Author: Chris

I despair of Reynolds, writing reviews of obscure foreign language thrillers that probably cost the equivalent of a Starbucks latte to make when there is the latest big budget Guy Ritchie movie just begging to be reviewed. Is that how you spend the holiday season? What message are you sending Max? Christ was born, and subsequently crucified and resurrected, in order that we might spend Christmas Day huddled in an air-conditioned movie theater watching explosions.

What to say? Sherlock Holmes is nowhere near as bad as we have a right to expect given that Ritchie is involved. It is probably best not to take the plot too seriously, and some of the fight sequences go on too long and serve little purpose. But Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law (as Doctor Watson) do good work here. There is a slight undercurrent of chaste homoeroticism as this pair act like a fussy old married couple. In truth, I can watch Downey in anything; he relies on deadpan humor and a perpetually quizzical expression. There is humor, some nice one-liners, a suitably grimy London, and — despite what the trailer would have you believe — Sherlock Holmes really does have remarkable powers of observation and deduction. If the movie makes any money, it is set up for the appearance of Professor Moriarty in the sequel. Oh, and just like the movies that Reynolds watches, it has subtitles. Go, celebrate the holiday season as God intended.

Not a great movie, but a great story. This film is a semi-fictional account of the decade of existence of the German Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader Meinhof Group after its two leaders. The account is fictional in that almost all the dialogue is imagined, but it is based on a well-regarded book written by one of the peripheral figures in the RAF who subsequently became disgruntled. The events and outcomes that it depicts are real. The film takes its time bringing its characters together, then rushes through the early 1970s when most of the RAF bombings and attacks took place, before slowing down to examine in detail the last two months in the lives of the RAF leaders, the kidnapping of Hans-Martin Schleyer and the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane (which eventually led to the rescue of the passengers at Mogadishu). Continue reading Baader Meinhof Complex

Touching, occasionally funny, but not terribly profound, this is Charlyne Yi’s exploration of love and relationships through interviews, puppets, and the semi-fictional depiction of her relationship with Michael Cera. Quirky, but not in a good way.

Thirst is the story of a priest who becomes a vampire. In the latest offering from Chan-wook Park, Kanh-ho Song (justly praised by Mike for his last role in The Good, The Bad, the Weird) plays the priest who is resurrected as a vampire after volunteering to be in a medical experiment. Resurrection is appropriate because the priest struggles with the sins he is forced to commit in his new life, and is even worshiped by a small cult. He begins an affair with the wife of a childhood friend, played by a superb Ok-vin Kim, and she rapidly becomes entranced with his vampirism and indulges a taste for blood with far fewer inhibitions than the priest. Mayhem, and blood galore, ensue.

This is good, in places very good, but it doesn’t rival the Vengeance trilogy for raw emotional heft and powerful imagery. There are some long sections in the middle of the movie, particularly a subplot about a watery haunting, that distract from the central narrative and make the movie longer than it needs to be. But the last half hour is near perfect as the priest tenderly tries to tame his slaughterous lover, and ultimately finds a way to end the bloodshed. Near the end the priest finds a way to disgust his followers, and thus end the cult, and as the camera follows him leaving the encampment, we see a small smile playing on his face as knows he has made some small amends for his sins. And once Park is able to expand his palette beyond dark interiors and nighttime, the richness of the imagery becomes breathtaking.

Certainly, if you want an antidote to the version of love and vampires in New Moon, this is well worth watching.

2012: is really pretty bad. Not really bad, just predictably bad. You will know the basic storyline: solar flares superheat neutrinos which destabilize the earth’s crust setting off earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. The earth is more of less destroyed in the process. Meanwhile our planet’s leaders race against time to build a bunch of arks to ensure the survival of the species (plus assorted giraffes, elephants etc.), or at least a reasonable cross-section of the wealthiest and cutest members of the species. Amongst the mayhem we follow frustrated fiction writer, John Cusak and his family, and geophysicist Chiwetel Ejiofer. Continue reading Disaster Movies

Il Divo is the imagined story of Giulio Andreotti’s last decade in the public eye, beginning with his selection as prime minister for the last time in 1989 (he was prime minster seven times in the 1970s and 1980w) and ending with the start of his trial for being an associate of the Mafia in 1996. It skirts the boundary between fact and fiction by implying Andreotti’s guilt for a wide range of crimes, including several murders, of which he was accused but never formally convicted, and for the vast majority of the dialogue, much of it spoken in private conversations by Toni Servillo, who plays Andreotti.

This film is stunning, not so much as an account of political intrigue, though there is plenty of that, but as a portrait of the interior life of Andreotti. He is haunted throughout the film – literally – by Aldo Moro, a rival in the 1970s, in whose murder Andreotti was complicit. Servillo portrays Andreotti as utterly still, at the center of a world that is collapsing around him. The film is beautifully shot – scenes of a police escort moving in slow motion as Andreotti walks to church, a string of rapid-fire murders that rivals the climactic scene of The Godfather, Andreotti motionless while journalists clamor around him, drenching rain as his bodyguards try to open a car door – and the eclectic soundtrack (classical, opera, Italian and German pop, American alternative) serves to heighten the back-and-forth movement between realism and surrealism in the film. There is a gripping “confession” in which Andreotti sits alone in a darkened room and lists his crimes while justifying them. Even setting aside the compelling subject-matter, the film’s construction and execution are brilliant.

Certainly the best film I have seen this year. I’d love to hear Gio’s take on it.

Not much to say, but just sheer, delirious fun. Clocking in at only 80 minutes, the movie is played entirely for laughs, with Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg playing off each other well. The zombie-killing action never gets old, culminating in a giddy finale in an old amusement park. And Bill Murray. What to say? He should have a cameo in every movie. Zombieland was made all the better by being preceded by a trailer for a ponderous, self-important vampire movie starring Ethan Hawke.

Bearing some similarities to Bubble, this is one of those low budget fragments of a movie that Soderbergh makes in between the glossier Hollywood fare. Lasting only 75 minutes, Girlfriend examines a few days in the life of high end prostitute, played by real-life porn star, Sasha Grey. There is no sex and barely any nudity. Instead we see Chelsea (Grey’s name in this film) meeting and talking to clients, and meeting with an assortment of journalists, webmasters and suchlike who might be able to raise her profile and money potential. We also follow her boyfriend, Chris (Chris Santos), who works as a personal trainer. Most of the stories are unexplained and cut short. Chris is going on a comp-ed trip to Vegas with some male friends and the camera occasionally cuts to the men on a private jet discussing women. Chris leaves a package for Chelsea, but we don’t know what it contains. At some point Chelsea contemplates leaving Chris and becoming more serious with a client she has never met. But it is all pretty aimless. The cinematography is superb, all angles, reflections and middle distance shots. Almost everything about this movie made me think of Van Sant, especially its fragmentary, non-linear narrative, and generally aimless character. Continue reading The Girlfriend Experience

As usual, another Michael Moore movie appears accompanied by a bunch of mean-spirited reviews which claim to applaud the topic, while criticizing the method. Of course, the fact that only Moore is capable of making documentaries that anyone beyond the PBS crowd watches is deemed irrelevant. Moore actually wants to change the world instead of just interpreting it, which requires a different approach to documentary-making, but, hey, let’s poke fun at the shambling fat man.

Capitalism is Moore’s best film; it’s the film he has been working towards since Roger and Me. And while it doesn’t have the shock value of Fahrenheit 911 (which was the first mainstream challenge to the consensus on Iraq), it is superb, managing to be Continue reading Capitalism: A Love Story

9 is a short (80 minute) animated film directed by Shane Acker, itself based on an Oscar-nominated ten-minute short by the same guy (producers include Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov and their signatures are all over this film, whether they were involved or not). It takes place in a post-apocalyptic future. How we got to that future is told in flashback, and it is a familiar story: man invents wondrous machine with brain; machine turns on man; devastating war destroys mankind. What survives are tiny burlap-covered robots of some kind, invented by the same scientist who created the original destructive machine. There are nine of them, and the film traces their efforts to band together, discover their purpose, and destroy the machine.

The animation is simply wonderful, with the ruins of a city rendered in fabulous detail, and all manner of metal creatures give chase to the little band of nine robots whose destiny it is to build the future. A lot is packed into the short running time, but almost all of it involves extended chase scenes, occasionally broken by moments of when the main characters have to decide between heroism or cowardice (symbolized by the difference between #1 (voiced by Christopher Plummer) and #9 (voiced by Elijah Wood). The story is too thin to sustain the movie (it really was better as a short), and the mystical ending strikes an odd note, but this is worth watching for the inventiveness of the animation alone.