He Was A Quiet Man

This superb film completely passed me by until I caught a trailer for it on another disc. The two minute long, condensed version made it look quirky, imaginative and original and I must admit that I didn't recognise Christian Slater before his name came up on screen. Welcome to my rental list.

If there's one fault with the way I discovered this it's that the trailer gave away a little bit too much of the plot. It showed quite a strong twist and left me worried that I'd seen the best part of the film before I even had the full version in my hands, but this turned out not to be the case. The plot is intricate and far from being a one trick pony.

Slater expertly plays the part of some kind of cross between Milton Waddams and Edward Norton's nameless Fight Club character, portraying a frustrated office worker, gradually being driven out of his mind by the tedium of his job and the pettiness of his colleagues. When he finally reaches the point of no return, events conspire to take everything out of his control, yet fate finally delivers him a winning hand. Slater gets the girl (Elisha Cuthbert proving she can act) and gets his life back on track... but we're only five minutes into the film.

This seems to have all the trappings of a cult movie. It doesn't appear to have had a massive budget, but it tells a complex story in a contained manner. The characters are interesting and it's unpredictable. I can't honestly find anything to dislike.

Recommended viewing.

He Was A Quiet Man

The Black Dahlia

What started off being slightly confusing soon settled into an interesting film that reminded me of L.A. Confidential in it's setting, period, storytelling and style. A high compliment indeed. The cast (Aaron Eckhart, Josh Hartnett and Scarlett Johansonn) were great throughout and the plot quite intriguing. I believe it was even loosely based on a real murder case from the early days of Hollywood.

I really enjoyed it, buy sadly only for about the first three quarters of the movie. There came a point, when the mystery began to unravel and things started getting 'explained', at which point I somehow lost all hope for a satisfactory ending. I think it was because they tried to make everything just a bit cleverer and more intricate than was really credible and this broke my attachment to the characters. By the end I found it hard to care what they would come up with next.

There was a fairly memorable head smash that reminded me of some kind of reverse Hot Fuzz. I also wonder if the love triangle was only really interesting because one corner was Scarlett Johansson.

The Black Dahlia

The Bucket List

Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are two fantastically experienced Hollywood actors who have played in genuinely powerful films over the years. Some of the highest rated movies of all time come with one of these two greats on the credits, yet more recently their success has also led them both down the road of occasional mediocrity.

Between them they've played God, Satan, presidents, psychos, wise old men and wanton womanisers, but in The Bucket List, they're just a couple of old guys dying of cancer. Based on that alone, I was already prepared for this to be a gigantic cheese-fest, laden with sentiment and dripping with tears. I didn't expect to be reaching for the tissues myself, moved to dab away a little at my moistened peepers, more I thought the snivelling would be on screen with the audience only cringing.

It just goes to show what I know, I suppose.

The Bucket List turned out to be an entirely watchable affair. Nicholson's role as billionaire suits him eminently and Morgan's down to earth mechanic fit him like an old glove. The two of them went through the buddy movie motions, as an unlikely couple (I can't bring myself to say 'Odd Couple' here - it wasn't that good) brought together by circumstances to discover a friendship they wouldn't have suspected. They write a list of things they want to do before they die and luckily money's no object, so they go around ticking them off. Even cancer doesn't seem that bad if you can still climb pyramids, so don't expect an unutterably horrific, gut wrenchingly painful, realistic portrayal of the effects of the disease. This is a movie about watching the guys doing fun stuff together and discovering a little bit about themselves along the way.

Where it lacks depth it manages warmth and where it lacks invention the leads supply charisma. By the end I wasn't moved, but I was entertained and that in itself was more than I had bargained for.

Worth a look.

The Bucket List

Viking: Battle For Asgard

Imagine a game like Fable 2, then strip away the finesse, the charm and the production values. Remove the attention to detail in the graphics and the subtlety of the sound-scape. Throw out the obvious time spent on the magical effects and send the decent voice talent home. Then fire the QA team. In other words, try to picture how Fable 2 may have looked if it had been developed by a team who had no passion, no budget and no resources.

Viking: Battle for Asgard gives the impression of having aimed for that level and run out of time before they got there.

Viking: Battle For Asgard

The Orphanage "El Orfanato"

I almost don't know what to say about The Orphanage, but I'll give it a go.

This Spanish movie, more of a chiller than a horror film, tells the story of a woman who brings her young family to live in the orphanage she grew up in. Her plan is to re-open the place with the hope of providing a loving environment for a new generation of orphans. All seems to be going well for them as they prepare the place, but their adopted son begins to suffer as he's left to compete for their attention. He starts to spend more and more time playing with his invisible friends and his seriousness about them starts to worry the adults.

So far, so good. The adults, played by Belén Rueda and Fernando Cayo, are both convincing enough and their son Simón, played by Roger Príncep, is credible. The scene is set for a decent bit of spooky cinema...

...and that's when it all gets so bog standard that you want to sigh. Let's have a little list of horror clichés that they manage to fit in:

• Child with sack over head - check
  
• Child that seems a bit too serious - check
  
• Playground roundabout that turns on its own - check
  
• Nobody taking the main character's concerns seriously - check
  
• Nasty old lady who keeps turning up - check
  
• Empty old house with plenty of dark corners - check
  
• Paranormal investigators - check
  
• Creepy dolls that no child would ever want to play with - check
  
• Things that go bump in the night - check
  

I could go on all day, but I am sure the point's been made. The Orphanage doesn't shy away from re-using any tired old tricks or symbolism so over-used that it's become boring. OK, the story keeps going and events that seemed pointless during the film are tidied up neatly by the end. In fact, it did have some good twists and turns, but they were swamped by the clichés and when the credits rolled I couldn't help thinking the plot had gone on for about ten minutes too long or that I wouldn't be recommending it to anyone I liked.

Overall: meh.

The Orphanage

A Good Year

Here you can find Russell Crowe in his least demanding role ever. His character is a banker in The City, but he spent many a summer in his uncle's Provence château and vineyard, as a nipper. When his uncle dies, our lead inherits them and heads off to oversee their sale.

I would normally avoid risking spoiling the plot, but here there really isn't much of one. Let's just say that if you can't guess what happens from what I have already mentioned, then you've probably never seen a film and you will love the experience. For everyone else, you just need to know that while there's not really anything wrong with A Good Year, there's nothing particularly profound about it either. In fact, I think it's fair to say its best aspect is the beautiful location, which would be much more enjoyable to visit than to watch.

A Good Year. A pleasant, yet forgettable film.

A Good Year

10,000 B.C.

This film gets terrible reviews from all angles and it's easy to see why, although I believe some of the criticism is unfair in it's approach. For example, when our rag tag team of mountain folk cross the desert and find a people harnessing wooly mammoths to build pyramids, you shouldn't complain that it's historically inaccurate, you should realise that the film is a work of fantasy fiction.

Don't criticise it for portraying an unrealistic placement of tundra-dwelling behemoths on a continent they never inhabited, alongside an apparently Ancient Egyptian civilisation pottering around in the sand seven thousand years too early.

Instead, criticise it for its awful script, its pedestrian acting, its cheesy narration from Omar Sharif or its feeble story. Criticise it for its schoolboy narrative, its patronizing prejudices and its useless cast. There's so much more wrong about this film than it's inclusion of scientific and historical flaws.

It's definitely one to miss, but let's at least be fair and agree that this is because they made a terrible mess of an appealing idea. Let's admit we like the concept of returning to a theme that cinema has left alone for decades, with the hope of seeing modern techniques breath new life into the genre.

Let's just admit that the reason this film fails is because the people who made it screwed it all up. Not because there weren't many giant, man-eating, dodo-like predators knocking around in Ancient Egypt.

10,000 B.C.