32 posts tagged “film”

By rights I should be watching the season premiere of House but since Alex is gone this week we've promised each other to wait till Friday so we can enjoy it together with a pizza and a bottle of wine (or knowing Alex a nice glass of port or knowing me a coffee).  So what's a girl to watch when she is too tired to study but needs to unwind from the day in the office and the killer SculptWorks class she took? A tried and tested romcom - Serendipity.

I'd forgotten what a nice little film Serendipity is, and set in my two favorite cities New York and San Francisco. It is about a pair of potentially star crossed lovers (Jonathan and Sara, played by John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale) who meet when haggling over gloves in Bloomingdales and click. Then instead of trading numbers like normal people they write their digits on a $5 bill and a copy of 'Love in the Time of Chorea' send these talismans out into the universe. That's kinda a dumb right? I mean if you find someone you can enjoy sharing a coffee with you should grab that person with both hands and never let go. But, hey that wouldn't be much of a plot. So Jonathan and Sara move on from that perfect date and seven or so years later, when they are both on the verge of getting married, decide to resume the hunt  because something is niggling them. Sara has to fly to New York to search with her best friend to search for Jonathan whilst Jonathan continues to scower second hand book shops looking for one of the most depressing books ever. There are signs being sent out by the universe that lures them to the same locations but they keep missing each other until they converge on Central Park at the very end.  Love it, especially because:

• It's from a time when John Cusack's rider stated that Jeremy Piven MUST play his best friend, and it's prior to mercurygate
  
• Eugene Levy guest stars as funny shop assistant
• Kate Beckinsale is so young and fresh faced
  
• Set in the good days pre-9/11 where you didn't need ID to board internal flights (otherwise Sara would have noticed that she had her friend's wallet and ID)

In The Loop is a spin-off prequel from the BBC comedy The Thick Of It, a political satire based on Blair years of British politics. It's a biting saitire with the foul mouthed spin doctor Malcom Tucker (Peter Capaldi) at its epicenter.  Given that Tucker is a fast talking Scot Alex thought that he would be subtitled but he is merely forced to enunciate and speak slightly slower than the TV show.

It takes place when the US and UK were on the brink of invading Iraq for a second time and were just looking for the right excuse. Of course the right excuse turned out to be a series of foot-in-mouth situations and a few falsified documents to save face. The action is split between Westminster where a government minister declared that 'war is unforeseeable' when in actual fact Tucker points out 'that it is neither unforeseeable or foreseeable', and DC where the US politicians are all desperately trying to get on the secret war committee. It's very funny though given how we know everything has been working out quite sad. My only complaint is that it is littered with anachronisms (e.g. FaceBook, the TV series Cranford) and that kept confusing me. Is it 2003 or 2009?

If your household is not undergoing budget cuts and you still have premium cable then I would highly recommend watching In The Loop through IFC On Demand. If you no longer have access to such a wonderful invention then get your arse down to your local art house cinema to watch it. 

I missed this at the cinema for the usual reasons of my having to ration my trips to the movies during school time and that Alex wasn't that into it. I thought it would make the perfect mid-week Netflix rental but I wasn't banking on my being so dog tired that I would keep dozing off and therefore got very confused about the plot. I love the premise of the movie (people with super powers being chased by government agents with super powers) and that it was set in Hong Kong (cue lots of neon and noodles).

The people with the super powers are broken down into different groups: Pushers, Watchers, Movers, Bleeders, Wipers, Readers, etc. The sinister government agency gather up the people with these powers and they are either recruited into their ranks or tested on. The powers-that-be have developed a serum that will enhance the powers and of course up until this moment none of the test patients have survived until a Pusher called Kira not only survives but escapes the facility. Then the action moves to Hong Kong, which is now full of expats with super powers laying low from the government agents. A young Watcher called Cassie (Dakota Fanning) tries to recruit a Pusher called Nick (Chris Evans) to help her in her quest to rescue her mum and help Kira. Got it?  The rest of the film is your basic chase plot with the government agents and a group of Hong Kong crims who are mainly made up of Bleeders (called because they scream so loud that they make you bleed) being after our rag-tag group of heroes. To mix things up the writers go all Memento and throw in lots of memory wiping sub-plots as a way to confuse the viewer and the government Watchers. Everything builds up to the big fight scene which turns out to be pretty disappointing given that this is a Hong Kong style action flick.

It was definitely better that Jumpers but it was too long and could have done with a snappier plot. I felt like they were trying a little to hard with Dakota Fanning's character, and at the end of the day it was not Natalie Portman's character in Leon. Not a bad rental but I am glad that I didn't pay full price and see it at the movies.

Dakota Fanning is not Natalie Portman in Leon.

This is the fourth film outing of the Terminator film franchise, and despite McG at the helm I was rather excited about it. The trailers looked fab with a gruff Christian Bale as an adult John Connor. The John Connor of Terminator 3 and the Sarah Connor Chronicles were rather emo in nature, a lot of moping about and listening to My Chemical Romance. Salvation's John Connor is the man of the myth in the thick of the war but he is not in charge of the Resistance, and that could have been an interesting theme to explore but McG merely dipped his feet in it.

In Terminator Salavation John Connor is trying to find his place in the war, and the Marcus Wright character is trying to discover who he is. Ultimately, the Marcus story is more interesting and surprisingly Bale is acted off the screen by Sam Worthington. That may have more to do with Wright having an actual story rather than Connor plodding along butting heads with the leaders of the Resistance, and broadcasting his soap box sermons on the radio.  The plot is the same as the other movies and TV series - SkyNet trying to kill John Connor and/or his parents (in this case his papa). There were lots of things I liked about the movie: Marcus Wright character, the dialogue and visual touches that give a nod to its predecessors, Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese, Bryce Dallas Howard as Kate Connor and the stunning Moon Bloodgood (she made me miss Journeyman).  However, the film didn't really move the mythology of the franchise on and I would have like more on the about the relationship between Kate and John, and more about the contention between John and the leaders of the Resistance. McG handled the special effects well but I wish it had been darker and be warned whenever a British actress appears as a scientist they will bring civilization to its knees (here we  had Helena Bonham Carter and in I am Legend it was Emma Thompson doing the same).

Oh my this was a poor adaptation, two thirds of the way in I was quite bored and started checking my text messages. Having read 'Angels & Demons' just over a week ago I had assumed that it would be a fairly easy book to adapt what with Dan Brown's writing style pretty much being the transcript of a movie. I am not saying Brown is a bad writer just depressingly uninspiring. Yes, he writes page turners packed with action and skewed factoids but he doesn't even attempt to write well and his foreshadowing is ham fisted at best. However, Ron Howard et al stripped back the plot so much that it ended up being dull and dumb.

My biggest complaint (other than having to see Hanks in a Speedo) was that it lacked the pace and drive of the novel. Our "hero" Prof. Langdon plods along, and he doesn't really give deep insight into anything. A half way decent tour guide could have got us from the Vatican to the Illuminaties' secret lair with a little less fuss and a little more background information. The b-plot of the BBC reporter has been cut as has the back-story of the scientists at CERN, and they leave to gaping holes that are "fixed" by the addition of some police officer. They must have sedated Ewan McGregor and cut most of his good speeches for fear of him stealing the show from Hanks. The Powers That Be changed the fanatical assassin into a straght-up mercenary who turned out to be one of the more interesting characters. (Probably because he was cute, and talked in complex sentences.)

It's really not worth watching in the cinema because, amongst other things, they don't manage to do justice to the beauty of Rome so you lose nothing watching it on the small screen. I really wish I'd gone to see Wolverine.  

I am not quite sure how it happened but suddenly everything is taking place this week. Tonight was leaving drinks for colleagues, tomorrow is Flight of the Concords, Wednesday yoga, Thursday a trip to the hairdresser and then Seal concert, and finally Friday... well on Friday I really want to see State of Play. After months of nothing going on suddenly, two weeks before exam leave, my social calendar bursts into life. The worst timing ever but perhaps all these carrots will be a good motivator for getting out of bed extra early. 

• Hugh Jackman is having way too much fun. Wolverine is channeling Peter Allen this evening and it's going to be a cabaret and then some (Liza is probably champing at the bit to get on stage)
  
• Love the bargain basement montage of all the films, especially The Reader. We'd all rather see Iron Man twice I know I did
  
• Meryl looks a little flushed when Wolverine shows her some attention, but don't mention to a lady the number of times she has been nominated because it is like telling the world her age. "Hey, Meryl 15 nominations you must be *old*
  
• Is it just me or is Sam Mendes looking a little like Salman Rushdie these days?
• Oscars is going for a real life life social networking vibe with the Best Supporting Actress nominations instead of montage of clips they bring out five past winners and we await to see who they will "friend"
  
• Best Supporting Actress (nice to see Whoopie as we'd be watching her earlier in TNG but Goldie you need a bra!) goes to Penelope Cruz (2 points to me and we'll ff through the speech)
• Fingers crossed for In Bruges (I need the points as I didn't pick Kate in the office Oscar pool).. meh Milk... okay Screenplay Adapted please let it be Frost/Nixon.. oooh first Slumdog nod of the evening 
  
• Jennifer Aniston is smokin' way cuter than Ange (sorry)
• Is it meta to have WALL-E watching the animation montage? Two more points for me with WALL-E and one point randomly for Petite Cube
  
• Not a huge surprise that the corset flick got Costume Design
• Hurrah for the Hollywood montage of romantic films that continue to feed the myth that leaves reality sucking
  
• Thank the gods for Natalie Portman in magenta, and Hasidic meth labs
  
• When the geeks and nerds inherit the earth it will be the Scientific and Technical Oscars that is shown in prime time, and the regular Oscars locked in the attic
• Wolverine's mother made him take tap
• Hell yeah for showing Mamma Mia some love. In times of economic crisis we need more musicals and Abba not depressing films about the suburbs and Nazis
  
• Do not get me started on Best Supporting Actor and how Ledger was only nominated because he died. Not fair, Oscar. If you are going to start nominating sci-fi slash fantasy films then do it properly not posthumously. (Does the cast and crew of Battlestar Galactica need to fake their own deaths to get a little Emmy-Golden Globe love?) And, yes I picked Robert Downey Jr. for the hell of it
• Will Smith showing action flicks some love because lets be honest they pay the morgage
• I thought Jerry Lewis was dead, and Alex didn't know who he was (nor did he know who the French bird was)
• Not a huge surprise that Winslet (accent, prosthetics, Nazi) and Penn (gay, retro costume) won
  
• Really chuft about Slumdog as I am a huge Danny Boyle fan every since I saw his first feature Shallow Grave (must re-watch in light of his win)
  

I was kind of surprised when Alex suggested we go to see Taken. The trailer has been playing heavily on TV and it looked like an okay sort of a thriller. Usually a film has to be outstanding in order to peek his interest, and it soon became clear that the reason he was so willing was because it stars an ex-jedi master, and as it turns out Liam Neeson kicked ass and then some.

Taken has the standard Hollywood plot: estranged father (Bryan - Liam Neeson) reconnecting with daughter; father use to work for the government; mother remarried rich, and daughter now spoilt; daughter goes to Paris with friend, before she has a chance to unpack she is abducted and sold into the sex trade; father utilizes private jet of stepfather and tears up Paris to finds her. There is also a somewhat misplaced b-plot line about a singer played by Holly Valance (last seen as the stripper wife of Michael Schofield in Prison Break) and the standard fare of ex-CIA friends that Bryan can call upon in an emergency. Most of the film takes place in Paris (where the plot/action is strongest) but Neeson/Bryan's Gallic adventures are booked ended by episodes in the US.

The film is riddled with hideous xenophobic stereotypes: America, Eastern Europeans, Arabs and the French. Neeson's character is the only one to escape which is probably why the film is such a showcase for his talents. Neeson rocks this film. His daughter, the ex-wife, the Albanian bad guys, the Euro trash bad guys, the French bad guys, and the plethora of drugged up whores are all footnotes. I think it is worth seeing for Neeson's fight scenes alone. They are dirty and effective. There is no grandstanding.

All in all not a bad film.    

(When we got to the movie theater I was so jacked up on caffeine and work that I merrily tapped out a blog post on my iPhone whilst waiting for the film to start. On reflection it is kind of navel gazing and dull so I won't bore you with it, and anyway I want to push work from my mind for the next 48 hours).

Underworld 3 is not a bad movie, after the abomination of the second one I had fairly low expectations and it managed to exceed them. This film is a prequel to the original Underworld, and focuses on the manumission of the Lycan from their vampire overlords. It is basically laying the groundwork for the mythology of the Underworld universe. The Lycan are basically big wolves until Lucian is born, he is the first Lycan who has a human and furry form. The vampires use Lucian to infect slaves and thus create their own army of serfs who can protect them during the day, and work in the mines, etc. Lucian is something of a pet to Viktor, gets to work as a blacksmith and conduct a clandestine relationship with Viktor's daughter Sonja. Lucian starts to yearn for freedom for himself and his people, and transforms into a Spartacus like figure.   

I wish it wasn't such a dark film. At times it was hard to see what was going on, and I think they must have done some technical hocus-pocus to make the trailer look way brighter than the actual film.  It looked as if Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen were having a blast; dressing up and swinging swords isn't a bad way to pay the mortgage. Sheen was also heavily involved in a battle of the hair extensions with Rhona Mitra. (He won.)

All in all it is a pretty good movie. Sheen and Nighy surpass the pedestrian script, and the powers-that-be manage to retroactively plant lots of the themes for the other two movies.  I think they could have skipped having the local noble human come to the castle as their costumes let the side down, and made the film feel like the part of Frankenstein where the villagers come to burn the monster.

As much as I was impressed by The Dark Knight, entertained by Hancock, and sang along to Mamma Mia it was Iron Man that stole my heart this summer.  In fact, I loved it so much that I saw it three times (though the last time was on a plane and that was just so that I could see the hidden scene at the very end). Iron Man was an easy sell what with Robert Downey Jr. in the lead as the anti-hero, and Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard and Gwennie in support.

Downey Jr. is Tony Stark, play boy industrialist and affable genius to boot. Tony heads up Stark Industries, his old man's firm, that he has successfully expanded.  Yapping at his heels is Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), business partner to Stark Snr. and someone who has 'bad egg' written all over him. Stark Industries main focus is the murky world of the arms trade.  Tony is right up to his neck in selling weapons to the good guys, and is naive in thinking that his merchandise wouldn't end up in the wrong hands.  He finds out the hard way that someone at his firm has been dealing under the table when he ends up on the pointy end of one of his missiles.  He is taken prisoner, and is hauled up in a cave he is forced to canablise his own missiles with the help of a philosophical friend (think 'Zen & the Art of Missile Maintenance').  First he builds a natty glowing cylinder that is to keep the shrapnel from piercing his heart, and then harnessing the power of the glowing cylinder he crafts a metal suit so that he blast his way out of the cave. Sadly, his cave mate doesn't make it but our Tony is a changed man.

Once back home Tony calls a press conference, and announces that Stark Industries will no longer be making weapons. This does not go down well with Obadiah or with his pal Col. Rhodes (Terrence Howard), Tony hauls himself off in his own cave (a slightly more comfy one), and gets to work on suped up super suit before the final explosive showdown.

Iron Man is a great action adventure flick, and the role of the semi-reformed hedonist who see the light was made for Downey Jr., and I am very much looking forward to the sequel.