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No Strings Attached
Valentine’s Day, so naturally I have to accompany Ivy to see a romantic comedy. No Strings Attached is actually classified as 15, but that’s more because of the ideas expressed than because of anything visual. The film attempts to turn the more common scenario of man wanting sex but no relationship on its head here, the man falls in love but the girl wants just sex. Of course, she gradually changes her mind, and towards the end she’s desperate to get him and keep him, while he has (maybe) cooled. Expect normal characterisations, particularly of hospital staff, lifestyles which don’t bear much resemblance to normal life, and occasional amusing incidents. Nothing to write home about. It will be forgotten by next month, never mind next Valentine’s Day.
The King’s Speech
Lots of hype about this film, of course, with Colin Firth tipped for Oscar glory. He certainly immerses himself in the part of the stuttering King and does a fine job. Actually, so do all the actors, many of whom bear more than a fleeting resemblance to the historical figures they are playing. Although the plot centres on the speech problems of the King and the unconventional means his Aussie speech therapist uses to help him, the film takes us through a crucial period of history, with King Edward abdicating and England declaring war on Germany. It’s a good, solid film but I don’t think it’s quite up to all the hype it’s getting. I found it a little flat, a little devoid of tension. I didn’t really expect there to be much action, and there wasn’t, but I did expect more in the way of dramatic tension to keep me on the edge of my seat. Well, I watched and I enjoyed, but I slumped and didn’t twitch once with shock or excitement. My other half actually dozed off. Go and see it if you like character driven stories and have a vague inkling of how important it was for King George to be able to speak properly. Otherwise, surprisingly, I’d suggest giving it a miss.
Confucious
This was a Chinese dvd so for once I had the subtitles on because all the dialogue was Mandarin, rather than because I couldn’t hear the mumbling actors. The scenery, as in most China-based films, was stunning, and my other half told me that the main actor was hugely famous and popular in China. So, did these two factors, together with the story of Confucious, conspire to make a good film? Almost. I thought the first half was very good, showing Confucious up to several clever tricks and thereby defeating various enemies, both politically and in the theatre of war. But then I think the film lost its way. Confucious, exiled from his home, goes wandering around all the local provinces which you would think would be a fine opportunity to show different ways of life and Confucious being clever again. But not so. Nothing much happens. He wanders, and grows old, and various followers are either killed or summoned off elsewhere. Then he himself gets summoned back home, where he sets up a teaching academy (not much of that seen though), apparently writes a book, and expires. I’d give the first half of the film 8 out of 10, and the second half only three or four. So the overall impact was less than it might have been. If you see this dvd going cheap it’s probably worth a look but don’t splash out for the full price.
Inception
Lots of hype about this film, of course. I didn’t get to see it on the big screen, where no doubt it comes over better, but I put the dvd on my Christmas list soon after it was available, and lo and behold it appeared. I enjoyed it, though I felt there were three things that stop it being absolutely top drawer. Visually, and as advertised, the effects are brilliant. The plot is satisfactorily thick, and not nearly as complicated as the pundits would have you believe. I certainly feel no need to revisit the film to try to understand what was going on (unless to pick holes in the story). The three things that let it down? Firstly, despite it being a strong point of the film, the plot doesn’t completely hold together, especially at the end. It all seems very convincing when it’s happening at 100 mph onscreen, but if you think about it afterwards in the cold light of day, you’ll see some frayed edges in the plotline. Secondly, one of the key characters comes in from a place of relative obscurity and practically takes over the show, displaying an understanding of what’s going on in the main character’s head and the plot generally far in excess of what she could reasonably be expected to learn in such a short period. There’s a lot of info-dumping while she’s learning stuff, too; and some of the dialogue is correspondingly stilted. And thirdly, I thought the ending was exactly what it shouldn’t have been - I won’t say what it was, suffice it to say if somebody had asked me what the likely ending was half way through the film, I’d have said ,"Well, I think it’s going to be such-and-such, but I really rather hope it isn’t." Unfortunately, I’d have been right. But even after these moans, I guess I’d recommend the film. Let me know what you think of it.
Despicable Me
Okay, so if one super-villain has got away with stealing one of the Pyramids, then obviously another super-villain has to up the ante, and the equally obvious way of doing that is to steal the moon. That’s the premise behind this animated 3D romp. Oh, and you have to add in the inevitable humanising effect three cute children have on the arch villain, Despicable Me. I enjoyed the film. More to the point, so did our own personal five-year-old arch-villain. It’s perhaps a little slow in places and on occasion slips into a part of the story which youngsters won’t follow (bank funding being the obvious example). I wouldn’t drive a hundred miles to see it, but if it turns up at your local cinema, you could do worse than going to see Despicable Me. As an aside, I wonder how long the trend for snappy, 3D-animated comedy action films like this is going to last? To me they resemble the American one-liner turned into a new visual medium even the action is usually short and sharp, with characters moving too fast for reality. Maybe it’s just me, but I suspect that a new use for this 3D medium will have to surface fairly soon, before cinemagoers start to get bored with the fare currently on offer.
Shrek 4 - Shrek Forever After
I thoroughly enjoyed the first Shrek, even though (at that time) I was a bit sceptical about the new-fangled way of doing what appeared to be little more than beefed up cartoons. I saw Shrek 2 and Shrek 3 with assorted children, and thought they were all right but weren’t as good as the original. I even spotted a continuity error in one of them - but shh, best not speak of such things here. So when I went with Boy 1 and Boy 3 (who have twenty actual years between them compressed into about one year when it comes to film preferences), I wasn’t particularly expecting to think that Shrek 4 would be any better than numbers 2 and 3. But I was wrong. This Shrek unashamedly assumes you know something about the characters from the previous films - without such knowledge, many of the situations and character twists would fall flat as a pancake. The plot is a version of many another story, featuring a small change in the past which produces huge (and unwanted) changes in the future - but fortunately our hero (Shrek) gets one chance to put everything right. Which, of course, he eventually does. I thought the script was right on, the 3D animation was excellent. and the plot just sufficiently different to keep adults happy. I recommend it. One word of warning though: number 3 son told me that he preferred Toy Story 3. I haven’t seen that, so I am unable to comment.
Apocalypto
This is a very violent (category 18) film directed by Mel Gibson. I remember seeing a trailer for it at some other film, and thinking it looked interesting. I also seem to remember it didn’t win over the critics. Anyway, I was in HMV buying something or other when I saw a copy of Apocalypto going for £3. So I bought it. I confess I enjoyed it. It’s something of a cross between Last of the Mohicans, Saw (which I have not seen, I hasten to add, but I get the gist of what it’s like), with a dash of The English Patient thrown in. Basically it tells the story of a peaceful group of Aztecs (or maybe Mayans, hard to tell), being attacked and captured by a warrior group of Aztecs. During the attack one of the goodies drops his pregnant wife and little boy down a big hole for safety. He then gets captured along with everyone else who is still alive, and dragged off to a big city in the throes of religious ecstasy. Human sacrifice is the name of the day, and they’re going on 24/7; except when our hero is about to be carved up, an eclipse happens and the high priest, to maintain face, says that’s because the sun god has temporarily had enough victims. Temporary reprieve. Warriors take the captives to the back of the city and tell them to make a run for it, but shoot or javelin them down before they can reach the jungle. Our hero, severely wounded, makes it, killing the son of the chief warrior in the process. Cue chase through the forest and our hero managing by luck and skill to whittle down the number of enemies chasing him. Yes, strains of Predator, now I think about it. The film cuts to the trials and tribulations of wife & boy throughout, especially near the end when it starts to rain, the hole starts to fill, and she manages to give birth while almost drowning. Such is the brutal nature of the film that you don’t know whether she & family are going to make it. But they do. Our hero saves them and they all go off into the jungle to make ‘a new beginning’. It is gorily simple, and as I say, I enjoyed it. Perhaps another reason I enjoyed it is because it contains not a word of English: all the characters speak Aztec or whatever, and there are subtitles throughout. Just the thing for the hard of hearing like me!
Letters to Juliet
I had better start of this review by making the traditional comment that I was ‘dragged along’ to see Letters to Juliet by my other half. This is mainly true, though I must confess that I mentioned the film to Ivy because I thought it was something she might enjoy. The basic plot is that a young woman, engaged to a self-centred chef, happens upon a wall in Italy while on holiday where star-crossed lovers (all apparently female) write sob letters to Juliet (she of Romeo and Juliet). This might actually happen for all I know, something akin to would-be clients writing to Holmes at 122b Baker Street. Anyway, a bunch of women have taken to answering the letters, so our heroine mucks in while self-centred fiancé swans off tracking down delicious Italian foods. Lo and behold she discovers in a hole in the wall a letter written some 50 years ago by a girl who didn’t go to her meeting with her lover and regretted it ever after. Predictably, our heroine decides to answer the letter, and the by now old woman’s grandson turns up shortly afterwards to complain that she is stirring up a hornet’s nest. Grandmother is now hell-bent on finding her lover of fifty years ago, and what sort of problems is that going to cause etc etc? The film is completely predictable, but that doesn’t matter much with this genre. You know that heroine and grandson, despite fighting like dog and cat at the start of the film, are going to fall in love and be happy ever after (self-centred chef gets the boot - actually Ivy seemed to like his character best of all and giggled wildly at his antics). You know that grandmother is going to find her long lost love, and that he will prove to be alive, well, and most important of all, still available. And so it all transpires. It was quite good fun, and my only criticism is that heroine/grandson didn’t seem to have much chemistry going so that their eventual love affair was a little laboured, while their arguments sounded much more real. It’s not a masterpiece, but neither is it a disastrous flop. If you like this sort of film, you’ll probably enjoy it.
Nine
And a Happy New Year to anyone reading this! On an impulse I went with She Who Must Be Obeyed to see Nine at Kilmarnock. The weather was better than when we went to see Avatar, but not by much, and the carpark closely resembled an ice rink in places. Still, we made it in safely, along with the half dozen other people doing the same thing. Nine is a slightly pretentious musical with a very good cast. It centres round a film director/writer (it appears he doubles up) as he struggles and fails to first write a script for a much-promoted movie, and then a second to save his marriage. Having charted his affairs and a small amount of his childhood which appears to have been rooted in religion, it goes on to show through the medium of musical set pieces and some drama how he becomes utterly self-obsessed and ruins everyone he knows. Eventually he comes clean (i.e. that he has failed to write the latest script) and is banished into obscurity for a couple of years - whereupon Nine finishes with him returning to make his next movie, probably triumphantly recounting his own life. It had its moments. The music is not memorable (although some of the dancing is). The plot is simple enough that there aren’t gaping holes, although it does leave the characters rather stereotyped. I don’t recommend it unless you are a fan of musicals.
Avatar
So, we braved the wintry weather to drive up to Kilmarnock to watch Avatar in glorious 3D. Alas my middle son Michael and his girlfriend Mishi couldn’t make it; they were trying to get down from Falkirk but had to turn back because of blizzards. No such problem for us, however, and when we left Kilmarnock at 11 pm there was much slush about but no ice. Never mind the weather, what about the film, I hear you ask. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The plot is not very subtle - you can pretty much predict everything that’s going to happen after the first ten or twenty minutes - but what you can’t predict is exactly how it’s going to happen, how everything is going to turn out, and of course the stunning special effects which show you everything that happens. Pandora, the world on which the film is set, is stunningly portrayed, so much so that you end up forgetting that it is make believe. The animals inhabiting the world are mainly savage, but brilliantly real. The ten foot blue humanoid D’Havi are also brilliantly depicted. If you want to see a film that makes you think, or even one that makes you laugh and cry, go watch something else. But if you want to watch an out-and-out adventure shown with astonishing realism in 3D, you can’t get much better than Avatar.