Even More Movie Reviews...
The Town (2010)
A really interesting movie about a group of armed robbers in an area called Charlestown. I'd recommend that non-Americans watch it with subtitles on. While you can mostly hear what they are saying, subtitles make it a lot easier to keep up with the slurring regional accent.
Jeremy Renner is unsurprisingly awesome in his role and the most interesting parts of the movie concern how he relates to Ben Affleck's character. Ben Affleck generally seems more suited to washed-up (Good Will Hunting) or thuggish (Mallrats) characters, rather than politicians (State of Play) or lawyers (Daredevil - where he was generally more believable in the superhero bits). He puts a fair degree of heart into this role and for once we can really accept him in a leading role.
The basic premise of this film is that Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner are two out of a group of bank robbers. Bank robbing is apparently pretty common in Charlestown. In one heist they end up taking a hostage and become rather concerned when it turns out that the young lady actually lives in their area. Of course, this is only a problem if she identifies them. However things become complicated when Ben Affleck bumps into her randomly and makes the decision to talk to her to see exactly how much she knows...
The Town is very well put together with a variety of characters who all feel pretty well fleshed out, good pacing, good acting and dialogue that holds our interest. The only problem lies with the ending where the writers seem to shy away from the seemingly inevitable tragic finish. On the other hand, I guess that means that this is a rather more feelgood movie than it might have been otherwise, which might actually be more appealing than hearing that this a typical heist movie where absolutely everybody is doomed.
It's not so much that the ending ruins the movie, but that the ending feels distinctly less tight than what came beforehand. Throughout the movie interactions between the characters are well balanced, making them all seem genuine. However, some things get tidied up rather too easily in the final act and it feels like the scriptwriters are cheating.
The other problem is the relationship between Ben Affleck and the love interest. I'll leave this for you to all think about: If you discovered that the person you had recently started a relationship with was actually a violent criminal, yourself being one of their victims, would you really feel terribly keen to help them? In any way? Of course, there are a very specific set of circumstances in the movie which might change your answer. I guess the only way you can be sure is to watch the movie and, while it isn't perfect, I don't think you'll regret checking it out to see for yourself.
4.5/5
Iron Man 2 (2010)
There were a lot of fairly lacklustre reviews for this, with a lot of people saying that Thor was a step up. I'm not sure I see it.
This was really good fun, with more Robert Downey Jr. mischief aided by the brilliant counterpoint of Sam Rockwell as the greedy competitor in the arms industry. Sam Rockwell might well be aiming for more serious roles since his fantastic turn in "Moon", but we still love him when he plays the self-important jackass. (As Chuck Barris he played something between the two in the movie "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind".)
In spite of having apparently gone daft enough to call her child "Apple" and sell cake knives for $75 in real life, acting-wise Gwyneth Paltrow seems to be at the top of her game right now. She's really endearing in the role of Pepper Potts and the chemistry between her and Robert Downey Jr. works really well, especially when she's telling him off. It's a rather negative point that one of her scenes they used prominently in the trailer was cut from the beginning of the film. Many people were really looking forward to seeing this scene, where Peppper Potts tells Tony Stark to 'go fetch' his Iron Man helmet and chucks it out of the plane in flight, as part of the full movie.
I remember thinking as I watched one scene where Scarlett Johansson takes centre stage "this is much more exciting than any of the action scenes in Thor". There's something in that action scene that reminded me of "The Matrix" (even without the need for slow-mo effects) and I'm now quite keen to see a dedicated Black Widow movie. Johansson isn't perhaps the best actress in the world, but she has a confident screen presence and appears to make a pretty badass action star.
And Mickey Rourke! Oh my goodness, I loved Mickey Rourke in this role. In fact wasn't Mickey Rourke supposed to have had a massive dip in his career before this recent resurgence? (I'm a bit too lazy to research it.) "Once Upon A Time In Mexico", "Sin City", "The Wrestler": He's brilliant in all of these. In fact even in "The Expendables" he was clearly acting on a different level to the rest of the cast and I really wished he got the chance to do something interesting, rather than being given weepy scenes as if the movie actually had a plot. Mickey Rourke's initial arrival in the middle of a Grand Prix race sets him up as an intriguing character from the start, even in spite (or perhaps because) of his limited success at this early stage of the movie. His background is left fairly vague and I think the scriptwriters are being intentionally enigmatic to leave things open for future movies.
I'm not at all sure why Rourke's character is Russian since either his identity as a Russian or the plot line that his and Tony Stark (Iron Man)'s fathers used to work together must be missing from the comics. They couldn't have been working together across the iron curtain. I suppose in the comic this might actually mean that Mickey Rourke's character's father was unambiguously evil in the comics, being portrayed as a Russian spy or as having defected to the Soviet Union and taking his scientific expertise with him. I very much doubt that the original comics would have put any genuine to decision to live under communism in a positive light.
Yes, some of the scenes of robots hitting each other is a bit over the top and yes, asides from action scenes there isn't a great deal happening in this movie. Some bits really do seem to happen one after the other. But it's good fun, the characters are endearing and some of the actors' performances are brilliant. It's a wonderful piece of entertainment and, to my mind, out of "Iron Man 2" and "Thor", "Iron Man 2" actually has the upper hand.
Still, I'm mainly over-egging the positives in this review because of all the negative reviews already out there. I must make clear that the plot is bitty and daft. The action scene where Don Cheadle and Robert Downey Jnr fight doesn't really capture the audience like some actions scenes did in this movie. Don Cheadle is a brilliant actor, but he isn't really given much of an opportunity to shine, seemingly having his screen time sacrificed to give space to all the other characters in the movie. And Samuel L. Jackson? What's he even doing here? Did they need him to say any of this as a separate character? Possibly, but only if you accept "setting things up for sequels" as a reasonable excuse. And that reminds me of another random scene. Our SHIELD operative from the first Iron Man movie has a completely pointless scene where he turns up to say that he's going somewhere else and Tony Stark turns out to randomly have a Captain America shield prototype in his lab. Of course the only point of this scene is to connect the movie to "Captain America" and "Thor". For the audience it simply serves to hold up the action (though admittedly the scene isn't lacking in humour).
As a part of an increasingly exciting movie series, this is an excellent addition. If you want to see it that way you should probably add at least another half a point to the score. However, as a movie on its own, or even as a sequel to Iron Man, this isn't the wonderful follow-up a lot of people were hoping for. It is, however, a wonderfully entertaining, solidly good movie. If you've been enjoying movies like "Thor" and "Captain America" recently but poor reviews for "Iron Man 2" put you off, now (in the light of those other movies) is probably the time to watch this.
4/5 (Good Solid Movie)
The Way Back (2010)
The story of a group of prisoners in a Soviet camp in Siberia. They make plans to escape, but not all of them will survive.
Problems with the movie are as follows:
- There are so many people on the journey all competing for our attention.
- Rather than getting an equal spread of our attention, it comes to feel more like each character has a very specific role to play, outside of which some may get very little attention at all.
- The movie is too long.
- The decision to use real clips from history towards the end feels trite and detracts from the story of the survivors.
- The lead actor looks like both Emile Hirsch and Taylor Kitsch. (Okay, that's not really a criticism. But it was a bit distracting.)
- *mild spoiler* The whole movie seems to be basically wrapping up once Colin Farrell disappears.
On the other hand, the acting is always good. Colin Farrell in particular gives a fantastic performance. The scenery looks great (though isn't siberia supposed to be rather more desolate than that?). The story is certainly interesting and there are even a few points of humour. Overall though, I couldn't help but feel that this was basically one thing happening after another. It was more like the film was conveying a set of stages to us rather than giving us a scenario to emotionally invest in.
It wasn't boring and I'd say it's worth watching. This is a good solid movie, but it's doesn't have that "something special" for me to recommend it highly. It isn't the epic that it thinks it is, but it's good entertainment all the same.
4/5 (Good solid movie)
Abel (2010)
The problem with this movie is that the central plot seems to come out of nowhere. There's a rather slow start where the dysfunctional family has to deal with the young child Abel coming back into their home from the psychiatric care institution where he'd previously been staying. Then, all of a sudden without any clear explanation, Abel changes. The thing that annoys me most about this is that Abel hadn't even been speaking up until this point. The idea that he should suddenly be able to gain a sense of authority fails to match up with what we'd seen earlier on in the movie.
The central premise, however, is that Abel comes to act as if he's the dad in the family. Their real father abandoned them a long time ago, so he is filling the role which he believes is missing. He takes on a very old-fashioned and conservative style of parenting. Of course, he isn't really an adult so when he criticises his older sister for her maths, it is the way she's written the numbers that he criticises not her answers to the sums. The reason why his family doesn't make a fuss is because his mother is frightened about questioning him too much in case he goes into tantrums and has to be take away again. Things are further complicated when Abel's father returns, to find that his role is being filled by his own son.
There are some really good ideas in the middle of this movie, but they aren't set up properly in spite of quite a long drawn-out beginning. On top of that the ending leaves things unfinished and enigmatic in a way that serves to provide a rather unsatisfactory viewing experience. A large chunk of the beginning of the movie is dull and slow-paced, the middle part is very good, but at the end the movie turns out to be rather lacking in a direction for its premise.
2.5/5 (Not good, but still somewhat entertaining)
Of Gods And Men (2010)
I didn't quite have the guts to write this review when I first saw it. This was raved about by Mark Kermode and a number of other reviewers, so I was expecting something special. I think perhaps these reviewers had their expectations too low and I had mine too high, because I was spectacularly dissappointed.
The premise is very interesting indeed. A monastery in Algeria caters to a Muslim population, mostly through their doctor who provides treatments to local people. The monks will give advice to local people and they are keen to study the Islamic faith in order to promote good interfaith relations with their community. Then Islamist extremists come to the area. They are terrorising the local area and the monks are told they should leave. What do they do when the extremists arrive at their monastery and how will their principles of peace and charity be seen by these rather more ruthless figures?
The central issue is dealt with in a very fair and balanced way. While naturally the extremists aren't going to all turn out to have hearts of gold, neither is this portrayed as a simplistic "good versus evil" scenario. The focus isn't so much on the distinctions between people, but in their relationships. The way the monks view and are viewed by the local community and the way the monks interact with the extremists is very cleverly written.
Unfortunately, this movie is extremely slowly paced. Monks apparently aren't the most extroverted of people, so with a room full of very withdrawn figures it's rather hard to tell apart most of them in any meaningful way. The end of the movie feels inevitable (though apparently this is based on a true story, so there's not much they could do about that) and not an awful lot actually happens when it comes down to it. There's not really much in the way of character development. There are lots of scenes of the monks singing religious songs and living a quiet peaceful existence. I'm sorry if this makes me a philistine, but I was bored to tears.
Looking at the wikipedia page for the movie it's interesting to note that the two most interesting performances come from the two actors with dedicated wikipedia pages of their own: Lambert Wilson (who's known for his role as the Merovingian in "Matrix Reloaded") and Michael Lonsdale (who's probably best known for his role in "Day of the Jackal" and was recently in the movie "Agora"). Both put in fantastic performances. Lonsdale plays the highly in-demand monastery doctor who is not personally in the best of health, while Lambert Wilson plays the nearest thing to a leader at the monastery and is thus expected to face the armed extremists when they arrive.
I'm going to break the pattern of giving 3/5 to every movie that I think was well made, but boring. The pacing issues for this movie simply cannot be glossed over and I'm not going to let it be an excuse. This movie didn't have enough to say and a few decent scenes do not justify a full length movie.
2.5/5 (Not good, but with a few good elements.)
The Fighter (2010)
I've never been terribly keen on Mark Wahlberg as an actor, but perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised to find this role suited him much better than others in the past. There's something very passive about his character in this (which feels like an odd thing to say, considering he's playing a boxer). He doesn't give the impression of being terribly bright and he's led around by other family members. His rather more introverted role is in stark contrast to the parts of Melissa Leo, Christian Bale and even Amy Adams.
It's good to see Amy Adams finally getting the opportunity to show her ability too. The last few films I saw her in were Charlie Wilson's War and Sunshine Cleaning. She was the lead actress in Sunshine Cleaning, yet she still didn't really seem to have much to work with. At one point (and I'm sure that those who've seen The Fighter won't have any trouble identifying this scene) there's an argument between Amy Adams and Christian Bale where they really seem to connect. It's a wonderful scene which really shows off the level of talent of both actors rather than just involving Adams being upstaged by Bale.
That said, Christian Bale's performance as a whole is absolutely incredible. After Terminator Salvation where Bale just appeared to be "doing Batman again" it's great to see him giving a performance unlike anything we've seen from him before.
Melissa Leo's performance is similar in some ways to that of Jacki Weaver in the recent Australian film "Animal Kingdom", however with the stakes not raised so high in The Fighter there are clear differences in the way we are supposed to feel about their characters. Still, the idea of a subtle dominance over the rest of the family, exploiting the sense of family loyalty, is definitely a common theme in both peformances. If anything I think Melissa Leo perhaps gives a slightly more nuanced performance, but to be honest there's not a lot in it.
Another thing that surprised me asides from Amy Adams and Mark Wahlberg's performances was the extent to which I was hooked by the plot. I was never a big "Rocky" fan and I'm generally uninterested in movies about athletes competing. However, I don't think this was really so much about how Mark Wahlberg's character was going to rise to success in boxing, but rather about the power-play within the family and a fair bit of self-delusion from various family members. It wasn't like "The Damned United", tracking a sports personality's rise to glory with montages. It was closer to "The Wrestler" in that any fight scenes were often more about what happened outside the ring.
This was definitely one of the best movies from 2010 and it should not be missed.
5/5 (Excellent)