Okay, continuing to catch us all up. Here we goes.

the Year Dolly Parton was my mother 

Well here was a truly pleasant surprise. I went in expecting a sub mediocre low budget Canadian art wank and I ended up getting a truly heartwarming little tale about a young girl in nineteen seventies rural Canada who discovers she’s adopted, then decides that Dolly Parton must be her mother based on the kind of evidence only a child or a wack job conspiracy theorist could draw a conclusion from.  What impressed me most about this movie was how natural the whole thing unfolded. It still had a lot of the flaws low budget Canadian drama tends to have  (lots of overwritten melodramatic scenes) but it’s also got an honesty too it that was enough to draw me in. It also taught me a lot, funnily enough, about Dolly Parton herself. I was so used to the caked on make up and fake boobs that I didn’t realize what a feminist icon she had been. One of the first female singer songwriters, not to mention an early gay rights activist, she really did pave the way for woman in music calling the shots and not just taking a job. Truly enlightening stuff.

Daydream Nation 

Another Canadian film (and there’s more coming, April seems to be the month for them) Daydream Nation is an early candidate for best Canuck film of the year. This story of a teenaged girl who moves during the tail end of her senior year to a small town (a pleasant place where there’s an industrial fire that will never go out and a serial killer running rampant) this film has the same feel of a Donnie Darko. I.E. it’s an art house crowd pleaser with a hint of mind bender to it. There’s some pretty blatant flaws in the film, chief among them being they go to a lot of trouble to make the central character seem highly intelligent then have her do some pretty stupid teenaged shit, but those can be forgiven once you look at the overall quality.  This one’s a real gem and it deserves an audience.

Bill Cunningham New York 

I absolutely freaking love documentaries that introduce me to interesting subject matter I knew nothing about. Bill cunningham New York is about a photographer (the titular character) who has been taking pictures of the New York fashion scene for decades now. He does it in three sets. He takes pictures at fashion shows, he takes pictures at galas and, most importantly, he takes pictures on the street. He actually looks at the evolution of fashion and how it finds its way onto the backs of people going to work.

He himself is in his eighties, has never married or, to anyone’s knowledge, had a relationship, and his apartment is filled with nothing but filing cabinets loaded with his work (he doesn’t even have kitchen appliances or a television). The film reminded me a great deal of Crumb. That is, a tale about someone who’s managed to turn his obsession into something positive as opposed to letting it destroy him. While the figure is tragic on some level, he’s also admirable on another. Would you rather be a raging success and lead a solitary life or fail at your goals and live comfortably? That’s something only you know for yourself.

And finally…

Water for Elephants 

Based on a novel, I got the feeling the novel was a lot better.

That’s not to say that the film doesn’t have it’s moments. This tale about a med school drop out who runs away and joins the circus is amazing to watch and, at times, feels very accurate in its depiction of circus’ during depression era America. But it’s got that thing…you know that thing I talk about all the time that bugs the fuck out of me? Where you realize that a scene, or a series of scenes, is meant to represent about two hundred pages in a novel? Well, this movie has that in spades. It just has that feeling of a well made film that had a very rushed script. There are some great actors in it (not just the leads, but the supporting cast seems to be peppered with theatre vets and working actors who always bring their A game) but just having great actors and great productions values isn’t enough, you need a compelling story and while this film hints at one, it doesn’t deliver and for that reason I can’t recommend it.

Okay, that’s all for now. Next week should bring several more Canadian films including Repeaters, Textuality, and The high cost of living, as well as some American stuff.

Till then.

Sef. 

This will be the first of two round ups to get me back in the race. Here goes.

Soul Surfer

This Christian themed movie, based on a true story, is about a young surfer girl who loses her arm in a Shark attack. Unable to give up her dream, she re-trains herself so that she can be the first one-armed surfer to compete in the major competitions in Hawaii.

The movie is quite well-meaning. And I did appreciate that it wore it’s Christian influence on its sleeve as opposed to trying to slip it in subtly,  but this film has far too many unintentional laughs and way too much wooden dialog for me to give it a green light. It’s not a total disaster, but I can’t judge a film based on good intentions, I have to go based on my viewing experience and my experience for this one was pretty forgettable.

Winter in Wartime 

Here’s another Oscar contender in last years foreign language category. In this WWII  film a small Dutch child witnesses an allied fighter pilot crash landing near his house. He investigates and discovers the Pilot, who’s English,  is miraculously healthy for a guy who just crashed.  The Child vows to help the pilot but there’s one problem, the town is currently under Nazi rule.

Over all I enjoyed Winter in Wartime  but I definitely didn’t have the catharsis that others have had over the material. yes, it is powerful, as are many war  movies, but there’s also long stretches where you kind of hope the story gets to the point. Considering it’s not all that long a film this isn’t a very good sign. But, for all my complaints what works works very well. The characters are well fleshed out and there’s not a one-dimensional villain among them (one of the films most disturbing scenes is when a Nazi SS man saves the hero child from drowning in a lake, to the cheers of onlookers, nothing quite like making a hero out of a Nazi to throw off an audience). Plus the ending, while it didn’t really match the tone of the film, is clever enough to earn your forgiveness.  I guess what I’m saying is, it’s not as good as people are saying it is but it’s not as bad as it could be. That’s a recomendation…I think.

Rio

Pretty to look at but a total waste of everyone’s time. Rio defines Auto Pilot.

Rio is the story of Blu. A bird who, unbenounced to him or his quirky owner, is the last male blue Macaw in existence. A scientist convinces the owner to take Blu to Rio to mate with the last Female of the species and thus, save it. However, Blu and his fiesty mate  are kidnapped by bird smugglers leading to yada yada yada whatever stick a bow on it I don’t care.

This movie felt like it was created by a group of jaded writers who, after they were handed the premise, were put in a room to figure out what all the most obvious things that could happen were. Then another even less inspired group of writers put the scenes in order.  It is sometimes breathtaking to watch and I did get a couple chuckles, but definitely not enough to have made me glad I was watching it and certainly not enough for me to recommend it.

Scream 4

Just good dumb fun that I think might have been smarter than it led on, Scream 4 seems to cap off a series that either saved slasher films or destroyed them, depending on who you ask.

what impressed me most about Scream 4 is that it really felt like it was from the same world as the first Scream movie. It’s been a good fifteen years from the debut of this series and they could have very easily just stuck the killer in a new setting full of new effects and none of the original film’s main characters. This, after all, is what they did with A nightmare on Elm street and  Friday the 13th. However Scream 4 kept the same style and the same ironic post modern sensibility. There are times you’re not sure if it’s badly written by accident or it’s badly written on purpose but it always seems to work. This is especially true of the crazy over the top ending which managed to seem totally implausible and crazy fun at the same time.  It should be said that, as far as horror movies go, it’s about as scary as an episode of Big Bang Theory, but I was smiling too much to care.

And finally…

African Cats 

Gotta say, I’m loving Disney for this series of Earth Day movies they do.  They are proof that there is such a thing as entertaining activism. Last year it was Oceans which looked at sea life and it’s perils. That one didn’t focus on any one particular creature but rather tried to tackle all of them. This year, with African Cats, the focus is on two specific families in the Sahara. One a pride of lions with one father and lots of mothers, and one, a Cheetah raising five cubs on her own. So yes, there are lots of cubs in this movie and yes, the cute factor was so completely off the scale it fills you with the urge to fly to Africa just so you could hug a lion (Tip: Don’t do this). But even better than the cubs frolicking in the rain was the surprisingly honest way the film dealt with life in the wild. There are, for instance, a group of lions on the other side of the river that want to take over the pride the film is following. The story sets it up so that these lions are villains, and the protector of our pride (an old vet named Fang) is the hero. If this was a rerun of Wild Kingdom they more than likely would have edited it so that it looked like Fang saved the day. Thing is that’s not always how it works in the desert. The new guys take over, they dispose of all cubs that aren’t sired by them, and Fang runs away never to be seen again.

It’s not all doom and gloom, this is Disney after all, but it’s mix of hollywood sweetness and harsh reality make for an informative and entertaining film that, while maybe not the best for three year olds, is still fun for (almost) the whole family.

Okay, that’s the first round up, next up should be Daydream Nation, Bill Cunningham New York, Water for Elephants and The year Dolly Parton was my mother.

Cheers.

Sef. 

Starring: Russel Brand, Helen Mirren 

Written by: Peter Baynham 

Directed by: Jason Winer 

The lights come up on a boardroom in a highrise in Los Angeles. The majority of men there are young looking except one, named Exec 1, who sits at the head of a long table and manages to look relaxed and stressed at the same time.

Exec 1 leans back in his chair and closes his eyes.  

Exec 1:Okay, we need  a star vehicle for Russel Brand. He’s got a new Apatow movie coming out and we want to follow on its heals with something to confirm his stardom.

Exec 2:We could just try and put him in a quality movie.

Exec 1: You’re fired. Get out. And if you read your severance package closely you’ll know that I can legally remove your pancreas.  Now, anyone else?

Long silence, followed by three execs shoving the new guy forward, then forming a human wall so he can’t get back in line no matter how hard he tries.

Exec 1: You, new guy. give me an idea or I’ll remove all of your happiest memories with a rusty spoon.

New guy: well…Russel Brand is english.

Exec 1: English…that’s a start, what else?

New guy: Well, Dudley Moore made a movie called Arthur back in the eighties.

Exec 1: Never heard of it.

New guy: It made tonne’s of money.

Exec 1: Oh Arthur!! Wait, you don’t mean…

New guy: Yes sir, lets put Russel Brand in a remake of Arthur. Only unlike the original, which wasn’t exactly the best movie to begin with, let’s make sure to keep the story as muddled as possible. Let’s put elements of the first film in, but only just enough to make people wish they were watching the original. Also let’s hire lots of great actors and waste their talents.

Exec 1: So the usual then. Well done. I see big things for you. I’m just going to make a phone call and…

Phone rings. Exec 1 answers. 

Exec 1:Hello?…um hmm…um hmm…gotcha, thanks (hangs up the phone.) So I’ve been fired.  I’ve got thirty seconds to make it out of the building so goodbye all. (as he’s running out the door he shouts to new guy). You’re the new studio head.

Exec 1 exits, New guy takes his desk without missing a beat. 

New guy/now Exec 1: Okay, we need a star vehicle for Taylor Lautner, he’s got a new…

And…scene. 

I’ll assume y’all got the point there.

Next up should me my long-delayed five film roundup. Stay tuned.

Sef. 

Starring: Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, Markus Rygaard 

Written by: Anders Thomas Jensen

Directed by: Susanne Bier 

I know I said a different movie would come before this one but some movies earn their spots through sheer force of will.

In a better world tells the tale, or rather the interweaving tales, of several characters all dealing with violence in their own way. There’s a doctor who spends his time in a war-torn african nation patching up the victims of a local crime lord. There’s a child who lost his mother to cancer and doesn’t know what to do with his rage. There’s another child, bullied at school because his teeth stick out, who doesn’t know who to turn to.  And there’s the mother of said child who feels that helpless feeling mothers get when they realize their child is dealing with something that they can’t fix.  The film takes place in Denmark and Africa but it’s message is universal. Violence begets violence.

But just having a message isn’t enough, delivery is king and this film DELIVERS. It’s characters are so vivid and it’s sympathy for both sides is so fully realized that you really do feel like you’re staring through a window into another world.

what impressed me most about this film was its depiction of school life. Not just the bullying, but the camaraderie one feels with an ally and the immorality that school children are capable of once it is normalized in their minds. The bullied child, named Elias, finds himself in a situation where the kid that saves him from his tormentors wants to do something potentially dangerous. I don’t mean climbing an unusually tall tree dangerous, I mean getting civilians killed dangerous. What’s remarkable about the movie is you can see how a kid would agree to this and you can sympathize. We were all young, and we were all capable of doing much more horrible things than we would ever let on. All it took was one influential friend with a bad idea (¨hey, I’ve got this bottle rocket, there’s a great target down near the kennel¨) and you found yourself in a place you never thought you’d be.  Well this movie depicts that in a realistic fashion. I’m not sure why it is the writer and the director and the actors were able to show the situation as accurately as they did, but they did.

There’s also the African nation that should be mentioned, mostly because it’s so horrific that it can’t be ignored. While the doctor is taking care of injured civilians he learns of the warlord that is supplying him with most if his patients. This man, known as the Big Man, finds pregnant women and places bets as to what sex the child in their belly is. Then, once the bets are placed, he cuts the fetus out to confirm. The scenes thankfully aren’t shown but the results are.  We, the audience members,  hear stories like this all the time. Soldiers attacked with axes while they are  praying. Black people in America dragged behind cars until their heads fell off.  12-year-old  girls in Africa getting HIV because they had to sleep with a storekeeper to get school supplies. It’s the kind of thing you tune out when you hear about it on the news but this movie makes it human and real and you don’t feel you have any choice but to look.

If the film has any flaw it’s with the main couple. The doctor from Africa is married to the mother of the bullied child back in Denmark and the two parents have separated. But the story makes it clear it’s that these two love each other and should never have called it quits. For me, this is a blemish on this otherwise near perfect film. I can’t freaking stand it when a movie takes a couple that is obviously in love and has them start the movie as broken up just to string us along until they get back together. It’s lazy filmmaking and this movie is better than that.

But that’s one speedbump on an otherwise powerful film. In a Better world won the best foreign language film Oscar for 2010. I’m not totally sure it was the best of the nominees but I know it’s a shitpot better than several of the movies that were nominated for best picture on this side of the Atlantic.  As far as the films that have come out so far this year, In a better world is, like Hanna, Rango, and Win Win, one of the few stories that felt honest and unsullied by studio involvement. A powerful take on the effects of violence that should be viewed as a cautionary tale as well as a humanizing story that puts a face on many of the headlines we tune out whenever we are watching the nightly news. Well done!

Final thoughts:  One of the few R rated movies that I would recommend to the whole family, an excellent film about a difficult subject matter.

Next up should be a five film round up.

Sef. 

Starring: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman 

Written by: Danny McBride, Ben Best

Directed by: David Gordon Green

If you’ve ever been at a party with a lot of people who know each other really well and have a certain shorthand with each other, one that gets them laughing without having to say a word, and you’ve thought to yourself “I’m happy for you but I’m kind of feeling like I’m on the outside of this and I would like to get the fuck out of here”, if you’ve ever been there then you know what it’s like to sit in the audience and watch Your Highness. An occasionally entertaining but mostly just tedious film that’s substitutes clever and crass for funny.

The plot of Your Highness (inspired by the sword and sorcerer epics of the eighties) centres around two brother, thadeous and Fabius  (McBride and Franco) Fabius is the champion and future king, Thadeous is the lost cause and goat of the family. But when Fabius’s bride is kidnapped on their wedding day the father of the two brothers orders both of them to go on the quest in the hopes that maybe it’ll make a man out of Thadeous. Of course the simple rescue mission becomes very complicated and it all eventually falls to the less talented brother to gut up and learn to be a hero.

I can see why so much of this movie was funny on paper. If you describe the film, and many of its scenes, it sounds funny as all get out. But the result is, sadly, just annoying.  In a weird way I felt like a parent must feel when their teenaged child is trying to explain to them why child molestation makes for some great punchlines. I just felt out of the loop.

The most annoying part is, in their last movie Pineapple Express (and in their TV show Eastbound and Down) McBride and his writing partner Best have a way of making you feel like you’re a part of the joke. Like you’re a friend of the really funny guys at the party. I don’t know what element they missed, I suspect it’s not something so simple it can be defined, but I do have one theory.

They didn’t take it seriously enough. 

The death of comedy usually comes when everyone performing it thinks it’s really funny. I don’t know a lot about comedy but I know this. When everyone is having too much fun you lose the realism of it and thus, lose touch with the subject matter you’re making fun of. Take the most famous movie by the Zucker brothers. Airplane!  Now, the Zucker’s could have picked a large ensemble of famous comedians for their cast  (E.G. It’s a mad mad mad mad world) and turned the whole thing into a celebrity get together. Instead they brought in some of the most legendary straight men of the seventies (Robert Stack, Peter Graves, and of course, our most beloved Leslie Nielson before comedy took over his life) and had them take the ridiculous plot very seriously.  Like…King Lear seriously, and that made the laughlines all that much more funny. In Your Highness there’s very few characters doing that. Or at least there’s very few prominent characters doing that. I’m not angry and Danny McBride, his character is supposed to be ridiculous. I’m mad at James Franco. James Franco plays the swashbuckling lead, something that in a film like this should feel like a grounding element in contrast with all the ridiculousness,  and he can’t even maintain an english accent for an entire scene. I mean, this guy just gave  a career making performance and now he’s barely present here. Natalie Portman should fill in the gap for realism but her character seems surprisingly unnecessary. She plays a rogue assassin who helps the brothers. Her copious skills are one of the main reasons they succeed. She is the steely eyed one with murder on her mind but her resolve is very seldom used for laughs. Her scenes are played fairly straight and therein lies the misuses of her character. Much like with Robert Stack driving recklessly in Airplane! her straight-laced demeanor could have been used for much greater comic effect. Sadly the opportunity was missed.

I really do hope this crew continues to make  movies together, they’ve done some great work in the past and they have the potential to do great work in the future. I also hope they learn from this misstep and don’t blame the audience for “misinterpreting” it. If they take the hits they got here and go with them their next movie could be gangbusters. Unfortunately, though, this one is just a straight up bust.

Final thoughts: A failed attempted at humor, it is mercifully forgettable.

Okay, I’ll try and squeeze in one more full length review before the next round up. More than likely it’ll be for Scream 4. Then I’ll finally get to Winter in Wartime and Arthur as promised.

Cheers.

Sef. 

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett

Written by: Seth Lochhead, David Farr

Directed by: Joe Wright

Some movie really are made just for me.

Hanna is about a young girl (round sixteen) who was raised out in a winter wilderness by her father. She was raised to be the perfect assassin. Always on her toes, skilled in virtually every known form of combat and, most importantly, willing to kill. The reason she has been raised like this is simple. There is a government agent out there that was responsible, so her father says, for the death of her mother and it’s Hanna’s job to exact revenge.

This movie does so much right it feels wrong to single anything out in a five hundred or so word review. So let’s go with the big ones. First off, it makes the impossible believable. I’m not saying I think that there’s a teenaged girl, possibly genetically enhanced, somewhere in the North West Territories with murder on her mind, I’m just saying that this film takes its subject matter seriously and never relies on a “just go with it” attitude that many movies have when they introduce fantastic elements. There’s also the  music. Lots of films have soundtracks, many of them are very good. The Chemical Brothers do a soundtrack to this film and it’s very good too. However, the music in this film is so much more than just “music”. It’s not just something to play in the background while some guy is chasing some other guy over rooftops.  The soundtrack is part of the story, the characters quite often interact with the music (I won’t explain how but trust me, it works).  I felt like every note was necessary and was as much a part of the film as the acting and the writing. That’s as it should be.

I’d also be remise if I didn’t mention the action sequences. The movie has a beautiful blend of realism and kick assed fantasy in its action. This is because, much like with the music, the action is only there if it drives the story forward. That’s what keeps the stakes so high when Hanna is fighting for her life. Every gunshot, every cracked neck seems integral to what’s going on in this film. But at the same time there is this feeling of escapism. While the action sequences are necessary to the story, there are still plenty of moments when you can watch them and go “that was freaking awesome” and not lose sight of why it’s happening and what ramifications it might have.

But all these are ultimately just pieces of a much larger puzzle (I didn’t even mention the fantastic actors or the spot on dialog) what’s most important about Hanna is that it blends all of these amazing elements together and it does so with such ease it almost makes you angry. I said at the opening of this review that some movies were made just for me. What I was saying, initially,  was that this was my kind of movie but as I write the review I realize the statement means more than that. it means that I can watch this movie at any moment and feel like I’m the only person in the room being told a story. It wouldn’t matter if it was late night television or a four hundred seat mega mega plex at some mall. The movie singled me out to tell me it’s tale. My guess is it did the same for a lot of people in the audience. It’s so fitting that this movie is coming out a year after Kick Ass as I’m having the same reaction to this film as I was to that one. People with my sensibilities are growing up and they are becoming very, very talented. The result is stories that embrace all the things I love in pop culture but explore them to their extent, not just their surface. Resulting in a film that has excitement and depth at the same time.

Final thoughts: In a perfect world Hanny would sweep the Oscars. Unfortunately in this world it will have to settle for being the best film I’ve seen yet this year.

That’s all for now. Next up should be the Oscar nominated Winter in Wartime followed by the comedy remake, Arthur.

Till then.

Sef.

Lots to catch up on  so let’s get to it.

Hop

Okay, this one was pretty painful. This story is about the next easter bunny and how he doesn’t want to be an easter bunny, he just wants to learn the drums and be a teenager. So he runs off and ends up crashing with a bit of a loser who doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. The two learn much from each other about the importance of blah blah blah etc etc.

There were some moments during the opening when I thought this film might at least be good for a few laughs. but those moments start feeling quite far away by the time we reach the end. This one is a real waste of time.

Essential Killing

An interesting premise that just goes on for a little too long. Essential Killing has its moments. Just not enough of them for a feature-length film.

The plot centers around a middle eastern terror suspect, who is detained in a Gitmo like prison camp only to be sprung by fate. He then spends the next several days, or possibly weeks, wandering through the snowy hills of some undisclosed country, fighting to survive. He sometimes kills (thus the name) he robs, he even, when he is starving enough, robs a nursing mother of her breast milk, but the implication is always the same, that he is a sympathetic character. The thing is they establish this fact so early on that the film doesn’t seem to have anywhere to go. we know that not all terrorists are evil sociopaths. We know that their surroundings and current conditions are a great influence on their behavior. We don’t need you to tell us repeatedly for ninety minutes. We’re there for ya.

An interesting attempt, but ultimately it falls short of the impact it was obviously aiming for.

Exit 67

I have to admit, when this french Canadian gangster film started I was pretty dubious but as the story went on it won me over, if only barely.

Exit 67 tells the story of a man who, at a very young age, witnesses his father beating his mother to death with a hammer. Surprisingly, this has some effect on him as he grows up to be one of the biggest up and coming gangsters in all of Quebec. He becomes the right hand man of one of the top dudes in the game and finds himself in line for the job. But he’s starting to doubt his choices and what got him there.

How many freaking times can we see that story? How many times can we learn of the young gangster with a heart of gold that’s starting to have doubts in his choices? Apparently lots as they come out fairly steadily throughout the year. But trite plotpoints aside, the young gangster involved does grow on you and the film, to its credit, throws a couple curveballs the audiences way which spice things up nicely. It’s nothing remarkable but it’s better than it needed to be and after it was all said and done I was glad I saw it.

Insidious

It’s got a hell of a lot of flaws, but no one can say that this film isn’t scary.

Insidious tells the story of a nice enough couple, both teachers (though she is taking some time off to pursue song writing) whose child goes into a sort of coma. While he’s out strange things start to occur around the house. at fist only the mother seems to notice but then they become to overwhelming to be ignored.

Okay so on the plus side, like I said, the film is genuinely scary. So many horror films either settle for “quirky” or “gory” and skip the scary part. On the minus side there’s a lot of easily solved problems in this film. For instance, the family has three children. But for the sake of the story only one (the possessed one) is necessary. There’s a little brother that is totally forgettable and there’s a baby that’s only purpose is to have a baby monitor so that ghosts can get picked up saying freaky things on it. Now contrast that with a film like Poltergeist where you have a family with three children and all of them are fully rendered characters that are effected in their own way by the demonic possession they are dealing with. This same problem extends to the writing of the parents. While the actors are talented the dynamic feels familiar. The father is the stern one who plays the skeptic, the mother, currently living at home, tries to convince people she’s not going insane. This is all familiar territory for ghost stories.

But. It’s scary as hell and you can see the creativity behind this film. For that reason I’ll give it a pass.

And finally…

Win Win

Here was my biggest treat of the past week. This is a heartwarming  story about a lawyer slash wrestling coach for whom everything is going wrong. His law firm is falling apart and his wrestling team seems to be allergic to victory. That all changes when through a complicated series of events he finds himself caring for a sixteen year old runaway that just happens to be the best wrestler his age this side of anywhere. Suddenly his team is doing well. Also his law firm has a new infusion of cash because…well…that part you’ll have to see the film to understand.

So first off, Paul Giamatti, who plays the lead, is a god. He just makes everything seem so natural. Even the most exposition laden dialog sounds right coming out of his mouth. And second, the film has this amazing ability to set up expectations then thwart them. That’s one I can’t go into too much without giving away details but it’s the smart writing, the endearing characters and the uplifting feel, even with its dark spots, that makes Win Win one of the best films I’ve seen yet this year. It won’t be in theatres long so if you have the chance, give it a shot.

Okay, that’s it for now. coming up are Hanna and the foreign film Winter in Wartime.

Till then.

Sef.

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright

Written by: Ben Ripley

Directed by: Duncan Jones

This movie is pretty frickin cool.

Source Code completes, for now, a trilogy of films that has come out this year that I’m calling movies that could have been episodes of the twilight zone. Not just because the were outlandish premises but because they had that element of “simple man has his life turned upside down by fantastic elements” that seemed to pervade every single episode of that classic show. The first of the trilogy was The Adjustment Bureau which was fun escapism. The second was Limitless which was…well…it just was. And now this comes along to champion them all. Source Code‘s premise is much like the others; simple man suddenly finds himself in a fantastic world totally out of his control. In this case it’s an army helicopter pilot, Colter Stevens (Gylenhaal) who wakes up after what he thinks was a mission in Afghanistan and finds himself sitting on a train just a few feet away from a very nice girl who seems to think he’s someone else. He spends the next several minutes trying to figure out what’s going on before, rather unexpectedly, the train blows up. Suddenly he’s himself again, stuck in a capsule, with a video link to an unknown army base asking him how the mission went. As it turns out, he is part of a super secret time travel experiment called Source Code which allows one person to relive the last eight minutes of someone else’s life. In this case, it’s the life of one of the victims of a recent train crash. Our hero’s goal? To figure out who it was that bombed the train as they apparently are planning on bombing a much larger target shortly.

What impressed me most about this film, and what separates it from the other two films I mentioned, is that the introduction of the premise isn’t the end of the story. For Limitless, once we’ve established that he’s taking a pill once a day to make him smart we can pretty much guess the rest. For the Adjustment Bureau it’s pretty much the same. There’s an organization running the world, hilarity ensues. But with Source Code it’s different. It’s premise is  the springboard for the story, as it should be. I really can’t tell you a lot of the details of it but I can say that they ring about as much as they can from the idea and the results are truly impressive.

There’s also a certain element in this film of a lack of studio involvement. Or, at least, a lack of formulaic necessity. While the film does contain a lot of the main elements of a studio film (leading man, leading lady, ticking bomb etc) it does some pretty interesting thing with it. Can you tell it’s killing me not to tell you? God damned it it’s not easy being spoiler free. Okay, here’s a minor spoiler. the films two most climactic moments don’t contain but a peppering of action. And even better, the train blowing up slowly becomes kind of unimportant.

There are some minor flaws with the premise but those are nit picky and can be forgotten once the picture is taken in as a whole.  With its fresh feel and excellent delivery Source Code is a true science fiction gem and, while it may not stand up there with the likes of Alien or The Fly it will at least stand the test of time as I’m sure, fifteen years from now, people will be discovering it on late night television and find themselves unable to look away. If there’s any test of time for science fiction (and any test that has been passed by this film’s grandfather the Twilight Zone) that’s it.

Final thought: Damned clever, Damned exciting, give this one a shot.

Okay, next up should be Hop, followed by Exit 67, Insidious and Hanna. Plus I’m sure a couple extra’s that I’m forgetting.

Till then.

Sef.

Starring: Rutger Hauer, Molly Dansworth

Written by: John Davies, Jason Eisner, Rob Colterill

Directed by: Jason Davies

Dude, Canadian’s are sick.

Hobo with a shotgun, the Nova Scotia based and partially Canadian government-funded gore fest,  found it’s origin in a fake trailer that showed before the film Grindhouse (a film that contained a series of fake trailers that attempted to add to the exploitation cinema theme) . It was the only trailer not made by a big deal hollywood director. In actuality it was there because it was the winning entry in a contest.

The premise is that a Hobo (Hauer) finds himself in the single most morally corrupt town this side of anywhere. There are murderers, rapists, and child molesters running wild. People are decapitated in broad daylight while witnesses watch helplessly, and at a nearby club random victims are horribly butchered in games of bumper cars. The Hobo can’t take it anymore so he gets a shotgun and…well…

Anyone who’s seen some of the Tromaville films (I.E. the Toxic Avenger) will know the kind of violence we’re dealing with here. There is not even an attempt to make it realistic.  It’s exploitation, it’s buckets of fake blood and it’s low, low, low budget. But you have to give it to the filmmakers. No matter how nasty this film gets it always feels at its core that it’s a labour of love. You could feel the genuine affection for the eighties straight to video fair this movie is based on.

That being said, I do have limits and this film pushed them. Round the two-thirds mark, about when the guy takes a baseball bat to the stomach which causes his intestines to fall out, I started feeling like the whole thing was becoming a little too grueling to sit through. Thankfully, though, at this point the filmmakers made the brilliant decision to add a supernatural element. I won’t tell you the specifics but the fact that they pulled it off is pretty impressive given how completely out of left field it is.

It’s the nostalgia as much as the exploitation that makes Hobo with a Shotgun work and much like with films by Tarantino (though this is nowhere near his skill level) it makes you feel sentimental about films you’ve never seen and, in some cases, may not even have existed. It’s definitely not for everyone, but Hobo with a Shotgun is so unabashedly proud of itself that you can’t help but go along for the ride. Yes it’s crude, yes, it’s sometimes stomach turning, but it’s also well written, well acted and well made. I’m pretty forgiving of any film that contains all three of those elements.

Final thoughts: A pretty cool film once you get past all the parts that are two disgusting to watch.

Next up should be Source Code followed by a four or five film round up.

Cheers.

Sef.

Starring: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Scott Glenn

Written by: Steve Shibuya, Zack Snyder

Directed by: Zack Snyder

I am right, the other critics are wrong.

That is, and always will be, rule number one.

The other critics have…well…not so much torn this movie apart as they have announced it a failure. Like it strived for something it couldn’t accomplish. But from where I was standing this movie tried, and succeeded, at giving us an original and compelling story with some genuine intelligence behind it, not to mention the best action sequences I’ve seen yet this year.

Sucker Punch opens with our hero, Baby Doll (Browning) losing her mother and then finding herself trapped in the house with her evil and perverted step father. She fights back, but ends up setting off a series of tragic events that lead her to be committed to a mental institution. As soon as she’s there things change. Suddenly the games room is a burlesque theatre and all the inmates are dancers/working girls that are part of a nineteen twenties style club.

It’s not a stretch to figure out what’s going on. Baby Doll creates an imaginary world to help her cope with the real one she’s been damned too. What impressed me most though was that the film felt no urge to shift back and forth between the two worlds. Once we enter Baby Dolls fantasy, we stay there until the films epilogue. It’s obvious that what’s happening in the fantasy world is meant to mirror what’s happening in the real world but the film doesn’t constantly show parallel scenes to help us understand this fact. For me this showed a respect of the audience’s intelligence.

It even goes one step further and completes a fantasy world within the fantasy world. You see, Baby Doll has a gift. She can mesmerize people with her dancing. This can serve as a great distraction when trying to steal certain items necessary for an escape plan. But the dances themselves transport Baby Doll (and the viewer) onto another plane where she and many of her fellow inmates are soldiers fighting an unknown enemy for the items that will help them gain their freedom. These scenes do stretch credibility a bit (fantasy within fantasy is a little tricky) but you find yourself able to forgive just based on how truly mind blowing they are. Watching an all out sword fight between a human woman and three twenty five foot tall Japanese Terracotta warriors is something that shouldn’t be described, it should only be seen.

But it’s not just about cool ass images, it’s about story and character and this film hits it damned near perfect on both counts. the characters are all endearing, even the nasty ones. And the story, while a little on the melodramatic side (especially the ending), keeps us guessing right to the end. This movie does not do what you think it’s going to do. If you’ve seen the preview and you think you know how this movie works, you’re probably wrong. that’s what impressed me most about it.

I am genuinely baffled at the negative reaction this film is getting, especially when I consider the sheer amount of crap that mainstream critics have given a free pass to over the years. Maybe it just came out at the wrong time, maybe I really do have taste that is miles away from other people. But I look at this movie as two hours of bliss that I’m so freaking happy I got to experience right before a hard day at work (a matinée before a night shift is better than a cold beer in June as far as I’m concerned )  and I hope some of you dismiss the negative press and give this film a shot on your own.

Final thoughts: Full of energy and risks, Sucker Punch delivers on expectations and surprises at the same time.

Okay, next up is Hobo with a Shotgun followed by Source Code and Hop.

Night all.

Sef.