Midnight in Paris

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Mum

Write Up.

Lovely little film.

Trishna

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes

Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

It's always worth taking note whenever Michael Winterbottom makes a new film. Like Gore Verbinski, Ang Lee or Takashi Miike, he has an unmistakable style but seems able to adapt to any kind of genre or story. This time, the story is Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, transplanted to modern day India.

Freida Pinto has the unenviable task of making a rather passive character sympathetic and engaging and I think she pulls it off. My favourite part of the film is watching the slow arc of this central relationship develop and sour. Unfortunately it's a double edged sword. 

While it's great how the relationship subtly evolves, the film really does drag on in spots. It takes its time I guess, but I think Winterbottom was a little too indulgent in some scenes, most of which I presume were improvised to a degree. Sure there is a lot of nice stuff but it all adds up to a lot of fat that should probably have been trimmed. 

Thankfully it has quite a strong finish but I'm still debating as to wether it was worth the long build up.

The Fog

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First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

I just got the bluray and thought it should have a spin. I saw this a very long time ago and at the time remember being more scared by this than Carpenter's Halloween.

Watching it again I see how incredibly simple the set up is. This is much more creepy but probably far less visceral than Halloween. It does have a fantastic cast of characters though.

I love the opening, the old man telling ghost stories to kids. It's very effective. I honestly didn't find the rest of the film as scary as I remember. It was also much more straight forward and shorter than I thought, like it's missing a second act or a real climax.

But there are some great sequences and I do love the feeling it evokes. Even though it was slightly less than I remember from my childhood memories I still enjoyed catching up with it.

Melancholia

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

Write Up.

 Tonight I watched this on bluray with Lars von Trier doing a commentary. He is rather hilarious but his sense of humour is so odd that it's no wonder he keeps getting into trouble. Well it's on full display in the commentary and it'd so easy to see why he gets tripped up. And I just find that even more hilarious.

There's some interesting bits about the filming and some great features on the disc about the fx work. Trier shows a lot of irreverence to his own work but if I distance myself from him as a personality I still have a film that I'm really fond of. If you missed this ins cinemas, check it out now.

Anonymous

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

Write Up.

I listened to the commentary on the bluray. Roland Emmerich is always an interesting listen, regardless of what you might think of his films (plus he has a funky accent) and writer John Orloff makes an interesting foil.

It was actually a really great informative commentary. Not only about creating the story, which parts are historically accurate, where they took liberties, what the scholars think and all that kind of intellectual stuff, but also purely rom a technical point of view.

I did not know this was the first film shot on the Arri Alexa. They talk about testing it out and trying to push its abilities in low light, with entire scenes shot only in candle light. Obviously this has been done before, most famously by Kubrick, but they were impressed with the richness of colour they still managed to get from the scenes and it's true, it does look pretty great.

I also had no idea exactly how much of the film was effects. Like 300, this was shot almost entirely on greenscreen or with a modular set, here they used a few walls, doorways and arches which they would redress and rearrange slightly to create all of the rooms, castles, pubs, courtyards, bridges and houses in the film. He actually used all the effects to make the film cheaper. Only a man who is so versed in big budget filmmaking and use of fx would know how to do that.

They also show a lot of love for their actors, who are all really great but they don't ever shut up about them. But it was a really good listen and well recommended.

The Divide

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Jordan

The best part of the film was the pre-credit opening. Once you're trapped in the fallout shelter with these "characters" the film becomes a mess.

I'm a real sucker for nuclear fallout and post-apocolyptic survival films so I just HAD to see this one and while it offers some nice ideas it never attempts to explain or develop any of the ones I actually cared about.

Instead of being worried about the bigger picture things, the nuclear war, who attacked them, what is going on up on the surface, who are the evil dudes in suits, what are these experiments they are doing, why are they kidnapping people, how will the the inevitable final girl survive once she escapes, etc. it instead chooses to focus on the much more budgetary friendly group dynamic and the characters decent into madness. I'm fine with that, in fact I usually really enjoy that and expected it but it just never clicked.

I think the biggest problem is the huge jumps in behaviour that happen. Sure you expect things to fall apart and descend into Lord of the Flies territory but this film has absolutely no grace or subtlety about it. It rushes to get there and then tries to exploit it as much as it can, but unfortunately all this shocking behaviour just comes off as laughable.

You can't really blame the actors, who are obviously giving it their all trying desperately to convince you but never managing to rise above the material.

While it has some nice ideas, overall it's not successful for me. The trailer has pretty much the whole opening, that's all you really need to see.

The Five-Year Engagement

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Jordan

Another crowd pleasing winner from the gratduate class of Judd Apatow. Jason Segel and
Nicholas Stoller's latest is even more accessible than Forgetting Sarah Marshall but still has an edge over the bland series of romantic comedies being slapped together these days. That mainly comes from the few out of left field moments that no one would expect in a formulaic romantic comedy and a great cast that give these characters enough weight to feel realistic and relatable.

Jason Segel and Emily Blunt are immensely likeable, it's hard not to fall in love with them yourself. And as always they are surrounded by the best cast of supporting characters you could want. Chris Pratt as Segal's brother and Lauren Weedman as his boss were standouts for me but it could have easily been any number of them.

The film opens with the proposal and intriguingly the tale of the meet-cute is spread throughout the film via various flashbacks which works surprisingly well and leads up to the finale nicely to tie everything together.

Once the inevitable roadblocks kick in the film, although enjoyable enough, tends to drag a little. They really make you feel those five years. I was surprised how far off the deep end they were willing to push Segal's characters but he's never been one to shy away from going there (or appearing naked, which he once again does several times in this film).

For a film that plays things so realistically it's a shame they had to push in a few tropes to get to the crowd pleasing ending. They make it work as best they can and it's probably the most naturally progressing plot structure you'll likely to see in a romantic comedy for a long time. 

Still it's hard not to be swayed by the feel goodlyness of it all. Although I think it could use some tightening up in the middle the characters and story works and most importantly, it is actually funny.

Safe

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

Jason Statham continues to make solid little action flicks. That he of all people would be this generations Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone always seemed unlikely to me and yet he's always been pretty reliable, his films enjoyable, at least his theatrical releases are.

This one, whilst having some nice action, also uses a good half of the film setting up its story and characters. We follow two characters intercut in their own little self contained films, one a down on his luck boxer film, the other a orphan girl with a gift coming of age film and then when they finally meet halfway through it explodes into nonstop action for the rest of it.

It is a long set up but it completely worked for me, while the story isn't anything that new or special it was convincingly done. I'll admit to getting a little gun fatigue, most of the action is fast paced shaky cam shoot outs, but it is punctuated often enough with little hand to hand moments and some inventive and very painful sounding blows. The bad guys in this film get hurt and the audience feels it too.

Another pleasant surprise was seeing some familiar faces pop up as supporting characters. Particularly James Hong whom I recently enjoyed rewatching in Big Trouble in Little China and Chris Sarandon who recently made a geektastic cameo in the new Fright Night.

Cathrine Chan never gets to the dizzying heights of, say, Natalie Portman in Leon, but she is serviceable as the young girl who is mixed up with all these gangsters.

This is definitely one of Statham's best and if he continues to output action of this quality and volume he's sure to be remembered with those 80's greats.

The Evil Dead

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

It's been almost 4 days since I last saw a film. I have been flat out with work and have unexpectedly found myself spearheading a campaign to get Cabin in the Woods released here in Australia theatrically. Roadshow changed their mind and decided to dump it to dvd. Bastards! So please do everything in your power to help out.

I decided I should watch this today. It's never not a good time to watch this icon of independent horror. Sam Raimi's masterpiece and probably the best cabin in the woods horror ever made (except for it's sequel, which I think mixes horror and comedy in perfect amounts and is my favourite of the series).

This film is just manic. The camera angles and movement and accompanying sound design almost make this cartoonish. It's larger than life. The gore and effects, while low budget and a little rough around the edges, are pulled off with glee and gusto.

And of course, The Chin. Joyous. The man is some kind of god.

It's a little strange in the widescreen aspect ratio on bluray, I don't like knowing half the image is cropped out, but it's still great to have in HD. It's just one of the best movies ever made. It does make me feel a little better too.