Category: Film

Killer Elite

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsManaged to sneak in a quick film this afternoon as gran popped round. We we ran out of the house, giggling like loons while she had her back turned and left her with the kids.

Killer Elite

“Blood doesn’t bother me. It’s ink I’m worried about.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: retired hired assassin is dragged back into the world of shooty death to save the life of a colleague

See it if you like: impressive thrillers dressed up as action films with excellent casts, intriguing “based on real events” storylines and brutal fight scenes

I mentioned the cast up there, and impressive it is indeed. Jason Statham at his very best (actually acting, not just being a tough guy), Robert De Niro in as meaty a role as you’ll ever see him in and Clive Owen crossing the good guy/bad guy part impressively. Yvonne Strahovski (from TV’s Chuck) also appears as the eye candy, getting to use her native Australian accent – though it does sound a little Kiwi. Please don’t tell her I said that.

Unusually for a film that is – or must be – pretty much fiction or at the very least hypothesis, it’s based on events described in a book partially regarded as non-fiction: Sir Ranulph Fiennes‘ The Feather Men. Set around the Oman war, it details or alludes to a large amount of British involvement which to this day is classified under the Official Secrets Act. Read the Wikipedia article (linked previously) for more information on the interesting story behind it.

The film runs for around 2 hours and crams a lot into that time. Statham plays Danny, one of a band of mercenaries who gets out of the game after one job too many. He is dragged in some months later by a rich oil sheikh who wants one last job done – the killing of three SAS soldiers, guilty of killing three of his sons. As an extra incentive for doing the job, Danny’s friend and ex-partner Hunter (De Niro) is held hostage.

Danny drafts a couple of old friends and they set out on their mission, eventually coming up against the novel’s titular “Feather Men” and their rogue member Spike (Owen).

There shouldn’t really be any clear good or bad guys in the film, but of course Hollywood won’t allow that so there’s an element of non-ruthlessness in places where you’d expect more from the characters. Aside from that, it’s a fairly brutal and unforgiving film very well filmed and with some excellent fight scenes and set pieces. Best of all, though, is that they’re wrapped in an excellent plot.

With such a strong cast, it’s almost a relief to have s decent story to go along with it. Nothing is too over-the-top, even the gore. It keeps the interest right the way until the end credits.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

30 Minutes Or Less / The Change-Up

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsA night of comedy for our first cinema trip in a fortnight. We toyed with catching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as well, but I was pooped and Gillian had work to do. So back-to-back comedies it was!

30 Minutes Or Less

“Sometimes fate pulls out its big ol’ cock and slaps you right in face.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Bad man wants to kill other bad man which means paying another bad man which means roping some other poor sap in to rob a bank.

See it if you like: the idea of Harold and Kumar Rob a Bank

Jesse Eisenberg returns to one of his more common roles as a bit of a layabout in this over-the-top comedy. He plays Nick, a pizza delivery guy whose job it is to get pizzas to customers within thirty minutes. Hence the title. Unfortunately, one one fateful delivery he finds himself trussed up, rigged with an explosive vest and ordered to rob a bank of $100,000 by madman Dwayne (Danny McBride) . Dwayne, you see, wants to off his dad and this will cost him a hundred G’s which he doesn’t have.

He teams up with his best friend Chet (Aziz Ansari), and together they set out to try and save Nick’s body from vapourisation. There’s a little more undercurrent in that Nick is in love with Chet’s twin sister, and Chet isn’t really happy about this.

Everything ties together well. There are plenty of characters who are all mad at each other for one reason or another. This means plenty of shouting and insults, most of which are gutter-level. Perfect for a night when the brain just needs to be tickled.

There are plenty of laughs and the story runs along well, never getting tired. Eisenberg and Ansari play very well off each other. I’d really like to see them together in something else in the future.

Certainly not high-brow, but it is funny – something some comedies seem to be lacking these days.

The Change-Up

“You are not having sex with my wife.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: two life-long friends with very different lives swap bodies after pissing in a fountain together. As you do.

See it if you like: the idea of 17 Again, Vice Versa, Freaky Friday etc. with nob gags.

Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman star as Mitch and Dave, two lifelong friends whose lives have gone in different directions. Mitch is a lazy “actor” who womanises and spends his days wasted. Dave is a lawyer pushing for partner with a hot wife (played by Leslie Mann) and three kids. After a few beers one night, they find themselves caught short in front of a fountain, syphon the python and – as they wish they each had the other’s life – something “magical” happens…

The two actors play each other’s characters very well indeed as Mitch tries to handle nappies and MENSA-level pre-teens, and Dave tries to remain faithful to his wife despite landing in Mitch’s bohemian life.

Of course, being an American movie it needs a dollop of schmaltz and life lessons. Thankfully these are handled well, with a good mixture of slapstick, low-brow humour, swearing and a handful of really very touching moments as our two heroes realise where they’re going wrong in their respective lives.

In the background is the search for the fountain, removed by workmen the morning after the incident – a quest reminiscent of Josh’s search for the Zoltar Speaks machine in Big. And what do they guys do when they finally find out where it is?

This is a really enjoyable film, and certainly better than the trailer made me think it would be. There’s a superb balance of giggles, awkward moments and pathos with the whole thing tying together well at the end.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Kill ListBurn After Reading

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsWell, we took a trip to the cinema last night to see Kill List, but the projector failed. We sat through almost ten minutes of sound with no picture before giving up and walking out. Shame, as it’s now unlikely we’ll get a chance to see it at all as we’re otherwise engaged next Friday night.

Instead, we wandered through Asda on the way home and perused the cheap DVD section and grabbed some movies. Gillian watched Shutter Island which I’ve seen before and quite enjoyed it. Next up was a toss-up between Moon and the Coen Brothers‘ Burn After Reading. As Gillian was in the mood for  comedy, and the box said “Comedy Of The Year” we popped that disc in.

Good. Gumption. What a complete load of arse. I mean, “comedy”? Didn’t someone tell them that comedies are supposed to be funny? I’m not even going to give this a full review. Suffice to say that despite an very good cast, it was an utterly awful film and a complete waste of an hour and a half. It was badly scripted, slow, tedious, boring, didn’t go anywhere, and the wrap-up at the end viewed as if someone had told them to cut the last ten minutes and replace it with a quick tie-up.

On Twitter and facebook last night, I found one person and her hubby who had found it hilarious. Pretty much everyone else hated it, including one comment of “Worst. Film. Ever.” Perhaps not. But damn close.

Burn Before Watching would have been a better title.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Conan the Barbarian / The Guard

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsA little bit of a David v Goliath competition this evening with a dinky Irish film competing for my attention against a meaty Hollywood blockbuster. Which will win out?

Conan the Barbarian

“By Crom!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: barbarian loses family and swears vengeance on the baddie who killed them

See it if you  like: muscley men with long hair hitting people with things

If there’s one good thing to say about Conan the Barbarian, it’s that it isn’t a remake of the old Arnie films. Given the huge detailed history given to Conan by his creator, Robert E. Howard, and successive authors following on from him there is plenty to draw from. How, then, did we end up with such a dull and vapid tale as this one?

Jason Momoa is passable as the bulky Cimmerian, though his facial expressions seem to range from annoyed to angry and not an awful lot else. Mind, this is a little better than Leo Howard who plays Conan as a youth and who seems to have modelled his part on some kind of pissed-off wolf cub. With a pet lip.

The film shows its cheesy intentions from the opening sequence where Conan is born and held aloft on the battlefield. Well, a really shitty obviously rubber fake baby is held aloft anyway. While dad (Ron Perlman) roars. As you do on a battlefield when people are running around you with big bloody swords.

As far as plot goes, it’s about as deep as the 80’s versions. That is to say as deep as a thin film of water spilled on your worktop. It’s pretty predictable, the characters are just as shallow and the action sequences are about the only thing to alleviate the tedium. The “sand creatures” which appear in one sequence are particularly well done, although I swear the exact same piece of footage of a creature jumping in the air is used about five times.

Yeah, you may have guessed I wasn’t that impressed. Gillian summed it up:

“Even Red Sonja was better than that.”

The Guard

“I can’t tell if you’re really motherfucking dumb, or reallymotherfucking smart.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A member of the Garda comes up against some seriously nasty drug smugglers.

See it if you like: Good British (yes, I know, it’s Irish but the style’s the same) detective dramas with a heavy hand of quirk.

And here’s David. All set up with a large Irish sling with which to smack Goliath firmly in the temple. $6m up against $90m. That’s a big gulf to cross. How could it possibly hope to compete?

The most simple answer is – by having a far superior script. The Guard actually has a great story. And some wonderful characters, one in particular – Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson). The quote above comes from Don Cheadle‘s FBI agent shortly into the film and I was actually thinking this about Boyle shortly before the question is raised. He’s a wonderfully written enigma and portrayed perfectly by Gleeson.

So, what happens? Boyle is a police officer in the arse end of nowhere in West Ireland. Cheadle arrives with information about some rather nasty drug dealers in the area and things kick off. This isn’t Lethal Weapon in scale, and the humour is far darker than you’d get in most Hollywood movies. In fact, the closest I can think of offhand is In Bruges which, coincidentally I assume, also stars Gleeson.

If I have an issue it’s that the film seems to try too hard to be funny at the start with a bit too much in the way of bad language and forced humour. Once things settle down, roughly around the time Cheedle’s character appears, the humour settles in and becomes far more natural.

As well as the crime and laughs, there’s a lovely side-story relating to Boyle’s mother who is dying of cancer. There’s no real reason for this little splinter of a story to be there other than to develop the protagonist’s personality. And it works.

It’s films like this that restore my faith in cinema at times. Please, if you have the choice of only catching some stupid sword and sandals flick (even worse, the aforementioned crock in 3-flipping-D) and this little pearl, hand your coins to David so he can load them into his sling.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

The Inbetweeners Movie / Cowboys And Aliens

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsAh, Thursdays. Child-free and cinema-bound…

The Inbetweeners Movie

“Ow, gentle on the sunburned cock please.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Four boys just out of school head off on holiday for sun, sea, sand, sex, booze, sex, drinking, sex…

See it if you like: low-brow British humour about poo, vomit, sex and more sex.

Way back in the mists of time was a film about two boys going abroad with the hope of getting drunk and laid. It was Kevin & Perry Go Large and it was utter ****. Released around the time that Harry Enfield had slipped from comedy genius to being as funny as syphilis of the face, it smacked of desperation and had as many laughs as a funeral on the banks of the Ganges.

So, The Inbetweeners Movie doubles the number of boys and sends them to Greece. It also adds jokes, some cracking dialogue, a great poo gag and a decent story – the latter quite surprising given the otherwise low-brow nature of the film.

Oh, and yes, it’s based on the similarly-named Channel 4 show which I didn’t even know existed until tonight. I assume the cast and characters are the same. Out of our little group we have a nerd, a pretty-boy who’s just been dumped, a sex maniac and a guy with lower standards than I ever had. So pretty much your average bunch of 18 year-olds.

Off they go to Greece to stay in the worst hotel in the world, while the dumped kid’s ex is wandering around the same resort and they try to cop off with four girls they meet on the first night.

So a thin plot, but some excellent scenes and brilliant comic timing from the cast and director. There are really moments where I sat there thinking, “Yeah, well, that was going to happ… no, wait. He didn’t!” It is possibly the best comedy I’ve seen since the first Hangover film, and probably done on a fraction of the budget.

If you’ve even got the slightest smidgen of immaturity in your body, go and see it.

Cowboys & Aliens

“It fell off.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Aliens are kidnapping people in the Wild West, which makes the folk they don’t snatch even wilder.

See it if you like: to disengage the old grey matter and revel in some old-fashioned sci-fi with a novel setting.

I’d heard great things about this graphic novel adaptation and the trailers held my interest. It’s certainly got a damn good cast with Harrison Ford as the mean old Colonel, Daniel Craig as the mysterious stranger and Olivia Wilde as the slightly weird looking woman (not typecast at all).

Craig is introduced, suffering amnesia, in the opening scene and the revelations as to how the titular Aliens fit in is revealed through his flashbacks. It doesn’t take long for the action to kick off, and the back story supports the set pieces well. It’s still a little slow at times, though.

It’s always good to see Harrison Ford these days – he does “curmudgeonly” so well, but Craig is on fire here. Jake Lonergan could take on James Bond any day and leave him begging for his mother. Imagine “The Man With No Name” with a headache, taking it all out on everyone else. Only cooler. And with scarier eyes. That’s Lonergan.

The effects serve the film well, and the supporting cast are up for the job. There are a few mawkish scenes which do jar a bit (the scene where one character is buried and words are said over his grave, surprisingly, isn’t one of them) and Ford’s Woodrow Dolarhyde changes a little more over the two hours than seems believable.

It’s not the best sci-fi film of the decade, but it’s certainly a fresh take with some nicely slimy aliens.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta