Thursday 25 February 2010

Movie Review: District 9 (2009)


A huge spaceship cruises over Johannesburg and comes to a stop. Eventually a large number of aliens, who look like giant prawns on legs, are welcomed to earth. They mainly take up residence in District 9, a cordoned-off ramshackle camp within the city.

Tensions between the humans and aliens grow over time, resulting in an attempt to relocate the residents out of District 9. Things go wrong when human government agent Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is infected by a mysterious substance and starts to morph into an alien. Horrifying for him and his wife, but fascinating for the government, since he can now use the aliens' sophisticated weapon systems.

District 9 is a well-made, sharply-delivered science-fiction film, remarkably similar to Avatar in terms of plot elements, but on one-tenth the budget. It demands sympathy for a strange looking alien race, introduces a human-to-alien transformation as a central plot element, portrays humans as both heavy-handed and under-handed, and quickly trots out something equivalent to the military-industrial complex to be the real evil.

That the first half of District 9 may be a metaphor for the mistreatment of blacks by the ruling white class during South Africa's apartheid era just adds a layer of poignancy.

But District 9 does unravel a bit in its second half, descending almost into a routine and forgettable action movie, with Wikus teaming up with one of the aliens, complete with cute young alien kid, to plan an unlikely escape from District 9 back to the mothership still hovering mysteriously overhead.

Sharlto Copley is the best thing about the film, as the well-meaning and naive government bureaucratic who finds himself turning into an alien. Particularly early in the movie, with Wikus going door-to-door in District 9 requesting the aliens' "consent" to be relocated, he embodies all that is distasteful about blatant government hypocrisy.

This is director Neill Blomkamp's first feature length film, and he puts his documentary storytelling style to good use. The movie effectively takes its time to establish the context, and there is no padding in the running length of under 2 hours.

District 9 is proof that a science fiction movie can be entertaining, thoughtful, and polished without necessarily costing the equivalent of a small country's GDP to make.







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Tuesday 16 February 2010

Movie Review: Metal - A Headbanger's Journey (2005)


Anthropology and heavy metal music are two subjects that rarely make it into the same sentence; but this does not deter anthropologist, heavy metal fan and documentary film-maker Sam Dunn. He sets out on a journey to better understand the history, evolution and global reach of his favourite music.

The result is an entertaining, well-made and thoughtful examination of heavy metal.

Dunn, from Victoria, British Columbia, traces metal's origins and its branching out into the numerous sub-genres exemplified by countless bands. Through interviews with band members old and new and fans world-wide, he examines metal's cultural influence, social and gender issues, battles with censorship, and links to satanism and violence. A particular highlight, unfortunately short, is Dunn's exploration of the direct links between classical music and heavy metal.

The first half of Metal - A Headbanger's Journey is crisp, sharp and funny. The second half gets lost in a couple of segments that are too long, in particular an unnecessarily drawn-out journey to Norway to explore criminals linked to extreme metal bands.

The highlights are undoubtedly the elegantly edited interviews with metal icons. The interviews with Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead are both smart and entertaining, and the DVD includes a second disc with extended interviews that did not make it into the documentary.

Dunn is not afraid to insert himself straight into the culture that he's documenting -- his continued obsession with metal forms an endearing thread throughout the movie, to the point that we sympathize with his awkwardness when he sits down to interview Bruce Dickinson, his boyhood idol. We also laugh with him as he reveals his boyhood enthrallment with cartoonish blood-soaked lyrics.

Metal - A Headbanger's Journey is a clever examination of a cultural phenomenon that is as powerful as it is misunderstood.







All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Friday 12 February 2010

Movie Review: Friday the 13th (2009)


As if time had stood still, the 2009 version of Friday the 13th adds absolutely nothing to the original 1980 horror classic.

This remake is a cinematic paint by numbers of the gagging kind. The true horror on display is the ineptness of the project: everything from the nauseatingly stereotypical multi-cultural mix of teenagers lined up for slaughter, through the various methods of killing, to the oh-so-tired final "shock", is wooden, recycled from the discarded remains of countless other movies, and delivered with all the flair of concrete shoes.

There is exactly one memorable moment in the movie, about 3 seconds in duration, a good one-liner about a hockey stick being a suitable accessory to mass murderer Jason's outfit.

The majority of the victims of Jason's latest rampage through Crystal Lake (which, somehow, required two screenwriters and three "story" credits) are obnoxious, stupid and aggravating to the point that they can't die soon enough or with enough brutality. Cheering for Jason may have been the purpose here all along, and he's certainly among the more sympathetic characters, acting like a useful terminator of hyper-sexed teens who are otherwise too inept to deserve oxygen.

Michael Bay either reveals the true depth of his lack of talent or remarkable lack of judgement by being associated with this mess as a Producer. The rest of the cast and crew are unknown, and on this evidence, likely to remain so.






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Movie Review: Inglourious Basterds (2009)


Yes, it's all fun and games and lots of Nazis get killed; but does the world really need a World War II fairy tale?

A conflict that engulfed the globe for six years surely has enough incredible stories that are real, close-to-real, or capable of inspiring sensational but still reality-based fiction, and over the years Hollywood has generated no shortage of World War II movies that cover all these various dimensions of reality, from the extremely serious to the wildly gung-ho.

Still, a revenge fairy-tale in which all high-ranking Nazis, including Hitler himself, congregate at a dingy Parisian cinema only to get slaughtered and burnt to death by the combination of a rag-tag commando unit and a Jewish girl? Is this what scraping the bottom of the intellectual barrel looks like when it is packaged and polished by a high profile director with a respectable ensemble cast?

From the mis-spelled movie title to some clearly derivative scenes, Quentin Tarantino is clearly not taking any of this seriously, yet the movie never quite places itself as a satire. The result is a general mis-match between intent and execution, with too many scenes played straight and asking for an emotional investment, only for the overall story arch to be just slightly short of farce.

Christoph Waltz as the Jew hunter Hans Landa emerges from the chaos with a priceless performance that will long survive the memory of the movie. He is all sleazy charm effortlessly combined with ruthless fascism. His scenes have a deliciously uneasy edge and deserve to be wrapped into an entirely better and more serious film.

Brad Pitt appears unsure if he is re-making The Dirty Dozen or an arts film. The rest of the cast stick closely to the first of one dimensions.

Inglourious Basterds is not short of entertainment. It is just glouriously unnecessary.






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Movie Review: The Hurt Locker (2008)


No so much a traditional movie as a series of tension-packed set-pieces, The Hurt Locker succeeds in re-creating the extreme and continuous pressure faced by the army units responsible for deactivating and disposing of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). And with IEDs being by far the weapon of choice of insurgents in Iraq, the men responsible for neutralizing them are effectively the front line.

Jeremy Renner as Sergeant William James brings life and personality as the bomb disposal expert, freaking out his unit on a regular basis with his unconventional and apparently risky methods. It's a polished but still stereotypical portrayal of the war hero who thrives by ignoring all the rules. The rest of the characters in The Hurt Locker are routine in the extreme and exchangeable with any number of soldiers who have populated war movies for the past 70 years or so.

The movie builds all of its drama around a series of well constructed exclamation points, as bombs (and in one case, snipers) are discovered and the unit needs to swing into action to understand and eliminate the threat. The ticking bomb is one of the oldest movie tricks in the repertoire, but Director Kathryn Bigelow manages to maintain a high stress level mainly by injecting uncertainty everywhere: are the Iraqis on the balconies curious on-lookers or about to detonate the bombs? Are the civilians wandering near the bomb disposal unit naive innocents or themselves a danger?

The tight rope that the soldiers must walk between protecting themselves and not harming innocent locals is at the heart of The Hurt Locker. There is a clumsy attempt to introduce the story of a local Iraqi boy who befriends Sergeant James, but whenever The Hurt Locker veers away from scenes that focus on immediate threats, it loses its way.

The war in Iraq will no doubt inspire a new generation of war movies. The Hurt Locker is unlikely to be the best of them, but it deserves credit for shining a unique spotlight on one of the war's most thankless and dangerous jobs.






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Monday 8 February 2010

Movie Review: I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell (2009)


And so Tucker Max becomes one of the early internet age faux-celebrities with a great career behind him.

His book of the same name, was very funny in the most juvenile way, and turned him into a hero in the drunken eyes of losers everywhere, and created a legend in his own mind. It takes a special lack of cinematic talent to take such a funny series of adventures and turn them into a stultifyingly boring movie, but the cast and crew assembled here pull it off.

While the book offers a non-stop sequence of genuinely funny short stories from Tucker's life, the movie manages to provide just one partially memorable scene, that being the now infamous race through the hotel lobby in a panicked search for a bathroom.

The rest of this disaster is a bland, humourless non-story about Tucker ruining his friend's bachelor party by dragging him to a supposedly hot strip joint. That's it. No, really.

It ends, not soon enough, with a smarmy apology scene that fools no one.

Director Bob Gosse displays a set of skills appropriate for a daytime soap-opera episode, while a set of mostly unknown actors, including Matt Czuchry and Jesse Bradford, work hard to make sure that they remain largely unknown.

The movie flamed out at the box office before the first batch of popcorn even popped. Tucker Max blamed its failure on poor marketing. Trust me on this one, no amount of marketing would have saved this piece of garbage -- it smells just as bad as that hotel lobby.






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Sunday 7 February 2010

Movie Review: Avatar (2009)


Watching Avatar in 3-D, the word that comes to mind is: game-changer.

In terms of technical achievement, Avatar redefines the benchmarks. Here is a whole new lush planet, Pandora, that comes to life at a level of detail that is orders of magnitude beyond anything seen in the Star Wars movies. Here also is a new virtual species, the Na'vi, who start out looking strange at 10 feet tall, blue and with tails, but end the movie as more familiar and more human than the earthlings.

And most of all, here is gorgeous 3-D technology being put to use to create life without gimmicks, without gizmos, and without spears or rocks being thrown at the audience. The 3-D is simply and brilliantly used to draw the audience into the movie and create a level of involvement never experienced before. Avatar is not a movie watched; it is movie experienced.

After his achievements with Terminator, Titanic, and now Avatar, director and writer James Cameron has cemented his place among the all-time giants of the movies.

The story of Avatar is powerful enough, but will certainly not win any awards for originality. It is a modern, science-driven take on the often-told narrative of invaders with a heavy foot trampling over a pristine land and disrupting the lives of locals. Substitute Pandora for North America and the Na'vi for natives; or allow the whole movie to represent US foreign policy in the Middle East -- it's all been done before.

The details here revolve around mining for the precious mineral called Unobtanium (clever name), which is only found on Pandora. The humans have established a joint scientific / military base to extract the stuff, but unfortunately the Na'vi keep getting in the way. The Na'vi combine ferocious but basic fighting skills with stealth, speed and oneness with nature to create a formidable obstacle in the way of the heavily armed but blunt human troops.

The science team (led by Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine) develops avatars in the shape of the Na'vi, to allow humans to take on native form and appearance. The objective is to better understand what it will take to move the Na'vi out of the way of the biggest Unobtanium deposit.

Jack Sully (Sam Worthington), a paralyzed marine who gains full mobility in his avatar, quickly becomes the focal point for both the scientists and the soldiers, as he is accepted by the Na'vi -- and falls in love with the daughter (Zoe Saldana) of the Na'vi chief. The ensuing conflicts that erupt between duty and love, aliens and natives, scientists and soldiers, science and nature, the physical and the spiritual, are all familiar, but are treated on an impressively grand and deeply satisfying scale.

Avatar is an immersive, breathtaking experience, and claims an undeniable place among the most major of milestones in movie history.



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Wednesday 3 February 2010

Movie Review: Invictus (2009)


More a movie about a powerful person and a powerful event than a powerful movie. Invictus suffers from a larger than life, legendary central character that by definition dominates his surroundings; compounded by a real-life fairy-tale sports story of the caliber that reminds us why sports events can pack so much power.

Morgan Freeman portrays Nelson Mandela, upon taking power in 1994 and immediately reaching out to the white South African community in several displays of reconciliation. In addition to retaining white staff members in his office and trusting white security personnel to join his team of personal guards, he controversially insists on maintaining the name and colours of the Springboks national rugby team, despite their strong associations with the minority white population and their lack of popularity among the newly empowered blacks.

Mandela develops a strong interest in the sport and the struggling South African squad, and spots the upcoming 1995 Rugby World Cup, to be held in South Africa, as an opportunity for national healing.

Mandela reaches out to the team's under-pressure captain, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), and inspires him and his predominantly white teammates to greatness, as the country comes together in a way that would have otherwise been unimaginable.

Clint Eastwood directs with an unusual directness and a lack of of any distinctive style, letting Mandela's personality and the World Cup games take centre stage. Freeman is terrific as Mandela, but it is difficult to distinguish the greatness of the performance from the greatness of the man. Damon as Pienaar is very much a supporting role and never gains traction. He mostly appears lost and overwhelmed by events around him.

Ironically, the most interesting narrative thread in the movie defaults to Mandela's personal security guards, where black agents fiercely loyal to the President need to come to terms with accommodating and trusting white agents added by Mandela to the team. Eastwood succeeds in encapsulating the drama of the country within the evolving dynamics between the agents.

Invictus delivers the necessary drama and emotional highs, but it all comes across as a workmanlike, relatively uninspired and straightforward re-telling of important historical milestones. Invictus portrays memorable personalities and events, but despite good intentions on both sides of the camera, fails to register as a distinctive movie.






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Monday 1 February 2010

Movie Review: Up In The Air (2009)


Up In The Air is a touching exploration of human relationships and the meaning of caring. Set against the backdrop of a deep recession and the job losses that tear apart the security blanket of families, director Jason Reitman captures both the agony of economic hardship among white collar workers, and the layered complexity of human interaction.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is ruthlessly efficient at the most heartless of jobs: he flies around the country as a consultant hired to professionally terminate the employment of workers at companies in the midst of large-scale downsizing. And in a recession, business is good.

In addition to being brilliant at his job, Bingham loves the time that he spends at airports and on-board airplanes, and dreads being at his bland hotel-like apartment. He has organized his world to enjoy the life of the road warrior, and this includes absolute detachment from any meaningful personal human interaction. His main goal in life is to maximize the collection of frequent flier miles.

Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) is a young graduate who joins Bingham's firm, and is assigned to shadow him on termination trips to gain field experience before implementing a radical on-line remote termination system that would spell the end of Bingham's cherished non-stop travel lifestyle.

Bingham reluctantly but effectively mentors Keener while developing a seemingly casual relationship with Alex (Vera Farmiga), another road warrior and his female mirror image.

Up In The Air draws its strength from contrasting Bingham's apparent lack of human warmth with his insistence on face-to-face meetings with the people that he's about to fire, and his stunning ability to comfort terminated employees at their moment of worst vulnerability. Keener represents the young generation, hopelessly devoted to the technology that adds distance to essential human interaction yet much more vulnerable and open to the pitfalls of emotional investments. Alex is one last emotional risk that Bingham is willing to take, to either confirm or properly question his lifestyle choice.

The three characters are well rounded by screenwriter Reitman and Sheldon Turner, working from Walter Kirn's book. Clooney was born to play Bingham, perfectly mixing icy coldness with searing sensitivity. Kendrick is his perfect foil as the young and idealistic Natalie Keener, all wide eyes, misguided overconfidence and good intentions. Farmiga is perfect as the female version of Bingham, offering him a tantalizing yet dangerous departure from the emotionally blank personal life that he has so carefully cultivated.

Up In The Air is also populated with interesting, multi-dimensional secondary characters revolving around Bingham and dealing with their own relationship issues. Jason Bateman is his boss, Amy Morton is the older sister, Melanie Lynskey is Bingham's younger sister Julie, and Danny McBride is excellent as Julie's husband-to-be.

The film maintains a firm grip on characters and events as it confidently flies towards an appropriate resolution. Up In The Air tenderly captures a slice of life and wraps it with clever deference to the complexity of personal relationships.







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