Film 2011

[Acker79]

Also, like with iron man and iron man two, there is little something at the end of the credits for Thor.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Went to see Insidious this afternoon. A catchy title that i am sure everyone understands the meaning of. It's funny often in horror films how little time they have to put a character together before they're thrown around a room by goblins or raped by trees. In this one Rose Byrne, the mother in the family, has given up work to write maudlin souly songs about going west. Patrick Wilson, the father, is an everyman and kindly teacher who wouldn't have photos taken of him as a child. That's pretty much what we get from them. Then, their son in a coma no one understands, some phantoms seem to have taken residence in their home.
Thoughts of Amityville and Poltergheist ring throughout - one chap eases the pain of a bruise with a cold steak, reminding me of that Poltergheist meat piece crawling by itself across the work surface - but the initial chills of the unseen are warmly dampened by a more and more ludicrous plot and comic characters arriving both living and dead.
Not something i'll horrifically remember, but not as bad as it could've been. Wilson and Byrne give it their all.

 

[Meade's Ball]

I sometimes see these latenight showings on (not of that variety, dirty boy), but always think they'll be full of drunks not caring what's happening onscreen. Then i realised that could actually be a good thing, so took myself and live-in lover to the Spanish horror film Julia's Eyes at my local, the Rio. A couple of ciders were downed beforehand and a single big can of brew bought to take in. It was a shame, by the end, that very people said anything at all whilst watching it. It was cack. One of those ones with the name of someone decent loosely-attached, this time Guillermo Del Toro. It was about Julia, who had an inherited eye-disorder bringing about blindness tanks to stressful episodes. Her sister already had it, but had been hung at the start by a mysteriously invisble chap. Now Julia, slowly going blind, is investigating her sister's death alongside being hunted by the killer. It was poor. Strangely, it was put on by the East London Film Festival, and have no idea what the film had to do with East London.

Today, i went back to 1919. Quite nice there, i thought. It was The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, beautifully abstractly-painted backgrounds and silent-pictured comical villainy. Luckily we had a pianist at the BFI helping with sound and emotion. I really enjoyed it. The look of it was intense and the character of Dr Caligari brilliantly devilish, his moustache rolled and twangable, his cape of ill-hope hiding the monster that lurked within. Caligari takes an exhibition to the local fairground in mountainous central Europe. The cabinet he opens houses a somnambulist he claims has been asleep since birth. Ask him any question once i awaken him, Caligari cries, and the answer shall be true. The first chap asks how long he will live, Cesare, the now open-eyed permanent sleepwalker, says until dawn breaks. Slightly unsurprisingly, he knows this because he will be sent out to kill by Caligari, who cackles noiselessly in his paper caravan.
It was a great show, human words sometimes written on screen, but the rest of the time them imagined as whichever character crackles with a mascaraed passion, and the panic felt sometimes said by the piano. The look of it was constantly appealing and intriguing too. Strange-shaped doors and windows and the world at a dizzying angle. I imagine without the accompaniment it would have been a sleepener, but it was a cool mix and i am very glad i went.

 

[Barrel of Fun]

Football Factory - 3.1 thus far. Danny Dyer is living proof that someone can reach for the stars without an ounce of talent. I have seen less wood on display in a bloody Travis Perkins. Utter tripe.

 

[Acker79]

May

Robert Pattison tries to shake off the tag of ‘that guy from Twilight’ with Water For Elephants, where he plays a young man who drops out of veterinary school after his parents’ deaths and joins a travelling circus. Also stars Reese Witherspoon. (trailer)

Terrence Malick returns in a story of lost innocence with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn in The Tree of Life. (trailer)

Saoirse Ronan continues to build her young body of work starring as the titular Hanna, a girl raised by her father to be a cold hearted killing machine whose new family is trying to help her take on a more conventional life. Also stars Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, Olivia Williams and Tom Hollander. (trailer)

Kate Hudson tries her hand at something completely different when she stars in... a romcom. This time her terminally single friend falls for Kate’s fiancé, putting a strain on all their relationships in Something Borrowed. (trailer)

Lots of recogniseable names support Paul Bettany when he plays the titular Priest who disobeys the church and goes off to fight vampires. I don’t believe this is based on a true story. (trailer)

13 Assassins is the latest offering from Takeshi Miike, telling the story of a group of assassins taking on what will likely b their last mission. (trailer)

After a period on the shelf waiting for the right time to be released Take Me Home is a homage to 80s movies that finally gets it’s time in cinemas. (trailer)

Father and son Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez star in (and the latter also directs) The Way the story of a man who travels to France to discover what happened to his son while travelling “El camino de Santiago”. (trailer)

Aliens invade South London in Attack the Block, and it’s up to the locals to defend the place, starring Nick Frost and Jodie Whittaker. (trailer)

Paul Giamatti plays a lawyer/high school wrestling coach whose plans to use a star pupil for less than honest activities is upset by te arrival of the kid’s mother in Win Win. (trailer)

Jason Statham and David Morrissey join forces to star in Blitz a film about policeman who is sent to investigate a serial killer who targets policemen. (trailer)

Sean Bean and Danny Dyer team up again to tell the story of the formation of Ian Fleming’s 30 commando unit, the precursor to our elite forces, in Age of Heroes. (trailer)

Woody Harrelson was nominated for an Oscar last year for his role in The Messenger which is getting a UK release this month. (trailer)

Hangover part 2 sees all the players from the surprise hit return. Can they recapture the magic? (trailer)

One for the kids as the book series continues to face big screen adaptations with Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules. (trailer)

Other big releases this month: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (trailer), X-men: First Class (trailer).

 

[Meade's Ball]

13 Assassins is alright. A little large and clunky and of course in many ways an ode to a Kurosawa epic or two, but quite enjoyable once it gets to the vast and fiery denouement.

 

[Austrian Gull]

Saw Heartbreakers last night.


Romain Duris is a fine actor and I Vanessa Paradis so this is one rom-com I was happy to watch. It's French cinema trying to be Hollywood.

Duris plays a character whose job is to seduce women who are in an unsuitable relationship. Paradis is about to get married to Andrew Lincoln much to her dad's disapproval. Duris is hired to split them up and, of course, falls for her.

Quite a few laughs, a predictably happy ending, great scenes on the Côte d'Azur, Paradis looking hot. I liked it.

7.2/10

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Thor was a bit rubbish and the 3d was a bit pointless, just seems they were basically getting any film out with him in for the Avengers.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Hanna. She is multilingual, a master of camouflage and can fire arrows near to the hearts of beautifully regal deer for dinner. But the poor cherub is also startled by the ringing of phones. In this, Hanna lives in hiding somewhere in Finland with her bearded father and trainer Eric Bana. She's been there almost all her life learning to become a truly dangerous animal. Now at the age of perhaps 16 she wants to venture into the world the majority of us live in, whilst knowingly being hunted down by the ginger-bobbed Cate Blanchett.
It wasn't much cop really. It was undeliberately amusing, Hanna's second tracker being a teutonic sexual deviant played by the dwarfish Tom Hollander. His team of sidekicks are all nazi skinheads. A mean bunch, of course, but if you were chasing someone for long distances i am not sure skintight denim and bother-boots would help you for speed. A couple of fight scenes were well-conducted and the front three of Bana, Blanchett and Saoirse Ronan as Hanna make it watchable, but it has no lasting tug to it, leaving one more shruggish than wondering of more.
No thinking required. If you did, you'd wonder why a German father and daughter only spoke English to each other.

 

[Acker79]

I enjoyed Hanna, but for all the wrong reasons (tom hollander camping it up, random spy guy doing littlewoods catalogue poses when trying to look nonchalant, etc.).

 

[New Carpet?]

Hanna

The action scenes were good, the industrial electro soundtrack complimented the film well, but there weren't really any twists in the film and it seemed to just run its inevitable course. As Meade's Ball has said, Hanna, Bana and Blanchett made it more watchable, and Tom Hollander was pretty amusing as a camp German doppelganger of David Van Day.

I'd probably watch it again though.

7.3

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Released in March, this look excellent from the trailer:

Really looking forward to the DVD. Bought the book for a fiver on impulse from HMV in the week, and- WOW!!! Subsequently seen the trailer, missed the movie release but will be first in line for the vid. Soundtrack sounds quality also.

 

[Meade's Ball]

I left my bike in town again thanks to the influence of drink last evening, so had to run there this morning to collect. I harearsed it. Don't know why, but with something of a hangover i seemed to be so much fitter than usual. I even had enough time to stop off to collect a water bottle and limited edition Snickers Maximus to keep me energised through Attack of the Block. I partly wanted to see that because of its setting in Oval, an ant's fart from my daily grind. And also because it was directed by Joe Cornish, the more nerdy-sounding of Adam & Joe, who i generally find quite funny. It's just the tale of a sort of alien invasion and kids from an estate looking to save the day, thanks to or despite their virulent hoodie culture-choice. It's very much a homage and nod to its influences such as Critters and Gremlins, but tries to give a slightly street edge. Sadly, the main thing that's missing from it, is humour. Maybe the banter and chatter of the hoodied teens is meant to tickle, but the cinema remained silent in response. Still, it wasn't without merit. The aliens were well-enough crafted and the sometimes bloody conflict became good fun. Not that good, but not that bad.

 

[Meade's Ball]

A strange, but enjoyable 12 hours in the cinema-world for the Meade. Not constantly, of course. I have a life outside of that in some way. You know, i like running, sometimes away from people and their big dogs.
Anyway, i went to another late-night screening in my local THE RIO, which i am more growing to love by the week. This time it was oddly unsettling Who Can Kill a Child? Made in 1976 and Spanish, this is a rather disturbing tale of the suddenly-evil wish for the children on this little island to massacre all the adults...and do it playfully. They fool grown-ups with their looks of innocence and teary little eyes before violence is struck. An English couple land on the little off-shore island for the male to show his pregnant bride a treasured time he had a decade or more ago. Little did they know the teens and below of that place had come to a psychic agreement, mostly at the hypnotic behest of the two main boys there, to reap their own sense of justice.
I really rather enjoyed it. I expected it to be a bit shit and just the sort of silly thing shown late-on for horror afficionados, and while the cinema had 20 or so of just that type, the film was actually really chilling. When you have the pregnant woman meeting her doom because one of the children has hypnotised her unborn baby to kill her slowly from within, you know you have something a bit weird on your hands. It was also oddly enjoyable to see the male try his best to escape, and as he did, whacks a load of kids in the head with wooden beams and anything he can lay his hands on. A number of us giggled as he did. If anyone gets the chance to see it, then do. The acting is not great and the English couple are amusingly 70s, but the kids in it are effectively rotten.

Now, before that film was on, they had some miniature cartoons on from the 70s of Thor. There was little movement in these Marvel productions and the voicing was amusing, but it coerced me to go to see the new version today. I had strong reservations as i knew they'd changed the original idea from the comic of the spirit of Thor being within the body of limpy-legged Donald Blake (MD). He'd crack his cane and say a line before Thor erupted from him and his thunderous hammer went into action. But i was surprisingly dragged along for the ride that Brannagh ruddered. The look of it was sometimes unappealing, Asgard computeristically unheavenly, but i found some of it charming enough to loiter to the end. Thor himself, when thrown to Earth, had me thinking mostly of Triple H from the wrestling ring and Blade "cockjugglingthundercunt" Trinity. And i had the thought that Brannagh perhaps fashioned it with its shakesperean narrative undertones. Quite enjoyed it though.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

I have managed to get to the cinema a couple of time this month.

Water for Elephants - a good story, well made and impressive to look at. Pattinson of Twilight fame may be a pretty boy but he is also an good actor who I believe will become a Hollywood heavyweight. Witherspoon was more lightweight but good to look at and the bloke from Inglorious Basterds played the bloke from Inglorious Basterds only as a Circus owner this time. The Elephant was joyous but the animal abuse was hard to watch and made the blood boil and was not condoned as such and made to look like it was a part of the way of circus life, which it may be. Nice to see the Elephant end up braining him.

7.2

Attach the Block

I had read good things about this and at the time though mmm, its ok but nothing special. On reflection the teenage hoodies are the worst type of scum who talk the most annoying bastard English like " you get me " and " blood " whatever the f*** that means so all in all I was rooting that the Aliens killed them all and it was a shame only 2 of the gang of 5 ended up Alien food. A reasonable hour and a half but it did not have the wit and humour of Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuss not by a long shot.

5.8

 

[dannyboy]

easy on the SPOILERS mr spielberg

 

[Barrel of Fun]

Cor!

Can't wait for this. Spielberg and Jackson can't have turned this into a moronic slushfest, surely?

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Why ?. It does not appeal to me that much but Spielberg making a film about mating Ants would be more interesting than 99% of the films put out there. Still your right every film he had made has been utter shite silly me.

 

[keaton]

13 Assassins

Pretty horrific start, good and quite funny at times set-up and then a 45 minute fight scene involving 12 Samurai, a beggar, 200 bodyguards and the Shogun's Evil Brother.
I liked it a lot, if it was a step-down from Zatoichi 8.5

 

[Bean]

The Hangover Part 2 also comes out on the 21st May, very much looking forward to that !