Posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago at 8:54 am. 0 comments
Rating: 
I have read many glowing reviews of District 9 but I have to say I just hated it. First time I felt like I’d wasted my time in the cinema since 28 Weeks Later. Maybe it’s not my genre (but I love Terminator, Alien, Blade Runner, Minority Report), but I found this mind numbing rather than though provoking.
The concept starts out interesting – a faux-realist documentary showing archive footage and talking heads commenting on a retrospective incident involving the alien colony that lives in District 9, a ghetto just outside Johannesburg, after their ship becomes stranded over earth. This is good – situating an alien/human engagement some time after first contact takes out the element of shock and awe and opens up the promising exploration of social issues such as immigration, racism, apartheid, genetic research and concerns like the horribly contemporary blurring of government, ngo and private roles particularly in the military complex. The small leap from UN to MNU is disturbing.
However I found that the film rapidly loses it’s way. The satire and social commentary wasn’t subtle enough but increasingly laid on in simplistic and stereotypical lumps that made be both cringe and snigger and the thrills become increasingly crash bang wallop shoot ‘em up rather than suspenseful.
Ultimately I thought this film couldn’t really decide what it wanted to be, throwing in tropes referenced from earlier films across many genres, much as the aliens scavenge amongst the human waste dumped in their ghetto. I didn’t care about any of the protagonists and by the end I was simply bored. The film progresses through acts like levels in a computer game and it probably would make an interesting concept game, but I didn’t find it a great evening at the cinema.
Posted 8 months ago at 8:36 am. 0 comments
Not had time to watch many films recently. Certainly my new year resolution of going to the cinema more seems to have failed. It is now July and I’ve been once. FAIL!
I still have Love Film to supply me with a production line of DVDs and, until November, Sky Movies. When Friday comes there is nothing I like more than to get home, crack open an ice cold beer and sink into a good story.
The Constant Gardener (2005)
Rating:
The cinematography in this Fernando Meirelles’ thriller is great. The rich, lush colours of the contemporary scenes and the bleached palette of the flashback scenes combine to prevent the narrative becoming too confusing as this tail of corruption and intrigue jags back and forth across Britain and Africa, and from the present to the past. Ralph Fiennes is typically repressed as the British diplomat Justin Quayle mourning the horrific murder of his wife Tessa (an excellent and vibrant Rachel Weisz) and trying to uncover the secrets that brought her to her death. It is sad, but then anything can make me cry on a Friday night, but strangely lacking in suspense and chemistry between the leads.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Rating:
Both this and the next film follow the familiar rom-com narrative arc of romantic disaster and boy meets girl misunderstandings until finally ending up with personal salvation, reunion and romantic perfection. If the scenario is well trodden both do well to provide some genuine laughs and fresh perspectives on this age old theme. This one I would describe as a boy Rom-Com. It is written by Jason Segel who also plays the lead character Peter Bretter, a man trying to get over the break up of his relationship with TV star Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), by going on holiday to Hawaii and staying in the same hotel where Sarah is enjoying a holiday with newe beau Brit rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). Peter is basically a depressed drip whose dream is to write a puppet opera based on Dracula (yes I can understand why she left him to). Probably shouldn’t say that as essentially this is a film about male insecurity, and the male characters are by far the most well developed with Sarah essentially existing to play bad girlfriend, whilst Mila Kunis is introduced as hotel employee Rachel Jansen who despite being an independent rebel for most of the film ends up being the gorgeous girl who saves Peter from himself. Writing the plot down that baldly makes t he filme seem worse than it is because if the romance is lacking, the comedy makes up for it with several amsuing caricatures particularly Russell Brand, who I can’t normally stand, seems to excel when playing a pastiche of himself.
What Happens in Vegas
Rating: 
This started of badly. The opening premise is so contrived, so ludicrous and so over the top it nearly made me stop paying attention. Jack Fuller gets fired by his tired, Joy McNally gets ditched by her fiance both in utterly humiliating ways. To drown their sorrows they go to Las Vegas with their best friends and get so drunk they end up marrying each other. Quite. Stick with it however, and once the conceit has been established this opens out into a likeable screwball romantic comedy in the we hate each other but soon we’re going to realise we love each other tradition of bickering couples. These films rely so much on the chemistry between the couple and Ashton Kutcher as Jack has plenty of charisma is this, and Cameron Diaz as Joy puts in one of her better and less plastic performances. Together they are a charming couple trying to better each other and looking every so perplexed and bewildered when they realise they might actually like each other. These moments are genuinely touching but the film never descends into schmaltzy sickly sweetness. Jack and Joy’s bickering may lack the wit of the classics of this sub-genre, but their friends Tipper (Lake Bell) and Hater (Rob Corddry) keep things nicely curdled throughout with their own personal hate/hate relationship. Stupid but fun.
Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 11:15 pm. 0 comments
Rating:
So Ben Affleck is a much better screenwriter and director than he is an actor, Casey is a much better actor than his brother (and quite absorbingly cute), but we live in a horribly morally ambiguous world. This is definitely worth watching, OK the plot straggles a bit into melodrama at the end but as it’s in the service of some subtly slippery characterisations it works. The photography and editing is crisp, clean and stylish and the acting is also excellent throughout: Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman you expect to be good but it is Casey Affleck as Patrick Kenzie who sustains the film as his moral core can’t help but bubble up over his baby faced street guy exterior like some moral lava erupting from his Catholic upringing.
His moral loyalty to absolution, the law and the complex bonds of his tribe is contrasted with the moral stance of his girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan) and the police who see things in black and white but according to their own personal moral codes they impose on the unedifying scenario of a drug runner mother who has lost her daughter. Amy Ryan is excellent as Helene McCready: both perpetrator and victim. She brilliantly portrays Helene as almost a child: first deliberately disaffected to hide her negligence, then gradually fighting the awareness of the enormity of what she has done wrong, before effortlessly slipping into her own ways once redeemed. There is not a lot to like about Helene McCready, but Patrick is not sure this should invalidate her as a human being and as a mother, even if that turns out not to be the best thing for her daughter. This is a complex moral dilemma, and like a Shakespearean device it uses melodrama, genre and a complex plot to illuminate it.
Not the lightest film for a Friday night but satisfying and thought provoking.
