Sunday 27 September 2009

Film Review: He's Just Not That Into You (2009)


A group of several twenty to thirtysomething friends navigate the treacherous waters of relationships, dating and marriage in the internet age, where a multitude of communication options and modern day stresses only add to the already complicated and veiled signals that couples send to each other.

Sweet and honest Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) is desperately looking for a relationship, but seems to find all the wrong men and misinterprets all the signals. She turns to savvy bartender Alex (Justin Long) for advice on how to better understand men. Inevitably, Gigi is drawn to Alex, but is he interested in her or is he just being a friend?

Janine (Jennifer Connelly) thinks that she is happily married to Ben (Bradley Cooper). But in the midst of a home renovation project, he seems to have maybe secretly started to smoke against her strong wishes, and he maybe has also secretly started an affair with hot Anna (Scarlett Johansson). Can this marriage be saved?

Beth (Jennifer Aniston) and Neil (Ben Affleck) are the perfect couple, but they are not married, and he never wants to be, while she is longing to tie the knot. The relationship ruptures over this conflict. Can it be recovered?

Mary (Drew Barrymore), who works in marketing, is embroiled in the electronic dating age, and mostly meets, communicates and breaks up with men through various digital devices. She eventually connects with a client, real estate agent Connor (Kevin Connolly), who was one of the men to dump Gigi, and who is finding professional success by advertising to the gay community. Connor also thought that he could have a serious relationship with Anna, but she just wanted him as a casual friend. Can Mary and Connor hit it off?

Loosely based on the best-selling book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, and directed by Kevin Smith, He's Just Not That Into You is an enjoyable examination of age-old adult relationship issues with a modern gloss. The movie plays its cards well and feigns steering straight into pessimistic and cynical territory before turning sharply towards affirmation of some time-honoured values.

Smith finds the fine line where comedy is used to enhance and enrich rather than disrupt the narrative, while the excellent cast get into their characters and appear to park their egos at the studio door. The script by Behrendt and Tuccillo with help from Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein rounds out the characters and generally avoids both annoying cliches and contrived situations.

He's Just Not That Into You is a flighty yet fun film that's easy to get into.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Saturday 19 September 2009

Movie Review: Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)


The terrific Golden Turkey Awards (1980) book by Harry and Michael Medved awarded Plan 9 From Outer Space the glorious title of Grand Prize Winner for Worst Film Ever Made. This was based on a survey of movie fans, and was a remarkable achievement considering audiences usually have a bias for their more contemporary experiences.

Plan 9 From Outer Space is indeed stupefyingly bad. It is difficult to imagine that this was not a joke. The plot, the sets, the script, the acting, the directing are all worse than a high school play conceived by 16 year olds having a laugh.

It is also difficult to imagine that this film was pulled together in 1959. It comes across more like something out of the early, pre-1930's silent era of movie-making. Edward D. Wood Jr. somehow directs wooden actors to keep a straight face while spouting the most inane lines of dialogue and avoiding plastic sets assembled after a salvage trip to the local landfill.

The plot? War-loving humans are on a path to destroy the sun. Aliens who look exactly like humans have concocted a remarkable plan to kill-off humanity. They want to destroy the world in order to save the rest of the universe from the stupidity of earthlings. The aliens intend to achieve their objective by waking up the dead from the local cemetery. The undead will then stumble around with outstretched arms killing other humans. This is the ninth plan that these aliens, who may be low on budget but are obviously not short of ideas, have come up with. Movie fans eagerly await films revealing the first eight plans.

For rather unclear reasons, probably related to resource limitations, the aliens are only able to resurrect about three dead folks, including a remarkably thin Vampira and the counterweight Tor Johnson. It is left up to a bland airline pilot who lives on the edge of the cemetery and an inept army General, who looks like a satire of every other movie army general, to team up and stop the evil aliens in their tracks. The final battle apparently takes place inside the lead flying saucer, which looks suspiciously like a bland half-furnished office. It takes one small pistol and a few punches to shut down the evil plot. 

Most of the action takes place in and around the cemetery, with headstones that sway when actors run past them. Stock footage of intense army manoeuvres is trotted out at one point, apparently to demonstrate the army battling some other band of evil aliens. Plastic plates - presumably flying saucers - are shown rotating menacingly over earth.

Somewhere in there, Wood throws in unrelated scenes featuring Bela Legusi, who apparently shot some scenes with Woods for a whole other film and then died.

Plan 9 From Outer Space, while funny and entertaining in ways that were never intended, is ultimately also a bit sad: there is genuine sympathy for the stunning all-round lack of talent and lack of resources mercilessly on permanent display.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.