Author: Mosh

Unknown

Time for a quick cinema trip after running a course for some other members of staff. And a nice sausage supper and chip butty on the way home!

Unknown

“Do you know what it feels like to become insane?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Bio-chemist involved in car accident wakes after 4 days to find someone else has stolen his life.

First things first. If you’ve seen the trailer and have a memory more efficient than a small bowl-encapsulated piscean life form, then don’t spend your cash. On the other hand, if you don’t know much about what happens then it’s not a bad bit of entertainment.

Liam Neeson plays Dr Martin Harris, newly arrived in Berlin for a conference along with his wife (January Jones). He is involved in a car accident and drops into a coma, awakening four days later. He discharges himself from hospital to find his wife – who doesn’t recognise him. She’s with another Dr Martin Harris and “our” Harris is left out in the cold.

Now, let’s assume the trailer more or less left it there. That would be fine. Only it doesn’t. It shows at least three major plot moments taking us right  up until the final couple of minutes of the film. Hell, one character is effectively one of the movie’s twists – and the trailer shows them very much post-twist, totally spoiling around 30 minutes of the film if you’ve seen it.

OK, so I managed to guess the final events well before they happened even though the evil trailer didn’t show them. It’s not incredibly clever, but it is a decent thriller with some good twists – if you don’t already know about them.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Ironclad / The Adjustment Bureau

Random choices for a Friday and a rarity in that I’d not seen a trailer for either film before we watched them. In fact, I’d not even heard of Ironclad before I checked out the performance times the day before.

Ironclad

“Hit them. Hard.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Mad king decides the Magna Carta doesn’t really suit him and decides to take England back. Can one small castle manned by 19 individuals stop him?

Ironclad is one of those excellent historical films that makes you want to go and look stuff up when you get home. Given my public school education (for American readers, this actually means “private school” in England – no, it makes no sense me either), my knowledge of English history is of course utterly abysmal. I didn’t even know, until last night, which king had actually signed it. I didn’t even know where it was signed (other than “at the bottom”).

The story is simple. King John, being a bit of a dick, has decided that the document which granted rights to the country’s population doesn’t really suit him. So he’s got the Pope to write it off and is about to start taking the country back under his iron – and rather nasty – rule. One castle stands in his way. He must control it to be able to begin his re-conquest.

A small party of Knights Templar get wind of this plan, and rustle up some support from a Baron, his men and a mercenary or two. They take the castle, recruiting its meagre population and prepare for the worst… an army of 1000 Norse warriors blackmailed by John into fighting for him on the promise that if he gets England back then the Pope will leave their country “un-Christian’d”.

So the film is essentially about the siege, and it’s incredibly gripping. Characters drop like flies, quotable dialogue flies around like a medieval Aaron Sorkin script, blood squirts and bones are crushed. It’s high in gore without focussing on it.

Although the cast across the board are very good indeed, I’m going to single out Paul Giamatti for his role as King John. Utterly mental and obviously a complete egotist, John hates it when things don’t go his way. He’s ruthless, greedy and vicious. No wonder the country wanted him gone. He also gets the best (and probably longest) speech in the film, all full of flailing limbs and frothing spit.

Gill thought the film dragged, and struggled to see some of the fight scenes as we were sat quite close to the screen so we lost the effect somewhat. She could be right on the latter, but I found the pace about right. Each intervening scene had enough being discussed and with such good use of language that I was entertained between all the grisly, exciting set pieces.

I tweeted as such right after the film and in reflection I’m still agreeing with myself. Up to now, this is the best film I’ve seen this year. In terms of pure enjoyment, I loved it. It’s never going to go down in history as a classic, I admit that. But I would go and see it again, and I can’t say that about anything else I’ve seen since January 1st.

The Adjustment Bureau

“What the hell is going on?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Man finds himself stuck in the middle of a hiccup in “he above”‘s great scheme of things… and decides to do something about it.

Quick question – has anything Philip K. Dick wrote not been adapted for the screen yet? The Adjustment Bureau is based on his short story Adjustment Team and must rank as one of the best. Again,I  had no idea what it was about when I saw down to watch it, and that’s the way it should be with films of this ilk. Trailers can only take away half the fun.

Matt Damon is David Norris, a gifted young man running for public office and doing well at it. He bumps into Elise (Emily Blunt) by accident and she inspires a great speech. This is the only time Norris is “supposed” to meet Elise, but something goes wrong in the way the world works and mysterious men in hats are sent out to repair it.

It’s hard to describe it more than that without giving away any of the fun stuff so I’ll stop there.

There’s a definite romance story, some science fiction, a nasty bad guy, a hint of religion, some neat effects, and a back story of manipulation not dissimilar to the masterful Dark City. The best thing is that it doesn’t really mess with your head the way that Inception did (or at least tried to – was that film really so complicated?). It’s easy to watch as pure entertainment without having to strain any lobes.

The ending could have been a little better, in my opinion, though it did tie things up nicely.

A nice story of one person up against all the odds the world has to throw against them, with good performances across the board. Surprisingly enjoyable.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Paul / Animal Kingdom / West Is West

Two nights, three films. Well, there’s lots out at the moment!

Paul

“Am I harvesting farts? How much can I learn from an ass?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: geeks find alien and go on a road trip with him.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost follow up a zombie film and a cop film with an alien film. They play a pair of nerds, travelling across the US to visit known UFO/conspiracy sites who come across an alien called Paul. Paul asks them to help him escape a group of “men in black” (led by somewhat psycho Jason Bateman) and to safety.

It’s a decent enough little road trip film with quite a few giggles, the majority of them low-brow. The CGI on Paul himself (voiced by Seth Rogan) is pretty impressive, but the characters themselves are more 2-dimensional.

I was really expecting great thing of Paul, much as I was of Hot Fuzz. Instead, I just enjoyed it (much as with the previous film). If anything, I had as much fun spotting the genre references – and there are many of them – as I did following the story.

Not the classic I was hoping for, but still not bad.

Animal Kingdom

“It’s a crazy ******* world.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Teenager gets involved in a world of crime courtesy of rather dodgy family members with silly accents.

This film was nominated for 18 awards in Australia, apparently. There are some great performances, but the story is sooooo slow it hit tedium point for me.

It’s set in Melbourne, from what I can figure, and tells of a young man who’s mother OD’s. As a result he ends up locating and moving in with his estranged grandmother and his uncles, who are all dodgy criminal types. As the family find themselves victimised by the police, Josh (James Frecheville) is pulled further into events he wants nothing to do with while Office Leckie (Guy Pearce) tries to use him to get to the family.

If it was a 60-minute TV drama, it would just about work. As it is, it’s just too long and drawn out. There are some tense moments and, as I said, some excellent performances (chief amongst these in my eyes is Jacki Weaver as the conniving granny). However, it just didn’t grip me or have me on the edge of my seat the way a thriller is meant to.

West Is West

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A domineering Pakistani dad takes his English-born son to “the homeland” to learn about his heritage.

Released 12 years after, but set 5 years after the original East is East, WiW takes the same family abroad to George Khan’s (Om Puri) homeland. Starting in Salford and moving to Pakistan, the film focuses on George’s relationships with his sons, wife and… erm… other wife.

Young Sajid (Aqib Khan) is struggling at school, mainly he’s being bullied at school for being a “Paki”. He blames his father for this, and dad decided that the best way to deal with it is to take the kid to Pakistan. After all, he has family there – Sajid’s brother who’s looking for a wife, and George’s ex-wife and daughters who he walked out on three decades earlier.

The first film, despite being a comedy and hilarious in parts, was a very good social commentary on Mr Khan’s attempts to make his mixed race, English-born kids grow up as “proper” Muslims. WiW follows in this vein without repeating the story of the previous instalment. The humour isn’t racial or racist in style and manages to bring across the problems that such a family may have faced back in the 1970s.

It’s also more of a drama and less of a comedy than EiE. Certainly the laughs are fewer and less intense, but if you take it as a different type of film then it does its job well. The cast are all great, British and Pakistani; young and old alike.

Not one I’d suggest rushing out to the cinema to see, but certainly worth renting when it hits DVD.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Upgrading RAM in a EeePC 1000HE

SODIMM
(Image by osde8info via Flickr)

I’m not sure if this applies to other models of the ASUS EeePC, or indeed to other manufacturer’s products, but I had a niggly problem upgrading from 1Gb to 2Gb memory (the maximum the little beast can take).

I bought my upgrade from Offtek who I’ve used a few times before and found to be very good. The SODIMM turned up, I swapped it out for the 1Gb one included in the machine and rebooted.

And found I had 0.99Gb of memory. The exact same as I had in place before the “upgrade”. I rechecked, re-seated, ran the Ubuntu memory checker and all told me the same thing.

So the SODIMM went back to Offtek who sent me a replacement by return of post.

And the same thing happened.

The solution, it turns out, is simple. Finding it is not. I couldn’t find jack **** on the ASUS website. For a start, there is no “EeePC” model listed in the search filter in the FAQ. Skipping past that and just searching for anything with “RAM” or “memory” in the text returned – surprisingly – nothing. At all. For any model.

I then tried Google and found a solution, funnily enough on some ASUS forum that wasn’t linked from the UK support site. It is this:

Upon booting, hammer the F2 key so that you get into the BIOS setup. Don’t touch anything, just hit F10 to quit and save changes (answer “yes” to the prompt).

Sorted.

An annoying little problem with a silly solution.

Enhanced by Zemanta

I Am Number Four / The Rite

A very late night on Friday to fit both of these in. A good job the latter was so bloody boring I managed to rest my eyes during a lot of it.

I Am Number Four

“A place is only as good as the people you know in it.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Weird kid with secret tries to fit in with outcast kids at school while being chased by aliens. As you do.

I didn’t realise until I walked past Waterstone’s today that this film is based on a book by one Pittacus Lore (actually a pseudonym for two people: Jobie Hughes and James Frey). What’s scary is that the book didn’t come 0ut until last August, and the option to it was bought a year prior. This means that Warner Bros were sinking a huge sum of cash into, and filming, a movie based on a book that hadn’t even been published. Wow.

The trailers and spiel made it out to be along the lines of the passable Push and the not-all-that-bad Jumper. It is in that it’s about a kid with abilities who’s being chased by forces unknown. It’s much better than both of them, though.

Imagine a mix of the above with the grouping together of characters which made the likes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer so good. It doesn’t start particularly well, with the acting seeming somewhat shonky but that improves as things go on. It was pleasing to see that the backstory was dealt with very quickly so that we could concentrate on what’s happening to our main character (John, played by Alex Pettyfer) and his guardian Henri (Timothy Olyphant).

Basically, he and a few other children are the last to escape a planet which is destroyed by the marauding Mogadorians. Once they come of age, they will develop powers which will help them defeat the evil nasties (who remind me of the black-clad aliens from Critters, if memory serves). Simple enough plot and one that focuses on John being unable to settle, constantly being on the move and starting to come of age – rebelling against Henri and trying to do his own thing despite the risks. Ideal teen fodder.

Thing is, it all works very well. Far better than the trailer would have you believe. The effects are excellent, the monsters scary, the bad guys evil and the violence pretty graphic for a 12A. OK, so it’s a little predictable in places (how obvious could the torn shirt cloth plot device have been made?), but it does keep throwing new things into the mix which you simply aren’t expecting.

The final battle scene, complete with ducking into doorways and firing huge laser guns around, is nothing short of a great homage to the original Star Wars in my eyes.

Really rather good. Hopefully, unlike with the excellent Vampire’s Assistant, it’ll rake in enough to warrant a sequel or two. Good stuff.

The Rite

“ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A priest is railroaded into becoming an exorcist and sends the male half of the audience to sleep.

Even the usually-excellent Anthony Hopkins couldn’t save this turkey. It’s as linear as a set of railroad tracks, has no twists or turns and the only good bit is at the end when you know you can go home.

Gill seemed to think that women would prefer it and the comments I overheard as we left would perhaps bear this out. Female voices made attempts to find good things in it while several men branded it variously as “*****”, “pish” and “******* awful”.

While it does have a story, it just doesn’t have a good one. It isn’t a horror. Nor is it something that would tear the Catholic church apart in a fit of conspiracy theories. It’s not a thriller and there’s no mystery to it. It’s most definitely not a comedy.

It starts well enough, with Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue) deciding to become a priest. Given the alternative is to take over at his father’s mortuary, this isn’t perhaps understandable. He aces all his exams except theology, which he flops as he has no faith. In a bid to get him to believe (or something), he’s packed off to Rome to study to become an exorcist.

Here, it could have got interesting. Perhaps he could have battled with his faith and the church, argued intelligently with great minds over the existence and non-existence of Satan. But, no. They palm him off on some old guy who’s casting demons out and… well… I fell asleep. Even Gill, who stayed awake, admitted that nothing happened. She just enjoyed the journey to nowhere that I snored through.

I recently had a comment on the Facebook rendering of this blog asking if I ever saw films I didn’t like. Well, it doesn’t happen that often, but I guess that comment tempted fate.

This was ****.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta