Film Shapes

Had a look at Avengers: Age of Ultron a few days ago. Seems to be doing good business at the worldwide box office - around 1.4 billion at the mo but two thirds of that is from outside the US. Maybe this is why most of the action ISN'T set in the US (Eastern Europe, Southern Africa, South Korea - incidentally, Sokovia and Wakanda BUT New York and South Korea??). I like the fact that the leads are saving 'people' not just 'Americans' as is usually the case in Hollywood moolah spunk-fests. A couple of new characters - Scarlett Witch and Quicksilver - slotted into the film well enough, though their back story differed from the X-Men one. Here they're referred to as 'enhanced', not mutants. This has something to do with legal wranglings between Marvel and Fox. Not sure about their casting, especially Taylor-Johnson as the fast one. He's super bland. In contrast to Paul Bettany as The Vision. His entrance, including the hammer pay-off, is probably...

A character in Birdman suggests to the titular figure that he 'confuses love for admiration' and this neatly sums up the film for me. Easy to admire, very hard to love. The admirable part mostly shows itself through the celebrated cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki. His hand-held, 'one take' style, though hardly ground-breaking, is technically brilliant. Lubezki has tried his hand at this kind of technique (gimmick?) before with that great scene in Children of Men . Take this away though, and I'm afraid the film appears as something of an actors wankfest. Some of the acting is pretty good and I'm thinking of Emma Stone and Ed Norton mainly here. The others seem to be pushing things a little too hard (Galifianakis is shite). It may be that acting as earnest theatre types, so in love with their profession, rubbed off a little because some of the ham was actually sniffable. The biggest problem was that I didn't give a rat's arse about any of the ...

No mid-year report this year as by the end of June, I hadn't seen ten films that were good enough. No worries for the year in full though. Here are the ten best films I saw in 2014. 1. Interstellar (2014) 2. The Hunt [Jagten] (2012) 3. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) 4. Spaced: Skip to the End (2004) 5. Gone Girl (2014) 6. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) 7. Philomena (2013) 8. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) 9. Ace in the Hole (1951) 10. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) And here are the ten worst. Really only the first on this list made me angry. The others were just mostly crap. 1. We Bought a Zoo (2011) 2. Riddick (2013) 3. The Best Offer [Deception] {La migliore offerta} (2013) 4. Les Miserables (2012) 5. Priest (2011) 6. Noah (2014) 7. Day Watch [Dnevnoy dozor] (2006) 8. The Inbetweeners 2 (2014) 9. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013) 10. The Wind Rises [Kaze tachinu] (2013)

Title - Gone Girl . Director - David Fincher. Main cast -  Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike. Genre - maybe mystery, thriller (?). These raisins were pretty much all I knew about this going into the cinema. And that's the best way to see this fine film. With no background at all. So, even though I'll try to avoid spoilers, I'd suggest not reading any more of this until you've seen the film. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Okay. So.....For fuck AND fuck's brother's sake as well. What a satisfying 'big' film. Very much against type for a studio picture. The performances are nicely tuned to the bi-polar nature of the story. Pike is superbly icy and unhinged. Affleck plays a more aggressive version of The Affleck but it's positioned in the sweet spot, almost like a Tendulkar cover drive. The supporting cast fill in the cracks with farce or pathos or whatever is required at any given point. Uniformly sound. Fincher himse...

This will be a brief write-up as I have to admit to a bit of 'Middle Earth fatigue'. In short The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is okay, a bit better than An Unexpected Journey and not as good as The Desolation of Smaug. I'd actually like to see one film with the Bilbo/Gollum face-off of the first and the titular battle of this one wedged into the second film somehow. Instead, we'll get extended versions, director's cuts, anniversary editions, blur, blah, blamph....... There were some nice touches - the 'battles within the Battle' featuring Legolas (Elf) vs Bolg (Orc) and Thorin (Dwarf) vs Azog (also Orc), as well as some grotesque 'war beasts' (basically huge Orcs with battering rams for heads or catapults on their backs. Visually very Jackson-esque. On the clumsy side - The character of Alfred from Laketown was an annoying prick and really changed the mood of the film (as well as being used for the same 'gag' a fe...

I like so many things about Interstellar that I'm quite willing to ignore or disregard the missteps. I don't care if the physics are a bit unlikely or inaccurate. I'm satisfied with the dumbing-down of some of the dialogue. Shit, I was even happy with the occasional clichéd 'cowboy' attitude of McConaughey's character. None of this bothered me at all during the film, and it's only since reading some reviews that I've come across the criticisms. In fact, the only problem I had with Interstellar was the ear-splitting volume of some of the audio (possibly a cinema issue). So maybe I should go over some of the positives. To begin with, this film had a great feel to it. I can't put my finger on it. Maybe simply the cinematography of Hoyte Van Hoytema was key. Maybe because it recalled some old sci-fi that I'm partial to ( Star Trek , 2001 , Silent Running , Hitchhiker's Guide , etc). Maybe the throwback music of Hans Zimmer. Not many fil...

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes picks up about 10 years after the end of Rise of the Planet of the Apes . Incidentally, I'd have thought a dawn would be before a rise , but there you go. There's quite a bit going on here. It opens with Caeser and his ape tribe (face paint and all) and stays with them for a good while before any pesky humans start stinking up the place. These pesky humans (Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, etc) don't compare very well to the apes, as far as holding the interest goes. They do compare in other ways, though, chiefly the fact that the human group mirrors the dynamics within the ape group. Without getting to technical, there's a liberal and a hawk on each 'team', and therein lies the drama. The performance capture technology is top drawer once again, but whereas in Rise it was gob-smackingly advanced, here in Dawn it might be taken for granted. In fairness, it's probably a little better and Andy Serkis d...

As the picture above suggests, Guardians of the Galaxy is a bit reminiscent of such films as Seven Samurai (and its remake, The Magnificent Seven ) and The Dirty Dozen . An unlikely bunch of misfits come together to fight something or somebody. Hatred and tension within the group leads to respect and friendship. Victory is achieved, albeit at some loss. This is not to undersell Guardians, though. It's a fun film with many things to like about it. It reminded me of Firefly and Serenity , especially the costumes and the design of the spaceships and planet vistas - the giant floating skull of 'Knowhere' is a stand-out. It's also a nice coincidence that Nathan Fillion (Mal in Firefly ) has a pretty funny cameo. Most of the humour in Guardians works. Not too esoteric (though I missed the joke about 'baby gravy') or American focussed, even the 1980s cultural references fit the lead character's situation. The lines are played straight and Chris Pratt h...