From a distant country

DVD review: Julia's Eyes

2012-12-21T19:13:00.000+00:00

Blind girls and unseen tormentors.

Another interesting scary movie from Spain. There’s not a lot that I have to say about it.

On a production and direction level is all very well done, Spain is still a guarantee of quality when you talk about scary movies.

Guillermo del Toro produced this movie, another guarantee of quality. It’s not Hollywood style, and level, of production, but this for many could actually be a bonus point.

For the story I have some reservations. It certainly works during the movie, a lot of ominous situations are nicely set up without having to resort to that dreadful cliché of the protagonist blindly, pun not intended, walking into obvious danger. Stuff happens, thing move along nicely and we are fed a lot of info about the evil forces at works. To sum it up, it’s very nice to follow.

The problems starts when you get to the end, after the big final revelation, and watching back it’s all so incredibly contrived, it must be the most picky and bizarre evil force ever to grace my screen…

Conclusion: A very competent thriller. It will not leave a very lasting impression afterward but certainly works on every level. Recommended viewing.

DVD review: 13 assassins

2012-12-20T09:00:00.000+00:00

A group of samurai set out to kill a sadistic lord.

This is a fairly peculiar movie. The first part is all preparations and drama, the second part is entirely occupied by an extended battle scene.

The movie is very Japanese so it can be off putting to people not used to eastern cinema.

The first part is a throwback to those classics black and white samurai flicks that maybe you glimpsed late at night. It’s fairly interesting material although it doesn’t engage a lot a modern viewer, most probably alien to the web of traditions that directed those people lives.

This is a Japan set movie from Japan by a Japanese author, Takashi Miike, so don’t expect any explanatory aside, or too much comic asides by the way. These samurais are very serious people and they don’t smile a lot.

The second bit is an incredibly lengthy battle sequence, I wasn’t joking when I said it is practically the whole second half of the movie. It’s all very well set, crafted and choreographed.

Probably I’m a true believer but I had no problem with such a lengthy battle, I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. It’s strange but the very length of the battle lends gravitas to it. It means that it is not a secondary event, like those random shoot outs in action movies. Instead it becomes a life changing event, a true moment of life and death.

Miike, regarding the action sequences, is of the “blood and guts” school so expect an incredible amount of bloods with severed body parts flying around. It’s so bloody that I’ll advise against seeing it if you are in any way easily impressed.

Conclusion: A nice old school samurai epic, the first part can be boring but the battle sequence alone is worth the price of admission. Only for katana heads anyway, certainly not recommended to the general public.

DVD review: The American

2012-12-19T09:00:00.000+00:00

A professional killer hides out in a tiny Italian Village.

The critics all loved it; it sits on top of many top ten movies of the year lists. I think you can already guess where this is going the end…

I rarely watched a more boring movie in my life. I’m not starting from the position where if there is not an explosion every 10 minutes I fall asleep. I actually enjoy more cerebral fares, but still I actually need something to be happening and somebody to relate to.

Everybody lauded the “restrained” acting by George Clooney. Now I got where they got the ideas, I understand the subtle pleasures of all the tiny signs. The revealing gestures, where the gaze goes and all that related stuff but still it all should lead to something, to somewhere. And moreover the really great restrained performances are not the impenetrable ones, are those where you can actually glimpse behind the face, those where the eyes actually tell a story.

The overall impression is of a long extended vacation. A very American view of Italian life. Yes they inserted some killing shenanigans pretending to be more “realistic” than the normal Hollywood fare even if in the end they just invented a different kind of fake “professional killer” job.

Conclusion: A pretentious movie by a pretentious director, to avoid at all costs.

DVD review: The resident

2012-12-18T09:00:00.000+00:00

A girl moves to a new flat. Sinister things start to happen.

After a long wait I’m back and the next movie on the list is “The resident”. Never saw so much misguided effort.

It’s very hard to not spoil the big concept. Suffice to say that it’s the kind of thing that sounds very scary if it would happen in real life but doesn’t translate so well filmically.

It’s not like they didn’t try. The cinematography is suitably moody thank to Guillermo Navarro, a long time collaborator of the other Guillermo, Del Toro of Hellboy fame. The movie itself is professionally done with a lot of talented actors. Hilary Swank is the damsel in distress, Jeffrey Dean Morgan the strange neighbor, there is even a cameo from Christopher Lee himself.

Yet they don’t manage to make it work. We couldn’t help but feel kinda sorry for the bad guy, probably the least threatening bad guy in recent horror history.

With this I don’t want to say that it is terrible. We waded through the running time with no effort and the concept is still interesting enough that our attention was kept awake.

Conclusion: This will probably end up in those late night reruns. Good to keep insomnia at bay at least.

DVD review: The Adjustment Bureau

2012-12-06T09:00:00.000+00:00

An upstart politician runs afoul of the forces that control destiny to save his love life.

A fair representative of the recent wave of “high concept” movie, “The Adjustment Bureau” got a splendid jumping point of a concept and some crazy visuals to accompany it.

It all starts with a Phillip Dick short story but as it often happens with those it is more of an inspiration than a straight adaptation. It’s that paranoia sensibility that translated so well in movies.

The love story bit is the main original addition by writer director George Nolfi. It’s certainly a good idea, it gives us a reason to care about the whole thing and position this movie in that awesome category, the Metaphysical Romantic movies, also known as Meta – Rom.

Matt Damon is perfect as the everyday man with the weight of the world on its shoulders, many argued that he was born to play average Joe in extraordinary circumstances. Emily Blunt as the love interest is as good as usual. She always manages to communicate some kind of intensity, even though the cheesiest lines.

The main strength, the high concept, sadly becomes the main weakness. The filmmakers clearly feared that they would lose their audience trough if the movie becomes too bizarre and so they played their hand incredibly tight.

A concept like this want to be expanded, played with, at least a little bit. Think of the final act of “Groundhog day”, that is the high mark on how an high concept movie should develop.

Not only they didn’t dare, they also filmed a very contrived finale that basically solves the entire conundrum with a literal Deus Ex Machina.

It looked so promising coming in.

Conclusion: An interesting little movie that doesn’t deliver on what was promised.

DVD review: Ip Man 2

2012-12-05T09:00:00.000+00:00

Ip Man moves to Hong Kong where he fights rival martial arts masters and corrupt officials.

Ip Man 2 builds on the foundations laid out by the first iteration delivering a better, smarter product on almost any fronts.

The story is still spot on and also, very refreshing. The quiet, unassuming, Ip Man is light years away from the conflicted heroes of Hard Boiled cinema or the slapstick protagonists of Jackie Chan fame. It’s strange how martial arts movies still have to get Ip Man as a character.

Although they swiftly produced, not one, but two copycat movies about Ip Man in less than two years. This prompted Donnie Yen, our titular Ip Man, to declare that Ip Man as a subject is over saturated therefore shelving any prospect for Ip Man 3. Please think about that Donnie! We need some more Ip Man!

Pleads to Donnie yen aside, let’s get back to the movie.

The narrative is more coherent, the story may be very tiny, it can be summarized as “Ip Man is looking for a job”, but it works well. The various characters just work, with a stand up in Sammo Hung as a rival martial arts master.

Speaking of Hung, who also choreographed the fights, the martial art in this movie is just spectacular. The mid movie fight between Hung and Yen is the material of legends, is the kind of fight that can convert a non believer into martial arts cinema.

The ending fight, although still nice, is comparatively a letdown. Maybe it resonated with the Chinese but for us westerners martial arts vs boxing isn’t that interesting.

Conclusion: A masterpiece, so good in his genre that it transcends it.

Cinema review: The Amazing Spiderman

2012-11-27T09:00:00.000+00:00

Spidey’s origin story told yet another time.

As the rest of the internet I was annoyed by the announcement, back in 2010, of this Spiderman reboot. I wasn’t at the level of the death treats throwing masses but I must admit that I declared loudly many many times that I didn’t want to see this movie.

The very idea of a reboot always annoys me. Maybe it’s a psychological thing, the subtle message “All that you watched before didn’t count because we are starting again”, the “You gonna pay to see the same story twice”, I think you got the drill.

Of course there is the argument that with enough time technology gets better, that a new era could approach the same story from a different angle, and here is where they rubbed everybody wrong.

It was like 1 week after Sam Raimi Spiderman 4 was canned that they announced the reboot. It was, for us unwashed masses of the internet, too soon.

Well, I’m happy to say that I was proven wrong. The smart heads up there at Sony Headquarter really had another take of the character.

The big trick was to focus on Peter youthness. This Peter never leaves school, neither he gets that job at the Daily Bugle, he remains an awkward teenager during the whole movie.

It works, Sam Raimi version breezed through Peter Parker life losing many nuances in the middle. This Peter Parker is a much more relatable character.

A lot of the merit of course goes to Andrew Garfield, an incredibly youth looking guy, at 29 plays believably a teenager. He and Emma Stone develop a rom com style romance that is in many ways better than the boring offerings from fully fledged rom coms. The director, Marc Webb, whose debut feature was the critically lauded “500 days of Summer” probably was also very important in this regard.

The fight and the various special effects scenes, a point where Sam Raimi’s version was groundbreaking, are also very good. All done in a very professional and engaging way.

The plot is that famous origin story so they can’t escape that feeling of déjà vu, but enough things where changed and remixed that it’s watchable even for us old comic book fans. There are many plot points that don’t hold water if watched too closely but they are all hidden fairly well so it’s not too hard to pretend they are not there.

Conclusion: An excellent superhero story able to hold the interest of the non fans.

DVD review: Red Riding Hood

2012-11-25T09:00:00.000+00:00

Little Red Riding Hood, now in a teenager version.

The story you know it roughly. What they changed is, at least on a surface level, not that bad.

There is something of Ten Little Indians now, people keep dying in Red Riding Hood village and the problem is guessing who the bad werewolf is.

A suitable amount of stuff happens, some blood get spilled, Gary Oldman himself makes an apparition as a Van Helsing style character, of course in this case is a Werewolf Hunter and not a Vampire Hunter but factually is the same.

The visuals are actually not too bad. I commend the style of the famous red hood. Although the CGI of the wolves is a terrible miss the rest of the setting is nicely done and shoot with a keen eye on the light.

Also every moment Gary Oldman is on the screen the movie switches gear because he is that awesome.

Amanda Seyfried is the titular protagonist. She doesn’t stretch a lot but this is the kind of role that she was born to play. She looks the part and she played similar characters so many times that she is now effortless in this kind of role.

Sadly we live in the post twilight era; they even got the director of the original Twilight, Catherine Hardwicke. So the usual undertone of “Werewolves are supposed to be very sexy” is overbearing. A very big chunk of the movie is spent with stolen glances, sexual innuendos, attractive guys with their chest bare etc.

Maybe if you are a Twilight fan you’ll love this stuff. Personally I have nothing against Twilight but I can’t bear supernatural teen romance, is so off putting.

Conclusion: The core of the movie is terrible and cliché but there is enough meat on the side to satisfy the most ardent twilight hater. Also there is Gary Oldman himself, what else do you need?

DVD review: Season of the Witch

2012-11-24T09:00:00.000+00:00

A couple of knights have to transport a witch.

A stunningly unoriginal story, all the characters are stereotypes and cliché, the setting is so familiar that at first sight you’ll think you have already seen this movie while the effects are so classical that probably some of those where rejected from an old episode of Xena Warrior Princess.

It’s baffling, but certainly good for the writer, that the original script, made in 2000 by Bragi F. Schut according to Wikipedia, was won by MGM after a bidding war and that it was made only now, one year after the very similar, Sean Bean starring, Black Death, only because of the financial woes of that studio.

Yet another of those “Movies that Nic Cage is doing because his accountant stole a lot of money” it stars the aforementioned Nic Cage and Ron Perlman, of Hellboy and a thousand B movies fame. Maybe it’s up to their personal charm but this movie that notionally shouldn’t work somehow clicks and becomes even engaging.

The much maligned Nic Cage is a great actor but as other movie demonstrated he can’t elevate terrible properties all by himself. Here luckily with the help of Ron Perlman he constitutes a terrific couple. Their easy chemistry and their jovial banter keep afloat a movie all by itself.

Don’t expect any surprise or any detounement, just a somewhat old western style medieval fantasy. Exactly like those old John Wayne movies it’s all clear cut, black and white, and old cowboys, templars here, ride along trying to right a very wrong world.

Conclusion: A surprisingly enjoyable fantasy, still not very recommended if you can’t bear some chainmail and sword fighting.

Book review: The Descent of Anansi

2012-11-23T09:00:00.000+00:00

The spaceship Anansi vital mission to earth is hindered by the schemes of a rival corporation.

As is often the case with Larry Niven stories this one got some wonderful and amazing scifi concepts but struggle with the rest.

The setting is the near future, the beginning of the colonization of space. Everything is believable and a rational extrapolation of the possible future.

The famous weak point of Larry Niven stories resurface here. The characters are all really weak and it’s very hard to care about them. Their relationships are bluntly spelled out with the same style normally used in a travel guide. At the core of everything there is possibly the most awkward love triangle ever.

In practical terms this means that for the first half of the novel is kinda hard to get into the various events. Too much time is spent on people that we don’t like but then Niven plotting get into gear.

An incident of purely Scifi nature happens and the various characters stop acting like they were living in a remake of “The bold and the beautiful” and start acting to solve stuff.

This is Niven at his best. The problem is interesting, the solution even more interesting and very original. The only problem here is that it’s complicated and fairly hard to visualize stuff.

Conclusion: Hard Scifi people will love it but even they will have an hard time with all the pointless characters.

DVD review: The Ward

2012-11-22T09:00:00.000+00:00

In an all female Psychiatric ward something is killing the inmates.

After a ten years hiatus John Carpenter returns to filmmaking. His career got a turn for the worse in the 90s when he seemed unable to make movies that connected to modern audiences; it was like he was stuck into that seminal era during the late 70s and early 80s that made him so famous.

Part of the problems that plagued his late movies are present also in this one, albeit in a reduced form.

As all Carpenter movies this is something of a B movie. Not a bad thing per se but as many experimented making a modern B movie is no mean feat. It’s nice to be rediscovered 20 years later but not really worth it when you are looking for financing.

As a whole the movie works. The plot is that classical crazy asylum tale where so much is hidden behind the surface. To me it was all a little bit obvious but maybe I watched too many examples of a genre that doesn’t have that many possible permutations.

The actual shoot and effect work is a little bit underwhelming. The monster looks and feels very cheap, like one of those b movie monsters from the 70s actually. The various “thrilling scenes” are nicely done but again with a very retro feeling.

It’s a smart move to retread to what you know best but overall this effort feels undercooked and not very inspired.

Conclusion: A Carpenter movie for Carpenter fans, he even put his name on the title.

DVD review: Rango

2012-11-21T09:00:00.000+00:00

Rango, a pet chameleon, ends up in a western style town.

This movie, according to the people who made it, is an attempt to do a western style animated feature, just a little bit adult oriented. The end result is an odd affair which earned rave reviews and an Oscar.

First, as it all too often happens with those reviews, they are mainly made by professional, or at least people deeply invested into moviedom. The problem with that is that so called “movie’s movies” tend to aggregate much better reviews than simpler affairs.

Rango certainly is a movie for movie fans. It is littered with movie citations and the whole structure liberally rips off the Dollar trilogy of Eastwood fame mixing it up with non sequitur, animal puns and LSD inspired spiritual trips.

Is this better than classical animated fare or at least more profound? Not really but is at least as good as that.

In the end what they made is a much quirkier than usual product, with a distinct independent cinema atmosphere.

The animations are made by ILM, Industrial Light and Magic, their first fully animated feature, with the direction in the competent hands of Gore Verbinski. It’s all very competent stuff, but honestly they still need a little bit to get to the level of the giants of animation.

Conclusion: An interesting experiment, recommended to adult fans of animation. The kids I fear want get most of the stuff.

DVD review: Drive Angry

2012-11-20T09:00:00.000+00:00

To stop a satanic cult a guy literally comes back from the dead.

One of the infamous wave of b movies that Nic Cage had to do to pay his tax problems “Drive Angry”, like most of his brethrens, is not really that bad and can’t really be accused of being dishonest. It does what it says on the tin, a lot of drive angry and a lot of other verbs angry, mainly shooting angry.

Nic Cage role, the aptly named John Milton, is a character as thin as cardboard, not even Cage manages to sell him wholeheartedly. There is the classic all American Blonde Babe, played by Amber Heard, who of course is very handy with guns and fast muscle cars. Then we have the shady and slimy cult leader.

It’s not really an original movie but of course that’s the point. B Movies were never that original, and of course they weren’t that good either. That’s a reason most of that stuff is relegated to the back shelves.

So as a B movie how does it fare? Quite well actually. There are a couple of scenes that are really insane and the rhythm is good, is not a boring experience.

The main problem is that they got the insanity level right only on a few occasions. The rest of the time it can be entertaining but it doesn’t deliver on the level of over the top action that the title promised. It’s like one of those comedies where the jokes aren’t enough, nice but in the end not satisfying.

Conclusion: If the title sparks your interest have a look but don’t expect too much.

Cinema Review: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

2012-11-19T09:00:00.000+00:00

The title is all that you need to know about this movie.

The really daft premise, coming from Seth Graham Smith who sold millions of copies writing “Pride & prejudice & zombies” so maybe he is into something, it’s the real deal breaker here.

Maybe there is a way to develop it sensibly and coherently but it never happened here, instead we got an incredibly dumb plot which not only is completely unrelated to any sensible history of the period, is also completely missing any internal coherence.

Maybe it’s because I know a thing or two about history but normally I don’t care too much about historical accuracy. Plot and fun are much more important. The problems start when the inaccuracies are so blatant that I can’t pretend I’m not seeing them, when very important plot junctions are decided with ploys that are nominally astute but in reality doesn’t make any sense.

If it was at least fun it could be all forgivable but instead we got some of the dumbest stuff ever. I normally don’t spoil anything of the movie but it’s really obvious that Lincoln somehow ends up hunting vampires. He acquires incredible fighting skills with which he can single handedly defeat dozens of vampires. The secret of his supernatural haste and strength? None other than the power of truth! He is super powerful because he is Honest Abe!

Even little kids deserve something better thought out.

The director is Timur Bekmambetov, who made the incredible “Wanted” in 2008, and so the fandom had very high hopes for this one. Sadly the failure is not limited to the plot.

While some of the action scenes bear the trademark blend of insane kinetic fights and crazy concept the rest of the movie is marred by the oh so American reverence for Lincoln.

I understand that he is one of the patron saints of American democracy but you can’t picture Lincoln straight while doing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. What you get this way is a movie grinding to a halt every single time Lincoln open his mouth. It gets so so boring.

At least we still got the very underrated Rufus Sewell as the main bad guy.

Conclusion: A so bad it is good movie, good train wreck value.

DVD review: Rare export

2012-11-18T09:00:00.000+00:00

The true story behind Santa Claus.

An ingenious dark comedy this movie got one of those wonderful and completely original premises that are so rare nowadays. Sadly it doesn’t develop it properly. The main idea is there and is all kind of amazing but a lone idea doesn’t add to a whole movie. You need more stuff to add to it.

The movie also suffers a bit from its independent nature. The shoots, the actors, the overall feeling is that of a somewhat amateur production. It’s not really that bad I need to add, just unimpressive.

A lot of time is devoted to a subplot about a kid trying to find his place in an undoubtedly very harsh world. It’s even done fairly well but honestly we would have preferred more Santa and less psychological introspection.

One last note about the movie, without spoiling the aforementioned premise this is a dark comedy so expect mature themes, a lot of blood and a very unusual take on Santa Claus.

Conclusion: Recommended to those who love their oddities but for the general public this is really to underdeveloped.

DVD review: Defendor

2012-11-17T09:00:00.000+00:00

A mentally ill man decides to become a real life superhero.

After Kick Ass popularized the concept of “What would happen in real life if somebody put on a spandex costume and started fighting crime” we start with the usual wave of copycat movies.

Defendor didn’t learn Kick Ass lessons properly. Maybe they can be excused considering that Kick Ass didn’t perform as expected at the box office, although it still turned a good profit, but where Kick Ass was all kind of wonderful and funny this is a somewhat depressing experience.

Yes we all know that dressing up as a superhero and fighting crime in our society would be a form of madness but that’s not the point. Superheroes stories are escapist fantasies where the wrongs can be righted and evil can actually be punched in the face.

Kick Ass managed to have his cake and eat it too with the creation of Hit Girl. So they had Kick Ass as the sad loser superhero and Hit Girl as the “Kick Ass” one, if you can pardon the bad pun.

Here we only get to loser part of the equation, played by an extremely well cast Woody Harrelson who looks and sounds the part, but he is not really a story that we would like to follow.

Who’s the target audience of this? Superheroes fans will be annoyed, non superheroes fans will be disinterested, maybe former superheroes fans that recovered from their vices and want to laugh at their former interest? It’s a mystery.

Kat Denning is entertaining as usual but terribly miscast as a young prostitute / crack whore.

There are some laughs every now and then but really too few and too little. It clearly aims to be a black comedy but it doesn’t do enough.

Conclusion: Forgettable in every sense.

DVD review: The tourist

2012-11-16T09:00:00.000+00:00

An average tourist is drawn into a web of intrigue by a beautiful woman.

While the main plot of the movie roughly works, being a remake of a French original this shouldn’t be a surprise, the rest is all a real big misfire.

The main problem incredibly lies into the main protagonists. Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie two of the most charming actors in the world somehow when working together create the anti chemistry. It’s amazing how the movie stops when they try something romantic, how Depp, normally so deft, is reduced to a bumbling buffoon and how wooden Angelina is. I really don’t understand it.

Even alone they don’t fare much better. Depp is so wonderful when he plays the abnormal, the strange, and the peculiar but evidently he is not capable to play the normal, the average. Moreover his natural good looks hadn’t been toned down not even a little bit. I understand that the main selling point is he and Mrs. Jolie making out but the story simply doesn’t work if the average guy came straight out of a fashion shoot.

Jolie doesn’t fare better. The makeup and costume department is evidently directed by some madman. Her hair and attire is incredibly over the top and, most importantly, she looks terrible in it. It’s so bad that it’s worth having a look just to appreciate it.

On the acting side also she, like Depp, evidently has a lot of trouble in conveying normal human emotions. All the social interactions are so stiff, her eyes absent.

Maybe part of the fault lies in the director hands. The long named Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck decided to set the movie in one of the more cinematic places in the world, Venice, and completely fails to use it. The lights are all terrible and the shoots uninspiring.

Conclusion: A real stinker, even if you are a fan of the main duo you really don’t want to see it because it’s the first really bad movie that they made in ages.

Cinema review: Snow White and the Huntsman

2012-11-14T09:00:00.000+00:00

Snow White.

The second “unconventional movie adaption of the classic Snow White fable” of the year. Yes of course it’s simply a coincidence, Hollywood is such a creative place that they don’t really need to copy other people ideas, do they?

Jokes aside this was actually fun. Two wildly different takes, because for once they are really diverse, separated by just a couple of months, they beg for a comparison but before getting to it let’s consider this movie on this own.

Plot wise this is a case of too many cooks. Universal reportedly paid 3.2 million for the screenplay before setting two different screenwriters on remaking it. Official sources say that 40% of the screenplay came up during these rewrites so they paid more than three million for practically half a screenplay. Amazing.

It’s easy to see the scars on the butchered plot. Countless things are incredibly important for the first 30 minutes before getting lost in the shuffle. Romance subplots disappear randomly, the Mcguffin is forgotten just before the end, the dwarves appearance clashes so much tone wise with the rest of the movie that you could smell bad test screening all across the Atlantic.

Then at least is a pretty movie. First timer Rupert Sanders was given the keys to the kingdom, 170 million has been spent on this movie, but he used the money wisely. The locations, the costumes, the CGI, are all very pretty. The overall tone is really darker, with some interesting choices. The mirror in particular, is spot on.

Kristen Stewart looks good in the part. She is still very Bella Swan, but this is more the fault of the director than hers. All the actors didn’t perform very well here. Chris Hemsworth for example is really terrible; it’s hard to believe he is the same guy who did so well with Kenneth Branagh guidance.

The only exception is Charlize Theron. I used to dislike her; she’s always been stunning of course but never impressed me with any of her capabilities. Here she quite literally steals the movie. She finds a way of delivering, a peculiar kind of speech that is amazing.

She succeeds in quite an hard task, trough an amazing performance she manage to elevate an inane and terribly written role and make it her own.

As to the above mentioned comparison movie wise Mirror Mirror is better but this one certainly got the best evil queen.

Conclusion: An average movie brought up by the sheer amount of money that they spent into it and a very good performance from Charlize Theron.

DVD review: Hereafter

2012-11-10T09:00:00.000+00:00

Three loosely interconnected stories about the hereafter.

It was bound to happen; the bad Clint Eastwood movie interrupts a streak that lasted at least 10 years, maybe more if you can appreciate “Blood Work”.

Strangely this is something that a lot of critics are apparently waiting for, many hailed the excellent “Invictus” as that paradoxical bad Eastwood movie. I honestly don’t understand why.

But how bad is bad here? Not too much in the end, certainly watchable.

The main problem lies in the plot, the first bad plotted movie chosen by Eastwood in ages. Many stories never get anywhere, Matt Damon is a medium who can feel the “dead people” (It’s hard to be more cliché than this), it climaxes at a book convention and I could go on. It’s very weak material.

Eastwood himself is in journeyman mode. The composition of his shoots, normally pitch perfect, is still functional but nothing more.

At least he retains his gift in obtaining good performances from practically everybody. At this stage in his career I think that if he decided to get me to star in one of his movie I’ll end with an Oscar nomination. He is that good.

In the end he still gets the job done. As many masters before him he honed his craft to a point that a bad Eastwood movie is still a fairly decent movie by any other filmmaker standard. He milks the inane plot for what is worth. He bring atmosphere, at least one sequence in the beginning is amazing, he deliver on the rhythm and in the end he left us strangely satisfied.

Still he doesn’t manage to get over the very difficult subject matter. Maybe out there a movie exist that talks about death and what comes after without being morbid, preachy and depressive but is not this one.

Conclusion: A mediocre effort from one of the true masters. Still worth watching.

Cinema review: The Raid

2012-11-09T09:00:00.000+00:00

A raid in a mob occuped building goes terribly wrong.

After “Merantau” Gareth Evans and his choreographer/action star Iko Ulwais tried to develop a big prison themed movie. Things didn’t went through and so they downsized themselves quite a lot and made “The raid” in record time to keep their names on the market. Very good for them because “The Raid” proved extremely successful and established new house names in the martial arts panorama.

Basically they skipped all the troubles with “Merantau” plot by practically abolishing it.

I’m not joking, for all intents and purposes “The raid” is an extremely long and convoluted fight scenes putting Iko Ulwais SWAT hero against an entire building full of machete wielding, machine gun blazing, Silat practicing crazy mobster. Yes every now and then we stop for a little bit of exposition, mainly bad guy gloating about stuff, but we never ever leave the building and more often than not that exposition is interrupted by some crazy action. It’s that relentless.

It’s all very creative. Instead of those strange worlds where people don’t use firearms at all here everybody is a very bad sportsman and so they try to kill each other in many creative ways.

Evans clearly learned many lessons while doing “Merantau”. The action is more slick, the shoots more interesting, and the light placement professional. It’s still not perfect. The action is so relentless that the various fights merge with each other and the rhythm is too much stop and go but in the end it’s very difficult to sustain tension for almost two straight hours, there’s one of the reasons no one tries something like this.

Now that they are famous they are aiming for their aborted bigger project. If they can fix their plot troubles we could have a martial arts masterpiece.

Conclusion: For fans of the genre this is unmissable but if you can’t appreciate a good machete swing you’ll better go elsewhere.

Cinema review: Prometheus

2012-11-08T09:00:00.001+00:00

The Alien prequel.

I had expectation for this one, high expectation. I always try to not bet sucked in the hype surrounding something but every now and then it’s inevitable.

Many have talked extensively about the plot. In a few words, it doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe the original idea that Ridley Scot had was working but what we got on the screen was a muddied mess. The most griping aspect of it is how the characters behave. We can survive an over complicated mythology, even accept monsters pointlessly complicated and behaving in an incomprehensible fashion, but the main characters, the humans, we should be able to understand them.

Their whole behavior is more than puzzling, is stupid to the point of self harming. It’s so bad that the salient points did become internet memes. It’s so bad that you want to throw sharp objects on the screen. It’s that kind of bad.

Then you look at the screenwriter and you realize that it was inevitable. Damon Lindelof, also known as the man who ruined Lost completely, wrote it. The continuing career of Lindelof is a mystery to me. He writes so badly, his mythologies are just messes created by randomly adding “cool” stuff, his characters inane and absurd.

But not everything is terrible in Prometheus.

Scott craft spectacular vistas, haunting sceneries and gorgeous places. After all these years we all somehow forgot how good Scott is when he is playing this game. The whole alien setting is perfectly realized and perfect in its “alieness”.

All the actors do a very good job with the terrible lines that they’ve been served. Noomi Rapace in particular got the short sticks with what are clearly the worst lines but somehow she manages to sell them.

Charlize Theron brings tons of attitude with another excellent interpretation while Michael Fassbender is the best android in ages, a shame that these wonderful characters had to do such an amount of stupid things.

Conclusion: The ticket is worth it just for the amazing visuals but the story is really stupid.

DVD review: Merantau

2012-11-08T09:00:00.000+00:00

Indonesians martial arts.

Notionally this movie has a plot but it is even more bare bone than the infamous Jackie Chan early stuff, which was patched together just to move from one set piece to the next.

From what I could gather Merantau should be a tradition where the youngsters from this Indonesian ethnic group spend a period wandering around to gather experience, knowledge and eventually money.

So we have this young guy doing his Merantau, he goes from his backward idyllic village to the big corrupt city where he run afoul of the local bad guy. Luckily for him, and for us spectators, he is a master of Silat, the Indonesian martial art. A lot of fighting ensues.

The acting is wooden, the plot bare bone and tedious, the cinematography of the city uninspiring. But the fights are good, very good.

There is no cable work here. They do it all there, for real, Ong Bak style. It’s all very hardcore and fairly brutal.

It’s also refreshing for martial arts movie connoisseurs watching a new martial art. Silat is cinematic and distinct enough from the usual fare.

If you are not a martial arts fan this is not the right movie to start with. The action is good but not that good; it will not blow your mind. There is some interesting stuff in there but all the people involved need that little bit of experience to make the next step and craft the perfect action fest (which they did in “the raid” coming in a couple of days).

Conclusion: Interesting for martial arts fan but, apart from the action, a very boring experience.

Book review: Hyperion

2012-11-07T09:00:00.000+00:00

Seven pilgrims travel to the otherworldly Time Tombs. They share stories on the way.

Very late to this party I finally managed to read the book that like a storm was on everybody’s mouth back in 1989. Back then I couldn’t buy it but now, thanks to the ever amazing charity shops, it is mine.

First of all if you heard some description form the critics don’t be scared. So many literary and artistic qualities have been attached to this book that starting it is a bewildering prospect.

This is not the sci-fi equivalent of some of those elitist tomes that critics worldwide seem compelled to like. It is true that it’s been inspired by “The Canterbury Tales” and that it shares the same stories within a story structure but this is not some overambitious literary vehicles. This is six stories for the price of one, all very good stories and all interconnected, to paint a wider picture.

Dan Simmons writes very well, he remembers to make his characters relatable, at least in some ways, and writes about interesting stuff. There are a lot of interesting concepts, this book is very sci-fi in this, it pushes the envelope a lot, certainly more than the majority of his contemporaries. It reminds me of one of those books from the golden age of Sci-Fi, of Van Vogt stuff.

One last note, the book doesn’t end. Lofty artistic types will tell you that it is better this way, that endings and explanations are for wussies, but reality is that simply he couldn’t publish it all in one go so he split it up. This means that if you want to know the real ending you need to check out “The Fall of Hyperion”. I know I will.

Conclusion: The hype is for real here. This book is a masterpiece, even non sci-fi people should check it out.

DVD review: Perfect Sense

2012-11-06T09:00:00.000+00:00

A mysterious epidemic gradually makes humanity lose his senses.

This movie is interesting because it moves against the flow.

Epidemics, with their zombies ridden addenda, are seen as a way to show humanity disgregation. It’s one of the appeal of the genre, nothing as heartwarming as random madness on the streets.

This quirky little movie instead decides to go in the opposite direction. What if we tried to continue to exist as a society? What would happen?

Maybe it goes a little too far with the voiceovers but it’s a real interesting and unexplored concept.

Eva Green and Ewan McGregor are a couple trough which misadventures we experience the global epidemic. Their lives are a little bit too contrived, and here maybe there’s the real flaw of the movie, but the two actor sell it all so effortlessly and with such conviction that it’s really hard not to participate.

Maybe there’s space for a romantic version of the usual epidemic horror genre, let’s hope so.

Conclusion: recommended viewing, even if you don’t like it this movie will fuel enough post vision discussions to last for a week.

DVD review: Ironclad

2012-11-05T09:00:00.000+00:00

King John Lackland lays siege to a castle.

This should have been so much fun. A siege movie based on a real historical event, but then they took so many liberties with the original that they should have simply set it on Camelot and be done with it.

Historical inaccuracies aside for a moment I can admit that this movie deliver on the rated violence. Heads are chopped and blood is spilled aplenty. It’s just not very interesting.

There is an art in cinematic violence, an art that writer director Jonathan English still has to master.

The plot also has problems. Historical inaccuracies aside, in the movie they are practically fighting for democracy in a period when the word doesn’t really makes sense, it’s all so very Die Hard. The villain is so bad that we are only waiting for him to start twirling is mustache, the heroes so noble, the fair maiden so fair.

Its missing subtlety, it’s missing all the subtle nuances that makes characters come alive without obtaining the epicness and majesty that made 300 and Conan so unforgettable.

And it’s still really a shame because they got some really good actors here.

James Purefoy got charisma in spades, Paul Giamatti idem but even them can’t manage to enliven a lifeless script.

Conclusion: Genre fans will still enjoy it but if you don’t like your sword with your chain mail this is not the movie to start with.