Like most right-thinking individuals, I put this film on my "Do Not Need To See" list the moment I heard about it. A film about the origin of Facebook? Facebook isn't special. I'm from Mono, man, I was friending people and writing stuff on walls when Mark Zuckerberg was still pissing his bed. Assuming that Mark Zuckerberg was still pissing his bed when he was eight. Which I think probably he was.
But then some names start popping up. David "Fight Club" Fincher is directing? Aaron "The West Wing" Sorkin is writing the script? Then it becomes interesting. Particularly the Aaron Sorkin part. He wrote Studio 60; which means that he managed to write a series in which he made me care about a bunch of guys writing Saturday Night Live every week. Which means, I think, he could pretty much make me care about anything.
And that's what this is. It doesn't matter what this is about, this is a conflict in which the weapons are finely honed quips and retorts. Sorkin has created a dense payload of weapons-grade dialogue, which has been put in the hands of a first class general in David Fincher, who marshalls his crack troops to deliver it for maximum effect - led into battle by Capt. Jesse Eisenberg, who for my money is turning into a sure-bet. I've seen three of his films now; they've been great, and he's been a major part of what made them great.
So, even though it's actually not important exactly what this is about for it to be good, we may as well talk about that. Mark Zuckerberg is portrayed essentially as a classic nerd; very intelligent, socially dysfunctional, and angry about it. He doesn't come across as the sweet geeky type. At all. His goal is to do something that distinguishes him, shows him to be above the herd of garden-variety geniuses with whom he attends Harvard. After creating a site called Facemash, which was a HotOrNot type site using pictures of female students hoovered up from the university's online face books (which seem to be student directories), he gets in a bit of trouble. Which makes him somewhat notorious.
This leads a group of fellow undergrads, led by the Winklevoss twins (depicted as a pair of arrogant boat-rowing bluebloods), to do the programming on a website they're planning called harvardconnection.com. Zuckerberg agrees to work with them, but instead pursues a similar project of his own design, thefacebook.com, along with his best friend Eduardo Saverin, who runs the financial side of the business. The business grows, and comes to involve Sean Parker, founder of Napster and Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. Zuckerberg and Saverin drift apart, which leads to Saverin leaving active involvement with Facebook, and Facebook's lawyers contriving to massively reduce the value of his shares.
Which leads us to the framing device of the story; everything we hear is told in flashbacks, as part of two deposition sessions, from two separate lawsuits against Zuckerberg; one from the Winklevoss twins about him stealing their idea, and one from Saverin about him screwing him out of the company. And we're mostly left to decide this for ourselves. Did Zuckerberg steal the idea, or did he just lose interest in the pretty lame and unoriginal Harvardconnection.com idea, and invent something better on his own? Did he screw Saverin, or did he just contrive to get rid of a guy whose contribution to Facebook had basically been to fund it in the early stages?
The film doesn't come down on either side, though it makes it clear that Zuckerberg has acted like a pretty shitty human being in his time. And as the lawsuits, in the real world, ultimately ended in negotiated settlements, none of this stuff was ever tested in court. But if you can take a film with an ambiguous ending, which doesn't offer any conclusions on the questions it asks, then you will very likely enjoy this film. I know that, for myself, I have pondered both of the cases, and want to read more about them before I would venture to have an opinion on either. And if a film is thought provoking, that's often far superior to presenting a concrete answer.
Views, Reviews, and Inflammatory Comments on the subject of Cinema.
Thursday 21 October 2010
Tuesday 19 October 2010
A Town Called Panic
Perhaps you remember the Cravendale milk adverts in which a set of farmyard toys are amusingly animated to display their allegiance to a particular brand of milk. These were made by animators Vincent Patar and Stephane Aubier, based on a series of short animations called A Town Called Panic, which were similarly mental. This is a feature length version of those animations.
The basic idea here seems to be to create the kinds of surreal adventures that kids of about age six have their toys go through. A cowboy (called Cowboy), an indian (called Indian) and a Horse (called Horse) live together and have a series of misadventures, mostly caused Cowboy and Indian doing ill-advised things while Horse (the brains of the operation) is otherwise occupied. It all starts when Cowboy and Indian attempt to order 50 bricks online, to build Horse a barbeque for his birthday, only they accidentally order 50 million bricks. This leads to their house getting crushed by 50 million bricks. They attempt to rebuild, but every time they do, the house gets nicked overnight. Which leads them to track down the culprits, which leads them on a subterranean chase after a bunch of weird fish-men.
It goes on from there and gets odder. If you've ever tried to tell a story to a young child, and asked them to contribute weird ideas to incorporate into the story, you'll have come up with something similar yourself. It's very inventive, in the sense that it's continually inventive. I wouldn't have said that it's frequently laugh out loud funny, but rather there's a constant stream of odd ideas, and amusing twist. The animation style is deliberately crude, and often there are great little moments where that is highlighted in amusing ways. I wouldn't say that it's exactly genius, but it's certainly above and beyond the norm, and you kind of stagger out at the end, blinking, wondering what just happened.
If the thing has a real weakness, it's the voice talent. In that the main characters all seem to shout at each other all the time. I imagine in a five minute cartoon, that's all highly amusing. Over 75 minutes, it's kind of wearing.
Overall, though, it's very entertaining to have someone basically be insane at you for 75 minutes. It doesn't let up, and there's never a dull moment. It's not going to make you think very hard, or leave you with a deep emotional message. On the other hand, it does have a giant robot penguin operated by three mad scientists, and for no readily explained reason. And what's not to like about that?
The basic idea here seems to be to create the kinds of surreal adventures that kids of about age six have their toys go through. A cowboy (called Cowboy), an indian (called Indian) and a Horse (called Horse) live together and have a series of misadventures, mostly caused Cowboy and Indian doing ill-advised things while Horse (the brains of the operation) is otherwise occupied. It all starts when Cowboy and Indian attempt to order 50 bricks online, to build Horse a barbeque for his birthday, only they accidentally order 50 million bricks. This leads to their house getting crushed by 50 million bricks. They attempt to rebuild, but every time they do, the house gets nicked overnight. Which leads them to track down the culprits, which leads them on a subterranean chase after a bunch of weird fish-men.
It goes on from there and gets odder. If you've ever tried to tell a story to a young child, and asked them to contribute weird ideas to incorporate into the story, you'll have come up with something similar yourself. It's very inventive, in the sense that it's continually inventive. I wouldn't have said that it's frequently laugh out loud funny, but rather there's a constant stream of odd ideas, and amusing twist. The animation style is deliberately crude, and often there are great little moments where that is highlighted in amusing ways. I wouldn't say that it's exactly genius, but it's certainly above and beyond the norm, and you kind of stagger out at the end, blinking, wondering what just happened.
If the thing has a real weakness, it's the voice talent. In that the main characters all seem to shout at each other all the time. I imagine in a five minute cartoon, that's all highly amusing. Over 75 minutes, it's kind of wearing.
Overall, though, it's very entertaining to have someone basically be insane at you for 75 minutes. It doesn't let up, and there's never a dull moment. It's not going to make you think very hard, or leave you with a deep emotional message. On the other hand, it does have a giant robot penguin operated by three mad scientists, and for no readily explained reason. And what's not to like about that?
Saturday 16 October 2010
Made In Dagenham
I feel a short but positive review coming on. Because really, this film can be summed up via this equation:
( Brassed Off + Calendar Girls)/2 = Made In Dagenham.
On the face of it then, I could give you an average score of those two movies, and knock off early.
Like Calendar Girls, we have a group of women who attempt to do something small, and in fighting the opposition they face, the small thing grows to be a much larger and important thing. In this case, the 187 sewing machine operators who assemble the seat covers and trims at Ford's Dagenham plant stage a 24 hour walkout because they're classed (and paid) as unskilled workers, whereas they feel they should be classed semi-skilled. Ford's management attempt to fob them off with a "well, you've brought this to our attention, we'll look at it in a few months, now off you go back to work." This leads them to widen the issue to equal pay for women, and widen the scope of the strike nationally.
This is the bit where it all goes a bit Brassed Off, as the strike soon brings Ford to a standstill in the UK, as without seat covers, they can't make cars. This forces the men working at Ford into a potential redundancy situation, and tensions begin to flare, as we see both the camaraderie and misery of those forced out of work. The mores of the time come to the fore, as it becomes clear that Ford as a company see no reason why they should offer equal pay, and the male dominated unions don't see it as an issue worth fighting, seeing women's wages as "a bit extra" and the main male breadwinners being the ones worth fighting for.
Unfortunately, the film suffers from being structured like an identikit "cause" movie. One character, for instance, bows out of the fight midway through the movie because the personal cost is too high. Will they be back for the final battle? I won't tell you, but only because I don't have to. Will the stuffy establishment be stirred by an impassioned speech by a neophyte to the world of labour relations, who reminds them what they've been fighting for all along? The battle causes stresses in the lead character's relationship. Will there be a reconciliation after the partner realises what a fool they've been, and makes a heroic journey to turn up and declare their support at the all-important speech? We've seen these scenes before, and we know how they all play out. And unfortunately, Made In Dagenham doesn't defy convention at all.
I understand the filmmakers intend this film to be something every young girl should see, and I agree with that. If only because there's an outside chance that they won't be achingly familiar with the film's well worn twists and turns that feel so familiar to cinematic old lags like myself. Because there's a great film here, that's really well done and really well performed by the main cast. Sally Hawkins is great as the plucky young protagonist, and she's ably supported by the likes of Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, Geraldine James, and a whole host of other faces from the British acting and comedy community. In isolation, this is a really good film, but when you place it within its genre, it doesn't really manage to distinguish itself, the genre being full of really very good films.
( Brassed Off + Calendar Girls)/2 = Made In Dagenham.
On the face of it then, I could give you an average score of those two movies, and knock off early.
Like Calendar Girls, we have a group of women who attempt to do something small, and in fighting the opposition they face, the small thing grows to be a much larger and important thing. In this case, the 187 sewing machine operators who assemble the seat covers and trims at Ford's Dagenham plant stage a 24 hour walkout because they're classed (and paid) as unskilled workers, whereas they feel they should be classed semi-skilled. Ford's management attempt to fob them off with a "well, you've brought this to our attention, we'll look at it in a few months, now off you go back to work." This leads them to widen the issue to equal pay for women, and widen the scope of the strike nationally.
This is the bit where it all goes a bit Brassed Off, as the strike soon brings Ford to a standstill in the UK, as without seat covers, they can't make cars. This forces the men working at Ford into a potential redundancy situation, and tensions begin to flare, as we see both the camaraderie and misery of those forced out of work. The mores of the time come to the fore, as it becomes clear that Ford as a company see no reason why they should offer equal pay, and the male dominated unions don't see it as an issue worth fighting, seeing women's wages as "a bit extra" and the main male breadwinners being the ones worth fighting for.
Unfortunately, the film suffers from being structured like an identikit "cause" movie. One character, for instance, bows out of the fight midway through the movie because the personal cost is too high. Will they be back for the final battle? I won't tell you, but only because I don't have to. Will the stuffy establishment be stirred by an impassioned speech by a neophyte to the world of labour relations, who reminds them what they've been fighting for all along? The battle causes stresses in the lead character's relationship. Will there be a reconciliation after the partner realises what a fool they've been, and makes a heroic journey to turn up and declare their support at the all-important speech? We've seen these scenes before, and we know how they all play out. And unfortunately, Made In Dagenham doesn't defy convention at all.
I understand the filmmakers intend this film to be something every young girl should see, and I agree with that. If only because there's an outside chance that they won't be achingly familiar with the film's well worn twists and turns that feel so familiar to cinematic old lags like myself. Because there's a great film here, that's really well done and really well performed by the main cast. Sally Hawkins is great as the plucky young protagonist, and she's ably supported by the likes of Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, Geraldine James, and a whole host of other faces from the British acting and comedy community. In isolation, this is a really good film, but when you place it within its genre, it doesn't really manage to distinguish itself, the genre being full of really very good films.
Wednesday 13 October 2010
Mr Nice
Howard Marks. Celebrity dope smuggler. Moved an awful lot of hashish from Afghanistan in his time, and eventually served a bit of time for doing so. Apparently went straight-ish after that, and instead made a bit of money writing a bestselling book about his exploits, and then, presumably, even more money by selling the film rights. Hence this.
Rhys Ifans plays Marks throughout his life, which is the first amusingly odd bit, since it starts with him aged about 15, getting bullied at school, and there's no sense in which he looks anything other than 6'2, and 42 years old. He's a clever lad, gets into Oxford, and ends up falling in with some guys who smoke a lot of pot, a pastime which he clearly finds quite diverting. There's a brief dalliance with a normal life after university, until he gets persuaded to move a large quantity of hashish resin which a mate of his has stashed in a car's innards in Germany, and which needs to get to London. The fact that his mate can't do it himself because he's in prison doesn't seem to daunt him any. One successful smuggling operation, and he's hooked, setting up front businesses, making contacts in the IRA to use their gun smuggling channels to move drugs, and so forth, until the inevitable point where the authorities catch up with him, and the multi-million selling book and screenplay tell us that crime doesn't pay.
It's a little bit of a flawed film, because it doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be a comedy or not. There's the odd bout of larks and hijinks, and some comedy turns from the likes of David Thewlis, as a pretty hapless IRA contact, but in the end, we're kind of being sold a bill of goods which says that Marks got himself into some unbelievable scrapes, but in the end, what Marks did was find a contact to supply him the stuff, and then arranged for it to be brought in through an Irish airport, and cunningly avoiding police attention by just not really touching the stuff himself. Hardly swaggering swashbuckling smuggler stuff. I think the meaning of the title pretty much sums up the general anticlimax of the plot. "Mr Nice", you think. "I wonder how an underworld figure gets the nickname 'Mr Nice.' I bet there's all kinds of stories of his benevolent robinhoodery behind that!" What happened was - he was on the run from the police, needed a new identity, so stole the identity of a bloke who happened to be called "Donald Nice". Oh. Is that it then? And there's an overall sense of "Is that it then?" that permeates the whole film.
Performance wise, Rhys Ifans is the only one really asked to put in a performance, with everyone else just being walk on extras in Marks' life. And he does a pretty sterling job. It hardly seems a stretch from his usual screen Welshman persona to what he presents as Marks, but it's when the wheels start coming off stuff, and he finally starts having to pay for his crimes, that there's a real pathos to him. The message of the film is that Marks really does feel that he didn't do anything wrong, even if it was illegal. To him, cannabis is a beneficial herb, and he's as much an enthusiastic consumer as anyone he ever sold it to. And we see him pay a hefty price for a crime that, in the estimation of the narrator and the film-makers, hurts no-one. I suspect your opinion on that will depend on your views on cannabis, and your views on obedience to laws you don't agree with.
The film looks pretty good; beyond the obvious problem that the film covers about 30 years of Marks' life, and Ifans pretty much looks as old as he does at the end of that time, throughout the whole movie. The timeline of the movie is shown through the film stock; we start off on old black and white film for his childhood, which bleeds into colour on his first experience with cannabis, and then stays in vintage grainy colour stock throughout the sixties and seventies, getting towards more modern film effects towards the end. It's a neat biographical trick.
Ultimately, though, by the end of the film, I felt that Marks' point had been put across, to which I sort of mentally nodded and thought "fair enough then" and went on with my day. I'd been mildly entertained, and slightly informed, but I didn't think that it had made any real connection.
Rhys Ifans plays Marks throughout his life, which is the first amusingly odd bit, since it starts with him aged about 15, getting bullied at school, and there's no sense in which he looks anything other than 6'2, and 42 years old. He's a clever lad, gets into Oxford, and ends up falling in with some guys who smoke a lot of pot, a pastime which he clearly finds quite diverting. There's a brief dalliance with a normal life after university, until he gets persuaded to move a large quantity of hashish resin which a mate of his has stashed in a car's innards in Germany, and which needs to get to London. The fact that his mate can't do it himself because he's in prison doesn't seem to daunt him any. One successful smuggling operation, and he's hooked, setting up front businesses, making contacts in the IRA to use their gun smuggling channels to move drugs, and so forth, until the inevitable point where the authorities catch up with him, and the multi-million selling book and screenplay tell us that crime doesn't pay.
It's a little bit of a flawed film, because it doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be a comedy or not. There's the odd bout of larks and hijinks, and some comedy turns from the likes of David Thewlis, as a pretty hapless IRA contact, but in the end, we're kind of being sold a bill of goods which says that Marks got himself into some unbelievable scrapes, but in the end, what Marks did was find a contact to supply him the stuff, and then arranged for it to be brought in through an Irish airport, and cunningly avoiding police attention by just not really touching the stuff himself. Hardly swaggering swashbuckling smuggler stuff. I think the meaning of the title pretty much sums up the general anticlimax of the plot. "Mr Nice", you think. "I wonder how an underworld figure gets the nickname 'Mr Nice.' I bet there's all kinds of stories of his benevolent robinhoodery behind that!" What happened was - he was on the run from the police, needed a new identity, so stole the identity of a bloke who happened to be called "Donald Nice". Oh. Is that it then? And there's an overall sense of "Is that it then?" that permeates the whole film.
Performance wise, Rhys Ifans is the only one really asked to put in a performance, with everyone else just being walk on extras in Marks' life. And he does a pretty sterling job. It hardly seems a stretch from his usual screen Welshman persona to what he presents as Marks, but it's when the wheels start coming off stuff, and he finally starts having to pay for his crimes, that there's a real pathos to him. The message of the film is that Marks really does feel that he didn't do anything wrong, even if it was illegal. To him, cannabis is a beneficial herb, and he's as much an enthusiastic consumer as anyone he ever sold it to. And we see him pay a hefty price for a crime that, in the estimation of the narrator and the film-makers, hurts no-one. I suspect your opinion on that will depend on your views on cannabis, and your views on obedience to laws you don't agree with.
The film looks pretty good; beyond the obvious problem that the film covers about 30 years of Marks' life, and Ifans pretty much looks as old as he does at the end of that time, throughout the whole movie. The timeline of the movie is shown through the film stock; we start off on old black and white film for his childhood, which bleeds into colour on his first experience with cannabis, and then stays in vintage grainy colour stock throughout the sixties and seventies, getting towards more modern film effects towards the end. It's a neat biographical trick.
Ultimately, though, by the end of the film, I felt that Marks' point had been put across, to which I sort of mentally nodded and thought "fair enough then" and went on with my day. I'd been mildly entertained, and slightly informed, but I didn't think that it had made any real connection.
Friday 8 October 2010
The Other Guys
The Other Guys is a comedy film based on the idea that in movies there's the big unstoppable action hero cops, and then there's "the other guys" - the average Joe workaday cops who don't do anything exciting. Two of these other guys are Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. Ferrell is an unworldly forensic accountant, and Wahlberg is a would-be hero cop, demoted to being partnered with Ferrell due to a faux-pas accidental shooting of Derek Jeter.
The two of them get involved in a Lethal Weapon style investigation of Steve Coogan, a dodgy seeming investment banker, motivated by Wahlberg's desire to crack a big case to get his career out of the toilet, and Ferrell's conviction that Coogan's failed to get permits for scaffolding on some properties he's developing. Obviously, there's something much darker going on, but our heroes have no idea what it is.
Of course, this is by the by. The plot is an excuse to spoof the genre, but the whole film is more of a vehicle to showcase Ferrell's trademark surreal clowning. So this is really no more a cop buddy movie than Anchorman was about tv news journalism. And there's the rub. Because this film is far less funny, far less often than Anchorman. Which is not to say that it's never funny, but you can really only expect a good snort of laughter every fifteen minutes, and in-between, the plot's too weak to carry it through.
Overall, not a bad film, but on the other hand, you wouldn't be hard pressed finding a funnier two hours entertainment. Myself, I was listening to The Bugle podcast on my way over to the cinema, and on my way home, and was aware that I laughed more on the bus than I did in the cinema.
The two of them get involved in a Lethal Weapon style investigation of Steve Coogan, a dodgy seeming investment banker, motivated by Wahlberg's desire to crack a big case to get his career out of the toilet, and Ferrell's conviction that Coogan's failed to get permits for scaffolding on some properties he's developing. Obviously, there's something much darker going on, but our heroes have no idea what it is.
Of course, this is by the by. The plot is an excuse to spoof the genre, but the whole film is more of a vehicle to showcase Ferrell's trademark surreal clowning. So this is really no more a cop buddy movie than Anchorman was about tv news journalism. And there's the rub. Because this film is far less funny, far less often than Anchorman. Which is not to say that it's never funny, but you can really only expect a good snort of laughter every fifteen minutes, and in-between, the plot's too weak to carry it through.
Overall, not a bad film, but on the other hand, you wouldn't be hard pressed finding a funnier two hours entertainment. Myself, I was listening to The Bugle podcast on my way over to the cinema, and on my way home, and was aware that I laughed more on the bus than I did in the cinema.
Wednesday 6 October 2010
Buried
A man wakes up, in pitch darkness. We hear him shuffle about, and we hear him banging against wood. He begins to panic and hyperventilate. Eventually, he finds he has a zippo lighter, which he lights. We see that the man, Ryan Reynolds, is in a rough wooden coffin sized crate, which, from the odd bit of sand falling through the cracks in the roof, has apparently been buried. At this point, he quite reasonably begins to totally freak out.
Once he regains some kind of composure, her begins to take stock, and eventually finds (after it begins ringing) that he's got a mobile in there with him. After a few panicky calls to people, and getting a lot of answering machines and unhelpful voice menus, he finally realises he should call back the person who called him; at which point he learns he's been buried buy Iraqi insurgents, and if he doesn't arrange for five million dollars to be paid by 9pm, he'd going to be left there to die. This is a problem, as he is but a simple truck driver, who nobody's ever going to break the "no negotiating with terrorists" thing over.
Eventually, he gets through to the authorities, who assure him they're doing everything they can to help, which he doubts. He also has to contend with such fun stuff as a snaked burrowing in there with him, the increasingly unreasonable demnads of his kidnappers, and of course his own dwindling ability to keep it together. It's frustrating, in that I'm sure you could think of a load of things that he could have done to maximise his chances, but realistically, it's quite reasonable that he'd be able to do very little of it, given his mental state, and the fact he's not that bright in the first place.
As a film, it's a very interesting experiment. It's in near real time, and is wholly set in the coffin. If you're worried that this might make it a bit samey and repetitious over two and a half hours, you wouldn't be far wrong. At 95 minutes, it's just too long for the content. But on the other hand, this is a film that's made the audacious move of setting an entire film in a 3ftx3ftx6ft box, and the fact that they did it at all is a technical marvel. It is, also, quite unbelievably tense by the end. If this were a 60 minute play, it would be pared down to its basics and better for it. But even without that, it's still one fo the most interesting and inventive films out this year. And as for Ryan Reynolds - this is a very different film to his usual sarky light comedy stuff, and he does well to hold our attention for an hour and a half. Very impressive dramatic turn for him, and I hope it goes on to net him more of this kind of role, and fewer weak romantic comedies.
Once he regains some kind of composure, her begins to take stock, and eventually finds (after it begins ringing) that he's got a mobile in there with him. After a few panicky calls to people, and getting a lot of answering machines and unhelpful voice menus, he finally realises he should call back the person who called him; at which point he learns he's been buried buy Iraqi insurgents, and if he doesn't arrange for five million dollars to be paid by 9pm, he'd going to be left there to die. This is a problem, as he is but a simple truck driver, who nobody's ever going to break the "no negotiating with terrorists" thing over.
Eventually, he gets through to the authorities, who assure him they're doing everything they can to help, which he doubts. He also has to contend with such fun stuff as a snaked burrowing in there with him, the increasingly unreasonable demnads of his kidnappers, and of course his own dwindling ability to keep it together. It's frustrating, in that I'm sure you could think of a load of things that he could have done to maximise his chances, but realistically, it's quite reasonable that he'd be able to do very little of it, given his mental state, and the fact he's not that bright in the first place.
As a film, it's a very interesting experiment. It's in near real time, and is wholly set in the coffin. If you're worried that this might make it a bit samey and repetitious over two and a half hours, you wouldn't be far wrong. At 95 minutes, it's just too long for the content. But on the other hand, this is a film that's made the audacious move of setting an entire film in a 3ftx3ftx6ft box, and the fact that they did it at all is a technical marvel. It is, also, quite unbelievably tense by the end. If this were a 60 minute play, it would be pared down to its basics and better for it. But even without that, it's still one fo the most interesting and inventive films out this year. And as for Ryan Reynolds - this is a very different film to his usual sarky light comedy stuff, and he does well to hold our attention for an hour and a half. Very impressive dramatic turn for him, and I hope it goes on to net him more of this kind of role, and fewer weak romantic comedies.
The Hole (In 3D)
It's Joe Dante! Hurrah! Back doing what Joe Dante does best, scaring little kids.
This particular bunch of kids that Joe Dante's scaring are a couple of brothers, Dane and Lucas, a teenager and a not-actually-that-irritating kid. They have moved to a new house in Smalltown USA, and find that in their basement, there's a big trap door, secured with a bundle of padlocks. Obviously, what happens next is that they open it up and take a look.
They are quickly joined by the girl next door, Julie, and together, they investigate it. They find that it apparently has no bottom, and if you lower stuff into it on a string, it gets pulled in and disappears, the string getting snapped off. This is bizarre and mysterious, but they can't immediately work out what to do about it. So they leave it, and get on with their daily business.
However, something lives in The Hole, and sends things out of the hole after the people who looked into it. The young lad is terrified of clowns (and hey, why wouldn't you be?) and so this weird clown doll starts stalking him. Meanwhile, the girl next door has something upsetting in her past, represented by a young girl, bleeding from her eyes, who stalks about the place in that weird jerky way the girl in The Ring did.
And so, the race is on to work out what the hell The Hole actually is, and how to defeat the apparitions it sends out before Very Bad Things happen.
The film, in general, follows the standard Joe Dante Horror Film For Kids format, in that it starts out really creepy and does a reasonable job of freaking adults out, before pulling a proper reveal in the third act - and as we know, once you get a good look at the monster in a horror film, it's nowhere near as scary. And this is a good thing; we're sent out of the film with a sense that the Bad Thing can be vanquished, and isn't so scary anymore, so hopefully the bedwetting and sleepless nights will be kept to a minimum. But I'll let you know how I go on that score.
So, really, it's a good little creepy, scary fantasy film for older kids, which pulls its punches just enough to not actually fuck kids up for life, but enough of a macabre edge to be enjoyable and memorable. I mean really, would you rather your kids grew up on a diet of Shrek sequels?
(I must just make mention of the 3D aspect. I don't like it. It's better than the appalling 3D of Clash of the Titans, which was basically just three flat planes in front of one another, and is shot in true 3D. However, it just looks wrong. There's a weird sparkly effect which is really distracting, and I worked out what it is. Let's say there's a shiny object in the room. Due to the lighting, the left camera picks it up as reflecting a lot of light. However, due to the different angle, the right camera picks it up as not reflecting much. So you get an argument between your eyes about whether the object is reflective or not, and that comes out as a distracting and unnatural seeming flickery sparkle. To be honest, if you can, you really should see this in 2D. I think it'd be a lot better.)
This particular bunch of kids that Joe Dante's scaring are a couple of brothers, Dane and Lucas, a teenager and a not-actually-that-irritating kid. They have moved to a new house in Smalltown USA, and find that in their basement, there's a big trap door, secured with a bundle of padlocks. Obviously, what happens next is that they open it up and take a look.
They are quickly joined by the girl next door, Julie, and together, they investigate it. They find that it apparently has no bottom, and if you lower stuff into it on a string, it gets pulled in and disappears, the string getting snapped off. This is bizarre and mysterious, but they can't immediately work out what to do about it. So they leave it, and get on with their daily business.
However, something lives in The Hole, and sends things out of the hole after the people who looked into it. The young lad is terrified of clowns (and hey, why wouldn't you be?) and so this weird clown doll starts stalking him. Meanwhile, the girl next door has something upsetting in her past, represented by a young girl, bleeding from her eyes, who stalks about the place in that weird jerky way the girl in The Ring did.
And so, the race is on to work out what the hell The Hole actually is, and how to defeat the apparitions it sends out before Very Bad Things happen.
The film, in general, follows the standard Joe Dante Horror Film For Kids format, in that it starts out really creepy and does a reasonable job of freaking adults out, before pulling a proper reveal in the third act - and as we know, once you get a good look at the monster in a horror film, it's nowhere near as scary. And this is a good thing; we're sent out of the film with a sense that the Bad Thing can be vanquished, and isn't so scary anymore, so hopefully the bedwetting and sleepless nights will be kept to a minimum. But I'll let you know how I go on that score.
So, really, it's a good little creepy, scary fantasy film for older kids, which pulls its punches just enough to not actually fuck kids up for life, but enough of a macabre edge to be enjoyable and memorable. I mean really, would you rather your kids grew up on a diet of Shrek sequels?
(I must just make mention of the 3D aspect. I don't like it. It's better than the appalling 3D of Clash of the Titans, which was basically just three flat planes in front of one another, and is shot in true 3D. However, it just looks wrong. There's a weird sparkly effect which is really distracting, and I worked out what it is. Let's say there's a shiny object in the room. Due to the lighting, the left camera picks it up as reflecting a lot of light. However, due to the different angle, the right camera picks it up as not reflecting much. So you get an argument between your eyes about whether the object is reflective or not, and that comes out as a distracting and unnatural seeming flickery sparkle. To be honest, if you can, you really should see this in 2D. I think it'd be a lot better.)
Tuesday 5 October 2010
Winter's Bone
As the film opens, up in the Ozarks, we have a family with a problem. Ree, a seventeen year old girl, has two younger siblings, a brother and a sister, a mentally ill mother, and a ne'er-do-well father who's currently missing. Worse, her father is out on bail and due to appear in court, and has put the house up as collateral to the bail bondsman. Hence, if her father doesn't turn up, and appear at his trial, the family is out on the street. And it doesn't look like he's turning up, so Ree has to go and find him.
And there her troubles increase, because there is a code up in the Ozarks, and that means you don't tell anybody anything; hence nobody's going to tell her anything about her daddy, and think that her proposing to turn her daddy into the cops is beyond the pale. But despite all the dire warnings, she hasn't got a choice, so she keeps digging, and eventually finds that there might be more to her dad's disappearance than the simple fact that he's a deadbeat.
It's interesting, I think, that your perspective on the clan of petty criminals she's investigating depends so much on the nature of the investigator. I couldn't help thinking that if this were a cop film, like (for instance), a Dirty Harry film, then these guys would be barely worth the toe of Clint Eastwood's boot. These are the kind of minor criminals your average movie detective kicks, beats and threatens on his way to more serious game. But we haven't got the services of Det. Harry Callaghan here, it's one young girl, on her own, which makes these guys a whole different kind of scary. Like almost Wes Craven Movie scary.
And that's what's so great about this film. Ree isn't tough, dangerous, well armed, has no back up, and that's what makes her so heroic. No-one would blame her for giving up, and running away; she's in serious danger, and a kind of danger she's not equipped to handle. And so we see a kind of bravery that's not generally seen in detective films.
Overall, it's a really great, great looking film that has the power to make you feel physically sick with worry for the protagonist at times.
And there her troubles increase, because there is a code up in the Ozarks, and that means you don't tell anybody anything; hence nobody's going to tell her anything about her daddy, and think that her proposing to turn her daddy into the cops is beyond the pale. But despite all the dire warnings, she hasn't got a choice, so she keeps digging, and eventually finds that there might be more to her dad's disappearance than the simple fact that he's a deadbeat.
It's interesting, I think, that your perspective on the clan of petty criminals she's investigating depends so much on the nature of the investigator. I couldn't help thinking that if this were a cop film, like (for instance), a Dirty Harry film, then these guys would be barely worth the toe of Clint Eastwood's boot. These are the kind of minor criminals your average movie detective kicks, beats and threatens on his way to more serious game. But we haven't got the services of Det. Harry Callaghan here, it's one young girl, on her own, which makes these guys a whole different kind of scary. Like almost Wes Craven Movie scary.
And that's what's so great about this film. Ree isn't tough, dangerous, well armed, has no back up, and that's what makes her so heroic. No-one would blame her for giving up, and running away; she's in serious danger, and a kind of danger she's not equipped to handle. And so we see a kind of bravery that's not generally seen in detective films.
Overall, it's a really great, great looking film that has the power to make you feel physically sick with worry for the protagonist at times.
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