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Reviews
Suing the Devil (2011)
Awful waste of time.
A minimum of ten lines? Really? I'm not sure I can find enough things to say about this movie to fill in the required amount of content. Having watched more than my fair share of films this year, and every year, I have to say that I think this is the worst movie I've seen this year, at least. It's right up the with 'A Haunting In Salem' for production values, casting, scripting, dialogue and acting. All of this is woefully under par here and apart from the life-affirming good vs evil head-to-head that some god botherers may appreciate, there is little to say in its favour. What on earth McDowell and Sizemore were thinking when agreeing to this is beyond me. Please, for your own sake, give this a wide berth.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009)
Intelligent Storytelling with Great Performances
Although you're unlikely to see it if you live the UK, with only a fourth quarter 09 release for 'Brief Interviews' in the States, and curiously Greece, at the Athens Film Festival, John Krasinski's adaptation of American maverick David Foster Wallace's book of the same name is something that you really shouldn't allow to go under your radar.
This shortish film (eighty or so minutes, dependent upon the version you see) has many head-spinning nuances that warrant your attention. Personally, this was a surprising turn for Krasinski, who displays a brilliant eye for a project and impresses upon his audience an ability far outweighing his popular persona of goof or funny man. It is delightful to see a harder, more serious edge to him. I was both shocked and delighted by this film and have happily become a convert of Krasinski's work, but on a whole new level.
Having not read the Wallace book and knowing little about the film prior to watching it, I feel I have benefited from not having any pre-conceptions about the story or how Krasinski decided it should be filmed.
I am grateful for the fact that I went about my usual business and avoided the reviews that had gone before me, as most reviewers have found that they either love or loathe it. Regardless, the film cannot be ignored once seen, and opinions abound about its relevance. Such is the subject matter and wealth of passionate feelings it both incites from its audience and the messages it dares to tell us about ourselves.
The 'Hideous Men' of the title are few and far between, however, and this may be different in the book, but the majority of a clearly hand-picked multitude of talented actors come across as having opinions on women that are heard all too infrequently. You get the impression that these voices would have remained unheard had a tape recorder and a camera not been placed in front of them and the right type of questions posed from an apparently unassuming and coercive questioner.
The acting talent throughout is exemplary, with one notable exception. Our lead Julianne Nicholson came across as slightly average through an uninventive, passionless and oblique performance as Sara Quinn. This is quite possibly due to her fellow performers and who can be surprised. These hideous men we come across all deliver outstanding monologues with Krasinski, Dominic Miller, Michael Cerveris and Frankie Faison being particular examples of unmissable, gripping talent.
The story is simple enough, Quinn is interviewing men on the back of a project to understand the progress of feminism and decides that the best way to understand at least half of that would be to interview men on their feelings about women, taking a broad cross-section of subjects to get as broad a result as possible.
What we get is a warts and all (and I do mean all) story about how some of these men view women in general. How some are unmoved in their philosophy and how others, at the more cognitive end of the masculine spectrum have started to realise that maybe this isn't their world after all. While some are bitter or delighted, most are confused by their relationships with the women in their lives, but all of them are nonetheless vocal about their feelings, even if those feelings are not what Quinn would really like to hear.
With an impressive cast, who appear to be mostly right on form, a screenplay adapted by Krasinski that is at times witty, funny and above all brilliantly observed by Wallace and some impressive editing by Zene Baker and Rich Fox, Brief interviews With Hideous Men is both a lesson of our times for men and women everywhere with meaning in every line. This makes romantic comedies seem dire by comparison and I would suggest that even though this is most definitely a look at relationships as much as anything else, it would be wise to avoid it when picking a DVD for a second date, as this raises some uncomfortable questions that are thankfully not glossed over with comedy.
A real treat for fans of rational thought and superlative acting skills.
Malice in Wonderland (2009)
A sprawling, untidy oddity.
It seems financially viable to release this now and an oversight not to, even if it is straight to DVD. With only a few short weeks until the release of Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland, anything bearing roughly the same name or subject matter is likely to gain more interest that it would do under normal circumstances. Lewis Carroll's version of Wonderland (and Alice, come to that) is altogether different here, however. This Simon Fellows directed version of the well-loved tale takes one step firmly to the dark side of humanity, edging further away from fantasy than either Lewis Carroll or Burton's interpretation of Carroll's undoubted masterpiece.
Simon Fellows gathers an eclectic cast ensemble and seems to have read through the story of Alice and then cherry-picked scenes that suit his cinematic vision and then chopped them together. Really, this boils down to two or three set pieces that make some sort of cohesive sense, with the rest just filler in-between. For all that, however, there are genuinely, but rare enjoyable moments throughout.
I'm not known for being a Danny Dyer fan, and still remain as unimpressed by him on the whole as I was before, having only been able to admire one of his delivered lines throughout the entire film. Maggie Grace plays the part of Alice, a poor little rich girl that has lost her memory after being knocked over by Whitey's (Dyer) taxi. Sounds a world away from the usual fantasy fare, right? Well this version of Alice In Wonderland is set in modern day inner city. The White Rabbit is a taxi driver who is off to buy a cake and is very late for the party, Tweedledum and Tweedledee are both club doormen and stealing tarts in this movie is driving off in an eighteen wheeler with a collection of hookers in the back. An unusual take on the literary work, and if I'm brutally honest, more than a little bit of a mess.
The entire movie feels cluttered, unkempt and sprawling. This never feels like a fantasy, more the intermittent recollections of a hallucinating girl on a one night class A bender. It never feels magical nor enchanting or indeed any element that the original work instilled in its reader.
It would be fair to suggest that this is not at all what Felllows had wanted to do with the film, but then you do have to ask, just what was it that he was trying to achieve? From what he has delivered here, it is not easy to tell, apart from a simple circular tale that could have been about anything, at anytime, anywhere. If so, then why base it on a well loved children's fable? (See paragraph one)
The acting is roundly awful by the main players. Dyer is famous for his usually overtly violent films that require him to shout a lot, point angry fingers and throw his fists about and Grace is as wooden as another well loved children's character. Some credibility comes in the form of Pam Ferris, Fiona O'Shaughnessy, Matt King and Nathaniel Parker in their own oddly created cameos, but none make enough of an appearance throughout to save this film from its rightful place in the bowels of DVD purgatory.
In summary, avoid this if you have the option. If you have to sit through it, I'd pay it the attention it deserves and make sure you have a book handy, or if you are of an hallucinogenic bent, you may find this riveting after you have dropped a tab. I would never suggest illegal drug-taking for recreation, but really, you will need more than just your brain, ears and patience to get to the end of it.
The Wolfman (2010)
Not As Good As Expected
Hmm, I have restarted writing this review three times as although I think I know how I feel about this version of an old classic; I'm just in two minds about the best way to describe it to an audience anticipating the mother of all scare-a-thons.
Story-wise, The Wolfman doesn't really need much of an introduction, having appeared in one form or another every decade or so in our movie theatres, and the story is one of legend as much as Dracula or Frankenstein, so telling you a man that gets bitten, but not killed, by a werewolf will turn into one himself every full moon will not be news to anyone, but still, so the story goes here, again.
Given that the basic story is already known by everybody that is likely to want to either see the film or read the review of it, it falls to the likes of yours truly to merely focus on everything else. Anticipation from a personal perspective was high. If you wrack your brains for a minute or two and try to think about who you would choose to play the part of a half man half beast, rip your throat out and roar at you character, could you really come up with better casting than Benicio Del Toro?
Well, you'd guess not. So why wasn't The Wolfman therefore more of a classic than it turned out to be? It's not as simple as putting your finger on one element of the film and no-one is solely to blame for its lacklustre finishes. Pretty to look at? Sure. There is no doubt about the setting. The film's looks, if anything, outweigh everything else. The first thing that nagged at me was the level of paranoia. The darkness of the film's appearance is not backed up by any ominous oppression from the script or the cast of players. I was expecting a tragedy, a lesson in wrung-out soul-wrenching. In short, I expected to be moved, and I wasn't. Not really.
Del Toro doesn't appear to be as moved by this as the audience would like. This is not a comment on his ability, but more his commitment to a role that needs to be dragged out of him. He just doesn't come across as one who has firstly suffered from events beyond his control and secondly, become tortured by his own actions.
Anthony Hopkins does his best with his role of Sir John Talbot, but his script is embarrassing and predictable at times. The final main player is Emily Blunt who, as beautiful and talented as she undoubtedly is, also fails to move the audience, given her own set of tragic circumstances. The three main characters, as a whole fail to engage and convince us of their dreadful and legacy. You simply don't feel it coming through the screen at you.
Of all the acting on show, the one bright star is Hugo Weaving as Abberline, who is not afforded the screen time his performance deserves. In all, a bit of a disappointment that never reaches its lofty expectations. The opportunity to re-tell this grand story appears to fall short in all departments, aside from the cinematography, which was the high point in a sea of unfortunate averageness.
Tony (2009)
An excellently observed slice of loneliness
Well, this indeed is a curio. Gerard Johnson takes the often glamorised subject matter of serial killing and drags the seediest parts of it to inner city London, warts and all. A human study in its purest form, the film centres around the eponymous Tony, a long-term unemployed rakish and withered nobody, the likes of which you and I pass on the streets every day and do our best to ignore and avoid in equal measure. Behind his locked and gated front door, we find an undecorated home, littered only with the corpses that Tony keeps for company, along with a television that has no reception and a collection of action films on VHS, as he doesn't have a DVD player.
Tony spends much of his daylight hours merely wandering the streets looking for people to talk to and failing to fit into a society that doesn't understand him any more than he understands it. When he does make a connection, it usually ends badly, from chavs, gay clubbers to TV licence inspectors all coming off worse after a visit to his council flat. His victims all appear to be men, and this may or may not be intentional, but only a female neighbour escapes his final, fatal spindly clutches.
Peter Ferdinando plays Tony excellently. He brings an ordinary, even avoidance inducing side to the character that makes Tony's escapades so much more believable as he goes about his under-the-radar activities. Most of his killings are spur of the moment needs to escape from situations that he has wittingly or unwittingly brought about himself most notably in the name of companionship, but nevertheless shows no remorse for his actions, cutting up his victims in the sink or bathtub when they have passed their sell-by date for company. Knowing his background, it makes just watching him walking the street with a blue plastic bag full of who knows what completely riveting.
As a measure of acting prowess, Ferdinando provides what could easily be a blueprint for characterisation, so impressive is his turn. Johnson and he have created an unassuming monster of a man that bears close scrutiny and personally I could have watched the performance for at least twice as long as we were offered. If I have one criticism of the film, it would be that it is too short, and it leaves the viewer frustrated that the only thing that we can be sure of is that Tony will go on.
The most chilling part of the film as a whole is that it is so well realised and stifled in a banal reality we all have some recognition of, in characters that are so well played and unfortunately believable, that we can easily imagine that this could go on in our streets, in our towns, so basic is its premise and unglamourous setting.
I am immensely glad to have seen it, and of everything I have seen in 2010 so far, this is probably the best thing yet, and it will stay with me for some time as I walk past those same potential Tony's on my street. Well done to the Film Council, Johnson and Ferdinando. If you are not squeamish and like your drama up front, in your face, and very possibly real, then I urge you to see it.
Grisly and uncomfortable but a nonetheless unique and considered view of its subject matter, approaching an often neglected personality type and opening a hitherto unseen world to its audience.
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)
Good all round fun for the uninitiated.
Ever gone into something when you have absolutely no idea what the thing is all about? I usually don't read reviews of movies that I watch from others until I have written my own (and sometimes not even then) so I don't cloud my judgement. It's impossible not to be moved to a certain extent by what even the most inept judge has to say on any movie, even if it's something that you disagree with, as you may find yourself selling an average movie too hard, just to defend it against another review that may have been over critical and vice versa.
So what did I know about Percy Jackson prior to sitting down and watching it? Well for starters I didn't even know the proper title, but I guessed there would be lightning in it somewhere, and I also suspected some kind of thief to make an appearance. Aside from that, I have to admit to being just a smidgen ignorant about the whole malarkey.
Which is probably just as well, because if someone had mentioned 'magical', 'clone' and 'Harry Potter' to me, I really wouldn't have bothered. By all accounts, this 'nearly-passed-me-by-altogether' adaptation of a book that actually did so was nowhere near as bad as my imagination would have decided it would be had I known about it in advance. So, a lesson learnt, at least. You can't really judge a book by its cover if you've never actually seen the cover, now can you.
So I'll dispense with any other expectations, as there wasn't any and suggest that Percy Jackson is a bit of a hoot. It's not grand opera, I'll grant you, but it ticks all of the boxes for the type of audience that will go and see it. There's fighting (with swords), dragons, gods, lightning, fire, more lightning, a bit of a romance for the girlies and a bit more fire. There isn't much sophistication involved, but the pace of the film hurtles along and you barely have time to catch your breath between one action-crammed scene and the next. Two hours literally flew by quick enough to make my head spin.
It's safe to say that if you liked the Harry Potter movies more than the books (assuming you read them) then you will be well served here. Suitably stuffed and full of indigestion by the end of it, in fact.
Being the offspring of a human Mother and god Father is not an easy lot for a chap (still better than being a teenage wizard though, I should add) and when the eponymous Percy finds out about his altogether unorthodox parentage, he is understandably taken aback. Whether this was because the news sounded so fantastical or because Pierce Brosnan's top half had been cgi'd to the body of a horse and he had just found out that the bit of his best friend he sees every day, who he's known for years, was actually the better looking half of an amalgam of man and goat, it is difficult to tell.
Still, you must know something is up when your teacher turns into a flying gargoyle-cum-banshee-cum-harpy and stars babbling and growling at you, all wings, fangs and slobber about some lightning bolt that Percy is alleged to have stolen. Not too bright, our Percy, it seems. And in need of a new pair of trousers, I shouldn't wonder.
And with this amazing discovery, a few small puzzles in Percy's life start to fall into place and his adventure duly begins. He is charged, as the bastard son of Poseidon, to return the lightning bolt to Zeus, from who it was pinched. You'd think a God could keep track of his valuables, but there you go. Not only this, as if things weren't bad enough, Hades has made off with his mother, so Percy also has to visit the underworld to get her back as well. There just isn't a minute's peace.
But in order to reach the underworld, he has to traverse the United States (why just the States, by the way?) to obtain three pearls, which are required to get back out of hell once he has rescued his Mother from the fiery clutches of Hades himself, played ultimately by Steve Coogan with all the flair and brimstone-tossing fury of a trainee traffic warden with confrontational issues. Securing the three pearls is no mean feat, as each one is well guarded by a better known foe from Greek Mythology. I won't ruin it for you and tell you which ones, but think Harry Hamlin and 'Clash Of The Titans' and you won't go far wrong. The performances by all concerned are never outstanding and a couple of them could easily be accused of over-acting, but this is a larger than life affair, aimed at the little ones, so perhaps we should really overlook these amplified affectations.
As I said the pace is breakneck, dragging the plot along with it whether it likes it or not. There are some outstanding special effects involved and the script is everything an eleven-year-old boy could want, really, with even some splashes of humour that even the grownups in the audience can appreciate.
In all, a fun-filled couple of hours that won't stretch the grey matter too harshly and might even expand your children's knowledge of the Greeks. Who knew?
Big loud fun.