Best of Siskel and Ebert

 

Movie Review: Nice Guys

Advanced showing, 116 minutes

Director: Shane Black, Crime comedy drama

Accurate trailer? Yup.

Really enjoyable basic buddy-cop movie set in dirty sleazy 70s LA.  Borrows from 70s cops shows, and movies such as Boogie Nights, LA Confidential and Guy Richie's later works.

Entertaining script well delivered with great chemistry between the recently out of sorts Crowe and the in-form Gosling, backed up by a good ensemble cast.

The only disappointing performance came from Kim Basinger, whose performance I strongly suspect has been heavily edited out.

The action is snappy, the dialogue clever but not pretentious and harks back to Black's previous work on Lethal Weapon and even As Good as it Gets.

The lack of obvious special effects shows a great restraint on the part of the director--it would have been tempting to have huge explosions and Matrix style slow motion. The only time physics was defied was in the revelation that bullets do not pass through car trunks and wooden doors--forgivable.

I thoroughly enjoyed it in story and film making terms.

A classic? Not quite, the ending is oddly unfulfilling and the climactic action scene is a bit convoluted, so a 9/10 from me.

Movie Review: Where to Invade Next

2016, Documentary, 110 minutes

I was sitting in McDonald's wondering why, despite not sharing Michael Moore's politics and being very wary of his editing policies, I really enjoyed this movie.

...and then it struck me: As I ate my hash-brown, contemplating the downfall of western civilisation, I watched some rapper (dressed the same as the same rapper) telling me over and over to  "lean back...lean back...lean back..." (that's what counts as lyrics these days). This song's video looked and sounded exactly the same as the last one, and the same as the next one. Money for nothing and your chicks for free.

Yes actually, I AM a cultural snob, I'm quite happy looking down on this crap, because it is crap.

For once it's good to watch a movie, any movie, that is unabashedly polemic and isn't made by a committee of executive producers. New York, London, Paris and oddly San Francisco seem to be destroyed anew again and again and again, until....this year...a hero will rise. Sponsored content masquerading as a movie.

When once Edwyn Collins complained that there were too many protest singers, not enough protest songs, now there's neither.

The concept is a simple, but very interesting one--America has spent billions sending its troops around the world to invade the scum of the earth, and has managed very little tangible gains....why not "invade" countries with high standards of living, or socially progressive policies and cherry pick them, taking this plunder back to America.

As a piece of documentary film-making the film stands up well. The medium is one in which Moore can spread out and shoot. Equal parts comedy, mockumentary and political statement, and Moore delivers a fun easy to watch and ahem pretty convincing argument.

Yes, I'm sure that this is edited ....extensively to give the required tone, and I'd want to fact check the hell out of this but at least it's funny, and thought-provoking and doesn't expect you to go into a coma in your seat.

8/10

Movie Review: The Man Who Knew Infinity

2016, 108 minutes, written and directed by Matthew Brown

Accurate trailer? Not really.

I was actually left quite disappointed and flat by this film. It manages to turn fascinating (TRUE) subject matter--one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century is a lowly self educated clerk from Madras, sent to pre World War I Cambridge-- and make it as uninteresting and traiatitious as the Cambridge fellows it predictably demonises.

I am unsure in which sense I am most disappointed--as a film enthusiast or as a mathematician, since it seems that writer and director Matthew Brown does not understand mathematics, and instead sets about making a trope filled fish-out-of-water biopic in which even the camera angles are straight on and uninteresting. Imagine "Eddie the Eagle", but with real talent and none of the snow.

Shall we number the cliches? There is the lonely outsider, the doubting parent (complete with hidden letters; which never happened), the over-bearing but well meaning father-figure who oversteps his boundaries and learns a valuable lesson himself, the patronising imperialist racist, the stuffy aristocrat who refuses to see genius...is that enough data?

Worst of all is my personal pet hate--some professor looking at a page of algebra and instantaneously declaring it a work of unparalleled genius. My Coke Zero nearly headed towards the screen.

Ramanujan's single greatest love was mathematics, and the obscure but then-burgeoning field combinatorics, so why is there a sum total of 10 seconds devoted to explaining the mathematics? Why do we never see into the mind of the mathematician at the peak of his autodidactic powers? Why are audiences allowed to leave the theatre without knowing how important Ramanujan's work would be in the computer age, and to later geniuses such as Turing?

Good Will Hunting has already been made, why, oh why would you need to remake it when you have the real thing, and far better actors?

There are so many squandered chances in this film and I hold director Brown responsible. Film direction is a series of choices and Brown's choice to ignore the intellectual, play down the professor-student dynamic, gloss over so many things is baffling to me. The much lower budget 2014  independent Tamil-language "Ramanujan" does a much better job of opening the man's head, possibly because it is Indian, and is rooted in the Indian soul.

Worst yet is the inaccuracies of the film--all sorts of liberties are taken with the truth that simply don't need to be taken: 10 minutes into the film we are informed that an apple tree on Trinity College's Great Court is the very same that produced the apple which landed on Newton's head. There is no apple tree there, the apple did not fall on his head, and it didn't happen in Cambridge.

Why would you do that? Don't they know that we boffins are by tautology pedantic? I'll forgive you for fudging the maths, I'll forgive you for fudging the film--but to fudge both? Inconceivable!

This isn't a bad film, but it is certainly within a standard deviation of the mean average. 5/10

Movie Review: Captain America, Civil War...Avengers...Iron Man...The Guy with the Arrows..etc etc etc etc

Marvel Studios 2016

Directors: Joe and Anthony Russo

Rotten Tomatoes score as at print: 92%

Accurate trailer? Yup, pretty much.

The biggest point of this review requires a spoiler--so spoiler alert from the get-go.

This movie has pretty much the same storyline of Superman vs Batman (or is it Batman vs Superman, who cares?). But whereas the DC Comic civil war fails, this one succeeded.

Whereas the violence of Superman and Batman was nasty and "dark" and artsy, this was frantic, fun and actually took the storyline along with it. Whereas the Capped Crusader's movie was incredibly serious, self absorbed and simultaneously petulant, brooding and confused, this was paced, frantic and enjoyable. Long, but enjoyable. Not perfect, but enjoyable.

Oh Superman! Why hath thou forsaken me?!?

Aside from the fact that we are now at peak-superhero, my biggest gripe with this genre is also present in this movie: this annoying trope of have 2 characters exchange clichéd explanatory dialogue about what their motivation is.

At some stage in all these movies there will be some weepy schmaltzy sad story about how one of the character's parents told him that he was destined to do great things, before tragically dying, and how there "hasn't been a day go by..."

These scenes are always filmed in that painful shot/reverse-shot style, with soft piano music gently telling us that this back-story is supposed to be sad, and that we are supposed to empathise with the character.

It's cheap, it's exploitative and that's why I hate it. Well, it's one of the reasons I hate it--the other is that it's just so boring. Please stop it Hollywood.

Anyway, the real kick in this is watching the Avengers split and then are forced to fight. The action is manic, and frantic and the filming reflects this; the 180 degree rule is deliberately broken, the sense of position disrupted, angles mixed, edits cut sharply and the perspective in the epic scenes is kept small, inviting intrusion from outside interference.

Unlike the DC fare also, there is a clear and objective motivation behind both the characters and the factions. 6 weeks after seeing Superman, I'm still not sure why Lex Luther did what he did, or why Superman was such a dick about it.

There's snappy dialogue and humour (does anyone remember laughter?) in this that mirrors the comics.

There is one thing which does confuse me about this film, and it's not even with the film  itself...it's in the American censor's rating. It gets a PG-13 because it contains "action and mayhem". Oh no! action AND mayhem?! We can't let anyone under 13 see actually, real mayhem, even with a balanced diet of action.

So overall worth seeing? Yup.

One final thing--my butt hurts. I have butt-hurt. This movie is a little shy of 2 and a half hours long. It is worth it to go to a deluxe cinema with comfortable seats.

Also, make sure that your 3D glasses are clean. Mine were slightly foggy around the edges, you know, and they annoyed me a little. If you have kids with you go see it in 2-D--there is a lot of action (and mayhem) and the combination of action, mayhem and 3D I could see creating upset little kids out there.

Rating: solid 8/10