boys, they go to wicked parties, buy expensive art and generally provide a bit of swing to a pre-swinging London. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with them?

I’d hate to give too much away, but the good times don’t last. Wouldn’t be much of a story if they did, I suppose. Still, when your childhood’s that exciting, anything else is going to be a let-down.

Promoted with a trailer that shows far too much of the plot, An Education is a nice little film which probably won’t get the credit it deserves.

Up (2009, Dir: Pete Docter)

It’s hard to compare Pixar films as they’re always so different. You can’t compare Up to Wall-E - it isn’t fair on either film. For me, Pixar are always doing something right when they’re not aiming their films primarily at children. Cars was so forgettable that it still irks me that a sequel is slated for release in 2011 (when you consider that they’re still releasing new Cars merchandise all the time – from a film that was released 3 years ago - you get the sinking feeling that it’s probably Disney’s call to plunder McQueen and company for more adventures).

Up received a lot of criticism for being too adult. It’s lead character is a septuagenarian misanthrope, and the film’s heartbreaking opening strips away any innocence that you would expect from an animated film. Excellent!

But let’s rewind back to the beginning, and the short film – a tradition of Pixar’s - entitled Partly Cloudy, directed by Peter Sohn. Sitting somewhere between the tone of Boundin’ (2003) and earlier fare such as Red’s Dream (1987), the film features no dialogue (again a tradition of their original, pre-feature shorts) and is a delight to watch. In 3D, the whole picture looks fantastic, especially due to the aerial setting.

Partly Cloudy tugs at the heartstrings (more on this idiom later), but what really hits home is the opening 10 minutes of Up. Apparently, the tearful tale of Carl and Ellie’s marriage was a hit at Cannes, and it’s not hard to see why. Most films would struggle to inject the audience with empathy for it’s characters; Pete Docter’s film manages it in minutes.

Once we’re sugar-fed the exposition, Carl takes to the skies in his helium-balloon assisted house - unwittingly taking boy-scout Russell along for the ride – to find the paradise that he and Ellie always dreamed about. The balloons, reaching down the chimney and connected to the fireplace (tugging at the “hearth”-strings?), take the pair to South America, and everything is plain-sailing until a series of mishaps lands them at the mercy of adventurer Charles Muntz, voiced by Christopher Plummer.

And it is here that we meet what has to be – after 10 features and umpteen shorts – my favourite Pixar character, the loyal Dug – a talking dog. Again, Pixar’s knack for observational humour goes down a treat when we hear a dog vocalising about his feelings. The rest of the film is a joy, again with the aerial locale providing an eye-candy setting in 3D.

Enjoy this film while you can, as it’ll be the last original Pixar film to be released until The Bear And The Bow in 2011. Until then we’ll get 3D re-releases of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, the long-awaited Toy Story 3, and – groan – the less-than-anticipated Cars 2.

(500) Days Of Summer (2009, Dir: Marc Webb)

Hollywood seems to have a knack of scaring me recently. Not from the instant shock of horrors or thrillers, but from the cold portrayal of women in seemingly innocent films. Closer (2004) was instantly memorable for its enjoyable stripclub scene, but Natalie Portman’s character also provoked a certain degree of discomfort. Never before had a female character been so shrewdly written to show that amount of sexual power that women have over men.

(500) Days Of Summer provides more of the same, although this time it’s disguised as a bittersweet romantic comedy. Here we have Joseph Gordon-Levitt, making up for the dull misstep that was 2006’s Brick, and the lovely Zooey Deschanel, finally finding a leading role worthy of her talents.

Marc Webb’s film owes a certain debt to Zach Braff – it’s cut from the same cloth as Garden State in both tone, and tones. The soundtrack (Reginor Spektor, Simon & Garfunkel, The Smiths, etc) is heavily reminiscent of the sort of artists that pepper Braff’s films, whilst the general feelgood bohemia of (500) Days Of Summer isn’t a million miles away either.

The film tells of the rocky romance between Tom and Summer, with time shifting effortlessly between the halcyon days of their blossoming affair, and their troublesome later days. The comedy is spot-on and uniquely original (including one of the best Star Wars references I’ve ever seen), and Tom’s best-friend, played by The Ringer’s Geoffrey Arend (of “When the fuck did we get ice-cream?” fame) provides a heavy dose of light relief.

Deschanel is the perfect fit for the film’s titular character. I first noticed her in Almost Famous, but she hasn’t really stood out since. The last film I saw her in was M. Night Shyamalan’s abysmal The Happening. I can’t actually remember her being in that film, as I seem to have – fingers crossed - successfully wiped it from my memory, but I’m sure she added a bit of eye-candy as Mark Wahlberg walked around looking perplexed.

The film marks the feature debut of director Marc Webb, a veteran from over a hundred music videos. It’s easy to see his style coming through in the film, with several arty flourishes that would be considered too left-field for a more mainstream film. My favourite shot was in a short montage showing Tom and Summer growing up, in splitscreen. On one side, the young Summer blew a dandelion flower. On Tom’s side of the splitscreen, a bunch of bubbles are blown into view - a match-cut that surpasses Kurbrick’s bone/space-station anyday.

Above everything, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber’s script really hits the spot. I left the cinema with a sinking feeling of despair. There was no masked killer in this film – just a shrewd and calculating femme fatale. I don’t know which one’s worse – what good is a heartbeat when the heart’s broken?

It Might Get Loud (2008, Dir: Davis Guggenheim)

It Might Get Loud opens with a shot of Jack White, in his Sunday-best, stood in a cow barn. He nails a few pieces of wood together, places a screw at each end, and links them with an old guitar string. An old coke bottle is placed underneath the string as a makeshift bridge, and finally an old, beaten pickup is attached. He plugs the contraption into an amplifier and switches it on, loud and distorted. “See?” he asks the camera, as the resident cows walk away from the noise. “You don’t need a guitar...”

Davis Guggenheim’s new documentary might not win many awards, but it hits the spot with its intended audience and any guitarist or rock fan will love it from start to finish. I did have reservations about the choice of guitarists involved – surely Jimmy Page is in a completely different league than The Edge and Jack White, but I can see how replacing them with Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck would turn into a complete bore-fest. Instead, we get three very different guitarists from three eras of rock music: Jimmy Page, the genius behind Led Zeppelin; The Edge, the technical mastermind behind U2; and Jack White, one half of The White Stripes and member of The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather.

The film is loosely based around one meeting of the 3 men, bizarrely on a sound stage in a Hollywood studio, and is interspersed with segments of each guitarist in their own environment. Jack White plays with his son, in his Tennessee farmhouse; The Edge tinkers around his Dublin rehearsal space and visits his old school; and Jimmy Page walks around Headley Grange - the recording location for many classic Zeppelin albums.

As you would expect, there’s a lot of humour to be found in the film – mainly from Jack White, but also surprisingly from Jimmy Page. The one sequence where he plays air-guitar to Link Wray’s Rumble is worth the admission fee alone. Although The Edge comes across as the more serious and reflective of the three, even he shines throughout - pausing at one point to give an amusing demonstration of one of his riffs (the intro to Elevation) minus his guitar effects.

But the film is about the music – The Edge attempts to teach Page and White the chords to A Sort Of Homecoming (much to Page’s amusement when he refuses to accept one chord in the progression); Page plays the cyclical riff of Ramble On in his rehearsal space, a look of smug satisfaction creeping across his face; and White composes a song on the spot whilst being interviewed (Fly Farm Blues, slated to be his first solo release).

I didn’t want this film to end, but unfortunately it had to. Here’s to a TV series!