romans in britain, a siren from the deep, an irish misstep

the Eagle (2010. dir: Kevin MacDonald) OK, this is more like it. The script is not great, but the story is a good one. The Ninth Spanish Legion is STILL missing, still swallowed up in the wilds of northern Britain during the Dark Ages, but this time it's the son of the vanished standard-bearer who traces his father's steps to regain the Bronze Eagle and his family's tarnished honour. It's still not perfect, but it's a vast improvement on Centurion. There's an interesting use of accents: the native Britons sound British, the Romans speak American. I'm not sure I like it, but it works better than trying to teach your yank-actors new pronunciations.

It's got a great cast, with Jamie Bell, Channing Tatum and Mark Strong, and I have to love Kevin Macdonald. Not only is he Emeric Pressburger's grandson, but he learned his chops making documentaries, and indeed made some of the best I've ever seen, including One Day in September, which ranks easily in my top three.

Ondine: (2009. dir: Neil Jordan) Here's an example of that rara avis, a romantic fantasy for men. Colin Farrell successfully combats its mawkish nature (a sad-sack fisherman with a wheelchair-bound, smart-as-a-whip little girl, a bitter ex-wife, and an impossibly beautiful girl swept from the sea into his net) with quickly spoken, no-nonsense line readings. A fairy tale set in the midst of the real world, it does not exactly work, although its heart is in a near-enough vicinity that it conjures a nice melancholy.

The end sequence is particularly unconvincing, and shot in a muddy, over-creative fashion which tells me that Jordan didn't quite believe in it, either. Much as I appreciate a Sigur Ros song acting as the hinge upon which an entire plot turns, the happy ending struck me as simplistic and the final image like something out of a wedding magazine, like they're trying to sell you something.

the Guard: (2011. dir: John Michael McDonagh) A first offering from Martin McDonagh's brother, sort of a poor man's McDonagh. Brendan Gleeson is lovely as always, but the Production Designer ran mad and amuck all over the film, so that everybody lives and works in aesthetically-wild sets instead of in real homes and offices. The pace plods, and it's not funny enough by half to satisfy.

Here's the best bit, the only one that made me laugh:

A: I didn't know you had gays in the IRA.
B: It's the only way we can infiltrate MI5.

Now I've given the funny bit away, you can watch something else instead.