Category: Review

Sweep of film reviews

I’ve watched a fair bit here in Bangkok as the cinemas are both cheap and very good. I also can’t be bothered writing full reviews for all of them so here’s a quick run-down of the four I’ve seen in the last week.

Public Enemies

Johnny Depp struggles not to remind you of Captain Jack Sparrow in this gangster flick set in the mid-1930’s. He almost gets away with it as well. How closely it tells the true story of John Dillinger I couldn’t say, but the period settings and so forth are beautiful.

It is without a doubt a good looking film with a respectable cast. However, the story just didn’t grip me and I found it a little hard to follow in places. Not as good as I was expecting, but I’m sure others would enjoy it a lot more.

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)

A remake of a film based on a book. Who says Hollywood is short of ideas? It’s a simple enough plot – a subway car and its passengers are taken hostage under New York City by a rather insane John Travolta. Denzel Washington, as a city worker, tries to do the hostage negotiation thing.

Simple plot, simple film. Nothing’s really a surprise although the story has been brought up to date to include modern technology. I can’t recall the original 1974 version too well, but I would like to compare the two. I have a feeling it was a far more taut thriller.

Nothing wrong with the performances in this one, but it’s still a little vapid and had a really weak and sudden ending.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (IMAX 3D)

I’ve enjoyed the Harry Potter films up till now, much as I enjoyed the books up till this one. In this regard, the films are now better. This was the first of the original novels I didn’t like – over-publicised, over-long and the ridiculous “leak” about a major character dying had someone carking it in every second chapter. And then being resuscitated, or discovered to be a shape-shifter or something. Bunkum.

As a result of the book’s size, a lot has been stripped out which gets rid of some of the unnecessary padding. The cast have improved with age and the series simply must have every single good British actor ever to tread the boards in it.

The one thing is that as a result of the stripping, you finish the viewing feeling like this was just the opening for the grand finale. I mean, it is. But that sensation is just a little too much. You expect to see “to be continued after the news” instead of closing credits. No bad thing, in a way, as it’s left me gasping for the final instalments (the last book is being split into two films).

A word on the IMAX 3D experience, though. And that word is: WOW. Only the first 15 minutes are in 3D, but they are staggering. Absolutely staggering. Simply the best 3D I have ever seen at a cinema. It’s just a crying shame that the whole film couldn’t be rendered in this way. I assume it’s a cost thing – maybe one day.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Oh, this is a silly one. It’s as comic book as you can get and utterly, totally, sublimely ridiculous. Never before has the phrase “leave your brain at the door” been more apt. You can tell it’s by the director of the Mummy films simply from the insane amount of half-cocked CGI that’s been used. But the thing is, you don’t care.

For every shonky “cartoon motorbike” there’s a collapsing Eiffel Tower. For every “heat-haze to disguise the rush job” there’s a kick-ass fight scene. For every horrendous piece of acting (Christopher Ecclestone – you should be ashamed of that “accent”) there’s a phenomenal pair of boobs to stare at to make up for it (Sienna Miller and Rachel Nichols just made my “must do when I’m incredibly rich and famous” list).

From what I gather, if you’re a fan of the comics then it will hurt you to watch this film in the same way that Sylvester Stallone‘s Judge Dredd made me whimper and want to drive nails into my own head. However, for the rest of us it’s an eye-opening, ridiculous, explosion-filled piece of pure sugar-coated entertainment.

Utter crap. But in such a great way.

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Zero by Eric Van Lustbader

Not much of a review as I’m short of time, more a listing to myself that I’ve read this. Zero is one of Lustbader‘s many Japan-centred novels although a large part is also played out in Maui. The plot follows two generations of familes – both Japanese and American – and hops back and forth along the timelines filling in gaps as it goes.

The plot’s pretty decent, but as with a lot of his books it takes some amount of time to pick up pace while the ending is frantic as every plot thread is picked up and tied up neatly.

Not bad, but heavy going language-wise. Mind, it’s as educational as it is entertaining, especially for those with an interest in Japanese culture.

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The Alchemist’s Secret by Scott Mariani

The curse of Dan Brown lives on in this adventure novel as one man (and a woman he picks up along the way) battles against a church-related organisation to retrieve the secret of eternal life. By curse, I don’t mean that it’s a bad novel, just that it’s buried in amongst a lot of similar times since The Da Vinci Code became the book of the decade despite being possibly the worst-written of all its peers.

The Alchemist’s Secret isn’t one of the best in this genre, but it’s a far cry from the worst. The pacing is good, the story unwraps well and the dialogue’s not at all clunky (Dan Brown – kindly refer to this text before writing anything else as your dialogue sucks). However, where it does fall down is that it’s very, very predictable.

By the end of chapter three, if you’ve read any of this type of book or seen any Hollywood film of the last 40 years, you’ll have guess how several of the plot points work out. What’s important is that Mariani makes you care enough about the plot to follow it through until the inevitable happens.

As with many good books, there’s a large dollop of truth and history mixed in with the fiction. It’s interesting when you get to the Author’s Note to find out exactly how much. With luck it will even encourage the reader to take a quick delve into the non-fiction section of the bookshop to discover more. Or at least a trip to Wikipedia.

Not bad. Not a classic, but not bad. I’ll be keeping an eye out for The Amadeus Letter.

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The Dealer by Paul Kilduff

Cover of "The Dealer"
The Dealer

Once in a while you find a new author that you’ve never heard off and end up very pleasantly surprised, wanting to hunt down anything else they’ve written. Paul Kilduff, for me, is one of these.

I’m not even sure where I picked up this copy of The Dealer – I think it might have been at a nature reserve near Dundee! Wherever it was, I’m very glad I did. It’s been some time since I sat and ploughed through a novel in the way I did with the last half of this one.

As an ex-financier himself, Kilduff’s in a good position to write about the City and all it’s money-related goings-on. His gift is to do so without getting overly complicated or boring. After reading the book, not only did I feel highly entertained but also that I’d learned a little bit about how all those rich people in expensive suits make a (ridiculously large) living.

The plot follows a dodgy dealer, a madam and an investigator trying to prove allegations of insider dealing. Every chapter end with the reader wanting to know what happens next to these main characters and a handful of others. Backgrounds are drip-fed so there’s always something new to find out and the ending doesn’t wrap up quite as neatly as may be expected – in a good way.

Despite all the fun I had reading the book, the ending really stuck out for me. Kilduff’s technique of using fake newspaper articles instead of closing chapters is a smart way of giving a “what happened next” approach. Somewhat reminiscent of a movie flashing up a short paragraph for each main character before the closing credit, but allowing the author to give more detail and also pace things out a bit and add just a final bit of tension.

The reviews inside the book liken him to a “Grisham beater”, but I’d say he’s a sideways step from the American giant in terms of subject matter. Certainly, his ability to tell a story about what is a fairly complex business in terms which the reader can easily understand and become engrossed in is up there with Grisham.

As far as I can tell from the back, The Dealer is only Kilduff’s second novel and was published in 2000. Hopefully this means he has a few more out by now. I know I’ll be keeping an eye out for them.

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Heavy Metal in Baghdad

Heavy Metal in Baghdad

The first thing to clear up is that Heavy Metal in Baghdad is not, primarily, about heavy metal. It’s about people, and the war in Iraq and the after-effects of it.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: a film crew from a US-based metal magazine travel to Baghdad (and later Syria) to interview the only Iraqi heavy metal band, Acrassicauda. We hear about their family, their music, the regimes they have lived under and finally their flight to another country.

This film isn’t fiction. It’s a very well made documentary by two North American metal fans who travel to Iraq to watch and help host a heavy metal contest in Baghdad. The band members are interviewed about everyday life there, both before and after the war when the crew visit for a second time.

Unlike many news reports, nothing is sensationalised. Plain truths are uttered, and the state of the country after the war is laid wide open to inspection. Did the conflict make any real difference to the people who matter? That is, the family on the street trying to earn a living?

Judging by the fact that, at the time of the film’s release, over 2.5 million Iraqis had fled their country the answer is “no”. They’d rather live in poverty as second-class citizens than risk staying in Baghdad or elsewhere and risk persecution or death. At least they’re free – and poverty seems to be a price they’re prepared to pay.

The pace of the film has been very well calculated. It begins on a high as the original crew take a jokey approach to heading there to see a concert. On their second visit, the tone is much more muted – as is the music. The band unable to play in their home country for fear of persecution. Fans can’t even headbang as it looks too much like Jews nodding at prayer!

Things seem happier when the band all meet up again in Damascus, but as I mentioned they’re now all destitute. They do, however, manage to play another gig and cut a three-track demo. What really hits home is when the film-makers show them the first two thirds of the movie as a “work in progress”. The emotions are overwhelming and the film ends on a very sour note.

Despite the best of intentions, things don’t always end well. But that’s the way it is and that’s why this is such as good piece of documentary.

Don’t avoid it just because it seems to be about music you have no appreciation for. See it because you need to know how other people in this world are being forced to live. And then realise how damn lucky you are.

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