Rev Stan's film blog

Rev Stan's film list 2010

*Sound of Stan jumping on the bandwagon* Well it is fun to look back particularly when you've seen a lot of films, and I have - 80 this year (82 with repeat visits).  

This year was a first, in one sense, I opened the chocolate box that is the London Film Festival and had a sneaky taste, and as a result there are a few films I've seen that aren't released until 2011 and it doesn't feel right including them so they have their own category.

The top 10 (in viewing date order)

The Road

Harrowing, yet heartening, still remember it despite it being nearly a year ago since I saw it.

A Single Man

A reminder that Colin Firth's acting talent stretches to more than flimsy rom-com's. The rest of the cast was excellent too and with fashion designer Tom Ford at the helm it also has to get a special mention for probably being the best dressed film of 2010. I was moved to tears and had to sit through the entire credits just to compose myself.

Kick Ass

Just to prove I don't just like weepies and arties, loved this comic book film for being really good fun, it's sense of humour and having a young girl as it's heroine, indeed a young girl who 'kicks ass'. Jason Solomon of the Guardian/Observer has it on his turkey list because he doesn't like nerdy superheroes. Nerdy done this way is absolutely fine with me.

Skeletons

2010 has been a good year for indy, low budget movies and this one I particularly loved for its surreal comedy. It was quirky, funny and a refreshingly imaginative story all packaged up in a well-made, on a shoe-string budget film.

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.

(I) Love (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Other Drugs

Saw this at a preview screening at the lovely Clapham Picture House last Sunday and once again Mr Gyllenhaal made me giggle like a love-struck 14-year-old.

He's still looking buff, not quite as pumped up as he did in Prince of Persia but perfect for a bit of bod exposure, of which there is plenty in this rom-com. He plays Jamie, a pharmaceutical company sales rep and womaniser who could charm his way into a nun's habit.

But of course this is a rom-com so there has to be a dose of cliche and he meets his match in the form of Maggie (Anne Hathaway) who sees through his charm. Of course Jamie falls for Maggie (and that isn't a spoiler because it's in the trailer, which is linked below) but the twist is that she suffers from early onset Parkinson's Disease.

The first half of the film has the majority of the laughs the second spends more time tugging at the heart strings as Jamie struggles to come to terms with Maggie's incurable illness and Maggie is at first mistrustful of his motives for wanting to be with her and then reluctant to 'trap' him into a future caring for her as her illness progresses.

OK so it's not going to win any Oscar's like Gyllenhaal and Hathaway's last outing together, Brokeback Mountain but it is a funny and charming popcorn movie and Jake is gorgeous *sighs*.  It gets four stars from me.

Obviously not everyone is as smitten with Mr G as I am, on Rotten Tomatoes UK it's aggregated 48% from 130 reviews. On Metacritic it's fared a little better and is rated at 55%

You can sigh at Jake in the trailer here

Is there no end to Ben Whishaw's talent?

Just bought the soundtrack for The Tempest (well I've got to have something to keep me going for the next three months) and Mr W sings on two tracks. Yes, he sings too and he doesn't sound half bad either.

Am loving mixture of rocky guitars and more traditional classical on the soundtrack. It's very atmospheric.

 

Download 09 Where the Bee Sucks

 

Download 04 Full Fathom Five

For fellow sad The Tempest fans, the films facebook page seems to have an interesting stream of pics and videos to whet your appetite (if you haven't seen it yet) or remind you of it (if you have).

 

 

 

Extreme rambling: The Way Back

Peter Weir doesn't shy away from making films of epic content and scale. This one sees him tackle the true story of a group of prisoners who escaped from a Siberian gulag in 1940, walking their way to freedom across 3,000 miles of the harshes environments.

The rag-tag group is made up in principle by Russian thief Valka (Colin Farrell), Pole Janusz (Jim Sturgess) convicted for anti-Stalinist behaviour on the basis of his wife's forced testamony and American Mr Smith (Ed Harris) who travelled to Moscow to find work during he US depression and is imprisoned for being a foreigner. They are joined en route by orphan Irena (Saoirse Ronan).

The Way Back isn't so much a road movie as a hiking movie - extreme rambling if you like. The problem is that once you've stripped out the very few encounters they have en route (the trailer does make it look a bit more action packed than it actually is, I'm afraid) and some character banter it is essentially about endurance and survival.

Nothing necessarily wrong with that. Weir does well to make the two hours stride along relatively confidentally although there were a couple of times when the pace did nearly slow to a blister-induced hobble. But I couldn't help feeling that it lacked the emotional depth of some of his other work.

The group spend so much time together in isolation and yet I never really felt like I got to know them. Yes there are some moving moments demonstrating the bond that forms but it nonetheless feels a little light on emotional engagement.

Acting against blizzards, baking desert heat and vast mountain ranges* is a feat in itself and there were some notable performances from Sturgess and Ronan in particular. Indeed the latter is carving out quite an illustrious career path for herself if she carries on developing her craft in such a way.

One for Lord of Rings Fans

I'm a bit of a Lord of the Rings fan (I don't dress up) and came across this fab YouTube clip on fan site TheOneRing.net. It's shot at a LOTR screen-a-thon and hobbit feast. Basically the idea is that the film watchers get fed a hobbit food-themed menu around the films. First breakfast, second breakfast etc, you get the idea.

Anyway none of that is really important because Elijah Wood stops by and ends up doing a Q&A. I love the way fan's ask the far more interesting questions and get far better answers than journalists.

It's confirmed in my mind that I definitely need to do my own LOTR-a-thon over Christmas, it's been a while since I saw them...

 

Somewhere there is a point

There is always a danger when you make a film about how dull someones life is that it might backfire. Sofia Coppola's latest offering Somewhere follows Hollywood star Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) when he is betwixt films and has little to do other than the occasional bit of promotional work and fittings for his next project.

Marco sleeps, smokes, drinks, goes out for coffee by himself, orders take aways and pole dancers, has sex with random women and is a guest at parties in his own apartment thrown by his friends. Indeed he seems like a guest star in his own life most of the time, a commodity of fame to be traded and discarded.

Thrown into this mix is spell looking after his 11 year old daughter Chloe (Elle Fanning) which forces him to re-examine his life.

Thing about Somewhere is that I can't quite make my mind up about it. I teetered on the edge of getting bored only once which is testament to Coppola's writing/directing skills considering the subject matter and it's slow pace.

The acting is sound, it is well made, the core relationship between father and daughter is endearing and there are some great amusing moments which expose the ridiculousness of celebrity and our obsession with it. But is this the point? 

Are we supposed to feel sorry for Marco because his life isn't as wonderful as we imagine a Hollywood's actors life to be; that he is a lonely human being underneath it all? Is it about exposing an actors life as being just as mundane as our own mere mortal lives?

I had a problem empathising with Johnny Marco in a 'you choose to live like that' way. Somewhere isn't a bad film, far from it. It is subtlely done, has some lovely moments and it's given me much material to debate since I saw it last weekend but I just can't rave about it. It gets three stars from me.

Rotten Tomatoes UK gives it 76% from 38 reviews at the moment. Metacritic gives it 57% from seven reviews so far.

 

Ben Whishaw/Helen Mirren clip from The Tempest

You know this is going to go on until well into March next year don't you? (Oh and here's a link to the official website. Lots of dramatic music but not much else really)

 

Narnia: Voyage of the Yawn Treader

You have to feel a little bit sorry for this third instalment in the Chronicles of Narnia coming out when Harry Potter 7a (as they like to call it on Wittertainment) is still riding high in the movie charts. Next to the bespectacled wizard, CS Lewis' stories show their age although the influence on JK Rowlings books is stark.

Both carry at their heart the battle between good and evil; the problem with Narnia, and in particularly the Dawn Treader, is that the story comes across as overly moralistic and the religious metaphors lack any subtlety.

A further problem with Dawn Treader is that its central story thread just feels, well a little lacklustre. In the Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe there was the excitement of discovering Narnia and freeing it from the icy grip of the White Witch. Prince Caspian had a wronged handsome prince fighting to get what was rightfully his back.

The story of Dawn Treader sees some characters we've never heard about before have disappeared into the mist. Literally. So Prince Caspian and the two youngest Pevensie children, Edmund and Lucy, accompanied by a reluctant cousin Eustace decide to go and find them.

What follows is a predictable and linnear narrative. When we are told that the mist will bring to the fore a person's darkest fears (inspiration for deatheaters anyone?) you can easily tick off the list of the effects it is going to have on each of the central characters. That Eustace starts out as an obnoxious, albeit quite an amusing, brat and will have some sort of epiphany turning him into a hero too is obvious.

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.