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Posts Tagged ‘comedy’

Up in the Air

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Well I didn’t see this coming… when I heard this being talked about in connection with Oscar Buzz, a movie directed by Juno‘s Jason Reitman (don’t get me wrong, I liked it, but it was overrated*) and starring George Clooney who I always feel can only play himself, I cringed. It seemed this was soon to be the movie that ruined an otherwise good-looking Oscar season and ceremony Slumdog style. It was only when Malcolm Ingram, of whom I only really know of via Kevin Smith’s podcast, tweeted, “I’ll be damned if @jasonreitman didn’t channel Hal Ashby for his new flick UP IN THE AIR…” that my interest really perked up about it. I still started the movie fearing the worst…

Again, I’m not sure where to start (and if I get around to filling in the missing reviews from the end of last year through repeat viewings, you’ll hear that a lot over this season’s Oscar movies)… maybe at the end. At this very moment, even though I’ve still a few potential contenders to see, I’m fairly stunned to find myself thinking this may be the movie I find myself rooting for come March 7th. If nothing else, it ranks alongside Moon and An Education as one of the most intelligent movies I’ve seen of the past year. But on top of that, it has heart that comes from nowhere, on at least two occasions near crippling humour, and a way of capturing the world as it is right now, “our time” and all that (I usually hate that too!), in a manner that I can only compare to Cameron Crowe’s (who I have frequently compared to the aforementioned Ashby) take on the dying gasps of the 60s in Almost Famous. Ingram wasn’t wrong, Reitman has taken leaps here from Juno and if the movie doesn’t sweep all the major categories then I hope he at least benefits from a rare Picture/Director split. If you know how overrated I have on occasion felt Juno was, you’ll know how hard it is for me to say that.

What’s funny is the movie doesn’t immediately fill you with this sense of appreciation. When we first meet Clooney and the woman he falls in love with, played by Vera Farmiga (good, but not as intense as in Orphan), they’re exactly that kind of character that makes you think after about 5 minutes … “ … and why should we care about these people?” They’re rich, fairly obnoxious, hollow people travelling the world and staying in swanky hotels making a living off firing people. Pure loathesome. What’s amazing is how quickly the movie wins you over to them and holds interest over nearly 2 hours approaching the most human, emotional resolutions I have seen in film in the past year. Avatar may be an achievement, Tarantino overdue, and The Hurt Locker one of the greatest war movies of all time, and they’re all among my favourites of last year, make no mistake… but I think this movie, against all the odds given the protagonists, speaks for more people than all those put together in the Right Now, including, to my astonishment, me. If you knew how much I expected, and for a time wanted, to loathe this movie, you’d know how stunned I am to be saying all this.

*Yep, I loved this one so much, however, that I’ll be revisiting Juno and Thank You For Smoking and anything else Reitman has done so don’t call me on that in the comments …

Tags: comedy, employment, family, romance, wedding
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In the Loop

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

I watched this after a large catch-up session watching all of the “Thick of It” episodes that had aired before the release of this spin-off movie and I’m not really sure whether it helped by setting me up with the world and style or just hindered by sheer overexposure to it in such a short time. In any case, I didn’t feel the time was entirely wasted. I found myself towards the end of the TV episodes I watched rather unfavourably comparing it to The Office in my mind and I still feel as a whole it is “good” rather than “great” … though that could be that I’m just not interested enough in politics, even if I am far more interested than I was when I first passed on watching the show.

On the “Thick of It” side of things, I have to say I preferred it in TV form. A whole other side of the story is presented in the movie in the shape of America and it’s too much of a leap, while the shooting style remains the same and I found myself thinking how I couldn’t imagine going to the cinema to see something like this. It’s entirely uncinematic, almost anti-cinematic, and I felt compelled before writing this to dig up Mark Kermode’s review and was surprised to find he liked it.

However, there was one unexpected surprise waiting for me here and again I can’t quite decide whether it helped or hindered my appreciation of the film. I had no idea Anna Chlumsky (of My Girl fame) was in this movie, and frankly she steals the movie entirely. I was pretty sure of her impressively honed acting skills in Blood Car but her performance here seals it for me, she has officially survived “the child star thing”, and the double whammy of those two movies shows just how interesting her choices an an actress are going to be. As for “The Thick of It” side of things … I look forward to getting back to the third series of the TV version.

Tags: comedy, cuties, politics, satire, TV, war
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Land of the Lost

Monday, September 7th, 2009

So, yeh, sue me but I got more out of watching this than I did watching Half-Blood Prince. I had read so many bad reviews of it shortly before watching it and they almost had me convinced, but I kept seeing Brad Silberling’s name on the director’s chair and I just couldn’t believe he could make a less than half-decent movie ‘cos he never has. I shouldn’t have doubted it for a second. Silberling has done two kinds of movies in his career so far, kind of alternating between the effects-driven kids movies like Casper, Lemony Snicket and this, and the more mature stories dealing with more mature relationships, which have steadily gone down in scale over the years from City of Angels to Moonlight Mile to his most recent 10 Items of Less. It’s interesting that the first two of the effects-driven movies, too, dealt with pretty powerful emotional stuff too, all of Silberling’s work, until 10 Items at least, always dealing heavily with loss. Needless to say, I expected none of that here, but I knew he wouldn’t just make an effects movie.

Okay, well, I’ll admit, that’s exactly what he has made here. But this guy really knows how to do that and stay interesting in my opinion. Even though surely shot on the usual Hollywood bankroll, the effects here reminded me of the fast and loose style Robert Rodriguez stumbled upon in making the first two Spy Kids movies on trademark tight budget. They’re having fun with this and it translates right onto the film, through the projector and into the audience: at least, for this audience it did. I laughed almost constantly for the duration and entirely “got” the slightly sillier aspects of the production. Anna Friel being allowed (in fact, apparently Silberling insisted) to keep her Mancunian accent is a wonderful bonus.

Tags: comedy, fantasy, time travel
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Le Dîner de Cons

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

I’m going to try and watch as much French cinema for the next week or so before a short and long overdue trip to Paris, mostly pulled from the recommendations of a fantastic podcast I found on iTunes called FrenchPodClass (seems not to have been updated in almost a year but there’s still plenty of free downloadable content). This was the first recommendation and appealed to me in particular as it’s only just over 75 minutes in length.

Well, I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in a long time. This is a true comedy, truly simple, almost entirely set in one room and never actually getting to the dinner mentioned in its title (well, metaphorically notwithstanding). It reminded me of a play by John Godber I once saw (and, by connection I guess, just about all those class war plays) except that as opposed to wealth and status being the great divide here, the French version seems to be the war of intellects (of course, wealth and status come into this too). If you’ve read more than a handful of my reviews you might already know that I don’t usually go for pure comedy, nor do I often like movies about characters so mean as some of the protagonists here, but I guess for this I must make an exception. Though this does take a fairly melodramatic turn in the last act and I liked this part very much, I was still hoping that it was leading up to one final gutbusting gag, and I wasn’t let down. The movie, like those Northern British plays of old, has a very serious point to make on one level, but it’s also incredibly entertaining about it. I don’t know if it’s a movie I’d watch over and over, it really gives you its all in one sitting; but I’m very happy I took the short time required to see it. Highly recommended even if you never watched a foreign film before.

Tags: clash, class, comedy, French, intelligence, personality
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Idiocracy

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

I’ve had this lined up for a long time now and just never seemed to get around to it because its sheer concept – that a guy wakes up in a future where today’s gradual dumbing down of society has reached its logical conclusion – spoke for itself. What I didn’t expect was a movie that in its own way is as bleak and ultimately moving as a more recent one it closely resembles: Wall•E.

Don’t get me wrong, Wall•E is doubtless a masterpiece that doesn’t even need a second viewing from me to verify while this lacks a certain amount of scope at times, perhaps simply because of the inevitable dumbness it’s dealing with. The same could possibly be said for the middle portion of Wall•E, from when the humans enter.

Some people might’ve read my comment about it being moving above and smirked a little. What can I say, in its last 10-15 minutes, this movie really caught me off guard. The fact is, there’s a truth in this film and Wall E and we’re all to an extent guilty of contributing to a backwards slide of our society, even if as Luke Wilson admits here it’s by doing nothing. I love the last piece of voiceover that states that our hero doesn’t quite rescue mankind, but that he got the ball rolling. Maybe that’s it. It’s so easy, easier with every passing year, to think of giving up trying to do something great in the face of the junk enveloping the world. But maybe it’s not about doing anything great at all; maybe we just have to do enough to keep the ball rolling, something being better than nothing.

(Incidental note, it’s a couple of weeks now since I saw the movie and started this review, and I swear barely a day has gone by now when I haven’t seen or read of something happening in the world and thought, “Oh no … it’s happening, isn’t it?” It really is kinda scary.)

Tags: comedy, future, insanity
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Dead Like Me: Life After Death

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Having quite the week for watching things I’ve been looking forward to for far too long, hehe. I adored the TV series that this feature follows, I came to it late and watched it almost back to back and have done the same again at least 5 times since, so my hopes were high. For about the first thirty minutes here, it’s mostly business as usual, feeling very much like so many TV to movie DTV “movies” – rather like two episodes joined together. To be honest, this didn’t bother me because I was just so happy to see these guys again after so long, even minus Mandy Patinkin and Laura Harris (whose replacement is oddly okay to me, afterall we’re used to characters looking different to others in this show) – but it did cross my mind that something more ambitious would be more desirable.

Midway, however, something interesting happens. What results reminded me a lot of the moment in Ghostbusters II where the team stop doing their job and all hell breaks loose on Manhattan. The story here ultimately is kinda ambitious and in keeping with the departure of Rube. All the rules are messed with but the rules of the show clearly still apply and that I find really kind of fascinating.

It’s not enough, that’s for sure, and I hope there will be more. But as it stands, I found it a perfectly acceptable closure for the show – for Rube, certainly … the rain of Post-Its at the end, while not quite the bells in the sky at the end of Breaking the Waves, did call that scene to mind and make me tear up just a little. There’s easily enough here to make it worth the 90 minutes over likely most of the larger features I’ll watch this year, that’s for sure.

Tags: angst, comedy, death, ghosts, TV
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Pineapple Express

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Well, blow me, another Apotow / Seth Rogen thing that didn’t bug me too much, lol. Matter-of-fact, this ranks up there with Forgetting Sarah Marshall for me as one of the most surprisingly good comedies of the past year. Put simply: it’s one of those ghastly Judd Apotow type movies with one simple catch … a story! Or, rather, it’s characters from one of the Apotow “adult” comedies dropped headlong into a pretty straightforward drug caper. Like dropping Ricky Gervais into Ghost, it’s one of those wild genre hybrids the ultimately can’t really fail. It’s hard to say anything more about it but that I laughed out loud almost constantly from the moment Rogan witnesses the shooting to the end, through James Franco’s leg through the windshield moment and more truly original comedic scenes. I’d watch it again in a heartbeat, and I rarely ever feel that way about such straightforward mainstream comedies these days.

Tags: comedy, drugs
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Love Happy

Monday, January 19th, 2009

A lot less Groucho than the other two Marx Bros. movies I’ve watched this week make this one immediately more palatable to me. There are still plenty of clunker gags but I found myself smiling or, yup, even laughing more than staring flatly at the screen. There’s a beautiful scene of Harpo on the harp (he’s certainly my favourite of the bunch – hey, I have a favourite Marx brother! I guess they can’t be that bad lol) … other than that, meh, not much to say. I don’t think I could even tell you where Marilyn Monroe was in the mix, lol – I’m not sure if this speaks well for her or not.

Tags: b/w, comedy, Marx brothers
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