Neil’s Movie Round-Up

Essential Killing is a silent, direct and inscrutable film.It challenges constantly, illumninates the boredeom of casual film viewers’ taste, and loves doing so.Vinvent Gallow plays an Afgan, possibly Taliban, it never states, who kills 3 American soldiers, in a derailing opening sequence so beautiful and simple, it’s immediacy almost pokes fun at exposition-heavy thrillers who find it necessary to add layers to their one-dimensional characters. It is a man-on-the-run action film with little dialogue, a knowingly ambigious morality, showing that if you swap nationalities with Vincent’s stark villian, it would be a hero’s tale, it’s this constant flux that demands attention though the oddests of set pieces from out running soldiers to pain stricken hallucinations ,with a performance from Gallow that perfectly encapsulates his persona dangling moral senses. He runs barefoot through -30 degree temperatures, tears through raw fish and demands the woman he suckles form is really lactating. It is the rarest of freshness that I hope will continue thorugh more collaboration between Polish director Jerzy Skolimonski and Gallow.

Submarine is Ricahard Ayoade’s (The IT Crowd’s Moss) debut film, it approaches the story of a young boy’s adolescence as if no one in it’s inception from novel to screen was even aware of any coming of age films before (everything I know on the other hand was gleaned from Saved by the Bell, damn you Slater). It deals with the character as he is a real person, not just a sex starved youth, encompassing all of the paranoia, stupidity, and idiocy that youth is. He struggles with the boredom of his parents’ marriage disintegration as his own first love swells to the most unromantic of incidents. We never really get cheap 80’s setting laughs, and it is only clear to the most observant viewer that its location is Wales. It does suffer under its own melodrama at times but there are touches of lightness in the politics of friendships and what romance should really be at any age that weather its dramatic urges. With a warm and intoxicating soundtrack from Alex Turner, it is minor classic of its genre.

Route Irish is an overwrought example of a political filmmaker, Ken Loach, not wanting to tell a story but making a film for the subject matter itself. However, when filmmakers attack an area (here its the private armies being brought in and given free reign to take pressure off overworked soldiers in foreign countries) to be Judge Dread style moralists. Set around a retired veteran at the funeral of a friend and colleague, it becomes a poorly-acted moral tale of corruption and unchecked biased beaurocracy. There are no real characters here just ideas of how people should behave ar the behest of a director needing a thread to tie his ideas together. It’s a tiring, overly-simple tale of vengeance - the one good guy by the a relentless terrible one. Ken Loach should know better by now, audience responses to political filmmaking are at their lowest ever, where documentaries are everywhere and news is constant, it feels tired.

Suckerpunch is an obscene failure, in that even in the moments where should be fun and frivolous it’s still dull. Zach Snyder has, in one drab sitting, lost all his nerd points on a an idea that interested no-one in the first place. It is quite a talent that nullifies a yarn of such apparent fun of Samurai Vs Tiny Skirt Lady, dragon Vs B53 Tiny Skirt Ladies skirt lass, and how did he ruin Steam Nazis Vs Mech Vs Tiny Skirt Ladies, and a bit on a train…(guess he ran out of steam!..ohhh hard hitting Journalism right there). There are people involved who have no right been on any screen. Vanessa Hugdens, I mean you! But with the very real promise of Emily Browning, Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish, talented and often courageous actors do who wear tiny skirts but probably created a credible back story for how regular skirts killed their first love, its just infuriating. Then there is the music, there are so many ideas in this thing. At one stage it was very probably a musical, but someone forgot to tell a quarter of the crew it wasn’t, and we get oddly dull needless versions of “Where is My Mind”, “Sweet Dreams” and “Army of Me”. There is a directors cut in the works, of course, which promises what we have come to expect from Zach Snyder, i.e. fun and slooooooooooow violence, and this film needs something that a credible story can not even offer.

Source Code, is one of the few times I was actually biased going to see a film. I did not like Moon. Moon for me was the bastard child of much better films and the year 2001. It was not original, but the British press loved it as they will do, they also liked the Kings Speech quite a lot, even though the real story would have 87% more Nazis, and look what happens when no naughty well dressed Germans happen in films, yes you get Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. See, pure and simple logic. Source Code is a very good pilot TV show. To make the step to features it needs flair, originally and a striking visual presence which Jones does not possess, he had a choice of a first name and picked Duncan! I do not need him telling me what to do with Sci-Fi, especially as the new Dr Who is just around the corner. It does have Vera Farminga though, which makes that lack of Nazis a little easier to take. Fun, but could have been great with a more confident director.

 

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