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....

 

Super Super 8

I'm the Goonies/ET generation so Super 8 is right up my street being a bit of a cross between the two.

The story is set in 1979 small town Ohio and centres on a group of kids who are trying to make their own zombie movie. While filming late one night they witness a train crash after which strange things start happening. Using the train wreck and the clear up by the military as a backdrop they try to finish their film and investigate what is going on.

So that's the action, thrill stuff. The train crash is quite spectacular and there are some real jump out of your skin moments later on.

But then there is a sub plot which adds the heart to the film. Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) has recently lost his mother and has a strained relationship with his father. He falls for Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) who's been roped in to play the heroine of the kids' film. Alice's father has a drink problem and there is no love lost between him and Joe's father for reason's that only gradually become clear.

Kaboom: the missing link?

Kaboom didn't make me angry as bad films normally do but neither did it make me smile like a bizarre but good film should and Donnie Darko leads the way in that.

I think I'm just stunned by the ineffectual absurdity of it all. It starts out promisingly enough - albeit with a lot of gratuitous sex and nudity. Student Smith (Thomas Dekker) is bi-sexual, fancies his surf-dude room mate and has the same weird dream over and over. His best friend Stella (Haley Bennett) is a lesbian who starts going out with a woman Smith has seen before but in his dream.

On the way home from a drug and sex-fuelled night out Smith stumbles upon another woman from his dream who is being chased by men in animal masks. He tries to help her but ends up witnessing her brutal murdered.

Up to this point it's a nice level of weirdness - is Smith delusional, still under the influence of the hallucinogenic drug-laced cookie he ate or is it real?

Ready for a reboot: Tron Legacy 3D

All I can remember about the first Tron film is futuristic cars making sharp 90 degree turns and I admit that my main motive for seeing Tron Legacy is that I just fancied a pre-Christmas, mindless popcorn movie.

And at least this was made in 3D so it's not as uncomfortable as watching something retro-fitted - although I still don't see what it actually added. Tron Legacy is a visually stunning film all black and white with splashes of neon. Perhaps it's just the amateur photographer in me but I just love the reflections in all those shiny surfaces.

Anyway, like the last visually stunning, shot in 3D film I saw (Avatar) the plot is fairly slim and predictable. Digital world Tron's original creator, Kevin Flynn, disappears ones night leaving his son Sam an orphan. When the grown up Sam (Garrett Hedlund) goes to investigate the origins of a pager message from his father's now abandoned former office he inadvertently ends up inside the digital world his father created.

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.

Trailers I like at the moment

First up is Christopher Nolan's Inception. Every single time I see this trailer at the cinema I get excited about the movie. I think it's purely down to the pulse in the soundtrack - it immediately puts me on edge. And I know there have been further trailers but they don't have quite the same effect. I hope it lives up to expectation and fills that clever-concept sci-fi gap that has been left by The Matrix

And the second is the Girl Who Played with Fire. Loved the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, loved it, and am still incredulous that it is getting an American remake - learn to read subtitles people it ain't difficult!

I'm glad I found a version of the trailer which is subtitled too and doesn't have  American movie-trailer voice-over man - I'm genuinely not having a go at all things stateside - it's just that whenever I hear that voice I think it's a piss take from all the times I've heard it lampooned. Sorry the association has just stuck with me.