[Film] Film 2014

[Acker79]

300 rise of an empire
This was very dull. For the most part it looked pretty decent, but even that look wasn't particularly fresh or creative, it's the same as the original 300, and it works for the story/adaptation. That's about the only good thing I can say about it. Even Eva Green, who people on my favourite movie review show have said really hammed it up, didn't seem over the top enough to be enjoyable. It was all just blah, and no one had any of the charisma that the cast of the first had, and the story just didn't seem to have anything of note. The 300 Spartans taking a stand has a hook to it, a regular Greek army not so much. It was all just dull.

Non stop
Another pretty dull movie. I only recognised three people, so thought the bad guy was obvious. Seeing the cast list, I actually knew more than I realised (including Scoot McNairy, Lupita Nyong'o, Linus Roache, and Michelle Dockery who is someone whose name I recognise as being something to do with Downton Abbey, but wouldn't have known what she looks like). The other person I recognised from House of Cards I thought would be the bad guy, but he wasn't so that kinda worked out well. Still not enough of a twist to make the film worth it. No one stood out as particularly noteworthy, no particularly entertaining bad guy, no snarky great good guy, no humorous sidekick, the story was mundane.

There was also an issue that the attacks don't start until half way through a 6 hour flight. There were going to be deaths every 20 minutes. That means 9 deaths. There were 150 people on the plane. Yet they acted as if they would (not could) would die

 

[Garret Bobby Ferguson]

Finally got to a showing of 12 years a slave on Tuesday. Considering the subject matter it seemed to be lacking in character depth in some places, I imagine there was a lot left on the cutting room floor. The whole Brad Pitt part was disappointing, it seems as though as a producer he wanted the good guy role rather than taking a better, meatier part where his character would have been shown in a bad light. His little speech about everyone being equal seemed out of step with the rest of the film, as an audience everyone knows what was going on was wrong, his objections to slavery could have been portrayed in a less preachy manner but it felt like he needed to be seen as a shining light. All in all though it was a good and at times hard watch that I wouldn't rush to see again.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Firstly i would like to say that an unFiennesed Grand Budapest Hotel would have had me hate every moment of it. He made it something with his enjoyable performance, but i still left the theatre with a bulging sneer attached to the general lip area of my unthrilled face.

Saw Starred Up on Monday night though, partly thanks to its freeness and otherwise i suppose down to the adverts promising a stand-out performance by the young lead, Jack someone or other. Well, it was a prison drama with a hunger for realism that a shaky camera is meant to licence. It concerned the imprisonment of this young chap who, it turns out, is actually trying to track down his father, a seemingly lifelong psychopathic savage who is one of the main mean sorts inside. As always, the only way to really set out your stall in prison is to almost beat someone to death, and nothing makes a mad-dad more proud of you. Will this youngster find his feet and almost become a man in an unforgiving climate whilst his papa accepts him as a fellow stabber of lungs and hearts?
Hmmm.
It had its moments, but the cliches and stereotypes had me feel a tad drowned and the acting by Ben Mendelsohn as the father was quite hilarious at times. Prison was bloody and rough, but i didn't emerge much other than lightly tickled by the grip and grit and the enormous usage of the word c*nt. A good scene of penis-biting too, may i add. The lad Jack was quite good though.

 

[Acker79]

Captain America: Winter Soldier
I went to a midnight showing of this last night. I really enjoyed it, but if you know the trailer well enough it ruins the twists and turns. Well, I say that, they may have been obvious anyway, and it was just the trailer that confirmed it for me.

It seems Cap has been training with more modernly popular fighting styles, as the old punch punch of the first film have been replaced with acrobatic martial arts. It didn't help that a lot of the fight scenes have a lot of shaky camera action. Though I did mostly enjoy the action scenes.

There's a bit more for Fury, Hill and Black Widow to do, and we get more of Captain America v modern life than we got with the avengers.

Overall another good entry into the marvel movie universe.

 

[shaolinpunk]

It seems Cap has been training with more modernly popular fighting styles, as the old punch punch of the first film have been replaced with acrobatic martial arts. It didn't help that a lot of the fight scenes have a lot of shaky camera action. Though I did mostly enjoy the action scenes.

I'm going to see it in a week or so - very much looking forward to it.

Have you seen The Raid? If not, you should - the fight choreography is out of this world (and the sequel is out soon). Anyway, it's become quite influential when it comes to fight scenes, apparently, which might explain the shift seen in CA2.

 

[Acker79]

I'm going to see it in a week or so - very much looking forward to it.

Have you seen The Raid? If not, you should - the fight choreography is out of this world (and the sequel is out soon). Anyway, it's become quite influential when it comes to fight scenes, apparently, which might explain the shift seen in CA2.

I have. There is a special unlimited members screening (of the raid 2) on monday that I hope to attend. Captain America's fighting isn't a patch on the Raid. Not even close.

 

[shaolinpunk]

I have. There is a special unlimited members screening on monday that I hope to attend. Captain America's fighting isn't a patch on the Raid. Not even close.

I'm not suggesting it would be - frankly, I'm not sure anything that tries to follow its lead will come close. I just meant the quick, fluid, in-your-face style rather than the more traditional block-and-punch style

 

[Acker79]

Muppets Most Wanted
Lacks a certain something when compared to the last movie, but still very enjoyable. I thought the songs were generally of a higher quality, but that a couple from the last film (man or a muppet, life's a happy song) were stronger than anything in this one.

The Raid 2
Fantastic action set pieces, with some incredibly violent moments, but tries too hard to have more story and more depth than the last one, leading to unnecessary moments that either needed more to round them out and give them meaning, or to just be dropped, but since the film was already 2.5 hours long, I lean towards just dropping them. Still way better than your average Hollywood martial arts movie.

 

[vegster]

It's nearing the end of it's run but managed to catch The Grand Budapest Hotel today at Dukes. Great film,Ralph Fiennes is the centrepoint of a lovely film, it's a comedy, an adventure it's a social commentary but above all a tour de force. When in full flow I thought Fiennes was channeling Leonard Rossiter at his finest. A lovely film, see it if you can.
8.2

 

[Meade's Ball]

Muppets Most Wanted
Lacks a certain something when compared to the last movie, but still very enjoyable. I thought the songs were generally of a higher quality, but that a couple from the last film (man or a muppet, life's a happy song) were stronger than anything in this one.

The Raid 2
Fantastic action set pieces, with some incredibly violent moments, but tries too hard to have more story and more depth than the last one, leading to unnecessary moments that either needed more to round them out and give them meaning, or to just be dropped, but since the film was already 2.5 hours long, I lean towards just dropping them. Still way better than your average Hollywood martial arts movie.

I went to the same doublebill on Monday. Jeez i was bored during the Muppets. Terribly terribly bored. And when i hoped that to be over during The Raid 2, i was a tad disappointed, as, as you say, it went into trying to put a storyline into what really ought to have been the out and out bloody bash em up that made the first one so great and astonishing. Gladly though i was pleased to wait until the last 40 minutes or so which was just ruddy amazing. Oh my heavens that was some action. I'll wait for it next to be on dvd i think and just watch the moments of baseball bat, hammer or hook wielding mayhem that had me love it so.

 

[London Irish]

Under the Skin - you'd think there is no way you could mess up a film with Scarlett Johansson going full starkers for the first time but this is a genuinely terrible film, pointless, boring, self-indulgent and vaguely nasty. Had to laugh at the couple of guys who fell asleep during the Duke of York's screening I went to, it was that turgid.

But fast forward a week to the Cavalry, and another Duke of York's audience just sat there stunned barely able to move as the screen went blank at the end and the lights went up. It's about the Christ-like suffering inflicted by a small Irish village on the local priest, like an episode of Father Ted but written by Dostoevsky. Very bleak but with a real humanity that the random body count of Under the Skin entirely lacked. Go see!

 

[Meade's Ball]

On a sickly afternoon, after couchbound i'd already sat through Das Boot and Contagion, i thought i'd dare myself outwards and have a small dose of vitamin D afore venturing into my local flicks-hall to see The Lunchbox. All the tale of a Hanks-n-Ryan-ian romance blossoming through an accidental lunch and the correspondence that follows, but set in Mumbai. I reasonably enjoyed it, but know for a fact that i wouldn't if it was in fact a Hollywood film spewing out the same romcom corniness at times. That may seem to be a film snobbery in place and probably is to an extent, but the setting made it feel differently interesting, looking into habits and traditions of an area so different to the inhuman glitter of Seattle or LA or NY where so many sweetly emotional ticklers are set. I chuckled a couple of times and hoped Saajen would overcome his morbid curmduegonliness and Ira, the daily baker of these meals to remember, would escape a mostly loveless marriage, but more than anything i liked the growing friendship of Saajen and his trainee in accounts, Shaikh.
Twas alright.


From what i very loosely remember, i sat through Captain America feelinglessly the other day and mostly bored. They've transformed a completely soulless comic character perfectly to screen with equal vapidity and stupidly-explained powers of invincibility. I'm going right off this Marvel compendium at the minute.

 

[Acker79]

The Amazing Spider-man 2
I am really unsure how I feel about this film.

Generally, I love superhero movies. Even Batman and Robin. So, I'm sure I don't hate it. I don't think anyone would put it on that level. But it just doesn't like it clicks, for some reason.

I know I wasn't exactly excited when they announced their intention to reboot this franchise. Not because it was so soon after the Tobey Maguire set - there are so many comic books, so many alternate takes, that I don't have a problem with that. But because it felt like they saw the success of Nolan's Batman series and decided "right, then. Dark, gritty and a more grounded in reality worked for Batman, let's do it with Spidey!" Spidey is a colourful, fun character, dark and gritty isn't him.

Then when the first came out I liked it well enough, though didn't like the conspiracy his parents were wrapped up in (something that is expounded on further in this one), the dark grittiness somehow making the lizard-people finale seem all the more cartoonish and ill-fitting.

It's more of that in this one.

Andrew Garfield is very good, haunted by the promise he made Gwen's father, and there is a lot about their relationship, and perhaps the villains suffer because of this. Again the villains are too cartoonish for the dark tone, and even more so in the case of Electro, who is so brightly CGI that his scenes often come across as almost computer game-ish, as did a lot of the action scenes.

Where Garfield is successful in making me forget about Tobey Maguire's turn as Spidey, Dane DeHaan falls short of both Willem DaFoe and James Franco as he takes his turn as Harry Osbourne/The (green/hob?) Goblin. His Harry is fine, in keeping with this film, but his Goblin seems rushed and underdeveloped. Wisely, they've stayed away from showing J Jonah Jameson, but have included references to him and Peter selling photos to the Bugle. Paul Giamatti makes bookending brief appearances where he essentially just laughs maniacally. There's an evil scientist who not only seems out of place with his cartoonish look, his act seems out of time with a ridiculous German accent.

There is a heart full story at the centre, focusing on the on/off relationship between Peter and Gwen, and further messages about choices and who has responsibility for them, and so on. But that, too, didn't really click for me. It wasn't awful it just didn't seem to connect with me.

It is a long film (2hrs 20min), and with things not really coming together it does test one's patience. I wonder if it is more that it still feels like it is building the world, setting up for something more substantial that the hints of these things make it feel incomplete on its own.

It did feel like I perhaps would enjoy more if watched when I'm in a different mood, so I wouldn't be surprised if other people are more impressed by it.

 

[keaton]

Grand Budapest Hotel 8.9

It's the most Wes Anderson of his films, but it works possibly become it's less slow and melancholic than the rest. Non-stop action and humour, and Fiennes deserves an Oscar for an amazing performance.

I also saw the showing of Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr, The Goat and Cops at the Dukes at the Komedia yesterday. I hadn't realised it was for children, but they all seemed to enjoy and it was superb watching them on a big screen with a live musical accompaniment. They should really do one at the weekend for grown-ups.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Tracks is a slow and beautiful Australian film, based on a true story, of a girl who sets off with four camels and a black dog to walk 1,700 miles across the desert from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean. Mia Wasikowska is stunning in the lead role, highly reminiscent of a young Gwyneth Paltrow. If you liked the style and leisurely pace of Walkabout or Picnic At Hanging Rock, then you'll love this. 8/10

 

[Meade's Ball]

Just under 90 minutes of Tom Hardy as a welshman in his car heading down the motorway, talking for at least half the time about the next morning not being able to make it to a record-breaking cement-pour. Sounds good, dunnit. Well, it was. The other half of the time is spent on more emotional calls with his wife and children and in firm discussions with the spirit of his father on the backseat, a man he's determined not to emulate in any fiendish sense. The film is Locke, the surname of Hardy's one-man show, and in spite of the action itself being non-existent, the dialogue grips dramatically and the conversations all concerning his surprise drive are mostly emotionally potent. The end didn't have the high or low i'd hoped for, but the getting there was largely enthralling. Great performance and good to see such a big league actor still giving time to a dialogue piece that relied on script with not a single sniff of graphics.

 

[Nibble]

I too saw Locke today. Wow. I thought it was staggeringly good. I deliberately avoided any reviews/spoilers before I saw it and that paid off. Tom Hardy, who I find can be quite wooden in some films, delivers a flawless masterclass in acting. I didn't know what to expect but the concept intrigued me and it works. Very rarely am I so deeply drawn into a film as this. I could have sat and watched Hardy giving the performance of his life for double the running time. The subject matter is serious but includes some genuinely laugh out loud lines from Hardy. I cannot fault it. One of the best films I have seen.

 

[Questions]

I have not read this thread for ages. I now know why. Dreadful wannabe film critics. It's made me cringe.

 

[Nibble]

I have not read this thread for ages. I now know why. Dreadful wannabe film critics. It's made me cringe.

I enjoyed your review of this thread, very insightful, thought provoking and honest, if a little flawed in it's premise. I give it a solid 2.675 out of 10.

 

[Questions]

I enjoyed your review of this thread, very insightful, thought provoking and honest, if a little flawed in it's premise. I give it a solid 2.675 out of 10.

Thank you. I did not want my review saddled, nay tortured with the usual idiosyncrasies one imparts so often when unravelling the inner mantle of a pretentious condescending synopsis.