Children of Men
I normally like Philip French’s reviews in the Observer, but he spent most of a page gabbing on about this film on Sunday without saying whether it was any good or not. I was worried in case this meant it was going to be
shit, and moody
shit at that. But I’ve just got out of seeing it and I’m pleased to say that this film is brilliant, fucking brilliant. It is grim and futuristic, but at the same time it’s really funny, like The Day Today gone bad or worse. It’s beautifully designed as well, enough to make you want to buy the dvd and freeze-frame it so you can take it all in. There is even Roots Manuva on the soundtrack. This film is
good, and then some.
Philip French’s review of
Clerks 2 was spot on though.
Volver
This is an entertaining film, but for me it is not Almodóvar at his best. Although the plot is convoluted relative to say, Snakes on a Plane, it's pretty pedestrian next to the rest of the Almodóvar canon: everyone stays the same sex throughout, and there are no deviant priests. I loved films like All About my Mother, Talk to Her and The Flower of My Secret, because they were utterly contrived and peculiar, and yet somehow, incomprehensibly, you feel for the characters. Volver is quite an intriguing story, and the acting is pretty good, you may have noticed that Penelope Cruz is still gorgeous, but it's not that engaging. It's still
good, but no masterpiece. For me, the most entertaining thing was the unmasked contempt with which Almodóvar treats the male characters, that is when he can be bothered to raise the slightest interest in them.
Also, I noticed that A Scanner Darkly was my 100th post on this blog. Good heavens, I never realised I had been callously judgemental about quite so many films. So, thank you for reading and I will attempt to protract my knee jerk reactions, at least until they stop making
shit films.
A Scanner Darkly
I know there's a lot of scope for really poor jokes like, I was a teenage Dick fan, but I was, and A Scanner Darkly was one of my favourite ones. That and Galactic Pot-Healer. So, I was a bit worried when this film came out because of the vast opportunity to mess it up badly. I find the problem with Philip K Dick films is that they look wrong; so often the plot hinges on the fact that everyone lives in a constructed world, and the filmmakers can't show you a reality that lives up to the text. In this respect, the rotoscoping technique used by Richard Linklater works wonderfully well, because you know everything is fake, everything has been interfered with. I find it's also pretty entertaining just to look at, it reminded me of some phenomenal
paintings by a bloke called Dan Hays. Unfortunately the paintings look
shit on t'internet so you will just have to go and see them live.
The performances are excellent, but it is a little scary seeing Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jnr looking a little old and crinkly. And while the film is true to the novel in its deep pesimism, there is humour in it: after all, it was more like autobiography for poor old Phil K. In short, it's hard work, but definitely
good. If you are interested, check out the original book, and an excellent and newly translated biography of the man himself, snappily entitled
I am Alive and you are Dead, which makes Dick's novels look pretty much like reportage.
Crank
Sorry for the interruption in service, I have been having a break in the Alps, very nice it was too and you really should go to Turin, etc. On the other hand, I can also recommend Crank to you, it is rather more violent than Turin but with fewer Fiats. In this film Jason Statham has been injected with the Beijing Mix, an nasty drug that forces him to stay over-excited or die. Golly, it is a good thing for him that he lives in LA and not Amersham, perhaps. Our Jase achieves the necessary levels of stimulation mostly through a) seeking vengeance and b) swearing a lot, because this is one of those films where a typical line of dialogue is permed from the phrases "fuck" "fuck you" "you fuck" "motherfucker" "motherfucking", and "wanker" on account of Statham is a Brit. But it’s not just entertaining for the dialogue, the whole thing is fresh and Statham mysteriously carries it off, despite not appearing hard at all, and having a eerie resemblance to a mildly vexed bollock. In sumary, this film is
good, and more importantly, a lot better than Snakes on a Plane. If you are getting bored with the popcorn movies, next time I will review some arty films, thank you.
Snakes on a Plane
Here is a nice cake of a plane. The movie is
shit, though. Not offensively
shit, just
shit to the level of a good tv-movie.
Sorry for the brevity of this review, I am full of a dirty cold that Andrew gave me, nobber.
