Another year that has passed too quickly comes to an end.  Has it been a vintage twelve months for cinema?  Well, not unless we have been transported back to the 1950s or at least the 1970s.  The movie year concluded for me on 28^th December with Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows.  Moriarty makes his full bow after an unseen cameo in the first instalment.  Yet the moment early in the film when Reichenbacher is mentioned, I knew the archvillain’s lifespan would not exceed the running time of the picture.  There were sections that surprised myself such as the early revelation of the face of Moriarty which signalled that Rachel McAdams’ character was doomed, although it was strange to kill her off when the film had barely begun.  Moriarty’s masterplan to unite military-related industry under his aegis and then kickstart a major European war in order to become a highly successful profiteer, was opened up to me in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (having not read the Conan Doyle novels, he would be extremely prescient if he had predicted World War One).  As a Guy Ritchie flick, if a gun is seen in Act One, it will be invariably used seconds later, forget waiting for Act Three.  Other scenarios were well telegraphed, such as when Holmes is comatose on the German train, the injection that he had used to stimulate Watson’s dog was given to the eminent doctor as ‘a wedding present’.  For a whole minute, I was thinking ‘the wedding present, the wedding present’, until Watson exclaims “Of course, the wedding present.”  Indeed.  Game of Shadows was alright and enjoyable, but not spectacular – multiplex fodder.

The ultimate multiplex franchise of recent years came to a close with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two.  It was a fitting end and there were moments that elicited ‘oh’ from me.  Not Severus Snape proving that he was an undercover good guy.  From the start, there was an element to Alan Rickman’s performance to indicate that he was not all that he seemed (my sister who read the books but before she had embarked on the seventh, dismissed this theory – well, who’s right now!).  The nature of Harry Potter’s scar was a huge revelation.  The epic final battle(s) had genuinely thrilling moments.  The epilogue decades into the future was very touching.  When the movie was first released, I was there at the head of the queue at Chatham Odeon on 15^th July so that no-one would ruin any aspects of the plot for me.  As the crowd waited for the doors to open, a vast gaggle of school kids were disgorged from a nearby coach and I quailed at the thought of having this noisy rabble pack the cinema as an end of year treat by their teachers.  Thankfully, they went past, on their way to Dickens World – an attraction which now probably makes most of its money from school visits.

In August, while Altaa was away in Mongolia, I saw Cowboys and Aliens.  With Daniel Craig speaking in short, staccato sentences, I initially presumed that his character might have been tailored to avoid exposing a dodgy American accent but later it is a creditable, if neutral, effort.  Harrison Ford is terrific, making one pine for what he could have given for the better part of the last decade when his career languished in the doldrums.  This film is a superior piece of storytelling, in addition to the incongruity of the Wild West and outer space.  The high concept is frontier town meets final frontier.  Before I witnessed it, I must admit I was sceptical.  Even so, it raids every cliché of the American outback – dusty, one-street towns, straggly bandits, Apache Native American war parties – and, in that zeitgeist phrase, ‘retools’ it.  There is even an upside-down steamer boat, like a Mississippi Huckleberry Finn-era Poseidon Adventure.  As for the sci-fi, the aliens are essentially our worse selves.  As their mother craft takes off, another homage, given that it is redolent of the opening of Star Wars Episode IV when you think “how much more of this ship is there?”  At first, the film adheres to horror convention, not showing the monsters so as to let the mind conjure the most terrible, but the story narrative as it is, the hostile aliens have to be seen eventually.  The distinctive feature of opening up the chest for protrusions to grope out recalls both Alien and Total Recall.  Overall, there are some neat twists throughout and the action scenes are well-handled.  This is, without any doubt, Jon Favreau’s best directorial work to date.