Thought-provoking documentary by Dutch film maker Ijsbrand van Veelen, featuring The Cult of the Amateur author Andrew Keen.
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Very geeky, but very cool: watch Star Wars in your Terminal:
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
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The Diving Bell and The Butterfly tells the tragic story of former Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who becomes paralyzed after a car accident. He suffers ‘locked-in syndrome’, and can only communicate by blinking his left eye. Despite this tragedy, he manages to dictate his memoirs and the film concentrates on this process.
What unfolds is a truly inspiring story of a man coming to terms with being trapped inside a non-functioning body, and is brilliant played by Mathieu Amalric. A lot of the film is shot from his perspective adding to the sense of absolute frustration that Bauby feels.
The artist-director Julian Schnabel makes many of the scenes more memorable by using vivid colours, particularly when featuring the female characters. The many dream-like cut scenes add a fantasy element, contrasting with the stark setting of the hospital where most of the film is played out.
Overall, a fantastic film and inspiring in many ways.
Rating: out of 5 stars
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David Cronenberg’s latest film stars Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts in a gritty gangster thriller set in North London. It concerns the death of a young teenager, the diary that she leaves behind and the implications of a Russian gang behind her death.
Mortensen, who plays the driver of the gang, puts in a performance of both menace and intrigue: dressed in his smart black suit, you are never quite sure if he will lose his cool.
The story is well-paced and the dialogue good, with enough humour sprinkled around to soften the often very tense scenes. The violence, as you might expect from Cronenberg, is shocking and, in the case of the bath house fight scene, incredibly brutal.
Even though the ending ties up a few too many loose ends, I found it a very enoyable gangster film and Mortensen’s performance deserves the Oscar nomination.
Rating: out of 5 stars
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Okay, so Harrison Ford is old, and there’s no Sean Connery. But. I do wanna see this so much!
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Prince Charles, Leicester Square
Gus Van Sant’s latest film is based on the novel of the same name by Blake Nelson. It features a young skater who accidentally kills a security guard.
The film is stunning in parts: many long slow-motion sequences with no dialogue gives the film a dream-like quality in parts. The amateur actors, supposedly recruited via MySpace, as a contrast add a realistic edge to the story. The murder itself is also genuinely shocking.
Unfortunately, by the end of the film I was left with a sense of disappointment. For all of the innovative visuals, the film felt empty and led to me feeling generally detached from the proceedings.
Rating: out of 5
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Curzon, Soho
Juno has been called the Little Miss Sunshine of the year; this was all I needed to get to the cinema to check it out.
It is a quirky comedy based around the pregnant teenager of the title, and the dilemma that she subsequently faces determining the unborn child’s future.
With a fantastic soundtrack that includes The Velvet Underground and Belle and Sebastian, Juno is a fantastic feel-good movie. It is perfectly paced, and Ellen Page deserves her Academy Award nomination for her lead performance. The deadpan delivery of her clever lines makes her the wisest character in the film. Michael Cera also deserves praise for his performance as the geeky-runner love interest. The script makes the whole thing tick along so well: the jokes are clever, and come thick and fast.
I came away from the cinema with my heart warmed and a smile on my face… thoroughly recommended.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Juno (2007) – Movie Info – Yahoo! Movies
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Prince Charles, Leicester Square
Based on Deborah Curtis’ book, Touching From a Distance, Control tells the story of Ian Curtis between 1973 and 1980.
In one sense, it’s a classic rock star rise and fall, but what gives it an edge is stunning visuals, and lead performances. The film is directed by Anton Corbijn, best know for his photography and music videos such as Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box. Here, he re-creates Curtis’ bleak Macclesfield backdrop in stark black and white which adds to the general sense of desperation that gets played out.
In the book, Ian Curtis comes across as somebody who is losing control, but it is hard to be sympathetic: He cheats on and subsequently ignores his wife, and looks to create a mythology for himself at every opportunity. The second half of the film captures this very well, and reveals a rather pathetic man struggling to keep things together.
Sam Reilly is a revelation as Ian Curtis, particularly in the Joy Division live scenes where he is utterly realistic. It is worth noting that the actors learned to play the songs themselves, which adds greatly to the realism. But the real star for me was Samantha Morton who plays Ian’s wife Deborah. She plays perfectly the loving wife who slowly gets pushed away from her husband through no fault of her own.
Overall, a very enjoyable film that leaves a strong impression.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Control (2007) – Movie Info – Yahoo! Movies
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Empire, Leicester Square
Lots of internet-led hype surrounded this film, so I was intrigued, if a little skeptical, about seeing it. The film’s premise is simple: New York is under attack from an unknown creature. What makes the film more interesting, though, is precisely how the audience is shown the story: through a video recording made by the lead characters.
This has lead to some critics comparing it to The Blair Witch Project, but apart from the shaky hand-held cam approach to the action, there are no other similarities. The brilliance of the Blair Witch was that the terror was very much inferred. Not so here: after the initial confusion of exactly what had caused a giant earthquake to rock Manhatten, the threat is all very evident. In fact, the final two thirds of the film became more Alien-esque which was unexpected and something of a disappointment.
Still, I did enjoy the film and in a couple of scenes found myself open-mouthed in awe at the special effects which superbly integrated. Because none of the lead characters were particularly likeable, it was very good fun seeing them terrorised and constantly on-the-run.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Cloverfield (2008) – Movie Info – Yahoo! Movies
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