Now that I have a wee little sprog of my own, bouncing around my apartment like a hyperactive midget that talks faster than Quentin Tarantino, I’ve been revisiting characters from my childhood. One of which is Paddington Bear. Now before he became a whore for Marmite, I remember him from the cute little stop motion animation in the 70s and 80s. Fucking adorable he was, with little hint that he was going to betray his love of all things marmalade and sell his soul to the salty yeast god for some easy cash.


After this, came a cartoon. The bear wasn’t as fucking adorable, but it was an excellent show. It quickly became a staple for my little one and I can now sing the theme tune from memory - fucking kill me and fill every orifice with juicy, juicy marmalade.

Of course, the next step had to be a CGI movie and a bastardised big screen version from Hollywood where Paddington moves to New York and calls himself Grand Central and eats hot dogs and becomes a born again Christian and kills his moocher Aunt Lucy for being a drain on the State and shoots and kills an evil Mr Curry when Mr Curry rats him out to INS.

Wait, that didn't actually happen? Britain and France produced a fun, charming, witty little family film of their own? Fuck yeah!

It’s rare to watch a family film that gets almost every little thing right. Paddington is sweet without being sickly, funny without resorting to the lowest common denominator and charming without having to shamelessly play on your emotions. Sure Paddington’s uncle is killed within the first fifteen minutes, but it’s done in an almost alarmingly matter of fact way. No sooner have we been enjoying Paddington live his idyllic life in deepest, darkest Peru, than he’s running through the trees in desperation, trying to escape from an earthquake.

It’s this disaster that kills Paddington’s poor uncle, and which has Paddington set off to London, leaving his aunt Lucy to see out her twilight years in a retirement home for elderly bears.

Paddington is living life under the false assumption that the English are a warm, friendly, welcoming lot. He obviously hasn’t been listening to the UKIP party and hasn’t been paying attention to our current Prime Minister, David Cameron. We don’t much like Johnny Foreigner, what with his weird ways, his strange food and his emotions. If we open our arms to a few foreigners, next thing we know, we’ll all be speaking Polish or praying to Allah.

There’s a neat little undertone of racism running through the film. Paddington’s neighbour Mr Curry immediately dislikes the bear and worries about ‘jungle music’. Spoken like a true disciple of Nigel Farage. At the beginning you have nothing but The Beatles and Stones playing from the street, but if you let just one bear in, next thing you know, it’ll be nothing but jungle music. Mark my words.

The Brown family, who take Paddington in, are wary of him also. Their new guest is uncouth and messy. He also has an Inspector Clouseau-type skill for creating mayhem out of nowhere. In one scene he manages to destroy the Brown’s bathroom, culminating with a flood that propels the bathtub down the stairs. It’s pure slapstick but it works brilliantly. However, after such a huge accident, there seems to be no water damage in the house. What’s that? I’m nitpicking, especially as the films centers on a talking bear? Fine.

But the core of the film is Paddington’s desire to find a home and to fit in somewhere. He’s not treated with much affection at the beginning. He’s locked up in the attic and told that he’s going to be handed over to the authorities in the morning. But this is the English way. We pretend that we don’t like outsiders. We put up all kinds of walls and obstacles. But deep down inside we always want to help someone out and we’re always capable of being won over.

Which is exactly what happens to Henry Brown, the patriarch of the family. Played by Hugh Bonneville, who plays the odious Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey, he’s a stiff-assed middle class twat who’s mortally afraid of risk. He wants to ship off the bear as soon as possible; let someone else take care of it. But before you know it, he’s helping Paddington out, dressing up as a woman (which is seemingly the secret dream of every Englishman) and even enticing men into illicit rendezvous to get what Paddington wants. Yeah, the promise of casual sex was a turn up for the books in this family film.

Even Mr Curry, played by the cadaverous looking Peter Capaldi, ends up helping the bear. Sure he wants the foreigner to get the hell out of his country, but he’s appalled when he finds out that someone is planning to stuff the poor wee little caniform. This is simply too much. We English might be suspicious of outsiders, but we don’t want them stuffed! Especially cute bears!

The only thing that doesn’t really work is the villain, played by Nicole Kidman. Kidman is obviously having fun and is trying to summon a Cruella de Ville vibe, but she feels a little out of place. Whenever she’s on screen, the movie suddenly becomes something completely different. But she’s not funny or scary enough to warrant the distraction. She’s a plot device, nothing more.

And the plot, it must be said, with Paddington trying to find an explorer who once visited his aunt and uncle in Peru, and Kidman’s crazy taxidermist who wants to stuff him, is a little weak. But the situations that the characters get themselves in, and the general humour and tone of the film, are delightful. There's a great scene where Paddington is taking the Tube and sees a sign that says 'Dogs Must Be Carried' on the escalator. Of course, Paddington takes it literally and ends up finding a pooch so that he can indeed ride the escalator. Cue the adorable sight of Paddington carrying a chihuahua under his arm.

And the CGI of Paddington himself is a huge success. I was very doubtful that they could pull it off, that he would either look too much like a real bear and would look weird or that he would look too cartoonish. But the animation is terrific and Paddington is adorable. It helps hugely that Ben Whishaw was cast - he lends Paddington the right amount of sweetness and innocence. But then again, Kidman aside, all of the casting is spot on. Even Hugh Bonneville is great! Just don't make me watch Downton Abbey again. Fucking ever!

The product placement in the Bond films is getting completely out of control. I could handle the lingering shots of Omega watches and the ever changing car manufacturers (although having Bond drive a standard Ford saloon in Casino Royale was a little sad - it was like he was going on a business trip to Milton Keynes), but now every last thing is dripping with commercialisation. Oh, what’s this, Bond’s in a chase sequence on a train? Let’s drop some Volkswagen Beetles in there and let’s be sure to mention them by name just in case the idiots watching the film don’t know what they are. And what fine beverage shall we give Bond when he needs to unwind? Er, some Heineken. Is this the fucking Champions League all of a sudden?

There’s a particularly egregious moment when one of the MI6 agents is trying to relax after an attack on M. He stands there in the MI6 HQ and swigs some Heineken. Really? Really?!? Somehow that’s more unbelievable to me than Bond falling into some icy water with a bad guy, killing him and then not drowning or freezing to death after seemingly being underwater for about ten minutes.

Commercialization aside, though, Skyfall is a pretty strong entry in the Bond franchise. It doesn’t quite reach the dizzying heights of Casino Royale and GoldenEye, and I probably prefer Licence to Kill as well if we’re talking about relatively modern Bond films, but it’s a pretty solid movie.

However, I did leave the film with a slight sense of disappointment, as Skyfall has a couple of amazing, breathtaking moments that are some of the best things I’ve ever seen in a Bond movie - I just wish they were able to permeate the whole film.

My favourite moment is when Bond fights an assassin in front of an open window in a tall skyscraper. These days the impulse is to get in close with the camera and have lots of fast cuts. But Mendes keeps the camera static and distant. And the scene is lit with the garish electric lights from a huge advertisement on the building opposite, meaning that the characters are cast in silhouette (it ends up looking like something you’d imagine seeing in Blade Runner). As they fight the camera ever so slowly moves in. It turns an incredibly routine fight scene into something beautiful and poetic. And kudos too to Mendes for the sense of vertigo he instills when the bad guy is finally dangling off the side of the building. My legs actually began to feel weak, so convincing was the effect.

I also really enjoyed the scene where Silva (Javier Bardem) attacks the inquiry that M is attending. Dressed as a cop, he manages to walk straight in. I actually really thought that he’d kill M in this scene but Silva wants to take too long to enjoy the moment and fluffs his opportunity. But it’s still a great scene and drips with tension.

And it’s pleasing to have a villain whose only objective is personal revenge. Silva is a former MI6 agent with a serious mummy complex and is distraught when M gives him up so that she can stop some of his shady shenanigans. His only aim is to kill M, although he doesn’t mind collateral damage.

Silva kind of reminds me of a mixture of Roger Moore and Hannibal Lector. The charm and the smoothness are pure Rog, but the creepiness, the mind games and psychosis are Lector-ish.

Silva’s introductory speech suggests that he wasn’t always a bad guy. He tells a story about some rats on an island. In order to get rid of them, he says, you put some coconut inside a drum and allow the rats to go inside and get it. One by one they get trapped, until they have no other option but to eat themselves. But then when you have two left, you let them go. However, they’ll never eat coconut again as they no longer have a taste for it - their nature has been changed. Which is what Silva is suggesting happened to him. That his work for MI6 has changed him and he’s no longer the person he used to be.

There’s also some humour to be found when Silva tries to sexually intimidate Bond. Silva caresses 007 and then begins to unbutton his shirt. Bond counters by saying that this isn’t the first time that this has happened to him and therefore remains cool during the whole exchange.

But it’s kind of amusing to me that even the bad guys now want to fuck Bond. It only used to be the ladies, but now Daniel Craig is so well-established as the buff, beefcake 007 that even the men want a piece of him. I think this is now two out of three Bond films where Craig has been tied to chair by a bloke and has either been fondled or had his genitals abused.

But with Skyfall we’re ever so slowly getting back to the old-style Bond movie. Bond actually shags three different women in this film (what a guy!) and both Q and Moneypenny make an appearance. Pretty soon Bond’s going to be slapping around bald-headed guys and fighting sharks.

Although having said this, Bond does actually go toe to toe with a komodo dragon in this film, which suggests the traditional Bond movie creep is even further upon us than I thought. Oh, and seeing as I just mentioned that Bond shags three ladies in this film, I must applaud the person who had the bright idea of having fireworks immediately follow the scene where Bond nails Moneypenny. Bravo, sir, bravo! Roger Moore would be proud!

The least successful part of the film is the final sequence. Bond takes M to Scotland to his abandoned family home Skyfall. He knows that Silva will find them but at least they’re isolated enough that there won’t be any collateral damage.

The final action sequence is a tad bland and by the numbers. Silva and his men attack Skyfall and mercenaries are blown up and killed by improvised explosives like they’re in Home Alone or The A-Team.

The film only rekindles its interest once Silva has his clutches on M. He puts his hands on her and begs her to shoot them both. It’s a very intense scene that is only rendered somewhat underwhelming because Bond turns up at the last second and throws a knife into Silva’s back, killing him. It’s somehow the most anticlimactic movie death I’ve seen in a long time.

But then Bond films often have this problem. They often start off strong but then descend into huge gun battles that lack the colour of everything that came before. Thankfully Skyfall saves itself by killing off Judi Dench as M and neatly setting up the next movie. It would have been sad if a strong Bond film like this would have ended up with simply a knife in the back.

Oh, the various ups and downs I’ve experienced during the making of Cloud Atlas.

Up: they’re adapting one of my favourite novels!

Down: Oh shit, the Wachowskis are involved. I still haven’t forgiven them for The Matrix Reloaded and V For Vendetta.

Up: Tom Twyker is also involved. Brilliant! Perfume: The Story of a Murderer was one of the great unsung films of the last decade and it vastly improved upon the source material.

Up even further: A five minute trailer is released and it’s amazing. The music, visuals and the feeling behind it are perfect. This could be a really special film.

Down: I actually go and see the film.

Looks like my Wachowski-related fears were well-founded. A subtle, playful, philosophical book is turned into a gimmicky hodgepodge with too much action. There’s a lot to admire in the movie but there’s also a lot that is wrong.

Structurally, the film is a horrible, horrible mess. In the novel, you have six stories. One begins and then halfway through, it’s interrupted. And so on and so forth until you get to the final story, which is allowed to play out in its entirety. The remaining stories are then wrapped up until we end back up where we started.

The decision here, and it’s not an unreasonable one, is to cut back and forth between the different tales. But the editing is terrible. Sometimes you get long stretches where you never rest for more than sixty seconds on any one story. This restlessness harms the movie immeasurably and ensures that you’re never particularly invested in any of the characters. It kind of reminds me of the end of The Return of the Jedi where you have three battles going on at the same time and then also The Phantom Menace where you have four - there’s just too much cutting.

Part of me wishes that this was made as a BBC mini-series, with each episode focused exclusively on each yarn (and structured like the novel). It would allow each story to breath and help the larger meaning to come slowly into focus. I feel that someone like Krzysztof Kieślowski would have been perfect for this.

Instead we have to make do with the Wachowskis and Tom Twyker, who realise that the masses are an impatient lot and need to eat all of their cake at once. And so all the stories play out simultaneously.

At the beginning of the movie I was hopeful that this strategy would succeed. Once we get past the credits, each story is slowly introduced. Wonderful. This isn’t going to be the hyperactive mess it could be. [half an hour later] Oh fuck, they’re going crazy with the editing.

One glaring instance where the editing hurts the movie is during the Luisa Rey story. She’s a reporter who kicks a hornet’s nest at a nuclear power facility and her life ends up in jeopardy. Indeed, at one point, she’s even run off the road by the killer Bill Smoke.. In the book this works perfectly. You’ve spent time getting to know the character, you like her, you’re rooting for her and then she’s rammed off the road to her presumed death. You then have to wait a couple of hundred pages to find out what happened to her. It’s a great cliffhanger.

But in the film, the attempt on Rey’s life is intercut with other stories and the power and surprise of the moment is lost. And also, because the stories are all intercut, we immediately find out what happened to her.

The film also does a poor job of conveying the short, intense relationship between Rey and Dr Sachs (played by Tom Hanks in the movie). He meets her once, for about a minute, and next thing we know he’s on a plane, confessing his love for her before he’s assassinated. We don’t feel any of the passion between the two characters and the impact of his murder is lost. (The trailer does a far better job of conveying the emotions.)

I was also disappointed with how gimmicky the make-up looked (the actors play multiple characters). I can kind of understand the point of it. The filmmakers want to show how interconnected we all are and how we as people are tied to those who came before us and those who will live after we die. I also guess it was done for practical reasons. The film cost a massive $100m and it would have required many more actors to fill the roles had they not struck upon the idea of having a repertory (a couple more big name could have easily added a few more million to the budget). But some of the make-up looks terrible. Hugo Weaving as a woman works in a ghoulish kind of way (and suits the comic nature of the Timothy Cavendish story), and Tom Hanks as an Irish thug is surprisingly enjoyable, but Doona Bae as a white woman looks weird in the extreme, as does her as an hispanic lady. Susan Sarandon’s stunt nose in the first story is also glaringly horrible - there was absolutely no need for it and it only served to take me out of the movie.

My wife was also annoyed with the actors playing multiple roles for the broader philosophical implications. Do the characters played by each actor represent a reincarnated soul? And if so, why do some of the characters the actors play differ so wildly? Hugo Weaving seems to play nothing but pricks while Tom Hanks is all over the map (psycho, thief, lovestruck scientist, psycho, actor, hero). Personally, that aspect didn’t really bother me. I didn’t see each character played by each actor as a reincarnated soul - I just saw it as a technique; a visual way of illustrating that all of the stories (and the grander human story) are linked.

But it is a little annoying that the filmmakers decided to make more out of this element. In the novel it’s very subtle - the only suggestion is that each of the main characters has a birthmark in the shape of a comet. How does this link these people? After all, each one is connected in action - each one commits an act of rebellion or rails against an oppressive system. But does it mean that they’re the same spirit? It’s up to you.

But the movie is a lot more overt in this theme. But at the same time, it also serves to make things more confusing.

To offer a positive for the movie, I loved the story about Robert Frobisher. Rather bizarrely, the action is moved from Belgium in the novel to Edinburgh in the film (to tenuously link the story to the Timothy Cavendish one - in the movie they take part in the same building), but it’s the only tale that packs an emotional punch. The best scene in the film by a country mile is the one where the doomed composer hides from his lover while atop a spire in Cambridge. The sun is setting and Frobisher is ruined - he refuses to let his lover see him this way but spies on him for as long as he can. It’s one of the best scenes I’ve seen in a film for ages and Frobisher’s final suicide is just as powerful.

I also really enjoyed the Timothy Cavendish story. Here we get a few well-needed laughs. The highlight being the ‘injury by pussy’ scene. And although it felt a little rushed, the Luisa Rey story was also enjoyable. The murder of Sixsmith, in particular, was as strong, surprising and brutal as I hoped it would be. I just wish it would have packed more of an emotional wallop. In the book you really get the feeling of love that existed between Sixsmith and Frobisher and it has a poignancy that Sixsmith is reading these letters right before he’s killed. The movie manages to get the brutality across but misses out on the sadness.

A massive, major success for the film is the movie’s main musical theme. Having heard it in the trailer, it was somewhat annoying that it only appeared about two thirds of the way through the movie but it was amazing how significantly the film improved whenever it was used. It may be the best theme I’ve heard in a movie this decade.

It certainly ensures that the film ends on a high. Adam Ewing’s assertion that an ocean is a multitude of drops and that therefore each person has an importance and significance in the world, wouldn’t resonate as strongly without this musical theme playing.

But such moments only make the sense of disappointment harder to swallow. The Somni story, for instance, is a travesty - it’s turned into a Star Wars-esque action spectacle. And Tom Hanks as Henry Goose, trying to poison Adam Ewing, is unsubtle in the extreme. When I read the book, Goose’s malice wasn’t apparent to me at all but here it’s signposted from the beginning. And Hanks really needs to be pelted with several large hams for his acting at the end of this story.

I also found, on film, that the Sloosha’s Crossin’ story was almost completely incomprehensible. I found it really hard going in places. And the depiction of ‘Old Georgie’ was heavy-handed in the extreme.

I guess this kind of means that I give a thumbs up to the stories directed by Tom Twyker and a thumbs down to the ones directed by the Wachowskis. A couple of years ago this would have validated my smug belief that the Wachowskis are talentless hacks but they won me over with their passion for Mitchell’s book - there’s a YouTube video where they display an infectious enthusiasm for the novel. Therefore it brings me nothing but sadness to say that they failed the book - their segments are easily the weakest. I only wish now that Twyker would have got to make the whole thing.

You could watch Perfume under the false impression that it’s a thriller. Instead it’s a romance, albeit one with murder, death and mayhem.

One of the reasons why I love Perfume so much is its portrait of human obsession. All too often people become slaves to moments. They can’t forget them and they replay them constantly in their head. They then coil destructively and threaten to consume the individual. This is what happens to Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He experiences one perfect moment and then spends his entire life trying to recapture it.

Therefore, as monstrous as he is, this makes Jean-Baptiste a rather romantic figure. He’s hopelessly trying to recapture the past, to preserve that one moment – to bottle it forever.

The scene where Jean-Baptiste’s obsession begins, the one where he encounters the female plum seller, is exquisitely filmed. Like a child he follows the beautiful girl through the streets (the musical score is wonderful in the way that the cue is almost like a siren call) and then when she finally speaks to him he can only smell her. He wants to consume this woman. He wants to possess her entirely. And so his eventual murder of her, through accidentally suffocating her, are like the actions of a child. Jean-Baptiste can’t comprehend the complexities of human existence and the fragility of human life. He’s a slave to his heightened olfactory sense – every other part of him that makes him human has been consumed by this gift/curse.

One could even argue that Jean-Baptiste isn’t human at all. Halfway through the film we discover that Grenouille doesn’t produce a smell of his own. Therefore he leaves no impression on the people around him – he’s like a phantom; he’s a no one. And at the end he’s literally consumed, meaning that all trace of him is wiped out.

But there’s another reason why Jean-Baptiste isn’t human. That reason is because he can’t love. And his realisation of this is crushing. It occurs during the orgy sequence when everyone is enslaved to his perfume. Everyone around him is making love, but all he can think of is the girl he killed. He imagines kissing her and feeling her body next to his, but it’s useless. He can’t have what he wants most. All the killing, all the attempts to recapture the past have been for nothing. So he stands separate from the crowd – completely alone. And at this moment, by opening his arms out, he begs to be killed, to be put out of his misery. But even his worst enemy embraces him. Everyone loves him. However, without a love that can be given and returned, it’s pointless. So only here does Grenouille finally realise that he’s killed another human being, that he no longer has the chance to love and that his obsession has poisoned his soul to such an extent that he’s no longer really human – death is the only possible response.

But before Jean-Baptiste can self-destruct, there’s his quest to create his perfume. And it’s here, on the surface at least, that the film acts as a thriller. Grenouille kills girl after girl and he stalks one redhead in particular. But even standard scenes of Jean-Baptiste lurking in the dark are filled with tension – there are no visceral thrills, but Grenouille’s quest to kill the redhead builds to a ridiculous extent. And the killing itself is perfect in how inevitable it is. For the whole second half of the film Jean-Baptiste has been chasing this girl. He needs her for his scent. But of course, the part of us that has seen loads of movies thinks that she’ll get away. So therefore her demise is both inevitable and a surprise – we knew it had to come but we didn’t quite believe it. And the killing itself is magnificently orchestrated. Backed by a marvellous brooding music cue, Grenouille enters the hotel. He then calmly moves through the building and makes his way to the girl’s chamber. There’s nothing showy about the scene but it has a sadness and an inevitability that I find irresistible.

However, for me the best sequence is the one where Jean-Baptiste first encounters the redhead. He sees her in the back of a carriage and then follows her scent to her opulent home. We then see Grenouille loitering in the garden before being confronted by the sight of the girl on her balcony. This moment is perfectly filmed. We can tell from the way that Jean-Baptiste looks at her that he’s being reminded of the girl he killed, and the swooping crane shot and gorgeous music make it achingly romantic. He’s overwhelmed. He’s almost in love.

But if the film has a fault, it’s that the girl who plays the readhead is actually a poor actress. Yes she’s physically attractive but she’s also horribly wet and childlike. But then again, this plays to Grenouille’s character. He’s not interested in inner beauty or intelligence or any complexity at all. He can only grasp surface beauty. Therefore the girl’s limited range isn’t as disastrous as it could have been.

Another minor problem is the film’s voiceover. For the most part it’s fine and helps the story to move along at a good pace. But every now and again it tells you too much. It tells you exactly how to interpret what you’ve just seen. For instance, after the orgy scene and Grenouille’s realisation that he’ll never love and be loved, we’re told exactly that by the narrator...after we’ve seen it! So that’s slightly infuriating.

Aside from that, though, the film is a joy. Few films have captured the nature of obsession quite so magnificently. And for a film that is so grim in its content, it’s also extraordinarily witty. I love the montage when the town of Grasse is gripped by fear over the killings. The townsfolk are given weapons and then everyone proceeds to kill one another – in particular I love the bit where a rich master shoots his servant when the servant unexpectedly wakes him with breakfast. And there’s also a lot of humour to be had in the pomposity of organised religion. The town priest, in the face of all the killings, announces that the killer will be excommunicated from the community, as if this is going to stop him. Well, it kind of does, because someone ‘confesses’ to the crimes. We then hear the priest orgasmically squeal ‘Hallelujah!’ like he and god are personally responsible for the scoundrel being captured.

But although the film is littered with dark humour, at essence it’s a sad tale. Jean-Baptiste is a man enslaved by his instincts and his senses. And one of the film’s lasting images is of him trying to capture the scent of the dead girl as she lies on the floor before him. He’s trying to preserve her scent and his confused love for her, but the scent is fleeting and he’ll never reclaim it. He’s lost to the world before he even has a chance to understand it.

Directed by Tom Tykwer
Screenplay by Andrew Birkin, Bernd Eichinger and Tom Tykwer
Produced by Bernd Eichinger
Original Music by Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer
Cinematography by Frank Griebe

Running Time: 147 mins

Rated R for aberrant behaviour involving nudity, violence, sexuality, and disturbing images.