Sunday, January 22, 2012

Rubber - meekon5 - review.

Despite a name that caused some raised eyebrows in discussion at work the next day as I tried to describe the film, this film is a little gem.
Whilst at university I had the opportunity to extend a couple of interests of mine, namely philosophy and film studies as part of one of the modules of my degree.
I also have the pleasure of a group of friends who share my love and interest in films, but more on the "Shit Film Club" (of which I'm sure any number of variations exist) at some later time.
I mention this because we tend to play silly games where each of us are looking for more unusual (read bizarre) little obscure films.Especially knowing each others likes and dislikes. This films discovery (for my group of friends) is Pete's work.
At once post modernist, and surreal in turns. Without giving too much away there is a scene early on where a character seems to break the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly,only for the the camera to turn round afterwards to reviel an audience in the film that he has been addressing.
For a film that follows a tyre that develops psychotic tendencies and goes on a killing spree.
Not a film for everybody, but a good film if you can take the surrealism, and the flip flop of dipping in and out of Post Modernism.

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Saturday, January 21, 2012

The Social Network - meekon5 - review.

For years I followed Barry Norman on the BBC's Film (insert your favourite year here 1972 to 1998 with a small break 1982-83). Now I cant say I always agreed with his reviews, in fact I probably disagreed with more than the ones I agreed with, but what I liked about Mr Norman was that he was consistent, and in the end I could judge whether I would enjoy a film from the tone of his review even if he slated the film.
I don't think anyone (Mr Ross, or the other two) have come anywhere near Mr Normans style or consistency.
I mention this because I aim at this myself. I don't expect to be as good a film reviewer as Mr Norman I just attempt to attain his consistency. I hope those of you who read this will come to be able to read these reviews, and if not agree with them at least get some idea as to what the film is and if you would enjoy it even if I didn't.
All I have to say about "the social network" is that if this was meant to be an attempt to make me the viewer feel any sympathy for Mark Zuckerberg by telling the story from his point of view, it didn't. I started the film thinking he was a bit of an arrogant knob (imho), and this film did nothing to dispel this point of view. As far as I can see he was an arogant knob who stole a bunch of ideas off his friends then paid them off. No sympathy.
I'm led to believe the sound track is very good if you don't spoil it by having to watch the film at the same time.
I don't want to start giving films points out of ten but I think there are better films to spend your time watching.

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Friday, January 20, 2012

Source Code - meekon5 - review.

OK to start with I suppose I owe you some sort of explanation. I have started to work through my backlog of DVD's. As I am now watching quite a few films in the week, I have decided to try to review them here. Each time I finish a film I will try to take a picture of the cover then blog here, rather than try to describe the plot and my impressions to everyone, I can just point them here.
I have to say I was somewhat surprised by this film. That is nicely surprised. I am always wary of films (or books) that refer other films (or books) in terms of "The New". As in "The New Lord of the Rings", or in this case "The New Inception". I always feel you can bet that any film that has to say this is of course going to be nothing like the hype they are pushing.
Having heard from a number of sources that Inception was a brain twister then being really disappointed with it, I was expecting this (Source Code) to be a poor attempt at what was a poor attempt at over intellectualised psychological sci-fi. I was really surprised, though the story is a little contrite, it does stand up on it's own and is nothing as bad as Inception.
A soldier wakes up in someone else's body. There then ensues an almost groundhog days round of the soldier returning to the same eight minutes on a doomed train. Avoiding a lot of the usual time travel paradoxes by being set in a virtual environment.
It's defiantly worth seeing.

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