Perfect Sense Review

Perfect Sense spent very little time in the cinema upon its release last year and I was very sorry to miss it. I was therefore glad to receive a test disc to review for its DVD release and pleased to report that it was well worth the wait. Set in present day Glasgow, the film introduces us to Susan (Green) and Michael (McGregor), a scientist and a chef. They meet, get together and fall in love against the backdrop of a global epidemic. An unknown disease afflicts the entire human race, which, over a fairly long period of time, robs people of their senses one by one.

First to go is smell, which the world’s population largely takes in their stride. Taste is next, which proves more troublesome. By the time hearing makes its exit, society is starts skating on thin ice. Superficially, you might compare this to Steven Soderbergh’sContagion, which released around about the same time. Whilst that film was interested in how organisations and governments reacted in the face of a crisis, Perfect Sense is much more interested in the response of everyday folk and their relationships. It is also, for my money, the better film.

Green and McGregor perform well and convince as a loving, modern couple – we see their relationship and devotion to each other develop, but we also see their complexities, desires and regrets as individuals too. Director David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Hallam Foe) tells the story well and, as you might expect, reflects the sensory deprivation of his protagonists on his audience. From a slightly geeky point of view, he also does some interesting things with locked off and roving cameras.

The emotional highpoint of the film is its ending, in which there is a moment of wonderful yet quiet catharsis, which is conveyed better than most such attempts in recent memory and manages to deliver a sense of both great joy and heartbreak in a truly stunning scene.

Some may criticise the film’s occasional penchant for the whimsical and there is one moment where the character’s actions don’t quite ring true, but that’s about the worst I can say about it.Perfect Sense was an engaging, inventive (the subplot regarding how Michael’s restaurant diversifies its menu in the face of the epidemic was very well done) and at its best, very affecting. Go buy it now. You know it makes sense.

Jackboots on Whitehall Review

The simplest way to describe Jackboots on Whitehall is as a World War 2 Team America. Set in an alternate history where the English soldiers have not been rescued at Dunkirk and taking its cues from the comic book heroes of the era, Jackboots is an anarchic comedy that proves very hard to dislike.

After losing their land and air forces, England is invaded by the Nazis, led by the high camp trio of Goebbels, Himmler and Goering, when they tunnel under the channel and emerge in Trafalgar Square, with an aim to capture Winston Churchill and put him in a cage. Clearly realism, sensitivity and political correctness were far from the top of the priority list. It’s left to simple farm boy Christopher, rejected by the army because his hands are too big (ahem), to save the Prime Minister and fight off the invasion. He rallies the inhabitants of his sleepy Kentish town, including the charming Daisy, her psychotic father and local reverend, a swarthy French resistance fighter and a misguided American fighter pilot, who is convinced that they’re fighting commie Ruskies. Together, they join the fight to save England.

The cast list is impressive. Lending their voices are none other than Ewan McGregor, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Timothy Spall, Alan Cumming, Stephen Merchant and Sanjeev Bhaskar, to name a few. The film is also shot surprisingly well, with some very nice aerial photography over the carefully constructed sets. The puppets are well done, though those based on actual historical figures (Churchill, Goebbels, et al) are somewhat superior to the fictional characters. The caricatures owe a lot to the likes of Spitting Image and really are very good, even if Goebbels is almost nauseatingly disturbing to look at.

It is of course the film’s humour that it hopes to trade on. Much of it is very funny, if rather juvenile. There are several instances of razor sharp satire, interspersed with very broad and blunt comic assaults. The laugh rate, however, isn’t quite as high as it needs to be, though, to come off favourably in the inevitable comparisons to Team America the film will receive. Edward and Rory McHenry (who also wrote the film and were heavily involved with the production design) direct the film pretty well, especially for such an unorthodox feature debut. I would suggest that the pace of the editing could have been picked up in places and some scenes felt a little like filler, however.

Despite its numerous flaws, though, I loved Jackboots. I found myself grinning all the way through and was even a little stirred at times (but then, who isn’t by a rousing chorus of Jerusalem, even when sung by puppets?). Jackboots on Whitehall may not quite make it onto any best films of the year lists, but it should at least go down as one of the most memorable.