[Locke]

+1:

Plus One is cripplingly slow, as its core plot is so very simple. There are two young lovers, one is played by the gorgeous Ashley Hinshaw and the other played by the utterly terrible in every way, Rhys Wakefield. David cheats on Jill for reasons he cannot explain, they break up, but thanks to a party which is "it" this weekend the two lovers cross paths once again.The problem is, that isn't really what the film is actually about.

+ 1 is less than a hundred minutes long, so there is no excuse for how crippling slow the build up is. Pretty much the whole first thirty minutes or so of the movie could be skipped entirely without any impact on the experience, and with the dialogue and acting so awful, I wouldn't even feel bad about skipping it either. Luckily then, when the real movie starts, it gets really really good.

The actual core concept, involving two timelines placed on top of one another, isn't particularly well realised, with a whole heap of logic leaps that leave you degrading your own intelligence - why would you start killing yourself in the past? - and lots of interesting directions for the film that are suggested, but then never actually capitalised on.

But, and I guess a pretty big but, if you let yourself be stupid for a bit, the movie has so much fun with such a simple concept that it ends up being a pretty fun ride. Everything that has happened, and is going to happen, begins to change. And as the pace picks up and up, it becomes increasingly more deliberately nauseating trying to keep on top of everything that is transpiring. It's thrilling.

Even the initial houseparty set up starts to make sense (not the length of that sequence, but the choice of the setting certainly) as it gives them a space the movie can easily control, while still having more than enough to play with to have things go totally nuts. I couldn't really imagine a space that would have worked better for this movie to play out in.

Seriously though, I can't stress enough, how much Wakefield ruins the entire experience. I'm kinda hoping that he was just stoned as fuck on set, and actually isn't the kind of actor the internet turned Kristen Stewart into in their jokes because fucking Christ misery guts. He's so wooden and emotionless he borders on bored, and considering David, over the course of the film, loses the girl he loves (and murders her), has a chat with himself from the past, watches someone get shot and a whole bunch of other crazy shit, the last fucking thing he should seem is bored. I'd suggest he was in shock or something, but he was just as cold and rigid during the happy portion of his life at the start and at the end of the film. He embraces the girl he claims to love in that awkward way you do with a relative you've barely met and are supposed to care anyway. Awful.

Worst of all though is the atrocious special effects. There is no movie magic here, most of the time a person is faced with a double it's a pure greenscreened CGI affair. And this is the only point the movie is genuinely scary, because the CGI used to recreate people is so atrociously bad, the humans look more like monsters.

If you've already seen Donnie Darko and Primer, I suggest watching this. It isn't nearly as good as either of those movies, but it clearly takes huge inspiration from them, so I'm sure fans could find something to enjoy through that.

If you haven't seen Donnie Darko or Primer, what the fuck is your life?

Inside Llewyn Davis:

At its heart, Inside Llewyn Davis is a very touching tale, telling the story of a folk singer whose partner commits suicide. Even though his partner commits suicide, Llewyn Davis refuses to give up on the music and 'just exist' and sets out on a journey to make it. Sadly, the film doesn't go down the Hollywood path, and instead treads Davis into the dirt repeatedly.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but with the naturalistic stylising of the films structuring and pacing coupled with the melodramatic, almost soap opera like pessimism, the film actively stunts its own progression and as a by product, becomes kinda boring.

I mean seriously, someone out there try and justify to me, what the point of the car ride to Chicago was. Sure John Goodman and Garrett Hedlund are both great, but they leave the movie as quickly as they come, with no lasting effect on the narrative. Except their roles aren't fleeting, despite it having no wider purpose on the rest of the film, the car ride to Chicago seems to go on FOREVER.

Even when Llewyn finally makes it to Chicago, it leads to nothing and he just goes home again. I can see what the Coen's are doing here, but even the most social realist of social realism cinema still remembers they are a film, and they still have to carefully steer the proceedings. The Coen's take a backseat so far back it's like they aren't even in the same room, leaving the film to not feel true to life, it just feels random.

I mean don't get me wrong, on a technical level it's exquisite. They seem to have desaturated the film, giving it this almost monochrome look, which along with the harsh weather and the general quality of the places he frequents, seems to capture what is going on inside Llewyn Davis in a beautiful piece of dramatic irony. It's nice to see a film set in the past, that isn't captured by a nostalgic glow.

It is also really enjoyable to see actresses like Carey Mulligan be dressed up as playing exactly to their role, only to then open their mouth and immediately defy all expectations. She is one of the funniest things, in a movie that is surprisingly funny, given its general melancholia. Plus Davis himself is played so wonderfully by Oscar Isaac that you wont even realise it is Isaac.

I don't even know what to do with Llewyn Davis as a character. With a film that has no real trajectory, no real act structure, Davis doesn't really have a character arc. He's basically a bit of an ass at the start, and over the course of the movie we realise just how much of an ass he actually is. But am I supposed to take that as a good thing? I think we're actually supposed to feel sympathy for him. I have no idea why the movie expects us to be sympathetic to a perpetual man child who is his own worst enemy. I certainly didn't care much for him.

I dunno, I guess from all the hype I'm just missing the point or something. To me it was two hours of an asshole moaning and it went nowhere, as it started nowhere. I'll probably go ahead and buy the soundtrack or something, but I can't imagine revisiting this again any time soon.

[Paladin]

Had the misfortune to sit through a film called "Mars Needs Moms." its an instant candidate for the worst thing I have ever seen.

Never before have I seen a combination of bad elements like this. Its ugly, unfunny and offensive in so many ways.

[KRX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladin

Had the misfortune to sit through a film called "Mars Needs Moms." its an instant candidate for the worst thing I have ever seen.

Never before have I seen a combination of bad elements like this. Its ugly, unfunny and offensive in so many ways.

Do you know what you should have watched instead?

3 Idiots.

[Locke]

You're Next:

You're Next took so long to be released in the UK, I'm treating this as a 2014 film, as as far as I'm aware it had no UK release - and no, film festivals don't count - until now on home viewing. I know it's so late, the movie is basically not even relevant any more, but let me enjoy this moment. This is a movie I longed for, and it's finally in my hands!

I'm gonna be perfectly honest in saying I really don't know a lot about this films context. Lots of people have spoken about the connection between cast and director in their day to day lives, and in the projects they share - most noticeably projects under the mumblecore genre. That apparently gives you this whole other reading of the film but I didn't even realise this until after I finished the movie and read up on it without fear of spoilers. So this is the first, and last time, this angle will be mentioned in this review. Okay? Okay.

The big twist in You're Next is there is no Final Girl, as such, because the final girl is so from the very beginning. They completely cut out the transformation from innocent virgin into cute Rambo, and with excellent results. The minute the family dinner turns into a horror film, Erin kicks into overdrive taking charge and control of the situation, even killing off one of the Home Invaders before the hour mark comes in. The invaders really have fucked up here, going after a chick who grew up on a survivalist compound. By the end she transforms into the most terrifying thing in the film, reminding me a lot of Ash from the Evil Dead trilogy. Sadly Erin's character is about the only thing of worth in the whole movie as pretty much everything else about You're Next is best described as "well crafted, but unoriginal.".

Director Adam Wingard almost makes the anti modern horror. The horror genre has largely forgotten that build up is as important as pay off, and that constant pay off without any build up is simply flat. That is why we've become so desensitized to jump scares, which are these days used in the absence of genuine scares.

What You're Next does is pretty much the opposite, Wingard stages tension and builds up his sequences exquisitely, constantly keeping you on the edge of your seat. There is no such thing as a cheap scare in You're Next, unless the scare is purposefully meant to be cheap. But after so much wonderful build up, the movie rarely pays off. Minus one kill with a blender, pretty much all of the kills are uninspired, and painfully repetitious, the kills feel bland even in comparison to the slashers of old, which had budgets of peanuts.

There are some well staged set pieces, some extreme bursts of raw violence, but prepare for throat slashing and face stabbing/smashing with next to no variation, with very little in between. I guess they were the only effects they bought.

It doesn't help that the edges of its budget are sadly pretty garishly exposed by the HD. From obvious makeup, to the very fake looking blood, to shots of bodies making no attempt to disguise that they are still breathing, despite being just killed. This film has actually been bouncing around festivals since 2011 and it's looking pretty tired already, even though most of us have only just got it.

That isn't even mentioning how much of this film feels completely wasted. I love the idea of three brothers, who once served together, returning home and becoming home invaders for hire. Each choosing a mask to identify themselves with, and a catchphrase they'd mark every house with. This would make a cool movie, without everything else, shame that isn't the movie we got.

[GoseiWonder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladin

Had the misfortune to sit through a film called "Mars Needs Moms." its an instant candidate for the worst thing I have ever seen.

Never before have I seen a combination of bad elements like this. Its ugly, unfunny and offensive in so many ways.

I want to read your full review now. Any venom-spitting review of a movie I thought would have been stupid makes me happy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KRX

Do you know what you should have watched instead?

3 Idiots.

This man speaks the truth. I watched that 3 hour magnum opus and I concur with KRX that 3 Idiots will be one of the best films you will ever see.

[Dr Kain]

The Godfather III - My god, I know people have said this movie is bad, and for years I have been told it is bad, and have read it is bad, but I could not believe they were all actually right. This movie sucked!! The biggest atrocity is that it was just down right boring. It did not have any of the cinematography of the first two. None of the character development. In fact, Mary was about as interesting of a character as a brick wall. Sam Witwicky had far more development in the first Bayformers movie than she had in this movie, making the ending of the movie completely emotionless as you don't give a crap about her to care. Vincent was a poor imitation for Michael too as the movie never gave us a reason to care about him either. Even Michael himself was vastly out of character and it just felt like Al Pacino phoned the performance in. Man this movie sucked ass and the plot just did not make sense. What the hell was the entire point of the Vatican stuff? Nothing ever came out of it. Overall, I give this movie a 2/10 and that is because of the last half hour of the movie during the opera house.

[Paladin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoseiWonder

I want to read your full review now. Any venom-spitting review of a movie I thought would have been stupid makes me happy.

OK. I guess I should spoiler-tag this but frankly you'll thank me for not having to see it:

The reason Mars Needs Moms is because all the Martian women are busy running the planet. And the men are all gay. That's a bad enough message (that you can't have a career AND a family) but the film takes it a step further. It's implying that you can't grow up into a good person if you come from a non-traditional family structure, and that you're only loved if you have the right set of parents.


That's why I hate this film.

[Galvantula]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladin

OK. I guess I should spoiler-tag this but frankly you'll thank me for not having to see it:

The reason Mars Needs Moms is because all the Martian women are busy running the planet. And the men are all gay. That's a bad enough message (that you can't have a career AND a family) but the film takes it a step further. It's implying that you can't grow up into a good person if you come from a non-traditional family structure, and that you're only loved if you have the right set of parents.


That's why I hate this film.

Also it's infamous for it's Uncanny Valley CGI. Frankly I'm shocked that no one's even trying to do 2D after Princess and the Frog lost to Alivin's Sqeakual. That's one of Hollywood's main problems today: in making all these effects story telling gets shoved to the wayside.

Mars Needs Moms was such a huge misfire. I only saw commercials of that trainwreack and I still felt like I was ripped off. It's just offensive on so many levels.

[Dr Kain]

Saving Mr Banks - WOW!! This movie was down right terrific. I went in expecting a simple story about the filming of Mary Poppins and Disney's battle with the author and came out with a complex well developed story that was much bigger than anticipated. Tom Hanks was incredible as Disney and it was interesting to see a movie that featured the life of Disney than just his creations. Thompson was also amazing as Travers as was Giamatti as her limo driver. The movie knew when to add comedy to the drama and it did it exceptionally well. This is by far one of the best movies of 2013 and it is a shame it has been snubbed of almost any award nominations. This movie gets a great 9/10.

[Locke]

I watched a bunch of stuff since this thread last got bumped!

The Great Gatsby:

The Great Gatsby's main meta point is that the world of the roaring twenties is basically our world, without the iPhones. That is why the book is still relevant, almost a hundred years later. Sadly the film version makes no attempt to play this idea with any subtly, replacing twenties jazz with modern pop music and rendering the entire world in extremely dated looking CGI.

That said, because the true nature of Gatsby is a reveal left late into the movie, he becomes a very intriguing and complex character, probably marking the performance from DiCaprio that I have enjoyed the most. The film deliberately makes his history convoluted and difficult to follow, to attempt to distract you from who he really is and what is really going on.

The two other must mentions in the cast are Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire, especially as they are in stark contrast of one another.

Mulligan on the one hand, has the stunning beauty to capture Daisy, but also has the acting chops to control her complexity. Daisy is shallow, and ultimately not really worth the lengths Gatsby goes to, but Mulligan makes sure she is never played as a straight conduit for the audiences hatred. She never feels like a villain, and she is so carefully steered, it takes you a long time to truly process how not worth it she ultimately is.

Tobey Maguire on the other hand, is utterly terrible. Nick Carraway is infamous for his passive nature, and I can't think of many choices worse than Maguire for the character, as the movie attempts to recreate Carraway with feeling. If that is their intention, why didn't they get someone who could act?

Honestly Gatsby's narrative is so complex, that it is pretty much impossible to discuss. Firstly, the whole thing is being narrated to us by an alcoholic in a mental asylum, which already proves problematic for how much we can truly trust what ultimately transpires. But even beyond that, The Great Gatsby is a movie about lying, where no one tells the truth even to themselves, constantly parading in masks which often deliberately distracts from the point. So even when Carraway is telling the truth, that doesn't stop him from being lied to, which means what he may believe to be the truth, isn't the truth at all.

What this ultimately means is everything The Great Gatsby is about, it isn't, but it also kinda is. For example at its very core, it's a very typical fairytale. There is a princess, a brute and a brave knight. But in reality none of these roles really exist, they are just fabrications by Carraway, and the movies opinions are simply his, not unbiased truths for the audience to make up their own mind. It's all Carraway's dream world.

And honestly, if that is the case, The Great Gatsby is a gay romance as much as it is anything else.

Out of the Furnace:

Bale is one of the best actors of our generation, and this may well be his finest performance. He lowers his gun, and both he and the audience, let out a long sigh as if none of us realised we were holding our breath. We see his character, Russell Baze - who is a pent up volcano of brotherly love - at his most peaceful during his moment of greatest violence. Windows of his performance let out small bursts of everything that is raging inside of him, but with one pull of the trigger he just lets everything go. And my GOD is there a lot of stuff raging inside of him. The grief of losing his brother, the death of the child that tore away any chance of him ever having a good life and the reality that the town he lives in is slipping off of the map, so he can't even just get by and live.

Perhaps most powerful though, is a scene where he finally plucks up the courage to see the love of his life for the first time since he got out of prison. She drops the bombshell that she is with child, after running to the Town Sheriff after he went to prison. His reaction to this news feels so real, so palpable, it's just magic, magic in the making. I'm really sad that this movie has met largely mixed reactions, because Bale's performance is one for the ages. It's the kind of breathtaking acting that is just so perfect, and so utterly rare, you wish you could go back and experience the whole sequence fresh and new.

He isn't the only actor worth writing home about either, but I find that every character aside from Russell is painfully problematic. Take Casey Affleck's Rodney for example. He plays a soldier who has done three tours in Iraq, who has seen and done some incredibly horrific things for his country, and then he has to return home to the same piece of shit town. The same piece of shit town where the best chance he gets is working in a dying steel mill and it just fills him with untapped hatred for everything. Affleck is no Bale, but he does a wonderful job of carefully downplaying his character, and then unleashing him at all the right moments. He becomes as lost in Rodney's shoes as much as Bale does in Russell's.

But the problem is, unlike Bale who tells Russell's story with his body, Rodney is the complete opposite. The stuff that drives his entire character happens entirely off screen with only a vague piece of dialogue dropped now and then (and one aggressive outburst) to allude to the horrors he has seen.

Ultimately what all this means is Rodney is more invested in himself, than the audience ever is. We never truly know the horror he has seen, and this works to his detriment, not to to his betterment. The most crucial thing he does in the movie is die, but as he defiantly utters "I don't care... I don't care.", it's a character moment much more profound for himself, than it ever is for the audience.

Woody Harrelson steps in to be the movies villain, DeGroat, playing completely to his type as a ridiculous psychopath. If he wasn't so good at playing this kind of character, I'd call his performance tired. He chews the scenery gloriously and his hands steer some of the movies most impressive moments.

Aside from those three, the movie utterly wastes the talents of Willem Dafoe, Forest Whitaker and Zoe Saldana. I really don't know why Dafoe was in the movie, Whitaker is used as a shameless plot device and although Saldana's character is crucial, her story appears to be taking place in a very different movie.

Ultimately there was a great movie in here somewhere, but it's lost in the bloated run time. This film is impossible to hate, but the execution also makes it impossible to love, either. Which is a shame, because I want everyone to experience Bale's performance, it is wonderful.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. :

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters was a film I was initially very excited for, but then seeing it get torn a new one by critics, I completely avoided it. However, with the release of an Unrated Home Video release, I found myself looking into the film again and seeing that revisionist horror fans have come out of the woodwork in the films defence for its apparent unashamed fun. Armed with that, and the relatively new knowledge in my film watching life, that critics have a unified hatred for all things fun I decided to dig into Witch Hunters and see just how wrong the critics were this time, the miserable old scrotes.

Witch Hunters is visually splendid, with just over ten percent of the effects done with CGI. CGI here is used as it should be, they don't use it to do effects easier, they use it to tweak and perfect what was already captured on the camera. I love that. From the awesome makeup of the witches, to the fabulous designs of the Witch Hunting weapons, to the beautifully dressed sets like the Candy House. Oh and Edward, the lovely animatronic troll. This movie is just lovely to look at.

This is all wrapped up in ridiculously gory action sequences which zip along like the witches do on their brooms. The hits are heavy, the impact is visceral and it bleeds style. The badass dial is ramped up to eleven. I just love fun, cool movies. I guess I'm still a little boy at heart

If there was to be any problems with the action, it's the tone. For the most part it plays the action like your typical action comedy, full of heavy hits that don't actually do a lot of damage and a lot of swearing, one liners and banter. But weirdly in the middle of all this slapstick action, are the witches, and the witches are some mean bastards.

At one point, they make a boy turn a gun on his mother, at another they force a guy to turn a gun on himself and another, they murder and eat a child - and this is just three examples, amongst many brutal things like the flashaback to Hansel and Gretel's parents or the rapist sheriff. Where the fuck is this coming from, in an otherwise fun little movie?

Renner plays Hansel exactly how Hawkeye should have been depicted in the Avengers. You can almost feel the pent up frustration for that character, unleashed here, making Renner so fun to watch. He's just a really great character. The ridiculously sexy Arterton adds all her sex appeal to Gretel, while also being a no nonsense badass who regularly outcools her brother. And that is fine by me, fuck your Catpiss Nevercleans.

Perhaps most fun though, is they are both 'flawed' heroes. A cheap device maybe, but it's more depth than I was expecting from a movie that has been so quickly written off by so many. Set right in the middle of Witch Trial Hysteria of 1700s Europe, the movie pulls no punches when it comes to presenting the horror of it.

Hansel calls himself 'old fashioned' in that he's happy to let someone under the suspicion of being a witch burn, without evidence. Living by the code 'the only good witch, is a dead witch'. His prejudice against witches is only turned around, when he ends up fucking a White Witch who numerously saves his life. It says a lot about his character, but not perhaps in quite the damming way you're probably expecting

His sister however is a woman who requires evidence, before she starts slaying, creating a series of checks she's trained herself and her brother in. But despite perhaps being the most grounded, logically, she sees nothing wrong with head butting the town, that is paying their bills, sheriff to the floor, even if he is a douchebag, on first meeting.

Best of all though, is seeing them together. They may not exactly be as much of a well oiled machine as you're probably expecting, but Gretel reserves a certain vulnerability for her brother and likewise although her brother is a bit of a douche, he is so fiercely protective of his sister, you can see she is the only thing he truly loves.

The only real downside to this, is as other reviewers have pointed out, they are just a little too...sexual with one another. I was never really convinced they were siblings. No one with real brothers or sisters, looks at their siblings this way or acts this way around them.

Really though, my biggest problem with the movie is how sequelbaity it is. Luckily that sequel is already secured and locked down (although who will still be on board after the first films critical failure is unknown at this point) but it's still somewhat disappointing that the whole film feels a bit like a feature length TV pilot, leaving you at the end ready to watch the next episode, only to remember there isn't one.

I guess at least at only having just over and hour and a half to tell your story, the mythology stays largely coherent and consistent. It almost feels well thought out, considering what we usually get from this genre.

Witch Hunters is pretty much the embodiment of 'you either get it, or you don't' and I don't mean that in some kind of intellectual way, actually I mean it in the complete opposite. It's the kind of movie where the lovers and the haters use exactly the same stuff for their argument. Some, like myself, will appreciate the films unashamed silliness and get behind it wooing and fist pumping all the way. Others will find the film stupid and frustrating, which I can really understand even if I can't really appreciate.

In short, If you find yourself asking before the first half an hour, why the two heroes are dressed in near bondage gear in 1700s Europe, you can be damn sure this isn't the movie for you. And that is okay.