Filmstalker Reviews

Wanted

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:33:33 +0000

I've been sitting on this review of Wanted for some time, and for no good reason other than I've been catching up with the Edinburgh International Film Festival reviews, so here goes. Wanted stars James McAvoy as a man just trudging through life until a league of top assassins appear in his life and tell him that his father didn't die when he was young and that he was one of the best assassins in the world.

Nice surprise! The film is adapted from a very early story outline by Mark Millar for his comic series Wanted that went off on a slightly different direction to the film, and at first that worried me.

Death Defying Acts

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:54:31 +0000

Death Defying Acts had me very interested because it starred Guy Pearce who is a superb character actor as Harry Houdini, a man whom we really haven't seen much of on screen. The story also sounded intriguing as it followed Houdini on one of his travels around the world performing and at the same time trying to find a real psychic who could bring evidence of a world beyond ours.

Of course there was one more reason, and that was the location was Edinburgh, Scotland, my home town. With all that going for it it sounded like a superb film. However the opening really didn't hold well with me for the very reason that I am Scottish.

Transsiberian

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:37:47 +0000

I have to admit to being disappointed with Transsiberian. I expected a lot from the thriller starring Ben Kingsley, Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, Eduardo Noriega and directed and co-written by Brad Anderson. That sounds good doesn't it? Well it didn't quite deliver as I had thought.

Brad Anderson has been responsible for some strong films including The Machinist and Session 9, as well as directing a few episodes of The Wire and of The Shield, both excellent shows. So hopes were high.

Standard Operating Procedure

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:43:41 +0000

Standard Operating Procedure is a film that really needed no publicity, especially for me to get interested. I am fascinated by strong documentaries about real people, and particularly documentaries that delve into such important events as the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and looking into who may really be to blame.

Then there was the fact that Errol Morris put the documentary together, he's a leading light in documentary making, particularly investigative documentaries, and so the desire to see Standard Operating Procedure was high. I hoped that the film could shed some light on the truth, and perhaps show me who was really to blame.

Shiver (Eskalofrío)

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:22:08 +0000

The EIFF write up for Shiver had sounded really interesting, and that's the problem with festival blurbs for films, they're all going to have to be good. I mean you can't have a blurb saying that a film is going to be rubbish for all the press people to read can you? Then no one would go see it and there would be no point in showing it.

So the blurb for Shiver sounded good. One parent family move to a small town and the local animals start getting murdered by some strange beast, the boy knows who and what it is, but people suspect him.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:01:31 +0000

I had wanted to see this film for a long time, since word came out about it, the delayed release, early screenings, more release delays, and finally the DVD release. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane had a turbulent time getting to my screen at least.

The film promised to take the old slasher story and bring us something new and original with it, and the plot outline sounded very interesting.

Married Life

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:17:17 +0000

The beauty of film festivals is that you see films you would never normally see, but this year at the Edinburgh International Film Festival there were a lot more mainstream films that are actually seeing releases in the cinema, and Married Life is another of these.

Featuring Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Rachel McAdam and Patricia Clarkson this is certainly a film with a big star line up for the cast, with writers and a director who, on paper, don't stand in the same league. However after Married Life, I think they will.

The Fall

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:06:39 +0000

Tarsem Singh is the talent behind The Cell, the visually exciting film starring Jennifer Lopez as the psychologist who uses a device to enter the mind of a serial killer the police have just captured in order to find where his last victim is being held. Although it didn't receive a lot of praise, the film is wonderful to watch.

So there was a lot of expectation for The Fall, his next film which came six years after The Cell and was financed with a lot of his own money. The trailer and marketing material for it looked even more spectacular than The Cell, and the hopes were that the acting and story would hold up to it.

WALL-E

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:52:56 +0000

I was quite excited about seeing WALL·E for quite a few reasons. One was the superb animation that looked like we were going to see from the trailers and pre-release footage, and the other was the fact that this was Pixar, a company who have produced some wonderful animated stories that really are filled with personality and humour, humour that doesn't just appeal to children.

So things looked set for WALL·E to be one of the best Pixar films yet. Despite what the critics are saying, hailing it as the best Pixar film ever and so on, I have to say I think it's one of the worst.

Cadaver (Sop)

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:19:15 +0000

There was a time I remember that a film like Cadaver, an Asian horror, wouldn't have been shown at the EIFF, much less attract the crowd it has for the press screening - an almost packed cinema at 10:30 in the morning, the night after a big press party.

Now Asian horror is the accepted thing and a drip feed for Hollywood, and that actually puts more pressure on a film like this. There's more expectation from the audience and a demand of better and better.

I have to sidetrack and say one of the coolest things was sitting in the near dark waiting for the film listening to the soundtrack of Escape From New York. That's the Cameo for you, super cool cinema.

Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite)

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:33:24 +0000

I'd heard about Elite Squad aka Tropa De Elite before, mainly because of the controversy it was raising over its presentation of the Brazilian police force and in particular the showing of the squad that deals with the drug gangs in the slums.

The film portrayed the police as thoroughly corrupt and the Elite Squad as a group of highly indoctrinated soldiers who routinely used torture and carried out a shoot first policy.

The Wave (Die Welle)

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:07:36 +0000

The Wave, or Die Welle, is a film that is based on the novel The Wave by Morton Rhue, aka Todd Strasser, which itself is a fictionalised account of the events that took place in a Californian high school in April 1967.

A teacher there, Ron Jones, conducted an experiment with his students. They had brought up the question of how people accepted the Nazi's rise to power and couldn't understand how people had let them. So Jones decided to recreate a dictatorship within his classroom and in less than a week the students had adopted some incredible traits and the project was threatening to spiral out of control.

Red

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:02:52 +0000

Brian Cox drew me to this film and the fact that the write up by the EIFF sounded interesting, interesting but not exciting. Well how undersold that was, and what a great surprise I was to get.

The first was that Stephen Susco wrote and produced the film, and for me that was a great plus. The other was just how powerful the film was.

Máncora

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:36:29 +0000

Máncora began beautifully, poetically and violently with a few great looking and sounding opening scenes. It's a film that has some strong and great looking leads, complex relationships, and some very real world views.

This Spanish film has a few surprises, particularly with the appearance of Enrique Murciano from Without a Trace as one of the lead characters. However it has a lot more to offer than that.

Elegy

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:39:39 +0000

You know I wasn't going to go and see this film because I'd been put off by the trailer and pre-release marketing that was all making a big play of the fact that Penélope Cruz was going to be naked in it, and I was thinking so what? Is that all there is to market it on?

Well I thought better of that and I'm so glad I did, for there's so much more to this than Cruz naked, there's a superb film that's both beautiful and moving backed by superb performances.