A couple of movie reveiws
The Hangover
Hyped as one of the best comedy films of the decade, I was atleast expecting this movie to be funny. The premise of the movie is certainly an amusing one; there can't be much worse than waking up after a night you can not remember with a tiger, a baby, and your friend vanished. But the movie itself isn't. What it is is crude, unfunny, childish and offensive.
This is genuinely one of the most offensive movies I have watched in ages. This is a movie that offended me on every possible level. And this is coming from a South Park fan. 'Retard' jokes, domestic abuse jokes, rape jokes, Chinese jokes, gay jokes, breastfeeding jokes, the sexual objectification of every women who appears in the movie, a sick masturbation joke about a baby - the list goes on and on. It was almost as if they were trying to be offensive in every way possible. I actually felt sick when I saw the aforementioned joke about the baby. I sat there and thought '.....oh my god, they can't actually be making that joke and getting away with it'. They directed a sex joke at an 8 month old infant. Can you really get any lower than that?
And on top of all of this, there was also the casino scene towards the end of the movie, which was blatantly parodying The Rain Man. Which, considering that the 'retard' jokes mentioned before were directed at Dustin Hoffman's autistic character from the movie ('Even the Rain Man made it big in Vegas, and he was a retard'), left you with a rather unpleasant taste in your mouth. It wouldn't have bothered me if not for the previous jokes at the start of the movie, but following those jokes, this really felt like the icing on the cake as far as offensiveness was concerned. First mock the character, and then round it of by parodying the referenced scene.
And despite all of this, the movie could have actually pulled this off if it was actually funny. But it isn't. I laughed once during the course of the whole movie. it is one of the unfunniest comedy films I have ever seen. The actors are completely unsuited to a comedy movie, and the jokes just fall flat. Or are, just simply, childish. If urination and people wearing (or not wearing) underpants amuses you, you will love this film. Because it forms about 80% of the humor.
And as an added note, if you are deaf, then don't bother with this movie. Because, as far as the movie makers are concerned, it appears you are only worth half the subtitles. I am not joking. They have literally only subtitled half the movie. The English subtitles only cover every other half-sentence. Because, you know, deaf people don't need to know how that sentence ended. Or to know what the character offscreen is saying (because 'Man:' isn't exactly very informitive). The subs are a complete insult.
So, needless to say, this movie is scoring pretty low. The plot itself isn't bad, but this is the only praise I have for this movie. On account of this, it scores a barely watchable 5/10.
Catfish
This is truly brilliant 'Fake-umentary' by two young, independant film makers. Like The Hangover, this is movie that was surrounded by lots of hype when it was released, but in Catfish's case it truly lives up to it.
This supposed documentary (which, however, poses massive questions regarding it's authenticity) follows amateur film maker and freelance photographer Nev Schulman, as his brother films him starting a friendship over facebook with an 8 year old art 'prodigy', Abby, who sends him paintings of the photographs he takes. Over time, Nev also befriends Abby's family members over facebook; her mother Angela, her brother Alex, and her attractive older sister Megan, who, like Abby, is a painter, and who also a singer and songwriter. Nev falls in love with Megan, and over a nine month period the two exchange facebook messages, phonecalls, and later on, mp3's of songs that Megan has written and perfomed herself. However, cracks begin to form in 'Megan''s persona when Nev realises that every one of her supposed songs have been plaigerised directly from youtube. More cracks form as Nev also discovers that Abby's supposed 'art galleries' do not exist in reality either, and that there are no reports or information about her supposed artwork online....
This is really intriuging and brilliant movie, which also provides an eerie and unpatronising look at the dangers of the internet. Although claimed to be 'completely real', there are major doubts over it's authenticity; a plot that seems to good to be true, lots of convenient camera shots and timing of filming, an unconvincing lack of acting, and of course the question of why you would film your brother chatting to an 8 year old online in the first place. But putting this aside, regardless of whether this is true or not, this is just a brilliant movie, which is one well deserving of the hype surrounding it. I give it a 9.5 out of 10 :) .