The Week In Movies 5/9/11 - 11/9/11

I'm late! By a few days too. First off I'll apologise. Sorry. Second I'll explain the situation. I'm very busy. Work is tough and long right now. I'm sitting here 14 hours after I left my house this morning. For the fifth day in a row. It's not even a film job, for which I might expect to be working those kinds of hours. Our bookshops are under staffed, coupled with a recent pseudo promotion this means lots of responsibility for me and a huge (partially self imposed) pressure to improve, fix, tinker and generally leave my own mark on the place. I shall add to that the fact that I found myself visiting over 50 blogs daily through sheer enthusiasm for reading everyone's great reviews and articles on a subject which I have such a huge passion for, which left my real life empty, devoid of any trace of me, just the detritus (and Leah) awaiting my return from self imposed exile.

I'm a pretty competitive guy, whatever I do I want to do it well, I want to do it very well, to the very best of my abilities in fact and this blog was/is no exception. I started taking it very seriously; planning weeks in advance, counting traffic, plotting advertising and marketing strategies with the vague idea that if I was going to be writing then I wanted to be huge. I wanted the entire world to be hitting my page twice daily with so much traffic that I could crash Google. It's not possible is it? Google is pretty powerful right? And anyway all of that is taking away from the fact that I quite like my real life, I really only got writing this thing to break my writers block and it's possible that I don't care enough to be constantly creating new (recycled) content for you all. I'm not going to be the greatest film blogger who ever lived so I'm going back to having some fun. It's ideally a change of mind frame for myself that shouldn't see too many changes in what I post. I've accepted one offer to write elsewhere online, which is a lovely bonus that was not something I ever thought about doing before and I'm looking at some other options with regards to writing occasional pieces online and IN PRINT! To quote a friend of mine, "I'm kind of a big deal around these parts don't you know?!" but only in my mind.

Now on to last weeks viewing history.


Attack The Block is superb, so very funny, much fun, very clever and is totally worth watching at least twice. Not for any particular twist of subtleties missed first time around but simply because it is pure enjoyment on a stick. Granted I am English and familiar with the slang that is quite prevalent throughout but I don't think it's essential to understand the actual words as the meaning is quite clear. I've heard stories of Americans having to subtitle English movies before now due to accents and dialects and slang, can anyone confirm or deny reports that this has happened with Attack The Block? I haven't read the post yet but Scotty L from The FRC has apparently just written a mumble about this slang, if you haven't read it yet my reader tells me it is kept here.

The noir-a-thon was a total letdown this week. Having seen The Glass Key this week we were reminded of our previous experience of it; we didn't actually like it too much. This was a year in the planning and purchasing of DVD's so clearly it had slipped our mind during that period. We left it off the list originally but it was added during the purchase stage of the planning as it was thrown in to a large selection of early noirs purchased in one batch on eBay for an extra $1. It's hard to pass up a bargain like that but I sort of wish I had now. As part of this weeks general abandonment of my online presence we have skipped a week in our noir-a-thon which has happily coincided with a movie that we didn't like. It's not getting a review, it's getting removed from the list. Next week This Gun For Hire and maybe Double Indemnity.

I had this overwhelming urge to watch Everything Must Go again during the week. I don't know what it was but it left me with a strange feeling that I get with these smaller movies that aren't amazing but I can't help but champion. Off the top of my head I'll add Roger Dodger and Tadpole to that list. I enjoyed it again, if you missed the review and want to know what the fuss is about please go here.

I was lucky enough to see Kevin Smith's newest film Red State last week and it got me very excited. I admit to being sceptical of him as a legitimate film maker recently after hearing anecdotes about being too fat for plane seats, being too stoned to direct actors and not working with The Weinstein Company anymore plus I don't really enjoy horror movies so my expectations were low. So low that I was ready to end my viewing after 15 minutes of quite awful chatter from three teenage boys trying to get laid. If that had been the whole movie I would have been appalled. However what actually occurs during the next 80 minutes or so was a pretty powerful piece of cinema that questions the nature of humanity. I'm not going to go in to detail as I may just write a full review now or after the advanced cinema preview next month that I've been invited to here in Perth. There are some strong performances from a great ensemble cast but I dare you not to be blown away by Michael Parks.

Now for the blahblahblahgay turnoffs in a busy week of non-viewing; Leah finally finished reading the excellent Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr Ripley so we could watch the Matt Damon starring adaptation of it. To say we were horrified by the movie would be an understatement, too many changes to the story and most importantly the excellent character of Tom Ripley combined with weak direction to say the least. Do not bother with this one. Serious Moonlight was the last script to be written by our latest fascination, Adrienne Shelley, before her murder. Directed by Cheryl Hines (a mediocre debut that should remain her only directorial effort) and starring the once beautiful now horribly disfigured Meg Ryan in a role clearly made for Shelley (nobody can play these roles better than her) opposite Timothy Hutton (a poor poor poor substitute for Martin Donovan.) I wish it were better, Shelley deserved more. Bridesmaids could be a controversial choice for a turnoff award but I got to 40 or 50 minutes of this 2 hour long 'comedy' and laughed once yet groaned many many times. That's just bad stats for a supposed laugh out loud comedy. Something I don;t understand is the cliche of the two friends from different social groups competing with each other for their mutual friends affection. The speeches I could see coming from a mile away but the tennis montage was one of the most painfully obvious attempts at physical situational comedy I've ever witnessed in something that had previously been labelled 'clever' or 'intelligent' by reviewers. I say poo to you.

Be well readers, thanks for your patience over my absence. Anyone miss me? You know where the blahs are.

Movie Review: Everything Must Go (2010)

Everything Must Go has that melancholy indie dramedy buzz thing going on. Based on a short story by Raymond Carver and starring the Stranger Than Fiction version of Will Ferrell, a poster that owes a lot to Dan In Real Life and a director, Dan Rush, stepping out of commercials for the first time.

What appealed to me the most was seeing Ferrell in a similar part to the one I loved in Stranger Than Fiction, he was so good in that and much like Jim Carrey massively underused in more serious roles. There's an underlying sadness that comedians seem to be able to pull off in certain roles so much better than other actors.

Nick is a recovering alcoholic who falls off the wagon the day he loses his job, his wife and his home. He spends the rest of the movie pretty much on his front lawn trying to sell his things. It's a movie, so there's a sense of catharsis at the end, but the journey is what counts.

The movie is merely OK, a simple enough story that's been told a thousand different ways but this time it doesn't leave you reaching for the vomit bag due to a trite ending or groaning at the paint by numbers emotional responses from the characters. Subtle is not a word usually used when discussing the work of Will Ferrell but yes this movie owes a large amount of its quality to a careful underplaying of the situation from the director and a performance from Ferrell that mixes his everyman charm and humour with a nice portrait of the breaking-apart middle aged man. If only Charlie Sheen behaved this way instead of acting like the very worst Will Ferrell character on its very worst day.

Other than a Will Ferrell performance of unheard of subtlety there's the character of Kenny, (impressively played by Notorious B.I.G. Jr.) a lonely kid who befriends the flailing Nick and an AA sponsor/best friend who helps him along the way. Both characters types are cliched staples of the genre, just the mention of them fills your mind with preconceived notions of what to expect from them. Kenny is no Thurman Merman from Bad Santa, he doesn't tug at Nick's better side and his sponsor doesn't shout and weep and demand things until Nick eventually pulls through. Robin Williams doesn't turn up to repeat "it's not your fault" and Tom Cruise isn't gonna demand that he lets him "help me, help you."

This could easily have been pitched at a very different tone, casting somebody like Philip Seymour Hoffman for example you could easily see this movie becoming dark and depressing with very little hope on the horizon, whilst asking Ferrell to play to his usual strengths (if you can call them that) would have been a slapsticky disaster of overacting. Dan Rush has achieved some small success with that if nothing else.

Other things of note: Laura Dern was alright enough as her minor character of "the ex high school crush" (yes another stereotypical choice for a character in this kind of movie,) who has a fun Brad Pitt anecdote, the music choice felt a little blah, standard instrumental stuff, nothing special but at least it wasn't a constant stream of hipster indie folk stuff like other indie dramedies recently and my favourite piece of dialogue: "black people can't play soccer," "entire continents of black people play soccer, ever heard of Pele?"

I definitely recommend seeing this, however I can't help but think that it has no target demographic. Those of you who love the blockbusters are probably going to find this a little too slow moving and not containing enough plot whilst those indie film junkies among us aren't going to love it either as it's a little too safe. Actually it feels like a solid TV movie or something that will probably get forgotten about very quickly after the novelty/pleasure of seeing Will Ferrell allowed to act wears off.

Seen it? Planning to? Desperate for more Ferrell? Prefer to see him in Zoolander 2? Leave some blah below.

The Week In Movies (28/8/11 - 4/9/11)

Anyone else having trouble with the blogger scheduling feature? I had to wake up to post this! It's making me want to break something! EDIT: Apologies for the spam in your readers. I can't criticise this scheduler enough.

Can you believe it's September already? Spring has well and truly begun in Perth, the sun has been out, I've been wearing shorts to work and my mind has drifted on to the outdoor cinema season once more. Oh how I love outdoor cinema. But more on that as soon as programs are released.

This week I have re visited 3 movies, reviewed 4 movies, turned off 2 movies and signed up for a Twitter account at last. First up the 4 movies there will be full reviews for.

3-Iron was loved and reviewed here, inspiring Tyler at Southern Vision to bump it up his queue. Fast Five was delicious cheese and reviewed here. The Maltese Falcon is this weeks Noir-a-Thon movie and will be coming on Tuesday as always and Everything Must Go should be reviewed by Wednesday. Something to look forward to.

That only leaves three more films that I finished this week.

Thor. I've been working on some nicknames for this. Bore. Yorn (pronounced yawn.) Not very inventive are they? About as inventive and interesting as the actual movie. I kept telling Leah to turn it off but neither of us did, instead reading interesting blogs such as Film Ha-Ha and The Great Movie Project with Thawn in the background. I appreciate Portman, Dennings and Skarsgard but everything, including the normal posters, is just so dull. That alternative poster commissioned by Marvel is pretty awesome though right?

Rewatching Shallow Grave this week prompted my Ewan McGregor list but could easily have prompted a Danny Boyle list. I loved it. I saw it a long time ago as a wee pup of a film viewer and Leah had never seen it. She always gets a kick out of seeing Dr Who in other things. I wish she didn't have that association as Christopher Eccleston is such a good actor. Anyone see the brilliant BBC series Shadowline recently? An enjoyable low budget British thriller from a soon to be huuuuge director starring one great, one pretty good and one mediocre actor. Watch Kerry Fox closely, her accent travels the globe. I must ask, how did she get cast? Hels at A Whole Load of Blah recently picked it as the best movie of 1994.

And then to Buried. A movie about a guy in a box. I loved the idea and if anyone was going to have the charisma to pull it off it was going to be Ryan Reynolds (I love watching him, I admit it, I haven't sunk to Green Lantern levels yet however.) I never really got in to this one though. It was interestingly filmed, I love the purpose built really tall casket story for example and Reynolds was good at being upset but I ended up not caring about him or his situation. A bad thing for a movie about a guy in a box on a mobile phone. Brian saw it and thought it was a horror and Stevee thought it was her fantasy come true.

This weeks blahblahblah turnoffs are two teeny tiny Ellen Page movies that I thought I would give a shot as Page is great to watch. However it is a shame the same couldn't be said for The Tracey Fragments and Mouth to Mouth. Tracey Fragments is a great idea, a young girl is traumatised by something and we experience the movie in flashback as she pieces together her memories of the event. The problem is that the story is told with multiple shots simultaneously and even multiple dialogue at times, representing her memories coming together; which causes your head to hurt and you to lose a lot of important information. Another problem is that it's noisy, which gives you a headache. Movies shouldn't give headaches. Mouth to Mouth is such a cheap and horrible and dull movie I have nothing good to say about it.

Leave me some blah, I'd love to know what you think of my turnoffs this week, that awesome Thor poster and whether you are as excited at the thought of trapping Ryan Reynolds in a casket as Stevee is?