On the couch

Scream 4
*
Directed by: Wes Craven
Starring: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courtney Cox, Emma Roberts, Rory Culkin

Hanna
****
Directed by: Joe Wright
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchette, Olivia Williams, Jason Flemyng

Lampshade hanging isn’t what you think it is. It isn’t what I thought it was either until recently when I discovered that the Internet, birthplace of such wonderful terms as “jumping the shark” and “nuking the fridge” had come up with a term to describe the practice in TV or movies of an element of the story that threatens the audience’s suspension of disbelief  by calling attention to it… and then moving on.

Like a Band-Aid, it can make the most irritating of boo-boos better, soothing the critical consciences of the most avid cinephiles.
Unfortunately, some films are beyond such cinematic slight of hand and a Band-Aid can’t do much in cases where serious surgery is needed.
Scream 4 is one of those cases.
From the opening scene, on it attempts to excuse its cliché-riddled plot and very existence with self-conscious humour and lampshade hanging but the sins are just too egregious to forgive for the sake of a bit of post-modern indulgence.
The Scream franchise was born out of the idea that the normal, film-watching public would probably have a better chance of surviving a horror movie because of an awareness of the rules and cliches most flicks follow and adhere to.
The first one was clever, funny, appropriately scary and twisty enough to leave audiences both surprised and smug in the fact that they’d “worked it out”. It was also littered with references to other classic flicks, paying homage rather than simply parodying its predecessors. The two that followed were less cleverly self-conscious and scorned appropriately.
Scream 4 takes the story back to Woodsboro, the place where it all began, to see the surviving members of the original cast plus a few new family members (extended family, not babies) cope with another dose of knife-wielding hack’n’slashery 10 years after the last incident.
Front and centre is, as always, Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell), now a successful author of Oprah-friendly self help books. She is joined by fellow survivors Dewey (David Arquette), now sheriff and his missus Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) the former tabloid hack who’s finding the life of a housewife and unproductive writer tough going.
The new generation of teens include Emma Roberts (as Syd’s young cousin), Hayden Panettiere and Marielle Jaffe as three pretty girls and Rory Culkin (yes, of the Home Alone Culkins) and Erik Knudsen as the new generation of film-savvy nerds.
For all the impact they make on the film the audition ad might have read “Wanted: bland 20-somethings to serve as unidentifiable filler for crap sandwich. No references required”.
While there are moments of snort-worthy humour for anyone who enjoyed the original trilogy, Scream 4 is a film that is neither clever enough nor scary enough to excuse its existence. Wasteful and boring, the only good things to come out of it are the twin reminders that the first film really was very good and Courtney Cox is still the best damn thing in the series.
But for some weird acid-flashback editing and an apparent difficulty in deciding whether it is deadly serious or a teen farce, Hanna could have been a legitimate contender for Leon’s throne as “best flick about a child assassin (non-super hero class)”.
Saoirse Ronan stars as Hanna, a young woman being brought up in the wilds of Finland by her father Erik (Eric Bana) and taught all the skills a pubescent could need to face the world – fighting, butchery, modern languages, memorising encyclopedia.
Hanna, it turns out, is being trained by daddy to kill the woman who killed her mother so when she is deemed “ready” she heads into the real world to hunt and kill CIA agent Marissa (Cate Blanchette).
Intrigue, the loss of innocence and some uncomfortable German stereotypes  follow as lil’ miss spy makes her way from Morocco to Berlin on the trail of her target.
With excellent acting from Ronan and Blanchette (almost a given at this stage) and a story that twists and turns like a twisty-turny thing, there’s very little about Hanna not to like.
It’s only awkwardness shows in Hanna’s small experiences of dealing with normal teenagers, when attempts at humour or lightness just come across as a little bit weird.
Other than that though, it’s a cracking good time.