2011 Trailers

I have had a completely, utterly, disappointingly pointless day, and thought I would round it off by spending an hour watching coming-soon movie trailers. Yes, you may take a moment to bask in my awesomeness.

Now let's continue.

YouTube very kindly made a playlist of 2011 movie trailers, and this is my reaction to the interesting ones (now aren't you excited about this post?): -

Friends With Benefits -- I can see literally no way this can be any different to the identically-themed No Strings Attached, which came out earlier this year and was very average, but I have also never found Justin Timberlake attractive until watching the trailer (I also never thought he could act, but am willing to be proved wrong).

The Three Musketeers -- Orlando Bloom, Logan Lerman, Matthew MacFadyen and Luke Evans, all in a swashbuckling period adventure film. It's like someone in Hollywood raided my mind, found my deepest longing and made it happen. So. Freaking. Excited.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides -- I'm a tad dubious (because the second and third films were pretty dodgy and the Orlando Bloom/Keira Knightley romance was one of the best bits), but willing to give it a shot (because the first one was incredible, and Jack Sparrow is still THE best bit).

Hanna -- I don't really understand this trailer at all, but I'll probably end up going to see it, purely because I think Saoirse Ronan (whose name I can spell but not say) is going to be one of the best actresses of my generation.

Beginners -- to begin with this oddball comedy-drama looked funny, but I grew steadily less interested as the trailer proceeded, which is definitely not how it's supposed to work. But we'll see.

Henry's Crime -- I would have been quite interested in this film, which looks like a cross between an angsty romantic drama and a comedic heist film (exactly), but Keanu Reeves is enough to put me off watching more or less anything...

Elektra Luxx -- the trailer was trying to be funny. It wasn't. Doesn't bode well.

Prom -- a bunch of outrageously beautiful American twenty-somethings trying to look like teenagers and getting excited about Prom. Well, we've never seen that before, at least.

Perfect Sense -- another one I didn't really understand. At first I was thinking romantic-drama, but then it started looking more like a dark-and-edgy thriller, then by the end I was just like "Whaaaa...??" so probably not.

The Roommate -- what is it with bad horror films being called 'The *insert mundane object*'? The first half of this trailer was all girly and the second half was all scary, so it's not for me. Also, all of the actresses in it looked identical, which I feel would cause a problem if I did decide to watch it.

The Debt -- this looks like a drama/thriller-typed thing with romantic undertones, and is something I will certainly watch on DVD, but which might be too heavy for the cinema...

Jane Eyre -- one of my favourite stories being adapted for the billionth time with a goodlooking Rochester and stunning Jane. Hollywood just doesn't get it. Anyway, the trailer actually played a lot more on the gothic, dramatic elements of the story than the romance, so I'm intrigued and certainly willing to give it a go. Sadly, the cast list would have made me very excited if they hadn't cast Mia Wasikowska (I hope I spelt that right) as Jane....

Real Steel -- impressively, someone somewhere has managed to write a film in which Hugh Jackman can play a lead role and I still don't fancy seeing it. Looks like Transformers meets Rocky. Hope it's not.

And there you go. I'm sure that's made your evening. :)

Review: Thor

Brief cyber-stalking of Chris Hemsworth reveals that he is 6'3'' (good), married (bad), was in a soap (bad), has a younger brother (good), who is 6'5'' (good) and dating Miley Cyrus (VERY bad). However, it takes no cyber-stalking whatsoever to know that he played the title character in the recently released Marvel superhero movie, Thor.

I've seen most (possibly all) of the previous Marvel films, because I have a little brother and I'm easily entertained, and I've always enjoyed them (with the exception of the 2003 Hulk). But I was particularly excited about this one, because it was directed by Kenneth Branagh. I mean, come on. Acclaimed Shakespearean actor/director making a Hollywood superhero movie? That had to be special.

And it was good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. But it wasn't special.

The performances were all good (especially Tom Hiddleston's Loki), the one-liners were amusing, the visual effects were spectacular (the fictional city of Asgard was absolutely beautiful) and the plot was fine. But I was expecting this superhero movie to be a bit different, and it wasn't. I was disappointed for two reasons.

1. With Kenneth Branagh telling the story, I wanted there to be a bit more storytelling. I wanted less Michael-Bay-esque fight sequences and CGI mash-ups, and more dialogue, more character development, more depth. I was hoping Kenneth Branagh would resist falling into the trap of the big-budget Hollywood movie, but he didn't; he drowned the plot in CGI and forget to tell the story.

2. There wasn't much plot to drown. I wanted something clever. And by that I mean a plot a bit more substantial than a heroic but arrogant prince being exiled to Earth for behaving arrogantly, whereupon all hell breaks loose on his home planet and he becomes a better person by loving a stunningly beautiful physicist (I'm sure they exist. I've never seen one, but I'm sure they exist.), just in time to save the day on both Earth and Asgard. That story is fine. But there are absolutely no surprises. You'll have pegged the bad guy after two seconds of screen time, the ending is decided before it's begun and every single twist and turn comes as no surprise whatsoever. At one point I got very excited, because I THOUGHT something shocking had just happened, but it turned out I'd just misunderstood.

So overall, I enjoyed it. But it didn't deliver, for me, the extra dimensions I was hoping a director like Kenneth Branagh would bring.

Basic summary: an action-packed, visually stunning, fun and engaging movie worth watching with the family, but expect no surprises and you won't be disappointed.

Rating: * * * (good)

Review: Sherlock

Frankly, I think it's disgusting that not one person pointed out to me how wonderful this programme was when it was actually airing last summer. I had to wait several months for my best friend's little sister to buy it, then several weeks for myself and said best friend to get bored enough to raid the DVD drawer and find something we haven't already watched a thousand times before. Because hell, was I missing out.

Sherlock Holmes is, in my opinion, one of the best characters ever written, but I'm always slightly hesitant to watch a film/TV adaptation, because it's very difficult to make a character so arrogant, intelligent, brutally honest and immodest likeable. But Benedict Cumberbatch has it nailed. There are many wonderful things about this man, which I could list all day, but here are my favourites: -
1. His name. Benedict Cumberbatch. You can't make it up.
2. His voice - he has that baritone huskiness that can make a detailed forensic analysis sound like an invitation to bed.
3. His cheekbones.
And that's all aside from his obvious talent as an actor. He plays the modern version of Sherlock with a Doctor-Who esque energy (not surprising when you consider the creators) and creates a character you couldn't stand in real life, but you still desperately want to be just like them.

One of the things I like the most about the character of Sherlock is that - unlike so many popular anti-heroes of modern times - he's not ruined by layers upon layers of angst. The writers haven't desperately thrown in a series of Freudian explanations for his rudeness, genius and sociopathy - he has no dark childhood secrets of abuse, bullying and molestation that account for his complete neglect of social skills. He just doesn't care. He is the way he is because he wants to be. It's shockingly refreshing.

Doctor John Watson - seemingly the only person who can put up with Sherlock's many, MANY idiosyncracies - is superably played by Martin Freeman as a world-weary, tolerant and intelligent Master of Sarcasm. People often go on about romantic chemistry on screen, but I honestly think that in buddy-films/series, the chemistry between two on-screen friends is equally important. It was particularly significant in this case, since 'Sherlock and Watson' is one of the greatest friendships of all time, and to translate that into a modern setting with a modern audience (whose mantra, with regards to male friendships and literature seems to be 'gay until proven straight') must have been difficult. But it's done fantastically. Freeman and Cumberbatch hit the perfect tone in their on-screen friendship, and the writers blatantly had fun playing around with the assumptions a contemporary audience would make of two men in their 30s living together (as their landlady so blithely points out, "Mrs Turner next door's got married ones.")

Basic Summary: The acting's brilliant, the writing's witty, the mysteries are clever, and the result is a fantastic, refreshingly original version of a story that has been adapted to death.

Rating: * * * * * (excellent)

Review: Source Code

I am insanely tired right now, but writing this is the last thing on my 'Things To Do Today' list, and I NEVER complete those lists, so it's gonna be short, sweet but - at least - existing outside my head.

I'll be honest; I was expecting Source Code to be...well, Jake Gyllenhaal in Inception meets Groundhog Day. I was not complaining. Groundhog Day was good, Inception was excellent and I LOVE me a bit o' Jake Gyllenhaal.

But Source Code had more to it than that. The plot is kind of hard to explain without a) giving anything away and b) giving myself (and you) a headache, but I'll try and simplify it. An American soldier finds himself on a train, in the body of another man, with no idea what is going on, how he got there or who he's supposed to be. Eight minutes later, the train explodes. He then finds himself in the 'Source Code', a new invention which is (eventually) explained to be a machine by which the last eight minutes of a person's life can be relived, as many times as necessary, in slightly altering parallels. Still with me? Right. The soldier's job is to find the man who bombed the train to prevent more innocent people being killed, but he ends up getting attached to a girl on the train and trying to defy reality and drama ensues. Believe it or not, that really was simplified.

Anyway, it would have been easy for the film to get tedious, with the same two settings, the same chronology of events, the same inevitable conclusion, but some clever writing resulted in a very gripping and fast-paced film. My penchant for cheeky smiles means I'd never be anything but approving of Jake Gyllenhaal, but my favourite performance was actually that of Vera Farmiga, whose portrayal of a fellow soldier on the other side of the 'Source Code', trying to explain AND with-hold information from Jake Gyllenhaal was touchingly subtle.

Basic summary: mind-bending, romantic, complicated and unpredictable thriller/drama with eye-candy galore and intelligent writing, which avoided the frequent modern pitfall of killing a film by being just twenty minutes too long.

Rating: * * * * (very good)

Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Seeing as this is the first proper post on my new film blog, I realise people will probably assume that every film I review will be of the same calibre as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I feel I should immediately warn you that this is not the case. This is perhaps the second foreign-language film I've ever watched and I spent much of last night rockin' out to the soundtrack of The Swan Princess. I am not a film snob nor particularly mature, so you have been warned.

Anyway, moving on to the matter at hand. This film was ace. With films that have been adapted from books I like, I have to admit that I always expect disappointment, and my expectations are usually met. I was particularly dubious this time since I had finished reading the book perhaps four hours before watching the film, so the plot, characters and details of the story were still very fresh in my mind.

The basic story, if you don't know, centres around a recently disgraced journalist named Mikael Blomkvist, who is hired by the CEO of a massive family company - the Vanger Corporation - to discover which member of the family murdered Harriet Vanger, who disappeared nearly forty years ago. The 'girl with the dragon tattoo' is Lisbeth Salander, a personal investigator with deep secrets, a dark past and (to put it mildly) a no-nonsense attitude. Salander and Blomkvist 'team up' to uncover the shocking skeletons in this family's deep and many-layered closet, a task which becomes increasingly dangerous with the discovery of a long-hidden serial killer and the actions of someone determined to keep the family secrets, at any cost.

The film handled the book-to-screen adaptation wonderfully; they stuck to the original story very closely, but with a couple of minor simplifications and modifications that I actually found improvements. They also cut a lot of the - if you'll pardon my Northern attitude - extraneous crap, which was the only thing preventing me from loving the book. The number of times Blomkvist 'puts on coffee', one would assume he has some sort of caffeine problem.

Anyway, the film also tackled some pretty horrifying scenes with a tastefulness and subtlety that made it bearable to watch, whilst being explicit and shocking enough to have the desired effect (namely, me hiding behind a pillow). It also had possibly my favourite post-sex moment ever when Salander, having effectively jumped Blomkvist, casually, er, dismounts, picks up her clothes and breezes out of the room with a cheery 'Goodnight.' The violence was brutal, but I'm not going to say it wasn't needed - I hate blood and gore for the sake of blood and gore, but The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is partly about the mistreatment of women, and to get the message across the violence kind of had to be vicious.

In terms of acting, Michael Nyquist (Blomkvist) was very good, but paled in comparison to Noomi Rapace. Salander was described so vividly in the book I thought it would be impossible for an actress to do her justice (particularly when I saw a picture of a post-makeup Rapace), but - frankly - wow. This film is worth watching purely to bask in awe of Rapace's performance, and it's a crime that she wasn't nominated for more awards. Anyway I think I've gone on for long enough.

Basic summary: fast-paced, clever and shocking thriller that grips you from start to finish, does the book justice and features an extraordinarily good performance from Noomi Rapace.

Rating: * * * * (Very good)

Introduction

So, as well as my love of writing, reading, talking, friendship, complaining, music, sarcasm and time-wasting, I have one other great love, and this second blog of mine is dedicated exclusively to the discussion, review and worship of the Love Of My Life.

Films.

Since being a kid, I have always adored films. My Dad is a big-time movie nerd, and it became obvious pretty early on in my youth that myself (and my brother) would follow in his geeky footsteps. You point to a film and I can probably tell you who starred in it, regardless of whether I've seen it. You ask me how tall an actor/actress is and I can probably answer you. You ask me what else that guy directed, and I'll give you a list. But this ability to memorise cast lists like lyrics isn't all there is to my adoration of films (though if it was a skill I could apply to revision then my life would be considerably easier).

The fact of the matter is that films make me happy. I love stories in any way, shape or form, but film has to be one of the best. Books are amazing in that they allow your own imagination to translate words to images, but films are amazing in that for two hours they allow you to escape your life and live through a character, they show you what that character sees and allow you to go on adventures, the like of which you'll never actually experience.

So this is gonna be it; my blog dedicated to films. Sometimes I'll write a review, sometimes I'll make a pointless list, sometimes I'll go off on a random movie-related tangent, sometimes I'll be on one of my "rare (but fun) rants". So let's see how this goes, shall we?

(As a side note, this blog was inspired by my friend Amy, who has a blog dedicated to her one true love: music. http://music-is-my-refuge.blogspot.com/)