Semi Pro

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

An amateur basketball team is in a league that's being merged into the NBA.
Best four teams get added to the NBA, the rest are dissolved. This particular
team are a gang of idiots and wasters led by Will Ferrell. They want to survive
as a team, and set their sights on fourth place.

So, it's a Will Ferrell Underdog Sports Movie. If I were to say to you "Will
Ferrell Underdog Sports Movie" then what immediately springs to mind will
probably be pretty much exactly it. Is it any good? Well, it's not bad. It's
pretty broad comedy, not a lot of subtlety in the same way as the moon's not
got a lot of oxygen. Within those bounds, I laughed often, and occasionally I
laughed pretty hard.

My advice is this: Go see Dodgeball, because that's a very good underdog sports
movie spoof. Then, go and see Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,
which is a funnier Will Ferrell Sport Comedy. If you enjoyed both, then next
time you're in the mood for more of the same, see Semi-Pro. If either film
struck you as too dumb to be bothered with, Semi-Pro certainly is. If you've
already seen them, you already knew what Semi-Pro is going to be like, before
I started writing.

7/10. Delivered what it promised, no more, no less.

Be Kind Rewind

Odd little comedy from the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
and The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry. The hallmarks are there, an odd little
film with a tenuous connection to reality.

You've probably heard the plot; an assistant in a video store (Mos Def)and his
idiot mate (Jack Black) inadvertently wipe all the tapes in the store. In a
panicky attempt to hide what they've done, they remake the movie that one of
the store's customers, who knows the owner, wants (Ghostbusters.) The tape gets
into the hands of her nephew, who thinks it's great, and insists that they make
more. A cottage industry of custom made remakes ensues.

Now, so far, and from what the trailers will tell you, this is a screwball
comedy in which Jack Black gets to ham it up something rotten. And it is, in
many ways, but there's a lot more to it than that. It's also an affectionate
piece which likens the demise independent cinema to the demise of small
neighbourhoods. Somehow, standard plot #12 (team of oddballs much raise cash to
fend off the bulldozers and save the school/shop/bar/whatever) gets involved,
and it all gets very It's A Wonderful Life by the end.

It's very entertaining, has a little message to deliver, which it does without
making too much of a big fuss about it, before going on its merry way. There's
nothing startlingly original here, but it does revisit quite a lot of familiar
ground in a fresh, offbeat way.

There Will Be Blood

My epic quest to see more movies continuums.

This is, in effect, a two and a half hour character study. Daniel Day Lewis
plays Daniel Plainview, a prospecter turned oil driller, and tells the tale of
his life and struggle to make it big in the oil business in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century. Starts in 1898 when he's a poor silver prospector,
and takes us up to about 1927.

Essentially, we're watching Daniel Day Lewis the whole time. Other characters
come and they go, but it's his show with no challengers. You could see it
working on stage as a one man show.

It's ambitious, it's long, it's weak in places because of this ambition, but
Daniel Day Lewis carries it through. It's him we're here to see, and he
delivers.

Cinematically, it reminds me a lot of Once Upon A Time In The West. There's a
lot of long, still shots, in which nothing much happens but the desert dust
blowing around. The thing has a hypnotic quality, and you can just sit back and
let it flow over you.

I usually feel that if a film's going to go over 120 minutes, it has to be
something special. This is. Recommended.

No Country For Old Men

This is one hell of a film. Premise: Man goes out hunting one day, and finds a
drug deal gone wrong. Two million dollars is just lying there, and the guy
takes it. He flees. The world's scariest man pursues. A sheriff close to
retirement follows the trail mopping up the bits.

So far, so "every film you've ever seen". It is, yes, a classic, some would say
done to death plot. The difference is the quality of the thing. Javier Bardem
has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Anton
Chighur, the world's scariest man, and if he doesn't win it, I am going to go
round and slap the life out of everyone in the Academy who didn't vote for him.

The directing, at times, just makes you pause and think "my god, this is a well
made film." Coen brothers at their very best. Suspense of the like that only
people like Hitchcock can produce. It is So Very Good.

The plot, other than the synopsis above, I will not go into, except to say that
it is all about how terribly cruel and unfair life and the world are. The end
will leave you sort of scratching your head and saying "huh?", and if you're
like me, you'll spend the next while thinking long and hard about what it
meant.

I didn't go to the cinema at all last year, and just recently made a late New
Year's Resolution to go to the cinema more, weekly if possible. This was the
first I went to see this year, and I'm partly very glad that I did, and partly
slightly frustrated knowing I'm not going to see a better one this year no
matter how many times I go.

Shaun Of The Dead

Unusual.

Take one fairly standard Zombie Apocalypse movie. Put it in the background of a modern twenty-something sitcom. See what happens.

It's quite well done - begins as being quite a light collection of zombie gags, and by the end, it's far more full on and serious, as things begin to approach the desperation levels you see in yer real genuine zombie movies, as the sitcom reality breaks down.

I would recommend this movie to any fan of Spaced, or any fan of horror movies who's got a sense of humour (i.e. not one of the idiot IMDb forum users who think that making a comedy version of Dawn of the Dead is sacrilege.) Because this really is an extended edition of Spaced, with some pretty evil gags in it.

8/10 - Funnier than The Passion of the Christ, more gory than Scooby Doo 2.

Love, Actually

This film lies to you. Remember that. There ought to be a health warning on it- "WARNING: Taking a chance on love can lead to rejection and bitter disappointment."

With that in mind, there was never a man so genuinely good as George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, so we can accept people being economical with the truth in the name of sentimentality. And that's what this film delivers, in spades. It's like Richard Curtis was thinking "Your girlfriend will cry, and you'll be damned close yourself. I demand it, and I shall put in scene after sentimental scene until you can resist no more." Every conceivable heart-string is tugged. Man pining after a woman he can't have not get you? Well perhaps a tragic bereaved widower will? No? Then how about a similarly bereaved child? He'll get you in the end, the swine.

The dialogue is pretty sharp and funny, and not everyone gets a happy ending, or at least not the one they deserve, which pulls the thing just clear of the mire of sentimentality. Just.

However, I would like to leave you with a list of things that are true in the world of Richard Curtis, and nowhere else:
1) To Be In Love Is To Be Hideously Awkward, physically and socially, with the object of your affections.
2) There is a political party in this country, that is neither Con, Lab or Lib, which consists solely of Nice Pretty Middle Class People Under Forty. This party has no policies, except for "provide Hugh Grant with a sumptuous flat." This party has a good chance of winning the next election.
3) It is possible for a person to achieve a working fluency in a foreign language in under a week.

Despite all, a genetically engineered Frankenstein of a feel-good movie, which manages to hit some of the right buttons despite seeming rather forced.

The Matrix: Revolutions

It's a good film. It's chock full of cliché, and is whizzes and bangs from start to finish. If that's not going to float your boat, then tough nuts, I say. If you can't be entertained by this level of shooting and explosions alone, then you're probably a girl or a grown-up.

Plot-wise, liked it. Reloaded muddied the waters, talked a lot about Choice and Philosophy and all that, and I'm glad to say that it turns out to be just trimmings, and the real message of the trilogy turns out to be "A Man's Gotta Do What A Man's Gotta Do."

Overall, my view of the trilogy is that Movie 1 was (of course) essential, and that Movie 3 was a worthy finale. Movie 2, in my view, suffered from basically just having to get us from Movie 1 to Movie 3. I wouldn't want any of Reloaded tagged onto the end of #1 and #3 was just right as it was, so #2 was a necessary sort-of disappointment in the middle. If they'd asked us to wait a year for Revolutions, I'd have been a bit P-O'd. But since I only saw Reloaded a couple of months ago, I've not got an issue with it.

I'll give Revolutions 8/10. Back to basics, doing what The Matrix should be doing.