What I’ve Been Watching (March 2011)

Here’s what I have been watching throughout March of 2011. Not as many movies as previously as I’ve dedicated a fair few hours to TV series Boardwalk Empire and even more time to shouting at passers-by from my window wearing nothing but a leotard.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Boardwalk Empire – Season One (2009)

Boardwalk Empire is a television show of epic proportions, its grand scale not comparable to much on our screens at this current time. You just need to take a look at some of the big hitters involved to know that a lot of money and creative flair has been put behind this 12 part series. They include leading man Steve Buscemi, director of the pilot (and producer of the series) Martin Scorsese, executive producer Mark Wahlberg and a supporting cast that includes Michael Pitt, Kelly MacDonald, Michael Kenneth Williams and Stephen Graham. The show focuses on Atlantic City politician/gangster Enoch 'Nucky' Thompson (Buscemi) during the 1920s Prohibition Era, his attempts to keep alcohol flowing into the city once it has been outlawed and his struggles to retain power when other forces threaten his livelihood. For me, it was like a movie I never wanted to end, the 12 parts leaving me itching for more (which is why I'm glad it has been a second series has been confirmed). Everything I love about gangster movies was applied tenfold to Boardwalk Empire, the storyline paced at the exact right speed to distribute all of the subplots and ideas. The violence was profuse, the twists commendable and Steve Buscemi's juggernaut role career-defining, as if it seems everything her has done leading up to this has been merely preparation for the empathetic yet ruthless Nucky Thompson. 9 / 10.

Miller’s Crossing (1990)

After seeing the most recent offering from the Coen Brothers last month (True Grit) I was advised to take a look at one of their earlier offerings, a movie I've heard nothing but good things about but haven't had the chance to catch before. I began Miller's Crossing being fully engrossed in the world of Prohibition USA, after spending 12 hours inside Boardwalk Empire, the movie following Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) in his struggles to keep the peace between gangland crime boss rivals Leo (Albert Finney) and Caspar (John Polito). Thrown into the mix is a woman who is in relationships with both Tom and Leo (although the latter is to gain protection for her wayward brother Bernie, played by Coens favourite John Turturro). I enjoyed Miller’s Crossing, the movie showing early signs of what the Coens would bring to our screens in the future and glimpses of how well carefully cast roles can benefit a film. It gets a solid 7 / 10.

I Saw The Devil (2010)

I’m a huge fan of Korean Revenge flicks, with Park Chan Wook’s amazing ‘Revenge Trilogy’ (Sympathy For Mr Vengeance, Sympathy For Lady Vengeance and Old Boy) a positive hallmark of Asian filmmaking and amongst some of my favourite movies of all time. Director Je-Woon Kim (who most notably helmed The Good, The Bad & The Weird) channels the talents of Byung-Hun Lee (of the same movie) and the wonderful Min-Sik Choi (the title character of Old Boy) in I Saw The Devil, currently billed as the ‘Ultimate Revenge Movie.’ I went into this excited to see what would unfold, having been impressed and intrigued by the effective trailer and looking forward to seeing Min-Sik Choi concentrating his acting guile towards the role of a malicious and unflinching serial killer. The film opens with the pregnant wife of government agent Kim Soo-Hyeon (played by Je-Woon Kim) being attacked and murdered by loner Kyung-Chul (Min-Sik Choi), the brutality of this act throwing you in at the deep end of the sadism that will occur throughout the near 2 and a half hours of I Saw The Devil. Soo-Hyeon tracks down the killer fairly early on in the movie, using his cunning and training as an agent to skip the correct channels and come face-to-face with Kyung-Chul less than an hour in. It’s unlike anything Hollywood would ever come up with, this moment in the movie likely to be a conclusion in a thriller we’d see today, but here is where Je-Woon Kim gets started. In terms of ‘Ultimate Revenge Movie’, this lives up to that all we’re judging it on is by how much pain in inflicted on the receiver of such bloody vengeance. Soo-Hyeon beats Kyung-Chul to within an inch of his life, makes him swallow an electronic tracker and hunts the murderer down again and again, causing as much pain as possible without putting the killer out of his growing misery. Of course, eventually the tables get turned, the lines separating ‘protagonist’ and ‘antagonist’ often becoming blurred. I’ll recommend I Saw The Devil based solely on the fact that it’s a lot of fun, although it could be slightly shorter, the final act being dragged out to at least 3 times as long as it needs to be. But, if you want another reason, how about one of the most realistic decapitation scenes I’ve ever witnessed? What more could you want? Fantastic, I’m giving it a MOVIE OF THE MONTH winning 8 / 10.

In The Loop (2009)

There’s a fair amount of pressure amongst film enthusiasts to appear intelligent and well versed in the credits of the modern world when discussing reasons that make up a successfully made movie. You could say that a film focused entirely on the political relationship between Britain and the US (albeit a satire, but a satire that strives to get its facts straight) is the perfect example of this. In The Loop is that film, a British movie taking a lot of its ideas from popular BBC2 comedy series The Thick Of It, making a mockery of the decision makers in the politics world and giving the audience a look ‘behind-the-scenes’ at the  ministers and secretaries we see on Newsnight and Question Time. The transatlantic relationship between members of both British and US government is the main focus for ridicule, but perhaps taking a shot at government officials by claiming they are bumbling and incompetent is something we are all too familiar with. A foul-mouthed turn from Peter Capaldi as communications chief Malcolm Tucker (whose variety of insults are creditable) is the only thing about this film that kept me entertained, the rest of it stitching together bland scene after bland scene and coasting towards an even blander ending. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t in the mood for a political satire and perhaps it was because my attention span wasn’t as long as it usually is when I sat down to watch, but I found In The Loop undeserving of the praise it receives, earning it a 5 / 10.

Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

There are a lot of elements in place for Battle: Los Angeles that highlighted it as a movie I may enjoy. It's been billed as Black Hawk Down meets District 9, a combination of popular recent movies, which is a ploy many studios are using to get people into theatre seats (recently The Adjustment Bureau was advertising as The Bourne Identity meets Inception, which I’ve been assured it isn’t). The film premise is simple. An alien race of mechanical beasties are invading Planet Earth, attacking areas with high populations and attempting to eradicate human life. A military unit battles the extra terrestrials, creating a line of defence a few miles off the coast and doing everything in their power to defend Los Angeles. After 2 hours of squinting my eyes to see what's happening (this movie adopts the 'shaky-cam' technique) and chuckling at the sheer ridiculous nature of the script, I must warn everybody. Black Hawk Down meets District 9 this is not. In fact, to associate those movies with this is a bit of an insult to Ridley Scott and Neil Blomkamp. The movie starts with some basic fleshing out of characters, but it's a little too rushed and none of the characters are memorable or likeable, including the leading man Aaron Eckhart, who plays Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz. When the battle scenes commence they try to employ all of the techniques that work well in war movies, some of those techniques being pulled off to a satisfactory standard, but the whole movie falling apart at the seams as it cannot be taken seriously when you hear some of the lines uttered by the soldiers and any of the other supporting cast. Some script gems include Sergeant Nantz's words of comfort to a child who has just lost his father, "Marines never quit!" and a civilian woman's offer of help to the soldiers as they try to find a weak point on an injured alien's body, "Maybe I can help, I'm a vetenarian." It's trying too hard to be Independence Day for a new generation, but the comedic turns and inspirational scenes are way too overdone. I wish I could be more generous, but it's only going to get a 5 / 10.

Pontypool (2008)

Zombie movies are of a genre that I will allow myself to enjoy no matter how bad the acting, script or cinematography seems to be, even if my opinion of those elements doesn't alter before and during the viewing. My love of the mythology surrounding zombies allows me to sit back and enjoy simply because of the subject matter, and while I will not love a movie unconditionally, I am a lot more open to what unfolds if I know the living dead will be involved in some way. Pontypool isn't really a zombie movie, but it's set up to seem that way (especially with what promotional material I had seen before my viewing) which is why I rented the Blu-Ray with a certain level of interest in what this low-budget film could offer me. The only recognisable face in Pontypool is Stephen McHattie (Watchmen's original Nite Owl) who plays Glenfiddich drinking radio host Grant Mazzy, a point of contact for the residents of the small Toronto town the movie is named after as a viral outbreak begins during a snowstorm. The 'zombies' are being described as jibberish-talking, bitey crazy people, which already sets them apart from the shuffling undead of old and puts them alongside the type of nasties we may be familiar with from the recent remake of The Crazies. But that's not all that makes them unique, for as the movie goes on Mazzy becomes aware (through various callers into the radio station and a doctor who makes it into the building who has seen the outbreak up close) that the virus is not airborne or even transferred by the blood, it's spread by various infected words, the English language the carrier and infecting a person once they hear and understand certain words. It's a bizarre premise for a movie and one that gets a little confusing at times, the direction the film is going in wavering and bending just like your sense of reality. The idea gets slightly stagnant towards the end but that doesn't take away from the enjoyable and eccentric experience that was Pontypool, which I will be giving a 6.5 / 10.

Jackass 3 (2010)

The movies the Jackass boys bring to our screen are of a different breed than most a studio would back. It's entertainment in its purest form, the key elements that drive a piece of cinema, like a narrative and a message, removed for a series of stunts that risk both the health and pride of those who take part. There are those who hate Jackass and those who love it; it would seem there is rarely a middle ground. I have to admit I really do love it, and this movie cheered me up a great deal and had me in stitches throughout. I wasn't lucky enough to see it in 3D, but from what I've heard it's mainly the opening and closing sequence of the movie that makes the most of the technology. I found Jackass 2 to be a bit of a lull based on what I'd seen in the first film and the TV series, so I was pleased to see that Jackass 3 had stepped up the game with some truly mind-blowing stunts, with not one section of the movie feeling like something only put there to flesh out the running time. Highlights for me included the midgets bar fight, roller skating with buffalos, the High Five and Lamborghini Tooth Pull. Other low key stunts, like the 'Rocky' and fun with superglue, didn't disappoint, although the slightly more disgusting stunts were hard for me to handle due to my fairly weak stomach (The Sweat Cocktail, for example). Based on the entertainment factor alone (and how much it made me want to share it with other people) I'll have to give it a decent 7 / 10.

Mother (2009)

The second Korean film of the month brought me to Mother, directed by Joon-ho Bong, who brought us a unique vision of the monster movie with his most famous previous offering The Host. Something that struck me about Mother was the fact that the protagonist, a woman in her sixties trying desperately to find the killer of a girl who has somehow framed her son for the crime, raised many questions for me as to why modern day Hollywood rarely employs anybody over a certain age as their leading actors. With men in happens a lot more often, with Clint Eastwood continuing to churn out the starring roles and action stars killing the masses long into their twilight years (as The Expendables recently proved). But with women, it’s rare for somebody as old as Hye-ja Kim (who plays the title role of Mother) to be considered a viable leading character. That’s why this film is a breath of fresh air, and while it certainly wasn’t my favourite Korean movie of late (the blood, gore and downright twisted plus points missing for most of this) the plot was intriguing enough as a decent murder mystery and the performances of all involved were great. It’s getting a 6.5 / 10. 

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

I came out of Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut Synecdoche, New York feeling like I'd escaped a dungeon that I'd been locked in for a few weeks with nothing but bread and water to keep me alive and a harsh concrete surface to rest my weary head on. I'd like to say that I thought it was a pile of pretentious crap, but I can't bring myself to say that simply because I know that Kaufman (who wrote one of my personal favourites Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and other decently presented movies like Adaptation) wouldn't make something like that, right? There must have been some sort of underlying message or moral that I missed, but that's what made this movie so difficult to enjoy. If there was a message it was hidden beneath numerous layers of metaphors and hidden meanings, making it hard work to sift through the non-chronological scenes to find something that spoke to me. The movie follows a theatre director throughout his life, his newest play being prepared for with a huge set of New York being built in a warehouse. It also focuses on his struggles with women and his slowly deteriorating health. Synecdoche, New York felt like a bit of a mess, although I am sure plenty of people wouldn't agree and insist that I just didn't 'get it' or that I don't have the intellectual capability to see what a beautiful piece of experimental cinema this is. If that's the case, then I'll have to agree, because for most of the time I was completely lost. I felt uninterested in every character on screen and could only think of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's theatre director Caden as a character of self-obsessed figure of misery who was literally falling apart at the seams. I didn't want his life to be a success and I couldn't care less if he ended up happy, he was that much of a dire man to be centre of attention for this story. I couldn't wait for it to end and I don't want to have to endure it ever again, which may appear narrow minded to some but I just couldn't tolerate anything this movie was trying to say or do. My lowest score on this blog so far (sorry Charlie) goes to Synecdoche, New York, with a SHIT MOVIE OF THE MONTH earning 2.5 / 10.

Last Days (2005)

After a miserable experience dragging myself through the experience of Synecdoche, New York, I needed something to perk me up. So, for some unknown reason I thought I’d watch a movie I’ve wanted to give a go for a while, something a lot more cheerful in the shape of Last Days, director Gus Van Sant’s drama following the last few days in the life of a Seattle musician, whose life is reminiscent of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. But guess what, the misery continued and if I’d been a weaker individual I may have decided to slit my wrists or at least start smashing my head against a wall just to break the silence of some of this movie’s long and dragged out sequences that were neither remotely interesting nor executed well. I wanted to switch off ten minutes in, which really isn’t a good sign for any piece of filmmaking. I don’t care if this is the kind of thing Kurt Cobain got up to in his last few days on this Earth, because it was bland and had Michael Pitt carrying out the kind of performance any drugged up hobo could do with only having to be ten percent awake. Even the ending, with Kurt, oh sorry, Blake taking his own life, happened off screen in a bizarre and dull directorial decision. Choosing between this and Synecdoche, New York for shit movie of the month was hard, but I decided to let this one off because I felt resentful in life due to what the previous movie had done to me. That doesn’t stop it getting a tie score of 2.5 / 10.

Ronin (1998)

Ronin combines the talents of two fantastic leading men, the unflinching charisma of Jean Reno and the unmistakeable grit of Robert De Niro, but both of those actors are 100 times better than what comes out on screen in this movie. I like it, don’t mistake that, but my memories of how good this film was when I first saw it not long after its release in 1998 weren’t lived up to by this watch of this Blu-Ray conversion. I won’t go into the plot too much, simply because I don’t quite want to and also because it isn’t entirely interesting, but there are some decent action scenes and a mystical undercurrent of ancient Japanese samurai metaphors (yeah, that’s right). It’s worth watching this movie simply for the poor quality of accents (mainly Irish) in some of the actors. But without a doubt the best moment of this movie is when Sean Bean (a British accomplice to the main characters early in the movie) comments after narrowly escaping an ambush by some shady weapons dealers that they were all nearly ‘raspberry jam.’ If that’s not classic writing of an English character then I don’t know what is. Brilliant, but only getting a 5.5 / 10.

Faster (2010)

I needed another action movie to cleanse the palate and something starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson was going to be the perfect remedy. Faster stars Johnson as an ex-con just out of jail and on the hunt to kill a group of people who murdered his brother and got him locked up in the first place. It was fun, the ridiculous nature of a hit-man sent to track down the near-mute leading character the only thing I didn’t really enjoy about this. Cut out that character and concentrate harder on the roles of Billy-Bob Thornton and Carla Gugino and you’ll feel a lot more engrossed in the over-the-top plights of the characters on screen. It was enjoyable at the time but probably not something I’ll return to. It was a well spent 90 minutes, so I’ll be happy to give it a 6 / 10.

American – The Bill Hicks Story (2009)

This documentary focused on the rise, fall and popularity of American genre-hopping political comedian Bill Hicks, the movie combining photography animation and voice-overs from 10 people who knew the man best with footage of the stand-up’s acts throughout the years. It was an awesome vision of Bill’s life and what lead to his untimely death. He’s somebody I’ve long been a fan of but never really had the chance to find out much about beneath the comedy specials, and this movie gave me the opportunity to delve into what it was that made the man tick as well as what inspired him and drove him to the kind of comedy he produced. One thing that struck me about Bill was that he was lauded just as often as he was spurned, but he never conformed in order to be successful. He kept his personal opinions at the forefront of his act and that’s what made him such a dangerous tour-de-force of a comedian. I enjoyed this documentary thoroughly and would recommend it to fans of any comedians, especially classic American funny men like Richard Pryor and George Carlin. It gets an 8 / 10.