I want Ben Affleck to give up his day job, not because he’s a bad actor (he has made bad choices however) but because on the strength of Gone Baby Gone he’s got far more promise as a Director than as an Actor. A slow burning, murky noir set around a case of child abduction, Gone Baby Gone feels like a throw back to the tough talking ‘tec pictures that the smaller studios used to make by the dozen in the fifties. However in this case the line between who is good and who is bad is even more blurred – everyone is grey, just some a blacker than others. Even the three out and out villains of the piece elicit a small amount of sympathy, even if their actions are horrific.
Tag: 2007 release
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
May well be the most unwieldy title for a film for a long time. It may also account for why it didn’t appear in many cinemas – how do you fit that on the marquee? Pity really, having seen this I’d have loved to have seen it on a big screen, this is a seriously beautiful film, each shot framed to perfection. Not since The Fountain have I seen something that looked so painterly.
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January’s Film Crop
Hooray for January which brings with it a slew of quality films as everyone competes to get their grubby little mitts on a shiny statue!
Three Films
Or how films really do get better towards the end of the year and we need to continue to support the British film industry at doing what it does best.
Eastern Promises
The start of autumn usually brings a slew of serious minded films after the summer as things gear up for March the following year. Eastern Promises is getting a lot of publicity following the success of A History of Violence as a companion piece, something that sits wrong as that is a western while this feels more like a urban horror like Taxi Driver.
Four films
A loveable loser runs the London marathon all the while pursued by a mad stuntman who believes he’s a star with an overdeveloped sense of smell…
Or how I forgot to comment on a couple of films…
The Lives Of Others
Or how Pan’s Labyrinth really wasn’t robbed on 25th February 2007.
Occasionally the buzz around a single film and its likelihood of getting an award becomes so great that it comes as a shock to the system when something else comes along and steals its thunder. Pan’s Labyrinth losing the Best Film in a Foreign Language at this years Oscars felt a bit like that, but having now seen the film that beat it is easy to see why.
Knocked Up & Cranky
No, not the latest performing arts duo to hit the circuit but a description of last night. Went to see Knocked Up (more of which later) and was kept awake by trampolines, hence my feeling cranky this morning.
The Bourne Ultimatum
All hail the glorious return of plot!
After a summer that has been high in excitement and wonder, but low in terms of the important things such as plot (unless it happens to be based on a book) we finally have a film that seems to break the rules of current blockbuster filmaking; it has characterisation, it has plot, it has a sense of pace – and all this from what is the cheapest of the summer tentpole movies. In short, The Bourne Ultimatum is possibly the film that those of us that find those things important have been waiting for.
Die Hard 4.0 (or “Oh no, another film review”)
I seem to be overdosing on visits to the cinema at the moment…
It feels weird writing this but the best phrase I can think of to describe Die Hard 4.0 is old fashioned, not that that’s a bad thing (of which I will return to later). I didn’t really have that high a hopes for it based on the directors previous output, the absolutely terrible Underworld films – the only films ever to make me feel old because they were just too bloody loud.
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Midland Film Monkey 