| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pandorum - R |
Another story about zombies in space this attempt offers nothing new with its blunt in your face fight between humans and whatever. Packed with scenes we have seen in too many other movies this visually impressive yet seriously lacking film brings nothing new to the table. Two astronauts, Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid) and Corporal Bower (Ben Foster), awake from hyper-sleep only to find out they are in a ship full of other humans gone zombie. Gradually we find out that this ?Noah?s Ark? mission, has been infected by a virus called Pandorum turning their other travellers into flesh eating sub-humans. Two other humans have also survived - scientist-turned-savage Nadia and fighter Manh. Any attempt at a story is lost as a battle of survival ensues. Just to crank up any tension we feel the ship?s generator threatens to crash. The survivors then suffer cabin fever and symptoms of Pandorum. The virus gives them hallucinations, amorality and delusions of power before making it free. Characters are forgettable and the story lost to endless fight scenes. |
January 2, 2010 | N/A | |||
| Bright Star - PG |
Bright Star tells us about the last days of John Keats - one of the great Romantic poets - at the time of his love affair with Fanny Brawne. In that sense we know how the movie ends. The movie starts in 1818 when Keats met Fannyin North London's Hampstead Village. Fanny (Abbie Cornish) is a feisty girl while Keat's writer friend Charles Brown (Paul Schneider) is dominating. They don?t get on but are forced into each other?s company through the mutual interest in Keats. Fannie's develops an interest in poetry to spend more time with the frail aesthetic Keats (Ben Whishaw). Their financial and social status is underdeveloped in the story but no less an important part of how love conquers all. Keats is uncomfortable with women, and struggles to give Fannie the attention she craves. Nevertheless we endear to him when he eventually returns. Her interest in his dying brother is not properly drawn out and we never get to know him. While their relationship is touching, and intimate through poetry it becomes an unrequited love. There is no physical relationship to spoil the spirit. Instead we are treated to many a poem including the one that gives us the movie title. However, Keats runs out of cash and moves into a hovel where he becomes ill. His love with Fannie is challenged by his move to Italy to recover. Fannie is not allowed to join him but they become engaged. Everything considered it is likely that he is just as happy to have her not there with him so unwell. In amongst it all the passion struggles to capture enough emotion through the poetry and is simply not translated through any other metaphors like her sewing. We are left disconnected from their internal strife. What holds us is the depth of character, Campion evokes the mood of the times superbly but still manages a few movie effects like having the lovers quote his poetry back and forth to each other. Fanny's mother, Mrs. Brawne (Kerry Fox) seems to have little role or influence and at times is pointless in her presence. Even the odd comment about social status seems to have little impact on the story. Toots (Edie Martin) as the little girl, is typically loveable but lacking real emotion. It is Brown that stands out with his pivotal moment when he cries "I failed John Keats!" and then his love child. Whishaw as Keats who provides real human feeling and unbearable vulnerability. And when his death is announced Fannie?s suffocating breakdown had me with her I loved Campion?s The Piano (1993) but was left bewildered by In the Cut (2003). Bright Star is not as outstanding as The Piano but is a touching confined tale of true love in another age. |
November 26, 2009 | N/A | |||
| 2012 - PG-13 |
2012 is non stop event movie crashing from one wreckage to another interspersed bizarrely with pithy jokes just to remind you this is only a movie. You?ve seen this movie before only with slightly less up to date digital theatrics: The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day. If it is not aliens or global warming then it?s the Mayans and this time it?s the end of the world for real. Plot? Just the usual middle American family that needs saving, but updated to one that is separated (until the happy ending). The War of the Worlds as adapted for Tom Cruise may be no classic but at least you can take it seriously. Sort of. What plot there is involves the Mayans predicting the end of the world. The scientists ? as in Independence Day - saw it coming too. And then they save the world. The president gets to make his speech. So same plot. 2012 is a near three-hour disaster movie that dazzles us with one special effects set piece after another. It is no less than visually stunning. Nothing touches it for the view of earth crumbling. Every scene is a lucky escape and humour stands in for real life situations. Contemporary references abound. After some brief introductions to the main actors (for example loser dad John Cusack) the movie moves on from characterisation and plot to concentrate on the world vs whatever this movie?s foe happens to be. Once you have taken in the breathtaking effects there is nothing underneath. Once one city or tower has toppled the lack of depth begins to make it all blur into inconsequence. John Cusack should know better. |
November 26, 2009 | N/A | |||
| World Trade Center - PG-13 |
World Trade Center starts like New York is like any other ordinary day. The director Oliver Stone takes us through the daily routines of uniformed officers. As the movie progresses this is panned out to tell the back stories of families, wives and friends. This is America under attack. Actually there is little run up, no explanation of what was about to come, it quickly gets to the gist of the movie which is the officers stuck under the tower. In this respect there is a respectful avoidance of dramatising the shock of the event in detail, and more a familiar tale along the lines of Saving Captain Ryan ? a courageous story about how we saved our men captured by the enemy in this case transit cops stuck under a collapsed building. Stone embeds seamless special effects the tons of masonry crashing down, the scarred landscape of the ironwork. Stone fully captures the monumental enormity of the situation. The bulk of the movie focuses on two of the cops trapped under the remains of the tower. It is dark and claustrophobic but somehow lacks the fear we expect to see being in a cave or submarine. Instead there is the disruption and uncertainty it causes to families and flashbacks from their family lives. Stone takes us down a soft populist road instead. Stone is guilty here of pushing the usual emotional buttons of Hollywood disaster movie instead of a true gritty look at the horror underneath the wreckage. This is a restrained movie without the usual Stone motifs around edgy themes and political tension. It focuses on the working man that defines America. Which could make it Stone?s most optimistic film. The only weirdness appears in quirky Jesus visions. This is a mainstream movie that successfully avoids any political buttons in favour of squeezing every tear possible out of you. It is traditional family values coupled with military stamina. This is possibly not the defining movie about the World Trade Center. It shies away from the verite style of Flight 93 by Greengrass, anything remotely political and the real horror of being under the collapse of the tower. In that respect it is a family mainstream movie without little to offer on the horror of 9/11. |
November 8, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Moon - R |
Duncan Jones? feature is a promising thoughtful debut. More Solaris than Star Trek this is a psychological thriller, it lacks the full-on effects of Terminator in preference for a neat concept. There are no aliens as in ?Alien? it is a human tale. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) plays an astronaut reaching the end of his three-year stint in mining resources on the moon. For company he has the ship?s computer voiced by Kevin Spacey. Gerty is more Mother (Alien) than HAL from 2001 in how its human speech helps Sam. The story starts off mundanely with Sam suffering hallucinations and crashing his space rover. The story goes bizarre as he discovers there are two of him. With much play around his identity he begins to form a friendship with his double. This at first appears ridiculous until you remind yourself he is in space on his own. Rockwell shows real depth in handling the ongoing breakdown of his marriage through the monitor updates. The set designs are basic and unconvincing at times. As the story unravels it opens up with a hidden level and a shocking commercial motive. It?s a tense and cleverly thought-out proposition that enables us to tolerate the slowness of the plot. While this drip-feeding lacks any dramatic twist it has much still to tell us: the slow burn of Bell?s downfall is counter balanced by his double?s reaction. A conceptual sci-fi story which is sensibly directed. This is no blockbuster but has much to offer. |
November 8, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Zombieland - R |
Whilst this movie may end up being remembered for the bizarre cameo by Bill Murrary it is unlikely to be remembered for the zombies. Altogether this makes it a quirky yet unstable movie. Ruben Fleischer?s affectionate if comical debut, Zombieland, is actually a romzomcom in the finest tradition; more road movie than zombie flick. And right in the middle is the cameo that flows so well you get sucked right in and almost believe you are there yet forgetting that the world is full of zombies ? a truly clever trick. Murray?s own mockery of his career rapidly endears you to him, but as quickly as he jumps into the movie he is gone and we are back on the road. Up there with Shaun Of The Dead Zombieland presents the slacker/geek version complete with street wise grrrls and token red neck. The graphic novel style is all there with the gratuitous violence against zombies and casual interest in the reality of the grave global situation. Instead we have an hilarious road journey of three mischievous characters plus one nerd staying in luxury mansions and whacking out zombies on the way. The four of them are likeable in their own way creating enough frisson between them to keep the tension necessarily high. Emma Stone?s cynical Wichita and Abigail Breslin, as her little sister play second fiddle to the men but show strength where the men have weak underbellies. Harrelson?s ice-cool Tallahassee, is entertaining despite his killer instinct. Eisenberg?s Columbus is both the lead and odd one out. Providing the least believable character with his nerdy juxtaposition to life yet ease at biffing zombies. His voiceover is unnecessary and eventual pairing up with Wichita unconvincing. Nevertheless his list of paranoid, survivalist rules provides for a funny, occasionally well scripted road trip. Worth a repeat viewing. |
November 5, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Invention of Lying - PG-13 | October 3, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Franklyn - R |
Gerald McMorrow?s debut Franklyn lives in two worlds ? the claustrophobic hell of Meawhile City and the latter day world of London. In Meanwhile City religion of any sort rules and a masked vigilante Preest (Ryan Phillippe) is looking for revenge. Undoubtedly, there are strong overtones of V for Vendetta. Running alongside this is Milo (Sam Riley) and Emilia (Eva Green) struggling with supernatural acts in their lives. The set in Meanwhile City is fascinating in its gothic malevolence. The narration though struggles to stay with the story. On its own the latter day story grows in its whodunit but the gothic tale running alongside it fails to keep with it and the story drifts. The dark brooding Meanwhile City and the workaday London end up feeling like two unrelated movies. The whole concept of how they interlock is simply never clearly explained. Its one interesting side tale is concept of the imaginary friend from a troubled childhood who returns when things get messy again in adulthood. Despite its gothic fantasy appeal its story line is too muddied. It never quite makes it as a proper fantasy tale and is certainly not sci-fi. |
October 3, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Hurt Locker - R |
Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker won a prize at the 2008 Venice Film Festival and its down to earth depiction of war in Iraq is realistic and hard nosed enough to justify more gongs. Set during Iraq in 2004 it focuses on a group set up to handle improvised explosive device; right from the beginning we are introduced to how awful this particular role is. Sharp dialogue and camerawork help add to the craziness and the gravity of the world they live in. Nevertheless the movie is ultimately about the addiction war and this kind of job has rather than what this particular war is about. The movie ignores politics to the point it could be in any middle east conflict. Local people rarely speak and tend to be up to no good. At its most gruesome a local boy?s life is sacrificed for a stomach full of explosives. To compensate for the lack of politics, the movie gives us the tension of de-activating the IEDs - utterly immeasurable. Added to that is the tension in the group when a trailor trash techie called James with a wild abandon joins the disciplined group and throws out the rule book. He lacks fear but is smart enough to stay alive. In fact he is portrayed as out of control by the army around him, but his ability to deliver results keep him in the team. Even his male colleagues think he's weird. But nature made him that way - to give him those titanium nerves that enable him to pull bombs apart. Unconvincingly, he is portrayed as the only one who really connects with local people. This allows the movie to let him investigate the murder of a boy he befriends but the plot soon gets lost and moves on. After the thrill of defusing bombs the movie runs out of story and James is seen back home with his family. But he is simply out of depth in the domestic superstore and we see him for one more time back in thick of battle. Bigelow does a stunning job updating movies such as Apocalypse examining the crazed psyche of the soldier addicted to war, but without turning it into Hollywood schlock. |
October 3, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Persepolis - PG-13 |
Persepolis is an animated film from Iran about a young girl's rites of passage during the revolution and Iran-Iraq war and its impact on her family. The writer/co-director Marjane Satrapi has taken Persepolis, her graphic novel series ,and turned into a simply drawn but vividly entrancing black and white animated story that adults will enjoy. Starting at the age of 8, Marjane lives with a middle class liberal family and tells her story through the revolution when she is moved to Europe and then, lovesick, returns home, eventually growing up to the age of 24 and moving back to Europe, incapable of living within the rules of the Islamic state. A critical stage is the Islamic Revolution of 1978, when the Shah of Iran is replaced by the uncompromising theocracy ruled by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The details are glazed over in favour of the immediate impact on Marjane?s familys? daily life: being forced to wear hijabs and the imprisonment and torture of family members. In a simple way Marjane becomes a problem through her punk-influenced jacket and bootleg Iron Maiden music. By the time war breaks out with Iraq, Marjane's parents decide it is too dangerous for her and ship her off to Vienna. This is the most difficult stage to portray ? Marjane?s teenage anxieties and problematic assimilation into European school life. Her punk friends, useless boyfriends somehow translate into homelessness. Nevertheless, at every stage with the personal and political we are kept away from anything difficult to watch. The grounded pipe-smoking grandmother never gives into the fascist behaviour of the state and teaches Marjane to be smart. We have no difficulty relating to Marjane, she is the girl next door who makes impetuous and dumb mistakes. Yet it struggles to engage with its adult audience in favour of light touch humour. |
October 3, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Shutter Island - Unrated | October 3, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| District 9 - R |
This is a different movie from what is out there. It hits the mark on a number of points: it is as Mark Kermode called it ?politically satisfying??; it is filmed in a documentary style that merges into the whole film very smoothly; and it is so not Hollywood ? no happy ending yet hopeful. Altogether it is engaging and demanding in its unerring confrontation with the dirty politics of our age. From the very beginning we are drawn into the blatant and discriminatory world we live in by how the aliens are called ?prawns.? The prawns live in a slum, segregated from humans called " District 9, apartheid by any other name. Yet that is not enough and they are to be moved to an even worse camp called District 10. The behaviour of the privatised army ? MNU ? is despicable in so many ways but our ability to accommodate the worker prawns is also difficult. The Nigerians get a hard time but no one except the lead?s wife is let off. The creativity in the story is hilarious at its most shallow level ? the aliens are hooked on cat food but the scenes of armoured vehicles moving in on the camp are reminiscent of those in Black Hawk Down that bring us back to the wars we face in our world today. The documentary style is not easy for those who find jerky handheld cameras a bind - like Cloverfield and [REC].but it takes us close to the action. This is not just a story of one man out of his depth moving the prawns to a new camp it is also about Iraq where the privatised armies are part of everyday life, here they are learning about the prawns and their armour and how to become more profitable and powerful. Ultimately, the humans are shown up as mercenary, power hungry, deceitful and incapable of understanding what is before them. As Wikus is infected by an alien liquid and transformed into an alien himself the movie lapses into action scenes ? but still gripping nonetheless. Ultimately full of originality but a very bitter pill to swallow about our own humanity of lack of. |
September 26, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (Ice Age 3) - PG |
Ice Age 3 is the latest in the franchise bringing us a new member to the family and in 3D. I took my 4 year old to see this and how he reacted to the glasses and what it throws it at him. Following on from Bolt we are now getting kids movies in 3D by default, and we are expected to pay the extra whether we like or not. We love the never ending adventures of Scrat the squirrel and even he has now fallen in love ?not with the nut but with Scratte the squirrel. Although the flights through the sky make reasonable use of the 3D like the rest of the movie it never really involves us. The first movie had a journey my son never tires of watching. This third outing lacks a point to it. It is a shameless attempt at exploiting the franchise. The plot is to recover Sid the Sloth because, despite his flaws, is our friend. Mixed in with this is Manny the Mammoth having a child. But how it adds to the plot is not important. The dinosaurs in the title also raise an interesting question about the chronological order of the three Ice Ages. But any way they occur early on when the sloth in a mad moment adopts three of them. Next we disappear into an unconvincing underworld where the dinosaurs hang out and the sloth is trapped. To help us through this rescue mission is Simon Pegg as a whacky weasel addicted to a fight to a death with an angry T-Rex. Despite many possibilities in the battles for some interactive-style 3D scenes it never really happens beyond a sledge run. There are plenty new fight scenes and creatures to come out at us. This is such a lost opportunity, and without an involving plot, my son lost interest after an hour. Instead we have the all too family friendly scenes about the oncoming child with plenty lessons on how to behave for the young ones. Ice Age 3 ends up no better if just as bad as many forgettable family movies. With only the cockney weasel to liven up a script lacking a point or any creativity this is a disappointment. |
July 25, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Hangover - R | I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tan Hauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die. | June 29, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Terminator Salvation - PG-13 |
After the disappointing T3 surely T4 can only improve on this? Instead Christian Bale will be marking it off as a shocking mistake, having the misfortune to repeat lines like ?I?ll be back!? His infamous outburst on set was probably the moment he realised he was in the wrong movie. So where is the ? THE ? Terminator? Instead we have a bunch of scenes and machines that turn into a game of guess which original sci-fi did they steal that from? Even the scene of the truck being chased by robot bikers rips off the truck scene in T3 and where have seen robot bikers before? Judge Dredd? In fact this does not even feel like a Terminator movie, just some junkyard of action scenes about the world gone wrong. It sadly lacks the tension of previous Terminator movies between the human and the terminator(s) in a chase to the bitter end. There was an opportunity with T4 to take the story into the future and take on Skynet. Instead we are in a submarine and Connor is not even the hero we thought he was. There are a bunch of chase sequences that fail to work together with no sense of the apocalypse on the scale of the Lord of the Rings. The characters are generally miserable throughout lacking any wry humour of previous movies. This is not only a shambolic mess but also an insult to the franchise. |
June 12, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Star Trek - PG-13 |
This highly anticipated movie both for fans and non-Star Trek movie goers J. J. Abrams's "Star Trek" re-vision of the franchise goes back to the beginning to allow him a free rein to write a Star Trek both for fans and newbies alike. Right from the beginning the movie is jumping back and forth in time, so much so they even get mixed up together at one time. The Romulan Nero (Eric Bana) opens the movie with scene-setting battle with the Federation. It quickly loses the pace and back tracks to a story of James T kirk. This takes too long to catch up and is only tolerated by the parallel back story of Spock superbly acted out by Zachary Quinto. The barely interesting exploits of Kirk as a budding admiral give way to the introduction of the full cast: McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, Checkov, and bizarrely Simon Pegg as Scotty. He just about pulls it off. In fact they are all convincing to me as a non-Star Trek fan. There is sufficient characterisation in them all except Kirk messing around with Uhura. Although visually stunning Star Trek descends into a migraine inducing pans and zooms that leave it all difficult to take in. Spock?s story about his parents and battles of logic and emotion pan out to a full blown battle with Kirk. In fact the movie is altogether too engrossed with itself rather than the worlds around it. It struggles to give us a big movie like Star Wars or Starship Troopers. It never quite delivers beyond introducing its band of travellers. Not even a contorted cameo by the original Spock can lift it. |
June 12, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - PG-13 | June 12, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Angels & Demons - PG-13 |
I was outvoted on Star Trek to see this movie instead. Based on the popularity of Da Vinci Code this is bound to be a hit. With Tom Hanks back sporting a sensible haircut we are about to experience another religious whodunit by Professor Robert Langdon, whose approach to the end of the world is to look for the nearest angel statue for inspiration. Da Vinci Code will love more of the same here. The professor engages on another journey racing from church to church explaining constantly what he is doing and seeing looking for obscure clues as he goes along. This time he does not need to leave Rome and all the action is at twice the speed as the clock races towards midnight. Unfortunately the plot is punctuated by ridiculous reliance on angels pointing this way and that way. This flimsy device soon wears thin and as does the desperate need to explain the plot at every given opportunity. The historical religious context would be interesting but the questionable story line of the illuminati makes it hard to believe. And then there is Ewan McGregor?s bizarre accent part Northern Irish part South African. His side hobby in helicopter flying is telegraphed early on ready for the incredible scene towards the end where he saves Rome single handedly. The addition of a plot device being highly volatile antimatter harvested from the Large Hadron Collider, in Geneva fits badly into the main theme. However, the movie rushes at such a hasty pace punctuated by the occasional action scene there is little time to ponder over the plot nor to give any depth to the historical nature of the story. Finally Angels & Demons was published before The Da Vinci Code, but here it appears as a sequel. The bad guy appears to have had any back story cut out to allow for the twists and turns in the plot. This can get confusing as we are entertained by different possible perpetrators. The final showdown between science and religion is not allowed to get in the way of a good action scene. Ultimately disappointing and disjointed this is a poor sequel. |
May 19, 2009 | N/A | |||
| State of Play - PG-13 |
State of Play State of Play is an updated American version of the original British miniseries. From the start State of Play is a heavy tense political thriller that is stodgy and lumbering in its unravelling of the plot. The director Kevin Macdonald gave us the superb and not unfunny The Last King of Scotland but here the script is more like his dry dramas. With the old newspaper industry on the block the plot introduces blogging and websites to make it seem topical. Good old fashioned journalistic investigation provides for nervy scenes but somehow the weight of tension sucks life out of the twisting plot. It probably helps that he never wastes a moment of the viewer?s time. State of Play begins with a hair-raising opening and rarely lets up afterward. A reformist congressman from Pennsylvania named Stephen Collins (an appropriately slick Ben Affleck plays a congressman in trouble in more ways than one but it is Russell Crowe as the maverick journalist who takes centre stage. Affleck never really lets go, just as Crowe?s role does not get the best out of him. It is actually Helen Mirren as the bitch editor who stops this movie from completely crashing. Finally Rachel McAdams is the upstart blogger who works alongside Crowe to provide a little sexual tension. Everyone seems to have some history involving each other making the plot complicated but giving the movie and neat twist at the end. After a while the infidelity gets a bit too incestuous with so-called friends sleeping with each others? partners. In fact the sleazy side threatens to get in the way of a good political story. Very occasionally topical matters of new declining newspapers sales butt in but it feels like an add to the main story of an old world journalist with dubious contacts working alongside smart young inexperienced blogger. This is a cluttered messy political thriller with an uneven script. Despite the heavyweight actors it never delivers pace, dramatic tension or a memorable punchline. |
May 10, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Defiance - R |
Edward Zwick gives us another major war movie seeking to build on the pedigree of ?Glory? and ?The Last Samurai?. A true story of Jews threatened with extermination forced into the forest to find a way to survive the war. The Bielski brothers lead a frail group of Belorussian Jews constantly on the run from the Nazi occupiers who want them dead. Daniel Craig lends the story a gritty if vulnerable edge as he attempts to keep the growing group together whilst his brother, Liev Schreiber, leaves after a fight to join the partisan Russian Army. After a slow start this grim journey takes in a visit to the ghetto, a painful winter, and finally kicks off when they are bombed out of a wood. As a true story it deserves a sympathetic cinematic retelling. Partly a story about two brothers separated by their own suffering and loss, the story somehow lacks a deep spirit until the very end when they are reunited. The dour greyness of the photography becomes a victim of itself, the side story of the Russian partisans is never properly explored, and the occasional gun fights are drably performed. Finally, the historical and cultural backdrop is rather casually added through bizarre references such as a stunted mention of the need for a community. The two lead actors drive the film with passion but cannot deliver it greatness. Never reaching its full potential till the bitter end the film does not dig itself out of its miserable dialogue and boggy landscape. The historical importance of Jewish communities daring to fight back against the Nazis deserves better. |
May 5, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Damned United - R |
Football is difficult to watch and look convincing on film. Hence the reason for few films about this otherwise heavily televised subject. Apart from When Saturday Comes there are few contenders. Now there is the Damned United. Based on the critically acclaimed book of the same name it paints an absorbing portrayal of the early years of Brian Clough. Using his appointment in 1974 as the manager of Leeds United it explores the years leading up to that appointment that led him to spend 44 difficult days with the famous club. His arrogant approach and pathological hatred of the previous Leeds manager Don Revie provides the back story leading to his eventual downfall. After being alienated by the players, despised by the fans he is dumped by the Board. David Peace's novel is a dark novel about the dirty game football was in the seventies. Like Life in Mars it is utterly politically incorrect and very hard drinking. Peter Morgan's script is much more entertaining with more humour. The downside of that is, apart from the late night drunken call to Don Revie, we are left wondering if there is more to Clough. Clough is portrayed as arrogant and out of control, attacking the owner of Derby and then of Leeds, setting his own terms and dissing Revie?s management style, upsetting everyone in the process. A key factor in his success was his relationship with assistant manager Peter Taylor. One of strongest footballing bonds, Taylor provided Clough with some of the best young talent. This becomes just as important as his period at Leeds. Clough?s determination to become better at management than Revie leads to a fallout with Taylor. Michael Sheen is superbly convincing as Brian Clough while Timothy Spall ? though not at all a Taylor look-alike ? puts in a strong performance. Clough is the optimist who believes in himself and Taylor is the enduring friend who tolerates his bad mouthing and tries to moderate his behaviour. Colm Meaney is the real thing as Don Revie and Jim Broadbent a good old fashioned club boss. The Leeds players would have been more convincing but are really bit players. The violence on the pitch is marvellous to watch but the regular use of real footage contributes to its TV movie feel. As with Life On Mars the attention to detail to the Seventies does not disappoint. As well as the industrial language the cars and clothes evoke the era perfectly. Overall, the film lacks enough ambition to be memorable movie. Perhaps some of the darkness of the book is needed. The good news is that as an examination of the best England manager we never had it will not put off non-football fans. |
April 14, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The International - R |
Tom Tykwer's twisting espionage thriller The International sees Clive Owen plays Louis Salinger, a secret agent investigating arms trafficking involving today?s bad guys the bank. Owen has to hold onto his own morals but the plot does not give him enough backstory to make it worth his while. Instead he huffs and puffs his way through a series of curious events starting with a questionable heart attack of a colleague. There follows a political assassination culminating in the movie?s only high point an indoor and messy gun-fight in New York's Guggenheim Museum. Well crafted it may be but it lacked the tension of the build up leading to the single bullet in Waterloo Station in The Bourne Supremacy. Is it worth for it for this scene alone? Apparently so for some. While Naomi Watts, as the assistant to Owen keeps the story moving along it simply lacks any memorable scenes either side of the gun battle to give it pace. The saving grace is the direction of Owen with the use of background and bird?s eye views to keep us in his frame. Ultimately we are left as dishevelled as Owen wondering where it all went wrong. |
April 9, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Watchmen - R |
This is a somewhat ambitious attempt at translating the ?80s cult novel by Alan Moore. Whilst Moore has refused to give his official backing to the movie adaptation the director Zack Snyder has persevered with a careful copy of the original graphic novel. If one has read the book then perhaps a faithful adaption is absolutely essential to the essence of the story. To everyone else it is perhaps academic and secondary to telling a good story. Since the original graphic novel has not been made into a movie before ? because it was regarded as too difficult ? then surely it could have been rewritten into a bloody good movie in its own right? But it hasn?t. Apart from a subtle change to the final apocalypse and minimal use of commentary this is one for the cult fans. Or is it? Will fans toe the Moore line and cry foul play? Watchmen is set in ?80s exploring a what if America had gone too close to nuclear Armageddon. With a backdrop of internal crisis and a successful Vietnam campaign ? thanks to the superhero Dr Manhattan, the film picks up with Watchmen superheros retired by law. At the beginning Rorschach?s commentary paints the plot of the mysterious murder of the superhero The Comedian. This eventually gives way to the need to ensure the film covers the whole plot but at the risk of losing the nuances and subtext of the book. Even Snyder?s cinematic feasts with slow motion camera and overhead shots ? all the way up to Mars - cannot make up for the story?s eventual dryness. The plot is broken up with each character?s back story and power introduced to us. Whilst this gives the film depth it is at the cost of being too long and drawn out to hold attention. Some judicious editing and more rounded characterisation could have made this one to remember. These are after all humans wrapped up in an old fashioned whodunit that is refreshingly so far away from Batman albeit at times similar to the leftfield Wolverine. This is a long movie. Maybe it could have been split into two? For such an attempt at telling the original story it pays the price of alienating the regular movie goer. While it may have worked for Lord of the Rings making a faithful adaption of Watchmen is not a guarantee of success. It simply does not create feeling for the characters and carry the viewer along with the story. The superheros are times wooden and more concerned with going through the motions of the original story than bringing an exciting story alive on the big screen. |
March 28, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Akira - R | March 20, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Changeling - R |
Clint Eastwood may be 78 years old but he has not slowed down in his output, with his recent superlative lead performance in Gran Torino. Directing Changeling, a true story, that is simply told, Eastwood lets the horror of corruption unfold before us, whilst at the same we wonder at the fortitude of the mother standing up to the full force of the police. Angelina Jolie, as the mother, draws us in with her human fallibility and takes us through her journey to find her son. She is utterly genuine in her fight for the truth and by the time she is holed up in an asylum we are completely drawn into her pain. The LAPD is exposed for all its arrogance as above the law. We are taken through the incredulous attempt to give the mother another child and convince her he is her own son. The closed ranks is convincingly portrayed and could have been more dramatically told alongside the mother?s story. The bullying of the mother and general incompetence eventually brings down the whole organisation, already discredited. By the time we see the mother in the hospital and introduced to the other maltreated women we see the full horror of the machinations of the police to cover its tracks. As well as the superbly odious criminal who has murdered the children there is the belligerent preacher played by John Malkovich who stands up to and eventually brings down the LAPD. Saving the mother from the hospital he is shown to be not quite as weird as first appears. The finale is a series of twists and turns partly, if a little dramatically, played out in a courtroom but eventually leaving us wondering what really happened. As a true story this is all the more disturbing. I was left aghast at how the pain and sadness of Angelina Jolie, so simply told did not win her the Ocsar over Kate Winslet. Eastwood has shown himself to be a masterly story teller. |
March 20, 2009 | N/A |
86 ratings
77 reviews
