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.

The expendables

The Expendables, is a necessary cancer on this year's not just summer films,but for film as a whole its exceptionably sub par,the journalism community when diagnosing this summers abject failure with the only exception being Toy Storey not even inception is without fault,will only need to relive the expendables to revisit the first genuinley fun film for a very long time.Its fails in every way a B-Movie action film needs to,to be regarded as a great action film,a genre by the way that does no need plot relevance or drama to carry themes,and in fact should not have any such words anywhere near it.

Plot................something about Micky Rourkes something, its not important.The cast girth should have been the only marketing necessary, and it actually was.To review this is pointless as where a films entire existence can be put on its title, a review cannot justify a cleaning notion a film like this has on other films.This is intentionally fun,it is made to laugh with and at and any other pseudo criticism at it is null and void as it is a film so self aware,and directly relating to an audience it never patronises but only embraces fondly.

The Rebound

The Rebound

Is the romantic comedy on its tethering end,its a genre with inescaple history,at its best it can feature true cinematic talent and highlight the most important person in any collaborative medium the creator,the person who fulfils ideas to their absolute best version of what they can achieve, the writers never achieve any real status whether its successful or an mis-marketed and didn't achieve its early promise...i.e complete patronising vomit, which the romantic comedy will suffer for more th an any other genre, everybody will fall in love at one time or another so we actually you,i am against the idea, its conversation possibilities are stifling and i really have no interest in curtains, which i can only assume is where all marriages eventually lead. With all our insight into this genre the universal film is a prompt and more appealing genre than rom....no abbreviations please anymore it leads to Edgar Wrights smugness coming over twat mountain.Yet the universal genre is dying,film at the moment is and always will be a substantial medium where if you are not a lazy idiot there are genuine and lovely moments to be found worldwide daily, so i refuse to lay the blame on the Hollywood-isation of the film industry as its just a giant research centre for fat people and their hideous opinions. My hideous opinion is slim so therefore better than theirs.

The rebound itself is a prime example of a genre constrained to find an audience by stretching its limitations to encroaching into other more broad guidelines but retaining a sense of itself in case it becomes successful, which of course it won’t, as its moderately entertaining as recent variation in the field have proved to be so outlandishly broad and stupefying that they have influenced the nature of this film,Sex and the City has much to answer for and i presume th Hague is planning an assault on its belief system a soon as its stops laughing at Belgium.It may take some time,but its a silly country so it cannot be blamed for any lack of speed in attacking just yet.

Yeah....woman meets boy, a few laughs one actually funny maybe two its depends on your taste for moustaches and Tom Skerrit. and then they kiss....its irrelevant presuming to talk about it not that its not worth discussing there are good topics of conversation of ageism, and patronising women involved here but anyone who would read a review of this film already has made up their mind about its ideas and just needs vilification towards them.Perhaps why the genre is dying its being condescended to by idiots who are not good enough to appreciate it are the only ones keeping the genre alive.

The Last Detail

The last Detail.

Encompassed in a dystopian remorse, two sailors in perpetual relenting take a boy of 18 to jail where he as one of them will spend the next 8 years of his life for a petty crime that has brought about the wrath of a society unaware of its own state of charity that in their fight for justice cause more harm to innocence than their charitable causes can ever repair. The two sailors, Jack Nicolson (Badass) and Otis Young (mule) consent to this "shit" detail as its predium offers a respite from their mundane living waiting for their orders to come though. Their cargo, a unique and innocent Randy Quaid is imprisoned for attempting to steal 40 dollars from a church charity box,and is duly sentenced, he goes from one encasement to another to another, and in a revealing moment he regales his "best friends" though his life which has up till then been nothing but school and now from institution to institution he has been failed upon,once revealing that his favourite teacher wanted him to become a vet, this tender moment is an attack on America itself giving this young boy a place of education till he can leave to travel through its heartless institutional core. America here is nothing but a promise to the young.

The three travel through the freezing cold of Americas east coast to the Naval penitentiary at Philadelphia never suggestion a start point always hinting at movement that never has a beginning but a defined end for all three, the kid prison, and Badass and Mule are lifers to the core. The beauty of this work is there are no beginnings to it and their journey though the 5 days together are what their lives will be like, the youth of travel and fun to the lost hangovers of their mid twenties to the search and inevitably payment to and for "the pussy" till the bitter end where at the end of their journey they cannot release what they want to and end up being chastised for their lifes work.

An absolutely endearing and always funny account of the lives of men when a catalyst of youth is placed before them. The performances are soft and sublime, a tension of adulthood is softened by redeeming innocence and an obliging smile of youths affection for the simple and majestic moments ot has yet to experience.

A classis of 70's cinema that should be more thought of the an the obvious classics as its touch is lighter but more penetrating in the long run, almost American new wave almost 70's revivalism but never both at once and absolutely effecting.

My night with Maud

My night with Maud becomes something special after it infuriates, teases and whips you round the dullness of the worst saturated ideas that new waves has ever bored us with,opening with "mass" as the main protracted etchings of Catholicism are peppered throughout the film,used sincerely and never more than a character McGuffin to throw characters off each others sent and to make animosity but its French so Religion is never really an important argument when there are cigarettes and wine on display. After the mass has ended and as its French it ponders on till the breaking point of concentration, but an early attribute to the power of a great filmmaker to make an audience bored at the beginning, thrill them at the middle and let them drift at the end to a dull but ultimately satisfying end.

The night in question is between three people the main but....boringly sincere Jean Louis, Maud herself the stunning vase holding the films withered flowers within its chest and the wonderful and underused Vidal, the friend and catalyst of this almost threesome. They discuss Blasie Pascal the French mathematician and philosopher, and deduce by his theories a template for the most interesting parts of conversation dampening the raising sexual tension that inevitably fools Maud wherever she turns. Without this often intermediate conversations it would be hard to see how Woody Allen would have fashioned a career, so much its its influence and unforgettable simplicity which is infused in this oddly beautiful film. It is from this view of the 20 century a mongrel simpleton child of Allen and Bergman, but from the opposing view a forward progression through so much turgid new wave ideas, it decimates the ideas that cinema at the time needed to be new, instead of the forcefulness of relaxed charm witty debate and ease that Maud hinges delicately between ease and discomfort but it sways between both gracefully and with a maudlin charm that forces nothing and incredulously has the gall to give so much more than it talks about, an idea that refreshed the forced sparkle of new wave in to our hearts and was forgotten amidst the sparkle of something to talk about over the simplicity of unregulated filmmaking which is what new wave is best at.

Mother

Mother.

In Korean the word mother and murder are almost identical when translated from English to Korean and it is the dichotomy that the film, although unconsciously is entirely hinged, its is a storey of a boy/man who is slightly mentally deficient but played to a point when its personality that encumbers rather than defines any mental misgiving, Again a duel theme accompanying the stories driving presence. The second is the title charachter,Hye-ja-kim,is a wrought fierce character of emotionless grit and complete understanding...so in essence eh a mother, but placed within confines of having a completely unidentifiable character to be a guardian too.

She is always taut with a twisted tension that becomes to define the simplest and uneasy moments of the film,and its this balance that attributed moist of the personality of her charachter,its never explored just reason with down to a pint where her character is nothing more that a character of an actual performance.

When combining difficult character blends into a storey that is seemingly twisted but never unfurls more than a few inches from where it begins everything becomes squashed together in terms of emotion but there is never any real sense of release that the audience is looking for and needs

to comprehend the people we are watching. Its overly simple in terms of plot when complicated is

necessary to draw away out reactions fro the characters for even a slightest moment.Realise comes but its never enough subsidiary plots develop but lead nowhere such is "the best friend" who needs redemption but is never given any,and the lack supporting cast who come in to play when squeezed out painfully.

The direction is misguided the pacing is off completely to a point where is ruins the flow of the film,but there are moments of fun to be had just never really amounting to anything,and this film needs heights to attain rather than being so satisfied with novelty and misappropriated charactisation.

Igor and Chanel

Igor & Coco is as modest in storey telling as it is in expression, to regale a cinema experience as being stark is quite a novelty in cinema today but more so as its diluted with historic acumen noble underestimates and languid sexuality. It s a film based on one line of a possibility, Coco Channel and Igor Stravisnsky may have had an affair.This film is not that concerned with any maybes it is deafening in its power.In this universe they most certainly did,now we must improve on to what the film is actually about,Its is modest sliver through the lives of two people and a look a cheeky examination if the two most interesting parts in their lives using sex as a conduit to channel the storey forward. Coco in mourning at her lovers death,is fused at first sight by the sheer physicality of Igor,his presence towering over his greatest work "the right of spring" being performed amidst a right of tempered frech "critics" is the beginning and sets an elegant tone to the length and breathe of the film.

It beginnings a solemnly with Igor alone in his room with the patrons amazing within the reflective intensity of the theatre, it has been designed as if to intimidate. The performance begins as template for the rest of the film, slow paced hinging on slight moments of insolence and always aware of itself, the director is charging the audience both in the theatre and subsequently in the cinema with a guile and spark that never erupts as expected but wimply lengthens until it can only fade,this film like the opening rewards the viewer with the unexpected, it attacks sense at once more than any single one,in a very conscious move reflecting the feel of Stravinsky’s music where by the decor is pure Channel.You watch this film in two parts,the dichotomy of characters and the split vision/hearing divide that accompanies all shards of this experience.

It does feel sat times provoking you to not care about these characters, which if a conscious decision works but if unconsciously it fails, everything hangs by your interpretation of actual opinion, this is not a character study id you don’t want it to be no more is it a biography, more a music video of two lives with images to prop up the other. There are faults and a second viewing may be difficult, it will in no doubt remain as a first curios visit to Stravinsky’s mind and a tactful but harmful reminder that true art akin to Channel is well beyond the ordinary.