The Hurt Locker

Brilliant, edge of your seat tension.

A film where I almost forgot to breath.

Meh! rating: 8/10

where does all the time go?

Still,

I've managed to watch a few films recently. Not had the time to do full reviews, but there follows a couple of quick summaries....

Franklyn

 

This has been sitting on my ‘to watch’ list for a while.

So, quiet night, everyone asleep, don’t fancy anything to heavy...reviews look interesting, I’ll give it a try.

A Drama / fantasy / character study thingy, set in two ‘times’. Modern day London, and a future world gone religious mad, ‘Meanwhile City’.

The interweaving of 4 separate story arcs into a nicely packaged together finale where everything  satisfactorily ties together.

Only I did not care.

It’s a low budget British film, by first time director Gerald McMorrow.  The story is ok,  there is the recently jilted at the altar groom chasing after his childhood sweetheart, the art student staging suicide attempts for her final project, the father looking for his lost son and, in the future,  the assassin Preest  hunting cult leader known as The Individual who he missed out on once before.

The stories amble on, slowly, and eventually the seemingly unconnected come together and there is closure for the viewer.

It’s just nothing special. Rather Meh! In fact. Acting was a little off, Meanwhile city design was nice and gothic, just a little cheap looking, and the soudtrack was just lacking.

Meh! Rating 6/10

District 9

Awesome, but ever so slightly flawed. Does that even make sense?

Neill Blomkamp has seen a few alien films in his time, and this is a tribute to them all. But then, it is also something completely new and fresh. An exhilarating ride that had me riveted from the start until the credits rolled.

Told using fly on the wall techniques, as well as spliced in security camera footage, District 9 tells the story of genuine ‘illegal’ aliens, stranded in a city and a country that does not want them.

Set in South Africa any one on a number of parallel could be drawn, yet the film does not go down that path. A cast of unknowns, who I believe ad-libbed most of the dialogue, and the style of filming make this a beautiful piece of cinema.

There are special effects aplenty, although at only $30million this was an extremely cheap film by today’s standards, but it is all done so well you don’t even notice, it just belnds as if this was real. For 90 odd minutes you believe it is.

The central story is of Wikus, a bureaucrat  working for a corrupt agency, who while acting out his orders of clearing out District 9  to move the aliens to a ‘better’ home, is accidently infected with alien DNA.

This sparks off both a physical and emotional metamorphosis as the man transforms from a horrible cold blooded enemy of the aliens into an almost freedom fighter for his once antagonist, or resistance leader as it were.

The set pieces are spectacular.  I could go into detail, but you need to see it for yourself. If you have seen Bad Taste (Peter Jackson produced this) or the Fly, you kind of know what sort of thing to expect.

My only gripe and it is not that big, but still lingers in the air is this. The film is all handy cam, like news footage you see every day from war zones or other places in plight. Interspersed with this is surveillance cam footage, obviously filling in the blanks were the ‘documentary’ team could not go. However sometimes there are just other filmed scenes where there is no explanation. There should be no camera there but we see what is going on. As I said, not a biggy, but does jar slightly when watching.

In conclusion, one of the most refreshing sci-fi films I have seen in a long time. Think I have to go and see it again now.

Meh! Rating: 9/10

 

Bruno

It has taken me a while to write this review, and there is a very good reason for it.

While watching Bruno I really did not get into it. I laughed only a handful of times and there were no tears streaming down my face. If anything the film was a diversion from other things; the washing up in the kitchen sink, the housework that needed doing, etc.

However, the next day my wife asked me about the film. I started by telling her how ‘Meh’ the film had been. Then I started telling her some of the situations that ‘Bruno’, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, found himself in. I say found, but it was obviously (over) engineered that way.

And, do you know what, I actually found it funny. I was laughing more telling my wife about the film, than when I was watching it. The rest of the day, as I thought back over the film, I found myself chuckling to myself further. How strange.

It is all very hit and miss.  The story, which loosely holds the film together, centres around Bruno losing his job  as host of a ‘hip’ Austrian TV show, and embarking on a mission to become as big a star as he can in Hollywood. What it actually comes down do is a load of skits, mainly about gay sex, getting more and more outrages as the film progresses.

The film is not as good as Borat, and in my opinion, that was nowhere near as good as his previous television shows, but, as I said, it beats housework.

Meh! rating: 6/10