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Hector and the Search for Happiness (2014)
Africa is not a country
The movie actually started with some interesting concepts, although it was obvious that they were setting up Hector as the stereotypical unhappy boring protagonist that needs to go on a trip of discovery. While that is not so problematic in itself, it was slightly clichéd. The problem started for me after leaving Shanghai, and then the film became a series of clichés, an almost comical depiction of a white dude's version of the journey of enlightenment. We get not only Tibetan monks, but a wise older monk holding the key to happiness!
But the worst was the trip to Africa. We get the white saviour (sort of Jesus like, but gay!) and the white devil.
And please, can we start having a more nuanced version of Africa? Africa is not a country, they never mention the country where they travel, with a reason, they mix languages, scenery, political conflict, fauna and music where they do not belong. Western African music, central African costumes and food. It's a horrible mess.
Lazy writing.
Monsters (2010)
Only white people are real
This had the potential to be one of my favourite films of the year, a brave and well-made little film that is actually character driven, but something kept bothering me, and it is something that happens in similar travel films involving white people in exotic locations.
The film-makers treat everyone but the two protagonists as mere decorations, they are on screen as props so that the two white people can have their travel-slash-romance. There is a certain paternalistic English gap-year ethos to the entire movie. Look at those two gringos trying to make their way home! Look at all of the gritty poverty! Isn't that edgy and cool? Oh, here is a black kid, let's interact with him so that we can show that we are multicultural and cool! This completely took me away from the characters, it is demeaning to the humanity of those portrayed, who end up being nothing but cheap settings who must sign a model release form.
Such a wasted opportunity, as I really wanted to like this.
Transformers (2007)
Michael Bay does it again
I was a huge Transformers fan as a child, so with the latest developments in CGI I was truly looking forward to this movie, until I realised that the man at the helm was Michael Bay. This is the man who unleashed Pearl Harbor, Armageddon and The Island upon an unsuspecting world, so I knew fear. I went into the cinema hoping that it would be good, but expecting it to be bad. In the end my expectations won and my hopes were shattered.
Firstly, the good. The action is mind-blowing, there are some set pieces that truly make you gasp. The transforming sequences are beautifully done, and the robots are the most life-like CGI characters up to date. When we look back at the history of CGI and live-action, this film will be one of the true innovators, and its technological achievements are worthy to be mentioned in the same sentence with the likes of Jurassic Park and LOTR. Whenever the Transformers are on screen, the movie becomes something else. Those scenes are precisely what a Transformers movie should be all about: robots beating the daylights out of each other.
However, the problem with this Transformers movie are the large chunks of time when the robots are not on screen. The acting is ludicrously bad, Bay manages to squeeze more emotion from Optimus Prime's little finger than from his entire human cast. John Turturro portrays the wacky black-ops operative, one of the many failed and feeble attempts at comic-relief, but he looks embarrassed by the script. Bernie Mac has become a movie cliché all on his own as the "funny black man", a cliché reprised poorly by Anthony Anderson, who is probably the worst ever hacker on screen. John Voight is clearly bored by playing yet another hapless authority figure. Oh yes, and we also get the "little Arab kid", Bay's scraping of the cliché barrel knows no boundaries.
This is a movie clinically tailored for the male teenager. The female cast has been hired just to look pretty (which they do, with the exception of the adequately embarrassed mum). I do not know where the producers hang out, but female hackers do not look like Rachael Taylor. And don't even get me started on racial stereotypes. Blacks eat a lot, white suburbians only care about their lawns, Hispanics are superstitious and go into Spanish rants all the time.
The dialogue is painful at times, and the supposedly comic scene where the protagonists look for the glasses while the Transformers wait outside has got to be one of the most contrived and ham-fisted scenes that I have had the displeasure of witnessing. I literally groaned at how completely parochial it all seemed. The world is threatened, yet we stand around talking about masturbation.
This movie is a clear spawn of the post-911 genre. The military are given a bumped-up heroic role, which had the same lame effect in the overall result as it did in War of the Worlds. We are hit over the head time and time again with America's military superiority, but the fact that the Transformers are vulnerable to conventional weaponry completely steals the thunder from the heroic Autobots, who end up being nothing but large support cast. This is the main flaw in an already flawed film. The climax could have been the same if you had erased the Autobots, just let the marines handle things. Oh yes, where were the Decepticons in all this? Yet another wasted opportunity at complexity.
This movie had a lot of potential, but unfortunately Bay and his ilk clearly do not think highly of their audience. They know what to give them, and seeing the comments in this board, they are always going to get a positive response regardless of the drivel they produce.
Children of Men (2006)
Outstanding film experience
Many people have commented on the brave, innovative, inventive, difficult, fresh and downright ballsy style in which Alfonso Cuaron has shot this movie. The cinematography, choreography and editing come together to achieve a once-in-a-lifetime film experience, a truly immersive film where you really care about the characters because you see the world through their perspective.
The emotional crescendo of some of the action sequences also adds to the overall involvement from the spectator. This feels like an important movie because of the techniques used, but also because of the subject matter.
Perhaps one of the most under-rated movies of the year.
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Pleasantly surprised
(Contains some minor spoilers) Like millions of people around the world I read The Da Vinci Code novel. While I was not impressed with the writing, I found myself lying awake late at night. The novel was a real page turner despite the far-fetched premise and factual errors. I happened to know something about the early period of Christianity, so I knew that the novel had some truth when describing Constantine and the existence of hundreds of Gospels and about the sad demise of the Knights Templar, but these were buried beneath some truly awful dialogue.
I had planned to watch the movie to see what the hype was about, and I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by Ron Howard's take on the source material. I can see how the novel does not translate perfectly into a movie, but Howard has paced it very well, resulting in an enjoyable historical thriller that jumps around some wonderful locations and culminates in the beautiful Roslyn chapel. The acting is very good, Hanks shows why he has won the Oscar on repeated occasions, and McKellen is magnificent as usual. Tautou does not shine as she did in Amelie, but she is more than adequate. Bethany's Silas stands out, he is much better than the novel, and it lends some depth to otherwise flat characterisation. I can see that many people will complain about the anti-climatic ending, but I actually found it very moving, perhaps the best part of the entire movie.
Do not let the critics and the Church spoil this, I think that it was highly enjoyable and I will definitely be seeing it again.
Highlander (1986)
Classic Fantasy
This is a very worthy movie from the 1980s. People judging it from today's standards are being unnecessarily harsh to a piece of art that was way ahead of its time. The movie has an amazing soundtrack and is beautifully shot in the most unsuspecting places. I remember going to see the movie for the first time expecting to see the usual drab codswallop coming out in the 1980s, but what I got was one an opening shot unlike anything I had seen before, a genre-defining moment. The interchanges between the present and the past are inspired in most instances, and even the dodgy accents do not detract from an incomprehensibly good story.
The Island (2005)
Formulaic and trite
I really wanted to enjoy this movie because I liked the plot premise and the little snippets of the story that I had seen in the media. But Michael Bay has a way of filming action movies that is unimaginative and predictable. This movie follows the same Hollywood clichés that we have seen hundreds of times. Add to that the completely gratuitous product placement that makes the entire movie a big advert and you will understand why this movie was more than underwhelming at the box office.
This movie is proof that Hollywood has lost its edge with blockbusters, and that the true innovation lies elsewhere. Unless producers and directors stop taking the movie viewer for granted, the summer blockbuster will die.
Earthsea (2004)
Worst adaptation ever
I have seldom felt so compelled to do a Comic Book Guy thing and "register my disgust throughout the world".
I downloaded the abominable Legends of Earthsea miniseries using Bittorrent, and I must say that I love a technology that allows me to avoid paying for this whenever it comes out for rental, or even tuning in at any point. To call this a travesty would be an understatement. My mind is filled with words. Abomination, dreadfulness, caricature, atrocity, disgrace, loathsomeness, they have all shown up at some stage.
The acting was bad; the direction non-existent; the script clichéd and filled with genre commonplaces; the production was cheap and the CGI was used with Ed-Woodesque gusto.
This is what people mean when they criticise Hollywood script-writers butchering perfectly good source material. I love the Earthsea Trilogy, and Ursula K. LeGuin is one of my favourite writers. What was done to her story should not be accepted. It is too bad Anglo-Saxon legal traditions do not value moral rights in copyright; this is so bad that if I were the author, I would sue.
I haven't been this outraged since I read the detestable Dune prequels.
King Arthur (2004)
Nice battles, pity about the script
This is the first movie to come out trying to use the formula that worked so well for Peter Jackson in LOTR. Big battles, mythical warriors, giving life to the unbelievable. The problem is that the script is not good at all. The movie started in an interested manner; I was impressed with the early stages and the attempts to bring life to the character of King Arthur a mythical figure that has suffered from over-exposure. However, after the first half hour I realized that we were in for another load of Bruckheimer schmaltz. The movie suffered from painful dialogue and a large dose of bad acting, saved only by the excellent Ioan Gruffudd in the role of Lancelot. Bruckheimer should have learnt from his mistakes in Pearl Harbor, where he tried to reproduce the winning formula of Titanic to disastrous effect. His only redeeming feature is Pirates of the Caribbean, which was saved by Johnny Depp's marvelous performance more than any of the production values. This movie stinks to high heaven, the only reason I have rated it higher than it deserves it that it managed to keep me entertained for 30 minutes. After that, it was just grunt after grunt to complain about the utter dreadfulness that I was seeing. Those laughs deserve some IMDb rating points.
Underworld (2003)
Unnecessary
A wholly derivative romp in cinematic banality. If you ever get lost there is every genre marker to guide you on your way. As relaxing and predictable as watching `Bold and the Beautiful'. There is something reassuring about knowing exactly which line will come next.
Try Dog Soldiers instead.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
AMAZING!
Few times in my adult life have I been so moved by a movie as I was moved by The Return of the King. There were scenes that were as near perfect cinematic as you can hope for. The charge of the Rohirrim should be remembered as one of the most amazing pieces of war ever filmed. I have never heard so many sniffles and people blowing their noses as in this showing. This is the perfect ending of an amazing trilogy. 10/10.
Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road (2002)
Pretentious moralisation and simplification
How is it possible that this movie has such a high rating? This film is totally undeserving of the high praise awarded to it in this site, it is complete and utter rubbish. I was forced to watch this on an international flight and I would have escaped if I had the chance, but we were cruising at 36000 ft and I could not get out of the plane, so I decided to finish it only to come back and slag this steaming pile of post-digestive bovine refuse on the Internet. This movie assumes that the audience are a bunch of morons who need to be hit over the head with its moralising messages. Yes, we know that smoking is bad, but you don't have to make the bad guys smoke all the time. Yes, we know that the legal system in the USA is crazy, but creating a town full of lawyers is not only ridiculous, it wastes an otherwise interesting perspective. Yes, we know drug abuse is wrong, but there's no need to populate an entire town with rave-mad teenagers to let us know that fact.
This is the modern version of 'reefer madness', a movie with the single purpose of selling its simplistic take on life to the unthinking unsuspecting masses. What a waste of Gary Oldman's talents.