Category: Film

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.

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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.

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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 ****.

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True Grit / Drive Angry

I just spotted there were going to be eight films in the cinema this weekend that interested me. This called for an emergency trip to the Edinburgh Cineworld to offset this load slightly.

True Grit

“If you would like to sleep in a coffin, it would be all right.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: hard drinkin’, straight shootin’, man huntin’… erm… rootin’ tootin’ cowboy flick.

According to the blurb, this isn’t  remake of the 1969 John Wayne movie, but instead a new adaptation of the original source novel by Charles Portis. I heard an interview with one of the Coen Brothers recently, and he stated that they’d stayed close to the book including around 90% of the dialogue being lifted straight from it. The dialogue certainly is fantastic and one of the highlights of a great movie.

Now, I’m not a Coen disciple. In my opinion they’ve done some pretty good stuff (The Hudsucker Proxy) and some completely over-rated claptrap (I’ll be crucified for this, but I think Fargo is ****). I picked True Grit as it had had good reviews and because it started at a convenient time. I’m glad I did as I really enjoyed it.

As I said, the dialogue is a delight. If the Brothers tell the truth then the credit deserves to go to Portis for writing it so well. Of course, the delivery by the likes of Jeff Bridges (“Rooster” Cogburn), Matt Damon (Texas trooper LaBoeuf) and narrator Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) should also be credited in much the way that Aaron Sorkin‘s genius wouldn’t be as effective without the gifted casts of The West Wing or The Social Network.

I am not a fan of westerns, either, but the setting makes no odds for this as the story is good. A simple tale of revenge as Mattie hires Cogburn to track down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) for killing her father. The two don’t like each other, or Damon’s LaBoeuf who joins them, and the three play well off each other.

It’s a well-spun tale with a good ending (not the same as the Wayne version, and apparently that of the book) which doesn’t over-stretch itself or become maudlin.

Better than I expected and well worth a watch.

Drive Angry 3D

“Wouldn’t wanna be you when Satan finds out!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Things explode and people get killed and there’s some devil worship in there somewhere… and maybe a plot.

I really can’t be arsed with 3D films. This one claims to be shot in “state of the art”3D. How this is different from the 3D used in other films these days, I have no idea. Yes, I’m aware there are those filmed in 3D and those ruined by mucking about with the print in post-production to fake it, but they’re all just gimmickery.

The first thing you should do upon buying your ticket for Drive Angry is to place your brain into neutral and allow any sense of reality to ooze from your ears before the trailers end (and that ******* Orange advert comes on. Again.). You should now enjoy it immensely. Especially if you’re male and around 18 years of age. It’s that kind of film.

Nicolas Cage is a man on a mission, to rescue his grand-daughter from the clutches of an evil devil worshipper. He’s aided by a ridiculously hot waitress (Piper played by Amber Heard) and a couple of other buddies along the way. To tell you more would only give away as much as is in the trailer but as ever I’ll try to stay as spoiler free as always.

As a bonus for your money, there are two bad guys. The aforementioned evil devil-worshipping cult leader Jonah King (Billy Burke) and The Accountant played by a  magnificent William Fichtner. I’ve seen this man in a few things, including TV’s Prison Break and he is, frankly, the natural replacement for Christopher Walken. Cool, unruffled, slightly unusual-looking and capable of scaring the **** out of you. In fact, he’s so good in this film, that he runs the risk of doing what Alan Rickman did in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and stealing the show.

This is not a sensible film. There are no heart-wrenching performances. It won’t have you rolling in the aisles with laughter. What it will do – if you enjoy films like Death Race – is thoroughly entertain. It does get a little bit repetitive at points, and some of the action scenes drag a little too long. Or maybe that’s me having seen too many daft films.

Either way, it’s worth your cash. Although I still reckon it would have been every bit as stupid and enjoyable without forcing me to wear those bloody glasses for 100 minutes.

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Gnomeo & Juliet

Another trip to the cinema with the kids. We needed something entertaining enough to engage the little one without sending us mad. That ruled the painful-looking Yogi Bear flick out, so we settled on:

Gnomeo & Juliet

“Let’s go kick some grass!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Shakespeare with pottery.

This turned out to be a great choice. Superb cast, tons of humour, near-constant action and bright colours made it ideal for all four of us.

The plot follows Shakespeare’s original fairly well, to a point, and some of the dialogue is a direct pastiche of the Bard’s work. Gnomeo (James McAvoy) is a blue garden gnome living in the garden of Mr Capulet (voiced by Richard Wilson). He falls for Juliet (Emily Blunt), a red gnome living next door in Miss Montague’s (Julie Walters) garden.

Of course, the owners and therefore the gnomes are deadly enemies. We’re not limited to little rotund porcelain midgets, though. There are plastic flamingos, concrete animals and a cute little toadstool as well. The imagination of the creative team is incredible with amazing attention to detail and beautiful ideas being thrown up time after time.

If there’s a downside to the film it’s that all the music is by Elton John and it’s not exactly my favourite genre. In fairness, a lot of it is reworked into the background. As the film goes on, the songs themselves are replaced by background instrumentals. Right up to the end credits when a voice from Hell takes over and cuts into the eardums like a chainsaw. I think it’s Ellie Furtado and it’s horrendous.

Gnomeo & Juliet is fun, bright and funny on enough levels to make it entertaining for the whole family.

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