DVD review: My summer of love

A young working class girl starts a very intimate friendship with a rich girl.

This is the archetypical art house movie. Taking just cues from his source novel polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikoski concentrates on the relationship between his two young leads. The class difference, while implicit in many scenes, is not the real fulcrum of the movie which, instead, focuses on those intense, summer long, relationships typical of a younger age.

Mainly improvised during filming the movie achieves a strange dreaming quality, akin to “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, the setting is beautifully shot, even the more plain scenes are enlightened by foreign elements and an uncanny light.

The plot is virtually nonexistent, a thread about the brother of the poor girl being a born again Christian goes nowhere. As in many artsy movies the director is more interested in setting the mood than in having actual stuff happening on screen.

The two young lead, including a then unknown 22 years old Emily Blunt, are the real standout, considering that they improvised most of the movie they deserve a lot of credit.

In the end this is an interesting and relaxing movie, maybe too relaxing for its own good, I don’t recommend seeing it while tired, there is a good risk you gonna fall asleep.

DVD review: Avatar the last airbender

In a mythical land the eponymous last air bender fights the genocidal fire nation.

Maybe you don’t know it but this movie is very much maligned. It collected five raspberry awards (The anti Oscars), including the big ones, worst picture and worst director, was subjected to much ridicule and generated an internet hate campaign for its casting.

Considering all of that it’s surprising how “Avatar: the last airbender” actually is not that bad. It’s not a good movie in any shape or form but it’s actually watchable.

The casting diatribe started because the casting calls for the movie somehow went online, showing the world that the filmmakers wanted just white people for an opera that the fans felt was mostly about oriental culture. Avatar is the movie adaptation of an American animated series that has one of the most rapid fan bases you can ever imagine.

In my opinion that casting call was certainly an error but I think it’s pointless to get so riled up about this particular movie. Hollywood still has problem with the so called “minorities”, a lot of very talented people are stuck doing the same role again and again because they don’t have the right kind of look. I agree that it’s a shame and that the system should change but this is a systemic problem, not an “Avatar the last airbender” problem.

Having said that the movie is still oddly unengaging. I never saw the original series so I can’t judge how good an adaptation this is but taken as a standalone product this is standard kid fantasy fare. Done with style, with some good CGI effects and nice backgrounds, but plot wise I never felt any sense of urgency or any connection with these people. I felt like I’ve been watching an half hour morning cartoon without any fun elements or cheesy lines.

To sum it up this is still a bad movie, only die hard fantasy fans (like me) should see it.

DVD review: The boys are back

A sport journalist loses his wife and therefore must learn how to raise his children.

This could have been so much better. Clive Owen, as the person discovering the joys and tribulations of fatherhood, looks the part and delivers an intense performance. The Australian director, Scott Hicks, is an old hand, famous for “Shine”. Soundtrack by Sigur Ros, a beloved source novel, it got everything but all this things never coalesced and instead we got an half baked movie with a very obvious plot.

The problem lies at the very root of the movie, instead of a father trying is best to make everything work we get a man child who basically skips all normal living habits. Because this is what you get without women around according to these guys, a complete and utter mess. This from a team that promised us an essay on male bonding, I’m so very deluded.

Not happy with the damage that they have already done, halfway trough they introduce another child to the equation, a teenager this time. Cue more pointless drama, in a slightly different tune, that eventually drags this movie to the conclusion.

This is so much a missed occasion, eventually Hollywood will make a good movie about fatherhood but for now the best example is still the Adam Sandler one.

DVD review: The next three days

The husband of a girl accused of murder is prepared to do anything for her, including evading her from prison.

Much maligned on the release this surprisingly good movie feature the best Russel Crowe performance of quite some time. The whole point of the movie is to take a typical Hollywood situation, a prison break, and put a normal person, a college professor, in the main action role. The results are both unusual, our hero never become a gun toting Bruce Willis style guy, he spends most of the running time preparing and rehearsing, and gripping, our hero makes so many mistakes and he is so obviously not very confident in his role that there is a clear sense that anything could go wrong.

Crowe is perfect as the ordinary man with a steely resolve; he is still one of the best in the business. For very peculiar reasons, mainly his bad temper, it is fashionable to bash him, but to judge an actor from his off screen antics is really, very stupid.

The movie in itself is not perfect. The last bit, the actual prison break, is very good and engaging but it takes forever to get there and, Crowe performance notwithstanding is too slow and little bit boring. There is an interesting angle about the Wife, Elisabeth Banks, where we are forced to ponder the very real possibility that she really did kill her boss. This neatly augments the main theme of the movie.

A nice dramatic movie, recommended to fans of the genre.

Dvd review: Harry Brown

After the death of one of his friends an old ex royal marine takes matters in his own hands and start fighting back the young thugs that are ruining his neighborhood.

Basically the premise is “Death wish” with a proper actor, Michael Caine instead of Charles Bronson, and a realistic approach.

Of course Michael Caine is excellent and therefore the anguish of his character is really engrossing. The real drama is not in the shoot outs, is in watching a person react against an impossible situation by doing the unthinkable.

There is no glamour in this movie, if it weren’t for the action scenes this could have been a perfect example of “social realism”, and so we can relate to it so much more. When Jason Statham goes on a rampage its fun but its connection with real life is at best very tenuous, instead here we are watching life as we know it, we see the kind of petty crimes that we are all subjected to, the kind of crimes that made us, all of us, wish just for one moment to do what Harry Brown does.

There’s an interesting detournement at the end where they try to develop the subject and make it less about “Hoodie terror” but smartly they raise a lot of questions without giving too many answers so it’s up to the viewer to make up his opinion.

Without Michael Caine this would have been standard fare but the strength of his performance carry the whole movie to another level.

Dvd review: The A Team

It’s the A team!

Adapting “the A Team” certainly it’s not an easy thing. “The A team” it’s one of those things that you remember fondly, and at the time it was an huge success, right into the zeitgeist,  but you don’t remember an episode or a story in particular, you remember the catchy music, the mottos “I love it when a plan comes together”, Mr T haircut. Mainly you remember the outstanding chemistry, the sense of pure fun that emanated from the screen but the stories, considered by themselves, where daft.

So in a sense this movie is a faithful adaptation, being the usual brainless blockbuster with a stupid plot. Jokes aside, the director, Joe Carnahan, who also took writing duties, clearly failed on both front here. He didn’t manage to create a reasonable and compelling plot for this remake and he also failed to deliver the same kind of over the top mindless fun that was the trademark of the original, apart from a tank scene that you can easily spot on the trailer.

The casting was smart and suited to the material. Liam Neeson, even on autopilot, is a perfectly acceptable Hannibal, Sharlto Copey of District 9 fame and Quinton Jackson, a Mixed Martial Artist, deliver the best bits and a sense of joyous fun while Bradley Cooper is still lacking in comic timing but at least is credible as Face.

One last gripe. As usual Hollywood saddles us with an origin story but why they did it here is really beyond my comprehension. We were perfectly fine with that little bit of voiceover with the original, we don’t need anything more than that so why do the whole movie around that “crime they didn’t commit”? Do they really think that today’s moviegoer will be lost if they don’t see it?

Overall this is a not very good movie that should have been left in development hell, easily skippable.

DVD review: A Prophet

A young Arab odyssey trough prison life.

With “A prophet” the French writer/director, Jacques Audiard, successfully created an Arab equivalent to the “Godfather”. He smartly noticed that the numerous Arab French population, mainly of Algerian descent, was missing any iconic figures and so he set out to create “images for people who don't have images in movies”.

This is the main point of the whole movie, get a familiar genre, the prison movie, and give it a different centre. He underscore this difference by adding the figure of Corsican crime boss Cesar Luciani, played by Niels Arestup, who represent both a fading world order and a reminder of what could eventually happen to our protagonist.

Prison life is depicted with a brutal, unflinching eye, the scene with the razor will certainly remain with you for a very long time, but I don’t want to give the wrong impression, there’s no gratuitous violence, the camera doesn’t linger on the blood but to do a proper picture on that kind of life you can’t gloss over it either.

This is an extremely well written movie, the kind of interesting stuff that’s worth a movie club evening with added discussion, a masterpiece.

DVD review: MR 73

An alcoholic detective is driven off the edge by on last terrible case.

MR 73, the name comes from a type of revolver used by the French police elite forces, is an hidden gem that didn’t enjoy a wide distribution outside its native market. Also known as “The last deadly mission” this is an hard, uncompromising story with a compromised protagonist who is literally an human wreck.

Bad stuff happens, a lot of bad stuff, some is caused by our titular hero but more is caused by the corrupt institutions around him. The overall atmosphere is reminiscent of the classic Hard Boiled fiction of Raymond Chandler.

Its main strength is also its main point of weakness. The atmosphere is so bleak that it gets somewhat uncomfortable on the long run. There are huge stretches if the movie where not a lot happens, of course they help building the tone but they could be a little bit more interesting.

At the end the plot suddenly thickens and all the various strands are resolved to perfect satisfaction.

Not a movie for everybody but if you are able to endure its bleakness you’ll get something excellent.

DVD review: 14 blades

A master assassin, armed with the fabulous 14 blades, try to thwart a plot against the emperor.

The concept of the 14 blades is wonderful, a rectangular box hiding inside the titular blades, every blade has a different shape and a different purpose, but in practice this is more of a missed occasion. I understand that they wanted to convey the holy nature of those blades but in practice we hardly see them at all and considering that the title of the movie this is quite a big problem.

Having said that the action overall is good if a little bit confused. It suffers from that peculiar martial arts movie problem where too much wacky stuff is happening on the screen at the same time making it difficult to follow.

The plot is fairly interesting, mainly thanks to the relationship between the hero and a girl he kidnap during his quest. On the other side it is overlong and the main plot manages to be complicated and boring at the same time.

A martial arts movie for martial arts movie fans, non believers will not be converted by this.

DVD review: The rebound

A divorced woman starts a relationship with her much younger male nanny.

I really don’t understand why this one was rated above the current atrocious crop of American comedies. The laughs are few and far between, some vague smiles and a couple of chuckles really. It’s still disconcerting how they make dozens of these rom-coms without any noticeable comic element in them.

The romantic part dwells on the aforementioned unusual relationship, subplots are virtually absent, not even the customary gay best friend that usually enlivens and comments these kind of affairs.

It is somewhat interesting and there are some nice insights on the perks of such a high age difference but then Hollywood Puritanism strikes back basically declaring that this stuff simply cannot be and that a big age gap is really too much of a hurdle. Considering the highly publicized relationship that Catherine Zeta Jones, the female lead, has with Michael Douglas, 25 years older, this is simply baffling.

This movie certainly got his niche audience, basically MILF lovers and cougars apparently, but everybody else should stay clear.

DVD review: REC 2

A special force team enters a quarantined building overran by the undead.

Another interesting Spanish horror, this is the follow up to the very interesting 2007 hit “REC”. As in his predecessor the gimmick is found footage Blair Witch style combined with zombie mayhem so we see everything trough the cameras mounted on the special operations operatives or other similar tools.

As it is bound to happen in zombie movies the plot doesn’t make a lot of sense, in particular the “heroes” make a lot of very questionable, borderline suicidal decisions, but this is part of the trappings of the genre so we shouldn’t complain. The hordes of the undead shouldn’t pose that much of a trouble for a fully armed team but of course if we do it realistically we wouldn’t have a film at all so it’s better not to pay to much attention to it.

Smartly the Spanish duo behind the serie, Jaume Balaguero  and Paco Plaza, knowing that it’s pointless to try a straight repeat of the slow revelations of the first one, switch gears and deliver something more akin to Resident Evil (the game not the movies). A couple of interesting revelations make the prospect of the third movie actually appealing.

The various character are the usual cardboard figures so common in these type of movies, it’s very hard to empathize with them, it’s actually hard to distinguish them at all, but this is not such a bad problem considering that this is a horror movie, of the gory kind, and so they are there only to be dismembered in various way for our amusement.

This is still a visceral experience, in many ways even more so than the first one but were the first one made us actually care about the events here is all about the body count and the scares.

DVD review: Knight and day

A normal woman gets entangled in the crazy life of a super spy.

This movie was nailed down by critics and performed very poorly at the box office; it was the worst opening for Tom Cruise in the last twenty years. After watching it on DVD I must say that I think that this reputation is unreserved.

Maybe the main problem was that the premise is too meta. The whole point of the movie is how the wacky antics of the stereotypical action movie protagonist would look from the point of view of the poor damsel in distress. It’s very hard to convey this trough the usual channels, going into the movie I had no idea, but the critics chorus of “It doesn’t make any sense! It’s too illogical” is disconcerting; they watch a movie like this one and point at plot holes? It’s like complaining that James Bond is the only spy who goes around telling is real name to everybody. It misses the point, completely.

It certainly is not perfect, not at all. The script went through nine official rewrites and changed completely tone at least three times and it’s easy to spot dreg and bits that clearly hails from previous iterations but overall it works, maybe because action movie plot are often messy and confused and so it doesn’t look out of place in its own genre.

There are a couple of nice stunts and action sequences, again nothing mind blowing just nicely done.

Tom Cruise practically plays his movie persona and he is still clearly believable doing it. Cameron Diaz got the hardest part, the script requires her to whine a lot about everything, but she manages to deliver the tricky mix of suburban life and action girl in potential.

Overall it’s a really enjoyable experience, good for a relaxing evening.

DVD review: Killers

A woman meets and falls in love with a man without knowing that he is a spy.

If you got the distinct impression of having watched this movie at least a couple of times without knowing it rest assured, it’s true. The “Oh my god! My husband is an undercover spy!” it’s something that Hollywood seems to really love, we got so many iterations of this basic premise, sometimes she is the spy, maybe they are both spies but they don’t know it.

Anyway as usual like seems to be very complicated for these undercover James Bond, eventually their jobs interfere with their real life, the con is discovered and they need to face their spouse with “I got a really high paid job with many, many perks. Do you want to visit the white house next week?”.

Jokes aside this sub genre spawned at least two excellent movies, “True Lies” and “Mr and Mrs Smith”, so evidently it’s possible to do this stuff right.

Killers clearly aim to do a rom com version of the aforementioned cliché. Sadly this requires funny jokes, which this movie clearly lacks. The romantic part is decent but there is no spark between the two protagonists. Ashton Kutcher, it’s there physically but it’s not really there, there is a strange kind of actorial void. Notionally he is supposed to be the impossibly cool guy but, c’mon, we are talking about Ashton Kutcher, he simply lacks the necessary charisma. Katherine Heigl is also oddly detached, she still has good comic timing but she still plays the trademarked Katherine Heigl character which we had to endure during her last four movies and still isn’t able to bring it to a semblance of life. We know that she can be good, we saw it in “Knocked up” but considering this is her only movie that she doesn’t like I fear that this isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

There is some action but it’s so tame that I can’t help but wonder why they bothered; we saw better stuff in any random episode of Chuck.

Not even for Rom Com fans, this movie will appeal only to Katherine Heigl completists.

DVD review: Hierro

A mother returns to the island where her son disappeared.

Spain is becoming synonymous with good quality horror and “Hierro” doesn’t disappoint the trend.

This is not a scary movie per se, this is more an “atmosphere” movie, a psychological thriller. There are not a lot of scare or gory moments but in their place we get an interesting story, with an actual plot and a mystery that we actually want to solve.

Where the mood is king the various characters are very thin. The grieving mother is an horror staple while the various hostile people of the island are more part of the general background than true people. Indeed it would have greatly beneficiated from some subplot and a change of pace every now and then, as it is it’s a study of grieving and pain 90 minutes long.

Recommended for fans of the genre.

DVD review: District 13 Ultimatum

The mad French parkour masters are back!

Strangely in the five years following 2004 District 13 nobody followed his lead and so to get another dose of parkour acrobatic we had to wait for the sequel.

The answer to the obvious question “Does it live up to the first movie legacy?” sadly is a resounding no. It’s not a bad effort but it was misconceived from the beginning.

The plot is stupid but this is not the real problem, we don’t expect the plot for a parkour movie to be any intelligent. The real problem is that the plot is not really very fun, it’s like a strange mutant version of “The warriors” were the various gangs, all good guys, are presented as real bad asses but somehow they never do a lot. An inordinate amount of time is spent on the French president, played by a serious French actor, Philippe Torreton, who, according to the extras, always wanted to be in an action movie, just to drag it down with inane gravitas I would like to add.

The two heroes from the first one, Cyril Raffaelli and parkour god David Belle, are back. They choreographed personally the stunts and all the action scenes bringing in their usual level of cheerful insanity but it just doesn’t manage to get to the next level. The inane plot robs it of every sense of urgency and an extremely clean cinematography made every action feel very detached.

It’s still a good action movie, with incredible stunts that are way above most of the CGI and cable enhanced stuff that Hollywood feed us every day, but it clearly fails prey to the sequel law of diminishing returns.