Somehow during two days of vacation and almost two weeks of illness I managed to watch a few DVDs. I avoided the cinema as the school holiday was on and there's nothing worse than children in movies, if you ask me, except maybe adolescents. Here are capsule reviews of what I watched, with ratings out of ****.
Robert Zemeckis’s “Beowulf”
I finally managed to catch the much-hyped and disliked CGI epic on DVD. The motion capturing technology is not yet perfect, but I was, strangely, not alienated by that. Maybe it’s the astonishing visual design; maybe it’s the brutal, gripping story as skilfully adapted by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary; I suspect I'm in the minority here, but I thought it was brilliant. (***½)
Wes Anderson’s “The Darjeeling Limited”
Whimsical yet quite profound tale of three brothers travelling through India on the titular train. Anderson’s is an acquired taste; even those who loved “Rushmore” often derided “The Life Aquatic”. Absolutely not for Adam Sandler fans. (***½)
Andrew Currie’s “Fido”
Instead of a dog, little Timmy here has a domesticated zombie (courtesy of a high-tech collar) that does his bidding in Currie’s failed attempt at satire. Set in the 1950s, the movie gets the look right for most part but the feel and the humor are left for dead. A wasted opportunity. Rather revisit “Shaun of the Dead”. (**)
Park Chan–wook’s “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance”
I’ve finally experienced the South Korean filmmaker’s lauded “Vengeance Trilogy” as a whole. Where “Oldboy” (part two) was the Greek tragedy and “Lady Vengeance” (part three) the female-driven exploration of collective capacities for violence, “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” has all the visual power of those two films plus some haunting imagery laced with moral and ethical quandaries. (****)
Takeshi Miike’s “Zatoichi”
The Blind Swordsman, a popular figure from Japanese visual culture, is revamped by cult director/actor “Beat” Takeshi Kitano as a masseur who possesses great swordsmanship skills. A bit tonally uneven and cartoony, but with Miike involved that was obviously the point. (***)
Ben Affleck’s “Gone Baby Gone”
Gripping, character driven crime drama that exhibits great promise for Ben Affleck’s directorial career. Based on the novel of Dennis Lehane, Casey Affleck investigates the kidnapping of a young girl as he traverses one moral quandary after another. Superlative entertainment, and less self-conscious than the much-acclaimed other Lehane adaptation, “Mystic River”. (***½)
Michael Winterbottom’s “Tristam Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story”
A delightfully clever quasi-adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy” from one of Britain’s most versatile directors (Winterbottom has also directed “Road to Guantanamo”, “In This World” and the Chris Eccleston-Kate Winslet version of “Jude”, which remains a favourite of mine since first seen in high school). Actor Steve Coogan stars as the leading actor working on the above adaptation, and we are witness to both the ‘film’ as it is made and the ‘film’ about the film team making said film. (***½)
Gus van Sant’s “Elephant”
I think I ‘get’ “Elephant”. I ‘get’ Van Sant. Yet this guerrilla drama about the Columbine shooting is tedious on a visual, narrative and thematic level. I can understand the purpose of the structure – characters’ lives interweave over a single day as the film shows us the same event from up to three perspectives – but there’s not point to following a character walking down a corridor for 90 seconds just because the corridor takes that long to walk. And this won Cannes accolades? (**)
Henri Georg-Clouzot’s “The Wages of Fear”
Long termed a classic and much loved, this black and white suspense drama does not live up to its proclaimed status. The first 50 minutes of the film are painfully slow, highlighting character relationships in an almost amateur manner. When the suspense kicks in – four men must drive two trucks carrying nitrogen almost 300 miles – the film delivers only two scenes of real interest: one where the trucks need to manoeuvre dangerously and one where one of the trucks hits a pool of oil. For what it’s worth, the ending is perfect. But 2½ hours is far too long for this adventure to go on. (**)
Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”
Roger Deakins’s cinematography is once again at its most magnificent in this visually opulent, overlong anti-Western. Casey Affleck owns the film as the titular coward, holding his own scene by scene against Brad Pitt’s enigmatic and flawed Jesse James. The film is introspective and demystifies the West as far as it goes, even including famed playwright Sam Shepard in its cast as a James brother. While some subplots seem rather unnecessary, if marginally interesting, the final half hour is utterly gripping. (***)
Neil Marshall’s “Dog Soldiers”
Before the superior “The Descent”, Marshall made this Brit-werewolf flick. Cliched and hammy at times, the film has a committed cast (they take it seriously, all this werewolf fighting and stuff) and a few surprises and genuine scares. Clearly low budget, the film turns out to be better than one would expect a B-horror to be. Nothing original, but a solid genre entry that’s at least visually more inventive than the usual fare. (**½)
