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Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Kill Bill Volume 2
The second part, (obviously) of Tarantino's rampage of revenge sees Uma Thurman finishing off the last two members of Bill's gang, (Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah) and then going onto "Kill Bill". Its a much more dialogue-heavy movie than the first part, with character's motivations coming through and the back story filled out. The homage-ometer this time veers much closer to spaghetti westerns, all close ups and Morricone soundtracks whistling through the desert, apart from an excellently done kung-fu master flashback halfway through the film. As the concluding part to the Kill Bill double, it elaborates on and concludes the story excellently, although if you consider it as a stand-alone film, the dissapointment would be that there's nothing in it to rival the hacking and dicing action set-piece finale of Volume One. It's possibly a rather strange choice, when most people would fill the start of their movie with the story and end with a spectacular action scene, but Tarantino's always challenging our expectations of film, even if it is with his no-brainer trick of never showing events chronologically. On its own, Kill Bill Volume 2 doesn't come with the same adrenalin rushes that part one provided, but taken as a whole, the two films combine to make a near masterpiece of a pulp-film cocktail.  Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Shaun of the Dead
This self-styled rom-zom comstars Simon Pegg as the eponymous hero, a guy who decides to sort his life out one day and get his girlfriend back, only to be distracted by half the population of London turning into flesh-eating zombies. As a denizen of the capital myself, I can sympathise with how long it takes Shaun to realise something's actually wrong with everyone. I can also relate to his solution - go to the pub and hope everything turns out OK. The film is from the same people who gave us the genius of Spaced, and its fair to say the film in style and humour resembles an extra long episode of Spaced - which is obviously a Very Good Thing. Most of the Spaced cast are in it, along with comedy faces from the Office and Black Books amongst others. Its fast, its funny, and the zombies are satisfyingly gory, with the end sequence in the pub reminiscent of From Dusk Till Dawn, only set in a London boozer rather than a Mexican strip-bar obviously. If only all romantic comedies were this good. And featured zombies. Thursday, April 15, 2004
Capturing the Friedmans
"Who are the Friedman's?" you may well ask - well, they're a wholesome, upper middle-class Jewish family and fine upstanding citizens in their neighbourhood - atleast they were until the father and one of his three sons were accused of sodomizing the neighbourhood's children. This documentary follows the case from the initial allegations through to the court cases and their consequences.It offers no clear answers as to the Friedman's guilt, it simply presents the evidence for both sides, leaving you constantly switching your side of the fence throughout. What makes this film stand out is that as well as the standard talking heads and interviews with the various protagonists, the film features footage from the Friedman's own home videos. And the Freidman's pretty much seemed to film everything - so we see the family preparing for various members to be carted off to jail in much the same way a family birthday might be filmed. Its fascinating, disturbing and at times much more funny than a documentary about a paedophile abusing children should be. Thursday, April 08, 2004
Starsky & Hutch
Amiable pastiche of the seventies cop show, with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson as the duo in the cool car and Snoop Doggy Dogg as Huggie Bear. Its a spoof that laughs with the original, rather than at it, and as such is good natured even when not being laugh-out-loud funny. Its one of those films that looks like it was a lot of fun to make, with everyone running around in perm wigs and dancing to 70s disco, and so it is fun to watch - but its hardly going to change your life. Gothika Halle Berry ghost-story-serial-killer vehicle, in which the delectable Halle plays a "brilliant" psychiatrist who works in a mental hospital for psychotic women where the generators keep going out. You can tell she's a "brilliant" psychiatrist because the other characters keep telling her how "brilliant" she is. Anywho, this brilliant life of hers is turned upside down when she wakes up to find herself in an isolation cell with no memory of how she got there, and everyone telling her she's now a crazy psycho-killer herself. There then follows all manner of supernatural loud noises and bog-standard scare techniques as she attempts to work out whether she's crazy or just possesed. Halle runs around and screams a lot, whilst the supporting cast including Robert Downey Junior and Bernard Hill stumble through the film as if on tranquilizers themselves, barely able to sustain their own belief in the nonsensical plot. People who arent that into "scary movies" may well be kept interested, but for those of us who enjoy films which are a bit more disturbing than the dire "What Lies Beneath" , its all very predictable and very un-scary, with plot twists signposted like six foot high letters in blood smeared on an asylum wall. Its competently made, and slickly edited, but like Halle's own hit-and-run incident in real-life a few years ago, this is one vehicle of hers that swerves all over the place, crashes and then the whole incident is instantly forgotten. |
