sp2303 Reviews

Mother (2009)

Motherhood hauled over some unpleasant coals...

[8/10 · 8 October 2010]

I began watching this film with no real idea what I was watching. Part the way through I was wondering if I wanted to watch a miserable woman for a whole film and then as the tale unfolded I decided that I was watching storytelling at its best. The idea of motherhood was taken out and hung out to dry, leaving behind a reality of a mothers need for control, her obsession for truth that becomes an obsession to lie and cover her son's murderous behaviour. The way that she subverts and restructures her son's relationships with the world, his friends, his acquaintances and the State in order to ensure the mutual survival of their relationship above all others is expertly told and left for the viewer to digest. Unexpected and really .. quite something.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Easily the worst film in years

[1/10 · 8 October 2010]

After spending a while not watching "Hollywood" film and wandering into foreign, animated.. all sorts I was actually looking forward to seeing a good old glossy, high budget, ranging Hollywood offering complete with expensively shot skylines (obligatory), oak desks (necessary for most involving offices of power) and currently loved actors mixing with some old stalwarts.. and I was not disappointed in any of those respects... except the actual film part.. I cannot comprehend how anyone can view this film as anything except completely awful. It is thin on characterisation, scrambling about in 12 year old Power Ranger style films for plot ideas and wholly bereft of any sense that I was watching something aimed above that age group. The parts where Lou commits suicide and all is made well by the agreed marriage is almost as puerile as the part where the separated couple are reunited implausibly by the man credited with jointly ruining their lives. The end credits are laughable and the pastiche of 80's "feel good" romantic comedies is almost perfect.. although I am pretty sure unintended. Michael Douglas must have wished he could turn back time and leave Gordon in jail, at least there he was safe from making a complete ass of himself. Please Mr Stone, please no more, put the camera down, step away from the camera .. please. Can't see myself braving a Hollywood film for a while..

District 9 (2009)

Sci Fi with a difference

[9/10 · 13 September 2009]

The central character is really excellent in this film, taking the dull day to day human with his trivial self into the complete unknown in a world he thinks he controls. His allegiance to man dissolves along with his bodily self in a way that grips. The downright blunt references to apartheid are not lost on the audience but neither are they so bludgeoning as to affect the films art. I loved the way this film teetered on the edge of it's story and the way it slams it's characters in your face. The running news was effective although I found the count"UP" from the central characters "exposure" did not add to the pace. By far the best scene is when Christopher sees the experiments in the lab. Great moment.. The ending also is superb. I love the way that the uncertainty of what the humans have done; that the ending itself is uncertain is perfect. Go see it.

French Film (2008)

Eric we love you... !

[1/10 · 21 June 2009]

Eric is great. Eric is just playing Eric. The rest is truly bad. What happened to the British film making fraternity that it assumes that everyone is interested in the middle class creative's life? No.. only they are.. that is why this wasn't a hit because nobody else cares. The interminable snowball of emotional layer cake that formulates these films stifles any real achievements with dialogue or characterisation and swallows it up with the cheesy endings. This stuff belongs on ITV on a Sunday night and nowhere else.

What is a shame about this film is that it could have been interesting, it could have had an idea but it leaves it behind and tries to become Notting Four Weddings and a Hill. Please go away.. watch Hunger... and come back and try again. But please.. until you can get rid of the 'rom-com' fixation.. do not.. I repeat.. do not.. see me!

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Veering close to the end.

[7/10 · 21 June 2009]

Multiple selves and multiple lives mirrored in the complexity of and constructed by an intense, suffocating interiority of an alternative but somehow parallel world that decays on the outside as our hero decays on the inside. It falls apart and is reconstructed as does he. He constructs new selves at a pace that mirrors ageing and life. It is painful, gentle, prodding and probing. The 'out of control' selves who change and challenge his perception of self, who reveal his inner deceptions and lay them in an outer but protected domain are interesting. The fact that his public do not see but we do is equally interesting as a concept but no more. It challenges and chases your thoughts but sometimes it chases them to the bar, the fridge or the exit. It is too damn long and tortured. 20 minutes needed editing out. The metaphor and in the end, the ultimate synecdoche did not need such over blowing to waft past effectively. Take a cushion, you will need it..

Is Anybody There? (2008)

The Rest Home from Hell..

[1/10 · 21 June 2009]

This is a truly awful film. Caine spits and gurns his way through the film as though he is doing facial exercises but in his defence the script is so poor that there is little else he can do but chew it up and spit it out with a look of complete boredom on his face. The lines are thrown around like ad-men's ideas and the odd witty line is so painfully contrived that it practically has a party popper attached to it. The characters are so thin that they rival the elderly resident's skin for transparency and the shovel loaded with emotional reaction is so heavy that it shows every time the film picks it up.

Leslie Phillips is grotesquely patronised by this film and his many esteemed acting colleagues left to wither in front of our eyes into an embarrassing dirge. Sadly, it is the rest home from hell for the audience.

The only thing the film delivers is how dead magic can be in the hands of an inept magician. Save the old actors... don't go!

Párpados azules (2007)

Sitting on an uneasy fence

[6/10 · 24 May 2009]

This film is a puzzle to me. Something about it thoroughly charmed me, even though watching it felt more like an obligation than an enjoyable experience.

The eccentricity of the main character was an essential component in the film holding me in my seat and it so often nearly lost me. The clunky imagery, over emphasised emphasis on banality and emptiness, emotional silence and the enormously dull way that the two main characters exist (rather than live), was almost too much.

But, I loved the idea of her winning the holiday and being so controlled by the experience that she deliberately secures her partner in order to conform to the convention that she thinks it demands.

Not a must see.. rather a "yep you might as well"

In the Loop (2009)

Blue Peter

[2/10 · 25 April 2009]

There is are two unwritten rules about Hollywood and British film for the cinema goer. Rule One says that Hollywood is always gauche, swish, unintelligent and awful and that we (the Brits) could do so much better if only we had the 40 trillion to make the film with. Rule Two says that we should not be let near the big toys because we always always face out our American cousins pretend machine guns with a cardboard cutout (ala Blue Peter). Unfortunately, In the Loop completely and utterly proves Rule Two. The actors do a fine job trying but the plot was lazy and dull and was trying to spin out a now well worn political joke that is now hackneyed. The script for 15 minutes of the TV series the West Wing not only would have wiped the floor with this film but probably recycled it as well. Belongs on TV on Sunday night but not after Rory Bremner, then I would have given it a 1. Stay home unless you need the popcorn and a mildly amusing diversion on a wet afternoon and only if you don't' have to pay full price.

The Consequences of Love (2004)

The Beast with elegance and beauty

[9/10 · 25 April 2009]

Le conseguenze dell'amore (2004)is a beautifully made film that takes small carefully positioned steps towards its ending that need to be savoured in order to be enjoyed. From the contrasting landscapes, to the tightly enclosed world that the hero inhabits, we are taken by the Director and controlled from the very moment we enter the hotel. We, like the hero, will never escape from the suffocating intensity and paradoxical monotony of his criminally driven, Mafia world. That the film resists Mafia stereotypes whilst revelling in them makes it all the more successful. The concrete grave, the inevitable brutal executions and overwhelming maleness are laid bare and exposed for what they are. Just brutality and business, and no more. Life is about being part of the corporate machine that is organised crime and not about love or living for self, family or others. Our hero is indeed a hero in that he gives up his life for the sake of the touch of the beautiful barmaid, the resolution of the misery suffered by his only neighbours in the hotel and in order to escape his decorative prison. The consequences of love are indeed beautiful and brutal at the same time. See it!!

Let the Right One In (2008)

Go somewhere different

[8/10 · 17 April 2009]

A fairy tale of love across realities. This is a film of paradox and poignancy. Snow and blood, ice and love that manages, somehow, to hang onto the childlike innocence that it breaks with horror and the fairy tale grim realities of both this and other worlds. The adult world fails to contain either the horror or the love that the vampire child creates and fails to be anything more meaningful to the living child (Oskar). The absurdity of a suicidal vampire explosion and mass cat attack is childlike and perfect. The simple imagery of stark white skin and red constantly restates the paradox of love and horror. Go and see it for yourself, sit back and let the falling snow take you somewhere different.

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

It tried so hard that it is worth your time..

[7/10 · 13 April 2009]

Ann Hathaway's hair (a God-awful choppy cut that looked like two four year olds had been let loose at the scissor table) was distracting. I wanted to sort if out... realising that this is not the best way to review a film (and following my dear friend's example of pining to clean the loo in "Trainspotting") I was however relieved when her sister tidied it up for her wedding ceremony in one of the best moments of sisterly love that has been shown on screen. The "7" goes to you for that alone. The rest of the film so nearly works that it is just plain annoying. The extended family and friends seem so nauseatingly nice that you are with Hathaway and are reaching for the narcotics yourself.. but and it is a big but, you sort of love the food obsessed motherly Dad. You want to hold him when he cries over the death of his son. You so, want his life to work. The music is tiring in it's intrusiveness and when someone (can't remember who!) tells the musicians to stop you want to break out into appreciative applause. Mum is good. She swings a good right hook, although her lack of injury at the reply is puzzling (there isn't a mark in sight at the wedding). The painful gap between mother and daughters tells so many tales. So many good good moments of film lost in a feast of food, music and poorly realised dramatic moments (Ethan's plate being revealed in the dishwasher stacking competition is one). But go and see it. The good bits are so worth it.

The Damned United (2009)

Go see! Go see!

[9/10 · 13 April 2009]

A perfect 1970's homo-erotic love story between pure arrogance and footballing brain, beautifully and humorously realised over fat, fag smoking (that's cigarettes for our US cousins) footballers! Superb. It is the only football film I have ever seen that smelled right for the 1970's. The game was male ego out of control and the film allows fiction to just get on with it and not worry about upsetting the footballing equivalent of trainspotters or anyone still living who doesn't like being portrayed as a git! An absolute blessing to have a British film that doesn't prance around the subject like a Guardian journalist. Unashamed sweat, mud, rain and tears. Could have watched another hour of it at least.

Changeling (2008)

Changeling wince

[3/10 · 13 April 2009]

I love Clint. I wanted to love this. I didn't. I wanted to agree with all the other glowing reviews on here but I can't. Angelina's cartoon like lips dominated the screen to the point where they began to grate. Hats off to Clint. The film looked amazing. The isolation of her character was intense and very well drawn but the constant close attention to her face just moved attention away from other characters (who were hugely reduced) and from the story. Sadly when they did appear they were not wholly appealing. The police were one dimensional characters of stock "we've been caught with our provincial pants down" plot lines and the "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" scenes in the psychiatric ward were less harrowing and more hackneyed. The best scenes were from the mother of the returning child, who escaped from the serial killer and the trial and enquiry running together. However, if I had been the Changeling, I would have stayed at home rather than live with those lips. Sorry Clint.

Hunger (2008)

Visual and stunningly human

[9/10 · 13 April 2009]

Hunger is a visually stunning piece of film. I was slightly apprehensive, thinking that this might be one of those rather annoyingly political "Sledgehammer" films. It was a very long way from that. It told it's tale with enormous humanity and never lost sight of the fact that it was dealing with real people, with real emotions, convictions, beliefs and fears, regardless of what side of the political divide they stood. The sheer brutality of it makes it somewhat of an ordeal for the viewer but it is one that holds you and contains you within itself. The long piece of central dialogue is compelling and feels like a knife edge. It stands out for the powerful character of Sands. The stench of the film is so well drawn that it is almost in danger of following you home. For anyone going thinking that they are going to see a one sided piece of political tale telling, you are in for a surprise. My advice! Don't sit next to the man with the burger.. it won't go down well.