requiem for a dream

such an uncomfortable film that attempts to put you directly into the mindset of people who resort to dependency to try and get through life.

drugs, sex, TV; a group of disconnected people fall into oblivion along completely different routes; out of boredom, loss, vanity, apathy...
the result is painful, worrying and leaves you wondering what possible reasoning an intelligent human would have for starting down that route. how do you finally get to that fulcrum of desperation? what is the point when your preference becomes for the losing of time, losing control and memory, dignity? when do you swap hope & belief for The Void?... all in the context of the destruction of society around us, today.

yeuch.

5/10

i could never be your woman

almost everything you want from a rom-com. pfeiffer and rudd make for a sweet couple, and paul rudd fully acts his socks off. it's quirky, it has a cast list of some really great people (and graham norton), there are some truly great ideas all the way through.... unfortunately, every good thing about this film is absolutely and completely overshadowed by a constant stream of terrible mistakes, that i can only attribute to the writer/director amy heckerling.

heckerling did give us clueless, but it seems all her good decisions were used up and she swaps them for the stupid tracey ullman character in this movie. even more terrible was the over emphasised agenda that heckerling obviously thinks she was being so clever about. she has a statement, a complaint about artificial hollywood society, and she constantly ladles huge portions of it all over this, spoiling what would otherwise have been a pretty good film.

3/10

the a-team movie is being directed by guy ritchie

deja vu

if you try really really hard you can get past the completely ridiculous premise behind this film. if you manage that, you might find quite an enjoyable couple of hours.
admittedly the whole thing only loosely works because denzel washington is almost completely made of charisma, but hey, take nothing away from him there. go on, have a look; it's very silly, but name a jerry bruckheimer film that isn't.

7/10

franklyn

you're probably a bit like me. you probably saw very limited marketing for this, but expected some sort of jean-pierre jeunet/dark city/v for vendetta/steampunk type action thriller. and was a bit looking forward to it.

please stop being excited.

yes, you do get some of that. about half an hour actually. unfortunately, due to some senseless storytelling device; the rest of the film is a made up of the central story, a quite dull 'lost soul search' set in present day london. mostly featuring a very irritating eva green as a pretentious, talentless film student who can't make a decent film.

it seems like someone had a great idea for a sci-fi film, but due to budget constraints tried to make it work by filling up the 90 minutes with random scenes from an unconnected BBCtv drama. i know, it doesn't make sense to me either.

there is some relief in the final revelation, but frankly(n) i was hoping for something entirely different. a bit of a lesson for the marketing team there too, about managing expectations.

it's a shame because whoever did the production design for the steampunk sections did a really good job.

the rest is pretty poor. and a waste.

4/10

the a-team movie is being directed by judd apatow

yeah, i know; having a white guy playing B.A. was a tough consultation with my own head. but c'mon, how awesome would john goodman be? seriously. the guy is amazing. did you see him in the flintstones?

i did toy with the idea of having michael cera play faceman but thought that was probably going a bit too far in the direction of irony.

at this point i have done quite a few of these (coming every 3 days from now on) and one of the main considerations when choosing Hannibal is how good they'd look with a cigar in their mouth, saying "i love it when a plan comes together." the seth rogan decision was very much how i envisage his delivery. and also the handlebar moustache from superbad. brilliant.

the A(patow)-team certainly has merit. i pretty much love every pie judd's stuck his finger in. i want something a bit darker though.

like, "batman dark."

yeah - like christian bale's dark knight was to adam west's bruce wayne, so shall my perfect a-team be to the original series.

..
next one fights it's way out to you on tuesday. oh you lucky souls.
send me suggestions if you pity the fool (me).

southland tales

what.

the.

hell.

where do you start with this film? perhaps if i tell you to try and imagine that luc besson, joss whedon and david lynch got together one evening and took some drugs, and in the haze that followed they managed to write and shoot a film. the film that resulted would probably not be that dissimilar to the last 2-and-a-half hours what i just did watch on my telly.

it's kind of a tough call as to whether i just watched a work of genius, or a piece so obscure that it could be considered the most pretentious of modern art. either way i'd recommend you watch it at some point, even just for educative purposes. i won't promise you'll enjoy yourself. or learn anything. or ever watch it again. but... uh... i dunno, maybe i just don't want to be alone in this misery.

or joy.

or whatever.

some highlights:
- jon lovitz being weird.
- janeane garofalo in the smallest cameo ever.
- sarah michelle geller singing "teen horniness is not a crime"
- drinking a lot of red wine while you watch it.
- mandy moore.
- ...... um..... wha?

7/10

platoon

a very fine film. slightly disguised as an action film, but this is much more an investigation into the psyche of soldiers in extreme combat situations. platoon is pretty soul-wrenching, but really compelling.

all the cast is pretty good, and while charlie sheen normally has that Leslie Neilson curse where you expect him to do something funny at any moment, he plays the lost soldier incredibly well.

it's one of those classics that are actually worth watching.

7/10

the a-team movie is being directed by quentin tarantino

i just heard today that they've cast this guy as B.A. Baracus in the forthcoming and much anticipated (by me) film of The A-Team. his name is Quinton Rampage Jackson, and as you can see from the photo he wouldn't put 'actor' on his CV as his main occupation. this incensed me for a while. i was really hoping that they weren't going to go all silly on us like starsky & hutch, and make a decent film. casting a show fighter (UFC in this case) is akin to saying "i'm not that bothered about making a credible movie."

"but hang on," thought i on further reflection, the original B.A. Baracus was a wrestler.

duh.

...so after a bit of re-thinking i'm okay with it. actually i think it's brilliant. especially on finding out that the movie is also to star liam neeson as hannibal, and bradley cooper (wedding crashers, the hangover) as face-man.

liam neeson!

out of all the fantasy adaptations in my head, the one i have most thought about casting is the a-team. many many times. i used to have friends who did it with the lord of the rings books, but i'd never read them as i'd spent too much time looking at some magazines i found under my dad's side of the bed. anyway, with the vast array of internet speculation about who is to complete the cast of the new film (to be released in 2010), i think it's unnecessary to push my tuppence in.

instead, i'm going to be doing this: casting The A-Team as i would if i were a highly regarded auteur.
today quentin tarantino:

ha!
lots more to come. and please... enjoy them.

district 9

i'm being treated rather well by the world of sci-fi this year; what with watching sunshine and moon and now this amazing amazing thing.

there are no prizes for spotting the similarities and commentaries between this film and the apartheid situation in south africa, and around the world actually. this is a film about racism. and a really brilliant and strangely informative way of looking at it. especially when it starts looking at the integration of different cultures. there is a very subtle discussion about people of mixed race in there too, in a particularly gruesome way.

unhidden subtexts aside, i was completely entranced and knocked apart by this. every second of it. i actually had a moment about halfway through where i realised my mouth had dropped open and i hadn't shut it in about half an hour. it was all dry and stuff.

i loved how it was filmed, that it was set in johannesburg, how many conventions it disobeyed, the special effects. i loved the ambiguity of the alien race: why they are there & what caused them to be stranded? i loved that they gave the aliens such obscure and unexplainable habits, and a mysterious culture that you never get into. all of it contributes to the whole racism commentary.

the journey of the central character wickus was particularly well done and well acted. you really dislike him to begin with. well you would, he was a racist bastard. but through one of the strangest character journeys i remember seeing, he becomes a noble hero.

i won't go any more into it, i really wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone. this film is brilliant.

9/10

i fall apart

i'm going to go into advertising. it seems they let any old emotionally-dead stumper do it:

this advert actually makes me suicidal. i've had people tearing lawnmowers out of my hands and away from my own jugular, just after this adverts been on the telly-box. it takes over my logic circuits. in fact the first time it came on i blacked out completely and when i woke up i discovered i was running full-pelt towards the knife rack with my head down.

bloody knife rack.

vicky cristina barcelona

i get the impression woody allen has written this at a time in his life when he's looking back on a list of failed marriages and relationships and decided that he doesn't like them. marriages or relationships. this film is a bit of an exploration on how rubbish it can be to be in love, and how it will probably destroy you from the inside out in some way.

allen does heap a certain amount of guilt and blame upon himself though, i think he sees himself as the javier bardem character; at first impressions a gifted romantic with oceanic depth, but as you study him you find a manipulative ass who will happily cause long-term emotional damage to the women around him for a few nights of kinky passion. which is a shame.

it is also a shame that allen seems to have truly lost the control of his inimitable style, and it manifests itself in vicky cristina barcelona as a difficulty in giving the characters their own voice, instead making them all speak like a woody allen stand-up routine.

and as a little added bitterness to the pill, i just found the whole thing a little bit boring. certainly wasn't expecting that from a film that had scarlett johansson and penelope cruz snogging.

5/10

sunshine after the rain

from the same website as the billion dollar gram i posted yesterday, i found this; a map of how much land we would need to cover with solar panels to provide the whole planet with power until 2030.

i actually can't believe we're not doing it. it's one of those 'no-brainers' that if the general public had any choice over how the world is run, would be instigated next week. oh well, i guess it's another thing that gets looked through by governments and corporations, much in the same way as trying to focus on the invisible man,

"what? i can't see you, are you there? am i looking in the right direction? oh. maybe you're not there"

"i am here. and i'm wearing a hat."

"i guess you're not there"

"i am here. and i'm talking to you and waving an enormous neon sign above my head that says 'invisible man here.' neither the sign, nor the sound of my voice is invisible."

"he must've left the room. oh well, i'm going to make my own invisible man out of petrol."

...that was a weird metaphor.

the hangover

bit of fun. nowt wrong wi' it. some classy film references, laugh-alouds and well done comedy performances. if a film were ever to be regarded as 'intelligent gross-out' ... this is it.

8/10

the curious case of benjamin button

feel free to marvel at the remarkably good special effects and cgi. that'll entrance you for the first 45 minutes or so.
then make sure you've got a good book to read for the next couple of hours while you wait for it all to come to a stop.

not really sure what happened. i'm aware there was a submarine at some point, and cate blanchett's face was reasonably well pasted onto that of a talented ballet dancer. apart from that i was thinking about vice versa starring judge reinhold.

7/10

big spender

this is pretty fascinating. and unnervingly pleasing to look at. in a world where the news tells us every day about monetary figures far too abstract to comprehend, an artist has attempted to put it all in some sort of graspable context. the result evokes some odd feelings. it's simple, not unlike a mondrian painting, but oddly subdued by a choice of half-hearted pastel colours.

maybe that's a choice to try and take away the horror of some of the statistics you'll find by taking a closer look. it's a brilliant way of comparison. for example: if we didn't have the beijing olympics, computer games, gift cards or yoga... we could feed every child in the world and save the amazon rainforests. that's worth a thought or two.

and the money spent on the Big Tobacco settlement could have paid off all african debt to the western world.

and the annual amount OPEC spend on climate change is less than what americans spend on viagra.

the big purple bit is pretty scary; how much money has been spent on blowing up iraq. what's even scarier (you'll see if you go and have a look) is a big yellow box at the bottom that was far too big to put on this blog.

the big yellow box is how much the banks are going to cost the economy by the time this financial crisis is over.

genocide: not as bad as bankers.

drag me to hell

sam raimi back on form! (let's just forget about spiderman 2-3 shall we?) drag me to hell is great fun with a hefty but well-balanced mixture of terror and hilarity.

this had a genuine sense of dread through many of the scenes, particularly the first time christine is 'visited' and your buttocks clench in the knowledge that the next 60 minutes are going to be absolutely incessant.

in true raimi form it has some brilliant moments of recoil, where you don't quite know whether to laugh your eyes out or vomit. a favourite was when allison lohman gets punched in the mouth, and i mean in the mouth.
that and - what i shall call - "the kiss" between lohman and a toothless old lady in a car.

it's all a bit of fun and there's a decent level of eye-candy for ladies and gents. and gross stuff. i mean seriously gross.

8/10

(500) days of summer

this

is

me

tristram shandy: a cock and bull story

god, why haven't i yet learnt not to expect too much from my heroes? or not to trust the promises of a well edited trailer?

i can't help but address this film in a really patronising way:
"aw guys, i can see what you tried to do. really well done, you tried so hard and i bet you learned a lot for when you make your first real movie."

i hate myself. i should be praising them for making the film they wanted to make. i genuinely admired the sentiment, the upsetting of a genre, the collaborators... it just felt a bit too self-indulgent. damn it.

4/10

i love you, man

paul rudd is awesome. paul rudd is funny. paul rudd is a brilliant comedy actor. i am paul rudd. you are paul rudd. this film is paul rudd. paul rudd paul rudd paul rudd.
also it's great. very touching and sweet, whilst keeping all the stupidity you'd want from a laugh out loud gross-out with a bag of intelligence. i really liked the rashida jones character, too. so often in these sorts of films you'll get a one-dimensional bitch for a girlfriend. instead, rashida is allowed to be funny, sweet and kind-hearted... and also very girl-next-door jumpable.
in fact, the whole cast is very strong; all of them getting to play decent characters, particularly jaime pressley and jon favreau.

it's a genuine feel-good movie, with a tonne of giggles. paul rudd especially brings a familiar realism to his ridiculous nerdiness that only trebles the jollity.

paul rudd.

7/10