Since Clint Eastwood is fast becoming my favourite director, I was excited about seeing how he’d tackle a film which combined politics and sport. Based on true events, Invictus follows Nelson Mandela’s (Morgan Freeman) first couple of years as President of South Africa and how he succeeded in achieving what many believed to be impossible, bringing a country which was completely divided together again and exceeding expectations beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
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Have you seen the 2005 Michael Bay film, The Island? That bloated and overbearing film was constantly in the back of my head as I was watching Never Let Me Go. The premise similarities are striking, as is the fact that the film (The Island) and the book (“Never Let Me Go”) came out around the same time. However, the film itself was purported to be a rip off of Michael Marshall Smith’s 1996 book “Spares” and Philip K. Dick’s 1964 novel “The Penultimate Truth,” so I guess the concept isn’t all that new. That “Never” is in the same vein as the rest of these works is not a spoiler, nor did the filmmakers want it to be. I was fortunate enough to catch an interview with the writer of the novel, Kazuo Ishiguro, together with screenplay writer Alex Garland. Alex clearly stated that the story they wanted to tell was a personal one and they did not want to be coy and keep anything a secret. In fact, there is a scene about 20 minutes in where someone, subtly but without question, spills the beans. The story of this dystopian world, a place that would allow this type of thing to happen, is just the backdrop and not the story that they wanted to tell. The morals and ramifications of such decisions are not discussed, so just because the storyteller does not want to share the answers does not mean that the audience won’t be asking, and be hounded by the questions.

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“Man is steel. The tank is only iron.” On July 12, 2006, conflict began between Israel and Lebanon. It began when Hezbollah soldiers fired rockets into Israel and blew up two armored Humvees patrolling the Israeli side of the border. Three soldiers died. Two other soldiers were taken by Hezbollah into Lebanon. Israel responded and for 34 days they carried out air strikes and rolled into Lebanon with tanks and foot soldiers. The writer/director of Lebanon, Samuel Maoz, was himself a gunner in one of those tanks, so this is a sort-of autobiography of his experiences. You can feel that placing this story on paper and on celluloid was a form therapy for Samuel. He places us, as the audience, in the dark, dank, cold, putrid, unwelcoming pit of a monster that he knows all too well. And because the camera never leaves the inside of that tank, save for two small book-ending scenes, he shows us what it felt like to be sequestered in those claustrophobic spaces only understanding the outside world what we see through the gunner’s scope.

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Jennifer’s Body was pretty heavily slated on its release, and I can see why. It seems undecided about what genre it wants to be. It has elements of horror, teenage angst, romance, and revenge, but it switches from one to the next without really covering any of them properly. A lot of the plot goes unexplained and important parts, such as Jennifer’s transformation from high school evil to actual evil do not seem to have been thought through properly. However, considering the current film obsessions with most things demonic, not to mention Megan Fox,  i’m still surprised it wasn’t received better.
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Atomic apocalypse may still be upon us. That is what the filmmakers behind “Countdown to Zero” want us to remember. As President Kennedy says, “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness.” This quote is used as the thesis behind this film. They used this thesis to scare the guano out of me. Seeing images of nuclear bombs going off while being told how your internal organs may explode if you’re close enough to the epicenter, really makes one ponder how to not have that happen. And that is exactly what they are going for. Getting a response is their way to get their audience to act and do what they want them to do whether that be writing their government, texting to a specific number, donating to a charity or reducing carbon emissions. It is emotional manipulation and it works. However, the direction they are trying to get us to move in is not only naïve, it is futile.

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I did not intend to write a review for Inception. I didn’t want to. If I plan on writing about a film, I take my notebook and write my notes by glow of the silver screen. However, when I entered the midnight showing, I went empty handed. I just wanted to sit back and enjoy the ride. The lights dimmed; the film played; the curtain closed and something was planted in my head that has since festered and grown, taking over my dreams and my waking mind. I was compelled to write on what I saw and experienced. I sit here now, needing to share what I experienced, needing to tell as many as I can to run and have the same experience I did. A film has not haunted me so much in quite a while. It is the second of Nolan’s films to make me question reality and have me chattering like a gibbon as I left the theater – Memento was the first. They both messed with my head. Inception is so well tuned, so well structured, the world it creates is complete and nearly perfect. I not only understood, but I could easily manipulate the concepts it showed me so that I could see them every day around me. This is what film is about.

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The film sub-genre of Mumblecore has been around since 2002. They are characterized by improvised scripts spoken by un-proven actors on shoestring budgets. The plots are simplistic, people talking about what people talk about as they would normally talk. Nothing particularly spectacular happens and it’s okay. Slowly, the directors of these films have been getting noticed and given acclaim. Last year, the film Humpday was a huge critical success for writer, director, producer Lynn Shelton. Now, Mumblecore has come to a theater near you with actors you have probably heard of. The brothers Duplass, Mark and Jay, were given the go ahead to work the magic they brought to their previous works, The Puffy Chair and Baghead, into something with a bigger budget. What they have given us is Cyrus – a comedy that keeps its independent vibe and does not skimp on the quirk; yet by the end, if you stay with it, will surprise and charm you.

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It’s never a bad thing when you laugh the whole way through a movie, which is exactly what happened whilst  watching Letters to Juliet. The film is not a comedy though. I’m afraid to say my friends and I were laughing at how unbelievably bad and predictable the film was. Yes it’s a chick flick romance and these types of films always contain predictable elements: a happy ending, a romance which starts with a few bumps but ends up smooth sailing, and a love rival, but seriously, there’s such a thing as good scriptwriting which can at least make a predictable plot enjoyable. Clearly the team behind Letters to Juliet don’t believe in making an effort with scripts. I genuinely believe that I could have written better dialogue, and I don’t claim to have any script writing experience or talent.
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When you go see a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine you know you are not going to be seeing anything intellectual. You expect to see a silly film with hopefully a lot of laughs, and that is exactly what Hot Tub Time Machine provides you with. It never pretends to be something it’s not. Since I was fully prepared for ninety minutes of pure silliness, I found I rather enjoyed it.
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When anyone watches a movie they enter into a non-verbal contract with the director that states that as we place ourselves in their hands for the next two hours, we trust that they will not screw with us. That does not just cover that they won’t plant us back in the Middle Ages and then have someone make a phone call on an Iphone but also that they know what they are doing and will not film someone’s chin when they intend to be capturing a close up. If they do film a chin, that chin better be important in the third act. Director Sol Tryon in his debut film “The Living Wake,” breaks this contract.

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