10-19March2011 :: This Week (and a bit)

20Mar2011 [weekly]

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Herein, comments on the various media consumed since leaving London up until yesterday (with today's film, Des Hommes et Des Dieux, held over for further rumination); assisted by in-flight entertainment and a week off work, this is mostly a bunch of movies:

• In the further couple weeks since seeing David Michôd's Animal Kingdom (imdb), the story's messy resolution has come to bother me more; looking back, the whole film seems untidy by extension; while mostly brilliantly executed (especially shot and acted), it's not particularly original; the film reminds me of a combination of Scott Roberts' The Hard Word (imdb), which also features Guy Pearce and Joel Edgerton, as two of three criminal brothers, and Rowan Woods' Little Fish (imdb), with Noni Hazlehurst in something similar to Jacki Weaver's role, but far more sympathetic; both are great Australian crime films, and while The Hard Word is flawed, I'd not rate Animal Kingdom higher than either; the other obvious influence on AK is Underbelly (imdb), both the narrative and production styles seemingly having a big impact on how we tell crime stories in Australia now.
• By rights, Burlesque (imdb) should be a lot better than it is, with Cher and Christina Aguilera and a reasonable supporting task, but while Cher and Stanley Tucci are slightly charming, most of the characters are unsympathetic (moreso than one expects from this type of movie), and most of the music that could've been great comes out as lazy set pieces, not helped when a couple of the early songs are deliberately average.
• Love and Other Drugs (imdb) starts out a bit all over the place, but develops into a delightful rom-com with a sensitive heart; unfortunately the early all-over-the-place of it makes for contradictory characters that make the film's resolution a struggle.
• Hereafter (imdb) either requires more attention than I can give it on a plane, or is incredibly boring; the opening scenes of the tsunami seemed horribly tasteless, and then it jumped to a series of awfully slow different set pieces and I gave up on the film; I've heard very mixed reviews too so I'm not sure I'm in a hurry to re-try the film under better circumstances.
• Morning Glory (imdb) is surprisingly entertaining, with a great cast; Rachel McAdams is perhaps a little too sugary-sweet, as is the happy ending, but she's delightfully offset by Harrison Ford's grouchy-old-man act.
• Heartbreaker (L'Arna Cœur) (imdb) is reasonably funny, though with some of the weird humour of French comedy; about a team who break women out of unhappy relationships by seducing them and thus waking them up, it overdoes the playboy thing at times; plus, ironically, it tries to play things very Hollywood, but in this is let down because its two leads aren't as attractive as they'd be in a Hollywood telling.
• Stonehenge Apocalypse (imdb) is delightfully dreadful, with the same couple of locations (fields/roads) standing in for at least three separate places on different sides of the world, and with cheap effects, dubious science, incoherent characterisation, messy editing, hammy acting.
• Park Dae-Min's Private Eye (imdb) is beautifully designed and shot, but has a fairly average and slightly too slow story, and flat dialogue (and it seemed the original Korean was unimaginative, not just the translations); Jeong-min Hwang is great in the lead role, but most of the supporting cast over-act in the way of much Korean film.
• Little White Lies (Les Petites Mouchoirs) (imdb) is a kind of film that the French love to make, and they do so regularly, but it's a fine example of the genre; one of a group of friends is nearly killed in an accident just before they're all due to go away on an annual holiday together; they go without him, and the ensuing weeks see relationships broken and re-made, tensions and revelations brought to the fore; it's a long film, and is mostly funny until things unravel at the end and the tone shifts darker, but it fits together appropriately; it's helped by some solid acting (no particularly stand-out but that isn't really a problem), and a tight script, which in turn is helped by avoiding anything too topical, so unlike some films of its kind, it doesn't feel like it belongs just to 2010.
• Sukiyaki Western Django (imdb) is strange, and uneven, with the transplanted "sphagetti western" style sometimes working and sometimes just cringe-inducing, but it looks great, in saturated colours, and it's entertaining enough to get through the story without trying.
• Scott Hicks' The Boys Are Back (imdb) is charming and full of heart; its main cast are great, and it features a beautifully shot Australian landscape.
• Picked up Stieg Larsson's Girl Who Played With Fire for the flight home but have been struggling to read it; the first book in the series is trashy, but an easy read; this one is trashier and harder to get through; it's a bad sign when, while the first suffers from a protagonist (clearly modelled for its author) at whom women throw themselves, the second takes the already ridiculous male fantasy and gives her a boob job and a lesbian relationship even while she pines for the author/protagonist.