7 days (of Retaliation)

7 days is another foreign-language film where the title seems to have been under-translated. The original French title of Les 7 jours du talion seems to translate pretty obviously into The 7 days of Retaliation; so why the truncation? Does someone think people are too stupid to know what retaliation means?

The film is quite hard to watch, since it deals with the aftermath of a child's murder. The scene setting is also quite graphic; so you know you are in for something hard-hitting.

But, for me, the film quickly loses its way. The parents' grief is passed over too rapidly. The wife is sidelined for most of the film. The cop (Mercure) who should have been as important to the story as the doctor (Hamel) isn't explored enough; and he interacts with Hamel in a mostly superficial way.

This could have been a powerful examination of the conflicts facing a father torn between the law and his need to exact a personal vengeance. But it isn't. I suspect the original novel is much better at exploring Hamel's state of mind.

No-one can know how they would react in such a terrible situation. I think the film is trying to show the conflict between right and wrong. But that isn't the point. As a viewer I'm not really interested in whether he is morally right or wrong, or even if he thinks he is morally right or wrong. What I care about is whether the portrayal is convincing or not. Does this look like a possible reaction to a crisis? To me it didn't.

Hamel's actions are not believable. And for that reason the movie fails. At the end it didn't matter to me whether Hamel killed Lemaire or not.

Elena

This is a bleak Russian film in which the title character Elena is caught between the rich and poor sides of Moscow. The problem is that it batters you slowly but surely into appreciating Elena's situation. Yes, I get it, but I was bored. I had sympathy with Elena who isn't appreciated by anyone. I loathed her rich husband. I envied his daughter who always got everything she wanted. I looked down on her poor lazy son and his family. I was shocked by what she did. The film ended.

Oblivion

What? Another Tom Cruise film, so soon. Well, since Jack Reacher wasn't so bad, I thought I'd trust the same recommender and try Oblivion too.

If I was being cynical then I'd say that writer Joseph Kosinski watched a whole load of sci-fi films, picked out his favourite themes and stuck them together into one story. For example, surely the drones in Oblivion are a tribute to ED209 from Robocop. But that would be unfair. Kosinski may have been inspired by some classics, but he has chosen well and incorporated many elements into a more or less coherent story.

There are a few problems that need some heavy suspension of disbelief. The two main characters live on Tower 49 and seem untroubled by the fact that they can talk to a space-station but not to any of the other crews on other towers... do they really believe that they are alone? And they are conveniently surrounded by an impassable radiation zone... but have a bubble-craft that can fly into space!

Anyway, the main characters are played brilliantly by Cruise and the wonderful Andrea Riseborough. For me the real power of the film is how those two react differently to their situation. Jack is haunted by dreams that he wants to understand, but Vika just wants to get the job over with and get out of there (she says).

Obviously there is something odd going on; otherwise there wouldn't be much of a film to watch. Things pan out quite gently with a few mild surprises. There isn't a mass of action, but there are plenty of interesting events to take in.

Robot and Frank

Robot and Frank is a light-hearted look at what it means to be alive. Frank Langella plays an ageing jewel thief who is given a robot to look after him by his family, who would rather not look after him themselves. As the film progresses we see them grow together but are constantly reminded that Frank is alive and the Robot is not.

Both characters are skilfully written and directed by Christopher Ford and Jake Schreier respectively. From the simple but effective device of never giving the Robot a name, to many more subtle tricks that you only spot if you look carefully.

The voice of Robot sounds very like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey; if Peter Sarsgaard did that deliberately then it is another nice touch.

I found this film funny and touching, without being overly sentimental.

Livid

I am not a fan of bad horror films (horror for horror's sake ... blood and guts all over the place) but I do like scary films that have a story. French film Livid is almost a great scary film.

The small cast are all good; particularly Chloé Coulloud as Lucie and Catherine Jacob as the nurse Wilson. The boys Ben and William start off good, but descend into stereotypes quite quickly... not the actors faults, just one of the few lapses the film has into the pitfalls of this genre; and yes, there is a scene where someone walks backwards towards something bad without looking!

It is a dark film; both metaphorically and in terms of lighting. That really works well for me. I prefer to imagine someone getting mangled rather than actually seeing it in all its gory detail. For me it is scarier to not see the detail... maybe my mind is darker than anything that can be shown on screen?

The story is a bit puzzling. The viewer is led along a certain path concerning Jessel and what happened to her family. At the end there seems to be a sort of twist; but I didn't quite get it. I think I know what happened... but I have no idea why it happened. Since this is quite a short film (93 minutes) maybe the director could have put more into the ending. But I am nitpicking a bit.

Good suspense. Well shot. Scary without over-indulgent gore.

The Emperor and The White Snake

On one level The Emperor and The White Snake is a simple Chinese film where good guys battle demons. It is spectacular and beautiful, with people who can walk on air and water, with demons that can change into people and giant monsters, and not a lot making sense.

Don't get me wrong; I like those films.

This film is more baffling than usual. But in a good way, I think. I guess my ignorance of Chinese myths and legends doesn't help me here.

Firstly, who was The Emperor? I assumed that it wasn't the Jet Li character, since he was referred to as the abbot. But as the film went on I waited for an emperor to arrive and none did. Odd. A bit of research after watching the movie revealed that it is more commonly known as The Sorcerer and the White Snake ... which is a better title ... since there is a sorcerer, and no emperor!

The other baffling thing was what the demons were supposed to represent. At the start they are bad things that hurt people. Then you get the idea that they are a metaphor for disease. The young doctor battles them with herbal medicine; whereas the religious guy battles them with magic.

It looks like we are going to get a story about science versus religion, but we don't. It gets more complicated when one of the demons falls in love with a mortal and one of the monks gets bitten by a demon.

Why it is so baffling is the ending. It doesn't make sense to me why the snake demon and the bat demon have the outcomes they do...

Anyway, it was an enjoyable film, if a bit confusing.

Beautiful Creatures

It's not the most original story, but Beautiful Creatures is a well made film. The lead actors Alice Englert (Lena) and Alden Ehrenreich (Ethan) both give wonderful performances that eclipse almost everyone else apart from Emma Thompson.

I haven't seen the Twilight films or any of the other recent youth-romantic-fantasy genre, so I can't compare. For romantiphobic men this is one of those films that you can take your girlfriend to see and both enjoy.

The plot is nothing special, so the watchability is all down to the acting and sound direction by Richard LaGravenese.

Not one to rave about; but I enjoyed it.

Riddick

As a film in its own right Riddick is a fun enough sci-fi romp. Vin Diesel's archetypal anti-hero fights against everyone, makes some almost-friends and just about survives... as you expect.

So, if I hadn't already enjoyed Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick, then I would probably be quite happy with Riddick. But whereas those two films were very different, this one doesn't add anything: we briefly see Riddick not liking being "King of The Necros" (again as expected) and then we are given a film which is quite like Pitch Black, but not as good.

Afterwards I found myself imagining the scriptwriter's thought process as - Right, we need another Riddick story... OK, the fans really liked PB and quite liked TCOR so... how about Riddick gets stranded on a planet with monsters and mercs???

Argh. More imagination needed. Film fans don't know what they want; they just tell you what they liked before. This is how we end up in a cloud of sequels, remakes and reboots.

Drug War

I was disappointed with the Chinese film Drug War. There are a few interesting moments; but for the majority of the film it just plods along (no pun intended) a single track. It needs more depth to keep you watching until everything kicks off at the end. I almost bailed out several times, but did stick with it until the end. It wasn't really worth it... the ending isn't very good either.

Daredevil (extended)

I think I was one of the few Daredevil fans who didn't think the 2003 film was completely terrible. It was far from perfect, but I don't think it deserved the panning it got. Daredevil is always going to be a hard character to portray because (like Batman) he has varied over the years from just tough to almost insane and very dark.

I've known for a while that there was a so-called director's cut of the film which many fans thought was a big improvement. But I'm not a fan of special editions; mainly because the few I've seen have just been too long and didn't improve the film at all (except for Blade Runner obviously).

But I noticed recently that the Blu-ray version of Daredevil is 124 minutes long (the DVD is 99 minutes) and it isn't labelled as a special edition. So what's going on? As far as the Blu-ray release is concerned, the longer version is the only version.

That intrigued me. So after 10 years I thought I'd watch it.

It certainly is an improvement on the theatrical release. The edits are quite major and change the whole tone of many parts of the film. There are extra scenes which develop the characters better and many more subtle changes, such as removing unnecessary narration, which help too.

It's still not perfect. The special effects still look poor compared to later films with bigger budgets and Colin Farrell is still annoying as Bullseye. But the atmosphere and tone of the film are very good. This definitely should be the only version of this film.

Jack Reacher

I was put off watching Jack Reacher by a friend who is a fan of the Lee Child novels and told me that Tom Cruise is nothing like the Reacher he imagined. I also disliked the Mission Impossible films so I wasn't willing to give Cruise the benefit of the doubt.

On the other hand, I did really like other Cruise films like Vanilla Sky and Minority Report so eventually I thought I'd give it a go. Knowing nothing about the books I just watched it as a stand-alone film.

I liked the character of Jack Reacher. He's tough and almost impregnable. He has some good one-liners and the action scenes are exciting. Sort of like a Schwarzenegger character but more intelligent and more agile.

In retrospect Reacher's invulnerability could have made the film predictable, but it doesn't. The plot is clever, but not too complicated, and provides enough contrasts to maintain interest.

There are some gripes. Rosamund Pike's character is shallow; a pointless token female. Some of the bad guys don't stack up either, but I can't go into detail there without throwing in spoilers.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised. An enjoyable film.

The Iceman

For a fleeting moment, when I saw that Chris Evans was in The Iceman, I thought "What? He's done The Human Torch and Captain America and now Iceman?"

But this 2012 movie isn't a Marvel story. It is based on the true story of Polish-American hit-man Richard Kuklinski; who is played beautifully by Michael Shannon.

The film film doesn't overly dwell on the murders committed by Kuklinski. Instead it tries to depict the apparent paradox of a notoriously cold-hearted killer who is also a family man. His wife is played by Winona Ryder who does a good job with a character clearly living in denial.

Whether the balance in the film is true or not is questionable. We see Kuklinski killing and disposing of people one minute then playing the loving father at a birthday party the next. Only on a couple of occasions does he show any compassion to his victims, or display any violence to his wife and daughters.

Evans is a bit of a distraction, serving mostly to highlight the outstanding performance of Shannon. Kuklinski always looks impassive but sometimes a brief ripple of emotion bubbles to the surface.

Not perfect, but interesting, with some great performances.

Cloud Atlas

You get a clue that Cloud Atlas is a hugely ambitious film when you see that it is 160 minutes long. The length itself isn't a problem; the problem is that there is too much going on to take in. So you'd need to watch this a few times to figure out what is going on ... at which point the length then becomes a problem ... who wants to watch a 160 minute film 3 times to figure out what's going on?

There are basically 6 interwoven stories here. Interwoven in the edit and (I think) in cause-and-effect. I say I think so, because I'm assuming that the same actor represents the same soul in each thread. That might sound obvious, but in some cases the actor is so heavily made up that it is hard to tell. Very impressive on the make-up front, but another flaw for me: it is hard enough to track the connections across 6 threads without having to speculate whether A equals B as well.

What happened when I watched this may or may not be typical. I found myself focussing hard on 3 of the stories and the other 3 became an irritation. The young lawyer, the composer and the clone all managed to grab my attention. Possibly because Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw and Doona Bae all give excellent performances.

In a novel this level of complexity works because you can set your own pace and go back to previous chapters to check details if you want. In a film it doesn't work. The connections are missed, or lost, and you are left feeling like you are trying to watch several films at the same time.

9

The film 9 is based on an earlier short film (of the same name) also directed by Shane Acker, that I haven't seen.

It is beautifully animated with a much more life-like style than other Tim Burton movies (he co-produces with Timur Bekmambetov).

The story is well told. Everything is mysterious at first. Gradually we find out what has happened to the world and who the curious little creatures are that we find ourselves rooting for.

There are moments of excitement and some of sadness. But this is generally a light and ultimately optimistic film. I think the joy is probably all in the first viewing, while everything is new and unknown.

Original and fun.