Mindhorn
******Spoiler alert*****
As you know - I'm a British film maker and I like to watch anything by my fellow British film makers, and I'm a big fan of Julian Barrat, as Flowers (C4) was just the best thing on TV last year.
Mindhorn is very standard fare it follows the career of a washed up TV actor now involved in a real murder case, and that's it. I was really hoping for something different or really funny but it just never quite gets there. It's so similar to the Alan Partridge movie and the Bad Education movie that they could have all been edited together to make one big multi-strand film, with Steve Coogan playing a sort of Alan Partridge character in Mindhorn it just doesn't have any individuality.
Sean Young the Director has no other Directing credits at all and it shows in many scenes it's quite clear he's not sure where to put the camera and eyelines are all over the place, which is odd as it's all about a man with only one see who can 'see the truth' (this ability is never used).
The story is simple but it is populated with far too many unmotivated bad guys, the bad cop, the killer cop, the foreign stuntman, the nasty agent, the man fan, and the actual murderer whose motive isn't really clear or funny enough.
It's absolutely full of cliché' but not in a good way: very simple unimaginative plot points and coincidences: e.g.: Julian discovers he might be a father and whilst walking along bumps into potential-daughter at a bus stop. Later on he knocks over one obvious box in the garage and it contains 20 years of lost love letters that the Mrs has never noticed.
Julian is, however, very good and some of the cast like Russell Tovery are fabulous, but on the whole it just isn't funny enough. The love interest Essie Davies isn't given a single funny line and plays it all 100% straight, when in the world of Mindhorn even Kenneth Branagh is not playing it straight.
The structure is exactly the same as the Dad's Army movie, which although brilliant cast was strangely without humour. There seems to be a strange sort of small to mid budget formulaic feature film making, that involves coastal towns, predictable plots and a lack of any sort of cinematography at all: everything is coverage. The DoP is David Luther who has shot some absolutely incredible stuff such as Black Sails, so I can't imagine he decided to shoot it in a 'boring' style. It's also got 16 producers and that may well be why it is so anodyne.
I left the cinema trying to remember a single funny memorable line but I couldn't recall a single one.
The Beastie Boys video for sabotage is funnier and more cop-centric.
3/5 quite funny but nothing special. Enjoyable - but we've see it all before.
******Spoiler alert*****
As you know - I'm a British film maker and I like to watch anything by my fellow British film makers, and I'm a big fan of Julian Barrat, as Flowers (C4) was just the best thing on TV last year.
Mindhorn is very standard fare it follows the career of a washed up TV actor now involved in a real murder case, and that's it. I was really hoping for something different or really funny but it just never quite gets there. It's so similar to the Alan Partridge movie and the Bad Education movie that they could have all been edited together to make one big multi-strand film, with Steve Coogan playing a sort of Alan Partridge character in Mindhorn it just doesn't have any individuality.
Sean Young the Director has no other Directing credits at all and it shows in many scenes it's quite clear he's not sure where to put the camera and eyelines are all over the place, which is odd as it's all about a man with only one see who can 'see the truth' (this ability is never used).
The story is simple but it is populated with far too many unmotivated bad guys, the bad cop, the killer cop, the foreign stuntman, the nasty agent, the man fan, and the actual murderer whose motive isn't really clear or funny enough.
It's absolutely full of cliché' but not in a good way: very simple unimaginative plot points and coincidences: e.g.: Julian discovers he might be a father and whilst walking along bumps into potential-daughter at a bus stop. Later on he knocks over one obvious box in the garage and it contains 20 years of lost love letters that the Mrs has never noticed.
Julian is, however, very good and some of the cast like Russell Tovery are fabulous, but on the whole it just isn't funny enough. The love interest Essie Davies isn't given a single funny line and plays it all 100% straight, when in the world of Mindhorn even Kenneth Branagh is not playing it straight.
The structure is exactly the same as the Dad's Army movie, which although brilliant cast was strangely without humour. There seems to be a strange sort of small to mid budget formulaic feature film making, that involves coastal towns, predictable plots and a lack of any sort of cinematography at all: everything is coverage. The DoP is David Luther who has shot some absolutely incredible stuff such as Black Sails, so I can't imagine he decided to shoot it in a 'boring' style. It's also got 16 producers and that may well be why it is so anodyne.
I left the cinema trying to remember a single funny memorable line but I couldn't recall a single one.
The Beastie Boys video for sabotage is funnier and more cop-centric.
3/5 quite funny but nothing special. Enjoyable - but we've see it all before.