Gerard Butler is a top engineer, happily married with a daughter. His entire life is changed within the first 5 minutes of the film when his home is invaded and his wife and child are raped and murdered. After this shocking opening the two men responsible for the murders are on trial. It turns out that only one of the men was responsible for the murders but unfortunately that killer has made a deal with the courts to frame the other man for the crimes. As there is no evidence to convict the actual killer he goes free whilst the other guy goes on death row the. Enter Jamie Foxx a top District Attorney who is responsible for this strange verdict Butler is furious he leaves and the killer is given a jail sentence.
We jump to ten years later, the guy on death row is given a lethal injection that is tampered with and he dies in agonizing pain, whilst the other guy is set free, Butler tracks him down and cuts him into pieces. You see for the last ten years Butler has been planning the ultimate revenge on everyone that has wronged him and his family. What follows is a series of expertly planned attacks and double crosses by Butler who is doing it all from jail.
You have to give the film a lot of credit it cuts all the bullshit and jumps straight into the story; unfortunately there are two big problems. The first being Jamie Foxx, his character is completely unlikable, there isn’t really one point during the entire film when we actually want him to succeed. His delivery is fine but there is no energy or charisma to latch on to. He does however deliver my favorite line in the film, when Butler is in jail and requests his last meal he starts listing all the stuff he wants – “I’ll take the stake and the potatoes with the broccoli, gravy and pomme frites” to which Foxx responds “fuck you and your pomme frites” it doesn’t get much better than that.
The films plot becomes incredibly convoluted but it doesn’t really require too much attention, it just keeps going and going the conversations between the two are more and more tedious. Then when we think the film is out of steam a bunch of people are stayed to death by a giant tommy gun and Butler kills his cell mate by stabbing him in the neck with a steak bone. The violence in this is brutal and realistic, mostly horrible to watch. The problem is that after a while we can’t really be sympathetic for anyone, Butler becomes too brutal to be relatable and Foxx was kind of unlikable from the start. It feels a bit like a film that would get made in the seventies, gritty and violent.
In the end the film is pretty unrewarding to watch, it’s a cold story with little humanity, about twenty minutes too long thanks to character development for characters that we don’t care about.
A poker movie from 1966 today, the film concerns an annual card game in a small town where the five richest men get together and play for high stakes. They stop everything in their in their life for the game, one man stops his daughter’s wedding, a lawyer stops the closing case quickly to run away. As the game begins a small family Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward and their son enter the barn looking for a place to stay. Unfortunately this long exposition before they get to game takes ages; a good seven to eight minutes of the five men traveling across the giant landscapes went on far too long and hurt the beginning of the film. When they get to the barn the card game is set up wonderfully the entire town’s folk gather to the barn to watch and share stories about the games’ infamy.
Henry Fonda takes a drink ends up meeting one of the players, they form a quick little friendship and the man allows him to go and watch the game, whilst watching the man realizes that these players are terrible. Fonda asks them if they can play, they agree but tell him that they play western style rules that is, if you can’t match the bet because you don’t have the money, you’re out. Ignoring his sons huge protests Fonda goes and digs into the family savings to enter the game, the action carries on Fonda’s money goes down so he clears out the family savings, sure that he can beat these people. They play until he gets the monster hand, but as he looks around everyone else seems to break their poker face in the same way. Unfortunately Fonda is nearly out of money and the bet has gone up, he puts up his watch, his horse and cart and then he makes his son watch the cards to go and get a loan from the bank.
Fonda faints, the wife takes over, the stakes get higher, and she has to try and raise more money. I’ll stop the plot here because it does get pretty fun and I don’t want to ruin it. The scenes of poker are very tame compared to what we’ve seen in films like Rounder’s; it’s almost a farcical game the obvious poker faces and silly bets, but it is fun, all the characters work so well together. The actors all have their fun quirks and qualities that make them entertaining and watchable. Fonda is a compulsive gambler, it is heartbreaking to watch him put his family’s life savings on the line. The dialogue is seamless blends in perfectly and is nice and snappy. My main problems with the film is that it takes a long time to get into the premise the film just kind of meandersaround the game building up this almost godly competition that turns out to be just a very simple card game. The acting is great Henry Fonda is charming to watch we have so much empathy for him as just a simple man who is incredibly weak but also is doing it to try and better his family’s financial situation. The ending is pretty wonderful and it has been emulated so many times over the last ten years that I’d be surprised if it hits anyone of this generation very hard.
I feel ashamed saying this and it goes against my usual way of thinking but I would say that this film is completely ripe for a remake. I’m picturing a kind of It’s a mad mad mad world tale where the card game happens at the beginning is completely superfluous and just a very simple backdrop to the real story of the wife going around town trying her best to raise the money for the game.
The film isn’t brilliant but it is also much better than half of the comedies that we see today. A very misleading poster as well.
Beginning with all the coolness of the usual Conman film, we are introduced to Ben Stiller’s character a well educated man working for one of the world’s most infamous private detectives – the paranoid socially inept Darryl Zero (Bill Pullman). Ben Stiller is the assistant of this highly eccentric detective, we are told early on about all of his quirks and skills, Zero is a complete social recluse shutting himself away from the world in an apartment with a complex security system on the top floor of a giant building. He takes on a new intricate blackmail case from a tycoon played by Ryan O’Neil, the mission takes Zero on a series of twists and turns, he falls in love with a girl and solves the complicated case.
I won’t go too much into the plot so I can avoid spoiling it, the script is really fun, very witty and sharp dialogue, the characters are all quite captivating. Zero is a master at reading people and Pullman plays it perfectly with the right amount of bizarre nuance to separate him from every other master mind that we’ve seen on film. The only real fault of this character is that there is a lot of introduction and establishment and it does stop the story from jumping in at the beginning. The plot stays very idle in the middle when Zero starts a relationship, it’s interesting to watch but the film defiantly stays in this moment for far too long, it was important to set up this relationship but it needed to be smoother and more intertwined to the mission.
The other problem is that as the film progresses the character of Darryl Zero become so interesting and rich that no other character holds your attention. They all are strongly overshadowed by Pullman’s weird eccentricities and it kind of makes the main plot thread that isn’t about Zero a bit of a side note. The film looses it’s suave stylistic tone from the beginning and becomes more about the characters, the problem is that the film still insists on showing these long cool hip scenes of people walking with tight synchronization and by this point they have lost their effect. The plotting becomes slightly convoluted as well but it is still more than acceptable, some of the best momentsare listening to Zero writing his memoirs/ journal reflecting on the case and the many new feelings he experience.
The film maybe suffers from trying to be too clever and complex, it looses the focus heading into the third act and manages to get it back right at the end. Great music choices throughout adds to the fun slick nature of the film. Ben Stiller is enjoyable as Arlo the assistant but he really is just playing it very straight, Kim Dickens is the love interest, her damaged, strong, and angry character is refreshing to watch she allows the right amount of venerability to come through to give the character empathy.
It’s an ambitious film very much about dialogue and could probably trim off ten minutes or so to help it flow but on the whole very fun enjoyable and cool.
Fans of Derrick Comedies internet shorts have been waiting in eager anticipation for the Theatrical release of their debut film “The Mystery Team” (and by fans I mean me). The first short I saw by them was entitled “Daughters” and I’ve been hooked ever since. Unfortunately the film had a very limited release, I think it was basically one print taken around to the biggest cities, but after a year of waiting the film has finally been released on DVD.
The three main members of this comedy troupe make up the Mystery Team a group of amateur detectives that have been solving mysteries for a dime since they were seven years old. The characters are strange adult hybrids that have innocent and childish minds, going off to solve a murder the master of disguise dons a horrible fake mustache in the attempt to pass as a tycoon, sticking out his chest and talking in a comical grandiose theater voice. Most of the humor in the film is derived from these bizarre characters interacting with people who are firmly planted in the real world.
Usually when sketch comedy such as SNL tries to make the move to film it turns into a bunch of gags with a plot that has serious dips in pace and interest but Mystery Team actually works as a film, the comedy builds jokes throughout and they just get more hilarious. The characters go through wonderful transitions growing up and maturing yet still being completely oblivious to situations around them. It’s a bit like a hardcore episode of the Rugrats, just instead of Nurses and daycare centers it’s full of prostitutes and murderers in a strip club. Working out of a small stall in their front yard the Mystery Team are ready to solve almost any small blunder that has befallen the quiet suburb that they live in, they begin the film finding out who stuck their fingers inside Mrs Kibbels berry pie and move to finding out who murdered a little girl’s parents. The mystery team rides color coded bicycles with matching sneakers, they’ve never grown up each member has a special skill that they are unskillful at; the master of disguise dons wacky costumes and ridiculous personas that are completely transparent, the strongest kid in town is weak and pretends to be on the football team and the Boy Genius memorizes useless facts that he uses in the wrong situations.
The great thing about the film is that the clues that the team follow are completely nonsensical, through a series of bizarre events they actually end up going on the right path. The moments of espionage are hysterical and imaginative but also quite suspenseful; there are great scenes where the characters are in serious peril and we feel that were there with them, all the characters posses such innocence that at times you actually are worried for their safety. The acting is strong and consistent throughout; the overblown farcical characters could fall apart quite quickly but they all remain charming and entertaining. The three main actors Donald Glover, D.C. Pierson and Dominic Dierkes are all prime to be in big comedies they prove that they can go far beyond the world of sketch comedy. They all also wrote the script and it’s actually really well done the story moves well the characters are all fun and original and the film is never boring.
The supporting cast also back them up well; Park and Recreation’s Aubry Plaza is great as a romantic interest and the older sister of the orphaned girl, she’s got that kind of angry brutally down to earth funny shtick down well. Ellie Kempar from The Office is a girl version of the Mystery Team fully grown riding round the town on a Bicycle with pigtails. Action scenes are really well filmed, very thrilling and far beyond what we would expect from a comedy film with such a small budget. The dialogue is so good in the film it never feels annoying or obvious and is generally pretty surprising and different from what we usually see.
Obviously there are few weakness such as the tone being destroyed by some real gross out moments but even these are kind of funny and are usually complemented with some good dialogue anyway. Some people could easily find the film annoying and childish but the comedy works, it plays incredibly well and is very refreshing to see. It is incredibly impressive that they managed to pull this film off for such a low budget, it’s not trying to say anything profound or change lives it just wants to be entertaining and in that respect it’s a great success. We should be nurturing these comedies, rent it buy it you will laugh and it has the most foul mouthed child that you will ever see on screen.
A sequel 11 years in the making bringing a 15 year Journey to the end, today is the final part in Pixar Animation Studio’s landmark debut series, one of the most anticipated films of the year – Toy Story 3. The films premise concerns the gang of Toys dealing with their owner’s lack of interest; Andy is now 18 and about to go off to college. Andy has been slowly getting rid of his toys for years leaving only a very select few of his favorites behind which conveniently are also the fan favorites as well, I’m talking about Buzz Lightyear,Woody, Slinky, Pig, Rex,Mr and Mrs Potato Head, Jessie and Bullseye, oh and those weird three eyed alien things. So being bugged by his mother to sort all his shit out Andy opts out of taking his porn and weed to college and instead decides to bring Woody with him and put the rest of the other guys in the attic instead of donating them to charity. In a nice mix up of events all the toys and a Barbie accidently end up in a children’s daycare center where they meet a ton of new toys, including a Ken doll and the leader of the bunch an old cuddle bear named Lotso.
Woody pleads with the rest of the toys to escape with him and make it back in time to Andy’s house before he leaves for college They have three days to get back but the rest of the toys think they have a pretty sweet deal at the day care center, they haven’t been played with in years and the prospects of some human interaction are quite appealing. Lotso introduces the toys to the room they will be living in which appears nice and Woody stowaways in a child’s backpack. Woody makes it to a new house and gets help from the toys there to find a route back to Andy’s, mean while the Toys back at the day care center finally realize that they are the punchbags to the young kids who have no idea how to treat toys and just enjoy smashing, throwing and slobbering all over them. When the Toy’s try to switch rooms they find out that leader Lotso is very malevolent and bitter from being abandoned years ago by his owner. He decides to lock up the Toys imprisoning them in toy boxes and putting a giant baby doll on patrol watch.
Woody gets word of his friends peril and goes to rescue them, this results in a daring long escape sequence where the toys are almost incinerated at a trash dump, before miraculously being saved, making it back it time to Andy’s to realize that they belong with a new child that will play with them. I rush through the plot, it isn’t as complex as the first two films but it is logical and sensible, it moves at pace that we know and expect from Pixar, allowing enough character development and story to come though without overloading it. If I am to cut the story to its bare bones it really is a rehash of the second film, it’s all a big mission for the toys to rescue each other and get back to their owner. Where I feel the film differs though is that it offers a logical conclusion to the lives of these characters and that isn’t to say that we get to see these lives come to an end but we do get to see a large chapter closed. It’s similar to the end of the Matrix in that we are pretty sure at the end that the characters will go on the same path with their new owner as they did with Andy.
Toy Story 3 has too many positives to even think of it as a failure, even with this notion I would say that it was the weakest of the 3 and I don’t think that is a bad thing. I mean who really says that a trilogy has to end with a giant epic conclusion; all we really want is a tidy ending for the characters that we have become attached with. In this film Pixar have paid attention to so many small details that have all worked perfectly; it seems as if every element was picked for the maximum effect. Every voice is perfect, the old favorites such as John Ratzenberger as Hamm, Don Rickles and Estelle Harris as mr and Mrs Potato Head, Wallace Shaun as Rex and of course Tom Hanks and Tim Allen as Woody and Buzz are great and entertaining to hear again. There are also some great new additions; Michael Keaton as Ken is wonderful, all the right enthusiasm and the cheesy pitch that we would expect from a Ken Doll. Ned Beaty is well cast as the evil Lotso bear, you can sense something strange about him from the start but it is subtle enough to dismiss. It is also a true testament to the integrity of Pixar that they don’t rely on these voices to sell the film, their Dreamworks counterparts always seem far too enthusiastic to highlight the expensive voice actors that they managed to get. Pixar pick the right voice for the right character and it always works very effectively, never feels out of place and is generally quite memorable.
The quality of animation has also reached entirely new heights; I saw the film in 3-d and whilst I can’t say that it is necessary to view in this format at all I did feel like the 3-d added a great depth of field to the shots. Another huge plus with the film was the amazing camera movement, yes granted there is no camera but every shot moves so perfectly allowing every action scene to be observed fully by the viewer leaving no moments of unsynchronized awe (something most normal films are still unable to handle). Pixar have this great skill of being able to emulate the perfect shot and movement for a scene, a big example being the dance scene during the closing credits, every close up and pan is spot on. Randy Newman’s music creates a wonderful backdrop to throughout, he has obviously re-recorded some tracks and he throws more emotion in than ever before.
It’s funny I always expected myself to be very excited about this film but as soon as I saw the first trailer my interest was lost. I knew the film was on its way and I wasn’t excited until the lights went down and the short film “Night and Day” began, I relised that I was almost sad to watch these characters go. This feeling is prominent throughout the film, when is it ok to hang on to something when do have to finally give something away? It’s a heavy issue that hits deep and watching the film I felt like Andy I’m glad to see these characters journey come to an end because one more venture with them would definitely be one too many. Pixar are very successful about making you feel like a child again whilst delivering a nice heavy message that puts you into a huge state of personal reflection, people could talk for hours about why their films manage to resonate with such a large audience but in the end it probably just comes down to the fact that they are full of so much heart.
They believe in putting on a good show and so far this year I’d say no one does it better.
An independent comedy today directed by Nicole Holofcener who made 2006’s Friends with Money. Now I didn’t see that film but money seems to be a very big theme for this director, Please Give is essentially a movie all about the many types of white guilt that can exist. Kate (Catherine Keneer) and Alex (Oliver Platt) run a furniture store in New York where they buy used stuff at estate sales then research the piece and hike up the price astronomically. Even with this successful enterprise Kate is very wary about giving her angry teen daughter Abby (Sarah Steele) horrendous sums of money like other well off parents. To make herself feel a bit better Kate does her best to help homeless people out, gives to charities and constantly tries to help at youth groups and just general be a decent person. To further add to their entrepreneurial actions Kate and Alex decide to buy their neighbors’ apartment to knock through and create a luxury place. The only catch is that the tenant, a bitter angry old women called Andra, will not leave the apartment until she dies. Her health has been deteriorating for years and she has been helped by her granddaughter Rebecca (Rebecca Hall). Rebecca spends her days working as a breast cancer reduction technologist in a very depressing clinic; she seems full of good ethics and morals and spends her lonely days caring for her miserable grandmother. Her sister Mary (Amanda Peet) is nearly the complete antithesis, self centered, mean, cruel, bitter, rude and unaware.
As the film progresses the overweight aging Oliver Platt cheats on his wife and begins an affair with the gorgeous young Amanda Peet. Now this is a pretty hard jump to make in this plot, they try to give Peet some motivation for the affair by having her recently dumped by a boyfriend but it is very hard to believe that she has no better option then having an affair with this man. This is really the only part that’s a bit hard to grasp, the good thing however is that Platt doesn’t really have a clue why he is having the affair. This is a real strength of the film, it could easily be clichéd if they had a horribly dysfunctional marriage and home life but this family actually seems very happy and it makes the predicament all the more realistic and confusing.
The whole film is full of bittersweet and touching moments that are hard for me in my caveman state of being to touch on why I felt the pain or the joy. There is a particular instance where Catherine Keneer goes to volunteer with a group dealing with disabled children, whilst there she is unable to contain herself and bursts into tears, rather than have her tell us why she is sad all the power is allowed to come from the actions. Rebecca Hall’s beautiful and depressed character is allowed to come out of her shell and find a boyfriend and feel more confident, this is handled so beautifully and sweetly as well and never gets artificial. Whilst Peet’s character begins the way she started with very little personal growth, certainly makes a change from the barrage of epiphanies within the film and cinema in general.
The film moves at a decent pace and when the old lady finally dies it’s very refreshing that we are not dragged down in this moment for eternity and the story moves on in a timely fashion. Of course the film defiantly aims to throw a great deal of questions, points and messages to the viewer, nothing really hit me very hard and I actually think that’s a good thing, I’m getting kinda sick of films that revel in making the audience feel as guilty as possible for whatever privileges that they have in life. The film also shares an important message that shitty things are always going to be in the world and that we can’t solve them all, we get to see Kate’s life ruled by her guilt, every action she makes is marred with its effect on others, she is constantly stressed and worried all the time.
A real character study here, not something where I can really talk about dynamic filmmaking, it serves its purpose as a thought provoking and entertaining little indie comedy. Whilst I do not agree with every single message put forward I can really respect the ways that it does show the ideas in a subtle respectful nature. Acting is all very high quality honestly can’t pull a bad name out of the hat, everyone put their best in and made it work.
Three separate stories by three filmmakers centering on the same place. This anthology film brings three big talents of World Cinema - Michel Gondry starts of the film, famous for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and his many visually striking music videos. Leos Carax, director of Pola X does the second segment and the final part is helmed by Bong Joon-Ho who is responsible for what I think is the best monster movie this decade – The Host.
So Gondry’s piece titled” Interior Design” kicks things off and we are introduced to a moody rainy Tokyo. The soundtrack and cinematography envelope you straight away as we are introduced to Hiroko and Akira, a young couple who have decided to move to Tokyo. Akira is an aspiring filmmaker and has come to display his work, getting a spot at a porno theater to show his film. The couple stay with their friend Akemi in her very cramped apartment, as the film goes on Akira manages to get a job wrapping gifts and Hiroko looks for apartments. After only finding small dirty crammed places that cost too much Hiroko begins to feel more and more depressed, further spiraling into a hopeless situation.
After Akira’s screening goes well, she begins to feel their relationship crumbling, talking to a man at the screening she learns of the hardships that couples can go through with creative types, one generally feels invisible or underappreciated. As Hiroko flees the screening she starts transforming bit by bit into a chair, with this new ability to turn in and out of this position she begins to look for a new dwelling ending up staying with a man without his knowledge and living happily with a new purpose.
Gondry does a marvelous job with this segment injecting his visual expertise into every scene; he creates a wonderful motif with nearly every shot conjuring up an enormous sense of claustrophobia. The cramped and confined spaces emanate throughout, where even the streets seem small and cramped. The quirks are a constant, especially with Akira’s film screening, which is full of the kind of Be Kind Rewind make shift elements that Gondry has perfected.
For a while it seems as if the story isn’t really going any further than a simple character study as there is an awful lot of moments between Akira and Hiroko. Then suddenly with just a subtle flash of Hiroko’s newly generated wooden arm the film takes an immediate shift. Dark comedic moments of horror as Hiroko finds a giant hole in her sternum, her metamorphosis is handled brilliantly as she slowly loses her clothes transforming back and forth for sanctuary. The end is quite beautiful and bittersweet, a great little short, very rewarding and interesting to see so much story crammed in to 40 or so minutes.
The next short is entitled “Merde” which is also the name of the main character, a vagrant strange pale man wondering the sewers and streets causing trouble. Merde speaks no English and looks about as mental as you can get, the Hitchcokian beginning showcases the skyline of Tokyo, slowly zooming in aided by a score reminiscent of Herman’s Cape Fear theme. We start off with a tremendous deal of suspense as Merde walks past people stealing things and knocking them over in an amazing continuous tracking shot. He licks beautiful women and steals an amputee’s crutches before escaping to the dark depths of the sewers. Whilst down in the abyss he finds a bag of unexploded grenades, he then goes on a rampage of death and destruction landing him in jail.
As the public become either repulsed or infatuated with this new bizarre figure a giant trial is held and the wonderfully mysterious, dark comedic tone is very quickly lost. A French magistrate comes forward claiming to be the only person in the world that can understand Merde, here film pretty much completely falls apart as we are given incredibly long dull scenes of the two interacting. The disfigured and intriguing individual losses his edge quite quickly and the short becomes very tedious. Merde is sentenced to death, appears to die when hanged but somehow comes back from the dead and vanishes into thin air.
It’s a shame this had to come in the middle because it starts really well but falls flat. The story doesn’t really have much of a progression and the characters all start to become quite irritating.
The final part directed by Bong Joon-Ho is called “Shaking Tokyo” and concerns a man who is categorized in Japan as a Hikikomori – which is a type of person in Japan who choose to isolate themselves from society in confinement. Living in his house alone for ten years our main character who goes nameless, receives a giant sum of money in the mail every month that he uses to order the essential items that he needs. The man collects everything and stacks them up in space consuming ways, ten years worth of toilet rolls and pizza boxes line the walls. He has a strict routine involving never looking people in the eye when they deliver to him, he orders a pizza every Saturday and reads almost continuously.
On one fateful Saturday he makes the mistake of seeing the pizza delivery girl’s bare thigh, prompting him to look her in the eye, as they lock an earthquake happens causing the girl to faint. The an brings her inside and takes care of her slowly falling in love. Breaking his strong routine the man wants to see the girl and orders a pizza on a Tuesday. A different pizza delivery man turns up and the man learns that the woman has become a hikikimori herself. In a last valiant effort to save her the man leaves his house for the first time in ten years looking for her.
This part is not without it fair share of bizarre moments but it is somehow all grounded in this weird reality. The intricate little details of every shot work perfectly to construct the man’s strange little world. There are constant moments which really feel like a strange twilight zone kind of world. When the man does finally go out to the streets he is presented with this barren metropolis that helps the tone. It’s a great story for the film to end with beautiful and poetic.
In short Tokyo! suffers slightly from a weak middle part but you have to give credit for the sheer originality of the stories. They all have very striking visuals and are all well acted.
After an unsuccessful attempt at finding Luc Besson’s stamp of approval on the credits I went into today film with no knowledge what so ever about what would follow. The Nest begins in true tension every shot is constantly revealing new elements, expanding the story and the list of characters further. We are introduced to three different teams- a crack squad of master thieves, a special forces unit driving an armored vehicle transporting one of Europe’s most connected crime lords and two guards of a warehouse.
The story builds and builds and builds and bores. Nearly 35 minutes into the film and we have had far more introductions and back story then we ever needed. The mind set of the film descends when a master thief breaks into a communications building doing needless acrobatics and various parkour stunts in slow mo with cool camera angles. When is this flashy shit going to stop? Parkour is only effective in a film if it is needed; a man does not need to do a double backflip of a small ledge if there is a ladder right next to him. So this lone acrobat makes his way to a very big plug and removes it causing an entire telecoms company to halt. Yep you’ve read that right a simple plug and a phone network goes down. So the build continues, the master criminals get into a warehouse hold the guards hostage and begin to load up all the electronic merchandise in the building.
Only blocks away the armored vehicle with the deadly Albanian crime lord aboard is ambushed by a ridiculous amount of henchman, the two living Special Forces guards manage to drive into the warehouse that is conveniently being robbed. From there on out the whole situation plays out continuous death and lots of mindless shooting and killing. The ridiculous amount of buildup really hurts this film all this complicated exposition just to corner ever character into this one building is very unneeded. The last hour of the film is a bit like a French Assault on Precinct 13 with more people.
As the film plays out it becomes hard to tell if these are good actors or not, I always find it difficult to tell if a foreign actors delivery can be considered believable or even decent because I have nothing to base it on. I can’t speak French and don’t know what tones and subtle nuances can ruin a performance, obviously I can say whether an actor grabbed me, and got me invested in the film or at least in a scene; the last hour of The Nest felt like watching a boring video game. No heart, no thought, everything felt so mindless. Quick editing without any rhythm; no action scene had time to be followed or enjoyed.
The visual flair that made the beginning of the film ends very quickly also and every scene and shot becomes incredibly unmemorable, I’m sure within a few days I will have almost no recollection. The film definitely tried to evoke John Carpenters Assault on Precinct 13, the situation is very similar and there are references to that film scattered everyone, each one just reminding me how awesome that film is and making me want to watch it again.
The fact that I haven’t seen today’s film embarrasses me greatly; I love 80’s films to the core and I cannot believe that I only decided to watch this today. Joel Schumacher’s 1985 Brat pack movies features all the regulars that you would expect; Alley Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson etc. They all play a bunch of friends that have just graduated from university and they are all having lots and lots of problems. Kicking off with the usual 8o’s soundtrack flair that we expect and love we get introduced to the gang’s usual hang out the bar called ST. Elmo’s Fire, when the gang enters there’s even the songs playing also called ST. Elmo’s Fire. All the characters have a great and believable interaction with each other; there is the usual jokes and characterization kicking off the turmoil that each person must go through.
Sometimes I find in these giant ensemble films can get to be pretty tiresome especially when some character arcs will inevitably be more engaging then others, here the same thing seems to be happening but it’s not dwelling on the boring moments so the scenes don’t feel long and played out. Between them all the characters go through most of the feeling that you here people dealing with after college; career, love, relationships, friendships, yada yada yada. It is a premise that does get slightly tiresome, if I didn’t have such a love for 80’s films and didn’t find these actors so fun I could easily see myself giving up when the shit hits the fan. Inevitably each person goes through a moment of discovery and changes something or gains a new outlook, it’s all pretty wholesome. The problem that really gets to me is a few of the characters, Rob Lowe’s in particular is a real moment of weakness; Lowe acts wonderfully but his characters actions and background just doesn’t make much sense; he has a wife and child yet doesn’t live with them and neglects them, goes of hooking up with any women he can yet feels jealous when he sees his wife out with a different man, guess I just didn’t buy that character and didn’t understand the motivation, it’s not like he’s a evil genius or a bizarre overblown individual, I just found his actions to not be believable. Also in relation to everyone else’s problems Emilio Estevez’ endeavor to get his dream girl Andie Mcdowell is just kind of silly, minor and hurts the tone of movie.
The films plays out as you kind of expect, there are a few surprises; the character we think might be gay and appears to be in love with his best friend is in fact in love with his best friends girl – cue another awesome 80’s song. The acting’s fun and the issues are relevant, maybe if I had seen this film ten years ago I would have found it more effective and moving. unfortunately I have seen so many of these big friend movies like Breakfast Club, Dazed and Confused, Empire Records, Clerks, Waiting, etc St Elmo’s just didn’t get me, I can however appreciate that this was obviously one of the originators.
The film goes back and forth and everyone starts to get quite tedious and annoying. The ending is anticlimactic but effective. In the end it all quite bittersweet, it’s a nice film the setting is perfect, and it again facilitates my need for the 80’s atmosphere. It also does lack the kind of John Hughes humanity that separates Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller from the rest of the 80’s movies.
Where do you begin to talk about this documentary, billed as coming from the mind of the prolific street artist Banksy, Exit Through The Gift Shop is probably one of the most eye opening and difficult films I’ve ever tackled. The film starts out with an absorbing credit sequence showing graffiti at its worst; taggers running across walls doing simple lines or standing on top of a car mindlessly tagging a bridge, the actions build in their absurdity aided perfectly by Richard Hawley’s “Tonight The Streets are Ours,” it basically changes your perception about graffiti within the first three minutes. That is not to say it makes the act acceptable; it just shows another perspective and I think it’s a really important way to start off the film, throwing away the preconceived feeling that most people have towards the distructive act.
We then enter Bansky’s studio, dark and scattered with artwork, face covered and voice muffled to protect his anonymity. Bansky creates a very foreboding atmosphere telling us about Thierry Guetta and his seemingly normal manner the first time they met. We are introduced to Thierry, a Frenchman living in L.A. with his family. Thierry makes his money running a retro clothing store buying old clothes off people and jacking up the price reselling to L.A.’s hip, trendy and foolish; a shitty way to make money but Thierry is so quirky and charming that you can forgive. We also learn very quickly of Thierry’s obsession with filming, he films nearly everything in his life continuously. Thierry goes to visit his cousin in France, a street artist by the name of Invader – famous for sticking little mosaic titles of Space Invader characters all over the place. Thierry begins to follow different street artists around Europe filming his experiences and the artists at work, he instantly becoming caught up in the majesty of doing something wrong in the night. Thierry comes across as being very immature and naïve most of the time but this also gives him the freedom to not hold back in the interview stages of the film; he speaks so truthfully and passionately allowing cracks in his character and a flood of emotions to come through that people are rarely willing to share with the world on film. The unarticulated French man appears to be the first person to really convey the appeal and sensation that comes with being part of this art movement.
Thierry then becomes friends with L.A. based street artist Shepard Fairey who is famous for his Andre the Giant Obey sticker that has appeared nearly everywhere. Thierry just follows Shepard around without asking eventually realizing his calling to make a documentary on the ever growing street art movement. After chronicling countless artists Thierry remains frustrated that one high profile artist still evades him, the ever illusive Banksy. On a chance encounter Thierry finally meets the infamous man and the two strike up a strange friendship, Banksy tells of their first encounter and how even though appearing slightly bat shit crazy Thierry was still quite nice to be around. After Thierry has followed Banksy all around the world the secret artist finally asks the odd French man, about the documentary that he has been working on for so long, prompting a startling revelation that Thierry never watches what he records and had no intention of actually making a documentary. We see a room full of tapes showing his progression over the years from hi-8 to mini dv, boxes and boxes of unlabeled tapes all with years of a man’s life – a truly perplexing sight. Thierry’s monomania of recording real life experiences leads him to create a 90 minute amalgamation of shit, it’s a bunch of clips brutally pieced together in a migraine inducing tacky edit. Even though the result is a brutal piece of Final Cut hell, we get to see the passion at which Thierry attacks his projects as he turns his back garden shack into a master editing suite. When Thierry presents the film to Bansky, the mysterious artist tells him it is terrible and that he should go out and make some of his own street art.
Whilst Thierry throws himself into the project Bansky takes reigns of the film deciding to follow Thierry’s exploration into the field. Going under the new persona of MBW – or MR. Brain Wash, Thierry hires a giant staff of designers to carry out his ideas in true Warhol fashion. He puts his house up for a second mortgage and opens a giant studio creating thousands of imitations of the pop art pieces that he admires. Understanding the power of hype Mr. Brain Wash unveils his master plan an art show like his mentor Bansky to hopefully sell his pieces for astronomical prices. The PR machine goes into motion and the end result is maybe one of the best criticisms on the art world that has ever existed.
To truly try and decipher the many layers of this film would take an eternity and probably negate the point of the film; that is if there even is one. You have to admire everyone involved especially Thierry whose brutal honesty and charisma is the driving force, Banksy manages to create a perfect comedic tone throughout; constantly showing Thierry’s beautiful, scandalous master plan. Countless questions arise as to the meaning behind art, the meaning imposed on art and if all the meaning is meaningless. We get to see the public become transfixed by this new pop culture wannabe, treating him like royalty because they think that they are meant to, Thierry gets caught up in the limelight becoming like the famous figures he looks up to. Thierry’s naivety and willingness to show his story make his actions almost justified and inspirational; we’ve seen his flaws and his lack of talent but his drive to succeed is stronger than most. How can you look down on a professional if they never claim to be a professional? Mr Brain Wash isn’t a self loathing figure but he never claims to be great I think he knows he pulling the wool over the public’s eyes and I respect him all the more for doing it.
There has been a lot of speculation if the film is legit or not and I do admit that documentary’s with a strong narrative flow are rarely this coincidental or perfect but even if the events manufactured would that even matter? We don’t even know if we can commend Banksy with being responsible for the film or merely just being a glorified editor as Thierry’s footage comprises nearly the whole thing but in the great scheme of things these points just seem insignificant.
Probably one of the most eye opening films ever made, a bit like an F For Fake for the new millennium, it will receive it’s fair share of criticism but it should be viewed again and again. I can’t even truly articulate my thoughts and feelings on the film, you could probably write P.H.D. on the thing quite easily. Better minds than I could talk about it for days and days. One of the best experiences I’ve had at the cinema in a long time, hysterical, engaging, revealing and challenging.
Today’s film was a true moment of self inflicted punishment, I knew I would hate the film to pieces, yet for some reason I decided to watch. I like to think you learn more about what makes a good film from watching a terrible one and if that statement is valid then today’s film is comparative to ten years at the best film school in the world. Another shameless remake coming 35 years after the original, directed by Tony Scott and starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta, yes today I entered my own personal movie hell. And so we move forward with my thoughts on:
Film Number 33 – The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Instead of the original having the words ONE, TWO, THREE in the title here Tony Scott throws in the numerals to try and add slightly more suspense to this remake starring his golden boy, Denzel Washington. So for anyone that has seen the original film starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw and Martin Balsam I suggest you take my negative reactions about the remake to heart and seek out the original. Now we begin the film with a dreadful hacky MTV montage of trains speeding up and slowing down in slow mo and fast mo and every hacky chop shop bit of music video editing that you could think of. For a movie that cost a hundred million dollars you would expect the opening credit sequence to be at least watchable but unfortunately it made me want to jump onto some live tracks. The nausea inducing credit sequence segues to our introduction of main bad guy John Travolta (in Robert Shaws role from the original). Travolta and his gang like the original hi jack the train kill a few people make contact with the controller Denzel Washington (in Mattau’s Role). The ransom is given the plot continues and all the things that were brilliant in 1974 are lost and overlooked.
In an effort to add some more characterization to Washington’s character, we find out that he is very corrupt and on suspension from his high profile job. Travolta plays games with him making him confess this shameful truth to save a boy’s life, seems like a bit of a distraction from what should be a shocking enough situation. The plot continues to move in ways that make no sense, characters die no one cares, we move on the mayor of New York is introduced and yet again no one really cares, the film chugs along and bores to the core. Like the original there is the scene where the cop car rushes through the crowded NYC streets carrying the ransom money, unlike the original the moment is completely dull, so dull in fact that the police and the mayor say “why didn’t we use the helicopter?” a moment intended for laughs but will just make every one wonder “why was this film made?”
Elements are horrifically laughable; a boy brings his laptop on the train which causes the whole world to be able to see what is going on in the train via the most powerful wireless internet connection that exists. Denzel Washington consistently tries to remind us that “I’m just a guy” and we believe that because at this point we couldn’t care less if he was Superman. The film lacks heart from beginning to end; the original was subtle and allowed for tension to build at a steady pace making us invested in every single character, the remake is an overload that tries to build instantly and then realizes that it is hollow, then tries desperately to add some humanity in the second half. The editing is a constant annoyance all the way through, the film will constantly stop and the time will appear on screen informing us that we only have 48 minutes until John Travolta starts offing the hostages. For such a big budget movie I am surprised that this very hoaky schlocky and altogether amateur editing was allowed to make the cut. The google maps style city scape image establishing the action set pieces are just tacky and unimaginative; a perfect example of technology hurting an action scene.
John Travolta’s bad guy is laughable, saying “Motherfucker” as many times as you can does not make you imposing if you look and sound like a douche. Who designed this movie? The whole thing looks terrible, lights everywhere and flashes; a sleek and neat train conductor’s office completely ruins the environment. Where are the coffee cups and the tacky posters the porno magazines, the unshaven and angry employees? No tension, no style, and no heart, the mise en scene is just a giant advertisement for stainless steel and low mood lighting.
It is a boring dull and unimaginative thriller that is anything but thrilling, save yourself nearly two hours and go and watch the original. As for Denzel Washington I feel that he may have gone too far into the world of shit films to ever make his way back. It has been ten years since Remember the Titans and in the last decade the only notable film he has managed to do was The Great Debaters, he needs to stop doing these films very quickly.
The fairest score I could give this giant disgrace would be 4 out of 10 Please do not waste your time.
About 8 years ago I pretty much reached my limit with giant blockbuster films, I still watch many movies with unfathomable budgets but after viewing 2002’s Die Another Day I finally realized that there had to be something more out there. James Bond movies had been a giant part of my early adolescence satisfying my need for action, adventure, explosions and beautiful women; Die Another Day had taken all of these necessities and made them shit.
I started quickly, consuming smaller films, better written films, different genres, world cinema, finding lots of new filmmakers to latch onto and follow. I had always watched smaller films mainly comedies but I rarely bothered to watch those down and dirty movies made on shoestring budgets. Obviously I had seen the past greats that were made for peanuts - The Night of the Living Dead, Repo Man, Mad Max, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Terminator etc, but in terms of contemporary independent film, it was something that I was always quite skeptical of.
It really only took me a few to realize the qualities that independent films have to offer, mostly if a movie cannot be commercially viable it doesn’t get made, or at least it doesn’t get made with a budget. My favorite independent films are ones which take this limited budget and push the scope of their ideas even further, thinking bigger and “outside of the box.”
Conveniently that idiom ties into the film that I feel utilizes all the strengths of independent filmmaking, what some people would call the perfect independent film. Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 debut Cube has more story and concept then you would normally expect from a film costing less than four hundred thousand Canadian dollars. The location is a giant puzzle box made up of Cubed rooms which are either safe or contain death in a grim horrible way. It features a few characters that have no idea why they have woken up in this deadly labyrinth and they all have to band together to escape. In true Night of the Living Dead fashion not all of the characters are friendly and the people start becoming as deadly as the traps that they are trying to evade.
Anyway enough about Cube, it is a small independent masterpiece that should be seen. Today was another trip to the cinema to watch Vincenzo Natali’s newest film Splice. Since Cube I haven’t had the chance to watch any other of Natali’s films, he has mostly been making independent films since then and Splice is the biggest film he has ever made. So equipped with a real budget (although still quite modest at 26 million) Natali directs Adrian Brody and Sarah Polly as two hot shot genetic engineers who spice together different animals DNA to create new hybrids in the hope to use new proteins and methods to cure disease. Sarah Polley becomes annoyed and impatient with the slow progression of the experiment and decides that she must make a giant leap forward to splice Human and Animal DNA.
The result is a strange small rapidly aging creature, which starts to appear more like a small human girl day by day. Complete with a tail and progressive intelligence the creation is named Dren, Polly’s character begins to care for her as a daughter teaching her how to communicate, and disciplining her appropriately. As Dren begins to age, grow and develop Adrien Brody realizes that Polly has used her own DNA to create the hybrid. Brody and Polly’s relationship starts to fall apart as they differ on the ethical ramifications of their work. Dren starts becoming evil and the story plays out in very bizarre and original ways.
Reflecting on the film, I find myself in a strange place, on one hand it is scattered with problems, enough for me to just dismiss it as another shitty creature horror movie. However as I look at all the positives it becomes clear that this film is a very daring piece of film making. The film begins very slowly, boringly, it almost had me resigned checked out and asleep very quickly, moments were dull, even the birth of Dren was slow and unappealing. I started getting very invested when we see Dren as as a 5-6 year old being taught and fed and cared for like a regular human child. For me the movie begins here, the effects look flawless at these points, impressive and scary.
I’m not going to talk about the rest of the story because it gets to the places you expect it to but the journey there is very original and strange. The film feels a lot like a B-movie that you would expect to see from the 80’s.The Cronenberg comparisons are apt, there is that strange slightly tongue-in-cheek attitude to every scene. I found it very reminiscent of The Fly, there are these brutal moments of blood and gore that for some reason are just hysterical, it is at times very inconsistent but this is a big strength. Somehow all these elements manage to work, a lot of that credit goes to the actors; Polly and Brody could have easily taken us out of every single scene and pissed us off to the max. But even as Brody begins to have sex with the now adult Dren; she is on top of him naked with her tail moving around, her back wings are fully extended, I am disgusted, repulsed, laughing hysterically with the audience but the moment never loses its believability somehow. I have no idea how they managed to sell that moment, sparking a mass cringe form the audience and then having Polly catch the two in the act it is a perfect moment of comedy, the two go into the scenes playing it mostly straight but allowing the right amount of comedy to come through. Delphine Chanéac who plays the creature Dren does a great job she makes this character full of subtle intricacies that show her humane side slowly coming through.
There is a lot to appreciate in this film, the horror genre has become a cauldron of remakes for the masses, I don’t know if you could call Splice completely original but it is defiantly a cinema experience that I haven’t had for a while. It manages to shock and repulse without feeling like cheap exploitation. It’s not normal for me to be so forgiving to a film with such a poor first and third act but Splice is one of those movies that makes you hopeful for the future, that maybe everyone out there isn’t just trying to make a very quick buck.Makes you wish for a time when a film didn’t need to be part of a pre established series, or video game, or dare I say it board game just to get made.
It is sad that this film wasn’t as solid and it could have been, a substantially higher budget than Cube but with a lesser scope, the events leading to the end of the film set it up for an explosive ending but the film just kind of goes out like the rest. The film isn’t doing much business which is sad but to be expected, it was marketed poorly like a simple creature feature. It isn’t mainstream and probably shouldn’t be released so widely but I’m sure that it will find a good audience and I hope that there is a better cut of it. Not perfect but better than most of what is out.
The last Apatow comedy of the decade pairs Russell Brand’s eccentric rockstar character- Aldous Snow, with a bumbling naïve doofus played by Jonah Hill. Brand’s character is also one of the leads from 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, here his band Infant Sorrow is scheduled to play a ten year anniversary show at the Greek Theater in L.A.
Hill’s character - Aaron Green works for Pinnacle Records and is hired by his boss Sergio (P Diddy) to get Aldous Snow from London to New York to be on Good Morning America then to L.A. to play the show all within three days. In true “Road To…” fashion they go through a series of hilarious bizarre calamities along the way. Brand has recently ended his seven years of sobriety and is in a self destructive streak after breaking up with his long term girlfriend – pop star Jackie-Q.
Now the plot of the film is masqueraded by the outlandish jokes and gross out moments this is a good thing because if I were to decipher it correctly I’m sure it would result in explosions. I will start with the problems because I actually feel that there is a lot to praise in the film. The problem with these kinds of buddy team up films is that people must always change the unhappy ways in which they are living their lives, I don’t know why near the end of the first decade of the twenty first century we still have to have these revelatory moments. The moments here involve Jonah Hill realizing that the music industry is a cruel mistress and opting to go Seattle at the end of the film to start a small label. The problem is that often the films’ plotting puts itself in these tight corners where the only way out is an awkward and unfunny scene, something a very quick rewrite or re edit could have solved. For instance when Russell Brand finds out that he is not the father of Jackie Q’s son, this causes Snow to have a very awkward conversation with the child that pretty much fucks up the tone of the whole scene because it is just sad and not funny, basically there was no need for the kid at all. There is a moment where Brand takes a detour to Vegas to see his father (Colm Meaney) whilst there they bond on a night of debauchery and then learn they hate each other again – so basically again waste of time that is covered by some great funny moments. Then for Jonah Hill and his girlfriend to reconcile Russell Brand suggest that they all have a threesome to make up for Hill cheating on her during their journey. Sounds like a funny scene but it fell flat and just ended up being very awkward with a couple of jokes. Nearly every moment of drama in the film feels incredibly forced and manufactured, cliché after cliché of what we expect the characters to do; to give the film credit though all the cast do a great job of covering these faults to the point where they only pissed me off when I actually thought hard about the film later. The humor feels at times to be quite uneven; in Sarah Marshall all the jokes felt smarter and more natural, subtle and consistent in tone. In Get him to the Greek the jokes come like a solid punch to the larynx; there are broken bones breaking through the skin, vomit everywhere, blunt innuendo, silly drug hallucinations – it is defiantly in the realm of the nutty Harold and Kumar type adventure.
Now time for the positives – the humor is funny – yes that line pretty much negates the last paragraph that I wrote but it really is funny stuff. Crude humor can be overdone so easily and lose its punch but here they mostly know when to hold back. The cast is for the most part impeccable, Jonah Hill has the role down well, very funny and allows his “straight guy” to have more complexity and heart then we usually see, he is believable because he lets loose quite quickly all whilst trying to be a voice of reason. Russell Brand has finally won me over to thinking he is funny; I resisted his charm for some time finding his stand up and T.V. career pretty unwatchable. I do wonder if there is much versatility to him, his character here feels like a slightly more exaggerated version of himself in real life, it would be interesting to see him in a different sort of role. P Diddy also deserves an honorable mention for his eccentric quirky angry CEO character Sergio, somehow Sergio has some of the best lines in the whole film “you can’t out run me I’m black.” His delivery is nearly spot on every time and it also helps that he is willing to really take the piss put of himself. Same goes for Russell Brand who knows he is making fun of his outlandish life style yet exploits it to the max. The film is littered with other great Cameo appearances too many to mention, except Lars Ulrich was a big surprise.
One of the things that also pleased me the most all the original music that was created for the film, Aldous Snow’s “African Child” a gentle ballad with a video depicting life in war torn Africa with Brand walking dressed in white like a messiah is a perfect example of bad taste and deemed the “Worst thing to happen to Africa since the apartheid.” My favorite is “The Clap” which sounds like a 60’s Beatles homage that could be very radio friendly until you hear the lyrics “I got it off the back of a toilet seat”- listen to that. It’s actually pretty ironic that Brand isn’t in a band in real life, the scenes of him singing live look like it’s what he should have been doing from the start.
Anyway in short – it’s a film that needs a lot of work and does feel like a slightly rushed production but at the same time there was a lot of effort put in, the characters are brilliant and I was entertained for most of it. A lot of fun and probably the best comedy offering that we have had so far this year.
FilmLead was started in January of 2009 by Eric Edwards and Zac Stein with the intention of providing news and just about anything else from the film world. Part satire, part serious the main goal is to provide readers with the news they need as well as a good laugh. Really, you can get the news anywhere, but only here at FilmLead can you get hilarious alternative commentaries, fake cast and plot summaries for real movies, a unique take on top 10 lists and everything else film.
