Rev Stan's film blog

Chronicle - the other film I've liked recently

I've been through a run of 'meh' films recently (and I've also been very lax at writing up the reviews which I'm in the process of addressing) but this is one of two goodies - the other was the Woman in Black.

It's another low budget sci-fi about three high school kids, naturally one is the bullied outcast, who discover  they have special powers after an encounter with a mysterious power source.  They have to learn how to use their new powers and explore their different skills, moving large objects, making things float, flying, that sort of thing, having a bit of fun along the way. 

But soon mistakes are made and they begin to question what is right and what is wrong to use their new found skills for.

And I really liked it. It is very human in its approach. If you found out you could move a car just by thinking about it you so would move the car a woman had just parked at the supermarket and then wait for her reaction when she returned to find it was in a different bay.

Yes there is a message there about with great power comes great responsibility but it doesn't feel over-egged and is nicely handled. And OK the special effects aren't the best in the world but they are more than adequate creating some quite dramatic set pieces.

Chronicle is a good fun, 90 minute movie. Hurray for low budget, independent film I say.

It's getting 70% from me, over on IMDB it's got 75% and Metacritic score of 69%. While on Rotten Tomatoes it has 84% and 76% from audiences.

 

The last two reviews of 2011: Another Earth and Moneyball

Slight cheat, two reviews in one but I'm eager to get my 2011 best of/worst of compiled as well as decide on my StOscars which I can't do until these are written, so here goes.

Another Earth

Low budget sci-fi movie about a high school student Rhoda (Brit Marling) who in a tragic car accident kills composer John Burrough's wife and child (William Mapother). On the same night a duplicate earth is discovered. When Rhoda comes out of prison, haunted by the consequences of her actions she sets about trying make amends while wondering if the other her, on the second earth, has made the same mistakes - something she might soon find out.

Like the low budget sci-fi movies I've enjoyed over the last 18 months it is more of a character piece than about the science and as such it works really well although I do wonder if the film wouldn't work just as well without the second earth.

Rhoda doesn't say much leaving the audience to fill the gaps which I like. She is at time a difficult character to like and I also liked that ambiguity, the humanness of her. 

It doesn't have a conclusive ending and raises a lot of questions that are unanswerable which some might find unsatisfying but I didn't. It's certainly a film that stays with you afterwards.

A nicely gentle, thought provoking film I'm going to give it 63%. On IMDb it's got 70% with a Metacritic scores of 66%. On Rotten Tomatoes there is no consensus from critics but 71% of visitors to have rated it 3.5 stars or higher.

Moneyball

Only the fact that Aaron Sorkin co-wrote the screenplay got me in front of this baseball movie that and the fact that critic Mark Kermode said it wasn't really about baseball but about statistics.

I know nothing and care nothing for baseball and yes it is more about statistics, money and the politics behind the game. And there is nothing wrong with it but I just can't muster much enthusiasm for it. The script, as you can imagine, is excellent, it was well acted and engaging enough for the duration but ultimately I didn't really care enough. 

I'm going to give it 55%, on IMDb it's got 78% and a Metacritic score of 87%. On Rotten Tomatoes it's got a critics rating of 95% and 88% of visitors gave it 3.5 stars or more. Just not one for me then.

 

And so that concludes my film reviews for 2011, now for the best and worst of's....

 

I Need to Write About Kevin

Must have seen the trailer for We Need to Talk About Kevin about half a dozen times over recent cinema visits but unlike Melancholia it just heightened my anticipation and, by the numbers that were in the early bird screening today, I wasn't alone.

It's based on the novel by Lionel Shriver about a mother coming to terms with an appalling act of violence carried out by her son and questioning her part in shaping him into a someone capable of such an act.

The story flits backwards and forwards from before Kevin's conception to his mother visiting him in prison putting the pieces together that lead up to the dispicable act.

From the opening sequence where Eva (Tilda Swinton) is enjoying a festival in France which involves everyone smothering themselves in tomatoes to scraping off the first lot of paint smeared on her house post Kevin's trial, red becomes a powerful motif. It is an ambiguous colour symbolic of both love and horror and summing up nicely Eva's feeling for her son from his birth.

Dimensions - worth selling the house for?

When the writer and director stand up and say they sold their house in order to make the film you are about to watch there is a big part of you hoping that it is good. And they - Antony Neely and Sloane U'Ren - did just that ahead of the cast and crew screening of their film Dimensions yesterday at the BFI.

It is a romantic sci-fi set in 1920s/1930s Cambridge about a boy, Stephen, who after an encounter with a professor becomes interested in time travel. A tragic incident results in Stephen growing up obsessed with going back in time.

And there is much to be admired in Neely and U'Ren's endeavour. Both have a lot of experience in film and television, Neely in composing and U'Ren as an art director and it is these areas that really shine in Dimensions. It is beautiful both in its settings, costumes and how it is shot. Neely isn't listed as the composer but the music is certainly atmospheric.

It's weakness is, however, its script. The dialogue feels awkward and cliched. While the plot's premise is an interesting one there are a some scenes which seem forced in order to contrive the plot and there are also some plot holes.

There are some good performances from the younger cast and Henry Lloyd Hughes does a reasonable job as the grown up Stephen but there are also some stiff performances and often the extras in background look staged.

Parts of the film feels like they lack confidence while others feel experienced and accomplished.

Dimensions was certainly a brave venture for a first movie and I'm not sure Neely and U'Ren pulled it off which is a real shame because I so much wanted to like it.

You can find the Dimensions trailer here and below is a slide show of production shots.

 

A new Dimensions for Stan (or the first invite to a film screening)

This is a first for me. I've been invited to a screening of a new film. It's a indie Brit flick called Dimensions and the trailer looks rather interesting.

The screening I'm going to is also the cast and crew screening - another first. Looks like it's going to be an interesting afternoon.

 

Couple of Colin Morgan related vids: Parked Trailer and Island interview

A trailer has appeared for Colin's new film Parked which is released in the UK on October 14. Looks like another interesting choice from Mr M but I'm starting to think I'd really like to see him play something a little more edgy, a character with less of a smile.

Can I also just say what a master of accents he's becoming.

 

And then there is this wee interview he did at the Glasgow Film Festival where Island premiered earlier this year. Interesting to hear him talking about how, as a drama student, he used to work at the very same cinema his film was being shown.

Glasgow Film Festival 2011 Colin Morgan on Island by justcolinmorgan 

A Monsters hit

If you take what Warner Bros spent on broomsticks for Harry Potter 7, slightly more than double it and you have the entire film budget for Gareth Edwards' Monsters. Which when you watch the film is gobsmaking.

A low budget monster flick should by all accounts be cliched, cheesy, amateurish and well a bit dodgy but this one isn't. The story is set six years after samples of alien life were accidentally dumped in northern Mexico and subsequently grew up into fully fledged alien life forms. The area has been quarantined, huges walls built and there is a growing battle to contain them.

Magazine photographer Andrew Caulder is in Mexico trying to get the one shot that will earn him lot of cash. However, he is tasked with getting Samantha, the tourist daughter of his publishing house boss back from Mexico after an incident with an escaped alien leaves her slightly injured.

On paper it appears predictable but there are several things that raise this film above and beyond. First is its reportage style which gives it an edge of realism. OK so the idea of aliens on earth is fantastical but this movie feels like it could be real. Edwards shot everything on location, often without getting permission first, drafting in people that happened to be around to make up the extra characters.

Of Gods and Men impressed Cannes but did it impress Stan?

Xavier Beauvois's film is based on the true story of a group of aging French monks kidnapped from their monastery in the Atlas mountains in Algeria by terrorists in 1996.

Much of the film follows the day to day life of the monks growing food, tending their bees, providing medical care and clothing for the local village as well as writing and reading for the illiterate. And of course praying, reading and debating the bible and looking out for each other.

It is a peaceful and mutually respectful co-existence between Catholic monks and the local muslim community. There is no scandal, drama, tension or jealously between the monks themselves or with the village. It is a harsh environment and they help each other. 

They take part in community debates and decision making and have friends there who invite them to their family celebrations.

It is a slow pace of life but the gathering threat of the renegade army, while doing nothing to the speed with which duties are performed, disturbs their inner peace.

The monks debate with the village council whether they should flee the impending danger or stay and face almost certain death at the hands of the terrorists. The villagers want them to stay: 'you are the branch and we are the birds' says one.

It is the debate within themselves that is the more difficult one. Each has to make their own decision as to whether to stay or go. Faith is tested in some while in others it is the strength they need.

Cherry Tree Lane

There is something confusing about Brit flick Cherry Tree Lane and it isn't the plot. That is simple enough: Middle class couple eating dinner in their nice home, son is out at football, doorbell rings and they are attacked and held captive by a group of their son's acquaintances who await his return to enact revenge for 'grassing'.

The confusion comes because I don't understand what Paul Andrew Williams really wants to convey with this film.

It has some quite artistic cinematography. All very nice but lingering extreme close ups, shot with minimal depth of field, don't add anything when the film merely skims the surface of the story, foregoing any attempt to get beneath the skin of the characters or plot.

The opening scene hints that there is discord between the parents but this is never explained, explored or even revisited.

The son's misdemeanour, that earns the wrath of this group of teens, isn't explained either. And we learn little about the hoodies to challenge perceptions hints of back story are fleeting and left unexplored.

Without knowing the characters' motives or the consequences of their action you are left with something that is supposed to be a tense thriller but just frustrates.

Hurrah for low budget movies like Skeletons

Every now and again a film comes along that proves that you don't need mega bucks to make an imaginative and entertaining film. Nick Whitfield's Skeletons is such a film offering a simply-shot, surreal and engaging comedy that has echoes of Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind done in the style of Withnail and I.

The two central characters Bennett and Davis are exorcists but not in the traditional sense. Watched over by The Colonel (Jason Isaacs) they are hired to exorcise skeletons from closets. Donning protective aprons and goggles, they harness special powers, channeled through some shiny stones and enter the closet to erase the embarrassing little secrets by inhabiting them.

Each has his own weakness which could affect their future career in the skeleton exorcising business. Davis likes to be a voyeur of his own memories in his spare time which could corrupt his powers and Bennett always feels some sort of obligation to the people whose secrets have been exposed, finding it difficult to walk away when the job is done.

Their strengths and weaknesses are put to the test when asked to examine the skeletons in the closet of a husband missing from his family for eight years. To say more would spoil it but overall the film is laugh out loud funny with some lovely touching moments. 

Skeletons is definitely a classic British film in the making. It's only got a limited release but it would be a shame if more people didn't see it.

Other people's views

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian gave it four stars describing it as a both odd and funny but overall a breath of fresh air.

Film Four website gave it four stars concluding: "This bleakly comic high-concept psychodrama about family, memory and grief defies easy categorisation or summary - but missing it would be your loss."

Rotten Tomatoes UK gave it 77%