Now as you know if you are a regular visitor here I routinely review movies in a certain amount of depth but with a very busy week ahead in my day job I figured I would just give a run down and rating for each of the seven so we can leave the rest of the week's posts to gab on about other movie and TV news. OK here we go ...
Movie Number 1: Frost/Nixon
This was actually a film I had wanted to go and see at the theater when it was around in January mainly because I am such a fan of Michael Sheen. The film is ... 'a dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon" (IMDB). It's interesting to see Sheen take on the persona of another famous living person after his portrayal of Tony Blair in The Queen. Once again he does an excellent job and what struck me while I was watching the movie is how you really forget you are watching an actor play a role. A few special people have that talent to make you forget who they are as their chameleon like talents take over and they really 'become' that person. I knew very little of this era in American politics so it was an education for me as much as anything (much to my shame I also haven't seen Stone's Nixon yet). I wasn't expecting to think much of Frank Langella's take on Nixon himself but i was happily surprised to see him turn in a very strong performance. It was a very well done film, worth a rental. Rating: ****
Movie Number 2: Notting Hill
When I was thinking about the weekend's film selection I wasn't planning on watching this Curtis/Grant classic but a good friend of mine had told me how surprisingly enjoyable P.S I Love You was recently. Now I wasn't able to summon the strength to watch that much of a 'chick-flick' but it did put me in the mood for a decent rom-com and so Netflix on Demand came to my aid and it was straight back to 1999. Pretty much everything is right with this film for me, Richard Curtis wrote a funny, charming and romantic script. Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts had great chemistry as the unlikely couple and the supporting cast screamed quality particularly the hilariously written and performed character of Spike played so memorably by my favorite Welshman (after Max Boyce) Rhys Ifans whose line, "Just going to the kitchen to get some food, then I'm going to tell you a story that will make your balls shrink to the size of raisins" still makes me laugh. It's a classic feel good date movie (I originally saw it in Laguna Beach on my honeymoon) and if you haven't seen it ... shame on you! Rating *****
Movie Number 3: Adventureland
To say I am not the target demographic for this film is an understatement but I was so impressed with Jesse Eisenberg in Zombieland I figured I would give it a go. Set in 1987 the film follows Eisenberg's character James as he is forced to work in his local amusement park for a summer instead of traveling to Europe. There he meets and falls for Em played by Twilight's Kristen Stewart. All of which is pretty standard stuff and while there are a few laughs it's by no means hilarious. Being set in 1987, a year I remember very well as a 19 year old, the music w
as great nostalgia for old gits my age but I did wonder at one point what today's teens made of it all. You also couldn't help thinking of the John Hughes movies of that era and I'm sure director Greg Motolla who is only a few years older than me must have had them in mind when writing the script. Just OK for me, I was certainly expecting more laughs but I might buy the soundtrack. Rating ***
Movie Number 4: Crank: High Voltage
If you saw the first Crank film you know a few things going into the sequel; you can't take it seriously, it's not a showcase for award winning acting and the second coming of Jason Statham as Chev Chelios is very likely to be even more mental than the original ... and it was. I have to say I loved every second of this film and am fairly confident I haven't seen a movie with this amount of frenetic energy ever before. The plot in a nutshell is "Chelios faces a
Chinese mobster who has stolen his nearly indestructible heart and replaced it with a battery-powered ticker that requires regular jolts of electricity to keep working" (IMDB). I have been a massive Jason Statham fan since his brilliant turn as cockney geezer 'Turkish' in Guy Richie's
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. OK he will never win awards for his subtlety but he has filled the void left by the action heroes of old, Van Damme and Stallone and he's done it with with a certain panache. This flick was just crazy, the dialogue was laughable but in a really good way, the violence extreme but again in a cartoonish inoffensive kind of way and all in all I enjoyed every imaginative minute of the film. I am fairly certain this is the most fun you can have on a couch alone with a remote control (honest guvnor!). Rating: *****
Movie Number 5: Elegy
Talk about a change of pace. Elegy is a beautifully shot film starring Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsely as student and teacher falling in love in spite of a thirty year age difference. Kinglsey plays a British academic in New York to perfection seemingly reveling in his chance to portray a man so mature to those around him professionally but emotionally so stunted in his personal life. His scenes with Cruz are as often intimate as they are uncomfortable as we see a man regressing to a state of almost teenage possessiveness. Spanish director Isabel Coixet takes her time in exploring the fall into love, obsession and ultimately the older man's inability to deal with his own insecurities about this much beautiful younger woman. The pace of the film really reminded me of Sophia Coppola's Lost in Translation in that it is a slow film but you thank the director for that as every scene in valuable and not a word seems wasted. The literary types among you may recognize the film as an adaptation from the Phillip Roth novel whose previous work The Human Stain was also a turned into a rewarding film. Elegy takes you to an unexpected place at the end and offers Kingsley's character a chance of redemption. Smart and engaging film-making I strongly recommend this. Rating: ****
Movie Number 6: The Great Buck Howard
It was while watching the trailers on a previous DVD that I came across the trailer for this John Malkovich comedy. The trailer looked great and I thought how refreshing it was to see an actor so often playing intense characters trying his hand at lighter fare. The film is about a young man played by Colin Hanks who after dropping out of law school decides to go on the road with Buck Howard, a mentalist/magician whose glory days are receding in his rear view mirror. The film started slow so I thought well maybe it's a slow burner and while the comedy seemed absent perhaps it's more of a charming tale than laugh out loud story. I am sad to say it was really neither. Actually what it was for me was a group of very talented actors, John Malkovich, Colin Hanks, Emily Blunt and Steve Zahn caught up in a not that funny nor interesting movie. Every now and then you just make a bum movie selection ... this was it. Don't bother. Rating: **
Movie Number 7: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
I did not play with these toys as a kid, I never watched the TV show and I watched the first Transformers movie on a plane. So you might ask why on earth did I bother watching the sequel? Well, the first flick was a pretty decent way to soak up a couple of hours on a flight and the action sequences were of course (it's a Michael Bay picture after all) pretty amazing. So I sat down with admittedly some trepidation for 150 minutes of cars turning into robots. What a shockingly bad choice and what a dreadful way to end my movie marathon! I am sitting here now, less than an hour after the film finished still racking my brain as to why I wasted so much of my evening on what was an utter load of rubbish. I love a good sci-fi flick, love a good action movie and don't mind loud silly films either after all I just loved the heck out of Crank: High Voltage! Sadly while this film had all those elements it ended up being painfully boring and agonising to watch. Yes, yes, yes, I know I am once again not the target market but then again I wasn't for Twilight and that wasn't a bad film! Unfortunately this was just a dog's breakfast for start to finish and if I were to list all my complaints I would still be going when Monday morning comes around. But ... being a bit of a Grinch about crappy films let's list one or two shall we? OK, Shia LeBoeuf, great name but the lad can't select a good script to save his life. A fellow blogger recently tweeted that he hasn't enjoyed one movie that the actor has appeared in and I have to agree. To make matters worse in the Transformers films he pairs up with Megan Fox, an actress who makes movies I don't want to see and performs as if she is in some kind of low budget cable flick every time I catch a glimpse of her (on and off the screen!). The dialogue was dreadful, John Tuturro is a great actor but HAS to be doing this solely for the paycheck, it was so long it seemed akin to some kind of CIA torture technique and finally the story was as dull as dishwater. This is in the running for one of the worst movies I have ever seen although it's still behind Hope Floats and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby! Rating: *
So that's my weekend of movies over. I saw some crackers and some clangers but that's what it's all about right? Now I have to spend the rest of the week catching up on my Sunday night TV!
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