It is the post-apocalypse, and everybody is killing each other for shoes.
Again.
So, Denzel Washington has what appears to be the last Bible on Earth, and is
travelling west to take it somewhere or other.
Gary Oldman is a evil psycho (surprise!) who runs a little town, and is
obsessed with getting himself a Bible, because he believes that he'll be able
to use it to inspire and thus control people. Denzel Washington doesn't want
that to happen. Conflict ensues.
It's a pretty cliched film, all told, basically a "single good man against band
of evil men" western, transferred to a postnuclear apocalypse where the sun's
so bright everyone's wearing goggles and sunglasses, and looking quite
cyberpunk. (The future, it seems, really is so bright that they've got to wear
shades.)
Having said that, Denzel Washington's cool and scary, Gary Oldman's crazy
scary, and the supporting cast do a good job. It's well shot, looks really
good, and the script's not bad.
Certainly passes the time, and it's way more entertaining than The Road was.
Views, Reviews, and Inflammatory Comments on the subject of Cinema.
Thursday 28 January 2010
Monday 18 January 2010
Up In The Air
Ah, that's better.
George Clooney is a Human Resources consultant whose job is to fire people. He
turns up to companies, to break the bad news to employees in as humane a way as
possible. He also has a sideline in public speaking and self-help in which he
advises people that property and people weigh them down and that they should
cut all ties, just like he does. He spends much of his time flying around the
country living out of carry-on luggage in a series of hotel rooms, spends about
a month at home per year, and that's the way he prefers it.
Into his life come a woman he meets in a hotel with a similar lifestyle who he
develops a relationship with, and a young girl "apprentice" who is working on
taking their company into firing people via videoconference, who he has to
introduce to the harsh realities of what he does. These two relationships
ultimately lead him to question his philosophy of life.
What this means is that this is a dark, bittersweet comedy drama, or perhaps
drama-which-is-frequently-witty-and-amusing, which has a lot of truth in it, I
would say. I know that I have, myself, been through a recession or two in my
time, and the picked-clean open plan offices and boardrooms stuffed with
unwanted cobalt bue office chairs struck a strong note of recognition with me.
In all, it's a great film, great script, charming performances, which doesn't
entirely go in the direction you might expect. Highly recommended.
George Clooney is a Human Resources consultant whose job is to fire people. He
turns up to companies, to break the bad news to employees in as humane a way as
possible. He also has a sideline in public speaking and self-help in which he
advises people that property and people weigh them down and that they should
cut all ties, just like he does. He spends much of his time flying around the
country living out of carry-on luggage in a series of hotel rooms, spends about
a month at home per year, and that's the way he prefers it.
Into his life come a woman he meets in a hotel with a similar lifestyle who he
develops a relationship with, and a young girl "apprentice" who is working on
taking their company into firing people via videoconference, who he has to
introduce to the harsh realities of what he does. These two relationships
ultimately lead him to question his philosophy of life.
What this means is that this is a dark, bittersweet comedy drama, or perhaps
drama-which-is-frequently-witty-and-amusing, which has a lot of truth in it, I
would say. I know that I have, myself, been through a recession or two in my
time, and the picked-clean open plan offices and boardrooms stuffed with
unwanted cobalt bue office chairs struck a strong note of recognition with me.
In all, it's a great film, great script, charming performances, which doesn't
entirely go in the direction you might expect. Highly recommended.
Saturday 16 January 2010
The Road
I really, really don't think this a good film. On a lot of levels. I'll detail
a few.
Plot. This goes back to my dislike of the original book. This is a novel set
post apocalypse. One day, the world burned in some mysterious way that left all
plant and animal life dead, save for some small percentage of humans who were
protected in, apparently, flimsily built American housing made of wood. For
many, misery takes over, and they turn to suicide and cannibalism. Because
that's what humanity does when we're pushed to the limit, allegedly.
So, living in the north, a man decides that he and his son won't last another
winter, and thus decide to walk south to somewhere unspecified, where it will
be warmer. Apparently, the first thing to be destroyed in the apocalypse was
the world's supply of mountain bikes, so the best that he can scavenge is a
shopping trolley to push their stuff in.
And so, they trek south in this grey and brown wilderness, like the world's
longest and most boring Quake level until the film ends to no particular
conclusion.
The plot is one of those "we're not going to tell you so don't ask" affairs
that refuses to discuss what happened, or why. We're supposed to be looking at
the characters. Which brings me to how much I hate the characters.
Not hate in the sense of "these people really irritate me." Hate in the sense
that they maddeningly make very little sense at all.
Take for example, the kid. Now, I had a reasonably middle class upbringing, and
I think the kid is soft as butter. In the film he's about ten, and was born at
the beginning of nuclear(maybe) armageddon, and is all wide eyed, and snivelly,
and fundamentally incapable of living in the world he was brought up in. He is
not, for instance, capable of listening to his father, and either a) keeping
silent or b) staying put when there are potentially cannibalistic rapists
about. If the armageddon took place *last week*, then yeah, sure, that's how a
ten year old would be. This kid... he couldn't possibly have grown up like
this. He'd be hard. He'd have instincts. But the author doesn't want to write
about that. He wants a perfect ickle angel to wax lyrical about. Despite his
insistence that everything else in the world has turned to complete shit,
apparently this kid turned out 20th Century Western Normal. He's a Nature over
Nurture man, evidently.
And there are lots of things I do not understand about the minor characters.
Like how is it that good, normal people don't trust one another, but somehow
rampaging cannibals can travel in helpful supportive packs of ten or so? The
vision of humanity's breakdown is as arbitrary and inconsistent as the nature of
the apocalypse itself.
I suppose I ought to make an effort to appreciate what the film is trying to
say, which is something or other about how parents will do anything for their
kids, which is as trite a generalisation as you'll find. But there wasn't a
single thing about the film from plot to setting to characters that made me
want to immerse myself in it at all.
a few.
Plot. This goes back to my dislike of the original book. This is a novel set
post apocalypse. One day, the world burned in some mysterious way that left all
plant and animal life dead, save for some small percentage of humans who were
protected in, apparently, flimsily built American housing made of wood. For
many, misery takes over, and they turn to suicide and cannibalism. Because
that's what humanity does when we're pushed to the limit, allegedly.
So, living in the north, a man decides that he and his son won't last another
winter, and thus decide to walk south to somewhere unspecified, where it will
be warmer. Apparently, the first thing to be destroyed in the apocalypse was
the world's supply of mountain bikes, so the best that he can scavenge is a
shopping trolley to push their stuff in.
And so, they trek south in this grey and brown wilderness, like the world's
longest and most boring Quake level until the film ends to no particular
conclusion.
The plot is one of those "we're not going to tell you so don't ask" affairs
that refuses to discuss what happened, or why. We're supposed to be looking at
the characters. Which brings me to how much I hate the characters.
Not hate in the sense of "these people really irritate me." Hate in the sense
that they maddeningly make very little sense at all.
Take for example, the kid. Now, I had a reasonably middle class upbringing, and
I think the kid is soft as butter. In the film he's about ten, and was born at
the beginning of nuclear(maybe) armageddon, and is all wide eyed, and snivelly,
and fundamentally incapable of living in the world he was brought up in. He is
not, for instance, capable of listening to his father, and either a) keeping
silent or b) staying put when there are potentially cannibalistic rapists
about. If the armageddon took place *last week*, then yeah, sure, that's how a
ten year old would be. This kid... he couldn't possibly have grown up like
this. He'd be hard. He'd have instincts. But the author doesn't want to write
about that. He wants a perfect ickle angel to wax lyrical about. Despite his
insistence that everything else in the world has turned to complete shit,
apparently this kid turned out 20th Century Western Normal. He's a Nature over
Nurture man, evidently.
And there are lots of things I do not understand about the minor characters.
Like how is it that good, normal people don't trust one another, but somehow
rampaging cannibals can travel in helpful supportive packs of ten or so? The
vision of humanity's breakdown is as arbitrary and inconsistent as the nature of
the apocalypse itself.
I suppose I ought to make an effort to appreciate what the film is trying to
say, which is something or other about how parents will do anything for their
kids, which is as trite a generalisation as you'll find. But there wasn't a
single thing about the film from plot to setting to characters that made me
want to immerse myself in it at all.
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