Love, Blood and Rhetoric

I've been going to the movies and watching recent DVDs more than normal lately, but I'm aware I've not kept up with writing full reviews for anything. So, I'm going to skip through three reviews in one post and try and keep them more to soundbites than the usual in depth ranting I usually do.



First up:

The A-Team

There seems to be a revival in Hollywood at the moment of the big, dumb action flick. We've got The Expendables out this week, Predators earlier in the summer and the A-Team, which slinked into UK cinemas a little later than the US. However, like Predators, it successfully recreates that bygone, cheesy age where an action movie meant lots of crap blowing up, while stereotypes ran around spouting corny dialogue. For me, personally, that's the best approach to an action movie, rather than the CGI heavy , shakey cam, Michael Bay school of movie making.

The A-Team doesn't try to attain any height higher than completely stupid and is all the better for it. Liam Neeson looks uncomfortable throughout (somewhat surprisingly, because as a movie it should cause less embarrassment than The Phantom Menace), but the rest of the cast genuinely appear to be enjoying themselves. Quinton Jackson's no actor, but fills Mr. T's large shoes admirably regardless and Bradley Cooper is obviously having a ball as Face. It's District 9's Sharlto Copley who really steals the show, however, making Howling Mad Murdock even more entertainingly unhinged than the original show.

Aside from the performances, the plotting's straightforward and just gives an excuse for action sequences - each more gloriously overblown than the last - to be strung together. It tips a little too far into ridiculousness for the finale - no mean feat considering an earlier sequence involving a flying tank - but there's still plenty to enjoy. It's loud, dumb, brash, utterly over the top and vulgar and it's not the kind of movie you'd take home to meet the parents, but for a fun night out where you wake up the next day wondering where in the heck you got that traffic cone, it's perfect.

Toy Story 3

Currently ranked at 99% at Rotten Tomatoes, it's not hard to see why. Toy Story 3 has everything going it and is a hair's width from being the perfect family movie. I'm trying desperately to think of some flaw which would make it seem like I'm not simply bowing down before the false idol of Pixar, but I'm coming up blank. It's one of those very rare sequels which surpasses the original and may well be the most rounded and entertaining of all the Pixar movies, which is no mean feat.

Pixar are pretty much the textbook example of family filmmakers - they don't talk down to kids or adults - and there's no doubt that Toy Story 3 is an emotional rollercoaster. If you have any sympathy or fondness for the characters, be prepared to have your heartstrings not just tugged, but yanked firmly. Make no mistake, there's some real depths of emotion here - a kid in the cinema behind be was sobbing their guts during a couple of scenes and obviously deeply affected - and even my lower lip was wobbling plenty. But there's utter joy as well and the movie contains some of the funniest scenes of any movie in recent years. Inventive, mature, hilarious, thrilling, witty, scary, deeply moving... Pixar have done it again.

Pixar's greatest achievement is where the action is supposed to make you laugh and break your heart at the same time. The fact that they accomplish that near impossible feat deserves love and applause.

Too many brilliant moments to mention and the cast is, as always, pitch perfect, but special credit to Ned Beatty, Michael Keaton (who actually comes close to stealing the show as Ken), Javier Fernández-Peña (who does steal the show), Timothy Dalton, Jodi Benson, Kristen Schaal and others for effortlessly slipping into the Toy Story world.

Plus, you’ve got to love any film that uses the phrase ‘death by monkeys’.

Finally,,,

Shutter Island

To paraphrase Lord Melchett "this movie twists and turns like a twisty turny thing." The 50s period movie very much plays on the surprise twists and shocking plot turns and more red herrings than an Agatha Christie novel as U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are sent to an island which houses an insane asylum to investigate the escape of one of its inmates. What follows is a story (loosely) that reminds me very much of The Wicker Man - very much all atmosphere and the central character's search for the truth of the disappearance hindered by the enigmatic inhabitants of the island.

In that, it does the gothic horror conventions proud - rich in atmosphere, all communication with the mainland disrupted by a hurricane hitting the island, sinister doctors and inmates alike. The high profile and hard hitting supporting cast (Ben Kingsley, Max Von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Ted Levine, Patricia Clarkson and Jackie Earle Haley) add to the gravitas. It's a fascinating exercise in film making art from Scorsese - beautifully shot, rich in atmosphere, claustrophobic, tense, tightly performed, intelligently scripted - but when the final reel rolls, that's what you remember, over being entertained. I think the best description I can come up with is "engaging, but not necessarily entertaining". As another review put it, "It would be more enjoyable if you could take out your brain and experience it only with eyes and ears."

That said, the story draws you in from the first and, while it would have benefitted from losing at least 20 minutes off the running time and one subplot, it's never boring and does an effective job drawing you in. Although the soundtrack was atmospheric, but a little intrusive. After the third or fourth time the soundtrack has built to an overpowering, ominous crescendo only for nothing to happen, you start to feel a little bit like it's the soundtrack that cried wolf. Equally intrusive are the occasional exposition dumps as supporting actors wander in to deliver a chunk of exposition, then wander off again, which means the stop-start feel of the movie is enhanced.

But even then, it's still an interesting exercise in mashing as many clichés of the gothic thriller and police procedural genres into one movie as possible. You do sense that Scorsese enjoyed the challenge and playing on convention, but it may well split the audience as to whether that enjoyment rubs off on them.

So, The Pet Shop Boys. It's daunting to think that they've been going 30 years or so now. And one thing they've always been renowned for the theatricality of their live shows.

Last night they played the BIC, my local venue, to a packed house. And to say they didn't disappoint is an understatement.

I had slight trepidation when I booked the tickets. I'd seen footage of their show at the Glastonbury festival and thought they looked and rounded a bit tired.

However, last night's gig demonstrated the opposite was true. Neil Tennant might be packing a few extra pounds around the belly which made his ludicrously tight trousers all the more comical, but they delivered an amazing fresh and vibrant performance.

The main strength? Well, apart from the deadpan ironical humor that's always been part of the Pet Shop Boys' mythos coming through, they resisted the main temptation of gigging bands when they have a new album to promote - push the new tracks at the expense of the hits the audience has come to hear.

Last night the Boys did the opposite. A few new tracks were interspersed with the classics, but the main thrust of the show was playing hit after hit and classic tune after classic tune. From the opening Heart through to the closing West End Girls, they hammered almost every great tune from their decades in the business, be it Always on My Mind, What Have I Done To Deserve This (with a great tribute to the late Dusty Springfield), a barnstorming It's A Sin, complete with confetti cannons, Suburbia, Kings Cross, Being Boring, Jealousy, New York City Boy, Go West, Love etc, Two Divided By Zero, even a Coldplay cover slipped in, mixed with Domino Dancing and many medleys of classic tunes.

The staging was equally brilliant. Employing a stage covered in stackable white cubes, which alternately become video walls, dance platforms, or makeshift set pieces and barriers for performers to escape for costume changes. The duo were ably supported by four dancers (including a twins) who did and amazing job of filling the space with some amazing costume changes and the cube motif continuing as all the performers went through much of the show in box themed costumes, with boxes on their heads that looked both hilariously daft and amazingly stylized - a balance that the Pet Shop Boys have always deftly managed. The genuinely brilliant sense of design offset by the fact that it might be brilliant but it's also totally ridiculous too. It was one of those gigs where it was impossible to keep the smile off your face. And certainly when Chris abruptly stepped out from behind his bank of keyboards to do a brief dance routine. Or when the Boys entered with boxes on their heads to perform the first number. Brilliantly daft.

This all combined to create an amazing party atmosphere for the gig. I'd definitely rank it up there as one of the best live experiences of my life (although not quite up there with Madness and the day we made tower blocks dance).

And so, it's over. Not with a whimper, but a bang. A big one, in fact. And since it'll be impossible to discuss the last two episodes of this series of Doctor Who without spoiling my colonial cousins, time to take it under the cut.

( Read more... )

When it was announced that Richard Curtis, creator of Blackadder, The Vicar of Dibley, writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually and Notting Hill, would be writing an episode of Doctor Who I was hopefully optimistic. At least, I thought, it should be funny.

And this week's episode, in which the Doctor and Amy meet Vincent Van Gogh, doesn't disappoint on that level, playing up on Matt Smith's comedy timing beautifully.

But it's more than that. Much more. This episode was a showcase episode - intelligent, complex, getting some stunning performances from its stars, beautifully shot, touching, thought provoking, even heartbreaking...

Not just the episode of the Matt Smith era so far, but very possibly the episode of the entire nu-Who run.

( Slightly more spoilerish thoughts beneath the cut. )

Ah, vampires. They're all the rage now, aren't they? And since Nu-Who's tackled werewolves, ghosts, witches and zombies (wait, maybe that was just Christopher Eccleston), it was only a matter of time before everyone's favourite blood suckers turned up. Of course, the Doctor's encountered vampires before, most recently in the Seventh Doctor's era story The Curse of Fenric, which was pretty much pure awesome on a stick (WWII setting, Russian spies, Norse mythology, ancient vampires, Nicholas Parsons), so it was interesting to see where they went with this one. Apart from Venice, obviously.

( Spoilers beneath the cut. )

Was working this morning, but found time this afternoon to go and catch Iron Man 2. Now, I'm not a worshiper of the original, although I think, as superhero movies go, it's up there. Reviews of the sequel haven't been kind, so my expectations weren't high. I will, say, however, that the movie was a lot more fun than my moderate expectations would have led me to believe.

( A vaguely spoiler-free review under the cut. )

Doctor Who time, and the much hyped return of the Weeping Angels. They've been nu-Who's creepiest new villains and appeared in one of the finest Doctor Who episodes, despite the Doctor himself barely appearing. And the idea of villains whose main power is quantum uncertainty is wonderfully surreal. But it was hard to see how they could successfully bring back the Angels without them being a shadow or reflection of the former story.

What I should have remembered is to trust the Grand Moff.

( Read more... )

The second outing for Matt Smith's Doctor and already he's demonstrating he's able to step into the shoes of the character as quickly as David Tennant did, neatly nudging the memory of the previous Doctor aside in the process.

What the episode also felt like was a step back towards old-school Doctor Who, notably having a feel of the Peter Davison era about it, and a blend of the sublime and the ridiculous.

It's also, sadly, I think the weakest episode Stephen Moffat's written for Doctor Who. Now, that's not necessarily damning the episode, since a Moffat episode is a cut above the norm in any case.

So, beneath the cut lie spoilers.

( Read more... )

I'm fashionably late to the party, but here's my thoughts on the first episode of the new Doctor Who series:

WHOOHOO!

Now, somewhere more coherently and spoilery under the cut.

( Read more... )

I like the many layers of Moon. Are they literally talking about the moon, or is the title a veiled reference to Sam Rockwell's buttocks? The answer may surprise you!

What?

To be honest, Moon is a tough movie to review. Not because it's bad, in any way, but because it's hard to talk about the movie without giving away major plot points. So, trying to be as vague as possible...

In Moon, Sam Rockwell plays astronaut Sam Bell, living in isolation in a base on the far side of the moon. Sam's nearing the end of a three-year contract to watch the base's automated systems as they mine for a newly discovered form of green energy harvested from moon rock. His only company is the base's AI, Gerty, voiced by Kevin Spacey, and the occasional recorded message from his wife and young daughter on Earth - his only human contact since the live satellite link was lost. With two weeks left to go before he returns home, Sam's mental state's deteriorating and starts to have disturbing hallucinations. But are they really symptoms of cabin fever or isn't he as alone as he's always believed?

With last year's Star Trek seeing a return to the big screen sci-fi, Moon also marks a return - not to the flashy, explosive sci-fi, but the quieter, more cerebral works like The Man Who Fell To Earth (not surprising, perhaps, considering it was directed by David Bowie's son), Blade Runner or Silent Running. The basic setup's not anything we haven't seen before - but the movie takes jumble of familiar elements and magics up something original. It certainly echoes Kubrick - both The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey - with a slow build which increases the skin-crawling tension and Gerty echoing HAL in more than one way - Spacey's emotionless delivery making the robot genuinely creepy and the emoticons that serve as Gerty's way of expressing him(its)self sinister rather than endearing. But it's no doppelgänger.

That's part of the movie's greatest success - it doesn't try to be all shiny otherworldliness, but familiar - the lived-in details of the moonbase, from furry dice in the endearingly clunky moon rover, the run down, industrial stylings, baked beans for breakfast, the alarm clock that wakes Sam to the strains of Chesney Hawkes each morning - all of these things make the exotic familiar. It's a theme that runs over into the characterisation too - Sam's an everyman, finding little, human ways to make his isolation more bearable.

The fact that Rockwell wasn't Oscar nominated is a matter of disappointment to me - the Academy clearly more distracted by the rich visuals of Avatar rather than a real, human performance. Rockwell carries the movie as, for most intents and purposes, the only human on-screen, delivering an affecting and credible portrayal of the loner yearning for home, with later plot developments allowing him to show different facets to the character. It's a deeply affecting one-man show and Rockwell puts a human face to the hefty themes of memory, alienation, identity and what makes a person.

It's a refreshing blast of old-school, sci-fi, at once familiar, but original, held together by a brilliant performance by Sam Rockwell, doing amazing things with its limited $5m budget and looking fantastic with its mundane, utterly convincing industrial stylings. It promises great things to come from Zowie Bowie, or rather, Duncan Jones, as he now goes by.

Oh, and bonus points for the blink-and-you-miss-it cameo by Matt Berry.