Movie Reviews!

Cold Souls (2009)
I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to work. After all, we all know what souls are right? They’re the bit of you that is all floaty and goes to heaven when you die. Well actually that’s not the case in this movie… and that actually makes things even more confusing.

The idea is that if you have your soul removed you will feel a weight lifted from you. Souls provide you with the essence of who you are, but a soul can also be heavy burden to carry. (This is sounding a bit Buffy-esque, isn’t it?)

So Paul Giamatti, who is finding himself getting rather over-emotional as he performs in a Russian play, becomes quite intrigued by a company which specialises in relieving him of his burden. The company treats the soul like an organ in the body. They extract it and put it in cold storage, with the option of transplanting it back in if things don’t work out.

There are a lot of clever ideas and there’s a similar sort of feel to Being John Malkovich (even to the extent that Paul Giamatti plays himself). Like Being John Malkovich, Cold Souls is a dark comedy which is pretty miserable, but may occasionally extract some laughs from you anyway. The world you are being introduced to is bizarre, but it’s still manages to feel close to reality.

So yeah, it’s someone “doing” the styles of Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze and it’s done pretty well. The acting is fantastic, the script is inventive and it generally pulls you in. The pacing is perhaps a little slow, but not so much that you lose interest my any means. There are some nice touches and it never runs out of steam, however there are a few moments where you suspect that the story is basically all finished with and the new twists and turns aren’t introduced quite as excitingly as they might be.

Don’t watch this expecting to laugh a lot. You might laugh a bit, you’ll almost certainly chuckle a bit, but this has the same quality of Being John Malkovich where it will give you a general sense of unease. Don’t worry about it seeming derivative. The ideas are original and Paul Giamatti’s performance is very different from John Cusack’s (not least because, to my mind, Giamatti is a much better actor), but the style will have you thinking Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich all the same.

4.5/5


The Blob (1988)
Let me just start by saying that this is far better than the original. I don’t care if Steve McQueen was in the original, it was dull dull dull. This remake isn’t perfect, but it introduces characters who you care for, even if they aren’t always given the best performances.

In fact it’s mostly the performances that let this movie down. The best actors generally seem to get killed off earlier and it all gets pretty campy, but on the other hand what movie is going to be suited to campiness than “The Blob”?

While the effects are always brilliant, the dialogue is not. As such, the movie drags a bit at around the three quarter mark. This is well worth watching and great fun, but it's missing the special something it needs to be more than just a solid monster movie. Great entertainment and well worth watching, but don't expect it to be an all-time favourite.

4/5


The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)
Oooh this hasn't dated well. What's remarkable, however, is that the thing that has dated the least badly is probably the monster itself. I mean sure, we can tell it's a man in a rubber suit. What's harder to tell is how they are able to swim so naturally when wearing a big suit which must surely weigh a tonne.

Meanwhile the sexism is just hilarious. Whenever the "someone's gonna die" music starts up the camera lingers on the sole female in the group. This seems to be a combination of expecting us to presume she's the one in the most danger and the cameraman just enjoying the view. She also regularly screams whenever the monster turns up. Why is she there? Well, asides from being the love interest of one of the scientists, she's actually supposed to be a scientist too. She just never gets any opportunity to demonstrate her credentials. She does, however, get the opportunity to demonstrate possible insanity when she randomly decides to go for a swim in the amazon when a viscious sea monster is believed to be on the loose.

The actual plot isn't half bad and I certainly wasn't bored. Still, in the end this is more a triumph of costume design than of storytelling.

3.5/5


Inglourious Basterds (2009)
When breakattiffanys  revealed their faux Oscars voting system on moviebuffs , I was quite disturbed to see this becoming the popular choice for best film. There are a number of reasons why I don't think it is the best movie of 2009 and think it is a step in the wrong direction for Quentin Tarantino. That being said, I do actually really like it. It's good silly fun and great entertainment. It feels a bit cut and pasted with scenes being shoved together rather haphazardly and plenty of sections just feeling glossed over. The mixture of very serious scenes, very daft scenes and scenes where Tarantino lectures us on the history of film don't always gel terribly well. However, there's no doubting the entertainment value, the sense of satisfaction when watching it and, of course, the incredible performance from Christoph Waltz.

Ok, so, the downsides. Firstly and most importantly: Mike Myers. Seriously, what the f*** is he doing there? That scene is pointless and Mike Myers comes along to do his Austin Powers voice. Why? Is it because Tarantino wanted to punish his UK audience or perhaps he just doesn't think the UK audience are important (in spite of us playing quite a vital role in making Reservoir Dogs such a hit)? Perhaps you, my readers, think that I'm making too much a fuss over this. Well I'm sorry, but you are wrong. Any review which fails to make a fuss over this is ignoring the massive stinking elephant in the room. I actually think my opinion of this movie would raise dramatically if this one scene was cut. It would certainly have made me a lot more comfortable with the number of votes in the moviebuffs Oscars.

Other issues. I said about the serious stuff and the comedy not always gelling well. There's a scene at the opening of the film-within-a-film where Brad Pitt's wholly conspicuous disguise makes it very hard to suspend disbelief. If you've accepted that the scene is intended as comedy then you can roll with it, but the tension has been built up so that it is very hard not to cringe. It just doesn't feel like the right time for comedy.

There's an interesting twist involving Christoph Waltz's character towards the end. What happens to him feels reminiscent of the end of the original script for "Natural Born Killers" (an absolutely fantastic script which you should all read and then never EVER watch the horrendous Oliver Stone movie which defiled it). It made me rather upset that Tarantino hasn't bought back that script and made it properly. That would seem to be a better decision than trying to recapture the intended finale of that movie in other works. Certainly the ingenuity of the ending to Natural Born Killers was wholly lost in Oliver Stone's horrible attempt at filmmaking.

All the stuff about German cinema. "I show German films at my cinema." "We need our operative to be an expert in German cinema." "I'm a famous German actress." Quentin, we don't f***ing care! Yeah I know Tarantino is big on the pop references, but normally he either makes them reasonably well-known or he keeps them far enough in the background that they aren't offputting. Here they were offputting.

And finally, could we actually have a movie from Mr. Tarantino now that isn't a big all-action pop-reference fest? We had a double-bill of that in Kill Bill. Then in the UK we were denied Grindhouse and instead were given the full-length version of Death Proof (which was boring). Now we get even more of that only in an alternative history WWII movie. Oh yay.... Sorry, but I'd actually like a serious movie from Mr. Tarantino for a change. I loved both volumes of Kill Bill, but down-to-earth and reasonably serious Tarantino movie is long overdue now.

Individual scenes in Inglourious Basterds are fantastic. The bar scene is absolutely brilliant. The point where the heroine is re-united with Christoph Waltz's "Jew Hunter" is absolutely brilliant. The fiery climactic scene towards the end, when it arrives, is actually very powerful in spite of the odd build-up which precedes it. If the whole thing was a little more polished, consistent and didn't contain a scene with Mike Myers and his Austin Powers voice, this could have been a real all-time classic. But, like I said before, it is a great piece of entertainment nonetheless.

4.5/5


Magicians (2007)
I had low expectations for this one because of the universally awful reviews. I think I enjoyed it a lot more as a result. It's not consistently funny, but there are some great moments. As a Mitchell and Webb fan I think it was more funny that it might have been otherwise. Also I kept recognising various members of the cast. In the end this feels like a set of Mitchell and Webb sketches which have been linked together, but where the need to make them form a singular plot has left them rather overly limited. Just like with their sketch show some sketches are better than others. The thing is that really what you want from a movie is a collection of their best stuff whereas this felt more like a selection of their more average work. I laughed plenty, but I can't say that I was particularly emotionally invested.

Worth watching, but your mileage will definitely vary, especially if you aren't a Mitchell and Webb fan.

3/5

Dogtooth (2009)
What the hell was that? (And no, not in a good way.) A bizarre household where the children are encouraged to completely misunderstand the outside world. They are deliberately misled on the meaning of words for things outside their experience, they are told that the aeroplanes that pass overheard are actually toy aeroplanes which land in the garden, they are told that cats are dangerous and that they should pretend to be dogs to scare them away and so it goes on. All very bizarre and silly, but the pacing of the movie means that this all gets very boring indeed.

The moviemakers seem to be trying to say "oooh, aren't we just NUTS?!!" You are actually far better off just watching the trailer because, to be quite frank, that'll give you most of the weirdest bits without the lengthy periods of boredom imbetween.

At one point there's a discussion about how dogs need to be trained which gave me the impression that there might be more depth to the movie. After all, aren't the children being similarly "trained" in their bizarre existence? But yeah, that pretty much leads to a dead end. There's no real point to the movie that I could see and, not seeing any point to it, it was a very frustrating and unsatisfactory experience.

1.5/5


Micmacs (2009)
I really wanted to like this. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amelie" is one of my favourite movies of all time and I also absolutely adore "The City Of Lost Children". Jean-Pierre Jeunet has the most fantastic imagination and it looked like he was going to be making good use of it in "Micmacs", a movie about a set of misfits who decide to take on international arms dealers with unusual methods (such as firing themselves out of a canon).

The movie looks absolutely gorgeous with a great deal of attention to detail. Sadly not to so much attention is provided for the plot.

There's a variety of quirky characters... who appear to be desperate to introduce themselves to the main protagonist saying "the quirky thing about me is..."

The main character is perhaps the least interesting in the entire movie. By far the most interesting character in the movie is his contortionist love interest who really steals the show.

The movie goes from a rather convoluted set-up to a far too neat conclusion. While there are plenty of clever little details along the way, the movie as a whole feels rather by-the-numbers. Even as I was oooh-ing and aaaah-ing at the gorgeous visuals, I couldn't help but notice that I wasn't really invested in the story, nor most of the characters.

This was a real let-down.

2.5/5


Defendor (2009)
Woody Harrelson plays a real-life superhero. The thing is that, in the end, you'd have to be crazy to actually be a superhero - and so this one actually is. Comparisons with Kick Ass are inevitable and, in the end, it seems that Kick Ass is the main reason most people won't have heard of this. Woody Harrelson's character regularly gets beaten up in his pursuit after "Captain Industry". His best weapon appears to be marbles (though wasps in a jar work pretty well too). He's keen to note that he doesn't have a cape because cape's are used for flying - and he can't fly.

As the plot advances, however, it becomes clear that he's not actually helping. The bad guy he is after is already under observation by the police. If anything, Defendor's vigilante efforts put a spanner into the police's existing operation. Yet even so the movie feels the need to shove in a section with all the public saying how much they support Defendor's struggle. There's no sense of irony in this. We seem to be genuinely expected to support Defendor's vigilante efforts even though we are shown quite clearly that they are directly responsible for the death of an undercover police officer.

Little errors like that can go a long way. While Defendor starts off seeming like a more down-to-earth and realistic superhero depiction it seems to give that up somewhat in places in order to make the movie more upbeat and less challenging. This removes what would have been the major distinction between Defendor and Kick Ass and I'm afraid the latter is clearly the superior of the two.

The was a good fun little movie, but with a few dodgy flaws in plot structure, internal logic and a clear unwillingness to bite the bullet on harsher issues really let it down.

3.5/5


A Prophet (2009)
On the one hand this was a good little story about a prisoner dealing with internal rivalries and trying to make the best of their difficult situation. On the other hand, the whole "prophet" thing seemed rather shoe-horned in. The protagonist keeps seeing visions of this man who initially requested a blow job in exchange for hash. Throughout the movie he appears as if he's supposed to somehow impart wisdom to the protagonist and apparently gives the main character prior knowledge of what will happen in the future. I believe the term is "magic realism" and, to be quite frank, it pissed me off.

The "good little story" I mentioned actually drags quite a bit in places and worst of all, I didn't really get the impression that it ever actually satisfactorily ended. It would have been nice to know why I was following this character, as he seemed like a bit of a thug from beginning to end. I suppose it's quite original to see a crime movie which is all about the inside of prison rather than a bunch of people desperately avoiding prison. However, in the end this wasn't a great movie. It had pacing issues, it wasn't very accessible and the protagonist felt very unsympathetic.

2.5/5


The Damned United (2009)
It's probably pretty inevitable that I'm going to be harsh with this one. I'm not into football. On the other hand, I actually seem to be a far better audience for this movie than real fans because I didn't know what was going to happen. Michael Sheen puts on a great performance in the lead role and, as indifferent to the sport as I am, I really understood the passion of the characters involved. This movie is somewhat more successful than Invictus in getting us excited about the actual games through its clever method of not showing the games. We are only shown the bits that really matter and in one clever scene we see the game from Brian Clough's perspective where he is unable to watch the game himself but only hears the applause and cries of the audience from his office.

All the acting is fantastic as the movie has a number of brilliant British talents, asides from Michael Sheen playing the main protagonist Brian Clough. The way the movie unfolds really does a good job of pulling you in. I was especially impressed when they showed some real footage of Muhammed Ali saying how he'd heard that Brian Clough was just as talkative as him!

The thing is that at the beginning of the movie he signs on to be manager of Leeds. Football fans know what came of this. I didn't have a clue. Throughout the movie the decision to take that job looks worse and worse as we are shown the prior history in long flashbacks (where the real meat of the movie lies) and in the end I felt the ending that the movie led up to was a bit of an anti-climax. The movie had done a great job of explaining Brian Clough's career, but it hadn't set things up well enough to produce a satisfying ending. Perhaps football fans will be happy with this, but personally, after I'd enjoyed the majority of the movie so much, the ending just wasn't good enough.

Good solid movie with great performances that really pulls you in, but a rather less impressive ending stops it from becoming a real classic.

4/5