Double feature

Last weekend saw me taking two trips to the cinema, which is way more than my usual no trips. I went to see two quite different style films that I've been trying to think of similarities between, so as to make this post more interesting, but I've been struggling a bit.

The first film I saw late on Saturday night (after an aborted earlier evening effort due to rather large queues) was Role Models. This star's Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott (with Rudd playing a kind of Paul Rudd character and Scott doing an excellent job of playing Seann [why the extra n] William Scott aka Stifler) as two guys who have to do community service by being mentors for a couple of wayward kids (kind of like the "Bigger brothers" from that old episode of the Simpsons where Bart disowns Homer) - one who's a bit geky and shy and the other who's a sweary tearaway. It's not a particularly novel film and is very much in the style of other recent comedies (Knocked Up, Superbad etc), but was entertaining enough. I think Rudd (who co-wrote the film) tried to inject a few in-jokes into it, some of which were ok, but other's didn't quite work on my non-late-thirties not-American ears. I laughed a good amount of times (mainly at Bobb'e J. Thompson's character, who did very well delivering many a foul-mothed line), so I'd say the film worked overall, but isn't going to be a classic.

The next film (seen on Sunday night) took me from the afluent suburbs of the US into the poverty stricken slums of Mumbai - yes, you've guess it, I went to see Slumdog Millionaire. Is it worth it's current crop of Golden Globes? I'd have to say yes (despite having not seen the majority of the other films that were nominated - partly cos they're not released in the UK yet). The film is visually really good for a start, so just watching it is a treat. I'd say that the parts of the story that aren't flashbacks to the characters as kids aren't quite as engaging (good though they are), because the actors playing the young versions of Jamal and Salim are amazing (sorry Bobb'e J., they're better than you) and there are great moments of comedy and tragedy. As Andrew Collins says don't go to see this film as it's been marketed ("the feel-good film of the decade") as it's brutal at times, but do go and see it.

So what is there linking these films? I suppose you could say that both films show triumph over adversity for kid's who've had it hard (mind you the kids in Slumdog have it a few orders of magnitude harsher that those in Role Models), but then that's just the classic underdog does good plot of most stories. But should you want to see a classic underdog story I (and the Golden Globe voters) think Slumdog just edges it.

Get me a Go Fast boat

Last night I watched the DVD of the Michael Mann film adaptation of Miami Vice, starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx. After watching it and mulling over its finer points I think it deserves a review, so here goes: Utter shit! That's about it really. It's got some nice night shots of speed boats (or "Go fast boats" as they seem to be known in the vice trade!) and cars, but the rest is pure drivel, and only semi-understandable drivel at that. Oh, the soundtrack is actually half-decent, but that's not generally what you'll go to see a film for. If you want to watch a Michael Mann thriller/action film watch Collateral instead, which I though was a lot better, or maybe Heat, which is supposed to be very good, but I've not seen.

Ain't talkin' 'bout dub

Getting to see an English language film shown in it's original form without it being dubbed into German is apparently quite a rare thing in Hannover (I suppose for the obvious reason that it's in Germany and generally people are statistically more likely to speak and understand German.) So when a film is being shown in English here it can be a big event for those that can understand it and prefer to see the unadulterated version of the film - you get to hear the actual actors who were paid to star in the film rather than their, not-necessarily similar sounding, German counterparts. I'm giving this set up to lead into a cinema outing that a group of about 25 or more of us (who work at the AEI) went on on Friday evening. Someone had heard that the new Will Smith movie Hancock was being shown (for one showing only) in English, so despite it not being at the top of many people's lists of films to see (I'd heard only bad reviews) we all jumped at the chance of going. Having now watched the film I have to say that I quite enjoyed it. It wasn't great, but it was a decent action movie with good effects and a story that had its funny moments and didn't drag. The film is probably saved by only being about one and a half hours long and if they'd tried to keep it up for longer it would have started grating, although the shortness did mean a lot of stuff had to be left unexplained. I also enjoyed the fact that I could buy a beer in a big multiplex cinema and take it into the screen with me, but that's not really to do with the film.

A film at its Prime

If you want to see a film that revels in just being a big fun, cheesy, actionfest then you can do far worse than going to see Transformers. I went to see it at the weekend and really enjoyed the whole thing. The movie kind of feels like two different films with a definite change when the Transformers start talking. The Transformers (at least the Autobots), when first introduced, seem to be aimed at children (which is fair enough as they are childrens toys) which is slightly out of place from the lead up that's been given, but you deal with it by the general coolness of the CGI. There was a completely superfluous subplot with the NSA signal analysts, which could easily have been cut without really affecting the films overall plot, but it was harmless enough having it in there. Some of the battle scenes between the Autobots and Decepticons are pretty hard to follow as they're really fast paced with so much going on. They definitely require being watched on a huge cinema screen. I was surprised that there was a quite a large comedy element to the film, which actually worked really well. You'll be unsurprised that like with most recent blockbusters they've set themselves up for the sequel, but I'll be looking forward to it - maybe they'll even get Leonard Nimoy back as a Transformer (it might be pushing it to have Orson Welles again though).

As you'd expect you've got to suspend the thinking part of your brain for the film, but in general I sat through the film with a big smile on my face thinking "Woah, that's cool".

Spidey (non)sense

The third installment of Sam Raimi's Spider-man franchise became the top grossing opening day film ever when released a couple of weeks back, but it's taken me a bit of time before getting out to the cinema to see it. However, today I decided that having seen, and enjoyed, the first two films I should give this one a go and add my contibution to the pile of money it's made.

The film starts off pretty much where the last one left off (it even gives you a quick "previously on Spider-man" style update in the opening titles.) Peter's/Spidey's mate Harry is still rather pissed with him (for reasons I wont say in case you've not seen number 2), but him and MJ are still very loved up. Thing's aren't all happy in the relationship though as MJ think's Peter/Spidey's getting a bit up himself - and she'd be right to. These things lead to much tension and many problems, with Peter trying to deal with many issues involving love, friendship and revenge.

Now the previous films have always been rather schmaltzy when it came to the emotional scene's between Peter and MJ (or Peter and his Aunt May), but I don't remember them grating on me as much as in this film. The main reason I think they grated was due to Tobey Maguire's face - throughout these sort of scenes he has a dopey confused look about him, like a faithful, but stupid, dog that can't comprehend what his owner wants him to do. These scenes in part make you cringe, and in part make you want someone to give him a slap. Then there are the scenes, done for comedy effect I assume, which see Peter/Tobey becoming a badass (strutting about and playing it smooth with the ladies) - these really do make you sink into your seat and wince. The humour in Spider-man is supposed to come form Spidey's witty one liners, and Peter's interactions with J. J. Jameson, not by making him look like a twat. Now how I've described things may indeed be how Maguire meant to play the whole thing (Peter/Spider-man is supposed to be the architypal geek-cum-superhero after all), but it mainly annoyed me.

Other than Peter/Spidey/Tobey there was one other main thing that didn't quite hold together. There were a couple of moments in the film were it seemed like they'd removed about 15 minutes of it and just left an unexplained gap. They may well be parts that ended up on the editing room floor to make way for more of the special effects filled moments, but it created a couple of disconnects in the plot.

Now I've not been particularly kind, but I did sort of enjoy the film - despite having to cringe through various moments. The effects were of a very high standard and it didn't drag for a 2 hour 20 minute film. I was, however, more disjointed than the last two films, and obviously the effects don't have the same inpact a third time around.

The plans seem to be to carry on the franchise for as many films as possible, but number three might have been Maguire last turn as Spidey. I think it'd probably be good getting someone else in to give a slightly different interpretation of the role.

Sunshine on an overcast day

Posted from Phys. Rev. X:

Sunshine is a new sci-fi film directed by Danny "Trainspotting" Boyle and written by Alex "The Beach" Garland and last night some of us went to see it. The flim follows crew of a second attempted mission to reignite the Sun, which has (for a probably best unexplained reason) stopped working properly. As a bunch of (astro)physicists (including one solar physicist) going to see a film about the Sun dying, naturally we're going to find a few holes to pick in the science, but mainly we were just hoping to see a good film. I could write a very long post with all the factual problems with the science in the film, but being factually correct isn't the main point of most popular sci-fi as the setting is just frame on which you hang the film. The main point of the film was to focus on the psychological effects on the crew as they passed into the zone where the intense solar radiation meant that communication home was no longer possible - wait a minute this zone appeared to start outside the orbit of Mercury, but we can easily recieve signals from there! No, I mustn't start on the nitpicking - and also how they dealt with being humanity's "Last, best hope" (Babylon 5 anyone) for salvation.

As far as eye candy went the special effects were great. We were treated to many majestic views of the spaceship, the Icarus 2, backdropped by the tremendous, yet terrifying and mighty, Sun. The film ramped up the level of crazy throughout, and this was generally well acted. There was a fair bit of distorted camera effects and angles, and mildly subliminal images towards the end of the film, which didn't, for me, enhance the film or serve any purpose. You were left more with a feeling of "What!?" than "oooooohh...aaaaaaahh..." at the end.

Overall I enjoyed the film as an entertaining spectacle, but was left rather flat by it. I wasn't really moved by any of the characters to care about any of them. I wasn't even particularly bothered about the success or failure of their mission considering its grand goal was trying to save all of mankind. Sunshine didn't give you the all out action and fun of something like Armageddon, which serves it's purpose as a bit of fluff sci-fi very well, but it also didn't give you the darkness, or real psycho craziness of something like Event Horizon. It sat somewhere inbetween and didn't quite satisfy. A modern film that does the etherial, going a bit mad, aspects of space quite well is Solaris, which just lulls you and kind of washes over you (that said I watched it on a plane, so was fairly spaced out myself) as it doesn't try to give you a big heroic saving mankind theme. But if you want proper sci-fi of the kind that this was trying to be then you can't beat a bit of 2001.