Fourteen Two

 It Was Just An Accident

Occasionally you see a foreign film and it blows you away. You think, that has really spoken to me in a universal language (such as I'm Still Here). Sometimes, you watch one and you think, why are these people shouting? This film has been hailed as a masterpiece, awarded, acclaimed and so on, but it's actually quite slight. The acclaim comes because it's against the regime in Iran. So okay, that's real and the message of the film that the regime is poison is fine. But that's the only message. The characters are largely incomprehensible. Maybe I missed the point and they're supposed to be driven by the ghosts of the past etc but they do that alien thing, where they go "I'm going to kill you" and then "oh no I could never hurt you" in the space of five minutes, both messages entirely at fever pitch.

So the performances are rather overwrought and the script unsubtle but it's still decent enough. I just didn't feel the same love for it I have for other Iranian films. Three stars but not a wholehearted recommendation.

Is This Thing On?

So this is like going to your happy place for divorced dads (Will Arnett's character is not quite divorced but okay). The dad discovers a new passion, fucks a younger chick and rediscovers what a banging broad he's married to. That's it. It's quite fun, mildly amusing, not too torturous in the talky bits, lit up by an absolutely incandescent Laura Dern -- one extended scene in particular where she is surprised during a date). Altogether, it's a banger. Highly recommended for sad old men. Four stars, could go higher even.

Revelation Space

Never were too words less fun to put together than space opera. Sometimes it means all the dullness of opera but in space. Sometimes it means a galactic empire with thousands of titles and names you have no hope of remembering. But sometimes it's nicely realised scifi, where the space bit is credible and interesting, and the opera bit just means there's a melodrama. The scifi is hardish -- I mean, it's soft but plausible, so the rules of physics are not broken so much as ignored; ships cannot go FTL but there are some loading AI into your head bits that don't seem very real. The story is bearable and the ideas are sparky. Four stars. Best scifi I've read recently.

Send Help

Look, if you said I had to be detained on a desert island with Rachel McAdams, who would get hotter and freakier the longer she was there, I wouldn't be crying about it. So this film is a more enjoyable version of Castaway in that respect. It's kind of a thriller, where the twists are telegraphed from a mile off, but it's fun. I liked the underlying idea of a person being more suited to the wild life, and it bringing out both the best and the worst in her. I didn't like the rescuers bit at all but I don't think it was supposed to be so much credible as it was amusing. Enjoyable nonsense and a good three stars.

posted by Dr Zen @ 5:58 pm