Change Your Image
chrisfewtrell
Reviews
Serenity (2005)
God bless Serenity, and all who sail with her.
I read the reviews, listened to the hype, hadn't seen the TV show so didn't know what the fuss was about. Eventually saw the movie, and... Wow! All you fans who were disappointed - go and take another look, your expectations blinded you. Don't worry, it happens to us all. I can't describe this movie like I would some others, because I'd end up adding to the hype and raising the expectations of my friends to unreachable highs. Let me concentrate on what separates Serenity from just about anything I can think of off the top of my head, certainly in recent memory. First, you just have to love and care about these characters, just as the writer and cast so obviously do. Then you are knocked out by a script that ignores the audience, at the same time as totally respecting it. That is, it assumes a certain level of intelligence and leaves you to get on with it - no patronising, no padding, no post-modern irony, or whatever they call those lame attempts at humour film makers use to try and get the audience on the characters' sides. This movie has charm in spades, the charm Hollywood seems convinced Vince Vaughn possesses but actually represents the opposite of. This movie resurrects your faith in movies, in people with ideas, commitment, talent, love of and belief in what they're doing. It confirms what I've been thinking for a while, as a movie lover who has almost ceased visiting the movies in the past three or four years - most of the real talent is working in American TV. You have to ration yourself nowadays, otherwise you'll drift through life doing nothing but watch high class, endlessly original and entertaining products rolling off the US TV production line, be it the Simpsons, the Sopranos, Rescue Me, or Firefly. TV used to be considered a threat to Hollywood, then its poor relation, then a rest home for ageing actors. Only recently has the output of HBO and the major TV studios regularly outperformed Hollywood in terms of scope, imagination, acting, writing and production values. For every Ocean's Twelve, a West Wing. Joss Whedon has successfully overlapped TV and Hollywood, others will surely follow, and we, the audience, can only be winners. God bless Serenity, and all who sail with her.
Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (2002)
Let's do the show right here...
I got a great idea: British films are sooo bad, what if we gather all the great actors we've got in one place - English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, scouse, brummie, cockney, yeah? Mix em all up like in one big impossible family? It's gonna be a scream. OK, so we pitch the idea and some idiot gives us the green light. Man, this is gonna be bigger than the Boondock Saints. So we get the cast - and what a cast! - and we get the director, locations, mobile café, the works. Dammit! Who brought the story? What, no one? We're gonna have to make it up as we go along? What if it turns out to be a horrible, embarrassing mess, a waste of time and the collective talents of the UK's finest thesps? Whaddayamean, it couldn't happen again: when was the last time you paid to watch a British film? Guess what? It did happen again. Makes you want to crawl away and die of humiliation, don't it? Question: Who on God's planet finances British films? It has to be the same people who 'run' English football. Don't they watch movies? Don't they want to make money? See the papers this weekend (Aug 19 2006)? Bollywood consistently outperforms - make that trashes out of sight - British films in the UK. The subcontinental fools! Has no one told them how last century it is to make entertaining films that people actually want to see? You want to know what a bunch of relative unknowns can do with a script written with love, care and respect for its audience? Go watch Serenity.
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Dull and dullerer
A bit like a more intelligent Lost in Translation, the best of both films consisting of the photogenic qualities of its female stars. Once Keira Knightley stopped crinkling her nose and impersonating a Yorkshire terrier, her attractiveness almost carried the film. Unlike Lost in Translation, whose only other redeeming feature was the Tokyo background, Pride and Prejudice failed to make anything of the glorious Derbyshire landscapes on offer, apart from one shot of Miss Knightley apparently auditioning for Wuthering Heights, superfluous, but at least it was pretty. Unless I watched a flawed print, the overall dullness of the movie seemed deliberately perverse. All I could think was that the £20M budget meant they couldn't afford to hang around for a spot of sunshine - particularly criminal during the brief scenes shot at Chatsworth, which barely hinted at what a stunning location this is. Scorn Hollywood as much as you like, but no director of a second rate TV movie would have wasted such an opportunity.
Finally, the ending. I haven't seen the US version, but it could hardly compete with the UK release for banal anti-climax. Much as I love Donald Sutherland, to end with him, and not the lovers (I use the term reluctantly, because any chemistry built up in the first hour, was dissipated in the rush towards the 'climax') was a patronising and failed attempt to genuflect to the novel and its millions of fans.
Love Actually (2003)
Uncontrollable rage, if you must.
I've always known I'm out of step with most of the people I meet, but can I be the only person who not only detests this film with an intensity bordering on the psychotic, but who finds it utterly offensive, on every level, from first frame to last? Never have I experienced such strong emotions about a film, and it leaves me almost speechless with anger just to hear its title. To hear someone actually praise the thing causes me to weep with frustration and I often have to bite my tongue to prevent myself from delivering a tirade of erudite criticism to complete strangers. Why should this be? Could it be the well documented, revolting (and believe it or not, largely unnoticed, among UK cinema goers I have asked at least!)reference to 9/11? The illogical behaviour of characters for the sake of a cheap laugh? The gratuitous use of pornography, in a stomach-churningly smug 'hey, porn is just harmless fun' middle class liberal unthinking kind of a way? The casual anti-Americanism, the embarrassing dialogue given to 'salt of the earth' working class stereotypes, the utter, utter complete nonsense of the plot in every single one of the 'stories'? Don't get me started. I thought Notting Hill was bad enough, with its brave cripple and her eternally patient husband. Here we had Emma Thomson looking balefully noble as she endured not only her husband's infidelity, but the sound of Joni Mitchell cruelly betraying one of her own children. And as for the brat with Liam Neeson? Why wasn't he shot by airport security, as he would have been in reality or any halfway decent film, and which he, and Richard Curtis, so richly deserved. Otherwise, it was okay.
He Said, She Said (1991)
Not quite When Harry met Sally
I didn't realise this film could generate such diverse opinions - ironic, given the tag line. This was a sweet movie, nicely performed by the nearly always underrated, but never disappointing stars, both of whom have enjoyed unspectacular but satisfying (from my point of view) careers. The story was smart and lightly handled - okay, it wasn't quite When Harry met Sally, but neither, thank God, was it You've got mail. Strange that Brian Hohfeld doesn't seem to have many other major writing credits, considering the standard he achieved here, or are my sources out of date? Nice work all round, and Elizabeth Perkins can still effortlessly pluck my heartstrings, even after all these years!