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Reviews
Juno (2007)
Overrated Sundance-chic
Best screenplay?
Oscar Winning Screenplay??? This???
Better than 'There Will Be Blood'???
Better than 'No Country For Old Men'??? WHAT?!?!
It's movies like this, that are destined for straight-to- video, but then become ultra-hip at a festival like Sundance and suddenly a mediocre movie hits the big-time. But what an insult to the writing of the Coen Brothers and PT Andersen that Diablo's bitter-sweet but annoyingly smarmy script took the gong at the Academy Awards. It shouldn't have even been nominated! One thinks that if she 'looked' like a writer - instead of a cross between Marilyn Manson & Elvira, no-one would really care for her. But the novelty of her in the Kodak theatre with all the black ties is one of those 'flavor of the month' moments Hollywood loves.
For lovers of cinema and truly great screen writing, it is a travesty.
Mister Lonely (2007)
More Rubbish from Mr Overrated
Harmony Korrine - hate him or hate him? On this evidence, loathe might be a better word. Not him of course, just everything he does. But it could've been so different because the first ten minutes of this film promises so much including a fantastic idea of a Michael Jackson impersonator falling in love with a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Fantastic. And set in Paris! This could be great. But unfortunately, Korrine may spark the odd decent idea but because he is an awful writer, the story fails on every level and the audience walkout I witnessed about an hour in is proof positive that he is the most boring and pretentious film-making out there. Apparently the walk-out rate at its premiere in last years Cannes festival was quite shocking. Instead of focusing on the two protagonists, he switches the story stupidly to the confines of a château to introduce a bunch of other impersonators making the whole experience tedious and narratively barren. When will the independent cinema stop funding this upstart?
Hum Tum (2004)
Sweet Bollywood
This is a very sweet boy meets girl Bollywood flick. And although all Bollywood flicks tend to be sweet boy meets girl tales, this one really has a chance of being remade for an English audience because it combines flashback storytelling with the cutest (& instantly marketable) cartoon characters - Hum & Tum (him & her).
The set song-pieces are very catchy, especially the all girl number as the reluctant husband to be considers his position. the colors and decor as always are bright and vibrant, but there really is a sweet believable story here and the two actors play out their 'I-can't-stand-you-I love-you' roles with pleasing believability and you genuinely want a happy ending, which of course is inevitable, but you just might fear it.
Married/Unmarried (2001)
Smart but very very bleak
One suspects the director is rebelling against the saccharine relationship movies that have swamped cinemas in the last decade because this is very bleak stuff. It is also very very smart. A naked married couple open the film in the tub and we're immediately thrown into the jealous paranoia of the wife, impressively played by Gina Bellman in her best role in years. As buff but dim hubby protests his innocence we relax in familiar rom-com mode but are soon shaken awake as the film shifts gear into a very explicit and (misogynistic) second relationship, the unmarried couple of TV fave Ben Daniels and his skeletal girlfriend Kim (Vogue model Kirsten Mcmenemy). Daniels unleashes a character never seen before in his numerous TV roles that's for sure! He is full of seductive menace and quiet venom, a cross between Casanova and Hannibal Lecter, tormenting Kim with brutal dominance to satiate his fetish and hate. The film shifts between the characters in satisfying chunks, revealing more of the story within the big bold colors that fill the screen within each carefully designed set-piece. What we lack is some humor and humility, some air to lift us out of the suffocation because this is strong stuff, ear-popping dialogue, gratuitous and necessary with equal measure. Not as good as Sex Lies & Videotape, but pretty damn brave for a Brit-flick.
Gavin & Stacey: Episode #2.5 (2008)
No More Please!!!
The first series of Gavin & Stacey was fresh and sweet and very funny. But this second series is none of the above. This is a very lazy, indulgent second series from Cordon and Jones who have been found wanting as both writers and actors. Relying on weak themes per episode and completely unfunny and embarrassing set-pieces (the home- gymnasium, the radio-mast protest, the foam party, the line-dancing etc., to name a woeful few) this series has remained laughter free. Cordon seems to rely on the Dawn French myth that because he's very fat he's very funny. He isn't. And Jones who was sparkling in the first series has become a mono-syllabic bore. Then we have the roll-over gags that are gag-free and stale - Steadman's vegetarianism, the slower-than-snail gay incident with Rob Brydon, the mum's omelette's (OK we get it!!!) - it's all so forced and bland. Do the words flog and horse mean anything to Cordon & Jones? And Gavin and Stacey themselves are now just annoying dullards. We don't believe their relationship, we don't believe the love and we certainly don't believe that either would even like the other. Surely Mathew Horne deserves a script that requires him to do more than his Martin Freeman bemused stare. There are many fans of the show in the UK - I was one too, but this second series was poor. Please do not make a third series!
Cashback (2006)
Sweet but overrated
This sweet but vastly overrated feature from 1st time director and equally overrated photographer Ellis is basically a short film stretched to way beyond its limits to make a feature. After a break-up from his girlfriend (the equally overrated bionic woman herself Michelle Ryan) Ben's (Biggerstaff) insomnia forces him to fill his time in a night-shift at Sainsbury's (did Sainsbury's really give their consent to this film because it hardly portrays them favorably!). There he meets Emilia Fox, is instantly smitten, but being the shy-English-Hugh-Grant type, cannot make a move. In between this he discovers how to freeze time and indulge in some life-drawing by undressing the female shoppers of the store. But his main artistic gaze is for Fox. It's all very sweet, but painfully slow, with probably the worst sound-design in cinema history as basically there is no sound but for the actors voices, which isn't helped by Ben's bland put- you-to-sleep voice-over. Fans of naked women will love this film. Fans of cinema won't.