Tag: George Clooney

Gravity

120px-Film-stripA sneaky daytime showing this week. My aunt volunteered to look after the little one while the other two were at school. I have Tuesdays off, and I’d heard good things, so we booked a couple of tickets for an IMAX screening of…

Gravity

“I hate space!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A routine shuttle mission goes all to hell…

See it if you like: sitting on the edge of your seat and not blinking for ninety minutes

Let’s just add a review-in-a-nutshell to this: See. This. Film.

Slightly expanded: If possibly, See. This. Film. In. IMAX. 3D.

If Hollywood died tomorrow and left Gravity as its legacy, then the industry would be fondly remembered. It’s so good, that I have – after many years – finally forgiven Sandra Bullock for The Net. A film I have derided for nigh on two decades. Sandra, seriously, you can now hold your head high.

With a cast of – to all intents and purposes – two, Gravity proves that you don’t need an all-star ensemble cast to sell a film. In fact, the last time I remember seeing a film with a cast so small it was The Disappearance of Alice Creed. Coincidentally, or maybe not, that film was also staggeringly good (you can see my review here).

Absolutely honestly, with my hand on my heart, I don’t think I so much as blinked (except to “avoid” on chunk of debris that looked like it would hit me in the face) after the first five minutes of the film. Around fifteen minutes in, my wife held my hand and we didn’t let go of each other until the credits rolled.

As ever, I don’t want to tell you too much about the plot for fear of giving anything away. Suffice to say, it’s a drama set in space against the background of a serious accident which leaves a shuttle crew stranded up there. Only it’s way better than that. Way better. Think how good you reckon that could be and then multiply that tenfold. At least.

George Clooney is excellent opposite Bullock, but the real star is director Alfonso Cuarón. With the aid of digital technology and a lot of new techniques, he’s made the visuals so realistic that it moves the film from “impressive” to “jaw-droppingly stunning” in every aspect. I don’t really buy DVDs any more, but this is very much likely to sway me purely as I’d expect some very interesting “Making of” features. In fact, it’s good enough to possibly convince me to finally get a Blu-Ray player.

In case I’ve not convinced you – see this film. If you see one film a week, month or year… this is the one. And stump up for IMAX 3D if you can. I know I go on about how 3D’s rubbish. This doesn’t hold for good IMAX 3D as it makes use of the size of the screen to fill your field of vision, plus the image quality helps.

I’d still not touch it in 3D at a regular cinema, but the extra we paid for IMAX was worth every penny. Twice over.

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The American (and a second dose of trains)

Courtesy of being a numpty and checking the times for Cineworld Glasgow instead of Edinburgh, I made my way to the cinema for 10:30 to find that the showing of Machete I wanted to see didn’t exist.

Arse.

I’d seen everything else due to start before half twelve (except Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest and I’ve not seen, or want to see, the one before it) so I opted to watch Unstoppable again. I missed the first 10 minutes when I caught it last week, so at least some of it would be new. It was still enjoyable the second time around, though not as good as the first screening.

Next up:

The American

“You cannot deny the existence of hell. You live in it. It is a place without love.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Mysterious American hitman/spy/something ends up in a peaceful Italian town with some dodgy Swedish people on his tail.

Based on Martin Booth‘s novel A Very Private Gentleman, the film finds “Jack” (George Clooney) fleeing to Italy to escape Swedish assassins, while preparing one final job. It’s never 100% clear what he does, though this final work seems to involve supplying a gun to another assassin rather than doing the deed himself.

It’s definitely a rather arty film, not the action spectacle you might expect. There are many scenes that just seem to be crammed together and often you’re left thinking “what’s going on? Why did he just do that?” – but at least it’s a film that makes you think rather than spoon-feeding the audience.

What I can say about the movie is that it is absolutely beautifully shot (director Anton Corbijn should take a bow), most of it in a small Italian town called Castel del Monte. If the Italian government were looking for a 105 minute tourism advert showing how gorgeous and historic parts of their country are, then they’d not go far wrong using this.

The rest of the cast are as good as can be expected, though I have to simply say: Violante Placido… *drool*. If I was allowed a “five famous people” list she’d be on it. Wow.

As I said, don’t expect huge explosions, spectacular car crashes and Bay-esque set pieces. This is a film about Clooney’s character rather than the events around him. The thing is, he’s such a private gentleman that it doesn’t make for a very interesting tale. Everything coasts along well enough, and there are little moments as the film builds to a decent near-ending… and a fairly weak final scene.

There are better films out at the moment, but if you want to see Italy at its most jaw-dropping then there’s nothing else to rival this one.

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Up In The Air

Up in the Air (film)
Up In The Air

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one and squeezed it in on a Wednesday night around travel arrangements and coursework.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham a well-travelled businessman who lives most of the year on the road… or more accurately on the airways.

Quick stuff first – I really, really enjoyed Up In The Air. I’m not a massive Clooney fan, though I do seem to enjoy a lot of his films. However, there’s no doubting he was a perfect choice for this role and it really does allow him a lot of range. His character is a little… different from what we’d consider normal. A man who revels in the fact that he doesn’t stay at home, instead living out of a small wheeled backpack.

His life seems about to take quite a change when a young upstart at his company comes up with a new method of doing their job (which, incidentally, is firing people) – doing it via webcam. This reduces costs and – importantly to Bingham – travel. His one aim in life is to hit a certain targetted number of air miles so that he can enter an elite club belonging to American Airlines, who it’s incredibly obvious must have sponsored the film.

As an aside, this movie has the most obvious sponsorship deals I think I’ve seen since the last Bond epic. American, as mentioned, are the only airline whose logos you see. Car hire is courtesy of Hertz, and mobile communications are exclusively Blackberry. Surprisingly, no laptop manufacturer seems to have been lured in. It’s actually unusual not to see the name of a tech company prominently displayed on the open lid of a computer – in all cases the badges are obscured.

Jason Reitman has done a great job of directing with the pace changing more rapidly than a tango. Swift, half-second montages cover the sections of Bingham’s life that are oft-repeated whereas the more emotive scenes are allowed a lot of time for them to sink in. The dialogue is simply wonderful. Witty, clever and reminiscent of the banter that I miss so much from The West Wing.

What’s even better is that, although it starts to turn into a feelgood movie the ending isn’t perhaps what you’d expect. As ever, I’ll avoid spoilers but I’m glad it didn’t just fall into a formulaic pattern and ruin an otherwise good film.

Definitely worth seeing, although it’s slightly too long for its own good.

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Film Saturday

Just for a change, a Saturday visit to the picture house and what a change it made crowd-wise. While I much prefer an empty theater (as people are generally selfish, noisy buggers in this country) it is good to see that the cinema is still a popular place to go. The queue was pretty big at 1pm, and by the time I walked past at 3pm I was glad I’d picked up the ticket for my second film in advance – the queue was out the door and up the street!

The Men Who Stare At Goats

Weird title, weird film. Apparently based on a weird book – which I actually remember seeing in the Popular Science section of Waterstone’s many years ago.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: a journalist with a failed marriage heads for Iraq to write a war story. On the way he encounters a retired soldier who claims to have been part of an elite psychic soldier outfit. And this is apparently based on a true story…

The main cast is astounding: George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey… Robert Patrick is headlined, but he’s only in it for five minutes. They’re all damn good as well. McGregor managed to pull off a decent American accent without sounding stupid while Clooney pulls off stupid without looking… well, stupid.

This is a film about complete mentalists. It’s hard to tell where the line is drawn between docu-drama and complete fiction. I’d guess that the book is the same, partly as it just seems to far-fetched. Yet how unlikely is it that armies were throwing cash a potential psychic “weapons”?

There are laughs a-plenty, most of them quite dark. The fact that McGregor’s character ends up in a quest to become what the psi-ops regiment called a “Jedi” is not lost on the viewing public either.

Overall a good film that doesn’t outstay it’s modest running length.

Jennifer’s Body

The last decent female-based teen horror film was Ginger Snaps and that was released ages ago. Jennifer’s Body goes more down the “monster” than “werewolf” route but does it well with some great black humour. And two hot girls snogging.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Town bike Jennifer turns from slut to blood-hungry psycho, requiring the blood of scared teens to survive. Her best friend is the only one to know her secret and she doesn’t like it.

When I saw the trailers I thought “rubbish – move on”. Then I saw some reviews, and not just from the likes of Baz Bamigboy and Jonathan Ross‘s far less talented sibling who will say anything is the “Best film of 2009” if it gets them a free bag of popcorn. The schedule fitted in with my free time so I took a chance.

The film opens after the end of the main plotline with one of the characters putting us into the scene. The story then jumps to the beginning and is more or less linear from there except for a brief jump back to explain exactly what happened to Jennifer (Megan Fox). Fox, incidentally, is hot. Scorchy hot. I-would-give-a-limb hot. But credit must also go to co-star Amanda Seyfried who plays the frumpy best friend, Needy – “frumpy” in the sense that as soon as she takes off her glasses and shakes out her hair she’s also typically sexy.

Everything happens at a good pace with the characters not being too stereotypical. The gore isn’t over-the-top and the effects are good. What I liked most, other than the humour, is the way the two main characters act opposite each other and how Needy develops.

You can pretty much guess what happens, it’s the ending that’s fairly original. Although not a huge twist, it’s definitely well written.

Don’t avoid this film just because it has obvious eye candy in. Don’t get me wrong. Fox isn’t that great an actress, but her hotness is actually useful in this film. And you get to see her with her tongue down another hot chick’s throat. Admittedly this scene was made somewhat less erotic by one numpty in the cinema crying “YAY” in a dull monotone, resulting in a huge outburst of laughter and a smattering of applause.

Still, that’s a throwaway moment in the film in my opinion. The main reason to see it is Seyfried’s performance. And the poor jokes.

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Film Thursday

9-movie-official-poster-fullsize 400x592
9

My last “Film Thursday” for 6 weeks as I’m on placement from Monday. Argh. It wasn’t as busy as I was hoping, with only three films making the “can be arsed going to see” category.

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant

The trailers for this looked good and it didn’t disappoint, despite almost being an overlong trailer for an upcoming series in its own right.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Two best friends end up becoming vampires by different mean; one a “good” vampire, the other a “bad” Vampaneze. Begin Blade-style “them against us” plotline.

Having had a quick scan through the related Wikipedia articles, there are definitely some differences between the film and the two source novels by Darren Shan. In fact, the two books which give up most of their content to form the plot for the film are Cirqu du Freak and The Vampire’s Assistant. They in turn are the first two books in a trilogy, itself the first of four such trilogies. So you can see that Hollywood would be begging for the rights with so much pre-written story to adapt.

As I’ve not read the books I can’t comment on how “good” an adaptation it is, but as a film in its own right it’s certainly enjoyable. There is enough revealed about the background world in which its set to certainly get the imagination going and I do hope they start work on a sequel or three. Mainly as I don’t have the time to read another twelve novels.

It is a little violent and there’s a smattering of bad language, but it’s suitable for the young teens and up in my opinion. The humour is quite dark (as it should be) with some good slapstick and gruesome effects.

Oh, and Salma Hayek is still hot, even with a beard.

9

Coincidentally, the second film of the day shares an actor with the first. Mr Crepsley from Vampire’s Assistant and “Number 5” from 9 are both played by John C. Reilly. However, in this wonderfully designed animated feature only his vocal talents are used.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: The world has been destroyed and all that’s left are some little sentient dolls and a very scary mechanical dog. But what happened? And why?

I was really, really looking forward to 9 and I have to admit to being a little disappointed. Mainly in the story which just doesn’t seem to be deep enough. Visually, however, it is a complete and utter treat. It’s not been so much sketched out and drawn, but mechanically designed. This very much appeals to my inner geek.

It is still a very moving film with some wonderful characters and a lovely ending. The journey to that ending is superbly crafted, but it just seemed to be missing a little something for me. I couldn’t tell you what, annoyingly enough.

There is no denying the Tim Burton influence in the freaky designs, though there are even shades of the scary hybrid toys from the first Toy Story movie. Only with engines and snippy bits and laser eyes and stuff.

For the pure visual wonderfulness, I would recommend 9.

Fantastic Mr Fox

I am so going to get it in the neck for this one, but I have my issues with this film… like 9 it is beautifully made, though the animation is far more simplistic. The voice acting if pretty good, though I think 9‘s was better (and yes, that’s even taking into account George Clooney). It’s the story, of all things.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A fox family move into a shiny new tree, but soon find themselves the centre of a pest-control war waged by three mean farmers.

So what’s my problem with the story? Bear in mind that I love Roald Dahl and everything he stood for, but for a kids’ story the morals on this are all messed up. The foxes start off fine. Mr Fox decides he wants to steal loads of stuff, which he then does. The farmers get a bit peeved at this and decide they don’t want him living next to them – who would?

But guess who wins?

Yes, kids. Steal stuff, annoy people… and you’ll get away with it if you have a cool (read “annoying”) trademark whistle and a way with words. Actually, in fairness it worked for our politicians for long enough.

I have to confess I’ve never read the book. It was one of the ones I just didn’t get round to as a kid. I couldn’t tell you how many times I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. I absolutely adored them, but now I feel almost glad that I didn’t read Mr Fox as it actually seems a bit weak.

Please tell me that the book didn’t have the “whistle-click” trademark in it? That’s just awful. As is some of the dialogue. I’m really hoping it’s just been destroyed in adaptation as I can’t believe Dahl would have been so trite in places.

But as I said: it looks fantastic. However overall it’s more kind of “Passable Mister Fox”

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