The Happening: The first 30 minutes of this film is vaguely interesting. The rest is Al Gore’s wet dream. I’d prefer minor surgery to watching this again.
Hellboy II: Director Guillermo Del Toro has brought along influences from Pan’s Labyrinth to Hellboy’s latest adventure. The visual effects are trippy, the dialogues are witty on cue and the storyline engaging enough to take a rain-check on those cigarette breaks. Special mention to Prince Nuada and the nasty tooth-fairies…both ostensibly kick loads of butt.
Kids: Director Larry Clark is on a mission to shock us into recognizing the truth. His intentions are respectable but the crude depiction of pre-pubescent street life leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Showcasing the decadent youth culture of America’s armpits is all fine and dandy, but I didn’t appreciate the crassness of Clark’s attempt. Apparently 19-year old Harmony Korine wrote the script for Kids; that’s probably the only thing about this film that didn’t shock me.
Walk Hard, Life and Times of Dewey Cox: This is a spoof film that pokes fun at Ray, Walk The Line and I’m Not There. The latter is probably incidental. The jokes are pretty much standard fare with a few standouts. Lil’ Dewey Cox sawing his brother in half results in hilarity. But seriously, I just don’t understand John C Reilly gets crappy roles; he’s such a fine actor.
Hero: I was always of the opinion that you needed to be under the influence to enjoy what Jet Li does. Despite drawing heavily from Rashomon, the film nevertheless adds credibility to this callous opinion of mine. But rest assured, even in sobriety you can’t help but admire the visual splendor of Hero. It’s almost as though the director has fulfilled a secret desire to be a painter. Quite a lovely painting, it is.
The Ruins: Take notes, Mr Night Shyamalan…this is how you make a film about flora wreaking bloody havoc on humans. Not the most intricate of concepts, but the film builds up the characters rather nicely and then makes them suffer adequately. In fact, it ends up doing fair justice to the creepy crawly genre.
Stranger Than Fiction: This probably is the warmest film to light up my television screen since I Heart Huckabees. Will Ferrell plays Harold Crock, an IRS auditor whose life is all but a story currently being written by the bitterly poignant Emma Thompson, a tragic author who hasn’t published in over a decade. The third person narrative is a part of the storyline and it works, wonderfully too. Ferrell gives up his screwball cult status to deliver a very clever performance. His love interest in the film Maggie Gyllenhall is outrageously gorgeous, as a woman and more astutely, as an actress. I could go on and on since there are so many things right about Stranger Than Fiction. I think I’ll just let Roger Ebert wrap things up in a nutshell. “Such an uncommonly intelligent film does not often get made”. I’ll gleefully second that.
Odd Fellows Rest 