Quasi-Evil

Posts Tagged ‘Reviews’

Film Reviews: Boudica, WALL-E, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and King Arthur

As procrastination usually entails, I’ve been watching films…

Boudica aka Warrior Queen was both very cool and utter pants. I still can’t make up my mind whether I liked it or not. I liked the costumes (what? I’m a LARPer…I made notes and everything), I liked the way they did their make-up for battle, I liked most of the script, and the acting from the three main women (Boudica and her daughters) was always satisfactory, occasionally excellent. I liked that Boudica was still womanly in the way she acted and reacted; not just a bloke with breasts. The interweaving of magic was a bit pants but mostly bearable. The ending was horrendous, and utter tosh. I’ll probably watch it again, if only to get screencaps of how Boudica’s vambraces were attached.

WALL-E was fantastic, as I knew it would be coming from the same director/writer who did Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo.

WALL-E is a Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth-Class, the last surviving robot on earth which was abandoned 700 years previously when it could no longer sustain human life thanks to the rubbish produced by mankind. The film takes a very hard look at how we treat our planet and for much of it, pulls no punches in painting the human race as cowardly; choosing to run away sooner than take responsibility for problems of our own making. A nation of obese, uniformed slobs – their bone structure weakening with every generation – is waited on by robots which show far more personality than any of the humans and it’s only when WALL-E arrives, that they begin to wake up from their virtual worlds and realise that there’s more to living than food that comes in plastic cups.

Despite the bleak beginnings, WALL-E is full of optimism. It doesn’t hammer home the environmental message, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I don’t need Pixar telling me we’re wrecking the world, and anyone who does need telling that, wouldn’t get it if they’d written it in great big letters on every single bit of footage. Go see WALL-E, it’s the best thing to come out in ages.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall, written by the guy who did Knocked Up and directed by someone I’ve never heard of, is a rom-com that I was fully expecting to be crap. I was pleasantly surprised. OK, so I wasn’t crying with laughter but I chuckled a lot and may have even guffawed once or twice. Peter (played by the guy who wrote it) is an unusual choice for a male lead, being pretty plain, but he was endearing, loveable, and yet normal. Mila Kunis, who’s the voice of Meg in Family Guy, is freaking gorgeous. I don’t know how I missed that fact. And Russell Brand played Russell Brand. As usual, I couldn’t help but like him anyway.

There was no message, it wasn’t trying to be big and clever, it was just enjoyable and uplifting. The unrated version also had full frontal male nudity, Mila Kunis’s breasts and some entertaining sex positions from Russell Brand. Winner.

So after some good films, it was King Arthur that was the let down. I cannot see how the man who wrote Gladiator, one of my favourite films of all time, wrote this. The script wasn’t appalling, but it wasn’t fantastic either. The acting, from people who I usually adore, was wooden and just generally pants. Every time Clive Owen started making a speed, I cringed. His knights were decently written but badly acted, and his speeches to them just seem so forced because they weren’t the type of men to listen to them. It was like someone had said ‘It’s an historical epic, we need an average of four inspiring speeches per hour whether they’re appropriate or not.’

On the plus side, the cinematography wasn’t half bad and I did enjoy the battle scenes (I was watching the Director’s Cut so they were probably longer). I just didn’t really care who lived or died. If I’m perfectly willing to go away and get a drink, without pausing a film, in the middle of the climatic battle scene, there’s something very wrong with your character development.

Indy’s Not Bad but Tristan Rules

I watched Indiana Jones 4 this morning and was, I’m sorry to say, disappointed. It’s not bad but that’s about all I can say for it. The thing with continuing epic franchises is that there’s a lot more expectation. If you’re a Star Wars fan then you’ll know the prequels were both the best and worst thing ever. Fantastic that we got more of what we love, but a disappointment in that it didn’t live up to the original.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull does a decent job of making reference to the old films; it felt like it could have been made twenty years ago along with the rest of them. But therein lies the problem. The special effects were pants, the script was as cheesy as ever, and there were plot holes galore (oh right, he couldn’t get into the temple before but while being insane he figured it out as if by magic: bollocks). Twenty years ago, we didn’t care because it was Indy. Not so anymore.

I loved Rambo 4, another throwback to twenty years ago. They kept the Rambo format, there was loads of awesome action and it did exactly what I expected it to do. Perhaps the difference is that I loved the old Rambo films whereas Indiana Jones is something I watch if it happens to be on TV on a Sunday afternoon and I’ve got nothing better to do. I don’t love the old ones, so it’s impossible for me to love the new one. Especially when the usually awesome Cate Blanchett keeps getting the accent wrong (every time there was a ‘oh’ word, like ‘Jones’ or ‘know’).

Another film for which I had huge expectations, and which I have also watched today, is the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. I love that book so much that I was pretty much planning on never seeing the film in case it sucked. Fortunately, it didn’t.

The start was slow going but then adaptations generally are a bit slow off the ground in the eyes of people who’ve read the book enough times to be able to quote it in general conversation. But about half an hour in, I was laughing out loud, had tears in my eyes and even found myself saying ‘Aarrrgghh’ along with Robert Di Niro. The cameos were perfection itself, and the acting in general was magnificent – even from people the critics weren’t so sure about (Michelle Pfeiffer for a start). I loved it, I want to watch it again and I’m frantically hunting for my copy of the book so I can reread it. I’d call that a success.

Thing of the Week: The Big Bang Theory

“No, I’m going to ask him to choose between sex and Halo 3. As far as I know, sex has not been upgraded to include high def. graphics and enhanced weapon systems.” – Sheldon, Season 1 Episode 7.

The Big Bang Theory is an American comedy about two physics nerds who have a beautiful girl move in across the hall from them. She’s played by Kaley Cuoco of 8 Simple Rules fame and I suspect I’m her, except less attractive.

The show is, quite simply, hilarious if you’re any kind of geek or if you fail at being a geek but surround yourself with friends who watch Doctor Who or play D&D or are sometimes too intellectual for their own good.

Why There’s a Wedding Magazine On My Desk

No, I’m not getting married. But I was in WH Smith’s looking at the women’s magazines section because that’s where they, in a rather sexist manner, put all the home magazines (and I like the Christmas specials in those things), when I happened to glimpse a wedding magazine unlike any wedding magazine I had ever seen or heard of before:

It’s a wedding magazine for people who live alternative lifestyles, it’s issue one and it’s beautiful. The catchline is ‘weddings without walls’ and the Editor’s welcome says (snipped lots), “We think a wedding is a uniquely personal affair…Why conform to a stereotype…This is a new era.” This issue has features on eco-concious, green weddings and another on medieval weddings but what really gives you an idea of the magazine is its very first article: ‘Bringing Sex to the City’. It’s effectively an advertorial for a ‘female-friendly erotic shop’ and it does seem an interesting choice of piece to open with.

After that we get some wedding fashion pages like you’ve never seen before. A couple of outfits look like something Nicole Kidman would have worn in Moulin Rouge, there’s a fairytale dress with a rather Lord of the Rings feel to it, a ’21st Century Kilt’ (modelled by a yummy bloke), corsets, Burlesque-esque underwear and what I think is a rubber (or possibly vinyl) hobble dress.

There’s an advert for Jed (who I met at the Birmingham Fetish Fair in June, gorgeous pinstripe clothing) and on the opposite side of the page, one for VIP Bentleys Ltd. There are even pictures of ‘normal’ wedding dresses at internals through the mag and I get the feeling that they really mean what they said about not stereotyping and that includes not stereotyping the wedding wishes of their own target market.

Will I be buying it again? Depends how freaked the boyfriend is when he sees a wedding magazine on my desk. But I’d like to. There’s gorgeous stuff in here that’s not just for people who are getting married (or having civil unions – it’s for people, not women) and I’ve just seen some shoes I want…