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Here are some reviews I wrote and never bothered to post because I am a failure.
Frost/Nixon
A series of caricatures in implausible wigs lead us through a fascinating subject that would be and has been much better served by documentary. It's a passably enjoyable way to spend time, but as a project it doesn't really justify its existence. Lots of stagey close-ups, some creaky accents, and more than a dash of overacting eliminate the fidelity the piece needs. Also, it's not really Frost/Nixon so much as Fact/Nixon, as Frost's role turns out to be wholly inconsequential alongside the presentation of a previously unpublished piece of evidence. Not really the battle I was expecting.
Milk
A series of well-judged, nuanced and restrained performances lead us through a fascinating subject that probably has been covered in documentaries I haven't yet seen, but is nonethless compelling enough as a film regardless of its similarity to historical fact. As a fiction it could have done more to examine Josh Brolin's Dan White character, though - in fact all the cast surrounding Milk are viewed externally, which is a little frustrating. Still, solid, worthy. Like eating a fistful of gay Ryvita.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
A film which decidely did not inspire my curiosity beyond what time it was and how distant that time was in seconds from the point at which the film would end. It delivers impressive special effects, which will look horribly dated within a short number of years, fine technical execution and some adequate performances, but ultimately it's a film that says very, very little. As an exercise in fabulist entertainment it lacks the elegant, indulgent whimsy of a film like Amelie, and in its scope and plot feels very much like a cynical retread of Gump, even down to rehashing the "you never know what you're gonna get" line at regular intervals in the hope of inducing some kind of Pavlovian love response in a slobbering, poodle-brained audience. Still better than that vapid bumburp Slumdog Millionaire, though!
Max payne
Max Payne the videogame is a harboiled noir pastiche whose central tenet is that everything looks better in slow-motion, particularly things like explosions, bullets and murder. Max Payne the movie, meanwhile, seems to be largely about filing. Filing and having terse, pointless conversations. If the main character in an action movie files more paper than he fires guns then there is something seriously awry.
Knowing
Turns out knowing wasn't the issue I had with this Nick Cage-fronted sci-fi gurn-fest, it was giving a shit. Nick Cage and his wig discover a message from the past which seems to predict lots of bad shit. He then drives around boggling incredulously at things beneath his ludicrous canopy of hair, while creepy men, transplanted from the director's only good film, try and spook the audience with agonising inevitability.
There are some slightly diverting disaster set-pieces in which special effects kill lots of people (in ways which you'd think would strain the PG-13 rating) but the film is mostly just a vehicle for Cage's bad Jimmy Stewart impersonation as he tries to unravel a series of absurdly staged clues about impending doom. It's one of those films whose construction is singularly designed to baffle audiences, without that bafflement actually having any logical place within the events whatsoever.
Things in Knowing's favour: you see a moose catch fire. |
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