Tag: cinema

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The Judge

I went to the early showing of The Judge today. Actually it was the only showing at Rochester cinema and just happened to be at 10:25. As with other films I have watched at the cinema which can be seen here and here I rated the film on IMDB. See this page for a discussion of my ratings.

So, I liked this film and I rated it an eight accordingly. I don’t often go to see dramas be they courtroom or family. I just don’t like seeing stuff that reminds me of real life. That’s why I go to see science fiction or action movies, I don’t have to reflect upon my own life. This film explored the reunion of a estranged brilliant son and his family and dad after the mother dies. The dad is a judge. Hence the title.

If we ignore the actors and their star attraction I just liked the complex nature of the back history and how the story was weaved together. It doesn’t really matter what happens and the outcome of this film. It’s really about families and what they are, how they work, the tragedies and the loves. There were a few funny moments that lightened the mood but it is not a film I left feeling happy. It made me realise that life’s a bit shit really. The times when you are cradled in your parents’ arms and truly happy and safe are short. The times when you are carefree and crazy are short. The times when you hold your own children close to your heart and feel true love are short. Life is constantly changing and you have to keep up. You have to make the most of every moment and treasure all those little moments you are given. One day, there’ll be no more me, so I should do the best I can while here.

Went a bit heavy there! Look, films are an art form and art is meant to make you emotional and affect your emotions in some way. This film affected my emotions [normally quite easy to do though], but more importantly I loved the story and wasn’t bored. My mind didn’t wander. I just paid attention. This is why I gave the film 8/10. I probably won’t watch this film again, but I did like it.

This was filmed somewhere in the States and it looked like a really nice place to live. If I searched the interweb thingy I could probably find out where. I loved the river, the bridge and the weir and white water. It is somewhere I would like to visit, although there are still many places like that in the UK where I haven’t been. I nice restaurant next to a rushing, rapids section of a river should be easy to find over here. Oh, an we don’t have tornados in the UK.

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Fury

Last night I went to see Fury. It’s a film about a tank crew in the Second World War and their movement through Germany in the last few months of the war. As a film it was OK. I rated it an 8 on IMDB, as ever, see this page concerning my ratings. [check out the bottom of this communication but avoid the spoilers]

So, overall this film was an acceptable piece of Hollywood film-making. I probably will watch it again one day, not because I seek it out, but because it is on TV and I don’t change the channel.

The film seemed realistic enough [although I have never been in a tank, nor war] and I liked the way they tried to portray the cramped conditions inside the tank. This was a bit like Das Boot in that sense. As in all war films there was lots of death and strange behaviour because, let’s face it war is fucking weird.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOLLOW

I didn’t like that the young boy, whose progress we follow [apart from the first ten minutes] survived. I guess someone had to survive to tell the story. I have no idea as yet if this was based on any real story, I doubt it as it never said so. I don’t like happy endings, I prefer more real endings. When the boy was discovered underneath the tank I am sure an SS member would have shot him there and then. I realise that the SS member was young and that he was in shock too but given their fanaticism he would have alerted the rest of his troop, especially given the amount of dead they had. The Americans had murdered plenty of Germans earlier in the film and I am sure they would have killed the Nazi scum, as the Brad Pitt character already did at the beginning of the film.

I didn’t really understand the breakfast scene in the middle of the film. Or rather I did understand it but it told me nothing new. It showed that Brad Pitt was a caring leader [who knows the bible] as well as being tough, that he had “morals” [he quotes the bible] and that this crew respected him. Problem is that they didn’t do as he told them. They flouted the boundaries he set down much like naughty children. Was this scene purely for the “kid” to have sex? And then to see his love destroyed and killed by a mortar shell? I don’t know. This scene felt most like the French plantation scene in Apocalypse Now! and that was cut from the cinema release. I guess this twenty minutes would have made Fury too short had it been removed. It served nothing. Added nothing. Told me nothing. Pointless.

 

 

 

 

Addendum:

I’ve changed my rating to a 6/10 after writing this review. I clearly didn’t like certain aspects of it.

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Gone Girl

Gone Girl. In all honesty I haven’t decided whether I liked it or not. Last night I rated it as a 6 on IMDB.

Please remember to see my previous explanations of how my IMDB scoring system works.

Was this film a comment on the rabid invasiveness of the media upon private lives? Was this film a comment on sociopaths? Was this film a comment on poor little rich girl who liked a bit of rough to get back at her parents?

POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOLLOW

(I haven’t worked out what I’m going to write yet and although I could come back and edit that header I won’t, mostly what you see is the train of consciousness of me)

Overall, this film was neither of those. I have no interest in reading the book, although I probably wouldn’t have read it before seeing the film. I think we end up coming back to the main crux of the problem. After a while neither of the main characters were likeable. The wife was appalling and the husband annoyed me. To make a film effective you need to create characters that people can empathise with. In this film there is the poor little rich girl with a trust fund who has degrees from Harvard and the writer for a men’s magazine who has a smooth patter approaching someone at a party. They live in a big house in the middle of shit-ville. They have a cat. He owns a bar.

Would this film be made if the main characters were scum bags living in a trailer park? Why doesn’t film (or TV) show us real life with normal characters? Where are the films that represent normality. People who have lost their homes or struggle to make ends meet. People who love and laugh and cry. People who form MOST of our society. People who have friends and family and tragedy but humility? Soap Operas do not count. Look at what happens in soap operas. Look at the tragedies that befall a single person. Look at the terror and strife that happens to all. Where are the happy and comfortable couples? Television and cinema thrives on scandal.

My friend would tell me these films exist but I chose not to see them. I would argue they don’t show them outside of London art-house cinemas. I would also argue that for the majority of the time I see films that are clearly escapism. I see sci-fi and trash action movies. I don’t often see humdrum films. Maybe I should.

Well, there you go. It turns out I didn’t like the film.

Gone Girl was written by a writer about a clever writer who had a mum who wrote children’s books. The husband character was a writer. Say no more.

 

Added extra [06:24]

WTF was up with the Doogie Howser ex boyfriend guy? Who was he? What kind of relationship was it he had with the wife? ANOTHER rich spoilt brat enjoying life. There’s about 5 minutes of him in the film but was he controlling or was the wife? WTF? How? Who? Where? Actually, I’m glad there wasn’t any more of him in the film, it was over two hours long anyway.

Again I arrive at the conclusion that rich people suck. They mostly don’t pay taxes, don’t give a shit about those who work hard and they aren’t likeable. Stop making films about privileged twats.

Right, time for me to calm down and to go and do some work for the day.

Please let me know if you watch this film and actually like any of the main characters. I’ll let you like the police investigation and the sister, these seemed to be the only two main people who had any decent morals, approach to life.

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The Equalizer [sic]

I have just got in from watching The Equaliser. There are probably going to be spoilers in here so if you think you might watch it and yet don’t want to know any more than the trailer tells you then feel free to pop back another time.

Overall I rated this film a 6. As with all my ratings you need to refer to this previous communication.

I enjoyed this film. It’s hard not to like a film that opens with warnings of graphic violence on the ratings certificate. I often remember a friend saying

It’s good to see a proper 18 film now and then

this may have been in reference to Ong Bak.

The Equaliser:
A good action movie. The opening was pretty good and set the mood. I liked the slow pace of it. The problem was that the initial killing sequence was over the top and from there the only place to go was to make it more “involved” and more elaborate deaths.

I kept trying to remember the TV series I watched with my dad. I’ve a feeling there were adverts so it may have been on ITV (shock, horror). Edward Woodward played a man with a mysterious past who helped people in trouble. He would do so in a menacing way and with lots of guns, did he have a secret wardrobe full of weapons? I’m pretty sure that he was rather low-key and sinister in that English way.

In this film version there wasn’t any real subtlety. The first killing was five men brutally executed after a slight altercation about nearly $10,000. Oh, and it turns out these people were key players in the Russian mob. After that the Equaliser can only go on and root out all evil that plagues modern Boston and Russia.

There wasn’t a need to make this a nasty, violent film. It would have been better if the first story in this inevitable franchise was a low key story of a man helping those in his neighbourhood. It could have been a slow-burner of a film and then about three into the series we could have had the decimation of all the mobs running the East Coast.

This film, while enjoyable, missed the point of the Equaliser and I think they also missed a trick. It could have been better.

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A Most Wanted Man

I really enjoyed this film. It showed the gritty realism of being a spy and trying to make the world a better place. Of course the gritty realism just means that there weren’t lots of car chases and vodka martinis. I’ve gone off Bond a lot since Casino Royale but this showed a certain story telling class as you would expect with a film with involvement from John Le Carre.
I think this was PSH’s last film. To be slightly honest I’m not surprised as he drank and smoked his way through the entire film. I liked the way that the film never left Hamburg. It was pretty much entirely from the point of view of the PSH character. This was an intelligent film, well worth a viewing.

My IMDB tweet will appear here when I can get the embed code.

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Before I Go To Sleep

This film was one of the very few “normal” films I have seen over the last while. I think by that I mean it wasn’t an action movie or science fiction. Those are probably my favourite type of film to see as they don’t require emotions or thought. They can just be watched and enjoyed.

I liked this film and I thought it was quite good. I rated it a 6 on IMDB, mostly because although I thought it was good a deserves an 8, I am unlikely to see it again, which means it is relegated into the “good but Parish won’t watch it again” category.

I liked the idea of this film. Although it would appear than someone paid Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman on a BOGOF deal. This is the second film of recent time when they have both played the leads, the other was The Railway Man. The story is a woman wakes every day unable to remember anything about her past. Each day she has to discover who she is and how she lives. Over time she uncovers what caused the injuries that made her like this.

I won’t say any more than that. I enjoyed watching it and the suspense it created. I liked the little “frights” the director added but gradually I am learning to calm my emotions to a Zen like status when I watch these films to remove the roller coaster. Overall, this was worth the watch and is probably far better than the trailer for some shock-horror-film where the evil thing is an ugly doll [I thought we had done all that with Chucky!].

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Lucy

I’m writing while the film is fresh in my head. I’ve got home, made a cuppa and am thinking about messing around on my new project DBL-MF. That can wait a short while as I give you my verdict on the latest Luc Besson film: Lucy.

It was shit.

It started well and I was quite excited at the prospect of a good film. The first twenty minutes or so were pretty good. They set the scene. Taipei looked pretty good and the baddies were Chinese, or rather Taiwanese, and I’m happy to let the island self-govern. There were some very odd cut-scenes and I’m pretty sure they were just there to make the film a little longer, they must have run out of film that was any useable. I was going to say “good” instead of useable but there wasn’t anything good and this film had Scarlett Johansson in it.

Girl gets duped. Girl gets super powers but a short while to live. Girl kicks ass.

This, on the face of it is a pretty good synopsis and could be made into a much better film. There was a ton of science mumbo jumbo throughout the film it made it almost unwatchable. I very nearly walked out, but it had Scarlett in it. Anyone else and this film would have made a distinct 2/10 on IMDB instead of the 4/10 I gave it.

Why, oh why, does the myth that we only use 10% of our brains keep reappearing in the popular media? Isn’t enough that we exist without belittling our capabilities! Fuck you wankers. This film could have been made without all that shit in it. Girl gets drugged, gains super powers, no explanation needed. See, it works. If this myth had been mentioned once I could have coped but the whole premise was what would happen when Lucy reaches 100%. Morgan Freeman quite clearly makes the point that we are just supposing about what might happen. just as well as this was a crock of shit.

Cut to more pre-made low definition scenes of animals mating.

Then we have the same issue I had with Transcendence. Why, when we make our brains really powerful (in films) does this allow us to manipulate everything around us? Why is telekinesis suddenly OK? I’m happy that we might become very intelligent, and we might even be able to feel more using our existing senses but control electromagnetism and material objects, more wankish writing. If we had ignored any brain stuff and just had girl gets drugged and then has super-powers this film would have still worked. In fact, it would have worked a whole lot better.

Finally, I’d thought I’d summarise:

I didn’t like it

Also, just in case you think I’ve been drinking, I haven’t. I’m just writing this within an hour of leaving the cinema and normally I write these the next day. This is the teacher equivalent of having a crap lesson and then writing reports on the kids you’ve just taught. It’s all deserved.

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Guardians Of The Galaxy

Awesome.

 

I loved this film. It had a perfect mix of beautiful, funny, space-stuff, action, characters and trees. I rated this film 10 on IMDB, however, see my ratings guide. I cant’ wait to see it again and also watch it with my family.

After the first few minutes I was worried that the rest of the film was going to disappoint me as the space scenes looked gorgeous. I was concerned that the quality was going to drop over the rest of the film. It didn’t.

 

 

 

 

There’s one big thing that annoyed me. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the film rather than censorship. The character played by Peter Serafinowicz is meant to use the word “asshole”. However, for what I can only consider reasons of censorship he says “A-hole”. It just didn’t fit with the rest of the film, especially when you consider the word “shit” was used a few times. What is it about “ass” or “arse” that can’t be said when the word “shit” is used anyway? It bugged me when it was first said and then the second time “A-hole” was used I just found it very strange. What a strange world we live in.

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Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

This was a much better film that Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes which I watched at the weekend and was just not fussed by it. I went to see “Dawn” last night because it was the only thing on at the cinema worth watching and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to spend the time going. It was only after I looked at the IMDB Critics’ Metascore that I decided I would see the film because it had scored 79, which is pretty good.

The animation was stunning. The acting was stunning. I believe ape culture was reproduced accurately. I thought the whole film was a good piece. It showed just what assholes apes and people can be, this film could be attached to any of the trouble spots around the planet at the moment and used as an allegory. The film is worth watching.

This film is really about two groups who know little of each other and how they handle the first encounter. All of the behaviour is brilliantly human. It quickly descends into violence. Just look at human history and what we have done to each other over the years. Overall this is a sad film commenting on how crap humans treat each other.

SPOILERS
I had a couple of issues with certain points of the film. I was happy to accept intelligent apes, that’s the main premise. I wasn’t particularly happy with three people being able to get an hydro-electric dam working again after 10 years of non-service. That seemed rather unlikely to me, but it was a minor thing.

I was also rather unsure of Caesar’s final conversation with the man. I felt that Caesar wouldn’t have accepted that war was an inevitable part of the future. It didn’t quite fit with the rest of the film. It was exactly at the point that the two characters needed to stand up and be leaders and organise peace. Two cultures can exists next to each other but there has to be movement and discussion. There is always a need for negotiation. As an example I give you the fact that all the time the IRA were bombing the shit out of the UK in the 1980s the government [we do not negotiate with terrorists] were secretly negotiating with the IRA. It is the only way to make progress, to allow differing cultures to live together. Forgiveness needs to be learnt by all to allow healing and future cooperation.

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Transformers: Age Of Extinction

I went to see this at the cinema last night. It was the first time I had seen a film in about two months due to commitments elsewhere. Over at IMDB I rated this film a 4/10. Go to this page to see what that means.

Overall, I just got fed up with this film. I was quite happy with the first hour of the film. It was a Michael Bay film and so I wasn’t expecting much. I’m not a massive Transformers fan and I wasn’t excited about this film but it was something to see. This film was 165 minutes long and after the first 60 I felt every minute of the remaining CGI fest. This film could have been 2 hours long and much better for it. It suffered from what Phil Plait calls “too-much-stuffism“.

The characters were two dimensional. The story line was fantastical. The acting was poor. Kelsey Grammer was pretty good but Stanley Tucci was absolutely over the top and brilliant he was the only high point of the film apart from a gratuitous top-of-the-legs-shot of Nicola Peltz. This isn’t really a film I’d show my children eventually as once you’ve seen one battle between Transformers you have pretty much seen them all, there wasn’t anything that stood out as new or different.

While I was writing this I had a lovely idea of a sentence to end this communication.

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