Film 2011

[Barry Izbak]

After spending Saturday watching the racing and having a few bevvies, I made a relatively late decision to walk into town to see Tinker Tailor. Arriving at the Odeon, I'm told its SOLD OUT ! (small screen, one showing per day)

So I plump for CONTAGION having seen Kate Winslet promoing it on TV this week. Strange film I thought. Good premise, and disaster movie potential, but so disjointed that it was just all over the place. Jumping from one place to another and at a varied pace, I'm afraid that it made the story hard to follow. I felt that they spoilt what could have been a good film.

And if anyone who see's it can help me, is Kate Winslet attempting an accent? If so what is it meant to be?

 

[Barry Izbak]

Finally got to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy last night at the Marina. No where near as complicated as some reviews would have you believe. Thoroughly enjoyed it, the story, the characters, the production. 8/10

 

[keaton]

Midnight In Paris

A genuine return to form for Woody Allen, his best since the early 90s. Wilson's superb and it's very funny and great fun

 

[dannyboy]

saw paranormal activity 3 last night . not too bad 6/10 if you like that sort of thing

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Saw 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' at the DoY last night. Was expecting great things from the director Lynne Ramsay whose previous film, yonks ago, was the totally trippy 'Morvern Callar', but 'Kevin' was curiously unrewarding. Tilda Swinton was her usual class act and the kids who played young Kevin and teen Kevin both conveyed a real air of psychotic coldness, but overall the film seemed a bit laboured and two dimensional. 6/10.

 

[Acker79]

We Need to Talk About Kevin
I mostly enjoyed this, but had the climactic moments of the film ruined due in part to the ridiculously tight schedule at the marina (the film finished at 4, and the next film to show on that screen, johnny english, was to start at 4.10), and the ushers directing people into the screen before '...Kevin' had finished. An old couple walked in making a load of noise, disturbing everyone, completely ignoring the fact the room was dark, everyone was in silence and a film was playing. There were a lot of confrontations once the credits started. Despite that, I did mostly enjoy the film.

Rocky Horror Picture Show
I went to an early showing because I had other plans for the evening, which meant the screening wasn't particularly busy, and the audience weren't all dressed up and joining in, but it's a classic and one of my favourite films, so I enjoyed it nonetheless. When I watch it on dvd I usually employ a couple of the special features (wizard of oz viewing (starts black and white and goes colour a little bit in) and an audience participation soundtrack) so it was the first time in a while I've really aid a lot of attention to it, and noticed lots of little things I either had forgot, or not noticed before.

 

[Oscar]

Saw Ghostbusters at the Duke of Yorks at the Saturday morning kids club. Holds up well after all these years and the kids seemed to love it despite some naughty bits that had some parents muttering (the ghost BJ on Ackroyd for example). Funny how I never noticed that back in the day.

A retro 7/10

 

[Acker79]

November

Tower Heist (2011) - IMDb sees Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller and Casey Affleck in a story about the victims of a Ponzi scheme, who seek revenge on the wealthy businessman who conned them. (trailer)

Gerard Butler, the gorgeous Michelle Monaghan, and Michael ‘soon to be Zod’ Shannon star in the true story of drug dealer-turned-preacher in Machine Gun Preacher (2011) - IMDb (trailer)

The BBFC originally refused to certificate IMDb - The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011) after a series of cuts, Tom Six gets to release his film about a man who saw the first Human Centipede and is inspired to go one better. (trailer)

James Marsden takes on the Dustin Hoffman role in the remake of a controversial film in Straw Dogs (2011) - IMDb. Kate Bosworth plays his wife and the film relocates from UK to America in the story of a peaceful man who is driven to breaking point by local conflicts. (trailer)

Crime, betrayal, deception poor reviews, probably what you’d expect when you put Nic Cage and Joel Schumacher together with Trespass (2011) - IMDb, also starring Cam Gigandet, and Nicle Kidman. (trailer)

Johnny Depp returns to Hunter S Thompson territory with The Rum Diary (2011) - IMDb, alongside Giovanni Ribisi, Aaron Eckhart and Amber Heard. Drug-induced crazy is to be expected. (trailer)

Henry ‘the new Superman’ Cavill stars with Mickey Rourke and John Hurt in Immortals (2011) - IMDb, Gods and Greek men fighting. (trailer)

Christmas Films are coming now, with Arthur Christmas (2011) - IMDb telling the tale of Santa’s son and the mischief he gets up to. Stars the voice talents of James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, and Hugh Laurie among others (trailer)

The beautiful Rebecca Hall stars as a hoax exposer who visits a boarding school to explain ghost sightings in 1921 in The Awakening (2011) - IMDb, but are they hoaxes? Also stars Dominic West and Imelda Staunton. (trailer)

Heathcliff! It’s me, Cathy come home... Another version of Wuthering Heights (2011) - IMDb, this time starring ‘Skins’ Kaya Scodelario and newcomer James Howson in the main roles, as Andrea Arnold directs a different (more desolate?) take on the familiar story. (trailer)

Snowtown (2011) - IMDb is and Australian movie based on the true story of John Bunting, the country’s most notorious serial killer. (trailer)

Another Nic Cage film, this time he stars as a husband who enlists the help of a secret vigilante group to exact revenge when his wife, January Jones is assaulted. Then the vigilante group start demanding he return the favour... Also stars ‘Dexter’s Jennifer Carpenter, Guy Pierce and ‘Oz’, ‘Lost’ and The Matrix Reloaded’s Harold Perrineau (trailer)

‘The Sopranos’s James Gandolfini, stars with Melissa Leo, Kristen Stewart (rumours of her nudity in this film may have been exaggerated) and Short Circuit’s Ally Sheedy in Welcome to the Rileys (2010) - IMDb, a film about a man who seeks redemption by caring for a young woman. (trailer)

Keeley Hazall, Gemma Atkinson... mmmm... sorry, lost track of myself for a moment, K and G star with Richard E Grant, Exam and James Bond’s Colin Salmon and ‘The Bill’s Billy Murray in How to Stop Being a Loser (2011) - IMDb (trailer)

Seth Rogan stars as a young man whose friend, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt is diagnosed with cancer in 50/50 (2011) - IMDb a film about how their relationship develops. Loosely based on Seth Rogan’s real life friendship with a cancer survivor. Also stars Twilight’s Anna Kendrick and Bryce Dallas Howard. (trailer)

Moneyball (2011) - IMDb stars Brad Pitt in the true story of a man who changed baseball, and thanks to American owners in the Premier League, could have an effect on football. Billy Beane successfully attempted to use computer analysis to judge potential signings on different standards to usual (trailer)

For the heat readers amongst you, Dream House (2011) - IMDb is the film on which Daniel Craig met Rachel Weisz. They play a couple who move to a new home that was the scene of a brutal crime. Naomi atts stars as their neighbour. (trailer)

My Week with Marilyn (2011) - IMDb sees Eddie Redmayne as an employee of Sir Laurence Olivier who documents Olivier’s tense relationship with Marilyn Monroe. Kenneth Brannagh plays Olivier, Michelle Williams plays Monroe. (trailer)

In Take Shelter (2011) - IMDb Michael Shannon stars as a father who having apocalyptic visions and struggles with the decision to build shelter for the coming storm, or from himself. Also stars Jessica Chastain and Shea Whigham. (trailer)

Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddlestone, and Simon Russell star in The Deep Blue Sea (2011) - IMDb, a story about the wife of a judge and theaffair sh has with a Royal Air Force Pilot. (trailer)

Michael Sheen and Kimberley Nixon star in Resistance (2011) - IMDb, a film about a Welsh village in 1944, where all the men have disappeared. (trailer)

Other big movies this month:
IMDb - The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011) (trailer)

 

[Barry Izbak]

Saw The Help last night and was not disappointed. The subject matter and the main characters suggest its aimed at the ladies, and the audience was 80% female last night, but in fact its a US civil rights movie and very entertaining.

At about 135 minutes, its longer than some blockbusters, and it is perhaps 20 minutes too long, but the performances and the appearance of the film are excellent.

And in case I've put you blokes off by suggesting its a chick flick (which it isn't), put on your best Jeremy Clarkson voice on.............. and just check out the cars!

8/10

 

[Nibble]

Saw Grown Ups. Was expecting a pile of shit from this Adam Sandler vehicle but thought for £3 I'll give it a go. It was quite funny.

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Saw The Help last night and was not disappointed. The subject matter and the main characters suggest its aimed at the ladies, and the audience was 80% female last night, but in fact its a US civil rights movie and very entertaining.

At about 135 minutes, its longer than some blockbusters, and it is perhaps 20 minutes too long, but the performances and the appearance of the film are excellent.

And in case I've put you blokes off by suggesting its a chick flick (which it isn't), put on your best Jeremy Clarkson voice on.............. and just check out the cars!

8/10

Agree with every word of that. I was blubbing along with the ladies too. Amazing performances all round - especially Sophie Ellis Bextor as that racist bitch. Yes 20 minutes or so too long - I needed 'Help' getting out of my seat by the end my botty cheeks were so numb!

 

[Acker79]

In Time
In the future, people stop ageing when they turn 25, and instead of money they trade time, which indicates how long they can live. Rich people have years, decades and centuries, poor people have just enough to live day to day. The allegory to money was not particularly subtle. The film doesn't take itself so seriously that it seemed preposterous or pompous. But it didn't plant its tongue in its cheek to make it particularly fun, either. Very m'eh film. Not one to make an effort for, but not offensively bad either.

 

[Acker79]

Twilight: Breaking Dawn pt1
Best comedy of the year. Wait, it's not meant to be funny? Oh, scratch that. It was rather comical in places (watch Edward pack when they finish their honeymoon!) The acting isn't any better than in previous instalments, the story is equally as absent, the characters as unlike-able and their relationships just as unhealthy. Key points are absurdly revealed at the last minute making them seem all too convenient.

As far as breaking points are concerned, this seemed to end at a point that felt like a complete story. Apparently there's a post credit scene I missed that sets up pt2.

Immortals 3D
Pretty much everything about this was pointless, especially the 3D (unfortunately the marina wasn't showing the 2D version). Why do 3D films look like they really use the three dimension gimmick in trailers then the films come along and disappoint? The 3D for The Darkest Hour looks amazing, I worry the film will disappoint in this respect.

I'm now concerned about Henry Cavil's ability to bring bass and gravitas to Superman...

 

[Meade's Ball]

It feels an age since i've gone on about cinema and stuck my nose up at the drivel i've sat through, so here i am again. But this time it's to mildly laud a new release. Take Shelter. A small and forgettable town in Ohio with a religious influence to its habits keeps Michael Shannon within it, a man plagued by apocalyptic visions. His dreams he begins to strongly believe in, all of them related to a terrible storm approaching, to the world naturally turning against him. He has a caring wife and deaf daughter he wants to protect from the hellish onslaught, but keeps his concerns and torments relatively quiet, often being simply lost in the intensity and mythicality of his visions.
It has been given an "if you like Donnie Darko you will like this" status and i semi-agree with this. But this is as much about a man going through psychological problems and not having the simple opportunity to talk about it anywhere, disappearing further into himself and his fantasies, as it is about his dreams. The dreams sometimes made me think of the one or two we see in American Werewolf in London. There is that shockingness sometimes to them.
Sadly the ending of the film was a disappointment, but overall it was a brilliant performance by Shannon doing what he can to keep everything in and two hours of real emotional drama peppered with gruesome outbursts of possibly imagined horror.
See it.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Why oh why oh why oh why oh why were they marching down Haymarket last evening, these strikers, and stopping me getting into the Cineworld there for Deep Blue Sea? Thanks to their wish for fighting a cut to their pensions and perhaps wanting the city that caused our world dismay to be charged much more to fight the deficit, i was forced into my second choice Dream House. By Mrs Gibbons that was a frigging shit film. Daniel Craig David is a man living the perfect life leaving the awful people-filled city to live in their idyllic little home far far away, along with the ever-youthful Rachel Weisz and two annoying young daughters who ask him a silly ha ha question he he every hahahaha few heh moments. Those cheeky young *****. But wait a minute. No one can actually be living this life, can they? I mean, really? No. They can't.
An eerie secret hides in the house and in Daniel Craig David himself. Does his nearest neighbour, Naomi Watts know of what it might be, that horrific secret? Oooooooh, i don't give a crap.
God that was a horrendous and unthrilling film with some truly sickly characterisation and no feel to it whatsoever. A cast you can usually trust must be honestly embarrassed. Jim Sheridan, the director most famous for In The Name Of The Father, should hang his head in shame also.
All in all, rancid ballbaggery.

 

[New Carpet?]

A recent brace from the Duke of York's:

The Future - the trailer deemed it to be a whimsical and entertaining film about a relationship after a mid-thirties couple decide to adopt a cat, the reality was that it was one of the most depressing and grating films I've seen. Writer, director and lead Miranda July could possibly have created the most irritating movie character since the woman who played Nancy Spungen in Sid & Nancy. Hated it, avoid.

2.5


Take Shelter - This is more like it. Read Meade's Ball's review above, but I'll just add that it was gripping from the offset, combining Fight Club with Sixth Sense with Inception with er, Twister. Great performances across the board and with an "is it?/isn't it?" cliffhanger that runs all the way right up to the very end (which I actually rather liked myself). One of the most memorable films I have seen in a long while - catch it while you can.

8.8

 

[Meade's Ball]

PS in Dream House, the main potentially murderous character is called Peter Ward. Another blasphemous reason to ignore it.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Hugo

Martin Scorsese is one of the visionaries. A great director and his style is stamped all over this film. It is a slow burner, go and be patient as the film grows in time and is a film about 2 broken souls , a young Boy and an elderly Man who help to heal each other through a metallic robot and the art of cinema. It is based in and around the Paris Train Station. This IS NOT a kids film. It may have been marketed wrongly as this is an intelligent slow film demanding attention and appreciation. DO NOT take your 3 and 4 years old to it as many parents did in the screening yesterday as they will not have a f*cking clue what is going on and their attention span will not last. It is for 10 year olds up to adults. The sets and panoramic scenes of Paris are stunning. Baren-Cohen does an amusing turn as the Station inspector.

Not quite the masterpiece some are saying and its on 8.6 with imdb at the moment but it is a unique and good film.

7.9

 

[Meade's Ball]

The best thing about The Thing's The Thing prequel is the moment during the closing credits when a husky escapes the premises and is chased across the tundra and shot at by the tired and desperate surviving Norwegians. The original's music, a thudding, thumping electronic heartbeat, kicks in, and the possibility of dramatic horror fills the bones.
In the review i'd read of this prequel, which is largely a remake, of the 1982 classic, and i am not often serious in my usage of such a title, the reviewer spoke of little memory of the original (i've seen The Thing From Another World and see it as a separate entity) and therefore enjoyed it enough to call it average. I am going to email him to tell him to rewatch John Carpenter's spinetingling, bloodcurdling masterpiece. This time around they largely missed the point of what combined some expert eye-widening graphics and chilling suspense. It's about being trapped in the most frozen of climes after a long winter's work and a snowstorm coming to mean there's no escape from the madness of containment. It's about an evil amongst men that can infect and transform us all and finding that foul contagion. It's about humanity more unable than not to cope with change, with the unknown, with the unseen. It's about an alien lifeform separating its head from his neck, pulling said head along the floor with the aid of a fly-catching-frog-esque tongue and then growing spidery legs out of it to enable head to scamper away.
In this remake they look to emulate in places by reconstructing some of the body-reshaping grotesqueness, but don't bring about the notion of really where they bloodfreezingly are, of simply having no chance in this fight to the death, of the suspicion within camp of who might be not who they claim to be. Instead it becomes more graphics than plot and sometimes the graphics too noticeably made.
All in all, it was not the most enjoyable of creature features. Although that's maybe as i'll have the original in my horrific heart for good.

 

[Acker79]

December

I can’t believe I forgot this. It's the last month of the year and I’ve put so much effort into these. I’m so angry with myself. With only half the month to preview this is a smaller post.

Oscar Favourite The Artist (2011) - IMDb is out after Christmas, it is a mostly silent movie paying homage to an old era in filmmaking. trailer

Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis star in Luc Besson’s The Lady (2011) - IMDb , a film about love set against a backdrop of political turmoil, telling the true story of Aung San Suu Kyi and Michael Aris trailer

Most of the Other Big Movies this month were covered in the opening post.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) - IMDb, trailer
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked (2011) - IMDb, trailer
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) - IMDb , trailer
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) - IMDb , trailer