Screenwriter »

• Awful photo of Sylvester Stallone looking at a sports car.

  August 9, 2010 @ 10:35 pm | by Donald Clarke

  I’m afraid I forgot to bring my camera to the press conference for Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables at the Dorchester Hotel. I tried taking some photographs of Sly — who sat beside Dolph Lundgren and Jason Statham — with my phone, but the results were so blotchy and avant garde they would barely pass muster as part of an installation piece. Anyway, he was very nice and looked very smart in a blue suit. You can see the back of his head in this dreadful photograph.

  

  L to R: Man, man, man,  posh car owner, S Stallone, man, bus.

  It’s a funny thing, but, for all his money and fame, he is still enough of a big kid to stop and admire a sports car. Sure enough, after emerging onto Park Lane, his eyes widened at the sight of some posh coupe or other. I assume the owner is the black gentleman in the white shirt. I don’t know what breed his car belongs to, but I know that the one nearer the camera is a Bugatti Veyron. That’s the fastest production car in the world, you know. Yes, yes, yes. Like too many idiots, I have — despite not being able to drive — watched the odd episode of Top Gear. Come to think of it, the Veyron always seems to be parked there. Does the vulgar, pornographically rich owner actually live in the hotel? More ghastly things have happened.

  Anyway, The Expendables, which stars absolutely everybody (including, probably, you), opens on August 20th.

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• A three-star bonanza in The Ticket.

  August 6, 2010 @ 7:57 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Hang around film writers for long enough and — after explaining that they have the hardest job in the world — they will eventually get around to complaining about the star-rating system. It really is an appallingly reductive business. For centuries critics got along without attaching ratings to their reviews, but, at some point in the early 1990s, the dreaded stars became ubiquitous.

  

  Two stars.

  The timing is surprising. You could be forgiven for assuming that the internet — with its constant need to rate and rank — is responsible for the pressing need to assign scores to reviews. But the final, unstoppable rise of the phenomenon occurred a few years before the web went mainstream. The NME began rating record reviews around 1990. The Guardian gave in a few years later. The Irish Times began scoring films and albums with the arrival of The Ticket in 2000. A few stalwarts such as The Observer held out, but, for the most part, the star system had taken over by the turn of the century.

  Of course, a certain hierarchy holds sway here. It is worth noting that — though mid-market tabloids behave differently — the quality press still refrains from granting scores to book reviews. The consumers of those notices are, it seems, regarded as smart enough to actually make their way through the text.

  Critics will put forward waves of arguments against the system. As the stars allow no space for irony or nuance, one is prohibited from giving a high score to a film whose very awfulness is entertaining. The jumps between grades are perceived as uneven: the difference between one and two, for instance, is a matter of little consequence; the difference between two (bad) and three (good) is more considerable. The bald stars allow no explanation of how some films — though poor — may satisfy their target audiences nicely: I view the Harry Potter films as slavish, overlong and pompous, but, knowing they work well for fans, I find myself guiltily typing out three stars every year.

  These are all fair arguments, but the true reason critics hate the system is more easily stated: it dissuades punters from actually reading the text. I can’t be bothered to go through my mails and produce accurate statistics, but I would guess that around 75 percent of complaints about my reviews mention the stars and the stars alone. One recent communication in particular illustrates the point nicely. Early this year, somebody mailed me to complain about giving three stars to Robin Hood. How could I justify this? The film was awful. Could I please explain my reasoning? Well, having attached 700 apparently unread words to the star rating, I felt that no further explanation was necessary.

  Another example from a few years back also does the business. My late colleague Michael Dwyer was not a fan of Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. Following his negative review, several letters appeared in the paper objecting to Michael’s “comments”. (One, from Maureen Lipman, neglected to mention that the sender was actually in the film.) The missives took particular objection to Michael’s assertion that one should attend “only if you must”. In fact, the phrase appeared nowhere in the text. The line could be found in the accompanying panel explaining what “two stars” indicated. The entire debate focussed on the star rating and no mention was made of the review itself.

  

  Three stars.

  That said, we critics, for the most part, reluctantly admit that the star method has become unavoidable in publications such as The Ticket. With “today’s busy lives” — where did that phrase originate? — punters demand and expect an easily digestible ratings system within their entertainment supplements. Moreover, the average citizen has become used to scoring films, albums and books on internet sites. It would seem odd if newspapers were the only place where such entities were not rated. (On a side note, don’t you love those maniacs who score films out of 100 and to two decimal places? “Erm, I think Empire Strikes Back is an 87.54 rather than an 87.55.” That sort of thing.)

  Like everybody else, your average reviewer finds himself or herself reluctantly referring to a “four-star film” or a “three-star film”. Moreover, he or she will inevitably begin charting apparent trends in the ratings. I can remember that on just one occasion — for the life of me, I can’t identify exactly when — we had the full gamut of star-ratings in an issue of The Ticket. I see a five-star film looming (guess it if you can) over the next month and wonder if there will be a repeat occurrence.

  All of which eventually brings me round to the trigger for this piece. There were seven three-star reviews in today’s issue. That’s got to be a record. My goodness, it’s like the entire world has come over all average.

  See how this nonsense overpowers you?

  Comments (18)

• Never mind the Bullock

  August 5, 2010 @ 12:51 pm | by Donald Clarke

  There’s a slightly scary truth at the heart of Forbes magazine’s recent list of the best-paid female actors (thank you, Irish Times style book). We’re not talking about the news that Sandra Bullock has made it to the top spot. She’s a hard worker and a good sport. More to the point, The Proposal and The Blind Side were genuine breakout hits.

  

  Actual photo of Sandra Bullock not getting out of bed for less than $56 million.

  No. The slight chill comes from the knowledge that the remaining places in the top five are taken up by, in order: Reese Witherspoon, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Aniston and Sarah Jessica Parker. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against any of these actresses… sorry female actors. But, consider the most recent  film each of them has made: Four Christmases, Knight and Day, The Bounty Hunter,  Sex and the City 2. It’s a fairly gruesome bunch (though this week’s Knight and Day is reasonably diverting). More importantly, all of these films performed below the studio’s expectations. Look back further in the top five’s CV’s and financial triumphs remain elusive.

  Next in the list is Julia Roberts, who hasn’t had a proper hit since the 17th century. After her, we get Angelina Jolie — number two, you might have predicted — who actually has delivered two successes recently: Salt did okay; Wanted was a minor smash.

  Here’s my point. If the most highly paid female actors (groan) in Hollywood can’t bring in the bucks then surely nobody can. It looks as if the star system is dead — or, like Monty Python’s parrot, is “all shagged out after a long squawk”.

  Male stars have only a tiny bit more pulling power (mainly in Rest of World). Consider this year’s worldwide box-office top ten. It’s not exactly coming down with star vehicles. Is it?

  1. Alice in Wonderland
  2. Toy Story 3
  3. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
  4. Shrek Forever After
  5. Iron Man 2
  6. Clash of the Titans
  7. How to Train Your Dragon
  8. Inception
  9. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
  10. Robin Hood

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• No sex please

  August 2, 2010 @ 6:44 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  I quite enjoyed Andrew Motion’s comments about the lack of sex in novels submitted for The Booker Prize. The former UK Poet Laureate, chairman of the Booker panel this year, suspects that writers are so afraid of winning the Bad Sex Prize — awarded for particularly embarrassing outbreaks of literary humping — that they stay away from the subject all together. If only film-makers felt the same reserve. The odd Don’t Look Now noted, sex scenes invariably seem unconvincing and clumsy in motion pictures. Of course, if the sex is meant to be awkward and embarrassing then that’s perfectly okay. But too often you feel a bit sorry for the poor actors: all that huffing, puffing and clenching of sheets.

  It’s customary for forward thinking pontificators to argue that there should be less violence and more sex in movies. Sex is so “natural” and so on. I don’t agree. I think there should be much more violence and as little sex — or, rather, as few sex scenes – as possible in the cinema. It is also, I think, time for the institution of a Bad Sex Prize for Movies. We should, in honour of the daddy of all ghastly sex scenes, call it the Cruise-McGillis Award.

  Comments (23)

• Can we start complaining about Let Me In yet?

  July 29, 2010 @ 3:46 pm | by Donald Clarke

  The question is prompted by the release of the first trailer for Matt Reeves’s remake of Let the Right One In. The Swedish vampire movie, made in 2008, but released here last year, proved very popular with the Screenwriter community. Readers voted it the second best film of 2010. Your correspondent put it at the top of his list. Inevitably, news of the American remake was greeted with weary groans. What to make of the promo?

  

  Well, first things first. I don’t know who is responsible for the ghastly gloom-rock tune that thunders over the action, but it lends exactly the wrong class of high-school, door-slamming petulance. One of the worst aspects of early-noughties mainstream horror was its reliance on a particularly unlovely school of sulk metal. There is nothing less frightening than an under-educated, mid-western lout shouting about Satan while wearing his mother’s mascara. Secondly, the editing is depressingly dizzying and — again — reminds one of the hyper-active aesthetic that ruined so many horror films in the first few years of the new millennium.

  So, in short, I don’t like the trailer, but I’m not sure the film itself looks too awful. There is, of course, every chance the picture will be edited with more caution and that the annoying song will appear nowhere in the finished article. I wasn’t all that keen on Kick Ass, but Chloe Moretz, young star of that film and of Let Me In, is a very talented juvenile actor. Kodi Smit-McPhee was great in The Road and he looks promising as the kid who gets lured into blood-letting by Chloe’s undead waif. The smashing Richard Jenkins is there also.

  Reeves, director of the entertaining Cloverfield, looks to have composed the shots with the same restraint showed by Tomas Alfredson in the original. So, there is a chance — just a chance, mind — that Let Me In could turn out to be a reasonably respectable facsimile of the original. I shun no opportunity to whinge about the current obsession with faithfulness to source material, but a respectful copy of the Swedish film might be the most we could hope for from this particular project.

  Anyway, it hardly needs to be said that, if you haven’t already seen Let the Right One In, you need to have a glance before the American version arrives on our shores. Let Me In is scheduled for release at Halloween.

  Oh and one more thing about the trailer. Yes, you read that right. Let Me In is, indeed, a Hammer film. The great British horror studio has recently been reconstituted. Sadly, the example of Ealing films makes it hard to exhibit unqualified enthusiasm. That comedy enterprise also rose from the grave about 10 years ago. Since then — remember I Want Candy and St Trinian’s — they have produced little else but garbage. We hope for better from Hammer.

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• Where the hell is The Tree of Life?

  July 27, 2010 @ 10:43 pm | by Donald Clarke

  I don’t expect you to know the answer. But the question is not exactly rhetorical either. I genuinely want to know where the blasted thing has got to. If you are not in the  loop, The Tree of Life is — or is supposed to be — an epic film of some sort from the admirable Terrence Malick. The director has, of course, previous form in the art of non-delivery. In 1973, he directed an extraordinary, durable film entitled Badlands. Five years after that, he delivered the slightly less focussed, but equally compelling and even more gorgeous Days of Heaven.

  

  “I think I see it. No, it’s just a regular sort of tree.”

  Then a great deal of nothing. Rumours surrounding Mr Malick’s activities over the following 20 years became increasingly frenzied and ever more absurd. He was living as a monk in Luxembourg. He had become a pirate. He was the brains behind Mr Blobby. Eventually, he resurfaced with the star-studded Thin Red Line.

  That 1998 war film was, to my mind, somewhat weighed down by its own pretensions. You remember. Shot of parrot. “I guess a man is just a little speck on God’s finger.” Shot of snake. “Seems there’s more evil in a river’s curve than in all the dead breath of murdered souls” Shot of crocodile. “Blah, blah, blah.” But it was very definitely an interesting sort of mess.

  The New World was something else again. Featuring our own Colin Farrell as John Smith and a rather brilliant Christian Bale as John Rolfe, the picture was a purposefully strange, impressively cool take on the colonisation of America and, more specifically, the Pocohontas story. In the years since its release in 2005, its reputation has steadily grown among Malick watchers.

  So, over a year ago, everybody was eagerly awaiting the premiere of The Tree of Life at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. The plot was — and remains — a closely guarded secret. But we knew it starred Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Fiona Shaw. We knew it was some kind of period piece. And we knew it was a Malick film. It was like the arrival of a new Thomas Pynchon novel before that fine author went back to being (sort of) prolific.

  The film didn’t turn up at Cannes. It didn’t turn up at Venice. It didn’t turn up at Toronto. It didn’t turn up at London. 2010 arrived and, once more, it didn’t turn up at Cannes. Now, over the last few days, we have received information about what’s playing in this year’s Toronto and this year’s Venice film festivals. Guess what’s not there.

  Am I alone in beginning to suspect that Tree of Life is one big conceptual joke? Pitt, Malick, Penn and all the rest are, perhaps, playing a gag on the world’s expectant filmgoers. Hmm? Unlikely, I think. It’s not as if Sean Penn is known for his sense of humour. At any rate, if you know where Tree of Life has got to then drop us a line. Yeah, I know there are release dates on IMDb. There have, I assure you, been release dates there before.

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• Sherlock Holmes won’t go away.

  July 24, 2010 @ 5:27 pm | by Donald Clarke

  And why should he? Throughout the entire history of cinema, film-makers have enjoyed playing with the persona of Arthur Conan-Doyle’s cerebral, faintly demented private detective. The Internet Movie Database lists a truly impressive 231 film and TV projects featuring Holmes and Dr Watson. In Russia, the characters, apparently, appear in every second barroom joke. Quite a few snooty  philosophers have used his adventures as a vehicle for the propagation of complex, head-spinning ideas. Too many  people still think him a genuine historical character.

  

  All of which is a prelude to my saying that I am looking forward to the BBC’s new take on the stories. Sherlock, which begins tomorrow, updates the stories to the present day and in, respectively, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, offers us younger than usual versions of Holmes and Watson. I am sure that many Baker Street Irregulars will be concerned, but the instigators of the show seem like men you can trust. Mark Gattis, co-creator of The League of Gentlemen, is an expert on Victoriana and a man with a taste for English Gothic. Steven Moffat has done good work as the current director of operations at Dr Who House.

  The series comes, of course, just six months after Guy Ritchie offered a different re-imagining — steampunk meets Sax Rohmer — of Conan-Doyle’s imperishable universe. You might wonder why two such transformations have occurred at just this point. Coincidence, I guess. A more interesting question is why, over the previous 100 years, there have been so few attempts to radically tamper with the stories’ key elements. The later Basil Rathbone films were set contemporaneously, but, aside from introducing Nazis into the picture, the temporal shift did not radically alter the series’ character (not least because it was only 40 years since the last tales had been published).

  Sherlock Holmes adaptations vary in quality, but they rarely alter much in appearance or ambiance. It’s usually foggy. Holmes is always eagle-faced and eccentric. Watson is always some sort of duffer (though rarely as dumb as Nigel Bruce’s adorable imbecile in the Rathbone flicks). It’s taken a very long time for this re-invention craze to set in.

  Or has it? You might reasonably argue that the entire history of 20th-century detective fiction (and movies and TV) has been a series of experiments with the Holmes template. Holmes’s key feature is his superhuman intelligence. From the moment the story starts, the seeds of the solution appear to be germinating in some corner of his brain. Remind you of anyone? Philip Marlowe is a noir Holmes. Lieutenant Columbo is a scruffy Holmes. Miss Marple is an elderly female Holmes. All are eccentric. All have a peculiar intelligence. All — even Columbo, who baffles his superiors and can’t fire a gun — work outside the traditional framework of law enforcement. So we have, perhaps, been constantly re-inventing the great man without quite knowing it.

  Anyway, it’s time to consider…

  FIVE NOTEWORTHY TAKES ON SHERLOCK HOLMES

  JEREMY BRETT

  

  Got the borderline-insanity just right. It was also a very nicely produced TV series.

  VASILY LIVANOV

  

  Legendary as the detective on Russian TV. Holmes was madly popular in the USSR and remains so in the former republics.

  BASIL RATHBONE

  

  Unfortunately, the films got increasingly crummy (see this clip). But he did define the role for at least a generation.

  CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER

  

  That’s right. That’s Chris in the sadly overlooked, if utterly mad Murder by Decree (1979). He’s after Jack the Ripper, you know.

  NICOL WILLIAMSON

  

  Like Murder by Decree, Herbert Ross’s 1976 The Seven Percent Solution veered away from Doyle. As always, Williamson seemed nice and barmy.

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• The strange business of the IMDb 250.

  July 21, 2010 @ 6:54 pm | by Donald Clarke

  If you go to the cinema more than once every two months and you own a computer then you will almost certainly have visited the Internet Movie Database. In the unstable digital multiverse, IMDb — initiated a quite staggering 21 years ago — seems a little like a creation of the Bronze Age. Finding it still fit and functional is akin to encountering Henry I’s favourite lute player at the top of the hit parade.

  

  “It’s at number three and it’s coming for us, Red.” “Don’t worry, Andy. It’ll be gone in a spell.”

  Aside from offering visitors the answer to most sane queries concerning the cast, crew and origins of virtually every film ever made, IMDb has, of course, become an important social resource. This is where you go to call X-Manfan19675 a moron or to make it clear that you think Jessica Alba is “like, way hot”. It’s also where you go to rate films from past and present. There is, I suspect, no other chart that takes in so many voters from so many locations as the IMDb Top 250. And yet the results are so strange. Here is the top 10 at time of writing:

  1. The Shawshank Redemption  (1994)

  2. The Godfather (1972)

  3. Inception (2010)

  4. The Godfather: Part II (1974)

  5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

  6. Pulp Fiction (1994)

  7. Schindler’s List (1993)

  8. Toy Story 3 (2010)

  9. 12 Angry Men (1957)

  10. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

  Now, you might argue that this chart — created, as it is by real people — has more worth than, say, the British Film Institute’s venerable list of the greatest ever films. Well, yes and no. The BFI  does vet its contributors and the voting procedure is nice and public. By way of contrast, though IMDb does employ a formula that attempts to root out lunatics, concerted campaigns still have an effect on the site’s final table.

  You can probably see where this is going. Two years ago, just such a campaign pushed Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight to the top of the chart for a month or two. How do we know it was an organised strategy? Well, not only was there a surge of 10/10’s for the Batman picture, there was also a simultaneous avalanche of 1/10’s for The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption. It seems unlikely that the world’s cinemagoers had suddenly spontaneously turned against Francis Ford Coppola and Frank Darabont.

  Hence the timing of this post. Unusually, there are, this week, two current films in the top 10. Toy Story 3 appears at number eight. Inception makes it into number three. Nolan’s dream-invasion thriller is a decent piece of work, but I defy anybody to offer a lucid argument for it deserving a place this high in a list of world’s greatest films. The Nolanistas are out in force again.

  The performance of Inception highlights the most serious problem with this list. Like most such sites, IMDb receives contributions from a disproportionately high number of teenage boys. If you doubt this, look at the ratings for the Twilight films. I know that most critics are less keen on the teen vampire pictures than I am, but the appalling ratings for the pictures on IMDb speak of a spotty allergy to “gurl’s fillums”. Such boys idolise Nolan and — crucially — know how to put together internet campaigns.

  Anyway, what else is of interest on the list? Well, like a lot of folk, I remain baffled by the cult surrounding The Shawshank Redemption, but there is no doubting that enormous numbers of intelligent punters — men, women, kids, pensioners — adore Darabont’s decent, humane prison picture. We should, therefore, not be surprised to see it at number one.

  Similarly, The Godfather has always managed to appeal to a wide range of moviegoers. It works as both a post-Visconti art picture and as a violent soap opera. No sane person will bugrudge it remaining at the top of such lists for 40 years.

  It is more surprising — but similarly cheering — to see The Good the Bad and the Ugly sneaking into the top five. Sergio Leone is, it seems, the only director of westerns who still has wide appeal with cinemagoers. What else? A bit of Tarantino. Some Spielberg. No surprises here from the internet junkies.

  Looking further down the list, we find a few other predictable entries. Coming in at an impressive number 15, The Seven Samurai — from Kurosawa, the Japanese Leone — registers as the highest ranking foreign language picture. The ragingly idiotic Fight Club, a film made for teenagers by teenagers, secures a place in the top 20. And so on.

  There is, for this writer, one continuing, apparently unshakable anomaly with the IMDb chart. There it is at number nine. This is not an aberration. This is no occasional visitor to the upper reaches. 12 Angry Men has a semi-permanent place in the IMDb top 10. Now, don’t get me wrong. Sydney Lumet’s film is a  fine piece of work. Okay it’s a bit stagy and it relies on single-adjective characters — racist, stupid, heroic, etc — but it’s the sort of picture you will always watch all the way through when it appears on TV.

  

  Oh look, it’s that guy. Don’t tell me. It’s on the tip of my tongue.

  Most sane cinemagoers would, however, be amazed to discover that 12 Angry Men was, of all films made before 1965, unreservedly, unquestionably the very greatest. As I say, the picture is always in the top 10 and it is always the highest placed film made before the death of President Kennedy. This is truly weird. Surely, when looking back into (for them) antiquity, the kids on IMDb would favour Casablanca (number 16), It’s a Wonderful Life (30) or — for Pete’s sake — Psycho (23). Each of those films is screened on television every bit as frequently as 12 Angry Men.

  An American pal of mine did, eventually, offer a possible explanation for this (overseas readers can confirm or deny). He claims that American kids are often shown Lumet’s film in school as part of their civics lessons. It explains the judicial system and it argues for the virtues of a liberal democracy. 12 Angry Men is, thus, for many US kids, the only “old film” they’ve ever seen. Sounds plausible. I just wish they’d show them Bergman’s Persona or Browning’s Freaks or Lang’s M once in a while. That’d learn them some hard truths about the universe.

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• What about Mel Gibson?

  July 19, 2010 @ 12:39 pm | by Donald Clarke

  An interesting one this. If you only read The Irish Times and only watch RTE and the BBC you might look at the above headline and reply: “What indeed? He is the star of the excellent Mad Max films. He is some sort of bible thumper. He directed the fantastic Apocalypto. But what’s he done lately to interest me? Excuse me,  I have to go away and watch Cash in the Attic now.”

  

  Yes! A disguise. That’s the answer.

  Well, it is possible – just about possible — that he has done nothing outrageous. But (as you well know) there is a recording circling the internet that features a Mel-like voice shouting racist abuse at one Oksana Grigorieva. The extravagantly named Russian pianist, Mel’s former squeeze, has confirmed that she is the one mopping up the n-words, but Gibson’s people have yet to comment on the veracity of the tape.

  With that in mind, it is not altogether surprising that The Irish Times, the BBC and other toffee-nosed media outlets have been somewhat cautious in reporting the matter. Added to the potential legal problems, there is a certain unease about how the recording was gathered. If you listen to it, you will note the queasy way Ms G allows The Other Voice as much rope as possible. Yes? Yes? What else?

  None of this makes the abusive language any more acceptable, but it does make it harder to identify the goody in this story (something we all yearn to do with news).

  Anyway, the real question is whether Gibson is now finally finished. We all recall the unfortunate business a few years back when he was pulled over by the police and delivered a truly staggering anti-Semitic outburst. “F**king Jews…the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” he ranted. He’s really only been on probation since then. Edge of Darkness, his first post-rant film as star, was not an enormous success. Apocalypto, made before the bust-up, but released in the aftermath, went down brilliantly with a great deal of critics, but too many seemed wary of praising a film by a man with this dubious recent history.

  Now, Mel has been dropped by his agency and the vultures seem to be circling. Well, we know the man believes in resurrections. He may, indeed, require divine help to roll aside this particular stone.

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• His & Hers proves the value of word of mouth.

  July 16, 2010 @ 8:16 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Much as we keyboard-thumpers like to think otherwise, strong reviews have only a modest effect on the performance of a motion picture. The figures show — if you are interested — that, whereas good notices have a pretty direct correlation with per-screen average, there is a fairly shaky connection between positive critical word and total takings. What this means is that reviews seem to boost interest in smaller films, but don’t really matter that much when it comes to blockbusters. The punter may pay attention to Maurice Snooty-Hack when choosing between Pierre Le Frou Frou’s Le Plume de Ma Tante and Moxie Woolyhat’s Stonewall Diary Redux. He or she does not, however, care too much about the critics’ view of Zebraman vs Mothra.

  

  Go see His & Hers or we kill the kid’s hamster (not really).

  The strong reviews go some way to explaining why Ken Wardrop’s His & Hers — a super documentary about being a mother in the midlands — managed to open relatively strongly a few weeks ago. But the fact that it has hung around so impressively must be attributed to a form of communication that Hollywood rarely considers these days: word of mouth. Just look at the top 10 in today’s soaraway Ticket. Nearly a month after it opened, His & Hers sits proudly at number five in the chart. Sex and the City 2 is currently eating its dust.

  Last week, when  I was chatting to (name drops with clunk) M Night Shyamalan, he  reminisced about how the success of The Sixth Sense took them all by surprise. It opened to decent, but not ecstatic, reviews and respectable, but not spectacular, box-office returns. Word got around and — steadily, steadily, steadily — the film began building into a phenomenon. It seems odd that, in the time of the internet, the slow-burn so rarely defines cinematic success. You’d think that this would be the Age of Word of Mouth. But no. The studios continue to open their big films in a billion cinemas worldwide in the hope of raking in a fortune before everyone discovers how crummy they are. Indeed, current release practices seem calculated to reduce the effect of word of mouth.

  At any rate, go to see His & Hers if you can.

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