Archive | Films and TV RSS feed for this section

BULLET POINTS

23 May

Absurdly quick roundup, because bed:

  • The Avengers was incredible. Admittedly I’d walked in hoping for, but not expecting to  receive, The Adventures of Tony Stark and Friends, but therein lies the film’s brilliance – each lead has enough individual moments of either sheer, usually violent heroism or understated hilarity that it’s impossible to waste effort picking a favourite. I still haven’t seen, nor am I still likely to see, the Hulk prequel, but his scene with Loki alone was enough to elevate him to ‘Almost As Fun As Robert Downey Jr.’ in my really-not-qualified-be-a-film-critic eyes.
  • Speaking of criticism, I reviewed Tribes: Ascend over at Gaming Daily. In hindsight I might have been  bit harsh on the turtling/defensive aspects; circumventing them takes practice, but is possible, and in some cases has actually made my flag-capturing attempts far more tense – and thus more rewarding to pull off. Still detest turrets, mind.

  • Over on BeefJack, meanwhile, I had a look at free mortify-em-up Raptus and previewed Crysis 3. Sadly, only two of my three ‘cry-’ puns made the cut in the latter, which means it’s only two-thirds as informative, witty and transcendent as it could have been. Still, I’m quite pleased with it – I wanted to make it partly about the series as a whole without drawing on tedious ’1 vs. 2′ tantrums which seem to show up whenever a Crysis sequel is mentioned on a site with longer comment threads than ours.
  • unforgivably, I’ve only seen four episodes of Adventure Time. This is the fifth-worst situation to be in once you’re aware it exists, and I plan to use the summer break to catch up, but you don’t need to be a longtime fan to enjoy this stunning and sweet songification:

You should probably go see Chronicle

12 Feb

One of the upsides of my PC breaking, then PC World employing the most comprehensively incompetent repairmen in the West of Europe, is that I finally have an excuse to watch more films. This mostly involves dusting off my LoveFilm account or rewatching Biffy Clyro’s stunning live DVD (sample!), but I’m a lot more willing to be dragged to a cinema too – last week we saw The Grey, which I can’t honestly recommend to anyone who enjoys happiness and smiling. Yesterday we took advantage of the inexplicable deal Orange have made with theatres to get half-price tickets on Wednesdays, and checked out Chronicle. It’s pretty good.

Chronicle is part superhero movie, part coming-of-age tale and all masterclass in character writing. All three leads – the American high schoolers who mysteriously contract telekinesis – are both likeably charming and, importantly, broken in some way. Obviously Andrew, the introverted hero (of sorts) seen above silently murdering an innocent car, is worst off – his dad beats him, he eats alone and thinks nothing of carrying an ancient video camera around his school. Matt, Andrew’s cousin, is well-meaning but dangerously ignorant of his relative’s dark side, while Steve – an athlete, but a disarmingly friendly one – displays a lack of tact and understanding that has grim consequences. Still, even when Andrew’s power begin to corrupt him, he never seems like an outright jerk; on more than a few occasions, his misuse of an incredible power is incredibly cathartic. But it’s the humane, naturalistic dialogue that really sells the boys’ friendship. I repeatedly have issues with films that can’t reconcile narrative ambitions with convincing characterisation, a kind of “Pfft, nobody talks like that” cynicism. Chronicle actually seems to portray people having a conversation, not actors recalling lines from a script. Obviously, once you can believe in someone, you can actually start to give a damn – Andrew becomes more tragic, Matt more conflicted, Steve more affable.

To be honest, the makers could have easily stripped out the pseudo-USP: 95% of the movie is in ‘found footage’ style, captured from the perspective of Andrew’s video camera. That’s fine, but the footage is of such high quality and is so often the subject of telekinesis (allowing for suspiciously steady conventional pans, zooms and angles) that when that format is quietly ditched during the climax, nobody seemed to notice. The home-video schtick could have been ditched completely with barely any effect – every other aspect of Chronicles is so strong, silly tricks like this weren’t really necessary.

Offcuts: Due Date

25 Jan

Behold, the worst injustice in filmic history since that actor you like wasn’t nominated for that award you thought he should win: Due Date’s Metascore is twenty-two points lower than that of The Hangover. I. Know.

Zach Galifiankis plays pretty much the same oblivious, thumb-handed idiot in both films, but partnering him up with a quietly seething Robert Downey Jr. yields far funnier results than having him flanked by two equally stupid (but considerably more prone to hysterical screeching) manchildren. RDJ’s expecting father -a high-strung but straight-faced architect forced to roadtrip across the US with the bearded cretin that got him kicked off his plane – focuses his rage with laser precision. It’s genuinely funny when he punches a kid in the stomach, almost entirely because of the swiftness and efficiency of the blow – in an instant, the outburst has passed without so much of a changing facial expression. These kinds of moments are, simply put, far more entertaining and far less tiring than the prolonged screaming meltdowns that so often punctuate male-led comedies.

The story is predictable, the situations contrived, but Due Date boasts  some great staccato-ish gag delivery, gorgeous scenery and an enormously underrated double act (even though Galifiankis can’t match his co-star’s comedy chops, he’s likeable enough and absolutely sells the more dramatic bits) that probably won’t reform ever again. LoveFilm it, at the very least.

← Older Entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.