Andrew Ferrier

Just watched The Song of Lunch on BBC iPlayer. Catch it before it disappears. An excellent little mini-film, starring the classic and highly-talented Alan Rickman and the beautiful Emma Thompson, it is based on a poem by Christopher Reid. It’s almost entirely sensuous: based around the sights, the sounds, and the baser senses of revisiting a former lover. I really enjoyed it, and it didn’t bore me for any of its 45 short minutes. I related to many of Alan Rickman’s observations about the little nuances of visiting a restaurant, being a very frequent visitor myself, from the silly ritual of wine to the waiter-watching. A few laugh-out-loud moments in the script combine with the many emotional twangs it evokes to make for a powerful drama.

I haven’t written a film review in some time, but having just come back from seeing Kick-Ass, with it still fresh in my mind, here goes…

Kick-Ass is definitely a comic book movie. It’s been portrayed in some circles as the anti-comic book movie, and that’s certainly the impression I had going in: the first ten minutes or so leave you in no doubt that the protagonist isn’t a professional, well, hero. But at the end – without spoiling it – you’re left in no doubt that it is a comic book and not reality. As evidence, the characterisation (for example, of Kick-Ass’s girlfriend, Katie) is pretty shallow. The violence is graphic and for me a little unpleasant at times (I can’t stand watching any kind of torture, and the whooping of the idiotic frat boys at the back of the cinema made it more unpleasant). Nevertheless, the film is definitely amusing – and I didn’t find the overtones of violence or language coming from Hit-Girl as unsettling as many have (if you don’t know, she’s 11, says “cunt” once and “fuck” plenty of times, and kills many people in a variety of gruesome ways).

Kick-Ass isn’t for the faint of heart, but there was a point in the film, where Kick-Ass is being drawn into the web, where I was totally engrossed and could have been watching Batman or Spiderman – except Kick-Ass is glossier, more colourful, and cooler. Despite the cringe-making violence, this is a cool film, albeit one that walks very very close to the moral tightrope (although, again, not entirely just because of Hit Girl). I like it. But many wouldn’t.

Been to see two films in almost as few days recently. Slumdog Millionaire was entertaining; perhaps not the classic it could have been – I think it lacked a little clarity in storytelling – but still great. Frost/Nixon was more compelling, certainly for me: I was not expecting Frank Langella‘s performance as Nixon to be as good as it was – in the end, it perhaps beat Anthony Hopkins‘s classic performance from Nixon. Watch out for Oliver Platt‘s wonderful performance-within-a-performance imitation of Nixon.

Went to see Burn After Reading with plv last night. It’s a bit of a slow starter, but when it gets going, there are some real solid comedic moments. It’s not laugh-a-minute, and is a little disjointed, but it’s sure entertaining as the plot gets more and more mashed up, and could almost be classed as a farce if it were a little clearer. Indeed, as the CIA boss says at one point:

Report back to me when … I dunno … when it makes sense.

It’s definitely worth the price of admission, and is a Coen brothers pic I actually like (they vary a lot). Brad Pitt and George Clooney both do a good job of playing bozos (Brad’s attempt to blackmail John Malkovich is hilarious), and J.K. Simmons as the aforementioned CIA officer is also very funny.

Pixar have done it again. WALL-E is their best film since Monsters Inc. The industrial cityscapes are amazing. The rendering detail is stunning. The story is robust, and the emotion deep.

The pre-film trailer for Madagascar 2 looked amateurish in comparison.

WALL-E is a wonderous film. See it.

Corriere della Sera said of Dog Days:

‘Those who have seen this film will never forget it, whether they loved it or hated it’

Well, I certainly didn’t like it, but I also think it is ultimately forgettable. The various stories within the film (whose only common thread is that they happen during a heatwave in Vienna) are vague, directionless, and mostly uninteresting. The characters are tedious. The hitch-hiker who seems to be suffering from some form of autism is by far the most interesting character, but even her scenes become repetitive after not too long.

Avoid unless you particularly like slow-going and very formal films.

If you’ve never had a chance to listen to the director’s commentary for Die Hard, I can wholeheartedly recommend getting hold of a copy – John McTiernan‘s comments are fascinating, and complement the talented acting of both Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman. It rapidly becomes obvious that McTiernan takes action film very seriously, as an artistic genre – not something to turn a fast buck. This is clearly one of the reasons why Die Hard is such a polished film and is a canonical example of the action film genre.

One interesting anecdote is that in the 80s, when the film was made, cutting in the middle of a camera move was forbidden by the studios, to the point where he was almost fired from Predator for doing this. A co-operative editor was the only reason Die Hard was able to use these kind of shots in the finished film. To me, this is an interesting example of how established conventions for the ‘best’ way of doing things don’t always turn out to be the best (after all, Die Hard was a huge commercial success, and no-one now watches it and comments on the strange camera moves).