Three Films
Oct. 2nd, 2006 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gervase_fenI went to see three films last week, the first one being one of the best I've seen this year.
Just my cup of tea - a bleak English dystopia that looks like "Threads" or "Survivors", directed with huge assurance by Alfonso Cuaron. There are some jaw-dropping set-piece hand-held camera action sequences, which look completely natural and all of a piece with the documentary style of the film. Michael Caine's performance is one of his best.
If I have a criticism, then there's a bit too much John Tavener on the soundtrack for my taste - the film works exceptionally hard to get to its climactic moment of spiritual grace, which I think it earns without the music cues.
Penny popped down from Nuneaton to see the new flat, so we watched a double bill at the local Odeon.
This is definitely better than the 2 star review it received in "Empire" - it's Little Red Riding Hood by way of Rashomon/The Usual Suspects, and completely over the heads of the four-to-eight year olds in the audience with us. The plot is reasonably well-thought out (it's a whodunnit that led me up the garden path for twenty minutes or so) ; there's a sweet, melancholic song in the middle in the style of Ben Folds, "Red is Blue" ; and there are some splendidly silly scenes, the standouts being anything involving the singing goat, and the wolf undercover in the sheep fold. There's even a dash of political comment - Nicky Flippers, the frog investigating the case, remarks "We don't lock people up because they look creepy", a cue for a police officer (one of the three little pigs) to phone the station and suggest that they release "the creepy guy" from the tank. Three and a half out of five from me.
Meryl Streep's performance is just about worth the price of admission, but the story flags in the second hour, and, remarkably, the scenes set in Paris look less glamorous than the street scenes of New York. There's a lovely joke about the next Harry Potter book, sterling support from Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci, and Anne Hathaway's ingenue heroine is pretty engaging as the viewpoint character. However, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
parrot_knight pointed out when we saw the 'exclusive Vue presentation' of the first main scene of the movie, to describe Ms. Hathaway as 'not skinny' is stretching the truth - and her transformation during the movie is hard to care about because, well, it's fashion! It's so shallow, darling!
Just my cup of tea - a bleak English dystopia that looks like "Threads" or "Survivors", directed with huge assurance by Alfonso Cuaron. There are some jaw-dropping set-piece hand-held camera action sequences, which look completely natural and all of a piece with the documentary style of the film. Michael Caine's performance is one of his best.
If I have a criticism, then there's a bit too much John Tavener on the soundtrack for my taste - the film works exceptionally hard to get to its climactic moment of spiritual grace, which I think it earns without the music cues.
Penny popped down from Nuneaton to see the new flat, so we watched a double bill at the local Odeon.
This is definitely better than the 2 star review it received in "Empire" - it's Little Red Riding Hood by way of Rashomon/The Usual Suspects, and completely over the heads of the four-to-eight year olds in the audience with us. The plot is reasonably well-thought out (it's a whodunnit that led me up the garden path for twenty minutes or so) ; there's a sweet, melancholic song in the middle in the style of Ben Folds, "Red is Blue" ; and there are some splendidly silly scenes, the standouts being anything involving the singing goat, and the wolf undercover in the sheep fold. There's even a dash of political comment - Nicky Flippers, the frog investigating the case, remarks "We don't lock people up because they look creepy", a cue for a police officer (one of the three little pigs) to phone the station and suggest that they release "the creepy guy" from the tank. Three and a half out of five from me.
Meryl Streep's performance is just about worth the price of admission, but the story flags in the second hour, and, remarkably, the scenes set in Paris look less glamorous than the street scenes of New York. There's a lovely joke about the next Harry Potter book, sterling support from Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci, and Anne Hathaway's ingenue heroine is pretty engaging as the viewpoint character. However, as
parrot_knight pointed out when we saw the 'exclusive Vue presentation' of the first main scene of the movie, to describe Ms. Hathaway as 'not skinny' is stretching the truth - and her transformation during the movie is hard to care about because, well, it's fashion! It's so shallow, darling! 
