This film has predictably caused a tabloid frenzy, but really it is no more violent than many aimed at adults. The only difference is that a little girl takes part in said violence and swears a lot – which sensible people know is hilarious and awesome.
Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a geeky high school student who decides to follow in the footsteps of Peter Parker and be a superhero. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been bitten by a handy radioactive spider, and so is just an ordinary teenager wearing a customised wetsuit. Even more unfortunately, the fake superhero gets mixed up with some real criminals.
Superficially, Kick-Ass deals with similar issues to Alan Moore’s Watchmen, but does not take seriously the question of what would happen if superheroes were real. This is more in the Mystery Men mould of films about stupid superheroes.
Johnson is too bland for the role – not nerdy enough to convincingly play the character or with enough spark to make you care very much. He is out-shone by the supporting players, particularly Christopher Mintz-Plasse as rival fake superhero, the Red Mist, and Nicolas Cage as the real deal, Big Daddy. But it is Chloe Moretz as Hit-Girl who really steals the show. Cute and with killer delivery, she is a little star in the making and what the film will be remembered for.
Written by Jane Goldman and the director Matthew Vaughn, the English roots can be seen in the casting (Dexter Fletcher!) and the liberal sprinkling of art from the YBAs in the rich baddie’s house. The film has pretensions of following Tarantino, but despite the Kill Bill-style violence they don’t quite pull off.
Instead they have crafted a violent thrill-ride which is light on plot, but heavy with laughs. It’s not big, and it’s not clever, but Kick-Ass is a whole lot of fun.
Monday, 31 May 2010
Film review - I Love You Phillip Morris
They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and this certainly applies to the life and times of Steven Russell (here played by Jim Carrey). Once a happily married policeman, he came out and became a conman with a knack for escaping from prison.
His story is portrayed with a light, playful touch by writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who previously brought us Bad Santa (2003). There is something about the film which feels unoriginal – perhaps the wacky tone, hyper-real production design and Texas setting makes it too Coen Brothers-esque – but it is still a hilarious and fascinating tale.
Carrey is brilliant as the audacious protagonist, walking the thin line between his comic and serious acting personas. There are moments of pathos amongst the scams, which he pulls off with aplomb, but he is also happy to partake in a little slapstick. Ewan McGregor seems a little old to be playing Steven’s titular lover – the character is supposed to be an ingénue. However, he gives a very sweet performance.
It is unusual to have a gay romance portrayed in a mainstream film, but this is not a romantic comedy. The focus is on plot, and what a plot it is. See it and be amazed at what one guy got away with.
His story is portrayed with a light, playful touch by writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who previously brought us Bad Santa (2003). There is something about the film which feels unoriginal – perhaps the wacky tone, hyper-real production design and Texas setting makes it too Coen Brothers-esque – but it is still a hilarious and fascinating tale.
Carrey is brilliant as the audacious protagonist, walking the thin line between his comic and serious acting personas. There are moments of pathos amongst the scams, which he pulls off with aplomb, but he is also happy to partake in a little slapstick. Ewan McGregor seems a little old to be playing Steven’s titular lover – the character is supposed to be an ingénue. However, he gives a very sweet performance.
It is unusual to have a gay romance portrayed in a mainstream film, but this is not a romantic comedy. The focus is on plot, and what a plot it is. See it and be amazed at what one guy got away with.
Film review - Green Zone
It’s not surprising that a war film is depressing, but Green Zone isn’t depressing because of the loss of life on screen; our hero doesn’t have to comfort a dying friend or reflect on what it means to kill a man like usual. Instead what is depressing is the politics behind the war itself. The situations depicted here are exasperating and all too close to the truth for comfort.
Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) has the pointless task of searching Baghdad for weapons of mass destruction in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion. When a CIA agent points out just how pointless it is, he starts to investigate the evidence for the war itself.
This is a taut, tense thriller, full of fast-paced intrigue. Paul Greengrass has combined his talents for message films with the Bourne side here, and it is an assured take on a difficult subject. Damon is impressive in the lead role, and it is lovely to see the Wire’s Amy Ryan on the big screen as a journalist. Greg Kinnear portrays the spineless suit charged with covering up the government’s tracks very well indeed.
As I’ve said, this is an enjoyable, pacey film about intelligence briefings – you should by now have smelled a rat. This is not All the President’s Men, but a fictionalised and much simplified version of what actually happened. Unsurprisingly, this retelling is also not particularly kind to the Americans. As an enjoyable night out at the cinema, Green Zone works really well. The danger is that people will think these events actually happened in this way. If only it were that simple.
Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) has the pointless task of searching Baghdad for weapons of mass destruction in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion. When a CIA agent points out just how pointless it is, he starts to investigate the evidence for the war itself.
This is a taut, tense thriller, full of fast-paced intrigue. Paul Greengrass has combined his talents for message films with the Bourne side here, and it is an assured take on a difficult subject. Damon is impressive in the lead role, and it is lovely to see the Wire’s Amy Ryan on the big screen as a journalist. Greg Kinnear portrays the spineless suit charged with covering up the government’s tracks very well indeed.
As I’ve said, this is an enjoyable, pacey film about intelligence briefings – you should by now have smelled a rat. This is not All the President’s Men, but a fictionalised and much simplified version of what actually happened. Unsurprisingly, this retelling is also not particularly kind to the Americans. As an enjoyable night out at the cinema, Green Zone works really well. The danger is that people will think these events actually happened in this way. If only it were that simple.
Film review - Shutter Island
This 50s-set thriller is a bit of a disappointment – especially as it comes from Martin Scorsese. US Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) arrive on the 100-per-cent spooky titular island to find an escaped mental patient. As a storm hits, Daniels starts to believe that there is more going on at this hospital than there first seems.
It is obvious right from the get-go that Scorsese is paying homage to his favourite B-movies of the 40s and 50. In the opening scene the score is full of orchestral crashity-crashity boom-ba-boom, when all we’re looking at is Leo on a boat. The melodramatic score and ominous shots of the island as it comes into view seem totally over the top to a modern audience – instead of building tension it makes everything seem quite humorous.
There’s no let-up in the hokum when we reach the island – the mental institution is run by everyone’s favourite screen baddy (Ben Kingsley) and an archetypal creepy German (Max von Sydow), and of course “there’s only one way off the island”. Once the massive storm comes, there is no way off the island, and we follow Leo as he runs around the forest, soaked to the skin and desperately trying to find the truth.
In the end this is just a lot of noise and driving rain signifying very little. There’s nothing wrong with the performances – DiCaprio is fine in the leading role, Ruffalo gives a quality performance and Kingsley is everything you expect – and there are some creepy moments, but the slow pace and unintentionally hilarious flashbacks will leave most feeling cold. The film just doesn’t sweep you along like it should.
As a silly thriller, it works well enough. If you want some deeper meaning, it is best to look elsewhere.
It is obvious right from the get-go that Scorsese is paying homage to his favourite B-movies of the 40s and 50. In the opening scene the score is full of orchestral crashity-crashity boom-ba-boom, when all we’re looking at is Leo on a boat. The melodramatic score and ominous shots of the island as it comes into view seem totally over the top to a modern audience – instead of building tension it makes everything seem quite humorous.
There’s no let-up in the hokum when we reach the island – the mental institution is run by everyone’s favourite screen baddy (Ben Kingsley) and an archetypal creepy German (Max von Sydow), and of course “there’s only one way off the island”. Once the massive storm comes, there is no way off the island, and we follow Leo as he runs around the forest, soaked to the skin and desperately trying to find the truth.
In the end this is just a lot of noise and driving rain signifying very little. There’s nothing wrong with the performances – DiCaprio is fine in the leading role, Ruffalo gives a quality performance and Kingsley is everything you expect – and there are some creepy moments, but the slow pace and unintentionally hilarious flashbacks will leave most feeling cold. The film just doesn’t sweep you along like it should.
As a silly thriller, it works well enough. If you want some deeper meaning, it is best to look elsewhere.
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Review - Up in the Air
Jason Reitman’s follow-up to the much-loved Juno is another bittersweet film, but one much less arch and more true to life. Up in the Air tells the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a man with one of the worst jobs you can imagine – he is hired by companies to fire people for them. Yet he loves his job because it allows him to travel across America, collecting airmiles and avoiding any meaningful relationships with others. When he finds his perfect mate (Vera Farmiga), and his own job is threatened by a fresh-faced graduate (Anna Kendrick) and her downsizing plans, Ryan starts to evaluate his life.
Clooney makes Ryan suave and sophisticated (let’s face it, it is hard for Clooney to be anything else), but at the same time he is one of the saddest characters to have ever been put on celluloid. Estranged from his family, he is someone with no home and no love who preaches this as a successful way to live at self-help conferences. It would have been easy for him to be incredibly unlikeable, like Tom Cruise in Magnolia, but the way he carries out his despicable job with such decency means you can see there’s a heart of gold in there somewhere.
Although Clooney’s performance is excellent, the two women are outstanding. Kendrick’s character is so realistic, and not the sort of female character you often see on screen. Bright and ambitious, her relentlessly business-like surface hides a naive young woman who is very hard on herself. Farmiga plays an older career woman who knows what she wants and goes out and gets it. The character’s relationship with Ryan feels very real, making this film anything but a fairytale romance. These are two star-making performances from actresses who haven’t been given a chance to shine before (they were last in the Twilight saga and The Orphan respectively).
The screenplay, based on the novel by Walter Kirn, is funny and touching in equal measure. This is perhaps the first movie to deal with the current recession, and one of the few to examine corporate America and business culture. Reitman uses real people who have lost their jobs to talk about what it feels like to be made redundant, which is heartbreaking and brings a universality to the film that would otherwise be missing. Up in the Air is a wonderful character study and truly a film for our times.
Clooney makes Ryan suave and sophisticated (let’s face it, it is hard for Clooney to be anything else), but at the same time he is one of the saddest characters to have ever been put on celluloid. Estranged from his family, he is someone with no home and no love who preaches this as a successful way to live at self-help conferences. It would have been easy for him to be incredibly unlikeable, like Tom Cruise in Magnolia, but the way he carries out his despicable job with such decency means you can see there’s a heart of gold in there somewhere.
Although Clooney’s performance is excellent, the two women are outstanding. Kendrick’s character is so realistic, and not the sort of female character you often see on screen. Bright and ambitious, her relentlessly business-like surface hides a naive young woman who is very hard on herself. Farmiga plays an older career woman who knows what she wants and goes out and gets it. The character’s relationship with Ryan feels very real, making this film anything but a fairytale romance. These are two star-making performances from actresses who haven’t been given a chance to shine before (they were last in the Twilight saga and The Orphan respectively).
The screenplay, based on the novel by Walter Kirn, is funny and touching in equal measure. This is perhaps the first movie to deal with the current recession, and one of the few to examine corporate America and business culture. Reitman uses real people who have lost their jobs to talk about what it feels like to be made redundant, which is heartbreaking and brings a universality to the film that would otherwise be missing. Up in the Air is a wonderful character study and truly a film for our times.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Review - Avatar
I am very proud to say that I have never seen Titanic. I was 14 when it came out and everyone at school was obsessed, particularly with Leonardo DiCaprio. We went on a French exchange trip and the situation was even worse over there. Celine Dion echoed round the country and I vowed never to see the watery epic. I was therefore not particularly inclined to see another film by James Cameron, and helpfully he decided not to make any for ten years. But then I saw the trailer for Avatar, and knew I had to see the CGI in 3D even if it was put together by the bombastic self-proclaimed king of the world.
Avatar is set on a planet called Pandora, home to a tall, blue, humanoid species called the Na’vi that live in a lush forest at one with nature. Although the atmosphere is toxic to humans, we earthlings have travelled there to mine a valuable mineral called unobtanium (a groan-inducing name), putting us at war with the Na’vi over land. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a paraplegic ex-marine brought in to work on a special project in place of his dead twin brother. Sully’s brain is connected up to an ‘avatar’, a half-Na’vi, half-human creature grown especially for the purpose so that he can safely go amongst the Na’vi and negotiate. As he learns the way of the Na’vi and falls for a beautiful Na'vi called Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), he realises that what the humans are doing is wrong.
Cameron has created a story full of high-concept conceits, but that is still paper thin. The environmental and historical allegories involved stick out more obviously than any of the 3D graphics, and the message behind it is as deep as a puddle. It’s just FernGully: The Last Rainforest in space.
The situation is not helped by the choice of leading man. Worthington is hunky, but lacks charisma. And when James Cameron has defined your character only as ‘not as bright as your dead twin brother’, and ‘quite a good marine’, you need all the charisma you can get. Sigourney Weaver brings sparkle to the screen as a scientist, Zoe Saldana is appealing as Neytiri, and it is nice to see Giovanni Ribisi in an atypical role, but generally there is little space in the dumb plot for you to get involved with any characters.
Now that I have established that Avatar is a mediocre film, I can now discuss the reason why everyone will still see it: the CGI. Using new techniques specially developed for the film, the 3D computer graphics are the finest ever made. A sequence where Sully’s avatar is shown the forest at night by Neytiri is breathtaking in a way perhaps only comparable to the first sight of the diplodoci in Jurassic Park (even if it looks suspiciously like the early levels of Rayman). The Na’vi characters are rendered very well, with realistic facial expressions. Cameron’s intention was to get rid of the creepiness of CGI humanoids, and though creepiness remains it is at a far lower level than usual. The 3D is integrated and realistic, not gimmicky with things flying at your face.
Most people will feel that it is worth sitting through the slow opening act and drawn-out final battle for the truly cinematic experience of this middle section. But few will be moved by this technological marvel, something which Titanic (however much I detest everything it stands for) managed to do to millions.
Avatar is set on a planet called Pandora, home to a tall, blue, humanoid species called the Na’vi that live in a lush forest at one with nature. Although the atmosphere is toxic to humans, we earthlings have travelled there to mine a valuable mineral called unobtanium (a groan-inducing name), putting us at war with the Na’vi over land. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a paraplegic ex-marine brought in to work on a special project in place of his dead twin brother. Sully’s brain is connected up to an ‘avatar’, a half-Na’vi, half-human creature grown especially for the purpose so that he can safely go amongst the Na’vi and negotiate. As he learns the way of the Na’vi and falls for a beautiful Na'vi called Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), he realises that what the humans are doing is wrong.
Cameron has created a story full of high-concept conceits, but that is still paper thin. The environmental and historical allegories involved stick out more obviously than any of the 3D graphics, and the message behind it is as deep as a puddle. It’s just FernGully: The Last Rainforest in space.
The situation is not helped by the choice of leading man. Worthington is hunky, but lacks charisma. And when James Cameron has defined your character only as ‘not as bright as your dead twin brother’, and ‘quite a good marine’, you need all the charisma you can get. Sigourney Weaver brings sparkle to the screen as a scientist, Zoe Saldana is appealing as Neytiri, and it is nice to see Giovanni Ribisi in an atypical role, but generally there is little space in the dumb plot for you to get involved with any characters.
Now that I have established that Avatar is a mediocre film, I can now discuss the reason why everyone will still see it: the CGI. Using new techniques specially developed for the film, the 3D computer graphics are the finest ever made. A sequence where Sully’s avatar is shown the forest at night by Neytiri is breathtaking in a way perhaps only comparable to the first sight of the diplodoci in Jurassic Park (even if it looks suspiciously like the early levels of Rayman). The Na’vi characters are rendered very well, with realistic facial expressions. Cameron’s intention was to get rid of the creepiness of CGI humanoids, and though creepiness remains it is at a far lower level than usual. The 3D is integrated and realistic, not gimmicky with things flying at your face.
Most people will feel that it is worth sitting through the slow opening act and drawn-out final battle for the truly cinematic experience of this middle section. But few will be moved by this technological marvel, something which Titanic (however much I detest everything it stands for) managed to do to millions.
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Review - Paranormal Activity
Most horror films are marketed as “the most terrifying movie ever made”, and Paranormal Activity is no exception. As is usually the case, this is a gross overestimation of the scariness level involved.
The film is another example of the The Blair Witch Project school of fake documentary, a technique most successfully used by Cloverfield. A young (and very annoying) couple are hearing bumps in the night, the same bumps that have been plaguing the girl (Katie Featherstone, a slightly dumpier and brunette version of Amy Adams) since childhood. The guy (Micah Sloat) decides to buy a video camera and start recording the goings on, even though a paranormal expert warns them not to antagonise the demon. The film is ostensibly the footage they shot.
Made extremely cheaply and with no effects you would class as “special”, the film is surprisingly effective for most of its running time. With the camera recording the couple as they sleep throughout the night, the audience must be very quiet to hear the paranormal activity, naturally producing tension and jumpiness. There are no big scares, though, and by the end your patience may have run out with both the demon and the couple.
The film is enjoyable if you are in the right mood. Otherwise you’ll realise you’re spending minutes of your finite life watching a bedsheet twitch.
The film is another example of the The Blair Witch Project school of fake documentary, a technique most successfully used by Cloverfield. A young (and very annoying) couple are hearing bumps in the night, the same bumps that have been plaguing the girl (Katie Featherstone, a slightly dumpier and brunette version of Amy Adams) since childhood. The guy (Micah Sloat) decides to buy a video camera and start recording the goings on, even though a paranormal expert warns them not to antagonise the demon. The film is ostensibly the footage they shot.
Made extremely cheaply and with no effects you would class as “special”, the film is surprisingly effective for most of its running time. With the camera recording the couple as they sleep throughout the night, the audience must be very quiet to hear the paranormal activity, naturally producing tension and jumpiness. There are no big scares, though, and by the end your patience may have run out with both the demon and the couple.
The film is enjoyable if you are in the right mood. Otherwise you’ll realise you’re spending minutes of your finite life watching a bedsheet twitch.
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