Tag Archives: reality

Sucker Punch Sucker Punch 4 star

April 6th, 2011 by surlaroute

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Bah, I had trouble making this one gel as I kept thinking of different things to add. Rather than waste any more time trying to make it flow better (which simply isn’t gonna happen) I’m just gonna post the mess as it now stands… which seems rather fitting for the movie, now I come to think of it… I think a few of my points come through, and if they don’t, the two links cover everything else. It’s not a movie that warrants massive discussion, though, I feel. It’s eye candy: you like it or you don’t; you can’t help it if you do, and it needn’t hurt anyone unless you let it…

It perhaps goes without saying that I didn’t expect much from this… but I’m not going to deny, I still really wanted to see it, even after the worst of the reviews came in. I don’t know what made certain moviegoers expect anything else from this than what it delivers. One of my favourites, Mark Kermode, went so far as to suggest that director Zack Snyder might think he’s made another Inception, which is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard him say. Yes, y’know what, I think I’ll invoke that most awful of recent phrases that get flung around at times like this – some people I’m afraid don’t “get” this movie at all. Not because it’s smart, clever, “game-changing”, but because it’s so insanely simple that people are looking for something that was never meant to be there.

If I described The Ward as “Girl, Interrupted with a bodycount” (which I didn’t – not here at least, not yet lol, one of the reviews that got away – but I would’ve…) then Sucker Punch is The Ward plus The Fall with all the visual insanity Snyder is known for (with the difference being here that I dug it). I can’t stress that enough – this movie is perhaps the most insane I’ve seen – I won’t even try to describe it – and I loved it.

There’s an objection to the movie that concerns itself with the exploitation of women surpassing any message of empowerment the movie purports to – or something to that effect. I’m loathe to get involved with an argument like this because to me it just seems so warped and depressing a way to approach a movie like this that I think it’s best ignored, but I’ll just say that surely such an argument is suggesting that women need some kind of special protection against being portrayed in a ridiculous popcorn movie that is not afforded men, and is hence a little patronising itself? In an equal and reasonable world, surely, violence against women in cinema would be just as unsurprising and unworthy of note (other than how awesomely it’s executed cinematically) as that against men? And given the fact that its director, Zack Snyder, gave us men dressed just as scantily ridiculous in his last two movies (Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen and, err, everyone in 300) doesn’t that even shoot down the “zomg they’re dressed like strippers!” argument?

Anyway that’s pretty much all I have to say on that – to use that as your sole reason to dismiss the movie wholesale (as many have – clearly trying to impress someone) is about as dumb as Mark Kermode’s calling Inception the best film of last year purely because “it proves that blockbusters don’t have to be dumb” (for the record: there are actually reasons I’ll accept for Inception being the best film of last year – they include “I just loved it…” – but not that one… sorry but, to cite just one example, Pixar have been making intelligent blockbusters for _years_…)

That out of the way, I’ll just say this – I don’t know where some reviewers get off comparing this to Inception because they’re clearly entirely different movies, but since you mentioned it, I’d rather watch this than that any day because it knows it’s not trying for greatness and succeeds completely at what it does where Inception (in my opinion) falls far short of its lofty goals (or the ones that fans have assigned it). The movie’s frenetic nature reminded me a little of Scott Pilgrim, not that I’d really normally make that comparison either – but I’d rather watch this than that, even, because it doesn’t have a constant tone of hatred masked with false irony. It has beautiful young girls in awesome costumes which, yeh, I’ll call sexy – nothing I can do about that, it’s ludicrous to apologise for what turns you on. The action sequences are fantastically overblown. And at the end of the day, much to my surprise, it actually has something to say – something akin to Tideland‘s message, it just occurred to me: that we have inside our brains the capacity to deal with anything outside it. It’s vague and perhaps a bit cheesy, but true – certainly no less powerful than Inception‘s (yes I’ll go there again – I didn’t start it) “this sentence is false, but you gotta believe something” joyless, hollow perfection.

Bottom line is, it’s just a movie. I recently linked to this, far better, explanation of (at least) why the movie isn’t the end of the world with the comment, despite still recommending people read it, that I’m not sure if it deserves that much thought but since the naysayers were overthinking it so much it seemed only fair for somebody to do likewise in its favour. Maybe it’s because I watched it just an hour or so after Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams which so perfectly, simultaneously, made our individual artistic cries into the abyss of time seem both important as a whole yet worthless in their isolation. Sucker Punch is just one movie, and one that mainly sets out to simply be eye candy at that. If you think such a movie has the ability, in just 2 hours, to destroy 50 years of progress for women and society, I’m sorry but it’s you who are underestimating women. It’s a movie that clearly has more interest in having fun than saying anything important. I make no apologies for loving it.

Inception Inception 3 star

September 21st, 2010 by surlaroute

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“Do you want to take a leap of faith? Or do you want to become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?”

So, at last, we come to the great movie of our time. After years of Hollywood dreck, finally Christopher Nolan delivers his masterpiece and proves that Hollywood can still make intelligent movies for grownups. It’s so expensive! So smart! So original! As the credits rolled I truly felt like I myself had been dreaming.

OR DID I.

Sure, I could take the easy route with this review and say all the now meaningless overpraise that everyone else has said thus avoiding the inevitable barrage of defensive comments I’ve seen on every other article, review, or message board post that dares to suggest that Inception is just an OK movie. But that’s not why I keep this site going, right?

I have no problem with people liking or even loving this movie as much as they clearly do – I care as little about that as I do what anyone thinks of my own opinion. What bothers me and puts me in the “need to redress the balance” frame of mind (ie. it’s not a bad film; but relative to its #3 position on the IMDb Top 250 list it’s a downright stinker) is the fact that its fans accuse its dissenters of not really backing up their opinion while committing just the same mistake themselves. The phrase “you don’t get it” has been thrown around this movie more than I can recall in my movie memory, as if there couldn’t possibly be any reason for disliking a movie other than simply not following the story.

I get this movie. I’ve watched it twice thrice now since it’s taken too long to catch up to posting this review, the second (and third) time(s) just to “make sure” of my total lack of overwhelm-ment the first time around (I wasn’t nuts about The Dark Knight the first time I saw it; now it’s in my top 50 – actually I need to update that review…) I won’t list the whole plot and show my working to “prove” that I get it because I just don’t believe this movie deserves that much attention, but a simple Google will unearth for you very simple explanations (if you must call them that) of the film’s machinations and you’ll just have to trust me that, I’ll say it again, I get it.

In short, here’s what I understood after the first viewing, and though oversimplified, I think it was “close enough”. We have a team that typically uses technology to infiltrate dreams and extract valuable information. Somebody comes to them asking if it would be possible to instead plant information. It’s possible, but hard, and involves “drilling down” in layers of dreams. Normally, if you die in a dream, you simply wake up, but this operation requires sedation and if you die you will go to a futher layer, “Limbo”, a place you perceive as reality, hence, troublesome. As the layers descend, time expands, eg 5 minutes real world gives you 1hr on the first dream level, way down to Limbo, where you could be stuck there for a lifetime – when you wake, you’d pretty much be a vegetable. Long story short, they successfully plant the information, get “kicked” back up the levels, and wake. For such a “dangerous” mission, our hero Leonardo DiCaprio was promised to be allowed to return to his children in the US (he had to flee under suspicion of murdering his wife, who killed herself, thinking herself still in Limbo). The promise is honored, we see Leo return home, reunite with his kids, but then through a motif used throughout the movie, a totem which all our dreamers carry to tell them whether they’re dreaming or not, we are left wondering if, in fact, Leo is still in a dream.

Or, in even shorter… here’s this movie in a nutshell: this sentence is false.

The thing is, much of this “complexity” (if you must call it that) is simply redundant in the grand scheme of the movie, in which Nolan really only has one thing to say, and that’s in that line that I quoted at the start of my review, a line that is in the very first scene of the movie, and recalled again at the end. The “twist ending” (if you must call it that – it’s by nature not a twist though) indicates that the entire movie may or may not have also been a dream. There is nothing concrete imparted to the audience, I’m quite sure of this the more pointless online discussions about it I find myself unable to resist reading, and that’s the problem of the movie. It tells you that in order to enjoy existence you must choose at least one thing to believe… something to latch onto… and to me, the endless discussions that the movie is provoking only serve to prove that that message simply wasn’t received by the bulk of the audience. No amount of digging around in the corners of this movie is going to make that message any clearer.

In short it’s a nice message, and a slickly visual movie, but nothing about it is as earthshattering as the masses have been led to believe by one another. I could go into how unoriginal it is too – go back just 10 years to find a far more curious and less patronising eXistenZ … I hear of an animé called Paprika that I haven’t seen … there are clear nods to The Matrix and The Animatrix … on and on the list goes.

I’m not saying all this to say the movie is entirely pointless or bad, but only to discredit the most niggling pieces in the overpraise nightmare this movie has been subjected to. It is not as complicated as it presents itself, and it most certainly is not an original idea. I’m happy for Christopher Nolan after his sterling career so far (for me really only dipping ‘till now at Insomnia though I’ve yet to watch that one a second time) that he was allowed to make what is clearly a project close to his heart. But it really is not the masterpiece that so much of the reception implies. To praise it so highly really does what would otherwise be a pleasantly above-average blockbuster a massive disservice by making those who prefer to keep the high accolades for truly deserving works… frankly hate it.

JCVD JCVD 4 star

April 15th, 2009 by surlaroute

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This one kind of intrigued me and I was far from disappointed. You may have heard the story here: Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a version of himself in much the same way – in an at times similarly surreal story – as John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich. Needless to say I haven’t really followed Van Damme’s real life for a while if ever so I was interested before writing this review in finding out how much, if anything, of the truth seeps in here; before realising that any “truth” I found could easily have been doctored to fit in with the film, lol, so I gave up. Which I guess is just one of the many things the movie could be about, that inevitable blur between fact and fiction that exists today, our sense of wanting and wanting to be celebrities and others in high places, and perhaps how they feel about the situation.

Unlike, apparently, many of those who praised the movie when it was released, I wasn’t overly wowed by the big surreal monologue moment here. Van Damme is fantastic for the duration, not just in this slightly too whiney segment, and I prefer the more subtle glances at the camera for breaking the fourth wall. It’s the kind of movie you can take mostly as tongue in cheek, a kind of clever curio, yet still get swept away by the drama. When the chaos is at a maximum inside the post office, I found myself genuinely fearful for the hostages etc. There’s a believability to the whole thing beneath the Brechtian pretense that kind of took me by surprise. It goes without saying that it’s Van Damme’s best film by leaps and bounds, but it works on its own merits as a heist movie too, and its originality is unquestionable.

Rachel Getting Married Rachel Getting Married 5 star

February 18th, 2009 by surlaroute

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In my eyes, Anne Hathaway hadn’t made a good movie since the fluke of The Princess Diaries which perfectly exploited her Julia Roberts-ness before this* so when I saw her nominated for an Oscar over what I felt sure must be greater performances, my jaw kinda dropped. Even though this is directed by Jonathan Demme who of course made the amazing Silence of the Lambs among other things, even that didn’t really make me wish to see it; afterall, aside from the documentary stuff he’s been pretty quiet for a while. So it’s another movie that, honestly, I may never have got around to were it not for the Oscar nod. Well thank God for the Oscars. I finally have a nominee for Sunday that I can save my champagne for – Anne Hathaway is that good here and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if she makes it up to the podium.

An Awkward Group Hug

This whole movie reminded me of the moment in Pieces of April where Sean Hayes screams from his apartment, “You’re a bad girl!” and she sits on the bottom step, pouting, insistent, “No I’m not,” tossing his toupée up to the landing. It reminded me of the Maggie Gyllenhaal starrer Sherrybaby too. I’d heard two negative things about Rachel Getting Married back on its UK release, however, that I felt might easily turn me off unlike those two, and that’s the very upper class nature of the family it deals with combined with the downright unlikability of any of the protagonists. When Hathaway’s character Kym is seen cavorting with the best man just seconds after getting out of rehab, I thought that was it over for me. Yet for some reason I just got more involved as the movie progresses. There’s so much that’s unsaid here, so much done with the merest of glances; after Doubt, possibly over that in fact, this is easily the best all-round acted movie of 2008. Though Hathaway shines, she’s supported all around by a host of others worthy of recognition, most of all Debra Winger. Even though it flails once or twice, most notably in the “dishwasher” scene and a lot that could be cut from the wedding itself, this is a movie I’ll likely come back to and find more every time. Like Pieces of April I’ll bet it’s a movie you can watch once for every character involved and find something new. It’s by no means as lovable or loving as that movie, but it’s every bit as illuminating.

* (edit .. of course Brokeback was a masterpiece and The Devil Wears Prada was fun, but that had nothing to do with Hathaway)

Quarantine Quarantine 4 star

February 12th, 2009 by surlaroute

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What is there to say of this but that it’s really not as bad as it’s tempting to go in expecting. While it’s true that you will get a better experience, aside from the lipsync, by watching a dubbed version of [Rec], it’s also undeniable that the Western remake brigade could’ve got away with a lot less respect for the source than they ultimately do here. There are unnecessary changes here and there (in addition, it must be said, to some rather amazing inventions: death by camera, for instance), and the acting isn’t quite as convincing; plus there was simply something about the original being located in a literally foreign place, making the confines of the apartment block all the more alienating; but this is still a fantastic experience that made me jump more than a lot of recent horror movies. Clearly I have to recommend [Rec] first and foremost … but if you do happen to be illiterate or a Xenophobe … there are worse things you could watch.

Slumdog Millionaire Slumdog Millionaire 4 star

December 30th, 2008 by surlaroute

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This kind of has the initial effect that Frost/Nixon had on me. You get all worked up by the hype the movie is generating, both of them getting serious Oscar buzz including the potential big Best Picture nod; and then, where as Frost/Nixon began I found myself going, “oh yeh: it’s a 2 hour movie based on an interview,” here, I found myself going, “oh yeh: it’s a 2 hour movie about a guy winning Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” lol.

No, it’s far from that bad … but it does fit comfortably alongside the vastly overrated bunch of movies we’re seeing headed for the Oscars this year. This movie grew on me fast from that initial worrying response – but it never struck me as anything more than well-made and watchable. The music is gorgeous, the colours and performances wonderful; but I’d sooner watch just about any other of Danny Boyle’s movies, throwing in a viewing of 4 Best Picture nominees from 1994 – Quiz Show, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction – that arguably meld together with a dash of Bollywood to create this one 14 years later. I can see it making it to the Oscars and even coming out smiling … I guess I just don’t think this year’s line-up of nominees is going to be as exciting as everyone else does … lots of good movies this year, that’s for sure … but so few great ones. It’s not a bad film at all – but all the good things to be said about it have been said just about too many times with exaggeration, and I take it upon myself to redress the balance.

Death Race Death Race 3 star

December 5th, 2008 by surlaroute

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One can’t complain too much about this one at all – I personally kinda got a little excited when I discovered Ian McShane and Joan Allen were in it. I haven’t seen the original Roger Corman movie yet so my nearest point of reference would be something like Running Man combined with Logan’s Run, the former of which at least it doesn’t stand up badly to at all – it’s certainly more fun than Doomsday (read: less hateful and childish) and I imagine on the big screen it was even better. Ian McShane isn’t in it nearly enough, but Joan Allen more than makes up for it. Her presence reminds me of the great stupid action movies of the 90s like Face / Off and The Rock that I loved (and love) so much – and while this isn’t anywhere near comparable to the likes of those, for this decade’s lousy record it’s possibly the best one can hope for.

[Rec] [Rec] 5 star

November 3rd, 2008 by surlaroute

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Again, here is why I do the Halloween marathon each and every year even though it too often entails sitting through too much awfulness than is healthy for a borderline manic-depressive, lol. Well, between this and The Strangers, I can safely say I had a great one this year (and I’m still technically halfway at this stage, hehe, continuing it today and through the weekend; in fact, repeat viewings of the classics will likely go on to mid-November, ROFL). I was apprehensive about watching this initially as it’s been a long time since I watched anything with subtitles. But the runtime of well under 90 minutes and my usual rule of, “ya know what? if it’s good, it’ll grab me,” forced me to put it on at the end of a long night when I could finally keep my eyes on the screen to read.

I needn’t have worried about that, really, for two reasons. One, this belongs to the great tradition of great foreign language movies – indeed, any language movies – where the dialogue really isn’t all that essential. Like Amélie or Life is Beautiful, you could easily watch this with the translations absent and still perhaps be just as terrified as I ultimately found myself. In fact, it might even help, so much is the fear here created by the feeling of being trapped in an unfamiliar location. Yes – did I mention? – this really is perhaps the scariest movie I have ever seen. That statement might be exhaggerated due to it being so long since I’ve been this terrified by a movie. But let’s just put it this way – these 80 odd minutes reminded me completely in the end of how I felt the first time I saw The Exorcist. This is coming from someone who has really been quite numbed by the sheer quantity of films of this genre that I’ve seen. I can’t speak highly enough of this movie, how overjoyed I was to realise I can still be made to feel this way in a darkened room for an hour and a half, lol.

There is clearly a Blair Witch-y influence going on here in the style, fake reality nightmare etc. The opening actually reminded me a lot of Hellraiser III though, too. It quickly becomes a kind of zombie movie more in the tradition of 28 Days Later, the sickness affecting people never really being defined entirely – George Romero’s latest installment in the “Dead” trilogy is another clear comparison and it must be said, I realise he really missed the boat having seen this. Then there’s the end of the movie, where it really enters Exorcist territory. I almost worried that this might ruin the movie for me, but it only terrified me more. When the religious side of things comes in here, and that creature stalking in shadow … I was literally staring at the screen, eyes wide, hand over my mouth, saying out loud, “WHAT … THE F*CK … IS IT?!!” It is simply a phenomenal production, incredible performances all around and a pace and tone that just never lets you go.