Triple Bill Mini Musings: Nostalgia, Punching, and Bureaucracy...

American Pie Reunion:
What's it about?
Third official sequel to the 1999 teen sex comedy smash-hit in which four graduating high school seniors sought to lose their virginity after their Prom. Now in their early thirties, the gang - the full gang this time (nevermind the missing faces of American Wedding) - reunite for their high school reunion.
Who would I recognise in it?
Everyone from the original movies plus Katrina '30 Rock' Bowden's arse.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
When such an extended ensemble cast are involved - and with nostalgia reigning supreme - the traditional focus of the three act structure gets somewhat lost between the "hey, remember me?!" reunion scenes, not to mention the sheer amount of spinning plates which, fortunately, do a solid enough job of keeping everything in-check. There are some nice bittersweet touches thrown in that keep the evolving yarns of these teens-no-more fresh - they're fully-fledged adults with their own separate lives, so they have to come to terms with being usurped by another group of breast-obsessed lads. Furthermore, Stifler has failed to really move on since college, so his pining for the old days leaves a tinge of melancholly that fits right in with the overall tone of nostalgia. Even the infamous "MILF Guys" are given deeper recesses to explore (relatively speaking). There's the requisite amount of raunch thrown in (more-so in the slightly longer "unrated" cut), and while many characters can get a bit side-lined (the primary focus was always Jim and his closest male buddies), it packs in enough variety to keep the surprisingly long running time (1 hour 54 minutes) ticking along nicely. The effect might be lost on new-comers, and those who caught-up on these flicks years later, but these movies hit my year-group at just the right time - a couple of years on either side of my graduating year is where American Pie always hit hardest, and its no different here. Thoroughly enjoyable - and it's nice to see they didn't give away all the good bits in the trailer - good.

Click "READ MORE" below for the low-down on gut-punching tower block action, and a beautiful Orwellian nightmare...

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus...

It's always the case with a film by Terry Gilliam, that you never really know what you're going to get. You don't know what you should expect, and sometimes you barely know what you're paying to see. For the longest time I had no idea what this film was actually about, or in what time period it was set, or anything.

Much of the chatter around it, naturally, surrounded the death of Heath Ledger (who gives another great performance here, proving like The Dark Knight did, that a truly great acting talent was taken too soon). Trouble does tend to follow a Gilliam film, and such tribulations are well documented, but these actually add to the flavour and occasion of a Terry Gilliam film.

The fact that he is still making movies, even after all his filmmaking career has been through, is just really inspiring in itself.

To respond to a couple of oft-talked about things, the transition from Ledger to Depp/Law/Farrell is never jarring. It makes total sense in this world, and is never confusing. At times you'll even swear that his three replacements actually resemble Ledger.

Another thing is the Imaginarium itself. Mark Kermode spoke about how the Imaginarium itself doesn't feel weighty enough - much of it being CGI - and this is indeed the case. After a moment that, for me at least, really made an impression (the first opening of the Doctor Parnassus sideshow outside a London nightclub), a scene that really shows off the weight and sheer size of the horse-drawn show, the world of the imaginarium itself does indeed feel weightless.

It's like a more serious, but no less weird, big budget version of Gilliam's Monty Python cartoons. It's wonderfully daft and quirky and colourful and actually, quite confusing - but in a nice way. This is indeed, as has previously been talked about by others, a film that has to be seen more than once to understand what you've just been shown (and perhaps even then you won't get everything). Although, most Gilliam films are like that, so it seems.

But is the weightlessness a bad thing? Certainly, I don't see how it could have been achieved practically at all, so it wasn't a bother to me.

This all said though, I still have no idea quite what to make of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. However, the fact that it has remained in my mind, swirling around in there, is testament to it being a bloody good film. If only I could tell you exactly why...