Film 2011

[Acker79]

Horrible Bosses
I saw this film this afternoon and was expecting something quite funny, but I don't think it met those expectations. I am a fan of Justin Bateman and Kevin Spacey, I usually enjoy Colin Farrell's performances, and still enjoyed it here, this was the first I saw of Charlie Day, and he seemed ok albeit as a character in need of fleshing out. I thought the cast and story combined enough to carry through the long periods that weren't particularly funny, and it picked up a bit toward the end. It suffers from casting, I'm not Jennifer Aniston's biggest fan (I don't dislike her, she just does nothing for me), but I thought she was the wrong person for the role. I agree with Kermode's comments about her being too attractive and appealing for the role of a woman whose advances are unwanted, and also that the crude comments coming from her didn't feel like it should have, it felt more like 'aww, look at her trying to be all grown up'. Decent enough if you find yourself watching it, but probably not worth a lot effort to catch it.

 

[keaton]

Beginners

Ewan McGregor's dad (christopher Plummer) has just died so he must sort of his things, and look after his dog, while he starts dating a french girl. Very quirky and emotional film, but very funny in parts. There's no vast plot, just an array of flashbacks and vignettes about life, love and loss and society changing over the last forty years without being as heavy going as that sounds. Lovely, like the reverse of Tree of Life

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

The Kings Speech

An excellent film all round and a throughly deserving Oscar for Firth. Rush was very good as well.

8.3

 

[Meade's Ball]

I was in the flicks last night watching The Big Picture. A French film taken from an American novel about a lawyer having to fake his identity after events change his life irreparably. Romain Duris in the lead was excellent. Much of the film is spent watching his face and the fears expressed of his pretendness being uncovered, his eyes a thoughtful quiver and the lines embedded from endless frowns thickening by the second. It's quite tense. I think the turning point for everyone watching it where i was was not actually thanks to the film itself. It came an hour in from a suddenly piercing scream from a woman some 15ft from me. She leapt and scampered. My first thoughts were a snake or a text from a kidnapper mentioning the husband she only now half-loves is being held captive and about to be boiled alive. It was a mouse.
The audience calmed within a few minutes, having carefully zipped up all their alluring nibbles and slowly moving their foots to the floor once more, and the film carried on.
It was a pretty good film. Held together mostly by Duris. And maybe for us there by the scuttling rodent and the thrills it injected.

 

[rockypaul]

The Kings Speech

An excellent film all round and a throughly deserving Oscar for Firth. Rush was very good as well.

8.3

Rush was head and shoulders better than anyone else and should have got the oscar..!

 

[Meade's Ball]

yeah yeah it's me again. Had the day off to recover from weekend overtime. Chose today, in fact, to specifically see the film Bal (Honey) on in Mayfair. Typically, they changed the day. Or i misread it. Instead, i went to Cell 211, a Spanish prison-riot drama, a genre i don't remember experiencing before. Watching it were a tall bald man and an elderly couple who a seat apart so that their belongings, most probably with a nibble or two in, could be stored comfortably and away from the dirty floor. And me. I think we all found the opening seconds stomach-turning with a man slowly slitting his wrists in his murky cell, but it was an 18 so we should have expected some roughness. After that, the violence was relatively little in comparison, but the story went on reasonably excitingly. It's all about a new prison guard who is looking around his new workplace when the riots begin. He is struck and left unconscious in cell 211. When he wakes, he realises he has to pretend to be a new inmate so as not to be kicked in by the criminals and conceals things such as shoelaces and belt to display that he is one of them. Then we have another 90 minutes or so of him looking to keep his disguise, whilst the authorities tussle gutlessly with the ideas of getting him out.
I rather enjoyed it. It was rough and ready and the acting was on occasion not the greatest, but the relationship growing between the guard in disguise and the goateed leader of the riot was quite compelling, and the suspense suitably kept to keep one gripped. A good cinema week thus far.

 

[Acker79]

August

Jim Carrey goes family friendly again in Mr. Poppers Penguins (2011) - IMDb , playing a business man whose world is turned upside down when he inherits six penguins. (trailer)

Sarahs Key (2010) - IMDb is a French film starring Kristin Scott Thomas as a journalist involved with a young girl whose family was rounded up by. (trailer)

Charlotte Gainsbourg plays the mother of a girl who believes her dead father lives in a fig tree in The Tree (2010) - IMDb (trailer)

Rising starlet Emma Stone stars with Viola Davis and Bryce Dallas Howard in The Help (2011) - IMDb about a young woman in the 60s who turns her Mississippi town upside down when she decides to talk to her family’s black house maid and write about what she has to say, leading to women coming together and sharing stories and bonds. (trailer)

A story of Saddam Hussein's son told through the eyes of the man who was paid to be his double in The Devils Double (2011) - IMDb , starring Dominic Cooper and Ludivine Sagnier. (trailer)

Audrey Tautou reteams with her Priceless director in Beautiful Lies (2010) - IMDb playing a woman who writes her mother and anonymous love letter in an effort to help her mother get over her husband leaving. (trailer only in French, sorry)

Elite Squad 2 (2010) - IMDb is a very well reviewed Brazilian movie that has something to do with an elite squad (well, d’uh!) infiltrating a prison riot, and then facing corruption charges and chaging career roles to suit political motives. (trailer)

Project Nim (2011) - IMDb is a documentary that tells the story of a baby chimpanzee that was raised by humans in an experiment in nature v nurture. (trailer)

Brendan Gleeson plays an unorthodox Irish policeman who teams up with Don Cheadle’s straitlaced FBI agen to investigate some drug smuggling in The Guard (2011) - IMDb . It all sounds very 80s, doesn’t it? (trailer)

Cashing in on the current fad, the New Directions take their TV show into the concert halls and out of the cinema screens with Glee: The 3D Concert Movie (2011) - IMDb. (trailer)

R (2010) - IMDb follows the life of a violent inmate and his social grouping-defying friendship with a young Muslim fellow inmate. (trailer)

One Day (2011) - IMDb Sees Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess play two people who meet up every year on the anniversary of their first meeting and see where they are in their lives. (trailer)

Pedro Almodóvar directs Antonio Banderas in The Skin I Live In (2011) - IMDb , a film about a plastic surgeon who seeks revenge for the rape of his daughter. (trailer)

Lily Allen’s Brother Alfie stars in Powder (2010) - IMDb a dark comedy about the independent music scene in Britain. (trailer)


Other big movies this month: The Smurfs (2011) - IMDb (trailer), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) - IMDb (trailer), Cowboys Aliens (2011) - IMDb (trailer), Super 8 (2011) - IMDb (trailer), Conan the Barbarian (2011) - IMDb (trailer), Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D (2011) - IMDb (trailer), The Inbetweeners Movie (2011) - IMDb (trailer), Final Destination 5 (2011) - IMDb (trailer)

 

[Acker79]

Captain America: The First Avenger
I quite liked this. Not challenging for the title of greatest superhero movie ever, but another solid entry into the marvel collection, working as a film in its own right while also setting up the avengers movie (for which there is a trailer at the end of the closing credits). I thought they did well keeping the character true while not laying on the patriotism angle too thick, or at all, really, while he wears the flag he is not fighting for america he is fighting for the little man, fighting against bullies, with a group of international soldiers as members of his support team. Tommy Lee Jones was very good, stanley tucci was understated, the effects were very good, at least for small steve rogers at the beginning (some of the action scenes were a bit cartoonish, perhaps by design).

 

[Acker79]

Super 8
I wasn't particularly excited by this. I don't know why, I like JJ Abrams work, even if I don't always follow his tv shows (except alias). Perhaps it was that this seemed very much like cloverfield, marketing-wise (it's a monster movie where we are teased on the monster for a long time) and I was very m'eh about that one. Perhaps it was having the name spielberg attached making me predict another film about daddy issues (and one of the first lines in the films is a neighbour questioning main kid's father's ability to play that father role with his wife gone), or if I just wasn't in the mood.

I did kinda enjoy it (and I suspect most people will enjoy it even more), but I wasn't blown away and felt like I should have liked it more than I did.

The kids were not annoying, there was nothing in particular that I felt detracted from the film, I just didn't fall in love with it.

I did really like the footage that accompanied the closing credits, though.

 

[Meade's Ball]

While some of you were probably enjoying us ease to victory in sailortown, i had finished up my Saturday's overtime and headed of to be afraid of an adolescent monkey. No, it's not a Teenwolf follow-up gone mad, but Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Now, partly thanks to technology, it's rather good. The look of Caesar, the ape we follow from near-birth to revolution, was initially remarkable and then comfortingly believable, and the lengthy session of him in a monkey sanctuary having to get along with and claim authority over his simian alikes was enthralling. His friendship with a onetime circus orangutan was moving.
It takes something of a film to make the viewer wish for the destruction of man at the hands of our evolutionary predecessor, but they manage it just fine enough here. The acting, outside of Andy Serkis buried somewhere beneath motion capture as Caesar, is mediocre as whichever players are background figures to an anthropomorphised tale of bullied youngster and then of uprising ape. Of course there are plotholes and acts of somewhat nonsensicality, but this is an emotion-led blockbuster with the right mix of technology and action.
good and moving fun, although the idea of a sequel seems really quite scary.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Super 8

Made by Abrams as a tribute to early Spielberg it was a warm, affectionate film which I enjoyed. The start was strong with a highly impressive train crash scene and the ending was strong imo and moving, similar but not as good as the end 10 minutes of ET but it dragged a little and lost its way in the middle. Strong performances by the young actors. 7.9

Phonebooth

Farrell shows his acting ability again apart from a dodgy New York accent that reverted to Irish on a few occassions. The premise was slightly ridiculous and unlikely and most people would have taken their chances and legged it from the phonebooth but it was entertaining enough to be worth the watch. 7.1

Burke and Hare

Very poor film from the normally reliable Pegg. His weakest work to date by far. 4.6

 

[Oscar]

Keep forgetting to add to this thread. Here's a couple I've seen of
late:

SUPER 8. I agree with US on this. Great style and set up but I didn't realise it was suipposed to be a full-on Spielberg tribute until after I'd seen it. It's kind of like what Gran Torino was to Clint Eastwood but not quite as good. It does capture the key ingredients of the classic Spielbergs (Jaws, ET, Close Encounters) and has a great Goonies-like main cast. 7.2/10

CAPTAIN AMERICA. Took mu eight-year-old boy to see this - his first proper comicbook movie at the cinema. After the inevitable drawn out set up, this was quite fun. It looks good and is well acted. Better than the majority of these Marvel movies but not quite up to Iron Man. 6.9/10

 

[dannyboy]

seen a few films recently

super 8 - bit dissapoined , was expecting more but good fun 7.1

rise of the apes - the opposite of super 8 was expecting less but got much more 8.2

the lincoln lawyer - very good twisty thriller 8.4

have the troll hunter to watch next . could be interesting, norwegian horror comedy

 

[Stat Brother]

I'm hopefully off, with the kids, to see Airetty at The Dukes tomorrow afternoon.

I'm expecting good things, and will report back.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Captain America: The First Avenger
I quite liked this. Not challenging for the title of greatest superhero movie ever, but another solid entry into the marvel collection, working as a film in its own right while also setting up the avengers movie (for which there is a trailer at the end of the closing credits). I thought they did well keeping the character true while not laying on the patriotism angle too thick, or at all, really, while he wears the flag he is not fighting for america he is fighting for the little man, fighting against bullies, with a group of international soldiers as members of his support team. Tommy Lee Jones was very good, stanley tucci was understated, the effects were very good, at least for small steve rogers at the beginning (some of the action scenes were a bit cartoonish, perhaps by design).

I normally love the marvel like movies. Thought this was one of the more average i'd seen. And I'm quite easily pleased.

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

super 8 - bit dissapoined , was expecting more but good fun 7.1

Don't disagree with this. Bit Disney and dragged on. Good child actors but too many Spielberg references dotted about.

 

[brighton_girl87]

Trying to convince a friend to see Planet of the Apes with me tonight, however she is concerned it will be “too jumpy”. Can anyone who seen it tell me if that is the case please.

 

[magoo]

Trying to convince a friend to see Planet of the Apes with me tonight, however she is concerned it will be “too jumpy”. Can anyone who seen it tell me if that is the case please.

You will have to sit there holding hands... and maybe kissing and fondling...

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Don't disagree with this. Bit Disney and dragged on. Good child actors but too many Spielberg references dotted about.

I think you will find that was the whole point of the film. Infact the title Super 8 was used as a reference to the lost art of making small films on a Super 8 camera which Spielberg and Abrams both started with in the 1960's and 1970's. A lost art as any chav can make a home movie on their mobile phone now ( and often do ).

 

[dannyboy]

Trying to convince a friend to see Planet of the Apes with me tonight, however she is concerned it will be “too jumpy”. Can anyone who seen it tell me if that is the case please.

not jumpy