True Grit ***

There used to be a time when 'Coen Movies' guaranteed an unforgettable evening, be it after seeing them in the cinema or in your living room. 'Fargo', 'The Big Lebowski', 'O Brother Where Art Thou?'; even 'The Ladykillers' and 'Intolerable Cruelty': they're all masterpieces which combine clever storytelling, amazing photography and a wicked sense of humour.

But then things went pear-shaped with 'No Country For Old Men': a dark thriller with some western elements. Most movie critics lauded the film, though I found the dialogue to be stiff and strained and the storyline to be far-fetched and difficult to keep track of.

I wasn't too thrilled with it's follow-ups: the bleak though star-studded 'Burn After Reading' and the only mildly amusing 'A Serious Man'.

On Thursday, I got to see the latest Coen outing: 'True Grit', starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and fresh new face Hailee Steinfeld. This in a press screening which took place at the NBC Universal HQ in Brussels.

It's always a special experience, attending press screenings there, not only because you get to see the films serveral weeks before they're released; also because you wouldn't guess there's a cinema when you enter the nondescript building in King's Street. There's this whole secretive vibe which looms around the visit.

Anyway, I liked the film. It didn't wow me the way the early Coen movies did - I don't think they'll ever get back to that original level - but I found the acting supreme, the backgrounds breathtaking and the attention to detail unparallelled.

'True Grit' is about a 14-year old girl (Steinfeld) who seeks to avenge her father's death by hiring a bounty hunter (a rugged Jeff Bridges) to hunt down her father's killer (Brolin in only a minor role). They're joined by a quirky Texas Ranger (Damon) in their quest through Indian territory.

The story clanks now and then, but both Damon and especially Steinfeld (Hollywood seems to have discovered a new breed of 14-year old ass-kicking heroines; young girls that talk trash like you've never heard - see Chloë Moretz in 'Kick-Ass') deliver magnetic performances.

It's a full-blown western with some ingenious dialogue and the odd hilarious scene (especially those involving Indians) which more than makes for an entertaining evening.

The Darjeeling Limited ****

Woke up today around nine, with no hangover. Such is very rarily the case on a Sunday morning, so I soon became restless. 'What to do?', I asketh myself. As I don't need much to have a good time - out here in West-Flanders we say 'He can amuse himself with a straw' ('Je kut em bezigoeden met e rietje') - I loaded a recently purchased copy of 'The Darjeeling Limited' into the dvd player.

Now, each generation of movie geeks has its own hero director. In the sixties, cinephiles idolized Alfred Hitchcock. In the seventies, they deified Stanley Kubrick (don't remember how N. last pronounced his name, but it was funny). In the eighties, they revered Steven Spielberg. The nineties and noughties were James Cameron's terrain. (Sorry, Michael Mann and David Fincher.)

Even though I find myself hooked to the work of Darren Aronovsky, the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino; I'm actually most attracted to Wes Anderson's stylish tableaux vivants: 'The Royal Tenenbaums', 'The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou', 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox' and aforementioned 'The Darjeeling Limited'. In my opinion each of these are works of art.

Not only are these films rich in story (the scenarios often revolving around fraught family relations); they are also beautifully made with the utmost attention to detail (I bought the dvd's so that I could press 'pause' from time to time, to admire the images, as each frame could be a painting in itself) and the actors who play in them seem to be born for their roles.

'The Darjeeling Limited' is another one of those vintage 'Wes Andersons'. It's about three brothers (played by Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody) who, after their father's death, go on a spiritual journey through India.

Most of the 'action' (might be an ill-chosen term as 'The Darjeeling Limited' tells a very quaint, still story) takes place on a train which is called The Darjeeling Limited and carries them through the vast Indian outback; sometimes halting for a visit to a temple or stopping altogether because it got lost.

Trains getting lost and not being to locate themselves might sound insane in the real world, but in Wes Anderson's universe it's actually quite normal.

The same goes for the characters: at first, they seem normal people, but the more Anderson peels back the layers (and there are many), you see that they are indeed a bit loony. The insanity generally stems from top-loaded family issues - divorces and the resulting fear of being left behind or being afraid to commit to others, difficult brother-sister relationships and so on.

(Come to think of it; I'd say my family could provide Anderson with some great fodder for a new film. My aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and even grandparents each have their own character, with the necessary electricity - and sometimes nuclear meltdowns - as a result. Let's just say our family gatherings are never boring. My uncle Bart, who's a writer and whose stories remind me of Andersons work in all of its aesthetic and detail, even used the matter as inspiration for a book - and a good one at that.)

The great thing about the quaint little Wes Anderson stories, with its colorful characters alternately hating, loving, fighting and caressing each other, is that they sometimes sidestep into crazy sequences, either in strong dialogue (like when Gene Hackman picked a fight with Danny Glover in 'The Royal Tenenbaums', saying: 'You heard me Coltrane. You wanna talk some jive?') or rumble-tumble action (cars crashing into houses, people getting stabbed in cold blood, islands being violently invaded). Those sequences breathe some air into the emotion-laden movies.

(I'm just rambling on about Wes Andersons style while I should actually be talking about 'The Darjeeling Limited'. Scuzzi.)

The things that make 'The Darjeeling Limited' another 'Wes Anderson' to remember are the images, which were shot on a moving train (very difficult to do as there's practically no place to work), the acting (both Wilson and Brody deliver highflying turns, and I loved the Bill Murray cameo as well) and the story (which revolves around the fact that you may not have been able to choose your family, but they're nonetheless the most important people in your life).

"I love you all, but right now I'm gonna mase you!", Schwartzmans character yells at one point in the movie, before spraying mase into his fighting brothers's eyes, and I think that line says it all: 'The Darjeeling Limited' tackles subjects which normally make you teary-eyed, but the director never lets the movie slip into ill-advised melodrama by providing the necessary humor and action.

What can I say: It's a must-see.

BEFORE I HEAD OUT TO READ SOME MAGAZINES...

... I want you to take a look at the sidebar, where Annelie's and Bakerman's blogs have been removed (that's what you get when you don't actually post on your blog) and have been replaced with the websites of both Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone - the fourth and third best magazines in the world, respectively. They're worth a sneak peek.

POST SCRIPTUM

Tonight Hollywood pats itself on the back with the Screen Guild Awards, where actors 'honor their fellow actors'. Curious to see who wins out.

The Way Back ***

It's almost twelve o'clock on a Friday night and I'm not in some dingy bar singing along to 'Ein Knallrotes Gummiboot'. Actually, I'm doing quite the contrary: I'm at my desk typing away on this blog - whát is my problem?!

Some might say that hanging out at dingy bars, singing along to silly schlager music is my problem, others could point at this blog and mumble the word: 'Problem.'

They'd probably mutter it in some silly Russian accent, the same way they do in the movie 'Eastern Promises'. There's something about those Eastern-European characters in Hollywood movies that makes 'em speak like sixteen-year olds with a swollen tongue, like they just drank their first wodka.

'The Way Back', Peter 'Dead Poet's Society' Weir's new film (Weir also made 'The Truman Show'), is another example of a movie with Eastern-European characters speaking English with a bad accent. (At least these Russians don't roll around naked in a steamhouse, like they do in 'Eastern Promises'.)

I didn't think the heavy accents weren't that much of a problem in this film, as opposed to the Girl Who Shall Henceforth Be Known As N., who sat next to me. Luckily, that was the only time during the movie N. wiggled around on her seat, firing criticism at the actors. (In fact, she loved the film - and N. isn't normally the one to be pleased easily. But passons.)

(I could write a book about N., but I suggest we proceed with reviewing this film. It's waaaay too late to start writing a book.)

'The Way Back' tells the true story of this group of men who escape from the Gulag - the working camps in the Siberian outback where Joseph Stalin and his Soviet regime sent 'the unwilling' to die from starvation, before, during and after World-War II. (These 'unwilling' being the state's literati; engineers, lawyers, artists and so on who wouldn't comply with the Communist ideas and were thus seen as 'enemies of the state'.)

The journey of this motley crew, comprising of The Elder Statesman (Ed Harris), The Young Idealist (Jim Sturgess), The Rugged Crook (Colin Farrell), The Sensitive Artist (Alexandru Potocean) and some bleaker hangers-on, only begins after they find their way out of the camp - if they make it out at all.

...

Okay, so they get out of the camp - if not 'The Way Back' would be a short-film. But after escaping, they must find a way to survive through the bone-crunching cold of the Siberian woods, the blistering heat of the Mongolian desert, and then once again the cold of the Himalaya, on their way to The Promised Land: India.

Now, there's always a risk involved when you film a story which stretches out over thousands of kilometers in a timeframe of several months - you risk losing the voltage, the pressure of the story.

I've gotta say that I normally don't like those kind of stories (with the exception of 'Forrest Gump'). The movies I like best happen within the frame of a few days, with only a limited number of actors interacting on a certain number of locations.

I loved the first part of the movie, which took place in some god-forlorn Gulag camp. After that, the DNA of the film gets stretched to a maximum, with its storyline sometimes skipping a few days and with alternate sidestories getting cut short. About halfway, I was starting to feel uneasy about this.

But the two things that won me over in 'The Way Back' were 1. The honesty and warmth of the characters and of their interaction with the group (that's a typical Peter Weir trademark you'll find in the characters of 'Dead Poet's Society' and 'The Truman Show' as well) and 2. The wonderful feeling you get by watching the characters travel through the most breathtaking landscapes you'll ever see on the big screen.

Watching 'The Way Back', even though it hardly depicts a walk in the park and the characters do suffer deeply, makes you feel like travelling. I'm sure N. felt the same way about it.  She probably would even give this film four stars. I'm sticking with three.

N., don't give me that look. It's MY blog!!

Come Oscar Time

It ain’t always easy being a movie geek in Belgium. Come Oscar time, there’s this sense of frustration that takes a hold of us when we see the list of nominations: half of them are still weeks away from their Belgian release date and some of them don’t even make it to our cinema circuit.

Take this year’s list for Best Motion Picture: only five out of the ten got screening time around these parts – with ‘The Kids Are All Right’ only playing in a limited number of cinemas. ‘Black Swan’ (Feb. 23rd), ‘The Fighter’ (March 9th), ‘The King’s Speech’ (Feb. 23rd), ‘127 Hours’ (Feb. 16th) and ‘True Grit’ (Feb. 16th) are all slated for a future release.

I know, I know, the studios can’t give every movie the same worldwide release date as some marketing budgets are more limited than others, plus they have to see whether an American movie will ring bells with the European audience and so on. But still: just once, I’d like to know what I’m talking about when I put my Oscar predictions on the table.

With that out of the way, let’s get to it.

BEST MOTION PICTURE

This year’s Best Picture draft is a pretty strong one. Don’t think there’s one film lover out there that’s not dying to see movies like ‘The Fighter’, ‘Black Swan’ and ‘True Grit’, all of which have been proclaimed as ‘masterpieces’ in the specialized (and privileged) press.

‘Inception’ and ‘Toy Story 3’ aren’t too bad, and I’ve yet to see ‘Winter’s Bone’ (probably on Sunday), but I think it’ll be one of the others that wins out. Probably either ‘The Social Network’ or ‘The King’s Speech’.

ACTOR / ACTRESS PERFORMANCES

You must watch this Vanity Fair gallery of ‘True Contenders’ – aptly described as ‘an exclusive gallery of nominees set to fight (Bale), flit (Portman), stammer (Firth), and saw (Franco) their way to Oscar glory.’ Good stuff.

Judging from the hype surrounding Colin Firth’s performance in ‘The King’s Speech’ (he’s got a Golden Globe for Best Performance to back up that hype), I think it’s safe to say Firth’s got a fair chance of winning the ultimate award in Movieland.

On the actress side of things, I’d put my money on Natalie Portman (‘The Swan’) for the Leading Role award.

BEST ANIMATED PICTURE / DOCUMENTARY

There’s not much left for me to say anything about the other categories, except for the Best Animated Picture and Best Documentary. I found ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ very entertaining in the former, while I also thoroughly enjoyed ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ (‘the Banksy documentary’) in the latter.

Roight, I’m leaving you to it.

For now.

Tron: Legacy **

"Baby be a simple, kind of man
Oh, won't you do this for me, son
If you can?"

I'd like to believe I'm a simple man. I'm polite, well-mannered and most of the time, aside from the odd night out, I keep to myself.

After a hectic day at work, it's also very simple for me to relax. I go to the cinema, grab a couple of beers and lean back in one of those cosy multiplex seats to watch a dumb movie. The train of my thoughts then comes to a screeching halt - I love it.

And let there be no doubt about it: 'Tron: Legacy' is one of those dumb-a$$ Hollywood movies which cost a mint and suck a lot - though you shouldn't let that fact get into the way of enjoying every damn second of it.

It's flashy, fast and well-produced. In other words: it's everything the original 'Tron' (1982) is not. I watched that movie a couple of years ago and I can't recall anything from that experience apart from the fact that we rrrreally enjoyed the old-school special effects used in the film.

In short, 'Tron' was born after animator Steven Lisberger saw the arcade game 'Pong' for the first time (that was 1976), and the visual effects don't really encompass that play of lines against a black background, with people acting in front of that background. In fact, most of the 'effects' in 'Tron' were achieved through 'backlit animation', a common technique back in the seventies, with disco and neon and that being all the rage back then.

(Weird fun facts: 1. There's only fifteen minutes of computer-generated action in 'Tron', which was made with a computer housing a 2 MB working memory and a 330 MB storage space; 2. 'Tron' cost 17 million dollars to make and 'grossed' 33 million dollars worldwide as the game accompanying the film outgrossed the movie; 3. Most of the live action was filmed in black and white and was later colored in by a team of 500 animators. Thank you, Wikipedia.)

'Tron' was a revolutionary in more than one way - along with the original 'Star Wars' movies it paved the way for the 3D-extravaganzas we get in our multiplexes today.

Which means it's also responsible for 'Tron: Legacy'. Should we really be happy about that? Depends on what you're expecting when you buy a ticket to see the film. If you're out for two hours of unparrallelled 3D-action, the breathtaking Olivia Wilde and some brooding, futuristic Daft Punk tunes; you'll have a ball.

On the other hand: if you expect to be entertained by ways of such things as 'a plot' and 'dialogue', it's safe to say you'll probably start wincing in your seat after half an hour.

I'm a simple man who got out of it what he wanted, so I'll give it two stars.

ANOTHER SUBJECT I'D LIKE TO TOUCH ON TODAY

The second 'low-tech broadcast' by the Ageing Alternative Icon who goes by the name of Henry Rollins: it's good, though listening to tunes by The Buzzcocks, Misfits, Black Flag and the Damned got me more riled up than I should've been after a looooong day at work.

Nonetheless: I enjoyed songs such as 'Casper The Homosexual-Friendly Ghost' by The Wesley Willis Fiasco and 'Loner With A Boner' by Black Randy & The Metrosquad (incidentally, that title would be a good name for this blog).

Anyway, as Rollins aka the Chief Fanatic points out, it's a show "in which we explore and indeed peel back the layers". If you don't like what you hear, you'll find that the music will stop once you press that button which says 'STOP'. The Low-Tech Broadcasts are there to take you on a journey through Underground Alternative Music.

I find the recurring Bill Hicks fragments quite amusing as well (on the Americans providing Iran with WMD's, then fighting them because they accuse them of possessing WMD's: (imitating George Bush's voice:) "We know they've got those weapons... We just looked at the receipt! Just waiting for that check to clear and we're ready to go in there!"), and the fact Rollins played 'Break 'Em Off Some' by Cypress Hill was a nice coincidence as I had just downloaded the entire CH back catalogue.

BEFORE I GO

I'd like to welcome another blog to my Links section: Storm. Storm and me go way back to the 'ancient' Molbardinho Chatblogs - so here's to a good ole cybertastic reunion.

Happy trails,
DM

Waltz With Bashir ***

Yesterday, after coming home from swimming at the Jan Guilini pool in Bruges and reading the newspaper and drinking coffee at the local Pain Quotidien, I found out, to my great dismay, that my Telenet Digicorder apparatus hadn't recorded the Denver Nuggets / LA Lakers game on Prime Sport - the sole Belgian channel that broadcasts NBA games.

Our (my housemate Jerre and me) two-week tryout subscription to the digital channel had expired, so that was kind of a bummer.

I had to look for an alternative, and scanning through the recordings on the Digicorder, I stumbled upon 'Waltz With Bashir' - a film that I had meant to watch for a long time; I just didn't get to it.

Probably because it looked like a risky film: an animation pic about mass slaughter in Lebanese refugee camps at the beginning of the 80's? That kind of movie can make or break your evening.

Well yesterday, although I was deeply moved by it's shocking ways, 'Waltz With Bashir' made my afternoon. It's not a movie you must watch to feel happy: it's themes are loss of innocence, losing your loved ones and the fact that you can't escape your past - you can try to forget but the memories will haunt you in your dreams.

That's exactly how the film kicks off: Israeli director Ari Folman keeps having this dream about 26 dogs chasing him. There are always 26 of them, and he doesn't understand why this nightmare deprives him of his sleep night in, night out.

The recurring dream may stem from his experiences as a soldier in the First Lebanon War in 1982, when Israeli forces invaded Lebanon to eradicate the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of Yasser Arafat (remember him?). Apparently, Folman had pushed away the memories to the awful things he saw to that extent that they had been practically erased.

In 'Waltz With Bashir', he attempts to reconstruct what happened to him by interviewing his fellow privates, who had been at his side during battle.

Not only is the film beautifully made (each frame is hand-crafted and not rotoscoped like they did with 'A Scanner Darkly'), scored with catchy contemporary music (such as 'Enola Gay' performed by OMD); it also touches on deep-human subjects which will leave even the most arduent cynist catching his breath.

The images are very atmospheric, bathed in deep-brown and fresh-green, and they radiate a constant feeling of threat.

The film touches on the very sensitive topic which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but still manages to strike a thoughtful tone, without picking sides too much (which is a feat in itself). In the end, 'Waltz With Bashir' shows the agony of war and how people, who have no quarry with anybody, end up in terrible situations. It shows how they try to stay human in a world filled with death and destruction.

Especially the final act, which focuses on the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, left a deep impression on me. The atrocities, committed by the Christian Phalangist death squadrons, are shown in a veiled way - though the last images; real news images which were made days after the bloodbath took place, leave no doubts that this was one of mankind's darkest hours.

(Normally I'd be at the demonstration in Brussels today, to protest against the fact that Belgium still - 224 days and counting; we're headed to an world record - has no government, but after seeing the images of the mangled-up bodies at Sabra and Shatila I just thought to myself 'Why even bother. I'm not gonna spend my time giving a signal to those no-good politicians that they just have to do their jobs and get on with it'.)

After seeing 'Waltz With Bashir', everything seems trivial. The movie makes you think, and that's probably one of it's most important merits. We should never forget what happened out there, back in 1982.

The Green Hornet **

Another loooooong day at the Brussels Motor Salon has left me brain-dead, though I shall attempt to write at least one coherent sentence in this 'Green Hornet' review. That is, if I manage to stay awake long enough to get to it.

Right, so, 'The Green Hornet'. Media magnate cum superhero-at-night Britt Reid with his trusty ninja sidekick Kato: their adventures aren't really known on the European continent (at least not to people who don't regularly frequent comic book stores) as they're primarily part of American lore.

I've read in Total Film that this superhero duo stems from a 30's radio show, then went on to gain popularity through a 60's television series (with the inimitable Bruce Lee as Kato) and was about to be remade during the 90's with George Clooney and Jason Scott Lee.

Until now, though, Hollywood hadn't been able to bring 'The Green Hornet' to the big screen.

It took the unlikely writer duo of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (who got to know each other on the editorial staff of the US 'Ali G' show and then puked up a slew of - at least in my humble opinion - mediocre 'comedies' such as 'Superbad', 'Knocked Up', 'Funny People' and 'Pineapple Express') to bring the project back to life.

I'm glad to say 'The Green Hornet' is aye lot better than 'Superbad' and 'Knocked Up', which I thought were pretty unfunny. (Rogen seems to think he's pretty funny in those movies, and there's something irritating about the guy's intonation and timbre which makes the chills run down my spine.)

Maybe I should first elaborate on what the movie's actually about, so here it goes, real quick: a no-good heir to a media magnate, Britt Reid (played by Rogen), plans to fight crime in the city of Los Angeles. He conjures an alter ego in the form of The Green Hornet, a superhero who cleans the LA streets at night. All this with his trusty sidekick Kato (a very good Jay Chou), an expert in martial arts and a supremely skilled car tuner.

Contrary to the protagonist in most superhero movies, the main character in 'The Green Hornet' is a washed-out douchebag who'd get his a** kicked by his grandmother. So it's kind of funny to see him stumble onto the LA crime scene, which in this film is dominated by this Chudnovsky fellar (supremely embodied by Christoph 'Hans Landa' Waltz), only to f**k up so bad that each time out, he needs his sidekick to bail him out.

Don't expect grand cinema when you go to see this film; indeed: you'll probably have forgotten what the movie was about by the time you reach the exit doors.

What will have stuck with you will be the mesmerizingly photographed action (the crew used a total of 29 1965 Chrysler Imperials to make this film; only three survived the shoot), a surprise turn by Jay Chou and dead-on performances by Waltz and Cameron Diaz. And a great soundtrack (Rolling Stones, White Stripes, David Bowie, Sam Cooke, Johnny Cash) to boot.

Still can't stand that Rogen guy, though...

Somewhere ****

Basically, Sofia Coppola's new movie 'Somewhere' shows everything that I find so appealing about Los Angeles and Hollywood - and it does a fine job at that. I'm simply fascinated by the City Of Angels: not only because of its supreme basketball team, but also by its broad lanes going nowhere and everywhere ('Mulholland Drive', check), by the bright night city lights that you see in 'Collateral', by the odd people that wander around on its sun-bleached sidewalks (if you haven't seen 'The Big Lebowski', do it now), and just by the sheer mystery the place that seems to unite so many extremities in a city that's not even a real city, breathes from every pore.

Okay, maybe I'm just a hopeless movie buff who's mislead by so many great 'LA Movies' - besides the aforementioned I also devoured 'Point Blank', 'Heat' and. 'Greenberg'. 'Somewhere' now adds an accolade to the 'LA Movie' genre.

There's something about Sofia Coppola's movies (I get the same with Wes Anderson's films) that sets them apart from the rest of the pack. They're not always the fastest ('Virgin Suicides'), the flashiest ('Lost In Translation') or even the best ones out there ('Marie Antoinette'), but their look and feel appeal to me in a way that no other movie ever could. They depict normal people, living their lives, but somehow, through beautiful storytelling, photography and scoring, those lives become special.

'Somewhere' is no different. It tells the story of the hard-living Hollywood moviestar Johnny Marco (who could've known that Stephen Dorff can actually act?) who lives at the mythical Chateau Marmont hotel, spending his days inviting strippers to his apartment and driving around in his Ferrari. Then he gets to spend some time with his 11-year old daughter Cleo (a wonderfully natural Elle Fanning, younger sister of Dakota), which somehow brings him back to his senses.

Just being with his daughter - taking her to skating class, playing Guitar Hero (great to hear some Police music on the big screen), going on a field trip to Milan, enjoying dinner with her - takes him out of the rat race that had gotten the better of him. He then suffers a breakdown and decides to turn his life around.

'Somewhere' is beautifully photographed by D.O.P. Harris Savides ('Greenberg', 'Zodiac', 'American Gangster', even 'The Game' back in 1993), who put together still frames wherein the actors do their thing. The movie's scored by French pop group Phoenix. Just like Air did with 'The Virgin Suicides' and Kevin Shields did with 'Lost In Translation', the music makes the images bathe in thin air and makes the movements and expressions of the actors wonderfully light and slightly unearthly.

Add Coppola's knack for sublimating the smaller things in life and putting them on the forefront, thus creating a wonderful story about simple delights and emotions, and you got yourself a winner.

SOME THINGS I LIKED ABOUT 'SOMEWHERE':

- The sound of a Ferrari, which is featured throughout the movie;

- The opening scene, where beautiful blonde twins perform a breathtaking pole dance to the tune of The Foo Fighters' 'My Hero';

- Stephen Dorff wearing a Black Flag shirt when he gets the head cast at the SFX-department;

- Father and daughter playing Guitar Hero to The Police's 'So Lonely'.

SOME THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE SO MUCH:

Chris Pontius really should stick to getting hurt in 'Jackass', because he looks hopelessly out of place in this film - even next to 11-year old Elle Fanning.