Ambival.net

The Hurt Locker

Melody — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:08:42 +0000

There’s very little for me to say about this movie that hasn’t been said better elsewhere but one thing that might tell you how good I think it was is by mentioning how much it made me respect those who fight for once. I’m generally entirely opposed to war, to the point I will rarely even comment on it for fear of causing offence. It bugs me, for example, when deaths of soldiers at war are reported on the news as if we should be surprised that anybody at war should somehow manage to get hurt. As long as conscription remains at bay, in my opinion only a crazy, desperate person or a sheep would sign up to the armed forces, and if they do then they should be refused entry on psychiatric grounds if they don’t understand that people die when they fire weapons at each other. (Please don’t respond to this stance in comments: I mention it only to give you some idea of why a movie like this needs to be really good for me, for want of a better word, to “like” it…)

I remember having a similar response to Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down years back, but that came so soon after 9/11 I put it down to shear shock – there was a part of me I’ll admit early in the decade that kinda did want someone to just “blow them up, all of them” etc. For the most part, for me, the great war movies have still remained firmly in the previous century. But I can’t deny this one access to that group. Some people have tried to explain how this movie somehow isn’t a war movie afterall. I’ve always hated this kind of argument. Particularly when a lot of these people are probably just surprised that it was a woman, Kathryn Bigelow, calling the shots. This is absolutely a war movie – it deals with an aspect of war … the very question that I answer with, “because they must be stupid!” above … simply, why do these people go out there? And further, why do some of them, like the central character here, go back for more?!!

Needless to say, the movie doesn’t change my total opposition to war: at nearly 30, I’m pretty much set that way. But in plain cinema terms, it does complicate the answer to that question and give me more to ponder. It presents us with a phenomenally complex character, and it puts us into his world with heartpoundingly visceral realism. The first 15 minutes of this movie are incredibly tough to watch, the tension that builds up almost unbearable. It’s that time of year when I tend to start mentioning the Oscars is every other review so here’s as good a place as any to start: I don’t know about the best picture slot, with 10 entries it doesn’t even seem worth speculating this year … but if Bigelow isn’t in the best director category I think I might be pretty angry. She’s really outdone herself here and easily joins the many great directors who have made this genre such an unlikely favourite of mine.

Twilight Zone: The Movie

Melody — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:08:24 +0000

Alright, no more dallying, it’s time to catch up on all the stuff I’ve been watching since my unplanned absence, lol. This one was watched on a sort of whim – I’d just finished watching all the Masters of Horror episodes and found myself still in the mood for anthological story telling, and this particular movie had been mentioned once or twice on those DVDs’ extras. I enjoyed this movie a heck of a lot more than expected, especially Steven Spielberg’s segment.

I’ve seen little if any of the original episodes that most of these stories are based on (though I’d of course seen parodies of the William Shatner “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”) so I came to pretty much the whole movie fresh – the bookends sequence is kind of corny and the first story didn’t do a lot for me at all but the wonder of Spielberg’s, the nuttiness of Dante’s and the manic performance in the third story more than made it worth the watch. Jerry Goldsmith’s score is fantastic, too.

2009 Movies

Melody — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:03:57 +0000

I am almost back and reviews will resume ASAP. It’s a long story which hopefully you’ve followed elsewhere; if not, you don’t need to know, just that I’m back lol. Here’s an updated 2009 list to mark my return. Apologies for the lack of linked titles.

Orphan Jaume Collet-Sera
The Damned United Tom Hooper
Coraline Henry Selick
Hannah Montana: The Movie Peter Chelsom
Star Trek JJ Abrams
Drag Me to Hell Sam Raimi
District 9 Neill Blomkamp
Brüno Larry Charles
The Last House on the Left Dennis Iliadis
Push Paul McGuigan
Watchmen Zack Snyder
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince David Yates
The Final Destination David R. Ellis
Land of the Lost Brad Silberling
AntiChrist Lars Von Trier
S. Darko Chris Fisher
Dead Like Me: Life After Death Stephen Herek
Race to Witch Mountain Andy Fickman
The International Tom Tykwer
Crank: High Voltage Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
The Pink Panther 2 Harald Zwart
Friday the 13th Marcus Nispel
The Boat That Rocked Richard Curtis
Terminator: Salvation McG
Angels & Demons Ron Howard
Vacancy 2: The First Cut Eric Bross

Hurlevent

Melody — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:28:12 +0000

I have to be honest, I had to check what I’d written on Twitter while watching this movie to remind myself what I did or did not like about it, lol, ‘cos it was a while ago now. Luckily, I made a few comments. This is the French take on Wuthering Heights, and as such the only one I’ve seen so far to feature nudity and a lot of flashes of underwear. There’s something perfect about even the idea of a French Wuthering Heights, and not just for the romantical aspects. There is that old thing about European women not shaving under their arms etc, a certain, if not “dirtiness” then at the least earthiness, which suits the love between Heathcliff and Cathy to a T, in my opinion at least. It’s odd that even though this version of the story is a contemporary adaptation, it’s grimier even than some of the more tired TV costumed attempts, and I loved that. It surprised me, too, how faithfully it follows the story. Because of the setting and title I expected something more “inspired by” than the transplanted retelling I got. There are some wonderful touches in bringing certain aspects of the original story into the more modern setting, like for example the feather print Cathy’s nightgown. It’s another interesting version of the story – not a favourite of mine but I’d take it gladly over yet another ITV period drama.

Wuthering Heights [1970]

Melody — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:10:35 +0000

This is kind of infuriating to write about. Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite novels, a fact that’s kind of more impressive when I remember that I was introduced to it at school by an English teacher I frankly didn’t like that much at the time (I have since forgiven him, he did afterall introduce me to the book and also Suzanne Vega and Bob Dylan’s music). This was one of the versions of the story I hadn’t yet seen so I put it on as part of a little season of Wuthering Heights around Emily Brontë‘s birthdate. And at first I found myself mesmerized.

Though Timothy Dalton’s quite elfin features at this time don’t quite lend themselves to the Heathcliff I have always pictured, this is far and away the best looking, and second best (sorry, Michel Legrand, Ryuichi’s 1992 score just beats yours) sounding Wuthering Heights film I have ever seen. And YET!

It’s bad enough that almost all Wuthering Heights adaptations stop in the middle of the book, only telling half the story; but this is a fact I have come to accept. Here, however, they go one step further in trying to offer, I guess, some kind of closure at this point. I’m not even going to issue spoiler warnings because you should in my opinion go into this movie knowing what they’re about to do. Hindley shoots Heathcliff at the end, lol. Considering how wonderful the rest of the production is, this really does make it one of the worst endings I have ever seen. It’s so disappointing.

The Music Lovers

Melody — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:55:16 +0000

I keep stopping myself since watching this and being like, “wait have I really finally seen that movie now?” because, to be honest, it didn’t really strike me the way, after years of wanting desperately to see it, I expected it to. My mum has always called this one the most awful movies she had ever seen and that, combined with its seeming hard-to-findness, had kind of given it some kind of cachet for me that maybe no film could live up to.

I’m inclined to go with one of the first IMDb reviews that came up for me when I visited its page while watching, that simply stated that it had many boring moments but many brilliant ones too. I talked to my mum since watching it and found out that I correctly guessed the exact moment which for her was the “too far” point, a moment during a final scene in a mental asylum that she described, 36 years later, almost perfectly. I can’t deny that the best images in this movie are truly that vivid and memorable but I think that fact speaks volumes more than I could guess. I think, too, the real impact of this movie for those who would react in such a way is that it genuinely begins and continues for almost a whole hour as a perfectly decent musical biography … tamer even than Milos Forman’s Amadeus. Any nauseating sensations until Ken Russell really piles on the makeup come from dizzying camerawork and editing. It’s a movie I would certainly watch again and would almost certainly benefit from a freshly scrubbed up DVD or Blu-Ray release. This was a very worn VHS copy, though I must admit when you get those long forgotten tracking lines on a movie as infamous as this it kinda adds to the experience.

Willard / Ben

Melody — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:44:55 +0000

This is another couple of reviews that I’ll squeeze into one post ‘cos they’re probably too close to one another for me to not repeat myself over two reviews. These are movies I’ve wanted to see for a long time – in fact I’d actually kind of forgotten they even existed for some reason since seeing the (not so) recent remake of Willard, but of course the recent death of Michael Jackson got the sequel’s title song in my head and I started thinking about them again.

What struck me most about both movies is that despite their production years, they really don’t feel a lot like most 70s horror movies. They don’t have the same experimental, queasy feel at all. They feel instead much more like nuts-and-bolts products of the end of the studio system in the mid-Sixties. Heck, Willard even stars Ernest Borgnine and has a score by Alex North.

They’re both certainly worth watching for any fan of horror. They’re such bizarre stories, thoroughly unique, and particularly in the case of Ben, so much more than the surface “killer rats” tale. You really do find yourself wondering where the heck Stephen Gilbert got the idea. There’s something almost beautiful about the grisliness.

Ponyo on the Cliff By the Sea

Melody — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:11:13 +0000

When the opportunity for me to watch this arose, I didn’t really greet it enthusiastically, more like, “sure, why not?” I loved Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and a couple of his earlier movies but even by the time it got to Howl’s Moving Castle I’d kind of lost any fandom I had and that movie didn’t do a lot to rekindle the passion for me (it could just be because I only saw the Pixar dub of that one, I just realised; Pixar do great dubs but it’s very possible I would’ve liked the original dialogue more, gotta be fair). If you read the synopsis of this one – about a fish that wants to become human – it’s very easy to be slightly underwhelmed at best, and at worst go all the way to, umm, didn’t Disney do that already?

Well, again, as with Watchmen (which I will review when I see it again … I really need to see it again, though if you must know, I kinda loved it), within 5-10 minutes, whoosh, those thoughts were just swept away one by one. This is an unbelievably cute movie, very much the Miyazaki I was once crazy about, and not at all like the Disney movie at first glance it seems to resemble. It’s at once a cute story of puppy love – say, imagine that Eric and Ariel were 6 lol – yet also urges you not to dismiss the power of love on account of the characters ages … at the same time as having a much larger story about the world as a whole.

I can’t wait to see it again, and yes, it will be in the Pixar dubbed version. I just heard yesterday that Noah Cyrus, Miley’s little sister, is doing the voice of Ponyo so basically, I’m sold lol.

Land of the Lost

Melody — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:05:47 +0000

So, yeh, sue me but I got more out of watching this than I did watching Half-Blood Prince. I had read so many bad reviews of it shortly before watching it and they almost had me convinced, but I kept seeing Brad Silberling’s name on the director’s chair and I just couldn’t believe he could make a less than half-decent movie ‘cos he never has. I shouldn’t have doubted it for a second. Silberling has done two kinds of movies in his career so far, kind of alternating between the effects-driven kids movies like Casper, Lemony Snicket and this, and the more mature stories dealing with more mature relationships, which have steadily gone down in scale over the years from City of Angels to Moonlight Mile to his most recent 10 Items of Less. It’s interesting that the first two of the effects-driven movies, too, dealt with pretty powerful emotional stuff too, all of Silberling’s work, until 10 Items at least, always dealing heavily with loss. Needless to say, I expected none of that here, but I knew he wouldn’t just make an effects movie.

Okay, well, I’ll admit, that’s exactly what he has made here. But this guy really knows how to do that and stay interesting in my opinion. Even though surely shot on the usual Hollywood bankroll, the effects here reminded me of the fast and loose style Robert Rodriguez stumbled upon in making the first two Spy Kids movies on trademark tight budget. They’re having fun with this and it translates right onto the film, through the projector and into the audience: at least, for this audience it did. I laughed almost constantly for the duration and entirely “got” the slightly sillier aspects of the production. Anna Friel being allowed (in fact, apparently Silberling insisted) to keep her Mancunian accent is a wonderful bonus.

Orphan

Melody — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:21:43 +0000

If you look at my list of tags on the left of this site, where font size indicates the number of posts with that tag, you’ll see that two tags in particular have stood out like sore thumbs ever since I added the feature to the site, cuties which I use wherever a notable young actress (sometimes actor) is present, and horror, which is self-explanatory. Anyone who has read my reviews or plain known me long enough will know that when both these elements are present, I will assuredly be in line

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this movie at all. I’d seen no trailers, read few comments, knew no plot details other than what the poster told me, that “There’s something wrong with Esther …” The girl on that poster, Isabelle Fuhrman (last seen as actually one of the more memorable aspects of the otherwise disappointing Hounddog), frankly didn’t even catch my eye due to the strange symmetry they’d given to her face. So I went in knowing only that it was a horror movie with a little girl in it, which really wasn’t too bad a start.

Though it’s ultimately a little too long, more of which in a moment, this movie doesn’t waste its time in telling its audience up front that it’s not going to be a half-assed version of this type of story. The opening, a nightmare sequence, is truly one of the more unpleasant things I’ve seen in recent movies, and the half hour that follows, leading up to a grieving mother’s final decision to adopt an older child, drew me in completely. Within 15 minutes I had that feeling I long for in movies, that I was in good hands and that I really would willingly accept anything director Jaume Collet-Serra (he of the House of Wax remake, which – don’t hold it against me but – I also quite liked) wanted to throw at me.

There’s an awkward half hour or so following Esther’s entry into the readymade family waiting for her where I genuinely feared they had dropped the ball. Isabelle Fuhrman hooked me completely in her very first scene, having a stern and troubling face that melts away the moment she smiles, but even she here is hard to watch as scenes seemed to go nowhere, unfinished, setting things up but leaving so much unsaid as to be annoying.

Fortunately, this disjointedness doesn’t go on for too long. Soon enough, Esther shows her true colours. This is ultimately the movie that Omen IV could have, should have, been. It’s Debbie Jellinsky from Addams Family Values: The Early Years. It’s Foetal Attraction. It’s all those things and it goes all the places that make you go, “No … they’re not gonna go there, are they?” Yes.

Maybe this is where I say too much but the thing I loved most about the movie in the end was how, much like I did in The Children, I kinda couldn’t help but be on Esther’s side much of the time. The scenes at school, for instance; the punishment of a bully (to be honest, when they said that girl only broke her ankle I felt a little let down lol); the way she completely fools her foster mom’s psychiatrist (marvellously played by the marvellous Margo Martindale, btw) who is clearly full of psychobabble, and the ensuing misunderstanding as all the blame and mental issues fall to the completely wrong person, the mother. I love the inevitability of these stories of manipulation, horrible though it may be when it happens in real life. I can’t help but be kind of happy for Esther, too, when she uses her intellect to flatly prove her case. It’s just like the Revenge of the Sith / Matrix Revolutions thing all over again I guess … sometimes, evil just plain got a point LOL.

Anyway, the movie is surely not for everyone. Even I kind of wanted to leave after the wretching first 5-10 minutes and in particular Esther’s abuse of the youngest of her new family is rough to bear – like everywhere else in the movie, Collet-Sera pulls no punches here and the story goes wherever such a person as Esther would truly take it, and that’s to be admired in my book, especially in a movie as otherwise slick and “mainstream” as this is. It will shock those expecting the usual top ten horror movie especially in the UK with its 15 rating. For me it is easily the best movie (in an admittedly short list, I admit) I have seen all year, if only for its flat out rageousness. The acting, particularly by young Fuhrman who I’ll be looking out for in future, but also by Vera Farmiga and the ever-reliable (albeit always the same) Peter Sarsgaard, is perfect; and the moments when it is in full sway more than make up for any hokiness in the storytelling and its slight overlength. Really, any modern horror movie that has the impact this had on me after two weeks of watching the “Masters of Horror” series has gotta be doing something very right indeed, lol.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Melody — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:48:03 +0000

It’s tough to write a review that even touches negative of any movie in this series because let’s face it, it’s Harry Potter and kinda like Doctor Who, it’s ultimately all good. I’ll begin by saying that almost by default this is still the best new movie I’ve seen so far this year and it will almost certainly remain better than at least 50 of the 100 movies I’ll ultimately watch in 2009. The technical wizardry, casting, music and production design here are as flawless as if not more flawless than ever before. I watched the ITV “Behind the Magic” documentary last week and I was amazed I hadn’t seen the movie already, so closely had they seemed to capture how I saw the book while I was reading it – right down to the very specific like Jim Broadbent as Slughorn.

Sadly, though this kept pulling at my heartstrings in places most particularly through a beautiful “hands touching” motif, and though I took a lot of the dead air with a pinch of salt hoping the movie would pull itself together for what surely couldn’t fail to be an exhilarating finale, I just found myself growing more and more distant from the proceedings as time wore on. This is no Azkaban or Phoenix and will never work as a standalone work like those, the best in the series to date, did. Some will argue that these movies shouldn’t need to stand alone or even work for those who never read the books, and on that we’ll have to agree to disagree. The point is, though working out of context isn’t necessary for these movies, Azkaban and Phoenix proved to me that it was possible, so I figure why not make the effort.

This, like Goblet of Fire (we’ll leave the Columbus movies out of this because they were an entirely different world away), is an awkwardly choppy “edited highlights” Potter – and I don’t say that in the same way other critics insanely argue that “they didn’t put the whole book on screen, the philistines!” … I realise they couldn’t fit everything in here, but the fact that what they did fit in hangs together so shabbily just draws that much more attention to the slight waste of resources.

There’s plenty of good here, don’t get me wrong. Evanna Lynch, though barely onscreen for more than a few lines total, steals every scene she’s in yet again as Luna Lovegood. Bonnie Wright as Ginny Weasley has been growing on me since day one and there are moments here that suggest to me she might turn out to be the real actress come Deathly Hallows parts 1 and 2. There are tons of laugh out loud moments, and this is humour I don’t generally go with like slapstick adolescent romance etc so this is saying something coming from me.

Ultimately I can happily accept this as a stepping stone to the Deathly Hallows – it ends as awkwardly as it’s executed but the technical brilliance and easy to love cast leave me gagging for the last two movies. The death at the end here doesn’t have nearly as much impact as the character deserves nor as what I felt when it was on paper and I don’t think that’s just because I knew it was coming this time. And for the record I’m sure all this disappointment from me isn’t just because they cut out the Crabbe and Goyle polyjuice thread lol. I’m sure any Harry Potter fan will be happy enough with this movie, but they knew that already. I would, however, frown a little at anybody who seriously declared it as their favourite. Azkaban and Phoenix are just plain better cinema by miles.

Crank / Crank: High Voltage

Melody — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:47:38 +0000

I think I have to just bundle these two in one review because there’s no way I can even write more than a paragraph for each, but I hasten to say this is by no means a bad thing. I had more fun watching these movies than I could possibly have imagined … the most ridiculous fun, indeed, since I saw Shoot ‘Em Up. Like the very few Michael Jackson gags that have made me laugh in spite of myself these past few weeks, these movies are just too well executed to dismiss on grounds of their at times abysmal taste or intentions. Jason Statham is astonishingly irresistible as a leading man and by the movies’ nature the action just never lets up.

Part one has our hero poisoned with a drug that requires him to keep his adrenaline up or die – kind of like Speed with a body instead of a bus, lol … if you can make a purer story for an action movie I’d like to hear it, lol. In part two his heart is replaced with an artificial one which he must keep charged or die. It’s not quite as pure as the first concept and the movie isn’t quite so much fun, but I would say, if you plan to watch either of these, you may as well see both in one sitting. High Voltage begins exactly where Crank ends and they work as a dizzying, nonstop 3 hour action epic of some kind. I just can’t stress enough how much fun I had watching these. They’re so wrong, but you just can’t dwell on it when the people behind the camera seem to know so exactly what they’re doing.

Winged Creatures aka Fragments

Melody — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:38:17 +0000

“You got stuff like this printed out before, in case somethin’ like that happens … and then you give them out after?”

This took me very much by surprise. There was a point over the last year or so where Dakota Fanning had a whole bunch of movies ready to be released but none of them seemed like they would ever see the light of day. I finally got to see Hounddog and The Secret Life of Bees, but her absence from the screen seemed to have really done anything but make my heart grow fonder of her. I really thought I was kinda done as a fan. Push ever so slightly renewed my interest … this movie is another story entirely, and by no means just for her.

Ultimately this movie is simply about the different, sometimes wild, ways different people deal with bad events. Much like Vantage Point, another movie starring Forest Whitaker (who is brilliant as ever here), we see the same random shooting that opens this movie several times and from several different perspectives as the story unfolds. Dakota’s character emerges from the event cold, refusing to address it at all as a bad thing; Whitaker’s takes his survival of the ordeal as a sign of his luck despite a recent cancer diagnosis; two other characters appear to be unaffected but by their seeming apathy the duty of having a response seems to pass on to their loved ones, wives and children … but ultimately all of them must face what happened whether they like it or not.

Writing it down like that doesn’t make it sound as good as I wish it did I guess, lol. All I can tell you is this is one of the best movies I’ve watched in a long time and it wholely made me a Dakota fan again, it’s her best performance since War of the Worlds. Shame about the upcoming Twilight sequel.

Irreconcilable Differences

Melody — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:23:43 +0000

This was slightly unexpected … I read about it while reading Drew Barrymore’s autobiography “Little Girl Lost” and it’s possibly mentioned also in Tatum O’Neal’s “A Paper Life” which I read around the same time but I thought it would remain an elusive title for quite some time. It’s a simple, almost TV-ish movie about a little girl seeking legal emancipation from her parents. I expected this to be an interesting movie and worth watching just for her, but it quickly switches into flashback mode and becomes a little more like Two for the Road meets Shoot the Moon too as we follow the couple in question through their entire relationship and ultimately how it affected little Drew.

This is all watchable enough, but it’s the extra layer added by its awkward closeness to the real lives of Ryan O’Neal and Barrymore that really make it worth the watch for me. These guys, Barrymore in particular, are really pretty emotionally naked here … there’s a moment where her character sneaks the dregs from a champagne glass at a party and it’s like, ouch … overall this isn’t a movie that’s going to change the world – the children’s rights thing is covered better by any number of other titles – but if you like the work of anyone involved it should be top of your list.

Wild Horse Hank

Melody — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:08:05 +0000

I find myself too much wanting to say I loved this movie because I just think the more “young girl and horse” movies there are in the world the better the world will somehow be … I just can’t get enough of them. This particular girl is Linda Blair who most of you will know better from much less savoury horsing around in The Exorcist. Here she’s a perfectly sweet 19-year-old tomboy who just wants to get a bunch of horses from A to B to save them from the dogfood can. It’s a perfectly simple story for animal lovers in particular but it’s the beautiful simplicity of the shots of her driving the horses across the landscape to some gloriously Seventies songs by Patsy Gallant that appeals to me here. It’s a totally average movie even speaking as a fan of the genre, but I’m still likely to watch it far too many more times than it deserves. The DVD commentary with Linda Blair is wonderful – like the couple of commentaries Hayley Mills has recorded for her older movies, it’s wonderful how her voice hasn’t changed at all and she completely retains the infectious spark of her youth.