Well its been a while, whoever said "Life happens while you're making plans" wasn't kidding. First person to email me the answer to that by the way can have a chupachup...is that how you spell it? Anyhoo, on with the show...
A quick side note before I move on, if a movie doesn't appeal these days, we pretty much write it off - 10 minutes is enough second chances in our book - so yeah, we ditch it and move on to the next one. This has happened a lot lately so you may find some of these a little brief, and deservedly so as I'm sure I'll agree, lol.
Far From Heaven - stars Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert
This is a period piece depicting a very wholesome 1950's Connecticut - kids calling their parents 'mother' and 'father' and doing their homework without havning to be asked, made beds, housekeepers and butlers and families throwing annual parties. Sheesh. There are tensions building underneath this fluffy exerior however, and this is what the film tries to explore.
This film holds faithful to an ideal of a polite and cordial upper-class society and hence the characters' stiffness around the set. They're almost robotic. I got "Gone With The Wind" isms right from the get-go and half expected someone to not give a damn, frankly. The 50s have been beautifully re-created with sets and costumes, some of the dresses were just stunning. BUT, here we are in 2003 and unfortunately we can't just sit through a couple-of-months-in-the-life-of these people, and here's where the film falls down.
Not once did they take a chance. They're dealing with the class struggle, racism and the fear of homosexuality - they call it a treatable disease - but nowhere did they capitalise on the potential of most situations. Think about "Not Without My Daughter", definately a different set of circumstances but the same premise, we're barracking for the neglected wife in a failing marriage, we want her to break out and be her own person, do her own thing. But where "Daughter" goes to the enth (admittedly it is a true story) in getting our heroine into action, this one makes her sit on her ass and accept what's going on around her without a fight. RAH!
I'm sitting there thinking, "yeah, you go shag the gardner, and you stick it up Miss Busybody with a hot poker, go nuts girl"...but...they played it safe, I fell asleep, and the ending, holy crap, where's a fork!!! The other thing I couldn't get past was half expecting Dennis Haysbert to shout out "GET ME JACK BAUER" everytime the shit got heavy, lol. Me thinks it'll take him a while to undo that work.
The acting is spot on, though calls that this is Quaid's best performance of his career are perhaps exagerated. Julianne is faultless, just didn't have the material. She could've taken this anywhere with a bit of create leverage. Haysbert, well, if he's not the president or driving a car for one of De Niro's crews then I can't handle him I'm sorry, lol.
In short, watch it for the costumes and sets, amazing. 2 stars.
Dog Soldiers - Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd
While on a training exercise in the Scottish Highlands, a platoon of pommy soldiers are attacked by an unseen foe. As things unfold it seems their attackers aren't exactly human, supernatural carnage ensues.
This is actually a pretty good laugh, but two things spoiled it for me. Firstly, we're thrust into our supernatural orgy of the macabre without much preface, its just straight in and hack away. Secondly, part of the character intros early on includes a cliched story of some mystery beast roaming around the area they're in, oooooo, scary. Totally unnecessary if they had've given us a better intro - think about the beginning of "Wolf", we know what's going by the time its time to deal with the results. Perhaps failure one dominos to failure two, perhaps I really am starting to talk out of my ass!
There's not too much to complain about other than that, loads of blood and guts and soldiers shooting big ass weapons in vein and formulating fateful plots, yeah nah that's all tops. And there are a few good laughs too. The making-of in the extras on this DVD suggested this was a character driven plot, but I disagree there, the characters were all pretty much the same, gung-ho and mad as cut snakes. Oh, one guy refuses to shoot dogs for no reason, yay, great character complexity there.
Watch it if you're just expecting people to get dead and shit to get blown up. Not the best werewolf movie ever made. 3 and a half stars.
Stephen King's The Langoliers - stars David Morse
King's in fine form on this, classic King situation-drama. On a late night flight to Boston, less than a dozen passengers wake to find themselves alone. Where have all the other passengers gone? Including the crew, who's flying this crate? Trippy shit ensues.
In typical King style, its a low budget, averagely acted B-grade style flick that succeeds simply because its on the end of King's pen. There's nothing more to be said here other than watch it if you're a King fan, any plot twists I give you here will spoil it so here endeth the review. Enjoy. 3 and a half stars.
Undercover Brother - stars Denise Richards and noone else of note really
Someone saw the success Mike Myers had with the Austin Powers movies, thought they'd put a spin on Shaft, and brought forth Undercover Brother, herein referred to as UB. Strewth! The coolest bit is at the beginning when UB spins his car around a few times without spilling his drink. The funniest bit is, er, actually its not that funny. Where Austin makes you laugh at the inane, UB fails to pull out a smile. If you do laugh, its at the movie, not with it. We got through about 15 minutes and had to pull the plug, darken the room and pretend we have been blind our entire lives. 1 star.
City By The Sea - stars Robert De Niro, James Franco, Eliza Dushku
Try trudging through this flick, I dare you, I double dare you, yes, this is a physical challenge. The first thing you realise is that you begin to fall asleep, head starts nodding, brain wanders onto how maligned peanut butter and honey sandwiches really are. This has something to do with drugs and an embattled father trying to clear his son's name and...oh something. We got through ten minutes of this. If any of you have seen it and think I need to know the end, I really don't and would appreciate your silent vigil to be upheld. 1 star.
Gangs Of New York - stars Leo DiCaprio, Danial Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz
I'm not a fan of Leo so I was skeptical from the beginning. I avoided it at the movies but with nothing else on the new release shelves I guess it was inevitable we'd have to pick this one up. Bad Irish accents and the complexities of the most simpleton plot I've ever been witness to forced us to switch this off after about 20 minutes. We got up to the bit where Leo has a fist fight with some dude in some pub owned by Daniel...see I don't even know the character's names. Why we succumbed to hiring this I don't know. The irony of course is Daniel's New York accent when of course he himself is Irish. Dumb. I'm starting to think I should just watch previews and be done with it, movies take too long. 2 stars.
The Bunker - stars Jason Flemyng
Having seen Dog Soldiers recently I got those isms straight away. Soldiers up against the supernatural...or are they? Same failings with, once again, a cliched spooky story told by someone to set the scene for us instead of acting it out. Very frustrating.
Interestingly, this one is set in WWII and involves German soldiers. The first scene is great with these guys under an unseen attack, bullets whistling past them and some cracking gunfire. That's tops. If this had've remained along the lines of "Germans battling unseen allied forces from a bunker", that would've been tops. But no, they end up battling something else. We actually got all the way through this...I tell a lie, Stace went and had a shower three quarters of the way through and I can't really blame her. It wasn't bad, but yeah nah, I'd be telling porkies if I recommended it. 2 stars.
What else have we seen recently, a bunch of crap I'll give it that. Nah, maybe I've just shut it out. Until next time...
BH