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OH.
MY.
GOD.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Torn, yet again
So they're making another Terminator film.
Boo.
But it's going to star Christian Bale.
Yay!
But it will be directed by McG.
Boo!
Two boos, one yay. There's your answer.
Boo.
But it's going to star Christian Bale.
Yay!
But it will be directed by McG.
Boo!
Two boos, one yay. There's your answer.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Does anybody have a coin?
So, quite fancy going to the cinema this weekend and quite fancy watching There Will Be Blood, the Oscar and Bafta nominated Paul Thomas Anderson film which has been hailed as a masterpiece. However, Sylvester Stallone was on the Jonathan Ross chat show in Friday with his new Rambo film and in that, apparently, someone gets brutally killed every 30 seconds.
So now I'm torn. Highbrow work of art or Stallone kill fest?
Tricky.
So now I'm torn. Highbrow work of art or Stallone kill fest?
Tricky.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Now THAT'S interesting
I haven't tingled like that at a trailer since the Star Wars Episode I teaser.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Film review: Cloverfield
Cloverfield @ IMDB
The review begins with a tinge of sadness as my Grandfather died a few days ago. He (and my Grandmother who died over ten years ago) had a profound effect on my life, in that they watched a Hell of a lot of films. And I mean a lot. I watched a lot of them with them, age certificates be damned*. But one particular brand of movies I remember being introduced to thanks to them is the Godzilla films.
Let's get this clear: I love Godzilla films. I can watch them all day. I cannot get into words my profound disappointment at the US Godzilla film, despite the teaser trailer being the greatest moment of my 15 year old life when I saw it.
So, we come to Cloverfield. As we all gathered from my previous excitement, I was looking forward to this film. No. I had been waiting for this film since that stupid T-Rex lookalike missed stomping on Matthew Broderick's smug face. It's rubbishness was proved years later when the real Godzilla wiped the floor with him. I still had my copy of Godzilla vs Megalon and continued to wait and hope.
A set up to further disappointment, you must be thinking. No film could withstand such a burden of expectation set upon it's shoulders.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong.
It is as follows: New York Rich People + Giant Monster x Army = The Best Film I Will See This Year. Simple as that.
The conceit of the film is that, Blair Witch style, it is the discovered camera footage of a small band of people who were running around New York as it gets leveled by something big and angry and even more angry. It speaks to our current news culture, the jittery footage grabbed by the bystander. The subway scene in particular brought back memories of the mobile phone pictures of the 7/7 attacks in London.
Yeah, fair enough, 9/11 is the obvious visual comparison as a) it's in New York and b) buildings fall over. One rather scathing review I saw on TV described the film as "9/11 porn" which is somewhat harsh. But you can't say it isn't there because it uses the same visual grammar of that day, only with a giant monster.
Ah yes. A giant monster. Do you see him? Oh yes. And watching it being attacked by soldiers and tanks and fighting them off is one of the most impressive things I've seen on a cinema screen.
So the monster is good. The humans? Good as well. You get enough of them in the beginning to actually care for them and that was good enough for me.
My only complaint is in the style of it. Now, that's not to say that I hated it because I didn't. The handheld style is amazing and allows for some truly terrifying moments. But it also gave me real bad motion sickness. I mean real bad. But I wouldn't have the film any other way.
In conclusion. I loved it. It has a great ending, cracks along at a great pace and it's not too long either. The only way it could have been better would have been if the Big G himself had been the monster. And he would have been proud to have put his name on this film.
But the only question is this: I saw the first trailer when I saw Transformers which was at least 6 months ago. So was the film worth the wait?
In a word? Yes.
* One of the most horrendously embarrassing moments of my life was due to this: we sat one night to watch Once Upon a Time In America. I must have been around 10. Something like that. Great film: De Niro, Sergio Leone, superb.
Then we get to the most prolonged rape scene ever. With me sat there, next to my grand parents.
That there answers a lot a questions.
The review begins with a tinge of sadness as my Grandfather died a few days ago. He (and my Grandmother who died over ten years ago) had a profound effect on my life, in that they watched a Hell of a lot of films. And I mean a lot. I watched a lot of them with them, age certificates be damned*. But one particular brand of movies I remember being introduced to thanks to them is the Godzilla films.
Let's get this clear: I love Godzilla films. I can watch them all day. I cannot get into words my profound disappointment at the US Godzilla film, despite the teaser trailer being the greatest moment of my 15 year old life when I saw it.
So, we come to Cloverfield. As we all gathered from my previous excitement, I was looking forward to this film. No. I had been waiting for this film since that stupid T-Rex lookalike missed stomping on Matthew Broderick's smug face. It's rubbishness was proved years later when the real Godzilla wiped the floor with him. I still had my copy of Godzilla vs Megalon and continued to wait and hope.
A set up to further disappointment, you must be thinking. No film could withstand such a burden of expectation set upon it's shoulders.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong.
It is as follows: New York Rich People + Giant Monster x Army = The Best Film I Will See This Year. Simple as that.
The conceit of the film is that, Blair Witch style, it is the discovered camera footage of a small band of people who were running around New York as it gets leveled by something big and angry and even more angry. It speaks to our current news culture, the jittery footage grabbed by the bystander. The subway scene in particular brought back memories of the mobile phone pictures of the 7/7 attacks in London.
Yeah, fair enough, 9/11 is the obvious visual comparison as a) it's in New York and b) buildings fall over. One rather scathing review I saw on TV described the film as "9/11 porn" which is somewhat harsh. But you can't say it isn't there because it uses the same visual grammar of that day, only with a giant monster.
Ah yes. A giant monster. Do you see him? Oh yes. And watching it being attacked by soldiers and tanks and fighting them off is one of the most impressive things I've seen on a cinema screen.
So the monster is good. The humans? Good as well. You get enough of them in the beginning to actually care for them and that was good enough for me.
My only complaint is in the style of it. Now, that's not to say that I hated it because I didn't. The handheld style is amazing and allows for some truly terrifying moments. But it also gave me real bad motion sickness. I mean real bad. But I wouldn't have the film any other way.
In conclusion. I loved it. It has a great ending, cracks along at a great pace and it's not too long either. The only way it could have been better would have been if the Big G himself had been the monster. And he would have been proud to have put his name on this film.
But the only question is this: I saw the first trailer when I saw Transformers which was at least 6 months ago. So was the film worth the wait?
In a word? Yes.
* One of the most horrendously embarrassing moments of my life was due to this: we sat one night to watch Once Upon a Time In America. I must have been around 10. Something like that. Great film: De Niro, Sergio Leone, superb.
Then we get to the most prolonged rape scene ever. With me sat there, next to my grand parents.
That there answers a lot a questions.
Film review: No Country For Old Men
No Country For Old Men @ IMDB
Right, let's get this clear: This is not a Lebowski, a Ladykillers, an O Brother or a Fink. This is The Coen Brothers, but this is the Coens with their sleeves rolled up, their fags stamped out and with a job to be done.
A Texan out hunting stumbles across the leftovers of a botched drug deal: dead Mexicans, a lot bullet shells on the floor and a bag containing £2 million dollars. He makes one mistake and then has to go on the run, a sociopathic criminal one step behind who wants the money.
And that's basically it. Toss in Tommy Lee Jones as a sheriff trying to make sense of the madness and you've got your movie.
But what a movie. The main two characters, Josh Brolin as the chasee and Javier Bardem as the chaser, dominate the screen without actually saying that much. Both men and are set on their path and nothing can stop them but each other.
Bardem (and his freaky, freaky hair) is getting all the press and deservedly so. He is an amazing presence, a force of nature, his every action full of threat. But Brolin more than holds his own, he becomes almost a reflection of Bardem.
Standouts: the scene at the hotel on the Mexican border. Woody Harrelson in a great cameo. The noise that the silenced shotgun makes. Damn near the whole film.
Apart from the end.
Now, the film is not a plot heavy thriller that needs to be wrapped up in a nice little package. But the last five minutes? Kind of gets lost. It's not clear what it's trying to say then BAM credits and the lights go up. It's not a deal breaker, it's not something that's going to wreck the film but it's a "Huh, that's it?" moment.
Doesn't stop the film being amazing thought.
In a word? Irresistible.
Right, let's get this clear: This is not a Lebowski, a Ladykillers, an O Brother or a Fink. This is The Coen Brothers, but this is the Coens with their sleeves rolled up, their fags stamped out and with a job to be done.
A Texan out hunting stumbles across the leftovers of a botched drug deal: dead Mexicans, a lot bullet shells on the floor and a bag containing £2 million dollars. He makes one mistake and then has to go on the run, a sociopathic criminal one step behind who wants the money.
And that's basically it. Toss in Tommy Lee Jones as a sheriff trying to make sense of the madness and you've got your movie.
But what a movie. The main two characters, Josh Brolin as the chasee and Javier Bardem as the chaser, dominate the screen without actually saying that much. Both men and are set on their path and nothing can stop them but each other.
Bardem (and his freaky, freaky hair) is getting all the press and deservedly so. He is an amazing presence, a force of nature, his every action full of threat. But Brolin more than holds his own, he becomes almost a reflection of Bardem.
Standouts: the scene at the hotel on the Mexican border. Woody Harrelson in a great cameo. The noise that the silenced shotgun makes. Damn near the whole film.
Apart from the end.
Now, the film is not a plot heavy thriller that needs to be wrapped up in a nice little package. But the last five minutes? Kind of gets lost. It's not clear what it's trying to say then BAM credits and the lights go up. It's not a deal breaker, it's not something that's going to wreck the film but it's a "Huh, that's it?" moment.
Doesn't stop the film being amazing thought.
In a word? Irresistible.
Film review: Charlie Wilson's War
Charlie Wilson's War @ IMDB
Hands up who knew that in Rambo III, Rambo was fighting on the side that would become al-Qaeda? I only mention this because Rambo III was probably the last time the Russian/Afghan war was last seen in a US film.
Until Tom Hanks decided otherwise, that is.
The short version: at the height of the Cold War The Red Army invaded Afghanistan, a long and bloody conflict followed. The US helped to finance the rag-tag Afghan rebels who eventually stalemated the once invincible Soviet war machine. The Russians eventually pulled out and this conflict precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war. Find the full version here.
That's all well and good, I hear you say. But what has this got to do with the Hankminator?
Well. The decision to finance the rebels in their conflict is said to have rested with one man, the eponymous Charlie Wilson. Played, naturally, by Tom Hanks.
But this isn't the usual Hanks role. While Wilson was a US Senator who funelled billions of dollars into the conflict, he was also a party man. The film starts with Wilson in a hot tub surrounded by strippers. And Hanks pulls it off, his easy going charm slipping into Wilson like a used glove but given a bit of extra bite.
It wasn't all Wilson's doing, however. Enter Julia Roberts as a wealthy Texan lady who pushes Wilson into intervening in the conflict. Also enter Philip Seymour Hoffman stealing yet another film out from under the main everyone's noses.
Their three performances hold the film together and all of them are flawless.
The film, however, isn't. It's a film of it's times in that it's the US vs The Bad Guys (Russia) and anyone who helps them is good no questions asked. There is very little gray in this film. And this is a story that needs it because this story ends with a plane being flown into a building.
9/11 is the elephant in the room that no one acknowledges, apart from a final denouement that overly relies on the viewer knowing about the fallout of the War. Hoffman comes out with some zen story about how stories never really end, that they roll on and on. But that's not enough.
You could go on like this and tear the film to shreds but I don't feel like it. Because I liked the performances and it was an interesting look at an interesting time.
In a word? Empty.
Hands up who knew that in Rambo III, Rambo was fighting on the side that would become al-Qaeda? I only mention this because Rambo III was probably the last time the Russian/Afghan war was last seen in a US film.
Until Tom Hanks decided otherwise, that is.
The short version: at the height of the Cold War The Red Army invaded Afghanistan, a long and bloody conflict followed. The US helped to finance the rag-tag Afghan rebels who eventually stalemated the once invincible Soviet war machine. The Russians eventually pulled out and this conflict precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war. Find the full version here.
That's all well and good, I hear you say. But what has this got to do with the Hankminator?
Well. The decision to finance the rebels in their conflict is said to have rested with one man, the eponymous Charlie Wilson. Played, naturally, by Tom Hanks.
But this isn't the usual Hanks role. While Wilson was a US Senator who funelled billions of dollars into the conflict, he was also a party man. The film starts with Wilson in a hot tub surrounded by strippers. And Hanks pulls it off, his easy going charm slipping into Wilson like a used glove but given a bit of extra bite.
It wasn't all Wilson's doing, however. Enter Julia Roberts as a wealthy Texan lady who pushes Wilson into intervening in the conflict. Also enter Philip Seymour Hoffman stealing yet another film out from under the main everyone's noses.
Their three performances hold the film together and all of them are flawless.
The film, however, isn't. It's a film of it's times in that it's the US vs The Bad Guys (Russia) and anyone who helps them is good no questions asked. There is very little gray in this film. And this is a story that needs it because this story ends with a plane being flown into a building.
9/11 is the elephant in the room that no one acknowledges, apart from a final denouement that overly relies on the viewer knowing about the fallout of the War. Hoffman comes out with some zen story about how stories never really end, that they roll on and on. But that's not enough.
You could go on like this and tear the film to shreds but I don't feel like it. Because I liked the performances and it was an interesting look at an interesting time.
In a word? Empty.
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