SOME SPOILERS AHEAD
I didn’t get around to watching absolutely tonnes last month, but I did manage to catch some of last year’s movies that made waves at various awards ceremonies. Despite it being Oscar month, just one Academy tipped movie made it into my schedule (Gary Oldman’s Best Actor nod in ‘Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy’) but I hope to familiarise my self with some of them in March.
Apollo 18 (2011)
Billed as a ‘found footage’ experience (although quite clearly the least believable of anything released since ‘The Blair Witch Project’) telling the story of NASA’s abandoned Apollo 18 mission and why the US ‘never returned to the moon’. It’s pretty predictable, the acting is lame and the big reveal of the extra-terrestrial creatures (posing as moon rocks) is a bit of a let down. It does it’s best to feel claustrophobic but it’s hard to get onside with the astronauts, who aren’t the most likeable guys and whose constant bad decision making is both frustrating and infuriating. It’s incredibly short as well, which means the plot just can’t get off the ground, resulting in my only happiness gained from this movie being that I’m just happy that I didn’t pay to see this in theatres. The winner of my SHIT MOVIE OF THE MONTH with a 4.5 / 10.
Melancholia (2011)
Here’s a word of warning – don’t watch Lars Von Trier’s ‘Melancholia’ if you’ve had an even slightly bad day, it will only make things worse. Now, I could look beyond the outer shell of this movie and try and pick apart the metaphors that lie within it’s many layers, and look further into the meaning of Kirsten Dunst’s depressive and self-destructive character, but to be honest I’d rather just talk about this movie as I took it. I couldn’t see beyond what was right in front of me, which was a slow, bland and quite pretentious piece of cinema. Dunst’s character Justine is getting married, but for some reason she’s not happy about it. She’s alienating all of those around her, including her new husband and sister, and while all of this is going on there’s a mysterious planet called Melancholia that’s about to collide with Earth. People sit around with sad looks on their faces, Kiefer Sutherland looks through a telescope and people sit on the hill as the world ends. That’s it. Nothing more to say other than I had to watch back to back episodes of ‘Men Behaving Badly’ to get back to normal. 5 / 10.
Biutiful (2010)
Perhaps not my best choice of a follow up to ‘Melancholia’ (I should have chosen some classic Eddie Murphy and not another serious slog), ‘Biutiful’ stars the ever awesome Javier Bardem as Uxbal, a Barcelona criminal who finds out he is dying from cancer and seeks spiritual guidance from those around him as he reaches the last of his days. It never really seemed to get going for me, and while Bardem’s performance was accomplished in every sense, those surrounding him (especially his manic depressive ex wife) weren’t as intriguing, which made the whole movie a great deal of effort to keep focused on. Perhaps it wasn’t holding my concentration, or perhaps it just wasn’t for me, but ‘Biutiful’ turned out to be anything but what I was expecting after hearing great things about it. And that soundtrack/score was complete torture! Awful addition to the whole experience. Another 5/10.
Bronson (2008)
Now this is more like it! 3 terrible movies are worth it if we finally get around to this, a wonderfully bizarre and violent account of the life of one of Britain’s most notorious prisoners, Michael Petersen, more commonly known as Charles Bronson. I had seen chunks of this film but never the whole thing in one go, but after falling in love with director Nicolas Winding Refn’s work on last year’s ‘Drive’ and already having a significant man crush on leading man Tom Hardy, I finally got fully enveloped in the Bronson ethos. Much of the movie is soaked in a twisted Bronson fantasy, which allows Hardy to be reckless, psychopathic and bombastic in his performance, which is hard to take your eyes. He tears through the movie like a steam train, using everything from insane monologues to brutal fight sequences to enhance the idea of Bronson as a true British anti-hero, despite him being quite obvious a mentally unstable human being. It’s part Kubrick, part Fincher, part Tarantino, and that makes a fabulous combination for a superbly enjoyable film. Visceral filmmaking at it’s best, and my MOVIE OF THE MONTH with 8.5 / 10.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)
With such a stellar British cast (which acts as a who’s who of current Brit actors making waves in cinema), I had huge expectations of ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ and was excited to see what it had to offer when I settled down with my Blu-Ray copy. Unfortunately, the MI6 espionage thriller set in the bleak days of the Cold War is hard work, not because of the intricacy of the plot or the occasional ‘over my head’ subject matter, but mainly because of the way the whole film is presented. There isn’t much urgency to any of the character’s causes and any tension caused is quickly forgotten about with every scene change/voiceover/twist in the tale. Gary Oldman’s performance is dry and understated, which is why it is surprising that this (of all of Oldman’s performances) got him his first Best Actor nomination at the Academy Awards. Could have been a great thriller, but for me it just felt too overloaded with half-cut ideas. 5.5 / 10
Contagion (2011)
A star-studded cast props up Steven Soderbergh’s thriller about a viral outbreak that threatens to overwhelm the human race. With appearances from Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Marion Cotillard, the drive of the movie can feel interrupted every time a new recognisable face appears on screen. But it’s well written and well put together, especially with the science behind the disease, which seems incredibly believable as it is explained in great detail. I felt the threat from the virus but found it hard to connect with any of the characters and I wouldn’t recommend it to any clean freaks or hypochondriacs. 6 / 10.
The Grey (2012)
After seeing the trailer at the tail end of last year, the hot-blooded male in me has been itching to see Liam Neeson in ‘The Grey’, and that’s not because I find the action star attractive. The whole thing has been sold to us as ‘that hard bloke from ‘Taken’ versus a pack of wolves’, and let’s be honest here, who the hell doesn’t want to see how that goes down? I was fully engrossed in the movie for the near 2 hours of running time, and despite the fact that it wasn’t the thrill ride I was hoping it would be, the whole ‘man versus’ nature thing really kept me hooked. I wanted these guys (a group of plane crash survivors stranded in the middle of Alaska) to make it (well most of them) and Neeson’s determined yet vulnerable character gave the whole movie a deep and poetic edge. He recited a poem, something he remembered from his childhood, throughout the movie, and I found it to be the perfect quote to sum up the truly epic scale of ‘The Grey’. “Once more into the fray. Into the last good fight I’ll ever know. Live and die on this day. Live and die on this day.” 7 / 10.
Immortals (2011)
The mythology of Ancient Greece has always been a slight passion of mine (from my childhood love of ‘Clash of the Titans’ to my numerous hours spent as Kratos in the ‘God of War’ game series) so perhaps I was more tolerant of ‘Immortals’ than many critics, who insulted it for bad dialogue and wooden performances. But I really did find it quite enjoyable, maybe because the turn of Mickey Rourke as the dastardly King Hyperion was impeccably evil and the inclusion of the Gods (from Zeus to Athena) in Theseus’ battle to save mankind was done with a streak of originality, despite it’s obvious similarities to the ruthlessness of ‘300’. Henry Cavill (who will soon play Superman in Zack Snyder’s ‘Man of Steel’) showed promise as a leading man and it was refreshing to see a take on Ancient Greece that was void of the hulking supernatural monsters that usual populate films of this genre (see the latest trailer for ‘Wrath of the Titans’ to see how to overdo it – exciting as it may seem). I really enjoyed it! 7 / 10.
