Round-up agogo

I know, I know - it's been a while. But I've been busy, and - well, it'd be nice to hear from you reader types now and then, even if you violently disagree. Especially if you do, in fact. I love the smell of arguments in the morning.

So, a recap of the last few movies:
Every Day
I quite liked this. Not sure why, but I did. It might have been Eddie Izzard as the crazy boss, but somehow I don't think so. I love Eddie to bits, but watching him act is like watching your parents explain proudly their knowledge of some recent pop sensation because they've seen them on Fern. You don't need to know about this to be good at what you do! Stop trying so excruciatingly hard to do everything.

It is relentlessly depressing, dealing as it does with themes of what life actually turns out to be, even when superficially you've got the things you're supposed to have wanted to get. Maybe that's why I like it. The ideal job? You're dealing with assholes. The perfect family? Maybe suddenly your gay teenage son doesn't fit the script you'd written for yourself as well as you thought. And ageing parents? Who knew the horrors in store? The gorgeous partner that you've been convinced is all you'll ever want? meh...


Schadenfreude fans will like it. Also borderline depressives will find some affirmation. 


American Gangster
You know that Denzel Washington? He's great, isn't he? I mean, did you ever see a film with him where you didn't think he was good? No. That's because he's a damn good actor.

American Gangster really wants to be Heat. If there's been no Heat, maybe this wouldn't seem at all like a tired re-tread, and maybe a lot of people wouldn't have been put off.


I enjoyed it. I know, like a lot of these films, they've gone for the "authenticity" angle whilst massively lying through their teeth about the protagonists in this "true-life" story, but it's well done. If you like a long, juicy crime thriller, this is long and juicy. It's not original. It is polished. 


Taken
Also not original. Liam Neeson IS ISN'T James Bond in a film that rides the cliche wave like a hero and just about makes it through.

This is a film where you can see everything coming. Liam "Jack Bauer" Neeson plays a guy so committed to his mustn't-tell-anyone secret service job that he's lost touch with his teenage daughter. His teenage daughter is as whiney and spoilt as the whiney, spoilt daughter in 24. His ex is a cocky pain in the arse SO cocky that she may as well be wearing a t-shirt that says, "Before this film is through, I will have to humbly eat my words".


So Liam's kid gets "Taken" (hence the title) and being the kind of hard-ass he is, he goes after her. No hold barred. You realise early on that you're going to have to suspend any kind of disbelief (and he didn't get arrested for that because...?...and he survived that certain death encounter because...?) but it's fine. As long as you start going "Hurgh!" during the predictable-as-fuck car-chase instead of "What the? As If!!" you'll be OK.


Neeson is great and doesn't disappoint. Worth an evening if anything I've said about it doesn't grate on your every last nerve.


Jackass 3-D
 I know. i'm as surprised as you are.


My preconceptions about Jackass were that a) it involved people doing things that seemed blatantly stupid because you'd get hurt, and then subsequently getting hurt and b) that they particularly favoured blows to the manpacket. I therefore expected somewhat dull, mindless viewing.


I wasn't wrong, but I was impressed by the creativity by which blows to the manpacket were presented to the viewing public. I found I didn't mind at all watching people get mindlessly hurt as long as they fell down amusingly. Go figure, as they say across the pond.


A few musings.
1. I'm never going to like jokes that involve people who aren't a party to it beforehand. The ones in this were mild, not humiliating and quite imaginative but nevertheless I still find it much more uneasy than funny to watch.
2. I quickly got more interested in the Boy Dynamics than anything else. The heart of Jackass is that if you're prepared to do something massively unpleasant for the general amusement of all onlookers, you're In. Seeing how readily guys will partake in humiliating, scary and painful experiences as long as they think their mates will approve makes a whole lot more sense of things like, say, WW1. 
3. I got particularly interested in how the wussier members of the cast got treated.
 "Danger Ehren", for example, was clearly scared/put off at an number of points. The bully factor then kicked in. 
4. I'd love to know how many times, off-camera, people really kicked off. Quite a lot, I suspect. 


Watch it. But stop before the last stunt because, really, nobody needs that in their head.


Anita Shreve
I forget sometimes that I'm supposed to be doing books as well. 

I've recently read Strange Fits Of Passion and Eden Close and I'm really impressed. Both books have been sitting around in my must-get-to-that pile for years because, based on the cover, it seems there's very little going on in them. 


I'm kinda not wrong. In the cold light of day, when you think about what you've read, little happens - and the themes tend to be very uncomfortable, not experiences you'd initially want to share. What she makes up for in lack of action, though, is a very readble sense of tension, beautifully drawn characters that you can empathise with down to the last idle thought, and an incredibly atmospheric sense of place. If you read about something in her books, it's as real to you as a place you've visited. I've found myself itching to get back to the books just to lose myself in them again. That's the sign of a good writer for me. 

30 Days of Night
I've had this in the pile waiting to be watched for ages because, tbh, it says "Vampire" and "horror" in big letters on the cover.

I've always hated vampires in any horrors I've seen. Weak yet predatory - sex offenders, basically - all of the bad stuff and none of the qualities I like in a good villain.

Horror films don't really do it for me as a genre. I don't seek out repulsion as an experience. I have seen decent horror films but it's not the horror element that makes them good.


So, expectations low, I stuck this in the DVD player - and I was impressed. Atmosphere is a big thing for me and this film had it in spades. I felt like I understood the dark little Alaskan town before anything really happened. I felt like I was there - and right with the peole wanting to get out before the darkness set in.


It was well acted and understated enough to stay believeable and edgy, and it never felt predictable or cliched. It fell short of being a classic - not enough character focus for me - but if it remotely sounds like your cup of tea, give it a go.

Thank you and goodnight.






 
 

Doghouse

@Jake West

Bad break-up, mate?

Due Date

This is a movie about a stressed out individual who goes through a series of increasingly stressful situations, mainly created by an irritatingly stress-free character whose main function seems to be to cause the main character stress.

If you don't mind that premise, it's an OK film. Personally I didn't find it that funny - it has its moments, it's pretty well written - but it's essentially part of that "hilarious comedy" sub-genre with a road trip/race against time twist.

If it was a bit funnier, the fact that it's pretty silly at times and involves a spectacular character u-turn at around about the expected point in the running time without any real explanation, I maybe wouldn't have minded, but for me this is a film that wants to be a bit more meaningful than your average comedy. It doesn't hit the mark from this point of view at all. 

It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, I quite like Robert Downey Jr and he's pretty good. If you're still not sure whether to watch it or not, see whether you find the following funny...

The angry, frustrated character gets shirty with an unhelpful Western Union clerk and makes disparaging remarks about his claims of having served in the Gulf. The clerk reveals that he's in a wheelchair and proceeds to give Angry Guy a beating.

The King's Speech

So then. I'd been told how good this was, but I must admit I approached it with a certain amount of prejudice. British film...period drama...I was expecting something well-made and worthy, probably a bit slow-paced and dull in places though.

I was wrong. I enjoyed this from start to finish. In many ways it's a simple story, and the ending isn't going to be a surprise to anyone, but the journey is so enjoyable. The performance - all the performances - are just excellent.  The casting is perfect. The pace is exactly right. The script is a treat - not overdone, well-judged, natural in feel but surprisingly profound in places. The film is really moving, in quite unexpected ways. As the credits started to roll in the cinema, there was a moment when I thought the audience were going to applaud. I felt like applauding. 

I don't want to single any particular scene out, because I want you to go and see it for yourself. We'll talk after :)

Inception

Wow.

This is hugely visually impressive, but as a rule I'm not hugely visually impressed. I don't wonder how it was done or take a vast interest. I go:

"Not seen that before. Nice"

and then wait for it to get properly interesting. Properly interesting for me is a conceptual thing, and this kinda got there.

It reminded me a bit of first seeing The Matrix, and people who loved that will love this. I didn't love The Matrix. I found it interesting, but the bits that I found interesting were the concepts, and they got tangled and complicated and it felt like "never mind, you're on a moving walkway to the next set piece so just wait and then there'll be something cool to look at!" And cool it may well have been, but I respond much the same way as I do to stage magicians - "Yes that looks impressive, but I know it only looks impressive, and don't flatter yourself I'll be concerned with how you did it".

Inception does a better job of the same thing, for me. There are concepts relating not just to dreams but to the subconscious that everyone can relate to behind the premises of the film, and it's interesting the way that one character's psychological trauma impacts on the events of the film.

if there's a problem with it for me it's that i felt that it was too tangled - there's no way on first viewing you can decide whether the movie's following its own rules, which puts you straight on the matrix set piece moving walkway. You start to become seduced by the idea that it's solveable, that because you're thinking hard to keep up with the concepts that a point will come in the film where you get there ahead of the main characters and turn into the Poirot of cinema. If you watch this and start thinking this way, stop it immediately. You will feel robbed. It's a set piece film with the human touch, and a very, very good one. Just don't get caught up figuring it out.

Letters From Iwo Jima

I've had this a while and not watched it, because I knew it would be sad/heavy going. I got very drawn in though.

Firstly, it's beautifully, expertly made. It is sad, and I knew it would be, but it's taught me a lot and opened up something which I understood very little about. Particularly interesting is the way that the film evokes the Japanese sense of honour not just as something to aspire to, but something to attain at all costs. It's a hard thing to understand the seppuku ideal as a westerner, but it comes across in a very heartfelt and sensitive way exactly what it meant to the Japanese. The feeling of duty being all important is clear. The feeling of lack of individual choice also comes across really powerfully. The stories of the protagonist and the commander were put across extremely well, and both actors were superb. Eastwood picks his symbolism well too. The gun, the dog...


There was a lingering sense, though, of this being propaganda for an American audience who might not have started out feeling too compassionate. This is where the honourable Mr Eastwood comes slightly unstuck for me. The commander? He'd been in America, was sympathetic to America and just found himself in the Wrong Place At The Wrong Time - but we can like him, because he liked America! The main character guy - he was forced to fight, he only really cared about his wife and unborn child, and he only wanted to survive and make a good life for them - like an american born in the wrong place really! What's not to love? And of course the least American, most japanese Japanese constitute the bad guys of the film.


I'm picking holes. Essentially the film is about what being in a war and being faced with the choice of giving your own, personal, valued life to serve often dubious national ends does to human beings - that's done brilliantly. I'm always going to respect a movie that does such a good job of exploring this territory.

Snakes on a Plane

I've seen some cult movies in my time, and I've seen some "so-bad-it's-good" movies. I have to say, though, I've never seen such a cynical and calculated attempt to out-and-out make something actually fit into those categories.

I started with an open mind, I really did. I like Samuel L. Jackson, I like Juliana Margulies from ER, I like the opening titles. All was fine. Enter the snakes. Snake 1 bites hot girl's nipple. Snake 2 bites cocky guy's nob in the toilet. Snake 3 makes an overweight woman have a rude dream when it crawls up her dress. By snake 4 I'd stopped paying attention and instead was wondering which of my Year 8 lads they'd got in a script consultants. 

It didn't get worse, it just got more predictable. I think the writers thought that this playing into stereotypes would be part of the film's cult charm. I also think that the writers assumed everyone who watched the film would be an idiot.

Particularly special was the Playstation vs. X-box product placement line. That's when I knew that the filmmakers were thinking "Product placement = win. Appealling to teenage gamers = win! Also - this has got to be so ridiculously blatant that it makes the film so-bad-it's-good, right?= WIN!!!" 

Wrong. Sorry. I watched it until the end out of some odd sense of fairness I have to any film or book I start out on, but in truth towards the end of the film I was less interested in what was going on and more interested in why I have said odd sense of fairness.

In the spirit of which, I should say that by watching this and then talking about it for this long, I've already spent more of my time on it than I ever should have. Thank you and goodnight.