Mega Film Update

It's been a while since I wrote anything down and I've been going through films at a rapid rate. These are the highlights.

Good Kill

Related to the previous blog about drones, this is a drama starring Ethan Hawke as an airforce pilot relegated to piloting drones and showing signs of the strain.

A slow drama that captures the growing tension between Egan and his colleagues regarding their work, and also with his wife (January Jones), it never quite succeeds, everyone being a little too controlled and unemotional. Not bad, though.

Future Shock - The Story of 2000AD

A documentary on the creation, trials and  success of the best comic Britain ever produced:

This introduces you to figures such as Pat Mills, Andy Diggle, John Wagner, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Carlos Ezquerra, Carlos Ezquerra and Grant Morrison. Even Neil Gaiman and Karl Urban get a look in. 2000AD affected an entire generation (mine) and, although video games and the internet have lessened it's effect, it still packs a punch.

Spectre

Yet another outing for Mr. Bond. James gets in trouble again when he follows a lead to a mysterious organisation... (yawn). Tell you what, I'll let Honest Trailers explain.

 A nice finale for Daniel Craig, although the plot was meandering. It all looks very nice, stylish an' all, and there's enough special effects, stunts and exotic locations: I think it's just that it's a fantasy and it shows.

Killer Joe

Desperate for money, Chris (Emile Hirsch) plots with his inept and devious family to have his estranged mother murdered by hitman "Killer" Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey).

A film version of a stage play, it shows as it's sometimes slow and claustrophobic. The Southern Gothic makes the film too grotesque for my taste, and, although the plot has a few twists and McConaughey does his best, it doesn't really engage. It also puts you off KFC.

The Fantastic Four

 Reed Richards (Miles Teller), after demonstrating his matter transporter with childhood friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), gets invited to help perfect a larger version with Sue (Kate Mara) and Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), together with original inventor Viktor von Doom (Toby Kebbell).

A remake of the Marvel film made about ten years ago (probably because Chris Evans is now Captain America), it's basically a teenage version, and a bit rushed at that.  The special effects are good, but the plot seems a bit haphazard. Not bad, but just not that good, as if someone deliberately made a pizza movie.

Life During Wartime

LoveFilm have recently updated their apps such that the films download a lot faster and more reliably, so I've been watching a lot more movies.

Brooklyn's Finest

This is an American cop movie starring Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes, Ethan Hawke (who once signed one his novels in Chelmsford!) and Richard Gere.



The movie follows the paths of three different policemen: a burnout seven days until he retires (Gere); a desperate family man who hits on the idea of robbing drug dealers (Hawke); and an undercover cop and having divided loyalties (Cheadle).

Although an excellent crime drama, it does suffer from having too many stories to tell. The burnout story could have been left out and more effort put into the other two stories, but each of the stories could have made a decent movie all by itself. Cheadle stands out for me as the conflicted undercover cop, but the others are all excellent, despite their limited screen time.

Angels and Demons

This is the adaption of the book by Dan Brown, whose name is a curse on the lips of every second-hand book seller:



If The DaVinci Code was silly, this is just ludicrous. I just wanted the bomb to go off - right in the middle of Vatican City, half way through the movie, so I didn't have to sit through the rest of this waste of celluloid. I hope it bombed.

Persepolis

This is an adaption of Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical comic book about growing up and living in Iran and Vienna:



Satrapi was co-director of the film, so what you see is pretty much as the books tell it. It's also a sad film as her family suffered terribly in the revolution and the Iran-Iraq war and she ends up leaving Iran forever, but it is a story about freedom and what it costs. The rendition of "Eye of the Tiger" was beyond funny.