This is so gloriously bad, it is almost worth seeing!
Not exactly a taxing plot so I had time to formulate a theory – each decade has its ‘own’ vampires. In the 1980s, it was The Lost Boys. Large portions of a year were spent quoting the Frog brothers* and wishing I lived in Santa Carla.
A decade later it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer ( I’m ignoring Bram Stoker’s Dracula using the Keanu Reeves exclusion rule). Thanks to Buffy, I still have evil-Willow envy, I sometimes have the urge to sing about my dry-cleaning, and was almost enough of a fan to buy an Anthony Head album (I said ALMOST!).
If Twilight is the vampire movie of the 2000s, then I think I have to give up on the contemporary vampire movie (poor dialogue and daytime soap acting are forgiveable but heavy-handed abstinence subtext is not), and go retro – time to dust off the DVD of Nosferatu.
*Edgar Frog: You did the right thing by calling us. Does your brother sleep a lot? Sam Emerson: Yeah, all day. Alan Frog: Does the sunlight freak him out? Sam Emerson: Uh, he wears sunglasses in the house. Edgar Frog: Bad breath, long fingernails? Sam Emerson: Yeah, his fingernails are a little bit longer, um, he always had bad breath, though. Alan Frog: He’s a vampire all right. Edgar Frog: All right, here’s what you do: get yourself a good sharp stake and drive it right through his heart. Sam Emerson: I can’t do that; he’s my brother. Alan Frog: OK, we’ll come over and do it for you. Sam Emerson: No! Edgar Frog: You’d better get yourself a garlic T-shirt, buddy, or it’s your funeral.
…(the day he watched the remake of) The Day the Earth Stood Still
A remake of the 1951 classic sci-fi film about an alien visitor to Earth…with Keanu Reeves.
It’s a truly lousy movie – neither a patch on the original nor an interesting movie in its own right.
The one selling point is that there is a moment when Klaatu (Reeves) stares into the distance and says ‘This body will take some getting used to’. There we have the best explanation yet of Reeve’s acting technique – he’s an alien getting used to his human body.
Otherwise, you can keep boredom at bay by cliche-spotting:
emotional female scientist…did I mention she’s emotional (Jennifer Connelly – who spends most of the movie looking doe-eyed at Klaatu - in the manner of the cat in Shrek)? Check.
annoying know-it-all child who fails to get killed (Jaden Smith). Check (double points here for managing to bring in the single working mother, multi-cultural family)
plagiarism of the Matrix (a double whammy of Keanu Reeves dressed as Agent Smith). Check.
biblical reference (the Ark, boaty rather than covenant version). Check.
established character actor (Kathy Bates) caught looking embarassed at cameo role. Check.
bad CGI. Check.
‘world’ invasion, for which read invasion of the States with some added (bad) stock footage of other places an American audience may have heard of. Check
John Cleese looking like Bernard Cribbins. No, really.
The story of the Red Army Faction’s political terrorism in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s.
Some incredible scenes – including a sequence near the beginning of student protestors being attacked by supporters of the Shah of Iran, while the police look on and then join in.
What was less clearly developed was the political and emotional journey made by Ulriche Meinhof, from radical journalist and mother, to being someone who gave up her own children and participated in acts of terror.
A dramatisation of the story of Barbara Daly, her marriage to Brooks Baekeland, heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune, and their tragic relationships with their son, Tony.
Summary: the damage that damaged people do to each other.
Eddie Redmayne (Tony) and Julianne Moore (Barbara) were amazing. The cinematography was hauntingly beautiful – giving a real sense of time and place as the family members drifted from country to country across two decades.
Difficult to say that one enjoyed a film with such disturbing subject matter as this, but it was certainly worth watching.
Shown as part of the Bath Film Festival - my only complaint? The pointless introductions to the movies that are being shown – fine if there are sponsors to be thanked or critique/context to be offered, but pointless if all that is offered is a plot summary of what is to come.
I thought I would compare notes with Oobely Boo on Dark Knight - I certainly didn’t hate it - but nor was I completely bowled over by it. It was too long and took itself too seriously. I also got very irritated by the deep ‘film trailer voiceover’ voice adopted by Batman (as well as by the child sitting next to me in the cinema who seemed unable to be quiet or still. Does that make me very old and grumpy?).
I was struck not by the much-heralded darkness of The Dark Knight, but more by the attempt at realism – the exploration of the humanity of Batman and a rather mundane looking Gotham. I suppose I prefer a more stylised approach – Tim Burton all the way.
This may mark me out as a very shallow consumer but just occasionally it would be nice if the ‘hero’ spent more of his time on saving the world and less on gloomy introspection. To borrow a line from the movie – is the Christopher Nolan version of Batman the hero we need or the hero we deserve? Batman for a psychotherapy generation?
Visually quite creative, as you might expect from a Guillermo del Toro movie. Thankfully, it didn’t take itself too seriously (hmm, any tips for the Batman franchise there?). Ticked the boxes for action movie cliches, if a little slow in places - Matrix-derived action sequence, then the bit in the middle where the team goes through self-doubt, action sequence, teaser for the third instalment, action sequence and then the self-sacrifice bit. Not exactly scary – except the casting of a former member of Bros as the bad guy – you could tell he was a bad guy because he wasn’t nice to the books in the library.
Okay, not actually about knitting – but this is a review of Wanted, a film where the plot centres on a fraternity of weaver-assassins (!?) whose hits are identified by the Loom of Fate (!!??). The Loom of Fate weaves fabric with imperfections – the imperfections are a binary code identifying the next victim. Needless to say I tried to imagine the Britflick version, where a confraternity of knitters caused carnage based on a dropped stitch or two.
Leaving gaping holes in the fabric, sorry plot, aside, this was a fairly mindless way to enjoy a couple of hours at the cinema. The effects were son of Matrix; Angelina Jolie’s eye make-up possibly weighed more than she did; and the acting honours go to Morgan Freeman, who said the following with a straight face:
Sloan: It a choice, Wesley, that each of us must face: to remain ordinary, pathetic, beat-down, coasting through a miserable existence, like sheep herded by fate, or you can take control of your own destiny and join us, releasing the caged wolf you have inside. Our purpose is to maintain stability in an unstable world – kill one, save a thousand. Within the fabric of this world, every life hangs by a thread. We are that thread – a fraternity of assassins with the weapons of fate. This is the decision that lies before you know: the sheep, or the wolf. The choice is yours.
Sheriff: If it ain’t, it’ll do till the mess gets here.
I could wax lyrical about the extended metaphors of age, decline and the inevitability of human fate but I won’t waste bandwidth that could be better used watching this movie instead.
This is the Coen Brothers at their slightly lopsided, eccentric best, with Tommy Lee Jones as crumpled as one of my linen suits and Javier Bardem as the scariest thing since his own haircut. The dialogue is so laid back it has its own chaise longue and there is a cinematographic feel for landscape that recalled to mind my other favourite Coen Brothers’ movie, Fargo, combined with a sense of violent style that reminded me of Grosse Pointe Blank.
Think engineering porn crossed with an extended Audi advert.
A laid back performance from Downey playing upon his own reputation:
Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts: [walks in on Tony trying to get out of the Iron Man suit] Tony Stark: Let’s face it, this is not the worst thing you’ve caught me doing.
Gwyneth Paltrow fared less well. Waste of space would be a charitable verdict on her character. A bad mix of under-developed characterisation and poor casting.
Think of all the horror movie standards – the hysterical woman, the haunted house with a tragic history, the moving shadows just outside the field of direct vision, the isolated location, ghostly children, the creepy old woman, the even creepier psychic - and then think of them combined in a well-made chiller movie rather than a mindless, overblown Hollywood gorefest. That’s The Orphanage.
This is so gloriously bad, it is almost worth seeing!
