Lord of the Rings Trilogy – 2001, 2002, 2003 Peter Jackson
I read The Hobbit and then thought I’d dust off the first in the trilogy. Everyone tends considers the three films to be basically one massive film, and rightly so. All three extended films run to over 10 hours (I think) and there is nothing crap about a single minute of it. In cinematic terms, that is an incredible achievement.
The Deep – 1977, Peter Yates
Nick Nolte in his (physical) prime. I put this on my LoveFilm list because Harry Knowles recommended it. This was before I realised that Harry Knowles will recommend almost anything so long as there is one thing to like about it. I like a lot of bad films for a lot of bad reason but I won’t recommend one unless it’s really worth watching. The Deep is basically a poor man’s Jaws but without a shark. It’s even got Robert Shaw (Sam ‘Fingernails on the blackboard’ Quint from Jaws) in it.
Franklyn – 2008, Gerald McMorrow
A film about delusion and denial. Part real life drama, part fantasy. Well structured and almost well written. One of those ’nice idea but didn’t quite work’ films. Let down by the fact that it stars Ryan Philippe, who just shouldn’t be in films.
Ran – 1985, Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa made more than just Samurai epics based on the Shakespeare tragedies, but they are what he will be remembered for. This is the one he spent his career building up to. The story isn’t the best one he ever made into a film, but the vivid colours and cast of thousands make up for it.
W. – 2008, Oliver Stone
Further evidence that Oliver Stone’s biographies are nowhere near as good as his fictional films (I know Platoon is semi-autobiographic but it’s not a biography). Josh Brolin does quite well as George W. Bush but he comes across as though he’s playing it for laughs even though he was playing it straight. In fact the film is generally miscast, with the exception of Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Chaney. A lot of things in this film are quite annoying actually, but the two most annoying things are: Brolin plays a collage age Bush in flashback scenes – they should have cast another younger actor for those bits; and James Cromwell’s half arsed performance as Bush Senior, while the rest of the cast are putting a lot of effort into recreating the physical and vocal mannerisms of the famous politician they are portraying, Cromwell just doesn’t bother.
Waltz With Bashir – 2008, Ari Folman
Collected personal accounts of the 1982 Lebanon War from those who fought in it and then had to deal with it in later life, presented using an innovative animation style that looks like rotoscoping but apparently it isn’t. The film has a slow pace but the subject matter is interesting enough to hold your attention. Well worth a watch, particularly for the shocking ending.
Les Visiteurs Р1993, Jean-Marie Poir̩
I didn’t expect to like this film at all but I ended up liking it a lot. It’s completely bonkers, and very French, but also hilarious. It’s like no other comedy I’ve seen. The synopsis makes it sound rubbish: Jean Reno plays a 12th century French knight who gets transported to modern day France (1993) with his peasant servant, hijinks ensue, mainly in a posh hotel. The first half hour races along, they were clearly in a hurry to get to the future, but as soon as they get there it’s funny as hell, in a dated French kind of way.
The Monster Squad – 1987, Fred Dekker
One of the cultist cult films. Prime Tyler Stout poster fodder. I never understood why The Goonies was so popular, but with Monster Squad it’s far easier to appreciate why it became so beloved over the years. It’s the best type of kids’ film, basically because it’s not really suitable for kids. The young cast perv on girls, say rude words and then fight scary monsters with shotguns. There are plot holes you could drive a hearse through, but that doesn’t matter with a final act as good as this one.
Serial Mom – 1994, John Waters
A funny little film. Funny peculiar though, not necessarily funny ‘ha ha’. Kathleen Turner does a good job, better than the character deserved perhaps given how under defined she is. Maybe the whole point of the film is that we never really get to understand why the ‘Serial Mom’ is such a psycho. John Waters' most accessible film after Hairspray?
Bottle Shock – 2008, Randall Miller
Perhaps the most middle of the road film to ever premier at Sundance? It’s so inoffensive it’s offensive. The true story of how an eccentric English wine critic went to California to see if their wine was any good, and the humble American wines end up beating the French wines at some wine tasting, but they almost never got there...zzzzz. Alan Rickman parodies himself, which is a shame, ‘cos everyone likes Alan Rickman.
Saturday 26 June 2010
Wednesday 23 June 2010
WALL-E
WALL-E – 2008, Andrew Stanton
WALL-E is timeless. It is timeless because the animation and the story will never become dated. Modern 3D animation when viewed in high definition looks incredible, particularly when done on the scale of WALL-E. The first big Pixar films; Toy Story and A Bugs Life were about our world viewed from the perspective of tiny little toys and insects. This world view translated very well into 3D animation because animators could create models of characters and landscapes and show them in perfect scale with each other at all times. The tiny/giant world Pixar created looked amazing, so amazing that Pixar seemed tentative to set a film in the ‘real world’. Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles take place in a world more like reality but they do not try to appear at all realistic, they are very cartoon like. WALL-E is set in our reality, it even has some live footage of humans in it, but the world has changed enough for it to still be a complete fantasy.
As awesome as this film and almost all of the other Pixar films are, they still seems to be following in the footsteps of Aardman for the slapstick and Myazaki for the ‘there’s a meaasage here’ stuff. WALL-E has been described as ‘dark and cynical’ with an environmental message, but it’s not exactly Princess Mononoke. Even if it wasn’t a direct inspiration, the social and political commentary in WALL-E is very similar to Belleville Rendezvous (aka The Triplets of Bellville). I suppose that WALL-E’s greatest achievement is to create a serious and relevant subtext to a kids film that viewers of all ages can understand.
I’d love to see Pixar make an ‘adult’ film, something along the lines of Ghost in the Shell...?
WALL-E is timeless. It is timeless because the animation and the story will never become dated. Modern 3D animation when viewed in high definition looks incredible, particularly when done on the scale of WALL-E. The first big Pixar films; Toy Story and A Bugs Life were about our world viewed from the perspective of tiny little toys and insects. This world view translated very well into 3D animation because animators could create models of characters and landscapes and show them in perfect scale with each other at all times. The tiny/giant world Pixar created looked amazing, so amazing that Pixar seemed tentative to set a film in the ‘real world’. Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles take place in a world more like reality but they do not try to appear at all realistic, they are very cartoon like. WALL-E is set in our reality, it even has some live footage of humans in it, but the world has changed enough for it to still be a complete fantasy.
As awesome as this film and almost all of the other Pixar films are, they still seems to be following in the footsteps of Aardman for the slapstick and Myazaki for the ‘there’s a meaasage here’ stuff. WALL-E has been described as ‘dark and cynical’ with an environmental message, but it’s not exactly Princess Mononoke. Even if it wasn’t a direct inspiration, the social and political commentary in WALL-E is very similar to Belleville Rendezvous (aka The Triplets of Bellville). I suppose that WALL-E’s greatest achievement is to create a serious and relevant subtext to a kids film that viewers of all ages can understand.
I’d love to see Pixar make an ‘adult’ film, something along the lines of Ghost in the Shell...?
Tuesday 15 June 2010
M.
M. – 1931, Fritz Lang
Well, it’s a classic all right. The reason pre-war classics are usually better than post-war classics is because they were pioneering by necessity. M. has its faults, but it was made in 1931, so it’s not like Fritz had the benefit of copying Kurosawa. It was also Herr Lang’s first film made with sound after he had pushed silent film to its’ limits with Metropolis. Post-war films widely regarded as classics can be disappointing, The French Connection and Mean Streets spring to mind. Both are good films, but in their attempts to seem ‘edgy’, though well received at the time, don’t date well in my opinion.
‘Edgy’ was a word that would never have been used to describe a film in 1931, they weren’t post-modern yet. Another word missing from the cinematic lexicon in the thirties was ‘pacing’. The original cut of M. was about 117 minutes long, but the widely distributed edit was cut to 99 minutes. The version I saw was about 110 minutes long, not because it is the best edit, but because they couldn’t find a full print of the original. They cobbled together what extra minutes they could find from the vaults of various European film archives. I doubt the shorter version is missing anything important, but I suppose the whole point of revisiting and restoring these ancient works is to rediscover the director’s original vision as completely as possible.
M. is a directorial masterpiece, it’s also an incredible achievement technically given the time. It is clearly as inspirational and groundbreaking as Citizen Kane, but it doesn’t get the same credit. The most surprising thing about the film is how the subject matter is still so relevant. The villain of M, is a child killing pervert, a goggle-eyed paedophile bogyman who is hunted down by an angry mob of gangsters who decide his crime is far worse than any of theirs. It’s as though Fritz was receiving editions of The Sun from 70 years in the Future.
The bad guy is played by Peter Lorre who went on to have a prolific career in Hollywood as the creepy guy parodied in an hundred Loony Tunes shorts.
M. – The Classic that doesn’t disappoint.
Well, it’s a classic all right. The reason pre-war classics are usually better than post-war classics is because they were pioneering by necessity. M. has its faults, but it was made in 1931, so it’s not like Fritz had the benefit of copying Kurosawa. It was also Herr Lang’s first film made with sound after he had pushed silent film to its’ limits with Metropolis. Post-war films widely regarded as classics can be disappointing, The French Connection and Mean Streets spring to mind. Both are good films, but in their attempts to seem ‘edgy’, though well received at the time, don’t date well in my opinion.
‘Edgy’ was a word that would never have been used to describe a film in 1931, they weren’t post-modern yet. Another word missing from the cinematic lexicon in the thirties was ‘pacing’. The original cut of M. was about 117 minutes long, but the widely distributed edit was cut to 99 minutes. The version I saw was about 110 minutes long, not because it is the best edit, but because they couldn’t find a full print of the original. They cobbled together what extra minutes they could find from the vaults of various European film archives. I doubt the shorter version is missing anything important, but I suppose the whole point of revisiting and restoring these ancient works is to rediscover the director’s original vision as completely as possible.
M. is a directorial masterpiece, it’s also an incredible achievement technically given the time. It is clearly as inspirational and groundbreaking as Citizen Kane, but it doesn’t get the same credit. The most surprising thing about the film is how the subject matter is still so relevant. The villain of M, is a child killing pervert, a goggle-eyed paedophile bogyman who is hunted down by an angry mob of gangsters who decide his crime is far worse than any of theirs. It’s as though Fritz was receiving editions of The Sun from 70 years in the Future.
The bad guy is played by Peter Lorre who went on to have a prolific career in Hollywood as the creepy guy parodied in an hundred Loony Tunes shorts.
M. – The Classic that doesn’t disappoint.
Blood: The Last Vampire
Blood: The Last Vampire – 2009, Chris Nahon
The original Blood The Last Vampire is a 50 minute animated film (is 50 minutes feature length?) made in 2000, it’s really good. Even though it’s so short, it still manages to build the suspense slowly and reach a satisfying climax (not in a sexual way you perv). Set on an American Airforce base in Japan in the 60s, it manages to squeeze in a well structured and tight plot about a female vampire who hunts other vampires and who works for some mysterious ‘council’ or ‘agency’ or whatever. The audience is told enough to understand what’s going on, so the lack of back story doesn’t matter. Less is more in every sense.
Live action adaptations of popular and beloved anime rarely stir up enthusiasm amongst fans of the genre (live action Akira anyone?), but given that the original Blood offers such a good premise, I was looking forward to this one. What a shame they turned it into a crappy Japanese B-Movie.
Not that Japanese B-movies have to be all bad. Godzilla and its’ sequels is perhaps the most charming collected work of films there is. I’ve not seen Machine Girl, or Tokyo Gore Police or RoboGeisha or either of the Tetsuo films, but it’s clear from the trailers that they are completely honest. They intend to thrill and shock the audience, and they have some kind of original idea at the core, some ‘thing’, some ‘idea’ is being explored. And even if some of them are complete drivel, at least they had an original idea. To be honest, I’m not even sure if Blood is a B-Movie as they clearly put a lot of money into it, but the CGI effects and the acting are of a B-Movie standard.
Blood The Live Action Version swiftly gets through the whole story of the original in 30 minutes. The original ending becomes the peak at the end of the first act. Then we go off and discover the origins of the main character. Descent into unnecessary back story, peppered with attempts at ‘awesome’ action sequences, although there is an old man fighting ninjas at one point which is quite good. It’s actually remarkable they got it so wrong. Entire auditoriums of Japanese directors must have wept when they saw this. A shot for shot remake stretched out to 120 minutes would have been better
That they made such a mess of it is criminal. Whoever it is who owns the rights to the source material must have been keen for an international blockbuster, so they happily went along with a western director, a cute American girl to co star with the cute Japanese girl, and to use an English script (although given that the animated version will have been widely seen with the English soundtrack, that makes sense I guess).
Watch this one, not this one.
The original Blood The Last Vampire is a 50 minute animated film (is 50 minutes feature length?) made in 2000, it’s really good. Even though it’s so short, it still manages to build the suspense slowly and reach a satisfying climax (not in a sexual way you perv). Set on an American Airforce base in Japan in the 60s, it manages to squeeze in a well structured and tight plot about a female vampire who hunts other vampires and who works for some mysterious ‘council’ or ‘agency’ or whatever. The audience is told enough to understand what’s going on, so the lack of back story doesn’t matter. Less is more in every sense.
Live action adaptations of popular and beloved anime rarely stir up enthusiasm amongst fans of the genre (live action Akira anyone?), but given that the original Blood offers such a good premise, I was looking forward to this one. What a shame they turned it into a crappy Japanese B-Movie.
Not that Japanese B-movies have to be all bad. Godzilla and its’ sequels is perhaps the most charming collected work of films there is. I’ve not seen Machine Girl, or Tokyo Gore Police or RoboGeisha or either of the Tetsuo films, but it’s clear from the trailers that they are completely honest. They intend to thrill and shock the audience, and they have some kind of original idea at the core, some ‘thing’, some ‘idea’ is being explored. And even if some of them are complete drivel, at least they had an original idea. To be honest, I’m not even sure if Blood is a B-Movie as they clearly put a lot of money into it, but the CGI effects and the acting are of a B-Movie standard.
Blood The Live Action Version swiftly gets through the whole story of the original in 30 minutes. The original ending becomes the peak at the end of the first act. Then we go off and discover the origins of the main character. Descent into unnecessary back story, peppered with attempts at ‘awesome’ action sequences, although there is an old man fighting ninjas at one point which is quite good. It’s actually remarkable they got it so wrong. Entire auditoriums of Japanese directors must have wept when they saw this. A shot for shot remake stretched out to 120 minutes would have been better
That they made such a mess of it is criminal. Whoever it is who owns the rights to the source material must have been keen for an international blockbuster, so they happily went along with a western director, a cute American girl to co star with the cute Japanese girl, and to use an English script (although given that the animated version will have been widely seen with the English soundtrack, that makes sense I guess).
Watch this one, not this one.
Sunday 13 June 2010
Koyaanisqatsi
Koyaanisqatsi – 1982, Godfrey Reggio
Koyaanisqatsi (skip to 29 seconds) is one of the most influential films ever made. This is precisely the reason it’s not worth watching. If you watch TV, you’ve basically seen Koyaanisqatsi. The film is made up almost entirely of time lapse footage of stuff that looks cool when shot using time lapse. It starts off with ‘nature’, clouds and shadows and such, and then switches to ‘man’ or ‘technology’ or whatever with people passing through stations during rush hour and footage of assembly lines.
The most familiar parts of Koyaanisqatsi are footage of cars on highways at night (in time laps of course). To modern audiences this kind of stuff is instantly recognisable from car adverts and other films (Blade springs to mind for some reason). Seeing the red and white lights wiz past in patterns dictated by traffic lights is interesting in small doses, but in 1982 this stuff was new and amazing. So interesting that Koyaanisqatsi devotes about 20 minutes to it. There’s another 20 minutes each of factory assembly lines and large crowds walking through cities.
The point the film makers were getting at was some hippie bullshit about ‘impending disaster caused by the modern industrialised world’. Koyaanisqatsi means ‘life out of balance’ in Hopi. So keen was the director to provide an accurate translation of the Hopi language that he employed 6 Hopi consultants (at least that’s how many are credited). Yet in interviews the director is predictably vague about the meaning of his film and how it’s for the viewer to decide. He just ‘presents us with the evidence blah blah blah’.
After the first half hour I played the rest of Koyaanisqatsi DVD at double speed and the experience was no worse or better than it would have been otherwise. In fact you only need to watch about five minutes of it to appreciate what they were getting at.
Needless to say I won’t be watching either of the sequels.
Koyaanisqatsi (skip to 29 seconds) is one of the most influential films ever made. This is precisely the reason it’s not worth watching. If you watch TV, you’ve basically seen Koyaanisqatsi. The film is made up almost entirely of time lapse footage of stuff that looks cool when shot using time lapse. It starts off with ‘nature’, clouds and shadows and such, and then switches to ‘man’ or ‘technology’ or whatever with people passing through stations during rush hour and footage of assembly lines.
The most familiar parts of Koyaanisqatsi are footage of cars on highways at night (in time laps of course). To modern audiences this kind of stuff is instantly recognisable from car adverts and other films (Blade springs to mind for some reason). Seeing the red and white lights wiz past in patterns dictated by traffic lights is interesting in small doses, but in 1982 this stuff was new and amazing. So interesting that Koyaanisqatsi devotes about 20 minutes to it. There’s another 20 minutes each of factory assembly lines and large crowds walking through cities.
The point the film makers were getting at was some hippie bullshit about ‘impending disaster caused by the modern industrialised world’. Koyaanisqatsi means ‘life out of balance’ in Hopi. So keen was the director to provide an accurate translation of the Hopi language that he employed 6 Hopi consultants (at least that’s how many are credited). Yet in interviews the director is predictably vague about the meaning of his film and how it’s for the viewer to decide. He just ‘presents us with the evidence blah blah blah’.
After the first half hour I played the rest of Koyaanisqatsi DVD at double speed and the experience was no worse or better than it would have been otherwise. In fact you only need to watch about five minutes of it to appreciate what they were getting at.
Needless to say I won’t be watching either of the sequels.
Saturday 12 June 2010
Hamlet 2
Hamlet 2 – 2008, Andrew Fleming
Hamlet 2 is a parody of a comedy. At least I hope it is. It takes many aspects of contemporary comedies and uses them to show how formulaic a lot of ‘independent’ comedy has become.
H2 is set in a small town in America, this in itself is supposed to be funny somehow). Kooky yet sincere characters live in a small community. They are eccentric but if they appear unbelievable, that doesn’t matter so long as everybody else behaves normally around them. The villain of the film is a bully who doesn’t understand the crazy main characters and tolerates them the least. Sound familiar?
Napoleon Dynamite (2004), Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and Juno (2007, were all very successful. Napoleon is overrated but was very well received at the time because it was so original. Little Miss Sunshine hit the independent comedy nail right on the head, following in the footsteps of Sideways (2004). Juno (which isn’t as good or as bad a people say it is) inspired a generation of teenager girls to be smart arses, better than aspiring to be a WAG I suppose. Between 2004 and 2007 the ‘delightful independent comedy film’ template was created. A template that will last forever. Sometimes film makers get it right; Broken Flowers (2005), sometimes they get it wrong; Rocket Science (2007).
Hamlet 2 gets it the most wrong of all. It’s not necessarily the formula that’s wrong; like any comedy Hamlet 2 relies upon the jokes and the performances to make it funny, all of which fall short. The sad thing about Hamlet 2 is that the lead is played by Steve Coogan. His performance is very Cooganesque, but the character is not a Steve Coogan character. And he puts on a very annoying American accent.
Stop getting Coogan wrong!
Luckily I caught this film on TV so I didn’t waste a precious LoveFilm delivery.
‘This years Napoleon Dynamite’ urrrrgh.
Hamlet 2 is a parody of a comedy. At least I hope it is. It takes many aspects of contemporary comedies and uses them to show how formulaic a lot of ‘independent’ comedy has become.
H2 is set in a small town in America, this in itself is supposed to be funny somehow). Kooky yet sincere characters live in a small community. They are eccentric but if they appear unbelievable, that doesn’t matter so long as everybody else behaves normally around them. The villain of the film is a bully who doesn’t understand the crazy main characters and tolerates them the least. Sound familiar?
Napoleon Dynamite (2004), Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and Juno (2007, were all very successful. Napoleon is overrated but was very well received at the time because it was so original. Little Miss Sunshine hit the independent comedy nail right on the head, following in the footsteps of Sideways (2004). Juno (which isn’t as good or as bad a people say it is) inspired a generation of teenager girls to be smart arses, better than aspiring to be a WAG I suppose. Between 2004 and 2007 the ‘delightful independent comedy film’ template was created. A template that will last forever. Sometimes film makers get it right; Broken Flowers (2005), sometimes they get it wrong; Rocket Science (2007).
Hamlet 2 gets it the most wrong of all. It’s not necessarily the formula that’s wrong; like any comedy Hamlet 2 relies upon the jokes and the performances to make it funny, all of which fall short. The sad thing about Hamlet 2 is that the lead is played by Steve Coogan. His performance is very Cooganesque, but the character is not a Steve Coogan character. And he puts on a very annoying American accent.
Stop getting Coogan wrong!
Luckily I caught this film on TV so I didn’t waste a precious LoveFilm delivery.
‘This years Napoleon Dynamite’ urrrrgh.
Tuesday 8 June 2010
The Quick and The Dead
The Quick and The Dead – 1995, Sam Raimi
The best thing about a lot of good films is their excellent ensemble cast. The best examples are of course Predator and the Alien films. An ensemble cast only works if all the characters are well established, even if they don’t have much screen time. The Quick and The Dead contains at least ten characters each with their personality and motivation are all clearly defined, even though only four of them are the main characters of the film. The four leads are, in order of importance; Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, pre gladiator Russel Crowe and a young Leonardo DeCaprio. Keith David and Lance Henriksen are in there as well, in a sense they are underused, but there’s enough going on in this film as it is.
TQATD is a western directed by the guy who did the Evil Dead trilogy, before he did the Spiderman trilogy. At the time it was his biggest budget picture to date, about twice the cost of Darkman (the Liam Neeson comic book vehicle).
The plot involves a gunfighter competition in a town called Redemption. Almost all the characters are gunslingers and the film revolves around them pairing up and taking part in shootouts in the street. Action and drama in equal measure, the perfect cocktail.
Sam’s western is an homage to westerns, made long before the self conscious referential homage became popular and quickly got old (rant, grumble etc). The film is full of B-Movie clichés, but they work perfectly within the story and whole ‘studio western’ vibe that Raimi achieved. He made exactly the film he intended to, but in later years he has apparently expressed his regret at how it turned out, suggesting he didn’t know what he was doing. He probably just regrets that it did so badly upon release.
This film and Bruce Willis’ Last Man Standing (a remake of Yojimbo directed by the great Walter Hill released a year earlier) both bombed at the box office, possibly because they were ahead of their time. For some reason it took Kill Bill to make such films cool.
The best thing about a lot of good films is their excellent ensemble cast. The best examples are of course Predator and the Alien films. An ensemble cast only works if all the characters are well established, even if they don’t have much screen time. The Quick and The Dead contains at least ten characters each with their personality and motivation are all clearly defined, even though only four of them are the main characters of the film. The four leads are, in order of importance; Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, pre gladiator Russel Crowe and a young Leonardo DeCaprio. Keith David and Lance Henriksen are in there as well, in a sense they are underused, but there’s enough going on in this film as it is.
TQATD is a western directed by the guy who did the Evil Dead trilogy, before he did the Spiderman trilogy. At the time it was his biggest budget picture to date, about twice the cost of Darkman (the Liam Neeson comic book vehicle).
The plot involves a gunfighter competition in a town called Redemption. Almost all the characters are gunslingers and the film revolves around them pairing up and taking part in shootouts in the street. Action and drama in equal measure, the perfect cocktail.
Sam’s western is an homage to westerns, made long before the self conscious referential homage became popular and quickly got old (rant, grumble etc). The film is full of B-Movie clichés, but they work perfectly within the story and whole ‘studio western’ vibe that Raimi achieved. He made exactly the film he intended to, but in later years he has apparently expressed his regret at how it turned out, suggesting he didn’t know what he was doing. He probably just regrets that it did so badly upon release.
This film and Bruce Willis’ Last Man Standing (a remake of Yojimbo directed by the great Walter Hill released a year earlier) both bombed at the box office, possibly because they were ahead of their time. For some reason it took Kill Bill to make such films cool.
Friday 4 June 2010
Ten Short Film Reviews 3
Any Given Sunday – 1999, Oliver Stone
It doesn’t need to be three hours long, but this is a good film with a good cast. Jamie Foxx plays Willie Beamen as though he was born to ball. Eyes peeled for a brief flash of Jesse from Saved by the Bell’s minge. Oliver Stones fictional films are way better than his biographies. I pray he never makes a film about his best mate Fidel Castro.
Beowulf – 2007, Robert Zemeckis
I was surprised it was given a 12 rating as it is overtly sexual. It was given a 15 rating in Germany, probably because of naked virtual Angelina Jolie. The animation is good but still not quite as perfect as the incredibly laborious motion capture technique involved in filming would suggest. And Ray Winstone is miscast in the lead. ‘I will kill you’re monsta, you black bawsterd!’ All that said, I still like and recommend it.
Harry Brown – 2009, Daniel Barber
Michael Cane goes all Charles Bronson on us and does his grim, inner city council estate version of ‘Deathwish’ Cane is the best thing in this film as the rest of the cast are a bit crap, particularly Plan B. Yes, that’s right; Plan B is in this film.
Fantastic Mr Fox – 2009, Wes Anderson
If you forget about Roald Dahl and remember that this is a Wes Anderson film, then you’ll be able to enjoy it. Thankfully it’s more like The Life Aquatic (ie a complete fantasy) and less like The Darjeeling Limited (which seems to straddle both fantasy and reality, and fails somewhat).
The Thing – 1982, John Carpenter
I watched this on Blue Ray, and as the dudes who they interviewed for the extra features say; those creatures weren’t just puppets and props, they were art. One day I’ll see this on the big screen, and then I can die happy.
Up – 2009, Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
It’s another very good Pixar film. Those guys will polish a story and a script until its perfect. But in this case it seems like they just couldn’t follow one idea through far enough to make a whole film of it. So rather than have a good first couple of acts and then let the ending slide (a la ‘You Don’t Mess With The Zohan’ and a thousand other comedies) the boys at Pixar just took two well sculpted scripts and stuck them together with a skit about talking dogs to cover the join. Still funny though.
JCVD – 2008, Mabrouk El Mechri
Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Jean-Claude Van Damme and when he pours his heart out on screen he makes you love Jean-Claude Van Damme. The film has a beige, washed out look to it which almost works but they went a bit too far – it’s a common fault of shooting on digital, it makes colour adjustment in post production very easy, and often directors/editors over do it with the saturation. But that’s a minor rant on a film that’s well worth a watch and has an excellent soundtrack. I particularly liked the acoustic arrangement of Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ by Marie Mazziotti that plays over the end credits.
Imagine if that primary school teacher you had who played the guitar was actually good, rather than shit.
Rocky – 1976, John G. Avlidsen
Vastly overrated, but without Rocky there is no Rocky III and no Rocky IV. No Eye of the Tiger and no Hearts on Fire. God bless you Sylvester.
Rocky II – 1979, Sylvester Stallone
Even though I watched it recently I still have trouble remembering what happens in this one apart from the rematch at the end...? Oh yeah, Adrian has Rocky’s baby and then seems less concerned about her husbands well being and sends him of to fight Apollo. ‘Win’
Rocky Balboa – 2006, Sylvester Stallone
Massive Rocky fan that I am, I was disappointed but not surprised to see Stallone veer from the formula that made Rocky III and Rocky IV so great: Boxing match/Training Montage/Boxing match. Nothing else is necessary, least of all the Rocky’s rants about the decline of society and the culture of victimhood.
It doesn’t need to be three hours long, but this is a good film with a good cast. Jamie Foxx plays Willie Beamen as though he was born to ball. Eyes peeled for a brief flash of Jesse from Saved by the Bell’s minge. Oliver Stones fictional films are way better than his biographies. I pray he never makes a film about his best mate Fidel Castro.
Beowulf – 2007, Robert Zemeckis
I was surprised it was given a 12 rating as it is overtly sexual. It was given a 15 rating in Germany, probably because of naked virtual Angelina Jolie. The animation is good but still not quite as perfect as the incredibly laborious motion capture technique involved in filming would suggest. And Ray Winstone is miscast in the lead. ‘I will kill you’re monsta, you black bawsterd!’ All that said, I still like and recommend it.
Harry Brown – 2009, Daniel Barber
Michael Cane goes all Charles Bronson on us and does his grim, inner city council estate version of ‘Deathwish’ Cane is the best thing in this film as the rest of the cast are a bit crap, particularly Plan B. Yes, that’s right; Plan B is in this film.
Fantastic Mr Fox – 2009, Wes Anderson
If you forget about Roald Dahl and remember that this is a Wes Anderson film, then you’ll be able to enjoy it. Thankfully it’s more like The Life Aquatic (ie a complete fantasy) and less like The Darjeeling Limited (which seems to straddle both fantasy and reality, and fails somewhat).
The Thing – 1982, John Carpenter
I watched this on Blue Ray, and as the dudes who they interviewed for the extra features say; those creatures weren’t just puppets and props, they were art. One day I’ll see this on the big screen, and then I can die happy.
Up – 2009, Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
It’s another very good Pixar film. Those guys will polish a story and a script until its perfect. But in this case it seems like they just couldn’t follow one idea through far enough to make a whole film of it. So rather than have a good first couple of acts and then let the ending slide (a la ‘You Don’t Mess With The Zohan’ and a thousand other comedies) the boys at Pixar just took two well sculpted scripts and stuck them together with a skit about talking dogs to cover the join. Still funny though.
JCVD – 2008, Mabrouk El Mechri
Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Jean-Claude Van Damme and when he pours his heart out on screen he makes you love Jean-Claude Van Damme. The film has a beige, washed out look to it which almost works but they went a bit too far – it’s a common fault of shooting on digital, it makes colour adjustment in post production very easy, and often directors/editors over do it with the saturation. But that’s a minor rant on a film that’s well worth a watch and has an excellent soundtrack. I particularly liked the acoustic arrangement of Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ by Marie Mazziotti that plays over the end credits.
Imagine if that primary school teacher you had who played the guitar was actually good, rather than shit.
Rocky – 1976, John G. Avlidsen
Vastly overrated, but without Rocky there is no Rocky III and no Rocky IV. No Eye of the Tiger and no Hearts on Fire. God bless you Sylvester.
Rocky II – 1979, Sylvester Stallone
Even though I watched it recently I still have trouble remembering what happens in this one apart from the rematch at the end...? Oh yeah, Adrian has Rocky’s baby and then seems less concerned about her husbands well being and sends him of to fight Apollo. ‘Win’
Rocky Balboa – 2006, Sylvester Stallone
Massive Rocky fan that I am, I was disappointed but not surprised to see Stallone veer from the formula that made Rocky III and Rocky IV so great: Boxing match/Training Montage/Boxing match. Nothing else is necessary, least of all the Rocky’s rants about the decline of society and the culture of victimhood.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)