The Fighter:
Like a new Rocky for the new millennium, The Fighter shares the same sense of an underdog from a tough, blue collar neighbourhood trying to overcome that which keeps him down, and punch above his weight in the process. Actors Wahlberg, Bale, Leo, and Adams all give inhabited performances, particularly Bale who once again transforms himself into his chosen role.
There's a subtle sense of humour dotted around the flick too, which helps keep the overall feel of the movie as tough, but not joyless, and similar to the final chapter in the Rocky saga, the fight scenes are handled with the same pay-per-view TV immediacy. By the final fight I was damn near ready to leap to my feet and start cheering with my fist thrusting into the air.
True Grit:
Of the Coen's recent batch of films, I really dug No Country For Old Men, enjoyed the 'standard Coens' Burn After Reading, and respected their unapologeticly exclusive A Serious Man - but out of the three, No Country was the one that really stood out to me as the Coens at full speed. Similarly, True Grit has that same sense of the Coen brothers in full swing.
At the time of writing this I haven't seen the John Wayne version - but I plan to at some point - so I can only go on this 2010 version (more a re-telling of the book, than a re-making of the movie, according to the Coens), but in short I loved it.
Jeff Bridges does a fantastic job at portraying the gruff, almost belligerent Cogburn - the mix of the eye patch, the grumbling near-unintelligible drawl, and a sense that this is Cogburn makes for a potent package ... it's not Jeff Bridges, it's not The Dude, it is Cogburn, and he's a tough man you would hate upon first meeting until you had been through some trials side-by-side that would earn you his respect.
Matt Damon plays it much more straight-laced, with a few flourishes here and there (his cocky flashing of his lawman's badge), but it's Hailee Steinfeld who steals the entire show. Her performance is phenomenal, and all the more so as this is her first movie. For a 13 year old girl (at the time of filming) to be so in command of her scenes - and indeed in command of Bridges and Damon throughout the movie - is just superb. Quite frankly the Academy have done themselves a disservice by not putting her into the Leading Actress category for the Oscars (she was instead nominated for Supporting Actress - when she's unquestionably the only prominent Actress in the entire movie), but then it's not the first time that the Academy have made a daft decision (and not the first for this year's show either - after all, where is Christopher Nolan's Best Director nomination?!).
Roger Deakins cinematography is, of course, beautiful - albeit less adventurous than what he provided in 2007's luxurious, poetic, and meandering The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Rounding out the package even Jarlath Conroy turns up in the movie. "Who?" you might ask - well, if you're a fan of George A. Romero's Day of the Dead, then you'll know him as the hard-drinking Irish radio operator McDermott. So that was a nice little cherry on top of a decidedly well made Sundae.
Highly recommended.
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Double Bill Mini Musings: One Hard, One Gooey...
Armored:
Generic, predictable, rushed, undercooked, underacted by actors who have all done far, far better work, not terribly exciting (or even slightly exciting) ... in short, it was pish and pointless. The only plus was that Fred Ward was in it, who I remember fondly as playing Earl Bassett in the first two Tremors movies.
The Stuff:
I've seen the poster/cover art for this flick all over the place - a typically unsubtle image of a man's deforming, agonised face expelling thick, white gunge from every hole ... so, pretty cool then. Annoyingly, that never really happens in the entire movie, which is suggested to be a gory horror, but it's decidedly not.
In fact it's got quite a decent budget behind it for this kind of flick - replete with sequences in studios, supermarkets, abandoned towns, private jets and so on - but it's all utterly wasted on a dreadfully unfocussed script which is machine-gunned with plot holes ... a problem only exacerbated by further machine-gunning to any shred of plot consistency in the edit.
The flick leaps from one sequence to another with sudden gear changes, the appearance of entirely excised scenes, and knocks to simple logic or common sense. It barely makes a lick of sense, and the opening scene is laughably to-the-point ... perhaps this was intentional, but it seems to take itself too seriously with it's apparent subtext of consumer and capitalist criticism, for any suggestion that it's a spoof or horror comedy to convincingly hold water. Remember how The Happening was called a tongue-in-cheek spoof after it turned out to be rubbish?
This all said, the scale afforded by a seemingly decent budget is impressive - most notably for the inclusion of some lovely visual effects, model work, and whenever large quantities of the thick, gooey "Stuff" gets loose and starts sliding up walls, out windows, bodies, and generally consuming all in its path ... indeed it begins to feel like an homage to The Blob at times.
Furthermore the protagonist - an industrial snoop/saboteur/investigator/blackmailer - gets some entertaining dialogue to chew on, but the rest of the film drowns in the afforementioned gargantuan plot holes and complete lack of screenwriting, directorial, or editorial focus.
It could have been a really good flick if it wasn't for the film's pervasive flaws, which over-ride the things it gets right. A pity. Perhaps it's a movie held in high regard by some fans who came to it in their formative years back when it originally came out - and all the power to them - but I personally didn't dig it. Enough was more than enough, to ham-fistedly parody a particular line of dialogue.
Generic, predictable, rushed, undercooked, underacted by actors who have all done far, far better work, not terribly exciting (or even slightly exciting) ... in short, it was pish and pointless. The only plus was that Fred Ward was in it, who I remember fondly as playing Earl Bassett in the first two Tremors movies.
The Stuff:
I've seen the poster/cover art for this flick all over the place - a typically unsubtle image of a man's deforming, agonised face expelling thick, white gunge from every hole ... so, pretty cool then. Annoyingly, that never really happens in the entire movie, which is suggested to be a gory horror, but it's decidedly not.
In fact it's got quite a decent budget behind it for this kind of flick - replete with sequences in studios, supermarkets, abandoned towns, private jets and so on - but it's all utterly wasted on a dreadfully unfocussed script which is machine-gunned with plot holes ... a problem only exacerbated by further machine-gunning to any shred of plot consistency in the edit.
The flick leaps from one sequence to another with sudden gear changes, the appearance of entirely excised scenes, and knocks to simple logic or common sense. It barely makes a lick of sense, and the opening scene is laughably to-the-point ... perhaps this was intentional, but it seems to take itself too seriously with it's apparent subtext of consumer and capitalist criticism, for any suggestion that it's a spoof or horror comedy to convincingly hold water. Remember how The Happening was called a tongue-in-cheek spoof after it turned out to be rubbish?
This all said, the scale afforded by a seemingly decent budget is impressive - most notably for the inclusion of some lovely visual effects, model work, and whenever large quantities of the thick, gooey "Stuff" gets loose and starts sliding up walls, out windows, bodies, and generally consuming all in its path ... indeed it begins to feel like an homage to The Blob at times.
Furthermore the protagonist - an industrial snoop/saboteur/investigator/blackmailer - gets some entertaining dialogue to chew on, but the rest of the film drowns in the afforementioned gargantuan plot holes and complete lack of screenwriting, directorial, or editorial focus.
It could have been a really good flick if it wasn't for the film's pervasive flaws, which over-ride the things it gets right. A pity. Perhaps it's a movie held in high regard by some fans who came to it in their formative years back when it originally came out - and all the power to them - but I personally didn't dig it. Enough was more than enough, to ham-fistedly parody a particular line of dialogue.
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Contempt of Conscience - full documentary online...
A few years back now I was involved in a documentary project called Contempt of Conscience.
It has now been uploaded in-full to YouTube, and you can watch it via the links (or embedded windows) below - or you can visit Top Documentary Films and see it there.
PART ONE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2pVngostcs
PART TWO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCkox_jq9wQ
PART THREE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yru4-86epCo
It has now been uploaded in-full to YouTube, and you can watch it via the links (or embedded windows) below - or you can visit Top Documentary Films and see it there.
PART ONE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2pVngostcs
PART TWO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCkox_jq9wQ
PART THREE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yru4-86epCo
Friday, 11 February 2011
Quadruple Bill Mini Musings: February 2011...
Daybreakers:
Didn't fancy it last year in the cinema, but it was a decent watch on Sky Movies. The most impressive thing about the movie was the ideas proposed by the script - a society in which humans are an endangered species after vampires have taken over the world. The issues of blood supply running low, of capturing and harvesting humans for blood, of blood rationing, of vampire canibalism, and a near-future world that runs exclusively in a nocturnal fashion.
That was all very impressive and interesting, but it's somewhat skimped on in a 90 minute movie that has to hit certain basic plot points along the way to bash through the action. If it didn't have any thought put into it, it would have been a rather dull and generic action movie, but with the inclusion of a relatively complex society it was elevated to much better fare. It's just a shame it wasn't a much more thoughtful two hour movie that really explored the socio-political themes in far greater depth.
Stripes:
Having recently seen Meatballs, I understood certain references in shows like Family Guy - and once again with Stripes it's the same deal. It's not amazingly funny, and I'm not of the generation that would have been teenagers when this flick came out, however Bill Murray's comedy is timeless - and it's worth seeing just for that alone - plus you get earlier work from the likes of Ramis, Candy, and Reitman.
Coogan's Bluff:
It's an "offbeat police drama" - according to the Electronic Programme Guide - and I only watched it because of Clint Eastwood. I didn't much care for it, to be honest. There are some nice dialogue moments (such as Clint's Arizona Sheriff Coogan dealing with a New York cab driver), but it's not particularly dramatic, or exciting, or all that interesting. Plus the sexual politics are very out-of-date by today's standards ... so it hasn't aged especially well in that respect.
Piranha 3D (Blu-Ray):
I wasn't particularly interested in seeing this in the cinema - not least because of the jacked-up price of a 3D cinema ticket - and for the same amount of cash I was able to get the Blu-Ray, which features the movie in 2D as well as both Stereoscopic and Anaglyph 3D. I don't have a 3D telly, but if I knew someone who had one sometime in the future I could watch it over at their place.
As it is though I watched the flick in good old 2D - with a skim-through afterwards in Anaglyph 3D, which, let's be honest, hasn't improved as a technology in the slightest. Even in a darkened room the 3D effect was minimal at best, and just gave me sore eyes with the red/blue glasses. Perhaps the Stereoscopic version works better, but Anaglyph 3D - for sure - is still rubbish. In fact you can practically watch the Anaglyph 3D version without the glasses on as most of the time the layers are so close together there's barely any noticeable difference.
In 2D however it was an enjoyable, 1980s throwback-style romp. It's the sort of flick in which a CGI piranha regurgitates a bitten-off and half-eaten male member into the camera lens ... which pretty much sums up the approach this flick has to the subject matter at hand. It's not meant to be taken seriously by any stretch of the imagination, it's not supposed to be scary either - it's supposed to be lurid, funny, gross-out, and just a bloody good chuckle.
Richard Dreyfuss cameos as "a version of his Matt Hooper character from Jaws" at the very beginning, and indeed Christopher Lloyd resurrects his crowd-pleasing wild scientist schtick as a fish-fascinated pet shop owner. From the outset the flick is drenched in gore, nudity, and silliness - this is a movie custom made for six-pack home viewing with some buddies.
It licks along at a fair old pace too (the deleted scenes clearly being cut to keep the flick under 90 minutes, as they're mostly pretty good scenes in themselves), so it never outstays its welcome, and it all builds towards an end-of-second-act orgy of boobs, blood and gruesome gore at a marina party. It's an audacious, over-the-top, gag-a-second drag race through as many naked bodies and half-devoured limbs, torsos, and faces as possible - in no uncertain terms, KNB FX have royally out-done themselves on this flick. The gore is copious, entertaining, and endlessly creative - so you gore hounds are most definitely catered for here. In fact, it's the ideal teenage movie - chock full of sex, violence, and general daftness - I really enjoyed it as a 20-something, and I would have likewise enjoyed the hell out of it as a teenager.
Apparently a sequel is in the works, and if it's as good as this flick - one of the handful of worthwhile horror remakes out there (including The Hills Have Eyes, also directed by Alexandre Aja) - then I'll be there with bells on.
Didn't fancy it last year in the cinema, but it was a decent watch on Sky Movies. The most impressive thing about the movie was the ideas proposed by the script - a society in which humans are an endangered species after vampires have taken over the world. The issues of blood supply running low, of capturing and harvesting humans for blood, of blood rationing, of vampire canibalism, and a near-future world that runs exclusively in a nocturnal fashion.
That was all very impressive and interesting, but it's somewhat skimped on in a 90 minute movie that has to hit certain basic plot points along the way to bash through the action. If it didn't have any thought put into it, it would have been a rather dull and generic action movie, but with the inclusion of a relatively complex society it was elevated to much better fare. It's just a shame it wasn't a much more thoughtful two hour movie that really explored the socio-political themes in far greater depth.
Stripes:
Having recently seen Meatballs, I understood certain references in shows like Family Guy - and once again with Stripes it's the same deal. It's not amazingly funny, and I'm not of the generation that would have been teenagers when this flick came out, however Bill Murray's comedy is timeless - and it's worth seeing just for that alone - plus you get earlier work from the likes of Ramis, Candy, and Reitman.
Coogan's Bluff:
It's an "offbeat police drama" - according to the Electronic Programme Guide - and I only watched it because of Clint Eastwood. I didn't much care for it, to be honest. There are some nice dialogue moments (such as Clint's Arizona Sheriff Coogan dealing with a New York cab driver), but it's not particularly dramatic, or exciting, or all that interesting. Plus the sexual politics are very out-of-date by today's standards ... so it hasn't aged especially well in that respect.
Piranha 3D (Blu-Ray):
I wasn't particularly interested in seeing this in the cinema - not least because of the jacked-up price of a 3D cinema ticket - and for the same amount of cash I was able to get the Blu-Ray, which features the movie in 2D as well as both Stereoscopic and Anaglyph 3D. I don't have a 3D telly, but if I knew someone who had one sometime in the future I could watch it over at their place.
As it is though I watched the flick in good old 2D - with a skim-through afterwards in Anaglyph 3D, which, let's be honest, hasn't improved as a technology in the slightest. Even in a darkened room the 3D effect was minimal at best, and just gave me sore eyes with the red/blue glasses. Perhaps the Stereoscopic version works better, but Anaglyph 3D - for sure - is still rubbish. In fact you can practically watch the Anaglyph 3D version without the glasses on as most of the time the layers are so close together there's barely any noticeable difference.
In 2D however it was an enjoyable, 1980s throwback-style romp. It's the sort of flick in which a CGI piranha regurgitates a bitten-off and half-eaten male member into the camera lens ... which pretty much sums up the approach this flick has to the subject matter at hand. It's not meant to be taken seriously by any stretch of the imagination, it's not supposed to be scary either - it's supposed to be lurid, funny, gross-out, and just a bloody good chuckle.
Richard Dreyfuss cameos as "a version of his Matt Hooper character from Jaws" at the very beginning, and indeed Christopher Lloyd resurrects his crowd-pleasing wild scientist schtick as a fish-fascinated pet shop owner. From the outset the flick is drenched in gore, nudity, and silliness - this is a movie custom made for six-pack home viewing with some buddies.
It licks along at a fair old pace too (the deleted scenes clearly being cut to keep the flick under 90 minutes, as they're mostly pretty good scenes in themselves), so it never outstays its welcome, and it all builds towards an end-of-second-act orgy of boobs, blood and gruesome gore at a marina party. It's an audacious, over-the-top, gag-a-second drag race through as many naked bodies and half-devoured limbs, torsos, and faces as possible - in no uncertain terms, KNB FX have royally out-done themselves on this flick. The gore is copious, entertaining, and endlessly creative - so you gore hounds are most definitely catered for here. In fact, it's the ideal teenage movie - chock full of sex, violence, and general daftness - I really enjoyed it as a 20-something, and I would have likewise enjoyed the hell out of it as a teenager.
Apparently a sequel is in the works, and if it's as good as this flick - one of the handful of worthwhile horror remakes out there (including The Hills Have Eyes, also directed by Alexandre Aja) - then I'll be there with bells on.
Monday, 7 February 2011
Pentuple Bill Mini Musings: January/Febuary 2011...
Point Break:
The only other Katherine Bigelow film I had seen up to this point was The Hurt Locker, however I was quite familiar with some of the iconography of this flick - namely 'the ex-Presidents' robbing banks, and the sky diving stuff - turns out it's a really fun action flick, and the sort that the film school graduate in me could have a field day with for an essay on sexual subtext. It's very much of the time of the early 1990s, but that's no bad thing. Plus the foot chase later on in the movie is great.
Harry Brown:
Like Gran Torino, only British - which, unsurprisingly, means 'set on a council estate and really goddamned bleak'. Perhaps that comes off as a bit snippy, but it is true that British film seems to be either obsessed with costume drama, or the criminal underclasses of the nation's inner city council estates and tower blocks - there's far more to Britain than that, and likewise the films produced here should expand beyond that more decisively.
That little rant aside though, it's a decent film - albeit, yeah, properly bleak. Gang crime, drugs, violence, intimidation, a police force that's completely divorced from giving a stuff about the problem ... it's a tough watch at times, but on the other hand you do get to see Caine's elderly avenger deliver vengence (in a British way). If only the darkness of the council estate featured wasn't representative of too many situations across the nation.
Where The Wild Things Are:
I had no knowledge of the book before reading about the film adaptation in Total Film, and while I didn't quite get what all the fuss was about, once we get to where the titular wild things actually are my interest did pique. Thematically it's a subtle film, which is a welcome change of pace - it could have so easily crammed the issues and character lessons down your throat, but it takes a different route ... although perhaps it could have been a little clearer in how it dealt with the themes, while still avoiding the usual bludgeoning approach we're so used to.
Still, when the kid eventually leaves the wild things, it was a really well handled and touching moment - and who doesn't want to watch a movie where James Gandolfini voices (movingly so) a big hairy monster that likes to smash shit up?
Ninja Assassin:
It has a standard enough revenge plot, so it's nothing to particularly write home about in that regard - however the action, violence and OTT Japanese-style gore is endlessly entertaining. So if you want to see some insane Ninja-related fighting, sword play, and shadowy action then it's well worth a look - oh and it's produced by the likes of Joel Silver and the Wachowskis ... so you should have an idea of the movie's style.
Youth In Revolt:
I'd intended on seeing this at the cinema last year but never got around to it. Turns out it's a decent little flick with Michael Cera getting to explore a different type of character than he's often considered to portray (namely, a laid back Breathless-inspired troublemaker). Enjoyable cameo performances and moments of animated whimsy round this out to be an entertainingly quirky tale of trouble-courting young love.
The only other Katherine Bigelow film I had seen up to this point was The Hurt Locker, however I was quite familiar with some of the iconography of this flick - namely 'the ex-Presidents' robbing banks, and the sky diving stuff - turns out it's a really fun action flick, and the sort that the film school graduate in me could have a field day with for an essay on sexual subtext. It's very much of the time of the early 1990s, but that's no bad thing. Plus the foot chase later on in the movie is great.
Harry Brown:
Like Gran Torino, only British - which, unsurprisingly, means 'set on a council estate and really goddamned bleak'. Perhaps that comes off as a bit snippy, but it is true that British film seems to be either obsessed with costume drama, or the criminal underclasses of the nation's inner city council estates and tower blocks - there's far more to Britain than that, and likewise the films produced here should expand beyond that more decisively.
That little rant aside though, it's a decent film - albeit, yeah, properly bleak. Gang crime, drugs, violence, intimidation, a police force that's completely divorced from giving a stuff about the problem ... it's a tough watch at times, but on the other hand you do get to see Caine's elderly avenger deliver vengence (in a British way). If only the darkness of the council estate featured wasn't representative of too many situations across the nation.
Where The Wild Things Are:
I had no knowledge of the book before reading about the film adaptation in Total Film, and while I didn't quite get what all the fuss was about, once we get to where the titular wild things actually are my interest did pique. Thematically it's a subtle film, which is a welcome change of pace - it could have so easily crammed the issues and character lessons down your throat, but it takes a different route ... although perhaps it could have been a little clearer in how it dealt with the themes, while still avoiding the usual bludgeoning approach we're so used to.
Still, when the kid eventually leaves the wild things, it was a really well handled and touching moment - and who doesn't want to watch a movie where James Gandolfini voices (movingly so) a big hairy monster that likes to smash shit up?
Ninja Assassin:
It has a standard enough revenge plot, so it's nothing to particularly write home about in that regard - however the action, violence and OTT Japanese-style gore is endlessly entertaining. So if you want to see some insane Ninja-related fighting, sword play, and shadowy action then it's well worth a look - oh and it's produced by the likes of Joel Silver and the Wachowskis ... so you should have an idea of the movie's style.
Youth In Revolt:
I'd intended on seeing this at the cinema last year but never got around to it. Turns out it's a decent little flick with Michael Cera getting to explore a different type of character than he's often considered to portray (namely, a laid back Breathless-inspired troublemaker). Enjoyable cameo performances and moments of animated whimsy round this out to be an entertainingly quirky tale of trouble-courting young love.
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