FILM REVIEW: 127 HOURS

20th Century Fox

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When I was younger and just discovering tennis, I thought that the worst tragedy that could befall me would be to lose a limb, especially a leg. I had devised a (morbid) hypothetical that, should I be diagnosed with some form of cancer which required the removal of my leg to ensure my survival, I would opt to keep the leg, bravely keep playing tennis through the pain and die a martyr to my new found passion. Oh, the folly of youth.

Aron Ralston, a carefree young man and extreme weekend adventurer probably never entertained such hypotheticals; it's doubtful he even contemplated death. But then one weekend in 2003, whilst out canyoning in Utah and alone as always, he slipped, fell and found his right arm pinned between a boulder, literally between a rock and a hard place.

That's the name of Ralston's book which details the five and a bit days – 127 hours – he spent trapped in that canyon; with little food or water (forced to drink his urine), hallucinating from dehydration, and eventually forced to make a tough decision: sever his arm or perish.

Director Danny Boyle, and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (who also penned Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire), have opened up Ralston's intense but brief story so it's not the claustrophobic exercise in style that was Rodrigo Cortes's Buried (2010), which (successfully) saw Ryan Reynolds spend 90-odd minutes trapped in a box with nothing but a mobile phone to play off.

Boyle brings all of his directorial flair – split screens, soaring vistas of the desert, handy-cam footage, flashbacks and hallucinations – to bear on the bare bones material, aided immensely by his two cinematographers, Enrique Chediak and Anthony Dod Mantle. And, of course, the performance by James Franco.

As Ralston, Franco has little room to work with physically but the success of 127 Hours rests squarely on his shoulders given he is, for the most part, the only person on screen. Franco captures the adventurous spirit of Ralston as well as the inherent arrogance and selfishness, traits which Ralston is made all too aware of in light of his imminent demise.

That demise is, of course, avoided by that fateful decision and that one scene – the money shot, if you will – where Ralston, with nothing but a pocket knife, amputates his arm to gain his freedom. It's a tough scene to watch; I tried two times and failed. But it's the sound of the bones he has to break before he can cut that really did me in. Would I be able to do that? Could you make that choice?

To paraphrase another Boyle film (2006's Trainspotting), Aron Ralston chose life. As such, 127 Hours is a celebration of the human spirit; it's life affirming but not in the trite way that so many films can be. It's an intense but rewarding experience.

FILM REVIEW: NO STRINGS ATTACHED

Paramount Pictures

Now Showing

No Strings Attached bills itself as a sex comedy as opposed to a rom-com, and with good reason given the nadir that genre finds itself in of late. But for all its blue talk and extolling of the 'friends with benefits' scheme, the film falls back on rom-com conventions sooner rather than later, with love trumping sexual gratification and the man inexplicably getting his way.

That's despite the typical male role being assigned to Natalie Portman's Emma, a doctor who works 80 hours a week and has no time for the hassles that inherently come with relationships. Adam (Ashton Kutcher), an intermittent acquaintance of Emma's over the years following their first meeting at summer camp (where he politely asked if he could 'finger' her), is only to happy to fulfill the role of on-call booty call (the film's original title was F*ckbuddies).

That is until it becomes clear that Adam's feelings for Emma reside mostly in his chest cavity and not his nether regions. He wants more than sex; he wants a relationship. Yes, Adam has been assigned the typical female role in No Stings Attached, an inversion which allows women's (supposed) desire for commitment to be championed whilst simultaneously allowing the man to be in the right. Take that, feminism!

Okay, so No Strings Attached is not without its laughs. Veteran director Ivan Reitman (working from a screenplay by Elizabeth Meriwether) knows a thing or two about comedy, but even supporting roles by Kevin Kline (as Adam's cradle-robbing father) and an underused Greta Gerwig (a surprise find in last year's Greenberg) can only do so much. Portman and Kutcher make for an attractive though remarkably bland couple.

Still, Portman (who also executive produced the film) doesn't disgrace herself and is in no danger of derailing her Oscar chances with this trifle. No Strings is no Norbit, the film which supposedly brought Eddie Murphy's bid for an Oscar for Dreamgirls undone.

No doubt No Strings Attached will be the Valentine's Day date movie of choice for 2011, just as Garry Marshall's Valentine's Day was last year and He's Just Not That Into You the year before. Personally, I prefer chocolates.

FILM REVIEW: TAMARA DREWE

Roadshow Films

Now Showing

Never having read Posey Simmonds' graphic novel, Tamara Drewe, it may be a bit rash of me to suggest that the eponymous character, successful columnist with a new nose and a lousy love life, was some sort of response to Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones. But the similarities are there.

Where Fielding drew from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Simmonds' novel owes a debt of gratitude to the far more brooding works of Thomas Hardy. Not that the film version, directed by Stephen Frears (of The Queen fame), is anything less than a comic romp.

But unlike the film versions of Bridget Jones, Frears' film, adapted by Moira Buffini, isn't focussed solely on the exploits of Tamara Drewe. He visits with a variety of characters who inhabit Hadditon, a small village outside of London from whence Tamara fled to the city, had a nose job and became a successful columnist, writing about her favourite subject – herself.

Tamara's return to Hadditon, to sell the family home, is the catalyst for upheaval, intentional or not, in the lives of those she comes into contact with. These include hunky farmhand and high school beau, Andy (Luke Evans), neighbouring crime author with a wandering eye, Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam), and his loyal wife, Beth (Tamsin Greig), and American author Glenn (Bill Camp), attending a writers retreat on the Hardiment's farm and struggling with his bio of Thomas Hardy.

There's also local school girls, Jody (Jessican Baren) and Casey (Charlotte Christie), bored teenagers who transform from quasi Greek chorus to agent provocateurs when their favourite rock musician, drummer/songwriter Ben Sergeant (Dominic Cooper), sweeps into Hadditon and into Tamara's bed.

All of this action, which takes place over the course of a year, is handled lightly enough by Frears even as the inevitable Hardy-esque tragedy looms. Like I said, it's a romp. And the ubiquitous Gemma Arterton makes for a fetching if somewhat thinly drawn heroine. She's a far pricklier creation than Renee Zellweger's Bridget Jones, but if you're more inclined to Hardy than Austen, prefer bitter to the sweet, than Tamara Drewe may be just the girl for you.

FILM REVIEW: THE NEXT THREE DAYS

Roadshow Films

Now Showing

Anything For Her was a French film released in Australia in late 2010; it was the story of a man who was prepared to go to great lengths to free his wife from prison following her sentencing for murder. I didn't see that film but I'm guessing the change of title in the American remake, The Next Three Days, suggests director Paul Haggis took a slightly different approach to the material.

The basics seem the same: John Brennan (Russell Crowe) is a teacher at a Pittsburgh community college who is called upon to go above and beyond the matrimonial vows of in sickness and in health when his wife, Lara (Elizabeth Banks), receives a life sentence for the murder of her employer.

With a failed appeal and finances strained, the mild mannered English teacher devises a plan to break his supposedly innocent wife out of maximum security prison and flee the country. Ah, the things we do for love.

This film's title, The Next Three Days, implies a thriller but Haggis's remake only really heats up in the third act when Brennan's escape plan is enacted. Before that we have to endure the ups and downs of Brennan's day-to-day torment as he juggles masterminding a prison escape – learning how to pick locks, open locked cars with tennis balls, and dealing with the local criminal element for necessaries such as fake passports – with the demands of single parenting.

Crowe is actually rather convincing as the everyday man prepared to go to any lengths for the woman he loves, even if he has to break several laws to do so. But the moment Brennan raids and torches a meth lab in search of much needed cash – not quite Harry Brown-style but still OTT – is about the moment the film demands far too great a suspension of disbelief.

Until that point, The Next Three Days is a serviceable enough drama. But at almost 30 minutes longer than the French original, Haggis, who also penned the screenplay, could have trimmed the fat and tightened the pacing. He could also have given an actor like Brian Dennehy, who plays Brennan's distant father, far more to do and say (I think he spoke no more than 20 words!).

The film could certainly do with a few more “real” moments, like when Brennan says a poignant, final goodbye to his dad, and less of the unreal action that follows.