Its a better song than film-One Day Review

One Day rings every conceivable notion of romantic love from its source material but instead of internalising it, and focusing all this energy onto creating robust round characters it constantly berates the audience with these two people need to love each other, and its star Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturges are never given enough time to ever be in love. We are told they are, with scenic promises ,but its little use when as actors themselves have to force so much from themselves to convince us, it should be the easiest thing in the world.

And its all the convoluted “One Day “ scenario that does not let the film breath. On every 15th of July, it follows wither Emma or Dexter in what happens to be going on in their lives at that specific point, and that is the failure, it feels very arbitrary what disposes these people to make these choices, we look at them like a 4th tiered friend would enquire at a lull in conversation. From Dex’s TV cretin to Emma’s slow road into her dreams its never engaging as at any point the next year could be anything. If it were grounded in less grand characters, and set in one estate or small universe for us to watch change with their timeline it would be much more successful.

The initial meeting is so integral to the chemistry, but its just what both actors do very well, Jims cocky bashful bachelor and Anne’s quirky reserved slightly uptight gem , but for their mist successful performances they have always had time to evolve into themselves, at a rate of 20 different set ups in time they are never given moments to shine as a couple but always just spout negligible plot points to set up the nest years eventual meeting. It feels too novelty to create a real spark between the two, instead of bonding over time it becomes aloof and cocky to see out of curiosity what they are doing, and we should be entangled in there personalities traits at these periods not lean plot development all the time. There is one moment of brevity and it’s a real release to the audience to have a moment with a character but that bicycle ride turns into yet more plot turning, Why do filmmakers not recognise love stories need to flourish under the expectations and needs of characters not the needs of storytelling.

Lone Scherfig of the stoic “An Education” and the almost wonderful “Wilbur want to kill himself” here is servicing the needs of plot too much, she creates a wonderful universe but just like An Education the people are so cold and servicing the film like mechanics to progress it plot wheels, we never get to enjoy the little moments, which is what every love storey is, little pieces of time that become a universe, not the opposite

The Kings Speech

The Kings Speech

Its not easy being Geoffrey Rush. You must remain consistent. Never ever approach a charachter, just run at it with water balloons and see what sticks walk around in it for a while, shake it a little, and remain there in the next few weeks and presume your work is done as you saunter through scene after scene exposing only what you are comfortable with and know will work. This is fine when you are the zaniest person on screen, but when eye to eye with a nuanced civilised and real person its starts to show your messy approach to character. In the opening half hour, and one of the best of the year, its equal and charming, the simple playful nature of the King and his FRIEND(in capitals as this word is the entire second half of the script, just repeated over an over again) capture simply and without any real stretch a different hierarchy of performance, never stretching never pushing each other to out due each others acting but a subdued nervous reverence for the practices and backgrounds of each person, this would be fine if one of these characters was not the King of England, but it is also the reason why it works so well until a point, this point fades in when Guy Pearce the older sibling and next inline for the throne comes in to play, he is like a super sub who comes in and give the film a beacon to push forward into a second act that magnifies the ordeal of the younger brother "Bertie"(old wet shirt..Colin Firth) and adds context to the his life as a Royal, these two acts are not seamlessly blended but make it look stunning compared to the bludgeoning of the third, where after so much time has been spent oh their brotherly squabbling it come s to a halt and re-inserts the story about a man speaking.......

this is akin to stop mid Coitus “as my favourite add is on telly and you must see it...ness“. It tries but the film has set up from its first two acts a third that places the inevitable speech as part of Britain’s catalyst in a savage fight to come, to show the explosion of his brothers abdiction, an highlight the people need for a real leader,the third act fails on all accounts mainly as it coasts on easy ideas and Geoffrey Rush's impression of the first reality Tv show host making his pupil overcome....something, possibly losing weight or finally coming to grips with..anyway, in context of the first two acts it fails and is like a lead weight dragging the rest of the ship down,In a boat carrying lead weights somewhere that is.

Other problems are a score stolen from an an elevator where a scene from Highway to Heaven was filmed and it all keeps coming back to missed ideas that never dedicated itself to commenting on Britain properly. If you are not going to fully discuss pre-war England and its Politics don’t feature Winston Churchill in a cameo, that feels like the dude making an appearance in a Harold and Kumar film where he plays there straight edged accountant.

Colin Firth is good though. Nicely shot too..in parts.

Love and other Drugs.

Love and other Drugs.

Man(Jake Gyllenhall) meets girl(Anne Hathaway).He is a drug rep. She has Parkinsons......

wow

It feels like a conspiracy. It may be word for word interpretation of the book that the film is based on,but i don't think it is. Otherwise its not best seller but more a classy smut book for ladies who like to cry while there gentlemen masturbate as they are women are so dull that the find this emotional stimulating. This is a film about a relationship but its the audiences relationship with

romantic fantasy and what a filmmaker is entitled to get away with to involve a demographic into

a story to purposefully hate them for their failings about what they need to find stimulating. There is coarse nudity,huge emotional curves that are pretty straight,it was just sign posted for a roundabout in 400 miles. Its a film where beautiful people are happy where ugly people are sad and useless(but can be tech savy millionaires if they choose),even the women,Anne Hathaway who suffers from Parkinson's disease at 26... come off a little too man easy going but then again the disease that with 4mins of editing could be taken out if test audiences felt it was wrong,a little trimming and a few scenes to redirect the ending and you have a fun rom com where noone one of known any better. Its all filler all the time,it has moments to criticizes the medical establishment but swerves at the last minute to making a gag out of it rather than ever have any courage to tackle any issue,targeting doctors more than the giant evil conglomerate who come off so lightly it feels a little too cosy and in social terms of what the film-makers laid out for themselves to films and what they eventually got...i can not presume to understand how they thought this was in any way going to work.A romantic film staring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway is fine in itself they had simple chemistry together in Valentines day,a film compared to this deservers so much more respect as all it aimed to do was to tell stupid love vignettes and sell it to girls. This uses illness to tell a story.Its momentum comes from suffering,and abusing such suffering,the film actually references going to Canada to buy cheaper mediation,yet never challenges why it is,it merely sells it as Cocoon on a bus.

Performance wise..its nothing. Direction is flaccid,from someone who believes he is making a statement but wants to sell it to reach the widest possible audience with an anodyne romance,and fails to convince anyone it matter on any level,unless you like your films hinged on a final one line that gives it a little bit of hope,until you recall the films opening,Jake as a electronics salesman being so alarming contrived to sell the rest of the film on his charm the whole filmed failed as he is not a salesman like Tom Cruise/George Clooney approach of being that salesman naturally and here Jake forces everything that he feels quite seedy and laughable.

Legend of the Guardians: something about a hhhhhh holooool...probably who knows its actually quite irrelevant anyway.

Legend of the Guardians: something about a hhhhhh holooool...probably who knows its actually quite irrelevant anyway.

A very solid routine name, it means nothing could be specifically about anything and could be applied to any single film ever made, this generic title, with one line of exposition dialogue could be injected in any film and give this title precedence. So for a film obsessive, a generic title a below par add campaign and terrible trailers don’t add up to much.The only failings in this film are sadly so important for a animated film it becomes about attrition for whats left to possible endure to see out the story. Oddly, plastic voices aside all of which could be used to voice a very plausible mexian soap opera set in a soap opera about soap,it does work .The films highlights delight at times,a very solid paced flowing rthym....with added VOICED CONSTANT EXPOSITION, add to the fact that the CONSTANT EXPOSITION is not that grating,it actually though other techniques, beautiful animation, simple and never forced animation and “SNYDERISMED” slo,oo,ooo...........ow motion do really add to the pacing so intelligently that the constant storey never seems forced. Which is only really revealed in the seamlessly interwoven and beautiful realised last 20 minutes, the storey is one third ”Lord of the Rings” one half star wars and the rest are wet Shakespearean books taken out of a emo girls backpack after a Lady Gaga concert by bullies used to beat her with. If you have seen two romantic comedies you have seen 200,this storey is the same but without Sandra Bullock so by definition complete watchable.

Now for my favourite game, what the trailer didn’t tell its audience. Its quiet violent ,it is fantasy not cutsey...despite the awwwwwwwwww factor which it does have, the 3-D actually works, and works beautifully in parts, and there is owl nudity, well they don’t wear pants so i think that argument has reason to be here.

Social Network

Social Network

Aaron Sorkin likes to talk. I would like to see a film version of his office, as in my version, as in his of the creation of facebook is oddly subjective,.Like Facebook, this film exists, but by all accounts like my version of how Aaron Sorkin wrote facebook is as acutely observed as my version of how he wrote it.

Scene 1: Aaron writes down what means most to him in a film.

Line reads: I love me.

Aaron rings receptionist: The resulting conversation is petty and ends with 2 prostitutes walking in naked and dictating Aaron’s verbatim script for something. He talks pompously for two hours,has his assistants add names to characters, places his knob in a rolodex. David Fincher has been spotted by the mighty one and so beings the storey of an idea that neither really cares about. Facebook.

It is an amalgamation of the two personalities of creative dogma clashing.And by shear luck and excellent casting,JT aside,it works. But this would have worked better without the Facebook narrative consistently foiling up the possibilities of these actors and dialogue combining. The story of the creation of a website......i have already forgotten what i’m saying. Wonder if i can eat all those biscuits.......YES anyway. This film has two major flaws the true storey itself and Aaron Sorkin’s complete inability to create plot points tension or movement from his conversational dialogue. If this film had a third act, that would have made the meshing of beginning and middle less coarse, it would be an excellent film. But since that ending is still being lived out, it all becomes a little pointless, watching privileged people become more alot more so.

The Kid

The Kid.

The kid is another one of those hopeful romantic ideals of overcoming adversity, helpful mentors,battling the misconceptions of youth and being accepted,tragedy,persecution, hope and eventual justice....which in terms of Hollywood are words which are seen in bold on any film poster are teh slow and gentle realisation that you must must only watch this film if the girl who is with you is an idiot....and pretty,obviously. The kid is all of these things and more but made with absolutely no originality, in any context,but its never dull, always engaging and seamlessly interacts the chapters of his life into a cohesive and driven storey.Following the life of Kevin Lewis a man raised by a brutal unflinching mother(the non ageing Natascha McEhlone) who beats and humiliates him remorselessly, played from infancy to adulthood and set in a 2009-alternative universe to made to look like 70's and 80's Britain by just playing the Cure alot,which is how the British Film industry does modern period dramas. Three actors play Kevin, William Finn Miller ,Augustus Prew and Rupert Friend,of which embody this unique character,and it is this character who is the vey pulse of the film.From his childhood,Kevin is imprisoned in his own room, scrawling cave style simple pictures on his wall,his mawkish brutal behaviour carries with him through care workers and foster homes till his eventual taming through "ye ole mentor" (Mr Miagi with a beard Bernard Hill)who has seen it all,another cliche but again told well,this film is bombarded with cliches but they peter out when you chose to enjoy the film and you will simply enjoy it,which comes about the time Mr Fantastic/Lancleot/Ioan Gruffod comes into play as the second hero of the boy's youth,Horray!......(Macgyver with a welsh hint),this again leads to another mentor(Obi Wan the accountant),who instils pride and something else cliche-y,and yes Boxing the films centre piece.All this does take a backseat to Kevin the character employing the camp girlish glee tones of Truman Capote intertwined with "Daneil Larusso" scare tactics and the charm of Eliza Dolittle.It is a dangerous performance,it could have so easily marred the film into treacherously bizarre camp undertones but the flow and confidence of director/pointer and instigator of le Cliche(NIck Moran,it must be said in an English accent MORE-an,not Irish,otherwise he will die) is charmingly simple,he an actor himslef,aka Sting's pretty boy son in "Lock,Stock..." and second time director/pointer is confidence in his abilities but aloof enough to let the actors enough room to breath and relax to create a simple wonderful film,if it weren’t for the little things,and there are quite a few little things,the accents set this in a Doctor Who world of odd intertwined British society where everyone comes and says the same thing in a different tone,it becomes annoying as it never sets the location.The violence is underwhelming as this is a violence fuelled film from its very beginning, we see Kevin being beaten but never real enough to make us feel for him,as a theme underlying the whole storey it never feels real,that it ever really affects his performance and is often treated as an afterthought.

Savage

Savage.

Savage is from the beginning the most annoying film i have seen in quite a while,it follws a crime photographer who is brutally attacked and progresses through Dublin seedier underbelly,al the while is perplexed by fear and ultimately vengeance.

That above paragraph by itself is better written than the entire film/experience. travesty that is savage.There are no characters in this film,there are ideas of other characters stereotyped and morphed into plot mechanics, there are props which are filled with dialogue,there are moments of apparent tenderness so laughable that you expect is to be SNL sketch.The problems are only with the director/crayonist(i will never call him a writer) Brendan Muldowney,whose creative flow comes from watching Fox news.Its a xenophobic fuelled presumption ridden nonsensical attack on modern Dublin,a city which is illuminated more towards Bangcok than a western capital and its primary fearful loactions are Dame St,Temple Bar and Smithfield!.

The storey is simple and contradictory at every moment,a crime photographer ,Paul Graynor is terrified of street crime,if he was a simpler profession it would immediately become more real,who is attacked ruthlessly by "hoodies",who may as well have swastikas and have the imperial death march played behind them for the foreboding terror then appear to represent.Paul,a decent efforted Darren Healy,becomes overnight agoraphobic and fearful of everything(enjoy the bread buying scene,Hitchcock it is not),who,apparently,throught the wonderful exposition of subsidiary characters, a love interst,a psychatirist,random Polsih bodybuilders and a sheep, lead us to.....

nothing relevant about this person whatsoever.So much so that after Paul starts popping steroids like skittles, he becomes a maniac! Ohhhhhhh.....its not that exciting, as its so poorly directed edited and written its irrelevant for any real intelligence to purse it other than trying to understand the mind of a man who believes that propelling fear in the minds of an audience in such a disgusting manner is relevant. Brendan,the crayonist tries, through Fox News powers, shoes a state of absolute terror,then through our already apparently terrified photograher into this world,and shoots it in such extreme close ups its difficult not to feel uneasy being in such proximity to bad actors.Imagine a slasher film set in Fair city,welcome to Savage.

At one point during the sceening the reels were placed in the wrong order,for an audience containing the films stars,director producer and editor it took them a very long time to notice that the film had just skipped 5 minutes,i can only presume they just enjoyed the fact that is was a little shorter.