Tag: Zooey Deschanel

Your Highness / Fast Five

A two-film Saturday night courtesy in a change of Gillian’s mum’s shifts. The two which fit nicely into our available timeslot were as follows:

Your Highness

“Quests suck!”

See it if you like: Dungeons & Dragons and drawing cocks on school text books.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Useless prince has to help awesome brother on a quest to rescue a maiden from an evil wizard. While telling cock jokes.

Your Highness is a very silly film from the people who made Pineapple Express which I’ve not seen. I can see it being a very divisive film – you’ll enjoy it or you’ll think it’s awful. I doubt there will be any middle ground. I also think that watching it over a few beers would be best.

The story tells of Prince Thadeous (Danny McBride) and his squire Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) who must help elder brother and all round superstar Fabious (James Franco) rescue his virginal bride-to-be Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) from evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux). On the way they encounter tough-as-nuts questress Isabel (Natalie Portman).

There. That gets the cast out of the way. A cast, incidentally, who apparently improvised the majority of the dialogue. Impressive. Even if the dialogue is fairly basic and full of sexual innuendo. And sexism. And tasteless insults. As I said – best watched with beer.

The cast do carry things off very well, and it’s quite a surprise to see Portman in particular move from OSCAR nomination in Black Swan to such completely different fare. Franco overacts in just the right way while McBride and Hardiker pair off well as the useless slob prince and his aide who doesn’t realise what a dick he is.

For an admittedly low brow comedy, the production values are quite high and the special effects and action sequences aren’t badly done at all.

Definitely not one you’ll be taking the kids to see unless you want to start explaining about Minotaur penises and why a hand would be like a vagina. Let your inner schoolchild enjoy it and you’ll have a good time.

Fast Five

“One last job, then we disappear forever.”

See if it you like: the thought of Newton spinning in his grave

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Members of the casts from all four previous films get together to pull off one last huge job before the franchise retires.

The gang’s all here – and then some. Pulling in cast members from all the films, including the somewhat sideways jump of Tokyo Drift, Fast Five aims to finish the franchise with a bang (although there are rumours of a sixth…)

We watched the fourth instalment the other night in preparation and I realised how slow it was. Gillian really didn’t enjoy it either. A few action sequences held together with a rather dull plot. Definitely the weakest of the series so far after the novelty of the first, buddy/buddy laughs of the second and scenery change of the third.

Fast Five manages to take all the ridiculous madness of the previous four, shove them through a blender, syphon off anything to do with Newtonian physics and pour the mixture onto celluloid. My only regret about watching this film is that I didn’t see it on IMAX.

As I think I hinted at, I think the laws of physics **** themselves when this film hit the screens. It makes no sense whatsoever. On the other hand… who, seriously, cares? It’s got cars, babes, muscle-bound men, explosions, crashes, trains, dirt, guns, grenades, rocket launchers, laughs, spills, fights, romance…

OK, so the plot in brief. Brian (Paul Walker) and Dom (Vin Diesel) team up to pull a huge job in Rio, taking down a drug lord and making themselves massively rich. In a not-very-well-hidden nod to the likes of Ocean’s Eleven they require a group of specialists. This is where they raid the back-catalogue of characters.

The cast definitely seem on a high and there are some really funny moments and great dialogue as they bicker and cajole. This fleshes out the utterly mind-blowing action scenes. If you thought the opening stunts in the last few films were a little over-the-top, you’ve seen nothing yet.

And that’s nothing compared to the final sequence. Good – and indeed – grief. For those with as much as a Physics GCSE, kindly partition off that section of your brain (particularly the segment to do with friction, force, acceleration and so forth) otherwise you’ll just turn in to a gibbering Newtonian wreck. I opted to sit there and giggle at the incredible destruction and sheer ludicrousness of the entire thing.

I know it’s only April, but I can see this ranking as one of the best action films of the year by the time we hit Christmas. Like all the best shows it leaves the audience wanting more. Whether we’ll get that is anyone’s guess.

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Thursday film round up – from last Thursday

Review: Enter 'The Hurt Locker' And Prepare Fo...
The Hurt Locker

Oops. I never did get round to posting this on time. Right, at present I get Thursdays as a “personal study day”. As I study over the weekend instead, I give myself this as a day off and make full use of my cinema card. Last week I managed to cram three films in around a quick lunch and a leisurely hour in McD’s using the free wifi.

The Hurt Locker

First up is Kathryn Bigelow‘s newest effort. I’m amazed this isn’t on in the “smaller” Cineworld cinemas such as Dundee on the basis that it has a big budget, a name director and a recognised cast. What else do you need to not be classed as a “minority interest” film? What really annoys me is that it’s bloody brilliant and fewer people are getting a chance to see it as a result.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Men in Iraq defuse booby-trap bombs. Usually. Only you don’t know when they’ll fail, regardless of the grade of actor playing them.

Bigelow has managed to shoehorn more tension into this film than in any three modern schlock horror films. There’s enough tension to make a steel cable snap.

Not just the bomb defusing scenes are taught. There’s a superb quarter hour where our main characters (plus a couple of incidentals) are pinned down by sniper fire.

Then there’s the fact that some of the events aren’t preceded by “will-he-won’t-he” moments. They just *BAM* happen.

I can’t point you at them right now, but I read quite a few comments on reviews before I saw this. A handful were from people who’d served in Iraq and Afghanistan and they heaped praise on the realism of the film.

Highly recommended if you have the nerve to sit through it.

District 9

Being “presented by” someone – even Peter Jackson – is often a death knell for a film. Or am I just thinking of how awful the Tarantino-presented Killing Zoe was? Maybe. However, Neill Blomkamp has done a decent job on this sci-fi effort although it’s still not perfect.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Aliens arrive, seemingly by mistake, and hover over Johannesburg. They end up corralled into a slum (the titular District 9) and treated like second-class beings until something goes wrong as they’re being moved away from the city.

The cast is – as far as I can tell – pretty much made up of utter unknowns. There isn’t a bad one in the bunch, though. Obviously, focus is on the central character of Wikus Van Der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), who is very good but did bring back memories of Derek from Bad Taste.

It begins  as some kind of docu-drama but rapidly becomes a mixture of this format and regular filming which does jar somewhat. Either make it all look like it’s from news camera footage or don’t bother. To offset this, the effects are simply superb. There’s a great blending of CGI and traditional “man in a rubber suit” work for the “Prawns” which works very well.

There’s no denying the “wouldn’t be more obvious if it kicked you in the crotch” allegory of people of a different appearance being kept in shanty towns in South Africa. It’s a point that sadly still needs to be made and when you consider that the film was made in that country it’s perhaps a little brave for them to basically be pointing out their own flaws.

This aside, it’s a very entertaining sci-fi flick. It wasn’t as good as I was hoping – the plot gets rather linear after the halfway point – but you do start to care more about the Prawns once this mark is reached and you learn more about them.

Worth a watch, but don’t believe the hype. I only hope they don’t go the obvious path and release District 10 but I fear it’s inevitable.

(500) Days of Summer

Yes, a rom-com. No, I’ve not gone soft. Well. No more than usual. I had a natural aversion to the film as it features Zooey Deschanel. While I’m aware that she is bloody attractive, she was also in the atrocious Hitchiker’s Guide To the Galaxy movie and thus will be tainted evermore.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl. Erm. Sort of. Only it jumps back and forth like a cross between Memento, Pulp Fiction and When Harry Met Sally.

This jumping about could have been such a headache, but it’s handled superbly well with careful use of graphic set pieces and a modicum of narration.

The story itself isn’t a hugely original one. It is, however, told in a novel way and with a great line of humour running through it. I don’t want to give too much away, but the ending isn’t what you’d expect. My only problem with it was that it mirrored a very recent relationship of mine far too closely for my liking. Don’t worry, I’m not going to sue them for ripping off my life. I do believe in coincidence.

Much as I did enjoy this, more because I wasn’t expecting to, I’d still rate Bandslam as a better rom-com. And it has better music. But still – this is very entertaining and a good date movie if your other half has a sense of humour.

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