And We're Nearly Home...

So, big developments for me lately, and I mean BIG.

Basically, I was planning on moving to London at some point in the future, and that point was namely going to be the 1st of July, my brother and I were going to start fresh new lives. But that's just had a change.

I was on my way back to Newbury on the old train when my brother called me. He has decided that he wishes to resit his entire third year of university, in order to clear his head of the crap that's been piling up there.

I honestly think that this idea works, and I support him fully in undertaking it, it just means that I'm gonna have to reschedule any plans of moving with him that I had. So where am I going to go? What am I going to do with myself?

In all fairness, that last one is something that I've been kind of asking myself for a while now. I'm 27, I don't have anything that could be unironically a 'career', I'm a shiftless layabout and I'm about to exit university for the second time, this time knowing just how much the real world sucks without any illusion about it. So yeah. I'm moving back to Newbury. At least there I already have a job and friends. A place to live might be good though, I hear that people need them.

BIUTIFUL.

Well, this film is anything but.

I can definately understand why it's being held in high regard and why Bardem was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in it, but as far as I'm concerned this film was more than two hours of mind-numbing, soul-destroying, heavy-handed morality story that never really went anywhere.

Our protagonist Uxbal is a family man of dodgy criminal income, his wife is sleeping with his brother and kicked out of the house, his kids are unhappy and living in poverty and he can see dead people. Oh yeah, where the hell did that come from? What did that possibly add to the story?

I admit that I'm not in the best of moods when I'm writing this review, but I have to say that looking back on it, I'm really not sure that this film deserves much more from me than my mild disinterest. It felt laden with all the things I label 'pretentious' and it seemed to go nowhere very slowly. There were whole plot points that I must have missed for just how little in engaged me.

Unfortunately that seems to be all I had to say about this movie. It really did that little for me. I managed to spit out more about Battle: LA last time. Now that's got to be an indicator, eh? I can talk more about alien invasion b-movies than this, what is supposed to be high art.

Oh well. Next time: SOURCE CODE.

39 and 1/2 hours

You know, at 27, you'd think that I'd grow out of my ridiculous habit of staying up for days and days at a time. It never really goes well and I always end up confusing myself. But at the same time I get oddly proud. So, I woke up 10:17 on Thursday morning and went to sleep some time around 01:05 on Saturday morning. Because I'm really clever like that.

At least I didn't spend that amount of time trapped in a canyon, because that would have been nasty and I honestly don't think I have the multi-tool or the willpower to hack my own arm off. I like my arm, I'm very attached to it. I suppose I could segway into the Oscars (several weeks late) with that last comment, so indeed I shall. My thoughts.

King's Speech won every award going and it was quite clear that it was going too anyway. It's a film that was designed at the genetic level to be an award winner. But... I still think it earned them. Colin Firth gave the performance of a lifetime, Geoffry Rush was outstanding, the writing was solid, the directing was playful yet serious, everything about the film deserves the recognition that it got. That does mean that a few lost out.

127 Hours is probably the most powerful film I've ever seen, Inception (despite Mike Lynch's protests) is a truly innovative story without any real boundaries and I think True Grit had some serious merit going for it. But all of these were overshadowed by the awards-monster that is King's Speech, and can we really blame it? I mean, it's the safest of all safe options, its got the most marketable appeal of all thsoe movies and it's the best loved by the older generation, who are still in charge of things in tinsel town. It's triumph over adversity, it's friendship breaking across class struggle, it's morally unambiguous and straight to the point. As films go, it doesn't mess around.

But in 127 Hours we actually wanted a man to cut his own arm off.

In Inception we wanted to immerse ourselves in that spinning top.

In Social Network we would have watched him hit 'Refresh' forever.

In True Grit I wanted to hear Bridges talk for another hour.

But we can't have them all, can we?

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES

So if I hadn't seen Ironclad a few days before, I'm sure that this movie would have clinched some awesome MANly feelings in me, but it certainly didn't have the punch of Purefoy and Cox's squaring up to VLADIMIER. Basically, for those that are unaware, Battle: LA is an alien invasion of the world, and it focuses on what it would look like from a hand-held camera sort of view.

Now, I'm not going to say that it's got a massively original story, or that it's got amazing characters (although Aaron Eckhart always gives a good performance and Michelle Rodriguez is, for once not shit!), or that it's a truly groundbreaking film... but I enjoyed it. I really, really enjoyed it. There's just nothing about it that didn't work, to my eyes.

It's got aliens, it's got big explosions, it's got US Marines realised that they are not the be-all-end-all of military forces, it's got action, it's got some overblown heroism and it's got a painful reference to Japan in the opening seconds.

Actually, I should make a point of that, it was shocking, the first lines of the movie are a radio voice-over saying about how Japan has been devastated. And we saw this on the friday release day, which was the VERY DAY the tsunami hit them.

Freaky, huh?

The other thing to mention with this movie is that it's a film about aliens invading Los Angeles... that's 'Inspired by True Events'. If you look up the Battle for Los Angeles on Wikipedia, you'll find out what I mean and quite frankly I think it's hilarious. Technically, this film about aliens invading Los Angeles is inspired by true events.

So overall, I think this film can be summed up in one phrase. 'If you can say "not quite as good as Independance Day" with a straight face, then that's this movie'. I dont' know why I thought that when I saw it, but there it is, that's this movie. It's fun, it's loud, it's explodey and it's a half decent way to spend an evening. And it kicked the shit out of Skyline.

Next time: BIUTIFUL.

7:00am

So apparently the server that this blogsite functions out of is about 7 hours behind me, putting it somewhere in Arizona, probably. At least that's what my limited skills of deduction have led me to. So therefore if I want my blog post to appear dated on the correct day that I want it too (see again, my massive retentiveness), I have to wait for 7am, which is kind of midnight. Well, it is in Arizona at least.

But apparently I'm no longer satisfied with this blog. Not that I'm going to stop doing it or anything, but I think I'm actually finally arrogant enough to think my that blog deserves a spin-off. So today I shall be launching (or kicking out the door, at least) my second blog on this site, entitled 'Televisual'. It shall be discussing my views on my most favourite of mediums, that of Television. Have a look. If you want.

In other news, I'm spending copius amounts of time in Newbury pretty soon, I feel like something of a yo-yo. I'm still having trouble with my sleeping patterns, but that's nothing new. Am still tempted to record them. Perhaps that could be its own blog as well, eh? No, don't get carried away now!

Now I know I said that I was going to talk about Winter's Bone, but the thing is that I thought that it was going to count as one of my five films for March, but then at the last minute I got given the chance to see Biutiful, after I'd already fulfilled my quota, so I'm gonna go with that instead, seeing as how Biutiful was cinema and Winter's Bone was DVD, and this review largely deals with movies I see in the cinema (and the occasional live TV filming).

I'm sure I'll find some time to talk about Winter's Bone at some point, but for now, I keep to the schedule.

IRONCLAD.

Without a doubt, the MANLIEST film I've seen in quite some time, it's probably even MANLIER than 300, a film so MANLY that women went to see it and spontaineously grew testicles. Of course, the MANLIEST thing about this movie is none other than VLADIMIER 'Lo there do I see my father...' KULICH, whos is now the MANLIEST MAN to ever MAN. Not that James Purefoy, Brian Cox, Paul Giamatti, Jason Flemyng, Mackenzie Crook, Charles Dance, Derek Jacobi, Jamie Foreman, Daniel O'Meara, Guy Siner and Steffan Rhodri are anything less than overly MANLY, but they aren't quite at the heights of Vlad. I mean, who could be?

The story revolves around a disgraced Knight Templar (Purefoy) teaming up with an uppity Baron (Cox), as they defy the army of Danish mercenaries (led by Kulich) hired by the tyrnanical King John (Giamatti), in the broken down and crumbling Rochester Castle, which is strategically vital for John to control if he wants his own country back. So they gather a group of ragtag scum, villains, hard-arses and nutcases and take control of the castle before John gets there. Then John's army arrives and the siege commences. And my God, does that siege commence. There is commencing all over that siege.

The only real downside of this film is the way the battle scenes are filmed, the completely over-the-top shaky-cam does a pretty good job of depicting the chaos of battle, but it makes the actual fighting (the thing we came to see this movie for) pretty damn difficult to follow and not all that enjoyable. Fortunately, that effect tones down towards the end of the movie, but it makes the opening fighting sequences quite jarring. I can definately see why they did it, but they probably shouldn't have.

That's the only flaw in this film.

Oh, the story may be a little basic (No Surrender!) and the characters may be a little shallow (Are you sorry for what you've done? Bollocks!), but there's nothing about thie film that doesn't achieve what it set out to do. There's awesome violence, there's amazing bravery, there's pumping emotion and there's acting that's so over the top it entirely suits this movie. The most depressing part of it is just how little screen-time it'll get throughout the UK, and just how few people will see it.

It's the biggest independant film made in the UK in years and it's got the cast of an A-list Hollywood blockbuster. It's got the story, it's got the action, it's got EVERYTHING.

Even mother-fuckin' VLADIMIER KULICH.

Next time: Something not as MANLY.

The Void

Void is an excellent word, I love its sheer depth of meaning and lack of emotion, I love how four letters can convey that sense of deep emptiness. It's one of those words that resonates with me, so that I don't like to use it too often, just in case I wear it out or something like that.

At the moment, large parts of my life feel like something of a void. I don't have a job, the hours in university are something of a joke, I get more writing done than anyone else but I tend to do it so quickly that I'm done before I've even realised I've started. So, what to I fill my time with?

DVDs, mostly. I don't like to watch movies on DVD, to be honest. I don't think I've actually watched a film on disc for months. TV series are where its at for me. Lost, Prison Break, Supernatural, Bones, How I Met Your Mother, Battlestar Galactica and the most important Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis consume vast amounts of my time, but sitting there and vegetating in front of a screen isn't always the best use of my time.

Marsh recommended that I need to find a hobby that isn't very creative, sinec I use my creative juices in pretty much every other hobby I have, and I seem to have several. I have a roleplay group, I write this blog and review movies on it, I spend a couple hours a day writing things that aren't even assignments, I used to paint many, many gaming miniatures, there are a few others. He suggested some kind of sport, so I didn't take him seriously.

Me? And sport? Yeah, right.

But still, without a job, without something to fill my empty weekends, I do tend to feel like there's a void hanging over me and there's not much I can do to break it. I'm kind of in a rut, because I don't really want to commit to anything big, since I'm moving away in July/August time. So what am I to do? Review films.

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU.

I was skeptical about this movie when I first saw the trailers for it. I don't like the idea of stories that try and mess with Fate, for two main reasons. These are:

1) If Fate/Destiny did in fact exist, it would by its very nature have to be so complicated, so complex and intricate, that nobody would ever know it existed. Every decision we have made, we were fated to make, every movement, every breath, it's all been pre-planned. Many people don't like this idea because they say it crushes Free Will. At the same time, what they kind of don't understand is that the theology of the arguement is utterly, utterly pointless. If Fate/Destiny does exist in this fashion, then there's no way we'll ever know and therefore there's no rational reason to even think about it.

2) Nobody can write stories about Fate as well as I can. Sorry to sound arrogant, but I think I've got it down to a T in my work, so back off, major film companies, you can't mess with this.

So, the film.

Basically, it's a love story spread out over four years. That there is a pretty thinly spread story, I didn't really feel any chemistry between our characters, nor did I notice a great deal of acting. Coates once again pointed out the 'Al does not know this emotion, called Love' card, for I do dislike grand ideas like Fate and Destiny to be muddied with petty human emotions.

Secondly, I found the Bureau itself to be overly wishy-washy, the whole idea of the layers of plans and notebooks and special hats looks appealing at first, but gets kinda vague and unsatisfying as the film goes on. I found the whole film to be wishy-washy, vague and unsatisfying, especially when Terance Stamp (yes, he's good but not as good as he could have been) was denied a powerful line.

It's nowhere near the 'next Matrix or Inception' that we were touted and it's just a bit... well... Meh.

Next week: Winter's Bone

Trains and Taxis

So last week I had a particularly unpleasent experience concerning the state of public transport in the United Kingdom, particularly Wiltshire. I went up to Bath to see my brother and his theatre society's new play, Pygmalion. Now I should point out that I don't particularly like Pygmalion or My Fair Lady, but that this actual performance (with my brother in the role of Colonel Pickering, one that he didn't want but I think he nailed to a T) held my interest and was truly enjoyable.

So the following day, my brother and I go to the cinema to go and see Paul. It's kind of a tradition that we go to the cinema together whenever we're in the same town. We saw Paul, and the review for that is up already. We'd judged the timing of this particular event quite well, I'd thought, because my train was at 15:36 and the film finished at around 15:12. So we hop over to the train station, I see my mother for about 30 seconds and then I head up to the platform and wait for my train.

It arrives. It's full.

Myself and about twenty other passangers are actually told that we can't get on the train because there are too many people on it already. Now this is the Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central line, it runs every hour or so and it's only ever got 3 carridges on it. But I've paid for my ticket and I should be able to use that train. Now, I get that train every time I go to Bath, which is about once every six weeks or so, and I've never been able to sit down on it. It's always sardines in there.

Now this seriously pisses me off, because First Great Western should bloody know by now just how popular that line is. So I can't get on the train (I should note, I had to start work in Newbury at 5pm). The stopper service that would get me to Westbury is due in a few minutes. Westbury's good, that's where I'd have to change to get to Newbury anyway. My plan was to get a new ticket there in order to go Westbury to Newbury. But of course I get there too late, I've missed the connecting train.

Know what time the next train is?

19:10. Two hours *after* I was due to start work. It wouldn't even get to Newbury until 19:45, which was when Alan Carr's show actually started.

Then my phone battery died. There were no staff at the platforms, there was a payphone but I didn't have any change. I was one of the only people there.

So what did I do? What could I do?

I got a taxi. And it cost me £80.

I got to work for about 18:30, fortunately I'd essentially been swapped with Vicky, so that she started at 17:00 and I started at 19:00, but another member of staff hadn't turned up at all, so I got to start straight away. I must have told the story of how I'd got there about twelve times, just so that people would think that I was dedicated to my job, which I am. I love that job, it makes me feel appreciated. It just means that I'm working at a loss for the next few weeks.

It wasn't a particularly brilliant weekend all round, with my brother's play being great and then everything kind of sucking after that, until my parents swooped in on the sunday and offered to take me back to southampton. I think I got about 9 hours sleep the whole weekend. I don't want to sound self-pitying, but it was just mad and I think I'm too old for all this crap. We didn't even get a chance to do November's Children, which annoyed me, because I was looking forward to that session.

Ah, sod it.

RANGO.

"De Leezard? Hee's going to die."

I'll probably be quoting that line for quite some time to come. This was a truly, truly enjoyable movie. In terms of story and plot, this film doesn't really have anything original going for it, as Coates put it, it's pretty much Chinatown with Lizards. It's got the story of pretty much every western you've ever seen, but it's intelligent enough to know that and to compensate by celebrating the genre rather than simply hammering it out.

And the thing that really sells this movie is that it's truly, truly gorgeous. I mean, it's on a par if not better than most Pixar films, it's just so sumptuous and intricate that to think it's for kids is almost a little insulting, because they don't quite deserve this level or artistic attention. Fortunately, we all well know that this kind of film isn't really for kids, it's a film that adults can take their kids too and enjoy themselves.

I can't say too much more about it, because it isn't all that deep and it's gorgeousness speaks for itself. Go watch it because it's very entertaining. And Bill Nighy is amazing.

Next up: The Adjustment Bureau.

4 as opposed to 5

Okay, so I may have said how I was supposed to do 5 posts in February, then I got round to the end of February and realised that I'd sodding forgot one, so I'll bump up March to 6. I mean, it doesn't really mean anyhting to anyone but me, but it annoys me that I messed up my own schedule by a few hours. Because that's just how cool I am.

I think I want to talk just a little about my friends and their blogs for just a moment. 'In Pursuit of Expression' and 'So, I Have A Question' are two of my classmates and they shamelessly copied my awesome blog idea in order to make themselves look as cool as me. Except they don't review movies. And they don't talk as much bollocks as I do.

I like to think that we all have our own styles and subjects to talk about, but it comes down to it, I think I'm not as original as I sometimes think I am. Even just looking at the blogs of my friends I realise that the same thoughts occur to them as do to me, and they often manage to get it down onto wordpad without sounding as up themselves as I often do.

There are times I like to think of myself as one of the best writers in our class, because of my sheer output compared to everyone else, but there are times when I'm humbled by the creative genius, the simple yet brilliant ideas, the fantastic wording and dogged determination shown by my fellow writing students. To Dave and Martin especially, actually.

Although NORTHEN FIST does kinda take the prize.

DRIVE ANGRY.

Man this film sucked. Our lecturer was saying how Nick Cage might have been one of these people who lost everything in the banking crash, so he's doing every single crappy movie he can in order to make back some of his former fortune. I'm not entirely convinced by that, I've always found Cage's career to be as varied as an acid trip through a kalidescope, so I'm not really surprised by anything that he does.

Even this horsecrap. So Milton is on a quest to kill an overly stereotypical cult leader who wants to sacrifice his grand-daughter, encountering a large amount of classic cars, a fiesty large-busted sidekick, a supernatural prison warden and enough bullets to fill an oil tanker along the way. That all sounds fine on paper, but there's just one thing about this movie that can't quite be denied about it when it's watched.

There is nothing original about it. Now that's quite surprising considering that it's actually an original film, it's not adapted from anything, no comic books or trashy novles lurking in the back ground waiting to claim responsibility. No, it's original. But it's not original in any way. There's nothing in this movie that Supernatural, Prison Break, Shoot 'em Up and even sodding Ghost Rider didn't do better.

The only real redeeming feature of this film was to give William Fichtner some more work, but he's playing an agent of the underworld sent to bring Milton back. To a place he refers to as a prison. I thought Chris Redfield in Resident Evil was bad enough, but this takes the biscut. What's next, Robert Knepper plays a hillbilly? Amury Nolasco plays a Mexican? What will they force the cast of Prison Break to relive next?

Next up: Rango!