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A Walk to Remember (2002)
Indefensible
This film has gone straight to the top of my "worst films of all time" list. There is nothing positive to be said about it. Whoever's responsible for it should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
The plot is this: Jamie is the school saint: a hard-working charitable Christian girl, who gets bullied for her troubles, and has no friends but is nevertheless perfect. (The "ugly-duckling" side to her character requires a major suspension of belief, since she's played by celebrity pop-singer Mandy Moore. But I'll let that pass, since there are far more serious criticisms to make.) Landon on the other hand is a loud-mouthed, popular, and irresponsible jock. Through his friendship with Jamie however, he gradually and agonisingly becomes a reformed character. Now that's a turgid, predictable, and unsubtle morality tale if ever I heard one. In case you missed it, the moral is this: being good is good, and being bad is bad. Even worse, it's Christian propaganda of the most patronising kind: being "good" in this film pretty much equals being Christian.
Then the plot takes a tragic turn: Jamie is fatally ill. Eventually after bravely coming to terms with her illness through her faith, she dies. Shortly before she dies however, Landon proposes to her. Their tragic, saccharine wedding is one of the most despicable scenes in the history of cinema.
The script throughout is simply appalling: it's nothing but a string of clichés of the most unoriginal and puke-makingly sentimental kind. Anyone for the line "Daddy, I love you *so* much"? As mawkish unimaginative cr*p goes that's bad enough already, but when it's spoken by a beautiful teenage girl on her deathbed, it becomes entirely intolerable.
One of the many major problems of this film is the performance of Jamie by pop-starlet Mandy Moore. In a nut-shell, Mandy Moore can't act. This is not a matter of opinion, it's a straightforward observation. Her efforts at acting are embarrassing. The fact that she was cast in this role can have been nothing more than a PR move to sell DVDs by association with her name. It should be interpreted as a direct insult to the intelligence of the viewer.
To compound the insult, the viewer then has put up with Ms Moore singing a couple of songs. In truth her songs perfectly capture the spirit of the whole film: unforgivable, unbearable emotional syrup.
What makes this film so bad, what makes it such terrible, unwatchable bilge, is its humourlessness. It's is set in a high-school and was described (by someone at "Sugar" magazine who should be sacked) as "The Teen Film of the Year". You might therefore expect it to contain a smattering of laughs, or at least attempted laughs. You say "romantic...", I say "...comedy", right? But no: throughout the whole length of this film, there isn't a single joke, or funny moment. Now I wouldn't expect the team responsible for this mush to be capable of actually making me laugh, but they could at least try. They could at least lighten the atmosphere occasionally. But they don't. The whole thing is given an insufferably heavy-handed, po-faced treatment, presumably to give the illusion that some important lesson about life is being taught. Well it isn't. The only lesson I took away with me is that some people shouldn't be allowed to make films.
In fairness, I should admit that I knew that I would hate this film before I watched it, and that I only did so because my girlfriend insisted on it. However my expectations were surpassed by miles, and as it turned out, my girlfriend also hated it (which serves her right). If you like having boring obvious moral lessons bludgeoned into you skull, then you might enjoy this film. If you like romance to be sickly sweet and tragedy to be angst-ridden, drawn-out, unsubtle, and tortuous then you'll love it. If you like trite, kitsch, commercial nonsense posing as a serious heartfelt love-story, then go and see it. But I don't and I got thoroughly fed up with the script continually plumbing new depths in its doomed attempts to tear my heart-strings.
This is not just an unspeakably bad film, its also a cynical film. It was made with minimal effort and with no regard for artistic creativity to promote Christianity and to make money by conning kids who don't know any better: shameful.
Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
A remarkable film
Capturing the Friedmans is an extraordinary documentary about a family collapsing, when the otherwise respectable Arnold Friedman is discovered in possession of child-pornography. Subsequently he and his son Jesse are charged with hundreds and hundreds of counts of child-molestation. This is a fascinating, tragic, and complex subject for a documentary, and this film is brilliantly made.
It contains no narrative voice, nor does is seek to come to any firm conclusions. The story is developed through interviews with the people involved (members of the family, lawyers, police, the judge, former victims and their families, relevant experts,...) and these various characters often give sharply conflicting versions of events, so much so that the viewer is left seriously wondering how much truth there ever was in the charges against Arnold and Jesse. At the very least the police investigation seems to have been conducted with disastrous ineptitude. But if this is a miscarriage of justice, it's not a clear-cut one: Arnold really was a paedophile, albeit a very likable one, and he may, or he may not have abused Jesse as a child, (subject to whether you believe Jesse or his lawyer). It's the desire to know the truth (which we never can), and to separate out these tortuous issues, which really sucks the viewer in.
However what makes Capturing the Friedmans so remarkable and unique is that long before director Andrew Jarecki took an interest in the case, David Friedman (another of Arnold's sons) was already there in the thick of it, filming everything. Through his camcorder we intrude on the privacy of a family in crisis: for instance we really see the unbearable strain it has to endure as Arnold prepares for his trial. Later we see him bravely enjoying his last night of freedom. The family is blown apart in front of our eyes, you won't have seen anything like it.
Throughout the film I had the feeling that even without the child-abuse charges, a film about the Friedmans would still have been worth watching. Certainly they were a interestingly dysfunctional group anyway: take the unsatisfactory relationship Elaine (Arnold's wife) had towards her husband and sons. All the characters are lively and charismatic individuals, and in happier circumstances you feel this could have been a funny and charming film: this adds to the sense of loss though, because this film is neither funny nor charming. Whatever the truth about the allegations of abuse, this film is the uncompromising and riveting human story of a family being dragged through a living hell.
Ringu (1998)
Absolutely Terrifying
This is a superb horror film. There's something about this film which gets under your skin, into your nervous system, and then it turns out the lights and creeps maliciously into your brain. The film has few jump-out-of-your-seat moments, and minimal violence, but as the plot develops the atmosphere becomes almost unbearably sinister and unpleasant. The climax of this film is one of the most frightening scenes in the history of cinema, and is guaranteed to turn your bones to jelly and leave you a quivering dribbling psychological mess.
Forget the pointless Hollywood remake, go and see this film today! There are no cheap tricks here, no melodrama, just poker-faced top performances from the cast, and some genuinely unsettling dark ideas which will bubble away in your subconscious for years to come.
My Little Eye (2002)
Disappointing
I'd wanted to see this film for ages: I'd heard good things about it, and I knew the basic idea: horrific goings on in the context of a sinister "Big Brother" style reality web-cast. I'm a big fan of horror-films, and I thought that sounded great: the atmosphere should be really edgy, and the web cams everywhere should create a real sense of claustrophobia. When I finally saw it though, I was very disappointed: it just didn't deliver at all.
The acting was fine, but despite the (somewhat desperate) dialogue about how terribly creepy the house was, the film had none of the nervy oppressive atmosphere I'd hoped for. The strange camera angles were more irritating than frightening, and the plot was generally totally unimaginative. It's more of a thriller than a true horror film, and a pretty unoriginal one. The psychological terror simply fails: it's too transparent and obvious, and you don't have enough empathy with the characters to worry too much about what will happen to them. The violence is routine and boring, and the supposed plot-twist will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever seen a thriller before.
This is an unoriginal and lacklustre film, in an original and contemporary setting. I think there's still an opportunity here for someone to have another go at making a decent film with the same premise, and I'd like to see it when they do.
Bad Santa (2003)
My kind of Santa
Usually I would go hundreds of miles out of my way to avoid any film with the word "Santa" in the title, but I made an exception for this film. This film isn't about the real Santa luckily, it's about a miserable drunken old bastard called Willie who spends every December playing Santa in a mall somewhere in the US. You know the sort of thing: children queue up to sit on his knee, they tell him what they want for Christmas, they pose for a cheesy photo, mommy hands over 5 dollars, and they go on their way. In fact though Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) is only does it as cover to rob the mall. His far more professional partner in crime is black dwarf Marcus (played by Tony Cox) who poses as Santa's little helper.
Whether or not you will like this film depends on whether or not you think the premise is funny: Willie is in fact closer to being the anti-Santa. He is a self-centered, chronically-alcoholic, womanising, child-hating, mean man. So if you think the idea of "Santa" puking up, pissing himself, chain-smoking, f***ing fat women in the changing rooms, falling over, and swearing at children (a lot) is funny, then this film will not disappoint you. I pretty much do, and I liked this film.
One thing that I enjoyed was Billy Bob Thornton's performance: he doesn't let up. There's no suggestion (for most of the film anyway) of any sort of soft-centre to the character, he really is a selfish bastard through and through, who thinks nothing of robbing old women or young children. The humour of the character is not his witty chat, but rather his uncompromising negativity. Part of the fun of the film is seeing how far that can be pushed.
Another thing I liked was genuine bizarreness of the main child character. He's a less than adorable bullied fat kid. He has some strange ideas, and this leads to some good funny dialogue between the two characters. I enjoyed the character of Marcus too, and the fact that he and Willie are by no means friends: they just needed each other to do the job. Marcus is constantly shouting at Willie, not in humorously hyperbolic terms, but straight: Willie is a loser who's perpetual drunkenness is jeopardizing their chances, and Marcus is damn well going to tell him so.
There are some other nice touches: the constipated mall detective who's always smoking and eating tangerines rather disgustingly, and the politically correct mall-manager who doesn't fire the duo only because he's too pathetic to sack a vertically-impaired African American.
The Coen brothers were executive producers for this film, and it has their feel about it: the (only moderately funny) dwarf jokes which run throughout, for instance. Basically if you find bad language remotely offensive, then don't see this film. If you find people who find bad language offensive ridiculous, then rent it on DVD and watch it with your whole family on Christmas day.
Vendredi soir (2002)
Oh Dear (Spoilers)
What a truly dismal film this is. It's a disastrous nightmare of a film, I completely hated it. I admit some of the cinematography is quite beautiful (though less than breathtaking). But, to get to the point (which this film never does), it's boring. It's really boring. Quite frankly it's more boring than watching a blank screen for 90 minutes - is that all? It seemed three times as long. Nothing happens at all: there's no plot, no dialogue, there's nothing to the characters. It's just a string of very very long scenes in which nothing happens: the heroes are stuck in traffic for ages, they go out and have a totally boring dinner, and so on. Even the sex is profoundly boring. There are literally about 20 words spoken during the whole film, and those are all of such a studied banality as to almost (but not) make them funny.
Why would anyone make a film like this? Well I suppose that the idea was to make a film illustrating the boring and unfulfilling lives that many lonely people live in big cities. If that is the aim of the film, then there's no question that it succeeds, but surely there must be a more imaginative way of doing it than by making such a boring and unfulfilling film. It seems as if the director believed that the inclusion of anything which wasn't bowel-achingly tedious (an interesting character for instance, maybe the odd thought-provoking bit of dialogue, the occasional bit of action, or even (God forbid) some plot worth speaking of) would constitute a breach of principle. So such conventional contrivances are rejected, and we're left with a blow by blow account of two deeply uninteresting silent people being stuck in traffic. Well thank you for the insight into the human condition, but I've learned more about life, and had a far more entertaining time, clipping my toenails.
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)
Slapstick rubbish (Spoilers)
Being male, I suppose that I'm not the target audience for this film, which is just as well, because I thought that it was rubbish. The performances are all good as far as they go, but the script is simply feeble. The plot is this: a slapstick comedienne called Bridget Jones is in a relationship with a high-powered human rights lawyer called Mark Darcy. However they find that personal differences are coming between them: she wants to go to parties, accidentally insult everyone there, and then fall down the stairs; while his interests include showing no vestige of humanity, being upper class, and smouldering in the background. Several crashingly unfunny scenes ensue: she suspects him of having an affair and falls off his roof trying to spy on him; they go on a skiing holiday and she falls off the ski-lift and then down the mountain; she tries to order a pregnancy test in Austria using a combination of mime and terrible mock German: all deeply second-rate stuff.
Then re-enter Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant): the attractive but untrustworthy philandering ex-boyfriend (worryingly I thought that Hugh Grant was the best thing about this film, and generally I can't stand him). Somehow or other Bridget and Daniel find themselves traveling to Thailand together, where there are some moderately amusing moments: she accidentally eats an omlette made of magic mushrooms; his attempts to seduce her are interrupted by the arrival of the Thai prostitute he'd pre-booked (he looks at the Thai girl, then at Bridget, and says "well I'm up for it if you are"). On the way home however she gets thrown into a Thai prison for accidentally smuggling cocaine: she spends her time in there discussing superbras and teaching the other inmates to sing Madonna songs.
Disappointingly though she is eventually released, thanks to the superhuman efforts of the tight-lipped but devoted Mark Darcy, and the mediocre comedy continues: Mark and Daniel have a pathetic fight in a fountain; Bridget gets soaked by a bus driving through a large puddle next to her; and (for the fortieth time in the film) whilst trying to discuss personal matters with Mark while he's at work, Bridget finds herself being humiliated in front of a room full of important international figures.
There are a couple of pointless subplots: her parents decide to re-affirm their marital vows; the sexy other girl who Bridget suspects is sleeping with Mark, actually turns out to have a lesbian crush on her. But overall there isn't a single genuinely funny moment in the whole film. Some of the scenes in Thailand have a certain charm, but almost all of the jokes have either been done to death already, or are just stupid slapstick nonsense. But as well as being unfunny, I thought this film was wildly unconvincing: Bridget Jones is meant to be a sort of everywoman, an ordinary thirty-something single girl who everyone can relate too. But she spends her whole time accidentally engineering herself into ridiculous situations. OK everyone's humiliated themselves in front of their partner's colleagues once or twice, but she does nothing else: it is her single defining character trait. For instance she's never skied before, but she claims to be an experienced skier, and then takes a chair-lift to the top of a mountain. This is profoundly foolish behaviour: is she really so deserving of sympathy when disaster inevitably strikes? Meanwhile Mark Darcy brings new meaning to the term "one-dimensional": he's polite and perfect, but he hardly ever shows the slightest emotion or interest in anything whatsoever.
I admit that I'm not the sort of guy who likes chick-flicks in general, but if you absolutely have to see one, there are any number of romantic comedies which are more plausible, more romantic, and funnier than this one.
Monster Man (2003)
Hilarious
I enjoyed this film as much as I've enjoyed any film recently. I admit that it's pretty trashy, and not particularly frightening, but I loved it. It's a gore-comedy basically, and I thought that it was absolutely hilarious. Very much in the fine tradition of Brain Dead (Dead Alive) and clearly influenced by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it takes the form of a college-road-trip movie plus monster-truck fun. I thought the road-trip part of the film was far funnier than most examples of that genre thanks to 2 good central performances, a witty script, and sharp directing. Then there's the gore which is a delight, with a string of outstanding corpse-jokes each outdoing the last for bad-taste. The atmosphere in the cinema during this film was brilliant, if you like real gross-out comedy (and I don't mean someone f***ing an apple pie) you will enjoy this film.
The Stepford Wives (2004)
Nonsense! (Spoilers)
"The Stepford Wives" is a profoundly stupid film. The plot is this: high-powered businesswoman Joanne (Nicole Kidman) suffers a nervous breakdown after losing her job in TV. Her slightly-less-but-still-very-high-powered husband Walter (Ferris Bueller) suggests that they and their two children move out of New York to the country, to repair their marriage and restart their lives in a more relaxed fashion. So they move to a perfect house in Stepford, itself apparently the perfection of small-town America.
Stepford combines all the benefits of hi-tech ultra-modern living (the toilets automatically test their urine for blood-sugar levels), with all the wholesome old-fashioned American values of eating roast turkey on thanksgiving day while the stars-and-stripes flutters outside. Soon though, the keen-minded Joanne begins to wonder about Stepford, specifically about the womenfolk of Stepford: how is it that they all look like models, and behave and dress like the housewife from a 1950s waffle-iron advert? Why do they spend all their time arranging flowers and doting on their drooling idiotic husbands? More to the point, why do they all speak and move in synch? And why do they sometimes start repeating the same phrase over and over again in a mechanized voice whilst sparks fly out of their heads? And so it is that Joanne plus her comedy sidekicks: Bobbie, the awkward feminist Jewish intellectual; and Roger, the fashion-conscious happy-go-lucky gay guy (each amusingly played, by Bette Midler and Roger Bart respectively) begin to probe beneath the surface to discover Stepford's dark secret, a secret as laughably implausible as it is blindingly obvious: all the wives in Stepford are in fact robots (or at least have undergone brain-surgery to replace their personalities with a remote-control-husband-obedience system, the film seems unable to make up its mind). Glen Close plays Claire, the town matriarch, every inch the 1950s domestic goddess, and Christopher Walken is totally type-cast as her husband Mike: the evil commander-in-chief of The Campaign To Turn Women (And Gay Men) Into Robots.
The whole thing is directed in a slightly stilted way to give the B-Movie feeling of the 1970s original. Presumably this is to maximise the extent to which the audience are prepared to suspend their disbelief, but this is exactly where the film fails. I have no objection to assuming all the necessary technological advances, it's simply that behaviour of the human characters in the film doesn't ring true. In fact, it misses its mark by miles and miles and miles. Take for instance the character of Walter. In the first section of the film he is portrayed as an intelligent, sympathetic, sensitive man who loves his wife so much that he quits his job so he can move to the country and spend more time with her. After a few days jealous exposure to the men of Stepford and their wives, he begins to wonder whether being sympathetic and sensitive is all that it's cracked up to be. Then one day in the Stepford Mens' Association, the the wives' true nature is revealed to him (in a particularly idiotic fashion). So what does he do? What would any man do? Run horrified to the police? Think that he must have lost his mind, and commit himself to a mental hospital? No, he begins to wonder when and how he can have Joanna similarly robotized. It's total nonsense.
There's considerably more hole than plot, but the hole twists and turns predictably until Joanne herself is indeed due to be robotized. She emerges from the machine with Barbie-doll blonde hair and grinning vacantly, but after a few more inconsequential hole-twists it inevitably turns out that she's only been faking the robot-thing, and in fact Walter heroically backed out at the last moment, thereby proving himself to be "a real man". Then he saves humanity in 30 seconds flat by pressing a few convenient buttons in the machine, and reversing the whole process so that all the women in town revert to their former selves and ask their husbands what the f*** they thought they were playing at.
If it were not so easily dismissed, the sociological premises of the film would be appallingly offensive. All right, I'm prepared to accept that many men would indeed like their wives or girlfriends to look like catwalk models, and some may even think that it's right and proper that their wives do all the cooking and cleaning while they sit on their fat arses smoking cigars. But there can't be many who would genuinely prefer to wake up to the vacant (not to say entirely sinister) emotionless visage of a robot, than that of the person they love. Even fewer still could be so psychopathic as to be prepared to trick their wives into intrusive personality-erasing brain-surgery. Yet, the film assures us, many, if not most men, would want exactly that.
The problem with this film is not that it is stupid (many of my favourite films are deeply - and deliberately - stupid), but that it wants to be taken far more seriously than it deserves. Where The Stepford Wives does succeed, it is with humour: some of the dialogue is very funny, and there are good moments too when the heroes are confronted by some of the robots' more eccentric behaviour. Bobbie is their very antithesis, whereas Roger, with his obsession with camp style fits right in. If they had concentrated on playing it for laughs, this would have a far better film. Sadly though, someone involved clearly thought that it had an important message to convey. But what? "A real man" doesn't murder his wife and replace her with her own re-animated corpse? You don't say.