http://ambival.net/movies/touching-the-void Just another WordPress weblog Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:19:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://ambival.net/movies/touching-the-void#comment-2460 Ambival.net » Movie Reviews » The Last King of Scotland Wed, 21 Mar 2007 02:18:00 +0000 http://ambival.net/?p=324#comment-2460 [...] Anyway, as to the rest of the movie … I really wasn’t a big fan of director Kevin McDonald’s last movie, Touching the Void, though his first One Day in September really impressed me. This, we’re told, is his first foray outside of documentary cinema (cough Touching the Void cough cough) and I sort of feared the seemingly too-fictionalised aspects of this one if, as I’d heard, and can confirm, Forest Whitaker’s performance was to be so on the nose. But somehow, if we’re to believe the degree to which the movie portrays this man’s insanity, the slightly surreal, bending-of-the-truth, approach, works. I found it somewhere between Apocalypse Now and The Beach with a Wicker Man-ish ending (well, almost – put it this way, when they, err, “punish” James McAvoy towards the end, it’s a more terrifyingly Wicker Man moment than anything in the Nicolas Cage remake, lol) that I think would sit best alongside last year’s Munich. [...] [...] Anyway, as to the rest of the movie … I really wasn’t a big fan of director Kevin McDonald’s last movie, Touching the Void, though his first One Day in September really impressed me. This, we’re told, is his first foray outside of documentary cinema (cough Touching the Void cough cough) and I sort of feared the seemingly too-fictionalised aspects of this one if, as I’d heard, and can confirm, Forest Whitaker’s performance was to be so on the nose. But somehow, if we’re to believe the degree to which the movie portrays this man’s insanity, the slightly surreal, bending-of-the-truth, approach, works. I found it somewhere between Apocalypse Now and The Beach with a Wicker Man-ish ending (well, almost – put it this way, when they, err, “punish” James McAvoy towards the end, it’s a more terrifyingly Wicker Man moment than anything in the Nicolas Cage remake, lol) that I think would sit best alongside last year’s Munich. [...]

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